Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2014: Only Lovers Left Alive

 It's a relief to be able to think of Jim Jarmusch fondly again. As unfair as it is to judge a director I like harshly by one movie, I couldn't get the bitter taste of Limits of Control out of my mouth for a long time, and it inexplicably tainted his earlier films, many of which I really enjoy. For five years, it lingered, festering and rotting, annoying me with an "art-y for its own sake" construction, and I suddenly didn't feel like watching Ghost Dog or Down by Law. There's no "there" there in Limits of Control - the film is strictly an exercise of the director drawing attention to how clever his ideas are, with no characters or narrative to draw from. A lack of narrative isn't especially new for Jarmusch - in fact, it's usually a selling point. But lack of characters? Can you imagine Dead Man without the oddball supporting cast to balance out Johnny Depp? Coffee and Cigarettes at all?

 Thankfully, five years later, Jim Jarmusch returns to characters, and from a most unlikely (for him) literary source: vampires. But I wasn't worried. I can't explain why, but despite the fact that we've been seeing watered down bloodsuckers for the last half decade (or more), something about the idea of Jarmusch and vampires felt right. It was a gamble that paid off, because Only Lovers Left Alive is easily his best film since Ghost Dog and completely wipes Limits of Control off the ledger. Everything that fans have come to expect from Jarmusch is in there: the aimless story, the location as musical backdrop, the off-kilter humor, and most importantly, memorable characters.

 When we meet Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston), we don't know anything about them other than they abide messy abodes. The camera hovers above them, spinning like a 45 as Jarmusch makes his way to their faces, the soundtrack booming. If you haven't seen the trailer, I suppose there's a good chance you wouldn't know they were vampires, at least until Eve leaves her apartment in Tangier to visit a night café. She's waiting patiently for an old friend (John Hurt), and when she says his name, Christopher Marlowe, I guess the jig is up for people going in blind. Yes, that would be "the" Christopher Marlowe, and yes, he's a vampire. He has a nice supply of "the good stuff" that he's happy to share with Eve, but please don't say his name out loud.

 Just writing this, I feel like I'm making Only Lovers Left Alive out to be a very obvious and stupid sounding movie, which it isn't. Jarmusch doesn't play coy about Adam and Eve* - they are vampires, they are old, and there's a lot of unspoken history between them. Taken out of the context of the movie, I could understand how it might sound clever in a bad way, but it's presented so matter-of-factly in the story that it's hard not to take in stride. Eve is so easygoing, and Adam so morose, that you worry they're just going to be "types," but then Jarmusch brings them together and Only Lovers Left Alive shifts into a love story.

 Marlowe asks Eve why she and Adam don't live together if they've been married as long as they have been, but it seems pretty clear when she leaves Tangier to visit him in the U.S. that they have a long history together. They can be together and apart, and Jarmusch doesn't give any explicit reason why they're comfortable half a world away. There's no tragedy or disagreement hanging over the narrative - it just is, and you accept it the same way you do the conceit that they're vampires. Like many Jarmusch films, the why is less important. It gets in the way of what is.

 As he has in the past, Jarmusch sets Only Lovers Left Alive in a city known for its musical history. In this instance, it's Detroit, where Adam sets up shop in an abandoned part of town (the city's current financial calamity is another critical part of the story) and makes music in anonymity. At least, relative anonymity. He has Ian (Anton Yelchin) bring him recording equipment, instruments and, in one special request, a bullet made of wood. That doesn't amount to much more than a MacGuffin, but it's behind what brings Eve back to Adam. He's sick of the "zombies" (what vampires call humans) and is irritated that his music is finding an audience, despite his efforts to mask his identity. She brings him solace, and when the two of them come together, their facades crumble at bit. It turns out that Adam is also something of an amateur scientist and mechanic, who sets up his own sustainable energy for the house and who tinkers with old equipment. During a Skype (?) chat, he transfers the laptop signal to an old television. It's something he enjoys doing.

 Most of the time they drive around Detroit, and he takes her to the Detroit Theater (now a parking lot) and offers to show her the Motown Museum ("I'm more of a Staxx girl," she professes), but Eve is awfully impressed when Adam pulls up in front of Jack White's childhood home. If there's a singularly Jim Jarmusch-y moment in the film, that has to be it, but fans of Mystery Train should enjoy the thematic bridge. Their reunion is short lived, because dreams involving Eve's sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska) turn out to be her way of announcing a visit. Ava doesn't care much about protocol like entering a home without permission and doesn't care much about personal space - she's more than happy to tear through Adam's supply of blood. She's not a very welcome guest, by either of them. It's hinted that they haven't seen her in more than a hundred years, and that it didn't end well "in Paris," and she doesn't seem to have changed much.

 True to form, she wastes no time in aggravating Adam and testing the patience of her sister, who tries to give her the benefit of the doubt. They make quite a trio, with their dark sunglasses and gloves, hanging out at the back of a club watching some band play (at her insistence), with Ian in tow, clueless to what's in the flask they're passing around ("is that Jaegermeister?"). By the end of the following day, she's worn out her welcome and insured they can't stay in Detroit, but they're the "boring, pretentious assholes." Her parting gift, so to speak (other than a SPOILER I'll leave out) is to leave Adam with a broken Gibson guitar from 1905, one that Eve had only recently identified the age of. It's no wonder that he was wary to find Ava had invited herself in the night before. Kids...

 Lest you worry that things get to dour and "goth" with vampires in the picture, you needn't worry: Only Lovers Left Alive is frequently very funny, in an off-beat way. Much of it comes from Adam's source for blood in Detroit, played by Jeffrey Wright. I'd tell you his name, but the setup and payoff of his name tag and the one Adam is wearing is too good to spoil here. When Adam needs blood, he pulls his scraggly black hair back into a ponytail, puts on scrubs, a stethoscope, and walks into the local hospital. The other doctors give him an askew glance, but don't say anything. However, in order to maintain a sense of mystery, Adam puts on his sunglasses when he walks into the blood lab, and he looks ridiculous. Jarmusch holds on the image of Adam trying to look intimidating as if to say, "dude, who are you kidding?" and Wright's character reacts accordingly.

 Yelchin and Wasikowska also provide varying degrees of comic relief, although Hiddleston gets most of the laughs as he tries to humor Eve and handle Ava with anything more than exasperation. His carefully constructed persona collapses completely with his wife and sister-in-law dragging him to a club, and Hiddleston knows exactly when to play the laugh. It would be easy to say he's simply playing a variation on Loki in Only Lovers Left Alive, but I don't think that's quite the case. Adam is more a creature of habit than Loki is, more comfortable in his carefully controlled environment. By the end of the film that environment has been completely shattered, and there's a humorous inevitability to the final shot. Swinton plays the moment perfectly, but that's consistent with her performance in the entire film. As Eve, she carries herself with a natural ease at all times that Adam desperately wants to have. Watching her subtle facial shifts around Ava is also fascinating - Adam is disdainful, but Eve is cautious, nervous even.

 In all honestly, I could have spent another hour with Eve and Adam, but I'm happy to have what's there. Only Lovers Left Alive restores the character to the Jim Jarmusch character study, and you don't mind watching a movie where the main characters drive around Detroit or hang out on the couch most of the time. Really, it's a lot of fun. The soundtrack is great, the actors are having fun, and Jarmusch brings just the right balance of directorial flourish and musical fetishism to the proceedings that I'm having a hard time finding things to complain about. There are more bad vampire movies and shows out there than good ones, it often feels like, so it's nice to add another film to the "positive" category. If you want to see a vampire movie where nothing really happens that you'll enjoy, check out Only Lovers Left Alive. Unless you like sparkly things or need someone to say the word "vampire" every ten minutes. You won't find that here.



 * Jarmusch did not, apparently, intend for audiences to assumed they were "the" Adam and Eve, but the IMDB trivia page erroneously refers to them being based on Mark Twain's satirical excerpts from the "diaries" of Adam and Eve, which ARE about "that" Adam and Eve. Twain also appears as a photograph on the wall of acquaintances in Adam's apartment.

Blogorium Review: Chef

 If you're going into Jon Favreau's Chef expecting something new or innovative in the realm of filmmaking or storytelling, then I'm sorry to disappoint you. Chef sticks to the basics, with a plot so predictable that you can guess how it all plays out within ten minutes. There's no reinventing the wheel, just Favreau working with his friends in the service of an age old story about the busy man who needs to slow down and appreciate life, interspersed with lengthy montages set to his favorite music. And that's not a bad thing at all.

 Chef is the cinematic equivalent to comfort food, appropriate considering that's the Raison d'être of titular character Carl Casper (Favreau). He was once known for his adventurous menus, for risk taking, but since he's been the chef for Riva (Dustin Hoffman)'s Los Angeles restaurant, Casper's had to curtail his ambitions. He still likes to change things up, with the support of his sous chef Tony (Bobby Cannavale) and line cook Martin (John Leguizamo), but when influential food critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt) comes in to review the menu, Riva orders him to "stick with the classics." Michel tears the menu apart, and Casper mistakenly takes to social media to air his grievances, and becomes an unwitting viral sensation.

 With no job and nobody interested in hiring him after a notorious YouTube meltdown, Casper agrees to join his ex-wife, Inez (Sofia Vergara) on a trip to Miami. Carl will keep an eye on his son, Percy (Emjay Anthony), who Casper tries to be a good parent for, but often falls short. While in Miami, Inez suggests that Carl reconsider her food truck idea, and that his Cubanos are better than anything they eat down there. Even if you couldn't see the poster next to this review, I'm almost positive you can figure out exactly where Chef goes from here, and I'll even throw in the fact that once Carl starts up El Jefe, Martin flies in and drives with Casper and Percy back to Los Angeles.

 I mentioned in my review of Frank that Chef's only real novelty is its mostly accurate portrayal of how social media works, largely through Percy. Carl has no idea how to use Twitter and makes the mistake of using his new account to attack Ramsey Michel publicly. Percy uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vine to document their trip across country (notable stops include New Orleans and Austin), as well as to advertise where they'll be next. While I can't say how long Chef will be out there before some of this seems dated, Favreau does use the concept of "viral videos" and the new "social" world we live in a way that doesn't feel contrived.

 This is mostly speculation on the part of the Cap'n, but it feels like Chef is a "back to basics" for Favreau after Cowboys & Aliens. It's a stripped down, less complicated movie that limits special effects to on-screen indicators of someone tweeting (I can't lie, hearing a "bird" noise after every "message sent" got a little old) and an almost bare bones plot. Again, this is not a bad thing, and if it was the palate cleanser that he needed after the lukewarm reaction to Cowboys & Aliens, then I'm glad that Favreau excels in telling stories we've heard before this well. It's almost surprising how little I minded the fact that I knew exactly where Chef was headed and, beat by beat, it does nothing more than what you'd expect. He makes even the oldest movie clichés feel natural and is amiable enough as the lead that you don't mind he's playing the old favorites.

 It might also help that Favreau brought along a lot of old friends, even if just for minor roles. I didn't mention that Iron Man and Iron Man 2 alums Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr. pop up in semi-extended cameos. Johansson plays Molly, the hostess at Riva's restaurant and maybe Carl's girlfriend (this is never really clear, but he definitely takes her home and cooks for her while she's sitting in his bed) who urges him to break out of his routine. Downey Jr. has a one scene cameo as Marvin, Inez's first husband who bankrolls El Jefe and buys the food truck for Carl. He may or may not have hooked up with his ex-wife after Carl split up with her, and he has a penchant for people wearing footies in his office, but Marvin seems like a basically decent guy. It's reasonably clear that Favreau worked with friends as they were available, which explains why Cannavale, Hoffman and Johansson aren't in the last scene when just about everybody else is. There are no real "villains" in Chef - even Oliver Platt has his moment of redemption as Ramsey Michel that leads to an unexpected (from the source, anyway) 11th hour version of a twist. Or as much of one as Chef can have.

 The music is also very good, a combination of Latin and New Orleans Jazz, soul, Motown, a little bit of rock and roll, and more than a couple live performances in Austin and Miami (Inez's father is played by Perico Hernandez). There's an unusual sing along to a Jazzy version of "Sexual Healing" with Martin and Carl, mostly because Percy is in the truck with them. Favreau spends as much time showcasing music he enjoys as he does on montages of food preparation, and while I'm not someone who does a lot of cooking, it seems legit. Maybe someone who is or has been a chef can watch this and set me straight, but it does feel like he's not faking the prep work. Favreau is definitely not faking the language in a kitchen, and if anything is going to hold Chef back from being "family friendly," it's the persistent profanity. But again, it's not a cleaned up version, nor is it designed to be as vulgar as, say, Waiting...

 Unlike a lot of movies I review here, Chef has the chance to appeal to the broadest swath of audiences, and I'll admit that even I came away with positive feelings. The Cap'n is usually the kind of grumpus who wouldn't bother watching something this easy to call early in, but Favreau has a pretty good track record, as far as I'm concerned. I think a great many of you will like it even more than I did, and it's an easy recommendation for just about anyone: foodies, music fans, or date night-ers. Just don't judge me if I get back to watching horror movies or anything like that. I mean, October's almost here...

Blogorium Review: Frank

 As I have been led to believe, Frank (2014) is the prequel to Robot & Frank (2012), which doesn't make a lot of sense to the Cap'n, but we'll go with that. I haven't seen Robot & Frank, and maybe I should so that this review makes more sense, but based on the IMDB synopsis it seems like the "Frank" character that Michael Fassbender is playing grows older and becomes the "Frank" that Frank Langella plays. Or maybe he's the robot. I'm not sure. I never pictured Fassbender's Frank becoming a jewel thief (SPOILER if you haven't seen Robot & Frank, like me), but I could maybe see him becoming a robot. It actually makes more sense that way, but what do I know?

 Nah, I'm just pulling your chain; Frank (probably) has nothing to do with Robot & Frank, but if I had seen the latter film I'd give it the old college try to make tenuous connections. Frank minus Robot is about Jon Burroughs (Domhall Gleeson), who is just a normal guy that wants to be a musician. The only problem is that he's terrible at it. He writes lots of songs, but they're all strictly observational - the beginning of the film follows Jon home as he tries to come up with ideas, and mostly he sings things he's sees, like "lady with the red coat / what you doing with that bag / lady in the blue coat / do you know the lady in the red coat?". He lacks inspiration, and feels like his normal, suburban life in Ireland is to blame.

 By chance, he's sitting on a park bench when the keyboard player for Soronprfbs decides he's had enough and that he wants to drown in the frigid waters. This puts the band in a bit of a predicament, as they have a gig that night. As he's standing next to their manager, Don (Scoot McNairy), Jon casually mentions he plays the keyboard, and he's in. What he's in, as Jon (and we) will learn, is more than he could imagine. By this point in the film, we've already heard Soronprfbs on the radio, where an interview devolves into screaming profanity as members of the band attack each other, and that turns out to be pretty much the dynamic that Jon steps into.

 To call Soronprfbs "avant garde" would be a disservice to the term, but that's clearly what director Lenny Abrahamson and writers Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan are evoking by dropping the otherwise vanilla Jon into the mix. The drummer, Nana (Carla Azar) and guitarist, Baraque (François Civil) only speak French, and generally only speak to each other, unless Baraque is cursing at Carla (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the other synthesizer / Theremin player. Clara is brusque with pretty much everybody, but she takes a particular dislike to Jon, when she senses that he doesn't "fit" with the band's direction. She's also very protective of Frank (Fassbender), the band's singer / songwriter, who suffers from a severe mental condition that drives him to wear a paper mâché mask (based on Mark Sievey's character Frank Sidebottom) at all times, even in the shower. No one in the band has ever seen him without the head, and nobody will discuss it with Jon other than Don.

 After a disastrous gig that begins with the band noodling and Frank singing non-sequiturs and ends with Clara and Baraque screaming at each other and storming off stage, Jon assumes his adventure has come to a close and he returns to his desk job. But Frank calls, offering him another gig, and Jon hops back in the van. They end up somewhere in the Irish countryside, in a cabin in the woods, where unbeknownst to our protagonist, Don has rented out the place to record Soronprfbs's album. Since only Frank knows what it should sound like, that could take a while.

 Now, at this point in a movie about an everyman outsider who joins an abstract, stand-offish group / band / etc., we typically have a good idea of what's going to happen: the "weird" band and the "normal" hero are going to meet somewhere in the middle, both will find their groove and everything will turn out great at the big gig. Everybody learns something about themselves, the mean person turns out to really respect the protagonist or they find love, blah blah blah. Without spoiling anything, Frank doesn't go that way. It turns out that Jon, who begins communicating about the band in a clandestine manner via Twitter, Blogger, and YouTube, is a terrible fit for the band. His musical ideas are terrible, but he convinces Frank that the people following the band online love Soronprfbs (don't try to pronounce it - none of the members do). His sway over Frank only further alienates him with Clara, and when Jon takes the initiative and books the band at South by Southwest, his true intentions come out. And that doesn't work out so well, either.

 Were I you, I wouldn't go into Frank expecting a comedy, because while it is often funny (or at the very least, amusing), there's a dark undercurrent to the film. The original keyboardist isn't the only person involved in the band that gives up on living, and the contentious atmosphere never softens. While it's frequently an interesting movie to watch, Frank keeps you at a distance until the very end. The last scene brings about some sense of setting things right, but on its own terms, and in the meantime it's hard to find a character to sympathize with. Jon transitions from affable to duplicitous not long after they arrive at the cabin, and the other chief option, Frank, is a mystery until late into the film.

 This is not to say that Gleeson, Fassbender, and Gyllenhaal aren't all very good in their roles, but that the characters seem off-putting by design, and you have to really work to want any of them to succeed. I'm not sure how the average moviegoer is going to respond to (SPOILER-ISH) Clara being right all along and Jon being totally wrong about Frank's ability to process actual fans. The film is, at times, dead-set in going the opposite direction of what you expect, and tonally I found it very similar to Calvary. Ostensibly Frank and Calvary are comedies, but both spend more time examining human nature and its frailties and less on making sure the audience feels comfortable with what they're seeing. Which is not to say that this is a bad thing, because I very much enjoyed Calvary and I like a lot of Frank, particularly the pitch perfect way it closes.

 Frank should also probably get some credit for accurately portraying the way that social media is used, although that might date the film as the internet pushes forward. Like Jon Favreau's Chef - an entertaining, albeit totally predictable movie I might review down the line - Abrahamson, Ronson, and Straughan use Jon's knowledge of Twitter, Blogger, and YouTube to help turn Soroprfbs into a viral sensation in a way that reflects how it usually happens, which is pretty much what Chef does with Twitter and Vine. I appreciated the effort, particularly in a cinematic landscape where computers are often a lazy way to get exposition out.

 The songs, for the record (no pun intended, but what can you do?) range from pretty entertaining to "what?" The last song, in particular, is the catchiest, despite the fact that I misunderstood Fassbender's singing and thought the chorus was "I love you, wall" instead of "I love you all," which does change the closing scene a little bit. Without getting into why she's singing them, it's also quite amusing to hear Clara's renditions of "On Top of Old Smokey" and "I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper." Jon's songs start out fitfully silly and devolve into wordless garbage by the end of the film, but I'm almost positive that was by design, so I won't criticize that too much.

 Finally, I can't leave out the truly impressive feat by Michael Fassbender, who manages to convey a great sense of empathy and enthusiasm in Frank without the benefit of facial expressions. He's behind the mask, which you can see in the poster above, and aside from a brief period when he begins describing his facial expressions to ease Jon's discomfort, Fassbender relies entirely on his body language and voice (in a strange, slightly ambiguous "American" accent) to bring the character across. If you weren't somehow already impressed by his acting before, Frank will push you over. That is, if you don't mind an almost relentlessly downbeat "comedy". It's tempting to call Frank a "black comedy," but I'm not certain that quite captures the film. Like its titular character, Frank is an odd bird. It's not for everybody, to be sure, but if you liked Little Miss Sunshine and thought the ending was too "upbeat," this might be your kind of movie. I have the feeling I'll revisit Frank at some point, if for no other reason than to figure out how a robot and jewel thievery get shoehorned into this universe...

Blogorium Review: Only Lovers Left Alive

 It's a relief to be able to think of Jim Jarmusch fondly again. As unfair as it is to judge a director I like harshly by one movie, I couldn't get the bitter taste of Limits of Control out of my mouth for a long time, and it inexplicably tainted his earlier films, many of which I really enjoy. For five years, it lingered, festering and rotting, annoying me with an "art-y for its own sake" construction, and I suddenly didn't feel like watching Ghost Dog or Down by Law. There's no "there" there in Limits of Control - the film is strictly an exercise of the director drawing attention to how clever his ideas are, with no characters or narrative to draw from. A lack of narrative isn't especially new for Jarmusch - in fact, it's usually a selling point. But lack of characters? Can you imagine Dead Man without the oddball supporting cast to balance out Johnny Depp? Coffee and Cigarettes at all?

 Thankfully, five years later, Jim Jarmusch returns to characters, and from a most unlikely (for him) literary source: vampires. But I wasn't worried. I can't explain why, but despite the fact that we've been seeing watered down bloodsuckers for the last half decade (or more), something about the idea of Jarmusch and vampires felt right. It was a gamble that paid off, because Only Lovers Left Alive is easily his best film since Ghost Dog and completely wipes Limits of Control off the ledger. Everything that fans have come to expect from Jarmusch is in there: the aimless story, the location as musical backdrop, the off-kilter humor, and most importantly, memorable characters.

 When we meet Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston), we don't know anything about them other than they abide messy abodes. The camera hovers above them, spinning like a 45 as Jarmusch makes his way to their faces, the soundtrack booming. If you haven't seen the trailer, I suppose there's a good chance you wouldn't know they were vampires, at least until Eve leaves her apartment in Tangier to visit a night café. She's waiting patiently for an old friend (John Hurt), and when she says his name, Christopher Marlowe, I guess the jig is up for people going in blind. Yes, that would be "the" Christopher Marlowe, and yes, he's a vampire. He has a nice supply of "the good stuff" that he's happy to share with Eve, but please don't say his name out loud.

 Just writing this, I feel like I'm making Only Lovers Left Alive out to be a very obvious and stupid sounding movie, which it isn't. Jarmusch doesn't play coy about Adam and Eve* - they are vampires, they are old, and there's a lot of unspoken history between them. Taken out of the context of the movie, I could understand how it might sound clever in a bad way, but it's presented so matter-of-factly in the story that it's hard not to take in stride. Eve is so easygoing, and Adam so morose, that you worry they're just going to be "types," but then Jarmusch brings them together and Only Lovers Left Alive shifts into a love story.

 Marlowe asks Eve why she and Adam don't live together if they've been married as long as they have been, but it seems pretty clear when she leaves Tangier to visit him in the U.S. that they have a long history together. They can be together and apart, and Jarmusch doesn't give any explicit reason why they're comfortable half a world away. There's no tragedy or disagreement hanging over the narrative - it just is, and you accept it the same way you do the conceit that they're vampires. Like many Jarmusch films, the why is less important. It gets in the way of what is.

 As he has in the past, Jarmusch sets Only Lovers Left Alive in a city known for its musical history. In this instance, it's Detroit, where Adam sets up shop in an abandoned part of town (the city's current financial calamity is another critical part of the story) and makes music in anonymity. At least, relative anonymity. He has Ian (Anton Yelchin) bring him recording equipment, instruments and, in one special request, a bullet made of wood. That doesn't amount to much more than a MacGuffin, but it's behind what brings Eve back to Adam. He's sick of the "zombies" (what vampires call humans) and is irritated that his music is finding an audience, despite his efforts to mask his identity. She brings him solace, and when the two of them come together, their facades crumble at bit. It turns out that Adam is also something of an amateur scientist and mechanic, who sets up his own sustainable energy for the house and who tinkers with old equipment. During a Skype (?) chat, he transfers the laptop signal to an old television. It's something he enjoys doing.

 Most of the time they drive around Detroit, and he takes her to the Detroit Theater (now a parking lot) and offers to show her the Motown Museum ("I'm more of a Staxx girl," she professes), but Eve is awfully impressed when Adam pulls up in front of Jack White's childhood home. If there's a singularly Jim Jarmusch-y moment in the film, that has to be it, but fans of Mystery Train should enjoy the thematic bridge. Their reunion is short lived, because dreams involving Eve's sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska) turn out to be her way of announcing a visit. Ava doesn't care much about protocol like entering a home without permission and doesn't care much about personal space - she's more than happy to tear through Adam's supply of blood. She's not a very welcome guest, by either of them. It's hinted that they haven't seen her in more than a hundred years, and that it didn't end well "in Paris," and she doesn't seem to have changed much.

 True to form, she wastes no time in aggravating Adam and testing the patience of her sister, who tries to give her the benefit of the doubt. They make quite a trio, with their dark sunglasses and gloves, hanging out at the back of a club watching some band play (at her insistence), with Ian in tow, clueless to what's in the flask they're passing around ("is that Jaegermeister?"). By the end of the following day, she's worn out her welcome and insured they can't stay in Detroit, but they're the "boring, pretentious assholes." Her parting gift, so to speak (other than a SPOILER I'll leave out) is to leave Adam with a broken Gibson guitar from 1905, one that Eve had only recently identified the age of. It's no wonder that he was wary to find Ava had invited herself in the night before. Kids...

 Lest you worry that things get to dour and "goth" with vampires in the picture, you needn't worry: Only Lovers Left Alive is frequently very funny, in an off-beat way. Much of it comes from Adam's source for blood in Detroit, played by Jeffrey Wright. I'd tell you his name, but the setup and payoff of his name tag and the one Adam is wearing is too good to spoil here. When Adam needs blood, he pulls his scraggly black hair back into a ponytail, puts on scrubs, a stethoscope, and walks into the local hospital. The other doctors give him an askew glance, but don't say anything. However, in order to maintain a sense of mystery, Adam puts on his sunglasses when he walks into the blood lab, and he looks ridiculous. Jarmusch holds on the image of Adam trying to look intimidating as if to say, "dude, who are you kidding?" and Wright's character reacts accordingly.

 Yelchin and Wasikowska also provide varying degrees of comic relief, although Hiddleston gets most of the laughs as he tries to humor Eve and handle Ava with anything more than exasperation. His carefully constructed persona collapses completely with his wife and sister-in-law dragging him to a club, and Hiddleston knows exactly when to play the laugh. It would be easy to say he's simply playing a variation on Loki in Only Lovers Left Alive, but I don't think that's quite the case. Adam is more a creature of habit than Loki is, more comfortable in his carefully controlled environment. By the end of the film that environment has been completely shattered, and there's a humorous inevitability to the final shot. Swinton plays the moment perfectly, but that's consistent with her performance in the entire film. As Eve, she carries herself with a natural ease at all times that Adam desperately wants to have. Watching her subtle facial shifts around Ava is also fascinating - Adam is disdainful, but Eve is cautious, nervous even.

 In all honestly, I could have spent another hour with Eve and Adam, but I'm happy to have what's there. Only Lovers Left Alive restores the character to the Jim Jarmusch character study, and you don't mind watching a movie where the main characters drive around Detroit or hang out on the couch most of the time. Really, it's a lot of fun. The soundtrack is great, the actors are having fun, and Jarmusch brings just the right balance of directorial flourish and musical fetishism to the proceedings that I'm having a hard time finding things to complain about. There are more bad vampire movies and shows out there than good ones, it often feels like, so it's nice to add another film to the "positive" category. If you want to see a vampire movie where nothing really happens that you'll enjoy, check out Only Lovers Left Alive. Unless you like sparkly things or need someone to say the word "vampire" every ten minutes. You won't find that here.



 * Jarmusch did not, apparently, intend for audiences to assumed they were "the" Adam and Eve, but the IMDB trivia page erroneously refers to them being based on Mark Twain's satirical excerpts from the "diaries" of Adam and Eve, which ARE about "that" Adam and Eve. Twain also appears as a photograph on the wall of acquaintances in Adam's apartment.

Quick Review: Good Ol' Freda

 At this point, you'd think there would be nothing about The Beatles that fans wouldn't know. Between the biographies, anthologies (musical and televised), fictionalized accounts (Backbeat), and the vast swath of websites devoted to the "Fab Four," all the ground has to have been covered, right? The Cap'n used to pore through books at the local library, soaking up details about the earliest days of the band, the transitional periods, the acrimonious break up, and solo careers, and while I don't pretend to know it all, I've certainly heard a lot of it over the years (and we're talking pre-internet for a lot of that). That considered, it's refreshing when a documentary like Good Ol' Freda pops up in the instant queue - it's a different side of the story of The Beatles, from someone who hasn't spoken about it in more than forty years.

 To put some context at the opening, Good Ol' Freda begins with The Beatles' 1963 Christmas recording, where John, Paul, George, and Ringo give greetings to all of their fans. As they're moving through their "hello's" and Christmas wishes, George mentions their secretary, Freda Kelly, and the boys pipe in with "good ol' Freda!" - voila, we have our title. Kelly was Brian Epstein's secretary and the head of the Beatles fan club from before they were famous until the very end, and Ryan White and Jessica Lawson spend the lion's share of the film letting Freda tell her story of Beatlemania from the inside.

 At 17, Freda Kelly was a typist in a secretarial pool, until one day her friends took her to the Cavern Club in Liverpool. She enjoyed the club so much she went back just about every day, and in 1962, that meant seeing quite a bit of The Beatles (John, Paul, George, and Pete Best at the time). The atmosphere was intimate enough that fans in the audience could request songs, although it was best not to send notes to John (Freda learned quickly that without his glasses, he couldn't read a thing onstage). Eventually, she started hanging out backstage with the bands and almost by accident became the fan club president of a band nobody knew - yet. In short order, that would change, and so too would her life...

 There's a level of intimacy in Good Ol' Freda that's really fascinating, because Kelly was so close to the band, their families, and Brian Epstein, that you don't really get elsewhere, even in the anthologies. She's very particular about what stories she's willing to tell and what she chooses to keep private - Kelly draws the line at sharing details about relationships and at one point sheepishly dodges the question "did you ever go out with any of them?" - but all of her anecdotes are personal. Hearing Kelly say "Richie" instead of Ringo, or about George's father insisting that he teach her ballroom dancing are a side of The Beatles that doesn't get covered much. It's less about the music and more about the lads. John tries to fire her after Freda has too much to drink in the Moody Blues' dressing room, so she tells him that she'll answer everybody's fan mail but his, and he begs her to stay on one knee. Her perspective on the Magical Mystery Tour is quite interesting, and I must admit that it's hard not to see her in the footage and photos from the movie once you've seen Good Ol' Freda. She was there the whole time (also amusing is her anecdote about booking the entire tour at a hotel as the "Women's Catholic League" because no one would dare book The Beatles).

 Much of the well covered territory in Beatles lore is left out - conquering America, the psychedelic phase, the tension towards the end - because Freda didn't travel with the band much. In fact, when Epstein moves the base of operations from Liverpool to London, Kelly doesn't join them after her father objects. He never approved of The Beatles, and his health is such that she can't in good conscience leave, so rather than lose the heart and soul of the organization, Epstein gives her his old office and Kelly continues to run the fan club from Liverpool. Quite a step up from accidentally using her home address for the fan club in the early days. She's free to hire (and fire) helpers to maintain a massive operation (including the assistance of other Liverpool bands like the Merseybeats to help deliver mail every now and then), and does her level best not to disappoint the fans. After all, she's a fan, too.

 Kelly is a fascinating figure in her own right, and scattered throughout Good Ol' Freda are brief interviews with her daughter that give us some idea why we've never heard this particular story before. There are other contemporaneous interviews, particularly with Tony Barrow (former Beatles press officer), mentioning that while most people related to the band decided to "cash in" at some point, Freda has been curiously silent about her life at the center of Beatlemania, a life she walked away from after the birth of her second child. Her decision to put that part of her life aside - in some instances, to literally pack it up in the attic, where we see hear going through some of the impressive memorabilia she didn't give away - was a personal one, and the reason for telling it now is one I'll let you discover in the documentary. One gets the impression that Kelly is happy to have told it now, so she doesn't have to again.

 She's a great storyteller, and White and Lawson bridge her interviews with plenty of rare footage and photography, along with something that must be hard to get making a documentary on the outside of the band: Beatles songs. While Paul isn't in the film (and Ringo pops up at the very end), I suspect their longstanding affinity for Freda Kelly helped in approving the rights to use the band's songs in the film, which is rare outside of Apple produced films. It's necessary and would be strange for Good Ol' Freda not to have, but I sense that the surviving members still think fondly of "good ol' Freda" and are happy to see her tell her story. I think most Beatles fans will be happy to hear it too; it's rare to hear a perspective on the band you haven't heard, and even if you're caught up with archival interviews with her, seeing Freda Kelly tell the stories is something fab indeed. While I haven't seen it yet, I imagine Good Ol' Freda would make a good double feature companion with 20 Feet from Stardom, so maybe I'll check that out next...

Blogorium Review: Pearl Jam Twenty

 When I think about it, I'm still surprised that of all the bands from the "alternative" scene in the 1990s, only three have had any staying power: Radiohead, Foo Fighters, and Pearl Jam*. Of the three, Radiohead is more respected for their influence than their presence on rock radio, whereas Pearl Jam and Foo Fighters regularly make the rotation with the likes of The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Journey, Tom Petty, and... name any other perennial "classic rock" radio band.

 At the time, I never really considered either band to be made for the long haul: the first Foo Fighters album was a one-off from Dave Grohl, recorded in the period after Kurt Cobain's suicide and Nirvana's end. Pearl Jam's Ten was actually out before Nirvana's Nevermind, but there remains a stigma that one band was more "pure" and the other was "commercial" and thereby living in the others' shadow. I was always more of a Nirvana fan - I had Ten and Vs., and I enjoyed them in doses, but I never really got into Pearl Jam the way I did Nirvana. Even after Pearl Jam emerged in the post-Cobain / post-Grunge world, I only gave them a cursory notice: Vitalogy and No Code were pretty good, and I supported their crusade against Ticketmaster and the live "bootleg" albums / collaboration with Neil Young, but they've never been a "favorite" band of the Cap'n

 So we come to 2011, where there are documentaries about the careers of Pearl Jam and Foo Fighters up to this point: Foo Fighters: Back and Forth and Pearl Jam Twenty. I've watched part of Back and Forth and enjoyed what I saw so far, but I gravitated towards PJ20 because of one name: Cameron Crowe.

 Even a passing interest in a band like Pearl Jam can be augmented by the presence of an interesting director with a passion to tell their story. Cameron Crowe, rock journalist turned director who has, to this point, only made on movie I haven't seen (Elizabethtown) and enjoyed, has the added benefit of having known the members of the band from the very beginning. Before the beginning, in fact - Crowe moved to Seattle after making Say Anything, and met Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament when they were still in Green River. Then they started Mother Love Bone, which is where Pearl Jam Twenty begins.

 There is an unwitting parallel between Back and Forth and Pearl Jam Twenty: both films devote their opening sections to the deaths that began the bands as we know them now. For Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl talks at length about the final months of Cobain's life, and for Pearl Jam, Gossard, Ament, and Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell relive the drug overdose of Mother Love Bone lead singer Andrew Wood. Had Wood not died, there may have been no Pearl Jam, and we might instead be watching a film about the fortunes of Mother Love Bone, but his passing was the catalyst that brought Gossard, Ament, Mike McCready, and drummer Dave Krusen together to form Mookie Blaylock (later renamed Pearl Jam). All they needed was a singer, and through former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons, they met Eddie Vedder.

 What's startling about Pearl Jam Twenty is how much footage exists of the early days of the new band, including interviews with Vedder that may well have been conducted by Crowe. There's a wealth of material from the period between Temple of the Dog and when Pearl Jam recorded Ten that I had no idea even existed, and it fills in missing pieces from present day interviews with the band (twenty-plus years later). It's as though Crowe was granted access to the personal vaults of everyone in and who knew Pearl Jam for the entirety of their career, and he weaves together footage from 1990, 94, 98, 2003, 2006, and 2010/1 effortlessly to tell their story.

 The band members are candid about their struggles, their disagreements, and the changes in their creative process over the years in a way that you don't see in many music documentaries (at least from bands that are still together). There's a level of discomfort in Gossard's voice when he describes his diminishing role as songwriter from Vs. to Vitalogy, and his admission that the band is primarily directed by Vedder now is laced with a twinge of frustration. Their frustration over losing the fight with Ticketmaster (including footage of Gossard and Ament clearly annoyed that the Congressional hearing they were invited to became alternately condescending and fawning). I had always wondered whether the footage of Eddie Vedder climbing up the stage in the "Evenflow" video was a regular component of the shows, and from the montage in the film it's clear that he was frequently subjecting himself to even more dangerous climbs, to the chagrin of Ament.

 Crowe (who included Ament, Gossard, and Vedder in his film Singles) periodically appears on-camera as well as conducting interviews, providing his own testimonial about the Seattle scene and the connection he has with Pearl Jam. The film does (to some degree) try to put to rest the idea that Kurt Cobain "hated" Pearl Jam, with the key piece of evidence being an interview where he talks about having spoken to Eddie Vedder a few times on the phone and finding that he liked him as a person. When Crowe asks the present day Vedder about the conversations, he replies "I can remember his voice... but I don't recall what we talked about" which is a strangely poignant moment in the film.

 I suppose it's fair to say that Pearl Jam Twenty works even if you aren't a devotee of the band, and it did deepen my appreciation for the work that's gone into keeping the band together for twenty years. Accordingly, I recommend the film openly to people who are only passing fans of the band, or who have some memory of the events covered in the film. It's a "warts and all" approach that doesn't backfire in the way that Phish: Bittersweet Motel does, and the candid nature of the people involved coupled with the wealth of archival material brings about an intimate portrait of a band I've always seen at a distance. If Crowe brings this level of quality to We Bought a Zoo, he'll have two great films in one year. Quite a feat.


* It is true that bands like Bush and Soundgarden are currently back together, but in terms on consistency of releasing albums, touring, and being recognizable in the public eye, I think it would be fair to say that even Beck - who has technically been around just as long - wouldn't meet that criteria.

Interesting Tidbit of the "True Story" Variety

 I almost wasn't the Cap'n.

 Not as in "I almost didn't call myself Cap'n Howdy when this blog thing came together" but as in my life almost went in an entirely different direction. For most, if not all of high school, my nickname was "Matt Pinfield." I guess that doesn't mean as much nearly fifteen years later, but the host of MTV's 120 Minutes for the 2nd half of the 90s was the basis of comparison for my friends because I wasn't the "movie" guy - I was the "music" guy. I haunted record stores, read anything about bands I could, made cassette tapes of college radio playlists, and was constantly turning people on to random bands. Blame it on a healthy dose of Rolling Stone, Flipside, CMJ, and Maximumrocknroll, or whatever else I was listening to (CMJ was fun because of the free cds), but my VHS collection was secondary.

 The fact that I was maybe, kind of, hooking two VCRs up and making tapes from the piles of movies rented from Carbonated Video was a minor part of high school Cap'n. Er, Matt Pinfield. Having half a dozen Nirvana bootlegs or knowing what Sentridoh was (and having the Sentridoh cd) or finding a used copy of The Concert for Bangladesh on vinyl at The Record Exchange was what I was known for. That and dozens of things I'm forgetting about - getting copies of Breeders Digest and buying nearly everything the Deal sisters released... or having a Slant 6 cd (and I still think Inzombia is quality low-fi fun). I wasn't encyclopedic by any means, but I knew a lot of obscure bands and I followed tangents by artists to their logical extension. For crying out loud, I had a duped copy of The Body Has a Head on cassette after seeing the King Missile / John S. Hall / Dogbowl reunion show at the Local 506. That last sentence most likely doesn't make sense to people.

 Anyway, I've been trying to remember when the shift happened from music to movies. Films were always in the background, the other strand in my pop culture DNA, but they didn't really assert themselves until college I think. It might have been from discovering Ain't It Cool News junior year of high school, but I think what happened was that at UNCG, the local cd store and the local video store were next door to each other. Crunchy and College Hill Video. Crunchy was cool - you could find Danzig albums mixed in with punk and ska (oddly enough, the Cap'n owned the first Operation Ivy record, even though I hate Rancid), but College Hill video had *ahem* bootlegs.

 Bootlegs, the heretofore unseeable, obscure, or forgotten films on a store bought tape with black and white labeling. To be fair, the guy who ran the place (and who is, now, a mostly reputable producer so I won't identify by name) did make cover art for the boxes, and we were grateful to be able to watch Bad Taste or the director's cut of Army of Darkness or Eraserhead, even if he'd just taped the porn he couldn't rent out last week. He was providing us a service - the complete Twin Peaks or Battle Royale; a VHS port of the Criterion Brazil laserdisc. Slowly but surely I drifted away from Crunchy and towards College Hill.

 When I went back after home after freshman year, I worked for a movie theatre - the one from Adventures in Projectioneering - and despite the fact that I was still absorbing the Complete Miles Davis and John Coltrane Sessions, films were winning. The summer of 1999 was an exciting period for film, even if it doesn't seem like it in retrospect - The Phantom Menace, Eyes Wide Shut, American Pie, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, The Sixth Sense, Payback - it seemed like every week had something to look forward to.

 If I had to pinpoint where film won, it wasn't sophomore year, when up and coming freshmen were knocking at my door asking to challenge the "movie game guy," although that amuses me now, or even the fact that I was "renting" out movies I brought to school (many of which never came back), but the summer after. In 2000, out of school indefinitely and unsure of what to do, I interviewed at Camelot Music, and with the handy knowledge of who Ani DiFranco was probably had a job waiting. But then a friend of mine wandered in there and hit it off with the staff, and I decided to go back to the movie theatre, where I quickly ascended from concessions to projectionist.

 Being surrounded by film, not just figuratively but on any given shift literally, I slowly phased out of biographies about Jim Morrison and into books like Gilliam on Gilliam. Film became more interesting, more fun. To me, despite all of the dress rehearsal that came before it, down to working at a Suncoast during Christmas of 1995, those quiet shifts sitting amongst the projectors really turned the switch and created the Cap'n as you know him now.

 I still have that Sentridoh cd, by the way.

Five Movies: The Most Repetitive Music in Film

Sometimes I'm not even sure where these come from, but after hearing that True Grit and Tron Legacy and Inception all had "repetitive" scores, I started thinking about films that truly test my patience with an over-reliance on one or two pieces of music, and this edition of Five Movies finds offenders far more egregious than any of 2010's punching bags. Take a look for yourself, and when possible, a listen:


5. The Creature from the Black Lagoon - It's not that all of the music for Creature is so tedious, but the fact that there's one theme for the Creature, and that it plays every time it appears onscreen, really robs the film of actual thrills or chills.



4. Dead Man / Human Highway - I'm lumping the two of these together because it feels like there isn't a piece of music that Neil Young doesn't love to play to death when he's in charge of the soundtrack. Dead Man's first half is punctuated by the same guitar riff played ad nauseum, which does add to the hypnotic effect of the film, but is nevertheless taxing on one's patience after a certain point. In Human Highway, we're subjected to the same Devo song ("Worried Man") every single time Devo appears on-screen during the narrative proper, so much so that it's a minor relief to hear the unbearably long "Hey Hey My My" during the film's dream sequence. That said, no sooner are we out of the dream sequence than the rest of the cast is performing "Worried Man."



3. The Graduate - I rarely have complaints about Mike Nichols' The Graduate, but its famous soundtrack, featuring music from Simon & Garfunkel, has the unfortunate tendency of playing "Mrs. Robinson" in different incarnations for most of the film (among other S&G songs). If there's such a thing as beating a song into one's head, The Graduate finds a way of doing it, and in the process sullies an otherwise entertaining piece of music.

2. Man on the Moon - Like The Graduate, R.E.M.'s score for Milos Forman's 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic suffers from the overuse of an instrumental version of one song - R.E.M.'s "Man on the Moon," which plays over and over and over again with little variation over the course of the film. Were it not such an obvious choice or not performed by the band whose song title inspired the film's title, or if it had simply been held back just a little bit, I might not be so perturbed by it, but nearly every time the film changes location, or the progression of Kaufman's life or career switches, it's back to the same old theme.

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - The number one, without fail, all time worst example of "playing a theme to death" I can think of. Howard Shore has two major pieces of score for The Fellowship of the Ring, and depending which part of the movie you're watching, you'll hear them both repeatedly. Early in the film, he plays the "Concerning Hobbits" theme for all its worth:



In the second half of the film, after the fellowship is forged, Shore relies on its theme for nearly every transition, action sequence, or musical bridge:



If you've ever tried watching The Fellowship of the Ring on television, or found yourself in the second half of the film, it's embarrassing how much of a crutch this "theme" is; it's one thing to return to a theme, touch on variations of it during other pieces of music (take Danny Elfman's Batman score, for example), but to play the same theme without variation for half of a three hour movie is taking it too far. Considering how toned down the repetition is during The Two Towers and The Return of the King, it certainly seems like Shore was aware of this too.

Blogorium Review: Singles

I have a pet theory about Cameron Crowe's Singles, a movie the Cap'n initially avoided in the wave of "90s movies about 20-something existential angst" - a list which includes, but is not limited to, Slacker, Reality Bites, Before Sunrise, Clerks, Empire Records, and, even though it doesn't directly address "Generation X," Dazed and Confused. The theory goes like this: Singles is Crowe's attempt to replicate French cinema from the 1960s, creating a sort of "Grunge New Wave."

Upon first viewing, it's immediately apparent how "not" like other Cameron Crowe films Singles is: Most of his films (before and after Singles) focus on a single character - Lloyd Dobler, William Miller, and, well, Jerry Maguire. Each protagonist navigates their way through life, and generally finds "the one" early in the film. By comparison, the sprawling, interconnected storyline of Singles deviates from Crowe's body of work.

There are, arguably, four main characters in Singles: Linda Powell (Kyra Sedgwick), Steve Dunne (Campbell Scott), Janet Livermore (Bridget Fonda), and Cliff Poncier (Matt Dillon). Their interactions with each other forms the core of the film, and while Crowe begins the film with one character and ends with another, it's easy to see that one could say Singles is, in fact, a film about the travails of two couples. But where does one draw the line with story lines being "less" important.

For example, is Debbie Hunt (Sheila Kelley)'s story less important because it occupies the middle of the film? Debbie's quest for love through video dating happens during a segment while Janet and Cliff and Linda and Steve are on rocky territory, but its resolution seems no less important to Crowe's overall exploration of single life. Is Andy (James LeGros) any less important to Linda's story than Steve is? Does Dr. Jeffrey Jamison (Bill Pullman) factor into the decision Janet makes to break up with Cliff?

How do we factor in the many (many) cameos in Singles: Eric Stoltz (The Mime), Jeremy Piven (Doug Hughley), Tom Skerrit (Mayor Weber) Paul Giamatti (Kissing Man), Xavier McDaniel (Himself), Debi Maza (Brenda), Soundgarden's Chris Cornell (Guy Listening to Cliff's Stereo), Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, and Eddie Vedder (Cliff's "Citizen Dick" band members), or my personal favorite Tim Burton (Brian, the Dating Video director), identified as "the next Martin ScorSAYZ."

Singles is filled with overlapping story lines, characters who hover in an out of the narrative, and while the Steve and Linda plot adheres closely to the standard "romantic comedy" tropes we're used to, it also retains much of Crowe's layered, relatable, human characters. Even if audiences can see where Singles is going, the film is imbued with heart and never rings a false tone.

But all of these elements still don't meet the "Grunge New Wave" descriptive I suggested at the outset. What does is a number of small, relatively unorthodox - even for 1992 American cinema - storytelling techniques that echo various entries from the French New Wave. To begin with, let's address the way Crowe tells the story of Singles, or rather the way his characters do. Cast members (specifically the "central four") at times speak directly to the camera, as though the audience is a participating observer in the story. It disappears for a while in the movie, but returns near the end when Dillon's Cliff begins tying ancillary stories up, and provides us with insight into the mind of the film's least developed character*. When characters don't directly break the "fourth wall," audiences are privy to non-omniscient voice-over narration, limiting our access to our immediate protagonist. But still, this doesn't point us directly to the French New Wave. Let's push further...

I draw my curious theory from two specific elements of the film, both of which seem to derive from specific Jean-Luc Godard films: dialogue often begins in one scene and continues into another**, reminiscent of Breathless. The more direct reference is based in the way Crowe punctuates Singles - with title cards loosely (or specifically) related to the vignette to follow, which seems to me to be directly lifted from Vivre Sa Vie's "12 Tableaus." Since Crowe directly references Breathless, Truffaut's Jules and Jim and Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad in Vanilla Sky, I don't think my instincts are far off.

The "Grunge" element, if not already evident, comes from the film's setting (Seattle in 1992), the soundtrack (featuring Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, and Tad) and featuring a score by Paul Westerberg with additional music by Chris Cornell (including an early version of what would become "Spoonman"). My only impression of Singles prior to seeing the film was "that's the grunge movie," one that seemed to be tapping into the Generation X zeitgeist, and 18 years later, while it's not just a "grunge" movie, it certainly feels like Crowe's take on New Wave cinema through a distinctly American lens.

If you've never seen Singles, or avoided it for reasons similar to mine, I hope this review / critical analysis helps dissuade your misgivings. To this point I'd only ever missed two Cameron Crowe films (the other being Elizabethtown), and in many respects, it's better that I waited so long. A little perspective goes a long way, and if the film holds up on its own, then the experience is that much richer.

* Cliff is nearly a caricature of "grunge" culture for most of the film, and I feel like Crowe makes the right decision in handing the closing exposition to him, paving the way for reconciling with Janet. ** I saw at least two reviews of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World that cited this exact technique as proof that the film was "ground breaking," which even without Breathless and Singles sounded absurd.

Blogorium Review: Louie Bluie

For those of you who think documentaries have to be somber or (shudder), dull, the Cap'n humbly points you in the direction of Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Ghost World)'s debut film, Louie Bluie. His subject - real name Howard Armstrong - was a Tennessee born, Chicago based bluesman, artist, poet, and genuine personality. Zwigoff discovered Armstrong while collecting 78 records from the 1930s, and as luck had it, "Louie Bluie" was alive and kicking in 1985. The end result of Zwigoff and Armstrong meeting is an immensely entertaining documentary about the "old time" music, at a point when the "old timers" were still around to tell it in person.

Louie Bluie is as much a character study as it is a documentary; Armstrong spends most of his time playing music and telling stories. As a musician, he's a hot-dogger of a mandolin player. Whether he's at home playing for Zwigoff or in front of a crowd, he has a habit of flipping the instrument over his head and playing blind. His fiddle solo during a concert nearly steals the show from the headliner, although it's hard not to pay attention to the singer, who announces "I wrote this song in 1929, when I was thirty years old."

When Armstrong isn't playing, he's chatting it up with just about anybody around. After a few songs, he begins joking with bandmate Ted Bogan about women and clothes, and ribs another friend about eating all of the chicken while they were playing. His joy of life is infectious: when Armstrong travels back to LaFollette, Tennessee (where he grew up), he stops to chat with anyone he sees, telling stories an reminiscing. While visiting his sister-in-law ("I don't care how many times she's been married; she's still my sister-in-law."), a gospel tune is followed by an innuendo riddled anecdote about woodpeckers Armstrong told in church as a boy.

There's an amusing encounter with a record-collector (not unlike the type that populate Seymour's party in Ghost World) after a performance in a Chicago night club, followed by Armstrong wandering around town and shopping at a street fair. An encounter with an old man selling perfumes is cause to share the story of how his band The Tennessee Chocolate Drops ended up as the musical accompaniment for a Hindu Snake Oil Salesman.

His experience with immigrant communities helped Armstrong and the band learn to speak Italian, French, and Hungarian well enough to perform popular songs and emulate styles of the Old World. And I haven't even mentioned his paintings, poems, self bound books, or The ABC's of Pornography, a tome he proudly shows off to a banjo playing friend. Armstrong, 66 when the film was made, seems to be as spry as any man half his age, and he and the boys are happy playing in front of a paying audience or on a street corner.

What's so very impressive about Louie Bluie is that Zwigoff manages to impart all of this about Armstrong in just sixty minutes. On top of that, he also intercuts anecdotal history with vintage footage of other blues acts from the 30s and 40s to contextualize what Armstrong is saying. While Louie Bluie isn't intended to be a comprehensive history of the blues in America, one still comes away with an impression that Armstrong, as fascinating a subject as he is, isn't all we've learned about. The film is a tremendous breath of fresh air considering that it addresses Jim Crow, poverty, and old age in various forms.

If you've seen Crumb, then you have some idea of the access that Zwigoff has to his subject, and I was quite impressed with how open Howard Armstrong is during the film. It's also nice to see a film that's about the early twentieth century from the perspective of people who lived through it, who aren't somber or shrinking away from the camera. Howard "Louie Bluie"* Armstrong was happy enough to let Terry Zwigoff into his home, and I'm happy to have been privy to the result. Check this film out as soon as possible.

Coen Brothers Final Day Two: Music and the Coens

2. Music is an important element in Coen films. More than background score, the songs and their lyrics are carefully selected and integrated to comment, create humor, and / or to underscore themes and motifs. Isolate and explicated examples of the use of music in several Coen films. In conjunction with their use of music / sound, it would also be interesting to consider the films that are marked by the absence (or minimal use) of music.


Music plays a supplementary role in the films of Joel and Ethan Coen, although in a very different way that it is conceived for most Hollywood features. While many studios are content to package songs for a soundtrack and haphazardly insert them into films where they (vaguely) see fit, and other directors (Quentin Tarantino for example) use music to augment the mood, the Coens integrate songs into their films in order to comment on the themes or underlying narrative. As they continue to make movies, the Coens have shifted the use of music (or, occasionally, the lack thereof) to include the score as commentary.

As early as Blood Simple, music is used in a discursive manner. The Coens use “It’s the Same Old Song,” by The Four Tops, repeatedly within the movie. It functions both to accentuate the decisions made by characters (the love triangle / murder angle), but one could also argue that the Coen brothers are using the lyrics to comment on their own decision to begin moviemaking with a neo-noir. Indeed, it is “the same old song / but with a different beat since you’ve been gone…” The Coens announce to audiences, critics, and the film community that, while their neo-noir is “the same old song,” narrative-wise, their technique distinguishes itself from previous instances of film noir revision. Their incorporation of unorthodox camera techniques (some borrowed from Sam Raimi) and willingness to ironically comment on the admitted un-originality of Blood Simple’s narrative provides a “different beat” needed to distinguish their debut from other first time filmmakers.

In Raising Arizona, Joel and Ethan begin using music to juxtapose styles and themes. The film’s score is primarily a southern / western combination of banjo music and “roots” flavored vocalizations, punctuated by a bluegrass version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Interspersed with these lighthearted musical excursions are Ennio Morricone-esque “Spaghetti Western” cues (attached to the “apocalyptic” biker Leonard Smalls) and a synthesizer score reminiscent of Goblin’s score for Suspiria. These darker elements create a contrast to the otherwise upbeat tone of Raising Arizona.

The Big Lebowski continues the juxtaposition of music and setting, although the Coens opt to let songs provide much of the commentary. Much of Lebowski’s soundtrack is designed to distinguish the Dude’s mindset from the film’s actual 1991 setting; songs like Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me” or Kenny Rogers “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” roots Lebowski in the late 60s / early 70s, where the Dude peaked mentally and likely remains, regardless of the year. The inclusion of The Sons of the Pioneers “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” as The Stranger’s theme not only creates a juxtaposition between The Dude and Sam Elliot’s mysterious “fourth wall breaking” narrator, but also comments on their shared ability to keep “drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.”

The Man Who Wasn’t There includes a primarily classical score, commenting on a tendency of classic noir films to use the more contemporary jazz set pieces – strange for a movement that priding itself on a fascination with the past. Similarly, The Ladykillers uses its songs to intensify the juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, alternating between hymns like “Come, Let Us Go Back to God” and Nappy Roots’ “Another Day, Another Dollar.”

Later in their career, the Coen brothers make a bold choice with No Country for Old Men by removing a musical score altogether. The most noticeable song in No Country is used to punctuate the seriousness of Llewelyn Moss’ injuries as a cheerful Mariachi band plays over his collapsed body. The film is otherwise barren of music, perhaps a result of the Coen brothers unwillingness to dilute Cormac McCarthy’s source material with their ironic detachment. Although credited with the score, Carter Burwell has only one musical cue, and that appears during the closing credits.

A Serious Man alternates between traditional Jewish music and psychedelic rock music, creating a juxtaposition of the Old world and the shift in American consciousness in the late 1960s. The recurring musical message, that of Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love”, asks “when the truth is found / to be lies / and all the joy / within you dies / don’t you want somebody to love”, the question underlying much of Lawrence Gopnik’s existential crisis. There is an interesting side note to A Serious Man’s use of Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, and Credence Clearwater Revival: the former both reflect the age at which Joel (born 1954) would be 13 and having a Bar Mitzvah, and accordingly the film’s setting of 1967. The latter reflect Ethan (born 1957)’s 13^th birthday and Bar Mitzvah. Danny Gopnik, the 13 year old son of Lawrence could then be considered an amalgam of Joel and Ethan Coen, and the film’s music reflects an autobiographical aspect of A Serious Man.