The Proposition, and DIY Pollock

A few days ago we went and saw The Proposition written by Nick Cave (gloomy Australian rock musician). The film was surprisingly well done, which is not exactly the same as enjoyable. No one with an objection to violence (including graphic brutality and murder, as well as someone's head getting blown off onscreen) should probably see this movie. But that said, the violence was not gratuitous. I mean, it was a story about murderous outlaws, and showing their activities in unflinching detail was important as a kind of indictment. If it had all been sanitized Hollywood-style violence then it would have been too easy to sympathize with them. As it was, there was a weird moral ambivalence about the whole thing, not because everyone was totally bad but because most characters were partly bad and partly redeemed by their nobler qualities.

The basic plot was, an Australian lawman of the 1880s captures the younger two brothers of an outlaw family. The youngest is a helpless innocent, the oldest a notorious criminal and the true target of the lawman's ire. The lawman places before the middle brother a proposition: track down and kill his older brother and he and his younger brother will go free; otherwise his younger brother will hang. Then he releases the middle brother and drags the other off in chains.

Though there are some complications, the story-line mostly stays with the stark decision placed before the middle brother, Charlie. The sound-track is very good and haunting, as are the landscape shots: they are sometimes long, but never boring or draggy because the overall tension level in the movie is so high, and also because the landscape is imbued with a sense of danger. The whole things was stunning, and impressive, but I wouldn't see it again. Most heartfelt conclusion: thank god I don't live in the Australias outback in the 1880s.

And now for something completely different. I found a website for DIY Pollock, linked to on someone's blog, and spent probably an hour playing with it. I totally recommend it (if you're confused, move your mouse around on the blank screen and you'll get the point). Below is one of my productions, which I am calling Riding Double, though something like Untitled 2 is more of a Jackson Pollocky title:



Is this website a medium, like a new kind of brush/paint/canvas? Or is the interface itself the art, in which case I am wrong to say that the above painting is "mine" or was made by me?

I don't know, but it sure was entertaining.