Douglas Trumbull was an American film director known for directing films such as Silent Running (1972) and Brainstorm (1983).
He also did special effects on 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner and The Tree of Life.
Tag Archives: cinema
RIP Margarita Lozano (1931 – 2022)
Margarita Lozano was a Spanish actress known for her parts in Viridiana (1961, Luis Buñuel) and A Fistful of Dollars (1964, Sergio Leone).
RIP Pete Smith (1958 – 2022)
Pete Smith was a New Zealand actor known for performances such as Once Were Warriors (1994).
RIP Jean-Jacques Beineix (1946 – 2022)
Jean-Jacques Beineix was a French film director best known for Betty Blue (1986).
There was something about this film, which I saw when I was 21, which I found very off-putting.
I can never forget when she smears that plate of spaghetti bolognese all over her face.
But the scene above, where she snubs the landlord and throws everything out of the caban by the sea, their beach house, is quite hilarious. Then she lights up the place, foreshadowing here coming madness.
Must see film when you are 21, totally optional afterwards.
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RIP Pierre Jansen (1930 – 2015)
This happened in 2015, but I only found out today.
Pierre Jansen was a French composer working in film. He was in particular the permanent collaborator of Claude Chabrol for whom he composed the music for many films.
He also scored the above documentary Acera, or the Witches’ Dance (1972) by Jean Painlevé.
RIP Miklós Jancsó (1921 – 2014)
This happened in 2014 but I only found out today.
Miklós Jancsó directed many well respected films but you can find a copy of the less respected but more interesting Private Vices, Public Pleasures (1976) by googling for it. You will find it on a well-known porn website. The film is, along with similar outings such as The Beast (1975), typical from European sexual revolution cinema.
RIP Bibi Andersson (1935 – 2019)
Bibi Andersson was a Swedish actress known for films such as The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957) and Persona (1966).
Dick Cavett: “It’s always said that Ingmar Berman [sitting next to her] understands women. Would you say that’s true?”
Bibi Andersson [hesitating, then nodding]: “Eeehh yes.”
RIP Stanley Donen (1924 – 2019)
Stanley Donen (1924 – 2019) was an American film director and choreographer best-known for Singin’ in the Rain (1952).
We remember him fondly for directing Bedazzled, an updated version of the Faust legend set in 1967.
Dudley Moore plays a lonely young man whose unrequited love of his co-worker drives him to attempt suicide. Just then the devil (Peter Cook) appears and offers him seven wishes in exchange for his soul.
The film’s fun-loving association with the Swinging London of the 1960s is smart and well-executed.
Love it.
RIP Jorge Grau (1930 – 2018)
Jorge Grau was a Spanish film director who worked in the age of the sexual revolution which came late in Spain because of censorship in Francoist Spain.
To the illustrious history of Spanish horror film, Grau contributed The Bloody Countess (1973) and Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974), the first film on Elizabeth Báthory, the second on zombies.
To the not so illustrious history of Spanish erotica, he contributed the film La trastienda, the first Spanish film to feature full frontal nudity. The film touches upon sexual repression and Opus Dei.
María José Cantudo was the actress who was first seen nude on Spanish cinema screens in La trastienda. While researching Grau, it also came to my attention that Cantudo recorded a song called “Desnuda me”, Spanish for “Unrobe me”.
In the part on Spanish horror of the documentary Eurotika!, Jorge Grau is featured on 18:50 [above].
I shop therefore I am
It makes little sense to talk about consumerism since consumerism is a pejorative (a third of the -isms are) and implies anti-consumerism.
So all talk of consumerism is talk of anti-consumerism.
Which brings me to the film above, which I suspect to feature strains of anti-consumerism. I speak of a Russian film about the Paris Commune which was titled The New Babylon.
I once[1] posted a lovely still of this film of a woman with a gun and a mannequin.
The New Babylon of the title of this film refers (I just learned) to a shopping mall, with the same title.
Shopping malls are paradises of consumerism.
The earliest shopping malls were arcades, admirably staged by Walter Benjamin in the Arcades Project and exemplified by The Crystal Palace. Window shopping without getting wet! A feast of artificiality! Society of the spectacle!
A full version of The New Babylon is now on YouTube (above).