I am his Mistress Keira Knightley as Anna Karenina
Exceptional films are those films where everyone involved takes a chance. Joe Wright‘s Anna Karenina is breath-taking, luxurious, magical and pushes to the edge every element of movie making. The staging, cinematography, costumes, lighting, and acting etc. every inch of this film is sumptuous and in particular it is the choreography (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui) that captured my imagination and made the unreal real for me.
See the movie, it is really much bigger then the trailer.
Everytime I see The Deer Hunter I notice how beautiful the film is, as well as how intentionally or unintentionally the film captures the evolution of that time. The backdrop to this love story is writer director Michael Cimino portrait of young men with the bawdy habits of their fathers with regard to women, drinking and their belief in the idealism of “Greatest Generation” until actually experiencing the horrific and often meaningless game of war.
When Micheal’s (Robert DeNiro) returns home from Vietnam in a taxi driven by a black man signals the beginning of the change for me. One legacy of the Vietnam “police” action was that soldiers came home by themselves, alone without a victory celebration or “thank you for your service”. Some of these men were shunned and giving little opportunity to regain the jobs they lost by going to war.
Another message in “The Deer Hunter” is my understanding of the “One Shot” and that to take more than one shot is greedy and eventually destructive.
When first reading about World War I, and that it was sometimes referred to as “The War to End All Wars” I wondered why this promise was never kept. What is it about us that we are so entranced by destruction. We know what war does and the impact it has on our lives. We seem to lack the courage to say no to war.
Today’s soldiers return and we clap and say thanks for keeping us safe (unintentionally but insincere in a way), before ordering that five dollar cup of coffee sweetness we feel we are entitled to each morning. No one wants to work in a steel mill today and only those with extreme idealism want to go to war (which is different in my mind to wanting to serve your country).
History and Evolution teaches us an important lesson. The past was never as glorious as others have made it out to be and if it were ever that good, we still are not able to go backwards. We really only have one shot, and that’s always going forward.
I liked this film and didn’t know why until I left the theater. I realized that I had already been influenced by the Scientology noise that preceded the release of the movie and because of this I believe that I missed or at least misunderstood a good deal of the script. I had already decided before seeing “The Master” that I would see it at least one more time, which I always do with films that are driven by dialog.
Some hours later, after getting past my misunderstanding and the incredible interpretations done by Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams I came to realize the movie was not an attempt at depicting known people (not based on anything) and began to see in the same light of Dogville or The Tree of Life, stories that are more complex and near mythical (maybe even biblical) that never end. Archetypical and like most of our stories, it leaves us with no answer to the beginning, like which came first chicken or egg or was Jesus and/or Lucifer, and was (the) Grigori Rasputin a myth that ends without ending. At times I think P.T. Anderson is telling one story, with each of his films being a chapter. I would love to know.
Again the acting was incredible and Joaquin Phoenix performance is breathtaking. I found myself to looking for Jimmy Emmett (To Die For) and could not find him any more. Amy Adams, who usually plays younger than she is, shows up as a powerful matriarch similar to Sissy Spacek’s Ruth Fowler in “In The Bedroom”. Philip Seymour Hoffman is the complete package, a leading man who carries a movie with his intellect and not his body or looks.
It just doesn’t happen, especially something created by David Simon, that the drama plays backup to the music. The music is the backbone to this wonderful epic, cause New Orleans is a living document about the United States and as much some people would like to see it gone and forgotten it keeps rolling, like that river.
New Orleans is the seed to the culture of the United States and the source of modern music across the world, and it takes “Musician from Other Lands” who come to pay their respect for us to wake up to the treasure we are trying to kill.
There is a thought that recreating New Orleans and turning it into a Disney Land park, with re-enactments of funeral marches, and almost spontaneous breakout of jam sessions every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at 8PM at a designated club will preserve the history and magic of this place. I don’t think so.
The beautiful and extraordinary work of Lisa Call is on at exhibit at the Art Quilt Gallery in New York, a gallery committed to contemporary art quilts.
Structures #143 by Lisa Call * copyrighted by the artist
Lisa Call’s is imaginative, edgy, bold, and comforting. Comforting in that the forms she uses to construct her work are patterns that we experience in our minds, like the things we want to say and do but never do. Another way of saying this is that Lisa says in her art what we (me) wish I had said.
“Lisa Call creates bold geometric contemporary textile paintings where color is of primary importance and is combined intuitively, often in unexpected ways, employing a unique palette of cotton fabrics she hand dyes. Her work is abstract but draws elements from many places: her love of the colors and geological forms of the southwest, repetition, pattern, and an attraction to human-made structures for containment such as fences and stone walls. Extensive stitching on the surface adds rich texture to her finished work.”…The Art Quilt Gallery.
Lisa’s work is bold in that she is not looking to trick or confuse the viewer. Each piece, says what needs to be said, simply and beautiful. The Show will be up until Oct 20th.
