Culture Vulture Time

Shaking Intensified

2011-11-19T12:49:00.007-05:00

It was with great pleasure, and a certain swell of pride, that I recieved the first copies of a new self-published anthology drawn from the online journal Shaking Like a Mountain (now called Shaking Online, with an expanded editorial focus), edited by co-conspirators Vito Grippi and my pal Wayne Cresser, containing 17 fiction and non-fiction pieces, all built around a connection to popular music serving as a central conceit. Of course it's filled with some evocative writing, and (yeah, baby) it includes one of my own, originally entitled "Bo Diddley: He Used a Cobra Snake for a Necktie, 1928-2008", from June,2008, reprinted below. As the editors themselve suggest, a near perfect stocking stuffer, available here.

A Tribute to Bo Diddley
by Scott Duhame

Somewhere in the ever-holy Tower of Song the residents shuffle up the winding staircase (handrails gleaming, carved from ancient ivory) to the bone-shaking, perpetually hypnotic, and pure rhythm Bo Diddley Beat. Bo, like Little Richard, like Chuck Berry, helped erect the sturdy bridge between the swamp of jazz, blues, country and gospel that lead to rollicking sea of rock and roll, Bo, as himself, is the undeniable architect of one of rock’s bulwarks--the otherworldly hip-shaking, chunka-chunka in-yer-head cadence of rock and roll. Bo, without the glammy, sweaty immediacy of Little Richard, who probably performed his way out of the womb, or the sharp, calculated story tunes and radio showy guitar hooks of Chuck Berry, offered up a different sort of regal showmanship.

Bo stood stage center like a conductor, hips akimbo, tasty hat, square eyeglasses, boxy guitar, oozing a quiet confidence while unleashing his snaky tremolo and laying down his first person eurhythmics. While Sun Ra readily informed his audiences and collaborators that he been transported to space and thus transformed, Bo might well have been a true time-traveler, clad in his own version of a space suit, his vast array of tailsmanic guitars his means of teleportation, mixing and matching the rumbling backbeat he lifted from the train yards of Chicago with ancient African tribal chants and the rat-a-tat-tat of a western gunslinger’s discharge, seemingly deprived of his earthly just desserts (money and fame), but actually here with other interstellar purposes: help create rock and roll, jumpstart the Rolling Stones, and lay down a mystical, eternal syncopation that will forever hold its sway.

Bar Talk # 7

2011-11-13T15:59:00.004-05:00

Overheard Friday Night (11-11-11) at Nick-A-Nees
Providence, Rhode Island
(Purty much reported as close to verbatim as possible.)

I’m a Republican, I really am, and I’ve been laid off from two good jobs in a row.

Do you think she wears the boots to draw attention to her ass or that she sticks her ass out in order to draw attention to those boots?

I like it when guitar players make it sound like they are plucking a chicken.

NBA players versus owners? What about the sausage cart guys, the bartenders, the wait staff, the restaurant and bar owners, the ticket takers, the clean-up crew, the parking lot guys, and every other blue collar motherfucker who is suddenly not gonna have a very merry Christmas?

Wisconsin was like a decent early season well-played loss, Ohio more like a strong mid-season victory.

I asked that sweetheart to dance with me, and she did, but she’s married to the drummer. The goddamned drummer.

I just saw the DC Tenz for the first time in a million years. They sounded cool, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what they sounded like back in the day. Face it-a whole lotta of us weren’t quite concentrating as hard as we thought about the music back then. They the punk era was sex, and drugs, and rock and roll, I say it was drugs, and drugs, and (sometimes) sex on drugs.

You just have to hate on Rex Ryan, but in reality he’s one funny foot fetishist.

Someone ought tell those Occupy Providence kids that if they need a break just come to this dumpster, its Woodstock nation all the time.

C’mon squadron leader, issue some orders and let’s move onward.

Man, if this was olden or Egyptian times, she’d be doing the dance of the seven veils.

I had a long day, I'm gonna get a Rick Perry special.
What's that?
Anything that makes you twice as stupid as when you arrived.

Hitch’s Children

2011-11-13T15:11:00.005-05:00

(Reprinted from Pop Eye)

One of my all time gurus, John Cale, once put it succinctly in song: “Fear is a man’s best friend.” Peeps in general (old school peeps, new school peeps, outta school peeps, probably even pre-school peeps ), all dig a good scare, always seem to be peeping around the darker corners of pop cult and their own upstairs windows trying to suss out yet another dose of temporary terror, attempting to churn up some innate fear-inducing chills and thrills, whether it be the ol’ pop- and-fresh in-yer-face shudder and shrink, or laying down the connected tracks for a psychological roller coaster ride, whether it be through literature, through the movies, or by splashing ketchup around the fake arrow sticky out of their pointy heads when they parade around in costumes on Halloweenie Day. (Myself, I don’t go hog-wild over Halloween because of those very costumes and the attendant behavior of those clad in them—they make me very, very nervous, but that’s a story for another day.)

Movies have long provided the safe distance into which one can thrust oneself directly into the realm of psychological, physical, or supernatural fear, and, by theory at least, be protected by the very distancing effects of the medium itself. Whatever route they take or genre they inhabit—whether it be the blood-and-entrails type, the slow-burn-to-insanity number, the have-some-paranoia side dish, or the occult special---movies have a special way of going bump in the dark and allowing for a certain release of tension, even if it’s simply the slow roll of the end credits. Of course the hypersensitive need not apply, and even the occasional regular Joe finds himself suddenly disoriented when a latent film image or a particularly piquant plot structure just keeps intruding upon his or her waking life. The catharsis that’s supposed to be part of the movie-movie deal ain’t always exactly delivered appropriately, particularly with the jaded-before-their-time, seen-it-all, oversaturated, highly desensitized contempo audiences.

The cinematic masters of the thriller-diller, the chop-‘em-up, the anxiety-arouser, the old fashioned spook fest, are indeed legion, ever expanding, and always keeping the creaking door open for any savvy art house director or pulpy filmmaker to step in for a one-timer, and try their hand in entering the ongoing (and perpetual) big screen fear fest. Names get bandied about, names like Polanski, Lewton, Lynch, Raimi, Carpenter, Argento, De Palma, Browning, Whale, Murnau, Romero, Cronenberg, and a whole passel of too-many-to-recount newbies, yet one truly stands above the rest: Alfred Hitchcock.

Hitch is the guy, the king of the fear swing, the cinematic svengali who continually wielded assorted degrees of voyeurism and sadism along with a blanket of Kafkaesque determination, bookending that filmic stew with ever eroding nerve endings and narrative uncertainty, all under the spell heavy duty moral implications, all in the glorious name of both art and commerce. Hitch was one filmmaker who, again and again, achieved a meaningful symbiosis between image, editing, camera movement, plot, character, tone and theme, and did most of it in the name of suspense. Much has been written about the films of Hitchcock, his sublime techniques, and his ability to layer a box office hit with overriding questions of guilt and morality. Hitchcock, with the possible exception of his late effort Frenzy (1972), didn’t do gore, didn’t do guts, and steadfastly refrained from all things Grand Guignol.

It was all about the power of suggestion, about the lights and shadows of both the visual palate and, yep, the soul. The ultimate Hitch film, as far as the fear factor goes is 1960’s Psycho. Not enough space allowed to re-sing its many virtues: taut, virtuosic, spine-tingling, exquisitely crafted, suggestive, lurid, flamingly Freudian, plus the cast, the score, the cinematography, the shower sequence. Years later, many would argue that Psycho, because it unleashed the first semblance of unimaginable but almost gleefully delivered overt violence--that knife against that bare skin under that deluge of sprayed water capped off by the black and white image of a splash of blood circling down the drain-- despite its indefensible stamp of artistry, set the dynamics of a whole brave and bold new cinema of unease. Hitch, what has thy wrought?

Bar Talk # 6

2011-09-21T19:51:00.005-05:00

Overheard Friday Night (9-16-11) at Nick-A-Nees
Providence, Rhode Island
(Purty much reported as close to verbatim as possible.)

If there’s one thing that truly curbs my enthusiasm it’s actually watching Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

By the end of this Sox-Rays series I’ll be washing down my popcorn with vodka and Drano on the rocks. I’m calling it the J-Lackey.

My father was a union man for forty five years. He was around when everyone knew they needed unions. Back in the day they just knew it.

I can’t play pool but I do know how to bend over and shake my ass.

I just came from the Dropkick Murphy’s outdoor show and man it seemed like it was just that close to the edge of weird-poseur-white-guy-high-testosterone-violence.

Q: How can you waste your time talking to those boring idiots? A: Well someone has to do it, right?

Taj Mahal at the Park Cinema, can you explain that to me?

Those jello-shots seem frat-like and they don’t really seem to fit in with this place, do they? I’ve had three, and now I’m looking hard for the jello-shot girl.

It’s like the time machine just let some travelers out the sliding doors, except they came out slightly altered.

Sure, RFK wasn’t exactly JFK-lite, nor was he Teddy Boy-reinforced.

Billy Wilder talking about comedy is like a priest talking about eternal redemption, you got to give the guy certain credence.

I just don’t see Governor Chafee leading any of us to the Promised Land.

A few good drinks are far better for the brain cells than TM, LSD, yoga, tai chi, acupuncture, massage, or running around in the woods in your underwear and socks and do you know how I know this? Look around man, all those dudes and dudettes who specialize in that shit are in here sucking them down.

Why are half of those dancers wearing yacht togs and boating attire?

I’d do her with my pool stick, sans chalk, know what I mean?

Did you see him in action last night, he was inventing a brand new half-a-step primitive stomp, and just because of his hair most of the party was trying to follow him down that rocky road.

If that’s the hippy hippy shake find me some young republicans.

That’s the kinda guy who stands in front of the mirror to see if his brown fedora matches his red thong.

She broke my heart, my wallet and my ass and there’s a part of me that still wants to give her mucho credit and another goddamned chance. Buy me a drink, the stupider the better.

Do The Needle Drop

2011-08-25T14:33:00.005-05:00

(One of New York's finest, albeit a cult band of sorts, The Del-Lords, will be playing in an unidentified backyard in South County this Saturday afternoon. For those interested, in what will be an undeniable rocking (and special) good time, contact Dan [rootshoot@cox.net].)

The Del-Lords
by Michael Tanaka

For a very long time-- decades, now that I think about it, I’ve been making a semi-annual pilgrimage to a used record shop just outside Hartford, in Weathersfield, Ct.

I go to Ed Krech’s “Integrity n’ Music” mostly for out-of-print and obscure jazz records. That’s his specialty. But over the years I’ve also discovered many hidden treasures tucked away in the bins of the rock section. Now I’m not talking uber-collector shit here—if you just went scrambling off for your copy of “Goldmine” and your rarities want-list, forget it. I’m talking about cool stuff you don’t see much anymore—mostly uncommon and forgotten LP’s that fell through the cracks in the 1980’s when vinyl began its slow death.

Example… a few years ago, while rifling the bins at Integrity, I happened upon the first three Replacements LP’s on Twin-Tone (Sorry, Ma…, Let It Be, and Hootenanny) as well as Tim and a couple of later titles on Sire. Each one was virtually unplayed and under three bucks each. Sure, I’ve got that stuff on cd—who doesn’t? But believe me when I tell you that vinyl really does sound warmer—it sounds better. And in addition, when you drop that needle and start to listen to an analog recording on vinyl, it has a certain magic way of really taking you back.

So a few weeks ago, I hit another major vein in the rock memory mine when I flipped through the bins and uncovered the first three records by the Del-Lords. Now the Del-Lords have come up in conversation many times in the past. My pal Scott Duhamel is a huge fan of both the Dictators and Del-Lords’ Scott Kempner and has long sung the praises of Joan Jett/Steve Earle guitarist Eric Ambel. But like most of you, I suspect, I hadn’t done a lot of in-depth listening to the Del-Lords in close to twenty-plus years. So scoring the first three LP’s by this critically acclaimed, yet relatively unsung band gave me the perfect opportunity to crack open a cold one, do the needle-drop, sit back and listen. And what a treat it was.

Of course, like a nerd, I played the records in order, so when I caught the opening track of the Del-Lords’ first album, Frontier Days, (1984), I was spun around when I heard their hard-rocking cover of “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” Like a line-drive double off the first pitch, this song comes out of the box strong, with incredibly tight playing, great energy and a muscular sense of swing. And as I listened to the lyrics, I was reminded of how socially conscious Scott Kempner and the boys were—I mean “are.” The song they picked to kick-off their debut, a Ry Cooder cover of a 1929 depression-era folk song (some say it was the first “protest” song) is even more relevant today than it was when the Del-Lords blistered through the track during the reign of Reagan. The song has been done plenty of times before and since-- even Bruce Springsteen added the song to his Seeger Sessions tour and subsequent American Land Edition recording in 2006. I recommend you listen to all three versions— by Cooder, Bruce, and the Del-Lords—and I guarantee the one recorded by the Lords is the one that will make you sit up and take notice. And to make that song your very first album cut—that’s balls.

And there are more Del-Lords songs from Scott Kempner’s pen that tackle tough topics directly, and manage to escape being sappy or sentimental—songs about serious stuff that still rock. “Soldier’s Home,” from the second album, “Johnny Comes Marching Home” is a blatant anti-war statement wrapped in a catchy, hook-laden package, and later in the album, “Against My Will” is a first-person account of a hostage held by terrorists.

But the Del-Lords are far, far more than a rock band with a conscience. In fact, thinking of them in that way sort of does them a disservice. This is a band that just rocks, straight up. in a no-frills, no posturing manner, with great guitar playing totally devoid of typical 1980’s riff-histrionics. This band is, in many ways, less about what they are than about what they are not. Make a list of all the things that annoy you about 80’s rock (synthesizers, fake drums, over-production, over-compression, digital delay, big hair, spandex—you could go on and on), and it is amazing how much of that is not the Del-Lords sound.

You can’t deny the Del-Lords’ ability to rock it in those first three albums, and you can clearly hear the influences of rockabilly, folk, country and punk—all enhanced with clean, uncluttered guitar solos and smart, funny, often tongue-in-cheek lyrics (another hallmark of the earlier, under-appreciated Dictators). In the garage-band flavored, near surf-parody “I Play the Drums” from their first album, Kempner writes of typical rock angst and alienation with deadpan humor: “When I hate everyone / Instead of going for my gun / I play the drums.” And in “The Cool and the Crazy,” on their third record, the first-person song spews self-indulgent hip babble, delivered without a trace of irony: “We’re the outsiders / Watching the whole show. / It’s amazing how much it resembles TV / An L-7 world lost in mediocrity.”

All I can say is that’s beautiful, daddy-O!

But when it’s time to play it straight, honest and cut it close to the bone, Kempner makes it simple and direct. “Judas Kiss” is a great screed about betrayal, and “Pledge of Love” is a love song that, in anyone else’s hands, could dance close to the edge of the corn-field, but listen to the Lords bring it, and it’s pure rock n’ roll.
Those first three Del-Lords records I found were recorded and released in 1984, 1986 and 1988. A live EP and another studio records later, and they were essentially done by 1990. But you can listen to all these great songs again, re-released recently on cd, with lots of cool, additional info and liner notes written by Scott Kempner. And three of the four original members of the band-- Kempner and Eric Ambel on guitars, with Frank Funaro on drums are playing out live again. Last year they played a house concert locally, somewhere in Wakefield, RI, before taking off for a tour of Europe. They’re doing it again this year, and I plan to be there for the house concert show. That’s even better than listening to the LP’s.

There’s a line from The Cool and the Crazy that sums up the Del-Lords in my book— “We don’t follow fashion / Who needs it when you got style.”

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

2011-08-16T18:20:00.038-05:00

Be Kind Rewind
by Mark Duhamel
(My brother Mark and I grew up a year apart, and shared the same bedroom until we hit the big 18 and respectively hit the road. We were nurtured, educated, and exhilarated by much of the same popcult preoccupations and discoveries, and despite a fairly continual 37 year separation of geographical home bases we remain largely on the same page. He often sends me astute, pithy, extremely erudite movie-movie reactions after viewing some gem or cult classic during the twilight hours, and I’ve decided to post them on a semi-regular basis

Do the Noir Part 2
By Mark Duhamel

I thought I’d watch some Film Noir. That particularly cynical pre and post WWII genre of films often imitated and seldom equaled in it’s stark and sometimes unrelentingly bleak view of human nature in subsequent movie making eras. I am a big fan of the lighting, photography, and especially the sensibility of these mostly low budget,B&W films. The synopses used here are courtesy of Netflix.

Sullivan's Travels 1942
90 minutes

Tired of churning out fluffy comedies, Hollywood director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) decides to write a serious, socially responsible film about human suffering. When his producers point out that he knows nothing of hardship, he hits the road as a hobo. On his journey, Sullivan invites an out-of-work actress (Veronica Lake) to be his traveling companion, and the pair get into more trouble than they ever dreamed of.

Cast:Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, Robert Warwick, William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn, Porter Hall, Byron Foulger, Margaret Hayes, Eric Blore, Esther Howard, Georges Renavent, Al Bridge, Jimmy Conlin, Jan Buckingham, Jimmie Dundee, Roscoe Ates, Billy Bletcher, Monte Blue, Chester Conklin, Edgar Dearing, Harry Hayden, Edward Hearn, Arthur Hoyt, Paul Jones, Elsa Lanchester, J. Farrell MacDonald, Paul Newlan, Emory Parnell, Willard Robertson, Dewey Robinson, Preston Sturges, Madame Sul-Te-Wan, Julius Tannen, Harry Tyler, Pat West
Director:Preston Sturges

Okay, this is not noir. Maybe it has some noir elements to it, but it is definitely not noir. I watched it because I wanted more Veronica Lake. I wanted to watch her in “The Blue Dahlia” and “The Glass Key”, but these films are not currently available for rental or purchase.

Did you know she was 4’ 11 ½” and that she only made it to age 50, dying of hepatitis? She briefly dated Marlon Brando, whose Hollywood star was rising as her dazey days were fading. Brando later heard that Lake was cocktail waitressing and sent her a check for a $1000. She never cashed it but framed and kept it.

She is absolutely brilliant, funny, sexy, and radiant in this wonderful film that somehow pulls off making fun of Hollywood, social justice, fame and celebrity, greed and poverty, and itself with a non-stop barrage of witty dialogue, slapstick humor, and an impossible and implausible balance of hard-boiled cynicism and wide-eyed optimism. This is one of those rare films that get better and better as time passes.

The Turning Point 1952
81 minutes

Is John Conroy's police officer father, Matt (Tom Tully), on the wrong side of the law? John, a prosecutor trying to rid his town of crime, hopes not, but newsman Jerry McKibbon (William Holden) says Matt has been running around with mobster Harrigan (Ted de Corsia). But Jerry can't be fully trusted either, considering he's got a thing for John's gal pal, Amanda (Alexis Smith). William Dieterle directs this noirish drama.

Cast:William Holden, Edmond O'Brien, Alexis Smith, Tom Tully, Ed Begley, Danny Dayton,
Director:William Dieterle

A nice paean to principle and friendship conquering evil. The evil portrayed here is a truly absolute and venal evil, worthy of overcoming mundane romantic triangles and professional jealousies to find solidarity and true warrior spirit.
Featuring the Prince of Cynical All-Knowing; William Holden, who along with the rest of the cast turns in an admirable performance while noir morality morass swirls around them and we feel sympathy for the devil in all of us decent but poor cops who took a little on the side to put their smart sons through law school so they could eventually overcome our corruption. The bad guy is really bad; the small timers; really small, and the innocent victims: of course; exceptionally innocent in a harsh, bitter, and cruel postwar reality.

Pushover 1954
87 minutes

Police detective Paul Sheridan (Fred MacMurray) is assigned the not-unpleasant task of striking up a friendship with Lona McLane (Kim Novak), the girlfriend of a man suspected of engineering a bank heist that netted more than $200,000 and cost a policeman his life. Immediately falling for the bombshell, the cop soon finds himself neck-deep in her scheme to betray her boyfriend and make off with the loot.

Cast:Fred MacMurray, Philip Carey, Kim Novak, Dorothy Malone, E.G. Marshall, Allen Nourse,Alan Dexter, Robert Forrest, Don Harvey, Paul Richards
Director: Richard Quine

Fred MacMurray was born to play these noir, doomed characters. His hangdog, “I’m so tired” face looks like he’s one cigarette away from killing everyone in the room and then, with a sigh, himself. This film “introduced” Kim Novak, who previously had only appeared in an uncredited role and just prior to doing this film, changed her name from Marilyn to Kim and took some acting lessons. She does fine and is well cast in this film, that strange noir femme fatale mix of sexual charisma, innocence, and chilling opportunism. Her best scene is not when she’s cooing and kissing but when she snarls curt rejoinders at a lusting bar patron trying to make her, violently spilling her drink on him when he won't lay off. The plot for this is a classic noir arc; predictable but still immensely enjoyable as the few moments of feral passion turn into oblivion for more than one of it’s characters.

Scarlet Street 1945
102 minutes

Unassuming cashier Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) falls hard when he meets Kitty (Joan Bennett). They become involved, but Kitty keeps a petty crook, Johnny (Dan Duryea), on the side as her real love interest. Hoping to impress Kitty, Cross embezzles funds from his employer. What he doesn't realize is that Kitty and Johnny are getting rich on Cross's paintings, which have become a huge success under Kitty's name.

Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea, Margaret Lindsay, Rosalind Ivan, Jess Barker, Charles Kemper, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Samuel S. Hinds, Vladimir Sokoloff, Arthur Loft, Russell Hicks
Director: Fritz Lang

Classic Edward G. playing against type, masterful B&W photography and precision direction by none other than Fritz Lang. Joan Bennett, what a knockout! No kidding, just watch her slink around on her “lazy legs” and you’ll be glad you took the time. Dan Duryea establishes himself as one of the greatest weasel-eyed, rat-faced, snake voiced bad guys in what became a career of playing bad guys, especially in Westerns. The opening scene smartly establishes class consciousness in a post-war country where there are no classes. The working class nebbish clerk Edward G. is presented with a 25 years watch, which he clumsily and humbly acknowledges as beyond his means, while his banker boss shows camaraderie handing out dollar cigars until he has to leave for a rendezvous with a dame who’s not his wife easily 1/3 his age. This last circumstance plants the weed of discontent in our nebbish hero. The mise en scene reveals director Lang’s deep roots in the visual medium as several scenes could easily play without dialogue, effectively propelling the story and transmitting the lust, greed, jealousy, deception, love and hate that fester for 96 of the 102 minutes. It ends with one of the bleakest fates for our fallen hero, one far worse than the hanging he sadly desires and richly deserves.

Odd Man Out (Gang War) 1947
116 minutes

In this film noir from director Carol Reed, Johnny McQueen (James Mason), leader of a secret Irish rebel organization, plans a hold-up that will provide funds to keep his group going. During the crime, things go sour and Johnny is wounded. Unable to make it to the hideout, he disappears into the seedy underground of Belfast, Northern Ireland. A massive manhunt is launched by the police, whose chief is intent on capturing Johnny and his gang.

Cast:James Mason, Robert Newton, Kathleen Ryan, Cyril Cusack, F.J. McCormick, William Hartnell, Fay Compton, Denis O'Dea, W.G. Fay, Maureen Delaney, Elwyn Brook-Jones, Robert Beatty, Dan O'Herlihy, Kitty Kirwan, Beryl Measor
Director: Carol Reed

This is a beautifully photographed film, featuring the deep focus and complex lighting of the fabulous British studio era. I love the sharp edges and shiny halos created by the banks of key, fill, and rim lights, flags, gobos, scrims, and other arcana of the high craft of this age. Carol Reed deserves his reputation as a master of the medium. James Mason, Kathleen Ryan, Cyril Cusack, Dan O’Herlihy, and all performers down to the slightest bit players deliver the highest order of performance in a taut drama that shows a slice of Irish life and presents “the struggle” in a way that transcends the stereotypes employed in the service of story. Top notch exposition, visual virtuosity and a truly sad but satisfying emotional resolution.

Dead Reckoning 1947
104 minutes

Humphrey Bogart stars as Rip Murdock, a World War II veteran ensnared in a web of crime and conspiracy when his best friend, Johnny Drake (William Prince), disappears en route to Washington, D.C., to receive a war medal. Murdock follows the trail to Drake's hometown, where he finds his friend's body burned beyond recognition. His continuing investigation soon involves Drake's ex-girlfriend, femme fatale Cory Chandler (Lizabeth Scott).

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, Morris Carnovsky, Charles Cane, William Prince, Marvin Miller, Wallace Ford, James Bell, George Chandler
Director: John Cromwell

A smash-up of all the great Bogart noir films you’ve ever seen. In fact, I think some of the dialogue is verbatim from both “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Big Sleep”. In any case, the opening shots of Bogie’s wounded face and his gravelly voice-over presage everything that is to come. There is no other actor possessing the irresistibly compelling visage, voice, and charisma of Humphrey Bogart. He is not a handsome man, yet it is totally believable that all women, and most men, find him an irresistible force. This film is the a-b-c of every subsequent noir and pseudo noir. The villain’s dialogue is the only challenge to suspension of disbelief, far too erudite and high-blown, but a small irritation in an otherwise tic-tac-toe postwar melodrama.

Hobo with a Shotgun 2011
86 minutes

This gory, gleefully over-the-top revenge fantasy stars Rutger Hauer as the Hobo, a bum who rolls into town hoping to start over, only to find his adopted city saturated in violence and ruled by a vicious crime lord known as the Drake (Brian Downey). The Hobo's answer? Pick up his handy pump-action scattergun and start laying waste to crooks, corrupt cops and every other lowlife who crosses his path.

Cast:RutgerHauer, Pasha Ebrahimi, Rob Wells, Brian Downey, Gregory Smith, Nick Bateman, Drew O'Hara, Molly Dunsworth, Jeremy Akerman, Mark A. Owen
Director: Jason Eisener

Okay, so this film has no place next to classic, carefully crafted works of noir filmic history. But I could not resist the title, nor the trailer which features a little bit of Rutger Hauer’s soliloquy to newborn babies at a hospital culminating in “… if you’re successful you’ll make money selling dope to crackheads, you won’t think twice about killing someone’s wife ‘cause you won’t even know what was wrong in the first place, or you’ll end up like me, a hobo with a shotgun…”.
I am not a fan of this gore-fest genre, and I am almost saddened to think of how and why Rutger Hauer ended up starring in this made in Nova Scotia drive-in movie, but I have to say in all sincerity; Hauer absolutely rocks in this. The soundtrack is all 1980’s electronica, there is plenty of classic bad movie poetry dialogue and over the top quotables; The Hobo: “You’re a fool, and a shitty father.” Drake: “Take him to the glory hole”. The digital photography is done with a camera called “Red Mysterium-X” which apparently means you have to shoot everything with a red filter in red light for your red digital super red sensor camera. If I still did drugs, I would take some and watch this again, tonight, and get no sleep and watch it yet again on my ipod for breakfast.

Dark Passage 1947
106 minutes

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall grace the screen in this classic 1947 thriller about a convict who escapes from San Quentin to hunt down his wife's true killer. To complete his mission, he must escape detection by the cops. So he undergoes plastic surgery and hides out in the home of a mysterious woman (Bacall) he's just met. The film uses a first-person point of view in its camera work, to put viewers into the shoes of the accused man.

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bruce Bennett, Agnes Moorehead, Clifton Young, Douglas Kennedy, Rory Mallinson, Houseley Stevenson
Director: Delmer Daves

This is a class-A “noir”, with a top –notch cast, director, composer, and an unusual first person camera perspective for the first half of the film. It’s a “noir” in quotes, because it’s not really a noir, it features cynicism and darkness, but sports a happy ending which automatically disqualifies it as noir for the discerning viewer.
The most startling result of the first person point of view gimmick is that contemporary viewers should be able to watch as they may mistake much of it for a cool retro-B&W video game.
We don’t actually see Bogart himself until over 100 minutes have passed. His voice alone stars.
Bacall and Bogart had previously made great success out of their debut as a couple in “To Have and Have Not”, and then the truly classic follow up “The Big Sleep”. After “Dark Passage”, they scored another big hit with Edward G. Robinson in the great “Key Largo”.
The no-see-the Bogart is a great gimmick and apparently made the studio big-wigs very nervous and they may have been right as this was not a smashing financial success. Bogart gets “plastic surgery” in a San Francisco walk-up from a disgraced doctor recommended by a garrulous cabbie. A face-lift that leaves you looking exactly like Humphrey Bogart for $200.00. Ah, the “good old days”. Imagine a pre-surgery consultation delivered by your would-be surgeon that goes like this: ” We’re all cowards. There’s no such thing as courage, there’s only fear, Fear of getting hurt, and fear of dying, that’s why humans live so long.”
Note; a white male born in 1947, had a life expectancy of 66.8 years.
Great visuals, an atmospheric, moody sound, lustrous on location B&W photography, a beautifully malevolent performance by Agnes Moorehead, and Lauren Bacall is sonorous and sultry as ever, a truly persuasive argument for bringing back the “good old days”. Goodbye Irene.

The Mechanic (Killer of Killers) 1972
99 minutes

Charles Bronson (looking gnarled as ever) works alone as a hit man for "The Organization." But when willing acolyte Jan-Michael Vincent proves he has the stuff aspiring killers are made of, Bronson agrees to train him. Looks like it might be a case of the pupil overtaking the master, though, when Vincent begins to get some peculiar ideas of his own. Directed by Bronson perennial Michael Winner.

Cast: Charles Bronson, Jan-Michael Vincent, Keenan Wynn, Jill Ireland, Frank DeKova, Linda Ridgeway
Director: Michael Winner

Okay another noir that’s not really noir, except it is, aka 1972. Charles Bronson and his true love, director Michael Winner team up to leave us a template for the future – fest of assassin as hero/anti-hero films. This dynamic duo delivered many Bronson classics including; “Chato’s Land”, and all three of the “Death Wish” extravaganzas. This film is another partnership devoted to death and emotionless mayhem, a paean to 1970’s nihilism and futility. The best ridiculously 70’s scene is Bronson with the whore in an apartment wonderfully appointed with classic and obscure movie posters, a nice tip ‘o the hat to filmic history. The early scenes wonderfully capture the truly seedy side of LA behind the glamorous façade. A movie-movie full of great murdering-101 bits, a classic tinkly-piano, strings and brass suspense score by Jerry Fielding, explosions, motorcycle chases, weapons lessons, and a reliably flat Bronson playing off a wretchedly inert Jan Michael Vincent. It seems better than I thought and probably is still a favorite among late-night-professional-killing is cool viewers.

The American Friend (Der Amerikanische Freund) 1977
125 minutes
Idealistic German art restorer Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz) is dying from a rare blood disease, so to earn money for the family he will be leaving behind, he accepts an offer from cunning American sociopath Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper) to carry out a high-paying mob it. Zimmermann and Ripley forge an uneasy bond steeped in deceit, corruption and cold-blooded murder -- a partnership that could easily ruin what's left of Zimmerman's life.
Cast: Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer, Gérard Blain, Nicholas Ray, Samuel Fuller, Peter Lilienthal, Daniel Schmid, Lou Castel
Director: Wim Wenders

A classic noir story featuring an ordinary schlub drawn into international art fraud and murder via a terrific plot device. All of the performances are memorable and iconic and of course Wenders has cast both Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller in pivotal, if minor, roles as the ultimate homage to his “American Friend(s)”.
The cinematography is extraordinary, somehow referencing the best film noir from the 40’s and 50’s and demonstrating the state of the art low light film stock of the mid to late 1970’s.
Wenders ably proves his noir scholarship: the heavy score, the sharp dialogue, and the steadily spiraling descent into darkness is perfectly paced and deliciously drawn. Hopper’s marvelous depiction of quintessential American selflessness and self-obsession, Ganz’s moral then physical deconstruction, the violence that infects and grows, lushly and inexorably unraveling lives in a cityscape spread over Munich, Paris, and New York. “Road Movies” indeed, Mr. Wenders.
I first saw this film on it’s release and don’t think I’ve seen it since. There are many moments that have stuck with me over the years, particularly a scene wherein Ganz pulls a man’s legs out from under him over a drain around Hopper’s house and you can hear the crack of bone snapping as he hits the concrete below.
I have always remembered this as a moment of truly disturbing violence. Disturbing in it’s simple and quick resolution, in contrast to the usual gun and gore porn depicted in Hollywood’s blockbuster panoramas. All of the violence in “The American Friend” is unsettling and matter of fact, a true noir aesthetic.

Growing Up in Public

2011-08-04T09:19:00.006-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the April issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

Over a decade, the Harry Potter film series has achieved the unusual, particularly in the light of the vast majority of film franchises. The Potter series, handed off from director to director, peopled with seemingly nearly every other high spangled thespian that Britain has to offer, featuring child actors who’ve grown up in the public and imaginative eye, has somehow maintained an unrelenting quality and no discernable softening of its collective imagery, mythology, or storytelling arc. In short, it will stand out as a notably well-stitched and irrefutably resounding example of commercial cinema at its best, underlined by the long awaited release of the final chapter of the Potter fable, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, an eminently satisfying and actually soul-stirring denouement.

Superbly helmed by David Yates, and well scripted by Steven Kloves, the final installment of the Potter epic is as much a culmination of all things Harry as it is a vivid fulmination on morality and the inevitable end of childhood, with its bespectacled central figure eschewing the tenets of the heroes journey that Joseph Campbell delineated in his seminal The Hero with a Thousand Faces. More importantly, the Potter series, and particularly its final offering, did all this with sumptuous (and consciousness pervading) set pieces, a wonderful sense of scale, and an overall tone of expressiveness mixed with increasing emotion. Daniel Radcliffe, who glided from cherubic charm to enigmatic intensity, will certainly go down, no matter what his on screen future holds, as a formidable film icon, forever held on some exalted higher cinematic plain with the likes of Sean Connery’s James Bond, Clint Eastwood’s The Man with No Name, or Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp. (Now that’s one weirdly absurd declaration—but one difficult to debate.)

While the Potter films certainly followed and fed from an obvious formula (as all film franchises do), their overall stature grows from the fact that movies, while quite easily seducing both children and adults and both J.K. Rowling readers and those who never picked up the books the films were based on, remained free of voguishness and easy contempo irony, they utilized snappy action and an array of CGI effects yet always kept character and plot as the central fulcrum, and they essentially painted a burnished narrative that was continually speckled with darkness and the intertwined accents of moral obligation and impending devastation of innocence. Yet, the movies twinkled with fabulist gewgaws and magical landscapes, and they fit together like an elaborate but addictive puzzle, always inching towards a collective emotional fission that I simply would never have guessed at upon viewing the first of the series in 2001.

As Potter directors have come and gone—Christopher Columbus, Mike Newell, Alfonso Cauron, David Yates—each with quite distinct styles and sensibilities, the acting troupe has remained steadfast, and anchored by the growing-up-in-public principles, Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Gint. In the crazy quilt of supporting roles many stood out—Gary Oldham, Helena Bonham Carter, Imelda Staunton, Michael Gambon, but none so much as Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, the embodiment of mythological evil and, by large, a classic movie villain,, and Alan Rickman as Severus Snape, eschewing subtle expressiveness throughout the course of the eight movies.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is purposefully somber, with a well-crafted grainy and drained color scheme, blips of fascistic ominousness, and the oh-so-familiar central setting of Hogwarts devoid of magic and wonderment and weighed down with sorrow and bleakness. It’s a hugely satisfying end to it all, richly textured and intimate, enriched and poignant. Every once in a while popular art can entertain and imbue, and virtuosity can become part of an integrated and well-conceived vision. It just doesn’t occur nearly often enough.

Be Kind Rewind

2011-07-19T19:45:00.025-05:00

(My brother Mark and I grew up a year apart, and shared the same bedroom until we hit the big 18 and respectively hit the road. We were nurtured, educated, and exhilarated by much of the same popcult preoccupations and discoveries, and despite a fairly continual 37 year separation of geographical home bases we remain largely on the same page. He often sends me astute, pithy, extremely erudite movie-movie reactions after viewing some gem or cult classic during the twilight hours, and I’ve decided to post them on a semi-regular basis.)

Do the Noir Part 1
By Mark Duhamel

I thought I’d watch some Film Noir. That particularly cynical pre and post WWII genre of films often imitated and seldom equaled in it’s stark and sometimes unrelentingly bleak view of human nature in subsequent movie making eras. I am a big fan of the lighting, photography, and especially the sensibility of these mostly low budget, B&W films.

I started my foray onto the darkening past with a post-modern take on noir, 1975’s Night Moves, starring Gene Hackman and directed by Arthur Penn from an Alan Sharp script. My brother Scott cites the final scene featuring a seriously wounded Hackman in a small motorboat circling endlessly in a large expanse of ocean as the ultimate cinematic expression of uncertainty and futility. Or something like that.
It put me in the mood to dig deeper underground.

The synopses are courtesy of Netflix, which is also responsible for satisfying almost all movie whims. In order of viewing:

The Naked City (1948)
95 mins

When a model is found drowned in her bathtub, homicide detectives Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) are on the case. Their investigation, the inner workings of the police department and some of the "eight million stories in the Naked City" are explored. Filmed on location in New York City, this classic thriller won Oscars for cinematography and editing and was nominated for a Best Writing Oscar.
Cast:Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor, Frank Conroy, Ted de Corsia, House Jameson, Anne Sargent, Adelaide Klein, Tom Pedi
Director:Jules Dassin

My take: Difficult viewing. Takes real perseverance and commitment to the cause. It is an important film in it’s pioneering use of NYC location shooting and pseudo-documentary style, but in the end; pedestrian.

This Gun For Hire (1942)
81 mins

Phillip Raven (Alan Ladd) is an assassin whose latest murder assignment is paid for with counterfeit money by turncoat Willard Gates. Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake), an entertainer and the girlfriend of the police lieutenant who's trying to bring Raven down, is recruited by the government to probe Gates's illegal activities. When Raven happens to meet Ellen on a train, they use their relationship to get what they want -- and exact revenge.
Cast:Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, Alan Ladd, Tully Marshall, Marc Lawrence, Olin Howlin
Director:Frank Tuttle

The opening scene: Alan Ladd (billed as “Introducing Alan Ladd” after a ten year stint of un-credited, bit, and even student film parts) wakes up in a cheap hotel room and glances at his watch; 2:00 PM. He opens a note detailing that someone will be somewhere between 3:00 – 4:00 PM. Then, he checks his gun, an automatic, probably a 45. He gets up to leave but stops when a stray cat scratches at his window. He lets the cat in, gently handling it and opens a can of milk and pours it into a bowl, spilling some on his hand. He leaves the cat and goes to the washroom and just then the cleaning woman enters the room, sees the cat and viciously shoos it away. Alan Ladd returns and seeing the cat cruelty grabs the woman by the shoulder. She turns suddenly and her dress rips. “Get your hands off me you creep! You owe me a dress!” Ladd slaps her back and forth as only happens in films of this era, and orders her out. Next, Ladd enters a cheap apartment house, passing by a very young girl sitting on the steps, complete with polio leg braces, she smiles sweetly and greets him as he ascends the stairs. He summarily executes a man and a woman in an apartment and as he exits, once again encounters the girl who says demurely, “Mister, I dropped my ball.” Ladd sweetly obliges and recovers her ball. This is all within the first 6 minutes or so of film time. Laird Cregar is wonderfully creepy and cowardly, Robert Preston is not particularly memorable and of course Veronica Lake is radiant, smart, sassy and cast in an incredibly unbelievable fiction involving a US Senator, a night club owner, and a national security breach involving a decrepit chemical plant capitalist selling out the USofA. But who cares, she and Ladd pull it off and show that they are both world-class movie stars. It’s not about “acting” for either one, just about presence and shiny charisma.

I Wake Up Screaming (1941)
82 minutes
In this film noir classic, when model and aspiring actress Vicky Lynn (Carole Landis) turns up dead, the evidence points to her manager, Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature), who was recently dumped by his star client. Dogged by a tenacious detective (Laird Cregar), Frankie finds the noose tightening, but Vicky's distrustful sister (Betty Grable) -- whose relationship with Frankie is chilly -- may have information that will clear him.
Cast:Morris Ankrum, Carole Landis, May Beatty, Allyn Joslyn, Chick Chandler, Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Alan Mowbray, Elisha Cook, William Gargan, Laird Cregar
Director:H. Bruce Humberstone

Wow. I’ll say it again, Wow. This is what it’s all about. Substantial performances all around. Victor Mature shines, Laird Cregar is at his creepy, foreboding best, Carole Landis plays a 1940’s version of Paris Hilton to the tee, Betty Grable is believable and satisfying as the good, sensible sister and the lighting is incredibly textured and layered, casting shimmering shadows snaking around evocative light pools. This one represents the darkly illuminated best noir has to offer. Where the title comes from remains an impenetrable mystery.

The Big Clock (1948)
96 minutes
In director John Farrow's noir thriller, crime magazine publisher Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton) tries to pin the murder of his own mistress on the magazine's editor, George Stroud (Ray Milland), after he discovers George coming out of the woman's apartment. Things fall into place as all the signs increasingly point to George as the killer, making it that much easier for Earl to set up the editor to take the fall.
Cast:Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan, George Macready, Rita Johnson, Elsa Lanchester
Director:John Farrow

I remember this one from years ago, perhaps during film school. I’m almost sure I read about this in Manny Farber’s Farber on Film back in high school. I had seen it before many, many years ago. It is a good example of the noir moral dilemma; a basically good guy who does something not terribly but kinda wrong and from there his whole world slides towards utter disaster and disintegration. In this case, he has a drink with a beautiful woman who is not his wife and stands up to his boss who not so coincidently has a relationship with said beautiful woman. He ends up framed for something he didn’t do but they don’t know it's him. A nice snaky plot-boiler with some twists and admirable turns by Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullivan, a spicy Rita Johnson and a very likably earnest Ray Milland.

Appointment with Danger (1951)
90 minutes
This hardboiled crime story stars stoic noir staple Alan Ladd as Al Goddard, a special investigator sent to Gary, Ind., to solve a postal detective's murder and track down the sole witness to the act: shy young nun Sister Augustine (Phyllis Calvert). With her reluctant aid, Goddard learns the identity of the culprits and soon uncovers their gang's plot to pull off a million-dollar mail heist. Jan Sterling is a standout as gun moll Dodie La Verne.
Cast:Alan Ladd, Phyllis Calvert, Paul Steward, Jan Sterling, Jack Webb, Stacy Harris, Harry Morgan, David Wolfe, Dan Riss, Geraldine Wall, George J. Lewis
Director:Lewis Allen

A little strange noirish but squeaky clean copper caper except the cops are actually post office (??) cops, and there’s a nun, and yes, that’s right; Jack Webb and Harry Morgan as bad guy buddies. Alan Ladd goes “undercover” somehow convincing the bad guys he’s a bad guy. I didn’t buy it, but they did. And there’s a nun. Great title huh, they don't make ‘em like they used to.

Union Station (1950)
80 minutes
The same year they appeared together in Sunset Boulevard, William Holden and Nancy Olson co-starred in this classic film noir about a frightened passenger (Olson) who reports two suspicious men aboard a train bound for Chicago's Union Station. When the terminal's police squad learns that the men are armed and involved in a kidnapping scheme, the officer in charge (Holden) enlists the help of a veteran police inspector (Barry Fitzgerald).
Cast:William Holden, Nancy Olson, Barry Fitzgerald, Lyle Bettger, Jan Sterling, Allene Roberts, Herbert Heyes, Landon Dunning
Director:Rudolph Maté

This time it’s a copper caper with train station cops, with William Holden at his cynical, wisecracking, shoot me in the arm I don’t care best. It’s hard to beat William Holden for the noir leading man, no one comes close to his slacker, I don’t care but I really do nonchalance. Except for Robert Mitchum who transcends I don’t care with I don’t fucking care and I think I’m gonna hit you in the face soon.
This one is a kidnap caper. The victim is a sweet, blind, apparently rich girl. It succeeds because the “psychotic” kidnapper is actually pretty clever and stays a step ahead for most of the film. He is of course finally brought to justice by the combined efforts of the implacable William Holden and the plucky and courageous best friend portrayed by Nancy Olson. Barry Fitzgerald is in top form as always. The photography is nothing special, but the Union Station scenes are well staged.

The Word According to Festus

2011-07-08T07:58:00.003-05:00

Reprinted from PopKrazy

With the recent passing of that sublime and absolutely natural Westerner James Arness, who will live in perpetuity as the forever able and Zen-master-with-a -six-gun Matt Dillon in endless reels of Gunsmoke episodes ( all truly worth seeing), I thought of one of Matt’s few kindred spirits, Festus, played quite iconically by Ken Curtis.

In the Kitty-Doc-Festus triangle that serves the great independent spirit of the perpetual flinty and eternally taciturn Dillon, Doc (Milburn Stone) functioned as Matt’s most intellectual companion, an equal to ruefully discuss philosophy and occasionally plan strategy with, and of course, just like the Marshall, an ever astute judge of character.

Kitty (Amanda Blake), the red-haired proprietor of The Long Branch, the town’s saloon and elegant (and unsaid) whorehouse, was Matt’s only channel for overt emotion, passion, or sexuality, and she also exists as the foremost manifestation of burgeoning civilization, while she also coexisted as the triangle’s most emotive, hardened but still given to concrete measures of gentility, and—-as all bar owners are—-a quick interpreter of character.

Festus, who came to the show belatedly (after the show departures of Matt’s earlier two ids—Chester (Dennis Weaver)—-the rube that Matt once was, and Quint (Burt Reynolds)--the half-blood native American who was of true Indian heritage the way the symbiotic Matt could never be), was a pure hillbilly and part scoundrel and the embodiment of cornpone digression , yet Matt admired him for his uncompromising ways, his disregard for much of what counted as airs, his unwavering loyalty to those who did the right thing, his surprisingly cat-like ability to leap into action and mayhem, his sharpened gun battle tactics, his high lonesome love of the life’s simplicities, and deep-to-the-bone divining skills of sussing out potentially dangerous characters. Oh yeah, Festus had a helluva way with words, and somehow the Gunsmoke writing staff knew the only Ken Curtis could continually shoot that empty bottle off the fence post:

“ Let’s just cabbage on to them.”

“You’re nuthin’ but an ornery old scudder.”

“Just keep on blabberin’ alluva the time.”

“Righty thoughty of ya.”

“Mighty thoughty of ya.”

“I’ll be on you like ugly on an ape.”

“You better have a hollerin’ kinda of a voice, because he’s 45 miles away.”

“Just like two tumbleweeds, kinda bumpity-bumping across the prairie will directly hit a barbwire fence and just kinda hang up there till there ain’t nuthin left.”

“I’ll pay you back before you can say the rat ran over the roost with a piece of liver in his mouth.”

“What in the name of seventeen billygoats are you doing here?”

“You make me so damned mad I could smoke a pickle.”

“One thang about thinking, it aint like buttermilk…well, you can set it aside for a while and it won’t go bad.”

“It’s seems like some folks is born to lose, it’s the other’s that gotta work at it.”

Lights Off

2011-07-05T15:38:00.003-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the April issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

Alright, someone stop the bleeding. Well, most comic book heroes don’t actually bleed, but the movies that they are featured in seem largely to be dead on arrival, big punchy exercises in warmed-over mythos accompanied by predictable palette’s of shiny unitards, recycled plot threads, formulaic rock ‘em sock ‘em good vs. evil battles, and warmed over CGI effects. The failures are too numerous to count, the mediocre efforts seem to be mounting, yet comic book movies still seem to be eking out a decent box office life. Green Lantern, the newest, is more middle-of-the road swill, and hopefully another nail in the potential coffin of this out-of-control modern movie genre. In this humble observer’s opinion the genre needs to bite the dust, as soon as possible, before it might become plausible again, or at least watchable.

The Green Lantern character belongs to DC Comics, and after first seeing light in the 40’s he’s been revived and reinvented a few times most notably in 1959, most recently in 2005. He’s one Hal Jordan, a hot shot fighter pilot who becomes the first human selected by the so-called Guardians to be handed an emerald ring powered by a lantern that will allow him to be a sort of intergalactic super cop, with (of course) a motto all his own “Let those who worship Evil’s might, beware my power-Green Lantern’s Light”. Hickory-dickory-dock, right?

Green Lantern is embodied by Ryan Reynolds, he of the sculptured torso and continually sardonic but hypnotizing toothy smile. As bad as the movie is, one can’t really blame Reynolds, who might have been on target casting if the final product had some balls or verve or even went whole hog into the campiness it only hints at. Reynolds’s charm only goes so far, and it can’t bring a pulse to a basically lifeless exercise. Mark Strong, Angela Basset, and Tim Robbins are also wasted in perfunctory parts, although Peter Sarsgaard manages to punch his mortal-into-alien baddie role up with a bit of that ol’ Christopher Walken styled hamminess. Blake Lively, an actress of no discernable talent, fits is seamlessly with the overall tone of substandard hokiness.

When I mentioned that my assignment for this month’s column was Green Lantern, one of my fellow cinephile’s questioned the validity of 650 words or so devoted to such blatantly unfulfilling movie handiwork, offering me his own piquant summation: “Perhaps you could do The Year of the Shitty, Perfunctory, Blatantly Made to Cash In On a Potential Franchise That No One Asked For Comic Book Movie.” In the immortal words of Stan Lee, nuff said.

The ultimate irony for me personally, is that I grew up during the true golden age of comics, the mid 60’s through the mid 70’s and my brother and I were avid collectors and fastidious readers. During that fruitful period one of the biggest complaints among the fanboys (who hadn’t been tagged with the label yet) was how Hollywood just didn’t get it—comics were ripe for natural big screen adaptations, with their visual panache, social undercurrents, and strength of characters. As a pre-teen and then teen I firmly believed this also--the cinematic possibilities for comic book translations were virtually endless, a bold new cinematic form was possible if only the right filmmaker took hold. Alas, outside of the occasional Tim Burton, Richard Donner, Christopher Nolan, Jon Farveau, or Bryan Singer, the well has run dry. What’s next on the comic-into-movie to do list? As one of my long time heroes, Lou Reed once sang, “And me, I just don’t care at all.”

The Westerner

2011-06-26T16:57:00.006-05:00

Reprinted from PoP--An Emporium of Popular Culture

Pop Eye
By Scott Duhamel

The slow and steady tracking-shot-into- close-up at the opening credits of the early Gunsmoke years is more than iconic, it is emblematic and will ever be a lasting (and essential) western image in American pop culture. While directly quoting the tracking-shot-into-close-up that steers all Western aficionados dusty souls, that justifiably empyrean big screen vision of John Wayne twirling his shotgun in 1939's Stagecoach, it offers itself up as a brand new (NW) defining image of The Westerner. When Ford spotlighted Wayne, that shot resonates as both the moment that that grand auteur would realize that Wayne was the right figure to represent his western balladry. Gunsmoke’s echoing shot, pulls up to a handsome and sturdy but slightly weathered James Arness (pointed to by Wayne himself after he turned down the potential spotlight dousing offer of a TV series), essentially conveying the simple fact that then iconoclastic, rosy-cheeked, cocksure adventurer of Wayne’s Stagecoach has been replaced by Arness’ Matt Dillon, a man with one foot gradually settling into the winds of oncoming civilization and one foot still planted firmly in the wooly freedoms of expansionism, yet still the lone American adventurer, a sharper, more expedient voice of law and order and right and wrong , an erudite arbitrator of frontier justice, a man who has killed, can kill, will kill, but prefers not to. The Gunsmoke close-up finally focuses on Dillon/Arness’ eyes, and they are the eyes of a nation progressing and receding, from a landscape of little rules but highly defined codes, one populated by individual valor and courage yet poisoned by wantonness and cruelty, with the ever sturdy Westerner forced to question the vagaries of right and wrong in a rapidly changing landscape.

True confession: Growing up I somehow missed the brilliance of Gunsmoke (1955-1975), the smartest, sublimely collective atmospheric (and obviously longest-running) western tale maybe ever told. Certainly individual western s movies had more impact and it’s unarguable that decidedly more overtly artistic westerns were made for the big screen yet Gunsmokes’s lasting impact, and it’s astoundingly continual high level of creativity are something to behold. I missed out on Gunsmoke, as a budding revolutionary and wanna- be hippy, because I knew there was an Arness-Wayne connection and I assumed it to be an onerous political one, and John Wayne was just somehow unacceptable in the turbulent late 60’s and early 70’s.

Years later I would read about Marty Scorsese screening The Searchers to his NYU film class, but prefacing the screening with an impromptu show of firing six shooters just so that his rabidly anti-Wayne film students would settle down for that sublime John Ford film. I missed the weekly imprimatur the Gunsmoke was searing into the collective consciousness, and have had the pleasure of rediscovering the lengthy series with continued viewings in the last few years. Although the show presented itself as hugely traditional, it was, in turns, ribald, self-conscious, cornpone, stark, moving, comical, and outstandingly consistent. Outlaws swung brazenly into town, showgirls had hearts of stone and of gold, the cowpokes were filled with grandeur, whiskey, goldust dreams, American immigrant exuberance, and more than often, just plain broken down.

With the Zen-like Dillon (who, of course, spent time with the Indians and treated with respect from the initial show) often presiding as an onlooker or mere sideman (until there was a call for action) , Gunsmoke’s Dodge City was inhabited by the cagey , flinty and determinedly philosophical Doc (Milburn Stone), the perpetual rube Chester (Dennis Weaver), the occasionally becalmed but raging bull Quint( Burt Reynolds), the red-headed highly astute business women and unabashed mistress Kitty (Amanda Blake), and the quintessential sidekick Festus (Ken Curtis), he of the cracker barrel sentiment, hillbilly rambunctiousness but the wondrous naturalness of a man at peace with his environment (like Dillon), plus a baker’s dozen of regulars from the town drunk to the officious main street businessman, never mind the uncountable appearances of every sort of actor (up-and-coming, down-and-out, character greats, stars that were and stars to be) Hollywood had to offer.

Arness’ Dillon is a stately but full blooded representation of the American Westerner and his whittled down performance, filled with pauses, squints, grunts, asides, and one sentence summations formed an amazingly well-rounded figure, highlighting a performance of depth and maturity. He embodies the transition from the traditional western to the post-western, while the modern world hasn’t fully cast a shadow on his travails, he, the great seer, knows that it is coming, and that his destiny is to help strangle the primitive world the created him and that he has so long embraced. I’ll say it straight up---James Arness' Matt Dillon is a truly tragic hero and one of the most essential starring roles in TV history. RIP James Arness 1923-2011.

Female Trouble

2011-06-12T16:14:00.005-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the April issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

Like most pop culture vultures, or at least those who deign TV an acceptable medium, I’ve had a long term on-again off-again relationship with NBC’s Saturday Night Live over its long and storied (and lengthy) run. I’ve come back as a regular viewer in recent years, blithely ignoring those occasionally dead-on-their-feet sketches as a nature-of-the-beast thing. What’s brought me back (and many others) to the late night comedy altar is the succession of smart, sly, and vibrant women ---Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and currently, Kristin Wiig—that have continually nudged large portions of the show back into uproarious regions. I headed to a screening of Bridesmaids recently, an unusual detour down the unfamiliar back roads of the chick flick, solely because the new comedy was co-written and starred Wiig, and I went with heightened expectations.

Wiig co-scripted Bridesmaids with comedian and Groundhog veteran Annie Mumolo, although the movie was made under the signature imprint of producer Judd Apatow (Knocked Up,The Forty-Year-Old Virgin)and directed by Apatow protege Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks), also a noted TV helmsman (The Office, Nurse Jackie).Wiig plays Annie, an attractive but perpetually unkempt single woman stuck in Nowheresville, suffering from the pangs of failure produced by a small business bakery failure, stuck in a unabashed booty call relationship with a handsome cad (Jonn Hamm), all the while slowly imploding while waiting on couples in the bloom of romance from behind the counter in a jewelry retailer. Her only anchor is her lifetime gal pal Lillian (Maya Rudolph), who shatters her fragile existence by announcing her sudden and impending nuptials.

Wiig’s Annie, a lifetime good sport and perpetual onlooker, mutates into a wedding anarchist, prodded even further by her discovery of a potential new BFF for Lillian, Helen (Rose Byrne), a snotty control freak bent on shaping the wedding into a dream affair. The movie, a sly feminine answer to The Hangover, follows this former triangle , along with three additional bridesmaids, Becca (Ellie Kemper), Rita (Wendy McLendon- Covey), and Megan (Melisa McCarthy) as they go on a not-so-magic carpet ride that encompasses pre- wedding sartorial choices, a trip to Las Vegas, and eventually the ceremony itself, with Annie comically and frenetically unbalancing all the way. (The male characters in this movie don’t mean a thing, and that’s a remarkably refreshingly observation to note.)

Obviously Bridesmaids has a bit more up its chiffoned sleeves than pratfalls and outlandish female behavior. The movie, which doesn’t offer much visually or formally, gently prods at the at the troubling conditions of both romantic resentment and class covetousness. Wiig’s everywoman is much like the lost male souls that Apatow’s features usually revolve around—although not quite akin to those character’s essential manchildness because Wiig’s downright hilarious portrait of a woman on the brink holds at its center an emotive weight that somehow resonates despite the comedic machinations which propel the movie.

Bridesmaids is a rambunctious tale, and it does feature a fairly raunchy centerpiece that will be debated as too much or perfectly over-the-top, but most certainly will draw the approval of the male audience the movie needs to insure its commercial success. Is Bridesmaids an exquisite leap into a new age of proto-feminist mainstream comic cinema? I don’t think so, but it is legitimately funny, has a ton of heart, and features the absolutely first class Wiig operating on all cylinders, and that combination makes it worth seeing.

When a Power Tool Was Not a Toy

2011-05-27T14:03:00.003-05:00

Reprinted from PoP--An Emporium of Popular Culture

Pop Eye
By Scott Duhamel

In the burgeoning years of the original Lupo’s and the Living Room, amidst the rock scene that was being spawned, The Young Adults were once kings, or at least crown princes of the Providence scene. They had the stage show, the songs, the shtick, and most of all the wild and burning energy of hell-bent provocateurs. Their amalgam of blues, white boy R&B, and even glam rock was all done with a sneer, an eyewink, and some downright hilarious antics. Springing forth from the mindset of bands like The Fugs, The Mothers of Invention and The Bonzo Dog Band, but imbued with a point-of-view that was decidedly more RI than New York, they were seen by many as full scale rock and roll Dadaists, satirists, and purposeful genre-benders, fueled by the respective swinging and towering geniuses (which in Young Adult speak translated to extraordinary talents and blossoming egos) of twin front men and songwriters Sport Fisher and Rudy Cheeks, melded together with the sly, witty talents of the almost professorial Jeff Shore, the unofficial musical director. They were ultra cool, hilarious, and extremely popular, drawing overflow crowds throughout New England, and before their career did the classic sputter and fizzle, they had managed to accomplish the release of an album, perform in and contribute to a feature length movie named after one of their local classics (“It’s a Complex World”), and also become among the very first Providence bands to release a single and garner steady airplay on the only station that counted at the time, WBRU. It was a heady, rollicking time period, and the Adults were much more than a presence, more akin to a cultural force, both musically and socially, virtually ruling the hipster scene at the one and only Leo’s, the then repository of all thing considered properly boho and avante-something that flowed in and about La Prov. They could actually rock and they were downright hilariously entertaining, an unusual and truly unique combo, and one that served them well as they, during the 70’s and 80’s, took no prisoners and put one of the early mass pop culture flags down in RI's capital city, demonstrating that the dirty old town of the time was and would eventually become recognized as continually fertile, amazingly disparate, and sublimely inventive—and certifiably RIesque-- growing art and rock landscape.

Ten (Random) Reasons to Celebrate Bobby D’s 70th Birthday

2011-05-24T16:32:00.009-05:00

Reprinted from PoP--An Emporium of Popular Culture

Pop Eye
By Scott Duhamel

1. Obviously, he is still here, constant, consistent and relentlessly performing and releasing recorded music on a regular basis, and despite his storied and magical mystery tour of a career, somehow becoming indistinguishable from the strange blur of his Never-Ending tour.

2. He has become, despite the copious amounts of money earned and the uncountable amount of press and nitcriticism generated, the sort of old road dog he has always admired, a virtuous troubadour, the proverbial wandering minstrel, dispensing bits of blues, folk, rock and roll, pop music and that old weird America to oldsters and (surprisingly enough) youngsters alike.

3. His current on stage persona—cowboy hat, slick western togs, boots with Spanish leather, is just about on par with his polka dot shirt-wearing Dylan-goes-electric look on the overall All-Time Rock and Roll Coolness Scale.

4. His voice, the one that has undergone many styles and changes and a consistent barrage of criticism since he very first appeared on the scene, has turned into a uniquely indecipherable whelp during his live performances, a guttural rumbling that sounds like a combo of a slightly busted foghorn, the disembodied ghost of Muddy Waters and God stuck and in a long check-out line in the super market while muttering intently.

5. His weathered features have all melted into what singularly can be described as The Big Squint.

6. If you devote any time at all to listening to his collective works, whether you’ve been listening intently forever, or listening closely for a long time, or even checking in occasionally to decipher a new direction or a sudden musical highlight, there are still dozens of song discoveries just waiting to be uncovered. Perpetually.

7. Over his seemingly limitless recording and performing efforts he has utilized an ultra-hip and thoroughly disparate batch of collaborators and well-paid sideman, a sorta sideways who’s who of rock players and characters: Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Clydie King, The Band, T-Bone Burnet, Mick Ronson, Scarlett Riveria, Daniel Lanois, Mick Taylor, Stevie Van Zandt, The Greatful Dead, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Plugz, Charlie Sexton, Emmy Lou Harris, Duke Robillard, George Harrison., and that’s just the quickest of glances.

8. The Never-Ending Tour always purposefully gigs at minor league parks, an unarguably smart decision.

9. The Great Mysterio / Mr. Ironic somehow matured (or mutated) to the point of becoming at least partially (and quite) publically mellow after a lifetime of rambunctiousness and beat-like contentiousness, managing to write a fascinating book that actually revealed a bit about himself and also spending a rollicking good time as the ever pleasant (and amusingly eye-winking ) host of vastly entertaining satellite radio show.

10. Finest overall collection of song titles evah, bar none, not even up for debate. That’s just the titles, mofo.

Bar Talk # 5

2011-05-08T14:58:00.008-05:00

Overheard Friday Night (5-6-11) at Nick-A-Nees
Providence, Rhode Island
(Purty much reported as close to verbatim as possible.)

"He was jimmy-jammin’ doing overtime, man."

"The Bruins sweeping the series tastes just like…freshly cooked bacon."

"Brown and RISD are like spicy side dishes of Providence, Johnson & Wales is like the ground beef, and PC is like that warm beer sitting on front lawn in that half empty cup."

"Yeah, I’ve got balls. You just can’t see them cuz they're up in my ass."

"You’ve heard the cliché, but up there on the dance floor is the illustration: Goofy white people dancing.”

"All that’s left here are band people and a bunch of crackpots."

"I gotta get home and buy some gaggers and watch Poker After Dark."

"He’s like King Sunny Ade without the genie hat."

"It’s all about the electromagnetic waves, particularly in the coastal regions."

"That guy is dancing with a traffic safety cone."

"How many ass jokes do you actually know?"

"I’m probably going to adopt a dog even though I’m probably not capable of taking care of one."

"I really want a Girl Scout cookie."

"When you see him still standing after midnight, it’s never ever a good thing."

"Okay, no problem, a hat tip and a handshake, they found Osama Bin Laden. But, what’s up with Whitey Bulger?"

A Stranger on a Train

2011-05-03T14:13:00.005-05:00

Reprinted from PoP--An Emporium of Popular Culture

Pop Eye
By Scott Duhamel

Among true aficionados Strangers on a Train (1951) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943) are considered among the famed British directors most resolutely American films (notably, the former was co-scripted by Raymond Chandler, the latter by Thornton Wilder), both of them smaller movies that brilliantly illustrate Hitchcock’s talents before his populist career turn that came with big budgets, big stars, and well-earned box office lionization.

Strangers on a Train also remains as one of the more lucid examples of Hitchcock’s long term thematic fascination with both doppelgangers and the wrong man theme. The plot revolves around an enigmatic exchange of words between one Bruno Antony (Robert Walker) and Guy Haines (Farley Granger) during a random train ride, a meeting that results in a murder and a falsely accused protagonist fumbling nervously to protest his innocence. In the words of the film, criss-cross.

While Robert Walker’s obviously deranged Bruno character, with his mile-long oedipal complex propelling the movies’ plot, has long been the weirdly compelling figure that audiences and critics have focused on, it is Farley Granger and his portrait of tennis star Guy that actually surfaces as the lynchpin of the Hitchcock’s moral and psychological game playing. Granger’s Guy is fit and particularly handsome, yet he wears his neuroses on his sleeve, and sends off palatable vibes of both self-loathing and social climbing desperation. The movie’s resonance rests upon the fact that despite the fact that the wild and wooly Bruno is the actual killer of uptight and out-of-sight Guy’s slattern wife, Guy undeniably wanted himself rid of her. The suggestion of an overt homosexual attraction between the two men flavors the film strongly also, all the more ironic because Granger would eventually come out the closet while still active in his acting career (his 2007 memoir was entitled Include Me Out).

Granger--whose name begs the question who the hell’s parents name a kid Farley?-- died in March, was born in San Jose, California in 1925, and was signed by Sam Goldwyn as a contract player in the early 1940’s, as a skinny but pretty tow-headed young lead. After a somewhat checkered 40 plus year stint in the movie biz, the actor found decent success on the stage. He did carve out a small place for himself in the overall Hollywood firmament with strong appearances in Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), Nic Ray’s They Live by Night (1949), and Luchino Visconti’s Senso (1954), but we will always remember him as the cocky but hapless Guy, a bit more than a mere stranger on a train, quivering impotently with anger and frustration (and a deep blotch of black guilt) as Bruno’s dancing eyes gaze upon him trapped in the frame of Hitchcock’s accusatory lens.

Inception Lite

2011-05-01T11:05:00.003-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the April issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

Christopher Nolan’s Inception was a grand rush of a sci-fi movie, overflowing with eye-catching visuals, brimming with storytelling brio, and offering (for the many true believers) just enough emotional fission to mark it as a truly distinctive cinematic offering. Obviously, Hollywood (always know for it’s unabashedly and constant self-cannibalization), did more than just note the critical hosanna’s and major box office bugaloo of Inception, and we, the sturdy film going public—particularly those with a propensity towards the fabulist movie tale—must prepare ourselves to keep plunging down the movie-movie rabbit hole. In fact the last month, has seen not one, but two (almost three if you would like to stretch the boundaries a bit and include the Bradley Cooper vehicle, Limitless), variations of Inception Lite, The Adjustment Bureau and Source Code.

Let’s examine the elements of the Inception Lite soup: mucho digital action, jigsaw puzzle plotting, godlike overseers, big themes swirling around matters of destiny and choices of free will, mind bending spatial or time travel, ever shifting narrative twists and shouts, artificial structural roles guided by the premise, intermittent gaping holes of logic, unintentionally preposterous leaps of movie going faith, and , always, a cool youngish (interchangeable) white male (Leo DiCaprio in Inception, Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau, Jake Gyllenhaal in Source Code).

The Adjustment Bureau, written and directed by The Bourne Ultimatum’s scribe George Nolfi, stars the aforementioned Damon, alongside John Slattery, Anthony Mackie and Emily Blunt as, well, as pretty much par for the course in this breed of film, The Girl.Based (but largely altered) on a short story by sci-fi guru and visionary Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report), The Adjustment Bureau means to be part fabulist thriller and part Kafaesque nightmare, with Damon as an ambitious politician who manages to discover that there are bunch of officious government types running around in fedoras controlling and altering people’s fates. Of course, after running into The Girl in a public bathroom the hat guys emerge to inform him that his pursuit of the free-spirited woman is a definite no-no and, more importantly, a shake-it-up life changer that will forever imbalance some sort of pre-written destiny.

Matt’s politico doesn’t dig that noise, so the movie delineates his impulsive and determined dash away from the fates prescribed and towards the unfathomable possibility of true (and random) love. (And includes a whole lotta hanging out in the rain, where somehow the hat boys can’t see him.)

The ongoing discourse about choice and self-determination remains a wheezy center of the film, while the old school love story manages top generate a decent amount of classical movie romantic tension. Director Nolfi and his cinematographer John Toll craft some better-than-average sequences and a nice overall gray feel but the movie is never as provocative as it wants to be, nor does it succeed in laying out one of these suffocating blankets of paranoiac dread. Damon’s well-acted intensity is certainly a plus, but The Adjustment Bureau is merely palatable.

Source Code heads down yet another dark and deterministic alley as Gyllenhaal’s military man suddenly wakes up on a train with no conception of where is he and why he is there and gets blown into smithereens a mere eight minutes later. Once again, the hands of some mysterious bureaucrats (Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright) are holding onto the puppet strings and Gyllenhal’s gold soldier keeps getting sent back to the same time and place in a repeated loop, sweating and straining to solve the bombing before it goes boom-kaboom and, yup, falling under the spell of The Girl (Michelle Monaghan) he engages with on the train.

The young director behind Source Code is Duncan Jones, whose little seen 2009 effort, Moon, received much praise in certain circles and even gained a small but rabid post failed-release following. The earlier films showed that he was a burgeoning craftsman and perhaps even an original cinematic thinker, and Source Code demonstrates that he can confidently take on bigger material. To his everlasting credit he avoids the videogame stylistics that a movie of this sort could so easily fall into, and while the movie cruises along at an accelerated pace, replete with multiple jump starts, it doesn’t become another case of technical proficiency acing out filmmaking artistry.

Like Damon, Gyllenhall holds his own, as his slow transition from pure befuddlement to focused soothsayer is delivered with panache and his lone seeker figure gains resonance as he ping-pongs through some mind tripping editing and psychedelic explosions. The Source Code also deserves praise for framing it’s build-up of central figure anxiety with a slightly ironic, almost meta, tone.

As with Inception, both The Adjustment Bureau and Source Code are movies far too enraptured with their own too-cool-for-thou structures, and as much as they hint towards a big screen examination of some overwhelming existential morass they remain filtered through the vagaries of commercialism. (In the case of Inception, Christopher Nolan’s superior talents works towards making an audience forget all of that strained seriousness and eventually give in and jump on the glorious –but decidedly pseudo-intellectual—joy ride.) These films strive hard to elucidate and to pose significant philosophical conundrums, yet they ultimately work as entertainment baubles and remain extra sensory side trips with all too little emotional grounding. Presented with the unique opportunity to be given a chance to go backwards and change fate, or go sideways and forward to affect or bypass what supposedly has been determined will remain a lynchpin of both sci-fi and sci-fi cinema. It just ain’t that all-fired effective when the sounds of the whooshing coils and the clatter of the well-oiled machinery keeps unexpectedly protruding into the ever desired dream state.

I don't have a new Pony, but I do have a new Hobby

2011-04-21T18:59:00.003-05:00

(Reprinted from PopKrazy)

Forget the burgeoning baseball season, forget rereading Raymond Chandler or keep reading Steve Erickson, forget the Boston Globe sports page, forget continually listening to Little Steven’s Underground Garage, forget obsessively filling the backlog of my unseen Gunsmoke episodes, forget making lists of the top ten Warren Oates’ character names, forget buying every single ripped-off, repetitive, and badly recorded Johnny Thunders recording evah, forget checking a few more outré film noirs off the grand list, forget finishing that piece about the stony greatness of Pynchon’ s last book, forget about finally beginning that new David Foster Wallace kinda-last-maybe-baby novel. Fuggedabouit, I’ve acquired a new hobby, another fresh and fertile landscape to explore, somehow a totally new (and astonishingly original) slab of pop cult meat to vulture on.

I do indeed own dogs, and dig those dogs (Boston Terriers named Francis and Alfredo), but I’m not a drooling beastie lover like so many I know, fighting back antic urges to spew baby animal smack tawk or tackle and pet and roll in the dirt with four-leggers behind cages or fences or sticking their heads outta passing car windows. Nor do I go hog wild over the Animal Planet show choices (truth be told, haven’t watched or desired to watch one show on this specialized cable network, so much that even when I was sick and could barely manipulate the clicker I passed it bye-bye), or read any sorta book that has anything to do with wild or tame beasts, or even considered the real life touching or petting of animals that don’t reside in my very own household. Nope, not me, and although I didn’t wanna admit it way back when, I didn’t even dig the whole Lassie scene, never mind the horribly monikered Rin Tin Tin.

Hardy-har-har, the funny part is the whole too-cool-too-be-true hobby kinda centers around animals, although they are as dead as the proverbial doornail or like Barry Goldwater’s corpse. Other killer aspect is that I can do a whole lotta boning up on the art/craft/science of my new hobby, and I don’t usually go near the science thang. (A sign of maturity, perhaps. Somebuddy tell my wife.) Other topnotch debating point: I’ll join a cult of few rather than more, and I’ll jump straight into the gonzo weirdness, immediately staking out the point-of-view of a verified hipster connoisseur and commentator, and that’s tough to do at my age. Further bonus: I also get to apply my finely honed critical skills into a pop culture sidebar that combines photography, absurdism, redneckism, and you just can’t beat the combo, even my pop cult guru Mr. Hull of PopKrazy can’t, and he was born and bred in the South and recklessly celebrates his heritage.

What I am talking about? Forgive me, but I haveta exhort and counsel you all (notice the southern verbiage, although please don’t discount this all those of who reside in Michigan)) about perhaps the greatest blog I’ve come across yet in the grand, vast, empty slop-bucket blogosphere—Crappy Taxidermy. I’m long gone, I’m hooked, I’m over the top, and I sincerely guarantee you that those you’ve long admired—like Lux Interior, Harvey Pekar, Elisha Cook, Jr, Russ Meyer, and RL Burnside—were on to this from the very beginning, no kidding at all. That means something. Trust me bro’s and sis’s.

It’s Crappy Taxidermy, and it should be all the time—stroke those thumbs and go straight onto http://crappytaxidermy.com/.

You won’t regret it, no way Jack (or Jill) or Rover.

Gender Games

2011-04-20T18:41:00.002-05:00

Reprinted from PoP--An Emporium of Popular Culture

Pop Eye
By Scott Duhamel

Ken and Barbie have long stood as among the ultimate consumable manifestations of baby boomer gender definers, yet the 50’s and 60’s were abundant with pink vs. blue masculine/feminine boundary settings, emanating from all corners, whether they be comic books, toys, TV shows, or plain old board games. What shall I Be?, manufactured by the Selchow & Richter Company, fits right into those quaint and uninformed times, with “The Exciting Game of Career Girls” arriving in 1966, followed by (note the change in verbiage) “The Exciting Career Game for Boys” in 1968.
SelRight Co. was a fairly big board game player, founded in 1867 in Bay Shore, New York, initially purchasing the licensing rights for Parcheesi in 1874 and Scrabble in 1952, and also producing a wide variety of games, from the known (Anagrams, Jotto ), the little known (Go for Broke, Whodunit, Meet the Presidents), to the truly unknown (Assembly Line, Cabby, Huggin’ the Rail.)

Both versions of What shall I be? are recommend for ages 8-13 and center around the pursuit of adult careers. The boys can aspire to be (yup), a Doctor, Athlete, Astronaut, Scientist, Engineer, and, ahem, Statesman, while the girls (lucky them) get to be a Teacher, Ballerina, Nurse, Model, Actress and Airline Stewardess. As you move around the board cards with character traits are acquired, providing board game guidance to those wonderful careerist aspirations. You get too excited—that’s bad for Astronauts, Doctors, and Statesman and equally bad for Nurses and Airline Hostesses. You are unfriendly—that’s bad for Statesman and Doctors, implying that it’s good for the others and perhaps explaining all those unfriendly astronauts we’ve all run into. You are emotional-that’s good for models and actresses. You are a slow thinker-fuggetaboutit for Astronauts, Docs, and Athletes and equally bad for (once again) Airline Hostesses and Nurses.

The cover graphics spell it out clearly—the boys version depicts a Paul Peterson-type inside a picture frame (or mirror), hand resting firmly on cheek with blue eyes gazing firmly and hopefully forward as he envisions a Doc bathed in white light at the operating table surrounded by concerned hospital help toiling alongside in the shadows, a fullback applying a stiff arm while he thunders down the open field, and an astronaut tethered to a capsule as he floats above a crated and dented surface, all of it boldly inked in a kinda of continuous splash across the oblong box cover. The girls version has within its small frame (or mirror) a young ribbon-attired lass with one finger tentatively inching towards her slightly parsed lips under eyes wide with uncertainty, as an Archie Comics-styled tableau of six costumed woman appears in her quivering imagination, four outfitted with skirts lined right to the knee, all (with the exception of the blond long-trussed actress garbed in what appears to be some kind of Elizabethan sheath) with short, tight, or pulled-back hairdo’s, none of them looking prepared to turn and face the ch-ch-changes that the tumultuous decade that birthed them would eventually bring.

Wherefore Art Thou, Nicky Baby?

2011-04-01T11:11:00.004-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the March issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

While observing Charlie Sheen’s down-the-torpedoes meltdown, and listening to the various theories ascribed to his transcendentally deer-in-the-spotlights behavior, I can’t help but reflect upon the vast and often galvanizing storied history of Hollywood-styled bad behavior, engagements with law enforcement, and just plain public burn-outsthat some many Tinsletown players have undergone—always feeding the trough of public desire-from Fatty Arbuckle to Mel Gibson, from Errol Flynn to Robert Mitchum, from Joan Crawford to Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Equally intriguing to me are the on-screen contretemps often evident when one peers behind the lens of various box office bugaloos; when an actor or actress off-screen neuroses, real life back story, or overall bad acting somehow peeks out from the façade of costumes and settings, plot line or role playing, shining a weird inner light on the big screen thespian’s inner life, as most obviously manifested in the off and on-camera antics of Marlon Brando, the crown prince of Hollywood looniness.

Case in point in one Nicolas Cage, our long time fave-rave Nicky Baby, our own contempo harbinger of big screen noxiousness, who has easily surpassed a near legion of contenders that include (to name a select few) Val Kilmer, Nick Nolte, Sean Young, Vincent Gallo, Crispin Glover, and once kingpin Mickey Rourke. Nicky Baby is once again delivering the damaged goods, back front and way left of center with Drive Angry, a wacky throwback that might even be seen as a high-spirited homage to 70’s drive-in movies if it weren’t so virulently dreadful.

True, Nicky Baby has largely shed himself of real life baggage (obsessive comic book collecting, Brat Pack partying, big league tax problems, a marriage to Lisa Presley), yet he is seemingly hell-bent on forging one of the most implosive and corrosive career paths of anyone regularly working in today’s movies with their name above the title. Face it, if a movie features Nic Cage you can be assured that it will be filled to the brim with a creaky plot framework, misspent and unfulfilled ambitions, and (best of all) full scale glazed-ham acting. To his everlasting credit Nicky Baby seems to sign on these projects with an undeniable (and possibly fevered) work ethic, and then emitted with a ravenous on-screen style that resembles nothing more than an ember-eyed fox circling the open gate of a well- populated chicken coop. Nicky Baby always commits. The question becomes how low can he go?

Let us not forget that, once upon a time, Nicky Baby was considered a committed and highly quirky player, displaying a consistentversatility and continually demonstrating a robust sense of adventure. Nicky Baby ‘s early and middle work was characterized by cool projects and memorable impartment—Rumble Fish,Birdy, Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, Wild at Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, Face/Off, Bringing Out the Dead, all capped off by the wonderful double turn in Adaptation in 2002. Since then, what hath Nicky Baby wrought? National Treasure, The Wicker Man, GhostRider, Bangkok Dangerous, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Season of the Witch, and of course the captivatingly gonzo The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call-New Orleans a non-sequel/sequel with a title as off-putting as Cage’s mesmerizingly off-kilter performance.

One of the essential elements of a Nic Cage performance is the choice of hair. To Nicky Baby, it always seems to begin with the hair, and in Drive Angry it’s blond and spindly, the better to accent his character’s grim (and angry) countenance. Nicky Baby is one John Milton (yet another nod to the movie’s subversively high intentions), and he’s a (angry) granddad in hot pursuit of his grandchild, who has been kidnapped by a satanic cult, led by a punkabilly ringleader named Jonah King (Billy Burke). Nicky Baby is soon joined by that drive-in staple, a comely young waitress (Amber Heard), who sports two eye-raising attributes, denim short-shorts and a cherry 1969 Dodge Charger, and they are in turn pursued by cooler-than-thou professional known as “the Accountant” (William Fichtner), a guy seemingly invulnerable to every sort of weapon of mass or minor destruction with the exception of an antique gun that Nicky Baby stows alongside his changes of underwear and comb collection.

Drive Angry boasts one of the greatest scenes in recent Nicky Baby history, wherein he puffs up a cigar while swallowing dollops of whiskey and picking off a pack of cultists armed with gardening tools while having sex. Trust me, that’s a cinematic conception that needs no such frothy underlining like special effects or effective acting.

I’d personally like to see Nicky Baby reunited with his equally downward spiraling uncle, Mad Francis Ford Coppola, to add to the legacy that they have already begun, collaborating before on Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, and greatest of all, Peggy Sue Got Married. With their potent mix of deteoriating taste, talent and all out chutzpah, they may indeed be capable of carving out a spot in the annals of directorial-acting partnerships, joing such luminaries as John ford and John Wayne, Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock, or Marty Scorsese and Robert DeNiro.

For now we simply have Nicky Baby in all his glorious and unabashed badness, keeping it unreal in Drive Angry, a movie so overtly dumb, so inscrutably wacky, so blithely idiotic that it’s virtually bad cinema nirvana. In 3-D, no less.

RIP Elizabeth Taylor 1932-2011

2011-03-29T18:49:00.003-05:00

Reprinted from PoP--An Emporium of Popular Culture

La Liz. Arguably the first of the imperial-celebrities and the last of the great movie stars. An iconic screen beauty, a living, fire-breathing personification of American womanhood, glamour, and (yup) personal drama, she grew upright in front of the peepers of the masses, going from child actress to dowager spokesperson, all the while hip-hopping through eight marriages (two to Richard Burton, with whom she also made eleven movies), befriending and mentoring the self-named King of Pop, Michael Jackson , getting nominated for five Oscars and actually winning twice (for 1960’s BUtterfield 8 and 1966’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf), singlehandedly raising the national consciousness about AIDS, becoming an everlasting gay icon (and standing up in public for closeted stars Montgomery Clift and Rock Hudson), and ,for a while, becoming the highest paid actress in the Hollywood Dream Factory while being denounced by the Vatican, all the while her black-haired beauty and infinitely deep violet eyes searing an indelible image that will forever remain in big screen perpetuity.

Born in London, the daughter of a St. Louis art dealer and his actress wife, she wound up in Los Angeles at the age of 7 as her parents left England to escape the war, and then, at 11-years-old, grabbed a role as Roddy McDowall’s pre-teen honey in Lassie Come Home in 1943. It was National Velvet in 1944 that put her on the star-watching maps, and a central role in Father of the Bride (’50) that kept her there. Initially Taylor was a luminously pretty face and highly radiant presence, but working with strong directors and making good choices solidified her as something much more than another prefab confection, and screen goers (particularly woman), heaved, and sighed and hurt along with her as she executed more complex roles in strong pictures like A Place in the Sun ( ‘51 ), Giant (’56) (in which, tellingly, she was actually a year younger than her newcomer co-star and blazing constellation, James Dean), Raintree County (’57), Suddenly Last Summer (’59), the aforementioned BUtterfield 8 (’60), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (’61), and finally her ultimate role as the harridan-like wife and hard-fading beauty of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (’66).

While Taylor , however historically and physically inauthentic, will always remain the living, breathing, eye-batting incarnate of Cleopatra; somehow her failed 1963 opus of the same name turned her career (and life) into something broader and more wide-ranging than cinematic stardom, as she began a new phase of perpetual public scrutiny, with hash-throwers, cosmetologists, and garage mechanics dishing the collective dirt on her romances, hairstyles, public drunkenness, diamond obsession, and seemingly dozen of visits to hospitals and doctors for a never-ending variety of ailments. Through it all, she managed to be simultaneously glamorous and thoroughly down-to-earth, consistently feisty and almost preternaturally sultry, unabashedly voluptuous and forever rash, a radiant diva with down-home urges and next-door neighbor actions, a public sinner and unknowing embodiment of feminine independence.

Her screen career may have actually topped off as the 1970’s arrived, but good work still remains here and there with films like Reflections of a Golden Eye (’67), Secret Ceremony (’68), and A Little Night Music (’78), yet she never suffered anything close to a career burn-out, making TV movies and commercials, advocating for charities, and continually making a splash when she deemed it worthy to step out into the public eye. Elisabeth Taylor (she personally disliked “Liz”), began her career as an emergent screen goddess with every view of the camera rendering her more emblematic , yet she wound up being a more than respectable actress, arguably ranking in the nether regions with the likes of Katherine Hepburn and Bette Davis. It’s doubtful whether will ever see the likes of her kind of outsized vocational orbit today, although one can certainly recognize elements of her success surfacing in the movie oeuvres of Julia Roberts and Angelina Jolie, while such contempo growing-up-in-public female celebs like Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, or even Madonna couldn’t collectively cause the commotion that the notorious single bat of a long eye-lash flickering past the deeply emerald eyes of Taylor’s could accomplish—it was a cinematic knock-out punch delivered with guile and ease.

Jane Russell: Mean, Moody, and Magnificent

2011-03-15T16:36:00.002-05:00

(Reprinted from PopKrazy)

Obviously, once upon a time there were no Kardashian sisters, no up skirt websites, no mass produced semi-celebrity sex tapes, and no instantly publishable photographs of the glitterati sans underwear. Way back in the not-so-long-ago 1940 and 50’s, except deep under the furtive shadows of the deviant underground and the back room demi-monde, overt sexuality on display was unheard of. Unlike today, it was about suggestion, aura, dress style, costume, pose-- all of it artful artifice--with the exception of the somewhat innocent concentration on the one lowest-common-dominator feminine psychical characteristic commonly referred to as “curves”. Jane Russell, perhaps one of the greatest of all Hollywood Va-Va-Voom girls, had every ingredient listed in that last sentence, and she had ‘em spades.

Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was born deep in the middle of America, in Bemidji, Minn., in 1921. She and her family moved to SoCal when she was 9-months-old, and after graduating high school she enrolled in acting classes at Max Reinhardt’s theater workshop, also doing some minor league modeling. While working as an assistant in a chiropodist’s office a photo of her found its way to one of the US’s most infamous wayward sons, Howard Hughes, then beginning his filmmaking period, and he cast her at the age of 19 in 1940 as the temptress in his much ballyhooed western The Outlaw. Of course, the movie was plagued with Hughes’ usual weird karma, only getting a strange initial run in San Francisco in 1943, another one in New York in 1947, and it did not get an actual national release until 1950. Not of that seemed to matter, as it was unleashed with a torrent of publicity and controversy, much of it over a poster featuring Russell with the caption: “Mean…Moody..Magnificent,” and Russell immediately became part of the nation’s collective big screen firmament, with the actress’s charms labeled as particularly overt and unusually bourgeoisie (and somewhat scary since she came across as so fiercely carnal), undeniably a new breed of the long-standing movie-movie tough and glamorous broad.

The Outlaw poster might still stand as an appropriate visual definition of sultry, as it depicted Russell lounging in a haystack, eyes smoldering, a gun in one hand, and her open-topped skirt falling off one shoulder to focus attention on semi-bared breasts that looked more powerful then M-1 missiles. The Roman Catholic church made a hue and cry, stories surfaced that Hughes, the movie’s producer and boy genius (after casting Russell when supposedly spotting her himself at a doctor’s office) designed his own special contoured bra, although Russell long contended she never actually wore it, rendering each part of the tale equally apocryphal yet still long preserved as Tinseltown lore.

Russell was no great shakes as a dramatic personage, but her incandescent sexuality, a powerful mix of otherworldly knowingness, a sizzling personality, and torrid airs, virtually leaped off the big screen and she became a pin-up fave rave. She is wonderful teamed with Bob Hope in The Paleface (‘48) and inexplicably enough, fortuitously partnered with Marilyn Monroe in the Technicolor gem that is Gentleman Prefer Blondes (’53). Russell also acquitted herself quite well in Macao (’52), Son of Paleface (’52), The Las Vegas Story (’52), The Tall Men (’55), and The Revolt of Mamie Stover (’56).

The vagaries of pop culture are often windblown and propelled by avarice, but somehow Russell remerged in the70’s and all the way through the 80’s as the television spokeswoman for Playtex bras, which she touted on the small screen as the perfect accouterment for “full figured gals” like herself, thus becoming an extreme feminine object of desire and commerce twice in her public life. By then her big screen career had faded into the rearview mirror, and eventually both her looks and politics grew harsh; but, as always, we are blessed to keep her image fixed in a time and place where she stood tall as a Lioness among kitty cats, as among the most red-blooded of the screen sirens, as the magnificently full figured gal posing knowingly in the stable, ferocious, challenging, and notoriously exuding the deep mystique that signifies forbidden pleasures. Russell stands forever shimmering and perpetually radiant, an absolute knock-out, while never a knock-over.

Bar Talk # 4

2011-03-06T14:24:00.007-05:00

Overheard Friday Night (3-5-11) at Nick-A-Nee
Providence, Rhode Island
(Purty much reported as close to verbatim as possible)“

I was freaking rocking it in the luxury box. Rocking it!”

“The guy is not even thinking about do it legislatively; he’s doing it by decree.”

“If the NFL is going to go down for the count I’m worried that my fanatic brother might go down for the count, which makes the players, the owners, and my bro all complete idiots.”

"I always dig the whole Oscar thing, but it got harder and harder to watch Anne Hathaway act like she was making her debut in a ninth-grade version of My Fair Lady while James Franco looked like he left his script out in the back of the van right next his bag of high grade weed.”

“You didn’t think I was actually capable of deep thought.”

“I wonder how many of them are wishing me total ill will upon my departure?”

“The dude singing this song sounds like he warmed up by resting his nuts in a frying pan.”

“Charlie Sheen? He’s the man, laughing his way on the way to the bank via public breakdown and somehow pleasing fans, foes and the rest of the fascinated simultaneously. I’ve never watched his sitcom but I’m totally into the whole tiger blood performance piece.”

"He’s a fool to even think about her, because all she’s interested in is drinking expensive vodka until she starts falling down on top of the closest male with a fat wallet in the vicinity.”

“You play pool like a recovering sex addict. Shaky.”

“Just a little bit of Glenn Beck everyday is enough to make me want to choke the snot outta the next five people I run into.”

“It’s hard times on the planet earth times pie, my brothers.”

"Something’s going awry when Steven Tyler is somehow fresh again. C’mon, the guy looks like a mummified pirate crossed with an organ-grinder’s monkey on acid. I mean Aerosmith plays casinos now, don’t they?”

“Peter Jackson said that he stole a whole lot from Alfred Hitchcock. You remember him right?”

“Hey bubble butt; I love those acid washed jeans.”

“That potent combo of a funeral and a bar always proved irresistible to my ex.”

“I took her to the weenie joint for gaggers and then she told me she was a serious vegetarian.”

“Deer Tick and Low Anthem ought to have a “Who’s More Authentic and Sincere Contest", although they’ll kinda split the townie/ivy league votes.”

"Christine Aguilera looks more and more like Miss Piggy every time you see her.”

“Last time I smoked that guy’s shit it was like I totally went into the Wayback Machine and I couldn’t find Sherman.”

“Bob Giusti is like the minor league, Providence version of Charlie Sheen, just not as hilarious.”

RIP: Woody Fryman (1950-2011)

2011-03-01T04:44:00.001-05:00

(Reprinted from Shaking Like a Mountain)

I always thought that name, Woodie Fryman, was yet another of those oh-so-succulent, sublimely apropos, only-in-the-landscape-of-baseball names that sound, well, pitch perfect. While a rabid baseball fan through the vast majority of Fryman’s career, I admittedly have no specific game memories of Fryman, no on-field exploits, not even a vividly recalled mental picture to fall back on. Nope, but Iremember the name, and I still find it comfortably resounding, and even, dare I say it, one of those baseball monikers that seem intrinsically poetic, as if they’ve been scribbled down by a high falutin’ authorial voice, or handed out by a set of salt-of-the-earth parents who just somehow knew that their baby boy was going to make an adult living playing a glorious childhood game.

Moe Drabowsky. Zoilio Versalles. Gates Brown. Manny Mota. Van Lingle Mungo. Junior Griffey. Sal Maglie. Coco Crisp. Biff Pocoroba. Harmon Killebrew. Dane Iorg. Jesus Alou. Gaylord Perry. Nomar Garciappara. Milt Pappas. Sixto Lezcano. Kiki Cuyler. Boog Powell. Elroy Face. Honus Wagner. Minnie Minoso. Tuffy Rhodes. Bernie Carbo. Enos Slaughter. Mookie Wilson. Hack Wilson. And, yes, Woodie Fryman.

Fryman, born in Ewing, Kentucky, made it to the majors in 1966 and stuck around until 1983, compiling a lukewarm lifetime won-loss record of 141-155, with 2411.1 innings pitched, a non-too-overwhelming ERA of 3.77, while piling up 1,587 strikeouts, and racking up 68 complete games and 27 shut outs. He pitched for six separate teams (in chronological order: Pirates, Phillies, Tigers, Expos, Reds, Cubs, and the Expos again), managed to toss four one-hitters, and was named to the National League All Star squad twice___ making him the sort of scrappy journeyman that predominate the rolls in major league baseball. No all-time sensation, he was consistently competent, just missing a perfect game in his rookie season with the Pirates and evolving into a late-career reliever, saving 17 games for the Expos in 1980. (He was also inducted into the Montreal Expo’s Hall of Fame in 1998, a Pyrrhic achievement if there ever was one.))

Woodie Fryman. Who knows? Without that name he may not have been destined to stand tall in the midday sun, leaning into a batter after a cursory glance at his catcher’s sign, a king of the hill toiling under the unwavering banner of America’s once greatest national pastime. Maybe he would’ve wound up being the guy unlocking the corner gas station doors at the break of dawn in Ewing, or traveling the backroads of the deep South trying to sell vacuum cleaners or household cleaning supplies, or possibly somehow uprooting himself to settle in as insurance man in a dull gray suit in Hartford, CT.

Maybe. But stop, and imagine that name, emblazoned on a Topps baseball card, with his everyman visage smiling from underneath one of his six specially designed home team caps, and you have to know that he found his proper calling, struggling through another tight spot late in the game, taking a deep breath and hurling that round bit of rawhide over the plate, willing himself a strike or a batter out, the crowd urging “C’mon Woodie,” or “ For Christ’s sake Fryman, get this bum out,” the right guy with the perfect name in a place that could never be righter.

Oscarmania 2011

2011-02-28T01:41:00.004-05:00

Cute-But-No-Cigar Award--Opening Hathaway/Franco/Baldwin/Inception Footage

Self-Aware Banter Award—Co-hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway

Young Gun Becomes Elder Spokesman Overnight Award--Tom Hanks

Oscar Night Turn of a Phrase Award Part 1--Kirk Douglas: “When I was making pictures…”

Spotlight Grabbing /Method Acting Acceptance Speech Award--Melissa Leo

Welcome to Lowell, Ma Award--Melissa Leo’s F-Bomb

Youth Brigade Coupling of the Evening--Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis

Oscar Night Turn of a Phrase Award Part 2--Justin Timberlake: “I’m Banksy.”

Tribute to Warren Beatty & Dustin Hoffman circa Ishtar Award—Josh Brolin & Javier Bardem and their awful-awful white tuxes

Did the Right Thing Award—Power writer Aaron Sorkin invoking screenwriting great Paddy Chayefsky and properly puffing up his director David Fincher

Oscar Night Turn of a Phrase Part 3—Screenwriter David Seidler: “My father always said I’d be a late bloomer.”

Unexpected Pitchman of the Night Award—Christian Bale for dickyeklund.com

Possible Sign of the Apocalypse Part 1--Trent Reznor wins an Oscar

Best Aside of the Evening Award—The Sound Mixing Award winner commenting that his stellar crew was “Union, of course.”

Be Still My Heart Award—Scarlett Johansson

The Christopher Nolan Drumbeat Continues Award—Best Art Direction,Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing

Best Special Effect Award- James Franco’s increasingly surreal smile

Swellegant Award- Cate Blanchett

The Future is Thiers Award--Michelle Williams, Jennifer Lawrence, Hallie Steinfeld

The Future is Now Award--Natalie Portman

Classy Gal Award—Hilary Swank

Perpetual Bon Vivant Award—Robert Downey Jr.

Best Eyebrow Action Award—James Franco

The Prez Sez Award-- “As Time Goes By” named best movie song by noted cinephile Barack Obama

Oscar Night Turn of a Phrase Award--Invisible Man Kevin Spacey: “I’m George Clooney.”

Good Concept, Ineffectual Delivery Award—The ongoing Oscar history tidbits

Whatever happened to Jennifer Hudson? Hello Jennifer Hudson.

Not Too Funny Award—James Franco in drag

Not Really Funny Award—Russell Brand & Helen Mirren’s translation schtick

Semi-Funny Award- Billy Crystal

Semi-Funnier Award-The Ghost of Bob Hope

Mr. Laconic Award--Jeff Bridges

Actually Funny Award--Sandra Bullock

Funniest Guy of the Night Award-Randy Newman

No Thanks for the Memories Award: To Celine Dion for effectively wringing away the grand memories of the likes of Tony Curtis, Patricia Neal, Pete Postlewhite, Jill Clayburgh, Blake Edwards, Lynn Redgrave, Robert Culp, Arthur Penn, and Dennis Hopper, while simultaneously warbling the one and only Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile”.

Sign of the Apocalypse Part 2- Instant television juxtapostion from the alien-like Celine Dion to the heavenly Lena Horne

Warrior Goddess Award: Kathryn Bigelow

My Lips Are Redder Than Her Lips Award: James Franco

Absolutely Coolest Collection of Peeps on Stage Simultaneously Award: Kevin Brownlow, Francis Ford Coppola and Eli Wallach

King of Shrugs Award--James Franco

Oscar Night Turn of a Phrase Award Part 4 –Colin Firth: “I have a feeling my career just peaked.”

Cheesy but Cool Award—Blink-of-an-eye PS 21 kiddie chorus finale with Oscar winners surrounding them

I am the Mailman, Koo Koo Kachoo--James Franco

(My Oscar pick 'em score? A not so great 17 out of 24.)

I Ain't Talking About Oscarmayer

2011-02-23T19:48:00.008-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the Feburary issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

Despite the steady proliferation of Award’s show, despite the ongoing barrage of awardees, festival winners, on-line accolade bearers, despite the indisputable presence of The Grammy’s, the Tony’s , the Emmy’s, the Golden Globes, the Razzies, even the Eeenie, Meenie, Miney and Moes, none of the competitors hold a candle as a far as prestige, importance, and actual historical significance like the Academy Awards.

The 83rd Annual Oscar show looms in the near distance, and while I should be donning my coolest threads and stepping out to the VMA on Feburary 27th at 6:30 to catch what promises to be an enjoyable and gussied up night of big screen television viewing presented by the Rhode Island International Film Festival group, I’ll be home safely ensconced on the couch, muttering about the pairing of presenters, waiting for the every-so-often potential moment of weirdness or controversy, and feverishly checking off categories on my well-thought-out Oscar ballot. Yes indeed, I’ll be unabashedly basking in my longtime out-of-the-closet inner cinephile nerdiness. Below, a quick overview of the major awards.

Best Picture
127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are Alright
The King’s Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone

Should Win: The Social Network. It’s racked up $95 million at the box office , and among the Best Picture Nominees, only True Grit and Toy Story 3 have earned more, but the former was helmed by the Coens, recent award recipients, and the latter is an animated, and Hollywood just isn’t ready to hand out the Grand Wazoo to an animated feature. Also The Social Network is director David Fincher’s best achievement so far, and it danced its dexterous fingers all over the current zeitgeist.

Will Win: The King’s Speech. Hollywood adores all things British, costumed, and historical, and the this one is right up the alley to the vast majority of over-the-hill Academy voters.
Overlooked: The Ghost Writer, The Town, Carlos.

Best Actor
Javier Bardem-Biutiful
Jeff Bridges-True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg-The Social Network
Colin Firth-The Kings SpeechJ
James Franco-127 Hours

Should Win: Javier Bardeem. A power house piece of acting that only James Franco came close to matching, and the acting side of the Hollywood elite (including Julia Roberts and Sean Penn) has been touting Bardeem’s turn all over town.

Will Win: Colin Firth. See aforementioned Oscar predilection for all things British.
Overlooked: Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine), Mark Wahlberg (The Fighter), Robert Duval (Get Low), Michael Douglas (Solitary Man).

Best Actress
Annette Bening-The Kids Are Alright.
Nicole Kidman-Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence-Winter’s Bone
Natalie Portman-Black Swan
Michelle Williams-Blue Valentine

Should Win: Annette Bening. A tremendously modulated and affecting performance, plus she’s been nominated three times (The Grifters, American Beauty, Being Julia) and came up short.

Will Win: Natalie Portman. A bravura, showy turn from a good citizen that has grown up on camera in front of the assembled, her votes will be multiplied by a huge dose of her colleague’s good will.

Overlooked: Julianne Moore (The Kids Are Alright), Isabelle Huppert (White Material), Lesley Manville (Another Year).

Best Supporting ActorChristian Bale-The Fighter
John Hawkes-Winter’s Bone
Jeremy Renner-The Town
Mark Ruffalo-The Kids Are Alright
Geoffrey Rush-The King’s Speech

Should Win: Christian Bale. The eye-popping, in-yer-face, take-this-roll-and-grab-it, most magnetic role playing of the year, hands down, in the strongest category, as Hawkes and Renner did splendid work, and Ruffalo just about (despite Benning’s excellence) walks away with his picture.

Will Win: Geoffrey Rush. Hate to say it (or think it) but add another one to the win column for The King’s Speech.

Overlooked: Andrew Garfield (The Social Network), Matt Damon (True Grit).

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams-The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter-The King’s Speech
Melissa Leo-The Fighter
Hallee Steinfield-True Grit
Jacki-Weaver-Animal Kingdom

Should Win: Melissa Leo.

Will Win: Melissa Leo. She’s a great journeyperson actress, she’s campaigned unabashedly for the honor, and someone has to break up the momentum generated by The King’s Speech.

Overlooked: Greta Gerwing (Greenberg), Barbara Hershey (Black Swan), Mia Wasikowska (The Kids Are Alright), Ellen Page (Inception).

Director
Darren Aronofsky-Black Swan
David O. Russell-The Fighter
Tom Hooper-The King’s Speech
David Fincher-The Social Network
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen-True Grit

Should Win: David Fincher
Will Win: David Fincher. Its Fincher’s turn, although Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) will be looking closely over his shoulder.

Overlooked: Christopher Nolan (Inception)

Original Screenplay
Mike Leigh-Another Year
Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson; story by keith Dorrington, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson-The Fighter
Christopher Nolan-Inception
Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumber-The Kids Are Alright
David Seidler-The Kings Speech

Should Win: Inception. Writer/director Christopher Nolan non-nomination for Best Director is one of the more blatant snubs in recent Oscar history, there may be enough sympathy or fairness votes to throw him the bone that is Best Original Screenplay.

Will Win: The King’s Speech.

Adapted Screenplay
Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufroy-127 Hours
Aaron Sorkin-The Social NetworkMichael Arndt; story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich-Toy Story 3
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen-True Grit
Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini-Winter’s Bone

Should Win: The Social Network.

Will Win: The Social Network. Hollywood loves it when a premier, big-timey screenwriter like Aaron Sorkin (For a few Good Men, Charlie Wilson’s War )hooks up successfully with a brainy, independent sort of filmmaker like David Fincher (nominated for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, equally as well known for The Fight Club and Se7en ) and they make hay, and heavy duty ticket sales, together.

Greek Coffee

2011-02-21T10:24:00.003-05:00

(Reprinted from PopKrazy)

Leslie Buck passed away, at the ripe old age of 87, during 2010, and inexplicably enough, not that many paid much attention to his passing.

Born Lazlo Buch in Khust, Czechoslovakia (now part of the Ukraine), he was a Holocaust survivor who made good in the US, first starting up a paper-cup manufacturing company in Mt Vernon, New York called Premier Cup. It was during the 1960’s that Buck joined the Sherri Cup Co. of Kensington, Conn, and he created one of the most iconic delineation’s of everyday American life, particularly the East Coast version, the exquisitely appealing Anthora paper coffee cup (Buck couldn’t quite pronounce “amphora” correctly), the design adorning coffees served at diners, deli’s, construction sights, factory yards and food carts, sales which peaked at 30 million pieces a year in the 1990’s.

Buck’s coffee cup became an instantly recognizable American artifact, a fairly improbable accomplishment considering its creator was both an immigrant, and artistically untrained. The cup, with its above-and-below border of Greek urns framing a bill boarded white background with a slightly ornate outline, three images of piping coffee cups and the phrase “WE Are Happy To Serve You” etched in a font meant to resemble ancient Greek, remains a totemistic likeness of the highest order.

Buck’s cup immediately conveyed what it set out to: coffee making and drinking as a daily (or hourly) pleasure of the simplest, yet most satisfying order. The years have made it’s lasting image, particularly when gripped in hand (shaky or firm), sends an immediate vibe of well-being, of order, of universal familiarity, of celebratory and tragic times, when a hot cup of Joe served to cure a multiplicity of ills, a direct on-the-spot cure, as countless eyes drank in its serene depiction of everyday classicism.

Fashioned to be tossed away, these cups always held firm and prodded the user back to solid ground (with grounds) and an inherent sense of lean functionality, freezing the moment, typically punctuated by the cups drainage and disposal. (There ain’t nothing more Zen than the exquisitely dream-like state one enters upon completing the purchase, lifting the thin yet perfectly fitted plastic cover, and peering into the perfectly quantified portion of liquid gold before focusing on the task at hand—the first sip translating into direct, immediate sustenance.)

In John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (a pro-forma college text in my higher education days), he discusses some of the effects of what he calls the “publicity image”:

“We are no so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact. A person may notice a particular image or piece of information because it corresponds to some particular interest he has. But we accept the whole the total system of publicity images as we accept an element of climate…Yet despite this, one has the impression that publicity images are continually passing us, like express trains on their way to some distant terminus. We are static; they are dynamic…”

The Anthora cup is a bonafide artifact, a pop cult object d art, an image and form fused to analogous contents. It was, and remains a simple, pure design worthy of its own Warholization, and if it was framed square in front of a glossy black background in a Soho gallery it would be dissected and discussed with heady terms and suggestions that it directly symbolized both desire and consumption.

Perhaps the vagaries of time will eventually erode the power of this seemingly pedestrian image--Solo Cup, Co out of Illinois, who took over Sherri, only makes the originals upon receiving a special order--but you can be sure the Leslie Buck’s terrific creation will never truly be replaced.

The mental stirrings evoked by it’s pure, straightforward imagery, as one’s hands are warmed by the brimming hot coffee temporarily housed within the container, conjure the type of internal shivers caused by yet another viewing of Citizen Kane’s cinematic perfection, yet another listening of Sinatra’s sonorous emotionalism, yet another glance at one of Edward Hopper’s twilight tableau’s, all of them simple and transcendent, eternally evocative, with Buck’s Anthora cup potentially remembered as among the most unique blendings of form and function, of artful commerce, to ever literally hit the mean streets of America

Bad is Good, Awful Even Better

2011-02-13T13:19:00.004-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the Feburary issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

To many of those of us who follow the wonderfully weird world of commercial cinema there is nothing quite as fascinating as a movie train-wreck or an outright film bomb, that shaggy dog species of pure cinematic failure on either the artistic or commercial plain ---or in the best/worst case scenario, both. Of course, film flops provide a lot of heightened film nitcrit rhetoric, and often an equal amount of finger-pointing and ha-ha fodder for a variety of media types and the general public, although they can be pure talk-talk nirvana for your run-of-the-mill barstool film buff (and I am definitely looking in the mirror as I utter that).

Thus, I bow my head with a combo of deep and overwhelming envy and admiration towards Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club (the sister publication to The Onion) who published one of the more entertaining and erudite movie books of 2010, My Year of Flops (264 pp. Scribner. Paper, $15)), an extremely humorous but strangely respectful small tome devoted to being a largely effervescent look into film flops both big and small, both heralded and obscure, both at the box office and laid out as targets at the movie reviewer’s collective shooting range.

Even the casual filmgoer has some knowledge about big-time movie floparamas, particularly in this era when a film’s weekly intake of cashola gets examined on the pages of USA Today and on the nightly TV entertainment wrap-ups. Any moviegoer with a modicum of knowledge outta be to able to come up with a quick list of infamously failed flicks, from Cleopatra to Gigli, from Paint Your Wagon to Heaven’s Gate, from Ishtar to Waterworld (all of which Rabin examines). Flops are yet another way to peer into the constant push-and-pull between art and commerce that is omnipresent (and often vastly under evaluated) when interpolating the art and craft of moviemaking. What makes an exceptional filmmaker go so strangely astray? How can so many dedicated and truly knowledgeable artisans contribute their earnest and hard-earned efforts to a project that seems so spectacularly stupid? Why green light such obvious crapola? Does more popcorn get consumed during the screening of yet another Hollywood misfire rather than that dripping-with-sincerity offering playing down at the near empty boutique art theater?

Rabin doesn’t have the answers, but he delves into the good, the bad, and the very, very weird without adopting a hipster pose, and with an eyes-wide-open enthusiasm that makes for some trenchant and amusing reading. Calling each movie reexamination a Case File, he positions himself as a cinematic sleuth with puppy dog eagerness, attempting to place each failure in one of the following categories: Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success. (Or in once case, “a semisecret fiascopiece.”) Thankfully, particularly with such a potentially ripe subject, Rabin can be legitimately funny without being overtly snarky, as in his attempt to explain the way-out acting turns in the final chapter’s of acting great Marlon Brando’s onscreen career: “…sometime in the mid-70’s, Marlon Brando began taking marching orders from The Great Gazoo, the tiny effeminate green alien only Fred Flinstone could see.”

The book’s subtitle is “One man’s Journey Deep Into the Heart of Cinematic Failure”, allowing the author to utilize his cinematic detection talents to equally scrutinize such diverse degrees of badness as Inexplicable Directorial Lead Ballons ( Robert Altmam’s O.C. And Stiggs, Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown, Preston Sturges’ The Great Moment, and Paul Mazursky’s Scenes From a Mall), Truly Execrable Efforts (Freddy Got Fingered, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, and The Love Guru), or more Fascinating Failures ( the 1962 and 1997 versions of Lolita, The Rocketeer, or the truly gonzo Tough Guys Don’t Dance).

Rabin can indeed be cutting (on Sgt Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band: “ But Stigwood’s film reduces the Beatles diverse, literate humor to history’s dumbest variety-show skit. …It ransacks vaudeville and silent film for its hokey jokes, grossly exaggerated performances, and groaning stupidity, but adds disco flourishes and special effects that wouldn’t look out of place in a Rudy Ray Moore movie.”), but his lack of film snobbery and general authorial high spirits make it all palatable, as do the constant stream of descriptive bon mots and eye-winking one-liners. (The book’s appendix, a scene by scene dissection of Waterworld, is something of a comic tour de force.)

Critic and film historian David Thompson once called Heaven’s Gate “a wounded monster”, and Rabin is bright and blithe enough to place it and it’s fellow monstrosities into a cage with plenty of water and food, and, yup, popcorn. After all, the scary monsters of commercial cinema ought to be watched and enjoyed as much as the holy beasts that we spend so much time endlessly analyzing, handing out awards to, or compiling all-time lists about. My Year of Flops, may not be a highly illuminating, sturdily academic study probing directly into the heart of film flop darkness, but it is an exceptionally witty read and an undeniably cool concept.

Style and Substance: Aronofsky and Russell

2011-01-09T14:10:00.004-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the January issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

This relatively short space won’t quite allow me to do justice to two late season releases, both already appearing on a majority of film nitcrit’s top ten lists and also garnering various nominations by the great spate of end-of-the year awarding bodies. Both films, Black Swan and The Fighter, while quite different in tone and execution, share one common element: They are helmed by on-the-rise directors with considerable talents, who both boast relatively small but sharp and intriguing bodies of work.

Darren Aronofsky, the director of Black Swan, made his initial splash with the much praised Pi in 1998, followed up by the vivid Requiem for a Dream (’00), the admirably grand failure that was The Fountain (’06) and then his popular comeback effort The Wrestler (’08). He has become an assured stylist, and Black Swan is swaggering with style, and yet another of Aronofsky’s patented tales of despair and self-destruction, despite the fact that it is set in the seeming delicate world of ballet.

David O Russell initially made a name for himself with the idiosyncratic Spanking the Monkey in 1994, with his follow-up the low-key and equally quirky Flirting with Disaster (’96), then the superb Three Kings (’99) and the overtly droll and sadly unseen I Heart Huckabees (’04). While The Fighter is ostensibly a boxing film, it actually can rest quite assuredly on the shelf with Russell’s prior self-puncturing character studies, and it is indeed crafted with a potent mix of directorial dexterity and razor sharp acting.

The acting in Black Swan is commendable too, particularly the full goose-looney central performance of Natalie Portman (easily her best screen work so far, which is truly saying something), the type of acting turn that brings on both Oscar nominations and also a fury of hipster hating. Accused by some cinephile’s of pandering with the success of The Wrestler, Aronofsky is back in more rarified territory here, and the film is peppered with references to the greatest ballet film of all, The Red Shoes, but also to another memorable movie made by the same director Michael Powell, Black Narcissus, and it also unabashedly alludes to both the high brow psychological frisson of Roman Polanski and the pulpy machinations of Brian DePalma. A weird and potent mix. Barbara Hershey registers strongly as a very smothering stage mother, while Mila Kunis is something of a revelation as a fellow ballerina who is hard to distinguish as friend or foe.

Aronofsky, working with his regular cinematographer Matthew Libatque, follows Portman around with a highly affecting stalking camera, a camera that also dances and pirouettes with a distinctive fluidity. Black Swan starts out as a classic glimpse into a particular arena of the arts, a movie ostensibly about commitment and artistic passion, but it slowly evolves into a nightmarish tour de force, cheekily transforming from a god’s eye view of a dancer’s intensity and grace to a Grand Guignol probe into the psychology of repression. It’s a visceral ride and a hallucinatory one, accented by dozens of subliminal directorial touches and a strange, just this side of supernatural, suggestion of doubling and doppelgangers: an art film that is streaked with blood, passion, and an ever mounting touch of delirium.

On the other hand The Fighter, marketed and understandably categorized as a another entry in the age old boxing film sweepstakes (it would be pure redundancy to go through the list of stellar Hollywood boxing movies capped by the acknowledged masterpiece, Raging Bull), is one of those genre excursions that is made better by most of what takes place outside the ring. It can be linked directly to another first class 2010 movie, Ben Affleck’s The Town, as another study of a certain type of peculiarly Massachusetts provincialism. The movie depicts that true tales of boxing half brothers Dickie Eklund (Christian Bale) and Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), their steel-eyed (and willed) Irish-American mother/manager (Melissa Leo), and Mickey’s townie-with-some-smarts girl pal (Amy Adams), and, perhaps the most important character--the suffocatingly gray, arid, and potentially toxic air of their own personal playground/prison, Lowell, MA.

The Fighter may not quite scale the boxing film tower of greatness, but it is a rousing melodrama with galvanizing performances by all of the abovementioned. Best of all, the movie neatly balances itself between the all-the-way, astoundingly showy depiction of the herky-jerky ball-of-misspent-fire that is crack-addicted Dicky by Bale, and the admirably restrained, astonishingly vanity-less, and largely reactive (but heartfelt) choices of Wahlberg as Micky.

The Fighter works as uproarious glance at the type of familial love that is linked directly to familial dysfunction, it also works as a spritely boxing tale, and it may work best as an exploration of the socio-economic and psychological restraints, burdens and inherent contradictions brought on when one is part of a blue collar, stay-at-home, urban culture. (Really.) The Fighter is wonderfully ambivalent about it all, a movie both crackling and kinetic, yet brushed with deserved pathos. It’s obvious, that David O. Russell, like Darren Aronofsky, is currently working on all cylinders, thus the devout and ever hopeful faithful filmgoer should be already brimming with anticipation over their respective next movie moves.

Have an Existential Christmas (Circa 1965)

2011-01-01T10:24:00.004-05:00

(Reprinted from PopKrazy)

Yessir there’s plenty of Christmas pop and rockers, do-wop-a-doers, and soul twisters. They never stop coming, every year brings more remakes and holiday pastiches and original turns, a few good uns too; the rock and pop Christmas tune never going out of sight or out of style. Had a million different favorites myself, liked ‘em serious, solemn, sexy, soulful, antic, blasphemous, tawny, jazzy, woeful, sarcastic, folkifized, solo Beatle, real Beatle, Beatle-like, corny, powerpoppish, reflective, heartfelt, satirical, rebellious, preachy, old school, trad, subversive, and even sweet.

Right now, today, this December, my current absolute fave rave, the one spinning repeatedly on my internal holiday season turntable, the current Tops of the Christmas Pops is The Sonics 1965 “Santa Claus.” It’s a propulsive and molten stomp all over the still ruddy cheeked Santa archetype, a plaintive holiday yelp with a backbeat (signaling “Farmer John”) where the lead vocalist (with a truly glorious garage rock guttural howl) asks Santa for no more than “a brand new car, a twangy guitar and a cute little honey with lots of money.” The cool daddy holiday surprise is that this early 60’s version of Santa lays the shattering truth on the entitled-mondo- boot-wearing-rebel-with-a-bleat–it’s-always-about-me-shaking-my-hair-budding-protest –kid with a stark indifference, as the dumbfounded singer exclaims in the chorus:

“And he just say nothing,

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing”

Right after the first delivery of the in-yer-face chorus sputters a pluck and warble guitar solo, engulfed in garage rock bravado, with pure torture-the-chicken fidelity, finally roaring its way into some emblematic Christmas fuzz. Who knew? The Sonics are certifiable sonorous Christmastime carolers, not only just one of the very first of the garage rock pioneers. I never really understood the great American northwest, but The Sonics are among those indigenous discoveries that help make think that that portion of this country is downright mysterious, impenetrable, pure left field baby. Like me, on this just passed-over Christmas, the Sonics fiercely just said nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing …in a Merry Christmas kinda way.

It’s Still a Complex World

2010-12-28T13:30:00.003-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the December issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

Twenty years ago Providence was abuzz in the wake of the release of Complex World, a sly home grown satire with a dose of rock and roll set at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, featuring the songs and acting contributed by the likes of Roomful of Blues, NRBQ, and one time kings of the downtown scene, The Young Adults. Co-written and directed by Jim Wolpaw, who had already managed to grab a vaunted Oscar nomination in 1985 for Best Documentary Short Subject for his droll and insightful Keats and His Nightingale: A Blind Date, the movie and its attendant screenings at the Cable Car sent a whole lotta the downcity (a term that truthfully hadn’t been disseminated yet) artists and hipsters into a temporary collective tizzy. The movie was funny and original, and all signs pointed toward eminent national success. It didn’t exactly go down that way, but Wolpaw survived the experience, completing the equally sharp Loaded Gun: Life and Death and Dickson in 2002, and currently ushering out a newly released DVD Complex World, which has long been unavailable. We recently met and talked at Providence’s Nick-a-Nee’s, wherein (only in La Prov) a stranger, overhearing our conversation, promptly began a long and thoroughly unsolicited recititation of one of H.P. Lovecraft’s works.

SD: What prompted the new DVD release?
JW: I lot of people have asked about the movie and it’s availability over the years, a lot of people quite regularly. It was never really available, although copies floating around here and there, over the years I’ve probably bought about a dozen, so I kept thinking about it. With the 20 year anniversary happening it seemed like the right time. Of course, hopefully it will raise a little money too.

SD: Any major changes, scenes deleted, scenes added?
JW: Did you know there were originally two versions? After showing it at in New York it got a good deal of buzz, but no one knew what to do with it. Eventually the US Film festival, which is now Sundance, called us up and they wanted to screen it even though their entry period was closed. Errol Morris was touting it, and the upshot was that we decided to some reediting and we got involved with Jeff Dowd, whose claim to fame at the time was association with The Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple (and who become the model for the Dude in The Big Lebowski) He and I ended up in this long distance 6 month business relationship where he tried to push me more towards making a so-called traditional film and I think that ultimately, the end result was better in a lot of ways. At the same time there were a lot of good scenes in the original version, and it some ways maybe that version is better. Anyways, both versions are on the DVD. There is one more Young Adults song, one more Stanley Matis song, and a scene set at a biker’s birthday party in the parking lot with an exploding birthday cake.

SD: Tell me about the circumstances of the original release.
JW: Well we showed it at the Cable Car, and at one point we got a call from Warner Brothers and we sent them a print, and of course they didn’t know what to do with it. Then John Daley from Hemdale contacted us, and while it was playing at the Cable Car we were negotiating a deal which we signed probably in early 1991. It took about a year and it was released in a dozen major markets, including New York and LA. You know it open it two strong potential markets, Boston and Austin with very little support. If you looked in the papers that day you couldn’t find where it was playing unless you read the reviews, which were generally positive.

SD: If I remember correctly, more than one reviewer likened it to a purposefully crafted so-called “midnight movie.” How did you feel about that?
JW: They called it a cult film, which I can see, but basically anything that is non-traditional gets labeled as a cult film.

SD: How do you think it fits into the rest of your work?
JW: To me it’s something I do, I try to push the limits of what the genre it is, so I think it fits right in, but it also hold’s it own.

SD: What are your current projects?
JW: I just completed one for PBS, basically about the image of George Washington on the dollar bill, an image created by RI’s own Gilbert Stuart. It really centers around the idea that these two were almost exact opposites, Stuart being a something of a wild man and Washington being a man of extreme control; you know the whole idea of these two men in the same room responsible for this iconic image. I am also working on a film about HP Lovecraft, along with Cat Hainfeld, which is kind of a documentary/fantasy. (Incidentally Mark Cutler is helping to score both films.) I am also working on another film about the history of the Ladd Center.

SD: Are you still basking in the glow of your Academy Award nomination? Seriously did that help with your career at all?
JW: It should have, if I had done the normal things I was supposed to have done. I mean it’s helped me raise money but there were also a lot of opportunities I ignored because I just really wanted to do what I wanted to do.

SD: When you look at Complex World now, twenty years down the line, do you think you filmed what you set out to achieve. Do you consider it a successful film?
JW: (Laughing.) WeIl I’m not sure what I set out to do. I have mixed feelings, there are parts of it I find hard to watch, but there are certain things I’m very proud of. I don’t know, I have a very much of a love-hate relationship with it, part of it being that we had these expectations that it was going to break big, and for a while it really looked like it might.

Postcard from the Edge

2010-12-05T18:27:00.003-05:00

Let’s get it right out of the way. As of late I’ve been suffering from strange case of malaise, manifesting itself as a feverishly wicked, temporary case of writer’s block, devoting nearly all of my energy to the always careening trials and tribulations of my real job as a so-called labor leader, letting my blog slip away, and only managing to get the Providence Monthly column I regularly contribute done because there is indeed a deadline and a job at stake.

The day before the holiday I had a reoccurrence of an ongoing medical condition I’ve battling with for over a year and plunged into the all-so-familiar well of sickness. I did my best to man up and get through Thanksgiving, helped along mightily by a perfect group of holiday guests, but my relapse on Friday into Saturday just about put me over the edge. Four days running without shoes, smokes, drinks, or solid food (My kingdom for a piece of cheese!), combined with a totally intermittent sleeping pattern had me actually questioning whether some of the despicable moral choices of my past or the once complete ignorance of my physical well being in the constant pursuit of fun, pleasure and gamesmanship had perhaps come back to haunt me. (Really, me, the guy who used to be so self-justifiably and in-yer-face guilt free.)

The mind plays weird tricks and I was tricked out all weekend, heading into a full blown, ever-deepening, and constantly swirling depression despite the unarguable fact that I have a great wife and a life-sustaining relationship, a good job, strong and lasting friendships, and, in direct contrast to so many Americans barely scraping through the holiday season the unadorned truth is that I am essentially a fat cat middle-class guy who doesn’t even have a dollop of the financial or emotional problems currently commom to the union members I serve; many of them literally poised on the brink of disaster if congress does not get it together to continue the unemployment extension.

Saturday I reached my lowest of lows, unable to make my good friend Mark Cutler’s gig at Nicks-a-Nees (my home away from home, my great good place, my tender bar) where I actually intended to give him give him a sincere holiday hug, an intention I don’t muster up very often. I woke (once again) as some godforsaken hour, enfeebled and infected, and scoured the TV only to find a Ken Burns executive produced series about one of my absolute favorite subjects-The American West- yet I watched through dour eyes, not seeing the examples of American spirit, individualism, and starry-eyed dreaming on display, instead concentrating on the heartbreaks, the broken spirits and disappearing cultures, the heavy foot of US imperialism, and I found myself silently weeping, sad for my woe-is-me self of course, but disheartened by a larger, blacker, feeling of despair and throat-tightening blackness. Dirt sick, poisoned of soul, hopeless in the grayness of the early dawn, I simply let both of my Boston terriers huddle against me, true pals in the disconsolate twilight, and willed myself and my mini-pack back to sleep, sick and damaged in heart, mind and stomach yet stengthened by that wierd unvarnished canine combo of companionship and devotion.

Still, came Sunday morn, cold and clear, the world hadn’t collapsed or imploded, and I at least got it together to bang out the above, and I requested my wife to drive my weakened self so that I might complete one of my most important self-rituals, the morning paper run. Outside the store I saw a proud male townie obliviously strolling through the parking lot in Cranston, RI, sporting shorts and sneakers with no socks pre-eight am with the temperature reading 27 degrees. Ah, a sign of normality I thought, somehow soothed. I went straight back to unwell HQ, where I drank my first cup of tea since childhood. (And it was ginger.)

Quick Cuts

2010-11-08T07:15:00.002-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the November issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

Conviction

Despite the fact that Hilary Swank suddenly seems to have a bunch of naysayers lying in wait of her next big screen portrait as a jut-jawed epitome of almost saintly decency (thus a guaranteed Oscar nominee), she continually manages to turn in affecting, no frills performances. Conviction, from a script by Pamela Gray, is director Tony Goldwyn’s (A Walk on the Moon) brick-by-brick retelling of the real life tale of RI”s own Betty Anne Waters (who, in the interest of full disclosure, I do happen to know) and her 18-year struggle to free her brother Kenny from a wrongful murder charge. Swank plays Waters, eyes forever verging on moistness, blue collar New England accent front and center, unwavering decency emanating from every pore, yet she avoids the off-putting air of self-righteousness and delivers a stellar, if somewhat predictable, turn.

While Goldwyn’s finished product doesn’t pander or over-sentimentalize, it never quite rises above a certain made-for-television movie feel, and not one of those crafted for cable, which usually push into darker corners or poke beneath frayed edges. Part courtroom drama, part hand-on-the-glass prison fare, part minor league Erin Brockovich, Conviction strives so hard to do the story justice and to impart a final sense of man-vs.-the-machine uplift that the movie gets bogged done with an overall vibe of good intentions, making it admirable enough, but not especially insightful or inspiring.

For those who enjoy exceptional casting, or, even better, scene-stealing; the movie abounds with the dynamic players, especially Melissa Leo as a hardnosed cop, Minnie Driver as Betty Anne’s law school BFF, and the always terrific Juliette Lewis as a townie witness. Of course, secret weapon Sam Rockwell as the volatile and cocky Kenny is a superb as ever, but the film’s by-the-numbers conventions never quite allow him or Swank to reach any sustained heights.

Red

Remember the much bandied about inside Hollywood term, the Concept film? Well, there are both Low Concept and High Concept movies, while Red might be categorized as an Old Concept. Based on a graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, it’s a throwback actioneer and spy-vs.-spy fable, lightly comic and generally torpid, centering around a reforming of a team of over-the-hill ex CIA assassins, all, Retired and Extremely Dangerous. (Red, get it?)

It’s thoroughly disposable, late night cable fodder down the road, and probably only memorable for it’s supposedly humorously incongruous coupling of middle agers Mary Louise Parker (46) and Bruce Willis (55) alongside Morgan Freeman (73), John Malkovich (56), Brian Cox (64), Richard Dreyfuss (62), Helen Mirren (65), and, god bless him, old Marty himself, Ernest Borgnine (93). Parker is excruciatingly over-the-top, Malkovich triple hammed-up, Freeman goes through his by rote the eye-twinkling motions, Willis does his deadpan retro thang, and director Robert Schwentke makes sure we all focus on the venerable Helen Mirren teamed with a gun nearly as big as her, because, well, that’s basically the whole concept.

Tony Curtis RIP 1925-2010

1959’s Some Like it Hot is unarguably among the greatest American movie comedies and as such, it is a cornucopia of hilarious plotting, trenchantly funny dialogue, razor sharp direction (from Billy Wilder) and exceptional comic acting. As enduringly hilarious and pin-pointedly funny as Joe E. Brown’s vaudevillian maliciousness’ is, never mind Marilyn Monroe’s breathtaking timing and cartoonish physicality, topped off by Jack Lemmon’s wildly neurotic and neatly comic over-machinations, it is Tony Curtis and his bravura playing of (simultaneously) an on-the-hustle musician, a Cary Grant-like playboy, and an all-knowing been-around-the-block dame (in heels and stockings) who ultimately absconds with the honors of the most magical farceur in this resoundingly humorous big screen farce.

Curtis, (born in the Bronx as Bernie Schwartz) was ever the strange hybrid of 50’s glamour boy, and John Garfield knock-off, with inexplicable connections to both James Dean and Jerry Lewis, and he proved more than adept in urban dramas, costumed sagas, gritty biopics, romantic comedies, and all-out satires. He will deservedly hold a solid place in Hollywood’s all-time firmament, eschewing endurable performances in Houdini (’53)Trapeze (’56), Mister Cory (’57), The Defiant Ones (’58), Spartacus (’60), Operation Petticoat (’59), The Great Imposter (’60), The Outsider (’61), The Great Race (’65), and most particularly, in The Boston Strangler (’68).

Although Curtis was initially noticed for his almost feminized good looks—-e was decidedly ethnic, with strikingly dark, curly hair piled high, full lips, and manicured eyebrows—-was his highly combustible combination of amped-up masculinity, genuine vulnerability and deep-seated naked ambition that played most fiercely on screen. This was ultimately proved when Curtis was cast opposite Burt Lancaster as hustling pree agent Sidney Falco in 1957’s Sweet Smell of Success, resulting in the one Curtis movie role that equals his all-time acting antics in Some Like it Hot.

Halloween Treat

2010-10-31T13:45:00.005-05:00

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009)
by Mark Duhamel

If you want to feel old and young simultaneously, to stand at the gateway of a parallel dimension you never knew existed, to test the limits of your frames-per-second visual tolerance, you should watch this and share with friends. The Japanese seem to accelerate and synthesize our collective pathology into their own, realizing a hyperdrive pop-culture mix-up that tantalizes, repulses, and ultimately redefines what is cool.

This may be the pinnacle of high school hi-jinks hi-def screw gun penetration exploding carotid artery blood spraying-head electro-video magic. Freaks and Geeks multiplied through Glee by way of Welcome Back Kotter on really bad LSD filled with blood spatter physics.

Imagine that you are a Japanese teenage girl with your legs cut off by a vampire and somehow through the genius of your father the vice-principal, your severed legs are mounted to the vertex of your skull where they spin like helicopter blades to propel you through space over the campus.

I'm not kidding, you'll see this and more in this film, and severed limbs reattaching themselves will seem mundane and ordinary compared to other more amazing and blood-spewing-spraying extravaganza images.(On top of it, the audio is pretty amazing.)

I'm serious, I chose this by random association and the inability to resist the iconic title. I may build a genius multimedia traveling horror roadshow around this. Ha ha he he ho ho ho.

Dirty Old Town

2010-10-14T06:58:00.005-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the September issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
by Scott Duhamel

Making the rounds promoting his new movie, The Town, actor-director-co-writer Ben Affleck has repeatedly said that he might not be quite comfortable forging a reputation as a “Boston” filmmaker. Of course, the Massachusetts born and bred Affleck first established his rep by co-writing (with fellow Mass native and acting buddy Matt Damon) the well-received Boston-based Good Will Hunting, and bagging a screenwriting Oscar in the process. As recently as 2007 Affleck, following a string of mostly bad movies and poor acting choices, won across the board kudos for his directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, a movie adaptation of author Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island), the contempo bard of Beantown badness. The Town, set in insular Boston neighborhood known as Charlestown, is a more than solid (and extremely assured) follow-up, and might suggest, contrary to director’s own publicly uttered uncertainties, that Affleck just might be yet another filmmaker whose most resonant work takes place in their native settings, ala Marty Scorsese or Spike Lee or Sidney Lumet’s respective cinematic New Yorks, all in all a particularly ascendant filmmaking level to aspire to.

In Gone Baby Gone, a tight, no-nonsense, gritty thriller, Affleck directed baby brother Casey, but with The Town he’s upped the ante and stepped back in front of the camera too. He plays Doug Macray, a savvy Irish-American tough guy, a supposedly typical townie with a few toes in the straight world, but largely caught up with his crew of professional thugs, all thieves with a heightened sense of code and a pride in their own viscious professionalism. Of course Doug is mirrored by childhood friend, a dyed-in the-wool native and overtly fervent brother-in arms Jimmy Coughlin (Jeremy Remmer), a hard case who has shed himself of any emotional or moral nuances. Doug’s father (Chris Cooper) is doing a lifetime stretch in the penitentiary and his occasional girl (Blake Lively) is both Jim’s sister and a hard living and round heeled fellow townie.

Doug is sharp but conflicted, torn up with both dislike and curiosity for the so-called “toonies” who are slowly gentrifying his stomping grounds, and all shook up about his dueling senses of long held propriety and increasing distaste for his very roots and his hallowed native ground. As the movie progresses Doug’s growing unrest makes him resolve to pull off the proverbial last job with hopes of getting out of Dodge. After being forced to take a bank employee (Rebecca Hall) hostage during a gone- wrong robbery, Doug ups the ante by falling for that same woman (who is simultaneously also a feminine representative of the ever elusive upper middle class), tipping his own sense of moral ambivalence into the danger zone, and imperiling him and his potentially good intentions.

Obviously, Affleck the director makes excellent use of his locations and evokes a solid and affecting sense of local geography, as well as moving the film along with a terse yet implosive pace. His action scenes play out well, lean and mean and subtlety tactile, none of them over amped or wrenched up like most Hollywood actioneers. The Town largely sustains its purposefully tough and neo-realistic mood, although it never attains the grimy melancholy of Gone Baby Gone. Affleck also sharply injects the standard neighborhood crime story tenants with some flavorful verisimilitude, continually punctuated with a lively chorus of barking, yapping, yowling Boston-based verbal gymnastics.

As with so many actors-turned-directors (Eastwood, Redford, Chaplin), Affleck authoritatively guides his fellow actors through some convincing paces, and the overall performance level just about makes up for some of The Town’s weaker edges. Both Chris Cooper and Pete Postlewhite (as one of the local crime lords) straight out walk away with their scenes, and Rebecca Hall managed to do a lot with a little, while Jeremy Remmer (an actor whose recently scorched the screen in The Hurt Locker, and one that moviegoers ought to really set their eyes on) veers into pure white hot Jimmy Cagney territory, as one of those wrong-side-of-town fireplugs whose palatable on screen volatility makes them audience magnets, despite their obvious (and deadly) wrongheadedness. (Only Jon Hamm as the local FBI man hunter seems unable to bring something extra to his archetypical role.)

The Town has obvious echoes to my own favorite modern American film, Marty Scorsese 1972 Mean Streets, but it never scorches the soul or soars into artfulness the way the latter film does. Still, The Town is well played and better executed, and it exhibits an overall directorial keenness, while easily surpassing the often lowered expectations of its particular genre. It’s both credible and watchable, and it hints that Affleck might go back to the mean streets of his beloved state or its capital city, and etch out another tale from the naked city, pure East Coast style.

Here's the Beef

2010-09-12T18:17:00.005-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the September issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

Smack dab, three quarters of the way through the 2010 summer movie season, and the current weekend film openings pose the ongoing quandary of the contempo filmgoer. On one side of the movie-movie box, a little high and towards the center is Eat Pray Love, a boutique chick flick based on the Elisabeth Gilbert memoir and cultural phenomenon, featuring the ever radiant Julia Roberts, a must-see post-30 date movie. Over to the left and just above the center is the much buzzed about Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, an off center comic book movie, translated from a series of spiffy comics created by Bryan Lee O’Malley, starring the anti-macho post-teen bundle of nerdiness Michael Cera, an under-20 date movie-must and potential geek fest. Holding down the foggy bottom, poised a few inches from the odoriferous lower regions is the Sylvester Stallone written and directed actioneer The Expendables, spotlighting ol’ Sly himself, plus a bunch of redoubtable manly men. Alas dear readers, despite your continued faith, this nitcrit took the low road, the one less traveled and more trampled upon.

The Expendables offers not Julia Roberts, but older brother Eric, doing one of his patented lip-licking villainous turns, and that should be enough to convey to any wizened film buff what the texture and content of this big screen vehicle will be. Director Stallone has carved himself up a true Meat Movie, of the band-of-outsiders on a mission variety, one that is not concerned with incisive plotting, political messaging, overall meaningfulness, or potentially furthering the iconography of the action film. By the same token don’t expect cutting edge visuals, computer generated imagery, or dizzying editing technique. The Expendables is about body count, bulbous biceps, bashing fists, sharpened knifes, phallic guns, and more body count, all of them in the service of a stolid flow of lumbering mayhem, all of it peppered further by a full corral of on screen meaty men tossing out meaty asides, meaty grimaces, meaty glances, topped off by meaty battle whoops and war cry’s, and a whole lot (unintended?) homoerotic subtext.

Despite the above reference, Stallone the Meat King’s directorial style does not seem particularly influenced by French visionary Jean-Luc Godard, nor action masters like Robert Aldrich (whose The Dirty Dozen remains a men-on-a-mission film template) or Sam Peckinpah (whose The Wild Bunch remains a men-on-a-mission film classic). Instead, this stubbornly old school specimen seems to follow the lead of a journeyman talent like former Stallone main man George Cosmatos , the traffic director behind Cobra or First Blood: Rambo II. The movie also liberally borrows from the not-so-storied playbook of the Cannon films of the 80’s, those grainy, bone-crackling, mug-fests like Missing in Action, Bloodsport, Death Wish II, or Enter the Ninja. Like those fondly recalled destroy-everything-that-moves beef fests, Stallone erects his potboiler with the purposefully throwback tools of hammer, nails, and glue, so much so that the movie ought to contain a warning that none of the legion of stunt men employed were injured in the making, and the explosives budget was somewhere below the cost of those utilized at the Battle of the Bulge.

Sly the Meat King deserves some credit, since his recent efforts, which included a revisited Rocky movie in 2006 and another run at a Rambo romp in 2008, seem to acknowledge that, ala Clint Eastwood, he’s at least contemplating his the inherent ridiculousness of continuing to make a mark as a meaty action guy, and maybe (possibly) sticking a popcult fork into action star ageism. The Expendables meta-nudge (who would have thought one could evoke both Godard and meta-anything when it comes not-always-sly Sly) comes directly from its casting. Glazed ham Eric Roberts gets wrestling kingpin Steve Austen as a fellow baddie, while Stallone’s on-screen dream team consists of his own coadjutant, named Christmas ( Brit beefster Jason Statham), plus other beef patties like Ying Yang (chop- sockey NNW superstar Jet Li), Hale Ceasar (NFL bruiser Terry Crews), Toll Road(UFC brawler Randy Couture) and Gunner (double-wink now, ex-enemy of all things Balboa, Dolph Lundgren). (C’mon, what kinda indie or mumblecore outing is gonna give you character names like that?) Adding a further element of braised beef are the brief appearances of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger), in a meeting-of-the-meaty-minds between those two action lions and the Meat King himself. (Remember, when dealing with this particular style and model of actioneer, women---in this case Charisma Carpenter and Giselle Itie—never get to register much beyond the bloody blades or the explosion around the next corner, and filmmaker Stallone makes sure to stick to those unwritten guidelines.)

If the vapors emanating from that steamy meat pie aren’t intoxicating enough there is the added sprinkling of wild but spicy game that is Mickey Rourke, weirdly over the top as always. Mickey’s hair (and Mickey’s sartorial choices must always been rolled into his performance choices) is striped boldly black-and-white, plus he smokes a long stemmed pipe, and while never allowed to participate in the action two-step, he gets to portentously muse on, basically expounding a whole cracked meat-cutting philosophy, while director Sly cuts to actor Sly looking on ever-so-sagely. (When’s the last time the newest European art house buzz movie offered anything like that?)

Sly the actor is more leaden than ever, and my lower lip hurt by the end of the movie, as I was sympathetically moving it, somehow hoping that maybe his would move occasionally too. You have to figure that maybe that’s all part of Sly the Meat King’s bigger plan, allowing all of the other meat team member’s group acting to rise at least to his lowered levels. The Expendables is one of those infrequent good bad movies, reaching its own limited expectations, and carving out a notch in the testosterone Hall of Shame. Although the burning question remains—were Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal and (especially) Jean-Claude Van Damme all too busy fondling their royalties to participate?

In Dreams

2010-08-11T19:26:00.003-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the February issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

While Inception ought to easily lay claim as the smartest, sharpest, most scintillating blockbuster entry of Popcorn Summer 2010, and further burnish director/writer Christopher Nolan’s growing reputation as the thinking cinephile’s Stevie “Wonder” Spielberg, it doesn’t quite generate the impact that would mark the film as an all-timer, although it is a crackling, mind-bending, whole-lotta-fun mainstream effort.

Inception is essentially a caper film, yet, the unfolding and depiction of the heist itself is something altogether different---the movie largely takes place in a series of dreamscapes, the elusive theft that the plot swirls around being a dream itself, sort of. Nolan, the rare director that actually melds his visual route into his thematic map proves himself an exemplary amusement park designer, and the movie’s pacing and bravura editing make it go by in a flash, despite its length.

Nolan’s methods and directorial preoccupations are easily evident in his praiseworthy catalogue, with all of his films, despite setting or time period, revolving around a morally compromised and obsessive male protagonist awash in a chaotic and often brutal society, pushing ever onward while wrapping himself deeper into his odyssey, plagued by doubt and a heightened past, forced to think quick and act quicker, with the end result—consistently reached through a Herculean utilization of instinct, memory, and improvisatory skills—a weirdly ambiguous goal-reaching. Nolan is a truly cerebral director of movie action, as the acute exposition and vividly memorable landscapes of Memento (‘00), Insomnia (‘02), Batman Begins (’05), The Prestige (’06), and The Dark Knight (’08) have already proven.

Caper films always depict a team of types brought together for the high risk job, and although Inception’s centers around breaking into an individual’s unconscious rather than the usual high security MacGuffin, a specialized squad still lines up. Brought together by Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio),an edgy, psychological tight-rope walker who needs to the job in order to be reunited with his kids, this dream team consists of a newbie architectural student (Ellen Page), a stiff-lipped right hand man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a chemist (Dileep Rao), and all-around warrior with special skills as a “forger” (Thomas Hardy). Of course, there is also a mark, the son of a dying energy czar (Cillian Murphy), and a businessman client (Ken Watanabe) who insists on going along for the ride. Hovering in and above it all is the great love and late wife (Marion Cotillard) of Cobb, still hauntingly real in the world of dreams. The cast is first rate, and Nolan never allows them to get lost in the pure wallop of his ongoing visual and narrative joy ride, while DiCaprio manages to get some well-earned mileage out of a part that is weirdly close to his last bit of role-playing, as the emotionally tortured cop in last year’s Shutter Island.

Although the movie abounds in the type of pseudo-scientific speak that was the bellwether of multiple cheesy sci-fi movies, the players chomp into the expositional dialogue like actors knifing through the shards of pulp fiction interaction. Page, who gets saddled with the familiar position of the character put there to anchor the potentially bewildered audience, should be acknowledged for her ironic aplomb. No matter what grade Z line reading she has to deliver, she somehow remains above the obviousness, and her thankless role gains in stature as the movie burrows further down its own wormhole.

Nolan plays it all with a technical fluidity that refrains from the typical in-yer-face make-up of the vast majority of big budget genre pictures. He also wears his potent influences on his conjurer’s sleeve: weaving together elements of 2001, Blade Runner, Bond movies, maybe even (gulp) The Matrix, also marking his big screen territory with the various master scents of MC Escher, Freud and Sir Alfred Hitchcock. Inception is a visceral experience, with Nolan attempting and pulling off some thrilling circus tricks with his loopy dream-within-dreams narrative, and hair-raising editing, ultimately generating some uncanny and wondrous imagery while neatly poking away at the audiences’ sensory perceptions.

Give Nolan credit, he does try to add some psychological heft to his film with DiCaprio’s haunted past bleeding into every corner of the plot, but the movie just doesn’t quite succeed as a full-bellied emotional churner. Despite his obvious throwback talents, Nolan is not a terribly self-conscious filmmaker, so the partial disconnect doesn’t ever drag the movie down, although its overall impact is diminished by the lack of truly resounding inner plot. In the long run, Inception, despite it’s rumblings of emotional character depth, is essentially a impeccably plotted tumble through a movie funhouse, with perhaps a bit too much of juiced-up bang-bang shoot-em-ups.

Sure Inception might be ultimately disappointing, as it hints towards greatness but finally falls short, yet it’s a barnburner of a big budget summer fare, and it spins and tilts with splendid acuity. While it may lack a truly beating heart, the movie is a delightful head trip, a brainy thrill ride, and a technical tour de force. That’s hard to complain about, and much than a large portion of Hollywood fare usually has to offer.

Frank Booth Was Kurt Cobain's Real Grandpappy

2010-07-20T19:34:00.004-05:00

(Reprinted from PopKrazy)

RIP Dennis Hopper, 1936-2010
(This piece originally appeared in Providence Monthly’s July edition, albeit in an altered, shortened form.)

In the long, ever strange history of Hollywood, Dennis Hopper shall stand fast as one of the most vivid flesh-and-blood parameters of an American industry turned inside out and eventually splintered and rendered all too soporific. Born in Dodge City, Kansas he was a pure-bred farm boy whose family eventually moved to San Diego in the late 1940s. He apprenticed at that city’s well-known Old Globe Theatre and became a very young contract player at Warner Brothers, building a budding career until a now apocryphal 1958 showdown with one of the then movie industry’s most macho despots, director Henry Hathaway, wherein the rebellious and cocksure young actor refused to give into Hathaway’s direction and faced him off in a widely viewed and reported public showdown that supposedly went on for some 80 takes, which resulted in a newfound status as a Tinseltown pariah.

Hopper quickly skipped off to New York City and became yet another charismatic Lee Strasberg acting apostle and an Actor’s Studio warrior and jumped from the stage into the burgeoning television dramatic scene, making over a 100 TV appearances. Reputation newly enhanced, he went west coast again, tilting sideways into the disintegrating studio system (even reworking with Hathaway) before inexplicably elbowing his way to the top of the pops by writing, directing and starring in the game changer that was Easy Rider in 1969. Drugs and bloated egomania dropped him to his hippie knees again after the colossal failure of his personal freak flag project The Last Movie in 1971, only to go further drug crazy and wander off into other artistic pursuits before coming back again under the wide shoulders of movie brat generalissimo Francis Coppola in 1979’s Apocalypse Now. A final phase, the ultra-professional actor-for-hire, crowned his grandly strange career trip.

Hopper was always something more than just big screen player, he was and shall remain a dual headed symbol of the both new Hollywood and an in-the-flesh poltergeist of the lost glamour of Hollywood Studio system, bridging the gap from florid and burnished 50’s melodrama (co-starring and rubbing in the glowing-but-mutated pixie dust of James Dean in both 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause and 1956’s Giant), through the emerging American new wave (the sensational mix of drive-in flick and socio-political parable with Easy Rider) to Dream Factory paradise lost (his directorial and personal shenanigans on The Last Movie would become a part of gonzo Hollywood lore), , through the unexpected emergence of the second wave of American independent/commercial filmmaking (David Lynch’s modern day classic, 1986’s Blue Velvet).

Hopper was a writer, photographer, actor, producer, director, performance artist, demi-monde celebrity, and an unending and totally willful repository of personal and professional chaos, plus one of the more memorable post-beat poets of self-immolation. Somehow he endured it all as an indestructible man with an equally indestructible career. Hopper easily stood out in his early films, with his deep boned Midwestern hipster looks belying the fact that even in his roles as hoods, misunderstood youth, or uneasily turbulent cowpokes, he seemed to dig deeper than the better looking hunks of meat surrounding him, his eyes flashing with intensity while he alternated a jaundiced sneer and a dreamy giggle. He transitioned into an alternative culture superstar while simultaneously drowning himself in irony and riches, recreated himself as one of the ultimate pop cultural guilty pleasures as the sharpest and most nuanced exemplars of movie-movie sociopaths (his lanky forehead head and sloped nose just about gleaming with the remnants of his own real life back-story), and lassoed it all into being gracefully acknowledged as one of most consistently solid character actors of all, and maybe even the truest pop cult granddaddy to such lost soul savants as Kurt Cobain. Bad movie, weird movie, great movie, I could never take my eyes off Hopper, and I always watched him both as explorative actor and living, breathing cultural zeitgeist.

A Hopper Baker’s Dozen

1.Blue Velvet. (1986) Frank Booth salivating with gusto for Pabst Blue Ribbon has to be among the most electrifying visual and aural surreal moments in mainstream Hollywood history, and that’s just a toe in the wondrously murky waters.

2.Easy Rider. (1969) Youthful wannabes and tripping hippies all wished they looked and acted like Peter Fonda’s Wyatt/ Captain America, but the truth of the matter was that, in most neighborhoods, there was a whole lot more of Hopper’s stringy-haired, fast-talking stoner Billy present and accounted for.

3.Hoosiers. (1986) As about an honest and thoroughly ingrained (and emotionally palatable) portrait of alcoholism and redemption, Hopper’s hunched-over character, Shooter, never trots down hokey lane, even if the movie points there.

4.Out of the Blue. (1980) Incendiary and harrowing, a neglected cult classic, a movie propelled by Hopper’s own fierce and unrelenting directorial vision.

5.True Romance. (1993) The stop-the-movie tête-à-tête, scripted by Quentin Tarantino, between Christopher Walken and Hopper is a cinephile’s parlor game wet dream, and it alone probably puts the pair in such stellar company as Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook, Jr., Robert Ryan, Warren Oates and any other stellar character mug you might wanna bring to the table.

6.Rebel Without a Cause (1955)/Giant (1956) Lurking around the periphery as Goon in the former, hitting lead off between the way-out line-up of Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson and skyrocketing Jimmy Dean in Giant, Hopper’s eyes alone signify as pure 1950’s burnished Technicolor firmament.

7.Rumble Fish. (1983) As the whiskey-soaked Dad at crispy center of the mumbling triumvirate of Mickey Rourke, Matt Dillon and himself, everything about this vastly under praised Coppola toss-off tour de force is simply too cool to be true, particularly the interaction between the three aforementioned lost soul mumblers.

8.Apocalypse Now.(1979)There simply couldn’t be anyone else but Hopper as the mixed-up, jumbled-up, jangled-around, imperiously incoherent photojournalist/ interpreter of both Brando’s Kurtz and the cinematic version of our country’s descent into Vietnam and the ever pulsing heart of darkness that accompanied it.

9.Kid Blue. (1973) An off center, rambling minimalist western ode that teams Hopper’s barely-in-gear magnetism with Warren Oates’s wounded eyes, resulting in a filmic slow burn that shoots right past the movie’s limitations.

10.River’s Edge. (1986) As Feck, the pied-piper of Nowheresville in post mall suburbia, Hopper is chilling and precise, and he singlehandedly lifts the younger and inexperienced cast into a level that most never reached again.

11. An American Friend (1977). A cinematic treat, combining the talents of an on-his-game Wim Wenders, a perfectly cast Bruno Ganz, the blueprint of Patricia Highsmith’s novel, and Hopper as Tom Ripley, the ultimate mercurial, two-sided ugly American.

2010-07-20T12:44:00.002-05:00

Press Release: Announcing the first annual shaking like a mountain 2010 Fiction Open
Judge: Janice Eidus

Janice Eidus is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Her short fiction has won two O.Henry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and a Redbook Prize. Her latest novel, The War of the Rosens, won a 2008, Independent Publishers Award in Religion, and was nominated for the prestigious Sophie Brody Award. Her new novel, The Last Jewish Virgin, will be published in October, 2010.

First prize: $350 Second prize: $100 Third prize: $50

The three prizewinners will be published in shaking like a mountain and have their work submitted by shaking editors to the Best of the Web and Best of Net anthologies
Deadline: September 15, 2010. Results will be announced at the website October 15, 2010, and the winners will be published before the end of 2010

Complete Contest Guidelines:
-We accept all genres of literary fiction as long as stories are related to the theme of music.
-Please be sure to include your name, address and phone number in a cover letter with your submission. Do not put your name, address, or phone number on the story itself.
-Entries must be: unpublished; 4000 words or less; and accompanied by a $10 entry fee per story.
-We welcome multiple entries ($10/story) and entries from outside the U.S. Entrants retain all rights to their stories.
-Once a story is submitted, we cannot accept an updated draft. (However, an entrant is welcome to submit an updated draft as a new entry.)
-Entry fees will not be returned or adjusted.
-Entries must be complete by 11:59 P.M. PDT on September 15, 2010.

Lost In the (new) Hood

2010-07-04T11:50:00.004-05:00

(Reprinted from PopKrazy)

It’s easy to see why the legend of Robin Hood lives on and on as an essential big screen vehicle, as it allows for pungent flourishes of pageantry, romance, violence, and the eternally appealing defense of the common man, and it’s rebel-with-a-cause (plus a bow and arrow) central figure must be as appealing to a big name actor as it might be intoxicating to his director to provide said actor with the aforementioned ornamentations.

It’s equally easy to understand why long time collaborators Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott (American Gangster, A Good Year, Body of Lies, and, most pertinent to this outing, Gladiator) would leap at the undertaking of revisiting the Robin Hood mythology. Crowe has the unarguable presence for such a spotlight role, and Scott has both the pedigree and the mentality to deliver his star to some greater cinematic glories. Their new film, Robin Hood, is muscular and sinewy, impeccably burnished and floridly filmed, totally flowing with populist ideology. Crowe stands erect throughout, emanating his particular brawny brand of minimalism, yet the movie seems devoid of passion or warmth and absolutely lacks any sense of the dashing tomfoolery that usually part and parcel of the landscape. It’s a ponderously gloomy origins tale, and after two and a half bombastic hours you’ll be zapped of both interest and energy.

Scott, a certified Hack Auteur, has an undeniably dexterous touch with action set pieces, and he delivers those goods as only he can, orchestrating half-dozen show-and-tells of 12th century warfare brutality, with intermittent valorous speeches from the far too taciturn Crowe. The film’s busy canvas also follows the travails of a moat full of pointed characters, including a fiery Cate Blanchett as a Marian with no trace of romantic chemistry with Crowe’s Robin, the ever felicitous Mark Strong as a conniving French villain, and solid types like Mark Addy, William Hurt, and Max von Sydow and the always interesting Danny Huston doing their bits ably.

Through the years the basic Robin Hood socio-political terrain has remained an audience-pleaser, although this Robin Hood doesn’t steal from the rich and give to the pour, instead preferring to penetrate multiple chain mail armaments in the name of fighting the holy battle against taxation without representation, bold flirting with Tea Party version of egalitarianism.

In the long run, every film Robin Hood, whether it be Douglas Fairbanks, Bugs Bunny, Frank Sinatra, Sean Connery, Kevin Costner or Russell Crowe, has be unjust compared to the indomitable Errol Flynn from Michael Curtiz’s 1938 Technicolor wonder The Adventures of Robin Hood. Yet another man -of -the- people, thoroughly illuminated by the Hollywood dream factory in its prime, Flynn’s Robin set unbeatable standards for heroic magnetism, rollicking manliness, eye-winking plumery, all the while providing he and the audience with resolute fun and deep-boned cinematic gratification that the well meaning but oh-so-ponderous team of Crowe and Scott simply can’t touch, however austerely they borough into the (new) Hood.

The Curtiz (old) Hood movie is eye candy of the highest order, a glistening helping of Hollywood classicism is unadulterated pleasure viewing. The movie won three deserved Oscars (Art Direction, Editing, Score) and it is ably burnished by the always capable Michael Curtiz, a perfectly paced and sumptuously filmed adventure tale, with the perfect coupling of Errol Flynn (effortlessly dashing) and Olivia de Havilland (rapturously beautiful), sprinkled with a typically first class supporting cast (Alan Hale, Claude Rains, Ian Hunter) and a devilishly villainous Basil Rathbone. The (new) Hood is passionless and resolutely uninspiring, a costumed dirge for contempo audiences largely unwilling or unready to be truly transported into a blissful state of artful imagination. The (old) Hood is absolute dream machine opium, once embraced by a viewing public unfettered by anything other than resolute professionalism and into-the-vein entertainment values.

How To Say Little, But Remain Convincing

2010-06-10T14:34:00.003-05:00

If you search hard enough and do your pop cult due diligence, you will discover one sharp, early AM, talking head film nitcrit, appearing in a semi-regular basis on Fox's The Rhode Show. I kid you not, I think this guy could be a comer...

Be Kind Rewind

2010-05-28T07:22:00.005-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the February issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Rewind # 1: Iron Man 2 is most obviously a sequel, the more full-bodied follow-up to the streamlined Marvel Comic actioneer that took audiences by storm in 2008, an entertainingly schizoid movie that works hard to deliver some more snack, crackle and pop for the multitudes of fan boys. The cool thing is that actor/director Jon Favreau almost subversively pumps some real directorial charm and panache to the non-action scenes, almost to the point of emasculating the go-for-the-popcorn high-tech effects, comic book clashes, and over-the-top spectacle. Audiences seem to be responding well once again, upping the possibility that if Favreau goes for another shot at the franchise, it might be the most gonzo Part 3 yet.

The movie is extremely shiny and tempered, but the overt story and the CGI spectacles take a certifiable second place to theatrics and repartee among the movie’s big name part-playing population, beginning with the rapid fire mumbling oratory of Robert Downey and his time-warping charm. Downey’s a true propellant contemporary movie star, and the narcissistic air of a nervy capitalist suits him exquisitely, delivering each new bombastic comic book line with a curry-and-par swipe and a hilariously provocative aplomb. Downey is so right on as the guy without the suit, that each of the movies suffers a bit each time the super hero metallic duds are donned and his twisty yapper gets hidden away.

Favreau is an actor’s director, and he allows all of his principles to follow Downey’s animated flow, causing actual sparks to fly in Downey’s sideways exchanges with an impeccably subtle Gwyneth Palthrow and an appropriately campy (and comely) Scarlett Johansson, much of it coolly conjuring up the patented stylings of screwball comedy. The sharp repartee and the heightened dialogue is also neatly bandied about by such nifty scene stealers as Don Cheadle as good buddy and sidekick, Samuel Jackson as a robustly macho military man, fave rave scene-chewer Mickey Rourke as Russian baddie with a cockatoo, and secret weapon Sam Rockwell as perhaps the drollest comic book villain so far, all of them trading barbs, eye-rolling, and put-downs with sleek fervor. Iron Man 2 doesn’t mean much of anything, and doesn’t purport to, it simply swaggers its way to the finish line, providing some first class diversion between the sound of metal clanking and things blowing up.

Rewind # 2: Like most knee-bending worshippers to the altar of rock and roll, I can’t resist a rock doc, and I’ve probably screened a few dozen of them. The vast majority traffic in broken dreams, past glories, druggy excesses, psychological afflictions, rise and falls, or just plain ascensions to rock and roll nirvana. It’s a Bash!, a new rock doc that chronicles the story of Attleboro-formed and Providence-made Neutral Nation, operates with a decidedly alternative mind set, unwinding as a true life tale of infectious rock and roll spirit, ongoing camaraderie, and working class pluck.

Director David Bettencourt (rapidly becoming a local filmmaker of some note, responsible for two highly credible prior works, You Must Be This Tall: The Story of Rocky Point Park and On the Lake: Life and Love in a Distant Place), does a wonderful job recreating the resolutely typically tale of the band’s movement from in-yer-face noise-makers to beloved local music scene headliners, gathering some smartly reflective and self aware talking heads footage from the individual band members (particularly Mike Yarworth, Tom Buckland, and Dave Chabot), and handsomely piecing together the Providence/ Living Room spawned scene of punk and indie rock.

Of course, I spent a whole lotta of my time embedded in that very scene during my youthful glory days, and the film helps prove that Neutral Nation were indeed something special, regular guys who, in their heyday, conveyed an ever widening sense of New England tribal inclusiveness and a constantly burgeoning down-to-earth craftsmanship, making a particular mark as one of those special bands with a whom audiences want to share a sensibility, a song, and a beer. Whether you catch the documentary, or catch the boys live at one of their perpetual reunion shows, you’ll never have to worry about Neutral Nation delivering the goods, with passion, verve, and some crooked smiles.

Mark Cutler's State of Grace

2010-05-07T08:22:00.005-05:00

Even at my straightest, most coherent, sharpest, extreme state of awareness I couldn’t even attempt to actually put a real number to the numerous times I’ve seen Mark Cutler play live music, numerous being a riveting understatement. Over the thirty years that I’ve been both a fan and personal friend with the guitarist/bandleader/songwriter, I’ve seen him play arenas, clubs, bars, restaurants, diners, coffee houses, cafes, packed houses, empty rooms, dank basements, amusement parks, songwriting circles, backyard celebrations, weddings (including two of mine), birthdays (including my 30th, 40th, and 50th), I’ve seen him open up for everyone from Jerry Lee Lewis, Boy George, Bob Dylan and then-Presidential candidate Obama. I’ve seen him rip up his guitar like he was ringing a bell, attacking it with both the ferocity of Fred “Sonic” Smith and the shamanistic explorations of Tom Verlaine, and I’ve also seen him gently stroke his acoustic guitar and sing songs of tenderness and beauty and sadness that rival those of Townes Van Zandt or Steve Earle. I’ve seen him cover everyone from Iggy Pop to KC and the Sunshine Band to Mink Deville. 1000 gigs? Double that? I’m really not sure, although I am sure that whether my pallie Mark was fronting the Schemers, The Raindogs, Lexington 1-2-3, The Dino Club, or the The Men of Courage, or sitting on yet another stool, hunched over with solo intensity, he was giving it his all, playing with both gusto and sincerity, and of course, playing yet another new song from his seemingly never-ending supply.

Among Mark’s circle of friends there’s a longstanding joke that’s partly ironic, partly worrisome, and fully accurate: The MC Credo: When in doubt, write a song. In emotional, financial, or familial trouble? Write a song. Good times? Write a song. Terrible times? Write a song. Blazingly sunny, reinvigorating day? Write a song. Winter storm howling against the windows? Write a song. Rent overdue? Write a song. Worried about political policies and continual American social ills? Write a song. Watch a Scorsese film? Write a song. You get the simple, straightforward picture: When in doubt, write a song. Mark has spent nearly a lifetime attempting to reach a state of grace through songwriting, written reams of choruses, hooks, and heartfelt lyrics, and also covered countless nuggets, gems, and classics from every pop genre, all of which brings us to his newest collection of a dozen songs, just released on a new CD entitled Red.

In the interest of full disclosure (not that may actually matter in the nebulous state of the blogosphere) I’ve had the occasional unique (and truly cool) opportunity to work alongside Mark as a lyricist and co-songwriter, with Red even containing one song, “Miss Connected”, co-written by the two of us, so I figure I’ve have a certain insight into his material. On the other hand, as a once practicing rock nitcrit, and, as a guy who’s heard a ton of Cutler’s tunes delivered by divergent musical configurations, in an ever-changing array of arrangements and styles, I’ve also developed an even more keen perspective on Cutler the songwriter’s thematic predilections, ongoing themes, and overall lyrical and aural landscapes. (Believe me, even my usually understanding wife worries about my bit too fervent interest in the guy’s music.)

At both his edgiest and most delicate, a vast majority of Mark’s material has always tinged with a certain melancholia, and constantly sprinkled with an understated bitter sweetness, with many of his songs chock full of characters striving to the right thing despite their cloudy pasts, shaky futures, or forays to the dark side. Red’s plaintive but fully descriptive titles (“Cousin Mary’s New Car”, “You Know What to Do”, “We Shall Always Remain Friends”, “Can’t Give it Away”, Jumpin’ Time”) paint a terrain of weathered and smarting middle-aged seekers, somehow simultaneously disconsolate and sanguine. He is a decidedly Catholic songwriter, and Red’s songs feature Saints named Annie, Marie, and even Mary, who happen to be jostling for space alongside bloodless vampires, miracle men, evil twins, bag men, and even the ghost of Doc Pomus, with frozen moments amidst midnight moves, tower guards, mamas crying, river’s bending, blanketed rafts heading down streams, and a whole passel of cruel disguises. Cutler’s usual fallible narrators hover above the clouds, dangle down at the edge, duck into the shadows of the descending sun, and seemingly just exist a paycheck away from yet another personal calamity yet somehow striving for some sort of sanctity.

Red goes beyond Cutler’s typically streamlined 4/4 rock, with supple keyboards and mandolin brushes, a spare and focused sound with contributions from a number of RI stalwarts, including bass players Jimi Berger and Mike Tanaka, keyboardist and accordion master Dickie Reed, drummers Rick Couto, Bob Giusti, and the late Phil Hicks, and secret weapon, the ever subtle David Richardson contributing some lovely mandolin playing and a neat baritone guitar flourish. Red was produced by Cutler and longtime collaborator Emerson Torrey, and it might be the best sounding recording of his lengthy career, as it the two have avoided overproduction, crafting a record that sounds both pristine and felicitous.

In the real world I make a living as a Union Representative, and I know that Mark would make an ideal rank-and-file member, because as a songwriter and performer he’s both diligent and honest, his work ethic is fairly legendary, he consistently manages to deliver what he promises, and he sports a blue collar aura that just can’t be faked. Quite simply, he defines that warhorse of an expression, “the real deal”.

The Cutler record release party for Red is scheduled from my home away from home, Nick-a-Nee’s, tomorrow, Saturday the 8th from 8:30 on, and it promises to be quite the celebratory evening, featuring Mark Cutler and more than a few of his various musical permutations. Make sure you grab a word with him between sets, don’t let him retreat to any corners or the privacy of his car, because, if left alone, he may feel a powerful draw to start writing yet another song, and lord knows, it kinda (heh-heh-heh) gets a little sickening after a while.

Dead Laughs

2010-04-29T13:53:00.005-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the February issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

The movie farce has always been something of a shaggy dog compared to the fine beast typically displayed on stage. Certainly, dialogue, plot and action can resonate as equally on both stage and screen, but movie farce has to be also driven by some of the prerequisite cinematic techniques like shot selection, editing, and camera movement. Movie farces helmed by the vaunted likes of Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder or even Mel Brooks usually roll out via such finely interlocking machinery, rapidly cranking up the ante towards comic nirvana.

Death at a Funeral is a sweat drenched attempt at carving out a sparkling (and supposedly outrageous) movie farce, but it ultimately strains at the seams, whisking along ever so tepidly, providing some legitimate laughs, but failing to pull it all together, or even reach occasional comic heights . Worse, upon final view, it even seems a step down from the movie’s it’s remaking, the 2006 film of the same name.

Transposing the setting from England to Southern California, and changing the cast from white Brits to middle class African-Americans, the new version sticks close to the original (they both share the same screenwriter in Dean Craig). As family and friends gather for a funeral viewing, secrets from the past, romantic tensions, misplaced bodies, and a vial of hallucinogens help tilt the day’s mounting encounters steadily off course.

The original (well okay, four-year-old) movie was directed by Frank Oz, a decent comic hand, responsible for the likes of Little Shop of Horrors (’86), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (’88), What About Bob? (’91), and Bowfinger (’99). Inexplicably the new, Americanized version has been but in the hands of Neil LaBute, the bad boy misanthrope behind both button-pushing plays (In the Country of Men, The Mercy Seat, Fat Pig) and films (In the Company of Men, Nurse Betty, The Shape of Things). LaBute may be a smart guy, but he has seemingly stepped into a role, that of comic filmmaker, that ill suits him. The movie veers towards the inept, with unconvincing bouts of slapstick, misfired gags, and no discernable snap or punch in the majority of the humorous exchanges. It’s as if LaBute, never a particularly great visual filmmaker, has eschewed even his usual unsettling edginess in a misguided attempt to prove he has a heretofore unseen directorial versatility. Well, it just ain’t so.

Even most of the potentially decent cast spend most of their time misfiring. Chris Rock, as the more traditional of two brothers largely plays it straight, and that tact remains disappointing, as one expects more slyness and rapier reactions from him, while Martin Lawrence, as the cock-of-the-walk sibling, stays stuck in his typically one note, you’ve-seen-it-before, hyperventilating shtick. The usually reliable Luke Wilson doesn’t even register in his low radar role, and such stalwarts as Loretta Devine, Regina Hall, Danny Glover, and Keith David and Zoe Saldana don’t come up with much beyond the fairly predictable. Strangest of all is the case Peter Dinklage, reprising his role in the first film, albeit with a different name, as an unwelcome funeral guest, who happens to be a dwarf and a homosexual lover of the deceased—yet executing a turn that seems less energetic and much less inspired then the first time around. (Only Tracy Morgan and James Marsden remain unscathed, both contributing some true belly laughs, with the latter registering some particularly inspired looniness.)

When LaBute is effective he usually allows a subtle anarchic spirit to creep into his film work, but the all important destructive spirit of comedy is not on display here. There is no piquant shredding of assumptions or of social or moral consents, just some rat-a-tat knockdowns, and a mere spritz. LaBute, despite his high toned background doesn’t get anarchic or ironic enough, he his most persistent directorial choice seems to be to just wave the action along like a complacent traffic cop, as if the material was unique or special enough to bring it on home. Of course, that isn’t the case, and the laughs here are as stiff as the corpses.

A Horse That Was a Bird

2010-04-21T20:24:00.006-05:00

(Reprinted from PopKrazy)

It’s been a hell of a fertile period for the Grim Reaper, Pop Cult Dept, (in my movie, that part is played by Larry Blyden), with a run that included Alex Chilton, T-Bone Wolk, and Johnny Maestro along with Dixie Carter, Fess Parker, Robert Culp, and John Forsyth, never mind Meinhardt Rabbe, the munchkin crooner from The Wizard of Oz, and Malcolm McLaren, that genuine force of nature. Wow, knock ‘em down and drag ‘em out. Yet, when the brimstone stench dissipated, the semi-celeb’s loss I felt most tenderly was a sports figure from my baseball-crazed pre-adolescence, pitcher Mike Cuellar of the Baltimore Orioles.

As an eleven-year old in the summer of 1967, I made the full transformation into rabid Red Sox fan, following the ups down of that “Impossible Dream” season, all the while transfixed by the day-to-day heroics of Carl Yastrzemski, the one and only Yaz. Like most baseball obsessives, I also underwent a quickie education about the sport, reading dusty book after book about the glories of baseball past, and digging into the sports page as soon as my father put the paper down each evening, and even going out and buying the up-to-date baseball guides available at the local newsstands. Eventually familiarizing myself with the starting line-ups of nearly every major league team, I also
learned that it was acceptable, at least for the sophisticated fan, to root for other cool daddy ballplayers that didn’t necessarily play for the home team.

Baltimore was a powerhouse in the late 60’s and early 70’s, with a kooky, colorful manager in Earl Weaver and a team made up of the Robinsons (non-brothers and future Hall of Famers Brooks and Frank), a batch of other intriguing characters (Boog Powell, Mark Belanger, Paul Blair, Davey Johnson), and quite possibly the best starting pitching staff in the American League, with Mike Cuellar as one of its stalwarts.

Cuellar, Cuban born (Miguel Angel Cuellar Santana), was a crafty lefty, not a typical flame-thrower, known for his screwball and changeup, and given the wonderful moniker, Crazy Horse. He, after starting in the Cinnacinati Reds system, was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals and then to the Houston Astros (where, in 1967, he did win 16 games and make the All-Star team), before winding up in Baltimore in 1969, and staying until 1976, after which he was traded to the Angels before leaving the game after a fifteen season career.

In his eight years with the Orioles he won 23 games in ’69, 24 in ’70, 20 in ’71, 18 in ‘72 & ‘73, and 22 in 74, made three more All-Star teams, and shared the coveted Cy Young Award in 1969 with the Detroit Tigers’ Denny McLain. As a kid, I was fascinated with both his mess-with-your-head array of pitches, his impenetrable pitcher’s stare, and (it was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, dig?) his non-white-guy look. Noted tribal leader and kneecap Napoleon Billy Martin said of Cuellar, “His fastball couldn’t blacken my eye, but he owned the batters’ minds.”

As a Red Sox fan, I simply couldn’t root for the Yankees, but as a baseball fan I felt that one had to route for the American League rather than the National League, in both All Star and World Series games, and I found it rather easy to, once the Sox were out of the picture, to get behind the Orioles as they made their way to the play-offs and every year (except for ‘72) from 1969-1974, and onto the Series in ‘69, ‘ 70, and ‘71.

Of course Mike Cuellars’s biggest claim to pop culture longevity was and shall remain, as one of the answers to one of the perennially great baseball trivia questions : Only two teams in baseball have boasted four 20 game winners, one of them being the 1920 Chicago White Sox , and the other being the 1971 Orioles. Name the four pitchers. Don’t even contemplate sitting at the Baseball Elders Table if you can’t snap off that answer: Dave McNally (21-5), Jim Palmer (20-9), Pat Dobson (20-8), and Mr. Crazy Horse himself, Mike Cuellar (20-9). All but Palmer are dead and gone now, co-co-ca-chooing with jilted Joe DiMaggio.

Humble Opinions

2010-04-13T19:43:00.006-05:00

In my humble opinion, this is how you cover a song (staying true to the original, but redrafting it in yer own style): LouDoesLennon

In my humble opinion, this is how you stay vital and perpetually hip (and get up close to Shelby Lynne): PeteGetsTragic

In my humble opinion, this is how you veer off course and make rumblin' rock and roll magic (and put in some quality time with Tito Larriva) : BobAndThePlugzDoBob

In my humble opinion, this is how you use file cards and quote F. Scott Fitzgerald after giving the audience the finger (and say, with great ironic aplomb: “Roll over, Woodstock”): IggyDoesItRight

Misunderstood Marty

2010-04-09T13:05:00.005-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the February issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

Among my multitude of favorite moments in Martin Scorsese’s 1972 American masterpiece Mean Streets, is when one of the character says, out of nowhere: “D.D. Disappointed Dunsky.” Well the word on the less-than-mean streets of pop culture city is that my main man Marty has lost it, that the last couple of Scorsese’s specials have been pandering and bloated Hollywood production line figurines, and that the continual Scorsese-Leo DiCaprio partnership isn’t half as innovative, explosive, or enthralling as the venerated run of Scorsese and his prior acting totem, Robert DeNiro. Meanwhile, Scorsese cultists (like myself), have been reduced to half-wacky, half-flagellant worshippers who resemble Michael Imperoli’s infamous Soprano’s character, Christopher, who once ran into Scorsese and sputtered “Marty! Kundum. I liked it.” For us, it’s quite simply: “M.M. Misunderstood Marty.”

Scorsese’s latest, Shutter Island, while doing strong box office, has received a wide array of critical reception, ranging from baa-baa-bad to flawed to “best director of the present” B-plus. Adapted from a Dennis (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) Lehane potboiler, set on a craggy, phosphorous island outside Boston harbor that houses only a state run insane asylum in 1954, the ideal setting for Professor Scorsese to delve into the arena of Alfred Hitchcock while setiing the appropriate framework for a psychological creep show.

At the same time, for the naysayers and those who’ve long vamoosed off the director’s bandwagon, the movie is yet another ideal cog in the Scorsese-DiCaprio decline and fall--- another chic and mannered populist sell out, at one with the recent likes of 2002’s The Gangs of New York, 2004’s The Aviator, and 2006’s The Departed, for which the fillmmaker won the Best Director Oscar. Conventional film maven wisdom follows along these lines: Scorsese is still more than capable of rendering virtuoso cinematic moments, whether they be set pieces or daring images, but he’s long been enmeshed in the Hollywood mainstream (which has muted his edginess), and DiCaprio simply never carries the weight his director entrusts to him, inexplicably remaining an unconvincing figure as a full borne adult. (What, has Johnny Depp somehow morphed into Jason Robards or William Holden?) Finally, there is this: Aging, 68-year-old Scorsese is beyond mustering up to the energy and originality of the unimpeachable DeNiro collaborations like 1976’s Taxi Driver, 1980’s Raging Bull, 1990’s Goodfellas or 1995’s Casino.

Shutter Island offers up a shimmering, tightly woven and even disturbing psychological thriller for a solid four-fifths of its way, before becoming boggled down with its overwrought denouement. DiCaprio plays a combustible Boston detective poking into the asylum’s shadowy goings on accompanied by his weirdly passive sidekick (an adept Mark Ruffalo), haunted by his dead wife (Michelle Williams), and turned round and round by docs, coppers and patients (finely done up by Ben Kingsley, Max Van Sydow, Patricia Clarkson, John Carroll Lynch, Emily Mortimer, Jackie Earle Haley, and Ted Levine.) The movie is ripe with Scorsese’s usual fusion of genre pastiche, filmic quotations, cliché-rattling and commanding visual verve, all in all a technically masterful and deft excursion, only marred by a few small miscues. Production designer Dante Ferretti, cinematographer Robert Richardson, music supervisor Robbie Robertson (aided by John Cage, John Adams, Nam June Paik, and Gyorgy Ligeti), are first class contributors, and, as always, editor Thelma Schoonmaker defines the boundaries of a cutting edge classicist.

Wrongly being bandied about as a slip-slide into more Scorsese-DiCaprio populist mediocrity, Shutter Island is by and large another big budget mediation on the particular wonders of genre cinema, speckled with vivid flourishes and consistently foreboding, while simultaneously another Scorsese portrait of a man gone dissolute. It may not be overflowing with eccentricities and jagged energies, but it’s delivered with propulsive relish, and overflowing with B movie spectacle rendered pointedly. On top of it, DiCaprio delivers---compact and sturdy, continually simmering just under a boil, moral compass unfettered despite the heavy weight of guilt, he’s as drop down earthy and subtly neurotic as John Garfield or early Jack Nicholson---unquestionably earning the baton pressed upon him by the director.

While no Scorsese-styled masterpiece, Shutter Island easily ranks up their with the aforementioned fictional Christopher’s Kundum (‘97), and with other such just-this-side-of paradise Scorsese entrees: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (‘74), New York, New York (‘’77), After Hours (‘78),The King of Comedy (‘82), The Color of Money (’86), The Last Temptation of Christ (‘88), Cape Fear (‘ 91), The Age of Innocence (‘93), or Bring out the Dead (‘99) . In the long and short of it is that Misunderstood Marty remains a uniquely visceral and masterfully evocative filmmaker with razor-sharp skills, despite his abandonment by cinema hipsters and a portion of the critical set. I’m more than certain that’s still a long way to go before we close the red velvet curtain on his storied career, until he contributes another shooting star to his master auteurist firmament.

Alex Chilton 1950-2010

2010-04-04T11:23:00.003-05:00

(Reprinted from shaking like a mountain)

“Children by the million
Sing for Alex Chilton
When he comes ‘round
They sing, ‘I’m in love
What’s that song
I’m in love with that song.”

The in-yer-face dichotomy of the strange, niggling, woebegone career of Alex Chilton is that absolutely more peeps, kiddies, flipsters, pop cultists and the not-so-great unwashed know of him than have actually hear him, or even, more insidiously, don’t know that they have indeed heard him. A perpetual, maybe even classic, cult artist, he, despite some true popcult peaks, remained unrecognized (as the young lead singer of the AM radio hitsers The Box Tops), undiscovered (as one of the primary forces of nitcrit cult faves Big Star), unknown (as the author of the Bangles well known “September Gurls” and the Cheap Trick diffident remake “In the Street, better known as the theme song for TV’s That 70’s Show), and unheard but forever mythologized as Paul Westerberg’s muse in The Replacements “Alex Chilton”).

Chilton was virtually a child star, a Memphis born blue-eyed soulster, who at 16 experienced a top of the chart hit while fronting the Box Tops with “The Letter”, followed by two more legit hits, “Cry Like a Baby” (which marched all the way to No. 2) and “Soul Deep”. Dissatisfied with the early sixties plastic pop machinery that The Box Tops were enmeshed in, he started up a second Memphis band, Big Star, in the early 1970’s with drummer Jody Stephens, bassist Andy Hummel and fellow songwriter and guitarist Chris Bell. That band, Big Star, became an immediate critical darling, drawing rave reviews and plenty of publicity push in the wide array of rock mags that existed at the time. A combination of industry bad mojo, including an uncomprehending public, a minor league record label, and the predictable split-up marked them as one of the biggest busts of the post-Beatle rock era.

Time, as is won’t with a whole lotta cultural iconoclasts, was good to Chilton and Big Star, with the band winding up as an after-the-fact staple on college and independent radio, with a legion of on-the record worshippers like the aforementioned The Replacements, REM, Elliot Smith, The DB’s and the Bangles. The third Jim Dickinson produced Big Star record Third/Sister Lovers (with Chilton as purty much the sole force, since Chris Bell had departed) wasn’t released until after the demise of the band and it is widely (and legitimately) hailed by pop cult diviners such as Robot Hull (“haphazard masterpiece”), a jangly, gloomy, sweet and sour, head-in-the-sand, tour de force.

Mid-career Chilton began embracing his cult status, becoming an American equivalent to John Cale, behaving outrageously and obviously abusing substances, acting as de facto party planner/producer for the likes of The Replacements, Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and The Cramps, moving to New York and cutting a top notch EP (Singer Not the Song), an influential single (“Bangkok”), and an all-time rock snob fave LP (Likes Flies on Sherbert), all of which poised him on the punk edge. I was lucky to see Chilton at Boston’s infamous Rathskeller during this period, he and his young band played a blistering but careening show, one both toxic and adrenaline-producing. I had lucked into a brief fill-in position as rock critic with the Rhode Island’s only daily, The Providence Journal, and I rejoiced immeasurably (in full, naïve, young, rebel-wanna be mode) that I talked an unknowing editor into allowing a mention of one the coolest and most arcane names in rock into a squaresville, mainstream, widely read publication.

Chilton soon went through another desolate period, changing styles again and making music that grasped at blues, rockabilly, and country’s primitive roots, eventually also producing Detroit’s The Gories and more Panther Burns stuff. Smack dab in the mid-1990’s Chilton once again did the unexpected and made an album and toured the oldies festival circuit with a revamped Box Tops and also reformed a mutated new version of Big Star, made up of old mate Jody Stephens and Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow from modern day cultists The Posies. He passed away, only a few days before a scheduled appearance with Big Star at this years’ annual South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, where he long been revered by industry insiders, geeky rock scribes, and budding quirky songwriters, many with long allegiances to the cult of Chilton and his backwards, side-stepping career, seeing Chilton as both soul deep American maverick and artistic wounded soul, another pop genius somehow doomed to a life on the showbiz periphery, perpetually resonant and influential to those game few that are willing to burrow, termite-like, into the crooked and tangled rock and pop foundations.

Both Sides Now

2010-03-29T07:06:00.002-05:00

Let’s not avoid the obvious: most blogs operate around the premise of a certain degree of self-promotion; despite any nattering of self-denial you might hear. My own blog, ostensibly about divining any hint of magic or wonder from amidst the teeming pile of the never ending pop culture onslaught, has even occasionally veered into the personal, much to my own chagrin. Here we go again, with two quick glimpses of my divided self, just turned fifty-four and aging rapidly, nearly zapped of energy and bleeding once valued wisdom, yet still essentially making the rounds with a sense of purpose and an inherent stalwartness. (Heh-heh-heh.) First, an appearance of the local Fox morning show, The Rhode Show, waxing glib and all-knowing, doing the thumbnail movie thang, and second, getting all hot and bothered in the real world, at a Westin workers rally. Somebuddy, call me mother in Florida and let her know I'm still hanging in there, and, yes, still somehow grasping onto that ever slippery moral compass...

David Janssen's Eyes: Kafka TV

2010-03-16T20:59:00.003-05:00

(Reprinted from PopKrazy)

Well before Harrison Ford was jumping into waterfalls and trying to stay one step ahead of Tommy Lee Jones terrifying case of lockjaw there was The Fugitive as a television series. What a strangely downbeat and moody bit of television this inexplicably popular series was. It ran for 120 episodes from 1963-67, was created by Roy Huggins (The Rockford Files), starred Richard Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble, the falsely accused title figure, and the last episode remains one of the highest rated in TV history.
Having recently hitchhiked through the full first season (Paramount DVD, 4 discs, $38.99), my dim memories of the series needed a serious recharging. The TV show was neither a cut-and-run suspense machine as I thought, and Janssen’s central figure was far more complex and decidedly less heroic than I recalled. What actually attracted me to this show as a Beaver Cleaveresque pre-teen? It depicts a monumentally grim world, with the truly laconic Janssen sleepwalking from one location to the next, all the while pursued by his equally tortured nemesis, the visually drained and dogged Barry Morse’s Lieutenant Phillip Gerard. The show allows for no reoccurring characters outside of the intertwined duo (a twosome that were decidedly weird for primetime—-both twitchingly neurotic, hollow and haunted), as Kimble stays on the road and on the run, backing himself into the deep shadows of America’s backwaters, stumbling into the briefest friendships and quickly doomed romances.
Janssen’s performance is almost perverse, considering the tenure of the times, the weight of the world on his sagging shoulders, eyes blinkered with inner pain, and a gravelly monotone that oft times barely rose above a mumbled whisper. What kept people watching back in those pre-Vietnam days of eternal optimism? The odds are loaded every which way against Janssen’s Kimble—if he finds his elusive one-armed man and proves his innocence the series is over. Did the 1963 audience tune in because of some internal desire for capitulation? Did they harbor secret wishes to watch a dream deferred, as when three-quarters of the way through each and every episode Janssen’s hardcore sad sack would watch his brief idyll poisoned and his temporary hopes deflated, heading off to the lonely, decidedly non-Kerouacian highway, an ex-bigtimey Doctor (one of the epitomes of the American dream during that era) shrinking and tucking himself into another obscure dark corner, a TV protagonist half broken by the continual twists of fate?

Falling and Flying

2010-03-16T20:17:00.004-05:00

(Reprinted from shaking like a mountain)
Crazy Heart
By Scott Duhamel

As the properly revered American cinema of the 70’s fades further into our collective memories, as the indie film revolt of the recent past twists and snaps into something altogether different, as the ever frightening Rise of the Hack Auteurs continues to flourish, and, as the movie brat directorial generation teeter into old age, oblivion, or rusty-but-venerated status, you just ain’t going to get much a chance to see a so-called cinematic character study like director Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart.

Neither instant classic nor pillar of the genre, the movie (adapted from novelist’s Thomas Cobb’s 1987 book of the same name), isn’t strikingly original either. The fact that it succeeds, even manages to create an imprint, falls squarely on the slumped shoulders of Jeff Bridges, long one of our more underappreciated American actors, delivering a full-scale performance with graceful aplomb, and ultimately creating one of the signature big screen turns of 2009. It’s an effortless portrayal, filled with guile and propelled by instinct, one that is weighted with authenticity and totally devoid of blandishments.

First-time director Cooper, who, by all accounts, stuck closely to Cobb’s novelistic intentions, brings a similar authentic feel to his under-the-radar directorial style. This is an actor’s movie, the sort that a Hal Ashby or Robert Altman would have once been drawn to, although in Cooper’s hands it is a purposefully straightforward film, lacking the extended complications or the multiple sources of conflict that the aforementioned filmmakers would have utilized to greater effect. Cooper does acknowledge the movie’s antecedents, with overt allusions to genre milestones like A Face in the Crowd (1957), Payday (1973), or Tender Mercies (1983).

Crazy Heart’s well-traveled tale concerns itself with Bad Blake (Bridges), yet another country and western macho poet with a fistful of magical songs, heartsick and stumbling towards oblivion with a lungful of cigarette smoke and gut full of bourbon. Blake bounces from Bowling Alley stage to straight-up saloon gig, often puking mid song, piloting himself with laid back charm or churlishness, almost broken with regret, yet nursing dreams about reversing his showbiz status. His shaky encounters with a mere trio of antagonists set the stage for an admirably unforced and neatly ambiguous tale of redemption. Colin Farrell is surprisingly competent in the part of Tommy Sweet, Bad’s protégé turned superstar pop commodity, while Robert Duvall (who mined much of this same territory when he once starred in Tender Mercies) brings some down-to-earth vigor to his few scenes as Bad’s now sober pal and father figure. The typically incandescent Maggie Gyllenhaal rounds out the triumvirate as a young single mom and journalist with (you knew it) with a misbegotten penchant for bad boys.

The seemingly infallible T. Bone Burnett (partnering here with the late Stephen Breton) once again delivers a soundtrack with acumen, with a batch of songs that seem realistically poised between classic outlaw C&W and the peculiar wryness of those leftfielders from the Townes Van Zandt school. The music is written from a point-of-a-view drawn from the Kris Kristofferson prototype (physically, Bridges could very well be the guy’s younger brother), the guy with the long hair and cowboy hat, submerging his intellect behind the drawl and the drink, one of those guys who buys right in to pop cult diviner Nick Tosches theory of straight up C&W music: “And ultimately there’s something about the depths of the human soul expressed within the confines of a rhinestone-embroidered puce suit—something not only of innocence and demonology but of proper perspective as well—that can’t be found elsewhere in this garbage heap that we call culture. ” Crazy Heart may be among the first Hollywood narrative that acutely digs into the mysterious songwriting process, albeit one that hints that dues’ paying is a central part of that process.

The same simple but sage methodology might apply to Bridges career. Since Crazy Heart comes up a little short in a variety of ways, its true strengths emanate directly from Jeff Bridges. Any movie-movie barroom chitchat would be promptly elongated if a debate ever sprung up over the actors best moments in a career filled with highlights and good choices. A quick, extremely partial (and highly personal) list: The Last Picture Show (’71), Fat City (’72), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (’74), Rancho Deluxe (’75), Stay Hungry (’76), Cutter’s Way (’81), Starman (’84), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (’88), The Fisher King (’91), American Heart (’92), Fearless (’94), The Big Lebowski (’98), The Door in the Floor (’04); all in all a potent delineation of superb choices and exemplary execution from an absolute American big screen acting treasure.

Bridges, replete with untethered belt, sexy sloop, charmingly slurred voice (it’s actual rhythms established through chain-smoking and perpetual drinking), is another middle-aged American male somehow cast adrift, captivatingly lost between bad intentions and good expectations-a species Bridges does well--- a still likable loser, weak, yet imbued with fierce pride. The performance is scented with melancholy, and all the more effective for it, adding a redemptive tone to the overall proceedings that doesn’t delve into heart tugging or corniness.

(Suggestion: Put your cash on Bridges walking away with the Best Oscar Award. It’s a done deal.)

The Rise of the Hack Auteur

2010-03-09T16:02:00.005-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the February issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

As Andrew Sarris initially wrote about the infamous Auteur Theory in his must-have 1968 tome (a dog-eared copy of which I still, some 40 years later, continually refer to) The American Cinema: “Ultimately, the auteur theory is not so much about theory as an attitude, a table of values that convert film history into directorial autobiography. The auteur critic is obsessed with wholeness of art and the artist. He looks at film as a whole, the director as a whole. The parts, however entertaining individually, must cohere meaningfully. This meaningful coherence is more likely when the director dominates the proceedings with skill and purpose.” In other words kiddies, his original concept (borrowed from a batch of smarty-pants French cinemaphiles), was that the film director, at his or his best, despite the multiple layers of intellectual and technical collaborators, and, despite the often strangling tentacles of popular art as commerce, is essentially an author, given to repeated themes, a few central preoccupations, typically expressing them with an idiosyncratic visual (and largely repeated) language, and is, no doubt about it, the author of his completed filmic work.

Of course, back then, Sarris found himself in a much publicized and dissected skirmish between those who found his essential theory either enriching, woefully overblown and wrongheaded, or at the least, intriguing. While in some, small, largely academic circles the debate may still simmer on, by and large it’s a theory long accepted by the vast majority of film nitcrits, cultural pundits, and the not-so-unwashed film going public. In fact today, every other whiz-bang filmmaker or box office boffo director gets bagged and tagged as an auteur, and many of them feel no qualms in unabashedly self-applying the description onto themselves. During a recent yakety-yak session, a knowledgeable acquaintance proposed new theories that of the contempo Hack Auteur, quantifying those very directors whose monikers alone manage to convey commercial gossamer, artistic weight and industry power. Yet, the theory goes, upon closer inspection, most of these directors, all of them replete with the multiple abilities to render a cinematic tale with gusto, to translate the literal into the visual, and to project that air of directorial arrogance and self-righteousness that signifies to some auteur-worthiness; under the critical microscope they seem filmmakers without the needed extra dollop of an acute vision, devoid of truly original and interlocking themes or imagery ,and without any unifying sense of the type of authorial voice that can penetrate through Hollywood’s ever standing layers of commercialism, artistic compromise, or restrictions of genre.

Who exactly makes us such a line up? As an early (and suddenly fervid) promulgator of the theory, I take great pleasure in listing those, both veterans and newcomers, which seem to be part of The Rise of the Hack Auteur. Let’s include McQ (Charlie’s Angels, Terminator Salvation) Michael Bay (Bad Boys, Armageddon, Transformers), Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow), Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forest Gump), and last but certainly not least, brothers Tony (Top Gun, True Romance, Man on Fire) and Ridley Scott. And, lest we forget (but he would never let us) the self-proclaimed King of the World, James Cameron (The Terminator, True Lies, Titanic).

Avatar, Cameron‘s latest; besides being a 300 million dollar, technotastic 3-D, superfragalistic CGI, phantasmagoric waterfall of modernistic special effects and sci-fi in-yer-face world making, is also the self-declarative big screen war whoop of a self-proclaimed artiste out to top himself. Despite its occasional spellbinding moments and its undeniable visual treats Avatar still remains the very evident work of that species we have dubbed The Hack Auteur.
Cloaked in the aura of industry buzz (“Groundbreaking!”), and undeniably coated by the ever inviting elements of a scrumptious, old-fashioned (but new-fangled) spectacle Avatar has been minting return monies and prompting all sorts of deep and thoughtful analyses, yet it continually traffics in the obvious, and is; in the final sense, such a funky potpourri of over-elevated green styled strum and drag.

Set in 2154, with the usually ruggedly handsome white male savior figure (Sam Worthington, a soldier without the use of his legs) at its center, it hammers back and forth from the black-hatted military and corporate (doubled evil, see?) world where the soldier boy is part of an avatar experiment and thus safely ensconced on a peeping-tom space station, to the alien moon of Pandora, the home to the Na’vi, an indigenous multiple-clanned people who (you got it) are at one with their environs, transcendentally bonding with both bountiful plant life and the savage beasties. Initially sent forth as both military scout and scientific sample-provider he (uh-huh) falls in love with a lithe (albeit blue-skinned) superwoman native gal (Zoe Saldana) and winds up trading sides and leading the natives (i.e. Vietnamese, Afghans, Native Americans,) in a rebel battle.

Cameron fails to get much emotional worth out of the effects versions of Worthington or Saldana, despite the Rube Goldbergian contraption of color, noise, and acid-inspired whirligig of sensory plug-ins that envelope their so-called acting. Chief baddies Stephen Lang (military) and Giovanni Ribisi (corporate) bluster and ham their way badly through the whole lengthy shebang, with only a robust Sigourney Weaver avoiding caricature until a cliché silent screen-style death scene.

Excess and extravagance, however finely-honed, do not make a picture great, or a filmmaker triumphant. Trippy and bold, Avatar is an amusing, even occasionally entertaining ride, and an obvious crowd pleaser. Ultimately it is never all that cohesive or layered, nor even that thought-provoking. (science=good, military=bad, cooperate interlopers=real bad, primitive natives=real good). An empty sensory delight, much like the continual onslaught of kicked-back-into-your-eyes onscreen 3-D debris that Cameron keeps pumping things up with, it’s without true cinematic complexity, just another big screen mechanized coloring book with a whole lotta shaking goin’ on. Pure Hack Auteur nirvana.

Bar Talk # 3

2010-03-07T14:51:00.003-05:00

Overheard Friday Night(3-5-10at Nick-a-Nees
Providence, Rhode Island
(Purty much reported as close to verbatim as possible)

“Oh, that’s some old Olympic dude; I remember he was on the Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes box when I was a kid.”

“Richard Jewel, the ultimate patsy. He was a wanna-be cop and he lived with his mother, so it’s textbook right? I hope the cops didn’t mess up his comic book collection too bad when they tossed his house.”

“I hate the word buzz. Everybody’s always got a buzz, catching a buzz, had a buzz, or they want to get buzzed. All these years of evolution and people drinking and the common term winds up buzzed? Just hearing it makes me want to get drunk. Not buzzed, understand?”

“Hey man, don’t forget it was Winston Churchill that said by the time a rumor is trotting around the world the truth hasn’t even put his sneakers on.”

“It ain’t the destination that matters; it’s the thrill of the journey. Just try to avoid all those detours.”

“If you really like a piece of music you should own it in all formats, Cd, vinyl, on the iPod. Everything but an 8-track I guess.”

“I just can’t seem to generate much interest in the current teams. I’m lost in the fog of New England sports cult past. I pine for the days of Joe Foy, Henry Finkel, Dallas Smith and the just departed Mosi Taputu.”

“It may be Scorsese, it sure looked like a Scorsese, a killer visual flair along with some killer flourishes, but I nailed the ending in the first five minutes.”

“The hardest daily or nightly choice in the vast majority of Florida is whether to eat at TGI Fridays, Outback, Applebee’s, and which pharmacy branch to settle on out of the six that swarm both tips of your neighborhood.”

“So I found the joint in the neighborhood behind the school and went in around 4:30, and got bourbon from the bartender and noticed the lone waitress was sleeping sitting up in the corner. She wakes up and says, what the hell is this music, a Christmas song? The cook comes barreling out of the kitchen and says that’s Bing Crosby song and this is a Bing Crosby compilation, and don’t you forget that. I fell in love with the place right there.”

“I took this girl on a date to Boston to see one of my all-time favorite jazz singers, I had all of her albums but I never saw her live, so I was really looking forward to it. Right in the middle of it my date starts telling me that the drummer reminds her of the first guy who ever took her from behind. That’s my luck, all the way. If I was in Amsterdam with a hooker as gorgeous as Marilyn Monroe she'd wind up leaning over my ear to start whispering to me about her favorite jazz singer.”

2009 MovieTime

2010-02-05T07:49:00.005-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the January issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem neccessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

2009 Favorites(in no particular order)

The Hurt Locker. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow.
What distinguishes The Hurt Locker from checking in as a moral-parading exploration of our current Middle Eastern engagement, or simply another pop and crackle action ride covered up in a war movie uniform, is Bigelow’s acutely unique overview and her more-than-scrupulous technique. The movie really isn’t about Iraq, nor is it an excuse to trot out a newfangled formula for contempo action; it delves into the grace (and devastation) of heroism in war, and it rolls out like a kinetic art piece replete with spatial distancing and a visceral flair. Bigelow’s hard-edged film (choreographed with sinuous hand-held camerawork and accented with off-balance tilts, full speed zooms, and nervous editing) arches into a rigorous self-propellant, with style flash pointing into substance. Stripped bare, the movie contains no story arc, no character development, and no big or resounding (aka meaningful) finale. It’s a potent dip into the adrenaline of recklessness and disorientation of cinematic action, and not in the typical Hollywood manner which is usually merely meant to artificially simulate so-called real life action. Probably the best film of the year.

Up in the Air. Directed by Jason Reitman.
Up in the Air may indeed be George Clooney’s best performance to date, and it can certainly lay claim to be among his most affecting. Neither Clooney’s central figure or the film ever seeps into the redemptive mode, and both movie and performance benefit for their bold fence straddling, and refusal to wrap up near anything neatly. Vera Farmiga, as the fellow traveler and soul sister with whom Clooney’s fixer gets entangled with, is for once, an on screen feminine counterpart who seems truly adult and intoxicatingly equal. Up in the Air is a woefully sad sack economic fable for our times, but Total George ups the ante, making it a personal tale that belies its basic structure as a very dark social comedy. Director Reitman traffics in a shimmering and resonant ambiguity, and Clooney proves well more than able in delivering an incisive central performance that is exquisitely poised between acerbic disdain and lost boy soul searching. George Clooney is indeed a big screen rarity—the matinee idol that can act with the best of them.

Inglourious Basterds. Directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Inglourious Basterds was bound to a polarizing movie, rolling itself out as if derived from an aesthete’s blueprint, yet crafted with pulp cartoonishness, continually nudging the artful into the low-down, craftily airing out the florid excesses of melodrama and outright tawdriness. It is, without question, Tarantino’s ultimate video clerk film fantasia, a movie boiled in the oil of melted down film nitrate stock (unironically enough, also one of the movie’s plot points), a film that unequivocally operates in a readymade cinematic vacuum. Tarantino’s movies have never been intended to peel back the shell and reveal anything of moral or psychological import, and this—a Holocaust revenge fantasy—doesn’t even hint at any significance outside of tickling the pleasure sensors. It’s a wacked-out paean to the delirious beguilements of the cinema, happily self-indulgent and brazenly self-assured.

Where the Wild Things Are. Directed by Spike Jonze.
Jonze has managed to paint an impeccably textured cinematic fable, both sweet and sour, about the inherent implosion of childhood, with vivid brushstrokes given to the inflated traumas and tongue-tying complications of growing up, a just about perfect reinterpretation of Maurice Sendak’s modern classic children’s book that’s part idyll, part nightmare, part real, part fantasy, all of it with a subtle emotional underpinning. As we all know, the boychild Max’s pursuit, his self-inflicted adventure, his expressive search for self-control, ends with a return to a simple but deeply satisfying hot meal and the eternal nurturing of quintessential motherhood, and that’s just enough to probably bring a tear to the eyes of Sendak, Freud, even Walt Disney, and certainly myself.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Directed by Werner Herzog.

Exquisitely gonzo, this non-remake, non-sequel of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 cult fave, substitutes a wickedly over baked Nic Cage go round for the unforgettable Harvey Keitel turn of the earlier film. A cop drama that dips and dives into hallucinatory flourishes with jangly oddball rhythms, also lets the wackadoo inner Cage loose, not the goofball charmer of big budget melodrama or the loony macho man of action movies, but a side-stepping, eye-popping, hilariously careening, barking-like-a-dog, performance artist playing a vile, vicious, and possible insane rogue copper. Herzog and Cage delight in the former’s faux documentary atmosphere, while the latter channels both John Barrymore and Crispin Glover, both of them sticking it right in yer face. While crispy and overdone, it’s still delicious.

Fantastic Mr. Fox. Directed by Wes Anderson
Strange as it is to be including two children’s film in one top ten, Wes Anderson’s stop-motion take on Roald Dahl’s 1970 storybook, is a delightful and intensely manicured effort. Deceivingly light, it’s woven together by Anderson’s wholly original sensibility, and easily seems at one with his other top notch work: The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, and The Darjeeling Limited. It’s archness at its best, another compulsively nuanced offering, and of those movies that sticks to your craw long after having left the theater.

District 9. Directed by Neill Blomkamp.
Brainy, spine-tickling, deft, and imaginative, this sci-fi mocumentary is also subversively amusing. Reviewers made sacrilegious comparisons to the visceral art and craft of James Cameron’s The Terminator that were truly right on, while South African filmmaker Blomkamp and his co-conspirator and star (Sharlto Copley) confidently managed to immediately mount themselves on the list of Filmsters We Must Watch.

The White Ribbon. Directed by Michael Haneke.
I find Haneke’s filmmaking output continually mesmerizing: The Piano Player (’01), Funny Games (’97 and ’07), Cache(’05). This one is typically glacial (vaqueness is his means of tension building), so of course it is also typically gripping, on the surface a haunting fable set in a small village during pre-World War I Germany. Bleak and devastating, brimming with breathtaking compositions, it is relentless, chilling, but enthralling filmmaking.

A Serious Man. Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.
The Coens, inscrutable as they may be, create films that are as cut and polished as diamonds, gleaming with precision. They make a living mocking, eviscerating, and savaging with deadpan officiousness, happily undercutting genre expectations along the way. As the title indicates, this provocative look into the state of Judasim in America in the ever changing 60’s, is as serious it is equally audacious---imagine Kafka traveling to the Midwest, hapless and unenlightened, yet with tongue-squarely-in-cheek. All in all, a remarkably self-lacerating modern day parable.

The Exiles. Directed by Kent Mackenzie.
This great lost film, partially revived by being referenced in Thom Anderson’s one-of-a-kind essay film Los Angeles Plays Itself, was released to obscurity in 1961 and brought back after a scrupulous UCLA restoration in mid 2008. I didn’t see it until last year, and it stayed with me until I felt forced to have a second viewing. A semi-documentary that follows a handful of Native Americans through their Los Angeles skid row environs through the course of one dusk to dawn day, its stark immediacy resonates deeply, like a neon-lit Raymond Carver short story that also sinks a dagger into your uncomprehending heart.

Just Below the Scoreboard: Big Fan, Adventureland, Me and Orson Welles, The Messenger, Public Enemies, Invictus, Up, Tyson, Drag Me To Hell, The Limits of Control.

RIP:Jenny and Jean

2010-01-30T12:08:00.007-05:00

I’ve been dog sick (for real), and soul sick, thus the blog has laid moribund, gathering electronic dust and perhaps losing whatever miniscule (but committed) readership I have. A bug of sorts may have physically splayed me, and the political landscape around us has continually sickened me, yet I’ve vowed to keep politics out of it and stay within the pleasure confines of the culture zone. A place where one can opine with delicacy, an actual thought process, and with ready theorems and even actual supportive facts and examples.

I’ve also been kicking myself for not somehow finding the time to toss off a few words about the recent passing of Hollywood beauty Jennifer Jones, and now that the one and only Jean Simmons has joined her in the astral dressing rooms, I am compelled to make up for it. Jones and Simmons shouldn’t be consigned to one general mini-tribute, but, in fact, they did indeed share certain big screen qualities, and both had equally difficult times landing resonating roles and both had rather strange careers.

Jennifer Jones was born Phylis Isley in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1919, the daughter of a local showbiz type, and she eventually found her way to Hollywood as an ingénue in the late 30’s and married the troubled young actor Robert Walker. She soon came under the penetrative gaze of the all powerful David O. Selznick, and found herself contracted to him and eventually engaged in an affair which helped break up both of their marriages, leading to their own legal coupling. Renamed, she made her official debut, in 1943’s The Song of Bernadette, and won a thoroughly unexpected Oscar for best actress. After snatching the coveted crown so early into her career, it would be forever debated by both industry and critical mavens whether her undeniably big screen glow emanated from the pure magic of perfect casting or an acting sense that wasn’t quite formed or shaped. Jones continually conveyed a deep-seated earnestness in her work.

Selznick was obsessed with Jones and her burgeoning career, eventually causing both directors and production types to hope against her landing a role in their upcoming production, fearing the flurry of memos and continual suggestive interference that was sure to come from Selznick. Ironically enough, despite his purest desires, he also seemed devoid of good judgment when choosing her roles. She is so magnificently miscast in 1946’s Duel in the Sun, that her misplaced ferocity as a tempestuous bad girl, in a luridly technicolored western sudser, made it one of the greatest Hollywood camp pleasures of all time, and a pivotal film for such latter-day biggie directors as Pedro Almodovar and Marty Scorsese. She is memorable in Carrie (’52), Ruby Gentry (’52), Beat the Devil (’54), Love is a Many Splendored Thing (’55), A Farewell to Arms (57), and faded out in rather high ((and campy) style in The Towering inferno (’74). Ethereal, severely limited in range, she was, for a time, one of those unadorned 40’s screen goddesses, yet she always stood out as a slightly off-the-mark type, one whom emanated definite vibes of peculiarity.

Jean Simmons, born in London in 1929, was a successful and extremely popular actress before she entered her twenties. A porcelain vision throbbing with inner vibrancy she couldn’t be missed in Great Expectations (’46), Black Narcissus (’47), and Hamlet (’48), all exemplary British films. She wound up in Hollywood at the tender age of 22, signed to a contract with the notorious producer and skirt-chaser Howard Hughes, who seemed not to care that Simmons was newly betrothed to British matinee macho man Stewart Granger. Punished by a petulant Hughes after she (one of the few it seems) turned him away, he forced her into a role that seemed ill-suited for her, as the angelic psychopath opposite tough guy/ patsy Robert Mitchum in Otto Preminger’s 1952 Angel Face, in which she turned in perhaps one of the most hypnotic and memorable woman’s roles in all of film noir, and forever created her own little filmic undercurrent. She was strong in The Actress('53), good in The Robe ('53), stood up to a grandstanding Brando in Desiree('54), and absolutely hit the mark, both singing and partnering again with Brando as Sister Sarah in Guys and Dolls (’55).

By now she had turned into an absolutely versatile leading lady, the aging process melting her otherworldly air of perfection by maturing into an unexpected vivacious, even salacious side. She did noteworthy work in The Big Country ('58),Elmer Gantry ('60), and The Grass is Greener('61) and then never again regained her spot at the top as the tumultuous (for the movie industry also) decade tumbled on. Simmons was indeed a radiant beauty but onscreen she learned to convey a decidedly feminine luminosity and sharpened sense of inner being, with nary a drop of sweat ever showing.

The Clooney Factor

2010-01-10T11:28:00.004-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the January issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem neccessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
by Scott Duhamel

It’s an age-old parlor game, known to certifiable cinephiles and those who kinda dip their toes in. What contempo actor or actress best represents, substitutes, replicates, approximates, conjures up, pays homage to, works within the shadow of, or maybe even directly connects to which iconic screen star of the past? Are Jack Nicholson or Robert DeNiro or Sean Penn legit Sons Of Brando? Is there a thin line that connects Veronica Lake to Angie Dickinson to Ellen Barkin to Sharon Stone to Vera Farmiga? Did James Dean begat Paul Newman who begat Brad Pitt? Is there really a logical connection between Jimmy Stewart and Tom Hanks? Is Cate Blanchett the new Katherine Hepburn, Johhny Depp what Monty Clift could have become, Liam Neeson hovering between becoming the second coming of Richard Burton, Albert Finney or Richard Harris? And, of course, is George Clooney the new version of Cary Grant?

Clooney, who by the way, is enjoying one hell of year-end showcase with the recent roll out of The Men Who Stare at Goats, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and the just released Up in the Air, seems to me, to be very worthy of comparison to the consummate Grant. Both exhibited a unique blend of pure good looks, gentlemanly sophistication, and an overriding mix of worldly irony, inner charm, and a genuine sense of remarkable self-depreciation. Grant, like Georgie Boy, made himself equally at home in screwball comedies, romantic sudsers, suspenseful pieces, and out and out actioneers. Both actors seem consummately masculine; yet exhibit a heightened sense of sartorial style, the smart comic tendency to lean into a clueless subterfuge of overconfidence, and (when playing it tough, haggard, or cool) an alchemic air of brilliant nonchalance.

Grant, long overlooked by critics yet embraced by audiences, marked his greatest achievements under the steadfast tutelage of Howard Hawks (Only Angels Have Wings, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday) and Alfred Hitchcock (Notorious, To Catch a Thief. North by Northwest), Clooney, who seems to bring forth a nitcrit-penned essay following him every few films with a title like “The Last of the Movie Stars?” has been best utilized by smart-aleck filmmakers Steven Soderbergh and The Coen Brothers. Both men sport pasts that to some diminish their later achievements; with Grant (born Archibald Leach) beginning his showbiz career as an acrobat in a traveling troupe, and Clooney starting out as infamously unlucky TV participant in a multitude of failed television pilots. Both also engage their big screens roles with a seeming modicum of effort, and their respective sweat less role-playing does not bring forth the typical critical hosannas.

A recent Time magazine piece by Richard Corliss divvied up Clooney’s performances into three simple categories: Serious George (The Perfect Storm, Solaris, Syriana), Glorious George (Out of Sight, Ocean’s Eleven, Fantastic Mr. Fox) and Spurious George (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, The Men Who Stare At Goats). Corliss also claimed that Clooney’s turn as Ryan Bingham, the seemibly smooth operator who blissfully flies the friendly skies in Jason Reitman’s adaptation of Walter Kirn’s 2001 novel Up in the Air, before touching ground to execute the vagaries of his one-of-a-kind-job---firing unsuspecting corporate day workers—is among the first roles that the actor can be seen as Total George, utilizing aspects of all three of his well known big screen personas. (Anthony Lane, in the New Yorker, made much the same point, while labeling Clooney’s division of roles as “cranky stiffs, troubled defenders of honor, and gossamer smoothies.”)

Up in the Air may indeed be Clooney’s best performance to date, it can certainly lay claim to be among his most affecting. Neither Clooney’s central figure or the film ever seeps into the redemptive mode, and both movie and performance benefit for their bold fence straddling, and refusal to wrap up near anything neatly. Vera Farmiga, as the fellow traveler and soul sister with whom Clooney’s fixer gets entangled with, is for once, an on screen feminine counterpart who seems truly adult and intoxicatingly equal. Up in the Air is a woefully sad sack economic fable for our times, but Total George ups the ante, making it a personal tale that belies its basic structure as a very dark social comedy. Director Reitman traffics in a shimmering and resonant ambiguity, and Clooney proves well more than able in delivering an incisive central performance that is exquisitely poised between acerbic disdain and lost boy soul searching. George Clooney is indeed a big screen rarity—the matinee idol that can act with the best of them.

Yup, a Resolution

2009-12-31T13:42:00.004-05:00

It’s a universal ailment, a constant source of personal dissatisfaction; yet another incremental dollop coagulating in that big ol’ fifty-gallon drum of all pervading ennui. Ain’t no way around it---one’s ambitions always seem to exceed one’s actual capabilities. Intentions, however sincere, somehow become thwarted, and then it’s throw-away-the-list time, or let-me-downgrade-my-goals time, or even. let’s-have-a-few-drinks-and-obliterate-it time.

I’m right there with the stumbling herd, jotting to-do lists down with pent up ferocity, modifying mental notes all the livelong day, awakening daily with a new found and etched-in-sincerity pathway. Then, of course, I really wake up.

Ironically enough, one of the more pleasant aspects of the whole holiday season –the reception of presents—has made me somewhat blue, bringing into sharp focus yet another of misspent endeavors. Try as I might, with the noblest of intentions, to read more books, and get my nose outta the dozens of publications I subscribe to, or the three daily newspapers I peruse in hard copy, never mind the predictable daily attention-grabbers like the Internet, the television, the radio, the CD player, at the end of the proverbial day the unread books seem to gather around me, much like the silent and predatory winged creatures in Hitchcock’s The Birds, piled above my shoulder on the end table near the couch, loosely placed on the outer edges of the built-in book shelves, artistically splayed throughout various nooks and crannies of the house and office.

I finally get through one, energized again by the extended and engaged experience of reading, yet there is always three or so (ever-changing it seems), in the on deck circle, and a heap more crowding the edge of the dugout bench, all vying for a brief spot in the to-be-read line-up. (I think I’ll call my team the Sisyphean Nine.) Having just finished Frankly My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited by Molly Haskell (Yale University Press, 2009), I easily transitioned into Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master by Michael Sragow (Pantheon, 2008), and then, came the thrill (and burden) of the Christmas deluge. My challenge for the months ahead (couldn't make this up):

A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement by Amy B. Dean, David B. Reynolds, and Harold Meyerson (Cornell University Press, 2009)

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, by Lydia Davis (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009)

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon (Penguin, 2009)

Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, by Morris Dickstein (Norton, 2009)

Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame, by Zev Chafets (Bloomsbury, 2009)

Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, by Larry Tye (Random House, 2009)

The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox and the Playoff of ‘78, by Richard Bradley (Free Press 2008)

Baseball Americana, by Harry Katz, Frank Ceresi, and Phil Michel (Smithsonian, 2009)

Frank Sinatra: The Family Album, by Charles Pignore (Little Brown, 2007)

Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales, by Clarence Clemons and Don Reo (Gran Central Publishing, 2008)

High on Rebellion: Inside the Underground at Max’s Kansas City, by Yvonne Sewell Ruskin (Thunder Mouth Press, 1998)

The Authorized and Illustrated Story of The Stooges, by Robert Matheu (Abrams, 2009)

The Velvet Underground: New York Art, Edited by Johan Kugleberg (Rizzoli, 2009)

Warren Oates: A Wild Life, by Susan Compo (University Press of Kentucky, 2009)

Tell Me How You Love the Picture: A Hollywood Life, by Edward Feldman with Tom Barton (St. Martins, 2005)

Robert Altman: The Oral Biography, by Mitchell Zuckoff (Knopf, 2009)

Whew, wow, damn, I just, well, … don’t know. Maybe I can conveniently break my leg, that oughta truly free up some time. My kind of resolution.

Merry Drinking

2009-12-24T09:15:00.003-05:00

Way back in 2000 or so my long time pallie Mark Cutler extended to me an offer I truly couldn't refuse, which was to collaborate with him both lyrically and (gulp) thematically, on a potential full length album about the fine art of drinking. Mark had written untold songs for the likes of RI legends The Schemers, Atco recording artists The Raindogs, and others bands formed by him as well, so I considered this a unique and truly special opportunity, and also a great chance to have some creative fun with my other pallies, jazz-guitarist-turned-rock-and-roll-bassist Mike Tanaka, and drummer and motormouth extraordinaire Bog Guisti. (Later on, Marks trustiest of sidekicks, ex-Schemer and ex-Raindog guitarist and vocalist Emerson Torrey, would join what was to become The Dino Club, a name derived from our collective fascination with American showbiz legend Dean Martin, and the brilliant, best showbiz book evuuuuh, the 1992 Nick Tosches penned Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams.)

Our concept album, self-released in 2002, was called Hey! Drink Up, and I have to say I'm quite proud of our efforts, and many of the songs still kick it hard and strong delivered live or as listened to in the orginal recordings. All of this comes to mind, since Mark suddenly put togther a self-made video to accompany the CD's anchor song, "Drinking in the Afternoon", so many years down the road. Well, drinking, my friends, is still drinking, and "The Day After", will forever be indeed the day after. Merry Drinking, watch and enjoy, these might be the best Christmas cards I've ever sent out...

Bar Talk # 2

2009-12-10T08:10:00.008-05:00

Overheard Friday Night (12-4-09) at Nick-A-Nees ,

Providence, Rhode Island

(Purty much reported as close to verbatim as possible.)

“I went from apocalyptic Christian to aspiring Jew to semi-agnostic to a possible Wiccan.”

“Can I come over to your house tomorrow and use your computer to pay my gas bill?”

“I had a thoroughly unproductive night Tuesday. I just kept drinking and listening to music and sitting on my couch. By the end of the night the notes were just hovering over my head.”

“My Mom and Dad adore this dude ( as Dylan’s “Mississippi” plays in the background) , but he always sounds like an escapee from Area 51 to me.”

First guy: “ I’d like to see her do the old school twist.” Second guy: “I’d like to see her in a cat suit.” First guy: “You ought to borrow one from your mother and give it to her.”

“Everyone constantly talks about rich kids and I am not one, but right now I am so one.”

“I gotta learn how to operate a vacuum cleaner real soon.”

“The thing about drinking is the thought of drinking precipitates the act of drinking which is often more glorious than the end result of drinking, and a lot less thinking seems to go with a lot more drinking.”

“If I have any more of this buca I’ll probably try to screw some of those ants that keep pouring out of my kitchen cupboard.”

“Deval Patrick tipped the scales in the wrong direction. All the blue New England states must have a Republican Governor. It’s all about balance, man.”

“They talk about Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson and that GG something guy but I think Lady Gaga is scarier that all of ‘em.”

“Whenever a stable boy pops up in a western, he’s a goner for sure.”

“Text me in a half hour to remind me I’m long, gone, and done.”

SHELF LIFE # 5

2009-12-04T11:29:00.009-05:00

(As monomaniacal as I might truly be, maintaining a blog of this high degree of purity and insight (heh-heh) gets wearying. I realize I have enough know-it-all-pallies, informormed buds, and sharp hipster connections, that I oughtta let one or two of you bring it on home occasionally. Here’s the basic premise: 1-3 concise paragraphs about a CD (or as we old schoolers still refer to it-an album) that wasn’t necessarily an all-timer, a Blonde on Blonde or a London Calling. Instead, spotlight a possible peripheral release that stands the test of time and delivers on its small promises, or simply executes succinctly and manages to remain on yer personal playlist--- a sideways record, an overlooked effort, a self-contained minor gem, ya know, a record that’s got Shelf Life. Send me your brilliant overview in simple Word form, and I’ll post ‘em up, giving my avid and obsessive readers (heh-heh-heh) an occasional breather from the sound of one man pontificating. Weighing in this time is Robot A. Hull, one of the all time great Rock and Roll nitcrits, and the man behind the curtain at PopKrazy.)

The Hombres--Let It Out (Verve/Forecast FTS-303,1967)

This is one of the great American garage albums that just don’t give a hoot. A Memphis combo, the Hombres opted for the lighter side of garage-punk. The Hombres’ album cover (which is their only album cover since no record label was brave enough to release another record by them) is an obvious reference to the Trashmen’s Surfin’ Bird LP, released in ’64, which shows the infamous surf band from Minneapolis clustered around a garbage truck.

Ironically, the Hombres had originally intended to be a surf band. In 1967, they traveled through Houston posing as a pop version of a West Coast surf group and somehow got tangled up with Texas producer Huey Meaux. In ’65, Meaux had already transformed a band of San Antonio punksters into an ersatz British Invasion act, the Sir Douglas Quintet (featuring a very young Doug Sahm). And so, with the Hombres, Meaux saw an opportunity for reshaping the rebellion of a garage band into a comedic sensibility.

With Huey at the helm, the Hombres’ first 45 was “Let It All Hang Out,” a clear parody of Bob Dylan’s vocal style. It is still the only pop hit that’s ever begun with a raspberry. In late ’67, the single went to #12 on Billboard’s pop chart—but only after the title had been censored to “Let It Out.”

This irreverent album includes all of the Hombres’ self-penned attempts to follow their initial punk/novelty hit—“Am I High,” Mau Mau Mau,” and “It’s a Gas.” (The latter song is not to be confused with Mad’s Alfred E Newman’s infamous song of the same name.) The Hombres’ gas record features the inspirational verse: “Don’t worry about the future, forget about the past/Whether it’s good or bad, its’ a gas!”

Most of the material on this album is marked by an offhand good heartedness as if the group is perfectly aware that their own musical ineptitude is beside the point. Meux’s typically lackadaisical production-style only enhances the sound of the cheesy organ and sloppy guitars.

Perhaps the most telling moment on the album occurs during the middle of yet another garage version of Van Morrison’s “Gloria.” It is a remarkable version. The song is untamed and yet focused, but it remains remarkable because it appears, suddenly, all six (6) minutes of it, out of context in the midst of a Southern-punk work of utter buffoonery. And then, right at the heart of the song, the Hombres forget—or seem to forget—the tune they’re playing, detouring into a charming, albeit primitive, stab at the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High.”

With warmth and spirit, the Hombres album seems to explicate Alfred E. Newman’s famous maxim: “What, me worry?”

Guilty as (Re)Charged

2009-12-02T12:31:00.004-05:00

I agree with most of the charges, gotta face up to the basic facts. Yep, I am a hipster dinosaur. Yeah, I spend far too much time on pop culture artifacts, and not enough exploring contempo happenings. Sure, I can’t resist a whopping dose of kitsch whenever (and however) it’s served. Certainly, I do despise 95% of what might be termed remakes, or even (gulp) reimaginings, and 70% of any and all tributes. The past is a gas, the future uncertain, and any attempt to put a firm finger on the pulse of the pop cult as it unfolds in front of yer ears and eyes can often be strained, pretentious or unholy. Yet, that hasn’t stopped me yet from boldly extending my rusty antennae or spuriously whipping out my gnarled and flaky divining rod, all part of a lifetime quest for that which is adventurous, tasty, beckoning, thrilling, ethereal, transcendent, piercing, stupefying, disquieting, detestable, and, well, basically just cool, daddio.

My lastest find is a relatively new blog site, PopKrazy, devoted to a wonderful array of pop cult junk, trash, treasure, ephemera, found objects, lost sounds, 60’s and 70’s heirlooms, campy antiquities, eye-winking relics, mainstream nuggets, sideways pleasures, with (uh-huh) even an occasional dose what’s happening today. (Or at least yesterday.) PopKrazy is overseen by the one and only Robot A. Hull, one of the more gloriously inspired gonzo writers from the Great Rock Writing Period of Yesteryear and Sarah James, another smarty pants and true hostess with the mostest, and it mutates daily, spotlighting a wide array of eye-poppin’, head-spinnin’, ear-teasin’ plain ol’ good stuff, with a neat array of revolving writers, pop cult philosophers, and cool daddy ethnologists, including (ahem) myself. Nuff said.

Destruction 101

2009-11-27T08:26:00.005-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the december issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem neccessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
by Scott Duhamel

It ain’t exactly a mental nutcracker imagining bits and pieces of writer/producer/director Roland Emmerich’s childhood interests. He had to be the kid ensconced in his German backyard meticulously cobbling together stick castles, toy railroads, or plain old ant farms, and then eagerly destroying his creations with the heavy heel of his boots or a fiery homemade explosive, all of it carried out with architectural precision and guided by a childhood mantra to truly search and destroy.

With movies like Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998) and The Day After Tomorrow (2007) Emmerich has become the contempo movie-movie Master of Destruction, a true bastard child of The Wizard of Spectacle, Cecil B DeMille (The Greatest Show on Earth, The Ten Commandments), the dictatorial director of such overwrought Hollywood glossies as, and The Duke of Disaster, Irwin Allen, the cheesy maestro responsible for the box office bounty claimed from The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Emmerich is front stage and full center once again, singlehandedly bringing the world to its collective knees with 2012, a swaggering treatise of full scale destruction and computer-generated film imagery, chock filled with directorial barnstorming worthy of DeMille, the sharp, aged cheese once favored by Allen, and Emmerich’s sure-handed air of plasticized movie chicanery—Destruction 101: Snap, Crackle, and Pop Goes the Weasel.

As much as it’s tempting to simply eviscerate Emmerich and his ultra-popular movie work, one can’t help but acknowledge and examine the age old thrill and desire attached to the extremely voyeuristic and indelibly thrilling act of bearing/ sharing witness to havoc being wreaked. Movies suit themselves ideally to this guilty pleasure, the surface mix of pleasure and fright directed at the sight of a familiar or imposing object being rendered asunder is easily transferred to the buzz of awe and appreciation derived from watching an expensive set, an elaborate set piece, or some high-level special effects being torn down, blown up, or rocked and socked. No less than the ever high-thinking Susan Sontag straightforwardly claimed that disaster was one of the oldest subjects of art, and that even pop art like mainstream Hollywood science-fiction was based around a concern with the aesthetics of destruction, the peculiar beauties of making a large scale mess.

2012 offers a plethora of such aesthetics: earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and tidal waves, roving dust clouds, blistering sunrays, Los Angeles dropping into the sea, a White House collision with an kinda/sorts immovable object, the crumbling of Las Vegas, the implosion of Yellowstone National Park, India drowning, an endangered cruise ship cousin to the Titanic and the Poseidon, and (no doubt about it--the unadulterated crowd favorite) a walls-come-tumbling-down disaster slide show at the Vatican. All of the obliteration rolls out like a well-polished and well-financed demolition derby, fully ludicrous and overtly preposterous, making Emmerich a sort of Alfred Hitchcock without layers, depth, or even a point-of-view, yet excusing much of his celluloid bamboozlement since the whole shebang seems overridden with an eye-winking (and gold-digging) self-consciousness.

As the disaster formula demands, 2012 is anchored by an everyman central figure with the attendant personal (i.e. familial) problems, a sci-fi novelist played by John Cusack (who, with this role and other ones like Con Air or America’s Sweethearts, seems to be making a truly concerted effort to join the Nic Cage Club for Serious Movie Actors Who get A Pass for Slumming in Blockbusterville.) Cusack’s failed writer and his kids (Liam James and Morgan Lily) wind up hooking up with his ex-wife and her new beau (Amanda Peet and Tom McCarthy) and, Looney Tune-like managed to miraculously stay a hop, skip and a jump ahead of every harbinger of destruction while people like Woody Harrelson (a high priest of conspiracy), Danny Glover (the U.S. Prez), Chiwetel Ejifor (big timey geologist), and Oliver Platt (imperious cabinet member), chew the scenery with the prerequisite mumbo-jumbo whys and great whatists.

Despite the first class special effects, despite Emmerich’s dazzling ability to render his filmic earth asunder, the movie never amounts to much more than another joyless ride of the schlock express. The plotting is laughable, the characterizations trite, and the suspense is largely missing and mostly well below even juicier B-movie standards. The on screen depiction of highly recognizable geographical landmarks and buildings blowing, up real, real good can’t help but conjure (however shadowy) images that connect to the iconography of 9/11 yet 2012 is absolutely devoid of political content. Finally, there is not a death within the whole whiz-bang death trip that will affect an audience in any significant manner, even in the traditional disaster pic tradition of high camp. It’s all weightless and thoroughly soulless, mere popcorn Armageddon, a dose of hot-buttered apocalypse. Hint: When in doubt, root for the dog.

Let the Wild Rumpus Start

2009-10-29T11:22:00.002-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the November issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem neccessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

I’m certainly not the first film nitcrit to draw on the parallels between the equally transfixing effects of being entranced by a first class movie as a full blown adult and the initial deep boned reaction upon hearing or reading a childhood tale as a dreamy youngster. The raw materials of story-telling, visualization, and self-projections of imagination can prompt the most primal of feelings, synthesizing images unburdened by freedom of the artist, creator, or interpreter. Yup, movies hit the gut and stay in the head like the very stories that enchanted one as open-eyed child, and movie pundits have always referred to certain imaginative filmmakers as perpetual teenagers, aging children, or petulant adults with a lifetime case of the Peter Pan syndrome.

So it comes as no surprise that three of the more intriguing contempo American directors have chosen to utilize their respective celluloid techniques and convert some classic, or at least neo-classic, children’s tales into full blown movies. The one surprise is that same three have finished movies that are virtually finding the big screens simultaneously. One could make an easy argument that Wes Anderson, Tim Burton, and Spike Bonze are movie-movie kindred spirits, all of them sporting an overall archness in their approaches, all of them drawn upon a variable understated tone of humor, and certainly all of them are undeniably devoted to providing a differentiating visual latticework in each of their cinematic efforts. Tim Burton’s version of Lewis Carroll’s estimable Alice in Wonderland is due in theaters in early 2010, Wes Anderson’s got-to-be-droll version of Roald Dahl’s much loved Fantastic Mr. Fox hits the screens in November, while Spike Jonze’s expanded take on Maurice Sendak’s unforgettable 1963 book Where the Wild Things Are is in current release. If the latter is any indication, this may signal a very welcome cinematic trend.

It’s difficult to recall another film that so effectively captures the raw-nerved landscape of emotion and physical energy, of the ever-burgeoning states of sexual and psychological awareness of pre-adolescence. Where the Wild Things Are opening sequences—with a hand held camera holding close to nine-year-old Max (newcomer Max Records) as he bounds through his house and yard, bursting with anger, imagination, and a flinty loneliness—create a heady and immediate impact. It’s a vividly detailed depiction of collapsing innocence and childhood awkwardness and somehow ineffably faithful to Sendak’s tone and style.
Yet, it’s a strange tease too, when Max, as in the Sendak book, finds his way to the mysterious island inhabited by the Wild Things (which takes up the bulk of the movie’s time), Jonze goes into a deceivingly languorous mode, and his film becomes a seductive fable propelled by sideways glances, mumbled enunciation, ambling inaction, and hanging emotions. The island’s very make-up leaves behind Sendak’s earthy backgrounds, as it contains a vast desert, hulking crags of mountainous rock, and an autumnal forest alive with growth, although the whole of it drips with melancholy. Kiddie time? Not exactly. About kiddie time? Exactly.

Sendak’s book was made up of 338 words and 18 illustrations in its entirety. Jonze and co-scenarist, novelist Dave Eggers have smartly elected to flesh out the original tale, all the while keeping close to the author’s spare and subtle depiction of Max as Freudian childking. The creatures, a combination of puppeteering and computerized facial expressions are still recognizable from Sendak’s pages, although given names and distinct personalities by Jonze and Eggers, and also given voice by some select name actors with Chris Cooper as the recalcitrant Douglas, Catherine O’Hara as the puckish Judith, Forest Whitaker as the low key Ira, Paul Dano as the ever wounded Alexander, Lauren Ambrose as the feisty KW, and a pitch perfect James Gandofini as Max’s doppelganger Carol.

Jonze has managed to paint an impeccably textured cinematic fable, both sweet and sour, about the inherent implosion of childhood, with vivid brushstrokes given to the inflated traumas and tongue-tying complications of growing up, a just about perfect reinterpretation of Sendak’s modern classic that’s part idyll, part nightmare, part real, part fantasy, all of it with a subtle emotional underpinning. The presence of the always stellar Catherine Keener as Max’s put-upon mom is another exquisite touch, as is the neatly off-center score by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Carter Burwell. As we all know, Max’s pursuit, his self-inflicted adventure, his expressive search for self-control, ends with a return to a simple but deeply satisfying hot meal and the eternal nurturing of quintessential motherhood, and that’s just enough to probably bring a tear to the eyes of Sendak, Freud, even Walt Disney, and certainly myself.

A Second Look

2009-10-15T21:37:00.003-05:00

Movies, like most pop art, tend to require repeated viewings, often simply to confirm the pleasures derived from the initial viewing, occasionally to douse an overtly passionate reaction caused by a singular performance, a nerve-tingling subject, a hypnotizing theme or maybe just pure directorial panache, and once in a while to somehow enrich or deepen the film going experience by gleaming a deeper meaning or a more penetrating misc-en-scene then an initial viewing may evoke.

Being a huge believer in Clint Eastwood’s directorial acumen, and a sucker for any film about the ever mystical Los Angeles (either past or present, especially past), I recently rewatched his Angeline Jolie hosanna and impeccably burnished period piece Changeling, and essentially saw it in a whole different light.

Back in December of 2008 I opined, among other things, that the movie was sinfully old-fashioned and terminally flawed:
“Jolie plays the one truly virtuous character, and Eastwood trails her like a golden-haloed heroine of some long ago silent film parable. Jolie in period costume is a truly iconic sight, and she delivers a delicate, even comely performance. The problem is the 78-year-old director’s classicist tendencies--the movie unfolds with a stately, methodical tone and proceeds with his assured feel for cinematic storytelling-- but ultimately it never bears down and scratches the surfaces beneath the readily apparent emotional and moral concerns.
It still doesn’t prevent Jolie’s single minded performance from becoming repetitive rather than enriched by the expanded canvas. One hates to damn Eastwood, as fine a working contempo director today, with faint praise, yet Changeling is more admirable than affecting, more contained than disturbing, more passive than passionate. It’s an old-fashioned movie that just about rises above its own mawkishness and inherent stolidity. Rare as it, maybe Eastwood the filmmaker has crafted a well-made offering that is essentially a misfire--a sharply drawn shell that too firmly covers up its raw entrails. Jolie’s much vaunted turnabout doesn’t crack the shell either; it’s far too gilded without an iota of the rawness and grit the framework seems to call for.”

Watching the film unfold again, I was equally impressed with Eastwood’s overall package--the set direction, Tom Stern’s cinematography, the smoothly flowing nuts-and-bolts story telling. Yet, the overall stolidity of the movie didn’t bug me again, and where I originally saw a jumble of an historical cautionary tale, a feminist ballad, a gothic chiller, and an open-ended mystery, I now see a purposefully (even defiantly) old school star vehicle, a movie solely devoted to the primordial gaze, a movie shaped around a long lost centerpiece: The Hollywood Heroine.

The inherent irony that as a macho a figure as Eastwood (his reputation as a filmmaker still skewers that way, part fact, part illusion drawn far too much from his on screen acting persona) would overtly machinate a “woman’s picture”, one worthy of such acknowledged masters of the genre as George Cukor or Josef Von Sternberg, is a major obfuscation. Still, a close examination of Eastwood’s progression as a director reveals him to be an ever maturing classicist, obviously steeped in a Hollywood of the past that he was never part of, as the studio system was dissolving during his early leap into stardom.

Changeling ain’t all about Eve, it’s all about Angelina, and Eastwood’s lens is as devoted to her as the gilded cameras of the once-upon-a- time dream factory that smoothly fetishized the faces of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, or Marlene Dietrich. Eastwood continually spotlights her lanky frame, her bee-stung lips, her inexplicable exoticism without sexualizing her, seemingly half of her lengthy screen time is spent with a natty hat half obscuring her delicate features. One can’t help but think of Garbo, and what Roland Barthes infamously postulated: “Garbo’s face represents this fragile moment when the cinema is about to draw an existential from an essential beauty, when the archetype leans towards the fascination of mortal faces, when the clarity of flesh as essence yields its place to a lyricism of Woman.”

Is the movie worthy of such a high-minded exegesis? Maybe not, it’s still not a one-of-a-kinder. Still, it remains a fascinating intermeshing of a highly developed directorial vision and a strong, iconic actress, and it stands as a fully formed and thoroughly intentional cinematic throwback, both a paean and a link to a type of well-made, populist American filmmaking that has long ceased to exist.

A Cop with a Hat, a Tommy Gun, and Lee Marvin's Eyes

2009-10-06T21:31:00.008-05:00

Until 1965’s Cat Ballou, the indomitable Lee Marvin was yet another working actor, flitting from the big screen to the small, making appearances (usually as a toughie, baddie, or at the very least, a character with heavy attitude) in such standard TV fare as The Virginian, The Untouchables, or Bonanza, and also popping up in meaty stuff like The Twilight Zone, Combat and Route 66, among others. Lee and his eyes also held down a starring role for 117 episodes (1957-1960) in a bare bones cop show, M Squad, finally available on DVD.

M Squad (which was directly parodied in The Naked Gun) featured Marvin as Detective Lt. Frank Ballinger, a dry-as-toast and tougher-than-leather copper navigating through the mean streets of Chicago. Disappointingly, the black and white half hour episodes are neither taunt nor sharp, and mostly without a hint of noir. Directed by a batch of familiar TV helmsmen (Virgil W. Vogel, Bernard L. Kowalski, Don’s Taylor and Medford), the shows aren’t exactly turgid either, bumped up a little bit by Marvin’s laconic voice-overs and his tough guy sway. (Outside of maybe Lancaster and Mitchum, two other poetic macho man, was there ever quite a sonorous prole voice like Marvin's?)

Some claim that the series was original in its depiction of TV violence and it did indeed sport a fantastic theme song, and a cool opening, a jizzy jazzy score throughout each episode, a nuts and bolts procedural panache, legit Chicago location shooting, and, of course Marvin.

Pain Don't Hurt

2009-10-05T07:32:00.003-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the October issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem neccessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

The recently late, not-so-great Patrick Swayze was easily among the most earnest of actors, a toned-up, adult Boy Scout with a modified mullet, a near perfect dancer’s ass, a model’s toothy smile, and the perpetual air of an aiming-to-please golden retriever. His career was a strange one, filled with cheesy box office hitaramas, grade C actioneers, confectionary TV mini-series, topped off with a bold splash of truly awful movies. Not without legit and sincere fans, he’ll be remembered for his athletic grace, his easy sincerity, and his low key yet pretty coyness

Not me though, I’ll remember him chiefly for two very specific film maven credentials, the first being his steady and often awe-inspiring run of exquisitely named movie characters. Think about it: He was Darrel Curtis in The Outsiders (’83), Jed in Red Dawn (’84), Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing (’87), Sam Wheat in Ghost (’90), and, oh yes sir, Bodhi in Point Break (’91), and, uh-huh, Vida in To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (’95). With character monikers as resplendent as that, the acting stuff was gloriously secondary.

Lest we forget, Swayze also played another one- name figure, a lead role that perpetually resounds by simply uttering (in a quiet, but oh-so-tough, monotone) the eternally poetic sobriquet, Dalton. His second, towering forget-me-not credential is his nonpareil portrait of Dalton, the Zen/magisterial/mystical/ultra-masculine/mythical Wandering Bouncer in one of the baddest of all contempo bad movies, 1989’s Road House.

Although there have been some adventuresome film nitcrits willing to offer up theories that Road House (helmed by the you-couldn’t make-this-up Rowdy Herrington) is a subversive tone poem bent on undercutting the very blueprint of the exceptionally macho action film (evidenced by a co-writing credit of a female, Hilary Henkin, later responsible for Romeo is Bleeding and Wag the Dog), or, in direct contrast, an overt cinematic ballad of plainspoken homoerotic worship (evident in Swayze’s ever balletic fighting moves, or the camera’s continually adoring shots of his aforementioned rump), I will continue to celebrate Road House as a masterfully terrible movie, one that holds the viewer in a horrified hypnotic sway.

Road House centers around Swayze’s Dalton, entering a one horse town in order to preserve the sanctity of the holy Double Deuce, the iconic road house of the title. Dalton, tooling around in a Mercedes convertible and proudly holding a Ph.D. in philosophy from NYU, is a warrior-Buddha, and apparently makes quite the living straightening out juke joints and dive bars throughout our wary nation. Steeped in the wisdom of the Far East, ably to stitch his own gaping knife wounds, he possesses all the Big Answers, and seemingly glides through the air while performing bare-chested tai chi, old school face pummeling, and modern day throat-ripping fu. He turns down sex from the long-legged and big haired women that drool on him in between drinks, literally tosses out dirty bartenders and knocks out petulant customers, and probably cleans the bathrooms stalls hourly with his own ever luxuriant locks. He is forever poised, unshakable, Wyatt Earp with a doctorate, and he even brushes his teeth with a powerfully abiding sense of harminiousness.
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When in doubt he calls upon Wade Garret (acting dynamo Sam Elliot), his mentor and the former A#1 Wandering Bouncer, while also seeking tenderness and stand-up sex with Doc (the dual-expressional Kelly Lynch), who happens to be, yup, the town doctor, while simultaneously waging war with criminal kingpin Brad Wesley (melting method man Ben Gazzara). (The screenwriters have subtly tagged everyone with cowpoke handles.) The town is an Edward Hopper painting made up of a car dealership, a general store, the bar, no visible police presence, a lake, and, shades of Samuel Beckett, two houses sitting across it and in full view of each other, the metaphoric ranches of the avenging Dalton and the villainous (and oldie-singing) Wesley.

No fervently rotten movie comes up without eminently quotable dialogue, and Road House is awash in pearly cinematic wisdoms:

“I want you to be nice until it’s time not to be nice.”
“That dog won’t hunt”
“Pain don’t hurt”
“Nobody wins a fight”
“I don’t fly…too dangerous”
“It’s my way or the highway”
“That gal has entirely too many brains to have an ass like that”

There’s absolutely nothing funny about pancreatic cancer, and I just have to believe that neither Johnny Castle or Sam Wheat, or even the Bodhi would approve of movie buffs either laughing or crying about the early passing of La Swayze. Do a Dalton instead, steering steely into the home screen, the later at night the better, the fiercer the gaze, the more controlled the movement, the sharper the mind, the better, and slip full away into another viewing of the immortal Road House, so very bad that it almost transcends itself. RIP Patrick Swayze, 1952-2009.

2009-09-29T21:26:00.003-05:00

Ernest Borgnine was in town recently, receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, and I wanted nothing more than to share a beer and an easy conversation with the guy. It’s a hoary cliché to bemoan the fact that they just don’t make ‘em like they use to, but it’s equally hard to argue that there’s a whole lotta equivalents to Ernie Borgnine in contempo cinema. Borginine, particularly in action films, war movies, and western’s brought a sort of proletariat authenticity, whether playing grizzled, ornery, malevolent, or wizened.

Borgnine’s greatest screen moments may have been as William Holden’s right hand man in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (’69), but he enjoyed some fruitful collaborations with the often underrated Robert Aldrich (one of the masters, alongside Howard Hawks and Sam Fuller of men-in-conflict sub genre), getting the job done in Flight of the Phoenix (’65), The Dirty Dozen (’67) and The Legend of Lylah Care (’68). Aldrich is also responsible for one of good ‘ol Ernie’s toughest, all-out, son-of-a-bitch roles, that of train conductor Shack in 1973’s Emperor of the North.

A box office failure upon its release, it was a hard to categorize effort, a train tale, a depression fable, and a very weird coming-of-age story, set in Oregon in 1933, and co-starring the indubitable Lee Marvin as a kingpin hobo called A-No. 1 and newcomer Keith Carradine as footloose punk puppy dog known as Cigaret. (The movie also underwent a title change from The Emperor of The North Pole to its longstanding one-word-less appellation, the original title being an ironic moniker applied to the boss hobo, aka The King of Nowheresville.) Aldrich steadfastly claimed it to be a representational bit of cinefiction, a sideways commentary of the generational fission taking place with America at the time, but it played out as a period piece peppered with brutality despite a few picaresque zig-zags (a loose turkey and a sad sack cop played by Simon Oakland in hobo camp, a comical riverside baptism, some cat and mouse shtick between Carradine and Marvin).

Aldrich, always a filmmaker who knew exactly how to stage, frame and cut an action sequence, delivers throughout, and the action and its inherent violence are filmed with an unfussy muscularity. The hobo patois (and Marvin's rat-a-tat delivery) is ear pleasing and the train set pieces are vivid. The characterizations, especially Carradine’s irritating braggart, don’t quite jell, but Marvin fully commits to his raging roosterisms and my man Ernie just clenches those powerful choppers of his and squints his way right past evildom. I saw this movie in the theatres during my late adolescence and was held in sway by it then, and thought that the final one-on-one match-up between the two manliest of men, Lee Marvin and Ernie Borgnine, was pure action nirvana--hard, smart, thrilling, and too cool to be true. I’m still there, some 30 wizened and ornery years later.

SHELF LIFE # 4

2009-09-23T21:24:00.004-05:00

(As monomaniacal as I might truly be, maintaining a blog of this high degree of purity and insight (heh-heh) gets wearying. I realize I have enough know-it-all-pallies, informormed buds, and sharp hipster connections, that I oughtta let one or two of you bring it on home occasionally. Here’s the basic premise: 1-3 concise paragraphs about a CD (or as we old schoolers still refer to it-an album) that wasn’t necessarily an all-timer, a Blonde on Blonde or a London Calling. Instead, spotlight a possible peripheral release that stands the test of time and delivers on its small promises, or simply executes succinctly and manages to remain on yer personal playlist--- a sideways record, an overlooked effort, a self-contained minor gem, ya know, a record that’s got Shelf Life. Send me your brilliant overview in simple word form, and I’ll post ‘em up, giving my avid and obsessive readers (heh-heh-heh) an occasional breather from the sound of one man pontificating. The latest guest effort comes from my long ago high school pallie-and then rock and roll guru--Chas Chesler.)

This Is Hardcore-Pulp (Island, 1998)

I’ve always had a thing for groups that were “too British”; quintessential but poor selling late ‘60s Kinks, the original Small Faces, Bonzo Dog Band, etc. When Scotty D requested a contribution, I looked to bands without much US success yet more recent histories. Oasis? Too famous. Blur? Too obvious. Pulp? Ahh, yes. Our topic: 1998’s This Is Hardcore. Reaching #1 in the UK, it didn’t even chart here! Can’t get more “too British” than that.

More than ten years on, This Is Hardcore is still creepy. When Pulp leader Jarvis Cocker whisper/sings during opener “The Fear”, “You’re gonna like it, but not a lot”, the “All About Eve” Bette Davis line “Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!" comes to mind.

This is an album of damaged people asking the mirror why they should go on. Cocker spins tales of excess nightlife and promiscuity and the inhabitants’ feelings of emptiness and worthlessness these appetites provoke. They recognize the physical and emotional self-destructiveness of their actions but seem powerless to stop. As the protagonist in “Party Hard” demands “If you didn’t come to party, why did you come?”
Over a pastiche of styles, Chris Thomas’ production is sharp-edged and remote. Elements of glam, pop, arena balladry (think Bob Ezrin-era Alice Cooper), disco and a bit of dissonance can be found.

There is no respite here as each song gets under your skin and the cycle repeats. “This Is Hardcore” unintentionally acts a warning to married with children couples with second thoughts; a much darker vision of The Kinks’ “Two Sisters”, one of whom chooses the home life rather “Than the wayward lass that her sister had been”.

Cocker lends his own name to the opening lyrics on “Dishes”, about a self-loathing kept man: “I am not Jesus, but I have the same initials”. A rare light moment on a highly recommended dark masterpiece.

Going Medeival

2009-09-20T10:13:00.007-05:00

The following column is reprinted from the September issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem neccessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

Quentin Tarantino’s often told personal tale, that of a brash, young know-it-all video clerk who writes his way into the heady upper regions movie industry, writing and making his directorial debut with the in-yer-face Reservoir Dogs in 1992, dashing off the screenplay for boldly rococo True Romance in 1993, contributing the story to attention-grabbing Natural Born Killers in 1994, and ultimately co-writing and directing up-the-ante Pulp Fiction that same year, spurred on a subsequent generation of movie scribblers and film nibblers, all bent on skipping over film school or industry apprenticing and vaulting directly into movie-making power, glory, and box-office ching-a-ling, equipped with nothing more than an audacious concept or two, some twisted dialogue, and the tippity-tap of the lap top keyboard.

In the decade plus that’s followed there has certainly been dozens of Tarantino (or QT, as he is known to his more ardent followers) approximators, imitators, followers, and cinematic brothers-in-arms, none of whom have held a candle to his single-minded filmmaking wonder world—a particularly peculiar filmic view that welds together genres, movie history, and pop culture fervor in vastly entertaining packages that are always part spectacle, part low concept, and part (yup) pulp fiction. His latest, long rumored to be in the works, is Inglourious Basterds, an ostensible take on the old school World War II movie that could have almost been made by tipping a few shelves over in the hip video store around the corner, and spicing together a heady batch of both disparate and kindred found footage culled equally from the mainstream and the exploitative.

Inglourious Basterds is bound to be intensely polarizing (as the initial nitcriticism indicates), as it rolls out as if derived from an aesthete’s blueprint, yet seems crafted with pulp cartoonishness, continually nudging the artful into the low-down, craftily airing out the florid excesses of melodrama and outright tawdriness. It is, without question, QT’s ultimate video clerk film fantasia, a movie boiled in the oil of melted down film nitrate stock (ironically enough, also one of the movie’s plot points), a film that unequivocally operates in a readymade cinematic vacuum. Tarantino’s movies have never been intended to peel back the shell and reveal anything of moral or psychological import, and this—a Holocaust revenge fantasy—doesn’t even hint at any significance outside of tickling the pleasure sensors. It’s a wacked-out paean to the delirious beguilements of the cinema, happily self-indulgent and brazenly self-assured.

As per usual, Tarantino’s arc is dominated more by character than plot, and the movie flies by the ring-a-ding-ding of its skillfully wrought hyper-dialogue. It’s all about the talkers, and the clichéd movie-movie toy soldiers are coolly filled out by a disparate cast of eye-archers. Brad Pitt plays the “Aldo the Apache”, a southern-fried Lieutenant leading a group scruffy Jewish soldiers (known as the Inglourious Basterds) intent on getting behind enemy lines and (literally) taking the scalps of 100 Nazis apiece. The squad winds up mixing and matching with the likes of undercover Brit soldier (and practicing film critic!)Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbinder), sexy German film queen Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), movie palace operator-with-a-past Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), and silky smooth Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), better known as “the Jew hunter.” Waltz walked away with a well deserved acting prize at this year’s Cannes, and in all actuality he gets much more screen time than the top-billed Pitt, who is fairly acute at rendering a caricature that would be equally at home in a Coen Brothers’ film.

Inglourious Basterds is 153 minutes of pop-art felicity, a rollicking collision of the absurd and the visceral, and there will be those (like myself) who can’t help but be swept along in its chortling, blazing, transparently outrageous pop-cult blender. In the blink of an eye, the film conjures up or draws upon huge dollops of film iconography, ranging from and to The Great Dictator, The Alamo, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The Devil’s Brigade, The Dirty Dozen, Ennio Morricone, Ernst Lubitsch, Alfred Hitchcock, Sam Peckinpah, Aldo Ray, Peter Sellers, Emil Jannings, G.W. Pabst, Marlene Dietrich, Josef von Sternberg, war movies, westerns, splatter flics, and film noir. To top it off, the movies very finale is set within the plush confines of Tarantino’s very own “Cinema Paradiso.”

To others, all of this is sugary frosting and not much more, and QT will be (perhaps justifiably) accused of substituting intellectualism for inanity, of passing off virtuosity as substance, of allowing shallowness to be painted as pointed (and artistically fermented) nihilism. He’d probably laugh that sort of complaint off, and tell ya that a movie is just a movie, man, and the pleasure always lies within the framework. As far as that goes Inglourious Basterds is written with sharp malevolence, shot with blissful theatricality, rendered with an adrenaline-pumping tension, and delivered with an overall directorial panache that you simply don’t find in the vast majority of mainstream movie offerings. No way around it, Tarantino, the film maven-turned-filmmaker, truly goes medieval this time out.

SHELF LIFE # 3

2009-09-15T20:52:00.006-05:00

(As monomaniacal as I might truly be, maintaining a blog of this high degree of purity and insight (heh-heh) gets wearying. I realize I have enough know-it-all-pallies, informormed buds, and sharp hipster connections, that I oughtta let one or two of you bring it on home occasionally. Here’s the basic premise: 1-3 concise paragraphs about a CD (or as we old schoolers still refer to it-an album) that wasn’t necessarily an all-timer, a Blonde on Blonde or a London Calling. Instead, spotlight a possible peripheral release that stands the test of time and delivers on its small promises, or simply executes succinctly and manages to remain on yer personal playlist--- a sideways record, an overlooked effort, a self-contained minor gem, ya know, a record that’s got Shelf Life. Send me your brilliant overview in simple Word form, and I’ll post ‘em up, giving my avid and obsessive readers (heh-heh-heh) an occasional breather from the sound of one man pontificating. Weighing in this time is The Professor, Wayne Cresser)

Submarine Bells- The Chills (Slash, 1990)

I probably wouldn't have known much more about the Chills than the catchy “I Love My Leather Jacket,” if it hadn’t been for one of those blessed mixed cassettes that friends would give me when the mood struck them. I never saw these 90 minute gems coming, which was a good thing since the surprise of the music had a better chance of working different levels when that happened.

Jen M. gave such a tape to let me know what the radio kids at Wheaton College were digging; this was maybe Spring, 1992. On the tape, there was a lot of Yo la Tengo, Pavement, a wonderfully strange Connecticut outfit called Uncle Wiggly, an even stranger Wiggly spinoff called Fly Ashtray and the sublime Chills from New Zealand. “Leather Jacket,” was in the mix, but that was just the key that opened the door to two songs from their 1990 album Submarine Bells: “Heavenly Pop Hit,” and the title track. “…Pop Hit” was impossibly bubbly-sounding. Paced by an echoey, ascending organ, it might float away if it were not tied to Martin Phillipps’ skeptical writing:

And I’m growing in stages,
and have been for ages,
Just singing and floating and free. Dum de dum dum
Its a heavenly pop hit
If anyone wants it.

The bolded line brings things back down to earth. Not a lot of people wanted “it” despite the Chills wit, charm and musical intelligence. The title track is flat out beautiful, with Phillips putting the finishing touches on the ocean motif that floats under the entire record (which I have to admit, did not come into my possession until years later).

Between the alpha and the omega, there are ten more elegant tunes, the best of which rock hard, “Familiarity Breeds Contempt,” soft, “Don’t Be-Memory,” and weird, “I Soar.” Submarine Bells is one of those records you always listen to in its entirety and wonder what it might have sounded like live.

I imagine the Chills toured the States in the 90’s, but sadly, I didn’t see them. If only I’d been paying more attention

Don't Look Now

2009-09-10T13:35:00.005-05:00

Just when you think that the contempo version of the horror genre has run its course, wham—a dumbass kill fest like last week’s new release The Final Destination hits the muddy ground running and racks ups the box office ducats. For those of you who desire something a bit more from the genre, the perfect antidote has arrived—a pristine new transfer from Criterion of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), one of the finer psychological thrillers ever made.

Although this was only Polanski’s second feature, and his first English language film, his sense of detail and unnervingly chilling pacing demonstrate his youthful cinematic mastery. Of course, as always with Polanski theme plays a dominate role, and this tale of alienation and sexual repression unfolds sublimely, with the picture perfect Catherine Deneuve (all 21 years of her) at the center as Carol, a Belgian manicurist sleepwalking through the spidery sidewalks of 60’s London. Carol is being chased by a handsome young man (John Fraser), and being affronted by her roommate and sister’s (Yvonne Furneaux) invading (and probably married) lover (Ian Hendry). Left alone for a week, she slowly dissipates, and as Polanski positions the viewer into sharing her subjectivity we witness her creaky apartment come alive with unnerving noises, shadowy glimpses, and walls that seem to almost breathe and sigh as she entombs herself, both psychically and psychologically.

Although the similarly plotted (and themed) Rosemary’s Baby (1968) is the work of an obviously more mature filmmaker, Repulsion is a commanding film, beguilingly composed and effectively stitched together, and creepy as all get out. In a strange way this is an anti-Hitchcockian thriller, although it shares Hitch’s penchant for mixing up sex, dread, and violence and it also is an effort that acutely utilizes the visual as a code for the psychological. Hitchcock enticed viewers with a surfeit of surface cinematic bedazzlement, and only audiences that chose to penetrated deep below the surface. Polanski, on the slips and slides and burrows into the subterranean psychosexual blues, accompanying it with a visual scheme that always seems poised to veer into the surreal, creating supreme tension because it never quite does. Yet, like any of the more powerful Hitchcock efforts, Repulsion will stay with you and linger ever so tantalizingly in the mind's eye, long after your viewing experience.

Las Vegas Redux

2009-09-03T09:20:00.002-05:00

(Although home, can't wipe the arid Las Vegas air outta my lungs, nor can I rid my nose of the perfumed stench of gung ho gamblers and witless casino dwellers, and my mind can't erase the all-out stale, pre-packaged wierdness of the landscape, so I dug out last year's after-the-trip reaction, presented below.)

Ahhhhh, Las Vegas. Just returned from an annual business trip/four-day tour and I still can’t get that horrifying (and continual) sound of the ever-clanging slot machines out of my head. That and the ongoing sight of hookers, high-rollers, bottom-feeders, sandal and short donning grown men, weirdly tanned women, hyped-up Asian youth, fat-assed security guys, all exhaling that strange combo of desperation and hope.

It ain’t Sinatra’s Vegas any more, although a brief excursion through so-called “Old Vegas” provided some temporary stale but outside breathing and a chance to walk among the more middle-class dreamers and beamers in a slightly upgraded version of the Atlantic City boardwalk. Just to make sure that I was fully aware that I could never walk in Frankie’s venerated footsteps, my colleagues decided that we should (for once) go to a show, rather than just eat, drink, and gamble till the wee wee hours.

My boys, good guys all, are not exactly culturally discerning, and some how the choice was made to sit through a performance of Cirque du Soliel’s Mystere. (Yeah I know, not even the Beatle’s show!) The sight of us, nine grown men in various states of inebriation and head titling sleepiness, seat by seat next to each other awaiting this hocus-pocus mix of mime, acrobatics, and artificial meaningfulness had to be, without a doubt, the gayest image I’ve ever been part of. After nodding through most of it, recoiling at half of it, and, despite my struggles, fully inhaling the acid aroma of stale showbiz cheese, I burst out onto the streets and left my union brethren behind, desperate to find my inner manliness, to go John Wayne on someone, to plunge down the Vegas strip with the Zen toughness of Burt Lancaster, the brutish male soul of Robert Mitchum, and the hard and clear oh-so-masculine eyes of Lee Marvin.

I immediately bent right down on the sidewalk and sniffed the first pretty girl’s ass that I saw, elbowed aside a couple of frat boy jokers and flashed ‘em the psycho stare, broke up the hand-clenching of two starry-eyed young lovers, got on my hand and knees and scooped up every grimy call girl playing card stuck to the curbsides, asked two silicone-injected west coast divorcee types to do the funky chicken with me, tore up the stairs to one the saddest McDonalds of all time and swallowed a Big Mac and left the goo right on my lips, threw a few fries at some Frenchy looking bastards with poofed-up hair walking below, then zigzagged across the street challenging any one of the Pakistani cabbies to run me over, demanded two Cuervo Gold shots and a Budweiser at the nearest bar and loudly asked anyone in the vicinity to tell me if there was a better sports town on earth than Boston, and by the way did they know that the 6-0 Celtics were marching directly towards the NBA crown, that Bill Belichick oughta just tap dance on the grave of Vince Lombardi, and that the Red Sox just might roll through the next coupla World Series. The bartender cast a weary eye on me, pointed a finger a the torn Cirque du Soliel stub sticking out of my top pocket, and told me in a quiet but stern voice that the next round was on him, nodding sagely all the while.