Teller directs a talkie while Penn - the other half of the comedy/magic duo - narrates and stars in this documentary account of inventor and video game designer Tim Jenison and the device he concocted to replicate the elusive technique that Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer devised to paint with light. Similar to an old time animator’s Rotoscope, Jenison’s mirrored gadget helps the artist “trace” his subjects with a near-photographic precision. The very rich Jenison puddle-jumps his Lear Jet around the globe, boning up on everything from the manner in which Vermeer mixed his paint to grinding a lens to fit his homemade Camera Obscura. Jenison’s The Music Lesson is a bolder and far more impressive act of artistic mimicry than Teller’s original. The endless array of talking heads, filmed in choking closeup, must be the director’s way of enacting revenge for all his years spent in silent servitude. (2013) — Scott Marks
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