Film Director Hector Babenco Dies in Brazil
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JULY 14, 2016, 10:39 A.M. E.D.T.
SAO PAULO — The Argentine-born Brazilian director
nominated for an Oscar for his 1985 film "Kiss of the
Spider Woman" has died. Hector Babenco was 70.
Denise Winther of Babenco's HB Films says the director
died Wednesday night of a heart attack at Sao Paulo's
Sirio-Libanes Hospital.
See also "Only Connect" and "Tombstones in Her Eyes."
Click image for a related post.
Taymor, it must be said, is a beautiful woman. Her face at fifty-eight has sharp, expressive features— she actually frowns when she's unhappy, and her eyes seem to light up when she laughs— and she still has the long black hair she had when she was a young actress, "a very pretty eighteen-year-old," as she puts it, who "didn't want to play Cinderella or Snow White. I wanted to be the Wicked Witch of the West."
— Richard Dorment, article dated November 14, 2011
The LA Times on last weekend's film "Thor"—
"… the film… attempts to bridge director Kenneth Branagh's high-minded Shakespearean intentions with Marvel Entertainment's bottom-line-oriented need to crank out entertainment product."
Those averse to Nordic religion may contemplate a different approach to entertainment (such as Taymor's recent approach to Spider-Man).
A high-minded— if not Shakespearean— non-Nordic approach to groups acting—
"What was wrong? I had taken almost four semesters of algebra in college. I had read every page of Herstein, tried every exercise. Somehow, a message had been lost on me. Groups act . The elements of a group do not have to just sit there, abstract and implacable; they can do things, they can 'produce changes.' In particular, groups arise naturally as the symmetries of a set with structure. And if a group is given abstractly, such as the fundamental group of a simplical complex or a presentation in terms of generators and relators, then it might be a good idea to find something for the group to act on, such as the universal covering space or a graph."
— Thomas W. Tucker, review of Lyndon's Groups and Geometry in The American Mathematical Monthly , Vol. 94, No. 4 (April 1987), pp. 392-394
"Groups act "… For some examples, see
Related entertainment—
High-minded— Many Dimensions—
Not so high-minded— The Cosmic Cube—
One way of blending high and low—
The high-minded Charles Williams tells a story
in his novel Many Dimensions about a cosmically
significant cube inscribed with the Tetragrammaton—
the name, in Hebrew, of God.
The following figure can be interpreted as
the Hebrew letter Aleph inscribed in a 3×3 square—
The above illustration is from undated software by Ed Pegg Jr.
For mathematical background, see a 1985 note, "Visualizing GL(2,p)."
For entertainment purposes, that note can be generalized from square to cube
(as Pegg does with his "GL(3,3)" software button).
For the Nordic-averse, some background on the Hebrew connection—
Background— Why Me? and the Fritz Leiber story "Damnation Morning."
The story, about the afterlife of a dead drunk, contains an intriguing dark lady.
Related material — Search for the Spider Woman.
See also Julie Taymor in an interview published last Dec. 12 —
“I’ve got two Broadway shows, a feature film, and Mozart,’’ she said.
“It’s a very interesting place to be and to be able to move back and forth,
but at a certain point you have to be able to step outside and see,’’
and here she dropped her voice to a tranquil whisper, “it’s just theater.
It’s all theater. It’s all theater. The whole thing is theater.’’
— and search for Taymor + Spider in this journal.
Happy Shakespeare's Birthday.
Today's noon post included a search result from a website titled "Enchanted Mind."
Related thoughts:
Today's New York Times on Julie Taymor's "Spider-Man"—
"Gone, when the show resumes performances on May 12 after a three-week overhaul, will be the Geek Chorus of narrators…."
A theatrical alternative—
National Catholic Reporter in 1995 on "Mighty Aphrodite"—
"Woody's neuroticism may be wearing thin, but he has invented a comic Greek chorus to comment on his problems…."
For a less comic Greek chorus, see The Quiet Customer (August 10, 2010).
"Hello, are you my 3 o'clock?"
See also Spider Girl (August 2, 2009).
yesterday on Julie Taymor and "Spider-Man"—
"This isn't a time for schadenfreude. Jobs are on the line, careers hang in the balance and the Fed isn't going to ride to the rescue of megamusicals as it did for Wall Street banks. But you'll forgive me for being a pessimist about the chances of an 11th hour redemption. The only way I can see this train wreck turning into an artistic success is if the investors were somehow able to resurrect Orson Welles to adapt the whole unfortunate episode into a 'Citizen Kane' sequel, the tale of an avant-garde idealist who loses her way after being enabled by heedless businessmen determined to duplicate the multibillion-dollar bonanza of 'The Lion King.'"
See also this morning's post and…
— Errol Morris in The New York Times , March 9th
Julie Taymor in an interview published Dec. 12 —
“I’ve got two Broadway shows, a feature film, and Mozart,’’ she said.
“It’s a very interesting place to be and to be able to move back and forth,
but at a certain point you have to be able to step outside and see,’’
and here she dropped her voice to a tranquil whisper, “it’s just theater.
It’s all theater. It’s all theater. The whole thing is theater.’’
Google News this afternoon (Blake Edwards obituary) —
Julie Taymor in an interview published Dec. 12 —
“I’ve got two Broadway shows, a feature film, and Mozart,’’ she said. “It’s a very interesting place to be and to be able to move back and forth, but at a certain point you have to be able to step outside and see,’’ and here she dropped her voice to a tranquil whisper, “it’s just theater. It’s all theater. It’s all theater. The whole thing is theater.’’
Non-theater —
"The interplay between Euclidean and Galois geometry" and
related remarks on interplay — Keats's Laws of Aesthetics.
Part theater, part non-theater —
"It's my absolute ambition that you are touched to the core of your being with the content…."
— Julie Taymor on Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (Playbill video, undated)
Another ambitious comic-book promotion —
"What Logicomix does that few works in any medium do is to make intellectual passion palpable. That is its greatest strength. And it’s here that its form becomes its substance."
— Judith Roitman, review (pdf, 3.7 MB) of Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth , in …
The December 2010 AMS Notices cover has excerpts from Logicomix.
Related material:
"In the classical grammarians’ sense of the power of form over 'content' and style over 'substance,' he originated the phrase, 'the medium is the message.'"
— Joseph P. Duggan on Marshall McLuhan at The University Bookman
See also, in this journal, The Medium is the Message, Wechsler, and Blockheads .
For Julie Taymor on Fashion's Night Out…
This morning's post had a link to a video meditation from the director of
the 1985 film "Kiss of the Spider Woman"—
This film clip is echoed by lyrics, broadcast this morning, from Taymor's new Spider-Man musical—
You can fly too high and get too close to the sun.
See how the boy falls from the sky.
This morning's post and the "At Play" film it linked to featured class conflict and Brazilian natives.
For a more down-to-earth approach to these topics, see Fox Broadcasting's new series "Running Wilde."
From Telegraph.co.uk (published: 5:56 PM BST 10 Aug 2010), a note on British-born Canadian journalist Bruce Garvey, who died at 70 on August 1—
In 1970, while reporting on the Apollo 13 mission at Nasa Mission Control for the Toronto Star, he was one of only two journalists— alongside Richard Killian of the Daily Express— to hear the famous message: "Houston we've had a problem."
See also Log24 posts of 10 AM and noon today.
The latter post poses the problem "You're dead. Now what?"
Again, as in this morning's post, applying Jungian synchronicity—
A check of this journal on the date of Garvey's death yields a link to 4/28's "Eightfold Geometry."
That post deals with a piece of rather esoteric mathematical folklore. Those who prefer easier problems may follow the ongoing struggles of Julie Taymor with "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark."
The problems of death, geometry, and Taymor meet in "Spider Woman" (April 29) and "Memorial for Galois" (May 31).
New York Times, January 12, 2010, 12:26 PM–
"Spider-Man" Musical Will Refund Tickets
"With… direction by Julie Taymor ['Frida'], 'Spider-Man' has been marred by delays….
The musical’s troubles have unfolded at the same time that the next “Spider-Man” movie has been descending into disarray…."
Related material:
"No Great Magic," by Fritz Leiber–
"The white cosmetic came away, showing sallow skin and on it a faint tattoo in the form of an 'S' styled like a yin-yang symbol left a little open.
'Snake!' he hissed. 'Destroyer! The arch-enemy, the eternal opponent!'"
“Ay que bonito es volar
A las dos de la mañana….”
— “La Bruja“
For the Man in Black
Lyrics: Arizona Star
“Shinin’ like a diamond
she had tombstones in her eyes.”
A picture: Salma Hayek and Julie Taymor
A book: Dark Ladies, by Fritz Leiber
This offers a gentler form of the alcoholic experience than Malcolm Lowry’s classic Under the Volcano:
“I’ve had hallucinations from alcohol, too…. But only during withdrawal oddly, the first three days. In closets and dark corners and under tables — never in very bright light — I’d see these black and sometimes red wires, about the thickness of telephone cords, vibrating, whipping around. Made me think of giant spiders’ legs and such. I’d know they were hallucinations — they were manageable, thank God. Bright light would always wipe them out.”
— Fritz Leiber, “Our Lady of Darkness,” in Dark Ladies
Related entries:
The Feast of Kali, the Dark Lady, and
Architecture of Eternity,
my own “Once Upon a Time in Mexico.”
For a more serious Dark Lady portrait, see the site of artist John de la Vega.
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