Amour

Last night, I finally caught AMOUR, Michael Haneke’s latest.
The film is about how a couple in their 80s copes when one of them suffers a stroke, and defines love in a way that I’d never seen portrayed in a movie before.

It was a lovely film. Sad, quiet, powerful.
Both Jean Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva are legends in French cinema, best known for work they did in their 30s, and to see them give such awesome performances here in their 80s was truly inspiring.

Not something I will easily forget!

See the trailer here.

Chi il bel sogno di Doretta / Puccini

The other day I woke up to this aria playing on the radio.

It literally drew me out of my sleep – it was so heartbreakingly beautiful (those soaring high notes) … and so familiar.
After some digging…Aha! Of course! It’s from this scene from one of my favorite films ever.
And the words are particularly lovely. Here’s the translation:

Doretta’s beautiful dream

Who could guess
The beautiful dream Doretta had?
Why her mystery
Came to an end

One day a student
Kissed her on the mouth
And that kiss
Was the revelation:
It was the passion!
Mad love!
Mad happiness!
Who will ever be able again
To describe the light caress
Of a kiss so burning?

Oh! My dream!

Oh! My life!

Who cares for wealth
If at last happiness flourishes!
Oh golden dream
To be able to love
In this way!

Counting

Thinking in terms of one
Is easily done—
One room, one bed, one chair,
One person there,
Makes perfect sense; one set
Of wishes can be met,
One coffin filled.

But counting up to two
Is harder to do;
For one must be denied
Before it's tried. 

Phillip Larkin 

Planet Earth, Earth Noises

I stole my dad’s copy of BBC’s Planet Earth over the holidays and am making my way through it for the first time now. I know I’m not the first to say this but I’m constantly amazed by the footage. (Seriously, how did they pull this off?) The plots are riveting. David Attenborough’s narration is pitch-perfect.

We live in a beautiful world.

On a similar note, I just came across Cornell Macaulay Library’s scientific archive of audio and video nature recordings (the world’s largest and oldest) – it’s now all online for the first time, and it’s remarkably thorough and interesting!

Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo

I have no idea what they’re saying, but I already know that it’s going to be my favorite movie.

http://www.traileraddict.com/emd/68961

Psst…Have you seen Priceless? or Heartbreaker?

Book Recos from Alain de Botton

I love a good book recommendation.  I got several from this interview with the lovely Alain de Botton.

What’s My Line

I could literally spend hours watching youtube clips of the 50s/60s game show What’s My Line where a blindfolded panel tries to guess the identity of a mystery guest by asking a series of questions.

I just love the witty, gentlemanly host John Daly and his charming panel.
Citizens of a different era!

Here’s a clip featuring the inimitable Salvador Dali:

The Plain Sense of Things

After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir. It is difficult even to choose the adjective For this blank cold, this sadness without cause. The great structure has become a minor house. No turban walks across the lessened floors. The greenhouse never so badly needed paint. The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side. A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition In a repetitiousness of men and flies. Yet the absence of the imagination had Itself to be imagined. The great pond, The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves, Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see, The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge, Required, as a necessity requires.   Wallace Stevens

Every, Every Minute

EMILY:
Good-bye , Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover’s Corners….Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking….and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths….and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it– every, every minute?

from Thornton Wilder’s classic Our Town
 

Lately (in pictures)