After my visit to the Bacon exhibition I went with my family to see the new Spielberg War of the Worlds and go on for something to eat. Movie was okay I guess. Stuff blowin' up. Aliens. Kids with big eyes. Misunderstood guy turns out to be a hero. People vaporized by aliens, turn scarily to dust. Which settles all over the city. (I think someone did an artwork about the dust that came down all over downwind NY from the incinerated paper from 9/11, (what on Earth could Spielberg be referencing this for? Cruise comes away looking like some No ghost.) but anyway...) People finding various ways to fight the bad guys &c &c. The things that went boom were great, the tension of the story was pretty good. Didn't care about the characters (but hey, can't have it all, though I thought Cruise's leather jacket was pretty cool). The story itself, based of course on Wells' original is pretty much intact: bad guys- check. Red weed- check. Richard Burton...Richard Burton...? Oh well. Tom 'Bob' Cruise is okay, but Bob is working with a story that has to cram in quite a lot of material that doesn't really belong there. It's nice to have the elder-son-wants-to-give-the-martians-some-welly bit and the developing father-son thing, but there really isn't enough time to develop the theme, and the bit about getting stuck in the basement could have been cut out completely with no bearing at all on the plot. But it was a good whiz-bang nonetheless. Bob manages to surge meaningfully enough through the motions, but there isn't enough subtlety in the role to tell if he's acting or not. The effects folk made a nice movie though. I liked the lighting too. I thought the sound design was pretty crummy though, and it seems to be a movie without a soundtrack (maybe a result of an attempt to simplify the movie?).
Tomorrow Iím going into Edinburgh to have a look around. I'm planning to start off at the Fruitmarket Gallery to see the exhibition curated by Tacita Dean- An Aside, which includes work by Lothar Baumgarten, Joseph Beuys, Rodney Graham and Gerhard Richter. I'm keen on Dean's own work, particularly her book/film Teignmouth Electron, so I'm looking forward to seeing what she's brought together and what she has to say about it.
Thereís also an interesting-looking thing on at the City Art Centre, The New Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which is about the creation of the library. I want to see what sort of things come out here and what metaphors are used to describe the library and the knowledge it houses. There's also Looking Both Ways, by African artists living in Western countries. Let's see what happens. Nearby thereís also Hateball (yikes). Nathanial Mellors is a new artist to me, but the Collective Gallery is only up the road on Cockburn Street. I wonder if there's anything on at the Stills? There also used to be some interesting things on at the Netherbow arts centre. Years ago I saw Ralph Steadman's illustrations for Treasure Island there. I don't see anything in the listings. I wonder what became of it.
I thought I'd get some lunch at Henderson's veggie restaurant where I have some fond memories of great food and company (though I'll be getting to the table on my own this time). There's loads more I'd love to see, but so little time. There's a big Gauguin show on, for example, which, though likely costly and crowded, is something I'd like to see. I've long admired Noa Noa ( I wonder if it'll be there) which is a sort of prototype artists' book, far removed from livres díartiste or editions de luxe, produced in hand-coloured relief reminiscent of Japanese folk printmaking. Gauguin, presumably, is angling for a Polynesian feel here. Gauguin and Stevenson are having a meeting in my imagination now, talking it over.
Anyway, all that done, I'm planning to get over to see my old friend John Paul, who's recovering from a broken collarbone and needs someone to help him lift a couple of beers. I felt it was only fair to volunteer.
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