Brian Blade: “Mama Rosa”

(out of 5)

Brian Blade occupies a unique space in 21st century pop and jazz music. First and foremost, he is a terrific drummer. His drumming skills have been used by artists of all stripes and genres. He played on Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, Joe Henry’s Scar, and countless jazz albums including many of the records by saxophonist, Joshua Redman. Yet, Blade’s most impressive role has been as composer and bandleader of The Fellowship Band. He and The Fellowship Band crafted a fine 2000 album, Perceptual, and a delightfully rich album last year titled Seasons of Change. If that weren’t enough, Blade has now stepped out on a limb to release a singer-songwriter record, Mama Rosa, on which he sings, plays guitar, and, of course, plays those drums.

Housekeeping and Tweeting

Here is how things look for the next several weeks. Right now there are two reviews cooking that I hope to serve some time this week. They are:

Brian Blade: “Mama Rosa”
Allen Toussaint: “The Bright Mississippi”

Both came out yesterday and I highly recommend you go out and grab a copy of Toussaint’s record. That will be one of the best records released this year.

Next week will revolve around Bob Dylan’s new record, Together Through Life. And after that, things will slow down around TMR for a few weeks. I’m going to try to still do at least one review per week, but I may not even have time for that. There are still some wonderful records from February and March that I haven’t gotten around to reviewing, so hopefully, I’ll get to those soon.

While things are moving slowly, there is a way for you to follow my thoughts on music and my listening habits (if you even care about such things). I’ve joined the twitter thing. Twitter has all the markings of a fad and, in fact, I think it may fizzle out as quickly as it exploded. Regardless, I’ve started one, not to inform you of which breakfast cereal I chose this morning, but as a way to post thoughts and “mini-blog posts” about music– think of it as bit-sized version of Tone Marrow Reviews.

So, if you’re interested in that, check it out:

Record Store Day 2009: Success!

This past Saturday was Record Store Day and hopefully you made it out to one of your local record shops to support the music business and gather some new tunes. I went to the local record store which I frequent, Manifest Discs in Charlotte, NC. Though they had several interesting exclusive RSD specials, I ended up spending most of my time in the Used racks taking advantage of their used sale and came away with six great discs.

I highly recommend all six of these records.

Joe Henry: Tiny Voices (2003)

Simply put, this record is a work of towering genius. Joe Henry is an artist unlike any other. Over the last ten years or so, he has made a slew of albums which all sound completely different, so anticipation around Tone Marrow Reviews is already building for his next record– maybe even later this year? I first heard Tiny Voices last summer when I downloaded it from iTunes and my love for it has grown deeper and wider with each listen. I’m glad that now I can sit and listen to it with lyrics booklet in hand– with a work this densely rich and complex, that’s necessary.

Queens of the Stone Age: Era Vulgaris (2007)

Just as I was heading to check out I saw this little disc and snatched it up. I’d been looking for some good ole fashioned, raw rock’n'roll from The Stooges, but was disappointed not to find anything by them. But I grabbed this one and it certainly scratched my ragged rock itch. Incidentally, 2007 was a phenomenal year for rock’n'roll. Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, The White Stripes’ Icky Thump, Dinosaur Jr.’s Beyond, and this record from the Queens of the Stone Age ending up not only as the best rock of 2007, but some of the best of the last several years.

Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell: Begonias (2005)

This one was a pure gamble that is really paying off. Caitlin Cary was fiddler and vocalist in the alt-country outfit, Whiskeytown, alongside Ryan Adams. Here she teams up with Thad Cockrell, whose tenor voice is not that unlike Mr. Adams, for a record of splendid country duets. Haven’t spent a ton of time with this one yet, but so far it is a real delight.

Howlin’ Wolf: The Definitive Collection (2007)

I love blues music, and somehow I didn’t own anything by one of the genre’s masters, Howlin’ Wolf. Well, all that changed on Record Store Day ‘09. This collection features twenty songs taking throughout his career and it has all of the essential cuts: “Wang Dang Doodle,” “Back Door Man,” “Moain’ at Midnight,” “Smokestack Lightnin’,” and “The Red Rooster.” And, of course, it features the classic number, “Spoonful,” which alone makes this disc worthy of owning– Howlin’ Wolf’s recording of that is likely one of my top ten songs of all time.

Jarvis Cocker: Jarvis (2006)

Frankly, I’m not too crazy about the ’90s British pop champions, Pulp, though I appreciate what they did. However, former front man, Jarvis Cocker, made a solo album in 2006 which is just spectacular. This was another risk that I took on Record Store Day. I had not heard a single song from this set, but I grabbed it anyway. Record Store Day is a day for taking chances, after all. Of all the records I bought this is the one that is the most addictive– I literally can’t stop spinning it. Keep an eye out for the follow-up to this record, Further Complications, due out in the US on May 19.

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks: Real Emotional Trash (2008)

This certainly isn’t a new record for me. I heard it last year and it came in at number eight on my favorite records of 2008. Though I had heard it several times, I didn’t own a copy, so finding it in the Used rack was a nice discovery. For more about this one, check out my review from last year.

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Did you participate in Record Store Day? What loot did you come away with?

Bob Dylan: “Beyond Here Lies Nothin”

One week until…

Watch the official video at Amazon.

The Class (Cantet, 2008)

You can lead a horse to water…

(out of 4)

Last year saw a slew of critically acclaimed films that focused on people living in the margins of American society. Audiences watched a washed-up wrestler struggling to get by in Darren Aronofsky’s brutal film, The Wrestler; there was also the tale of a young woman and her dog trying to get to Alaska and getting stranded in a small Northwestern town in the heartbreaking Wendy and Lucy; and there was the mesmerizing story of a Hispanic kid living in Queens, NY in the shadow of Shea Stadium, who was doing what he could to survive in Ramin Bahrani’s wonderful Chop Shop. Certainly there were others as well– and for those who lived outside the United States there was also the opportunity to see Laurent Cantet’s Entre les murs which is getting its US release now in early 2009 under its English title, The Class.

It’s always a strong day for cinema when stories that haven’t been told before get to see the light of day. The Class tells the story of a French teacher in an inner-city Parisian school and the difficulties that he faces as a teacher. If there is one group of people that is certainly oft-neglected in the Western world, it’s probably public school teachers. As the husband of a teacher, I know well the difficulties that come with the job—the hard work that follows you home, the disrespectful, rowdy students, the little appreciation, and small amount of compensation. The Class follows a group of inner-city middle school students throughout a tumultuous year in Mr. François Marin’s French class (played by François Bégaudeau). Marin does his best to teach the students against their will and they do their best not to learn.

This story sounds so familiar– a determined teachers trying to change troubled students has been portrayed in countless films like Mr. Holland’s Opus, Dangerous Minds, Dead Poets’ Society, and on and on. It’s become a bit routine. Bad class meets good and determined teacher. Teacher persists and there is a clear turning point when students change and achieve/become something great. Yet, The Class is, in many ways, the antithesis to those films. The teacher works hard to teach them, but rather than finally figuring out how to deal with the students we see him struggle all year long. The turning point of the film doesn’t come when Marin suddenly figures out how to connect with the students, instead, it comes in a moment of weakness and mental exhaustion when Marin uses an inappropriate choice of words which sets off a series of events that changes the life of one student forever.

The film is shot using hand-held cameras giving it the look and feel of a documentary, and it really isn’t that unlike a documentary. The students are real inner-city, non-acting, Parisian teenagers. The teacher is played by a real former teacher, François Bégaudeau, who authored a semi-autobiographical book about his experiences teaching in Paris on which the film is based. Though Bégaudeau helped adapt his book into a screenplay, much of the dialogue in the film was allegedly ad-libbed and there is certainly a sense that the cameras were just rolling and capturing the spontaenous goings-on of this noisy classroom.

Director, Laurent Cantet and his Director of Photography, Pierre Milon, also make use of lots of tight shots on faces of the students and the teachers. It is this touch that draws the viewers right into the classroom and right into the events of the film. It makes the audience feel as if they were seated right in the classroom. The camera sometimes moves around the room from face to face, not unlike the manner in which a person may glance around the room during a class discussion.

Many American audiences will likely not care for The Class. It doesn’t provide the typical Hollywood ending. It chooses not to tell a fairy tale, but instead a real story—a story that is taking place in America, France, and other countries every day. It tells of the hard lives of the teachers, the lives of the students as they face hardships at home and at school, and the difficulty of one person teaching another.

My wife is a public high school teacher and not a huge fan of foreign language films. She was gracious to go and see The Class with me on her day off, but the film’s depiction of the labors of teaching and the classroom setting were so accurate that it stressed her out. That says something of the film’s ability to create a real world filled with real characters who have real problems– a feat that many films fail to achieve. It also illustrates one of the points raised by the film– teaching is one of the most undervalued professions in the world. Brilliant films like The Class are needed to remind audiences of this forgotten, noble profession.

Dusty Discoveries #1:: U2: “Pop”

This is the first post in, what I hope will be, an occasional series here at Tone Marrow Reviews called “Dusty Discoveries.” These will be highlighting albums that, though have been out for some time, are new to me. Some of these “discoveries” will be like today’s offering, a record that I’ve known about since it’s release but never listened to until recently; meanwhile, others will be records that were previously unknown to me. Today, we will take a look at U2’s 1997 album, Pop.

(out of 5)

Let’s begin with full disclosure. I am not a huge U2 fan. (That probably goes without saying since I’m just getting around to listening to one of their records twelve years after its release.) I have still not even heard all of their albums and I only own one of them, the famous 1987 collection of hymns and anthems known as The Joshua Tree. I say that to earn the trust of non-U2 fans (because I know how tired we non-fans are of hearing various friends and co-workers raving about U2’s work) and I hope to earn the trust of those die-hard U2 fans as well by showing that I’m still exploring their catalog and I’m willing to give them a chance (unlike some of your friends and co-workers whom you annoyed earlier this year with your non-stop chatter about the new album). But enough about that, onto the actual album.

First of all, what makes Pop a great album (and a great discovery) is that it is an album that raises genuine, thought-provoking questions about love, faith, and pop culture while, surprisingly, informing us of how empty pop music and pop culture can be when one builds their life around those things. Yet, what makes Pop even more impressive is the manner in which U2 raises these questions. These messages are carried in a beat-heavy guitar-pop album, which in many ways is an emblem of the very lifestyle which they seek to expose. And so, it remains a very subversive and nuanced listen even twelve years after its release.

Filmmaker Spotlight: Wes Anderson’s Influences

Wes Anderson, filmmaker and drinker of water.

Strange as it may sound, for quite some time, I’ve been critical of Wes Anderson as a filmmaker. I certainly appreciate his quirky, instantly recognizable style, but I was always frustrated with the way his characters spoke and acted. To phrase it the way several other detractors of Anderson’s work have, I felt like his work was “all style and no substance.”

However, in recent months I revisited a few of his films again which put me back on the fence about Anderson– until I recently discovered Matt Zoller Seitz’s 5-part video essay over at Moving Image Source, aptly titled, “The Substance of Style,”  and it has pushed me firmly back into the realm of Anderson fandom.

You may be surprised, as I was, to see that Anderson was influenced by the Charles Shultz’s Peanuts characters and Bill Melendez’s TV cartoon adaptations of those characters as much as he was by Orson Welles and The French New Wave filmmaker, François Truffaut. This essay will certainly give you a greater appreciation for Anderson’s work and how he seeks to honor and incorporate his influences in it. It may also change the way you watch movies in general as it reminds you to look for influences.

(The following links will direct you to the written versions of the essay, to view the essay in a slightly more expanded video form featuring clips from Anderon’s work, click on the video icon on the right side of the page.)

Part 1 — Influences from Charles Shultz/Bill Melendez, Orson Welles, and François Truffaut

Part 2 — Influences from Martin Scorcese, Richard Lester, and Mike Nichols

Part 3 — Influences from Hal Ashby

Part 4 — Influences from J.D. Salinger

Part 5 — The prologue to The Royal Tenenbaums, annotated

The Felice Brothers: “Yonder is the Clock”

(out of 5)

Roughly forty years ago Bob Dylan and The Band gathered in the basement of a house called Big Pink to spend several laid back months playing and recording music with the windows open and a dog lying on the floor. During these sessions, Dylan introduced the Band to the weird, wild, spirited songs of war-time blues, old-time country, and traveling folk tunes. In other words, it was pure Americana. Feeling out the pulse of these old songs and styles led to the recording of a slew of original numbers inspired by these dusty American styles. The result of these sessions was the legendary two-disc The Basement Tapes and it’s probably impossible to fully realize the extent of this record’s influence on contemporary music. But the influence of that record can be felt all over the work of The Felice Brothers and on every track of their latest offering, Yonder is the Clock.

Hailing from upstate New York, not too far from where the legendary Basement Tapes recording took place, these brothers, Simone, Ian, and James, come from in a big family. Joined by friends, Christmas and Farley, the Felice Brothers perfected the art of laid back Americana during sing-along jam sessions at a weekly Sunday afternoon barbecue and then they spent time honing and tightening their skills  in the subways of New York City. Its likely these experiences that caused The Felice Brothers to develop a sound that incorporates carefree country vibes that glide alongside the anger and snarl of NYC folk and rock’n'roll.

Knowing (Proyas, 2009)

“This is the hardest Sudoku I have ever seen.”

(out of 4)

Knowing is a fascinating film, if for no other reason then for the fact that it has had such a varied response from film critics. Roger Ebert, the undisputed King of Film Critics, famously gave it an unabashed four-star rave before the negative reviews starting pouring in from nearly everywhere–though, to be fair, it has received more favorable reviews since its release. At the writing of this review, Knowing has a 34% at Rotten Tomatoes and a 41/100 at Metacritic. Add to that the fact that it was directed by Alex Proyas, director of cult classics The Crow and Dark City as well as Will Smith blockbuster, I, Robot, and there are more than a few reasons to seek out a theater to see this film. Though viewers will likely be surprised with the ways that Knowing defies expectations.

Knowing is a science-fiction thriller with a heavy dose of the supernatural. It opens in 1959 with an elementary school class in Lexington, Massachusetts drawing pictures of the future to be placed in a time capsule to be opened in 2009. However, one student, Lucinda Embry, instead of drawing a picture, fills a piece of paper with a string of seemingly meaningless numbers. In 2009, when the time capsule is opened another student, Caleb Koestler (Chandler Cantebury), gets Lucinda’s sheet and takes it home to be discovered by his MIT professor father, John Koestler (Nicolas Cage).

Koestler is a broken man who is estraged from his pastor father, mourning the fairly recent loss of his wife, and has come to believe that the universe is meaningless and random. However, a startling discovery from these fifty-year old numbers wakes John from his apathy as he discovers they include the date and number of deaths associated with the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Koestler studies these numbers and uncovers more predictions and after a heart-pounding scene on a rainy highway, Koestler begins to really believe the legitmacy of the numbers.

Though at this point, Knowing sounds like another film about preventing future disasters, it is really much more than that. I haven’t even mentioned the strange people that are seen standing in the woods, or the shocking revelations that are made once Koestler meets Diana and Abby, daughter and granddaughter (Rose Byrne and Lara Robinson) of Lucinda Embry, or the strange whispers that only Caleb and Abby hear. The movie combines elements of science fiction and horror to establish an motion picture that is engaging and, at times, thrilling.

Yet, the movie’s payoff doesn’t quite match its build-up. Knowing is nothing if not a movie that raises thought-provoking questions, yet, it spends very little time developing or exploring these questions. It kicks around ideas of universal determinism vs. universal randomness, biblical prophecy, numerology, the after-life, and extraterrestrials, but it doesn’t do much with them. For instance, the first two-thirds of the movie set a course by raising questions of determinism, randomness, and numerology before it abandons these questions only to raise different questions that have a strained connection to what has already taken place. Certainly, these unexpected sharp turns will keep moviegoers on the edge of their seats, but it may also cause them to be a bit dissatisfied leaving the theater. Knowing would have been a more intellectually engaging film had it narrowed it’s focus to one or two ideas or more clearly connected the wealth of ideas it manages to pack into its two-hour running time.

I fear that one reason some may avoid this film is the presence of Nicolas Cage. The great actor who once turned in phenomenal performances in Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation, and Bringing Out the Dead, is now associated with the sort of B-grade action/adventure movies that involve car chases, running, and a main character who makes crazy claims that no one believes (I present National Treasure, National Treasure 2, Bangkok Dangerous, and Next as evidence). But Cage carries this film well, turning in a solid performance–though its not the kind of performance that wins awards, it fits this thoughtful sci-fi movie very well. Rose Byrne also manages to do a lot with the small amount that her character, Diana, is given to do.

It also may not help that Knowing has some superficial similarities to Cage’s 2007 film, Next, in which he plays a magician whose ability to predict the future is utilized by the FBI in an attempt to prevent a nuclear attack. The image of Cage running through crowded streets trying to warn people of impending doom in the trailers for Knowing may seem very familiar, but Knowing is quite surprising in that it turns into a film so much larger than that.

As we discover early on, no amount of running and shouting can prevent the catastrophes the numbers predict (though that doesn’t prevent Koestler from trying it occasionally). Knowing contains some nightmarish visuals and genuinely spooky moments that bring to mind any number of horror and science fiction films (to give specifics may give away too much). Another way Knowing sets itself apart is in its ending. The last ten minutes contain some shocking turns, breathtaking visuals, and a final shot that perhaps raises more questions than it answers. So, while it may frustrate some viewers in its neglect of explanation and its failure to put its ideas into a coherent context, Knowing will certainly entertain many viewers with its visual thrills and sustained suspense.

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Knowing
Dir. Alex Proyas
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Chandler Canterbury, Rose Byrne, Lara Robinson, D.G. Maloney, Nadia Townsend
United States, 2009
Science Fiction/Thriller
U.S. Release Date: 03.20.2009
Running Length: 2:02
MPAA Classification: PG-13 (Violence, Mature Themes)

Broken Flowers (Jarmusch, 2005)

Happiness is a warm, leather sofa.

(out of 4)

Broken Flowers opens to the sound of an unseen typewriter typing a letter. It’s fascinating that something so small, so mundane, might have the power to change so much. During the opening sequence we watch this pink letter (stuffed inside an equally pink envelope) work its way through the postal system before landing in the entryway of Don Johnston (Bill Murray). It hits the floor right as Don’s latest live-in girlfriend, Sherry (Julie Delpy), is getting the last of her things and hitting the road.

It’s hard to gauge Don’s response to this. He sits, an aged Don Juan, glued to his leather couch watching a possible future version of himself in the black-and-white past of the 1934 film, The Private Life of Don Juan. But, it’s hard to guage Don’s response to anything in his life. We learn that he’s retired early after earning a good living in computers; but he didn’t love that—he doesn’t even own one. When Sherry declares that she’s leaving, Don asks her to stay, but there’s no passion in his plea—in fact, there is no passion in his life at all. He sleeps on his leather couch and watches his large TV. Even wine and food don’t bring him pleasure anymore.

But the letter in the pink envelope has the potential to change his life. It’s an anonymous letter informing him that he has a nineteen-year-old son who may be trying to locate him. And so, most of Broken Flowers unfolds as an atypical road trip movie in which Johnston hits the road alone in an attempt to locate the  writer of this pink letter. Don concludes the letter must have come from one of the five women he was involved with roughly twenty years before.

Don shares the letter with his neighbor, Winston (a terrific Jeffrey Wright), who has an zealous passion for life. He works three jobs to support his wife and five kids, and he still has the energy to play detective on the internet, looking up Don’s old flames and planning a road trip to visit four women hoping to find out who sent the letter.

This sounds like a decidedly straightforward film for the independent heavy-weight director, Jim Jarmusch, who is known for his intentionally plot-light films. And it’s true that Broken Flowers is quite different from Jarmusch’s past work, yet, its quirky charms and unresolved ending ensured that this film continued to keep Jarmusch out of the mainstream.

Don’s first visit is to Laura (Sharon Stone). She’s a widow of a race car driver and mother to Lolita, a teenage girl who tries her hardest to live up to her literary namesake by implicitly offering herself to Don during a ten-second walk across the room that garnered Broken Flowers it’s R-rating. Next, Don moves onto Dora (Six Feet Under’s Frances Conroy) and her perfectly deplorable husband, Ron (Chris McDonald) for the most awkward meal of his life. Then it’s onto Carmen (Jessica Lange) who has a strange profession and an ambiguous relationship with her receptionist (Chloë Sevigny). Then it’s onto Penny (an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton), who runs with a rough crowd of bikers. Penny is extremely unhappy to see Don and that manifests itself physically on Don’s person.

What makes Broken Flowers feel so real is that these characters seem to have real histories which remain mostly unexplored. Things with Carmen must have ended awkwardly and they carry on that way in the present; Penny hates Don for some unknown offense that he committed against her; and based on a few sweet moments at a rainy cemetery we gather that Don had deeply loved another woman and that, at one time, he must have believed he could have been truly happy with her. It’s in this all-too-brief cemetery seen, that Murray shows us how much he can communicate with a brief facial expression. It’s the key moment to another strong performance from Murray.

Which brings me to one of the only possible problems with Broken Flowers. Murray, in this role that was written for him by Jarmusch, is playing basically the same emotionally detached, mostly expressionless character that we’ve seen before in Rushmore, Lost in Translation, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. I would argue that there is no one who plays this character better than Murray, which is why most of the roles mentioned above were written with him in mind. However, I’m afraid with every brilliant performance that Murray does with this similar character, he may be boxing himself into a typecast—it may begin to come off as boring or lazy if he continues in this trend in coming years. Murray is no doubt one of the best actors working today, but I’d love to see him take more chances to show more range because I think there’s a wealth of talent still unexplored in him.

Yet, there no one can communicate more with an expressionless face than Murray. The final shot of the film, we see Murray watching a young man run down the street. A car drives by with another young man locking eyes with Don. The camera circles around Don showing us that he is standing in the middle of a three-way intersection before pausing on his face. His face is stone, but his eyes twitch a little. Just like us, Don is sorting through all that has happened, wondering what comes next. He tells us more with his face in those final few seconds than an entire movie’s worth of narration could provide. We don’t know what comes next for Don, but we see that he’s off the couch. Like life, there isn’t a real conclusion here. This will certainly frustrate many viewers, but I would argue that Broken Flowers is not about resolution, it’s about the journey. Our lives are shaped by series of journeys just like this– some are resolved and some are not. Broken Flowers takes us through one that is engaging and powerful.

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Broken Flowers
Dir. Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton, Julie Delpy, Alexis Dziena, Christopher McDonald, Chloë Sevigny
United States, 2005
Drama/Comedy
U.S. Release Date: 08.05.2005
Running Length: 1:45
MPAA Classification: R (Nudity, Sexual Situations, Profanity, Violence)