nine reasons

2007-08-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

If you're in DC, you really have to visit the National Gallery west building (East Building forthcoming), at least to see the highlights of the highlights.

1. Van Eyck's Annunciation, 1434

The fabrics, the biblical scenes in the tiles of the floor, the color gradient of Gabriel's wing, the distorted landscape through the thick church lead glass, are all amazing up close.

2. Gozzoli's The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of John the Baptist, 1461

I have a soft spot for Gozzoli, but I think he's earned it. The tiled ceiling shows that it was early enough after the systematization of single-point perspective that it's okay to show it off. The numerous scenes really tell a story, if you're able to decipher it (start at the back, presumably, with Salome and her mother; then, the dance, then the beheading, I believe). A great Italian Renaissance painting.

3. Da Vinci's Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci, 1474

The first time I saw this I was unimpressed. The second time, a month or so ago, I was completely enthralled, in spite of the crowd. Her drowsiness is wonderful, as is the shading, the complete effacement of all brushstrokes, the kind of glossiness of it. Women today would kill to have Ginevra's skin, I'm sure.

4. Rubens's Fall of Phaeton, 1604

Seriously, if you look up baroque in a dictionary, there should be a picture of this. There are other Rubenses that should be in the dictionary under "rubenesque" but this one is all guy.

5. El Greco's Laocoon, 1610

God I love El Greco. Falls under mannerist, I guess, so if you were to go through the movements from the Renaissance on, you'd count this before baroque, even though this was painted afterwards. Plus, El Greco is so much El Greco that to call him mannerist is almost a disservice, I think. The tone of the skin, the proportions---plus he was a precursor to my favorite college-dorm-painting-that-I'd-never-actually-put-on-my-wall-
because-it'd-be-so-cliche (see also: Klimt, Gustav), Picasso's Old Guitarist.

6. Vermeer's Woman Holding a Balance, 1664

Like all of these, must be seen in person. I didn't believe people who said that, at least about paintings that aren't all about texture and brushstrokes, but for all of these, seeing them in person really alters your opinion of them. This would be a genre painting, if anyone's keeping track. The museum's website has a nice little slideshow analysis about it, highly recommended, but to summarize: the light.

7. Fragonard's Diana and Endymion, 1753

A perfect instance of rococo: erotic, frothy, pastel. Also a perfect evocation of the time, or at least how we now imagine it: the decadence of the French monarchy before the Revolution. For comparison on how paintings of the day reflected the zeitgeist, compare rococo to neoclassicism a few years later. The former, all diagonals (see the x of their bodies), the latter, all right angles (Socrates dying, etc). Or even better, track the trajectory of Goya's career, from rococo frivolity to Saturn eating his kids. Yeah.

8. J.M.W. Turner's Approach to Venice, 1844

Umm, I don't know what movement this technically is. I'm kind of skipping over neoclassicism, romanticism, and realism. I guess this would be romantic, actually, because, you know, it's so romantic. If I were trying to be smart, I'd have put in a John Constable instead, because he's so academic and whatever. But Turner is so pretty.

9. Cassatt's Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878

This makes me love Cassatt, and I can't say I did before I saw it. Her position, her face, the dog, the very Cassatt-via-surimono reduction of the scene's depth. You can see impressionism at basically any American museum in a city that had a big industrial surge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (including Pittsburgh, but also Cleveland, St. Louis, etc.). But this, which really isn't impressionism but was concurrent with it, was new to me, in the best way.

2007-08-06T21:22:00.000-07:00

Watch if....

1. Priest in drawer. You'll understand once you see it. The movie was actually pretty hilarious, and this was just one of many absurd moments.

2. There's gay and then there's gay-gay, and this film has plenty of both. British public schools (which are private schools to Americans, confusing, yeah), no surprise, are kind of hotbeds, apparently, of kind of teasing flirtatiousness among the (all male) students, but still, there are obviously some characters who are actually gay, and sorting out who falls into each category is part of the film's fun. It also makes it much more compelling, and creepy, and subversive, and the whole situation initially comes to the fore during...

3. ...slow motion gymnastics. So bizarre, and very '60s, but awesome too.

4. Malcolm McDowell unknowingly practicing for his Alex. A really great performance, he's all hilarious and rebellious and then he cries a little, or something.

5. The very, very '60sish aesthetic of the whole thing. I loved the credits, and the chapter titles, and the lowercase red letters of the titles, and the screen-printed opening image. There were also periodic shifts to black and white, which I'd guess were a practical/budgetary decision but that added to the whole thing (a quick check on imdb says my guess was correct). See also, the Blow-Upesque sex scene involving tigers. The women, all naked in that way that happened in the '60s that makes it clear that nude women were still a novelty in mainstream films, and the way they touch themselves inappropriately. The Patty Hearst-like female character also was a nice touch.

6. Related: one of the women and her husband, the headmaster (I believe), in separate Lucy/Ricky beds. She plays the recorder as he prepares for bed. Hilarious.

7. Lots of ways to think about in terms of other films: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (which I think it most resembles, as its kind of British counterpart), Scorpio Rising, Heathers, Harry Potter, even.

8. The '60s again, it was made in '68: the heroes actually believe that (rough quote) "a well-placed bullet can change the world" and I'm kind of thinking that, via the film's kind of heavyhanded allegory, the filmmaker's are saying "yeah, you have to rebel against these institutions"...

9. ...but at the same time---and this is why, though it's dated, the film is still probably better than it was when it was released---it shows (at least after 40 years of hindsight) the futility of '60s revolutionary ideology. Revolution is just as institutionalized as the capitalist, or the headmaster, whatever. Che Guevara and other figures who were icons (codified, conventionalized) of marxism or whatever, are on Travis's walls. And at the end, I think Travis kind of realizes this: taking out every institution out there (the church, the school system, the military, the government) is a very serious game, but also kind of silly. If "one well-placed bullet can change the world" then why is he firing entire machine-gun rounds with little chance at more than a quick death and an article in the paper?

2007-07-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

Watch Friday Night Lights.

1. I don't remember My So-Called Life much, and I'm pretty sure whatever it is that I do remember is from watching it in re-runs many years after it ended, because let's face it, I was nine at the time it aired (thanks, imdb), but even so, remember Angela (remembered her name without imdb, thank you very much) and Jordan Catalano? One of those all the laughter all the tears teen television relationships. Friday Night Lights has a teen romance of comparable depth but less histrionics in the burgeoning love of Matt the quarterback and the coach's daughter Julie. It's most adorable and probably realistic high-school love situation I can think of that's ever been on television. Not quite as dramatic as Jordan Catalano was, wasn't there an episode where he was homeless or something? Or was that the gay kid. In any case, it has a gloriously high squee factor and yet never comes across as overly manipulative.

2. NBC.com streams the shows, and unlike abc.com, which has a lot of the popular shows, but only a few episodes of each, NBC has the less-popular shows, including Friday Night Lights, but has the entire seasons of them. Yes, this means 30 Rock streams too.

3. You'll care. Believe me, I really didn't think I would care, or that I could be made to care, about a bunch of (more or less, see below) stock characters from a dying Texas town, all obsessed with football. But I cared.

4. Connie Britten's awesomeness. Edie Falco should thank NBC whenever she wins her Emmy this year, because if the right people actually saw Britten's sex-talk with her daughter, the Emmy would be hers. She could be the new Lauren Graham.

5. The post-ironic tone of the whole thing, including the unironic use of the slow!clap. This is related to number 3. The show isn't about how weird it is that a bunch of people are as obsessed with football as they are, or about how weird it is that a network like NBC would air a show about these obsessed people. Britten is useful here, too, because she is about as unobsessed as anyone on the show, and so viewers (or me, anyway) are able to trust her---if she can get into football so much and put up with her husband's coaching so much, then there must be something there. The slow!clap is about exactly what you'd expect, but watching it (by myself, which may have influenced the reaction) I couldn't even take a cynical attitude toward it.

6. The banter between wife and husband is Tracy-Hepburnesque. Or, let me think, Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (though less nefarious, obviously). Or, Cary Grant and basically anyone. Or Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in Before Sunrise and (especially) Before Sunset. They do that overlapping-talking thing that is just great.

7. Cinematography, naysayers be damned. Yes, it's that stylized-handheld thing, but I like it. It makes everything feel immediate, and even though it may just be a convention that I'm responding to, I'm still responding, if that makes any sense.

8. Supporting characters, especially Buddy Garrity and Matt's grandma. Buddy is one of those obnoxious characters that you hate, not because of anything huge, but because of a bunch of little things that just add up to an awful person, and then you hate yourself for hating him, because he turns out to have hidden depths, and then you hate him again for getting yourself to stop hating him, because he does more stuff that irks you to know end. Matt's grandma is the less-exciting half of one of the series' best scenes, when Matt pretends to be his grandfather (singing) in order to get his grandma to go to bed. While his date watches (see number 1). And then, in the car, when it's her, Matt's friend, and Lyla and Tyra, she's great and I love her.

9. Beautiful people. Soooooooooo many beautiful people.