Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick (1959)

One of the earliest short films from Jean-Luc Godard. It's a comic Shakespearean style story of 21 B&W minutes about two students in Paris, Charlotte and Véronique, who get picked up by the same guy, Patrick, different times of the day, and are being convinced to go out on a date with him. All these on Ludwig Van Beethoven music. The funniest part is when the two girls happily talk to each other about the nice guy they met, little thinking they have the same name... 

The film had a remake of 11 minutes by Etienne Faure in 1992 named  Tous les garçons.

Ismail Kadare

Born in 1936, Ismail Kadare is an Albanian writer winner of the Prix Mondial Cino del Duca award in 1992 and Booker International Prize in 2005.  He's a leading figure of Albanian culture from the 1960s. 

He grew up during WWII years, witnessing his country being occupied by Italian, German and Greek army, which, of course, influenced his writings.

I read two of them. 

The Pyramid (1992) - is a political comedy of life in Albania under communism, wrapped in a story of the ancient Egypt.

The Palace of Dreams (1981) - a political allegory of totalitarianism in which work is life and the government controls the subconscious. The main character, Mark-Alem, has a new job in this Palace of Dreams, to select, sort and then interpret people's dreams with the final aim to discover the crucial "master-dream", which will help the government to guide it's policy. 

1001 ...

... movies you must see before you die - a book you should read ... if you are a film fan and a very optimistic person to hope to see at least half those films. After getting that big book, before beginning reading it, I was proudly thinking about the many movies I've seen so far. Then I began skimming through the good edited book, recognizing many titles, from which a few I've seen, but from all the 1001 ... The feeling I have now is close to frustration. Of not having seen lots of the recommended movies. Or maybe not frustration just an uncomfortable feeling about this ... idea. 

Starting with George Melies' Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902) and ending with Tsotsi (2005) by Gavin Hood, the book chronologically presents various worldwide critics choices for the 1001 movies one must see. Edited by Steven Jay Schneider, it was especially popular in Australia. Here World Movies, an Australian subscription television channel that broadcasts foreign films, together with SBS (Special Broadcasting Service - one of the two government funded Australian public broadcasting radio and TV networks, the other being ABC) selected 25 titles from the book and ran them once a week in spring/summer 2005.

The 25 chosen films were:

Nosferatu, a Symphony of Terror (1922) - dir. F.W. Murnau

The Battleship Potemkin (1924) - dir. Sergei Eisenstein

Metropolis (1927) - dir. Fritz Lang

Un Chien Andalou (1928) - dir. Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí

Boudou Saved from Drowning (1932) - dir. Jean Renoir

Modern Times (1936) - dir. Charlie Chaplin

The Rules of the Game (1939) - dir. Jean Renoir

Les Enfants du Paradis (1944) - dir. Marcel Carné

Umberto D. (1952) - dir. Vittorio de Sica

Seven Samurai (1954) - dir. Akira Kurosawa

The Seventh Seal (1957) - dir. Ingmar Bergman

Mon Oncle (1958) - dir. Jacques Tati

Breathless (1960) - dir. Jean-Luc Godard

8 1/2  (1963) - dir. Federico Fellini

The Battle of Algiers (1965) - dir. Gillo Pontecorvo

Blowup (1966) - dir. Michelangelo Antonioni 

Kes (1969) - dir. Ken Loach

Solaris (1972) - dir. Andrei Tarkovsky

The Last Tango in Paris (1972) - dir. Bernardo Bertolucci

Dersu Uzala (1975) - dir. Akira Kurosawa

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) - dir. Pedro Almodóvar 

Raise the Red Lantern (1991) - dir. Zhang Yimou

Trois Couleurs: Bleu (1993) - dir. Krzysztof Kieslowki 

Breaking the Waves (1996) - dir. Lars von Trier

City of God (2002) - dir. Fernando Meireilles & Kátia Lund

 

From this 25 I've seen 1, 2 ... 3.

momo

1973 - the year Michael Ende's book Momo was published. Also known as The Grey Gentlemen or The Men in Grey. The original German title is fully translated as Momo, or the strange story of the time-thieves and the child who brought the stolen time back to the people. This title actually tells you the synopsis, so to say. Like the title in Jesse James movie.

Momo is the little girl in an unnamed town in Italy that came nobody knows where from and is the person who listens. Listens. And by that, by listening and occasionally asking simple questions, gives solutions to her friends and other people talking to her. They have the solutions and the answers themselves, they just don't think enough about this, or maybe not from the right point of view. Which after me is the simple point of view, so to say. I think that's Momo's point of view. Because she's just a kid that doesn't yet know how to unnecessarily complicate her judgment.

I only read this novel by Michael Ende, nothing else yet, I started reading The Neverending Story these days, but I know and Momo proves it a lot that the author talks about time and its importance, friendship, the value of simple things in life using fantasy and symbolism. Both in Momo and The Neverending Story he also highlights the contrast between childhood and adult society.

Literature professor Linda Goodhew stated that: "One of the most amazing things about Momo is that it was published in 1973. Since then, the temporal nightmare it depicts has become our reality". I agree.

Momo was first made into film in 1986, an Italian/German production, then in 2001 Enzo D'Alo adapted the novel for scripting and directed the movie this time named Momo alla conquista del tempo (Italy/Germany). This year, 2008, a Momo TV mini-series will be produced. And I am looking forward to see it.

jesse james

or The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), a film I've seen and enjoyed these days.

Jesse Woodson James(1847-1882) was a famous train robber who continued to be notorious even after his death. Member of James-Younger gang, he ended up murdered by Robert Ford, who idolized Jesse James since childhood, but gradually became resentful of him.

Brad Pitt had a great performance, maybe he's best ever. The image is wonderful, I liked the edit very much, even if from time to time it felt boring, I don't know, maybe it was done on purpose like this. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis scored it. 160 minutes of worth-seeing film.

#Brad Pitt had a clause in his contract that the name of the movie was NOT to be changed.

The Great Train Robbery (1903) - a film by E.S. Porter which came out in Jesse James' glorious time.