Oren Lavie - Her morning elegance (2007)

Shortcuts by Robert Altman.

Directed by Robert Altman 1993.

This film is truly one of the best films I have seen for a long while, Robert Altman is a genius of American cinema and in Shortcuts he brings together his kaleidoscopic vision of Raymond Carvers stories. It is epic in both scale and duration being a hefty 3 hours long but completely worth every second and meticulously observed. The extraordinary cast ensemble include Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Lily Tomlin, Robert Downey Jr, Tom Waits and Jennifer Jason-Leigh.

It follows the lives of many characters living in South California over the course of a few days. Some of them know each other, some don't, their paths cross as the film plays out, and some never meet each other. As the characters go about their lives, the perspective of the film is like a wandering observer's, I am not very well-versed in Altman's work but this seems to be a penchant for many of his films. It reminded me of the film Magnolia, in the way that characters have a butterfly effect and stories ripple into other ones, bringing all the characters together for a climatic end.

The acting is absolutely superb, especially Julianne Moore and Lily Tomlin, the cinematography is beautiful and depicts the american way of life and seediness as well as a complete demographic of american life.

The film captures the way life is full of accidents, happy ones as well as bad ones. it is a wonderful piece of cinema about the way people interact with one another without even knowing it.

Planatacia x Abstractica @ Standpoint Gallery, Hoxton.

Daniel Pasteiner The Fortress, 2008 Oil and Tyco track on MDF

James Ryan

Standpoint and curator Rod Barton collaborated in putting on this show by two young artists whom met whilst showing in New Contemporaries, who work between the boundaries of formalism and convention.

Abstraction and modernism can sound in painting as now boring, defunct terms, but Ryan and Pasteiner' intelligent approach to the hemispheres between two art worlds: Duchamps readymade and abstract/ cubist space work well together.

Brussel sprouts coasted in lacquer, scalectrix track, swirling mirror balls and yards of coloured fluorescent tubing makes this show an interlocking of different dimensions. The work considers: Geometry and media from the traditionally thought out, depth, colour and composition within modernist painting set against but also in harmony with the manifestation of translucent collage/ assemblages and light installations.

The two artists will be in conversation with Francesca Gavin 05.03.09 @ 7.15pm.