FRIENDS CALL HIM MODI

I can't help but think of the 'Ginger Man,' the notorious 1955 Irish novel by J.P. Donleavy. Depending how much you drink, the bawdy protagonist is either a jolly hero or a depraved villain.

The tale offers a mad series of epic benders and blunders. It's an audacious read, a laugh riot, which is why it is unfilmable. Too hard to translate to a visual narrative, a likely fail. Should anyone make that mistake, Johnny Depp would be a casting coup.

Speaking of Johnny Depp, he has directed a new, upcoming film, titled 'Modi.' The film covers 72 wild hours in the whirlwind life of painter Amedeo Modigliani. The working title was "Modi: Three Days on the Wings of Madness." I'm all in.

As you will see in the film's trailer, on our sister site Formerly Known As Cinema, Modigliani goes on a bender and runs all over Paris in 1916. He's doing the same things artists do today, that daily routine of seeing friends, caging drinks, pleading for payment, making a lil' art, ditching a cloying collector and seeking precious solace wherever one can.

A bender or a dragon chasing mind alteration are not experiences that film well; you just have to be there. Only a master filmmaker can make such a narrative work. "Withnail and I" tops a short list of such debauched films.

I can't wait to see how Johnny Depp does. Can he pull off such a bold attempt? Regardless, I'm glad he took the risk.

As our readers know, we have been covering this film throughout its long history. We love Modi. We love artist movies. We're rooting for you Johnny.

Art Report Today .com

A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT ART AND LIFE

A life in the Los Angeles arts is a fast moving marathon. The galleries are the glue and local grad school affiliation outlines turf. Tons of fun. Like everywhere, the arts can be competitive, opinionated and tribal. That's the only world I knew.

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Printmaking has always been a part of my work. The process is centuries old, which lends gravitas to any project. Important to me, chance is an indisputable element of printmaking. Love everything about it.

To wade into the vast waters of printmaking, I took a class at the Barnsdall Art Center. The campus rests on top of a hill in Hollywood, an odd eruption in the East Hollywood flatlands. The hill is crowned with a municipal art gallery and Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House, a 1920s commission by flamboyant arts patron Aline Barnsdall.

The Barnsdall Art Center is a public-private cooperation to provide hands-on art classes in every medium at a very reasonable price. The thoughtful instructors are legendary. I fell in love with the place. Ducks of a feather. I ended up devoting about a decade to the org.

For me, this art center was a surprising doorway to a secret kingdom in the art world.

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Old Olive Hill is now called the Barnsdall Art Park. My classmates represented every flavor in the LA soup. The Barnsdall Art Center, this funky temple, taught me to separate the water drop from the cascade.

In the classroom, gallery representation and careerism were rarely a topic. Exhibition was a fun thing that popped up like a birthday. Creation and the work was the glue of our relationships. Everyone there just loved to make art.

Every week, squeezed by time, we manufactured art works. The journey of the process, trying this or that. Taking risks while listening to the wise instinctive voice in your head.

You can live a whole lifetime in the creation of one fast work. The brain is always receiving and calculating. You learn small things, that together become a philosophy, a devotion and your lifestyle. That's the life in the arts.

Art Report Today .com

EMPERORS OF THE IP

There are two people in cinema, of great creative success, that I really want to write about. Art Report Today doesn't have the funds to assign a writer and I don't have the time to research and investigate. But I can tell you why I'm interested.

Both have approached the concept of Intellectual Property, the IP, in very fascinating ways. IP is the tony way of saying 'our beloved franchise.'

Someday I will share my admiration of Jason Blum. He is the impresario of Blumhouse, a mini-film studio, and the acorn that fell from the tree of Irving Blum, the famed provocateur of LA's seminal Ferus Gallery.

This weekend, director Dan Trachtenberg opens his new film 'Predator: Badlands.' Somehow, he has seized a crapped out franchise, an entire IP no less, and sailed away with the spoils. He is a well-prepared pirate. His toolkit was packed with talent and solid work experiences. I think he was ready, at the right time.

It all begins in 1987 with a sci-fi actioner starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. 'Predator,' and so many other films, are a take on the 1924 classic tale, "The Most Dangerous Game." Here, the big game hunter is an alien, going after human trophies on earth. Director John McTiernan kept the film moving and the theatrical release was a huge box office success.

Yes, there was gold in those hills and many tried to mine it. Predator sequels were made in 1990 and 2010. Two "Alien vs. Predator" crossovers were hatched in 2004 and 2007. The franchise, I mean the Intellectual Property, died in 2018 with director Shane Black's widely derided "The Predator."

Filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg made a short in 2003. In 2011, he directed an episode of "BlackBoxTV." In 2016, he helmed "10 Cloverfield Lane," the spin-off of the unexpected box office success of director Matt Reeves' big monster in Manhattan thriller "Cloverfield," in 2008. Notices were good.

This is where it gets interesting. Everyone believed the 'Predator' IP was toast. All of the films in the series were set in the present day.

Somehow, and I'd like to find out, Dan Trachtenberg got the new idea that those aliens have been coming to earth to hunt for centuries. He took what he believed were the IP's strong points and placed his adventure with the Native American Comanche tribe in 1719. Interesting.

"Prey" premiered at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2022. The 20th Century Fox film played on Hulu and Disney+. Reviews were good and viewership was high. A goldmine and an invitation for more.

Early in 2025, Trachtenberg debuted an animated time-traveling feature "Predator: Killer of Killers." This weekend, you can go to the opening of his new live action film "Predator: Badlands," starring Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi. Trachtenberg is keeping the IP fresh, and refreshed, which is hard to do.

All of the imaginative minds in Hollywood believed the Predator IP was dead, beaten, bruised and condemned to the curb. I love Trachtenberg for thinking otherwise, in very clever ways, respectful of the lore and the joys of the genre. A true creative.

He is worthy of a profile. I want to know the story of such smart serendipity. The challenge of presenting his idea. How his concept was polished and evolved. Were there other motivating factors?

A painter works alone in a studio. A filmmaker needs an army and creativity is shared. The film industry has always been very particular and controlled, yet these days the landscape is apocalyptic. Gloves are off. The medium that we formerly knew as cinema is a whole new game. Dan Trachtenberg is a rare IP superstar. He is doing good work.

Art Report Today .com