Kate Gilmore

I saw Kate Gilmore's work at Catherine Clark Gallery in SF - the video, Anything, showing her piling a bunch of chairs together and tying them with dangerously loose twine to reach the camera. The actions are ridiculous and a little unlady-like. There is an element of danger, but the kind that adolescents get in to - like if an eight-year-old did these things and hurt themselves, the parent would ask, 'did you really think this through??'. But Gilmore's actions are thought through, and that preposterous-ness is exactly what makes them great.

In “Blood From a Stone” Kate Gilmore, dressed like a suburban housewife in a cardigan and knee-length skirt, lifts 10 one-foot cubes of solid plaster one by one onto shoulder-high shelves. The blocks weigh 75 pounds apiece, and as Ms. Gilmore manages to heave each into place, wet paint on the shelf splatters and drips down the wall.
The videos make us question our capacity to watch them happen, I was uncomfortable during it and wanted to somehow help her out - she seems to be struggling. Then I wonder if that's chauvinistic or not? Any-hoo, they're definitely worth a look.

Oldboy - Park Chan Wook

Oldboy is one of my favorite movies ever and it needs to be here for sure. The original Korean film, directed by Park Chan Wook is a vicious story of vengeance and determination. Like the rest of his ‘Vengeance Trilogy’ [Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005)], it epitomizes a great deal of what this blog is trying to tease out - pathos, vulnerability, perserverance, etc. And this is the BEST fight scene ever.



We meet the central character, Oh Dae-su, as a drunken and disorderly man in a police station waiting area for someone to pick him up and take him home to his family. He is not an extraordinary man, and except for a drunkard’s charm, largely uninteresting. But, for seemingly no reason, he is abducted and imprisoned by unknown captors for fifteen years. At the end of his captivity, he is released to begin the journey of finding his captor. The story now is one of revenge and we follow Dae-su and Mi-do – a sympathetic sushi chef with whom he falls in love - on a trail of clues to a final climax when the hero learns of his oppressor and the reason for his imprisonment- no spoilers.


Apparently, a new version is going ahead by Steven Spielberg that adapts the story from the original manga comic, not the Wook film. That may be the big failure part.

'American Old Boy won't be offending anybody and will instead be a pretty standard noir/revenge story where Will Smith has to track down the guys who done him wrong, and we never have to worry that he's going to do something really terrible like ____ his ________ or ___ ___ his own ______. America, you're safe.' - Chud.com

Fill in the blanks after you see it... ;)

1976 Swine Flu Propaganda

...too soon? (thanks Julie)

If you listen with the right set of ears, it could also be a warning against some type of herpes. Joe really screwed it up for everyone by sleeping with his secretary.



AND.. here is the inevitable conspiracy theory.