Be Kind, Please Rewind

He’s an Irregular Einstein. He’s the…

Vidiot

Week of July 26, 2013

My favourite painter is Benjamin Moore. First up…

Trance

The best way to protect art from thieves is to cover them with paintings of cigar-smoking olives in Martini glasses.

Without Michael Godard images to deter them though, thieves, like the ones in this thriller, will steal your real art.

Art auctioneer Simon (James McAvoy) pilfers a painting and presents it to his partner Franck (Vincent Cassel), who then coldcocks him.

Afterwards, when Franck finds the frame vacant, he returns to interrogate Simon, who now suffers memory loss from Franck’s attack.

To jostle his recall, Franck sends Simon to a hypnotherapist (Rosario Dawson), who dislodges more than the painting’s whereabouts.       

With a hard to follow narrative and antagonists disguised protagonists, director Danny Boyle does his best to elevate Trance from a muddled heist movie to a muddled psychological-thriller - with mixed results.

Besides, instead of stealing 1 painting, isn’t it smarter to kidnap the artist and have them paint more?  0

***Starving Graffiti Artists***

Bomb It

To protect priceless paintings from thieves we should transfer them onto immovable objects.

Oh, wait, street artists, like the ones in this documentary, already do that.

Beginning with a man named Cornbread, who in 1967 spray-painted his moniker around Philadelphia, tagging became a craze in urban areas across America.

Considering themselves soldiers in an emotional, an artistic and a territorial war, faceless artists, like TAKI 183, Os Gêmeos, Terrible T-KID 170, Obey creator Shepard Fairey, and rapper KRS-One, descended upon their respected cities, bombing their neighbourhood with their nicknames creatively rendered with aerosol cans.

As the movement spread to other countries, its self-aggrandizing origins were repurposed for political protest and government sanctioned public art.

From subway walls, to Paris runways, to Hip Hop culture, Bomb It recounts the evolution of this controversial art form that begot a renaissance.

Incidentally, until now, I thought building graffiti was just the architect’s autograph.

He’s a Street Art Critic. He’s the…

Vidiot