Archives for 2005

for the move here, so we went out for an early dinner and came home and happened upon a wonderful documentary on TV: Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story.

Brigid Berlin was a key member of Andy Warhol’s entourage for many years, and it would be tempting, and easy, to just look at her like any of the other tragic cases that surrounded Warhol – as in fact the “user reviewer” on the IMDB listing for the film did.

Unlike most of the others that we’ve seen in film after film over the years, Berlin, although clearly suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder, was also a legitimate artist, as avant-garde or more than anyone else around Warhol and arguably pushing Warhol himself, not following in the wake of the mad environment he nurtured. And as such it was fascinating – a film not about a hanger-on, but about someone who was clearly a trusted confidante and equal of Andy Warhol himself. Troubled like everyone else in that world, but definitely not a “user” or anything like that. Highly recommended for anyone who has any interest in that time in New York.

for the new Batman movie, “Batman Begins“, most of them lamenting what the previous series of movies sunk to by the time Batman & Robin came out. The trouble is these reviews tend to lump all of those together, which does a great disservice to the Burton/Keaton Batman. The new Batman is supposed to be edgy and dark and feature Wayne/Batman’s psychological problems prominently? Well so did Burton’s film, and I would be very surprised if Christian Bale can pull it off any better than the surprising Michael Keaton did 16 years earlier.