In the Electric Mist – Starring Tommy Lee Jones

In the Electric Mist (2009)  Directed by Bertrand Tavernier, starring Tommy Lee Jones, John Goodman, Peter Sarsgaard, Kelly Macdonald, Mary Steenburgen and Levon Helm.  In this crime drama, laced with magical realism, set in the bayou and back country of Louisiana, Tommy Lee Jones, portraying an recovering alcoholic, Vietnam veteran, parish police detective, investigates the murder of a young prostitute.  Though the cast is clearly top notch and the potential to be more is there in the portrayals by all of the major actors; unfortunately, their acting seems, somehow, somewhat uninspired.  The failure to really come together could very well be due to the poor screenwriting, based on the novel In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke, that fails to create much tension or develop characters, and is otherwise equally ineffectual and splintered.  (PR)

See our posts on the films The Company Men, The Fugitive, starring Tommy Lee Jones and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones.

We recommend that you buy your DVDs and Blu-ray Disks.  Have a great personal film library…  Here are links to amazon.com (Amazon Instant Video, DVDs and Blu-ray Disks, in that order, when available):

top image: rottentomatoes.com

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Marathon Man – Starring Dustin Hoffman & Laurence Olivier

Marathon Man (1976)    Directed by John Schlesinger ( Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), The Day of the Locust (1975)), starring Dustin Hoffman (Midnight Cowboy (1969), Straw Dogs (1971), Straight Time (1978), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Rain Man (1988), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)), Roy Scheider (The French Connection (1971), All That Jazz (1979)) and Laurence Olivier (Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), Sleuth (1972), The Boys from Brazil (1978), and many, many others, of course).   This classic thriller is distinguished by some very good acting on the part of Hoffman, as Babe Levy, an emotionally confused, guilt-ridden and rather annoying history graduate student, and, of course, Laurence Olivier as Dr. Szell, a politely, coldly demonic ex-Nazi, gem-smuggling sadistic dentist.  Roy Scheider, as  Hoffman’s brother Doc, secretly an agent for a clandestine government agency, is really quite good, as well.  Marathon Man is also characterised by an effective use of place: New York, Paris, and very briefly South America, and a sensitivity to lighting, all of which contribute to an overall atmosphere essential to its success.  The plot is, shall we say, a bit confused, replete with double-crossing, triple-crossing and perhaps even more, and, in the end, Marathon Man may be a bit weak on logic.  But perhaps that’s not really the point, as the tension of scene after scene is more than palpable and the acting so very good. (PR)

See our previous posts on the films Sunday Bloody Sunday directed by John Schlesinger, Straw Dogs and Straight Time starring Dustin Hoffman, and The French Connection with Roy Scheider.

We recommend that you buy your DVDs and Blu-ray Disks.  Have a great personal film library..  Here are links to amazon.com:

top image: Wikipedia

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Quartet

Quartet (1928)(Novel) by Jean Rhys (Voyage in the Dark (1934), Good Morning, Midnight (1939), Wide Sargasso Sea (1966))   This slim volume, Rhys’s first novel, though written in 1928, is, despite its linear narrative structure, extraordinarily modern, in its style, its writing, its attitude toward women, and their relationships with other women, and, of course, men and the world at large.  Set in the distinctly bohemian Paris of the 1920s, though the Paris of today is most certainly recognisable, Quartet, originally titled “Purposes”, a sad and rather sordid story of desolation, degradation and depression, follows a young woman’s seemingly compulsive self-destruction amid the facades, questionable ethics  and cruelty of the expatriate community of artists, gallerists, criminals and others, from café to café, bistrot to bistrot in a wonderfully evocative, highly personal search, full of despair, for something better in life; perhaps love, or at least, some sense of security. (PR)

See our post on Jean Rhys’s novel Wide Sargasso Sea..

We recommend that you buy your books.  Have a wonderful personal library.  Here are links to amazon.com:

top image: Penguin Books

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Nota: Don’t confuse Rhys’s excellent novel Quartet with the film of the same name by Merchant/Ivory, which, though loosely based on Rhys’s novel, is an altogether different sort of thing…

Anish Kapoor – Leviathan at Monumenta – Photos & Video

Leviathan (2011) by Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor’s truly monumental installation Leviathan, currently at Monumenta at the Grand Palais in Paris, is shown in all its beauty (well, perhaps not all) in a post published by the great design blog Designboom, entitled, in Designboom’s own pithy manner, “anish kapoor: monumenta 2011 – leviathan“.  A true feast for the eyes, with absolutely wonderful photos, and fascinating comments by Kapoor himself, in video, below.  All thanks to Designboom.  Bravo and merci!!

http://vimeo.com/23677414

images: © designboom

See our previous posts on Anish Kapoor, here.

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Anish Kapoor – Monumental in Paris

“Memory” by Anish Kapoor, at the Deutsche Guggenheim (2009)

Natasha Garnett has written “Anish in Paris”, in the WSJ Magazine section of The Wall Street Journal, an excellent article and interview with the renowned, ambitious and charming Indian-born, British artist Anish Kapoor, looking at his work, his thoughts about art and fame, and his upcoming monumental work, “Leviathan“, for Monumenta in Paris:  An enormous inflatable “balloon”, a major departure for the artist, who has worked almost exclusively with solid, predominantly metal, constructions, that will fill the vast, light-filled nef of the Grand Palais in Paris from 11 May- 23 June 2011.

Anish Kapoor in his London studio, with unfinished works and a member of his team standing by.

An excellent slideshow accompanies Garnett’s article, here.

Monumenta’s wonderful official site, including photos, interviews and videos with Kapoor, here.

The Grand Palais’s fascinating official site, including a virtual visit, here.

 image: Top, Mathias Schormann/courtesy of the artist and Deutsche Guggenheim/The Wall Street Journal, bottom, Photograph by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin/The Wall Street Journal

nothingisinvisible@live.fr