It just says it all in...... 1:59. done. On with your day. See you tonight at 11 for the same thing. Done.

 

A quiet, sensitive, calculated, descent into a tale of values. Its a process-amputation in prose and animation, lead by Paul Barman's voice and accompanied by Michel Gondry. Its lovely and is 3:33 in length. Simplicity almost always wins, but it must be coupled with concept, and this film has a foot in both shoes, until......that shoe is lost on its way down the stairs.  

 

Days before the new decade began I took a short trip with my 9 year old daughter to Las Vegas NV. For most of us Las Vegas trips include the typical stream of debauchery, financial jeopardy, binges on unlimited king crab legs, 1,000's of menthols, roller coasters, porn, Mignon's (fillet and otherwise), drugs, lies, and spinning out-of-control. With this journey and the company I kept while there, it was distinctly altered from that well known course of decline. I had a 9 year old with me, we were seeing my old friend Ezra Fowler and his wife Kelly, both had recently migrated from Portland Oregon and both of who had transported to Las Vegas with all of their Portland sensibilities firmly intact.

These parameters of a subdued Las Vegas produced a most interesting and valuable chain of events that lead me to discover one of the finest art shows I have seen in years. My only regret is that all I had was my iPhone to photograph with...it worked okay. This is a good one to check out. Well done Las Vegas, your shimmer is a new one for me. The show is likely no longer up, but I expect it illustrates the promise that the group at the Neon Museum and the Reed Whipple Cultural Center are moving Las Vegas forward with.

Altered States - Artists Re-imagine the Book - curated by Joseph Shuldiner. 

The lie of the future never holds up to the truths of the past. 

To make this point clearer I present Jeff Altmans one man crusade to take a long and deep series of inherited footage shot by his Grandfather in the mid to late 1950's. It is an exquisite time travel and it looks to be mainly from California. It is Kodachrome (RIP), it is ghostly and sincere, it is a fleeting moment captured and wrangled and brought back to life. I love these moments that otherwise get undulated and folded and boxed up in the minds and attics of the places they occurred. BUT - here they are, and more exquisite and critical, to how we advance, than ever.