Archive for the 'Cinema' Category

Simone Signoret, Samy Ben Youb in “Madame Rosa’

Wednesday, October 19th, 2022

  • (Japanese poster)

  • Madame Rosa

    Directed by Paris-based Israeli director Moshe Mizrahi, “Madame Rosa” won the Best Foreign Language Oscar, and Signoret received the Cesar Award (French Oscar) for Best Actress.
    Well-shot by ace lenser Nestor Almendros the film also
    features Claude Dauphin and director Costa-Gavras as an actor.

    Romain Gary wrote The Life Before Us

    See a Full film on youtube here.. and discover the miracle of Samy Ben Youb.

    (Sophia Loren recently played Madame Rosa who became an Italian).

  • Angela Lansbury, Star of Film, Stage And ‘Murder, She Wrote,’ Dies at 96

    Tuesday, October 11th, 2022
  • Angela Lansbury

    (Angela Lansbury was in “Blue Hawaii” with Elvis)

    Lansbury had a prolific career in film, theatre and television. She was one of the last film stars of the golden age of Hollywood, having been a contract player with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940s. She acted alongside actors such as Ingrid Bergman, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, Orson Welles, Bette Davis and Maggie Smith in such classic films as Gaslight (1944), National Velvet (1944), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), The Harvey Girls (1946), State of the Union (1948), The Court Jester (1956), The Long, Hot Summer (1958), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Death on the Nile (1978).

    She is also known for her roles in classic children’s films as Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), The Last Unicorn (1982), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Anastasia (1997), Fantasia 2000 (2000), Nanny McPhee (2005), The Grinch (2018) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). Lansbury is also known for her iconic work in Broadway musicals working Stephen Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1978), Gypsy (1973), and A Little Night Music (2009–2010). She also starred in Jerry Herman’s Mame (1966), and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I (1978). She is also known for her performances in plays such as the Terrence McNally play Deuce (2007), the Noël Coward comedy Blithe Spirit (2014), the Gore Vidal political drama The Best Man (2012). She gained international fame for her role as mystery writer turned sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the CBS crime series Murder, She Wrote (1984–1996).

    Tim Robbins & Angela Lansbury
    TIm Robbins born Oct 16, 1958. (Happy birthday Tim Robbins)
    Angela Lansbury (16 October 1925 – 11 October 2022)

    RIP Irene Papas, Singer, Actress

    Wednesday, September 14th, 2022

  • (Iphigenia)

  • (The Trojan Women)
    Irena Pappas was directed by Michael Cacoyannis in “Zorba the Greek”, “The Trojan Women”, “Iphigenia’ and “Electra”.


  • (“Christ Stopped at Eboli’ directed by Francesco Rosi.)

  • Irene Papas
    was a Greek actress and singer who starred in over 70 films in a career spanning more than 50 years. She gained international recognition through such popular award-winning films as The Guns of Navarone (1961)

    In 2013 she began to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.[54] She died on 14 September 2022, having spent her final years in Chiliomodi.

    (via wiki)

    Her wiki on her affair with Marlon Brando.

    In 1954 she met the actor Marlon Brando and they had a long love affair, which they kept secret at the time. Fifty years later, when Brando died, she recalled that “I have never since loved a man as I loved Marlon. He was the great passion of my life, absolutely the man I cared about the most and also the one I esteemed most, two things that generally are difficult to reconcile”

  • Manoel Oliveira directed Irene Papas in “Party” and “A Talking Picture”.

  • Adieu Jean Luc Godard

    Tuesday, September 13th, 2022
  • J.L.G. godard1

    Une Catastrophe Jean Luc Godard!

  • Tributes from Mik Leigh, Claire Denis, Kelly Reichard, Paul Schrader etc..

  • <>1acoujlg

  • RIP Alain Tanner A Pioneer of Swiss New Wave Films – Sept 11 2022

    Monday, September 12th, 2022

    Messidor is an original, unpredictable, and disturbing film about two alienated young women in search of freedom from society. The film, in its poetic sweep, is reminiscent of Terrence Malik’s Badlands and could have been a prototype for Thelma and Louise.”

    1aaBulleOgier
    Bulle Ogier from La Salamandre.

    Alain Tanner

    Influenced by his involvement with the British “Free Cinema” movement in London and with the French New Wave during his years in Paris, Tanner is best known for his movies Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l’an 2000 (Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000), Dans la ville blanche (In the White City) and Messidor. (via wiki)

    See his filmography (via MUBI)

    “My films have always represented a balancing act between those films whose objective is the discourse, the concept, and those which start from the material, from emotions, behaviour and locations.”

    <>

  • Requiem

  • John Berger wrote the script for La Salamandre (1971); The Middle of the World (1974); and Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976)

    Brilliant Casting of Hidetoshi Nishijima for “Drive My Car” by Ryusuke Hamaguchi

    Sunday, September 4th, 2022
  • Hidetoshi Nishijima and Ryusuke Hamaguchi photographed by Mark Selige

  • Drive My Car at Criterion

  • In Conversation Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Hidetoshi Nishiima – Adapting Drive My Car for Screen

  • The Playlist Interview

  • Actor embraces grief Chekov and a red Saab for “Drive My Car” (LA times)

  • >
    1adollsKitano
    (Hidetoshi Nishijima in Dolls directed by Takeshi Kitano)

  • Adam Driver Played Daniel Jones in “The Report”

    Friday, September 2nd, 2022

  • Adam Driver “the Report” interview –

    Adam Driver on ‘The Report’ and Why He Loved Scott Z. Burns’ Script

  • <> <>
    (Best Original Screenplay written by Scott z Burns)
    (Photos by Fung Lin Hall)

    The Passing of Leon Vitali – Kubrick’s Actor & Filmworker

    Sunday, August 21st, 2022
  • (Leon Vitali as Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon.)


  • See what Mathew Modine wrote about Leon Vitali

  • Alec Baldwin
    interviewed Leon Vitali

  • S is for Stanley a documentary film on Driver/Handyman (Previous post).

  • Tokyo Toilets – Wim Wenders & Yakusho Koji

    Sunday, August 14th, 2022
  • Wim Wenders homepage

    „THE TOKYO TOILET“ Art Project with Wim Wenders, Koji Yakusho, Tadao Ando et al.
    Wim Wenders announces a new art project which includes a short film about high-end public toilets in Shibuya, Tokyo.

    Japan’s leading international actor, Kōji Yakusho (Memoirs of a Geisha / Babel etc.) will play the lead role.
    The spaces featured in THE TOKYO TOILET (TTT) were designed by world-renowned architects like Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban,and designers like NIGO, with the idea that a pleasant public restroom could counter the common expectation of a dark, dirty and dangerous place.

    “My first reaction was: What? Toilets? Chotto mattete,” said Wim Wenders during the press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday, using the Japanese expression for “wait a minute”.

    For Wim Wenders, the project has high social value and he could immediately see the potential and story behind these stylish Tokyo toilets. „Because a toilet is a place where everybody is the same. There’s no rich and poor, no old and young, everybody’s part of humanity“, he said.

    The film shooting will take place in Tokyo in October 2022.

    Amen Mathieu Kassovitz – La Haine, Le Bureau Etc.

    Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022

  • (Birthday Girl starring Nicole Kidman, Ben Chaplin, Vincent Cassel and Mathieu Kassovitz)

    Happy birthday Mathieu Kassovitz

  • La Haine Hate
    Mathieu Kassovitz wrote, directed and acted in La Haine.
    (Upon its release, La Haine received widespread critical acclaim and was well received in France and abroad.
    The film was shown at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival where it enjoyed a standing ovation.
    Kassovitz was awarded the Best Director prize at the festival and he was 27 years old.

    Mathieu Kassovitz MUBI


    Le Bureau French TV Series
    (Exciting TV series as great as “Breaking Bad”, “Borgen”, or “The Queen’s Gambit”.

  • Wiki

  • RIP Bob Rafelson (February 21, 1933 – July 23, 2022)

    Monday, July 25th, 2022
  • Jack & Bob

    Rafelson did six films with Jack Nicholson, Head (1968), Five Easy Pieces (1970), The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Man Trouble (1992), and Blood and Wine (1996).

    Photo via Esquire Interview

    Bob Rafelson Emerges to Reflect on His Feud-and-Brawl-Filled Career (Esquire Interview)

    Hunter S. Thompson was an Aspen neighbor with whom Bob Rafelson would practice shooting using pictures of Richard Nixon.

  • Bob Rafelson wiki

    Rafelson left home at 14 and worked variously as a rodeo rider, a hand on an ocean liner and a jazz musician. He later enrolled at Dartmouth College to study philosophy. He started writing plays in 1953.
    During his military service he was based in Japan where he took up disc-jockeying and subsequently working on films produced by the Shochiku company.


  • (Directed by Bob Rafelson. With Debra Winger, Theresa Russell, and Sami Frey)

  • Aspen honored Bob Rafelson with the life time achievement award and his lost masterwork Mountains on the Moon
    On “Mountains on the Moon” “It’s my best work and it’s my most personal work,” Rafelson said

  • Ingmar Bergman – Persona , Madame Sade & Magic Lantern

    Wednesday, July 13th, 2022

  • (Watch it on youtube here.)

  • MARKISINNAN DE SADE

    Madame Sade Bergman’s hit production of Yukio Mishima’s play.

    ‘Starkly ascetic regarding the physical effects, yet vibrating with sensibility.’

  • Curious Conundrums of Bergman’s Magic Lantern

    I’m planning, you see, to try to confine myself to the truth. That’s hard for an old, inveterate fantasy martyr and liar who has never hesitated to give truth the form he felt the occasion demanded.

    – Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern

  • The Magic Lantern, Bergman’s
    first autobiography, was a huge-
    ly
    revealing and honest piece of
    writing. In general terms, how-
    ever, Bergman’s unparalleled
    successes as a film, theatre
    and television director have
    clearly overshadowed Ingmar
    Bergman the author. Dubious
    as a document, masterful
    as literature, the book had a
    non-chronological structure,
    with altering chapters on child-
    hood, theatre work, the tax
    affair in 1976, marriage crises,
    and encounters with artists like
    Laurence Olivier, Greta Garbo,
    and Herbert von K