Monday Monologues (XLVI)

Saving someone's life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world. For days, sometimes weeks afterwards, you walk the streets, making infinite whatever you see. Once, for a few weeks, I couldn't feel the earth - everything I touched became lighter. Horns played in my shoes. Flowers fell from my pockets. You wonder if you've become immortal, as if you've saved your own life as well. God has passed through you. Why deny it, that for a moment there - why deny that for a moment there, God was you? (Nicholas Cage as Frank Pierce in Bringing Out the Dead, the most underrated Scorsese so far, 1999)

Un blog care-mi place mie de el ;)

This one. Somehow a film related blog. Undeniable: the guy has talent! The Talented Mr. Ripley sort of...

Cvasimilitudini (XXXI)

Drive: thriller senzorial ce te duce cu gândul la nihilismul urban practicat de William Friedkin în To Live and Die in L.A., dar mai ales la Michael Mann (Thief, Manhunter, Miami Vice) prin calofilia imaginii, stilul sobru, ritmul lent, meditativ şi soundtrack-ul retro synth-pop, pliat perfect pe combustia interioară a unui personaj făr' de nume venind de neunde şi mergând spre nicăieri, înveşmântat maiestuos în propria-i solitudine.

Bonus: the pink credits. A really nice touch!

Tot la capitolul bonus poate fi trecută şi autoironia tandră şi amară în acelaşi timp, plasată de Winding Refn în replica unuia dintre sidekickşi: „I used to make movies. Sexy stuff. Some critic called them European. I thought they were shit.” Danezul nu are o problemă în a se lua peste picior, pentru că, spune el undeva: „I just make films based on what I like to see, on what arouses me, and not try to analyze them, because if I do, then I can destroy it.”

Juxtapuneri (XIII)

„Atunci când, foarte rar din păcate, mi se întâmplă să întâlnesc două fiinţe în vârstă vizibil copleşite de tandreţe, îmi imaginez viaţa lor ca pe o lungă peregrinare într-o zi însorită şi clară de iarnă, cu un ciorchine aurit în mâini.” (Andrei Makine - Cartea scurtelor iubiri eterne)

Screenshots from Lovely, Still (dir. Nicholas Fackler, 2008)

Anatomia unei scene din Collateral

Pentru detalii suplimentare aţi putea da o tură pe-aici.

Monday Monologues (XLV)

Is it so terribly inconceivable to comprehend God with one's senses? Why does he hide in a cloud of half-promises and unseen miracles? How can we believe in the faithful when we lack faith? What will happen to us who want to believe, but can not? What about those who neither want to nor can believe? Why can't I kill God in me? Why does He live on in me in a humiliating way - despite my wanting to evict Him from my heart? Why is He, despite all, a mocking reality I can't be rid of? (Max von Sydow as Antonius Block in Det sjunde inseglet, dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957, a combination of strong emotional response and stillness that I have never felt watching any other film)

Malick Essential (6)

Screenshot from Days of Heaven (1978)

Ora exactă (XIV) [ad libitum]

Screenshot from Three Days of the Condor (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1975)

Cvasimilitudini (XXX)

Screenshot from L'année dernière à Marienbad (dir. Alain Resnais, 1961)

Screenshot from Hable con ella (dir. Pedro Almodóvar/2002)

From The Best of Blur

The promo video for To the End was directed by David Mould and shot in Prague in 1994. In keeping with the song's use of French, the video is a pastiche of the classic French New Wave film Last Year at Marienbad (dir. Alain Resnais,1961). The 4-minute video imitates the cinematography and editing style of the film, and replicates numerous scenes from it. Enigmatic subtitles (not from the film) appear. The band takes the place of the characters from the film: Damon Albarn plays "X" and Graham Coxon is "M", both of whom are involved in a love triangle with a mysterious woman. (via wiki)

P.S.: Marienbad is the German name of the spa town Mariánské Lázne (Czech Republic).

Monday Monologues (XLIV)

I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning. Even if I can't remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still here. Do I believe the world's still here? Is it still out there? Yeah. We all need memories to remind ourselves who we are. I'm no different. Now, where was I? (Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby in Memento, dir. Christopher Nolan, 2000)

Malenc(h)olia

„Monica was perfect for this character because in her expression, in her eyes there is not only her beauty, but there is the mistery of the world that you want to know…” (Giuseppe Tornatore)

Juxtapuneri (XII)

V-am spus - şi rămân pe această poziţie! - că The Tree of Life nu e genul de film care să malaxeze sau manipuleze savant diverse concepte/clişee filosofice pentru a fura ochiul şi a lua minţile. În esenţă, The Tree of Life e un film simplu pentru un public extrem de selectiv. Cu toate acestea, cred că poate fi văzut şi prin acest filtru. Văzut zic, şi nu redus.

„Cum ar fi dac-am gândi aşa:

- spaţiu este unde nu e timp;

- timp este unde nu e spaţiu.

Într-adevăr, spaţiul sfidează cumva timpul, dacă nu-l cocnepi ca pură mişcare. Res extensa carteziană nu are «nevoie» de timp până nu-şi adaugă mişcarea, care însă presupune o res extensa pură, adică ceva unde nu e timp. Timpul redus la pura curgere, cel heraclitean şi bergsonian, nu are «nevoie» de spaţiu, dimpotrivă, se izolează de el.
Arată aşadar ca şi când, reduse la «puritate», nici unul nu are nevoie de celălalt, şi pe această ireductibilitate se făureşte mişcarea, care are «nevoie» şi de unul, şi de celălalt. Ciudat este că ireductibilul spaţiului şi timpului pure se vădeşte numai în străinătatea unuia faţă de celălalt.“ (însemnare datată 16 noiembrie 1977, extrasă din volumul Seminţe de Alexandru Dragomir, Ed. Humanitas, 2006)

Cvasimilitudini (XXIX)

Screenshots from L'année dernière à Marienbad (dir. Alain Resnais, 1961)

Screenshot from Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier, 2011)

Epilog (a short movie by Tom Tykwer)

Dragostea e mai ales ceea ce se întâmplă atunci când, din varii motive, doi oameni care sunt împreună  nu sunt împreună. Atunci când sunt separaţi de gânduri, ezitări, tatonări, iluzii, deziluzii... Dragostea e (ca) o sală de aşteptare. Sau, la un alt nivel, ceea ce rămâne între doi oameni când între aceştia nu mai rămâne nimic. Iar dacă nu mai rămâne nimic, asta e! Vorba lui WKW: Love is all a matter of timing.

P.S.: Nu e chiar primul scurtmetraj al lui Tykwer, ci mai degrabă primul care chiar contează (cronologic e al doilea şi e din '92)

Monday Monologues (XLIII)

It always fascinated me how people go from loving you madly to nothing at all, nothing. It hurts so much. When I feel someone is going to leave me, I have a tendency to break up first before I get to hear the whole thing. Here it is. One more, one less. Another wasted love story. I really love this one. When I think that its over, that I'll never see him again like this... well yes, I'll bump into him, we'll meet our new boyfriend and girlfriend, act as if we had never been together, then we'll slowly think of each other less and less until we forget each other completely. Almost. Always the same for me. Break up, break down. Drunk up, fool around. Meet one guy, then another, fuck around. Forget the one and only. Then after a few months of total emptiness start again to look for true love, desperately look everywhere and after two years of loneliness meet a new love and swear it is the one, until that one is gone as well. There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time, well you still can't live without him. And even if he wakes you up every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes more than anyone else's kisses. (Julie Delpy as Marion in 2 Days in Paris, dir. Julie Delpy, 2007)

Close & brief encounters of the third kind (IX)

Brad Pitt and... Sean Penn finally sharing the same screen in The Tree of Life (as father and son). Their first movie together, in other words!

Malick Essential (5) [To A.]

Screenshots from The New World (2005)

„I loved you once!”

Sau despre cum e să lucrezi cu Terry!

P.S.: Thanks, yemisty, once again!

Cvasimilitudini (XXVIII)

 Screenshot from The Thin Red Line (1998)

Screenshot from The Tree of Life (2011)

Monday Monologues (XLII)

Mother, where do you live? In the sky? The clouds? The sea? Show me your face. Give me a sign. We rise... we rise. Afraid of myself. A god, he seems to me. What else is life but being near you? Do they suspect? Oh, to be given to you. You to me. I will be faithful to you. True. Two no more. One. One. I am... I am. (Q'orianka Kilcher as Pocahontas in The New World, dir. Terrence Malick, 2005)