Let me reiterate my love for Blow-Up AND WHY I am so excited for this Friday:
While I, like everyone, like to think of myself as quirky and special and with tastes singular only to my own, over-the-years-well-honed-culture-palate, there is one thing that makes me exactly the same as every art/film student/graduate in the last two decades:
I own a Blow-Up poster.
Yes, this one:
It hangs above my bed (tacked, not framed, as I am not fully grown up yet), and elicits either no reaction or “Oh, I have the same poster in my room” from whomever is passing through my humble accommodations. If the latter happens, knowing glances are exchanged, bonds formed and so on and so forth. Its like a secret handshake, that poster. And that movie too.
It is also the first DVD I netflixed once I became a member, and for a brief period of time while I was 22, the movie that impressed me the most if a person of opposite sex owned it.
I’ve grown wiser since but I still love the movie.
It is not Antonioni’s finest (cue the discussion about merits of “L’Avventura” and “L’Eclipse”), it is really not all that sexy, if you think about it objectively, and the story (while probably thrilling in concept: A fashion photographer tires of working with “pretty dolls” and heads out at night in the hope of finding gripping scenes. His life becomes an adventure when he accidentally takes a gripping photo of a murder.) really fades away in the light of hyper-stylization.
But what hyper-stylization it is: all the women (Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, Veruschka, even Jane Birkin’s sprite) can serve as inspirations for decades past and decades to come, and the way 60s London (and David Hemmings as its reigning photographer star) are shown has been a source of both endless interpretations AND parodies.
Anyhoo, it is playing for one week only at AFI starting this Friday
And this Friday AFI asked us to host a little cocktail party to celebrate the run.
So we are.
Here is the flyer and the details:
Mark Zimin will DJ.
Beer and wine will flow.
Photos will be taken.
All will dance.
The party itself is free (preferably WITH movie pass, but we will not nitpick) but we have 3 pair of passes to the 930 screening that will preceed it.
TO WIN: post a comment why you want it and by Friday 8 am, they could be yours.
GO.
Even better, take a 22 year old art student to see it with you.
You can thank me later.
oops. i meant “I Vinti”. my italian is sub-par.
September 3, 2008 at 6:35 pmi want tickets because I haven’t heard of this movie and I am an aspiring film/arts major. Isn’t that pathetic? I’m embarassed. Please enlighten me so I can spare myself the humiliation.
September 3, 2008 at 10:58 pm“Blow-Up” is of the the essential Swinging London movies. That’s to say, it is Swinging London as seen through the eyes of Antonioni. What it lacks in realism it makes up for in moditude. The actions are cool, the reactions are unusual. It is also, in some ways, a precursor to the Italian Giallo thriller. Plus there’s a great Yardbirds song in it, and some real “yeah, baby!” models (Veruschka, Gillian Hills AND Jane Birkin! *sigh*).
I’d like the free ticket so I can afford to buy some popcorn. Burp.
September 4, 2008 at 4:54 amyo-where can i buy tickets? at door? thx
September 4, 2008 at 9:23 amat door or at afi.com/silver
the party is free in and of itself. the movie costs money
September 4, 2008 at 11:35 amWhile I, like everyone, like to think of myself as quirky and special and with tastes singular only to my own, over-the-years-well-honed-culture-palate, there is one thing that makes me exactly the same as every art/film student/graduate in the last two decades:
I also like to think of the prosaic photography on my website along similar horizons of aggression in the photographic image and the meaninglessness of mimetic reproduction- is this due to profligacy or scarcity? I will take this irresolute phenomenological condition as a given to the “product” my website affords to so large a cohort of “pretty dolls [that] head out at night in the hope of finding gripping scenes” in a small east coast city. Now, let us all go out on “an adventure” to accumulate and spend cultural capital with reckless aplomb. Eros is sick.
Oh, and I’m a freshly-turned 28. how about you andrew?
September 4, 2008 at 10:11 pm
for all you Blowup nerds out there: you should check out I Venti- an Antonioni film circa 1953- which has an English segment that acts as a precursor (or at least inspiration) for Blowup. just saying.
i’d take them tickets too.
September 3, 2008 at 6:33 pm