School started more than a week ago [I know, right?], and the prep and attendant mishegas means I have a buncha tabs open and a ton of late-summer filmy stuff I've had no time to write about. So it's bullet time!
- Do you follow the Boston Globe's Movie Nation blog? You should. A recent thoughtful post by Mark Feeney leapt from a Cronenberg reference in the forthcoming William Gibson novel [squee!] to plumb the way the movies "have a capacity to superimpose themselves on actual human experience as no other art form can." Another touted an exhibit of downright cinematic advertising photos from the pre-Mad Men 1930s at the unlikely venue of Harvard Business School: "Glimpse the right image, though, and a mental movie can emerge unbidden. It's a collaboration between our imagination and years of movie-watching experience."
- Speaking of photography, you have a little more than two weeks to make it to Dartmouth's Hood Museum of Art to catch "Made in Hollywood: Photographs from the John Kobal Foundation." So many iconic silver prints, but also plenty of surprising pictures, too. While you're on the second floor, check out the adjacent piece from the permanent collection, Christian Marclay's 1995 video "Telephones." Then head to Murphy's, sit at the bar, and let Liam look after you. He's like the Irish Jeeves of bartenders.
- According to the Economist, Marclay has a new 24-hour piece debuting at White Cube Gallery in London this October called "The Clock," which "is a montage of clips from several thousand films, structured so that the resulting artwork always conveys the correct time, minute by minute, in the time zone in which is it being exhibited." No dates for a stateside stop for the eternal loop yet, but Paula Cooper Gallery in New York also put up the bucks for the project, so here's hoping.
- While I'm on the subject of ahhhht [as the people of my home state would say], if you find yourself in greater Boston with a few free hours between now and October 17, I simply MUST insist you hit the ICA for the CHARLES LEDRAY: workworkworkworkwork exhibit. I loved it so, I went on two separate days. Plus, there's an amazing patio: drink in the harbor while you drink!
- Anyone else watch the Chanel ad Scorsese helmed and, aside from the 0:30 nod to "Blow Up," think meh?
- Do you keep reading about the 8 1/2 Foundation and wanna be young again? Or at least work your way through the recommended films? Me, too. Even rolling over the film photos to read the very funny synopses is good stuff.
- "I know deep down it's me, not them." The Guardian's Danny Leigh cops to a growing dislike of Michael Cera.
- Finally, like everybody else, I am making my way through what I hope is the first of many issues of n + 1 film review. I'm going slowly, to savor it, and also because of [see opening paragraph above].
