Author Archive
Saturday, January 1st, 2011
Portraits Worth Traveling For
Fresh from a fascination with Henry VIII, thanks to Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and the Korda brothers’ Private Life of Henry VIII, I started thinking about how Hans Holbein’s the Younger’s portrait of Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, was powerful enough to change history. I guess Hans was the instant messenger of his day, [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Art,Travel by pzingg
Sunday, September 12th, 2010
Great men aren’t always world movers
My father-in-law, Roger Hooper, died earlier today at age 93. While I don’t expect to be eulogizing him at his funeral, I would like to note why I considered him to be a significant person in my own life and a great man in his. Roger attended Groton and Harvard (Art History as an undergraduate, [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Architecture,Film by pzingg
Monday, September 28th, 2009
Plan B for Spain: How to get robbed in Barcelona
11 tips for the tourist on how to help Spain’s underground economy.
Comments Off - Posted in Travel by pzingg
Friday, July 10th, 2009
Flamenco update
It’s been nearly a year since I posted about being swept away by Belen Maya in Carlos Saura’s “Flamenco”. Maya and her young Malaguena dance partner, Rocio Molina, recently performed their latest exhibition of Flamenco energy, “Mujeres”, at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Mass. Due to good fortune (who says 2009 is unlucky?) the [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Film,Miscellany by pzingg
Friday, July 10th, 2009
Scott Walker: 21 Century Man
All right. I admit that I lost track of Scott Walker after “Make It Easy on Yourself” (Bachrach/David, 1965) and “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” (Crewe/Gaudio, 1966). I don’t think I ever picked up copies of Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 or Scott 4, and I know I didn’t follow his cult-like discovery by [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Dylan,Film by pzingg
Friday, March 13th, 2009
When you click Delete All
Because of a dire lack of nutrients, I was in the mood to remove random posts from this blog on a Friday spring fever afternoon. Next time you try this on a WordPress blog, you might think of doing a SQL backup. Luckily I am so word-tied that I have only posted seven articles (of [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Web Mongering by pzingg
Sunday, September 7th, 2008
Total art: Saura and Storaro
While I generally prefer films which are messy, with loose ends and imperfections that show that the filmmaker is trying to do more than he dare, occasionally I see one whose conception from start to finish could not posssibly be improved on. Tonight I put Carlos Saura’s Flamenco on the wide screen–I had been trying [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Film by pzingg
Sunday, November 11th, 2007
Road movies: the Salles view
The New York Times Magazine today published a reflection on the road movie genre by Walter Salles, who has directed three of the best. He mentions Hopper, Kiarostami, Antonioni, Wenders, Winterbottom, John Ford and others as masters who have pushed the genre to explore the movements of culture as well as characters. Now I have [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Film by pzingg
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
Reality bites
If you go to the movies today, you are usually looking to have to endure 150 minutes of flashy, overbudget, effects-heavy gimmicks produced by the Hollywood machine. This unpleasant experience extends even to “groundbreaking” movies, like those made by the Mexican new-wavers Inarritu, Cuaron and Del Toro, all vying for 2006 Oscars. Yes, they all [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Film by pzingg
Wednesday, July 19th, 2006
Zaha a Roma
Still under construction, this will be an extremely interesting building for a number of reasons: the architecture, the concept (hey, this IS the 21st century), and what it will do to a very backwater neighborhood of Rome. There will now be an axis between MAXXI and Parco della Musica (that includes the poor old Palazzeto [...]
