Mitch Cohen
What’s New Pussycat - 1965, written by Allen, who plays a sidekick role. Slapstick. I had a hard time keeping track of all the brunettes having affairs with Peter O’Toole. Silly but fun. Not directed by Allen but similar feel to films he’d later direct.
I enjoyed A Rainy Day In New York - 2019. College-age romance in NYC. A good screenplay and cast. I’d never heard of Timothée Chalamet by name but I’d seen him in Homeland. Predictable but quaint final scene.
Last week I watched Woody Allen’s latest film, A Rainy Day In New York. Woody’s an odd guy, some say a bad guy. In general I like his films. I decided I’d make an attempt to watch all 50-or-so of his films, starting with his oldest. I’ll blog about it here, with brief reviews.
Whatever iTunes Match is called now has begun misremembering songs. It thinks Believe from Run Lola Run is a slow & quiet instrumental I’ve never heard, which is far from the truth. Worst part is it’s impossible to find what songs are screwed up without playing them all.
I’ve never quite understood the appearance of the color indigo. However while staring at my rice over dinner, I’m guessing this is close enough. My wife says this is a mix of brown and black rice. Also, shredded brussels sprouts.
For today’s blue theme, from 2014. Blue water, blue sky, and a girl in a pink bathing suit scooping shells.
As film transitioned to digital photography, I had an enjoyable fling with color infrared film. I loved the unpredictable results and false colors. Here’s one of my favorites, with a yellow sky for Yellow day in micro.blog land.
Way back in 1984 I ran an old-style dialup BBS. A columnist interviewed 17-year-old me about BBS’s and computer hacking. Those were fun days! “Enter the world of the ‘hacker’”
Ziggy, our not-spoiled-at-all dog, under a cozy red blanket for the first day of micro.blog’s rainbow themed week.
“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.” - Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury 💬
Talent alone won’t make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: ‘Are your ready?’
- Johnny Carson 💬
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. - William S. Burroughs 💬
“When you are a bear of very little brain, and you think of things, you find sometimes that a thing which seemed very thinkish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”
–Winnie the Pooh 💬
As a followup to last night’s 💬, I found an image of the full quote in Haring’s handwriting. I’d scanned this from a calendar in the mid-1990’s. I wish I’d scanned it in a higher resolution, but mid-1990’s.
My AirPods Pro (in case) seemingly slipped out of my pocket while watching Westworld last night. Tore the couch apart. Found $8 and an old iPod Touch. But no AirPods yet.
“I’d like to pretend that I’ve never seen anything, never read anything, never heard anything… and then make something.” -Keith Haring 💬
Ten movies that stay with me, day two. Hearts of Darkness, a documentary on the making of Apocalypse Now.
Ten movies that stay with me, day two. Hearts of Darkness, a documentary on the making of Apocalypse Now.
I enjoy almost any documentary about the making of a movie, as long as it isn’t a mindless promotional puff piece. Filmmaking is fascinating to me. This is the best “making of” films I’ve seen. To me it’s even better than the film itself, which is a masterpiece.
Francis Ford Coppola made Apocalypse Now after the success of The Godfather I and II. It was an audacious move at the time - an unflattering film about the Vietnam War made during the war. Coppola’s wife Eleanor filmed and recorded much of the goings on during shooting. Years later, she and others turned it into “Hearts of Darkness, A Filmmakers Apocalypse.” It’s anything but a puff piece.
Coppola threw himself, his money, and his family fully into the film. Everything went wrong. I won’t give it away, but he had major issues with the cast, the weather, and the arguments with the Philippine military who were providing his helicopters - in the middle of a real war of their own. His perseverance didn’t just border lunacy, but crossed the line and kept on going. Fascinating. The end result was one of the best war films ever made.
The only thing I find confusing is the title. Apocalypse Now is based on the Joseph Conrad novel Heart of Darkness. I guess they wanted to use a similar (appropriate) title, and it fits, except the pluralization of Hearts. This is clearly about one heart, that of Francis Ford Coppola.
The documentary opens with a period statement from Coppola which sums it up nicely(?):
“My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It’s what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle. There were too many of us. We had access to too much money, too much equipment. And, little by little, we went insane.”
Facebook people are doing the “ten days ten films that stay with you” thing. I’ll try it here. My first film is Koyaanisqatsi, by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass.
Facebook people are doing the “ten days ten films that stay with you” thing. I’ll try it here. My first film is Koyaanisqatsi, by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass.
I first ran across this documentary-ish film of beautiful landscapes and new-to-me dazzling music in college, on a rented VHS tape. Koyaanisqatsi is Hopi for Life Out Of Balance, or (my preference) A State Of Life That Calls For Another Way Of Living. Intense is an understatement.
I’ve been lucky to see it on the big screen twice, both with music performed live by Philip Glass and his ensemble. It’s the first of a trilogy, followed by Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi.
Koyaanisqatsi is on YouTube. The conversion from film isn’t as good as the Blu-ray, but not bad.
Find the biggest screen you have, turn off the lights, crank the volume to eleven, and click m.youtube.com/watch