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Post by Deleted on Jun 30, 2015 18:28:46 GMT
We just firmed up plans to go to NY in September for 2 weeks. In that the family homestead in Bridgehampton is rented and we will not be able to stay there, we have been graciously invited to spend ten days in Sag Harbor at the home of D.A. Pennebaker, American documentary filmmaker ( "(Don't Look Back" "The War Room" etc. ) as his daughter' Lynley's guest at at a house on the water not far from Bridgehampton. I hope to be able to interview him in an informal way during our stay and so ecstatic that we have this opportunity to spend some time with this great artist.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2015 21:49:58 GMT
It's actually kind of depressing how awkward this is.
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Post by questa on Aug 21, 2015 0:50:27 GMT
"Bule" [boo-lay]is the Indonesian word for albino. It is also a mildly derogative word for "white person". I lived in a small rural village in Indonesia for 2 years and was the only white person there, in fact the first one that many of the people had seen close up. The people made me uncomfortable by deferring to me, best seat in the bus, service in market/shops, first served at a meal and they stroked my forearms wishing that they had fair skin. One day I referred to myself as "bule" and they protested. I said I was not any bule but their bule. Amid the laughter things changed subtly. I was shown off to visitors to the village as "Our bule" and the men would call "Hello Mrs Bule" on the way to the fields. I don't know what really changed, or how, but I think humour and living simply as they did helped.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 7, 2015 23:18:40 GMT
This documentary on the Normans is fascinating. I've just finished the first part and am very looking forward to the rest of it:
Part One ~
Part Two ~
Part Three ~
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Post by htmb on Sept 14, 2015 22:26:30 GMT
I'm not sure if this documentary about the September 11 evacuation by water of over 500,000 New York City civilians has been posted here. I've just seen it on social media today for the first time.
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Post by questa on Sept 15, 2015 0:13:10 GMT
I saw it recently as well...very moving,but I would have to take issue on the statement that the flotilla's effort was greater than Dunkirk. (10:01-10:00) Here they were moving on a river for shorter runs, Dunkirk they were crossing the English Channel, at night and day, under fire and in less seaworthy craft. Still, an excellent documentary.
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Post by htmb on Sept 15, 2015 0:51:16 GMT
What I thought I heard was that the NYC World Trade boat evacuation, in terms of the total number of people moved, was even greater in size than those evacuated at Dunkirk. I took it to be a way to put the NYC situation into some sort of context in terms of size. I'll have to go back and listen to that part again. Maybe I missed something.
Having just spent a lot of time in that area of Manhattan, and now having a child working directly across from the World Trade Center location, I found myself constantly wondering about how people were cleared out of an area that is surrounded by water on three sides. I had assumed there was boat involvement, but had not heard this story.
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Post by questa on Sept 15, 2015 2:05:44 GMT
In raw numbers more people were moved and in less time in NYC. I was just pointing out that you can't compare apples with oranges...they were 2 totally different scenarios, both heroic. The script implies (to my understanding) that NYC was better than Dunkirk.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 22, 2015 17:35:12 GMT
Went to see The Many Lives of William Klein last night. Oddly, the full film is available on youtube, but not the trailer. I really appreciate the films shown at the Photography Center here. There is something about sitting in a darkened room, seeing the images blown up and hearing about how the photographer developed that seems to buff my own eyeballs into being more alert about what might constitute a good photograph. More info on Klein: www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/18196/1/the-godfather-of-street-photography
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 29, 2015 16:24:46 GMT
The Babushkas of Chernobyl -- screening in London this weekend & in New York in mid-November ( screenings) But amid the environmental devastation, the human story of Chernobyl is often lost. That story is embodied in an unlikely community of some 130 people, known as “self-settlers”, who defiantly live inside the exclusion zone.Almost all of them are women. About 116,000 people were evacuated from the zone at the time of the accident, but about 1,200 of them refused to stay away. The women who remain, now in their 70s and 80s, are the last survivors of those who illegally returned to their ancestral homes shortly after the accident.A new film by Holly Morris and Anne Bogart, screening in London this weekend, follows the unlikely group of rebels as they continue to go about their daily lives in the toxic and lonely environment.Click the text above for the full article and a trailer for the film. More information here:
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Post by Deleted on Oct 29, 2015 17:35:15 GMT
I've seen quite a few stories about these people and their attitudes are always amazing. I even remember a work of fiction about refugees fleeing across Eastern Europe who accidentally wander into this zone and meet the old people there.
Meanwhile, earlier this week I went to see La glace et le ciel, about antarctic scientist Claude Lorius. It is almost a bit too uplifting, but since the filmmaker is also responsible for movies like March of the Penguins, it was unlikely to be pessimistic in spite of the warnings about climate change. Anyway, I thought it was nice to make a movie about this guy while he is still alive instead of waiting until he is dead.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 29, 2015 18:14:54 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2015 15:12:45 GMT
So many of these look real interesting. Especially, BOATLIFT.
Yesterday we watched a very cool documentary Keith Richards: Under the Influence. (Not at all what the title infers). It is all about the man and his music. No gossip, "war stories" about his "bad boy" days. Lots of vintage footage and tidbits of musical trivia. Interviews with friends (I never knew that he had collaborated with Tom Waits). Humble, unpretentious,funny, generous with his praise of other musicians. There's one particular scene where he lovingly describes the musical influence his mother had on him, introducing him to artists such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Louis Armstrong.
If you are a Stones fan, especially Keith Richards, you must see this film.
(It's a recent Netflix production).
As an aside, many years ago, (circa 1994) Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes fame interviewed Mick Jagger and Keith Richards separately here in New Orleans. Apparently Bradley had each one choose where they would like to be interviewed. Jagger chose Antoine's restaurant, a very old high society pretentious French Quarter establishment. Richards chose The Maple Leaf Bar, a funky music club around the corner from us. The contrast spoke volumes.
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Post by bjd on Nov 7, 2015 19:53:36 GMT
I just saw a documentary about poor people in Madagascar and how they manage to make so much from so little, but mention it here because it's really a good movie and doesn't feel preachy. It does make me feel rather ashamed about how well off so many of us are, how lucky, yet we complain about petty things. Well, I can't manage to insert the video here, but it's called Asy Dasy. Maybe this link will work: www.allocine.fr/video/player_gen_cmedia=19551718&cfilm=231019.html
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2015 20:33:13 GMT
Ady Gasy perhaps...
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 27, 2015 21:43:01 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2016 17:11:35 GMT
Today I went to see Janis: Little Girl Blue about the life of Janis Joplin. Since she died more than 45 years ago, one of the most amazing things was to see the modern interviews of the friends, family and other musicians who survived those times since of course in the archive footage they are all 20 year old hippies. Janis Joplin herself would be 73 years old now, so the imagination can run wild about how she would look now -- bag lady with wild hair or all calmed down and dignified like Joan Baez? There were quite a few people in the cinema, but just about all of them were the same age as I. Hmmmm... how could that be?
I certainly didn't know that she had slept with Dick Cavett.
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Post by htmb on Jan 9, 2016 19:02:10 GMT
Dick Cavett? For real?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2016 19:07:13 GMT
Well, that is what he *almost* said in the film (oh, he is old now!) before sort of backing down and saying that his memory might be deficient.
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Post by htmb on Jan 9, 2016 19:30:49 GMT
There's so much I don't remember about Janis Joplin, I think I might like seeing this documentary some day. There's an interesting interview on-line. Her last, with Dick Cavett, a few days before she died.
I happened on a documentary about Lance Armstrong. What a vicious liar. A total disappointment as a human.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 9, 2016 19:45:20 GMT
Dick Cavett, huh? That's cool!
I am dying to see the documentary, as I am a huge Janis fan. Kind of in line with surprising sex partners, I once read that when she went back to Port Arthur to visit, she would go golfing with her aunts.
The report on the Janis documentary reminds me that I forgot to report that I watched Amy the other night. It's a long and very affecting look at her trajectory and flame-out, made even more compelling because of all the footage of her pre-fame. Because I am such a big fan of hers, I always refused to look at those youtube videos showing her screwing up on stage near the end. The documentary shows some of that, but compassionately. There is a clip of her at some massive music fest with fans extending back for at least an acre, all cheering and yelling her name. In the closeup of her face, she looks like she's trying to climb inside of herself like a snail, poor little girl. No matter how much you admire her talent, in the sections on the early part of her career, where she is happily singing in the studio and just nailing a song, you'll be blown away all over again at how good she was.
Her effing father should be put in jail and her nasty-ass husband is even viler than you already think he is.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2016 21:22:09 GMT
I'm sure the Amy Winehouse documentary was excellent, but I did not go see it when it was playing in Paris. She had some great songs, but she was a bit too creepy for me, so I was never attracted to the person. To be honest, I was never all that much attracted to Janis Joplin either (once again, even though she had some great songs), but she was part of my youth and I can't ignore some of the barriers that she broke down. My main memory of her is sitting at home during (I think) summer vacation from college and watching the Dick Cavett show one afternoon with my mother. It was when she said that she was going to return to Port Arthur for her 10-year high school reunion. Ha ha, there were plenty of laughs about that, especially when she said something along the lines of "oops, I shouldn't have said that. It was going to be a surprise." But then she went on to say how much she had suffered in high school and that everybody hated her and she was going back to prove that she had become someone and she wanted them all to see that they were wrong. She choked on those words and burst into tears, and what really marked me was that it was the very first time that I had ever seen anybody cry on an afternoon talk show, especially something as innocuous as Dick Cavett. It was one of the "television moments" of my life, just like seeing Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald live on a New Orleans television channel. Anyway, the documentary shows a moment or two of that television appearance but not at all when she cried.
In the 21st century, it has become obligatory for people to burst into tears at the drop of a hat.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 9, 2016 22:26:03 GMT
Yet another simul-posting, wherein it looks as though I'm replying to Htmb's comment about the JJ interview on Dick Cavett, whereas I was really replying to Kerouac's post, as I didn't see Htmb's until just now.
Interesting remark about all the crying nowadays. Remember when we all made fun of Jimmy Swaggert? Now it's de rigeur to spill your guts everywhere.
Re: Lance Armstrong -- my genetic makeup prevents me from having any interest in any sports figures whatsoever. Well, for sports either.
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Post by cynthia on Jan 10, 2016 3:37:06 GMT
From time to time, there are Dick Cavett essays in the New York Times, usually with videos. But these are not necessarily about his talk show but essays about famous people of the past and some encounter or other he had with them. For example, there is an essay about running into Nixon, after he was out of office, in a restaurant on the New Jersey shore. With the perspective of time, these essays by Cavett are truly fascinating. I know the NYT requires a subscription to see everything, but a limited number of articles can be seen without signing up.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 10, 2016 4:12:12 GMT
I always thought Dick Cavett was a sensitive and insightful person.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 22, 2016 23:23:01 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2016 22:10:35 GMT
I don't expect anybody here to really want to watch this for 93 minutes, but the very first scene at about the 1'30" mark is already stunning.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 24, 2016 5:12:04 GMT
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Post by Kimby on Feb 24, 2016 14:26:17 GMT
American Masters is always worth watching. They have done Les Paul, the inventor of the electric guitar and over-dubbing (multi-track recording). His recordings with his wife Mary Ford were amazing in their virtuosity.
Just saw the American Master treatment of Carole King. Also excellent.
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Post by Kimby on Feb 24, 2016 14:28:29 GMT
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