five C reviews

FILM: La Sconosciuta, dir. Giuseppe Tornatore

2008-10-26T15:46:00.000-07:00

La Sconosciuta - (ITA, 2006; The Unknown Woman - US Title)
Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore
Written by Massimo De Rita and Giuseppe Tornatore

In the US, Tornatore’s name will forever be linked to his biggest international hit, Cinema Paradiso, largely because that movie’s blend of nostalgia intermingled with a non-explicit portrait of life’s harsher realities is perfectly suited to the US art-house cinephile’s hunger for restrained whimsy.

Audiences expecting more of the same from Sconosciuta will be greatly shocked by the frankness of the opening sequence in the movie: A nod to Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, with added cynicism, which then plunges into a mood not unlike a Hitchcock-ian thriller that’s sustained for nearly three quarters of the movie’s running time.

The movie revolves around Irena, the titular unknown woman, a Ukrainian immigrant in Italy who is looking for work as a maid for one particular family, though the depths and the reasons for her single-minded violent pursuit of this work is slowly revealed to us as the plot progresses. Irena is played by Xenia Rappopport, in a performance that is every bit the equal to Carice Van Houten’s leading turn in Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, another 2006 foreign movie about a woman struggling to reconcile her past with her motivations in the present. That movie was hailed as a return to form for Paul Verhoeven, whereas Sconosciuta is largely seen as a departure for Tornatore; Verhoeven’s track record in Hollywood greatly abets this distinction.

Bits and pieces of Irena’s exposition are given to us in fragmentary flashbacks, and slowly, the present day segments start accumulating their own resonance, such as when the audience notes the fact that the family’s young daughter does not resemble either of her parents. It’s a testament to the film’s pull that the large holes in the film’s plot could be glossed over by the desire to see the film’s destination.

To reveal more than this would rob a good portion of La Sconosciuta’s power, and that power helps to contextualize the film’s final act, which abandons the thriller component of the movie, and moves into the message portion of its agenda. The issues the film addresses are very real blots on current Italian society, and likely in the Western world in general. Though largely ignored on these shores, there are a small handful of Indiewood directors and producers who have tackled these topics (John Sayles, pre-Ocean’s Eleven Stephen Soderbergh, Maria Full of Grace), though none with the entertaining panache of Tornatore’s most recent export.

As the audience filed out of the screening I attended, a woman noted “that was the most f’ed up movie I’d ever seen.” This woman seems to have been shielded from either version of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, and perhaps she should remain thus. For me, La Sconosciuta provided the impetus to look into Tornatore’s other films in order to see if I’ve been missing something by writing him off as a purveyor of safe nostalgic fare.

Reviewed by thebeigeone - 479 words

BOOK: Got by D

2007-04-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

Got (Seven Weapon Arsenal) by D
The Armory (imprint of Akashic Books), New York, 2006

Got is the debut novel from The Armory, the new “urban noir” imprint of independent publisher Akashic Books (Akashic’s tag is “dedicated to the reverse gentrification of the literary world”). The specific genre label seems deliberate, a nod to controversies that swirl around the genre’s other names, “street lit” and “gangsta lit,” questions about the genre’s literary values and social impact.

Which I only mention because it would be disingenuous not to, just as it would be disingenuous to shrug off my white privilege coloring my perspective of a predominantly African-American literary form.

And which I won’t dwell on because it seems patronizing, seems to take a different tone than any teeth-gnashing over the nihilism and questionably literariness of Nick McDonnell or Bret Easton Ellis and its effect on 15- to 25-year-old white kids.

This novel rises above such concerns, or perhaps more accurately blasts past them. It is high-energy, swiftly-paced noir, gritty and violent without being gratuitous, grim but not nihilistic, a narrative pull that understands desperation is another kind of hope.

Got is written in second-person, which works so perfectly for noir that I’m surprised I haven’t come across it before. Second-person is risky, can devolve into gimmick if not handled with a deft touch, and this is the most consistent and effective application I’ve read since Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller.

The immediacy created by the second-person voice drives the story. You’re a college student and part-time bagman for the city’s toughest boss, and, as the story opens, you’re in the middle of a VIP session with your favorite stripper, backpack of your bosses cash at your side. The moment she concludes your special customer treatment, you notice the bag is gone. A foot chase, shotgun blast to the chest, and violent meeting with your boss later, you’re on the street with the rest of the night to retrieve the cash.

The story is a runaway train from there, barreling through forged and broken alliances, old grudges, and wholesale gang warfare. And yet you, the narrator, remain central, never overcome by events. The narrator is a warrior, has fought for a lifetime against inevitability, unwilling to be defined merely by his abusive home life with his parents, the brutal murder of his loving adoptive parents, the realities of getting by on the streets. He is fighting for his conception of himself as a person of worth, a college student, not just another punk. He fights for his right to self-determination.

There is a spirit that pervades this book that violence isn’t inevitable, but the product of choice, even when the choices life lays out are dire. It is a short novel that crackles with energy, yanks the reader out of his seat and into a headlong plunge, but leaves in its wake a deeper resonance, meaning that seethes up out of the muscle memories of the sprint.

reviewed by Jim Jewell, 484 words

CD: Avant Hard by Add N to X

2007-04-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

Add N To X: Avant Hard
Mute Records

The middle part of my formative years, musically speaking, took place in Nuremburg, Germany. I was there from 1980 – 1984. This may explain why I still have an affinity for European bands whose track lists mostly consist of electronic or synth instrumentals.

The only American counterparts to this music (that I can remember listening to at the time), were Devo, and early hip-hop classics (George Clinton’s “Cosmic Dog,” Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock,” and Jonzun Crew’s “Space Cowboy”).

I’d been hooked since I first heard Robert Palmer’s “Johnny & Mary.” After that, it wasn’t long before I was freaking out to the sounds of KMFDM, Bauhaus, Kraftwerk, Tones On Tail, and the Art of Noise (both the Trevor Horn influenced experimentia, and the later more commercial work – the “Peter Gunn” cover, Max Headroom’s “Paranoimia” – that Dudley, Morley and Langan popularized).

I am particularly fond of these last two strains of AoN. You can feel their influence in some odd places like Wizardzz (Horn gone minimalistic, and jammy), or Daft Punk (Homewerk captured the early schizoid nature of AoN rather well). However, a number of their direct descendants are found playing under the unlikely and algebraic moniker Add N to X.

Possessing only their last two albums (Add Insult to Injury, Loud Like Nature), and in search of something new, I picked up Add N To X’s third album Avant Hard (1999) expecting to encounter more of their groovy, synth-based, math-y goofiness (or moog-tinged body music, if you will).

What I found was an album that Trevor Horn wishes he had created.

Starting with “Barry 7’s Contraption” (an odd little concept piece that mixes the mouth harp with a Danny Elfman-esque loop, amidst other oddities), Avant Hard takes you through some of the strangest musical landscapes created this side of Aphex Twin’s less aggressive ventures.

Along the way, you’re taken on video gamey joyrides (“Skills”), menacing cartoon parades (“Steve’s Going To Teach Himself Who’s Boss,” reminiscent of AoN’s “A Time For Fear” and MC 900 Foot Jesus’ Welcome to My Nightmare), sped past a dramatic and arid desert landscape(“Revenge of the Black Regent”), until you end up in the breathy embrace of a confused muse (“Oh Yeah, Oh No”), nestled cozily in a lush Morricone cloud (“Machine is Bored With Love”).

If all of this sounds too esoteric, too “challenging,” then I’m simply not doing a good job of conveying the amount of fun to be had listening to this album. Yes, they use a loop of a horse galloping as the basis for one of the album’s more aggressive songs (“Ann’s Everyday Equestrian”); but, they aren’t shy to use a basic punk drumbeat, nor a more traditional rock rhythm section on a number of these songs, though.

There is a considerable evolution between this and the two albums that succeed it (though not necessarily in approach); Avant Hard makes an already difficult to place, yet greatly enjoyable band, even harder to pin down.

--thebeigeone, 494 words.

PLAY: My Name is Rachel Corrie at Seattle Repertory Theatre

2007-03-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

My Name is Rachel Corrie,
by Rachel Corrie, Katherine Viner & Alan Rickman
starring Marya Sue Kaminski, directed by Braden Abraham
Seattle Repertory Theatre, March 15 to April 22, 2007

Ten years ago, I was visiting my ex-girlfriend in New York and she suggested we go see a movie. It was a less painful proposition than talking to her, so we drove to the local multiplex and picked Jerry Maguire, then in its first days of release. It seemed the least objectionable choice, but my expectations were incredibly low. And I ended up really liking the movie, so much so that I recommended it to friends when I returned to Seattle. Most of whom ended up hating it. It was, by that time, the much-hyped sensation we remember it to be.

Such is the power of expectations.

And surely some of that is in play with my reaction to Seattle Rep’s production of My Name is Rachel Corrie. I was underwhelmed by the play as a piece of literature, and further put off by a fawning review from a local critic whose tastes rarely synch with mine. I entered the theater with exceedingly low expectations.

And it blew me away.

Almost all of the credit goes to Marya Sue Kaminski as Corrie. She manages to avoid the nigh-inevitable lags in energy and/or narrative that plague one-person shows. Kaminski is immediate and vitally present every moment she is on stage, deftly metamorphosing from exuberant Rachel to terrified and serious Rachel. Her dynamic portrayal of a young woman living the courage of her convictions is enough to pierce the shell of hardened cynics, a group among which I count myself.

The production isn’t, however, without it faults. I found it surprising and disappointing, given the level of controversy that follows the play, that the epilogue, Corrie’s death, would be handled so clumsily. After Kaminski leaves stage, several disembodied voices, presumably of Corrie’s companions, describe the events of her death, laying responsibility firmly at the feet of the IDF with claims that the bulldozer driver “clearly” saw Corrie over the dozer’s scoop, and hesitated directly over her body before withdrawing.

Until that point, the production managed to be bigger than the politics that surround it. Kaminski’s performance is so strong that the play clearly reads as the perspective of a single person. While still a political play, it avoids being a political statement. By introducing a plurality of voices in the end, all of whom share the political perspective of Corrie, it moves from one woman’s perspective to discourse on the facts. Until that point, there was no need for equivalency within the play, but that move to multiple voices demands it. A far more powerful conclusion could have been reached with an objective prologue, reporting her death and the disputed facts thereof.

This and a brief backstory digression about a trip to Dairy Queen with mental health clients that served only to diffuse tension that might better have been directed elsewhere are the only missteps in a strong production, anchored by a stellar performance by Kaminski.

It was worth mounting, and is worth seeing, much to my (delighted) surprise.

reviewed by Jim Jewell, 497 words

Television: Robin Hood

2007-03-20T17:34:00.000-07:00

Robin Hood

produced by John Yorke

When I was a fat pre-pubescent growing up in rural Ohio, I wanted to be Robin Hood. I read a book called Locksley: The Story of Robin Hood and decided that living in the woods with a bunch of guys, working against an evil government and fighting for the people would be a cool lifestyle. My dad bought me a bow and I spent a few weeks practicing in the half-assed manner that would garner me so much success in my later years. I lost interest in archery after a short while, but I still have a fondness for Robin.

So I was excited when I saw that BBC America was going to be running a new series about him and I've been DVRing every episode and...meh.

It's nothing I can put my finger on. Their Robin is this pretty boy who's meant to be charming but doesn't actually have enough charisma to carry Errol Flynn's used condoms. They've given Robin this servant who fills the role of comic relief sidekick. Or, rather, he would fill the role of comic relief sidekick if he was at least as funny as, say, yarn. But he's not. In a joke-off, a skein of yarn would win, hands-down.

The writing appears to have been done via Mad Libs. Robin brings ______ (noun) to the villagers. The Sheriff threatens _____ (person). Robin saves them. Week in, week out. Then there's the problems found with every single British action/adventure series I've ever seen, which is that the action is lame and it's not all that adventurous. You'd see better stunts in a Theater Camp stage combat class.

And, like many other things that I've seen on TV this last year, (Studio 60, I'm looking at you) I really wanted to like this. But I just can't. I hate when I want to enjoy something that ends up sucking fifty metric tons of ass.

So then, today, I'm lying pantsless on the couch with the remote in my hand when I saw that HBO was running Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. And I thought, "Huh. I wonder how it stacks up against the BBC show."

Turns out it makes the BBC version look like utter genius. If you can get around Costner's mullet and the fact that an English lord sounds like he was born and raised in Oklahoma, then you still have to deal with Christian Slater's mullet and his shitty attempt at an accent. To this, you then add Alan Rickman as the Sheriff, made up to look like one of the Wilson sisters from Heart circa 1987. I mean, the shot where we follow the arrow from the bow to the tree was great and all that, but you've gotta have more than that to build an entire fucking movie.

So great is my disappointment in both of these craptacular takes on the story, I'm gonna do my own version with sock puppets and twigs. And it'll be more historically accurate.

Reviewed by Joe Wack, 500 words

BOOK: The Open Curtain, by Brain Evenson

2007-03-12T10:55:00.000-07:00

The Open Curtain, by Brain Evenson
Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2006

Whenever I profess religious tolerance yet feel like being funny, I add, “Except the Mormons. They’re just nuts.” Somehow it feels safe in a way it never would making a joke about another religion. Partly it has to do with Mormonism’s geographical concentration; one is less likely to offend a Mormon outside of Utah. But, more so, it is Mormonism’s alien nature, its status as Other, shrouded in secrecy.

Brian Evenson’s The Open Curtain places the reader on the fringes of Mormonism, and the effect is a novel that feels of another culture, referring to a shared narrative and values with which most readers are unfamiliar. Yet, the book is less about Mormonism than it is about Mormons whose lives are transformed by the seductive and destructive powers of violence.

The Open Curtain focuses on Rudd Theurer, a Mormon teen whose father committed suicide years earlier. Rudd is the archetypical Object of High School Scorn, isolated from peers and increasingly distant from his overbearing mother, when two events converge to change Rudd’s life: the discovery of hidden letters of his father’s that imply an unacknowledged son by another woman, and a school assignment that leads him to the 1903 murder conviction of William Hooper Young, son of Mormonism founder Brigham Young.

The injection of these two narratives into Rudd’s life begins a psychological transformation, one that Evenson relates through a three-part structure of shifting perspectives that serves to delay discoveries and preserve the elements of mystery in the story. And it works. This is a novel supported not by evocative language but a taut and driving plot and a psychological exegesis of the notions of secrecy and violence tied up in the disputed Mormon doctrine of “blood atonement.”

Which is not to say the novel succeeds on every level. The female characters are shallowly drawn, including the one, Lyndi, from whose perspective we see the novel’s middle act. Lyndi’s motivations never progress beyond a fear of being alone. The only two other women given significant time are Rudd’s overbearing and self-deceptive mother and Lyndi’s bullying and self-deceptive aunt. Perhaps it serves as a comment on women’s place in Mormonism, but they come off as caricatures.

And, in fact, the only reason I’m willing to conjecture this last possibility is the author’s afterword. Too many graduate criticism classes have left me with a sour taste for overemphasis on authorial intent, but I make an exception here. Evenson explains how writing this book accompanied his separation and voluntary excommunication from the Mormon Church, but he goes on to explain his delicacy in relating Temple practices and his respect for the culture. As a result, the novel has a different resonance than it might have coming from a bitter ex-Mormon.

Coming an an afterword, it allows the fact of Evenson’s ex-Mormonism to frame but not define the book, and where it would have failed as a screed against Mormonism, it succeeds as a thoughtful story told at the fringes of that culture.

reviewed by Jim Jewell, 499 words

PLAY: My Name is Rachel Corrie, by Rachel Corrie, Katherine Viner & Alan Rickman

2007-03-03T15:34:00.001-08:00

My Name is Rachel Corrie,
by Rachel Corrie, Katherine Viner & Alan Rickman
Theatre Communications Group, September 2006

[Disclaimer: I work for the Seattle Repertory Theatre, which is mounting a production of My Name is Rachel Corrie that opens later this month. However, this is only in the interest of full disclosure; my job at the Rep is evening/weekend receptionist, and I have no connection or investment in this production. For further clarification, this review is of the text of the play, not of any individual production.]

Don’t be fooled by any of the PR that producing companies sling about My Name is Rachel Corrie not being a political play. It is an overtly political play, and can’t help being so.

Which isn’t to say their protestations are utterly groundless. On its face, My Name is Rachel Corrie can be called one girl’s story, told in her own words. But the simple fact of the matter is that we would not care about the story of this particular girl were it not for the political context of her death.

Rachel Corrie was a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA when she traveled to Gaza to join international activists in protesting the destruction of Palestinian homes by the Isreali Defense Force (IDF). On March 16, 2003, Corrie was killed by an IDF bulldozer while attempting to block the destruction of a house; the details of that day are disputed.

Depending on your point of view, Corrie is either a folk hero or a young girl who got herself killed by stepping into the middle of someone else’s fight. The very fact of the play’s existence sides with the former. We are only interested in Corrie because of the controversy that is sure to ensue when the play’s political relevance is recognized. Nobody that would choose to produce this play wants to side completely with Corrie in the incredibly complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict, yet it is impossible to separate endorsement of her politics from the choice to mount it.

Because what My Name is Rachel Corrie really is, is a bad play. OK, maybe not bad, but lackluster and uninspiring in and of itself. What power it has is drawn from the energy evident in Corrie’s writing, the energy of a young woman in the process of finding herself. And, at moments, however brief, it delivers in her wit and earnestness. But, far more often, it comes off as precious or contrived, and during those times, the bulk of the play, the only thing that can potentially draw the audience along is the politics, the pull of her inevitable end, her martyrdom.

As a collection of first-person accounts (edited by Viner and Rickman from Corrie's writings), the play can only truly represent one viewpoint, Corrie’s. The only hints of the complexity of the political situation in which she inserts herself come when she relates the words of a Palestinian doctor, who notes that life in Gaza was good before the Intifada, and the occasional hand-wringing of her parents over suicide bombings as a tactic.

In the end, there really isn’t anything wrong with deciding that Corrie is, in fact, a folk hero, a young woman with the bravery to take direct action in support of her ideals. But, to deny that this play’s merits hang on acceptance of her specific choice, and cannot be viewed in a political vacuum, misses any point the play might ultimately make.

reviewed by Jim Jewell, 490 words

Television: The 79th Annual Academy Awards

2007-02-26T13:26:00.000-08:00

79th Annual Academy Awards
produced by Laura Ziskin

Oscar night is always a special, fun night that reminds me of the drive my wife and I made when we moved to Seattle, stopping off in a coastal hotel in Oregon to watch the 1995 ceremony. I look forward to it every year.

Or at least I did until last night.

Last night's Oscar telecast had all the excitement of a lukewarm tuna casserole. To be more specific: a lukewarm tuna casserole in which some of the noodles periodically do a pointless tumbling routine behind a scrim and then meld themselves into utterly unamazing shapes.

Seriously, who thought it would be a good idea to bring in Pilobolus? Were Blue Man Group and the cast of Stomp unavailable? One bit of pretentious shadow puppetry was more than enough. But they kept bringing those assholes back over and over.

They were just one of the many parts of the ceremony that had me wondering just what the hell the Academy was thinking. How the hell many film clip reels do we need? I'm sorry, folks, but splicing together vaguely thematically related scraps of celluloid does not impress me. If you've never seen a foreign film, a two-second clip of La Strada isn't going to send you running to update your Netflix queue. You could have the greatest clip reel ever assembled by man or God and you still don't need more than one.

Speaking of drags, who the hell took a liposuction hose and sucked the funny out of Will Ferrell and Jack Black? That number they sang was painful. I shredded my Oscar ballot and stuffed the scraps into my ears to block out the sound.

Nor was I hankerin' to hear any of the zombified patter between presenters. Hey, folks! There's a reason Al Gore doesn't do stand-up. Abigail Bresden and Jaden Christopher Pinkett Tinactin Colostomy Smith may be gifted child actors, but they do hilarious banter about as well as I fart "O' Canada".

By the time they got around to the major categories, I was snoring on the couch. Do we really need an Oscar ceremony that takes longer to watch than the Ring Cycle?

Not that there weren't some good bits. Alan Arkin's acceptance speech was touching. It was very nice to finally see Scorcese get the recognition that so very many less talented directors have received before him. (Opie, I'm looking at you.) There was something nice about the fact that two African-American Oscar winners didn't seem like anything unusual.

Ellen DeGeneres did an okay job overall. Her opening monologue was moderately funny. I don't understand why they brought in a gospel choir, but I don't really hold that against them. I thought we could have done without her little trips into the audience, which, again, only really served to add time onto a show which dragged like whatever folksy metaphor you want to use that involves dragging. I should not need a bucket of methamphetamines to keep me awake through the broadcast, dammit.

Reviewed by Joe Wack, 500 words

Film: Idiocracy dir. Mike Judge

2007-01-28T19:30:00.000-08:00

Idiocracy
directed by Mike Judge

I was frustrated as hell last year when Mike Judge's Idiocracy was dumped into only a handful of theaters and never played the Greater New York area. I was pissed. I love King of the Hill. I was one of the twelve people who went gaga over Office Space before it was released on video. I'd been waiting for this movie eagerly ever since I'd seen it listed in Entertainment Weekly's Summer Movie Preview. I scanned the horizons, ever watchful that it would soon splash across screens on the isle of Manhattan. Nothing. The jeezly flick never played here. In New York!

So, when I saw that it was coming out on DVD, I moved it immediately to the top of my Netflix queue. This weekend, at last, I saw this movie to which I'd been looking forward for ever so long.

Meh.

The premise of this movie, I think, is ripe with comic potential. The over-breeding of dullards in today's society leads to a future world inhabited by utter morons? Awesome! What a great comment on the sad intellectual state of the world we live in. The sequence in which the evolution of this catastrophe is laid out is hilarious. But, once we get to this future world, there's only so many different ways it can be hammered home that these people are stupid.

My wife didn't feel that there was really anything you could do with this premise to give it a longer shelf-life than, say, ten minutes. I think Mike Judge could have done a whole lot more with this, if he hadn't been saddled with a number of other problems.

First off, he attempts to stick fairly closely with the post-apocalyptic movie genre story beats. Massive threat to civilization; our hero manages--somehow, in this crazy, mixed-up world--to restore some semblance of order. Throw in futuristic product placement here and there, as well as a gladiatorial scene; blah blah blah. It's not something that works if played straight with a goofy type of apocalypse grafted on.

Second, Luke Wilson is just kind of boring. I like him. You put him in the right movie, with a strong cast supporting him, and he can pull off a leading man with some credibility. But he's just not strong enough to anchor something like this.

Third: Maya Rudolph. Ugh. I've never understood why she lasted more than a season on SNL and I have no idea why anyone would hire her for a movie. NOT A GOOD ACTRESS.

Do I think this movie is a brilliant, underappreciated gem? No. Hell no. On the other hand, I still don't understand why it didn't get a wider release. There's a whole bunch of crap put out on a regular basis that is five times stupider than this and doesn't even try to make a comment on our society. Epic Movie was the number one film in the country this weekend. I rest my case.

Reviewed by Joe Wack, 494 words

BOOK: The Exquisite by Laird Hunt

2007-01-27T22:58:00.000-08:00

The Exquisite by Laird Hunt
Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2006

Using an unreliable narrator is tricky – dangerous and enticing for the novelist. It reeks of literariness, and can become a crutch used to save a shaky story, mask a writer’s lack of control over the narrator, all of which makes Laird Hunt’s masterful use of such a narrator in The Exquisite, Hunt’s third novel, all the more impressive.

One of the effects of the unreliable voice is distance, freeing the reader from any necessity of identifying with or liking the narrator, and that serves Hunt well. The story’s narrator and protagonist is Henry, a mentally unstable, larcenous drunk drawn into a world of odd characters, ersatz murders and twisted identities. Henry is the type of person interesting at a distance, repellant up close.

And yet, even this was insufficient risk for Hunt. The Exquisite is pointedly post-9/11 fiction, set mainly in Manhattan in the aftermath of “the unpleasantness downtown.” The fall of the towers was the catalyst for Henry’s descent into homelessness and fractured self. But, because Hunt handles 9/11 so tactfully, with bits of imagery and brief asides, focusing not on the event itself but with its aftermath, the novel rises above the clambering mass of mediocre art that horrific day has inspired.

Henry, his frail grasp on reality shattered by the terrorist attacks, wanders the city until he is discovered and befriended by Aris Kindt, an enigmatic old man with a fetish for herring and an interesting proposition – help him carry out fake murders of paying customers, themselves so rattled by the attacks as to need to face their own deaths in more detail and proximity. Told concurrently is Henry’s stay in a hospital, of which Mr. Kindt is also, or so it seems, a patient.

Hunt uses the intertwined narratives to exert Henry’s unreliability to its maximum benefit. In the early going, characters sharing names and attributes (though whether they are in fact the same people remains open) shimmer in and out. Job’s identity in particular is fluid, appearing as bartender and orderly and occasionally others, becoming so indistinct as to appear to be more a role in Henry’s head to be filled than a real person. And then there is Tulip.

Tulip’s name is drawn from the novel’s other key figure: a Rembrandt painting called “The Anatomy Lesson” (full title “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp”), which details a seventeenth-century etching of the autopsy of the corpse of a man named, pointedly, Aris Kindt. The painting sits at the center of the question of Mr. Kindt’s identity, as well as serving for the inspiration of Henry’s hospital’s institutionally cold Dr. Tulip, and by extension the winsome Tulip that binds Henry to Kindt.

Above all, however, this novel is engaging, even riveting. Hunt’s language is both tight and evocative, and the themes of death and identity are well-served by Henry’s rambling, troubled, all-but-self-loathing voice. Hunt weaves dark comedy and intricate thematic exploration into a dynamic read that rises above the categories it might otherwise fall into.

reviewed by Jim Jewell, 500 words

Top Five Albums of 2006

2006-12-15T18:43:00.000-08:00

1) TV On The Radio
Return to Cookie Mountain
4AD

TVotR achieves the nearly impossible: Deliver an impeccable sophomore album, one that addresses the promises of their debut and supercedes them on a number of levels. Every single element on this album, from Sitek’s production, Adebimpe’s lyrics, to his and Malone’s delivery of same is exemplary. Their collective work has thrown down the gauntlet that previous masters (Wilco, Radiohead, Flaming Lips, etc.) must pay heed to in their future works. Not enough superlatives could be heaped on this album; as challenging and innovative as Desperate Youth, yet more encompassing and leaves one thankful for the return of passion to music.

2) Honeycut
The Day I Turned to Glass
Quannum Projects

This CD from San Francisco’s Honeycut lands neatly beside Massive Attack’s Blue Lines, Air's Moon Safari and Portishead’s Dummy in terms of groove-filled and sensuous debut albums. Like Sitek, producer RV interweaves his various influences with his own predilections, and achieves a singular aural effect. Admirably, no two songs sound alike on the album, and yet nothing is jarring; you end up letting it wash over you. "Butter Room," a luscious number along the lines of Zero 7, is followed by a killer two note sax intro which yields into ABC-esque synthpop ("Dysfunctional"), which is left behind for a song based on a bass riff Tricky would be proud of ("Dark Days, White Lines"). Worth seeking out.

3) The Dresden Dolls
Yes, Virginia...
Roadrunner Records

Another impressive sophomore effort. Much has been said about this duo’s cabaret-punk sound, and not much at all of their ingenious usage of cabaret as a storytelling device. The story told within Yes, Virginia’s nimble 55 minutes is every bit as compassionate, bloody, and empowering as Mitchell and Trask’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch. "Sing," coming, as it does, at the end of one hell of an emotional story, is quite possibly the most moving song of the year.

4) Pigeon John
...And the Summertime Pool Party
Quannum Projects

It would be surprising if, by the time summer in 2007 ends, you were not familiar with at least one song on this album. Pigeon John bravely chooses the road less traveled these days, and establishes himself as the inheritor to the goofy wise-ass gadfly persona largely left alone since the days of the Native Tongues family. The man name checks everything and everyone from Wu Tang to Phil Collins, in the process of delivering some of the sunniest hip hop of the last few years. The production, which skews more Jazzy Jeff than Prince Paul, remains bouncy throughout, and is confident enough to successfully reference REM on "As We Know It."

5) Gnarls Barkley
St. Elsewhere
Downtown Records

Though currently experiencing the inevitable backlash after a monumentally successful single, the fact remains that Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse’s first collaboration is an invigorating mash up of hip hop, gospel and 60s soul. Yes, "Crazy" has been overplayed, and the world did not exactly need a Violent Femmes cover (as fun as it is), but that doesn’t mean the rest of the album suffers as a result. It’s possible that lightning will not strike twice with these guys, however St. Elsewhere stands as a successful experiment not seen since Gorillaz' first album.

--the beige one, 500 words.

BOOK: Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

2006-11-20T10:15:00.000-08:00

Special Topics in Calamity Physics
by Marisha Pessl
Viking Press, New York, 2006

It is impossible to find a review of Marisha Pessl’s first novel “Special Topics in Calamity Physics” that does not mention her attractiveness (and if you were looking for one here, you still haven’t found it). In fact, her looks have been at issue since news broke that another “hot” young author was awarded a six-figure advance for a debut.

While patently unfair to Pessl, I think the attention to her looks is reasonable for two reasons. I wouldn’t have read it but for the publicity photo, an intense come-hither stare enticing one to believe she is slowly unbuttoning her blouse just outside the photo’s frame. But more importantly, this is not only the novel by a beautiful girl, it is the novel as a beautiful girl. We are willing to feign interest in dull and damaged friends, overlook affectation and overanalyze leaps of faith only because we are smitten.

The novel is a mystery slowly unraveled by the narrator, Blue van Meer, an intellectually gifted teenage girl who has spent her life crisscrossing the country with her widowed father, a brilliant and charming professor of political science. Framed as an account of Blue’s life told from the vantage point of her first year at Harvard, it looks back most specifically at her senior year of high school, for which her father briefly halted their parapitetic existence to allow Blue to attend a private school in Stockton, NC. The significance of the story, we find in the opening chapter, will be to unravel the events around the death of one of Blue’s teachers, Hannah Schneider.

As a perpetual new-kid-in-school and the daughter of an aggressively intellectual man, Blue experiences much of life through a filter of books, which Pessl chooses to indicate through Blue’s annotation of her own life story with literary references, some real and others contrived, a quirk that quickly dissolves to affectation. Were all the references real, I’d applaud the work involved, or were the fake references funnier, the wit, but too often they fall unsatisfyingly in-between.

As a whole, the novel reflects our cultural tendency to listen to whatever the pretty girl says. At 514 pages, the book is seriously in need of an iron-fisted editor (a la Gordon Lish). Pessl’s metaphors are often overwrought (“all guests in the hotel… were emptied out into Pace Verdome like cream of potato soup from a can”), and the pace of the novel rambling. The mystery requires so much set-up, and is so quickly dispatched, that its convolutions are unsatisfying, and made no less so by the excrutiatingly contrived final chapter’s attempts to highlight the potential for doubt the novel leaves open.

And yet, as the final chapter clumsily attempts to illustrate, there is indeed substance here, questions of identity and the power of narrative at the forefront, and the writing is at times as alluring as the writer. It is chick-lit meets The Crying of Lot 49, peddled, unfortunately, by editors that realize sex sells better than Pynchon.

reviewed by Jim Jewell, 500 words

CD: The Underground Spiritual Game by Fela Kuti

2006-10-26T13:24:00.000-07:00

Fela Kuti: The Underground Spiritual Game
Released by: Quannum Projects
Re-mixed by: Chief XCel

Fela Kuti has always been an unwieldy, yet entrancing artist. A combination of Malcom X and James Brown with a little bit of Ellington thrown in, Kuti has been recognized as the creator of what is now known as the Afrobeat sub-genre in World Music (a label that neatly side-steps the protest aspect of his music). Rhythmic, pulsing, simultaneously laid back and energetic, a typical song will feature an instrumental section, Kuti’s explication of whatever the song is about (African women dropping their culture in order to adopt European airs in the song “Lady,” for example), followed by a call and response section, and ending with another instrumental section. These affairs can last anywhere from 8 minutes to a full half-hour.

It is this last that makes Kuti such a challenge to introduce to the un-initiated. Having been raised on your typical three to four minute pop song, anything lasting longer than six minutes tends to lose your average Western music listener.

Enter Blackalicious’ resident DJ/Producer, Chief Xcel.

What Xcel brings to the table, beyond an unprecedented talent for beats, is an obvious admiration for Kuti’s work, and a desire to ensure the further propagation of Kuti’s legacy. And so, he does as much as possible to keep any discernible fingerprints off of Underground, while at the same time putting the spotlight on the individual elements that make Kuti noteworthy, listenable, and, ultimately, vital.

Starting with pre-firebrand era “Ololufe Mi,” a song intended to seduce, Xcel leads the listener on an abbreviated journey through the many facets of Kuti’s music. “Trouble Sleep Yanga Wake Am,” the song immediately following, introduces the rabble-rousing characteristic Kuti later became notorious for.

When cat sleep
Rat go bite him tail
Wait and fight
-- from, “Trouble Sleep…”

Using pidgin English as the language for his lyrics (the better to appeal to a wider African audience), Kuti then goes on to describe several different examples of African people being oppressed, always finishing with an admonition that the insurgents’ time will eventually come. The juxtaposition between song and lyric creates a pleasant and smirking tension that nicely accentuates the head-bobbing that is surely taking place.

This is then followed up by a perfect example of Xcel’s wisdom. “Look and Laugh” (a song castigating a reluctant audience who talk big, but don’t take action) is taken from a daunting 30m47s, to a neophyte friendly 4m18s.

Underground continues like this through the phases of Kuti’s career, Xcel keeping the majority of the songs’ length under six minutes. And then, after building up our stamina, he delivers the piece de resistance: “Africa Center of the World,” Kuti’s 17minute celebration for his people to take pride in where they come from, and encouragement to the rest of the globe to “set [one’s] mind to Africa.”

This is music to live by, and this album is a must for Kuti devotees and neophytes alike. Kudos to Xcel for work well done, ultimate props to Kuti, Africa’s answer to Bob Dylan.

--thebeigeone, 499 words.

The Music Industry

2006-10-06T18:12:00.000-07:00

In early September I went to see Devo with a group of friends, and acquaintances. While having dinner beforehand, I was talking with a friend about a compilation project she was undertaking and mentioned that I may have a couple of songs that would fit the profile. She asked if she could borrow the CDs in question, in order to burn the songs onto her computer and I said sure; which was when a person in our party shot us a look that could’ve killed us with its intensity.

It turned out that the person formerly worked as an A&R rep for a now-defunct major label. He claimed that the label went under due to music piracy. I found it difficult to muster much in the way of sympathy, as cool as the guy was.

Frankly, the music industry has no entity but itself to blame for its current woes.

Looked at in the abstract, it’s easy to argue that their product really hasn’t changed all that much since its inception, and that the industry has become complacent since the universal acceptance of the CD format.

The nature of its complacency is in the assumption that if they kept a lid on any technological advancement, people would still buy their product, at whatever prices they chose, ad infinitum.

The real folly in this line of thinking comes shining through when you take a good look at DVDs…It is not uncommon to walk into a grocery store these days, and be able to purchase a recent movie, of usually decent caliber, in the letterbox format, and with a few extras thrown in for the measly amount of $10. Meanwhile, new CDs are still in the $15 - $18 range. When you realize that production costs on CDs aren’t really a match for the average movie budget, one has to wonder why the prices are kept at such a high amount.

The industry would have us believe that this is due to piracy, as if the movie industry does not have this to contend with either.

Admittedly, due to site restrictions, this is a rather shallow treatment of the very real problem that exists for both industries. However, it seems that if the music industry would like to survive the coming times (there’s no real solution to piracy, in this day and age), they should re-think its fatal dependence on a pricing scheme that alienates the average fan of music.

Buying new music has always been a gamble, and it is not an exaggeration to postulate that a CD containing an average of 8 – 12 songs, maybe a third of those songs will have a lasting impact on the listener. Outside of material fetishists like myself, I can’t think of many who are willing to take that bet. Even for an artist they admire. Better to copy from someone who is willing to spend that money.

--the beige one, 484 words.

CD: Return to Cookie Mountain by TV on the Radio

2006-08-08T11:49:00.000-07:00

TV on the Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain

One of the signs of selling out—a cardinal sin in the postpunk world—to which critics point is overproduction, a condition wherein songs sit in the studio, subjected to so many treatments and revisions, that the artists’ original intent is lost, and the music can’t be reproduced live.

But suggesting that recorded music should behave like live music is like saying that film should limit itself to the conventions of theatre. There are some albums that have been overbaked in the studio, and some bands for whom the studio masked a deficiency of musicianship; but there are also seminal producers, like Martin Hannett and Brian Eno, who have managed to define the sounds of important bands like Joy Division and Talking Heads without marring the essential musical character of the bands themselves. In recent years, electronic acts have found ways of taking the toys and tools of the studio itself, in whole, part, or proxy, and “jam” onstage. Freed from the strictures of exact reproduction, musicians can test the elasticity of musical ideas. The studio becomes an instrument, not simply the gloss used to make up for a musician’s inability to play one.

And so we have TV on the Radio, and their splendid new CD, Return to Cookie Mountain. Any attempt to describe their sound will be misleading and reductive; so many influences abound that trying to trace them will make the band sound weirder than it is. Their music is suffused with elements as arch a musique concrete, as assaultive as shoegazer (the fourth track, “Playhouses”, hums and churns like classic My Bloody Valentine). They’re often compared to Peter Gabriel, particularly in his early capacity as leader of Genesis (when they were cool). It’s strangely appropriate that David Bowie lends backing vocals to “Province”, a funky, paranoid glam exercise. “Let the Devil In” begins with an insinuating melody whispering over pounding drums that reek of rough, messy sex, until the vocals transform into a battering ram of overdubbed gospel harmonies unleashed with brute, industrial force.

Return to Cookie Mountain is, indeed, MOUNTAINOUS, as lush and intricate a feat of production as I’ve heard. Founding member and multi-instrumentalist Dave Sitek handles production duties, so songwriting and production choices emerge from a common point of origin; it’s hard to imagine these deceptively simple compositions arising from any other medium. Key vocalist Tunde Adebimpe shares the spotlight with numerous other vocalists, but his Peter-Gabriel-meets-Reggie-Watts growl, a chilling mix of elemental and transcendental, still carries the melody.

TV on the Radio toy with prog, pop, funk, hip-hop, and postpunk. But what they’re really about is the sheer pleasure, the unbound delirium of sound. Any thoughtful music lover will find treasures on this disc. Return to Cookie Mountain could be a tough gamble; its pop ambitions may turn off fans of experimental music, and they may still be too smart, too difficult, for the mainstream. Here’s hoping the gamble pays off.

--thelyamhound - 498 words

BOOK: The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo by Al Capp

2006-07-30T14:38:00.000-07:00

The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo
by Al Capp, foreword by Harlan Ellison
The Overlook Press, Woodstock & New York, 2002

My familiarity with the shmoo (plural “shmoon) was tangential at best. I vaguely recalled the shmoo as part of two different Flintstone “comedy hour” re-hashes from the late 1970’s. Only slightly less-removed was a passing mention from the television series MASH. In one later episode, Colonel Potter is painting a portrait of a piece of shmoo merchandising and explains to Radar O’Reilly the shmoo craze that is in full swing back in the states.

My first reaction, decades later, upon picking up The Short Life and Happy Time of The Shmoo, a collection of the shmoo story arcs from the Li’l Abner comics of the 40’s and 50’s, was to marvel that so little has been heard of the shmoo since.

For those unfamiliar, shmoon are cute, gourd-shaped blobs that are, depending on one’s outlook, the ultimate boon to or bane of mankind. Shmoon make loving pets, and are happiest serving people; if you are cold, they will cuddle, if you are bored they will stage races and shows for your entertainment. But, their real benefit is they are so damned delicious. They produce the richest milk, cheese and butter imaginable, dozens of eggs in a heartbeat, and require no sustenance but air. Better still, they reproduce like mad, die of sheer happiness when someone looks at them hungrily, and when fried taste like chicken, when roasted taste like pork, when broiled like steak. Their skin makes durable building materials, their whiskers excellent toothpicks, their eyes perfect buttons. A poor family could live a life of luxury for the gift of six shmoon.

And that’s the problem. Nobody has to work for the measly wages industry provides or buy the inflated, dismal products industry sells, and so industry decides the shmoo must die for the good of us all.

The shmoo were interpreted as a symbol of the expendability of industry by some and the expendability of workers by other, and it is this potentially contradictory nature of the shmoo that makes it such a compelling character. Even to the issue of benefit, they are open to interpretation; the residents of Dogpatch are happier after the shmoon arrive, but also fat and lazy. And it seems a question long pondered – is it in the best interest of human beings to have all they desire acquired so easily?

Harlan Ellison’s quixotic and rambling foreword to the collection both confuses and delights, taking wild digressions (as Li’l Abner was wont to) before settling in to assert that it is difficult for anyone that didn’t live through it to understand the magnitude of the shmoo craze.

I have no reason to doubt it, and instead wonder why that mania played itself out, and how one might go about re-igniting critical academic study of the shmoo. Analysis is surely complicated by Capp’s abandonment of political satire in the face of McCarthyism and subsequent shilling for conservative ideology and politicians, but to my mind that only makes this bizarre little character all the more compelling.

reviewed by Jim Jewell, 500 words

Film: World Trade Center dir. by Oliver Stone

2006-07-22T20:48:00.000-07:00

World Trade Center
directed by Oliver Stone

A few disclaimers. I hate Oliver Stone due to my intense annoyance at being whacked with Stone’s thematic Gallagher-sized mallet. I also am criminally uninformed about movie news, so when a friend called and asked if I wanted to see a free sneak preview of World Trade Center with him, I agreed while knowing nothing of the film. Not even the director until a few hours before the screening.

And, for the first time, Stone’s name actually gave me hope. Aren’t movies with an edge of social-political commentary what Stone should be good at? Is not his own strength a willingness to court controversy?

The hope was woefully misplaced.

Stone doesn’t rely on his usual cinematic hyperbole with WTC, a story of two Port Authority cops among the twenty survivors pulled from the wreckage. The collapse of the towers is surprisingly understated, as Stone seems to recognize that the power of the events is already established.

But this inspired another bout of empty hope, as the story focuses, from the moment the first tower falls, on the two trapped policemen and their families. The heartstrings plucked are easy notes (who won’t be moved by a four-year-old perhaps soon to lose a father) and the light moments tedious affectations (Nicholas Cage’s trapped sergeant frets over his unfinished kitchen).

Where are the conspiracy theories? The alternate explorations of the day’s events and their ramifications? Hell, where is the jingoistic support for the narratives that day has spawned or allowed to prosper? Even that would have been more substance than what is here.

Instead, Stone has crafted what I imagine he sees as an affirming story about the power of the human spirit, designed to sell to those with an uncomplicated view of 9-11 and its aftermath and a need to consume simple affirmations of the mythological (and admittedly well-deserved) status of first-responders: when others rushed out, they rushed in. It is a one-note symphony, struck repeatedly for two hours .

The only interesting character in the movie is retired Marine Staff Sergeant Karnes, wonderfully creepily played by Michael Shannon. Watching the events unfold on TV, he suits up in uniform, travels to Ground Zero, and makes his way into the wreckage, eventually discovering the trapped officers. He never drops his Marine persona once he re-adopts it, and never alludes to anyone that he has retired, setting him up as an odd and unlikely hero. And then it comes. At the close of the rescue, he looks up at the wreckage and says that they will need good men to avenge this. Moments later, the epilogue informs us that he re-enlisted and served two tours in Iraq, subtly reinforcing the specious 9-11/Iraq connection hawked by the administration.

But, an interesting moment doesn’t make an interesting movie. WTC will play well in those communities already gobbling up such narrative, but has little to offer those with a complex worldview. It is Stone-lite at best, which says very little coming from me.

Reviewed by Jim Jewell, 499 words

CD: St. Elsewhere by Gnarls Barkley

2006-07-13T17:23:00.000-07:00

Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere
Downtown Records
Produced by Danger Mouse

Danger Mouse is one prolific motherfucker; in the last year alone he has created the impression that he’s doing nothing but sitting in front of his laptop and turntables simply for the purpose of creating beats. In that time, he produced the majority of Gorillaz’ second album Demon Days (working with Blur’s Damon Albarn); released a hip hop collaboration with MF Doom called, obviously enough, Danger Doom; and now Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere, another hip hop producer/rap artist effort, where he teams up with Goodie Mob’s Cee-Lo.

Taken in aggregate, the trio of albums make for an interesting aural beachhead for the man responsible for putting the mash-up genre on the map (the oft-heralded Grey Album, a mix up of the Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album; look for it on Ebay). Taken individually, each album represents the baby steps taken by an emergent artist towards establishing his personality.

There’s no arguing that DM has chops. Like Demon Days, St. Elsewhere goes a long way towards proving that DM’s pop sensibilities are sharp and on-point. His work with Cee-Lo feels a lot more unrestrained than that evidenced by Danger Doom (which, for an Adult Swim tie-in, the album certainly doesn’t feel as freewheeling or as fun as it should).

The album does not completely stand up on its own, however. For example, “Go Go Gadget Gospel” may have a smirk-inducing title, but the song itself feels like it belongs in Cee-Lo’s library of hip-hop experimentia (best exemplified by Goodie Mob’s team up with fellow Atlanteans Outkast in Dungeon Family’s Even in Darkness). There's even an unnecessary cover (Violent Femmes' "Gone Daddy Gone"). Thankfully, the impulse to skip a song doesn’t happen often.

Not enough has been said about Cee-Lo’s work and influence on this album. His lyrics on this album, both haunting and lyrical in the best sense, achieve a schizophrenic and forlorn effect with a minimum of effort:

I'm a microchip off the old block
You know not but I was a robot
…
Something that you won't see again
What the hell might as well be a friend
I can transform, I'm a transformer
No telling who I will have to be again
(from “Transformer”)

Ever since breaking off from Goodie Mob, Cee-Lo has been hard at work at re-establishing what his sound is about, and SE makes me excited for his future output. It has been a long time since 60s Soul had a run in the popular landscape, and, in my opinion, it’s about time it did so again.

St. Elsewhere works best when the collaboration between DM’s doodling and Cee-Lo’s neo-classic-soul tendencies mesh. As much as SE has grown on me, however, it still feels incomplete. In the pantheon of hip hop producer/artist collaborations, it can’t compare to previous masterworks (Dan the Automator/Kool Keith’s A Much Better Tomorrow and Madlib/MF Doom’s Madvillainy are personal benchmarks). On the other hand, the album is still a good time to be had, and that ain’t bad.

Reviewed by Jose' Amador, 499 words.

Film: The Proposition

2006-07-03T14:46:00.000-07:00

The Proposition
Written by Nick Cave
Directed by John Hillcoat

Nick Cave’s surly, mystical, white-trash magic realism was so easily applied to the landscape of my own observation that the notion of his having a landscape of his own to inspire his fevered visions never crossed my mind. His stories of retribution, mad love, gruesome death and implacable deities had the clear ring of the universal. Of course, the most universal art often emerges from artists telling their own stories, the stories of their own backyards, their own tribes. With Cave’s dazzling screenwriting debut, the grim, lyrical Aussie Western The Proposition, the whole spectrum of Cave’s work will now call to mind the baking Australian desert, the portentous hum of flies on a dead carcass (or its living observers), the piercing shame of colonialism, and the bottled discontent of exploited aboriginals.

Directed with stark delirium by John Hillcoat, The Proposition is built on the simplest of conceits. A lawman, Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) makes captured outlaw Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) an offer he can’t refuse, sending him on a simple-but-gruesome errand for a simple-but-urgent reward: if he kills his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston), Stanley won’t hang Charlie's younger brother Mike (Richard Wilson).

The plot is elemental, but the intricacies of the internal relationships lend the film a stealthy complexity. Rather than the hero, or even the antihero of the story, Charlie is the cipher; Pearce gives him gravitas, but he’s a mythical everyman in a story that indulges in mythological flourish even as it demythologizes its own particular history. Huston and Winstone do the heavy lifting, bringing poignancy and potency to their respective studies of damaged men. Emily Watson, as Stanley’s jittery wife, carries a tremendous thematic burden with aplomb; her comical displacement as a bourgeois wife in the unforgiving wilderness is as nuanced a portrayal as I’ve ever seen of the plight of the colonial wife, separated from her element and increasingly estranged from a husband who fights with every fiber to maintain justice, however convoluted his ideas definition thereof has become. And I won’t even try to explain John Hurt’s giddy cameo: it must be seen to be believed.

The Proposition isn’t for the faint of stomach. Even my desensitized constitution reeled a little when a man wrings blood out of a whip in the midst of a brutal—and revealing—flogging. As with many revisionist Westerns, the impunity with which men kill supersedes moral preoccupation; death relegates all victims to yet more rotting matter in a punishing wilderness. But for all of that, the movie still whispers, croaks and chants its way into the viewer’s consciousness, like Cave’s own muffled voice on the insinuating score, by Cave with longtime collaborator Warren Ellis (Bad Seeds, The Dirty Three). Cave may play the nihilist, but the key to his script, as to his music, is the tiny sliver of hope for redemption that still cries out from its dark, bloody heart.

Reviewed by thelyamhound, 494 words

BOOK: Pedro and Me by Judd Winick

2006-06-11T21:30:00.001-07:00

Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss and What I Learned
by Judd Winick
Henry Holt and Company, 2000

I never imagined that I would ever review a non-critical work with MTV anywhere on the cover, much less something six years old and both widely reviewed and officially recognized. But, after a vague and passing reference in some essay, I put the graphic novel of Pedro and Me by Judd Winick on my library reserve list. After it arrived, I was surprised twice: first, to find “of MTV’s The Real World” and a still from the show on the cover, then again when I finally read it.

Pedro and Me is the story of the friendship between Winick, a cartoonist, and Pedro Zamora, an HIV-positive AIDS educator, during filming of The Real World: San Francisco. I haven’t been any kind of regular MTV since my teen crush Martha Quinn left, and have passing impressions at best about the show. None of the impressions are particularly positive.

Yet this novel moved me, nearly to tears (and would have succeeded were I reading it alone in a room, I’m sure). People I cared absolutely nothing about when they were on television drew me entirely into their world when rendered in pen and ink, and in the end I felt enriched for the experience.

I’m a cynical bastard, so these are epic feats.

Pedro and Me succeeds because it tells a story of friendship and loss without any affectation; never does it seem to be trying to do or be anything more than it is. There isn’t an ounce of pretention. Winick’s simple drawing style is matched with a keen sense of visual narrative; sequences and images carry incredible weight without ever being caught trying. In every way (with the exception of one character that looked too much like Bill Cosby for comfort), the art enriches the story being told, never grandstanding the simple honesty of Winick’s story.

Neither does Winick ever upstage the real focus of the work, which is his love and respect for Zamora, whose friendship and eventual loss to complications from AIDS changed the course of Winick’s life. As the narrative voice, it would have been easy, yet Winick brings the same simplicity of style to his prose as he displays in his artwork.

The most surprising effect of this novel for me was the way it humanizes the people of reality television. I find it easy to dismiss participants in reality programming based solely on my extreme distaste for the genre, and yet here is Minick making me care about him, the wife he met on the show, and his friend Pedro.

I had never cared about anyone that participated in a reality show, much less one on MTV, and that Pedro and Me had the power to do so is enough for me to recommend the experience to anyone, maybe especially if you hate reality MTV as much I do.

Reviewed by Jim Jewell, 474 words

CD: Hidden City of Taurmond by Wizardzz

2006-05-31T11:55:00.000-07:00

Wizardzz: Hidden City of Taurmond
Load Records
Mastered by Jeff Lipton

The cover art gives it all away: a city of cones and spires, drawn as in a child’s hand, in blacks, grays and purples that lend, perhaps unintentionally, a dystopian air to the childlike whimsy. It’s like the setting of a Russian fairy tale filtered through Lawrence Paull’s production design for Blade Runner. From incongruities like these, Hidden City of Taurmond weaves its spell, integrating whimsy, majesty, fascistic precision and a free-flow of happy accident.

Wizardzz is a two piece ensemble from Rhode Island featuring Brian Gibson on drums and Rich Porter on keyboards. Taking inspiration from ‘60s krautrock, ‘70s prog-rock, free jazz and post-rock’s headiest provocateurs, these boys whip up a maelstrom that would be the ideal soundtrack for a film too delirious, too dense, too violent, heady and transcendent to have yet been made. Rich Porter has clearly heard some Vangelis in his day, and some press has Porter citing John Carpenter’s score for Escape from New York as an influence. I’d also suggest the keyboard intro to The Who’s “Teenage Wasteland” and the theme to Disney’s Parade of Lights as useful touchstones for the uninitiated. But as much as the music possesses the deliciously cheesy grandeur of such “epic” influences, it is also, thanks to Gibson’s fervent syncopations and propulsive urgency, as nimble as a mountain goat: Gibson’s percussion reels and hops about, dancing on the peaks and towers laid out in Porter’s soundscapes.

In recent years, post-rock acts like Tortoise, Mogwai, and Turing Machine have been toying with a new template for the evolution of rock as an instrumental form, finding ways for its typical lineups, stripped to bare minimum or enhanced with unexpected instruments, to carry “compositions” pithier than those of their classical and jazz forbears, but more complex than mere “songs”. Where Wizardzz departs from such brethren is in their triumphalism: taking cues from heavy metal acts like Isis, Sunn O))) and Pelican (no pop form has ever so thoroughly explored the pleasures of triumphalism as has metal), Gibson and Porter balance whimsy, aggression and sheer brawn with athleticism and aplomb.

Where tracks like “jelliper-lilly field” and “diamond mirror” recall what the poppies scene in The Wizard of Oz might have sounded like had the film been made in the ‘70s, tracks like “whispers from wallface” and “sea battle at orkusk” match such sonic musings to epileptic fits of percussive clatter. Paranoia and apprehension creep through such post-industrial-by-way-of-proto-industrial outbursts like “chasing our shadows” and “ladydragons” (the latter of which erupts from this apprehension to effectively simulate the terror of attack). We’re left with a long, live track called “mimi vivian sunrise”, which calls to mind Ministry-covering-Yes-covering-Neu, which reduces all elements to unadulterated propulsion. Still, the album is ultimately a good trip, one where the good guys win, where dragons can be vanquished or harnessed, and where the wizards—or Wizardzz—are on your side.

thelyamhound – 499 words

BOOK: Foul Ball by Jim Bouton

2006-05-31T10:06:00.000-07:00

Foul Ball, my life and hard times trying to save an old ballpark
by Jim Bouton
Bulldog Publishing, Massachusettes, 2003

Recently I was having dinner with my neighbors from down the hall. Gradually, the conversation swung over to my obsession to visiting ballparks. I talked of how I would slide into whatever town just in time to catch the game, survey the bars and restaurants around the facility, party and talk with the locals, enjoy the experience of their stadium, wait until the parking lot cleared, and then leave. A "gonzo" surgical strike, if you will.

They asked if I would write of the history of these stadiums. "God, no!" I scoffed. "Most of these new cathedrals were built with taxpayer money and usually against the people's will. It's the big money that's usually behind the call for new stadiums. It's really quite ugly when you think about it. I love the ambiance and the people, but if you think how this neo shrine came about, it makes you sick." One of the neighbors sighed with whimsy, "I voted no for Safeco Field and the no's won. They still built it." Another chimed in, "With our money."

I thought about that brief interlude while I was reading Jim Bouton's Foul Ball, my life and hard times trying to save an old ballpark. Bouton is of course the former major league pitcher who wrote the famous (or infamous) book, Ball Four, his diary of the 1969 baseball season which took readers into the unexposed (until then) side of baseball.

In Foul Ball, Bouton and two other investors want to preserve an aging ballpark in Pittsfield, Massachusettes and bring an independent minor league team to the field for 2002. Bouton writes in diary form as the year 2001 unwinds. The ballpark in question, Wahconah Park, is labeled as dicrepit and falling apart. There is a team playing in the park for the 2001 season but they are moving to a new stadium in Troy, New York. The local newspaper in Pittsfield is calling for a new stadium to be built so they can keep up with the changing times (yes, even in the minor leagues). The city's main businesses, Berkshire Bank and General Electric, are strongly on the new stadium bandwagon. But Bouton sees history and charm in old Wahconah and goes about being the alternative if the new stadium doesn't pass with voters.

What ensues is an all out war between city government, big business, the media, grassroots organizations, and guys just trying to run a baseball team. Bouton is very honest and straightforward about all the quirks, hypocrisies, testiness, and controversies that occur (including his own). Information, disinformation, who has money, who doesn't have money, editorials and letters to the editor, and dirty little secrets involving GE and the local river all come up. The levels to which people in power would go is the one prevalent theme throughout the book. It is a fun, fast, and disturbing read. All of this for a minor league field!

by Paul Shipp - 488 words

CD: Hot Women, compiled by R. Crumb

2006-05-24T10:53:00.000-07:00

Hot Women - Women Singers from the Torrid Regions of the World
CD Compilation By R. Crumb, Remastered by Tony Baldwin

There’s a delicious futility in attempting to describe the pleasures of Hot Women: Women Singers from the Torrid Regions of the World. Aside from the skewed, surreal nature of the music and its abstract pleasures, there’s the risk of sending a potential listener into the fray with any preconceptions. The treasures of this CD are to be perused, not pursued. Seek, and ye shall most certainly not find.

Hot Women is a collection of 24 tracks taken from old 78 rpm recordings. They were gathered by none other than underground cartoonist/cultural icon R. Crumb, who also annotates the liner notes with what biographical information his friends could find on the web (Crumb himself knows not how to use the internet); we’re even treated to illustrations based on whatever photographs he could find of these women. The earliest of the songs, like “Lu Fistinu Di Palermo” (Rosina Trubia Gioiosa of Sicily), comes to us from 1927; the latest, “Ballali Madja” (Hamsa Khalafe & Ali Atia, Africa), is dated around 1950. Most tracks come to us from the ‘30s, and possess both the eerie warmth and alien disembodiment that informs such cinematic tributes to the ‘30s as Triplets of Belleville and Pennies from Heaven, only more so: more so because while some of these “torrid regions” may be familiar to us (Lousiana, Cuba), others are decidedly less so (Tunisia, Middle Congo). I never imagined that Vietnam or Burma had viable pop recording industries 70 years ago.

Tony Baldwin handled remastering duties on Hot Women, and while I have no idea what the original recordings sound like, the effect is mesmerizing. The sound is still separated from reality, yet saturated with the physical effects of its context. “El Tambor De La Alegria”, a Cuban number from 1928, arrives as in a cloud of dust from the street, as though it exploded into being without the benefit of a producer. The mesmerizing “Chant D’Invitation A La Dance”, from the Middle Congo, built entirely on voice and finger piano, seems suffused with the miasma of an unfamiliar terrain and a stubborn refusal to be “properly” colonized.

If Crumb’s notes show an admiration for these women, his illustrations and the songs themselves seem to reflect the persistence of “exotic” cultures despite the oppressive gaze of the occidental eye. If Crumb’s cartoons turn misogyny on its head by deconstructing the misogynist impulse, his sharing of this music seems to critique colonialism by spreading its accidental treasures, the voices of the oppressed turning the entertainment of their oppressors into an expression of their own tenacity. This collection is grotesque, sexy, dissonant, desperate, and comical, both of this world and defiantly outside of it. These may not be the first hot women to haunt my daydreams, but they’re among the few I’ve ever felt so desperate to share.

--thelyamhound—489 words

FILM: The Power of Nightmares, Dir: Adam Curtis

2006-05-22T15:42:00.000-07:00

The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear
A BBC Documentary Written/Directed by Adam Curtis
180 Minutes, in 3 episodes
Making the Film Festival Circuit; available, for free, at the Internet Archive.

What the US mainstream press pundits willfully ignore about Stephen Colbert’s recent display of supreme satire at the White House Press Corps Dinner is that, while lacerating the current administration, Colbert’s speech also doubled as a damning indictment of the press itself, print and broadcast mediums alike, and their uncomfortable inability to discuss it as such is pretty telling.

One wonders how much, if any, opprobrium is felt by the news teams at ABC, CBS, (MS)NBC, and CNN when viewing the product coming out of their British cousin BBC News (FOX News, residing at the Weekly World News end of the spectrum, probably doesn’t give a whit). Particularly if they ever decide to take a look at The Power of Nightmares, Adam Curtis’ exploration of the similarities between Fundamentalist Islam, and the Neo-Conservative movement.

Insightful, in-depth, and eye opening (Islamic fundamentalism was birthed in Greeley, Colorado?), Curtis excels in documenting the facts in such a cold and logical manner, it makes the fumbling, sensationalistic nature of anything coming out of the likes of Dateline or 20/20 seem amateurish by comparison. It puts the impassioned, if well-intentioned, Michael Moore into the ham-fisted category.

Which isn’t to say that there isn’t a bias in the film, there is; however, its arguments are nearly irrefutable, simply because it doesn’t go that step too far. The movie gives you the facts and allows you to jump to your own conclusions, even though there’s really not that far to jump.

For example, there is a segment dedicated to the NeoCon’s first foray into power at the White House, where many of the familiar faces of this movement were starting to develop the practices we are now inured to. Specifically, it’s the “just because there’s no discernible evidence [that the enemy doesn’t have x weapon], doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent” ruse. In the case of the 70s, the deadly weapon is a sub-sonic submarine the Soviets are purported to have, and how it is supposed to be impossible to trace by any known methods.

Most would be content to take that bit of non-logic and leave it to the viewer to plumb its maddening nature. Instead, Curtis wisely finds the people who were in the intelligence field at the time (some of them who went on to hold powerful offices in the FBI), and has them, in no uncertain terms, refute the possibility, and, in turn, the logic, outright.

It is fascinating to watch Curtis, using this scalpel-like precision, essentially marry the NeoCon movement with that of Fundamentalist Islam. The similarities may have been noted before, but Curtis makes those connections concrete, once and for all. Just as fascinating is watching the forward progress made by these movements repeatedly fall apart for, essentially, the same reason:

Humanity’s hunger for dominance and power is only outmatched by its desire to live in peace.

Meanwhile, tonight on Dateline: Is Your Neighbor Releasing Rats Into Your Basement? An In Depth Investigation.

Reviewed by Jose’ Amador, 489 words.

BOOK: Firmin by Sam Savage

2006-05-21T15:02:00.000-07:00

Firmin – Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife
by Sam Savage
Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2006

Were I to be doing the marketing for this book, I’d be tempted to throw down a phrase like “for anyone who believes in the power of literature.” I’d be lying (of course, I’d be marketing). This is not for anyone, this is not blushing book-love, but rather desperate and clinging. Firmin is a story not of literature’s power to exult, but to barely sustain in the face of inevitable decay. And, it recognizes that the power will always come up short.

Make no mistake, Firmin, our titular hero, is a book-lover. He is also a rat, the thirteenth child of a drunken twelve-nippled mother, born in the basement of a bookstore. It begins with chewing pages to supplement the few drops of wine-addled milk he is able to wrestle away from bullying siblings when he recognizes that he can understand the words. Firmin becomes the introverted reader who believes himself more rich than the world will ever be able to understand, who lives with the pain of recognizing he is, in their eyes, just a rat.

The strength of Firmin’s voice is the driving force of this book. Negotiating emotional honesty with self-deception, he calls himself a pervert and a cynic and is half right. His only moment of normal sexuality is arousal by his sister’s swaying haunches; later the same night he discovers what will become a lifelong obsession with his Lovelies, the women of the porn movies the local theater reverts to at midnight. So, pervert, maybe, but Firmin is no cycnic. He is the committed romantic that tries to adopt cynicism after each disappointment, yet will still and always imagine those he loves to be more than the wrecks we can clearly see them to be. It is his last defense of hope, and as a doomed strategy is most poignant late in the book, when he says of his only friend, “it occurred to me that if you didn’t know better, you could mistake Jerry for just another hooch hound on the long slide to nowhere.”

Firmin’s hope, dim and compromised as it is, grants him a very human voice. The mind that is convinced, when Firmin cites as his favorite opening line Ford’s “This is the saddest story I have ever heard,” that life always ends badly, is overthrown by the heart of a small frustrated writer that finds, in the moments of his life, beautiful and meaningful titles for the life story he knows he will never write.

The impact of the singularity of Firmin’s life extends to the writer, an indulgence I’m rarely willing to make. I would never consider including a book jacket bio in a review, were it not accompanying a photo of an old man and were it not this:

Sam Savage received his bachelor and doctoral degrees in Philosophy from Yale University where he taught briefly. He has also worked as a bicycle mechanic, carpenter, commercial fisherman, and letterpress printer. This is his first novel.

Beautiful.

Reviewed by Jim Jewell, 498 words

BOOK: Hidden Camera by Zoran Zivkovic

2006-05-19T13:50:00.000-07:00

Hidden Camera by Zoran Zivkovic, translated by Alice Copple-Tosic
Published by Dalkey Archive Press, Eastern European Literature Series

The unnamed narrator of Zoran Zivkovic’s Hidden Camera, an aging undertaker, arrives home from work to find a blank envelope stuck in the jamb of his door. After much speculation, he opens the envelope to find a ticket to a movie house for a performance that begins within the half-hour. When his attempt to ignore the mysterious invitation fails, he grabs his coat and bolts out the door.

At the theater, an usher seats him directly next to the theater’s only other occupant, a beautiful woman, and the film begins: a short scene of the narrator himself, a few months earlier, sitting and reading on the park bench he visits daily, oblivious to the woman who shares his bench, the same woman who sits next to him in the theater. When the lights rise, the woman is gone, replaced by another mysterious envelope. The narrator, convinced he is the subject of a hidden camera show, plunges back into the night, following the trail of envelopes through fantastic situations and mounting paranoia.

Zivkovic’s writing is somehow spare and incredibly rich in imagery at the same time, as though adjectives would only sully the crisp fancies of his imagination. As the narrator moves from one orchestrated scene to the next, running themes quickly emerge. Purple flowers and childbirth and fish return to announce their intentionality. Zivkovic begins bending reality around the edges, allowing the absurd to seep in with a Calvino deadpan. Whether stunned or seduced, neither the narrator nor the reader cares, as long as the weird and wonderful visions continue.

But, at some point, it is exactly the weird and wonderful that breaks its own spell as the reader struggles to discern which details hold significance. Because this novel is from a cultural tradition not widely published in the US (Zivkovic is Serbian), there is an inevitable question: which of the seeming inconsistencies are narrative and which cross-cultural? Should we read each scene as weird, or just, you know, European?

The question of just what this novel is hangs unsatisfyingly unanswered in the end. The first chapter breaks from the narrator’s colorless description of his colorless existence into decisive and frantic action like a release of potential energy, but just as quickly thwarts this kinetic promise with meandering internal exposition worthy Nicholson Baker. The unreliable narrator at times creates too much distance, as he languishes under misconceptions of which the reader has been long since disabused or wallows in a paranoia that seems insufficient for the situation. And, the slide from absurd to fantastic imparts more significance to the narrative threads than is ever delivered. The ride is so beautiful, the destination almost doesn’t matter, but ultimately the whole amounts to less than the sum of its parts, an exotic confection that could have been much more.

Reviewed by Jim Jewell - 467 words