Murder Trial? Or Exploitation? Sunday Journal #1

I don't wish to alienate those who enjoyed Michael Jackson's music, or even his celebrity.  I listened to Jackson on the airwaves since he was a youngster (and, incidentally, so was I). I was not a  fan, although I enjoyed one or two of his recordings (like "Human Nature"); but I understand that it is hard to lose someone who provided pleasure through music or any other kind of performance or artistic endeavor. (To me, for instance, Heath Ledger's sudden death and the resulting loss of his potential, were tragic.)

Jackson had talent, and stardom at a young age.  His cult-worship today, however, seems totally out of sync with his contribution to art or music, or even culture.

Now, over two years after his untimely death, his absence is still unsettling to many people. Among them there is a lack of closure; and so there is some need to place blame elsewhere, rather than to accept the idea that perhaps Mr. Jackson made some unfortunate health decisions of his own, which contributed to his hastened demise.

And so we have another "trial of the century" in which prosecutors are seeking to identify a culprit.  

What offends me about the case of Dr. Conrad Murray is that it seems to have been "styled" like a reality show reminiscent of O.J. Simpson's 1994 murder trial, which was a media bonanza.  The purveyors of this new media circus have found a way to continue to exploit and profit from Jackson's fame, with this manufactured "event".

If Jackson were not so popular--or eccentric-- this "case" would appeal to very few, certainly not enough to warrant the coverage it is receiving...if it were tried at all.  

Does anyone else think Murray's trial is being programmed and orchestrated to remind "audiences" of the Simpson trial?   

Dr. Conrad Murray tried for Involuntary Manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson (2011)...


O.J Simpson on trial for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson (1994)...

Opera + Puppets = A Unique Attraction

Next week I am departing for Italy, home of some of the world's best and most famous Operas. 

So it's a funny coincidence that I just became aware of an unusual, 50-year-old opera theater, unique in the entire world, right in my own back yard.

While visiting a local Performing Arts Center for a Business Meeting, I picked up an Arts brochure and found a listing for Opera in Focus.  I had never heard of this theater, located just "next door" in the suburb of Rolling Meadows, Illinois.  I looked at the web site (click here for the performance repertoire), and found that it is an intricate puppetry performance, in which scenes from famous operas are carefully staged and delicately perfomed by special artists using specially-designed puppets that apparently don't exist anywhere else in the world.


And tonight, a local PBS program called Chicago Tonight offered a wonderful segment about this amazing and little-known art. 

William B. Fosser, who founded the theater in 1950, was a movie art director and set decorator, with films like "Home Alone", "Backdraft" and "Ordinary People" among his credits.  As a youngster he developed fascination with opera and obsession with puppetry.


Soon he developed intricate rod-puppets with such amazing detail of design and movement, that it remains one-of-a-kind in the world. 

Fosser, who died in 2006, expressed a wish that the puppets be destroyed if the theater ever closed down. His apprentices, Justin and Shayne Snyder, who joined Fosser in the early 1980's and now operate the 60-seat basement theater in a nondescript building of the Rolling Meadows Park District, admit that they could never destroy these amazing puppet-"performers".  So they hope to keep the tradition, and the theater, alive.

I can't believe I have missed this!  But I will rectify that life-error very soon.


Check out this extraordinary 9-minute video, which I found unexpectedly moving.  I'll be attending my first performance, after I return from the opera capital of the world. 

The End of a TV Era: A Three Hour Tour, and Three Times Two

"Just sit right back and hear a tale...
...Of a lovely lady...."

Once these songs get into your head, you're hooked for life...

"Gilligan's Island", and "The Brady Bunch"....Two of arguably the most recognizable sitcoms (and theme songs) in American television history. Both still have lives of their own, still going strong in syndication, decades after their original broadcasts.  Both were the creations of Sherwood Schwartz, who died this week at age 90.

Schwartz, who gave up the study of medicine to write jokes for Bob Hope in the 1940's, went on to great success in television.  He created these two popular shows from the 1960's and early 1970's.  Schwartz also wrote the lyrics to the theme songs which laid out the premise of each situation. The ideas and their finished products were simple and simplistic, but nonetheless brilliant for being so memorable and so iconic.  Schwartz lived and worked in a time when it was admirable to reach as large an audience as possible, when appealing to a broad common denominator was respectable, even desirable, and inclusive. 

"Gilligan's Island" sent six hapless characters adrift after their "three hour tour" boat is shipwrecked.  The fun of the show was watching such disparate characters; a millionaire couple, a starlet, a genius, a girl-next-door, a birdbrained captain and his bumbling mate--survive all kinds of wacky incidents, and coexist.  It's  a slapstick version of "Lost" and "Survivor",  before this premise took itself so darned seriously.  The episodes bore no resemblance to "reality", and everyone knew it: that was part of the innocent fun. Mind-numbing yes, and for me, a little went a long way.  And yet, a lot of respectable people grew up enjoying this stuff, and regard it with pleasant nostalgia. It is part of our pop-culture fabric.


"The Brady Bunch"  is perhaps even more well-loved.  Two single, widowed parents, each with three children, get married, and the children's initial resentment eventually turns into a bond, and mischief ensues.  The fun of this show was also how these two families, along with their wisecracking housekeeper, got into dilemmas that were neatly resolved in a half hour.  Even though it was a "contemporary" look at a typical middle-class family, everyone knew even then that it was all sugar-coated absurdity, not at all a reflection of real families.  And therein lay its appeal, the same as comfort food, not always nutritious, often bland, but predictable, safe, and good for some laughs.


As far as innovation and groundbreaking television was concerned, these were barely passable shows in general, but they were harmless, and fun.  They never went beyond the mildest level of tension, and that predictability was appreciated.   

And many regard them with a lot of affection, as a symbol of an era where folks across generations and demographics could enjoy something knowingly cheesy; and everyone across the country had these shows in common, and bonded over them.


(You didn't have to vote people "off"; no one was humiliated except in a gently comic way; no one feared having to see a ripped open corpse, or suffer through "hip" banter that elicits the laughter of degradation instead of joy.  The public did not require TV to establish its "street cred" in order to be acceptable, and TV didn't pander to that idea, either. We knew it was fake...we loved it for its artifice.)


And everyone was in on the joke, producers and audiences alike.  These shows have a following unlike anything that is currently broadcast. And nothing on TV now, I predict, will have anything like the longevity or staying power of Shwartz' creations.


Perhaps you  have heard the trivia regarding the little boat in "Gilligan's Island" called The S. S.Minnow...It was an in-joke, named after former FCC Chairman Newton Minnow, who, in a 1961 speech about media, ranted about the state of television, and coined the now-famous phrase "Vast Wasteland" to characterize it. 

Well, if Newton Minnow could do today what he urged media experts to do then, which is to spend an entire day in front of television with no other form of media input, he might find the reruns of "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch" to be welcome oases in a wasteland he could not have imagined 50 years ago.


I suppose if I were older when these shows were released, I would have cast a jaded, snobbish eye on them.  But then, things are different now. Maybe I like these shows because they have, in all of their innocence, endured, and are pleasing new generations of viewers. 


Fellow blogger Andrew of Encore 's World of Film and TV has asked readers to select their favorite episode of a "scripted" show from this past season.  You know what? I honestly can't think of one. But if I said something like "The Minnow would be lost", or "pork chops and applesauce", a lot of folks could launch into an entire song...or give a complete episode description.


The question that begs is: which of this season's episodes--and TV theme songs--will everyone remember, fondly and completely, after 40 years?

A Moving Scene From The Series "Six Feet Under"--A Friday Journal

I want to share with my readers a personal anecdote: about how a few moments of an old TV drama helped me regain my perspective, allowed me to re-connect with a bygone era that I miss, reminded me that fiction (especially of the human kind) can illuminate one's own experience, and reaffirmed my admiration for the peaceful influence and profound, uncomplicated beauty of Joni Mitchell's music.

Several years ago, I watched the entire first season of HBO's dramatic series "Six Feet Under."  The series followed the members of the Fisher family, after the sudden accidental death of their patriarch, Nathaniel.  Sons Nate and David take over the family's independent funeral home business; widowed mother Ruth must reinvent herself as a single woman whose children no longer need her; and youngest daughter Claire navigates the dangers of adolescence and of life in a California public high school. 


They struggle to find meaning in their lives, surrounded by death, and by a gallery of troubled lovers, dangerous friends, greedy businessmen, grieving customers, and other unforgettable figures, past and present.


The series compelled me, and won my admiration, for creating some of the most interesting original characters ever conceived for television (or films, for that matter), and for keeping us close to them in extraordinary circumstances.  It spoke about what it meant to be a parent, a son, a daughter; what it meant to confront a fatal disease, a lost love, a lost parent; what it meant to build a life as a gay man, or re-build a life as a single mature woman, or cut through the crap of adolescence, or see humanity's absurdity with clarity, even forgiveness.


(After 9/11,  I cancelled all but the most basic cable service, in protest against the banality that continued on the air after the 24-hour disaster coverage ended, and regular programming returned.  As a result, I also lost some good programming, like "Six Feet Under".)


We recently got hold of the entire five seasons on DVD, and have begun watching them in earnest, several nights a week.  We are in the home stretch of Season Two.


The final scene of Episode 7, Season Two, surprised me with its matter-of-fact poignancy, its images packed with meaning and emotion.  It played thus:


Daughter Claire goes to Topanga Canyon to visit her mother Ruth's sister Sarah, who is a free spirit.  A group of old hippies spends the night in New-Age revelry, awakening a feeling of freedom in Claire.  Sarah gives Claire a gift of a cassette tape of "Sarah's Songs", and on it is the original recording of "Woodstock" by Joni Mitchell.....


Claire brings the tape home.  She and her mother, as usual, have little to say to one another.  Ruth finds the tape and puts it on; and as Claire looks on, touched and amazed, her mother, standing alone in the middle of the kitchen, sings the plaintive lyrics perfectly along with Joni....and the music plays on over the end credits.....

...And Claire, like the rest of us, understands that Ruth, this repressed and tragic figure of a mother, was young once, was a free spirit, and sacrificed it all by the choices she made...but the spirit is still there, just waiting to be touched and released.

Take five..and enjoy the song and video....

Tough Questions on the Road to Reinvention--A Very Personal Wednesday Journal

Is re-invention worth it?  Am I trying too hard?  Not hard enough?  Have I merely fought against a natural state of equilibrium?


Feeling discouraged...tired....as alienated as a teenager, but without the cultural support or consolations I used to find....


Need to step back, and see where I am heading....


A big question: Do I spend too much time dwelling on what has been, and casting an overly-critical eye on what's happening in modern culture?


Some may argue that yours truly disdains technology.... instead of regarding it as just another tool...
that "the past" is just that...
that I am caught in a time warp of my own making, what with my love of "obsolete" artists like Joni Mitchell, Federico Fellini, and so on...
and that my lack of appreciation for things like "Avatar", the latest  electronic book readers, smart phones and home theater technologies renders me "irrelevant".


I argue:

Technology is another tool, but  a tool for what? What I disdain, if anything, is our obsession with the tools (or, "technology"), and less with what they can do for us.  So many line up for the latest phones, but few will use their Kindles to read about the latest scientific breakthroughs.


We are all a product of our pasts. As long as our memories serve us, the past will always be with us...The past, too, is a valuable tool, a tool for understanding.... The past is never "just that."

I defend:


The criticisms I have imagined against myself may not be fair; in a world that screams at you in order to distract you, I try hard to keep myself informed, to learn things, and have new experiences, without losing sight of what brought us to where we are.
I appreciate good things, no matter how "old" they are.
The "time warp" contains much beauty, and messages of comfort or caution, which only the perspective of time can truly bring into focus.


I will try to keep my sense of humor, and console myself that for my age, and among my peer group, I have come a long way.

Can we learn from the past?  Or not?  can the past help to move us forward, or does it hold us back?
Dogs have the uncanny ability to thrive in the "here and now"...and demand that we do the same....Which is why the dogs in my world are a way of navigating a troubling present.
But then, even dogs remember the people who were good to them....or cruel...and respond with the appropriate tail-wag, or fear-posture. If only as self-preservation....


I am rarely comfortable with life as it unfolds, and only gain real appreciation for my "present" later, after reflection and gaining, perspective....
...Even as a child I was not content to enjoy the things that I was expected to enjoy....So, it is just my nature to cast a cynical eye to the things that I am told are "relevant"
....don't forget my Betamax, LOL!


A Declaration:


We can and must learn from the past, and embrace it to some degree....
We cannot reinvent ourselves otherwise. 
When young people are fluent in the language of popular culture, but ignorant of cultural traditions, they are thought of as "visionary".  When mature people express appreciation of the beauty and universality of neglected culture, and challenge the assumptions of popular culture, they are regarded as irrelevant.  Why?

When you get down to it, popular culture has always depended on who has the buying power.  

What interests me is that which lasts, that which helps us to understand ourselves and where we're going, regardless of age. 

As far as reinvention goes, I can feel at peace with my fondness for old things, for past culture, and am happy to furnish my mind with them as a refuge in a difficult world that nonetheless has a place for me, as I continue the processes of learning, and changing, and giving. 

And yes, I wish Fellini were still with us. Fortunately, his work still speaks to us, if we only watch and listen.

Tagged For A Musical Meme!

Walter of The Silver Screening Room tagged me to participate in a musical meme, kind of an on-line interview on a particular topic.  I've been asked to answer a series of questions about the music in my life.  This exercise was great fun, and I fear I have responded in much too much detail...I humbly appreciate the invite! Thank you Walter...


[To those who have been exceedingly kind in promoting my blog, and had tagged me for creative recognition, especially Tom (Sophisticated Lunacy) and
Dave (Ultra Dave) I am forever in your debt.   I regret that I did not feel ready to follow through then....and I hope some day to earn the honor you have generously offered.  You are true mentors and blogging friends. 

And so I would like to tag both of you, Tom and Dave, to provide us your responses to this great survey.]

meme   Pronunciation: \ˈmēm\
Function: noun   Date: 1976
: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture

And so, here are my responses to the series of questions about music in my life:


1. Open up your iTunes, music player, spin the CD, whatever, hit shuffle and tell us what is the first song to play?   From my new, in-development i-Tunes, the first "song" to pop up is "The Anvil Chorus" from Verdi's opera, "Il Trovatore".

2. Name your top five favorite bands/musicians of all time. So hard to narrow this down...and I fear I may lock myself into an era...but here goes: Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Gordon Lightfoot, and George Gershwin. (And there are about 50 runners-up).

3. What was your first CD to own? (8 track, record, CD, MP3 for the newbies) There are two I received as gifts at the same time: The Soundtrack from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", and The Carpenters "Close To You".   Vinyl, of course.

4. Of all the bands/artists in your cd/record collection, which one do you own the most albums by? Joni Mitchell...I have almost every recording she ever made, plus two concert DVD's.  She is a consummate artist, a poet, prolific and brave, and endlessly interesting.

 
5. What was the last song you listened to? "Hey Ya" by OutKast, just happened to be on the car radio as I was driving home from the gym this afternoon.  (I won't include "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" from "Women in Love", which I watched tonight on DVD.) 
6. What song would you say sums you up? No song is complex enough, funny enough, or dog-friendly enough.  One song that speaks most closely to my current philosophy is "Clouds (Both Sides Now)" by Joni Mitchell.

7. What's your favourite local band or band that originated from your hometown?  The band Chicago, of course. 

   




8. What's the greatest concert you've ever been to? Linda Ronstadt at the University of Iowa.

 
9. What musician would you like to hang out with for a day?  After Joni (of COURSE), I think Elton John, to talk to him about working on Billy Elliott.

10. What was the greatest decade for music?  Every decade had great music.  Mozart (1780-90) and Beethoven (1801-10) might raise this bar a bit....  In American pop culture, the '60's had the most interesting variety and evolution, plus it was a lot of fun....

11. What is your favorite movie soundtrack? Oh come ON!  So many to choose from, I will create sub-categories:

Classical: Amadeus; and John Corigliano's "The Red Violin"

Original dramatic score: Personal favorites are "The Best Years of Our Lives" by Hugo Friedhofer, and Philip Glass' "The Hours";   but my all-time favorite song written for a movie is "Moon River" from "Breakfast at Tiffany's".

Compilation: "A Clockwork Orange" features Electronic Beethoven and Purcell, Rossini's "Thieving Magpie", Pomp and Circumstance, and Gene Kelly's rendition of "Singin' in the Rain"---what a combination!
Favorite soundtrack of a musical: "West Side Story"

Most evocative of the emotional effect of a film: "Brokeback Mountain" can still bring me to tears.

12. What's the most awful CD/record/etc. you've ever bought? Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits doesn't qualify, because it was a gift.  So, by far, the most awful CD I purchased was The Shaggs, "Philosophy of the World".  I heard the incredible (and sort of tragic) story of these three inept musical sisters on a radio program, and could not resist having a copy.  Read their story HERE  and listen below.... (sorry)

13. What's your favorite band t-shirt or poster?  I always loved the logo for the 1969 Woodstock festival...don't know if this technically qualifies, but I can bend the rules here a wee bit....




14. Rolling Stones or The Beatles? The Beatles....they had the more interesting musical evolution...each musician was fascinating...legendary....They had more versatile music with wider, universal appeal.




15. What is the one song you would most like played at your funeral? Your birthday? While on a romantic date?
Funeral: "Cabaret"
Birthday: "Downtown" by Petula Clark, and maybe dozens more!
Romantic date: Hmmm, I always got dreamy hearing Maria Muldaur's "Midnight at the Oasis"...or Chicago's "Wishing You Were Here"

And there you have it!  Thanks for coming along on my magical musical tour.

Unsporting: Olympic Musings--A Sunday Journal

While the Olympic competitions are still compelling and worth a look, it appears that the media's coverage has slipped once again into xenophobia.  American audiences are assumed to have no interest in athletes from other lands, and American coverage panders to the taste for celebrity and  medal count that the media themselves have created.

I have a couple of short takes, then, on trends and stories that have given me pause.....

MEDAL COUNT

I suppose many Americans take comfort in American domination at the Olympics.  It is an artificial comfort, as though our victories on the world's playing fields signifies that all is well at home, if not necessarily in the world. The attention to medal count takes away from the pure sport, art and competition of the games.... But, for some, the medal count is the whole point.....

As of this moment, according to the latest tally supplied by NBC, the latest count for the top three medal-winning teams is thus:

Team USA-24; Team Germany:-18.  Team Norway-12.

I am not a whiz at math, but my intuition tells me that the more athletes a nation has on its team, the more total medals the team is likely to win.  It wouldn't make sense for Kenya, with its one team member, to have tallied more than 24 medals....but that's just my simple way of seeing things.

There's another way to interpret this.  As a percentage of total athletes in competition, the medal standings are thus:

Team US- 215 Athletes: 11%;  Team Germany--152 Athletes: 11%;  Team Norway--100 Athletes: 12%.
Team Netherlands so far won only 5 medals, but wih only 34 athletes in competition, that's a 14% ratio of medals to competitors.


My point is that I want to ignore the importance of the final medal tally, because it's an inaccurate measure of the strength of a team. 

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LYSECEK VS: PLUSHENKO: A NEW "COLD WAR"

I always thought that the judging for the Olympic Figure Skating Competitions has been subjective; but that is only because I don't have knowledge of the nuances the judges seek, nor do I understand the tally process. 
It is not entirely subjective, I assume; there must be some universally accepted criteria for assigning excellence, on top of which, criteria like the judge's personal preference and artistic interpretation round out a final score.  (It is, in many ways, like film criticism....subjectivity applied to accepted criteria that are recognized in the art and industry of criticism.)

The final scoring in figure skating can be assumed to be somewhat arbirtrary, but with a good foundation in basics.  Therefore it is fruitless to try to argue a judging panel's opinion.  Worse yet is when "controversy" is manufactured by media in order to set up a false sense of competition between nations. So it was when America's Evan Lysecek earned Gold at last Thursday's competition, leaving Russia's Evgeni Plushenko, the "favorite",  to "settle" for Silver.

To me, there was no controversy beyond that which the media tried desperately to create....journalists must really miss the Cold War.....   I heard one news-reader say that Russia was "protesting" the decision.  My curiosity about that remarkable statement made me listen on, wondering if a formal complaint was lodged.  However, I simply fell for the bait.  No protest was made other than the reactions of a high-profile Russian skater whose "belligerence" could have been a misinterpretation of cultural differences in behavior, even a reaction to the baiting of journalists, as it could have been  literally a mis-interpreted statement.  Luckily, Lysecek graciously sidestepped the debate, and made low-key, non-threatening statements.  I hope this"fight" has been laid to rest.

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EFFEMINACY AND CANADIAN JOURNALISTS....

In my next post, I will examine a troubling dialogue by a pair of sports journalists in Montreal over American Figure Skater Johnny Weir, and my assertion that fear of effeminacy in males is due to a more fundamental and disturbing aspect of our culture.

Vancouver Olympic Kickoff--Friday Journal

A few thoughts tonight about the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.  I feel an excitement this year that I have not sensed surrounding the Games for a very long time.....

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I expect a huge audience for tonight's Olympic Opening Ceremonies, continuing a trend I have recently observed. Lately, the big TV specials, like the the Golden Globes and the Grammy Awards,  and the Super Bowl with its historic ratings, are commanding big viewership. I wonder--is it because we are feeling our isolation, lost as we are in all of the many technologies that allow us to "connect", without having to see or touch a real human being, our gazes fixed as they are on our electronic screens?  Are we craving a shared experience more than ever, to deal with the sobering events of the world, and a future so difficult to predict?  Is it just an extreme case of cabin fever after a punishing winter across the country?

If any event is worthy of attention, able to provide a pure community experience we can share with friends and strangers the world over, the Olympic Games is it, giving us a focal point for our need to reach out and enthuse over the efforts of eager, talented people.  Winners win and take the stage, losers are not voted out of the village, or humiliated by a disinterested celebrity judge.  Except for the occasional brass of media intrusion, it is a pleasure to stand with people from other lands, some of which we grow up believing are hostile to us, and yet we feel relieved,  blessedly free of animosity.

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Of course there is a sense of pride in the home team.  We thrill to the athletic competition, and there is a feeling of fellowship in that....Only the media tend to frame the Games in terms of rivalry, in which it is our patriotic duty to take sides, to pay more attention to the gold medal count and to manufactured celebrity, instead of allowing viewers to 
breathe, and enjoy a rare feeling of personal connection to athletes of many countries.  Team America has my admiration, but not to the exclusion of the other teams; so this time I want to learn more about the unique indivduals from around the world, and their stories. Maybe the networks will find the time or inclination to enrich their coverage in this way  .

The Olympic Web Site provides excellent information about all of the events, competitions, and best of all, the athletes and the countries represented in the competition.

For example, I'm looking forward to learning more about the following:

--The six athletes from Iran, all in skiing competitions, one of whom is female(the story of her achievement, and her experience as a woman traveling with a predominantly male team from a male-centric culture, could be interesting);

--The lone young man representing Pakistan in the Alpine Skiing competition; 

--Chinese Taipei (Taiwan's) sole team member in the Luge event, and how his little contingent had to negotiate, or capitulate, to mainland China (for example, the flag they were "allowed" to carry during the parade of countries);

--The tiny country of Andorra managing to pull together a team of six, in Alpine Skiing and Snowboarding;

--India's Luge team member, Shiva Keshavan, who almost missed his fourth Olympic Games because his sled broke during practice, and how the Supreme Court of India personally contributed about $10,000 to replace it;

--The Games' oldest athlete, from Mexico, Hubertus von Hohenlohe, 51 years old, an Alpine skiier.

There are many more.

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Nodar Kumaritashvili, a Luge competitor from Georgia, was killed in a practice run.  He was 21 years old. The camaraderie of the world's young athletes was sealed with this tragedy.  In his or her own way, each athlete's competition will be dedicated to Nodar.  We will hear more soon about the excessive speed of the track.  For now, a cloud will hover over the Games.

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Does anyone feel like holding back a bit from the celebration, knowing that half a world away, Haitians are still suffering?  Are we uncomfortable that the story of the earthquake has faded, and is in danger of being ignored, in favor of the two-week competition and party that is the Olympics?

Thankfully, there is a connection between the Haitian Relief Effort and the Olympic games.  At tonight's Opening Ceremonies, plans were underfoot to premier the new version of "We Are The World", recorded just after the Grammy Awards, with the video directed by Paul Haggis, and with the participation of musicians contemporary and classic.  "All proceeds from "We Are the World" singles and video sales will go to the newly formed charity We Are the World Foundation LLC and will then be distributed to Haiti relief efforts"...

(Postscript:  I missed this segment of the show, and will seek the video on line tomorrow. I  have noticed mixed reactions on-line so far, so I am anxious to see it for myself. ).

LET THE GAMES BEGIN.......

Oscar Nominees Interview: and Why I Miss Pauline Kael

(REVISED on Feb 10--to correct errors brought on in part by an exhausting day....)

In the weeks ahead, I will offer an occasional opinion, essay, rant, etc., about this year's Oscar nominations.  Tonight, I want to share how an innocent round-table discussion among actors made me yearn for the writing of one of the best film critics this country ever produced.

The latest Newsweek (February 8) featured an interview and  discussion with six of this year's Academy Award Acting Nominees: Morgan Freedman, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Bridges, Woody Harrelson, Gabourey Sidibe, and Carey Mulligan.

It was a lighthearted and entertaining discussion, designed to personalize these performers and give Oscar-watchers a good feeling should any of them eventually take home the gold. 

Among other tidbits, we learned that Sandra Bullock is the daughter of opera singers/voice teachers; that Jeff Bridges is a proponent of motion-capture filmmaking (used in his upcoming film, a remake of Disney's "Tron"); that Woody Harrelson got his start by doing Elvis imitations; that Morgan Freeman is often mistaken for Samuel L Jackson, and calls "Avatar"  "a bit faddish...really cartoons..."; that Gabourey Sidibe blew her audition for a Huggies commercial (as a tot) for crying too much; and that Carey Mulligan wanted to act since age six (and has flexible toes!!)

Then I read the following exchange and realized that something has been missing from the film industry, and the art of film criticism, perhaps never to be recaptured:

NEWSWEEK: Morgan, how did you feel when you were 50 years old to read the opening line of that famous Pauline Kael review of Street Smart: “Is Morgan Freeman the greatest American actor?” Do you remember that?
FREEMAN: Of course I remember that.

NEWSWEEK: Gabby and Carey, do you know who Pauline Kael is?

[They both shake their head no.]

Even though I understand that these young performers are of a new era, I can't help but wish that somewhere in their education, on their way to working in the industry, they had some familiarity, some understanding, of one of the voices that influenced their profession. 

Critics of the arts define their eras. Pauline Kael defined a period in which I came of age, learning about the art of movies and filmmaking.  Kael was the primary film critic for The New Yorker from 1968 to 1991.  She was smart, idiosyncratic, and brought with her great knowledge of literature and music and theater, elevating the art of film by connecting it to universally accepted and venerable art forms. At the same time, she wrote as a fan, her intelligence shaping her style.  Her love for movies of all kinds, and her sharp eye and wit, always were convincing, even if a reader did not always agree.

I admire her story.  The daughter of Polish immigrants, her family moved to San Francisco when they lost their family farm.  She did a number of jobs (including that of seamstress). By her mid-thirties, she was writing film reviews for City Lights magazine, and running the Berkely Cinema Guild, programming movies for a 2-screen art house (similar to our own Music Box Theater, Chicago's answer to the Castro in San Francisco).  Her capsule reviews, written in a personal style and cutting verbage, were considered collectors items even then.

She approached movies head-on, proclaiming an unabashed love for writing and acting, and a distaste for pretension.  She disparaged moguls, businessmen, and pseudo-artists alike.  She appealed to the childlike wonder of educated filmgoers who were insecure about their love of movies as an art form.  It became acceptable, under a steady diet of Kael, to connect with a movie, to feel as though you could change your life after a work of emotional and cinematic power, but you didn't have to know a lot about "film grammar" to have the experience.


One of my favorite quotes, which sums up her critical philosophy, and one that I think is vanishing from the art of film criticism, is: "The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.”

In 1967, after writing for numerous and high-profile publications, she was hired as the film critic of The New Yorker, and her inaugural review, an in-depth and impassioned rave of "Bonnie and Clyde", vaulted her to national recognition.  That was the beginning of the American Film Generation, the American New Wave.  She admitted that her writing was best at this time because the movies offered so much.  She raved about pictures that became some of my favorites: Cabaret, The Godfather, Nashville. She also went on flights of fancy, and went apart from the crowd. She was true to her views, and while I often violently disagreed with her, I always came away from her reviews feeling as though I had just had the experience--or had the renewed experience--of seeing the movie about which she had written.

That, in the best sense of the word, is a re-view.

She created a new aesthetic: the movie review as an art form in itself, that entertained and informed readers independently of their knowledge of the film under scrutiny, but which added a deeper appreciation  of all of the movies she discussed.

Many critics and filmmakers cite Kael as an influence in their own creative work: Roger Ebert, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, A.O. Scott, Elvis Mitchell, Michael Sragow...many other critics, often referred to as "Paulettes" due to their "homages" and imitation of her style.

And myself..she influenced me and my way of "reading" and appreciating a film, and my way of trying to capture the experience in my writing of them.

I have read all of her books, many of the titles deliberately sexually suggestive (movies were a sensual experience to her, always).  Titles like "I Lost it at the Movies", "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", "Deeper Into Movies", "When the Lights Go Down"...I have read them all, many times until some of them have lost their covers....

She won a national Book award for "Deeper into Movies", the first time a book of film criticism ever won such a prestigious literary award.

I wonder what she would have liked today.... I think she would have loved "Avatar" and "A Single Man" both.


She died on September 4, 2001.

“Trash has given us an appetite for art”. Another characteristic quote...she believed that movies rarely achieved the status of art, and so to love movies at all, we need to find an appreciation for trash.  I go back and forth on this one....

Tempestuous, opinionated, informed, funny, able to recapture a film and do it justice, good or bad....Champion of artists and craftsmen, writers (especially!) and performers that really did have a sincere desire to change the landscape of cinema while entertaining us and making us think (like Altman, Scorsese, Bertolucci, DeSica,  Mankiewicz)......Essayist of an incomparable personal style, who missed nothing, who was unashamed of her own guilty pleasures, who cast herself in each review in the role of the consummate film-lover, who didn't care a bit if you agreed or disagreed but wanted to share her enthusiasm with you all the same.....

I miss her. 

Reflections In A Golden Globe---Sunday Journal

Random thoughts on why I loved Movie Awards like the Golden Globes once, and why watching them now sort of feels like I'm looking at sentimental photographs of friends who have forever lost touch, or passed on.....

When I was a kid, I lived for movies and movie award shows.  I read as many reviews I could get my hands on, and in that way I began to put together a set of criteria about the worth of a film and its must-see factor, based on critical consensus. Since the MPAA rating system was strictly enforced in our house, I was restricted from seeing the very films the critics held up as examples of the most topical, artistic, exciting and powerful films in release; in other words, the movies I just HAD to see.  It was then that Oscar and Golden Globe came to the rescue.  The best chance I had to convince my parents to take me to adult-themed movies, like "M*A*S*H" or  "The Godfather", was if these movies received the imprimatur of the industry, the stamp of approval the awards conferred on these pictures. 

With earnest study of film, I looked at Award-nominated and winning pictures as one of my guideposts to notions of quality.  Of course I soon learned that the awards were not always to be taken seriously, that voting was often haphazard or subject to popularity, or bribes, or other things that had nothing to do with "art" or "science"

Even so, I think there was a more sincere effort at the time to recognize the best, and there was some comfort in knowing that a movie, or performance, was outstanding enough to be elevated as an example of the finest work the industry had to offer. 

I enjoyed it too, and became a pretty good expert in Oscar and awards trivia. 

More on my Awards Odyssey later...in fact, it's shaping up into an actual novel !  Suffice it to to say that in the last few years there has been a growing disenchantment, a sense that the Award organizations have lost their way, fear that they are becoming irrelevant, and to survive have lowered the bar to match the expectations of the viewers they need so much. 

Some thoughts on tonight's show...

--Mo' Nique, Meryl Streep, the Screenplay Award for "Up In The Air"...  Good choices, respectable choices.  "Avatar" for best picture was seemingly inevitable.  The pleasures to be had from "Avatar" are to the aesthetics of movies as Graphic Novels are to literature; will a Graphic Novel ever win a literary prize, beautiful and artistic as it may be?  While there is room for both,  it's odd to see them honored as the same.

--"The Hangover"....REALLY?  Is this gold-standard filmmaking? Okay, maybe you and I know that that isn't what it's all about....but to today's young aspiring filmmakers and writers, an award like this can "inspire" them to emulate "The Hangover"....and we'll eventually get more of the same...and worse.

--Gabourey Sibide: I almost wept again watching her film clip from "Precious, as raw and honest a portrayal as I have seen all year...perhaps for many years. I hoped her name would be called. It wasn't.

--"Sherlock Holmes"....REALLY?  Robert Downey Jr. as one of the finest examples of film acting this year? 

--"Avatar" was one of 2 big winners tonight with two--count 'em--two awards.  Only one other picture matched this...."Crazy Heart"!  (The eleventh-hour campaign might just sweep this latter film to unlikely Oscar gold.... ) 

--"Nine" went empty-handed...there is a calculated effort to bury this film, simply because most people didn't get it, or were flummoxed by its pace and subject and found nothing "exciting" in it, or are still cowed by the likes of Roger Ebert who harped on it like a demented scold (he also  hated "All That Jazz" in 1979...go figure...)

--As empty handers went....so did "Single Man"....  "Hurt Locker" was shut out too....

--This was a more reserved, less uninhibited party than we're accustomed to.  The events of the world seemed to be on the minds of many in the room, as evidenced by the large red ribbons worn, and a few of the more thoughtful speeches (Meryl...) 

In all, we enjoyed the telecast...and especially, the montage of Martin Scorsese's films.   What a marvelous piece of exciting filmmaking it was, too, better even than many of the movies included in the clip.  I criticize Scorsese a lot because he is such a great talent and I want greatness from him all the time.  I guess if I'm honest with myself, he is one of my last heroes in the industry, one who is committed to reminding new audiences of the pleasures of the movies I have loved all my life...many of them Golden-Globe and Oscar-winners. 

February 2--Oscar Nominations.  And the story of how my heart was Broke- back in 2005.- and my love for Oscar  simply Crashed.

"Avatar", the Product and the Principle

"Avatar" is unavoidable.  Unless you prefer to be excluded from the cultural conversation, one might as well climb the bandwagon, and take the ride.  For those of you, like this reviewer, who generally don't care for this kind of movie, having to purchase the special eyewear (you must, if you go, see it in 3-D) is akin to drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid.  Knowing that your purchase will support the efforts of a megalomaniac director (who needs no encouragement to divert popular attention away from literate, emotional and personal films with modest budgets and efficient shooting schedules), you might die a little; but I can tell you that the death is relatively painless, the experience mostly inoffensive.


That's because, at heart, "Avatar"is an amusement park ride, a throwback to childhood thrills, a harmless entertainment that only pretends to say something about war and imperialism and ecology.  It is big, often hugely imaginative, its visuals created with obvious care by scores of craftsmen and designers and technicians, and loaded with gorgeous detail and color.  Some of it is irresistible; although, in the end, it's an  enormous, hyped-up version of the kind of action and fantasy pictures that sensitive viewers, in general, successfully avoid. 

Yet it won't be just the film alone that draws record crowds; for many, it will  be almost impossible to withstand the virtual tsunami of marketing and promotion; so we will allow ourselves to be swept away by this massive, faddish wave, and hope to survive, and be deposited safely, relatively unscathed, to reality in three dimensions.

Filmmakers misrepresent the grosses of blockbusters like these in order to justify making more of the same. (As I write, "Avatar" is proclaimed to be the fourth-largest moneymaker in movie history ...with no mention of the adjustment for inflation, and the highest admission prices in movie histoy).  But more of the same is already in the can, so to speak, so there is a lot at stake in ensuring the success of "Avatar". 

In fact, the trailers at the afternoon screening I attended New Year's Day featured a  remake of "Clash of the Titans" (creatures, explosions, lots of noise); Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" with Russell Crowe (or, "Gladiator: Men in Tights", more noise and explosions), and two 3-D films (a sequel to "Shrek" and Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland"). So for now, those moviegoers who prefer human stories and engagement with real characters in recognizable human situations are left to go begging. 

Is it a great film?  I think for about 90 minutes, "Avatar" is a work of visual splendor, trapped inside an inane battle movie stretched to 162+ minutes, bloated to the size of director James Cameron's ego.  Cameron has actually stated that "Avatar" was the integration of  his life achievements, boasting that it was the most complicated job anyone had ever done.  (Give me 4 years, 250+ million dollars and over 1000 employees, and I'll hand you a review to end all film criticism.)

Is it art?  Aesthetic pleasure is so elusive, and subjective.  If one is satisfied with sumptuous surface appearances and textures, then it could suffice.  A lot of sincere imagination went into the creation of the plant and animal life we see on the fictional planet of Pandora, among the Na'vi, a culture of blue-skinned humanoids with large eyes, slender buff bodies and wiggling ears, who revere nature and possess a natural resource ("unobtanium") that the evil earthly military wants to mine. Some of the graphics have the layered delicacy and palette of  a Chinese silk painting, and the mysterious glow of underwater sea creatures.

The detail work is top-notch. I especially loved the whorled plants that withdrew quickly on the slightest touch; or the lovely "milkweeds" that descend on special souls as if by instinct; the flying insects that appear to escape the bounds of the screen and float perpetually in front of us; the way light reflects off the eyes of the Na'vi, and the way their ears move to catch sounds; their sleek bodies and four-fingered hands; even their jewelry, the feathers, and finery are a designer's dream.

But "Avatar"'s ideas, as well as its physical beauty, have been manufactured by a committee, factory-like.  It's meant to be admired for its technical success, for its surface detail, but we are not meant to look at it too closely or think about it too long, the way, I think, art invites us to do.   

With the staggering (some may think obscene) amount of resources committed to this one entertainment, I think it's not unreasonable to have expected something more profound than it delivers.   "Avatar" in 3-D is a new kind of movie triumph, but it is a triumph of logistics, like "Titanic";  it's also a franchise.  One wonders, after seeing the 2-dimensional trailer, what kind of life the film will have after its theatrical run.  The "flat" images were colorful, but not remarkable.

If only a bit more of the budget were committed to the script, and to logic.  The story is promising: The year is 2154, and paraplegic marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is sent to Pandora as a Na'vi avatar operator (given a "virtual" body) to bond with the native population of Na'vi. He must convince them to relocate away from their homeland in order for his employer to mine the unobtanium that will be carried back to earth (which vaguely, has burned out, or something).  Since the Na'vi are wise and are able to commune with the plant and animal life around them, it's never clear why they don't just give the unobtanium away, since we never see how it's crucial to their own survival. 

Jake, with the aid of his mentor, botanist Grace Augustine (Siguorney Weaver, often sporting a pristine Stanford University T-shirt...more on that later) and a motley crew of fellow scientists and sympathetic military folk, enters the Na'vi world, learns the customs of the natives and the sacred place of the creatures there, and falls in love with the beautiful (by Na'vi standards) Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).

Jake sees the unfairness of his assignment, and sides with the Na'vi against the insensitive mining company's corporate hack (Giovanni Ribisi) and the evil, neo-con-like colonel and head of the mining company's security detail (Stephen Lang).  Battle lines are drawn, and by the third hour, when all is clashing hardware, swooping creatures, and James Horner's cliche-ridden score to remind you to be awestruck, you may be too worn down to care that Neytiri happens to know how to use an oxygen mask (there is no oxygen on Pandora, by the way) to save our hero's life.

Dazzling, yes, but not wholly original. "Avatar" owes a huge debt to "The Lord of the Rings", and shows the definite influence of "Star Wars", so when the weapons and the creatures start their airborne battles, you may have the sense of having seen all of this before. (Industrial Light and Magic had a hand in the production).  In fact, lots of movies came to mind, in not always flattering ways.  Jake's introduction to the nest of winged creatures recalled Rod Taylor's cautious steps around the crows and gulls in "The Birds"; the Na'vi's tails wave to and fro as if in tribute to Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion; the fall of Home Tree was a green version of the final plunge of the "Titanic"; and Grace is brought to the Tree of Souls for healing, in a scene hilariously reminiscent of  the Lourdes of Jennifer Jones in 20th-Century-Fox' own "Song of Bernadette".

If Cameron were really revolutionary, if he had the full confidence in the power of his images and his technology, he might have tried scrapping the music entirely, and gone strictly with "natural" sounds. Some small portions of the score were developed with a musicologist to create a musical culture for the Na'vi;  but I felt more wonderment and awe in the first 10 minutes of Terrence Malick's "Thin Red Line".  Malick, using traditional, luminous photographic lighting to capture the natural jungle and the creatures therein,  accompanied his images with the sweet exalted chorus of voices of an actual native people.

(Cameron is said to have developed an entire Na'vi culture, and a language with a thousand-word vocabulary, little of which appears to be used in the film.  Is there really so little left to discover about our own world?)

The performers are fine in their limited "human" roles.  For their computer-generated incarnations, the use of motion-capture techniques employed tiny cameras affixed to the actors' faces to be digitally manipulated, creating the look of a new species, while keeping the performer's features recognizable. Credit must go to the technicians who "created" Sam Worthington's "performance" as an avatar. Worthington is much more expressive in "animated" form than in his human scenes.  No matter---he is quite watchable nonetheless.  Weaver is a pro, and thoroughly convinces as the tough-as-nails botanist.  Saldana, Wes Studi, and C C H Pounder all lend expert vocal acting skills to their Na'vi characters.  As the "villains", Ribisi and Lang are stock characters, their dialog a thinly-veiled representation of America's involvement in current global wars. 

Finally, I admired the attempt to create some wonderful creatures, patterned after our own dogs and horses, and mythical pterodactyls and other fierce beasts; but, apart from enlisting them in battlefield heroics, we learn little about them.  For "Avatar" to have worked for me, I would have preferred the whole film to take place on Pandora, drop the bracketing military story and the battle sequences, keep it completely "animated", and linger there; create a story involving the mystic bonds between the Na'vi and the nature around them.  Of course, there would be little material in that for a video game.

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A bit more about SiguorneyWeaver and her surprising collegiate sportswear: Stanford University must have done something right to last another 100 years on a burned-out planet (or, at least, to keep up their on-line merchandise sales!).  Weaver is a graduate of Stanford, and my research has not yet uncovered whether she brokered a deal for a "product placement" for the school. I do understand, however, that the University has an incredible Virtual Human Interaction Lab for developing motion capture for the purpose of studying and predicting human behavior.  I was heartened by the practical use of this technology. 
You can read more about it here.