Paul Fortune's Fake Club (Lily Anolik)

This would make a good film. Does anyone remember laughter?

Can a Person Change? (Scorsese on The Irishman)

The opening shot of Irishman, in a sense, played itself out by listening to..."In the Still of the Night." And when I heard the song, I just knew we had to be floating down the hall at this assisted living facility and wind up on this old man sitting in a chair. I get it.

I knew that...it would be compared to the long take in Copacabana in Goodfellas. But it didn't matter, because ultimately, it's been 20 years, and so I've spent a lot of time in these places and hospitals and emergency rooms and assisted living places...[with] people having difficult times in their lives and also people at the end of their lives. I know the routines. I know what it's like in the middle of night in the hospital while you're waiting because a patient is very close to you. What do you do? You just sit there. Nurses go by. The light changes. Lives go by. Beds go floating by. And all these lives, we know nothing about them. They just become old and gone. And it's a whole life has gone by, in a way.

But it's the mood and tone of those places that I spent a lot of time in.

P-H-A-R-O-A-H (New Yorker interview)

aka take me back to Jazz Fest '07

What do you listen to these days?

I haven't been listening to anybody...I listen to things that maybe some guys don't. I listen to the waves of the water. Train coming down. Or I listen to an airplane taking off.

beast speaks sense

Greta, what is cinema?

Also, on the importance of writing & stories from vanity fair.

"life seems long...until it's short"  captures the irishman

CATS/Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker (Landmark Glendale)

double feature

advice/wisdom

don't mistake the stakes for the challenge. you've got this!

Little Women (Keystone Landmark)

My Mom's two favorite genres are: 1) The Sound of Music, and 2) Little Women

...so every twenty-five years (when Little Women is re-made) it's a movie date.

*Still love Gillian Armstrong's '94 version. Winona Ryder as Jo still glows. And so does Saorise Ronan.
*Mr. Laurence (Chris Cooper) and Beth's quiet connection is a nice addition from Gerwig.

Dunkirk

A re-appreciation with QT. Definitely a film that warrants multiple viewings. First time, I remember vividly a numbness and distance from the film.

Todd Haynes on Carol (visual storytelling/style)

"You'll see in 'Carol' a lot of shots shot through windows and glass, with interruptions between where we are and where object is. I hope that that conjures the whole act of looking as a predicament, as something that is never easy and completely attainable."

Scorsese on The Irishman (NY Times)

But the film could say something about “the process of living and existence, through the work we could do — you could depict it, the actors could live in it.” And he could not resist the story of criminals whose lengthy life spans become a curse that burns their misdeeds into their souls. He quoted a lyric from the Bruce Springsteen song "Jungleland": “‘They wind up wounded, not even dead,’” Scorsese said. “And that’s even worse, in a way.”

“The Irishman,” he said, was not a repudiation of his previous crime dramas nor an expression of regret for how he’d depicted their swaggering characters. “I don’t think it’s regret,” he said. “This is different. Here, it’s the dead end, and everybody has to reckon at the end. If they’re given the time. And that’s where we’re headed.”

New Year's Day