art

How do we perceive and judge art? Why does some art have a profound effect on someone and cause another person to simply shrug her shoulders? An artist can never expect to please every onlooker. I guess I'm still processing last night, and because I was one of the "featured artists," I cannot objectively comment on my experience because the whole night was a blur. I was happy to have so many of my friends in the audience: Jessica, Josh, Young, Julie, Jeff, Lilia, Gabriel, Jayson, Estelle, Jon, Sultan and Tanya. And of course Chantal and Noemi were there because Chantal was actually one of the featured artists as well since she filmed the piece (and might I continue to add that the filming she did was beautiful). Anyway, I was a little out of my mind with anxiety, and I can't honestly say that I even remember seeing anything while our piece was on. I just kept hoping that people liked it and that it had a positive impact on them and that it was memorable (in a good way, and not in a torturous way). I appreciated meeting KT Nelson of ODC Dance Company right before the show, and it was special to me that I got to sit next to her and watch her reactions as the images flickered away on the 10 screens that surrounded us. After our screening was over, she reached over and congratulated me and I was happy to see that she was pleased with our work. I felt relieved because I feared that she might hate it. And not only that, my friends enjoyed it too, with the exception of Chantal, who thought there should be more images of the dancers and less water, but other people thought otherwise (most notably Linda Bouchard, who hired me). So the moral of the story is that you can't please everyone.

Speaking of pleasing artistic experiences, I just saw the latest James Bond film, Casino Royale. This is by far the best movie I've seen this season. It was a truly enjoyable film through and through, lots of action and quite thrilling indeed. Especially the scenes where Daniel Craig showed off his pectoral muscles. But seriously... this 007 film showed a side of Bond that was more human and fallible. Also the Bond girl was much more well-rounded, and I don't mean curvaceous. She was smart and deep and strong and had motives other than sex. Furthermore, the film portrayed the life of a secret agent to be a dangerous game, rather than a walk in the park as in former Bond pics. Instead of dusting off his tux, this James Bond got bloody and scratched up, almost died and even had his heart broken. In the vein of the new Batman, this pic was part psycho-drama and part action/adventure and part love story.

Much better than Borat. Borat bad. Bond good.