Everyone's in a good mood today. I wonder what Gabriel's teachers will say about him today at his parent-teacher conference.
- So I've always liked the Scottish band Teenage Fanclub. I used to have a few of their CDs. I haven't heard any of their music in years - it's distinctly catchy power pop - but I now really like one of their songs, even though I didn't know it was them! It's "The Concept," which plays a prominent role in Young Adult - it's the song on the mix tape Patrick Wilson made for Charlize Theron, which she later finds (to her disappointment) isn't "their" song at all, but now Wilson's and his wife Elizabeth Reasar's. It's off the band's superb 1991 album Bandwagonesque. Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqYibZeafg8
Andreas Gorsky (#15)
The German-born Gorsky was the son of a commercial photographer - so his calling was in his genes. He studied in Essen's Folkwang School, which was a major training ground for photojournalists. He practiced within the documentary tradition. In late-1980s Dusseldorf, Gorsky took part in the avant-garde movement and was hugely influenced by the Bechers (Bernd and Hilla), who were famous for their typologies (extensive series of photographic images), in which they presented a long series of images of landscape structures with similar functions (for example, winding towers that haul coal) in which viewers could then compare the forms and designs of the structures based on their functions, age, utility, etc. (Does that make sense? Here's an example: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/95)
Gursky eventually moved beyond the Becher School and started putting his own distinct touch on his photographs: his work is big, bold, full of color and detail. He has worked all over the glove, on almost every continent, portraying the industrial landscape of the zeitgeist - apartment buildings, hotels, business towers, power plants, warehouses, stock exchanges, dance clubs. He essays the modern world's structures with
His 2001 photo 99 Cent II Diptych, about an overflowing, well-stocked convenience store, was at the time of its auction, the highest-priced photo ($3.3 million) in history. Here it is:
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| May Day V (2006) |
Thanks to: http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2001/gursky/
- Tower Heist is a fun movie that succeeds on the strength and fun of its cast of characters alone: the manager at the residential apartment tower which happens to be the highest-priced piece of real estate in the world (Ben Stiller); the fast-talking criminal (Eddie Murphy, coming on like a welcome gust of fresh air, ha-yuck, ha-yuck); the nervous, laid-off white collar nebbish (Matthew Broderick, who can play this role to perfection); the sleepy-voiced suck-up with a kid on the way (Casey Affleck, destined to always sound like a nasally sixteen-year old); the flirty Jamaican safecracker (Gabourey Sidibe, doing anything to string-out her career); the FBI agent on the trail of this inept gang of thieves (Tea Leoni, with her elastic, loopy gift for physical comedy); and the unctuous, condescending Bernie Madoff-type who has $20 million (or more) hidden somewhere in his apartment (Alan Alda, richly oily). Brett Ratner directs, having a lot of fun with the material. It's never hilarious, but there are pleasures to be found, including a well-staged sequence in which the gang tries to get a car out of the top floor of the high-rise during Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. (***)
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