Losing Beautifully

 I had some grand designs about composing something bigger this evening to post here, but I ended up getting sucked into a documentary on the Sundance channel. "Beautiful Losers" is a film by one Aaron Rose that chronicled a relatively small collective of underground artists in New York and California in the early-to-mid 1990s, including celebrated notables like Harmony Korine, Mike Mills and - wait for it -- Shepard Fairey, as well as a clutch of lesser-known but equally imaginative and prolific individuals. As with a couple of the other art films I've talked about here, specifically Eileen Yaghoobian's "Died Young Stayed Pretty" and, more recently, "Exit Through the Gift Shop," there is a requisite amount of eccentricity on display -- along with a chronically-recurring abuse of the adjective, "rad" -- but I found it to be a really compelling piece. I vaguely remember hearing about it upon its 2008 release, but I don't think it made a particularly huge splash.

In any case, if you didn't catch it and are as intrigued by (for want of a better term) unconventional and/or street art (everything from painting, grafitti and print-making through film and sculpture and beyond) and its accompanying culture (everything from skateboarding through music), I strongly recommend checking it out. You can find the film's official website here or simply tune in to the Sundance channel to watch it, as it's scheduled to air five more times before the end of the month.