“…as i now move, graciously, i hope toward the door marked Exit, it occurs to me that the only thing i ever really liked to do was go to the movies. Naturally, Sex and Art always took precedence over cinema but neither ever proved to be as dependable as the filtering of present light through that moving strip of celluloid which projects past images and voices onto a screen… ”
Point to point navigation: a memoir 1964 to 2006
Gore Vidal
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This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
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This documentary examines the fascinating, controversial life of Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler (his credits include One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and many of John Sayles’s movies) and his relationship with his son Mark, who directs this film.
NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW – Almost every frame of “Tell Them Who You Are” conveys an intimate, emotionally charged understanding that only a spouse or an immediate family member could bring to such a project. Near the beginning of the movie, the younger Wexler admits that the film is his attempt to get closer to his father. This sense of personal mission helps make “Tell Them Who You Are” the richest documentary of its kind since Terry Zwigoff’s “Crumb.”
SPECIAL GUEST – Michael Ondaatje
Ondaatje’s work includes fiction, autobiography, poetry and film. He has published 13 books of poetry, and won the Governor General’s Award for The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970) and There’s a Trick With a Knife I’m Learning to Do: Poems 1973–1978 (1979). Michael’s work also includes last week’s movie The English Patient and he will be joining us this week for dinner, the movie and conversation after the movie.
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The sweeping expanses of the Sahara are the setting for a passionate love affair in this adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s novel. Michael Ondaatje will be speaking on Saturday, June 25th at the MACC presented by The Merwin Conservancy as part of The Green Room Series.
A badly burned man, Laszlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), is tended to by a nurse, Hana (Juliette Binoche), in an Italian monastery near the end of World War II. His past is revealed through flashbacks involving a married Englishwoman (Kristin Scott Thomas) and his work mapping the African landscape. Hana learns to heal her own scars as she helps the dying man.
Nominated for 5 Oscars
A touring Shakespearean theater group, a backstage assistant – The Dresser – is devoted to the brilliant but tyrannical head of the company. He struggles to support the deteriorating star as the company struggles on during the London blitz.
Posted in Drama, FROM A CLASSICAL PLAY
Tagged Albert Finney, Peter Yates, Tom Courtenay
Seeing Tom Hanks in Bridge of Spies a few weeks ago reminded us of what a remarkable actor he is. We thought we should show Philadelphia. In that film Hanks won the Academy Award for Best Actor, 1993.
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The French Lieutenant’s Woman is a 1969 postmodern historical fiction novel by John Fowles. It was his third published novel, after The Collector (1963) and The Magus (1965). The novel explores the fraught relationship of gentleman and amateur naturalist Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, the former governess and independent woman with whom he falls in love. The novel builds on Fowles’ authority in Victorian literature, both following and critiquing many of the conventions of period novels.[1]Following popular success, the novel created a larger legacy: the novel has had numerous responses by academics and other writers, such as A.S. Byatt, and through adaptation as film and dramatic play. In 1981, the novel was adapted as a film of the same name with script by the playwright Harold Pinter, directed by Karel Reisz and starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. The film received considerable critical acclaim and awards, including several BAFTAs and Golden Globes. The novel was also adapted and produced as a British play in 2006.
A film is being made of a story, set in 19th century England, about Charles, a biologist who’s engaged to be married, but who falls in love with outcast Sarah, whose melancholy makes her leave him after a short, but passionate affair. Anna and Mike, who play the characters of Sarah and Charles, go, during the shooting of the film, through a relationship that runs parallel to that of their characters.
Venerated filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (Elmer Bäck) travels to Mexico to shoot his new film after being shunned by Hollywood. There he has a sensual experience that becomes a significant turning point in his life and career.
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Who would have thought that a dysfunctional, deranged, down-and-out homeless person in pre-First World War Vienna become, 20 years later, Chancellor of Germany? This peculiar and intriguing film simply named “Max” argues that he succeeded because he had such a burning need to be recognized (sounds familiar ?)–and also, of course, because of luck= good for him, bad for us.
If Hitler had won fame as an artist, the century’s history might have been different.
“Max” imagines a fictional scenario in which the young Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor) is befriended by a one-armed Jewish art dealer named Max Rothman (John Cusack) in Munich in the years following World War I.
“The time is the nineteen-fifties, perhaps the last epoch when, as a moviegoer, you could still believe that some enchanted evening you would see a stranger across a crowded room, and somehow know. The film is a casting coup, with Blanchett’s inherent languor-plus that low drawl of hers, a breath away from boredom- played off against the perter intelligence of Mara, whose manner, as always, is caught between the alien and the avian. The film is at its best when it honors that craving for trouble.”
Anthony Lane
film critic for The New Yorker
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Cinematiki Maui 