What Are You Running Away From

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Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris


Maria Schneider with Jack Nicholson in The Passenger

Sometimes I Wonder What It Is I Could Have Done

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I'm so excited about this Christmas gift from Strath – the Criterion Collection edition of L'Avventura, starring the incomparable Monica Vitti.

It's such a beautiful and lonely film. I can't wait to put it in on Saturday – the perfect accompaniment to my inevitable New Year's Day hangover.

Brilliance, Beauty, Vision

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One of my Christmas presents this year from Strath was Antonioni's The Passenger on DVD. I'm so excited to watch it again - it is such a beautiful film. We saw it on the big screen at BAM in 2006, right before we went to southern Spain. It was the perfect prelude to our own getaway. (Also: Maria Schneider – so chic!)

What's the Point?

Oops, I meant to post this last month as something I wanted for Christmas, but then I realized it was out of print. After that, the whole "what I want for Christmas" series got back-burnered (along with most of the other so-called "series," or "serieses," that I said I'd start).

In any case – I'm going to start looking around for an old VHS copy of Michelangelo Antonioni's beautiful and strange story of disaffected youth, Zabriskie Point. Check it:



I picked up the soundtrack at a flea market several years ago. Here's a sample:
Pink Floyd Heart Beat, Pig Meat mp3

And I ride and I ride

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The Refinery 29 blog Pipeline has a little feature on Maria Schneider's style in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 film The Passenger. A couple things about this.

No.1: I am nowhere near what my mom used to call a "fashion plate" (as in "You don't have to be a fashion plate," which she would say every time my brother and I were over-stuffing our plastic suitcases for two weeks at Camp Orkila, anticipating the unknown bevy we would be attempting to impress). Clothing wise, I pretty much stick to basic stuff like Levi's, Filson, Brooks Brothers, and the wide array of useful items cast off by the armed forces of the United States of America. But I think Refinery 29 is an interesting business. My understanding is that they essentially curate a collection for their online store by picking and choosing products they want to sell from a network of affiliated designers and brick-and-mortar shops. When someone places an order, the affiliate fulfills it, so their overhead must be very low. They drive people to the site by tightly refining their aesthetic so you want to check there first (I mean, if you are inclined), and also by producing magazine-like content, such as street fashion, party pictures, music reviews—and now this blog, Pipeline. It's kind of similar to The New York Times' T blog, but more street-level. There's a lot to skip over, but it's worth skimming through every once in awhile.

No.2: The Passenger is a dope movie. It's on DVD now so you can get it from Netflix or wherever you like. Once you've seen them once, most of Antonioni's movies can be added to the aforementioned collection of visually stunning movies that can be watched with the sound off—but The Passenger is one I could watch again and again if the mood strikes. The fashion and design is amazing—Maria Schneider's style is very current, but I also really dig Jack Nicholson's clothes, the Land Rover he drives across North Africa, the way Gaudi's and other interesting architecture appears so prominently throughout the film. Plus, it's a road movie. Who doesn't like a road movie?

Pipeline also has a great video clip in its post.
Get more info on The Passenger from Sony Pictures Classics.