Go Metric

Out of Exile

by Gary Pig Gold

For an album that received such a lukewarm-at-best reception upon its initial release (even the almighty Rolling Stone magazine used the words “overdone blues cliché” whilst making snide comparisons to Tommy James), the tenth album produced by Keith Richards and company has certainly enjoyed a critical reappraisal and then some over the ensuing thirty-eight years. Why, even M. Jagger who in ‘72 complained “This new album is fucking mad. It's very rock and roll. I didn't want it to be like that. I mean, I'm very bored with rock and roll,” today insists the recording of Exile On Main St. “was a wonderful period; a very creative period.”

And of course Rolling Stone now places those very same blues clichés near the tip-top of most every Greatest Album Of All Time list it regularly publishes in between all the sneaker and suntan crème ads.

Now, come 2010, the (in)famous Exile has been fully refurbished, re-struck, and reconstituted through and through by a crack crew of audio surgeons headed by honorary Glimmer Twin Don Was, digitally polished to an immaculate sheen, “correcting” the original soupy subterranean mixes (“The cymbals sound like dustbin lids” Mick again complained as “Tumbling Dice” was first being readied for release) so as not to have the album stand as too sore a sonic thumb alongside Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, I suppose. Personally, I much prefer dustbins to “Just Dance”...but I digress.

Meanwhile, as part of this gala Exile resurrection comes an accompanying behind-the-scenes documentary film, Stones In Exile, which gathers together all five early-Seventies Stones within a wealth of vintage studio (meaning the basement of Richards’ villa on the French Riviera, where most of the album’s basic tracks were recorded) and on-stage footage (via the post-Exile tour film Ladies and Gentlemen...The Rolling Stones, which itself is due for re-release later this year). Why, even snippets from the beyond-cult 1972 road-film-from-hell Cocksucker Blues are cunningly slipped between shots of various waterskiing and overdubbing Brits-in-, yes, exile.

Not so surprisingly however, some subjects (such as the rampant drug use which eventually resulted in Keith’s total submission to heroin) are only delicately alluded to, whilst other key players in the scenario – houseguest Gram Parsons, most obviously, who schooled Monsieur Richards especially in nuances of the country blues which permeate the entire Exile album – are ignored altogether. Plus the Stones In Exile bonus footage could have been much better filled with, say, a complete study of the original, highly innovative Main St. record cover shoot by Cocksucker director Robert Frank, as opposed to rambling heads the likes of Caleb Followill and Sheryl Crow.

Still, the contemporary footage of Mick Jagger and the immaculate-as-ever Charlie Watts wandering around Olympic recording studios and Jagger’s former Stargroves estate – sites of the initial Exile sessions – are both fascinating and entertaining...in a Sunshine Boys sort of way (if you get my octogenarian drift). Naturally Keith Richards appears throughout the proceedings in ghostly stark black-and-white, the multitude struggles of ’72 still etched deep into his face, whilst good ol’ Bill Wyman remains ever the Stone Alone with the most revealing, reproachful, yet detailed reminisces of the bunch (a man still upset, it seems, at not being able to locate a proper brew of British tea in the south of France, for example).

So while I may indeed have my doubts over the, um, validity of a vintage-2010 Exile On Main St. album per se, this Stones In Exile film, far on the other hand, is a perfectly under-polished production which more than succeeds in placing one square down the very depths of Keith Richards’ basement during the festering summer of ‘71...yes, with all the horror and gorgeous excess – not to mention utterly magnificent, guttural music – such a locale entails.

And somehow, still, continues to inspire.

Rolling Stones - Rocks Off (1972)

“The Greatest Rock Movie You've Never Seen,” according to Steven Van Zandt

by Gary Pig Gold

Attention, music fans and pop culture connoisseurs everywhere:

Your assignment today is to gather together in one medium-sized concert facility, for one evening only, one dozen of the world’s most popular entertainers. Age, style, size, corporate affiliation and particularly musical pigeonhole is to be strictly of no concern whatsoever. Each act just has to have had a heck of a lot of their songs downloaded, perhaps maybe even sold, over the past calendar year or so.

Then, with a bare minimum of rehearsal or directorial guidelines of any sort – and an equally bare-boned budget to boot – a two-hour concert has to sequenced, scored, choreographed and executed upon a single stage utilizing all these chosen singers, dancers and accompanists, the entire proceedings recorded and video’d completely live, music and vocals, without re-takes, and the resultant miles of tape then edited, printed, promoted and distributed for public viewing into theatres.

Oh. And this all has to be completed within the period of a mere fourteen days, from show-date to release-date, by the way.

Finished laughing? Of course in a 21st century scheme of things such an endeavor would scarcely get past the imagining stage I agree, quickly dismissed out-of-hand (not to mention out-of-mind) as completely unfeasible; one legal, logistical – not to mention egotistical – nightmare of gargantuan proportions.

But, in that strange and distant galaxy known as The Sixties, where anything seemed possible, everything was tried at least once, and “no” was a word only uttered when speaking to people over thirty, undertakings of such grand socio-musical import were thought no more impractical than, say, making orange juice out of freeze-dried crystals then flying with them all the way to the moon and back.

What is hard to believe, however, is that one such concert event filmed inside the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on the night of October 29, 1964 in front of a few hundred local high school students should not only survive to be released on DVD, but that its one hundred and twelve monochrome minutes remain as utterly entertaining, and downright engrossing, all these forty-five years later.

The TAMI Show: Collector’s Edition, now finally available from our friends over at Shout! Factory is, you see, simply so, so much more than merely Monterey Pop without the lysergic, Woodstock without the mudslides or, yes, Altamont minus pool cues and homicide victims. True, one could consider this film as “just” the single most frantically paced, ultra-high-decibel time capsule of an extraordinary era ever preserved on disc.

Or even, as Quentin Tarantino most assuredly claims, “in the top three of all rock movies.”

I will go all that one further, however: The TAMI Show (as in Teenage Awards Music International, by the way) is absolutely essential viewing to anyone and everyone who consider themselves fans, followers, and/or students of popular music.
Period.

For what novice director Steve Binder and his crew captured, and what today is immaculately preserved upon The TAMI Show DVD, is busting-full of rich musical (James Brown, just for starters!) and cinematic (Diana Ross’ eyes literally filling the screen during an utterly Supreme “Where Did Our Love Go”) moments which have been oft-shot by everyone from Pennebaker to Scorcese since, but never truly duplicated.

Yes, it may, sorrowfully, have taken nearly half a century to make it into our homes, but this film has not returned anew one single frame, nor scream, too soon.

Trust me, Little Steven is right:

You have never seen, nor heard, ANYTHING quite like this before...

Kurt Russell was "Elvis"...First

by Gary Pig Gold

Nowadays, it seems anyone and everyone with easy access to velcro sideburns and a karaoke machine are busy making livings (of a sort) out of playing at Elvis Aaron Presley.

After all, Mojo Nixon was right: Elvis Is Everywhere.

But retrospective credit is definitely due director John Carpenter and dick clark productions for getting there fastest, and first: Even before the autopsy was cold, they were readying their “Elvis” for his home screen resurrection during prime time, February of 1979.

The vehicle? An ambitious, yet quite reverent (especially in view of subsequent bio-pics) made-for-TV motion picture starring Kurt Russell in that title role of a lifetime. And to watch this particular Elvis again today, newly available from the fine folk over at Shout! Factory, is to be reminded just how larger-than-life The King had already become as the Seventies ended and the deification was only about to begin.

Indeed, the original, uncut Elvis tele-film, freshly packaged alongside some revelatory bonus footage (including a real gem from the Dick Clark vaults: a Summer of ’64 Beatle-battling tribute to the King from American Bandstand) makes for a surprisingly entertaining, and sometimes even thought-provoking two hours of music, mayhem and, as is often hinted, pure madness. Yes, it’s the story of a simple man blessed with unusual talents and drive who, armed only with his wits and a twelve-dollar guitar, aspired to little more than moving his beloved parents out of the Memphis projects and into a comparatively better life.

Of course, what transpired over the next ten years Elvis in even his wildest adolescent dreams could hardly have imagined.

Under Carpenter’s direction, this still-improbable tale is told with an unusual eye for detail and a true sense of middle-1950s America, with its music and its morals struggling to break free. More remarkable still, Elvis succeeds in conveying just how one most unlikely young man came to embody this entire socio-musical upheaval, and how it eventually swallowed and, yes, broke him.

Pedigree is present as well, as the cast of Elvis features two actual Memphis Mafia, Larry Geller and Charlie Hodge. Much screen time as well is devoted to the Elvis of Sun Records, where during the years 1954/1955 he and his raw-diamond accompanists Scotty Moore and Bill Black just so happened to change the course of musical history under the ever-watchful ears of producer Sam Phillips. This is a key era of Presley’s development which is much too often ignored for flashier and/or seemlier events in most retrospective recreations of the man, cinematic and otherwise.

Keen observers will also spot in the role of Elvis’ first drummer D.J. Fontana no less than original Spinal Tap sticksman Ed Begley Jr. And while we’re trivially speaking, lest we forget that Kurt Russell’s very first-ever motion picture appearance was at the tender age of eleven, attacking the real Elvis’ shins in 1963’s It Happened At The World’s Fair. So there!

Interesting as well to see the role of Elvis’ long-suffering daddy Vernon played by Kurt’s real-life father Bing (!), and to realize within weeks of the ABC-TV premier of Elvis Kurt up and married Season Hubley, who portrayed his on-screen wife Priscilla!! And keeping things as familialy dysfunctional as possible, the great Shelley Winters is brilliantly cast as Elvis’ closer-than-close mother Gladys, a role she plays throughout Elvis with all her usual devotion and gusto entirely intact.

But it is truly the 27-year-old Kurt who excels throughout, more than ably filling gigantic shoes and faltering only occasionally during some of the key musical numbers. Not that he should be blamed, however: Russell makes as good a hillbilly cat as can really be expected from a former Disney child actor who looks as if he spent his formative years listening to far too many Fabian records. Yet purely dramatically speaking, he portrays the King with a respect and, believe it or not, sly subtlety which has been sorrowfully lacking in most every subsequent way-over-the-top Presley portrayal.

To be truthful, I was personally surprised at just how well Elvis stands up, musically, historically, and purely cinematically, amidst the three decades – and insurmountable flood of Presley “tributes” – which have followed. So then I do suggest you watch it today, and watch it often (followed, if you dare, with Allan Arkush’s Elvis Meets Nixon, to pick the story up where Carpenter and Russel leave off).

Then, of course, pull out all the old RCA and especially Sun tracks that you can, and marvel anew at the real thing as well, don’t forget.

Video: Kurt Russell as Elvis shoots out a TV screen

Review: Off the Hump

By Mike Faloon

Whenever I watch a short film where the writer/director also appears on camera I wonder which skill set they're trying to showcase.  So many people use shorts as business cards that I'm left scratching my head; is this guy trying to show how he can frame a shot, write well, or charm an audience?  The greatest strength of Off the Hump, a collection of 15 shorts ranging from 30 seconds to eight minutes, is that filmmaker Adam Bourget seems to make shorts as an end unto themselves.  Digit Goes Digital probably won't land Bourget a job, but it should.  (In said short, Digit, the ambitious primate, leaves the jungles of Rwanda for the jungles of the movie business.  It's good fun and perfectly scored by a host of songs from the Primate 5.)  Ditto for Superflake, the story of K-77, the world's first cloned snowflake.  Off the Hump is a fine way to spend an hour.

Review: The Grace Lee Project

By Mike Faloon

Smart, nice, and soft spoken-these are the words people come up with to describe the Grace Lees they know, so filmmaker Grace Lee embarked upon an project to dig beneath the surface of the stereotypes.  The movie doesn't take hold until Lee shares interviews with Grace Lees who astound and surprise her, women who seem older, wiser, and stronger than those depicted in snippets during the first third of the movie.  Once filmmaker Grace Lee begins marveling at her subjects the focus shifts away from her self doubts ("I am not a typical Grace Lee!") to portraits of remarkable people who happened to be named Grace Lee.  Overall, an interesting concept that yields mixed results.

Review: Fateless

By Mike Faloon

Scene: There's a beautiful damsel tied to the tracks, steam engine approaching.  The villain fondles his handlebar moustache and smirks at a job well done...until the good guy, dressed in white, leaps from his stallion to save the day.  Whoever cast that mold could never conceive how long their template for moviemaking would last.  Even though Westerns have faded from the Hollywood foreground, it's amazing how American movie makers cling to the dynamic depicted above, especially when a movie deals with racial or religious identity.  One example that comes to mind is Men of Honor, ostensibly the story of the Navy's first African-American diver, Carl Brashear, played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.  The film's true focus is on Robert Deniro's character, a grizzled veteran determined to see Brashear fail.  Deniro, the good guy in white, gets the spotlight while Gooding remains bound and gagged on the tracks, a prop to make Deniro's character look virtuous.  (Check out Radio, another Gooding gem or Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning for similar experiences in "You have to hand it to white folks willing to work with black people!")  To some extent you see this in holocaust related films too.  Take Schindler's List, for example, which the Village Voice dubbed "a feel good movie about the ultimate feel bad experience."  The point?  All of this makes Fateless such a welcome, if unrelenting, movie experience.  Set in 1944, Gyura, a 14-year-old Hungarian, is sent to a labor camp.  The healthy teen slowly disintegrates before our eyes.  Every time it seems like he can fall no further, the bottom gives way and Gyura continues his descent; it reminded me of reading The Jungle.  The pacing is a bit odd at times (a few scenes are cut short before they could develop their full impact), but it's directed by a cinematographer, Lajos Koltai, making his debut as a director so that, the pacing, is more than offset by the fact that Fateless is ceaselessly stimulating visually.  Highly recommended. 

DVD Review: Dreamgirls

For movie junkies, Oscar season is both the best and worst of times. As the hype surrounding the year’s most outstanding achievements in film reaches a fever pitch, it is nearly impossible, logistically and financially, to satisfy the craving to see all of the nominated pictures. At $11.00+ a pop, the movie fan must sometimes take it to the street. In this case, that street is Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst, where $5.00 will get you a taste of the most-nominated film of the year: Bill Condon’s Dreamgirls.

Cinematography: B
Either the cinematographer is an extremely disciplined yoga student or a conspicuous tripod was utilized in the making of this film. Aside from a man with a very large baseball hat obscuring the screen at the 39-minute mark, the camera work is steady throughout. Eddie Murphy’s pomp and Beyonce’s rump both translate with vivid clarity.

Audio: C-
Had this been a neo-realist art house exercise,  “scratched Motown 45 played on a toy mono phonograph” would have been an interesting aesthetic choice. The dialogue is virtually inaudible, but, what the hell, it’s a musical. Background noise is limited to a few surges in applause (Jennifer Hudson’s showpiece “And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going” and Eddie Murphy’s “I Want You Baby” both drew heavy audience response), the occasional “Amen!” and some popcorn bag ambiance. Just like being in the theatre with a malfunctioning hearing aid.

Performances: B+
Based on the singing, dancing, and this reviewer’s interpretation of facial tics, eye acting, and voice volume shifts, Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson’s Oscar noms are well deserved. Oscar voters sadly overlooked Danny Glover’s stylized delivery of garbled dialogue.

Story: C
If one reads the synopsis on the back of DVD container and views the trailer on YouTube, the plot will mostly make sense. The use of montage and musical numbers advance the plot rapidly, making this an ideal film to enjoy in pirated form. The disc ends mercifully at the two-hour mark, presumably before the end of the theatrical version.

Music: B-
One guesses that in the multiplex or on CD, the music would probably be a bit too slick to capture the energy of 1960’s and 70’s R&B. However, poorly recorded and burned to a cheap DVD, the soundtrack reclaims the gritty quality of the time period represented.

Packaging: B
The color printing on the DVD case is top-notch (no dot matrix job here!). One complaint: the credits printed on the back of the box are actually for V for Vendetta.

Overall: B-
Are there better quality bootlegs of Dreamgirls out there? Probably. But this particular print is a tangible proof that—from Jennifer Hudson’s improbable rise to fame to a Korean junk vendor’s perseverance in the face of copyright law—the American dream is still attainable.

-- Brett Essler

Review: Save the Green Planet

By Mike Faloon

Is Lee nuts or is he just painfully aware of plans for an impending alien invasion?  Can he trust his circus performer girlfriend?  Was he right in kidnapping the CEO of the chemical company?  Will he be able to avenge his mother's tragic death?  Can he juggle all of these dilemmas while still paying the bills as a bee keeper?  There are so many reasons to like Save the Green Planet, but the absurdly humorous sci-fi storyline is overwhelmed by the unsettling violence.  You know those interrogation scenes they always cut away from in Bond movies?  The scenes where they let us blink to break the tension?  Green Planet director Jang Jan-hwan never lets us look away, squeezing every drop of blood he can from the exhausting torture scenes; it's excruciating.  This is one to avoid, at least until the Save the Green Planet: Edited for Pussies DVD comes out.   

Review: Wheel of Time

By Mike Faloon

I went into this one blind.  It was the first day of summer vacation and it had been weeks since I'd been to Film Forum; I wanted to go to a mid-week matinee simply because I could.  A documentary about Buddhism?  Let's go!  I'd heard of the director, Werner Herzog, but never seen any of his movies, and knew even less about the subject matter.  I topped it off by stumbling into the theatre five minutes late.  I had my work cut out for me but found Wheel of Time to be a near-perfect experience.  It doesn't set out to tell us about Buddhism, instead showing us the awe-inspiring devotion of which Buddhists are capable.  The main event is a gathering in the spring of 2002 for an initiation ceremony to be led by the Dali Lama.  Nearly half a million people came together, forming an impromptu city of tents.  Some traveled thousands of miles to attend, many walked the entire way.  I was just starting to think how much grumbling my 40-minute commute induces when Herzog interviewed a Buddhist who spent three years crawling to the gathering ("I measured the Earth with my body.")  Then, as if their faith had been insufficiently tested, the Dali Lama's health forced him to cancel the main portions of the ceremonies.  The sights and stories in Wheel of Time mesmerized me.  I daydreamed throughout much of the movie--there were long stretches without speaking and just as many scenes without subtitles--and still know nothing about Buddhism, yet recommend Wheel of Time to anyone in search of a unique movie experience. 

Review: Yang Ban Xi

By Mike Faloon

With most documentaries, I focus on content more than process; if the topic's interesting, I'm in.  Most of the time.  With Yang Ban Xi, the topic is a chip shot: a documentary on the absurdist propaganda movies produced during China's Cultural Revolution ('66-'76).  Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, a member of the Gang of Four (she started on bass but later switched to rhythm guitar) banned traditional Chinese operas and oversaw in their place a series of musicals that combined MGM spectacle with overt communist propaganda (not the wishy-washy pre-HUAC stuff that bogged down Hollywood).  People dancing with rifles and singing the praises of fighting the good fight and laborin' for the good of the people.  An hour of highlights of the 8 Model Works (of the 13 musicals produced during the Cultural Revolution the eight most popular movies were deemed "Model Works") would have kept me in my seat, but director Yan-Ting Yuen also interviewed key figures involved with the making of the 8 Model Works--actors, dancers, writers, and musicians.  (Not even communists want to talk to crew members, apparently.)  Their stories are amazing.  In particular, the woman who relates how, after the fall of the Cultural Revolution, she was forced to work in a factory and her co-workers claimed that she didn't deserve a raise because of her perceived close ties with the Gang of Four.  Yet even more telling are their current circumstances; they talk about being treated like pop stars during their time but now most of them reside in the tiniest, though remarkably well-kept, apartments.  With so much going for it, what gums up Yang Ban Xi?  First there is the overly ironic narration (provided by an actress, always shown in shadows, playing Jiang Qing (the real Jiang Qing committed suicide in 1991).  Second are the incongruous music videos, for lack of a better term, that are meant, I suppose, to show what music is like in contemporary China.  The narration is a repeated joke that never works and the videos are jarringly out of place.  (At first I thought the projectionist had made a mistake.)  In the end, if you love Chinese history and/or musicals, there's enough to see you through.  Everyone else will spend half of their time reaching for the "fast forward" button.