Laura Israel's DON'T BLINK -- ROBERT FRANK returns this singular artist to Film Forum

Back in 2009, New York City's indispensable arthouse cinema Film Forum offered a wonderful double bill: An American Journey: In Robert Frank's Footsteps coupled to a swell little short, In the Street, that featured photos taken in Spanish Harlem back in the 1940s. Beginning today, Wednesday, July 13, and running for a full two weeks at Film Forum, photography/art-film connoisseurs can get their fill of Robert Frank via the new documentary from Laura Israel entitled DON'T BLINK -- ROBERT FRANK.

During the course of this 82-minute documentary, Mr. Frank, now 91 years old and shown above and throughout below, muses that his moving pictures are not as accessible to most audiences as were his photographs. TrustMovies must count himself among those audiences, as he find the photos, especially those from The Americans, simply phenomenal, while the movies range, in his opinion, from slapdash fun to not much at all.

Still, TM would just about give up his left ball to be able to see Frank's legendary movie, Cocksucker Blues, about and with The Rolling Stones, which has never been released theatrically but will have two screenings at Film Forum at 9:50 PM on Wednesday and Thursday, July 20 and 21. (Order soon, if tickets even remain available.)  One might imagine that any film about Robert Frank ought to be generously endowed with gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, and sure enough, Ms Israel (shown at right, and the director of the surprising and disturbing 2012 wind-energy documentary, Windfall) has given us a good dose of exactly that.

Her movie about Frank, his life and career, also manages to capture much of the looney-ness, charm and oddball, alternately under-wraps/exhibitionistic kind of talent Frank had in his younger days. Now, in his more-than-senior years, the guy seems to have grown jollier and less angry (or maybe he's just worn down). Israel also captures the rhythm -- jazzy, beatnik, playful -- of the man and his work, making the film seem even more of a collaboration than the principals might have imagined.

Don't Blink bounces from scene to scene, decade to decade, oeuvre to oeuvre, giving us finally more of an overview than anything in-depth. We view snippets of Frank's films -- from his first, Pull My Daisy, to About Me: a Musical and Candy Mountain (the latter appears to have been Frank's one attempt at a full-length, 35mm, more-or-less independent/vaguely mainstream movie).

We get less of a sense of what's these films entailed than we do of the constant struggle the filmmaker had as he was making them. Of the man's personal life, we learn a lot -- of his decades-long relationship with wife and fellow artist, June Leaf, above, and of his (their?) two children Pablo and Andrea, both of whom died young (the latter in a plane crash, the former I am not certain, but perhaps via suicide?) -- but again without going deeply into anything.

Frank-ophiles should come away from the movie pleased at having seen so much of their hero, while those of us less familiar with the man than with his early photography will still find a lot to like and learn. Intercut with present day and archival footage is one particular interview that Frank gave decades earlier that Israel returns to time and again, in which the artist seems annoyed at having to do the interview yet eventually spills some interesting beans about his life, art and raison d'etre.

In terms of Frank's artistic quest, Don't Blink may put you in mind of Samuel Beckett, had Sam been a bit more manic. Toward the end of this odd little romp, the artist tells us, "Keep your eyes open, don't shake, don't blink," which may be his advice to budding photographers, even though he long ago gave up his career (and for many of us his crown) as a, maybe the, great photo journalist.

From Grasshopper Film, Don't Blink--Robert Frank opened today, July 13, at Film Forum in New York City for a two-week run. Here in South Florida, it opens on July 22 at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, and on July 29 in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Monica Film Center. To see all currently scheduled playdates, with theaters and cities listed, click here.then scroll way down and click on WHERE TO WATCH.

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Art, biography, documentaries, DON'T BLINK--ROBERT FRANK, Laura Israel, personal filmmaking, Photography, USA-Canadian-French co-productions,

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Add to your must-see list Giuseppe Tornatore's gorgeous tale of obsessive love THE BEST OFFER

Have movies given us a more splendid story-teller than Giuseppe Tornatore? I don't think so. From Cinema Paradiso through The Legend of 1900, Malèna, The Unknown Woman and Baarìa, film after film is packed with everything I love about movies -- being able to lose myself in a story at once strange, wonderful and absolutely riveting and so gorgeously designed and photographed that each becomes an instant classic. Now we have THE BEST OFFER, yet another amazement from this beauty-besotted, quality-over-quantity artist.

Signore Tornatore, shown at left, has brought together a swell international cast for this English-language movie, each member working at top form and joining to make a near-perfect ensemble quartet. The milieu is the international art world, specifically the auction house owned by Virgil Oldman (a terrific Geoffrey Rush, below, center), a man who seems as remote from actual life and emotion as might be possible. Possessing an eye for art that is pretty extraordinary, Oldman has managed to run, over the years, a fine little scam, with the help of his friend Billy (Donald Sutherland), in which Billy helps sell paintings not worth all that much for higher prices, while allowing Oldman to acquire others that are likely to grow exponentially in value. Considered to be the expert in art evaluation, as well as the top auctioneer, Oldman is riding high.

Then he is asked to evaluate and handle the auctioning of the estate owned by an ultra-reclusive heiress, and bit by bit his life changes and expands -- as does that of the heiress.

In to this mix comes Robert, a young man whom Oldman often uses to repair watches and other mechanical items from the estates he handles. Robert is played by Jim Sturgess (above) in his most boyish, charming and winning mode. And if you know Sturgess' work, this is very winning.

The heiress, whom we do not see for some time, is played by Dutch actress Sylvia Hoeks, above, chosen no doubt for her beauty and exotic quality as much as for her acting skills. She delivers on all three fronts.

What Tornatore has given us is a mystery as much as anything else. But it is also very much a love story, and an obsessive one, at that. Oldman will do things and go places utterly new to his world, and we follow, entranced by the beauty and strangeness of it all. Performances could hardly be better, particularly those of Rush and Sturgess, and the visual delights here are simply non-stop. I hope I live long enough to see more of this filmmaker's wonderful work, and that he keeps at it long after I'm gone.

The Best Offer, via IFC Films and running not a minute too long at 128 of them, is available now on DVD (if any movie deserves the Blu-ray treat-ment, it's this one) but, oddly, not available via digital rental. Netflix really ought to have this one on streaming. It has garnered an IMDB rating of 7.8 from over 51,000 viewers -- which is nothing to sneeze at, movie fans.

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Art, Giuseppe Tornatore, International cinema, Italian film, THE BEST OFFER,

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Another important/annoying/provocative doc about art: Doug Pray's LEVITATED MASS

How unusual but bracing to have opening in New York theaters within as many weeks two very special documentaries about art and its place in society. If LEVITATED MASS -- the latest film from Doug Pray who graced us with one of the best movies ever to deal with "family" (Surfwise) before foisting upon us a really crappy one about the glories of the advertising industry (Art & Copy) -- is not quite up to the amazing level of Jeremy Workman's Magical Universe, it may still find wider appeal due to its subject being a piece of art coupled to an event that made international news two years back. That would be the art installation of what seemed at the time a billion-ton boulder in the heart of Los Angeles.

If you remember this "case," it had to do with artist Michael Heizer (above) in connection with LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and some heavy-duty donors, along with the folk in charge of some dozen or so towns in the area between Riverside, California (where the boulder was detonated out of its quarry) and Los Angeles, where the rock was to eventually come to rest (see poster above and photo at bottom) as some sort of an "exhibit." What made this more than just another piece or good, bad or indifferent "art," was that fact that the boulder's size made getting it from Riverside to L.A. the hugely expensive, time-consuming task that required the kind of cooperative effort than in other times might have won World War II more quickly or today turned Climate Change back in its tracks.

How all this gets done, along with raising the question of why, is part of the very good film that Mr. Pray, shown at left, has delivered. In it, he also offers up much of the history of the artist and his earlier work, and we see and hear Heizer as far back as 1969, then in 1980 and finally at the event of the rock and its installation. Interestingly, in 1969, as part of an exhibition in Bern, Switzerland, Heizer was called "the most extreme and troubling figure," due to the kind of art he was making. A later "exhibition" in Detroit (you'll have to see the doc to believe what this art entails) ended so badly that Heizer was forced to remove his enormous work -- at his own expense.

The movie is also full of talking heads -- from LACMA's director to other gallery and museum folk to construction men (notes one, "this is art on the scale of infrastructure") to employees of the towns in which the boulder must travel to reach its destination, and finally various men-(and women)-on-the-street interviews regarding the actual worth of this art. As to the cost of transporting the boulder to its final resting place, "We don't even have money to fix our roads!" notes one interviewee, expressing the shock and dismay that many viewers are likely to feel, as well. Ah -- but we're doing this for the sake of art, doncha know?

It is greatly to Mr. Pray's credit and to the success of his film that he allows us all the mixed feelings and opposing ideas that keep occurring as the film wends onwards. We're inundated with everything from Biblical references and religious theories about the rock to exposition/blather from the art establishment as to what is being accomplished here. "Levitated Mass" (the art project, not the film about it) is very much a product of the current art establishment and the monied donors intent to seeing it to fruition. As one person so thoughtfully point out, "This is a California rock, and Heizer is a California artist." Yes? And...?

Magical Universe, on the other hand, is anything but art establishment. It's a personal film about a very personal artist whose work would not even have surfaced were it not for the filmmaker who encountered that artist and began a ten-year collaboration with the man. The project -- photographing Barbie dolls in specially made environments -- is bizarre but genuine and finally productive for everyone involved, while the project in Levitated Mass never quite overcomes its own sense of pomposity. In my opinion, at least. You might call Heizer's work minimalism maxed out.

Nonetheless we learn a lot from this documentary, including the fact that New York City has its own "Levitated Mass" -- granted in a much smaller format -- made in 1982 at 500 Madison Avenue. In Surfwise, as here (though not in Art & Copy), Mr. Pray gives us a heady mix of positive and negative and lets us form our own conclusions. And while there is much that is undeniably impressive about Heizer's idea brought to its conclusion, there also lurks the question: If this much money, planning and cooperation can go into the creation of a single piece of art, why are we still so stalled regarding our response to Climate Change?

Levitated Mass, the movie, after playing more than half of its playdates already, will open here in New York City this Friday, November 14, at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center. In your city? You can check all past and upcoming playdates, cities and theaters by clicking here.

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American documentaries, Art, art installations, Doug Pray, establishment art, LEVITATED MASS, Michael Heizer, minimalist art,

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