Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

In Conversation with Artist Jim Shaw

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Jim Shaw: Thinking the Unthinkable, at Gagosian, Beverly Hills (12 January – 25 February 2023)
by Amadour

Artist Jim Shaw captures the tantalizing spectacle of Hollywood in a new series of paintings and sculptures in his exhibition Thinking the Unthinkable, opening at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. Last month I visited the artist at his studio in Highland Park, Los Angeles, to view the work for this show and to speak with him about his many muses. A prolific drawer, Shaw has mountains of sketches from which he prepares his ideas for forthcoming paintings. In this interview, we plug into his infatuation with film, stories of Hollywood personalities, and secret societies. [Read more…]

The Tragedy of Macbeth 

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A film written and directed by Joel Coen

Reviewed by James Shapiro
NYR

Those who have long followed the Coen brothers and their cinematic universe of criminals, nihilists, and overreachers may see in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) a long-deferred reckoning with Shakespeare, who has been there before them. We don’t typically think of Shakespeare as a writer interested in crime stories, but he surely was, from the earliest play in which he likely had a hand, Arden of Faversham — a true crime story in which a wife conspires with her lover to kill her husband — through Hamlet and Macbeth. There are moments in The Tragedy of Macbeth when Shakespeare and the Coens feel in perfect alignment, such as the scene in which Macbeth suborns two nameless murderers to kill Banquo. The hapless pair see the pointlessness and peril of saying no to him, and in their anxious glances and resignation seem to have walked onto the set directly from an earlier Coen brothers film. [Read more…]

The Aesthetic Of Nostalgia In Once Upon A Time … In Hollywood

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By Alci Rengifo

Nostalgia has replaced epochs in the modern culture. There is the increasing feeling that while technology certainly races ahead in its advancement, culturally we are obsessively looking to the past. Vinyl is sought after by the kids who are convinced it sounds better than digitally remastered albums on CD or streaming. The look of videotape is being recreated for music videos and even entire film projects. Music scores are reviving the techno sheen of the 1980s. Millennials, having just missed out on the 80s and consuming art while growing up highly influenced by the 70s, are desperate to reach back. With consumer culture now defining the times and creating stagnation in any new art forms or styles, the past takes on a new glow. But few filmmakers can make art out of nostalgia quite like Quentin Tarantino. His new film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, defines nostalgia itself. In its look and sound it feels like a brain working in overdrive to recall a specific moment in its archived history. [Read more…]

Christoph Waltz’s Savagely Clever Directorial Debut In Georgetown

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Reviewed by Kristy Puchko

At 53, Austrian-German actor Christoph Waltz became an unlikely Hollywood star. After decades working in German film and television, he broke through with Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. Despite being an unknown stateside, despite starring opposite A-lister Brad Pitt, despite being tasked with playing a ruthless and giddily zealous Nazi, Waltz stole the spotlight, then earned his first Academy Award.  [Read more…]

The City as an Abyss of Dreams: Michael Chrisoulakis’s Los Angeles Overnight

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Reviewed by Alci Rengifo

Los Angeles. The city is damned and neon-lit, devourer of the modern-day wanderer in search of gold and social stability, like some hip reincarnation of the Conquistadors. Pauline Kael once wrote that L.A. is the city “where people have given in to the beauty that always looks unreal.” This is ever so true about those glassy-eyed souls who leave home to settle into this pitiless city to make a dream reality, or at least come close to touching it. Director Michael Chrisoulakis’s Los Angeles Overnight is a true and raw portrait of the spirit of LA, even if the film masquerades as an engaging dark comedy—which it no less is. Flirting with surrealism, this low-budget film moves with an immersive energy and a dark heart. It takes the romanticized image of the struggling artist trying to get a call back and twists it back into its true self, full of despair and willing to indulge in the criminal netherworld. [Read more…]

Mulholland Drive

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CINEMA DISORDINAIRE

Reviewed by Stephen Holden

While watching Mulholland Drive (2001), you might well wonder if any film maker has taken the cliché of Hollywood as ”the dream factory” more profoundly to heart than David Lynch. The newest film from the creator of Blue Velvet (1986) and Twin Peaks (1990-’91) is a nervy full-scale nightmare of Tinseltown that seizes that concept by the throat and hurls it through the looking glass.

By surrendering any semblance of rationality to create a post-Freudian, pulp-fiction fever dream of a movie, Mr. Lynch ends up shooting the moon with Mulholland Drive. Its frenzied final 45 minutes, in which the story circles back on itself in a succession of kaleidoscopic Chinese boxes, conveys the maniacal thrill of an imagistic brainstorm. [Read more…]