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It has been a long time I didn’t talk about TV shows, last time was in June 2008. Since then I had the pleasure (well it is not always such a pleasure…) to watch new shows and I have had some great surprises. Among them is ‘Burn Notice’, a comedy-drama/action show created by Matt Nix. I wasn’t expecting much from this show, nothing more than being entertained for less than an hour. At first I didn’t like the character of Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan), a disagreeable ex-spy, neither I liked the character of former IRA operative and Westen’s ex-girlfriend Fiona Glenanne (Gabrielle Anwar). She is alluring (I remember her in ‘Scent of a Woman’ in 1992, when she meets in the restaurant with Al Pacino and his ‘babysitter‘) but she was as disagreeable as Michael was. As for the story, it sounded interesting (I like spy shows) but I felt…⇒ READ MORE

I unfortunately didn’t have much time left to hang around lately but there are some exhibitions I couldn’t miss. “Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005“, a major retrospective of Leibovitz’s work, was definitely one of these. Last September, I spent an entire afternoon at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and I had a wonderful experience. The first time I heard about Annie Leibovitz was by a friend of mine, a photographer who was truly worshipping her. That was just after Keith Haring untimely death in 1990, when I saw the portrait she did of a self-painted and naked Keith Haring (who would have turned 50 this year). I was stunned by how she succeeded to emphasize Haring’s work and personality. A few years later, I read a very interesting article by Susan Sontag, feminist and literary theorist; at this time Sarajevo was under the bombings… Suddenly, everything…⇒ READ MORE

I like gun scenes in movies, but very few directors have mastered the art of the gun scene. I was young but Tony’s death scene in Scarface (1983) was both shocking and exciting (read more about my Scarface experience here). Tony knew he was going to die but he goes out shooting and shouting insults like if he was immortal. That was my first gun scene experience in movies, an unforgettable one that inspired my first short movie as you may already know. But if Scarface is a masterpiece, other movies were also successful due to the quality of their gun scene(s). I’m not talking about classic western films, but about recent -action- movies, in the last two decades. John Woo is one of the best in the genre: The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992) both show slow motion shots and choreographed action in an amazing final scene (respectively a…⇒ READ MORE

The period between Great Depression and World War II is remembered as Hollywood’s Golden Age, from the 1920′s to the late 1940′s with introduction of television. I’m a huge fan of the 1930s to 1940s movie decade, when Bette Davis was Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage (1934), her fights with Jack Warner and the Hollywood Canteen with Cary Grant. Errol Flynn was Peter Blood in his first starring role in Captain Blood(1935), he came to Europe to write about Spanish Civil War and had a controversy friendship with Nazi Herman Erben. Then he was a supporter of the Cuban Revolution and he was a well known womanizer. Marlene Dietrich was Amy Jolly in her first American film, Morocco (1930) with Gary Cooper. She was a fashion icon and she was openly bisexual (remember the kiss Lola Lola gives to another woman in Blue Angel?). During World War II she…⇒ READ MORE

Some movies inspired my creativity and made me write my first short stories. Scarface is definitely one of these great movies that changed my life. I was a young teenager and it was a real shock to me, maybe I wasn’t ready (too young) for such a movie and that’s why I remember it so well. Since then, I watched it again a couple of times and always got into it, waiting with anxiety the chainsaw scene. Al Pacino‘s play is memorable, both flawed hero and cruel villain, becoming his own worst enemy, and the acerbic and classy Elvira played by Michelle Pfeiffer is -still- with no doubt, one of the most beautiful woman in the world. Oliver Stone (screenplay), Brian De Palma (direction), Martin Bregman (production) and Al Pacino is the winning quator for this cult classic gangster movie. That was the first impact. At this time, I didn’t…⇒ READ MORE