Art – Page 64 – Memphis Flyer

To be honest, it did not bother me. I was the only person at the movie theater over the age of 10 who was not accompanied by an adult or accompanying someone under the age of 10. But that’s cool, because I do like Disney’s full-length animated features, yes indeed.

That’s not to say I like all of them. Pocahontas was an embarrassment and last summer’s epic Dinosaurs (was that even animated? I am not sure computer art necessarily counts) lacked the heart of Disney’s other creations. But, and this is a big but, at least those previously two flicks were well made. The animation was incredible; the production looked like someone cared deeply for the subject matter. They were — if you forget about the bad stories and bad characters — well-done films.

So what to make of Disney’s mid-term effort, The Emperor’s New Groove? Unfortunately, not much. The story line revolves around one Emperor Kuzco (played sarcastically by David Spade) and his unfortunate transformation into — of all things — a llama. Why a llama? I guess the Disney focus groups figured that were llamas were all the rage this season. His only companion is village head and chief-llama herder Pancha, portly played by John Goodman. While I sincerely appreciate the Disney artists’ interest and ability in portraying their voice-talent as new creations in drawing, did they really have to make Pancha grossly obese like Goodman? Just a question. The bad guys are former advisor to the emperor, Yzma (Eartha Kitt) and her sidekick Kronk (Patrick Warburton).

My biggest problem with this film is that Disney cartoon flicks have generally balanced kid moments with adult moments. While there is usually a lot of funny stuff, there is also plenty of serious stuff as well. Spade is by definition incapable of any sort of depth in his performance, relying solely on a single-sided, arrogant, and typically half-assed performance. Yeah, he’s funny, but the act got old during Saturday Night Live.

Spade even finds ways to distract the audience from the rest of the story. Providing voice-over (to create a singularly confusing narrative) from the start, Spade forces himself on the viewers, even at the most inappropriate moments. For example, the young pre-llama Kuzco wants to demolish poor Pancha’s village for a swimming pool. After the film makes pains to show how much Pancha loves his home, Spades character literally stops the show to explain how the real focus should be — of course, on Kuzco and not on the concerns of Pancha. Director Mark Dindal should have recognized a good scene and left it alone. Instead, Dindal sacrifices the good scenes for cheap laughs.

That’s a recurring problem. The Emperor’s New Groove relies almost entirely from tried and true gimmicks for humor. Grant it, Kronk in the kitchen provides very funny moments, but at other times even the visual humor (a trademark of Disney films) seems forced and clichŽ. At one moment, there is even a recreation of a famous Spaceballs moment with Yzma swinging out a statue’s nostril via a curtain.

Why this movie is not a straight-to-video release probably has something to do with the voice talent and their price tags. To be fair, Spade and Goodman do have good chemistry and are more funny than not. I smiled through most of the film and was only vaguely aware of how disappointing this effort was overall, which I guess is a good thing. If you want a movie that is light and superficial as its main character who unabashedly proclaims “It’s All About… ME!” then enjoy this film. If you would rather watch a better idea of what Disney filmmakers are capable of, watch any of the other full-length animated features.

In L Ross Gallery’s exhibition, “Sculpture,” artworks range from the
comic to the sublime. Helen Phillips’ raku-fired ducks are both.
Dressed in long, brown pontiff’s robes with collars of seaweed draped
around the base of their slim necks, they appear to glide across the
surface of ponds, graceful and magisterial, in a series of works titled
Contemplating a World Gone Mad.

In her haunting homage to global warming, Water Rising, Nancy
White sculpts a woman’s torso out of clay and plants it on the ocean
floor. Waterbirds seek shelter in the seaweed growing from the woman’s
wrinkled shoulders. Her mouth, attempting to suck oxygen from the sea,
reminds us that all creatures, including humankind, are woven into the
web of life. What we do to the earth, we do to ourselves.

In Eli Gold’s Peacekeeper, a work loaded with geopolitical
implications, a nuclear-warhead hangs in a glass skyscraper beneath a
human hand tied with golden threads to what the artist describes as an
altar to “fear and greed.”

At L Ross Gallery through November 30th

At Marshall Arts, “Ties That Bind” includes works by four artists
whose lives are bound together by friendship and a love for the
expressive possibilities of line.

The sinuous lines and untouched passages of watercolor paper in Mel
Spillman’s minimal but evocative portraits suggest the svelte figures,
milky-white complexions, and bright lights of celebrity. No matter how
matte the makeup or bright the lights, Spillman captures the soul
inside the persona. In the 63-by-42-inch pencil-and-paper portrait
What’s In?, the lower part of the face of the leggy youngster
who became the world’s first supermodel is nearly washed out. In
striking contrast, Twiggy’s large, dark eyes dilate and stare at us
like a deer caught in our headlights.

Roger Allan Cleaves’ dystopian societies are inhabited by hybrids
(part-human, part-heavy metal) with overdeveloped biceps and buttocks.
Penises are projectiles; lovemaking looks lethal. Both the male and the
female of the species obsessively cut, rape, and kill each other and
anything else that moves. The mayhem is mesmerizing and unsettling. The
titles of Cleaves’ ink drawings (As Time Goes By, History
Repeats Itself ) suggest that these homicidal hybrids could be us
— could be the next stage of evolution for a species increasingly
adept at genocide, collateral damage, and global warfare.

In some of the most evocative works in the show, Lindsay Palmore
turns the bittersweet and the saccharine into meditations on emotion
and time by pouring black washes across floral motifs, art deco
baubles, and doilies collaged onto the surface of paintings titled
You know my heart — it beats for you and To be sure
these days continue.

Every inch of Bobby Spillman’s paintings are filled with roaring
rivers, bird houses, tree limbs, and telephone poles swept up by
tornadic winds. Spillman’s quick mind and rapid-fire imagination
generate conversations as energized as his paintings. At the center of
the largest painting in the show, Gimme Shelter, you’ll find the
artist’s alter ego as a Bambi look-alike leaping nimbly over and around
flying objects, its fur ruffled by the wind, its huge eyes wide-open
— not with fear but wonder.

At Marshall Arts through November 29th

In “Elemental” at Perry Nicole Fine Art, Martha Kelly so accurately
observes atmosphere, light, and texture, we both see and feel
Morning Shadows snaking their way through grass thick with dew
and lime-green in the early light. Kelly’s depiction of rarified light
in Vespers takes us to the edge of effable as gold fades to
white at the top of the canvas.

Also at Perry Nicole, Chuck Johnson fills his “Recent Paintings”
with microbes, amoebas, sunspots, phantasms, and botanical drawings
so flawlessly rendered that the artist convinces us his exotic
landscapes could be real. Johnson paints each canvas with encaustic and
china markers, then covers the surface with a second landscape, leaving
only traces of the first. He repeats this process, creating worlds
within worlds that appear to be vast distances apart.

Johnson’s ability to make two-dimensional surfaces look fathoms deep
and the magic he weaves into his worlds are particularly memorable. He
paints nature in all its infinite variety, endlessly recreating
itself.

At Perry Nicole Fine Art through November 28th