Vitro Nasu

“I am trying to discover who I am through making movies. I see myself as being confined in a cage of Japanese culture and the cage of being a man. I have to look at myself from an outsider’s point of view when I make my films.” Itami Juzo.

Nobuko Miyamoto and Juzo Itami, NYC, 4/12/88

Itami and Nobuko Miyamoto, Creative Marriage

Itami was the brother-in-law of Kenzaburō Ōe and an uncle of Hikari Ōe.

A Quiet Life – Criterion based on a novel by Kenzaburo Oe, directed by Itami Juzo.

Itami Juzo was cast in “Lord Jim” acted with Peter O’Toole. When Peter O’Toole visited Japan, Itami took him to meet Akira Kurosawa when he was
filming, “Red Beard”.

Spotlight on Juzo Itami

Movies & TV Spotlight: Juzo Itami — The Revered Tampopo Director Who Died in Mysterious Circumstances

Itami Juzo Museum

Juzo Itami vs The Yakuza

Happy Mother’s Day

Philippe Sollers passed away

(Philippe Sollers and Julia Kristeva)

Derrida’s closest intellectual comrade in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the writer and editor Philippe Sollers, who published a number of Derrida’s early essays in Tel Quel. But the friendship soured. Sollers wanted Tel Quel to become the cultural journal of the French Communist Party (PCF) and enforced strict obedience to the Moscow line. At a dinner with the Derridas, one telquelian launched into a passionate defence of the Soviet invasion of Prague, where Marguerite’s relatives lived. It did not go down well. Sollers was also worried that Derrida’s reputation might eclipse his own, suspecting that Derrida’s essay in praise of his novel, Numbers, was a covert ‘attempt at appropriation’. In 1967 Sollers had secretly married the Bulgarian literary theorist Julia Kristeva, whose career he was also keen to promote over Derrida’s. Rebuffed in their efforts to capture the cultural apparatus of the PCF, in the early 1970s Sollers and Kristeva converted to Maoism. This led to a deepening estrangement from Derrida, whose friend Lucien Bianco, a distinguished Sinologist, had disabused him of any illusions about revolutionary China. When Derrida gave an interview to La Nouvelle Critique, a PCF literary journal, Sollers and Kristeva protested by ‘boycotting’ a dinner in his honour. Derrida’s Tel Quel years were over. Years later, in her novel The Samurai, Kristeva would mockingly depict Derrida as Saïda, founder of ‘condestruction theory’, a man who was so attractive to American feminists that they ‘all became “condestructivists”’.)(Via Not In the Mood – a review of Derrida’s bio..)
In the Mood for Julia Kristeva – June 24, 2013

Bob Dylan and Gordon Lightfoot

I can’t think of any Gordon Lightfoot song I don’t like. Everytime I hear a song of his, it’s like I wish it would last forever.
-Bob Dylan

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5rEAILOiX4

Here are 10 popular renditions.

https://tubitv.com/movies/551922/gordon-lightfoot-if-you-could-read-my-mind  (A great documentary film –  a must see).

2 photos when Harry met Marlon and Chomsky. (repost)

Ryuichi Sakamoto homepage

His nickname is Kyoju, which means Professor in Japanese.

Listen to Ryuichi Sakamoto playing “Bring Them Home” (Sakamoto was an activist for peace- scroll down) (Previous post)
Kitano Takeshi and Ryuichi Sakamoto

“I live in the fourth dimension when I create landscapes.”

Senga Nengudi homepage

Senga Nengudi Exibition at Dia Beacon

Over her five-decade-long career, Nengudi has realized a remarkable body of work that blurs the boundaries between sculpture and performance, fine art and ritual, individual authorship and collective energy. Made of everyday materials such as vinyl, water, nylon, sand, dry-cleaning bags, lint, paper, and tape, Nengudi’s installations are at once proxies for bodies and sites for performance. The works accommodate a variety of cultural references from African, Japanese, and South Asian rites to Western avant-garde art. Characteristic of her openness to multiplicity, the artist, born Sue Ellen Irons, has assumed pseudonyms that inflect her creative identities as sculptor (Senga Nengudi), painter (Harriet Chin), photographer (Propecia Leigh), and writer (Lily Bea Moor).

Dia’s long-term exhibition of Nengudi’s work will be accompanied by a performance program and publication, revealing the multiplicity of her practice. Sculptures and room-sized installations from the years 1969 to 2020 will be on display at Dia Beacon, including recent acquisitions in Dia’s permanent collection. Performances at Dia Beacon and partnering venues will activate and complement the sculptural presentation, and an artist’s book will collect, for the first time, Nengudi’s drawings, photographs, prints, poems, performance instructions, and other writings.

(Via

A,O Scott

In 2023, he moved to the The New York Times Review of Books.

In a 2009 interview with Rotten Tomatoes, Scott named the following five films as his favorites of all time. [15]
La Dolce Vita
The Godfather
Sullivan’s Travels
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Florida Project The Best film of the year 2017 NY times

A.O. Scott puts “The Florida Project” at No. 1 and writes that it “managed to be both the most joyful and the most heartbreaking movie of the year.” Scott praised director Sean Baker, supporting actor Willem Dafoe and leading lady Brooklynn Prince, who is 7 and lives in Winter Springs. Scott adds that Brooklynn’s performance as Moonee “has earned a place in the canon of American mischief alongside the likes of Eloise and Tom Sawyer.”

Dec 11, 2007 actor Ion Fiscuteanu
(The Death of Mr. Lazarescu)

Actor Ion Fiscuteanu, a Star of Romanian Stage and Film, Dies at 70 (NYtimes)
A, O Scott on Romanian New Wave

New York Times critic A.O. Scott has recorded several pieces on films coming out of Romania, called Romanian Cinema Rising, in light of the current hype surrounding Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days.

Oe Kenzaburo
Oe was married to sister of Tampopo director Itami Juzo.

BBC Obit – Oe Kenzaburo

Oe Kenzaburo and Mario A
(interesting photos of Oe Kenzaburo and his family and friends here)

Oe and his son

The birth of Hikari was a turning point in Oe’s life and in his literary career. Much of Oe’s later fiction examined the relationship between disabled and non disabled people. Hikari turned out to be exceptionally gifted in music, and he is acknowledged as one of the most famous composers in Japan.
Hikari Oe Wikipedia here

Art and Healing: Conversation with Oe (UC Berkeley edu)

Oe Kenzaburo and Kazuo Ishiguro in Conversation. (Among many other topics they discussed Yukio Mishima)

(Indochine)

Requiem

Kate Millet by Alice Neel – 1970

(Nancy Kwan, Bruce Lee and Sharon Tate)

(Makanai directed by Hirokazu Koreeda)

Girls building a solar toy car.

Name these girls – Happy Hinamatsuri album

Google Hinamatsuri

The custom of displaying dolls began during the Heian period. Formerly, people believed the dolls possessed the power to contain bad spirits. Hinamatsuri traces its origins to an ancient Japanese custom called hina-nagashi (雛流し, lit. “doll floating”), in which straw hina dolls are set afloat on a boat and sent down a river to the sea, supposedly taking troubles or bad spirits with them.(via wiki)

(Hidetoshi Nishijima in Dolls directed by Takeshi Kitano)

The Dazzling Beauty of Elizabeth Taylor in Iran

Elizabeth Taylor was born on Feb 27, 1932

Elizabeth Taylor Her Place in the Sun”> (Previous Post)

Monty Clift was her best friend

(Taylor with James Dean)

HIV Activism
Taylor was one of the first celebrities to participate in HIV/AIDS activism and helped to raise more than $270 million for the cause.[65] She began her philanthropic work after becoming frustrated with the fact that very little was being done to combat the disease despite the media attention.[66] She later explained for Vanity Fair that she “decided that with my name, I could open certain doors, that I was a commodity in myself – and I’m not talking as an actress. I could take the fame I’d resented and tried to get away from for so many years – but you can never get away from it – and use it to do some good. I wanted to retire, but the tabloids wouldn’t let me. So, I thought: If you’re going to screw me over, I’ll use you