Kingdom Of Heaven (2005) | Dir. Ridley Scott

SONG of the DAY _ Nightclubbing - Iggy Pop - from “The Idiot” (1977)

Nightclubbing, we’re nightclubbing We’re what’s happening Nightclubbing, we’re nightclubbing We’re an ice machine We see people, brand new people They’re something to see Nightclubbing, we’re nightclubbing Oh isn’t it wild? Nightclubbing, we’re nightclubbing We’re walking through town Nightclubbing, we’re nightclubbing We walk like a ghost We learn dances, brand new dances Like the nuclear bomb When we’re nightclubbing, bright-white clubbing Oh isn’t it wild

©  Daidō Moriyama  From the book “Another Country in New York" (1974.)

Mean Streets (1973) | Dir. Martin Scorsese

Tony / David Proval  

Of Freaks and Men (1998) | dir. Alexei Balabanov

Cinematography by  Sergey Astakhov

"Of Freaks and Men" is both a dark gem and a perplexing marketing conundrum. Pic will get fest kudos, but it's too much ribald fun for "serious"art film lovers and too offbeat in its birth-of-Russian-porno subject matter and stylized cinematography to catch any significant arthouse B.O. Its outside chance of success rests upon savvy exploitation of its undeniable qualities and quirky period parlor hijinx.

References for this picture, shot almost entirely in a tinted-sepia re-creation of period daguerreotypes, are tough to find, but one could look to David Lynch’s penchant for dwarves and Canadian cult auteur Guy Maddin’s oddball musings. Pic also bears strong stylistic resemblance to Steven Soderbergh’s ill-fated B&W “Kafka.” But “Freaks” contrasts strongly with all of the above in its fidelity to its sympathetic characters and the central premise that sex is the sinister undoing of both the innocent and the evil...

Thought-provoking, funny, disturbing and utterly involving, “Freaks” marks a terrific follow-up to Balabanov’s award-winning ’97 Russian box office hit, “Brother.” Cinematographer Sergei Astakhov’s carefully modulated and composed sepia-tone images are both disconcerting and hypnotically mood-enhancing. While the distancing effect may be counterproductive to the drama, it does lend an aura of the faded, forlorn days when the combination of sex and photography was new.

Withnail & I (1987)

ph. ©Murray Close

Hansel and Gretel (2007) | dir. Pil-sung Yim | South Korea

Cinematography by Ji-yong Kim

Chun Jung-Myung

Daido Moriyama, Love Motel, Miyagi Prefecture, 1970.

Withnail & I (1987) 

"I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth. And indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! How like an angel in apprehension. How like a God! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, no, nor woman neither. Nor woman neither."

“Mean Streets” isn’t so much a gangster movie as a perceptive, sympathetic, finally tragic story about how it is to grow up in a gangster environment. Its characters have grown up in New York’s Little Italy, and they understand everything about that small slice of human society except how to survive in it. Scorsese places these characters in a perfectly realized world of boredom and small joys, sudden assaults, the possibility of death, and the certainty of mediocrity. He shot some exteriors in Little Italy, where he was born and where he seems to know every nuance of architecture and personality (though most of the movie was shot in Los Angeles), and his story emerges from the daily lives of the characters. They hang out. They go to the movies. They eat, they drink, they get in sudden fights that end as quickly as a summer storm. Scorsese photographs them with fiercely driven visual style. We never have the sense of a scene being set up and then played out; his characters hurry to their dooms while the camera tries to keep pace. There’s an improvisational feel even in scenes that we know, because of their structure, couldn’t have been improvised. The movie’s scenes of violence are especially effective because of the way Scorsese stages them. We don’t get spectacular effects and skillfully choreographed struggles. Instead, there’s something realistically clumsy about the fights in this movie. A scene in a pool hall, in particular, is just right in the way it shows its characters fighting and yet mindful of their suits (possibly the only suits they have). The whole movie feels like life in New York; there are scenes in a sleazy nightclub, on fire escapes, and in bars, and they all feel as if Scorsese has been there.

Roger Ebert

A Clockwork Orange (1971) | dir. Stanley Kubrick

DoP : John Alcott

My friend’s in the middle of the road bleeding to death! Can I please use your telephone?