Sweet Charity: the adventures of a girl who wanted to be loved starring Shirley Maclaine

 


Sweet Charity: the adventures of a girl who wanted to be loved, 1969, starring Shiley MacLaine directed and  awarded choreographed by Bob Fosse, the Cabaret's filmmaker, is the great movie I did chose to start the year.

It was originally a 1966 Broadway production also directed by Bob Fosse that was inspired by a  
What amazes is that it is timeless whether you consider the story or the choreography, the costumes, music and sounds arrengements and it was the first movie Bob Fosse worked as a filmmaker as well as a choreographer starting a very successful career.

The movie has many fans and still astonishes the young generation that was born in the clip era and inevitably compares it to some of today's clips. There are some elements that are in fashion today in clothes, make-up, Charity having a tattoo and the environment they create.

The most important aspect I did choose is Charity optimism always ready for the next adventure that might break her heart again but "living hopefully ever after." is her fate that is already inscribed in her name Charity Hope Valentine.

Shirley MacLaine is perfect for the role with her kind off girlish movements and innocence.
The three videos are the most known ant the two that have been receiving new interpretations are "Big Spender" and "The Aloof". There are some at YouTube like The Pussycat Dolls, this version of some Canadian girls for "Big Spender".

I tried to publish the videos that only shows the dancing but they are not available. You can skip the first minute and go straight to the dancing part. The music "Big Spender" is a little catchy and you may find yourself singing "Hey, big spender!" or "Do you wanna have fun, fun fun?..." but it I assure it will go away.

Great movie, great performances, great choreography that inaugurated some trends and is still new. Some of the scenes of Prince's "Get Off" and "Kiss" clips reminded of it.

Séraphine, the cleaning lady that was a painter, movie by Martin Provost

I watched the movie Séraphine by Martin Provost and loved it. It is the story of Séraphine de Senlis a cleaning lady that painted.

What I liked the most about the movie is that the story unfolds without any drama and not emphasizing any aspect of Séraphine biography, it is a true story,  with the talent of Yolande Moreau interpreting Séraphine.

Maybe in the hands of another filmmaker her madness, she was locked at an asylum where she spent the rest of her days, her poverty or weirdness, she talked to trees, to angels and Virgin Marie would be depicted in a heavy way making the artist disappear as it was done with many artists.

This is the opposite and Séraphine's paintings are the most important and by watching the movie we get in touch with her style, her flowers that are quite unusual, almost unique and get in touch with the great collection of work she left.
This would be a great movie for Christmas since Séraphine had a catholic education and talked to Virgin Marie.

I'll not write too much because this movie should be seen by those who like art and for those who love nature or wants to reach the sublime, a rare occasion in today's filmography.

The movie, there are English captions, speaks for itself and focus on the woman, not the lunatic that painted. Maybe this is one of the reasons it was awarded.

Séraphine de Louis is currently exhibited in the Musée Maillol in Paris, the Musée d'art de Senlis, the Musée d'art naïf in Nice, and the Musée d'Art moderne Lille Métropole in Villeneuve-d'Ascq.

I just found this video where Martin Provost speak about the film and I'm glad that he says he didn't want to make Séraphine's biography. I'll translate what he says and publish another post about this movie and the artist. There is a biographic book but I don't want to know details of her life. It doesn't help me 
SEEING.

Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman

"Vivian: People put you down enough, you start to believe it.

Edward: I think you… are a very bright, very special woman.

Vivian: The bad stuff is easier to believe. You ever notice that?"


(image: at the opera)

Who said that?

Give it a try. Guess who will be next Saturday, 11/11/2011, at the picture. She is the woman who said:

"A career is born in public, talent in privacy."

"I've always felt those articles somehow reveal more about the writers than they do about me."

"I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am pretty, but not beautiful. I have friends, but I am not the peacemaker. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love."

"I don't forgive people because I'm weak, I forgive them because I am strong enough to know people make mistakes."

"If I play a stupid girl, and ask a stupid question, I've got to follow it through. What am I supposed to do, look intelligent?"

"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul."

"Imperfection is beauty. Madness is genius and it is better to be absolutely ridiculous then absolutly boring."

"Some people have been unkind. If I say I want to grow as an actress, they look at my figure. If I say I want to develop, to learn my craft, they laugh. Somehow they don't expect me to be serious about my work."

"It takes a smart brunette to play a dumb blonde."

"I've often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people."

"They think I'm crazy, ... But trust me, I'm 100 percent there."

"Gee, I never thought I had an effect on people until I was in Korea."

"My illusions didn't have anything to do with being a fine actress. I knew how third rate I was. I could actually feel my lack of talent, as if it were cheap clothes I was wearing inside. But, my God, how I wanted to learn, to change, to improve!"

If you want you can play this funny BBC's "Who said that?".

Update: November, 14

Nobody is curious to know the woman so I'll leave it till someone asks: Who said that?

Maybe a prize?

"Enlightenment can be brutal" Vanessa Redgrave's "The Fever"

This is another of those posts that nobody will care, nobody will comment and nobody will have access.
For the last months I have been reading and searching a lot and became aware of many facts that are happening in this world that made me realize that fiction, especially those that display a dystopic world, portrays a pale idea about what governments and the elite is doing.

I will say nothing else because I also realized that it is impossible to try to share this knowledge even tough it affects all individuals of the world.
I am exhausted and, yes, enlightenment can be brutal. All my life I was never afraid of questioning and asking "why" or "who will profit from that" maybe because I lived under dictatorship and in my twenties it was a period of time that it was a shame not having a political view.

No man was considered a man if he did not read the newspapers, reading disinformations consciously or not, in the morning whatever his views were.
Today saying "I don't like politics." is glamorous and some people say it as if they were above good and evil with this attitude as if they were immune and free of the manipulations of the powers.

What is being done, and I wrote some posts about it that were ignored, is inhuman, heinous and criminal in a global scale. Everybody is affected.
There is nothing I can do and I hate this phrase. I was thinking about publishing this post about this movie that is the first step if someone wants to understand not only the world but what regulates his/her life in a high degree: what we eat, what we drink, what we think the control of our subjectivity, but I gave up improving it's test.

I am tired and I know that enlightenment is a personal journey thou the consequences of politicians acts affects humankind.
I cannot make people care about their own lives being manipulated and influenced. There are also those who are aware and that is enough for them and they use their knowledge to be good in rhetoric.
Just two alerts about the Nazi regimen:

"Propaganda is the art of persuasion - persuading others that your 'side of the story' is correct. Propaganda might take the form of persuading others that your military might is too great to be challenged; that your political might within a nation is too great or popular to challenge etc. In Nazi Germany, Dr Joseph Goebbels was in charge of propaganda. Goebbels official title was Minister of Propaganda and National Enlightenment."

"Education played a very important part in Nazi Germany in trying to cultivate a loyal following for Hitler and the Nazis. The Nazis were aware that education would create loyal Nazis by the time they reached adulthood."

"If you tell a lie, tell a big one." Goebbels

This is the unfinished test I was doing about "The Fever":

I have already expressed my admiration for Vanessa Redgrave in four posts and the first time I watched the movie "The Fever", 2004 HBO production, I felt like sharing but I didn't.

I saw part of it today and again I couldn't take my eyes of the screen because Vanessa's acting always deeply affects me.

Her voice, the way she speaks, the way she acts mixed with her activism, the Oscar speech, Julia, her family, the lost of her daughter Natasha Richardson, integrity, character, dignity her universe moves me and comforts me knowing that she dedicates her life and career seeking for justice in this world.

Filmed in Zagreb, Croatia the story is in a nameless country that has a little of all the problems of the world and it is about the awakening of a woman who never had to confront the gap between poor and rich or the fight of those who are dispossessed of their rights.

As always, the truth bewilders, confuses, aches, changes the reality and it is during a fever that this woman has a soliloquy that is very enlightening and for those who have never experienced questioning the reality of other people it can be taken as a lesson.

"Enlightenment can be brutal." is a sub-tag of the movie and we all know how hard it is to read some truths, how much emotionally stressful it is to try to understand so many injustices humankind have been enduring in a degree that the absurdity of some events makes many people feel that it is impossible that such event is real and sometimes the only way out is doubting one's own sanity.

Funny that we live in a moment where some people are becoming aware about being lied but some prefer to run from the truth therefore: it is not easy to face it especially the fact that we are all involved in the problems of the world and we shouldn't continue uncountable:

"The ever-widening gap between those who have and those who have not plagues me, because there sees to be no legitimate moral reason for this. It is the awakening to the brutal realization that we are deeply connected to the condition of so many other people that lies at the core of 'The Fever,' and is why this film needed to be made now, more than ever."

Carlo Nero filmmaker

Angelina Jolie is a survivor of the brutality of the regimen that murdered her sister and who decided to join the rebels: "That's right. I'm one of those people, I'm one of those people against the government."

Michel Moore is a journalist and it was his character that showed the other side of the country to the woman.

They have no names what makes of their story the story of all of us.

The Dissent project tells more about Carlos Nero and Vanessa Redgrave.

The right picture is Vanessa Redgrave in the movie Julia.

Peter Pan

I don't know why this is one of the Disney's production that I liked the most when I was a child. I still have some scenes on my mind and can recall the enchantment of being carried away by a fantasy world. It was pure and simple magic and it is good that sometimes it can be experienced again when reading a book, watching a movie, going to an exhibition, watching dolphins or any other of these things that make us dream and remember that we are different but changeless. 

Lemmings mass suicide is a Disney creation

I love Disney but, as many, I am feeling a fool after knowing that what is shown in this 1958 Oscar winning award documentary, "White Wilderness," is FAKE. Everything is edited and lemmings DO NOT commit mass suicide. The film was done in Bow River, Canada, and not in the Arctic ocean as the narrator says. Useless documentary showing lies wins Oscar. That sounds familiar! This is a harmless lie, but it is a lie. The problem is that everyday there are lots of stories at the news that are also edited in a way that we believe it is the truth. The myth inspired a game and is in the hearts and minds of many people. The only white truth about lemmings is that they turn white in winter, a very known tact animals have to avoid becoming a prey: camouflage.

Flawless: "Oh yeah? Well life's a bitch, so I became one, honey!"

This is a Rusty Zimmerman's quotation from Philip Seymour Hoffman's drag-queen character at the movie Flawless. Dialogging with Robert de Niro both actors did a great movie directed by Joel Schumacher who also wrote the screenplay.

It approaches many issues but the most important is creating friendship with people whose universe are so apart.

There are some great quotations and I chose this one:

Rusty Zimmerman: "Oh yeah? Well life's a bitch, so I became one, honey!"

What do you think about that?

Philadelphia

Great movie and this song by Neil Young touches my soul in a way that I don't have words to express what I feel. The piano is amazing!

Have a great weekend.

Update November, 13

Ken left a comment and reminded that yesterday was Neil Young Birthday.

Happy Birthday Neil Young!

Reminder: The music is not "The streets of Philadelphia" by Bruce Springsteen.