It's Oscar night. This is one of those times when I am thrilled to have only daughters - we snuggle up on the sofa, get our snacks, and watch the awards. We enjoy the gowns, the hair, the jewels, and the celebration of all that is Hollywood. It's one of our traditions, and I love it.
(But what was Meryl Streep thinking with that outfit?)
We're big movie people. I have lots of time these days, so I watch a lot of films. Thanks to Netflix, TCM, HBO, and AMC, I see everything. I love the movies ... well, more specificially, I love good movies. I'm not going to sit through something that will waste my time. However, on the right day, I would see that Sandra Bullock/Keanu Reeves movie, what's it called, The Lake House? Would it entertain me for 90 minutes? Good enough.
I like foreign films, good book adaptations, and quality movies for children. I try not to be elitist about what I like, or arrogant. I just like a good movie.
In short, I'm a fan. So I like to see the best performances honored.
At the same time, I think the Academy Awards are a bunch of crap. What do they really mean, anyway? I can barely remember who won last year - who did win best actor, anyway? Best supporting actress? (It was Rachel Weisz, and I think George Clooney - I know he won one year - but I honestly can't be certain.)
There are so many deserving people who don't win: Felicity Huffman should have won last year, not Reese Witherspoon, and Annette Bening deserved to win for Being Julia over Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby - she was that much better.
And there are bunches of people who should never have won. Helen Hunt? Cher? Marlee Matlin? Don't mean to focus on only women, but those are the ones who spring to mind.
I know the awards are supposed to be for a specific performance, but they aren't always. It's political - Henry Fonda didn't win for Grapes of Wrath, so when he did win - for On Golden Pond - it wasn't about that performance. Jane Fonda didn't win during Vietnam, so she won later. If Martin Scorcese wins tonight, it's not about The Departed.
The list of talented people who have never is very long, full of notable names: Barbara Stanwyck, Richard Burton, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Johnny Depp, Lauren Bacall, Annette Bening, Kevin Bacon (he's underrated), Martin Sheen, William H. Macy, Donald Sutherland, John Cusack, Julianne Moore, John Travolta, Joan Allen, Robert Altman, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorcese (?), Peter O'Toole (?).
And come on - Rocky? over All the President's Men? Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan?
No Citizen Kane?
But I am going to defend Crash over Brokeback Mountain; liked them both, but Crash really was the better film (though the cinematography in Brokeback was breathtaking). And I'm also going to defend Grace Kelly beating Judy Garland, simply because I've loved Grace Kelly ever since visiting Monaco in 1976. Can't help it.
It's all subjective - that's the bottom line. And it's entertainment. Yes, films have value, but they are not as important as they like to think they are. It's just an award. I'll bet no one can name five winners of the Oscars the year they graduated from high school, but you can name every one of your grade school teachers.
Exactly. In the end, they just aren't important. But they're still fun.
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4 comments:
Cindy,
We graduated in 1984 and the Best Picture was Amadaeus; Best Actor was F. Murray Abraham (Amadaeus); and how could anyone forget Best Actress: Sally Field (Places in the Heart). We like her, we really like her. See, I can remember a few of them.
Hi Cindy - I watched a couple of hours last night with Tammy and Steve - hadn't seen many of the films this year but still it was fun to see the fashions. Especially since Tammy kept a running commentary on the designers and of course had her usual cryptic remarks on hair and make-up!
While we were in Phoenix, our daughter-in-law Anne Marie (GHS class of '90) said for you to tell your brother James hi for her - she's married to my husband's son and is a physician who owns a Medical Spa. Too bad I didn't have time for some botox! Anne
The purist may look askance but Olaf Van Cleef does not really care. The carping critic may wonder what's going on and the trained painter may cringe at the veritable mixing of artistic metaphors but the delightful outcome is precisely what Van Cleef is all about. Fundamentally, a jeweller with a passion for the chic in quite the classical sense; then a brand ambassador for Cartier, Paris; third — and much later in life — a painter expressing the turbulence of his soul in an emotional outburst of complex colours; Van Cleef in his fourth incarnation is a jeweller and painter morphed into one with his crystal-studded performance, the `Bejewelled Fireflies', which opened in Kolkata's Galerie La Mere recently, under the aegis of the Sri Aurobindo Institute of Culture.
Having overcome the impact of the initial encounter with what may be called a typically Olaf-ish genre of art, one cannot but take a second look and a closer third look into the vivacious world of sparking colours that contains such inexplicable strains of black and grey.
Van Cleef is pouring out his turmoil-filled soul into his external world, which he has immersed in the most striking hues: the turquoise blue against the magenta or the bright yellow or the pale green against the ink blue and the golden brown. The added dimension in this kaleidoscope comes in the shape of tiny bits of Austrian crystals embedded into the art or, in possibly the lighter moments, minuscule strips of chocolate wrapping pasted daintily alongside strips of delicately drawn bamboo. The French expert Ghislain Mollet-Vieville had suggested that Van Cleef bring his jewel craft into his paintings and even as the `classical Olaf' was hesitating, "friend David quietly poured some diamond chips on his work. The effect was stunning". Van Cleef had realised that the jewelled touch would be well worth the effort.
Into this luminescent world enters the black: in herringbones, through serpentines, crosses or even via the deformed Swastika. Many in Van Cleef's family have fallen prey to the Swastika's evil regime but the symbol in the Indian context brings solace to the soul of the painter who has never ceased to grieve for the death of his dearly beloved on the one hand and for the death of simplicity or innocence in the `cultured' world around him.
It is similar to the solace that the City of Joy, Kolkata, provides him with — drawing him for biannual visits, inspiring his art, enlightening his mind "with the sheer depth of its culture" and "invigorating" him with the "throbbing of its heartbeat", which Van Cleef can feel even in distant Paris. There he paints through the night, like a man possessed, placing his colours in mosaics or in a labyrinth of lines wending their way around circles, triangles, rectangles.
"Kolkata peeps out from unexpected corners" of his art: a Krishna-Gopi sequence in a possibly Rajasthan painting with a miniature Howrah Bridge conspicuous through the archway of a palace or the Royal Bengal Tiger placing itself majestically in the midst of another.
What sets the Bejewelled Fireflies apart from his earlier works is the deliberate care with which "every emotion has been made distinct;" every dot that Van Cleef "places on paper is a separate identity, conveying something significant" and his paintings are replete with them. They are striking because of the sheer contrast of the white on black — the artist using his "half a micron felt tipped pen under magnifying glasses to ensure that no dot touches another".
Whether the overall picture is one riot of colour or a mass of confusion reaching out for a world of comprehension possibly depends on the viewer but it does not fail to raise questions. Save a few paintings that are clearly self portrayals: a bemused young Van Cleef contemplating his beloved grandmother or a young French boy seeing an elephant for the first time in India and then envisioning a grand entry into this land of palaces and fountains as a caparisoned pachyderm in the company of two younger members of the species, which convey wonderment, others are poignant even in their splendour. There are the monarchs, the fish, the weeping women by the well, the batiked fabric or the timeless clock. Most are fenced by spotted lines of black and white; sorrow and joy.
Elephants are very central to Van Cleef's current series: the dancing twins with their crystal-studded cloaks or the majestic shape framed against the equilateral arch of a maharaja's abode. It is not just the physical presence of the jewels that give the paintings an embossed look; it is the Moulins Papier d'Arches paper, "pure cotton, produced by a company of 1492 vintage". Van Cleef has found in this a material that has a mind of its own: "making a very special contribution to the painting as it soaks up the colours". For some artists it may have been nightmarish but Van Cleef has found a way of making the paper cooperate with his fingers, which choose to do a bit of calligraphy now, or again some delicate stone placement or even engaging in some careless dabbing of paint on paper, and then, when the fingers want to shock deliberately they just pick up chocolate paper, snipping it into infinitesimal bits to be scattered over the easel; carefully carelessly. Van Cleef does not know what he will paint; his soul takes over as he devotes about a 100 hours to each work.
Bejewelled Fireflies is more than special because it is a tribute to the city that Van Cleef loves more than any other: its spirit encompassed by the Howrah Bridge that connects everyone and everything "without any sense of stratification; like a soul that is set free".
It is this sense of freedom that Van Cleef is seeking ; freedom from the complexities of his mind that snatch his sleep over endless nights; freedom to lose himself in his world of jewels and gems; and in the colour of crushed lapis lazuli or simple sindur that adorns the forehead of the Indian woman.
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