.Christine McVie, the golden voice of the Fleetwoods and the McVies (she was the wife of FM bass player John McVie) ,the Songbird is gone at 79....She composed among the other songs, some of FM's greatest hits, Don't Stop, Everywhere, Songbird and Little Lies.
I got to see her with Fleetwood Mac (minus Lindsey ;() in Dublin in June 2019...a gorgeous unforgetabble day (and nites:)...
My favourite album of hers is not with the Macs (though it should've been a FM album at 1st, but Stevie said no; ( ), so with only Lindsey Buckingham in tile and her billed first, one of the highlights of 2017 (though John McVie and Mick Flletwood are on all the tracks:). One of my top emotional favourites of that year (here).
BBC Four documentary about her, Fleetwood Mac's Songbird – Christine McVie in 2019.
I want it all All the sparkling things A new merry go round...
The Fabelmans could've /should've been called The Spielbergs :)
A very personal account of Steven Spielberg childhood, from the age of seven to age 18, his family and his passion for cinema developing. More interesting than many of the new films (it's a cycle ,a series) that famous directors do recently about their childhood/coming-of-age (Branagh's Belfast, PTA's Licorice Pizza, Cuaron'sRoma, Linklater'sAppolo, James Gray's ArmageddonTime).
Overlong sure (2h31) and over-sentimental (Spielberg ?!, his own memories...) but a real treat for cinema lovers. One of the year's best films and what we expected from SS in aloong time...
To be seen in the movie theatre, especially for the visual qualities.
Variety called it`the Rare Great Movie About the Ecstasy of Making Movies`.
Agreed!
TBC...
Gabriel LaBelle personifies a very motivated and ambitous SS (Sammy Fabelman).
Ruben Östlund talks here (or direct link below) about his favorite films, etc. With the occasion of French release of Triangle of Sadness (my review here), named en francais 'Sans filtre'.
He also names as one of his favorite films Godard's Sympathy for the Devil (One+One), of which I recently wrote on the Godard tribute here. Intersting to see he apreciates Annette (on my top of 2021 here),as well as Parasite and Roy Andersson, and that made ski films before he went to film school.
This is a great programme that takes directors into a video (DVD) shop in Paris. Konbini Video club.
You can also check other episodes, Cronenberg, Argento or Brad Pitt )
Best thing on TV streaming right now. Not Yellowstone, nor Tulsa King, but The English.
And with a lot of resemblances with 1883, the Yellowstone prequel from earlier this year on Paramount+.
It's a 6 episodes mini-series, like 5 hours movie, BBC with Amazon Prime but in Romania on HBO Max.
Created and directed by Hugo Blick with a superb Emily Blunt and a majestic Chaske Spencer. A gritty revenge western, with one of the best bad guys in recent memory, Rafe Spall. A terrific supporting performances by Cieran Hinds. And a surprisingly low-key Stephen Rea. Shot in Spain, in Castilla-La Mancha and Almeria, where the legends were made...
As a good and old friend of mine wrote me: It's like Sergio Leone would make The Last of the Mohicans :)
Triangle of Sadness (2022) is one of the year's best films, an amoral fable and a statement of our times (or any times?). An unapologetic great satire, a comedy as dark as they come (or go :).
Lots to say/write/think, I got what I expected and more, was entertained (is this the word?) and it fits my world viewpoint somehow (und more:) In den Wolken ). I think it's Ruben Östlund's best, a mix of Marco Ferreri's La grande bouffe (1973-that is something the French might have loved t in Cannes) with shades of Monty Python (The Meaning of Life dinner sketch and beyond ;) and Bunuel's Le Charme discret de la burgeoisie (1972, and lots more of Bunuel into it), three chapters of exuberating nihilism and cinematic anarchism with a great ambiguous ending, A young couple, two fashion models, beautiful but crude in life (brit Harris Dickinson -watch out for this guy (cos he's on his way to the Top!!!) and a special nod for Southern African actress Charlbi Dean as Yaya, who sadly died recently at the crudest age of 32...) find themselves on a yacht in an exclusive cruise for the very very rich and powerful (?). Trouble ensures. Galore. A lot of puking included. No more spoilers here. I would say the 1st act is somehow slower and tricky, it gets you into a very different direction than the other two chapters that follow. The film duration of 2h27 is well justified though and I personally would've liked act 3 to be even longer...
Woody Harrelson as the aloof captain is a blast, and Croatian Zlatko Burik (recurrent Nicolas Winding Refn actor: Pusher trilogy,Bleeder and now Copenhagen Cowboy) as 'I sell Shit' Dimitri is the highlight of an impeccable eclectic cast. Filipino Dolly De Leon as Abigail deserves an award alone! No score composed but brilliant sound design and sarcastic choice of songs :)
I would've picked this one tho (from the aptly titled Human Menagerie;) Great widescreen cinematography by fellow Swede Fredrik Wenzel, Östlund's DOP also for The Square and Force Majeure. To be seen on the big screen! (it runs in selected theaters in Romania NOW).
It is a worthy Palme d'Or, second for Östlund, entering now a very select circle of filmmakers (number 9 after Coppola, the Dardennes, Kusturica, Imamura, Haneke, Alf Sjoberg ! Bille August !, Ken Loach !, all overrated IMO except the Coppola wins -his second Palme for Apocalypse Now though it was a tie-in with Schlondorff, also Kusturica and Haneke). I thought Östlund's first Palme was way overrated, The Square didn't convince me in its last act, leaving the satire and irony for some sort of cheesy human redemption. Here's not the case, ToS being closer to Parasite than to Östlund's own Force Majeure or Play. A sort of 'eat the rich' and the best use of the word 'shit' on the big screen. Oh, also think Pret-a-Porter as a Disney Pocahontas film compared to the modelling /fashion insight of ToS. Also The Square and Parasite were films I saw on their world premiere in Cannes, in 2017 and 2019, I wished I was there to see this one as well. I really don't think this will make much fuss at the Oscars next year, as it's way too dark and cynical for the AMPAS to enjoy it as it should. The redeeming values of human race are very low here and it's very actual and morbid fun. But I guess in an European way, we'll see about that soon enough. As written above, one of the year's best films and a statement of the times that will grow surely into an unapologetic great cult film.
4 1/2 out of 5/ 9 out of 10!
The Title meaning:
"Triangle of Sadness," as defined by filmmaker Ruben Östlund, is a term appropriated from the beauty industry, referring to the space between one's eyebrows where the struggles of life manifest as wrinkles. That is, if you don't have the money, power and privilege to smooth them out with a quick procedure.
***
check out also my post about talking about his favorite films. Here or
I was alwasys fascinated with the last Led Zeppelin album, In Through the Out Door (1979), see I was not contemponary with them so, as much as I was exposed to all I, II, III, IV, and in the eighties Houses of the Holy was was faved, this album stuck with me because it was their most eclectic, weird and it seems everyone hated it. Why? cos' they would not like them to play like that? or just philistines ;)....
from In the Evening to All of My Love through the greatest weirdola of 'em all, Carouselramba....with the keys that would define the 80's...maaan, I'm Gonna Crawl....
Anyhu, recently I got on on youtube a podcast of a Spanish guy, JCM (Jose Calvo Monturiol), obsessed with this album, hid fave Zep LP, who wants to make justice to the album, and way more...He is a lifelong fan of Zep and a player in his own right.
*****
There are seven episodes of In Through the Out Door (from 1974 to 1980, complete with the whole year events, up to the death of Bonham (September 25th 1980)
and also a new podcast of Post Zeppelin now, 1981-1989). even more fasinating and still going on..loved the Michael Winner story ;).
The whole gig takes you to many hours of watching and listening and it's for the most super interrested freaks & geeks of LZ, It's super well documented and presented in such a nice way -personal and subjective-you gotta love it...or surely don't :) I did. And I was talking about ot to all the guys I met and thought they can relate. So I thought this is a better way to present it and share it here. Just for the sake of music...
Thank you Jose for your passion, dedication and hard work, it was a pleasure (and a pain:) and a blast to watch and re-remember all and learn more....The song Remains the Same !!!!
Then I saw them once more without him (2018). It sucked.
Though Dan was so frail, his throat singing was so great. Hair of the Dog if it bit 1000 times...He was 76, Retired (or?) from Nazareth in 2013. Too much Razmatazzz :()
they played Sala Sporturilor in Brasov in the early nineties (the first ofem all coming). a buddy of mine tried to give them palinca upfront....wild...
This is the pic I took in February 2012 at Hard Rock Cafe in Bucharest.. I think he was on coke but hey. he did a great gig.
Amsterdam is a really bad movie. One that does no mov(i)e, its overlong (2h14min), bloated and unfunny. Like a comedy made by people with no sense of humor. Oh but it's not a comedy. It's a conspiracy crime thriller as well. And an expensive period piece. And a true story apparently. (that should've been told differently for us to care). And so a flop. A sign about all that was that it didn't make it first in any festival as a film like this should've do and build up from there.
Margot Robbie looks superb asa brunette but she is not part of a Jules and Jim, or Bande a part triangle. And Amsterdam should have stayed in... Amsterdam. Also it could've been called Timbuktu or any other city for that matter. Cos it's like a Proust Madelaine that Amsterdam here, cos' Paris was probably too much of a cliche (`we'll always have Paris` ya know).
I am just sorry I didn't write about it earlier (saw it two weeks ago already) so I could save some friends money as they went into the cinema and were flabbergasted. Sorry, my bad...
A wasted De Niro (he looks really old), over-the-top Christian Bale and not funny (again with a glass eye!) grotesque Rami Malek, John David Washington leaves me totally cold... a potential great cast totally wasted... Chris Rock has nothing to do but some poor comic relief, Mike Myers shows up right from his Inglorious Basterds cameo and Michael Shannon is wasted, oh did I wrote that three times already?
David O Russell is not Wes Anderson, nor the Coen bros, neither Woody Allen which he tries to emulate in this loud pastiche, with ambitious and gorgeous cinematography by Emanuel Lubezki. Best asset of the film except Robbie's smile..
I am now fully convinced the director (also writer and producer) is totally overrated and not on my cup of Joe list. The only film of his i liked was Three Kings (1999), which is not really his film, as it was tinkerd by the stars (cllooney absolutely hated him and vice versa) in it and the studio (WB). And screnwriter John Ridley who was betrayed and sued for his credit. Oh, and it seems also The Fighter (2010), cos' I just saw I wrote a very possitive review back then (in Romanian here), and I expressed then my opinion about him on Silver Linings Playbook in 2012 (also in Romanian :) Both these movies get lower grades now from me, I always tend to be more generous then and back in time (or maybe was just younger;). For ex. American Hustle I tried to rewatch recently on prime streaming and gave up after 10 minutes. Oh, and there is Joy...did I really went and see that? In a cinema theatre no less...I'll be Amster-damned...
4 stars out of ten, 2 out of five.
it'll show up on disney+ soon, so save the effort...
TEHL/ The Eagle Has Landed (1976) is the last film directed by the Magificent Seven's John Sturges, as a fare to get more fishing money. That's what I've read now and I am sad about this-he didn't care about the post production at all, but the film still stands up, and it's a joyride!
The plot to kidnap Winston Churchill by a band of condamned German paratroopers in England in 1943...wow! Solid script by Tom Mankiewicz, based on a novel by Brtish writer Jack Higgins.
It is one of my guilty pleasures: faved ww tales of what if (Where Eagles Dare, Eye of the Needle, Kelly's Heroes) and the multi million studio bound all star cast A Bridge too Far was made at the same time)
Rober Duvall pulls a lookalike heavy Stauftenberg, how the F*** the got him?, grand accent), reddish Donald Sutherland as Devlin, an Irish IRA member seems to have much fuun,
It stars also Donlad Pleasence as Himmler, and Anthony Quayle has a cameo as adimral Canaris, we dont get the fuhrer but we get his signature :)
and Jenny Agutter, yes:)
Michael Caine as colonel Karl Steiner, the same Steiner that shows up in The Iron Cross and Steiner Iron Cross Part 2, played by James Coburn (great in Peckinph's only war movie), and Richard Burton in a gimme gin gig, how the heck the only German name is Steiner for all these?
and Larry Hagman, well J.r. as a commaning American officer with a moustache...
I bet Tarantino loves this...
Sir Micharel Caine said it and I was shattered..BS
In his autobiography, Sir Michael Caine confessed to being somewhat disappointed with the end product: "The picture was being directed by the Hollywood old-timer John Sturges, and we were all very pleased that this illustrious veteran had agreed to direct our film. That is, until one day when I was talking to him between set-ups and he informed me that, now that he was older, he only ever worked to get the money to go fishing, which was his passion. Deep-sea fishing off Baja, California, he added, which was very expensive. The moment the picture finished, he took the money and went. Producer Jack S. Wiener later told me that he never came back for the editing nor for any of the other post-production sessions that are where a director does some of his most important work. The picture wasn't bad, but I still get angry when I think of what it could have been with the right director. We had committed the old European sin of being impressed by someone, just because he came from Hollywood."
I was too, to find out this in 2022 :(
so Anne Coates (the editor) did the movie...
I also love the Lalo Schifrin score and
this gets better every time i revisit it.
It's now on you tube , you can watch it here -until it vanishes :)
Why the plot failed?
¬I thought my plot failed cos' one of my man died saving the little girl over there¬
Steiner
I still think it's a great fun film and they don't do them like that anymore :( Caine, Duvall,Sutherland, Lalo, Sturges all in one, you gotta treasure that, it was 44 years ago...The Eagle had landed all right (remember the Saxon live album cover as well).
7 out ot 10, 3 1/2 out of five (would be a six but, hey :)
