Midnight Jazz

Hello, sons and daughters, heroes and villains. Today is a good day, I've decided to share some music with you. Strictly, jazz music. I want to share it because, they have been good to me, and I want to be good to you too. But, you don't like jazz? Oh, it's okay, you don't have to listen to it, or you can give it a try and you might surprise yourself that you actually like it. As far as the selection goes, it's pretty mild and melancholy, just like whiskey on rocks. That's why I call it midnight jazz. Here, drink it.

The Last Days of Disco

Director/Writer: Whit Stillman
Stars: Chloë Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale and Chris Eigeman
Year: 1998
IMDB

My Rating: 7/10

I love disco.

Barcelona

Director/Writer: Whit Stillman
Stars: Taylor Nichols, Chris Eigeman and Tushka Bergen
Year: 1994
IMDB

My Rating: 7/10

I really enjoy Whit Stillman's trilogy, and the way he approaches film-making. I think he really knows how to make intellectual and entertaining movies. I love how his characters talk and behave. There's something fascinating about modern aristocrats, because frankly there's no such things anymore. I mean there are, people who dress to kill, have money readily to spare on whatever things he/she fancy, talk intellectually interesting stuff, are my ideas of modern aristocrats. It is a way to live, vanity to keep sanity. Oh, I see I mention nothing about the movie...

Man always dies before he is fully born

The estranged man on the other hand tries to solve the issue another way, namely by conforming to his surroundings. He only feels secure and safe if he resembles his fellow man as much as possible. His highest purpose is to achieve approval of others, and his greatest fear is having to live without it. Being different, or belonging to a minority, is a danger that threatens his feeling of security. The consequence is a search for limitless conformism. The feeling of guilt with regard to sin that controlled people's lives some generations back, has now been replaced by a feeling of discomfort and insecurity with respect to being different.

(Erich Fromm)

Zabriskie Point

Director/Writer: Michelangelo Antonioni
Stars: Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin and Paul Fix
Music: Pink Flyod and Jerry Garcia
Year: 1970
IMDB

My Rating: 8/10

A movie about dreamers. I love how Antonioni uses the stark desert landscape, looks incredibly beautiful. Also, the explosions look wonderfully poetic. I would suggest that by blowing up luxury condo and material goods is a way of saying "fuck you" to the right, to the power, to the capitalism. One of Antonioni's most accessible movies, in my opinion. Oh, did I mention the music? killer soundtrack!

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Director: Robert Altman
Writers: Edmund Naughton (novel), Robert Altman, and Brian McKay(screenplay)
Stars: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Rene Auberjonois
Music: Leonard Cohen
Year: 1971
IMDB

My Rating: 7/10

Robert Altman's take on the wild west. Refreshing. Western is not really my type of genre, but this is a good one. Beautiful, great music, Julie Christie.

The Fire Within

Director: Louis Malle
Writer: Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (novel)
Stars: Maurice Ronet, Léna Skerla, Jeanne Moreau and Yvonne Clech
Music: Erik Satie 
Year: 1963 (France)
IMDB

My Rating: 9.5/10

Based on the same novel as Oslo, August 31, I prefer this version. The impossibility to touch, to love, to understand the very life I'm living in. Suicide is not an option for me, but I understand his agony and devastation very well. We're all struggling to get through life, aren't we?