MaXXXine (2024)

MaXXXine ends the X trilogy, continued with prequel Pearl (2022). Of course he just made it up as he went along...

It might be Ti West's most ambitious yet, more Meta and auto-referential. Plus the whole Hollywood puns and the 80's cheesy sleazy world of addiction and decadence. It's also the most self-ironical, self-conscious film of the three, more like a parody than the others, cynical, tongue-in-cheek, movie universe based, locked & loaded.

This is an article mentioning 7 films related to MaXXXine. Psycho (again!, after Pearl) and De Palma's Body Double (complete with a Frankie Goes to Hollywood sequence !)

Adding to that Sunset Blvd., What Happened to Baby Jane, Profondo Rosso,  Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, even Chinatown... the elevator from 8 Millions Ways to Die, a showdown at the Hollywood sign...  

And that damn Alligator has a cameo, this time on the small video screen, not from Tobe Hopper but from the Sergio Martino's the Great Alligator (1979) ;)

an interview with Ti West (here's my notes on his western, In a Valley of Violence, and the cult film The Sacrament), on the Konbini video store series, about his models, references, favorite flicks here or below: 

His BFI top films list is a classical (and classy;) one.

RIP Nicu Covaci

Cei ce ne-au dat nume ...se duc acum cu totii...

Nicu Covaci a fost Phoenix, "insa eu"...

19 aprilie 1947-2 august 2024. 

RIP....End of an Era...

Fotografie de Cristian Radu Nema de la premiera filmului lui, Phoenix: Povestea, pe 16 octombrie 2022, cu Nicu in forma festiva, alaturi de Laura Baron.

more later...

i-am vazut, ca o intreaga generatie care i-a asteptat cu infrigurare dupa fuga lor din 1978, in Parcul copiilor, in toamna tirzie aului 1990. 

RIP John Mayall

 Just back from the Brezoi Open Blues Fest when this came as a sad closure...John Mayall has gone on July 22nd.  He was 90.

John Mayall is/was Mr White in the Blues. Groundgreaker. Bluesbreaker. As in John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers.

Saw him twice in Bucharest, in the 90's and in the new millennium, in 2012, same venue, Sala Palatului. In 1995 his guitarist sidekick was the sensational heavy Texan Buddy Whittington. It mesmerized me that second time he was selling his own CD's, first artist I saw doing that...(setlist and pictures here!)

Jeff Beck gone, Only Clapton remains. His homage to Mayall here:

BBC obit here.

RIP Shelley Duvall

Shelley Duvall was 75 just for three days (born July 7th 1949).

Shelley is Wendy, Jack Nicholson's victimized wife in Kubrick's The Shining (1980) and that is the part she will remembered most. She lived a personal ordeal through that shoot, got a Razzie for it and meanwhile Razzies rescinded her prize (interesting article here).  After that film her career and personal life never fully recovered.

But she worked for Robert Altman too, in seven films with highlights on Three Women (for which she won best actress in Cannes!), Nashville and Popeye !

She was also in Woody Allen's Annie Hall. 

RIP...

a nice article on her from El Pais