Verfilming van het boek ‘Le Scaphandre et le Papillon’. Een mooie recensie van de film kun je hier lezen.

Thema: locked in syndroom (waar de laatste paar dagen veel om te doen is). Een film om eens op te zetten als je veel medelijden met jezelf hebt …

Recuerdo que Najwa Nimri se sucidaba al principio de ‘Antes que añochezca’.

We at Blue Blood like beards… We’ve always liked beards. Some of our biggest heroes such as Julian Schnabel, Vincent Gallo, Patrick Petit Jean, Dash Snow and even our own guys PJ and Jarno having sporting beards for a while.
Appearantly beards are the next best thing out there.

Have a look at http://fuckyeahbeards.tumblr.com/

BB.

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A collage of the many famous faces who have crossed Indochine's threshold over the years.

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From the time it opened its doors back in the hedonistic ’80s, Indochine has exerted an inexorable pull on the famous, the glamorous, and the fabulous, and unlike its equally glittery peers—the Mudd Club, Studio 54, the Palladium—it’s still standing. In fact, this year is Indochine’s 25th anniversary, and Rizzoli has just published a book documenting its finest hours.

Indochine: Stories, Shaken and Stirred features a combination of collages and Polaroids taken at private parties plus photos from the ’80s and ’90s by Patrick McMullan, Patrick Demarchelier, and Roxanne Lowit. There’s also work by many of the artists who frequented the downtown boite, including Julian Schnabel, Ross Bleckner, and Francesco Clemente; and Salman Rushdie, Moby, Julianne Moore, and Bob Colacello have contributed essays.

“The beauty of Indochine is that everybody has all these dear-diary moments, but nobody ever has ever really talked about them!” designer Narciso Rodriquez told Fashion Weekly Daily at a party at Bergdorf Goodman last Thursday celebrating the book.

Jean-Marc Houmard, a co-owner of Indochine, remarked to Vogue that he’d been working as a law-firm intern when he took a night job as a busboy there a year after it opened. “There was this sense of fabulousness,” he noted, “especially when I started working there in 1985.”

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At the book party (from left): Richard Johnson, Jim Gold, Narciso Rodriguez, and Jean-Marc Houmard.

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One of Roxanne's photos from the book (from left): Andy Warhol, Jacqueline Schnabel, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, and Kenny Sharf.

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I asked Roxanne, who signed books at the party, about how she felt looking back at those times and at her photos. I wondered if it made her nostalgic. “It’s fun to see them. It was  a fun time then,” she said quietly. “I don’t think about going back in time, though. I think about going forward. I always say my next picture is going to be my best one.”

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Cover of Persepolis (Pantheon, 2007); image courtesy of shelflove.wordpress.com

When I saw the film version of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis, it was a pretty rad time to be a feminist moviegoer. In the last month of 2007 and the first month of 2008, this movie came out, along with Juno and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Having just completed a girls’ studies course, I was ecstatic that three different movies, each from a different country, were released with complex, resilient protagonists who were girls and young women.

Two of these movies earned Oscar nominations a few months later. Juno won Best Screenplay. Persepolis was nominated for Best Animated Feature, but unfortunately lost to Ratatouille. 4 Months, which documents the harrowing day of one college student trying to procure an illegal abortion for her roommate during the last years of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s in Romania, won the Palme D’Or at Cannes earlier in 2007, but failed to receive any nominations. For some reason. Perhaps it escaped nomination as a technicality, but I don’t understand why no one, particularly writer-director Cristian Mungiu or lead actress Anamaria Marinca, got any Academy recognition. Perhaps because it lacked the allegorical importance of No Country For Old Men or There Will Be Blood and cut to very real (and tremendously gendered) issues facing real people in the real world, many of whom reside in developing nations. 

But it is really no matter. No Country, There Will Be Blood, Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There were but more examples of what a very fine time this particular two-month period was for movies. But 4 Months was easily my favorite movie of that year. The movie whose source material will be the focus of this post was a very close second.

Having seen the movie upon its U.S. release, some context has changed considerably upon revisiting Satrapi’s autobiography about coming of age inside and outside of Iran from the late 70s to the early 90s, a time period where the country witnessed the fall of the Shah (aided by the United States), the swift and crushing oppression of its citizens by Islamic extremists, a devastating eight-year war with Iraq, and the neighboring country’s launch of the Persian Gulf War. In late 2007, we were still living under the Bush Administration, so the country’s positioning as part of the ”axis of evil” was in my mind, but being pretty ignorant about the country’s political history and our involvement with it past the Iran-Contra Affair, Bush’s branding of the country read more as a promise that the United States were, in fact, going to try and spread democracy by force to all of the Middle East, snatching up its real or imagined WMDs and drain its oil resources in the process. And I knew about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and was disgusted by his views on the Holocaust and heartened by the student protests around his adminstration, but was not yet aware of just what a dangerous despot he is.     

This was, of course, before this year’s highly controversial presidential election, which Ahmadinejad “won” by a suspiciously high margain over rival candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, an Independent reformist. At the time, what seemed more present in our minds in the states was what Twitter was doing to help cover and contextualize the civic protests and how quickly mainstream broadcast news was going to incorporate the still-emergent micro-blogging site’s Tweets into their 24-hour cycle, regardless of how accurate they were. 

As a result, I was a little jaded by the “Twitter users coverage of the Iran election is going to change news reporting” angle many seemed to be taking and instead wanted to know more about how the election was fraudulent, why certain people (specifically journalists, protesters, students, and politicians) were being arrested, what the stakes were, who was doing a good job covering this news story, and, most importantly, what circumstances led to the current iteration of Iran. Remembering that local branches of Barnes & Noble were donating proceeds to the Paramount upon purchase last weekend, shilling out my money to the big box chain for the sake of preserving a historical movie theater seemed as a good an opportunity to buy the book that may provide answers.

And, I’ll be honest. Reading the book left me with more questions than anything else (a similar feeling came over me when reading Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, two books whose timelines stretch past the 70s-90s, but contain a considerable overlap in terms of time with Persepolis, focusing on what was going on with ordinary people in Afghanistan, another contentious Middle Eastern country that borders Iran). It was hard not to check some ugly American tendencies I have toward Islamic traditions — particularly toward its views on marriage, sexuality, gender politics, and dress. At the same time, I was incredulous of how pro-West rhetoric and ideology, alongside our smuggled trinkets of popular culture, could possibly reform a nation, or at least save a person.

Luckily, Satrapi is skeptical of both and, like me and other feminists from all over the world, has a lot to negotiate. She grapples with these issues head-on. She argues with teachers against the physical restrictions and societal double standards that come with the hijab and the burka (sidenote: I know that Faegheh Shirazi, who teaches Middle Eastern Studies at UT and rejects traditional Islamic dress, has written and taught courses on gender and clothing in the Middle East, but any other suggestions for further reading are welcome). She watches her female peers grow up to only want marriage and children, in large part because these are the only things their nation’s leaders believe define their worth. Particularly poignant for this co-habitator, she regrets getting married to a man named Reza because they could not legally live together (or even walk the street) without proof of marriage, dissolving the marriage and leaving for France.

Marjane and friends reject the hijab; image courtesy of rand.org

Satrapi is a smart rebel who reads constantly, thinks clearly, and never backs down from an argument. She yells at authority figures who bully her or deny that there are any political prisoners in Iran after learning about the loss of her grandfather, who was son and prime minister to the ousted king (a tie that Satrapi suggests is not uncommon).

College student Satrapi damns the man; image courtesy of butterfliesandbears.wordpress.com

Luckily for Satrapi, she gets through all of this with the love and support of her politically aware and resistant parents, their friends, and one rad paternal grandma. Not so luckily, she also knows and meets lots of folks who suffered for speaking up, speaking out, or just living in the wrong house during an aerial bombing. Something tells me that many Iranians could recount similar tales of horror.

Satrapi also learns that the ways of the West are not always ideal, either. While a pre-pubescent in Iran, she hangs Iron Maiden posters on her wall her parents smuggle from a vacation in Turkey when the government lifted border restrictions. She defiantly walks around her neighborhood, blaring Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” from her Walkman while sporting a Michael Jackson pin. But noting that their daughter’s rebelliousness is hardly a phase and that escalating conflict with Iraq could mean the imprisonment or death of their mouthy teen, her parents send her to live with a friend of her mother’s in Vienna.

Still from the film; image courtesy of whatsontv.co.uk

Satrapi finishes high school, barely scraping by as she finds odd jobs, dates dumb boys, takes a lot of drugs, and runs into authority figures who want her to tow the line and behave. She also falls in with a group of radical misfits who dabble with nihilism, Marxism, hair dye, and punk. While Satrapi initially finds a home with these punks and new wave kids, she soon discovers their privilege has made them cowardly, pretentious, self-righteous, entitled, and lazy. Her outsider status also makes her cool, her Austrian peers clearly jealous by what she has seen and experienced without really processing the weight of it between drags off their joints and skims through their copies of the Marx-Engels Reader in their well-appointed bedrooms. It’s small wonder that, when Satrapi finally returns home to Iran after she finishes high school homeless and afflicted with bronchitis, she washes off a punk stencil from her bedroom wall. And while she’s sad that her mother gave away her cassette tapes, she probably wasn’t going to listen to them anyway. She would’ve kept the Kim Wilde tape, however.

So, ultimately, I do feel this revisit of Persepolis helped clarify my feelings about the state of Iran. It also left me with several questions and a need to know more. Ultimately, though, it left me with the sense of universality that exists between people, especially tough, smart women and girls, while at the same time recognizing the particularities that inform their realities. And continues to inform them. Back in June, Satrapi spoke out against the election results with filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalba. Something tells me that her grandmother, who passed away shortly after Satrapi moved to France at the close of the book, would be proud.

Quality time with grandma; image courtesy of rwor.org

Assim começa a dedicatória do livro de Jean-Dominique Bauby: “Para Théophile e Celeste, com os desejos de muitas borboletas”. A primeira edição saiu em 1997 com 142 páginas distribuídas entre 28 capítulos curtos, mas preenchidas em um estilo quase poético. O autor da façanha traça um retrato de si mesmo nessa autobiografia ao narrar como seu corpo tornou-se uma vestimenta impermeável e hermeticamente fechada: um escafandro, cuja sensação era a de estar mergulhado nas águas profundas do oceano sem poder tocar ou sentir nada à sua volta, recebendo oxigênio de uma máquina, após sofrer um derrame que resultou na síndrome conhecida como “locked-in”. Seu único escape era a figura de uma borboleta que voava em direção às lembranças acumuladas no decorrer dos 43 anos de vida e impulsionava sua imaginação e sonhos.

Na orelha do livro onde há a descrição do perfil do autor está escrito: “Do interior da bolha de vidro de seu escafandro, onde voam borboletas, ele nos envia cartões-postais de um mundo que só podemos imaginar, mundo onde nada mais ficou além de um espírito em ação. Espírito ora sarcástico, ora desencantado; espírito cuja intensidade toca profundamente o coração. Quando só restam palavras, nenhuma palavra é demais.”. Esse trecho foi a razão para eu instigar minha irmã a escolher este livro como presente de aniversário, pois, apesar da pouca idade sinto que existe nela um espírito tímido e poético. Combinação perfeita que permite a introspecção necessária para apreciar o relato de Jean- Do.

Bauby, jornalista e editor-chefe da revista francesa Elle, vivia rodeado de lindas mulheres, dirigia carros do ano e freqüentava bons restaurantes. No entanto tinha dois filhos com os quais não mantinha um relacionamento íntimo e um pai enfermo que não visitava com muita freqüência. Jean- Do tinha a pretensão de escrever uma versão feminina de “O Conde de Monte-Cristo”, sendo a vingança ainda o estímulo principal na narrativa transportada para o século XX. Mas o acidente vascular cerebral sofrido por ele pôs fim a esse plano e estabeleceu um novo desafio: comunicar-se com o mundo a partir do piscar da pálpebra esquerda. Ele indicava “sim” com um fechar de olho e “não” com dois. Encerrado em seu escafandro ele sinalizou cada letra de seu livro a partir de um alfabeto estabelecido de acordo com a freqüência das letras na língua francesa, enunciado por todos que falassem com ele: essa era a maneira com que ele formava as palavras e sentenças.

O livro foi convertido em longa-metragem de 1h 52 no ano de 2007 e o filme foi premiado no Festival de Cannes na categoria de melhor diretor (Julian Schnabel), ganhou dois Globos de Ouro, melhor filme e melhor diretor, e recebeu ainda quatro indicações ao Oscar. Os enquadramentos de algumas cenas lembram telas de obras de arte: a estética é incrível. Isso porque Julian Schnabel além de diretor é artista plástico. A fotografia do longa em alguns momentos fica turva para passar ao espectador a sensação de estar assistindo o filme a partir do olho de Jean-Dominique, interpretado por Mathieu Amalric, ao lado de Emmanuelle Seigner, esposa de Roman Polanski, que faz o papel da mãe dos filhos de Bauby. O roteiro foi construído em forma de flashbacks, com a reconstrução de alguns momentos da vida do personagem antes do derrame em contraste com o tempo em que fica no hospital de Berck. Um dos raros casos em que o filme faz juz ao livro e excede as expectativas com a criatividade  do diretor na sequência de tomadas.

via ONTD

I’ll admit it. When I heard yesterday that there was a petition going around the film community to free Roman Polanski, I kind of laughed it off, like, “Haha…frivolous Hollywood ‘activism’ at its finest.”  I only saw three names on that list, the biggest being Jonathan Demme, so I shrugged it off.

So imagine my absolute dismay to see what the petition actually looks like.  I’m completely nauseated to see that some of my favorite directors have signed their names on that petition.

Pedro Almodovar? Julian Schnabel? Stephen Frears? Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu? Alfonso Cuaron? Wes Anderson? Wong Kar Waï?  Woody Allen (okay, not too surprising)? Alexander Payne?  Tilda Swinton??

Sniff.

Of course, the old boys’ club of Hollywood supports him ( Scorcese, Wim Wenders, etc.), as does Diane von Furstenburg and Salman Rushdie.  It’s disgusting.

The petition:

We have learned the astonishing news of Roman Polanski’s arrest by the Swiss police on September 26th, upon arrival in Zurich (Switzerland) while on his way to a film festival where he was due to receive an award for his career in filmmaking.

His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.

Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.

By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this.

The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country, where he assumed he could travel without hindrance, undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no-one can know the effects.

Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renown and international artist now facing extradition. This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom.

Filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians – everyone involved in international filmmaking – want him to know that he has their support and friendship.

On September 16th, 2009, Mr. Charles Rivkin, the US Ambassador to France, received French artists and intellectuals at the embassy. He presented to them the new Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the embassy, Ms Judith Baroody. In perfect French she lauded the Franco-American friendship and recommended the development of cultural relations between our two countries.

If only in the name of this friendship between our two countries, we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski. [emphases added]

A case of morals?  WTF?  How ’bout a case of rape?! The extradition will be “heavy in consequenses and take away his freedom?”  NO SHIT.  If he’d just done his time as planned, he’d be out by now.

ARGH!  I’m literally nauseated right now.

Alguma vez você já tentou se comunicar e as pessoas pareciam não te escutar? Não conseguiu se manifestar? Ficou mudo? Sem reação? Se sim, você sabe um pouco como é viver no escafandro.

O Escafandro e a Borboleta (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon, 2007) conta a história real de Jean-Dominique Bauby, 43 anos, editor da revista ELLE e que sofre um derrame restando em seu corpo apenas os movimentos do olho esquerdo. No início Jean-Dominique se nega a aceitar seu destino. Mas acaba aprendendo a se comunicar piscando apenas o olho esquerdo.

Esse filme é com certeza uma experiência única.  Começando pela fotografia. Grande parte do filme é a partir do olho de Bauby. É como ser a consciência de alguém, ouvindo os pensamentos e enxergando apenas o que o personagem quer. O efeito e a sensação são incríveis. Também, a história do filme vai de pontos altos a super baixos na rapidez de um corte seco entre uma cena e outra, compartilhando ainda mais a experiência vivida pelo protagonista com o espectador.

À primeira vista, O Escafandro e a Borboleta promete ser um drama daqueles de chorar horas.  Mas surpreende. A forma como Jean-Dominique usa do humor para lidar com sua situação. O filme carrega o espectador da angústia, do nervosismo a risadas e momentos agradáveis. Do escafandro a borboleta.

Outro filme que indico rapidamente é o espanhol Mar Adentro. Muito bonito!

Veja este post também no matthew.com.br

Even though Rose Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel is 2007’s news, I cannot turn away from the sexiness of this NYC staple. It’s a perfect first date spot—especially if you’re going to eHarmony it up (who actually admits to this?)—the dim lighting is so flattering it makes Uncle Fester look like Brad Pitt. I kid, I kid.

Now I must preface this entry by saying that I have not attended the nighttime, promoter-sponsored parties—I am a happy hour type of chick. I cannot muster up the energy to rage with the masses on a Friday night, even if it is with a date.

Whenever a guy asks me to pick the date spot (FYI guys we secretly loathe this—it’s your duty) I always drag them to Ian Schrager’s—yes, of Studio 54 fame—and Julian Schnabel’s revamp of this once dowdy joint. Hey, if a guy can hang with me and sip on $20 martinis at Rose Bar and then walk across the way to Pete’s Tavern for a beer, he’s my type of guy.

Medieval is the word that comes to mind when describing Rose Bar. I feel like I’m a maiden lost in a Spanish castle’s great hall where models serving bottles and beefy men in black lead me to Prince Charming behind the wooden, oak-leaf-shaped bar. On my way to the Vanilla Passion martini (which consists of Stolichnaya Vanil and Tuaca liqueur with coconut cream and passion juice) I always pause to take in the impressive sights. The walls are lined with authentic works from celebrated artists. You cannot miss Warhol’s fifteen-foot gold leaf “Rorschach” print, Schnabel’s “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” (near the red-felt, smoked-wood pool table) and “Suddenly Last Summer #2” above one of the two, 10-foot high, wood burning fireplaces. The red and white tiled floors are adorned with custom-designed, ultra-cushy velvet couches and chairs—the perfect excuse to whipser sweet nothings into your date’s ear!

The cocktail menu is pretty extensive and features a wide range of drinks to please the fussiest drinkers from the Ginger Fig (Reyka vodka with muddled ginger root and fig jam and fresh orange juice) to the Pineapple and Cinnamon Mojito (Sailor Jerry rum with muddled fresh pineapple, fresh mint leaf and cinnamon foam) and over to the male-friendly James Bond (Hennessy Cognac, Orange Curaçao, a splash of pineapple and fresh lime topped with Prosecco). As usual, I tend to stick with my Villa Maria New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Rose Bar also serves food during the lunch hours, but I’ve never eaten here and haven’t heard much about the cuisine at all so I stick to the booze.

It has been my personal experience that Rose Bar is on its best behavior between the hours of 1pm-9pm. During this time period you’ll avoid the kiddies, the celeb stalkers and the *cough* working girls. It’s quiet enough to hold a business meeting, take a client out for drinks or even that girl from marketing who your boss is also interested in dating…

Did she mention that she’s also on eHarmony?

I just wrote a short piece on a new book about Julian Schnabel’s film about Lou Reed’s 1973 album Berlin. A book about a film about an album! It’s like the old woman who swallowed a cat to catch the spider that caught the fly…I don’t know why.

I don't really know who Bruce Weber is, but he made Vanity Fair's 2009 International Best Dressed List. Kind of gives us all hope, no?

 La Dauphine posted a blog tonight about Vanity Fair’s annual International Best Dressed List. Her timing was impeccable–the print issue arrived in my mailbox today.

As always it’s an eclectic mix of celebrities, politicians and the generally fabulous–many of whom I’ve, frankly, never heard of before. I’m afraid I can’t realistically weigh in on whether H.H. Sheikha Moah of Qatar or Roo Rogers qualify as the world’s best dressed, but I can certainly throw down my two cents about some of the selections.

Overall, I feel like this year’s list is missing some of the excitement of previous years. Last year featured some of my favourite outlandish style icons including Tilda Swinton, Karl Lagerfeld and Julian Schnabel. They at least give us something to talk about and marvel at when they hit the red carpet. But this year…

Well, let’s start with Kelly Ripa. Really? Kelly Ripa as one of the best dressed women in the entire world? Yes, she’s stylish, and gorgeous, but best dressed in the WORLD? Maybe it’s because beside Regis in his daily dark blue suits she looks stunning, but I think she’s misplaced on the list.

Next: Daniel Craig. Does he deserve to be here? Yes. Yes, he does. That is all. Ditto for Brad Pitt. The man can pull off toothbrush moustaches, pink suits and ascots. Of course he should be on this list.

Anne Hathaway has had some amazing red carpet appearances over the last few years, so I guess her appearance on this list is legitimate, but I still have a hard time thinking of her as a style icon. However, any issues I might have with her are eclipsed by my utter shock at the inclusion of Renee Zellweger as one of the members of the Hall of Fame.  Her style is meh at best. She can look good, but she’s sure not consistent. Other celebs who made the list include Penelope Cruz and Alicia Keys. Both are beautiful, but like Renee, I’m not sure either are consistenly stylish or memorable.

A few more standouts that get the big thumbs up from me: Barack and Michelle Obama–so stylin’. Can you even imagine George and Laura Bush on this list? Or Bill and Hillary Clinton? Uh, no. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is another no-brainer. She oozes style. As for Catherine Deneuve, I give her kudos, not only for her style, but for being one of the few women-of-a-certain-age who actually allowed her age to be printed in this piece.

Make sure you check out La Dauphine for the full rundown on the list.

kp

After loving Julian Schnabel’s newer film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I was curious to see some of his older work.  I kind of expected to be at least a bit disappointed, but I was nonetheless curious to see where he came from in his film making.  My first stop was the 1996 biopic Basquiat, based on the life of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Unfortunately, the movie can’t tell whether it wants to be an art house pic or a straight Hollywood narrative and often gets tangled up between the two.  Often, scenes or character reactions don’t seem to make much logical sense, which would be fine in an art house movie.  But then at the same time the movie seems to be following a textbook rags to riches to drug overdose story line, and with that we want the narrative norms we’ve come to expect.  Furthermore, the character of Jean-Michel himself is a bit of an enigma, the type of character that frustrates me to no end.  He doesn’t seem to have the motivations or drives that most people have, and a lot of his artsiness seems at least a bit affected.  But is that just me trying to inject me bullshit societal norms on a figure living in his own world?  Of course I’ll never know, neither about the movie character nor the real life figure, but it still takes me out of the film and makes me wonder.

To spend a minute on some pro’s, goddamn that was some acting.  Jeffrey Wright is so fucking amazing in everything he does I don’t even know where to begin.  He just seems to do everything right, goddamn him.  David Bowie is so weird as Andy Warhol, but I guess appropriately so.  Gary Oldman is surprisingly a little sacharine in his role, although we’ll spend more time on that role as a whole in a minute.  But nevertheless, great supporting roles from Benicio Del Toro, Michael Wincott, Dennis Hopper, Parker Posey, and even a bit role for Willem Dafoe.

Now back to Mr. Director, to Julian Schnabel.  Having seen a few interviews with him, he is weird in that post-modernly aware sort of way, awkwardly forcing the art – business medium in ways that don’t always seem to make sense to me but nevertheless seem inevitable in today’s world.  He is conscious of how rich and succesful he is and what people are saying about his art, and knows that that may take him out of the pure free art making zone, but still embraces the life and continues to make art for commercial reasons I guess?  I won’t lie, it’s something I can’t completely wrap my mind around.  So then I read that Gary Oldman, in the movie, is basically playing the part of Julian Schnabel, just with a fictionalized name (which he doesn’t do for anyone else in the movie).  Say what?  Out of everyone, Oldman seemed the most “normal,” the most conscious of the world around him and how he and all these other players fit in.  Also, his studio looked exactly like Schnabel’s.  And Oldman’s character seemed unnecessarily omni-present, as though the film sometimes revolved around him and his view of things more than it did Basquiat’s.

Also, I wanted to see Basquiat’s death cause I totally knew it was coming.

Overall, great acting, some cool ideas and cool scenes and shots, but it just misses the mark overall.  To many holes and problems to really make it a solid complete film.

a FAT overdue post. basically I am shoving pictures in your face! not in chronological order either. but here is an image-rich chronicle of what I have been doing in New York…

DAISYKAT (who belongs to my friend Julia for whom I housesat in Gramercy for a week…)

Kiel && Daisy

Jules in Chelsea

Unfortuately I have tanned a lot since then

Kiel

One night it was beautiful

@ Cooper Union

My neighbor Danny

assisting Nick at the Woods photoshoot  (who actually live on my block)

Naomi at Matsugen

The Spotted Pig

Julian Schnabel at Berlin book signing (w/ Lou Reed)

Examine this picture closely . TOTALLY TRIPPY or what

Ryan, when I dragged him to go gallery-hopping in Chelsea

outside Todd P presents Woodsist/Captured Tracks festival

Peter

Dude from the band Psychedelic Horseshit. I think his name was Ryan.

from our roof

Ali looking at Peter Sutherland’s book

look at her MINXED nails

we are attractive

@ the farmer’s market

favorite cat

at the Yayoi Kusama exhibit at Gagosian with Ryan

that’s all for now, folks

(new picture everyday up on my website)

Oh what fun it is to scan SAT practice tests onto my computer and try to write a screenplay, hey! Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg. That has always irritated me. Whatever, it’s what I’m doing right now – scanning SAT practice tests and working on my first feature-length screenplay. I read it today and realized how much I relied on dialogue. No! Not good! Stop! Not good! You’re burning all the food, the shade, the rum!

To expand on my praise for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” yesterday, I would just like to say this. Julian Schnabel, I must watch more of your movies. For many reasons not limited to because Johnny Depp dresses like a woman in “Before Night Falls” and also plays Lieutenant Victor. What a nasty man is Lieutenant Victor.

If I get any of this wrong, please don’t tar and feather me. It’s been a while since I maintained my library of Johnny Depp trivia and my computer is in no state for me to check it quickly. I can imagine the neurons devoted to Johnny Depp trivia in my brain (if there is such a thing – which would be kind of sad) dying one by one from lack of use. Ah psych 101. The things you teach me. Like endorphins, which made me do the Drew Barrymore Syndrome in class. I hope no one saw that.

“Gives one the feeling of being in love.” “You don’t say…”

It’s the little things in life that make us smile. Like Johnny Depp references. And eating a whole bag of kettle corn before you realize that you’ve eaten a whole bag and emptied the equivalent of a gallon of sugar into your system.

While in the bathroom, I thought back to the moment I realized that I wanted to be a director. 11-years-old, creating a tour of Mesopotamia video for school. We didn’t have the money or the means to create an actual ziggurat, so we printed a picture out and moved our camera toward it. To simulate a long journey, we filmed back and forth on the same seven-foot stretch of hedge, with my friend’s little brother panting behind the camera for sound effects. It was impulsive thinking, it was creative, because we didn’t have anything.

Watching the extra features on “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, they did the same thing – but more sophisticated. A good use of camera angles and colors excited me more than a good story. It felt like finally, this was art. As I’ve mentioned, “Arizona Dream” felt similar to this, as did “Across the Universe”.

The summer has taken a turn for the better. Tomorrow Miya and Nobu are coming over for an 80’s movie marathon, and by the looks of it Club Retrospect has been approved. Huzzah!

Sorry for the lack of Ernest & La Poo Poo updates. It’s been difficult for me to even find time for my own blog, I’ll really try to find time for theirs but I can’t promise anything.

My mom and I have been hanging out because really, there’s no other option. But it’s fun when there are only two of you because you’re more free to make your own plans. I could never have my friends over if my dad was home, and especially if the house had not stayed somewhat clean. Which it wouldn’t have if my sisters were home.

I can’t wait for tomorrow, and I can’t wait to go to Trader Joe’s today and find more awesome possible birthday foods. Mostly, I can’t wait to fail my first psych test and realize that maybe I should study.

I just realized that “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” has unseated PotC as my second-favorite movie. To be honest, PotC wasn’t my second-favorite, it was only there as an obligation to acknowledge how prevalent it’s been in my life. I could never bring myself to put something before it on a list besides “Arizona Dream”, though. Congrats. I think I’ll watch PotC now…while no one’s home.

I’m busy working on the dragon costume anyway. Oh yeah, I went to Halloween Club and asked for a dragon costume. They showed me a dragon lady costume. I know it’s nothing, they were just trying to help me out and showing me their only options, but it’s sort of funny. In a racial way…and yet…whatever. It’s just…funny. I can’t explain it.

Costume-making isn’t so bad. It’s nice to have something you’re working toward. A goal, I guess, but not necessarily. This stop-motion keeps me optimistic that this summer will not go to waste.

In other news, MIKA’s new single is called “We Are Golden”. Huzzah.

What screenwriter Ronald Harwood and director Julian Schnabel have managed to do here is stunning. They’ve taken the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor of Elle, who suffered a paralyzing stroke at the age of 43 and who thereafter was only able to use his left eye to communicate, and made it into a dazzling cinematic work. The movie is often seen simply from the viewpoint of Bauby’s eye, and the cinematography and editing are amazing. The scene where Bauby’s right eye is sewn shut is more terrifying than most horror films. But it’s more than just that; it’s also a freewheeling sort of film that finds enough space for pre-stroke flashbacks as well as Bauby’s haunting fantasies. Mathieu Amalric, as Bauby, is wonderful. In every respect, it’s a beautiful, moving, and unforgettable film.

A+

Sinopse:

Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) tem 43 anos, é editor da revista Elle e um apaixonado pela vida. Mas, subitamente, tem um derrame cerebral. Vinte dias depois, ele acorda. Ainda está lúcido, mas sofre de uma rara paralisia: o único movimento que lhe resta no corpo é o do olho esquerdo. Bauby se recusa a aceitar seu destino. Aprende a se comunicar piscando letras do alfabeto, e forma palavras, frases e até parágrafos. Cria um mundo próprio, contando com aquilo que não se paralisou: sua imaginação e sua memória.

Opinião:

Desde o início o filme tenta colocar quem o assiste na ótica de Jean-Do, compartilhando seus sentimentos e pensamentos, a medida que aos poucos a câmera começa a sair do personagem e coloca o filme em terceira pessoa, deixando apenas para o final o momento do acidente após termos nos afeiçoado ao já debilitado personagem.

O grande mérito desse filme está na forma como a história do personagem principal é contada porque comumente esses filmes tendem a cair em clichês de autopiedade e isso não acontece com O escafandro e a borboleta. A história como um todo é retratada de forma muito humana e tem uma proposta de ir muito além da simples superação que a meu ver não era o foco do filme. O filme acaba se tornando um exercício de reflexão, não para a vida de Jean-Do, mas sim sobre a nossa própria vida. O filme é narrado de forma muito poética misturando memórias, pensamentos e devaneios com a situação rara do protagonista, mas é também um filme bem denso e um pouco difícil não sendo para todas as pessoas e para qualquer momento.

Avaliação:

These are two movies I’ve been looking forward to watch for a long time and I must say that they didn’t disappoint at all.

Tell No One(produce by the great director Luc Besson and directed with tight precision by Guillaume Canet) deals with a couple who while skinny dipping late one evening at their country state, are the victims of a brutal assault: the wife, Margot played by Marie-Josee Croze gets murdered while the husband, Alex played by Francois Cluzet,  is left in a coma for three weeks.  Eight years later, two bodies are discovered buried near the place where the wife’s body was found along with some objects that call for the reopening of the case; a case in which the husband was the primary suspect, mostly because when he was beaten, he was left for death in the lake, yet his body was found on top of the deck and of course he didn’t have any recollection of how he got out of the water.  In other words, lots of unresolved mysteries.  Add to that the fact the he starts getting cryptic email messages that link to video feeds showing his wife well and alive, asking him to: “tell no one” and the story gets even more mysterious.

To give anything else beyond that is to ruin the engrossing fun of watching Tell No One.  The plot has to be follow and pay close attention to; it isn’t that it’s confusing as much as you are trying to piece things together: who’s who and what’s their part in all of it but you don’t really get much of it until the very end.  It is a brilliantly executed thriller that deserves attention, for it is very curious on how simple it really is while enticing you with bits and pieces of its secret.  Grade: B+

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly is nothing short of a marvel of a movie; a complete and honest celebration of life.  A show of determination and the resilience of the human spirit even in the most helpless of situations.  The movie is adapted by Ronald Hardwood from the memoir of the same name by the editor of french Elle magazine: Jean-Dominique Bauby and directed by Julian Schnabel.  As such, the movie is completely told from the perspective of Jean-Dominique in his stake of locked-in syndrome after he suffers a stroke while driving with his son.

The Great Mathieu Amalric (best known as Mr. Greene the villain in last Bond movie Quantum of Solace) does an amazing physical job portraying Jean-Dominique post-stroke and pre, thanks to flashbacks and dream sequences.  I don’t think anyone but Julian Schnabel, who’s an artist (no really, an a very famous one too in case you didn’t know) could have directed this.  He brings his artist point of view to many scenes, giving us a sense of how Jean-Domonique, confined to his body (The Diving Bell) chooses not to pity himself and let his mind fly free (The Butterfly) living through the power of his imaginations, his memories, and the life of those around him.  He found himself in one of the most saddest and soul-crushing situations a human could ever find himself in: not being able to move whatsoever, to talk, to do anything for himself; depending completely and absolutely on others for the rest of his life, and because as far as his mind was concern, he was lucid and perfectly aware of his environment, frustrating because people could and tend to ignore or disregard what you may be feeling.  But instead of depression, he chose to use the only thing he had, the ability to move his left eye to communicate, write his memoir through an interpreter and share his experience, his life, his feelings, etc., with the world.  Grade: A.

Este Movie Review no hubiese sido posible sin mi insomnio intermitente. Hace unas noches zappeando en lo que lograba invocar a Morfeo vi un rostro escuálido y derruido en la pantalla, detrás de unos grandes lentes que parecían vitrinas para esos ojos casi afables. Era Lou Reed.

Como muchos de ustedes escuché por primera vez su nombre cuando pregunté por Perfect Day, pero a diferencia de muchos, tuve la fortuna de poner un rostro a ese nombre al poco tiempo. Era un rostro ya sexagenario, el mismo que muestra en Berlin… Así que cuando sintonicé esa transmisión y vi una cara familiar, algo me hizo detenerme. Sonaba el Rock Minuet. Quedé atrapado en la cadencia extraña de la melodía y las letras sin concesiones. Después, una tonada conocida, Sweet Jane, conocida sí, pero nueva en su forma y sensación. Finalizó la cinta, ambas piezas eran encore.

Me apresuré a investigar que era lo que había visto, a saber más y a descargar esa última canción en esa versión que, para mi sorpresa, fue bastante difícil de localizar. Pero quedé con hambre, quería más. Descargué la cinta en su entero y al verla sentí el calosfrío de cuando una pieza te habla directamente a ti y te mira fijamente en lo más profundo y propio de tu persona.

Cada canción está estructurada para platicarte una historia, no como un diario, no como una noticia, sino como una conversación íntima, sin esperar redención sino misericordia. La voz es cruda y lo que dice lo hace sin mesura. Cada imagen que nos regala Schnabel es el lienzo perfecto para que nuestra mente pinte sobre las líricas con sus melancólicos tonos verdes.

Se explica por qué el álbum original fue un fracaso comercial en su tiempo, porque estaba hecho para los oídos de hoy, parcos e insensibles dónde historias como esta no hacen eco, pero resuenan para siempre en el anonimato, porque son las historias de personas como tú y como yo. Ésta cinta hace justicia.

Berlin. Berlin. Berlin. ‘I never would have started if Id known that it’s end this way. But funny thing, I’m not at all sad, that it stopped this way’

At the age of 42, Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered an unexpected and massive stroke, which paralyzed his body but left his mind perfectly intact, a condition known as “locked-in syndrome.” Once the high-profile editor of the fashion magazine, Elle, the stroke forced him to communicate by blinking his left eyelid; indeed, with the help of a speech therapist, who developed a linguistic system allowing Bauby to spell words through blinking, he dictated his memoir, Le scaphandre et le papillon. Julian Schnabel’s film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (PC rating: 5/5) is based on this memoir, and it is a cinematic triumph, frequently taking Bauby’s own constricted viewpoint and yet, at the same time, showing how his spirit is not crushed by the impairment but, rather, expanded.