If you have some time, this video is worth watching, especially if you love Linklater and the Before Sunset, Sunrise, Midnight movies.

from Robert Ebert & Martin Scorsese: Best Films of the 1990s

ROGER: To me the greatest value of film is that it helps us break out of our boxes of time and space, and empathize with other people — it lets us walk in someone else’s shoes. “Hoop Dreams,” made by Steve James, Frederick Marx and Peter Gilbert, gave me that gift.

MARTIN: Well, I think it’s a extraordinary film. I mean, you have real people becoming dramatic characters. You follow their lives like everyone’s life I think is a drama in a way. And the dedication of the filmmakers was remarkable. It reminds me Goes back to Flaherty where they live with the people and stay with them for years. Again, this is a new way, a new interesting look at story telling. And what’s great too is you begin to see the relationships in the family and how they change, the boy and his father.

ROGER: When we reviewed the movie on this show Gene Siskel said that the best scene for him was where the mother turns out to have been attending nursing school —

MARTIN: Oh, that was a great scene!

ROGER: — and she has her graduation. And he says, “That’s where the crowd should have been, not at the basketball game.”

MARTIN: Just catches you, that scene.

Paul D’amato’s Here Still Now series includes photos documenting the decline and demolishment of Chicago’s notorious housing project, Cabrini-Green, which is where William Gates, one of the main subjects of Hoop Dreams, also resided. The other photos in the series are equally touching, beautiful, and sincere.

I loved it.

BJ loves, loves going to the movies. I feel bad, because I only feel the urge once in awhile. When I get to the theater, I’m usually glad I went, but I generally prefer watching movies at home. But after watching these trailers, I’m looking forward to catching Museum Hours and  The Spectacular Now on the big screeb. They look promising, right?

I loved reading about Robin Wood’s thoughts on one of my favorite scenes – the listening booth scene. Found here:

“I have to confess, at this point, to a failure: even on first viewing I told myself that I would ‘one day’ analyze in detail the scene in the listening booth of the record store, in which nothing happens except that Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy either do or don’t look at each other, their eyes never quite meeting. After a dozen viewings I abandoned the project. I suppose one might try an elaborate system of charts and timings, annotating ‘direction of the gaze’, when and how long each looks (or doesn’t)… which would demonstrate nothing of the least importance. With no camera-movement, no editing, no movement within the frame except for the slight movements of the actors’ heads, nothing on the soundtrack but a not-very-distinguished song that may vaguely suggest what is going on in the characters’ minds and seems sometimes to motivate their ‘looks’ (“Though I’m not impossible to touch / I have never wanted you so much / Come here”), the shot seems to me a model of ‘pure cinema’ in ways Hitchcock never dreamed of (not merely ‘photographs of people talking’, but photographs of them not talking), precisely because it completely resists analysis, defies verbal description. All one can say is that it is the cinema’s most perfect depiction, in just over one minute of ‘real’ time, at once concrete and intangible, of two people beginning to realize that they are falling in love.”

Before Midnight on npr

Already a fan of Matisse, especially his paper cuts, I have an even bigger admiration for his work created after he became less mobile. Here he is in poor health, drawing with a 9 foot pole, climbing dressers to reach higher spots. I can’t imagine anyone else during that time who could have gotten away with creating such modern imagery for a chapel. I can see how some of the nuns were up in arms!

I love the little details that went into planning of the chapel down to the priest’s chasubles, which Matisse first drafted with paper cut outs. There were several proposals for the stained glass, and one of my favorites that didn’t make it was the piece above called The Bees, which captured an overhead view of nuns in their habit. Definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already!

sources 1. 2, 3, 4, 5

BJ and I saw The Deep Blue Sea over the weekend. The pace was slow and natural, the sweet scenes were super tender making the dark ones even darker, and I thought this one of the few movies that examined love in a different light. Rachel Weisz was beautiful as always. If you see it, I would love to hear what you think.

One of my favorite scenes played You Belong To Me by Jo Stafford. And it’s one of the few youtube comment sections worth reading.

photo by Liam Daniel. Music Box Films

Beyond happy for Fishing Without Nets winning the Jury Prize in Short Filming!

I only saw BJ’s design for the film’s movie poster in the beginning stages and loved how it turned out.

Gus Van Sant’s Restless. I’ll happily watch anything with Mia Wasikowska.

Our friends Andrew and Bridget were married on April 30th. Imagination and care could be discerned in every facet of their wedding: the words, the prayers, the places, the songs. It was a triumph. As a bonus, we got to see many of our favorite people in one of our favorite cities.

Of course, I forgot the camera charger and used my phone  as alternative for most of the trip. It ended working out. Enjoy!

More pictures from the trip here.