What the hell happened to me? – 56 Up ****

September 13, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally published on Digby’s Hullabaloo on February 2, 2013)

Have you ever stumbled across one of your own childhood photos and mused, “How could this grinning idiot have not seen a future in computer science?” Or, “Pardon me, but…have we met?” (“If I’d only known then what I know now…”).

The tendency many of us have to brood about a life tragically misspent with each successive birthday is bad enough…but imagine doing it on national TV, whilst thousands of voyeuristic strangers look on, parsing your every thought and action. If that reminds you of The Truman Show, you’re not far off the mark.

In 1964, a UK television film series-cum-social experiment kicked off with Paul Almond’s 7 Up, a documentary profiling fourteen 7 year-old kids from varied socioeconomic backgrounds, sharing their dreams and aspirations. 7 years later the same subjects appeared in 7 Plus Seven, with Michael Apted taking over directing. Seven year updates continued with 21 Up, 28 Up, 35 Up, 42 Up and 49 Up.

Which brings us to Apted’s latest chapter, 56 Up; like its predecessors, it has been released to theaters. First, it’s nice to see that everyone is still above ground (currently being 56 and ¾ myself, I find that somehow…reassuring). This is not to say that the participants haven’t been put through life’s wringer in one way or another. Health issues, multiple marriages and financial problems abound. Some are doing better than 7 years ago, some worse; most maintain the status quo. Some are happy, some not so much.

The most fascinating character continues to be Liverpool native Neil Hughes, who is like a real life version of Jean Valjean from Les Miserables. A charming and funny little kid in 7 Up, he was a homeless, mentally troubled university dropout by 21 Up. Over the next two installments, he remained directionless and homeless, moving first to Scotland, then to the Shetlands. By 42 Up, however, he had discovered a knack for politics, in which he remains ensconced.

In this age of dime-a-dozen reality TV shows and smart phone attention spans, the idea of a filmed series where the audience waits seven years between “episodes” may seem trite; perhaps downright anachronistic. But if you think about it for 10 seconds, I suspect that sitting down to watch any number of episodes of, let’s say, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, over any number of years, would not likely provide you with much keen insight into the human condition (it’s more likely a roomful of monkeys with typewriters could eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare…and in less time).

At least here, there were/are noble intentions; and you certainly cannot say that Apted, having devoted 40 years of his life to the project doesn’t have “the vision thing”. Not all participants share in the altruism; in 56 Up some interviewees continue to badger the director to hang it up and be done with it. Granted, 10 to 15 minutes of screen time, every 7 years cannot give you the whole picture of someone’s life, and that’s one of the primary issues in question.

As far as the “social experiment” aspect of the project is concerned, that has been off the table for some time now, especially when you consider that the participants have become celebrities in the U.K. So it appears that over the years, the “experiment” has become less Margaret Mead and more Andy Warhol.

Indeed, one gentleman, who has declined to participate since his strident anti-Thatcher rants in 28 Up made him a pariah in the British press and led to his resignation as a teacher, makes no effort to sugarcoat his cynicism. “I’ve only agreed to come back” he tells Apted, “…because I want to promote my band.”

Still, for the most part, everyone is game. There’s a palpable sense of poignancy this time , since Apted has amassed a sizable archive of clips for each interviewee, from all periods of their lives (he makes good use of the flashbacks and flash-forwarding).

The lives depicted here may not be glamorous or exciting, but most people’s lives aren’t, are they? And as cliché as this sounds, it all seems to boil down to that most basic of human needs: to love or be loved. You know what? I’ll bet that’s what was making me smile in my childhood photo.

Documentary, Show Biz

Now say something funny: When Comedy Went to School (**1/2) & A top 5 list

September 7, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally published on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 24, 2013)

Regular readers will likely roll their eyes if I kick off yet one more post with “Back in my stand up days…” So anyway, back in my stand up days, I developed a “hook” for the act based on being a Jew from Alaska. “Feast your eyes,” I would tell the stone-faced crowd by way of introduction, “You’re looking at an actual Jew from Alaska. We’re a rarity. We call ourselves ‘Jewskimos’.” Sporadic chuckles. Wait a beat. “God’s Frozen People.” HUGE laughs (usually). Okay, you’ve got ‘em. Don’t lose momentum. “In fact…and I have to say I don’t share this with every audience,” I would confide, “My Jewskimo name is ‘Kvetches With Wolves’. That was given to me by my rabbi…Rabbi Iceberg.” Guffaws, light applause. If I didn’t have them by then, I knew I was fucked.

I never stopped to consider why I made a conscious decision to play up my “Jewishness” to milk laughs/approval from roomfuls of drunken strangers. After all, my father is a farm boy from rural Ohio, and my mother is a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, so technically speaking, I’m not 100 per cent Kosher…I could swing either way. Why not play up my WASP “half”? Why did I eschew the straw hat for the yarmulke? Is it the Jewish DNA that makes me “ha-ha” funny?

It so happens that there is a new documentary called When Comedy Went to School, in which co-directors Ron Frank and Mevlut Akaaya tackle the age-old question: Why are there so many Jewish comedians? Apparently, back in 1970, a survey found that while Jews only comprised 3% of the total U.S. population, they accounted for 80% of the professional comics working at the time. Who better to ask than some Jewish comedians? Robert Klein narrates, providing some historical context (my Jewish grandfather emigrated from Russia to escape the pogroms, so I wasn’t shocked by the filmmaker’s revelation that vaudeville sprang from the shtetls of Eastern Europe).

Unfortunately, after a perfunctory nod to Vaudeville, Frank and Akaaya kind of drop the ball as per any further parsing of the symbiotic evolution of the Jewish-American experience with the development of modern comedy, instead leaning on the old shtick of parading veteran Borscht Belt comics like Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Jerry Stiller, Mort Sahl and Jackie Mason in front of the cameras to swap war stories about the halcyon days of the Catskill resorts (which is where, the filmmakers posit, comedy “went to school”).

There is some fun vintage performance footage (Totie Fields! Buddy Hackett!), and an overall genial tone to the affair that makes it hard not to like on a casual level, but the film is ultimately a somewhat superficial affair (and c’mon guys…a slow motion montage of performers edited in sync to Judy Collins’ rendition of ”Send in the Clowns”…again?). It’s very similar in structure and tone to the 2009 PBS mini-series Make ‘em Laugh: The Funny Business of America; and at a short 76 minutes, it feels destined for television broadcast.

OK, so that didn’t work for me, what to watch this weekend? Keeping with the theme, I thought I’d offer my “Top 5” picks for the best films about the business of funny. Enjoy!

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work-“Do you want to know what ‘fear’ looks like?” exclaims Joan Rivers, pointing to a blank page in her weekly planner, “that is what ‘fear’ looks like.” Later, she laments “This (show) business is all about rejection.” Any aspiring stand-ups out there need to heed those words of wisdom (and I will back her up on this). Fear and rejection-that’s the reality of stand-up comedy. One could also take away much inspiration from Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg’s engaging “one year in the life” portrait of the plucky, riotously profane 75 year-old, as she rushes from nightclub and casino gigs to TV tapings, taking meetings and sweating over the writing and production of her one-woman stage play. The film also reviews her roller coaster career, from Borscht Belt beginnings to anointment (then blackballing) by Johnny Carson, then back up to middling. What emerges is a portrait of a performer who is still working her ass off, putting people 1/3 her age to shame with her fierce drive to succeed.

The King of Comedy– Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) is an urbane, intensely private man by day, and a wildly successful TV talk show host by night. Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) is a boorish, pushy autograph hound by day and an aspiring stand-up comic by night (in his mother’s basement). Rupert dreams of getting his big “break” on Jerry’s show. When his demo tape fails to land him an audition, an increasingly delusional Rupert attempts to ingratiate himself by stalking his idol. This does not set well, leaving the desperately fame-hungry Rupert only one option: kidnap Jerry and demand a spot on his show as ransom. The outstanding direction from Martin Scorsese, sharp screenplay by Paul D. Zimmerman, and top-notch performances bolster a dark satire about the ups and downs of the show-biz ladder (as well as our obsession with celebrity culture).

Lenny– Directed by Bob Fosse, adapted by Julian Barry from his own play and shot in gorgeous B&W by DP Bruce Surtees, this 1974 biopic is an idiosyncratic yet ultimately illuminating look at the life and legacy of groundbreaking “dirty” comic Lenny Bruce, brilliantly portrayed by Dustin Hoffman. Don’t expect a hagiography; Fosse is not shy about taking side trips from the faux-documentary framework to revel in the seedier elements of Bruce’s personal life, especially his heroin addiction and dysfunctional marriage to a stripper (Valerie Perrine, in a heartbreaking performance that earned her a Best Actress win at Cannes). Hoffman’s transformation from the fresh-faced comic genius killing packed houses every night to the ranting, puffy-faced junkie parsing transcripts of his obscenity trials to a handful of puzzled drunks is nothing short of extraordinary.

Mickey One– Warren Beatty is a comic who is on the run from the mob. The reasons are never made clear, but one thing is for certain: the viewer will find him or herself becoming as unsettled as the twitchy, paranoid protagonist. It’s a Kafkaesque nightmare, with echoes of Godard’s Breathless. A true rarity-an American art film, photographed in expressive, moody chiaroscuro by DP Ghislain Cloquet (who also did the cinematography for Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar and Woody Allen’s Love and Death). Directed by Arthur Penn, who also teamed up with Beatty for Bonnie and Clyde.

The Tall Guy– Whether it slipped under the public’s radar or was poorly marketed is up for debate, but this underrated gem (directed by actor-comedian Mel Smith) is the stuff cult films are made of. Jeff Goldblum is an American actor working on the London stage, who is love struck by a nurse (Emma Thompson). Rowan Atkinson is a hoot as Goldblum’s employer, a stage comic beloved by his audience but known as a backstage terror to fellow cast members and crew. The most hilariously choreographed lovemaking scene ever put on film is worth the price of admission, but a stage musical version of The Elephant Man (skewering Andrew Lloyd Webber) had me rolling. Richard Curtis’ script is a schizoid mesh of high-brow and low-brow comedy that shouldn’t work…but somehow it does.

Drama

In the pines: Therese *1/2

September 6, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 7, 2013)

First comes love, and then comes marriage. Or does it always necessarily occur in that order? For example, according to Wikipedia, a “marriage of convenience” is defined to be

…contracted for reasons other than the reasons of relationship, family or love…such a marriage is orchestrated for personal gain or some other sort of strategic purpose.

“I’m marrying you for your pines…I’m not ashamed of that…you love my pines, too. Only natural.” That’s our eponymous Therese (Audrey Tautou) pitching woo to her fiancé, Bernard (Gilles Lellouche).

Not the most romantic basis for a pending marriage, but apparently it was the neighborly thing to do for those living on adjoining estates in the bucolic pinewoods of southwest France in 1928. “So many ideas in your head,” Bernard teases, “…like everyone, a few wrong ideas.” To which she enigmatically retorts, “It’s up to you to destroy them.” Well, you know what they say…love is a many-splintered thing.

Thus Therese embarks (no pun intended) on a new life, replete with those free-spirited “ideas” in her head. If the prospect of a provincial marriage to a narcissistic dullard who cares more about preserving family cachet than attending to his wife’s happiness or respecting her opinions sounds depressing, you would be correct.

One of the “ideas” that married life cannot “destroy” concerns Therese’s feelings toward sister-in-law Anne (Anais Demoustier), with whom she has been friends since childhood (the prologue offers a montage of idyllic summers suggesting Therese may harbor unrequited feelings for Anne).

This could explain why Therese sabotages Anne’s passion for a hunky suitor and then begins her own downward slide into a permanent sulk over her unsatisfying marriage. Eventually, she can only see one way out. Certain plot elements recall Hitchcock’s Rebecca, yet the film conveys no sense of Hitchockian suspense.

Therese is the final work by director Claude Miller (The Accompanist, Alias Betty), who died in April of 2012 at age 70. Miller co-adapted with Natalie Carter from Francois Mauriac’s 1927 novel, Therese Desqueyroux (previously filmed by Georges Franju in 1962). The novel was inspired in part by the trial of one Madame Canaby, who was tried in Bordeaux back in 1906 for attempting to poison her husband (she was acquitted, but convicted on a lesser charge of forging prescriptions).

The romanticist in me desperately wishes I could pronounce the director’s swan song as a fine piece of work, but unfortunately this film is as dull and lifeless as Therese and Bernard’s doomed marriage. The locale is lovely, the cast gives it their best shot, but the film is undermined by one too many dangling narrative threads…leaving the viewer unable to see the forest for the trees.

Big Money, Drama, Family Issues

Our vines have sour grapes: You Will Be My Son **

September 6, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 21, 2013)

You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. C’est le vie. That’s the gist of Gilles Legrand’s You Will Be My Son, an oft-told story of a dysfunctional family; in this case a vat of seething resentment fermenting in the confines of a Bordeaux region heirloom vineyard. I may not know a bottle of Batard Montrachet 1990 magnum from a boxed mountain Chablis in a taste test, but I do know my whines, and this vintage-style melodrama has a fine woodsy bouquet of neuroses; albeit with a rather predictable finish.

The relationship under examination is between father and son. Paul (Niels Arestrup) is a successful winemaker and owner of an estate valued at 30 million Euros. His son Martin (Larant Deustch) lives on the estate with wife Alice (Anne Marivin) and helps with office duties. Martin yearns to be given more responsibilities that will groom him for taking over the mantle , but the demanding and domineering Paul (a classic narcissistic personality) views Martin as the not-so heir apparent to the family business. Paul mocks his son when Martin reminds him about his college degree in wine making, telling him you must “have the palate” for it; he can only learn by doing.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to assess that Paul’s daily nitpicking is taking a psychic toll on Martin (“Do something about those nails,” Paul berates him at one point, grabbing his hand, “It’s unbecoming for a man.”). While Martin continues to sublimate his growing anger at his father (much to his wife’s chagrin), all those poisons that lurk in the mud are about to hatch out after Paul’s longtime family friend/estate manager Francois (Patrick Chesnais) reveals that has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

When Francois’ son Philippe (Nicolas Bridet) who has a stateside gig as “Coppola’s chief winemaker” comes home to spend time with his dying father, Paul’s mood palpably brightens. It turns out that Philippe, with his wine making talents, business savvy and personal charm, has all the requisite attributes of Paul’s idealized heir. Paul’s wishful thinking moves beyond the academic when he consults with his lawyer about the plausibility of adopting Philippe as his son. To Paul’s surprise and delight, it turns out to be doable (“It’s a wonder of our civil codes,” his lawyer says, glibly adding: “It’s led to many marvelous family feuds.”)

While it takes a while for the narrative to catch fire (the script, co-written by the director with Delphine de Vigan and Laure Gasparotto could have benefited from tightening), I was pulled in enough to develop a morbid curiosity as to which character was going to take the most shrapnel when this emotional powder keg inevitably made its earth-shattering ka-boom. I should warn you that none of the players in this soap opera are particularly likable, so it could be an uphill battle all the way for some viewers. Like some wines, you could store this one in the cellar to uncork when the mood dictates.

Behind the Music, Documentary, Rock 'n' Roll

Places she remembers: Good ‘ol Freda ***

September 6, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 21, 2013)

There hasn’t exactly been a dearth of documentaries over the years delving into the public and private lives of John, Paul, George and Ringo, nor could I say with a straight face that there has been a severe lack of painstakingly annotated critical analysis regarding their music, album by album, song by song, lyric by lyric…and as an unapologetic Beatle freak, God (as a thing or whatever it is) knows that I’ve seen ’em all. Filmmakers have taken every tack, from cheap, breathless tell-all sensationalism to sober, chin-stroking dissertation about the Mixolydian constructs of “Norwegian Wood”. However, jaded as I am, I’ve never seen a Beatles doc as touching, unpretentious and utterly charming as Ryan White’s interestingly entitled Good Ol’ Freda.

The unlikely star of this study is an unassuming, affable sixty-something Liverpudlian named Freda Kelly. At the tender age of 17, she was hired by manager Brian Epstein to do odd jobs around the office while he focused on the fledgling career of his young proteges. A year or so later, she became the chief overseer for the band’s fan club, embarking on what was to turn into an amazing 11 year career as (for wont of a better job description) the Beatles’ “personal secretary”, from Cavern Club days to the dissolution of the band.

What makes Freda unique among the Beatles’ inner circle (aside that she remains a virtual unknown to the public at large) is her stalwart loyalty to this day in protecting the privacy of her employers; she’s never written a “tell-all” book, nor cashed in on her association with the most famous musical act of all time in any shape or form.

Granted, after appearing in this film, she won’t be unknown, but she makes it clear this is her finally caving in to say her piece (since we’re all so damn nosy and insistent), then she’ll be done with it. And she does tell some tales; although none of them are “out of school”, as they say. That’s okay, because she is so effervescent and down-to-earth that watching the film is like having Freda over for tea to peruse scrapbooks and enjoy a chat about times that were at once innocent, hopeful and imbued with the fleeting exuberance of youth. You could do worse with 90 minutes of your time.

Romantic Comedy, Social Satire

The man show: Don Jon **1/2

September 6, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 28, 2013)

In her review of the 1966 film Alfie, in which Michael Caine stars as a self-styled “Cockney Don Juan” who confides his chauvinistic tenets on relationships to the viewer, the late Pauline Kael wrote that screenwriter Bill Naughton’s dialogue “…keeps the viewer absorbed in Alfie, the cold-hearted sexual hotshot, and his self-exculpatory line of reasoning.” If you fast forward the time line from swinging 60s London to the present-day Jersey shore, trading a double-breasted suit for a wife-beater, this could double as a description of the eponymous character in Don Jon, who explains his philosophy of life thusly:

There’s only a few things I really care about in life. My body. My pad. My ride. My family. My church. My boys. My girls. My porn.

“Self exculpatory” is an understatement. Especially once Jon (played with “fuhgettaboutit” swagger by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who also wrote and directed) really gets cooking on a breathless jag describing his love affair with internet porn. Not that he has any trouble with the ladies, mind you (his nickname stems from a seemingly effortless ability to bed a different woman every weekend, much to the wonderment and admiration of his “boys”).

This may be moot to interject, but our hero may be exhibiting classic signs of sex addiction. I’m not judging; I’m just sayin’.

Anyway, back to the porn. The thing is, as much as he does love the ladies, it seems that sex with a partner somehow never measures up to the online experience; he can’t “lose himself” in the moment in quite the same way. Again, I risk belaboring the obvious: Is it possible that the porn addiction has given ‘Don’ J some unrealistic expectations about actual adult relationships?

Enter Barbara (Scarlett Johansson) a knockout beauty who responds to Jon’s time-tested moves…but only up to a point. She is nobody’s one-night stand; she wants to be wooed. At first, Jon responds like the proverbial deer in the headlights. This could require radical concessions, like maybe (gulp) meeting for lunch or (worse case) coffee first. What is this strange new feeling? Could it be this “love” of which people speak?

Just as Jon begins to sense the paradigm shift, he meets another (more mature) woman (Julianne Moore, acting circles around everyone else) who seems to be genuinely interested in him as a person (he has no idea what to make of that). Jon’s amusing Sunday confessions begin to expand beyond his typical “Bless me, Father, I masturbated 34 times this week.”

Gordon-Levitt has poured admirable effort into his directing debut, but in his over-eagerness to prove himself, he may have put a few too many eggs in the basket. On the plus side, he’s assembled a great cast. In fact, some of the supporting players threaten to walk away with the film; particularly a surprisingly effective Tony Danza (yes, that Tony Danza) as Jon’s father, telegraphing (with expert comic timing) how the apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree.

Brie Larson (as Jon’s sullen sister) steals every scene she’s in-no small feat considering that she spends most of the film staring at her cell phone, until deciding to impart a few words of wisdom toward the end (it’s that whole Silent Bob thing). On the down side, there are jarring tonal shifts that leave you scratching your head as to what Gordon-Levitt is trying to say at times with this (sort of) morality play/social satire hybrid. Still, I was entertained. I laughed, and almost cried (just don’t tell my boys).

Action, Drama, Sports

Mano a mano: Rush ***

September 6, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 28, 2013)

I’ll admit up front that I don’t know from the sport of Formula One racing. In fact, I’ve never held any particular fascination for loud, fast cars (or any kind of sports, for that matter). If that makes me less than a manly man, well, I’ll just have to live with that fact.

However, I am fascinated by other people’s fascination with competitive sport; after all, (paraphrasing one of my favorite lines from Harold and Maude) they’re my species. There’s certainly an impressive amount of time, effort and money poured into this peculiarly human compulsion to be the “champion” or securing the best seats for cheering one on; even if in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t mean shit to a tree.

So what is it that motivates a person to squeeze into the cockpit of what essentially amounts to an incendiary bomb on wheels to go screaming around tight curves and through mountain tunnels at speeds up to 350mph? Well, aside from the intense adrenaline rush, the international fame and glory, the piles of dough and the unlimited sex (alright…perhaps I haven’t completely thought this through).

Apparently, back in the 70s, there was a “merciless” mano a mano sports rivalry (even sexier than the one betwixt Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky?!) involving a pair of European F1 drivers. Now, I’m taking director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan’s word for it, because prior to watching the Frost/Nixon team’s latest fact-based drama Rush, I had never heard of Austrian race driver Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) or his professional nemesis James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) who hailed from the UK. The two were a classic “oil and water” mix. Hunt was the reckless rock star type, reveling in all the hedonistic excess at his disposal. Lauda was decidedly more reserved and methodical, in both his professional and personal life.

The one thing that these two men did share in common was their lofty opinions of themselves. The precise origins of the rivalry are not made 100% clear; so I assume it’s your typical scenario of two males with high-T levels jockeying for the alpha position (don’t the sports announcers routinely refer to the drivers whizzing around the racetrack en masse as the ‘pack’? “He’s pulling ahead of the pack!”

As one might expect, there’s a lot of ear-plug inducing scenes involving loud cars navigating dangerously narrow roads at suicidal rates of speed, as the two rivals chase each other on assorted Grand Prix courses all around Europe and Asia.

What you might not expect, however, is the compelling dual character study that lies at the heart of the film. The “rivalry” reveals itself to be more of a relationship borne of a begrudging mutual respect; taking on an even more interesting dynamic following Lauda’s near-death experience in a horrific fiery crash on the deadly Nurburgring circuit in 1976.

Bruhl and Hemsworth both give commendable performances (each actor also bears an uncanny physical likeness to his respective real-life counterpart). Bruhl (who played the Nazi sniper “hero” in Inglourious Basterds) is proving himself a versatile character actor, and Hemsworth’s infectious energy and brash scenery-chewing recalls a young Peter O’Toole. The excellent Alexandra Maria Lara (The Baader Meinhof Complex) plays Lauda’s devoted wife Marlene, and Olivia Wilde appears as Hunt’s supermodel trophy wife, Suzy.

I found Howard’s film reminiscent of Michael Ritchie’s Downhill Racer, another sports movie that isn’t really so much about sports per se, as it is an examination of the obsessive nature of a person who strives to be a “champion”. In that 1969 character study, Robert Redford plays a talented but arrogant athlete who joins the U.S. ski team, immediately butting heads with the coach (Gene Hackman), his teammates and pretty much anyone else he comes in contact with (OK, he’s a dick). Like Hunt and Lauda (at least, as they are dramatized here), the Redford character only seems truly fulfilled when he’s “winning”…everything else is superfluous.

I also see a corollary with Howard and Morgan’s previous collaboration, suggesting a diptych. The adversarial dynamic between David Frost and Richard Nixon is similar to Lauda and Hunt’s. Frost was handsome, outgoing and had a rep as a “ladies man” (like Hunt) and Nixon was brooding and stand-offish, yet quietly crafty (like Lauda). Frost and Nixon circled each other warily, like two boxers vying for the champion’s belt. I’m not sure how I got from Formula One to politics. Say, is there some kind of trophy for what I just did?

Behind the Music, Documentary

Land of 1000 sessions: Muscle Shoals ***

September 6, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on October 5, 2013)

Things That Make You Feel Like An Old Hippie, #342: It’s possible that there’s a whole generation of musicians now who have never heard the words “Tape’s rolling.” Oh, they may have dabbled in ACID…but any bedroom studio hipster will tell you that’s just a gateway drug to Pro Tools 9. At any rate, if you’re old enough to remember how to thread a TEAC A-3340S, you may find yourself getting a little misty-eyed watching an engaging new documentary from first-time director Greg “Freddy” Camalier.

His aptly entitled Muscle Shoals examines the origins and legacy of what has become known as the Muscle Shoals “sound”. It’s a sound borne of heart, soul, sweat…and close miking the bass drums.

According to mystically-inclined interviewees, it’s about Native-American spirits, harmonic convergence, and location, location, location. Muscle Shoals, Alabama lies in the deep American South…as in banks of the Tennessee, goin’ down to the crossroads, cotton fields back home, South, y’all. Aretha Franklin describes it as a greasy kind of sound. At its heart, Camalier’s film is a tale of two studios.

The story begins in the late 1950s, when songwriter/musician Rick Hall founded FAME Studios (an acronym for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises) with two partners. Hall went solo on the venture a few years later, moving the studio down the road a piece to Muscle Shoals. Hall hit one out of the park on the very first session he did in the new digs, Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On”. That song became one of the first hits for the Rolling Stones, when they covered it soon after.

The yet-to-be-defined Muscle Shoals “sound” also caught the fancy of the Beatles, who covered “Anna” on their debut UK album Please Please Me (a song Alexander cut during those same sessions). Hall then used the profits to move his studio to its now iconic address on Avalon Avenue.

There was a secret to Hall’s subsequent success, which wasn’t solely due to his (obvious) prowess as a producer. That would be the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, aka “The Swampers” (who are name-checked in Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”). The Swampers were to FAME Studios what the “Funk Brothers” were to Motown; a crack group of players who brought an indefinable mojo to songs like Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally”, Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” and Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman”.

The Swampers formed a tight bond with Hall; which made for a little awkwardness in 1969 when they had to inform their soon to be ex-boss that Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler (who had originally brought Franklin and Pickett to work with Hall) was luring them away by building them their own local studio. As Hall recalls in the film, that meant “war” with Wexler and his friends-turned-rivals.

This turned out to be a one-sided kind of war; the good kind…as in “A-side”. In their eagerness to one-up each other, Hall at FAME and the traitors at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio churned out a mess of classic sides, leaving music fans to enjoy the spoils. Hall went on to produce choice cuts by the likes of Candi Staton, Etta James, Clarence Carter, Bobby Gentry, George Jackson, Lou Rawls and Wilson Pickett (in the film, Hall proudly cites Duane Allman’s fiery fretwork on Pickett’s “Hey Jude” as the genesis of “southern rock”).

As FAME drifted into the country arena, Muscle Shoals attracted rockers like Traffic, Canned Heat, Lynyrd Skynrd, Rod Stewart, Bob Seger and The Rolling Stones (the 1970 documentary Gimme Shelter captures footage of the Stones at Muscle Shoals working on “Wild Horses”).

One interesting aspect regarding this unique confluence of talent is the “colorblind” factor; especially when you consider when and where it all took place. The Swampers were the original “average white band”; there are some amusing anecdotes in the film about some African-American artists’ initial shock when they found out that the soulful players who they had hitherto heard but not seen were so “pale” by comparison.

While the civil rights movement was making significant headway throughout Muscle Shoals’ most prolific and influential period, they were stuck in a part of America where (there’s no polite way to put this) such news flashes weren’t getting through.

Mssrs Jagger and Richards are among the music luminaries on board to reminisce and/or offer insights (although I wish they had subtitled Keith’s typically unintelligible musings). Key members of The Swampers pitch in, as well as Jimmy Cliff, Percy Sledge, Candi Staton, Steve Winwood, Gregg Allman and, erm, Bono (did U2 ever record there?).

If you get a kick out of vintage performance footage, there’s a good amount of it on hand. I would have preferred more screen time devoted to the producer’s studio techniques, but that’s a personal problem. While the film gets a bit repetitive in the second half (how many ways can one describe the “magic” of a “special place”?) it’s an enjoyable couple of hours for any music fan with a pulse.

Drama, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

Like drama for Dramamine: Captain Phillips **1/2

September 6, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on October 12, 2013)

In his “New Rules” segment on HBO’s Real Time program last week, Bill Maher issued an important advisement: “Before seeing the new Tom Hanks movie, Captain Phillips, liberals in the audience must be warned that yes, the bad guys in the movie are black…and we apologize.” Apology accepted, Bill. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m not going to mention the teensy-weensy hint of colonial stereotyping I detected while watching the latest “ripped from the headlines” docudrama from British director Paul Greengrass.

Of course, I understand that Mr. Greengrass had no control over the fact that the pirates who hijacked the U.S. container ship Maersk Alabama and took its captain hostage back in 2009 happened to be Somali nationals. Or that the Navy Seals came riding in (technically…rowing in) like the US Cavalry (along with seemingly half of the American fleet in the region) to take out three pirates and rescue one white guy. I mean, you couldn’t fantasize a more perfect mash-up for a director who specializes in real-world-based political dramas like United 93 or taut thrillers like The Bourne Supremacy.

And Greengrass does indeed run with it, enlisting screenwriter Billy Ray (State of Play, Breach) who co-adapted from the real-life Phillips’ autobiography, A Captain’s Duty along with the author and Stephan Talty, as well as relentlessly utilizing his signature “I think I’m gonna hurl” pseudo-cinema verite shaky-cam (you’ll feel like you’ve been on a raft for three days by the end of the film).

There’s very little point in giving you a plot summary, as anyone who watched the events unfold on the nightly news will remember how it went down. Even someone too young to remember can logically assume that since it is based on the protagonist’s personal memoir about his ordeal with his captors, he doesn’t like, you know, (spoiler alert!) die at the end.

So the key to the success or failure of any such film dramatization lies in the artistry of its execution and/or visceral entertainment value; and from that purely cinematic standpoint, Greengrass does an expert job at ratcheting up the tension and the thrills (although I wish he could have kept that goddamned camera still long enough for me to regain my purchase at some point before the credits rolled).

In its best moments, the film recalls Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, in the way Greengrass uses the claustrophobic staging to present a cross-sectional microcosm of (in this case) the effects of globalization on impoverished third-world nations.

To his credit, Greengrass at least takes a stab at examining the sociopolitical factors fueling the pirates’ actions, particularly in several brief but well-played exchanges between Phillips (Hanks) and the Somali leader (Barkhad Abdi), but it feels perfunctory. Truth be told, Cy Enfield did a more effective job humanizing the “enemy” and reforming antiquated colonial stereotypes of Africans in his 1964 historical drama, Zulu.

Okay, the entertainment value is there, the acting is fine…so what’s my problem? I’m so glad you asked. It’s the same “problem” I had with Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. While I’m proud to be a ‘murcan and all, and thank (insert local deity here) everyday that there are dedicated men and women much stronger and braver than I putting their lives on the line protecting “our” interests around the world 24/7, I just really get uncomfortable with this whole booyah kill mission thing that we do so (disturbingly) well.

Greengrass tries for a hole-in-one, but drives his movie ass-over-teakettle into the same fist-pumping for the death squad sand trap Bigelow did. I guess I’m tired of expecting a Secret Decoder Ring, only to discover at the end of the day that it’s just another crummy commercial…in this case, for American exceptionalism.

Anyone for a nice cup o’ hubris? Ovaltine?

Culture Clash, Road Movie, War

Can’t we all just get along? – Zaytoun **1/2

September 6, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on October 26, 2013)

I say chatzilim, you say maqluba: Zaytoun

Human conflict is as old as, well, the human race…as Mel Brooks’ “2000 year-old man” once confirmed to interviewer Carl Reiner after being asked to recall the very first national anthem, singing “They can all go to hell…except Cave 76!“. After many millennium’s worth of mass destruction and horrible suffering, you’d think we would all have come to the logical conclusion that war, as Bertrand Russell once pointed out “…does not determine who is right, only who is left.”

However, “logic”, it would seem, is for wusses and has no place on the manly battlefield. But I can always dream, can’t I? As Carl Sagan observed, we are all made of the same “star stuff”, so why can’t we just get along? (and again, I’m being logical…so pardon my naiveté). A few filmmakers have explored that theme over the years, in parables like La Grande Illusion, Hell in the Pacific, Enemy Mine, and now in a new film called Zaytoun, from Israeli director Eran Riklis.

The backdrop is war-torn Beirut in 1982. A 12-year old boy named Fahed (Abdallah El Akal) lives in a Palestinian refugee sector on Beirut’s outskirts with his widower father and grandfather. Needless to say, life in 1982 Beirut isn’t easy for Fahed and his young friends. When they’re not at home nervously scanning the skies for Israeli jets that frequently swoop in on suspected PLO targets embedded in their neighborhood, they’re having guns waved in their faces and getting shooed away by their Lebanese “hosts” whenever they venture into the city, where they play fun games like daring each other to dash across sniper alleys. Not that they are strangers to guns; we observe them as they engage in mandatory PLO-sponsored combat training, as well as political indoctrination.

Fahed’s father spends his spare time doting reverently over a potted olive tree. He shows his son how to properly nurture this delicate heirloom; his dream is to one day replant it into the soil of the family’s home town across the border in Israel/Palestine (whichever one’s preference). If it sounds like foreshadowing, you would be correct. Fahed’s father is killed in the first act via Israeli air strike, stacking the deck with assurance that freshly-orphaned Fahed’s first face-to-face meeting with The Enemy is less than congenial. The object of his reflexive derision is an Israeli pilot named Yoni (Stephen Dorff), who has been captured by the PLO after bailing out nearby.

Fahed and his friends taunt the imprisoned Yoni, after the PLO has “softened him up” a bit in an attempt to gather intelligence. Yoni responds in kind, calling them “little terrorists”. Yoni makes an escape attempt, after which Fahed gratuitously shoots him in the leg while he is still locked in his cell; obviously, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. It’s never made clear what prompts the PLO to leave their valuable prisoner (whom they intend to trade for Israeli-held Palestinian brethren) in the charge of 12-year olds, but Yoni soon convinces Fahed to help him escape by playing on the boy’s desire to visit his ancestral village so he can fulfill his late father’s dream. In strict adherence with Road Movie Rules, these mutually wary travel companions slowly Form A Special Bond.

If I sound like I’m mocking my own pacifist sentiments, it’s not that I disagree with The Message in Riklis’s film; it’s just that he and Palestinian-American screenwriter Nader Rizq have oversimplified their narrative, which is rife with cliché and topped off with a tear-jerking denouement right out of an Afterschool Special. For example, the situation in Beirut in 1982 was complex, what with the Lebanese civil war, the PLO cells and the Israeli military involvement. Most viewers would understand why there was no love lost between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but in one scene Fahed and his friends are called “Palestinian dogs” by the Lebanese soldiers (maybe police?). Why? Was this a sentiment shared by all Lebanese? One Palestinian character is noted to have been killed by a “Phalangist sniper”. Who were the Phalangists again…and what was their beef?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been raging since 1948, so what was the significance in informing us that this is “Beirut, 1982” but then offering no further exposition? Some historical context would have been helpful (as it is considered rude to do a Wiki search on your cell during a movie screening). Then again, maybe I’m looking on the wrong side of the lens. After all, if an Israeli director and a Palestinian writer can collaborate to create art, then maybe we can all get along (eventually). Perhaps in this case, the medium is the message.