Posted: 19 Feb 2010 12:03 AM PST

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The older Martin Scorsese gets, the more at home he is in the past.

Look at his new film, "Shutter Island," which opens Friday. It's set in 1954.

A filmmaker already known for his biographies ("Raging Bull," "The Aviator"), he has a Sinatra biography he wants to shoot. And "Silence," his next project, is about Jesuit priests in 18th-century Japan.

"I like the re-creation of aspects of lost worlds, lost times," Scorsese said. "We forget these other times and how much knowing what happened then can tell us about our present time. We need to know the past to live the present, create the future."

Named in poll after poll, in magazines from Total Film to Empire and Entertainment Weekly, as the cinema's "greatest living filmmaker," Scorsese won his Oscar for directing "The Departed," the sort of film he's most associated with — a crime picture with gangsters, crooked cops and rackets.

But Scorsese, 67, has embraced history throughout his career, from Civil War-era New York ("Gangs of New York"), to Gilded Age Manhattan ("The Age of Innocence"), Jazz Age New York ("New York, New York"), to biblical Jerusalem ("The Last Temptation of Christ").

"Shutter Island" allowed Scorsese to re-create the 1950s, with flashbacks set in World War II during the Holocaust. And ever the film historian, he paid homage to Alfred Hitchcock ("Vertigo") and producer Val Lewton's Jacques Tourneur-directed horror films as he did so.

"'Cat People' and 'I Walked With a Zombie' — terrible titles, but beautiful works of film poetry, both made in the early 1940s," he said. "These two have a mood and tone and atmosphere and poetic dimension that make them timeless."

In "Shutter Island," based on Dennis Lehane's novel, a federal marshal (Leonardo DiCaprio) comes to an island prison hospital off the coast of Massachusetts where an inmate has escaped. His uncertainty over what is going on in the place is amplified by dark shadows in his own past — his war memories, the recent death of his wife and children. Scorsese saw an opportunity to do a paranoid thriller set in a paranoid age.

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Steve Jobs Working With Walter Isaacson On Biography - The Business Insider

Posted: 16 Feb 2010 09:03 AM PST

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Walter Isaacson is working on a Steve Jobs biography with help from Steve Jobs, Brad Stone at the New York Times reports.

Walter was formerly a managing editor at Time magazine, as well as the author of biographies for Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein, both of which were best-sellers.

As Brad points out, plenty of Steve Jobs books have been written, but they've always been unauthorized. This will be the first written with his cooperation.

Should be interesting to see how Steve Jobs tells the Steve Jobs story.

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Steve Jobs: Spilling his Secrets Soon? - PC World

Posted: 16 Feb 2010 06:29 PM PST

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Apple's CEO Steve Jobs may about to reveal the story of his life.

According to The New York Times, Jobs is likely to collaborate on an authorized biography, to be written by Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of Time magazine.

Isaacson has a good track record as author of two best-selling biographies, "Einstein: His Life and Universe" and "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life."

Isaacson most recently wrote "American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane," a collection of essays. All Isaacson's books have been published by Simon & Schuster.

The Apple co-founder is notorious for saying little in public about the company or his personal life. His official Apple bio offers the following: "Steve grew up in the apricot orchards which later became known as Silicon Valley, and still lives there with his family."

Last year, Apple tried to block a lengthy 4,000 word plus profile of Steve Jobs from being published in the Sunday Times newspaper.

Respected journalist and author Bryan Appleyard reported Apple twice tried unsuccessfully to halt the story, which covered familiar and not so familiar ground including Apple's iconic appeal, Job's upbringing, patchy education, love life, control freak nature, business success and failure and his health.

"Apple hates personality stuff and press intrusion. "We want to discourage profiles," an Apple PR tells me stiffly, apparently unaware she is waving a sackful of red rags at a herd of bulls," Appleyard wrote. "Another PR rings the editor of this magazine to try to halt publication of this piece."

Jobs opened up about his liver transplant later in 2009, when he made a public return to Apple launching revised iPods and a new iTunes. "As some of you know, about five months ago I had a liver transplant," Jobs said. "I now have the liver of a mid-20s person who died in a car crash and was generous enough to donate their organs, and I wouldn't be here without such generosity."

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Poles throw bicentennial bash for Chopin - Rock Hill Herald

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 04:56 AM PST

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"Fryderyk Chopin is a Polish icon," said Andrzej Sulek, director of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw. "In Polish culture there is no other figure who is as well-known in the world and who represents Polish culture so well."

Perhaps nothing better conveys Chopin's importance - literally - than his heart. It is preserved like a relic in an urn of alcohol in a Warsaw church, encased within a pillar with the Biblical inscription: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

Just before his death at 39 from what was probably tuberculosis, a coughing and choking Chopin, fearful of being buried alive, asked that his heart be separated from his body and returned to his beloved homeland. His body is buried at the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where Chopin spent the second half of his life.

Finding it unseemly, Polish authorities have repeatedly rebuffed scientists wanting to run DNA tests on Chopin's heart to explore a suspicion that he actually succumbed to cystic fibrosis, a disease not yet discovered in his day.

Sulek said Poland would rather have the world focus on the genius's life, not his death.

Chopin was born in 1810 at a country estate in Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, to a Polish mother and French emigre father. Historical sources suggest two possible dates of birth - either Feb. 22, as noted in church records, or March 1, which was mentioned in letters between him and his mother and is considered the more probable date.

Since no one is sure, Poland is marking both. A series of concerts in Warsaw and Zelazowa Wola will take place over those eight days featuring such world-class musicians as Daniel Barenboim, Evgeny Kissin, Garrick Ohlsson, Martha Argerich and Krystian Zimerman.

Then, a refurbished museum opens in Warsaw on March 1 displaying Chopin's personal letters and musical manuscripts along with a multimedia narration of his life.

Celebrations span the globe, from music-loving Austria to concerts at Cairo's pyramids and across Asia, where his following is huge.

The astronauts who blasted into orbit on the Endeavor space shuttle Feb. 8 carried with them a CD of Chopin's music and a copy of a manuscript of his Prelude Opus 28, No. 7 - gifts from the Polish government.

The Endeavor commander, George Zamka, who has Polish roots, told the Polish news agency PAP ahead of his trip to the International Space Station that listening to Chopin in space would enhance the majesty of the cosmos.

"Chopin is universal," said Mariusz Brymora, a Foreign Ministry official who helped put Chopin's music in space. "We are convinced that Chopin is Poland's best brand, Poland's best product. There is nothing else like him."

In France, Chopin is valued as "the composer who ushered in the age of great French music," according to Adam Zamoyski, historian and author of the new biography "Chopin: Prince of the Romantics."

Chopin's entire musical output, about 15 hours worth all together, will be played by some 60 pianists at the end of February in the central French city of Chateauroux and in Paris in an event entitled "Happy Birthday Mr. Chopin." The program will be filmed and later shown on French television.

And the small chateau in Nohant of Chopin's famous companion for eight years, feminist writer Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin - best known by her nom de plume George Sand - has been fixed up and will host three weeks of concerts in June. Chopin wrote some of his masterpieces at that inspirational spot in central France.

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Biographies

Friday, February 19, 2010

“Martin Scorsese is all about re-creating history these days - Courier-Journal” plus 3 more

“Martin Scorsese is all about re-creating history these days - Courier-Journal” plus 3 more

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