Friends with Benefits (2011)

Not quite a motion picture, but an (unintentionally) impressionist painting executed by a group of friends and acquaintances in the course of an evening. Not a manifesto, but a memento of friendships, serendipitous encounters, and the both coasts. The supporting characters (of Richard Jenkins, Jenna Elfman, and Woody Harrelson) are well conceived, but poorly integrated---in a way that is true to life, defiant of the Hollywood formula, and, perhaps, compliant with some aggregation rule for the votes collected at the test screenings.

Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis are well prepared (even when directed by a committee) to star in the impending era admitting that the lives of the articulate can be, if not comprehensible, then at least gratifying to observe.

Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera

(George Eastman House, 17 July 2011)

Rockwell painted what the public wanted and what he found pleasing: friends---numerous, in safety, and in comfort. Advertisers and editors paid for the best and rejected the worst. What he thought mattered to him most, he could not paint, and so he has never lost his public.

The intensity of the contact with what matters most may overwhelm the artist unless he operates by swiftly releasing the shutter. The vitality of pictures fades faster than that of words, which evoke ever changing images in the artist's maturing mind. The consolation of Rockwell's art is not that a conflict can be resolved, but that no conflict exists; at most, there is brief misunderstanding.

Midnight in Paris (2011)

It is an insult to great minds, to wish to have lived in their times, for that wish implies that they have left little of lasting value, and have consumed more than they have produced.