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9 June 2013

A few months ago I commented on the dearth of truly good acceptance speeches during the Golden Globes. The Oscars were even worse. Now the Tony Awards have provided the gold standard for the acceptance speech: Cicely Tyson.

Check out Cicely's eloquence and composure. No note cards. No jitters. She tells her story - briefly - with grace and even wraps it up on cue with a terrific acknowlegment to Broadway - and those pesky award producers keeping an eye on their watches.

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22 April 2013

So let me get this straight. That stupid coward Tamerlan Tsarnaev was 26, married to a 24-year-old woman, and had a 3-year-old child? Doing the math, the baby was born sometime in 2010. And yet that jackass spent 6 months in Russia in 2011? Seriously? Gosh. That sounds like a happy marriage, doesn't it? Sounds like he was quite the engaged father, to boot.

As for his idiot brother, Dzhokar, they should parade each and every one of his classmates through his hospital room and have each and every one of them look him in what's left of his face and ask him, "What the hell were you thinking, dumbass?" Then, optionally, they could spit in his face.

Come on now. Time to take off the kid gloves. People died because of these imbeciles. Some people out there want to see the world burn. No need to beat around the bush or play nice with human refuse like Dzhokar Tsarnaev. He didn't respect Bostonians, therefore there's no inherent obligation to show this piece of nothing respect.

And what's up with this bullshit about Tamerlan not being able to make American friends? Good gravy! Plenty of people struggle with making friends and "civilized" society in general is no place for wimps - and it's only worse if you're a frickin' asshole wife-beater! So let's not even try to frame this as an issue of inclusiveness and assimilation wherein America failed the immigrant. He married an American... Hmmm... Wait a minute... He married an American woman but pouted about how he didn't have a single American friend? Did I mention how happy their marriage must've been?

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13 January 2013

I had the Golden Globes on for background noise this evening. I've received the first dose of my annual injection of inspiration and renewed commitment to getting my two primary screenplays finally down on paper.

I'm disappointed with Argo winning Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director - it's a movie about making a movie, so it's not a big surprise from that point of view - Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty rank as more deserving in my book. I am pleased, though, with Les Miserables' three big wins - Best Picture (Comedy or Musical), Hugh Jackman, and Anne Hathaway. It was also cool to see Jessica Chastain take top honors for her work in Zero Dark Thirty. Of course, Adele's win for Skyfall made me quite happy.

As usual, most people just vomitted up a laundry list of platitudes and thank-yous. It was refreshing to hear Jennifer Lawrence, Hugh Jackman, and Jessica Chastain break away from the pack with some really good comments, some funny, some touching.

Daniel Day-Lewis, though, made my favorite speech. His sincerity was so pure. And his jokes were perfect. Earlier in the evening, President Clinton came on stage to introduce a clip from Lincoln and Day-Lewis joked about how he wasn't sure people were prepared for two former presidents on the same stage in one evening. But the really good bit was his joke about the Queen parachuting in (as she ever-so dramatically did at the London Olympics) to make a last-minute pitch for Skyfall.

Awesome! Thanks, Daniel, I appreciate the plug for my favorite movie of 2012.

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6 January 2013

Ah. Okay. There are no actual Van Goghs on display in the Vincent|Clyfford exhibit. I don't want to call it a cheap cash-in on the DAM's excellent Becoming Van Gogh exhibit, but it wasn't what I was expecting. I should've figured something was up when there was no mention of an exhibit catalog.

Anyway, it is a nice, small museum, although for my tastes it dedicates too much space to Clyfford's larger, more abstract, later works than his more interesting earlier drawings and paintings. But that's my taste.

The Vincent|Clyfford exhibit shows some of Clyfford's paintings and, via iPad fixtures, allows visitors to see comparisons to similar works by Van Gogh. There were also three well-done and informative videos that made several parallels between Vincent and Clyfford. Both were contemplating to some degree or another work as a pastor (indeed, Vincent tried and failed). Both didn't shy away from portraying the uglier side of things. Both had humble beginnings. For Van Gogh, he also had a humble and premature end. In contrast, I was surprised to see mention of Clyfford owning several Jaguars in the museum's nice historical exhibit about the man himself.

Overall, I liked the museum and I'm glad it's in Denver. Based on what I read at the museum, Clyfford was an artist of sincere ambitions and with a significant amount of integrity. Of course, that's based on the information in the mueseum. I'll have to dig around and see if that impression survives further research.

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1 January 2013

To kick off the new year, I checked out the excellent Becoming Van Gogh exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. When I was in Amsterdam last month, I was disappointed to see the Van Gogh Museum was completely closed for renovations until the spring. On the plus side, they had a great temporary exhibit at the new Hermitage Amsterdam (well, fairly new; the Hermitage satellite opened in 2009). The irony is a huge swath of Van Gogh's work is currently right down the street from me - at the DAM and at the Clyfford Still Museum (checking that one out next weekend).

As for the DAM, it was an impressive collection of work from Van Gogh's early drawings to his final painting, completed merely two weeks before his death. The audio tour glossed over the man's chronic nuttiness (I'm wading through Van Gogh: The Life to get the complete story, in painful detail). The focus was on his art and his perseverance as a self-taught artist. I should start a list of all the great men and women who were self-taught in whatever field they became famous.

His nuttiness notwithstanding, Van Gogh made plenty of cogent observations that were documented in his many, many letters. Here are some inspirational quotes from the man that were presented in the Denver exhibit.

• "Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures."
• "The uglier, older, meaner, iller, poorer I get, the more I wish to take my revenge by doing brilliant color, well arranged, resplendent."
• "One can speak poetry just by arranging colors well, just as one can say comforting things in music."
• "For the great doesn't happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together."
• "I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort - and disappointment and perseverance.
• "And the great isn't something accidental; it must be willed."
• "How much there is in art that's beautiful, if only one can remember what one has seen, one is never empty or truly lonely, and never alone."

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