Friday, February 29, 2008

Congorama: cinema of bloodlines


It is wonderful to come across a film of its own heart and universe. Congorama, a 2006 Belgian film is a world of inventors, heredity, adoption, Canada, chance, electric cars and World's Fairs. It somehow reminds me of Im Juli, a German film from the same Hamburg studio that brought you Mostly Martha. Both films have intriguing and sudden circumstances and dynamic cinematic qualities. There is a kind of heart for the charaters or at least a heartful look at the situations they find themselves in.

The surprises and plot connections make for an interesting journey. My rearview mirror as scribe to you on this one is obscured. In other words, I very much risk saying too much, giving too much away at any given point. I don't often view DVDs a second time before returning them, but a look at the first ten minutes after my initial viewing convinces me I must in this case. I can now see how incredibly tight and well-orchestrated this is.

I'm not sure what draws me to certain films when I read over synopses. I probably look for possibilities of something being a little bit different than mainstream fare. The synopsis below is theone at imdb credited to the director and writer of the film, Philippe Falardeau (also available in French at the film's website) but somehow Congorama's uniqueness is hinted at.

"Michel, son of a paralyzed writer, husband to a Congolese refugee and father of a future tennis champion, is an erratic Belgian inventor misunderstood by his employer. At age 41, he learns he's been adopted and was in fact birthed secretly in a Quebec barn, in Sainte-Cecile. In the summer of the year two thousand, Michel goes to Sainte-Cecile, a sleepy village that soon makes him want to run bock home. There, he meets a man who drives an anachronistic hybrid car. On their way back to Montreal, an accident will change their lives forever as well as the very future of the automotive industry. Welcome to Congorama."
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:13 PM
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Thursday, February 28, 2008

Redacted: of Facets and Perspectives


"I am always fascinated by how you maximize the visual potential of your location or your material" Brian De Palma says in the interview extra on the Redacted DVD. It is this approach that makes Redacted somewhat interesting, despite issues with sterotyped characters, over broad acting and messy execution. De Palma use of different media perspectives is fascinating and somewhat ground-breaking.

"All of these ideas came from the Internet." says De Palma in the Interview. He is also talks about creating a digital reality with HD. It is a reality that he builds from a variety of materials and perspectives. There is the video diary of Pvt. Angel Salazar, the ambitious film student, Surveillence and testimony video, Internet web cams, YouTube-like web presences, Arab insurgency websites, knock offs of CNN and Al Jazeera, and an embedded French documentary crew.

The experiment with form is intriguing, but the execution overall is not. A squad in Samara copes with the heat, ambiguity, horror, and drudgery of this war. We have two lunk head hillbillies, a college literary guy, the family guy with the unlikely name of Lawyer, an early casuality of a black sergeant, and, of course, Salazar, the wanna be filmstudent who tries to keep the horror at camera's length but admits that "just because your watching doesn't mean you're not a part of it."

I have not seen De Palma's Casualities of War of which Redacted is stated to be recast from its original Vietnam setting and story line. The roadblock sequence is interesting and seems true to the kind of tension and uncertainty that the soldiers face. The central plot action revolves around a pre-meditated rape on a 15 year old Iraqi girl that the two southern crackers instigate. It is designed to kick the viewer in the gut, but the characters and execution make it muddy and bog it down. This is a classic situation where form outshines content. Mike Figgis and Stephen Soderburgh's piror experimentations with long takes and HD (Hotel, Time Code, Full Frontal) didn't truly succeed either. Even if the film had troubles deep and wil likely polarize the population that will see it, one should note and admire the attempt by a master filmmaker still working at trying to do something unique.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:14 AM
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Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Duke Channeled in our Living Room


Sometimes the nicest evenings out are not very far away. Ron Carter, jazz educator from Northern Illinois University (no, not Ron Carter the bass player I saw two weeks ago--although I heard our local jazz radio station even confuse the two) served as guest conductor for new first year Clark College music director Rich Inouye's Jazz Ensemble.


The entire program consisted of Duke Ellington music from the "Essentially Ellington" editions, which are direct transcriptions from recordings with annotations by Wynton Marsalis and the edition's transcriber, David Berger. It is obvious that the Clark band had been spending some time working on these charts, but this day with Carter is what gave them a life of swing. I don't recall seeing such a irrepressible band leader. He didn't so much conduct the tunes as dance the band through them. Between numbers he exuded an ebullience of stories, facts and impressions about Duke, his times, and his orchestra, even livelier and fuller than I witnessed Wynton Marsalis hosting up at a Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra salute to Ellington several years back.

The feel of the evening was loose and swinging. It felt like an extension of the rehearsal session Carter had with the band during the day. He called out shouts of encouragement and responses to soloists and sang passages of the songs as part of his introduction, such as a drum part introducing Pyramid. It would have been enough to intimidate a drummer, but Clark's Aaron Piel rose the the occasion.

Caravan was certainly a highlight. In his introduction, Carter told how he had directed the band to slow down the way they were playing it because camels don't walk that fast, they chill. And he then took them into a wonderfully slinky tempo with the band taking solos. Carter left the stage returning with his clarinet, on which he played a long solo with lots of ideas and extensions. And then blending and extending even further, first with rhythm section and baritone sax and then with trombone soloist Shawn Congos accompanied by the entire trombone section. The conclusion consisted of Carter and trombone playing each other down to an easy three point glide down fadeaway ending.

"Duke was Baaad!" said Carter who, like many consider Ellington to be America's greatest composer. One of the baddest moments of the evening was the finale selection Happy-Go-Lucky Local from the Deep South Suite. He told the baritone player to get ignorant, but not too ugly because you don't want to scare people. The entire band worked hard in recreating Ellington's impression of trains. This time Carter took up his alto, following tracks of Johnny Hodges, who he earlier called the best of alto players, leading his day's passengers on an Ellington Expediter, with all of us in the audience grateful for the ride. In his introduction of Ron Carter, Director Inouye said he and the band were going to probably spend the rest of their lifetimes absorbing the information that Carter gave them throughout the day. He certainly made his little over an hour with Clark Ensemble a most full, (overflowing even) giving tribute and bringing life to, well, America's greatest composer.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:27 PM
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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Sasquatch 2008: Just Another Big Concert



What attracted me to the Sasquatch festivals of 05, 06. and 07 was the diversity in the programming that the House of Blues brought to an alt-rock base. I remember an interview with a promoter a few years ago where he was having a difficult time defining what a Sasquatch band was. That was a very good sign to me that this was something interesting and that organizers were trusting programmatic instincts as well as obvious commercial potential when they made their selections.

This year, to my mind, Live Nation is promoting and they are playing it pretty safe with a line up that seems basically designed to get the Seattle area burb kids over the pass for the Memorial Day Festival. Examples: REM, Death Cab, Modest Mouse, etc. Lots of acts have been there before. And other than Rodrigo y Gabriela, Ozomatli, and Michael Franti, all or almost all are categorically and directly part of the alt rock landscape. Flaming Lips was presumably going to bring their space ship two years ago. This time they supposedly are for sure. Wayne Coyne is a kick in the butt, but neither a mothership or Flight of the Conchords are enough to attract me to the great backdrop this year.

So maybe I am old cranky guy who needs seasoning like Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings or Gogol Bordello (both are playing Coachella) to down my alt-rock. And three years is pretty good run for a Memorial Day tradition. But still I was looking forward to the mystery weather (heat, rain and hail, or wind--who knows?) and coming home with at least two or three bands that no one in my circle knew about. Maybe 2009 will connect better.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:11 AM
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Monday, February 25, 2008

Jill Scott: Soul Essential


This woman does more than express her voice when she sings a song. She brings forth an essence from a well-of self awareness and self-confidence. She means what she sings. She sounds like a fully flexed and well exuded verb. The song may call for her to be a little more low key in some settings vs. others, but her clear space and identity are always well-stated and solid.

I love the scene in the Dave Chapelle's block party when she replied "Have you ever seen my show?" when Michel Gondry asked if she was nervous, I think it was in context of watching Erykah Badu precede her.

When VH1 Soul seemed to continually loop the performances in today's You Tube clip selections late last summer, I'd let it roll. The band is kicking hard and always has the beat in just the right groove, letting her testify about she's living her life like its golden.

Anyway, full disclosure: part of why I'm posting here is so I can have easy access to these clips so I can listen to this most determined of modern soul voices and one tight kicking band do their thing. If any of you check it out and dig, well, that makes it even better. Not enough folks out there know about her and should know about her. So I do my part to embed here.

Jill Scott speaks on another clip "I love where I am. I love the music that's coming out of me...I'm not afraid of jazz or blues or soul or gospel or funk or any of it."... "False passion is a waste of time." To my ears, Jill Scott's music both feels modern and eternal and most certainly, there is no doubt that she indeed mean what she sings.






posted by well-executed buffet at 5:17 PM
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Sunday, February 24, 2008

Oscar: Always worth a few good moments



On my posting regarding the Grammy awards, I mentioned that it was still worth watching because of a handful of good moments. The same goes for the Oscar telecast. It is long, self-serving, and can feel like a time sink, but in the midst of the thank you speeches to agents and producers and family members, there always are a few good moments and surprises. And the fact that it is a large, often unwieldy enterprise that is broadcast live opens it up for some memorable moments. Among a few worth noting.

The Host
We are admirers here of Jon Stewart at La Casa Pam and Bob. We watch most all of the two hours put out each week of the Daily Show with the exception when intolerable right wing nut jobs like Bill Kristol come on as guests. The natural delivery of Jon is always a wonder to behold and he does a good job at the Oscars, obviously having a good time and apparently not concerned that the whole world is watching.

Honorary Oscar to Robert F. Boyle
A few minutes of tribute to the 98 year old Art Director for Hitchcock, Norman Jewison and many others. How cool was that! I hope the AFI will release a DVD of him at his master class. His love of architecture, of set design and the movies was very apparent in the script and his lovely acceptance speech.

Glen and Marketa
I told Pam earlier tonight that I figured they would muck up the simple and lovely Falling Slowly with a bunch of strings. Despite the slushy arrangement and the incongruous hanging of guitars on the set to represent the scene in Once that takes place in the music store it still came across. But there is no excuse for the dearth of closeups of Marketa during the song. One would have hoped that Jon Stewart was indeed responsible for Marketa coming back to do her acceptance speech: "fair play to those who dare to dream and don't give up. And this song was written from a perspective of hope, and hope at the end of the day connects us all, no matter how different we are." Gulp.

Share the Wealth
I noticed that every Best Picture nominated was represented by at least one award. Some years it just feels like a fixed sweep, so that was kind of cool.

Upsets by Foreign Actresses
It was very cool to see Tilda Swinton win as the meanest corporate ice bitch I can recall. And also for Marion Cotillard for her transformative performance as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. If any one got both of those on an Oscar pool, they were basing it fully on luck or performance and not on expectations and politics. Surprises like these are what keeps watching the Oscars interesting.

But if this Buffet was in charge
There would have been room for more nominations for The Black Book, The Assassination of Jesse James, He's Not There, When the Devil Knows Your Dead, Across the Universe, and 3:10 to Yuma among others.

Enough. I don't even have energy to bitch about the egregious flashbacks by the likes of Streisand and Speilberg. Time for bed.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:19 PM
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Saturday, February 23, 2008

A Weekend Movie Marathon (of sorts)


Movies. That's what was on my mind after my return from Online NW on Friday.

3:10 to Yuma
The ongoing quality of Elmore Leonard's short story is what provided the heart of this engaging, entertaining, and, at times, thought provoking film.

Another thing this film has going for it is its pacing and the quality of the set pieces. The night fire raid on the farmer Dan Evans' (Christian Slater) place quickly draws the audience into the film with action. That is quickly counterpointed by a breath taking raid by Ben Wade (Russel Crowe) and his gang on stage coach equipped with a gattling gun. We then have Ben Wade's capture. The midsection action in the film contains another outlaw attack, An Indian ambush at night, and an ecounter with a railway constuction camp building tunnels, etc. The dialog driven scenes are tightly crafted and mostly feature the earnest principles of Evans/Bale sparring with the somewhat sociopathic criminal mind of Wade/Crowe.

I'm glad that 3:10 found audiences last Fall when it was released last fall. Like jazz, the western is a quite individual and consummate American invention. World cinema found it and enriched it and exported back to us, most notably in the form of the so-called Italian spaghetti western. One of the great features of the receipt of our nation stories twisted and reconstituted with soundtracks from Leone and other was when they featured soundtracks of Ennio Morricone. Marco Beltarmi's soundtrack for 3:10 seems to somehow create a new circle here with its martial drum beats, mariachi inflected trumpets, and plaintive string strung melodies sounding like a creation of Morricone's grandchildren. And it succeeds in adding one more layer of interest to an already entertaining return to Hollywood's love affair with 19th century western America.

Lust, Caution
What set this film apart in many ways is the setting. I don't recall wartime occupied China as a setting for thriller in recent years. We saw students get involved in the resistance in Sophie Scholl, the dangers of espionage sex in The Black Book , and so many other films in the past that deal with similar themes. But this one had the difference of not being in the familiar environs of WWII Europe. We see pre-Communist revolution efforts to assassinate a Kuomintang official in collusion with the Japanese. I love the poetic look and craft of Ang Lee's filmmaking, but as for the story, early on I asked myself if I care about these folks or their circumstances at all.

The flashback sequence of the formation of their revolutionary cell and first attempt is especially annoying. They do a play and then they go to do the revolution. There is no reason to care about this awkward group. When they return to Shanghai, for the last ninety minutes where the real story and action (and sex) takes place, we are already wiped out. It is kind of like Atonement in reverse where the act with the more significant action (and sex) happens first.

The explicit for big budget narrative film sex scenes in Lee's film have gained it most of the extraordinary notoriety that probably would not have been afforded to a routine war espionage, covert danger love relation movie. The first one could not be considered to be anything more than violent rape and a case could be made that the characters are represented by their encounters, which continue in intensity but are thankfully less violent. But by then the film has been rattling on for over two hours and the sex reminiscient of In the Realm of the Senses seems like some kind of bizarre pay off for staying with the film. I was hoping that Ang's return to Asia would be a return to the earlier kind of execution and vision he had in his early The Wedding Banquet or Eat Drink Man Woman. Lust Caution unfortunately and ultimately, ports over baggage and convention from decades of Hollywood and European resistance, attractive woman using sex as lure and means thrillers and that bogs down everything, even the attempt at trying do something significant and unique with the staging of sex scenes.

A note on the sensation that Lust, Caution has caused on the Chinese mainland. Switched, a blog that deals with technology issues reported in a post that there were warnings issued in China relating to Lust, Caution. First, there were warnings by a anti-virus computer company warning folks that pirated copies of Lust, Caution found on line had a virus that could capture passwords. Secondly were the warnings from Chinese physicians that the sex in Lust, Caution contain "abnormal body positions" that could lead to "unnecessary physical harm" if not tried only by women with "comparatively flexible bodies that have gymnastics or yoga experience." This looks like evidence of China encountering media blowback from the shock of the new.

There Will Be Blood
I have been anticipating this one. It promised to be a big, bold auteristic statement originating in the early twentieth century naturalistic fiction of Upton Sinclair. The first twenty minutes or so of the film contains no dialog and is absolutely brilliant The last half hour is almost entirely dialog and isn't as nearly, but still good strong stuff. What happens in between is filled with dreams, derricks, gushers, duplicity, and Old Testament style conflicts.

Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day Lewis are unique artists who deserve our attention. For all of the miscues of Gangs of New York, Lewis stands impressive and unforgettable. Even with past strange choices of group singalongs, showers of frogs from Magnolia or a chorus of smudgy colored lights in Punch Drunk Love, anyone who cares about filmmakers having unique and individual visions should want to pay attention to the one often abbreviated as PTA.

There is a lot that is great in There Will Be Blood, but I pull back short to say that the film is greatness. But you have to give great stock and credence for the story of two visionaries, Daniel Plainview, who follows his dream to be an independent Oil man on the level and playing field of the Standard and Union Oil and young Eli Sunday, with his zeal to toil in the fields of the lord, ostensibly for souls, not oil and riches.

There will be Blood has one of the same structural problems that George Stevens interpretation of Edna Ferber's Giant had (with another iconoclast, James Dean, as iconoclastic oil man.) Specifically, that the great visual stuff of the film takes place about the mid point of the film...gushers and fireballs are great to watch on the big screen, but then it is back to character and conflict.

Family and lineage is key to much of the conflict in There Will Be Blood. Just about any mention concerning family tends to be a huge trigger for Daniel Plainview. The brotherhood through the blood of Christ is the major concern of Eli's. And then there is Daniel's son, HW, who is haunts many scenes in the early plot portions of the film with his high intensity gaze that seemingly contain deep running waters.

The look and the sound of this film are unique. Most all of the daytime exteriors are shot under flat overcast. There are no shadows and great contrasts but it gives the lighting a kind of advantage that HD video does to depth of focus, a real lifelike arena in which to tell its story. Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead has created something that is less music as a soundtrack, but brought a kind of aural landscape, often foreboding, to compliment the California hills and mountain outcrops that provide the natural cyclorama to the oil mining activities.

There Will Be Blood is an experience that one will either buy into and admire or even love or will feel detached from. Yet regardless, and as the other PTA's films will likely give you a lot to think and talk about afterwards.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:58 PM
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Friday, February 22, 2008

Big Day Out with Librarians 2008


Version 1.0 with revisions
It is a rare pleasure in life when you get to make a public pronouncement to an entity about how it has made a positive impact in your life. I had the privilege of telling 75 people or more (including folks that got evacacuated because they were hanging outin the door way of the Beaver alumni reading room lounge (which coincidentally included at least five books taking up our front room bookcase, the one in our living room with contents that Pam has suggested could be pruned out big-time) how much I have appreciated 14 years of associating with Online NW.

Online NW is a one day conference consisting of a keynote, four concurrent sessions, good salad bar lunches, excellent snacks, and a solid mix of all kinds of folks who work at and with libraries, care about libraries and the technology that allow us, to use Douglas Engelbart's model, augment the human intellect in a positive way with personal digital devices.

As Kitty Mackey and I told our presentation, it was where we trek annually to learn about breaking and developing technologies. Online was where I first learned about alternative shareware browsers, Cascading Style Sheets, Google and its breakthroughs in Search technology, Wikis, social bookmarking, and a lot of other tools and trends. I went to my first one, I believe in 1994. I remember not being able to go to the 1996 one in Eugene because travel advisories were in effect after the big floods that year.

This year their 25th Annual outing in Corvallis was departure in many ways from years past. The attendance was especially strong--well over 300, pretty much capacity for the CHM2 Hill Conference Center which has alum gatherings and programs, sometimes on game day, right across the street from Parker, now Reser (if you know about dairy cases in the Northwest, you know Reser) Stadium. It is also the first year organizers gave out free tote bags!

I don't think I encountered any breakthrough stuff for me this time. This years sessions seemed to continue a dialog I have been seeing for about two years, the question of library roles with the so-called Web 2.0 technologies, for themselves and for their patron communities. RSS, Social bookmarking, and the whole bevy of community computing tools from MySpace to aggregator resources.

My conclusion is that there is not yet a killer app for these in the ways that libraries have been doing business so far. Libraries have taken on this kind of stewardship role acting as the giant reflector and refractor of digital technologies popular and otherwise. That's what makes the Online Conference so valuable for me. An example, are the historic sessions lead by former conference chair Dale Vidmar, a reference and instructional librarian at Southern Oregon University, showed attendees year after year that librarians are the most fortunate guides to the gateway for search resources and how to comprehend them. His invaluable Internet Searing Tools pagewill always be one of these gateways.

Unfortunately, I had scheduling conflict to see the presentation by another impressive librarian from the Fort Vancouver Regional System, Sam Wallin, who I see deep in the midst of studying and sharing the current trends in web resources in a similar way. But I saw Sam present at InfoCamp earlier this year and I am a fan of his blog, supercrazylibrarianguy. I see him trying to uncover clues in this new landscape. Also, impressive is the Oregon State team who have been monitoring trends through their page Infodoodads.

Delivery possibilities were also probed by a terrific duo, Michelle Drumm of BCR and Barret Havens of Centralia College (Go SW WA community colleges!) who were survivor associates of Houston Community College systems and are darned glad to be out West now, thank you very much. They poked and probed through a whole variety of RSS connectivity tools and issues as demo previews of tutorials they will have online soon. And they did what the best library presenters and trainers do, they passed out chocolate before lunch to the audience. Impressive.

Another departure was the non-librarian, and non-futurist choice in keynote speakers. Jared Spool is kind of the clown prince of Web Usability, full of provocation, one liners, some improv and some PowerPoint slides with cool transitions, like during his 20 minute tour analyzing a search for downloading Hewlett Packard printer drivers. I've seen Jared a few times at conferences and am simultaneously infuriated and entertained at his presentations. Actually, he was no match for the librarians. And everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.


  • Spool: When I told folks I was coming to speak to a bunch of librarians in Corvalis, there were two reactions. One is that they totally believed me, the other was that they asked me how many would be wearing Birkenstocks.
    (asks for show of hands of Birk wearers, and none are raised)
    Audience of Librarians: Ask about Danskos.
    He asks who is wearing Danskos and I saw at least twenty hands raised from my vantage point.

  • Spool: My son wants to be a magician. When the little kids come up to him and ask him how he did certain tricks, he went all Dewey on them and would say 873.6.
    Poor Jared, he asked if that was right
    Audience of Librarians: (muttering I interpreted as 790.)

  • Spool also told a story about someone who came into their usability lab on the way to Doctor's office. He had them check out the Dr. Koop page (remember the big controversy about paid advertisements and sponsorship by drug companies a few years back?) for a possible ailment quickly diagnosed on the phone and watched them struggle with the subject headings.
    Audience of Librarians: What about Medline Plus?



    • I was frankly a small bit nervous at first being scheduled to be a co-presenter on a session about library page usability, right after Jared. Afterall, he is founder and principle of User Interface Engineering

    But there was no reason to worry. As I said the room was full and we were well received. Our topic was an annual project my GRCP 210 Interface Design and Interactivity class does to provide usability testing, focus group feedback, and makeover designing for the Clark College Cannell Library website.

    Some of the most surprising and rewarding feedback came from folks who were impressed by the level of collaboration that was taking place between faculty and library. I guess I have assumed that myself and many of my colleagues at Clark were not extraordinary in the projects we have done. But I guess its not that way everywhere. Another reason to count blessings about where I work.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 9:05 PM
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    Thursday, February 21, 2008

    Sita goes to Berlin: Congratulations Nina


    The buffet is very pleased to learn that Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues premiered at the Berlinale, the 58th International Berlin Film Festival last week. I totally fell for this unique project by independent animator when she screened it as a work in progress at last summer's Platform Animation Festival.

    Sita Sings the Blues is an interpretation of the Ramayana, the famous Indian epic work of literature with fun cartoon style animation with intercutting segments set to torch and Tin Pan alley jazz songs performed by 1920s singer Annette Hanshaw along with sections where Indian expatriates recollect and discuss the meaning of the Ramayana and the fate of its heroine, Sita. Additionally, there are segments of more traditional exposition of the story. But the film is also framed with the story of Paley's own story of how she was dumped by her husband via e-mail, circumstances that led to her fascination and relationship with Sita's story in the Ramayana.

    Somehow the incongruity of all these elements balance each other out in the mysterious ways of juxtaposition and art. I found the material she shared at Platform most delightful, as well as her DIY moxie that has, at last, turned her efforts into a completed work. The bright color palette and the style reminiscent of the 50s UPA animation also appeal to me greatly.

    I wish Nina nothing but the best and hope that she will get a great distribution opportunity in the future and that an audience will discover the charms of her film as I did last summer. Perhaps maybe, Persepolis will pave a little bit of a path for that discovery?

    Here is her trailer for Sita Sings the Blues and a Hanshaw vocal segment.



    posted by well-executed buffet at 7:53 PM
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    Wednesday, February 20, 2008

    Adrian Belew: Guitar, Animals, Machines


    Adrian Belew seemed to be just about everywhere in the late seventies and early eighties. He held his own with Zappa, was a central part of the reconstituted King Crimson, provided some of the coolest guitar solos ever on the Talking Heads Remain in Light and provided counterpoint to Laurie Anderson's trippy visions of the modern age. Then there was the solo albums with lots of songs about animals, Big Electric Cats and Rhinos and all the rest. (I am also reminded that there was that horrendous Oh Daddy song that played for a while on MTV, we'll try not to give too much consideration to that here)

    I am very glad I took up a friend's offer to join him at tonight's Adrian Belew Power Trio concert at the Aladdin Theatre. I was struck by the fact that this is an artist with not one but many distinctive voices and many unique ways to control effects that would have been overly gimmmicky in other hands. His sounds on guitar are not only sometimes imitative and expressive of the animal world but also can reflect the mechanical and the angst of the machine. He started one of his lengthy jams with an automobile starting up and by the time he ended he seemed to deconstruct an entire factory.

    I remember Los Lobos' Dave Hidalgo once confessed after an especially raucous jam that "making noise is a lot of fun." Belew's body language, broad smile and informal patter ("Looks like Portland likes to celbrate Friday early") revealed he was having a great time on the stage he shares with a brother and sister with the last name of slick who have barely entered their twenties. Barefoot lass Julie Slick and her brother with mutton chops that still look peach fuzzy are no novelty act. They give Belew plenty to work whether it be a rock steady Third Stone from the Sun space, jazz fusion tension or progressive rock backdrop for his various sonic explorations and departures.

    One of those departures during his brief solo sequence was an insanely manic version of the Beatles' Within You, Without You where he collapsed the entire end phrase of that tune like a seal would slam dunk a ball. The crowd loved it as well as just about every whammy bar extended note he played throughout the evening.

    More Belew Links and so forth...

    Where did I hear this guy?
    Check out the music player on the Out of the Belew website Did he really play on all these songs? Well most of them for sure, I like being able to check out the solo on Crosseyed and Painless and the outro of Burning Down the House. (I can't hear the latter without visualizing David Byrne's head projected on the pavememt)


    The old man and the kids are alright
    Here's some footage from a gig at Marymoor Park in Redmond, WA from last fall. I think you will agree that the Slicks are significant graduates from the School of Rock. Here's also a blog young Eric started during their 2006 fall Tour.


    Animal Noises for a Japanese Commercial
    This is very cool stuff. Check out YouTube for a couple more of these commercials.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 11:26 AM
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    Tuesday, February 19, 2008

    Strange Times, Strange Folks, Strange Places


    I'm not sure why the red envelope selections became so extensively dark and psychologically heavy as of late. Neither David Cronenberg's Spider or Norwegian surrealist outing The Bothersome Man have worked out well for kicking back after dinner in the middle of winter, yet both are intriguing in how they deal with internal reality, one of the traditional landscapes of cinema rooted in German Expressionism and surrealistic experimentation.

    Spider's structure is especially worth noting. Mr. Cleg (Ralph Fiennes arrives at a kind of horrid halfway house for long time institutionalized patients. It is alongside a canal across from a gasworks that makes awful noizes and is run by Lyn Redgrave as a passive agressive Big Nurse like character. He writes in spiderweb-like patterns in a diary which allows him to become a present and almost active observer in a series of childhood flashbacks with lots of psychotic twists that ultimately explain how he got to his currently creepy circumstances.

    A few weeks back I wrote about how I was exceptionally impressed with Croneberg's Eastern Promises and A History of Violence. Spider is closer to his prior Naked Lunch or The Fly. Still, I wanted to take a chance with it. Spider was by no means a pleasant experience, but one so well executed it stands to be appreciated.

    Andreas in the The Bothersome Man (Den Brysomme mannen) suffers more from interactions in an absurdist external world than a deeply embedded internal reality that Mr. Cleg has. Or is it his internal world, we're never quite sure. Essentially, dirctor Jens Lien has created a kind of mental/emotional experience like some kind of amusement ride. After dropping onto a train track, ostensibly because he saw a couple in an over-the-top embrace, Andreas rides a bus that takes him to a desert where a welcome banner awaits him. He is then driven to a town where he is plugged into a job as an accountant among a bevy of Stepford like co-workers. Sometimes he pushes too far and is picked up by two guys in in gray industrial garb driven around in a silver Suzuki mini van where he dropped off to be in place of reset, as in a game of pinball. So the modern world is absurd. Is that the point of this exercise? Seeing this film gives me a similar response to a lot of Iron Curtain era Eastern European cinema I've seen: It makes me appreciate Bunuel even more. For me he is and always will be the definition of Surrealist cinema.

    A well-executed buffet must contain both flavors of light and dark, high-intended expression and low brow excursion. Like the weather, being more to the cold/wet side of the scale, its time to get things into balance.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 7:31 PM
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    Monday, February 18, 2008

    The Danger in the Oddly Drawn


    Sometimes its hard to drop a work of fiction, on film or otherwise, that one wants to like but its foundational premise or oddly conceived environment or world is so flawed it kind of eats itself up causing a kind of lingering "what the hell was that?" sensation.

    This is my aftermath of seeing The Amateurs, originally titled The Moguls, which is an independently produced comedy starring Jeff Bridges, Joe Pantoliano (of the Sopranos), Patrick Fugit (the Almost Famous Cameron Crowe alter-ego), Ted Danson, Valerie Perrine and a bunch of recognizable character actors. The set up is that Bridges, divorced mid-lifer who never made his mark frozen in arrested development decides to enlist a weird mish mash of Andy of Mayberry like misfits to create a porno film for fame and fortune. I think the key to Bridges in a movie is that he will always be associated with a character, either the owner of Seabiscuit or Tucker with amazing faith and optimism or the protagonist with demons in Fisher King or Fearless so there is almost a reflexive response to root for his character and the ragtags on this improbable enterprise.

    Joe Pantoliano's character, who is given the name, Some Idiot, by the other wacky townies, lives with his Mom. Danson plays the town beautician, Moose, a closet gay who overcompensates with a macho act. Another character is in love with the town strumpet who always gets stood up. And Fugit's character lives in the back of the video store and DV records everything, etc. They talk dirty and excitedly about making a local porno, but with a kind of faux innocence insist on turning their backs and giving the actors privacy when there is any chance of nudity or sex on "the set."

    Yes it is tempting to let this just dismiss this strange little outing as being a bad movie, which it really kind of is. But I see it as a reminder of just how hard it is to do satiric or quirky comedy well. Just as I did in my buffet entry on The TV Set a few months back, I thought about David Mamet's State and Main as a kind of model for this sort of film. Your town, your characters and premise can be oddly drawn. Farce,frivolity and surprise need to be added as seasoning. But if it is drawn too oddly or if the seasonings aren't quite right...then the "What the hell was that?" afterburn could easily result with the reader/viewer wondering what they just devoted a portion of their time on earth to.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 9:54 PM
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    Sunday, February 17, 2008

    Cecil Taylor at PDX Jazz 2.17.08


    I am glad I supported PDX Jazz Director/promoter Bill Royston's concept of a weekend that was bookended with Ornette Coleman on Friday and would conclude on Sunday with Cecil Taylor. The integrity these two men have had in being true and consistent to their visions and gifts for the half century is worthy of a thematic weekend, especially when a quartet performance by the likes of Ron Carter and Kenny Barron can be slid in between these two iconic pathfinders.

    I'm not sure of the year I first saw Cecil Taylor. It was sometime in the late eighties or early nineties. He played to a two thirds full house on a Saturday night at the old Carolyn Berg Swann Auditorium of the Portland Art Museum. A Bosendorfer piano had been imported from San Francisco for the occasion. He began each of his two sets with several moments of Tai Chi. Emotional memory associated with art is intriguing thing. During today's set by Taylor, I recall how I felt when I first saw him at the piano bench: It was a sense that it is important for folks not to maintain and hold expectations and preconceptions of defined boundaries in music, art, and performance.

    Taylor was on a Steinway this time. He turns 79 next month. There was no Tai Chi warmup. He brought music with him (which I don't believe he did last time) as well yellow pages of note paper. His music is of his own vision. It contains its own architecture and emotional language. Frankly, it sometimes it reminds me of the musical equivalent of telling someone off. An acquaintance at the show told me that his partner asked him "why is he so angry?" There is a strong emotional content in Taylor's music to be sure. Yet I maintain that anyone who takes a bit of time to listen will realize that it is not all about noodling and off the top of one's head improvisation. Patterns become evident and return. Dramas get played out between themes and rhythms. Forces are defined and then attract and oppose other forces.

    It can be an effort. I believe anyone less than a fully devoted listening program to this artist and the few others who live exclusively in this kind of world of sound will drift away from it, at least from time to time. At one break point I saw a couple dozen folks leave after about 35 minutes or so. I started to stir and decided to engage my "Tabula Rosa poetry reading mind." And then he stopped playing and started reading.

    He introduced them as words and not as a poem or composition . I jotted down some of his images and lines. "Rotational Deliverence ...Interconnected Membranes...Cylinrical Invisibility...Equivnocturnal Priests...Adoooa Addoooa" Even a humorous allusion to jazz showed up "Blakey Blakey, The Artful One." After the reading, he returned to the keyboard again with more textures and waring arpeggios until he got up from his bench, looking dazed and tired. He then bowed and signaled to the house manager he had one more up his sleeve, and after completing that brief piece with a kind of plunky upbeat, he put on his dark glasses, bowed again and made his way off the stage.

    This concert did not have any where near the impact that Taylor's performance had on me a decade and a half ago. Nor did it seem to be on par with this Seattle 2001 Cecil Taylor visit. Part of that may be the context of this weekend. This was my fourth act of the festival in three consecutive days (including today's overlong opening act of very talented and unique bass player Glen Moore and the less extraordinary saxophone playing of Rob Scheps) and I was feeling the duration of the weekend. But also it is clear that Taylor is now a Lion in Winter. I am listening to a 1967 solo performance and it is overbrimming with energy, ideas, shifting shapes and moods. Still, today was time well spent. I complete reading of AB Spellman's essays on Ornette Coleman with insight and appreciation I would not have otherwise and my IPod in recent days or even weeks will provide me with evolutionary and revolutionary voyages with great explorers of soul, rhythm and psyche, namely the likes of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, with some Kenny Barron and Ron Carter thrown in for good balance and measure.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 8:20 AM
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    Saturday, February 16, 2008

    Classical Jazz Quartet at PDX Jazz 2.16.08



    I bought the tickets for this one thinking it was the Classic Jazz Quartet due to the lineup, which was the motivating factor and why I didn't think about it for more than a minute or so...Ron Carter, Kenny Barron, Stefon Harris, and Lewis Nash. It was only a few weeks ago that I realized that this was the Classical Jazz Quartet and that their body of work would be arrangements of Bach, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky. I am wary of pull-together collections of A-List musicians recruited around theme, especially those that get subtitled or titled with the words "A Tribute to.." but there is a sense of cohesion and group to this gang of four and a history, especially with Carter and Barron that goes back many years.

    So is this a new MJQ aka the Modern Jazz Quartet, another group of solid jazz stars (a Heath brother, Milt "Bag's Groove" Jackson, et al.) with what Wikipedia article described as "genteel baroque counterpoint." Maybe not as genteel here and definitely as baroque. The Classical Jazz Quartet has moments of pure swing with the arrangements of recognizable classics clearly there for points of departure purposes. Additionally this group performed at least three originals: Two by Carter Nearly (which my co-pilot said sounded like a late fifites early sixties Miles tune, even more so when Chet Baker joins Carter on the Patero album with their recording of the song) and Candelight and Harris' Epilogue for Milt Jackson, dedicated to the MJQ's vibemaster.

    Lewis Nash is clearly a full purpose bebop-style drummer, his soloing would use the complete real estate of his kit. Full of inventive touches he began a piece with hand drumming on his snares and ended a brush solo at another point by waving them in the air and letting the microphones pick up the vibrating noise.

    Stefon Harris has a percussive feel on the vibes that at times reminded me more of vibes more latin and ethnic such as Arthur Lyman or Cal Tjader than the traditional jazz vibraphone sound of Hampton, Milt Jackson or Bobby Hutcherson. The balance between piano and vibes is key to the success of a group like this, He knew when to sit out during Kenny Barron's solos and when to blend and extend the vibes to the sound of the piano.

    There are very few jazz piano players more elegant and lyrical in delivering their style than Kenny Barron. His work with Stan Getz has always dazzled me, especially their album of duets, People Time. In this setting, it is hard to keep focused and admire all of the pieces of the whole as much as I would like to. It would have been great if Bill Royston, Mr. PDX Jazz in the Santa beard, could have also booked a solo or duo set with the great Barron while he was in town.

    A couple of times I heard Ron Carter pull out sounds that, well, could only come from Ron Carter. At the end cadenza of a couple of times I heard sounds from the end of his solo on Quincy Jones' Walking in Space or on Footprints on Miles Smiles. There is a sound of a run that is truly his own and also when his hand splays out to catch some notes at the end of a phrase.

    This was classy stuff of finery for a February Saturday night at the Newmark Theater. It is worth noting that not only four separate careers in jazz converge for this collaborative project, it is also the merging of three generations of jazz. Barron and Carter born in the thirties and forties, Nash in the fifties, and Harris in the seventies. Their mission is one of a kind of unity, listening close particularly when they all seem to be holding a corner of a quilt of sound ideas and counterpoint, both gentile and otherwise, especially in the later numbers and encore.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 10:04 PM
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    Friday, February 15, 2008

    Ornette Coleman At PDX Jazz 2.15.08


    Ornette Coleman turns 78 next month. And he was here tonight in Portland and Sunday in BC before taking off next week for Australia and Hong Kong. My anticipation for his Portland Jazz Festival performance has been building for a couple days.

    Yesterday I got a hold of a copy of AB Spellman's Four Lives in Jazz (FKA Four Lives in the Bebop Business). I'm walking around with it like an art student would have a copy of Vassari in his rucksack while in Florence. I secured a copy of Spellman's 1966 book, recently republished with the new name features extensive because I knew it had a study on Herbie Nichols, who I blogged about a couple of weeks back. Unbeknown to me was that it also had long essays about Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, two central components of my weekend. (The fourth life is Jackie McLean, a player I want to explore more of)

    Laurie Anderson has a bit about "difficult music." Sitting yourself upright in a straight back chair" etc. What I have discovered is that at this stage in my Ornette journey, I am getting past the stage of finding his music difficult because I am trying to learn his language. He will give you clues in interviews and alike, calling it hamolodics (A word that reminds me of when Tiger Woods was describing himself as Caublacasion) or sound grammar or asking playful questions ("What is the sound of sound?") like Sun Ra used to do so profoundly.

    It was a wonderful and varied set. When it was over, the band took a most majestic bow and came back for Coleman's classic Lonely Woman, the tune that defines plaintiveness.
    And then for a second bow and the man with the blue suit and Zorro porkpie leaves the stage with many of us blissed in legendary presence fortunate to have shared with one of the most unique and pivotally important voices in the world of jazz.

    Three Great Links of Ornette
    Keep Swinging Tribute to the 50th Anniversary of Coleman Recording
    Fifty years ago this week Ornette made his first recording on Contemporary The Music Of Ornette Coleman Something Else!!!! Yes, there are four exclamation marks in the title. I'm listening to it now. (Thanks, EMusic) It is kind of straight bebop until Coleman solos. That voice colored only a few bands lower or less frenetic and angular, maybe mellower. Somehow it reminds me that Ornette started out a tenor player. And as a honky tonk player intersecting another Texas music notable, King Curtis. (Note on the blogger: Looks like KKeep Swinging is the full well excuted jazz buffet from the Netherlands:"A daily web log in English and Dutch to share my passion for jazz, record collecting and other music projects that surprise me."


    Acceptance Award Speech: Lifetime Achievement Award 2007 Grammys.
    How heavy is Ornette and how deep does he get? Among the comments: "No one can know anything that life creates since no one is life itself."

    Big Coleman Dossier
    Be sure to check out the press kit from this publicist of the Sound Grammar album. Lots of fine articles.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 4:58 PM
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    Thursday, February 14, 2008

    Yes, They were Special


    There is a very cool new DVD called The Specials: Too Much, Too Soon that features nine vintage performances of various format (videos, concert footage), a bunch of Super 8 Sound stuff filmed in 79, and four or five Specials AKA music videos. The less said about the last of these categories, the better.


    Damn, they were a band. Watching Lynvall Golding onstage is an amazing spectacle, but even more so when you simultaneously check out the moves of Roddy and Sir Horace that take place behind him. The monotone with an attitude delivery of Terry Hall pounds into one's head like a whinining jack hammer. "Ain't He Cool? No He Ain't. He's just another burden of the Welfare State." There is also a drummer who doesn't miss a fill and Jerry Dammers, frightening toothless when he grins, whose keyboards kind of orchestrate all of the madness. I remember the energy of their Saturday Night Live appearance where their black beauty induced energy could was too much and overfilled the stage.

    The first wave of Neo-ska in 79-80 made quite an impression on me. I was a listless in early twenties and the every other beat bounce along with the blend of snotty plus clever of the Specials really connected. I had just started a service job, and was convinced that would keep me out of the Rat Race "Your just wasting your time...You ain't no friend of mine." In those quasi-nihilistic days, I recall listening to the song Do Nothing from their second More Specials album "I'm just living in a life without meaning, I walk and walk and do nothing." There is an excellent television show performance of this song on the Too Much Too Young video where they are wearing ski sweaters like you would find at the time in a JC Penney advert. Ski Sweaters? How cool was that.

    The first album was a kind of hyperlink for me. From it, I indulged in the first wave of Jamaican ska and rock steady. That led, obviously to the early Bob Marley, which led to my first really close listens to Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions, Marvin Gaye and others.

    I actually was more appreciative as the second album, with its moodiness and post bouncy bounce shape shifting. It kind of became my signature record for a while in a way. The musical sandwich placed between the snotty readings of "Enjoy yourself, It's later than you think" broke out of the off beat grind with lots of interesting textures but kept the attitude. One of my favorites is not on the Too Much Too Soon collection, so I submit it here for all of you Stereo Types. It is a fan scrap book compilation with the album tracks from YouTube, but I wanted to embed it so I could have access to this song while editing or submitting dispatches to this buffet. It's just too bad it isn't the long version complete with Lynval's toasting. Enjoy anyway. It may be later than you think.

    posted by well-executed buffet at 6:30 AM
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    Wednesday, February 13, 2008

    Head Librarian


    The Mark O Hatfield lecture with Librarian James Billington was a bit of adisappointment for me. He did not speak much at all about his role as the Nation's (and maybe world's) librarian and instead read a speech about prescriptive actions the United States should take in the current state of the world. Still little factoids would reveal themselves that worth taking home such as his observation that the United States was the only major government evolve out of the age of print. Or the fact that one of the greatest harms America can do to itself is in the perception of cultural imperialism. Billington sees the United States as a country that is filled with multiculturalism at home but is quite monoculturalistic abroad.

    Yesterday (longish story of why I would discover this) I found that the word fortune appeared in Shakespeare's Hamlet 47 times. I am sure in his one hour speech Billington said the word freedom (The signature ideal of America) at least that many times in his hour speech. Billington is 78 years old and has been spent decades in public service and scholarship. Has he earned the right to rock the mike in just about anyway he chooses to? Perhaps so.

    The Library of Commerce and Billington were early Internet heroes of mine. The efforts at www.loc.gov were well conceived and executed at a time just after just being able to get the CIA Factbook was a big hit stuff. I remember encountering the Thomas database for the first time impressed with the combination of technology and citizenship. It was exceptionally cool to look up activities and members of congress. The Library of Congress was definitely the bomb during the years when a lot of the rest of the planet were not taking the potentials of the Net nearly as seriously.

    Billington feels that electronic digital imaging should be a large part of America, but he asks what are we doing with it. He sees terrorists and radical Islamists making good use of the technology as well. But Billington isn't giving it up, he believes that people can come on line and it can lead to a better understanding among the world's peoples. He points to the The World Digital Library as an example of how the free and instantaneous nature of the Internet can be highly effective. It utilizes the seven languages of the UN: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

    Billington does not believe that new technologies do not substitute the old and that one media does not necessarily replace another. To his mind, digital still has the basic values of print. The book is not going away and neither are librarians or libraries. He seemed especially impressed with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. And he believes there will be a need always for those who will be doing the business of "acquiring, presenting, and disseminating information. In other words, folks that are doing the work of librarians.

    Great trivia of the evening. James H. Billington is only the 13th person to serve as the Librarian of Congress since the Library's creation in 1800.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 9:43 PM
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    Tuesday, February 12, 2008

    Ted and the Edge


    Ted Nelson has the following quote from Orson Welles on his web page: "Everybody's waiting for me to die so they can say how much they appreciated my work. But nobody will back me."

    I reviewed a section of Nelson's Computer Lib/Dream Machines. (available from a link here) with my class the other day. I don't think they new what to make of it. In a couple dozen pages, he comments on the computing "priest hood", challenges the nature of traditional education, and gives the foundations of a hypertext like system called Fantics. Additionally, his self published books from the seventies can be seen as one of the early examples of desktop publishing.

    Nelson discounts and distances himself from the epic Wired magazine article from 1995 describing Xanadu, a vision for a computer system that has a lot of similarities with what the web became. It was a commercial entity that could not be scaled like what the web became. Ultimately, his Xanadu, like the one in Welles' Citizen Kane did not bring him happiness, but in Nelson's case, not riches either.

    A side bar of Nelsons in the reading on his premises on teaching provided us with a couple interesting departures: "Everything is interesting, until ruined for us. Nothing in the universe is intrinsically uninteresting. Schooling systematically ruins things for us, wiping out these interests; the last thing to be ruined determines your profession." and then there was "There are no “subjects.” The division of the universe into “subjects” for teaching is a matter of tradition and administrative convenience."

    I was pleased that my class saw some of Nelson's statements as provocateurs. One student quoted Nietzche "All generalizations are false." in regards to some of Nelson's grander pronouncements.

    The point of this post is not to even try to give analysis or perspective to Nelson, his genius, or the woes it brought him. I just wanted to record a recent encounter with his work again and how it was a reminder to me to always look at the art, ideas, and folks on the edges. They are those most likely to intrigue, beguile, or inspire.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 8:03 PM
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    Monday, February 11, 2008

    When a Few Minutes Are Worth It


    It is a bit of a guilty pleasure, but there are always a few performances and moments that are worth powering through with speed remote. Folks, I'm talking about the Grammys, and here was the stuff that made it worthwhile for me for the 50th Anniversary telecast.

    Low Points or Just Didn't Connects: Beyonce & Tina Turner, Little Richard, John Fogerty & Jerry Lee Lewis, and any time Alicia Keyes showed up--self absorbed art at its most self absorbed...ooops excuse me, Kanye West has that one hands down,. Poor Amy Winehouse. You want to root for her. I've been digging some live recordings lately, but I have my doubts about her future and stability.

    Final Verdict Hey, it's only once a year. And there will almost always be a few golden moments you won't see anywhere else on television for 364 more days.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 8:36 PM
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    Sunday, February 10, 2008

    Jazz House Party with Morgan and Montgomery


    These are my two favorite live jazz albums for the past two or three years. They both feature the outstanding hard bop pianist Harold Mabern and that might be a major factor why they are so recurrent on my playlists. Mabern is like a master acrobat juggler illusionist who keeps many musical ideas in air, never letting you see him drop. This makes him a good match for the likes of Montgomery and Morgan.


    My first exposure to Montgomery was as a pre-teenager listening to my parents A&M CTI albums like Road Song. His guitar had such an individual voice like the most popular straight ahead pop-singers do. But years later, I heard a Montgomery from an era just prior to his sanitized take on Beatles songs and alike, one on So Much Guitar! that peeled out streams of ideas and a kind of energetic furor. That is the Wes Montgomery in quartet setting in these Paris settings and other posthumous releases of his work from the mid sixties I have been encountering recently.

    But Montgomery's set is almost sedate to the moments of fire on Lee Morgan's live at the Lighthouse. There are only twelve music tracks on this three CD set, all of which are at least ten minutes minutes long. Bennie Maupin plays a range of wind instruments. There is both a commonality and a variety to these tracks. This feels like a band laying it on the line. The kind of the hard bop that Morgan is associated with from his Art Blakey years is evident throughout but there is something else with songs come forward with such strong live-for-the-moment fortitude and resolution, yet still given the opportunity and time to for bassist Jymie Merrit and drummer Mickey Roker to fully explore. And they make sure to pull out The Sidewinder the funky boogaloo that helped Morgan get recognized and allowed him to capitalize on through the mid-sixties.

    Both of these live sets are not focused on the music of what the artists are most known or popularized for. Perhaps that is a reason that attracts me to them along with the vitality and energy executed in these recordings, as much as I like their popish sides.

    Both artists died within a couple of years after being captured here. Morgan in a dramatic drug-related shooting by his girlfriend in a NY jazz club at 33 and Montgomery from a heart attack at 45.

    I can't find a YouTube clip of Morgan with his later working bands, so this earlier excerpt of him with the Jazz Messengers will have to suffice. But the Montgomery piece is very reflective of the kind of energy found on the Paris set.





    posted by well-executed buffet at 7:09 PM
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    Saturday, February 9, 2008

    Year of the Dog: Slipping into Weirdness


    Mike White's Year of the Dog seems at first to have a lot going for it. It has a great cast: Molly Shannon, Laura Dern, John C. Reilly, and Peter Sarsgaard. The world of work scenes feel authentic in that quirky way The Office or Office Space did, partly because of the way that Shannon inhabits them. The first half of the like a romantic comedy with a hipness and an edge, not unlike The Good Girl, which White had writing credit for.

    But then the film takes a couple of turns similar to the dogs of its lead protagonist Peggy the secretary. First one goes a bit astray to bad consequence and then another reveals its true nature by biting his master and mauling and killing one of its kind. What happens is that the protagonist goes mad and audience is thrown off kilter wondering what to feel about this late thirties/forties something single whose life spirals after Pencil the perfect beagle suddenly dies. She tries to jump start it with Romeo construction worker great white hunter neighbor played by Reilly (who has a great line talking about safaris for endangered species-get em while you can) and then with fellow animal lover, the sexually ambiguous (but looking and acting pretty darn gay) Sarsgaard. During the course of this, turns vegan and starts forging donation checks from the boss for animal rights causes that she website cruises at her work.

    Shannon's performance is impressive. It reminds me of the vocal of Deborah Iyall's in Romeo Void when she would incant "A Girl in trouble is a temporary thing ." As she slips into animal obsessed weirdness, out comes a kind of plain with her pain that is quite disturbing. It is something familiar that many will recognize in coworkers they have been around in the past where someone makes a shift and you ask yourself what the heck is going on with this person.

    When Year of the Dog took its strange left turn at close to the hour mark, I didn't know how to respond except by muting, putting it on 2x speed and reading captions for a time. I remember intense arguments among film goers in the seventies when folks would stridently disagree if Ruth Gordon's performances in Harold and Maude or Where's Papa were the stuff of comedic genius or disturbing and creepy. There were lots of other films in the sixties and seventies where characters with madness was equated and painted to have insightfulness and wisdom. That seemed to be the zeigeist.

    I was recalling all this towards film's end when Peggy tried to make a valiant attempt at being normal by returning to her job (after forgery and embezzlement and attempted manslaughter on her neighbor? Come on now, Mike White) only to surf another animal activist website which was enough to make her ride off into the sunset on a PETA bus.
    I vote for disturbing and creepy, and I'm not sure what it has to say about the spirit of our times.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 11:08 PM
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    Friday, February 8, 2008

    A Diving Bell, Memory, Perspective, and Imagination


    One of my definitions of cinema is the ability to create a world unique from our own. The unique world here is the internal reality of French writer and locked-in stroke victim Jean-Dominique Bauby in Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon.) Sure, you can see what Robert Montgomery saw as Philip Marlowe in the 1947 film noir Lady in the Lake or the sequences before Rock Hudson took off his bandages in John Frankenheimer's Seconds eighteen years earlier. But this is different. It may be the closest a filmmaker ever came to creating the first person "I" persona in a film. You come away with the what it must feel like to be about as severely disabled you possibly can be only being able to communicate with the outside world by using one eye. And this eye becomes ours for most of the film.

    Drat it! I am dying to talk about the form and structure of how Julian Schnabel uses form and perspective in his story telling. But that would be giving away too much. Those elements are as, if not more, incredibly important to this film, probably more so than plot structure with characters and all that.

    I believe what keeps him (and let's face it, to some degree, the film itself) alive is being around incredibly beautiful intense women in his life: ex-wife, therapists, book transcriber, and former lovers. The other is that although he did not have his body he had imagination and memory, and we viewers are also privileged to some expeditions to those territories.

    And music, one of those most important of magical formulas for evoking memory, plays an important part in Schnabel's film. My day began listening to Joe Strummer tunes at home in my underwear and ended with Joe singing the first credits song in Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Velvet Underground and Tom Waits tunes are also featured in some sequences in the film to wonderful effect. Schnabel has a sense of music and poetic film images that reminds me of Wim Wenders' work.

    Report on Wikipedia said that Schnabel learned French because he deemed there was no way it could be done in English,. This is especially true of a film's dialog consists of his family or the beautiful angels of "Team Jean Do" are spell talking with the blinking man. I think that this film in English would be both travesty and tragedy.

    This is a great film. It has visions and wonder and opens a discussion on what film can do and can be, a chat we have not had for sometime. I predict that there will be filmmakers in the future who will take some of what Schnabel did here and they will push it out big further, in a way not unlike what the Nouvelle Vague did with American B gangster films, etc. Godspeed, you of those with Schnabel or Tarrantino or Herzog or maybe even Kubrick or Welles-like powers.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 8:37 PM
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    Thursday, February 7, 2008

    Brendaddendum


    Today's post is a quick addendum to yesterday's comments on Brenda Laurel. Here is a picture one of my student warriors took of my Brenda moment and a pull quote from the Recent Talks and Essays section of her website which I especially appreciate.



    "Our young people need to be multilingual. They should not speak only the language of money or only the language of technology. They should also speak the languages of curiosity, possibility, history, community, activism, balance and health. As educators and mentors, we have the power to tell the stories, shape the technologies, and enact the values that will make our students resilient, responsible, creative citizens in a rapidly changing world."
    From Tools for Knowing, Judging, and Taking Action in the 21st Century
    posted by well-executed buffet at 10:21 PM
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    Wednesday, February 6, 2008

    Encountering Brenda Laurel


    I first saw Brenda Laurel in 1993 San Francisco at the Digital Be-In, an event during MacWorld week where baby boomers and ex-hippierati were more or less taking credit for the digital revolution. She did a rant with some kind of video feedback. I don't remember if the piece was fully taped or if she was live with the video effects. The only thing I remember of the content was that she talked about the Lomax brothers doing field recordings and that their work would be used in some kind of holodeck Plato's cave type device. After the rant she introduced Timothy Leary by telling a story of how he hailed a late night cab when hanging out with William Gibson and herself in Italy or Spain by standing in the middle of the road exclaiming he was Timothy Leary. A cab driver stopped, exclaimed "Maestro" and drove him into town. (I also seem to recall that she said Gibson tried a similar maneuver where he was unsuccessful)

    Laurel is someone who is known as a digital pioneer paving into new frontiers. The easiest way get a handle on the range of Laurel's work and contributions is to take a quick look at the history of the books she has published. First there was her editing of Art of Computer-Interface Design, a big anthology now almost twenty years ago based on a seminar that Apple did that still brims with solid foundational concepts. Secondly, there is Computers as Theatre where she applies classic dramatic theory to the world of computer interface and interaction with the intent of improving the relationship between computer and individual. Utopian Entrepreneur is a summary of her experience in the nineties, first researching the nature of gender and technology and then creating a company, Purple Moon, devoted to developing girl games. Lastly, and most recently there is her anthology Design Research: Methods and Perspectives where she presents a summary of the range of design tools and techniques that designers should consider in their work, providing a tool box not disimilar to the one she helped provide twenty years earlier to help define the interface community.

    It is now 15 years since that first encounter with Brenda Laurel at the Be-in. She is now Professor Laurel of California College for the Arts in Oakland, here as guest speaker at a meeting of one of my favorite organizations, CHIFOO (Computer Human Interaction Forum Of Oregon) and has come to share her views and stories about ethnography and other forms of design research. Still it is Brenda Laurel, this is not a sedate lecture. It has elements of theater, she is constantly interrupted by a sarcastic spectacled man who appears in the upper corner of her screen challenging the value of the points she makes. She closes the pop window and proceeds to almost overwhelm with a huge currency of ideas that emphasize her major point: namely that good, unprejudiced design research can not only create good products, it can help make the world a better place.

    There were too many probes and ideas for recounting in this space, but there certainly were some significant ones I will be considering for days to come. Such as the fact that Laurel's studies have shown that technology is comfort for young people. "They sleep with their cell phones." Modalities don't matter, whether voice, text, cell messages or e-mail what does is that technology is able to keep them in touch, give them that social touch. An example of the kind of surprise she encountered in her research was that tough shredder skater punk boys hold a strong devotion to family. Laurel told how when this demographic was asked what they would do if they were to make a lot of money the answer almost unvaryingly was "I'd buy my Mom a new house."

    It was an inspiring and fun evening. Her enthusiasm and devotion to inquiry countered a rotten twenty plus mile drive through a truly rotten rain storm. Six students I work with were also able to attend their first CHIFOO event. And that was great, too. I hope they were able to take something away from her lecture/performance and realize how unique this pioneer of technology is. I hope they took notice of the final slide of her formal lecture What you do with you know is up to you. For me a highlight has to be the inscription she added to her signature of my copy of Utopian Entrepreneur: "Thank you for being a Teacher."
    posted by well-executed buffet at 10:45 PM
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    Tuesday, February 5, 2008

    Meet Herbie Nichols


    Herbie Nichols was a notable jazz pianist who recorded four albums between 1955-56 in trio setting with three great drummers (Art Blakey, Max Roach, and Mingus' favorite drummer, Dannie Richmond) Most importantly, Herbie Nichols was a gifted composer who mostly performed his own works.

    Somehow his music evokes the kind of feelings the weather does. His right as rain compositions that have a kind of effortless flow and lilt as you would move through a day with reasonable environmental conditions. New Yorker critic Whitney Balliett referred to Nichols' music as "umbrellas of sound." "When Nichols plays, there are no rests or bare places or passages of blue sky." wrote Balliett in a mid seventies tribute to Nichols. He describes his music as "dense and vertical." To me, Nichols compositions are kind of like five minute continuous line drawings that sometimes fan out in a kind of texture. He uses his piano to sketch in the way that Crockett Johnson's protagonist uses his marker in Harold and the Purple Crayon to make paths, shapes, forms.

    Nichols is often compared to Thelonious Monk, but he is without as much angularity and harmonic limit pushing of the great Monk. He has also been likened to somehow being a link between Teddy Wilson and Monk. Somehow, his lyrical style reminds me also of Billy Strayhorn at times. Baillet thinks his "sguiggly runs" have their roots in Monk and Ellington and that the broken phrasing comes from Bud Powell. Ye all in all, Nichols has originality in his voice with his melodies and improvisations like self contained short stories you can listen to closely or have in the background as environmental enhancement.

    He only lived for forty four years (1919-1963) and although his music was recognized by critics and peers, it has gone largely unknown although "Lady Sings the Blues" and "House Party Starting" have kind of made their way into the extended bluebook of jazz lines and vehicles for jazz musicians for several decades.

    Fortunately, because of a handful of devoted jazz musicians, Nichols music has found some new ears. Trombonist Roswell Rudd has recorded Nichols extensively and even been instrumental in publishing previously unknown work. There is also the work of The Herbie Nichols Project which puts Nichols trio recordings into a much fuller harmonic group setting led by pianist Frank Kimbrough. They have recorded three albums of Nichols' work. The only one I can speak to is their last Strange City. When I hear it my shoulders tend to shuffle and looking outside a window while an improvisation based on one of Nichols' floating statements of light emotion doesn't seem like a waste of time by any means. Strange City also gets adventurous and explores some of the darker and more minor-keyed aspects of Nichols. I am less engaged with guitarist Eric K. Johnson's Herbie Nichols Volume 1 which tends to interpret his numbers into a kind of slinky noir reminiscent of Charlie Hunter.

    Maybe it is because trenchcoats and alleys don't really reflect my view of Nichols and his music. It seems lighter to me and noir seems better associated with Monk. Stefan from Paris, one of my favorite music bloggers on his Moodswings blog emphasizes the sense of fun and play of Nichols music. I agree with him that "It is not hard to imagine Herbie grinning in anticipation, wondering how the listener will react to each oddball melody or chord voicing as he plows forward, fragments of offbeat measures and angular tunefulness in his wake."
    posted by well-executed buffet at 9:11 PM
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    Monday, February 4, 2008

    The Other Robert Hughes and a Favorite Artist


    Goya, Crazy Like a Genius is the film counterpart to Australian art critic's biography of this Spanish artist. Goya fascinated Hughes for decades, but he did not attempt to write about him substantially until the artist's imagery haunted him during his coma and extensive hospital stay after a major autombile accident in the late nineties.

    One of Hughes' key thesis in the film is that although Goya lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he is modern, unflinchingly looking into the future of what will come. "He is one of us."

    One of the first portraits he breaks down is a 1792 self-portrait where he paints himself wearing a bull-fighters jacket. Hughes says he identifies the danger of the artist with that of the matador in the corrida. And it makes a kind of fashion statement of toughness "like an artist wearing a leather jacket in the sixties."

    Some of the best summaries of Goya's work comes from an intercut interview with New York artist Leon Golub. Golub says Goya was born on the wrong side of the world but was tough and smart enough to play the world's game. "Yet he was also a kind of rough character all over the place" you can't get you hand on him. He and Hughes agreed his is kind of like a dog that bites. It is from the interview Golub also gives the film its title. In regards to the final, disturbing paintings from Goya's deaf world "He's crazy like a Genius. He's absolutely in control. He's out of control and in control. We can't separate the two with him."

    It is in part the contrast and journey of Goya, or the land of Goya, as Hughes terms it that continues to provide interest for seventy five minutes. He was court painter, well-patroned. He acted as a kind of precursor to the photojournalist depicting scenes of war. He satirized class and conditions in Spain and celebrated the bullfight. And finally, created dark recessed imagery that still has the ability to startle and impress.

    Sure, there are some cheesy moments for BBC television like Hughes being tortured by intercut Goya demons in a reenactment of his infirmity or somewhat awkwardly asking simple questions in Spanish to the guide at Goya's birthplace, but there is no doubt that there is significant lifetime of interest and fascination in the topic for Hughes. This is apparent when he comments on how the naked Maja could have a touch more pink on the right nipple and how he wishes he could pop into the painting "like a bee getting into a peony and have a wonderful afternoon." But also evident in his explanations of Goya's demons, particularly in the latter "black paintings" that seem to be exceptionally familiar to the artist, like he has breakfast with him.

    The concept of Goya as modern was not a hard sell for me. Last Spring I was able to move up and down the spiral of the Guggenheim with a comparative show of Spanish painting called Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso. Velazquez, El Greco and Goya were hung next to Dalis and Picassos in those small alcoves of the museum to illustrate treatments of theme and imply a kind of evolution. The 400 years covered in the show seemed very compressed with the coil of the Guggenheim linking it together like some kind of artistic strand of DNA.

    And lastly, have you ever noticed how much Brendan Gleeson and Robert Hughes resemble each other?

    posted by well-executed buffet at 10:49 PM
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    Sunday, February 3, 2008

    No Country for Any and All Living Things



    Joel and Ethan Coen are among the list of a couple dozen filmmakers I try to pay attention to when their new projects are released. No Country for Old Men has been collecting audiences and recognition for several months now and I finally caught up with it. My anticipation was high. It has been a great year for movies and a couple of hours in the off-tilt world of the Coens seemed like a good way to counter a wet and rainy afternoon.

    But I forgot that Coenworld sometimes works for me and sometimes doesn't. This film definitely has relations to Fargo (so memorable and individual) but also to Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing and, to an extent, Raising Arizona, which didn't connect with me. And I have never read Cormac McCarthy so I'm not one of those No Country viewers who has that as a frame of reference.

    No Country for Old Men shows semi-protagonists dealing with a unsurmountable pure evil force. Not that there is nothing to reflect on here but Javier Bardem's air compressed or air projected cannons get are overwhelming and the body count is so extensive. There are some excellent set pieces, mostly involving ambushes in hotels or motels. Josh Brolin's return to the scene of a drug deal gone of a landscape filled with dead pickups, Mexicans and dogs has to be one of the most ill-advised errands of mercy in the history of cinema. After all the violence, Tommy Lee Jones' waxed poetics at the film's beginning and conclusion of the film seem out of balance with the carnage and intensity. At least they were lost on me. Although I can look at the world from a seventies-era cynicism, I want my protagonists or heroes to at least have a fighting chance.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 8:45 PM
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    Saturday, February 2, 2008

    Instant Fan of Eliza


    I knew nothing about Eliza Carthy prior to encountering her brief appearance in Ken Russell's quaint, informal, and entertaining documentary "In Search of the English Folk Song" where she performs a Mighty Sparrow calypso number as an electric folk song with great abandon. It turned me into an instant fan.

    Quick biographies on Eliza Carthy always note within the first paragraph that she is the daughter Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, who it turns out are big deal players in the English folk music world. It turns out I've heard her before as a guest on a Wilco Mermaid Avenue track and the Harry Smith tribute, but it didn't connect like the aforementioned Sparrow cover or this terrific You Tube clip with Mum, Pop and members of her band The Ratcatchers. I also found out that most of her recorded output is on emusic, where my subscriptions downloads reset tomorrow which means head will likely be filled with child ballads and modernized Morris reels for the next few days.



    posted by well-executed buffet at 11:14 AM
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    Friday, February 1, 2008

    Artist/Animator in a Strange Land


    I really don't believe favorite long form graphic comics can't really be termed graphic novels, because their subject is of true experience and of the world. Art Spieglman's Maus, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Joe Sacco's various dispatches from the Middle East and Central Europe, Louis Riel by Chester Brown, and now a new favorite of mine, French cartoonist Guy Delisle's Pyongyang should be described, I believe, as nonfiction graphics.

    Delisle's nonfiction graphic is a depiction of his two month stint in 2001 supervising animation in North Korea. He is a comic artist who is depicting in journalistic fashion his Pyongyang experience. Joe Sacco covers similar ground, but his approach is different by his training, voice and interest. I see Sacco as a journalist who works in the form of comics. This sounds like perhaps a subtle difference, but is really quite distinct.

    Although the voice is first person, the almost always grayed profile of his protagonist feels like a third person entity. I think part of this is due to the strange circumstances Guy finds himself in: one of a handful of guests in a fifty storied hotel unable to go anywhere alone without an interpreter guide. It is a place where the single state-run television state television station repeatedly shows footage of horrors from the Korean War with the lingering impression that the war was over just a few months ago and could immediately begin again. Delisle obviously had some idea of what he was going to encounter. He brought a copy of Orwell's 1984 and refers to it almost as one would use a guidebook.

    The other major nonfiction graphics I mentioned at the outset have a defining form and style. Satrapi's Persepolis is much more high contrast black and white with an emphasis on shape and form. By contrast, Speigelman's world in the Maus books is one of lines, most floors and walls carefully cross textured and the emphasized also with line on striped prison uniforms and barred windows. And Joe Sacco's work, to me, is powerful, in part because he uses the conventions well-established in mainstream comics to frame his journalistic experience and insight.

    Delisle's book can be defined with one color: Gray. This is discused in an NPR interview with Delisle. They talk about the fact that North Korea is in contrast for the rest of Asian cities because there is no publicity with colored messages for commercial products, only billboards for Kim Il Sung, (The Great Leader) and the country. Gray may be his palette, but the voice and spirit of this book is like one you would encounter if you were to meet Delisle at a party or a bar and you had opportunity to hear about this very interesting trip for his work he took a few years back.
    posted by well-executed buffet at 10:10 PM
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