Sunday 15 December 2013

Artistic beauty in film

There are many sides to a personality and if something flips my coin, it's art.

Whether brush, pastel, pencil, oil or crayon, the maestros in charge taught these implements to stretch muscles they never thought possible.

Well boil my kettle, such magnificence made the silver screen rather more sophisticated.

Cinema can move in mysterious ways but I believe your asses won't until you're done here.

Personally, I think sculpture doesn't have the same clout as scrawl but regardless of opinion, it's still art.

I only have a solitary example of poster (also used for DVD cover art) but hey, it's better than nothing.

We see the clever use of Van Gogh's Starry Night
Now that's sorted out, take a bite of a fantastic steak sandwich.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off is the quintessential 80's movie.

Matthew Broderick, Mia Sara and pal Alan Ruck make the most of their unauthorised leave of absence which involves visiting the Art Institute of Chicago.

Here are most that tickles interest.

Three Men Walking - Alberto Giacometti
Walking Man - Alberto Giacometti
America Windows - Marc Chagall
Ferris and Sloane, get a room before I puke...
Bathers by a River - Henri Matisse
Equestrienne (at the Cirque Fernando) - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Greyed Rainbow - Jackson Pollock
Paris Street Rainy Day - Gustave Caillebotte
Improvisation 30 (cannons) - Wassily Kadinsky
Jacques and Berth Lipchitz - Amedeo Modigliani
A Pablo Picasso triple-hit combo.  Genius.
Sloane (The Red Armchair)
Ferris (Portrait of Sylvette David)
Cameron (Seated Woman)
Nighthawks - Edward Hopper
Nude Under a Palm Tree - Pablo Picasso
Day of the Gods - Paul Gauguin
Reclining Figure - Henry Moore
Portrait of Balzac - Auguste Rodin
Shortly after, its pose is parodied by the classroom skippers.



Tanktotem - David Smith
The Old Guitarist - Pablo Picasso
The Child's Bath - Mary Cassatt
Winged Figure - Abbot Handerson Thayer
This is more famous than something really famous, hanging out in Famousland.

Cameron focuses solely on the little girl in Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande-Jatte because he identifies the affection shown between her and mother.  The attention he receives from his own family is more disconnected than dial-up.
Finally.

Woman Before Aquarium - Henri Matisse
Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?

No, neither have I.

Before Jack Nicholson's Joker chats to Vicki Vale at the Flugelheim Museum in Tim Burton's original 1989 vision of Batman, he and his henchmen set about defacement.

Portrait of George Washington - Gilbert Stuart
The one dollar bill.
Pink and Blue - Pierre Auguste Renoir
The Blue Boy - Thomas Gainsborough
Self Portrait - Rembrandt
Two Dancers - Edgar Degas
Woman Holding a Balance - Johannes Vermeer
The Syndics of the Drapers - Rembrandt
So which painting was tagged by Mr Happy?
Approaching a City - Edward Hopper
"I kinda like this one, Bob.  Leave it."
Francis Bacon's Figure with Meat is spared the indiscretion of vandalism.
Based on Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon,Tom Noonan's serial killer Francis Dolarhyde, dubbed The Tooth Fairy is obsessed with William Blake's The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun in Michael Mann's Manhunter .

From back to front.




Even the canvas was terrified of such a surreal masterpiece.

Although featuring the same characters, Red Dragon is 'apparently' not a remake of Manhunter. Despite that curious claim, Ralph Fiennes provided an admirable replacement as the antagonist.

Sleazy tabloid journalist Freddy Lounds (Philip Seymour Hoffman) watches in horror as The Dragon is revealed.  In Manhunter, Stephen Lang assumed the role. 
He's at it again In Ridley Scott's Hannibal, the very unnecessary sequel to The Silence of the Lambs.

The Ghost of a Flea is very briefly shown on a postcard.
From the back, Lecter's message reads:

"Did you ever think Clarice, why the Philistines don't understand you? It's because you're the answer to Samson's riddle: you are the honey in the lion.  Sounds like him to me.
In the darkly impressive American Psycho, Christian Bale's Patrick Bateman displays subtle taste.

A series of surrogate paintings by Alan McCollum.
Okay, This Means War (between Tom Hardy and Chris Pine).

To sweep Reese Witherspoon off her attractive feet, Pine claims to be an expert on Gustav Klimt.

Things are going well, until Tom Hardy's intervention...

"To show intimacy with the canvas, he would finger a painting and sometimes he would use mud and sticks.  If he could not find a stick, he'd use his dick."

Ha ha ha!

From the immediate left to right, admire portraits of Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein and Eugenia Primavesi.
The Harpist
Undine
Kick-Ass 2 promised so much but was decidedly mediocre with scenes featuring The Motherfucker leaving a bad taste.

Anyway, the original was great and guess what?

Andy Warhol's Gun pop art
What's that white canvas thing with coloured dots?
Applying the digital zoom...
Hey, point that thing away from me.
Isonicotinic Acid Ethel Ester - Damien Hirst
Barring an amazing clone, I don't see what else it can be.

Going back to what I said about Hannibal, there is a world of difference between unnecessary and pointless.

Which brings me to Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, that falls under both.

Still, Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf) observes a truly horrific piece of art.

Saturn Devouring His Son - Francisco Goya
Bretton James (Josh Brolin) later destroys it in a terror tantrum.
After Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon, John McTiernan's Die Hard set the action benchmark that others struggled to follow.

Although 'cop-related', both are completely different films.

Anyway, hired for anything apart from his charming personality, Theo (Clarence Gilyard Jr.) finally persuades the computer to open the vault that houses something other than millions of dollars.

Ecole de Dance - Edgar Degas
Humanity is on the brink of extinction in human infertility yarn Children of Men.
The large mural behind Clive Owen and co is Picasso's Guernica.
Meet Kim (Felicity Jones), from surprisingly enjoyable romcom Chalet Girl.
Looky, looky here - it's only Weeping Woman, another piece from my old mate Pablo.
World cinema cannot resist a poke.

The original Oldboy was notorious for live octopus ingestion, brutality, hammer dentistry and plot twists you didn't see coming.

It remains a great chunk of celluloid.

Right near the start, the 'imprisoned' stares at this frightening face.

The Man of Sorrows - James Ensor
Am I interested in the already released and less than publicised Spike Lee remake?

No way, never and definitely not - in that order.

Action thriller Hanna takes centre stage.

Thanks to some DNA enhancement, she was part of a since shut down super-soldier project and people are out to extinguish her flame quicker than it was lit.

While the titular character is busy researching her mysterious past, we are very briefly treated to a portion of disturbing detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymous Bosch.
Die Hard With a Vengeance was the last time we saw John McClane with hair and heard "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker".

This is probably the best shot you can capture of a two piece mural clearly displaying Georges Seurat's masterpiece.


Yeah, I'm brilliant.

The end is just the beginning as music, video games and more may just feature something of a similar vein...

Oh yeah, the silver screen will also return.

It's getting towards 'that' time again so if this proves to be my final feature of 2013, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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