foxes and guns and art, oh man

so, i finally saw fantastic mr fox and it was like dreams of wes anderson movies coming true. it was really clever and labeled a lot like the tennenbaums and good coloring and great adorable characters. jason schwartzman annoys me lately even though he was pretty much the only good thing about funny people and he was really awesome in this so i don't know what my problem is. anyway, my favorite parts were the closeups of characters and how the faces moved. it's exciting to see some stop motion. i'm gonna go see it again on $5 tuesday and i expect to love it even more!

i've also been on a mission to get back into art. so there's this lovely series on instant netflix, a pbs show, called art21. i recommend giving it yr eye time. in the beginning they have celebrity introducing and narrating, and they usually cover about three artists a show, and there's a theme, like fantasy or place. stuff like that. anyway at some point they ditch the celebrities which i like better because there's no cheesy stagey intro with the celebrity sitting somewhere reading something canned about art. it's people you know and maybe don't know. i watched a few this morning after waking up way way earling and cleaning and having TG dinner for breakfast. fantasy is a good one. it starts off with jeff coons but i had to FF through his part once it became shot upon shot of legions of art students sitting in front of macs with him talking about making art over it. he did say that he's trying to draw people in, which made me like his art more. i'm so cynical, i thought it was all irony, all the time. also, i'm not sure which theme carrie mae weems is on, but she's a really intense, beautiful amazing person. she talked about recreating sixities photos (like the one of the vietnamese dude getting shot?) with students and that was a great one to see. somewhere near portland some gallery or museum is showing kara walker's animation. i can't wait to go check it out.

and then today i watched a pretty bad barbara stanwyck movie at my friend edie's. she has a projector and she painted a big white block on her brown wall so it's great to watch movies there. the movie was called forty guns and i had the problem with black and white movies where all the men look the same until about a half hour in. it was really confusing anyway- too many characters and a pretty thin story. so, barbara stanwyck is a ranch tycoon, they call her the high ridin lady with a whip. she runs a tight ship. she employs tons of people who she eats dinner with at a huge table that must seat about 40 people, all dudes besides her, in her big fancy house on the ranch. the best moment was during dinner, her big crush (a dude who used to be a top gun in the west but then went straight to become a us marshall and get some morals) comes in and she says, "Boys, give us a minute." so there's this scene where all these dudes get up from the dinner table. it was pretty badass. but then, again with the getting lame, love makes her a total wuss and she admits tax evasion and loses her ranch but gets the man. it didn't seem worth it to me.

i think i'm gonna watch more art 21.