March 21, 2024
Showing posts with label classic movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classic movies. Show all posts
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
Open House Reception for "The Movies"
Please join us on Saturday, February 17 from 4-6 pm as we roll out the red carpet for the new exhibition "The Movies".
Free and open to the public.
Preview the exhibition here.
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
‘The Godfather’: Capturing the Corleones Through the Lens of Photographer Steve Schapiro
"The Godfather is widely regarded as one of the greatest films in the history of cinema. And with the original film celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Paramount Pictures is releasing a special anniversary edition of the entire trilogy on 4K Ultra HD on March 22. Ahead of the release, Collider has gotten an exclusive look at some of the bonus content available with the 50th Anniversary Collectors Edition and the re-released trilogy. You can now take a look inside the film and behind the scenes with the late, legendary photographer Steve Schapiro who captured several stunning and intimate moments on the set of The Godfather in 1971.
Schapiro passed away earlier this year, but his legacy continues on through the photos he took. He captured many incredible images during his lifetime, including several iconic shots from the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s. In the 1970s, he was hired by Paramount Pictures as their on-set photographer. He would go on to immortalize scenes within movies like The Godfather, Chinatown, and Taxi Driver, as well as exclusive off-camera moments of actors and crew members at work. In the behind-the-scenes featurette, which you can watch below, Schapiro discusses some of his favorite shots from his work on The Godfather." --Collider
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Rebel with a camera: Dennis Hopper's stunning photographic archive is revealed
All Photograpahs by Dennis Hopper: Ike and Tina Turner, 1965
The Independant
Saturday, 19 February 2011
When the actor and director Dennis Hopper died last year, it sparked renewed interest in his 'other' career – a chronicler of Sixties America. As his stunning photographic archive is published in a book for the first time, John Walsh pays tribute.
Jane Fonda, 1965
The film critic Matthew Hays wrote of him: "No other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the Sixties than that of Dennis Hopper". Note the word "persona" – as if the real Hopper lay forever hidden behind the image he projected, of the scary, wild-eyed, chemically enhanced, crazily enthusiastic combination of hippy visionary and serious artist.
He was born in Kansas but his parents relocated to San Diego in 1949 when he was 13. California clearly suited him. In his high-school graduate class of 1954, he was voted the Boy Most Likely To Succeed. He didn't waste much time. His film career began a year later, when he appeared in Rebel Without a Cause, the first of two films with James Dean. Hopper hero-worshipped Dean, and was with him almost every day for eight months before Dean died in a car crash. And it was Dean who encouraged him to pick up a camera.
Selma, Alabama (Full Employment), 1965
Ironically, the death of his friend pitched Hopper into such a fever of anti-authority attitude that for years Hollywood studios refused to use him. Photography became a substitute. His first pictures were street scenes in New York, where he moved to study acting at Lee Strasberg's method school. The turn of the 1960s was an explosive time for the arts – pop music, pop art, wayward graphics, post-studio cinema, photo-realist reportage, the rise of the art super-dealer like Robert Fraser in London and Henry Geldzahler in Manhattan. Hopper lapped up all the new influences around him. He was, reputedly, the first person ever to buy a Warhol soup can (for $75). He became a self-confessed "gallery bum". And his photographs began to reflect two things he had discovered: the texture of the ordinary, and the attractions of fame.
His pictures of empty highways, graffiti and torn posters on city walls were eloquent statements of everyday decadence. When Hopper moved on to photographing people, he revealed a talent for capturing expressions. Check out the three black kids on the "Full Employment" demonstration in Alabama (above): the boy in the middle is clearly wondering if the white snapper is going to use his image for good or ill; but his friend grins sardonically as though pleased just to have his picture taken.
Biker Couple, 1961
Look at the biker couple in his 1961 double portrait: the man so handsomely chiseled, his hair so back-slicked, his beard so trim, his tattoos so expressive of death, glory and rebellion as he gazes into the future – and his girlfriend so contrastingly down-to-earth, as if she's wondering just how long she can put up with this troubled, self-preening hero.
As he grew more confident and better known into the Sixties, Hopper acquired some famous friends and put them under the intelligent gaze of his lens. Paul Newman is snapped, looking grumpily like his jailbird alter ego Cool Hand Luke, behind a wire-mesh fence, so that its shadows imprison him in a net. He photographed Jane Fonda and her husband Roger Vadim in a series of loving poses, but managed to snap Jane flexing her independent muscles with a bow and arrow. He caught Ike and Tina Turner in a wonderfully ambiguous mood, amid the carnival paraphernalia of his house: Ike sitting on a kind of throne, fingering the organ keys, while Tina is left (ironically?) playing the role of washerwoman, scrubber, and cowed helpmeet (not that she looks terribly cowed).
Twins at 1712, 1966
His photography became more experimental (see Twins, above, where two bursts of strong Klieg lights blind the viewer who is trying to concentrate on the girls' bottoms) and more celebrated. In the mid-1960s, Better Homes & Gardens magazine commissioned a profile of him as "a photographer to watch" by the novelist Terry Southern, later to write Candy and The Magic Christian. By 1967, however, his photographic career was over. No longer an up-and-coming snapper, he was soon to become the hottest new director around. His counter-cultural masterpiece, Easy Rider, won a prize at Cannes, and was nominated for an Oscar (for best original screenplay). But his photographs, which capture with intelligence both street-life and the lives of famous friends, remain Hopper's vivid calling-card, announcing the arrival in town of a wild and wayward talent.
'Dennis Hopper: Photographs 1961-1967' is published on Monday by Taschen
More photos here.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
HAPPY BIRTHDAY: JAMES DEAN WOULD BE 80 ON FEBRUARY 8, 2011
Richard C. Miller: James Dean during the making of "Giant"
James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955)
"I, James Byron Dean, was born February 8, 1931, Marion, Indiana. My parents, Winton Dean and Mildred Dean, formerly Mildred Wilson, and myself existed in the state of Indiana until I was six years of age. Dad's work with the government caused a change, so Dad as a dental mechanic was transferred to California. There we lived, until the fourth year. Mom became ill and passed out of my life at the age of nine. I never knew the reason for Mom's death, in fact it still preys on my mind. I had always lived such a talented life. I studied violin, played in concerts, tap-danced on theatre stages but most of all I like art, to mold and create things with my hands. I came back to Indiana to live with my uncle. I lost the dancing and violin, but not the art. I think my life will be devoted to art and dramatics. And there are so many different fields of art it would be hard to foul-up, and if I did, there are so many different things to do -- farm, sports, science, geology, coaching, teaching music. I got it and I know if I better myself that there will be no match. A fellow must have confidence. When living in California my young eyes experienced many things. It was also my luck to make three visiting trips to Indiana, going and coming a different route each time. I have been in almost every state west of Indiana. I remember all. My hobby, or what I do in my spare time, is motorcycle. I know a lot about them mechanically and I love to ride. I have been in a few races and have done well. I own a small cycle myself. When I'm not doing that, I'm usually engaged in athletics, the heartbeat of every American boy. As one strives to make a goal in a game, there should be a goal in this crazy world for all of us. I hope I know where mine is, anyway, I'm after it. I don't mind telling you, Mr. Dubois, this is the hardest subject to write about considering the information one knows of himself, I ever attempted."
"My Case Study" to Roland Dubois,
Fairmount High School Principal, 1948
James Dean had one of the most spectacularly brief careers of any screen star. In just more than a year, and in only three films, Dean became a widely admired screen personality, a personification of the restless American youth of the mid-50's, and an embodiment of the title of one of his film "Rebel Without A Cause." En route to compete in a race in Salinas, James Dean was killed in a highway accident on September 30, 1955. James Dean was nominated for two Academy Awards, for his performances in "East of Eden" and "Giant." Although he only made three films, they were made in just over one year's time. Joe Hyams, in the James Dean biography "Little Boy Lost," sums up his career: --"..There is no simple explanation for why he has come to mean so much to so many people today. Perhaps it is because, in his acting, he had the intuitive talent for expressing the hopes and fears that are a part of all young people... In some movie magic way, he managed to dramatize brilliantly the questions every young person in every generation must resolve."
Text Source: The Official Site of James Dean
All photographs © Richard C. Miller Trust
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