- Hardcover, bound in chocolate brown silk
- 30x30 cm (approx 12x12") coffee-table art book
- 104 tritone plates
- Printed in Italy
Genre: Foreign Film - Spanish/misc SA
Rating: R
Release Date: 18-DEC-2001
Media Type: DVDImagine if an actor's director like Eric Rohmer--whose films consist almost entirely of conversation between pairs or small groups of people--made a film that incorporated elements from movies like Dark City, eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor, The Truman Show, and Total Recall. The result might resemble Alejandro Amenabar's remarkable second feature, Open Your Eyes, which favors ideas over effects and offers twist upon twist with mind-warping agility. This film rewards multiple viewings, pushing the viewer toward one perception of reality, then switching to anot! her until reality itself is called into question. Melodrama, l! ove stor y, and psychological thriller combine with a dash of science fiction, forming a plot that is both disorienting and deceptively precise.
Set in Madrid, the story defies description, but this much can be revealed: young, handsome Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) is vain, rich, charming, and--following a botched suicide-murder scheme by a jilted lover--horribly disfigured. He'd fallen in love with Sofia (Penélope Cruz) but is now an embittered husk of his former self, stuck in a "psychiatric penitentiary" on a murder charge and hiding behind an expressionless mask. His reality has crumbled, but as the film's agenda is gradually revealed, we realize that there are other factors in play. Exposing that agenda would be a criminal offense against those who haven't seen the film; suffice it to say that Open Your Eyes takes you into the twilight zone and beyond, and does so cleverly enough to prompt Tom Cruise to produce and star in an English-language remake, Vanilla Sky. T! he 2001 remake, directed by Cameron Crowe, costars Cameron Diaz and Penélope Cruz, who reprises her original role. --Jeff ShannonLarry Levis was an outstanding poet, and a student and colleague of Philip Levine. Levine, who edited this posthumous manuscript, writes that Levis's "early death is a staggering loss for our poetry, but what he left is a major achievement that will enrich our lives for as long as poetry matters." That's high praise, and the poems in Elegy are sturdy enough to carry the weight of those expectations. Especially striking is "The Oldest Living Thing in L.A.," an encounter between urbanites trapped within the prisons of their routines, and an ancient-seeming possum crossing a busy city street: "It would lift its black lips & show them / The reddened gums, the long rows of incisors, / Teeth that went all the way back beyond / The flames of Troy & Carthage..." Levis's writing is marked by memorable imagery that reson! ates both to the world of our daily lives and our mythic long! ings for transcendence.According to The New York Times, John McDermott is "the Ansel Adams of Angkor.... His pictures are not just beautiful but iconic... dreamlike photos, which look as though they were taken in an ancient, forgotten world... becoming, in essence, the defining images of Angkor." McDermott's magical images let us enter an Angkor that is rapidly vanishing: the hidden realm of temples lost in the forest, a nineteenth century explorer's dream. He first came to Angkor in 1995 to witness a total eclipse of the sun. Inspired by the surreal, otherworldly light of the eclipse, he returned again and again over the next several years to create a definitive artistic portrait of the ancient Khmer temples. McDermott's photographs capture a unique moment in the history of Angkor: a pause on the cusp of their transition from remote jungle ruins to high profile international destination. In his images you can still wander solitary and alone through the giant stone causeway to a slu! mbering Angkor Wat, or watch in silence as a nun lights incense at a sunlit stupa. Created in a fourteen-year labor of love, Elegy is the definitive collection of McDermott's Angkor photography, with over 100 photographs. This exquisite coffee-table art book, with its lush images and subtle tonalities, was printed in Italy by Editoriale Bortolazzi Stei, one of the premier fine-art book printers in the world. The book is hardbound with a chocolate brown silk cover (the US edition has no dust cover), 256 pages, 104 tritone plates, 30x30 cm or approximately 12x12".
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