Song of a Reformed Headhunter

I'm a sucker for movies about writers and artists. Always eager to learn some secret to success, I suppose. As if there is one. Local Color (2006), written and directed by George Gallo, is too simplistic and sentimental to be truly inspirational. The acting by Armin Mueller-Stahl (Nicholi Seroff, the older artist) and Trevor Morgan (John Talia, Jr., the younger artist) makes the film watchable. * I did not know David Hockney started out as an Abstract Expressionist at the Royal Academy. That was probably the greatest revelation of the Met show. In those early works, there was already a keen sense of color. The Room Tarzana (1967) is my favorite of the works on show, beating out all the swimming pools, glass-curtain buildings, Californian landscapes. It has this wonderful sense of coolness about its sexual heat. The most penetrating, psychologically, is "Henry Geldzahler & Christopher Scott" (1969), about the Met curator, ensconced on his throne, and his supplica...

Just returned from a weekend with T and D who live in Kingston, near Woodstock. Friday night, after dinner at an Italian restaurant called Mint, we drove into Rhinebeck to Upstate Cinemas to watch "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel." A good-fun, feel-good movie, it followed a group of British retirees who traveled to India to stay at the eponymous hotel. The ensemble acting was good though the roles hardly stretched the talents of Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith and Dev Patel. India was seen very much through the eyes of these Britishers (a recent widow, a former civil servant, a retired High Court judge, an ex-governess), but it was to the credit of the firm, directed by John Madden, that it fleshed out a few Indian characters such as Dev Patel's hapless romantic. The dialogue was sharp, and the plot provided a couple of surprises ("twist" is too strong a word). On Saturday, after eating lunch and walking about in Rhinebeck, which boasts the ...

"a day on the grand canal with the emperor of china, or surface is illusion but so is depth" is a film by Philip Hass and David Hockney. Hockney explains the art of Chinese painting by examining a 72-foot long 17th century Chinese scroll by Wang Wei, depicting Emperor Kangxi's grand tour of his southern domains. In his explanation, Hockney usefully contrasts Chinese aesthetics with that of Europe, using a Canaletto painting as well as a later Chinese scroll influenced by Western perspectival theory. He also reminds the viewers that they see only what the camera is showing them, that the film too has its frame. Unlike Western paintings, Chinese paintings have a movable frame as the viewer unrolls the scroll. The viewer, in other words, is in control of which section of the scroll he wishes to see, and is not fixed in his viewing position as when he views a Western painting. Viewing a particular section of the scroll, the viewer can also decide where to look, whether to f...