Verbatim Citation

Chronopolis

2012-01-31T23:18:00.000-08:00

{ Piotr Kamler's 'Chronopolis' }

Awesome. Special. Effects.

StuStuStudio

2012-01-31T23:12:00.001-08:00

{ Kim Keever's Studio }

My name is?

2012-01-31T23:04:00.001-08:00

Dive in

2012-01-31T19:18:00.001-08:00

Sark wrote this as her first self-published piece of artwork as a description of how she intended to live her life each day. It became a best-selling poster and Stark has now written over 11 books.

This is not a suit

2012-01-17T17:49:00.001-08:00

This Is Not A Suit (2010) United Kingdom (Directors: Adrien Sauvage, Chris Gaunt, and Jon Clements; Screenwriters: Adrien Sauvage and Madeleine Morlet) - An instructional guide to the art of dressing that explores the creative quandaries of the mind. Who is the designer? Well, we will look into that. Here we learn the principles of easy dressing as you have not seen them before.

Reminds me of The Perfect Human. Stunning cinematography.

Happy Thursday!

2012-01-05T01:55:00.000-08:00

This cracks me up...

{ via Gebela }

Assortment

2011-12-31T20:17:00.000-08:00

An atheist at Christmas: Oh come all ye faithless - Alain de Botton discusses the Christmas for those who view the nativity as nothing more than a fairy tale - interesting prelude to his new book Religion for Atheists.

The secret life of J Edgar Hoover - For half a century, the FBI director waged war on homosexuals, black people and communists. Now, a controversial film by Clint Eastwood is set to reveal some of the explosive truth about him. This is going to be great.

Science and Censorship: A Duel Lasting Centuries - Secret science!

Eat food

2011-12-22T01:29:00.001-08:00

Maira Kalman talks about her latest illustrations. I do love her.

Diamonds, Fur Coat, Champagne

2011-12-13T03:54:00.000-08:00

Hold me now...

2011-12-13T02:55:00.001-08:00

2011-12-05T22:31:00.001-08:00

Attempts at using my new graphics tablet. I have a looong way to go.

Film | Tarantino on auteurism

2011-12-05T18:03:00.001-08:00

"One of the most talented filmmakers of my generation is David Fincher. All right. But he's not in the same category as me because I'm a writer/director, and that makes it different. That makes it a different thing.

...and it's a lot easier to go and look at the scripts that are out there, and available, and you can maybe work with a writer, or do a little rewrite, or do that kind of thing. And you get more movies made. But, you know, cut to six years down the line, and where's that voice? It's gone away.

...'cause to me the glory of what I do is the fact that it starts with a blank piece of paper."

- Quentin Tarantino

Tilt / Shift

2011-12-05T17:23:00.001-08:00

For my next film project, I'm experimenting with a shift tilt lens to create a miniature effect on distant objects. It's going to look so damn great.

Creativity | Do be do be do!

2011-12-05T16:09:00.001-08:00

'To do is to be' - Rousseau *
'To be is to do' - Sartre
'Do be do be do' - Sinatra

* some say Voltaire

Music | Spraaaawl

2011-11-28T06:17:00.001-08:00

I always find it weird when my favourite song on an album is the least promoted. When I listened to Arcade Fire's 'The Suburbs' when it was released last year, I instantly fell in love with the song Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains). Now, over a year later, I'm looking for the official music video.... and.... nothing. Huh? This is a fan-made edit:

But as a well-meaning viewer on YouTube said:

2:49 is like meating god (sic)

What is it about this song that I find so addictive? Perhaps just a longing for 80s dream pop combined with a misspent youth watching The Mysterious Cities of Gold on repeat.

The seeming and the meaning

2011-11-28T06:01:00.001-08:00

"Every American student, is regarded as just someone out to make a lot of money. Really 16% of these students regard it as their main goal and concern in life to make a lot of money. And you know what the top category was among students? … 78% of these American youngsters were concerned as they expressed it themselves, with finding a meaning and purpose in their lives.

… If you take man as he really is, we will make him worse but if we overestimate him, if we seem idealist, overestimating, overrating man, and looking at him that high (pointing upwards), here above, you know what happens? We promote him to what he can really be. So we have to be idealist in a way because then we wind up as the true, the real realists.

And do you know who said this? This was Goethe. He said this verbally and now you will understand why in one of my writings I said that this is the most apt maxim and motto for psychotherapeutic activity.

So if don’t recognise a young man’s way to meaning, a man’s search for meaning, you make him worse. You make him dull. You make him frustrated. You contribute to his frustration, while if you presuppose in this man, this so called criminal or juvenile delinquent or drug abuser, there must be a spark of search for meaning. Let’s recognise this. Let’s presuppose this and then you will elicit this from him and you will make him become what he in principle is capable of becoming.”

NOTE | This video is from a 1972 lecture in Toronto, Canada; this and other full-length recordings of him can be seen: here

Mainly I'm a fan of Goethe.

Film | That moonglow

2011-11-24T05:27:00.000-08:00

“The Glow and the Gloom” showcases the most stunning garments of S/S 2011. It combines elements of performance, music and light design. A suggested narrative creates a loose structure around our heroine within a sinister yet beautiful world. Guided by a never revealed power, our heroine moves around her surroundings, revealing a dark and brooding world.

I think this is the best lighting design I've ever seen in a film.It was inspired by Henri-Georges Clouzot's unfinished film L'enfer, starring Romy Schneider (below).

Shut up and listen

2011-11-24T05:06:00.000-08:00

Jacques Thibaud plays franck violin sonata with his friend Alfred Cortot. Recorded on May 1929.

Music | Connan Mockasin

2011-11-21T04:35:00.001-08:00

Hail thee, the new masters of psychedelic whimsy. This is the shit.

King Harvest has surely come

2011-11-11T05:35:00.001-08:00

I was reading about Jessica Helfand, who together with William Drenttel form Winterhouse, a design studio in Northwest Connecticut. She is Senior Critic at Yale School of Art, where she is an Associate Fellow in Jonathan Edwards College.

Watch this video! Even if you're not interested in what they say about design, their house is perfection. And they have my favourite dogs!

Six hangovers

2011-10-19T21:49:00.000-07:00

P.G. Wodehouse, best known today for depicting pre-war English, upperclass society in his Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, was the first to document the six original varieties of hangover in his novel The Mating Season.

"I am told by those who know that there are six varieties of hangover — the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie, and his manner suggested that he had got them all."

They have been described by others in the following way:

1. The Broken Compass

"The Broken Compass attacks the senses of balance and direction and its symptoms include stumbling, colliding with objects which under normal circumstances one would find it easy to avoid, falling, tripping, disorientation, dizziness, aimless wandering, and the sudden and crippling inability to find one’s way home. In extreme cases such as the one illustrated, the victim becomes so disoriented they fall to the ground they know not where, unable to move.

A rare variant of this form of hangover is known as Shatner's Compass. This affliction causes a peculiar sense of detachment from reality, giving its victims the sense of floating outside themselves."

2. The Sewing Machine

"The Sewing Machine affects the nervous system and its symptoms include shaking, the inability to move one’s limbs in the direction desired by the brain, the physical inability to talk due to jaw malfunction or other nervous defect, and sudden involuntary movements.

An oft-experienced aspect of the sewing machine is known as the Carpet Layer - a curious malady that causes the sufferer to feel as though the inside of their mouth has been carpeted over by a mysterious gnome."

3. The Comet

"The Comet has been praised by philosophers for its simplicity, which is often said to be beautiful in a mathematical sense. It has only a single symptom, which is the forcible expulsion of the contents of the stomach through the mouth."

4. The Atomic

"The Atomic attacks the brain and, although its effects can contribute to one or other of the metaphysical hangovers, the Atomic itself is strictly physical. Its symptoms include many varieties of headache and, in extreme cases, deafness."

5. The Cement Mixer

"The Cement Mixer attacks the digestive system, and its symptoms include abdominal pains and abnormal lavatorial experiences. The Cement Mixer often becomes apparent after its victim has begun to eat something."

6. The Gremlin Boogie

"The Gremlin Boogie is the only one of the eleven hangovers which has the peculiar distinction of being enjoyable, and is thus sought out by hangover connoisseurs. It is a psychological condition that enables the sufferer to revel in their hungover state* and to draw a peculiar kind of energy from their circumstances. It is almost always experienced in groups and its symptoms include an unfounded sense of wellbeing, hysterical laughter, the desire to buy goods which at other times would be deemed unnecessary and a masochistic enjoyment of the other types of hangover. Most commonly, it fuels within the sufferer a rampant desire to continue drinking, the victim becoming so caught up in the joy of the communal hangover that he or she cannot bear for the experience to end. Indeed, it is generally wise to allow the Gremlin Boogie to run its course."

These were categorized on GreeneHighway, so go have a look to note wonderful recent additions as "The French Horn", "The Happy Chef", "The Fear", "Mr Batey", and my favourite: "The False Dawn".

Film | Hell and Back Again

2011-10-14T06:50:00.000-07:00

Unless you have a personal connection, the war in Afghanistan is an abstraction. After nearly ten years since the initial invasion, the daily bombings and ongoing violence has become mundane, almost ordinary. It is tempting to become indifferent to the horror and pain. It is much easier to look away from the victims. It is much easier to lead a life without rude interruptions from complex insurgencies in distant lands. But it is when we take this easier path, the suffering becomes of no consequence and therefore meaningless. The anguish becomes invisible, an abstraction. It is when society becomes numb to inhumanity; horror is allowed to spread in darkness.

- Hell and Back Again

Scary.

No digital traces found...

2011-10-02T00:50:00.000-07:00

Check out Personas - an MIT experiment. Enter your name on the website...

...and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person - to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data. It will then give you something like this:

The computational process is visualized with each stage of the analysis, finally resulting in the presentation of a seemingly authoritative personal profile.

Unfortunately, I'm the only Freya McOmish in the world (I think) so it just replied with "no digital traces found" - but other people may have more luck!

via Peter, thank you!

Heidegger Heidegger was a boozy beggar

2011-09-27T03:35:00.000-07:00

"What gets said in the call of conscience? Heidegger is crystal clear: like Cordelia in King Lear, nothing is said. The call of conscience is silent. It contains no instructions or advice. In order to understand this, it is important to grasp that, for Heidegger, inauthentic life is characterised by chatter – for example, the ever-ambiguous hubbub of the blogosphere. Conscience calls Dasein back from this chatter silently. It has the character of what Heidegger calls "reticence" (Verschwiegenheit), which is the privileged mode of language in Heidegger. So, the call of conscience is a silent call that silences the chatter of the world and brings me back to myself."

Simon Critchley, Being and Time, part 7: Conscience, at the Guardian

( via A Myth in Creation )

Unfortunately I wasn't around to chat with him on this park bench, as our being and time did not coexist.

Life's a beach

2011-07-27T00:55:00.000-07:00

Some images by Massimo Vital

Short film | Muta by Lucrecia Martel

2011-07-26T22:47:00.000-07:00

A short film for Mui Mui - beautiful and very creepy.

I like:

Fast and slow editing
Hidden faces
Incredible, haunting sound effects

TED | How I became 100 artists

2011-07-26T20:34:00.001-07:00

"How do you stage an international art show with work from 100 different artists? If you're Shea Hembrey, you invent all of the artists and artwork yourself -- from large-scale outdoor installations to tiny paintings drawn with a single-haired brush. Watch this funny, mind-bending talk to see the explosion of creativity and diversity of skills a single artist is capable of." -- TED Talks

Wayne Thiebaud

2011-07-12T02:57:00.000-07:00

{ Wayne Thiebaud “Girl With The Pink Hat” 1973 }

Haute street looks at Paris fashion week

2011-07-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

Tommy Ton photos from Paris fashion week - more here

Short film | The man and the thief

2011-07-06T16:42:00.000-07:00

The Man and the Thief from Freya McOmish on Vimeo.
Short silent film created for Introduction to Film Production BFP100 at SAE with Joel Plunkett, David McDonald, Steven Lawor and myself. No dialogue allowed, 3 minutes.

Starring: Renee Johnson, Michael Jones and Peter Bjerregaard.

Enjoy!

The Maserati Medici I of the 1970′s

2011-07-06T15:22:00.000-07:00

Oh! What a lovely war

2011-07-04T22:34:00.000-07:00

Pride of Procrustes

2011-06-20T23:31:00.000-07:00

There is this beautiful word called Procrustean |prəˈkrəstēən; prō-| adjective(esp. of a framework or system) enforcing uniformity or conformity without regard to natural variation or individuality : a fixed Procrustean rule.

Here is an excerpt of Justice for Hedgehodges by Ronald Dworkin:

Hence the word: Procrustean

This came to me via Chelsea via Chris (via Dworkin?)

Camus review

2011-06-20T23:04:00.000-07:00

A personal journey with Martin Scorsese through American movies

2011-06-06T22:44:00.000-07:00

For an assignment at university, I decided to reflect on Harvey Weinstein and his impact on independent film. While reading an article in the New Yorker Magazine, I came across this quote from Harvey who talked about his experience of working with Scorsese during "Gangs of New York".

Weinstein tries to bring an auteur's knowledge to his work--and this, he says, is something people don't know about him. "I am a perpetual student," he said. "And I can tell you that the most enriching thing that happened to me with Marty Scorsese is that, when making 'Gangs of New York,' Marty would give me a movie to watch every Saturday night, a movie that influenced him in the making of the movie. So over three years I saw eighty films that Scorsese gave me. I wanted to call it 'Saturday Nights with Marty,' because I would see David Lean, 'Oliver Twist,' from his own library. Here I am, twenty-two years, whatever, into the business, and I am learning more than I ever learned on any movie, from Marty." This is Harvey the cineaste, and he insists that it distinguishes him from his Hollywood peers. "If you asked people in the industry, 'Name me five Francois Truffaut movies,' I don't think ninety per cent of them could even tell you," he said. "Nor do they care. Which also bothers me. I see myself as an outsider."

Here are the films that Scorsese reflects on in his documentary: "A personal journey with Martin Scorsese through American movies":

~~The Great Train Robbery (1903)~~
The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)
Death’s Marathon (1913)
Cabiria (1914)
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Regeneration (1915)
Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916)
Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919)
The Ten Commandments (1923)
7th Heaven (1927)
~~Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)~~
The Crowd (1928)
The Cameraman (1928)
The Wedding March (1928)
Anna Christie (1930)
The Big House (1930)
Her Man (1930)
The Public Enemy (1931)
Scarface (1932)
Hell’s Highway (1932)
42nd Street (1933)
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
Wild Boys of the Road (1933)
Footlight Parade (1933)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935)
Stagecoach (1939)
~~Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)~~
The Roaring Twenties (1939)
~~The Great Dictator (1940)~~
High Sierra (1941)
~~Citizen Kane (1941)~~
~~Sullivan’s Travels (1941)~~
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
Cat People (1942)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
~~Double Indemnity (1944)~~
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Detour (1945)
Leave Her to Heaven (1945)
Scarlet Street (1945)
Duel in the Sun (1946)
The Red House (1947)
T-Men (1947)
I Walk Alone (1948)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)
Raw Deal (1948)
Force of Evil (1948)
My Dream Is Yours (1949)
Colorado Territory (1949)
It’s a Great Feeling (1949)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
Samson and Delilah (1949)
Deadly Is the Female (1950)
The Furies (1950)
Outrage (1950/I)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
The Naked Spur (1953)
Pickup on South Street (1953)
The Band Wagon (1953)
The Robe (1953)
Crime Wave (1954)
Johnny Guitar (1954)
~~On the Waterfront (1954)~~
Silver Lode (1954)
~~A Star Is Born (1954)~~
East of Eden (1955)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Land of the Pharaohs (1955)
The Phoenix City Story (1955)
All That Heaven Allows (1955)
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
The Searchers (1956)
Bigger Than Life (1956)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
The Tall T (1957)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Forty Guns (1957)
The Left Handed Gun (1958)
Murder by Contract (1958)
Some Came Running (1958)
One, Two, Three (1961)
Advise & Consent (1962)
Lolita (1962)
Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)
Shock Corridor (1963)
America, America (1963)
The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
The Naked Kiss (1964)
~~Bonnie and Clyde (1967)~~
Point Blank (1967)
~~2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)~~
Faces (1968)
Directed by John Ford (1971)
~~The Godfather (1972)~~
~~Barry Lyndon (1975)~~
~~All That Jazz (1979)~~
~~Unforgiven (1992)~~

Gun street girl

2011-05-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

{ New York Times | Purse Pistols }

O what a lovely war!

2011-05-25T00:02:00.000-07:00

Book me up

2011-05-24T23:40:00.000-07:00

Face type

2011-05-16T00:05:00.000-07:00

Periodic table of typefaces

Chloe Sevigne New York apartmento

2011-04-06T03:10:00.000-07:00

Finally cleaning up the images on my hard drive ... these are for the benefit of ... ?

According to who?

2011-03-24T22:57:00.000-07:00

Film | Isle of Flowers

2011-03-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

I just realised that I haven't put my favourite short film of all time on this blog, enjoy!

Hot plate heaven at the green hotel

2011-03-11T23:26:00.001-08:00

I like breakfast plates:

But I especially like tectonic plates:

{ especially when depicted in size-14 futura font }

Naturally I've been thinking of them lately (disasters in New Zealand and Japan), and I've also been thinking about the importance geology in altering human development (thank you BBC's How the Earth Made Us). We’ve always chosen to build our homes along the edges of fault lines and plate boundaries - places which for thousands of years have provided the resources needed for civilisation to flourish.

"We continue all over the world, to understand how human beings are attracted to fault lines for copper, as well as water and many other resources that allow civilisations to flourish, they also helped change the very way we lived our lives. Even if they are dangerous. But what’s perhaps strangest of all is that we haven’t learnt our lesson – in fact little has changed over the past 10000 years. Half of the largest cities on Earth still lie along fault lines and plate boundaries. That’s even more surprising when you consider that we now know exactly what we’re living with."

2011-03-04T01:37:00.001-08:00

{ 19th century engraving of a Leonid meteor storm }

Light my fire

2011-01-03T01:45:00.003-08:00

{ Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir with Che Guevara, 1960 }

O to be an Arabian Babbler

2010-12-23T15:04:00.000-08:00

"Babblers dance and take baths together, offer themselves gifts, clean themselves, and sometimes enter into conflict with each other for the privilege of helping another babbler. They may also feed their counterparts. This peculiar behaviour made them a privileged examples for ethological theories concerning altruism among animals."

Talkin' world war III blues

2010-12-03T23:42:00.000-08:00

So, a while ago, when Josephine was my beautiful housemate in West End, we'd sit on our front deck and philosophize.

We came up with our own theory of communication, and the different levels. The friends you're closest with are at level 5, while some friends you're really stuck at level 3 with. (Hah, well, honestly, the reason I'm posting this here to clear up my dashboard of random stuff!)

levels of communication

Intoxicated (base level)
Frivolities (the weather etc)
Circumstantial (domestic, study)
Decisions
Ideas

Kim Jong-Il looking at things

2010-12-03T02:58:00.000-08:00

This site called "Kim Jong-Il looking at things" made me laugh for 10 minutes straight, and confirmed to all my absolute insanity.

{ looking at the kitchen cabinet }

{ looking at a radish }

{ Looking at metal }

{ looking at girls }

Matter over mind

2010-12-02T10:19:00.000-08:00

"Be who you are, and say what you feel, because those that mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind."
  -Dr. Seuss

Help me Charles Manson

2010-08-14T09:55:00.000-07:00

In the late ’90s, pop-culture historian Bill Geerhart had a little too much time on his hands and a surfeit of stamps. So, for his own entertainment, the then-unemployed thirtysomething launched a letter-writing campaign to some of the most powerful and infamous figures in the country, posing as a curious 10-year-old named Billy.

Above is a letter he sent to Charles Manson. Have a peak at Manson’s response, and see more Little Billy letters.

Music | We're tough and we're Texan with necks good and red

2010-08-14T05:28:00.000-07:00

Texan Love Song | Elton John

Photographers in Film

2010-08-02T00:46:00.000-07:00

BLOW UP

CITY OF GOD

CLOSER

EYES OF LAURA MARS

FUNNY FACE

BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY

HARD CANDY

via FashionIndie

The best of Charlotte Rampling

2010-07-31T19:03:00.000-07:00

Charlotte Rampling, so effing cool

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy & Existentialism?

2010-07-31T18:50:00.000-07:00

Matthew Hutson writes in Psychology Today:

"I've recently come to the conclusion that cognitive behavioral therapy, the empirically-demonstrated gold standard for treating depression and a host of other problems, necessitates a belief in existentialism, a philosophy holding that we live in a meaningless universe.

How can happiness derive from appreciating the fundamental pointlessness of existence?

Existentialism (at least atheistic existentialism) does not argue that meaning does not exist, only that it does not exist out there in the real world. All meaning is human-constructed. You have complete freedom to interpret events however you like (a freedom that some find nauseating.)

CBT similarly places interpretive control in the hands of the individual. The premise is that thoughts lead to emotions (which lead to behaviors), and we can learn to control our thoughts--even if they've become habit. We're not at the mercy of an emotional system automatically placing valuation on experiences."

Read the complete article.

{ Claire suddenly realized that existence precedes essence

and she was free to kill all the old gods }

Shopping | Urban Outfitters

2010-07-31T18:32:00.000-07:00

Some favourites...

{ Wildflower Scarf US$28 }

{ SAT words shower curtain US$28 }

{ Framed Animal Prints by Ryan Berkley US$38 each }

{ Atlas Tapestry US$36 }

{ Ruffled Duvet Cover US$148 }

{ Fuji Instax Instant Camera US$130 }

Film | Sunset Boulevard

2010-07-27T23:21:00.000-07:00

1950 | 110m | BW | USA | Showbiz Drama, Satire | TSPDT #31

A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent-film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.

DIRECTOR
Billy Wilder

SCREENPLAY

Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, D.M. Marshman, Jr

OSCAR
Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, D.M. Marshman, Jr (screenplay)
Hans Dreier, John Meehan, Sam Comer, Ray Moyer (art direction)
Franz Waxman (music)

OSCAR NOMINATION

Charles Brackett (producer)
Billy Wilder (director)
William Holden (actor)
Gloria Swanson (actress)
Erich von Stoheim (actor is supporting role)
Nancy Olson (actress in supporting role)
John F. Seitz (photography)
Doane Harrison, Arthur P. Schmidt (editing)

CAST
William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich Von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough, Franklin Farnum, Larry Blake, Charles Dayton, Cecil B. DeMille

IMPRESSIONS
Full of ostentatious visual, usual for Wilder, and compositions that evoked the air of Phantom of the Opera, and Kane's Xanadu.

It's rather negative, and this is probably the reason I'd never seen the film - my father was a huge Billy Wilder fan but never introduced me to this film as he found it too depressing.

I love the huge close up of the white gloved hands as they play Beethoven on the wheezy pipe organ as the trapped gigolo flutters in the background. Wilder's acidic, yet nostalgic, traipse through the film industry's haunted house could certainly be re-watched endlessly.

You can't help but feel sorry for Norma (Gloria Swanson), the megalomanic silent movie queen, whose attempts to stay youthful into her fifties paradoxically make her seem a thousand years old. Norma lives in a decaying mansion on Sunset Boulevard, holding a midnight funeral for her pet monkey, scrawling an unproducable script, and dreaming of an impossible comeback ("I hate that word! This will be a return!").

Even Wilder gives strange affection to the has-been Norma, and the never-was Joe, with a somewhat sadistic use of such ravaged and frozen silent era faces as Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner and Anna Q Nilsson. I love Norma's line: "I'm big, it's the pictures that got small!"

The dialogue is beautiful and often poetic, especially Joe's narration of the story. There are some great one liners too, and I almost feel that this film in some ways will be just an enjoyable to read.

NO. 1
Sure we believe you, only now we
want you to believe us. That car
better be back here by noon tomorrow,
or there's going to be fireworks.

GILLIS
You say the cutest things.

As a side note to remember, for myself: I like the narration at the beginning "you've come to the right party" - another alternative would be an off screen monologue as the narrator tells another character - although this wasn't the case in this film.

SHOTS

GILLIS
Come to think of it, the whole place seemed
to have been stricken with a kind of
creeping paralysis, out of beat with the
rest of the world, crumbling apart in slow
motion ...

More screen shots below: See more...

NORMA
Thank you, Jonesy. And teach
your friend some manners. Tell
him without me he wouldn't have
any job, because without me there
wouldn't be any Paramount Studio.

DEMILLE
Of course you didn't. You didn't
know Norma Desmond as a plucky
little girl of seventeen, with
more courage and wit and heart
than ever came together in one
youngster.

1ST ASSISTANT
I hear she was a terror to
work with.

DEMILLE
She got to be. A dozen press
agents working overtime can
do terrible things to the human
spirit.
(to the set)
Hold everything.

GILLIS
That's the trouble with you
readers. You know all the plots.

GILLIS
May I say you smell real special.

BETTY
It must be my new shampoo.

GILLIS
That's no shampoo. It'smore like
a pile of freehly laundred hand-
kerchiefs, like a brand new auto-
mobile. How old are you anyway?

BETTY
Twenty-two.

GILLIS
That's it -- there's nothing like
being twenty-two. Now may I suggest
that if we're ever to finish this
story you keep at least two feet
away from me ... Now back to the
typewriter.

Film | Bicycle Thieves

2010-07-27T04:35:00.000-07:00

1948 | 93m | B&W | Italy | Family Drama, Urban Drama, Coming of Age | TSPDT #14

A man and his son search Rome for a stolen bicycle vital for his job.

DIRECTOR
Vittoria De Sica

SCREENPLAY

Cesare Zavattini, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Vittorio De Sica, Oreste Biancoli, Adolfo Franci & Gerardo Guerrieri, from the novel Ladri di Biciclette by Luigi Bartolini

OSCAR
Giuseppe Amato, Vittorio De Sica (honorary award - best foreign language film)

OSCAR NOMINATION

Cesare Zavattini (screenplay)

CAST
Lamberto Maggiorani, Lianella Carell, Enzo Staiola, Elena Altieri, Vittorio Antonucci, Gino Saltamerenda

TRIVIA

Long mistranslated as "The Bicycle Thief"

IMPRESSIONS
In this film, the bicycle is not just a means of transportation for Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani), but also a symbol of the desperate situation facing the people of postwar Italy. Ricco is thrilled to have a new job, and new bicycle. But very soon he goes from this:

... to this:

Without a bicycle, Ricci has no job, and no hope for the future. You feel so sorry for Ricci with his little boy Bruno (Enzo Staiola) in tow, as they crisscross around town trying to recover their bike, encountering various aspects of Roman society, including some of the more acute class differences, in the process. I even found myself scouring the screen looking for a trace of his bike, while intermittently worrying that Bruno would get lost when he so often wanders off in the labyrinth of ancient lanes.

This film is possibly the greatest depiction of a relationship between father and son in cinema history - part of the reason I was so curious to see it. It's full of subtle fluctuations and evolving graduations between the two characters in terms of trust and respect, and it's an awesome heart breaker.

BRUNO
I wouldn't have let him go for his tin

RICCI slaps BRUNO. RICCI is surprised at his own behaviour. BRUNO cries and and stumbles off into the shrubs. RICCI apologizes in fast Italian.

BRUNO
Why hit me?

RICCI
Because you deserved it.

This is really the turning point of the film, as RICCI is a caring father and upright citizen who loves his family and gives time to the poor suspect to get his free tin off beans, and thereby loosing his lead, who morphs into a new callous creature fighting for his family's survival. It's about the lines we cross in times of desperation, and it's easy to wonder how many families were going through similar transformations during this period.

The film also has moments of Chaplin-esque comedy: the contrasting behaviour between the two boys having lunch at the same restaurant. The father and son were acted so well. The father is both tender and harsh. And the kid is so strong willed and passionately Italian, it's phenomenal. I just want to say this one Italian line with the same conviction he does:

The film also features some of the best bicycle doubling around:

GENRE

It's apparently one of the best examples of Italian Neorealism, and it is the first film of this genre that I have seen. Director Vitorrio De Sica, along with Luchino Visconti and Roberto Rossellini, had trained and worked in the commercial Italian film industry before WWII, and produced startling and distinctive films that captured the reality of physical devastation, the moral degradation, and the human suffering of the war years. In the words of De Seca:

"the experience of the war was so decisive for us all. Each felt the mad desire to throw away the old stories of the Italian cinema, to plant the camera in the midst of real life."

Neorealism presents everyday life through stories involving working-class or poor protagonists, also makes use of location shooting, long takes, natural lighting, non-professional actors, venacular dialogue, grainy black-and-white film stock, and unobtrusive editing. Some of these choices derive partly from the economic circumstances of the film makers at the time.

Italian Neorealism's principles and visual style has influenced much of international art cinema, and also Hollywood's film noir, and the social problem films of the 1940s and 1950s, the British New Wave of the 1960s and Third Cinema movements such as Cinema Novo in Brazil and post-revolutionary Cuban cinema. Its social vision and conventions were taken up by politically committed filmmakers in Africa, Latin America, and also Asia during the revolutionary fervour of the 1960s.

SHOTS

Art | Gemma Smith

2010-07-27T03:05:00.000-07:00

Geometry geometry.

via Destined to Design

Film | Fantastic Mr Fox

2010-07-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

Coffee table book on the making of Fantastic Mr Fox:

Shopping | Etsy finds

2010-06-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

Meet Etsy. This vintage online store is going to chew up so much of my time...

{ 100 year old deck of playing cards - $45 }

{ Frankenstein Portrait Plate - Altered Antique Plate $59 }

{ Cream and Strawberry skirt - $65 }

{ Orange Cassette Tape iPhone Case - $18 }

{ Steampunk Goggles - Vintage AMBER TINT Steampunk Goggles Glasses with MESH Side Shields - TOTALLY COOL 1800s SPECTACLES STYLE - $165 }

{ French Sugar Black and White Organza Stripe Wrap - $39 }

{ MID CENTURY BRASS DUCK MALLARD BOOK ENDS 1960s RETRO PERFECT BEACH COTTAGE CABIN HUNTING DESIGN - $12 }

{ Small vintage Russian turquoise colour mechanical alarm clock Raketa from Soviet Union period - $35 }

Prices in US dollars.

Many thanks to work collegues @OPTIKO for letting me know about this store!

Music | Kitchen at parties

2010-06-16T04:23:00.001-07:00

Current favourite

A brief film review: Antonioni's La Notte

2010-06-03T02:36:00.000-07:00

I'm finding Antonioni's films excessively tedious of late. La Notte is by far his worst, apart from the beautiful geometric precision of Antonioni and cinematographer Gianni De Venanzo's compositions. Antonioni consistently overplays the themes of modern malaise. Pauline Kael called La Notte, Last Year at Marienbad and La Dolce Vita "The Come-Dressed-As-The-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties," and as far as La Notte is concerned she has a point.

Paul Newman

2010-05-27T18:44:00.000-07:00

I was introduced to Paul Newman in the film The Sting, but my first time I saw the young radient Paul Newman was in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. While my male and very straight film buddy gushed about how stunning he is in that film, I remained unfazed. Then came along Cool Hand Luke, and suddenly I saw the light: Paul Newman is an absolute God.

Paul Newman wasn't only an Oscar winning actor, he was a philanthropist, pro race car driver, husband of 50 years to actress to Joanne Woodward, father & grandfather. With a legacy of unforgettable roles such as Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy behind him, Newman also earned $250 million for countless world charities. Paul Newman is an inspiration - his life was one that was truly well lived.

Revisiting Brideshead again

2010-05-25T01:09:00.000-07:00

1. Et in Arcadia Ego

Here, at the age of 39, I began to be old. As I lay in that dark hour I was aghast to realise that something within me, long sickening, had quietly died.

The chill bonds of law and duty, and custom.

( Shot – in show, pan across, every one scrubs themselves vigorously while he just stands there underneath the water letting it poor over his face. )

I could bring to my job nothing more than acquiescence.

Disappointment changed to resignation.

Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. When the chestnut was in flower, and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, she exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush that gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously over the intervening clamour.

We ate the strawberries and drank the wine. As Sebastian promised, they were delicious together. The fumes of the sweet, golden wine seemed to lift us a finger’s breadth above the turf and hold us suspended.

Just the spot to bury a crock of gold. I should like to bury something precious… in every place that I’ve ever been happy. So when I’m old and ugly and miserable I could come back and dig it up. And remember.

I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him. That was unavoidable, for, from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities of behaviour, which seems to know no bounds. My first sight of him was in the door of Germar’s and on that occasion I was struck less by his looks that by his carrying a large teddy bear.

Now when we met were the circumstances propitious...

{ From the beginning of the BBC series }

2010 Film Diary

2010-05-23T19:19:00.000-07:00

January
     2 La Grande Illusion a.k.a { Jean Renoir }
   2 Bad Day at Black Rock { John Sturges }
     4 Cat On A Hot Tin Roof { Richard Brooks }
     5 City of God { Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund }
     5 Changling { Clint Eastwood }
     6 El laberinto del fauno a.k.a Pan's Layrinth
         { Guillermo del Toro }
     7 Silence of the Lambs { Jonathan Demme } *
     9 A Woman Under The Influence { John Cassavettes }
     10 The Maltese Falcon { John Huston }
     18 There Will Be Blood { Paul Thomas Anderson }
     21 (500) Days of Summer { Marc Webb }
     24 The Graduate { Mike Nichols }
     25 Once Upon a Time in the West { Sergio Leone }
     26 The Man Who Planted Trees { Frédéric Back }
     27 Rocky { John G. Avildsen }
     31 Patton { Franklin J. Schaffner }

February
     5 Casino { Martin Scorsesse }
     7 The Good, The Bad and the Ugly { Sergio Leone } *
     8 Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
         { Lee Daniels }
     9 Avatar { James Cameron }
     10 Harold and Maude { Hal Ashby }
     11 Blade Runner { Ridley Scott }
     13 Lawrence of Arabia { David Lean }
     14 Metropolis { Fritz Lang }
     14 Heat { Michael Mann }
     14 The French Connection { William Friedkin }
     15 Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story { Todd Haynes }
     16 Superbad { Greg Mottola }
   21 A Prophet { Jacques Audiard }
     24 School of Rock { Richard Linklater }

March
     4 The Big Chill { Lawrence Kasdan }
   6 The Blind Side { John Lee Hancock }
     12 Rebel Without a Cause { Nicholas Ray } *
     16 Fast Times at Ridgemont High { Amy Hekerling } *

April
   5 Hotel Rwanda { Terry George }
     16 Star Trek { J.J. Abrams }
   18 Ordinary People { Robert Redford }
     25 Rebecca { Alfred Hitchcock }

May
   11 Goodfellas { Martin Scorsesse }
   14 Broken Flowers { Jim Jarmusch }
     24 M { Fritz Lang }
   25 Before Sunset { Richard Linklater }
   25 Punch-Drunk Love { Paul Thomas Anderson }
   26 Rashomon { Kurosawa, Akira }
   28 Cool Hand Luke { Stuart Rosenberg }
   31 Dog Day Afternoon { Sidney Lumet }
     31 Kids { Larry Clark }

June
     1 The Secrets in Their Eyes { Juan José Campanella }
     1 Saving Private Ryan { Steven Spielberg }

* re-view

Beauty?

2010-04-30T03:00:00.001-07:00

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

-- Sir Francis Bacon

You should be dancing

2010-04-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

Stop press. Joy. Oh joy. Oh joy. 10th of July, 2010: The Red Shoes is going to be released by the Criterion Collection on blue ray. Oh joy joy joy joy. Seriously, it used to be completely impossible to find a clear still image of this film, let alone a clear copy of it.

What Avedon did

2010-04-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

My top pics.

1. MARLON BRANDO

2. JUDY GARLAND

3. BOB DYLAN

4. THE BEATLES

5. PAUL SIMON

6. TWIGGY

Holiday in the sun

2010-04-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

Our escape to my parents place in the tropics - Townsville and Magnetic Island - over the Easter Break.

The Talented Mr Ripley

2010-04-09T22:49:00.000-07:00

I'm going through a two-fold obsession with The Talented Mr Ripley - the fashion, and the premise.

Tom Ripley, like many of Highsmith's characters, is a very credible sociopath, coldly capable of disposing of anybody who gets too close to his secrets. It is easy for him to kill, and the fact that he does so while living the haut-bourgeois life in an elegant French house adds to the fascination we have for him.

Of course we know that it all started with the murder of Dickie Greenleaf, and as we see his life unfold over the series of novels, we may cherish hopes that sooner or later Ripley's criminal past will catch up with him. But it does not, and after several novels I suspect that many readers are actually unwilling for that to happen. Why? Because we are fond of Ripley? That is hardly likely -- Tom Ripley may be charming and urbane, but he is not really very likeable.

Perhaps we merely want his story to continue because we are enjoying it so much. If Ripley had been arrested, or disposed of by somebody he had crossed, then that would have been the end of the series, and that would have been a disappointment. As it happened, Ripley survived his creator, and is still presumably living in Belle Ombre, his house in France, awaiting some author to approach the Highsmith estate with a request to continue to record his dubious doings.

-- from The Wall Street Journal

Bertrand is my homeboy

2010-03-23T06:06:00.000-07:00

Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness. Praise where praise is due. It speaks for itself.

"Truth, profundity, clarity...

2010-03-23T05:44:00.000-07:00

...but the greatest of these is clarity."

One of the most important ideas of the philosophical tradition has been the new concepts and values that emerge from the stubborn reflection of one's old ones. At the beginning of virtually every social and scientific revolution, there stands a philosopher who not only questioned some idea or practice of her age, but was able to suggest something better.

Nick Cave?

2010-03-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

{ Nick Cave at London Fashion Week }

The look

2010-03-21T23:41:00.000-07:00

Chorale for the Death of Icarus

2010-03-21T23:19:00.000-07:00

But he has wings, and is pursued with light.
Golden he lies,
and he has brushed the sun's fire in his flight.
We saw him rise
from the east sea, a wound upon our sight;
dawn was across his wings, and midday in his eyes.

Golden he wheeled in the height of his morning-mad
brother the sun.
But is this he, this stone-limbed borken lad,
and are they one,
the rock-racked boy and he whom the the young sky had?
Mourn not; if this be not his triumph, he has none.

{ Author unknown unfortunately - found when going through my old poetry folders }

Icarus flew too close to the sun, but oh boy was he hella cute.

Office space

2010-02-25T16:03:00.000-08:00

{ This last image is Sofia Coppola's office }

Be sure to wear some

2010-02-23T07:11:00.000-08:00

Another hard drive dump.

Epic, just

2010-02-03T02:28:00.000-08:00

{ Print by Tom Gauld }

Alfred Jarry Bicycle Club

2010-02-02T18:20:00.000-08:00

‘All space is occupied by the enemy. We are living under a permanent curfew. Not just the cops – the geometry’

Long before Copenhagen Cycle Chic et al., Alfred Jarry was the king of avant-garde cycling. He was notorious for his wild eccentricity and his outrageously unconventional cycling. More recently, the Alfred Jarry Bicycle Club is homage to eco-friendly means of transport as well as a psychogeographical exploration of the cityscape. The cyclist exploits the urban geography unconsciously on dérive exploits, stopping occasionally for an ice cream.

Alfred Jarry was a French writer and poet, who became famous for his play L'Ymagier while living in Paris in the late C19th. This play paved the way for absurdist theatre as we know it today. A serious eccentric, he took very seriously the art of taking nothing seriously. Under five feet tall, he habitually dressed in black cycle-racing clothing, grooming himself like Mephisto in miniature, and ate his meals in reverse, desert first.

He spoke in a staccato, nasal vocal delivery, which emphasized each syllable (even the silent ones). He adopted a ridiculous and pedantic figures of speech; for example, he referred to himself using the royal we, and called the wind "that which blows" and the bicycle he rode everywhere "that which rolls". Often he would be seen, tearing in and out of Parisian bars and houses astride his bicycle, swilling absinthe and pointing his two pistols at anyone who questioned him. He often alternated between meticulous cleanliness and not washing.

In the meantime, the young Jarry floundered in his own pataphysical world, discovered the pleasures of alcohol, which he called "my sacred herb" or, when referring to absinthe, the "green goddess". A story is told that he once painted his face green and rode through town on his bicycle in its honour (and possibly under its influence).

He fell at the age of 34, mainly from his absinthe drinking and ether sniffing, and had himself photographed as a corpse, so that he could send postcards to his friends. Eventually, he was overcome by tubercular meningitis, and lapsed into a coma, waking momentarily before death to call for a toothpick.

His life mirrored his work, a particular favourite of mine is the wonderful The Passion Considered As An Uphill Bicycle Race, a short prose piece, with Barabbas scratched from the starting board, Pilate starts the race, and St. Matthew is the sports commentator. Jesus gets a good start, but a bed of thorns puncture his front tire, and ends up carrying his cross-shaped frame up the hill, while the two other competitors ('as thick as thieves') escape.

Jarry's influence has been considerable. Movements such as Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, Expressionism Cubism, Theatre of the Absurd - all owe debts to his works. Picasso, Flann O'Brien, The Marx Brothers, the Goons, Mad magazine, Robert Anton Wilson, Monty Python and their spawn were all influenced by Jarry, whether they knew it or not.

{ Sadismul Adevarului. Ilustratil de Victor Brauner, Marcel Iancu, Alfred Jarry, Kapralik, S. Perahim, Picasso, Man Ray, si Jacques Vaché }

But nothing's original, it's daft to think that he began it all - he himself owes much to Rabelais. But at the same time you can't help but think he just had an ultimate desire to be socially subversive.

There's more here - Alfred Jarry: a Cyclist on the Wild Side.

Poets ranked by beard weight

2010-02-01T20:57:00.000-08:00

Apparently there is a strong correlation between the beard weight and poetry weight, making Whitman the lightest poet and Morse is the heaviest - makes sense as he was the first code poet.

This is how they stacked up with beard gravity increasing as we move from left to right and top to bottom:

{ Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sir Walter Raleigh, Henry David Thoreau, Lord Tennyson, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edwin Markham, Sidney Lanier, William Cullen Bryant, John Burroughs, William Ernest Henley, Joaquin Miller, Samuel Morse }

In 1913 Upton Uxbridge Underwood (1881–1937) published a book entitled Poets Ranked by Beard Weight, which ranked poets according to the gravity of their beards, assigning each one a “pogonometric index” score ... A score of 10, for example, was “very very weak,” whereas a score of 58 was “very very heavy.” I discovered the above image on Right Reading, via A Journey Around My Skull who uncovered Upton Uxbridge Underwood's brilliant book. He stated that in the book:

“Poets Ranked by Beard Weight is the centerpiece of Underwood’s estimable, if fetish-fueled treatise on pogonology, or the study of whiskers and associated lore…. This quaint publication takes the reader on a fascinating excursion through such topics as False Beards, Merkins, and Capillamenta (chin wigs); Effusions of the Scalp and Face; Celebrated Chaetognaths (chaetognathous = hairy-jawed); and even includes an affectionate mini-essay about the wooly mammoth!”

Art | Lehel Kovács’s google street view series

2010-02-01T16:30:00.000-08:00

Lehel Kovács is a Hungary-based freelance illustrator, and his recent Google Street View series of sketches is deservedly catching lots of internet attention lately. Some of my favorites appear below:

I strongly encourage you all to visit his website and Flickr stream for more.

Aristotle, oh and the shadows

2010-02-01T14:58:00.000-08:00

When Aristotle isn't being praised as God himself, he get beaten around a bit. So does Plato but mainly Aristotle. Here's something interesting that I found when going through my old files:

"If there is a philosophical Atlas who carries the whole of Western civilization on his shoulders, it is Aristotle. He has been opposed, misinterpreted, misrepresented, and—like an axiom—used by his enemies in the very act of denying him. Whatever intellectual progress men have achieved rests on his achievements.

Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history’s brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind. The Aristotelian revival of the thirteenth century brought men to the Renaissance. The intellectual counter-revolution turned them back toward the cave of his antipode: Plato.

There is only one fundamental issue in philosophy: the cognitive efficacy of man’s mind. The conflict of Aristotle versus Plato is the conflict of reason versus mysticism. It was Plato who formulated most of philosophy’s basic questions—and doubts. It was Aristotle who laid the foundation for most of the answers. Thereafter, the record of their duel is the record of man’s long struggle to deny and surrender or to uphold and assert the validity of his particular mode of consciousness."

- Review of J.H. Randall’s Aristotle, The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1963, 18

Music | Music Go Music

2010-01-31T23:14:00.000-08:00

{ Source: thanks Benoit }
I'm a fan. Blondie will never die.

Story of an artist

2010-01-31T18:36:00.000-08:00

"Day after day we seek an answer to the ageless question Aristotle posed in Ethics:

How should a human being lead his life?

Traditionally humankind has sought the answer to Aristotle’s question from the four wisdoms—philosophy, science, religion, art—taking insight from each to blot together a livable meaning. But today who reads Hegel or Kant without an exam to pass? Science, once the great explicator, garbles life with complexity and perplexity. Religion, for many, has become an empty ritual that masks hypocrisy. As our faith in the traditional ideology diminishes, we turn to the source we still believe in: the art of story.

The world now consumes films, novels theatre, and television in such quantities and with such ravenous hunger that the story arts have become humanity’s prime source of inspiration, as it seeks to order chaos and gain insight into life.

Some see this craving for story as simple entertainment, an escape from life rather than an exploration of it … To retreat behind the notion that the audience simply wants to dump its troubles at the door and escape reality is a cowardly abandonment of the artist’s responsibility. Story isn’t a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.”

- Robert McKee, from his book, Story.

For kicks, here's the excerpt from "Adaptation." with Nicholas Cage as Charlie Kaufman and Brian Cox as Robert McKee.

Disco inferno

2010-01-31T18:18:00.000-08:00

Or Dante's.

Short film | L'homme qui plantait des arbres

2010-01-24T23:10:00.000-08:00

Exquisite. "The Man Who Planted Trees". By many considered to be the best short film of all time. If you have a spare 30 minutes this week I encourage you to watch this, it's in four parts:

I care because you do

2010-01-24T01:39:00.000-08:00

{ Thanks go to Miss Jessica McOmish }

Assortment

2010-01-08T00:49:00.000-08:00

Russian Cannibal Who Ate His Mother Gets a Lenient Sentence Because “He Just Was Hungry” - I don’t know what is more remarkable – the judge’s reasoning or the fact that 15 years in jail is all one normally gets in Russia for killing his mother for her pension money and eating her.

Smart Dolphins - the more we study them the smarter they turn out to be.

The Large Hadron Collider may be being Sabotaged by time travellers from the future - I’m dying to see what exactly got those future people so worried.

Empires

2010-01-08T00:04:00.001-08:00

Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

1940 Tour de France

2010-01-07T17:19:00.001-08:00

Team Wehrmacht.

Music | Mussorgsky and the ultimate love

2010-01-05T03:17:00.000-08:00

Every since I was a young girl this was my favourite piece of classical music.

MUSSORGSKY | PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION: PROMENADE

Apologies that this isn't the perfect version. Pictures at an Exhibition is a suite in ten movements composed for piano by Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.

And wouldn't this just be perfect for film?

I find this music irresistible. So powerful. Actually I would even go as far as a crazy person and say that I'm glad I was born so I could listen to it. I think we all have (or should have?) a piece of music or art that just resonates with you. For my father it's Handel's Water Music - every time he listens his body freezes. For Jessica, my sister, it's Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto no. 1. Chelsea comes to mind, maybe for her there's no equivalent to Tennyson's verse:

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

She's an artist

2010-01-03T05:04:00.000-08:00

She's got everything she needs,
She's an artist, she don't look back.

{ Dame Edith Sitwell | POET }

She's got everything she needs,
She's an artist, she don't look back.
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black.

{ Joni Mitchett | SINGER }

You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees.

{ Cat Power | SINGER }

You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees.
But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees.

{ Sofia Coppola | DIRECTOR, SCREENWRITER }

She never stumbles,
She's got no place to fall.
She never stumbles,
She's got no place to fall.
She's nobody's child,
The Law can't touch her at all.

{ Francoise Hardy | SINGER }

She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks.
She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks.
She's a hypnotist collector,
You are a walking antique.

{ Michelle Williams | ACTRESS }

Bow down to her on Sunday,
Salute her when her birthday comes.
Bow down to her on Sunday,
Salute her when her birthday comes.
For Halloween give her a trumpet
And for Christmas, buy her a drum.

{ Simone de Beauvoir | PHILOSOPHER }

This was...

BOB DYLAN | SHE BELONGS TO ME

Simple

2010-01-03T03:01:00.000-08:00

Let's make it simple. Watch this. I usually dislike this kind of advertising, it brings out my inner sceptic, but hey, it's not for a financial company, it's for Chevas, and I like Chevas. Or maybe I just like the idea of chivalry at the moment? It's a rare quality. Honour. Galantry. Giving a damn. What happened to straight talkers who give their word, and keep it? However, I highly doubt drinking Chivas will bring out your inner gentleman, but I like the sentiment.

{ Montgomery Clift | photographed by Stanley Kubrick }

Thank you 2009

2009-12-31T06:53:00.000-08:00

Interesting year. I must reflect. Can't help it. It's what I do during swotvac, visits to the dentist and the end of the year. A necessary evil. So this year...

- diving
- poached an egg, once
- learnt 3 new pieces on piano
- book club
- jet skiing
- learnt how to use photoshop
- finally bought a MacBook Pro
- paid back my travel debt
- ran 15 km
- finally bought an LP player
- learnt to paint with gouache
- slept on the roof

And now for the more interesting "low points of 2009" list

- got banned from family apartment for a month
- didn't run a marathon, surprise surprise
- didn't quit smoking
- killed/starved 6 agavis, and I estimate 5 palms
- went completely broke
- and not too smart - deciding to create Law of Evidence notes in pictorial form

Ah memories. Many thanks and much love to everyone who contributed to the memories above listed!

* Note: this post was edited because I wrote it about a week ago, and then it automatically published it

Ode to green

2009-12-29T00:26:00.000-08:00

{ Julie Gayet, I've lusted for those gloves for years }

{ it's a peacock }

{ green Chanel 3.55 }

{ Lilith - Adam's wife before Eve }

{ green tea brioche from Chajin, 24 rue Pasquier, Paris }

{ leaves of grass }

Remains my favourite colour. I've given up on trying to make red my favourite.

And for the road....

Younger than Jesus

2009-12-29T00:20:00.000-08:00

"Art should never try to be popular.
The public should try to make itself artistic."

- Oscar Wilde

Band of insiders

2009-12-28T22:57:00.000-08:00

Out of nowhere, I think I've developed a crush on actor Jason Schwartzman. Slightly pedophilic because I think it was Rushmore induced. He's now modeling Band of Outsiders collection for Fall 2009. Ready for this?

Extra extra - Jason interview in Interview Magazine

Between the lines of age

2009-12-28T00:03:00.000-08:00

Aren't these just beautiful? From Franklin Evans at Marie Walsh Sharpe Open Studios, New York

Homeless museum of art

2009-12-27T11:32:00.000-08:00

Hmmm. It's the Homeless Museum of Art is a New York initiative, which moves around the city in their very elusive booth. Honestly, I am a fan if the oh-so-nouveau art booth complete with director. On the other hand it oozes New York philanthropic chic by also exhibiting homeless modern art it in brightly lit, stark white galleries. And the collections themselves feel like they're just stepping back in time to Andy Warhol mode. Really, jello boxes? However, some pieces are interesting. Check out some of their recent acquisitions for yourself.

My favourite art gallery that I've ever been to, even above the Louvre, Prado, Uffuzi, et al.,would probably be Kunsthaus Tacheles, which is Berlin's not-so-secret art squat. It sits in the old Jewish quarter of East Berlin and takes it's name from the Yiddish for truth. Originally a department store, it was occupied by a collective of artists in 1990, two months before its planned demolition, and has been a cultural hub ever since.

"A building with a storied history—it started out as a kind of proto-shopping mall in the early 1900s, was taken over first by the Nazis, then by the Communists. And when the Berlin Wall, once located just a few blocks away, came down, the building became the home to a host of German and international artists, many the sons and daughters of Communist revolutionaries from Cuba, the Soviet Union, and China. Today, the building has the outward appearance of disuse—a bomb-pitted facade of gray stone covered with graffiti, stencil art, and stickers, and windows darkened from the inside by more graffiti. But inside is a vibrant, diverse, anarchistic (i.e. leaderless) art community. The building hosts a cinema, a performing arts space, 30 studios (made available to artists, who are selected by an outside curatorial panel, for only the cost of utilities), two indoor and two outdoor bars, exhibition spaces, two galleries facing Oranianburger Strasse, and a high-power projector that screens video art on an adjacent building every night of the week. Artists from Japan, China, the Middle East, and the UK, among other places, curently occupy the studios; probably Tacheles' most famous tenant is recording artist Peaches, who's been there for two years."

- From Eyeteeth

Anyway, went there at the end of 2007, and it's always stuck in my mind.

Precious bodily fluids

2009-12-27T09:47:00.000-08:00