Saul Leiter, perhaps the most famous non-famous New York street photographer, has just passed away at age 89. A pioneer who worked mostly in color in an age when street photography was still a predominantly black and white medium, Leiter captured the ineffable details than can only be seen and appreciated if you slow down and pay attention.
Now considered a cult film, Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 film, Zabriskie Point, was a huge commercial flop, costing $7 million to make — a huge sum back then — and grossing less than $1 million in its brief theatrical run. The director of the very successful Blow Up , his first of three English-language films, had blown up at the box office.
The film also literally — as “literal” as a fantasy sequence can be in any film, especially this one — blew up at the end, as this clip of the final scene depicts: (more…)
The Danish “Dogme 95” directors created some amazing films, and their famous Manifesto, below, still resonates with with me as a way of getting outside of myself, my work, and aesthetic preconceptions. (more…)
In honor of the passing of the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni last month, here is a shot of the ink spilling scene in L’avventura, and then three alterations of the image as it passes into memory.
Groucho Marx, as Captain Jeffrey Spaulding, in Animal Crackers(1930):
Spalding (speaks): Well I’m certainly grateful for this magnificent washout, eh, turnout, and, eh,
now I’d like to say a few words…
(sings) Hello, I must be going.
I cannot stay, I came to say I must be going.
I’m glad I came, but just the same I must be going. (more…)
