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Paintings by Stephen Bush, from Melbourne, in an upcoming show at Goff + Rosenthal in NYC. Can't vouch for these in person because I haven't seen them yet but the jpegs are pretty dynamic. Like a more serious Martin Kippenberger, who also painted on top of those smeary, Helen Frankenthaler-by-way-of-the-carnival-booth abstractions. The post-industrial, Little House on the Prairie on Mars theme (at least in the top three) is intriguing, and you have to give props to any artist willing to stake an entire exhibit on pink and green.
As with all his best work, Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist sweeps you along from the first frame and keeps you surprised, even by a story you know well. Oliver isn't an actor, he's a reactor--everyone wants something from him, though it's clear he has little to offer besides a look of holy innocence. His single act of volition is walking 70 miles to London after fleeing his master, the rest of the movie consists of him making right or wrong choices based on circumstances framed by the rest of the cast. The desires of others propel the story.
An undertow of sorrow builds throughout the film that you are barely aware of until it crescendos in the final scene, when Fagin breaks down into shocking, gibbering cries on the eve of his hanging. Ben Kingsley plays him soulfully, as a grotesque monster and coward but ultimately just as much a victim of grinding circumstance as the boy he mentors and pities. All the shadings of humor turning into horror and back again that have been in Polanski's work since Fearless Vampire Killers are here. (Bill Sykes' partner in crime is notably strange.) Superb.
In case you haven't seen the love letter Scooter ("Biff") Libby wrote to Judith ("Queen of All Iraq") Miller, here's the last paragraph. The typographical equivalent of vomiting will follow. Here's what one mass killler (and published novelist) says to another mass killer (with a book deal):
You went to jail in the summer. It is fall now. You have stories to cover--Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work--and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers. With admiration, Scooter Libby.This is childish, but bleeeeaaaaagggghhhhh. Wasn't Saddam Hussein also supposed to be some kind of novelist? Here's hoping Biff goes to the Big House, just for writing that paragraph. Jane Hamsher, posting on Digby's blog, has more on what sort of coded info was being communicated in the non-mash-note part of the letter. Haven't been following the Plamegate minutiae to this extent, but it's pretty clear that navigating the twists and turns of the investigation is how we're processing the terrible crime of the Iraq war, because the Democrats are too complicit to have a real debate about it. The aspens can't turn soon enough for me.