In the last two days, I’ve heard two curators from MoMA talk extensively about what the new building and the reinstallation of the art in it will be like. To use the phrase of the evening, I’ve gotten mixed signals.
Terry Riley discussed Yoshio Taniguchi’s building as the next major datapoint in the generations-long experiment of how architecture should address modern and contemporary art. In contrast to the Guggenheims, which engage art with their own influential, expressive intent, MoMA’s buildings–almost since its founding–has served as a “machine in the service of art,” emphasizing flexibility and utility.
After the powerful statement of Bilbao, Taniguchi’s MoMA, Riley said, “restabilizes” and reinvigorates this debate. And it does it with “logic” and “tradition,” some of the same principles contemporary artists worked against when making their art.
Nevertheless, Riley predicted people “will be shocked” by the vitality and dynamism these allegedly “conservative” principles bring.
On the art front, Ann Temkin, a curator from Painting & Sculpture, revealed that “Art History 101,” MoMA’s longstanding, authoritative chronological approach to displaying its renowned collection would return in November, albeit in expanded form. The thematic experiments of the MoMA2000 shows and the Tate Modern’s idea-driven installations seem to have reinforced the curators’ belief that MoMA’s uniquely deep and broad collection come with the unique responsibility to attempt to show this history. They’re doing it because they’re almost literally the only ones who can.
The “core historical collection” as taken in another generation, and art from the last 30+ years–which is still in process and historical flux–will be shown in consecutive 9-month views. Beyond these accretions and intentional change, the space, the vistas, the juxtapositions and potential paths generated by the new building are probably the greatest difference.
I’ve been in the almost completed building, and it is literally jaw-dropping. The atrium and the contemporary galleries are massive, and even the upper, historical galleries feel huge. MoMA’s got an unparalleled collection, sure, but I have to think that the building’s–the institution’s–new monumentality may end up overwhelming and subsuming many of the works we remember quite intimately. Some may even find it shocking.
Barely related: Not that anyone cares, but there’s some satisfaction in knowing that Charlie Finch got it almost 100% wrong.
Author: greg
Bloghdad.com/Remove_Your_Hairpiece
Kwikpoint specializes in visual language guides, laminated pictograph cards to help bridge language barriers in hospitals, foreign countries, in daily deaf life–and for law enforcement and the military.
An Army captain with his boots on the ground calls their fold-out Iraq Visual Language Survival Guide “a hot commodity.” It includes point-and-don’t-shoot instructions for locating snipers, identifying the nationality of foreign terrorists, and, as pictured here, conducting a hairpiece-to-shoelaces strip search.
BoingBoing links to a couple of partial scans, but you can buy the whole thing for $11 directly from Kwikpoint. This is cooler than any deck of cards.
[via BoingBoing, Xeni, all is forgiven.]
‘Wong Kar Wai,” Cantonese for “When it rains,”
Wong Kar Wai Week continues. Remember that “interview” with Wong Kar Wai I just linked to? Turns out it’s the Access Hollywood Movie Minute version. The HBO Original Series version–long, convoluted, emotional tumult spread out over the whole thing, lots of special guest cameos, no easy plot wrapups–is in the New York Times Magazine. Titled “The Director’s Director,” Jaime Wolf doesn’t actually work many other directors into the story. Go figure.
I only mention this because Wong’s–and his last/family name is Wong, just so you don’t embarass yourself in print or conversation–films and career have a such deep, meaningful resonance with my own.
The Director’s Director [NYT Magazine]
The Making Of
That’s what I’m thinking of changing the subtitle of this weblog to, although I’m still unconvinced.
It works in Europe, where I am not, at least most of the time. Top ten lists on the radio are called “le best of,” as are McDo value meals (“menus best of”). Also, “the making of” has become a programming genre all its own.
But it still looks a little funny. And this ain’t Europe. And so I remain undecided.
FS: ‘Mission Accomplished’ Banner, Qty: One (1)
It’s hard to remember now, but things looked so different back then. In August. When Sharon Waxman put David O. Russell on the deck of an aircraft carrier the front page of the Times Arts section for “Conquer[ing] the Hollywood Studio System.” On Aug 16, Russell had turned Warner Bros. into his own personal Ahmed Chalabi, ready to do his bidding:
Well, that was the plan, anyway. To find out the truth, don’t bother reading the Times, who hasn’t covered the story since; slog instead through the foreign papers and crazy alternative journals like the Los Angeles Times.Here’s a timeline of how, thanks to the foreign insurgents on the ground at Warners, David O. Russell’s grand Iraq strategy went terribly, horribly astray.
Continue reading “FS: ‘Mission Accomplished’ Banner, Qty: One (1)”
As Rumsfeld Is My Co-Producer
David Robb slogged through decades of data–a veritable quagmire of documentation, including production notes, official memos, filmmaker and producer interviews, and screenplay drafts–to write his new book, Operation Hollywood. From the interview he gave to Mother Jones, it sounds like a fascinating story.
That said, the interview gives me an odd feeling that the author–and maybe even Mother Jones herself–might be letting a strong political point of view slip through here and there. Nothing specific, though, maybe it’s just me.
I’m sure Operation Hollywood will become the must-read bible for anyone who decided to get into the motion picture business after seeing Top Gun [one hilarious anecdote from the book: enrollment actually shot up after Top Gun not in film schools, but in the Navy. Who’da thought?].
One wee bit of constructive criticism which I hope arrives in time for the paperback edition: In these perilous times, the book’s subtitle, How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies, seems needlessly divisive, by which I mean SATANICALLY UNAMERICAN. I suggest it be changed to How Hollywood Does Its Part To Help Keep The Pentagon’s Recruiting and Funding Pipelines Flowing, While Spending Some of That $500 Billion You’re About To Vote For In YOUR District, Congressman.
[via GreenCine]
Mother Jones Intern Intern-views David Robb
Support David Robb, the anti-Military Entertainment Complex, and buy Operation Hollywood: &c., &c. at Amazon.
Watch the Pentagon’s greatest cinematic success, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line on DVD. [What? You say they didn’t do that one??]
Wong Kar Wai talks about 2046
2046 barely screened at Cannes, after the director hand-carried the not-quite-finished print to the rebooked theatre. Now it’s being released in the UK, and it turns out Wong has actually re-edited it since May.
Read Howard Feinstein’s interview with WKW and his recounting of the tortured making of in the Guardian
“It was like being in jail” [Guardian UK]
Related: I, too, delivered an unfinished film to Cannes, a fact I mention because of the deep, meaningful resonance between Wong Kar Wai’s films and career and my own.
Faster, Pussycat! Shill! Shill!
Do whatever it takes. Kill the whole friggin’ space program. Put NASA out of business; my wife can find another job. Bankrupt the entire airline industry, and ground every plane. I don’t care.
Just please, Xeni, please stop it with the PR pablum from some zero-G plane that last made the news during the shooting of Apollo 11. It wasn’t interesting when Howard, Hanks & Bacon blabbed on about it, either, but at least they stopped after the movie came out. Unless you’re going to ride a on-loan-from-Marketing Segway in a parabolic arc, get off the plane; the flight landed a long time ago.
“Previous BB posts: 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.” [BoingBoing: Xeni Flies Zero-G #10]
Eros, Thanatos, Thanatos, Eros: Russ Meyer RIP
Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! director Russ Meyer went tits up over the weekend; students of his rather buxom body of work will recognize his fondness for this position.
My greatest Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon triumph was connecting FPKK‘s Tura Satana to Kevin Bacon, via Herve Villechaise, which was possible only with the help of the then-little-known IMDb.com.
Russ Meyer’s Obituary, with nice quotes from fan John Waters & screenwriter Roger Ebert [LA Times]
Try it yourself: Faster, Pussycat! [IMDb]
Don’t mess with her copyrights. Seriously. [TuraSatana.com]
More Thanatos, Please
Speaking of Wong Kar Wai… Eros is a compilation of three great directors’ short films on the subject of, well, eros, love, and sex.
Early reports from Toronto say that Wong’s is the only segment that’s right. The others, by Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni, sound like a $5 handjob at the Port Authority and that 15 minutes window before the Spectravision hits your hotel room bill, respectively.
Apparently, the only reason to not leave after WKW’s short is the haunting Caetano Veloso song, “Michelangelo Antonioni,” which bridges the last two films. It’s a wonderful song, to be sure; I’d contemplated using it in the opening scene of my first short, but it was too heavy. I first replaced it with the Pink Floyd bongos from the opening of Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point.
I mention this because of the deep, meaningful connections between Soderbergh’s, Antonioni’s and my own work.
Wong Kar-Wai dominates uneven Eros [Peter Brunette, Indiewire]
According to the Italian producer’s site, the whole thing was producer Stephane Tchal Gadjieff and Antonioni’s trophy wife Enrica’s idea. [Fandango, no, not that Fandango]
The Nudist Buddhist, or Humping Sharon Waxman’s Leg
Whatever it takes to get the story, I guess. A serious shoutout to the Times’ Sharon Waxman, who had my boy David O. Russell [boxers, not that anyone asked] rub up against her on the set of I Heart Huckabee’s.
That’s the tip of the antics iceberg, though. Check out Waxman’s report covering the last 18 months of the production.
Interestingly, she’s very cagey about the finished product itself. She was very circumspect on the reactions at a cast/family/friends screening. Meanwhile, the film seems to be rocking ’em in Toronto.
The Nudist Buddhist Borderline-Abusive Love-In [Sharon Waxman, NYT]
Tom Hall ♥’s I ♥ H [Indiewire, via Greencine]
[9/22 Update: Defamer reports [sic] that D.O. is P.O.’ed about Waxman’s NYT article; seems he thought she was writing a book. Which, technically, is true. It’s called Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System.]
Correction: Explorateurs Urbains are NOT Cataphiles
My apologies for mistakenly calling the explorateurs urbains of La Mexicaine de Perforation cataphiles. In an interview on NPR, filmmaker Lazar Kunsman, the group’s spokesMexicain, explained that cataphiles are “more like nerds,” who just wander around underground without doing anything. Explorateurs, meanwhile, are seeking to produce new forms of creative expression, to create a viable, engaging alternative to the sterile, mainstream culture found aboveground.
So next time you run into a guy in the catacombs, just ask, “Why the hell did Harvey sit on Hero for so long?”
NPR interview with La Mexicaine de Perforation
Previous subterranean cinema posts, including a partial film programme
Bad Architecture (in Beijing)
China’s building boom may throw up a Rem Koolhaas now and then, but most of the time, it just looks like it’s throwing up.
Now, bad Chinese architecture has a home, BadJianZhu. Paul Wingfield, co-founder of the site, promises buildings with “a grandiose quality, a fantastical or monumental kind of aspiration that makes them worth recording.” Plus plenty of “Copies derived from copies, kitsch derived from kitsch.”
To be honest, a lot of it looks like the highway from DC to Dulles.
Visit BadJianZhu at badarchitecture.org
via Christopher Hawthorne’s NYT article, “Beijing’s Truly Bad Buildings”
Nice, Short Fresh Air Interview with Richard Kelly
Richard Kelly was on Fresh Air last week to discuss the director’s cut of Donnie Darko, which is platforming out into theaters now.
Who noted that theatrical re-release is fast becoming a standard marketing element for a remastered or new-version DVD?
Listen to Richard Kelly’s interview [9/7/04, 12 min., NPR]
Buy the old DVD version on Amazon, while supplies last [“Customers also bought Requiem for a Dream, Lost in Translation, Kill Bill and Pi“? Yeah, no kidding.]
RNC Thugz Videomakers Found, Speak
Mission Accomplished (aka f***newyork, the name of the .mov file) was the hi-larious (so true, though, we’re only laughing on the outside) video of a gang of private school wiggaz telling it like it was about the RNC takeover of the city.
While the rest of the world just sat back and laughed at it, the folks at hip hop music tracked down the film’s creators, writer Sam Marks and director Max Rockatansky (aka Matt Lenski) for an interview. It’s great stuff, even if they do use the N-word. And the F-word. And a bunch of other words. A lot.
The Guys Behind the F***NewYork Video [hiphopmusic.com]
Google “f***newyork.mov”, but not with asterisks to find the file.
[via Anil]