Kerewin and I went to see the Andrew Wyeth Retrospective at SAM this past sunday afternoon. Very interesting …. here was an artist I may have heard of in passing but knew nothing about, nor any of his art. Not unlike the Yoyoy Kusama exhibit of a few months ago, a neat surprise (completely different type of art from hers – Wyeth is predominantly tempura and watercolor painting).

What’s also interesting about Wyeth is that he only lived in two places his entire life, and was painting right up until he passed away. And (some might say of course) he seems to have had a hidden obsession with one of his female models for a long period in his later years.

The exhibit has a number of great paintings but I think what I liked best were the watercolors, because they were still very detailed for that type of painting (I don’t think that’s typical) – apparently he used the same types of detail methods to paint despite using a different medium.

Definitely worth seeing, it’s there until Jan 15.

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It could have been soooo much simpler, according to this picture….

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that Jim Henson remains one of the most creative and cool people who ever lived….

From Boing Boing:
Watch the pitch reel for Jim Henson’s cyberpunk muppets TV series

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really getting tired of writing these – Malcolm Young – RIP.

Malcolm Young Cause Of Death: AC/DC Founding Member, Guitarist, Dies At 64

Ride On – ACDC Bon Scott from Luis Patricio Vacas Torres on Vimeo.

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“the world needs Iron Maiden” – and yes, we DO.

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So I’m on a bit of a mountain climbing movie kick now, for whatever weird reason, following on from the Everest Unmasked movie of mid-Oct. This time, it was the recent K2 documentary from 2009. I’ve also decided that I don’t want to watch either ‘movies’ of mountain climbing unless there’s some other aspect of the plot too (e.g James Bond flick or something) – I’d rather just work through the scary-enough truth of these crazy climbs via actual documentaries. Besides these two movies, I’ve seen Touching The Void several years ago not long after it came out.

So once again in watching this film, there were parts of the movie where I wanted to just shut it off – they are up SO high. Plus on K2, unlike others, they do a up-down style so they can survive acclimatizing to the extreme lack of oxygen and climb itself, so they go up to Camp 2, then back down, then up to Camp 3, then back to 2, and so on.

The personalities here are a bit more interesting than the two guys in Everest Unmasked, but R. Messner from that climb went on to become one of the greatest climbers of all time in the decades since (they briefly mention his summit of K2 years ago on what seems to be the most difficult possible way).

Even the drive to get them into the mountains and then long hike to base camp seem far more extreme than Everest by contrast, even though Everest is of course the highest peak on earth (K2 is #2). But they show stats early on about how much tougher and far fewer summits have been done on K2 vs. Everest.

Finally, a great counterpoint in this documentary is the story of the first summit attempt, way back in 1912, by an Italian duke. They intersperse that story with the modern one throughout the movie, makes it even more impressive for both expeditions in the end, in my opinion.

Check it out!

Other perspectives:
Rotten Tomatoes

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