ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL
ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL
December 1 2006, DVD, home, someone else's Netflix
Watched with Ben Barnett over some not-at-all-good pizza. It's all much of a muchness. ASC isn't a very good movie, either, and that's really too bad - I want to have Dan Clowes's baby, and I have loved every film directed by Terry Zwigoff that I've seen (I mean, CRUMB? GHOST WORLD? BAD SANTA? We're talking favorites here) but this just isn't... well... I know what they were trying to do, and they did it, but it hasn't got almost any emotional impact besides contempt and annoyance. Maybe that actually is what they were going for; Clowes is a relentless misanthrope.
It is very convincingly a Clowes comic done live-action. Almost every frame, I could envision as one of his harsh, unflinchingly revealing line drawings; all the dialogue is spot-on because he wrote it. But it isn't as interesting in film form as I think they wanted it to be. For one thing, our protagonist Jerome (played by the giant-lipped, intermittently hot Max Minghella) spends so much time crying that I wanted someone to show up and just put him out of his misery. It's no good when your protagonist is at the verge of committing suicide, and you hope the fucker succeeds. There's not a single likable character in this film - the closest is the object of obsessive desire, Audrey, played by the sandwich-eating, luminous blonde Sophia Myles, but she's not very likable either thanks to her cluelessness and the casual cruelty of The Girl You Want. John Malkovich is actually quite good as the ambiguously gay, supernaturally self-absorbed painting teacher Sandiford, who spends most of his class time on the phone with gallery owners trying to set up shows; his now-successful art is so laughably simple and dull that it just twists the knife. (The art in this film is a character in and of itself, and probably the most effective character - I'm sure most of it was done by Clowes because it bears the mark of his style, but most of it, especially the art that's popular, is so viciously ironically mediocre that it's the best part. But who in the average American audience knows how to respond to art well enough to know what's truly good and what's not? It's not like that skill is taught in schools or anything, and yes it is a skill that can be learnt.) Jerome's roommates are two more stereotypes - the driven, shouty film major (Ethan Suplee, who totally nails his Kevin Smith-meets-Michael-Bay impersonation) and the obviously-gay-to-everyone-but-himself apparel major who is so pointless that I don't remember his name, so I can't look up the actor who played him. (No good!) Jerome's only kinda-buddy, Bardo (Joel David Moore) is a slacker and a sleaze, and Jerome's nemesis, the baldly untalented blond jock Jonah (Matt Keeslar), gets absurd levels of praise for his paintings that look like they were taken from a kindergarten-level coloring book. There's plenty of other star power in the movie - Anjelica Huston is lovely, but also not really involved in the plot; Steve Buscemi is the brash gallery/coffee shop owner who makes new famous artists famous; and Jim Broadbent is the old painter/alcoholic who may or may not be a serial killer.
It's all just a truckload of harshness and for some reason my schadenfreude didn't kick in like it should have; it's not that bad of a movie, but it's not that good, either. I hope these two creators work together again in the future, because they have hit the mark so nicely before, but this was the wrong story to turn into a movie. (Where's my "Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron" already?...)
December 1 2006, DVD, home, someone else's Netflix
Watched with Ben Barnett over some not-at-all-good pizza. It's all much of a muchness. ASC isn't a very good movie, either, and that's really too bad - I want to have Dan Clowes's baby, and I have loved every film directed by Terry Zwigoff that I've seen (I mean, CRUMB? GHOST WORLD? BAD SANTA? We're talking favorites here) but this just isn't... well... I know what they were trying to do, and they did it, but it hasn't got almost any emotional impact besides contempt and annoyance. Maybe that actually is what they were going for; Clowes is a relentless misanthrope.
It is very convincingly a Clowes comic done live-action. Almost every frame, I could envision as one of his harsh, unflinchingly revealing line drawings; all the dialogue is spot-on because he wrote it. But it isn't as interesting in film form as I think they wanted it to be. For one thing, our protagonist Jerome (played by the giant-lipped, intermittently hot Max Minghella) spends so much time crying that I wanted someone to show up and just put him out of his misery. It's no good when your protagonist is at the verge of committing suicide, and you hope the fucker succeeds. There's not a single likable character in this film - the closest is the object of obsessive desire, Audrey, played by the sandwich-eating, luminous blonde Sophia Myles, but she's not very likable either thanks to her cluelessness and the casual cruelty of The Girl You Want. John Malkovich is actually quite good as the ambiguously gay, supernaturally self-absorbed painting teacher Sandiford, who spends most of his class time on the phone with gallery owners trying to set up shows; his now-successful art is so laughably simple and dull that it just twists the knife. (The art in this film is a character in and of itself, and probably the most effective character - I'm sure most of it was done by Clowes because it bears the mark of his style, but most of it, especially the art that's popular, is so viciously ironically mediocre that it's the best part. But who in the average American audience knows how to respond to art well enough to know what's truly good and what's not? It's not like that skill is taught in schools or anything, and yes it is a skill that can be learnt.) Jerome's roommates are two more stereotypes - the driven, shouty film major (Ethan Suplee, who totally nails his Kevin Smith-meets-Michael-Bay impersonation) and the obviously-gay-to-everyone-but-himself apparel major who is so pointless that I don't remember his name, so I can't look up the actor who played him. (No good!) Jerome's only kinda-buddy, Bardo (Joel David Moore) is a slacker and a sleaze, and Jerome's nemesis, the baldly untalented blond jock Jonah (Matt Keeslar), gets absurd levels of praise for his paintings that look like they were taken from a kindergarten-level coloring book. There's plenty of other star power in the movie - Anjelica Huston is lovely, but also not really involved in the plot; Steve Buscemi is the brash gallery/coffee shop owner who makes new famous artists famous; and Jim Broadbent is the old painter/alcoholic who may or may not be a serial killer.
It's all just a truckload of harshness and for some reason my schadenfreude didn't kick in like it should have; it's not that bad of a movie, but it's not that good, either. I hope these two creators work together again in the future, because they have hit the mark so nicely before, but this was the wrong story to turn into a movie. (Where's my "Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron" already?...)