Month: August 2005

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Feeling Lucky

Although he has lived in America for most of his life, Eddie Pao, the chef/owner of Mosa, a month-old Pan-Asian bistro at Poplar and Kirby, insists that his English isn’t very good. He makes frequent apologies for misunderstanding questions or repeating himself, but Pao’s linguistic problems don’t prevent him from translating a bit of ancient Chinese wisdom.

“If 50 people are unhappy, but 400 people are happy, you’re doing very good,” he says with a meaningful nod. “BUT! If there are 50 happy people and 450 are unhappy people, then you are not doing so very good.” So maybe Pao’s not so good with the sage aphorisms either. But he’s still got a track record for making people happy and keeping them happy. For 28 years Pao’s first restaurant, Formosa on Summer Avenue, was widely regarded as having the best Chinese food in Memphis, and that opinion was frequently reflected in local dining polls. When the Summer location closed last year, Memphis’ gastronomic hipsters mourned even though the Formosa on Quince continues to serve the same food, prepared to Pao’s high standards.

“I have a way of mixing the vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce,” he says of his Szechuan brown sauce. “I teach it to others, but – I don’t know – it just seems so very easy to me.”

When Pao closed the Summer Avenue Formosa, he claimed he was getting older and just wanted to slow down a little. But even as Pao was slowing down, he was also planning to speed things up. Mosa, which operates with the efficiency of a fast-food restaurant by day but a more traditional bistro atmosphere at night, has been three years in the planning. If the first restaurant is successful, Pao plans to open another, and maybe another, and another. The sky’s the limit!

“I think downtown is a good place right now,” Pao says. “Lots of office workers who want a good fast lunch that is also healthy.”

While the original Formosa was a classic Chinese restaurant, with its fortune-cookie color scheme and dragon and phoenix menu, Mosa is the polar opposite. With its blond wood paneling and long banquette, Mosa has been stripped of all kitsch and infused with a lean elegance. For all its austerity, it still has flavor. The black-and-white place settings highlight Pao’s simple cuisine. The gleaming two-alley kitchen is open, and wok burners shoot flames like a jet engine.

“I learned a lot from looking at [open] American kitchens,” Pao says. “And at 450 degrees, the food cooks very fast.”

So you want to do Mosa from top to bottom? You want an appetizer, a soup, a salad …

“No! You cannot eat that much. Nobody can eat that much. My salads are big,” Pao insists. “I had construction workers in here once, and they didn’t eat so much, but the salads were all gone. Ah-HA!” Still, Pao does recommend his chicken wraps, which are stir-fried in a garlic sauce and wrapped in a crisp lettuce leaf, as either a light lunch or an appetizer. His favorite entrees are Kung Pao (chicken, beef, or shrimp) with carrots, broccoli, and red pepper and also the Singapore Curry, which he describes as “very special.”

“I don’t use dried peppers in my Kung Pao,” Pao explains. “I grind my peppers into powder because nobody eats the peppers. But if you like the burn, you will taste my Kung Pao and say, ‘That’s not so spicy – oh wait, that is spicy.'”

Pao is interested in developing Mosa as a franchise and has had some offers, but he’s cautious about expanding too quickly.

“The Formosa name means something to me,” he explains. “When people hear ‘Mosa’ I want them to think ‘good.’ And if I’m going to [have a franchise] I want [investors] to be able to make a lot of money.” With its speedy service, sleek, easily replicated design, and a menu that’s composed of proven Formosa classics and other quickly prepared Thai and Japanese dishes, Mosa seems designed to do exactly that.

“You know, this building was first a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and it went out of business,” Pao says. “Then it was a barbecue restaurant, and it burned. A lot of people have told me that this place is unlucky. But I don’t think it’s unlucky. It’s a good location, and I feel lucky here.”

Mosa, 1825 Kirby Parkway (at Poplar), 755-6755

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

No Accountability

What Americans should demand from their governments at all levels is accountability. Accountability is far more important than transparency, which can be easily faked.

Accountability is not complicated. It simply means people must take responsibility for their actions. If the actions are successful, take responsibility; if they are a failure, take responsibility. This principle applies daily to Americans in their private lives.

Of all the sins one might list of the Bush administration, failure to be accountable is the worst. As a justification to go to war, the Bush administration insisted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It did not. The Bush people insisted Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda. There were none. They insisted Iraq was a threat to its neighbors. It was not, as all of its neighbors publicly said.

So, obviously, it was a case of lies or blunders – take your pick. In either event, people should have been held accountable for misinforming the American public and going to war on false pretenses. Not one single person, not a clerk or messenger or janitor even, has been held accountable. In fact, the people who made the blunders or told the lies have all been rewarded with promotions or medals.

This refusal to admit mistakes and to be held accountable is what gives the Bush administration the eerie atmosphere of being totally disconnected from reality. Whatever Bush says or does is always correct and successful, no matter how copious the evidence to the contrary. Members of the administration just don’t talk about the weapons or the ties to al-Qaeda anymore. You must be mistaken, they say. We went to war because we love the Iraqi people so much, we wanted them to have a democratic government.

Excuse me. You want me to believe that you love a people – who for 13 years we bombed and impoverished with sanctions – so much that you will gladly spend 2,000 American lives to relieve them of a dictator the U.S. once supported? This is insane.

I can live with crooks. I can live with differences of opinion and of politics. After all, those are parts of a democratic society. But the Bush administration scares me because it seems on its face irrational. That’s a fancy word for crazy. The world is too dangerous for us to have a president who seems unable to connect to reality and who surrounds himself with people whose chief qualification is that they agree with whatever he says.

I think there might be an arrogance gene in the Bush family. His father might well have been reelected if he had gone to the American people, apologized for breaking his promise that he would veto any new taxes and explained why he thought it was necessary to do so. But, no. It was “read my hips” as he stalked away from reporters. Apparently, in the Bush family’s eyes, it is impossible for anybody named Bush to make a mistake, tell a lie, or do anything wrong.

Of course, in fairness, most American politicians refuse to be accountable. Members of Congress in particular will pass bad laws and then act as if they had been sneaked onto the books by Martians in the dead of night.

But politicians don’t take responsibility because the American people and the media don’t demand it of them. If the American voters continue to act like ignorant sheep and the media continue to concentrate on trivia, you can’t blame the politicians for taking advantage of them. As an outlaw said in an old cowboy movie: “It may even be sacrilegious [not to rob the villagers]. If God did not want them sheared, why did he make them sheep?” Indeed, why?

Charley Reese writes for King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Categories
News The Fly-By

F-Stop

The going rate for a piece by Memphis artist George Hunt just dropped dramatically – to 37 cents.

Hunt’s 1997 painting America Cares will be included in a new stamp series that debuts this week entitled “To Form a More Perfect Union,” which recognizes those who struggled for equality during the civil rights movement. Hunt’s America Cares depicts the Little Rock Nine, the first African-American students to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Hunt, who grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, says he initially didn’t think school integration was a big deal. “I remember the governor calling in the National Guard, and I read about it in the Arkansas Gazette, which was the black newspaper. As a young person at the time, I really felt I was already going to the best school, so I didn’t care for integration one way or the other.”

The Little Rock High School Museum commissioned the painting in 1997 as part of the 40th anniversary celebration of the historic event. Former President Bill Clinton attended the event and asked that the painting be hung in the White House where it remained during his presidency.

The painting, done in Hunt’s signature bright colors, depicts the nine students flanked by a National Guardsman on one side and Daisy Bates, the head of the Little Rock NAACP, on the other.

After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Hunt became very involved in the Poor People’s campaign but says he doesn’t try to confront issues of civil rights directly in his work.

“As an artist I feel that I try to consider human issues.”

His education in New York put Hunt in contact with a number of important African-American artists such as Jacob Lawrence and Hale Woodruff. Woodruff, in particular, helped Hunt in his transition to the New York art world. Hunt, however, considers Picasso to be his major hero.

“I feel as though I’ve learned as much from folk artists as I have from school,” Hunt says, “but once you’ve had a little schooling, you can’t exactly call yourself a folk artist anymore.”

Hunt taught art and coached athletics for 30 years in Memphis City Schools and is now retired. He is pleased to have his artwork made into a stamp but even “at 37 cents a pop, I don’t think I’m going to be sending too many letters,” he says.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

We Recommend

Thursday, 25

Well, now. This column, for me anyway, is sort of the end of an era. It’s the last time I’ll be writing this part of the paper, in which I try to offer up recommendations about what to do around town each week, and it’s probably a good thing for everyone, since I have become such a hermit that I don’t actually go anywhere other than work, my nearby neighborhood bar, and my other nearby neighborhood bar. Bands start too late for me. I can’t get to anything outside Midtown because it involves driving over viaducts. And my bedtime is 10 p.m. Since 1989, I’ve written this column almost every week, except for the weeks when I’ve been just too tired and out of it to do it. Or when the thought of someone actually thinking of making plans based on what I might recommend scared me too much. Oh, I’ve found and promoted some fairly interesting people, places, and things and have taken great delight in helping give them exposure in order for them to be more successful. And I have been, more often than not, sincere about wanting to let readers know about these things, whether free drinks and other forms of payola were in it for me or not. I can think of a few standouts. If any of you ever paid attention to my ramblings and visited the Big S Lounge and tasted the late Mr. Hardaway’s barbecue and drank the coldest beer on the planet from little milk glasses and listened to the juke box there that has perhaps the country’s best collection of R&B music loaded into a machine, I feel honored that you took me up on the tip and just hope that you got to meet not only Mr. Hardaway but also everyone else who ever sat in that magical place. If you’ve ever ordered a martini and lit a cigarette upstairs in the “Heaven Room” at Cielo in Victorian Village while Di Anne Price wails torch songs from her seat at the baby grand piano, you might just have a good idea of what it’s like to be in, well, heaven. Ditto for Mr. James Govan at Rum Boogie Café. In looking back at my bound volume of the first 52 issues of the Flyer, it appears that the first “We Recommend” column appeared in the second issue, on February 23, 1989, as a simple listing of some of the things going on around town that week. Not sure when it turned into a venue for bashing the right wing on a weekly basis, but at that time it was pretty harmless, innocent, and naive. It mentioned blues legend Mose Vinson playing a gig at the Oak Court Mall. What was up with that? It also featured, and I quote, “the National Field Trial Championship, the country’s foremost championship for bird dog competition. An annual event since 1896, pointers run 35 miles a day, sniffing out quail while followed by judges on horseback.” I must have still been in AA when I wrote that! In that same issue, longtime FM 100 deejay Tom Prestigiacomo (whose name I can still spell off the top of my head), in his “Let ’Em Cake! Birthdays” column, wished a happy b’day to “actor Jim ‘Lovey, I think I left my diamond cuff links in the lagoon’ Backus, born in 1913.” In that same issue of the Flyer, yours truly seriously reviewed a few artsy video releases but loosened up in the following edition with a thumbs-up salute to John Waters’ classic film Polyester, stating that “Housewife and mother Francine Fishpaw (played larger than life by the late Divine) becomes a dismal alcoholic when her porno-theater-owner husband runs off with the secretary; her teenage daughter gets pregnant in between go-go dances and decides to turn Hari Krishna rather than have an abortion; and her glue-sniffing teenage son turns out to be the infamous Baltimore foot-stomper.” It was like being set free to really write anything I wanted to convey. In that same issue, the evolving “We Recommend” column mentioned catching a show by comedian Dennis Phillippi (who is still not one bit right) and the opening night of a production of No, No, Nanette at Germantown High School’s Poplar Pike Playhouse. I think at that point I had dropped out of AA. Or at least I would like to believe that was the case. And then at some point during that first year of the Flyer, I became a real smart-ass, or at least took on that persona. And, unfortunately for many of you, I’ll still be writing that kind of column and it will appear on the inside back page of the paper. Maybe not every week and certainly not forever but as often as possible (starting next week) and until I’m either in prison or a nursing home. So, without further ado, and for the last time, here’s a quick look at what’s going on around town this week. At the Brooks Museum tonight, there’s Girls’ Night Out at the Brooks, a closing reception for “Patrick Kelly: A Retrospective,” with cocktails, door prizes, and hair and makeup demonstrations by Pavo Salon. And Vicky Loveland is playing at tonight’s Sunset Atop the Madison series.

Friday, 26

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. There are some plays opening this weekend. Flip over to the “Theater” listings and you’ll find them! That’s what I always did, only I got them before you did! Art openings? Well, just check out the “Art Happenings” listing. They are all there. There are about a dozen or so and I — ha ha ha — don’t have to type them in! As for other fine entertainment, tonight’s Fresh Air Flicks Film Series movie is Make It Funky! and is showing outside on South Main next to Earnestine & Hazel’s. Yamagata is at the Beale Street Tap Room. The Gamble Brothers Band is at the Full Moon Club. And at the Blue Monkey Midtown, there’s a very special benefit tonight for the family of Holly Abbott, a dear, sweet Blue Monkey bartender who was killed a few weeks ago in a motorcycle accident. There will be live music by Los Cantadores, Susan Marshall, the Circus Bears, and other special guests. So come, donate, and support this event.

Saturday, 27

Tonight’s Hands on Memphis “Summer in the City” fund-raising party at The Orpheum features entertainment, a cocktail party, food, and a big silent auction of items including airline tickets, jewelry, artwork, hotel stays, and much more. Tonight’s Heartlight Gala at the Cannon Center to raise funds for Agape Child and Family Services features a live performance by Steven Curtis Chapman. Papa Top’s West Coast Turnaround is at the Buccaneer. And Drew Holcomb is at the Hi-Tone.

Sunday, 28

Di Anne Price & Her Boyfriends are at Huey’s Downtown this afternoon, followed tonight by the Soul Shockers. And Chip Googe and Dave Norris are at Café Ole.

Monday, 29

It’s the last Monday of the month, which means it’s time again for the Last Mondays in Studio A concert series at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. Tonight’s show is by Barbara Blue and her five-piece band. 7-9 p.m.

Tuesday, 30

Preston Shannon at B.B. King’s.

Wednesday, 31

Court Square Concert Series from 5 to 8 p.m. with The Dempseys. And now I really must go. It’s been a great 16 years, and I need a drink. BIG TIME. I’ll be back next week, but in a different life.

Categories
News The Fly-By

A Quickie with Joel Gulledge

United States economic sanctions against Iraq were lifted over a year ago, but a Chicago-based network of human rights activists is still feeling the blow.

Since 1996, the grassroots group Voices in the Wilderness (VITW) has sent over 70 delegations of activists to Iraq to deliver humanitarian aid to civilians. Deliveries were mostly medical supplies, such as catheter tubes, cancer medications, and over-the-counter drugs that were inaccessible to Iraqis due to the sanctions.

As their way of voicing opposition to the sanctions, VITW would notify the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) when they were planning a trip. The group received numerous warnings of possible consequences, but VITW continued with their mission anyway.

“We don’t believe that we need permission from our government to perform works of mercy,” says Ceylon Mooney, one of two Memphis residents involved in VITW. “The law says you can’t support human life because our government doesn’t support another country’s dictatorship. We don’t believe in that law.”

The group was eventually taken to court over a 1998 delegation that violated U.S. economic sanctions. Last Friday, U.S. federal judge John Bates ordered VITW to pay a $20,000 fine.

Part-time Memphian Joel Gulledge works with VITW’s Chicago office.

Flyer: How have you guys not been fined before this?Gulledge: We’ve had individuals fined before, but this fine is against Voices in the Wilderness.

What did you deliver to Iraq on that delegation?

They fined us $20,000 for delivering medical supplies and toys to civilians and children in Iraq.

How will VITW pay the fine?

We’re not going to.

What kind of punishment will VITW face?

They’ll probably freeze our bank account, which means as of now, we can no longer accept donations. And that’s how we exist. They’ll probably try to seize our assets. Legally, we don’t exist because we’re not a 501(c)3, but our lawyers have advised us to stop cashing checks. We’ve started returning them when they come in.

How will VITW continue its mission without funding?

Basically, what’s happening is VITW will come to a close as a name. We’ll continue to do the same kind of work and it will still be the same group of people, but we’ll have a new name.

Categories
Music Music Features

Suiting Herself

Shelby Lynne’s new album, Suit Yourself, is dotted with bits of studio banter – conversations and instructions caught on mic and spliced here and there, into and between the songs. It’s nowhere more noticeable than on “I Cry Everyday.” “Let’s get the claps in,” Lynne commands after the bridge, and sure enough, hands start clapping on the beat. As the song fades out, she orders, “Take out the claps,” and sure enough, they fade out and are gone. This curious technique is not just a behind-the-scenes glimpse of Lynne’s recording process. It’s also a strong reminder that she is producing this album herself, that she is calling the shots, that she is in control. She who giveth the handclaps taketh them away.

This small display of power is revealing: Lynne thrives when she has complete control over her output, from writing to arranging to recording. That was the hallmark of her 2000 album, I Am Shelby Lynne, which would have been called a comeback if more people had heard of her. Lynne had spent over a decade in Nashville, with five solid, if not exactly spectacular, albums to her name. Apparently tired of the Music Row rigmarole, she took the reins of her career and reinvented herself. Produced by Bill Bottrell, I Am Shelby Lynne sounds like someone going for broke: It’s full of laid-bare songs that updated Phil Spector’s wall-of-sound and Dusty Springfield’s soft-focus soul and recalled a time when rock-and-roll, R&B, and country were more or less synonymous – all in service to a woman who introduced herself to a new audience as unafraid and even willing to expose or embarrass herself.

I Am Shelby Lynne was a transformation of such Madonna magnitude that it was considered by many to be a debut album, and Lynne even won a Grammy for Best New Artist. It seemed genuinely odd, then, that for her hastily recorded 2001 follow-up, Love, Shelby, Lynne handed the reins over to professional hit-maker Glen Ballard, who had helped turn Wilson Phillips, Alanis Morissette, and the Corrs into stars. He not only produced Love, Shelby but also received co-writing credit on more than half of the tracks. The result was an album as slick and calculated as its predecessor was insistent and empowering; Ballard’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach made Lynne sound like all the country singers she’d been trying to show up.

Lynne regained her footing with the aptly titled Identity Crisis, which she produced and wrote on her own, but it’s Suit Yourself, her fourth album as the new Shelby Lynne and her ninth overall, that finally fulfills the promise of I Am Shelby Lynne. She gets sole writing credit on most of the songs, and her airy production gives her rough country songs a Brill Building polish while creating an airy sound that counterbalances her bravado vocals. Wanting a comfortable, live feel for the album, she corralled a backing band that includes drummer Bryan Owings, former Wallflower guitarist Michael Ward, and bassist/engineer Brian “Brain” Harrison, along with Benmont Tench and pedal steel player Robby Turner, whose guitar illuminates almost every track. But perhaps the most crucial presence here (besides, of course, Lynne herself) is Tony Joe White, who contributes two songs to the album: the chestnut “For Old Times Sake” and the closer, “Rainy Night in Georgia” (which Lynne renames “Track 12,” presumably because she can).

Even as Lynne oversees every aspect of the album, her songs make clear that life is uncontrollable and the future unseeable, an admission that makes Suit Yourself hardier and more conflicted than its predecessors. On “You Don’t Have a Heart,” she takes action and leaves an emotionally stunted lover. Conversely, on the Bush-bashing “You’re the Man,” she realizes she can’t take action against war, sprawl, or general corruption, even though she still presents her Southern liberalism as back-porch common sense.

But death looms larger than romance or politics on Suit Yourself, especially on tracks such as “Where Am I Now” and the lullaby “Sleep.” Even so, Lynne stalwartly tempers her fears of mortality with intimations of faith. “Turn the noise up, make it louder,” she sings on “I Won’t Die Alone,” “I can’t leave here as a coward/I won’t die alone.” She sounds alternately resigned and relieved at the thought of death, knowing that the brave-face lyrics are not a statement of fact but a hope that’s tentative at best. The song loses none of its impact for being so upbeat.

In an act of awkward sequencing, “I Won’t Die Alone” is followed by a trifle of a song (the less-than-a-minute “You and We”) before Lynne launches into the album’s best track, “Johnny Met June,” which was inspired by the death of Johnny Cash. (Lynne must feel particularly close to the couple: She plays June’s sister Carrie Carter in the upcoming biopic Walk the Line.) The two songs address two sides of the same enormous issue: If “I Won’t Die Alone” is about having people in life to send you off, then “Johnny Met June” is about having loved ones waiting for you when you finally get where you’re going. Shelby Lynne may not know where she’s going, but she’s definitely making her own way.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Aristocrats and Brothers Grimm

Ten minutes into a local promotional screening of The Aristocrats a few weeks ago there was nervous laughter echoing around the theater, quickly followed by squeals and gasps, and then a few walkouts.

Produced by comics Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette (the taller, talking half of Penn & Teller), The Aristocrats is essentially a document of more than 100 comedians of different types and levels of fame telling variations on the same joke. Jillette has said – warned, really – that the film contains no violence or nudity but does contain “unspeakable obscenity.” And if you think that’s an exaggeration, trust that it isn’t. I’ve seen people walk out of movies before – from boredom or outrage – but never in response to language.

The title of the film is also the title – and punchline – of the joke each comedian tells, an old vaudeville set-up about a family act being pitched to a talent agent. Between premise and punchline, the joke is a blank slate meant to be filled with the vilest content (scatological, transgressive, whatever) the teller can imagine. Because the content is too blue for most audiences, the joke is most often told backstage among comedians, a “secret handshake” between pros.

The argument being made by The Aristocrats is that the blank slate and the improvisation required to fill it make the joke akin to jazz. It’s a basic melody that anybody can riff on. Watching so many comedians spin their variations on the same set-up is, the film suggests, an ideal way to demonstrate the jazzlike virtuosity and individual expression of stand-up comedy.

The problem with this assertion is that most variations on the joke aren’t funny, just shocking. And the shock factor detracts from the ostensible point of the project: The audience is too taken aback by the what that’s being said to notice the how, to notice the personal nuance each comedian brings to the telling. The content obscures the artistry.

What The Aristocrats – the film and the titular joke itself – seems to really be about, though none of the film’s participants directly acknowledge it (George Carlin comes close), is overcoming the self-censorship impulse. It’s this negation of self-censorship that drives the best and most important stand-up comics, from Carlin to Richard Pryor to Chris Rock. The willingness to say anything at any time to anyone, to violate any verbal taboo, is often more important than the simple act of doing so. And this explains why “The Aristocrats” (the joke) is largely a backstage exchange. It’s the equivalent of a singer doing vocal exercises to keep his or her performances sharp.

Unless you’re into prurience or transgression for its own sake, the joke itself soon ceases to be interesting, but there are still variations and elements tangential to the premise that satisfy: Relatively unknown comic Wendy Liebman gently inverts the joke, while Kevin Pollak tells it in the form of a Christopher Walken impression. There’s the pure spectacle of the dirtiest language coming from the most unlikely sources: a very pregnant Judy Gold, the Smothers Brothers, or ostensibly wholesome Full House/America’s Funniest Home Videos star Bob Saget.

The discussion of the joke – its parameters and politics – is often more interesting than its telling: that there seem to be different rules for women comedians; that it isn’t quite the same shibboleth among black comics. (As Rock explains, black comedians never dreamed of mainstream success, so they just told their dirtiest stuff on stage.) And there’s a very funny discussion of alternative punchlines: The Sophisticates, The Royalty, The Republicans.

But other pleasures are more incidental. The Aristocrats offers an irresistible tour of a clubby comic subculture, one that admits not only stand-up practioners from the well-known to the unknown but also writers, magicians, jugglers, and mimes, the staff of The Onion and the animated cast of South Park. Where these participants are filmed is almost as interesting as why they care. Shot over the course of two years on consumer-quality video cameras, The Aristocrats documents these comics wherever they can be corralled: homes, offices, backstage dressing rooms, empty sets, cafes, even – in the case of Robin Williams – the beach.

There’s a fascinating documentary in here somewhere, but “The Aristocrats” gets in the way. The film is meant to be an exhibit of the musical notion “it’s the singer, not the song.” But in this case, the song too often obscures the singer.

– Chris Herrington

In following his doomed attempt to adapt Don Quixote to the big screen, the documentary Lost in La Mancha proved there may be no figure more quixotic than Terry Gilliam himself.

The Brothers Grimm, Gilliam’s latest feature, confirms him as a director who has lost control of an overeager imagination. The film features Matt Damon and Heath Ledger as brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, respectively, who make a business of eliminating monsters and ghosts at the behest of spooked villagers. Jacob truly believes in the folk tales, while Wilhelm sees them as a way to fleece the populace. The movie careens through the Brothers Grimm catalog, occasionally pulling out interesting visuals but failing to maintain any sense of coherency.

Part of the issue is Gilliam’s obsession with mise-en-scène. A look at Gilliam’s other films reveals that plot is often secondary to spectacle.

Gilliam got his start as a cartoonist for Monty Python, coming to define their zany style of animation. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which is either the best or worst film Gilliam has made so far, is similar to The Brothers Grimm – an over-the-top amalgamation of fairy tales and wondrous set pieces in which the narrative feels mostly like an excuse.

The Brothers Grimm, like many Gilliam films, is dedicated to protecting the imagination and resisting the specters of the Enlightenment. In this film, the theme takes the form of nationalist conflicts between the rational French and the superstitious Germans. The film begins by acknowledging the danger of this conflict. A young Jacob is sent to get medicine for his sister. Instead, he returns with magic beans and his sister perishes, a mistake the older Wilhelm will never forget.

Gilliam does not seem interested, however, in heeding his own warning. The film is keen on presenting a series of fascinating and refreshingly dark snippets from the Grimm catalog. The film does have some memorable moments, such as when a demon horse swallows a young child whole. The enchanted forest is wonderfully done, with trees that creep and shift.

Yet the film also has major continuity errors, which are jarring to the viewer. At one point a young girl is kidnapped by the evil forces in the woods, then is somehow present in the village the next day, when she is kidnapped a second time.

The three main characters, the brothers Grimm and their shared love interest, a sexy German woods-woman played by Lena Headey, are all interesting and well played. The supporting cast, however, which includes an Italian torture expert and a stuffy French general, never really find their place in the story. The malevolent Italian, Cavaldi, is especially frustrating, spewing stilted jokes and whining, as I imagine Gilliam would, for a chance to play with his exquisitely intricate torture machines.

The film, while dark, might appeal to children. Gilliam’s flights of fancy have always had a childish bent, and the plot difficulties that bother an adult probably wouldn’t distract a younger viewer from the eye-candy. It is frustrating to see this film, knowing that if Gilliam could only rein himself in he might be able to make a work that is simultaneously imaginative and dense but also coherent. – Ben Popper

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Pick a Winner

The 22nd Annual Ostrander Awards, named after Memphis’ favorite actor, the late Jim Ostrander, will be held at Memphis Botanic Garden’s Hardin Hall on Monday, August 29th. With 13 nominations, Circuit Playhouse’s production of A Man of No Importance, a bittersweet musical about a gay bus driver in brawling Dublin, leads the pack. But was it the best? Hardly! For this year’s critic’s picks, read on …

With its narrow swath of blue sky, Bruce Bergner’s expressionistic design for Of Mice and Men at Playhouse on the Square put the audience into the off-kilter world of John Steinbeck’s Great Depression. It was not only the best set of the year but one of the best on-stage environments Memphis has ever seen, and it will easily trump designs for Germantown Community Theatre’s Diary of Anne Frank, as well as Theatre Memphis’ productions of Dracula and Enchanted April.

There are only three nominees for choreography: Amy Hanford for the Harrell Theatre’s Oliver, Courtney Oliver and Lindsey Roberts for Playhouse’s Man of La Mancha, and Jay Rapp for Playhouse’s Beauty & the Beast. Oliver and Roberts do fine work, but when Rapp’s choreographing your show, you don’t need to hire a director. Rapp will win.

It’s immensely frustrating that Megan Bowers didn’t get a supporting actress/musical nomination for her stunning, backwoods turn in Floyd Collins and even more frustrating that she did get tapped for much easier and more obvious work in Beauty & the Beast. It’s not likely she’ll win, however, given Christina Wellford Scott’s brilliantly grumpy performance in A Man of No Importance and Anita Jo Lenhart’s pitch-perfect turn as the countess in A Little Night Music. I’m calling this one for Scott, but Lenhart would be equally deserving.

For Best Supporting Actor in a Musical there’s no choice. Although Jonathan Russom was outstandingly depressed in A Little Night Music, Evan Linder took on a much beefier role in Floyd Collins, and he’ll take home the prize.

Angela Groeschen’s trampy turn in Man of La Mancha could win the Ostrander for Best Leading Actress in a Musical, easily trouncing her own performance in Beauty & the Beast. Crystin Gilmore shook the rafters in It Ain’t Nothing but the Blues, and Ann Sharp was divine as the aging actress in A Little Night Music, but neither could hold a candle to Groeschen’s fiery take on Adonza the whore.

For leading Actor in a musical there are only two real choices: Michael Ingersoll as the unlucky caver in Floyd Collins or Dave Landis in A Man of No Importance. Although Innersole had a tougher assignment, I’m calling this one for Landis.

The award for Best Direction of a Musical should go to Mark Steven Robinson for A Little Night Music, but, as Floyd Collins was ruined by a horrible set, and Man of La Mancha didn’t take off until the second act, Scott Ferguson will win for Beauty & the Beast. What Beauty & the Beast lacked in depth, it more than made up for in detail, and it should triumph over Floyd Collins and Man of La Mancha to win Best Production of a Musical.

Best Supporting Actress and Actor in a Drama? Laurie Cook McIntosh was nothing short of stunning in Playhouse’s Book of Days. It’s a shame nobody but the theater judges and critics saw that amazing show. There’s certainly no justice in the world if Jeff Godsey doesn’t win best supporting actor for his chilling turn in Book of Days. Although Ron Gordon (Looking for Normal), Jack Kendall (The Girls in 509), and Dave Landis (Of Mice and Men) are all capable of excellent work, Godsey schooled them all with his work in one of Langford Wilson’s finest dramas.

Leading Actress in a Drama is a tough category to call, because it’s the one category where this critic missed the majority of nominated performances. I’d put my money on Christina Wellford Scott (Theatre Memphis’ Master Class), if only because it’s a one-woman show – and a hard one at that.

Picking the winner for Leading Actor in a Drama is much easier: George Dudley for his turn as the not-so-gentle giant in Of Mice and Men.

This is the year of Of Mice and Men, a sterling example of everything theater can and should be: a feast for the eyes, ears, mind, soul, and heart. It would be an insult to the art and craft of live performance if Drew Fracher doesn’t win Best Director, and if Of Mice and Men isn’t awarded top honors for excellence in a dramatic production.

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

For years, Charlie Wood has been one of the jewels of Beale Street, his ongoing residency at King’s Palace Café providing one of the most consistent and perhaps the most distinctive live musical experiences to be had on the famous strip.

People think of the blues and of Beale as being guitar-driven, but Wood is a piano man – or organ man, to be more specific. His accomplished, witty playing is rooted in jazz and blues but with echoes of rock, pop, and even gospel. As a singer and lyricist, he has a light, cerebral touch. The result is regional roots music that traces its origins less to a Mississippi bluesman like Muddy Waters than to a more urbane showman such as Arkansas’ Louis Jordan.

With drummer Renardo Ward and guitarist Gerard Harris completing his trio, Wood provides sharp, snappy good-time music that stimulates the body and the brain. You can see it live most nights at King’s Palace, and you can also hear it on his new album, Somethin’ Else, which opens with a dizzy burst of solo piano and unfolds into a series of stylistically varied takes on Woods’ jazz/blues template. On “Memphis,” an autobiographical ode to his Bluff City base, Wood opens with “I heard a gray-haired old musician say/That on the vaudeville circuit back in his day/They said the two worst nights you could ever play/Were Sunday night and Memphis” and goes on for five more minutes of funny-because-it’s-true observations on his hometown and his place in it. “Memphis” is the highlight of Somethin’ Else but only the beginning of its treats.

Wood celebrates the release of Somethin’ Else Wednesday, August 31st, at King’s Palace. Doors open at 6 p.m.; music starts at 7 p.m. – Chris Herrington

In the late 1970s, Dwight Yoakam strapped a guitar on his back and left his old Kentucky home for the underground music scene of Los Angeles. When the lanky picker got to California, he fell in with the punk crowd and often played with the Blasters, Phil and Dave Alvin’s revered rockabilly train wreck. That association most likely accounts for Yoakam’s frayed vintage aesthetic and his ability to take traditional honky-tonk sounds and make them fresh and furious. His latest release, Blame the Vain, proves he’s aged like good whiskey. The album – in spite of its odd bits of spoken word – is souped-up Bakersfield country in the spirit of Wynn Stewart, Merle Haggard, and Yoakam’s professed hero, Buck Owens. Catch him at Sam’s Town on Saturday, August 27th.

Vending Machine and Augustine? Now that’s a show, my friends. Vending Machine’s Robby Grant writes intensely quirky songs packed with images from a 6-year-old’s daydreams. Augustine’s stately reinvention of Brit-pop should mix with Grant’s singular sound like a chocolate guitar slathered in peanut butter. Not so long ago, I went out on a limb suggesting that Augustine might be the best band in town, and for now I’m sticking by that claim. See them at the Young Avenue Deli on Saturday, August 27th at 9 p.m. – Chris Davis

I have an anger-management problem, but I don’t punch holes in walls or yell at people over petty grievances. My problem is that I can’t get angry, no matter what happens to me. I’m too nice and too forgiving. That’s why I like hardcore. Bands like the So-Cal punk-metal outfit The Warriors get me all riled up in a way that no one person can. Their music starts with a soft little drumbeat and then suddenly a heavy guitar chimes in and the lead singer screams “ARGHHHHHHHHHH!” I’m sure he’s saying something, but I don’t know what and it really doesn’t matter. It’s that raw energy that gets me going.

A lot of hardcore bands sound the same, I will admit, with many vocalists singing like they’re constipated and trying to channel Satan. But the Warriors are different. Their vocalist screams like a girl. Think Kittie, only with a less manufactured sound. At first, his prissy attempt at sounding tough annoyed me, but the more I listened, the more I related. After all, I am female, so why should a girly scream annoy me? I just began pretending he was a girl.

That may not be so easy live. But check it out for yourself at the Complex as the Warriors join Summer’s End, Set Your Goals, Cut the Tension, and Donculis on Friday, August 26th.

– Bianca Phillips

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Harold Ford Jr. for Senate?

Current opinion polls suggest that the Republican Party may be in trouble going into the 2006 mid-term elections, largely as a result of the public’s increasingly acute perception that the administration’s Iraq war follies are, well, just that. But the numbers also show that the Democratic Party is getting virtually no benefit from the fact that President Bush’s approval rating is sinking like a stone.

Why are we not surprised? Since 2002, when then-leaders Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt lined up a majority of their colleagues to join with Republicans in giving Bush war-making powers in Iraq, the Democratic Party has been badly split between those who continue to “go along to get along” and those who believe that forthright opposition to the Bush administration’s illegal and immoral Iraq war is not just the party’s only ethical alternative but its only long-term path to electoral success.

Democratic Party pragmatists have managed to hold the upper hand, but indications are that reality is finally catching up with them. Two crushing national election defeats have proven the eternal wisdom of Harry Truman’s observation that “When voters are given a choice between voting for a Republican or a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they’ll vote for the Republican every time.”

Now the public is restless. The negativity extends directly to every member of Congress, Republican and Democrat, who lacked either the intestinal fortitude or the common sense to stand up to this administration’s mad rush toward war.

Here in Tennessee, Democratic candidate for senator Harold Ford Jr. not only supported the Iraq War Powers Act, he was one of the co-sponsors! To his credit, Ford has stuck to his guns. (“I support this war in Iraq,” he reiterated last week. “I supported it from the beginning for one reason: Saddam Hussein was a bad guy.”) And since that 2002 vote, Ford has continued to ignore Truman’s dictum. He has been the very model of a “Democrat who acts like a Republican” by supporting the Terry Schiavo bill, by failing to show up to vote against this year’s heinous budget, and by voting for the administration’s corporate-friendly bankruptcy and energy bills.

Cynics suggest that Ford is simply trying to strike the kind of “moderate” pose that enhances his chances in Republican East Tennessee. The facts suggest otherwise. Indeed, the vehemence with which Congressman Ford defended the administration last Friday (“I love my president. I love him personally,” the congressman avowed) inclines us to suggest that Ford take President Truman’s advice to its logical conclusion:

Congressman Ford, we suggest you immediately declare your candidacy for the Republican nomination for the Senate. Your words, your political contributors, and your votes make it clear that’s where you belong. As the Republican nominee, you would become the favorite to be Tennessee’s next senator. And you could go before the voters as what you are: a centrist who believes in the war in Iraq and who favors the budgetary, economic, and environmental policies of the Bush administration.

Best of all, your move to the Republican Party would clear the air in state politics. In 2006, the voters of Tennessee might be given a real choice at the polls: between a Republican candidate who stands on his record and for the status quo and a real Democratic candidate who might have the political courage to articulate a viable alternative to the mess in which we presently find ourselves at home and abroad.

Let’s make Harry Truman proud and give Tennessee voters a real choice.