Friendly people

This is a sketch illustrating a pair of sculptures I one day wish to construct. 

The two larger figures are about 15 feet high, and to be constructed from a flat material such as steel, if it can be made rigid enough (perhaps it will be necessary to coonstruct them as a sort of steel sandwich, so that each sculpture would consist of two steel flats, joined by a struts).

The two smaller figures are there for scale, and represent real people. They will be painted in bright colours. The figures are designed to be friendly and welcoming.

Pendulous

A sketch of a sculpture soon to be completed with wires and an old picture frame.

The sculpture is Calderish, and its format  is one which I shall be translating for paintings increasingly. That is, a composition which consists of two or possible three planes, very closely placed in relation to each other, and a highly rhythmic relationship between elements, clearly distinguished in bright colours.

I Melt with You (2011): review: 2.5/10

Middle class male friends reunite in a remote house in California to drink, take drugs and bear hug.

This goes on for a considerable amount of time until something, inevitably, goes wrong.

Pretentious picture relieved only by good British punk music and Californian scenery.

To Rome With Love (2012): review 2/10

The stories of various characters in Rome, including a young architect and his older correspondent, a music producer and and opera singer played by Benigni.

It feels as if Allen made up this film as he went along, trusting to fate or depending on cliche to guide him. The pacing is awful, the jokes sink.  Allen himself is irritating, as is Benigni and one leaves the film grateful for the end.

The film fails to celebrate Rome, or even American presumptions about it, as Allen's previous Parisian film managed to do.

People Like Us (2012): review: 1/10

In California, the father of a self regarding young salesman dies. The salesman meets his father's illegitimate daughter and despite already having an attractive partner, becomes emotionally embroiled in her life, and that of her son.

The film degenerates rapidly into a soap opera format, with contrived melodramatic exchanges. The lead exudes self satisfaction, as if he would really prefer to be in an advertisment for hair shampoo. The others actors are not much different. The plot is preposterous. No one can act, and they are all too good-looking.

Utterly phoney: avoid.

Nackt (Naked) (2002): review: 7.5/10

Three discontented young German couples meet at a dinner party where they engage in a peculiar bet.

Imaginatively shot and fast-scripted film about romantic, sexual, and occasionally financial tensions between young Germans, who treat each other with gratuitous unkindness, behaving with distinct shrillness, in accordance with cultural stereotypes.

The Flock (2007): review: 3.5/ 10

An overenthusiastic probation officer, played by Richard "gerbils" Gere, is joined by a young woman, who is shortly to replace him, They pursue sex offenders with surprisingly eccentric tastes in New Mexico. Manichean, he exceeds his remits.

This is a Silence of the Lambs revisit, with a little dash of Dirty Harry thrown in, but one which lacks the interpersonal tensions necessary to animate it. The narrative is not easy to follow either.