Emmys: Scorsese has now two statuettes; Mad Men's forth in a row; Modern Family vanquishes

Best drama series: Mad Men

Actor in a drama series: Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights

Actress in a drama series: Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife

Supporting actor in a drama series: Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones

Supporting actress in a drama series: Margo Martindale, Justified

Best comedy series: Modern Family

Actor in a comedy series: Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory

Actress in a comedy series: Melissa McCarthy, Mike & Molly

Supporting actor in a comedy series: Ty Burrell, Modern Family

Supporting actress in a comedy series: Julie Bowen, Modern Family

Best miniseries or TV movie: Downton Abbey

Actor in a miniseries or movie: Barry Pepper, The Kennedys

Actress in a miniseries or movie: Kate Winslet, Mildred Pierce

Supporting actor in a miniseries or movie: Guy Pearce, Mildred Pierce

Supporting actress in a miniseries or movie: Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey

Best reality competition program: The Amazing Race

Best variety, music or comedy series: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Directing for a comedy series: Michael Spiller, Modern Family

Writing for a comedy series: Steve Levitan and Jeffrey Richman, Modern Family

Directing for a drama series: Martin Scorsese, Boardwalk Empire

Writing for a drama series: Jason Katims, Friday Night Lights

Directing for a variety, music or comedy series: Don Roy King, Saturday Night Live

Writing for a variety, music or comedy series: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart – Steve Bodow, Tim Carvell, Rory Albanese, Kevin Bleyer, Rich Blomquist, Wyatt Cenac, Hallie Haglund, JR Havlan, Elliott Kalan, Josh Lieb, Sam Means, Jo Miller, John Oliver, Daniel Radosh, Jason Ross, Jon Stewart

Directing for a miniseries, movie or dramatic special: Brian Percival, Downton Abbey

Writing for a miniseries, movie or dramatic special: Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey

Midnight in Paris (2011), there's something about the rain

It was nearly midnight when I walked out of the theater and how plain it would have felt if I did it out of Studio 28 or Le Balzac. Instead I came out of a Lusomundo's but how grateful and delighted I felt anyway for I had just watched a very compelling original story, burst a mouthful of laughs and deep-breathed at the sadly hopeful message Woody Allen had genuinely told me during the last ninety minutes.

The man from New York, who once named a film after his dearest town, began this European journey in London, with Match Point, post-carding it on Scoop (coming back in Cassandra's Dream and in You'll Meet a Tall Dark Stranger) and flew to Barcelona with Vicky and Cristina. For the time being, he'd finished a trip to the capital of France and was ordered a work in Rome. "No work of art can compare to a city.", notes Gil Pender, Woody's clearly depicted alter-ego here. Don't let this deceive you. If Woody indeed exquisitely painted Paris with its incredible finesse and romance, he far exceeded the touristic expectations, and one might say he once again deconstructed himself while brushing a moving, wit and universal story.

Anyone who's had the chance to fall in love with the city may be immediately charmed. Three-minutes of jazzy non-dialog shots of the most emblematic places to visit - the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elyssées, the Louvre, Notre-Damme, Monmartre, the Senne, the Moulin Rouge and so on. And when to the smart first dialog is attached a picture, you hear "Monet" and struck against your seat for you're actually starring at a living Bridge of a Pond of Water of Lillies, with Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams crossing it.

You will now visit Allen's commonplaces, such as the creative work, the unstable relationships caused by the protagonist's neurotic self-doubts, the pseudo-intellectualism or the snappy betrayal. But now, just like in Manhattan, the helmer, and so the characters, is truthfully in love with the place and that waves out intensely and enchantingly. Harry is not applauded by his thankful characters but Pender time-travels to the 20's Parisian clubs where once dwelt his idols. Masters like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, Picasso, Buñuel or Dali. It is extravagant and reflective and yet warm, cozy and there's this girl to fall in love to. It's magical.

The Golden Age. The Golden Ages. We all lure at a time and a place we can't belong to, for in this relies the beauty of it - a nostalgia of a lost, unknown, unreachable past, accounting for all the paradoxes such statement hoists. To the most possible way, we all have our Belle Époque. That is nowhere but in the books and in how we read them, in the paintings and in how we gaze at them, in the movies and in how we watch them, in the music and in how we listen to it. Somewhat like a fairytaily curiosity; our Romantic inheritance. All along, we have Paris in the rain.

Bergman: "Godard is a fucking bore."

"I’ve never gotten anything out of his movies. They have felt constructed, faux intellectual, and completely dead. Cinematographically uninteresting and infinitely boring. Godard is a fucking bore. He’s made his films for the critics. One of the movies, Masculin, Féminin, was shot here in Sweden. It was mind-numbingly boring." Ingmar Bergman, on Jean-Luc Godard (interviews from Jan Aghed on his "När Bergman går på bio").

Un homme, une femme, ont forgé la trame du hasard

Comme nos voix ba da ba da da da da da da
Chantent tout bas ba da ba da da da da da da
Nos cœurs y voient ba da ba da da da da da da
Comme une chance comme un espoir
Comme nos voix ba da ba da da da da da da
Nos cœurs y croient ba da ba da da da da da da
Encore une fois ba da ba da da da da da da
Tout recommence, la vie repart

Combien de joies
Bien des drames
Et voilà !
C'est une longue histoire
Un homme
Une femme
Ont forgé la trame du hasard.

Comme nos voix
Nos cœurs y voient
Encore une fois
Comme une chance
Comme un espoir.

Comme nos voix
Nos cœurs en joie
On fait le choix
D'une romance
Qui passait là.

Chance qui passait là
Chance pour toi et moi ba da ba da da da da da da
Toi et moi ba da ba da da da da da da
Toi et Toi et moi.

Um grande cineasta, um grande filme, um grande plano

Um muito obrigado ao João Palhares, do Cine Resort, pelo convite que me fez a participar na sua já longa iniciativa de escolher um plano e falar sobre ele. Aqui.

Scorsese, Monahan & DiCaprio; reunited for re-picking Dostoyevsky's story

After a considerable number of masterpieces, in 2007 Martin Scorsese ultimately earned the Academy's utter recognition, by winning the Oscar for Best Director with the successful thriller The Departed, also accolading Best Film, Best Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay for writer William Monahan in one of his first film writings. Among the very fine cast there was, as today it is all in all improbable not to be, Martin's fetish actor, Leonardo DiCaprio.


To the prospects of remaking this team I write with excitement, feeling to which I add a great expectation when acknowledged with the object of Paramount's contract with Scorsese and Monahan: regenerate Karel Reisz's The Gambler. The 1974 film is a bare adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyefsky's novel, telling the story of a literature professor who while inspiring his students to read the Russian's works, spirals into the gambling vice and drags his girlfriend.

DiCaprio is currently not under legal assignment but along the company's gawking, may we also check his recent prolific cooperation with the director: Gangs of New York (2002) The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010), the abandoned The Wolf of Wall Street and the upcoming Sinatra (2013)

Great Dialogue: Mad Men 2.05

A little context. "Theme from A Summer Place", by Max Steiner, plays on the radio. It's night, a dark extra-marital trysted night, and the always groomed Don Draper drives dashing lascivious Bobbie Barret all the way down to her house in the beach, where she wants to have him in secret, while feeling the sand on her curved back. His family and her husband respectively wait for them, at home. The conversation has been going for a while now.

Also, this will probably make much more sense if you've watched Antonioni's La Notte.

Bobbie: I love bridges. I don't know if it is the drop or just because you get to see something disappearing behind you. Do you like bridges ?

Don: I do.

Bobbie: That's two things you like. What else ?

Don: Movies.

Bobbie: Yes ! Spartacus ? Have you seen the foreign ones ? Oh, so sexy.

Don: La Notte.

Bobbie: Yes ! Why is it so hard just to enjoy things ? God, I feel so good.

Don: I don't feel a thing.

Apple suing Samsung, Kubrick may solve it

After this month's launch of Samsung's new Galaxy tablet, the technological pomaceous fruit by Steve Jobs has already managed to temporarily block its sales in Australia and Europe, upon charges of "blatant copying" of Apple's iPad interface and design. However, when the two giants stepped into the US Court, the Koreans whisked the traditional loading of firearms and instead lit up a whole new fire: Apple did not invent the iPad; filmmaker Stanley Kubrick did.

This clip from 1968's 2001: Space Odyssey, was actually exhibited in the court of law, described as " (...) an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table's surface), and a thin form factor". Mark Summerfield, intellectual property specialist lawyer, cautions that Samsung may have some ground here, arguing that "Generally science fiction is not legitimate prior art to a utility patent, because it does not provide an 'enabling disclosure (...)" but "For example, if I were to copy the Star Trek communicator as a novelty mobile phone, I would have no right to claim a monopoly in that design. I did not devise it myself (i.e. I am not the true designer/author).".

Sean Penn complains about Malick's decisions on Tree of Life

"I didn’t at all find on the screen the emotion of the script, which is the most magnificent one that I’ve ever read. A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact. Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context! What’s more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly."

I believe we've heard this once, already.

"It was extremely unpleasant." (Adrien Brody, about Thin Red Line).

They should know by now that master Malick will always slice their appearances to the sharpest and finest piece of imagery he envisions.

Maybe he'd really rather be shot

Beautiful.