Close & brief encounters of the third kind (X)

Charlize Theron meets... Grace Kelly (Miss Dior Cherie), Marlene Dietrich (Hypnotic Poison) & Marilyn Monroe (Dior Addict) in the newest Dior ad for J'adore (2011). It's all about special effects, obviously, but it's magic!

Crăciun cu Cinesseur (IV): prelungiri

Crăciun cu Cinesseur (III) sau Monday Monologues decalat (LIV)

Pentru conformitate, iată şi transcrierea voice-over-ului din finalul filmului Mysterious Skin de Gregg Araki (2004):

And as we sat there listening to the carolers, I wanted to tell Brian it was over now and everything would be okay. But that was a lie, plus, I couldn't speak anyway. I wish there was some way for us to go back and undo the past. But there wasn't. There was nothing we could do. So I just stayed silent and trying to telepathically communicate how sorry I was about what had happened. And I thought of all the grief and sadness and fucked up suffering in the world, and it made me want to escape. I wished with all my heart that we could just leave this world behind. Rise like two angels in the night and magically... disappear. (Joseph Gordon-Levitt în rolul tulburatului şi turbulentului Neil)

P.S.: Niciodată, în nici un alt film, Silent Night nu a sunat atât de cathartic şi răscolitor ca aici. Iar Sigur Ros, imediat după, e de-a dreptul o izbăvire...

Crăciun cu Cinesseur (II)

Screenshot from Brazil (dir. Terry Gilliam, 1985)

Santa Claus: What would you like for Christmas?
Little girl on his lap: My own credit card.

Crăciun cu Cinesseur (I)

Asemeni lui Bernard-Henri Lévy, fascinat şi intrigat de organizarea socială şi ansamblul mentalitar din Statele Unite, Umberto Eco povesteşte în Călătorii în hiperrealitate (termen lansat, pare-mi-se, de Baudrillard, în 1986, într-o carte dedicată aceluiaşi spaţiu) cum a descoperit America. Demersul lui B.-H. Lévy mi se pare încă şi mai interesant (citeam deunăzi că romanii nu aveau acest cuvânt în vocabular), fiindcă rescrie - spectaculos, savant, seducător şi la distanţă de 100 de ani - o carte clasică: Democraţia în America de Alexis de Tocqueville.

Screenshot from Bad Santa (dir. Terry Zwigoff, 2003)

Revenind la Eco: chiar şi mitologia americană are o formă tangibilă, observă el. De Crăciun, Santa Clauşi de toate mărimile tronează în fiecare magazin, iar eroii din desenele animate îşi fac veacul prin Disneyland în fiecare zi lăsată de Dumnezeu, inclusiv în a şaptea. Prin analogie, observă cărturarul italian, dacă grecii antici îşi sărbătoreau eroii în poezii epopeice recitate la focuri de tabără, americanii moderni le strâng mâna în costumele lor originale.

 Screenshot from The Thin Red Line (dir. Terrence Malick, 1998)

În ajun

Unul din versurile acestei melodii a devenit după nişte ani... titlu de film. Sau film în sine! 

P.S.: Dacă vă duceţi cu link-ul, atenţie la titlul original, că despre acela e vorba, nu despre traducerea sa în engleză, oferită by default de tâmpiţeii de la imdb.com!

Ora exactă (XVI)

Screenshot from The Banishment/Izgnanie (dir. Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2007)

Monday Monologues (LIII)

Took a charter flight on a DC-10 to London. Landed at Heathrow. Took a cab to the city center. Don't let people lie to you: hostels are for the ugly. I'm staying in Home House, the most beautiful hotel in the world. Called a friend from school who was selling hash, but she wasn't in. Met a couple of Brits who take me to, of all places, Camden Street. I flirt a bit at the Virgin Megastore, buy some CDs, then follow some girls with pink hair. I wandered around trying to get laid, until it started to rain, then went back to Home House. Ministry of Sound is dead, so I go to Remform - but it's Gay Night. I find the one hetero girl in the place and we dry hump on the dance floor. We cab it back to Home House. I strip her clothes off, suck her toes, and we fuck. I hung out for four or five days. Met the world's biggest DJ, Paul Oakenfold. Kept missing the Changing of the Guards. Wrote my mom a postcard I never sent. Bought some speed from an Italian junkie who was trying to sell me a stolen bike. Smoked a lot of hash that had too much tobacco in it. Saw the Tate. Saw Big Ben. Ate a lot of weird English food. It rained a lot, it was expensive, and I'm jonesing... So, I split for Amsterdam. The Dutch all know English, so I didn't have to speak any Dutch - which was a relief. I cruise the Red Light District. Visit a sex show. Visit a sex museum. Smoke a lot of hash. I meet a Dutch TV actress and we drink absinthe at a bar called Absinthe. The museums were cool, I guess. Lots of Van Goghs and the Vermeers were intense. Wandered around. Bought a lot of pastries. Ate some intense waffles. We bought some coke and I cruised the Red Light District, until I found some blonde with big tits that reminds me of Lara. I gave her a hundred guilders. In the end, she pulls me out, and I cum between her tits, even though I'm wearing a rubber. Afterward we made small-talk about AIDS, her Moroccan pimp, and herself. I wake to the sound of a wino singing. It's 8 AM and hot as blazes. I pretend to ice-skate around Central Station, while someone plays the sax. Trade songs with a Kiwi girl... Then split for Paris by train. Wander the Champs-Elysees. Climb the Eiffel Tower for only seven francs, because the ticket machine was broken. Got the hang of the Metro, took it everywhere. Went to a Ford model party and hooked up with a Romanian model named Karina. She chugs my cock at the Mariott Champs-Elysees, which is good. We played billiards, went shopping. I think she gave me mono. Drove a Ferrari that belonged to a member of the Saudi royal family. Made out with a Dutch model in front of the Louvre. Saw the Arc de Triomphe and almost became road-kill crossing the street... "Oakie" invites me to Dublin, so I catch an Aer Lingus flight and stay at the Morrison. Dublin rocks like you can't imagine. Oakenfold lets me spin some discs with him. Irish girls are as small as leprechauns. I swap hickeys with a drunk woman. After groping my abs and calling me "Mr. L.A.", she strips for me in the bath room of the club. Sneak into the Guinness factory and steal some stout so good my dick goes hard... I fly to Barcelona, which was a low-rent bust. Too many fat American students. Too many lame meat markets. I dropped acid at the Sagrada Familia, which was a trip to say the least. Cruise up the coast to the Museo Gala Dali, but had no more acid, which sucked. Some girl from Camden calls me on my cell, so I let her listen to the church bells in Cadaques. Canta Cruz is beautiful, but there are no girls here, just old hippies... So, I went to Switzerland where I, ironically, couldn't find anyone who had the time. Took the Glacier Express up the Schilthorn, which is beautiful in a way I can't describe... Euro Pass into Italy and ended up in Venice, where I met a hot girl who looks like Rachael Leigh Cook and speaks better English than I do. She's living for a year on only five dollars a day. We gondola around, buy some masks. She think's I'm a capitalist, because my hotel room costs more for one night than she's spending her entire trip. But she doesn't mind it so much when I pay the bills... I ditch her and hook up with a couple who obviously want a 3-some. Too much tension there, but the doofus offers to drive me to Rome, an offer I jump at. Traffic is bad and we're stopped for hours without moving. The wife turns out to be a freak. The guy starts to wig out on me. It's like a Polanski film... We stop for a while in Florence, where I see some big dome. A bomb goes off and I lose the weird couple, which is probably for the best... Ended up in Rome, which is big and hot and dirty. It was just like L.A., but with ruins. I went to the Vatican, which was ridiculously opulent. Stood for two hours to get into the Sistine Chapel, which - now that it's been cleaned - looks fake. I meet two under-age Italian girls who I try to talk into fucking each other while I jack off onto them. Bored, I buy them some ice cream instead. My hotel has a gym, so I work out. I bump into some guy from Camden who says he knows me, but I'm sure that he's a fag, so I lose him. I try to fart and instead shit my pants. Back in my hotel room, I masturbate and have a pain in my groin. That night, I dream about a beautiful girl, half in water, stretching her lean body. She asks me if I like it and I tell her she can clean fish with it. I don't know what it means, but I wake well-rested, masturbate in the shower, and check out... I make my way back to London and hang out in Piccadilly Circus. Hmm. Palakon. I swap shirts with some upper-crusty Cambridge chick. Hers was an Agnes B., mine a Costume Nationale. She acts stuffy and prudish, but is really wild underneath it all. She barely looks at my abs, though she wants to. The next day, I drop some acid and get lost in the subway for a full day and can't find my way out. I meet a cute girl who lets me jack off onto her as long as no cum gets onto her Paul Smith coat. We get stoned while listening to Michael Jackson records and the next morning I wake up talking to myself. I have a big bump on my head from flailing in my sleep. I get my stuff and barely make my plane back to the United States... I no longer know who I am and I feel like the ghost of a total stranger. (Kip Pardue as Victor - summarizing his vacation - in The Rules of Attraction, a movie feature based on Bret Easton Ellis novel, director Roger Avary/2002)

Un vals!

Vorba lui Jim Morrison: this is the end. Sfârşitul unui film (întâmplător, ultimul pentru Maria Luisa Bemberg, cineastă argentiniană decedată în 1995) ce seamănă leit cu o plimbare sub bolta înstelată a absurdului. 

În De eso no se habla (1993), un distins avocat trecut binişor de ceea ce unii numesc prima tinereţe, dar plin de bani, de unde şi miserupismul aferent, se îndrăgosteşte prostesc-adolescentin de o pitică pe nume Leonor. Pe care o şi ia de nevastă. deşi ar avea de unde alege, diverse femei atrăgătoare curtându-l mai mult sau mai puţin direct. 

De fapt, aici voiam să ajung: la secvenţa, punctată muzical de Nicola Piovani (compozitor italian pe care cei mai mulţi îl ştiţi din La vita e bella), în care el, mirele pe care mai toţi îl cred ţâcnit (Marcello Mastroianni în persoană, interpret nonşalant al oricăror visuri sau extravaganţe), valsează cu mireasa-i, în noaptea nunţii, purtând-o în braţe ca pe o păpuşă. E o muzică nici veselă, nici tristă, un fel de vals ce te îmbie să vezi viaţa aşa cum e: combinaţie bizară de bucurie şi amărăciune, extaz şi prăbuşire. 

Deznodământul poveştii e întrucâtva apăsător şi ambiguu (ea îl părăseşte în favoarea unei trupe de circari ambulanţi, el va dispărea în sau dincolo de valurile mării). Ca viaţa.

Cvasimilitudini (XXXV)

Screenshot from Alas de mariposa (dir. Juanma Bajo Ulloa, 1991)

Screenshot from The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malick, 2011)

Hitch: „Without the element of surprise the scenes become meaningless”

Francois Truffaut: In other words, what intrigues you is the paradox between the inner fire and the cool surface.

Alfred Hitchcock: Definitely. I think the most interesting women, sexually, are the English women. I feel the Swedes, the northern Germans, and Scandinavians are a great deal more exciting than the French, the Latin, and the Italian women. Sex should not be advertised. An English girl, looking like a schoolteacher, is apt to get into a cab with you and, to your surprise, she’ll probably pull a man’s pants open.

Truffaut: I appreciate your viewpoint, but I doubt whether the majority of the public shares your tastes in this matter. I think the male audience prefers a highly carnal woman. The very fact that Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, and Brigitte Bardot became stars, despite the many flops in which they appeared, seems to bear this out. The majority of the public, it seems to me, prefers the kind of sensuality that is blatant. 

Hitchcock: That may well be true, but you yourself admit that those actresses generally make bad films. Do you know why? Because without the element of surprise the scenes become meaningless. Look at the opening of To Catch a Thief. I deliberately photographed Grace Kelly ice-cold and I kept cutting to her profile, looking classical, beautiful, very distant. And then, when Cary Grant accompanies her to the door of her hotel room, what does she do? She thrusts her lips right up to his mouth.

Truffaut: I’m willing to grant that you manage to impose that concept of icy sexuality on the screen, but I still feel the audience prefers the kind of sex that’s obvious and tangible.

Hitchcock: Maybe so. Anyway, when the picture is over, the public’s pretty satisfied with it. 

(fragment din Hitchcock de Francois Truffaut & Helen G. Scott)

Despre volatilitatea sentimentelor teoretic durabile

Elegy pleacă de la o carte de Philip Roth (The Dying Animal) şi mă tem că nu a nimerit chiar pe mâinile cui trebuie (Isabel Coixet). M-a prins la început, dar pe nesimţite m-a pierdut pe drum. Am rămas totuşi in the game doar pentru Penelope Consuela Cruz (una din ex-iubirile mele de şi pe celuloid) şi părţile ei anatomice, generos & maiestuos expuse (a la Goya) şi am sfârşit prin a fi fermecat de Patricia Clarkson ce-mi aducea aminte în câteva din momentele sale de sexpertease... de Sophia Loren (din filmul din care am selectat imaginea de faţă).

În locul lui Kepesh, profesor universitar cu morgă (un Ben Kingsley apatic, ieşit din formă) aş fi pariat toţi banii şi tot timpul pe ea. Personajul ei, trecut prin viaţă şi oarecum împăcat cu expedientele sentimentale, ştie ce e tandreţea pe sponci şi ştie cum s-o preţuiască atunci când are parte de ea, însă un bărbat precum Kepesh, ezitant, angoasat de spectrul tot mai pregnant al îmbătrânirii - temă predilectă la Roth - şi tocmai de aceea predispus spre „comodificare” erotică, dar nu în ultimul rând erodat de tot soiul de complexe (sau prejudecăţi delicate?)  are dificultăţi - pentru mine inexplicabile - în a aprecia şi perpetua this love on the run. După cum nici în relaţia cu muza lui mai tânără nu se descurcă tocmai onorabil. Avea dreptate Wong Kar Wai: Love is all a matter of timing! Or Elegy e de la un capăt la altul o sarabandă a desincronizărilor.

Key to the kingdom: I think it was Betty Davis who said old age is not for sissies. But it was Tolstoy who said the biggest surprise in a man's life is old age. Old age sneaks up on you, and the next thing you know you're asking yourself, I'm asking myself, why can't an old man act his real age? How is it possible for me to still be involved in the carnal aspects of the human comedy? Because, in my head, nothing has changed. (David Kepesh)

Scurtmetraj, din 10 cuvinte

De Exarhu. 

Everything in its right place (sugestie de soundtrack).

„Uşile, uşile...” (3)

Screenshot from I Saw the Devil (dir. Kim Jee-Woon/2010)

Monday Monologues (LII)

When you see the girl in the picture that was shown to you earlier today, you will say, "this is the girl". The rest of the cast can stay, that's up to you. But that lead girl is "not" up to you. Now you will see me one more time, if you do good. You will see me, two more times, if you do bad. Good night. (Monty Montgomery as Cowboy in Mulholland Dr., dir. David Lynch, 2001)

Ilaria

Un (pre)nume ce m-a urmărit cam 19 ani: Ilaria. Occhini, Regăsită/revăzută ultima oară în Mine Vaganti. Dar nu numai! Ar mai fi o ipostază aici (unde-s zăpezile de al'dat'?, l-am putea întreba şi pe Philip Roth,  de exemplu) şi alta aici (nu prea fericită!). E intanto il tempo se ne va!

Cvasimilitudini (XXIV)

 Screenshot from Rushmore (dir. Wes Anderson, 1998)

Screenshot from La vida de los peces (dir. Matias Bize, 2009)

Bonus track: o juxtapunere de pus în ramă!

Monday Monologues (LI)

As time went on we saw less and less of Teddy and Vern, until eventually they became just two more faces in the halls. It happens sometimes. Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant. I heard that Vern got married out of high school, had four kids, and is now the forklift operator at the Arsenault lumberyard. Teddy tried several times to get into the Army, but his eyes and ear kept him out. The last time I’d heard, he’d spent some time in jail. He was now doing odd jobs around Castle Rock. Chris did get out. He enrolled in the College-courses with me. And although it was hard he gutted it out like he always did. He went on to College and eventually became a lawyer. Last week he entered a fast food restaurant. Just ahead of him, two men got into an argument. One of them pulled a knife. Chris who would always make the best peace tried to break it up. He was stabbed in the throat. He died almost instantly. [typing] Although I haven't seen him in more than ten years I know I'll miss him forever. I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anybody? (Richard Dreyfuss as The Writer in one of the best adaptations of a Stephen King story: Stand by Me, dir. Rob Reiner, 1986)

A french twist(er)

Cu prezenţa melodiilor sale prin diverse coloane sonore v-aţi obişnuit. Unii îl ştiţi şi din scrierile în proză. Ce s-ar putea să nu ştiţi şi, iată, aflaţi acum, e că Leonard Cohen a cochetat meteoric cu cinemaul. Nefiind, deci, joaca sa preferată, s-a amuzat atât cât şi cum a putut ba cu glasul, ba cu pasul, în patru scurtmetraje, respectiv un film de 89 de minute. Cea mai spectaculoasă apariţie, însă, rămâne de departe cea din... Miami Vice. Faimosul serial din anii 80, desigur! Nu mi-e clar cum l-au convins producătorii să accepte rolul unui terorist francez pus pe nostimade nesărate, cert e că au reuşit. Cohen nu rupe gura târgului (nici în scenariu, nici pe platouri), dar cel puţin e exotic vorbind franţuzeşte. Apropo: parlez-vous francais?

Dacă nu, măcar în engleză de v-aţi descurca. Pentru acest interviu pe care n-ar fi tocmai rău să-l parcurgeţi. Ca bonus!

Malick Essential (8) [Tenderness]

Toate filmele lui Malick, până şi The Thin Red Line, unde numai asta nu te-aştepţi să găseşti, sunt inundate de tandreţe. Dovadă şi această imagine (sau cea de dedesubt, luată din The New World).

Timişoara, I love you!

foto: moa

Am înţeles că la cinemaul ăsta trebuie să vii cu pătura de-acasă, altfel te congelezi. Bine, cică de-acasă ar fi bine să mai aduci cel puţin un om pentru a fi sigur că se întruneşte cvorumul necesar începerii proiecţiei (minim 3 persoane). Ideea e, că deocamdată la Cinema Timiş, rulează Crulic, pe care nu mă trage aţa să-l văd, însă pentru experienţa cu pătura mai că aş încerca. Vă ţin la curent dacă o să iau şi eu curent. Din sală, desigur!