Artistically Independant
Added 1/26/2009
I loved this movie. The acting is great, the raw artistic passion is there and as dark as the story-line was the movie did not fail to induce laughter through its witty sarcasm.
The ingredients are all there: passion, artistic talent, art school environment, murder and loads of bitterness. Add to that a dash of John Malkovich and you have got one hell of an independent movie on your hands.
It gives a rare view of the art world from every angle possible. The art student's view, the washed-up artist's view, the art professor that never made its view, the art dealers' view and the artist's muse's view. What more could you ask for?
Definitely a movie worth watching.
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Great fun!
Added 1/13/2009
Never forget: "MANY ARE CALLED, FEW ARE CHOSEN!" This film should be required viewing for all wannabe artists, actors, musicians, athletes, etc. Could save them YEARS of grief. For most wannabes it's much, much better to have a decent-paying day job, and pursue their creative dreams strictly for their own satisfactions. ... in other words, F.T.W. Remember, too: So-called artistic strivings and sufferings are self-imposed. All the TALENT in the world won't help if you lack CONNECTIONS and LUCK. Just some friendly, fatherly advice. PS: Malkovich was great in this film!
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He is trying to sing in his own voice using someone else's vocal cords
Added 12/11/2008
"Art School Confidential" was a thoroughly enjoyable cinematic experience. Directed by Terry Zwigoff with a screenplay written by Daniel Clowes based on a comic book, also by Clowes, it really nails the pretentious Art School atmosphere. Clowes based his story on the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn--they even use minimalist paintings he did while a student there for Jonah, a character who is only pretending to be an artist. A lot of the students are so cliché--but that is entirely intentional. The students and faculty may all be studies in cliché, but they are rendered in such excruciating detail. It seems that Art School attracts the same types semester after semester, as Bardo, a student who keeps dropping out and returning tells Jerome, the neophyte, after enumerating the archetypes:
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Bardo: I'm a living cliché just like the rest of these guys.
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John Malkovich plays the pompous and burned out Professor Sandiford who imparts the following advice:
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Professor Sandiford: Now I don't have any particular wisdom to impart to you people, except to say this, these four words - don't have unrealistic expectations. If you want to make money, you might as well drop out right now; go to banking school, or website school - anywhere but art school. And remember, only 1 out of 100 of you will ever make a living as an artist.
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Rather than just a collection of clichés the story unfolds in a way that is not only funny and entertaining but actually illuminates the intersection of Art, Talent, Fame, and Infamy. Great performances by Max Minghella and Sophia Myles as Jerome, the young artist, and Audrey, the figure model he pursues. Myles goes the distance as the daughter of a semi famous artist who takes the Art World that Jerome so desperately craves to be a part of for granted. She is his muse and inspiration, and though she sees through the pretentiousness of the Art Scene, she is not immune to the charms of a sincere young artist with talent.
Bad Santa (2003) .... Directed by Terry Zwigoff
Ghost World (2001) .... Directed by Terry Zwigoff, Written by Daniel Clowes [Steve Buscemi was Seymour]
Crumb (1994) .... Directed by Terry Zwigoff
Tristan and Isolde (Widescreen Edition) (2006) .... Sophia Myles was Isolde
The Big Lebowski - 10th Anniversary Edition (1998) .... Steve Buscemi was Theodore Donald 'Donny' Kerabatsos
Fargo (1996) .... Steve Buscemi was Carl Showalter
American History X (1998) .... Ethan Suplee was Seth Ryan
Being John Malkovich (1999) .... John Malkovich was John Horatio Malkovich
The Sheltering Sky (1990) .... John Malkovich was Port Moresby
The Grifters (1990) .... Anjelica Huston was Lilly Dillon
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Professor Sandiford: Now, everyone don't be so hard on Jerome. He is attempting to achieve the impossible. He is trying to sing in his own voice using someone else's vocal cords.
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The blind leading the blind
Added 11/11/2008
I've just watched Art School Confidential, a 2006 film from Terry Zwigoff, maker of Crumb (1994) and Ghost World (2001), two of my favourite films. It gets wildly divergent responses from reviewers, usually a sign the film maker has hit his mark.
Watch Crumb if you want to know what's wrong with America, dissected by an extraordinarily intelligent, very articulate and devastatingly vitriolic analyst who has worked through his own childhood abuse, art celebrity and exploitation and dysfunctional family life to achieve some kind of clarity. Robert Crumb is not just a talented artist and cartoonist but a master of black humour, whose comments are so accurate they make you feel uncomfortable even while you laugh.
In Ghost World two best friends are in league against the mediocrity that surrounds them, the parents, the nerds, the pretentious advocates of bad taste. Then one of the friends succumbs (grows up). The film has a lot of heart and is much more than satire, but the tasteless, the sellout and the lies we tell ourselves are held up to ridicule until right at the end of the movie when Enid has an epiphany. She learns that if we believe enough, then our bus will arrive.
Art School Confidential, made, like Ghost World, with Daniel Clowes (whose comics formed the basis for both films) attempts a more complex structure than the earlier films and is not entirely successful. Here the structural idea is to parody the teenage exposé film genre, as you can tell from the title, with all the stereotype characters and acts of violence, the rivalries and central love affair common to the genre. It's an easy target: even the best of the type, Rebel Without a Cause, now looks a bit dated.
At the same time the pretensions of the art world are skewered (without doubt other professions, like financial analysis for example, have their pretensions. The film doesn't claim there is something unusual about art in this respect. And of course this is not a real art school). John Malkovich is devastatingly good as a teacher whose self obsession makes him less than useless as an instructor. Steve Buscemi has a few good minutes as Broadway Bob, an egotistical gallery owner. The students' critique of each other's work is a marvel of obfuscation. Everybody at this school works really hard on the trappings of art, without creating any art at all. The film really excels here, though the satire is a bit distant. The film makers are not as threatened by the art bureaucracy as Enid and Rebecca were of adulthood in Ghost World. And they can hardly lampoon artists ambitious of financial success while making a movie themselves, a business venture designed to make money.
But there's more yet to the film. The central character, Jerome, wants to be as famous and admired as Picasso. He's shown as a good artist, but his emotional need is the motivation for what he does. He's at art school just as much to find the girl on the school catalog as to outpaint Picasso. While he dedicates himself to his painting he loses his girl and is sneered at by his fellow students. Once he joins the rat race and strives to impress, he gains ground, and when he exploits his notoriety as a suspected serial killer he not only starts to sell paintings, but his girl falls in love with him. He ends up with it all, but is separated from both girl and gallery by a visitors' glass wall in the prison where he awaits trial. So he doesn't get it all, merely the appearance of all. You'd be doing the film an injustice by seeing this as realism, though some surprisingly have done so.
This is a serious attempt though to look at artists' motivations and the many ways you can sell out for success, with all the rewards and punishments this implies. And I wonder if the love affair, with beautiful music from a Beethoven concerto, was not self parody and a sellout as well. The acting was good enough to get me involved but I do have second thoughts. I did feel the love affair and the artistic ambitions illuminated one another.
All told the film tries to do too much and feels as if some of its many producers might have tinkered with the script or tried to interfere with its development. There's a too many cooks air about the film. Perhaps the film makers were just ambitious. My verdict would be that the parts are more than the whole, but that its worth seeing for those parts, especially the ridicule of the art mystique, where the blind very confidently lead the blind. Thank god there are people trying to achieve something as complex as this in film.
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A very dark comedy indeed
Added 9/29/2008
Art School Confidential starts out like a million other "virgin at college" movies, but quickly hits its stride with a series of dead-on parodies of art school and art students. John Malkovitch is perfect in his role as the has-been art professor desperately trying to book a show to rekindle his reputation.
Then the film takes a very dark turn- our hero loses the girl, he's depressed, everything's going wrong- and just when you expect the usual turnaround- hero gets the girl, wins the prize- it gets even darker. There's a murderer afoot, and things start to turn very ugly. Actions have dark, unforseen consequences.
I'm not sure the ending worked for me. It's perhaps the most cynical statement in the movie, and leaves a number of threads incomplete. But for the first half- three stars.
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