magnificent.

"7 Virgins" ("7 vírgenes"), directed by Alberto Rodríguez, was not a great film by any standarrds, but it was very watchable. Tano, played by an engaging Juan José Ballesta, was given 48-hour leave from the juvenile reform center to attend his brother's funeral. He lived those hours with the devil-may-care insouciance of a teenager raised in the blue-collar district of southern Spain. By the end of his leave, however, his world has crumbled around him. The title is a reference to a superstition that if you light two candles before a mirror, you will see your future in the mirror.

The Paul Gauguin show at the MoMA was very informative. The prints and transfer drawings revealed an artist who worked and reworked motifs across a wide range of media.I did not know before that Gauguin's mother's family came from Peru. In fact, the artist spent his earliest years in Lima. His father died during the voyage from Paris, and so his mother, wearing traditional costumes, was his all-in-all. That explains, in part, his obsession with the "primitive" women of French Polynesia. His use of the long format in painting was influenced by temple frieze, in particular, those of Borobudur. The colors of the paintings were very strong and sensual. No wonder Matisse fell under their influence.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

from an interview Philip Roth gave to Daniel Sandstrom, the cultural editor at Svenska Dagbladet, for publication in Swedish translation in that newspaper and in its original English in the NYT Book Review:

Whoever looks for the writer's thinking