Month: November 2009

Catching Up with Cartwright

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date November 12, 2009

Greg Cartwright formed three modern-classic Memphis bands before
relocating to Asheville, North Carolina, six years ago: the Compulsive
Gamblers, the Oblivians, and the Reigning Sound.

Lately, he’s spent more time in his hometown playing with the
technically defunct Gamblers and Oblivians than with his current band,
which has been on a quasi-hiatus in the years between 2004’s Too
Much Guitar and the band’s new Love and Curses.

The Oblivians reunited earlier this year for a European tour,
playing a sold-out warm-up show at the Hi-Tone before setting off,
while the Compulsive Gamblers reformed for the recent Antenna club
reunion show and then for Gonerfest.

“It could always happen again,” Cartwright says of the reunions,
particularly the Oblivians, whose cult following has grown in the
decade since the band called it quits.

“I don’t think it will ever be a regular thing. And I doubt we’ll
ever make another record. But I enjoy the dynamic of the three of us
[Cartwright, Jack Yarber, and Eric Friedl] playing together. And it’s
still fun. That’s what you learn when you get back together and do some
shows. I’m not opposed to doing it again if the situation is
right.”

The Reigning Sound remains Cartwright’s primary outlet, though the
band has been absent from record store racks and Memphis clubs for a
while.

“Too Much Guitar came out after I’d already moved,”
Cartwright says. “It was all in the can before I left. Once I moved and
it came out, I was busy trying to get settled [in Asheville] for a
couple of years, and then once I got settled, a lot of work picked up
with other bands — trying to help people produce their records or
playing on people’s records or writing material on people’s records.
That kind of took front and center for a couple of years. Trying to get
a new Reigning Sound in place took a bit of time too.”

When Cartwright relocated to Asheville, the only Memphis-based
bandmate who remained in the band was bassist Jeremy Scott, but soon
even Scott didn’t fit as a long-distance bandmate, necessitating
Cartwright to put together an entirely new band.

In the meantime and on one track, Cartwright took on other projects,
producing records with George Soule, the Ettes, and a high-profile
collaboration with former Shangri-Las singer Mary Weiss, and joining up
with garage-rockers the Detroit Cobras as a playing/writing/producing
auxiliary member.

On another track, Cartwright began assembling a new Reigning Sound,
first adding drummer Lance Wille, then bassist Dave Wayne Gay (of the
Kentucky alt-country act Freakwater), and finally keyboard player Dave
Amels, whom Cartwright met while working on the Mary Weiss record.

“Things were in flux for a while and I didn’t want to go into the
studio with a band that wasn’t going to be the band that toured behind
the material,” Cartwright says about the five-year gap between Reigning
Sound records.

Partly recorded in Memphis (at Ardent) and in Asheville, Love and
Curses is a somewhat softer-edged record than Too Much
Guitar, which was recorded primarily as a trio. The addition of
Amels has brought the band closer to what it sounded like on Break
Up, Break Down and Time Bomb High School, when Memphis
keyboardist Alex Greene was in the band.

“It felt more complete once I had Dave [Amels],” Cartwright says of
the current lineup. “I was kind of missing having keyboards and being
able to use organ and piano. It really helps to fill things out
underneath. I’m not a real busy guitar player. I have to focus most of
my energy on the vocal, so it’s helpful to have someone who can play
melody lines beneath me.”

Love and Curses is comfort food for Reigning Sound fans, but
it does take a couple of detours. “Stick Up For Me,” the record’s only
cover, is an obscure ’60s protest anthem from Detroit band the Glass
Sun. It’s a departure for the album musically and the band lyrically.
And the closing “Banker and a Liar” is a Dylanesque lyric with a
gypsy-music feel, sounding perhaps more like a Compulsive Gamblers song
than anything previously heard on a Reigning Sound album.

“The good thing about the Reigning Sound is I think all of the fans
realize at this point that I’m not going to keep making the same record
over and over again,” Cartwright says. “It’s always going to sound like
me, but they don’t expect each record to sound exactly like the last
one or even for the production quality to sound the same. Things
change. The only constant is me. If you like what I do, you’ll probably
like the next record as well.”

Music Music Features

Southern Sounds, Out of Place

Post author By Andria Lisle
Post date November 12, 2009

A few months ago, I sat on the patio of the Produce Row Café
in Portland, Oregon, and listened as my friend Jay Martin — aka
DJ Hwy 7 — spun 45s all night long.

Over 2,000 miles from home, and the soundtrack for the evening was
Mississippi blues and Southern soul — the latter served up by
Beyonda, a transplanted Memphian named Casey Minatrea, who has made her
monthly “Hole in My Soul” DJ nights a Portland institution.

The PDX-Memphis connection crosses decades and musical genres. In
the 1990s, native Memphian Cort Williams booked acts at Portland rock
club E.J.’s. Bruce Saltmarsh once ran Portland’s punk-roots label
Casting Couch Records. Another Portland-based label, the now defunct
Empty, mined Memphis’ garage scene for releases by Lover!, the
Reatards, Lost Sounds, Destruction Unit, and Mouserocket.

Portland’s fascination with blues, gospel, and soul is less easy to
decipher, although clues abound, ranging from the vinyl reissues of
Skip James and the Memphis Minnie tracks in the bin at Mississippi
Records to the superlative three-disc set Fire in My Bones: Raw,
Rare & Otherworldly African-American Gospel, 1944-2007,
compiled by Portlander Mike McGonigal and released on October
26th.

“Gospel took longer to get to than other genres,” says McGonigal, a
music journalist who, until now, was better known for penning a book
about My Bloody Valentine and editing the circa-1980s underground music
guide Chemical Imbalance than for praising the power of the Holy
Spirit via the likes of north Mississippi performers such as the Rev.
John Wilkins and the late Lula Collins.

“I love so many kinds of music. To me, music has the ability to be a
spiritual medium even if one is listening to only the Complete
Funhouse box set by the Stooges,” McGonigal continues and adds:
“Gospel today is the one music that speaks to me the most — in
terms of sound and also message. I try to not over-think why, since
it’s simultaneously such a visceral and spiritual and personal thing,
you know?”

Factor in the hungry record buyers who haunt the aisles at
Portland’s dozen or so record stores, and it begins to make sense.

“I think we all want what we do not have, and this might be part of
why that music is so popular here,” McGonigal says. “Since gospel is
the root of a vast majority of popular music, and it’s often the most
raw and beautiful and real kind of sound. It’s something that people
tend to get to later in life, once they’ve exhausted other avenues and
genres and sounds.”

Memphix Records co-founder Chad “Chase” Weekley has traveled
to Portland several times for special guest appearances at Minatrea’s
Hole in My Soul night, along with fellow Memphis DJs Andrew “Buck
Wilder” McCalla and Daniel “Leroy Trenton” Mathis.

“People were handing us requests,” says Weekley of his latest
appearance at Portland club Rotture on September 10th. “You just don’t
get that from 20-year-old kids in Memphis. It blew my wig off!”

Recalling the New Year’s Eve 2008 party he DJed with Minatrea, which
drew a sold-out crowd of 600, Mathis says, “Maybe Portlanders are more
receptive to [Southern roots music] because they don’t take it for
granted.”

Weekley and Mathis give high props to Minatrea, a graduate of
Hernando High School who manned the counter at Shangri-La Records
before heading west.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for Casey,” Weekley says. “If she was
still in Memphis, she’d be struggling to find her audience. But she
runs the scene in Portland.”

“She sells herself really well,” Mathis adds. “She’s very strict
about what she wants played, and because she stays focused, she’s been
able to build her image.”

Memphians will get a chance to see Mathis and Weekley in action on
Friday, November 27th, when So-Cal’s “Ambassador of Boogie Funk”
Dam-Funk makes his local debut at the Hi-Tone Café.

A circa-1980s session musician who arranged synths for West Side
Connection, Nate Dogg, and Dr. Dre, the 38-year-old Dam-Funk is
currently coming into his own. His new album, Toeachizown,
released on the Stone’s Throw label in late October, spans 139 minutes
and features vocoder, drum machines, and keytar.

“Dam-Funk didn’t come out of nowhere,” Mathis says. “He’s been
around forever, but people are just now starting to figure it out.”

“He reminds me of Prince mixed with a little bit of Parliament and
some sick West Coast hip-hop,” Weekley says. “We’re lucky to get this
guy here.”

Dam-Funk’s appearance will be anchored by a spate of local DJs,
including Homework, Chase, Hype Taylor, Leroy Trenton, Redeye Jedi, and
Chicago-based Memphix cohort Dante Carfagna. Admission to the show is
$10. Doors open at 9 p.m.

Tags hi-tone-caf

Art Art Feature

Grit and Grace

Post author By Carol Knowles
Post date November 12, 2009

For his David Lusk exhibition “From Peace Mountain,” Don Estes takes
birch plywood, vinyl spackling, paint, plaster, and graphite and
creates artworks that evoke Barnett Newman’s “zips,” Mark Rothko’s
luminous colors, Kasimir Malevich’s blinding whites, and Claude Monet’s
Impressionism synthesized with such originality that the end result is
unequivocally Estes.

Each of the seven horizontal bands that make up Peace Mounain
6 is a work of art unto itself. The bottom of the painting, for
example, is a haunting piece of Impressionism in which a spring-green
spit of land juts into pale-blue water beneath an overcast sky. The
impastoed strip of white at the top is so textured, sculpted, and
incised, we feel the undercurrent of Estes’ thoughts and feelings even
in the painting’s most understated passage.

A black cloud hovers near the top of Three Days on the
Sylamore, and a deep-red line abruptly stops at the center of the
work. These elements suggest not only physical but emotional terrain in
which key memories — dark passages, shared passions, and moments
of joy — are reexperienced as Estes creates his art.

Five of the works in the show represent an entirely new direction in
which Estes draws faint lines across the surface of delicately textured
16-by-16-inch squares of plaster created in clay molds. Estes blows
powdered graphite onto the plaster pieces, washing some of it away,
stroking what remains with bare fingers to create endless variations of
white, off-white, and subtly shadowed surfaces. Day flows into day,
sensation into sensation, structure feels less important, and each
nuance is noted.

At David Lusk through November 25th You’ll find a
full range of female forms in John McIntire’s current exhibition at
Perry Nicole Fine Art, including the svelte hips and full bosom of the
dark-walnut sculpture Henry’s Number One Lady, the milky-white,
triple-jointed marble limbs of Georgia, and the Rubenesque
buttocks in McIntire’s limestone torso titled Sandy.

What makes this show one of McIntire’s strongest are the figures
that are quirky and cutting-edge as well as sensual. What looks like
both an oversized phallus and cranium thrusting up from Sandy‘s
derriere suggests the same energy that impassions the body and the
mind. Breasts on top of buttocks on top of craniums in the marble piece
Teresa look totemic, or she could be the talisman of some
ancient shaman summoning all the power in the universe that he can
imagine. Sky Watcher leans slightly forward as she opens herself
up to the universe. Her iridescent white form and small high breasts
look more ethereal than sensual.

The stair-stepped buttocks and mouth spread across a wide face
topped by two mammoth frontal lobes lets us see Valerie from
several angles simultaneously. Like Picasso’s cubist sculpture and
paintings that were inspired, in part, by the discoveries of quantum
physics and Freud’s research into the unconscious mind, McIntire’s
figures appear to be at the edge of some evolutionary leap. His walnut,
marble, limestone, and bronze female forms express every kind of
yearning and raw energy. At Perry Nicole through November
29th

Across hardscrabble landscapes, in the face of death, in spite of
impermanence and pain, Jeri Ledbetter has created a body of work filled
with boundless possibility and an unbridled zest for life in her L Ross
Gallery exhibition, “Mano a Mano II.”

In Tessier’s Bend II, weathered branches work their way out
of underbrush and cross a sometimes arid, sometimes golden-ochre earth,
moving toward a pale-blue patch of sky or pool of water searching for
sustenance and light. The incisive blood-red lines in Sugar Ditch
IV suggest life’s brambles can cut to the quick, and the
clarion-red morass of vines and veins in La Palma remind us,
like William Faulkner’s novels, that life is full of sound and
fury.

In one of Ledbetter’s most iconic paintings, Cielo II,
charcoal washes coalesce into what looks like the death throes of some
prehistoric beast. In the wild scribbles of graphite lines that arc and
jab across a piercingly blue sky, we feel both the ancient creature’s
and the artist’s rage for life.

Ledbetter is master of the palimpsest as well as the expressive
line. We see traces of former worlds covered over with broad, thick
swaths of pale-gray paint the artist lays down with gusto. Ledbetter
dismisses her inner critics, banishes the fierce demons guarding the
temple door, and gives herself permission to experiment, to fail, to
start anew, to create works of art that, like life, are complex,
uncertain, and achingly beautiful.

Tags L Ross Gallery

Theater Theater Feature

Freaks

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date November 12, 2009

Tis true my form is something odd, But blaming me is blaming
God. Could I create myself anew, I would not fail in pleasing
you. If I could reach from pole to pole, Or grasp the ocean
with a span, I would be measured by the soul, The mind’s the
standard of the man. — a poem by Isaac Watts frequently
quoted in letters by Joseph Merrick

A confession: I walked out of the McCoy Theatre’s The Elephant
Man desperately wanting to drive to Studio on the Square for a late
showing of the Michael Jackson documentary This Is It. Jackson’s
story and that of The Elephant Man have been intertwined since
Jackson toured the Royal London Hospital where he was shown the
twisted, misshapen bones of Joseph Merrick, the “Elephant Man.” In a
1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the King of Pop denied pervasive
rumors that he’d tried to purchase the skeleton. Then Jackson, a
reclusive plastic-surgery disaster who practically had been born on
exhibit, confessed an affinity for Merrick, the tragic freak-show
exhibit of the Victorian age.

“I love the story of the Elephant Man,” Jackson told Oprah. “He
reminds me of me a lot.”

What’s extraordinary about this admission is, of course, that
Merrick’s doctor, Sir Frederick Treves, noted that in spite of his
hideous figure, keen intelligence, and romantic imagination, the
Elephant Man had become a perfectly polished mirror. People who came to
see him, whether they were royalty or rough trade, saw themselves
reflected in Merrick’s deformity and good nature. The fictionalized
Treves in Bernard Pomerance’s faithful stage adaptation of Merrick’s
story elaborates on the phenomenon, noting that nobody on the Elephant
Man’s visitor’s list is really alike. Except, of course, for the fact
that we all eventually become monsters.

It’s easy enough to find oneself reflected in director Leigh Ann
Evans’ thoughtful, if too introspective, staging of The Elephant
Man. Ed Porter is particularly effective in the role of Merrick.
Pitching his voice into a higher than natural register and twisting his
body into an uncomfortable snarl, Porter has no need for prosthetics
and projects his character’s hideousness, physical pain, emotional
yearning, and eventual complacency with incredible subtlety.

Porter’s physical commitment to the role is unfortunately not always
echoed by his homogenous castmates who do honest work but are too
rigid, even for England in the age of empire. If there is a crucial
element missing from this production, it’s proof that Treves was right
in declaring us all different. Ross the carney (played by David
Yarborough) doesn’t seem that much different from Treves the doctor
(Pieter Smith). And for an actor, one of the most fun parts of doing
The Elephant Man is asking the question, What kind of
monster am I?

Alicia Queen is a commanding presence in the role of Francis Carr
Gomm, the traditionally (and historically) male chairman of the Royal
London Hospital who helps to facilitate Merrick’s illusion of normalcy.
The dynamic character actor could be much more than a presence, but
there is an invisible barrier preventing her from fully engaging with
Treves. Likewise, Madison Hannahs is excellent as the actress Mrs.
Kendal who befriends Merrick and becomes his nurse and emotional
confidante. Opportunities for a richer character study may have been
missed, but Hannahs charms the audience as easily as she charms Merrick
and shows Treves his own secret deformities.

Laura Canon’s set is very useful and very gray. It begs for actors
to complete it, and it begs for them to be at least a little more
colorful, animated, and engaged than they ultimately are.

If, like me, the thought of capturing a pop-culture moment by
watching The Elephant Man and This Is It back-to-back is
irresistible, do it soon: The McCoy Theatre closes its run this weekend
with a Sunday matinee.

Food & Wine Food & Drink

Worth the Trouble

Post author By Ari LeVaux
Post date November 12, 2009

CREDIT: Yasonya | Dreamstime.com

The pomegranate is the crazy aunt of fruits. It’s talented and
passionate but misunderstood. But it has not always been this way. The
scabby orb’s blood-red image decorates the temple of Solomon and the
robes of priests, its juice is imbued with medicinal properties, and
its flavor is integral to many Old World cuisines. But in the New
World, the pomegranate’s reviews have been mixed. Its flesh, tart
enough to make you wince, is buried among bitter membranes and crunchy
seeds. Its juice is quick to splatter and stain. Getting to know the
pomegranate’s virtues is messy, painstaking work. It’s worth the
trouble.

The pomegranate runs in many of the same circles as the grape. The
two fruits co-star in several biblical verses, including more than one
suggesting the presence of pomegranates and grapes as an indicator of
good land. Great chefs sprinkle pomegranate seeds atop their finished
dishes, knowing that a single seed is like a sip of wine in the mouth,
creating fireworks when chewed into rich food, from stuffed pork loin
to mushroom linguini.

Brought to the Americas by Spanish settlers, pomegranates grow in
the Southwest and Mexico and ripen from September to January. The
fruit’s shelf-life can be extended for months by wrapping them in paper
towels and storing them in a paper bag at the bottom of the fridge
where there isn’t much activity. You want to leave the wrapped
pomegranates undisturbed, with as few vibrations as possible. Like
bottles of wine, the less they’re disturbed, the better they’re
preserved.

When selecting pomegranates, look for firm fruits with rounded,
rather than sunken, skins. Avoid super-sized fruits, which typically
don’t have as much flavor. Like wine-grapes, pomegranates cultivated
for size produce a more watery fruit, with less evident terroir.
So choose from batches of baseball-sized fruits. Pomegranates don’t
have a fragrance when ripe. The best way to determine the quality or
ripeness of a particular batch is to open one. If the seeds are
brilliant ruby red, juicy and sweet, then get some more from the same
batch for long-term storage.

Many recipes pair pomegranate with walnuts. Historically, they’re
grown in the same regions, and culinarily, the flavors complement each
other beautifully. Walnuts are astringent and oily, while pomegranates
have a penetrating acidic sweetness. Pomegranate seeds are used to
accent sopa de nuez, a Spanish creamy walnut soup; they’re
sprinkled atop chiles en nogada, a Mexican dish of stuffed
chiles and walnut sauce; and they’re ground with walnuts and red pepper
to make muhammara, a Persian dip.

Perhaps the most famous pairing of pomegranate and walnuts is
fesenjan, a meat stew with ground walnuts and pomegranate juice.
Fesenjan can be found throughout the Middle East and Central
Asia, from Georgia to Iran, Armenia to Azerbaijan. Fesenjan is
typically made with chicken or lamb. I’ve tested batches with turkey
and wild duck without complaints.

To make fesenjan, start by browning your meat in a pan with
oil. Large pieces should be cut into inch-cubes; chicken drumsticks can
be left whole. Remove skin from poultry.

For each pound of meat, lightly toast two cups of walnuts in a hot
pan, stirring often. When cool, use a food processor or otherwise grind
the nuts into a dry paste. For each pound of meat, slice one large
onion (or two medium onions) in half lengthwise, and then slice each
half thinly end to end.

After the meat has given up its water and browned, add the onions
and fry until they become translucent. Add the ground walnuts and four
cups of pomegranate juice. Reduce heat to simmer and add seven cardamom
pods (or a teaspoon of ground cardamom), a teaspoon each of cinnamon
and salt, and half a teaspoon of black pepper. Add a cup of chicken
stock and enough water to submerge the meat. As it simmers, add water
as necessary to cover the meat. After an hour, add the juice of one
lemon. Many recipes suggest adding a little sugar. I don’t think that’s
necessary, but add a tablespoon if you want.

After another hour, when the meat is falling-apart tender and fully
impregnated with the pomegranate-walnut sauce, cease adding water and
allow the sauce to reduce, stirring often to prevent burning. When the
sauce is thick as melted ice cream, remove from heat and serve
fesenjan with rice.

Given the current health craze attached to pomegranate juice (some
of its constituents are thought to help prevent cancer, diabetes, heart
disease, prostate problems, and viral infections), you should have no
trouble finding it at your local store. Concentrated juice, aka syrup,
is widely available in Middle Eastern, Persian, and Central Asian
markets. The syrup can be diluted with water into juice.

In addition to its role in dishes like fesenjan, pomegranate
juice makes a good base for a marinade and can be used in salad
dressings or as a mixer.

The word “pomegranate,” a combination of the Latin words for “apple”
and “seed,” literally means “seeded apple.” Although apples and
pomegranates have little in common, their external resemblance may help
explain why modern depictions of the forbidden fruit that tempted Eve
often look like an apple, while many biblical scholars believe it was a
pomegranate. Yet another example of the pomegranate’s perennially
misunderstood status.

And while the pomegranate may have gotten Adam and Eve banished from
the garden, in another myth, eating pomegranate seeds forced the
goddess-borne Persephone to spend half of her life in hell.

Either the pomegranate is really bad news, or the gods are really
jealous of it. You decide.

Food & Wine Food & Drink

Think Big

Post author By Pamela Denney
Post date November 12, 2009

At the opening party for Stella Marris, Steve Cooper‘s
new restaurant and lounge in Cordova, the menus were stacked in neat
rows near the entrance. The dinner menu described 14 seafood
entrées, plus 11 different steaks and chops. Next came the
late-night fare: sliders, small plates, and a choice of deep-fried
finger foods (alligator, oysters, fried green tomatoes, pepper jack
cheese). Finally, the third menu listed desserts, including warm apple
crisp and 23 cordials and cognacs priced from $7 to $225.

“Wow,” I thought, before scooping up an ahi tuna carpaccio from a
passing tray. “This is ambitious.”

Thanks to executive chef Derk Meitzler, the food at Stella
Marris — Latin for “star of the sea” — is a seamless match
for the size and scope of the place, which offers 15,000 square feet of
lavish décor, seating for over 300 customers, private dining
rooms, two kitchens, and separate tanks for Maine and spiney
lobsters.

In fact, the menu’s mix of seafood and steaks has a nostalgic
appeal, much like the restaurants favored in the 1950s when a side of
potato au gratin could feed an entire table.

“I’m partial to big steaks and big sides,” said Meitzler, who grew
up near Chicago. “I have great memories of eating at restaurants like
Win Schular’s with my grandparents, where they would bring you those
big crocks of cheese.”

Add in Meitzler’s love of Southern and Creole cooking, and the
entrées at Stella Marris are an appealing mix of old and new.
The wild salmon, for example, is broiled and finished with barbecue
hollandaise sauce. “I throw in the Memphis dry rub,” Meitzler said.

Side dishes are updated, as well. The crawfish mac-and-cheese is a
crowd-pleaser (don’t ask for the recipe; it’s top-secret), and the
sweet potatoes are combined with alligator sausage hash.

“We’re Southern-driven with Northern influences,” Meitzler said. “I
play off the idea of Route 61: Start in New Orleans and go north.”

The restaurant’s late-night menu has similar influences but fewer,
and less expensive, choices. Small plates such as fish tacos and hot
wings run $8 to $10 and are served from 10 p.m. until the lounge closes
at 2 a.m. on weekdays and 3 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Stella Marris, 7955 Fischer Steel, Cordova (755-5553),
stellamarris.net

You can order an 18-ounce rib-eye or a Buckhead filet mignon at
Sharky’s Gulf Grill in East Memphis, but the entrées are
the only reminder of the building’s longtime former tenant, Steak and
Ale.

Under the direction of John Golon, the restaurant on Poplar
Avenue opened last month with a Caribbean-style decor and a focus on
coastal cuisine.

“We’ve taken the kind of seafood restaurant we love at the beach and
moved it to Memphis,” Golon said.

Sharky’s started with dinner service seven days a week and added
lunch two weeks ago. “We didn’t want to open for lunch until we got our
sea legs under us,” Golon said. “I just love to say that!”

For lunch and dinner, seafood is the grill’s mainstay and buying
from day boats ensures a sustainable and fresh supply.

“Traditionally, fishermen go out for seven to 14 days depending on
how long it takes to fill up the boat,” Golon explained. “Day boats
leave in the late afternoon, fish all night, and call in their catch to
brokers. The fish is purchased before the boat gets back to the
dock.”

For Sharky’s customers, day-boat suppliers mean “what’s on your
plate was swimming two days ago,” Golon said. The restaurant’s list of
fresh catch also changes day to day. Last Thursday, choices priced from
$19 to $23 included mahi-mahi, swordfish, salmon, and cobia, a coastal
fish appreciated for its texture and flavor.

Thanks to head chef Lance Morton, a Gulf Coast influence
directs the menu, from the Apalachicola oysters baked five ways to the
grouper Pontchartrain, a grilled dish topped with soft-shell crab and
béarnaise sauce. Sharky’s also offers sushi and coastal
cocktails like “Pineapple Martini” and “Miami Vice.”

Tags Sharky's Gulf Grill, stella marris

Film Features Film/TV

Football’s Back Pages

Post author By Hannah Sayle
Post date November 12, 2009

At the beginning of The Damned United, a film whose title
refers to the colloquial name for Leeds United, the team is in the
First Division, at the top of the English Premier League. The year is
1974, and the team’s famous manager, Don Revie, has just been tapped to
take over the England National Team, leaving open one of the most
coveted managerial positions in football (or what most Americans know
as soccer). Enter the tenacious Brian Clough, newly appointed to the
job and still spewing residual vitriol about Leeds. Over the next hour
and a half, the film connects the dots of Clough’s career and pieces
together his rivalry, perceived or otherwise, with Revie.

The film flashes back to 1968, when Revie (Colm Meaney) was the
ever-prosperous manager of the First Division Leeds, and Clough
(Michael Sheen), along with his humble and underappreciated assistant
Pete Taylor (Timothy Spall), were managing the Derby County squad,
flailing at the bottom of the Second Division. In a random lottery
pick, Leeds is chosen to play against Derby, a fact that thrills the
provincial Derby County team. But when an exceedingly enthusiastic
Clough feels that he has been slighted by Revie, the scene is set for
Clough’s rivalry against Revie, Leeds, and anyone or anything that
stands in his way.

Some British critics have panned the film, both for toning down
novelist David Peace’s depiction of Clough’s superiority complex and
for adjusting the facts. It should come as no surprise that the Brits
are more than a little touchy about their nation’s most beloved sport
and its history. For our part, the film can stand alone more easily as
a fascinating biopic about a character whose blind ambition, unchecked
arrogance, and ham-handed approach to managing is ultimately
destructive. (“I wouldn’t say I’m the best manager in the country, but
I’m in the top one.”)

Only after a hearty helping of humble pie do the tides turn in his
favor, and then only with the help of Taylor. Clough’s ego having
apparently clogged his brain for years, he suddenly realizes he cannot
go without Taylor. One of the best scenes involves some deserved
groveling and a tinge of well-intended humiliation. Having abandoned
Taylor in Brighton to become the manager of Leeds, Clough comes
crawling back, where Taylor gets him to beg, “Please, please, baby,
take me back.”

Massaged facts and unfamiliar subject aside, the film is highly
enjoyable for all moviegoers, football fans or no. Director Tom Hooper
makes the most of a sometimes bleak, retro scene. In the 1970s,
Britain’s economy was suffering. As a working-class sport, football did
not always boast the best facilities, and let’s not mention Britain’s
penchant for rain and cloud-cover. But Hooper makes something beautiful
from this palette. The acting is superb, particularly Sheen and Spall.
The always excellent Jim Broadbent does a sharp, bristling turn as the
often undermined owner of the Derby County team.

For those of us who are football fans, the film highlights a time
when the sport was financially challenged; when the perfect green pitch
of today was a mud pit; when the thought of paying a professional
footballer 300 quid a week was preposterous. But the film makes it
clear that British football was on the cusp of all those things, and
these changing times provide a fitting backdrop for the vicissitudes of
Clough’s career.

Film Features Film/TV

Global destruction as popcorn-movie entertainment.

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date November 12, 2009

Director Roland Emmerich has carved a mini-film empire as a purveyor
of high-tech disaster movies. Emmerich’s films are in the spirit of
’70s-era disaster flicks, with sprawling, cameo-packed casts inhabiting
flimsy characters who are secondary to visual spectacle.

A master of the new technology, Emmerich isn’t content with mere
capsized ocean liners or burning skyscrapers. Only computer-generated
global cataclysm will do.

These films — 1996’s Independence Day, 2004’s
The Day After Tomorrow, and now 2012 — have
emerged as pure formula: An unexpected assault — whether alien or
environmental — threatens mankind. A group of broadly drawn,
relatively multicultural, and far-flung characters are established via
early crosscutting and finally brought together midway through the
film. An Everyman who Understands What’s Happening overcomes obstacles
and doubts to find his place beside the primary decision makers.
Fantasies of mass destruction are indulged. Humanity comes together and
survives to start anew. And so it goes with 2012, its title a
reference to a Mayan calendar prediction about the date of the end of
time.

Independence Day is still beloved in some quarters while
The Day After Tomorrow was an impressive spectacle soon
forgotten, a fate likely to befall 2012 regardless of whether it
recoups its budget.

Independence Day is more the crowd-pleaser for several
reasons: It had some human interest in the form of enjoyably blustery
performances from the likes of Bill Pullman, Will Smith, and Randy
Quaid; by contrast 2012 gets by with an overplayed Woody
Harrelson cameo and a subdued John Cusak (and I can barely remember who
was in The Day After Tomorrow). The alien-invasion angle
provides a villain to fight against and more of a sense of distancing
fantasy. In the other films, the villain is simply nature, and the
specter of environmental devastation, however wildly exaggerated, hits
too close to home to serve as simple popcorn-movie escapism. As a
result, these films try to be more serious but are too clunky and
cartoonish to earn the gravity they aspire too.

2012 is essentially the same film as The Day After
Tomorrow, only with a Great Flood replacing a new Ice Age. The film
opens in 2009 with the discovery of “the biggest solar eruption in
human history” provoking a secret global initiative to plan for
planetary upheaval and the preservation of the species. Later, a
struggling writer and divorced dad (Cusak) is taking his kids on a
Yellowstone camping trip when they wander into a military installation
studying a disappearing — and steaming hot — lake.
Soon, the special effects destruction revs up: Californa collapsing
into the sea is the backdrop to a high-speed thrill ride, like
something from an Indiana Jones movies. Iconic creations such as the
Washington Monument and the Sistine Chapel are pulverized.

There’s something interesting in the film’s sci-fi speculation about
what a (slightly) futuristic Noah’s Ark would be, but 2012 is
built on the spectacle of watching the world collapse over nearly three
hours, with little redeeming value in terms of story, characterization,
or thoughtfulness.

Film Features Film/TV

Rashomon

Post author By Addison Engelking
Post date November 12, 2009

A Japanese film constructed like a Chinese box, Rashomon is
still as pictorially ravishing as it is intellectually suspect. Set in
the 12th century, director Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 international
breakthrough starts out like a bad joke: A priest, a woodcutter, and a
bum meet in a rainstorm …

But there are no laughs in Rashomon. It is a deadly serious
exploration of a recent rape/murder that grows ever more unfathomable
with each re-enactment, since its witnesses and participants hardly
seem to have witnessed the same thing. The tension and uncertainty
generated by the differing versions of the story spills into the film’s
divided soul: Kurosawa’s exhilarating modernist delight in remixing the
details and actions of the four versions of the crime is undercut by a
trite, undergraduate anti-humanism that threatens to spoil the
formalist party. The film claims to offer truth but leaves you feeling
as lost as its characters, who stare at the sun, the rain, and the sky
in search of answers to questions they can’t quite articulate.

The formal ingenuity triumphs over the “everybody’s a liar” conceit,
though. Rashomon remains one of the major treatments of what
Donald Richie called “relative reality,” and it’s set in the film
equivalent of a World Heritage site — a forest grove alive with
leaves, trees, sunlight and shadows as beguiling and mutable as the
characters’ testimony.

In a movie where every character eventually plays his own
doppelganger, Toshiro Mifune thrills as the bandit Tajomaru, a one-man
zoo who mimics the scratches and gaits of lions, gorillas, and pit-bull
terriers.