Bits & Pieces

by Kimberly Lindbergs | March 22, 2008

Categories | News, Books, Rants & Raves, French Cinema, Blogathons, William Klein


Elke Sommer and her bunny want to wish everyone
a happy holiday weekend!

Real world responsibilities, job hunting and a bad cold have been interfering with my writing and blog updates lately. I’m also going on a brief vacation tomorrow and I won’t return until Tuesday next week, but by then I should be feeling a lot better and you can expect me to start regularly updating Cinebeats again.

During my downtime I have been catching up on some reading. I got some interesting books for Christmas last year including Geoffrey Nowell-Smith’s Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s and Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art, which have been keeping me busy. Both books make for some fast, fun and fascinating reading.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about how I write about film and the way I approach viewing and analyzing the movies I watch after the film critic Adrian Martin was kind enough to consider my blog in a brief piece he wrote for de Filmkrant which you can read here:

- World Wide Angle - March 2008, nr 297

I’ve admired Adrian Martin for awhile and I find his writing and interviews very inspiring so I was extremely surprised and deeply flattered when Girish kindly pointed out Adrian’s piece in his own blog, which led to an interesting conversation there. I tend to get a little intimidated by all the wonderful and extremely thoughtful conversations that take place at Girish’s blog and I get nervous about jumping into the fray, but Girish has always made me feel very welcome there even when the other commentators occasionally seem to be twisting themselves up in small knots trying to talk around me and over me

I must also say that I’m really happy to be considered an ‘enthusiast’ by Adrian since it was really my love, appreciation and interest in unusual films that have often been maligned in the past or overlooked such as Boom! and Blood and Roses, which really motivated me to start writing about cinema and I find the original Cahiers du cinéma writers extremely inspirational.

Before I disappear for a few days, I thought I’d share a few links to various things of possible interest…

My buddy Kate has started her own film blog called Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire. If you enjoy horror films and unusual subgenres like nunsploitation, please stop by Kate’s blog and tell her I sent ya!
- Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire

Ferdy on Films is putting together a blogathon May 4th - 10th called Invitation to the Dance that will focus on various forms of dance found in films. I have a serious weakness for musicals that makes me drop everything I’m doing and watch them if I ever come across one playing on TV so naturally I plan on excepting Marilyn’s invitation and I hope other film bloggers will as well!
- Invitation to the Dance Movie Blogathon

And last but not least, Tim Lucas recently offered up a sneak peek at the upcoming Criterion - Eclipse 3 Disc DVD Box Set of The Delirious Fictions of William Klein, which has me super excited since it promises to be one of this years most interesting DVD releases. I’ve only seen Klein’s wonderfully surreal and fantastic film Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?, 1966) myself, but the print I saw many years ago was from a horrible multi-generation VHS tape that was barely watchable so I’m really looking forward to this release. Now I’ll finally be able to enjoy Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? in all its glorious widescreen splendor, along with two of Klein’s other films that I haven’t had the opportunity to see yet.
- The Delirious Fictions of William Klein

You can experience a little bit of William’s Klein’s magic in the following clip from his film Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966)


12 Comments »

  1. Jonathan Lapper says; March 22, 2008 @ 8:29 am

    Enjoy your vacation! Hope you feel better soon.

  2. Marilyn says; March 22, 2008 @ 10:14 am

    Enjoy your vacation and the return of health. I have missed your posting and look forward to more.

    And thanks for accepting my invitation. I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

  3. Keith says; March 22, 2008 @ 12:20 pm

    I do wish you all the best. I know this has been a trying time for you. Take care. Good luck. Enjoy your vacation. I look forward to your return. You have a wonderful blog here. Both books look great, but I really dig the cover of Making Waves. I’ll have to check out those links you posted.

  4. Vanwall says; March 22, 2008 @ 3:51 pm

    Thanks for the linkies - have a restful vacation!

  5. Kassy says; March 22, 2008 @ 7:03 pm

    I knew I liked this blog, but today you linked to Blood and Roses one of my all-time favorite movies and now I love this blog! Have a great vacation!!!

  6. Tenebrous Kate says; March 24, 2008 @ 7:31 am

    Hey Kim! Thank you so much for the shout-out–I really appreciate it :) It means a lot to me that a talented authoress such as yourself is enjoying my blog. I’m pretty sure that between this and the H’Berger DVDs you’ve sent me, I’m going to have to wash your Mini Cooper when I’m in your neighborhood. Have a lovely vacation and I’ll catch you upon your return!

    All good things,
    –K

  7. Will Kane says; March 25, 2008 @ 12:31 pm

    Hi Kimberley,

    I’m sorry to hear you’re unwell, I’ve been bed-bound myself for the last couple of days.

    I’m very excited by the William Klein boxset release.

    I’ve never seen ‘The Model Couple’ and I’ve only “seen” ‘Polly Maggoo’ in French with no subtitles so can give no deeper analysis than it ‘looks good’.

    ‘Mister Freedom’ however is amazing! It’s like a French 60s version of ‘Team America: World Police”, only so much better that sounds.
    Just a gobsmacking, “can’t believe what I’m watching”, visually stunning tour-de-force.

    -WK

  8. Campaspe says; March 25, 2008 @ 1:40 pm

    I sympathize with your blogging plight, and I hope you are able to clear away all that other work, rest up and feel better soon. I know exactly what you mean about Girish’s place, they hit the intellectual ball waaaaaay over the net sometimes and I doubt my ability to lob it back. But as you say, Girish is just about the nicest guy in the film blogosphere, warm, welcoming, and generous.

    Meanwhile, as a means of cheering you up, I just had to send this link your way. I have never seen this picture before, I have no idea where Larry found it, but it’s fab.

  9. Chris says; March 25, 2008 @ 4:52 pm

    I don’t know if you’ve seen these already but…

    http://murdermystery.livejournal.com/336074.html + http://esotika.blogspot.com/2008/03/traitement-de-choc-alain-jessua-1973.html

  10. cinebeats says; March 26, 2008 @ 2:05 pm

    Thanks for all the nice comments!

    I’m back from my vacation and have a lot of catching up to do but I managed to get a nasty spider bite on my foot while I was away, which is making it hard to stay on the computer for long periods of time since I have to keep my foot elevated so it will take awhile for me to get back into the swing of things here.

  11. girish says; March 27, 2008 @ 8:01 am

    Kimberly and Campaspe, thank you for your kind words. I’m so glad that you feel welcome at the blog even if the conversation pushes and pulls in various directions…! Both of you are model, generous conversation hosts and we all have a lot to learn from you about how to put readers instantly at ease and make them feel comfortable.

    Kimberly, best with that nasty spider bite!

  12. cinebeats says; March 28, 2008 @ 2:34 pm

    No need to thank me Girish! I really enjoy your blog and the conversations you start there make for some great reading.

    Thankfully the spider bite seems to be healing now that I’m at home so hopefully I’ll be able to walk straight soon.


RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>





Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Movie Posters 1960-1979

see more in Cinebeats' Flickr Gallery








CREDITS

  • Cinebeats chronicles one woman's love affair with '60s & '70s era cinema. Or as she likes to call it, cinema's Platinum Age! Blog design, updates and all original content is provided by Kimberly Lindbergs. She can be reached by email at:
    kimberly@cinebeats.com. This site is a review site and claims no ownership over the images used to promote the films reviewed here. All original blog content is copyright © by Kimberly Lindbergs and can not be directly copied or distributed in full without her permission.

    • INFORMATION