Happy Sunday, all! My wife continues to impress me with her informative blog. Check it out if you haven't already. Here's the link again: http://arthistorymusings.tumblr.com/
There were some good basketball games this weekend. In the NBA, it's Lin-fever in NYC. Hooray for the undrafted Harvard kid! On the college level, it doesn't seem like anyone can topple Kentucky right now. There are a few more weeks until March Madness, so it'll be interesting to see who will, along with the Wildcats, begin to elevate themselves from the pack.
- Most painter biopics aren't worth anyone's time, but 1956's Lust For Life, adapted from the Irving Stone novel, isn't half-bad. Kirk Douglas is actually pretty good as Vincent Van Gogh. Douglas' often earnest, strident, manly intensity is well-suited to the part (he was nominated for an Oscar), and Anthony Quinn won the Oscar for his portrayal of Paul Gauguin. It's a straightforward, more or less linear retelling absent bad, shorthand dialogue (though Douglas' dialogue occasionally generates a howler), well-shot, sometimes floridly framed to resemble a Van Gogh piece, colorful.
- Final Destination 5 is a fond, fitting closing act to a nifty little series. The last entry, #4, was a clunker, atrociously acted, but this time the direction (Steven Quale) is playful and fun, and while the film is more or less diagrammed the same as the earlier ones - a subset of teens escape death and then one by one, every five to eight minutes of screen time or so, they die in a horribly, explicitly gruesome way. Damn if it's not fun, though, and the ending is clever - an exercise in the circuity of destiny.
- Julia and I just finished the first season of Parenthood. What a show!
- All right, it's two weeks to the Big Night, but I'll go ahead and give my Oscar picks:
- Picture: The Artist I'm thinking the popular The Help is going to get muscled out here by this tribute to the early, glorious days of old Hollywood. The number of reputed audience walk-outs is disturbing, though. Is it because they weren't sure it was going to be a silent or was it just boring?
- Actor: Jean Jujardin, The Artist Clooney already has one. Pitt will give a good race - being in The Tree of Life helps too - but Jujardin, hopefully not a one-hit wonder in this country, sings and dances and acts without talking. A lot of groundswell support here.
- Actress: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady Just a hunch here. It'll be between Streep and Viola Davis, and I think Streep's long streak of non-winning will finally be addressed - and stopped.
- Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners A given. Great career, great performance.
- Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help This is the movie's surest shot at a win.
- Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist If Martin Scorsese didn't win this five years ago, I'd say he was the favorite. But I think the Frenchman has the edge right now.
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| The Two Fridas, 1939 |
This week's masterpiece is Frida Kahlo's The Two Fridas, done during the period of her tumultuous divorce from Diego Rivera, her largest painting (and on display at Mexico City's Museum of Modern Art). The Frida on the left, with her blouse ripped open to reveal her beating, exposed heart, is the Frida that was left behind by Rivera. The Frida on the right has a heart that hasn't been cut up and bruised; she holds a small amulet with a portrait of Rivera on it (which, incidentally, was found amongst Kahlo's belongings after she died).
There is, of course, more to the painting. Kahlo returned home after a 1939 exhibition of her work in Paris and decided to divorce the womanizing Rivera. Needless to say, this was a period of self-doubt, turmoil. The left Kahlo wears a colonial white dress, lacy, similar to a wedding dress. The right Kahlo wears a traditional Tehuana costume (Rivera liked to see Kahlo dress in the native style). A vein runs from the amulet of Rivera, through both hearts, finally cut by the rejected Kahlo's pincers, blood spurting on the dress. In her diary, Kahlo revealed that this painting originated from her memories of an imaginary friend she had as a girl. Regardless, she is alone now, herself her only companion. The clouds indicate storminess, inner pain. It's a graphic painting, medically gruesome, though no one would ever assume such inner pain from the placid, serene expressions on both Kahlo faces. Kahlo seems to be implying that somewhere along her journey from a rather provincial, native girl to more worldly, continental artist, she lost a bit of herself, her very lifeline; the pain is very apparent. However, her and Rivera would get back together and remarry the very next year. Here's an interesting take on Kahlo: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/davis8-28-08.asp
- What else? Here's a good article from Smithsonian about the Oscars and Short Films: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/movies/2012/02/what-ever-happened-to-the-short-film/
- So, a book I'm reading right now, The Boy in the Suitcase, deals with child trafficking in Denmark. I went on CNN's website to see how prevalent a real-life problem human trafficking is. Prostitution isn't illegal in Denmark. Pimping is, however. And to work as a prostitute, one must be a legal resident. In reality, though, about half of the prostitutes working in Denmark, though, are not Danish: many come from Africa and eastern Europe. There are tons of pimps too, many of whom are prostitutes and traffickers themselves. There have been reports of the children being forced into street crime too. Some "au pair" organizations are actually fronts for trafficking too, though this is very rare. It's hard to get a number of how many kids are trafficked because it's such a clandestine affair. In 2007, Denmark adopted a four-year plan to combat human trafficking, but the country still hasn't created any national plan to deal with the issue of child exploitation.
Regardless of how prevalent this disgusting practice is, it makes for good fiction.
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| Yuck |
All right, keeping with the spirit of Final Destination 5, here are my top 20 horror/scary films of the last ten years, in no order:
- The Descent (2006)
- The Host (2006)
- Eclipse (2011)
- The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
- The Final Destination series (2000-2011)
- Insidious (2011)
- Frailty (2002)
- The Ruins (2008)
- The Orphanage (2007)
- 28 Days Later (2002)
- The Mist (2007)
- Open Water (2004)
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| Uh-oh |
- Wolf Creek (2005)
- Rogue (2007)
- The first two Paranormal Activity films (2009, 2010)
- Drag Me to Hell (2009)
- The Ring (2002)
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| We're not dead, mummy! |
- Vacancy (2007)
- Turistas (2006)
What did I miss? Let me know.
(One correction: In Thursday's post, I accidentally said that Tony Scott directed the new Denzel Washington thriller Safe House. He didn't. Daniel Espinosa did.
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