raynola

And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.

[breakalime]

““As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving - not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time. Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44. Now you are… Gone.””

— Synecdoche, New York (2008)

[rainstormcolors]

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

[raynola]

What was once before you - an exciting, mysterious future - is now behind you. Lived; understood; disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone’s everyone. So you are Adele, Hazel, Claire, Olive. You are Ellen. All her meager sadnesses are yours; all her loneliness; the gray, straw-like hair; her red raw hands. It’s yours. It is time for you to understand this.

Walk.

As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving - not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time. Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44. Now you are…gone.

–Synecdoche New York

[raynola]

The Watch

in the hospital you horizontal, me vertical

i not wanting to know the time you handed me your watch and ring you had never done that before

i sensed mother’s breeze in the room

they said you had congestive heart failure they told me it was like breathing under water you said you were tired

mother silently chanting in my ear “tell your father you love him, tell your father you love him” my vocal cords hardened asphalt a mute saxophone

in this silence this perfect space between us i would like to think you heard me gone from the body that carried the song

–Kamau Daáood, “The Watch”, The Language of Saxophones: Selected Poems

[raynola]

May 1, 1978

To think, to know that maman is dead forever, completely…is to think, letter by letter (literally, and simultaneously), that I too will die forever and completely.

There is then, in mourning (in this kind of mourning, which is mine), a radical and new domestication of death; for previously, it was only a borrowed knowledge (clumsy, had from others, from philosophy, etc.), but now it is my knowledge.

–Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary

[raynola]

“And now he had days filled with things that were annoying in their familiarity, and yet he could not quite remember them – gestures, remarks, fears, anxieties, hopes, plans. So he smiled and told jokes, tried to be friendly, tried to get by. He assumed this was what others were doing, too. Those who had been around awhile. He started thinking that his parents must have done this for years. His mother and father had endured a long, private decline in an apartment, the two of them jammed in there like gerbils, walking upstairs and down, watching television, eating meals together silently, watching more television, going upstairs and downstairs for thirty years or more after retirement. His father had complained. His mother had not complained. And then they died, one after the other.”

— Frederick Barthelme, Waveland

[movieposteroftheday]

1975 French petite first release poster for PATHS OF GLORY (Stanley Kubrick, USA, 1957)

Designer: Jean-Claude Labret for Joineau Bourduge

Poster source: Heritage Auctions

[sesiondemadrugada]

Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984).

[sesiondemadrugada]

Robby Müller.

[midmarauder]

RIP Robby Müller

[pozmagazine]

Does Trump Know the Difference Between HIV and HPV?

Nope. According to this video of Bill Gates.

Donald Trump apparently doesn’t understand the difference between HPV and HIV. As president of the United States, he asked billionaire Bill Gates about the viruses. Twice.

That’s according to footage obtained by MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes that shows the Microsoft cofounder talking to staff of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the philanthropic organization that tackles poverty and disease while promoting education and health care across the globe.

[mosttafaa7md]

The Battle of Algiers (1966) dir. Gillo Pontecorvo

[pdlcomics]

Crab

[thefilmstage]

3 Faces is the fourth film Jafar Panahi has made in defiance of a 20-year filmmaking ban the Iranian government issued against him in 2010. The first three were all small-scale affairs, shot solo or with tiny crews, in which the camera never left the confines of a given space – Panahi’s apartment building in This Is Not a Film (2011), a holiday house in Closed Curtain (2013), and a taxi in Taxi (2015). His newest, which sees him working with a larger team, is almost entirely set in a remote village in the mountains, likely in Iranian Azerbaijan. This shift is in keeping with the thematic trajectory drawn by this series of clandestine films. While the first one focused on Panahi’s own predicament, each new installment has expanded the scope of his critique, encompassing further facets of the oppression engendered by the authoritarian values that hold sway over large parts of Iranian society.

Continue reading our Cannes review of Jafar Panahi’s 3 Faces.

[thefilmstage]

The Criterion Collection’s release of The Tree of Life, featuring an additional 50 minutes, is now available to pre-order ahead of an August 28 release.

New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Terrence Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray

New extended version of the film featuring an additional fifty minutes of footage

Exploring “The Tree of Life,” a 2011 documentary featuring collaborators and admirers of Malick’s, including filmmakers David Fincher and Christopher Nolan

New interviews with actor Jessica Chastain and visual-effects supervisor Dan Glass

Interview from 2011 with composer Alexandre Desplat about the film, and a new interview with music critic Alex Ross about Malick’s approach to music

Video essay from 2011 by critic Matt Zoller Seitz

Trailer

More!

PLUS: An essay by critic Kent Jones and a 2011 piece on the film by critic Roger Ebert

[elizabethellenfastmachine-deact]

i miss blogs

where ppl talked abt shit other than self-promotion and/or who we can’t read today. newsflash: we’re all sinners. <3

[thefilmstage]

With Like Father Like Son (2013), Our Little Sister (2015), and After the Storm (2016) all premiering one after the other at the Cannes film festival and The Third Murder getting a berth last autumn in Venice, it seemed as if Hirokazu Kore-eda, now well settled into this mature career groove, was making great films with every other effort. So does Shoplifters — which has the director once again competing for the Palme d’Or — adhere to this pattern? It would seem so.

After the peculiar courtroom detours of Murder, Kore-eda returns to familiar ground — and returns to form — with Shoplifters, yet another story of unusual family setups and one that, once again, ponders questions of what exactly constitutes normal or even healthy choices when raising a child.

Continue reading our Cannes review of Shoplifters.