Dedicated to Alan and Isabela
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After Volver, Oakland, California, November 2007.
Pedro Almodóvar is on a roll. Since 1999 he's been making one gem after another, starting with
All About My Mother and continuing all the way to
Volver (2006), which featured Penelope Cruz at her sauciest and his entire pantheon of great character actresses. Bookended by these two movies about women were two movies about men,
Talk to Her (2002) and
Bad Education (2004), rarities for Almodóvar and equally great. Almodóvar's movies before 1999 were all irresistible in their own ways:
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown was so popular it may soon become a TV series for Fox, and at the core of
Live Flesh was a great performance from Javier Bardem. But none of them could have prepared us for the complex depths of feeling and tragedy found in
All About My Mother and the later films. He has a new movie coming out soon,
Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces), and a new movie by Almodóvar is always a good thing.
There's one more reason to look forward to a new
Almodóvar movie: a new musical score from
Alberto Iglesias, the
brilliant composer who scored Almodóvar's last seven films. (Listen to -- and be swept away by -- the title track from
Talk to Her in the first video below.) Almodóvar reputedly likes to haunt karaoke bars and sing his heart out. It shows in his movies; the tragic ones are like operas and the day-glo comedies are Broadway musicals waiting to happen. His
soundtracks mine the best of old and new music from Spain and some of the best heartbreakers ever recorded (listen to Caetano Veloso's
Cucurrucucu Paloma or Maysa Matarazzo's version of
Ne Me Quitte Pas). His new movie,
Los Abrazos Rotos, which is about a filmmaker who has become blind, features the beautiful song "A Ciegas" (Blindly), scored by Iglesias and performed by Miguel Poveda (see video below).
All About My Mother
Talk to Her
Bad Education
Volver
Almodóvar Images (music by Alberto Iglesias, Talk to Her)
From Los Abrazos Rotos, Miguel Poveda sings "A Ciegas"
Penelope Cruz sings title song of Volver
Anatomy of a Movie Poster, Volver
Main Titles, Talk to Her
Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye is a 90-minute look into the life and legacy of the father of modern American photography, part of the American Masters series for PBS. All the famous pictures are here as well as rare and early ones, the O'Keefe pictures, portraits of artist friends and fellow photographers, and the work of contemporaries like Edward Steichen, Clarence White, Frank Eugene, and John Marin. As a special treat, Georgia O'Keefe reminisces about her life with Stieglitz as his wife and muse in a rare interview.
I have divided the film into four bite-size parts. Higher quality versions can be downloaded here:
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