I have been in the mood to watch some art-related films currently out.

The Milos Forman movie Goya's Ghosts, starring Natalie Portman and Javier Bardem, known from the Academy Award film "No Country For Old Men", is a lovely film. The painter Francisco Goya is the thread which runs through the movie in the backdrop of France through the Inquisition to Napoleanic times.

A controvercial film, My Kid Could Paint That is a serious challenge to what is considered contemporary modern art. It is a documentary about a four-year old whose paintings are compared to Picasso. Is it miraculaous or an elaborate hoax? The documentary follows the rise, the fall and the rise again of the small prodigy as she makes hundreds of thousands of dollars for her work.

Finally, Who the *&% Is Jackson Pollack, is an amusing film about a semi truck driver who buys a painting for five dollars. When she is told it may be an original Jackson Pollack, the quest is on to prove that it is truly an original.

Recently attended the theatre screening of Terry Zwigoff's "Art School Confidential." The director's fourth effort, unlike the successful 1994 "Crumb" and 2001 "Ghost World," was a disappointment.

After an ambitious effort with a documentary of renown illustrator, Robert Crumb - a difficult, yet eccentric personality, Zwigoff tackled the subject of 'everywhere America' with the interpretation of the comic Ghost World. While "Crumb" explored the creative impulse with outsider attitudes, it settled on the interpretation of everyday life and individuals, which fuel Crumb's illustrations. As a contrast, the film delves into the ill-functioning of Crumb's own family with many poignant scenes. Spring-boarding to "Ghost World," screenplay and comic written by Daniel Clowes, Zwigoff further examines the phenomena of finding ones place in the world for a recently graduated high school student. The choices we make in light of the mediocrity of contemporary living are displayed in pure and cutting satire with wonderful performances by Thora Birch and, then unknown, Scarlett Johanssen. The fourth effort of "Bad Santa" 2003 by Zwigoff is barely worth mentioning as it totally misses the mark.

Being an artist and enjoying Zwigoff's first two efforts as a director, I was really looking forward to the potential lampooning of the art school experience. While "Art School Confidential" makes a pedestrian effort in poking fun at art school students, teachers and art star wannabees, I feel it dragged with mundane scenes and a simplistic subplot of a campus murder. It's not that there isn't enough comedic material for a movie, it just wasn't explored by the writer and director. The stereotype of students who go to art schools, the critique of work, trying to get into shows, temperamental gallery owners, washed up instructors and art star burn outs all make the art world a bit of a parody of itself. I felt this could have really been played up with a greater question in the background of what constitues contemporary art today! I ultimately left the theatre at the end thinking this movie could have been a scream with a very valid question posed underneath.

Can anything else be said about WWII to enlighten a new generation? I think so, with two new movies I recently rented at the local video store, "Downfall" and "Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary."

There is a particular fascination with Adolf Hitler's life and final time spent in a bunker in Germany, which is the basis of an Academy Award Nominated movie called "Downfall," 2004. The details of what happened in the final days of April 1945 in the bunker were based on interviews with sole survivor, Traudl Junge, Hilter's young secretary. This detailed account of parties, marriage, infanticide and defiance is laid out in a step by step fashion creating an unnerving punch, along with the knowledge that nothing was fabricated or enhanced in a Hollywood fashion. The unflinching acceptance of inevitable fate is not overplayed or overdramatized as we watch final preparations with the allied forces advancing outside. The portrayal of Hitler, by Bruno Ganz, is nothing less than impressive, as we see him skillfully accentuate characteristics of the man and not the image, so feared by many. We are left seeing this Oliver Hirschbiegel movie as something close to a documentary, or as close to one which could ever have happened.

A nice addition for a double feature would be to take out the documentary, "Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary," 2002. An oral history, up close and personal with the woman, in her eighties, who was Hitler's personal secretary from 1942-45 is the basis of this documentary. Speaking of her day to day life before and after accepting the job, after a silence of some sixty years, Junge creates one of the few personal portraits of a man who will remain vilifide throughout history. Shortly after the premiere of this movie Junge passed away at the age of 82 having relieved her conscience of her role in history. This documentary is highly recommended as an addendum to "Downfall" as to the final days of the Fuehr.

While no new information can really be gleaned from the events of WWII, it is important to introduce two movies, one based on the interviews of the other, which will educate future generations to the factual final days of Adolf Hitler.

Taughted as one of Richard Burton's finest performances outside of the stormy "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," "Equus" is a marvel of advanced writing.

Burton, in the role of psychiatrist Martin Dysart, is treating a disturbed young man for the apparent senseless act of blinding six horses. The story goes far beyond the questions of why and addresses issues of faith, passion and the normalization of people into society. The writer Paul Schaffer extends himself to point out and ask the viewing audience, "At what cost is a life worth living without passion?" Always a timely topic in a world where ones convictions can either elevate or destroy you.

Available at your local video store as long as VHS's still last.

Will this movie actually change anything? The reason I ask is even though there is an election in the USA come November, will a single movie be enough to open the eyes of people who sat back and let George W. Bush usurp the presidency in the last election?

In 1966 Francois Truffault make a movie, "Fahrenheit 451," based on the Ray Bradbury story of an oppressive future where books are banned and burned. "Knowledge tends to make one dwell on themselves and cause unrest," it was explained, and "is detrimental to the smooth running of society." Michael Moore obviously has found similarity in the current administration of the USA to an Orwellian society - lets face it who can blame him, between the color code alerts, vague crisis alerts, citizen profiling and detention, to warrant calling his latest film, "Fahrenheit 9/11."



As is commonly mentioned when reviewing this film, I think the most damning image is that of George W. Bush sitting staring off into space in a kindergarten somewhere in Florida, with the book "My Pet Goat" on his knee. As opposed to some who have set up websites just to bash the movie and Michael Moore, I do not think Bush was showing calm and restraint in choosing to do nothing for 7 minutes. I quite frankly think he didn't know what to do and was in a state of shock. The first quarter of Fahrenheit 9/11 deals with the connections between the Bush and Bin Laden families, as the common denominator is oil and money. This is damning stuff as the only flights to leave US airspace in the hours after the World Trade Center explosions were those chartered to carry the Bin Laden family members out of the country, without question or detention. How do you explain that away? This is the very same family which Bush claims to be "hunting down" to this day, three years later. The film carries on dissecting the last US election, the "war on terror," and for the last three quarters of the film focuses on the effects on American families who sent their sons and daughters to fight another Vietnam.

While Moore has shown considerable restraint and tact - the lack of gory images of the WTC, he is still one director who insists in playing fast and loose. Analogies to the wild west and Bonanza theme mock US involvement in oil pipelines running through Kuwait to make rich men of those in power via with young soldiers who feel compelled to kill to the hits of their favorite tape. Watching the toll taken by family members who start out believing in the cause makes you cry for them even more when they lose a child in battle and begin to question the point of it all.

That is what I was left thinking as I strolled out with the rest of the somber audience members - what is the point of it all? Moore jumped through hoops to get this movie out in time for people to see before the election. Some say it is a documentary triumph, yet others say it is the greatest piece of propaganda since "Triumph of the Will." So again, I say will this movie make a difference come election day? Taking into account the effects of mass media on the public, it will be interesting to watch.