Dead Beauties

From the AGO photography exhibit (shhhh, don't tell on me), inspiring images of faces long dead:
The first one is a painting of a newspaper clipping of a murdered girl, doesn't she have a ghost like quality?
The blur is in the painting, not my doing:

And this one, as classic as a Botticelli muse, 20'th century style:

From the Great Upheaval show, the one that stayed with me is this masterpiece by Picasso, called Moulin de la Galette.
It is difficult to say what attracts me in this image the most. Perhaps the delicate line of the chin of the woman who is whispering in her friend's ear, or is she leaning in for a kiss? to see the subtlety of that one brushstroke you need to get close, almost kiss the painting. It is a marvel.

Cartoon for the Ages

Viewing - Chapter Two

I don't know why we're paying for cable. We get the basic 30 channels, and there is absolutely nothing to watch, most of the time. News? radio is enough for that.
Anyway - we rent TV series on dvd and gorge. It's so much better. Some are fluff, some are gruesome, some are pure gold.
The latest is Top Of The Lake - made by Jane Campion (she of the masterpiece The Piano), placed in New Zealand. We're not done with it yet but I can tell you now: the villain is a very very bad man. You want him dead from the get go. The detective is played by Elizabeth Moss, who we know better as Peggy from Mad Men. She's good - beautiful and talented, a pleasure to watch.
We always want a certain amount of quirkiness to hover around the story, and this is provided here by the sure hand of Holly Hunter. She is only a side character - a bit of a witch/sage/cult leader/nutcase, not an essential part of the mystery, but she is such a powerful performer that whenever she makes an appearance, you want her to stay and do more. She provides a layer of positive craziness that makes us hope for the best.

Another worthy series is from Sweden: Annika Bengtzon - a young and very hot looking investigative journalist who gets too deep and personal with her chosen subjects, very bad people who hide their dark side with money and/or glitz. The actress is a true beauty, in the same way Bergman's actresses were beautiful - you can't stop watching them. She gets results, she entices, we grow to like her a lot and we want her to get the bad guys, and she delivers. I admit it is a bit of a fluff, but it's satisfying fluff, and they speak Swedish which makes it exotic, to me.

Viewing Pleasures - Chapter One: The Past

This is cocooning time of year, as unspeakably low temperatures grow fiercer in the wind, when all you want to do is crawl under the covers, or into a dark theatre after a good warm meal, and allow your mind to wander the globe through the screen.
We've been watching stuff - lots of stuff. From Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, France. TV dramas that our dedicated crew at the local video shop are kind enough to bring in, and movies.

Lets do the latest movie first: The Past - the creator is an Iranian director, Asghar Farhadi. He places this story in Paris, not the Paris you see in a Woody Allen movie. Not the elegant chick Parisian glory saved for tourist, not the river and the churches. Instead we get the decrepit misery of the working class, but the crazy dramas that plague life for rich and poor alike are all there.
The theme of the story is the ripple effect our small personal choices have on the lives of everyone we touch. The ripples are more tsunami like than gentle waves: A displaced man riddled with depression leaves his family behind to go seek peace of mind in the old country. The end result is a woman he has never met and never will in a hospital bed in a coma. The trajectory of small seemingly unrelated actions people take that lead us there is the basis for this tragedy.
Don't expect laughs, there aren't any. Not a single smile crosses the faces of these people. They see no humour in their situation, because there isn't any. Love, passion, hope for something good is what these people want, they think what they do will get them what they want, but they make wrong choices, and others pay the price.
It's a good movie. Bleak but very good.

August: Osage County - Movie Review (spoiler alert)

Who can resist a movie with Dame Meryl Streep? I know she hasn't been knighted yet, but it's gonna happen one day. Anyway, I couldn't resist, although I kind of knew what I was about to see was going to be unpleasant.
It's the type of movie I usually avoid - the Great American Family Drama, in the way Tennesee Williams used to write them. I lost the taste for these melodramas long ago. But Meryl Streep… so I went.
It is very well written. There are some lines there that should be put into a bible of the best lines in movie history, seriously killer lines. Not that I can repeat them now, but I remember thinking that while we were laughing.
It starts funny, but goes sour pretty fast. You know the way it goes in family gatherings - we start laughing and end up crying.
Naturally, the acting is beyond reproach, impeccable. I don't quite understand why the two English boys, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ewan McGreggor had to be brought from across the pond to play American guys - seems that Mr. Cumberbatch is a must in every production these days, but they took away his best tool, his fabulous English clip. Oy. Not terribly good use of his presence.
They make for a good looking crazy bunch, with a passion for what they call 'truth-telling' that gives truth telling a bad name. These are the kinds of truths you want to be kept buried for eternity, not splashed all over the old furniture and your face during lunch. They tell it to you regardless, and the results aint pretty.
Subtlety is not to be seen here. It is a brutal play, but a bit of holding back in the story line would have done it much good. Towards the end in particular, when everybody's guts are already slashed and bleeding, a little restraint should have been deployed. Since this is America everything is torn apart in the end, with no one left standing.
I see Oscar parties coming for these guys. They do love blood in America.

Here are some of these lines, for your pleasure:
BARBARA: What were these people thinking... the jokers who settled this place. Who was the asshole who saw this flat hot nothing and planted his flag? I mean we fucked the Indians for this?
BILL: Well, genocide always seems like such a good idea at the time.
BARBARA: Right, you need a little hindsight.
BILL: If you want me to explain the creepy character of the Midwest, you’re --
BARBARA: Please, the Midwest. This is the Plains: a state of mind, right? A spiritual affliction, like the Blues.