The Great Debators (2007): review: 5/10

In the 30s, in racist Texas, a black teacher trains a black college dabating team: despite interpersonal difficulties, largely inspired by a pretty girl with a dimple, they prove formidible in debates with other colleges.

This is an essay in moral obviousness: we might be better served by a film which illustrated with less suffocating self righteousness the genesis of the civil right movement, and whose lead characters had the tiniest complexity: but as this film comes from Ms Oprah Winfrey's stable so we should expect nothing else.

I'd be curious to see a film describing the corrosive effects of self-righteousness on the American people -a quality which Americans seem delighted to export. This would be a film which parodies moral worthiness and all the bossiness and mental lethargy that comes with it, and which describes the nausea it induces in gentle souls who prefer to mind their own business.

Departures (2008): review: 7/10

A 'cellist's orchestra is dissolved: he goes with his girlfriend to live in the house of his deceased mother: he finds work as an assistant to a funeral director.

Apart from making him quite nauseus this seems to cause his superficial girlfriend considerable distress.

This is rather long, but well made, lending interesting insights into Japanese culture.

Licht und Blindheit

 

Licht und Blindheit, oil on card, 14.4 x 9.5 cm discarded

Painted near the petrol station, and the most satisfactory, most Redonesque of recent nocturnes, bridging better than others internal and external.

A tree at night

*

A tree at night, oil on card, 11.9 x 9 cm  - available

Painted from the table of a burger joint. I wasn't bothered at all there but I miss being able to sit in a car and paint and listen to music.

I'd  intended to paint the stars but couldn't find a suitable place to work: I need somewhere that is bright enough for me to paint but which affords a good view of the night sky, the stars undiminished by streetlights.

Night

Night, oil on card, 13 x 10 cm

  

This time I attempted to paint the stars through the mesh of branches: next time I will simply paint the stars in the sky. 

I stand joyfully on the shoulders of V. van Gogh.

Isn't it odd how few paintings there are of ths night sky, given how amazing it is to see?

The Man Next Door (2009): review: 7.5/10

*

A precious furniture designer lives with his wife and child in a Corbusier house: his idyll is destroyed when his neighbour constructs a window in his wall looking onto their house.

With much wit, the film describes the vacuity of the designer, his vanity, casual dishonesty and snobbery. However the film is somehow incomplete, the various narrative threads not closed with total efficiency.

 I am not sure if this is deliberate or not.

*

Lucas III

Lucas III, oil on card, 14.4 x 10.4 cm

The third of a series of Lucas.