South Korean License Madness

Cha Sa-soon with her new license. Be afraid--be very afraid.

It’s one of those items that newspapers and the Web can’t resist: the human- interest story. From South Korea comes the news that Cha Sa-soon, 69, had just gotten her driver’s license. What made it newsworthy was that it took 960 tries to obtain it. Yep—that’s right—she flunked 959 times between April of 2005 and August 2010.

What’s really weird is that no one seems to be questioning whether such a person should be behind the wheel. The testing agency was happy when she passed, her driving school instructors burst into applause, and Hyundai gave her a new car, and she’s now starring in a TV commercial. Has South Korea gone collectively insane?

Shall I raise the obvious? Somebody needs to! The woman is 69, a time in which her reaction time will certainly have slowed. Don’t you think that someone who flunked 959 times might just need a tad more reaction time? And how does one flunk a friggin’ driver’s test 959 times? If you look to the highways and byways in your town you will quickly notice that there are motorists out there with IQs surpassed by the average potted plant. Let’s face it, the only test on the planet easier than a driver’s test is a urine test and if you flunk the first test 959 times it makes one wonder how Cha Sa-soon would fare on the latter. How does one even get to take the test that many times? Note to South Korea: Put a lifetime cap on how many times one can retest.

Second note: Shouldn’t one investigate the qualifications of the driving “school” that Cha Sa-soon attended? If an elementary school flunked a first-grader this many times, wouldn’t you shutter it? And a new car? Sheesh, this woman wouldn’t be safe in a Brinks truck. Suggestion for Cha Sa-soon: Sell the car and buy a water buffalo and cart. To my friend who lives in South Korea: Please don’t drive; it’s not safe.

The only virtue I find in this story is that it makes us realize that the United States doesn’t have the market cornered on bad ideas.--LV

Natalie in motion--the only way you'll ever see her!

Natalie MacMaster
August 20, 2010
Calvin Theater
Northampton, MA

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been following Natalie MacMaster’s career for almost a quarter of a century. It seems like only yesterday she was a corkscrew-haired teen prodigy. Now she’s a mature 38, has three kids, and is introducing wunderkind of her own, including Emily Jean Flack, a sixteen-year-old niece who’s a singing and step-dancing sensation, and Nathaniel Smith, an accomplished cellist who is also just sixteen. But make no mistake—Natalie is still the star and when she turns it on, nothing stands in her way—not rising talent, not slick band members, not even a fourth child just three months from its debut.

As for turning it on, that took MacMaster all of about ten seconds during her recent show at the Calvin Theater. She stepped on stage, waved, and hit the gas. I once described MacMaster as a “musical perpetual motion machine” and that remains accurate. Two things happen when MacMaster puts bow to fiddle—the music flows like crashing waves and her body surfs the notes. To say that she moves with the music is the understatement of the year—Natalie MacMaster becomes the notes that pour from her instrument. Most of us joke about not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time, but watch this gal for a few minutes and you will feel like the klutz in the bad joke. It’s not enough that she tears off jigs and reels with perfection and ease—she does so while step-dancing, clogging, moon-walking, and fancy dancing. You read that correctly—she plays and dances at the same time. When she wants to get really serious she puts down the bow and let’s her feet thunder to Thor-like cadences.

MacMaster enjoys the well-earned reputation of being the living exemplar of Cape Breton fiddling. It would, however, be a misrepresentation to hang an exclusive label on her current repertoire. To be sure, Cape Breton’s fast-paced reels, driving strathspeys, and energetic jigs continue to shape her set list, but MacMaster has expanded her horizons considerably. The Calvin show was shot full of jazz, Americana, pop, and experimental sounds. Her original tunes, once so identifiably Celtic, now use that core to create a global sound. And if your last experience seeing her on stage was as a shy and self-conscious twenty-something, you’ll be shocked to see how confident she’s become. She doesn’t merely play with the band, she orchestrates it and isn’t at all hesitant to fly across the stage to dual with her bass player, trade riffs with her pianist, make her cello player skedaddle up and down the strings, or challenge her drummer to match her clogging feet beat for beat. In short, Natalie MacMaster has become a spectacle to match her enormous musical prowess.

It makes sense in a way. Cape Breton music is fabulous fun, but it’s not known for being subtle. MacMaster threw out some astonishing runs, trills, and ornamentation, but her music always returned to its danceable roots. This was true even of the pieces that were clearly jazz-influenced. They began edgy and contemplative, but most of them finished with that full-bodied flourish that is MacMaster’s trademark. The audience clapped, swayed, tapped their feet, and cheered lustily. How not? MacMaster made it nearly impossible to sit still.

To be balanced, it was not a flawless performance. There were one or two transitions that seemed forced—as if the slower intro had to be overcome in order to get to the quicker-paced tunes. Paradoxically, there were also times in which the show appeared too slick—perfectly timed abrupt endings, dramatic poses, stagey interactions…. And though I think that Flack has an amazing voice for a sixteen-year-old, I just don’t think kids that young can really sing songs such as “When You’re Smiling” or “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” Like most young singers, Flack hit the notes but missed the essence. Put simply, one needs more experience to sing jazz effectively and more depth to impress with a show tune. Flack was at her best showcasing her agile dancing ability, an activity at which she appeared accomplished rather than apprenticed.

But here’s the deal—these were things I noticed because it’s a critic’s job to notice them. Most of the large audience in attendance surrendered to the spectacle, and who can blame them? Even though not everything gelled, I can’t imagine that too many people left feeling as they hadn’t gotten their money’s worth. Natalie MacMaster is, simply, one of the most electrifying performers you’ll ever see. If you get a chance to hear her before she takes time off to have her baby, by all means do so. Natalie MacMaster is an original talent—the sort best labeled a force of nature. As for nature, with all that jumping about I suspect the newest addition will dance its way out of the womb!

Eilen Jewell Butcher Holler Honors Loretta Lynn

EILEN JEWELL
Butcher Holler: A Tribute to Loretta Lynn

Signature Sounds
* * * *

In the 1960s Loretta Lynn was the biggest star in country music. Her glow was fading a bit by the time Sissy Spacek portrayed her in the 1980 biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter. Get ready for the next resurrection—Eilen Jewell’s stunning 2010 tribute to Lynn is sure to spark interest. Jewell covers a dozen Lynn classics, including “You’re Looking at Country,” “Whispering Sea,” and “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” but it’s the racier material that really stands the test of time. Lynn knew hard times; she was married at 13 and had four of her six kids by the time she was 19. She stayed married, though her husband cheated in her repeatedly and often told interviewers that he never hit her without getting hit back. She sang about all of this, with a plastered on smile framed by seriously big hair.

Jewell shines on Lynn’s tougher material. She offers a kick-butt “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” some wink-wink naughtiness on “Deep as Your Pocket,” and hints at violence in “Fist City” and “Don’t Come Home a-Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind),” songs that remind us of how gutsy Lynn’s repertoire was for its time. Jewell is smooth and swingy where Lynn was twang and honky tonk but, if anything, Jewell—ably insisted by Johnny Sciascia’s walking bass lines, Jason Beck’s slap percussion, and Jerry Miller’s robust guitar—enhances Lynn’s do-me-wrong-and-I’ll-do-you-worse defiance. This is the kind of album that makes you look into his eyes and smile as throw a right hook to the bastard’s jaw.

Still More Signs of the Times

I'm so relieved. I hate it when my Norse buddies drop by and we run out of mead (or Spam)!
Salem, MA
















In Kennebunkport, but shouldn't it be in Provincetown? I'm just sayin'.
























Picky, picky, picky! Lexington, MA


















Owner did not major in marketing. Kennebunkport























I knew civilization was lurking somewhere! Sign in Ottawa, Canada but apparently one must go to Gatineau, Quebec to escape savagery.

Great Big Sea: Fun over Art

GREAT BIG SEA
Safe Upon the Shore
Redeye/Great Big Sea 010
* * *

Great Big Sea began life in a rowdy Newfoundland pub and eighteen years later, they’re still at it and still cranking out their unique mix of Maritime mayhem, folk rock, and Celtic-tinged music. On Safe Upon the Shore, the band’s tenth album, they’ve added a new twist—songs such as “Hit the Ground and Run” and “Don’t Want to Go Home” are what you’d get if you mixed GBS’s trademark good time bar band music with New Orleans-style brass and some Cajun spices.

GBS is not a subtle band and they remind us of this from the get-go. The album opens with some hot party music whose temperature rises when guest musician Sonny Landreth lets loose on slide guitar. A few tracks later the charismatic Alan Doyle adds some salt to the mix on “Yankee Sailor.” The sea, some romance, a rivalry, a hint of tension, and Doyle’s unique vocals that are filled with gravel one moment and butterscotch the next…. What could be better? How about a song co-written by Doyle and Randy Bachman (Bachman Turner Overdrive)? Or Bob Hallett’s “Over the Hills,” which takes a traditional sea song and reworks it as a contemporary cautionary tale on the idiocy of military adventurism? And for sheer fun, the GBS cover of Ray Davies’ “Have a Cuppa Tea” is sheer delight. If you know anything about the British-Canadian obsession with tea, this one will have you in stitches.

There’s lots of intriguing stuff on this album, though some of the finest to my ears are those that stick closest to what the band has always done well. Séan McCann’s cover of “Gallows Pole” is sublime, as the title track—an a cappella sea song with Séan on the lead and robust harmony choruses framing him. And GBS just can’t go too long without dragging out such kick-ass bad boys behaving badly songs. Both “Wandering Ways” and “Road to Ruin” fit that bill admirably and if you think Irish drinking songs are irreverent, they’re practically hymns compared to what their Newfoundland cousins conjure. Like I said, not a subtle band. On the art-versus-good time scale, their needle goes off the right-hand scale.

The Girl Who Played with Fire Fizzles Out

Lisbeth shouldn't play with guns or matches.

The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009)
Directed by Daniel Alfredson
129 mins. Rated R (graphic lesbian sex, violence, nudity)
In Swedish with English subtitles
* *

The toughest part of a trilogy is the middle. Everyone knows it’s a device whose major purpose is to make us long for resolution. It’s hard enough for novelists to produce compelling second books and it’s even harder to treat them for movies. Seeing The Girl Who Played with Fire reminded me of what an extraordinary directorial job Peter Jackson did with The Two Towers, a film that may well have been the very best of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Hardcore Stieg Larrson fans will flock to The Girl Who Played with Fire, but if they praise it, they’re filling in the film’s considerable gaps with things that simply aren’t there. I adored The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but I found the sequel tedious and barely watchable.

You shouldn’t even try this film unless you’ve read Dragon or saw the first film. All the principals are reassembled: the troubled Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), editor and Blomkvist lover Erika Berger (Lena Enda), and masochistic guardian Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson). In this episode, Lisbeth returns to Stockholm to take care of business and just has enough time to take possession of an expensive condo and have hot sex with Miriam Wu before she finds herself the prime suspect in a triple murder she didn’t commit. Stockholm police can’t seem to figure out what is obvious to Blomkvist—two of the victims were a couple working on stories about Sweden’s illegal sex trade and were people Lisbeth never met. The attempt to get to the bottom of everything—which we know they won’t do entirely because there’s a chapter left to film—gives us insight into Lisbeth’s childhood, the incident that led to being declared legally incompetent, and the dark underbelly of Sweden’s democratic-socialist society.

If you’ve read the book you know that it dwelt on substantial explorations of motives, the sort of interior stuff that’s exceedingly hard to depict on the screen. Alfredson’s decision was, simply, to excise most of it. Gone are most of the details about sex trafficking; in fact, the investigative team Dag and Mia hardly appear at all, except as corpses. Gone also is the mole inside Armanskij’s firm, the internal turmoil inside inspector Jan Bublanski’s police team, discussions of Stockholm’s lesbian subculture, explorations of Lisbeth’s thinking, Blomkvist’s philandering, Erika’s husband, and just about everything else that would elevate this film above what it turns out to feel like: a bad James Bond film with a rumpled journalist cast as Bond. I will say in Alfredson’s defense that some of the film’s most seemingly preposterous parts are actually true. There really is an ex-boxer named Paolo Roberto (who plays himself), and there really is a medical condition called congenital analgesia that makes people impervious to pain. (One of the biggest clusters of this rare condition is in Sweden, which is where Larsson no doubt got the idea.) But you don’t really need to remember this, as there are plenty of equally preposterous parts of the film that don’t correspond to reality.

As I said, Larsson junkies will have to see this film. The rest of you don’t and shouldn’t. Give the first film a watch and, if you like it, *read the second book. Word is that the final book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, is disappointing so maybe Alfredson can redeem himself with a superior film adaptation. LV

Postscript—The Salander-Wu sex scene is just the latest head-scratcher in why an American version of this franchise is in the offing. Smart money is that this won’t be in the American version, at least not the way it was done in Sweden!

Inception a Good Summer Film but Don't Get Carried Away

Phsyics don't apply in the dream world.

Inception (2010)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
148 mins. PG-13
* * *

Inception is a film that will remind you of other films: The Matrix, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Waking Life, What Dreams May Come…. There are even elements of director Christopher Nolan’s own Memento, though the latter is a far superior film to Inception.

Inception has been hyped to the gills and it has a clever hook and a complex plot that has left some viewers reeling. To grasp all its twists and turns would require multiple screenings, though to our eyes the movie just isn’t good enough to warrant this. So before we go any further, here’s the two-sentence verdict: Forget the ballyhoo and enjoy this film for what it is—a better-than-average summer film that’s basically a high-tech chase movie. It’s stylish and has a high wow factor, but don’t confuse narrative incoherence with profundity.

In a nutshell the movie is about the possibility of dreaming within a dream. It is set in the near future and Dean Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a sophisticated thief who invades people’s dreams to extract profitable information from them. The setup is that Saito (Ken Watanabe) wants Cobb to go a level deeper by having Cobb enter a corporate rival’s dream to plant an idea (the “inception”) in his subconscious that will ultimately benefit Saito’s firm. Can one plant a dream within a dream? Yes—and Cobb’s incentive is a chance at redemption. He pioneered the technique on his own wife, Mal (the delicious Marion Cotillard), but it didn’t work according to plan. Cobb assembles a crack team to do the job, the keystone of which is Ariadne (Ellen Page), a precocious lass who can find her way though mental labyrinths (get it?) and who suspects that Cobb has undisclosed issues that could endanger them all.

If you get lost in the layer-upon-layer-upon layer, there are three things to remember. First, psychologists believe than if we dream our own deaths, we die in fact. Conversely, dreams do not conform to waking logic. It is thus possible in a dream that the bad guys never shoot straight and you can literally weave your way around machine gun fire. Finally, insofar as anyone knows there is no limit to what the imagination can conjure in the dream state.

The last of these means that Inception is fascinating to view in places. The worlds constructed in the mind are far more interesting than what we see in cartoon-like fantasies such as Avatar simply because the mental constructs are simultaneously exotic, yet vaguely plausible. The film is strongest when it lurks in the imagination, both its marvelous and its dark sides. There is a wonderful scene—one of the simpler set ups, actually—in which Ariadne takes control of a dream by building a fortress of mirrors around herself. Likewise, Cobb’s dream city yields nothing to futurists and sci-fi writers.

All the performances are strong, except for Watanabe. At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, his English simply isn’t good enough and it’s exceedingly difficult to make out what he’s mumbling. That’s a problem when he’s one of the three major characters. But where the film suffers most is that it’s often blinded by its own flash. There are way too many chase scenes, explosions, and shootouts. Since we know they’re dreams in the first place, the only suspense is whether those involved pull out in time. In essence, the film’s violence is not only gratuitous, it’s pointless. We found ourselves growing bored by endless shoot-em-ups in the service of nothing and these consumed screen time that could have been devoted to developing the character back stories more fully. (Here’s all you’ll learn about Ariadne: young, perky, brilliant.) And when we get right down to it, half the story is about which mega-corporation gets the upper hand, not exactly something we care about or should.

Still, Inception is a mind-blower in its best scenes and one should give Nolan credit for challenging audiences and for having ideas more provocative than anything else you’ll see this summer. For a far better take on the alternative worlds the mind can build, rent Synecdoche, but see Inception on the big screen—the visuals will linger long after you’ve forgotten what “big” issue you were supposed to contemplate.