Word: artes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...European art film, especially of the contemporary Cannes Film Festival marquis, continues on its exclusionary march toward a self-selected and well-informed audience with the addition of Pedro Almodvar's 13th full length film, All About My Mother. This film weaves together a beautifully crafted, though at times maudlin and contrived, plot with expert film technique. Yet in this attempt to re-create an All about Eve for the '90s, where life imitates acting imitating life, Almodvar's masterpiece runs the risk of alienating any viewer who isn't a film buff...
...However, after Esteban's death, Almodvar supplies the pretentious and melodramatic art film twist, losing the faith of anyone aside from the loyal film aficionado. Manuel donates Esteban's heart and goes to Barcelona in search of Esteban's father, a transvestite originally an Esteban himself but now Lola the Pioneer. The depiction of one train moving forward and another train moving backward, when coupled with Manuela's voice-over of the history and purpose for her journey detract from Almodvar's intention that the scene serve as a point of transition and departure. In an almost music-video-like...
...Balthus' paintings as practically his only source in constructing his life, which provides the reader with only a weak characterization and superficial understanding of Balthus. Unfortunately, Weber appears to take to heart the epigraph from Oscar Wilde that appears at the beginning of the first chapter: "I treated art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction...
...construction of biography is itself an art form, Wilde's assertion poses a problem for biographers: do you place more emphasis on the life of the subject, or on the artistic value of the biography itself? One of the most controversial and talked about biographies released this fall was Edmund Morris' Dutch, a biography of former president Ronald Reagan that grappled with just this question. By including a fictional character in the midst of his otherwise serious biography, Morris caused an uproar over the standards of factual and historical accuracy in the literary world while asserting his belief...
...learned the art of flirtation, negotiation and compromise," Stewart recalls. "I also became intermittently acquainted with my own flaws. I learned some hard lessons about the media and press relations...