Written by Tracy Garrett, Shannon McShane and Brittany Stevens
Wednesday, 08 October 2008
Reviews keep coming in as we continue updating this particular post throughout the day...do keep checking back!
Update: As we continue to update, thus adding to this post, the newer entries will appear first as the others will follow. If you're trying to catching up on Little Ashes reviews, you've come to the right place.
More reviews are in, this one from an audience member at today's screening at Raindance...
The opening credits start with sepia coloured rushes billowing in the wind and Lorca's gentle voice reciting a poem. At that moment you know you can sit back and revel in this film.
The photography is quite sumptuous and beautifully and very dramatically lit.
Performances are stellar here. Mathew MacNulty was totally believable as the repressed Bunuel. Marina Gatell gave us a wonderfully moving Margarita, her eyes telling all in a very pivotal scene. The moment when she invites Lorca to go to Italy with her and he is distracted was a beautifully understated moment.
Javier Beltran as Lorca and Robert Pattinson as Dali both gave superb performances. I particularly loved Pattinson's delicate playing of Dali. He could have gone way over the top and played him as mad as a balloon especially later on, but instead he gives a very mature and controlled performance and you see Dali's shyness and insecurity, we also see lovely touches of humour and comedy. I also found that the moment when he and Lorca are reunited and Dali seems to be siding with the Facists was quite chillingly played.
There are a couple of scenes that have been mentioned. I won't post any spoilers here but I will say that they are handled extremely well and were beautifully and sensitively done. They were not at all gratuitous, and won't frighten the grown ups among us.
My only slight niggle with this film, and it is only a very tiny one, is with the editing. It very slightly gave the impression of sprawling slightly and could have been just tightened up slightly. I just have to be honest here.
But on the whole a massive giant BRAVO to all involved.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Tracy!
Keep checking back for more reviews, which comprises our own reviews from our correspondents and official photos from last night's premiere! And click READ MORE for additional reviews.
Of course you do! Well, here's your chance. If you live in the Los Angeles area, do your part to advocate for a Little Ashes showing! Our partners at Robert Pattinson Life posted this:
Friends from pattinsonlife made a suggestion earlier today and have written an amazing letter to Regent Releasing, asking them for a screening of Little Ashes in Los Angeles. A petition has been made for people who would like to see this movie in Southern California and we're all trying to get as many signatures on it as possible before it is sent to Regent. Calls will be made to theaters in LA tomorrow to ask them if they would be willing to help out with this little crusade. They're serious about this. We all want this to happen, and we know you all want it as well. So if you could sign it, it would seriously help. Let your friends know, etc. And please please please put serious answers in the question area.
If you want to sign the petition, simply click this!
Then the lights dimmed down and the movie began. And I don’t even know where to begin. Everything in terms of lighting, costuming, sound, all that technical film stuff that I probably don’t really know anything about (cinematography etc) was wonderful. Amazing. I was seriously blown away.
As we all know, Raindance is featuring Little Ashes and since the film is creating quite a stir, a second screening has been added. However, now our quest begins on presenting you with all updates, news and reviews Raindance and Little Ashes related. If you are not one of the lucky fans who have the opportunity to go to Raindance, we will bring Raindance to you! The opening quote is from a review on a blog called, Improbable Fiction, which we just discovered. Here's another taste:
There was this scene where the two boys are swimming in the lake and the moon is shining really bright and it was just fantastic. The colors were vivid, almost dreamlike… it was one of my favorite bits in the entire film. The acting was also unbelievable. I will admit, I was a bit nervous about Robert, but he well exceeded all of my expectations.
If you would like to read more of this review, you can do so here.
I just received some amazing news from the Producers at Aria Films...
Due to the film's popularity at Raindance, they have added a second screening tomorrow afternoon, October 8th at 14.30! It will take place at Cineworld Shaftesbury Avenue.
If you know anyone that was not able to get tickets for tonight's screening please tell them about tomorrow's screening.
Last week, Victor, our recruited blogger, re-introduced us to the lives of Dalí, Lorca and Buñuel, and how their lives intertwined. This second segment of his weekly editorial, Victor will further elaborate on Lorca and his musical affiliations.
Want to get more from Victor and his endless pool of knowledge on Dalí and Lorca? Click here, and find Dali on the menu on the right to discover and read more of what Victor has to say on his blog about these fascinating artists.
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Throughout his life, Federico Garcia Lorca was a huge aficionado of traditional Andalusian folk music, particularly Flamenco. However, by the 1920s, Flamenco was in a serious decline, owing to the desire of the Spanish public to appear “modern.” Afraid that the traditions would soon completely, Lorca and his dear friend Manuel de Falla undertook saving it from oblivion.
Lorca had learned guitar from a couple of old Gypsy men who lived in some caves near his hometown of Fuente Vaqueros. In 1920, Lorca, de Falla and several other concerned friends returned to those caves to collect what songs they could from the Gypsies still living there. Many of the lyrics to the songs only survived in fragments — a verse here or a chorus there — so Lorca wrote brand new lyrics for them and arranged them for piano and guitar.
On coming back to Spain from his travels to the New World, Lorca decided to record 10 of these folk songs featuring himself on piano and an actress/singer/dancer friend of his who went by the stage-name “La Argentinita” on vocals. These were released on a five-disk set of 78 rpm records, one song to a side, in 1931. Two of the 10 were recorded with an orchestra, and of those two, “¡Anda Jaleo!” went on to become an unexpected hit. The song became extremely popular and deeply associated with Lorca.
Regent Releasing, just recently made available the official movie poster for Little Ashes. Here is the high-resolution movie poster for everyone!
Click this link to see it and save for your personal viewing pleasure! You can also view the poster here:
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Special thanks to John Beal from Regent Releasing! You guys rock! Thanks to our partners, Seana and Devon from RPO for giving us a heads-up on the new images at the official Little Ashes website!
When we started this promotional blitz site, one of the first things we ever did was to contact Javier Beltrán. We consider it a privilege to actually get to know more of the man and the actor. Javier is simply an amazing actor and very nice individual who gave us his time and answered to the best of his abilities, all the questions we asked of him.
The whole team salutes you!
- - - [ Javier Beltrán on his background, becoming Frederico Garcia Lorca, and his future pursuits ]
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Tell us about yourself.
My full name is Javier Beltrán Andreu and I was born in Barcelona on May 18, 1983. As far as my life, not that interesting, nothing outside the normal thing. I studied in a school in Barcelona and then started the university (degree in Humanities, also in Barcelona), at the same time I studied dramatic art in the Nancy Tuñon y Jordi Oliver actor studio. Four years at the university and another four years studying interpretation (acting).
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How did you become involved in acting?
In school, I participated in a few plays, but the truth is it was not my intention to professionally dedicate myself to acting. It never crossed my mind while I was in school. It was when I was at the university that I began to take an interest in acting and finally I decided to begin professional training. I suppose that in my decision to be an actor also had to do with me working for three years as an usher in a movie theater in Barcelona. Yes, I’m pretty sure that had something to do with it!
We are now in our fourth week of entertaining you with the Salvador Dali saga. In this week's dose of Dali, we will observe Dali's perception of educational policies at the San Fernando Acedemy of Fine Arts, thereby giving us the ability to ascertain why he left for France.
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...all of the [professors] began to look upon me as a supernatural being. This kind of attention threatened to reawaken my old childhood exhibitionism, and since they could teach me nothing I was tempted to demonstrate to them in flesh and blood what ‘personality’ is.
-Salvador Dali on his professors in the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts.
It was in this school where Dali was mostly known for his exuberant behavior and dress and always being the center of attention.
In his biography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, Dali stated that he was enthusiastic about attending the Academy of Fine Arts, but was quickly disappointed in the professors. He said they were teaching liberty and “finding their own manner,” and painting had no rules. Dali believed the opposite. He wanted limits, rigor, science but in asking technical questions he received evasive phrases, which didn’t go very well with him.
In 1923, Dali was suspended for a year from the San Fernando Academy after inciting the students to riot. He was accused of having led a student protest against the painter Daniel Vazquez Diaz for not having been granted the chair of painting at the school. He was let back in in 1914 but had to repeat the year he had lost.
No lesson was learned by Dali, calling it his “Glory Suspension from the School of Fine Art,” it only made him more full of himself. In 1926, he was permanently expelled from the school after he refused to take his final exams stating that he knew more about the subject and was more qualified than all of his professors put together.
With that he said goodbye to Madrid and headed to Paris for the next part of his life.
Gala Dali was born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova on Sept. 7, 1894, in Kazan, Russia, to a family of intellectuals. After the death of her father, her mother remarried, and the family moved to Moscow. In 1913, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to a sanatorium in Switzerland, where she met her first husband, French poet Paul Eluard. Gala fell madly in love with Eluard, and in 1916, amid World War I, she moved to Paris to marry him. She gave birth to their daughter Cecile in 1918.
In 1929, the couple met Salvador Dali, a Surrealist painter, in Spain. Although he was 10 years her junior there was an immediate attraction between them. Gala abandoned her husband and daughter to marry Dali in a civil ceremony in 1934. After a special dispensation from the Pope, they remarried in a Catholic ceremony in 1958. There were no children from their marriage, which was what Dali and Gala saw as an ideal union.
Gala was often referred to as Dali’s one and only muse – the one who saved him from madness and early death. She frequently appeared as a model in Dali’s work. She also was Dali’s agent and often was accused of as being ruthless and materialistic. There were rumors of her extramarital affairs, among them was her first husband, Eluard. Despite everything, Gala and Dali remained devoted to one another until the day she died. She always had believed that Dali was a genius and did whatever she could to promote his career.
Gala died June 10, 1982, at the age of 88. After her death, Dali moved to the Castle of Pubol, which he bought and decorated for her many years earlier. Gala not only was his wife, she was his muse, and when she was gone, he lost all interest in art and ultimately, the will to live. Dali died January 23, 1989, and was buried in his museum in Figueras, Spain.
Beginning with this Monday, we will bring you a very rare and informative weekly editorial. These editorials are intended to give a glimpse behind the veil of the film and allow you to hear from Victor Marzowicz-Velasquez, a recruited blogger, who is very knowledgeable in the area in which Little Ashes surrounds itself.
To launch this new series, an introduction of sorts is required thus re-introducing the characters who are exemplified in the film. In addition, this preface overviews the relationships between Dalí, Lorca and Buñuel.
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Ever since the Renaissance, people have wanted their artists to be heroes, so it seems rather natural that most of what we have heard so far about Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel and Federico Garcia Lorca has been positive. But, to mangle Ginsberg, this is the story where the three greatest artistic minds of their generation came together to all but destroy one another.
I’ll be frank and admit I believe only one of these three deserves the title “hero:” Lorca. As I also strongly believe young people need to hear more stories of truly courageous and honorable gay men, it is my intention to focus on him in this series of articles, but I want to start off balancing the record by telling you some less savory things about the other two that have yet to be mentioned here.
The simplest way I can put it is this: Dalí was all brain, Buñuel was the all muscle, and Lorca was all heart. Sounds like they should have completed one another, right? Unfortunately, two of the three were cowards, and what should have been a cosmic triumph turns into a bloodbath.
Resuming our weekly tribute to the chronicles of Salvador Dali, we witness an abrupt and distinct transition. In this next chapter, we bid farewell to Dali the boy and introduce Dali the man.
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You sit in a cinema, popcorn in your lap, soda in its place, anticipation in your veins. You’ve waited for this particular movie for a while now, and it’s been extremely popular – all of your friends have spoken about it, praised it and seen it again. Just as the lights dim, the door to the back opens, light pours in and a figure appears, a shadow falling down the aisle. You’re annoyed – deeply – and you plan on glaring menacingly at the character that has chosen this minute to arrive. You turn to give your worst and are brought face to hip with a man in a velvet jacket with a gilded cane, hair much like a girls and sideburns halfway down his cheeks.
Would you laugh or just be shocked?
Even in today’s avant-garde street wear it’d be a sight to behold. So imagine it’s the early 1920s. But that seems to be the way of Salvador Dali.
My description of the look above is almost word-for-word from Dali’s mouth about his appearance out to a movie the third night of his entrance exam into the School of Fine Arts. He was proud of his strange looks – if only at first – and later admitted that his friends were correct in calling them “fantastic.”
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