Archive for October, 2019

Kaoru Yachigusa – (January 6, 1931 – October 24, 2019)

Monday, October 28th, 2019

Kaoru Yachigusa passed away

Kaoru Yachigusa, actress in “Samurai, The Legend of Musashi,” dies


(Yachigusa Kaoru and Toshiro Mifune in Samurai, The Legend of Musashi”)

She was a member of Takarazuka Revue

Yachigusa, who started her career in the all-women Takarazuka Revue, gained popularity through her role as Otsu in the 1954 film, known as “Miyamoto Musashi” in Japan, which featured Toshiro Mifune as the swordsman Musashi. The film won the Honorary Foreign Language Film Award at the Oscars in 1956.
She appeared in a number of other films, including Japanese-Italian musical “Madame Butterfly” and “Yukiguni.”


  • (Mariko Kaga and Kaoru Yachigusa in With Beauty and Sorrow based on Kawabata Yasunari. )

    Kaoru Yachigusa was in “Yukiguni” with Kishi Keiko see previous post on Kawabata Yasunari

  • Citizen X, 3 Identical Strangers, Elena – 3 Films for Halloween

    Sunday, October 27th, 2019
  • Citizen X

    Citizen X is a 1995[1] American television film which covers the efforts of detectives in the Soviet Union to capture an unknown serial killer of women and children in the 1980s, and the successive bureaucratic obstacles they consistently encounter. The film is based upon the true story of Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, who was convicted in 1992 of the murder of 52 women and children committed between 1978 and 1990. It stars Stephen Rea, Donald Sutherland, and Max Von Sydow.

  • Three Identical Strangers (Five things you may not know)

    3 Identical Strangers (wiki)

    Three Identical Strangers is a 2018 documentary film directed by Tim Wardle and starring Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran. It examines a set of American identical triplets, born in 1961 and adopted as six-month-old infants by separate families, unaware that each child had brothers. The separations were done as part of an undisclosed scientific “nature versus nurture” twin study, to track the development of genetically identical siblings raised in differing circumstances. Combining archival footage, re-enacted scenes, and present-day interviews, the documentary reveals how the brothers discovered one another at age 19 and thereafter sought to understand the circumstances of their separation.[3][4]

    The film premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival,[5] where it won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling.[6] The film was a nominee in the Best Documentary category at the 72nd British Academy Film Awards. It was also on the shortlist of 15 films considered for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, out of 166 candidates

  • Elena

    Elena (With Philip Glass soundtrack)

    It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival[1][2] where it won the Special Jury Prize.

    Peter Bradshaw review
    (The above review was written earlier. Since then Andrey Zvyagintsev directed Leviathan.)

    Julian Schnabel & Hans Heiner Buhr – 2019

    Friday, October 25th, 2019

  • Happy birthday Julian Schnabel (photo via
    See more art (previous post)

  • Happy birthday Hans Heiner Buhr

    His homepage

    See more from previous post

  • Hillary arrives in Bosnia.

    <> <> <> patrol.gif

    The Silence of the Sea – Jean Pierre Melville

    Saturday, October 19th, 2019

  • photo via
    The 10 greatest films of Jean Pierre Melville

    “La Silence de la Mer” (1949)
    This debut feature is a distant relative to the atmospheric crime films that would ultimately carve his name among the greats, yet even so, “La Silence de la Mer” is vital in any conversation about Melville. It’s a film that relies so heavily on narration, and is so spatially limited (taking place mostly in a single living room), that it should revokes its right to be cinematic but ends up being so regardless.

    The Complete Melville at Criterion


  • photo via

    Born Jean-Pierre Grumbach
    20 October 1917

  • “Léon Morin, Priest” in English — was Melville’s sixth feature and almost the exact midpoint between early successes like “Bob le Flambeur” (1956), about a gentleman thief organizing the heist of a lifetime, and “Army of Shadows” (1969), his late-career masterpiece about the Resistance. Given his interest in the war, it’s understandable that he was drawn to “Léon Morin” and its story of life during the occupation.

  • Le Samurai

    The Weight of Harold Bloom & His Western Canon

    Tuesday, October 15th, 2019
  • <> <> <>
    Derrida and Harold Bloom

    Guardian Obit

  • Question-one-should-never-ask-about-work-art – Stanley Fish

  • Harold Bloom on the Band
    (Harold Bloom thought Levon Helm was the heart and soul of the Band)

    On Iris Murdoch

    In his edited volume on Iris Murdoch, Harold Bloom wrote that no contemporary British novelist could rival her skill. The Good Apprentice and Bruno’s Dream were both included in Bloom’s Western Canon, and he also admired The Black Prince and The Word Child.

    In his New York Times review of The Good Apprentice, Bloom wrote that “Of all her talents, the gift of plotting is the most formidable, including a near-Shakespearean faculty for intricate double plots.” He describes her as “a religious fabulist, of an original and unorthodox sort” who “thinks for herself theologically as well as philosophically,” starting out as an existentialist before turning to a kind of post-Christian Platonism.(via)

    1artirisMurdoch

    Walter Benjamin, Iris and Derrida (previous post)

    The Passing of a Killer Poet/Muse, John Giorno

    Saturday, October 12th, 2019
  • Art news obit

    News
    John Giorno, Storied Artist Who Expanded Poetry’s Possibilities, Is Dead at 82

  • Do the Undone – John Giorno Installation at Sperone Westwater.
    (5 September – 26 October 2019, Sperone Westwater, New York)

  • John Giorno

  • Keith Haring, William S. Burroughs and John Giorno, photo by Tseng Kwong Chi.

    via Digitized by Backstage Library Works

  • William Burroughs, Laurie Anderson & John Giorno photographed at Giorno’s loft in New York City in 1980.
    Giorno as Muse

    JOHN GIORNO AT HOTEL CHELSEA, 1965. PHOTO: WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS.

    RIP Robert Forster – He was Cool & Lovely

    Saturday, October 12th, 2019

  • (Medium Cool Forster, directed by Haskell Wexler)
    Robert Forster

    photo via

  • His top 10 performances
    (Forster played George Clooney’s father-in-law in the Descendants directed by Alexander Payne.
    Also in the list is his part in Mullholland Drive directed by David Lynch)

  • Peter Handke , the Nobel Win & the Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty Kick

    Thursday, October 10th, 2019

  • (Peter Handke Moravia Night)

    (Peter Handke google image gallery)

  • A Troubling Choice, Authors criticise Peter Handke

  • Handke collaborated with director Wim Wenders on a film version of The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty, wrote the script for Wenders’ The Wrong Move, and co-wrote the screenplay for Wenders’ Wings of Desire and The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez. He has also directed films, including from his own novels, The Left-Handed Woman and The Absence. (wiki)

    Mario Vargas Llosa and Peter Handke

    Repost from my previous post on Peter Falk below
    Peter Falk is counterweight to Peter Handke?

    Wenders had admired Peter Falk in Cassavetes’ films in the 1970’s, and it was probably from Cassavetes that he obtained Falk’s telephone number. He phoned one evening, introduced himself, told a little about the film and explained that he needed a former angel, to which Peter Falk replied after a pause: “How did you know?” When Falk asked whether a script could be sent, Wenders said that he had nothing at all in writing about this ex-angel, not even a single page. If anything, that apparently made the part even more interesting to Falk, who answered: “Ah, I’ve worked like that before with Cassavetes, and honestly I prefer working without a script.”
    Falk arrived in Berlin one Friday in November and he and Wenders spent the weekend together, developing the role on the basis of taped improvisations. All of Falk’s scenes were shot the following week, and Falk returned to Los Angeles.

    Peter Falk-les ailes du désir (Wings of Desire)

    Imagine John Lennon being 79 years old

    Sunday, October 6th, 2019

  • Photo by Marc Riboud

  • Imagine: cinematography by Nestor Almendros

  • Louis Malle, John Lennon, Yoko Ono e Jeanne Moreau, 1971 (AP Photo)


  • Kristin Scott Thomas played aunt Mimi in “Nowhere Boy” ..(directed by artist Sam Taylor Wood)

  • Hans Haacke’s Exhibition, Martin Creed’ s Ballet – October 2019

    Tuesday, October 1st, 2019
  • Opening October 24 –
    The New Museum Presents Hans Haacke, All Connected


  • Together – Hans Haacke – (Paula Cooper Gallery)

  • Trickle Up1HansHaackeTrickleUP

    See more from previous post

    American flags & amigos


  • Martin Creed Ballet

    Martin Creed choreographs a piece for classically trained dancers featuring live music. Using video and music composed by Creed and played by his band, Work No. 1020 is performed by five dancers who are restricted to using the five core classical ballet positions, each of which are ascribed a musical note. By limiting the dancers to the five positions, Creed establishes a tight framework in which to examine the changing effects of time, speed, and direction.

    Most ballet is not very funny. But by using just the five basic positions of ballet, Martin Creed — better known for his art than his choreographic skills — offers a playful and engaging 70 minutes of repetitions where the limitations actually become the springboard of creativity. It’s a bit like watching a giggly game of chess or perhaps a game of Scrabble created with the human body, which has been intercut with a bit of chat from Creed, some video (including some of Creed’s more notorious vomiting and defecating films) and some songs played by Creed and a band, who limit their musical palate just as the dancers’ physical movement is limited.