The NY Times profiles Peter Walker, the dean of modernist US landscape design (and ex-dean of Harvard and Berkeley arch. schools). Not a lot of news, but he does cite Donald Judd and Carl Andre as artistic inspirations. 2 pts for taste, but the problem with Arad’s original plaza was its unremitting Andre-ness. His own firm’s memorial proposal was “a glassy wall with the victims’ and heroes’ names etched within.”
TMI, or Overblogging Sundance
With daily reports from the frontlines filling the Festival site, IndieWIRE, Movie City News, the Times, the trades, , Sundance needs weblogging about as much as Bush’s march to war did.
Naturally, that’s not stopping anyone. If you still think you should’ve gone, check out reports from the standby lines, bathroom lines, and coke lines as well: Weblogs, Inc. [portally]; Eric Snider [Utah-funny]; Dan Webster [Pf’ingH?]; Alastik [lots of waiting]; Peter Vonder Haar [lots of pics so far]; I’ll keep adding them as they cross my path [thanks? GreenCine, Gawker, and email]
Filmmaker Magazine’s weblog, to their great credit, actually includes posts from the filmworld beyond the steamed-up windows of Park City.
On Jon Routson and the future of video art
For an artist who’s only shown a couple of times and whose most well-known work –a 22-minute, reconceived-for-network-TV version of Cremaster 4–has only been seen by a handful of people, Jon Routson sure gets a lot of press. Baltimore City Paper’s Bret McCabe gives Routson the full feature treatment this week, a 5,000-word cover story, complete with inflammatory comments by [at least one] wannabe playah with a weblog.
With pleasant symmetry, another Baltimore artist, the indie filmgod John Waters, opens an exhibition of his work–thematic collages of images cribbed from 60’s and 70’s movies–at the New Museum Feb. 7. Read Artnet’s recent interview with Waters.
Related: my previous post about Routson, and my NYT article on bootlegging video art
Like I was saying about Mormon Cinema and…
Filmmaker reports that in the face of religious boycotts, the missionary-meets-boy tale, Latter Day, was dumped by its Salt Lake venue, Madstone Theaters. Actually, this is good news; it means they might be open to dumping Mel Gibson’s controversy-baiting The Passion of Christ, which is scheduled to open Feb. 25.
In the Village Voice, Ed Halter hears the good news about Mormon Cinema. [O me of little faith…] I think I may have been friends with one of the silly Mormon comedy producers. If not, I’m sure gonna be friends with them soon.
Other things I just posted about that turned up in the Voice [Choire’s making money for this, too. Note to self…]: Independent film’s dead! Long live independent film!, and John Cage festivities, this time at Anthology Film Archive (tomorrow night, tickets available until after the films start, from the sound of things).
2004-01-26, This Week in The New Yorker
Issue of 2004-01-26
Posted 2004-01-19
The Talk of The Town
COMMENT/ TAXING/ John Cassidy on Paul O?Neill?s deficit message.
HAUNTS/ ECTOPLASM!/ Ben McGrath on a ghost, perhaps, at the Maritime Hotel.
HEY, PAL DEPT./ OLD HACK/ David Owen hails a taxi historian.
GOOD WORKS/ BARELY SHAVERS/ Field Maloney on a group that?s growing mustaches for charity.
THE FINANCIAL PAGE/ BIG SPACE/ James Surowiecki on the billions behind Bush?s space program.
ANNALS OF MEDICINE/ Jerome Groopman/ The Grief Industry/ Does crisis counselling really work?
SHOUTS & MURMURS/ Frank Gannon/ Aristotle on Relationships
FICTION/ Antonya Nelson/ “Eminent Domain”
THE CRITICS
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ David Denby/ Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Monster
THE THEATRE/ Hilton Als/ King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe!
BOOKS/ John Updike/ MIND/BODY PROBLEMS/ New novels by Andrew Sean Greer and Hanif Kureishi.
THE BACK PAGE/ “And the Winner Is . . .”
WTC Memorial Jurors Speak–and Design
The NYT’s Glenn Collins and David Dunlap have a transfixing and revelatory article about details of the WTC Memorial Jury’s deliberations and process for the first time. Twelve of the thirteen jurors spoke with the reporters.
It turns out even the jurors were underwhelmed by the revised designs their finalists came up with. And Martin Puryear’s dismissal of Michael Kimmelman’s call for elitism to save us is right on.
Of course, Felix Salmon’s analysis is also right on, that it was essentially the jury that designed–and continues to design–the Memorial, and that Arad’s design was picked because it was the most amenable to their impending directives.
Look over there! Filmmaker Magazine!
Gotta run, but before I do, the fine fine folks at Filmmaker Magazine timed the launch of their weblog to the opening of the under-the-radar Sundance Film Festival. Sundance is not, as its name suggests, held in a warm, sunny place, but in Park City, in the state of Utah. It may not be of any interest to you, but if it is, the festival has a little website.
Also at Filmmaker this month, the makings of a great short film, tips from a festival programmer. [via GreenCine]
On Adapting for Film
[via IFP] New York Women in Film and Television is sponsoring a panel titled The Art of Adaptation on Jan. 28 in New York, thank you. In fact, it’s at the Alliance Francaise/French Institute, East 60th St, so even I can stumble out of bed and wander on over by, um, the 6:30 start time.
IFP members and others get $5 off the $20 registration fee. NYWIFTies get in for a mere $10.
Related: Jason Kottke made a sweet weblog for Susan Orlean’s view of Adaptation.
This panel may be payback for the last adaptation panel I attended, a misogyny-tinged but hilarious and enlighteneing discussion sponsored by Harper’s Magazine. At the New School, a lone woman, Susan Minot, squared off against David O. Russell, David Foster Wallace, Todd Solondz and Dale Peck. Editor/moderator Lewis Lapham complained about Leonard [sic] DiCaprio, while everyone else discussed James Cameron at length.
Alas, with no known tape or transcript, this panel only lives on in our hearts. And in this funny weird/funny haha DFW-centric account from some delusional DFW groupie chick (“He’s trying so hard to be everyman, when we all know he’s uberman… poor Dave.”). Quelle surprise, it’s written in the overly footnoted style of the uberman himself.
The Political Gospel, According to Reuters
Just a quick Sforzian note of these two Reuters photos, which were side by side on a Yahoo News page this morning:
Related: Producer Scott Sforza, who’s built a Potemkin village centered around the White House.
First, Movies in DC, now Making Movies in Miami
I see through fellow Best NY Blog nominee Lockhart Steele‘s feeble ruse to get me to post more non-NYC stuff. Even as I’m powerless to thwart it.
Tommy Ryk’s documentary, Work Sucks, I’m Going Skiing follows the antics of a New York hotel developer in South Beach. No story there, folks. Throw a rock in SoSoHo (as I called it in 1990, when then-friend Tony Goldman put me up in the Park Central) and you’ll hit a New York hotel developer.
No, Ryk’s film is about The Creek, a hostel-turned-hotel, full of wacky young artists, guests, and contractors. It opens at the Made in Miami Film Festival. According to this Herald article, Ryk was hired to shoot web video of artists redoing the guestrooms, but instead turned his cameras on guests who stayed on to help renovate; ersatz security guards auditioning for porn flicks, a cast of characters you could never write without sounding like Weekend at Bernie’s III.
This isn’t gonna help me win “Best NY Blog…”
But what can I do? It’s Kieslowski. The Decalogue is playing at the AFI Silver Theater in DC, starting tomorrow (through 1/22). The marathon back-to-back screening of all ten episodes on Saturday includes, inexplicably, the only screenings of episodes I-IV.
This was probably my last chance to see Decalogue uninterrupted in theaters for the next 15 years, give or take a month. And to think, I just found out about it. Well, maybe you should just watch them on DVD like me.
Salt in the wound: Sunday is a back-to-back showing of the Three Colors Trilogy: Blue, White, and Red, too.
John Cage Weekend at Barbican Centre
[via Kultureflash] John Cage Uncaged is a weekend of performances, films and discussions (“and mushrooms!”) at Barbican Hall.
Cage symphony performances are rare enough to make them not-to-be-missed events. Highlights: Friday’s BBC Orchestra concert, “Cage in his American Context,” (which will include the first UK radio performance of Cage’s most famous work, 4’33”) and Saturday’s Musiccircus, a happening-within-a-happening which gets an annoyingly giddy description “Bassoons in the bars, flutes in the foyers and, who knows, you might even find a tuba in the toilet!”
You can buy tickets or a weekend pass, but for my money, I’m sticking to the radio. Here’s BBC3’s program schedule for Friday (that’s GMT, don’cha know):
19:25 John Cage Uncaged: Cage In His American context, Part One
20:20 Cage on Cage, interviews from the BBC Archives
20:40 John Cage Uncaged: Cage In His American context, Part Two
21:30 A discussion of Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story
22:00 John Cage Piano (including works by Feldman, Wolff, Schoenberg)
12/16 update: The Guardian collects Cage-related recollections and discussions by composers and artists, including Martin Creed’s very Cage-y “I want what I want to say to go without saying.”
Mike Mills, How did you get your f*&%ing awesome job?
[via TMN] Considering the number Google searches I still get for Mike Mills, two years after I posted about his Jack Spade-sponsored documentary, Paperboys, and considering how tight Spike, Sofia, Roman and I have become since then, I should be sitting down with Mills myself.
In the mean time, check out Readymade’s interview with Mills, whose feature debut, Thumbsucker, is based on the novel by the less-Mormon-than-I-am-but-more-Mormon-than-you-are Walter Kirn.
Paperboys is now on DVD, but I like my VHS copy in its Spade-y little box.
Revised WTC Memorial design leaked a day early
After a German press agency forgot to attach an embargo notice to them, the NY Times published images of the heavily revised Arad/Walker design for the World Trade Center Memorial a day early. There are quite a few changes.
Perhaps the most significant is the addition of a large (60-100,00SF, 1.5-2.5x the tower footprints themselves) underground space to house artifacts from the attacks.
But that’s not all: Access to the 30′ high space is via a ramp along the exposed slurry wall. From within the space, visitors can look down 40′ to the foundations of the towers. That puts the newly treed park at street-level. Most of Libeskind’s original cultural buildings have either been eliminated or relocated. And it’s not finished yet; jurors describe this design as but “one more stage of memory.”
It’s worth waiting to examine the design in detail, but it feels like it’s trying to accommodate almost every criticism that arose during the guideline and selection process. Which may be why the jury picked Arad’s design in the first place: only the most pared down concept could support all the additions they foresaw. Nice idea, but can it work?
The Leonard Riggio Spiral Jetty Visitor’s Center, Valet parking to the right
Well, not yet. But after years of drought, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty is so visible (and walkable), it’s getting so many visitors, the Dia Center is thinking: upgrades. Making the bone-jarring road more accessible; maybe adding some rocks here and there; getting it up out of the water so those pesky salt crystals don’t form on it anymore. As Michael Govan, the Dia’s director, notes, “The spiral is not as dramatic as when it was first built. The Jetty is being submerged in a sea of salt.”
“What we’re conceiving is an exciting, interactive, immersive Spiral Jetty experience. It’ll be educational, and entertaining. With the lake’s salt level where it is right now, you just float. You can’t actually immerse. We’re talking to some of the governor’s economic development folks about fixing that, though. They’re in Salt Lake. And IMAX. Can you imagine Smithson’s movie in IMAX? Oh, and we gotta fix that fence over there.”
Okay, I made that last paragraph up. Basically, all that’s happening is, they’ve surveyed the site, and they realize the Jetty won’t survive if 2,000 people walk across it every year. One potential benefit of rebuilding Spiral Jetty: Journalists might stop pretending it’s missing.
Related: Dia, the Baedeker for the Contemporary Art Grand Tour [bonus non sequitur: post includes the sole remaining excerpts from Plum Sykes’ outline for Bergdorf Blondes]
Update: check out John Perrault’s commentary at ArtsJournal In 25-words or less: “I knew Smithson. Smithson was kinda a friend of mine. A reconstituted Jetty, sir, is no Robert Smithson.”