Ralph Stanley, the diehard pioneer of mountain music, who was reintroduced to a new generation through the Coen brothers film "O Brother, Where Art Thou," died last week at 89. A few years ago, he contributed to the fine soundtrack for "Lawless," penned by Nick Cave. Here he covers the Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat."
And the haunting "O Death":
Rolling Stone magazine is good about supplementing its obits with 10 essential tracks. Follow the link here.
***
Bernie Worrell tore the roof off with his keyboard work for Parliament/Funkadelic in the '70s, and then he helped burn down the house with Talking Heads in the '80s. He died last week at 79. Here is the irresistible R&B hook, "Flash Light":
And with Talking Heads on the big-suit workout "Girlfriend Is Better" from Jonathan Demme's "Stop Making Sense" in 1984:
Elvis Presley's sideman Scotty Moore died Tuesday at 84. Here he is on Elvis' left as the boys rip through Jimmy Reed's "Baby What You Want Me To Do" on the Comeback Special in 1968:
And while we're there, let's toss in the memorable version of "Trying to Get to You," where Elvis just can't sit still:
BONUS TRACK
Note the beehives ringing the stage at Elvis' feet. That reminds us that Margaret Vinci Heldt, who invented the beehive in 1960, died earlier this month, too. The Washington Post wrote a wonderful obit.
A couple of morbid titles, fueled by effective performances:
UNCLE JOHN (A-minus) - This sweet, affecting -- but disturbing -- story travels along two tracks. In a Midwestern small town, John (John Ashton), a carpenter, is dodging the police and the town gossips after he murders a local goon, Dutch, and expertly disposes of the body. We don't know his motivation. Meantime, the nephew that John raised, Ben (Alex Moffat), toils at a youthful ad agency in Chicago. (The streets of the city are empty and have a specious gleam to them, as if those scenes were shot on the cheap in a studio.)
Those two narrative tracks don't merge until deep into the second half of the film, when Ben takes a road trip to visit John on the farm he grew up on. Until then, newcomer Steven Piet sets things on simmer, methodically building a story piece by piece -- John starts to get harassed by Dutch's drunken, no-good brother, Danny (a disheveled Ronnie Gene Blevins), who suspects John offed his kinfolk; and Ben tries to woo a new colleague, the exotically cute Kate (Jenna Lyng), who resists the idea of getting involved with a co-worker.
The movie has a lived-in improvisational feel, driven by actors who know their craft. The dialogue between Kate and Ben is refreshingly organic, as is the old-man banter between John and his mates at the corner cafe. Ben and Kate toss off quaint one-liners that could have been workshopped in John's garage; Kate tipsily invites Ben into her apartment and says, "Welcome to my humble adobe."
And the principal cast is impeccable. Ashton (a veteran of '70s police procedurals and the"Beverly Hills Cop" series, in a role of a lifetime) is haggard and jumpy, stooped over with the weight of the world on his back. Moffat, square-jawed and broad-shouldered, has a Matthew Perry aw-shucksness about him that's endearing. Lyng has a model's build and a nerd's gait, and she imbues Kate with a heavy spirit. Blevins, looking like Peter Sarsgaard's evil twin, reeks of desperation as the hapless menace
Worth noting, too, is the somber, and at times tender, piano score by the team of Adam Robl and Shawn Sutta, which cranks up the tension when Kate and Ben show up on the farm and Danny drops in to lay some psychological terror on John. Piet paces this like a veteran, methodically building, over 113 efficient minutes, to a climax involving all four characters and a bookending violent confrontation.
This is a stunningly assured debut. Piet and writing partner Erik Crary exhibit a Duplass brothers indie sensibility with a dash of noir. "Uncle John" tells a timeless story of love and evil, like an old-fashioned murder ballad.
10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (B) - A trio of fine performances takes this subdued thriller much further than it deserves to go, before the whole experiment explodes into a crazy mess. That's not surprising, considering that this film is billed as a spiritual successor to the 2008 found-footage screamer "Cloverfield." Both are from the production house of J.J. Abrams.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead ("Scott Pilgrim vs. The World," "Smashed") stars as Michelle, who wakes up after a car crash chained up in a dungeon in the home of Howard Stambler (John Goodman), a survivalist who has sealed off his home from the outside world where, he insists, an apocalyptic attack has rendered Earth uninhabitable. A third resident soon pops up, Emmett (John Gallagher from "Short Term 12"), and before long, he and Michelle are plotting ways to escape.
Goodman tears into a meaty role of a gruff apparent madman holding these youngsters hostage. Winstead is all doe eyes, alternating between panic an pluck. (Apparently, her resume is heavy on scream-queen roles.) Gallagher's boyish charm goes a long way.
The screenplay from a trio of writers (including Damien Chazelle from "Whiplash") is crafted like a corny chamber-room drama intended for the stage. The tension builds nicely until the inevitable break-out attempt.
And that climactic showdown sends everything that comes before it careering off the rails. It's as if it were edited onto the end from another genre. It feels like a cheap gimmick and a cheat.
Fans of pulp fiction might applaud the maneuver. But it's an unfortunate waste of what could have been a fine thriller.
BONUS TRACKS "Cloverfield" revels in shimmery '60s pop, with this obvious theme song popping up right in the middle of the film -- Tommy James' "I Think We're Alone Now" (we were tempted to go with Tiffany again):
Ah, hell. Let's have a battle of the bands. Here's Tiffany's jeans-jacket/synthesizer version from the '80s:
And over the closing credits of "Uncle John," Chuck Jackson with "Since I Don't Have You":
WEINER (A-minus) - Anthony Weiner just can't help himself. What a dick.
Weiner is a 51-year-old man with the disposition of a 12-year-old know-it-all, and this documentary about him has more than a whiff of Shakespearean tragedy as it chronicles his attempt to bounce back from his 2011 sexting scandal to run for mayor of New York City in 2013, with his fierce, proud wife, Huma Abedin stalwart by his side. Filmmakers Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg craft a compelling character study that is insightful, expertly paced and highly entertaining. It deserves a place alongside other classic New York films.
Weiner achieved cultural notoriety when, as a fiery progressive congressman from Brooklyn, he got caught sending pictures of his junk to women who were not his wife. Slow to fess up, he torpedoed his career and resigned, destined to be a punchline, with jokes that wrote themselves. Until then, he was a progressive firebrand, known for standing up to political foes and TV pundits.
With the hubris of a Clinton, Weiner could wait barely two years before launching his comeback, in a crowded Democratic primary field with no clear frontrunner. Weiner actually topped a few polls early on, and the filmmakers dutifully lace the first half of the documentary with a strong sense of foreboding.
Weiner is an appealing figure. An early YouTube clip captures a full-bore rant on the floor of the House -- in which he shouts down Republican colleagues -- that would make Bernie Sanders supporters salute with a raised fist. His political heart is in the right place, and his political radar is spot-on. Elected as a City Councilman at 27, he has a connection with voters in the city's neighborhoods that feels authentic.
But then the other shoe drops. Having assured his wife, staffers and voters that the scandal was behind him, new revelations explode, exposing him as a liar for promising that he had cleaned up his act in 2011. Abedin, a moving force behind this attempted comeback, stands at his side during a painful new conference, but soon can't hide her disdain for her husband's childish, boorish behavior, and she gradually extricates herself from the campaign.
The implosion of the campaign -- illustrated by the faces of the disillusioned young staffers -- is a classic trainwreck, and it's hard to look away. A damage-control staff meeting becomes surreal, as Weiner and Abedin's toddler son (in utero during Phase 1 of the scandal two years earlier) disrupts the conversation with some bratty antics -- a chip off the old block, maybe.
Just when you think Weiner has learned a lesson or figured out how to modify his behavior, he shoots himself in the foot. He picks a fight with an observant Jew in a deli, acting like a petulant child when called out on his immoral behavior. (It turns out that the detractor goaded Weiner with a low-blow reference to his "Arab" wife.)
Abedin is also a fascinating subject here. Aside from her impeccable taste in dresses, she runs hot and cold when it comes to her husband, the campaign, the media and politics in general. She can be both girlishly charming and cunning as a strategist. She comes off as human and rational, washing her hands of the fiasco by the end. In one scene, we watch a hard-headed Weiner tank an interview with MSNBC, and it's clear that his defiance is hollow and egotistical, far removed from the impassioned championing of the people from his days in Congress. The next day, Weiner watches the regretful interview on his laptop, proud of his performance, and Abedin can only shake her head and leave the room.
Such intimate, revelatory moments are gold to a documentary filmmaker, and Kriegman and Steinberg don't fumble the opportunity. They know when to push, when to pull back, when to just let the camera run.
In another scene, Weiner wolfs down a lunch while riding in the backseat of a car, and we hear a question coming from off-camera, suggesting that Weiner doesn't like to talk about his feelings and emotions. Rather than contemplate the question or simply open up a little, Weiner reacts instinctively -- he attacks. Isn't the whole idea of "fly on the wall" filmmaking, he wonders aloud, that the fly should be silent and just observe? As usual, Weiner makes a valid point, but he comes off as petulant and mean-spirited.
Luckily, the filmmakers kept the cameras rolling. They knew what they had. They knew this story would write itself. They might be the only people who can say that Anthony Weiner didn't let them down.
BONUS TRACK This classic '70s track plays early in the film, Kiss member Ace Frehley's "New York Groove":
MAGGIE'S PLAN (C+) - Greta Gerwig does her flighty-chick thing, Ethan Hawke reels off his patented earnest middle-aged-guy shtick, and Julianne Moore attempts a crazy accent (cartoon Danish? Baba Wawa?) -- and none of it can save Rebecca Miller's drab, sluggish comic drama about a woman who wants, not to have it all, but to put everyone around her in their place.
Gerwig plays Maggie, a rather ordinary academic adviser who wants to have a baby, so she convinces an old schoolmate she barely knows -- quirky urban pickle "entrepreneur" Guy (Aussie Travis Fimmel) -- to contribute his sperm, no strings attached. Just as she's basting her private parts, there's a knock on the door from her married colleague John (Hawke), who has come to profess his love to her. Maggie has been reading a draft of his novel, keeping him company and hearing him bitch about his Nazi of a wife, Georgette (Moore), and it turns out she too is smitten with this older Linklaterian manchild and father of two.
Miller -- the deliberate director, known for "Personal Velocity" and "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" -- has a clean style with her sly scripts. With three distinct acts, she struggles with the set-up surrounding these somewhat cliched Brooklynites, and then she falls down a hole during the middle third, as John and Maggie settle into an ossified domesticity with their perfect little love child. We're told this is a wrenching transition for the adults and kids, but it never feels like anything important is at stake. I was tempted to walk out halfway through.
The "plan" that finally gets hatched here involves Maggie finding a way to dump John back on his ex. It's a great idea (credited to newcomer Karen Rinaldi, who deserved a better result), but it's executed as limply as a late-period Woody Allen fiasco. Everything is twee and mannered -- more movie-ish than real. Maggie's love child is a perfect angel; Gerwig's layered outfits are quaintly retro; New York's streets shimmer; the dialogue snaps just so.
Miller manages some truly funny moments, but they are few and far between. Moore's Georgette rides a roller-coaster from ridiculous to touching to mawkish. She does reel off a few of the best lines. Remarking on her husband's niche academic specialty she compliments him, straight-faced: "No one unpacks commodity fetishism like you." A scene of John and Georgette holed up at a snow-bound cabin in Quebec, drinking and dancing to a French-accented folkie couple's version of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark," provides some authentic emotion.
But Miller can't help herself here, fussing too much over the details. Her characters are walking tropes: Maggie is manic and controlling of everyone; John is a success in academia but a frustrated novelist; Georgette is a brilliant, egomaniacal harpy who, in the end, can't function without some doofus to keep her company.
The twist ending is telegraphed from the first act, although Gerwig sells it beautifully. She's still an amazing physical comedian and a natural improvisor (just watch her wince after sipping a cup of coffee with butter in it). But by that final scene here, you want to take her aside and assure her that she's grown out of her "Frances Ha" eccentric-gal phase and that this Hollywood slow-track just isn't for her. Everyone involved in this project simply needs to move on.
A BIGGER SPLASH (A) - Do you have a specific warm memory of an old love linked to a song or an album, maybe a guilty pleasure, evoking an era, a slice of a decade or a moment in time? This film by Luca Guadagnino -- re-teaming with Tilda Swinton from 2009's "I Am Love" -- will jar that loose for you.
Luxuriating on the Italian island of Pantelleria, the director and his cast spin an intoxicating tale of a fading rock star, Marianne Lane (Swinton), seeking solace with her hunky boyfriend, Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), after throat surgery, only to have their exile interrupted by her sybaritic former lover/producer/guru, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), who has dragged with him a kittenish young woman, Penelope (Dakota Johnson), whom he pawns off as the long-lost daughter he reunited with a year or so ago. Marianne has had throat surgery, so she's mostly mute, a stark contrast to Harry's near-psychotic romp through their compound and the tourist town.
Table set, two tag teams stoked, let it rip. The cast sinks its teeth into the meaty roles. Swinton and Fiennes -- on a given day the two best actors of their generation -- have the rare ability to disappear into their characters so that their brilliance is never thrust in your face. Here, they bring wildly different energy levels to the proceedings. Swinton, shackled with nothing more than a whisper, mugs and mimes and speaks volumes with her wide eyes. She can elevate the simple stage direction of "Exit gargling" to Shakespearean levels. Fiennes is a Tasmanian devil here. Harry is fueled by drugs and alcohol, as well as the buzz of his vinyl-producing days and his eternal desire for Marianne. The two actors are giants elevating a smart script into memorable moviemaking.
The two main supporting actors raise their game, too. Schoenaerts ("Bullhead," "Rust and Bone") brings heft to the role of a brooding, loving hunk. Johnson, shockingly awful in the snippets of "Fifty Shades of Grey" that I could bear to watch, smolders as the coquettish Penelope, suggesting layers of intrigue beyond your average sex kitten. When her character turns on a dime at the movie's climax, you understand how sophisticated her handling of subtext was throughout the film.
As the tension among the four builds, Guadagnino slaloms along flawlessly. He revels in the lush life of the rich and famous -- an enormous hunk of cheese at an outdoor dining table speaks volumes through a fleeting sight gag. And he picks away at those layers of each character until he finally hits a nerve. When tragedy strikes and the police are called in, Guadagnino isn't afraid to go broad, bringing in Italian comic and satirist Corrado Guzzanti for some Columbo-like laugh-out-loud moments.
Juggling these genres, the director also captures the emotional tug of bygone romances or classic pop songs without tipping into nostalgia. Harry tells stories about the old analog days, working with the Rolling Stones among others, and then he drops a needle on a vinyl album and does a crazy, inspired dance to the Stones' R&B workout "Emotional Rescue." It's tough to stay in your seat during that scene. It's easy to get swept up in the giddiness of treasured memories, of the muscle memory that kicks in when an irresistible riff hits your ear.
If a movie like this doesn't make you fall in love -- whether it's with the past, present or future -- then you're just not a hopeless romantic. You may just be simply hopeless. "A Bigger Splash," cynical as it can be at times, urges you to rekindle a passion, any passion.
BONUS TRACK A clip from a dinner scene, which captures the quartet's interactions well:
St. Vincent sings an electro-funk version of "Emotional Rescue" over the closing credits:
And that led us to another classic covered by Ms. Clark. After a brief Hendrix-like tease, she shreds the Beatles' "Dig a Pony":
FIREWORKS WEDNESDAY (2006) (A-minus) - Asghar Farhadi is the one storyteller of the past decade who most perfectly renders the complexities and challenges of relationships.
We have tracked the Iranian director's filmography backward and forward, starting with "A Separation," 2011's troubling tale of a breakup, which topped our best-of list that year; 2013's "The Past," a slow burn of a family drama; and a latent release, 2009's mystery "About Elly," which was released last year. Distributors reach back to 2006 for the latest release, "Fireworks Wednesday," about a young woman who gets tangled in a couple's simmering domestic dispute.
We follow Roohi (Taraneh Aladoosti, the title character in "Elly"), planning a wedding with a fiance we see in the opening scene of the couple on the motorcycle, and earning some extra cash by taking a cleaning job at the condo of Morteza (Hamid Farokhnezhad) and his wife Mozhde (Hediyeh Tehrani). Morteza has noticeably put his hand through a window; it was presumably done during an argument with Mozhde over her suspicions that he's having an affair.
Roohi, with big eyes and a girl-next-door innocence, keeps her head down and tries not to get too deeply snarled in the domestic warfare. The dialogue is spare, and we're often required to read between the lines to catch all the subtext. In the outside world, Tehran is preparing for a new-year's celebration, a fireworks spectacular on the order of July Fourth. Firecrackers sound off constantly throughout the film; the relentless popping provides an unsettling soundtrack.
Roohi decides to get her eyebrows styled (to surprise the fiance), so she visits the beautician in the couple's condo building. The woman happens to be the prime suspect in Morteza's infidelity. Is he a dog, or is Mozhde imagining things? Will the big fireworks finale be figurative or merely literal?
This all certainly gives Roohi a sobering lesson in the pitfalls of marriage. Aladoosti and the striking Tehrani sizzle in their scenes together. Farokhnezhad broods and stomps around like a caged lion in his messy abode.
In retrospect, this is a fitting prequel to and set-up for the endgame of "A Separation." It is subtle, sophisticated cinema from a filmmaker who knows his way around the battle of the sexes.
BONUS TRACK We're reminded of Elvis Costello's '80s track that could have easily been chosen to play over the credits, "Indoor Fireworks":
Country traditionalist Dale Watson raised the roof at Low Spirits on Thursday night. He channeled just about every revered legend, from Nashville's golden era to Austin's outlaw heyday, at times blurring the line between homage and parody.
From George Jones-style drinking/forgetting songs to truck-driving tunes, Watson and his Lone Stars (drums, upright bass, pedal steel) displayed an epic command of the "Ameripolitan" songbook, riffling through rockabilly, swing, honky-tonk and outlaw with a nod and a swagger. He weaved originals into his set along with his finely crafted, if occasionally cribbed, originals.
If anyone deserves to carry the torch, it's Dale Watson. The man's got the pompadour -- a cross between Jones and Charlie Rich -- and the pipes. When he walked out on stage, the sound system was still blaring Merle Haggard's "Ramblin' Fever," and so, what the heck, he struck up the band in a version of it. It was a flash of his improv skills and set the tone for a night filled with tributes.
One of Watson's catchier tunes is a shuffle called "My Baby Makes Me Gravy":
A little grease, a little flour
Gives that woman a lot of power
Watson has a well-honed stage presence. (He has a running gag of fake commercials for Lone Star Beer, cleverly parodying the old "When You Say Bud" spots.) And he's charming and glib. But some songs seemed to be haphazardly crafted, word stews from a Magnetic Poetry set of country classics: "Turn on the Jukebox, Turn Off Her Memory"; "Whiskey or God"; "Tequila and Teardrops"; "Mamas Don't Let Your Cowboys Grow Up to Be Babies."
Watson is obsessed with authenticity, repeatedly wailing about Nashville's pop factory and the likes of Blake Shelton and Taylor Swift. He dismissed the mainstream scene with the song that spits, "That's country, my ass":
But it's just a little ironic that Watson wallows so deeply in tradition that his own identity is swallowed up by those of his idols. He made multiple references to the recently departed George Jones (a recent tribute is called "Jonesin' for Jones"), and by the end of the show he finished a song by doing a straight-up impersonation of the man. (It was a damn good one at that.) His originals borrow hooks and riffs, and you hear echoes of Waylon Jennings or the rambling guitar line of "Gentle on My Mind." It's been only two months since the death of Merle Haggard, so Watson
played a trio of the man's hits in the middle of his set. And during an
encore, he knocked out a cover of a song his voice was tailored for, our favorite "Silver Wings." From beginning to end, that's a lot of Merle.
Watson's devotion to a bygone outlaw movement waters down his own brand. But he's a diehard flying the flag down in Austin, and he's a hell of an entertainer and guitar slinger. Perhaps his biggest hit and bounciest hooks features a killer couplet: "I lie when I drink / And I drink a lot." And it closes the deal with a line that Willie or Merle could have penned: "I only drink when I'm missing you."
Watson finished up with a rollicking version of the Jerry Reed classic "Eastbound and Down." Here's Reed's own hoedown dust-up that's finger-pickin' good, from an old "Austin City Limits":
A pair of duds at the matinee box office this past weekend: THE LOBSTER (C) - The Greek director of the offbeat gems "Dogtooth" and "Alps" returns with his first feature in four years and his first one in English, and it's a disappointing slog.
Here's the handy plot summary from IMDb: "In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The
City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic
partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts and sent off
into The Woods."
An impressive mostly U.K. cast seems to have missed something in the translation from Greek in a script by director Yorgos Lanthimos and his regular collaborator Efthymis Filippou. Colin Farrell plays David, a paunchy shlub who hopes to seek his mate, although he has his animal picked out in case he strikes out: a lobster (mainly because he has experience as a swimmer and lobsters live long, fertile lives). He arrives with his brother, who is now a dog -- most people, we are told, are not creative with their choices, which is why there are so many dogs and cats around.
The key to finding a mate is to have something ordinary in common with a member of the opposite sex. One man (Ben Whishaw) gives himself violent nosebleeds in order to get paired up with a young woman who is prone to nosebleeds. New couples are put through some paces -- some are given children to help cut down on the bickering and the tedium -- while those left behind with the clock ticking grow either desperate or resigned to their inevitable transition to a new species.
Among the quirky cast of characters is Robert (John C. Reilly), who has a lisp, and has little hope of finding a woman with a similar speech impediment. He is mocked for choosing to be an animal that talks, a parrot. TV veteran Olivia Colman has a blast as the all-powerful hotel manager. Rachel Weisz is fine as a short-sighted woman, which would make her a match for Farrell's bespectacled David. Lea Seydoux smolders as the leader of an outlaw group of single people who survive out in the woods.
The first half is charming as it sets up its offbeat premise. In this bizarro world the characters speak in monotone and deliver delightfully deadpan lines. But that droning rhythm soon wears thin, and the second half -- which takes place mainly in the forest -- turns convoluted, and any broad message that Lanthimos is trying to make about the hell of either marriage or singlehood gets buried in plot twists.
His previous films -- "Alps" (about a group of people whose jobs are to impersonate the recently deceased in order to help clients grieve) and "Dogtooth" (about parents raising their kids like wolves) -- both had challenging premises and dreadfully dry humor, but they clocked in at 93 minutes. Here, Lanthimos has enough story for half that running time, yet he drags it out to two hours -- and that final half hour is an endurance test.
The cast is game, and they are to be applauded for taking a chance on an emerging alternative voice in cinema. Unfortunately, the material just doesn't hold up.
DREAM ON (C-minus) - John Fugelsang cut his teeth back in the day as a fluff host on VH-1 and "America's Funniest Home Videos." These days he styles himself as a political satirist, a modern Will Rogers, if you will. He's not.
His game has always ranked as tepid, and his earnest, nice-guy shtick can't carry this documentary about the elusiveness of the American dream. Fugelsang hits the road in the eastern half of the U.S. as he retraces the trail blazed by Alexis de Tocqueville nearly two centuries ago as he researched his landmark study "Democracy in America." It's a lame gimmick, and nothing our host digs up is as remotely interesting as that Frenchman's take on our way of life.
Fugelsang's futility is especially dispiriting when compared to two recent films we've seen: "Detroit: Wild City," a Frenchman's rumination of that once thriving city, and the ultimate assessment of the "American Dream" -- the recent polemic from Noam Chomsky release earlier this year, "Requiem for the American Dream." This limp documentary pays lip service to weighty topics, and it treads ground that's been beaten raw long ago.
And Fugelsang's obsequious personality wears thin almost immediately. The film sprinkles in snippets of his toothless standup act -- suitable for your mom's friends -- at some vanilla comedy club, looking almost like a parody of an early "Seinfeld" episode. Fugelsang is fatally retro, from his preppy look to a demeanor that recalls the family-friendly version of Bob Saget, his popular predecessor on "AFHV." Except less edgy. And those outfits date him even more.
The folks he interviews on the road are mostly forgettable, and the production values are cheap and uninspired. Fugelsang can be occasionally funny on the morning radio show with Stephanie Miller. But this movie is a bad idea poorly executed.
BONUS TRACK Our title track, from Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet:
February 25, 1964, Cassius Clay defeats Sonny Liston:
I've spent my life avoiding the temptation of idolizing athletes, rock stars and movie stars, or anyone else, for that matter. But I had one weakness: Muhammad Ali. He was a true giant of the 20th century, a man who transcended sports, who dwarfed anything else captured by the media, who personified grace and courage, brutality and poetry.
It's a challenge to imagine a world without him, not unlike the shocking death of John Lennon in December 1980, a few days before my 18th birthday. It's now a profoundly altered world that I live in. I should be in better shape to handle this one.
About five years ago I was on an annual getaway in Arizona, taking in some spring training baseball. I want to say it was the Dodgers playing the Royals. It was an ordinary outing. The game dragged on. At some point, between innings, a buzz started to sweep through the crowd. We couldn't tell what the fuss was. And then it became apparent. I don't remember there being an announcement, but there might have been. Way down on the field, a bullpen car was making its way up the third-base/left-field line. Inside was Muhammad Ali. The crowd didn't cheer so much as chatter in awe. I couldn't see his face, don't even remember a wave, but I felt a profound sense of child-like wonder whoosh through my body. I gasped like a teenage girl watching the Taylor Swift take the stage. I sensed a unity with every other person in that stadium, a unanimous acknowledgment that we were being blessed by the mere presence of an other-worldly prince of peace.
It was a fleeting moment. I've never been able to re-create the feeling.
We have reviewed two documentaries about Ali in our short time in this spot. I previously told a version of that spring-training story and admitted that "I seem to never get enough of documentaries about" the man. The most recent one, "I Am Ali," is "an incredibly intimate portrait of the boxing legend," sifting through audio tapes of phone calls to his children and putting forth revealing interviews with wives, rivals, insiders. The other, from two years ago, is "The Trials of Muhammad Ali," focusing on Ali's conversion to Islam and his refusal to serve in Vietnam, as a conscientious objector.
Of course, the most memorable documentary is "When We Were Kings" (from the director of "Trials"), which chronicles the trip to Zaire by Ali and George Foreman and their entourages for their Rumble in the Jungle, one of the greatest fights ever. Watching the bout again last night, I was reminded that it wasn't just a cheap rope-a-dope exhibition by Ali. Rather, he came out in the first round firing combinations and stunning Foreman, who at the time was a veritable Hercules who had demolished Joe Frazier and Ken Norton and was expected to dismantle the 32-year-old ex-champ. As I watched the fateful 8th round tick down, my heart raced with anticipation of the final furious explosion from Ali, culminating in the sharp right that sent Foreman windmilling to the canvas, as if Ali had toppled a building with his fists; it was an upset as improbable as Buster Douglas' KO of the super-human Mike Tyson in 1990.
"Kings" sweats in the African heat, celebrating '70s black culture with the likes of James Brown and B.B. King. The exploration of ethnic heritage, with prominent black Americans connecting with their roots, is genuinely moving. For Ali, it seemed like vindication of his embrace of the Nation of Islam and his devotion to the separatist ideology of Elijah Muhammad. I was too young to be aware of his 1964 conversion to Islam and the renunciation of his slave name -- and the resulting cultural upheaval that he foisted on society in that turbulent decade. The world had never seen anything like him, and he refused to be silenced by the white media and power structure. When he resisted going to Vietnam ("No Viet Cong ever called me nigger") it thrust him into the political maelstrom and in sync with the Rev. Martin Luther King, who would speak out forcefully against the war one year before his assassination.
Ali spent his prime years as an athlete exiled from his sport and touring college campuses, honing his rhetoric, learning how to articulate his worldview. MSNBC aired "When We Were Kings" tonight, and the channel's coverage has been thorough all weekend. I saw a clip of Ali speaking at Harvard in 1975, a graduation speech that is difficult to track down online. A memorable line was a plea for selflessness over selfishness. Another reminder of how to be in the world.
Muhammad Ali was recognized (and idolized) in every corner of the globe, and he was as powerful a cultural force as any athlete or politician of the 20th century. He was Jackie Robinson, MLK and Michael Jordan rolled into one. In purely physical terms, he was the greatest boxer of any era. The combination of his incessant cockiness and his balletic ring skills made me swoon as an adolescent, just like it aggravated my angry father. Ah, anybody could fight that well with that reach of his, my dad would scoff. Rocky Marciano -- now there was a heavyweight. A paisan. Undefeated. He would have burrowed inside on Ali and destroyed him! Tell that to George Foreman, dad. To Sonny Liston. Joe Frazier.
Though I didn't realize it until well into adulthood, I have absorbed important life lessons from Muhammad Ali -- about race, about the idea of God, about social justice, about beauty and courage. My father was a bitter victim of the civil-rights and anti-war movements; I managed to escape his old-world vortex somehow, stumbling on occasional glimpses of what I assume to be enlightenment. My dad, who died 25 years ago, taught me many things. But so did Ali. He shook up my world.
Back to that day in Arizona. I think what was most important was the warm contentment I experienced, serenity amid a crowd of strangers. Ali's random appearance assured me that he was still in the world. After his death on June 3, 2016, I no longer have that assurance, that comfort of knowing he's somewhere in the ballpark, his mere presence magically merging thousands of souls into one soothing hum.
BONUS TRACK Ali, the draft resister. "My conscience won't let me go shoot ... some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America." And, rapid-fire, to a white student: "You won't even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs and you want me to go somewhere and fight but you won't even stand up for me here at home."
END CREDITS The profoundly moving tribute to the legend (myth?) of Cassius Clay renouncing the racism of the South that he returned to from the Rome Olympics in 1960 by tossing his gold medal into the Ohio River. It's the deeply moving "Louisville Lip" from Catherine Irwin and Janet Bean of the alt-country band Freakwater:
"Whip the world, whip this town
Whip it into the river and watch it go down
Whip the world, your lashing tongue
Big man crying like babies from where the bee stung."
THE NICE GUYS (B-minus) - Give it up for Ryan Gosling, who reaches deep down here for seriously childish comedy chops, and carries this spoofy crime noir that has no right to be as entertaining as it is.
Gosling plays hard-luck private detective Holland March, who, through a twist of fate (and of an arm) teams up with bruiser Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) to unravel the mystery of the apparent death of porn star Misty Mountains, whose car spectacularly plunges off the Hollywood Hills, through the house of an adolescent boy, at the moment he's gawking at her in one of his dad's skin magazines, and out the back end of the house. The pair dodge various thugs as they hunt for another young woman caught up in the porn industry, Amelia (Margaret Qualley from HBO's "The Leftovers"), a slippery target who somehow stays a step ahead of the men.
The fumbling but crafty duo are assisted by March's precocious daughter, Holly (the dynamic Australian teen Angourie Rice), who likes to defy her father's orders and insert herself into dangerous situations. Rice is a gem here, tossing out lines like a teen Jodie Foster and serving as foil to the misbehaving adults.
The setting is Los Angeles in 1977, and the dumpy pre-digital era is rendered here in funky hairstyles, colorful clothing and plentiful drugs. The soundtrack pulses with disco fluff and classic dusties; the credits start with "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" and end with Al Green's "Love and Happiness." A wild house party imagines what "Mad Men" would have descended to if it had lasted a few more seasons.
"The Nice Guys" emanates from the pulp factory of writer/director Shane Black, who cut his teeth with the script for "Lethal Weapon" and still churns out action fare like "Iron Man 3," but who, for our purposes here, was the mastermind behind 2005's breathtaking true-crime romp "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" with Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. "The Nice Guys" employs the same kinetic philosophy of a plot that's impossible to follow but is stuffed with so much energy and wit that the viewer has no choice but to give in (provided you don't give up after 20 minutes).
Gosling has endless fun with his somewhat dimwitted but sly private eye who is more than a little bit of a coward. March has a meet-brute with Healy, and they slip easily into the buddy-cop banter that Black made an instant cliche with Danny Glover and Mel Gibson a generation ago. Crowe has never really impressed us. Even in his best roles -- "L.A. Confidential" and "American Gangster" -- he doesn't exactly light up the screen like Pacino or brood like Brando. Here, he's serviceable if unspectacular, and he's generous with Gosling, whose lines are laugh-out-loud funny and whose physical work is impressive. (Speaking of "L.A. Confidential," a meticulously preserved Kim Basinger shows up here in a throwaway role as a corrupt Justice Department official.)
Black loads this up with too many plot twists and way too much graphic, disturbing violence, and it's about 15 minutes too long. But it's often a riot. The mismatched trio of heroes are charming. This is what 2004's remake of "Starsky and Hutch" should have been -- a trippy, sleazy homage to a gloomy genre. It's a lot of fun.
