2 for the Best-of List

Two of our favorite movie experiences of the year happened over last weekend: the rental "Mud" and the newish release, "20 Feet From Stardom."

MUD (A-minus) - This one was headed for a perfect grade until the final 20 minutes. Even so, "Mud" is the best drama of the year so far.

Writer/director Jeff Nichols follows up the harrowing "Take Shelter" with a pulpier but lighter story of the South.  Two 14-year-old boys, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone, are Arkansas river rats who discover a fugitive named Mud (Matthew McConaughey) living on a nearby island. McConaughey is just so easy to watch, slipping smoothly into character.

Reese Witherspoon, looking sad and spooky in her own version of exile, is the troubled woman Mud pines for -- and the trap that awaits him on the mainland. Sam Shepard is some sort of retired assassin who observes the proceedings from his lair; he's a moody father figure to Mud and like a grumpy grandfather to the boys. Young Ellis deals with his squabbling parents (including an emasculated dad), while Neckbone hangs with his randy uncle Galen (Michael Shannon, "Take Shelter's" star in a minor turn here). The boys delight in the adventure of helping Mud get a treed boat functional again, while the boys navigate the various stormy adult relationships they can't seem to escape

Mud's rapport with the boys is a delight. Sheridan, especially, is a revelation; he gives the best performance of the year so far. His outburst against Mud in a climactic scene was the moment when I thought this might be a great film. This is a very male coming-of-age film with generations of men from teen to twilight dealing with the classic boy-meets-girl, boy-shoots-girl's-lover, boy-loses-girl scenario. Nichols gets to the heart of male angst, though he too often uses women as props and convenient sources of blame.

As noted, this gets messy in the final 20 minutes, with corny heroics and a too-neat ending. But despite the film's minor flaws, Nichols has a compelling story and the perfect cast to entertain the hell out of you. 

"20 FEET FROM STARDOM" (A-minus) - This is far from a perfect documentary, but it was one of the best experiences I've had this year in a movie theater. It is uplifting and full of fine music.

"20 Feet" looks back at the golden era of backup singers -- the 1960s, '70s and '80s.  The star is Darlene Love, who is the prototypical example of the gifted backup singer who stumbles while going solo, drops out of the business and finally finds late-career success and recognition -- epitomized by her long-running annual holiday appearance with David Letterman singing the iconic "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."

The front-men (Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger, among them) are kind and complimentary. Sting is especially sweet in paying tribute to those who make him sound a lot better, and he has a healthy perspective about his own luck in making it big.

Director Morgan Neville knows he has a winner on his hands, and he doesn't overplay his hand. He takes a light touch (almost irresponsibly so at times) and lets the women and the superstars who are in their debt just spin stories.

Merry Clayton recalls being dragged out of bed, wearing curlers, for a late-night session with the Rolling Stones to record her memorable vocals for "Gimme Shelter" ("Rape, murder -- it's just a shot away"). She spins a great story, although -- in a good example of the lightweight nature of the production -- the filmmakers let her embellish the tale (she claims to have never heard of the band at the time, even though it was 1969 and they'd been stars for four years).

We also get a glimpse into the personal lives of a few other singers. Claudia Lennear has an older woman's pride in her run as a sex symbol and member of the furiously frenetic dancers backing Ike and Tina Turner. Lisa Fischer reveals a conflicted inner life, coming to terms with a career in the shadows of Luther Vandross, Tina Turner and the geezer version of the Stones, content with one semi-successful solo album more than 20 years ago.

Much of the music here takes on added meaning. With their histories fleshed out, overplayed songs like "Walk on the Wild Side" and "Sweet Home Alabama" sound fresh and fun when our attention is drawn to the background vocals. And that's what this movie does. It finally puts these singers in the spotlight, and it gives us a new appreciation for the full dimension of the music of the past two generations.

"20 Feet From Stardom" teaches and entertains, with a life-affirming message that will resonate with anyone who cares about popular music.

Breaking "Breaking Bad"

I've never been a regular viewer of "Breaking Bad." I was never hooked, and I didn't find it as compelling as the great dramas of the recent era.

As millions prepare for the series finale, let's dig into the archives for my Albuquerque Tribune review of the pilot episode. It's always tough to judge a show by its pilot, so this barely scratches the surface. I've since pretty much skipped to the final season, so I'm still not qualified to assess it as a whole, but I remain convinced that many of the performances beyond Bryan Cranston's are too often weak, the plot twists a bit far-fetched, and the writing above average but not great.

Here was my first impression from January 2008:

Welcome to Albuquerque, Bryan Cranston.

Thanks for helping make the city look so beautiful and so seedy at the same time.

Cranston, who used to play the dad on "Malcolm in the Middle," can share credit with "X-Files" veteran Vince Gilligan and the cinematographers on "Breaking Bad," the latest series from AMC debuting in January.

"Breaking Bad" stars a forlorn, frumpy Cranston and the craggy New Mexico landscape in the story of a cash-poor Albuquerque high school chemistry teacher who gets a dire diagnosis and decides to use his former Nobel-track prowess to cook up some primo meth and provide a nest egg to bequeath to his wife and handicapped teen son.

It's an interesting premise, and the producers vow that the series won't glorify criminal behavior but merely present a good man making bad decisions for complicated reasons. The results are mixed in the debut episode.

On the one hand, Walter is imbued with an unusual sense of bravado almost immediately after receiving his terminal diagnosis. Suddenly he's superman, staring down bullies much bigger and younger than he is and outwitting bad guys with guns.

On the other hand, Walter is often clad only in his underwear and shoes and socks (he doesn't want the smell of meth to get on his good clothes) and almost shoots his foot off trying to figure out how to work a handgun.

It's up to the rest of the seven-episode series to begin sorting out all the moral implications that get raised.

Albuquerque, meantime, often provides a picturesque setting, with the Sandias and mesas as pleasant backdrops. Cinematographer John Toll, whose work ranges from "Braveheart" to this year's New Mexico-shot "Seraphim Falls," was director of photography for the pilot. The rest of the series is credited to Rey Villalobos ("Risky Business," "Urban Cowboy").

While the landscape looks harsh but alluring, lurking inside innocuous suburban-looking neighborhoods are meth labs, pit bulls and seriously bad dudes.

Walter goes on a ride-along with Drug Enforcement Administration agents and watches one of these operations get taken down. When he spies a former student escaping out a window, he decides to blackmail the kid and corral him into a business proposition.
They buy an RV and drive it to the outskirts of Albuquerque, where Walter's mad chem skills produce top-notch meth.

The main drawback in "Breaking Bad" is the gap between the lead performance and the rest. Maybe Cranston is that good, but his supporting crew is surprisingly wooden, as if Gilligan urged the actors to be mechanical in some scenes.

Anna Gunn ("Deadwood") doesn't bring much to the pilot as the loving, understanding wife, and Aaron Paul looked a little lost as Jesse Pinkman, Walter's former student and new partner in crime.

Elsewhere, Walter's students and extended family are solidly two-dimensional. We get the stereotypical hard-ass buddy cops, one Anglo, one Hispanic. (Walter's brother-in-law, Hank, is a federal drug agent. Can you sense the tension yet?)

This whole production could easily be overwhelmed by Cranston, who was a force on the sloppy sitcom "Malcolm in the Middle" and who had a memorable turn as the dentist on "Seinfeld" in the 1990s.

Cranston has thrown himself into this character, a mix of Walter Mitty and Travis Bickle. He's pale and out of shape. His mustache is pathetic; his eyeglasses are depressing. We cringe as we watch the pilot episode establish his middle-age angst and desperation.
But often, while Cranston and his character are manic, about to burst, the rest of the gang is stuck in traditional TV Drama Land.

There's room for improvement all around, which isn't unusual after a pilot episode. (AMC didn't send out copies of the other six episodes in the series. You can catch a "Making of" preview on the cable channel three times in the next week, starting tonight at 10:30.)

AMC, which started out as American Movie Classics, has begun branching out into series drama, as a sort of junior HBO. AMC struck gold this past fall by tapping the "Sopranos'" crew of writers. Matthew Weiner's "Mad Men," the period drama about the ad game in Manhattan in 1960, scored decent ratings and charmed critics across the board.

"Mad Men" was strong from the start, rich in character, back story and plot. "Breaking Bad" might get there, but to succeed it will have to flesh out the rest of the cast and raise the stakes for our anti-hero.

It's hip these days to be a hardened criminal just trying to make ends meet and provide for the family. Tony Soprano and Dexter Morgan have mouths to feed and bills to pay; how they process their evil deeds can be the stuff of compelling drama.

Gilligan, perhaps, felt he needed to keep up with the Joneses and cover a lot of ground in the first episode. Walter's transformation is rather jarring.

We get two basic-cable explicit sexual situations with Walter and his wife (named Skyler, for some reason), which are intended to be not-so-subtle bookends to show us how defeated Walter starts out and how macho it can be to walk on the wrong side of the law.

In the end, the pilot episode offers a message that doesn't rise much above that of your typical rap video: deal drugs, earn cash and flaunt your virility with the ladies.

We'll see whether "Breaking Bad" rises above that credo and returns to Albuquerque to shoot more episodes.

Valedictory

This is one of the sweetest things I've ever seen in sports. It's Mariano Rivera being pulled from his final game in Yankee Stadium by his longtime teammates Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte. It's our video of the day:

One-Liners

Three for the price of one:

SHADOW DANCER (B+) - The always reliable Clive Owen and the riveting Andrea Riseborough sizzle together in this taut tale of an IRA soldier (Riseborough) turned by an MI-5 agent (Owen) in the waning days of the Irish terror campaign in the early '90s.

I'll keep it short, because revealing too much of the plot will ruin what should be your discovery of an under-the-radar drama. A late twist and a shocking ending are perfectly rendered. Meantime, the soldiers plot away, and Riseborough's Collette barely keeps it together under the threat of being found out as a rat.

Tom Bradby turns his novel into a smart screenplay. (You might want to turn on the subtitles so that the thick accents don't obscure the sharp dialogue.) Director James Marsh (who brought us the harrowing documentaries "Man on Wire" and "Project Nim") brings a Paul Greengrass edginess that slowly ratchets the tension. This one's a little gem.

THE SAPPHIRES (B-minus) - The heartwarming true story of an Australian Aboriginal girl group of the '60s as they tour Vietnam is pure cornball cheese -- it not only feels like a Disney movie but like one made in the 1960s. At worst it's a guilty pleasure; at its best, it's a sassy mix of "Gidget" and "Gilmore Girls" filled with soulful, catchy tunes. Chris O'Dowd (yet again) stars as an alcoholic keyboardist gigging in Australia who discovers a talented foursome; he cleans up his own act and takes them on a frolic in Frankie Avalon's version of 'Nam.

Each girl neatly fits a stereotype, and each is just the right amount of boy crazy. A highly improbable love story emerges, our hero ends up in harm's way, but don't worry -- Charlie's bombs can't destroy true love!

The soundtrack is infectious -- many Motown standards that sound surprisingly fresh -- and the voices (whosever they are) are great. The first song out of the gate is a lovely songbird version of Merle Haggard's "Today I Started Loving You Again." The proceedings go by quickly as you tap your feet and roll your eyes.

THE WE AND THE I (B) - This one slipped through the cracks. It's Michel Gondry's charming drama about high school kids in New York making an epic bus journey home on the last day of the school year.

You cheer for Gondry and for these kids to transcend the June-swoon cliches, and they mostly do. I liked the grittiness of the characters, who rough up each other, talk trash and bully other passengers. I laughed uncomfortably at their juvenile behavior, perhaps nostalgic for the types of things one can get away with at that age.

This eventually descends into melodrama, and Gondry blows past a more appropriate ending, dragging this out to a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion. As much as "We" makes you feel alive, it has a twinge of high school drama-class to it, and Gondry falls short of the masterpiece he had within his grasp.

Experiments in Cinema 1.0

In this essay, two attempts to reboot cinema:

COMPUTER CHESS (B+) - Andrew Bujalski's format-faithful homage to the early-'80s computer craze.

AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY (B) -  Terence Nance's ambitious modern effort that chops up both love and narrative filmmaking into a new language.

***

Andrew Bujalski doesn't make it easy to like his films. The maestro of Mumblecore often tries your patience as he takes his time getting to the point. And the first hour of "Computer Chess" can be a bit of a trudge. (He may be his own worst editor.) Here, he embarks on a nostalgia trip by dramatizing an early-'80s competition of chess programmers taking place over the course of a weekend.

It takes a while to get over Bujalski's gimmick: He has faithfully re-created the videotape quality of the era (and its graphics) to visualize a documentary-like story of the tournament in which the geekiest of the nerds take over a tacky hotel for a weekend to pit their computer programs against one another's, with the winner to take on a flesh-and-blood chess master.

I squirmed a bit while Bujalski positioned his pieces throughout a first hour marked by geek speak and existential nerd chatter. Like the other half of this double feature, the director sometimes machine-guns the viewer with dialogue, and it's difficult to keep up with the ideas or to find a long enough lull to pick up the story's thread. Dialogue gets repetitious. The no-name cast doesn't quite connect.

But then ... it all starts to click. One computer programmer discovers that his team's chess program doesn't do well against other machines but it does react properly when going up against a human making moves on the other side. It seems all of the men here stand at ground zero of the original sin of creating artificial intelligence that will surpass us one day; meantime, the computers themselves seem to be reacting intuitively to human contact. We sense a grand theme that in the end will give us a twinge of "2001: A Space Odyssey" muscle memory.

Bujalski expertly weaves in a couple of sidebars: one about a new-age couples-therapy conference that has a cult-like feel to it and which gradually invades the tournament's space, and another about a room-less tournament participant who wanders the hotel grounds like a ghost (or a conscience?), mixing with both the chess players and the couples. A shy programmer reaches out to the only female participant. One of the frisky couples picks off a vulnerable young programmer and tries to seduce him in their room, a creepy yet bittersweet scene that feels real and personal.

In the end, Bujalski's strategy pays off, and the disparate parts somehow fit together. My hunch is that the takeaway will vary from viewer to viewer, and it almost feels sacrilegious to try to articulate his ultimate point. Who survives in the end -- human or computer? That's an unsettling question. We don't know yet, do we?

***

Terence Nance wants his wide-market debut, "An Oversimplification of Her Beauty," to convince you that it's blowing your mind. It may or may not.

This is a movie about making a movie, and as such, its intense navel-gazing tags it with Strike One. Too often it feels like we're merely indulging a pretentious artist as he reads from his diary and shows off footage of gorgeous women who felt flattered enough to let him film them.

I was also unprepared for the overwhelming amount of animation involved; this is basically an animated movie with a sprinkling of live action. Strike Two. Even when you do see actual people, they rarely interact directly in dialogue. For a story about relationships, that's a little more than frustrating.

The film evolved from an earlier project, the documentary "How Would You Feel?," which chronicled his relationship (or lack thereof) with Namik Winter. Nance takes that earlier film and creates a fresh mix tape by fictionalizing the experience of shooting the first movie.

Nance uses the conceit of a nature documentary, with affectless narration (which sometimes blends into and out of his own voice as narrator). It's a welcome gimmick at first, and you expect him to drop it, so that the movie will really kick in. But, no; that voiceover recurs ad nauseam, right up until the bitter end. Strike two-and-a-half.

The script is riddled with faux academic pronouncements and purple prose, presumably for effect. Instead of saying "they lived in different cities," he says, "they resided in different municipalities." But he outsmarts himself a few times. (For example, he misuses "disinterested.") And the rapid-fire narration, which often competes with typed words pouring across the screen, is difficult to keep up with. His stream-of-consciousness thoughts and philosophical pronouncements machine-gun the viewer, who often is left not knowing whether to read or listen or try to multitask and absorb as much as possible. It's very digital 21st century. Strike two-and-three-quarters.

Yet, down deep, this is a classic boy-meets-girl/boy-loses-girl story. And Nance displays talents that flash across the generations. He and his film bring to mind a 20-something Spike Lee ("She's Gotta Have It"), a 40-something Woody Allen ("Annie Hall," "Manhattan") and even a 60-something Jean Luc Godard ("In Praise of Love"). There's definitely something here; I just didn't connect with it enough.

I'll admit, I'm a Gen X white guy critiquing the creative work of a Gen Y black man. Maybe it's a masterpiece. Maybe it's a cluttered, over-ambitious early work of a director to watch. Maybe it's just too early to tell.

Bonus Track
On the way home from this Guild Cinema double feature, the Wild Flag song "Endless Talk" was conveniently cued up on disc to put a little exclamation point on Nance's movie:

Tapia on Tap

The Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, scheduled for October, is planning to debut a documentary about local boxing legend Johnny Tapia, who died last year after 45 years of living la vida loca.

An AP report on the film, "Tapia," which is backed by rapper 50 Cent, can be found here.

Here's an unrelated highlight reel featuring the five-time champ:

Score

Random cine-stat of the week:

When I see Nicole Holofcener's "Enough Said" sometime later this year, it will mark the 20th film I've seen featuring Catherine Keener.

Faith in Rock 'n' Roll

A BAND CALLED DEATH (B) - It was the early to mid-'90s and our music culture was still luxuriating in the Heyday of the Planet of Sound, the era that spanned the emergence of college-radio alternative music until the end of the Pixies (the original iteration) and Nirvana. I was record-shopping in Reckless Records on Chicago's north side near Belmont and Broadway.

The hipster behind the counter decided to spin a disc by some obscure Australian power rockers from the 1970s, a band called Radio Birdman. I heard the opening hooks of their thrash version of the "Hawaii Five-O" theme (the original one), and something primal stirred in me. I walked out with an import version of the disc "Radios Appear" that day, and I've loved those '70s rascals ever since.

I'm sure many others can spin a tale like that. One person's story involved discovering a pristine 45-rpm vinyl recording of "Politicians in My Eyes" by the punk-era band Death. It was one of only 500 copies of the record pressed by the three Detroit brothers who recorded it and distributed it on their own little label. The band Death had disbanded just a few years after recording that song and a handful of others mid-decade. It wasn't until the turn of the millennium that those recordings were finally discovered.

"A Band Called Death" tells the story of the Hackney brothers -- three black kids who preferred the thrash and power chords of the Who and the solos of Hendrix to the sound of Motown R&B. They dug Alice Cooper more than Curtis Mayfield. Here's the B-side of "Politicians," with opening riffs inspired by Pete Townshend:

The documentary by Mark Christopher Covino and Jeff Howlett spends much of its first two-thirds reminiscing with the brothers and chugging through their history. Bobby and Dannis Hackney survive and tell the story about growing up in Detroit, watching the Beatles play on the "Ed Sullivan Show" and following their brother David into hard rock, trusting in his obsession with spirituality and the meaning of death. (David's insistence on that band name, according to his brothers and an early producer, was what ultimately doomed their chances at securing a recording contract.)

Covino and Howlett probably dwell too much on the extensive backstory. To be honest, the Hackneys are not particularly fascinating characters, and Death's recorded music, while vibrant and edgy in a generic way, is not particularly compelling in a manner that would soon be perfected and popularized by alt-rockers like the Replacements. Viewers might squirm a bit while trapped in the Hackneys' Detroit of the '70s and '80s, as Bobby and Dannis split from David, set down roots in Vermont and find moderate success in a reggae band.

David, meantime, returned to Detroit and began to drown in alcohol and recriminations over the failure of Death. He died in 2000, having first hand-delivered Death's master recordings to his brothers. While the filmmakers show proper respect to David, it's hard to escape the feeling that there is a better, less hagiographic film to be made about David and his demons.

Meantime, I was waiting for the Discovery Story. I wanted to know how the band finally found acclaim, why this story was being told 40 years later. Leave it to the hipster white boys scouring the record bins in Chicago and freelancing for the New York Times to revive Death. Eventually, one of Bobby's sons heard his dad's youthful voice bursting from vinyl at a DJ party in San Francisco. He and his own two brothers and a couple of friends formed a cover band (named after one of Uncle Dave's one-off pseudonyms, Rough Francis), and soon Drag City Records in Chicago was releasing the long lost Death album.

That's the charm of "A Band Called Death," though it's all jammed into the final half hour. A little bookending or foreshadowing would have balanced the movie better.

Those are mostly quibbles. By the end of the film, if you're patient and do some cutting and pasting of your own, you'll be able to appreciate the basic story being told here: there is beauty and joy in a random recording full of heart and soul, and whether the world snaps it up immediately and the band becomes rich and famous or whether a few hundred stumble on it decades later, there's no denying that there is joy, too, in a determined individual digging up a piece of vinyl or a cassette or a disc featuring a killer hook or a catchy chorus that few people knew existed.

In the end, this is a movie about audio archeology and the thrill of discovering your new favorite band, even if that band is a long-forgotten flop. Three kids in a bedroom in Detroit threw down some rock 'n' roll and dispersed it into the universe. When I sat in the darkened theater -- with a total of two other people in the audience -- and first heard David Hackney's rough riffs calling out from the era of my adolescence, I immediately thought to myself, "Hey, that sounds like Radio Birdman."

Cool.


Bonus Tracks

Here is the full-length (7-song) album from Death, released in 2009:

And here is a track from the much more polished Radio Birdman, their scorching revival of the epic Roky Erickson rocker "You're Gonna Miss Me," from "Radios Appear":

New to the Queue

The calendar turns, the queue churns ...

I skipped "Love Crime" and I might take a pass on Brian de Palma's version, too, but for now, let's add "Passion" to the list.

If only for a supporting turn by Michaela Watkins, there's the tale of a bored housewife and her stripper nanny, "Afternoon Delight."

A drama about young adults running a foster-care facility, "Short Term 12."


And this past Friday, the New York Times reviewed 25 (!) new releases in one edition. We plowed through them all (plus the crossword puzzle) and settled on these titles:

• The provocative (exploitative?) documentary about the elusive author, "Salinger."
• Lynn Shelton's on a roll, and she grabs Rosemarie DeWitt again for her lead in "Touchy Feely."
• A documentary about the woman who runs a special-ed school in Newark, "Best Kept Secret."
• A 62-minute doc on parent-trigger laws that create charter schools, "We the Parents."
• The creepy tale of orphaned teens falling prey to skeevy men, including Rutger Hauer, "Il Futuro."
• Naomi Watts and Robin Wright as soccer moms sleeping with each other's 20-year-old sons? Be strong ... Resist ... "Adore."

Soundtrack of Your Life: Thursday at the Bank

A new feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems:

Date: 5 September 2013, 3:40 p.m.
Place: First Financial Credit Union, Downtown Albuquerque
Song: "The Mayor of Simpleton" (1989)
Artist: XTC
Irony Matrix: 7 of 10

Best days long gone, Part 2: "Django Unchained"

Quentin Tarantino had a good run about 20 years ago. He had a five-year burst of creativity from "Reservoir Dogs" to "Jackie Brown." In between those, he wrote and directed his masterpiece, "Pulp Fiction," wrote "True Romance" and provided the story for "Natural Born Killers."

That was his time. And his time has long passed.

I never bothered with the "Kill Bill" movies, because I'm not into martial arts, violence, and fantasy (at least that's how I perceive them from snippets and previews). Tarantino took six years off between "Jackie Brown" and the "Kill Bill" movies, and somehow his aesthetic went from cool pulp fiction to just plain pulp. By the time his Grindhouse phase kicked in, I was checked out; it wasn't worth a few scenes of transcendent streaming dialogue and sublime plot twists if it meant I had to sit through the gore and simplistic storytelling that dominates the films.

Which brings us to the breathtaking revenge porn of "Django Unchained."

First, I did sample "Django's" table-setter, "Inglourious Basterds," on video last year and was underwhelmed; I was alternately bored and disgusted. The performances were flat. Tarantino's provocations -- Nazis! Scalping! Vigilantism! Brad Pitt! -- were juvenile. It's as if his true 12-year-old was finally set free by his '90s successes, and the Weinsteins' blank checks gave him free rein to wank off.

I don't allege that he's not talented or sincere; of course he is. It's just that his filmmaking suffers from a fatal cynicism; he exhibits almost a condescending disgust for his followers and the rest of disposable humanity. It is simply stylized and soulless nihilism.

"Django" is almost unwatchable because of the boatloads of blood and the ridiculous autopsy-level violence. In the polar opposite of old Hollywood's bloodless slayings, here gunshot victims explode in powerjet blasts of blood. Bodies are hit multiple times, spraying or burbling every time. It might be Tarantino's idea of realism, but it comes off as beyond cartoonish. In fact, it's downright Pythonesque; it's the sober fanboy's unironic take on that troupe's hilarious homage to Peckinpah (or its faux John Wayne title "Buckets of Blood Pouring Out of People's Heads"). (And it's really unnecessary at this point to even mention the mind-boggling number of times a treasured racial epithet riddles the script. It's the linguistic equivalent of a bloodbath.)

Django (Jamie Foxx), passing as a freed slave under the cover of a prolific bounty hunter, Schultz (Christoph Waltz), perpetually seethes with hatred and often reflexively reaches for his sidearm, just hoping for an excuse to blow a bad guy away. (In his revenge fantasy come true, not even Uncle Toms are safe from disfigurement.) Django's goal is to rescue his wife, Broomhilda von Shaft (kute!) from the clutches of her owner, plantation big-shot Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio, nearly out of his league).

Is there any doubt that the noble hero (watch him outwit and outshoot a dozen gunmen at the same time!) will save the horrifically degraded damsel? Alas, Foxx is mostly asked to narrow his eyes and sneer, in a performance straight out of the Joaquin Phoenix School of Scowling. (And is it heresy to say that Waltz is a gifted character actor but that his hard-ass-eccentric shtick typically gets old by the third reel?)

Frankly, this is all a fetish of Tarantino's, playing out in public. Some of this might be entertaining if it felt even remotely original. I'm sure he means it as homage, but the silly soundtrack and the pseudo-Cinemascope display come off simply as cheaply derivative. Just because he's infatuated with Spaghetti Westerns or Grindhouse shtick doesn't mean we want to watch him ape it in the 21st century. Doesn't he know a lot of that was crap anyway? How outre of him to get his fingernails dirty like this; no wonder he's Oscar's guilty pleasure.

Tarantino does get credit for regularly employing cinematographer Robert Richardson. Some of the shots in "Django" are lush and lovely, and I wish I'd seen them (or at least parts of them) on the big screen. But, frankly, anyone with a generous budget can ape David Lean or Sergio Leone. And, honestly, who can appreciate this cinematic elegance when we're all just checking our watches waiting for the climactic holocaust awaiting a theater full of Nazis or a plantation full of slaveholders?

I will hand it to the pulpmeister, though. In each movie, he crafts a handful of scenes that capture the old magic, the spiel of biblical proportions. And there's one scene each in "Basterds" and "Django" that rival the giddy brilliance of "Pulp Fiction." Of course, the opening scene in "Basterds," in which Waltz's Nazi character interrogates the rural family hiding Jews under their floorboards, is expertly crafted. And in "Django," DiCaprio acquits himself with a confrontational/phrenological monologue/rant that turns Hamlet and jurisprudence on their skulls. Such intermittent joys do not make a movie, however, especially one that clocks in at a bloated 166 minutes. (It's an epic, you see!)

I've been fond of subscribing to a Three-Album Rule (a corollary to the Salinger rule):  most bands are lucky to have a run of three consecutive releases. (Even the Beatles' peak can be pegged from "Rubber Soul" to "Sgt. Pepper.") Quentin Tarantino is the cinematic poster child for that rule; "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown" were brilliant. He and I bonded during those years. And then we went our separate ways.

I feel good about where I've ended up.


GRADES
Django Unchained (C+)
Inglorious Basterds (B-minus)
Jackie Brown (A)
Pulp Fiction (A)
Reservoir Dogs (A-minus)
True Romance (B-plus)

Deadheads for the End Days

The New Yorker has a fascinating piece about an "Amish-style hippie group" that frequents Bob Dylan concerts and tries to recruit fans into their "quasi-Christian sect."  The recruiters are members of the Twelve Tribes.

John Clarke writes:

The Twelve Tribes member Aysh Harris told me that the effort to recruit fans of Dylan—who* he calls a modern-day prophet (“A lot of things he said back then are coming true now”)—has been a good experience, a success even. “Most people we meet out there are pretty satisfied with the life they’re living,” Harris said. “But some have shown an interest in Twelve Tribes. There are definitely pockets of Dylan fans who are at least curious.” For the interested, joining Twelve Tribes requires forsaking all material goods, living communally, and working without pay in one of the group’s cafés, stores, farms, or construction companies scattered across the United States.

In “Dylan: What Are You Thinking?,” an anonymous Twelve Tribes author ruminates on the music legend’s religious beliefs before claiming that Dylan’s prophetic anthems “touch the complex and deep longing of the soul for a real answer, for a solution to the problems we all face, and for some deep change of heart that will fix everything that’s wrong.” 

Those who followed Dylan in the 1980s will recall that the Grateful Dead often either shared a bill with Dylan or immediately followed his tour dates with their own. Thus, it was common to deal with the Deadhead community congregating in the parking lot on the day of Dylan's shows.

I was never recruited into a cult-like organization, but I was offered grilled-cheese sandwiches.

Clarke writes:

The original mission of the Twelve Tribes dates back to 1987, when the group started following the Grateful Dead with a band of musicians, singers, and dancers, offering emergency medical care in venue parking lots. They also provided a place for lost friends to meet, and helped people coming down from bad acid trips. The author James McCallister ran into Twelve Tribes at a Grateful Dead show in 1990. “I viewed their seemingly predatory behavior as a vile cancer on the scene,” he said. “The operation seemed like a bear trap set in otherwise peaceful woods, a trap designed to ensnare those in vulnerable psychological states.”

* - Since when does the New Yorker not care about the difference between "who" and "whom"?

The Pace of Modern Life

We pause the Internet to salute the web comic XKCD for providing perspective to those of us who curse modern technology and decry the dizzying pace of communication, which saps the human attention span.

 

Here's a link.

Lower in the Lineup

The New York Times' A.O. Scott reports from the Telluride Film Festival (with a wordiness that brings out the copy editor in me). In addition to the bigger titles he digs deeper for four more obscure films to keep an eye out for:

David Mackenzie’s “Starred Up” is a British prison drama anchored by superb performances from Jack O’Connell and Ben Mendelsohn as a son and father confined in the same penitentiary. Tough, violent and profane, the movie is also sensitive to the nuances of emotion underneath the macho belligerence, and honest about what its characters must do to survive. 

“Ida” is the first Polish-language feature directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, whose previous movies (notably “The Last Resort” and “My Summer of Love”) have made him one of the bright lights of British cinema. This movie is dark, both visually and thematically, as Mr. Pawlikowski uses a monochrome palette and a boxy, old-fashioned aspect ratio to capture the gloom of 20th-century Polish history and the glimmers of hope that managed to persist. The story of a young woman preparing to take her vows and become a Catholic nun, “Ida” touches on both the legacy of the Holocaust and the realities of postwar Communism with apt sorrow and an equally apt touch of fatalistic humor.

“Gloria,” from the Chilean director Sebastián Lelio, is the sad and funny portrait of a 58-year-old woman. It is hard to do justice either to Gloria (played by the amazing Paulina García) or to the story Mr. Lelio tells, which is about the way she contends with loneliness, sex, alcohol, pop music, her grown children and her neighbor’s cat.

Modern urban loneliness is also among the themes of “The Lunchbox,” the deft and charming first feature by Ritesh Batra. He uses Mumbai’s lunch-delivery system — which transports thousands of meals every day from kitchens to offices — as the background for a quasi-romantic fable that might be thought of as an Indian variation on “You’ve Got Mail.”

Click on through for the full report.   

Best days long gone, Part 1: "Blue Jasmine"

BLUE JASMINE (D+) - I've now seen my second Woody Allen movie of the past 24 years, and this one is even worse than the embarrassing "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" (2008). Let's see ... how can we describe it?

Offensive. Sour. Unfunny. Manipulative. Misogynistic. Tone-deaf. Lazy. Out-of-date. Infuriating. Ridiculous. Repetitive. Under-cooked. Over-acted. Embarrassing.

At first, you think the great Cate Blanchett might pull this off, with an assist from the irresistible Sally Hawkins (as Jasmine's step-sister, Ginger). But Blanchett, in her first scene as the fallen Manhattanite -- talking the ear off of a stranger she sat next to on the plane to her new life in San Francisco -- immediately stumbles (the scene is devoid of any real humor or pathos). And, like everything here, it is a sad reminder of the shell that Woody Allen and his comedy and cinema have become.

This movie takes place in an alternate universe of 1940s Hollywood film fantasy as conjured up by a dreadfully out-of-touch old man who is irretrievably detached from reality. Allen's depiction of the tensions and gaps between entitled socialites (East and West Coast) and gruff blue-collar shlubs lacks the depth and sophistication of your typical Three Stooges short.

I was almost incensed that an actress like Cate Blanchett would participate in such a naked hatchet job on humanity. You could hear audience members whispering about how powerful her performance is, but her take on a hysterical female in denial (chugging vodka and constantly fumbling with her Xanax) is cartoonish, because that's how Woody Allen sees it, writes it and directs it. By the end, Blanchett becomes shrill and predictable. I would feel bad for her if she weren't so ... complicit.

The other characters mostly meander. Alec Baldwin looks bored and even frustrated. (There is very little humor (for him or any other actor to chew on), and most attempts at jokes were met with polite chuckles from the mostly elderly audience.) Bobby Cannavale (as Ginger's neanderthal boyfriend) lights up the proceedings when he first appears, but his shtick (be fair, Allen's shtick) quickly gets old. Louis C.K. shows up to represent the "great guy" alternative to Cannavale's lug, but the comedian seems hopelessly adrift. Peter Sarsgaard, as a priss who falls for Jasmine, treads the boards provincially as if he's escaped from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Amazingly, Andrew Dice Clay, as Ginger's ex-husband, brings warmth to an under-written role.

The prevalent misogyny is disturbing. Men tell women that they are "pretty" or "stylish" and the gals swoon. That's when the guys aren't flat-out assaulting the poor sisters.

Technically, this is a mess. The flashbacks are clunky. Various characters repeat the same central plot point -- Jasmine let her husband fleece her sister and brother-in-law, and Jasmine ignored her financially struggling sister only to come crawling to her when her own world fell apart -- over and over again. Characters state the obvious, including the fact that Jasmine talks to herself in public (over and over again). Each sister has a final-reel reveal with a lover that should never have survived a first draft. Cameras pan, leading the viewer to expect a revelation, only to be interrupted by a ham-fisted edit.

Any moderate consumer of cinema knows that this is lousy filmmaking. If anyone other than Woody Allen submitted such lukewarm, anachronistic tripe, they would be sent packing to their day job. My curiosity has been satisfied. Woody Allen is still an old creep with no clue about how the real world has functioned since the Carter administration. Why does he continue to get away with it?

Hello, Good Evening and Welcome ...

The death of David Frost at 74 calls to mind the Monty Python parodies of the man who employed a couple of troupe members before they launched their own show in 1969.

It's our video clip of the day: