Winterbottom Goes Bubbley for Gitmo Movie Distribution

Michael Winterbottom’s A Road To Guantanamo was produced for Channel 4, but they’re opening it like a film, too. Like a Soderbergh film called Bubble, to be specific. A simultaneous DVD, Theater, and–hold on–online release next month.
The film is a fantastical, unrealistic tale of some guys en route to a wedding who get swept up and dumped in Gitmo for two years, no questions asked. Then they’re released. How implausible is that?? Oh, wait. [via kultureflash]

CNN Is The New Blog

It hit me again during the Super Bowl: the perpetual motion, 3D overkill design language of on-air TV graphics is in serious need of rethinking.
Sundance Channel did something about it, and now CNN International has, too. It’ll be interesting to see if/how other networks react. [I’m watching The Daily Show, and they’re using CNNI clips of the White House briefing. It looks great.]

Another Look At The New CNNI [tvnewser via kottke]

Check Out The Ass On That One

I fired off an email to Charlie Finch’s editor/wingman last night, and even though I’m a ridiculous apprentice of nothing, he graciously favored me with a reply. If only I had a nicer rack, he might’ve gotten me a group show somewhere.

From: greg.allen on behalf of Greg Allen
Sent: Mon 2/13/2006 9:26 PM
To: Walter Robinson
Subject: You really need to let Charlie go start a blog of his own
Hey Walter,
I have to tell you, Charlie Finch’s columns have been prurient and sexist for quite some time, and I’m sure it has a following among an older, hairy-eared, mouthbreathing microsegment of Artnet’s readership, but to many others, including myself and many collectors, dealers, and artists I’ve spoken with about him over the years–men and women alike, including several of the female artists who have been objectified and diminished in print by Finch’s pawing prose– his writing presents an unenlightened, retrograde blight. It’s offensive and uncalled for. It’s sexist and demeaning in a blatant way that was long ago identified as such by a civil society. Artnet’s continued publication of Finch’s writing leads one–me, at least–to conclude that you and Artnet support or at least assent to Finch’s POV, even if it is under the guise of editorial independence.
Seriously, his demeaning discussions of female artists are the gender equivalent of racist asides, the kind even Strom Thurmond eventually learned not to voice publicly; Trent Lott, of course, learned that lesson the hard way, and it cost him his leadership post and bully pulpit. It’s long past time for Finch to pay the same price. It’s not like you’ll be silencing him, of course; only disavowing his demeaning view of women and their art. I’m sure a wheel as squeaky as Finch will fulfill Artnet’s 2006 prognostication and launch a blog of his own. By his–and apparently your–criteria, the only qualifications that matter in the art world are a penis and a willingness to flog someone with it.
For now, I’ll refrain from posting this as an open letter on my own blog, but judging from the rising drumbeat online, it’s only a matter of time before headlines of Artnet Sexism and Misogyny start propagating on- and off-line. I don’t think I’ll wait too long, though, to start talking up dealers and artists about Finch and Artnet, starting with the ones I buy most regularly from–and the ones who advertise on Artnet.
Regards,
Greg Allen
—
From: Walter Robinson 7:41 am (5 minutes ago)
To: Greg
Subject: who is greg allen?
ha ha, thanks for your comments, as stupid as they are. W

How It Happened Here Happened

It Happened Here is a 1966 documentary-style account of a Nazi occupation of Britain, made over the course of eight years of weekends by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo. They were 18 and 16, respectively, when they started production.
All the accounts of the film describe the production design as fanatically authentic, and praise the evocation of its 1940 setting through a combination of montage, attention to mundane detail, and damningly plausible British political accommodation of fascism.
The movie is now out on Region 2 DVD, and Brownlow’s book, How It Happened Here, about the production and the controversy that swirled around the film, was reissued last year.

DVD’s of the week: It Happened Here [telegraph.co.uk via metafilter]

Mark Romanek On Bubble DVD Commentary?

I find Soderbergh’s DVD commentary tracks are consistently entertaining and enlightening. And now that it turns out he has Mark Romanek on with him for the director’s commentary of Bubble, I think the question of which format–theater, ppv, or DVD–is best for me has been settled.
Josh Oakhurst has transcribed some of the two directors’ conversation on his blog; check it out. [joshoakhurst.com via robotwisdom]

With Apologies To Francesco Vezzoli…

I will quote goldenfiddle in full on this one, and just say that, Francesco, I was wrong. You were right. Fake trailers to non-existent films are an art form after all:

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are teaming up to produce a bunch of fake trailers to non-existant kung-fu and sexploitation flicks, and maybe two short films that will suck to everybody except the directors themselves.

New “Grind” update [darkhorizons.com]
Previously: greg.org on Francesco Vezzoli and his Venice Biennale trailer for a non-existent remake of Caligula

Well Duh, Because It’s Gus Van Sant.

warhol_vansant.jpg
Finally, someone’s saying something about the inconsistencies, conflicts and caprices of the Warhol Authentication Board, which is wreaking quiet, opaque havoc on the market for Andy Warhol’s artworks. The BBC is showing a documentary on the Board tonight on BBC1 called “Andy Warhol: Denied”.
The above self-portrait, from 1964-65, for example, which Warhol gave as payment to Richard Eckstract, an important collaborator in Warhol’s films, was subsequently declared inauthentic.
Is this a real Warhol? [telegraph.co.uk via boingboing]

Fool Me Once, Shame On.. Fool Me.. Twice We…Won’t Be Fooled Again

gwb_jester.jpg
Unless this was somehow the on-message Backdrop for the day. Let’s go to the tape. Look at this wider shot, where the pre-existing monitors have been used for the Backdrop.
gwb_jester2.jpg
Somehow, this was intentional. Maybe that capuccino-skinned jester was supposed to read as Mayor Nagin? I don’t think it came off that way, though.
[image ap/evan vucci via cbc.ca, and eyeteeth]

What If Sprawl Is The Real Entropy?

Maybe we have the whole Smithsonian entropy thing wrong.
In 2002, Artforum’s Nico Israel whined with condescension about the homogenous strip mall & fast food landscape he had to endure on his road trip from one perfectly isolated Earthwork [Spiral Jetty] to another [Double Negative].
Then, as the Jetty has re-emerged year after year, visitor traffic has increased dramatically, along with press coverage and local awareness and appreciation.
Road signs to the Jetty appear in the middle of what was once unmarked desert scrub.
Tour buses idle where once only high-clearance 4WD’s were advised to go. The Dia Center takes ownership [?] of the Jetty.
And Smithson’s widow, fresh on the heels of fabricating a piece that didn’t exist during the artist’s lifetime, mentions offhandedly that she doesn’t see how adding rocks and regrading ramps would conflict with her husband’s idea of entropy.
And now, the industrial detritus that has long defined the Jetty’s site for visitors–and, to some extent at least, for the artist himself, who chose Rozel Point as much for the abandoned oil derricks as for the water’s reddish-pink tint–has been cleaned up and hauled away, deemed “an eyesore” by the State [as if anyone had bothered to look there until a couple of years ago].
Should we care? Conventional art world wisdom holds that Smithson’s entropy dictated a hands-off approach to his work. Que sera sera, dust to dust. Nature will take its inexorable course; stopping, fighting, or reversing this [d]evolution through restoration, maintenance, or re-creation is doing a disservice to Smithson’s ideas and his legacy.

spiral_doily.jpg
“The Spiral Doily,” picked up in Utah on
my last trip to the Jetty

But in his seminal Artforum essay of 1966, “Entropy and the New Monuments,” the examples of entropy Smithson cited weren’t ivy-covered ruins and rubble, but New Jersey, Philip Johnson and the “cold glass boxes” of Park Avenue, and suburban sprawl. “The slurbs, urban sprawl, and the infinite number, of housing developments of the postwar boom have contributed to the architecture of entropy.”
Just this week, Reuters reported on a land use study that shows Suburban Sprawl may be an irrestistable force in the US. When he sited Spiral Jetty in BF Utah, was Smithson building against New Jerseyification, or just ahead of it? Is it possible–or is it just convenient acquiescence to suggest–that roped-off “Nature”-driven degradation is not, in fact, entropy, but Romanticism? Maybe letting “civilization” have its paving, scrubbing, sprucing up, licensing, Acoustiguiding, Ritz Carlton Jettyway Weekend Packaging way with the Jetty isn’t closer to the end game Smithson envisioned?
Entropy and the New Monuments [robertsmithson.com]
Suburban sprawl an irresistible force in US [reuters]

WH Beat Photogs Upset At Staged Photographs They Don’t Take

Stockholm Syndrome? Job security? The White House News Photographers Association was so worried about the sharp increase of staged photographs, they undertook a study and filed a complaint about it with White House Productions.
Don’t get them wrong; they’re not complaining about the image control the White House exerts via Scott Sforza’s strategically placed backdrops and camera pens. They’re upset at the increasing number of WH events at which press was banned altogether, and the only pictures released were from WH staff photographers. Funny, because back in the day [aka 2001-3], the only way you could make out the artificiality of Sforzian Backdrops was via the inside-the-ropeline WH cameras.
Photogs Slam White House Use of Staged Pictures [e&p via mediabistro and man]
Previously: Will this be on the White House DVD?