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الثلاثاء، 4 فبراير 2014
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6:54 ص
A trailer has been released for the Kate Beckinsale film inspired by Amanda Knox and the Meredith Kercher murder case.
The Face of an Angel, which also stars supermodel Cara Delevingne and
German actor Daniel Bruhl, is an adaptation of the book Angel Face: Sex,
Murder and the Inside Story of Amanda Knox by the American journalist
Barbie Latza Nadeau.
It is directed by Michael Winterbottom, whose sequel to The Trip with
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon premiered at Sundance Film Festival last
month.
Beckinsale stars as a journalist in the film
Beckinsale stars in the film as a journalist who is investigating a young woman who is accused of murder.
Bruhl stars as a struggling film-maker who travels to Italy to write a film based on the journalist's book on the case.
Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were freed in 2011 after being cleared of their 2009 convictions over the killing.
On January 30 the original convictions were reinstated by at a court in Florence.
Lawyers for the pair say they intend to take an appeal to the highest court.
Winterbottom has reportedly said he does not plan to change his film in light of the convictions.
A source told the Hollywood Reporter the verdicts would have no effect
on the Revolution and BBC Films production because it is only loosely
based on the murder of British student Ms Kercher in Perugia in 2007.
The Face of an Angel is due for release later this year.
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الثلاثاء، 14 يناير 2014
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2:15 ص
Last year, the Museum of Modern Art caused a ruckus with a plan to raze its neighbor, the former American Folk Art Museum building, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. So MoMA
trustees hired the architecture firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro to
explore alternatives to demolition that would still permit expansion.
But
last week, that firm’s architects joined with Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA’s
director, to say that, unfortunately, the building needs to be torn down
after all. They saw no way around it.
What’s left to be said?
Elizabeth
Diller and Ricardo Scofidio seemed genuinely sorrowful about the
outcome. Gifted architects, they brought to the High Line an energy and
vision that recognized obstacles as opportunities, the clash of old and
new as a virtue, when many people favored tearing down those elevated
tracks. Where did that energy and vision go?
A
city presents endless constraints out of which creativity emerges, or
it doesn’t. There were plenty of good reasons to raze the old
Pennsylvania Station 50 years ago, but that didn’t mean that it was
wise. It would be truly radical for MoMA to save the former folk art
building, but that’s not what the museum has ever really been about.
MoMA wants more gallery space, and the expansion that drives the planned
demolition is just more MoMA madness.
Launch media viewer
The former American Folk Art Museum would be demolished by MoMA.Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
MoMA and Diller Scofidio hoped to sweeten the pill by promising improvements
to the museum’s lobby and opening its sculpture garden to the public
free during museum hours. They also propose, in place of the razed
building, a Gray Box for performances, above an Art Bay, with a
retractable glass wall and spaces for yet-to-be-conceived presentations,
visible from the street.
That plan for the former folk museum site sounds a lot like the one Diller Scofidio has proposed for the Culture Shed,
a glossy event and exhibition center without portfolio, cooked up under
the Bloomberg administration to fulfill the “culture” requirements for
Hudson Yards, the West Side commercial development. If you build it,
they will come, is the concept. Across West 53rd Street from MoMA, the
Donnell Library Center, a long-shuttered branch of the New York Public
Library, is scheduled to reopen late next year at the same spot but in
the bowels of a new luxury hotel, at a third of its former size, with
wide bleacher seating and steps as the main feature.
“More
like a cultural space, which is about gathering people, giving people
the opportunity to encounter each other,” is how the library’s
architect, Enrique Norten, describes the plan.
It’s
all the same flimflam: flexible spaces to accommodate to-be-named
programming, the logic of real estate developers hiding behind the
magical thinking of those who claim cultural foresight. It almost never
works.
As
for the opening of MoMA’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden,
it’s a nice gesture and possibly transformational, making one of the
city’s treasures available to everyone. That said, the place has always
been a sanctuary, a retreat with a view back onto the city, and who
knows how it will work when it’s opened to the street and entered, as it
rarely is, from the north. I wonder what Philip Johnson, who designed
the garden in the early 1950s, might say. (He died in 2005.) The site
was never intended as a public park.
“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded” is Yogi Berra’s famous phrase. Let’s hope that’s not the case.
The
neighborhood already has Paley Park, and Central Park isn’t far. But
the fabric of the surrounding streets does need more outliers like the
former American Folk Art Museum building to stem the increasing monotony
of glass towers. MoMA, far from being one of those outliers, has pretty
much become like Extell and other Midtown developers, waiting to gobble
up property and expand its own shiny glass palace. I walked around and
looked at the four-story buildings in the area. How long can they last?
The folk art building is barely a dozen years old. MoMA acquired it in
2011, after the American Folk Art Museum defaulted on its debts and had
to move to smaller quarters near Lincoln Center.
It
was, from MoMA’s perspective, never architecture, just real estate —
business, nothing personal — a parcel of land between the existing
museum building, most recently designed just a decade ago, by the
Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi, and the site of a luxury
condominium tower, designed by Jean Nouvel, the base of which has been
set aside for MoMA galleries. To move smoothly from the galleries in Mr.
Taniguchi’s building to the ones in Mr. Nouvel’s and back again is best
achieved, Ms. Diller insisted last week, by designing a continuous loop
so that people can enter the new rooms at one end and exit at the
other. This demands passageways slicing through the folk art museum
site.
Launch media viewer
In 1932, the museum moved into a building at 11 West 53rd Street, center.Museum of Modern Art, New York
And voilà. “To save the building, we had to lose too much of the building,” is how she regretfully put it.
So there was no choice, Mr. Lowry said. Progress rolls on. Manifest Destiny has its costs.
In
retrospect, Diller Scofidio had an implicit conflict of interest,
taking on the expansion at the same time it swore to leave no stone
unturned when it came to finding alternatives to demolishing the former
folk art building. Accepting the expansion made establishing a
continuous loop the bottom line.
But
the expansion into the condo tower seems the real problem. It is a move
that, aside from vandalizing MoMA’s claim to be a custodian of
architecture and design, adds too little. The 40,000 or so square feet
that the museum will gain, far from ideal, can’t begin to solve the
current overcrowding. Traffic engineers know that adding an extra lane
to a clogged highway only worsens congestion.
The
whole layout and concept of the museum must be reconsidered from
scratch, which goes beyond architecture to the institution’s mind-set.
MoMA is now as jammed and joyless as the Van Wyck Expressway on a Friday
in July. That’s not because it is a victim of its own success; it’s
because the museum is a victim of its own philosophy. This is not just
nostalgia talking.
MoMA’s
leaders seem to have failed to seize a crucial opportunity when they
negotiated for space in return for the sale of the condo site to Hines,
the Houston developer. What were they imagining for MoMA’s expansion
before the folk art site became available? How were the circulation
problems to be solved back then?
Now
it seems clear that they aren’t inclined toward out-of-the-box
alternatives, like off-site places to grow, akin to MoMA PS1, in Long
Island City, Queens. I remember the temporary home the museum occupied
in Queens during its last renovation. It briefly got MoMA out of its
Midtown straitjacket and closer to its pioneering roots.
Wedged
onto a narrow plot, the ill-fated folk art building is far from
perfect. Inside, it’s mostly stairwells and passages, its galleries
tricky to install. But the eccentricity helps to account for what
endears it to architects. Those bespoke, domestic-size spaces, like the
building’s sober hammered bronze facade, share something with the
handicraft of the folk art museum’s collection; the building has a
rootedness, a materiality, an outsize claim to significance. It stands
proudly on the street, the unfashionable antithesis of generic,
open-ended modernism, the opposite of what Diller Scofidio now envisions
in its place, with its paradigm of indefinite and perishable culture.
Might
the new city administration have any excuse or inclination to weigh in
on the demolition and new MoMA plan? Once upon a time, there was talk
about at least saving the facade of the folk art building, a token to
posterity. Ms. Diller dismissed the idea. “Facadism,” she called it.
Fair enough. But Mr. Williams and Ms. Tsien affixed a panel inscribed
with the names of all the workers who helped build the American Folk Art
Museum.
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الأربعاء، 1 يناير 2014
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9:21 ص
Manchester City opened 2014 by moving to the top of the Premier League table with a 3-2 victory away at Swansea City.
Fernandinho
netted the first goal of the new year at the Liberty Stadium, Wilfried
Bony replied on two occasions for the hosts, but Yaya Toure and
Aleksandar Kolarov wrapped up the points for Manuel Pellegrini's side.
Best of the match
Man of the match: Yaya Toure. Netted a fine goal and kept City driving forward with neat touches and great vision.
Goal of the match: Wilfried Bony's late
effort counted for little in the grand scheme of things, but he left Joe
Hart flapping at thin air with a skidding drive from a long way out.
Moment of the match: Ashley Williams did
his best to block a shot from Toure, but helped the ball into the net
and the game swung in City's favour.
Talking point: Have Swansea got enough to steer clear of trouble? Are City now the side to beat in the title race?
City, who endured their struggles on the road in 2013, got off to the
perfect start on a wet and windy afternoon in South Wales, with
Jonathan de Guzman inadvertently deflecting a corner into the path of
Fernandinho to drill home on 14 minutes.
Swansea grew into the game though - with only their finishing letting
them down - and they hauled themselves level in first-half
stoppage-time when De Guzman whipped over a cross for Bony to plant a
powerful header into the bottom corner - leaving Joe Hart rooted to the
spot.
They were, however, unable to keep the back door bolted in the second
period and, after the Swans had failed to clear their lines, Toure spun
inside the box just before the hour mark to drive past Gerhard Tremmel
via the aid of Ashley Williams' studs.
On 66 minutes, City made the game safe as Kolarov was allowed to
travel a long way with the ball, cut inside onto his less favoured right
foot and drill through Tremmel - with another deflection doing the
German goalkeeper few favours.
They were made to sweat a little in the closing stages as Bony lashed
in his second of the game from distance, but there was to be no late
twist in the tale.
Threaten
It did not take long for Pellegrini's side to
threaten the home goal as Edin Dzeko, Alvaro Negredo and Jesus Navas
combined, with the Bosnian firing wide from the edge of box.
Bony smashed a fierce effort just wide at the other end during a
lively opening before Swansea suffered the misfortune of losing Pablo
Hernandez to injury in just the eighth minute.
The winger, so often hindered by injuries since joining from
Valencia, went down clutching his left hamstring and was in tears as he
left the field to be replaced by Roland Lamah.
Matters got worse for Swansea when they fell behind in the 14th minute.
Samir Nasri's corner struck De Guzman, and Fernandinho made no mistake in hammering the loose ball beyond Tremmel.
Swansea responded well to going behind, with Jonjo Shelvey firing
wide and De Guzman failing to beat Hart after a lovely flowing counter
involving Lamah and Bony.
Press
The hosts continued to press and referee Phil Dowd
waved away penalty claims against Vincent Kompany when a Williams shot
struck the Belgian's arm.
The Swans were given two scares when Negredo and Dzeko failed to
capitalise on sloppy play in the home defence, and the failure to take
those chances came back to haunt City as Bony, enjoying one of his best
days in a Swansea shirt, gave Hart no chance with a header from De
Guzman's pinpoint cross.
Flores and Tremmel almost undid all Swansea's good work six minutes
into the second half. The pair hesitated dealing with Nasri's lofted
pass and Negredo nipped in, only to shoot straight at the keeper.
There was no such reprieve for the hosts in the 58th minute when they
failed to clear a Nasri cross and Toure pounced to fire past Tremmel
with the aid of a deflection off Williams.
Eight minutes later the clinching goal arrived. Kolarov robbed Wayne
Routledge just inside the City half and drove forward unchallenged
before cutting inside on to his right foot to beat Tremmel, who ought to
have done better.
The excellent Bony worked Hart at the other end before the keeper got
a stroke of luck after he came for, and got nowhere near, a De Guzman
corner which Williams could only prod wide of an empty net.
Bony pulled one back in stoppage time with a superb low drive, but it was not enough for Swansea.
