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Great painters live on in these (moving) pictures
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dear Mr. Smithee,
Being an artist myself, I’ve enjoyed seeing famous artists portrayed in films.
My short list consists of “Lust for Life,” “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” “Pollock,” “Picasso,” “Girl With a Pearl Earring” and “Frida.”
Are there any good ones I may have missed that you can recommend, oh wise one?
JACK NEWMAN, Boynton Beach, Fla.
Dear Blue Boy,
Being an artist myself, I don’t usually waste my valuable time with everybody else’s staid museum hangings.
But my once wee son, Cecil B., went through an elaborate easel phase. We ended up hauling our persons all across the country to gaze and headily reflect upon purported art.
I can still see Cecil B. now, his small body racing through the National Gallery of Art, stopping quickly in a room of Dutch masterpieces. He twirled on a toe and, punctuating the moment with a swoop of his arms, proclaimed, “Rembrandt!”
Cecil B. certainly had his opinions (he still to this day insists he is correct about everything, and where he got that I’ll never know). He proclaimed van Gogh “too brushy.” Monet? You call it impressionism. Cecil B. dubbed his works the smushed results of “a dude who was going blind.”
The best movie on your list is, undoubtedly, “Pollock.” Jackson Pollock might not have painted as well as Michelangelo, but Ed Harris is better at acting the former than Charlton Heston (“The Agony and the Ecstasy”) was the latter.
Here are films you should see: “Basquiat” (1996) with Jeffrey Wright; Akira Kurosawa’s “Dreams” (1990) with Martin Scorsese as van Gogh; “I Shot Andy Warhol” (1996); “Moulin Rouge” (the original 1952 version with Jose Ferrer as Toulouse-Lautrec and definitely not the Baz Luhrmann exclamatory excrement of 2001); “My Left Foot” (1989); “Rembrandt” (1936), with Charles Laughton; “Surviving Picasso” (1996); “Vincent & Theo” (1990), with Tim Roth as van Gogh; “The Wolf at the Door” (1986) about Paul Gauguin; and “Painted Fire” (2002), a visually astute film about 19th-century Korean painter Jang Seung-ub, ably played by Choi Min-sik (“Oldboy”).
You should also look for the 2003 Disney animated short “Destino,” a project Salvador Dali and Walt Disney abandoned in the 1940s, and the remarkable “Russian Ark” (2002), which takes place at the Russian State Hermitage Museum.
ALAN
P.S. You get a “The Black Dahlia” T-shirt and an “Ask Alan Smithee” T-shirt.
Dear Mr. Smithee,
The name of a movie. A man’s child is kidnapped. He has to assassinate the governor or they will kill his child. A man at a shoeshine stand helps him get his child back. Thank you.
JACK KABLER, Fairborn, Ohio
Dear Word Mincer,
Hello, and a fine morning to you, too, Mr. Kabler.
If Grandmother Smithee taught me anything, it was how to be polite.
“Stand up straight and speak like you know something, child,” she would say, just before letting loose with a thorny rosebush switch on exposed legs.
But I also realize that you, Jack, are in a bit of a hurry. So …
“Nick of Time,” 1995. Johnny Depp and Marsha Mason. He parent. She governor. Shoeshine man: Charles Dutton (middile initial: S.). Plot proceeds in actual time. Tagline: “Ninety minutes. Six bullets. No choice.”
You’re welcome.
ALAN
P.S. You get an “Idlewild” T-shirt and an “Ask Alan Smithee” T-shirt.
Dear Mr. Smithee,
Claudette Colbert passed away in 1996 in Barbados. Where is she buried, and is the grave site accessible to those who mourn her?
D.P. KELLEY, Atlanta
Dear Cemetery Bound,
Actually, her grave site is accessible to anyone who also just wants to gawk.
Oscar winner Claudette Colbert was born in 1903 in Paris and by her mid-20s was a star. Among her better films: “The Sign of the Cross” (1932), “It Happened One Night” (1934), “Drums Along the Mohawk” (1939), “Since You Went Away” (1944) and “The Egg and I” (1947). She died in July 1996 after a series of strokes and is buried in the St. Peter Parish cemetery off Highway 1 near Speightstown, Barbados.
For more information, call the Barbados Tourism Authority at 1-246-427-2623.
ALAN
P.S. You get a “9 to 5” coffee mug and an “Ask Alan Smithee” T-shirt.
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By Susan Stephens
October 4, 2006 2:39 PM | Link to this
Dear Mr. Smithee,
I would love to see all the movies about he famous painters but where do I find them? I would appreciate an answer. Thanks a million