Word of the Day: aoristic(eh\uh\RIS\tik); indefinite, indeterminate
Weight: 206 pounds
Goal: lose 100 pounds in one year duration
Pounds to lose: 74 pounds
Waist Size: 44 inches
Rowing Duration: 100 minutes, 37 seconds
I always feel great when I've finished my workout session, accomplishing one and one half hours on CC makes me want to go out and do more exercise, so after my streches I'll take Winter out for a nice long morning walk, the walk may also help me to coof off as I am bugged about an issue that I won't bother you with, at least for the time being.
I must still be suffering from sleep deprivation as I fell asleep much earlier than I had intended to do last night and I was so looking forward to seeing "Modern Family," oh well, I guess I'll have to catch last night's episode when they rerun it.
I would like to acknowledge the owner of the house we are renting in Gainesville, Florida. Yesterday morning I contacted her to see if it would be alright if I contacted the cable centre to update the television package to include home box office. To my surprise, and delight, Lee, (that's her name,) upgraded the package for me, she said it would be her Christmas gift to us, wasn't that nice?
Speaking of Christmas, there are now only 36 days left to do your shopping, make that special something and bake those Christmas yummies that everyone loves. I love Christmas, it is my favourite holiday, and I can't wait to watch my kids open up all of their presents, its all over with in less than an hour and the kids seem to get even more skilled at opening presents faster than last year, but I bet I was just as fast at opening presents fast, if not faster.
Yesterday, Zac, Winter and I picked up my niece Sally from her school as a favour for my sister-in-law, Louise, we looked at it as if we were the ones asking the favour, we just love spending any time at all with the kids, heck we would pick up the kids every day, if we were allowed, that's just the kind of hairpins that we are!
Today, is the birthday of one of my favourite filmmakers, Mr. Martin Scorsese who was born in 1942, which makes him 68 years of age, yup, you're getting up there Marty, at least it beats the alternative!
Martin Scorsese is an American film director whose movies often deal with violent and obsessive aspects of modern America and the themes of sin and redemption. Martin Scorsese won critical attention for his film "Mean Streets" which I loathed all through 1973, but at least this movie propelled Marty on and he went on to make a number of other acclaimed films, including "Taxi Driver," which I love "Raging Bull", which I donèt love because I feel it is way too violent, ÈGoodfellas", which I love and "The Departed" for which I have mixed feelings about, but at least "The Departed" stands out as it is this one that Martin Scorsese finally received the Academy Award for best director.
Image via WikipediaScorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo, and the violence endemic to American society. Scorsese is widely considered to be one of the most significant and influential American filmmakers of his era, directing landmark films such as "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull" and "Goodfellas"; all of which he collaborated on with actor Robert De Niro. Martin Scorsese earned an MFA in film directing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. I would like to comment on some of Scorsese's work, his body of work is too large to cover all of it, but I will comment on my favourites, its my blog!
In 1974, actress Ellen Burstyn chose Martin Scorsese to direct her in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress. Although well regarded, the film remains an anomaly in the director's early career, as it focuses on a central female character. I love this movie, it has some really nice bits, especially by a very young "Jodie Foster," for whom I am a great admirer.
In 1976, Scorsese sent shockwaves through the cinema world when he directed the iconic "Taxi Driver," an unrelentingly grim and violent portrayal of one man's slow descent into insanity in a hellishly conceived Manhattan. I first saw this movie at the Odeon York, (for the record) and I remember that I hated it on first viewing, I thought it was much too violent and I didn't like the character that Jodie Foster played, Iris, who was a teenage prostitute.
"Taxi Driver" also marked the start of a series of collaborations with writer Paul Schrader. The film bears strong thematic links to (and makes several allusions to) the work of French director Robert Bresson, most explicitly "Pickpocket" (in essence the "diary" of a loner/obsessive who finds redemption). Writer/director Schrader often returns to Bresson's work in films such as American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, and Scorsese's later "Bringing Out the Dead."
Already controversial upon its release, "Taxi Driver" hit the headlines again five years later, when John Hinckley, Jr., (remember that kook.) made an assassination attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan. He subsequently blamed his act on his obsession with Jodie Foster's "Taxi Driver" character (in the film, De Niro's character, Travis Bickle, makes an assassination attempt on a senator.)
The critical success of "Taxi Driver" encouraged Scorsese to move ahead with his first big-budget project: the highly stylized musical "New York, New York." This tribute to Scorsese's home town and the classic Hollywood musical was a box-office and critical failure.
"New York, New York" was the director's third collaboration with Robert De Niro, co-starring with Liza Minnelli (a tribute and allusion to her father, legendary musical director Vincente Minnelli). The film is best remembered today for the title theme song, which was popularized by Frank Sinatra and Miss Liza, who people complained was playing her mother, Miss Judy Garland. Although possessing Scorsese's usual visual panache and stylistic bravura, many critics felt its enclosed studio-bound atmosphere left it leaden in comparison to his earlier work. Often overlooked, it remains one of the director's early key studies in male paranoia and insecurity (and hence is in direct thematic lineage with "Mean Streets," "Taxi Driver," as well as the later "Raging Bull" and "The Departed)."
The disappointing reception "New York, New York" received drove Scorsese into depression, anyone whose anyone has had one! By this stage the director had also developed a serious cocaine addiction. However, Martin Scorsese did find the creative drive to make the highly regarded "The Last Waltz", documenting the final concert by The Band. It was held at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, and featured one of the most extensive lineups of prominent guest performers at a single concert, including Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Paul Butterfield, Ronnie Wood and Van Morrison. However, Scorsese's commitments to other projects delayed the release of the film until 1978. Another Scorsese-directed documentary entitled "American Boy" also appeared in 1978 focusing on Steve Prince, the cocky gun salesman who appeared in "Taxi Driver." A period of wild partying followed, damaging the director's already fragile health.
By several accounts (Scorsese's included), Robert De Niro practically saved Scorsese's life when he persuaded Scorsese to kick his cocaine addiction to make what many consider his greatest film, "Raging Bull" (1980). Convinced that he would never make another movie, he poured his energies into making this violent biopic of middleweight boxing champion Jake La Motta, calling it a Kamikaze method of film-making. The film is widely viewed as a masterpiece and was voted the greatest film of the 1980s by Britain's Sight & Camp; Sound magazine. It received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Robert De Niro, and Scorsese's first for Best Director. De Niro won, as did Thelma Schoonmaker for editing, but best director went to Robert Redford for "Ordinary People."
"Raging Bull," filmed in high contrast black and white, is where the director's style reached its zenith: "Taxi Driver" and "New York, New York" had used elements of expressionism to replicate psychological point of view, but here the style was taken to new extremes, employing extensive slow-motion, complex tracking shots, and extravagant distortion of perspective (for example, the size of boxing rings would change from fight to fight). Thematically too, the concerns carried on from Mean Streets and Taxi Driver: insecure males, violence, guilt, and redemption.
Although the screenplay for "Raging Bull" was credited to Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin (who earlier co-wrote "Mean Streets"), the finished script differed extensively from Schrader's original draft. It was re-written several times by various writers including Jay Cocks (who went on to co-script later Scorsese films "The Age of Innocence" and "Gangs of New York"). The final draft was largely written by Scorsese and Robert De Niro.
After the collapse of "The Last Temptation of Christ," Scorsese again saw his career at a critical point, as he described in the recent documentary "Filming for Your Life": Making "After Hours" (2004). Martin Scorsese saw that in the increasingly commercial world of 1980s Hollywood the highly stylized and personal 1970s films he and others had built their careers on would not continue to enjoy the same status, and decided on an almost totally new approach to his work. With "After Hours" Scorsese made an aesthetic shift back to a pared-down, almost "underground" film-making style, his way of staying viable. Filmed on an extremely low budget, on location, and at night in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, the film is a black comedy about one increasingly misfortunate night for a mild New York word processor (Griffin Dunne) and featured cameos by such disparate actors as Teri Garr and Cheech and Chong. I love this movie and it is a bit of a stylistic anomaly for Scorsese, "After Hours" fits in well with popular low-budget "cult" films of the 1980s, e.g. Jonathan Demme's "Something Wild" and Alex Cox's "Repo Man."
Along with the iconic 1987 Michael Jackson music video "Bad", in 1986 Scorsese made "The Color of Money", a sequel to the much admired Paul Newman film "The Hustler" (1960). ("The Hustler" was directed by Robert Rossen, whose 1940s boxing film "Body and Soul" was a major influence on "Raging Bull".) Although typically visually assured, "The Color of Money" was the director's first foray into mainstream commercial film-making. The movie finally won actor Paul Newman a belated Oscar and gave Scorsese the clout to finally secure backing for a project that had been a long time goal for him: "The Last Temptation of Christ." Martin Scorsese also made a brief venture into television, directing an episode of Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories."
The opulent and handsomely mounted "The Age of Innocence" (1993) is one of my very favourite Martin Scorsese films (I thought it was very pretty to watch,) and was on the surface a huge departure for Scorsese, a period adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel about the constrictive high society of late-19th Century New York. It was highly lauded by critics upon original release, but was a box office bomb. As noted in Scorsese on Scorsese by editor/interviewer Ian Christie, the news that Scorsese wanted to make a film about a 19th Century failed romance raised many eyebrows among the film fraternity all the more when Scorsese made it clear that it was a personal project and not a studio for-hire job.
Recently, "The Age of Innocense"has started to come back into the public eye, especially in countries such as the UK and France, but still is largely neglected in North America. The film earned five Academy Award nominations (including for Scorsese for Best Adapted Screenplay), winning the Costume Design Oscar. "The Age of Innocense" also made a significant impact on directors such as Chinese auteur Tian Zhuangzhuang and British film-maker Terence Davies both of whom ranked it among their ten favourite films.
Whew!, I'm tired now.
Topics coming soon:
Art
Politics
Technology
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