I have always been a big fan of the movies. I’ve written here in the past how I will often paint while an old movie plays in the studio, especially some of the older classics that were often based on great ideas and great dialogue. They are not distracting in most cases and it’s easy to pull thought and emotion from these films that finds its way into my work. It’s hard to not want to inject more feeling into whatever I am at work on when I listen to some of the lines from The Grapes of Wrath or so many other great films.
Tonight are the Oscars, that night when Hollywood celebrates the past year’s top films. I have watched faithfully since I was a kid even though recently I seldom have seen many, if any, of the nominees. It usually takes a year or so after the awards for me to catch up on them and in some cases I lose interest in pursuing them.
Sometimes when I do catch up on them I regret not having gotten to them sooner but often I am glad I waited because the film just wasn’t that good or simply wasn’t my cup of tea. But it’s always been like that. In the heyday of Hollywood they produced more than their share of bad movies. It’s easy to think otherwise because we see the classics over and over. A bad movie is a bad movie regardless of the time in which it was made.
But let’s not focus on bad movies. Let’s hope that there are movies this year and in the future that will inspire and move us.
It seems like every year there is some sort of controversy with the Oscars and this year is no different, with all of the the acting nominees having a decidedly pale complexion. I don’t have any answers except to say that filmmakers are missing out on a quickly growing demographic by not developing more films that simply tell good stories with people of color in larger roles without resorting to portraying them as gang bangers and drug dealers because that is not the experience of the overwhelming majority of this segment of the population.
It’s up to writers, especially those of color, to create work that goes beyond these stereotypes. If they can create compelling stories featuring people of color that appeal to the common human experience to which all people can relate, these films will be made.
I believe it can and will be done eventually.
That being said, let’s have a little Sunday Morning music with a Hollywood theme, one of my favorites from one of my favorite bands. It’s Celluloid Heroes from the Kinks. Have a great Sunday!
For me, Punxsutawney Phil is not the ultimate predictor that winter is coming to an end. No, it is those first reports from Florida and Arizona that baseball’s Spring Training is beginning that does it for me. The baseball is in the air once more and I feel so much better when I am immersed in the rhythms of baseball.
Valentine’s Day.
I showed this short video here about six years back. It’s a compilation of morphing self portraits from Vincent Van Gogh put together by Phillip Scott Johnson that I found intriguing then and now.
I was going through some old images the other day and for some reason I always settle on this image shown here, an old piece from my earliest painting efforts over twenty years back. I call it The Incantation. At that moment a news station was on the TV, with its incessant and seemingly never-ending coverage of the presidential primaries.
Here’s my latest entry into the Icon series, a 12″ by 12″ canvas piece that is titled Icon: Joe H. He is my 3rd great-grandfather and his name was Joseph Harris and he was born in the Lindley (the town named after our common ancestor, Eleazer Lindsley,who was among the first Icons) area south of Corning in 1833.
There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer. 
The painting above is titled Paradise-The Land of Men, Birds and Ships. It’s actually a mural that was painted on a building outside of Paris in 1950 by artists Friedensreich Hundertwasser and René Brõ. It was saved from demolition in 1964 although I have no idea where or in what condition it now stands. I’ve featured Hundertwasser’s work, with it’s rich colors and organic shapes, here on the blog a few times in the past. I like his work, I like this and thought it fit well with the song I’ve chosen for today’s Sunday Morning Music.
Redtree Times 