Twelve Films at Christmas - 7 & 8

'He didn't know a wahwah from Akira Kurosawa'. So goes one of Clive James' brilliant lyrics in Pete Atkin's song The Man Who Walked Towards the Music.  This is not strictly relevant to my review of Kurosawa's Rashomon but I'm always game for a bit of soi-disant intellectualism. Anyway, onwards with the review. Rashomon (1950) comes with all the critical baggage of any modern viewing of a Kurosawa movie - the inescapability of assertions of genius. It survives that burden. It is the storytelling equivalent of cubism - a highly influential (take for example The Usual Suspects) exercise in multiple perspectives. 77/100. 

From the monochrome of Rashomon to the garish cartoon tones of Moana. Great animation and catchy tunes allied to a winning narrative make this great fun. Cleverest of its tricks is to make the sea itself a charcter in the plot. Modern animation is a crowded field but this stands up without being a great film. 69/100. 

Advent 24

'BDR, Loule, 1990' is the simple legend on this picture that hangs in our front room. It was painted by my father, a self-portrait of the great man sitting, signature pipe in his mouth, in the sunshine in the Algarve on the Aston Old Edwardians centenary rugby tour. The picture used to hang in Holly Lane but Mum gave it to me last Christmas.

I cannot tell you how much I loved and admired the man. His dying years were blighted by the evil that is dementia, but he had packed in a mountain of living before that cruelty.

So that is it. Happy Christmas and may your god go with you. 

Advent 23

Tomorrow we will have a picture that touches my soul for very personal reasons but today we have the painting that would be my answer if you were daft enough to ask me, 'What is the most important picture of the twentieth century?' As I say, the question would be daft and only a man as impertinent as the Overgraduate would offer an answer from quite such a position of ignorance. Oh well.

Guernica (1937) is Pablo Picasso's gutteral response to the bombing of Guernica by the Nazis at the behest of Franco. It is executed on a massive scale (close to 24 square metres). I'm sticking with my answer.

Advent 22

Another National Trust exhibit today. Plas Newydd on Anglesey is the seat of the Marquess of Anglesey. In the dining room you will find Rex Whistler's extravagant Italianate-styled mural, almost ten metres in length. As a guest at the Marquess's table you would either be facing the mural or, your back to it, the Menai Strait and Snowdonia. No losers there - perhaps they used to swap round after each course.

Whistler (born 1905) died on active service in Normandy in 1944. The flanking panel of the mural (not shown here) includes a modest self-portrait of Whistler sweeping the floor.

Advent 21

Georges Braque (1882 - 1963) seems to have been the quiet man of cubism, his more staid life standing in stark contrast to that of his colleague Picasso.

Of all the pictures so far highlighted in this exercise, I think Braque's 1911 painting, Bottle and Fishes, is the one I would most like to have on my wall. It is a brilliant exercise in simultaneous perspectives and I find the geometric technicalities it deploys endlessly beguiling.

Advent 20

As proof of just how middle-class (and middle-minded) I am, I have to confess that The Groupie and the Pig are members of the National Trust. Enough said.

Rembrandt (1606 - 1669) painted a vast number of self-portraits and this one (1635) hangs at the Trust property, Buckland Abbey. I offer it as an unbeatable example of technical excellence in verisimilitude. I also put it up as a useful point of departure towards the very different painting I want to highlight tomorrow.

Advent 19

Whilst the urgent noise in American art was abstraction, Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967) offered an atmospheric antidote. His pictures shout of a realism that understands the peculiar loneliness of company. Here is his most famous painting - Nighthawks (1942) - a picture that launched a million posters.  

Advent 18

David Hockney (1937 -) is a national treasure - witness the recent and joyous documentaries with Melvyn Bragg on Sky Arts. His art is as happy as the artist and and narratives are suggested by his profuse revisiting of themes. Here I have selected 1967's A Bigger Splash. Technically pure with an attention-grabbing command of colour and Californian light.

Advent 17

It seems to me that almost every stately home has a Canaletto. His pictures of Venice are glowingly identifiable - often brought back to England as souvenirs of the Grand Tour. Better than postcards I think you'd have to agree. However my chosen Canaletto is his own souvenir of his trip to London - Westminster Bridge (1750).

Advent 16

After yesterday's diversion into the troubled imagination of Jackson Pollock, today we have something more figurative. We have several signed prints by William Selwyn (1933 -) dotted around Casa Piggy. His pictures of Welsh farmers are fabulous but I choose a ravaged landscape, Pont-Y-Gromlech. For me, Selwyn best captures the atmosphere of my beloved North Wales.

Advent 15

After yesterday's lapse into the naive, today we venture into the murky waters of abstract expressionism. Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956) died young at the wheel of his car and with alcohol at the wheel of his senses. A mess. And there are plenty who think his later paintings nothing more than meaningless messes. They don't look like anything we can relate to and a frequent criticism is that 'I could have done that'. But could you really? Pollock's best stuff reaches into the intestines of human imagination and gives expression to the bloody mess. Here we have Untitled from 1949. 

Twelve Films At Christmas - 5 & 6

In my random wanderings through cinema, it is rare that two such excellent movies cross my path in succession. The second of them was already known to me and I am surprised to note that I have not previously reviewed it here. I'm getting old and there can seem to be no time before I gave life to the Overgraduate. As for the first film now under the spotlight, well this was an altogether pleasant surprise. 

Hell and High Water (2016) is a beautifully poignant film evoking the moral and literal deserts of West Texas. Its principal protagonists are two small-time bandits (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) and two Texas Rangers (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham). To be clear, this is not a Western but, with its nods to that important genre, it provides a modern coda to the format. By the conclusion of the film, two of these four characters will be dead. I will not spoil it by naming them (it's available on Netflix). Beautifully acted by all, this film is succinct and barely wastes a frame. Highly recommended. 86/100.

 Chinatown (1974) is cited by some as film noir. It certainly borrows many of the tics of that genre but for this amateur critic, the running time is too long and there are too many sunlit exteriors to fit the bill. That does not make it anything less than a very fine picture. Jack Nicholson's detective, Jake Gittes, is possibly his finest role in a career not empty of highlights. Faye Dunnaway is a suitable femme fatale. The conclusion is as dark as its street location is glaringly sunlit. That is rather the point of this excellent film. 84/100. 

Advent 14

I doubt that I had ever beguiled you into thinking otherwise but today I betray the Overgraduate as nothing more than a sentimental vulgarian.

Charles Wysocki (1928-2002) was an unashamedly commercial artist, his rather twee primitive (decried as faux naive) pictures launching record-breaking jigsaw sales. He celebrates an America which no longer exists, indeed may never have existed at all. I detect an optimism that confirms the America I love and admire - as far from the vile post-Trump world as can be conceived. This is Hickory Haven Canal. Corny I know. Tomorrow, something altogether more challenging.

Advent 13

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was, towards the end of his life, hampered in painting due to the after-effects of an operation for abdominal cancer. In response to his infirmity he returned to a medium he had occasionally used in his early life -collage or cut-out. He would sculpt pre-painted sheets of paper and lay them out to stunning effect. He started with small compositions in this medium but graduated to much larger pieces.

Blue Nude III is from 1952's production of four studies in the cut-out method. By my count this picture is made from just six cuts of painted paper. It is what we art critics call bloody clever.  

Advent 12

Tintoretto was by all accounts something of an opereator in Venice - undercutting other artists to obtain important commissions and generally making himself unpopular with his peers. He claimed to have been apprenticed to Titian but that master seems to have denied the connection. Whatever, Tintoretto could paint. In this Last Supper he defies classical perspective and looks upon the scene on the diagonal, giving prominence to servient underlings instead of Christ and the apostles. He was playing the same manner of tricks that Orson Welles would bring to bear in cinema four and a half centuries later.

Advent 11

After two offerings from sculptor/artists which play tricks with form, today's picture is straight out of the top drawer of classicism - indeed some might argue that Titian has the top drawer to himself.

Where Hepworth and, to an even greater degree, Boccione, respond to light and structure, Titian lets his full representational talent loose on a biblical theme, The Assumption of the Virgin (1516-18). The colours are stunning and the technique brilliant. As I have assembled this list, I have had to confront my own prejudices and I have been struck by my taste for the relatively modern. This sort of devotional art is, though, quite thrilling.

Tomorrow another Venetian. 

Advent 10

Umberto Boccioni was, like Barbara Hepworth (see Advent 9), both painter and sculptor. He was also one of the founders of the Italian Futurist movement. Out of Head+Light+Surroundings (which at first glance seems an abstract blur of colours) a human face and other represenatations emerge. The whole effect of this 1912 picture is provocative and satisfying, demanding some effort of attention from the viewer.  

Twelve Films At Christmas - 3 & 4

An Inspector Calls is a 1954 screen adaptation of J.B. Priestley's 1945 stage play. I suppose I should declare an interest - I played Arthur Birling on the stage. A fascinating role - an industrialist caught up in his own importance and blind to the terrors about to be unleashed on the world (the play is set in 1912). The play is masterful and, Midsummer Night's Dream aside, the best in which I appeared in my limited am-dram career.  

The play is designedly claustrophobic - befitting the enclosed and comfortable world of the Birling family. A frequent problem with movie adaptations is that they feel duty-bound to open up the world of the play. An Inspector Calls is no exception to this problem. The flash-back technique takes the place of the play's taut, almost confessional, exposition of the flaws of the assembled characters. As the inspector (for no reason that is discernible to me, renamed Poole in place of the play's Goole) Alastair Sim is excellent. This is a perfectly decent movie but if the chance presents itself you should see the play. 61/100. 

When We Were Kings is a curiosity. It is a time capsule of a film. It assembles documentary footage surrounding the 1974 Foreman v Ali heavyweight title fight in Zaire. The film itself had originally been projected as a record of the 'Black Woodstock' concert held at the same time as the fight (the fight was delayed due to an injury to Foreman). It ran into problems of copyright and the film never saw the light of day until 1997. The stunning result of the fight is correctly part of the lore of the twentieth century. Ali and (to a necessarily smaller degree) Foreman are titanic figures. The film gives us insight into the articulate warrior Ali. We see the emergence of the malign influence of promoter Don King. An important record of a moment in history. 70/100. 

Advent 9

The Hepworth Sculpture Garden in St. Ives is small and a charming space in which to take in the smooth atmospheres induced by Barbara Hepworth's sculpture. Hepworth's pictures are much less well known but they capture the same sense of civilised structure. This is Winter Solstice (1971), a print of which adorns our bedroon wall. Less is more.

Advent 8

 

Henri Rousseau was an untrained amateur artist. His arresting paintings have the quality of perfect cartoon. Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised) (1891) is another picture that I discovered in the National Gallery and returned to time and again when I might have been  better employed in the college library. Oh well, it all turned out alright in the end.

Advent 7

I don't promise not to return to the genre but for now I will leave it at a trio of pop art pieces. My choices may not be other than obvious but cliches are cliches for reason. So, yes you guessed it, we have to have some Andy Warhol. Nothing can be better than to consider one icon's representation of another - Liz (1964).

Twelve Films At Christmas - 1 & 2

Sometimes you watch a film and find it perfectly pleasing in a passing and impermanent sort of a way, and then you find yourself wondering why they bothered. I'm afraid that is how I feel about the 2016 reboot of Swallows and Amazons. The books on which it is (loosely) based are precious to me. Arthur Ransome may well have been a funny sort of a cove (certainly his toleration of communist Russia doesn't read too well in retrospect - mind you 20/20 hindsight is a cheap virtue) but he was a damned fine writer of children's fiction and operated in an innocent age. The books warrant adult re-reading. There already exists a perfectly serviceable 1974 film version which sticks to the source novel. So why shoe-horn into this more recent offering a hokey plot involving muderous Russian spies? Daft and a disservice to the source text. 56/100.

And now for something altogether grander. Realised on a thrilling scale and, yes I'm going to say it, up there in discusssions as to the greatest films ever made (quite certainly amongst the greatest ever made in Britain) we have A Matter of Life and Death. No doubt you have seen it already but, if not, watch out for it at Christmas (it's usually on) and treat yourself. Fast-paced, brilliantly played, romantic, clever and, in its colour sequences, sumptuous. A genuinely great movie. 93/100.

Advent 6

If anything can perfectly capture a mood of volcanic consumerism and bare emotions, it is the work of Roy Lichtenstein. His blow-ups of cartoon drama are initially arresting but also have the power to retain your interest. The image scalds onto your mind and stays there. It is clean-lined and universally comprehensible. Shown is Crying Girl from 1963.

Advent 5

This, arguably the most widely influential piece of pop art, was created by Jann Haworth and Peter Blake. It is the cover from arguably (there's that word again - utilised to camouflage my own adamantine opinions) the most important album of all time, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

The pop art flavour will continue tomorrow. OG is so down with the kids. Or more accurately he is down with those who were kids when he was himself a juvenile. Uber-pseud.

Advent 4

I spoke yesterday of my pseudo-intellectual posturing as a young undergraduate. Well the fact is that I soon discovered that many of my fellow pseuds had Bosch posters on their walls as well. Making matters worse it was clear that even more of them had Dali posters to match mine. No matter, Salvador Dali may have been an old rascal but he was a man of huge technical skills and a provocative imagination. Today's picture is the very one that hung next to my Bosch poster - Impression of Africa. 

Advent 3

There were giants in the land. I was taught by a collection of learned and interesting men and women. It was their intellectual hinterland that made the very greatest teachers. One such was Andrew Pargeter who taught Physics, the only science that I took at O level. He was a good teacher but a greater impression was made on me by his collection of outside skills - magician, brilliant guitarist, man of letters. For General Studies lessons in the sixth form the teachers were given their head and allowed to range over their outside interests. It was in that spirit that Andy introduced us to Surrealism. And it was in that spirit that he offered us Hieronymus Bosch as the great fifteenth century progenitor of that twentieth century disruptive school. 

I mentioned yesterday my time as a very lazy student in London. On my wall in my room at King's College Hall was the poster of this Bosch painting. I thought it made me an intellectual. Pseud more like it. Great picture though.

Advent 2

Today's picture takes me back to my time reading Law at KCL, for the very good reason that rather than spend time at my studies I would instead wander down the Strand and pass my time in the National Gallery. Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres is painting on an heoroic scale. I do like a big canvas - is that another signifier of vulgarity? I would love to own a wall big enough to do justice to this picture.

Advent 1

I loved my father very much. He was a great man. And so it is that we start the walk through my imaginary gallery with the work of a man whose genius was pointed out to me by Dad. I couldn't actually let you pin me down as to my favourite Turner. Other more renowned paintings of his have been featured on this blog before but for today I will settle upon Snow Storm. Original hangs in Tate London. You need to get up close and be drawn into the elemental drama.