Month: July 2008

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Chronicle of a Summer

Back in the days when I was a teenager

Before I had status and before I had a pager

You could find the Abstract listenin’ to hip-hop

My pops used to say it reminded him of bebop.

— “Excursions,” A Tribe Called Quest

It’s the summer of 1994. New York City private-school teenager and pot dealer Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) has a pager, all right, but he sure doesn’t have any status. He doesn’t have any friends, either — his only confidant is his psychiatrist and client, Dr. Jeff Squires (Ben Kingsley). Luke is cute and intelligent, but his thoughtfulness often looks and sounds like stoned slowness. He’s never had a girlfriend, although something may be brewing with Dr. Squires’ stepdaughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby).

Like a lot of urban-suburban white kids, Luke is more lonesome than depressed, and he combats his loneliness by immersing himself in hip-hop — the great 1990s hip-hop of the Native Tongues movement, Biggie Smalls, and the Wu-Tang Clan. Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness is much more than a pitch-perfect time capsule; it’s a coming-of-age story that’s preternaturally wise about music, sex, and teenagers.

Initially, Luke’s road to maturity and wisdom is hard to follow because Dr. Squires is such a strange, shifting guide, one who’s barely beyond adolescence in his own emotional development. Plus, Luke and Squires’ path is heavily strewn with 1990s signposts and gestures: Writing phone numbers on paper (rather than punching them into cell phones), grumbling about douche-bag mayor Rudy Giuliani, snorting Ritalin, and walking past Kurt Cobain memorials, Forrest Gump posters, Mary-Kate Olsen (only here she’s all grown up), and the World Trade Center are all part of Levine’s pop-cultural diorama.

These references aren’t held up for ridicule or cheap sentiment; they perform the same necessary function as the cigarette-smoking and three-martini lunches do in the terrific TV series Mad Men. They capture the mystery and fragility of the recent past.

The use of music throughout The Wackness — songs like Nas’ “The World Is Yours,” Raekwon’s “Heaven and Hell”, the Notorious B.I.G.’s “The What,” and, best of all, a Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It” — is also enlightening rather than nostalgic. What’s most amazing about these superbly chosen hip-hop tracks is the now-unmistakable air of tragedy and loss they all share. In a beautiful shift and stretch, though, the film’s romantic pinnacle turns on a visual cue to an ’80s song: After his first kiss, the concrete blocks under Luke’s feet light up à la Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video.

But as great as his musical allusions are, Levine’s handling of adolescent sex, shown through scenes that are tender and erotic without tumbling into exploitive jailbait fantasies, is even better. Stephanie is compassionate and understanding about the mechanics and (male) malfunctions of sex, but she’s not at all willing to deal with the messier emotional aftershocks. Her response to Luke’s declaration of love is a sudden, harsh “Whoa, dude.” It’s a tribute to The Wackness that Stephanie’s response is not portrayed as a condemnation of teenage girls. Like so much in this movie, it turns out to be strangely sweet and right.

The Wackness

Opening Friday, August 1st

Multiple locations

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

The Coming Dawn

Are you on Team Edward or Team Jacob? If you know this reference, then surely you have your calendar marked, your watch set, the car gassed up, and money in hand to purchase Breaking Dawn, being released at midnight on Saturday, August 2nd.

The much-anticipated Breaking Dawn is the fourth in the “Twilight” youth-novel series written by Mormon mom Stephenie Meyer. The dream-inspired saga follows Isabella “Bella” Swan, a teen who falls for Edward, a mind-reading vampire. Also on her romance radar is the brotherly werewolf Jacob. The first chapter of Breaking Dawn was released to Entertainment Weekly in May and reveals that Bella has a new car, a strange credit card in her pocket, and news that she is engaged.

Could Meyer be the new J.K. Rowling? The first book, Twilight, is being made into a movie, and excitement about the release of Breaking Dawn (countdown clocks included) couldn’t be higher. There will be Breaking Dawn concerts in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Seattle. In Memphis, there will be two release parties. At 9 p.m. on Friday at David-Kidd, it’s pizza and a “Twilight” talk, before the 10 p.m. main event, which includes a fashion show and giveaway of an autographed copy of Meyer’s The Host and an iPod mini engraved with a quote from one of the books. On Friday at 10 p.m., Bookstar in Poplar Plaza is inviting fans to put on their best Bella or Jacob or Edward or whatever for a costume contest. There will also be activities, crafts, giveaways, and more.

“Breaking Dawn” Release Parties: 9 p.m. at Davis-Kidd Booksellers, 387 N. Perkins ext. (683-9801), and 10 p.m. at Bookstar, 3402 Poplar
(323-9332)

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

A Post-Racial Election?

To the dissatisfaction of both major candidates in the 9th District congressional race, incumbent Steve Cohen and challenger Nikki Tinker, Shelby County mayor A C Wharton has made a public profession of neutrality in their race. “My friends are divided on the issue,” Wharton said. “I don’t want to get in the middle of that.”

Cohen, who had nursed the greater hope for an endorsement, could take some solace, however, from other remarks by Wharton, who had just returned from Germany, where enthusiasm had been brimming over for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

A clearly impressed Wharton had this to say: “With Barack Obama, we have entered upon a post-racial world and a post-racial politics.” Going on, he expressly concurred with a conclusion of that kind offered by Cohen during the first-term congressman’s recent televised debate with Democratic primary opponents Tinker and Joe Towns.

“He’s entitled to say that,” ventured the mayor about Cohen’s debate remarks, which had likened Wharton’s own two mayoral victories, Obama’s success in this year’s Democratic presidential-primary race, and the congressional win in 2006 by Cohen himself.

Should Cohen prevail, he faces a renewed challenge from Jake Ford, running again as an independent, though apparently without the support, tacit or otherwise, of two illustrious kinsmen — father Harold Ford Sr. and brother Harold Ford Jr. Both served as congressmen from the district and both made a point of repudiating some racially charged rhetoric by Jake Ford on filing day. They went further, making statements seemingly distancing themselves from his candidacy.

Harold Ford Jr. represented the district for 10 years before becoming a national cynosure in the 2006 U.S. Senate race, which he narrowly lost to Republican Bob Corker. Though some Democrats, locally as well as nationally, thought the charismatic congressman had moved overmuch into the political center and perhaps even beyond, the mainstream media as a whole tended to regard Ford as symptomatic of a new, edge-free breed of black politician.

It was no huge surprise that a still politically ambitious Ford, now head of the moderate-to-conservative Democratic Leadership Council, should have characterized his brother’s racial invective as an “insult.” Equally meaningful was Harold Ford Sr.’s categorical statement that Jake Ford “does not speak for me.”

The senior former congressman is now a wealthy lobbyist living in semi-retirement in Florida but, in his political prime, was a bona fide living legend.

Not only had he become, in 1974, the first elected black congressman from Tennessee, but he went on to reign as the ultimate inner-city power broker, putting out a sample ballot at election time that influenced the fate of statewide elections as well as local ones. A likely bid for power at the congressional leadership level was stymied by a long-running federal indictment for bank fraud from which Ford emerged triumphant and vindicated in 1993, acquitted by a virtually all-white jury.

The senior congressman Ford could himself lapse into inflammatory rhetoric. Even after his deliverance at the hands of the rustic West Tennessee whites who had made up his jury, Ford could lash out at the “East Memphis devils” who unsuccessfully opposed his next reelection — the final one before passing the congressional baton to his namesake first son.

But Ford Sr.’s power had always been based as much on keeping governmental channels open for influential whites in the larger community as on keeping the faith with his black constituents. His very legal predicament had stemmed from a long-term association with C.J. and Jake Butcher, the white East Tennessee bankers whose financial collapse and prosecution by the government had muddied Ford’s own waters.

Tinker, who was the largely nominal campaign manager for Harold Ford Jr. in at least one of his uncontested election victories, no doubt hopes for some substantial intervention by the Fords on her behalf. And, in fact, one of the intriguing revelations of the second quarter’s financial disclosures was that Harold Ford Jr.’s wife had maxed out her contributions on Tinker’s behalf.

But the fact of the matter is that 9th District politics, like the Fords themselves, may have moved on to that post-racial world Wharton spoke of. Early voting totals in inner-city precincts have not thus far suggested anything like the saturation-style, directed voting of the past — perhaps because, in that part of the 9th District, as elsewhere, race may no longer be the single determinant factor it once was.

See also ”A Sleeper Election?” and ”The Fine Print”.

Senior editor Jackson Baker is the Flyer‘s political columnist.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

NCAA Will Investigate U of M Over Booster’s Phone Call

A phone call to prized basketball recruit Abdul Gaddy’s mother by FedEx president and CEO David Bronczek has triggered an investigation by the NCAA, according to FoxSports.com.

Oseye Gaddy, Abdul’s mother, works for FedEx in Tacoma, Washington. She received a call from Bronczek in which she said her boss told her about the FedExForum and said positive things about Tigers coach John Calipari.

Read Jeff Goodman’s article on FoxSports.com.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Fine Print

As if political and governmental matters in Shelby County weren’t confusing enough, voters on August 7th will be asked to approve two ordinances, each of which has generated some controversy.

The more troublesome one is Ordinance 360, made necessary by the state Supreme Court overturning the means by which several Knox County officials were elected. The same decision invalidated the constitutional status of five similarly provisioned Shelby County offices — those of sheriff, trustee, assessor, register, and county clerk — and made it necessary for the offices to be redefined by the county charter.

After much wrangling, the Shelby County Commission managed to reestablish the five offices on terms close to their previously presumed status under the state constitution.

But there’s a major obstacle to passage of Ordinance 360, one that divided the County Commission during deliberations and has generated some opposition in the community at large. This is a provision establishing a limit of three four-year terms, not only for the five newly defined officials but for the county mayor and members of the commission as well.

The problem is that a prior referendum to establish two four-year terms as the limit for mayor and commissioners was overwhelmingly approved by Shelby County voters in 1994 and was the primary factor in a virtual overhaul of the commission’s membership in the 2006 general election. Even though current mayor A C Wharton and all sitting commissioners are constrained by the two-term provision, the proposed re-do of term limits is bound to be a chancy matter.

And if it should be rejected, the five former constitutional offices will still have to be redefined by a new ordinance hastily put together by the commission for the November ballot. That one almost certainly would restore the two-term limit.

Ordinance 361, which addresses a variety of largely administrative matters, has occasioned less fuss, though a lengthy argument on the commission greeted one of its provisions that would establish 15 percent of registered voters as the perquisite number of signers to force a recall election.

A last-ditch resistance to the provision was led by commissioners Sidney Chism and Henri Brooks and may have resulted from some effective lobbying by Circuit Court judge D’Army Bailey, who had once, as a city councilman in Berkeley, California, been the subject of a politically motivated recall. But Ordinance 361 ended up intact.

See also ”A Sleeper Election?” and ”A Post-Racial Election?”.

Categories
Hot Properties Real Estate

Recession Special

All right, you renters who assume you will never own a home, here’s your chance, so don’t blow it. This is a solid brick and stucco bungalow in a well-maintained Midtown neighborhood. And it’s priced right!

Glenview is an early suburb developed just after the parkway system was laid out in 1904. The majority of houses in this historic district were built between 1910 and 1940. This one is prominently sited atop a high corner lot only two blocks from Glenview Park, which has a new community center and an active recreational program. The neighborhood lies just south of Cooper-Young at the intersection of Lamar and McLean.

This bungalow has the deep roof overhang typical of Craftsman bungalows. The inset front porch has massive stone columns, a broken terra-cotta tile floor, and a handrail of cut limestone. Out back is a detached two-car garage with a wide dormer filled with high windows that fill the interior with light.

Holly, abelia, forsythia, and snowball viburnums are used as foundation plantings. The shady rear yard is home to hydrangeas and hostas. The hill west of the house is filled in the spring with grape hyacinths. There are so many of these that they must have been planted soon after the house was built and have been multiplying for the last 90 years.

A large living room, dining room, and den run down the west side. The floors are a light-colored, narrow oak. The plaster ceilings are in good shape and nine feet high. The original black-gum trim and doors are unpainted in the main public rooms and a treat to behold.

Along the east side are two bedrooms, a newly renovated bath, and the kitchen/mudroom/back entry. The new bath has small, white ceramic tiles and a deep soaking tub with rain head shower. The large pedestal sink is flanked by sconces for efficient lighting. An unnecessary second door from the bathroom to the kitchen was wisely closed during the construction.

The kitchen renovation is in progress. The nasty job of peeling up the layers of linoleum and removing the glue has been done. The old heart-pine floor gleams anew. There is a great wall of original cabinets with glass doors on the top cupboards. The run of cabinets with sink is a bit dowdy but could easily be replaced.

The kitchen is wide enough for the new owner to consider installing a large island and relocate the sink. There is neither a stove nor a refrigerator, but the gas pipe and water outlets are in place. How hard is that?

Upstairs in a rear “airplane” (a partial second story frequently found on bungalows) are two more bedrooms with lots of windows and a large attic. The house has its original radiators and has been updated with window air conditioners. A brand-new roof was installed in the fall of 2007, and all the older roofs were stripped off and the decking repaired. Now, those are all the salient details but one: There’s an assumable FHA mortgage that, including principal, interest, taxes, and insurance, comes to $805 a month, if you qualify. Need I say more?

1726 Kendale Avenue

Approximately 2,300 square feet

4 bedrooms, 1 bath; $89,000

Realtor: Crye-Leike, 276-8800

Agent: Elaine Muhammad,

949-2391

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Brideshead Revisited revisited — with diminishing returns.

Following both Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel and a much-loved, 12-hour 1980s British TV miniseries starring Jeremy Irons, the new film adaptation of Brideshead Revisited has a lot to live up to. And this mid-grade Merchant-Ivory from a team of young British filmmakers and writers — director Julian Jarroid (Becoming Jane) and screenwriters Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones’ Diary) and Jeremy Brock (The Last King of Scotland) — feels condensed even if you haven’t seen or read its source material.

A period drama that takes place (mostly in England, but with fruitful excursions to Venice and Morocco) between the world wars, Brideshead Revisited is similar to Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers: an emotional triangle among a brother, a sister, and a fascinated outsider, which plays out against a period of social upheaval.

The protagonist is Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode), an aspiring painter of modest means who goes to Oxford and is befriended by aristocratic fop, Sebastian (Ben Whishaw), who first draws his intrigued new find into his rarefied campus social circle and then whisks him off to Brideshead, an opulent ancestral home (the film uses the same location as the 1980s series) littered with priceless art that entrances Charles.

This holiday tryst of sorts — not quite platonic, not quite sexual — is the strongest portion of the film, but the boys-of-summer idyll is interrupted when Sebastian’s family arrives, most notably his sister Julia (Hayley Atwell), who vies for Charles’ affections, and his domineering, devout mother, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson).

Brideshead Revisited‘s lavish art direction is always worth gazing at, and Thompson and Michael Gambon (as the clan’s estranged patriarch) add some needed gravitas to a film whose young leads are pretty low-wattage. But the film’s themes — class and religious boundaries, the decline of the aristocracy — are not well developed.

The film’s ending suggests Charles is an opportunist manipulating the family to worm his way into their world, but all the evidence portrays Charles as lost and confused. And whether it’s the actress or the script, Atwell doesn’t have the heft to make the film’s doomed romance matter much.

By the end, you’re supposed to feel some sense of loss, not just for the characters but for a way of life. I felt nothing but moderately intrigued by the bare bones of something that could have been a lot better. This decent adaptation is just good enough to serve as something of a two-hour advertisement for the novel and miniseries, both of which presumably make much more out of a promising story.

Brideshead Revisited

Opening Friday, August 1st

Ridgeway Four

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Villains …

We are pretty hardened by now to the likelihood of ignominious, unconstitutional, and illegal deeds on the part of the Bush administration, but even we were astonished by this week’s revelations of the partisan litmus tests imposed on would-be Justice Department officials, including

prospective U.S. attorneys, by Monica Goodling, the former White House liaison with the department.

For starters, there were such questions as “What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?” and “Why are you a Republican?” Better questions: “What is it about this that makes us want to barf?” And, for that matter, “Why isn’t Goodling, who admitted to breaking the law, in jail?”

Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more graphic example than this misprision of justice as to just why Bush and his favored operatives (conscientious cabinet officers like Paul O’Neill, Colin Powell, or Christine Todd Whitman were ritually ignored or muzzled or cast aside) should be subject to legal penalties themselves. The only plausible reason for not pursuing impeachment or prosecution is the same as that for staying clear of a wounded cobra. Why waste the time, when it’s an election year and the poisonous thing will soon enough pass away of itself?

Perhaps it’s more useful to make this administration’s misdeeds an object lesson for the 2008 presidential race and meanwhile to quarantine its residual venom as far from the realm of public affairs as is humanly and constitutionally possible.

… and Fools

If the doings of the national Republican administration savor of the sinister, those of the state GOP run more to comic relief. Consider the case of Bill Hobbs, the Tennessee Republican Party’s communications director (a job description which is more than a little oxymoronic).

Hobbs’ idea of media relations is to pick gratuitous fights with publications across the state (we ourselves have been so favored), and his way of representing the Republican Party itself is to make it look as bigoted and uninformed as possible. (His erroneous description of “Muslim garb” worn by Barack Obama on a visit to Kenya, coupled with his ostentatious use of the candidate’s middle name of “Hussein,” earned Hobbs an official dressing-down from both of the state’s Republican senators.)

But now Hobbs has outdone himself. Faced with the task of how to handle the state GOP’s annual Statesmen’s Dinner, an occasion for handing out awards and generating good P.R. among the state’s mainstream media, Hobbs came up with a precedent — to ban the media from covering what he decided to call a “closed” fund-raiser! That meant an embargo on publicity for such luminaries as Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, this year’s crop of Republican candidates, and the event’s main speaker, former presidential adviser Karl Rove (who may, some suspect, have forced Hobbs’ hand).

As if puzzled as to why the usually compliant MSM subsequently ignored the annual gala and his post-dinner press releases about it, Hobbs has now gone so far and been so breathtakingly kind as to offer around videos of the affair. We won’t bother to explain to him what’s wrong with all this; wiser heads in his own party surely will.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Angel Jazz

Memphis is already a famously musical town, but it’s about to get a little more harmonious. And maybe even a little funkier. On Friday, August 1st, the Contemporary A Capella League brings the 2008 Vocal Symposium for a capella singing groups to downtown Memphis. The unique symposium features a variety of master classes and panel discussions and climaxes on Saturday night with a concert at the Orpheum by the influential sextet Take 6 (pictured).

In addition to recording their own material, Take 6 has worked with artists ranging from Ray Charles to Don Henley. Their jazz, pop, and gospel recordings have earned numerous Grammy and Dove awards. Take 6 will be joined on stage by DeltaCapella, Memphis’ tight, all-male a capella ensemble.

The Contemporary A Cappella League was formed in 2007 as a resource for a capella groups across the country. Every year, thousands of students who’ve participated in college vocal groups graduate, and most of them never perform with a group again. The CAL’s mission is to create opportunities for people who want to keep on ooh-ing, ah-ing, and bop-shoo-bopping.

Members of Take 6 are scheduled to conduct a master class at 2:30 p.m. prior to their concert.

Passes to the symposium are $125 for members and $150 for nonmembers. Tickets for the Take 6 performance range in price from $10 to $40 and are on sale to the public through TicketMaster.

Additional information regarding the 2008 Vocal Symposium is available at vocalsymposium.com.

2008 Vocal Symposium, various locations, August 1st-3rd; Take 6 and Deltacapella at the orpheum Saturday, August 2nd, 7:30 p.m.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Vote on Slavery Apology Continues to Attract Attention; Senate Action Possible?

Will the U.S. Senate follow up Tuesday’s action by the House of Representatives
and consider its own resolution apologizing for slavery and the Jim Crow
segregationist past? The Washington Post cites 9th District
congressman Steve Cohen, author of the House resolution, as saying that Iowa
senator Tom Harkin is the likely sponsor of a companion resolution.

Since the passage of the
House resolution by acclamation on Tuesday, the apology-for-slavery issue has
attracted considerable attention, both nationally and internationally. The
Post article, titled “House Issues Apology for Slavery,” was one of 333
articles listed by Google, as of midnight Wednesday, that pertain directly to
this week’s action on the resolution.

As the
Post noted, the House vote was but the latest in a series of such remedial
actions adopted by Congress. “In February, the Senate apologized for atrocities
committed against Native Americans, and the body apologized in 2005 for standing
by during a lynching campaign against African Americans throughout much of the
past century. Twenty years ago, Congress apologized for interning Japanese
Americans in concentration camps during World War II.”

The
resolution had 120 co-sponsors in the House, including Reps. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y..)
and Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (D-Ohio), the only two members of the Congressional
Black Caucus who have lent their names to the campaign of Cohen’s Democratic primary opponent, Nikki
Tinker. House Judiciary chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), and civil rights
legend. John Lewis (D-Ga.), both of whom have endorsed Cohen for reelection,
were among the original co-sponsors of the House resolution.

Typical of responses to the resolution was this one from the Rev. Jim Wallis of the Sojourners movement:

Thursday, July 31, 2008


Slavery Apology–One Step Forward (by Jim Wallis)

I’m still “down under” — wrapping up my book tour in Australia. The news
from the U.S. reminds me of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s first act on the day
after his swearing in as prime minister. In a moving speech,

he delivered a speech of apology to the aboriginal people.

Tuesday,
for the first time, the U.S. House of Representatives

passed an official apology for slavery and segregation. Over the past
few years, five southern states have apologized, but efforts in Congress had
failed.

Congress has issued apologies before, to Japanese-Americans for their
internment during World War II and to native Hawaiians for the overthrow of
the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893. In 2005, the Senate apologized for failing to
pass anti-lynching laws. But never for slavery.

It is appropriate, because ultimately it was government policies that
were both complicit in and directly responsible for this great inhumanity
and injustice. Nobody alive in America today participated in slavery, many
have no ancestors who did, and large numbers of families came to this land
only after slavery was officially abolished — but all white Americans have
benefited from the poisonous legacy of slavery and discrimination.


The language of the resolution is clear on the importance of apologizing
as a step forward. After recounting the evil of slavery, it concludes:

Whereas a genuine apology is an important and necessary first step in
the process of racial reconciliation;

Whereas an apology for centuries of brutal dehumanization and
injustices cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs committed
can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help Americans confront
the ghosts of their past;

Whereas it is important for this country, which legally recognized
slavery through its Constitution and its laws, to make a formal apology
for slavery and for its successor, Jim Crow, so that it can move forward
and seek reconciliation, justice, and harmony for all of its citizens:
Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) acknowledges that slavery is incompatible with the basic founding
principles recognized in the Declaration of Independence that all men
are created equal;

(2) acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and
inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow;

(3) apologizes to African Americans on behalf of the people of the
United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors
who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow; and

(4) expresses its commitment to rectify the lingering consequences of
the misdeeds committed against African Americans under slavery and Jim
Crow and to stop the occurrence of human rights violations in the
future.

I hope the Senate will quickly pass a parallel resolution and that
President Bush will publicly endorse it. It would be an important day in
U.S. history.