Here’s a preview article I wrote for the Jersey City Independent, about a protest event scheduled for this Sunday, November 1. The goal is to keep Liberty State Park out of the hands of developers. There will be a bike ride, bands, kites, food trucks, and face painting for the kids. Come on out for an important cause!
Meet Eddie Clemens of the Agency Group
Here’s an interview I conducted for the September/October issue of hMAG. Was interesting to talk with someone involved in booking concert tours at a level far above the indie shows I obsessively attend.
Movie Review: Bridge of Spies
4 stars out of 5
I learned a little about captured pilot Francis Gary Powers as a schoolboy, and then I guess his name came up again after the band U2 got famous. But I can’t say I’ve given him a lot of thought since. Honestly, I didn’t even know that this movie was based around the U-2 incident until the Powers character shows up in it. “Oh, inspired by THOSE true events,” I silently thought, as to respect my fellow audience members.
Well, it’s a hell of a story. Yes, a lot of it is negotiations, which maybe doesn’t sound too thrilling to watch. Thankfully, we’ve got top-(no pun intended)flight talent handling things here: Directed by Steven Freaking Spielberg. Starring his fellow war-obsessed buddy Tom Hanks. With a script revised by the Coen brothers, who are possibly my favorite siblings of all time.
Now, you’ve got that word “inspired” by true events, which could be a red flag. But based on what I’ve gleaned from Wikipedia in the minutes before writing this review, they’ve followed history pretty closely. And then I imagine they had to connect the dots where information is still classified or is just unknown. Of much interest to me is Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who — though traded for Powers, and a grad student to be named later — I don’t recall getting a whole lot of ink in my textbook. He is expertly portrayed by Mark Rylance: reserved and sardonic, but with a definite humanity seeping through.
The recreation of his U.S. trial certainly has relevance in our post-9/11 world: What rights do foreign prisoners deserve? Is a fair hearing remotely possible? Spielberg contrasts the treatment of Abel with the much harsher way that Powers is handled back in the USSR. (You don’t know how lucky you are, boy!) But in the wake of Gitmo, who can really take the moral high ground?
The filmmakers are all products of the Cold War era, so most everything here rings true, from the duck-and-cover drills at home, to the greyness of the Soviet World, to the symbolic and actual delineation of the brand-new Berlin Wall. Much of the action is set in East Berlin, so Spielberg gets a little WWII atmosphere in here too — a German soldier even asks an American for his “papers.” If you’re wondering, the Coens don’t deliver any of their trademark zaniness (we’ll have to wait for Hail, Caesar!), but I do think they helped make the dialogue that much more realistic.
Hanks is solid as ever as James Donovan, the lawyer assigned to defend Abel. He takes his job seriously even though the government really doesn’t want him to. The terrific Amy Ryan, as his wife, doesn’t get a whole lot to do, but she delivers a look toward the end of the film that absolutely makes her casting worthwhile. It’s good to see Jesse Plemons, a.k.a. Landry from Friday Night Lights, getting more and more work (this time as one of Powers’ fellow flyboys); interestingly he’s also in this season of Fargo, executive-produced by the Joel and Ethan Coen. I’m always happy to see Herc from The Wire, and Alan Alda does a nice, restrained job as the head of Donovan’s law firm. Oh, and the dog-killing guy from The Leftovers teaches pilots how to fly the U-2.
So, good stuff all around: story, script, performances, cinematography. Steven Spielberg may not be the most artful director around — for better or for worse, he’s the eternal poster boy for the Big Hollywood Film — but man oh man, he is still the absolute best at endings. The whole time he’s landing the film (pun maybe intended), Spielberg was really “getting me in the feels” as the young people say, one moment after another. And then that “here’s what happened afterward” text comes up at the end — wow, I lost it. Good job, fellas.
My Internet Radio Playlist, 10/20/15
EPISODE #203: COVERS II
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Grass Widow — “Cover You”
Robyn Hitchcock — “The Ghost in You”
John Wesley Harding — “Like a Prayer”
The Proclaimers — “King of the Road”
Hank Hill from King of the Hill — “Teddy Bear”
Liz Phair w/ Material Issue — “Turning Japanese”
The Lemonheads — “Mrs. Robinson”
Yes — “America”
The Feelies — “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)”
Sonic Youth — “Superstar”
Los Straitjackets — “My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme From Titanic)”
Devo — “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
Dinosaur Jr. — “Just Like Heaven”
Yo La Tengo — “Friday I’m in Love”
broadcast live from Hoboken, NJ, on “Jack’s Aquarium”
Tuesday, 10/20/15, 10:00-11:10 a.m. eastern time
Separated at Birth XXXVII
Martin Short and the guy on the Mississippi Grind poster who isn’t Ryan Reynolds
FBW’s 25th Anniversary
A terrific nonprofit group I do a little volunteering for here in Hoboken is the Fund for a Better Waterfront. On Thursday, October 22, they will be celebrating their 25th anniversary, with a gala at the local Elks Club. I wrote a short preview of the event for hMAG.com.
The Ghost of Uncle Joe’s Returns
Live music and dead people: Seeing bands in a 19th-century cemetery is pretty awesome. I finally made it to the annual “Ghost of Uncle Joe’s” fundraising show last year, and I was honored to write a preview of this year’s event for the Jersey City Independent.
Movie Review: The Forbidden Room
4 stars out of 5
I’ll be honest with you — I have no idea what to make of this movie, but I still enjoyed the hell out of it. The works of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin are certainly not for everybody, but if you’re lucky enough to be remotely on his wavelength, he rewards us with beauty and sadness, humor and absurdity, and utter madness.
In The Forbidden Room, he holds nothing back. The film begins with a virtual explosion of wobbling muted colors and million-year-old fonts; you feel as if the film stock will suddenly burn up in the projector, or else turn to dust. An older man in a robe — reminiscent of the “host” from Funny or Die Presents — instructs us on how to take a bath. Next we are in a submarine, where the crew is running out of air. A mysterious bearded (and damp) woodsman boards the vessel somehow, unsure how he got there, and we learn of his quest through the forest to rescue the beautiful Margot. And there is a song about derrieres by the legendary oddball duo Sparks, paired with footage featuring Charlie Chaplain’s daughter:
It goes on like this, stories embedded within stories within stories with stories, an intricate, meticulously crafted puzzle, with acting credits interspersed throughout. If you’re familiar with Maddin’s films, you’ll find yourself in recognizable terrain — a woozy dream state viewed through the lens of silent movies, worshipping the old-timey and the never-was. If you’re not familiar and it all sounds incredibly pretentious, fear not: Maddin has a wild sense of humor, a definite down-to-earth sensibility, and much of this is tongue-in-cheek (and even breaks the fourth wall, slyly referencing the screwiness of so many stories nested within themselves). He just happens to be insane.
The movie has a co-director (Evan Johnson), but I’m guessing that was more a matter of logistics, as the film was conceived as an art project, performed and filmed in front of live audiences (which you absolutely can’t tell from watching the finished work). And I think that the stories within are lost silent films, totally reimagined and remade. Also there is much, much more footage, which will end up on an interactive website. Or I have all of this completely wrong — I just don’t know anymore!
If you like looking at famous people, in addition to Geraldine Chaplin, we get Mr. Diving Bell and the Butterfly Mathieu Amalric, Broadchurch lawyer/Dexter doctor Charlotte Rampling, and we-need-a-German-guy Udo Kier. Also, I was very happy to see Maddin regular Louis Negin.
I was transfixed and frequently delighted by The Forbidden Room, but it’s definitely a head trip. If you’re new to Guy Maddin, you may want to test the waters by first watching The Saddest Music in the World, which is a little less Maddin-ing.
My Internet Radio Playlist, 10/13/15
EPISODE #202: CMJ 2015
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Beverly — “You Can’t Get It Right”
Hamish Kilgour — “Crazy Radiance”
Big Quiet — “Ghost”
Slang King — “Part Unanimous”
My Teenage Stride — “That Should Stand for Something”
Stephen Chopek — “Systematic Collapse”
Amy Bezunartea — “Mostly I’m Just Scared”
Mercury Rev — “Hudson Line”
Clint Michigan — “Hawthorne to Hennepin”
Evans the Death — “Sledgehammer”
Worriers — “Sinead O’Rebellion”
Panda Bear — “Tomboy”
Neon Indian — “Should Have Taken Acid With You”
Titus Andronicus — “Dimed Out”
broadcast live from Hoboken, NJ, on “Jack’s Aquarium”
Tuesday, 10/13/15, 10:00-11:05 a.m. eastern time
Movie Review: The Martian
3.5 stars out of 5
I’d seen the trailer a while ago, but by the time The Martian came out, I totally forgot what it was about. Martians, maybe? I saw a picture of Matt Damon looking all astronaut-y. Maybe he befriends a martian? Maybe he *is* a shape-shifting martian? (Ooh, not a bad idea — get me Project Greenlight on the phone.) Eh, I figured I’d see it. I like Damon, and director Ridley Scott has made some cool sci-fi stuff: Alien, Blade Runner, that 1984 Macintosh commercial.
So, anyway, he *is* an astronaut, assumed to be killed as a NASA crew aborts its mission during a crazy Mars storm and hastily flees the Red Planet. The End! No, wait, there’s more. Incredulously, Damon is alive — he’s alive! But the ship is gone baby gone and in space, no one can hear you scream.
What we get here is a tale of solitude and survival. Can smart-guy Damon live long enough to be rescued? (Assuming he can figure out a way to make contact with Earth in the first place.) Now, have we had other movies sort of like this? Sure we have. There was Gravity and there was 127 Hours and Cast Away and ooh I really liked Moon, that was a good one. So what sets The Martian apart? Well, for one, it’s on Mars. So that’s something. And time is handled in a compelling way. Mars is, like, really far away, so Damon will have to stay alive for years to have any sort of shot. A hundred twenty-seven hours would be a total cakewalk for this dude.
Also good is a repeated appreciation of math and science. Instead of laser guns, it’s our old friend problem solving to the rescue here. Damon is a botanist. Can he grow food on Mars? Can he create water? There is thinking and calculating and trial-and-error.
The problem with science in a sci-fi movie is that some of it’s going to be fi. So maybe you’re sitting there thinking, “Hmmm, that could be feasible… and maybe that too…” But then where do you draw the line before it’s bonkers nonsense? Which then maybe lessens the impact of “real” science earlier on. I don’t know.
Another science problem is when the — oh, spoiler alert, he does make contact, hey don’t get mad, the poster says BRING HIM HOME — when the astronauts and NASA guys and Jet Propulsion Laboratory nerds are talking, they keep dumbing it way down for us stupid audience members. “Say this salt shaker is Mars” yadda yadda. I know, I know, you have Germans in a movie and they’re speaking English because we can’t understand German. Fine. But all these super geniuses speaking so very casually in The Martian was kind of off-putting.
Now that I’ve spoiled everything, I might as well mention other actors. Jessica Chastain, we like her, she’s the commander of the Mars mission and has an appropriate gravitas. Jeff Daniels is head of NASA and it’s like he walked straight off the set of The Newsroom and directly onto this set and is playing the exact same character. One of the Mara sisters is in this as an astronaut and does not distinguish herself (maybe Scott could’ve given her a dragon tattoo or something?). Sean Bean is a NASA guy who cares about the crew and I’ve always liked the name Sean Bean. Chiwetelu Ejiofor did 12 years as a slave, so 4 years planning a rescue mission is nothing. Donald Glover from Community is a squirrelly nerd-hipster and actually pretty good — funny without chewing the scenery. Mackenzie Davis is the female NASA hipster and for a hot minute I thought she was Greta Gerwig and that gave me what the French refer to as a “frisson.” In a horrendous bit of casting, Kristen Wiig is the NASA public relations person. You do NOT want to be watching a “serious” movie and suddenly go, “oh, haha, it’s Kristen Wiig.” You know who was good and believable: Benedict Wong as the head of JPL. Who else? Is Alec Baldwin in this? Oh no, that was the preview for the Will Smith concussion movie.
Oh, and Damon. He’s good, he’s always good. I was disappointed that the movie — beyond a line spoken by Ejiofor — didn’t really delve into the psychological impact of being THE ONLY PERSON ON A PLANET with NO HUMAN CONTACT. I feel like Damon didn’t get to stretch his acting muscles as much as he might’ve, but that’s really the fault of the script.
Just like this review, the movie is a bit too long: 141 minutes, I don’t know what that is in solar days. And so I liked it a little less as it dragged on, away from sci and closer to big-Hollywood-dumb fi. Still, there’s plenty of cool stuff here, from Martian landscapes (I sprung for the 3-D which gave it extra depth) to realistic-looking spacecraft, and the reliable drama of trying to save Private Ryan or whatever Damon’s name is in this one.
Jack Silbert, curator