SANDY GARNETT ART BLOG

For four years Mr. Gibson has been crucified by the media and Anti-Defamation league for producing a Jesus film and the masses responded angrily by paying the filmmaker a billion dollars to make more movies.  The message sent was that non-Christians will not be cultural gatekeepers of Jesus.  Imagine a Christian group demanding that a Jewish director change his Moses movie to suit their bullying tactics or suffer a lifetime of media abuse.  The media set a climate in which metrollectual lemmings could Mel bash and be hip, Gentile and Jew alike, without ever seeing his movie.  This remarkable hypocrisy created an undercurrent of outrage in the vast majority that simmers today.  His recent and stupid militant zionism remark reads more like media self-fulfilling prophecy after years of national abuse that would have done in a weaker man.  He apologized, those offended hated him before The Passion came out because they were told to, they will hate him the rest of his life because they are ‘hurt’ by Mel, and they will spend the rest of their lives trying to kill or silence the public figure.  The pre-Passion campaign was really ‘Shock and Awe’, it backfired bigtime and I will never forget it.  The relentless campaign against Mr. Gibson was so appalling that I will see every film he ever makes the rest of his life.

This handsome, taught film compliments Mr. Gibson’s the Passion and Braveheart.  Apocalypto boldly talks in Mayan tongue about a peaceful tribe living off the land only to be saddled into the sport of sacrifice.  Adults not slaughtered are carted off to a city of stone for beheading or sexual slavery.  The hero’s journey takes us to Sin City then back to his loved ones only to view the birth of Spain’s dominance in a massive land that was once jungle and tribe.  Out of the frying pan and into the fire.  Some of these brief passages remind me of Malick’s 2005 The New World or The End of the Spear; natives confronted with worlds beyond their grasp.

Physical brutality is a human trait and finance has taken its place in a no less barbarous fashion.  I recently saw ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’, a depression era film depicting the insanity of dance marathons for entertainment, a local Roller Ball of sorts pardon the loose association.  Apacolypto is presented plainly and beautifully in an original epic of very contemporary proportions which juxtaposes the local, national and international pressures humans endure.  Along these lines the agrarian state seems a decent stop, armed humans and tamed land.  The film argues the smaller the better, and there is some truth to this.  Much as computers have allowed the autonomy of small business, the earth’s clean power can be harnessed by any forward thinking land owner who also wants high tech.  Go see ‘Who Killed The Electric Car?’ for example.

There is a sweetness to the jungle that filmmakers flock to, yet living off the land with a pelt and spear is an ugly game for those in glass houses of metropolis, cocooned by inbred intellectual fantasy from the violent kernels of civilization.  Mr. Gibson gets at this in his picture, one of gravity, strength and spirituality that can be gleaned in every rock and waterway the human being tramples or nurtures to enjoy his home on the planet.  Mr. Gibson’s films are not for the faint of heart, which is to say he is an artist.  It’s always harder to look at the underbelly of civilization, where pearls of wisdom lie beneath.  Definite top 10 of the year.

I’m seeing a ton of movies right now as I finish my Christmas work.  Last night I saw the painfully sweet Girl in the Cafe, where Billy Nigh’s severely reserved character reminds me of Sellers’s Being There and Hopkins opposite  Emma Thompson in Remains of The Day.  I give this one 3.5 paintbrushes for its glimmer of hope and as I can watch Billy Nighy in anything after his remarkable rocker charm in Love Actually.  The man’s been acting for 26 years and seems to be in bloom.  And I saw Down in The Valley, with an Ed Norton turned dangerous, a character he plays easily.  This film is 2.5 paintbrushes for its lack of message really, although the acting is good, the direction is good.  I think screenwriting here.

 The other night I saw Born into Brothels, which is a movie about the children of a red light district area in India.  As much as the makers of the film have good hearts this format reads exploitive.  We get the best these children may have to offer, and this underlying thought is hard to work with.  All but one drop out of the private schools the filmmakers are good enough to find for them, and this one might make it out of the brothels if only she stays the course.  It’s hard to look at children whose stars have already shown their brightest, according to the film.

I saw Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, a dismaying and crystal clear picture about global warming and how this is a reality.  Two weeks ago I saw ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?’ and the answer is GM, 13 years ago, when they ultimately decided they could make more short term gains with the Hummer rollout.  What an absurd embarrassment, and really funny today too as Kerkorian just this morning sold off 28 million shares, or 9.9% of the company.  Back to GM’s program in 1993, where driving radius on one battery charge was a problem for several years until an inventor in Detroit figured this out.  Texaco bought that advanced battery technology and shelved it so the electric cars couldn’t get the same radius as a full tank of gas.  Here is a technology that the world has and does not use.  Mechanics use white gloves to fix these damn cars.  No moving parts, no busted engine, no pollution.  Zero.  Zilch.  You drive it home, plug it in, fill the battery with what would be the cost of 30% of a tank of gas (in electricity/coal or windpower, which we have).  I voted for Gore once, and his movie reminds me what I like about him.  Unlike most corrupt government wafflers, Mr. Gore has been consistent on this position for thirty years.  I respect this about him.  I would buy an electric car tomorrow after having seen the electric car movie.  The hybrid thing is fine, the hydrogen thing is years off, but we already had the electric car over a decade ago so what in the hell is the world thinking?  What happened?  The leases came up, GM yanked every last one and shredded each and every car into a million little scraps… what, to erase the cars from memory?  What times we live in.

I had this absurd notion to rate movies 1-5 paintbrushes.  I think this gift might just keep on giving.  The joke’s on me and I’ll be laughing with you if I get that joke going.

I’ve been on a serious movie binge lately in an unusual experiment where my easel and drawings are set up to keep me at the work while various movies play.  Yesterday I saw Man Trouble with Jack Nicholson and Ellen Burstin, which is funny 80’s fare with classic Jack and a good script.  Rumor Has It is a fluffball comedy with the brilliant Shirley McClean, Jennifer Anniston, Kevin Costner and Mark Ruffalo in a film where a Anniston plays a 30something who can’t quite settle down.  This one is a funny premise, fine direction by Mr. Reiner, but light and sappy.  My vote on these two movies head to head is Man Trouble, which has some classic lines like, ‘If the criminal has a weapon the dog will go directly for the groin; this will severely incapacitate the attacker’s brain’… I paraphrase but this Jack line was HYSTERICAL.

Recently I paired The Astronaut’s Wife, Johnny Depp and Charlieze Theron, with In the Cut, Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo.  The Astronaut’s Wife suits my current UFO research as thousands of ufo sightings and movies can be viewed on youtube.  The movie drags but maintains some intensity, it’s message is alarming, and I was suitably paranoid moving on to In The Cut.  This is a strange yet well directed suspense movie where everyone can be the bad guy, even the good guy.  This ‘all the guys are suspects’ formula is slightly tired but how else do you deliver guess work to an audience?  Not every film can be the Illustionist.  It’s very sexual, the main actors engage in graphic language and play, the direction is taught and moody, and I liked the movie.