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Beautiful, moving film.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

"Tim's Vermeer" is probably not a documentary that the average person would ever watch. Me being a huge Penn & Teller fan, however, I was the perfect audience. My wife, however, is not such a huge fan--but she ended up enjoying the film even more than me!This documentary was produced by Penn Gillette and he narrates it as well. His silent partner, Teller, directed the film. It's a strange story about a guy with too much time on his hands who has an obsession--to test out the theory that Jan Vermeer (the super-famous Dutch painter) actually might have used advanced technology (specifically a camera obscura-sort of device) to help him make such a super-realistic painting. Fortunately Tim Jenison appears to be very rich due to some of his inventions and has the time and obsessive drive to test out his idea. Through the course of the film, you see him exactingly replicate the studio room used by Vermeer and actually paint a Vermeer-style painting using this technique. What makes it even more amazing is that Jenison is NOT a painter and has novice skills in that department.While this probably sounds a bit boring, it really isn't. I love just about all of Penn & Teller's work--and this is no exception. As for the wife, she is an engineer and the way that science and engineering was used in the show REALLY got her excited--and it's rare to ever see my wife get his excited about a film. She loved it. Well worth seeing.

We live in the age of technology. We don't normally think of this as a time producing great artists the way they proliferated in earlier times.One of the most fascinating types of art, to me anyway, are those of the Dutch. So much detail, particularly in the works of Vermeer.Penn Jillette, part of the magic team of Penn & Teller, introduces us to inventor Tim Jenison, who puts forward the theory that Vermeer employed technological/scientific means to paint his incredibly detailed artwork. He attempts to figure out how Vermeer was able to paint in such great detail, and reproduces everything available to Vermeer in his time, to recreate his studio, and finally to paint "The Music Lesson."Jenison postulates that Vermeer possibly used camera obscura and a small mirror to achieve the look of his work.No way to prove this as Vermeer did not leave any notes, including notes about achieving the colors of his paint. However, Jenison makes a very strong case.This is a fantastic and absorbing documentary, and gives a possible answer for another aspect of Vermeer's work that wasn't brought up in the discussion. Jenison's recreation using these techniques took months. Vermeer did not leave behind a great many paintings. Granted he died young (43, probably not that young in those days) but still, if it took so long to paint these pictures, perhaps that is why there are so few of them. His lack of paintings was mentioned, but not connected with this technique. I think this is yet further evidence that he may in fact used these painstaking methods.This is a controversial subject because some art historians feel it blemishes Vermeer's work and makes him a cheat. Many feel that art and science must forever stay separate.Jenison and others, such as David Hockney, argue that it is not cheating to use or even invent techniques to help his work. The commitment, the beauty, the detail, the color, all stand testament to the artistry of Vermeer. The fact that it can be replicated in modern times doesn't diminish the work.A wonderful documentary that deserves to be seen.

Funny how the question of genius still preoccupies us; what is that untouchable quality that makes one a genius? Not funny how the usual answer our era gives to that question is some kind of how - not who - dunnit, that actually masquerades what one can well call the traumatic quality of genius, by transforming it into some kind of expertise, aggressive projection of idealizations, and, eventually, a bland denial that the question of genius even exists.I consider "Tim"'s approach actually loathsome; from the initial premise that had some kind of frisson, the mystery is violated by his bland need to be the smartest boy in the room, in that pal manner bosses have to intimidate their employees.There is no sense of recognition, or even of absurd rivalry (Salvador Dali excelled in that when confronting Vermeer), just a nerd's resentment (at least Mr. Hockney has some smaller talent's resentment in order to prove reductive persuasions about painting)that totally blinds him to the dimension of art as such, or when encountered in the deft, sublime brushwork, let alone simpler facts like one cannot strike the same pose for months, especially when the portraits demonstrate such spontaneity and transience.As it is, the film reads more like a bad omen for cognitivism: what claim humanity had in the once sublime, je ne sais quoi quality of art, it returns as a repressed artless invention, as in the reduction of language - that is essentially poetry - to some elaborate chemicals juicing the brain; or like articles one reads nowadays that promote sex as good for blood circulation and even muscle development; that urge french kissing so that when one grows old will escape drooling. And that is depressing. There is no pleasure in it.

Penn & Teller are most well-known for their entertaining and often edgy magic act. While Teller's documentary Tim's Vermeer is unrelated to his own work, though Penn and himself are active participants in the project, it does have a type of magic involved. The film follows wealthy inventor Tim Jenison's attempts to re-create a painting by Johannes Vermeer using methods that he theorises that Vermeer most likely used. Jenison is no painter, but he has a mechanical mind. To many, Vermeer represents when art started to become more realistic and three dimensional, almost like a photograph. While some art historians believe that he used optics such as a camera obscura to project an image onto a canvas, others implore that it was from sheer talent. It's a hot debate in the art world and one that Jenison is deeply involved in outside of his primary interests and business in contemporary computers, cameras and television. The film thus studies the relationship between art and technology and how creative expression can be manufactured by machines, though it can be argued that through Jenison's obsessive attempts to re-create a Vermeer he in turn learns the skills in order to do it, rather than prove his theory of being able to re-do it in a clinical objective way. Jenison is a fun figure to watch, he's thoughtful and practical with a sense of humour about his preoccupation. He's kind of like a mix between Dan Harmon and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Sometimes the mission does seem quite frivolous when this time and money could be put into more productive and urgent matters but it does somewhat justify itself. However, while it has all the ingredients for a great doc, Teller's direction just can't keep up. It suffers from choppy editing, a really rough production and a lack of structure. Perhaps a finer editor would have improved it significantly, but Teller's work makes it a much cheaper picture. Still very much worth the watch.7/10