glimpse of an eternity

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.- Albert Camus

...

A Song of Good and Evil, by Philippe Sands and starring Vanessa Redgrave, Laurent Naouri and Guillaume de Chassy, played at the South Bank Centre Purcell Room 29-30 November, thereafter in Stockholm (Jan 14, 2015) and Nuremberg and across Europe.  
BBC Radio3's In Tune (6 days left to listen)

 http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/culture/a-song-of-good-and-evil-by-philippe-sands/2016872.article
  
A watercolour of Munich's old city hall, believed to be painted by Adolf Hitler, sold recently to an anonymous Middle East buyer. A question was also begged by The Monuments Men that if Hitler truly hated degenerate art as much as he did Jews why did he order such care to be taken in safeguarding so much degenerate art (in the salt mines) looted from museums of Europe?

Vanessa Redgrave has a small but critical role in Foxcatcher (Jan 9) as the mother of billionaire wrestling sport 'savior' John du Pont. Some if not many ‘rich’ abhor idleness believe it or not.  Du Pont hungered to possess knowledge; the mysterious engine of viscous creation. To carve his own character and other mens' equally within and apart his family heritage. Yet the ‘Rosebud’ erodes and always cracks an end. A disturbingly beautiful film, knock out performances helmed by Bennett Miller and writers E.Max Frye/Dan Futterman. The film should win [is that a spoiler alert;] a Golden Globe or two on Jan 11 and whoever/whatever wins next year’s Oscars, Foxcatcher will be up there in many hearts: if the film doesn’t mirror many a Hollywood experience what does?

Watch the film first THEN see the real John E du Pont? Is he ‘acting’ John du Pont in a faux 'Fred Wiseman doc'? No disrespect to Bennett Miller or Steve Carell but Foxcatcher is inevitably a construct. But then so is the world…The initial Cannes 2014 reviews that complained about lack of truth just roll ones’ eyes.  What the fuck do these people know about anything! Let alone reality! As Picasso didn’t quite say: America is a lie that makes us realize the truth. At least the truth that is given us to understand. 

19min into this 92nd St Y discussion Christoph Waltz (Walter Kean, Big Eyes) 

'We're soldiers of the Queer [sic.] my lads'.... John Boorman's Queen and Country (UK- May 8)


Finding Vivian Maier is on Soda Pictures DVD/Blu-Ray. Did this nanny by day and photographer perambulator amass not piles but mountains of newspapers because she thought every human story was worth telling? Or was she just a loopy great eye?

Tim Burton's Big Eyes is on general release. Walter Keane (movie version): "What's wrong with the lowest common denominator? That's what this country was built on."

One other thought: why did du Pont buy the British Guiana 1856 1c black on magenta stamp in 1980? Simply sound investment? One lone survivor of anything collectible would only appreciate exponentially in value. Was there more to it than that? Was it the adventuring ship with the motto, "Damus Petimus Que Vicissim" (We give and expect in return)? Was it the 12-year-old Scottish schoolboy, L. Vernon Vaughan who discovered the stamp in 1873 and let it go because there was no record of it? Or was it that sole surviving act of human activity and creation and an extant working man's signature on a makeshift stamp? Or is that romancing the stone...

INTERSTELLAR

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.- -  -       -     - Albert Einstein
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Beethoven - String Quartet No.13 in B flat major, Op.130