Month: October 2009

Categories
Opinion

Memphis Goes National

In a Monday editorial titled “Sucker Punch,” The Washington
Post said the Herenton-Cohen 2010 congressional race “gets ugly”
and Willie Herenton is “jumping into the gutter with low-road tactics
that divide rather than enlighten.”

The editorial took Shelby County commissioner and Herenton supporter
Sidney Chism to task for saying the 9th Congressional District seat
“was set aside for people who look like me. It wasn’t set aside for a
Jew or a Christian. It was set aside so that blacks could have
representation.” The Post says “someone forgot to tell the
district’s free-thinking voters” who sent Cohen to Washington in 2006
and 2008.

Or maybe them big-city Yankee editorial writers ought to take off
their rose-colored glasses. Chism got sucker-punched for plain
speaking. If his statement is not literally correct, it is essentially
correct, and history backs him up.

Whatever it is today, Memphis was no racial utopia in the events
leading to the tangled creation of the 9th district.

Race has been at the core of every major Memphis redistricting,
annexation, and runoff-election decision for at least 50 years. The 9th
is the only district in Tennessee located within one county and the
only one ever to have a black representative. It was eliminated in 1973
based on the 1970 census.

In the 1974 congressional election, white flight from school busing,
the Watergate scandal, and a big increase in black voter registration
allowed Harold Ford Sr. to beat a white Republican opponent by only 774
votes out of 135,000 votes. A tweak of the district lines here or there
and it might have been different. The district was recreated as a
majority-black district with a preponderance of Democrats in 1983 based
on the 1980 census.

Prior to Ford’s election, it was common knowledge that in a racially
mixed city like Memphis, elections could be rigged in favor of white
candidates by carefully drawing district lines, selective annexation,
and runoff elections. In 1966, civil rights pioneer Vasco Smith, who
died this week, said, “We don’t stand a ghost of a chance in this town
when it comes to running at large.” Eventually, the federal courts
agreed and, in the process, officially acknowledged the impact of
racial bloc voting. In 1991, at the urging of the U.S. Justice
Department, a judge in Memphis struck down runoff elections for the
specific reason that they penalized black candidates in mayoral and
at-large city council elections. Which was what blacks had been saying
for decades.

The immediate beneficiary, of course, was Herenton, who won the 1991
election with 49.4 percent. An indirect beneficiary was Steve Cohen,
who won the 2006 Democratic primary with about one third of the vote
before winning the general election with 60 percent.

The former mayor and educator knows better than anyone the impact of
race on elections, annexations, housing patterns, and public school
enrollment. As a principal and superintendent, he witnessed white
flight from the school system and did what he could to slow it down by
supporting optional schools. He also took the heat for closing several
black schools.

He believed in integration, and he knew public support would
dissipate for an all-black system. In one of his first interviews as
mayor in 1992, he told me the same thing about the city as a whole, if
it went the way of Detroit, and he correctly predicted that white
enrollment in the schools would drop below 10 percent. It is now 7
percent.

Herenton the unifier has been forgotten by most people, including,
it often seems, himself. His horrible decisions and word choices had a
lot to do with it.

In an interview quoted in The New York Times, which like
The Washington Post has taken a fancy to this story, he said “to
know Steve Cohen is to know that he really does not think very much of
African Americans” and that Cohen “has played the black community
well.”

Cohen fired back in a letter to the Times published last
week, noting that he was reelected in 2008 with nearly 80 percent,
foreshadowing, he wrote, the election of Barack Obama.

“We’ve come a long way in Memphis, and ours is a story of
post-racial politics.”

We’ll see, and the national media will be watching.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Rope-a-Dope

The polls say now, as they said three months ago, as the
conventional wisdom said six months, a year, two years ago, that A C
Wharton, the well-liked Shelby County mayor, is a cinch to be the
next elected mayor of Memphis.

With the special mayoral election just two weeks away, and with
Wharton holding on to what the recent Mason-Dixon poll evaluated as a
30-point lead, it would seem that the closest of his competitors
— former Councilwoman Carol Chumney, Mayor Pro Tem
Myron Lowery, and veteran lawyer Charles Carpenter
— are no more than a distant second tier.

And yet, some slippage, while not inevitable, is more than possible,
especially if Wharton’s rivals begin to land some of the punches
they’re throwing at a front-runner who occasionally slaps out a telling
jab of his own but, for the most part, is playing rope-a-dope, skipping
as many public forums as he attends.

Another major forum, organized by the Cordova Leadership Council,
was scheduled for this week, and, at press time, Wharton seemed likely
to be a no-show. Next Tuesday’s Rotary Club debate luncheon at Rhodes
College may be the last good opportunity for the public to size up the
major candidates — at least until an election-eve television
debate on WREG, News Channel 3.

The station’s first televised showdown between Wharton and his three
closest rivals took place last Saturday night, and expectations were
high for a viewing audience comparable to that which registered good
ratings for the inaugural TV debate of the season, held in August on
WMC-TV, Action News 5.

For much of the way in the Channel 3 debate, it was a legitimate
question as to which participant was most prosecutorial:

Was it WREG anchor Richard Ransom, who consistently (if
gracefully) hounded the four candidates for their lack of candor,
charging them with making “political” answers? Or Charles Carpenter,
who pressed a relentless attack against front-runner Wharton? Or
Lowery, who sternly marshaled evidence against both Carpenter and
Wharton, interrupting their replies to one inquisition before whipping
immediately to the next?

Even A C himself got cranky and ad hominem once or twice.

The big surprise was the subdued final posture of Chumney, the
former damn-the-torpedoes councilwoman who had arguably got the
mischief started by asserting that Wharton wanted to pile on new layers
of bureaucracy and reactivating an old accusation that the county mayor
had committed some hanky-panky in getting his car registered.

Declining, unlike the others, to take advantage of the opportunity,
in the two-hour debate’s last half hour, to address direct questions to
whomever she might choose for up to four minutes, Chumney explained
that as mayor she might in the future have to “work with” one of her
three opponents. So why would she want to rile things up now?

Wharton struck some as overcautious, even a bit of a waffler, having
made a somewhat generalized case for the success of his seven years as
county mayor (though his claim to moving ahead on a Shelby Farms plan
was acknowledged by critic Chumney) and, in his finest moment —
one that earned him “courage” points from opponent Lowery —
acknowledging that he was “dead wrong” in having allowed radio
talk-show host Thaddeus Matthews to use the “N”-word in his
presence.

The candidates all hoisted their campaign personas in their opening
remarks: Self-described man-of-action Lowery depicted himself through
the slogan “If it is to be, it’s up to me.” Carpenter, insisting he was
“not a politician” (shades of his longtime mentor Willie
Herenton), promised to substitute a “business culture” for a
“political culture.” Chumney assumed the role of civic crusader, vowing
to “fight for you” (a note that many, even some longtime supporters,
consider more appropriate to a legislator — Chumney served both
in the legislature and on the council — than an executive).

For obvious reasons, clear front-runner Wharton bore the brunt of
most of the direct attacks. Sometimes things got ultra-personal.
Carpenter was particularly slashing, at one point demanding to know how
it was that the county mayor could utilize as campaign aides Bobby
Lanier, Susan Adler Thorp, and Tom Jones, three
longtime Wharton associates who, Carpenter insisted, had run afoul of
ethical or legal guidelines. And both Carpenter and Wharton would be
taxed by Lowery for using former Herenton intimate Reginald
French in their campaigns.

Lowery also got Carpenter to own up to having earned some $5 million
in work for the city over the 17 years of his mentor Herenton’s
mayoralty.

Indeed, in the judgment of several observers (including this one),
the acting mayor probably rose and shone more consistently than the
others, though his final statement (which was also the final statement
of the night) was a somewhat risky defense of his “Hello, Dalai”
fist-bump moment, which Lowery seemed to be trying to escalate into a
transcending piece of good public relations for the city.

Understandably, such other hopefuls as Jerry Lawler, Wanda
Halbert, and Kennth Whalum Jr. were vexed at being left out
of the latest TV debate, though all but Halbert were scheduled for this
week’s Cordova forum, as was former Shelby County commissioner (and
perennial mayoral candidate) John Willingham.

• Much of Wharton’s recent strategy has consisted of
advertising the significant number of other public officials who have
endorsed him — including assorted City Council members, county
commissioners, and others. At one endorsement ceremony last week,
featuring Sheriff Mark Luttrell, the county mayor unbent from
his above-the-battle posture long enough to fire back at opponent
Chumney’s claim that he was running for one job before completing his
commitment to another.

“That’s exactly what she did,” Wharton said. “She was running for
mayor [in 2007] before she’d finished her commitment to the City
Council.”

Chumney’s response: “The City Council is not a full-time job, as is
the job for county mayor, and if elected city mayor in 2007, I would
not have been sworn in until my council term expired.”

• Adrienne Pakis-Gillon, the Democratic challenger to
Brian Kelsey, the heavily favored Republican in the special
election race to succeed the resigned Paul Stanley in state
Senate District 31, knows the odds against her. But she thinks she can
gain traction by a three-pronged strategy of talking up Democratic
issues like jobs and health care, appealing to wavering Republicans,
and pointing up Kelsey’s personal eccentricities.

On the latter score, she notes a penchant for public stunts by the
former state representative, who resigned his District 83 state House
seat last week to facilitate an early special election to replace him,
should he win the state Senate seat, as expected.

One action Pakis-Gillon cited was Kelsey’s waving an envelope
stuffed with bacon during a House floor debate last year.

“We don’t need to be the comedy routine on late-night television,”
she told a meet-and-greet group in the Gray’s Creek area of east Shelby
County last Thursday night.

The meet-and-greet affair boasted the attendance of Luttrell, a
longtime friend of the candidate. And several other attendees, like
Luttrell, were Republicans. A number of these suburban residents
professed concern over the guns-in-parks bill passed in the last
session with the support of Kelsey and other GOP legislators.

“The Republican Party used to be known as the conservative party, as
the party of common sense. They’ve left us. Will you become the senator
of common sense?” asked one man, who identified himself as a
dyed-in-the-wool Republican.

And when Pakis-Gillon answered by expressing at length her own
opposition to the gun bills passed in the last session, condemning the
National Rifle Association for what she said were its arm-twistings and
infusions of money, the man said, “Well, you’ve got one Republican
vote!”

Another GOP attendee, who had been active in the campaigns of
Republican state Senate majority leader Mark Norris, said, “For
us to be comfortable, we need to have somebody in Nashville to deal
with those issues we haven’t even thought about yet. Someone with
maturity. I’m not impressed with the Republican candidate.”

These may be atypical voices, or they may signal a possible trend.
The well-financed Kelsey remains an odds-on favorite, but Pakis-Gillon
demonstrated at the Gray’s Creek meet-and-greet that she already had a
modicum of Republican support herself and would be probing for more
crossovers.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Carpenter’s Plan

No member of the current Shelby County Commission — or in the
local political establishment, for that matter — has devoted more
time or energy or constructive thought to the vexing and
still-unresolved issue of school funding than Mike Carpenter. Almost as
soon as he was sworn in after the countywide election of 2006,
Carpenter began thinking out loud about the relationship between the
Memphis school system and that of Shelby County. When the funding issue
heated up last year, he oversaw an ad hoc in-depth examination of the
problem across all jurisdictional lines.

Now, after the breakdown of earlier efforts to achieve an
understanding between the various principals, Carpenter is trying again
with a plan for single-source funding by the county that offers
legitimate incentives to everybody. Though his plan envisions
countywide property-tax increases in the third and fourth year of a
four-year transitional period, city residents would experience an
overall reduction in taxes via the conversion to single-source funding.
(Currently, Memphis residents pay property taxes to both the city and
the county.)

For their part, residents of Shelby County outside the city would
benefit from a reduction in the special school-bonds levy employed
several years ago to build a new school in Arlington. Further, by
virtue of the current state allocation formula (based on average daily
attendance), the county school system would net a $35 million
“windfall” once the $78 million in disputed funding for city schools is
permanently freed up. The $113 million required to fund the total
package would be augmented from expected normal revenue growth as well
as from the two proposed tax hikes.

All in all, it has the look of a potential bargain, though Carpenter
expects changes as the plan undergoes discussion over the next several
weeks. It’s a start, anyhow, and we congratulate the commissioner.

Vasco Smith

It is hard to imagine two more influential — or more
inspirational — figures in Memphis’ civil rights history than the
husband-wife team of Vasco and Maxine Smith. Though somewhat less in
the public eye than his wife, the longtime head of the local NAACP
chapter, Vasco Smith was as instrumental as she, both in his own right
and as her backup through several decades of strife and overdue change,
including the integration of the University of Memphis and Memphis
movie theaters.

Vasco Smith, who died this week from complications resulting from
bone cancer, was the first African American elected at large to the
County Commission, serving from 1974 to 1993. He was always an eloquent
advocate for the dispossessed and was a leader in the movement to
establish the Med as a fully equipped successor to John Gaston charity
hospital.

Though unyielding in his commitment to equal rights, the genial
dentist maintained friendships across all lines — racial,
political, social, and ideological. A raconteur, he was famous also as
a jazz aficionado, owning an extensive private collection of jazz
recordings.

Dr. Smith will be missed, not just in the sentimental or historical
sense but because so many people depended so long on his wit,
intelligence, and simple good cheer.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

One Last Appeal

Back in 2006, when Shelby County tried to enforce a term-limits rule
for county commissioners, some officials challenged the rule under the
Tennessee Constitution. The trial court upheld the provision; the
appellate court struck it down; and the county took it to the Tennessee
Supreme Court, where the county ultimately prevailed. 

With luck, a similar judicial ping-pong may happen over the
commission’s attempt to appoint a second judge at Juvenile
Court.  

On Monday, a Tennessee court of appeals panel ruled that the 1967
state law authorizing the Shelby County Commission to appoint a second
judge violated the state Constitution, reversing a trial court decision
siding with the commission. The opinion is based on a strained reading
of the act and should be appealed.

The 1967 statute granted the County Commission the authority to
appoint a second judge whenever it deemed such an appointment
necessary. In 2006, the commission passed a resolution to fill the
vacancy. Judge Curtis Person, who would have had to share power
with the second judge, then sued to block that action. The
second judgeship has remained vacant by court order, pending the
litigation.

On the merits, the second judgeship is a sound judicial reform,
endorsed by the Memphis Bar Association, supported by findings of a
special study by the National Center for State Courts, and ratified by
a County Commission report summarizing months of public
hearings. It represents the majority model of juvenile court
structures around the country. More important, the opinion unfairly
overrules the will of the people, as expressed by the state legislature
and County Commission.

The 1967 act established the original Juvenile Court and then
provided:

“[T]here is hereby created a Second Division of the Court. … The
Judgeship of said Second Division shall remain vacant until the
Quarterly County Court of Shelby County shall determine the need
therefore.”

Yesterday’s appellate court reasoned as follows:

1) Under Article VI, Section 1 of the Tennessee Constitution, only
the state legislature can “create” a court.

2) Under Tennessee case law, the presence of a judge is an essential
element of a court — a court doesn’t exist without a judge. Thus,
the state legislature cannot create a court without also creating a
judgeship.

3) The act in question does not really create a judgeship, because
it leaves the question of when to fill the vacancy open to the County
Commission. 

4) By giving the commission power to say when the second
judgeship would be needed, it gave the commission the power to say if
it would ever be needed, which contradicts point one.

Points one and two are fair enough, but from there onward the court
goes astray.

First, the act’s plain language clearly states that the legislature
“hereby created” the second division of the court. The County
Commission did not “create” it.

Second, the act clearly does establish a “judgeship.” Its plain
language refers to “the Judgeship of said Second Division,” which is
held vacant. 

The appellate court goes out of its way to interpret the act’s
language to render the act unconstitutional, reversing the normal
presumption in favor of construing legislation in a manner to keep it
constitutional.

The opinion also proves too much. It is not at all unusual for the
legislature to create a new local court and allow local government to
fill the vacancy. But by the appellate panel’s logic, any time the
legislature does not simultaneously fill a new local court with a judge
the instant it creates it, it is violating the Tennessee Constitution.
In all such cases, there is some length of time during which the
“court” does not come into existence until the local body fills its
vacancy; by the logic of the opinion, the local government then
“establishes” the court, in violation of Article VI, Section 1.

Mindful of prior cases saying the state legislature could not
delegate to local bodies the power to “create” courts, the 1967
legislature was very careful to do the creating itself, leaving the
local body with only the narrow question of filling the vacancy. The
panel opinion simply disregards all this.

Getting a second judge is a good idea. So is challenging a decision
which unfairly and permanently ties the hands of the state
legislature and the County Commission. We should appeal the case to the
state Supreme Court and get the issue decided once and for
all. 

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Plus-Sized

CREDIT: Photo: John Betancourt

Photo: John Betancourt

Frederick Sandys’ Ysoude with the Love Philter (1870) Collection Museo de Arte de Ponce

There’s something big happening at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
And no, I’m not cracking wise about the famously plump models of the
renowned Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens, though several of his works
will be on display when “Masterpieces of European Painting from Museo
de Arte de Ponce” opens at the Brooks this weekend.

The Ponce Museum of Art in Puerto Rico houses more than 4,000
pieces, including the most impressive collection of Pre-Raphaelite
paintings outside of Europe. The Brooks show features 56 works
representing six centuries of mythologically inspired paintings by a
variety of Spanish, Dutch, German, British, Italian, and French
artists. The artists include Edward Burne-Jones, a painter and designer
whose wide-ranging influence impacted painters and printmakers like
Gustav Klimt and Alphonse Mucha as well as fantasy author J.R.R.
Tolkien whose visions for Middle Earth were inspired, in part, by
Burne-Jones’ paintings.

“Masterpieces of European Painting” also includes works by Frederick
Sandys, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Anthony Van Dyck, and Francisco de
Goya. It includes extraordinary examples of Renaissance, Baroque
Rococo, and neoclassical painting.

The exhibit’s opening weekend kicks off with a members reception at
6 p.m. on Friday, October 2nd. On Saturday and Sunday, the public will
enjoy free guided tours in English, Spanish, and French as well as live
music and a special menu in the Brushmark restaurant.

Categories
Music Music Features

Wide Awake

Ardent Studios, located at 2000 Madison Avenue, is a busy place
these days.

Of course, there’s the recent hoopla about the four-disc Big Star
box set, Keep an Eye on the Sky, and the deluxe reissue of Chris
Bell’s I Am the Cosmos, both released late last month.

Joseph Davis, rep for the studio’s secular music label, Ardent
Music, is hard at work pushing recent titles like Jump Back Jake’s
Brooklyn Hustle, Memphis Muscle and the upcoming Star &
Micey eponymous full-length, scheduled to hit the streets on October
20th.

Staffers for the studio’s Christian music division, Ardent Records,
also are celebrating the success of Awake, the eighth studio
album from Skillet, which debuted at #2 on the Soundscan/Billboard 200
charts in early September.

“Skillet was one of our first artists. We put out their first album
in ’96,” says Aislynn Rapp, a label manager for Ardent Records. “Now
they’re on Atlantic, but we’re still connected. Our role is to
distribute all their records to the Christian market through INO, a
Nashville distribution company.”

Next week, Rapp will see the fruits of her labor firsthand, when
Skillet rolls into Minglewood Hall midway through their 50-city “Awake
& Alive Tour.”

While Skillet frontman John Cooper is the only Memphian left in the
band, which is currently based in Kenosha, Wisconsin, he says that the
October 8th gig at Minglewood is one of the most important dates on the
tour.

“We’ll be playing for our label, playing where we’re from,” he says.
“But it’s always kind of a rule that whenever you play your [hometown],
it’s gonna be the worst show on the tour. It’s like a jinx. You worry
about people coming, because you don’t want your family to think you’re
a loser.”

It’s been five years since Skillet moved on to major-label success,
but Cooper says many of his Ardent memories are still fresh.

“One of the biggest things I learned at Ardent was being steadfast,
being committed to what you’re doing,” he says. “We had great support
there from the beginning. Our producer, Paul Ebersold, and Skidd Mills,
who engineered a bunch of our records, taught me how to go from being a
young songwriter into the big leagues. In the Christian market, Ardent
was the underdog, and we were underdogs too. We both learned that we
have to always feed our fans and keep making good records.”

Now steadfastness has paid off: Awake, produced by Howard
Benson (Daughtry, Good Charlotte, Kelly Clarkson), is a crossover
success. Within 24 hours of its release, it hit the top spot on iTunes’
“Top Albums” and “Top Rock” charts. The album’s first single,
“Monster,” is the official theme song for the ACC College Football
season and appears on the soundtrack to the MTV series Bully
Beatdown. Another single, “Hero,” can be heard in NBC’s Sunday
Night Football promotional campaign.

“It’s been a crazy few months,” Cooper says. “I keep asking myself,
Why is this thing selling so good? I’ve been doing this so long that
sometimes you put out a great record and it just doesn’t matter.

“On the Christian music side of things, we broke some ground 10
years ago,” he says. “At the time, we were a little aggressive for that
market, but hard rock is more acceptable now. And on the mainstream
side, listeners aren’t as opposed to listening to Christian rock bands,
so we’ve gotten to tour with acts like Saliva and Three Days Grace.
We’re very much a word-of-mouth band, and having our fan base grow with
us has been important.”

Skillet’s success serves as an inspiration for other artists on the
Ardent Records label.

Contemporary Christian singer-songwriter Todd Agnew has a new album,
Need, scheduled for release on October 6th, Rapp says. In November,
folksy singer Joy Whitlock will tour with American Idol Season
Six contestant Sean Michel.

Categories
Music Music Features

Memphis ex-pats Reigning Sound return; newbies Rainy Day Manual debut.

(In the Red)

The first Reigning Sound studio album in five years isn’t as
sonically arresting as 2004’s Too Much Guitar. It isn’t as
covered in record-shop pixie dust as 2002’s Time Bomb High
School. And it isn’t as compellingly moody as 2001’s folk-rockish
Break Up, Break Down. In other words, it’s the most mundane
Reigning Sound album ever. Or it would be if one simple, gorgeous song
after another is “mundane.”

If Greg Cartwright had been fortunate enough to come of age in the
late ’50s or early ’60s, he might have been the equal of Buddy Holly or
Roy Orbison. As it is, he’ll have to settle for being the most
musically skilled, least affected, and most soulful purveyor of
pre-Beatles-style rock-and-roll the world now knows — in other
words, a cult artist. I think his new band lacks the snap of the
Memphis version, but the singer and the songs are still exquisite.

Most of Love and Curses treads standard Cartwright territory:
’50s/’60s pop/rock with nods to soul and Dylan/Byrds-style folk rock.
And there are great new songs in this vein:

“Call Me,” with its insolent delivery and surf/rockabilly riff; “The
Bells,” which wraps elegant wordplay in a tight little melodic package;
and “Broken Things,” a new Cartwright classic with Dylan organ, subtly
revving garage-rock rhythm, and a slippery lyrical delivery that twists
into bolder-than-usual territory (“And when humanity fails/They won’t
cut and run/Cause they can’t even tell/When the damage is done”).

But there are also a couple of unexpected detours. The stomping
“Stick Up for Me” sounds like Cartwright’s going topical: “Don’t
you think that the millions/Are getting tired of being governed by so
few/They send you out to fight their war/While they stay home to
control you.” Except it’s the album’s only cover, of a garage-rock
obscurity (original band: the Glass Sun), and it’s actually more than
40 years old, which I suppose is part of the point.

The album-closing “Banker and a Liar” is an original and one that
references gypsy music before launching into mid-’60s Dylan imagery and
delivery (“And if their money don’t fulfill you/There are medicines
that will do/All the thinking for you so you can relax”).

Cartwright has been in town over the past few months playing reunion
gigs with his earlier Memphis bands the Oblivians and Compulsive
Gamblers. It’s been awhile since the Reigning Sound returned, but
Cartwright & Co. will look to rectify that with a November 14th gig
at the Hi-Tone Café. — Grade: A-

(no label)

Though you can hear echoes of hand-me-down Big Star or the Beatles
in the mix if you really try, local four-piece Rainy Day Manual is
really a thoroughly modern band, their lack of grounding in any kind of
roots, punk, or classic-rock tradition distinguishing them from most of
the rock bands plying their trade in Midtown clubs.

The band’s official debut, the five-song, 22-minute EP Vox a
Copia, was recorded primarily at Ardent Studios and boasts a
cleanness and density of sound designed for commercial radio. That’s a
difficult place for new rock bands to end up, but it wouldn’t be
surprising if Rainy Day Manual made it.

I like the guitars on this record most when they’re bright (as on
the opening to “Speak and Stand”) rather than when they get heavy, and
I like the music better generally when it winds up in a tight rhythm
rather than when it spreads out into atmospherics. In these moments,
with Chris Faulkner’s powerful, versatile vocals up top, the band
reminds me a little of Maroon 5, one of the better recent Top 40 guitar
bands. — Grade: B

Rainy Day Manual celebrates the release of Vox a Copia
with a CD-release show Saturday, October 3rd, at Neil’s. Jamie
Randolph & the Dark Horse open.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Edge of Desire

Ekundayo Bandele, Krissi Cain, and Bronzjuan Worthy

By all rights, Hattiloo Theatre’s founding executive Ekundayo
Bandele should make a fantastic Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’
A Streetcar Named Desire. He’s got a look that fluctuates
between easygoing elegance and smoldering intensity. His performance in
Topdog/Underdog was a highlight of the 2007/’08 theater season,
proving that the gifted writer, designer, and director can come out
from behind the curtain and hold his own as an actor. But for some
reason, Bandele never seems completely at home in the skin of Williams’
brutish masculine archetype. And his performance, while always
watchable, is surprisingly mundane. The same may be said for the rest
of an ensemble that gives until it hurts but still comes up short.

There are times when I think of Williams as the Yngwie Malmsteen of
American playwrights. Like the quick-fingered guitar player, Williams
was given to a bit of excess. And all possible lessons from
Amadeus aside, even the greatest artists can play too many
notes. I agree with critic Brooks Atkinson, who, in 1947, described
A Streetcar Named Desire as overlong, explaining that “not all
those words are essential.”

Although he’s associated with naturalistic Method actors such as
Marlon Brando, Williams was a formalist’s formalist and his
self-consciously poetic words with their expressionist overtones and
echoes of Shakespeare and Chekhov were never intended to be
“essential.” They were supposed to be a beautiful assault on the
audience’s senses, capturing every sweaty, grimy nuance of life in New
Orleans’ French Quarter. They were supposed to play out like jazz, and
when an ensemble really cooks, that’s exactly how it works. But not
every ensemble can jam. There’s not always a lot of natural chemistry
between the principle characters at Hattiloo, and without that
chemistry, this overheated melodrama about sex, money, power, and the
crumbling aristocracy of the Old South can drag on. Without that
natural chemistry, the words can pile up like a wreck on the
interstate, bringing any forward progress to a crawl.

A show where most of the racist language targets people of Polish
descent and where much of the drama keys off of the loss of a family
plantation can be a jarring test for an African-American theater
company. It’s a test Hattiloo ultimately passes as a result of their
honest, unfussy performances. Still, there’s a little something lost in
the translation.

Krissi Cain makes for a sweet Stella, though it’s hard to know why
she doesn’t run when Stanley turns violent. The “things” she speaks of
that happen between a man and a woman making everything else okay are
seldom evident.

Bronzjuan Worthy gets all of Blanche’s nervous fragility but very
little of her edge. The character may be wounded and delusional, but
she’s also a master manipulator of both women and men. She’s a
proto-cougar who’s always depended on her wits, not the “kindness of
strangers.” Even in the end, as she’s being taken to a mental hospital,
that famous line is a part of her act. Worthy’s performance is detailed
and often compelling. But only in the scene where Blanche considers
seducing a newspaper boy are we allowed to see her more reptilian and
predatory side emerge.

Delvyn Brown seems to understand that beneath his character’s
mama’s-boy exterior lurks the heart of a wolf. Oh sure, he’s the most
polite guy on poker night, but he still tries to push his date with
Blanche as far as it will go. Unfortunately, of all the major
characters, his seems to be the most interesting and the least fully
developed.

Director Leslie “Stickey” Reddick has crafted a solid if not always
exciting production of one of the 20th century’s most deceptively
difficult scripts. Light changes can be abrupt and jarring, and the
voices from the street never mingle as smoothly as the Dixieland
Williams attempted to mimic. Still, there is virtue in simplicity, and
even if the play is never as dynamic as it could be, it’s refreshing to
see A Streetcar Named Desire presented free from so much
of the baggage that usually accompanies it.

Of all of Tennessee Williams’ best-known scripts, Streetcar
may have aged the worst, but even Hattiloo’s uneven production will
remind audiences why this show changed the face of American
theater.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Of Friendship and Fury

It’s been said that roller derby is a cross between a sorority and a
gang. But in Whip It, the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore,
roller derby is both a family and an escape from family.

As a producer, Barrymore has created films that feature quirky
characters, strong female leads, and cute love stories. The only
difference is that Whip It is a cute romance between a quirky
girl and the sport she loves (and the other women who love it,
too).

Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) is a reluctant pageant girl from a small
town outside Austin. She works at a barbecue restaurant with her best
and only friend, Pash (Alia Shawkat, “Maeby” from Arrested
Development) and longs for the day she can leave Bodeen, Texas,
behind her.

On a shopping trip to Austin, she discovers the roller derby, a
world full of badass chicks and cute boys. Bliss unearths her Barbie
roller skates and, despite being in high school, lies about her age and
sneaks off to become a derby girl.

Based on a novel by derby girl Shauna Cross, Whip It does a
good job straddling the expectations of the derby audience and what it
needs to appeal to the rest of the audience.

I’ve been involved in derby in some capacity for more than three
years, so I’m well versed in the source material. Whip It gets
most of the details exactly right: former figure skaters turned derby
girls, the skeezy guy fans, and girls comparing bruises at parties.

Derby fans might wince when Bliss ultimately joins derby over a cute
boy or that the film’s hits aren’t exactly what you’d call regulation
for flat-track derby. But for the uninitiated, it gets the camaraderie,
the athleticism, and the importance of the sport to the women who play
it completely right.

The only off-note is perhaps Barrymore’s own character, Smashley
Simpson, the film’s running sight gag and most violent skater. There
are real-life skaters who are quick to retaliate a real — or
imagined — foul with an intentional trip or even a punch,
but they generally aren’t free-spirited, happy-go-lucky hippies.

The rest of the actors are well cast in this heart-warming comedy:
Page can deadpan with the best of them, but it’s refreshing to see her
play a character with more vulnerability and warmth.

Daniel Stern is her somewhat oblivious but doting dad, and though
the story rests on the female relationships, it’s the chemistry between
Stern and Page that makes the whole thing work.

Kristen Wiig is perfect as team captain, adoring mom, and mother
figure Maggie Mayhem. And Juliette Lewis is all lanky, feral
malevolence as Bliss’ arch-enemy, Iron Maven.

Because when it comes down to it, you might join derby for the
sport, but you stay for the people.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Lowlifes and bottom-feeders, compellingly captured

The lowlifes and bottom-feeders in Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s
fine if taxing crime film Lorna’s Silence do not behave like
traditional movie characters. They are puzzling, frustrating,
inscrutable — and best handled as discrete collections of body
parts rather than as functioning, goal-oriented protagonists and
antagonists. Surface is all: A drug addict’s taut forearm muscles, a
hustler’s bald spot, and a mail-order bride’s flat chest register on
screen with a kind of limpid clarity seldom granted to the faces and
bodies of the starriest Hollywood stars. The shoulders, profiles, and
backs of heads in Lorna’s Silence are more weirdly expressive
than the perfectly lit, shallow-focus close-ups typical of major studio
filmmaking.

The Dardennes’ insistence on their characters’ corporeality is
necessary early on, because the people in the film remain stubbornly
opaque for the first hour. Consider Lorna, played by Arta Dobroshi.
Dobroshi may look like Ellen Page’s androgynous, beaten-down sister,
but she’s far less expressive and open — in fact, she’s so
skilled at draining her face of emotion that even after the story kicks
in, it’s never clear what forces send her through her day. Her husband
Claudy (Jérémie Renier) — whom she treats like an
unwelcome, irksome roommate — is, in spite of his shaking,
quavering requests, just as mysterious.

After some raw exchanges between this makeshift couple, we discover
that Lorna’s tense cohabitation with Claudy is just the first part of a
crude, crass scheme designed to exploit her new status as a European
citizen and potential mail-order bride. However, as the scheme
progresses Lorna — to her (and our) shock — discovers that
she cannot behave as mercilessly as her criminal co-conspirators; a
sudden, careless act of compassion simultaneously focuses her emergent
spiritual crisis and puts her in grave danger.

While not as forceful or exciting as 2005’s L’Enfant,
Lorna’s Silence reaffirms the Dardennes’ important status as
global filmmakers (with U.S. distribution — hooray!) whose art
addresses the damaging effects of unchecked market forces on human
compassion. Their conclusions are seldom comforting or easy to parse,
and the Dardennes’ fluid handheld camerawork reinforces their
characters’ trapped and desperate circumstances. (By the way, isn’t it
nice to see a filmmaker use a handheld camera to capture intimate
moments instead of using it as a tool to manufacture intensity?) But
flashes of hope and beauty crop up from time to time — the
vibrant yellows and blues of a phone booth, a bicycle ride through the
streets, a breathless account of a potential snack-bar space.

The problematic ending is equal parts urban legend and fairy-tale
wish fulfillment, but overall the strongest passages in the film
express a feeling of deferred religious grace comparable to the
uncompromising chronicles of despair found in Flannery O’Connor’s
crueler short stories.