Tam Matsumoto Guitar Album Blows New and Tired

TAK MATSUMOTO

Strings of My Soul

335 Records 1208

* * ½

Guitarist Tak Matsumoto assumes four identities, that of a New Age artist, a crunching rock and roller, an introspective jazz innovator, and a Japanese traditional musician. He sometimes wears all four identities in the same piece. So does this make Strings of My Soul a daring blend, or a shepherd’s pie with too many ingredients? To my ear, both. The good news is that Matsumoto avoids the common guitar solo album problem of presenting everything as if it’s cut from the same cloth; he simply doesn’t dwell anywhere long enough for you to feel that way. He’s also highly skilled, as befits the Grammy Award winner that he is. It’s also a delight to hear tracks such as “Hana” and “Koi-Uta,” in which the Asian erhu (a two-stringed fiddle) shares sonic space with Western instruments. The bad news? Matsumoto’s rock departures may go down a storm in Japan, but most seem like decades-old news here in the West. Ditto atmospheric his New Age meanderings, a genre that’s well past its sell-by date. Even with the aid of Larry Carlton, I can do without a cover of “Suriyaki,” and I’ve always hated “My Favorite Things,” so that one left me cold as well.  A reworking of themes from the 1968 soundtrack for “Romeo and Juliet?” Okay, but…  I think Matsumoto is an amazing fret-board wizard, but the material and his arrangements left me hungry for more one moment, and slightly queasy the next.--Rob Weir   

Make Romney Show Us the Paperwork!

Pay back time!!!!

They screamed, “Foul!” and “He’s a Kenyan.” Remember back in 2009 when the Tea Party, the Ditto Heads, and the Assorted Loony Right tried to undo the Election of 2008 by insisting that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States? Remember how the Obama administration declared their cries were too trivial to act upon? Remember how the Rightwing Rats kept crawling upon the political deck until Obama finally caved?

Good, because turnabout is fair play. The Mitten (Romney) insists he paid a 13% tax rate over the ten years for which he won’t release his tax returns. First of all, a man as wealthy as The Mitten should be paying 35%. That aside, I don’t believe him. I think Harry Reid is right and The Mitten didn’t pay any taxes at all. Let’s hear from everybody to the left of Attila, “Release Your Taxes! Release Your Taxes!” I’ve seen Barack Obama’s birth certificate and it’s online for Rush and all the rest of his Brown Shirts to see. Now I want to see The Mitten’s tax returns. What’s he hiding? Until he shows us his taxes, I will believe Harry Reid. And if you think that’s unfair, I say, “Here’s a dose of your own medicine. How does it taste?” 

Assuming The Mitten does release his taxes–probably the day after hell freezes over–here’s the next response for those of us who can’t stand the Great Flip Flopper. Breathe in and yell out, “Fake! Fake!” When you tire of that one try, “Let’s See the Cayman and Swiss Accounts.”  If that’s too much of a mouthful, just oink, yell out “Piggie! Piggie!” and hoist signs that ask, “Why did Romney Pay a Lower Tax Rate than My Grandma?” 

Pariah Tackles Important and Personal Subjects

Rees film deserves broader audience.

PARIAH  (2010)

Written and Directed by Dee Rees

Chicken and Egg Pictures, 86 mins. R

* * *

Alike (Andrepro Oduye) is a 17-year-old black girl finishing her high school education in an edgy New York City neighborhood. She’s kind, shy, loves poetry, and is a straight-A student. The problem is that her grades are the only thing straight about her. Alike (pronounced Ah-lee’-kay) knows what she is—a virginal Butch lesbian longing for sexual encounters she’s too guilt-ridden to initiate. She lives with her sister and parents, the latter of whom entrap her in a closet of inner frustration and outer role playing. Her father, Mack (Raymond Anthony Thomas) is a New York City detective with a military-like demeanor, and her mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans), loves Jesus to the point where she is shut down to human affection. Audrey lives a life circumscribed by what she thinks God demands of her—an austere respectability that makes her cold to her daughters, her husband, and her coworkers, all of whom quietly drift from her.

For Alike, “coming out” is out of the question, so she lives a double life, leaving the apartment each morning as Alike dressed in costumes picked out by her mother, then ducks into a school bathroom to become “Lee” by donning muscle shirts, a doo rag, hip hop baggy jeans, and a backward ball cap. Her best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker) is both what she’d like to be, but a warning of its cost. Laura is openly Butch and secretly takes Alike to gay clubs with her, but she’s also working on her GED and lives hand-to-mouth with her sister because she left school when she was tossed from her home because of her sexual preferences. So Alike plods on with few friends and no lovers. Audrey blindly foists church, inappropriate clothing, and “suitable” friends upon Alike, all of which add to her frustration—until she’s forced to spend time with a girl from a “good Christian home,” Bina (Aasha Davis). I suspect you can figure out what happens next! Don’t get too smug, though, because there’s quite a bit in this film that isn’t predictable.

Director and writer Dee Rees, who admits that some of the film is autobiographical, serves up a black family drama, the likes of which we seldom see. She uses the character of Audrey to highlight a searing contradiction within the black community—the same churches that led the civil rights movement are among the most bigoted forces in all of American society insofar as acceptance of gays and lesbians goes. Rees also delves nicely into the sometimes catty world of high schoolers, a group that plays with emotions, identities, and each other with a casual and clueless cruelty.

This is an independent film and it has the virtues and drawbacks of such a project. Kudos go to Rees for giving us a fresh look at the inner city, families, and sexual identity. Also bold was her casting choice. Oduye is not a product of New York’s mean streets; she’s Nigerian born and had a very solid childhood. Most intriguing of all, although she convincingly plays 17-year-old Alike, she is actually 33. And Davis, who plays Bina as a cute-as-a-button spoiled teen, is 32. The small budget shows up in a thin script that could use some doctoring, in the claustrophobic sets and cut-rate lighting, and in the stiff acting of secondary characters.

 It’s by no means a perfect film, but it’s a very good one that deserved a far bigger audience than it got upon release, despite raves as festivals such as Sundance. One problem was its ridiculous R rating—cuddling and girl-on-girl kissing is as racy as this film gets. Therein, in my view, lies the problem. The film got an R rating because it had lesbian characters, pure and simple. The film lacked appeal in the black community because it portrays a forbidden topic in a positive way. And most non-whites haven’t seen it for exactly the same reason. You should.—Rob Weir

A Candidate for Worst Beatles Doc Ever

Grab some images like this from Google and you too can maker a documentary!

THE BEATLES: THEIR GOLDEN AGE (2012)

Written and Directed by Les Krantz

MVD Visual, 60 mins.

zero stars

Is The Beatles: Their Golden Age” the worst film ever made about the Fab Four? I wouldn’t go that far. It’s possible there are lousier efforts out there that I’ve simply not seen. If there are, please alert me—sitting through Les Krantz’s film is as much pain as I can take. I will give him credit for one thing: I once thought it impossible to make the lovable Liverpudlians boring, but I was wrong.

I knew I was in for trouble from the opening sequence on. The soundtrack consisted of generic music, some of which was vaguely composed to sort of resemble Beatles’ tunes. I’ve encountered this before and what it means is that the director could not secure permission to use Beatles’ tunes and didn’t have the money to hire other musicians to recreate them and pay copyright fees. This makes for awkward filmmaking; dozens of Beatles’ songs are mentioned, but none are heard. What we hear most is crowds screaming and Kranz’s voiceover, sure signs of no-budget filmmaking. What Kranz did was grab a few pieces of public domain documentary footage and force fit them into a Wikipedia-like overview of the Beatles’ career. (And it’s a truncated version at that, with all of earliest years shoved into a few minutes and no explanation of how Ringo came to replace Pete Best.) You will see the same pieces of surging, screaming crowds over and over, as well as a few fair-use interview snippets, and segments from various films made about the Beatles. In other words, it’s the sort of film that someone reasonably skilled with iMovies could make in an afternoon.

The thesis, such is it is, is that The Beatles quickly became more popular than Elvis. Is there anyone who doesn’t know this? And is there anyone who thinks that you can make a decent film about the most popular band in history without using any of its music? Simply a horrible project. Watching this was my own Hard Day’s Night.

Marwencol: Art Imitates Life

Hello Dolly! 

MARWENCOL  (2010)

Directed by Jeff Malmberg

Open Face, 83 mins. Unrated

Do we watch movies to see the same old thing, or to enter new worlds? If your answer is the second, Marwencol should go to the top of your video (or streaming) queue. The protagonist of Marwencol is Mark Hogancamp and the only ways to enter his world are vicariously through this film, or to suffer a brain injury as did he. Jeff Malmberg’s film about Hogancamp is labeled a documentary, but that’s mainly because we lack a better term. The word “documentary” generally infers recording of objective reality, but Hogancamp doesn’t live in that realm. For casual film viewers, documentary is often a synonym for didacticism and tedium—the sort of films that give you an excuse to go make a sandwich when they’re honored during the Academy Awards broadcast. Not this one. It’s quirky, bizarre, and as imbued with fantasy as The Lord of the Rings

Mark Hogancamp was just another slightly-down-on-his-luck guy living in shopworn Kingston, New York, until a few years ago when he was brutally beaten by a gang of local low-lifes. Hogancamp almost died from the assault and suffered permanent brain damage. He walks, talks, has fine motor skills, and usually makes sense, the key word being usually. Hogancamp’s brain sometimes sends signals that make him unemployable, bypass social conventions, and dump the filters required by “normal” society (whatever that might be). It’s taken him years to rebuild even to this level. Or should I say “build?” What Marwencol is mainly about is the fantasy world Hogancamp constructed as self therapy. Think a soap opera set in a complete World War II Belgian village built to 1/16^th scale, with dolls playing the parts of people Hogancamp knows and with himself as the refashioned GI Joe hero of the ongoing drama. Not surprisingly, the Nazis are stand-ins for his attackers. Hogancamp acts out his real-life brutalization in numerous scenarios, often with women playing the role of avenging angels, and each clearly a projection of Hogancamp’s frustrated desire for female relationships. And we’re talking levels of detail on everything in the village of Marwencol; Hogancamp is as serious about how it and the characters look as any war reenactor or hobbyist.

One of the more charming aspects of the film is the reaction of Hogancamp’s friends and neighbors. He has a built-in support network that knows that he’s not entirely in touch with reality, but they nonetheless like him, encourage him, and even take part in his role-playing fantasy games. These include many of the women that know that he has sexualized them in doll form, but deem him harmless and are happy to help him work his way through his tortured past. The wildcard in the already-bizarre fantasy is director Jeff Malmberg, who stumbled upon the story and became fascinated with Hogancamp. He too is drawn into Marwencol, but mainly as an old-style documentarian recording the fantasy realm as if he were a World War II newsreel cameraman.

There are two twists to the story that are so startling that it would be unfair of me to reveal them. Let’s just say that one involves the New York art world’s reaction to photos produced by Malmberg, and that the second is a socially-frowned-upon Hogancamp personality trait that may have predated his attack. These add dimension, depth, and additional weirdness to what is already one of the most unique stories imaginable. It’s unlike anything you’d ever see at the local Cineplex. Watch it and I think you’ll agree that Marwencol is more compelling than any Hollywood paint-by-the-numbers action film and has more heart than the coronary unit at Johns Hopkins.—Rob Weir

Romney and Ryan: Hypocrites Incorporated

We shouldn’t have been surprised. Mitt Romney not only picked a vice presidential candidate with whom he’s comfortable, he got one whose purchase on truth is no better than his own. I will remind you that everything Mitt (rhymes with…) now opposes he was once for. “Obamacare” is almost exactly the program Mr. Mitten signed into law in Massachusetts. He also welcomed gay marriage in the Bay State, but now he’s really, really against it. Don’t get me started on where Mitt once stood—on slippery ground I now realize—on a woman’s right to choose, on military spending, on public education, and on federal aid to states and municipalities.

Enter Paul Ryan—rhymes with lyin’—who says we need to dramatically downsize government. Ryan says that special projects, earmarks, and government-subsidized big-budget initiatives are especially evil--unless they benefit his Wisconsin district that is. Lyin’ slammed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as a “wasteful spending spree” and voted against it. That’s what he did in public, but like his greasy running mate, his Mr. Hyde private side was a different matter. He wrote four letters to the Obama administration Energy Department requesting millions of dollars for a Wisconsin “green” geothermal energy project, the likes of which his Tea Party supporters decry as extravagant frauds. He also wrangled $5.4 million in earmark funds for Wisconsin for things such as improved state bus service, a scenic trail, and a transit network for his hometown of Janesville. (Why, one might ask, did a city of over 63,000 not already have such a system? Guess it couldn’t get enough federal funds until Santa Ryan put it into its stocking.) Oh yeah, Ryan also lobbied in favor of the auto industry bailout. Do you think the feds helped Janesville when its General Motors plant closed? If you answered “yes,” take a gobble from Congressman Ryan’s Big Bag of Pork. 

Romney and Ryan—two hypocrites from the same corporate mindset: screw you, as long as I get mine. Well… water finds its own level. So does shit. 

Let Bobby V be Bobby V

Let Bobby Valentine give the hook to Red Sox underachievers.

Word out of Boston is that the collection of overpriced whiners and immature horses’ posteriors known as the Red Sox has petitioned ownership to fire manager Bobby Valentine. Apparently Bobby V has embarrassed several of them. (Gee, I would have thought their horrendous play would have done that!) I’m not a Red Sox fan, nor do I think Bobby Valentine was a good choice for the Red Sox. (Sigmund Freud would have been better.) Those who read my spring blogs know that I predicted Valentine would be a bad fit in Boston. But the problems with the Red Sox are not Bobby Valentine’s fault.

Bobby V probably isn’t the right type for today’s game and maybe a change is needed, but if I’m the general manager, that change comes in the offseason (as do many other changes). I know that Sox fans hang on to every scrap of hope, but let’s face it–2012 is a lost season. As I type these words, 45 games remain in the season and if the Sox won 30 of them (a seldom-achieved .666 pace), they’d have but 87 victories and that’s highly unlikely to get a Wild Card. (The wildcard-leading Orioles and Rays need to go just 25-21 to reach 88 wins) My advice would be to unleash Bobby Valentine–let him take off the kid gloves and call out lousy play in public. Let him say what everyone can see: that Josh Beckett has given up. Let him be feisty and get into scraps with his players á la Billy Martin. In fact, the Sox’s hated rival, the New York Yankees, is a good role model for what to do with Beckett.  

If the team can, it should dump Beckett as soon as possible–perhaps even for an A.J. Burnett-like deal: eat most of his salary and get a bucket of balls in return. If Boston can’t swing such a deal­–Beckett is due nearly $32 million for the next two years and can veto any deal he doesn’t like–the Red Sox should do what the Yankees did to Ken Holtzman in the late 1970s: bury him in the bullpen out of harm’s way. The Yanks brought Holtzman to New York after five fabulous years in Oakland in which he won 91 games. The 30-year-old Holtzman proceeded to stink up the Bronx and the Yankees banished him to the pen and made him a forgotten man. When he reemerged with the Cubs in 1979 at age 32, he got one more year in MLB before he was released. The Yankees did the same with Kevin Brown, though throwing nearly $16 million at a 39-year-old was insanity in the first place. The Yanks also banished Kei Igawa in the minors before cutting him this spring.

If the Sox have the guts to play hardball with Beckett, they can. Pitchers generally have their peak ERA years at age 29 and their peak win years at 30. Beckett, 32, appears to have peaked earlier. He had 67 wins between the ages of 26 and 29, but just 24 since. His current ERA is over 5 and he is, to put it very mildly, a disruption. Send him to the pen for mop-up duty. He would be 35 when he hits free agency again and I will guarantee you no one will offer him $16 million per.

The Sox, of course, have other issues. Bobby Valentine should be unleashed to tell the press that Adrian Gonzalez wasn’t brought to Boston to be a singles hitter, that Jon Lester can’t mail it in, and that if Jacoby Ellsbury can’t play through nicks and pains they’ll give his roster spot to someone who can. He should privately remind Dustin Pedroia that if he’s going to go behind his back, he’s got a guy named Pedro Cirisco whose natural position is second base and is currently hitting .333, 50 points higher than he. (Note: Pedroia has publicly disavowed a spat with Valentine, either because it never happened, or because his agent told him to STFU.) 

As I said, odds are good that Valentine will be let go this winter, so why not give it a whirl? The Sox are going nowhere and the now-sainted Terry Francona couldn’t rule this bunch by kissing their butts. Let Bobby V kick them instead. It can’t get any worse.