Music Archives - Page 5 of 10 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Happy Feet (2006) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

March 18, 2007Adventure, Animation, Antarctica, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Music, Musical, New Zealand, Romance

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
screenplay by George Miller, John Collee, Judy Morris, Warren Coleman
directed by George Miller

by Walter Chaw For no other purpose, really, than that I loved its unabashed perversity and darkness, I used to make an annual ritual of watching George Miller’s Babe: Pig in the City. The image of Mickey Rooney in full clown regalia, sopping at an ice cream cone, is the stuff of nightmares, as well as a marvellous example of how much Aussie director George Miller got away with halfway around the world from his financiers. As a kid’s show, Babe II‘s success has a lot to do with it recognizing how familiar is fear and isolation in the life of a youngster, and providing solutions to things that alarm instead of denying their existence. Watching the director’s latest, Happy Feet, the moment Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood, danced by Savion Glover) woke up in a zoo after an odyssey in pursuit of a commercial fishing vessel and was told by his inmate, a HAL-voiced fellow penguin, “Try the water, Dave. The water’s real, Dave,” I realized that we were down the same rabbit hole with Miller, seeing zoo animals as insane at best, made so by the drudgery of routine and the inability to communicate with their jailers. It’s a fertile image amidst Happy Feet‘s most fertile passage (and its connection to the Starchild sequence in 2001 is the second such allusion in a film this month (see also: The Fountain)), one that ends with Mumble tying the secret of interspecies understanding to that old minstrel trick of tap-dancing for a very particular audience of otherwise disinterested aliens.

Sundance ’07: Hounddog

January 31, 20072000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Music, Sundance

*/****
starring Dakota Fanning, Robin Wright Penn, David Morse, Piper Laurie
written and directed by Deborah Kampmeier

by Alex Jackson Deborah Kampmeier's Hounddog is even worse than its pre-emptive objectors assume it is. The film is offensive in precisely the way you think it's going to be but surprises you by becoming offensive on a whole new level. Everything in the film revolves around a scene where Dakota Fanning is raped, which, far from "gratuitous," is the film's entire raison d'être. Before The Rape, Hounddog plays like one big striptease leading up to it: in the very first scene, Fanning promises her playmate a kiss if he shows her his penis, and throughout the picture, Kampmeier has her prancing around in her panties, gyrating in her rendition of Elvis Presley's "Hounddog," and going swimming in an undershirt. Naysayers are calling the picture "a pedophile's dream," and though I maintain that you would have to be a pedophile of particularly low self-esteem to whack off to this, they do have a point. Up until The Rape, the film is just plain exploitive and cynical. It starts to seem like Kampmeier knows why we're here and is going to draw out our dread/anticipation past the breaking point before delivering "the goods." Then little Dakota gets popped. The scene is simultaneously cowardly, leering, and utterly tasteless: we see close-ups of her limbs flailing and her playmate staring on, fascinated and horrified. Her demonic rapist, who had been hiding in the shadows, grunts a couple of times, comes inside her, and very audibly zips up as she lies on the ground, bawling and defeated. The pre-rape portion of the film was sweating with sex, but all that heat dissipates out during and after the rape.

Sundance ’07: Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten

January 26, 20072000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Ireland, Music, Sundance, UK

***/****directed by Julien Temple by Alex Jackson I worry that this film was wasted on me. I usually walk out of the Q&A sessions after festival screenings because I can't bear to hear the stupid questions the audience asks or, as in the case of M dot Strange, the filmmaker's stupid answers. This time, however, the questions were intelligent and thoughtful, and, it almost goes without saying, so were the replies. Watching Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, I was reminded a bit of those critics who said that The Passion of the Christ was made for hardcore Christians and…

A Star is Born (1976) – DVD

January 3, 20071970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
starring Barbra Streisand, Kris Kristofferson, Gary Busey, Oliver Clark
screenplay by John Gregory Dunne & Joan Didion and Frank Pierson
directed by Frank Pierson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It was no doubt celestially preordained that Barbra Streisand would unleash herself on some cherished Old Hollywood warhorse. But while the Janet Gaynor/Judy Garland hand-me-downs that ultimately felt her musical wrath were nobody's idea of untouchable masterpieces, they at least played their cards right in terms of credulity towards celebrity and damaged spouses. The Streisand/Kristofferson A Star is Born lacks genuine investment in its central relationship between alcoholic rock star John Norman Howard (Kris Kristofferson) and his protégé/lover Esther Hoffmann (Streisand). We're supposed to take their epic love on faith, to say nothing of the burned-out cynicism of the descendant rocker; there's a lot of talk about disaffection and anguish, but Frank Pierson's camera never catches it and the actors never quite express it.

TIFF ’06: The Page Turner

September 4, 20062000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Music, Thriller, TIFF

La Tourneuse de pages***/****starring Catherine Frot, Déborah François, Pascal Greggory, Julie Richaletscreenplay by Denis Dercourt, Jacques Sottydirected by Denis Dercourt by Bill Chambers I question whether Denis Dercourt's Chabrolian The Page Turner (La Tourneuse de pages)--which more than earns its presumptuous double entendre of a title--actually has anything of consequence to say, but I sure got a charge out of it. Mélanie, a butcher's daughter, blows her shot at getting into a music conservatory by becoming flustered when one of the entrance exam's administrators, famed concert pianist Mme. Fouchécourt (Catherine Frot), interrupts her audition to sign an autograph. Some years…

Don’t Come Knocking (2005) – DVD

August 6, 20062000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Music, UK

**/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth, Gabriel Mann
screenplay by Sam Shepard, based on his play
directed by Wim Wenders

by Walter Chaw Howard Spence (Sam Shepard) is a has-been western star knocked down a few pegs by alcohol, drugs, and groupies–and so like any good anti-hero, he takes off in the middle of shooting a film, on horseback, to reunite with his long-estranged mother (Eva Marie Saint) before heading off to Butte, Montana in search of a long-lost bastard son (Gabriel Mann). He has a few conversations with the barmaid (Jessica Lange) he knocked up once upon a time, while a sullen girl (Sarah Polley) carrying a blue urn stalks him around town, offering the occasional cryptic message before retreating again into the wallpaper. But what glorious wallpaper it is, with Wim Wenders and his cinematographer Franz Lustig finding in Butte a myth of the American West frozen in bright, primary, Edward Hopper amber. Twin painters of isolation and suspension, Wenders and Hopper–since long about The American Friend–have been on a mission to redraw the psychic divorce of one American from another in minor chords and long, drawn-out tremolos. Don't Come Knocking, though, is only minor Wenders, and I do wonder if giving over too much faith in the flagging abilities of Shepard to write a script worth shooting has cost him his pitch this time around.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) [Cinema Classics Collection] – DVD

July 24, 20061970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Music

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia Mc Broom, John La Zar
screenplay by Roger Ebert
directed by Russ Meyer

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's no point in whitewashing the career of Russ Meyer. Latter-day critics have tried to float the filmmaker/satirist/horndog as some kind of feminist despite much evidence to the contrary, and though against-the-grain readings are possible, really, who are we kidding? Similarly, his Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is loaded with all sorts of attitudes most thinking adults would rather like to forget, including a streak of homophobia that resonates as slightly nasty. But with Meyer, it's impossible to separate an actual position from a sitting duck–and that confusion is what makes his films so uniquely mind-blowing. His fake morality tales blow up the very notion of morality, to the point where his less noble conceits are torpedoed with everything else.

L’Enfant (2005) + The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006)|L’Enfant (2005) – DVD

July 23, 20062000s, Belgium, Crime, Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Documentary, Drama, DVD, France, Music, Palme d'Or Winner, Romance, Theatrical

The Child
**½/****
starring Jérémie Renier, Déborah François, Jérémie Segard, Fabrizio Rongione
written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON
**/****
directed by Jeff Feuerzeig

by Walter Chaw I believe the title is meant to indicate the arrested protagonist more than it is the baby he tries to sell on the black market, thus The Child (L'Enfant)–another of Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's mild, allegorical subversions of Robert Bresson and incrementally more violent subversions of the French New Wave–takes on Pickpocket via Breathless. In so doing, it conjures up this odd chimera of a stylistically backward-looking, formalist deconstruction, the first film of the Brothers (after La Promesse, Rosetta, and The Son) to feel this much like a knowing satire, to come so perilously close to being smug and post-modern that its style begins to become confused with its message. It could be a product of overfamiliarity with a fine and distinct sensibility (the last thing this kind of innovation can afford is to be outrun and second-guessed), or it could be that the Brothers are getting either bored of their shtick or fond of their reputation.

Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll (1987) [The Ultimate Collector’s Edition] – DVD

July 13, 20061980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Concert Doc, Documentary, DVD, Music

***/**** Image B+ Sound A (DD)/A- (DTS) Extras A+
directed by Taylor Hackford

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover One thing is clear from Taylor Hackford’s Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll: not even the most dedicated hagiographer could ignore the more irascible aspects of Chuck Berry’s personality. Leaving aside his arrests (something Berry forces Hackford to do) and sexual peccadilloes (no prompting required), there’s no denying a general self-possession and pig-headedness that would awe General Patton himself. That Berry can inspire loyalty in the many famous admirers he’s abused is testament to both his personal charm and his shattering influence in the field of rock-and-roll. Although one gets the feeling that people let their starry eyes get in the way of popping him one, he’s one hell of a camera subject and manages to grab your attention for the full two-hour running time.

Monterey Pop (1968) [The Criterion Collection] – DVD

July 3, 20061960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Concert Doc, DVD, Music, The Criterion Collection

***/**** Image A- Sound A- (DD)/A (DTS) Extras A
directed by D.A. Pennebaker

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's impossible for a certain generation to not feel wistful looking back at Monterey Pop. Those who only know a world with a DVD for every band might be blasé about an early concert doc with mere clips of soon-to-be foregone conclusions, but for those who can remember a time (or have endured the rantings of those who can remember) know that in the Summer of Love, a music festival wasn't just the names above the title. The film captures the relaxed atmosphere surrounding some fabulous furry freaks safe in the knowledge that they were about to take on the world; the music is but affirmation of the groundswell bubbling up in the milling crowds. D.A. Pennebaker's camera is deft enough to capture the mood in addition to the tunes, coming up with something more than a hippie variety act.

Valley of the Dolls (1967) [Special Edition] – DVD

June 30, 20061960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Paul Burke, Sharon Tate
screenplay by Helen Deutsch and Dorothy Kingsley, based on the novel by Jacqueline Susann
directed by Mark Robson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's little left to say about Valley of the Dolls that hasn't already been said by either its contemporary critics or legions of mock-adoring fans. The former were correct in establishing it as a cynical cash-in crushed under the weight of its vapidity, the latter justified in their identification of its trash playground of mansions, film sets, and nightclubs as the ideal stage for queening and camping. By all rational standards, the movie is awful, yet its rapid-fire stream of meshuggah takes it into some realm of nonsensical fantasy that makes it as good or better than successful films of its genre. There are so many critical errors in judgment that they meld together to become a hyperbolic cocktail that goes to your head and knocks your legs out from under you.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic (2005) – DVD

June 11, 20062000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Concert Doc, DVD, Music

*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
directed by Liam Lynch

by Walter Chaw It starts off on the wrong foot and never recovers, this first showcase for the brilliant Sarah Silverman to strut her aggressively, pointedly offensive stuff. Something about the deadpan seriousness of her delivery sells jokes about being raped by her doctor ("A very bittersweet experience for a Jewish girl"), about the "alleged" Holocaust, about how the best time to have a baby is "when you're a black teenager," or about how she'll always remember 9/11 as the day she discovered how many calories were in a soy chai latte. And that you're never meant to know with absolute certainty if she's aware exactly how horrible are the things she's saying could be part of the schtick.

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) [Rock On Edition] – DVD

May 25, 20061970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Music, Teen

***/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A-
starring P.J. Soles, Vincent Van Patten, Clint Howard, Dey Young
screenplay by Richard Whitley & Russ Dvonich and Joseph McBride
directed by Allan Arkush

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I could be fastidious and tell you of Rock 'N' Roll High School's faults–that it's cheesy, for instance, with cheap jokes and a relentlessly peppy mindset that somehow contradicts the presence of punk pioneers The Ramones. Yet the film's various demerits add up to a plus, as the exuberance of the whole thing renders it absurdly enjoyable. Much like punk itself (though not like punk at all), the inappropriateness of juxtaposed elements creates sparks that make you wanna dance. This is the big latter-day musical John Landis was gunning for with The Blues Brothers but had too much money and too little sense to achieve: a film that resurrects the innocent, let's-put-on-a-show mentality of old musicals and mates it to the burning-schoolhouse mentality of rock-and-roll. Most people can see that The Ramones have no place in a bouncy teen comedy, but that's almost the best joke in the movie's arsenal.

Mae West: The Glamour Collection [The Franchise Collection] – DVD

April 27, 20061930s, 1940s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music, Musical, Romance, Western

NIGHT AFTER NIGHT (1932)
*½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring George Raft, Constance Cummings, Wynne Gibson, Mae West
screenplay by Vincent Lawrence and Kathryn Scola, based on the novel Single Night by Louis Bromfield
directed by Archie Mayo

I'M NO ANGEL (1933)
***½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Mae West, Cary Grant, Gregory Ratoff, Edward Arnold
screenplay by Mae West
directed by Wesley Ruggles

GOIN' TO TOWN (1935)
***/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Mae West, Paul Cavanagh, Gilbert Emery, Marjorie Gateson
screenplay by Mae West
directed by Alexander Hall

GO WEST YOUNG MAN (1936)
*½/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Mae West, Warren William, Randolph Scott, Alice Brady
screenplay by Mae West, based on the play Personal Appearance by Lawrence Riley
directed by Henry Hathaway

MY LITTLE CHICKADEE (1940)
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Mae West, W.C. Fields, Joseph Calleia, Dick Foran
screenplay by Mae West & W.C. Fields
directed by Edward F. Cline

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Flower Belle Lee reads some words off a school blackboard: "'I am a good boy. I am a good man. I am a good girl.' What is this, propaganda?" Thusly does My Little Chickadee sum up the appeal of its female star, Mae West, who invited all of us (but mostly women) to reject the nice behaviour we learned in school and chart a course based on glory and gratification. You can keep your Bette Davises and your Katharine Hepburns, so often punished for their lively behaviour or pushed into the arms of some man; rest assured that men found their way into West's arms and not the other way around. Certain proto-feminist elements are inescapable: long before Laura Mulvey was a gleam in her mother's eye, West would dare to return the male gaze and demand a sexual appetite equal to, if not exceeding, the men bound to use it against her in a double standard. There was only one standard in West's world, and she set it.

Whisper of the Heart (1995) – DVD

April 20, 20061990s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Family, Japan, Music, Romance

***/**** Image B Sound B- Extras D
screenplay by Hayao Miyazaki
directed by Yoshifumi Kondo

by Walter Chaw Three years after directing Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki-scripted Whisper of the Heart, and before he was able to complete a second picture for the venerable Japanese institution, ace animator and Miyazaki protégé Yoshifumi Kondo passed away of an aneurysm at the age of 47. Knowledge of Kondo's fate colours the already wistful Whisper of the Heart with another layer of blue (especially if you're a fan of Kondo's behind-the-scenes work on landmark anime like Grave of the Fireflies and Princess Mononoke), but it doesn't completely rescue its remarkable humanity from frequent descents into culturally-alien specificity. The obsession with reworking John Denver's hilljack schmaltz classic "Country Road" into an un-ironic ode to the "concrete roads" of the picture's Tokyo-bound little girl protagonist (Shizuku (Youko Honna)), for instance, almost by itself renders Whisper of the Heart a Hello Kitty! for that particular brand of Japanese, Yank-ophile, cross-eyed badger shit. It's a better film if you're Japanese–kind of an amazing thing to say, I know, but the moments that don't reconstitute American "popular" culture through a Nipponese filter manage a fair-to-amazing job of evoking the overwhelming rush of first love. Shame, then, that John Denver appears at regular intervals to remind us of how peculiar a beast cultural diffusion can be.

Adam & Steve (2006)

April 5, 20062000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, Music, Romance, Theatrical

*/****
starring Craig Chester, Malcolm Gets, Parker Posey, Chris Kattan
written and directed by Craig Chester

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover This site's editor Bill and I were on the phone one night, and we came up with a pleasant dream: What if a movie's stereotypical gay character–the one who gets all the bitchy repartee–actually wasn't funny? Be careful what you wish for: Adam & Steve is all stereotypes, all the time, and none of them are remotely funny. Only not by design, like in our fantasy–it's meant to be hilarious, meaning that you die of embarrassment on behalf of everyone involved. Although the film is supposed to be about a gay romance, its real theme is failure, and it's so terrified to seem like anything less than an outrageous good time that it tries too hard. (That the film's lone comedienne generally performs to crickets pretty much sums up the self-flagellant tone of the whole enterprise.) Hostile, ugly, and generally unpleasant to endure, it engenders fear intense enough to snuff out whatever lightness it might have had.

Cimarron (1931) [Special Edition] – DVD

February 28, 20061930s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Drama, DVD, Music, Western

**½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras A-
starring Richard Dix, Irene Dunne, Estelle Taylor, Nance O'Neil
screenplay by Howard Estabrook, based on the novel by Edna Ferber
directed by Wesley Ruggles

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Not exactly a proper western (but not exactly any other kind of genre piece), Cimarron is sort of a thesis-statement historical melodrama, establishing the greatness of the West's upswing while capping off with distinct dissatisfaction over its levelling off. Like its male lead, Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix), the film is beguiled by the idea of rising American "civilization" to the detriment of the idea of permanent settlement. Still, it's quick to note the silent suffering of Yancey's wife, Sabra (Irene Dunne), who naturally has to stay behind as he follows his wanderlust once the initial stake grows gentrified. But though the pull between conservative home and wild, liberal prairie doesn't add up to killer cinema (and is further hobbled by this being an early sound production), as a symptomatic powder keg, Cimarron is endlessly fascinating.

Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006)

February 24, 20062000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Concert Doc, Directors: Jonathan Demme, Music, Theatrical

***½/****
directed by Jonathan Demme

by Walter Chaw Not long after the death of his dementia-stricken father and in the four days preceding an operation to fix a potentially fatal brain aneurysm, Young recorded “Prairie Road”, then called Jonathan Demme post-operation to say that he was taking some time off and interested in making a movie. Demme’s best film is still a tossup between Swimming to Cambodia and Stop Making Sense–his forays into mainstream filmmaking (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) tending towards exactly the kind of slick populism his documents of performance pieces never seem to. His latest, Neil Young: Heart of Gold, is a return to form for a filmmaker who might be our best chronicler of the glorious syncopations of rhythm and flow: a deft, evocative film that finds new poignancy in Young’s voluminous back catalogue while allowing cuts from “Prairie Wind” the kind of metaphysical room its title promises.

Walk the Line (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

February 20, 20062000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Germany, Music, Romance

**½/**** Image B Sound A- (DD)/A+ (DTS) Extras B
starring Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin, Robert Patrick
screenplay by Gill Dennis & James Mangold
directed by James Mangold

by Walter Chaw I'm no longer certain what kind of currency there is in producing a biography of an iconoclast whose life is an exact simulacrum of every other iconoclast's life. Here's an entirely respectable film about Johnny Cash that begins in his childhood, proceeds into the Big Break, then segues from there into the euphoria of fame; the drug abuse and the groupies; the "Come to Jesus"; the rehabilitation; and the closing obituary. (It's like Denis Leary said about Oliver Stone's The Doors: "I'm drunk. I'm nobody. I'm drunk. I'm famous. I'm drunk. I'm fucking dead.") Though it claims not to be a hagiography, Walk the Line (like last year's Ray) featured the freshly-dead legends as advisors up until their untimely demises, a kind of personal involvement (and Cash's son John Carter is one of Walk the Line's executive producers, just as Ray Robinson Charles Jr. was for Ray) that precludes, methinks, most controversy in the telling. That's fine, I guess, this new vogue for these modern Gene Krupa Storys and Eddy Duchin Storys and Glenn Miller Storys–I mean, really, who does it hurt? But after praising the almost supernatural channelling of very public figures by talented actors, the only thing left is the drive home, a hot bath, dreamless sleep, and maybe the impulse purchase of the soundtrack at Starbucks in a couple of weeks.

Sundance ’06: Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That!

February 1, 20062000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Concert Doc, Documentary, Film Festivals, Music, Sundance

Awesome; I Shot That!½*/****directed by Nathanial Hörnblowér by Alex Jackson Given that I was about halfway through a really nasty cold when I saw The Beastie Boys' Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!, I probably wasn't in the right frame of mind to judge its merits. With that disclaimer in place, this has to be the loudest movie I have ever seen. At the end of the ordeal, I felt as though band members Mike D, Adam Horowitz, and Adam Yauch had burrowed inside my brain and gone to work with an iron frying pan. I'll cop to preferring masochistic cinematic…