‘Valentine’s Day’ panned, applauded

Thanks for the spot-on review of Garry Marshall’s pedestrian “Valentine’s Day,” which wasted an amazingly diverse cast’s talents [“Sweet to Some, Saccharine to Others,” by Betsy Sharkey, Feb. 12].

You could have put it more succinctly by saying: “An unsuccessful American remake of Richard Curtis’ ‘Love Actually,’ but missing the acting, style, finesse and joie de vivre of the British original.”

Lee Moldaver

Santa Barbara

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Who sneezed on Betsy Sharkey’s See’s Candies? I read her “Valentine’s Day” review after coming home from seeing that film at a packed theater. There were big laughs throughout, several spontaneous bursts of applause and lots of smiles filing into the lobby afterward.

My companion and I discussed how grateful the stars must have been to be cast in such a delightful movie that will surely become a perennial holiday classic. Sometimes films are just meant to be fun. “Valentine’s Day” was that and then some.

Dawna Kaufmann

Los Angeles

Late Renoir works a triumph

I just read the critique of the “Renoir in the 20th Century” exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art [“Not a Masterstroke,” by Christopher Knight, Feb. 15]. I found it to be a somewhat disturbing assessment of Renoir’s later works of art and the context in which they were done.

One could say that the art should stand on its own without excuses. Knight gives reasons why Renoir’s later works fail to meet his earlier standard.

It seems to me that all of Knight’s explanations pale in comparison to the cloud of the rheumatic disease under which Renoir painted. Knight’s sop to his gnarled hands comes not even close to the infirmities under which the man labored.

I would presume that he had, what, two hours of morning stiffness requiring painful exercises to limber up. There must have been excruciating pain and swelling in the critical small joints of his hands, and deformities that resulted in loss of dexterity. No wonder that his brushwork may have been modified.

To compare what he went through to other artists who were not working under the same horrid life circumstances is unfair.

Renoir should be celebrated for working at all and his later works appreciated and applauded, if for no other reason, as a triumph of the human spirit.

Richard Goldin

Torrance

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There is always comfort in seeing art through the filter of some narrative or other. Christopher Knight, a self-comforting, Clement Greenberg kind of guy, sees his prejudices thus confirmed with the show of late Renoirs at LACMA.

Renoir, in the 1880s, turned toward his particular version of tradition and therefore invalidated himself in the march toward a singular blob of paint in the center of a very large canvas (in Greenberg’s time) and then toward a gallery space strewn with doodads and geegaws and video projections (in Knight’s time).

True, a lot of art in Renoir’s time and since that tries to do something along his lines is bad. But so is a lot of art today.

Look, dear art appreciators, with clear eyes, and see that Renoir was doing a particular, valid thing better than just about anyone.

Zack Kircher

Los Angeles