'Work of Art' Finale & Two Superhero Movies
Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
retsukoLast night was the 'Work of Art' finale! ... and I almost forgot about it, which is saying something. As much as I enjoy this show, I don't have the raw, visceral need to follow it that other shows (reality and otherwise) have elicited. Perhaps it's because the drama (especially in the final episode) feels so manufactured, and as such, my contrary nature says, "Ho hum, not real, why not go to bed early?" But I'm still glad I caught the finale, which had a semi-surprising, but very satisfying result. I am exceedingly happy that the judges chose Kymia, whose work was ambitious and interesting. Actually, I thought all three finalists all did something fairly enterprising, but Kymia's work was the clear winner. Sara J's sculpture of the paper cranes flying out of the bird cage was lovely, but her project felt sort of like "I make your Post Secret for you", while Young's work, although very personal and arresting, seemed overly sentimental. I loved that the camera kept coming back to Kymia's drawing of the Viking longship, filled with dirt and with the shadow of the feet on the sail. Yebisu loved this image, and the more I saw it, the more I liked it. It was personal and meaningful without being overly specific and inaccessible. All of her work was like this--her emotions were in there, but they weren't bossing you around to conclusions about what to think. And that's saying something for an artwork.
Young's disappointment over not winning was tempered for me by the thoughts that a) his work had been overly dull and very politically correct and b) he'd already won more than $50,000 through various challenges. I was more saddened by Sara J's loss, since her work had been some of the most interesting in the later half of the show. Ultimately, I would pay to see Kymia and Sara J's work in a museum, which is my personal measure of success for this particular program.
In non-spoilery talk, I do want to say that China's fashion choices last night were crazier than anything she'd previously worn on the whole season, and both of them were overdone and extremely terrible. For the first half of the show, she wore an outfit that made her look like a blueberry (a *plastic* blue beret and a rounded blue dress with matching heels), and for the second half, at the gallery show, she was wearing a black and white number that looked as if she'd been walking past a palette factory that exploded, covering her Victorian nightgown in large black and white disks. With her crazy Bjork hairstyle, the whole concept for her clothing appeared to be something like "Uptight Nanny Secretly Wants to Party With Self-Absorbed Art Critics and Runny Mascara." All season long, her stylist apparently decided that China should look like Carrie Bradshaw, since the real life Sarah Jessica Parker is an executive producer on the show. The problem is that Carrie Bradshaw had more personality than China and even with all that personality, half the outfits she wore looked insane and terrible anyway. The resulting look for China was Lady without the Gaga, Tea with Carrie Bradshaw, a distracting and bizarre mix.
Speaking of distracting and bizarre, I've seen two superhero movies in the past two weeks, and they were both only mildly engaging. "Captain America" and "Green Lantern" were supposed to be all kinds of thrilling, but both ended up being mildly diverting at best.
I was more entertained by Captain America, and this largely had to do with Hugo Weaving's presence. My Dad's assessment of Weaving's villainous character, Red Skull, in the comics is, "Man, that guy never goes away!" Weaving made me believe this villain would never go away, either--he had too many plans up his military, mutated sleeves for that. And, really, his mockery of Captain America was spot on: here's a guy in a ridiculous costume, running bravely towards the mortal peril with apparently little else to fight with than his gumption and gosh-darn-it-American-ness! If I were the Red Skull, I'd roll my eyes at that, too. Captain America himself came off as 2.5 dimensional. I liked his motivation, succinctly stated as, "I don't want to kill anyone. But I don't like bullies." But Chris Evans was weirdly flat in some places, and the script shied away from giving him true character. There's a great moment about three quarters of the way through where Captain is mourning the loss of a friend, and he reveals to the love interest that because of his increased metabolism, he can no longer get drunk. I would have loved for this quiet scene to go on just a little bit longer, because it made him a lot more relatable. But instead, we were back to the action moments later. Whee, Tommy Lee Jones! Don't drive that car off a cliff! OMG! etc.
Far less successful to me was "Green Lantern", and this mainly had to do with Hal Jordan himself. I have to ask: was he really that much of a self-absorbed douchebag in the comics? He came off like an overgrown frat-bound teenager, and it bothered me quite a bit that everything and everyone in the movie hero-worshipped him. (That scene with Blake Lively in the bar was... well, turn off the visuals, and just listen to the dialogue alone. It sounds like something else that involves dubious consent.) I was excited to see non-humanoid aliens, but they were only in the movie for a very short time. Anyway, I got heartily sick of the whole affair about halfway through and spent the rest of the movie playing Thread Words on my Kindle. The next time I looked up, the bad guy was attacking a generic city and causing lots of property damage. Pretty much par for superhero movies.
Young's disappointment over not winning was tempered for me by the thoughts that a) his work had been overly dull and very politically correct and b) he'd already won more than $50,000 through various challenges. I was more saddened by Sara J's loss, since her work had been some of the most interesting in the later half of the show. Ultimately, I would pay to see Kymia and Sara J's work in a museum, which is my personal measure of success for this particular program.
In non-spoilery talk, I do want to say that China's fashion choices last night were crazier than anything she'd previously worn on the whole season, and both of them were overdone and extremely terrible. For the first half of the show, she wore an outfit that made her look like a blueberry (a *plastic* blue beret and a rounded blue dress with matching heels), and for the second half, at the gallery show, she was wearing a black and white number that looked as if she'd been walking past a palette factory that exploded, covering her Victorian nightgown in large black and white disks. With her crazy Bjork hairstyle, the whole concept for her clothing appeared to be something like "Uptight Nanny Secretly Wants to Party With Self-Absorbed Art Critics and Runny Mascara." All season long, her stylist apparently decided that China should look like Carrie Bradshaw, since the real life Sarah Jessica Parker is an executive producer on the show. The problem is that Carrie Bradshaw had more personality than China and even with all that personality, half the outfits she wore looked insane and terrible anyway. The resulting look for China was Lady without the Gaga, Tea with Carrie Bradshaw, a distracting and bizarre mix.
Speaking of distracting and bizarre, I've seen two superhero movies in the past two weeks, and they were both only mildly engaging. "Captain America" and "Green Lantern" were supposed to be all kinds of thrilling, but both ended up being mildly diverting at best.
I was more entertained by Captain America, and this largely had to do with Hugo Weaving's presence. My Dad's assessment of Weaving's villainous character, Red Skull, in the comics is, "Man, that guy never goes away!" Weaving made me believe this villain would never go away, either--he had too many plans up his military, mutated sleeves for that. And, really, his mockery of Captain America was spot on: here's a guy in a ridiculous costume, running bravely towards the mortal peril with apparently little else to fight with than his gumption and gosh-darn-it-American-ness! If I were the Red Skull, I'd roll my eyes at that, too. Captain America himself came off as 2.5 dimensional. I liked his motivation, succinctly stated as, "I don't want to kill anyone. But I don't like bullies." But Chris Evans was weirdly flat in some places, and the script shied away from giving him true character. There's a great moment about three quarters of the way through where Captain is mourning the loss of a friend, and he reveals to the love interest that because of his increased metabolism, he can no longer get drunk. I would have loved for this quiet scene to go on just a little bit longer, because it made him a lot more relatable. But instead, we were back to the action moments later. Whee, Tommy Lee Jones! Don't drive that car off a cliff! OMG! etc.
Far less successful to me was "Green Lantern", and this mainly had to do with Hal Jordan himself. I have to ask: was he really that much of a self-absorbed douchebag in the comics? He came off like an overgrown frat-bound teenager, and it bothered me quite a bit that everything and everyone in the movie hero-worshipped him. (That scene with Blake Lively in the bar was... well, turn off the visuals, and just listen to the dialogue alone. It sounds like something else that involves dubious consent.) I was excited to see non-humanoid aliens, but they were only in the movie for a very short time. Anyway, I got heartily sick of the whole affair about halfway through and spent the rest of the movie playing Thread Words on my Kindle. The next time I looked up, the bad guy was attacking a generic city and causing lots of property damage. Pretty much par for superhero movies.
