Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Ann Savage (1921-2008)
Ann Savage, “died in her sleep at a nursing home on Christmas Day from complications following a series of strokes,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Savage was most memorable in her femme fatale role Vera in the film noir classic Detour. I still remember how proud I was doing my first film noir retrospective at our film club and was able to get a copy of this movie. Ann Savage was a few notches tougher than your average bad girl, and Detour swirled into deeper realms of ill fate than you usually can take serious. It was a mesmerizing experience
Al Roberts: Oh, sure, Phoenix. You look just like a Phoenix girl.
Vera: Are the girls in Phoenix that bad?
Vera: Stop makin' noises like a husband.
More Buñuel
Another exciting acquisition: I finally ordered and got this DVD box containing the following works:
- Las Hurdes
- Los Olvidados
- Susana - Carne y Demonio
- Él
- Abismos de Pasion
- Ensayo de un Crimen
Although I have seen quite a few of Buñuel's movies, this edition actually has 3 titles I've been wanting to see for quite a while. I'm especially looking forward to Abismos de Pasion, an adaptation of the novel Wuthering Heights. Can't wait to see what Buñuel did with this story!
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Luis Buñuel: Mi Ultimo Suspiro
I searched for hours to find a photo showing the exact edition of this book that I recently purchased - nowhere to be found. So this is my own scan and probably the first online publishing of this particular cover. The English edition was published as My Last Sigh.
I have read Buñuel's autobiography before - about 30 years ago! I still do have it well in remembrance, but just like Buñuel's, reminiscing can't always be trusted, I thought I'd need to re-check. The book is very entertaining, and if you know Buñuel's movies, it seems very much like a literary match to his cinematic storytelling.
Like in his movies you are getting a seemingly straightforward story of his life full of anecdotes of all kind, but then he drifts off into different topics, explains over several pages how to make the perfect Martini dry or lets his sister tell a story about the Buñuel family's fear of spiders, and half the time you cannot really be sure, whether he's telling the truth or not.
By the way, Buñuel was Alfred Hitchcock's favourite director, and you can imagine Hitchcock creating surrealist films, if he hadn't worked under such commercial restrictions as he did.
A gathering in Los Angeles, 1972: (from left to right standing) Robert Mulligan, William Wyler, George Cukor, Robert Wise, Jean-Claude Carrière, Serge Silberman;
(seated) Billy Wilder, George Stevens, Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock, Rouben Mamoulian.
Another 1000 movies
I got this book as a birthday present from my friend Tanja: another 1000 movies discussed, but this time not exactly all classics and not essential viewing. Luck has it that I've seen most of them before, more so than on the 1000 classics list.
Nevertheless, I'll try and get to those in this book I have been missing. I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up: I've been watching a lot of movies lately, and for each one I wanted to set up a blog post with photos and synopsis and possibly my short opinion, but just didn't have the time. By now I'm like 20 movies behind. But that just means you'll have a lot to expect soon.
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