When it comes to graffiti art there is only one name that comes to mind, and it’s Banksy. Before checking out this documentary I had no clue that graffiti art was actually something people took seriously, beyond gang tags and little kids marking up a wall for fun. Apparently there are numerous acclaimed graffiti artists around the world, artists who define themselves with their own unique style and message they’d like to share with the rest of the world, even if their message will most likely be painted over.  In 2010 Banksy came to San Francisco to vandalize some walls with a little paint, and it was enough to create a buzz across the city about what the artist would do, and out of that spawned this unique documentary that explores the value of graffiti art.

If you weren’t around in the 1970’s you might be surprised to find out that film superstar Michael Douglas was once in a television cop show. It was this influential crime drama that allowed Douglas to show off the acting chops that would earn him a spot in the Hollywood elite for decades to come. It didn’t hurt any that he was able to team up with Karl Malden, an undervalued talent in his own right. The two of them literally bring the show to life.  The series was run by Quinn Martin, himself no stranger to groundbreaking television. Martin was the same talent who created the crime drama with The Untouchables. His uncanny ability to come up with a clever premise was responsible for such milestones in television history as The Invaders and The Fugitive. Later he would continue to shape the look of television

It is always interesting to see how the history of cinema weaves its way back into the art form, especially when it is incorporated into the narrative itself. For example E. Elias Merhige’s  Shadow of the Vampire (2000) constructs its narrative around a fictional filming of F.W. Murnau’s  Nosferatu (1922). Recently, Gary Oldman announced his interest in writing and directing Flying Horse, a biopic of Eadward Muybridge, one of the founding fathers of moving images as we know them. Cinema is the only art I am aware of that artists take strides to be self-reflexive for the sake of appreciation of the medium. Apocalypse Child (2015) toys with self-reflexivity, but in a very unique way: It portrays cinema as a quasi-mythical presence through alluding to Francis Ford Coppola’s hellish stretch of filming Apocalypse Now (1979) in the Philippines.