When the Child was a Child...from Wings Of Desire

Unfaithfully Yours (1948) - Be vulgar, by all means

Abed, this morning....by happenstance....stepping on the remote control.....this underrated Preston Sturges film was beginning........It has the very best Marx Bros-ish  'comic apartment destruction', by Rex Harrison,  scene and Harrison's scenes, conducting the orchestra, channeling his emotions, that have arisen from his paranoid obsessions about his much younger wife's possible dalliance with his character's 'right hand man', ..........Referencing, on many levels,  Hitchcock's films from this Period.......note.....the surrealist painting in the apartment....not in this clip, alas.....and Dali's  dream sequence in 1945's Spellbound....It's all in the details.....  Just ignore the British sexism, that, today, seems as impertinently offensive, as the snotty references to social class.......  (note:  only two women in the Orchestra....Harpist and 'page turner', who 'does' her nails between page turns......)   [note: comment.....for some 'new' reason, I was unable to post the video link or embed it within this post!]  

My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose - Jubilee (1977) Derek Jarman

GHANDI was on Showtime this morning......the usual, and likely...inevitable...strings and fabrics of associations arose, some surfacing as tears...one tear, the memory of Ian Charleson....then all the thoughts and feelings, arising from that germinal association.....from a kernal of memory, wherein so much anguish and loss co-habit a knot of discordant repression and fitful recollection....the callousness of Youth seeds the indifferences of Age....

On The Discovery of Phillip Holmes as 'The Man In The Photos'

Watching the 1931 Film adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel, AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, this morning.....which, oddly, I'd never seen before, although I'd read its source novel during college days and had seen the Monty Cliff/Elizabeth Taylor/Shelly WInters 1951 adaptation, A PLACE IN THE SUN....I 'froze framed' on Phillips Holmes, an actor that died in a WW2 'mid-air' plane crash.....and realized that I had not one, but two old publicity photos of Holmes......I had imagined that the 'signature' at the lower left corner of one was The Photographer.....never realizing that these were photos of Phillips Holmes....the actor.... Montgomery Cliff remains the 'righteous' Clyde Griffiths....thanks to George Stevens, who directed the '51 Movie.......Although, I'd rather have an autographed photo of the 1931 film's director, Josef von Sternberg.... I was just imagining what 'it' would have 'looked like' to see Liz and Phillips, together....immeshing their bottom 'double' lashes in lustful abandonment..... or Sylvia Sydney and Shelly Winters in a 'whining' competition.....

A MILLION LITTLE PIECES

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Juliette Lewis, Charlie Hunnam, and Dash Mihok and Giovanni Ribisi.....under the wand of Sam Taylor-Johnson.... could only have produced this dark, moody odyssey through drug/alcohol/nicotine addiction......that, by comparison, makes The Man With The Golden Arm and Requiem For A Dream seem like wholesome Disney fodder......I had to 'take a break' after half an hour of James Frey's Madness.....Having anticipated 'Count Vronsky's self-containment, but 'getting' some full-out,  full-tilt total lack of that even before the Title arose after Aaron's drunken fall from the balcony......

INTELLECTUAL PREVARICATION

The "ANTI-HOLLYWOOD" MOVEMENT.......escaping the formulaic dogma of tradition....until THIS becomes the object of tomorrow's derisions.......The pitfalls of intellectual Glamour, traducing the hipsters of now to become the apocalyptical intellectuals of tomorrow's yesterdays as they exonerate the Fashions of last year's Art Runways......The shade...the Shade....Let's play it backwards, desaturated, and with Czech subtitles......There!....It's NOW! which....tomorrow....will be YESTERDAY....  Just kick us in the teeth, Lars!   

Kathryn Grayson - Voices of Spring - Strauss Hi Fi

In second grade, already dreaming of being a Tap Dancer...like Fred Astair or Gene Kelly, I was taken, by my parents, to The Lyric Theater for my first venture into the world of Voices....beautiful voices......the movie was SO THIS IS LOVE, with Kathryn Grayson and Merve Griffin.......The next Monday, in the West Clinton School auditorium, I heard Miss Alta Trotman singing.....well, not anywhere as well as "Grace Moore".....but well enough to impress an 8-year old boy, who had only heard his Grandfather sing, while accompanying himself on an old, out-of-tune upright Kable-Wellington piano......  or his Mother, singing....a few years later, as she fumbled on the ivory keys of that same piano..that was, now, mine......

Jodi Arias Couldn't Remember, Either.........Does That Mean "It Never Happened"?

Leonard Shelby had something on most of us......he could write events on his skin, hoping to connect the dots later........Memory is an elusive modifier, construct reorientationalist, and all around neologistic shaper of the moment after the moments before........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3-UIdApbyw

JOJO RABBIT......down the 'hole' to some kids from yesterday.......

Roman Griffin Davis deserves "at least" a 'best supporting (at least) actor/actress' award!' Right, Jody Foster? Right, Patty McCormack? Right, Tatum O'neal? Right, Freddie Bartholomew? Right, Haley Joel Osment? How about Quvenzhané Wallis, Keisha Castle-Hughes......(even though 'hard to remember /unfamiliar/too-foreign names are quickly filed away and forgotten) Maybe, tonight at the Academy Awards, he'll get that 'one second pause' as the cameras pan the Ocean of Hollywooders, showing their Glamour in Designer costumes and borrowed jewels......Will he get more 'on camera' time than Timothée Chalamet garnered last year as he hammed it up in the background while Meryl Streep 'acted' as though she didn't really give a fig....errr, or a white truffle?

2020.......seeing with perfect vision? Or lost in the carnage of popular sentiment?

Back to the Awards......Although I'd seen very few of the nominated films, it was easy enough to make predictions based on the Nominees and their 'history' in films, Fashionable Trendings, Celebrity 'likeability' and the mechanisms by which the films were promoted and distributed.........I'd not seen Joker, but would have placed a $100 bet on Phoenix's getting the trophy.....likewise Rene Z.....(If Olivia Coleman has been in the 'running'....although she won last year.....I'd have 'checked the box' next to her name...then erased it, knowing that there would be no 'repeat' for her, this soon).....I was content with her amusing little 'speech', anyway.... I predicted 'Best Costuming' based on the dearth of Female Representation this year......so, next to slobbering over Cynthia Erivo's hyper-glamorousness compensatory singing performance at the Awards and for having played a re-inventedly cool Harriet Tubman, I predicted Renee's Constant Comeback with scrubbed-down- plasticized face performance......that I'd not even seen, except for a couple of clips.....Brad Pitt, riding Leonardo's shadow, of course, who's "entitled" to a trophy after so many films...and having adopted all those foreign and 'dark-skinned' kids with his ex-wife...and did his Matt Damon 'thing', having his award-getting wrangler, Cynthia Pett-Dante as...'his Date'......and, having been passed over for Benjamin Button.....although I didn't love his performance clips from the QT flick that still resides, unopened, upstairs. Harder to predict some of the technical awards, since I'd not seen the Flicks and could only judge by referencing the nominees' previous work that I'm familiar with....like Roger Deakins.....the great, great cinematographer!....Laura Dern is Hollywood Royalty.....seated next to her mother, looking good, the great, top-tier actress, Diane Ladd, who shared DNA with Bruce Dern to make Laura the naturalistic actress that she's become.....she also shares that 'I'm not loaded with pancake' look with Renee', of course.....I predicted a win for American Factory, based solely on it's Environmental/Sociological....well all those 'trending' concerns of stylishly 'correct' Hollywoodites and saavy movie-goers......the 'short subject' skateboard short would fill the slot for 'regional/world/religion/Muslim' slot, to balance a Korean film, I surmised......I could go on, but there are many who will express their opinions and judgments today, I'm sure...... Oh, doesn't everyone love the 'right' makeup job....so, give Bombshell a sleekly golden guy, too.....and, trendingly Europeanly sophisticated and not old-school same old Sound.....Hildur Guðnadóttir for some 'not like Laurence of Arabia' soundtrack! Enough of this rambling....I hear the Trash Truck rolling up the street and I need to ditch this bag of stinky cat litter!

PARASITE

I viewed "Parasite", the new Bong Joon Ho tar black metaphorical/allegorical class aspirationalist comedy-to-slasher, last night....almost a day later, I'm still processing visual data......Like Snowpiercer, the film unravels a bit in its second half....lots of loose strings that devalued the movie....for me....a hand, dripping with blood, leaving no marks on a door being grappled with it; the trashed mansion, cleaned up in exactly 8 minutes, before its owners arrive; after the monsoon of a flood, just hours later, people are rolling around and sitting on the ground..which appears to be totally dry; the granting of paroles (!) details....details......the film gets real sloppy in it's 'editing' toward that Cinema Requirement......'one and a half hours'......I loved the schizo-kid's paintings......they reminded me of Jean-Michel Basquiat's or Peter Kiel's.... the penultimate garden-slaughter scene recalled Peter Jackson's early film "Bad Taste" and Harry Hart's killing spree in the Church from "Kingsman: The Secret Service"