Arts and shorts.

"Where theatricality and real life mix - that, to me, is more interesting than the lavish theatricality that Barney does," Eve Sussman tells New York (Click "Top 10 to Watch" and browse... slowly... to #4). The comparison only comes up, in fact, because she's worked with the same composer Matthew Barney worked with on his Cremaster series, Jonathan Bepler. Sussman will be presenting a ten-minute loop entitled 89 Seconds at Alcazar, inspired by Velázquez's painting Las Meninas, at the Whitney Biennial. Also of interest will be #7, Aïda Ruilova, the video artist who's featured her mentor, Jean Rollin, in one of her works. More Sussman; more Ruilova.

Paul Laster's snapped some shots at the opening of the "John Waters: Change of Life" exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Also via Artnet Magazine: "The $12 million independent biopic Modigliani, starring Andy Garcia as the iconic tubercular painter of early modernist Paris, has completed filming (in Romania)... the pot-boiling art-romance also features the French actress Elsa Zylberstein as Modi's mistress Jeanne Hebuterne, the British-born Iranian standup comic Omid Djalili as Pablo Picasso (who is painted as Modigliani's rival in the film) and supermodel Eva Herzigova as Olga Koklova, Picasso's first wife."

The movie event of this Ash Wednesday, of course, is Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and you've already heard more than enough about it. So, very selectively:

• Reihan Salam presents the New Republic's entertaining "Guide to the Passion Pundits": "[W]hat the most prominent players on both sides of the Passion debate have said, and what you can expect them to say in the weeks to come."

• Via Alternet, Peter Keough recalls Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), Franco Zeffirelli's mini-series Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and asks, "Which movie would Jesus watch?"

• The New York Times, today alone: Kenneth L. Woodward on the Op-Ed page, AO Scott's review (great opener) and Laurie Goodstein on the varied reactions among an interfaith panel of eight Christian and Jewish clergy members and laypeople.

Here's a Twin Cities event well worth plugging and Peter Ritter plugs it well: Hollywood 2004, this year's edition of an Oscar-viewing night. "Since it started 17 years ago, as an informal get-together in someone's living room, the event has earned more than $1 million for the Minnesota AIDS Project and associated charities." Also in the City Pages: Matthew Wilder on honorary Oscar recipient Blake Edwards.

"Saturday, Bollywood hit Koi Mil Gaya swept what are known as India's Oscars, bagging the Filmfare Awards' best actor title for heartthrob Hrithik Roshan as well as the best film and best director honours for the film based on the friendship between a mentally challenged man and an alien." But Newindpress asks, "How rewarding are Bollywood awards?"

For Central Europe Review, Igor Pop Trajkov interviews Serb filmmaker Srdan Golubovic (Apsolutnih sto [Absolute Hundred]).

In the Guardian, Natasha Walter asks Gurinder Chadha, Beeban Kidron, Alison Peebles and Patty Jenkins, "What is stopping women making the sort of films that take the highest honours?"

In the New York Times:

• Carolyn Curiel on Farmingville, winner of a special jury prize at Sundance and "a primer for anyone - whether lawmaker or citizen - who cares to better understand the usually unseen cost of America's appetite for cheap labor."
• Bernard Weinraub on Judy Garland: By Myself.
• Sharon Waxman updates us on the wrenching, ongoing dispute over Capturing the Friedmans.

Online viewing tip. Fun spoofs of the MPAA anti-piracy trailer and site: RespectBootleggers.org.

Posted by dwhudson at February 25, 2004 1:35 PM