I recently finished Moby Dick. I’m not sure how I was able to receive a BA in English without having read this book. DH Lawrence called it “one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world”. Annie Dillard called it one of the greatest books written about nature. Below is my fantasy adaptation …
Bastards by Claire Denis got me thinking about children and fate.
I thought the much discussed, controversial sex scenes would have been better if there had been some dirty talking involved as well as some ouis and some nons and some je t’aimes Do french lesbians really refrain from making love when they have their period? Too many extended, gratuitous pre-K classroom scenes.
A man is riding a motorcycle through a cold, bleak landscape. He is stopped by three guys who approach him carrying axes. They demand money. The guy on the motorcycle reaches into his jacket. He pulls out a gun. He shoots two of the men point blank without warning. The third man runs for his …
I’m continuing to kick around my idea for a screwball comedy (tentatively titled) “Not Without My Grandson” The idea is loosely inspired the serious situation in the Iranian film Lelia. In that film a young couple are dealing with infertility. Because it is the woman who is infertile the mother of the man starts putting …
Read more “Who’s your Daddy? The Films: Leila, Mother of George & Wadjda”
Here’s a kind of crazy comparative analysis of two movies I saw recently: Hannah Arendt and Frances Ha. One thing they have in common is that they both have their respective protagonists’ names as their titles. But, if you can believe it, the similarities don’t stop there.
I was a terrible tourist in Berlin. Committing to the Berlin Film Festival meant not seeing much of the city. Instead I’d thumb through the Forum and Panorama sections of the catalog over coffee. I chose films and, just in case, back-up films. By bike, foot and U-ban I shuttled between the Delphi, Cubix, Arsenal, …
While in Berlin, I didn’t get to the Stasi museum as planned. Or the Pergemon Museum. My longest bike rides were at night when I couldn’t really see anything. I only had one sausage the entire week I was there! But I did spend several hours at the Gemäldegalerie. I had originally planned to just …
Did I dream this monkey-husband, inaudible crocodile of a cinemacartographic melodrama?! Gian Luca Venura, the narrator of Part 2: Paradise, cannot say at what moment desire turns to love, nor can I say at what moment I stopped squirming in my seat and finally let myself be swept away. 2012, it seems, was a good year …
Last year the front running contender and winner in the Oscar’s Foreign Film Category was the A Separation. It’s a film about a couple in a difficult situation. Simin, played by the lovely Leila Hatami, wants to leave Iran (I’d leave with her in a heartbeat). But Nader, her husband, feels he must stay put …
I saw Carlos Reygadas’s Post Tenebras Lux new film on Friday night. With this one and Holy Motors I seem to have had the knack of picking unusual films to go see in the theater. There is nothing straightforward about this movie. But unlike Holy Motors, I was largely entranced by this very strange, hypnotic film. …
I used to say if I ever had a kid it would happen in the way it happened to Gloria Swenson, in the Cassevettes film Gloria. I’d acquire the kid by some twist of fate — like a mob hit. However, my partner is a woman so when we our son was born it wasn’t exactly …