Alex2507 has characterized me as the champion of "slow" movies. While I don't necessarily agree, I did see a good slow movie tonight so here I go...
Tim's Vermeer is an art movie about art and a true story. Tim Jenison is a rich inventor obsessed by the desire to figure out how Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer made his paintings. He's convinced that Vermeer used a Camera Obscura, in conjunction with a mirror in his quest to create paintings with super-realistic color, so Tim sets out to spend some of his time and money to re-create a Vermeer painting himself, in spite of the fact that he has not the slightest artistic talent or experience. Tim travels to Europe and Buckingham Palace to study Vermeer, builds a replica of the room in one of the master's paintings and spends 4 months painstakingly replicating the painting, using his optical mechanism. It sorta works as a proof of concept, but nothing in this really proves the Vermeer did anything like this.
It's a very odd movie, written by Penn and Teller, directed by Teller with narration by Penn. Jenison plays himself, with some first person narrative. More than anything, to me, it seemed like an illustration of what you can do and how much you can spend if you're rich, inventive and obsessive. It was really an ODD movie, with a surprisingly large, appreciative audience. We tried to go last night, but when we got to the theater, the film hadn't arrived by UPS yet, so they let us go into Dallas Buyer's Club for free. We'd already seen it but enjoyed it again. Tim had arrived tonight.
