"They see the creases, they know they're done for!" carps Vet (John Doman), a belligerent South Texas border cop pontificating on the mindset of illegals when they see the sharp indents of his pants in Suzan-Lori Parks's newest, The Book of Grace. It's an astute analogy, given that Parks—never one to give audiences an easy route through the swirling, often bizarre complexities of her characters—absolutely lets you see the creases here, and certain audiences not on her wavelength are most certainly done for. However, her blackly comic Southern gothic, despite its longueurs and occasional overreaches, is sprinkled with poetic assertions on postwar distress and home-life abuses, and in James Macdonald's first-rate production at the Public, it occasionally even manages to cast a sinister spell. Continue Reading »
Last year's It Might Get Loud portrayed White Stripes frontman Jack White as a man (touchingly) concerned with stripping his music of artifice, with avoiding the privileges that success affords in the pursuit of music that's primal, pure, and unfettered by self-consciousness. The irony, of course, is that few musicians seem to be more self-conscious than Jack White; he's self-conscious of his self-consciousness. Trying to let go, to will spontaneity through unspontaneously manufactured obstacles (such as deliberately inconvenient instrument positioning on stage), White probably boxes himself in about as much as if he were comfortably produced, but that yearning for truth, which strikes one as legit, can be felt in his music, which, at its best, is vital, intense, personal. White, like many artists of all stripes of his thirtysomething generation suspects that he's lacked the hardship to produce the kind of art that's inspired him (particularly blues), and it's that doubt that gives White the spiritual friction he seeks.
The White Stripes concert movie Under Great White Northern Lights is almost entirely conceived around White's insecurities: The picture follows the band as they tour every province and territory of Canada as part of a larger tour a few years ago. White seems to see Canada—"a neighbor"—as one of those great natural lands of little towns overlooked by big corporate logo-sporting franchise concerts, and he revels in the intimate shows, as well as in the considerably even more intimate "side-shows," which are usually put together an hour or so beforehand and are attended by whoever happens to have their ear to the grapevine. White, though he never explicitly voices it, is clearly concerned with the effect of the web on rock n' roll—with the effects that iTunes, IM, email, and blogs have wrought on the communal nature of browsing through record stores and listening to local bands at coffeehouses and bars. Continue Reading »
SXSW's film festival officially ended last night (though the films continue to play just as often for a few days, for those of us who haven't seen our fill yet) and the music festival started today. Watching the mole people of the movie world get replaced by sleeker, more stylish, generally younger musicians and A&R types makes me think of a very clever bumper (one of those short films that precedes each movie to let you know it's part of the festival) for this year's festival. This one, which is by SXSW staffer Joe Nicolosi, shows a bright-eyed young woman who heads into the woods "to get some exercise" and has to fight off one horror-movie monster after another. As she's about to go down, the final supertitles say something like: "Stay indoors. Watch movies."
The People vs. George Lucas (Alexandre O. Philippe). SXSW always has a strong lineup of documentaries, and The People vs. George Lucas is one of this year's best. Smart, funny, and often impassioned, it's entertaining even when it's just exploring the filmmaker's relationship with his rebellious army of fans. But what really hooked me were its insights into why this battle matters to the noncombatants.
Some points are hammered away at too often, and the Stars Wars-style "episodes" the doc is divided into work better as a joke than an organizing principle. I could have done with a little less footage of talking heads too. But those talking heads sure can talk. Their vivid language, self-aware humor, strong emotions, and intelligent observations won me over, as did the generous sampling of impressively creative or endearingly amateurish fan edits and the footage of fans, often surrounded by merchandise or putting their own stamp on the Star Wars myth. I particularly liked a couple of guys dressed as Elvis, one of whom was also a storm trooper while the other was a Jedi. Now, that's participatory fandom. Continue Reading »
[Editor and Author's Note: These weekly recaps will be cross-posted over at Vinyl is Heavy. We encourage comments at either joint.]
Sawyer episodes are usually a lot of fun because he usually gets into a lot of mischief. This one proved no different. And, for once, I was totally into the sideways story where Sawyer's Jim, an LAPD detective working with Miles, for the simple fact that it played like a parody of the buddy cop genre. Sure, it was kind of cool to see Charlotte show up undamaged, and the final chase to throw Kate against a fence was lively, but mostly it was hilarious to see these two dudes play these roles. Only problem with it is that is that Ken Leung is a better actor than Josh Holloway and seems in on the joke a bit more. Not to say Holloway's no good, but he mostly scowls through the episode. Continue Reading »
"The Imperfections of Memory" is a brief quiet moment before the next two episodes, what I expect shall be a far noisier wrap-up to the first half of Caprica's season. It will return this fall to complete its first series, and the good news according to The Hollywood Reporter is that the show looks likely to be renewed. The even better news for the disenfranchised Battlestar Galactica fans who like a little "space" with their soap opera is that Syfy is hoping to get executive producer Ronald Moore to develop yet another BSG spinoff.
With Caprica's fate currently looking somewhat safe, I guess I don't have to fret that this last episode breaks the momentum which has been building. I can just enjoy some of the unusual ways this entry ventures outside some of the familiar territory it has comfortably settled in.
As the Graystone's grief over Zoe's death recedes just a bit (if not from their consciousness then from the show's and its Caprican population), Amanda starts having visions of her dead brother, Darius. These hallucinations spur some desperate, wonderful dreamlike images that run counter to the crisp, concrete world established on the series so far, even in V-world. After Clarice runs into Amanda at the MagLev memorial, she learns of Amanda's visions. This prompts Clarice to theorize that since Amanda can see the dead—and is mother to the messianic Zoe—God speaks through her the same way He speaks through her daughter. Clarice gives a rare bottle of Scorpion Ambrosia to Amanda in order to ingratiate herself, hoping to glean something from the oracular Graystone matriarch. Continue Reading »
No One Knows About Persian Cats (Bahman Ghobadi). In Tehran, being in an indie rock band can be extremely dangerous. After stints in jail and the constant fear of being caught playing "underground music," bandmates Negar and Ashkan decide they need to go to London to play their music live. They get introduced to Nedar, a fast-talking, hyper-passionate underground music know-it-all who, after listening to their CD among his pet parrots and stacks of illegally obtained DVDs, uses his web of connections to try and get them overseas. He promises to help them on their journey to find a backup band and visas (a U.S. passport on the black market is $26,000).
Negar and Askan's search for underground musicians through windy roads, basements, secret practice spaces is fascinating. At each stop, these real-life musicians play their music as the pair listen in, studying to see what and who will work with their band. These scenes often incorporate montages of Tehran street life. One of the most interesting segments concerns a rap group meeting on a floor of an unfinished building, and overlooking the city the group raps about class struggle in Tehran.
Bahman Ghobadi's film premiered at Cannes, winning the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section and continued on to win several International awards. The film is a delicate and beautiful portrayal of the musicians in Tehran and how they struggle to do what they love. It is my hope that it will continue to play screens around the world. Continue Reading »
Marwencol (Jeff Malmberg). I'm a bit wary of a documentary that feels the need to split itself up into chapters. To me, it's typically a sign of a director that doesn't quite know how to unify his material—one of the basic challenges of this genre. You've accumulated a lot of footage, now how do you make it flow? Chapter division seems like a bit of a trick solution to that problem.
The story of Mark Hogancamp, a man who suffered brain damage a few years ago causing the loss of nearly all his memories, doesn't really need to be split up, as most of the material naturally flows. It's engrossing and fascinating to learn how Mark's personal form of therapy—constructing a 1/6th scale WWII-era town in his backyard—eventually turns into an art form, and it can all be told so easily from beginning to present without the disruptive punctuation of title cards.
Now, lest you think I focus entirely too much on chapter divisions, the film does have a larger problem. As told and as edited, the film builds to an emotional climax, winds back down, then starts the process all over again, leaving us with two story peaks. To feel as if you've concluded only to start back up again is taxing and makes the film seem much longer than it actually is. Continue Reading »
Fans of Beatrice Arthur, we are in heaven. (Hattip: Ali Arikan.)
House reader Matthew Schmitz sends us two pieces of his on Eric Rohmer: 1) "Remembering Rohmer" from First Things. 2) "Talking About Rohmer" from The League of Ordinary Gentlemen.
Finally, two trailers for us this morning, both HBO series. First, Boardwalk Empire, created by Terence Winter, pilot directed by Martin Scorsese:
Second, Treme, the latest from David Simon and friends:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to keithuhlich@gmail.com and to converse in the comments section.
MacGruber (Jorma Taccone). You might think a full-length feature about MacGruber, Will Forte's bumbling '80s action hero, would feel at least an hour too long. Even Steven Carrell couldn't lift his lumbering feature about Maxwell Smart, the '60s version of MacGruber, off the ground—but maybe he needed Jorma Taccone at the controls.
Saturday Night Life actor/writer/director Taccone, one of the three guys who does those funny videos with Andy Samberg (he also shot a lot of the MacGruber shorts for SNL and is the man behind a Pepsi ad for the Super Bowl), has great sense of comic timing and a deep and gleeful knowledge of comedy conventions and pop-culture icons. In the Q&A after the film, he revealed that he loves late-'80s/early-'90s action movies like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon and Rambo 3 ("not one or two or four—though four is pretty great too"), and that he and his cast intended their movie to be more of a comic tribute than a spoof.
You probably have to love those movies to embrace this one fully, but for those of us who do, it makes for a wildly entertaining night at the movies. Action movie clichés, like the way people keep telling MacGruber, "I thought you were dead!," are given just the right emphasis. You laugh at the dick jokes and gay jokes too, partly because they're cathartic, surfacing and then blowing up all the unacknowledged homoerotic machismo that fuels those movies, but also because Forte does blustery incompetence so well and the editors always know just where to cut. And Michael Bay has taken things so far that you pretty much have to chase your bad guy off a cliff, fire two big guns at him as he goes down, and reduce him to a blackened hole in the ground at the bottom of a canyon if you're going for laughs. This movie also has the funniest sex scene since the South Park movie with the puppets. Continue Reading »
"Once you kill a cow, you gotta make a burger." So says Lady Gaga as she turns to the camera with a deadpan stare in her latest video for the Fame Monster track "Telephone." Directed by Jonas Åkerlund, the clip is a sequel to the previous Gaga-Åkerlund collaboration "Paparazzi"—and it's an epic in music video terms, clocking in at nine and a half minutes.
Whereas "Paparazzi" was an extended riff on, among other things, Hitchcock and his voyeuristic sensibilities, "Telephone" has chosen the work of Quentin Tarantino as its visual and narrative inspiration. The video is full of nods to the director: the self-conscious dialogue laden with knowing winks to the audience; the fascination with the muddy waters of exploitation, of which the women-in-prison film is a genre favorite; and of course, the infamous Kill Bill Pussy Wagon. (The Tarantino connections are so strong, the first time I watched the video I was sure Gaga was making out with Steve Buscemi.)
Forget for a moment the Ouroboros meta-nature of crafting a pastiche of a filmmaker whose work is defined by pastiche; Beyoncé, Gaga's co-star and the Honey B(unny) to her Pumpkin, has Tarantino on the brain as well. Her clip for "Video Phone" (directed by Hype Williams and featuring Lady Gaga in a mirror-like inversion) riffed on Tarantino as well, with its opening scene a direct lift from Reservoir Dogs. However, "Video Phone" is a deeply flawed work; its pastiche descends into an incoherent hodge-podge, with ideas and images thrown into the blender without rhyme or reason. Continue Reading »
No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson (Steve James). Whenever the great documentarian Steve James (Hoop Dreams, The New Americans) has a new doc, he shows it at SXSW, and it's always one of the festival highlights for me. This year's world-premiere screening of No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson was no exception. The 90-minute doc was shot as part of ESPN's "30 for 30″ series (it will air on April 13), in which 30 directors each tell a story about an athlete "that really resonates for them personally," as James put it at the screening. The films are about sports, but—at least in the ones he's seen so far—always as "an avenue to something else."
As told by James and his crew, Iverson's story is a great American tragedy, a harrowing look into the gaping racial fault line that runs through America in general and Hampton, Virginia, in particular. The city is the filmmaker's hometown as well as the ballplayer's; James even played basketball there in high school, his father lettered there in three sports, and his mother still lives there. Without those strong roots in the community, he said at the screening, he could never have made this film—and even so, he had to work hard to get most of his subjects to talk to him, since they didn't want to re-expose rifts they have worked hard to paper over. But in the end, he got a good sampling of the community on film, including people who coached or otherwise mentored Iverson, community leaders and lawyers who supported him after his arrest, reporters who covered the case, retired policemen and other community officials, and a few people who thought he got what he deserved. Almost all are frank and articulate about what they thought and felt about his arrest 17 years ago—and still do, just as strongly. Continue Reading »
The games section on Apple's App Store is like an open democracy on the brink of anarchy. The glut of games that try to grab your attention can be a little jarring for those whose only wanted to kill 10 minutes of their day. Luckily, Apple has provided various lists to separate the standout titles in its helter-skelter ecosystem. Yet even here, from one week to the next, games that are at the top of the bestseller list are quite regularly dethroned by copycats undercutting prices and dooming the original inspirations into obscurity. However in the past couple of weeks, two games have shown to be an exception.
Plants vs. Zombies and Final Fantasy have been on top of the best-selling games list for a few weeks now. It was recently reported from Pop Cap (Plants vs. Zombies's developer/publisher) that the iPhone version had grossed more then $1 million. Also, considering Final Fantasy is not that far back in sales, it is not that much of a stretch to believe that it too has acquired similar numbers. To say games like Plants vs. Zombies or Final Fantasy are not your usual iPhone games would be a bit of an understatement. So what makes these games so special? The answer lies in the philosophy behind their design. Continue Reading »
Crying with Laughter (Justin Molotnikov). Joey Frisk (a very capable Stephen McCole) is a fireball on the verge of flaming out. His vulgar, relentless standup comedy style seems to demand that he self-destruct in every area of his life, from his irresponsibility as a father to his unprofessionalism as a comedian. He precedes his acts with a ritualistic line of coke, walks out on stage swigging a beer, and unleashes at whoever he can spot in the dimly lit crowd.
The film begins as a surprisingly interesting study of Joey, a Scottish man incapable of pulling things together. He can't help but mess things up with his landlord, his ex, and even the old schoolmate who tracks him down (Malcom Shields). But about 25 minutes in, another film begins and leaves this one behind, instantly transforming Crying with Laughter into a breezy "mystery" thriller with plot holes. When Joey spends the third act bloody, running, and saving the day while trying to reason with villains, it hits you: "Wait—how the heck did we end up here?" I yearned for the captivating character piece this film began as. Continue Reading »
Okay, so Geoffrey Nauffts's Next Fall isn't about "old" times per se, but its content seems firmly rooted in the seriocomic patterns of seasoned old pros. Take the homosexual preference out of this setup and see if it doesn't hold to a sort of Doc Simon programme: Two men—nebbishy, inquisitive Adam (Patrick Breen) and the much-younger, devoutly Christian actor Luke (Patrick Heusinger)—embark on a rocky relationship that spans over four years, while dodging the latter's unaware, intolerant parents (now divorced) and relying on their best friends (one is a woman, natch) for moral support. Add some zesty one-liners, some juicy albeit palatable deliberations on faith, an unfortunate car accident, and a big, sloppy heart and you've got Next Fall.
And through the play's sturdy, funny, confident first act, you feel as if this type of patter comedy with some deeper meaning just might be the ticket to a rebirth, only this time with same-sex participants. Told in flashbacks as Luke is comatose in the aforementioned accident, the play backracks their relationship as their friends and family wait currently for good news, while Adam, wracked with guilt and frustrated by not being able to tell Luke's parents who he truly is, confides in best pal Holly (Maddie Corman), the fluttery-adorable boss of the candle shop where both men have worked. Luke also has a mysterious best friend, Brandon (Sean Dugan), who has always been adversarial toward Adam, and whose true nature is just as mysterious to us through most of the play. And then there are the parents: saucy, genial but somewhat dim Arlene (Connie Ray) and super alpha-male, deliberate, rock-solid Butch (Cotter Smith). Continue Reading »
"Thanks to our incredible volunteers, who are getting drunker as the day goes on but still doing an incredible job." That intro—I forget for which film—was right on both parts: the 600 strong volunteers of True/False surely make a lot of things possible, even if they were all drinking (one of the big venues has a full bar) to while away the tedium of passing out queue tickets. (Special points for inventiveness to the man who stayed in character as Captain Jack Sparrow. He had the swaying walk down and everything.)
But, arguably, the main thing that makes True/False so unspeakably awesome is that they do not care about premieres. At all. Without a doubt, the premiere culture is one of the worst aspects of any festival that can't get any good ones but still wants their red carpet moment. It's always some kind of damn mediocre ensemble drama starring Glenn Close or someone, and it always fades into oblivion, and it's pernicious.
The True/False guys—by which I mean festival heads David Wilson and Paul Sturtz—clearly don't care about any of this, which is fantastic. (What's even better is that the Secret Screenings—an idiocy necessary to preserve the "premiere status" of terrific films—are really, really good. The one I saw has the potential to be one of the Films Of The Year. I hope more people pay attention when it's officially "premiered" or whatever. You get the feeling even if they had premiere status, they wouldn't abuse it.) What they've constructed is a micro-festival that offers a strong personal voice and an argument (roughly, form matters just as much as the polemic, and your righteousness alone will not save you). This is a micro-fest done right.
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