{ art & other musings }

...

Thursday, January 11, 2024

Society of the Snow

Numa Turcatti: Don't lose faith.

Arturo Nogueira: I have more faith than I ever had in my whole life.

Numa Turcatti: What, are you an altar boy now?

Arturo Nogueira: Don't laugh at me. But my faith—sorry, Numa—isn't in your god. Because that god tells me what I'm supposed to do at home. But he doesn't tell me what to do on the mountain. What's happening here is a completely different situation. Numa. This is my heaven. I believe in another god. I believe in the god that Roberto keeps inside his head when he comes to heal each of my wounds. In the god that Nando keeps in his legs and that lets him continue walking no matter what. I believe in Daniel's hands when he cuts the meat. And Fito, when he gives it to us without saying which of our friends it belonged to. That way, we can eat it without... without having to remember their faces. That's the god I believe in.





 

Monday, November 27, 2023

The Second Tree from The Corner

 "Trexler meditated, as he walked, on what he wanted.  “What do you want”” he heard again. Trexler knew what he wanted, and what, in general, all men wanted and he was glad, in a way, that it was both inexpressible and unattainable, and that it wasn’t a wing. He was satisfied to remember that it was deep formless enduring and impossible of fulfillment, and that it made men sick and that when you sauntered along Third Avenue and looked through the doorways into the bars, you could sometimes pick out from the unregenerate ranks the ones who had not forgotten, gazing steadily into the bottoms of their glasses on the long chance that they could get another little peek at it.  

Trexler found himself renewed by the remembrance that what he wanted was at once great and microscopic, and that although it borrowed from the nature of large deeds and of youthful love and of old songs and early intimations, it was not any one of those things, and that it had not been isolated or pinned down and that a man who attempted to define it in the privacy of a doctor’s office would fall flat on his face.

Trexler felt invigorated.  Suddenly his sickness seemed health, his dizziness stability. A small tree, rising between him and the light, stood there saturated with the evening, each gilt-edged leaf perfectly drunk with excellence and delicacy. Trexler’s spine registered an ever so slight tremor as it picked up this natural disturbance in the lovely scene “I want the second tree from the corner, just as it stands,” he said answering an imaginary question from an imaginary physician. And he felt a slow pride in realizing that what he wanted none could bestow, and that what he had none could take away."


—E.B. White 



Monday, June 5, 2023

The Swimmers

 


Directed & Screenplay by Sally El-Hosaini

based on the true story of sisters, Sara and Yusra Mardini


Friday, March 31, 2023

TÁR

 


“But there are other kinds of plagues that visit us […]power, true power."



Directed, Produced, Edited by Todd Field, Starring Cate Blanchett

THE WHALE

 "People are incapable of not caring."


Directed by Darren Aronofsky, Starring Brendan Fraser

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

Tobias Wolff

The bullet is already in the brain; it won’t be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end, it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce. That can’t be helped. But for now Anders can still make time. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark at the flying ball, time for the boy in right field to smack his sweat-blackened mitt and softly chant, They is, they is, they is. 

Monday, November 22, 2021

DUNE

Jamis: The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve…but a reality to experience. A process that cannot be understood by stopping it. We must move with the flow of the process. We must join it. We must flow with it. [Ghostly voice: Let go.]


Based on Dune by Frank Herbert / Directed by Denis Villeneuve / Screenplay by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth

Produced by Mary Parent, Denis Villeneuve, Cale Boyter, Joe Caracciolo Jr.

Starring Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac

Cinematography Greig Fraser

Edited by Joe Walker

Music by Hans Zimmer

Production companies Legendary Pictures

Monday, August 23, 2021

What the Thunder Said



                                    I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
                  Shantih     shantih     shantih


T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Monday, May 31, 2021

Tree


Trees and their indifferent majesty [...] teaches us how [insignificant we are] and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.

- Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of a Hedgehog


Sunday, April 4, 2021

The Queen’s Gambit

Created by Scott Frank, Allan Scott / Based on "The Queen's Gambit" by Walter Tevis / Written & Directed by Scott Frank / Starring Anya Taylor-Joy
"Her mind moves upon silence." - W.B. Yeats
“Chess isn't always competitive. Chess can also be beautiful. It was the board I noticed first. It's an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it. I can dominate it. And it's predictable, so if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame." - Beth Harmon 

Friday, February 26, 2021

Nomadland

Directed, Written, Edited, and Produced by Chloé Zhao / Starring Frances McDormand / Cinematography by Joshua James Richards / Based on Jessica Bruder’s 2017 non-fiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century."


But thy eternal summer shall not fade, 
Shakespeare - Sonnet 18


"The naturalistic approach meant Zhao’s script evolved with the workers they cast. Producers would arrive on location in advance of the shoot to record iPhone videos with possible characters, then send them to Zhao so she could work on her revisions.

'I tried to focus on the human experience and things that I feel go beyond political statements to be more universal — the loss of a loved one, searching for home.' - Chloé Zhao"

(source: IndieWire)

Monday, January 25, 2021

The Sound of Metal

"The world does keep moving and it can be a damn cruel place, But for me those moments of stillness, that place, that’s the Kingdom of God. And that place will never abandon you." - Joe
Directed by Darius Marder / Music by Abraham Marder, Composer-Sound Designer Nicolas Becker / Story by Darius Marder, Derek Cianfrance / Starring Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff, Mathieu Amalric / Produced by Bert Hamelinck, Sacha Ben Harroche, Bill Benz Kathy Benz / Screenplay by Darius Marder, Abraham Marder / Cinematography Daniël Bouquet / Edited by Mikkel E.G. Nielsen / Production company Caviar Ward Four

Saturday, March 28, 2020



Practice humanity. We don't talk about practicing humanity, but now if ever there is a time to practice humanity the time is now. The time is now to show some kindness, to show some compassion to people, show some gentility [...] Yes, we have a problem. Yes, we will deal with it. Yes, we will overcome it. But let's find our better selves in doing it. - Governor Cuomo


Tuesday, December 31, 2019




"Freefall, we will survive..." - Bisco Smith



Monday, August 6, 2018

Jean-Marc Vallée

Director, Editor, Producer


(From an interview with DNA; about directing process on Big Little Lies)


JMV... "the way we shoot – handheld with available light, not blocking the light, not reflecting it – it creates a space. There's a feeling of reality; we're doing fiction but it becomes about capturing. I'll shoot the first rehearsal and I don't tell the actors where to go. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it's good and then I react to that. I do coverage depending on the [character's] perspective, what they look at and where they go. If she starts walking and then she stops and he looks at her, or she looks at him - I cut from her perspective and use her looks to tell me where to cut there. [...] to shoot with no rehearsal."

"when I saw the Pacific Ocean over there, it was f***ing angry and violent. I've never seen waves like that and the sunset was so incredible. I thought, this has to be a character. And the sound – it would be the sound of the series. I thought, let's find houses where these women will have a connection to the ocean. The ocean is the mother of humanity. It's so powerful, strong and mysterious and such a good symbol."

(source: DNA article, written by Rucha Sharma. Photo credit: Michael Watier)

Thursday, April 26, 2018

Generique

by Miles Davis
soundtrack album, Louis Malle film "Ascenseur Pour L'échafaud"



Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Six Feet Under

Created by Alan Ball

Performances by Frances Conroy, Michael C. Hall, Peter Krause, Lauren Ambrose, Rachel Griffiths, Mathew St. Patrick, Freddy Rodríguez... / Written by Alan Ball, Nancy Oliver, Rick Cleveland, Kate Robin, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Scott Buck, Jill Soloway, Craig Wright, Laurence Andries, Christian Taylor, Christian Williams, Johnny Otto.




Our death is our wedding with eternity - Rumi



Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Anne Frank

Anne Frank: "It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more" - Diary excerpt - July 15, 1944

Vasudeo S. Gaitonde



"The study of Zen has helped me understand nature... and my paintings are nothing else but the reflection of nature. I want to say things in few words. I aim at directness and simplicity." - Vasudeo S. Gaitonde

(source: MOMA, New York City, Dec 2017)