Yahoo Chief Marissa Mayer too Sophisticated to Gauge her Audience.

The New York Times Magazine ran an insightful article on Yahoo's downfall by Nicholas Carlson. Suffice it to say that Yahoo lost ground in a big way to the big four - Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.  Mayer, who cut her teeth at Google inherited a company with a $37 billion stake in Alibaba, but if you sold off that position, what was left was negative $4 billion !  Mayer, avid reader of Town & Country magazine and used to wearing Oscar de la Renta couture was a poor match for Yahoo, a middle-America brand.  She lacked instincts of a media executive.  Anna Wintour, Vogue editor in chief, was appalled at Mayer's suggestion they join forces with Yahoo's site for women, Shine.  Wintour was making money focused on a narrow affluent audience, not 500 million monthly page views. 

Funniest anecdote - at major advertising event in France, Martin Sorrell, media mogul (WPP), asked Mayer on stage why she didn't return his phone calls.

Alison Klayman documents Ai Weiwei Collision

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is a documentary film (2012) about Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, directed by American filmmaker Alison Klayman.  A Brown Univ. graduate, she met Weiwei in 2008 while producing TV features for PBS, NPR, and AP TV.  Ai Weiwei is son of renowned poet Ai Qing.

In between gallery openings, we see him beat up by Chengdu police (leading to a trip to Germany to repair cranial hemorrhage), we see the Government raze his $1 million Shanghai studio (he responds with a demolition party serving river crab, whose name is Mandarin homonym for "harmony"), and his April 2011 detention at Beijing airport.  The film captures his rise to one of the best known political dissidents in China.  Klayman basically filmed the subject in real time, not knowing where it was going, like the Maysles did in Gimme Shelter (and caught a murder).  Critics say that his confrontations with authorities is a form of performance art.

In 2009, Weiwei posts over 5,000 names of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake victims.  Chinese authorities shut down his blog, two days later, he joins Twitter.  This effort in transparency recalls the publication of the Bosnian Book of the Dead.

Klayman didn't set out with any intention as to how she wanted to portray the State, "But I do think they wrote their part into the film themselves."

Weiwei is very outspoken about not supporting the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  The movie poster depicts one "flipping the bird" at Tiananmin square, but Mr. Ai no doubt flipped the bird at the Bird's Nest ! After all, he was hired as the stadium design consultant.

Novelist Biyi Bandele Debuts as Director on Half of a Yellow Sun

Biyi Bandele and Anika Noni Rose

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's literary masterpiece Half of a Yellow Sun (2011) has been captured by UK-based Nigerian (Yoruba descent but brought up in Hausa community in northerrn Nigeria) novelist and debuting Nollywood director Biyi Bandele. Adichie insisted it be filmed in Nigeria. It is the biggest production in the history of Nigerian film and was filmed at Tinapa Studio, Calabar and Creek Town against all odds (logistical like electricity and water for 200 people as well as malaria and typhoid cases) over a five week period in 2013.  Arguably, it is the first feature film from Nigeria.  Born in Bloomfield, Connecticut, Anika Noni Rose plays the lead sister Kainene.  Rose also starred in Dreamgirls (2006). 

Much of the novel's artistry and detail escapes the film.  Adichie's novel is not chronological, a choice for dramatic effect.  Also, only 4 characters relate the story from the first person vantage point, in the novel.  The atrocities of the Biafran war and the seige of this Ibo nation are downplayed in the film although news clips work well.  In particular, Ugwu's participation in a gang rape is omitted.

It is compelling that a Yoruba director can portray an Ibo clan with such empathy.

Gabi Trinkhaus' "LO SE MON" Tricks the Mind

From a distance, no one could be faulted for thinking this was an aerial view of L.A.  Closer inspection reveals that this is a collage of a supposed web of streetlights and highways that dematerializes into a collage of advertisements found in pop culture magazines.  The brightness of the city is merely consumer glitz and brand names.

Gabi Trinkhouse calls the work "LO SE MON," an acronym for love, sex, money - what makes the world go round.  The media domination of urban society is totally evident here.

Hany Abu-Assad's Omar Examines Betrayal in West Bank

This is not a movie about love.  It is a movie about betrayal among Palestinian freedom fighters in the West Bank.  Directed by Palestinian (born in Nazareth) Hany Abu-Assad, it is the first film (2014) to be accepted by the Academy with origin listed as Palestine.  The $2 million budget was funded entirely by Palestinians.  Zuaiter, living in California for 20 years, helped raise funds and visited the West Bank for the first time.

In a New York Times interview, Assad views the three protagonists as archetypes: Tarek (Eyad Hourani) as leader and war-maker, Amjad (Samer Bisharat) is joker and opportunist, and Omar (Adam Bakri) is the fighter.  Assad reveals the routines of everyday life including an affection for U.S. actors like Marlon Brando and Brad Pitt.  There is a comical scene where Rami (see below) argues with his wife and mother over phone trying to arrange school pickup.  It is reminiscent of CIA agent Russell Crowe in Body of Lies (2008).  With the Wall as backdrop, every aspect of local existence is highly politicized.  Omar's difficulty in climbing over the Wall near the film's end is highly metaphorical.

Affiliated with the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the 3 men carry out a sniper attack on an Israeli military outpost, as a proof of manhood.  Ultimately, Omar is arrested, tortured and imprisoned.  Rami (Waleed Zuaiter), an Israeli officer coerces Omar to be an informant in exchange for release. Omar becomes trapped and conflicted.  The hopeless impasse between Jews and Arabs is symbolized in Omar's conflicted relations and his "solution" in the final scene.

Angelina Jolie Writes, Directs and Produces a Masterpiece

Angelina Jolie has written, directed and produced a masterpiece in In The Land of Blood and Honey (2011),  aimed at revealing the genocide (and rape genocide) perpetrated in Bosnia during the Bosnian War (1992-1995), starring Zana (rhymes with Donna) Marjanović (Ajla), Goran Kostić (Danijel), and Rade Šerbedžija (Nebojša).  Danijel is a soldier fighting for the Bosnian Serbs. In a prisoner camp led by his strict father, the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) general Nebojša, he finds Ajla, his former love, who is a Bosniak and therefore a prisoner. The Bosnian Serb policy against Bosniaks, and the secrecy of their relationship before the war, endangers the lives of the former lovers.  Jolie got the idea to write a script of a wartime love story after traveling to Bosnia and Herzegovina as a U.N. goodwill ambassador.  Generally the actors were local, still harboring fresh wounds from the conflict, so one can imagine how difficult the brutal scenes were to execute.



Naturally controversial, Serbian directors have claimed the film is not evenhanded in examining atrocities by the Bosniaks.  The Bosnian Serbs are painted as aggressors, in the name of a mythological Greater Serbia, masterminded by Slobodan Milošević.

Golshifteh Farahani Tests Limits in The Patience Stone

Golshifteh Farahani is Iran's best known actress, but her rebellious ways have landed her as an exile in Paris.  Afghan-born Atiq Rahimi directed the film based on his novel of the same title, written in French.  The actress was required to learn her lines in Dari, the Farsi dialect spoken in Afghanistan.

In a country torn apart by war, following the retreat of Soviet occupation forces, Afghan rival bands of mujaheddin are fighting over remnants of the city...A young woman in her thirties (the film never reveals any character names) watches over her older husband, a fratricidal bullet in the neck has reduced him to a comatose state. One day, the woman's vigil changes. She begins to speak truth to her silent husband, telling him about her childhood, her suffering, her frustrations, her loneliness, her dreams, desires, and secrets. After years of living under his control, with no voice of her own, she says things she could never have spoken before, even though they have been married for ten years.

Her husband has unconsciously become syngué sabour (THE PATIENCE STONE) - a magical black stone that, according to Persian mythology, absorbs the plight of those who confide in it. The woman's confessions are extraordinary and without restraint: about sex and love, her anger against a man who never understood her, who mistreated her, who never showed her any respect or kindness. Through the words she delivers so audaciously to her husband, the woman seeks to free herself from suffering. But after weeks of looking after him, she begins to act, discovering herself in the relationship she starts with a young soldier.  Her aunt, who runs a brothel (she murdered her husband), quips regarding the young soldier "Tell him to fuck with his tongue and talk with his dick."

Portions of the film were filmed in Kabul, without Farahani.  Permits were obtained in the name of doing a documentary on combat quail, the racing birds, a subplot in the movie.  The balance of the movie was filmed in Morocco.

Set in 1979, it draws upon Rahimi's memories of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. By that time, his parents had left Kabul, his father having served jail time as a political prisoner, but Rahimi remained in the city to complete high school. During the Russian occupation, life soon became unbearable, and the director, along with a group of friends that included his future wife, escaped to Pakistan. There, he was granted asylum by French authorities, and went to Paris to continue his education. 

The Internet of Things on Collision Course with Free Market Capitalism

Delacroix, slight revision

 

Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Zero Marginal Cost Society, wrote a sobering piece for The New York Times Week in Review (3/16/14) on how reduction of marginal costs spells the end of capitalism as we know it.  Competitive markets are bringing costs so far down that goods and services are nearly free, abundant, and no longer subject to market forces.  Economists never anticipated a technological revolution that would bring costs to near zero.

Napster started the trend with music sharing, newspaper and book publishing soon followed.  Popular belief holds that free products entice consumers to purchase higher end goods.  The Internet of Things is an example on steroids and will play out over next few decades.  Billions of sensors now monitor resources, the electricity grid, etc. and are implanted in homes. offices, and vehicles.  Productivity advances could affect 1/2 the global economy by 2025.

Rifkin believes that non-profit organizations will take over the economy.  Emerging collaborative commons will flourish alongside capitalist markets.  Shared access will trump private ownership.  Social media sites allow us to share cars, homes, and goods.  The impact on the labor market is profound with workerless factories, virtual retailing and automated logistics.  The new employment opportunities lie in the collaborative commons via non-profits.

A note on the painting: Liberty Leading the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple) is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. A woman personifying Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution – the tricolor flag which is still France's flag today – in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne.

Did the Times Editor intend to imply that the depletion of the middle class would lead to another revolution ?

Yiren Lu's Brilliant View of Silicon Valley

 

 Yiren Lu nails it.  She brilliantly analyzes current Silicon Valley "app" culture and the collision between old school and new school.  Btw, yes, that is her on YouTube at age 12 playing Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu.  Verbatim highlights appear below:

·        I am a grad student in computer science at Columbia University — with several friends who will be working at Dropbox and Facebook this summer

·        The rapid consumer-ification of tech, led by Facebook and Google, has created a deep rift between old and new, hardware and software, enterprise companies that sell to other businesses and consumer companies that sell directly to the masses.

·        In pursuing the latest and the coolest, young engineers ignore opportunities in less-sexy areas of tech like semiconductors, data storage and networking, the products that form the foundation on which all of Web 2.0 rests. Without a good router to provide reliable Wi-Fi, your Dropbox file-sharing application is not going to sync; without Nvidia’s graphics processing unit, your BuzzFeed GIF is not going to make anyone laugh. The talent — and there’s a ton of it — flowing into Silicon Valley cares little about improving these infrastructural elements. What they care about is coming up with more web apps.

·        Smart kids want to work for a sexting app because other smart kids want to work for the same sexting app.

·        The face of web tech today could easily be a designer, like Brian Chesky at Airbnb, or a magazine editor, like Jeff Koyen at Assignmint. Such entrepreneurs come from backgrounds outside computer science and are likely to think of their companies in terms more grandiose than their technical components.

·        And it followed what was for decades the highway that connected academia to industry: Grad students researched technology, powerful advisers brokered deals, students dropped out to parlay their technologies into proprietary solutions, everyone reaped the profits. That implicit guarantee of academia’s place in entrepreneurship has since disappeared. Graduate students still drop out, but to start bike-sharing apps and become data scientists.

·        Much of this precocity — or dilettantism, depending on your point of view — has been enabled by web technologies, by easy-to-use programming frameworks like Ruby on Rails and Node.js and by the explosion of application programming interfaces (A.P.I.s) that supply off-the-shelf solutions to entrepreneurs who used to have to write all their own code for features like a login system or an embedded map. Now anyone can do it, thanks to the Facebook login A.P.I. or the Google Maps A.P.I.

·        The sense that it is no longer necessary to have particularly deep domain knowledge before founding your own start-up is real; that and the willingness of venture capitalists to finance Mark Zuckerberg look-alikes are changing the landscape of tech products.

·        There’s a glass-half-full way of looking at this, of course: Tech hasn’t been pedestrianized — it’s been democratized.

·        Companies like Uber and Airbnb, while properly classified as interfaces and marketplaces, are really providing the most elevated service of all — that of doing it ourselves.

·        Recently, an engineer at a funded-to-the-gills start-up in San Francisco texted me to grumble about his company’s software architecture. Its code base was bug-ridden and disorganized — yet the business was enjoying tremendous revenue and momentum. “Never before has the idea itself been powerful enough that one can get away with a lacking implementation,” he wrote. His remark underscores a change wrought by the new guard that the old guard will have to adapt to. Tech is no longer primarily technology driven; it is idea driven.

·        increasingly short product cycles are things Jim attributes to the rise of Amazon Web Services (A.W.S.), a collection of servers owned and managed by Amazon that hosts data for nearly every start-up in the latest web ecosystem.

·        “But now, every start-up is A.W.S. only, so there are no servers to kick, no fabs to be near. You can work anywhere. The idea that all you need is your laptop and Wi-Fi, and you can be doing anything — that’s an A.W.S.-driven invention.”

homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto

Leslie Jamison submitted an essay regarding her tattoo quoting the Roman playwright Terence (195/185–159 BC) stating "I am human: nothing human is alien to me," which appeared in NYT Sunday (4/13/14).  It can be found in his play Heauton Timorumenos ("The Self-Tormentor").  Terence was the first Roman playwright of North African descent.  This may be the ultimate example of cultures in collision.  Jamison (b. 1985) attended Harvard and just released essays in "The Empathy Exams."  She got the tattoo to mark a break from her partner, to brand herself to mark a new era.  She was reclaiming her body, in a sense opposite from being pregnant, it was "the residue of intimacy."  The tattoo was to serve as epigraph for her new book.  While the article focuses on her need to explain the tattoo to observers, it is light on explaining what it really means. 

Rayner Teo in a 2009 blog opines on the second line "nothing human is alien to me."  It alludes to a universal quality that we all share - humanity.  It is an embracement of everything human.  It implies that one is familiar with all the joy and suffering that is the human condition.  Perhaps we can strive for this as the culmination of a lifetime of experience.  It is a worthy goal without passing oral judgement.  Teo is sympathetic to sinners who writer difficult literature or make gritty movies, rather than moralising self-righteous preachers who repress their own humanity in pursuit of false goodness.

Jamison does say it's about empathy and camaraderie, a denial of singularity and exceptionality.  The implication is that we're all in this together, but do we need to discount exceptionality ?  Jamison feels her tattoo is not yet true for her but it establishes a goal, an asymptote, a horizon, in line with Teo's vision.  Jamison recalls a drugstore clerk saying "you will leave a little piece of yourself with everyone you imagine."  Is this what Terence had in mind ?

Haifaa al-Mansour Triumphs in Wadjda

 

 

 

 

This is the first feature film to be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, and by a woman no less !  Ten-year-old Wadjda (Waad Mohammed) enters a Koran-recitation contest to win a cash prize that will enable her to buy a bicycle.  The audience is exposed to Saudi life in a way rarely seen.  The film was partially funded by German producers.  Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns a majority share in Rotana (the Arab world's largest entertainment conglomerate) was also instrumental in funding the film. 

 

There is no movie production infrastructure in Saudi.  There is television production, but their methodology is very different.  Segregation forced Mansour to direct outdoor scenes with a walkie-talkie from inside a van !

The film exudes great sensitivity between Wadjda and the mother (the beautiful Reem Abdullah) as well as Wadjda and her male playmate (Abdullrahman al-Gohani).  In fact, the tender love and respect between Wadjda and the boy is so refreshing yet counter intuitive in a segregated misogynist society.

In an example of life imitating art, Waad Mohammed’s family has said they will only allow her to act until she’s 16, and then marry her off—female actors are generally shunned in Saudi.
 

Kechiche's Blue is More About Cultural Chasms than Sexual Preference

 

 

 

This film is based on Julie Maroh's graphic novel "Le bleu est une couleur chaude."  Watching this 2013 film (Blue is the Warmest Color) is like drinking water from a fire hose !  There is so much to take in on the first viewing.  Be it the mesmerizing yet sloppy beauty of Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulus), who was encouraged by the director to improvise lines.  Be it the extraordinarily sensual nature of the film in endless close-ups.  Be it the 10-minute long sex scene that is so un-Hollywood (1 minute max is typical formula) in its mimicry of real life, it is not choreographed (which typically desexualizes the act).  Be it the rich French literary references to Sartre, Francis Ponge and Pierre de Marivaux.  Be it the uncanny improbable ability of a French-Tunisian male director (Abdellatif Kechiche) to explore the nuances of a same-sex relation transpiring over 3 hours.  Be it the ambivalent final scene, with implications that heterosexuality is better (or not).   

 

Unusually, the director and both actresses each were awarded the Palme d'Or at Cannes in May, 2013.  They were the only women (besides Jane Campion for The Piano, 1993) to win this award, based on their role as "auteurs" (see Sullivan in Agnesfilms.com).  The film is replete with controversy.  Women claim that Kechiche betrays a fetishism in his male gaze, it is a male view of "lesbian" sex.  Kechiche titled his adaption "La Vie d'Adèle" in France, rather than the title of Maroh's graphic novel "le bleu est une couleur chaude."  Some claim he was obsessed with the actress and her buttocks, a frequent subject of the camera.  And sexism is alive in the butch-femme relation as Adèle plays housewife to Emma.  Also the media obsession with prosthetic vulvas on the actresses, was it real sex or not ?  Does the homophobia exhibited by Adèle's classmates elevate the film's message to one of militant lesbianism ?

 

The Life of Marianne by Marivaux is significant as it is about the anticipation of desire.  Marianne own experience of love at first sight becomes the object lesson in the classroom scene.  Adèle takes it to heart.  Adèle's unsatisfying heterosexual effort with Thomas (Jérémie Laheurte, who became her real-life boyfriend) and her encounter with a female classmate represent transitional steps in an awakening.  Sartre's Being & Nothingness can inform the debate: are these two women just lovers or are they Lesbians ?  Sullivan opines that being lesbian has its own negation, its own "nothingness."  Kechiche prefers to consider the pair as simply "being."  To name the women lesbians would be making a militant statement.  It is like any other love story with no sexual politics.  The actresses share this philosophy with the director.  Note that during the shoot, France was experiencing violent gay rights protests.  Same-sex marriage became legal in France May, 2013.  An historical antecedent is in the film: note Louise Brooks in a silent film playing at Léa's party: Brooks was well known for her bisexual dalliances, including Greta Garbo.

 

Some may view the film as a tale of obsession.  Swedish pop star Lykke Li's club hit "I Follow Rivers" is featured in the birthday party scene.  On an interview this is what she said about the song 'I Follow Rivers'..."It's about lust and obsession and infatuation. Infatuation is something very different from love, it's a craving, it's very animalistic so it's about you crave something whether its drugs or it's this love that is really bad for you, it's gonna hurt you but you still want to go there so it's like 'I'll follow you wherever you may take me' and it's a very dark, doom place.. you know it's like a river, like you can't hold back once you jump in."

 

In the final analysis,  Adèle cannot sustain her lustful relation with Emma (Léa Seydoux, granddaughter of the Chairman of Pathé) because of irreconcilable class differences, Adèle from a blue collar family in Lille and Léa a sophisticated intellectual and artist.  It is telling that her voluptuous mouth is featured eating junk food and pasta, not just kissing.  The differences that at first were points of attraction soon polarize the relation.  In fact, Emma becomes very exploitative in the relation.  The film ends years later as Adèle visits Emma at a gallery opening and bumps into her Arab buddy Samir.  The two reunited working class heroes exchange bios.  In the final scene Samir goes after Adèle without finding her.  Ironically, the final shot features Samir, suggesting a political awakening in a film sequel.

 

Kechiche accumulated more than 700 hours of film.  The film was shot chronologically, in order to capture more realistically the growing passion and tension between the actresses.  French Unions revealed that the film violated French labor laws with more than 8-hour days.  Kechiche was prepared to drop sex scenes for the censors, but the distributor Wild Bunch wouldn't have it.

 

Brooklyn Castle Cerebral Mr. Holland's Opus

 

Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) is presented as a biography of the 30-year career of the eponymous lead character, Glenn Holland, a music teacher at the fictional John F. Kennedy High School in Portland, Oregon.

 

Brooklyn Castle (2012) is a documentary film about Intermediate School 318 (101 Walton St.), an inner-city public school in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, where an after-school chess program, having both dedicated educators and a supportive community, has triumphed over deep budget cuts to build the most winning junior high school chess team in the country, and the first middle school team to win the United States Chess Federation's national high school championship.

 

The similarities of these two films are striking and are a testimonial to the human spirit.

Jep has "More Than a Feeling" in The Great Beauty

 

Neapolitan director Paolo Sorrentino's film The Great Beauty (2013) is about a wealthy sybarite, Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), a city (Rome), and a country (Italy).  It is also a tribute to Italian cinema.  The unflattering and grotesque characters lack a sense of purpose.  Yet they populate a city with extraordinary beauty, which they could not replicate today. 

 

The occasion is Jep's 65th birthday.  He learns that his first love has died.  While hoofing around Rome he has numerous flashbacks including a scene where Elisa (Annaluisa Campasa) confronts him as a young man near the beach, exposing her teenage breasts and walking away. 

 

This film is loaded with beautiful music, sacred and profane.  Sacred includes:

 

1) the opening vocal "I Lie" composed by David Lang, performed by Torino Vocalesemble, with lyrics in Yiddish by Joseph Rolnick, at the church of San Pietro on the Janiculum hill. 

 

2) John Tavener and William Blake's "The Lamb," performed by the Choir of the Temple Church is also noteworthy. 

 

3) Polish composer Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3 known as "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs," III Movement called the Lento - Cantabile Semplice which features a soprano.

 

4) "Dies Irae" by Zbigniew Preisner

 

5) "Beata viscera," c. 1200 - Magister Perotinus & Jan Garbarek

 

Profane includes Bob Sinclar & Raffaella Carra "Far L'Amore," which opens the party.

 

Yet the music that filled my head was the glorious vocal by Brad Delp (no falsetto he), lead singer for the band Boston, remembering Marianne, walking away in "More Than a Feeling."  Yes Jep, this is the tune that should be the voice inside your head !

 

 

Brad Delp is an amazing singer and his ever rising tenor in "More Than a Feeling" is legendary, ultimately hitting E (660 Hz) above high C (tenor C or C₅ is 525 Hz) on the line ending in "slipped away."

More Than a Feeling

I looked out this morning and the sun was gone
Turned on some music to start my day
I lost myself in a familiar song
I closed my eyes and I slipped away

It's more than a feeling, when I hear that old song they used to play (more than a feeling)
I begin dreaming (more than a feeling)
'Till I see Marianne walk away
I see my Marianne walkin' away

So many people have come and gone
Their faces fade as the years go by
Yet I still recall as I wander on
As clear as the sun in the summer sky

It's more than a feeling, when I hear that old song they used to play (more than a feeling)
I begin dreaming (more than a feeling)
'Till I see Marianne walk away
I see my Marianne walkin' away

When I'm tired and thinking cold
I hide in my music, forget the day
And dream of a girl I used to know
I closed my eyes and she slipped away
She slipped away

It's more than a feeling, when I hear that old song they used to play (more than a feeling)
I begin dreaming (more than a feeling)
'Till I see Marianne walk away

Inside Llewyn Davis Echoes Humboldt's Gift

 

The Coen brothers have made a film about a folk singer Llewyn Davis, based on Dave Van Ronk's posthumous memoir "The Mayor of Macdougal Street" (2005).  He is but a footnote in the history of American popular music (NYT, 12/8/13).

 

Dylan, Rotolo, Van Ronk in 1963

 Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift (1975) contributed to his Nobel Prize in Literature.  The character Von Humboldt Fleisher is based on the life of Delmore Schwartz, a Jewish-American poet who lived and died in Brooklyn.  Humboldt published an avant-garde poetry book in the 1930s, he dies of a heart attack in the 1960s. 

  

 

When viewing Inside Llewyn Davis I could not help notice the parallels with Humboldt's Gift.  Both Van Ronk and Schwartz were second rate artists surviving in an era that would end in an explosion of post-1950s talent, notably Bob Dylan and the British wave in music and authors like Mailer, Bellow, Roth, Vonnegut, and Pynchon in literature.

 

Chilean Evangilism-Teenage Sex Train Wreck in Young and Wild

 

Rivas and Rodriguez

 

Chilean director Marialy Rivas' coming of age film Young and Wild (2012) examines the friction inherent in evangelical religion (18% of Chile is evangelical Christian) and teenage sexuality, odd bed fellows in the least.  Young & Wild is the name of the blog by narrator Daniela (Alicia Rodriguez), an 18-year old riddled with boundaries in post-Pinochet Chile.  Her blog is her salvation as she parses through an emotional morass of teen sexuality.  The film is based on the true sexual escapades of Chilean blogger, Camila Gutierrez.

 

Working at a religious TV station, she finds herself at the center of a love triangle involving a boyfriend, Tomás (played by Felipe Pinto), and her free-spirited female coworker, Antonia (María Gracia Omegna).

Perfunctory Asperger's Symptoms Abound in Attenberg

 

 

 

Attenberg (2010), an "anthropological" drama, directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari and filmed in the seaside town of Aspra Spitia, in the Greek region of Boeotia, follows 23-year-old Marina (Ariane Labed), an unpredictable creature whose isolated habitat and limited human interaction have led her to mimic the repetitive behavior of animals featured in the Sir David Attenborough documentaries. Viewers may immediately associate Asperger's Syndrome (the singer Susan Boyle and the Newtown killer Adam Lanza) with her emotionally bereft and aloof behavior.  Her world is shaped by her father Spyros (Vangelis Mourikis), whose health is decaying and her promiscuous friend Bella (Evangelia Randou).  Ultimately, she has an unemotional sexual tryst (Giorgos Lanthimos, who btw, is the director of Dogtooth and Alps), yet there is tenderness in the series of encounters, despite their perfunctory animalistic/clinical flavor, with the nakedness mimicking the apes in the jungle. 

In one memorable scene (see poster), attempting to open up to Bella, Marina removes her shirt, exposing her shoulder blades, which she begins to pop in and out of joint. It’s a freakish confessional, and it encapsulates the core of the film: it’s one thing to hear someone describe herself as double-jointed, another to see it in practice.

Just as in the Attenborough TV documentary with the gorillas, the relations in her life are unemotional.  Inevitably, her father dies, and the cremation process is equally devoid of emotion.  The functional process of packing him off to Germany to be cremated (cremation is legal in Greece and has been since 2006, but is still frowned upon by the Orthodox Christian church there) pulls her back into a world that is hard and cold and stark. She stands and watches his coffin packaged, x-rayed for the flight, marked with "THIS WAY UP" stickers like some Amazon or eBay parcel.

In an interview at the 2011 Sydney Film Festival, Tsangari states "I'm a big fan of combining things that are not readily combinable."  After all, that is the basis of this blog.