RIP Anouk Aimée

Anouk Aimée  is no more. She was 92. From Anne Gauthier in Claude Lelouch historical Nouvelle Vague film Un Homme et une Femme (where she was nominated for an Oscar, though it was a Foreign film and it was the year 1966 !), through Lola (1961, which was a subsubject in the latest Nani Moretti film), Model Shop (1969, another Jacques Demy film, in which she was Lola and that is an inspiration for Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and one of the women of Marcello in Fellini's masterpiece metafilm 8 1/2 (1963) , also a bit part in La Dolce Vita (1960). Another great part was in Bertolucci's 1981's La Tragedia di un uomo ridiculo, next to Ugo Toganzzi. Best actress at Cannes in 1980 for Marco Bellochio's Salto nel Vuoto (A Leap in the Dark)..

She was the wife of Albert Finney from 1970 to 1978. 

Anouk partnered up with Trintignant for also the sequel of Lelouch's film, Un Homme et une femme: vingt ans  déjà (1986), but also as Anne Gauthier in her last film, toujours avec Trintignant et Lelouch in 2019 in Les Plus Belles annees d'une vie. 

French arts & culture are in mourning after Francoise Hardy and Anouk Aimée.

Variety obit 

Drive-Away Dolls (2024)

1st film directed by Ethan without his brother Joel, Coen that is.

Ethan was credited as a producer but the brothers directed together, that's what they say.

This is co-written and co-produced with his wife, Tricia Cooke. Also editor.

Drive-Away Dolls it's an UFO of sorts, noir spoof, lesbian comedy, pop stuff, mostly an acquired taste, very much a hit and miss. Nevertheless fascinating, cos' the gimmick of the suitcase in the trunk (started with Kiss Me Deadly, through Repo Men into Pulp Fiction) is here copious to say the least.

Margaret Qualley is irresistible as the boyish Jamie, loved her in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and in Poor Things, and I think she's in for a great career-coming up Kinds of Kindness and The Substance, both Cannes 2024 fares.

Cameos galore, from Pedro Pascal to Bill Camp, Matt Damon and even Miley Cyrus ;)

                                       Dedicated to Cynthia "Plaster Caster" (1947-2022)
                                                                     "We Remember" ;)

RIP Françoise Hardy

Chanteuse pop, actrice, muse du mode...Françoise Hardy etait 80. Femme du Jacques Dutronc. 

Elle etait Lisa dans John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix (1966). 

"Comment te dire Adieu", 1968, paroles de Serge Gainsbourg. Adaptation d'un chanson anglais de Arnold Goland  et Jack Gold.

Only the River Flows (2023)

Only the River Flows by Wei Shujun. Premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2023.

 He bian de cuo wu or in Romanian, Raul Ucigas (not That River Wild).

Saw this in the cinema in April this year, just me and some guy, ran for about 5 shows on a week...

so I feel privileged.

It's like a Chinese "True Detective", as much as a Chinese cop in 1995 can be living in a communist world, his inquiry in an abandoned theatre (cos' people don't go to the cinema anymore, the cinema gimmick used also in episode one of The Sympathiser: "Death Wish")

and i guess some inspirations by Tarkovski -dreams, visions, premonitions, more dreams or aren't they dreams...

music score from Beethoven to Howard Shore's music from Cronenberg's Crash, re-used here. And it quite worked.

quite a curio, not sure I understood all of it but that's my Chinese Democracy;)