There’s a stark black screen with two bright white, luminous, almost pulsating, roundish images where eyes would be if the screen were a face. The titles come in to the lower left in a fat serif typeface. Daylight comes swiftly and the white images become blue sky through openings in a rock formation of Monument Valley, Utah. It’s the kind of photograph Wim Wenders might include in one of his photography books of the West. The camera slowly pans around 360 °and then tilts downward to expose an ugly array of white trailers, booms and trolleys of a movie setup. A horse with rider gallops at speed out of the valley, up an incline through the red rock and disappears over the horizon. That is Howard Spence (Sam Shepard), an over the hill movie star cowboy, coming off a binge of drugs, booze and debauchery. Two whores are still in his trailer.
Continue reading “Don’t Come Knocking. A Review”
Category: reviews
The Big Oyster
…and I don’t mean Marc…
The Big Oyster is the title of Mark Kurlansky’s new book which shucks the long and complex story of this bi-valve from between the crusted shells of history. Kurlansky’s last book was Cod, which did the same thing for that significant fish, primarily as a lens for the history of North America, and it appears he focuses primarily on oysters in New York City in this new book, at least according to the New York Times review.
Oysters also happened to be a subject of the Boston Globe’s food section this week, which follows a Wellfleet oyster shucker to the national oyster shucking championships in Miami.
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Lucky Number Slevin
Carol and I were lucky enough to go to a SF Film Society advance screening of Lucky Number Slevin last night. The Writer, Jason Smilovic was there for a Q&A after the film.
Good flick!
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Jazz Giant Mesmerizes The ATL
Last night, Kelly and I went to see Chick Corea and his new band Touchtone at the Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech. I have been a HUGE fan of Chick for decades (I saw him in a small club in LA over 30 years ago) and have a number of his albums. My expectations of what I was going to see, however, were not fulfilled — they were exceeded with surprise!
As the band took the stage, he announced that the audience should be ready to hear all new music, and nothing we had ever heard from him before. OK,cool. But what? He wasted no time in blowing us all out of our seats with a 30 minute improvisation interspersed with Spanish flamenco and Moroccan overtones. His new collaborators are a global group: Jorge Pardo on flute and sax (ouytstanding!), Carles Benavent on bass (played as I had never heard it before!), Rubem Dantas on all manner of percussion, and a long-time FACOC (friend and collaborator of Corea) Tom Brechtlein on drums. Astounding,but wait,there’s more. Continue reading “Jazz Giant Mesmerizes The ATL”
An evening with Robert Towne
I sat in the 4th row on the left aisle, Robert Towne arrived at the appointed time and sat in 2nd row, 2nd seat in front of me and nuzzled against a young Asian woman, obviously a colleague.
Immediately, a film strip with scenes from a number of his films started playing:
- The Last Detail
- Chinatown
- Godfather
- Shampoo
- Tequila Sunrise
- Personal Best
ending with a digital clip from his new film Ask the Dust which will open March 17.
Continue reading “An evening with Robert Towne”
Unknown White Male
Unknown White Male (2005 )
Directed by Rupert Murray
Genre: Documentary
Tagline: If you lost your past, would you want it back?
Plot Outline: The true story of Doug Bruce who woke up on Coney Island with total amnesia. This documentary follows him as he rediscovers himself and the world around him.
Credited cast: Doug Bruce …. Himself
An unknown white male, mid-thirties in age, wakes up on a New York subway train passing through the environs near Coney Island, the last stop on the line. He is in wholly unfamiliar surroundings, industry and apartment blocks, gritty. At the end of the line, he has the facility to find his way off the subway to the street, he has no idea where he is, who he is or what to do about it.
Continue reading “Unknown White Male”
Andy does film…
Andy, the currently under-employed Hollywood filmmaker, has been commissioned to contribute to a “cinephilia chronicles” collection, to be published in a respected French film magazine PANIC. His name will appear among a group of wonderful critics/filmmakers, only inches away from an unpublished Godard screenplay in the same issue! As he states it: “In fact I am really only one degree from Godard in befriending Nicole, because she’s working on a book with him.” Too cool!
Also, his Top 10 list was recently published in Sense of Cinema’s 2005 World Poll…
…Hmmm….not all these are on Netflix!
He promises to begin contributing to our growing site as well…
Unique Art in San Francisco
Recently, I went to see three new pieces of art in San Francisco that couldn”t be more different from each other; four, if you count the de Young Museum, itself.
The new de Young museum opened in San Francisco in October and I took my first trip to check it out last week. The architects are Herzog & de Meuron, a Swiss firm well known for its museums, but this their first in the United States. John King’s review is especially interesting.
Two pieces of art were commissioned for the opening: An installation by Andy Goldsworthy in the entry court, and a huge mural by Gerhard Richter at one end of the lobby. Continue reading “Unique Art in San Francisco”
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