Piero Scaruffi is a normal person. Like so many others, he ponders knowledge, language, and art from time to time. When he travels, he takes pictures. Just like everyone else. Sure, he has his thoughts about politics and world affairs, who doesn't? And when he's done with all of this he just wants to rock. Exactly like you. See?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Feb 23, 2006 - 12 comments

"[She] loved as in our age
People already do no longer; as only
The wild soul of a poet
Is still condemned to love".
Ever since her tragic death in a car accident in 1967, Forough Farrokhzad has been drawing thousands of visitors to the Zahir-al-Doleh cemetery in Tehran. They come to lay flowers, recite poetry and light candles on the grave of the poet who has become an inspiration to women not only in Iran, but wherever women's rights are severely curtailed. If she had survived her car crash, the poet would have celebrated her seventieth birthday this year. Farrokhzad was also a film director: her documentary The House is Black is considered a masterpiece by filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami and Chris Marker and critics like Jonathan Rosenbaum. More inside.
posted by matteo on Dec 6, 2005 - 8 comments

The poet of nightfall Twentyfive years ago, film director Nicholas Ray died in New York. Like Jacques Tati and Samuel Fuller, Ray did a lot of living before he ever got around to filmmaking: he was of part of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship, a devotee of southern folk music, an avant-garde theatre director. He had made Rebel Without a Cause and survived James Dean, and the title of the film seemed to dramatise his terrible, self-destructive battles with Hollywood. His films (They Live By Night, In a Lonely Place, On Dangerous Ground, Johnny Guitar, The Savage Innocents, King of Kings) were in love with imprisoned life, but the dark edge of mourning was always there, too. He was idolised by the young Cahiers du Cinema critics who would become the directors of the New Wave. François Truffaut once noted: "There are no Ray films that do not have a scene at the close of day; he is the poet of nightfall, and of course everything is permitted in Hollywood except poetry." Contrasting Ray and Howard Hawks, he added: "But anyone who rejects either should never go to the movies again, never see any more films". Jean-Luc Godard offered another sweeping panegyric: "There was theatre (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforth there is cinema. And cinema is Nicholas Ray. These days, lucky Chicagoans can admire one of Ray's greatest works, Bitter Victory -- the film about the dangerous games men play with macho self-images... (more inside)
posted by matteo on Jun 18, 2004 - 16 comments

"Whadyawant, motherf*ck?" These are the first words Charles Bukowski speaks in John Dullaghan's documentary about the poet and novelist, famous for his writing and infamous for his drinking and brawling and screwing. The audience member might respond, "To hear your story, Hank, that's what I want." The movie opens with friends (Sean Penn, Harry Dean Stanton, Bono) and colleagues and lovers and fans recounting the myth; theirs are stories of blades pulled on the maitre d' of the swanky Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills, of dangling dicks revealed in public, of a drunk who'd just as soon crack his bottle over your head than share its contents. (more inside)
posted by matteo on May 28, 2004 - 26 comments