Got around a little bit this month: saw a really lovely independent film that won an award at Cannes in 2006 called "Luxury Car" at the Asia Society. It's from China and has some gorgeous acting and judicious direction. If you want to check it out yourself, here's a link to a clip:
http://www.linktv.org/programs/gl_luxurycar
The version I saw was originally subtitled in French so if you speak that language this poster will make even more sense:
Speaking of films, hick that I am, I *finally* saw two Shakespeare classics I've been meaning to catch up with: Julius Caesar with the luminous Marlon Brando and the astounding James Mason (and the great John Gielgud, Deborah Kerr, etc. everyone was rockin' it) and Laurence Olivier in Merchant of Venice. Just blown out of the water with the performances. Olivier's final utterance/lament at the end of the trial was just haunting and he showed a tremendous amount of restraint and grief throughout the film. Dude was not to be messed with! (That's him with the top hat. I haven't exactly *mastered* the blog photo thing so that's the best I could get of that picture, okay?)
That made me go into the wayback machine and pull out the good old Richard III with Ian McKellen (whose MacBeth with Judi Dench I also saw not too long ago).
Folks know I'm into the old school Brit drama (I, Claudius with Derek Jacobi and Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson were forever etched in my mind as a child. Yay for PBS and constant re-runs!). I've seen just enough of the less-than-successful adaptations of that stuff to really love it when it works on stage or screen (big or small). Super duper gorgeous.
If you want to see some great send-ups through (let's not be too precious about Will), my colleague Nelson hipped me to this hilarious clip of Peter Sellers doing Richard III doing the Beetle's "Hard Day's Night" that was chuckle-worthy in it's drollness:
and who can forget that Emmy award winning turn of *Sir* Derek Jacobi making fun of his own (*beautiful*) original BBC Hamlet on Frasier?:
*Everytime* I see these joints I have to laugh.
(If you don't see 2 links immediately above, just two pix, something's not working with the blog but be sure to google them! Youtube has the clips!)
So, as you may detect from the many stills I've been indoors and it has been raining a lot here...
But, one one of the few lovely evenings, I got a chance to see one of my buddies' bands play, Marvin Sewell's group. They were really great, fabulous really, and shared the bill with Jeff Lee Johnson (whom I'm ashamed to say I didn't know but was really moved by). Marvin urged us to see Johnson's band and I'm so glad I did!
Marvin's crew was hitting it and, if you know Marv you know he's not exactly a talker, but he was quite conversational that night...I have to say I learned some stuff about him I didn't know before -- and I've known 'him for more than 15 years! He had the ever-ready and deservedly in-demand bass player Jerome Harris (who I also have known since forever), keeping it lockety-locked.
M. Sewell's a low-key kinda dude as this picture sorta indicates. But he was workin' them strings:
Extra thumbnail pictures for being extra in the house this month! Now that spring is hopefully springing, there may be less so this should hold ya. Modern China, Old fashioned/adapted Shakes and cool newfangled music. Not a bad month to leave! See y'all with a poem (or two):
a woman had placed
by Anne Blonstein
after jorge luis borges
a yellow rose
in a hotel glass
the man had kissed her
on the neck
had kissed her
on the mouth
but these kisses belonged to yesterday
there would be no moment
of revernalization
yellow roses came from china
open in may before our hybrids
unfold pink rugosities and baroque scent
expose dusty fissured yellow pearls
Concordance [Our conversation is a wing]
by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Our conversation is a wing below my consciousness, like organization in blowing cloth, eddies of water, its order of light on film with no lens.
A higher resonance of story finds its way to higher organization: data swirl into group dreams.
Then story surfaces, as if recognized; flies buzzing in your room suddenly translate to "Oh! You're crying!"
So, here I hug the old person, who's not "light" until I embrace him.
My happiness at seeing him, my French suit constitute at the interface of wing and occasion.
Postulate whether the friendship is fulfilling.
Reduce by small increments your worry about the nature of compassion or the chill of emotional identification among girlfriends, your wish to be held in the consciousness of another, like a person waiting for you to wake.
Postulate the wave nature of wanting him to wait (white space) and the quanta of fractal conflict, point to point, along the outline of a petal, shore from a small boat.
Words spoken with force create particles.
He calls the location of accidents a morphic field; their recurrence is resonance, as of an archetype with the vibration of a seed.
My last thoughts were bitter and helpless.
Friends witnessing grief enter your consciousness, illuminating your form, so quiet comes.
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