Larry & I made it through a nice and relaxing and stress-free NYE last night, watching Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin on CNN’s NYE broadcast from Times Square. They were of course endlessly entertaining and made us laugh throughout the night, while we kept warm at home and enjoyed a quite delicious bottle of Saddlebrook Champagne from the local Malibu Wines. After the previous 2 years, it’s good to have had a simple and harmless event. And despite usually having a terrible hangover from champagne, this was good stuff and we were pretty good this morning!
One of the first things I ended up doing was putting together my gift from Alyssa & Jon: a LEGO set of the United Nations! As has been readily apparent, I am all about these LEGO Architecture sets. They’re so much fun to put together and I’ve been loving the sets of places that I’ve actually been to, as I also have a Rockefeller Center set and then the one that Larry got me for my birthday, the Trevi Fountain. The white pieces and the clear blue pieces are beautiful – I can’t imagine taking these sets apart, but if I did, they’d be fun elements to build something with.
So first, here are my pics of the LEGO set:
And since I seemed to have not posted these on my site even back in 2010, here’s the pics I took back from December 2010 when I went and visited the United Nations. It had been on my list of places I wanted to visit and I wasn’t leaving NYC without doing so. It was very awesome to get a chance to go there, and I even got some pics in the General Assembly! I can’t remember why Larry didn’t go with me though, but afterwards I met up with my friend and former co-worker Pravi in Midtown for lunch and goodbyes. Feels like forever ago!
December 23, 2010 – Visiting the United Nations
Finally, time to the title and featured image of the post! We went out and saw the movie Big Eyes this afternoon, and then grabbed some dinner at the Mexican restaurant there at the Americana called Frida. Good food, and a great movie!
Big Eyes (2014)
Saw this on January 1, 2015 at Pacific Theaters at Americana
This Tim Burton movie (!) tells the real-life story of Margaret and Walter Keane, who were married and responsible for the artwork known primarily because of the subjects’ giant eyes. Here’s the trailer:
As it shows, Margaret was the actual artist of these drawings and paintings, while her husband Walter took the credit for it and was the one who promoted and sold the hell out of them. She would be toiling on the paintings in secret back at home while the world thought Walter Keane was the talent. It was the late 1950s and early 1960s so the social mindsets seemed to lean towards skepticism of female artists, so Walter took it upon himself to be the front man. Watching this all go down from 2015, it is really hard to watch. Amy Adams as Margaret is amazing but you want to just scream at her character that she deserves so much better! Alas, she goes along with this arrangement for a long while, until of course she doesn’t.
Both Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz are great in the roles – she is especially good in the role, even though it requires her to rein in a lot and play someone who is bound by her domineering husband and fear of what would happen if she were to say something. Waltz is on full smarm mode but that is what the role calls for, and you just want to punch him in the face. But that’s him doing a great job as Walter Keane! I think what is surprising is how little this feels like a Tim Burton movie, as he’s the same director of such movies as Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, to name just a few. There’s a moment where you get some of his signature weirdness in the movie, but besides that, it’s a very traditional-style movie. Larry pointed out that still there is a lot of composition of shots that Burton pulls off that help frame the movie much like a 1960s postcard which does require some directorial flair. Regardless, it’s a very good movie and left me wondering how the Keane artwork is formally recognized now?