A Walk In The Park/Then Annie Disappointed Us/But Amy Didn't

Went for a nice walk in the Prater, the former imperial hunting grounds.

It's a huge park and though it was cold and gray outside, there were plenty of people jogging, bicycling, walking, and playing with their dogs. There was a hill with some snow & ice on it (probably man-made, because we haven't had enough snow to accumulate like that) and the kids were having a great time sledding down...

Even the crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw. 

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Then we went to the Annie Liebowitz exhibit at Kunsthaus Wien.

Annie was the subject of a recent American Masters documentary. She's been around forever and even people who have never heard of her have seen her images. Among the most famous is the pic of a naked John Lennon curled up in bed with Yoko Ono, and a pic of the naked, pregnant Dimi Moore. Both of which were at the exhibit.

And there were some great portraits on display, but the exhibit mostly disappointed us. Most of the work looked pretty ordinary to me. There were lots of shots of Annie's family---her kids, her siblings, her parents---doing ordinary stuff in the back yard or at the beach. I don't care if photographers shoot non-famous people, but the photos have to be interesting, and these weren't. Annie's large format, B & W shots were beautiful but most of the other 150 or so images made us shrug and say, "Eh."

The exhibit was crowded, though. Mostly with younger people, staring at the photos of famous people.

I dunno. I always liked Annie's work, but maybe that's because I only saw the very best of it. Why she chose to stack her exhibit with shots my grandma might have taken, is beyond me.

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We discovered a local public-access station here called Okto. They carry Amy Goodman's DEMOCRACY NOW! and we watch it several times a week.

Yesterday, Amy featured a guy who spoke of an interesting plan: people disappointed in the attitudes of, and risky investments of the major banks, should consider withdrawing their money from those banks and depositing it instead in small local banks and credit unions.

I like the idea of thousands or millions of customers telling the "too big to fail" banks: Go fuck yourselves. Voting with your money---it's the American Way.

Check out the Move Your Money website for more.

Free Postcards

Some free postcards I picked up at a restaurant...

Avatar

Went to see AVATAR last night with our friends Peter and Vivian.

Short take: I suggest you see it.

I am not big on special-effects films. When I hear someone say: "The special effects were fantastic!" I take that to mean: "They tried desperately to cover the stink of a shitty story with less-smelly special effects."

But with Avatar, I give a hearty thumbs-up...not only because the effects were so spectacular, and the world they created so beautiful, but also because the 3-D was a nice touch. Unlike 3-D films of the past that I've seen, where you get cheap-ass cardboard glasses with different colored lenses, with Avatar we got what looked like regular sunglasses. I looked them over, trying to figure out what was different about them, but couldn't. But they worked, and worked well.

The story was decent, though a few of the characters (particularly the military leader) were absolute caricatures. Also, though the film is set in the year 2154, there were way too many early-21st Century verbalizations, like "Bring it!" and "Is that all you got, bitch?" An obvious concession to the youngsters in the audience.

Also, the sappy Hollywood-esque romantic part of the story line might make more mature viewers say, sarcastically: "Yeah, right---that's EXACTLY how love works," though I suspect the teenage girls in the audience might swoon a bit. Give 'em a few weeks of a "dream man" who sits on the sofa all night farting while playing his video games, and who never cleans up around the house, and they'll get over that shit soon enough.

Also, the final battle scene was way over the top and I found myself thinking: "I'm not buying this crap for a second," followed immediately by: "On the other hand, here's a movie where blue cat-people are flying around on dinosaur birds, so who can expect a realistic battle sequence?" It's like opera: you go for the music and the singing, but forget anything approaching a believable story.

Lots of interesting modern-day parallels in the story line that provide food for thought. And, the producers used a lot of imagination in designing the world the blue cat-like people inhabit.

I also thought it might be a great film to see while higher than a kite, for those of you who enjoy a good smoke now and then.