Hump Day Hottie: Matthew Barney

Because some days, like days in which you return to New York City from Utah (just... hypothetically speaking), nothing but a Mormon obsessed art world superstar will do.

Matthew Barney in "The Order" from Cremaster 3

There's nothing like a man who likes to toss his own sculptures around, wear feather headdresses, pink kilts and shove bloody rags into his mouth.

The many faces (and bodies) of Matthew Barney

Sometimes there's nothing like a man who dresses his nude body in intricate outfits and squids, obsesses about viscous fluids, shrinks his own testicles for art and then ties ribbons on them, chops up his pop star girlfriend in rising water before transforming into a whale, and reworks the Guggenheim as a video game setting.

There's nothing like a man who makes things with his hands.


Today is one of those days. No other man but Matthew Barney will do.

T H R E E

As promo'ed on Friday, the Film Experience Blog turned 3 years-old on this busy busy weekend amidst all the festival coverage.

We celebrate as we always do... with Lists!

Nathaniel's 3 favorite...
movies with 3 in title: 3 Women ('77), Trois Coleurs ('93-'94), The Three Faces of Eve ('57)
3rd installments of a franchise: Ouch. This one is tough since #3s tend to astonish with their capacity for suckage (see also: this summer's releases) but I'm gonna go Trois Coleurs: Rouge (1994), Alien³ (1992) --yes I mean that, Cremaster 3 (2002)...though, technically, it's not the third is it since they weren't made in order
directors: Hitchcock, Almodovar, Allen (give or take many others)
books: The Great Gatsby, Le Petit Prince, Inside Oscar
tv shows: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Once & Again, Twin Peaks
foods: pad thai, coffee, anything w/ cheese (none of these inside the theater please)
mythological creatures: medusa, centaurs, lost silent films

actors about whom I have impure thoughts: Jude Law, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Brad Pitt
foreign movie stars (all time): Catherine Deneuve, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Liv Ullman
michelle pfeiffer performances: Susie Diamond (1989), Catwoman (1992), Ingrid Magnussen (2002) all of which she should've won Oscars for. Yes, in my world she has three.
childhood obsessions: Olivia Newton-John, The Muppets, Gene Kelly
nonhuman film characters: The Tin Man (The Wizard of Oz, 1939), Smitty (The Awful Truth, 1937), Pris (Blade Runner, 1982)
movie stars (classic): Natalie Wood, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland
movies (ever): West Side Story (1961), Manhattan (1979), number three changes all the time so stop asking (1915-2002)
cinematic moments most likely to entrance me: a strong musical number, a good close up (if they've been used in moderation and if the filmmaker has the good sense to not cut away after 2 seconds), a woman lying to herself

In the comments
Name your 3 favorite anything... (don't be shy. You know you want to LIST)
*

Incredibly Random Star-F**king Goodness

Queerty loves The Devil Wears Prada. Re: it's box office, I love that I called that this would be a big hit and no one believed me. One reader actually told me privately 'you're crazy. Only gay men will want to see that' and I also staunchly defended its unusual trailer (just one scene) which some people hated but which totally did the trick: i.e. introduced the characters. Made you want more...
Oh No They Didn't on Keira Knightley's skeleton.
Just Jared w/ photos of God and her family. So many redheads! I'm glad she's multiplying and replenishing the earth, good talented genes and all... but I hope she starts making good movies again.
Female First on the "top gays" Sir Ian rules. Oh, and that pic above is of Gandalf marching in London pride with a guy who is rumored to be his new boyfriend (the guy to the left in the Blondie t-shirt) --if you haven't yet voted on the fav actor right now poll Ian is one of your contestants.

and just because it's the Fourth doesn't mean we can't be critical...
Cinematical on South Korea's quota drop for Hollywood films. My opinion? A very bad move on South Korea's part. The countries that survive, cinematically speaking, put quotas on these things and their citizenry is thus coaxed to see their own good stuff and Off-Hollywood cinema survives ...as it should. Cinematical also has an intriguing post on the 'anti-american accusational brouhaha over Superman Returns. I totally agree with their take.

And why am I showing this picture of Matthew Barney and Chlöe Sevigny chatting it up? Well, like the Ian pic and Keira link above it's from Oh No They Didn't. The photo is labelled something like 'the talented Chlöe Sevigny'. You know that I worship celebrities as much as the next person and enjoy the gossip blogs but crap like this bugs. When one of the most important celebrated artists in the world (and Mr. Björk to boot) is standing next to a talented indie actress, shouldn't he at least get a mention? I mean think about it. He's far more important to the art world than Sevigny is to the gossip / celebrity world. Grrrr. It's like seeing a photo of Nicole Kidman with Barack Obama on a political blog and the blog just saying "the wonderful Barack Obama" ... and ignoring that one of the world's most important movie stars happens to be standing right next to him. Ah well. At least it didn't read "...and unidentified friend."

Matthew is on my brain at any rate because my friend Astroboy (who wrote those last couple of horoscopes for y'all. This is him to the left, his beau in the middle, and yours truly to the right) just went with The Boyfriend (mine. pay attention) to this exhibit "Into Me, Out of Me" at PS 1 this past Sunday and who was actually there to see the same exhibit? Matthew Barney, Björk, and their daughter Isabella. Astroboy, who feels about Björk the way I feel about La Pfeiffer, was entirely beside himself and has not uttered a word about anything else for the past 48 hours. If my one and only with Michelle Pfeiffer in the flesh is any indication... he'll be talking about this day for years to come.

At one point The Boyfriend was standing next to Barney and Astroboy was standing right next to Björk as they all stared at the same exhibit. Oblivious to the art and the starfucking fandom, wee Isabella played with her necklace on the museum floor. My favorite part of the story is that at one point they saw Matthew Barney holding his daughter and pointing at his own installation in the show (which features him dangling in a harness --buck naked of course --it's Barney) and explaining it to her.

I love Matthew Barney & Björk. Loved them separately. Love them together. I obsess on Cremaster and even made it through Drawing Restraint 9 (pictured right) which completely terrorized my fragile psyche. So why did I stay home instead of seeing this exhibit with them? Bad decision on that particular Sunday afternoon, I'll tell you that.

Blogosphere Multiplex: Gallery of the Absurd

Once a week I'm grilling bloggers I admire with questions about their own film experiences. This week's interviewee is 14 from "Gallery of the Absurd". Her insightful, funny and terrific illustrations on modern celebrity and gossip culture have been written up in the New York Post, Newsday, and are justifiably hot topics in the gossip blogosphere.

I won't even try to pick a favorite but if you're unfamiliar with her work look at: "Paris Hilton as a Proboscis Monkey", "Celebrity Endorsement Idea No. 645", and "The Sexiest Man in Hollywood" to get an overall feel.


10 Questions with 14
Don't be confused. The number of questions is ten. The name of the interviewee is "fourteen." Pay attention.

Nathaniel: How often do you go the movies?

14: I go see a movie about once or twice a month. I'd go more often, but there hasn't been much I've wanted to see. The thought of sitting in a crowded theater while watching Tom Cruise gnash his teeth while shooting ridiculously large guns and running from fiery explosions is just NOT the ideal movie going experience for me. MEOW!

Nathaniel: What --you don't think those large guns make him look enticingly manly? OK. Who is man enough to lure you into the theater with their action hijinx?

14: Manly. Tom Cruise. Those words just don't seem to fit together.

Gary Oldman will lure me into a theater no matter what role he's playing. I absolutely love to watch that man act. Johnny Depp lures me with his skills of quirky character performance and OKAY, I won't lie, his smoldering good looks. I am a big fan of Jeff Bridges, Gene Hackman, Meryl Streep, Samuel Jackson, Shirley Maclaine, Uma Thurman, and I better stop listing all of them now. To answer your question, I'd LOVE to see Mickey Rourke star in a summer blockbuster action film.

Nathaniel: What about Sin City? He was sooo good in that [FB Bronze Medal -ed]. Did that satisfy you or merely whet the appetite for more M-I-C-K-E-Y?

14: More mickey MORE!!!!

Nathaniel: So in your awesome illustration work, you're often taking already absurd celebs and zeroing in on why they're so nutso. Because of that special talent of yours you end up painting a lot of celebrities that many people love-to-hate like Tom Cruise, Nicole Ritchie [click on 14's illustration to the left readers -the details are wildly entertaining] and Kirsten Dunst, etc...) rather than those that everyone loves to love like, say, Meryl Streep. Is there any actor or actress out there that you'd love to have more of an excuse to draw? Which movie faces do you find most fascinating as an artist?

14: First, thank you for your kind works about my art. For now, I'm enjoying exploring what happens to a person when they get trapped (either willing or not) in the world of tabloid gossip. Their identity becomes less of an actor or entertainer and more of a character starring in a very public circus freak sideshow. Tom Cruise is no longer an actor, the tabloids have turned his character into a couch jumping crazy who believes an evil galactic ruler named Xenu brought humans to Earth and stacked them around volcanoes. Truth is stranger than fiction. I seek to observe and record celebrity gossip because I feel it's an interesting form of mythology. I want to understand why our culture is so obsessed with celebrity. For now, my focus will stay on gossip, but that is sure to change one day.

As for what movie faces I find the most interesting...I love older un-botoxed actors and actresses with character, confidence and charisma. I find them far more beautiful and interesting than fresh faced starlets.

Nathaniel: I once painted Julianne Moore and I must have thrown out a ton of rough sketches. I found her incredibly hard to capture even though I wasn't going for realism. Which celebrated face has plagued you the most as an artist --or does it always come easily?

14: I like your painting - she DOES have a very difficult face to capture!

There are some faces I just can't seem to "see". I can't paint Sienna Miller or Hillary Duff because I can't get my head around what they look like. Brad Pitt is difficult because his face changes from handsome to haggard within seconds. Right now I'm struggling with Janice Dickinson's face - she is extremely hard to draw because her features are so...stretchy and puffy. I usually do multiple sketches, some with my eyes half closed, in order to find the "essence" of the person I'm trying to paint.

It usually doesn't come easy except in the case of Britney Spears. I can paint her in my sleep.

Nathaniel: Re: Sienna and Hillary. I totally hear you. To me the fame that confuses me most is the generically pretty fame. In most cases you have to be slightly weird-looking to capture/keep the nation's attention. Like, say, Uma Thurman.

Anyway... What's your favorite movie? ever.

14: If I had to pick one, Seven Samurai.

Nathaniel: I noticed in your "about" page that you love Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle (as do I. Oh how I love it so). Which is your favorite?

14: I really haven't watched The Cremaster Cycle for the story, but I've viewed it several times for the breathtaking visuals, installations, costumes, sets, etc. The series gave me great inspiration for my work. If I must choose which episode is my favorite, I would say Cremaster 3.

Nathaniel: Edward Scissorhands or Captain Jack Sparrow?

14: Captain Jack! As much as I understand and appreciate sensitive misfits with dangerous hands, I'd much rather spend time with a swaggering adventurous pirate in search of lost treasure.

Nathaniel: Re: Art movies like Girl with a Pearl Earring or artist biopics like the Francis Bacon pic Love is the Devil or Ed Harris's Pollock. Any general or specific feelings on these? Hate? Love?

14: They were all good movies, especially Love is the Devil...but what I'm waiting for is a Salvador Dali biopic. Perhaps I'll write one.

Nathaniel: They make a movie of your life. Who would play you? What's the title? What's the rating?

14: Movie title: "A Fruit So Swollen With Juice, It Longs for the Prick of the Knife" Actress to play 14: A wild chimpanzee. The movie is rated: 1.6180339.....

THANK YOU!!!

Nathaniel: No, thank you 14. This was very fun.

Once again readers, check out 14's addictive and clever work at "Gallery of the Absurd."


New Reader?
If this is your first time here please check the rest of the blog or, in keeping with this posts theme, see a random assortment of the film experience's more gossipy/absurd moments: Paris is Only a City in France * Poptart Sandwich * A History of... Sharon Stone *

Other Interviews:
The Gilded Moose * Jay Lassiter * Dylan Meconis * Martha @ Cinematical * ultranow * fourfour * six things * How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons * Ron L'Infirmier * Thomas & Co.

To All Readers:
Any suggestions of bloggers you'd love to see featured? I'll try to rope them in.

Tags: movies, cinema, illustration, design, film, Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Matthew Barney, art

No Restraint

OK. So it's 2 AM and I really need to be asleep. But I gotta tell you...I just got back from seeing "The Björk & Barney Show" (AKA Drawing Restraint 9). About 2/3rd of the way through it they went from being the hippest genius couple in the world to something like a highbrow Mickey & Mallory Knox. I'll be sleeping in the fetal position tonight. If I get any sleep at all.

I didn't really think that either of them could freak me out at this point. I have loved and watched Björk since the Sugarcubes days. I sat through all 10 hours of Cremaster. This isn't my first Drawing Restraint etc... And, yet, they managed it. um. congratulations?

Love to "The Boyfriend"

Longtime readers know "The Boyfriend" from his infrequent but oft-sarcastic blog comments (what is that about anyway?) but since today is our anniversary (8 Years. Holla!) I thought I should mention him...but in a movie related way since I think it rather icky when celebrities give too much detail about their personal romances. [Not that I'm a celebrity, but if you have to have a model for behavior, why not the gorgeous, rich, and fabulous?] Anyway, it always causes trouble when they go on and on about their romantic life so they are wise to keep their lips zipped. Brangelina...well done. The silence? Good.

The Boyfriend is a total and incurable Francophile when it comes to le cinema. His favorite movie this year --well, I knew it'd be French-language. It always is. I think it's his way of rubbing it in that he doesn't need the subtitles. If it's improbably not French like, say, 2001's Mulholland Dr...then it's still somehow connected to la France. Lynch's latest masterpiece was French financed. Canal + don'cha know?

So when I asked him what his favorite film of 2005 was recently he, hilariously true to form, says "Hmmmm. It's either Caché or Kings and Queen. Maybe Kings and Queen." Some of his other favorite cinematic things? Documentaries, Catherine Deneuve, Johnny Depp, Ingmar Bergman, Matthew Barney's Cremaster. I suspect part of his general movie-standoffishness is mere snobbery. He prefers art, Björk, and fashion. Example. He loves Brokeback Mountain --I know in my heart that he does--yet he refuses to fully admit to it because, you know, everyone else does. He doesn't care at all about "best ofs" or "awards" or "lists" of anything. How demented is that? But it's lovely that he is so patient with my full-time obsession.

xoxoxo

Seven Things

This isn't another shout out to sixthings (my devotion already over-publicized there) but rather one of those chain blog/survey thingies -coming to me via Pfangirl (one of my fav longtime online pals. We met via you know who).

7 Things to do before I die
Figure out how to balance career, hobbies, and personal life
Write a book
Learn Flash animation
Travel to Europe and Asia
Swing on a trapeze
something i haven't even dreamt of yet
Attend the Oscars

7 Things I cannot do
Act
Relax
Understand the public's taste in movies
Drink as much water as I'm supposed to
Be mad at my cat
Stop obsessing about movies and actresses
Be offline for more than a week


7 Things that attract me to people
talent
intelligence
kindness
beauty
memorable features
good aesthetic taste
expressiveness (physical and emotional)

7 Things I say most often
F@#* (and no, I'm not proud of this at all)
ewww!
What? (because I often drift away)
I don’t know
truth be told...
"mmmm, can't get enough" (from Heathers)
my back hurts

7 Celebrity Crushes
Because I reveal this all the time in the hump-day-hottie threads, let's go with something less easy for film experience fans to shout along with and say...
7 Non Movie Star Related Crushes of the Fictional or Celebrity Variety
Olivia Newton-John "totally, totally, totally hot"
Nightcrawler (The X-Men)
Anderson Cooper
Prince Charming (Sleeping Beauty)
Lindsay Wagner as The Bionic Woman
Matthew Barney (of Cremaster and Mr. Björk fame)
Iceman (The X-Men)

So...
Now it's your turn, readers. Answer one of any of the categories above. If you have a blog, you have to do them all.