By Dennis Hartley
As they say in the biz…comedy gold:
Poor Jeb. He’s starting to remind me of one of my favorite movies:
Change the “ud” to an “eb”, and you’ve got a new campaign song:
Pore, pore Jeb.
(Wal)…ly Ballou here, live from Heaven
By Dennis Hartley
R.I.P. Bob Elliott (on the right) 1923-2016
This blog is starting to look more and more like an obituary column. It’s either that, or I’m getting old (keep your opinions to yourself).
Bob Elliott, the last surviving half of the comedy duo “Bob & Ray”, has “gone dark” (as we say in broadcasting when you sign off for good).
I grew up listening to (and watching) Bob and Ray, from the early 60s through the late 80s. They were one of my main inspirations for going into radio (along with the Firesign Theater, who were surely influenced by them). They invented what I call “stealth comedy”. Their delivery was so low-key, their satire so subtle that many people didn’t realize that they were…comedians (they perfected the “fake news” shtick decades before SNL or The Daily Show). They were also masters of the time-released zinger, as perfectly illustrated in this classic bit:
Another one of my faves-an interview with History’s worst historian:
…and fade to commercial…(cue announcer)…
A peek at Oscar’s shorts
By Dennis Hartley
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 30, 2016)
At the risk of having my critic’s license revoked, I will freely admit this, right here in front of God and all six of my readers: I’ve only managed to catch 3 of the 8 films nominated for Best Picture of 2015. Then again, you can feel free to ask me if I care (the Academy and I rarely see eye-to-eye). Funny thing, though…I have managed to catch all of the (traditionally more elusive) Oscar nominees for Best Short Film-Animation and Best Short Film-Live Action. And the good news is you can, too. The five nominees in each sub-category are making the rounds as limited-engagement curated presentations; each collection runs approximately the length of a feature film, with separate admissions.
(Reads woodenly off teleprompter) And the nominees for Best Short Film-Animation are:
Bear Story (Chile) – A 3-D animation piece about a bear living a life of quiet desperation (no, seriously). Lonely and life-tired, he goes through his morning ablutions on auto-pilot, then world-wearily shuffles off to work. His job? Standing on a street corner with his custom-built mechanical diorama, offering a peek to passers-by for a nickel a pop. What his customers see is less than heartwarming. Sort of like Ingmar Bergman for kids.
Rating: ***
Prologue (UK) – Billed as “an incident in the Spartan-Athenian wars of 2,400 years ago”, this 6-minute vignette is handsomely executed, but a head-scratcher. A little girl watches in horror as four warriors engage in a gruesome death match. That’s it. I suppose it delivers on the title; it’s a prologue…but to what? More of an exercise than a narrative. Not suitable for kids; it’s last on the reel and a parental warning will be flashed on screen.
Rating: **
Sanjay’s Super Team (USA) – The inevitable (unavoidable?) Pixar nominee. I promise to be good here and put aside my general aversion to Pixar “product” (longtime readers understand…it’s probably just a chemical thing, can’t be helped). A first-generation Indian-American boy plants himself in front of the TV, whilst his dad quietly begins his Hindu prayers. Dad subtly steers his son away from the idiot box and into his devotionals. At first, the boy balks, but becomes entranced by the icon figures in his dad’s shrine, sparking a Sorcerer’s Apprentice-style fantasia. The usual Pixar overkill ensues. Still, the piece has its heart in the right place, and it delivers a positive message.
Rating: **½
We Can’t Live Without Cosmos (Russia) – Two lifelong pals realize their boyhood dreams to become cosmonauts. It’s a lovely homage to the spirit and sacrifice of space explorers past and present, and to mankind’s quest for knowledge about what’s out there.
Rating: ***
World of Tomorrow (USA) – Don’t let the simple stick figures fool you…there’s a lot going on in this heady mixture of sci-fi whimsy and existential angst. A little girl is taken on a tour of her future, which is not the brightest (for Earth in general). Still, there are technical wonders to behold. But there is a catch; and unfortunately she’s not old enough to process her time-travelling guide’s buried lede (probably for the best that she stays happy for now). A clever mashup of Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen and Douglas Adams.
Rating: ****
And the nominees for Best Short Film-Live Action are:
Ave Maria (Palestine/France/Germany) – Five nuns walk into a bar mitzvah. Actually, it’s the other way around…three Israeli settlers (an elderly woman, her son and his wife) walk into an isolated West Bank convent after accidently knocking over their Virgin Mary statue (oops). Their car has stalled out on them and they need to use a phone. The nuns have taken a vow of silence, and the Jewish gentleman can’t touch the phone because it’s Friday after sunset. Yes, it’s a fabulous setup for some wacky interfaith hijinks, which do ensue. It’s a clever comedy of mores that gives you hope for humanity.
Rating: ***½
Day One (USA) – A neo-realistic, one-act microcosm of our country’s Middle Eastern quagmire, parsed through a day in the life of a newly-deployed Afghan-American military interpreter. On her first mission, she accompanies a squad closing in on a bomb-maker. As the soldiers secure their prisoner, his pregnant wife is discovered in a back room, where she begins to go into labor. Very similar in theme to Ave Maria, but more somber in tone. Even in the midst of conflict, there’s always room for a little compassion.
Rating: ***
Everything Will Be OK (Germany/Austria) – A divorced father picks up his 8 year-old daughter for their weekend visitation. Everything appears normal…initially (any further synopsis constitutes a spoiler). A well-acted character study, with a suspenseful build-up.
Rating: ***
Shok (Kosovo) – War is hell for anybody involved, but it’s particularly distressing and heartbreaking when filtered through the eyes of innocents who are caught in the crossfire. Such is this short, sharp, shock to the system (based on true events) about two Albanian boys who are best friends in Kosovo during the Yugoslav wars. It’s intense and affecting.
Rating: ****
Stutterer (UK/Ireland) – A character study of a young man whose complex over his speech impediment keeps him socially isolated. His sole ray of light is an online texting relationship that he has developed with a young woman. When she proposes to take it to the next level and arrange a face-to-face visit, he short-circuits over the dilemma. Borderline precious (with a predictable “twist”) but it only takes 12 minutes of your time!
Rating: **½
Have you seen his star tonight: R.I.P. Paul Kantner
By Dennis Hartley
1941-2016
Lemmy started it. Then Bowie, Frey…what, they come in fours, now?!
“If you can remember the 60’s…you weren’t there.” The man who may have coined the phrase (a tired old debate still rages as to who actually did) is no longer earthbound. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Paul Kantner, founder of the Jefferson Airplane/Starship (to paraphrase Dennis Hopper) is out there, man…he’s really out there.
When you think about the 1960s “San Francisco sound”, it’s nearly impossible to not think about the Airplane. Yeah, they were a bunch of dirty fuckin’ hippies, but there’s no denying that they have a pretty deep catalog, and a lot of those songs have held up pretty damn well.
They’re typically lumped in with Bay Area contemporaries like the Dead, Moby Grape, Quicksilver, Big Brother, It’s a Beautiful Day, the New Riders, etc., but I always thought they had a slightly bolder sound. Consider this 1969 appearance on Dick Cavett , tearing it up with an uncensored rendition of Kantner’s “We Can Be Together”:
A bit X before X, n’est-ce pas? And Jorma’s man-bun seems…prescient.
But Kantner wasn’t strictly all about revolution and proto punk. I’ll sign off my tribute with his most beautiful song (co-written with David Crosby), from the Starship’s Blows Against the Empire album:
The last days of disc: All Things Must Pass ***
By Dennis Hartley
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 23, 2016)
The first time I visited L.A. was in 1975, while still living in Alaska. I went with a friend, a fellow music geek who had grown up there. He introduced me to his “holy trinity” of record stores: Rhino on Westwood Boulevard, Aron’s on Melrose, and Mecca…a/k/a/ Tower Records on the Strip. I went absolutely ape shit (I remember flying back with about 150 LPs in tow). We didn’t have record stores like that in Fairbanks. Especially Tower, whose legend had loomed large in my mind (the import section alone-good god!).
In 1979, I moved to San Francisco for a couple years, where I developed my own “holy trinity”, including Rasputin (which required an excursion to Berkeley via BART), Aquarius in the Castro, and the Tower in North Beach. By the time I moved to Seattle in 1992, vinyl was pretty much on its way out, and the birth of Napster in 1999 assured that the CD would soon join the LP on its long slow death march. One by one, I watched my favorite independent record stores bite the dust, which was sad, but it was only once Seattle’s two Tower stores went belly up in 2006 that it truly felt like the “end of an era”.
Granted, by the time of its demise Tower had become somewhat “corporatized” (for wont of a better term), with worldwide franchising and over 90 stores across the U.S., but there was something about the vibe of the stores (at least the ones I visited) that made music geeks feel warm and fuzzy (notwithstanding the occasional judgmental clerk…but then that was part of the fun, and par for the course at any record store that was worth its salt).
That legacy (as well as that “vibe”) is the subject of All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records, a genial (if unremarkably executed) 2015 documentary by Colin Hanks, just out on DVD and Blu-ray. Hanks begins in the early 1960s, when founder Russell Solomon opened his first modest store in Sacramento, then eventually added the now iconic San Francisco and L.A. locations (in 1968 and 1970, respectively), ushering in the chain’s golden era in the 70s and 80s. However, as the title implies, nothing lasts forever; so Hanks also documents Tower’s slow, sad slide into the cut-out bins of history.
Solomon (pushing 90 and still pretty spry) is on hand to reminisce, as well as some of his former business partners. You do get a fairly good picture of the company’s unique management culture, which took a sort of anti-management approach (let’s just say that it was the 70s, these folks loved to party…and leave it at that).
Several music luminaries also share their anecdotes, most notably Sir Elton John, who went through a period where he would obsessively hit the Sunset Strip store every morning at 9am to check out the latest releases (this isn’t mentioned in the film, but he had a legendarily huge private music collection of 70,000 LPs, 45s, cassettes, 8-tracks, CDs and unique studio tapes, which he sold at Sotheby’s a few years ago to help raise money for his AIDS foundation).
Those of a certain persuasion (borderline OCD music collectors) and/or of a certain age (ahem, twice) may tend to get more misty-eyed toward the end of the doc than the average viewer. Again, it is not the most dynamically produced film, but its heart is in the right place. And if you miss the ritual of pawing through those bins, ogling the cover art and skimming the liner notes and track listing on the back, all the while breathing in that singularly intoxicating bouquet of shrink wrap and petroleum product-feel free to browse.
BONUS TRACK!
The obsessive collector’s mindset is perfectly encapsulated in this slyly multi-layered scene from Barry Levinson’s 1982 film, Diner:
The Zen of Yen: Ip Man 3 **1/2
By Dennis Hartley
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 23, 2016)
You know what they say-everybody has to start somewhere. Bruce Lee was no exception; he had a mentor, a gentleman known as Ip Man, who was a master in a Shaolin martial arts discipline called Wing Chun. Hong Kong director Wilson Yip’s new film, Ip Man 3, marks his third installment in a franchise dramatizing specific periods of Master Ip’s life.
Donnie Yen (Dragon Inn, Iron Monkey) returns in the eponymous role. The story is set in 1959, which was the year (at least as dramatized in the film…Wiki begs to differ) a young and cocky Bruce Lee (Danny Chan) first approaches Master Ip and expresses his desire to become his disciple. But apparently, he’s just not “fast” enough yet (like I said-everybody has to start somewhere). After this brief interaction in the opening scene, the Bruce Lee character drops from the story (unless I wasn’t paying close enough attention).
Keeping Bruce Lee in the story might have propped things up; otherwise you’re left with a standard genre pic, with Ip Man taking on an ambitious, mobbed-up property developer (Mike Tyson…yes, that Mike Tyson) who has built up a network of surly youth gangs to intimidate, terrorize, and generally soften up the locals so that they will become more pliant. Thankfully, Tyson doesn’t have too many lines; although his call-out challenging Ip Man to go mano a mano (“Lethee who hath the fascist fifths!”) is eminently quotable.
The ensuing vignettes of explosive street violence are interlaced with family melodrama, as Ip Man deals with his wife’s terminal illness. To the director and cast’s credit, these scenes are sensitively handled and genuinely touching at times; but unfortunately the juxtaposition with the action sequences (well-choreographed and entertaining as they are) is jarring. In the end, the soap could render the film as too slippery a slope for action fans.
Dennis Hopper explains the Trump phenom
By Dennis Hartley
OK, it’s official. The Clock has moved one minute closer to midnight:
What he’s been able to accomplish, with his um, it’s kind of this quiet generosity. Yeah, maybe his largess kind of, I don’t know, some would say gets in the way of that quiet generosity, and, uh, his compassion, but if you know him as a person and you’ll get to know him more and more, you’ll have even more respect. […] God bless you! God bless the United States of America and our next president of the United States, Donald J. Trump!”
Ah! So this is how the world ends. Suddenly, this makes perfect sense:
Wolves, bison & bears…oh my: The Revenant ***1/2
By Dennis Hartley
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 16, 2016)
“Nah, man…I gotta remember: NEVER get outta the boat!”
-from Apocalypse Now
If there’s one thing I’ve learned reading Jack London and Joseph Conrad and watching countless adventure movies over the years, it’s this: never get out of the goddamn boat. Remember what happened in Apocalypse Now, when they got out of the boat? Aguirre, the Wrath of God? The 7th Voyage of Sinbad? Uh, Deliverance? It very rarely ends well.
Latest case in point: Alejandro Inarritu’s sprawling survivalist epic, The Revenant. Once “they” get out of the boat, everything goes to hell in a hand basket; in this case, an authentic, hand-woven hand basket crafted by authentic First Nation peoples, in an authentic rustic setting. Inarritu’s film is not only steeped in gritty and authentic Old West verisimilitude, but tells its tale in real time. OK, I’m exaggerating-it’s only 3 hours.
The story is set in the early 19th Century, “somewhere” in the Rocky Mountain region of the Louisiana Purchase (I assume, as there are Frenchmen wearing fur hats lurking about). Leo DiCaprio stars as a crackerjack woodsman named Hugh. He and his half-Native American son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) have hired on as guides for a pelt-hunting expedition.
After the party is ambushed by Indians, Hugh leads the survivors into the deep woods. While temporarily separated from the party, Hugh is severely mauled by an actual “grizzly mom” (it is the film’s most harrowing scene, which is really saying a lot).
His compatriots find him, barely alive, and begin to carry him along. However, they soon find the terrain too daunting to navigate with a stretcher. Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), one of the more mercenary members of the party, suggests putting Hugh out of his misery so they can make tracks.
The party’s Captain (Domhnall Gleeson, son of Brendan) briefly considers the option, but decides to leave Hugh in the care of Hawk and a young volunteer named Jim Bridger (Will Poulter…playing who I can only assume is the Jim Bridger of legend, since the screenwriters take no pains to elucidate). One more man is needed, but the Captain has to first sweeten the pot with the offer of a reward. Guess who steps up? If you guessed our mercenary friend with dubious motivations, you are correct.
What ensues earns what I like to call my “3G” rating (Grueling, Grinding, and Gruesome). It’s a quasi-biblical, “to hell and back” tale of betrayal, suffering, fortitude and (drum roll please)…redemption. It’s also a bit of the aforementioned for the viewer, as he or she is required to channel the patience of Job while awaiting the redemption part.
Which reminds me of a funny story. Around halfway through, I had to excuse myself for a few minutes (hey-let’s see you try making it through a 3 hour flick with a 59 year-old prostate…and fellow sufferers be warned that the sights and sounds of babbling brooks, surging rivers and roiling rapids abound throughout).
Anyway, as I left the auditorium, I noted that the recovering but not yet fully ambulatory Leo was slowly, painfully, crawling through brambles. I go do my thing; when I return to my seat several minutes later, I note Leo is still slowly, painfully crawling through brambles. I whispered to my friend, “So I take it I didn’t miss anything?” He confirmed that my intuition was spot on.
While I stand by my conviction that the film would not have suffered from judicious trimming, it still has much to recommend it, particularly for fans of adventures like Black Robe, The New World, The Last of the Mohicans, Dances with Wolves, Never Cry Wolf, or The Naked Prey.
In context of its striking visual poetry, there is one film that must have inspired Inarritu and/or his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and that is Letter Never Sent, Mikhail Kalatozov’s tale about a squartet of Russian geologists who become trapped by a wildfire while diamond-hunting in Siberia. The 1960 film was breathtakingly photographed by Sergey Urusevskiy, also renowned for his work on Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying and I Am Cuba (my review).
Like Urusevskiy, Lubezki fuses natural light wide-angle photography with classically composed long shots and audacious hand-held takes that make you scratch your head and wonder “how in the hell did the camera operator shoot that without running into a tree?!”
The director and screenwriter Mark L. Smith co-adapted their screenplay from Michael Punke’s 2002 book The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge. I didn’t realize until doing a little research after seeing the film that Hugh Glass was a real-life trapper and frontiersman (how I know who Jim Bridger is, yet have never heard of this guy…is one of life’s mysteries).
I also learned this is not the first film based on Glass’ exploits; that honor goes to a 1971 western called Man in the Wilderness, directed by Richard C. Sarfian (how I know and love Sarfian’s 1971 classic Vanishing Point, yet have never heard of his other 1971 film…is another of life’s mysteries).
What isn’t such a mystery are the 12 Oscar nominations, which include Best Actor and Supporting Actor for DiCaprio and Hardy. DiCaprio earns his statue for the al fresco dining alone (you’ll know when you see it). Hardy is perfect playing a character who could be an ancestor for those mountain men in Deliverance. And I can’t emphasize this enough: Never, never get outta the boat.
The Fall and Rise of Ziggy Stardust
By Dennis Hartley
Pushing the envelope, to the last…
Wow. Simply wow.
I had put off watching David Bowie’s “Lazarus” video for several days because I had a feeling it would disturb me on many levels.
It did.
But it also moved me, in ways few music videos have. Many people have observed over the last few days that his new album Blackstar was a final “gift” to his fans. Perusing the comments for the YouTube posting confirms it was (I only made it through a few before I lost it).
In the song, Bowie laments: Look up here, I’m in heaven/I’ve got scars that can’t be seen. But for a parting refrain, he lays a reassuring hand on our shoulder: Oh, I’ll be free/Just like that bluebird/Oh, I’ll be free/Ain’t that just like me? Yes, David, you sly devil…it’s just like you.
The emotional impact of the video reminded me of this swan song:
https://youtu.be/vt1Pwfnh5pc
I am also reminded of Warron Zevon, who released The Wind, just 2 weeks before his death from mesothelioma in 2003 (he had received the diagnosis several weeks before work began on the album.). Not surprisingly, mortality is a running theme through most of the cuts; in “Keep Me in Your Heart” (the album’s closer) Zevon also seems to be offering his fans an epitaph and preemptive grief counseling.
Like Bowie, Zevon begins with impending doom: Shadows are falling, and I’m running out of breath…but finishes: These wheels are turning, but they’re running out of steam/Keep me in your heart for a while.
https://youtu.be/1KjRLq4uF4A
On the up side, we’ll always have their music. As Jim Morrison sang:
Well the music is your special friend
Dance on fire as it intends
Music is your only friend
Until the end
David Jones is on his way
By Dennis Hartley
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 11, 2016)
1947-2016
Live to your rebirth and do what you will
(Oh by jingo)
Forget all I’ve said, please bear me no ill
(Oh by jingo)
After all, after all
(Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing…) I woke up this morning to get ready for work, turned on the Today show (…news had just come over, we had five years left to cry in) and saw the lead story (…news guy wept and told us, earth was really dying…cried so much his face was wet, and I knew he was not lying). No, not him! Fuck!
When one is at a loss for words after a great artist dies, it’s not uncommon to default to the old standby that “(he or she) meant so much, to so many people.” Of David Bowie, it may be more accurate for one to say that “he was so many people, who meant so much.”
Bowie invented the idea of “re-invention”. It’s also possible that he invented a working time machine, because he was always ahead of the curve (or leading the herd). He was the poster boy for “postmodern”. Space rock? Meet Major Tom. Glam rock? Meet Ziggy Stardust. Doom rock? Meet the Diamond Dog. Neo soul? Meet the Thin White Duke. Electronica? Ich bin ein Berliner. New Romantic? We all know Major Tom’s a junkie…
This one is hitting me hard. I’m 59 years old, so I’m getting a little used to watching the musical icons I grew up with dropping like flies…but this is one is hitting me hard. We’re talking Bob Marley and John Lennon; this is a significant loss to the music world.
Favorite Bowie album? For me that’s like choosing a favorite child. If pressed, I’d have to say my favorite Bowie period would be the Mick Ronson years (Space Oddity, Hunky Dory, The Man Who Sold the World, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Alladin Sane, and Pinups). There was something magical about the Bowie and Ronno dynamic; right up there with Daltrey and Townshend, Plant and Page, Ozzy and Tony, and Jagger and Richards. Luckily, this era was captured for posterity in D.A. Pennebaker’s 1973 concert film, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: the Motion Picture. Visually, the film is less than spectacular, but the performances are mesmerizing.
I’m sure his family had understandable reasons for keeping mum on his illness, and I respect that; but I can’t help but speculate on whether or not Bowie’s highly-developed sense of theatre prompted him to choreograph his demise into a sort of farewell installation piece. Consider: his final album (which he had to know was going to be his swan song) was released on his 69th birthday January 8…2 days prior to his death. It’s as if he anticipated the great sense of loss amongst his fans; it’s a reassurance, a form of grief counselling: “It’s alright. I got my affairs in order; came up with a few odds and ends here to leave you with…it’s OK. Enjoy! It’s only rock’n’roll. After all, after all…”