In the Moscow Times’ obituary for Eduard Limonov, who died four years ago aged 77, writer Mark Galeotti summed up the poet-turned-politician in two simple sentences: “Was Limonov a visionary or a poser, an artist or a politician, a leftist or a rightist? The answer to all of them is, of course, yes.” This is key to understanding Kirill Serebrennikov’s latest movie, a boundary-blasting biopic that simply drips with punk-rock energy, revealing everything and nothing about a slippery character whose modus operandi was reinvention from the get-go and for whom consistency really was the hobgoblin of small minds.
Limonov, the poet, fits into a long line of miscreant artists, such as writer Vladimir Mayakovsky, who co-wrote the manifesto of the Russian Futurist group (“A Slap in the Face of Public Taste”) in 1912, and Dziga Vertov, the avant-garde director whose Man with a Movie Camera (1929) changed the face of documentary altogether.
Limonov, the poet, fits into a long line of miscreant artists, such as writer Vladimir Mayakovsky, who co-wrote the manifesto of the Russian Futurist group (“A Slap in the Face of Public Taste”) in 1912, and Dziga Vertov, the avant-garde director whose Man with a Movie Camera (1929) changed the face of documentary altogether.
- 5/19/2024
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
These days it’s somewhat difficult to fathom there was a time when Leonardo DiCaprio was not recognized as one of the finest actors of his generation. Born with preternaturally good looks, talent, and an obvious degree of taste, DiCaprio has grown onscreen from precocious child actor to heartthrob, to movie star, and finally to revered leading man. At least onscreen.
With that meteoric career-trajectory beginning at the remarkably early age of 18 in the movie This Boy’s Life, DiCaprio has had the rare opportunity to carefully curate and shape his career from virtually the beginning, and in the process has left behind a body of work that is increasingly choosey—and well chosen. But which are the best performances, and which are the ones that didn’t work out? Read on to find out.
*Editor’s Note: We are focusing only on DiCaprio’s feature film performances where the actor...
With that meteoric career-trajectory beginning at the remarkably early age of 18 in the movie This Boy’s Life, DiCaprio has had the rare opportunity to carefully curate and shape his career from virtually the beginning, and in the process has left behind a body of work that is increasingly choosey—and well chosen. But which are the best performances, and which are the ones that didn’t work out? Read on to find out.
*Editor’s Note: We are focusing only on DiCaprio’s feature film performances where the actor...
- 10/20/2023
- by David Crow
- Den of Geek
A Teacher Fights For Her Job In Katalin Moldovai’s Simmering Indictment of Hungary’s Culture Wars
Agnieszka Holland’s largely forgotten (and quite awful) 1995 biopic Total Eclipse is perhaps best remembered for its lead performance by rising star Leonardo DiCaprio playing famed poet Arthur Rimbaud with a heavy American accent. Yet, nearly thirty years later, the film unexpectedly sets off a scandal in Katalin Moldovai’s captivating and simmering feature debut Without Air in which a high school teacher’s fight to save her job serves as a pointed political indictment of a country so focused on stirring up cultural firestorms that it ignores the real issues that threaten its economic and ecological future.…...
Agnieszka Holland’s largely forgotten (and quite awful) 1995 biopic Total Eclipse is perhaps best remembered for its lead performance by rising star Leonardo DiCaprio playing famed poet Arthur Rimbaud with a heavy American accent. Yet, nearly thirty years later, the film unexpectedly sets off a scandal in Katalin Moldovai’s captivating and simmering feature debut Without Air in which a high school teacher’s fight to save her job serves as a pointed political indictment of a country so focused on stirring up cultural firestorms that it ignores the real issues that threaten its economic and ecological future.…...
- 9/10/2023
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- IONCINEMA.com
On the surface, it looks like any other teenage love story: Abel, an absent-minded high-school student in Budapest, hopelessly pines for his best friend, Erika, dreamily staring out the classroom window when the teacher calls his name. On the day of his final exam, he draws a blank: Rather than bury his head in his history books, Abel’s had his head in the clouds.
But an off-hand comment by one of his examiners, about the tricolor ribbon pinned to his lapel — a nationalist symbol in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary — sparks a controversy that soon snowballs into a nationwide scandal. For Hungarian filmmaker Gábor Reisz, the director of “Explanation for Everything,” the debate cuts to the heart of a question that has increasingly dominated public discourse in his country since the rise of the right-wing prime minister: “Are you a real Hungarian?”
The film, which premieres in the Horizons strand of the Venice Film Festival,...
But an off-hand comment by one of his examiners, about the tricolor ribbon pinned to his lapel — a nationalist symbol in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary — sparks a controversy that soon snowballs into a nationwide scandal. For Hungarian filmmaker Gábor Reisz, the director of “Explanation for Everything,” the debate cuts to the heart of a question that has increasingly dominated public discourse in his country since the rise of the right-wing prime minister: “Are you a real Hungarian?”
The film, which premieres in the Horizons strand of the Venice Film Festival,...
- 9/2/2023
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Cyril Schäublin's Unrest is now showing exclusively on Mubi in most countries starting February 22, 2023, in the series Festival Focus: Berlinale.My grandmother and grandaunts worked in the same watch factory, where their job was to produce the mechanical heart of the watch, the so-called “unruh” (unrest). With our film, we wished to reconstruct a watch factory from the past, and many questions came to our minds: Are the definitions of time and work, developed and established during early industrial capitalism, mere fictions? How are imaginations such as nations and other inventions of the past defining how we inhabit our present together today? Is there something like a capitalist mythology discreetly guiding our everyday life? What are its fairy tales? And what other tales might be possible?The film also explores the historical beginnings of the anarchist watchmaker unions in the valley of Saint-Imier in Northwestern Switzerland, the valley which...
- 2/21/2023
- MUBI
Todd Haynes is known for his uniquely experimental approach to filmmaking, but 2007's "I'm Not There" might be his most ambitiously inventive project to date. So ambitious, it seems, that his characteristic directorial flair confused one of the film's stars — namely, Heath Ledger.
Having already taken on the entire Glam Rock era with 1998's "Velvet Goldmine," Haynes turned his attention to an even more daunting task: telling Bob Dylan's life story. The director first had to come up with a concept interesting enough to persuade the notoriously mercurial Dylan to grant permission to depict his life on-screen. Naturally, he came up with a film that, on the surface, didn't seem to be about Bob Dylan at all. Instead, six actors would portray six different characters with names like Arthur Rimbaud, Jack Rollins, and Robbie Clark — all versions of Dylan at various points in his life.
The inventive concept won over the iconic musician,...
Having already taken on the entire Glam Rock era with 1998's "Velvet Goldmine," Haynes turned his attention to an even more daunting task: telling Bob Dylan's life story. The director first had to come up with a concept interesting enough to persuade the notoriously mercurial Dylan to grant permission to depict his life on-screen. Naturally, he came up with a film that, on the surface, didn't seem to be about Bob Dylan at all. Instead, six actors would portray six different characters with names like Arthur Rimbaud, Jack Rollins, and Robbie Clark — all versions of Dylan at various points in his life.
The inventive concept won over the iconic musician,...
- 11/9/2022
- by Joe Roberts
- Slash Film
The artist David Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992, used his queerness as a radical pose, a way of saying, as Chris McKim’s documentary “Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F***er notes,” “I’m not gay as in I love you, I’m queer as in fuck off.” An angry, traumatized painter, photographer, writer, musician, filmmaker, and activist, Wojnarowicz cut a striking figure: wiry, gaunt, sallow-faced. In other words, he didn’t exactly blend into the world, and so he idolized fellow rebel poets like Arthur Rimbaud and Jean Genet, outcasts who allowed him to see the falsities of straight society from the outside. Blending Wojnarowicz’s own audio journals with input from a handful of his contemporaries, .
The film gets its title from a scribbled piece of homophobic obscenity Wojnarowicz found on the street, and then turned into radical art. Born in 1948, Wojnarowicz went on to become...
The film gets its title from a scribbled piece of homophobic obscenity Wojnarowicz found on the street, and then turned into radical art. Born in 1948, Wojnarowicz went on to become...
- 3/19/2021
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Channeling the aesthetic and urgency of a driven multimedia creator, “Wojnarowicz” chronicles the too-short life of a determinedly “outsider” artist who was among the most furiously outspoken victims of the AIDS epidemic. Chris McKim’s documentary is largely composed of materials from the late subject’s archives, woven into a collage whole that is equal parts biography, vintage agitprop and objet d’art, plus surviving associates’ audio reminiscences.
While the confrontative nature suggested by the film’s full title is amply represented, there’s also considerable beauty and invention on display here, as often there was even in David Wojnarowicz’s most enraged work. Kino Lorber is currently distributing the feature to virtual cinemas via its Kino Marquee program, with home-formats release planned for May 18.
McKim starts in 1989, when his protagonist had already been diagnosed as HIV-positive, writing, “I realized I’d contracted a diseased society as well.” One symptom...
While the confrontative nature suggested by the film’s full title is amply represented, there’s also considerable beauty and invention on display here, as often there was even in David Wojnarowicz’s most enraged work. Kino Lorber is currently distributing the feature to virtual cinemas via its Kino Marquee program, with home-formats release planned for May 18.
McKim starts in 1989, when his protagonist had already been diagnosed as HIV-positive, writing, “I realized I’d contracted a diseased society as well.” One symptom...
- 3/19/2021
- by Dennis Harvey
- Variety Film + TV
On May 31st, Patti Smith will appear on Peyote Dance, an album with the experimental musicians of the Soundwalk Collective. The New York-based group are known for making new art out of “found sounds” – everything from antenna effects to old classical recordings. The new album will include “Ivry,” a new song with lyrics written by Smith that pay tribute to the French poet Antonin Artaud, who died in 1948.
The Soundwalk Collective wrote it with instruments that included Mexican Tarahumara guitars from the valley where Artaud wrote 1947’s The Peyote Dance,...
The Soundwalk Collective wrote it with instruments that included Mexican Tarahumara guitars from the valley where Artaud wrote 1947’s The Peyote Dance,...
- 5/20/2019
- by Patrick Doyle
- Rollingstone.com
California’s High Desert is heavy with rock history. It’s where country-rock icon Gram Parsons had his corpse cremated by friends; where an Irish band found a name and cover image for a great LP; where Jim Morrison dropped acid and made a movie; where Josh Homme and Kyuss cooked up stoner rock. Now The Mekons — those zany, erudite and beloved British punk-country-reggae-rock survivors — join the processional with Deserted. Recorded near Joshua Tree, the LP loses itself in the desert and finds timely survival metaphors everywhere. And it burrows...
- 3/28/2019
- by Will Hermes
- Rollingstone.com
A noxious — if somewhat necessary — response to the prescriptive nature of some contemporary indie cinema, Peter Brunner’s “To the Night” is not the kind of movie in which the damaged (but lovable) hero can reply on the plot to save them from themselves. It’s not the kind of movie in which a haunted (but sarcastic) twentysomething is able to slay their personal dragons by winning a dance competition, or making peace with a dying parent, or meeting a girl who loves The Shins. It’s not the kind of movie that invites you to trust in the process, so you know that even the most painful moments are productive steps towards the final catharsis.
No, “To the Night” is the kind of movie in which Caleb Landry Jones plays a tortured artist who punches his girlfriend in the face, neglects their baby boy, buys ketamine from a man with horns,...
No, “To the Night” is the kind of movie in which Caleb Landry Jones plays a tortured artist who punches his girlfriend in the face, neglects their baby boy, buys ketamine from a man with horns,...
- 7/5/2018
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Looking back on this still-young century makes clear that 2007 was a major time for cinematic happenings — and, on the basis of this retrospective, one we’re not quite through with ten years on. One’s mind might quickly flash to a few big titles that will be represented, but it is the plurality of both festival and theatrical premieres that truly surprises: late works from old masters, debuts from filmmakers who’ve since become some of our most-respected artists, and mid-career turning points that didn’t necessarily announce themselves as such at the time. Join us as an assembled team, many of whom were coming of age that year, takes on their favorites.
A kaleidoscopic portrait / exploration / celebration / etc. of Bob Dylan’s many contradictions and personas, I’m Not There isn’t the first pseudo-biopic from director Todd Haynes. His debut film, Superstar, unravels the life of singer Karen Carpenter and her eventual,...
A kaleidoscopic portrait / exploration / celebration / etc. of Bob Dylan’s many contradictions and personas, I’m Not There isn’t the first pseudo-biopic from director Todd Haynes. His debut film, Superstar, unravels the life of singer Karen Carpenter and her eventual,...
- 12/4/2017
- by Tony Hinds
- The Film Stage
The following essay was produced as part of the 2017 Locarno Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring film critics that took place during the 70th edition of the Locarno Film Festival.
Locarno isn’t just home to a major European film festival. It’s also an ideal place for many Swiss and foreign families to travel in summer and enjoy its hot weather, pleasant cuisine, and serene lake. This makes it a terrific place for contemplating new movies.
Ironically, during the 70th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, many of the films outwardly questioned the value of traditional family life. Many viewers encountered the puzzling contrast of watching subversive movies, leaving the screening rooms, and watching very conventional heterosexual families enjoying their vacations. But this only made the power of these movies stand out.
“C’est moi” says Fanny Ardant, a transgender women, in “Lola Pater,” the film by the Franco-Algerian director Nadir Mokneche,...
Locarno isn’t just home to a major European film festival. It’s also an ideal place for many Swiss and foreign families to travel in summer and enjoy its hot weather, pleasant cuisine, and serene lake. This makes it a terrific place for contemplating new movies.
Ironically, during the 70th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, many of the films outwardly questioned the value of traditional family life. Many viewers encountered the puzzling contrast of watching subversive movies, leaving the screening rooms, and watching very conventional heterosexual families enjoying their vacations. But this only made the power of these movies stand out.
“C’est moi” says Fanny Ardant, a transgender women, in “Lola Pater,” the film by the Franco-Algerian director Nadir Mokneche,...
- 9/14/2017
- by Francisco Noronha
- Indiewire
Mrs. Géquil is a delicate woman, at least in the eyes of her patronizing husband (played by José Garcia) as well as, perhaps, in the eyes of her boss and the vast majority of the students in her class. However, if the Robert Louis Stevenson reference in the title hasn’t led you to this conclusion already, then perhaps the casting of Isabelle Huppert in the lead role just might: she will not be referred to as delicate for very long. Mrs. Hyde, a socially bellicose, darkly humorous farce with aesthetic and spiritual echoes of both giallo horror and recent Kaurismäki, is the latest work of film critic-turned-actor-turned-director Serge Bozon. He’s a filmmaker who has, in the past, used similarly absurdist tropes — although never through such a playfully pseudo-supernatural façade — to talk about issues of class and gender politics in contemporary France, evidenced in Tip Top (also with Huppert) and La France.
- 8/7/2017
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Title: Chi mi ha incontrato, non mi ha mai visto (Those Who Met Me, Did Not See Me) Director: Bruno Bigoni Genre: Mockumentary If you are fond of French poet Arthur Rimbaud, watching ‘Chi mi ha incontrato non mi ha mai visto (Those Who Met Me, Did Not See Me)’ will be as sweet as tasting a madeleine while reading Proust. Filmmaker Bruno Bigoni embarks on an adventurous trip in search of answers about the great poet’s life. A mysterious French woman sells to the director an unpublished photo of Arthur Rimbaud, which might reveal revolutionary information about his life and works. From there on, Bigoni plunges into a passionate [ Read More ]
The post Turin Film Festival 2016 Movie Review: Chi mi ha incontrato, non mi ha mai visto (Those Who Met Me, Did Not See Me) appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post Turin Film Festival 2016 Movie Review: Chi mi ha incontrato, non mi ha mai visto (Those Who Met Me, Did Not See Me) appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 11/26/2016
- by Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi
- ShockYa
[Brightcove "4744977545001" "" "" "auto"] Leonardo DiCaprio isn't afraid to talk about how his father has influenced his career. "My father has always been a huge force with me," The Revenant actor told GQ in 2011. From taking his son to counterculture concerts to offering crucial career advice, here are five things about Leonardo's counterculture father you might not know. 1. George was an underground comic book writer and distributorUnlike most fathers trying to get their sons into comics, George didn't expose his son to mainstream comics like Marvel and DC Comics. "At a young age, I was exposed to, like, the most hardcore hippie subculture any...
- 2/9/2016
- by Chancellor Agard, @chancelloragard
- PEOPLE.com
[Brightcove "4744977545001" "" "" "auto"] Leonardo DiCaprio isn't afraid to talk about how his father has influenced his career. "My father has always been a huge force with me," The Revenant actor told GQ in 2011. From taking his son to counterculture concerts to offering crucial career advice, here are five things about Leonardo's counterculture father you might not know. 1. George was an underground comic book writer and distributorUnlike most fathers trying to get their sons into comics, George didn't expose his son to mainstream comics like Marvel and DC Comics. "At a young age, I was exposed to, like, the most hardcore hippie subculture any...
- 2/9/2016
- by Chancellor Agard, @chancelloragard
- PEOPLE.com
Game Count
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Writers: Agnieszka Holland, Olga Tokarczuk
Polish auteur Agnieszka Holland, once the protégé of Krzysztof Zanussi, is still best remembered for early 90s titles such as Europa Europa (1990) and her Arthur Rimbaud biopic starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Total Eclipse (1993). Her last feature was 2011’s In Darkness, nominated for Best Foreign Language film that year, and she’s been steadily working in television, from the superb mini-series “Burning Bush,” to English language items such as episodes of “House of Cards,” and the t.v. treatment of “Rosemary’s Baby.” She’s been attempting to adapt famed Polish novelist Olga Tokarzuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead for several years, and phases of filmmaking have commenced on her adaptation, known as Game Count and co-written by Tokarzuk. Filming is supposed to wrap in late 2015/early 2016 on what’s described as a crime thriller with comedic...
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Writers: Agnieszka Holland, Olga Tokarczuk
Polish auteur Agnieszka Holland, once the protégé of Krzysztof Zanussi, is still best remembered for early 90s titles such as Europa Europa (1990) and her Arthur Rimbaud biopic starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Total Eclipse (1993). Her last feature was 2011’s In Darkness, nominated for Best Foreign Language film that year, and she’s been steadily working in television, from the superb mini-series “Burning Bush,” to English language items such as episodes of “House of Cards,” and the t.v. treatment of “Rosemary’s Baby.” She’s been attempting to adapt famed Polish novelist Olga Tokarzuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead for several years, and phases of filmmaking have commenced on her adaptation, known as Game Count and co-written by Tokarzuk. Filming is supposed to wrap in late 2015/early 2016 on what’s described as a crime thriller with comedic...
- 1/11/2016
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Hey there, creeps! Today I’m joined in the Crypt o’ Xiii by the die-rector of the new revenge flick Julia, Matthew A. Brown! Let’s get ta jawin’!
Famous Monsters. Julia contains some hardcore themes, in particular brutal rape. How difficult was it to tackle that sort of thing?
Matthew A. Brown. I’ve always been attracted to stories of radical transformation, themes of weakness vs. power or weakness vs. courage, journeys from intense darkness to full blown light, in which characters are pushed to transcend their small egocentric selves to full realization of their own innate and inherent even primal power—of course, what that means is dependent on the context of the story itself. In this case it was about a woman who’s spent her whole life suffering under the abuse of others, and finally something so extreme happens that it tips the scales from her...
Famous Monsters. Julia contains some hardcore themes, in particular brutal rape. How difficult was it to tackle that sort of thing?
Matthew A. Brown. I’ve always been attracted to stories of radical transformation, themes of weakness vs. power or weakness vs. courage, journeys from intense darkness to full blown light, in which characters are pushed to transcend their small egocentric selves to full realization of their own innate and inherent even primal power—of course, what that means is dependent on the context of the story itself. In this case it was about a woman who’s spent her whole life suffering under the abuse of others, and finally something so extreme happens that it tips the scales from her...
- 10/23/2015
- by DanielXIII
- FamousMonsters of Filmland
To promote her latest memoir, M Train (out Tuesday), Patti Smith spoke with The New Yorker's David Remnick at the magazine's festival this weekend about a colorful blend of literary and nonliterary topics. Although the two apparently text from time to time — Smith sent him pictures from Wittgenstein’s house in Vienna on tour this summer — Remnick was clearly starstruck Saturday night; fortunately, he managed to hold it together and accompany Smith on the electric guitar for a surprise performance of "Because the Night." The crowd sang along and beamed just like Remnick when she talked about her upcoming projects, experiences taking acid, and time working in a factory — where she endured a urine dip for reading the work of the decadent poet Arthur Rimbaud. Read on for the night's highlights:She has many more books in the works — including a Ya one Her next book with Knopf is going...
- 10/5/2015
- by Stephanie Eckardt
- Vulture
The world's least likely Aqua Teen Hunger Force fan, Patti Smith, recorded a surreally sincere elegy for the goofy Adult Swim show, which will end later this month. "I'd never dreamed I'd be in Aqua Teen/13 seasons, what did it mean?" she sings plaintively to a gentle piano part. "A Master Shake, Meatwad, a floating head/and now you're dead and it's the end of Aqua Teen Hunger Force." The show's series finale – officially titled "The Last One Forever and Ever (For Real This Time) (We...Mean It)" – will air on August 23rd.
- 8/20/2015
- Rollingstone.com
★★★★☆The French title of Leos Carax's Mauvais Sang (1986) - released in the UK as The Night is Young, although the closest translation is "Bad Blood" - derives from the narcotic-laden second part of Arthur Rimbaud's bracing prose poem A Season in Hell, a work which captures a frenzied conversation between the poet and his 'other'. In that regard, it's an apt reference point for the director's oeuvre that's filled with wildly imaginative works of sub- conscious projection. In Carax's films, the act of creation cannot be divorced from autobiography; his work is populated with his other selves, from tortured artists to mute children. And, more often than not, the indomitable Denis Lavant is Carax's unbridled id.
- 6/24/2014
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆Kill Your Darlings (2013), director John Krokidas' ambitious debut feature, is about the early years of the hedonistic group of American writers who became known as the Beat Generation, as well as the violent murder that nearly derailed their literary movement in its infancy. It's autumn 1943 and the Second World War is raging, but the battlefields of Europe seem a million miles away from Columbia University where freshman Allen Ginsberg (Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe) meets sophomore Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) for the first time. Ginsberg is immediately drawn to Carr's subversive energy and his love of such unorthodox writers as Henry Miller and Arthur Rimbaud.
- 4/22/2014
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
As one of the pioneers of the French New Wave in the 1960s, Jean-Luc Godard has left an indelible mark on the world of cinema and generations of filmmakers who followed him. And so, despite a career spent breaking the rules and challenging convention, the revolutionary filmmaker earned a spot in cinema's pantheon of directors, alongside names like Hitchcock, Welles, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Bergman, and Fellini.
But for those same reasons (that Godard made films that rejected traditional narratives and style), his work may not be as familiar to mainstream audiences as to hardcore cinephiles. With the Tiff Bell Lightbox beginning a two-part retrospective on Godard on January 23, however, now's the perfect time to rectify that oversight. So, to help get you prepped to discover (or re-discover) Godard's work, here's a primer on who the French director is and why he's such an influential figure in the film world.
Who is he?...
But for those same reasons (that Godard made films that rejected traditional narratives and style), his work may not be as familiar to mainstream audiences as to hardcore cinephiles. With the Tiff Bell Lightbox beginning a two-part retrospective on Godard on January 23, however, now's the perfect time to rectify that oversight. So, to help get you prepped to discover (or re-discover) Godard's work, here's a primer on who the French director is and why he's such an influential figure in the film world.
Who is he?...
- 1/23/2014
- by Rick Mele
- Moviefone
★★☆☆☆ Sumptuous looks and an enticing central subject may be enough to attract audiences to Matthew Mishory's A Portrait Of James Dean: Joshua Tree, 1951, but what it possesses in visual beauty, it sadly lacks in substance. Opening oddly to a prologue involving poet Arthur Rimbaud, we are quickly transported to 1950s La where we meet undergrad James Dean at UCLA. James Preston plays the legendary (yet short-lived) screen star and certainly has the looks of the doomed Hollywood icon, sporting wavy curls and thick-rimmed Ray-Ban wayfarers, capturing an enjoyable level of petulance, with his languished looks.
We see Dean interact with fellow students in acting classes overseen by his theatre professor (David Pevsnor), drunken sex-scenes with other young men and scenes of him hanging by the pool, topping up his tan with predatory agent Roger (Edward Singletary) at his side. This is accompanied by the odd scene in the desert at Joshua Tree,...
We see Dean interact with fellow students in acting classes overseen by his theatre professor (David Pevsnor), drunken sex-scenes with other young men and scenes of him hanging by the pool, topping up his tan with predatory agent Roger (Edward Singletary) at his side. This is accompanied by the odd scene in the desert at Joshua Tree,...
- 5/14/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Susanna Heller Phantom Pain Magnan Metz Gallery Through April 20, 2013 Susanna Heller's recent paintings present visually stunning landscapes that are layered with both strata of gestural paint and rich, subtle nuanced meaning. Heller uses the vocabulary of Expressionism, wielded with great skill, to create paintings that are rooted in nature and a gritty urban reality of lived experience.
On first encountering Heller's work, one might be tempted to compare her views to Cormac McCarthy's ruined landscape inThe Road, a post-apocalyptic, science-fiction tale that is also a harrowing yet deeply personal story. In McCarthy's world an unnamed catastrophe has scourged the landscape, which is inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a small number of surviving dogs. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Trees have become extinct. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what...
On first encountering Heller's work, one might be tempted to compare her views to Cormac McCarthy's ruined landscape inThe Road, a post-apocalyptic, science-fiction tale that is also a harrowing yet deeply personal story. In McCarthy's world an unnamed catastrophe has scourged the landscape, which is inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a small number of surviving dogs. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Trees have become extinct. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what...
- 3/27/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Jonas Mekas, 'the godfather of avant-garde cinema', talks to Sean O'Hagan about working with Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali and Jackie Kennedy
Jonas Mekas, who will be 90 on Christmas Eve, has an intense memory of sitting on his father's bed, aged six, singing a strange little song about daily life in the village in which he grew up in Lithuania.
"It was late in the evening and suddenly I was recounting everything I had seen on the farm that day. It was a very simple, very realistic recitation of small, everyday events. Nothing was invented. I remember the reception from my mother and father, which was very good. But I also remember the feeling of intensity I experienced just from describing the actual details of what my father did every day. I have been trying to find that intensity in my work ever since."
We are sitting at a table in...
Jonas Mekas, who will be 90 on Christmas Eve, has an intense memory of sitting on his father's bed, aged six, singing a strange little song about daily life in the village in which he grew up in Lithuania.
"It was late in the evening and suddenly I was recounting everything I had seen on the farm that day. It was a very simple, very realistic recitation of small, everyday events. Nothing was invented. I remember the reception from my mother and father, which was very good. But I also remember the feeling of intensity I experienced just from describing the actual details of what my father did every day. I have been trying to find that intensity in my work ever since."
We are sitting at a table in...
- 12/2/2012
- by Sean O'Hagan
- The Guardian - Film News
On the occasion of Joseph Nechvatal's upcoming exhibition at Galerie Richard in New York (April 12 through May 26), the recent publication of his new book Immersion into Noise, and a concert of his remastered viral symphOny in surround sound. Taney Roniger is an artist and writer who lives and works in Brooklyn.
Bradley Rubenstein: We really want to get into the new book, as well as the upcoming show, but can you take a minute and give us a little backstory? You have always slipped in and out of categories: actions, painting, sound art, writing....
Joseph Nechvatal: Well, when I was going to undergraduate art school at Southern Illinois University (Siu), I was making drawings and little gouaches and smaller-type paintings on paper, generally. And they were well-received. I was not so interested in painting on canvas at the time. You have to put it in the perspective of the...
Bradley Rubenstein: We really want to get into the new book, as well as the upcoming show, but can you take a minute and give us a little backstory? You have always slipped in and out of categories: actions, painting, sound art, writing....
Joseph Nechvatal: Well, when I was going to undergraduate art school at Southern Illinois University (Siu), I was making drawings and little gouaches and smaller-type paintings on paper, generally. And they were well-received. I was not so interested in painting on canvas at the time. You have to put it in the perspective of the...
- 3/29/2012
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
This story first appeared in the Feb. 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Highbrows might scoff that Hollywood doesn't respect serious literature, but they obviously haven't discovered the biz's high-end rare-book scene. Johnny Depp collects first-edition works by Jack Kerouac, Arthur Rimbaud, Dylan Thomas and Edgar Allan Poe. Other industry figures have assembled museum-quality collections devoted to everything from exploration (producer Kathleen Kennedy) and aviation (director Tony Bill) to novelizations of silent-era films (business manager Bill Tanner) and the poetry of William Butler Yeats (screenwriter Jeffrey Fiskin). CAA is a particular fan of vintage
read more...
read more...
- 2/11/2012
- by Gary Baum
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Getty Images Publisher John McWhinnie attends an in-store reading and discussion at the Strand Book Store on July 16,2008 in New York City. McWhinnie died on Friday.
At a friend’s wedding in 2005, John McWhinnie once distilled some love letters that Orson Welles had written to Rita Hayworth in the 1940s and read the short passage to the assembled guests.
McWhinnie, a New York dealer, scholar and collector of rare 20th century books, letters and ephemera, died on Friday.
“He figured...
At a friend’s wedding in 2005, John McWhinnie once distilled some love letters that Orson Welles had written to Rita Hayworth in the 1940s and read the short passage to the assembled guests.
McWhinnie, a New York dealer, scholar and collector of rare 20th century books, letters and ephemera, died on Friday.
“He figured...
- 1/9/2012
- by Robert P. Walzer
- Speakeasy/Wall Street Journal
Hatsue Kawamura and Jane Reichhold: Breasts of Snow - Fumiko Nakajo: Her tanka and her life (The Japan Times)
It is amazing to me that I did not come across the work of Fumiko Nakajo until this year. No poems in Kenneth Rexroth’s three main Japanese translations (One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese, not even Women Poets of Japan), or in The Poetry of Postwar Japan (ed. Kijima Hajime), or in Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson’s From the Country of Eight Islands. Unrepresented in any of the more general poetry compilations in my collection.
Finally, combing Wikipedia while researching an article about what an amazing literary year 1922 was, I clicked on her name (she was born in 1922) because I was also on the lookout for more Japanese female poets to include in one of my musical projects. When I read the brief Wikipedia article on her,...
It is amazing to me that I did not come across the work of Fumiko Nakajo until this year. No poems in Kenneth Rexroth’s three main Japanese translations (One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese, not even Women Poets of Japan), or in The Poetry of Postwar Japan (ed. Kijima Hajime), or in Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson’s From the Country of Eight Islands. Unrepresented in any of the more general poetry compilations in my collection.
Finally, combing Wikipedia while researching an article about what an amazing literary year 1922 was, I clicked on her name (she was born in 1922) because I was also on the lookout for more Japanese female poets to include in one of my musical projects. When I read the brief Wikipedia article on her,...
- 11/16/2011
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Leonardo DiCaprio has a pretty easy life. He makes millions of dollars per movie. He dates supermodels. He has his pick of what he wants to do, when he wants to do it and if he wants to do it.
In the October issue of GQ, the star of the upcoming movie "J. Edgar" -- a biopic about former FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover -- talks on a variety of topics including working in Hollywood, life and politics.
Here are a few interesting things he discusses:
On the business end of show business: "Throughout my career, I never knew which movies of mine made money and which didn't. When 'Titanic' came out, people would say, 'Do you realize what a success this is?' And I'd say, 'Yeah, yeah, it's a hit.' The [money] stuff never mattered to me until I was into my thirties and got interested in producing.
In the October issue of GQ, the star of the upcoming movie "J. Edgar" -- a biopic about former FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover -- talks on a variety of topics including working in Hollywood, life and politics.
Here are a few interesting things he discusses:
On the business end of show business: "Throughout my career, I never knew which movies of mine made money and which didn't. When 'Titanic' came out, people would say, 'Do you realize what a success this is?' And I'd say, 'Yeah, yeah, it's a hit.' The [money] stuff never mattered to me until I was into my thirties and got interested in producing.
- 9/13/2011
- by editorial@zap2it.com
- Pop2it
Leonardo DiCaprio is on the cover of GQ's October issue, and inside the magazine, he teams up with his J. Edgar director Clint Eastwood for an interview. The actor has been spending time in Australia shooting Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby while he preps for J. Edgar's November release, which will come just in time for award-season consideration. During his conversation with Clint, Leo opens up about his business savvy, his thoughts on politics, and even his family, though there's no mention of his most recent flame, Blake Lively. Here are some highlights: On why he doesn't only do blockbusters: "Throughout my career, I never knew which movies of mine made money and which didn't. When Titanic came out, people would say, 'Do you realize what a success this is?' And I'd say, 'Yeah, yeah, it's a hit.' The [money] stuff never mattered to me until I...
- 9/13/2011
- by Lindsay Miller
- Popsugar.com
Just Kids, Patti Smith's beautiful book about her youth with Robert Mapplethorpe, who she calls "the artist of my life" is a celebration, an elegy, a memoir, and a fascinating slice of life of New York City from the late sixties and seventies. It's also a study of two very different artists, with very different sensibilities.
Patti was very bohemian. She came from a poor background, with a loving family. She never finished college, but was well-read, especially in Symbolist poetry and her hero, Arthur Rimbaud. Patti spent most of her twenties trying to find herself. She wasn't focused on being a star, but an artist. Generous of spirit, she wanted at first be a muse, then an artist in her own right. Seemingly having little or no ego, she wanted everyone she met to succeed. She must have had a healthy ego to become a rock star, but...
Patti was very bohemian. She came from a poor background, with a loving family. She never finished college, but was well-read, especially in Symbolist poetry and her hero, Arthur Rimbaud. Patti spent most of her twenties trying to find herself. She wasn't focused on being a star, but an artist. Generous of spirit, she wanted at first be a muse, then an artist in her own right. Seemingly having little or no ego, she wanted everyone she met to succeed. She must have had a healthy ego to become a rock star, but...
- 7/1/2011
- by Tamatha Uhmelmahaye
Ben Whishaw is putting the poets and dreamers behind him, and playing a ruthless 1950s hack. He talks to Amy Raphael about roles, trolls – and what gets him angry
Ask Ben Whishaw about acting and he twists in his chair, pushes his hair into various shapes, and, avoiding all eye contact, mutters: "I find it really hard to say anything coherent or interesting about the work I do." But ask him, out of slight desperation, about the government's cuts to the arts and he sits up sharply and squares his shoulders. "We're really going to feel it. I'm frustrated by the whole situation because I'm not sure I believe what we're being told about the deficit problem. It's frightening to see public services being cut and libraries being closed. Closing the UK Film Council felt shockingly barbaric."
Whishaw has rather taken me by surprise – not because he has opinions about government policy,...
Ask Ben Whishaw about acting and he twists in his chair, pushes his hair into various shapes, and, avoiding all eye contact, mutters: "I find it really hard to say anything coherent or interesting about the work I do." But ask him, out of slight desperation, about the government's cuts to the arts and he sits up sharply and squares his shoulders. "We're really going to feel it. I'm frustrated by the whole situation because I'm not sure I believe what we're being told about the deficit problem. It's frightening to see public services being cut and libraries being closed. Closing the UK Film Council felt shockingly barbaric."
Whishaw has rather taken me by surprise – not because he has opinions about government policy,...
- 6/30/2011
- by Amy Raphael
- The Guardian - Film News
Getty Composer Alexandre Desplat
Creating the music for “The Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick’s epic spiritual drama that recently won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, was a unique challenge for veteran composer Alexandre Desplat.
“It was perilous,” said the four-time French-born Oscar nominated composer (“The King’s Speech,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) in Cannes last week, where Malick, the reclusive filmmaker, was a no-show at press events. “But it’s good to be in danger,...
Creating the music for “The Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick’s epic spiritual drama that recently won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, was a unique challenge for veteran composer Alexandre Desplat.
“It was perilous,” said the four-time French-born Oscar nominated composer (“The King’s Speech,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) in Cannes last week, where Malick, the reclusive filmmaker, was a no-show at press events. “But it’s good to be in danger,...
- 5/28/2011
- by Anthony Kaufman
- Speakeasy/Wall Street Journal
In an exclusive interview in this week's Newsweek, Powell talks to Tony Dokoupil about the origins of the Cookbook, his reinvention as a teacher of diplomats' children, and how he processes the unseemly acts tied to his name.
It's the original guide to "everything illegal," from pot loaf and hash cookies to tear gas, dynamite, and TNT. There are frank tips on demolition, surveillance, sabotage, and the gorier parts of hand-to-hand combat, including how to behead a man with piano wire and make a knife "slip off the rib cage and penetrate the heart." In the introduction, the then-teenage author makes clear his wish that the book be of more than just theoretical use. "I hold a sincere hope that it may stir some stagnant brain cells into action," he wrote.
Related story on The Daily Beast: Al Qaeda's Deadly New Nest
William Powell, author of The Anarchist Cookbook, succeeded all too well.
It's the original guide to "everything illegal," from pot loaf and hash cookies to tear gas, dynamite, and TNT. There are frank tips on demolition, surveillance, sabotage, and the gorier parts of hand-to-hand combat, including how to behead a man with piano wire and make a knife "slip off the rib cage and penetrate the heart." In the introduction, the then-teenage author makes clear his wish that the book be of more than just theoretical use. "I hold a sincere hope that it may stir some stagnant brain cells into action," he wrote.
Related story on The Daily Beast: Al Qaeda's Deadly New Nest
William Powell, author of The Anarchist Cookbook, succeeded all too well.
- 2/23/2011
- by Tony Dokoupil
- The Daily Beast
The main title of James Geary’s new book, I Is An Other: The Secret Life Of Metaphor And How It Shapes The Way We See The World, is borrowed from French poet Arthur Rimbaud. That’s an apt choice for a book about metaphor, but Geary might as well have drawn from Carl Jung or Stephen Hawking: I Is An Other is more concerned with the power of associative thought than the power of flowery language. Indeed, Geary argues that metaphorical thinking—long considered a “cognitive frill”—is, in fact, essential to almost all forms of human pursuit, from ...
- 2/17/2011
- avclub.com
There have been many great boxing movies over the years, but most of them are about white champs – and there aren't many of those in the real world
The ratio of good films about boxers to bad films about boxers is extraordinarily high. That may be because there is something inherently thrilling about the manly art, but it may also be because Hollywood doesn't make a movie about boxers every week, whereas it does make a movie about young men who treat women badly 52 times a year. It may also be because the great movies about boxers become lodged in the public's memory, while the bad ones (The Main Event, a woeful 1979 outing starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal immediately comes to mind) simply vapourise. It may also be because so many movies about boxers have been directed by talented directors (Martin Scorsese, John Huston, Michael Mann, Martin Ritt, Jim Sheridan,...
The ratio of good films about boxers to bad films about boxers is extraordinarily high. That may be because there is something inherently thrilling about the manly art, but it may also be because Hollywood doesn't make a movie about boxers every week, whereas it does make a movie about young men who treat women badly 52 times a year. It may also be because the great movies about boxers become lodged in the public's memory, while the bad ones (The Main Event, a woeful 1979 outing starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal immediately comes to mind) simply vapourise. It may also be because so many movies about boxers have been directed by talented directors (Martin Scorsese, John Huston, Michael Mann, Martin Ritt, Jim Sheridan,...
- 1/28/2011
- by Joe Queenan
- The Guardian - Film News
Release Date: Available Now Director: Jean-Luc Godard Writers: Marcel Sacotte, Godard Cinematographer: Raoul Coutard Starring: Anna Karina, Sady Rebbot Studio/Run Time: Criterion Collection, 83 min. Early outing from New Wave auteur reveals great depths “I. is someone else,” confesses Nana (Anna Karina) during a police inquiry, echoing the century-old sentiment of French poet Arthur Rimbaud. In the next scene, she transforms from a meek record store clerk with suffocating debt and a child that she (and the audience) never sees, to a prostitute with a new set of problems. The 1961 film is classic Godard in its exploration of...
- 8/5/2010
- Pastemagazine.com
Leonardo DiCaprio is no stranger to playing historical characters on the big screen having already portrayed Howard Hughes in "The Aviator," infamous con man Frank Abagnale, Jr. in "Catch Me I You Can" and poet Arthur Rimbaud in "Total Eclipse." While discussing his upcoming Christopher Nolan thriller "Inception" today, DiCaprio confirmed earlier reports that he's hard at work on a biopic of notorious FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. "I am talking to Clint Eastwood about playing J. Edgar Hoover who had his hand in some of the most scandalous moments in American history," DiCaprio says. "Everything from the Vietnam war to...
- 6/25/2010
- by Gregory Ellwood
- Hitfix
Jim Jarmusch sets his latest enigma in Madrid, Seville and Almería. Existentialist mystery ensues…
Jim Jarmusch has been writing and directing intriguing, highly accomplished independent movies for a quarter of a century now and occasionally acting in those of fellow independents. His budgets remain relatively modest by Hollywood standards, but he has attracted leading performers like Johnny Depp and Robert Mitchum to work with him, as well as musicians such as Tom Waits and Joe Strummer.
His films are mysterious without being obscure and are sometimes carefully patterned and sometimes linear stories of journeys of discovery. Mystery Train, for instance, retraces the same few hours as it interweaves several stories of Presley fans in Memphis, while in Broken Flowers Bill Murray crisscrosses America visiting old girlfriends (all played by well-known actresses) to discover which one bore him a son. Despite the fact that few of the characters actually meet each other,...
Jim Jarmusch has been writing and directing intriguing, highly accomplished independent movies for a quarter of a century now and occasionally acting in those of fellow independents. His budgets remain relatively modest by Hollywood standards, but he has attracted leading performers like Johnny Depp and Robert Mitchum to work with him, as well as musicians such as Tom Waits and Joe Strummer.
His films are mysterious without being obscure and are sometimes carefully patterned and sometimes linear stories of journeys of discovery. Mystery Train, for instance, retraces the same few hours as it interweaves several stories of Presley fans in Memphis, while in Broken Flowers Bill Murray crisscrosses America visiting old girlfriends (all played by well-known actresses) to discover which one bore him a son. Despite the fact that few of the characters actually meet each other,...
- 12/14/2009
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
If you're going to ask me which movie of Leonardo DiCaprio I remember the most, I'd say - 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape', and I'll have to add that even though Johnny Depp headlines the flick, both him and Leo stood out with their heartfelt performances- with DiCaprio earning an Oscar nom for his role. While I am inclined to say that Leo's role appears to be the more challenging, the acclaim he received stems from the fact that he really put himself into Arnie and he became that character.
- - -
- - - In putting some more perspective, let's see how the Lasse Hallstrom's movie fared with the critics - In 'Grape' Chicago Tribune's Roger Ebert said:
The special quality of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" is not its oddness, however, but its warmth. Johnny Depp, as Gilbert, has specialized in playing outsiders ("Edward Scissorhands," "Benny...
- - -
- - - In putting some more perspective, let's see how the Lasse Hallstrom's movie fared with the critics - In 'Grape' Chicago Tribune's Roger Ebert said:
The special quality of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" is not its oddness, however, but its warmth. Johnny Depp, as Gilbert, has specialized in playing outsiders ("Edward Scissorhands," "Benny...
- 10/6/2009
- by modelwatcher@gmail.com (Jed Medina)
- The Movie Fanatic
If you're going to ask me which movie of Leonardo DiCaprio I remember the most, I'd say - 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape', and I'll have to add that even though Johnny Depp headlines the flick, both him and Leo stood out with their heartfelt performances- with DiCaprio earning an Oscar nom for his role. While I am inclined to say that Leo's role appears to be the more challenging, the acclaim he received stems from the fact that he really put himself into Arnie and he became that character.
- - -
- - - In putting some more perspective, let's see how the Lasse Hallstrom's movie fared with the critics - In 'Grape' Chicago Tribune's Roger Ebert said:
The special quality of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" is not its oddness, however, but its warmth. Johnny Depp, as Gilbert, has specialized in playing outsiders ("Edward Scissorhands," "Benny...
- - -
- - - In putting some more perspective, let's see how the Lasse Hallstrom's movie fared with the critics - In 'Grape' Chicago Tribune's Roger Ebert said:
The special quality of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" is not its oddness, however, but its warmth. Johnny Depp, as Gilbert, has specialized in playing outsiders ("Edward Scissorhands," "Benny...
- 10/6/2009
- by modelwatcher@gmail.com (Jed Medina)
- The Movie Fanatic
If you're going to ask me which movie of Leonardo DiCaprio I remember the most, I'd say - 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape', and I'll have to add that even though Johnny Depp headlines the flick, both him and Leo stood out with their heartfelt performances- with DiCaprio earning an Oscar nom for his role. While I am inclined to say that Leo's role appears to be the more challenging, the acclaim he received stems from the fact that he really put himself into Arnie and he became that character.
- - -
- - - In putting some more perspective, let's see how the Lasse Hallstrom's movie fared with the critics - In 'Grape' Chicago Tribune's Roger Ebert said:
The special quality of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" is not its oddness, however, but its warmth. Johnny Depp, as Gilbert, has specialized in playing outsiders ("Edward Scissorhands," "Benny...
- - -
- - - In putting some more perspective, let's see how the Lasse Hallstrom's movie fared with the critics - In 'Grape' Chicago Tribune's Roger Ebert said:
The special quality of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" is not its oddness, however, but its warmth. Johnny Depp, as Gilbert, has specialized in playing outsiders ("Edward Scissorhands," "Benny...
- 10/6/2009
- by modelwatcher@gmail.com (Jed Medina)
- The Movie Fanatic
If you're going to ask me which movie of Leonardo DiCaprio I remember the most, I'd say - 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape', and I'll have to add that even though Johnny Depp headlines the flick, both him and Leo stood out with their heartfelt performances- with DiCaprio earning an Oscar nom for his role. While I am inclined to say that Leo's role appears to be the more challenging, the acclaim he received stems from the fact that he really put himself into Arnie and he became that character.
- - -
- - - In putting some more perspective, let's see how the Lasse Hallstrom's movie fared with the critics - In 'Grape' Chicago Tribune's Roger Ebert said:
The special quality of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" is not its oddness, however, but its warmth. Johnny Depp, as Gilbert, has specialized in playing outsiders ("Edward Scissorhands," "Benny...
- - -
- - - In putting some more perspective, let's see how the Lasse Hallstrom's movie fared with the critics - In 'Grape' Chicago Tribune's Roger Ebert said:
The special quality of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" is not its oddness, however, but its warmth. Johnny Depp, as Gilbert, has specialized in playing outsiders ("Edward Scissorhands," "Benny...
- 10/6/2009
- by modelwatcher@gmail.com (Jed Medina)
- The Movie Fanatic
'Sometimes I like films where people just sit there not saying any thing," says a character in hipster icon Jim Jar musch's latest snoozer, "The Limits of Control."
These lines are delivered in a white wig and a cowboy hat by Tilda Swinton, who also observes that "the best films are like dreams you're never really sure you had."
And so it goes in this comic thriller, neither funny nor thrilling, although it seems to have pleased some of my critical colleagues who like to congratulate themselves for picking out cultural references -- William S. Burroughs, John Boorman and Arthur Rimbaud,...
These lines are delivered in a white wig and a cowboy hat by Tilda Swinton, who also observes that "the best films are like dreams you're never really sure you had."
And so it goes in this comic thriller, neither funny nor thrilling, although it seems to have pleased some of my critical colleagues who like to congratulate themselves for picking out cultural references -- William S. Burroughs, John Boorman and Arthur Rimbaud,...
- 5/1/2009
- by By LOU LUMENICK
- NYPost.com
By Michael Atkinson
Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There" (2007) is such a risky, ambitious, passionate conceptual big-brain freak of a movie that, whether you find yourself loving it or hating it or not knowing what in hell to make of it, you can sympathize and even agree with anyone who ends up with the opposite takeaway. Ambivalence is an appropriate response, and one Haynes probably intended, given his subject: Bob Dylan, or, rather, the elusive, chameleonic, deliberately free-associative nature of Dylan's public personality, and the idealized and sometimes ridiculous ways we've conceived it for ourselves, and hence the absurdity of pop culture celebrity in general. A lot of abstracted meat and potatoes for one film to tackle, and Haynes, easily the most theoretical and analytical indie filmmaker at work today, goes for the gusto, crafting a weave-movie made of strands that only occasionally cross each other's dreamscapes and more often launch out into the ether.
Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There" (2007) is such a risky, ambitious, passionate conceptual big-brain freak of a movie that, whether you find yourself loving it or hating it or not knowing what in hell to make of it, you can sympathize and even agree with anyone who ends up with the opposite takeaway. Ambivalence is an appropriate response, and one Haynes probably intended, given his subject: Bob Dylan, or, rather, the elusive, chameleonic, deliberately free-associative nature of Dylan's public personality, and the idealized and sometimes ridiculous ways we've conceived it for ourselves, and hence the absurdity of pop culture celebrity in general. A lot of abstracted meat and potatoes for one film to tackle, and Haynes, easily the most theoretical and analytical indie filmmaker at work today, goes for the gusto, crafting a weave-movie made of strands that only occasionally cross each other's dreamscapes and more often launch out into the ether.
- 5/13/2008
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
Sundance Film Festival
PARK CITY -- Twelve years in the making, Patti Smith: Dream of Life is a unique record of an artist's journey.
The first film by fashion photographer Steven Sebring, it stitches together layer upon layer of human experience to paint a portrait of the artist as a tireless and dynamic worker for music, poetry, peace, family and friends.
A knowledge of Smith's landmark contribution as a rock 'n' roll pioneer is not essential, and the film should be a joy for anyone interested in pop culture of the past 40 years.
Sebring does not take a conventional route here, which is fitting for his subject. The long gestation period for the film has afforded an intimacy and ease that allows him to penetrate Smith's inner and outer worlds, weaving back and forth in time from her arrival in New York in the late 1960s to raising her two children in Detroit with husband Fred Sonic Smith to her triumphant return to performing in the mid-'90s. Structure is anchored in the bedroom of Smith's cluttered New York apartment and jumps around from there as she reflects on her life and art.
First stop is a poignant visit to the lived-in house she shared with her husband and kids in Detroit until his death in 1994. In fact, much of the film deals with friends who are no longer alive, but the tone is elegiac, not morbid. So when she pulls out a vial of Robert Mapplethorpe's ashes or talks about William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, she is just honoring their influence. When she visits the graves of her mentors, William Blake and Arthur Rimbaud, she sees herself as part of a living tradition of poetry.
"We all have a voice", she says, "and the responsibility to use it."
New York is central to her life and the film, and there is some wonderful archival footage from the early '70s, where she talks about how she had to leave her childhood home, across from a square dance hall in South Jersey, and venture to the big city to discover her voice. Later she reads her poem, Prayer for New York.
Although there are some classic scenes of her onstage in the heyday of the Manhattan punk club CBGB, this is not a performance film; it's more meditative and musing than about her music. There are no big, show-stopping moments, but there are some lovely, smaller ones.
In one scene, she and her old friend and lover Sam Shepard sit in the corner of her apartment playing vintage guitars, singing the blues tune Sitting on Top of the World as Sebring focuses on their feet tapping time in unison. Later, when Smith visits her elderly and entertaining parents in New Jersey, there is a shot held for several seconds of the couple holding hands, and in the background we hear the sound of a ticking clock as if it's counting off their time together.
Sebring follows Smith around the world as she visits the Middle East and listens to the music of Muslims and Jews praying, Buddhist monks chanting in Japan and speeches at a peace rally in Washington. He shot most of the footage himself in 16 millimeter, some in color, some in black and white, and the varied looks and textures help give the film character. Skillful editing by Angelo Corrao and Lin Polito pull the divergent threads together from what was obviously a massive amount of material.
Throughout, Smith's approachability keeps it real. When a fan steps onto an elevator with her, she laughs when she's called a rock icon. That's for Mount Rushmore. She's a working artist, and like another one of her heroes, Walt Whitman, she's writing for young poets who years from now may be inspired by this beautiful record of her life's work.
PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE
Clean Socks and Thirteen/WNET New York
Credits:
Director: Steven Sebring
Producers: Steven Sebring, Martha Smilow, Scott Vogel
Director of cinematography: Phillip Hunt, Steven Sebring
Editor: Angelo Corrao, Lin Polito
Running time -- 109 minutes
No MPAA rating...
PARK CITY -- Twelve years in the making, Patti Smith: Dream of Life is a unique record of an artist's journey.
The first film by fashion photographer Steven Sebring, it stitches together layer upon layer of human experience to paint a portrait of the artist as a tireless and dynamic worker for music, poetry, peace, family and friends.
A knowledge of Smith's landmark contribution as a rock 'n' roll pioneer is not essential, and the film should be a joy for anyone interested in pop culture of the past 40 years.
Sebring does not take a conventional route here, which is fitting for his subject. The long gestation period for the film has afforded an intimacy and ease that allows him to penetrate Smith's inner and outer worlds, weaving back and forth in time from her arrival in New York in the late 1960s to raising her two children in Detroit with husband Fred Sonic Smith to her triumphant return to performing in the mid-'90s. Structure is anchored in the bedroom of Smith's cluttered New York apartment and jumps around from there as she reflects on her life and art.
First stop is a poignant visit to the lived-in house she shared with her husband and kids in Detroit until his death in 1994. In fact, much of the film deals with friends who are no longer alive, but the tone is elegiac, not morbid. So when she pulls out a vial of Robert Mapplethorpe's ashes or talks about William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, she is just honoring their influence. When she visits the graves of her mentors, William Blake and Arthur Rimbaud, she sees herself as part of a living tradition of poetry.
"We all have a voice", she says, "and the responsibility to use it."
New York is central to her life and the film, and there is some wonderful archival footage from the early '70s, where she talks about how she had to leave her childhood home, across from a square dance hall in South Jersey, and venture to the big city to discover her voice. Later she reads her poem, Prayer for New York.
Although there are some classic scenes of her onstage in the heyday of the Manhattan punk club CBGB, this is not a performance film; it's more meditative and musing than about her music. There are no big, show-stopping moments, but there are some lovely, smaller ones.
In one scene, she and her old friend and lover Sam Shepard sit in the corner of her apartment playing vintage guitars, singing the blues tune Sitting on Top of the World as Sebring focuses on their feet tapping time in unison. Later, when Smith visits her elderly and entertaining parents in New Jersey, there is a shot held for several seconds of the couple holding hands, and in the background we hear the sound of a ticking clock as if it's counting off their time together.
Sebring follows Smith around the world as she visits the Middle East and listens to the music of Muslims and Jews praying, Buddhist monks chanting in Japan and speeches at a peace rally in Washington. He shot most of the footage himself in 16 millimeter, some in color, some in black and white, and the varied looks and textures help give the film character. Skillful editing by Angelo Corrao and Lin Polito pull the divergent threads together from what was obviously a massive amount of material.
Throughout, Smith's approachability keeps it real. When a fan steps onto an elevator with her, she laughs when she's called a rock icon. That's for Mount Rushmore. She's a working artist, and like another one of her heroes, Walt Whitman, she's writing for young poets who years from now may be inspired by this beautiful record of her life's work.
PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE
Clean Socks and Thirteen/WNET New York
Credits:
Director: Steven Sebring
Producers: Steven Sebring, Martha Smilow, Scott Vogel
Director of cinematography: Phillip Hunt, Steven Sebring
Editor: Angelo Corrao, Lin Polito
Running time -- 109 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/23/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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