Gone with the Woman – Last year I saw a great film from Denmark called Adam’s Apples, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to gamble with another film from the region. I picked this movie over Alan Ball’s Nothing is Private. I figure the Ball film will be out soon enough, but this film from Norway might sneak in and out of indie theaters before I knew it. I think it was a good choice. The movie is a sort of absurdist romantic comedy, a stripped-down version of Amelie. It’s the simple tale of a man who meets a crazy girl, falls in love and deals with the consequences. The protagonist has no name which fits him because his girlfriend, Marianne, seems to impose herself on him in every way possible. The highlights of the film include a very self-confident Peter Stomare as the nameless man’s confidante/swimming buddy (he spends almost the entire film in Speedos) and a few very funny dialogue exchanges. I didn’t really have any complaints. The film is whimsical and feather-light, but manages to deliver some nice observations about love. I can imagine this film getting remade here starring Zach Braff and Jessica Biel (hey, I like Scrubs, okay?). The film doesn’t inspire any strong feelings; it just makes you sort of smile—which is not a bad thing at all. If anything, the movie made me want to learn French and go marry some Parisian (does every woman in France look like Audrey Tautou?). The film isn’t that substantial, but it’s worth checking out on DVD again next year.
George Romero’s Diary of the Dead – Wow, I’m shocked how much I liked this film. In the back of my head, I’m like “how many times can you go to the zombie-well, George?” Yet, somehow this movie works. It takes place on the first night the dead start coming to life; so it’s set on the same night as the original film albeit in present day. A crew of film students is in the Pennsylvanian woods making a cheapie horror-flick when radio news reports start pouring in about the dead coming to life. The student who was directing the film decides to start filming the incidents taking place as the world starts going crazy, initially to the chagrin of his fellow students who just want to get home. So the film is shot as if from the perspective of this kid who records everything in sight. It’s not the cinema verite of The Blair Witch Project, because the DPing is professional and never distracts from what’s going on on-screen. However, it does create a distinct look that adds tremendously to the atmosphere of the film. This is a movie that lets you care about the characters, so when the isht hits the fan, you actually want to see these kids survive. Score one for George Romero in showing these young’uns how it’s done. The movie is smartly written with great dialogue and many funny exchanges. It’s also got its fair share of scares and gore. George Romero was at the screening and the audience reception was unreal. You had an entire section of the audience dressed up in zombie-garb. He received a well deserved standing ovation for the film and when he came up for the Q&A, almost every seat was still full. Quite an accomplishment at two in the morning on a Saturday night/Sunday morning. Definitely a movie worth checking out if and when it hits the theaters. I'd rank this film right behind the first two, Night and Dawn of the Dead. I think that’s it for horror films this year.
3 comments:
Hmm.. Romero is to zombie horror what Haydn was to symphonies. Let's hope for a hundred.
I've been trying to write a play about a woman whose husband was plying older, somewhat forgotten recordings as her own piano recordings and was recently discovered by mirroring/comparison technology of the type used by iTunes. This, after she passed away. I was attracted to the ideas of love, the possibility of deceiving one's own loved one, and the nature of art.
I'd like to see the modern art kid movie. Recently going through the Tate Modern in London, I was reminded how much I hate abstract art. I understand the ideology/philosophy behind a Pollack, and the efforts that got there, breaking down representative art, but it seems at a certain point it got way too insular and deformed from what art can actually do. The Tate has some good commentary on many of its pieces among their descriptions, and there's a true transformation in the language used, from an earlier mix of content and technique devolving into descriptions purely of technique. Art cannot be art unless it makes a social or political commentary of some kind. This is why kitsch is often mistaken for art, when it is merely pretty, but has no real use. Note, a photograph of a building can be art because it has a true aesthetic wonder and ability to it, which suggests one doesn't need to fiercely engage with the object ideologically, but that one needs to actively participate in exploring what that thing is, and what makes it pleasing, or displeasing, or a thing itself.
Aesthetics is a tough rag. Anyway, the idea of this wunderkid is pretty fascinating. Of course she's making great abstract art. But it's also too late for it. Pollack hit at the right time - his was the innovation. After that, it was merely variances of technique, either getting naked models to slather their bodies and canvasses with blue paint (Yves Klein) or find ways to express it spiritually (the much better Rothko). Meanwhile, it's all a crisis, the art world. There is an art bubble going on with jacked-up prices. One suspects, as always, the truly lasting art is being done along the margins. Possible exceptions of Damion Hirsch's platinum and diamond encrusted skulls, etc.
-elw
There is a really great scene in "My Kid Could Paint That" where Marla's art dealer talks about his frustrations with the art world. I would wager that his rant sums up the feelings of many struggling artists.
I don't know what quite to make of the mind-boggling prices that collectors pay for modern art. What is apparent is that when you price things in that way, then you just create another commodity or in this case another scorekeeping metric. There is a very select pool that can afford those stratospheric prices for a Pollock or a Van Gogh. And within that pool you still have to establish a pecking order. What better way than with an obscene expenditure on paint dripped over a canvas? Not really different from the way a rapper might want to buy the most expensive and gaudiest piece of jewelry he can find. It clearly says, "I'm worth more than you."
Knowing little of the art market world, it does seem like people buy status, which resides in so few names. I'm not even sure the top-end auctioned paintings are seen as investments, really. Someone said after a certain number of millions, or billions, it's not about the money anymore, it's about the power. And there's something ineffably powerful about collecting at enormous price a unique item other fabulously rich people covet.
That leaves the no-names, the artists in squalor, but then they've always toiled in obscurity, haven't they? You had Gertrude Stein, as a friend, buying canvasses from Picasso and friends, before anybody knew what they were on about. You have Van Gogh, of course, ending himself in dispair. While he goes in a single canvass now for far more mool than he ever saw in his lifetime.
But nobody ever suggested art is fair, which is why the days of patronage seemed to work better, when you hoped some court impressario could wheedle enough cash from the king. 'Art' is just this deformed, galumphing thing: major museums have unseen collections of paintings that have gone out of fashion but may return in the decades to come; then you have Dada and Futurism, which were supposed to 'wash out the museum spaces' but wind up honored works in their own rooms.
It's all kind of weird. Anyway, the movie sounds inticing. A little girl creating abstract masterpieces, to me, shows how flimsy the continuance of that genre is.
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