[Gig] Coldplay

March 27, 2006
Nassau Coliseum, Long Island
Opened up by Richard Ashcraft

A History of Violence (2005)

Canada / UK
Director: David Cronenberg
Book Author: Vince Locke, John Wagner
Screenwriter: josh Olson
Cast: Viggo Mortensen (Tom Stall), Maria Bello (Edie Stall), Ashton Holmes (Jack Stall), Willian Hurt (Richie Cusack), Ed Harris (Carl Fogarty)

A Room With a View (1986)

UK
Director: James Ivory
Book Author: E.M. Foster
Screenwriter: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Cast: Helena BonhamCarter (Lucy Honeychurch),Maggie Smith (Charlotte Bartlet), Julian Sands (George Emerson), Denholm Elliot (Mr. Emerson), Daniel Day-Lewis (Cecl Vyse), Simon Callow (Mr. Beebe), Rupert Graves (Freddy Honeychurch)

Vera Drake (2004)

UK
Director / Screenwriter: Mike Leigh
Cast: Imelda Staunton (Vera), Philip Davis (Stan), Peter Wight (Detective Inspector), Adrian Scarborough (Frank), Daniel Mays (Sid), Alex Kelly (Ethel)

In the last two scenes, Vera talks to two women who was in jail second time for performing abortion; and the last scene is the Drakes sitting quietly around the dinner table, and cinematagraphically speaking, they all helplessly restrained in the door frame. This two scene help to put a personal tale to a representative case.

[Gig] Stereolab

March 18, 2006
Town Hall,
Opened up by Sam Prekop and Archer Prewitt

Amazing experience. With a 7 people band, with up to four keyboards, up to three guitars, drum, trumpet, and other instruments I don't know the name of,it is quite a concert.

Setlist:
Come and Play in the Milky Night
Eye of the Volcano
Vonal Declosion
Visionary Road Maps
Need to Be
Interlock
Pack Yr Romantic Mind
Excursions Into "oh, a-oh"
I Feel the Air (of Another Planet)
Mountain
Miss Modular
Whisper Pitch
"...sudden stars"
Widow Wierdo
Vodiak
Cybele's Reverie
-------
U.H.F. - MFP
The Noise of Carpet

[Broadway] The Light in the Piazza

March 17, 2006
Lincoln Center, Vivian Beaumont Theater

Tragedy disguises under the warm lighting and costumes in this beautiful musical. At the end the wedding takes place behind the fences of the church. Like all the relationships states in The Light in the Piazza, they all ends up behind the bar, in the prison; there is no future, only dead ends.
It is amazingly suitable for this musical to play in Vivian Beaumont Theater. The 270 degree stage, with a tragedy take place in Italy. I think it is more than a coincident.

Solaris (1972)

USSR, AKA Solyaris
Director / Screen writer: Andrei Tarkovsky
Screen Writer: Fridrikh Gorenshtein
Book Author: Stanislaw Lew
Cast: Nayalya Bondarchuk (Khari), Jüri Järvet (Snauth), Donatas Banionis (Kris Kelvin), Anatoli Solonitsin (Sartorius), Vladislav Dvorzhetsky (Burton)

Mamma Roma (1962)

Italy
Director / Screenwriter: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Cast: Anna Magnani (Mamma Roma), Ettore Garofalo (Ettore), Franco Citti (Carmine), Silvana Corsini (Bruna), Luisa Loiano (Biancofiore)

All About My Mother (1999)

Todo Sobre Mi Madre (Original title)
Spain / France
Director / Screenwriter: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Cecilia Roth (Manuela), Marisa Paredes (Huma Rojo), Penélope Cruz (Sister Rosa), Antonia San Juan (La Agrado), Eloy Azorin (Esteban), Candela Peña (Nina)

Leave Her to Heaven (1946)

US, 20th Century Fox
Director: John M. Stahl
Producer: William A. Bacher
Cast: Gene Tierney (Ellen Berent), Cornel Wilde (Richard Harland), Jeanne Crain (Ruth Berent), Vincent Price (Russell Quinton)

Blue Velvet (1986)

US
Director / Screenwriter / Songwriter: David Lynch
Cast: Kyle MacLachlan (Jeffrey Beaumont), Isabella Rossellini (Dorothy Vallens), Dennis Hopper (Frank Booth), Laura Dern (Sandy Williams)

Unknow White Male (2005)

UK, Documentary
Director / Producer / Editor: Rupert Murray

Douglas Bruce's story. I don't know what bugs me, but I got this strange feeling that I don't buy this story. Maybe I am just envy someone can start a new life, literally, this way. Yes, I do envy him, especially he can look at the world as a new born baby; everything is fresh, is beautiful. No burden to carry, no past to worry. This is the right way to "feel" life, no matter we have the amnesia or not.
What make us distinctive? Are we made of our memory? Is there anything calls "true self" and are we born with it? From Doug's story, I'll say there is no such thing as true self, we are containers of our memory, and that what make us who we are. Of course it is kind of scary (or comforting?)to think of this way, as fundamentally we are all the same.

I don't know why this film made me extremely sad walking out of the theater in the East Village. Personal? Maybe the feeling I got is because some part of the movie vibrates with some part of me. Or maybe because the Sigur Ros I was listening.
I don't know.

Stella Dallas (1937)

US, MGM
Director: King Vidor
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Stella Dallas), John Boles (Stephen Dallas)
Anne Shirley (Laurel Dallas)

Well, this maybe feminists' nightmare, and mine.