The Shining (a different film altogether)

Bunuel Tribute - Belle du jour

myspace.com/luis_bunuel_portoles



Original

Belle du jour

1995 US Re-Release

Belle du jour

Hundreds strip naked on glacier in global warming protest

This is AMAZING!!! Love Spencer Tunick.

Art in its most socially active form...

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From YouTube description:

Six hundred people shed their clothes on a glacier in the Swiss Alps to bodily cry out for help against a planetary emergency: global warming.

The nude volunteers posed for us and renowned naked "installation" artist Spencer Tunick on the Aletsch Glacier.

Without clothes, the human body is vulnerable, exposed, its life or death at the whim of the elements. Global warming is stripping away our glaciers and leaving our entire planet vulnerable to extreme weather, floods, sea-level rise, global decreases in carrying capacity and agricultural production, fresh water shortages, disease and mass human dislocations.

If global warming continues at its current rate, most glaciers in Switzerland will completely disappear by 2080, leaving nothing but valleys and slopes strewn with rock debris.

Tribute to A Clockwork Orange

Last night I created a tribute page for Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange:

You will find the page at this link:

A Clockwork Orange Tribute

The page will be featured on Stanley's profile, on his top friends list. I will add to it with videos and additional articles I find, many of which debate the violence and artistic nature of the film... and that age-old question of whether life imitates art or vice-versa. Naturally, I think it's brilliant, but depending on the individual may require multiple viewings over the course of many years into adulthood to appreciate, understand, and absorb the material... I wouldn't recommend it for children under the age of 18 or even 21 for that matter, unless you study the background and meaning behind the film, the book it's based on, and Kubrick's philosophy in directing it.

28 UP (1985)

In 1964, the organization World in Action decided to film the lives of 16 seven-year-olds in the United Kingdom, in order to explore the adage "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man." Michael Apted worked on the film, and decided to continue the series, by documenting these children's lives every 7 years. Neil Hughes is one of those children. The following video is an interview segment with him, at the age of 28 years old. I connect with a lot of what he says, in terms of society, life, and the meaning behind it.

28 UP: Neil



A series of quotes and statements I relate to by Neil Hughes from the Michael Apted documentary 28 UP.

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"I don't think I ever had any stability... to be quite honest. I can't think of any time in my life when I ever did. I don't think I've been kicking against anything. I've been kicking in mid-air the whole of my life."

"There's a lot more to do in the mountains. What I found here is that you don't talk about things like the weather, because the weather is all-around. Everyone knows it's been raining. That makes good sense to me."

"I'm not the sort of person who can go to a pub, sit down with a drink, listen to the jukebox, and talk a lot of rubbish. A lot of people find that very relaxing. But if I'm going to talk to somebody. A) I have to be able to hear myself speaking, and B) I have to be talking about something that actually has a meaning."

"I'm not trying to denigrate the way that most people relax. But I can't do that. I'm lost in a noisy pub. I'll sit in the quiet corner of a quiet pub, and then I'll want to talk about literature or something like that, which not everyone will want."

"I don't think I was so much clever. I think I was quite enthusiastic about the subjects I was studying, therefore with some good teaching, I was able to get some good results."

"No formal education can prepare anybody for life. Only life can prepare you for what comes. Sooner or later, you're going to have to cross certain barriers. And I don't think you ever cross those at school or at university. You come across the problem of mixing with other people. But the real problem of becoming a success in the world is something you have to tackle yourself."

"What my background has given me is just being part of a very impersonal society. The most you can hope to achieve is to have the right to climb into a suburban train 5 or 10 times a week, and just about stagger back. The least is just unemployment."

Q: What are the things about modern society that turn you off?

A: The cheap satisfaction in so many things, the aimlessness... but I think the total lack of thought is at the bottom of it.

"Nobody seems to know where they or anybody else is going, and nobody seems to worry. You finish the week. You come home. You plug into the TV set for the weekend, and then you manage to get back to work on Monday. And it seems to me that this is just a slow-path to total brain-washing. And it seems to me that if you have a brain-washed society, then you're heading towards doom. There's no question about that."

"What I look like is not necessarily what I feel like. I'm not claiming that I feel as though I'm in some sort of nirvana. But I'm claiming that if I was living in some sort of suburbia, I'd feel like cutting my throat."

"I don't think I was really taught any sort of policy of living at all by my parents. This is probably one of the biggest mistakes. I was just left to fend for myself in a world in which they seemed completely oblivious of. I found that even when I tried to discuss problems that were facing me in school. My parents didn't seem to be aware of the nature of the problem."

"I sometimes feel when I'm on my own, that I'm losing touch with the way other people live."

"You can't afford to go around looking depressed. That, in itself, is bad enough."

"No, I'm not better than anything or anybody, I'm just somebody with my own particular difficulties, with my own particular obstacles to surpass. And everybody else is doing the exact same thing."

Mamma Roma (1962)

A must-see for all fans of classic Italian filmmaking, the great director Pier Paolo Pasolini, and screen force Anna Magnani.

To view Pasolini's tribute, click here: myspace.com/pier_paolo_pasolini

I love all of these scenes, but my favorite is scene 17 when Ettore and his mom take a ride on his new moped... reminds me of my childhood in Italy.

Mamma Roma: Trailer

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Mamma Roma: scene 2

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Mamma Roma: scene 3

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Mamma Roma: scene 4

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Mamma Roma: S17

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Robert Altman Tribute

For those Robert Altman fans out there, I created a tribute page at this link for future reference:

myspace.com/robert_altman

I'll be posting additional photos, videos, etc... as I find them.

Trailers for two of my Altman favorites: The Player & Gosford Park

Stanley Kubrick - Chicago 1949

Few people know that before he started making movies, Stanley Kubrick was a star photojournalist. In the summer of 1949, Look magazine sent him to Chicago to shoot pictures for a story called "Chicago City of Contrasts."

Kurt Cobain & RW Fassbinder

Bizarre connection ... but both lived short, intense, creative lives with heavy drug use:



"I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out than to fade away."
--Kurt Cobain, 1994 (1967-1994)

"Everyone must decide for himself whether it is better to have a brief but more intensely felt existence or to live a long and ordinary life."
--Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982, director, writer, actor, producer, editor... completed 44 projects between 1966 and 1982).

Alfred Eisenstaedt Tribute

You may have never heard the name... but you have definitely seen his photographs. "Eisie", as he was often referred to by friends, was one of the most prolific photographers of the 20th century with a career spanning eight decades... taking cover shots for LIFE Magazine on a regular basis. I created this page, as a feature under my PHOTO SPOTLIGHT series page. I actually have his famous V-J (Victory over Japan) Day Kiss photograph framed and hanging in my apartment. It features a nurse and a sailor kissing in Times Square, right on Broadway. Check it out.

myspace.com/alfred_eisenstaedt

A few of my favorites include these below:

Paris, August 15, 1945

Had to share this beautiful photograph from the same day as the V-J Day Kiss But instead of New York City, American servicemen and women gather in front of "Rainbow Corner" Red Cross club in Paris to celebrate peace. The photographer is unknown, but assumed to have been a US officer.

WWII was one of those rare instances of an arguably just war, at least from the American perspective.

Michael Mann Tribute

For those Michael Mann fans out there, I created a tribute page at this link for future reference:

Michael Mann Tribute

I'll be posting additional photos, videos, etc... as I find them.

The Beatles