Fader

In Paranoid Park, Gus Van Sant's characters wander aimless and blank-faced—haunting Portland's Northwest locales in a state of dazed apathy. Just like the moment when you burst from underwater and out into the air, Paranoid Park operates on the concept of ear popping newness, and how characters are forced into reaction when things happen beyond their control. More simply though, it's about how sometimes when you're figuring shit out as a teenager you do something really bad and get away with it.

There isn't much plot to it, but there's an understanding of the always-unspoken weight that comes with figuring out who you are. The film also holds all the usual Gus Van Sant tropes: teenage nihilism, beautiful scenery and long shots of amateur prettyboys walking dreamily, all interrupted by a chance confrontation with a train station security guard. Although it's the crux of the entire film, it also seems incidental, because what this movie is really about is growing up and what you do or don't do when your only mechanism for dealing with life is not dealing with it.

Over vacation we did not much else aside from listen to the They Know remix but we did de-haze-ify ourselves enough yesterday to go catch an afternoon showing of the Gregg Araki stoner masterpiece Smiley Face in which Anna Faris does not close her mouth for the entire film because even she could not believe how incredibly blazed she was. (Nor could she believe she was holding an original copy of the Communist Manifesto outside of a meat factory, as shown above). Go see it because Faris is amazing and googly-eyed and then like it more for Araki's blend of weed jokes and apathy assailing. Or go see it because Danny Masterston humps a skull and RIP the incredible Roscoe Lee Brown.

Freak Scene gets literary this week with an excerpt from Max G. Morton's Indestructible Wolves of the Apocalypse Junkyard. Send it to your niece for Christmas! more...

The genesis of the Tokion art book, Revisionaries, is an interesting one: the mag wanted to do a book that celebrated its history but when nothing could be decided on, the book became a reflection of the progress and subsequent democratization of the art world through the lens of Tokion coverage. “Now there are ten thousand galleries and there are so many different communities of people that are into art,” says Ken Miller, curator of the book and former Editor-In-Chief of Tokion. Inside, you’ll find work from the likes of Ed Templeton, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Chris Johanson, and Rita Ackermann. Essentially it’s about celebrating the history of Tokion without actually being about Tokion. “The thing that defined the magazine was the artists that were in it,” says Miller. “That was really the personality of the magazine.”

Buy Revisionaries now for yourself or an artsy fartsy loved one from HNA Books or your local bookseller.

There is a part in the trailer for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly where entirely paralyzed locked-in syndrome sufferer Jean-Domenique Bauby is wrapped up in blankets on a platform in the ocean, unfeeling anything because he is completely immobilized. Waves crash around him and he’s silent and unmoved and everything is very sweeping and emotional and we saw this about ten trillion times in the theater and each time it was more “triumphant!” and corny. But then our friend made us see it (even though we kind of wanted to see Starting Out in the Evening because we are old) and it was super crazy and not trite and triumphant without quotes or corniness. Julian Schnabel made an epic movie about a guy who can only blink. We can’t even blink epically. Watching an eyelid sewed up from the inside is the future of film. Go see it, if only for better use of Velvet Underground in a weirdo French movie than Michel Gondry could ever wish for.

Like all good New Yorkers should, we dragged ourselves uptown to the museum this weekend, saw Kara Walker exhibit at the Whitney, she of conflicted MacArthur status and deathly brutal but still, uh, brutal slavery narratives. Read the non-art-knowing art vibes and art thoughts of some art after that little jump. And sometime before it closes in February, go see Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, too. It's pay what you want on Fridays! more...

In a brilliant flash of branded entertainment Reebok is producing a new series for IFC (premiering next Monday) which pairs its top athletes with celebrities of other sorts in tête-á-têtes of surprisingly human dimension. Superstar ballers like Baron Davis, David Ortiz, Allen Iverson, and Thierry Henry match up with people like Nelly, Emmanuelle Chriqui and Paz Vega in locations that have personal relevance to each. Our favorite so far is Thierry and Paz in Barcelona (pictured above) because we played soccer as kids, weren't very good, and didn't get to travel or hang out with beautiful people because of it. Hooray for television!

Last week we caught a screening of Southland Tales, writer/director Richard Kelly's much-delayed follow-up to Donnie Darko. Though it's not as terrible as some have said, Southland Tales is more likely to go down, if anything, as a camp classic, not a cult classic. Sorry to disappoint, dudes. more...

Thanks to a tip from good FADER friend Simone Shubuck, we stopped by Jack Hanley Gallery in Chinatown, LA to check out the new Aurie Ramirez exhibition and quickly realized that we were not prepared for the awesomeness therein. Aurie's brilliant watercolors exist in a world of her own invention, inhabited by face-painted androgynes and dancing pastries (maybe hot dogs?). Aurie is one of the artists developed by Creative Growth Art Center, a Bay Area group that fosters artistic achievement in adults with physical, developmental and emotional disabilities. Ramirez speaks and writes in a language of her own creation, and her paintings are as idiosyncratic and engaging as her personality. For more images of her work, make the jump, and visit Jack Hanley Gallery where the exhibition will be on display until February 24th. more...