Posts filed under 'Europe'
A couple summers back, I was in London working on a documentary, when my buddy, Paul Pilot, and I came across this piece of street art in a tunnel filled with graffiti. At the time, I figured the “life is beautiful” text had been added separately to the shot of Madonna & Britney making out. I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition, so I took a pic of it and hadn’t given much thought to the matter until I saw the image appear in the documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, which I just watched last week.
This film, directed by the phenomenal street artist, Banksy, is one my favorites of 2010. It’s nearly impossible to describe this wormhole of a tale of art inspiring art inspiring commerce, so I’ll just say that you should see it, if you haven’t already. There are those that question whether the whole thing is a farce, but I can’t even begin to imagine how that could be. But if it is, I think that would make me admire the film all the more…
January 10th, 2011
One of my most cherished photos from my time in Budapest (and one of the only ones not involving the Chain Bridge or the Four Seasons) is this shot above. Kim and I rented bicycles one day while she was over visiting, and we rode them all around the city, up and down the Danube, stopping briefly for lunch at my favorite restaurant in town, Goa Café.
August 25th, 2010
“If you go from Mosco to Budapest, you think you are in Paris.”
- Gyorgy Ligeti
(or from Los Angeles for that matter…)
August 24th, 2010
“I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.”
- Pablo Picasso
(above: the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace, where I was all too fortunate to stay during our filming in Budapest)
August 23rd, 2010
Here’s another shot of my favorite bridge in Eastern Europe, this time from my hotel room window, and in the distance, you can see the National Gallery lit up on the hills of Buda.
August 22nd, 2010
Széchenyi Chain Bridge is a suspension bridge that spans the River Danube between Buda and Pest, the western and eastern sides of Budapest, the capital of Hungary. It was the first permanent bridge across the Danube in Budapest, and was opened in 1849. At the time of its construction, it counted as a wonder of the world.
August 21st, 2010
Happy St. Stephen’s Day!
It was five years ago today that I took this pic during Budapest’s annual celebration of their famous saint’s birthday, which also marks the foundation of the Hungarian state a millennia ago.
The irony, of course, is that I was watching these fireworks with Steven Spielberg (or Saint Steven as I like to call him) and his family from their balcony at the Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace. The experience was a tad surreal to say the least…
August 20th, 2010
The Blue Grotto.
What a great name – The Blue Grotto. It would make a great title for a book, if only I wrote books. I’d never been to the Mediterranean before my time in Malta, and one of the things that still sticks with me till this day was the sensation of floating while you were swimming due to the concentration of salt in the water. The water was warm and you didn’t have to even paddle while you were in it. Pretty much every free moment I had from working on the movie, I spent on, in or around that water. It was something else.
April 27th, 2010
VALLETTA, Malta — In spite of the cloud of volcanic ash drifting south from Iceland, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in this Catholic nation on Saturday evening in his first foreign trip since a sexual abuse crisis began engulfing the Roman Catholic Church. Benedict’s visit — commemorating the 1,950th anniversary of the shipwreck of St. Paul on Malta… – NY Times
Reading this the other day, got me thinking of my lone trip to the Mediterranean, and specifically to the little island country of Malta. Thought I’d post some pics this week from that adventure back in the summer of ‘05, and the above seemed eerily appropriate given all of the recent criticism of the Catholic Church and the many calls for the Pope’s head on a pillow.
April 26th, 2010
“You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see. You hang around cafés.”
- Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises
February 8th, 2010
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