The email said ...

"Professor Anderson, really, any excuse to put up pictures of Dominique Sanda ..."

Well, yes. Of course.

***
(PS. Let me bring up this comment into the post. I think, per Anon's comment, that had I met, or even seen, Dominique Sanda even once in the early 1980s - before, of course, Aryeh Neier introduced my beloved Jean-Marie and me - I would not have been able to concentrate for the rest of the decade.)

Anonymous said...
It's not bragging, really, but during one stay in Paris, about 20 years ago (everything seems to be 20 years ago) I met with this lady three times on the same day. Of course, I was the only one of the two to notice...Is my comment excuse enough for another photo ? By the way, I am writing you from Spain. ¡Bravo! for your article in LIBROS.

Okay, I am on the lookout for another photo of Sanda, from about the same period of late 70s-early 80s.

Also, you can never, ever go wrong on this blog praising my efforts in Spanish, such as they are, and especially my Fukuyama piece in the the Revista de Libros, even if it was Luis Gago's (really, really superb) translation, not mine.

***
Someone else dropped me a note asking, as a kind of reference point, what I thought some of the really good movies are - given that I don't take movies seriously as a source of Truth or Beauty or, god knows, Politics.

(Thinking about movies and politics. I'm never quite sure how to respond, given the exquisitely calibrated and easily offended sensibilities of many of my law students, what to say when one of them, in a class on international business transactions or something, proceeds to cite, say, that 2006 film Lord of War as a primer on the weapons trade. And really and sincerely means it. Actually, that one is easy; I used to be the director of HRW's arms division, and spent lots and lots of time looking at light weapons and small arms global trade, so I have politically correct credentials to suggest that the film doesn't quite get it right. Or that recent movie on the blood diamonds trade - actually, the HRW work touched on that too. Anyway, I would say that the current generation of students has absorbed into their beings great strides forward in not getting their politics from movies, especially compared to my boomer generation - my daughter's generation is one step even further along, thinking quite correctly that if it is silly to get one's politics from actors and musicians, well, equally so from teachers and professors, especially if they teach in the humanities - but still not strides quite great enough.)

Well. I'll put up a post one of these days with a list of Truly Excellent movies. In the meantime, think sex, violence, sci-fi.