Author: greg

Clear Your Calendars [Except For Your Therapist]

The BFI’s National Film Theatre is running a complete Tarkovsky retrospective through March 30. It includes new prints of both Solaris and Stalker. And who can pass up seeing Andrei Rublev on the big screen? [I know everyone in NYC passed up seeing it on video; I bought an utterly unused copy, fresh from the newly dead Kozmo.com, on ebay a few years back.]
NFT: Andrei Tarkovsky [bfi.org.uk, via kultureflash]

Read What I Read, Not What I Write

Poss. alt. title: greg.org reads the NYT to you.

  • The Short Film, an Art Deserving a Longer Life [nyt]: After watching the Oscar nominees, Margo Jefferson finds short films to be highly concentrated joys. Even the worst short is better than a film, she says, because it’ll be over sooner. [Related? Or the exception that proves the rule?: Amazon is hosting a short film competition in association with Tribeca Film Festival. To win, your <7 min. short film must be rated highest by random Amazon surfer/shoppers. Good luck with that.]
  • Is a Cinema Studies Degree the New M.B.A.? [nyt]: English majors don’t teach English, either. Is this ascendance of media literacy substantively different from the classic ideal of a liberal education? For the corollary, though, I think people entering something as economically irrational as moviemaking should take business classes. Of course, an MBA would think that.
  • The Making of Gunner Palace: Maybe basic training is the new MBA? I’ve been stoked waiting for Gunner Palace since Tucker first emailed about it last summer. Congratulations and good luck. [via kottke]
  • Editing god Walter Murch explores the power and meaning of sound on Transom.org. Murch never stops to amaze and inspire me. Clear, insightful, and never condescending in his explanations of his work. [previously: Murch on greg.org] [via Lawrence Wechsler at Design Observer]
  • Enough About ‘Gates’ as Art; Let’s Talk About That Price Tag [nyt]: By all means. The MBA in me wants to get back into the “Apprentice of Nothing” T-shirt business. [previously: The Gates Bill; on the Christos’ Maybach]

    • On Demand

    The other night Thomas Demand offhandedly described some of the insane details of the production of Clearing, the massive photograph of a forest which is now built into The Modern at MoMA. The photograph was laminated onto two sheets of architectural safety glass that were so large, they had to use satellite-curing ovens at ESA, the European Space Agency–at night–to fabricate it. When the request for the work, Thomas said, “no one quite knew what they were getting.”
    [On an irrelevant note, the lifesize set for Clearing happened to be in Demand’s studio during a MoMA Jr Associates visit I set up. It was so stunning, the trustees quickly added the studio to their Berlin itinerary, and curator Kynaston McShine suggested the Modern acquire the work. And I still can’t get a reservation.]
    I mention this–obviously I mention the studio story for self-aggrandizement, but remember the tagline of this site, yo–because not quite knowing what you’re getting seems like one of the underlying currents of Demand’s work.
    Walking through the show, I tried to recall the portentous actual setting that was obscured behind each photograph’s generic title: Kitchen was Saddam’s, Archive was Riefenstahl’s, etc., but I kept remembering them wrong, which made me load all kinds of historical baggage onto each image; turns out only some of the bags actually matched. Barn was Pollock’s, not Kaczynski’s; the cluttered desk was L. Ron Hubbard’s, not Bill Gates’. The Bauhaus-style stairway was from Demand’s middle school, but it turns out even he remembered it wrong.

    Thomas Demand opens today at MoMA     [moma.org]
    Michael Kimmelman calls it “hypnotic” [nyt]
    No one goes to The Modern; it’s too crowded

    I’m Your Puppet

    evil_interpol_puppet.jpgInterpol’s video for “Evil” from their recent album “Antic” was directed by the artist/CG animator Charlie White. It features an Interpol-ish puppet–“pale, thin, with dark hair and a boyish-man quality”–that looks like White’s trademark alien/troll figures in human drag.
    MTV.com has some press junket-level technical details of the making of.
    Interpol’s ‘Evil’ Is More Like ‘Creepy’ [mtv.com, via fimoculous]
    Previously: greg.org on Interpol

    This is your brain on Gehry. Any Questions?

    Since it was opened, the polished stainless steel roof on Frank Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall in LA has been throwing off so much glare, people are getting baked alive in the neighboring condominiums. And on the street, fuggedaboutit. They’re frying eggs and dog’s brains on the sidewalk.
    The result: the County Board of Supervisors has ordered a bunch of workers with hand sanders to climb up there and dull the thing down a bit. Meanwhile, some tourist from New Jersey, 3,000 miles away, thinks they should leave it alone.
    Disney Concert Hall to lose some luster [LAT, via BoingBoing]
    Related: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis-Brown house was “red-tagged,” meaning no one can enter it, after a inspectors noticed a rainsoaking-related shift in a retaining wall. [LAT, via archinect]

    Edited For Content

    So we finally caught Sideways, twice, on the plane back from Amsterdam. The fat white trash sex scene was edited out, of course, and the PG dubbing was awkward [how can they not say “get you laid”? It’s the characters’ whole point.] with one exception: they replaced “a**hole” with “Ashcroft” which, at least in the first occurrence, just sounded like Oscar-worthy writing.
    Meanwhile, on the other channel, Alfie was so full of humping, naked birds and profanity, it would’ve been outrageously offensive–if anyone could’ve been bothered to watch it.
    [update: Slate linked to this Thursday WashPost report of the Ashcroft thing. Airline movies run for a month, but presumably, it didn’t raise any eyebrows until now.]

    2005-03-07, This Week In The New Yorker

    In the magazine header, image: newyorker.com
    Issue of 2005-03-07
    Posted 2004-02-28
    THE TALK OF THE TOWN
    COMMENT/ BELIEVER/ Louis Menand on the life and death of Hunter S. Thompson.
    ON TOUR/ DR. JUICE/ Ben McGrath attends a Jose Canseco book signing.
    AWARDS SEASON/ THE POLLIES/ Adam Green on a proud night for political consultants.
    GIZMOS/ TWO PENS/ Tad Friend on recent advances in ink dispensation.
    SUMATRA POSTCARD/ OUR MAN IN MEDAN/ Dan Baum meets an American diplomat in post-tsunami Sumatra.
    THE POLITICAL SCENE/ Jeffrey Toobin/ Blowing Up the Senate/ Extreme tactics in the fight to confirm judges.
    FICTION/ Umberto Eco/ “The Gorge”
    THE BACK PAGE/ Paul Rudnick/ “Further Proof That Lincoln Was Gay”
    THE CRITICS
    BOOKS/ Adam Gopnik/ Voltaire’s Garden/ The philosopher as a campaigner for human rights.
    ON TELEVISION/ Nancy Franklin/ Vision Quest/ The mind of the married medium.
    THE ART WORLD/ Peter Schjeldahl/ Drawing Lines/ Cy Twombly at the Whitney.
    POP MUSIC/ Sasha Frere-Jones/ Ring My Bell/ The expensive pleasures of the ringtone.
    THE CURRENT CINEMA/ David Denby/ Devilment/ “Be Cool,” “Constantine.”
    FROM THE ARCHIVE
    LETTER FROM WASHINGTON/ Richard H. Rovere/ January 8, 1959/ A description of the political maneuverings surrounding a filibuster against civil-rights legislation./ Issue of 1959-01-17
    Subscribe to the New Yorker via Amazon

    Tony Danza: A Tape I WANT To See

    tony_danza_gates.jpg

    So while he is taping himself for “his talk show on skates,” Tony Danza runs into The Gates and falls flat on his face. I don’t know how to unpack this little gem of a story, though:

  • Danza, Schmanza, is that Sony VX2100 alright?
  • Who’s got that tape?
  • I’m supposed to believe there were really two paparazzi following Tony Danza around?
  • A “talk show on skates”?
    Tony Danza Crash photo sequence [via Forward Retreat]
    Sony VX2100 Buy a [new] Sony VX2100 at Amazon for $2,349.88 [amazon]
    The Tony Danza Show [why? and why do they still use go.com? go.com]

    • The Independent Sideways Awards, &c.

    Holy smokes, the IFP awards were a total dogpile on Sideways. I can’t remember all my votes, but even though I’m a Payne/Taylor fan, I spread the love around a little bit more.
    Yeah, and on that Oscar, too. We just flew back from Amsterdam, and not just our arms are tired. I was banished from the (TV-equipped) bedroom, so I “watched” the Academy Awards on Gothamist and Defamer [who got the NYT to sponsor their 10-month anniversary party, complete with a gift, um, sac from Fred Durst, you know, the one on Rodeo?]

    20th IFP Independent Spirit Awards Winners     [ifp.org]

    NFS: Art You Can’t Buy

    keith_tyson_puzzle.jpgTangentially related to both preparations for my upcoming talks on the art market in Rotterdam and to The Gates being rather showily not for sale, I’ve been thinking about art you can’t buy or sell.

  • e-flux’s Do It! exhibition is full of artworks you create or complete by following the artist’s instructions. Sometimes a museum paid the artist to let them keep these originally temporary works, but the museum can’t sell them. And you can’t buy or sell them. [You CAN buy the handbook-size catalogue, though.]
  • The other night in SoHo, I saw a dealer whose collection I visited way back when. My favorite piece was an edition, a foot-long steel bar by either Walter deMaria or Michael Heizer [anyone know?] which was stamped, “may not be sold for more than $100.” Since it’d be “worth” far more today, no one’ll sell the thing the only way the artist permits it to be sold. [Of course, all those Earth Art guys were originally trying to subvert the market/gallery system. Yeah, how’d that work out?]
  • We have some prints by Gabriel Orozco that I picked up at agnes b. gallery in Paris way back when. They were free then, the way ephemera and art books are. I’ve been offered nice money for them, even though they say “ne peut etre vendu” on the bottom. Crazy people.
  • At Frieze art fair last fall, Keith Tyson had a large sculpture at his gallery’s booth, which was not for sale. He would only give the piece away to the first person who could decipher the multi-part puzzle that was incorporated within it. [In Le Monde, Tyson says a collector who wanted to buy it said, “no problem, I’ll just buy it from the guy who solves it.”]
    The Times of London has Tyson’s full puzzle [timesonline.co.uk]