“Disneyland is something that will never be finished. Something that I can keep developing, keep plussing and adding to. It’s alive. It will be a live, breathing thing that will need to change. A picture is a thing. Once you wrap it up and turn it over to Technicolor you’re through. Snow White is a dead issue with me. A live picture I just finished – the one I wrapped a few weeks ago – it’s gone. I can’t touch it. There are things in it I don’t like. I can’t do anything about it. I wanted something alive, something that could grow; something that I could keep plussing with ideas. The park is that. Not only can I add things, but the trees will keep growing. The things will get more beautiful each year, whereas when a picture’s finished and I put it out and I find out what the public doesn’t like, I can’t change it. It’s finished. But I can change the park,
because it’s alive. That is why I wanted a park.”

FREE PUSSY RIOT!

Go ahead, say it. As a matter of fact, scream it. Just let that shit roll off your tongue. Do it because it’s fun and funny; because it’s vulgar and edgy, because it’s off-putting and it’s awesome. Do it because it’s sociopolitically relevant; because it speaks to the very heart of separating one’s church and state. Do it because it is indicative of the mass hypocrisy that ensues when party politics give way to Putinism. Do it because Putinism is really nothing more than a bolshevik term for Hooliganism. Do it because Hooliganism is the primary offense that three members of the punk group Pussy Riot were charged with. Do it because Hooliganism – defined as unruly and destructive behavior, usually perpetrated by gangs of young people – is really nothing more than a catch-all term that dates back to 19th Century London. Do it because – in this instance – Hooliganism was a term used to categorize the peaceful actions of a minor faction of staunch feminists, a handful of whom rushed the altar inside a capitol Cathedral. Do it because these rabble rousers were actually standing on the altar for a little under one minute. Do it because they were each originally sentenced to more than two full years in prison. Do it because they dressed up in brightly-colored balaclavas and sang a silly punk song about the wacked-out, crazy Jesus people. Do it because we all remember what the religious right did immediately after Jesus went kablooey in the marketplace. Do it because one man’s altar is another man’s performance space. Do it because the media turned this into an international incident. Do it because Pussy Riot has become a cause celebrity; because Madoonna and Paul McCartney and Lady Gaga and Yoko Ono have all offered their support. Do it because there’s a significant difference between a mortal sin and a minor crime. Do it because it’s time to compensate for all the witches that were burned in Salem. Do it because progress only occurs once people tip their sacred cows. Do it because provocation is at the heart of every protest. Do it because God has yet to offer a single thought on the whole incident. Do it because the dust has long since settled; because two members of that feminist group are still left languishing in prison. Do it because it is altogether right and proper and fitting. Do it because the punishment has long since overshadowed the crime.

FREE PUSSY RIOT!

And watch this documentary while you’re at it. It does a pretty effective job of covering all the bases.

(Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer premieres Monday, June 10th on HBO.)

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“Ideas are very frustrating because they don’t exist, y’know. It’s like in comic books, when you see the thought bubbles around people, it’s in smoke that evaporates. Ideas evaporate. So the [area] where I feel very blessed is that I’ve had an opportunity with some of my ideas to be able to execute them. The 12 years I spent on Blue Valentine, I was just going crazy because I had these thoughts that were just smoke. They weren’t there. They didn’t exist. There’s nothing in an idea. It’s in execution. It’s in doing. It’s in making. So to me, it’s all about making.”

Gluttony is a sin, and a deadly one, at that. It’s never been on more embarrassing display than in the upper echelon of 21st Century America. While this collection of oil on canvas paintings is billed as a semi-autobiographical homage to consumption, it hints at something much deeper (and more dangerous) – namely, the long-term impact ongoing selfishness might have on future generations. Artist Nicole McCormick Santiago has tapped into something here, lighthearted but visceral; wholly indicative of how easily people shirk their responsibilities in the face of self-indulgence. On top of which, this exhibition includes pictures of cupcakes and glitter and soda and candy, and who on earth doesn’t like those?

(The Sweet Life by Nicole McCormick Santiago runs through June 15th at the First Street Gallery, Free, 526 West 26th Street, Suite 209) 

Five More For The Offing: 

• The Lovers by James Gortner @ Lyons Wier Gallery (Free, through June 1st, 542 West 24th Street)
• Equilibrium by Christopher Evans @ Fischbach Gallery (Free, through 6/28, 210 11th Avenue, Suite 801)
• One Hundred and Forty Characters featuring various artists @ Feldman Gallery (Free, 6/1 through 8/2, 31 Mercer Street)
• Unique featuring various artists @ Von Lintel Gallery (Free, 6/1 through 7/12, 520 West 23rd Street)
• Summer Sights featuring various artists @ Bernarducci Meisel Gallery (Free, 6/6 through 7/19, 37 West 57th Street, 3rd Floor)

I am reminded of the late great film Director John Hughes, who was once quoted as saying, “The first objective is to make a good movie. The second objective is to have a hit. If you get it backward, you probably won’t get either.”

I am reminded of After Earth co-writer Will Smith, who revealed in a 2009 60 Minutes interview that – early on in his career – he and his agent got together and researched the top 10 highest grossing motion pictures of all-time. The majority of Smith’s early film choices were a reflection of common elements from those 10 motion pictures.

I am reminded of Director M. Night Shyamalan, who has either given up on the idea of admirable storytelling altogether or is suffering from the mistaken belief that – much like Alfred Hitchhock – his biggest flops will not be fully appreciated until several decades after he’s gone.

Finally, I am reminded of this, and then this. And then nothing.

After Earth.

(After Earth opens in theaters nationwide tomorrow.)

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Click through for full-size gallery.   Continue reading →

Focus groups killed the classic Western … focus groups and the notion that every significant plot point needed to be charted, categorized, cataloged and certified before a project could move forward. And what a tragedy that is, really. I mean, there was such an artform to those sprawling early Westerns – a steadfast appreciation for the fact that low-rent trollops were actually low-rent trollops, heroes and villains were morally ambivalent, and the average cowpoke ran so ripe that giant horseflies took to nesting on his face.

That world is all but gone now, rendered moot by the fact there is no big-budget formula that accounts for the violent killing of woman and children, no allowance for rape as a matter of historical record, no reconciling the fact that – at least in the wild frontier days of yore – mercy and compassion were the vestige of the weak. No, sir. Those amoral vices only test well with the Mafia audience. In fact, more often than not, the modern Western feels more like an homage – a glossy caricature brimming over with white-wash veneers. You’ll not find so much as an out-of-place scratch among the lead cast, let alone the usual cadre of freaks and geeks that an honest-to-goodness classic Western might actually call for.

At the forefront of the Western genre throughout the 1960s was Italian Writer/Director Sergio Leone – Lord of The Revenge Epic, Maestro of the Dollars Trilogy, known in various circles as the man who turned down Paramount’s Godfather. While most critics point to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly as the absolute pinnacle of Leone’s career (if not the Western genre, altogether), it was Leone’s follow-up, Once Upon a Time in The West, that inextricably solidified his legacy. Panned by critics and shunned by mainstream audiences, Leone’s masterpiece has since been added to Time Magazine‘s list of the 100 Greatest Films of All-Time. Certain aspects of the movie have also popped up in everything from Back to The Future to Inglourious Basterds.

Once Upon a Time‘s slow pacing and stiff cues play like a clinic in film tension. The good guys are bad, the bad guys are good, and the story unfolds retroactively, creating a multi-layered effect that keeps viewers guessing straight up to – and through – the climax. Once Upon a Time is long and labored and it’s sometimes taxing to endure. But the story is so rich and the payoff so significant, that all the requisite down time doesn’t really seem to matter. In the final analysis, Once Upon a Time remains a classic, constructed in a signature mold by the greatest director the Western genre’s ever known. It stands as living proof that Charles Bronson was actually once young, that Henry Fonda and Jason Robards never were, and that composer Ennio Morricone was capable of doing the same thing with a few notes and a harmonica that Johnny Williams was capable of doing via two notes and a piano. Slap it all together and what you’re left with is one hell of a kick-ass Western, the kind we shant see the likes of again.

(Once Upon a Time in The West is currently streaming via Netflix.)  Continue reading →

“The young are impatient about change because they cannot grasp the power of time itself; not only as the enemy of flesh, the very germ of death, but as a benign cancer. As the young cannot grasp really that love must be a victim of time, so too they cannot grasp that injustices – the economic and family traps of living – can also fall victim to time. And so I really thought that I would spend the rest of my life as a railroad clerk. That I would never be a writer. That I would be married and have children and go to Christenings and funerals and visit my mother on a Sunday afternoon. That I would never own an automobile or a house. That I would never see Europe, Paris and Rome and Greece I was reading about in books from the public library. That I was hopelessly trapped by my family, by society, by my lack of skills and education. But I escaped again. At the age of 18 I started dreaming about the happiness of my childhood, as later at the age of 30 I would dream about the joys of my lost adolescence, as at the age of 35 I was to dream about the wonderful time I had in the Army which I hated being in, as at the age of 45 I dreamed about the happy, struggling years of being a devoted husband and loving father. I had the most valuable of human gifts, that of retrospective falsification:
remembering the good and not the bad.”

Here’s some summer reading.

Consider this ICP’s State of The Union Address – a triannual installation (or collection of installations) that explores the ongoing evolution of photography. Curators have assembled an extremely progressive line-up this time around, incorporating audio, video, 3-D, digital, photorealism, lightbox, and more – the majority of it focused upon social activism in the field. There are moments when this exhibition feels a little schizophrenic, what with each passing display offering some new-fangled take on the role of photojournalism. But there are also individual works that are well worth exploring – chief among them Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse’s light-box collage from Ponte City (a 54-story residential tower in Johannesburg, South Africa). Go because ICP is well worth supporting, and so are the 28 artists whose work is on view. But don’t be surprised if you find yourself yearning for the halcyon days of good, old-fashioned photography. Simple may be old-hat, but it also has a way of connecting with people on a very human – if not wholly humane – level.

(A Different Kind of Order runs from now until September 8th @ The International Center of Photography, $14, 1133 Avenue of the Americas & 43rd Street)

Five More For The Offing: 

• The Open Window: Objects, Rooms, and Landscapes by Helen Berggruen @ Fischbach Gallery (Free, through May 25th, 210 11th Avenue, between 24th & 25th Street)
• Recent Paintings by Kenne Gregoire @ Arcadia Gallery (Free, through 5/31, 51 Greene Street)
  
• Cosmologies by Marianne Van Lent @ The Painting Center (Free, through June 15th, 547 West 27th Street, Suite 500)
• Gueule De Bois by Quentin Garel @ Bertrand Delacroix Gallery (Free, through June 1st, 535 West 25th Street)
• Rain Room by Random International @ The Museum of Modern Art ($25, through July 28th, 11 West 53rd Street)