FREE LACMA Admission This Week to See "Levitated Mass"

Here's LACMA's blurb:

"As a show of thanks to the many communities which saw and hosted the historic transport of

the 340-ton boulder that is now part of Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass at LACMA, the museum is offering free admission to residents of select zip codes during the week of June 24 to July 1."

Among those zip codes are these from Long Beach: 90802, 90803, 90804, 90805, 90806, 90807, 90808, 90810, 90813, 90814, and 90815.  For more qualifying zip codes, go HERE .

What IS Levitated Mass ?  Here's what LACMA says:

"Levitated Mass by artist Michael Heizer is composed of a 456-foot-long slot constructed on LACMA's campus, over which is placed a 340-ton granite megalith. As with other works by the artist, such as Double Negative (1969), the monumental negative form is key to the experience of the artwork. Heizer conceived of the artwork in 1968, but discovered an appropriate boulder only decades later, in Riverside County, California. Taken whole, Levitated Mass speaks to the expanse of art history, from ancient traditions of creating artworks from megalithic stone, to modern forms of abstract geometries and cutting-edge feats of engineering."

The work was unveiled this past weekend, as you can see below.

I'm sure a number of you were aware of the boulder as it made its way through the area.  Here are a few of the photos I took as it was headed down Atlantic Ave. from Bixby Knolls, over the 405, and past Spring St.

 

See LACMA's WEBSITE for information about the other current exhibits (including a tribute to the title sequences from James Bond movies!).

In the Kingdom of Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson, director and co-writer of such films as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Fantastic Mr. Fox, has a new movie out: Moonrise Kingdom.

With an impressive 95% Fresh critical consensus on the Rotten Tomatoes site (and a 92% from the non-professional-critic Audience), the film still has its haters.  I give you The New York Observer's Rex Reed:

"Preceded by bewildering blogs and Tweets (and even a few genuine reviews) from Cannes ('A Tender Triumph!' 'Glows in the Darkness!' 'Ode to Arrested Development!'), Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom is juvenile gibberish about two 12-year-olds who get married in a Boy Scout camp that is too sexually outrageous for the preteen age group it portrays and too tween for grown-ups. Like all Wes Anderson movies, it is naïve, mannered, pretentious and incomprehensible. He co-wrote it with Roman Coppola (yikes! another Coppola!). Together they were responsible for The Darjeeling Limited, one of the worst movies of all time. This one is neither as contrived as The Royal Tenenbaums nor as moronic as The Darjeeling Limited, but its boredom quotient is still stuck in the same unbroken wave of dubious tedium Mr. Anderson is famous for. (It also features another Coppola, the creepy Jason Schwartzman.) What is it with this guy and his awful movies masquerading as 'original ideas' that turns otherwise sensible critics into slobbering groupies?"

Reed would certainly fall into the group that Michael Specter calls Anderson's "detractors."  In a new Wall Street Journal piece (a mini-tribute, really) called "The World of Wes Anderson,"  Specter writes that Anderson "has been tagged with the loathsome term 'quirky,' largely because he has a particular vision and is tenacious in bringing it to life."

And whether you love his work or hate it, Anderson's work IS immediately recognizable as his.  Check out what he does with this recent car commercial:

Besides the "quirky" epithet, Anderson's work is also often dismissed for being "precious" and "twee."  I'm guessing that many who throw those terms around couldn't actually provide accurate definitions of either word, so let me turn to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

precious: "excessively refined: AFFECTED"

twee: "chiefly British : affectedly or excessively dainty, delicate, cute, or quaint"

And since both definitions refer to AFFECTATION, here's that definition: "the act of taking on or displaying an attitude or mode of behaviour not natural to oneself or not genuinely felt."

So the knock on Anderson seems to be that his work is fake, not genuine, pretentious, cutesy, and--something that seems to lurk under the surface of a lot of Anderson criticism--not suitably masculine.  I think there's a journal article there, but I want to move on.  Here's the trailer to Moonrise Kingdom:

Here are a few words from Wes Anderson:

"I want to try not to repeat myself. But then I seem to do it continuously in my films. It's not something I make any effort to do. I just want to make films that are personal, but interesting to an audience. I feel I get criticized for style over substance, and for details that get in the way of the characters. But every decision I make is how to bring those characters forward."

Here are a few words from me (or is that too twee?): I love some of Anderson's movies and don't respond to some others.  For me, the stylization works best when it reflects the imagination and originality of youthful protagonists.  At other times, it can have the effect of distancing us emotionally.  In Moonrise Kingdom, the Aesthetics (with a capital A) can keep us at arm's length, but slowly the movie pulls us in (if we let it), providing a surprisingly emotional pay-off.

But who cares what I think?  Wes Anderson is a stylish guy.  Just look at him.

Some might see affectation.  I see someone who is true to himself.

My Voyage to Italy

I got back from Italy a few days ago.  Of course, I was there for the food.

And for the antiquities.

And for the sense of history all around you.

And for the scenery.

Not to mention the people watching.

But a couple of hours after landing in Rome, I snapped the throngs of tourists at the Trevi fountain,

and foremost in my mind was Federico Fellini,

who used the fountain in a famous scene from his 1960 film La Dolce Vita.

And for the rest of the trip, the images I saw around me often brought to mind the images from classic Italian films.  "I saw these movies.  They had a powerful effect on me.  And you should see them."  Not my words but Martin Scorsese's, spoken in his nearly-four-hour-long documentary about Italian cinema My Voyage to Italy (1999).

In his film, Scorsese discusses the work of Fellini, along with that of other major Italian directors Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, and Michelangelo Antonioni, presenting generous clips from many great films that will make you want to fill a Netflix queue.  It's like sitting in on a university class taught by the best film professor imaginable.  His enthusiasm is infectious.

And the movies Scorsese discusses are ones that every serious student of film should know.

Here are a couple clips. The first focuses on Fellini's La Dolce Vita.

The next focuses on Visconti's Senso (1954).