Thursday, October 20, 2011

Intimate Lighting


Intimate Lighting is a 1965 Czech film, directed by Ivan Passer, that is considered one of the highlights of the Czech New Wave.

Here is Roger Greenspun's 1969 review of the film from The New York Times:

IVAN PASSER made "Intimate Lighting" in 1965. It played at the 1966 New York Film Festival. I've seen it several times now, most recently in connection with its opening at the Fifth Avenue Cinema, and it loses none of its charm, to age or to repeated viewing. It is one of those very special movies that does not so much reveal new secrets each time you see it as confirm a justness and good humor that was never hidden.

Passer's anecdote (it doesn't amount to a story) concerns a cellist from Prague who, with his young mistress, visits a country town where he is to give a concert with the local orchestra. He spends a day and a night with an old school friend, a violinist who heads the town's music school and who has settled down with his mother and father, a plump wife, three kids, a car, and a garage full of chickens.

Nothing very significant happens. There is a family dinner, some amateur chamber music, and country funeral and a wake, a drunken late-night session involving the two friends and a family breakfast the next morning—with which the movie ends.

"Intimate Lighting" is constructed out of a series of minor embarrassments and low-keyed confrontations. Everything in the film's situation suggests incongruity and ironic distancing. But Passer has been at pains to keep all lines of communication open and never cruelly to play lifestyles off against one another. His warmth is neither sentimental nor condescending. And in all likelihood he has made a funnier movie from an awareness of imperfect reconciliations than he could have from an exploitation of disparities.

Understatement both in performance and technique, which has become a characteristic almost to cliché in many Czech movies, works perfectly in "Intimate Lighting." Passer, who has been known mostly as a scenarist to Milos Forman, is a perceptive director, and he has a fine cast to work with.

Because everybody except Vera Kresadlov (the mistress) has essentially a character part to play, it is difficult to single out anyone for praise. But I especially enjoyed Vlastimila Vlkova as the athletic grandmother, and Karel Uhlik as the town pharmacist whose violin technique is a struggle between musicianship and arthritis.

"I love this music. I love it passionately," says the pharmacist, who then takes up his violin and virtually saws apart a movement of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik." But he does love it, and the mess he makes of Mozart is the kind of testimony to love with which "Intimate Lighting" is filled. All the country people protest too much—their love of art, of family, of the lives they have to lead—but their protestations add up to a truth to which men agree and which it would be folly to disapprove.

For the final breakfast the grandmother has made an eggnog so think and rich it won't pour out of a glass. She tells the family and guests that "with a little patience" they will have a treat. And so in the last scene they all stand, glasses raised, mouths open, utterly ridiculous but sublimely patient.



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Thunderbean Animation (Website)


Thunderbean Animation is both an independent animation studio and a company that releases DVDs of classic animated shorts. To see examples of the work they've done and find out how to purchase their DVD releases of vintage cartoons, follow this link:

http://www.thunderbeananimation.com/ 

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Japan Today (Website)


Japan Today is a website devoted to current news from Japan. Included are news items about Japanese art, entertainment, and culture. Follow this link to take a look:

http://www.japantoday.com/ 

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Sights Within (Website)

Les Noisettes (The Nut-Gatherers) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

SightsWithin is a website that offers high-quality scans of classical paintings by such artists as Watteau, Fragonard, Bouguereau, Alma-Tadema, Gerome, & Friedrich, and other works of early photography and architecture.

In their own words: "SightsWithin is here to share the magnificence of art created throughout history. Its goal is to give everyone access to all of these creations. However, there are contemporary limits to this striving. Newer artworks, unfortunately, cannot be published. Any artwork of an artist that hasn't deceased more than 70 years ago cannot be displayed on this page due to copyright restrictions. The exception of that rule is given in the cases where we receive explicit permission to display one's artworks. Nevertheless, we hope you find many personal treasures among the works we have managed to collect."

Follow this link to take a look:

http://www.sightswithin.com/ 

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Friday, October 14, 2011

The End of August at the Hotel Ozone


The End of August at the Hotel Ozone is a 1967 Czech science-fiction film, directed by Jan Schmidt and written by Pavel Juracek, that concerns itself with a band of women looking for mates in a post-apocalyptic landscape.


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Pajama Guy (Blogsite)


Steve Kurtz is a Los Angeles-based writer-television producer. His personal blog serves up his opinions on television, music, theater, films, news events, and politics. Follow this link to take a look:

http://pajamaguy.blogspot.com/ 

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Geoff George (Website)



Follow this link to visit the website of Michigan-based photographer/filmmaker Geoff George:

http://www.gsgfilms.com/

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Friday, October 7, 2011

Corpus Fluxus (Website)


Corpus Fluxus is the website of independent filmmaker and performance artist Ross Lipman. Lipman is also one of the team of people who restore films at the UCLA Film & TV Archive. Lipman can be seen at work in Alejandra Espasande Bouza's 2010 short, Allegro Non Molto:


Follow this link to see Lipman's own website and learn more about his activities:

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Ikarie XB-1


Ikarie XB-1 is a 1963 Czech science-fiction film directed by Jindrich Polak and written by Pavel Juracek who later wrote the screenplays for the Czech films Daisies and The End of August at the Hotel Ozone.

More information about the film can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikarie_XB-1

You may need to click on the CC closed captions icon for the subtitles to play with the image:



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Saturday, October 1, 2011

Koko's Earth Control


Here is Max and Dave Fleischer's 1928 surreal and apocalyptic animated short, Koko's Earth Control.

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