L’Etoile by Edgar Degas is considered to be a classic impressionistic painting. Although Degas never himself claimed to be an impressionist, he is still considered to be one of the artists at the forefront of the impressionist movement. He was born in 1834 in Paris, France and began painting around the age of thirteen. Degas met Edouard Manet in 1864 and was influenced by his artwork for the rest of his artistic career. He was said to be a very argumentative person, with an exceedingly difficult personality. He had very few friends and was known to be constantly devoted to his work, isolating himself from the outside world. Towards the end of his life he was almost completely blind and found it difficult to continue with his artwork. He died in 1917 in Paris.
Despite his bleak life story, Degas still managed to create many revered pieces of art during his lifetime. “The Star” is one of his more famous works but, much like his life story, the painting has an overall very depressing quality. His use of dark blues, greens, browns and blacks will bring forth exactly the emotions that normally come to mind when thinking of these colors: despair, desperation and sorrow. The focal center of the piece is the female dancer towards the lower right hand corner. Her face displays a deep melancholy, while the dancers (or audience, depending on how you choose to perceive it) behind her look on with unreadable expressions. It brings to mind the “danse macabre”. Is this girl in the innocent white tutu dancing towards her own demise? We can only speculate.
Done in 1878, Edgar Degas’ classic painting titled “L’Etoile” or, in English, “The Star” is a crucial piece in the puzzle that is impressionistic painting. The color palette is a subdued mixture of pale blues, greens, and browns, giving the painting a cool, almost “danceable” overall feel. The “star” herself is the focal center of the piece. Degas’ impeccable use of shading puts the spotlight directly on the dancer as she moves effortlessly across the stage. The piece has a flow and a sense of movement that can be felt almost immediately by the viewer. The background of the painting is beautifully ambiguous. At first glance, it seems that the dancer is simply going out onto the stage from behind the stage curtains, where her fellow dancers wait to join her. But upon closer inspection, she appears to be dancing on the floor of a cave, with the other dancers huddled in the shadows of the cave walls. In the upper right corner, you can see a cold, wintery scene. Is it the open entrance to the cave, or simply a painted set piece made specifically for the ballet performance? This question can be left up to the individual viewer, and is part of the alluring mystery of the piece. Despite the attention to detail and rushed brush strokes throughout, there is one emotion that specifically comes to mind when viewing this piece: calm. However one chooses to interpret this great piece of artwork, there’s no denying that its beauty will both overwhelm and inspire you.
Using fake names. Stealing from liquor stores, gas stations, and department stores. Getting arrested, multiple times. And all before the age of twenty. This is the life of Patrick Sullivan, the lead character in Jason Buhrmester’s Black Dogs. It may sound like a tough life to lead, but Mr. Sullivan is doing just fine for himself. How, you ask? Well he and his friends just managed to pull off the biggest rock robbery in history. No big deal.
A quick read at only 241 pages, Black Dogs is a fast-paced novel that tells the story of Patrick Sullivan and his odd (but lovable) group of friends living in Baltimore. After a house theft gone wrong, Patrick gets off scot-free and one of his best friends, Alex, gets sent to prison. In order to right his wrongs and get a little spending money for him and his friends, he devises a plan to rob the most popular rock band of the time, Led Zeppelin. Not everything along the way goes as planned, and the reader is taken on a hilarious ride through the ups and downs of their utterly flawed mission. As one robbery leads not-so-flawlessly into another, the crew learns more about one another and also, not so obviously, about themselves. This book has plenty of classic rock references to satisfy the music enthusiasts in the audience, but will also appeal to the not-so musically inclined due to the pure excitement factor. Zeppelin fan or not, chances are you won’t be able to put this one down.
The book is based loosely on the “Zeppelin Robbery” that occurred in 1973. While the accounts leading up to the robbery and the characters were all fictional, the robbery did in fact take place. However, the culprit is still unknown today. Led Zeppelin’s safe deposit box at the Drake Hotel was robbed of $203,000 at the end of their ’73 tour. It was the largest safe deposit box robbery to happen in New York City at that time. Buhrmester’s account of the story is riveting and unapologetic. You’ll find your jaw dropped at some point in nearly every one of the hilariously titled chapters. Named everything from ‘The Worst Blow Job in the World’ to ‘Snowbirds’, the chapter titles alone will have you begging for more. But if that’s not enough, the rough dialogue and shallow lead characters will keep the pages turning.
If you’re interested in reading a book filled with hidden meaning and depth, this book may not be for you. But if you’re looking for an exciting read that will keep you on your toes until the very last page, try reading Black Dogs. And if you’re not convinced that you should read it yet based on content alone, the flashy red cover should give you that extra shove.
Dinner for Schmucks is a comedy about a man named Tim (played by Paul Rudd) who is trying to work his way up the corporate ladder. After coming up with a good business concept, Tim gets invited to a “Dinner for Winners” by his boss. He is instructed to find the biggest “schmuck” and take him to a dinner to be laughed at. Luckily for Tim, he literally crashes into his schmuck, Barry (Steve Carell), one day on the street and thinks his search has been successful. Not quite. Long story short, Tim’s girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak) doesn’t approve of the whole “stepping on and climbing over others to get ahead” technique and Tim spends the rest of the movie trying (and failing) to win Julie back and stop Barry from making a complete fool of himself at the dinner. The plot of the film is not very cohesive and thus the many subplots have difficulty tying in with the main plot. Though the subplots do eventually converge at the end (albeit, in a very roundabout fashion), the journey getting there is convoluted and sometimes painful to watch.
Let’s talk about the schmuck of the hour, Barry. It’s nearly impossible not to love Carell, in any movie. And although you’ll probably fall in love with his Schmuck’s character, you may also find him to be almost too oblivious. His brainless antics easily induce true laughter a few times throughout the film, but there are too many instances where the audience is simply overwhelmed with the obvious fact that Barry is a complete idiot. We get it already!
The overall message of the movie (if there is one) also seems unclear. The audience is constantly coaxed into laughing and poking fun at Barry all throughout the bulk of the movie, and is then almost scolded for doing so. Maybe the point is just to show us who the true schmucks really are: us. Nevertheless, the audience is misled. It’s like a mother feeding her children nothing but cookies and ice cream for a month, and then putting them on weight watchers one day, without warning, and slapping away their sticky, outstretched little hands. By the end of the movie you’ll have all the compassion in the world for Barry, but you’ll still probably want to laugh at him.
Although Dinner for Schmucks seemed promising at first glance, it made one common mistake found in comedies today—it gave away most of the funniest parts in the previews, before the dinner even began. The appetizer previews were deliciously enticing, but the main course was not as filling. There was a wide variety in the virtual buffet of funny scenarios, but they failed to deliver the final satisfaction prominent in a “less is more” approach, that may well have salvaged the film. At the end of this overcooked and over-thought experience you are left with nothing more than a bad taste in your mouth.
With such an incredible cast comes incredibly high expectations. Dinner for Schmucks continually fell just short of incorporating the magic recipe that could have made it a classic. If you are looking for nothing more than a few good laughs, this movie will satisfy your appetite. But it may be a better idea to run to your nearest Blockbuster and rent last season’s episodes of The Office on DVD.
