The Adventures of Sally Tomato, Cosmonaut

STARTER FOR TEN
So, so good.1 I love, love, loved this movie! James McAvoy is so eager and adorable. You agonize over his every social faux pas, and rejoice in every geeky triumph. As a long-time lover of geeks (no, seriously), I so have a soft spot for the i-never-realized-how-good-looking-i-actually-am smart guys.

There is so much in this movie that rings true about college idealism and that freshman social learning curve. There are so many great details--from scammy roommates to the guy that's given up toilet paper for environmental reasons (hah!)--that just take you back. (Shotgun, anyone?)

LAST KING OF SCOTLAND
All I can say is, don't watch this before bed. I did, and I totally regretted it. It's violent, but it's the steadily mounting tension that really gets you wound up. James (I'm tired of typing "McAvoy". We're officially on a first name basis.) in all his cute-bottomed-rosy-faced Scottishness, is the perfect foil for Forest Whitaker's exuberant and volatile Idi Amin. The tension starts visually: there's the obvious physical contrast between their size, colouring, and carriage. James's personality - dominated by roguish charm and frank immaturity - somehow makes the revelation of Amin's crazy all the more jarring. From the beginning you know everything you love about James McAvoy will be his undoing (well, you do if your friend Bridie movie storied2 you the whole thing during your workout). Passion, idealism, and optimism are the flip sides of impulsivity, ill-informed decisions, and misplaced trust. James is just so damned likable though, you keep wanting to rescue him from his coquettish3, over-confident self.

This movie also contains primo James McAvoy sex. I am not gonna lie. That sex scene in the cave room is totally hot. Way hotter than Atonement, y'all. Probably because it's so, so illicit and ill-advised. I want to scream "Don't do it, James McAvoy and Idi Amin's wife! Clearly, this will not end well!" Though, let's face facts... The threat of a painful death at the hands of my crazed dictator-husband probably wouldn't stop me from making passionate love to James against a rock wall either. (Hey, where the heck was that place?)

WANTED
Speaking of a slow and painful death... Wanted. Dear God. I want that two hours of my life back. Until Wanted, there have only been two occasions where I have actually hated a movie so much that I wanted to get up and leave the theater.4

Repetitively boring violence, Angelina's Grotesque Mouth, and the soundtrack are just the tip of the iceberg of things to hate about Wanted. (About thirty minutes in, I was already thinking "If I have to see one more person get shot in the head...") The most irritating thing about this movie is the quasi-morality used to rationalize violence. We just love to watch a flawed-yet-sexy hero dole out vigilante justice to avenge some sort of heinous crime against a child or a long-lost parent.5 Wanted cleverly incorporates both child and long lost parent, making James's final march of fury all the more justifiable.

James McAvoy is one of the great Scottish actors of our time. (And one of the only...? I can only think of about five Scottish actors right now.) His talent seems superior to that of his directors, as well as whoever decided what his hair should look like in the above films. He can flare his nostrils and pop the veins out on his forehead on cue. I stand mightily impressed.

The real beauty of James McAvoy is that he can go from being totally hot...

To totally not...

...before you can say "haggis".

MacBeth (part of the Shakespeare Retold series) is surprisingly good. James McAvoy plays a chef and does a really horrifying demonstration with a pig's head. The film is really bloody and violent, but this is mainly because much of it takes place in a restaurant kitchen. It's definitely worth seeing if you're a omnivorous foodie, if only to remind you of how distanced we are from our food. Another point in the film's favour is that James McAvoy has a Scottish accent. God, I could listen to a damn Scottish accent all day.

Though he's Scottish, he's had an English or American accent in all the other movies I've seen him in. I really don't know the point of the American accent in Penelope as there are many randomly British characters. The most interesting thing about Penelepe, besides Christina Ricci's prosthetic pig nose, is the set design. Her bedroom is amazing. It's kind of Willy Wonka-meets-Anthropologie. James McAvoy's flat oozes melancholy masculinity with dark oily wood and old leather. Mmm... Yummy!

Becoming Jane is a must-see for all those people who have seen all the Jane Austen adaptation--if only because you have, like myself, seen all those like 50 million times and you need to mix it up a bit. Anne Hathaway's possibly a bit too... eager, but fairly convincing nonetheless. (Convincing enough that I went out and bought myself a damn dip pen.) Be prepared to spend some time arguing with yourself about whether Anna Maxwell Martin is pretty or not. James McAvoy is, of course, amazing! He is most notably hot when boxing. His nearly translucent Scottish skin and wiry muscles are like an Eakins painting come to life. Watching him frolick about in whorehouses and fields with Joe Anderson is almost too good for this life.

Atonement was surprisingly long and dull. The first part of the movie is completely dominated by gratuitous close-ups of Keira Knightley's face. After the sex in the library (WHOOPS! SPOILER ALERT!), the whole thing really goes downhill. Quite literally, actually, as James McAvoy is pretty much walking about for the remainder of the film. As in Becoming Jane and Penelope, he's entirely convincing as totally masculine, yet totally sensitive. He's everything you want in a man, really: highly intelligent, wicked sense of humour, strong sense of duty, loyal, deeply passionate, and coordinated enough to ravage you on a bookshelf.

[in claiming that] the projects fall short of both social and aesthetic significance, you've left out the difficult part - explaining why - What criteria are you using to judge these objects and happenings on an aesthetic level? on a social level?

For me, the best art...

• Operates on multiple levels, merging concept and form seamlessly into something both challenging and arresting.
• Demonstrates an appropriate and intentional use of materials. I value significant technical prowess and fine craftsmanship.
• Is internally consistent, particularly with regards to concept.

To the above aesthetic non-negotiables, I suppose I would add specific criteria based on the type of project. For a project that intends to create a collective experience (as opposed to inspiring a transcendent moment for a solitary viewer), I suppose we'd need to add some indicator of how well a piece facilitates that experience for participants. (Should we also judge a piece on the quality of the experience it inspires? Or is it simply enough that it happened?)

I think the steam project may have been more aesthetically significant for me (in terms of promoting shared experience) if I had experienced it outside the gallery. As it was, I experienced it by myself indoors. Though, short of finding a gallery with a steam grate in it or exhibiting the whole show outside, I suppose there's really no way to keep that magic going indefinitely.

The pinball machine was extremely successful in creating a shared experience. It actually went beyond sharing into dependency on other people. (Hmm... maybe this could relate to the whole quality of experience question above...) It's also really frigging fun (I went back and played it after my other post). I did, however, find its formal strength was superior to its conceptual critique of funding structures, mainly because pinball machines are unlikely to really upset the current system of arts funding.

This gets to what bothers me about Other Options: the other options aren't necessarily viable. I feel that this limits the impact of their critique and, thereby, their conceptual merit. To me the projects feel somewhat unfinished. They are like studies for a project yet to be completed. They critique these huge systemic concepts, but don't actually inspire any actual action or sustain change beyond the collaboration among exhibition attendees. Seems a bit of a pity. On the other hand, maybe that's why the show is called Other Options, not the Best of All Possible Options.

I appreciate Benner's comment about struggling with different vocabularies. I didn't realize how difficult that must be as a curator, scholar, and/or artist working on these kinds of projects until trying to articulate my response to the exhibition. The verbal language, and even the - for lack of a better term - curatorial language (i.e., venue, space, layout) of the show not only influence our perception of the project's worth, but for these kind of projects, their very classification as art or social projects. We might need some new words. And possibly some new ways of thinking about aesthetics.

I am so tired of thinking about this. Apart from (Re) which I find internally inconsistent, I am not sure now if these projects really fall short aesthetically, or if they just don't really do it for me. Or if they really excel when judged against some other criteria I haven't thought of/learned about yet.

Forays and Material Exchange presented the strongest projects in the exhibition. They scored points for being fun and unpretentious. They demonstrated the greatest potential for replication beyond the gallery setting. They posed interesting questions and represented a point of departure for continuing dialogue. For example, Forays with Steam could eventually develop into a collaboration that includes engineers, city planners, and, I would hope, a biologist. The discussion and the prototype could be expanded into something that actual has some societal benefit. The same is true with the pinball machine.

The project I reacted most strongly to is (Re). I feel that (Re) challenges a structure ((PRODUCT)Red) that I don't perceive as flawed enough to even warrant a critique. While I certainly appreciate the outcomes, I take issue with the assumptions that inform the project, the characterization of marketing, and the obvious anti-corporate bias.

Orr and Thompson assume that cause marketing "claims to erase any guilt from shopping". I seriously doubt that the target audience for flashy marketing campaigns is the same group that experiences consumer guilt for reasons other than maxing out their credit cards. (I wonder if these artists experienced pangs of guilt when they bought their iPods...)

The (PRODUCT)Red campaign (like pink for breast cancer or shopping for the economy) is intended to transform a portion of the dollars people would spend anyway into financial support for a cause. Like most marketing campaigns, socially conscious or otherwise, it has to appeal to the lowest common denominator within its audience in order to maximize results. This isn't "manipulative and damaging" so much as it is opportunistic.

Let's say that (PRODUCT)Red does perpetuate a cycle of mindless consumerism. Individuals that are concerned about that could just give directly to the Global Fund through (PRODUCT)Red's website. (Wait... are grantmaking intersectoral partnerships part of the "Nonprofit Industrial Complex"?)

Ultimately, I found that the project undermines itself by first suggesting that consumption is not a healthy part of involvement in a cause, and then tapping into the consumption patterns of a better educated and issue-impassioned (read, anti-corporate) group of gallery-goers. The project suggests that (PRODUCT)Red doesn't inspire people to actively initiate change, then offers opportunities for action that are only slightly less passive.
Again, I think it's awesome that so much of the proceeds are donated. I think, however, that (Re) would work better as a companion to (PRODUCT)Red instead of setting itself up as something that is morally superior and diametrically opposed to it.

At the end of the day, I wonder if the Other Options projects would be more effective if artists weren't doing them. By locating these projects within the arts community, I think the creators may have limited their access to specialists in other fields, whose input could improve the projects and ensure their application outside of the gallery. As art projects, they deflect constructive criticism of their social benefits. Yet, because of their social nature, they can also avoid any real aesthetic critique as well. They exist in a position of safety, which I feel limits their overall effectiveness as art products and catalysts for social change.

and then i went to founders and heard them. and they were so delightful.

also, i'm drunk. this may be my first drunk post to g-rad. huzzah! (ugh. why does my apt. smell like this?!)

anyways, they reminded me of church, carnivals, and all the delightful things. yeah, church. that crazy beat and nice bass. that damn accordian. i love Love LOVE an accordian! who knew?!

ok, off to make vegan pita pizzas.