Vivian Maier

A woman is born in NYC, grows up in France, returns to the States and works as a nanny for about 40 years. While she is working as a nanny, she also take photographs. Thousands and thousands of photographs. And never shows them to anyone.

Finding Vivian Maier

Her photos are incredible. And I love how private she was. Especially in our celebrity culture now, to have someone who was so passionate about her work, so talented and persistent, and yet avoided the public eye...it's very moving to me.

To make art for the act of making it alone - I have a lot of respect for that.

I can't wait to see the documentary.

Article on Maier.

Coffee table book of her photographs.

The Trip

Come, come, Mr Bond, you get as much pleasure from killing as I do.

This movie, and in particular this scene, is fucking hilarious. If you haven't seen it, you should.

"Hanna" - cool, cool, cool... what?

I was SO excited to see the thriller "Hanna" about the daughter who is trained to be an assassin by her father played by Eric Bana (hot). SO. Excited. I love love love thrillers and yearn for way more shows and films with strong female leads and this one has TWO! TWO!

It was ok. I can't believe some of the plot holes. With a little more character development and some rewriting of the plot line to get closer to what would actually happen in that very unusual circumstance, this movie could have kicked as much ass as Saoirse Ronan does as Hanna. (She was great.)

Cate. Blanchett's. Teeth. If you've seen it, you know what I mean. She, as usual, was awesome. A great villain. And gorgeous. And super talented. Way to look good in a pencil skirt, Ms. Blanchett.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching it but I wanted it to be great soooo badly... and it just wasn't. But it was a fine thriller!

Next up: "Bridesmaids"!

A movie I want to see (I think).

It's a film set in Romania in 1987 about a girl who gets pregnant, waits for a long time to deal with it and she and her friend (from what I understand) try to get her an abortion, which is illegal under the dictatorship ruling the country. It won a Golden Palm at Cannes in 2007.

Here is the trailer on youtube.com.

It was reviewed by the Village Voice as a "white-knuckler". There are a lot of reasons I want to see it, probably first and foremost that abortion is hard to talk about something I strongly support (talking about it, that is). So I would like to give my money to a film that tries to deal with that issue, no matter what country it's in or what the political backdrop is.

I hope to see it this weekend and I'll let you know how it goes.

But if you're interested, it's just barely still playing in NYC at the IFC Center - according to my fiance who called to confirm that it is still playing this week - at 323 6th Ave in the West Village.