Band of Thebes

The Nutty World of Book Awards

Thrice a Booker bridesmaid, Julian Barnes has finally captured the UK's biggest literary prize for his very short novel The Sense of an Ending. (Ian McEwan won the Booker for his flimsiest work, the little yellow faintly homophobic marshmallow Peep of a novella, Amsterdam.)

Smug you, thinking you already knew every possible mistake publishing could make, but the clogged-eared workers at the National Book Awards proved you wrong this week, admitting they mistakenly announced the anti-gay hate crime novel Shine as a finalist when it was supposed to be the teen witch novel Chime. Each category's chairperson conveys the winning decisions by telephone to avoid the embarrassment of leaks via email. The nominated, then un-nominated, then re-nominated, then re-un-nominated (yes, really) author Lauren Myracle took the vertigo ups and downs with grace and even had the good sense to get the National Buffoon Award Foundation to donate $5,000 to the Matthew Shepherd Foundation.

The Guardian considers the 184 names in nomination for the $750,000+ Astrid Lingren Award for Children's Literature its "shortlist." Click here for all 184 names which include Neil Gaiman, Peter Sis, Eric Carle, Quentin Blake, and Meg Rosoff. Nice to see 66 nations are represented.

With typically, terrificly terrible timing, the Galaxy British Books Awards announced their finalists yesterday, on the very eve of the Booker announcement. The name suggests sci-fi but in fact their books are the soul of England, including Alan Hollinghurst's Booker-snubbed The Stranger's Child up for the year's top prize against Booker winner Julian Barnes, Booker nominee Carol Birch, Orange of Oranges winner Andrea Levy, Anthony Horowitz, and out lesbian Carol Ann Duffy. Lesbian Jackie Kay is nominated in the biography category for her memoir Red Dust Road, where she faces Keith Richards, Bear Grylls, Christopher Hitchens, and the remarkable Claire Tomalin. Other categories celebrate the year's best popular fiction, popular nonfiction, paperback, thriller, food, and children's book, as well as new writer and international writer: Egan, Barry, Murakami, Morgenstern, Obreht, Nesbo.

Dissatisfied with Britain's book award culture, a new group has announced the coming debut of The Literature Prize to honor fiction of "unsurpassed quality and ambition." The group criticizes the Booker's new priority of "readability" over excellence, a charge the Booker head considers "tosh." Unlike the Booker, The Literature Prize will be open to any fiction in English published in the UK. Early supporters include John Banville, Pat Barker, Mark Haddon, Jackie Kay and David Mitchell.

Madrid's Javier Moro has won Spain's Planeta Prize for his novel El imperio eres tu, a "detailed chronicle of the life of Pedro I, who ruled Brazil in the first half of the 19th century." Who? you ask, The what? Wise up, people. It's the 60th annual award (compared to the Booker's 43rd) and it carries the world's second-highest purse for literature, worth $833,887, after the Nobel. Besting the 482 other submissions written in Spanish, even the Planeta's runner-up, Inma Chacón for her novel Tiempo de arena, took home $206,052.

La Piel Que Habito

There's no joy in reporting that to his dazzling aviary Almodóvar adds a turkey. I saw La Piel Que Habito at a multiplex in Nice and, alas, the highlight was that the emergency alarm went off and all seven theaters had to be evacuated. Milling around with the mixed-French/Italian crowd was more entertaining than returning for the final act of this leaden misfire. In the past, absurd plots have heightened the fun, but here the ridiculousness has no helium and the heavy story unfolds with maybe two laughs. Costars Antonio Banderas as a deranged plastic surgeon and Elena Anaya as the unwilling patient imprisoned in his mansion for six years vie to see who can deliver the more vacant performance, while wonderful Marisa Paredes overcompensates in an underwritten role. The very few powerful images are mainly repeats from earlier films and the new elements push the whole thing toward parody: the rapist with uncontrollable animal urges arrives in a tiger suit with a stuffed crotch. After the second-rate Broken Embraces, The Skin I Live In confirms that Almodóvar needs to leave the hollow rich to other directors and get back to the deeply textured working or middle class characters he does so well. You'll see the zest is gone from the very beginning -- no exuberant Juan Guatti title sequences (but, yes, a close-up of an Alice Munro paperback!); veteran Alberto Iglesias's lively score almost compensates. Only for die-hard fans who enjoy being disappointed.

Full Trailer for Almodóvar's "The Skin I Live In"

After 20 years, Antonio Banderas is back with Almodóvar in this creepy thriller as a (typically, strangely) sympathetic modern-day Dr. Frankenstein obsessed with creating synthetic super-skin, twelve years after his wife died from burns in a car crash. His beautiful young captive test case played by Penelope Cruz 2.0 newcomer Elena Anaya displays (typically bizarre) strong signs of Stockholm syndrome. Full review in English.

The movie is certain to be at the New York Film Festival, which opens September 30 with Roman Polanski's Carnage starring Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, and Christoph Waltz.

Gay Spain: Balenciaga Museum and Almodóvar's Mapplethorpes

A favorite Spain-watcher tipped me to the grand opening of the Balenciaga Museum in the designer's tiny hometown of Getaria, a seaside village near the French border. The massive 54,000 square foot museum displays (only?) 90 dresses, including gowns worn by Princess Grace and Belgium's Queen Fabiola. A gala preview with Queen Sofia and Givenchy preceded the public opening on Friday. Worldly readers may be unsurprised to learn the museum's foundation is beset with financial irregularities and the original budget of 6 million euros somehow ballooned to 30 million euros. Difficult to imagine the master of the uninterrupted line loving this awkward mash-up building, but his art inside will more than compensate. Spanish Vogue offers some highlights of a magnificent career.

In Madrid on Wednesday the Galeria Elvira Gonzalez opened a show of twenty-eight Robert Mapplethorpe photographs curated by Pedro Almodóvar. It appears to be a cavalcade of strong men, delicate flowers, a kitten, and a young naked Patti Smith.

Three Tóibín Interviews: From Schubert to Bartok

Video proof of Colm Tóibín's endless charms. Chris Castellani interviewed him in Cambridge yesterday afternoon, prior to his evening reading of "Two Women." Discussing straight writers, Toibin says, "They mean no harm." (If the clip doesn't load properly, see it here.)

To watch an earlier interview by Paul Holdengraber at the NYPL, click here.

Or you can read this interview in which Tóibín compares his previous story collection Mothers and Sons [[Kindle]] to The Empty Family [[Kindle]]. "The tone is the first book is calmer, almost like Schubert's piano music. By the second book, Bartok has taken over. It's all edge and anger, or enough of it is to make a difference." He says "The Colour of Shadows" is his favorite story. Of his work overall he explains, "The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and painting, as much as from the need to impart mere information, or mirror anything. I am not a realist writer, even if I seem like one. I do admire Josipovici. We should all be better than we are."

Best of 2011: The Empty Family by Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín's The Empty Family [[Kindle]] ranks with a handful of books (by Alice Munro, William Trevor, Bobbie Ann Mason, Tatyana Tolstaya, Mavis Gallant, Julie Hecht, Annie Proulx, and Raymond Carver) as one of the great story collections of the past quarter century. His stories are larger and recent high praise is insufficient for the power they achieve.

Often, the stories easily inhabit three settings. Always, the present moment is balanced by the weight of the past. A trio of themes -- loss, solitude, dislocation -- yield infinite brilliance. In a mere fifteen pages “One Minus One” covers Texas, New York, and Dublin; the narrator’s failed relationship with the man he’s addressing; and a lifetime of family strain resurfacing as his mother dies. My favorite, “Two Women,” conveys Dublin, Los Angeles, and Guatemala as a wonderfully brusque set dresser Frances Rossiter reluctantly returns to her native Ireland to work on a movie.

“The lowness of the buildings in Dublin, shops that were cheap imitations of larger and better shops in bigger cities, ways of dressing that were either shabby or pretentious, and ways of moving in the street that lacked alertness or any style, all began to irritate her. At the weekend, especially on Fridays, the hotel lobby and the bars filled up with drinkers, and once or twice, having pushed her way through a crowd of half-drunken men and women, she was proud of having lived most of her life away from such people and glad that the staff of the hotel, unfailingly polite and self-effacing, came from elsewhere.
        It struck her that she really would not come back, that she would work in future anywhere but here. Even Gabi’s efficiency and sweetness seemed complacent to her, and some of the men moving sets were too slow, almost openly lazy. She found it difficult, especially in the third and fourth weeks of filming, not to show her impatience. She loved intelligent, decisive people who did things briskly, and on a few occasions when she had to phone home and found herself speaking down the line to Rosario, she realized how much she missed Rosario’s intelligence, almost exquisite at times in its depth of perception, and her way of moving, so elegant and careful and poised.”

The nature of artifice is Frances’s life’s work – notice how she views even the real Dublin shops as “imitations” – and one sees how she's become its master:

“The director used to be young – she smiled at the thought as she opened the set drawings she had carried with her – but now he was no longer young. But he was not old enough to know that you got nothing extra from using a real pub, no matter how quaint and full of atmosphere, instead of a studio-built pub. A set, she knew, just needed a few spare props that suggested something; with a real pub, you would have to spend hours removing objects that suggested too much, and painting over colours that seemed faded to the eye but would jar once bright lights and a camera were shone on them.”

The story’s interest in the art of artifice expands, incorporating paintings at the National Gallery and how a movement by a guard there recalls the dead Irish actor (artifice personified) with whom she had a very long affair, the core romance of her life. Ultimately, a chance encounter on set in the burdensome pub penetrates Frances’s own carefully constructed facade, right down to her speech, which reverts to the softer, Irish cadences of her youth.

All the other stories are equally engaging, and their meticulous subtleties and intricate craft arrive almost hidden by compelling characers and compulsive plots. “The New Spain” unspools layers of ironies as Carme, a former radical communist who frittered away years of exile in London, returns to Barcelona then Menorca with drastically different standing in her uptight family now that she’s inherited half of her grandmother’s property. The novella “The Street” explores the loving, neutral, or brutal hierarchies among Pakistani immigrants in Barcelona, where one character is wholly dependent physically and financially on his attacker.

Gay relationships are the core concern of five or six of the stories. Francine Prose considers the best in the collection to be “The Pearl Fishers” about a gay man’s meal with a bourgeois couple, reuniting him with his first lover from boarding school and that man’s wife who is gaining fame as a crusader against past abuse. Readers of Brooklyn’s detailed hetero sex scenes who thought Tóibín would never be so explicit with his gay characters will especially appreciate those teenage flashbacks as well as the many male couplings and orgy in “Barcelona, 1975.” Returning to more oblique times, the first story, “Silence,” sees the author of The Master again imagine Henry James as a character, now through the eyes of his widowed dinner partner, who carefully recasts her passionate adultery as a story idea for him. Again the source of art and the urge to remake the past propel this collection to astonishing heights.

Born January 21: Cristóbal Balenciaga

"Arbiters of fashion generally agree that Balenciaga, the son of a Basque fisherman and a seamstress, was the greatest couturier of the last century. Dior considered him the primus inter pares, and Chanel conceded that Balenciaga alone could construct a perfect garment from start to finish with his own hands, whereas everyone else was merely 'a designer.'"

To comprehend his genius you could inspect the three hundred original designs he created each year from 1937 to 1968, but you'd still be lost about his legacy; or you could simply read Judith Thurman's New Yorker essay "The Absolutist," which includes the quote above and is a highlight of her brilliant Cleopatra's Nose. She discusses Balenciaga's business partner and greatest love, Vladzio Zawrorowski d'Attainville, as well as the benefits of being gay to Yves Saint Laurent and the current Balenciaga designer Nicolas Ghesquière: "A sense of dislocation often hones the instincts of a gifted gay youth from the provinces... They are able to recognize a closeted seductress -- a Buñuel heroine, like Belle du Jour -- and help to realize her potential for transgression."

Despite his success and his unmatched status as The Master, Balenciaga suffered a series of devastations: In 1947 Dior got credit for the New Look, when Balenciaga had been showing mid-calf skirts, full bust jackets, and small waists for years; in 1948 his partner died; and over the next two decades the world edged away from couture to ready to wear. Although he triumphed time and again with his tunic dresses in 1955, his sack dresses in 1956, his pairing of tall boots with harlequin tights and shorter hemlines, and his maverick use of special fabrics like plastics for rainwear, he decided to close his business in 1968 rather than lower himself to the faster, cheaper standards mandated by ready-to-wear. Four years later he died in his native Spain.

Born January 6: Juan Goytisolo

Praised by Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Edmund White, and according to the Guardian, "widely acknowledged as Spain's greatest living writer," Juan Goytisolo has lived in self-imposed exile in Marrakech since the 1960s. (He is 80 today and now spends part of each year in Paris.) His more than thirty books make clear why he left his native land: Franco, the post-Franco government, the Catholic church, middle class bourgeois attitudes, and homophobia. Also, he loves Arabs, particularly illiterate or uneducated men whose gayness is not marked by effeminate behavior but a hyper virility. Depending on which critics you ask, his masterpiece is either his two-volume memoir, groundbreaking for among other things its frankness about gay sex, or his trilogy comprised of Marks of Identity, Count Julian, and Juan the Landless. Goytisolo's most recent novel, A Cock-Eyed Comedy, recounts in his typically subversive style the ribald sexual antics of a gay priest.

Born January 6: Juan Goytisolo

Praised by Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Edmund White, and according to the Guardian, "widely acknowledged as Spain's greatest living writer," Juan Goytisolo has lived in self-imposed exile in Marrakech since the 1960s. (He is 79 today and now spends part of each year in Paris.) His more than thirty books make clear why he left his native land: Franco, the post-Franco government, the Catholic church, middle class bourgeois attitudes, and homophobia. Also, he loves Arabs, particularly illiterate or uneducated men whose gayness is not marked by effeminate behavior but a hyper virility. Depending on which critics you ask, his masterpiece is either his two-volume memoir, groundbreaking for among other things its frankness about gay sex, or his trilogy comprised of Marks of Identity, Count Julian, and Juan the Landless. His most recent novel, A Cock-Eyed Comedy, recounts the ribald sexual antics of a priest in Goytisolo's typically subversive style.

Born January 21: Cristobal Balenciaga

"Arbiters of fashion generally agree that Balenciaga, the son of a Basque fisherman and a seamstress, was the greatest couturier of the last century. Dior considered him the primus inter pares, and Chanel conceded that Balenciaga alone could construct a perfect garment from start to finish with his own hands, whereas everyone else was merely 'a designer.'"

To comprehend his genius you could inspect each of the three hundred original designs he created every year from 1937 to 1968, but you'd still be lost about his legacy; or you could read Judith Thurman's New Yorker essay "The Absolutist," which includes the quote above and is a highlight of her book Cleopatra's Nose. She discusses Balenciaga's business partner and greatest love, Vladzio Zawrorowski d'Attainville, as well as the benefits of being gay to Yves Saint Laurent and the current Balenciaga designer Nicolas Ghesquière: "A sense of dislocation often hones the instincts of a gifted gay youth from the provinces...They are able to recognize a closeted seductress -- a Buñuel heroine, like Belle du Jour -- and help to realize her potential for transgression."

Despite his success and his unmatched status as The Master, Balenciaga suffered a series of devastations: In 1947 Dior got credit for the New Look, when Balenciaga had been showing mid-calf skirts, full bust jackets, and small waists for years; in 1948 his partner died; and over the next two decades the world edged away from couture to ready to wear. Although he triumphed time and again with his tunic dresses in 1955, his sack dresses in 1956, his pairing of tall boots with harlequin tights and shorter hemlines, and his maverick use of special fabrics like plastics for rainwear, he decided to close his business in 1968 rather than lower himself to the faster, cheaper standards mandated by ready-to-wear. Four years later he died in his native Spain.

Palm Springs Film Festival's 18 LGBT Movies

"People" often sneer or squint with concern when I say I love Palm Springs, but name another heavily gay desert town of 43,000, with snow-capped mountain peaks over 10,800 feet, a nearby legendary annual two day rock concert, and a film festival which this year boasts 209 movies from 73 countries. The 2009 lineup includes 18 lgbt features from around the world, highlights which are: 

Patrik, Age 1.5 (Sweden, 2008) Comedy drama about a Swedish gay couple, Göran and Sven, who expect to adopt a 15-month-old and instead get a homophobic 15 year-old. Photo above.

Comme les Autres (France, 2008. US Title: Baby Love) A "romantic dramedy" in which pediatrician Lambert Wilson and his boyfriend desperately want a baby of their own. French law allows civil unions but not adoptions by gay couples.

Be Like Others (Canada, 2008) Documentary about government funded gender reassignment in Iran, where homosexuality is punished by death.

American Primative (US, 2009) On Cape Cod in 1973, two teenage sisters discover their widowed father is gay.

Chef's Special (Spain, 2008) Comedy about a stressed out gay chef (played by Javier Cámara of Talk to Her) coping with the arrival of his estranged teenaged children and his new neighbor, a hot Argentinean former soccer idol. Also stars Lola Dueñas from Volver.

Clapham Junction (UK, 2008) Intersecting lives of gay men amid an act of brutal homophobic violence.

Eugene (US, 2009) "Lonely bachelor befriends young hustler and his girlfriend with disastrous results for all involved." Will be part of MoMA's New Directors/New Films March 25 - April 5.

Pedro (US, 2008) Dramatic feature about Pedro Zamora, the gay star of MTV's The Real World: San Francisco who died of aids at twenty-two in 1994.

Ready? OK! (US, 2008) Young Catholic schoolboy Joshua enjoys dressing as Maria von Trapp and is determined to be a cheerleader.

Suddenly, Last Winter (Italy, 2008) "Gustav and Luca have been in a stable, open relationship for eight years. Their private life is suddenly turned upside down when the new Italian center-left government plans to institute civil unions — including same-sex partnerships — unleashing a widespread backlash."

Woman's Hearts (Italy, 2008) "Shakira, a pre-op Moroccan transgendered dressmaker is creating a traditional Arab wedding gown for her client, bride-to-be Zina. But in order to be true to Arab customs, Zina must regain her virginity before she weds, and the two set off on a road trip from Italy to Morocco for the operation."

Watch for these movies in your local festivals, art house theaters, or on DVD.

Born January 5: Juan Goytisolo, Alvin Ailey

Praised by Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Edmund White, and according to the Guardian, "widely acknowledged as Spain's greatest living writer," Juan Goytisolo has lived in self-imposed exile in Marrakech since the 1960s. (He is 78 today and now spends part of each year in Paris.) His more than thirty books make clear why he left his native land: Franco, the post-Franco government, the Catholic church, middle class bourgeois attitudes, and homophobia. Also, he loves Arabs, particularly illiterate or uneducated men whose gayness is not marked by effeminate behavior but a hyper virility. Depending on which critics you ask, his masterpiece is either his two-volume memoir, groundbreaking for among other things their frankness about gay sex, or his trilogy comprised of Marks of Identity, Count Julian, and Juan the Landless. His most recent novel, A Cock-Eyed Comedy, recounts the ribald sexual antics of a priest in Goytisolo's typically subversive style.

If you watch the CBS profile below from last August celebrating the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater's 50th anniversary, you'll see some great dancing and an American success story of a black troupe thriving in a typically white corner of the arts. What you won't see is any mention that he was gay, or gay people's contribution to dance, that he died of aids, or aids' toll on the world, nor will you see any of the more complicated aspects of his life, like his devastating arthritis, his addiction to cocaine, or his dependence on lithium. To his final days, at fifty-eight, he was so terrified of his mother's homophobia (growing up in Texas, he hid his dancing from her for two years; when she first saw him backstage in make up, she slapped his face), he asked his doctor to lie about the cause on his death certificate. His private demons never obscured his public genius. One of the seventy-nine dances he choreographed, Revelations, set to spirituals and gospel music, is among the most popular and most seen ballets of the twentieth-century.

Born January 1: Forster, Hoover, Hormel, Orton, Vasquez, Stefano, & More

E.M. Forster (1879-1970) English novelist. Of course Howard's End is one of your favorites, but don't forget his excellent collection of stories, The Life to Come, filled with gay men less anguished than his Maurice characters.

J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) American FBI director and closet case of unsurpassed twistedness.

Maurice Béjart (1927-2007) French-Swiss choreographer who directed maverick ballets and all-male romantic dances long before the likes of Matthew Bourne.

James Hormel (1933) American philanthropist and gay rights activist.

Joe Orton (1933-1967) randy British playwright and subject of the excellent movie Prick Up Your Ears.

Eloy de la Iglesia (1944-2006) Spanish film director.

Junior Vasquez (1946) American DJ.

Nahum Bernabe Zenil (1947) Mexican painter.

Joey Stefano (1968-1994) Porn superstar.

Trailer Up for Lorca - Dali Romance "Little Ashes"

Regent Releasing has posted a full length trailer for Paul Morrison's Little Ashes, about Salvador Dali's affair with Federico Garcia Lorca and their joint friendship with Luis Buñuel. The title is not explained in the preview but comes from this painting by Dali. At sixty-four, Morrison knows offbeat love stories; his 1999 feature, Solomon and Gaenor, about a young Jewish man and young Welsh woman who fall for each other against her family's wishes in 1911, was nominated for a best foreign language film Oscar. Regent has not yet announced a theatrical release date.

Born October 30: Néstor Almendros

Like so many great artists, Néstor Almendros did not follow a straight path to his genius. Born in Barcelona in 1930, he became disgusted with Franco's Spain by age eighteen and followed his father to Cuba, then went to film school in Rome, tried and failed to work in New York, left for France, was ready to give up at thirty-four, and got an absurdly lucky break: He happened to be on set the day the director of photography quit a short project with Eric Rohmer. From there Almendros became one of the world's  greatest cinematographers, carefully composing each frame and using natural light like a painter on over fifty films, including, in order, Two English Girls, Chloé in the Afternoon, The Story of Adele H., The Marquise of O., Days of Heaven for which he won an Oscar, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Blue Lagoon, The Last Métro for which he won a Cesar, Still of the Night, Sophie's Choice, Pauline at the Beach, Places in the Heart, Heartburn, Imagine: John Lennon, and Billy Bathgate.

For anyone seriously interested in cinema, his book A Man with a Camera is essential reading. Not only does he clarify how the director of photography differs from the cameraman (union rules prohibit the DP from operating the camera) but he devotes a brief chapter to each of forty films. He describes the challenges and innovations of working with directors (again and again it's Rohmer, Truffaut, or Robert Benton) to decide which colors they want the costume and set designers to use and how Almendros will light and shoot each scene. They usually start with fine art. Their initial inspiration for Kramer vs. Kramer, set on the Upper East Side of the 1970s, was Piero della Francesca, with a little Hockney and, for the child's bedroom, Magritte. For The Blue Lagoon, he concentrated on Gauguin. For the Meryl Streep - Robert DeNiro psycho-thriller Still of the Night, he looked to old Fritz Lang movies and Edward Hopper. Remarkably generous with the secrets of his working trade, his autobiography completely ignores his private life. And yet, even though he was closeted, when he had the opportunity to direct his own movie in 1984, he chose to make a documentary about Cuba's persecution of gay men, Mauvaise conduite [Improper Conduct], which won the audience award at Frameline. He also shot ads for Calvin Klein and Armani. He died of aids in 1992 at age sixty-one. Human Rights Watch gives an annual film award named in his honor.

Born September 25: Pedro Almodóvar

Genius. No, supergenius. The son of an adoring mother and a barely literate father who hauled wine by mule in a small town in La Mancha, Pedro Almodóvar was sent to Catholic boarding school when he was eight, attended a good college, worked as an assistant in the Spanish telephone company for twelve years, and did not make his first movie until 1980, when he was thirty-one. In the twenty-eight years since Pepi, Luci, Bom, he has made sixteen other features and is universally considered a master of contemporary cinema. (Time magazine called Talk to Her the best film of the past decade, and it won the Oscar for best original screenplay despite not being in English.) Almodóvar’s vision is unique. No one working in any media has been able to corral so many incongruous moods—from bathetic despair to camp hilarity, mixing trashy telenovas with an austere sorrow in what’s been called “screwball tragedy”—to create such profoundly affecting art, even across cultural and linguistic chasms. He writes his own screenplays, balancing complicated, almost absurdist plots with complex thematic symmetries. Like many gay directors, he excels at showing strong women in tough circumstances, yet he’s equally at ease with the twisted tough guys of noir. Similarly, he overpacks his images with obsessive visual splendor. His movies are instantly recognizable by their saturated colors and bold compositions: like his stories, they have wacky, dazzling patterns. (You could write a book on his use of red.) The same attention to detail is evident from the opening credits, usually by the graphic genius Juan Gatti, to the haunting closing music, usually by Alberto Iglesias. Almodóvar’s brother Augustin produces all of his films.

His next was supposed to be a movie called La Piel Que Habito, “in which an unhinged plastic surgeon exacts terrifying revenge on the men who raped his beloved daughter.” Now come reports that he has finished filming Broken Embraces with Penelope Cruz in Madrid and the Canary Islands. According to Variety it's a four-way romantic thriller with very dark touches. Figuratively and literally, because it's also about a man who has to avoid bright lights, inspired by Almodovar's six months in a dark room felled by migraines after Volver. THR has the full cast. Maybe it's the same story. It's said to be released "early next  year" but why wouldn't they wait for Cannes, which loves him?

Read his diary entries about shooting in the dark here.

Clandestinos

Sorry, can't talk, in a hurry as I am moving to Madrid right now.
    Suddenly needing to emigrate is the only danger of the really satisfying Spanish movie Clandestinos, about three lads who escape from a juvenile detention center. The love triangle that develops is not among the teens (a Basque, a Mexican, and a Moroccan), but features Xabi caught between his unreachable lover, a Basque rebel in his 50s, and Germán, an undercover cop, also in his 50s. Touchingly, when Germán takes Xabi home after picking him up from a row of (unrealistically?) stunning hustlers at the mall, what he really wants to do is cook for him, though of course they do that other thing, too: sleep. Xabi's fellow escapees are straight and their girlfriends are awesome in the way that the smaller roles in Almodóvar are such standouts. (Think Lola Dueñas or Rossy de Palma.) Warning: the trailer below is a little lame and its ratio aspect is distorted. Also, there's frontal nudity, in case you're at work. Look for Clandestinos at your upcoming film festival.

Born June 5: Keynes, Compton-Burnett, Garcia Lorca, Orman

Economist John Maynard Keynes, novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett, poet Federico Garcia Lorca, and financial guru Suze Orman, all here.

Born January 21: Cristóbal Balenciaga

 
"Arbiters of fashion generally agree that Balenciaga, the son of a Basque fisherman and a seamstress, was the greatest couturier of the last century. Dior considered him the primus inter pares, and Chanel conceded that Balenciaga alone could construct a perfect garment from start to finish with his own hands, whereas everyone else was merely 'a designer.'" To comprehend his genius you could inspect each of the three hundred original designs he created every year from 1937 to 1968, but you'd still be lost about his legacy; or you could read Judith Thurman's sixteen page essay "The Absolutist," which includes the opening quote here and is the highlight of her brilliant book Cleopatra's Nose. She discusses Balenciaga's business partner and greatest love, Vladzio Zawrorowski d'Attainville, as well as the benefits of being gay to Yves Saint Laurent and the current Balenciaga designer Nicolas Ghesquière: "A sense of dislocation often hones the instincts of a gifted gay youth from the provinces...They are able to recognize a closeted seductress -- a Buñuel heroine, like Belle du Jour -- and help to realize her potential for transgression." Despite his success and his unmatched status as The Master, Balenciaga suffered a series of devastations: In 1947 Dior got credit for the New Look, when Balenciaga had been showing mid-calf skirts, full bust jackets, and small waists for years; in 1948 his partner died; and over the next two decades the world edged away from couture to ready to wear. Although he triumphed time and again with his tunic dresses in 1955, his sack dresses in 1956, his pairing of tall boots with harlequin tights and shorter hemlines, and his maverick use of special fabrics like plastics for rainwear, he decided to close his business in 1968 rather than lower himself to the faster, cheaper standards mandated by ready-to-wear. Four years later he died in his native Spain. Watch the brief, vintage clip below for a glimpse of a more sumptuous time, namely his Spring Summer collection of 1960.

As far as I can tell, in December Judith Thurman became the first National Book Award winner to post a comment on Band of Thebes. She liked it. I had already praised her book before then, so I feel fine repeating my conviction that everyone should read it now.

Born October 30: Néstor Almendros

Like so many great artists, Néstor Almendros did not follow a straight path to his genius. Born in Barcelona in 1930, he became disgusted with Franco's Spain by age eighteen and followed his father to Cuba, then went to film school in Rome, tried and failed to work in New York, left for France, was ready to give up at thirty-four, and got an absurdly lucky break: He happened to be on set the day the director of photography quit a short project with Eric Rohmer. From there Almendros became one of the world's greatest cinematographers, carefully composing each frame and using natural light like a painter on over fifty films, including, in order, My Night at Maud's, Claire's Knee, Two English Girls, Chloé in the Afternoon, The Story of Adele H., The Marquise of O., his legendary Days of Heaven [above] for which he won an Oscar, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Blue Lagoon, The Last Métro for which he won a Cesar, Still of the Night, Sophie's Choice, Pauline at the Beach, Places in the Heart, Heartburn, Imagine: John Lennon, and Billy Bathgate. For anyone seriously interested in cinema, his book A Man with a Camera is essential reading. Not only does he clarify how the director of photography differs from the cameraman (union rules prohibit the DP from operating the camera) but he devotes a brief chapter to each of forty films, describing the challenges and innovations working with the directors (again and again it's Rohmer, Truffaut, or Robert Benton) to decide what colors they want the costume and set designers to use and how Almendros will light and shoot each scene. They usually start with fine art. Their initial inspiration for Kramer vs. Kramer, set on the Upper East Side of the 1970s, was Piero della Francesca, with a little Hockney and, for the child's bedroom, Magritte. For The Blue Lagoon, he concentrated on Gauguin. For the Meryl Streep - Robert DeNiro psycho-thriller Still of the Night (originally called Stab), he looked to old Fritz Lang movies and Edward Hopper. Remarkably generous with the secrets of his working trade, his autobiography completely ignores his private life. And yet, even though he was closeted, when he had the opportunity to direct his own movie in 1984, he chose to make a documentary about Cuba's persecution of gay men, Mauvaise conduite [Improper Conduct], which won the audience award at Frameline. He died of aids in 1992 at age sixty-one. Human Rights Watch gives an annual film award named in his honor.