We all want. We all need. We share those wants and needs and they go on, endlessly. Loneliness, like a phone call in a small, public phone booth. The child, thousands of miles away. The mother, in another world, making a living as best she can, sending money home, hoping to bring the child there or go back. Madrid is nothing like the Caribbean. Nothing like the Dominican Republic. Class and race, immigrants and turf. But mostly turf. New girls…
Perhaps the first post-modernist painting, well before the period assigned to that name. Pespective. Multiple perspectives. Meta. About painting. About the act of painting. Velasquez paints Velasquez. This is not a pipe. This is not Velasquez. Are we, the audience, looking at the painter painting us? Or, does our vanity blind us and prevent us from seeing that it is the king and queen of Spain in that mirror, not you? Or eye. Too easy, that one. Mirrors. Pictures within…
Woody Allen’s new film takes a sharp turn. It’s a departure from most of his other films in that neuroses is foreign, literally foreign, and perhaps more understandable in that context. The most overtly neurotic character, Maria Elena, played by Penelope Cruz, is the violently passionate ex-wife of the artist Juan Antonio, played by Javier Bardem. The two main characters, Vicky and Cristina, played by Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson, are mildly conflicted in comparison. The two American tourists, spending…