Vinyl Is Heavy (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
by Ryland Walker Knight —Bring yourself, roll Curb Your Enthusiasm , 7th Season [Larry David, 2009] Hard to beat "The Table Read," no doubt, among so many episodes this season, but, once again, LD proves how smart he is about people's petty shit and everybody's desire for a fairytale—despite knowing all too well that most things in life, as it turns out, aren't just jokes but...
Renewable Music (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
Filmmaker Robert Bresson: "Not to use two violins when one is enough." Mozart on his own concertos: "They hold the happy mean between the too difficult and the too easy. They are brilliant..., but they miss poverty." This blogger-to-be, on the edge of a manuscript, 1981: "Everyone talks about having too many notes uptown and too few notes downtown. Isn't the real problem not...
Renewable Music (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
Repetitive stress does not necessarily imply injury. It can be musically useful. From a Ghanaian post office, a worker cancels stamps, spontaneously changing the pattern to fit each envelope: Another example from a Ghanaian post office, an ensemble: Various styles of counting cash, far less interesting than the basic pulse of each sequence are the rhythms internal to each pulse: (See also this: Villagers...
The One-Line Review Presents (Free subscription) | 11/14/2009
Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) .. Jacques Rivette Gertrud (1964) .. Carl Theodor Dreyer The Green Ray (1986) .. Eric Rohmer Chimes at Midnight (1965) .. Orson Welles Early Summer (1951) .. Yasujiro Ozu Late Spring (1949) .. Yasujiro Ozu Sans Soleil (1983) .. Chris Marker L'Atalante (1934) .. Jean Vigo The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) .. Victor Erice Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) .. Robert Bresson...
The One-Line Review Presents (Free subscription) | 11/14/2009
L'Atalante (1934) .. Jean Vigo The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) .. Victor Erice Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) .. Robert Bresson Tokyo Story (1953) .. Yasujiro Ozu Man with a Movie Camera (1929) .. Dziga Vertov La Règle du Jeu (1939) .. Jean Renoir Playtime (1967) .. Jacques Tati L'Avventura (1960) .. Michelangelo Antonioni Sunrise (1927) .. F.W. Murnau The Conformist (1970) .. Bernardo Bertolucci...
Shooting Down Pictures (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
Screened November 7 2009 on Artificial Eye DVD TSPDT rank #939 IMDb Wiki Eric Rohmer’s debut feature suggests that there were many Eric Rohmers vying for the man’s artistic identity, informed by the cinephilic breadth of influences one would expect of a Cahiers du Cinema critic having his turn behind the camera. In this film, the approaches [...]
ArchitectureChicago PLUS (Free subscription) | 10/23/2009
About a week ago, Cecil Adams The Straight Dope Chicago tackled why so few movies were filmed in Chicago during the reign of Richard J. Daley in the 60's and 70's. Adams cited the then Chicago mayor's antipathy to how productions such as the popular The Untouchables television series reinforced Al Capone gangster stereotypes. Still a few films slipped by, most prominently Haskell Wexler's extraordinary...
Blogcritics: Video (Free subscription) | 10/17/2009
If you ever wanted to see Robert Bresson direct an Adam Sandler movie, then Frownland is for you.
[CinemaRatty] Lattest Articles (Free subscription) | 10/08/2009
Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch departs from his familiar aesthetic of landscapes as abstract manifestations of internal states to create a spare and intimate, yet equally provocative exploration of absolute...
Who Walk In Brooklyn (Free subscription) | 10/05/2009
There’s a new book in town! Now that the professional mourners have put their veils and candles away, the enormity of the artistic life of Michael Jackson remains. To help us make sense of and celebrate those numerous achievements, Armond has put together a collection of his MJ writings under the title Keep Moving and [...]
Movie Cross Rhodes (Free subscription) | 09/27/2009
Film Review #211: The Passion of Joan of Arc 1928/DVD 1999 Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer Cast: Renee Maria Falconetti & others The idea of what makes a woman hero dates back at least to female medieval mystics, among them Joan of Arc, the illiterate French peasant girl whose “divine voices” told her to unite France, assist in the crowning of the young Charles VII and expel the English...
European Tribune (Free subscription) | 09/24/2009
A Daily Review Of International Online Media Europeans on this date in history:1901 – Robert Bresson,...
Globe and Mail (Free subscription) | 09/23/2009
Director Jane Campion says to be crazy, challenging and provocative is the job of the young
Style.com (Free subscription) | 09/22/2009
Ryan McGinley and Tilda Swinton , the photographer and actress that the clothing company Pringle of Scotland tapped to shoot and star in its Spring 2010 campaign, appear to be extremely intimate friends: Between the hand-holding and the snuggling, they alternately call each other "twin sisters" and "brothers from another mother." So it was a bit shocking to learn, at a dinner in...
L. A. Times Dodgers Blog (Free subscription) | 09/18/2009
Poet John Keats fell in love with the girl next door, but it all ended too soon, and badly. "Bright Star" satisfies a hunger we may not have known we had, a hunger for an exquisitely done, emotional love story that marries heartbreaking passion to formidable filmmaking restraint, all in the service of an unapologetically romantic belief in "the holiness of the heart's affections."...
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