Madonna — True Blue Profile (Hollywood, 1986) Photo: Herb Ritts Foundation Herb Ritts was a celebrity photographer in both senses of the term: a photographer of celebrities and, rarer still, a photographer who became a celebrity. His status was built upon his shots of fashion models and entertainment icons in stark black and white — […]
art
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How the West was 10
Over the past decade, Adelante! Gallery has built a reputation — in its Paseo Arts District home and beyond — for fine Southwest, Western and contemporary art. For its 10th-anniversary exhibit, gallery owner Cynthia Daniel Wolf said she is excited to continue that tradition with Art of the West, which opens with free receptions Friday and […]
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Upstream Color
Here’s what I think about Upstream Color nearly three weeks after seeing it: I’m unsure. I’ve not yet finished processing it. I can’t even explain the title. Screening Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, the self-distributed film marks the belated sophomore effort of writer/director/producer/actor/editor/ composer/cinematographer/camera operator Shane Carruth, who became an […]
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Hopper: A Journey into the American Dream — Tom Folsom
Folsom traces the life of Dennis Hopper through its four distinct phrases: Kansas farm boy, Method actor/James Dean worshipper, pharmaceutical madman, comeback kid. That he had a fourth at all continues to amaze me, especially after reading all the details. The kinder, gentler Hopper was hardly one to shy away from admitting his battles with […]
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Core values
Alexis Rodgers’ Before and After For more than 20 years, the Individual Artists of Oklahoma gallery has done its best to titillate and educate Oklahoma City with the annual Biting the Apple exhibition, featuring erotic art from all over the state. Kendall Brown, executive director of IAO, believes this year’s incarnation will be the most […]
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Trance
Based on a 2001 British made-for-TV movie, Trance casts X-Men: First Class member James McAvoy (presumably standing in for Ewan McGregor) as Simon, an art auctioneer who becomes a media hero for foiling the heist of an über-valuable painting, yet pays the price when the would-be thief, Franck (Vincent Cassel, Black Swan), comes looking for […]
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Monster mash
The Phantom of the Opera7:30 p.m. Thursday Lon Chaney’s name is forever associated with 1925’s The Phantom of the Opera, and for good reason: It’s one of the great performances in silent films. I don’t care how old you are or how many times you’ve seen it: When Christine (Mary Philbin) unmasks the Phantom 38 […]
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Happy People: A Year in the Taiga / The Gatekeepers
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga Love a good documentary? If so, you’re in luck, since two excellent, if decidedly different, ones are in town this week. Werner Herzog is easily among the most singular of documentary makers, having made such elegantly strange works as Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Still, fans […]
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Paseo visionary
“All of a sudden, everyone hears this big, baritone voice, and it reverberated throughout the entire building,” said Karen Orr, the gallery owner. “I can’t get that out of my head. There was no microphone, and it wasn’t required.” Belt, an attorney and urban developer, was known for working behind the scenes and doing little […]
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Banned in the USA
O. Louis Guglielmi’s Subway Exit (1946) When the topic of artistic censorship is raised, odds are that works cited include Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ or just about anything by Robert Mapplethorpe. The United States government, however, in that golden era of anti-Commie paranoia, arguably did the best job of it by the disbanding and dismantling […]