JOHN’S REPLY: Many thanks, Joe, for your info. on Tex. The fact that there is so much unknown, maybe myth, maybe not, only makes him a more fascinating character– just like the ones he created in the ‘toons.

Monsters on Maple Street, 1960 Original : At 1 2 3 video.nl
http://www.123video.nl/playvideos.asp?MovieID=836300

2003 Remake on you tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvwHuyHrNSE

The remake is more contemporary and very good as well. Watch both.

Is taring and feathering of our cowardly senate & house members allowed these days? Or would it be be deemed “terrorism ? ” The fools certainly deserve it along with sequestration of their pay.

Thanks for spreading the word about Five Broken Cameras. I served on the main competition jury at the 2012 Milwaukee Film Festival, where documentaries and narrative films compete in the same category. My fellow jurors and I gave the directors of Five Broken Cameras a prize. We often hear of the “democratization” of cinema. This is it.

David Heuring

JOHN’S REPLY: David, yes, this is it! For years I have watched many first person and autobiographical documentaries– usually fascinating self-portraits, and even at their most self-indulgent, intriguing studies in narcissism. But Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi have achieved that most rare thing with “5 Broken Cameras”: the story of a whole people’s struggle, while focused on one man’s family. In feature film terms, one has to look back to a film like “The Battle of Algiers” to see a similar personal focus, that of Ali La Pointe, the unlikely hero of a revolution.

Thank you we need to be reminded of this truth.

As I sit here in Las Vegas in my hotel room for meetings at today’s NAB convention, your post makes me want to pack my bags for the Met immediately. Such a contrast the thoughtful scholarly work and fascinating antiquities offered up by the Met against the backdrop of Las Vegas.

I can testify to your regeneration of visiting museums to recharge your batteries.

While working for Technicolor, I visited you in Chicago while on location for “Continental Divide.” One of the days I was there, you arranged with a museum for us to be allowed to enter before official opening times to take in an exhibit of abstract German art (I remember the images quite clearly, but can’t recall the name of that art movement). It was a fascinating experience to walk the halls, just you and I, and have you explain much of what we were looking at. Your were clearly energized by the art, and it in turn informed and impelled in how the play of light and shadow would influence your cinematography then, and films yet to come.

In my tenure at Technicolor, I always enjoyed (and was always somewhat in awe of) conversations with yourself, Vilmos, Laszlo, Owen, Vittorio, etc… On the works of Brunelleschi, Caravaggio, and others.

JOHN’S REPLY: I’m sorry I missed you at NAB, Rob. It is a zoo there esp. around the “millennials” booths– like “GoPro” and its neighbor booth “dji” with its white “Phantom” 4 rotor copter. Somewhere in the midst of the raffle drawings and the break dancers it was possible to find Arri and Canon.

I think the Chicago exhibition you allude to was a landmark one on the Bauhaus, the American version of which was actually founded in Chicago in the late 30s by Moholy-Nagy.