Naturally Kodak’s Coloramas, the giant photos that graced Grand Central Terminal for so many years, have wound up in the collection of the George Eastman Museum. And brilliantly, they have decided to show some of them in their parking lot. I love how the image is so disassociated from the surroundings. We’ve been doing a lot of that in our living room as we stream a disparate array of content on these deep winter evenings.
“M” Fritz Lang, Berlin 1931, Peter Lorre and tough subject matter. The movie feels utterly contemporary. The filmmaking and directing is so good he hardly needs sound and in some cases he lets the scenes play out without. The movie is like getting swallowed up in a Beckmann painting or maybe an August Sander photo. This is a masterpiece. We kept the disc a second night and watched it again.
“Pretend It’s A City” I loved these episodes but I became concerned, finding I share so many of Fran’s curmudgeonly views. Scorsese’s straight man and editing were brilliant.
“Notes on Marie Menken” We knew nothing about Marie Menken, “the mother of the avant-garde.” She inspired Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger and Gerard Malanga. A larger than life character, Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” was based on her.
“The Dissident” A rage-maker of a documentary. We know the story so it was painful to watch it laid out in detail. This MBS guy buys so much military hardware from the US that we’ll let this slide. A reporter, Khashoggi, is sawed into pieces in the video conference room of an embassy while the action is streamed to the boss. and then some dude walks out past Khashoggi’s widow while wearing Khashoggi’s clothes.
“Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold” We watched for a second time. Just because she is brilliant and beautiful.
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Local cable here has a movie channel up in the hundreds that shows a lot of Noir movies, and the other nite they showed 2 from the late 40s that were directed by Fritz Lang. Never knew about them. He was a great visual story teller, maybe made stronger by being blind in 1 eye.
I believe those Coloramas were displayed at Grand Central for one month , and then they post a new one. After they were done with GC , Kodak would disply them at Kodak’s B-28 Visitor Center for a month . Second hand roses . But cool , none the less.