Contmeporary Artist

A contemporary artist I chose is Nikko Hurtado, a tattoo artist from California. Nikko's inspiration for tattooing comes from cartoons and comic books, he specializes in portraits of film and television characters. He has unique style and a huge imagination. In junior high school he attended art classes where he learned to draw professionally and went on to take extra classes at The Art Center of Pasadena. He opened his own tattoo shop in 2010, called Black Anchor Collective in Hesperia, CA. His work to me stands out because he is able to make the tattoo look realistic, with portraits the skin tone and texture are amazing. 

The Goonies

The Goonies

Ever since I was little, The Goonies has been one of my favorite movies. I never paid close attention to details in the movie when I was little. This time when I watched it I noticed a lot I've never seen before, such as the camera work and lighting used to convey certain scenes. In scene 5, Steven Spielberg has a thunderstorm in the background to convey a darker atmosphere when “The Goonies” find a treasure map in the attic, where they're not supposed to be there. There's also dark lighting in the attic to give off an ominous feel. Many scenes throughout the movie have mysterious music in the background as well.

The Godfather

          For my movie blog I chose The Godfather, because I have never seen it and I've always been told to watch it because it is a phenomenal movie. This year is also the 40^th anniversary of The Godfather. The movie begins at the wedding reception of mafia boss Don Corleone's daughter, known as “The Godfather”. I really enjoyed this movie because it had my attention the entire time. I wasn't expecting to enjoy this movie as much as I did. I believe this movie deserves to be on AFI's greatest films list. The entire movie has impressive use of camera work and dark lighting in most of the scenes. In my opinion the cast used in this film makes it feel so realistic and makes the film a masterpiece. It was hard to chose just one scene to convey the entire plot of the movie. I chose two scenes in the movie because I felt the first scene in the movie really helped portray what the rest of the movie was going to lead into. “I Believe in America”, about 6 minutes long, shows immediately, the main character, Don Vito Corleone is a very important person to the plot. The director uses dark lighting to convey a serious conversation between the two characters, the lighting only shows the two characters with no background scenery. The Godfather and Tom Hagen, the family lawyer, are hearing requests for favors because, according to tradition, "no Sicilian can refuse a request on his daughter's wedding day." One of the men who asks Corleone for a favor is Amerigo Bonasera, an old family friend, whose daughter was beaten by two young men who received minimal punishment. Don Corleone is mostly disappointed in Bonasera, who'd avoided contact with him for so long.  He agrees to have his men punish the young men responsible. The second scene I chose was scene 6 of 23, “The Shooting of Don Corleone”. The scene begins with two characters joining together against the Corleone family, Sollozzo and Luca Brasi. Sollozzo stabs and kills Luca Brasi after joining together. I chose this scene because the director conveys the meaning through camera angles and sound. There is no dialogue in the scene, you hear footsteps coming and see Don Corleone's reaction to the footsteps. After he gets shot several times, you see the emotions coming from his son Fredo who was the driver and people on the streets. The next part of the scene shows his son Michael, reading the newspaper and finds out about his father and they do not know if he's dead or alive. The purpose of this scene was to show Sollozzo's assassination attempt against Don Corleone, due to him not accepting his offer to help finance his narcotics smuggling operations.

Artists from 1950-1985

Looking at art from 1950-1985, I enjoy looking at pop art. For an artist from 1950-1985, I chose Larry Rivers, a pop art artist from the Bronx, NY. Larry Rivers is considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" of pop art because he was one of the first artists to really “merge non-objective, non-narrative art with narrative and objective abstraction”. My favorite artwork of his, is Tanfastic from 1966. I also enjoyed looking at artwork from Jim Dine, an American pop artist. In 1962 Dine's work was included, among other pop art artists, in the ground breaking New Painting of Common Objects. My favorite piece by him is “Study for This Sovereign Life”, it was an oil painting made with sand in 1985. I think this piece is very creative and the color is very vivid.