A Momentary Taste of Being

From earliest youth I have loved the work of Salvidor Dali.  Here is a film started in 1946 and finished . . . later. The continual chain of transformation is just gorgeous. What a fascinating specimen of mind gives rise to so interesting a series of transformations.

A quotation from a review on the USCCB movie review site: "Religiously honorable, but aesthetically tentative drama" If that doesn't describe the vast majority of the art labelled Christian, I can't think of anything better.  While I would be ecstatic over successful "Christian" Art, too often the label is used to indicate substandard writing and art in the Name of God.  It's a shame that this should so often happen.  Not all, but at least enough to give one pause when it comes to the purchase of "Christian" artwork.

The Third Man available through You-Tube

Norwegian Wood trailer

Guillermo del Toro to direct At the Mountains of Madness We'll see if funding materializes, but if he handles it with the aplomb of The Orphanage and Pan's Labyrinth with a liberal sprinkling of Hellboy , we're likely to be in for a real treat.  The first Lovecraftian treat on film (other than the Lovecraft-in-name-only Reanimator. ) Poor H.P. suffers nearly as badly as E.A. Poe and Stephen King in the transition to the silver screen.  Consider such gems as Die, Monster Die!, The Shuttered Room, The Dunwich Horror .  Dagon was all right, but not much related to the story.  And probably the best Lovecraftian film, In the Mouth of Madness has precious little to do with anything H. P. penned.

Wow, this MP3 is remarkable---Truffaut and Hitchcock together and talking cinema.

"They're very prone to hypnosis. . . "

James Dean Tribute For those who admire him, he will ever be the rebel without a cause.  I'm not in the legion of admirers. Nevertheless, he, and a few others exemplify these sentiments: To An Athlete Dying Young A. E. Housman T HE time you won your town the race   We chaired you through the market-place;   Man and boy stood cheering by,   And home we brought you shoulder-high.      To-day, the road all runners come,       Shoulder-high we bring you home,   And set you at your threshold down,   Townsman of a stiller town.      Smart lad, to slip betimes away   From fields where glory does not stay, And early though the laurel grows   It withers quicker than the rose.      Eyes the shady night has shut   Cannot see the record cut,   And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears:      Now you will no...

A review of the film of Brighton Rock

Hitchcock's Angles Much of this strikes me as very worked up and not really good interpretive theory.  On the other hand, I am not a scholar nor even a good student of film, so I'll leave it to others who understand the medium better to draw conclusions. Ovaphobia

Paris Underground

Tarkovsky's Solaris revisited The King's Real Speech 1938 Forthcoming from Herzog--The Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Arthur Miller writes The Misfits for Marilyn Monroe

Werner Herzog, whose film Dream of the Green Ants was recently discussed at Fred's Place , chats with us about film and other things. Herzog is an eccentric genius--with Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God (among others) as major film credits.  Dream of the Green Ants may be one of the more accessible films in the oeuvre.

Marcel Duchamp--Anemic Cinema

A compendium surrounding The Rite

Historic Chinese Animation

Where the Green Ants Dream Like Fred, I was attracted to the film for its title.  I saw it some time ago.  And I must say that the only thing that stuck with me were several lovely, preternaturally lovely, images of green ants that occur throughout.  I may need to revisit, but I'll probably live with those images--rightly remembered or no, as my legacy from it.

Winter in Yosemite a short film

A Trip to the Moon for your delectation and delight