Every Picture Tells a Story (2003) Review

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(More customer reviews)These 8 episodes of "Every Picture Tells a Story" peer deeply into masterpiece art works in a fresh way. Superior to anything I (and my wife) have seen. My M.S. & B.S. art degrees and over 2 decades of art teaching helps me grant this new Athena DVD set 5 colorful stars. This DVD set also rates "2 paint brushes UP-WAY UP."
THE PRESENTER, Waldemar Januszczak, U.K., is an art critic who never learned to be sophisticatedly boring, dull, & lifeless. He will even make you laugh by finding a lighter side to masterpieces of art. He provides his opinion alongside the findings of other authorities, so you can decide for yourself. He does this in a manner somewhat similar to a European travelogue. Enjoyable. Scenic.
Individual episodes are less than 25 minutes, a perfect length for classroom use at universities and High Schools. 1 or 2 episodes touch on language and/or sexual topics that might want to be previewed and opted upon by "conservative" schools. Probably just a PG rating if it were to be rated, however.
INTERDISCIPLINARY TEACHING: Each painting episode touches not only on the art itself, but on history, geography, and literature related to the piece. This is true educational integration, highly sought by state-of-the-art school curriculum.
WHAT DOES IT INCLUDE?
"Mr and Mrs Andrews", Gainsborough, England. A mystery of the unfinished masterpiece.
"The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp", Rembrandt, Dutch. The artist's haunting of death. Painting is compared to TVs "E.R."
"The Tempest", Giorgione, Venice. Giorgione means 'Big George'. This is a mysterious painter of even more mysterious art. Is Homer's "Odyssey" a clue?
"The Birth of Venus", Botticelli, Florence. Venus' voluptuous vulnerability vexing the virile. Not birth, so where does this painting's meaning spring from?
"Boy Bitten by a Lizard", Caravaggio, Rome. Finding the why from a lizard bite which was painted by a Roman artist and murderer.
"Mona Lisa", Leonardo da Vinci, Paris. Don't bother with "The Di Vinci Code" book. Episode is about solving the real Leonardo mystery.
"Le dejeuner sur l'herbe", Manet, France. The naughty, naked, picnic lady leaves behind illegal, immoral, impressionism--immortally.
"The Arnlfini Marriage", Jan van Eyck, Bruges, Belgium. A 15th century mystery in oil on an oak panel.
WHAT IS BONUS/extra?
For each episode: "The Rest of the Story"
For each episode: "Artist Biographies"
For each episode: SDH subtitles
A viewer's guide booklet with:
Featured painting reproduction
Questions to consider (individually or in a classroom)
List of other artistic work featured on each episode
Bibliography of 4 options for additional learning related to each episode's painting
This DVD 2-disc set truly brings masterpiece wonder to the masses.
Every High School, College, and Public Library should own this.
8 very affordable lesson plans for art teachers and professors.
Hours of enjoyment for the art lover. YES, a perfect gift.

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EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY - DVD Movie

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Les Paul - Chasing Sound (2007) Review

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(More customer reviews)I saw this documentary last night on TV and would recommend it to anyone who appreciates music, history, inventors, musicians, electronics. It is one of the best things I have ever seen on television. Buy it - you will not be disappointed.

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Guitar wizard, inventor, architect of rocknroll...the legendary Les Paul tells his own rags-to-riches story in this feature-length documentary shot in HD. From his hometown in Waukesha to Chicago, Nashville, Hollywood and the National Inventors Hall of Fame, follow the life and times of this irrepressible superstar. Featuring a wall-to-wall soundtrack of greatest hits, American Masters - Les Paul: Chasing Sound! also includes interviews with B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Tony Bennett, Jeff Beck, Merle Haggard, Steve Miller and many more.
Includes 90 Minutes of Exclusive Extras: Full-length performances from the Iridium Jazz Club with Les Paul and his Trio. Vintage duets with Keith Richards, Kay Starr, Merle Haggard and Chet Atkins. Classic TV appearances (Les Paul & Mary Ford at Home, Omnibus and more. Extended conversations with Les Paul. Photo Gallery.

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Empires - The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (2004) Review

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(More customer reviews)This four-hour documentary on the Medici has all of the series' strengths (high production values, excellent cinematography) and its great weakness of substituting simple conflict for historical analysis. You might get weary, as I did, of the implicit comparisons of the Renaissance banking family with the Coreleones, but that's relieved by a truly diverse selection of talking heads and viewpoints.

There are other problems, though. Nearly every entry in the "Empires" series has had difficulties with characterization, and "The Medici" is no different. Lorenzo de Medici, for example, is portrayed as an enlightened ruler, a public-minded human being and an art patron whose career was sabotaged by religious fundamentalism. You'd never know he covered his debts by stealing from the public treasury. Savonarola is accurately depicted as a puritanical maniac, but his appeal to Florence is never fully explained. One minute the Florentines are sipping grapa and discussing Platonic forms, the next they're tossing their copies of "The Republic" on a bonfire. For "The Medici," it's enough to show Lorenzo as a patron of learning, and Savonarola as a fundamentalist, creating a black and white conflict that dehumanizes both and makes a mockery of the competing and often contradicting strains of piety and humanism found in many Renaissance figures. It also makes ordinary Florentines look like dupes: Savonarola was a fanatic, but his Puritanical, anti-Medici sermons had resonance with a city that was tiring of Lorenzo's abuses.

The third episode on the Medici popes moves in a similar direction. This is the weakest of the bunch. The narrative is little more than a society-page list of parties and paintings, mixed with random acts of violence and a barebones timeline of the two pontiffs' lives. Intervals with Michelangelo are enjoyable, but brief. And the series again simplifies the protagonists. Leo and Clement were wastrels whose excesses helped spark the Reformation. They lived large and often led their armies into impious war. That's all correct. But if Leo X lived it up, he was also sincerely religious. He wasn't unique, either: Many medieval and early Renaissance rulers saw no conflict between hedonism and piety. Given the chance to explore this odd trait, "Empires" shies away and opts for scenes of Leo killing off his enemies.

The documentary is worth a purchase, though. The first episode on Cosimo de Medici is one of the best explorations of Renaissance politics I've seen on television, and Brunelleschi is given his due in both raising his dome and inventing perspective. If Cosimo's failings are passed over, the overall assessment of his rule is fair. One wishes the film would point out that common families like the Medici rose to power because the Florentines abolished feudalism in 1290, but that's a minor nit to pick.

To be fair to the filmmakers, you can't fit everything about the family in a four-hour documentary, and "The Medici," at least, hits the basics and doesn't get anything wrong (unlike Empires' "Martin Luther," which told us the faith is a Freudian rejection of father figures). This is probably the best treatment of Renaissance politics television will ever come up with, so you might as well seek it out, and hope the next "Empires" film fixes the flaws of its predecessors.

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From a small Italian community in 15th-century Florence, the Medici family would rise to rule Europe in many ways. Using charm, patronage, skill, duplicity and ruthlessness, they would amass unparalleled wealth and unprecedented power. They would also ignite the most important cultural and artistic revolution in Western history--the European Renaissance. But the forces of change the Medici helped unleash would one day topple their ordered world. An epic drama played out in the courts, cathedrals and palaces of Europe, this series is both the tale of one family's powerful ambition and of Europe's tortured struggle to emerge from the ravages of the dark ages.

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Biography - Pablo Picasso: A Primitive Soul (2000) Review

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(More customer reviews)Pablo Picasso was a remarkably prolific artist whose styles were groundbreaking for the 20th century. His equal appetite for women is presented in this video and one can, for the first time, see his portraits of the women he lived with, loved, abused and had children with. It is a long video (100 minutes) but it held my students spellbound. They hated him for his womanizing, but respected the art. Most of the images come from the Picasso Museum in Paris and are well documented. I loved the interviews with his daughter by Maria Therese, wife Francoise and child Paloma. They added much first hand information about Picasso and his other wives and mistresses. The artist himself is also featured creating some of his paintings. For a film to go along with this one, I also recommend Surviving Picasso which is based on the memoirs by Francoise of her life with him. Any art student or lover will enjoy this film.

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Brush With Fate (2003) Review

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(More customer reviews)Based on the Bestselling book by Susan Vreeland, this is an excellent portrayal of the historical passing of an unknown and unseen painting by a famous artist. The author brought the painting's path to life by depicting the owners through centuries of time.
'Girl in Hyacinth Blue' was a finalist for Book Sense Book of the Year in 1999. It has become part of the curriculum for many schools and universities. I was privledged to meet the author, Susan Vreeland, and saw this film as a private theater viewing during a literary festival in Dahlonega, Georgia. Vreeland's novels have been translated into 25 languages.
In Brush with Fate, the woman who lost the bid for the painting when it was up for auction was 'Magdalena', the girl in the painting and daughter of Vermeer, but now grown and poor. She wished to buy it back, but could not afford it. This is evident in the hard version, but Hallmark edited some scripting to allow for time. Also edited were scenes of the illicit affair to make it more for family viewing.
The film was shot entirely in the Netherlands. Although Vermeer was an actual painter, he only painted about 40 canvases. Magdalena was not one of the them, but rather a figment of the author's imagination, and depicted extremely well in the film version. It shows the influence of art upon those who appreciate art.
Vreeland focuses on bringing art to life through its alleged history. Her inspiration came after viewing artifacts in a museum and wondering how many hands and lives it went through to get to its current place.
According to Vreeland, it was actress Glenn Close who suggested the near-sighted Cornelia to be the eccentric woman she portrayed. In the original book, Cornelia was 'Cornelius', but when the movie was made the producer could not find a suitable man to play the part, thus it was changed to be played by Close.
I thought this movie was superb. Excellent cast, excellent script. The author was present and got a standing ovation, after which she took questions and answers.
Worthy of purchase. I bought the book.
Gail Gupton, author The 31-Day Diet of Spiritual Enlightenment and Seekers of Truth

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BASED ON THE NOVEL "GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE"Inspired by love, sold in desperation, bought in passion and stolen in greed: this priceless masterpiece has played a pivotal role in the lives of everyone who has owned it.As he settles into his new job at an American prep school, an art teacher, (Thomas Gibson) is approached by a reclusive historian Cornelia Engelbrecht (Glenn Close, Sarah, Plain and Tall) who believes he alone will appreciate a secret treasure she has long guarded - an unknown Vermeer painting.Although Richard is overwhelmed by its beauty, he doubts its authenticity.How could such a masterpiece be hidden for centuries?Drawing upon a lifetime of singularly focused devotion to its history, Cornelia reveals the secrets behind the mystery of "Girl in Hyacinth Blue."From the moment three centuries ago when an impoverished Dutch artist painted the beautiful image of his daughter seated at an open window, the legendary masterpiece has been admired, coveted and pursued by its owners - from impoverished farmers to a wealthy society woman (Ellen Burstyn).All forever entwined in its legacy and unknowing participants in its future.Based on Susan Vreeland's best-selling novel, Brush With Fate traces the history of a masterpiece that has changed many lives, but still has a greater secret yet to reveal.

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