If You Watch Both

The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick, and Dogtooth by Giorgos Lanthimos, in the same week, you will cover the entire gamut of family life, from the way of grace, the way of nature, and the way of the psychopath.

It is a strange juxtaposition.

Malick's fifth film in 38 years has already generated a great deal of press and opinions about what it is, what it means, and whether it is even worth seeing. Comparisons to Kubrick's 2001 have been made. Some theaters post notices that anyone leaving the cinema will not receive refunds. I suspect that many years from now a more definitive examination in retrospect will seal this film as either the work of a genius or an overreaching flop. The path to release has been long, and the film was supposed to have been released two years ago. Rumors of much footage cut have circulated. What is left is almost pure cinema, very little dialog, emotional images with whispering narrators who do not so much preach as opine. The beginnings of the universe, a family growing up in Texas, the death of a brother. A more serious A Serious Man? Perhaps.

It has already won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

I can't wait to see it agin.

Dogtooth was nominated for best foreign language film and is a much more straightforward examination of the extremes of family life with a patriach who lives in a gated estate. His three children are never allowed to leave the house and have grown up only under the twisted guidance of their parents who assert that they are protecting them from the outside world. Their world, a microcosm of the outside, has been altered in order to prevent outside influences from creeping in, but of course, creep in they must, to both horrific, comic, and liberating effect.

It is a fascinating look at family life at the extremes, but I do not think I shall see it again.

David O'Reilly's The External World

Is 17 minutes of brilliantly demented animation oddness all packed full of irony (literally), pop culture, and moments of brilliant insight. I was laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair but I am quite sure that this will offend many viewers.

The External World from David OReilly on Vimeo.

I've mentioned Please Say Something before, another very odd animation from the same creative mind.

David O'Reilly site.

Roger Ebert - Part 3 In 3D

Roger Ebert does not get video games.

That much is clear.

However, he very much gets the internet.

His last rant on "videogames are not art" has, like a Katamri Damacy ball wheeling across cyberspace, accumulated greater than 4500 comments.

That's at least worth a minor fiefdom in the hinterlands of the internets.

He appears to have conceded something. What, I am not exactly sure. The title alone: "Okay, kids, play on my lawn" appears to be an apology. Except when you read what he actually wrote.

Trollbait extraordinaire!

My Art For Your Code?

Interesting idea behind artforcode. Artists need a tool (Blender3D function, or other), and offer artwork in exchange for a programmer to code that tool.

In other words, bid one Campbell's soup can for one clone tool.

In the realm of the free, the one thing that is actually worth something is time.

Exit Through The Gift Shop

Purportedly a movie that started off as a documentary of street art by the filmmaker Thierry Guetta, this film morphs into an examination of what happens when the documentarian drinks deep from the Kool-Aid and the filmmaker turns into a street artist himself.

The twist when Thierry meets the famous and secretive street artists, Banksy, and begins filming his artistic activities, to when his hastily put together documentary does not meet expectations to his transformation into Mr. BrainWash is just as fascinating as the documentary We Live In Public.

Is it art? Documentary? Recreation? Fantasy? Commentary?
Is the snake eating itself.

Who cares, the ride is worth the price of admission.

Exit Through The Gift Shop
imdb

Roger Ebert Is At It Again

Criticizing games for not being art. Unfortunately this seems to lie in a very outdated way of interacting with art, ie. not at all. As a passive viewer, forbidden to cross the line between creator and audience, Ebert happily and resolutely implies that games cannot be art:

"No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets." To which I could have added painters, composers, and so on, but my point is clear.

Maybe a game of chess is not art. Nor a football game. But in a virtual environment where you can create anything, how could games be preordained to forever aspire to some forbidden plane to which it can never achieve? This entire argument is so replete of broadcast and push media based analysis that it clearly skews his argument. Perhaps there are no games that are worthy of comparison to the greatest works of art, but since when is that a requirement for inclusion into the field of artistic endeavor? Maybe if Ebert was sitting in a darkened theater with a joystick in hand he might change his mind.

Overlapping Artistic Movements?

Has anyone mapped overlapping artistic movements temporally? Globally? Not just within a particular discipline, but in relation to the cultural gestalt?

For example:

Hollywood's New Wave, Punk Rock, and postmodernism?

So many discussions of these movements and turning points appear to extract only the single artistic platform and style, leaving the entire context hidden or undiscovered (or more likely, unresearched).

Right now we have the rise of digital moviemaking, DIY culture, the internet, mashup Web 2.0 world, and massive global economic bubble pops.

Why Have I Never Heard Of ZoomQuilt

Impressive infinitely zoomable collaborative artwork.

ZoomQuilt.

ZoomQuilt II.

Via Boing Boing.

Designed To Provoke An Emotional Response

This video (via BoingBoing - WARNING NSFW) is utterly provocative and in your face (I suggest you watch the entire clip before casting judgement). Flesh is a 10 minute short that reinterprets 9/11 in a visually stimulating and hopefully thought-provoking way. Created by Edouard Salier (MySpace Page) (effects by Strikeback pictures) it looks like it was released on the festival circuit two years ago and won a few awards. Fascinating. I suspect this will definitely piss off a lot of people.

Top DVDs And Into The Pixel

Two short info tablets for Saturday:

Following on the top 100 movies (from AFI - see previous post) comes the top 50 DVDs you must own (ignoring all of the ones you should already own like Star Wars and some of Hitchcock's flicks) from PopMatters. They've broken the list into five categories and have an interesting selection of classics as well as challenging films. It's always fun to look at a list like this to find out what I haven't seen yet.

Into The Pixel announces the 16 works and artists selected for 2007. Only one video (City 17), but some nice images derived from video games are on the list.

Fascinating Look At Film's Influence On Picasso

From the Charlie Rose show a look at how film influenced Picasso and Braque in a show at Pace Wildenstein in NY (NYT, NYMag). Interesting how the eruption of a new form of art influenced the practitioners of an older form.

So what effect will video games and YouTube have on today's artists? If film is the ultimate art form (imo), then is there a trickle down effect to other forms? What about feedback to film? The recent incorporation of the comic book form into cinema (both in story and visually) is one example but what else is there?

Literature and film of course (both narrative forms), photography (visual), music (score). All of these have a great deal of crosstalk. But what about painting, sculpture, opera, theatre, or dance? Does art need the infusion of new ideas from new forms of expression to stay alive and 'relevant'? Obviously video games influence film today and in the case of machinima rather heavily influence both the means of production and the settings, storylines, etc. But other forms? How big can the network of art types grow to? How strong or weak are the links? Do certain forms die off or merge with others? The intersections and interstitials are where all the fun stuff happens so it is an exciting time right now in the world of cinema.