Yep, very good. Pacino was, surprisingly to me, excellently scene chewy, and the script wasn’t mangled too much.
Nothing really to add here, because art is so very subjective. Just anecdotally, I never really paid much attention to Starry Night - I could take it or leave it. But in my high school art classroom, a friend of mine took it upon herself to paint that very picture on the back wall. It was huge, and I would stop in during lunch to watch her paint. She had such a great eye - all she needed was a small picture and she could duplicate it exactly; anything, anywhere, anytime. I don’t think I had realised how many colours, how many brush strokes, how much was really going on in that painting until I watched her putting it up with great care on that back wall. When it was finished, it was larger than life, and the most amazing thing I had ever seen done with my own eyes.
Now, it’s my favourite painting. But it wasn’t Van Gogh who made me love it. Thanks, Shawna! 
Surprisingly? Are you unfamiliar with Pacino or just don’t care for him? He pretty much epitomizes scene-chewiness. If it’s the former, it seems we don’t agree on a lot outside Joss. *Starry Night’*s my most favorite painting (though I’ve never seen it in person and doubt I ever will) and Pacino’s one of my favorite actors as well.
For me, it’s most of Monet. Some of his earlier works are pretty good (I like the ‘Gare St Lazare’) but I could not care less about the frickin’ water lilies. Ah well.
For poetry, I personally really like metrical poetry, sonnets etc, but free verse does absolutely nothing for me. The whole point of poetry, to me, is to do something prose can’t do, to impose a different structure, not just divide up the lines differently.
I also find ‘modernist’ novels other than Joyce to be very difficult to make it through. Joyce is work, but rewarding work.
I meant surprisingly in context. I appreciate Pacino, but I didn’t think his scene chewiness was going to work in that role, or in the Shakespearian tongue. I thought it was going to be groaningly over the top. Worked fine, though.
I came in here to say the same thing. Really, WTF? It’s a very plain portrait, and there are millions of others like it. What’s the big deal already?
I’ve seen a few Manet originals and I can’t see what’s great about him. To me they just don’t look very good.
And although I completely distance myself from the people who moan about the cost, I just don’t get the Scottish Parliament building.
Ah. I’m not familiar with *The Merchant of Venice *but assumed he would be perfect for a Shakespearean adaptation considering his acting style, myself.
The appeal of it to me is that a lot of people see this beautiful, vibrant, surreal landscape. One online resource says:
I think this completely misses the point. Van Gogh was not just lonely at this point. He was fucked up. What I see in Starry Night is pure, unadulterated paranoia and existential terror.
I see a small village huddled in dread under a swirling, chaotic sky. The huge stars and moon exert their mysterious, alien dominance over the terrified village.
The stark, black tree in the foreground just heightens the effect. It brings the fear and uncertainty out of the sky, and down to earth. It’s a connection between the remote, existential intimidation the artist feels from the sky and the more mundane dangers here on earth. The tree crowds, almost pinches, the village between itself and the stark hills and the forest to the right of the frame.
It’s a very uncomfortable, paranoid painting. That’s why I like it. 
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!
True Blue Jack
I can’t stand Kurt Vonnegut. He’s a smug, didactic bore who isn’t half as clever as he seemed to think he was. “So it goes?” Oh, just shut up already.
Have you ever seen Looking for Richard? It’s a documentary where Al Pacino goes around talking to other actors about Richard III, basically workshopping the play, and staging certain key scenes to illustrate what they’ve just been talking about. Great stuff.
Yes. And why wouldn’t folks have good feelings for past times lived through a constant drug-induced high?
True Blue Jack
From what I understand, the focus of most of the appreciation of the painting is not the lady herself, but the background, which is surprisingly detailed upon close examination. It is also a great example of the sfumato technique.
I don’t get poetry and I don’t get Fellini, for the most part. I realize these are my shortcomings and not those of the artists. I need to make more of an effort to understand and appreciate. I just can’t work up the energy to do so at this point.
Casablanca.
Maybe I just need to see it again (I would have been… thirteen? when I saw it last)
But when I saw it, I was very open to it. It’s not like I hated it because I was expecting something else or because I didn’t appreciate old movies or anything like that. My dad had explained all the background to me and I understood the plot, so… I honestly don’t think it was a matter of me being too young to get it.
But… I hated it.
Huge? :dubious:
29x36 inches isn’t exactly huge for a painting. I’d put in firmly in the medium category. I’ve also seen it in person, and while I agree that it is a fantastic painting, it’s size did absolutely nothing to impress me.
I don’t get anything from pre-impressionist paintings. Nada. Most photography, too, leaves me high and dry.
Yeah, it is strange isn’t it? I do like the way it looks with the crags behind it though.
My contribution would be Cubism. I know it was really important and revolutionary, but they just look like jumble to me. Perhaps if I knew more about it, I would appreciate it more.
Actually, I had almost the opposite reaction. I was at the Van Gogh Museum in Holland in April and I came away thinking ‘Dude, what a fucked up guy. Good thing his sister-in-law kicked ass at the marketing angle. Otherwise no one would have ever heard of him.’
I look at a lot of Van Gogh and look work by a guy who had talent but illness and other weirdnesses kept him from living up to it all. Some of it’s good but I could live without it. And this is after spending most of a day soaking in it.
Even with Vermeer?
Hmm, hadn’t really heard of him, though after looking over his wiki article I’m not too impressed, though I do like Girl with a Pearl Earring. Okay, so most pre-impressionist painting.