22 posts from 2006

Here are 3 that were rerun non-stop for a VERY long time to the point where I just loved these movies. Seriously, I could watch them again and again.

Kathy Ireland is nerdy, then she falls down a big ass hole into the earth's core and discovers Atlantis is really a big ole crashed spaceship. She meets a cute dude down there, goes on some adventures, and comes back to the surface all hot looking and stuff. Because all you had to do for a makeover in the 80s was get a perm and lose the glasses, dig?

A magic glowing orb falls to earth and gets found by a bunch of orphans who go on a big adventure. Its the future by the way, and although there's been a drought and an evil corporation/government/whatever controls all the water, there's still hockey teams. Okay not a hockey team, a hybrid of hockey, rollerblading and basketball. Look for almost the entire cast of The Lost Boys. There's more to it obviously, you can read about it here

All I have to say is that I Wanna Be the Most Popular Girl...you will have that stuck in your head, along with the awesome white boy band rap song "Top That". Nerdy girl finds out she's a reincarnated witch, and thus casts spells to get back at mean people and then make herself popular. Not only does it star Robyn Lively, but Zelda Rubenstein (you know, creepy psychic from the Poltergeist movies?). I love how this was the era where every stud in the high school was named Brad. Is it just me, or does that pop star Shana (a poor woman's Madonna character) look like Elvira?

I love the Tyra show. Well, more like my husband and I love to laugh at it while having lunch. I like how her speech pattern announciates certain words for a very dramatic effect ala serious Oprah speak. And like Oprah she has her lap-bitch shrink, her lap-bitch life coach dude, and her varying experts she turns to when she says SHE is out to solve this-n-that problem in America and then all she does is ask her expert their generalized opinion. But in the end every conversation comes back to Tyra or how it relates to her...because it is all about her you know.

 The other day the topic was the dangers of being a party girl:
“Secret Lives of Party Girls” covers a really important topic. I realize girls like to have fun, but there is a big difference between having fun and losing control - and losing control is one step away from losing your life. I might sound preachy, or like your mama, but I love you and don’t want devastating things to happen in your life.

Well, according to the girls they had on the most devastating thing that can happen is to fall flat on your face; fall on your ass; fall and scratch your eyeball on the pavement; pass out in a jaccuzzi; pass out in a limo; and look like a stupid skank while on the stripper pole in the bar. Well if falling and looking stupid is the biggest danger -- this was kid's stuff. These weren't party girls, these were just skanks who mix bizarre combinations of alcohol (jagermiester and a margharita anyone?) because they aren't "party girls" in my book unless blow, a video camera and creepy Middle Eastern dudes are involved. Oh yeah, if you are over age 23 and still call yourself a "party girl" you just need to be punched.

Today was a show having to do with makeovers (esh again?), all I caught was that Tyra managed to turn former Duchess Sarah Ferguson into a skank within 3 accessories.

Seriously, she looked like a soccer mom in Laguna Niguel trying to look like her teenage daughter. Why do you have to do that to people Tyra? Why do you have to re-enforce the notion that men actually find Micha Barton, Nicole, Paris and the rest of those girls attractive and stylish? Because I don't know I single man who would in all honesty bang any of them; in fact most guys I know talk about how gross all those US Weekly celebrities are. But its okay Tyra, Oprah had her trash phase too and one day it will pass.

For some reason, this Killing Joke video

Killing Joke - Love Like Blood

about a minute into it started to looke like this video

Spin Me Round

The flowing flags and banners and two of the guys having the same bleached hair. Plus, you know spinning n' stuff. I dunno, thought it was funny.

Show us your pride and joy.
Submitted by ::c::.

Here's my ranking:

1.
Though I've never been into Van Gogh (I'm a Gaugin fan myself) this has to be the better of all films about artists I've seen. Its captivating and doesn't try to be "arty". Though it is obvious the details and harshness of Van Gogh have been glossed over, it still does the job and goes more into conversations about painting itself; not the "oooh look how wacky and bohemian he is". If anything his eccentricty is not shown as glamour -- a rare thing in films about artists.

2.
I don't know why, but I really like this one. Its also good because it focuses on one part of Picasso's life, not trying to cram in one movie of his whole life.  Maybe because Gilot finally gets a spine and leaves Picasso with the upper hand is why I like it. The set designers showing off their stuff in flashbacks are not too in-your-face with the off beat set decor, and Anthony Hopkins does a good job of playing the prick.

3.
While her diaries pretty much describe a life of sex, paint, sex, paint, the movie hardly goes into her injuries or the dark side she held because of the bus accident and multiple miscarriages. The animation and paintings coming to life are more for decoration and seem to serve the creators themselves as a "look what I can do!" chance in the film, than anything that is supposed to be expressed or tell a story. Still, it does the job of running down the main points of her life without getting tedious -- jumbled and mashed together -- but entertaining at least.

4.
There was so much that could have gone right in this film, but so many little things went wrong that it began to add up. It seemed to drag at a point where I actually stopped caring. What is up with the boxing match in the middle? Like a drunken chain smoking artist knows how to box! And again, we have filmmakers trying to do arty things with the sets that look out of place, all while showing off to the middle class "oooh look at them drink and smoke and act kooky until 4am!" The Hemingway character is ridiculous, but the main character is quite likeable and the only thing that kept me going.

5.
I laughed through the whole thing. What killed me was the opening sequence at some salon/cafe where Picasso all these freaky women with black shawls and a harlequin is dancing around while they all are being overly "artsy" drinking, drawing and reciting bad poetry etc. The part that really made me mad (besides having Renoir say he didn't paint women because they were too Fat in his day -- whatever), was when all the artists are working on their pieces for the Salon Competition of 1920. It is a montage with background music that sounds like some crap the band Enya would release. All the artists are screamy, crying, covered in paint, jabby with their brushes and chain smoking -- oh-so tortured you know. As if they made these paintings in one freakin' day!

I've met two kinds of artists in life with concern to dress and outward projection. The kind who dress wacky and act out these faux bohemian lifestyles because they want it to be 1920s Paris again, and the kind who dress like up-tight minimalists that are the super serious academic and drink bad Chardonnay. I don't know where the graffitti artists fall in that spectrum, but I consider myself in the middle. Though my clothing has taken on some odd turns here and there.

I was going to include "Art School Confidental" on here, but I wanted to focus on movies about one artists. Though I find the comics to be way better than the movie, it was indeed a very accurate depiction of art school (though we didn't do sports). When they praise Flower and her bad Cy Towmbly drawing and the guy screams "what? are you kidding me?" that summed up how I felt pretty much all the time. I walked out of a class once because all these grad students and our teacher were getting into an argument about whether dogs have feelings or not....it went on for a good half-hour. Yeah, that was money well spent.

Well, my trip to SF for my husband and his Club Nationals race was fine and dandy, but damn if a horrible airline doesn't ruin it for me on the way back. Well, anything Chicago O'Hare related will ruin your good time as a general rule. I was also having my pad painted (within 2 days it has begun cracking again, so much for craftsmanship), so I'm still moving back all my furniture and having to rehang all wall art etc. At first I thoughtall my stuff bunched and covered in plastic in the middle of our rooms looks nice and minimalist. I thought of just leaving it as an installation and tribute to my laziness. We don't do clutter, yet I still think I have too much"stuff".

While in SF I tried to take more Motel sign photos, alas during the rain I missed some good shots, but I managed to get a sweet shot of the Capri sign with the old-school International House of Pancakes sign behind it. I highly recommend the Edward II b&b, as they have great pub grub at Bloomers downstairs.

Official: Friday, Oct 12th 2007 @ Asterisk Gallery in Cleveland
"My Own Private Empire: The National Portrait Gallery of Kessa"

This will be my recreation of a museum setting for my portraits, about 30 total. I'm hoping this will travel to a few other cities as well. What started out was just some punk rock looking Elizabethan portraits in 2001 has become a monster project. Fake lineages, country maps, biographies and period costume research -- all while trying to keep my style throughout. Everytime I sell one of these puppies, I get all fussy because then it screws up my family tree I created. Oh well, time to actually work and stop slacking off.

Sometimes the kids are right.

Most studies show that children consider good art to be anything rendered realistically, this might be true most of the time, but what I love is their way of summing up art criticism in one sentence. Something current art critics might benefit from. Even as an artist, to me, the only thing more usless than a music critic trying to be a "writer" is an art critic trying to over intellectualize things.

I went to see the current exhibit at Cleveland's MOCA. I really liked 2 paintings by Dana Schutz, so I went with my husband's family to see the rest. This included my 7 yr-old niece and 9 yr-old nephew. The rest of the Dana Schutz exhibit I wasn't crazy about besides my two favorites; maybe the canvases were too big, some seemed careless, who knows. In fact, everyone in the family was trying to figure out why this was considered hot shit.

 My nephew had a few gems of criticism,

"Ew, fat people kissing!"
"I could do that!" and
"Aunt Arabella, you didn't get an exhibit at this museum and this did? Whatever!"

Then my little niece assured me that the museum staff must be "dumb". We thought the Barbieri room was pretty cool, if anything just because his goal and process were very interesting.

My nephew and husband were impressed that they were fooled into thinking these were photos of models -- that was good and dandy enough for them. But the best comment from my nephew was reguarding a Richard Long piece that belongs in the permanent collection at CMA. I hadn't seen it yet, but I watched one of the guards smirk as my nephew came out of the gallery and said sarcastically,

"There's a very interesting arrangement of rocks, in a circle.

Later when I showed him the catalog had written a few paragraphs describing the rock installation, he was perplexed,

"But its just a bunch of rocks, at least the other lady did pictures of stuff!"

And it was here in a disappointed fashion -- feeling cheated a bit --- everyone was in a hurry to leave. This was much like the experience seeing the Laura Owens exhibit at the L.A. MOCA, who was unfortunatley put next door to the stellar Lucien Freud retrospective making her exhibit it look that much worse. I made up to my husband for that by taking him to see an Alex Gross exhibit, he loved that.

See, a lot of art/museum types want to say that the reason "common people" don't like a lot of new artists or avant garde exhibits is because they just don't understand them, or they are ignorant and don't get "edgy" whatever that means these days. But to me, I think they are just better at seeing through hype and bullshit. 

I went to see the Burning City Roller Girl demo derby night on Friday. I thought it was time to do something new, ya know?
"What are you doing tomorrow?"
"going to see punk chicks beat eachother up on roller skates".

It wasn't the punk chicks in fishnets falling and trying to wail on eachother that had my attention, it was the venue itself! I felt like I had been transplanted to 1981. Not that it was bad, just the realization that this is what kids used to do before the internet and real video games. Freaky eh?

The funniest part was seeing all the 11-13 year old girls. You know, at that age where they want to be 18 but don't have it together yet? They start using hairspray or gel -- badly -- and try walking in shoes with heels with jeans that are a bit too tight. It was cute, those little skanks in training. During the derby, the SkeeBall units had been turned off, along with all the other games -- that made me sad.