Oliver Stone's JFK scores a big hit
Jason Sandhaus
Capital Times Staff
Controversy, controversy, controversy.
That's what surrounds Oliver Stone's
latest picture, JFK. Stone has never been
one to shy away from the truth. At least
that's what he wants to show in JFK.
The movie obviously centers around
that fateful day, Nov. 22, 1963—the day
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated.
JFK is, by far, the best picture this
year. I haven't seen a film of its caliber in
some time. I look for this film to gamer
many nominations come Oscar time. I
look for Costner to be nominated for an
Oscar, as well as Stone, the film, and
possibly the script (which was extremely
well written). It may be three hours long,
but goes by quickly.
One of the most interesting parts of the
movie was Stone's direction; he combined
actual footage with newly-shot footage.
The result is a masterpiece.
During those troubled times, only Jim
Garrison, district attorney of New Orleans,
stepped forward with his beliefs of a
murder conspiracy. The challenging role of
Garrison is played by crowd favorite Kevin
Costner.
The real Jim Garrison, now a judge in
New Orleans, has a cameo role in JFK as
Judge Earl Warren.
The film begins with the assassination,
but the story doesn't pick up until four
years later, when Garrison begins to
question the Warren Commission's
Simplicity yields complexity in art exhibit
Celia Fox
Capital Times Staff
Only eight pieces of art inhabit the
Gallery Lounge in February—a sparse
arrangement compared to other exhibitions
shown there. Yet, simplicity can be
surprisingly complex.
Allen Moore, who teaches Graphic
Design and Visual Communication at
Marywood College in Scranton, doesn't
call himself an artist.
"I consider myself a visual
sociololgist," he said. "Years from now,
probably after I'm dead, society will decide
whether I was an artist or not."
He filters his own response to society
through a screen of jcwclcolor and
silversheen. His psyche explores the
philosophical through the tactile and
visual, mixing a little trash in with his
truths.
Two large works, part of his "Heroes
and Villains" scries, arc a rccyclcr's
delight. Paper, plastic, resins mixed with
pigment, coffee grounds, mustard and
other mysterious elements combine into
pearly underwater pastels in one piece.
Similar materials yield darker tones in
the other, bringing to mind a vision of
earth from the sky's vantage. Their ragged
outlines force them to hunch over. They
stretch from floor to ceiling, connecting
space in a new way. The ceiling crouches
over the viewer's head and the Gallery
becomes a cave.
Both the mermaid's tapestry and the
satellite painting are dotted with
conspicuous lumps that prevent them
from being merely a pretty assortment of
colors. The inclusion of the pads is
visually arresting, emotionally irritating
findings. He starts his own secret
investigation into Kennedy's untimely
death.
Garrison does not believe that Oswald
acted alone on the killing, and speculates
Movie Review
that there was crossfire coming from the
grassy knoll and from across the street.
So, Garrison and his associates go to
Dallas and talk to witnesses. One person
said she saw two men behind a fence on a
gcassy knoll. Another man said he saw a
man who looked "rather suspicious."
People who were standing by the grassy
knoll said they heard gunshots coming
from behind them.
From here Garrison scopes out the
view from the book depository, Oswald’s
location when he allegedly shot Kennedy.
An employee of the depository at the
time, Oswald had easy access to the higher
floors of the building.
Garrison was troubled by the view
from the window. Why did Oswald wait to
shoot Kennedy on a turn when he could
have had a head-on shot?
He concludes that the point where
Kennedy was killed was a prime site for an
ambush.
Also, the gun Oswald supposedly used
to make the difficult shot was a piece of
junk. There was no way he could have
gotten off four shots in six seconds. It
and socially discomfitiing.
But then, art has nothing in common
with peace of mind (for peace of mind,
consult you local tv program listings).
"It has to do with things we think
Art Review
about, but don’t necessarily articulate,”
Moore said. "For me, it's about my own
life and problems and hangups. What do
you think it says?"
The moods and feelings Moore puts
into his work arc his own, but what
comes out of it belongs to us. He's
forcing us to confront something we're
accustomed to ignoring by turning it into
an icon. I found my feelings changing
every lime I turned away from the pieces
Abstract art by Allen Moore is displayed in the the Gallery Lounge
took two seconds just to reload the gun.
Garrison's partner told him that even the
FBl's best marksmen couldn't match that.
The storyline follows Oswald and his
ties with the CIA and the Cubans.
Gary Oldman, who plays Oswald, is a
dead ringer for the assassin. During
Oswald's arrest and subsequent
questioning, he remained calm, adamantly
claiming he was a patsy (not Cline).
When Garrison looks, into Oswald’s
background, he discovers that Oswald
supposedly defected to the Soviet Union
earlier in his life.
When he arrived home, you'd think lie
would be arrested as a traitor to his
country, but nothing was done. Some
believe he was a secret agent.
Oswald starts to seem more like a
patsy when Garrison gets a phone call
from a Mr. X (Donald Sutherland), who
ties everything together.
Mr. X, a former Pentagon employee,
tells Garrison that at the time of the
murder, Kennedy was drafting a bill to
pull the American troops out of Vietnam
by 1965.
According to Mr. X, the higher-ups in
Washington didn't want that, because the
war was good for the economy. The
military knew Johnson would support
them in war.
So, who plotted the murder? Was it the
CIA, the military, or Lyndon Johnson?
Mr. X also tells Garrison that when he
was in New' Zealand on operations, he
picked up a newspaper in the airport and
and then looked back,
The "Heroes" or "Villains" (it’s as hard
to distinguish the good guys from the bad
guys here, as it is in real life) reflect the
influence of abstract expressionism on
Moore’s artistic vision.
"Abstract" means non-rcprcscnlalional
in a visual way and docs not exclude
emotional content from the work. It can
deal with moods and feelings without
referring to recognizable figures. It coaxes
the view'er to sec things that arc invisible,
yet manifest; intangible, yet real.
The three framed pieces adjacent to the
"Hcrocs/Villains" arc working drawings
for the scries. At first glimpse, they
appear to be satellite maps of the western
stales with their olive and red marbling
and sharp corners. After a moment, their
hunched posture indicates a willingness to
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read that Kennedy was killed. The paper
also contained a bio on the man who
supposedly murdered him.
The only problem was that New
Zealand is four hours BEHIND United
States time. How could this information
already be out, unless it was alrcadly given
to the press before it actually happened?
When Garrison goes to trial, he brings
in Clay Shaw, played by Tommy Lee
Jones.
Shaw had murky CIA tics and was a
closet homosexual who frequently partied
with Dave Ferrie, a communist militia
leader. Shaw claimed to know nothing
about the murder and was declared not
guilty by a jury following his trial.
In the trial itself, Garrison brings up a
major point. Since I am only 21 years old,
I don't have the firsthand experience about
the subject; nonetheless, I was intrigued.
Garrison tries to disprove the single
bullet theory Arlen Specter helped invent.
At that time, Specter was a clerk, and
President George Bush worked for the
CIA.
The single bullet theory is a joke. How
could one bullet weave in and out of two
men seven times? It just isn't possible.
What is it that the government is
trying to hide? We'll have to wait until
2029 to see the Warren Commission's
findings.
It might be me, but didn't people think
it was strange for "the truth" to be hidden
for so long? I guess they figured everyone
would be dead by then.
"go head to head" with the enemy and the
resemblance is clear.
For Moore, drawing is a gestural
activity that doesn't necessarily involve
paper and pencil. It is a line recording the
movement of the hand, eye and mind.
Although the three Hcrocs/Villains arc
painted, they arc drawings in this larger
sense.
"Drawing occurs whenever two
substances meet and affect each other,"
Moore said.
Three smaller geometric works of
glazed plywood hang on the wall like
missing puzzle pieces, showing us Moore
as reductionist.
"I like to sec how much you can lake
out and still have something meaningful
left," Moore said.
The hard-edged spears gather light in
surface wrinkles and veins, concentrating
it in their darkly-cryslallinc interiors.
Powdered pigment mixed with plastic
resin give him a paint thick enough to
mold and sculpt.
"The process is first," Moore admitted.
"Thought comes later."
The clean-edged shape and dimly
luminescent colors conceal the amount of
work these pieces represent. With up to 30
layers of various coalings, they can lake
anywhere from six to eight months to
complete.
The wall surrounds them, yet they
dcline the space. The cloudy, translucent
hammer-shape on the corridor wall seems
related to sea-tumbled beach glass. The
paired shards arc head to head, evoking the
opposing forces depicted in
"Hcrocs/Villains."
Allen Moore's work will inhabit the
Gallery Lounge through Feb. 29.