Another movie that dealt with a famous artist and which turned out to be a disappointment for me was Tim Robbins' The Cradle Will Rock. Although only meant to be tangential,I was dissapointed by the the movie's portrayal of Diego Rivera's efforts to paint an homage to Lenin on the walls of the Rockefeller Centre after he was commissioned by one of the Rockefeller's to do a mural there on American Progress. It is such a delicious real life story and yet Robbins' telling of the tale was not entertaining or provocative in the least.
On a positive note, and by way of segue, a movie *by* a painter that I truly enjoyed was Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls, if you can call being harrowed by a tragic and haunting bio-pic disturbing.
I plan to catch at least one Hitchcok this weekend. Don't know which yet. I am going to let my friend decide.
