Considerations...: Happy 4th

Word of the day : pandect : a complete code of the laws of a country or system of law
                                            : a treatise covering an entire subject

Having a good Fourth, everyone? Hope so. Let's get to the new movies this week:
(I'm doing this a day early).

The Amazing Spider-Man    Why? Why? Why remake a series that was just rejuvenated ten years ago - with two sequels? Apparently, it's the first movie (that is, the 2002 film) all over again, with Andrew Garfield replacing Tobey Maguire as Spidey, Emma Stone subbing in for Kirsten Dunst, and Rhys Ifans now in for Willem Dafoe as the Green Lizard or whatever. The critics like it, but with reservations, of course. It's not really an improvement, they argue, per se, but it's still well-done. Directed by Marc Webb, who has one other picture to his credit: 2009's charming 500 Days of Summer.
Verdict: Mildly Interested

Savages    Oliver Stone's new film is a bold, wild picture about two southern California young men (Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch) who have gotten exuberantly rich growing pot. The two even share a girlfriend (Blake Lively). When the Mexican drug cartel (led by Salma Hayek, recent Oscar nominee Demian Bechir, and Benicio Del Toro) moves in, a turf war begins. It's reputedly a pulpy, noirish, overlong anti-war-on-drugs, co-starring John Travolta as a DEA agent. Above average reviews, seen as a return to form for Stone. Based on the Don Winslow novel, some critics don't like it - calling it bloatedly average and over-the-top, but I guess we'll have to see it to find out.
Verdict: Mildly Interested

The Pact    Director Nicholas McCarthy's first feature is about two grown sisters (Caity Lotz and Agnes Bruckner) who return to their childhood home to pay their respects to their recently diseased mother. Strange things begin to happen, of course. Critics say it descends into tropes and cliches, unable to continue to the first half's momentum. But it has some slyness and some big scares, so I'm curious.
Verdict: Interested

The Magic of Belle Isle    I liked Rob Reiner's last film, 2010's family feature Flipped. He returns with another PG-rated drama, with Morgan Freeman as an alcoholic writer of westerns who takes a lakeside cabin for the summer at picturesque Belle Isle, where he befriends a single mother (Virginia Madsen) with three kids (one of whom is played by Flipped's Madeline Carroll). It's always a pleasure to see Freeman and Madsen, but critics are describing it in ways you could imagine: kind of charming, sentimental, a mushy, minor work, with pretty locations.
Verdict: Interested

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Neon tetra

Red-eyed tetra

Ghost shrimp

These are the denizens of our new aquarium. I just hope they live longer than a few weeks!

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Today's entry in my 500 Greatest Performances of All Time:

Robert DeNiro

as Rupert Pipkin in The King of Comedy (1983)

DeNiro has played a lot of memorable psychos, but second only to Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle was the deluded Rupert Pupkin in the ahead-of-its-time The King of Comedy, one of the more beautifully-extended, oddly endearing, alarming portraits of a nutjob ever committed to film. Pupkin is a comic who is smaller than small fry, but he wants so badly to hit it big (he lives in his mother's basement, for crying out loud), that he won't take no for an answer; in a grandly absurd, startling bit, he is chased through the offices at CBS, believing that, contrary to what he has been repeatedly told, his idol (Jerry Lewis), really is in the office somewhere. Finally, along with an equally loony accomplice (Sandra Bernhard, really good), he just decides to go ahead and idnap Lewis. DeNiro makes Pupkin ridiculous without condescending to him, always a tricky proposal, and he is really funny. I like the way DeNiro (and director Martin Scorsese and writer Paul Zimmerman) finds infinite variations within a character that verges on the one-note; we should get tired of this crackpot (Pupkin doesn't understand the word 'no' and hears only what he wants to hear), but we don't. We could watch him forever.

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I haven't forgotten about Professional Photographer's list of the "100 Most Influential Photographers of All Time" list. We're up to #54.

Bert Hardy

Hardy was born in London in 1913 and started work as a lab assistant in a photo agency. In the late 1930s, when his photographs began getting noticed, he got some further recognition for being one of the first photographers to use a 35mm Leica camera. He was hired by Tom Hopkinson for Britain's Picture Post and became known for his pictures of London during the Blitz. Leaving the publication, Hardy was drafted into an army photographic unit, was with the Allied troops during the D-Day landing, and also photographed the liberation of Paris on August 25 in 1944. He took pictures of concentration camps. He returned to Picture Post in time to photograph and report on the Korean War (including the decisive Battle of Inchon) and the Vietnam War. He eventually went back into advertising. There are three portraits of him in the National Portrait Gallery.