#Alexander Seitz

[craft2eu]

Vier Elemente. Handwerk & Design aus Berlin und Paris: Berlin vom 30.03. bis 30.04.2023

Die Doppel-Ausstellung „Vier Elemente. Handwerk & Design aus Paris und Berlin“ präsentiert die Ergebnisse der Wettbewerbe „Landespreis Gestaltendes Handwerk“ (insgesamt dotiert mit 15.000 €)  von 2019 und 2022 – und wirft darüber hinaus einen Blick auf zeitgenössisches Kunsthandwerk jenseits nationaler Grenzen: Prämierte und jurierte Berliner Objekte werden ergänzt durch Pariser Exponate, die von…

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Alexander Maximilian Seitz (German, 1811–1888) A Triptych depicting the Resurrected Christ with Agnes, Mary, John and Elisabeth, 1853

[oldsardens]

Alexander Maximilian Seitz - Crowned Mary with the Christ Child

[maerchenstund]

Vom Sinngehalt des Märchens – Rose Eller

„Da das Märchen blutgebunden ist, hat die Überlieferungswelt sich allen gegensätzlichen Einwirkungen im Laufe der Geschichte zum Trotz in Resten, in denen unschwer das alte Bild zu erkennen ist, erhalten.

Bauernland mit verstreuten Höfen, von Wald, Heide, Weide und Wasser umgeben, das ist die Welt des Märchens. Mittelpunkt des Lebens ist der Hof und sein Herdfeuer. Die Frau genießt höchste Wertschätzung. Die Zugehörigkeit zur Sippe ist der Kern des Lebens, in ihr wirkt das Vorbild in freigewählter Sittlichkeit. Mitunter erscheint der Märchenheld als Ahnherr eines Geschlechtes. Der Sohn empfängt vom Vater die besonderen Waffen, das besondere Roß und er durchläuft dieselben Haltepunkte in der Binnen- und Außen welt wie sein Vater. "Es war einmal ein König, der hatte drei Söhne...", so beginnt ein Märchen.

Das alles ist Heimat.“

[krautjunker]

Reisen in Taiga und Tundra

Buchvorstellung von Werner Berens VorbemerkungenSo heißt das Buch bzw. die Übersetzung aus dem Schwedischen, erschienen als Buch der  Friedenauer Presse, einem Imprint des Verlages Matthes & Seitz Berlin. Der Autor, Matthias Alexander Castrén, berichtet, beschreibt, erzählt darin auf 313 eng beschriebenen Seiten in den im Folgenden erwähnten Kapiteln und vielen Unterkapiteln über seine…

[goalhofer]

2024 olympics Switzerland roster

Athletics

Charles Devantay (Zurich)

William Reais (Chur)

Timothé Mumenthaler (Geneva)

Felix Svensson (Versoix)

Lionel Spitz (Adliswil)

Jonas Raess (Zurich)

Jason Joseph (Basel)

Julien Bonvin (Sierre)

Tadesse Abraham (Geneva)

Matthias Kyburz (Rheinfelden)

Ricky Petrucciani (Locarno)

Simon Ehammer (Stein)

Emma Van Camp (Bern)

Annina Fahr (Schaffhausen)

Catia Gubelmann (Zurich)

Lena Wernli (Zurich)

Julia Niederberger (Buochs)

Giulia Senn (Bern)

Géraldine Frey (Zurich)

Salomé Kora-Joseph (St. Gallen)

Mujinga Kambundji (Bern)

Ditaji Kambundji (Bern)

Léonie Pointet (Jongny)

Audrey Werro (Fribourg)

Rachel Pellaud (Biel/Bienne)

Valentina Rosamilia (Aargau)

Yasmin Giger (Romanshorn)

Fabienne Schlumpf (Wetzikon)

Helen Eticha (Geneva)

Sarah Atcho-Jaquier (Lausanne)

Angelica Moser (Andelfingen)

Pascale Stöcklin (Basel)

Annik Kälin (Zurich)

Badminton

Tobias Künzi (Würenlingen)

Jenjira Stadelmann (Bern)

Canoeing

Martin Dougoud (Geneva)

Alena Marx (Bern)

Climbing

Alexander Lehmann (Bern)

Cycling

Stefan Bissegger (Weinfelden)

Marc Hirschi (Ittigen)

Stefan Küng (Wil)

Alex Vogel (Frauenfeld)

Mathias Flückiger (Bern)

Nino Schurter (Tursnaus)

Cédric Butti (Thurgau)

Simon Marquart (Zurich)

Elise Chabbey (Geneva)

Noemi Rüegg (Schöfflisdorf)

Linda Zanetti (Lugano)

Elena Hartmann (Grisons)

Aline Seitz (Basel)

Michelle Andres (Baden)

Alessandra Keller (Ennetbürgen)

Sina Frei (Männedorf)

Nikita Ducarroz (Sonoma County, California)

Nadine Aeberhard (Bern)

Zoe Claessens (Echichens)

Equestrian

Robin Godel (Fribourg)

Felix Vogg (Waiblingen, Germany)

Steve Guerdat (Elgg)

Martin Fuchs (Zurich)

Edouard Schmitz (Wangen An Der Aare)

Pius Schwizer (Oensingen)

Andrina Suter (Schaffhausen)

Mélody Johner (Cheseaux-Sur-Lausanne)

Fencing

Alex Bayard (Sion)

Pauline Brunner (La Chaux-De-Fonds)

Golf

Joel Girrbach (Kreuzlingen)

Albane Valenzuela (Dallas, Texas)

Morgane Métraux (Lausanne)

Gymnastics

Luca Giubellini (Rebstein)

Matteo Giubellini (Rebstein)

Florian Langenegger (Bühler)

Noe Seifert (Sevelen)

Taha Serhani (Hutwill)

Lena Bickel (Ticino)

Judo

Nils Stump (Uster)

Daniel Eich (Fribourg)

Binta Ndiaye (Bern)

Pentathlon

Alexandre Dällenbach (Saint-Denis, France)

Anna Jurt (Bern)

Rowing

Scott Bärlocher (Würenlos)

Dominic-Remo Condrau (Zurich)

Maurin Lange (Bern)

Jan Plock (Zurich)

Patrick Brunner (Zurich)

Kai Schaetzle (Lucerne)

Joel Schurch (Schenkon)

Raphaël Ahumada (Lausanne)

Jan Schäuble (Bern)

Andrin Gulich (Zurich)

Roman Röösli (Neuenkirch)

Tim Roth (Zurich)

Célia Dupré (Plan-Les-Ouates)

Lisa Lötscher (Meggen)

Fabienne Schweizer (Lucerne)

Pascale Walker (Zurich)

Aurelia-Maxima Janzen (Bern)

Sailing

Elia Colombo (Bern)

Arno De Planta (Pully)

Yves Mermod (Zurich)

Sébastien Schneiter (Bern)

Elena Lengwiler (Hinwil)

Maud Jayet (Lausanne)

Maja Siegenthaler (Spiez)

Shooting

Jason Solari (Malveglia)

Christoph Dürr (Zurich)

Nina Christen (Stans)

Audrey Gogniat (Le Noirmont)

Chiara Leone (Frick)

Swimming

Tiago Behar (Lutry)

Antonio Djakovic (Frauenfeld)

Thierry Bollin (Bern)

Roman Mityukov (Geneva)

Noè Ponti (Locarno)

Jérémy Desplanches (Geneva)

Nils Leiss (Geneva)

Lisa Mamié (Zurich)

Tennis

Stan Wawrinka (Stans)

Viktorija Golubić (Zurich)

Triathlon

Adrien Briffod (Vevey)

Max Studer (Kestenholz)

Sylvain Fridelance (Vaud)

Julie Derron (Zurich)

Cathia Schär (Lavaux-Oron)

Volleyball

Tanja Hüberli (Thalwil)

Nina Brunner (Steinhausen)

Esmée Böbner (Hasle)

Zoé Vergé-Dépré (Berne, Germany)

[byneddiedingo]

Corinne Griffith and Victor Varconi in The Divine Lady (Frank Lloyd, 1929)

Cast: Corinne Griffith, Victor Varconi, H.B. Warner, Ian Keith, Marie Dressler, Montagu Love, William Conklin, Dorothy Cumming. Screenplay: Forrest Halsey, titles by Harry Carr and Edwin Justus Mayer, based on a story by E. Barrington. Cinematography: John F. Seitz. Art direction: Horace Jackson. Film editing: Hugh Bennett. Music: Cecil Copping.

Frank Lloyd is a director nobody remembers today except for the fact that he won two best director Oscars. Unfortunately, they were for movies that almost no one except film scholars and Oscar completists watch today: this one and Cavalcade (1933). His other distinction is that his Oscar for The Divine Lady is the only one that has ever been awarded for a film that was not nominated for best picture.* It's a moderately entertaining film about the affair of Emma Hamilton (Corinne Griffith) and Lord Horatio Nelson (Victor Varconi) -- a story better told in That Hamilton Woman (Alexander Korda, 1941) with Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier as the lovers. Griffith is one of those silent stars whose career didn't make it into the sound era, reportedly because her voice was too nasal. She was, however, considered* for the best actress Oscar, which went to Mary Pickford for Coquette. She doesn't have to speak in The Divine Lady: Although it has a synchronized music track, including Griffith supposedly singing (but probably dubbed) "Loch Lomond", and sound effects, including cannon fire during Nelson's naval battles, there is no spoken dialogue. The only truly standout performance is a small one by Marie Dressler as Emma's mother: She has a funny slapstick bit at the beginning of the movie, but disappears from the movie far too soon. The cinematography by John F. Seitz (miscredited as "John B. Sietz" in the opening titles) was also considered* for an Oscar, but it went to Clyde De Vinna for White Shadows in the South Seas (W.S. Van Dyke and Robert J. Flaherty, 1928).

*If you want to get technical about it, there were no official nominations in any of the Oscar categories for the 1928-29 awards. What are usually regarded as nominees are the artists and films that Academy records show were under consideration for awards. In Lloyd's case, he was also under consideration for directing the films Drag and Weary River during the same time period, but when his win was announced, only The Divine Lady  was specified.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Chinese EVs Clog Up Brazil Ports With New Tariffs Cooling Growth

Brazilian ports have been clogged this year with upwards of 70,000 unsold Chinese EVs, in a sign of how hard it’s becoming for China’s automakers to keep up their robust growth.

Companies such as BYD Co. and Great Wall Motor Co. have global ambitions, and Brazil has become a crucial proving ground with many other large economies turning toward protectionism. The country is the world’s sixth-biggest auto market and success there may boost prospects across the region.

But after taking Brazil’s nascent EV sector by storm, China’s automakers are facing increasing challenges. The glut of cars at the ports stems from them trying to avoid new tariffs. Domestic competitors have responded with additional electric options and investment. Plus, the country’s EV growth rate is cooling, like much of the world.

The “honeymoon is over now,” said Alexander Seitz, executive chairman of the South American unit of Volkswagen AG, which has been selling cars in Brazil since the 1950s and produces some of the country’s top-selling combustion-engine models.

Continue reading.

[back-and-totheleft]

Book of Stone

To the minimalism of Straub and Huillet we can counterpoint the maximalism of Oliver Stone, the most aggressive tabloid American director since Samuel Fuller (although Rococo-period Tony Scott gives him some competition). After two books on Wes Anderson, Matt Zoller Seitz has brought us a booklike slab as impossible as the man’s films. Can you pick it up? Just barely. Can you read it? Well, probably not on your lap; better have a table nearby. Does its design mirror the maniacal scattershot energy of films like JFK (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994), and U-Turn (1997)? Watch the title propel itself off the cover.

stone-book-coverThe Oliver Stone Experience is basically a long interview, sandwiched in among luxurious photos, script extracts, correspondence, and the sort of insider memorabilia that Matt has a genius for finding. We get not only pictures of Stone with family and friends, on the set, and relaxing; there are bubblegum cards from the 40s, collages of posters and filming notes, maps, footnotes, and shards of texts slicing in from every which way. Newspapers, ads, and production documents are scissored into the format, including a Bob Dole letter fundraising on the basis of the naughtiness of Natural Born Killers. Beautiful frame enlargements pay homage to the split-diopter framings of Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and the shadow of the 9/11 plane sliding up a facade in World Trade Center (2006). When Stone had second thoughts about things he’d said, Matt had the good idea of redacting the interview like a CIA file scoured with thick black lines.

The whole thing comes at you in a headlong rush. Amid the pictorial churn and several essays by other deft hands, we plunge into and out of that stellar interview, mixing biography and filmmaking nuts-and-bolts. Matt gets deep into technical matters, such as Stone’s penchant for rough-hewn editing, as well as raising some big ideas about myth and autobiography. There are occasional quarrels between interviewer and interviewee. Out of the blue we get remarks like “Alexander was not only bisexual, he was trisexual,” which was not redacted.

The book’s very excess helps make the case for Stone’s idiosyncratic vision. Matt’s connecting essays, along with the vast visual archive he’s scavenged and mashed up, made me want to rethink my attitude toward this overweening, sometimes crass, sometimes inspired filmmaker. He now seems a quintessential 80s-90s figure, as much a part of the era as Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Stone emerges as a resourceful defender of The Oliver Stone Experience, articulating a radical political critique with gonzo verve.

-David Bordwell's review of The Oliver Stone Experience [x]

[ari-leschnikoff]

Goethe, Faust, 1877, illustrations after original designs by Alexander Liezen Mayer and vignettes, ornamental borderings, etc. by Rudolf Seitz. 

[straysakurapetal]

I still freak out over the fact that these two fellas own the same va

So do these two but then again where have we NOT seen Lucien Dodge in a video game?

Dust: An Elysian Tale was good aight

AND WE CAN’T FORGET THAT THE KING OF VALENTIA BECAME THE HUMBLE GATEKEEPER-

HMMMMMMM

They brought back so many Echoes VAs it’s awesome

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Godzilla vs. Kong (Wingard, 2021)

This review contains mild spoilers.

The last time Godzilla and King Kong fought, the former was still a villain, or at least a monster of whom we should be fearful (human motivations perhaps don't apply to such creatures), having been established as a destructive force in a few prior films, and the latter was the more heroic one. (It wouldn't be for a few more films until Godzilla, like the Terminator, became a good guy, and with his belly-rubbing-and-hopping dance in Invasion of Astro Monster, achieved an official Cute designation. Membership fees are a few hundred a year, but if you're lucky, your employer foots the bill, and you get a few extra letters at the end of your name.) This time, well, we're a few entries into this new shared universe franchise, and we've spent enough time with our giant scaly and furry friends to know that neither one is bad deep down, and even though the movie sets one up as a heel to force some confrontations, astute viewers can guess that something is up.

I normally find shared universes exhausting in modern cinema (I shouldn't have to do a dozen movies' worth of homework to understand why one jag-off in pantaloons is punching out another jag-off in pantaloons). But I find them a lot more palatable with the kaiju movie, as here the plots very much don't matter so any excuse to bring together different monsters is welcome. Like with the Showa era classics, the human characters are very much secondary to the proceedings, but I think it's worth pondering the differences in worldviews between the two iterations. Matt Zoller Seitz goes into it with a lot more thoughtfulness than I can muster in this great piece for Vulture, but essentially where Ishiro Honda believed in the sanctity of institutions and that humans were capable of altruistic actions that had an actual impact, these new movies view human intervention somewhere between misguided and actively detrimental. I won't pretend I have any great insights here, but this tale of a giant lizard duking it out with a giant gorilla does hit a certain way when the tension between individual actions and institutional response to systemic problems and the Coronovirus pandemic have been on a lot of our minds.

That being said, it doesn't make the human scenes all that much more compelling, and a supposed twist involving Demian Bichir becomes as much as a surprise as the fact that can't trust the president of Cuba, a person whom Bichir once portrayed. I will say that I was more engaged when we spent time with the unexpectedly attractive smarty pants scientist types played by Rebecca Hall and Alexander Skarsgard and the unexpectedly attractive representative of the military industrial complex played by Eiza Gonzalez, and found the rapport between Hall and the deaf-mute child Kaylee Hottle fairly involving by the standards of these movies. I was much less involved when we hung out with Millie Bobby Brown, who was in one of these movies previously, her annoying friend Julian Dennison, and a conspiracy theorist played by Bryan Tyree Henry, who is very much in "Li'l Rel Howery in Get Out" mode.

I also watched this on a flight, which is perhaps not the ideal way to experience a movie of this scale. Which is to say, I found the monster carnage diverting enough and relatively colourful, but found it lacked the grandiosity of the 2014 Godzilla, the phantasmagoric qualities of King of the Monsters and the giddy textural pleasures of Kong: Skull Island. And the CGI very much felt like CGI to me, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't prefer the more concrete pleasures of people in suits knocking over cardboard sets, like in the previous confrontation between the two titular characters.

[themattress]

Because the talent collected for Pokemon Masters impresses me, I’m making this masterlist post of voice actors. They are divided into four categories: Fresh and Unestablished (VAs who just surfaced in the past few years and haven’t become noteworthy names at the time of their casting), Fresh and Established (VAs whose careers have spanned the late 2010s and are already well recognized for at least one other major role, usually several), Veteran (VAs whose careers have spanned the late 2000s / early 2010s), and Super Veteran (VAs whose careers have spanned the early 2000s or even earlier). Again, bear in mind this reflects their status when cast for this game - obviously, things change: some Unestablished VAs are now starting to become Established, some Established VAs are reaching Veteran status, and eventually Veteran VAs will be known as Super Veterans. It’s just how the business works.

SUPER VETERAN: Ben Diskin (Ace Trainer, Scientist, Street Thug) Bob Carter (Chuck) Bryce Papenbrook (Lear) Cam Clarke (Alder) Carrie Keranen (Lucy) Christopher Bevins (Koga, Brycen, Swimmer) Christopher Corey Smith (Kabu) David Matranga (Gordie) Dorothy Fahn (Agatha, Marley) Doug Erholtz (Guzma) Ezra Weisz (Molayne) J Michael Tatum (Emmet) James Carter Cathcart (James, Meowth) Jamieson Price (Wulfric) Janice Kawaye (Janine, Kahili) Jennie Kwan (Emma) Julia McIlvanie (Olivia, Camper) Karen Strassman (Fantina) Kirk Thornton (Blaine, Clay) Kyle Hebert (Pryce, Crasher Wake) Mela Lee (Karen) Michelle Ruff (Plumeria, Lusamine) Minae Noji (Olympia) Patrick Seitz (Lt. Surge) Rachel Robinson (Argenta) Richard Epcar (Sawyer) Steve Kramer (Drake, Ramos) Ted Sroka (Ethan) Wendee Lee (Melony)

VETERAN: Alexis Tipton (Anabel) Amber Lee Connors (Ariana) Anairis Quinones (Greta) Austin Tindle (Riley) Brianna Roberts (Team Skull Grunt) Brittany Lauda (Klara) Bryson Baugus (Arven) Casey Mongillo (Benga) Cassandra Lee Morris (Iris, Tate) Cherami Leigh (Kris, Mina) Chris Jai Alex (Kiawe) Christine Marie Cabanos (Acerola) Cristina Milizia (Nemona) Cristina Vee (Bugsy, Phoebe, Marnie) Christopher Wehkamp (Team Plasma Grunt) Dawn M. Bennett (Team Plasma Grunt) D.C. Douglas (Lysandre) Edward Bosco (???) Elizabeth Maxwell (Dana) Erica Mendez (Gardenia, Hilda) Erika Harlacher (Bianca) Erik Scott Kimerer (Barry, Grant) Joe J. Thomas (Professor Oak) Kaiji Tang (Noland, Hiker, Poké Fan) Keith Silverstein (Norman, Collector) Kellen Goff (Ball Guy) Kevin M. Connolly (Milo) Kira Buckland (Liza, Shauntal, Beauty, Rising Star) Laura Post (Flannery, Cheryl, Drasna) Lauren Landa (Lorelei) Lindsay Sheppard (Naomi) Linsay Rousseau (Oleana) Micah Solusod (Adaman) Michelle Knotz (Jessie) Mick Wingert (Ghetsis) Morgan Berry (Malva) Morgan Lauré Garrett (Sonia) Ray Chase (Marlon, Blackbelt) Ricco Farajo (Jacq) Sarah Natochenny (Ash Ketchum) Sarah Williams (Whitney, Clair) Sean Chiplock (Siebold, Nanu) Todd Haberkorn (Petrel) Xander Mobus (Steven) Xanthe Huynh (Erika)

FRESH AND ESTABLISHED: Alexander Gross (Faba) Amanda Lee (Lana) Andrew Rusell (Giovanni) Anjali Kunapaneni (Courtney) Armen Taylor (Cyrus) Austin Lee Matthews (???) Beau Bridgland (Bede) Ben Lepley (Professor Sycamore) Bill Millsap (Lance) Billy Kametz (Blue) Brad Venable (Wikstrom) Brandon McInnis (Lucian) Brandon Winckler (Red) Brenna Larsen (Eve) Brian Hanford (Morty) Brianna Knickerbocker (Roxie, Viola) Brook Chalmers (Palmer) Cassie Ewulu (Team Yell Grunt) Chris Hackney (Volkner) Christian La Monte (Archer) Clifford Chapin (Proton) Cory Yee (Volo) Courtney Lin (Penny) Daisy Guevara (Shauna) Daman Mills (N) Dani Chambers (Shelly) Della Saba (Lyra, Hapu, Gloria) Emi Lo (Evelyn, Team Galactic Grunt) Erica Lindbeck (Maylene, Rachel) Faye Mata (Tricia, Trinnia, Trista) Greg Chun (Bruno, Grimsley) Griffin Burns (Hilbert) Griffin Puatu (Lucas) Henry Mason (Blue) Howard Wang (Falkner) Jackie Lastra (Serena) Jade Dennis (Chase) Jeannie Tirado (Winona, Sophocles) Jenny Yokobori (Nita) Joe Zieja (Silver) Jon Allen (Brawly, Thorton) Jordan Dash Cruz (Tierno) Jordan Reynolds (Ingo) Kai Jordan (Team Galactic Grunt) Kane Jungbluth-Murry (Hala) Katelyn Gault (Glacia) Kayleigh McKee (Avery) Kayli Mills (Rosa) Khoi Dao (Paulo) Kimberly Woods (Jasmine, Youngster) Kyle McCarley (Clemont) Landon McDonald (Flint, Cheren) Laura Stahl (Skyla, Hau) Lily Ki (Iono) Lisa Reimold (Kali) Lizzie Freeman (Sabrina) Maureen Price (Irida) Mick Lauer (Looker) Mike Haimoto (Saturn) Phillip Reich (Will, Marshal) Rachelle Heger (Tina) Reba Buhr (Misty) Ryan Bartley (Candice, Korrina) Ryan Colt Levy (???) Skyler Davenport (Valerie) Stefan Martello (Team Skull Grunt) Stephan Fu (Hugh) Stephanie Southerland (Gloria) SungWon Cho (Sidney) Tamara Ryan (Professor Bellis) Tommy Arciniega (Brock) Vargus Mason (Hop) Yong Yea (Larry) Yung-I Chang (Colress) Zach Aguilar (Calem)

FRESH AND UNESTABLISHED: Abby Espiritu (Poppy, Team Magma Grunt) Adin Rudd (Archie) Adriel Varlack (Chili) Alice Himora (Elaine, Geeta) Amber Connor (Mallow) Antonia Flynn (Diantha) Ashley Biski (Katherine) Becca Q Co (Rika) Ben Balmaceda (Shadow Triad, Team Yell Grunt) Ben Thao (Victor) Bindy Coda (Team Aqua Grunt) Brent Mukai (Team Rocket Grunt) Brian T. Anderson (Darach) Brittany Cox (Lisia, Jupiter) Caleb Yen (Cilan) Cedric Williams (Leon) Chris Wei Lewis (Aether Foundation Grunt) Christie Cate (Mars) Christina McBride (Selene) Connor Ludovice (Eusine) Darrel J. Delfin (Team Magma Grunt) Deborah Gatton (Elesa) Deneen Melody (May) Dorah Fine (Bertha) Edward Mendoza (Grusha) Greg Vinciguerra (Trevor) Heather Gonzales (Team Rocket Grunt, Dahlia) Jarred Kjack (Maxie) Jennifer Losi (Lillie) John Patneaude (Rei) Jonah Scott (Ryuki) Justice Washington (Brandon) Justine Lee (Team Flare Grunt) Kevin D. Thelwell (Team Aqua Grunt) Kevin K. Gomez (Aaron) Kieran Reagan (Team Flare Grunt, Sightseer) Kimberley Anne Campbell (Dawn) Kory Getman (Cress) Kyle Castellani (Nate) Maaz Ali (Chairman Rose) Madeline Dorroh (Lyra) Melissa Mabie (Wally) Michelle Marie (Leaf) Mike Dent (Elio, Raihan) Mike Smith (Matt) Mikey Caputo (Wallace) Nicole Gose (Allister) Noveen Crumble (Aether Foundation Grunt) Risa Mei (Akari) Sarah Miller-Crews (Roxanne, Caitlin) Shara Kirby (Bea) Tiana Camacho (Nessa) Van Barr Jr. (Tabitha) Vivian Lu (Zinnia) Zakiya Young (Lenora)

[bcwallin]

One Nostalgia Later

Zero barely talks about his great lost love. As the “aged proprietor” of an “enchanted old ruin” known as the Grand Budapest Hotel, he tells his life story by skipping around her presence, touching on the existence of his “darling Agatha,” but avoiding falling into the pit of despair. Beautiful things don’t get to be completed in his world, where poems are always cut off, nice sentiments are interrupted, and the dark specter of war and disease cuts short any hope of living long, living with love. The man who “struck one as being, deeply and truly, lonely” knows what it is to lose.

For a brief time, Zero and Agatha shared a love. They were outcasts, ignored, working in service jobs that required self-abnegation—he as a hotel lobby boy; she, the pastry girl at a bakery. We see them in their bedrooms; it’s not much. “We did not have 50 Klubecks between the two of us,” recalls the older Zero. They worked long, demanding hours and had few moments to spare. Zero’s meals were held with the rest of the hotel staff. Agatha suffered the overbearing, watchful eye of her boss at the bakery, Herr Mendl. Being together was difficult, but the few moments they shared were rapturous. Their courtship felt like young love feels: furtive, secretive, and bursting with flushed emotion.

That young love never gets to mature. Agatha dies too early. “An absurd little disease,” the older Zero says parenthetically of the cause of death. So, every moment is preserved in amber, but never lingered on for too long. “She is a nearly absent presence in the story, by Zero’s choice: a narrative door marked ‘Do Not Enter,’” writes Matt Zoller Seitz, in his book about the movie. “He won’t speak of her. It’s too painful, and he’s too private.” But the aged Zero can’t tell his story without including her, try as he might. And we get glimpses.

On one good day, Zero and Agatha go to a carousel. They’re accompanied by Herr Mendl, but they barely notice. Zero gives his love a gift. He’s so anxious for her to like it, he can’t even wait for her to open the wrapping before he bursts out with what it is. He can’t contain his love in the inscription, either: “For my dearest, darling, treasured, cherished Agatha, whom I worship. With respect, adoration, admiration, kisses, gratitude, best wishes, and love.”

Throughout their courtship, the world around Zero and Agatha bursts at the seams with the portents of war, as newspapers tease, armies gather, and the brightly colored, idyllic world of the fictional state of Zubrowka teeters on the brink. The start of the war, after all, sees the appearance of black-clad death squads, and eventually, the draining of color from the film itself. Darkness and death loom quietly, but no matter what’s going on in the world, a first love is a first love. And it’s all encapsulated in a single image.

Agatha’s face takes up the center of the boxy frame—her gaze is transfixing. She stares lovingly, straight through the camera. We’re Zero, locking eyes with her. The colors shift over her face as carousel lights turn behind and around her. She is radiant, then shadowed, then red. She has the slightest hint of a smile, her head tilted, just so. Agatha stares with her deep blue eyes and it’s near-impossible to look away. But who would want to?

In this single moment, the music fades as if it’s playing somewhere else, the lights haze, as the focus can only be directed toward Agatha. Time is frozen, if only for a moment, as we experience the ecstasy of loving and knowing you are loved. Of early love, with its rushed heartbeats, tingling limbs, empty stomachs, stuttering lips, and sweaty brows. We hold onto this eternally familiar moment. As Italo Calvino once wrote, describing a different, frozen moment in time: “The suspicion that has gripped me is precisely this: that I have come to find myself in a space not new to me, that I have returned to a point where we had already passed by.”

* * *

The Grand Budapest Hotel continues a literary tradition that’s stretched from Dante to Moulin Rouge!: women die tragically and their lovers memorialize them in their writings. Agatha is an ideal, an image. Like Madeleine to Scotty in Vertigo (but less creepy), like the woman of an aged Mr. Bernstein’s tale in Citizen Kane (but more meaningful), Agatha exists as a memory or a reference.

With its frames within frames of shifting perspectives and aspect ratios, The Grand Budapest Hotel is distinctly literary. Its opening monologue is lifted nearly verbatim from Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig, an author whose work is credited with inspiring the film, whose mustache seems to appear on more than one character’s face, and whose disappearing world is fictionalized as the setting. Zweig’s non-fiction is a great example of the longing for a lost place; his fiction for lost people. In his novella Journey into the Past, Zweig chronicles the long-awaited reunion of a man and a woman who had once been deeply in love, years ago. “How much time, how much lost time, and yet in the space of a second a single thought took him back to the very beginning.”

Zweig’s stories are often framed as recollections told over, as stories shared with strangers because of their absolute meaningfulness—much like the memorializing by grieving lovers of literary tradition—because these memories needed to be stories, to be remembered by somebody else. Zweig’s framing characters look to create the literature of their own lived stories. Journey into the Past sees two characters, Ludwig and an unnamed woman,  returning to their own story, with one seeking to consummate his unrequited love of nine years’ distance. They had had an emotional affair, tucked into passionate glances and tacit communication, years earlier, while her husband was alive. They kissed where they could, but they had to hide from the servants who always seemed to be around at the least opportune time. Ludwig’s desires were never fully satisfied and he was called away on business so he could build his fortune. And he and his love made a promise to be together once he’d return.

But the trouble with remembering love is that its amber glow sets up dangerous expectations. After being away far longer than he’d have liked to be, Ludwig is greeted fondly by the woman’s staff. He joins his love to the literary tradition and wonders to himself, as Zweig writes, “Odysseus…the household dogs recognize you, will the mistress of the house know you again too?” He’s been away for nine years. He’s gotten married, but he still returns for a rendezvous with the woman he loved and lost, to fulfill a promise she had made him, but which she realizes she cannot keep. Ludwig recalls a couplet from a French poem by Paul Verlaine: “In the old park, in ice and snow caught fast / Two specters walk, still searching for the past.” The poem, which cuts off there in Zweig’s story, imagines a dialogue between lost lovers:

—Does your heart still surge at my very name?

Do you still see my soul when you dream?—No.

—Ah, the beautiful days of inexpressible bliss

When our lips met!—It may have been so.

—How blue the sky, how hopes ran high!

—Hope has fled, vanquished, to the black sky.

Like Jay Gatsby or Mr. Bernstein or Lemony Snicket, wondering what might have been, Ludwig and Verlaine’s narrator and an old Zero romanticize their visions of love as time goes by.

“Any adequate view of nostalgia will acknowledge that it involves a felt difference between past and present: the very irretrievability of the past is salient in the experience,” wrote philosophy professor Scott Alexander Howard. We may seek to stay in the past through memory, Howard tells us, because the present seems worse, because we didn’t realize how good life was, or because we’re spontaneously overtaken by nostalgia. Nostalgia may mean that we see the past as a time that was better, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean that our vision of the past is false, it does mean that things get amplified to a whole other level:

The nostalgist knows the past in question was unpleasant at the time, but in memory it is altered by certain effects: for example, the memory has acquired a gold patina, or it seems to be an uncanny distillation of a whole time period. Neither effect strikes the self-aware nostalgist as true to the quality of one’s experiences at the time when those memories were encoded. Yet they are part of what is targeted by nostalgia. The emotion seems to be directed precisely at the “fictional” features of the memory image��things which one recognizes to be not inside the scene on the other side of the window, but drawn onto the glass.

That amber glow or gold patina grows as we distance ourselves from a disappeared world. Zero’s story, his world, his love are by definition irretrievable.

The carousel (in reality, a wood frame built around a camera setup) is irretrievable. The lights (in reality, constructed to be evocative more than representative) are irretrievable. The shared moment—stolen between long shifts of service as Herr Mendl looks on—is gone, and its memory is a fictionalized, amberized construction of nostalgia and longing.

As the elder Zero looks back, the once garishly pink and red hotel now looks like a holdover from Soviet-era architecture, its colors a drab collection of beiges and oranges. The grand ballroom holds few diners and the place, in general, is empty. Guests push their own elevator buttons, serve themselves from vending machines, and, at times, even retrieve their own keys.

And Agatha. Zero holds onto her memory, but reveals very little of it. She has 15 lines in the film’s screenplay. The first time we hear of Agatha, the older Zero avoids saying much, and talks of her only when he has to. It’s all gone and irretrievable. Sort of.

* * *

One cold November night at Penn Station, the poet Alandra Markman, then going by the pseudonym Allan Andre, wrote a poem for me and a friend (we missed our train, but the delay was worth it). “One nostalgia later” gave a compelling portrait of family meals, “as winter nights dissolve into warm / recollection and company we’re still keeping.” The way the poem goes, we create our nostalgia as we live through moments, readying our stories to be told and remembered some time later on. “Let every glow, mechanical or felt, be one / with the shadows we’re still casting, / and guide our bodies into greater light.”

The story of Zero and Agatha’s love was created on the carousel. In that moment, we see their love blossoming, deepening, exploding with the soft-focus lights of ecstasy. The elder Zero tells us he’s exercising restraint, avoiding talking about Agatha as much as he can, but if he were truly offering a utilitarian telling, there’d be no need to include this gaze frozen in time. In that moment, we never see Zero head-on, never see the reverse shot of adoration. It’s only Agatha and light. And us.

The elder Zero tells the story to a writer, the writer remembers it long enough to write it as an older man, the older man’s book becomes important enough for him to become a beloved national author, and through the eyes of a devotee, we read this book. When Stefan Zweig incorporates listeners into the story, it’s not just for the purpose of framing. The value of a memory is in how it feels to the rememberer, but the value of a story is in how it feels to the one who hears it. It is the storyteller himself who seeks out the opportunity to tell his story—the older Zero needles the writer into admitting his curiosity and offers, of his own volition, to tell it  in full. The telling is not for the benefit of Zero himself; he is giving something to the author, creating an experience for his audience. With its multiple framings, The Grand Budapest Hotel tells us that we are the viewers, the listeners, the readers. We are part of the experience, and we create our nostalgia as we experience it, so we can tell the story later of a place with bright reds, dark blacks, and swirling lights.

I remember The Grand Budapest Hotel, and I remember those swirling lights and the clutched breath and the deep longing. I think about that one frame of Agatha, frozen in time, holding her lover’s gaze—holding our gaze—as the darkness briefly clouds her face. Every time Zero and the writer and Wes Anderson tell me the story, I see that darkness and I face the irretrievability. I don’t feel nostalgia; I feel regret. For Zubrowka and everything it represents. For the grandness of the Grand Budapest. For Agatha.

* * *

When Calvino wrote about his frozen moment, it was in the story “t zero,” in which the narrator, a hunter, faces a lion L, the arrow A just fired from the hunter’s bow at the time tx. The hunter considers the possibility that A will collide with L at point X and he will be saved, or that A will miss the target L, which would then sink its very sharp claws into his chest in the less preferable of situations. It feels familiar, the narrator tells us, though not because of a comparable lion he’s fought or some feeling of ancestral memory lodged in his DNA. “If I say this moment I am living through is not being lived for the first time by me, it’s because the sensation I have of it is one of a slight doubling of images, as if at the same time I were seeing not one lion or one arrow but two or more lions and two or more arrows superimposed with a barely perceptible overlapping, so the sinuous outlines of the lion’s form and the segment of the arrow seem underlined or rather haloed by finer lines and a more delicate color.” He is experiencing a sense of timelessness, as if he’s lived through this moment in time and space, again and again. “What, after all, is the use of continuing if sooner or later we will only find ourselves in this situation again?”

While the elder Zero withholds a lot, rewatching The Grand Budapest Hotel can feel like a slight glimpse into the heart of an old man, thinking about his lost love and the potential of bright colors and bursting emotion that could have continued for the rest of his life (the internet loves a revisionist theory about a movie—what if the Grand Budapest Hotel of the past only looks that way because of how Zero remembers it?). Calvino’s hunter is doubtful. Zero seems assured. He memorializes his beloved with the hotel that stands for their love. With the story he tells of her. And he lets us see a little.

And we see the near-imperceptible smile, the tilt of a head, the unblinking eyes, the brightness and the dark. We see the warm glow of memory that says how great this was and the hint of sorrow asking how great this could have been.

Originally published on Bright Wall/Dark Room

[ojamajonext]

Magical Doremi FUTURE/English VAs!

Maggie Washington: Jessica DiCicco

Patty Washington: Kelly Metzger

Flo Washington: Tara Strong

Charlotte Hawkins: Kath Soucie

Maisy and Macy Bailey: Amanda Leighton

Annie Mccormick: Lara Jill Miller

Peggy Raymond: Candi Milo

Megan Montgomery: Rebecca Husain

Patina Briggs: Lisa Ortiz

Laralie: Andi Whaley

Patunia La Croix: Kathleen Delaney

Falina/Drona: Jessica Calvello

Conya Lovelace: Mollie Weaver

Babba Picou: Alexia Khadime

Passiflora: Cree Summer

Queen Rosie: Tabitha St. Germain

Jewel: Cathy Weseluck

Rona: Bella Hudson

Uma Vexx, Ginger Digby and Fiona Grove: Lisa Ortiz, Amy Palant

Patrina Briggs: Megan Cavanagh

Doris Briggs/Young Patina: Sarah Stiles

Babita Picou: Jenifer Lewis

Alexander T. Ferdagio the Great: Ted Lewis

Adam: Seth Green

Freddy: Sean Astin

Leo: Greg Cipes

Ted: Rob Paulsen

Empress/Circe Von Stein: Stephanie Sheh

Emperor: Jamieson Price

Magician/Puddin: Leah Clark

High Priestess: Laura Bailey

Hierophant: Mark Hamill

Lovers: Taliesin Jaffe (Romeo) Michele Knotz (Juliet)

Chariot: Kristina Nicoll

Strength: Melodee Spevack

Hermit/Sonny: Yuri Lowenthal

Wheel of Fortune: Jonathan Brooks

Justice/Magical Marie: Cristina Vee

Hanging Man/Perlito: Michael Sinterniklaas

The Reaper: Alison Sealy-Smith

Temperance: Tom Kenny

Imp: Hynden Walch

Sun: Kate Higgins

Moon: Maggie Flecknoe

Star: Trina Nishimura

Judgement: Kira Vincent-Davis

Fools: Patrick Seitz, Jerry Jewell

Unknown Fairy/Saphira: E.G. Daily

Cora: Kristen Schaal

Alice Carlson: Jad Saxton

Louise Dodgson: Lena Headey

Kira: P!nk

Lord Wang: Jackie Chan

Midgets: Markiplier

Young Patina: Sarah Stiles

Young Patunia: Cheryl Chase

Young Conya: Rachael MacFarlane

Young Babba: Faithe Herman

[georgehoney]

Žiče Charterhouse The birth of the Žiče Carthusian Monastery coincides with the time when Styria became a duchy. The founder of the monastery is Otokar III. Traungau, the Styrian border count  and his son, the first Duke of Styria, Otokar IV or. I, who owned territories in Slovenian Styria from 1147, when they inherited the land from Bernard Spanheim. Two legends emerged when the Carthusian Monastery was created. The first is that Otokar III. went hunting with the German Prince Konrad III. After a while Otokar departed from the group. The Count decided to rest under a nearby tree, where  John the Baptist revealed himself, and told him to build a monastery at the place where he was resting. Otokar was awakened by a hunter who exclaimed Seitz on! Seitz, which served as the inspiration for naming Seitz. According to another legend, Otokar was supposed to have build the monastery in a different place, but again John the Baptist appeared to him. Count asked Pope Alexander III. for monks from the Great Carthusian Monastery.