While missing the first installment of this exposure to another perspective of the world, I was fortunate enough to find this one, albeit quaintly installed in a side corner of one of the Los Angeles County Museum’s building. There are two immediate invocations that are summoned when walking briskly through this. The first is the […]

Modern German artists, especially enveloped in the Weimar Republic, have an eerie perspective on the nature of humanity. As is demonstrated with these etchings, there is no longer a celebration or a humanism in representing mankind. Note how historically in the West, and recharged with the Renaissance, the anthropomorphic form was consistently utilized to imagine […]

Abe Begalin took possession of half of an art gallery, filling that half with viscerally imposing, even daunting, monuments to an indeterminate scientific future. It is, in his own way, a contribution to science fiction which in itself is a categorization of the fantasizing of science, more or less. And with such fantasizing of science, […]

For the city folk, the day-to-day ounces of effort which convert into pounds of sustenance are hardly felt unlike at the basest level of civilization. Rams pleasantly and eloquently remind the audience of what it takes to keep the business of civilization running, even if it is not the main premise of the film. We […]

“Music is serious” quips a music critic for the New York Post to rebuke the charade that is forged to maintain the appearance of legitimacy of a wealthy woman fulfilling her dreams of performing at Carnegie Hall. And what can immediately be insinuated from this context is the lack of genuine merit in her performing, […]

Babel is a hideously preposterous attempt at drama. When realism is entirely abdicated to create artificial passionate stirs of emotion, disbelief is suspended thus distancing the subject from trying to gain a new perspective on reality by peering through the looking-glass of alternative subjects. And what I speak to here is how utterly fantastic any […]

Lo and Behold is Werner Herzog’s rendition of what we should be fearful of with the march of technological progress, nay advancement. I must rectify myself in presuming all technology is progress toward a better human condition. It is not self-evidently the case, as the argument can be made, as Herzog tries here, that technology […]

Contemplating the afterlife is a past-time that humans have endeavored with since perhaps the first moments of sympathy for the loss of a human life. The question, eternally, of where does one go when one’s life ends has been the work, almost foundationally, of religion since human records began. Defending Your Life is not trying […]

Contemplating the afterlife is a past-time that humans have endeavored with since perhaps the first moments of sympathy for the loss of a human life. The question, eternally, of where does one go when one’s life ends has been the work, almost foundationally, of religion since human records began. Defending Your Life is not trying […]

Fantastic Planet explores the idea of human beings being pests in a surreal world. Almost miniaturized to being classified as Earth-bound termites, humans are labeled as “Oms” by the giant blue anthropomorphic creatures, who treat them as pets and play things. The entire film is actually less surreal than anticipated, as it follows a linear […]