A word on Antonioni's legacy

Emptiness is such a vast realm that one can easily become immersed into it. In fact, the problem was born with man, so it can even be argued that loneliness and ultimately alienation are the all too natural circumstances towards which humankind has been leading its ever clumsy steps, from the dawn of this world on. (Can't help but being reminded of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.) It's all about our perfectly mysterious origin, and the hole that we all have inside because of it. The original sin, unlimited beyond any physical and imaginary boundaries.

More and more, we manage to discern through a history too painful and bloody to be a lie, only to realize a rather unpleasant certainty: Our sister, our brother, our neighbor, that beloved friend is the alien. This is a consequence of many shades, but there is no denying that the condition we are talking of will be the cause of this planet's actual demise. Because man was born with it, not only his death but every other creature's death is the price to pay for getting rid of universal loneliness. Emptiness in a cosmic scale, that is.

By 1968, the year Kubrick's landmark sci-fi epic was released, Michelangelo Antonioni's take on the subject matter had long already established itself as both illuminating and controversial, prompting audiences around the world to regard a seemingly new phenomena. Even though Antonioni's opera were predated by the works of French existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus (author of the novel L'Étranger) for instance, his voice remains closer to our understanding --willing or not-- of such vital yet abstract issues, if only for all its modernist attachments and escalating urgency. A timeless, often startling humanism captured on film, indeed.

Guess the movie

I posted this on some forgettable forum 6 days ago:

"Clumsy teenage girl falls for brooding, mysterious, charming and quite older man. He also happens to be wealthy and, oh, there is some terrible secret as to who he is --at least in his own dark eyes. On the other hand, the little heroine sees herself in a romance, not in a virtual horror story.

Another hint: it's based on a best-selling novel written by a female author.

Yet another hint: one of the characters is called Jasper."

Then, the first reply got the answer right.
Later, someone mentioned Twilight. Shame on me, she said. Shame on Stephenie Meyer, I said.
Another poster thought my description also fit Jane Eyre, minus the Jasper line.
Jasper, of course, is the dog, was a remark.
Georgy Girl; Duh!!! All I came up with was Daddy Long Legs were the other answers.

question unsolved?

The hyena that shows up in Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) is there clearly representing a HYENA, not a werewolf! In the novel, the hyena was another of Dracula's shapeshifting incarnations. Just because a previous intertitle card tells of one of his better-known forms --that of a wolf, oddly enough in the light of modern vampire lore--, it doesn't mean the viewer can't see what is going on in the screen. What is it with all the people today seeing a failed attempt by the filmmakers to portray Dracula as a werewolf?    

Femininity and masculinity in the roles of Marlon Brando

Dad (Karl Malden) and the Kid (Brando): One-Eyed Jacks

Like a Freudian Picasso who could use his own body as a canvas in which the strokes would be only red and green colors, the Brando that swaggers in A Streetcar Named Desire is not just the Michelangelo-like sculptured physique and the Beethoven-kind of bursts of rage; but also an artist so incredibly innovative that he is able to create from the black and white screen into the Tennessee Williams' and Elia Kazan's poetic scenary the most multidimensional of all moments: a human life.

From 1951 on, many were the traits in Brando's style and persona which made a more or less conscious impression: the rebellious attitude, the enigmatic mumbling, the Byronic romanticism, the iconoclastic approach to acting, the link between sexuality and individuality. Sexual allure is precisely what defined, if not Brando's technique, his stardom; yet what can be found at the core of his absolute greatness, it is not his sex-appeal, but the ambiguity which rooted this: the inextricable confussion in the On the Waterfront antihero of male and female characteristics as never before nor after has blessed any actor of his class.

One of the most noted venusian artists of his time, Roger Vadim benefited himself from his own singular feminine side. In the same way, Brando was the most convincing Fletcher Christian on the screen: flamboyant, mannered, cocky, petulant, too much delicate. Not too much, really. The little there is to know about Christian's womanizing means looks smooth as well, and his suggested game is perhaps a reflection of that of Brando's friend, the director of And God Created Woman.

It was another filmmaker friend of Brando, however, who exerted a huge influence on him and the development of his craft. After working together in Streetcar, Kazan and Brando went to make only two more movies, Viva Zapata! and On the Waterfront. This final collaboration contains what are probably the most elaborate and at the same time simple examples of the great actor's unique androginy. When the main character, Terry Malloy, is in the company of his comrades, the melancholic gaze of his eyes of wasted prize-fighter underlines the substantial difference between his conflicted inner self and the confidence that exude from the naturality of the others. He does not fit in this man's world, Kazan implicitly communicates through the camera angles and the light that make Malloy to show almost like a womanly vulnerability, both his weakness and his real strength in this harsh environment. Stanley Kowalski has become Blanche DuBois, but Waterfront, despite its documentary-like realism, has got an idealist heart; hence the triumph of good in the uplifting end.

Waterfront was that moment in cinema when the doors got opened; without it is impossible to conceive the emergence, if not of all Brando heirs, at least of some of the most sexually ambivalent and universally appealing: John Travolta, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp. Nonetheless, it seems unlikely that the gender dynamics which fueled Brando's psychological richness in characters can be ever matched.

10 things you want to know about the Method

1. The Actors Studio was founded by directors Elia Kazan and Robert Lewis, and producer Cheryl Crawford in October of 1947. Another former Group Theater member, Lee Strasberg was invited to join in 1949; by 1951, he was already its power.

Irene Selznick, Tennessee Williams, Elia Kazan on the set of "A Streetcar Named Desire". New York City, 1947

2. It was Stella Adler who taught Brando the Stanislavskian system of acting --never Strasberg, as it is all too frequently assumed. Founding member of the Group, Adler was trained by Konstantin Stanislavski himself, whom she visited in Moscow circa 1934.

3. Jimmy Dean only attended about just a couple of sessions at the Studio. However, Strasberg was proud of Dean's character job in the 1956 epic film Giant.

4. 'Method' was a term coined by Strasberg to rename the Russian 'System' for the American stage.

5. Brando hated Strasberg and vice versa. Al Pacino loved them both; always had. Pacino first became aware of the Studio when he saw Brando in the Kazan pictures as a teenager. Many years later, he was Strasberg's most excellent disciple, protégé and friend. Then, in 1972, Pacino had his breakthrough playing the cold-blooded son to Brando's Godfather.

6. Among the alumni who could not stand the rigor of Strasberg, besides Dean, there have been other more contemporary greats, such as Harvey Keitel, who does acknowledge Strasberg as one of his mentors.

Harvey Keitel and Zina Bethune in Martin Scorsese's Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967)

7. It seems that the only girl --the one student, with disregard of their gender, Pacino aside-- who ever actually enjoyed the guy was Marilyn. She was devoted to Strasberg's dissecting lessons and overall psychoanalytical take on anything. Marilyn was a real sweetheart.

Laurence Olivier, Marilyn Monroe and Susan Strasberg

8. The soon to be called Method acting had its first time in the spotlight when the triumphant performance of Brando in the world debut of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire", directed by Kazan, hit the Ethel Barrymore theater on December 3, 1947. 'Stella!!!' (an almost unbearable screaming which is also the laconic emblem of a shocking new kind of artistic expression) was, along with a ripped T-shirt and the desperately inarticulate style of a caveman, the trademark of an instant phenomenon. True or false, Brando and the Actors Studio went up to be so immediately and profoundly associated, it can be said the Method is modeled after him.

Brando (Stanley Kowalski) and Jessica Tandy (Blanche DuBois)

9. The best-known action movie star to have ever been a member of the Studio was Steve McQueen. From The Great Escape (1963) to The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), McQueen has turned out to be presumably one of the most oddly underrated leading men of the era.

10. Around the time The Godfather: Part II was in production, Kazan was unavailable. So, Francis Coppola approached Strasberg for the role of the venerable and treacherous Hyman Roth, following Pacino's advice. It is a tribute to Strasberg's prowess that he nailed the part (seemingly) effortlessly, and made it his own for generations to come and sing the praises of the legendary guru in a top demonstration of his method.

bad bromance

Mr. Pink don't tip

Nice Guy Eddie: C'mon, throw in a buck!

Mr. Pink: Uh-uh, I don't tip.

Nice Guy Eddie: You don't tip?

Mr. Pink: Nah, I don't believe in it.

Nice Guy Eddie: You don't believe in tipping?

~Quentin Tarantino

Who is there among us who knows?

The echo of a love song heard before it's sung,
wandering through a memory dreamed when you were young.
Foolish or fantastic -- which do you suppose?
Who is there among us who knows?

From nowhere, the thought of someone gone for many years.
Then all at once a footstep: Lo, and he appears.
Imagined or a mystery --which, do you suppose?
Who is there among us who knows...

Or even cares which one is true?
There's hardly anyone except a haunted few...

Who long ago remembered somewhere they would see
someone wrapped in twilight, carrying the key,
carrying the secret everywhere he goes,
someone here among us who knows.

Someone here who may not even know she knows.

Music: Burton Lane. Lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner
Vocal: Jack Nicholson

Beauty is truth

Jony Dep

You can see the series of children's letters to Chris Walken as collected by artist Brandon Bird here.

Clift versus Brando: 1951 Academy Awards

Montgomery Clift reportedly said that he had voted for Marlon Brando in the Oscars. Brando was the favorite and yet the Lifetime Achiev..., err, the Best Actor was Humphrey Bogart! As it is on film, Clift's work in A Place in the Sun is arguably still underrated in comparison to Brando's Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire --even though the latter is still somewhat underrated in comparison to Vivien Leigh's Blanche, by some viewers at least. Both male performances are in the same league, share the same level of intensity and commitment; both are groundbreaking and utterly original, classics in the better sense possible. Neither of them, Brando or Clift, were better than the other one; they were so different from any other actor around, though to each other they were different and similar at the same time. And at the same time, one can say, they both changed cinema acting forever.

Clift's George Eastman was so internalised, in all manners conceivable, it (like Brando's brute) singlehandedly showed the new way to anyone who cared to pay attention. And yet again as Brando's, it is a pure perfect sheer genius untouchable piece of a job. He is the leading man, the antihero, and he carries the whole movie on his shoulders. Every one of his scenes is brilliant, and he has many more than Brando in Streetcar (if that counts, too). Clift's own 1951 revolution may not have been any showy in comparison, any violent to the common uneducated eye --a murderer pushed by his circumstance, not a insensitive bully whose every act is almost or about to be a murder--, but may certainly be the kind of unsung point from which even Brando himself learned which direction to go to in the years that followed. Both guys were a real pioneering team, whether they wanted it or not.

light of sadness

Oscura angustia,

encubridora de nobles

sentimientos,

cegadora de la tenue

luz de la tristeza,

asesina de la ancestral

melancolía,

oscura angustia
que hieres, de luz
ensombreces nuestros
corazones.

~Pina Pellicer

22:11

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. ~William Faulkner

pomp

Badass

If I ever manage to get a mugshot of myself, somebody up there let me look this cool.

Corey Allen (1934-2010)

Buzz Gunderson: "You've gotta do something. Don't you?"

insomnia

it's unglamorous.

Mr. Blonde's karma

"The oddest thing is when children recognize me from Free Willy and their parents recognize me from Reservoir Dogs. The kids are, like, 'There's Glen!' and the parents are, like, 'Don't go near that guy!'"

J.R. and the Girl

Harvey Keitel and Zina Bethune

20/6

JACOB

So, how does it feel? You know what I mean. To be that old.

BELLA

Jake, stop it!

EDWARD

[Brooding] It's OK. I just want my bouffant back.

JACOB

[Grinning] No way, pale face. Pops.

BELLA

It's alright, sweets. You still look like Elvis.

EDWARD

[Still brooding] It's the sideburns.

JACOB

Oh yeah.

BELLA

Uh. Shut up, Jake.

EDWARD

[Aside. Brooding] First Carlisle, and now Muscle Boy?! Fuck my eternal life.

modesty

OPHELIA

Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1

numerology

world's worst motel

"Mother! Oh God, mother! Blood! Blood!"

Ralph who?

Ralph Garci!

One day, a few years ago, I had read every IMDb user comment on Fame (1980), only to realise the seemingly null impact of Barry Miller's (otherwise) indelible character on the viewers: there was not a single word about it in their reviews! Now, Mr. Miller has said, regarding the movie 2009 remake: "I am not well-disposed towards the historical revisionism, culturally enforced amnesia and sociologically motivated erasure of my performance in a film that was profoundly important to me."*

*Copyright 2010 USA TODAY

something in the way

"The sound you make is Muzak to my ears,

You must have learned Something in all those years."

Groundbreaking and 60

Panic in the Streets, the 6th feature-length film directed by Elia Kazan, was released on June 12, 1950. It remains a veritable, suspenseful thriller.