MONSANTO_WESTINGHOUSE'S PRE THANKSGIVING '07 NY TIMES LA TIMES RECAP
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22 November 2007 @ 03:45 pm
real-life cartoonist turned writer Robert Graysmith,
Maybe that’s why it doesn’t have the usual movie-made shrink- rapping and beard-stroking, as in Mommy was a castrating shrew and Daddy used a two-by-four as a paddle. Throughout the film Mr. Fincher and company keep focus on Zodiac’s crimes, on the nuts and bolts of his deeds, rather than on the nurture and nature behind them. There is no normalizing psychology here, and no deep-dish symbolism either, maybe because the title crazy is so peculiarly fond of symbols, which he sprinkles in his missives and, for one murder, wears superhero style on a black-hooded costume that makes him look like a portly ninja in a Z-movie quickie. It’s no wonder the victims don’t see the threat behind the masquerade until it’s too late.
There’s a moment early in the film when Mr. Downey stands in the Chronicle newsroom, back arched and rear gently hoisted, affecting a posture that calls to mind Gene Kelly done up as a Toulouse-Lautrec jockey in “An American in Paris.” Avery has already started his long slip-slide into boozy oblivion, abetted by toots of coke, but as he strides around the newsroom, motored by talent and self-regard, he is the guy everybody else wants to be or wants to have. Like Mr. Ruffalo’s detective, who leaves everything bobbing in his rapid wake, Mr. Downey fills the screen with life that, by its very nature, is a rebuke to the death drive embodied by the Zodiac killer. Rarely has a film with so much blood on its hands seemed so insistently alive.
Naomi Klein is the author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
"Everyone was waiting for this day to come."
THE REV. TADEUSZ PACHOLCZYK, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, on a report that scientists turned human skin cells into what appear to be stem cells.
From Andy Warhol to Lonelygirl15, modern media culture thrives on the traffic in counterfeit selves. In this world the greatest artist will also be, almost axiomatically, the biggest fraud. And looking back over the past 50 years or so, it is hard to find anyone with a greater ability to synthesize authenticity — to give his serial hoaxes and impersonations the ring of revealed and esoteric truth — than
As you watch the mid-’60s renegade folk singer Jude Quinn — embodied in Ms. Blanchett’s hunched, skinny frame and photographed in silvery Nouvelle Vague black and white — pinball through swinging London, subsisting on amphetamines, Camel straights and gnomic talk, it feels like a pop earthquake. The ’60s, man! As Mr. Ledger’s character and his wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) meet, marry and fall apart, it feels like the heartbreaking aftermath of a moment of high promise and possibility. (That would be the ’70s.)
“Live in your own time.” That’s the advice young “Woody Guthrie” hears from a motherly woman who offers him a hot meal and a place to sleep. It’s sensible advice — he’s daydreaming of the Depression in the middle of the space age — but also useless. It’s not as if anyone has a choice. To slog through the present requires no particular wit, vision or art. But a certain kind of artist will comb through the old stuff that’s lying around — the tall tales and questionable memories, the yellowing photographs and scratched records — looking for glimpses of a possible future. Though there’s a lot of Bob Dylan’s music in “I’m Not There,” Mr. Haynes is not simply compiling golden oldies. You hear familiar songs, but what you see is the imagination unleashed — the chimes of freedom flashing.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/movies/21ther.html?th&emc=th
David Fincher’s magnificently obsessive new film, “Zodiac,” tracks the story of the serial killer who left dead bodies up and down California in the 1960s and possibly the ’70s, and that of the men who tried to stop him. Set when the Age of Aquarius disappeared into the black hole of the Manson family murders, the film is at once sprawling and tightly constructed, opaque and meticulously detailed. It’s part police procedural, part monster movie, a funereal entertainment that is an unexpected repudiation of Mr. Fincher’s most famous movie, the serial-killer fiction “Seven,” as well as a testament to this cinematic savant’s gifts.
“Se7en,” the 1995 thriller that grossed $350 million worldwide, and “Fight Club,” his over-the-top answer to young male anomie.
For him, the Zodiac murderer, who terrorized the Bay Area and was never caught, isn’t just any old serial-killer story.
Raised in Marin County, Mr. Fincher was only 7 when the area was seized with fear in 1969. “I remember coming home and saying the highway patrol had been following our school buses for a couple weeks now,” he recalled in December in an interview in New Orleans, where he was editing “Zodiac” while filming “Benjamin Button.” “And my dad, who worked from home, and who was very dry, not one to soft-pedal things, turned slowly in his chair and said: ‘Oh yeah. There’s a serial killer who has killed four or five people, who calls himself Zodiac, who’s threatened to take a high-powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus, and then shoot the children as they come off the bus.’ ”
“I was, like, ‘You could drive us to school,’ ” he recalled thinking.
It was that same sense that initially drew him to “Se7en,” he said: the fearsome power of the stranger among us. “That’s what Zodiac was for a 7-year-old growing up in San Anselmo. He was the ultimate bogeyman.”
But the source of his dark-hued lens on life, Mr. Fincher suggested, might be as simple as that original bogeyman. “It was a very interesting and weird time to grow up, and incredibly evocative,” he said. “I have a handful of friends who were from Marin County at the same time, the same age group, and they’re all very kind of sinister, dark, sardonic people. And I wonder if Zodiac had something to do with that.”
150 days, not counting months to complete the illusion of Mr. Pitt’s metamorphosis from newborn old man to demented, dying baby.
“It’s as unadorned a movie as I’ve ever made,” he said. “It’s just people talking, and it’s hard to make an audience realize that they have to be paying attention. One way you do that is by not doing very much.” There are none of the “perceptual games” that he said he played in “Fight Club,” where the subject was “the most unreliable narrator possible,” for example. “It was like, cast the movie right, get the script right, shoot the scenes as simply as we can and get out of everyone’s way,” he said.
“He said: ‘I think it’s great, but I’m in territory I’ve never been before. I just don’t know if they’re going to get it. And that’s exciting news: ‘Here’s my brand, and I’m stepping outside of it.’ ”
He added: “Every once in a while there are actors you can defeat.”
“What’s so wonderful about movies is, you get your shot,” he said. “They even call it a shot. The stakes are high. You get your chance to prove what you can do. You get a take, 5 takes, 10 takes. Some places, 90 takes. But there is a stopping point. There’s a point at which you go, ‘That’s what we have to work with.’ But we would reshoot things. So there came a point where I would say, well, what do I do? Where’s the risk?”
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Movie Review | 'Zodiac': Hunting a Killer as the Age of Aquarius Dies (March 2, 2007)
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Told of Mr. Gyllenhaal’s comments, Mr. Fincher half-jokingly said, “I hate earnestness in performance,” adding, “Usually by Take 17 the earnestness is gone.” But half-joking aside, he said that collaboration “has to come from a place of deep knowledge.” While he had no objections to having fun, he said, “When you go to your job, is it supposed to be fun, or are you supposed to get stuff done?”
Robert Downey Jr., impeccably cast as a crime reporter driven to drink, drugs and dissolution, called Mr. Fincher a disciplinarian and agreed that, as is often said, “he’s always the smartest guy in the room.” But Mr. Downey put this in perspective.
“Sometimes it’s really hard because it might not feel collaborative, but ultimately filmmaking is a director’s medium,” he said. “I just decided, aside from several times I wanted to garrote him, that I was going to give him what he wanted. I think I’m a perfect person to work for him, because I understand gulags.”
Mr. Ruffalo too survived some 70-take shots. “The way I see it is, you enter into someone else’s world as an actor,” he said. “You can put your expectations aside and have an experience that’s new and pushes and changes you, or hold onto what you think it should be and have a stubborn, immovable journey that’s filled with disappointment and anger.”
He said Mr. Fincher was equally demanding of everyone — executives, actors, himself. “He knows he’s taking a stab at eternity,” Mr. Ruffalo said. “He knows that this will outlive him. And he’s not going to settle for anything other than satisfaction, deep satisfaction. Somewhere along the line he said, ‘I will not settle for less.’ ”
real-life cartoonist turned writer Robert Graysmith,
Maybe that’s why it doesn’t have the usual movie-made shrink- rapping and beard-stroking, as in Mommy was a castrating shrew and Daddy used a two-by-four as a paddle. Throughout the film Mr. Fincher and company keep focus on Zodiac’s crimes, on the nuts and bolts of his deeds, rather than on the nurture and nature behind them. There is no normalizing psychology here, and no deep-dish symbolism either, maybe because the title crazy is so peculiarly fond of symbols, which he sprinkles in his missives and, for one murder, wears superhero style on a black-hooded costume that makes him look like a portly ninja in a Z-movie quickie. It’s no wonder the victims don’t see the threat behind the masquerade until it’s too late.
There’s a moment early in the film when Mr. Downey stands in the Chronicle newsroom, back arched and rear gently hoisted, affecting a posture that calls to mind Gene Kelly done up as a Toulouse-Lautrec jockey in “An American in Paris.” Avery has already started his long slip-slide into boozy oblivion, abetted by toots of coke, but as he strides around the newsroom, motored by talent and self-regard, he is the guy everybody else wants to be or wants to have. Like Mr. Ruffalo’s detective, who leaves everything bobbing in his rapid wake, Mr. Downey fills the screen with life that, by its very nature, is a rebuke to the death drive embodied by the Zodiac killer. Rarely has a film with so much blood on its hands seemed so insistently alive.
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They spend at least two hours a day online, usually playing games or chatting. Of those, up to a quarter million probably show signs of actual addiction, like an inability to stop themselves from using computers, rising levels of tolerance that drive them to seek ever longer sessions online, and withdrawal symptoms like anger and craving when prevented from logging on.
They also follow a rigorous regimen of physical exercise and group activities, like horseback riding, aimed at building emotional connections to the real world and weakening those with the virtual one.
“He didn’t seem to be able to control himself,” said Mrs. Kim, a hairdresser. “He used to be so passionate about his favorite subjects” at school. “Now, he gives up easily and gets even more absorbed in his games.”
Her son was reluctant at first to give up his pastime.
“I don’t have a problem,” Chang-hoon said in an interview three days after starting the camp. “Seventeen hours a day online is fine.”
“I’m not thinking about games now, so maybe this will help,” he replied. “From now on, maybe I’ll just spend five hours a day online.”
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THE BIG PICTURE
Come on, writers, script your futures
Adrian Wyld / Associated Press
"Michael Clayton" director Tony Gilroy: "The studios have got to be hoping that this idea about being entrepreneurs doesn't sweep over the TV show runners, because once you start seeing really good production values on the Internet, I mean, what does Larry David really need HBO for?"
The Big Picture: As the writers strike enters its third week, I think the future belongs to a tantalizing new hyphenate: the writer-entrepreneur.
By Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 20, 2007
Hollywood is a town awash in hyphenates. TV is loaded with writer-producers. The movie biz is full of writer-directors. There's even a legion of actor-filmmakers like Clint Eastwood and George Clooney. But as the writers strike enters its third week, I think the future belongs to a tantalizing new hyphenate: the writer-entrepreneur.
Visiting a UCLA film class the other night, I was asked to name the most influential filmmakers of our era. The choices were pretty obvious: Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, John Lasseter, George Lucas. . . . As the names spilled out, I realized they all have something in common. They're filmmaker-entrepreneurs, artists-turned-businessmen who helped start their own companies to further their work, became financially independent and created a world that operates under a radically different set of rules from the vacuous studio assembly lines. It's telling that the current strike is about new media yet both sides seem to be following old-school models.
Strike: Money trail
Photo Gallery
Strike: Money trail
FOR THE RECORD:
Scott Frank: Patrick Goldstein's Big Picture column in Tuesday's Calendar section said Scott Frank had directed "The Woodsman" this year. Nicole Kassell directed "The Woodsman." Frank directed "The Lookout" this year. —
Writer Guild members, listen up. There is a lesson here. Just ask Tony Gilroy, the writer-director of "Michael Clayton," a nervy thriller that's won critical raves this fall. Gilroy had a script that was dead in the water until a total outsider -- a Boston real estate developer named Steve Samuels -- said if Gilroy could get a star and stick to a budget, he'd bankroll the film.
Gilroy didn't see himself as an entrepreneur. He just had a script that was burning a hole in his pocket. "I'd say the experience was more about my wising up than becoming a visionary," he explained the other day. "But the moment I started chasing private-equity money, it didn't take me long before I'd realized that I'd short-circuited the formula for getting a greenlight. I didn't need studio approval. All I needed was one guy who believed in the movie."
Gilroy is now a convert. "The studios have got to be hoping that this idea about being entrepreneurs doesn't sweep over the TV show runners, because once you start seeing really good production values on the Internet, I mean, what does Larry David really need HBO for? This is all everybody is talking about on the line. They're not talking about healthcare. They're going, 'Wow, is there a different way to get our movies and TV shows made?' "
It's the kind of talk that's contagious. Scott Frank, who wrote hits like "Minority Report" before directing "The Woodsman" this year, has been speaking with Samuels about financing a new film. David Twohy, writer-director of "The Chronicles of Riddick," has lined up financing for a new thriller, "A Perfect Getaway," from Relativity chief Ryan Cavanaugh, who also bankrolled "3:10 to Yuma."
Steve Zaillian, who wrote "American Gangster," has a deal with Mandate Pictures to make under-$10 million character-driven films where he is a 50-50 partner in all the projects. Mandate has a similar partnership with writer-director Sam Raimi of "Spider-Man" fame. Mandate also has a writers program in which, in return for initially cutting their fee, writers can get 25% of the gross after a film goes into profit and have approval rights on hiring the movie's cast and director.
"Writers who create something rare -- a story with great, original characters that movie stars will cut their price to play -- have a real value," says Mandate production chief Nathan Kahane. "But that value doesn't get unlocked in the studio system. If writers are willing to share our risk, then we're willing to give them a lot of control and share in the profits too."
THIS kind of entrepreneurial formula couldn't have existed in the era when the studios had a stranglehold on every facet of the business, notably talent, money and distribution. But those days are gone. The stars became free agents long ago. In the last few years, with billions of private-equity dollars flooding the business, the studios have lost their lock on financing too.
All that's left is marketing and distribution. It's hard to equal the way studios launch their summer popcorn extravaganzas with a $40-million marketing blitz. But as more entertainment migrates to the Internet, where distribution is basically free to anyone with a computer, the studios will lose that monopoly as well. If the last couple of weeks are any indication, with clips from out-of-work comedy writers popping up every day, the Web could be littered with new must-see video sites by Christmas. Remember: After barely a year in existence, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. On the Internet, good ideas travel fast.
"The world is about to change," Frank says. "Anyone with an Apple computer can make a movie now -- it's never been a more democratic medium. The studios should be very afraid. Once the independent financiers start going directly to writers, things could change really fast. I ask myself every week -- why aren't we all working with them? Look at the movies they've made. They are the new Medicis."
While the studios peddle dreary remakes and special-effects extravaganzas, the movies that really get people talking -- such as "Crash," "Brokeback Mountain," "Michael Clayton" and the upcoming "Juno" -- have been financed by outside investors. None of the films had a big budget, but fiscal discipline and artistic autonomy often fuels creativity. "Ten million dollars to $30 million is where ambiguity stays alive, where you can have complexity in storytelling," Gilroy says. "When you get up to a certain budget number with studio films, the bad guys have to all wear black hats."
The WGA is fighting the good fight. But the glory days of "Norma Rae" are gone. Real change in today's world comes from the energy and ideas of entrepreneurs, not from labor negotiations. To take control of their work, writers have to cut out the middleman. Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, who just struck a deal with NBC to air their "Quarterlife" Web-only dramatic series, will reap most of the rewards, since they own the show. Not every writer has the clout of that duo to attract outside investors. But as the Internet has proved time and again, game-changing ideas are more likely to come from an unknown 26-year-old newcomer than a fiftysomething veteran.
THE models are everywhere today, especially in the music business, where economic upheaval has given birth to a new array of artist-entrepreneurs. Radiohead and Prince have both bypassed the soul-killing tangle of retailers and promotion people by releasing their latest records themselves (with Radiohead using the Internet as its distributor, even letting its fans set the price of the record themselves).
Being entrepreneurial isn't for the faint of heart. If you want a sweet upfront paycheck, you may not have the stomach for it. But after seeing studios bowdlerize their scripts, many writers will swap a big payday for more control. Twohy says that after Relativity read his script, "They told me, 'Script approved as-is.' I've never heard a studio ever say that."
This kind of creative freedom already exists in Silicon Valley, where the creators of product are its owners. Software entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, who helped found Netscape, makes an eloquent argument on his blog (blog.pmarca.com) that a prolonged strike could undermine the studios' control of production and distribution, ushering in a new showbiz model built in the image of Silicon Valley.
Even if the strike is settled soon, dramatic change is coming. As more outside money pours into Hollywood and as our computers begin to merge with our TV sets, the studios will have less control over content than ever. NBC's Jeff Zucker can sneer at the paltry dollars to be made from selling TV shows on iTunes all he wants. But if old media keep pulling their product away, surely the day isn't far away when Steve Jobs will bankroll his own programming to keep our iPods full of compelling entertainment.
Whoever enters the fray will still need writers to create this new content. So writers should keep their eyes on the prize. Getting a few more pennies of digital loot is just a beginning, not an end. The ultimate goal should be finding ways to own a piece of your own work.
"If I were someone like Les Moonves, I'd be scared," Gilroy says. "You don't want your employees thinking about opening their own store around the corner. We might be really tough competitors."
The Big Picture runs every Tuesday in Calendar. E-mail questions or criticism to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.
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ART REVIEW
'Las Vegas Diaspora' at the Las Vegas Art Museum
'Step (in) Out'
Tim Bavington
'STEP (IN) OUT': Tim Bavington's stripe-painting is part of "Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art From the Neon Homeland," featuring former UNLV students.
Modern art and culture find a home in the distinctly American gambling capital with a showcase for 26 former UNLV students.
By Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 20, 2007
LAS VEGAS -- If it did nothing else, "Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art From the Neon Homeland" could claim the best title of any art museum exhibition this year. The show chronicles the scattering of 26 artists who graduated from the gambling capital's University of Nevada campus after studying in the 1990s with prominent art critic Dave Hickey.
Now, 15 of those artists work in eight other regions, especially on the coasts. The remainder decided to stay in town, where the show is on view at the Las Vegas Art Museum through Dec. 30. They represent the vibrant kernel of a serious art scene in a city few would expect to have one.
'Ridicule Is Nothing To Be Scared Of'
'Ridicule Is Nothing To Be Scared Of'
click to enlarge
Installation view
Installation view
click to enlarge
That's the other reason that "Diaspora" is not just a snappy name but also an apt term for this undertaking. As nomenclature, the word is usually applied to describe the fate of minorities reviled by the dominant culture. That means it fits Las Vegas art to a T.
This metropolis is a distinctly American city, where modern art ideas originally forged in a European crucible often have the fit of a delicate glass slipper jammed onto the ungainly foot of an ugly stepsister. In that regard, Las Vegas is the new Los Angeles.
Not so long ago L.A. was the place where culture was said to be mostly found in yogurt. Vegas, though, is still the kind of place where "Swan Lake" is assumed to be performed as a topless revue, save for the incongruous ostrich feathers.
"Las Vegas Diaspora" takes that no-class, low-art slur and wisely runs with it, turning most every imaginable sow's ear into a startling silk purse. The aesthetic refinement is downright extreme.
Hickey, who was guest curator for the show (his wife, Libby Lumpkin, is the museum's director), came to the forefront of American art criticism -- snagging a MacArthur prize in the process -- nearly 15 years ago, when he audaciously argued that, of all things, beauty would become the art-issue of the 1990s. It did.
The topic assumes an unexpected tone of militancy in "Las Vegas Diaspora." Beauty isn't offered as some timid escape from society's crushing woes, but as a sharp rebuke: Not that; this!
I surrender -- happily.
The works
Thomas Burke's 16-foot-long panel of undulating geometric color, "The Hots," crosses Sol LeWitt with a Navajo blanket, then turns on the neon. Jane Callister's "Cosmic Landslide" is a primordial ooze of sliding paint -- pigmented magma.
It might have been the site for the Rev. Ethan Acres' "Miracle at La Brea," a digital photograph that shows the born-again preacher happily resurrecting a winged Tyrannosaurus rex from the tar pits and sending it heavenward.
Shawn Hummel juxtaposes a panel enameled in cherry red automotive paint with big color photographs of a purple car hood and a late-night glimpse into an apartment building window, disturbingly illuminated by acrid yellow light. It's like a gorgeous Ellsworth Kelly abstraction that morphs into a vaguely predatory image.
Nearby, lovingly described slabs of raw meat and entrails, gaily marbled with fat and painted in slick oils by Victoria Reynolds, seem right at home in their elaborate Rococo frames. No guts, no glory.
Sleek, glamorous, sexy, sensational -- this art is also intellectually savvy. The artists are fluent in the complex language of contemporary art, and the best of them speak distinctive dialects.
Bradley Corman's black, anodized aluminum wall relief starts with a sober, Donald Judd-style Minimalism. But the striated horizontal surface of the wide, rectangular relief is slightly bowed, almost imperceptibly engaging ambient light. Static Minimalist form careens into a speeding visual blur.
Across the room, Gajin Fujita engineers a different yet related collision, pushing urban street graffiti into Japanese screen painting. With a tagger's skill he writes an angry "BURN" across the flight pattern of an up-from-the-ashes phoenix.
Drawing you in
Seduction is also a prominent leitmotif, with the art regularly offering come-hither glances. Philip Argent does it in luscious yet apocalyptic paintings that merge crystalline shapes with liquid color, negative space with hard-edge undulations. His paintings record the big-bang-birth of a thoroughly synthetic cosmos.
In a hyper-stylized manner Sush Machida Gaikotsu paints bamboo sheltering exquisite white tigers -- an animal unknown in Japan, and thus as mythic a beast as those tamed locally by Siegfried & Roy. But the way he's packaged his nominal Asian scrolls in obsessively crafted, clear acrylic boxes turns high art into luscious consumer product. The tiger, sometimes a Nippon symbol for the West, suddenly assumes a new, ravening identity.
Some of the work seems skillful but as yet unprocessed. David Reed, Josiah McElhenny and Jim Isermann were among two dozen distinguished guest faculty who taught at UNLV between 1990 and 2001, and their authority is easy to spot.
Robert Acuna evinces technical mastery in painterly abstractions that read something like aestheticized consumer bar-codes stretched 7 feet wide, but the flourishes of paint echo Reed's work too strongly. McElhenny's hand-blown glass confections lurk in the background of Curtis Fairman's otherwise cheeky sculptures, assembled from discount-store candlesticks, bowls and vases and suggestive of glittery, potentially lethal erotic toys. Almond Zigmund's geometric decals on a gallery window-wall and Sherin Guirguis' jazzy, decorative wall-relief of Eames-like stacking chairs both recall Isermann's work.
Guirguis manages to transform the influence into something uniquely her own, though, largely through an unexpected manipulation of materials. What looks like a raised, linear drawing is in fact painted Masonite. Sculpture, painting, drawing, relief and furniture tumble together into one marvelously polymorphic species.
Odd yet effective
Among the show's strangest, most unexpected works are two large, oil-on-linen "Crack" paintings by Jason Tomme. Ethereal golden-brown panels turn the show's volume way down, their shadowy hues recalling fragments of ancient wall behind the foreground action in a Caravaggio, like "The Calling of St. Matthew" or "Boy With a Basket of Fruit."
Art's action lies in the breach, escaping through unexpected fissures, this canny work suggests, lurking in the illuminated void where flamboyant human dramas unfold.
A large majority of the artists are painters, but many of them make paintings with sculptural qualities. Among the most adept is David Ryan, whose organic reliefs layer flat, irregularly shaped puddles of vibrant color that miraculously carve out deep volumes of visual space. Wayne Littlejohn heads in the other direction, his organic tower of sculpted polystyrene spray-painted in lascivious hues, like the passionate Venus flytrap in "Little Shop of Horrors."
Two other features of "Las Vegas Diaspora" are noteworthy. Both represent something you're unlikely to encounter in any American or European art museum east of the Mojave Desert. (The show travels to the Laguna Art Museum in March.)
James Gobel's knockout "painting" of Regency fops suggestively dining on tasty cherry pie, all made from cut-and-glued felt and yarn, hangs on a big entry wall painted bright tangerine. Tim Bavington's equally fine, similarly monumental stripe-painting, "Step (In) Out," hangs on a lime green wall.
Two other art-adorned walls are suavely painted lemon yellow and aubergine. Think about all that Little Richard tutti-fruitiness the next time you're nodding off inside some tired white cube at MOCA, the Hammer, the Whitney or the Walker. "Serious" contemporary art museums wouldn't dream of it.
More's the pity -- especially as the other novel twist comes in the show's catalog, right after Hickey's typically engaging essay on what makes a studio art program meaningful. Five pages of raucous party pictures are worthy of Vanity Fair -- and not just the slick celebrity magazine, but the Thackeray story satirizing 19th century British tastelessness and greed.
christopher.knight @latimes.com
Party/gig Electric Cabaret
==================
Club nights can’t have just a so-called superstar DJ headlining some old Roxy anymore. Who wants to see that? Now you have to have jugglers, snake charmers, self-harmers, those terrible chocolate fountains and monkeys on fire playing crazy golf. Or something like that anyway. And I think that’s probably a good thing. As sponsored nights go, the Smirnoff Electric Cabaret have pulled out all the stops and hit pretty high on the entertainment-o-meter – they’ve bagged YouTube heroes OK GO to perform a one –off routine, London’s most exciting DJ, and Radio 1 new boy Kissy Sell Out, Parisian fashionista glam-rockers Fancy, Belgian electronica peeps Goose and a host of cabaret acts, beatboxers, acrobats and magicians. See – it ain’t exactly a bad night out is it? / Number 8 Be the first to email le cool and get a pair of tix to this mad one.
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November 22, 2007 - Thursday
MONSANTO_WESTINGHOUSE’S PRE THANKSGIVING ’07 NY TIMES LA TIMES RECAP
Current mood: worried
Category: worried Movies, TV, Celebrities
real-life cartoonist turned writer Robert Graysmith,
Maybe that's why it doesn't have the usual movie-made shrink- rapping and beard-stroking, as in Mommy was a castrating shrew and Daddy used a two-by-four as a paddle. Throughout the film Mr. Fincher and company keep focus on Zodiac's crimes, on the nuts and bolts of his deeds, rather than on the nurture and nature behind them. There is no normalizing psychology here, and no deep-dish symbolism either, maybe because the title crazy is so peculiarly fond of symbols, which he sprinkles in his missives and, for one murder, wears superhero style on a black-hooded costume that makes him look like a portly ninja in a Z-movie quickie. It's no wonder the victims don't see the threat behind the masquerade until it's too late.
There's a moment early in the film when Mr. Downey stands in the Chronicle newsroom, back arched and rear gently hoisted, affecting a posture that calls to mind Gene Kelly done up as a Toulouse-Lautrec jockey in "An American in Paris." Avery has already started his long slip-slide into boozy oblivion, abetted by toots of coke, but as he strides around the newsroom, motored by talent and self-regard, he is the guy everybody else wants to be or wants to have. Like Mr. Ruffalo's detective, who leaves everything bobbing in his rapid wake, Mr. Downey fills the screen with life that, by its very nature, is a rebuke to the death drive embodied by the Zodiac killer. Rarely has a film with so much blood on its hands seemed so insistently alive.
Naomi Klein is the author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
"Everyone was waiting for this day to come."
THE REV. TADEUSZ PACHOLCZYK, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, on a report that scientists turned human skin cells into what appear to be stem cells.
From Andy Warhol to Lonelygirl15, modern media culture thrives on the traffic in counterfeit selves. In this world the greatest artist will also be, almost axiomatically, the biggest fraud. And looking back over the past 50 years or so, it is hard to find anyone with a greater ability to synthesize authenticity — to give his serial hoaxes and impersonations the ring of revealed and esoteric truth — than
As you watch the mid-'60s renegade folk singer Jude Quinn — embodied in Ms. Blanchett's hunched, skinny frame and photographed in silvery Nouvelle Vague black and white — pinball through swinging London, subsisting on amphetamines, Camel straights and gnomic talk, it feels like a pop earthquake. The '60s, man! As Mr. Ledger's character and his wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) meet, marry and fall apart, it feels like the heartbreaking aftermath of a moment of high promise and possibility. (That would be the '70s.)
"Live in your own time." That's the advice young "Woody Guthrie" hears from a motherly woman who offers him a hot meal and a place to sleep. It's sensible advice — he's daydreaming of the Depression in the middle of the space age — but also useless. It's not as if anyone has a choice. To slog through the present requires no particular wit, vision or art. But a certain kind of artist will comb through the old stuff that's lying around — the tall tales and questionable memories, the yellowing photographs and scratched records — looking for glimpses of a possible future. Though there's a lot of Bob Dylan's music in "I'm Not There," Mr. Haynes is not simply compiling golden oldies. You hear familiar songs, but what you see is the imagination unleashed — the chimes of freedom flashing.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/movies/21ther.html?th&emc=th
David Fincher's magnificently obsessive new film, "Zodiac," tracks the story of the serial killer who left dead bodies up and down California in the 1960s and possibly the '70s, and that of the men who tried to stop him. Set when the Age of Aquarius disappeared into the black hole of the Manson family murders, the film is at once sprawling and tightly constructed, opaque and meticulously detailed. It's part police procedural, part monster movie, a funereal entertainment that is an unexpected repudiation of Mr. Fincher's most famous movie, the serial-killer fiction "Seven," as well as a testament to this cinematic savant's gifts.
"Se7en," the 1995 thriller that grossed $350 million worldwide, and "Fight Club," his over-the-top answer to young male anomie.
For him, the Zodiac murderer, who terrorized the Bay Area and was never caught, isn't just any old serial-killer story.
Raised in Marin County, Mr. Fincher was only 7 when the area was seized with fear in 1969. "I remember coming home and saying the highway patrol had been following our school buses for a couple weeks now," he recalled in December in an interview in New Orleans, where he was editing "Zodiac" while filming "Benjamin Button." "And my dad, who worked from home, and who was very dry, not one to soft-pedal things, turned slowly in his chair and said: 'Oh yeah. There's a serial killer who has killed four or five people, who calls himself Zodiac, who's threatened to take a high-powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus, and then shoot the children as they come off the bus.' "
"I was, like, 'You could drive us to school,' " he recalled thinking.
It was that same sense that initially drew him to "Se7en," he said: the fearsome power of the stranger among us. "That's what Zodiac was for a 7-year-old growing up in San Anselmo. He was the ultimate bogeyman."
But the source of his dark-hued lens on life, Mr. Fincher suggested, might be as simple as that original bogeyman. "It was a very interesting and weird time to grow up, and incredibly evocative," he said. "I have a handful of friends who were from Marin County at the same time, the same age group, and they're all very kind of sinister, dark, sardonic people. And I wonder if Zodiac had something to do with that."
150 days, not counting months to complete the illusion of Mr. Pitt's metamorphosis from newborn old man to demented, dying baby.
"It's as unadorned a movie as I've ever made," he said. "It's just people talking, and it's hard to make an audience realize that they have to be paying attention. One way you do that is by not doing very much." There are none of the "perceptual games" that he said he played in "Fight Club," where the subject was "the most unreliable narrator possible," for example. "It was like, cast the movie right, get the script right, shoot the scenes as simply as we can and get out of everyone's way," he said.
"He said: 'I think it's great, but I'm in territory I've never been before. I just don't know if they're going to get it. And that's exciting news: 'Here's my brand, and I'm stepping outside of it.' "
He added: "Every once in a while there are actors you can defeat."
"What's so wonderful about movies is, you get your shot," he said. "They even call it a shot. The stakes are high. You get your chance to prove what you can do. You get a take, 5 takes, 10 takes. Some places, 90 takes. But there is a stopping point. There's a point at which you go, 'That's what we have to work with.' But we would reshoot things. So there came a point where I would say, well, what do I do? Where's the risk?"
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Told of Mr. Gyllenhaal's comments, Mr. Fincher half-jokingly said, "I hate earnestness in performance," adding, "Usually by Take 17 the earnestness is gone." But half-joking aside, he said that collaboration "has to come from a place of deep knowledge." While he had no objections to having fun, he said, "When you go to your job, is it supposed to be fun, or are you supposed to get stuff done?"
Robert Downey Jr., impeccably cast as a crime reporter driven to drink, drugs and dissolution, called Mr. Fincher a disciplinarian and agreed that, as is often said, "he's always the smartest guy in the room." But Mr. Downey put this in perspective.
"Sometimes it's really hard because it might not feel collaborative, but ultimately filmmaking is a director's medium," he said. "I just decided, aside from several times I wanted to garrote him, that I was going to give him what he wanted. I think I'm a perfect person to work for him, because I understand gulags."
Mr. Ruffalo too survived some 70-take shots. "The way I see it is, you enter into someone else's world as an actor," he said. "You can put your expectations aside and have an experience that's new and pushes and changes you, or hold onto what you think it should be and have a stubborn, immovable journey that's filled with disappointment and anger."
He said Mr. Fincher was equally demanding of everyone — executives, actors, himself. "He knows he's taking a stab at eternity," Mr. Ruffalo said. "He knows that this will outlive him. And he's not going to settle for anything other than satisfaction, deep satisfaction. Somewhere along the line he said, 'I will not settle for less.' "
real-life cartoonist turned writer Robert Graysmith,
Maybe that's why it doesn't have the usual movie-made shrink- rapping and beard-stroking, as in Mommy was a castrating shrew and Daddy used a two-by-four as a paddle. Throughout the film Mr. Fincher and company keep focus on Zodiac's crimes, on the nuts and bolts of his deeds, rather than on the nurture and nature behind them. There is no normalizing psychology here, and no deep-dish symbolism either, maybe because the title crazy is so peculiarly fond of symbols, which he sprinkles in his missives and, for one murder, wears superhero style on a black-hooded costume that makes him look like a portly ninja in a Z-movie quickie. It's no wonder the victims don't see the threat behind the masquerade until it's too late.
There's a moment early in the film when Mr. Downey stands in the Chronicle newsroom, back arched and rear gently hoisted, affecting a posture that calls to mind Gene Kelly done up as a Toulouse-Lautrec jockey in "An American in Paris." Avery has already started his long slip-slide into boozy oblivion, abetted by toots of coke, but as he strides around the newsroom, motored by talent and self-regard, he is the guy everybody else wants to be or wants to have. Like Mr. Ruffalo's detective, who leaves everything bobbing in his rapid wake, Mr. Downey fills the screen with life that, by its very nature, is a rebuke to the death drive embodied by the Zodiac killer. Rarely has a film with so much blood on its hands seemed so insistently alive.
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They spend at least two hours a day online, usually playing games or chatting. Of those, up to a quarter million probably show signs of actual addiction, like an inability to stop themselves from using computers, rising levels of tolerance that drive them to seek ever longer sessions online, and withdrawal symptoms like anger and craving when prevented from logging on.
They also follow a rigorous regimen of physical exercise and group activities, like horseback riding, aimed at building emotional connections to the real world and weakening those with the virtual one.
"He didn't seem to be able to control himself," said Mrs. Kim, a hairdresser. "He used to be so passionate about his favorite subjects" at school. "Now, he gives up easily and gets even more absorbed in his games."
Her son was reluctant at first to give up his pastime.
"I don't have a problem," Chang-hoon said in an interview three days after starting the camp. "Seventeen hours a day online is fine."
"I'm not thinking about games now, so maybe this will help," he replied. "From now on, maybe I'll just spend five hours a day online."
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THE BIG PICTURE
Come on, writers, script your futures
Adrian Wyld / Associated Press
"Michael Clayton" director Tony Gilroy: "The studios have got to be hoping that this idea about being entrepreneurs doesn't sweep over the TV show runners, because once you start seeing really good production values on the Internet, I mean, what does Larry David really need HBO for?"
The Big Picture: As the writers strike enters its third week, I think the future belongs to a tantalizing new hyphenate: the writer-entrepreneur.
By Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 20, 2007
Hollywood is a town awash in hyphenates. TV is loaded with writer-producers. The movie biz is full of writer-directors. There's even a legion of actor-filmmakers like Clint Eastwood and George Clooney. But as the writers strike enters its third week, I think the future belongs to a tantalizing new hyphenate: the writer-entrepreneur.
Visiting a UCLA film class the other night, I was asked to name the most influential filmmakers of our era. The choices were pretty obvious: Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, John Lasseter, George Lucas. . . . As the names spilled out, I realized they all have something in common. They're filmmaker-entrepreneurs, artists-turned-businessmen who helped start their own companies to further their work, became financially independent and created a world that operates under a radically different set of rules from the vacuous studio assembly lines. It's telling that the current strike is about new media yet both sides seem to be following old-school models.
Strike: Money trail
Photo Gallery
Strike: Money trail
FOR THE RECORD:
Scott Frank: Patrick Goldstein's Big Picture column in Tuesday's Calendar section said Scott Frank had directed "The Woodsman" this year. Nicole Kassell directed "The Woodsman." Frank directed "The Lookout" this year. —
Writer Guild members, listen up. There is a lesson here. Just ask Tony Gilroy, the writer-director of "Michael Clayton," a nervy thriller that's won critical raves this fall. Gilroy had a script that was dead in the water until a total outsider -- a Boston real estate developer named Steve Samuels -- said if Gilroy could get a star and stick to a budget, he'd bankroll the film.
Gilroy didn't see himself as an entrepreneur. He just had a script that was burning a hole in his pocket. "I'd say the experience was more about my wising up than becoming a visionary," he explained the other day. "But the moment I started chasing private-equity money, it didn't take me long before I'd realized that I'd short-circuited the formula for getting a greenlight. I didn't need studio approval. All I needed was one guy who believed in the movie."
Gilroy is now a convert. "The studios have got to be hoping that this idea about being entrepreneurs doesn't sweep over the TV show runners, because once you start seeing really good production values on the Internet, I mean, what does Larry David really need HBO for? This is all everybody is talking about on the line. They're not talking about healthcare. They're going, 'Wow, is there a different way to get our movies and TV shows made?' "
It's the kind of talk that's contagious. Scott Frank, who wrote hits like "Minority Report" before directing "The Woodsman" this year, has been speaking with Samuels about financing a new film. David Twohy, writer-director of "The Chronicles of Riddick," has lined up financing for a new thriller, "A Perfect Getaway," from Relativity chief Ryan Cavanaugh, who also bankrolled "3:10 to Yuma."
Steve Zaillian, who wrote "American Gangster," has a deal with Mandate Pictures to make under-$10 million character-driven films where he is a 50-50 partner in all the projects. Mandate has a similar partnership with writer-director Sam Raimi of "Spider-Man" fame. Mandate also has a writers program in which, in return for initially cutting their fee, writers can get 25% of the gross after a film goes into profit and have approval rights on hiring the movie's cast and director.
"Writers who create something rare -- a story with great, original characters that movie stars will cut their price to play -- have a real value," says Mandate production chief Nathan Kahane. "But that value doesn't get unlocked in the studio system. If writers are willing to share our risk, then we're willing to give them a lot of control and share in the profits too."
THIS kind of entrepreneurial formula couldn't have existed in the era when the studios had a stranglehold on every facet of the business, notably talent, money and distribution. But those days are gone. The stars became free agents long ago. In the last few years, with billions of private-equity dollars flooding the business, the studios have lost their lock on financing too.
All that's left is marketing and distribution. It's hard to equal the way studios launch their summer popcorn extravaganzas with a $40-million marketing blitz. But as more entertainment migrates to the Internet, where distribution is basically free to anyone with a computer, the studios will lose that monopoly as well. If the last couple of weeks are any indication, with clips from out-of-work comedy writers popping up every day, the Web could be littered with new must-see video sites by Christmas. Remember: After barely a year in existence, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. On the Internet, good ideas travel fast.
"The world is about to change," Frank says. "Anyone with an Apple computer can make a movie now -- it's never been a more democratic medium. The studios should be very afraid. Once the independent financiers start going directly to writers, things could change really fast. I ask myself every week -- why aren't we all working with them? Look at the movies they've made. They are the new Medicis."
While the studios peddle dreary remakes and special-effects extravaganzas, the movies that really get people talking -- such as "Crash," "Brokeback Mountain," "Michael Clayton" and the upcoming "Juno" -- have been financed by outside investors. None of the films had a big budget, but fiscal discipline and artistic autonomy often fuels creativity. "Ten million dollars to $30 million is where ambiguity stays alive, where you can have complexity in storytelling," Gilroy says. "When you get up to a certain budget number with studio films, the bad guys have to all wear black hats."
The WGA is fighting the good fight. But the glory days of "Norma Rae" are gone. Real change in today's world comes from the energy and ideas of entrepreneurs, not from labor negotiations. To take control of their work, writers have to cut out the middleman. Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, who just struck a deal with NBC to air their "Quarterlife" Web-only dramatic series, will reap most of the rewards, since they own the show. Not every writer has the clout of that duo to attract outside investors. But as the Internet has proved time and again, game-changing ideas are more likely to come from an unknown 26-year-old newcomer than a fiftysomething veteran.
THE models are everywhere today, especially in the music business, where economic upheaval has given birth to a new array of artist-entrepreneurs. Radiohead and Prince have both bypassed the soul-killing tangle of retailers and promotion people by releasing their latest records themselves (with Radiohead using the Internet as its distributor, even letting its fans set the price of the record themselves).
Being entrepreneurial isn't for the faint of heart. If you want a sweet upfront paycheck, you may not have the stomach for it. But after seeing studios bowdlerize their scripts, many writers will swap a big payday for more control. Twohy says that after Relativity read his script, "They told me, 'Script approved as-is.' I've never heard a studio ever say that."
This kind of creative freedom already exists in Silicon Valley, where the creators of product are its owners. Software entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, who helped found Netscape, makes an eloquent argument on his blog (blog.pmarca.com) that a prolonged strike could undermine the studios' control of production and distribution, ushering in a new showbiz model built in the image of Silicon Valley.
Even if the strike is settled soon, dramatic change is coming. As more outside money pours into Hollywood and as our computers begin to merge with our TV sets, the studios will have less control over content than ever. NBC's Jeff Zucker can sneer at the paltry dollars to be made from selling TV shows on iTunes all he wants. But if old media keep pulling their product away, surely the day isn't far away when Steve Jobs will bankroll his own programming to keep our iPods full of compelling entertainment.
Whoever enters the fray will still need writers to create this new content. So writers should keep their eyes on the prize. Getting a few more pennies of digital loot is just a beginning, not an end. The ultimate goal should be finding ways to own a piece of your own work.
"If I were someone like Les Moonves, I'd be scared," Gilroy says. "You don't want your employees thinking about opening their own store around the corner. We might be really tough competitors."
The Big Picture runs every Tuesday in Calendar. E-mail questions or criticism to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.
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ART REVIEW
'Las Vegas Diaspora' at the Las Vegas Art Museum
'Step (in) Out'
Tim Bavington
'STEP (IN) OUT': Tim Bavington's stripe-painting is part of "Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art From the Neon Homeland," featuring former UNLV students.
Modern art and culture find a home in the distinctly American gambling capital with a showcase for 26 former UNLV students.
By Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 20, 2007
LAS VEGAS -- If it did nothing else, "Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art From the Neon Homeland" could claim the best title of any art museum exhibition this year. The show chronicles the scattering of 26 artists who graduated from the gambling capital's University of Nevada campus after studying in the 1990s with prominent art critic Dave Hickey.
Now, 15 of those artists work in eight other regions, especially on the coasts. The remainder decided to stay in town, where the show is on view at the Las Vegas Art Museum through Dec. 30. They represent the vibrant kernel of a serious art scene in a city few would expect to have one.
'Ridicule Is Nothing To Be Scared Of'
'Ridicule Is Nothing To Be Scared Of'
click to enlarge
Installation view
Installation view
click to enlarge
That's the other reason that "Diaspora" is not just a snappy name but also an apt term for this undertaking. As nomenclature, the word is usually applied to describe the fate of minorities reviled by the dominant culture. That means it fits Las Vegas art to a T.
This metropolis is a distinctly American city, where modern art ideas originally forged in a European crucible often have the fit of a delicate glass slipper jammed onto the ungainly foot of an ugly stepsister. In that regard, Las Vegas is the new Los Angeles.
Not so long ago L.A. was the place where culture was said to be mostly found in yogurt. Vegas, though, is still the kind of place where "Swan Lake" is assumed to be performed as a topless revue, save for the incongruous ostrich feathers.
"Las Vegas Diaspora" takes that no-class, low-art slur and wisely runs with it, turning most every imaginable sow's ear into a startling silk purse. The aesthetic refinement is downright extreme.
Hickey, who was guest curator for the show (his wife, Libby Lumpkin, is the museum's director), came to the forefront of American art criticism -- snagging a MacArthur prize in the process -- nearly 15 years ago, when he audaciously argued that, of all things, beauty would become the art-issue of the 1990s. It did.
The topic assumes an unexpected tone of militancy in "Las Vegas Diaspora." Beauty isn't offered as some timid escape from society's crushing woes, but as a sharp rebuke: Not that; this!
I surrender -- happily.
The works
Thomas Burke's 16-foot-long panel of undulating geometric color, "The Hots," crosses Sol LeWitt with a Navajo blanket, then turns on the neon. Jane Callister's "Cosmic Landslide" is a primordial ooze of sliding paint -- pigmented magma.
It might have been the site for the Rev. Ethan Acres' "Miracle at La Brea," a digital photograph that shows the born-again preacher happily resurrecting a winged Tyrannosaurus rex from the tar pits and sending it heavenward.
Shawn Hummel juxtaposes a panel enameled in cherry red automotive paint with big color photographs of a purple car hood and a late-night glimpse into an apartment building window, disturbingly illuminated by acrid yellow light. It's like a gorgeous Ellsworth Kelly abstraction that morphs into a vaguely predatory image.
Nearby, lovingly described slabs of raw meat and entrails, gaily marbled with fat and painted in slick oils by Victoria Reynolds, seem right at home in their elaborate Rococo frames. No guts, no glory.
Sleek, glamorous, sexy, sensational -- this art is also intellectually savvy. The artists are fluent in the complex language of contemporary art, and the best of them speak distinctive dialects.
Bradley Corman's black, anodized aluminum wall relief starts with a sober, Donald Judd-style Minimalism. But the striated horizontal surface of the wide, rectangular relief is slightly bowed, almost imperceptibly engaging ambient light. Static Minimalist form careens into a speeding visual blur.
Across the room, Gajin Fujita engineers a different yet related collision, pushing urban street graffiti into Japanese screen painting. With a tagger's skill he writes an angry "BURN" across the flight pattern of an up-from-the-ashes phoenix.
Drawing you in
Seduction is also a prominent leitmotif, with the art regularly offering come-hither glances. Philip Argent does it in luscious yet apocalyptic paintings that merge crystalline shapes with liquid color, negative space with hard-edge undulations. His paintings record the big-bang-birth of a thoroughly synthetic cosmos.
In a hyper-stylized manner Sush Machida Gaikotsu paints bamboo sheltering exquisite white tigers -- an animal unknown in Japan, and thus as mythic a beast as those tamed locally by Siegfried & Roy. But the way he's packaged his nominal Asian scrolls in obsessively crafted, clear acrylic boxes turns high art into luscious consumer product. The tiger, sometimes a Nippon symbol for the West, suddenly assumes a new, ravening identity.
Some of the work seems skillful but as yet unprocessed. David Reed, Josiah McElhenny and Jim Isermann were among two dozen distinguished guest faculty who taught at UNLV between 1990 and 2001, and their authority is easy to spot.
Robert Acuna evinces technical mastery in painterly abstractions that read something like aestheticized consumer bar-codes stretched 7 feet wide, but the flourishes of paint echo Reed's work too strongly. McElhenny's hand-blown glass confections lurk in the background of Curtis Fairman's otherwise cheeky sculptures, assembled from discount-store candlesticks, bowls and vases and suggestive of glittery, potentially lethal erotic toys. Almond Zigmund's geometric decals on a gallery window-wall and Sherin Guirguis' jazzy, decorative wall-relief of Eames-like stacking chairs both recall Isermann's work.
Guirguis manages to transform the influence into something uniquely her own, though, largely through an unexpected manipulation of materials. What looks like a raised, linear drawing is in fact painted Masonite. Sculpture, painting, drawing, relief and furniture tumble together into one marvelously polymorphic species.
Odd yet effective
Among the show's strangest, most unexpected works are two large, oil-on-linen "Crack" paintings by Jason Tomme. Ethereal golden-brown panels turn the show's volume way down, their shadowy hues recalling fragments of ancient wall behind the foreground action in a Caravaggio, like "The Calling of St. Matthew" or "Boy With a Basket of Fruit."
Art's action lies in the breach, escaping through unexpected fissures, this canny work suggests, lurking in the illuminated void where flamboyant human dramas unfold.
A large majority of the artists are painters, but many of them make paintings with sculptural qualities. Among the most adept is David Ryan, whose organic reliefs layer flat, irregularly shaped puddles of vibrant color that miraculously carve out deep volumes of visual space. Wayne Littlejohn heads in the other direction, his organic tower of sculpted polystyrene spray-painted in lascivious hues, like the passionate Venus flytrap in "Little Shop of Horrors."
Two other features of "Las Vegas Diaspora" are noteworthy. Both represent something you're unlikely to encounter in any American or European art museum east of the Mojave Desert. (The show travels to the Laguna Art Museum in March.)
James Gobel's knockout "painting" of Regency fops suggestively dining on tasty cherry pie, all made from cut-and-glued felt and yarn, hangs on a big entry wall painted bright tangerine. Tim Bavington's equally fine, similarly monumental stripe-painting, "Step (In) Out," hangs on a lime green wall.
Two other art-adorned walls are suavely painted lemon yellow and aubergine. Think about all that Little Richard tutti-fruitiness the next time you're nodding off inside some tired white cube at MOCA, the Hammer, the Whitney or the Walker. "Serious" contemporary art museums wouldn't dream of it.
More's the pity -- especially as the other novel twist comes in the show's catalog, right after Hickey's typically engaging essay on what makes a studio art program meaningful. Five pages of raucous party pictures are worthy of Vanity Fair -- and not just the slick celebrity magazine, but the Thackeray story satirizing 19th century British tastelessness and greed.
christopher.knight @latimes.com
Party/gig Electric Cabaret
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Club nights can't have just a so-called superstar DJ headlining some old Roxy anymore. Who wants to see that? Now you have to have jugglers, snake charmers, self-harmers, those terrible chocolate fountains and monkeys on fire playing crazy golf. Or something like that anyway. And I think that's probably a good thing. As sponsored nights go, the Smirnoff Electric Cabaret have pulled out all the stops and hit pretty high on the entertainment-o-meter – they've bagged YouTube heroes OK GO to perform a one –off routine, London's most exciting DJ, and Radio 1 new boy Kissy Sell Out, Parisian fashionista glam-rockers Fancy, Belgian electronica peeps Goose and a host of cabaret acts, beatboxers, acrobats and magicians. See – it ain't exactly a bad night out is it? / Number 8 Be the first to email le cool and get a pair of tix to this mad one.
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MONSANTO_WESTINGHOUSE'S PRE THANKSGIVING '07 NY TIMES LA TIMES RECAP
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22 November 2007 @ 03:45 pm
real-life cartoonist turned writer Robert Graysmith,
Maybe that’s why it doesn’t have the usual movie-made shrink- rapping and beard-stroking, as in Mommy was a castrating shrew and Daddy used a two-by-four as a paddle. Throughout the film Mr. Fincher and company keep focus on Zodiac’s crimes, on the nuts and bolts of his deeds, rather than on the nurture and nature behind them. There is no normalizing psychology here, and no deep-dish symbolism either, maybe because the title crazy is so peculiarly fond of symbols, which he sprinkles in his missives and, for one murder, wears superhero style on a black-hooded costume that makes him look like a portly ninja in a Z-movie quickie. It’s no wonder the victims don’t see the threat behind the masquerade until it’s too late.
There’s a moment early in the film when Mr. Downey stands in the Chronicle newsroom, back arched and rear gently hoisted, affecting a posture that calls to mind Gene Kelly done up as a Toulouse-Lautrec jockey in “An American in Paris.” Avery has already started his long slip-slide into boozy oblivion, abetted by toots of coke, but as he strides around the newsroom, motored by talent and self-regard, he is the guy everybody else wants to be or wants to have. Like Mr. Ruffalo’s detective, who leaves everything bobbing in his rapid wake, Mr. Downey fills the screen with life that, by its very nature, is a rebuke to the death drive embodied by the Zodiac killer. Rarely has a film with so much blood on its hands seemed so insistently alive.
Naomi Klein is the author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
"Everyone was waiting for this day to come."
THE REV. TADEUSZ PACHOLCZYK, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, on a report that scientists turned human skin cells into what appear to be stem cells.
From Andy Warhol to Lonelygirl15, modern media culture thrives on the traffic in counterfeit selves. In this world the greatest artist will also be, almost axiomatically, the biggest fraud. And looking back over the past 50 years or so, it is hard to find anyone with a greater ability to synthesize authenticity — to give his serial hoaxes and impersonations the ring of revealed and esoteric truth — than
As you watch the mid-’60s renegade folk singer Jude Quinn — embodied in Ms. Blanchett’s hunched, skinny frame and photographed in silvery Nouvelle Vague black and white — pinball through swinging London, subsisting on amphetamines, Camel straights and gnomic talk, it feels like a pop earthquake. The ’60s, man! As Mr. Ledger’s character and his wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) meet, marry and fall apart, it feels like the heartbreaking aftermath of a moment of high promise and possibility. (That would be the ’70s.)
“Live in your own time.” That’s the advice young “Woody Guthrie” hears from a motherly woman who offers him a hot meal and a place to sleep. It’s sensible advice — he’s daydreaming of the Depression in the middle of the space age — but also useless. It’s not as if anyone has a choice. To slog through the present requires no particular wit, vision or art. But a certain kind of artist will comb through the old stuff that’s lying around — the tall tales and questionable memories, the yellowing photographs and scratched records — looking for glimpses of a possible future. Though there’s a lot of Bob Dylan’s music in “I’m Not There,” Mr. Haynes is not simply compiling golden oldies. You hear familiar songs, but what you see is the imagination unleashed — the chimes of freedom flashing.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/movies/21ther.html?th&emc=th
David Fincher’s magnificently obsessive new film, “Zodiac,” tracks the story of the serial killer who left dead bodies up and down California in the 1960s and possibly the ’70s, and that of the men who tried to stop him. Set when the Age of Aquarius disappeared into the black hole of the Manson family murders, the film is at once sprawling and tightly constructed, opaque and meticulously detailed. It’s part police procedural, part monster movie, a funereal entertainment that is an unexpected repudiation of Mr. Fincher’s most famous movie, the serial-killer fiction “Seven,” as well as a testament to this cinematic savant’s gifts.
“Se7en,” the 1995 thriller that grossed $350 million worldwide, and “Fight Club,” his over-the-top answer to young male anomie.
For him, the Zodiac murderer, who terrorized the Bay Area and was never caught, isn’t just any old serial-killer story.
Raised in Marin County, Mr. Fincher was only 7 when the area was seized with fear in 1969. “I remember coming home and saying the highway patrol had been following our school buses for a couple weeks now,” he recalled in December in an interview in New Orleans, where he was editing “Zodiac” while filming “Benjamin Button.” “And my dad, who worked from home, and who was very dry, not one to soft-pedal things, turned slowly in his chair and said: ‘Oh yeah. There’s a serial killer who has killed four or five people, who calls himself Zodiac, who’s threatened to take a high-powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus, and then shoot the children as they come off the bus.’ ”
“I was, like, ‘You could drive us to school,’ ” he recalled thinking.
It was that same sense that initially drew him to “Se7en,” he said: the fearsome power of the stranger among us. “That’s what Zodiac was for a 7-year-old growing up in San Anselmo. He was the ultimate bogeyman.”
But the source of his dark-hued lens on life, Mr. Fincher suggested, might be as simple as that original bogeyman. “It was a very interesting and weird time to grow up, and incredibly evocative,” he said. “I have a handful of friends who were from Marin County at the same time, the same age group, and they’re all very kind of sinister, dark, sardonic people. And I wonder if Zodiac had something to do with that.”
150 days, not counting months to complete the illusion of Mr. Pitt’s metamorphosis from newborn old man to demented, dying baby.
“It’s as unadorned a movie as I’ve ever made,” he said. “It’s just people talking, and it’s hard to make an audience realize that they have to be paying attention. One way you do that is by not doing very much.” There are none of the “perceptual games” that he said he played in “Fight Club,” where the subject was “the most unreliable narrator possible,” for example. “It was like, cast the movie right, get the script right, shoot the scenes as simply as we can and get out of everyone’s way,” he said.
“He said: ‘I think it’s great, but I’m in territory I’ve never been before. I just don’t know if they’re going to get it. And that’s exciting news: ‘Here’s my brand, and I’m stepping outside of it.’ ”
He added: “Every once in a while there are actors you can defeat.”
“What’s so wonderful about movies is, you get your shot,” he said. “They even call it a shot. The stakes are high. You get your chance to prove what you can do. You get a take, 5 takes, 10 takes. Some places, 90 takes. But there is a stopping point. There’s a point at which you go, ‘That’s what we have to work with.’ But we would reshoot things. So there came a point where I would say, well, what do I do? Where’s the risk?”
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Told of Mr. Gyllenhaal’s comments, Mr. Fincher half-jokingly said, “I hate earnestness in performance,” adding, “Usually by Take 17 the earnestness is gone.” But half-joking aside, he said that collaboration “has to come from a place of deep knowledge.” While he had no objections to having fun, he said, “When you go to your job, is it supposed to be fun, or are you supposed to get stuff done?”
Robert Downey Jr., impeccably cast as a crime reporter driven to drink, drugs and dissolution, called Mr. Fincher a disciplinarian and agreed that, as is often said, “he’s always the smartest guy in the room.” But Mr. Downey put this in perspective.
“Sometimes it’s really hard because it might not feel collaborative, but ultimately filmmaking is a director’s medium,” he said. “I just decided, aside from several times I wanted to garrote him, that I was going to give him what he wanted. I think I’m a perfect person to work for him, because I understand gulags.”
Mr. Ruffalo too survived some 70-take shots. “The way I see it is, you enter into someone else’s world as an actor,” he said. “You can put your expectations aside and have an experience that’s new and pushes and changes you, or hold onto what you think it should be and have a stubborn, immovable journey that’s filled with disappointment and anger.”
He said Mr. Fincher was equally demanding of everyone — executives, actors, himself. “He knows he’s taking a stab at eternity,” Mr. Ruffalo said. “He knows that this will outlive him. And he’s not going to settle for anything other than satisfaction, deep satisfaction. Somewhere along the line he said, ‘I will not settle for less.’ ”
real-life cartoonist turned writer Robert Graysmith,
Maybe that’s why it doesn’t have the usual movie-made shrink- rapping and beard-stroking, as in Mommy was a castrating shrew and Daddy used a two-by-four as a paddle. Throughout the film Mr. Fincher and company keep focus on Zodiac’s crimes, on the nuts and bolts of his deeds, rather than on the nurture and nature behind them. There is no normalizing psychology here, and no deep-dish symbolism either, maybe because the title crazy is so peculiarly fond of symbols, which he sprinkles in his missives and, for one murder, wears superhero style on a black-hooded costume that makes him look like a portly ninja in a Z-movie quickie. It’s no wonder the victims don’t see the threat behind the masquerade until it’s too late.
There’s a moment early in the film when Mr. Downey stands in the Chronicle newsroom, back arched and rear gently hoisted, affecting a posture that calls to mind Gene Kelly done up as a Toulouse-Lautrec jockey in “An American in Paris.” Avery has already started his long slip-slide into boozy oblivion, abetted by toots of coke, but as he strides around the newsroom, motored by talent and self-regard, he is the guy everybody else wants to be or wants to have. Like Mr. Ruffalo’s detective, who leaves everything bobbing in his rapid wake, Mr. Downey fills the screen with life that, by its very nature, is a rebuke to the death drive embodied by the Zodiac killer. Rarely has a film with so much blood on its hands seemed so insistently alive.
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They spend at least two hours a day online, usually playing games or chatting. Of those, up to a quarter million probably show signs of actual addiction, like an inability to stop themselves from using computers, rising levels of tolerance that drive them to seek ever longer sessions online, and withdrawal symptoms like anger and craving when prevented from logging on.
They also follow a rigorous regimen of physical exercise and group activities, like horseback riding, aimed at building emotional connections to the real world and weakening those with the virtual one.
“He didn’t seem to be able to control himself,” said Mrs. Kim, a hairdresser. “He used to be so passionate about his favorite subjects” at school. “Now, he gives up easily and gets even more absorbed in his games.”
Her son was reluctant at first to give up his pastime.
“I don’t have a problem,” Chang-hoon said in an interview three days after starting the camp. “Seventeen hours a day online is fine.”
“I’m not thinking about games now, so maybe this will help,” he replied. “From now on, maybe I’ll just spend five hours a day online.”
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THE BIG PICTURE
Come on, writers, script your futures
Adrian Wyld / Associated Press
"Michael Clayton" director Tony Gilroy: "The studios have got to be hoping that this idea about being entrepreneurs doesn't sweep over the TV show runners, because once you start seeing really good production values on the Internet, I mean, what does Larry David really need HBO for?"
The Big Picture: As the writers strike enters its third week, I think the future belongs to a tantalizing new hyphenate: the writer-entrepreneur.
By Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 20, 2007
Hollywood is a town awash in hyphenates. TV is loaded with writer-producers. The movie biz is full of writer-directors. There's even a legion of actor-filmmakers like Clint Eastwood and George Clooney. But as the writers strike enters its third week, I think the future belongs to a tantalizing new hyphenate: the writer-entrepreneur.
Visiting a UCLA film class the other night, I was asked to name the most influential filmmakers of our era. The choices were pretty obvious: Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, John Lasseter, George Lucas. . . . As the names spilled out, I realized they all have something in common. They're filmmaker-entrepreneurs, artists-turned-businessmen who helped start their own companies to further their work, became financially independent and created a world that operates under a radically different set of rules from the vacuous studio assembly lines. It's telling that the current strike is about new media yet both sides seem to be following old-school models.
Strike: Money trail
Photo Gallery
Strike: Money trail
FOR THE RECORD:
Scott Frank: Patrick Goldstein's Big Picture column in Tuesday's Calendar section said Scott Frank had directed "The Woodsman" this year. Nicole Kassell directed "The Woodsman." Frank directed "The Lookout" this year. —
Writer Guild members, listen up. There is a lesson here. Just ask Tony Gilroy, the writer-director of "Michael Clayton," a nervy thriller that's won critical raves this fall. Gilroy had a script that was dead in the water until a total outsider -- a Boston real estate developer named Steve Samuels -- said if Gilroy could get a star and stick to a budget, he'd bankroll the film.
Gilroy didn't see himself as an entrepreneur. He just had a script that was burning a hole in his pocket. "I'd say the experience was more about my wising up than becoming a visionary," he explained the other day. "But the moment I started chasing private-equity money, it didn't take me long before I'd realized that I'd short-circuited the formula for getting a greenlight. I didn't need studio approval. All I needed was one guy who believed in the movie."
Gilroy is now a convert. "The studios have got to be hoping that this idea about being entrepreneurs doesn't sweep over the TV show runners, because once you start seeing really good production values on the Internet, I mean, what does Larry David really need HBO for? This is all everybody is talking about on the line. They're not talking about healthcare. They're going, 'Wow, is there a different way to get our movies and TV shows made?' "
It's the kind of talk that's contagious. Scott Frank, who wrote hits like "Minority Report" before directing "The Woodsman" this year, has been speaking with Samuels about financing a new film. David Twohy, writer-director of "The Chronicles of Riddick," has lined up financing for a new thriller, "A Perfect Getaway," from Relativity chief Ryan Cavanaugh, who also bankrolled "3:10 to Yuma."
Steve Zaillian, who wrote "American Gangster," has a deal with Mandate Pictures to make under-$10 million character-driven films where he is a 50-50 partner in all the projects. Mandate has a similar partnership with writer-director Sam Raimi of "Spider-Man" fame. Mandate also has a writers program in which, in return for initially cutting their fee, writers can get 25% of the gross after a film goes into profit and have approval rights on hiring the movie's cast and director.
"Writers who create something rare -- a story with great, original characters that movie stars will cut their price to play -- have a real value," says Mandate production chief Nathan Kahane. "But that value doesn't get unlocked in the studio system. If writers are willing to share our risk, then we're willing to give them a lot of control and share in the profits too."
THIS kind of entrepreneurial formula couldn't have existed in the era when the studios had a stranglehold on every facet of the business, notably talent, money and distribution. But those days are gone. The stars became free agents long ago. In the last few years, with billions of private-equity dollars flooding the business, the studios have lost their lock on financing too.
All that's left is marketing and distribution. It's hard to equal the way studios launch their summer popcorn extravaganzas with a $40-million marketing blitz. But as more entertainment migrates to the Internet, where distribution is basically free to anyone with a computer, the studios will lose that monopoly as well. If the last couple of weeks are any indication, with clips from out-of-work comedy writers popping up every day, the Web could be littered with new must-see video sites by Christmas. Remember: After barely a year in existence, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. On the Internet, good ideas travel fast.
"The world is about to change," Frank says. "Anyone with an Apple computer can make a movie now -- it's never been a more democratic medium. The studios should be very afraid. Once the independent financiers start going directly to writers, things could change really fast. I ask myself every week -- why aren't we all working with them? Look at the movies they've made. They are the new Medicis."
While the studios peddle dreary remakes and special-effects extravaganzas, the movies that really get people talking -- such as "Crash," "Brokeback Mountain," "Michael Clayton" and the upcoming "Juno" -- have been financed by outside investors. None of the films had a big budget, but fiscal discipline and artistic autonomy often fuels creativity. "Ten million dollars to $30 million is where ambiguity stays alive, where you can have complexity in storytelling," Gilroy says. "When you get up to a certain budget number with studio films, the bad guys have to all wear black hats."
The WGA is fighting the good fight. But the glory days of "Norma Rae" are gone. Real change in today's world comes from the energy and ideas of entrepreneurs, not from labor negotiations. To take control of their work, writers have to cut out the middleman. Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, who just struck a deal with NBC to air their "Quarterlife" Web-only dramatic series, will reap most of the rewards, since they own the show. Not every writer has the clout of that duo to attract outside investors. But as the Internet has proved time and again, game-changing ideas are more likely to come from an unknown 26-year-old newcomer than a fiftysomething veteran.
THE models are everywhere today, especially in the music business, where economic upheaval has given birth to a new array of artist-entrepreneurs. Radiohead and Prince have both bypassed the soul-killing tangle of retailers and promotion people by releasing their latest records themselves (with Radiohead using the Internet as its distributor, even letting its fans set the price of the record themselves).
Being entrepreneurial isn't for the faint of heart. If you want a sweet upfront paycheck, you may not have the stomach for it. But after seeing studios bowdlerize their scripts, many writers will swap a big payday for more control. Twohy says that after Relativity read his script, "They told me, 'Script approved as-is.' I've never heard a studio ever say that."
This kind of creative freedom already exists in Silicon Valley, where the creators of product are its owners. Software entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, who helped found Netscape, makes an eloquent argument on his blog (blog.pmarca.com) that a prolonged strike could undermine the studios' control of production and distribution, ushering in a new showbiz model built in the image of Silicon Valley.
Even if the strike is settled soon, dramatic change is coming. As more outside money pours into Hollywood and as our computers begin to merge with our TV sets, the studios will have less control over content than ever. NBC's Jeff Zucker can sneer at the paltry dollars to be made from selling TV shows on iTunes all he wants. But if old media keep pulling their product away, surely the day isn't far away when Steve Jobs will bankroll his own programming to keep our iPods full of compelling entertainment.
Whoever enters the fray will still need writers to create this new content. So writers should keep their eyes on the prize. Getting a few more pennies of digital loot is just a beginning, not an end. The ultimate goal should be finding ways to own a piece of your own work.
"If I were someone like Les Moonves, I'd be scared," Gilroy says. "You don't want your employees thinking about opening their own store around the corner. We might be really tough competitors."
The Big Picture runs every Tuesday in Calendar. E-mail questions or criticism to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.
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ART REVIEW
'Las Vegas Diaspora' at the Las Vegas Art Museum
'Step (in) Out'
Tim Bavington
'STEP (IN) OUT': Tim Bavington's stripe-painting is part of "Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art From the Neon Homeland," featuring former UNLV students.
Modern art and culture find a home in the distinctly American gambling capital with a showcase for 26 former UNLV students.
By Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 20, 2007
LAS VEGAS -- If it did nothing else, "Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art From the Neon Homeland" could claim the best title of any art museum exhibition this year. The show chronicles the scattering of 26 artists who graduated from the gambling capital's University of Nevada campus after studying in the 1990s with prominent art critic Dave Hickey.
Now, 15 of those artists work in eight other regions, especially on the coasts. The remainder decided to stay in town, where the show is on view at the Las Vegas Art Museum through Dec. 30. They represent the vibrant kernel of a serious art scene in a city few would expect to have one.
'Ridicule Is Nothing To Be Scared Of'
'Ridicule Is Nothing To Be Scared Of'
click to enlarge
Installation view
Installation view
click to enlarge
That's the other reason that "Diaspora" is not just a snappy name but also an apt term for this undertaking. As nomenclature, the word is usually applied to describe the fate of minorities reviled by the dominant culture. That means it fits Las Vegas art to a T.
This metropolis is a distinctly American city, where modern art ideas originally forged in a European crucible often have the fit of a delicate glass slipper jammed onto the ungainly foot of an ugly stepsister. In that regard, Las Vegas is the new Los Angeles.
Not so long ago L.A. was the place where culture was said to be mostly found in yogurt. Vegas, though, is still the kind of place where "Swan Lake" is assumed to be performed as a topless revue, save for the incongruous ostrich feathers.
"Las Vegas Diaspora" takes that no-class, low-art slur and wisely runs with it, turning most every imaginable sow's ear into a startling silk purse. The aesthetic refinement is downright extreme.
Hickey, who was guest curator for the show (his wife, Libby Lumpkin, is the museum's director), came to the forefront of American art criticism -- snagging a MacArthur prize in the process -- nearly 15 years ago, when he audaciously argued that, of all things, beauty would become the art-issue of the 1990s. It did.
The topic assumes an unexpected tone of militancy in "Las Vegas Diaspora." Beauty isn't offered as some timid escape from society's crushing woes, but as a sharp rebuke: Not that; this!
I surrender -- happily.
The works
Thomas Burke's 16-foot-long panel of undulating geometric color, "The Hots," crosses Sol LeWitt with a Navajo blanket, then turns on the neon. Jane Callister's "Cosmic Landslide" is a primordial ooze of sliding paint -- pigmented magma.
It might have been the site for the Rev. Ethan Acres' "Miracle at La Brea," a digital photograph that shows the born-again preacher happily resurrecting a winged Tyrannosaurus rex from the tar pits and sending it heavenward.
Shawn Hummel juxtaposes a panel enameled in cherry red automotive paint with big color photographs of a purple car hood and a late-night glimpse into an apartment building window, disturbingly illuminated by acrid yellow light. It's like a gorgeous Ellsworth Kelly abstraction that morphs into a vaguely predatory image.
Nearby, lovingly described slabs of raw meat and entrails, gaily marbled with fat and painted in slick oils by Victoria Reynolds, seem right at home in their elaborate Rococo frames. No guts, no glory.
Sleek, glamorous, sexy, sensational -- this art is also intellectually savvy. The artists are fluent in the complex language of contemporary art, and the best of them speak distinctive dialects.
Bradley Corman's black, anodized aluminum wall relief starts with a sober, Donald Judd-style Minimalism. But the striated horizontal surface of the wide, rectangular relief is slightly bowed, almost imperceptibly engaging ambient light. Static Minimalist form careens into a speeding visual blur.
Across the room, Gajin Fujita engineers a different yet related collision, pushing urban street graffiti into Japanese screen painting. With a tagger's skill he writes an angry "BURN" across the flight pattern of an up-from-the-ashes phoenix.
Drawing you in
Seduction is also a prominent leitmotif, with the art regularly offering come-hither glances. Philip Argent does it in luscious yet apocalyptic paintings that merge crystalline shapes with liquid color, negative space with hard-edge undulations. His paintings record the big-bang-birth of a thoroughly synthetic cosmos.
In a hyper-stylized manner Sush Machida Gaikotsu paints bamboo sheltering exquisite white tigers -- an animal unknown in Japan, and thus as mythic a beast as those tamed locally by Siegfried & Roy. But the way he's packaged his nominal Asian scrolls in obsessively crafted, clear acrylic boxes turns high art into luscious consumer product. The tiger, sometimes a Nippon symbol for the West, suddenly assumes a new, ravening identity.
Some of the work seems skillful but as yet unprocessed. David Reed, Josiah McElhenny and Jim Isermann were among two dozen distinguished guest faculty who taught at UNLV between 1990 and 2001, and their authority is easy to spot.
Robert Acuna evinces technical mastery in painterly abstractions that read something like aestheticized consumer bar-codes stretched 7 feet wide, but the flourishes of paint echo Reed's work too strongly. McElhenny's hand-blown glass confections lurk in the background of Curtis Fairman's otherwise cheeky sculptures, assembled from discount-store candlesticks, bowls and vases and suggestive of glittery, potentially lethal erotic toys. Almond Zigmund's geometric decals on a gallery window-wall and Sherin Guirguis' jazzy, decorative wall-relief of Eames-like stacking chairs both recall Isermann's work.
Guirguis manages to transform the influence into something uniquely her own, though, largely through an unexpected manipulation of materials. What looks like a raised, linear drawing is in fact painted Masonite. Sculpture, painting, drawing, relief and furniture tumble together into one marvelously polymorphic species.
Odd yet effective
Among the show's strangest, most unexpected works are two large, oil-on-linen "Crack" paintings by Jason Tomme. Ethereal golden-brown panels turn the show's volume way down, their shadowy hues recalling fragments of ancient wall behind the foreground action in a Caravaggio, like "The Calling of St. Matthew" or "Boy With a Basket of Fruit."
Art's action lies in the breach, escaping through unexpected fissures, this canny work suggests, lurking in the illuminated void where flamboyant human dramas unfold.
A large majority of the artists are painters, but many of them make paintings with sculptural qualities. Among the most adept is David Ryan, whose organic reliefs layer flat, irregularly shaped puddles of vibrant color that miraculously carve out deep volumes of visual space. Wayne Littlejohn heads in the other direction, his organic tower of sculpted polystyrene spray-painted in lascivious hues, like the passionate Venus flytrap in "Little Shop of Horrors."
Two other features of "Las Vegas Diaspora" are noteworthy. Both represent something you're unlikely to encounter in any American or European art museum east of the Mojave Desert. (The show travels to the Laguna Art Museum in March.)
James Gobel's knockout "painting" of Regency fops suggestively dining on tasty cherry pie, all made from cut-and-glued felt and yarn, hangs on a big entry wall painted bright tangerine. Tim Bavington's equally fine, similarly monumental stripe-painting, "Step (In) Out," hangs on a lime green wall.
Two other art-adorned walls are suavely painted lemon yellow and aubergine. Think about all that Little Richard tutti-fruitiness the next time you're nodding off inside some tired white cube at MOCA, the Hammer, the Whitney or the Walker. "Serious" contemporary art museums wouldn't dream of it.
More's the pity -- especially as the other novel twist comes in the show's catalog, right after Hickey's typically engaging essay on what makes a studio art program meaningful. Five pages of raucous party pictures are worthy of Vanity Fair -- and not just the slick celebrity magazine, but the Thackeray story satirizing 19th century British tastelessness and greed.
christopher.knight @latimes.com
Party/gig Electric Cabaret
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Club nights can’t have just a so-called superstar DJ headlining some old Roxy anymore. Who wants to see that? Now you have to have jugglers, snake charmers, self-harmers, those terrible chocolate fountains and monkeys on fire playing crazy golf. Or something like that anyway. And I think that’s probably a good thing. As sponsored nights go, the Smirnoff Electric Cabaret have pulled out all the stops and hit pretty high on the entertainment-o-meter – they’ve bagged YouTube heroes OK GO to perform a one –off routine, London’s most exciting DJ, and Radio 1 new boy Kissy Sell Out, Parisian fashionista glam-rockers Fancy, Belgian electronica peeps Goose and a host of cabaret acts, beatboxers, acrobats and magicians. See – it ain’t exactly a bad night out is it? / Number 8 Be the first to email le cool and get a pair of tix to this mad one.
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November 22, 2007 - Thursday
MONSANTO_WESTINGHOUSE’S PRE THANKSGIVING ’07 NY TIMES LA TIMES RECAP
Current mood: worried
Category: worried Movies, TV, Celebrities
real-life cartoonist turned writer Robert Graysmith,
Maybe that's why it doesn't have the usual movie-made shrink- rapping and beard-stroking, as in Mommy was a castrating shrew and Daddy used a two-by-four as a paddle. Throughout the film Mr. Fincher and company keep focus on Zodiac's crimes, on the nuts and bolts of his deeds, rather than on the nurture and nature behind them. There is no normalizing psychology here, and no deep-dish symbolism either, maybe because the title crazy is so peculiarly fond of symbols, which he sprinkles in his missives and, for one murder, wears superhero style on a black-hooded costume that makes him look like a portly ninja in a Z-movie quickie. It's no wonder the victims don't see the threat behind the masquerade until it's too late.
There's a moment early in the film when Mr. Downey stands in the Chronicle newsroom, back arched and rear gently hoisted, affecting a posture that calls to mind Gene Kelly done up as a Toulouse-Lautrec jockey in "An American in Paris." Avery has already started his long slip-slide into boozy oblivion, abetted by toots of coke, but as he strides around the newsroom, motored by talent and self-regard, he is the guy everybody else wants to be or wants to have. Like Mr. Ruffalo's detective, who leaves everything bobbing in his rapid wake, Mr. Downey fills the screen with life that, by its very nature, is a rebuke to the death drive embodied by the Zodiac killer. Rarely has a film with so much blood on its hands seemed so insistently alive.
Naomi Klein is the author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
"Everyone was waiting for this day to come."
THE REV. TADEUSZ PACHOLCZYK, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, on a report that scientists turned human skin cells into what appear to be stem cells.
From Andy Warhol to Lonelygirl15, modern media culture thrives on the traffic in counterfeit selves. In this world the greatest artist will also be, almost axiomatically, the biggest fraud. And looking back over the past 50 years or so, it is hard to find anyone with a greater ability to synthesize authenticity — to give his serial hoaxes and impersonations the ring of revealed and esoteric truth — than
As you watch the mid-'60s renegade folk singer Jude Quinn — embodied in Ms. Blanchett's hunched, skinny frame and photographed in silvery Nouvelle Vague black and white — pinball through swinging London, subsisting on amphetamines, Camel straights and gnomic talk, it feels like a pop earthquake. The '60s, man! As Mr. Ledger's character and his wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) meet, marry and fall apart, it feels like the heartbreaking aftermath of a moment of high promise and possibility. (That would be the '70s.)
"Live in your own time." That's the advice young "Woody Guthrie" hears from a motherly woman who offers him a hot meal and a place to sleep. It's sensible advice — he's daydreaming of the Depression in the middle of the space age — but also useless. It's not as if anyone has a choice. To slog through the present requires no particular wit, vision or art. But a certain kind of artist will comb through the old stuff that's lying around — the tall tales and questionable memories, the yellowing photographs and scratched records — looking for glimpses of a possible future. Though there's a lot of Bob Dylan's music in "I'm Not There," Mr. Haynes is not simply compiling golden oldies. You hear familiar songs, but what you see is the imagination unleashed — the chimes of freedom flashing.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/movies/21ther.html?th&emc=th
David Fincher's magnificently obsessive new film, "Zodiac," tracks the story of the serial killer who left dead bodies up and down California in the 1960s and possibly the '70s, and that of the men who tried to stop him. Set when the Age of Aquarius disappeared into the black hole of the Manson family murders, the film is at once sprawling and tightly constructed, opaque and meticulously detailed. It's part police procedural, part monster movie, a funereal entertainment that is an unexpected repudiation of Mr. Fincher's most famous movie, the serial-killer fiction "Seven," as well as a testament to this cinematic savant's gifts.
"Se7en," the 1995 thriller that grossed $350 million worldwide, and "Fight Club," his over-the-top answer to young male anomie.
For him, the Zodiac murderer, who terrorized the Bay Area and was never caught, isn't just any old serial-killer story.
Raised in Marin County, Mr. Fincher was only 7 when the area was seized with fear in 1969. "I remember coming home and saying the highway patrol had been following our school buses for a couple weeks now," he recalled in December in an interview in New Orleans, where he was editing "Zodiac" while filming "Benjamin Button." "And my dad, who worked from home, and who was very dry, not one to soft-pedal things, turned slowly in his chair and said: 'Oh yeah. There's a serial killer who has killed four or five people, who calls himself Zodiac, who's threatened to take a high-powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus, and then shoot the children as they come off the bus.' "
"I was, like, 'You could drive us to school,' " he recalled thinking.
It was that same sense that initially drew him to "Se7en," he said: the fearsome power of the stranger among us. "That's what Zodiac was for a 7-year-old growing up in San Anselmo. He was the ultimate bogeyman."
But the source of his dark-hued lens on life, Mr. Fincher suggested, might be as simple as that original bogeyman. "It was a very interesting and weird time to grow up, and incredibly evocative," he said. "I have a handful of friends who were from Marin County at the same time, the same age group, and they're all very kind of sinister, dark, sardonic people. And I wonder if Zodiac had something to do with that."
150 days, not counting months to complete the illusion of Mr. Pitt's metamorphosis from newborn old man to demented, dying baby.
"It's as unadorned a movie as I've ever made," he said. "It's just people talking, and it's hard to make an audience realize that they have to be paying attention. One way you do that is by not doing very much." There are none of the "perceptual games" that he said he played in "Fight Club," where the subject was "the most unreliable narrator possible," for example. "It was like, cast the movie right, get the script right, shoot the scenes as simply as we can and get out of everyone's way," he said.
"He said: 'I think it's great, but I'm in territory I've never been before. I just don't know if they're going to get it. And that's exciting news: 'Here's my brand, and I'm stepping outside of it.' "
He added: "Every once in a while there are actors you can defeat."
"What's so wonderful about movies is, you get your shot," he said. "They even call it a shot. The stakes are high. You get your chance to prove what you can do. You get a take, 5 takes, 10 takes. Some places, 90 takes. But there is a stopping point. There's a point at which you go, 'That's what we have to work with.' But we would reshoot things. So there came a point where I would say, well, what do I do? Where's the risk?"
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Movie Review | 'Zodiac': Hunting a Killer as the Age of Aquarius Dies (March 2, 2007)
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Told of Mr. Gyllenhaal's comments, Mr. Fincher half-jokingly said, "I hate earnestness in performance," adding, "Usually by Take 17 the earnestness is gone." But half-joking aside, he said that collaboration "has to come from a place of deep knowledge." While he had no objections to having fun, he said, "When you go to your job, is it supposed to be fun, or are you supposed to get stuff done?"
Robert Downey Jr., impeccably cast as a crime reporter driven to drink, drugs and dissolution, called Mr. Fincher a disciplinarian and agreed that, as is often said, "he's always the smartest guy in the room." But Mr. Downey put this in perspective.
"Sometimes it's really hard because it might not feel collaborative, but ultimately filmmaking is a director's medium," he said. "I just decided, aside from several times I wanted to garrote him, that I was going to give him what he wanted. I think I'm a perfect person to work for him, because I understand gulags."
Mr. Ruffalo too survived some 70-take shots. "The way I see it is, you enter into someone else's world as an actor," he said. "You can put your expectations aside and have an experience that's new and pushes and changes you, or hold onto what you think it should be and have a stubborn, immovable journey that's filled with disappointment and anger."
He said Mr. Fincher was equally demanding of everyone — executives, actors, himself. "He knows he's taking a stab at eternity," Mr. Ruffalo said. "He knows that this will outlive him. And he's not going to settle for anything other than satisfaction, deep satisfaction. Somewhere along the line he said, 'I will not settle for less.' "
real-life cartoonist turned writer Robert Graysmith,
Maybe that's why it doesn't have the usual movie-made shrink- rapping and beard-stroking, as in Mommy was a castrating shrew and Daddy used a two-by-four as a paddle. Throughout the film Mr. Fincher and company keep focus on Zodiac's crimes, on the nuts and bolts of his deeds, rather than on the nurture and nature behind them. There is no normalizing psychology here, and no deep-dish symbolism either, maybe because the title crazy is so peculiarly fond of symbols, which he sprinkles in his missives and, for one murder, wears superhero style on a black-hooded costume that makes him look like a portly ninja in a Z-movie quickie. It's no wonder the victims don't see the threat behind the masquerade until it's too late.
There's a moment early in the film when Mr. Downey stands in the Chronicle newsroom, back arched and rear gently hoisted, affecting a posture that calls to mind Gene Kelly done up as a Toulouse-Lautrec jockey in "An American in Paris." Avery has already started his long slip-slide into boozy oblivion, abetted by toots of coke, but as he strides around the newsroom, motored by talent and self-regard, he is the guy everybody else wants to be or wants to have. Like Mr. Ruffalo's detective, who leaves everything bobbing in his rapid wake, Mr. Downey fills the screen with life that, by its very nature, is a rebuke to the death drive embodied by the Zodiac killer. Rarely has a film with so much blood on its hands seemed so insistently alive.
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They spend at least two hours a day online, usually playing games or chatting. Of those, up to a quarter million probably show signs of actual addiction, like an inability to stop themselves from using computers, rising levels of tolerance that drive them to seek ever longer sessions online, and withdrawal symptoms like anger and craving when prevented from logging on.
They also follow a rigorous regimen of physical exercise and group activities, like horseback riding, aimed at building emotional connections to the real world and weakening those with the virtual one.
"He didn't seem to be able to control himself," said Mrs. Kim, a hairdresser. "He used to be so passionate about his favorite subjects" at school. "Now, he gives up easily and gets even more absorbed in his games."
Her son was reluctant at first to give up his pastime.
"I don't have a problem," Chang-hoon said in an interview three days after starting the camp. "Seventeen hours a day online is fine."
"I'm not thinking about games now, so maybe this will help," he replied. "From now on, maybe I'll just spend five hours a day online."
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THE BIG PICTURE
Come on, writers, script your futures
Adrian Wyld / Associated Press
"Michael Clayton" director Tony Gilroy: "The studios have got to be hoping that this idea about being entrepreneurs doesn't sweep over the TV show runners, because once you start seeing really good production values on the Internet, I mean, what does Larry David really need HBO for?"
The Big Picture: As the writers strike enters its third week, I think the future belongs to a tantalizing new hyphenate: the writer-entrepreneur.
By Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 20, 2007
Hollywood is a town awash in hyphenates. TV is loaded with writer-producers. The movie biz is full of writer-directors. There's even a legion of actor-filmmakers like Clint Eastwood and George Clooney. But as the writers strike enters its third week, I think the future belongs to a tantalizing new hyphenate: the writer-entrepreneur.
Visiting a UCLA film class the other night, I was asked to name the most influential filmmakers of our era. The choices were pretty obvious: Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, John Lasseter, George Lucas. . . . As the names spilled out, I realized they all have something in common. They're filmmaker-entrepreneurs, artists-turned-businessmen who helped start their own companies to further their work, became financially independent and created a world that operates under a radically different set of rules from the vacuous studio assembly lines. It's telling that the current strike is about new media yet both sides seem to be following old-school models.
Strike: Money trail
Photo Gallery
Strike: Money trail
FOR THE RECORD:
Scott Frank: Patrick Goldstein's Big Picture column in Tuesday's Calendar section said Scott Frank had directed "The Woodsman" this year. Nicole Kassell directed "The Woodsman." Frank directed "The Lookout" this year. —
Writer Guild members, listen up. There is a lesson here. Just ask Tony Gilroy, the writer-director of "Michael Clayton," a nervy thriller that's won critical raves this fall. Gilroy had a script that was dead in the water until a total outsider -- a Boston real estate developer named Steve Samuels -- said if Gilroy could get a star and stick to a budget, he'd bankroll the film.
Gilroy didn't see himself as an entrepreneur. He just had a script that was burning a hole in his pocket. "I'd say the experience was more about my wising up than becoming a visionary," he explained the other day. "But the moment I started chasing private-equity money, it didn't take me long before I'd realized that I'd short-circuited the formula for getting a greenlight. I didn't need studio approval. All I needed was one guy who believed in the movie."
Gilroy is now a convert. "The studios have got to be hoping that this idea about being entrepreneurs doesn't sweep over the TV show runners, because once you start seeing really good production values on the Internet, I mean, what does Larry David really need HBO for? This is all everybody is talking about on the line. They're not talking about healthcare. They're going, 'Wow, is there a different way to get our movies and TV shows made?' "
It's the kind of talk that's contagious. Scott Frank, who wrote hits like "Minority Report" before directing "The Woodsman" this year, has been speaking with Samuels about financing a new film. David Twohy, writer-director of "The Chronicles of Riddick," has lined up financing for a new thriller, "A Perfect Getaway," from Relativity chief Ryan Cavanaugh, who also bankrolled "3:10 to Yuma."
Steve Zaillian, who wrote "American Gangster," has a deal with Mandate Pictures to make under-$10 million character-driven films where he is a 50-50 partner in all the projects. Mandate has a similar partnership with writer-director Sam Raimi of "Spider-Man" fame. Mandate also has a writers program in which, in return for initially cutting their fee, writers can get 25% of the gross after a film goes into profit and have approval rights on hiring the movie's cast and director.
"Writers who create something rare -- a story with great, original characters that movie stars will cut their price to play -- have a real value," says Mandate production chief Nathan Kahane. "But that value doesn't get unlocked in the studio system. If writers are willing to share our risk, then we're willing to give them a lot of control and share in the profits too."
THIS kind of entrepreneurial formula couldn't have existed in the era when the studios had a stranglehold on every facet of the business, notably talent, money and distribution. But those days are gone. The stars became free agents long ago. In the last few years, with billions of private-equity dollars flooding the business, the studios have lost their lock on financing too.
All that's left is marketing and distribution. It's hard to equal the way studios launch their summer popcorn extravaganzas with a $40-million marketing blitz. But as more entertainment migrates to the Internet, where distribution is basically free to anyone with a computer, the studios will lose that monopoly as well. If the last couple of weeks are any indication, with clips from out-of-work comedy writers popping up every day, the Web could be littered with new must-see video sites by Christmas. Remember: After barely a year in existence, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. On the Internet, good ideas travel fast.
"The world is about to change," Frank says. "Anyone with an Apple computer can make a movie now -- it's never been a more democratic medium. The studios should be very afraid. Once the independent financiers start going directly to writers, things could change really fast. I ask myself every week -- why aren't we all working with them? Look at the movies they've made. They are the new Medicis."
While the studios peddle dreary remakes and special-effects extravaganzas, the movies that really get people talking -- such as "Crash," "Brokeback Mountain," "Michael Clayton" and the upcoming "Juno" -- have been financed by outside investors. None of the films had a big budget, but fiscal discipline and artistic autonomy often fuels creativity. "Ten million dollars to $30 million is where ambiguity stays alive, where you can have complexity in storytelling," Gilroy says. "When you get up to a certain budget number with studio films, the bad guys have to all wear black hats."
The WGA is fighting the good fight. But the glory days of "Norma Rae" are gone. Real change in today's world comes from the energy and ideas of entrepreneurs, not from labor negotiations. To take control of their work, writers have to cut out the middleman. Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, who just struck a deal with NBC to air their "Quarterlife" Web-only dramatic series, will reap most of the rewards, since they own the show. Not every writer has the clout of that duo to attract outside investors. But as the Internet has proved time and again, game-changing ideas are more likely to come from an unknown 26-year-old newcomer than a fiftysomething veteran.
THE models are everywhere today, especially in the music business, where economic upheaval has given birth to a new array of artist-entrepreneurs. Radiohead and Prince have both bypassed the soul-killing tangle of retailers and promotion people by releasing their latest records themselves (with Radiohead using the Internet as its distributor, even letting its fans set the price of the record themselves).
Being entrepreneurial isn't for the faint of heart. If you want a sweet upfront paycheck, you may not have the stomach for it. But after seeing studios bowdlerize their scripts, many writers will swap a big payday for more control. Twohy says that after Relativity read his script, "They told me, 'Script approved as-is.' I've never heard a studio ever say that."
This kind of creative freedom already exists in Silicon Valley, where the creators of product are its owners. Software entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, who helped found Netscape, makes an eloquent argument on his blog (blog.pmarca.com) that a prolonged strike could undermine the studios' control of production and distribution, ushering in a new showbiz model built in the image of Silicon Valley.
Even if the strike is settled soon, dramatic change is coming. As more outside money pours into Hollywood and as our computers begin to merge with our TV sets, the studios will have less control over content than ever. NBC's Jeff Zucker can sneer at the paltry dollars to be made from selling TV shows on iTunes all he wants. But if old media keep pulling their product away, surely the day isn't far away when Steve Jobs will bankroll his own programming to keep our iPods full of compelling entertainment.
Whoever enters the fray will still need writers to create this new content. So writers should keep their eyes on the prize. Getting a few more pennies of digital loot is just a beginning, not an end. The ultimate goal should be finding ways to own a piece of your own work.
"If I were someone like Les Moonves, I'd be scared," Gilroy says. "You don't want your employees thinking about opening their own store around the corner. We might be really tough competitors."
The Big Picture runs every Tuesday in Calendar. E-mail questions or criticism to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.
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ART REVIEW
'Las Vegas Diaspora' at the Las Vegas Art Museum
'Step (in) Out'
Tim Bavington
'STEP (IN) OUT': Tim Bavington's stripe-painting is part of "Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art From the Neon Homeland," featuring former UNLV students.
Modern art and culture find a home in the distinctly American gambling capital with a showcase for 26 former UNLV students.
By Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 20, 2007
LAS VEGAS -- If it did nothing else, "Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art From the Neon Homeland" could claim the best title of any art museum exhibition this year. The show chronicles the scattering of 26 artists who graduated from the gambling capital's University of Nevada campus after studying in the 1990s with prominent art critic Dave Hickey.
Now, 15 of those artists work in eight other regions, especially on the coasts. The remainder decided to stay in town, where the show is on view at the Las Vegas Art Museum through Dec. 30. They represent the vibrant kernel of a serious art scene in a city few would expect to have one.
'Ridicule Is Nothing To Be Scared Of'
'Ridicule Is Nothing To Be Scared Of'
click to enlarge
Installation view
Installation view
click to enlarge
That's the other reason that "Diaspora" is not just a snappy name but also an apt term for this undertaking. As nomenclature, the word is usually applied to describe the fate of minorities reviled by the dominant culture. That means it fits Las Vegas art to a T.
This metropolis is a distinctly American city, where modern art ideas originally forged in a European crucible often have the fit of a delicate glass slipper jammed onto the ungainly foot of an ugly stepsister. In that regard, Las Vegas is the new Los Angeles.
Not so long ago L.A. was the place where culture was said to be mostly found in yogurt. Vegas, though, is still the kind of place where "Swan Lake" is assumed to be performed as a topless revue, save for the incongruous ostrich feathers.
"Las Vegas Diaspora" takes that no-class, low-art slur and wisely runs with it, turning most every imaginable sow's ear into a startling silk purse. The aesthetic refinement is downright extreme.
Hickey, who was guest curator for the show (his wife, Libby Lumpkin, is the museum's director), came to the forefront of American art criticism -- snagging a MacArthur prize in the process -- nearly 15 years ago, when he audaciously argued that, of all things, beauty would become the art-issue of the 1990s. It did.
The topic assumes an unexpected tone of militancy in "Las Vegas Diaspora." Beauty isn't offered as some timid escape from society's crushing woes, but as a sharp rebuke: Not that; this!
I surrender -- happily.
The works
Thomas Burke's 16-foot-long panel of undulating geometric color, "The Hots," crosses Sol LeWitt with a Navajo blanket, then turns on the neon. Jane Callister's "Cosmic Landslide" is a primordial ooze of sliding paint -- pigmented magma.
It might have been the site for the Rev. Ethan Acres' "Miracle at La Brea," a digital photograph that shows the born-again preacher happily resurrecting a winged Tyrannosaurus rex from the tar pits and sending it heavenward.
Shawn Hummel juxtaposes a panel enameled in cherry red automotive paint with big color photographs of a purple car hood and a late-night glimpse into an apartment building window, disturbingly illuminated by acrid yellow light. It's like a gorgeous Ellsworth Kelly abstraction that morphs into a vaguely predatory image.
Nearby, lovingly described slabs of raw meat and entrails, gaily marbled with fat and painted in slick oils by Victoria Reynolds, seem right at home in their elaborate Rococo frames. No guts, no glory.
Sleek, glamorous, sexy, sensational -- this art is also intellectually savvy. The artists are fluent in the complex language of contemporary art, and the best of them speak distinctive dialects.
Bradley Corman's black, anodized aluminum wall relief starts with a sober, Donald Judd-style Minimalism. But the striated horizontal surface of the wide, rectangular relief is slightly bowed, almost imperceptibly engaging ambient light. Static Minimalist form careens into a speeding visual blur.
Across the room, Gajin Fujita engineers a different yet related collision, pushing urban street graffiti into Japanese screen painting. With a tagger's skill he writes an angry "BURN" across the flight pattern of an up-from-the-ashes phoenix.
Drawing you in
Seduction is also a prominent leitmotif, with the art regularly offering come-hither glances. Philip Argent does it in luscious yet apocalyptic paintings that merge crystalline shapes with liquid color, negative space with hard-edge undulations. His paintings record the big-bang-birth of a thoroughly synthetic cosmos.
In a hyper-stylized manner Sush Machida Gaikotsu paints bamboo sheltering exquisite white tigers -- an animal unknown in Japan, and thus as mythic a beast as those tamed locally by Siegfried & Roy. But the way he's packaged his nominal Asian scrolls in obsessively crafted, clear acrylic boxes turns high art into luscious consumer product. The tiger, sometimes a Nippon symbol for the West, suddenly assumes a new, ravening identity.
Some of the work seems skillful but as yet unprocessed. David Reed, Josiah McElhenny and Jim Isermann were among two dozen distinguished guest faculty who taught at UNLV between 1990 and 2001, and their authority is easy to spot.
Robert Acuna evinces technical mastery in painterly abstractions that read something like aestheticized consumer bar-codes stretched 7 feet wide, but the flourishes of paint echo Reed's work too strongly. McElhenny's hand-blown glass confections lurk in the background of Curtis Fairman's otherwise cheeky sculptures, assembled from discount-store candlesticks, bowls and vases and suggestive of glittery, potentially lethal erotic toys. Almond Zigmund's geometric decals on a gallery window-wall and Sherin Guirguis' jazzy, decorative wall-relief of Eames-like stacking chairs both recall Isermann's work.
Guirguis manages to transform the influence into something uniquely her own, though, largely through an unexpected manipulation of materials. What looks like a raised, linear drawing is in fact painted Masonite. Sculpture, painting, drawing, relief and furniture tumble together into one marvelously polymorphic species.
Odd yet effective
Among the show's strangest, most unexpected works are two large, oil-on-linen "Crack" paintings by Jason Tomme. Ethereal golden-brown panels turn the show's volume way down, their shadowy hues recalling fragments of ancient wall behind the foreground action in a Caravaggio, like "The Calling of St. Matthew" or "Boy With a Basket of Fruit."
Art's action lies in the breach, escaping through unexpected fissures, this canny work suggests, lurking in the illuminated void where flamboyant human dramas unfold.
A large majority of the artists are painters, but many of them make paintings with sculptural qualities. Among the most adept is David Ryan, whose organic reliefs layer flat, irregularly shaped puddles of vibrant color that miraculously carve out deep volumes of visual space. Wayne Littlejohn heads in the other direction, his organic tower of sculpted polystyrene spray-painted in lascivious hues, like the passionate Venus flytrap in "Little Shop of Horrors."
Two other features of "Las Vegas Diaspora" are noteworthy. Both represent something you're unlikely to encounter in any American or European art museum east of the Mojave Desert. (The show travels to the Laguna Art Museum in March.)
James Gobel's knockout "painting" of Regency fops suggestively dining on tasty cherry pie, all made from cut-and-glued felt and yarn, hangs on a big entry wall painted bright tangerine. Tim Bavington's equally fine, similarly monumental stripe-painting, "Step (In) Out," hangs on a lime green wall.
Two other art-adorned walls are suavely painted lemon yellow and aubergine. Think about all that Little Richard tutti-fruitiness the next time you're nodding off inside some tired white cube at MOCA, the Hammer, the Whitney or the Walker. "Serious" contemporary art museums wouldn't dream of it.
More's the pity -- especially as the other novel twist comes in the show's catalog, right after Hickey's typically engaging essay on what makes a studio art program meaningful. Five pages of raucous party pictures are worthy of Vanity Fair -- and not just the slick celebrity magazine, but the Thackeray story satirizing 19th century British tastelessness and greed.
christopher.knight @latimes.com
Party/gig Electric Cabaret
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Club nights can't have just a so-called superstar DJ headlining some old Roxy anymore. Who wants to see that? Now you have to have jugglers, snake charmers, self-harmers, those terrible chocolate fountains and monkeys on fire playing crazy golf. Or something like that anyway. And I think that's probably a good thing. As sponsored nights go, the Smirnoff Electric Cabaret have pulled out all the stops and hit pretty high on the entertainment-o-meter – they've bagged YouTube heroes OK GO to perform a one –off routine, London's most exciting DJ, and Radio 1 new boy Kissy Sell Out, Parisian fashionista glam-rockers Fancy, Belgian electronica peeps Goose and a host of cabaret acts, beatboxers, acrobats and magicians. See – it ain't exactly a bad night out is it? / Number 8 Be the first to email le cool and get a pair of tix to this mad one.
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MONSANTO_WESTINGHOUSE'S PRE THANKSGIVING '07 NY TIMES LA TIMES RECAP
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