Two Good Movies
This entry was posted on 2/2/2012 4:29 PM and is filed under Movies.
Last night was a good double header. First, I watched Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen's latest.
It was really good. Josie and I watched it together and we both found it charming and delightful. We hated Rachel McAdams and laughed outl oud when Gertrude Stein told Owen Wilson it was obvious she was cheating. I thought Hemingway was hilarious. Every plot point was easily predicted but we didn't care at all; in fact, we'd have been disappointed if it hadn't turned out the way we thought it should.
I'm over Owen Wilson. He's too old for that stupid haircut. Even Justin Beiber got rid of it, for crying out loud. He's too old to be playing idiotic characters who sit around wide eyed and gobsmacked. Don't get me wrong, he does it well, he's just too old.
The second movie I watched last night was the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop and I may have liked it even more than Midnight In Paris.
It's about the street art movement, featuring artists like Shepard Fairey, whose work we are all familiar with, and Banksy, who has done some cool things. What I liked best about the film was the way it deconstructed the art world. First of all, if you clicked on the above link for Obey, you see that Mr. Fairey fancies himself an agent of dissent. I don't know how you can be anti-establishment when you are the establishment but that's artists for you; they're nuts.
Here's what I loved; the second part of the movie was about a guy who fell into the street art culture by filming the artists while they applied their graffiti. He began as a sort of groupie; claiming he was making a documentary.
He wasn't making the documentary we were watching. It turns out, the guy had no talent and no clue. As Banksy said, when he got a look at the 'film' after years of footage was shot, he realized that Thierry wasn't a film maker at all, but just a person with mental issues.
So naturally, Thierry decided to mount his own 'street art' show. Having never been a street artist and having no talent and not a single original idea didn't stop him! He called himself "Mr. Brainwash", hired a stable of graphic artists to crank out a warehouse full of derivative crap, hyped it to the skies and became the new star of the art world!
I laughed my butt off!
Some of the street artists have some talent and many of them have some cool ideas but Mr. Brainwash has nothing but Chutzpa! I was torn between thinking "He's a talentless hack without the brains to understand the irony" and "Mr. Brainwash; point taken!" Either way, he sold a million dollars worth of product so kudos to him.
My favorite part of the documentary was the interviews with Thierry's friends after he made himself the darling of the art world. They all thought his 'work' was awful but since he was their friend, they tried to be nice. One said "I won't be endorsing any new artists any time soon." and Banksy said "I used to say everyone should do art; paint, draw, whatever. I thought everyone should do it. I don't think that anymore."
It was an absolutely perfect commentary on the current state of fine art.
