The Art of The Steal

-I feel like art may be similar to film appreciation. If you watch Rebel Without a Cause now a days, if you were to put those same lines in a movie today, film it the same way and use the exact same script in today's film world, it wouldn't be as treasured, I feel. It would be completely unremarkable. But the movies are appreciated now because they were good for their respective time periods. I really feel that to be true. Similar to art, I think. Although lesser so. Art has technique, it has form. There are things about certain paintings that people appreciate (things that I feel like I will never get). It's something that, I imagine, evolves and changes as the times change. As does all forms of art. So it's more like some scribbles by Serrat was brilliant in its time, but if that same piece of art would be done in the exact same way in this day and age, it would look like something that's been done and nothing remarkable. Could that be true?

-It's like they can't win. They want the art in the right location, but when they put it in the right location (the original building at the Barnes museum) and the neighbors get mad. And then everything blows up in the stupidest way ever. So basically, they just want what the will says, no visitors. Which is lame.

-It was funny to see the filmmakers attempt to take both sides, when you know what they really thought about the whole situation. You could sense what side they were on. They interviewed Glanton. Thankfully he said yes and they had the opportunity to TELL both sides, but they didn't really stick up for both sides, so much. Which is a hard thing to do. And not all docs need to even do that. Some docs are MADE to take one position. Some docs are made jsut to give information and tell the story.

-I love how they told us each person that wouldn't speak up and defend themselves on camera. It was like Food Inc in that way. They would talk shit about someone and then let us know that they declined to be interviewed for the film. That made them look even worse than they would have looked if they just got on camera and said no comment for every single question.

-It was an interesting thing, watching this. After watching so many docs that have made me cry; docs about the state of education in America, docs about poverty, and death, and mental illness, and physical deformity, watching something about a bunch of nerds arguing with a bunch of rich people about a bunch of art that's priced by people on the basis of I don't know what characteristics....this seems like such small potatoes. Also valid in its own right, of course, but just not worth heartache. In comparison, of course. I'm sure a lot of these people are rightly heartbroken. And their feelings are justified. I guess.

-I really extremely don't see the big deal here. This guy bought a bunch of art, and then wanted it specified in his will that after he's dead and gone and no longer living on this earth in any way shape and form, no one should be able to publicly see these pieces...that he didn't make, he just paid for. No one should be able to borrow these pieces. No one should be able to sell the art. No one can ever visit these priceless (although very expensive) pieces of art. Says the dead man. What a selfish guy with a selfish will. It's not the city of Philidelphia's art. That's true. it's Mr. Barnes art. But you know what? Mr. Barnes is dead. I get the objection to not wanting it made profitable, just for a "damn the man" kind of reason. But I don't get not wanting it to be viewed by the public so they could appreciate and learn from it. Also, he's dead. They probably thought of this guy as a eccentric misanthropic genius, but I see his as a controlling almost psycho. You can't take it with you, dude. These guys being interviews just seem, more than anything, to be like butt hurt fanboys. They actually sound very similarly to the fanboys from The King of Kong. And I don't knwo if I mentioned this already, but he'd very dead.

Art & Copy

The opening maked it seem like it's going to be a discovery channel show focusing on ants building their hill. Different from the quirky cover of the DVD. When it gets into it, getting into the credit sequence with the superimposed titles and everything, you can tell this is going to be a pretty tight doc.

It's actually pretty funny that I watched this the day after watching Mad Men. I felt like I was doing after school homework to prepare myself for next week's episode. This one was about the ads we see everyday, where they come from, and who made them. Sort of. One of the comments for the IMDb page for this movie says "All copy, no art," and that's true. They talked to the copy writers about how they came up the slogans for the ads (I love NY, etc), but they didn't talk to the artists who brought them to life. That was a missing perspective I think.

It's an interesting take to begin it with the guys who put up the billboard sign, then segue into the guys (and gals) behind the signs. I don't know if I like it or not, but it was different. As I got into it, I think it became more distracting. It worked with the shots of the beautifully framed people on the street and sky/city/day shots, and it all added tonally to the film, but I'm still trying to figure out if that's actually what they were going for or if it was mostly used for b-roll to cut the interview footage around. Sometimes the footage was too on the nose (the long shot of the Steelers tattoo while talking about symbols and logos), and sometimes it's not on the nose enough. It's a strange dynamic.

It was very nicely shot. I loved the look and the tone, but I feel like, overall, something was sort of missing. Maybe there wasn't enough explored there and some of what they did explore didn't gel with the rest of the doc. I feel like it's similar to the b-roll from Si, Puedes. It's generic stuff and we needed to fit over the interviews and cut around. I feel like it wasn't full enough. There's so much to explore when it comes to advertising, but I feel like they just scratched the surface content-wise. But maybe it's my problem and I went into it expecting something else.