DALIFLOR - EDT SPRAY 3.4 OZ for Women
DALIFLOR - EDT SPRAY 3.4 OZ for Women
-
Used Price: ?6.29
Customer Review: A rather bland look at selected works of the artist
First off, let me say that I know next to nothing about art. I would like to cultivate an appreciation for great artwork, but it certainly does not come naturally - especially when it comes to modern art. Dali, however, is a master I at least have some affinity with. Who doesn’t know of the melting clocks? I have also seen the dream sequence he created for Hitchcock’s film Spellbound in 1945. Plus, the guy was just plain weird, and that is something I know a little bit about myself. This Artists of the 20th Century DVD looks solely at Dali’s artwork. All you see throughout the 50 minutes of video is one piece after another. There is no biographical look at the man, no mention of his contributions to the world beyond his paintings, and certainly no commentary on his eccentric personality (or mustache). There is not even an adequate identification of Gala, his inspiration and muse, despite numerous references to her in his paintings. Thus, this DVD will not introduce you to Dali the man or Dali the artist - it only looks at selected pieces of the art work of the maestro. Dali’s artwork is obviously impressive, and I was surprised by the variety of his work and styles. The narrator offers insight into some paintings - others, you just look and advance. I don’t understand a lot of Dali’s work, nor can I see some of the things the narrator tells me are in his more abstract pieces. The melting clocks and other surrealist images appeal to me. Dark works such as Visage of War speak volumes to the human observer, and the disappearing bust of Voltaire paintings are also striking. I was most impressed by the small sample of classical pieces Dali painted, however - largely because I did not know he ever produced such works. My idea of a painting equates with something like Design for the Interior Decoration of a Stable-Library, which is a strikingly beautiful work. Is this DVD worth watching? I will have to say No. If you’re a know-nothing novice like me, there is not enough basic information provided to really illuminate the artwork you will be shown. If you’re knowledgeable about Dali, you’ll be disappointed by the limited nature of the production and by the exquisite Dali works excluded from the show. After watching this, I decided to peruse some Dali galleries online, and I must say that the Internet makes this DVD of little value. Not only are the analyses and critical comments you will find online far superior to the information provided in this video, the quality of the paintings themselves are far better online than they are on the DVD.
Continue …
Used Price: ?6.92
Continue …
Un Chien Andalou / Land Without Bread Customer Review: Somewhat interesting, if dated - and polemical
This tape includes two very different pieces from Bu?uel (directed at not too distant time from each other, the late 1920s and the early 1930s). The first is Un Chien Andalou, which is credited as being codirected by Salvador Dali. This surreal short must have been terribly shocking when it was made, but I think that more than 75 years later, a lot of its impact has softened, perhaps because its surreal tricks have appeared in a lot of later movies.
The second piece is flawed too, though at least is more interesting - and I think more polemical, also. It’s a 30 minute documentary about life in one of Spain’s poorest regions. What I find wrong about this movie is that while Bu?uel gleefully shows us the poverty and ignorance of the people living there, he doesn’t have much clues (and doesn’t seem to care much) of how to solve this. Now, 70 years later, Spain is much richer than it was then. And if poverty receded in Spain it was not exactly with the sort of leftism that Bu?uel favored, but with Western European style capitalism. Shockingly, in one scene, the narrator chides that in school, children are taught the value of Pi. Teaching math to poor people, the horror!. Bu?uel shortsightedness is at its most glaring here, not realizing that it is access to the latest knowledge and technology what will help the poor overcome their situation.
All in all, two pieces that have not aged well.
Customer Review: Las Hurdes is absolutely shocking
I just watched Land Without Bread, or Las Hurdes, the only documentary directed by Luis Bunuel. The film is short, only 27 minutes, but it is long enough to portray enough human suffering to disgust. Images include a girl who lies in a road for two days and then dies. No one helps. The local schoolteacher instructs rows upon rows of malnourished children to respect the property of others. The schoolteacher feeds them bread, and makes them eat it immediately to keep their starving parents from taking it from them. They dip it into the only nearby source of water, a trickle running through a ditch where the pigs wallow. Bunuel illustrates with these sorts of images how these people are unbelievably pathetic, yet he clearly goes beyond this when he shows images of the developmentally challenged somehow teetering on the edge of life in a world where even the fittest can rarely overcome. “Morons and dwarves are plentiful…” says the narrator, but in some degree or other, all the people of the community are tragically moronic at every turn. They drink water from the ditch, yet somewhere within a reasonable distance is a river. They try to plant a crop, but the crop is washed away because they plant too near that river. They cook over an open fire indoors, but they don’t make windows for themselves to let smoke out of their homes. They have no food for two months of the year, and yet mothers carry babies around in almost every shot. The viewer is left with the distinct impression that these people can’t survive much longer, and there is certainly no optimism in sight when the film ends. How in the world can these people not plan a little better? The answer, I think, must lie in the intellectually suffocating nature of their hopelessness, the horrendous condition they feel swept away again and again along with every one of even the slightest currents of misfortune. Perhaps they’ve simply quit trying, it would seem.
