Cinebeats (Free subscription) | 17/11/2009
In 1962 Alain Resnais’ film Last Year at Marienbad aka L’année dernière à Marienbad (1961) debuted in America and apparently made quite a splash with film critics as well as fashionistas. As the following fashion article from ‘62 makes clear, women were obviously inspired by the lovely Delphine Seyrig and attempted to mimic her look [...]
The House Next Door (Free subscription) | 03/11/2009
By Dan Callahan "I'm not an apparition," insists Delphine Seyrig in Truffaut's Stolen Kisses (1968), "I'm a woman." While we would like to give her the benefit of the doubt, there can be no denying that Seyrig is the most ghostly of actresses, haunting her own movies with a druggy, dazed quality over which she placed a severe intellectual patina. Something as simple as a different...
Bright Lights After Dark (Free subscription) | 01/11/2009
Issue 66 of Bright Lights Film Journal is now online. From the editor Keep watching the lights... Articles Roman Polanski: What's on Trial? By Karin Luisa Badt Looking at Charlie: Modern Times An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin "Buck up! Never say die! We’ll get along!" By Alan Vanneman Past Sunset: Noir in the West "I don't need other people. I don't...
The IFC Blog (Free subscription) | 07/10/2009
As a commenter elegantly added after Scott Tobias's review of "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" at the AV Club, "Thanks a lot, jerk. I would have appreciated a spoiler alert before describing the potato scene." Really, few other films are as spoiler-proof as Chantal Akerman's 1975 housewife saga, the complete plot of which could be described in two sentences....
The Computers Blog (Free subscription) | 20/09/2009
By Virgie Barlow Until recently, if you wanted to watch a movie, a trip to a video store like blockbuster was your only option. Now, with internet usage exploding, movie downloads are becoming very popular. Following is a list of a few movies that you can get using a movie download site. Curly Top: Shirley harmonizes "Animal Crackers in My Soup" as she plays Cupid once more, this time for...
The One-Line Review (Free subscription) | 28/08/2009
France/Italy/West Germany Feature Film Director: Alain Resnais Writer: Jean Cayrol Cinematographer: Sacha Vierny Composer: Hans Werner Henze Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Nita Klein, Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée The excellent Seyrig plays a widow, living with her step-son, who invites a former lover, whom she hasn’t seen for twenty-odd years, to visit her in her Boulogne...
Cinematical (Free subscription) | 26/08/2009
It's the kind of film that cineastes discuss in whispers. It has an awkward title, and an awkward running time: 3 hours and 21 minutes. It has long been unavailable on video, and only those with access to the occasional special screenings -- or to bootleg DVDs -- have been able to see it in the past 34 years. Those who have seen it describe it with awe: nothing happens. Well, not exactly nothing....
DVD Talk (Free subscription) | 16/08/2009
Highly Recommended THE MOVIE: When most movies claim to be "a day in the life," they don't really mean it. Or, at least, they don't mean what the phrase implies, that what we will see is an average day. There is usually something out of the ordinary, some kind of catalyst for change. In her 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles , Chantal Akerman gets around this...
The One-Line Review (Free subscription) | 20/07/2009
UK Feature Film Director: Joseph Losey Writers: Harold Pinter, Nicholas Mosley Cinematographer: Gerry Fisher Composer: John Dankworth Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Stanley Baker, Jacqueline Sassard, Michael York, Vivien Merchant, Delphine Seyrig Beautifully combining unsettling mise-en-scène and structuring, an eerily portentous score, and a number of expert performances, suffused with significance, Losey’s...
GAMER Deals (Free subscription) | 23/06/2009
Blu-ray Movie Releases for the Week of June 23, 2009 Here is the full list: Inkheart (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Amazon Digital Bundle + Digital Copy and BD-Live) [Blu-ray] ~ Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, and Jim Broadbent Last Year at Marienbad (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] ~ Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoeff, and Luce Garcia-Ville The Code [Blu-ray] ~ Morgan Freeman, Antonio...
Flavorpill San Francisco Events (Free subscription) | 20/06/2009
Saturday June 20 (7pm) Sunday June 21 (2pm) @ Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Belgium-born director Chantal Akerman 's ciné ma-vé rité -like portrait of three days in the life of a bourgeois widow lays bare the rote series of repeated tasks that constitute "life" in the domestic sphere. The ritualized manner in which the titular Jeanne (played with unnerving restraint...
Fin de Cinema (Free subscription) | 19/05/2009
Partially due to my weekend cold and also in hopes they'd throw an additional something exciting our way today, I'm a little late in posting the August Criterions. Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles , starring Delphine Seyrig, will make its home video debut in the US on DVD 25 August. Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco , with Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale,...
Filmjourney.org (Free subscription) | 15/04/2009
Last weekend, LACMA screened the new print of Chantal Akerman’s riveting portrait of life as a series of imprisoning rituals, Jeanne Dielman: 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), a film that charts the actions of a matronly widow (Delphine Seyrig)–and covert prostitute–as she performs house chores and errands over a three day period. [...]
Lost in the Frame (Free subscription) | 21/07/2008
Paul Frankeur, Delphine Seyrig, Fernando Rey, Bulle Ogier, Stéphane Audran, and Jean-Pierre Cassel in The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie [Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie] (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1972). June 14th is Bloody Sergeant Day! I'm marking that on my calendar from now on. Structurally, this resembles nothing so much as a loosely-connected string of Monty Python skits. The humor...
Gossip Central (Free subscription) | 12/01/2008
Morning in Larry Rivers' downtown loft, the setting of Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's 1959 “Pull My Daisy,” the celebrated beat classic written and narrated by Jack Kerouac. In the opening sequence, the actress Delphine Seyrig pulls the curtains, letting...
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