An eerie self-fulling prophecy on the cover of " Patriotism"

I can't quite call it " Current Viewing" because I just stumbled on this short film by the Japanese novelist Mishima via a tip from a TI reader. I'm so in love with cover design of this Criterion DVD however, I just had to post it. Thanks RD! I didn't even know Mishima had made a movie!

Still from Jean Luc Godard's Breathless

When I was in film- school this kid in our film-group used to sketch "Godard Is God" in his notebook. I would roll my eyes because I found Godard's agit-pop to be tedious to the point of sleep. So recently running through this Criterion DVD the funny thing was to discover how prescient a movie "Alphaville" really was. Part sci-fi, part noir detective tale, the story has actress Anna Karina at her most luminous, a master computer growling instructions to our hero, really gorgeous shots of modern city architecture in Paris circa 1965 and a chilling early warning about how dehumanizing an excessive worship of technology can be for a society. Fashion kids are always digging up Jean Seberg in "Breathless" as the big Godard reference but for TI it really is all about the clinical precision of "Alphaville". Funny how Paris doesn't look like that these days. But get into the circular construction of Anna's coat as positioned against the swirling spirals of the staircase. That's what you call framing a shot!

Jean Luc Godard's Breathless

Last Year At Marienbad: DIR: Alain Resnais: Fox Lorber

I has been having this dialogue with a friend of mine, the mastermind of frillr.com about the strange lure of boredom. Or to be precise the perverse act of watching beautiful people on screen being very bored. We went through a crash course of 70's Warhol Movies (Trash , Bad, Women In Revolt) and have now moved onto the very austure Alain Renais stuff. The big must-watch? The legendary 1961 film “Last Year At Marienbad ” starring Giorgio Albertazzi as an impeccably dressed stranger trying to convince an even more impeccable Delphine Seyrig that they were past lovers. The beautiful thing about the film (apart from the absolute boredom of the beautiful cast) is the obsessive geometric arrangements the director constructs from framing to mise en scene to lighting to tracking shots. Very French in that Cartesian way. The tension and the control of the visual design of this film says a lot about the formal conventions, ritual conversations, and lifeless parlor games of fashionable society. And if Delphine looks particulary “coutured-out”, maybe it’s because all the costumes were designed by Chanel. Coco Chanel that is. I'm not sure what's happening with the rights to this film but I dream that Criterion has it high on the list for a digital remastering.