Year: 2013
On My Way
Saturday, November 30th, 2013 Film Reviews,Watching Catherine Deneuve in On My Way, there were times when it seemed the film should be called Bad Grandma, or perhaps Mauvais Grand-mère. Like the revolting Irving Zisman in Jackass’s hit comedy, the elderly Bettie sets off on a rambling road trip to deliver her grandson to another relative. Her estranged daughter, Muriel, (played […]
Yoko Ono
Saturday, November 30th, 2013 Art Column,For an artist who has devoted her career to peace, love and understanding, Yoko Ono’s press call at the Museum of Contemporary Art was unpleasantly regimented. Journalists and photographers were herded from room to room like errant sheep, and it was made clear that questions about John Lennon would not be welcome. The only problem […]
Carrie
Saturday, November 30th, 2013 Film Reviews,Is there any difference between a ‘reboot’ and a ‘remake’? At some point during the last few years, the word ‘reboot’ quietly migrated from the land of computer jargon and became movie jargon. In purely semantic terms the idea of remaking a movie seems more ambitious than rebooting one. We reboot a computer by turning […]
The Art of Mining
Friday, November 29th, 2013 Blog,Most of my travels are art-related – on the track of another Biennale or a major retrospective. Last month I undertook a very different trip, visiting Laos as a guest of the mining company, PanAust. There was an ostensible art excuse: PanAust had sponsored an artist’s residency for Peter Churcher, who came back with a […]
Twenty Feet from Stardom
Saturday, November 23rd, 2013 Film Reviews,One of the features of world cinema over the past decade has been the resurgence of the feature-length documentary. Two outstanding new examples are getting theatrical releases this week: 20 Feet From Stardom, which looks at the careers of some of the leading back-up singers in popular music; and Blackfish, which examines the lives of […]
Blackfish
Saturday, November 23rd, 2013 Film Reviews,Blackfish is the kind of documentary that picks up on an issue that will rarely have entered the consciousness of most people, and makes it a matter of urgency. The starting point is the death of Dawn Brancheau, an experienced trainer of Orcas (or “killer whales”) at SeaWorld, Florida. The agent of destruction was Tilikum, […]
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Saturday, November 23rd, 2013 Film Reviews,Panem et Circenses was the Roman formula for keeping the population happy. In Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games novels, Panem (bread) is the name of the dystopian society in which the story is set. The circuses are the Games themselves, in which a boy and a girl from each district are chosen by lottery to partake […]
America: Painting a Nation
Saturday, November 23rd, 2013 Art Column,“Thus in the beginning,” wrote the philosopher, John Locke in 1689, “all the world was America.” He was referring to a primitive state of social organisation being rapidly improved by British colonialism. Nowadays Locke’s words seem just as true, but it is because America has colonised the rest of the world. For much of the […]
Balthus: Cats and Girls
Saturday, November 16th, 2013 Art Column,“Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. Now let us look at the pictures.” This was the formula proposed by this reclusive artist for the catalogue of his 1968 retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London. Whereas most artists are eager to have their lives and deeds discussed at length, Balthus (1908-2001) was a […]
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
Saturday, November 16th, 2013 Film Reviews,“All vulgarity is crime,” wrote Oscar Wilde. “Vulgarity is the conduct of others.” One wonders what Wilde might have made of Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa – a film that has confounded everyone by surging to the top of the United States box office. He may have seen it as affirmation of another witticism: “America is […]