Posts Tagged ‘Banksy’

NewsTalk 1010: Meet The Man Who Hung His Own Artwork Inside The Banksy Exhibit.

Barb DiGiulio is off. Richard Crouse fills in on NewsTalk 1010’s The Nightside and talks to Tharanga Ramanayake about why and how he hung his own artwork inside the “The Art of Banksy” event.

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

The best and the weirdest from the world of pop culture in 2013

Screen Shot 2013-12-30 at 10.57.02 AMThe best and thew weirdest from the world of pop culture in 2013

Top Singles (click on title to watch the official video)

1. The Stars (Are Out Tonight): David Bowie

2. Treasure: Bruno Mars

3. Brainwash: La Luz

4. Hate the Taste: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

5. Bagboy: The Pixies

6. Get Lucky: Daft Punk feat. Pharrell Williams

7. Afterlife: Arcade Fire

8. Black Skinhead: Kanye West

9. Right Action: Franz Ferdinand

10. Goons (Baby, I Need It All): Mona

Top Celebrity moments/Gossip

1. Controversial Twerking! In April no one knew what “twerking” was. Unfortunately now we all do.

2. Amanda Bynes threw a bong out the window of her 36th floor apartment. It was “just a vase,” she said.

3. After calling Bruce Willis “greedy and lazy” Sylvester Stallone charged $395 per autograph at NY Comic-Con

4. Tom Cruise said Katie Holmes filed divorced because of Scientology

6. Michael Douglas admitted he didn’t get that he got throat cancer after engaging in oral sex.

7. Kat Von D not so cleverly named her new lipstick “Celebutard.” Sephora pulled the plug amid complaints from Down Syndrome Uprising, Family Member, Inclusion BC and All About Developmental Disabilities.

8. Ke$ha says she drank her urine and, “It tasted kind of like candy.”

9. Banksy stall sells art works worth up to $30,000 for $60 each in New York’s Central Park.

10. Justin Bieber’s pet Capuchin monkey, Mally, was confiscated at a German airport after the singer tried to smuggle it into the country.

Top TV moments

1. Two words: Tentacle porn. – Anthony Bourdain’s Tokyo Parts Unknown episode.

2. Zombies falling through the ceiling of a department store in The Walking Dead

3. “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really… I was alive.” – Walt (Bryan Cranston) on the Breaking Bad finale

4. Orphan Black Clones!

5. Cooking lessons from Hannibal Lector on Hannibal.

6. The bisected cow on Under the Dome.

7. Nick and Jess’ first kiss on The New Girl. So passionate, Jess says the kiss made her see “through space and time for a minute.”

8. Orange is the New Black’s duct-tape sandals.

9. The “Red Wedding” massacre on Games Of Thrones. “My King has married and I owe my new Queen a wedding gift.” ― Lord Walder (David Bradley)

10. The car crash death of Downton Abbey’s Matthew in the final minute of the period drama’s 3rd season.

Top General Entertainment Stories

1. Lou Reed Dead at 71

2. James Gandolfini Dead at 51

3. Angelina Jolie announced double mastectomy

4. Paula Deen gets fired for using the N word

5. Kanye West declared himself the “number one rock star on the planet” in a BBC interview.

6. The last movie ever rented at a Blockbuster? This is the End.

7. Sinead O’Connor accused Miley Cyrus of “behaving like a prostitute and calling it feminism.”

8. Born! The Royal Baby, Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge.

9. Cory Monteith R.I.P.

10. Star Wars: Episode VII release date announced. The Force will return to theatres on December 18, 2015.

Top Online Moments

1. The prank video showing the baffled and terrified reactions of customers in a NYC coffee shop reacting to a woman with telekinesis tearing up the place.

2. Grumpy Cat vs Tommy Lee Jones meme. A side-by-side comparison of Jones at the Golden Globes and Grumpy Cat reveals that they might be long lost relatives.

3. Wisest tweet of the year: Always remember! Many of the people on the Internet telling you what’s what are not old enough to rent a car. – @KenJennings

4. M.I.A.’s Psychedelic Dance Party at the YouTube Music Awards

5. Raven-Symone came out on Twitter after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn The Defense of Marriage Act. “I can finally get married! Yay government! So proud of you.”

6. Andrew Huang’s video of his rap song without using the letter “E” and it’s about NOT using the letter “E”!

7. Swedish Chef Ramsay meme. “Why did the bork bork? Because you borked the bork!”

8. “I want Drake to murder my vagina.” – Amanda Bynes on Twitter

9. Best web series: The Booth at the End starring Xander Berkelely as a mysterious man who grants wishes… for a price.

10. Homeless Army Veteran Turns Life Around in Amazing Time Lapse Video

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP: 4 ½ STARS

ExitThroughTheGiftShop_Contest-540x380“Exit Through the Gift Shop” is either a fascinating portrait of the growth of street art or an elaborate hoax. Documentary or visual art art project? Either way it is an engrossing movie about the creation of art, the exploitation of art and the meaning of art.

Directed by the acclaimed but unidentified street artist Banksy, a British pioneer of street art, blending graffiti, pop art with a satirical edge, it is allegedly the story of Thierry Guetta, a French videographer turned world famous artist. The film apparently blossomed from Guetta’s twin obsessions with videotaping everything in his day-to-day life and street art. He captured thousands of hours of graffiti artists in their natural habitat—painting on buildings and running from the police—as they created their own DIY art shows. Using consumer grade equipment he filmed some of the superstars of the field,      Shepard Fairey (whose Barack Obama portrait later became the iconic image of the president’s campaign), France’s Space Invader and Banksy, the daring artist who once brazenly decorated the Israeli West Bank barrier. At Banksy’s suggestion Guetta put down his camera and reinvented himself as Mr. Brainwash, a street artist who hired a staff to create his art and threw one of the largest art shows Los Angeles had ever seen, grossing over one million dollars in two weeks. Not bad for an artist no one had ever heard of.

Banksy is by far and away the best known artist to emerge from the street art movement, but despite earning a world wide reputation (and the resulting pay cheques) he is an enigma. Never photographed (in the movie his voice is distorted and he is only shot form behind) he is a mystery and that’s why I use words like allegedly and apparently when I talk about this movie.

There is a rumor that given the movie’s strange provenance—it ostensibly began as Guetta’s home videos, turned into a doc on Banksy and then a movie about Guetta, because, as Banksy said, “Thierry is more interesting than me”—that Guetta is actually Banksy and the entire film is the artist’s provocative and beguiling comment on the art world.

Billed as “the world’s first street art disaster movie” it effectively documents how hype and a bit of nerve can be as important in the creation of an artistic movement as the art itself. Banksy, through carefully placed talking head segments (although his face is obscured by a black mask and hoodie) inserts some tantalizing insights into his world. “The reaction to the art is the most important thing,” he says of his street art, which, by its temporary nature is meant to provoke a response above all else. “I used to encourage everyone to make art,” he says later. “I don’t really do that so much anymore.” Is that a comment on the sudden rush of artists claiming street art as their own, or on Guetta or is it a joke, the punch line to Banksy’s 90 minute gag?

I don’t know, but I do know that “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is one of the most thought provoking and entertaining docs to come down the pike in some time.