“I need images, I need representation which deals in other means than reality. We have to use reality but get out of it. That’s what I try to do all the time.”
Agnès Varda (born May 30, 1928)
(VIA strangewood)
p.s. i’m on set all this week, so Criterion Corner will be posting much less frequently than usual for the next few days. i know it will be hard, but please try your best to stay strong.
Noli me tangere.
Jan Davidsz. de Heem (Utrecht 1606–1683/84 Antwerp)
Still life with flowers, a fish, a boiled lobster, and a faience bowl, signed at upper left: J. D D Heem f., oil on panel, 46 x 63 cm, framed (detail)
Provenance:
W. von Stumm Collection, Madrid (1906);private collection.
A Dutch Delft blue and white porcelain bowl
INGMAR BERGMAN INTERVIEWS INGMAR BERGMAN
once upon a time there was a Swedish publicity magazine called Filmnyheter, issued by production company Svensk Filmindustri to promote their pictures. when Ingmar Bergman’s Summer With Monika came out in 1953, the accompanying issue of Filmnyheter included an interview between Ingmar Bergman and… Ingmar Bergman. you can read the entire thing in the booklet that Criterion has included inside their Summer With Monika release, but i’ve included some of my favorite snippets below. Bergman’s droll sense of humor is evident throughout his work, but between all the doom and despair it can be easy to forget just how hilarious the dude really was.
Bergman: What was it like making Summer With Monika?
Bergman: I didn’t *make* Monika. [source novel author and co-screenwriter Per Anders] Fogelström bred her in me and then, like an elephant, I was pregnant for three years, and last summer she was born with a big ballyhoo. Today, she is a beautiful and naughty child. I hope she will cause an emotional uproar and all sorts of reactions. I shall challenge any indifferent person to a duel!
Bergman: From what I’ve heard, Summer With Monika includes the obligatory Swedish nude swimming.
Bergman: I haven’t heard that nude swimming has become obligatory in Swedish filmmaking. But I think it should be.
Bergman: So do you want to say anything with this film?
Bergman: “Get out! But return!”
Bergman: Any beautiful moment from the shooting of the film?
Bergman: As always, one forgets the hard work and remembers the fun. In this case, the skerries. We—
Bergman: MAKE IT SHORT!
Bergman: One morning at six o’clock, we were on our way to location, the engine of our little boat thumping across the still waters. The horizon at sea fused with the sky, the islets stood like floating octopuses in all that soft white. Up above, the fiery button of the sun was burning. It was warm and unusually still; there wasn’t even a swell, not a ripple. It was like eternity itself. It was like being in eternity. The smell of the sea, the quivering in the hull, the murmur around the stem, and the high silence — the summer of eternity.
Bergman: And then what happened?
Bergman: Nothing. That was it.
Jesus is Rambo.
This is what the Louvre looks like when it’s closed. What we were doing there would take too long to explain.
Happy Birthday, Pete Townshend!
So this guy asked us to go out on tour with his band, who are called Guided by Voices, and we said yes, because despite appearances we are not entirely bereft of sense. You can find the tour dates at which Détective will be playing listed in full to the right. We are, obviously, very excited, even if it means we have to learn how to play all of our songs and figure out how many fit into a 30 minute set (quite a lot, it turns out) and also it’s not until September, so.
On a somewhat more proximate note, we’re doing an in-store at Permanent Records in Los Angeles on June 23, recheduled from May 26 due to the fct that we’re not sure we’ll actually have the records yet from the record-making place, and since that’s the whole point of playing in a record store, we thought it might be better to push the event rather than show up empty-handed.
More news soon. Stay tuned. By which we mean, of course, stay in tune, using a tuner, but not fanatically, becuase a little bit out of tune can sound really good.
Godard loses his glasses and Truffaut takes a spill during the chaos of the abortive screening of Peppermint Frappé at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival. Peppermint Frappé director Carlos Saura and star Geraldine Chaplin were among those trying to prevent the screening as part of the ongoing efforts to shut down the festival.
(Godard is clearly the Velma of the Nouvelle Vague.)
gives WASP a whole new meaning
New Guided By Voices tour dates
We are delighted to announce that we’ll be opening for Guided By Voices on all of the club dates for this tour.
Booking:
Joe SmythThe Nicodemus AgencyjoeATnicodemusagencyDOTcomPress:
