KITTY was asked by a design firm, design their Valentine's Day Card.
Meticulously researched fascinating article by Jonathan Franzen on stray cats in Los Angeles, their impact on them, us and birds. A most welcome 1hour audio reading of the New Yorker essay. There's a lot to take in. Franzen never does anything by quarters, halves even 9/10th's. It may seem strange someone devoting so much time to stray cats when so many housed or dehoused humans die every night in our eyes. Not sure Franzen...perhaps. Devil in the details. The reader always an activist.
There’s a storyline in my KITTY script and you’d swear I’d seen this. Weird maybe I did live the past life of a Marxist kitten Vanessa Redgrave;)! Rupert Murdoch, even, had a bust of Lenin as a youngster. Not suggesting for a moment any feline tendencies;) Though now one thinks…Maybe Covid Marxist minds meow alike?
There’s never not a Todd Haynes film worth one’s time. Past in present in future haunting. However, re-purposing Michel Legrand’s The Go-Between score, May December put’s off get go. OK, we hear/understand the trope though many newbys won’t. Championed Safe even pre-get go. Immaculate cinematography sculpting story. May December, only, seems too knowing. We watch want to know yet: what’s the reveal? Haynes acknowledged Douglas Sirk over the decades. Maybe May December more François Ozon?
Irritating, though, are critics who review movies as if they ever could make the film they envision rather than that upon their eyes. Great film critics never fall foul. When Pauline Kael wrote disparagingly of Chaplin’s Limelight ending it was hard to disagree. A little like The Way We Were and her review. Ironically for some precisely their decisive moments of embrace and heartbreak.
Bradley Cooper’s Maestro isn’t François Girard’s ‘32 Weird Tales of Lenny’. Nor was meant to be. Though some may wish. Everyone just knew, including exec producer Steven Spielberg certainly after Bradley’s A Star is Born, the film wouldn’t disappoint. Everything is consummate. Everything pondered. Re-thought. Something like 5 years in the thinking/researching. Carey Mulligan provokes every nook, cranny Felicia’s [Bernsteins’s wife] character. Catharsis for anyone remotely in her position let alone Lenny.
Somewhat this Brechtian approach the maestro would have admired. A party scene observed behind drapery. The penultimate Lenny/Felicia argument widescreen uncut agin Macey’s Thanksgiving Parade outside their Central Park West apartment windows. The holding back fascinating, frustrating. Maestro Bernstein never in life and most certainly not in art. Director/writer Bradley Cooper astute. When Bernstein confronts his daughter denies/consoles the gay tangled rumors from Tanglewood, the edit leaving brief eerie silence on Bernstein’s lips. Silence oft spoken Furtwängler and genius.
Prophesy hangs all over this movie, pure Leonard Bernstein. Is it that Bradley Cooper mutes this? No. It’s not the film he’s making. His more uplifting and more Bernstein public face. Goodness knows enough wows beneath. Is it that we see Bernstein and not feel him or feel and not see him in this movie?
Is it co-incidence that as Bernstein gave his Harvard Norton lectures Paddy Chayefsky was writing the iconic film Network? Acknowledged co-incidence a TV anchorwoman shot herself live on camera in 1974. Bernstein (Norton Lecture) on why Mahler and particularly his 9th symphony was neglected for 50 years: It was simply too true. Something too dreadful to hear. ..In Mahler’s ceasing we have gained everything. The close up bulky ’70s camera Bernstein eerily cajoling us and listen. The same camera Howard Beal in Network.
Days, weeks, months later great movies ought leave deep chasms in our souls.
A new NY art show NAMELESS spraying its place in a bleak January with The Winter Show. Bet you haven’t got any Ming cat scratching posts?! Patina for huang hulai.
Does this clip remind you of maybe Glass Onion:)!?
PBS just dropped a must-see documentary Razing Liberty Square. Was it Molly Dineen said one of the keys to documentaries is casting? Director Katja Esson instinctively knows. Hundreds of residents accepted Section C offered vouchers for temporary re-location. Only a handful ever returned. Gentrification wasn’t the Miami-Dade governing pitch. Community love demolished. As fair-minded as docs can be. Even more visceral if one’s familiar with Miami demography. And geography, Liberty City sits on a ridge as opposed to most of Miami, hello climate change and flooding. One’s eyes roll as a security guard shoos away pre-teen kids playing on patches of manicured grass. No bikes, skateboards, anything. Just playing.
Courtesy Garth Greenan Gallery [of course the reproduction is poor justice to the large original]
“My paintings tell the story of knowing land over time—of being completely, microcosmically within a place,” says Emmi Whitehorse of her enigmatic compositions.“ She has been has been invited to the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
The Gazan children orphaned by war
Haven’t watched this yet [starts 30min in]. Devil always details not sound bites. Helluva an issue “Sexually explicit content” v. “Freedom of speech”.
And life-threatening.
Cheslie Kryst and micro-aggression. It needn’t be social media yet so easier, more damaging that way. How can you ever forgive/explain the death of “walking sunshine” ? Get a thicker skin? !!!! If the great whoever/whatever wanted us to be pangolins or armadillos then maybe there was a Bacchus or mushroom issue the night before. And before that that was created….
This guy tirelessly documented NYC art openings, was removed and reinstated. How do you use social media to truly promulgate/document Tracey Emin or Egon Shiele or ………….
Scarily this is where AI could come in. It clearly ain’t smart enough yet.
I think people are frustrated in this society, where predators prey upon normal, law-abiding citizens, and you never see justice in the courtroom. In my films, the predators don't get away with it. — Steven Seagal
ANDREW’s Weird Wednesday Movie
Martin Scorsese commentary on the Criterion DVD
Chita Rivera [we’d never thought you’d like die, Angela Lansbury living forever….[sounds funnier in Sofia Vergara’s accent]
ANDREW contemplates mortality.
I would if I looked down, I’m not a ghost. ANDREW’s Weird Wednesday Movie
I’m Thinking of Ending Things one of the most moving, original movies since a long time. Its parallel world right up there with Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up reality. This can't be love, because I feel so well…
Jools Holland one of Britain’s best kept secrets until Rod Stewart;)
So. A wrap for the month. Painful as life can be, happiness lies somewhere near. So near. Within. Forget the Fentanyl! Even on a mountain. No shame. The world's a mess. America a mess. Feeling you can make difference then good for you: a given throughout centuries against all odds. One's head the start. All one's answerable to. When our world so unwell how to know? How to know it is our voice not something else. Am I sounding like a rapper:) Respect!
AHHHH! Breaking News: CBS [Cat Broadcasting Service] just released images of a cat leaping onto the Superbowl pitch protesting feline rights to feral food now being eaten by desperate Gazans. Taylor Swift’s three cats deny any foreknowledge except a meow, “thrice thrice the cat has meowed”.
Cat time- tomorrow, tomorrow…is only a day away. Send in your winning image, get a free flight to Gaza working as a humanitarian. Meowbe Ricky Gervais was me in life nine, thus spoke the alley cat. Terrifying thought after all the sell-by fish.
[As a P.S.- While Jack Sweeney's carbon emission efforts tracking private planes should be applauded, as the right to freedom of information, maybe there ought be a reporting delay for Taylor Swift. As he compromised with Elon Musk. Whilst legal it isn't very fair-minded and Mr. Sweeney would achieve all the same goals without angering and potentially endangering celebrities.]
