From a 2010 debate with that evangelist Reagan worshipper/Obama hater Dinesh D’souza:
”l never could find no tracks
in a woman’s heart.
l packed a squaw
for years, pilgrim.
Cheyenne, she was.
And the meanest bitch
that ever balled for beads!
l lodgepoled her at Dead Wolf Creek
and traded her for a Hawkin gun!
Don’t get me wrong,
l love the women, l surely do!
But l swear…
…a woman’s breast is the hardest rock…
…the Almighty ever made on Earth…
…and l can find no sign on it.”
-from the film Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
Went up to Landmark Kendall to see this last week. Made sure to sip down a luscious Tripel style beer at Cambridge Brewing Company before ambling over to the cinema.
Ok, there’s Bob looking buff, hard to believe cancer ate through his entire frame in just a few years. So what to say about this latest documentary? I’ve seen them all and this is the best. People might complain that there’s not enough of Tosh or whatever else in it, but this film is about Robert Nesta Marley and his hard-won battle to bring his musical vision—Rastafarian themed reggae music-to the rest of the world. Yes, Tosh was an indispensable part of what happened, but Tosh is covered in the film. Everybody and everything that is valid to the story of Bob Marley is touched upon in this 150+ minute film, with loads of unreleased film and music that has never seen the light in any documentary thus far. Also, the chronology of Marley’s life is the clearest yet produced.
I first heard “Jammin” on the radio like every other white American kid, for me sometime in the mid 1980’s when I was a young teen. It wasn’t until after high school that I first heard other music by Bob Marley after I’d already been way into Dylan, the Doors, and all kinds of other then-modern shit like The Pixies, Jane’s Addiction, The Cure, etc…but this music from Jamaica hit me in a different way…probably because I was alienated, mentally unstable from drugs and booze. At a now defunct Woolworths I had bought a bargain cassette of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ very early music, a compilation of some of the Coxsone Dodd sessions from 1964-1966, and also some of the early Lee Scratch Perry sessions. The music was ska-inflected reggae soul that shouted out to me in my alien cocoon somewhere up in the wilds of Maine, where I had been isolating myself from life. This music had an upbeat soulfulness and lyrical righteousness infused with introspective poetry and it touched a place in me that needed healing. In fact, I was so charged by that one cassette that I was actually disappointed as I explored further into the Wailer’s catalog and listened to Burnin’ (1973), hearing slower rhythms and Marley singing in a lower register. It is a great album, but not as soulful as the Lee Perry sessions material or Simmer Down. This was the Wailing Wailers of Trenchtown. Marley, Bunny, and Tosh. It was regurgitated American soul performed with a raw intensity and urgency that could only come from abject poverty. Not to say that musicians in America at the time weren’t suffering or poor, but Trenchtown, Jamaica was and is just something that is not duplicated here in the U.S. as bad as things have been and may be here in the states.
No, I wasn’t hip to Rastafarians, didn’t know anything about them except that dread-locked reggae dudes were heavy into pot and that was cool with me at the time. It wasn’t until I listened to that first Marley tape that the spirituality of songs really hit me in any serious way. Up until that time, spirituality to me was getting as fucked up as I could on psychedelic drugs and trying to hallucinate demons (one time I desecrated a treasured family Easter keepsake—a delicate egg with a Virgin Mary inside— with red candle wax and never heard the end of it) but Marley fixed that shit for me, I was a Soul Rebel ever after. Like Bob, I began to also lament on the human condition and our constant Fussin and Fightin. The devastating loneliness of Chances Are was something I could identify with. These were great songs that came together from individuals who sacrificed their very souls to the music, the indefatigable Marley dead in 1981 after a remarkably prolific recording and performing career. But, unlike so many of the god-awful bands that plague the MP3 scene these days, Marley had a vision of unity through music that transcended his own life and he lived to realize it. The film does the man justice. I could describe it in detail but this post would probably end up a book. So to whoever reads this, if you have any interest in Marley, Reggae, Rastafarians, the international politics of post-colonialism, or even if you don’t care about any of these things, Marley is an excellent film about an excellent human being. Who Jah bless, no one curse.
“Given the chance…
I’ll die like a baby…
On some faraway beach…
When the season’s over…
Unlikely I’ll be remembered…
As the tide brushes sand in my eyes I’ll drift away…
Cast up on a plateau with only one memory…
A single syllable…
Oh lie low. lie low Lie lie lie..”
★★★★☆
Who knew that this human pitbull was an important and influential cataloger at the Library of Congress?
Growing up in the 1970’s and 80’s and listening to the music of the 60’s— The Beatles, The Doors, JImi Hendrix, etc., I was always curious about the F.B.I.’s role in the deaths of those musicians I loved, Jim Morrison, Hendrix, Lennon, Joplin and others. My mom always told me that J. Edgar Hoover killed them all. While that is certainly not true, I later learned that Hoover did have files on all those mentioned above, including The Jefferson Airplane. The film John Lennon v.s. The United States (2006), shows the extent to which Hoover had tabs on Lennon.
In any case, wow… DiCaprio’s studied performance of J. Edgar Hoover is nothing short of incredible. The man can act apparently. Of course, I knew this already as Revolutionary Road (2008) is one of my favorite films of late (probably the most honest film ever made about marital strife). Yeah, he has haters, mostly jealous men, but give the guy his due, he puts up millions to save endangered tigers.
Clint Eastwood’s directing is spot on in this film, he effortlessly sews together the pivotal moments of the legendary F.B.I.’s tyrannical top G-Man, and one doesn’t get lost in the sudden jump cuts that bridge decades. Really my only complaint about J.Edgar is that the interesting character of Helen Gandy, Hoover’s personal secretary for 54 years, played by one of my favorites, Naomi Watts, is not delved into very deeply. In contrast, the oft-supposed homosexual relationship between Hoover and Associate Director Clyde Tolson is played to the fullest. While the obvious may not always be true, the known facts certainly seem to fit in Hoover’s case as far as his repressed sexuality can be measured. Even so, Gandy personally destroyed almost the entirety of Hoover’s personal files immediately after his death, so we’ll likely never know the tabloid dirt on him.
Touch of lavender aside, Hoover was responsible for greatly advancing the scientific approach to criminal investigation. He had ample experience to do so considering that as a cataloger he’d personally revised the Library of Congress Classification system and was looked upon as a shoo-in for the Head Librarian position. For better or worse (probably the latter) he moved on to the Department of Justice and through a few different incarnations became head of the F.B.I. where he began the first systematic centralization of fingerprint records.
This film is a great voyage through the always misunderstood and commingled history of socialists, communists and labor unionists in first half of the 20th century as Hoover ratchets up his extra-legal powers to spy, harass, arrest, and deport them.
The cultural phenomenon whereby the public adoration of gangsters and public enemies like Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde was transformed by media manipulation into worship of the Government Men or “G-Men” is more than a little spooky to me, especially since it only took about a decade.
A major part of the film’s plot is Hoover’s attempt to defame Martin Luther King. Hoover illegally used wiretaps to spy on King’s extra-marital affair in a hotel room (true story). Hoover planned to fuck up MLK’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize by letting King know he had the goods on him, but King accepted the prize anyways, defusing Hoover’s plan.
J. Edgar is worth a watch. The acting is top-notch, and where else will you see a tearful Hoover put on his mother’s dress and jewelry?
★★★★☆
Ever since I saw Michelle Williams in Meek’s Cutoff (2011) I’ve been smitten. Wendy and Lucy is an earlier effort also starring Williams by director Kelly Reichardt, whose River of Grass (1994) is on my Netflix queue. Williams plays Wendy who’s traveling to a shot-in-the-dark summer job in Alaska with her dog Lucy. Wendy is naive and humble, a bad combination for a girl traveling alone. Her car breaks down in Oregon and she awakens to a parking lot security guard scolding her for sleeping in it. Knowing she may have to use all the $ she has left to repair the car, she tries to shoplift dog food for Lucy but gets busted by a grocery boy straight out of the Nazi Youth and after getting processed by the local police, returns to the supermarket to find Lucy missing from where she tied her. The conflict that ensues, as she tries to track down her beloved companion, get her car fixed, and find a safe place to sleep, tests her character and eventually the painfully shy and submissive Wendy begins to get grit in her soul. The climax of the film is both tear-jerkingly sad but triumphant as well. There is virtually no music in this film, which struck me as odd a few times but the believability of the story and William’s acting talent more than compensated for the lack of abstraction.
★★★☆☆
Was fairly excited to see this and went to the post-midnight show at the RPX theater in Fenway. I was one of 3 people in attendance. Imbibing in true Poe fashion before the show, I was a bit buzzed as the previews came on—an overly loud march through Hollywood’s latest shock/horror/gore genre films, all pretty awful looking exept for Chernoybl Diaries which might actually be terrifying. Anyways, this cinematic take on Edgar Allan Poe doesn’t do the man justice, which comes as no surprise since the only film to ever remotely give Poe his due props was Roger Corman’s Masque of the Red Death but that was a straight up rendition and melding of Poe’s stories not a fanciful biopic of the writer himself. The Raven is not a terrible movie, just not a very good one. One of the tallest giants of American letters, Poe once again is reduced to the same campy bullshit that the Hammer films were famous for, although Corman did Poe with much more reverence for the original stories and poems. The plot for this film is a clusterfuck full of holes a giant pendulum could swing through. Cusack could have been a marvelous Poe, but this story never rises above a Sherlock Holmes-esque tenor. The real Poe would have never kept a raccoon for a pet or dissected human hearts in his spare time. This is complete CRAP. Poe deserves better, MUCH better, but when will the cliches about Poe stop? Interestingly, it is only the antagonist serial killer of the story who has any real respect for Poe’s writing and that is the irony of it. Poe has been made a cartoon character, a stand-in for a surrogate writer’s story. The surreal beauty of Eleonora, Ligeia, and Silence-A Fable; when will these works be appreciated cinematically? Poe’s life and the times he lived in were infinitely more interesting than this Jack The Ripper rip-off by V for Vendetta director James McTeigue. 3 stars are almost too much for this but I know that I am highly biased if not altogether residing in the wrong century and that many a fifteen year old Fangoria reader will probably love this flick. The part in the film where Poe is bullshit that his scathing review of Longfellow’s poems failed to get published is worth 3 stars. Like Poe, I think Longfellow was vastly overrated in his own time and even today. Here’s hoping some future director will get as pissed as I am at yet another attempt to appreciate Poe. One thing is to be sure, this film is probably as close to a biography of Poe that anyone has created yet so that is good news, at least things are progressing towards something more artistic in scope.
Juicing again, after a week of depression—didn’t care about anything, gorged on cholesterol loaded crap food and sucked down booze every downtrodden moment just to pass the while…but, I’m back on the Juice Wagon…Below is a blended concoction of bananas, almond milk, strawberries, and carrots…the orange part with the addition of the purpleness: blackberry/blueberry/raspberry, and plain yogurt. While it does look like a Martian landscape, the little golden pile to the left is actually a small sand dune of flax.
Next: Add cucumber, broccoli, spinach, celery, and apples…
And voila! A colorful and healthful tonic for the body and soul. Honestly, it does kick my body and mind into gear. Brain food to be sure. Drinking this panacea affords an instant improvement in concentration and overall thinking. BUT…it does take time, and $ to do this, not to mention it turns my tiny kitchen into a mad scientist’s laboratory for at least two or three hours and messes up a lot of dishes. I’ve got a system down, and can make enough juice for four days in about 1.5 hours if I’m pressed for time.
Did I happen to mention this tastes unbelievably awesome?
✮✮✮✮✰ 4 out of 5
Streamed this directorial debut by Julia Leigh last night (early morning, insomnia time 3am actually). I was rapt throughout, not only because of the gorgeous Emily Browning but it’s written as a tight-fisted character study of a character who is always hiding herself. Leigh’s story is provocative and original and Browning’s acting is understated. I think Browning is brilliant and I don’t know why Cannes narrowly missed entering this film last year.
Browning plays a hard-working university student who holds typical jobs in the daytime hours as a barista, an office copier and a medical experiment subject. At night, however, she indulges in independent prostitution and eventually finds herself employed as a scantily clad silver-service girl for a high society dinner club.
That parlays into an opportunity for her to cater to fetishists who get their jollies cuddling up to unconscious nude women. She is administered an opiate tea that renders her asleep for hours while rich old malcontents verbally abuse her, fondle and drag her around the bed, she unawares all the while. She is paid well for this but comes to depend on providing the service even though she was warned by the madam in charge not to do so for reasons of self-preservation. Her sense of guilt and deep-seated trauma, the sources of which are only obliquely revealed, set off her painful odyssey, dangerously adrift in a world of sexual abandon and abuse at the hands of soul-corrupted decadents. In the meantime, the affections and attention of her drug-addicted best friend, the one person she truly holds dear, dies of overdose, and thereafter she has no solace in anyone.
I really loved this story, and do candidly admit that Browning’s undeniable sexiness had me riveted to the screen. But for a fairly long hour and forty minute film with sparse dialogue, it never became boring. The cinematography is subtle and smart with no gimmicks. Browning’s performance comes off entirely believable and altogether human.
Can’t wait to see Julia Leigh’s next film.
Surreal Meditation on Rasputin
Rasputin was a Siberian-born mystic and healer who was supposedly initiated into a cult that practiced orgiastic sex to cleanse the soul. He was a pivotal if not fully understood figure in the demise of the Romanov dynasty and the end of Tsarism. He was widely thought to be dangerous and debauched but his relationship with the Tsarina and heir Alexei made him sancrosanct to his many enemies. This video was created by altering four very brief clips from the A&E documentary on Rasputin, editing them together and slowing them down with some contrast and color adjustments. I filmed the clips with my Sanyo digital by way of shooting my plasma screen while Netflix streamed the documentary. So, it’s 2nd hand footage that I took liberties with. The music is from Georgian composer Nadarejshvili’s First String Quartet, the last movement. The video is not making a statement or a narrative, it is simply what its title says it is.
