Marianne: Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
In the Nude
"The animal [can] be looked at, no doubt, but also - something that philosophy perhaps forgets, perhaps this being calculated forgetting itself - it can look at me. It has a point of view regarding me. The point of view of the absolute other. And nothing will have ever done more to make me think through this absolute alterity of the neighbor than those moments where I see myself naked under the gaze of my cat."
- Derrida, 2002: 280, (in the bathroom with his cat)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
"Sad Panda"
"Reader Claire Jackson took this picture of the Sad Panda last Saturday, standing near the bull at Bowling Green. "He was taking pictures with tourists," she told us. "He seemed sad because the tourists were more interested in having their picture taken with the bull's testicles than with him." Reader Jen Kipley saw him in the same spot at about 11:30 this morning, and he was feeling no better. She reports he was "dejectedly covering his ears, as if to push out the sounds of the world around him." Existential. Apparently, this is his usual spot. Could it be that Sad Panda is thephysical manifestation of the bear market?"
New York Times
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Dirty Roman Blonds
aPoppaea, second wife of Emperor Nero, kept 500 lactating she-asses to bathe in. Allegedly persuaded Nero into murdering his mother and his wife in order to make her his legit second wife.
Messalina, wife of Emperor Claudius, wore her blond wig to the brothel.
Lily Allen - Not Fair (HD)
 | Lily Allen - Not Fair (HD) Mar 20, 2009 - 03:51 |
MOMA article on director Agnes Varda
INFLUENTIAL FRENCH FILMMAKER AGNES VARDA RECEIVES FIRST MAJOR NEW YORK
RETROSPECTIVE
A Visit by the Filmmaker and Several New York Premieres- Including a Number of Rare Short Films-Highlight Program of Thirty-One Works
Agnès Varda
October 3-31, 1997
The exhilarating work of French filmmaker Agnès Varda is the subject of a major retrospective to be held from October 3 to October 31 at The Museum of Modern Art. Varda, now in her fifth decade as a filmmaker, will introduce the opening night screenings, launching a thirty-one-film program that includes all her feature-length and short works. The series opens with the world premiere of a newly struck print of Le bonheur (1964), Varda's exploration of the complexities beneath the surface of domestic life that won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival; and Vagabond (1985), one of the director's most powerful films, which stars Sandrine Bonnaire and which won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Born in Brussels in 1928, Varda was the official photographer for Paris's Théâtre National Populaire before her Left Bank colleagues persuaded the then twenty-six-year-old, who had seen relatively few films, to make her first feature, La pointe courte (1954). The work was a financial failure but a critical success, and is today considered by many to be one of the authentic ancestors of the Nouvelle Vague. Following La pointe courte, Varda made three visually arresting short films about places in France that held special meaning for her: the French Riviera, Chambord, and
Paris's Left Bank. But it was her next feature, Cleo from Five to Seven (1961), that brought her international acclaim. In the film, which follows the life of a young woman who is anxiously awaiting reports from her doctor, Varda's signature elements can be clearly discerned: namely, a tendency to inflect narrative with documentary reality, a photographer's keen and practiced eye, and a deep interest in the everyday life of women.
A critical feminist, Varda regards her filmmaking as artisanal work, equivalent to cloth weaving and hand sewing, and has established her own atelier, ciné-tamaris, to make her films. She has traveled widely in her professional work, blending social and personal histories and documentary with more or less fictional narratives to create intriguing films in France, Iran, and Cuba.Varda has also made several films in the United States. In the 1960s she made a short work about a relative in San Francisco, Uncle Yanco (1967); a political documentary, Black Panthers (1968), shot in Oakland; and a lively riff on Hollywood "un"-reality, Lion's Love (1969), starring, among others, Warhol superstar Viva and the
writers of Hair, Jim Raddo and Jerome Ragni. Varda returned to Los
Angeles a decade later to make Mur Murs (1980), about the city's street murals, and Documenteur (1981), a tale of a single mother looking for work and adequate housing.
Page 1of 2MoMA | press | Releases | 1997 | Influential French Filmmaker Agnes Varda Receives Fir...
2/25/2009http://www.moma.org/about_moma/press/1997/varda_retro_09_15_97.html
The director's other acclaimed features include The Creatures (1965), starring Catherine Deneuve and Michel Piccoli; One Sings, the Other Doesn't (1976), chronicling the friendship of two women over the course of fifteen years; Jane B. by Agnes V. (1987), a portrait of the actress Jane Birkin; and Kung Fu Master (1987), a love story about an older woman, played by Jane Birkin, and an adolescent, played by Varda's son, Mathieu Demy.
In the early nineties Varda made three films about her husband, the
celebrated French filmmaker Jacques Demy, to whom she was married in 1962. The first, Jacquot de Nantes (1990), explores Demy's childhood. After his death in 1990, Varda completed two documentaries, The Young Girls of Rochefort-25 Years Later (1992) and The World of Jacques Demy (1993), both loving and exuberant portraits.
Her most recent film, A Hundred and One Nights, made for the centennial of cinema in 1996, is enlivened by cameos by numerous European film stars, including the late Marcello Mastroianni.
Agnès Varda is organized by Larry Kardish, Curator and Coordinator of Film Exhibitions, Department of Film and Video, and presented in
cooperation with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.
No. 57
©1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Page 2of 2MoMA | press | Releases | 1997 | Influential French Filmmaker Agnes Varda Receives Fir...
Great Girl Flats
directed by Agney Varda. This clip from "Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962) Part 4/9 (HD)" features the ultimate in beautiful girl's apartments. Followed swiftly by Lola's in Jaques Demy's 1961 film, 'Lola'. Number three is Emma Peel's of The Avengers fame. I would love a life size dummy pinned against my front door to practice fencing with, and a red grand piano... | |
| © 2009 YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066 |
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Current Playlist
(on shuffle)
1. I'm Loving Nothing - The Impressions
2. I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight - Richard & Linda Thompson
3. The Cutter - Echo & The Bunnymen
4. True True - U-Roy
5. Blue Flower - Mazzy Star
6. April Skies - The Jesus & Mary Chain
7. I Found You - Gene Clark
8. The Chain - Fleetwood Mac
9. Older Guys - The Flying Burrito Brothers
10. Old Shoes and Leggins - Uncle Eck Dunford
11. A Pair of Brown Eyes - The Pogues
12. Dear Miss Lonely Hearts - Phil Lynott
John Muir living
"Early one morning in the middle of Indian Summer, while the glacier meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from the foot of the Mount Lyell on my down to Yosemite Vally to replenish my exhausted store of bread and tea."
John Muir, 'The Mountains of California'.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Thomas Paine
from The Crisis, 1776
"Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the miseries of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man."
Friday, May 8, 2009
: "Performance (1970)" & "The Servant (1963)" clips
Nic Roeg & Donald Cammell A diametrically opposed act from Tony of 'The Servant', James Fox delivers a terrifying, but equally confused London gangster. | |
 Joseph Losey superbly directs Pinter's restrained script, and Douglas Solcombe's cinematography is formidably good. It's exquisitely sexy without every being explicit (except for the shot of the tap, perhaps). © 2009 YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066 |
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)