Off-Center Views

Fribble Maker Shakes Down Retirees

2012-02-01T14:54:00.001-05:00

Tell Friendly's to stuff their Fribbles up Sun Capital's behind!

Mae Pelissier is 82-years-old. For 28 years she worked for the Friendly Ice Cream Corporation in Northampton, MA, and dragged herself to the store at six a.m. to make sure it was ready for morning customers. Until this month she got a small benefits package for her labors: a pension of $72 a month, a $6,000 life insurance policy, and a little bit of supplemental health insurance. Now it’s gone, as is the fate of 6,000 other former employees.

Friendly’s went into Chapter 11 and didn’t make its way out. It sought a buyer and only one appeared. Its name alone tells you that it isn’t interested in making fribbles: Sun Capital Partners Inc. What companies like Sun do is buy troubled assets, put companies on a short leash, and if that doesn’t work, sell everything that isn’t nailed down, bring in the wreckers, and move the real estate. They pare to the bones costs associated with wages and benefits. One of the first things Sun did with Friendly’s was instruct it to tell its retirees that Sun would not assume the company’s pension plans. So forget the fribbles-–it’s time to shake down Mae Pelissier.

Back in the 19^th century companies routinely stiffed workers of their wages, especially in the construction industry. A favored dodge was to defer wages on a construction site, and then declare bankruptcy as the project neared completion. A “new” firm suddenly appeared–often the old one with a new name and a new board of directors. This pseudo white knight bought the bankrupt project (at bargain basement prices), set up shop, and operated with money in its treasury that should have gone for wages. Workers fought like hell to get what were called “mechanics lien laws” passed to curtail this vicious practice. Now, when a firm goes belly up, paying back wages is part of the liquidation process (as any firm taking over the company understands).

Move the clock forward and we see a new dodge centered on pension plans. Spare me all claims that “times change.” Pensions are a classic quid pro quo; workers agree to scale back wage and immediate benefit demands in the name of deferring reward until a later time. It’s simply unconscionable that firms like Sun can cancel these plans so cavalierly. (This, by the way, is also the profile of many of the firms with which Mitt--I’m Way Above the 1%--Romney has been associated.) Let me be clear: no laws are being broken, but the morality of this is on par with selling heroin in the schoolyard.

The United States needs to extend mechanics lien laws to cover pensions. What kind of society or company can strip Mae Pelissier of such a piddling pension? Friendly’s, of course, washed it hands of this. It had no other buyer, it claims. Here’s my retort: If a firm such as Sun won’t honor pensions and no other buyer that will emerges, the government should seize the bankrupt firm, sell all its assets (including property) at a public auction, and all revenues should go into a state-run escrow account that maintains benefits. Continue paying these until the funds run out; if retirees run out before the funds do, government gets to keep them.

We can’t hold out breath waiting for the Millionaire Congress to pass such a law, but we can register our personal protest. Boycott Friendly’s. Do your part not to leave any bones for Sun Capital to pick.

Shame Intrigues, but Does it Resolve?

2012-01-30T16:17:00.000-05:00

SHAME (2011)

Directed by Steve McQueen

Fox Searchlight, NC-17 (explicit sex), 101 minutes

***

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan

Steve McQueen directed Hunger in 2008, a harrowing film about the 1981

Northern Ireland hunger strikes, in which Michael Fassbender very effectively played Bobby Sands. Now McQueen takes a dubious risk portraying a man who is addicted to sex. Take a deep breath - this is not all it might appear to be. Fassbender plays Brandon – an upwardly mobile New Yorker living in a high rise apartment on 28^th Street. Brandon's tempestuous private life, which allows him to indulge his sexual addiction, is disrupted when his sister Sissy–played with brilliant intensity by Carey Mulligan–arrives unannounced for an indefinite stay.

Her highlight is her funereal club performance of the song “New York, New York,” witnessed by Brandon and by his boss, who lusts after Sissy. Everyone seems to be addicted. Performances are excellent throughout - including Brandon’s creepy office colleagues imprisoned in their high-rise office in the same way as Brandon is in his apartment. But, for me, Mulligan is the real star. She goes full tile at the dialogue and appears to be as damaged as Brandon and in need of the same emotional support, the difference being that she’s open about it and he isn’t. Addiction is a fascinating topic from so many viewpoints: psychological, neurological, biochemical, sociological, legal, moral.... It’s a good example of the complexity this film seeks to address. At what point does a brain-state become something that removes personal responsibility? Does it ever? After all, we are our brains.

Whether the film successfully tackles any of these issues is problematic, but it does hint at them at several points along the way. However, I suspect McQueen also has a prurient interest in Brandon’s sexual proclivities, even when we are asked to accept them as a critique. Something tells me the line between this and fascinated appeal is crossed many times. In the end, this is a difficult film to love, but it’s one to admire from a technical point of view. New York is a city of blinding lights, shot through with dark blues and greens reflecting the coldness of Brandon’s apartment. Told through a series of flashbacks and anchored in the early 1980’s prior to the worst AIDS/HIV scares, it gives McQueen the freedom to accelerate though Brandon’s wild life. It certainly asks many questions, but whether it resolves much is hard to say.--Lloyd Sellus

The Iron Lady is Made of Lead

2012-01-27T21:05:00.000-05:00

The Iron Lady (2011)

Directed by Phylida Lloyd

Film4, 113 mins. PG-13

Another bid for an Oscar goes down in flames. It began as a wastepaper fire, but raged out of control because the audience was too bored to notice until the flaming paper-–Abi Morgan’s screenplay–took down everything in its path.

The Iron Lady is, reputedly, a biopic of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose reign of error lasted from 1979 to 1990. Maggie Thatcher was Britain’s Reagan–a pol who gave the country over to bankers and speculators, privatized everything that wasn’t nailed down, smashed labor unions, and called it all “prosperity,” based on the evidence that a small percentage of Brits enjoyed wealth and clout the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the barons and gentry perished in the wake of World War I. She was the longest-serving PM of the 20^th century, and won reelections that reflected her popularity for having presided over Britain’s victory in the 1983 Falklands War, which allowed Britain to entertain the fantasy that it was still a mighty empire. In the end, though, that proved as illusory as the second coming of the aristocracy. Brits continue to wrestle with her decisions to cut holes in the social safety net and break up British Telecom, British Airways, British Steel, and British Rail, to say nothing of her 1985 decision to reject integrating the British economy with the rest of the E.U.

Why the history lesson? Because you won’t learn much of this from the film. Thatcher, now 88, is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, a fate one would wish on no one. This fact led to a curious decision on the part of Morgan and Lloyd: they focus most of the film on the post-2003 period, that year being the one in which Thatcher’s husband Denis died, and in which her own dementia began to spin out of control. Thatcher’s life is told episodically through a series of flashbacks, but the back story is truncated. That’s too bad. Young Thatcher-–actually Margaret Roberts–is played by Alexandra Roach. She is a fresh face and shows Roberts/Thatcher as a principled and fiercely determined young woman. Once Margaret is married and on the rise, Meryl Streep takes over.

I am such a huge Streep fan that I think she is this generation’s Katherine Hepburn, but she is–as the Brits would say–bloody awful in this film. Of course she can do the accent and, yes, there is some impressive acting on her part, which is part of the problem. This is one of those films in which you see the acting rather than losing yourself in the characterization. It’s as if the film should be titled The Iron Lady: Meryl Streep’s Bid for an Oscar. Streep’s attempt to wrench sympathy for the demented Thatcher is pure bathos, and her tirades against her Cabinet ministers are histrionic.

To be fair, she’s dealing with a lame script. Morgan’s screenplay has Margaret spending half the film speaking with Denis (Jim Broadbent) after his demise. Great! Just what we all wanted–Topper Goes to Parliament. The film’s longest sequences have Streep moving through a confused fog; the actual events of Thatcher’s ministry appear as snippets stripped of depth and nuance. Even worse is the film’s dishonest impression management. Thatcher is shown as argumentative, bullying, and obstinate, but small insertions such as a tabloid proclaiming booming stock markets juxtaposed against angry strikers leave the impression that she was ultimately right. Really? Ask the Scots about that; Margaret Thatcher’s 1989 poll tax almost single-handedly insured the success of Scotland’s 1997 devolution vote.

Even worse are the mawkish scenes in which Thatcher is presented as an inspiration for British women. That might be true of the Bloomsbury and fox hunting sets, but good God! I’m happy to debate the wisdom of Thatcher’s economic policies, but viewing her as a feminist icon is too absurd to warrant wasting my breath.

In the interest of full disclosure I should note that each of my three cinema companions loved the film. Who should you trust? Me on this one. Box office receipts have been scant, reviewers have been indifferent, and audience scores are low. It seems that The Iron Lady is made of lead.

I'm Not Pissed Off by Marine Pissing Incident

2012-01-25T16:40:00.001-05:00

Aggressive pissing--not nice, but not a war crime.

You can place this one near the top of my “Damned-if-I-Care” list. The Obama administration and the U.S. Marines Corps have expressed shock over a video in which four Marines were shown urinating on the bodies of Taliban combatants. Disciplinary action is probably in the offing as, after all, we must show the world that Americans don’t do mean things. So once again, some kids will be made sacrificial lambs to cover the sins of their elders.

Do I condone urinating on bodies? No. But given what is asked of those sent to Afghanistan, if the worst troops do in such an untenable situation is pee on a few corpses, they’re hardly war criminal material. Isn’t it oh-so-easy to punish those on the ground for geopolitical obstacles that policymakers can’t solve and military leaders are powerless to remove? If these four Marines receive anything stronger than a stern lecture, their unit should demand a transfer stateside.

The hypocrisy of policymakers and military brass is stunning. What did you expect? You train young people to become killing machines, tell them that the enemy represents pure evil, build unit cohesion, then send them off to a place where they watch their comrades killed and brutalized. Then you say, “Remember kids; be nice.” How does that work, exactly? I also can’t condone the torture of living human beings the likes of which we saw at Abu Graibh, but those who were surprised by that are eligible to have their pictures posted in the dictionary beside the entry for naïveté.

As for complaints from the Taliban (in Pakistan, of course!) about American “brutality” and the “desecration” of Muslim bodies, please excuse me while I sneer. Listening to complaints from the Taliban is like listening to a hangman complaining about rope burn. I’ll get upset about Piss-Gate when I hear the Taliban apologize to Daniel Pearl’s widow. I wonder where the Marines got the idea to disrespect corpses? It couldn’t have anything to do with seeing the video of Pearl’s beheading, or of witnessing American bodies being dragged through the streets, could it? It’s hypocrisy even by the Taliban’s debased standards to moan about rules of war that it doesn’t respect.

The very best way to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again is to bring the troops home. Retribution for 9/11 has been exacted, Osama bin Laden is dead, the Taliban is tucked away in Pakistan, and the Karzai government in Kabul is just as sexist and treacherous as the one he replaced. Every day troops remain active in the senseless Afghani conflict increases the odds that some soldiers will act in ways they’d normally find repulsive. It’s time to exit and let Afghanis sort out this Inferno for themselves.

As for me, I really do want people to be nice. So here’s my ecumenical gesture in the name of promoting world peace. If I die a natural death–as opposed to being killed by a religious fanatic–persons from all religious persuasions are invited to piss on me. I only ask that you line up nicely and don’t fight.

The Night Circus Thrills on Every Page

2012-01-23T16:25:00.000-05:00

The Night Circus

By Erin Morgenstern

Doubleday, 2011

I began reading Erin Morgenstern’s debut novel The Night Circus in December and even when just half done I thought it the best work of fiction I read in 2011. I finished it in early January, and I’d not be the slightest bit shocked if it ends up being the best novel I read in 2012 as well. This is one of those rare books one is sorry to finish because it means an end to the wonderment.

The central premise is disarmingly simple. Today we live in a world of illusions and of skepticism. We see magicians, but we know they’re not real; there are even TV shows that demonstrate how the tricks are done. We marvel at the technology and at the clever performances that make us not see what is patently obvious once the ruse is revealed, but we don’t believe in magic. Morgenstern takes us to back to Victorian London. It too was a society in which illusionists abounded, but by the time this novel opens in 1886, most thinking people were as deeply skeptical as we are today. The floodgates opened in 1882 when the Society for Psychical Research began to expose mesmerists, mediums, and assorted tricksters as frauds. The bottom fell out of the spooky world cottage industry in 1888, when the Fox sisters, the period’s most famous spiritualists, were exposed as nothing more than carny con artists. Thus, the patrons who attend Le Cirque des Rêves marvel over the amazing illusions they witness, but they assume it to be a fantasy world no more real than the dreams alluded to in the spectacle’s name. But what if they’re wrong? What if they are witnessing bona fide magic and the real illusion is getting audiences to assume it’s chicanery? What if the entire circus was created by the paranormal powers of just a few individuals who were so good that not even the circus’s putative designers, managers, and other performers were entirely aware that most of their “artistry” was accomplished through magic?

If magic is real, what kind of alternative reality can be created? Morgenstern, a 2000 graduate of Smith College, gives her own imagination free rein, and what an imagination it is—gowns that change shape and color, ambrosia-like foods whose ingredients no one can quite pin down, gravity-defying rooms that appear to be made of clouds, ice-curtained fantasy realms without refrigeration, thrilling rides that defy the laws of physics, acrobatic kittens, clocks of greater complexity than a modern computer, actors that seem never to age… And it all unfolds within black and white tents that mysteriously appear overnight, as is appropriate for a circus that commences at sunset and closes at sunrise.

The circus, it seems, is actually the set for an elaborate contest between two ancient master wizards, Prospero and Alexander, which they wage through their proxies, Prospero’s gifted daughter Celia, and Alexander’s chosen ward Marco. The latter are also pawns, unaware of the degree to which they must participate, but increasingly drawn to concerns over the welfare of the circus, the innocents whose lives they control, and to each other. Who are Prospero and Alexander? Greek gods among mortals? Competing demons? Two cranky wizards who’ve been competing for so long that the game has become all-consuming?

Some critics have compared The Night Circus to Harry Potter and the works of Neil Gaiman. I can see the Gaiman connection, but this one is far more adult than Harry Potter. It also bears atmospheric similarities to Terry Gilliam’s The Imginarium of Doctor Parnassus and to Steven Millhauser’s Pulitizer Prize-winning novel Martin Dressler. And life inside the show bears some resemblance to Cirque du Soliel.

Does The Night Circus deserve to be mentioned amidst such august company? I’d concede that there are flaws that betray the author’s youth and inexperience. I wondered why she didn’t set the main action in New York, as she’s clearly American in her sensitivities and her evocation of Victorian London isn’t exactly Dickensian. Some of the characters have great depth, others seem sketchily underdeveloped. I’m sure that serious critics would say that there’s quite a bit of sleight of hand in the novel. You know what? I don’t give a damn. I haven’t been this engaged in a novel in years and I don’t care if the entire thing is as phony as the Fox sisters. I bought into the fantasy cape, cane, and rabbit.

Big Foot Wins!

2012-01-20T13:19:00.000-05:00

Big Foot knows the Constitution better than New Hampshire park officials.

Score one for the little guy. Or should I say, for the big furry guy. Those outside of New England may not have heard of Jonathan Doyle. He’s a free spirit who gets his jollies by dressing up as Big Foot and scrambling around the rocks of New Hampshire’s Monadnock Mountains. It was big goof that evolved into a concept. Doyle took to interviewing hikers about their alarm at confronting Big Foot and posting small videos on YouTube. Everything was done in the snarky, ironic, and self-reflexive style that dominates the Internet. Sometimes Doyle made himself as Big Foot the subject of the interview, with “Big Foot” commenting on his brush with homo sapiens sapiens. Doyle even planned to do a “mockumentary” film titled The Capture of Big Foot.

Everyone was having a good laugh until the State of New Hampshire stepped in. Wonder why Ron Paul is popular in the Granite State and why folks up that way distrust government? It might have something to do with the fact that its regulators have the commonsense of the average mollusk. As word got out about Doyle’s theatrics, the “Live Free or Die” state decided that Doyle had become an “event.” As an “event,” Doyle was required to secure a $100 special events permit and post a $2 million bond--a pretty hefty hunk of change for a guy in a glorified gorilla suit. So Doyle exchanged the monkey suit for a lawsuit, got in touch with the ACLU, sued, and won. The Supreme Court of New Hampshire–showing more mental acuity than the regulatory mollusks–decided that the law was too vague. (No kidding!) Now Doyle is free to let his wild spirit gambol amidst Monadnock’s gnarly gneiss.

While I’m on the subject of New Hampshire, isn’t it time also to call out the hypocrisy of the Granite State? It prides itself on having no state income tax. Big frickin’ deal! Everything else costs an arm and a leg up there. How does it fund mollusk regulators and the rest of the state? By having very high property taxes, by gouging drivers a $1.40 toll to drive the 13 miles from the Massachusetts line to Kittery, Maine, by having user taxes on everything, and by trying to fleece jokesters like Doyle. And, oh yeah, by not spending much; New Hampshire has some of the worst public services north of the Mason-Dixon. Maybe it would be better off with Big Foot running the show.

John Martyn Tribute Album Wildly Uneven

2012-01-17T14:29:00.002-05:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS

John Martyn: Johnny Boy Would Love This

Liason Music 4012

* * ½

John Martyn (1948-2009) was certainly one of the more important songwriters of the past 60 years. He was also one of the most versatile; he wrote songs that thrilled fans of various genres: pop, rock, folk, jazz, blues…. It seemed as if every other review of his songs included the phrase “defies categorization.” Like Joni Mitchell, Martyn’s favorite project was reinventing himself. As a result, he never lingered long in the limelight, but among other songwriters he commanded a reverence bordering on legend.

The intent behind Johnny Boy Would Love This is to honor Martyn’s eclecticism. Thirty different artists headed to the studio to record his songs and, appropriately, they are from various musical genres. The result? Well… Johnny boy might have indeed loved it, but most listeners will, at best, find it a stronger concept than album. My own take is that it would have made one terrific disc, but at two it’s exceedingly uneven.

The odd choices begin immediately in that the second disc is much stronger than the first, a curious marketing decision given that most DJs and reviewers are likely to spin whatever comes first in the rotation. In like fashion, the opening track of David Gray singing “Let the Good Things Come” is so moody that we expect ominous rather than joyful things. It’s an interesting track, though, which cannot be said for the histrionic soul of Clarence Fountain and Sam Butler on “Glorious Fool.” This, I fear, is a metaphor for the entire project: good tracks amidst mediocre ones. Among the latter, Beck’s competent but forgettable “Stormbringer,” Syd Kitchen’s calpso-meets-pop “Fine Lines,” the faux soul of Nicholas Barron on “Angeline,” the noisy train wreck a band called On My God makes of “John Wayne,” and the unforgiveable sonic mush to which Vashti Bunyan reduces Martyn’s classic “Head and Heart.” I’m not overly fond of Beth Orton’s “Go Down Easy,” either, but I confess I find her so overrated than I’m biased on that one.

Among the good stuff, Snow Patrol’s shimmery “May You Never,” which features Gary Lightbody’s expressive vocals; the psychedelic/bluegrass tinged “Run Honey Run” by Morchebba; Bombay Bicycle club’s evocation of Donovan on “Fairytale Lullaby;” and Julie Tzuke’s well-done pop/soul rendition of “Hurt in Your Heart.” The album closes with Phil Collins covering “Tearing and Breaking,” another highlight. The Collins track ought to serve notice to pop-wannabes not to shop at thrift stores. Until you can fill the stage with an army of harmony singers and musicians, don’t try to construct thick arrangements. Overall, this collection works better when it keeps things simple, and founders when complexity overwhelms the songs. Half good/half lamentable--hence 2.5 stars of five.

Video Review: Beginners Much Better than Its Silly Trailer

2012-01-13T16:34:00.002-05:00

BEGINNERS (2010–released 2011)

Directed by Mike Mills

Olympus Pictures, 105 mins. R (For no reason other than gay people are shown)

* * *

Some movies fail because they suck and some because they can’t get mass distribution in a market dominated by just six studios. (That’s the fate of most independent, foreign, experimental, documentary, and non-linear films.) Then there are films that flop because their production companies don’t have a clue of how to market them. Place Beginners in the latter category; its worldwide box office was a paltry $14 million. I suspect most audiences avoided it for the same reason I did when it was in theaters: a dreadful trailer that promised to reduce gay people to swishy stereotypes.

I concede to gay friends and family that the movie has elements of swish and camp. Goran Visnjic is guilty of this; as the character Andy his acting palette has just two tones: the happy puppy-eyes look that precedes a hug, and the baleful downcast glance that it is usually followed by the line, “It’s because I’m gay, isn’t it?” (No; it’s because you’re acting as if you’re brain-damaged!) Visnjic’s mediocre performance signals that Beginners is no Long Time Companion; it’s not even Philadelphia. But that’s part of my point. What it’s also not is a “gay” film; it’s a film that happens to have gay characters, but whose center is a heterosexual relationship. And it’s not even about that. It’s really about what each of us find within ourselves when we stop playing expected social roles and take time to ask ourselves who we really are and what we really want. The title Beginners is ironic; it references the “Ah ha!” moment in which you finally make sense of something that has tripped you for years and begin to move on.

In the case of 71-year-old Hal (Christopher Plummer), it’s the liberation that comes after his wife Georgia (Mary Page Keller) dies–he can finally openly live the gay life he has craved since his adolescence. This revelation shocks his 38-year-old son Oliver (Ewan McGregor), but it also helps him clear leftover childhood trauma. It explains why his father was so both physically and emotionally absent, why his mother was morose, and why family conversations were like ships leaving different ports and moving in opposite directions. He also learns that Georgia was also trapped–by expectations that she be a dutiful housewife and not the bohemian flake that she really was. And it really explains why Oliver has t-shirts that last longer than most of his relationships.

As they say, a funny thing happens in the five years between his father’s coming out and his death. Hal and Oliver reconnect, but more to the point, Oliver observes his father’s joy–first through judging eyes and then through his own sadness. When Anna (Mélanie Laurent) appears on the scene, Oliver is in the midst of deep depression and cynicism. Anna is a French version of his mother–free-spirited, blunt, and marching to a different drummer. She’s also drop-dead gorgeous and is attracted to Oliver. The film explores whether this relationship is as doomed as Georgia’s belief she could “fix” Hal, or if Oliver can find his inner joy before he turns 71 like his old man.

I can say not more except give this film a try on video. It’s way more intelligent that the trailer made it out to be. It’s certainly not a great film, but it is a diverting one that deserved better. And it’s definitely not a gay film. It does veer toward stereotype in several scenes–doesn’t Hollywood stereotype everyone?–but in an odd way it redeems itself. When the camera moves away from establishing (read: hit us on the head) shots that identify who is gay and who isn’t, the movie is at its best: gay people and straight people interact, carry the same emotional baggage, and do their best to help those they care about. You know; just like real life when people put aside all labels except “human.”

Noam Pikelny Makes Banjo Hip

2012-01-12T15:42:00.000-05:00

NOAM PIKELNY

Beat the Devil and Carry a Rail

Compass 4565

* * * *

I highly recommend Noam Pikelny’s latest solo banjo release. Yes, I know that most people associate banjo with the theme music for The Beverly Hillbillies, but trust me when I say that it’s been decades since that style of playing has been dominant. But you don’t have to take me at my word about Noam Pikelny. His band The Punch Brothers is one of the hottest acts in bluegrass music and Pikelny won the 2011 Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass. Pikelny has shared stages with Martin, and in case you’ve been asleep, Martin doesn’t wield the banjo as a comedy prop; he’s won a Grammy and an International Bluegrass Music Association award with it.

Martin isn’t the only good company Pikelny keeps. Also assisting on this album are music industry luminaries such as Tim O’Brien, Jerry Douglas (Allison Krauss Band), Aoife O’Donovan (Crooked Still), and Chris Thile (Nickel Creek). Want some old-time music? Check out his duet with Martin on “Cluck Old Hen.” How about some whimsy? Any tune called “My Mother Thinks I’m a Lawyer” will fit the bill, especially when wrapped in an arrangement that’s half bluegrass and half ‘30s-style string band. Desire a barnburner? Listen to Thile make his fingers do double duty to keep up with Pikelny on “Bear Dog Grit.” Looking to taste of something sweet? Pikelny turns down the noise and slows the pace so that O’Donovan can transform the Tom Waits composition “Fish and Bird” into something as delicate as a Kate Rusby offering. Don’t think a banjo album can be hip? Check this out and get back to me.

Here’s Steve Martin talking about banjo playing and being upstaged by Pikelny on The David Letterman Show.

Swamplandia a Snappy Novel

2012-01-10T10:16:00.000-05:00

Swamplandia! (2011)

By Karen Russell

ISBN: 978-o-307-27668-1

Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! is showing up on a lot of “Best Of” lists for 2011 novels and some reviewers have hailed it as their top choice. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it is a very impressive debut novel populated with unforgettable characters. If pressed for a sound bite, mine would something along the lines of: “Hard-luck losers mucking about wetlands trying to avoid being snapped up by a Leviathan named Seth.” Let me explain.

Russell’s story centers on the Bigtree family, an ensemble ensconced on a muddy island in the midst of the Okefenokee Swamp. The Bigtree surname is an invention of patriarch Samuel designed to make his poor white trash brood seem vaguely “Indian” and more exotic for tourists making their way from the mainland to witness the family enterprise: alligator wrestling. Samuel rules over his family and a dreary little theme park, Swamplandia, as the “Chief.” He’s equal parts deluded, bumbling, big-hearted, well intentioned, and clueless. He’s mainly inept and the family’s real center is its star, matriarch Hilola. She was born Jane Owens, but as Hilola she dives into an alligator pit, out swims them, and puts on a show by subduing one of the gators and taping its jaws shut. The Chief runs a family “museum,” hawks junky souvenirs, and mentally prepares his children to enter the family business by feeding them constant stories about the family’s fame on the mainland. The kids dutifully tend to the “seths,” the nickname given to all alligators because Hilola originally wrestled a monster called Seth on a billboard. (As The Chief explains, they kept the name because “advertising is expensive.”) The family’s alleged fame is mostly a load of swamp mud, but seventeen-year-old Kiwi and younger daughters Osceloa, 15, and Ava, 9, mostly believe it until their mom suddenly dies and Swamplandia is left entirely to The Chief’s stewardship. As you might expect, that doesn’t go well.

Swamplandia! begins as a quirky book about lovable losers, but it becomes something murkier and sadder. When Hilola dies, the tourists stop coming, Kiwi bolts for the mainland, and The Chief soon follows–ostensibly to raise money for a new scheme that will win back tourists from a mainland amusement park. We watch as the Bigtrees replace one set of myths with equally implausible ones. Kiwi lands a job at the rival theme park, where he practices using big words and dreams of going to Harvard, though he’s just flunked his GED exam. Nobody knows where The Chief has gone, and the two girls remain on the island. Osceola disappears into Ouija boards, séances, and imagination. When an abandoned 1930s-era dredge floats into Swamplandia’s waters, Osceola announces she is betrothed to the ghost of a young man who died on the boat; one day she too disappears. The guts of the book evokes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness–Ava’s journey into the heart of the swamp in search of her sister. Her guide is a creepy Deliverance-like figure known only as The Birdman.

The Conrad reference works on another level, if one considers that the Bigtrees call alligators “seths.” Set–rendered Seth by the Greeks–was the Egyptian god of darkness and chaos. He’s the one who killed and disemboweled his brother Osiris and then poked out the eye of Osiris’s son Horus, who in turn castrated Seth. The blind eye, darkness, chaos, the spirit world…. All of these are good metaphors for this novel. Could we even see Sam as emasculated once his Chief illusion is shattered? You tell me when you rediscover him in Swamplandia!

Russell raises big issues in her novel, not the least of which is the question of how families such as the Bigtrees are supposed to cope. Take away their fantasies and what, precisely, do they possess? She creates indelibly memorable characters, makes us feel Ava’s peril and the slither of the swamp, and takes us inside a world where few of us would wish to enter any way other than vicariously. At some point in the journey she’s a little lost herself and the novel’s resolution feels like a deus ex machina worthy of one of Osceola’s séances. But one can forgive such slips in the midst of such fecund storytelling.

George Clooney Sleepwalks through "The Descendants"

2012-01-06T10:12:00.002-05:00

If only the scriptwriter was this thoughtful!

THE DESCENDANTS (2011)

Directed by Alexander Payne

Fox Searchlight, 115 mins. Rated R (language)

* * ½

The Descendants has garnered decent reviews, which we should interpret as still another sign of the shallow yield of 2011. In truth, it’s neither a good film, nor a bad one—merely an inconsequential one. It’s also a walk through for George Clooney, who looks rested, tanned, and unchallenged.

The film is set on Oahu and Kauai. Clooney plays Matt King, a big-time lawyer from an extended family that traces its ancestry to 19^th century missionaries that came to Hawaii to civilize the natives. If you need to know more, consult Sarah Vowell’s Unfamiliar Fishes, a book that writer and director Alexander Payne seems to have cribbed in developing a back story on why the Kings own so much land. Matt King’s wife, Elizabeth, is involved in a boating accident that leaves her in a vegetative state, and overnight he must set aside his Type A personality and develop parenting skills to deal with his daughters: 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller) and 17-year-old Alexandra (Shailene Woodley).

Clooney is first seen wearing a Hawaiian print shirt and he either has a fleet of these, or he seldom changes it. Take that as a metaphor for how few surprises are in store in this script. Payne tries to interject a few twists—an impending development deal, Elizabeth’s secret affair, a resentful father-in-law, Scottie’s temper tantrums, Alex’s teen angst—but everything in this film is like standing on a seaside cliff and gazing into the distance: you can see what’s coming long before it arrives. Particularly lame is the role of Sid (Nick Krause) as Alex’s inappropriate boyfriend. He seems to be in the film to call people “dude” and offer some faux Hawaiian Falstaffian comic relief. It’s a silly role that serves little purpose but then again, much of the script is silly, including Matt’s very lame caper to discover and confront Elizabeth’s lover.

We never see Clooney perspire in this film and that too is a metaphor. He’s never Matt King; he’s Clooney being Clooney—smooth, confident, calm, and in control (even when the part calls for him to act as if he’s not). The guy’s wife is dying for heaven’s sake, and he can’t muster a tear until the end!? Alex is a little monster and all he can say is, “Hey! Watch your mouth.” Will Alex grow up? Will Matt learn to be a dad? What does your view from the cliff tell you?

Payne has directed truly snarky films such as Election (1999) and Sideways (2004), but his script for The Descendants is lost in a sea of sentimentality and forced redemption. The kids don’t act like real kids, Clooney doesn’t act like he’s really anguished, and everything else in the film—except Judy Geer’s small role as a cuckolded wife—seems contrived. Label The Descendants a Terms of Endearment film: one that pulls at the heartstrings and might induce a sniffle or two. Once you think about it, though, you’ll be embarrassed that you broke out the Kleenex box. It’s 115 minutes of diversion—nothing less and certainly nothing more. Number me among those who want to see Clooney stretch himself; we know he can channel Cary Grant, but can he do anything else?

Top Films of 2011: Making the Best of a Bad Situation

2012-01-02T13:45:00.002-05:00

No easy answers down this rabbit hole.

Making a list of the top ten films of 2011 is a bit like compiling the most nutritious junk foods for the National Institute of Health. In a better film year most of these films would have struggled to make the list and my top film, Rabbit Hole, would have been a bottom-of-the-pack choice. The best films I saw last year were all restored prints of classics: Les enfants du paradis (1945), Les diaboliques (1955), All About Eve (1950)…

The Academy Awards has the weird idea that a film is considered a 2011 film if it opens in either La-La -Land or New York before December 31. We take the view that a 2011 film is one that opened in a place called “the United States” during 2011, even if was made the year before; hence some on this list were considered for awards last year (which merely underscores the paucity of quality for 2011).

10 (tie): The Greatest Movie Ever Sold and Exit through the Gift Shop. Both of these quirky documentaries reveal how buzz can be manufactured and marketed, the first by exposing the role of product placement, and the second by showing how life literally follows art. A metaphor for why today’s culture is often more hype than substance?

9. My Week with Marilyn: Not a deep film, but Michelle Williams is stunning as Marilyn Monroe, and a talented cast transforms a slight script.

8. The Illusionist: A charming (and nearly silent) animated film about the dying days of vaudeville and a middle-aged magician’s big heart.

7. Melancholia: If the apocalypse is this beautiful, bring it on! This film is everything Malick’s Tree of Life wasn’t. That list begins with the word “interesting.”

6. The Hedgehog: A rare instance in which the film of a popular novel is equally good and the liberties taken work. Learn why 11-year-old Paloma wants to kill herself when she turns 12, and why she might change her mind.

5. Martha Marcy Mae Marlene: A stunning performance from the luminous Elizabeth Olsen in a creepy film about the allure of cults. Redemption or damnation?

4. Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune: A smart documentary about the late protest singer Phil Ochs that shows the power, the glory, and the hubris. Ochs was flawed, but we sure could use his voice now.

3. Blue Valentine: If you need more proof that Michelle Williams is the real deal, this will provide it. She and Ryan Gosling play a matched set that manages to clash in a relationship that should be, but never quite is.

2. Another Year: This superb British film from last year didn’t do much at the box office because it’s strictly an adult film, and it stars veteran actors long past their pretty boy/pretty girl prime. It’s Mike Leigh’s take on how the middle class and working class live in such radically different worlds that even the well intentioned manage to miscommunicate.

1. Rabbit Hole: Nicole Kidman has made herself into a fine actress, which she demonstrates in this family tragedy. What happens when a dream world shatters? Where does one find solace? A film long on hope and short on tidy resolutions. It deserves top dog status for avoiding clichés and fairy tale endings.

Note: There are longer reviews of most of these films on the blog. Click on the movie madness list (left hand side of the home page) to see individual reviews.

Worst Films Viewed in 2011

2012-01-01T13:03:00.003-05:00

An action sequence from Somewhere.

2011 will not go down in anyone’s film annals as a stellar year for cinema. In that spirit it makes sense to begin the end-of-the-year wrap-up with the stinkers. Tune in tomorrow for the best-of list.

Our rule is that we dishonor bad as we encounter it. Some of these films were released prior to 2011, but we only saw them on video. (A few were so bad that it made sense that they went straight to video, and some were made outside the US and never opened at local theaters.)

In descending order of purification:

9. Fish Tank: A film with a strong lead actress, but it’s basically British poor white trash that should have never left the council flats. Who can behave more badly: the cast of loser adults or the 15-year-old loser-in-training?

8. Meek’s Cutoff: Much ballyhooed and gorgeous to look at–if you want to spend 104 minutes watching a painting on the screen. Nothing happens. Nothing.

7. Love and Other Drugs: See Ann Hathaway naked. Best viewed with the sound off.

6. Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Stunning prehistoric art shot by Werner Herzog that would have made a stunning 15-minute silent film. Alas, it’s 90 minutes of Herzog’s pretentious mystical musings on….? Damned if we know.

5. Waiting for Superman: A rightwing attack on teacher unions disguised as caring about kids. It’s really a GOP defense of vouchers pretending to be a lottery drama.

4. J. Edgar: A lot of money spent so that Leonardo DiCaprio can bring J. Edgar Hoover to life and reduce him to listless limpness. How can you make Hoover boring? Leo manages.

3. Tree of Life: Pretentious crap from Terrence Malick. A film about the beginnings of life and the struggle for existence across the eons that unwittingly redefines the term “timeless.”

2. Thor: Not good enough to be a comic book-brought-to-life, and not bad enough to be camp. The only thing louder than Chris Hemsworth’s grunts is the collective groan of the audience.

1. Somewhere: Sofia Coppolla should go the California and manage her old man’s wine estate–anything except direct. It would be wrong to say Somewhere goes nowhere. That would have been more interesting. Let’s just say that it opens with a car driving in circles and goes downhill from there.

Skippy Dies Uneven but Intriguing Read

2011-12-31T16:02:00.000-05:00

SKIPPY DIES (2010)
By Paul Murray
Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-86547-943-2, 661 pp.

* * *

Paul Murray’s sophomore novel opens with a shock: fourteen-year-old Daniel “Skippy” Juster has just died on the floor of a down-market Dublin doughnut shop, the name of his girlfriend upon his lips. Why did Skippy die? Was if for love? Was it the pills he and his friends indiscriminately pop? Was if from a ruptured heart triggered by his recent swim meet? Or is something more sinister to blame?

Murray’s sprawling novel is, at turns, sad, provocative, chilling, and screamingly funny. It is set at Seabrook College, a once-tony-grown-shabby Irish Catholic prep school. It’s a place that’s been cruising on its reputation for decades, the kind of place where “tradition” is constantly invoked in the hope that no one will notice that “venerable” has been steamrollered by “sclerotic.” The priests who nominally run the place are old and tired, as is much of the lay faculty. In fact, the entire staff knows the place is a joke except for “the Automator,” oily Acting Principal Greg Costigan, who is determined to modernize Seabrook and aggrandize himself in the process. The students are certainly aware that Seabrook is just a place where their well-heeled parents stuck them to get them out of sight and out of mind, a reality Murray reveals in several tortured phone calls between Skippy and his clueless father.

Skippy Dies isn’t really about why Daniel Juster died; it’s really about how institutions, families, and individuals fall apart in ways analogous to the famed frog-in-the-pot scenario in which the frog isn’t aware he’s being slowly boiled to death. In many ways, it’s also a metaphor for Ireland. (Remember how the Celtic Tiger turned out to be declawed stray cat?) The kids are especially sharply drawn. Murray assembles a memorable cast. Skippy’s family life is so screwed up that he finds temporary solace in Lori, a little flirt who’s taking him for a twisted ride. His roommate is Ruprecht Van Doren, an obese, doughnut-inhaling nerd who is either a future genius or a young Frankenstein, who is busy building a machine constructed of copious amounts of tinfoil, which he hopes will allow him to access the eleventh dimension! Others in his circle include Mario, who carries his “lucky” condom, which has never been out of its wrapper in the three years he’s possessed it; the über-cynic Dennis; and Titch, a vacuous preppy predestined to follow his old man into the gray-flannel realm of banking and mergers. Murray absolutely nails teenaged angst. He paints a world of boys obsessed by sex and thoughtless in their personal interactions, though vaguely aware of being adrift. Skippy’s group lives in mortal fear of thuggish upper classmen, especially a clique led by Carl, a neo-fascist drug pusher who does his best to hide the demons that would reveal him to be frightened, damaged, and insecure.

Where are the adults to help the kids navigate these shoals? Clueless would be too charitable an adjective. History teacher Howard Fallon is a milquetoast dubbed “Howard the Coward” by students and peers alike, and not without reason. Costigan is what Carl will look like in ten years and Miss McIntyre the amoral temptress Lori will become. The rest are assorted cynics and fools, except for the priests, who are something altogether darker. The adults don’t hear each other, let alone the kids; in fact, they are often revealed responding to imagined conversations, not what was actually said.

Murray uses humor, surrealism, absurdism, and splashes of magical realism throughout. These add needed balance to the pathos and tragedy of a story that’s less coming-of-age than end-of-an-age. At 661 pages the novel sprawls, sometimes effectively, but often not. At 400 taut pages Skippy Dies would have been a small masterpiece; as is, it sometimes stumbles over its myriad style and mood shifts, and the hit-us-over-the-head metaphors. (The theme of futility is, for instance, hammered and anviled home by Howard’s obsession with World War I.) Overall, though, it’s a worthwhile read. I’ll give you a hint: Skippy didn’t choke on doughnuts.

Michelle Williams Stunning in My Week with Marilyn

2011-12-28T14:00:00.003-05:00

My Week with Marilyn (2011)

Directed by Simon Curtis

BBC Films, 99 mins. R (language, brief dorsal nudity)

* * * *

My Week with Marilyn is one of those “small” films in which not a lot happens-–the sort that would be overlooked were it not so well acted. Lucky for us the cast is superb.

The film’s narrative is sparse and revolves around Marilyn Monroe’s 1957 visit to England, where she made an inconsequential film, The Prince and the Showgirl that starred and was directed by Sir Laurence Olivier. Ms. Monroe was 31 and at the height of her sex kitten fame. So much so, that she was already coming apart at the seams. Her marriage to Arthur Miller was just three weeks old but crumbling, and Marilyn was wracked with insecurities that she addressed through temper tantrums, anxiety attacks, pills, affairs, and the vain hope that she could become a serious actress. Toss into the maelstrom her constant companion, Monroe’s acting coach, Paula Strasberg, who was equal parts method acting guru and Svengali-like mesmerist, and the set of The Prince and the Showgirl was not a pleasant place to be. Monroe often late or absent from the set, and incompetent when she was there. In one delicious line from My Week with Marilyn, Olivier-–played with world-weary aplomb by Kenneth Branagh–remarked that trying to teach Monroe how to act was “like trying to teach Urdu to a badger.” So how did the film ever get made? If we are to believe the memoir of Colin Clark who served as Olivier’s third assistant director–a glorified gofer–it’s because Ms. Monroe found solace in his friendship and in their brief fling. (For the record, Clark was 24 at the time, and not everyone believes his story of having had an affair with Monroe.)

The movie was adapted from Clark’s short play and it only works as a film because the actors make us believe a dodgy story line and a threadbare plot. Eddie Redmayne is well cast as Clark and plays him with the besotted puppy dog loyalty as one might expect from a young lad asked to be a companion to the world’s most glamorous woman. Branagh incisively dissects the 50-year-old Olivier as a man forced to realize that his womanizing charms are a decade out of date and he’s not going to stave off Father Time, seduce Monroe, or become a Hollywood idol. Zoë Wanamaker is even better as Strasberg, whom she turns into a cross between Machiavelli and the Wicked Witch of the West. One glare from Wanamaker is more effective than a ten-minute rant from a lesser actor. Like most British films, even the minor parts are crisply performed by topnotch actors; look for twinkling cameo star turns from Derek Jacobi as Sir Owen Morshead, Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh, Judi Dench as Dame Sybil Thorndike, Dominic Cooper as photographer Milton Greene, and Emma Stone as Lucy, the would-be girlfriend that Clark tosses aside for Monroe.

But this film belongs to Michelle Williams who is, simply, the best interpreter of Marilyn Monroe I can recall seeing. Williams doesn’t actually look like Monroe, even with flaming red lipstick, a wig, and a paint-on mole; Williams is more slender, less full-figured, and fresher of face. But you won’t need to check your credibility at the box office; Williams will make you believe she is Marilyn. Most actresses fail as Monroe because they try to channel the public image rather than the inner person. This means they become a photocopy of a photocopy. Williams gets the fact that Marilyn Monroe was a paste-on persona in the same way that Samuel Clemens was Mark Twain or Julius Marx was Groucho. Williams plays to the tension between the coquettish mask and the troubled inner self. We see her wishing, nay aching, to be allowed to be normal, but failing to find any comforting hiding places not illuminated by Marilyn’s glow. She goes from giddy joy to a deer in the headlights when quietly walking a London street only to be mobbed by admirers. In another luminous moment she’s in a schoolyard when the same thing happens. At first she’s frightened, then she turns to Clark and asks, “Shall I be her?” In a flash she turns on the Marilyn act, and the audience laps it up like a cat in front of a saucer of cream. Williams delivers an astonishing performance that should win awards–if enough people actually see the film.

Therein lies a tale. My Week with Marilyn is a bit like the film-within-the-film, The Prince and the Showgirl. The latter got a few good notices and some pans, but was mostly ignored. Monroe next made Some Like it Hot, generally regarded as her most memorable role. In it she gave up the pretense of being a stage actress and played to Monroe stereotypes. In like fashion, Olivier gave up silver screen dreams and returned to the boards for The Entertainer, wherein he made stage history. Will the small My Week with Marilyn win the awards it deserves? Probably not, but somewhere in the future lies an Oscar engraved with the name Michelle Williams.

Society for Prevention for Useless Giving

2011-12-26T10:22:00.002-05:00

Until I read a recent issue of The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, I had never heard of SPUG: the Society for Prevention of Useless Giving. I was so amazed that I double-checked to make sure SPUG was legit and not some sort of seasonal prank. After all, academics have been known to pull fast ones in the service of protesting the arcane nature of modern research. Sure enough, SPUG was the real deal.

SPUG formed in 1911 and lasted into the 1940s, though along the way it had a name change to the more positive-sounding Society for Useful Giving. Philanthropic upper-class Society women formed SPUG. Their original inspiration was the disgust they felt toward merchants and advertisers that lured factory workers and working-class women into squandering money on needless things during the Christmas season. Weddings were a close second. SPUG launched an educational and propaganda campaign aimed at convincing those with scant resources not to waste their wages. Were SPUG advocates forerunners of Dr. Seuss’s Grinch? Nope. They had no objection to giving per se–they simply wanted to stop the practice of spending money on novelties, junk, and baubles and shift it to useful things. They reasoned that if one is going to shell out for a gift, it ought to be something the recipient can actually use or appreciate.

So why am I telling you about SPUG? Because it’s the day after Christmas, known in British Commonwealth nations as Boxing Day. It’s akin to Black Friday in the States, a day of retail gluttony featuring markdowns, extended retail hours, and various advertising come-ons. There is, however, a small twist–it’s also the day in which people begin to return unwanted presents opened the day before. We Yanks do this too, but we ought to do so with the zeal of Europeans. As SPUG evolved, it paid attention to recipients as well as givers. A gift, they reasoned, should not be a life sentence; in fact, every individual should purge one’s self of unneeded and unwanted things. As SPUG advocates expressed it, one should never keep anything that isn’t either useful or beautiful. They hoped to move Americans beyond the sentimentality that makes a person keep an ugly lamp in the closet just because Aunt Mary gave it to you. SPUG’s simple advice: Get rid of it!

Those of you reading this blog on Boxing Day can probably conjure an item or two from yesterday that doesn’t enhance your life in any measurable way. So get them out of your house. Return them to the store, re-gift them, donate them to charity or, if necessary, throw them away. We now live in a society in which materialism is more than crass; it’s expensive. In 1984 Americans stuffed items into 289 million square feet of storage bins; by 2007 it had grown to over 2.2 billion square feet. Each year about $20 billion is spent just to squirrel away goods, and some Americans spend more to store their stuff than it would cost to buy the items new. Compulsive hoarding is now recognized as a bona fide psychological ailment. Would it surprise you to learn that, in most cases, the cost of treatment for hoarding disorder exceeds the value of the items hoarded?

SPUG isn’t around anymore, but maybe it’s time to revive it. One of its major virtues was that it asked people to operate within their own value systems, not transform themselves into aesthetes, monks, or Spartans. Remember, the standard was to keep only what is useful or beautiful. Each of those standards involves a qualitative judgment. I don’t find a painting of Elvis on velvet to be beautiful but if you do, by all means hang it above the sofa. On the other hand, if a friend gave it to you as a joke, have a laugh, burn it, and send the ashes to Graceland. Whatever you do, don’t store it.

I claim no greater virtue on this issue. Like many Americans, I own more than I use, have boxes I’ve not opened in years, and possess things that I once thought were beautiful but don’t anymore. I doubt I can go cold turkey and just starting chucking everything. (Phoenix could!) But my New Year’s resolution is to turn back the hands of time and become a member of SPUG. I pledge that I will begin to wean myself of useless and non-beautiful things and work hard to resist adding to the household stash. The goal is to be lighter a year from today. Anybody else in on this? I’m thinking a SPUG support group.

Gaby Moreno a Bilingual Dynamo

2011-12-22T16:27:00.000-05:00

GABY MORENO

Illustrated Songs

Paisley Records

* * *

Everything on Gaby Moreno’s new release (her second) sounds old. Moreno is a bilingual artist who was raised in Guatemala. As a performer she’s a retro dynamo. Several of her Spanish songs draw on bossa nova beats and ranchero-style singing, but most sound like Latin-laced versions of the kind of small combo songs found on the soundtracks of Depression Era movies. That is, except for “Ave que Emigra,” her semi-autobiographical song about leaving Guatemala for New York; she makes no bones about the fact that Do Diddley was her influence on that one. I’d also hazard a guess that some Johnny Cash snuck in subconsciously. When Moreno switches to English, her whole demeanor changes. She’s still retro, but it’s a Motown well from which she draws. The slightly coquettish tones of her Spanish songs give way to lusty, big-voiced numbers. Check out “Mess a Good Thing” and you might think she morphed into Aretha Franklin! (Though she again throws us for a loop with the odd little song, “Mean Old Circus,” which evokes an 1890s musical hall.)

Whether all of this showcases her versatility or leaves her foundering for a clear musical identity is up for debate, but I found her an intriguing talent and admired her willingness to take chances. She’s an unsigned artist at present, but I doubt that will last long. Check out her Webpage; there are some samples there.

Roger Ebert Memoir Uneven but Moving

2011-12-21T21:39:00.002-05:00

Life Itself: A Memoir. By Roger Ebert. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2011.

ISBN 978-0-446-58497-5

Who, in the past twenty-five years, has done more to change the way we think of movies than Roger Ebert? More serious than the freakish Gene Shalit, less pretentious than Rex Reed, and more approachable than Pauline Kael, Ebert–and the late Gene Siskel–evolved a form of film criticism that might be labeled upper middlebrow: a way of accepting all screen images on their own merits. For Ebert, the question has never been whether a summer blockbuster or a kung-fu movie was the equal of Fellini or Bergman, but whether a movie is a good one within its genre. Two small measures of Ebert’s impact: On the weighty end of the scale, he was the first film reviewer to win a Pulitzer Prize. As for his impact on popular culture, who does not know the shorthand thumbs-up/thumbs-down assessment of a film? (Be careful if you use it; it’s copyrighted!) More recently, Ebert has become a hero for cancer survivors and the disabled; complications from a 2006 surgery for thyroid cancer cost him most of his jawbone and left him unable to speak or take nourishment through his mouth.

In Life Itself, Ebert leaves pity to others; he considers himself a man blessed by a good family, good education, serendipitous vocational fortune, rich professional relationships, dear friends, the blessings of late-in-life love, and the ongoing ability to view, muse upon, and write about movies. Ebert takes us from his Urbana, Illinois childhood and a University of Illinois education to his time in Europe, his luck in securing a job with the Chicago Sun-Times, his TV success with At the Movies, his marriage to Chaz Hammelsmith, and back to Urbana, where he runs an annual film fest. His descriptions of his early days with the Sun-Times are like outtakes of the 1931 film The Front Page, complete with crusty editors, frenetic newsroom energy, and wide open horizons for those energetic and talented enough to seize them. Ebert was a product of those freewheeling days; he freely admits that he knew almost nothing about cinema when he was assigned the Sun-Times’ film critic’s job in 1967. Equally compelling are his recollections of the gritty side of Chicago, its dive bars (including the Billy Goat, parodied by John Belushi) and the city’s colorful cast of characters, including John McHugh, Mike Royoko, and Studs Terkel.

Movie fans will find numerous delightful anecdotes. Ebert speaks glowingly of those who touched him personally, and what an eclectic mix it is: Pauline Kael, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Martin Scorcese, Werner Herzog…. If there is any doubt about Ebert’s catholic tastes, consider that he thinks that both Ingmar Bergman and soft-porn king Russ Meyer were geniuses! And, of course, there is plenty about Gene Siskel (1946-1999), his TV sidekick, the urbane counterpoint to his own frumpy demeanor, and a man who was, variously, his mentor, cherished friend, and nemesis—often within a span of days.

Ebert’s willingness to admit to a love-hate relationship with Siskel is emblematic of the warts-and-all approach to his memoir. He is equally candid about past struggles with alcoholism, his sexual adventures and misadventures, his fascination with African-American women, his agnosticism, his grueling surgeries, and his own mortality. The major downside to the book is structural, not unfiltered candor. Neither chronological nor thematic, it’s a randomly distributed mélange of views and memories, many of which first appeared on the popular blog he began when he lost his physical voice. One wishes his editor had arranged the chapters in something approaching a logical sequence, as the book’s scattershot presentation often makes for disjointed reading. In some cases, full understanding of the chapter requires some knowledge of events and people that have not yet been introduced.

That said, though, it would be a big mistake to dismiss this book as one merely about its author. There are deeply moving selections about dealing with illness, of mentally conjuring the taste of foods never again to be savored, of what it meant to grow up in a unit that exuded for-real family values, what it feels like to be transported by a movie, and what it means to contemplate death. Ebert has long educated us on the glories of film; in late life he’s now helping us see our inner selves with greater clarity.

Battlefield Band, Alan Reid, and Beyond

2011-12-18T16:36:00.003-05:00

BATTLEFIELD BAND; ALAN REID

Line-Up; Recollection

Temple Records 2104; 2103

The cover of the new Battlefield CD pictures the band posing in front a height chart, as if they were crime suspects. It’s a fun idea as we know this “line-up,” or do we? We see Sean O’Donnell (guitar/vocals), Alasdair White (fiddle/fretted instruments), and Mike Katz (bagpipes/whistles/guitar/cittern), but who is the tall man holding another set of pipes? That would be Ewen Henderson, who also plays the fiddle, whistles, and piano. He tips us off that we’ve seen the passing of an era; in 2010, Battlefield cofounder Alan Reid retired from Battlefield after 41 years. Battlefield can now throw two pipe kits or two fiddles at a time at us. The opening set, “Raigmore,” is a very cool one--edgy, loud, and ever-so-slightly dark and frenetic, with fiddles popping in an out like a man with a secret. It’s suggestive of future directions Battlefield might

take. Two others are “The Herring,” a bouncy cittern and fiddle-driven piece, and “The Pits,” a big-reel set that airs out the pipes. Two of the album’s songs are in Gaelic, a language in which Henderson is fluent. So is Battlefield alive and well? I think so. The new album also features a lot of quiet material, with many of them evoking the Boys of the Lough more than Battlefield’s backlist. The concluding “Me n’vin Bêlek, na Manac’h” stands as the bookend opposite of “Raigmore.” Solo fiddle sets the mood for a pastoral, wistful tune in which even the pipes are feathery and light, though they move the piece onto a more joyous plane. Good stuff, though also a hint of hesitancy. Label it new steps, but not yet full stride.

Not ready to go cold turkey on Alan Reid? No need; Recollection is an eighteen-track compendium of Reid originals, covers, and classics culled from the Battlefield backlist, plus a 1981 duo project with Brian McNeill. Can any of us hear songs such as “The Green Plaid,” “I am the Common Man,” or “The Gallant Grahams” and not hear Reid’s voice in our heads? And then there are songs he penned such as “The Dear Green Place,” “

Jock the Can,” and “The Arran Convict” that have become so well known that many people assume they are traditional songs. Savor this collection, but don’t file it under “nostalgia;” at age 61, Reid has left Battlefield but has no plans to hang up his pen or vocal cords. Recollection is just out there to tide us over until new projects appear.

Brian Miller: He's a Lumberjack and He's Okay!

2011-12-15T16:34:00.001-05:00

BRIAN MILLER

Minnesota Lumberjack Songs

Two Tap Records 014

Brian Miller dons the cap of singing folklorist on Minnesota Lumberjack Songs. He saws into several old songbooks and into the repertoires of source singers to give a fine cross-section of the Irish and Scottish songs that made their way to the north woods. Of special interest are shanties, the term referencing logging cabins, not the high seas, though sea song fans will recognize that ditties such as “Save Your Money When You’re Young” have saltwater variants. Ditto parallels to mining songs. There are numerous “come-all-ye” ballads reminiscent of miner songs, and “The Mines of Cariboo” makes a direct connection in spinning the tale of a lad who drifted between 19^th-century gold camps and left behind songs that migrated to Minnesota. Miller is a strong singer and a masterful instrumentalist (bouzouki, guitar, flute, harmonium). He enlists fine backing musicians and harmony singers on the album, but accordions, fiddles, and whistles stay in the background, as they should for ballads and narrative songs. Miller sings boldly and clearly, never losing sight of the fact that the tales are on display, not virtuosity. My personal favorite on this thoughtful collection is “The Shanty-Boy’s Alphabet,” a whimsical walk through a worker’s worldview one letter at a time. But, really, each song is a gem. And I can’t help dreaming of a lumberjack double bill with Miller representing Minnesota and Lissa Schneckenburger doing the honors for the Northeast US and Canada.

Terrence Malick's Tree of Life Bears Little Fruit

2011-12-10T11:42:00.002-05:00

Pitt and two kids throwing stones at a lousy script!

The Tree of Life (2011)

Directed by Terrence Malick

Fox-Searchlight, PG-13, 139 mins.

* *

Let me begin with an admission: I’ve never liked Terrence Malick films. If The New World (2005) had been made thirty years earlier, it would have dissuaded me from majoring in history. The Tree of Life is analogous to the film that brought Malick to public attention, Days of Heaven (1978): gorgeous to view, but in the service of very little. The thinness of the script for Days of Heaven was forgivable because the story being told was small. Not so in The Tree of Life, where Malick wants us to ponder the origins of the universe and the nature of humanity. He’s trying to make an earthbound 2001: A Space Odyssey, but he ends up with something that’s revelatory in the way that an introductory philosophy class is enlightening to a college kid who has never before pondered anything bigger than himself.

To the degree that there is a story arc, the action is set in a post-World War II Waco, Texas suburb in which Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain) and their three sons are not living the American Dream. Pitt spouts the official line about opportunity, but he’s a failed inventor stuck in a factory job. He simultaneously covets wealth, but is deeply resentful of how obtaining it is linked to privilege. Chastain reveals the film’s thesis in a voice-over: there are two paths in life, the way of nature and the way of grace. Pitt is nature, an emotionally buttoned-down and frustrated loser in the struggle for existence who wishes to be tender but becomes a militaristic tyrant when he’s angry. Chastain is the way of grace–nurturing, kind and free-spirited, but also a passive bird easily knocked out of the air by her husband’s volcanic outbursts and the slings and arrows of life’s misfortunes.

Or maybe I should say that she’s a small dinosaur furtively grazing in primal fern forests, ever mindful of predators. I say this because Malick tries to make the O’Brien’s struggle analogous to the creation of the universe and the evolution of life on earth. Along the banks of the same river that runs near the O’Brien’s home we are transported millions of years back in time and see a small dinosaur soothing a wound. As the injured reptile lies in the shallow water it’s pined in place by a larger carnivore that ultimately releases it. (Gaffe alert: Shouldn’t that river have changed a bit more over several million years?)

Oh, I get it! The wounded dino is Mrs. O’Brien and her husband is the predator. Duh! If you find that contrived–and you should–consider also that the children see their parents as animus (the male Hero archetype) and anima (a Virgin Mary joy and goodness archetype). Each must choose his own path. You can forget the youngest child–who is there mainly because 50s’ families were supposed to have three kids–as the real drama is between the middle son who is like his mother, and the eldest, Jack, who is filled with self loathing because he’s a chip off the paternal block. Malick isn’t content merely to take us to the dawn of time, we must also go forward in our cinematic time machine, where we encounter Jack (Sean Penn) as a highly regarded architect whose personal life is in shambles. One must infer all of this, as Penn doesn’t say much; his is mostly a cameo role in which he walks about canyons of steel and glass looking morose. He’s allegedly musing upon the meaning of life because he’s gotten word that his middle brother, whom he abused as a child as surely as his father abused his mother, has died.

Sound pretentious? Wait; there’s more. Not content to offer primers on Social Darwinism and Jungian psychology, Malick gives us an ending that’s Hinduism for Beginners. Jack takes an elevator to the bottom floor (death?), exists into a rocky landscape, walks through a wooden door arch in the middle of nowhere, and encounters his birth family wading in shallow waters. Everyone is happy.

That is, everyone except those who sat through 139 minutes of such utter nonsense! Sorry if I gave away the ending, but it’s for your own good. Now you won’t be tempted to waste an entire evening. Why two stars? Score one for Chastain, who is transcendent in her underwritten role. A begrudging second for the painterly visuals.

The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, despite the fact that half the audience booed it. Why did it win? Maybe it even seemed “deep” to the shallow glitterati that turn up at places such as Cannes. I’ll be charitable and say that the film’s surfaces make one appreciate Malick as a visual artist. Too bad he doesn’t hire scriptwriters. A film about the origin of life shouldn’t feel as if you just watched it in real time.

John Doyle Album One of Year's Finest

2011-12-07T16:29:00.001-05:00

JOHN DOYLE

Shadow and Light

Compass 4565

John Doyle tours with Liz Carroll and in lineups such as Solas and the Karan Casey Band. But don’t you dare slap the label “side man” on him. After hearing Shadow and Light, you’ll be checking listings to see when Doyle’s headlining at a venue near you. Doyle is part of the muscular jazz-meets-skiffle-meets-trad guitar continuum pioneered by (the late) Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. Like them, he makes really hard things sound smooth and easy. There is, for instance, the sweet “Little Sparrow,” which he penned for his daughter. At first it sounds like a simple little tune the likes of which might come from a backwoods picker. Then it hits you that it’s not a bird that’s flying up and down the strings. And if you really want to feel the heat, listen to his sizzling fingering on “The Curraghman.” Just as impressive are Doyle’s vocals and his composition skills. His tenor voice is at once comforting and expressive--perfect for musical storytelling. Among the tales is “The Arabic,” a song about his grandfather’s harrowing emigration from Ireland to America. Both guitar and voice roll and pitch like the doomed ship that deposited some passengers in a watery grave. It’s so vivid that you can close your eyes and see pictures in your head. What’s your pleasure? A transportation song? “Bound for Botany Bay” will answer. A warning about the evils of drink? Check out the Appalachian-flavored “Bitter Brew.” A little history? How about “Farewell to All That,” a musing on Robert Graves’ (tragic) memories of World War One? Throw in support from Compass vets such as Alison Brown, Stuart Duncan, and Todd Phillips and you’ve got one of the year’s finest records. In fact, it's probably my favorite album of 2011.

Go to John's Website to hear samples.

kindlewood Debut Sparks No Fire

2011-12-05T15:07:00.000-05:00

kindlewood

Desiderium

Self-produced

Once a band is declared buzz-worthy we’re supposed to love it, right? kindlewood has generated a lot of buzz, perhaps because their lead vocalist, Kelci Smith, is the sister of Joshua Tillman, the drummer for the even hotter Fleet Foxes. Well, count me among those who simply don’t “get” what this band intends. They package themselves as “alternative folk,” a term that means …? To my ears kindlewood is the acoustic analog of 60s and 70s art rock bands that generated attention by being so oblique and enigmatic that hipsters fearfully embraced them lest they expend all their cultural capital by admitting they hadn’t the foggiest idea about the band’s message.

There are some lovely parts to Desiderium but the album has so little shape or structure that each individual part is like a single drop of paint on a very large canvas–as if we were listening to the start of a Jackson Pollock painting. The songs are New Age in sentiment, the music is trippy but meandering, and Smith’s lead vocals are annoyingly nasal. The promo material evokes Simon & Garfunkel and Jeff Buckley, but kindlewood lack Paul Simon’s poetic and melodic gifts, Art Garfunkel’s harmonic magic, or Jeff Buckley’s range or dark edges. Aside from the unusual decision to incorporate a glockenspiel into the arrangements, kindlewood struck me as being a project in search of a concept.

Don’t take my word for it, listen to “This House.”

Melancholia Sparks Sharp Disagreement

2011-12-03T19:24:00.000-05:00

Lars von Trier's perplexing new film sparked disagreement between yours truly and our London corresondent. Both views are posted for your consideration.

Melancholia (2011)

Directed by Lars von Trier

Zentropa Entertainments, 136 mins. R (nudity)

Let me be clear about this film – I have no idea what van Trier is trying to say. However, he says a great deal and lays on the mystery so thick it’s hard to breathe. Everything that happens is so unreal that it could be metaphor, heavy symbolism, both, neither, or something clear only to von Trier. The deal is this: Two sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet named Melancholia may or may not be on a collision course with Earth. The film opens with a spoiler – it’s the end of the film we appear to be watching, though the actual end of it is somewhat different. So we are actually beyond the end at the very beginning? Confused? I suspect you will be.

The two sisters are Justine–Kirsten Dunst in a typical von Trier role of damaged woman–and Claire, Charlotte Gainsbourg as a more levelheaded character. The film’s first section is titled “Justine” and recounts her disastrous wedding day. She and her doting husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) arrive late for her wedding dinner at a huge country house and grounds, where the entire film is set. (Film buffs will be amused at the Last Days in Marienbad reference in the house’s ground.) The party is fraught with discomfort, hilarity, unease and bewilderment featuring excellent cameos from Charlotte Rampling as Gaby, Justine’s angst-ridden, cynical mother, and John Hurt as Dexter, her fun-loving and slightly daft father. Against a backdrop of embarrassing speeches, the amoral designs of Justine’s advertising-industry boss Jack (Stellan Skarsgård), the first observations of Melancholia, Justine’s battles with personal demons, and the gathering impatience of brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland) who is paying a king’s ransom for the reception, we witness Justine’s marriage dissolving before it’s even consummated (or at least consummated with Michael).

Part two, “Claire,” seems to probe her character in opposition to Justine’s. Claire is decent, nurturing, and levelheaded, though she too becomes more disturbed as Melancholia approaches. I confess that at this point I was struggling to piece together disparate scenes to form coherence. However, the cinematography was stunning and as a possible companion piece to Terence Malick’s Tree of Life, to which there are filmic similarities, it left a sense of wonder over non-earthy things. But nothing was really taking shape except the fear of the travelling planet and I considered that maybe that was all there was to it!

But I’ll take some guesses here: that Melancholia is a metaphor for the inevitability of bad times? No, too glib. A portent of disasters to come? Way too simple. That the two sisters’ apparent behaviors are symptomatic of all over-emotional beings? That’ll never stick. So I confess I am puzzled. However, the film resonates with some visual mystery, and the performances are brilliant (especially Gainsbourg, though Dunst won a Best Actress award at Cannes). I guess it’s too much to expect von Trier to communicate in a direct fashion. Oddly threaded though the oblique screenplay is some very dark humor, but is that enough? In the London cinema where I saw Melancholia, there were seven others watching. In the adjoining cinema, Drive was sold out. Violence packs ‘em in.

Lloyd Sellus

Melancholia: A Response

* * * *

I agree with Lloyd that Melancholia was a mess in places, but for me it was a sublime mess. We’ve seen end-of-the-world films before, but never has it been filmed as beautifully as the opening five minutes of this film. It is, simply, an elegiac, poetic, and transformative piece of filmmaking. It’s so riveting, in fact, that it’s hard to imagine what Director Lars von Trier could have done to follow it.

Lloyd had trouble with the second part of the film; for me, von Trier stumbled in the first half. The wedding sequence simply takes too long to establish a single idea: that Justine embodies melancholia long before she’s heard of the eponymous Doomsday planet. Moreover, disastrous weddings are so clichéd that to establish Justine’s character through such a device seems especially hackneyed when juxtaposed to the bold opening.

I also agree with Lloyd that the film is, at best, enigmatic. I suspect von Trier wanted it to be that way. After all, if we really were facing the end of all time, how would we react? By leaving threads dangle, as it were, von Trier leaves us to ponder such things. It may not be as satisfying as the resolve-all-issues fare we’re force-fed at sticky-floored malls near you, but isn’t it a hell of a lot more honest?

Here’s my take on the film, though I freely confess that it’s speculative. I see Justine as Fate; she’s the Greek moira in one body. Have we ever considered what the Fates thought as they spun, measured, and cut the destinies of all others and finally got to the task of their own demise? And would not knowing it induce depression interspersed with despondency; that is, melancholia? Justine first realizes that she is the walking dead when her beloved horse refuses to cross a bridge; in folklore, ghosts cannot cross water.

I see Claire as the Spirit of Life, clinging desperately to hope, nurturing her son, and both literally and figuratively tending her garden to the bitter end. Surrounding Justine and Claire are cameos that represent the Seven Deadly Sins: the upper-class twits stuffing their faces as gluttony; Gaby is wrath pronouncing doom to any hint of happiness; her devil-take-care ex-husband Dexter is sloth, content to have fleshy women at his side as he overdoes already shopworn jokes; Michael is envy, desirous of Justine’s beauty and wealth, but too laconic to battle for her affections; the rapacious Jack is greed; Jack’s bootlick assistant Tim is lust, one so stupid that he confuses a depressed woman’s one-off with him as having had “good sex;” and the cocksure John is pride trying to will Melancholia out of harm’s way and whose courage falters in the wake of classic hubris.

Melancholia becomes, then, a clash between competing belief systems: ancient Greek, Medieval Latin Catholicism, modern-day cynicism, and humanitarianism. Lars von Trier also makes brilliant use of a Richard Wagner’ opera throughout (from Tristan und Isolde), music that is simultaneously dramatic and terrifying, yet dignified in a funereal fashion-–appropriate ambiguous music for a puzzling film. But von Trier does seem to be telling us one thing very clearly: when the end comes, no belief system will save us. The demise will be sudden, inevitable, and perhaps even beautiful.

Lars Vigo

Obama Middle East Policy Encourages Mislamgyny

2011-12-01T15:46:00.000-05:00

Boys will be boys.

Last week Thug-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to step down in Yemen. It came at a time in which Egypt erupted again–this time with protesters pouring into the street to demand that the military hand over power to a civilian government. Meanwhile, in Syria, government troops fire on protesters. U.S. President Barack Obama went on the air to reiterate that his government was “behind the people” in Yemen, Egypt, and Syria. To which I retort, “Rookie!”

It’s weird being older than the president of the United States; sometimes I feel like I ought to take the prez into my office and for one of the firm-but-challenging discussions I’ve had with grad student with interesting ideas but little evidence to back them. Take a close look at the street celebration from Sana, Yemen’s capital, that greeted Saleh’s announcement. See anything missing? Now Google images of Cairo protests and tell me what’s not there. Do you see a single female face in the crowd? (How about burning Israeli and U.S. flags?)

Earlier this year I warned people not to get excited about Arab spring. Americans are told that Arab nations are on the road to redemption because they’ve held elections. What utter nonsense! At the risk of offending every liberal and most of the conservatives in North America, allow me to suggest that women in Egypt were better off under Hosni Mubarak, those in Yemen and Syria under Saleh and Assad respectively, and Iraqi females under Saddam Hussein. Only in Afghanistan have women done better since a change of government. Egypt is rocketing toward rule by the Muslim Brotherhood; its equivalent will take over in Yemen, and Iraq will devolve into further anarchy. None of this portends well for women. To put a point on it, power by the masses in the Muslim world means male tyranny–call it mislamgyny. (misogyny + Islam)

Idealism is to be commended, but it’s poor foreign policy unless it’s backed by something more substantial than nostrums. Jimmy Carter’s linkage of aid to human rights in Latin America is a rare example of morality-based policy that actually worked, but don’t look for a similar policy in the Middle East. The U.S. took the high moral ground in Latin America because loss of trade was offset by goodwill, but its Middle Eastern policy is single-minded and non-lofty: keep the oil flowing.

Spare all the piety about overthrowing dictators; the U.S. is happy to deal with thugs, as long as they’re our thugs. When Jeanne Kirkpatrick was Ronald Reagan’s advisor, she divided the strong-armed world into “authoritarian” and “totalitarian” nations in a lame attempt to parse the morality of dealing with monsters. In her twisted logic, it was fine to deal with “authoritarian” leaders because their tyranny was a “temporary” measure aimed at “stabilizing” their nations, as opposed to the permanency of “totalitarian” governments. It was bollocks, of course, but it did have the dubious virtue of putting national self-interest upfront. (Under Reagan, by the way, the U.S. did business with cuddly types such as Marcos in the Philippines and Pinochet in Chile, as well as–ahem–Saddam in Iraq and Osama bin-Laden in Afghanistan.) That damn fool George W. Bush managed to ruin even the self-interest policy in his needless and geopolitically stupid invasion of Iraq. (Good idea, Georgie boy, take down the only regional power that countered Iran.)

This brings me back to the current mess in the Middle East, where President Obama’s policy is crafted around neither self-interest nor morality. How blind must one be to overlook the reality that Middle Easterners seeking to overthrow their governments hate the United States? And how can anyone be so naïve as to think that an election means that the masses are right? Democracy often yields tyranny, not freedom. (Left to its own devices, the U.S. electorate would ban gay marriage, abolish affirmative action, sanction school prayer, expand the death penalty, dismantle income taxes, and overturn a host of environmental laws. It’s not clear it would approve the Bill of Rights if it could vote on it!) Get ready for the Muslim Brotherhood and groups even further to the right when elections are held in the Middle East. These governments will be anti-Semitic, anti-American, and deeply misogynist. I never thought I’d find myself rooting for Assad or the Egyptian military, but given a choice between secularism and mislamgyny, I know where my loyalties lie.

J. Edgar a Very Dull Film

2011-11-30T16:52:00.000-05:00

J. EDGAR (2011)

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Warner Brothers, 137 mins. Rated R (language, violence)

* *

J. Edgar has been getting rave reviews from critics. Don’t fall for it; this film is flatter than a Herman Cain tax proposal. It is indifferently acted, weakly scripted, and unimaginatively directed. The film checks in at 137 minutes, but it feels much longer.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), whose rise to fame and infamy this film purports to trace. Director Clint Eastwood does this through a very tired filmic device-–flashbacks interspersed with the late-in-life writing of a memoir. DiCaprio is in every scene–as the ambitious and oily young Hoover, as the amoral and outdated older man, and as the omniscient voiceover for all of the linking passages. Phoenix thought he was convincing as Hoover–though she agrees the movie was dull–but I’m just not a DiCaprio fan. For me, he never quite manages to be anyone other than Leo and I no more bought him as Hoover than as Howard Hughes in The Aviator (2004). I admit, though, he looked the part. I’d have no quarrels with this film winning makeup and costume Oscars, but if it wins much of anything else, it may be time to write Hollywood’s epitaph.

One of the film’s subthemes is the relationship between Hoover and his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). The film takes as a given that which remains speculative among Hoover biographers: that Hoover and Tolson were lovers. And that’s about all it does. Their love is (or isn’t) consummated off-screen, as is virtually every other bit of action that might give us insight into Hoover’s character. I suppose we’re supposed to conclude that Hoover became a Machiavellian monster because he tried to sublimate and hide his homosexuality and that he felt compelled to win the love of his unapproving and domineering mother (Judi Dench as Anna Marie Hoover), but there is not enough depth to writer Dustin Lance Black’s script to convince us of this. Eastwood’s clunky direction doesn’t help; he truncates potentially revelatory dialogue in favor of moving us back into the compilation of Hoover’s memoir. (I can think of few less interesting ways of making a film than watching someone dictate thoughts to a typist.) What could have been a semi-interesting history lesson get lost as well; Eastwood deforms dramatic events from the past into little more than potted plants lurking in the background. To pick just one example, the film begins with Hoover’s obsession with stymieing a 1919 Bolshevik plot to bring down the government. We see a few bombs go off, including one that almost killed Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. But the only “villain” we see exposed comes during a brief segment of Emma Goldman refusing to answer questions at her deportation trial. We certainly do not learn that most of the offices the Justice Department raided belonged to innocent members of the Industrial Workers of the World, immigrant social clubs, and anti-communist socialists.

A history lesson is merely among the things this film could have been but isn’t. It’s also not a convincing portrait of a tortured soul, not a searing exposé of the rise of a demagogue, not a revelation of gay life in the stay-in-the-closet years, not a blow-the-lid off divulgation of justice miscarried in high places, and not a penetrating look at a relic out of step with the times. To my eyes, it was just Leo trying to appear weighty (both figuratively and literally).

My vote for the best acting in the film goes to Naomi Watts for her role as personal secretary Helen Gandy. She takes very thin material–Black’s underwritten script–and emerges as an enigmatic character. If Tolver is the right hand, she’s the left. Watts plays her sparse role with icy efficiency, leaving us to wonder if she’s loyal to Hoover because she shares his paranoiac values, or whether she’s simply savvy enough to calculate that the antidote to powerlessness in a pre-feminist world is to be the puppet mistress.

Here’s the ultimate measure of this film’s lameness; I did not walk out hating Hoover. I should have; he was a despicable man who undermined American democracy in the guise of saving it. I hated the real SOB when he was alive, but I simply couldn’t care less about the cartoon cutout I saw on the screen. Label this one a bore and a snore.

Chick-fil-A Seeks to Intimidate Vermont Artist

2011-11-28T16:24:00.004-05:00

I'm confused. Is this man holding a chiken?

File this one under “You’ve Got to Kidding.” The nation’s second-largest purveyor of fast food cluckers, Chick-fil-A, has filed a violation-of-trademark lawsuit against Vermont artist Bo Muller-Moore for his t-shirt designs emblazoned with the phrase “Eat More Kale.” Huh? Well you might ask.

Muller-Moore has been selling hand-designed shirts exhorting folks to devour more brassica oleracea since 2000, which he sells for $10 a pop. Somehow or other the Louisville, Kentucky-based megacorp Chick-fil-A thinks that Muller-Moore is violating their trademarked slogan “Eat Mor Chikin.” Their suit contends that Muller-Moore’s phrase “is likely to cause confusion of the public and dilutes the distinctiveness of Chick-fil-A’s intellectual property and diminishes its value.” A professional satirist couldn’t come up with better than that!

Where to start? Can three misspelled words even constitute “intellectual” property? Dilutes their “distinctiveness?” Have you ever heard of a person ordering chicken in a restaurant only to throw his hands up in the air when the food came and exclaim, “Oh no! I thought chicken was that vegetable from the cabbage family that’s high in beta carotene and is especially excellent in colcannon.” Just who in the public is likely to confuse a leafy green vegetable with a beaked, egg-laying fowl? I suppose it’s possible that the kind of person who’s dumb enough to think chicken is spelled “c-h-i-k-i-n” or that fillet is spelled “fil-A” might think so, but even that seems a stretch. But at least it’s more—or should I say mor?—plausible than thinking Muller-Moore is any sort of economic threat. I mean, this guy moves product in the tens, not tons.

I can’t say that I’m a big fan of kale, but I’d learn to love it before I’d purchase anything from Chick-fil-A. How can one have confidence in a product sold by a company that makes one wonder if its marketing, PR, and legal departments have the collective IQ of a stalk of kale? We can only hope that there’s a judge somewhere with the courage to call this what it is: a frivolous lawsuit whose sole intent is to intimidate. And while the court is at it, one hopes the judge directs the Bar Association to consider revoking the license of the law firm that advised its client to file such a silly and expensive lawsuit. In a court system clogged by backlog we waste time on this? Maybe Chick-fil-A should spend some money to get abreast (get it?) of the First Amendment.

Here’s the Chick-fil-A contact page: http://www.chick-fil-a.com/Connect/Contact-Us-CARES I suggest you write to the firm and express your views on this matter. They have a Facebook page as well.

If Muller-Moore loses his battle, our next step is clear: set up a legal fund that helps him acquire copyright control over the capital letter A and countersue.

How to Opt Out of Christmas

2011-11-25T14:02:00.000-05:00

Our annual Black Friday message for avoiding Christmas craziness.

Years ago Phoenix and I opted out of Christmas. It wasn’t the money. We simply wanted release from the stress, crowds, and mindless consumerism associated with the most intensely crass and secular of all American holidays. Spare us the Babe in the Manger speeches; Christmas in America has more to do with Adam Smith than Baby Jesus.

We decided to spend December dining with friends, making contact with family, and consuming fun rather than getting caught up in rituals of reciprocity and gluttony. The breaking point came about ten years ago when our nieces were literally swamped under a mound of gifts. They no sooner opened one present than another was thrust in front of them so that every relative under the sun could snap a photo of the bewildered lasses. Soon, they were dazed and numb. As clichéd as it sounds, by the afternoon they were having more fun with the wrapping paper and boxes than with the content. And here’s the worst part: the wreckage represented expenditures of hundreds of dollars, a lot of it from folks who could have used the cash for much better purposes.

Christmas is even more crass when we buy for adults. In our families the holiday had degenerated into a zero sum game–you buy me the item on page 72 of the L.L. Bean catalog and I’ll buy you one from page 104. For adults Christmas involves two types of people: those who can afford to buy things and thus already have what they need and want; and those who shouldn’t engage in consumer frenzy, yet are pressured into doing so. If you fall into the second category, for heaven’s sake stop! Consider this sobering statistic--if you rack up $6,000 on your credit card and try to pay it off by making the minimum payment, it will take roughly 54 years to do so even if you never use the card again! Fa la la, indeed! In trying to conform to manufactured images of seasonal jollity you have placed yourself in economic thralldom akin to that of 19^th-century sharecroppers.

It’s our seasonal prayer that none of you are in that sinking boat. But even if you have plenty of dough, there’s simply no reason to put up with the stress and the madness. Just say no. It may already be too late for this year, but it’s not too late to prepare for next. Here’s our how-to-guide for opting out.

1. Step One: The Power of Guilt. We must ask ourselves how Christmas got to be such a mess in the first place. The answer is simple: We’ve been sold a bill of literal and metaphorical goods on what a “perfect” Christmas is supposed to be like. Don’t underestimated how powerful that imagery is. To counter it, you need to present an equally powerful counter image.

As you gather this Christmas, subtly drop remarks such as “We have so much and there are others who have so little. What do you think about scaling way back and making some donations to charity instead?” My guess is that about three-quarters of your friends and relatives will breathe a sigh of relief and get on board immediately. Your job is to follow up on this and start dropping reminders in late summer and again several weeks before Thanksgiving. Don’t call and say, “We’re not giving presents this year, right?” Instead remind them that they said they wanted to give to charity. Tell them you plan to make a donation in their name and ask which charity they’d like you to support.

2. Step Two: Phasing In the Plan. There will be some people on your list who won’t buy in immediately. One or two may even feel hurt and assume you don’t care enough to buy them something. You need to go gentle with these folks. Start by scaling back instead of going cold turkey. Appeal to their soft side. Do they love animals? In addition to a modest gift, get a really nice card and insert a Heifer International brochure with a note that you’ve given a donation in their name. It may take a few years before these folks stop the gift cycle altogether, but they will.

3. Step Three: Be True to Your Principles. It’s not enough to say you want to spend time with friends and family instead of gift buying; you need to do it! Make sure you schedule dinners out (or potlucks in) with close friends and family. The goal is to make the holidays joyous, not to become the Grinch.

4. Step Four: Replace Consumer Goods with Thoughtful Ones. What people really want during the holidays is a reminder that you care. A plate of home-baked cookies can say this louder than an item plucked from a catalog. So too can cleaning someone’s gutters, fixing a squeaky door, or taking their car in for an oil change. Want to do something really simple? Rent “It’s a Wonderful Life” and watch it with someone you care about. Provide the buttered popcorn. The biggest gift you can give is your time!

5. Step Five: Buy Your Kids a Pen Pal. If you have little ones, it’s hard to eliminate gifts totally, but the U.N. and other agencies have programs that allow you to sponsor a child abroad. Do this for your kids and spend part of Christmas with books, pictures, and maps that illustrate where their pen pal lives. Help your kids write a letter to that child. Follow it up in the weeks to come with language lessons, food, and other such items. I had pen pals as a kid and it made me think about the world. I remember a correspondent from Peru way more than I remember most of my toys.

6. Step Six: Treat Yourself in December. Take some of the dough you’re not spending on prezzies and go out. Take in a concert or a show. Fun is always a good antidote for stress!

7. Step Seven: Replace Old Rituals with New Ones. Okay, I admit it: If I hear “Silent Night” at a mall one more time I may spew. I loathe Christmas carols, plastic reindeer, and blow-up lawn displays. But I’d be the last to say that rituals are bad. If you dislike the old ones, make some new ones. We buy a new tree ornament every year and label it. We also have some invented holidays, such as Moosemas on December 16, which is celebrated by eating clam chowder and drinking Scotch. A small ritual is walking amidst the downtown lights on Christmas Eve after the stores have closed. Another is a short walk in the woods behind the house on late Christmas morning. Still another is playing CDs of English and Scottish carols that we’ve not heard a billion times. Our most cherished is an annual pre-Christmas dinner at a restaurant with our dearest friends.

8. Step Eight: Make Christmas all about the Food. When you ask most people to name their favorite holiday, it’s usually Thanksgiving. Why not? It’s about food, family, and a relaxed pace. So make Christmas into a second Thanksgiving. Prepare foods that take a long time to make. Buy a really, really good bottle of wine. Have a multi-course meal that unfolds over several hours. And, above all, share it with friends and family. Don’t forget to mention how lucky you are to have so much when others have so little.

Liz Frame's Music for Grown-ups

2011-11-23T13:27:00.002-05:00

LIZ FRAME and THE KICKERS

Sooner

Self-Produced

* * * *

True story. I was walking down a Newburyport street last summer, spied an arts market, and then heard a voice that froze me in my tracks. It belonged to Liz Frame, who was providing some street entertainment with her band The Kickers. Check out her new CD and I sincerely doubt you’ll get much done until the last of its ten taut tracks has finished.

In an age of saccharine sentimentality and little girl whispers, Frame offers a mature alternative, both in her real life-marinated song themes and in her powerful far-ranging voice, which she ornaments with tasteful catches at appropriate moments. The music lies in that ineffable intersection between country, rock, folk, and blues. Call it country chutzpah if you have to call it anything. Don’t expect any of those lame “Baby, baby, you light up my world” kind of lyrics; a Frame sampler–all originals–includes: “Don’t take more than you can handle/Don’t chase what you can’t outrun/Don’t love nobody so much that you can’t watch them walk away/Don’t play with guns” and “I want to feel your love in my hands/I want to feel the sweat in my pores.” Oh yeah. Put some edgy electric guitar to that, add some sexy bass lines from Lynne Taylor, and it’s get-on-board or get-the-hell-out-of-the-way. The Kickers is an apt name for Frame’s band–like she, they are brassy, bold, and rootsy. This is music that dances on the razor’s edge between danger and ecstasy. You know–just like the deal really goes down outside of Fantasy Land.

So pay attention the next time you walk past an arts fair; you never know what diamond in the rough might lie amidst the spangled crocheted dolls.

You can sample Frame’s music on her Website: http://www.reverbnation.com/artist/song_details/10884169 Please go to www.lizframeandthekickers.com to buy her music and to keep abreast of her performances.

Old Town School Sampler Leaves You Wanting More

2011-11-22T22:27:00.002-05:00

Dipping the toes into a very deep well.

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Live from the Old Town School

Old Town School Recordings

* * * *

To call Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music a venerable institution is akin to calling the Mona Lisa a fairly well known painting. Formed in 1957 at the height of the folk revival, the OTS has hosted pretty much every major figure on the folk scene. True to its name, it’s also a teaching institution for around 6,000 erstwhile musicians as well as a concert venue. The OTS has mined its considerable archives and has made available to the public 127 tracks featuring 85 separate artists. The recording featured in this review is a whet-your-whistle 21-track sampler. My-oh-my, what an assemblage of talent!

The sampler dips mostly into performances since 1982. There’s Donovan leading a group sing of “Mellow Yellow,” Joan Baez performing “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” Doc Watson ripping up the strings on “Blue Eyed Jane,” and John Hammond giving up the “Walkin’ Blues.” There are early performances from now famed musicians–Steve Earle singing “Goodbye,” Martin Carthy on “John Barleycorn,” Jeff Tweedy singing the catchy “Three is the Magic Number,” and a young Claudia Schmidt singing “Wild Mountain Thyme. More poignant still are tracks from those no longer with us, a list that includes Dave Van Ronk, John Hartford, the great Mahalia Jackson, and the one I miss the most: Steve Goodman. What comes through in each performance is the consummate professionalism of the artist, the intimacy of the venue, and the joy of sharing fabulous music with an appreciate audience.

Check out the entire collection at www.oldtownschool.org/liverecordings

Olsen Stunning in Martha Marcy Mae Marlene

2011-11-17T19:05:00.000-05:00

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE (2011)

Directed by Sean Durkin

Fox Searchlight, 102 mins. Rated R (nudity, violence, sexual assault)

* * * *

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are this generation’s Ava and Zsa Zsa Gabor–trashy tabloid fodder and the butt of countless jokes. Please, please, please do not extend the twins’ helium celebrity to younger sister Elizabeth; as she proves in the deeply disturbing Martha Marcy May Marlene, she is a weighty and serious young actress from whom will see marvelous things. (She also possesses a fresh, natural beauty that her airbrushed sisters can’t touch.)

This film follows a young woman who was born as Martha. She becomes Marcy Mae when she falls in with an upstate New York quasi-religious cult and Marlene is a phone pseudonym if any outsider calls. But Marcy Mae is the real problem; it’s the handle given to her by the Svengali-like cult leader, Patrick, played with demonic intensity by John Hawkes (who was Teardrop in Winter’s Bone). Hawkes’ wiry body and chiseled face evoke a younger Sean Penn, and he’s every bit as creepy as Penn in one of his dance-on-the-razor roles. Patrick is a mash-up of David Koresh and Charles Manson; that is, a psychotic charismatic who cajoles and love bombs his followers as prelude to gaining their consent for unspeakable acts such as crime sprees. So thoroughly does he hold sway over his flock that female members willingly prepare relaxing drugs to relax new recruits for their initiation: being sodomized by Patrick. The cardinal cult rule is that Patrick’s wisdom cannot be questioned.

Martha, though, does the thing a cult member isn’t supposed to do: she allows her conscience to consider things done in the name of alleged greater glory. This prompts her to flee the cult and seek refuge with Lucy (Sarah Paulson), a sister from whom she has long been estranged. But is she any better off with Lucy and her self-absorbed Yuppie husband Ted? (The latter role is played with British pretension by the talented Hugh Dancy.) Lucy wants to be supportive, but she’s thoroughly bourgeois and Martha has become semi-feral. The clash between her desire for social respectability and Martha’s asocial behavior has Lucy frazzled and has driven Martha to the borders of insanity. In fact, Martha has become so unhinged from what happened in the cult and her inability to resocialize that neither she nor we can discern what is real and what is imagined. Are Martha, Lucy, and Ted in great danger? Is Martha being stalked by the vengeful cult, or is she tormented by inner demons? Those familiar with the Bible will recognize Martha as one of the two sisters of Lazarus. Legend holds that she later wandered to Provence, where she pacified the Tarasque, a monster that terrorized locals. This Martha, however, remains in the grips of so many dragons that she could have easily been named Sibyl.

As you’ve no doubt surmised, this isn’t exactly a first-date film! But it’s a damned good one and it’s way scarier than the average slasher film for the simple reason that it’s plausible rather than fanciful. Most of us smugly assume that we would never fall prey to a cult; this film suggests just how easy it is for a vivacious and bright young person to do so–especially one trying to make sense of past disappointments (and who isn’t?).

Olsen is simply stunning as Martha, both physically and psychically. She exudes so much vulnerability that you slowly begin to see her as a cork bobbing on choppy waters and marvel at the inner resources she had to marshal in order to make the inner-directed decision to flee the cult. Does she or doesn’t she escape? I’ll only say that you won’t escape thinking about this film long after the final credits have rolled. Keep your eyes peeled for Ms. Olsen. And don’t call her Mary-Kate or Ashley!

Ivan Nova Got Jobbed in R.O.Y. Vote

2011-11-15T15:57:00.002-05:00

Give me a guy who wins over one that puts up fancy stats.

The American League just gave its Rookie of the Year (ROY) award to Tampa Bay pitcher Jeremy Hellickson. He’s a promising talent and put up impressive numbers everywhere except where it really matters: wins. He was just 13-10.

I mean no disrespect to Hellickson, but this is a travesty on par with giving Felix Hernandez a Cy Young Award for a 13-12 record. In fact, it may be worse because Tampa Bay is a decent team and the Mariners simply stink. I know these prizes are individual awards, but baseball is still a team game and the ultimate measure of any single player’s worth is whether he helps the collective to victory, not whether he is the lone rose in a field of thorns. (Look at some of the gaudy numbers put up by the 2011 Red Sox and you’ll appreciate the importance of team efforts!)

This brings me to the guy who got jobbed: Yankees pitcher Ivan Nova. Hellickson had more strikeouts (117 to 98) as one might expect from a power pitcher versus a finesse ground ball pitcher; he also had more walks (72 to 57), but a lower earned run average (2.95 to 3.70). I suppose one could make the case for Hellickson, except that Nova went 16-4. That is, Nova was +12 and Hellickson was just +3. To put a point on it, anyone who knows anything about baseball knows this: without Ivan Nova the Yankees wouldn’t have made the postseason. He rescued a pitching staff that was as thin as hobo soup.

The Stat Heads would retort that most of Hellickson’s other numbers were better, and so they were. But explain to me how Nova finishes fourth in the balloting. Kansas City’s Eric Hosmer finished second by hitting .293 with 19 homers and 78 RBIs–a nice season, but hardly Mickey Mantle numbers. And the Royals needed him to lose 91 games? And then there’s the third-place finisher, Mark Trumbo of the (Wherever the Hell in California) Angels who hit just .254 and whiffed 128 times to go with his 29 homers and 87 RBIs. This guy was more valuable to the Angels–who finished ten games out of the money–than Nova to the Yankees?

Excuse me if I’m seeing anti-Yankees bias going on here. Let’s see, Hideki Matsui finishes second in the 2003 ROY race to the immortal Angel Berroa and C.C. Sabathia wins 21 games in 2010 but loses the Cy Young to a guy one game over .500. Hmmm…. Are we playing Fantasy Baseball or the Real McCoy? In the latter, what matters is who wins. I’ll take a guy who wins 21 games with a higher ERA every season over a guy with great stuff who wins 13. And I’ll take one who is +12 over one who is +3. And spare me the spiel on who surrounds you on the roster; a pitcher (as opposed to a thrower) adjusts his stuff to what is needed; you don’t need to throw like it’s 2-1 if the score is 7-2.

I look forward to the day when real baseball fans invite the numbers wonks to catch batting practice without gear–maybe a few foul tips would knock some sense into them. As for now, I could stomach Nova as the ROY runner-up, but fourth? Do the people who vote these awards actually watch the games?

Two Boring Films to Avoid

2011-11-10T21:17:00.000-05:00

Porn sites have to be more interesting than this film!

We had heard many good things about the film Meek’s Cutoff (2010, Directed by Kelly Reichardt, PG, 110 mins.) and the film is gorgeous on the surface. Alas, it doesn’t have much except surface. Well… not quite true; Michelle Williams, as usual, is a riveting force, but not even she can rescue a film in which next to nothing happens. It’s set in 1845 and a small band of settlers is lost in the high desert of Oregon, running low on water, and probably in Indian territory. The film certainly chips away the romance attached to the American pioneer myth and it also exposes the preposterousness of Anglo-Saxon superiority presumptions, but it’s ultimately a film that touches upon but never penetrates the bigger issues it raises. Some critics have praised director Reichardt for not tying up loose ends. Fair enough, though ambiguity isn’t always very compelling viewing and Meek’s Cutoff drifts into a category we might label “So what?” It’s 110 minutes of people trudging across barren land and feels longer than Lawrence of Arabia.

Avoid Love and Other Drugs (2010, Directed by Edward Zwick, R, 112 mins.) unless you absolutely need to see Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal naked. They are both gorgeous, but don’t buy for a second that this film is making a serious statement about Parkinson’s disease or the sleaziness of the drug industry. (Do we need a film to tell us about the latter?) Let’s call this one what it is: soft porn. I enjoyed Anne Hathaway in her birthday suit, but I suspect there are Internet sites where I could have seen her without sitting through this vapid film.

Liberal Democrats and the Weenie Problem

2011-11-07T10:43:00.002-05:00

Only in Weenie World is this negative campaigning!

Tomorrow is Election Day and I’m a content man. We elect the new mayor of Northampton, MA tomorrow and I’m fine with whoever wins. I’m well aware of how lucky I am to live in Northampton. Folks elsewhere often have to choose between entrenched politicos and Tea Party crazies. Not Northampton. Our longtime beloved Mayor Clare Higgins—an open lesbian known for her plain talk, acerbic wit, and political acumen–has retired and two men vie to replace her: former John Olver aide, acting mayor and city council president David Narkewicz is squaring off against Michael Bardsley, a gay man with a long record in public education and city politics. In other words, it’s a very liberal Democrat against a very liberal Democrat.

I have no idea yet as to how I’ll cast my vote as it’s been hard to tell the difference between the two. I sort of like Bardsley’s position on a local aquifer issue better than Narkewicz’s, but I like both of these guys a lot and might just toss a coin before I go into the booth. There is, however, one thing that might push me to put an X beside Bardsley’s name, the factor I call liberal weeniedom. Through no fault of his own, Narkewicz has attracted an inordinate number of the sort of folks who think that government ought to be a giant group hug in which harmony and consensus reign. Some of them, I suspect, think a city council meeting ought to end with a massed singing of “Kumbaya.”

Bardsley has been accused by liberal weenies of “negative campaigning.” Count me among those who laments the decline of civil discourse in America, but you tell me if these things descend to the level of “negative” campaigning. Bardsley’s first campaign slogan was “A Mayor Should be Elected, Not Selected,” a reference to the fact that Higgins retired a few months early and is supporting Narkewicz. The Bardsley campaign raised the question of whether a bit of favoritism was at work by allowing Narkewicz to sit in the mayor’s chair in advance of the election. “Perish the thought!” cried the weenies, who insisted that all procedure was followed and that it was a mere “coincidence” that Narkewicz was in the city charter-defined position to take over. Yeah—right! There are lots of detached heads lying about this town that once belonged to those who mistakenly took Clare Higgins for a fool! I can’t prove it, but I’d say she knew exactly what she was doing. Get over it, folks, politics is sometimes Machiavellian, a term I’d apply both to her premature resignation and Bardsley’s attempt to exploit it.

Bardsley’s newest slogan is “Everybody’s Mayor,” and this too has set the weenies on edge. He has raised the issue–an irrefutable one–that Northampton’s business community and upper middle class get more attention than its less affluent residents living in the outlier districts. My goodness—to hear the weenies cry “foul” on this one, you’d have thought that the Aardvark of the Apocalypse just took a stroll down the center white line of the universe! Only a truly air-stuffed brain could get lathered about a slogan such as “Everybody’s Mayor.”

I find myself so amused by the passion generated over this stuff that I don’t talk about the election in public, lest I be viewed as smug. Guilty. I am smug about this. If this election is viewed as “negative,” I have to ask if Northampton voters have ever heard of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. The Tea Party? The Republican Party? Nobody has sung “Kumbaya” for quite some time, except post-election liberal Democrats licking their wounds after getting knocked out once again by boxing according to Marquis of Queensberry rules while their conservative opponents pounded away below the belt!

As a historian I wonder what my city’s squeamish would have made of the election of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson was accused of being an atheist and a terrorist. Or the 1840 election in which William Henry Harrison was called the sort of man who’d be content to live in a log cabin alongside his jug of hard cider. In 1884, Grover Cleveland weathered the charge that he represented the party of “rum, Romanism,” and rebellion.” Prohibitionists dismantled Al Smith in 1928; FDR hung the Depression on Hoover in 1932; John Kennedy had to sidestep charges he’d turn the nation over the pope in 1960; Lyndon Johnson made Barry Goldwater into a nuclear mad man in 1964…. The list goes on. In the 1964 election, though, GOP operative Lee Atwater learned the lesson that politics was a contact sport and began to fashion the politics of division blueprint that has led to steady Republican gains ever since. Is it pretty? No. Does taking the high road pay off? No again. Frankly, I’ve come to doubt that the Democratic Party has the stomach for modern politics–an irony as it was the Dems who perfected down-and-dirty ward politics during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries that made it into the majority party.

This much I know: the Democrats are going to continue to lose elections they should win until they turn their backs on the weenies. Get tough or get off the ballot–that’s just the way it is these days. Regrettable? Yes it is. But that and a few dozen positions papers will get you second place on Election Day.

This is why I’m smug about Northampton’s election. We get to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that politics is about rational people making public-spirited decisions. It still works that way here. Lucky us. I’ll be happy tomorrow no matter who wins: David and Michael are both quality individuals. I’ll be happy, but I won’t look for a group hug. Things just don’t work this way when you drive out of Northampton into the troubled and divided realm known as “America.”

Ritch Workman is an Idiot and Other Political Rants

2011-11-05T21:23:00.001-04:00

Lead candidate for bunghole of the year!

You’ve got to hand it to the Republican Party: in Herbert Cain it managed to find an African American who is even whiter than Clarence Thomas! Cain’s recent lampoon of the Wall Street occupiers as a bunch of unemployed people trying to take money from those who earned it is straight out of 19^th century Social Darwinism in its callousness. He also missed the point. They are unemployed, you damn fool—that’s the entire point of the occupation.

Speaking of Clarence Thomas, expect to hear him complain again of being “lynched” by the left. (Only someone craven would use the term as cavalierly as he.) It seems that the press is finally getting around to raising a question or two—albeit with kid gloves—about the seed money the Supreme Court Justice provided his wife to form a Tea Party group. Justices are, in theory, banned from engaging in partisan politics as they are expected to be impartial (yeah, right!) when cases appear before them. Thomas is now disingenuously saying that he knows little of his wife’s political activities or the $1.6 million he helped raise for Tea Party causes. What he has done isn’t impeachable (or believable), but if he has a scrap of decency he’ll recuse himself from future cases with even a hint of ideology attached to them. Don’t hold your breath, though; Thomas is a disgrace to robes once worn by Thurgood Marshall.

In an older blog I suggested that shock jock Michael Graham wasn’t very funny in making dwarf jokes. I’m ready to declare Graham a saint in comparison to Florida Representative Ritch Workman, who has actually argued that Florida should repeal its law on dwarf-tossing. This mean-spirited jackass actually had the moxie to suggest that a repeal would create opportunities for unemployed dwarves, who could get jobs in bars servicing patrons who get their jollies from hurling small folks around the joint. I’ve got a better idea—one that could go a long way toward alleviating the national debt. How about a bill that allows citizens to fling dung on legislators? How much would you pay for that privilege?

A last rant, this one directed at liberals. I’ve been approached by numerous people to sign petitions asking that the government halt the deportation of illegal immigrants and that it launch legal challenges to draconian laws such as that of Arizona and Georgia. Sorry, folks, but I won’t put energy or money into a lost cause. We need a debate over immigration law, but it’s not going to happen in this Congress and it has zero chance of occurring until 2013 at the earliest. I must also say that the United States is about the only nation in the world where a debate over illegal immigration would even take place. I know that there have been heartbreaking cases of families torn asunder, but this is truly a case in which risk assessment is part of the equation. I have personally known illegals—mostly from Ireland and Scotland—and each was well aware of the consequences of being apprehended. As I said, I’m all for a revamp of immigration laws–legal immigration laws. But kneejerk defenses of illegal immigration strikes me as muddled liberalism that’s out of touch with current law, prevailing politics, public opinion, and common sense. It is, simply, a cause with no future.

Mini Picks, Including a Classic!

2011-11-03T21:11:00.000-04:00

Truly one of history's greatest films.

I had heard about it for decades and avoided it for all the reasons I generally avoid all things hyped. Take the word of one who was foolish but is now wiser: Les enfants du paradis (“Children of Paradise,” 1946, 163 mins. French with subtitles) deserves its status as among the greatest movies ever made. Directed by Marcel Carné at the very end of the German occupation of France during World War II, the film is set in Paris in the 1820s, a time in which class distinctions were as sharp as a noble’s sword. It centers on the character of Garance, a model/prostitute/courtesan and the four men who love her: a romantic mime, an egoistical actor, an arrogant duke, and an amoral criminal, each of whom is based on a real-life character. It is a film about the thin and porous lines between admiration and obsession, love and lust, ambition and egotism, passion and cruelty, and celebrity and notoriety. There are parts of the film that are more surrealistic than anything Fellini ever imagined, and others that are more sumptuous and sensual in black and white than a Crayola factory could manufacture. The film’s stunning final scene has been often copied, but never equaled. Don’t wait to see this, even if you think an old black-and-white film in French sounds dreary. There’s a reason why it has been praised to the skies.

Also in French is Sarah’s Key (2010, directed and written by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, PG-13, 111mins.) This one isn’t likely to make its way onto any classic films list and there are bits of it that are exceedingly contrived, but give it credit: it at least tries to do something new with the Holocaust. I mean nothing condescending in that remark, only that it’s hard to tell that story without drowning an audience in horror, pathos, and sadness. All three are present in Sarah’s Key, but the film humanizes the scale of the Holocaust in ways that, in many ways, makes the tragedy more impactful. The central character is Sarah Starzynski, a child rounded up in the seldom-discussed Parisian roundup of Jews in 1942. The story switches between Sarah in 1942, and investigative journalist Julia Jarmond in the present. The fully bilingual and always impressive Kristin Scott Thomas plays Jarmond. This film is still in theaters as well as on DVD. It’s worth viewing.

A music pick. If you want a night out that involves a break from the present and tongue-in-cheek mayhem, go see the Sweetback Sisters, a delightful retro band that culls the Country music backlist from the days in which slickness meant hair grease not studio tricks. We caught them in a West Whatley, MA concert recently and reveled in their hijinks, energy, tight harmonies, and crisp musicianship. Okay, we could have done with fewer histrionics from the lad playing electric guitar, but what’s not to like in a repertoire that draws from Patsy Cline, Hazel Dickens, and loads of other earlier Country and bluegrass stars and supplements them with superb originals?

Looking for something quite different musically? I just caught up with Wu Man recently, whom I had not seen in a while. Wu Man is the mistress of the Chinese pippa, a four-stringed, 23-frets instrument whose sound you will recognize, though you’ll not hear many who can play it like Wu Man. At times she makes her instrument sound like it came from some royal court thousands of years ago; at others she’s so wild and expressive that she’s been dubbed the “Jimi Hendrix of the pippa.”

NBA Fails to Open and the Public Yawns

2011-10-30T11:10:00.000-04:00

Who cares?

November 1 was supposed to be the first regular season game of the National Boring Association, sorry--National Basketball Association. The impasse between the filthy rich players and the even filthier, even richer owners has delayed this. Aside from vendors, advertisers, and a handful of service-industry workers, does anyone really care? The lack of a public hue-and-cry for the NBA contrasts greatly with the angst associated with last summer’s possible pro football cancellations. The NFL lockout was front-page stuff news; the NBA is relegated to the internal columns of the sports pages. Why? And how can we salvage the NBA?

First of all, now that the NBA finals extend until late June, it’s not like we’ve been without NBA basketball for very long. The NBA is overexposed and that’s not good news because…

The second problem with the NBA is that its product is unattractive. NBA marketers do their best to manufacture heroes, but the millionaires it seeks to promote are too flawed or too immature to play their roles. The league’s best is Kobe Bryant, who has never recovered from rape allegations leveled in 2003. That leaves LeBron James, who is overhyped, underperforms under pressure, and who made a total ass of himself in his televised decision to bolt Cleveland for Miami. In a recent poll James ranked as the sixth least-liked athlete in the United States. Guess who was number five? Yep--Kobe Bryant. You know the NBA has an image problem when you’re as likely to see past and present players on America’s Most Wanted as on ESPN. Among the lowlights (lowlifes?): twice-convicted Allen Iverson, Ponzi-schemer Tate George, jail birds Isaiah Rider, Charles Smith, Sly Williams, and Sean Banks, and gun-toter Gilbert Arenas. Oh yeah, the guy Arenas pulled a gun on is Jarvaris Crittenden, under investigation for murder. And these are just the tip of the iceberg. And the NBA Players’ Association thinks the public gives a damn what percentage of basketball revenue goes to this lot?

Athletes are seldom saints--Michael Vick is a starting NFL quarterback for heaven’s sake--but the road to redemption is to thrill audiences in the arena. This leads to the NBA’s third problem: it’s just not a very good product at present. Blame owners and management for that. They’ve gotten it in their collective heads that “athleticism” and “an NBA body” is more important than the ability to score, the possession of skills, or actually understanding the game. There are millions of kids in playgrounds and gyms across the world and the NBA can’t find more than a dozen who can knock down a 15-foot jump shot? Don’t tell me about how good the defense is these days--I’ve seen the footage of Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird, Dave Cowens, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, George Gervin, Michael Jordan, and Dr. J draining shots with guys hanging on them like a Cadillac hood ornament. Don’t get me started on the lack of ball-handling ability; let’s just say that in the old days if a team trailed by ten going into the 4^th quarter, the game was over.

Here’s my proposal to solve the NBA impasse. First, as anyone who has viewed the game in the past decade knows, the first 46 minutes are irrelevant. They also know that the final two minutes will take an hour to play with the constant time outs, fouls, feigned injuries, etc. So let’s forget salaries altogether. Negotiate a TV contract based on a series of one-hour broadcasts of the final two minutes of NBA contests. Let’s pretend 46 minutes have been played, start with a good modern NBA score of 73-73, and play the final two. An alternative would be to say that the first team to 80 wins--though networks would have to be prepared to extend the one-hour timeslot. Players and management split the TV revenues 40-40, with 20% going to support the underfunded high schools that supply NBA talent.

Second, create a round robin of two-minute games to determine who gets to the playoffs and finals. The entire season could be played out and filmed in about two weeks and replayed on TV according to a seasonal schedule with the first “games” aired in November and the “finals” in late April. Players would sign sworn affidavits not to reveal the outcomes in advance; anyone doing so would be barred for five years from the main revenue-enhancing outlets of NBA players: endorsing sneakers, fast food, or Gatorade.

Because the NBA season would actually be played and filmed in its entirety by late August, those athletes who wish to play entire games would be free to go elsewhere to do so. This would be additional income for them and they’d still get U.S. TV revenue money. Kobe could go to Italy and LeBron to China, where apparently people still care about pro basketball. The rest of us just want to see the circus finale, not the plumed prancing horses.

UMass Football: An Expensive Delusion

2011-10-28T12:41:00.003-04:00

UMass gambles despite stacked odds against it. This article originally appeared in The Daily Hampshire Gazette October 18, 2011.

Western Massachusetts is about to place a wager with high potential to lose millions, bring an influx of unsavory characters, and leave social wreckage in its wake. No, I’m not talking about casino gambling; I mean the deluded belief that the University of Massachusetts can become a profitable Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) powerhouse. Recent shakeups in football conferences threaten to cancel or limit UMass’s entry into the Mid-American Conference (MAC) and confirm that the university is betting on desperation odds. It’s time to give up football fantasies and concentrate on things that matter more.

I came to the Valley twenty-five years ago to get a Ph.D. at UMass. I love UMass, stayed here to be close to it, donate to it, and often teach courses there. But I grew up in Pennsylvania, where Penn State was a focal point of Commonwealth pride and was/is well-funded by the legislature. I was shocked to see how little Boston cares about UMass. I have taught in buildings with plywood nailed to the first floor to prevent people from falling to the basement. Campus wags say that the school motto is “Deferred Maintenance” and that its mascot is a classroom rain bucket. I can take you to places where jerry rigged plastic sheets and tubing is all the stands between dry land and a new campus pond. I can enumerate departments that have been understaffed for decades.

It’s shameful how the Commonwealth ignores its flagship but—as the slogan goes—it is what it is. UMass athletics suffered an $850,000 cut to its $23 million budget just last year, the region is losing population, we’re likely to shed a Congressional district, and the UMass board has a single regional representative. Western Mass will lose clout in Boston, not acquire more. Need I remind everyone that big-time basketball was going to bring prominence to the university? That the Mullins Center—now hemorrhaging money and managed by an outside firm—was going to replenish university coffers? Did the Commonwealth help that program? Will it rescue UMass if the MAC decides it doesn’t want the Minutemen, or boots them two years hence for insufficient attendance? (It’s no slam-dunk that UMass will average 15,000 fans for two years. It barely averaged that in 2010, even with a big- attendance “home” game vs. New Hampshire in Foxborough. Think UMass will draw 32,000 for that big rivalry against Ball State?)

Football is a money drain, though you have to decode the university budget to see it. In 2010 UMass budgeted $4.3 million for football; it brought in $1.2 million, but the books were “balanced” because student activity fees subsidized football (and other revenue-losing sports). Expect fees to skyrocket if UMass joins the MAC and football costs swell to nearly $7 million. Expect also that any residual revenue will go to Eastern Massachusetts, not Amherst. There will never be a large stadium on the UMass campus; local infrastructure cannot sustain it. UMass students will pick up the tab for Boston-area entrepreneurs.

And here’s the clincher. Even if UMass managed to build a respectable program comparable to that of neighboring Connecticut, big-time college comes at a social cost comparable to that of casino gambling. The NCAA is a cartel that’s as self-interested as the American Gaming Association. Money is made, but seldom by the schools involved; the NCAA admits that just 22 FBS schools actually made money on football during 2009-10. Big-time gamblers love college football, payoffs abound, and athletes are used like poker chips. Don’t take my word for it; check out what recent articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Atlantic, and Forbes have to say about it.

UMass uses “benchmark” schools to measure its academic and student life standards. Among its peers are UConn, Michigan State, and the University of Maryland. They’re fine schools but, with all due respect, I’d much rather UMass used universities such as Brandeis, NYU, the University of Vermont, and the UCal system (sans Berkeley) as benchmarks. Each is a topnotch academic institution with healthy enrollment and no football team. I call upon new UMass President Robert Carnet to shut down the Amherst football/craps game before millions of dollars are lost and academic excellence joins building maintenance on the “deferred” list.

Visit from the Goon Squad Undeserving of a Pulitzer

2011-10-26T14:38:00.001-04:00

Diverting, but nothing more.

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010. ISBN 978-0-307-94835-9

There are certain awards--film’s Palme d’Or springs to mind--that have more to do with how much one has impressed peers than how good the product is. I’m beginning to think that the Pulitzer Prize for fiction is one of them. I haven’t agreed with the committee’s choice since Richard Russo won in 2002 for Empire Falls, but the 2011 choice, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, leaves me especially perplexed. It is, at best, a middling effort that hardly deserves to join exalted ranks such as To Kill a Mockingbird or The Confessions of Nat Turner. It’s not a bad book, just one I could see a group of aging committee members honoring in the mistaken belief that they are being “hip” and “relevant.” It must be “now,” right? There are PowerPoint slides in the book and some of the characters text and tweet. Wow!

Egan takes us inside the chaos of the 1970s, a time in which punk rock was in the process of transitioning from an expression of underclass anger into a commercial commodity. In fact, one of the book’s two main characters, Bennie Salazar, is helping make that happen. He’s a failed musician-turned-record executive seeking to bask in the star glow of his discoveries. The other central figure is the enigmatic Sasha, his kleptomaniac assistant, who is either a free spirit, a true punk bad girl, or just seriously screwed up. Their various friends, acquaintances, lovers, drug dealers, and hangers-on populate the rest of the book. Kudos to Egan for probing a topic few have previously explored: what happens to punk rockers when they hit middle age, parenthood, and artistic irrelevancy? Bennie’s case is dramatic; his very raison d’être is built around having his finger on the next pulse. What does one do when one’s own pulse weakens, both literally and aesthetically?

Egan moves back and forth in time in good postmodern style; that is, never sequentially and never in a cause-and-effect fashion. That structure has led some critics to cry foul over a Pulitzer for literature. They assert that the work is really a short story collection rather than a novel. I disagree; the stories are so interdependent that none could stand alone in a comprehensible way. My brief with the novel is that it isn’t (novel); that is, aside from the idea mentioned above, it’s not terribly original. Does anyone still feel that a story must be told chronologically? Not that many books and movies wouldn’t be all the better for doing so, including this one. The book’s structure seems contrived rather than unique or necessary, but this may be because Egan is not a great stylist. The book is diverting, but not one that will make you marvel over the elegance of its language, its evocative imagery, or its unforgettable characters. The latter, in fact, are so vacuous and shallow that days after you’ve read this book, you probably won’t remember any of them.

So why read it at all? I’d say for the same reason you read a fan magazine or a work of pulp fiction--it’s breezy, mildly entertaining, and easy on the brain. If that makes it sound like classic beach reading, that’s what I think it is. A Pulitzer Prize winner? Oh dear! I suspect that ten years from now this selection will be considered in the same what-were-they-thinking? category as awarding the 1976 Best Picture Oscar to Rocky. It might be a good idea to get some real readers on the Pulitzer committee; discussion groups formed around the book are far less effusive in their praise than critics. Many of the readers have the audacity to call this a rather ordinary book. The nerve!

Ian Green Autobiography for Friends and Foes Alike

2011-10-24T19:26:00.000-04:00

Ian Green, Fuzz to Folk: Trax of My Life, (Edinburgh, Luath Press, 2011), 334 pp. ISBN 1-906817-69-3.

Scotland is a land of strong music, strong drink, and strong opinions. Readers of Fuzz to Folk will encounter all three. It is the autobiography of Ian Green, the founder and proprietor of Greentrax Records. Green inspires great loyalties but, by his own admission, is also viewed by some as a “grumpy old man.” (319) In his defense, he was grumpy before he was old! And for the same reasons he’s so beloved: Green has always been an implacable foe of pretense, incompetence, and dishonesty. Like all great ventures, Greentrax has deep roots. Green acquired some of his love of Scottish music from his father, who was a piper, but if it hadn’t been for the Korean War, he might have taken up his father’s other trade: gardening. Military service sharpened Green’s national identity, but it also led to a civilian job with the police force. In addition to rounding up miscreant, Green helped organize a police-sponsored folk club nicknamed “Fuzzfolk.” Through it he became friendly with performers such as The McCalmans, The Cotters, Jean Redpath, Dick Gaughan, Eric Bogle, Silly Wizard, Nic Jones, and Brian McNeill. Greentrax didn’t occur until after retirement from the police in 1985; in between lay activities such as editing Sandy Bell’s Broadsheet, involvement with the Edinburgh Folk Club, and running Discount Folk Records as a moonlighting job.

Those looking for revelations into the Scottish music scene will be disappointed. Music takes up less than a third of the book, Green is no gossip, and his attitude toward artistry has always been pursuing what he likes rather than analyzing or pigeonholing music. His assessment of performers seldom goes beyond adjectives such as “excellent,” “terrific,” and “distinguished.” The book’s most-revealing chapters are those that highlight Scottish life in the 1950s through the 1970s, a time in which Britain was still very much in the post-World War II doldrums, but opportunities existed for those with more moxie than credentials. Some of circumstances and terms Green discusses may be unfamiliar to North American audiences but they’re not his target audience. Number me among the Ian Green fan club brigade, but even if you conclude he is grumpy, thank your stars for the music you know because of him.

The Hedgehog a Gem and a Delight

2011-10-19T13:43:00.001-04:00

Is a future star peeking out from that frizzled mane?

THE HEDGEHOG (2009)

Directed by Mona Achache

100 mins. (French with subtitles)

* * * *

The Hedgehog is that rarest of stories: one that works as well on the screen as it does on the printed page. Those who loved Muriel Barbery’s novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog (L’élégance du hérisson) will find a few changes in the film, but most of them work brilliantly. It’s now in distribution across North America and you should rush to see it.

Those unfamiliar with the story may find the story line troubling. The film centers on Paloma Josse (Garance Le Guillermic), the precocious eleven-year-old daughter of an upper-class dysfunctional Parisian family. She lives with a disinterested father, a neurotic mother, and a narcissistic older sister in a ritzy apartment complex supervised by a widowed concierge, Renée Michel (Josiane Balsako). Paloma identifies with the family’s goldfish and sees life as an exercise in frustration akin to bumping into the sides of the bowl. Life is so futile, in fact, that she plans to kill herself on her twelfth birthday, has stockpiled pills pilfered from her mother’s stash, and is busy videotaping her thoughts on the shallowness of existence and her own impending death.

Does this sound like fun? It is! I don’t want to give away too much, but let’s say that it’s not a suicide film; it’s about social class, philosophy, art, and literature. It’s about the ways in which class status and being classy is not the same thing. Above all it’s about the things we don’t see even when they’re right in front of us. Le Guillermic is riveting as Paloma--a frizzy-haired, stripped-shirted bundle of contradiction who is all of eleven in one moment, but wiser than her elders the next. The frumpy Renée is the film’s hedgehog, prickly on the outside, but possessive of an inner intellect, kindness, and curiosity that can only be seen by those who bother to look: Paloma and a new Japanese neighbor, the widower Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa). The three make up a mismatched set of musketeers, but a trio that slices away pretense to reveal essential and aesthetic truths.

Novel readers will notice that Paloma has been transformed from a diarist to an artist and videographer. This works spectacularly. The film’s small details come together as a gorgeous visual mélange and relieve the screenplay--cowritten by Barbery--of the difficulty of filming a writer’s inner thoughts. There are a few things readers will miss. The film doesn’t probe philosophy with the depth of the novel and key relationships between Renée, fellow domestic Manuela, and their mentally challenged neighbor, Tibére, are pared to the bone.

But one can only do so much in 100 minutes and the film does a remarkable job of preserving the book’s essence. Watch out for young Garance Le Guillermic; she who bears the first name of the heroine of the classic Children of Paradise looks as if she’s capable of a few classics of her own.

Long Time Courting Debut Crisp and Sublime

2011-10-17T15:03:00.000-04:00

LONG TIME COURTING

Alternate Routes

Self-Produced

* * * *

Long Time Courting open their debut CD with “Maggie Dean,” a song about a lass who disguises herself as a lad to go to sea. Call it a sly get-over-it message to those who still think the idea of women playing Celtic music is exotic. LTC consists of Sarah Blair, Ariel Friedman, Shannon Heaton, and Liz Simmons, and the important thing to know is that they’re very, very good. Each is a fine singer and they have the sense to try new things with old material, such as rendering "Barbara Allen" atop drone-like cello. In many ways, though, the instrumentals dazzle even more. The title track is scaffolded by Simmons’ bold guitar, swoops to Heaton’s flute, comes back to earth with the deep resonance of Friedman’s cello, and takes flight anew courtesy of Blair’s edgy fiddle ornaments. Sets such as “In the Doghouse” evoke the rhythms and grooves of Lúnasa, but it’s inevitable that this lineup will be labeled as New England’s rejoinder to Cherish the Ladies. Not bad company to keep.

Here's a 2009 clip of concert in New Hampshire.

The Ides of March Decent but Unoriginal

2011-10-14T09:54:00.001-04:00

Been there. Done that!

The Ides of March (2011)

Directed and cowritten by George Clooney

Cross Creek Pictures, R, 101 mins.

* * *

The phrase “taut drama” is often applied to films about political intrigue; “slightly flabby and in need of a facelift” is the way I’d describe The Ides of March. It’s not a bad film, but it travels familiar turf and has nothing new to point out during the journey. If you go, lower your expectations and you’ll be fine; if you miss it, no need to feel regret.

The Ides of March takes us to Ohio, where populist Governor Mike Morris (Clooney) should, by all rights, be wrapping up the Democratic Party nomination for president. Of course, politics is never that easy, as Morris campaign strategists Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling) are about to discover. Ohio’s open primary allows anyone to vote regardless of their party affiliation and Senator Pullman, Morris’s opponent, is surging because of Republicans and rightwing ideologues planning to vote for Pullman, whom they see him as more beatable in November. Moreover, Ohio Democratic Senator Thompson (Jeffrey Wright) has ambitions (and delegates) of his own, which he’ll sell to the highest bidder. All of a sudden, a sure thing becomes a battle to save both the campaign and Governor Morris’s integrity.

That’s the skinny of the narrative, but the film is really about how idealist Stephen Myers loses his political virginity when he finds out that Morris isn’t entirely the man of rectitude and incorruptibility he thinks he is. And once one sells one’s soul, why not get the best price? Pullman’s campaign leader Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti) is superb as an oily demonic tempter, though Old Nick himself--as he always is in such films--is hubris. Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Woods) plays the role of naïve Eve wandering though the garden.

It’s an excellent cast and Gosling is riveting in his transformation from starry-eyed innocent to amoral cynic. Alas, his performance, as well as those of Giamatti and Hoffman, surpasses the material he’s handed. Clooney’s script is marked by tepid dialogue and a lack of originality. A well-meaning politician slapped in the face by dirty politics, temptation, and corrupt political machines? Where have we seen this before? How about every other political film from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1932) to the present? There are so many, in fact, that the video guide The Golden Retriever has genre categories titled “Capitol Capers” and “Vote for Me!” Movie hounds will recognize The Ides of March as a crib of The Candidate (1972) and The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979). The latter is probably no accident, as it starred and was cowritten by another great Hollywood liberal: Alan Alda.

In the end, The Ides of March simply adds to our culture of political cynicism. If you feel the need to wallow in it, Ides will serve well, though there are far better films you can rent. Among them (in my order of preference): The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bob Roberts (1992), Wag the Dog (1997), Primary Colors (1998), The Contender (2000), and the films mentioned above. And the very best making-of-a-leader portrayal ever done, in my opinion, is the make-your-skin-crawl British TV series A Very British Coup, also available for rental.

A final point--Don’t try too hard to extend the metaphor of The Ides of March. Like much of the film, surface trumps depth.

Darol Anger Album Intrigues Even When It Fails to Resonate

2011-10-10T12:24:00.000-04:00

DAROL ANGER’S REPUBLIC OF STRINGS

Generation Nation

Compass 7-4427-2

* * *

Newgrass, the blender mix of bluegrass and other genres, has been around for so long that the very term is an oxymoron. But if you think that you’ve heard every permutation possible, reserve judgment until you listen to Generation Nation, the latest collaborative project led by fiddler Darol Anger. It’s a bit like grafting a Grateful Dead concert to a string band. Take a hard listen to “Polska Upstairs” as it’s about as close to a conventional melody as this album gets. If you’re a listener who absolutely needs to hear strong melodies, feel dancey pulses, and hum signature hooks, steer clear of this recording. If, on the other hand, you like music whose loose weaves leave big spaces for jams, innovation, and free form jazz, this is the ticket. Anger doesn’t cover chestnuts; he cracks them open. There is, for instance, Chris Webster channeling Aretha Franklin on “Chain of Fools.” Her vocals are strong, sexy, and reminiscent of Franklin’s 1967 hit single, but Rushad Eggleston’s cello lines and the fiddle meanderings of Anger and Brittany Haas are miles from what Jerry Wexler had in mind. Anger describes “The Seagull” as an “origami,” an apt way of describing the ways in which the instruments fold into each other’s musical space; and the album’s final two tracks, “Rain Dance” and “The Tan Hut,” are so meditative and experimental that I wondered for a moment if Phillip Glass produced the record.

Does all of this work? No. I adore the singing of Aoife o’Donovan, but her soft tones are simply lost in all the resonant bottom of “In the Basement.” How do you feel about an instrumental version of the tragic ballad “Mary Hamilton” done as if it was the soundtrack for a laconic summer raft float down a slow-moving river? I can’t say I felt much of anything. Nor did I care for a Motown treatment of the Buffalo Springfield standard “Bluebird.” Still, though I did not enjoy every track of this record, I was always intrigued.

Farewell to the Phillies

2011-10-08T15:14:00.002-04:00

If he can hit above .253, put him in the lineup!

If you hate big-spending baseball teams you ought to be in Hardball Heaven right now. Numbers one and two, the Yankees and Phillies, are gone and numbers 3 (Red Sox) through 9 never made the postseason. Left standing are the Tigers (10^th), the Cardinals (11^th), Rangers (13^th) and Brewers (17^th).

One of my baseball maxims is that the playoffs expose weaknesses of top teams that get overlooked during the season. Nearly every “expert”--except me!--had the Phillies in the World Series. I picked them to finish second and might have been right if the Braves hadn’t choked on the chicken bone. (Why is no one calling for Fredi Gonzalez to get the axe?) The Phillies were overrated from the get-go. Forget their 102 victories; this was inflated by playing in the NL East. If you play bad teams like the Nationals, Marlins, and Mets 58 times and beat them two of three (which you should), you’re 40% of the way to 100 victories. Fixing the Phillies’ dysfunctional roster will be easier than repairing the Yankees, but not much.

The Phillies do, at least, have very good pitching, including MLB’s best: Roy Halladay. I’m not as sold on Cliff Lee, though he seems perfectly suited for the National League, and I find Cole Hamels such a flake that he drives me crazy, but a person would have to be nuts not the want these two guys. The Phils should, however, part ways with Roy Oswalt, who looks done. He was 9-10 and batters hit a robust .280 off him. Vance Worley proved he’s ready and the Phils should move in that direction. Say adios to Brad Lidge too; Ryan Madson is the closer.

The Phillies didn’t win for the same reason the Tampa Rays didn’t get out of the first round--they can’t hit. Their roster consists of guys who once were, but aren’t any more--Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Placido Polanco, Raul Ibanez.... If you think I’m being overly harsh, look at the numbers. The Phils ran away with the NL East, but they were 15^th in team batting average, 11^th in on-base percentage, and 17^th in slugging. Carlos Ruiz led the team with a .283 average. For all the ink he gets, Ryan Howard had a year like that of Mark Teixeira of the Yankees. He hit a lot of homers (33) and drove in 116 runs, but he hit just .253. He had a gaudy .993 fielding percentage, but don’t be fooled--he’s a one-dimensional player who simply doesn’t get to a lot of balls that his competitors sometimes muff. Utley and Rollins have been wonderful players, but Utley only got into 103 games and Rollins fought off injuries all season. They are breaking down and the Phillies need to consider moving on. If it’s my team, I don’t resign Rollins, who is a free agent. The two guys you want to build around are late season pickup Hunter Pence and scrappy throwback Shane Victorino. I also look to move Domonic Brown, a guy who keeps showing up on the future superstar list and proceeds to play like the next coming of Lastings Milledge. In all honesty, I’d also give serious thought to trading Howard for some guys with a higher on-base percentage; his .346 is so-so for a guy making as much as he.

I’ll be shocked if this roster doesn’t look very different in April of 2012. The Phillies got some talent in the minors--including shortstop Kevin Frandsen, pitcher Michael Schwimer, and first base stud Matt Rizzoti--and a youth movement would not be a bad idea. The pitching is so good that the Phillies will be competitive even if the kids make a few mistakes. They should resist the temptation to trade minor league talent (other than Brown) in the search for a quick fix.

No Easy Fix in the Bronx

2011-10-07T15:22:00.005-04:00

Yankees fans not likely to see one of these next year either.

I may be a Yankees fan, but I’m no Pollyanna. I wasn’t surprised when the Tigers knocked the Yankees out of the playoffs; I’m still trying to fathom how this team won the AL East. I had them slated for third or fourth, which is where I’ll pick them for 2012 barring a major roster makeover.

Here’s what the Yankees won’t do, but should: call 2012 a rebuilding year and develop the young talent in the minors. Both Manny Banuelos and Dellin Bettances have major league talent, but next year is too soon. To toss them into the rotation in 2012 would be 2007 all over again (when Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy were rushed). They need time at AAA and the Yankees also need to wait on promising arms such as Adam Warren, Jose Quintana and David Phelps. They should admit that Andrew Brackman is a bust and see if the can offload him.

I’d rebuild this team around Ivan Nova, Robinson Cano, Eduardo Nunez, David Robertson, Curtis Granderson, and Jesus Montero, and be patient as kids such as outfielders Slade Heathcott and Zoilo Almonte develop. Dante Bichette Jr. looks like he’ll be the third baseman by 2014 and Gary Sanchez will be the catcher. But the Yankees wont be patient because they and the Red Sox are like the US and USSR during the Cold War; each will spend big money even if it makes little sense. And it won’t this year: once one gets past Albert Pujols and Jose Reyes, free agent quality drops dramatically.

The Yankees have three big problems--their starting pitching is awful, they don’t hit well, and the infield leather is shaky other than Mark Teixeira, who is the best fielding first baseman in MLB. (Spare me the Adrian Gonzalez routine; he has half of Tex’s range.) There are no ready fixes to any of these problems.

Decision one is whether to pony up for C. C. Sabathia, who can opt out of his contract. They’ll probably have to pay him as: (a) the Red Sox will make a run at him, and (b) there is no better option on the market. This is a huge--as in C.C.’s portly body--risk; his late season numbers have been very bad two years in a row. Anyone who throws big money at him ought to write a conditioning clause into the contract. The Yankees will undoubtedly make a big run at C. J. Wilson, but he’s truly a number 3, not an ace. It might make some sense, though, to let C. C. walk and sign a package of threes for less dough: such as some combo of Wilson, Mark Buehrle, Bruce Chen, and Joel Pinero. Frankly, if the Yankees don’t get more arms to go with Nova, it won’t matter if Sabathia is there or not. They could make a run at Chris Carpenter, but his injury history makes him risky, plus he likes it in St. Louis. Smart money also says Freddy Garcia comes back. Send Bartolo Colon a retirement card; he had a fine first half but he’s done. Next year is the time for Phil Hughes either to live up to the hype or forever be the guy the Yanks wouldn’t trade for Roy Halladay. A. J. Burnett is the most self-destructive loony since Oil Can Boyd. He simply must go, even though the Yanks will have to pay part of his contract. I still say Burnett for Lackey, but it won’t happen.

The bullpen is still strong with Mo Rivera and superb young arm of David Robertson. They’re probably stuck with Rafael Soriano; anyone who offers him more than the Yankees are paying next year is just plain nuts. They don’t need him, though, especially if Joba Chamberlain and Pedro Feliciano recover from surgery. Please, please waive goodbye to Damaso Marte, Scott Proctor, and Boone Logan. Cory Wade, Luis Ayala, and Aaron Laffey pitched well enough to earn a return. Fill in with spare parts.

The everyday lineup lives and dies by three-run homers and that won’t get the job done in the playoffs. Cano led the team in hitting at just .302, Derek Jeter was second at .297, and no one else hit above .262. The Yanks desperately need high on-base-percentage guys, but they’re saddled with albatross contracts that it unlikely they can retool. By the way, I’m not talking Jeter, who hit for the fifth highest average of all MLB shortstops. The biggest drain on the lineup is Alex Rodriquez, who is injury-prone, aging, unloved, and unproductive. For $30 million you need more than 99 games 16 homers and 62 RBIs. Remember when this guy was going to set the homerun record? He’s sitting at 629 dingers; he won’t catch Ruth, let alone Aaron or Bonds. Frankly, Eric Chavez is a better third baseman and could be as productive. It’s harder to dump on a guy who knocked in 111 runs, but Teixeira’s .248 batting average is a disgrace; he needs to move down to the five slot and Granderson and Cano should bat 3-4. The Yanks also need another outfielder. Dump Andruw Jones and look for help. I like Nick Swisher, but not as an everyday player. But when Michael Cuddyer, Nate McLouth, and David DeJesus top the free agent list, you may have to resign Swisher. Russ Martin isn’t a great catcher, but he’ll do and Francisco Cervelli will back up until Sanchez is ready; Montero has DH written all over him. (A formidable DH, though.) Austin Romine is trade bait, not the answer.

Overall the lineup needs tinkering. Here’s the lineup card I write (in order): Brett Gardner, Jeter, Granderson, Cano, Teixeira, A-Rod, Montero, Martin, Swisher (or other). I’d prefer “other” in the nine hole--preferably someone speedy. Again, though, it matters little unless the starting pitching improves. So long and thanks for the memories to Jorge Posada, whose numbers warrant a Hall of Fame sniff.

It won’t be easy to fix the Yankees, unless they do something radical such as sign Pujols and Reyes to contracts giving them Central Park and the Lower East Side and moving Teixeira for a starter. Won’t happen. Neither will a championship in 2012.

Driving Guide for Bay State Residents

2011-10-06T10:23:00.001-04:00

The mystery of the triangle revealed!

I just got back from an out-of-state trip and was astonished to observe drivers paying attention to traffic laws. I live in Massachusetts, a land in which hockey players experience less physical contact than motorists. We’re so feared that other New Englanders refer to us as “Massholes.” I once thought that was true--like the day I had to jump out of the way to avoid a speeding car. That wouldn’t be unusual, except that I was walking in a field at the time. I’ve since come to understand that Massachusetts drivers are just ill informed. What follows is a driving guide for Bay State drivers, though I’m pretty sure folks in Connecticut, New Jersey, California, and metro New York can also use some of these tips.

Yield signs: The word “yield” derives from the West Saxon word gieldan. I mean, come on, who speaks West Saxon any more? It’s hardly their fault that Massachusetts residents grow up thinking that the term translates “Get the hell out of my way.” It actually means that others have the right of way and you must wait for them before proceeding.

Speed limit: Once again Bay Staters are being stigmatized because some smarty-pants is being pedantic (as is anyone who uses the word pedantic in a sentence). In this case the word limit comes from limitare. That’s not only French, it’s 14^th-century French for Gawd’s sake. For those whose 14^th-century French is weak, the word limit means maximum, as in you can’t drive a cah fastah than this. Some folks think it translates “suggestion.” That is incorrect.

Right turn on red: This is legal, but where it says “right turn on red after stop,” it means that each car has to stop and they must stop at the light before turning even if they’ve already stopped once. It does not mean you can keep on going if you have stopped your vehicle at any time in the past month. Bad news: You have to yield (see above) before you turn. The other cahs have the right-of-way. The road must be clear of traffic and that’s an absolute--a better than 30% chance of not getting hit is not good enough. More bad news: Current law allows only right-hand turns.

Some individuals do not know left from right. Here’s an easy way to learn. Take a two-digit number such as 25 and look it with the numbers in an upright position. The last number is the one on the right. In my example, the 5 is on the right. If you don’t like 25, choose any two-digit number you like as long as the two numbers are different; 11or 44 will cause confusion, as will a single or three-digit number. The last number is always on the right. Without crossing your wrists, place your hands by the numbers and take a (washable) marker and write an R (for “right”) on the back of the hand that corresponds with the last number. Now when you drive you’ll be able to glance down and refresh your memory as to which is right and which is left. (Hint: The left will be the hand without a letter on it.) It is imperative that you learn this because, in North America, right is also the side of the road on which one is supposed to drive.

Pedestrians: Mass residents are victims of their culture (cultcha) on this one. We love candlepin bowling up hear (heah) and the object of the game is that you take a round object and knock down as many pins as you can. Is it our fault stupid cah companies made the steering wheel round and the human race evolved bipedalism? I can only caution Bay State drivers to notice that steering wheels are larger in circumference than bowling balls and that most pedestrians are taller (tallah) than candlepins. Sharpen your observational skills and you’ll get the hang of it.

Lines on roads: There are no signs telling you this, but lines on the side of a road and in the middle are not decorative motifs; they designate a “lane,” a word meaning the boundaries in which you are legally allowed to operate your vehicle. Lanes are also for moving vehicles; under no circumstances are you allowed to park in them.

Special instruction for Northampton drivers: There are two lanes on Main Street, except at some lights where there is a special third lane restricted to those who are turning. I understand that the latter can be confusing, but let’s start with the 2/3 rule; 17 is just wrong.

Special instruction for New Jersey drivers: There is a very skinny lane on the right side of many roads that is relatively free of vehicles. This is called a “break down lane” and is meant only for cars that have become disabled. It is not a special commuter lane in which one is allowed to drive at Warp Nine.

Turning lanes: I alluded to these above. It is important to understand two complex factors when using turning lanes. First, you must look for signs telling you if it is for a right-hand or a left-hand turn. It will usually say something cryptic such as “Left Turn Only.” The second and more difficult thing to keep in mind is that it’s implied that you will make an immediate turn at the very juncture where the sign appears. It does not mean you can use this lane if you have the intention of turning in that direction at some point during your current journey.

Turn signals: The flashing light array you observe on cars in front of you is called a “turn signal.” It is not an advertisement for a Japanese animé film. The lights indicate that the driver intends to swing his vehicle out of the current “lane” of traffic and into a new one. You can tell which direction the driver will turn by which side of the car has flashing lights. To know this, however, you will need to master right and left. See “Right turn on red” for tips on doing so.

Special instruction 1: If the driver indicates a turn and doesn’t make one, check to see if the motorist is over the age of 109. If so, the driver is probably unaware of who he is, why he’s in a car, where he’s going, or why he’s hearing a constant clicking noise. Be kind.

Special instruction 2: It is important to make sure that the signal on the back of the car is flashing on and off in a constant pattern. If a red light comes on and stays on, that’s a “brake light” indicating that the vehicle has stopped. It is also a warning for you to stop your car, lest his trunk become your new hood ornament. The latter will interfere with your car’s performance and it is best to avoid altering factory design.

Special instruction 3: You too should get in the habit of using turn signals. Don’t worry; you will not prematurely wear out your car through overuse. The turn signal is usually a small level that’s attached to the steering column. Experiment with pushing the lever up and down to see if the little lights on the back of the car will flash as described above. Do this in your driveway before attempting it in highway conditions.

Primary colors: I do not know who decided on these colors and I agree that they don’t accessorize with all wardrobes, but the following rules apply: red = stop, as in a complete standstill; flashing amber or yellow = proceed with caution. Most people think it means, “Whoo hoo, baby, let’s see how fast this puppy can accelerate!” but that is incorrect. Green = go, but conditionally so. You must first check to make certain that no color-confused drivers or candlepins--sorry, pedestrians--are in your lane of travel. A flashing blue light means you need to pull to the side of the road and speak with the nice police officer. Either that or a K-Mart special.

Emergency vehicles and school buses: You have to pull over to the side of the road for fire and ambulance vehicles and you are not allowed to pass a school bus with flashing lights, even if you’re on the other side of the road. Mr. Nice Police Officer will ask you to contribute to the Commonwealth general fund if you violate these rules. He will not be amused if you say, “Oh what the hell; that guy in the ambulance is going to die some day anyhow.”

I could go on, but we’ve covered a lot of new ground. Master these and we’ll move on to more difficult concepts such as the rules of rotaries, the etiquette of driving in school and nursing home zones, how fast you should drive on entrance and exit ramps, advanced geometrical shapes (including the octagon), the importance of leaving space between you and the car in front of you, and why it’s a bad idea to text, shave, or iron while driving.

Dan Quayle: Rested, Tanned, and Dumb

2011-10-01T16:08:00.001-04:00

The perfect GOP candidate: Dan the Man Quayle

So I’ve been following the Republican “debates,” an act of abuse only slightly less painful than self-flagellation. To call the field “undistinguished” does a disservice to the term “mediocrity.” There are 14 declared candidates, though for some reason the media thinks there are just seven “serious” candidates-Michele Bachman, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum. Herbert Cain’s shocking win in a Florida straw poll may force the media to call it eight, though nobody with the slightest knowledge of politics would think that Cain, Gingrich, Huntsman, Paul, or Santorum has a better chance of surviving than a Hershey bar on an El Paso sidewalk. Who is Cain? Oh, he’s black. I don’t think so! Newt is yesterday’s fish wrap, Huntsman is an unknown Mormon battling a known Mormon, Paul should be heading the Libertarian ticket, and Santorum would be a jihadist if he wasn’t such a “serious” Christian.

That leaves Bachman, who is as mean as Santorum and certifiably crazy to boot; Perry who is so dim he’s managed to self-destruct in six weeks; and Romney, a Mormon who’d happily call himself a jihadist if he thought they’d vote for him. Remember how the GOP excoriated John Kerry as a “flip flopper?” If I were a Democratic strategist I’d be salivating over the sound bites I could write if Mitt is nominated. (And can’t you just see those fundamentalists who label Mormonism “Satanic” getting real excited about Romney?) Sarah Palin is, of course, the wild card but the forthcoming Joe McGinniss bio of her will expose her as the vacuous self-seeking troll she really is.

Of the second-tier candidates, only one--former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer--has any name recognition, and then only for those with long memories as he was ousted in 1991. What a set of doozies the rest are. There’s Fred Karger, a gay activist, who never got the memo that Republicans hate gays. Career flight attendant Tom Miller is definitely lost in the clouds, as is Vern Wuensche, whose platform is that CEOs should be in charge of America. (Who’s the VP candidate, Bernie Madoff?) The field also includes Andy Martin, who launched the Obama-is-a-Kenyan campaign, and Gary Johnson, a man so nondescript I had forgotten he was once governor of New Mexico. My personal favorite is Jimmy McMillan, who looks like a bounty hunter and once ran for office on the Rent is Too Damn High ticket.

If ever there was a race to the bottom, this is it. Give them credit, though; Bachman, Martin, McMillan, Miller, Palin, Paul, Perry, Santorum, and Wuensche recognize that the Stupid Bloc might be the biggest sector of the American electorate. He or she who gets the moronic masses off their asses has a chance to win. And, of course, Mitt Romney is willing to be very, very dumb if you say you like him; Mitt’s just so willing to please. He’s probably taking drooling lessons as I type. But, you know, none of these folks are battle-ready stupid; each carries too much baggage (paid for by campaign contributions in Palin’s case). The GOP needs a uniter, not a divider--someone like Dubya, but he’s ineligible.

Then it struck me--why not Dan Quayle? He could package himself as a prophet and proclaim, “I was dumb before my time.” Wouldn’t a man who said “I made good judgments in the Past. I have made good judgments in the Future...” be perfect to lead 21^st century Dumb Democracy? His supporters wouldn’t know what the hell he meant when he says, “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not have a mind is wasteful….” But they wouldn’t care! They’d understand when he told them it was time for the “human race to enter the solar system.” Or not. Who cannot love the principles of a man who stood up to Sam Donaldson and asserted, “I stand by all the misstatements I made.” Tell folks that he’s from Indiana, the Hoosier state, and he’ll wrap up white, male, breast-fixation voters who think Hoosiers is the regional name for the Hooters chain. Now that Dan’s older and has lost some of his pretty boy looks his handlers could say that his gray temples give him more gravitas. This would go down well with GOP voters who would say, “Hell, yes, I like a little gravitas on a potatoe.”

Why is the GOP still searching? Its perfect candidate is right before its eyes. I can see the posters: Dan Quayle in 2012. He’s Rested, Tanned, Protestant, and Really, Really Dumb. Mitt Romney might want to sign up for advanced drooling. Better yet; he might want to convert.

Red Heart Falters in Margaret MacArthur Tribute

2011-09-29T16:06:00.000-04:00

RED HEART THE TICKER

Your Name in Secret I Would Write

Auger Down Records 008

The late Margaret MacArthur (d. 2006) was one of my favorite people. She was a kind, generous soul who found more value in the simple things of life than most folks could get from a pile of gold. In the 1940s the Ozarks-born MacArthur moved to Vermont and began collecting folksongs, both from the archives and from people she discovered in the hills and along the back roads. Her 1962 Folksongs of Vermont is rightly regarded as a Green Mountain treasure.

If ever there was a CD I wanted to love, Your Name in Secret I Would Write is it. The record consists of plus two field recordings Margaret made in 1961, plus ten of her favorite songs. The latter are performed by a duo calling itself (rather cumbersomely in my view) Red Heart the Ticker. It consists of Margaret’s granddaughter, Robin MacArthur, and her husband, Tyler Gibbons. They have a good feel for old-time music but, alas, not for Margaret’s repertoire. When these songs were collected, Margaret made the conscious decision to present them unadorned. She was, in many ways, the last generation of what used to be called “source singers.” Although a handful of performers--Tim Eriksen springs to mind--continue the stark ballad tradition, unless you’ve got pipes like Eriksen’s, it’s hard to engage audiences these days without more polish and a lot more instrumentation than was expected during the Folk Revival.

There are three problems with Your Name. The first is that the album is neither this nor that. When you have old-time material, it works best to be either a conduit or an innovator. I had hopes that Red Heart would be the second, based on the opening track, “Mother’s in the Graveyard,” in which Robin MacArthur’s dry voice intones atop the drone of an Estey pump organ. It’s easily the album’s best track. The experimentation of the opening track quickly became formula, with other instruments taking on the organ role. And here is where the second problem emerges: Robin’s voice has different qualities than Margaret’s. It is, simply, not clear enough to carry stripped-to-the-bones story songs. If we can’t make out the lyrics of a ballad, they mostly become just long songs with inconsequential melodies. The third problem exacerbates the second--the recording is muddy and the balances are off. “Carrion Crow,” for instance, has parts in which residual ringing from the instruments nearly obliterates the vocals.

Some times being a reviewer sucks. I loved Margaret and continue to indulge in love affair with Vermont, whose arts council (along with the NEA) helped underwrite this project. I wanted to tell you that Margaret MacArthur’s torch is being carried by a new generation. But as a reviewer, I have a duty to say that this album simply isn’t very good.

Boo Hoo in Boston Induces No tears Elsewhere

2011-09-29T11:24:00.004-04:00

David Ortiz--who is not the problem--contemplates historic Sox collapse.

As a Yankees fan I’m in Dawg Heaven over the Red Sox collapse, officially the biggest choke since hanging was outlawed. If you’re a Sox fan, don’t look for much sympathy outside of New England. All that Red Sox Nation is a load of crap and the Old Towne team is just as hated as the one you like to call the Evil Empire, and it has considerably fewer fans outside the region. (The Yankees have the odd distinction of being both the most-hated and the most-beloved team in the country.) The big question is what next for the Sox. Heads will and should roll for a team that played as if the season began in May and ended in September. As a baseball observer, not a Yankees fan, here are a few things to watch for.

Reports out of Boston say that Terry Francona is on the hot seat. Are you kidding me? There is, simply, no better manager out there with the possible exception of Mike Scoscia of the Angels and he’s going nowhere. Francona isn’t the problem; I’d happily trade Joe Girardi even up for Francona. The anti-Francona nonsense reminds me of those who wanted Bruins’ coach Claude Juline’s head when the eventual Stanley Cup winners went down 0-2 to Montreal in the first round.

If you want a scapegoat, a better choice is GM Theo Epstein, who assembled this Yugo and tried to pass it off as a BMW. Theo the Boy Genius is another myth the magnitude of Red Sox Nation. The ’04 team that won was Dan Duquette’s team for the most part, as was the ’07 roster. Theo’s only real slam-dunk signing was Curt Schilling. How did the Daisuke Matsuzaka thing work out? Epstein is also the architect of 2011 signings such as John Lackey, Dan Wheeler, Bobby Jencks, and Carl Crawford. Just as important, he’s the guy who did not sign Victor Martinez or Adrian Beltre, and thought that a washed up Jason Varitek and a never-will-be Jarod Saltalamacchia could hold down the catching corps. He’s also the guy who thinks Marco Scutaro is an everyday shortstop. He’d better be; you heard it first: heir apparent Jose Iglesias will not hit MLB pitching. If you’re looking for help down on the farm, don’t; Theo gutted the system in free agent compensation and ill-advised midseason trades. (Did someone say Erik Bedard?) What the Sox have mostly are guys who’ve worn the “can’t-miss” tag for so long that it’s faded on their Pawtucket uniforms: Kyle Weiland, Michael Bowden, Felix Doubrant…. (I actually think the latter has promise, but the Sox have misused him as a middle reliever instead of back-of-the-rotation starter.)

I’m also hearing that David Ortiz may be non-tendered. My word! What more can that man do for the team? All he did was put up a line of .309, 29 dingers, and 96 RBIs. Do they think that September flash Ryan Lavarnway will duplicate that? He’d have to because few scouts think he’s an everyday catcher. If anyone has earned a Derek Jeter-like contract for past services rendered, it’s Big Papi, who will have no trouble finding work if the Sox cut him.

So who needs to go? You can forget about dumping Crawford; no one will touch that contract. Label him J. D. Drew Redux. Lackey, on the other hand, must go no matter how much of his contract they have to eat. In a rational world the Sox and Yankees would exchange bad contracts--Lackey for A. J. Burnett—in the hope that a change of scenery would get a decent year out of each. My thinking, though, is that he returns to the Angels with the Sox picking up about two-thirds of his salary in exchange for a few middling prospects. Two others who should go are Jed Lowrie and Josh Reddick. Each is a decent player, but Lowrie plays no natural position that’s open and Reddick would fetch a needed second-tier relief pitcher.

Many people call for Jon Papelbon to be dumped, but I think the Sox must squeeze another year or two from Pap because everyone else in the pen except Alfredo Aceves should go. My list includes the overhyped Daniel Bard, who should be traded before everyone in MLB figures out that his pitches are fast, but straight and Scott Proctor- hittable. Unless he’s hiding a cut fastball somewhere, this kid is not a future closer. The rest of the pen is yard sale material, if there’s a buyer. Otherwise, take a good look at next year’s Pawtucket bullpen. My pare-down list includes a sad call: Tim Wakefield is done. Wake is a class act, but all good things must come to an end. (Hatchet man Josh Beckett should have half of Wakefield’s class—among the Sox needs is a catcher who will protect the everyday lineup from tit-for-tat retaliation by reining in Mr. Beanball.)

How much wiggle room the Sox have is disputable. It’s very possible they may need to unveil Nomar Chapter Two and move a very popular player to fix the roster. Jacoby Ellsbury might win the MVP award, so he’s probably untouchable, and GMs will lowball the injured Clay Bucholz. Sox fans will cringe, but Dustin Pedroia is probably the team’s most-tradable commodity.