Category Archives: 4 Stars

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Nine Inch Nails & Jane’s Addiction live at Jones Beach, June 7, 2009

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STREET SWEEPER SOCIAL CLUB

Street Sweeper Social Club, the new band formed by Rage Against the Machine gui­tarist Tom Morello, opened. Their badass cover of M.I.A.‘s “Paper Planes” was a highlight.

Nine Inch Nails live at Jones Beach New York

NINE INCH NAILS

It felt wrong some­how to see a band as moody and dark as Nine Inch Nails play while the sun was still up. But clouds soon moved in, obscur­ing a sun­set that would have been impres­sive over the water, mak­ing every­thing suit­ably gloomy and very, very cold as NIN chased sum­mer away. This stripped-down four-piece ver­sion of the band played a great cover of David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Amer­i­cans,” the best song Nine Inch Nails could have but never wrote, and ended with the over­whelm­ingly sad “Hurt.” Sur­pris­ingly omit­ted was “Closer,” what I would assume to be a req­ui­site entry in any NIN set list (but the end theme did fea­ture in a short instru­men­tal jam). Speak­ing of, said jam was one of only two instru­men­tal por­tions of the set (the other being The Fragile’s ambi­ent inter­lude “The Frail”). A lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing, given that Trent Reznor has been becom­ing more and more musi­cally exper­i­men­tal and adven­tur­ous of late, with whole chunks of The Frag­ile and the entirety of the mas­sive two-disc Ghosts being instru­men­tal. Per­son­ally, when it comes to Nine Inch Nails, the music (not so much the gloomy lyrics) is where the action is for me.

Nine Inch Nails live at Jones Beach New York

JANE’S ADDICTION

All thanks to Reznor for play­ing peace­keeper in reunit­ing the noto­ri­ously frac­tious and unsta­ble Jane’s Addic­tion, at least for the length of the NIN/JA tour. Basi­cally a funk/prog/metal power-trio fronted by the antics of Perry Far­rell, a… unique indi­vid­ual whose ego (he once re-released a raft of Jane’s Addic­tion songs under just his own name on a solo great­est hits album) has often cre­ated con­flict with bassist Eric Avery. The full moon peek­ing out from the clouds prob­a­bly only added to Farrell’s lunacy. They opened with their mag­num opus “Three Days,” an epic fea­tur­ing more dis­crete gui­tar solos by Dave Navarro than I could count. Hon­estly, where do you go from there? They kept find­ing high points to hit, how­ever, includ­ing “Ocean Size” and the closer (what else?) “Jane Says.” It only took a few songs for the age­less Navarro’s vest to dis­ap­pear (he must have one heck of a per­sonal trainer, not to men­tion a chest hair waxer), and Perry’s shirt fol­lowed shortly thereafter.

Jane's Addiction live at Jones Beach New York

THE FUTURE

Reznor has made vague noises about Nine Inch Nails com­ing to some kind of end fol­low­ing this tour. It remains to be seen whether he means retir­ing the name in favor of solo work, start­ing a new band, or sim­ply ceas­ing to tour for a while. He’s report­edly been clean & sober for some time now, and engaged to be mar­ried, so more power to him. If he retreats now, he’d be going out on a high note. I hope the orig­i­nal lineup of Jane’s Addic­tion man­ages to keep it together to con­tinue work­ing in some form or another. With only two stu­dio albums to their credit (I’m not count­ing the awful Strays, writ­ten & recorded with­out Avery’s inim­itable bass), the world needs some new songs from them.

GETTING THERE AND BACK

I had a lit­tle unex­pected adven­ture on the long trip from Man­hat­tan all the way out to Jones Beach. Met a few fans on the Long Island Rail­road as we debated the var­i­ous ways of get­ting there, all of which suck. Thanks to Kim & friend for the impromptu car ride to the venue! But I didn’t have the same luck on the way back, an ordeal that included wait­ing a full hour for a LIRR train to arrive. Pic­ture dozens of hun­gry fans, shiv­er­ing atop an ele­vated plat­form in the mid­dle of nowhere.

Jane's Addiction live at Jones Beach New York

THE VENUE

Blech. Sur­rounded on three sides by water, Jones Beach sounds nice in the­ory, but in per­son it’s cold. Never mind if you’re going to a show there dur­ing the sum­mer; dress warmly. Also, for a music lover used to all kinds of venues in Man­hat­tan and Brook­lyn, it’s in the mid­dle of nowhere, with no food or water for lit­er­ally miles. The exor­bi­tant con­ces­sion prices are, let’s be hon­est here, graft. Just to keep from dehy­drat­ing and get­ting a migraine from all the second-hand pot smoke, I reluc­tantly paid $6.50 for a bot­tled water, which I cer­tainly hope the venue recy­cled. Also, the sound sys­tem is kinda crappy. Jane’s were notice­ably louder than NIN, but Farrell’s mike sounded pretty muf­fled, espe­cially on the first and last songs.

THE AUDIENCE

The audi­ence was a weird mix­ture of goths, met­al­heads, and gray­ing thir­tysome­things like me. Although NIN has remained extremely rel­e­vant for some time now, the orig­i­nal Jane’s lineup has been out of action for more than a decade, and both bands date back to the late 80s / early 1990s, when I was in high school. The black-fingernailed lon­ers didn’t sur­prise me, but I didn’t really expect so many head­bangers. I even saw a middle-aged, bearded, fat dude in a skirt, a look I thought fiz­zled on arrival in the mid-90s. In ret­ro­spect, I shouldn’t really have been sur­prised, but I come at Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addic­tion from a dif­fer­ent angle. Lis­ten­ing to NIN is an exten­sion of my appre­ci­a­tion for elec­tronic and pro­gres­sive rock, and Jane’s vis­cer­ally filthy, slightly sleazy rock owes more than a lit­tle to Led Zep­pelin (who were also arguably a bit prog).

Offi­cial band sites: www.nin.com and www.janesaddiction.com

Buy The Slip, Nine Inch Nails’ lat­est album, and the new Jane’s Addic­tion rar­i­ties boxed set A Cab­i­net of Curiosi­ties from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Frozen River

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Frozen River movie poster

 

The title of Court­ney Hunt’s sus­pense­ful Frozen River refers to both a lit­eral body of water sep­a­rat­ing coun­tries, and to the ten­u­ous bor­der between merely scrap­ing by and true poverty. Melissa Leo was rightly praised last year for her per­for­mance as Ray, a woman strug­gling to sup­port two boys in upstate New York. Her fam­ily appears to have been liv­ing beyond their means, even before her gambling-addict hus­band lit out with their sav­ings. If she doesn’t make the next pay­ments on their huge flatscreen tele­vi­sion (a ridicu­lous sight in their shabby liv­ing space) or a cov­eted replace­ment double-wide home, they’ll lose the TV and the new home’s down pay­ment. The TV is exactly the sort of need­less extrav­a­gance that can put a check­book in the red, and the double-wide upgrade becomes a neces­sity when their exist­ing place looks unfit to sur­vive the bit­ter winter.

Melisso Leo in Frozen River

Cir­cum­stances push her into an antag­o­nis­tic part­ner­ship with Native Amer­i­can Lila Lit­tle­wolf (Misty Upham), whose sit­u­a­tion is, if any­thing, worse. Lila’s busi­ness is smug­gling ille­gal immi­grants over the tit­u­lar frozen river on Mohawk land. The fact that there is a ques­tion as to whether the prac­tice is legal on a reser­va­tion is almost a point of pride. No one seems to know the actual law, but the per­ceived grey area in a way val­i­dates the Mohawks’ auton­omy. Mak­ing a liv­ing this way is seen as pride­ful, never mind the exploited immi­grants that pay about $40,000–50,000 each to make the trip, either in cash or the oblig­a­tion to work it off as inden­tured slaves.

A still from Frozen River

As I recently wrote about the extra­or­di­nary Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (read The Dork Report review), a sin­gle event such as a car break­ing down or a spouse leav­ing may be the tip­ping point lead­ing to home­less­ness. Both films fea­ture a woman on her own, strug­gling to meet press­ing debts while feed­ing lov­ing but needy depen­dents. But Frozen River suf­fers in com­par­i­son when watched back-to-back with Wendy and Lucy (as I hap­pened to), feel­ing over­writ­ten and with a neatly schematic end­ing. With­out spoil­ing too much, a sur­pris­ing burst of expo­si­tion near the end explains the rules of almost too-convenient new sit­u­a­tion for Lila and Ray right as it’s happening.

Offi­cial movie site: sonyclassics.com/frozenriver

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Set Phasers to Awesome: Star Trek

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Star Trek movie poster

 

Like the 1966 Corvette a reck­less young James Tiberius Kirk com­man­deers in an early sequence, the new Star Trek is precision-crafted for speed, sex appeal, and total awe­some­ness. Kirk launches that beau­ti­ful machine off a cliff, but thank­fully direc­tor J.J. Abrams never does the same with the movie. Star Trek (the first in the fran­chise to go by the per­fectly terse name of the orig­i­nal TV series) joins the rar­i­fied ranks of the few other mod­ern block­busters that thrill and enter­tain (not to men­tion cost and earn mas­sive piles of money) yet have last­ing merit. Make room on the DVD shelf for a new entry in the canon, along­side Jaws, E.T.: The Extrater­res­trial, The Lord of the Rings tril­ogy, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and Spider-Man 2.

Trek has a long tra­di­tion of uti­liz­ing the sci­ence fic­tion con­ceits of time travel and alter­nate dimen­sions to play­fully sub­vert its char­ac­ters and mythos. The orig­i­nal series intro­duced the Mir­ror Uni­verse, giv­ing the cast the chance to rein­ter­pret their goodly char­ac­ters in hairier, eviler alter egos. Two of the best movies brought the Enter­prise back in time, first to save the whales in the 1980s (in the light­hearted Star Trek IV: The Voy­age Home), and later to wit­ness Earth­lings’ first con­tact with an alien race in 2063 (in the under­rated Star Trek VIII: First Con­tact). Two of my per­sonal favorite Next Gen­er­a­tion episodes “Yesterday’s Enter­prise” and “All Good Things” tasked Cap­tain Picard with course-correcting an Enter­prise skip­ping through time, no mat­ter the sac­ri­fice. The fun in these kinds of sto­ries comes not just from their brain-teasing sci-fi con­cepts, but in enjoy­ing new twists on the estab­lished char­ac­ters fans love. But any real inno­va­tions were always only tem­po­rary, the sta­tus quo always quickly restored in time (so to speak) for the next episode.

Anton Yelchin, Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, John Cho, and Zoe Saldana in Star Trekall hands on deck

Thus, the Star Trek fran­chise has man­aged to main­tain a sin­gle (albeit mas­sively com­pli­cated) time­line across six TV series, ten movies, and count­less nov­els and comic books. There’s even a niche mar­ket in the con­ti­nu­ity data itself, as evi­denced by pop­u­lar wikis like Mem­ory Alpha and ref­er­ence tomes such as Star Trek Chronol­ogy: The His­tory of the Future. Such cat­a­logs of the incred­i­bly com­plex future “his­tory” in which Trek is set are use­ful not only to obses­sive fans, but also to the writ­ers charged with cre­at­ing new sto­ries that don’t con­tra­dict what came before, at least too badly.

A cer­tain degree of renewal was already built right in to Star Trek. When any one premise ran out of ideas, an ensem­ble aged beyond plau­si­bil­ity, or rat­ings dipped, the pro­duc­ers could always start over with a new ship, a new space sta­tion, or in a new year. The most rad­i­cal depar­ture yet attempted was the ulti­mately dis­ap­point­ing final series, Enter­prise. The pre­quel, set years before Kirk would take the helm, got off to a great start with a Starfleet crew a world apart from any we had seen before. As many have pointed out over the years, Star Trek cre­ator Gene Rod­den­berry may have mod­eled Starfleet on the Navy, but the orig­i­nal 1960s series was basi­cally a West­ern set in space. The 1980s The Next Gen­er­a­tion recon­ceived Starfleet as kind of trans-species peace­keep­ing fleet, a kind of U.N. of The Milky Way. So, set between Earth­lings’ rough-and-tumble early space­far­ing years and the later ide­al­is­tic inter­galac­tic coöper­a­tion, Enter­prise fea­tured a bunch of cocky cow­boys brazenly tak­ing their val­ues out with them into space, base­ball caps firmly screwed on heads, and phasers defi­antly set to kill. The series seemed poised to be a some­what obvi­ous but fruit­ful metaphor for an arro­gant, George W. Bush-era United States forcibly spread­ing democ­racy where it wasn’t wel­come. But its qual­ity (both in writ­ing and in spe­cial effects bud­get) bot­tomed out in just a few episodes, and even the smoking-hot, well-endowed Vul­can T’Pol (Jolene Blalock) couldn’t keep the show on the air.

Zoe Saldana in Star TrekUhura mod­els the lat­est in 23rd Cen­tury Blue­tooth fashions

The entire Star Trek fran­chise seemed all but dead after Enter­prise’s can­cel­la­tion, not unlike the no-win sce­nario Spock devises as a test to tor­ture Starfleet cadets to see how they cope with fail­ure. A cher­ished part of Star Trek lore is that Kirk doesn’t believe in no-win sce­nar­ios, and thus cheated in order to win Spock’s unwinnable test. Para­mount evi­dently learned a les­son from Kirk’s lat­eral think­ing, for the first they they have given the OK to an irrev­er­ent new cre­ative team to per­ma­nently reboot Trek from top to bot­tom. Nearly all of Trek’s metic­u­lously main­tained con­ti­nu­ity (except­ing, iron­i­cally, the failed Enter­prise, set chrono­log­i­cally before any of the events of this movie) has now for­ever been rede­fined as belong­ing to an alter­nate time­line. At least, that is, until the next reboot. As the heavily-advertised appear­ance of Leonard Nimoy as the orig­i­nal “Spock Prime” attests, noth­ing nec­es­sar­ily pre­cludes the reap­pear­ance of any beloved orig­i­nal actors or other kinds of crossovers between time­lines (any­thing in pos­si­ble in sci­ence fic­tion). But Star Trek does mark a very clear end to Star Trek as we knew it.

After 40 years of unre­li­able qual­ity con­trol and dimin­ish­ing box office, such dras­tic mea­sures were arguably essen­tial to pre­serve Trek as a viable fran­chise. But I do sym­pa­thize with the grum­bling of long­time fans upset at scrap­ping every­thing and start­ing over. And this is not even to men­tion the many writ­ers, direc­tors, and actors that cre­ated the no-longer canon­i­cal sto­ries. All of which hasn’t dis­ap­peared from our real­ity, and will be enjoyed for­ever on DVD, but this film does ren­der pretty much every­thing that came before it as second-class Trek. I can’t help but won­der how all future spin­offs are now going to be han­dled on a prac­ti­cal level. For instance, if there are to be future comics or nov­els fea­tur­ing the char­ac­ters from The Next Gen­er­a­tion, are the phys­i­cal prod­ucts going to have to be labelled as tak­ing place in the now-depricated orig­i­nal fic­tional uni­verse? How does “Trek Clas­sic” and “Neu Trek” sound?

Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto in Star TrekSpock has had enough Kirk and can’t take it anymore

But back to the topic at hand: the totally awe­some new movie is packed with glossy art direc­tion, gen­uinely excit­ing spe­cial effects, fight scenes, chase sequences, and attrac­tive young actors young and attrac­tive enough to strut about on the big screen in their space scant­ies. Despite all this gloss, it some­how man­ages to not be totally stu­pid, which is more than This Dork Reporter can say about your typ­i­cal sum­mer movie (*cough* Trans­form­ers *cough*). How­ever, I can’t help but point out a few, for­give me, illog­i­cal plot ele­ments, espe­cially in the mad rush towards the end:

  • Why does Kirk bother fir­ing upon Nero’s ship as it’s being torn apart by a black hole? The Dork Report’s No-Prize answer: maybe Kirk feared Nero would time travel yet again to cre­ate mis­chief in yet another time­line (hey, there’s always the inevitable next reboot in a few years).
  • Starfleet is busy else­where in the galaxy, so we see the cadets mobi­lized into a strike force to con­front Nero. So why is the Acad­emy still full of stu­dents when Nero’s ship reaches Earth? The Dork Report’s No-Prize answer: maybe they were Fresh­men not qual­i­fied to do more than merely swab the decks.
  • It’s wildly implau­si­ble for young Spock to maroon Kirk on the same planet that Nero did Spock Prime. The Dork Report’s No-Prize answer: nope, I got noth­ing. I mean, really, come on! (but still, the movie is awe­some, just go with it)
  • The hard­est plot point to swal­low is why Spock Prime does not accom­pany Kirk back to the Enter­prise. Would he really risk the fate of Earth because he thinks it’s more impor­tant that Kirk and his young self forge their des­tined friend­ship? The Dork Report’s No-Prize answer: yes.

But enough com­plain­ing. Did I men­tion the movie is TEH AWESOME? There’s not one bad per­for­mance to drag things down (a notable prob­lem with Watch­men — read The Dork Report review). Despite being tasked with recre­at­ing char­ac­ters beloved by fans for over 40 years, no one attempts an out­right imi­ta­tion or car­i­ca­ture. The most faith­ful is Zachary Quinto as Spock. Beyond his eerie phys­i­cal resem­blance to Nimoy (maybe not how he actu­ally looked in 1966, but how he might have), he has a fresh take that plays up the character’s inter­nal strug­gle between emo­tion and logic. Chris Pine art­fully embod­ies Kirk’s blend of right­eous nobil­ity and brash rule-busting atti­tude with­out aping William Shatner’s famously hammy style (for which we all, admit it, love him). Karl Urban nails Bones as a sea­sick pes­simist, and Zoe Sal­dana and John Cho bring wel­come sass and phys­i­cal action hero prowess to Uhura and Sulu, two char­ac­ters often left on the side­lines. Only Anton Yelchin and Simon Pegg come close to over­do­ing it. Pegg mugs and shouts, play­ing Scotty as much more of a mad Scots­man than James Doohan ever did, and Yelchin overex­ag­ger­ates Chekov’s accent for pure com­edy. But that’s not to say both per­for­mances aren’t hugely enter­tain­ing, just like every­thing else on display.

Simon Pegg in Star TrekPegg gives Scotty’s accent all she’s got, Captain!

Star Trek goes much much fur­ther with Spock’s half-human nature than any of the Trek I’ve seen. Spock was such a key ingre­di­ent that almost every ver­sion of Trek that fol­lowed was oblig­ated to include a sim­i­lar char­ac­ter: most obvi­ously the android Data (Brent Spiner) in The Next Gen­er­a­tion. We are reminded the Vul­can species is not nat­u­rally emo­tion­less, as many casual fans assume, but rather a deeply pas­sion­ate peo­ple that holds its war­like nature in check by ele­vat­ing logic to the level of reli­gion. A purely devout Vul­can would be about as dra­mat­i­cally inter­est­ing as a robot (but it must be said that even Spock’s father Sarek (Ben Cross), a high-ranking Vul­can elder, pri­vately admits to being moved by the irra­tional emo­tion of love). The aged Spock Prime is prac­ti­cally jovial, seem­ingly hav­ing come to terms with his dual­ity. It’s actu­ally rather heart­warm­ing for a long­time fan to see him at a place of peace with himself.

I have room for one more small com­plaint: there’s an over­re­liance on clichéd father issues as easy story short­cuts to define char­ac­ter, for which I blame J.J. Abrams. Both Kirk and Spock are torn between rebelling against and own­ing up to their respec­tive heroic, accom­plished fathers. Abrams also built his TV series Alias and Lost upon the same dra­matic crutch, in which seem­ingly every char­ac­ter is pri­mar­ily moti­vated by strained rela­tion­ships with absent and/or bad fathers (e.g. Syd­ney, Jack, Locke, Kate, Miles, etc…). One won­ders, sta­tis­ti­cally speak­ing, how many peo­ple in the world actu­ally do have such com­pli­cated rela­tion­ships with their dads. Maybe those that do are just more likely to make their careers writ­ing scripts for Hollywood.

None of the many Trek sequels, pre­quels, or spin­offs to date have ever reached the mythic sta­tus of the orig­i­nal series and its core dynamic duo Kirk and Spock. Star Trek makes a bold bid to reclaim what made the orig­i­nal such a phe­nom­e­non: it goes back to the orig­i­nal sce­nario and char­ac­ters, and thor­oughly remas­ters, rein­vig­o­rates, rein­vents, and gives them a swift kick in the ass. It restores the names Kirk and Spock to the realm of leg­ends and icons.

Offi­cial movie site: www.startrekmovie.com

Mutant Mayhem: X-Men

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X-Men movie poster

 

On a whim, this Dork Reporter decided to rewatch X-Men and found it sur­pris­ingly good, even bet­ter than I remem­bered from my first view­ing almost 10 years ago. I used to be a comics fan, and read most of Chris Clare­mont and John Romita Jr.‘s lengthy run on The Uncanny X-Men series in the mid-80s. Even though I had long since stopped read­ing comics reg­u­larly by the time the movie was announced in 2000, I recall being con­vinced there was no way a live-action X-Men movie could not be a ridicu­lous folly. But I went to see it partly out of mor­bid curios­ity and partly out of a sense of duty as an ex-fan (see what I did there?). As it turned out, writer David Hayter and direc­tor Bryan Singer’s expert adap­ta­tion of the Mar­vel Comics source mate­r­ial turned out more fun, clever, and excit­ing than it had any right to be. Most wel­come of all, it is fre­quently laugh-out-loud funny (in a good way), a key ingre­di­ent unfor­tu­nately lack­ing in the mostly humor­less (but still pretty good) sequel X2: X-Men United (2003).

Hayter and Singer man­aged to dig up every ounce of sub­text baked into the X-Men mythos by orig­i­nal writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby. At its heart, the X-Men series was essen­tially a nev­erend­ing sci-fi soap opera with a noble moral of pro­gres­sive social aware­ness. The weirdo super­heroes that make up The X-Men are “mutants,” born of human par­ents but with super­hu­man pow­ers typ­i­cally man­i­fest­ing dur­ing ado­les­cence. Prior to Lee and Kirby’s inno­va­tion, comics’ super­hero tem­plates were either extrater­res­tri­als like Super­man or ordi­nary humans with arti­fi­cially gained super­pow­ers like Spider-Man (mere mor­tals Bat­man and Iron Man don’t count, no mat­ter how inor­di­nately dri­ven to fight injus­tice). Unlike the phys­i­cal ideal Super­man, most of Lee and Kirby’s mutants did not view their pow­ers as gifts, and some were out­right monsters.

Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in X-MenThe Royal Shake­speare Com­pany mutants face off

The X-Men for­mula also incor­po­rates deeper themes of racism, xeno­pho­bia, and even evo­lu­tion. Indeed, the entire premise is built upon the the­ory of evo­lu­tion: as mul­ti­ple species of humans walked the earth simul­ta­ne­ously hun­dreds of thou­sands of years ago, so too do humans now find them­selves shar­ing the earth with arguably the next branch of homo sapi­ens’ evo­lu­tion: known in the comics as “homo supe­rior.” Car­ried through to the next log­i­cal con­clu­sion, this mutant minor­ity is feared and demo­nized as freaks by the humans that vastly out­num­ber them.

The X-Men’s sym­pa­thetic antag­o­nist Erik Lehn­sh­err (Ian McK­ellen) is a sur­vivor of a Ger­man con­cen­tra­tion camp. The hor­rors he expe­ri­enced at the hands of those that hated his race (but didn’t yet real­ize he was actu­ally a dif­fer­ent species) in 1944 Poland inform his actions as the supervil­lain Mag­neto. As he lis­tens to con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can politi­cians argue over how to con­tain and sup­press the increas­ing mutant pop­u­la­tion, he dis­gust­edly states “I’ve heard these argu­ments before.” His for­mer friend (and fel­low mutant) Charles Xavier (Patrick Stew­art) hopes to find a way to live in peace, and coun­ters “That was a long time ago. Mankind has evolved since then.” But Mag­neto is unyield­ing. “Yes. Into us.”

Hugh Jackman in X-MenTalk to the claws

The cru­cial fac­tor that had me sim­ply assume the movie would be ter­ri­ble was cast­ing. It’s not hard to imag­ine a young actor able embody Spider-Man’s secret iden­tity Peter Parker as a put-upon geek har­bor­ing tremen­dous reserves of guilt and right­eous­ness. But how do you cast Wolver­ine, a diminu­tive, half-animal Cana­dian super­sol­dier with ridicu­lous hair? Easy! You hire the tall, absurdly hand­some Aus­tralian studly song-and-dance man Hugh Jack­man. Against all odds, he totally nailed the fan-favorite char­ac­ter. The moment in the film when this for­mer X-Men comics fan decided that Jack­man suc­ceeded is a sequence in which he steals an X-motorcycle and dis­cov­ers a handy tur­bo­boost but­ton. The entire audi­ence at the New York Ziegfeld the­ater laughed heartily along with his undis­guised glee at its total awe­some­ness. This doubter was com­pletely sold.

Another cast­ing coup was the double-dose of Royal Shake­speare Com­pany grav­i­tas pro­vided by McK­ellen and Stew­art (both with exten­sive expe­ri­ence in fan­tasy and sci-fi genre mate­r­ial, as Gan­dalf in Lord of the Rings and Cap­tain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion, respec­tively). Bruce Davi­son (as the xeno­pho­bic Sen­a­tor Robert Kelly) also has a long his­tory in sci­ence fic­tion, hav­ing starred in Willard and the influ­en­tial clas­sic The Lathe of Heaven.

Famke Janssen in X-MenJust don’t call her Mar­vel Girl

James Mars­den later proved him­self to be enter­tain­ingly charis­matic in Enchanted, but here he’s a vic­tim to the humor­less char­ac­ter of Cyclops. As Wolver­ine cor­rectly psy­cho­an­a­lyzes him, he’s a dick. Sim­i­larly, Famke Janssen isn’t given a whole lot to work with as the no-fun-please Dr. Jean Grey (known in the comics as Mar­vel GIrl, later to die and rise again as Phoenix in Brett Ratner’s crap sequel X-Men 3: The Last Stand — read The Dork Report review). But together with Jack­man, the trio brings alive the Wolverine/Cyclops/Phoenix love tri­an­gle drawn from the comics, help­ing to make the movie accessible.

The one real weak spot in the cast is Halle Berry. Like Jen­nifer Lopez in Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, she seems to have only one real act­ing per­for­mance under her belt (Monster’s Ball, of course). Here she turns in one of her most bland and tone­less per­for­mances yet. For extra amuse­ment, be sure to catch the deleted scenes on the DVD edi­tion in which she can be heard affect­ing a weak pseudo-African accent. It’s a shame, because Storm was a very strong char­ac­ter in the comics around the time I read them. Writer Chris Clare­mont obvi­ously had an affec­tion for her, even pro­mot­ing her to leader of the X-Men.

Hugh Jackman and Anna Paquin in X-MenFero­cious mutant super-soldier Wolver­ine can really relate to Rogue’s teenage angst

Aside from cast­ing, I imag­ine the second-biggest obsta­cle fac­ing the film­mak­ers was how to intro­duce the com­plex X-Men uni­verse to main­stream audi­ences while pre­serv­ing its integrity to appease long­time fans. Hayter and Singer came up with the excel­lent solu­tion of hav­ing us meet Pro­fes­sor X and his X-Men through the eyes of new­bies Wolver­ine and Rogue (Anna “That’s my mother’s piano!” Paquin). Both are very dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters that share key com­mon expe­ri­ences that allow them to bond in a big brother / lit­tle sis­ter rela­tion­ship: Wolver­ine is a loner amne­siac unaware there are oth­ers like him, and Rogue is a young run­away iso­lated by par­tic­u­larly extreme pow­ers that pre­vent her from expe­ri­enc­ing nor­mal human inter­ac­tion. Almost any­one can iden­tify with the painful com­ing of age that comes with her exag­ger­ated ado­les­cence. A star­tling moment of pathos occurs between them when she sees him wield the fear­some metal claws sheathed in his fore­arms: “When they come out, does it hurt?” “Every time.”

On an even more prac­ti­cal level, the film­mak­ers came up with an inge­nious solu­tion to the comics char­ac­ters’ silly cos­tumes by hav­ing the movie X-Men wear more pho­to­genic uni­forms. Cyclops’ joke about yel­low and orange span­dex is an easter egg for fans: Wolver­ine sports such an ensem­ble in the comics. Best of all, the req­ui­site action set pieces are jus­ti­fied by the char­ac­ters, not just the plot. For exam­ple, a big blow-out staged at a train sta­tion is the result of a heart­break­ing mis­un­der­stand­ing that causes Rogue to flee the longed-for safe haven she had only just discovered.

The fran­chise is now set to con­tinue with a tril­ogy of pre­quels includ­ing this summer’s X-Men Ori­gins: Wolver­ine, and rumored projects X-Men Ori­gins: First Class and X-Men Ori­gins: Mag­neto. But with the first of these wrack­ing up some notably awful reviews, it’s clear the first in the series will still stand as the best for some time.

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Mogwai live at The Music Hall of Williamsburg, April 2009

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The Scot­tish instru­men­tal rock out­fit Mog­wai earned their rep­u­ta­tion in part for sheer vol­ume, like My Bloody Valen­tine and The Who before them. Their music is also notable for explor­ing the kinds of extreme dynam­ics you usu­ally only hear in elec­tron­ica or pro­gres­sive rock, wholly unlike the fatigu­ing con­stant loud­ness of most pop, punk, and metal.

My teeth are still res­onat­ing. This was far and away the most vis­cer­ally phys­i­cal con­cert I’ve ever attended. In all seri­ous­ness, I believe it would be pos­si­ble for a deaf per­son to enjoy a Mog­wai show. I don’t mean to be offen­sive to the deaf com­mu­nity here; I felt the waves of sound as much as I could hear them.

This con­cert, part of a three-night stand at The Music Hall of Williams­burg, was filmed and might appear on a future DVD.

Mogwai live at The Music Hall of Williamsburg, April 2009Mog­wai fear nothing

Offi­cial band site: www.mogwai.co.uk

Buy Mogwai’s lat­est album The Hawk is Howl­ing from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In)

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Let the Right One In movie poster

 

Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) is unapolo­get­i­cally a vam­pire story. It fol­lows most of the rules of the genre but avoids the stan­dard trap­pings of spec­tac­u­lar blood­let­ting (like, say, Blade) and sim­plis­tic sex­ual metaphors (we’re look­ing at you, Twi­light). Direc­tor Tomas Alfred­son and screen­writer John Ajvide (adapt­ing his own novel) are star­tlingly frank not just in their depic­tions of the rit­u­al­is­tic vio­lence inher­ent in a vampire’s every­day toil, but also in the des­per­ate hungers and desires of all their human char­ac­ters as well.

Novel and film are both set in 1980s Swe­den, at a time when the famously inde­pen­dent, neu­tral nation was strug­gling through a Cold War eco­nomic reces­sion. 12-year-old Oskar (Kåre Hede­brant) is meek, frail, and so fair as to seem albino. He splits his time between a scold­ing mother and a lov­ing but dis­tant father with unex­plained secrets. The only time we see Oskar happy is when play­ing in the snow at his father’s rural home. An omi­nous guest arrives, mut­ing even con­ver­sa­tion (we never learn the man’s iden­tity, or the rea­son for his smoth­er­ing effect, but for story pur­poses it only mat­ters that Oskar can­not be happy even here). Oskar is con­stantly bul­lied by school thugs seem­ingly inspired by the sav­age tor­tur­ers from the movie Deliv­er­ance: their favorite taunt is to demand he squeal like a pig. The con­stant pres­sure dri­ves him mor­bidly inward, rapidly becom­ing a poten­tial dan­ger to him­self and oth­ers. He secretly col­lects grue­some news­pa­per clip­pings of local crimes, and sneaks out­side at night to play­act his vengeance with matches and a knife. It’s easy for a 21st Cen­tury viewer to imag­ine Oskar becom­ing a school shooter.

Lina Leandersson in Let the Right One InEli (Lina Lean­der­s­son) has been twelve for a long time

A mys­te­ri­ous cou­ple moves in next door in the dead of night: Eli (Lina Lean­der­s­son), a girl appear­ing about his age, and her adult com­pan­ion Håkan (Per Rag­nar). Eli inter­rupts one of Oskar’s soli­tary night­time revenge fan­tasies, and they strike up a sort of friend­ship. As the habit­u­ally aloof Eli warms to his com­pany, she advises him to fight back against his oppres­sors. When he gets a chance to do so, Hedebrant’s star­tling per­for­mance dur­ing his tri­umph con­veys a dis­turb­ing impres­sion of a too-young boy expe­ri­enc­ing a kind of ecstasy. Com­pare and con­trast his obvi­ous plea­sure with the wholly dis­pas­sion­ate mur­ders com­mit­ted by Eli and Håkan. One won­ders how Alfred­son directed the young actor towards such a per­for­mance, and how much Hede­brant knew about the sub­text of how the scene would play on the screen. As becomes clear, Eli may not have had the boy’s best inter­ests at heart; was she urg­ing him to stand up for him­self, or set­ting him up for a big­ger fall later? Either way, she suc­ceeds in bind­ing him more closely to her.

Although Oskar is pubes­cent, his infat­u­a­tion with her does not seem to be espe­cially sex­ual. His hungers are more for com­pan­ion­ship and under­stand­ing. Eli says she is “not a girl,” and asks Oskar if he would still like her were she not. With lit­tle hes­i­ta­tion, he answers yes. He catches a glimpse of her naked torso, see­ing what seems to be a cas­tra­tion mark. But Eli is far more than just not a girl. Sub­tle spe­cial effects give us fleet­ing images of her with eerily enlarged eyes and as an older woman. She is per­ma­nently frozen in a state of child­hood, but it seems she hasn’t matured intel­lec­tu­ally and emo­tion­ally as her body remains in sta­sis (unlike the young char­ac­ter Clau­dia in Anne Rice’s Inter­view With the Vam­pire). As she tells him “I’ve been twelve for a long time.”

Let the Right One InVam­pires are hot stuff in bed

Although it doesn’t resem­ble more typ­i­cal vam­pire tales, Let the Right One In does fol­low most of the mythos: vam­pires have to be invited in (hence the name; to enter unin­vited will cause a painful, bloody death — a fate Eli demon­strates to Oskar to prove her affec­tion for him); any vic­tim bit­ten but not killed will become a vam­pire (Eli is shown to break a victim’s spine after feed­ing — a belated form of mercy com­ing from a vam­pire, I sup­pose); house­cats are com­pelled to attack vam­pires (as seen in not one of the most con­vinc­ing spe­cial effects sequences), and sun­light causes them to spon­ta­neously com­bust (as seen in one very con­vinc­ing sequence).

Eli shares with Oskar her motto “To flee is life. To linger, death.” Like her encour­age­ment to fight back against bul­lies, here is the key to under­stand­ing the mys­tery of her devoted human com­pan­ion Håkan. Eli has out­sourced her phys­i­cal needs to her self­lessly devoted ser­vant, essen­tially mak­ing him into a ser­ial killer on her behalf. What moti­vates him to com­ply? Was he once a boy, like Oscar, that fell in love with her? What­ever their bond, she ensures that Oskar is next in line to become her new provider.

After writ­ing the above, I read The A.V. Club’s excel­lent Book Vs. Film: Let the Right One In by Tasha Robin­son (part of a series also includ­ing Watch­men). In short, yes, a great deal needed to be omit­ted from the novel to shape the story into a fea­ture film. But Robin­son approves; rather than leav­ing too much out, the movie fruit­fully chooses a very dif­fer­ent, more inter­nal ver­sion of the story. Some tid­bits gleaned from the arti­cle that may be of inter­est to any­one else that hasn’t read the book:

  • The book is a more graphic, con­ven­tional hor­ror story.
  • Oskar’s father’s friend is a less sin­is­ter char­ac­ter in the book. Sim­ply, he’s a drink­ing buddy, and Oskar’s oth­er­wise decent father is appar­ently a mean drunk.
  • The title is derived from a Mor­ris­sey song quoted in the book: “Let the right one in / let the old dreams die / let the wrong ones go / They can­not do what you want them to do”
  • The Oskar of the novel is over­weight, inspir­ing the bul­lies’ “piggy” taunts.
  • The Håkan of the book is a pedophile. Eli encoun­tered him as an adult, and she trades some sex­ual favors for his ser­vices. Skim­ming the com­ments left below Robinson’s arti­cle, I see most other view­ers inter­preted the movie the same way I did.

Offi­cial movie site: www.lettherightoneinmovie.com

Must read: Let the Wrong Sub­ti­tles in to Let the Right One In. Icons of Fright finds the Eng­lish trans­la­tion lacking.

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Happy-Go-Lucky

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Happy-Go-Lucky movie poster

 

Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is a crea­ture rarely encoun­tered in movies and even less in real life: some­one gen­uinely happy. She’s not both­ered by oth­ers’ life goals; at 30, she doesn’t have a baby or a boyfriend, own a house, or know how to drive. Relent­lessly chip­per, upbeat, and out­go­ing, she’s best friends with her room­mate (a true rar­ity!) and has already found the career pos­si­bly most suited for her (she’s a gifted, com­pas­sion­ate pri­mary school teacher). Her one van­ity seems to be that she’s proud of her legs.

In con­ver­sa­tion, Poppy always finds a way to agree with almost any­thing any­one says. We first meet her chat­ter­ing away at a sullen book­store clerk. Hav­ing seen Hawkins inter­viewed around the time of her Oscar nom­i­na­tion, it’s all the more appar­ent she’s affect­ing a Cather­ine Tate impres­sion for the movie. Like Tate, Poppy just barely skirts the edge of being annoy­ing to the audi­ence as well, which con­sid­er­ing the reac­tions Poppy pro­vokes from cer­tain other char­ac­ters later in the film, prob­a­bly says more about me than it does her. Poppy’s other major strat­egy in life is to find a new oppor­tu­nity in every set­back. A back injury sends her gig­gling all the way onto an excit­ing adven­ture to a chi­ro­prac­tor. Hav­ing her bicy­cle stolen pro­vides another open­ing for a new expe­ri­ence: dri­ving lessons.

happy_go_lucky_2.jpgYou’re dri­ving me mad! See what I did there? No? Too easy?

Unfor­tu­nately for them both, her new tutor is the unsta­ble, fero­ciously angry Scott (Eddie Marsan). Just a few of Scott’s many neu­roses include racism, homo­pho­bia, reli­gious fer­vor, and con­spir­acy the­o­ries. His most para­noid rant (regard­ing the Wash­ing­ton Mon­u­ment sup­pos­edly being 666 feet tall — appar­ently a rumor stem­ming from the mis­re­ported height of its foun­da­tion) echoes those of the sim­i­larly dam­aged Johnny (David Thewlis) from Mike Leigh’s excel­lent Naked (1993). Is Marsan the most ver­sa­tile actor ever? He’s played every­thing from a sweet-natured man almost par­a­lyzed by shy­ness in Leigh’s Vera Drake, to a tough preacher in 21 Grams, to a ruth­less crim­i­nal who keeps los­ing extrem­i­ties in Han­cock. Yes, Hancock.

Most nar­ra­tives are usu­ally struc­tured around a protagonist’s prob­lem. How do you tell a story about some­one that has no prob­lems? Happy-Go-Lucky defied my expec­ta­tions that the story would go one of three ways:

  1. Poppy’s happy-go-lucky atti­tude is a defense mech­a­nism mask­ing an inner sad­ness. Events con­spire that force her to con­front and defeat her inner demons. Every­one cries, then laughs. Happy end­ing. Pic­ture a young Julia Roberts.
  2. Poppy con­fronts a huge tragedy that nearly breaks her spirit. She over­comes the obsta­cle. Every­one cries, then laughs. Happy end­ing. Pic­ture Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful.
  3. Poppy meets some­one deeply sad and unhappy, her polar oppo­site. She fixes this bro­ken per­son with the power of her indomitable spirit. Every­one cries, then laughs. Happy end­ing. Pic­ture Robin Williams help­ing Jeff Bridges heal in Fisher King (although it may seem like I’m mock­ing it here, Terry Gilliam and Richard LaGravenese’s Fisher King is actu­ally one of my favorite movies).

happy_go_lucky_1.jpglat­i­tude, lon­gi­tude, pos­i­tive attitude

While Poppy’s hap­pi­ness is totally gen­uine, she is not deranged. She does not deny that prob­lems and sad­ness exist in the world and in other people’s lives. Nor does she believe that any­one else can sim­ply shrug off their set­backs, depres­sion, or inner demons. The above sce­nario to which Happy-Go-Lucky comes clos­est is the third. Scott and one of Poppy’s sis­ters are as sad and messed up as she is happy. She tries to help, but rec­og­nizes she is unable to fix them. The truly sad real­iza­tion for the audi­ence at the end is that we see that Poppy knows she must keep her dis­tance from her sis­ter and stop try­ing to befriend Scott. Her mere pres­ence in their lives dri­ves them crazy.

Offi­cial movie site: happygoluckythemovie.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

The Visitor

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The Visitor movie poster

 

The Vis­i­tor is the excel­lent sopho­more effort from Thomas McCarthy, writer/director of The Sta­tion Agent (2003). The dis­gust­ingly tal­ented McCarthy is also an accom­plished actor, most recently appear­ing as a cor­po­rate espi­onage agent in Tony Gilroy’s Duplic­ity and as a pla­gia­riz­ing jour­nal­ist in The Wire.

Wal­ter Vale (Richard Jenk­ins) is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Con­necti­cut Col­lege. The recent wid­ower has regressed into a will­fully lonely state, hav­ing lost his social graces and merely coast­ing in his respon­si­bil­i­ties. In one small way at least, he does seem to be try­ing to grow a lit­tle as the movie begins. He runs through a num­ber of piano instruc­tors, futilely attempt­ing to pick up the instru­ment at an age he is coun­seled to not even try. We later learn that this effort is fac­ing back­wards and grasp­ing at the past; his late wife was a con­cert pianist.

Richard Jenkins and Haaz Sleiman in The Visitor

Wal­ter reluc­tantly trav­els to New York City to present a paper he nom­i­nally cowrote. He finds that his neglected vacant city apart­ment has been ille­gally sub­let by a man named Ivan (which comes across like a clue dropped for a future con­flict — who is this Ivan with a key to his place, and will he return? But the plot point is never picked back up). His unex­pected ten­ants are a young cou­ple barely mak­ing a liv­ing in New York City as artists: Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), a Syr­ian djembe player, and Zainab (Danai Jeke­sai Gurira), a Sene­galese jew­elry designer. The con­sci­en­tious Wal­ter balks at throw­ing them out and instead befriends them. Tarek begins to teach him to play the djembe, which he takes to more imme­di­ately than he ever did the piano.

My one com­plaint is that the char­ac­ter of Tarek is too sketchily drawn. He’s an implau­si­bly good and nice guy, with­out a hint of any­thing even remotely dark. Where are this very gre­gar­i­ous man’s other friends? Even the icy Zainab seems to have pals at the out­doors mar­ket where she sells her hand­made jewelry.

Richard Jenkins and Hiam Abbass in The Visitor

The trio’s brief period of hap­pi­ness is bro­ken when Tarek is detained over a mis­un­der­stand­ing that inci­den­tally reveals he and Zainab have both over­stayed their visas. As Wal­ter tries to aid his new friends, he finds him­self plunged into the black hole of ille­gal immi­gra­tion and Home­land Secu­rity. Tarek’s over­pro­tec­tive mother Mouma (Hiam Abbass) arrives, and Wal­ter becomes her ambas­sador as they shut­tle back and forth to a deten­tion cen­ter in Queens (a bor­ough the movie por­trays rather unflat­ter­ingly). If find­ing new friends and an invig­o­rat­ing cre­ative out­let had not already plunged Wal­ter back into life, a bud­ding romance with Mouma com­pletes his new slate.

The Vis­i­tor and The Sta­tion Agent both man­age to just barely skate the razor edge of sen­ti­men­tal cheese. Keep­ing the story of Walter’s emo­tional reha­bil­i­ta­tion from being too corny is the worry that Wal­ter is maybe a bit too des­per­ate to ingra­ti­ate him­self. Mouna under­stand­ably does a dou­ble­take when she learns how much he is sac­ri­fic­ing to help Tarek, even though they have all known him for only a few days. Indeed, the per­pet­u­ally ner­vous Zainab sus­pected his inten­tions from the very begin­ning — his aid would seem to be too good to be true were he not a man with a des­per­ate hole in his life. Zainab’s dis­trust is the defen­sive stance of some­one who knows she could be kicked out of her new home at any moment — xeno­pho­bia dressed up as com­bat­ing ter­ror­ism. It’s all the more affect­ing when she finally melts and opens up to Wal­ter and Mouna.

Any one of these char­ac­ters could be the tit­u­lar Vis­i­tor: Tarek, Zainab, and Mouna are, in the eyes of the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity, at worst poten­tial ter­ror­ists and at best tem­po­rary labor, no mat­ter what they may have to offer. Wal­ter has homes in Con­necti­cut and New York but doesn’t really live in either one.

Offi­cial movie site: www.thevisitorfilm.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Bottle Rocket

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Bottle Rocket movie poster

 

Wes Ander­son and co-writer Owen Wilson’s fea­ture debut is based on their 1992 short film of the same name. Like Kevin Smith’s Clerks and Quentin Tarantino’s Reser­voir Dogs, Bot­tle Rocket is Anderson’s urtext. His sig­na­ture style is already fully present: metic­u­lously con­structed of pri­mary col­ors, writ­ten in tor­rents of words, and shot per­pen­dic­u­larly against exact­ing mise en scèné. The Royal Tenebaums is the only of Anderson’s films to fea­ture par­ents as fea­tured char­ac­ters through­out, but Rush­more, The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­ited, and Bot­tle Rocket all con­cern mis­fit sib­lings with largely absent par­ents. Like the Tenen­baums and the Whit­mans (of The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­ited), the Adams broth­ers are priv­i­leged yet seem to pos­sess noth­ing of their own.

Dig­nan (Owen Wil­son) throws in his lot with local crook Mr. Henry (James Caan), who proves both a bad boss and poor father sub­sti­tute. Dig­nan forms an ama­teur gang of sorts with brother Anthony (Luke Wil­son) — an aim­less young man suf­fer­ing from self-diagnosed “exhaus­tion,” and their pushover friend Bob Map­plethorpe (Robert Mus­grave) — of use mostly because he has access to a car. Every detail of Dignan’s grand scheme for his life is plot­ted out in the hand­writ­ten man­i­festo “75-Year Plan — Notes Re: Careers.” As he tells Anthony, “I think we both respond well to structure.”

Robert Musgrave, Owen Wilson, and Luke Wilson in Bottle Rocket“On the run from Johnny Law… ain’t no trip to Cleveland.”

They feel the urge to steal (from a chain book store, hilar­i­ously, and even from their own par­ents’ home), not so much for money itself but to enable their fan­tasy of liv­ing inde­pen­dently on the road. Their dream is that being on the lam would pro­vide the excite­ment they imag­ine their lives lack. But Dignan’s pre­cise vision of the future is dis­rupted at every turn. The most cat­a­clysmic event of all is when the roman­tic Anthony becomes smit­ten with motel maid Inez (Lumi Cava­zos), and he gives up most of their ill­got­ten spoils to help her. Dignan’s own future hasn’t fac­tored in love; even­tu­ally he real­izes he must set off on his own to find his destiny.

The 2007 Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion edi­tion reprints a 1999 appre­ci­a­tion by pro­ducer James L. Brooks, in which he describes how the neo­phyte film­mak­ers had lit­tle notion of how movies are actu­ally writ­ten and made, espe­cially any aspect thereof involv­ing cre­ative com­pro­mise. Their first draft was report­edly so wordy that a sim­ple table read­ing proved epic:

the longest enter­tain­ment known to man, beat­ing Wagner’s Ring cycle before we reached the halfway point of the read­ing. By the time we approached the last scene, all the water pitch­ers had been emp­tied, yet voices still rasped from overuse, and there were peo­ple in the room show­ing the phys­i­cal signs of starvation.

The script was deemed unfilmable, begin­ning a long process of urg­ing Ander­son and Wil­son to cut mate­r­ial they held dear, and they held every­thing dear. The movie still seemed doomed even after suc­cess­fully shoot­ing a work­able script. When early cuts tested poorly before audi­ences, Brooks tried to con­sole Ander­son and Wil­son by telling them that early feed­back for E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was also poor, but it was saved by the music and a mem­o­rable logo. Indeed, Brooks cred­its the score by Mark Moth­ers­baugh of Devo for help­ing make the film work.

James Caan and Owen Wilson in Bottle Rocket“This seems like a nice soirée”

James Caan only worked on the film for three days, and still seems bemused by the whole thing. But the result has proven a cult clas­sic, and launched the careers of not only Ander­son but also the Wil­son broth­ers. The Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion edi­tion also includes Mar­tin Scorcese’s 2000 appre­ci­a­tion from Esquire, in which he cred­its Ander­son with a rare, true affec­tion for his char­ac­ters. Dignan’s belief in his imper­vi­ous­ness is the flm’s “tran­scen­dent moment”: “they’ll never catch me, man, ’cause I’m fuck­ing innocent.”

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

David Byrne, Live at Radio City Music Hall, February 28, 2009

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David Byrne On Tour Poster

 

David Byrne and Brian Eno, both Dork Report favorites, col­lab­o­rated exten­sively between 1978–1980. Many of these clas­sic albums have passed into the musi­cal canon, most espe­cially Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light (1980) and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981). I believe there are some lin­ger­ing rumors of inter­per­sonal fric­tion, cer­tainly within the four Talk­ing Heads, but Byrne and Eno appear to have remained in light, as it were. As Byrne relates the story in the liner notes to their new album Every­thing That Hap­pens Will Hap­pen Today, the pos­si­bil­ity of his com­plet­ing sev­eral of Eno’s stock­piled instru­men­tal demos arose over din­ner. The even­tual result is a bril­liant new album that is unmis­tak­ably the prod­uct of these two unique musi­cians, but is cer­tainly no sequel or retread of past glories.

David Byrne Live at Radio City Music HallSquint and you might see more than some blotches of color

Tour­ing to sup­port the new mate­r­ial, Byrne chal­lenged him­self with the self-imposed restric­tion to draw from only the five albums on which he worked with Eno: More Songs about Build­ings and Food, Fear of Music, Remain in Light, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and Every­thing That Hap­pens Will Hap­pen Today. Even with this self-imposed lim­i­ta­tion of albums that are all, frankly, kind of weird, it’s amaz­ing how many toe-tapping pop songs they contain.

The excel­lently sequenced set list, mostly alter­nat­ing between the weird and (rel­a­tively) nor­mal, kept the mas­sive Radio City Music Hall audi­ence singing along. Strange Over­tones, my favorite song from the new album, came first. Talk­ing Heads’ Crosseyed and Pain­less proved an early cli­max, bring­ing the entire audi­ence to their feet for most of the rest of the show. The only dis­ap­point­ment was that Byrne selected only one sin­gle track from the leg­endary My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: Help Me Some­body. It was imag­i­na­tively rearranged with live voices replac­ing the original’s found vocals (or as Byrne noted that we would call them today, sam­ples). Why not try the same with some of the other great tracks on that album?

David Byrne Live at Radio City Music HallThe long white splotch in the mid­dle is David Byrne and the Rockettes!

The stage design was per­fectly aus­tere, and decep­tively sim­ple. I espe­cially liked the stark, mono­chro­matic light­ing design. The entire band was clad in white, and three mod­ern dancers accom­pa­nied sev­eral songs with wit­tily chore­o­graphed rou­tines. The show cli­maxed with a truly barn­storm­ing ver­sion of Burn­ing Down the House, with the entire band dressed in frilly tutus. It could only be com­pleted by the star­tling appear­ance by… wait for it… the bloody Rock­ettes! OMGWTF!? Need­less to say, the crowd went bananas.

In short, I had a grand time. Here at The Dork Report, I have fewer qualms about rat­ing movies on a five-star scale than I do con­certs. Movies are cheap enough to rent in con­sume in large gulps. I end up see­ing many bad or mediocre movies, but few con­cerst that sucks. The likely expla­na­tion is the expense involved, which often lim­its the con­certs I go to to artists that I already very much like. The only rea­son I didn’t rate this par­tic­u­lar show higher is that I could imag­ine that if I could time-travel back to the 1980s and see the orig­i­nal Talk­ing Heads (prefer­ably dur­ing the period Adrian Belew was in their live band), that would eas­ily by five stars.

Offi­cial album site: EverythingThatHappens.com

Buy David Byrne and Brian Eno’s album Every­thing That Hap­pens Will Hap­pen Today from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.