Month: February 2010

Last Call

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date February 18, 2010

CREDIT: JB

As the filing deadline for countywide offices approached, the blanks were rapidly filling in on ballot slots. Interim Shelby County mayor Joe Ford was not in yet, but he had picked up a petition, and indications were that he would be an official candidate for a full regular term before the deadline of noon on Thursday.

That would match him in the May 4th Democratic primary against county commissioner Deidre Malone, who has already filed and who opened up her campaign headquarters on Friday with a bring-’em-on attitude toward both likely primary foe Ford and Sheriff Mark Luttrell, who is almost certain to be the Republican nominee for county mayor.

“We’ll take whoever decides they want to run … and we’re ready for them,” said Malone to supporters’ cheers on Saturday. “I’m not afraid of much. … I’m prepared to be the next mayor of Shelby County.

“Some people are born into politics, they’re part of a family dynasty,” Malone said, clearly indicating Ford, while others have been “in one area of government all their professional lives,” a possible reference to Luttrell. She claimed for herself a “well-rounded” dossier that included both government and business experience.

Malone and Ford might be interested in the results of the poll, performed by well-known consultant John Bakke, that persuaded a previously reluctant Luttrell to make the race for mayor. According to the sample of some 350 likely voters, the sheriff had a three-to-one edge over Malone and a five-to-three margin over Ford in hypothetical matchups.

According to Bakke, Luttrell, whose favorable-to-unfavorable ratio was 17 to 1 — “the highest I’ve ever seen,” said the veteran pollster — was a clear front-runner in every polled group except that of Democratic voters per se.

• As the filing deadline got nearer, there were numerous candidates who were still hoping not to have opponents at all. Or to avoid consequential opponents, in any case.

One such was Mike Carpenter, the first-term Shelby County commissioner in District 1, Position 3 who has made a name for himself as a maven in several fields — school funding and several aspects of governmental reorganization prominent among them.

Carpenter also has crossed swords with members of his own Republican Party. Early in his tenure, when he sided with the commission’s Democrats in voting to add a second Juvenile Court judge, it appeared inevitable — even to himself — that he’d have a contested primary in 2010.

But, as the week began, Carpenter still had no opponent, and the likely reasons for that were spoken to last Thursday night at a reception/fund-raiser for Carpenter at the Crescent Club. Two of those who made remarks on Carpenter’s behalf that night were Luttrell and Memphis mayor A C Wharton, whom Carpenter had served as co-chair of Wharton’s post-election transition team.

Wharton referred to his support for Carpenter as “a no-brainer,” calling the commissioner a “statesman” and describing Carpenter as “someone who is willing to look at each matter that comes before him with one simple question: ‘Is this the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do? Not the Republican thing to do or the liberal thing to do, the conservative thing to do, the black thing to do or the county thing to do or the white thing to do, the city or urban, but is this the right thing to do?’ I wish we had thousands of Mike Carpenters in office.”

Like Carpenter, two other high-profile commissioners with penchants for the controversial are equally unopposed — Republican Mike Ritz in District 1, Position 1 and Democrat Steve Mulroy in District 5. Both have proved willing to put themselves on the line — Ritz in any number of causes involving the county’s management of its fiscal house and Mulroy in taking the lead on such matters as that of nondiscrimination in government.

Both are formidable in debate, though Ritz’s modus operandi runs to the damn-the-torpedoes variety, while Mulroy, equally staunch, is more willing to accept compromise at the margins of an issue.

Understandably, the well-financed Mulroy is keen for the depth of his endorsements — which include several from organized labor and such Democratic potentates as Wharton, interim mayor Ford, former congressman Harold Ford Sr., and City Council chairman Harold Collins — to be known.

• With the Med in financial crisis, and with a beleaguered county government (which just upped its own contributions from $27 million to $37 million) getting little or minimal help from equally strapped city and state governments, Ritz has just stepped out of formation and thrown what is either a Hail Mary or a bomb. He has intervened directly with the federal government — filing a “civil rights discrimination complaint” against the state of Tennessee and the federal Department of Health and Human Services. (See also story on Ritz, p. 10.)

Essentially, Ritz, acting as an individual and not on behalf of county government (but addressing his complaint under his official commission letterhead), charges that the Med has been unjustly deprived of its rightful share of federal funding — largely as a result of state government’s routing into the at-large TennCare network the larger part of federal funds earned by the Med for providing uncompensated care to indigents.

Says Ritz in the letter of complaint (which is accompanied by a variety of supplementary graphs, tables, and other exhibits): “Tennessee recently received an annual payment from DHHS of over $200 million for uncompensated care. Of that amount DHHS sent to Tennessee $81 million, based on the uncompensated care at the Med alone. However, Tennessee has forwarded to the Med total supplemental care payments of $29 million to $39 million a year.”

And Ritz continues: “Therein lies my Complaint against the state of Tennessee.”

It remains to be seen how the federal government itself deals with Ritz’s complaint. The reaction from state government can only be described as stony, even hostile. The state finance commissioner dispatched an e-mail to Med administrator Gene Holcomb that seemed to threaten a hands-off attitude toward the Med’s problems and stating, “It [Ritz’s complaint] has changed our ability to negotiate any further agreement for the benefit of the Med. I sincerely hope that other sources become available to assist you.”

Ritz himself has indicated he will continue to press the matter, come what may.

• Meanwhile, one of Ritz’s colleagues, Commissioner George Flinn, has launched his own Med-related initiative with the federal government. He had already prevailed on commission members to endorse his call for a commission letter to this year’s crop of gubernatorial candidates demanding that they pledge to support a routing of all uncompensated care funds generated by the Med to operations of the Med itself.

Flinn, now a Republican congressional candidate in the 8th District, upped the ante at last week’s public meeting of the commission by announcing his own unilateral mission. He said he had arranged a visit to the “White House” to meet with unspecified staff members there in an effort to solve the imbroglio over distribution of uncompensated care funds.

And on Monday Flinn’s gubernatorial pledge, not yet even formally released, got its first taker — Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Wamp. In town to formally begin his statewide “announcement” tour, Wamp answered “absolutely” when asked if he would sign the pledge.

Flinn’s vacated seat is up for grabs and so far is being sought by Flinn’s longtime assistant Heidi Shafer and former commissioner John Willingham.

• John Pellicciotti, who since mid-January has been the interim Shelby County commissioner in District 4, Position 3, will seek election this year as a full-time commissioner from District 4, Position 1, the seat being vacated for term-limits reasons by current commission chair Joyce Avery.

Pellicciotti expects a hard-fought race between himself and Probate Court clerk Chris Thomas, who also seeks the Position 1 seat. Pellicciotti offered no criticism of Thomas but suggested, without elaborating, that there were possible philosophical differences between the two.

On the commission, Pellicciotti has kept a generally low profile but has not been reticent about offering solutions to issues before the legislative body. He authored the text of a compromise resolution allowing county employees to volunteer for Haiti relief missions, which was narrowly defeated.

And as this week began, Pellicciotti — who evidently has caught a case of innovation-itis from his senior colleagues — had drawn up a resolution for budget-cutting and tax relief which he planned to present in committee on Wednesday.

Pellicciotti’s plan calls for “$20 million in personnel/payroll deductions, excluding the Sheriff’s office and the county Fire Department” and would allocate “no less than 60 percent of cost savings incurred to a property tax decrease, and no less than twenty percent of cost savings incurred to debt reduction.”

Editorial Opinion

An Affair of State

Post author By Flyer Staff
Post date February 18, 2010

Elsewhere in this issue, we examine the several strategies being employed in county government and elsewhere to keep the Med operating as a trauma center and medical-treatment center for indigents. These are hard economic times, of course, and all governments are having trouble keeping their vital services up to snuff.

But in the sense that institutions, like people, have a life cycle and experience pendulum swings between ill health and wellness, we have to say that only some of the ills now afflicting the Med stem from natural causes. Other causes of the hospital’s present financial malaise are avoidable and would be so, in good times or bad, and, further, they are attributable to either negligence or malice aforethought.

The first circumstances can be attributed to the governments of the states bordering Shelby County — Arkansas and Mississippi. Regardless of changes of regime or which party happens to be in control or other factors of that sort, neither state has begun to offer anything more than token response to the fact that the Med services numerous residents of both states on a daily basis. As far as proper financial compensation goes? Nada.

And our own state government is hardly more charitable. It is a certifiable fact that for every $3 in uncompensated care that the Med provides and for which the federal government compensates the state of Tennessee (that being how such monies are distributed from Washington), Shelby County and the Med receive back only $1. The rest of the Med-generated funding is distributed throughout the rest of the state’s hospital network via TennCare channels, to public and private hospitals alike.

There is a possible rationale for such an allocation mode, based on a labyrinthine version of how TennCare operates, but Governor Phil Bredesen, like his immediate predecessors, has been careless, even indifferent, about making the case. Worse yet was the response of state finance commissioner Dave Goetz last week to a civil rights complaint filed by Shelby County commissioner Mike Ritz seeking to return more of the federal funding to the source which generated it, i.e., the Med.

What Goetz did in effect was threaten to retaliate by breaking off any pending negotiations on the Med issue between the state and any and all local officials in retaliation.

We say shame on state government for taking such a position and bravo to Ritz and his colleagues who are trying, justly, to force an issue that should have been resolved long ago.

Joe Kent

Tennessee suffered a major loss last week with the death of former state representative Joe Kent, a Memphian who throughout his lengthy tour of office was a champion of the Med and other vital public institutions and who, as much as any other member of the House ever, was a force of cohesion binding members of different parties and different regions into common cause.

Kent will be remembered this Saturday at the McWherter Senior Center in a Celebration of Life memorial service, and, while the complete list was still being added to at press time, numerous local officials will be there to pay the former legislator proper homage. We, too, say well done and farewell. Kent was a moderate’s moderate and a good guy.

Opinion Viewpoint

Chameleon Democrats

Post author By Richard Cohen
Post date February 18, 2010

Let me introduce myself. I am Harold Gillibrand or maybe I’m Kirsten Ford, a blending of the Democrats who want to be the next elected senator from New York. I am running to free the party from the clutches of Harry Reid, or maybe it’s Chuck Schumer, and to return fiscal sanity to the state that was once home to Alexander Hamilton, our first secretary of the treasury who, like so many other New Yorkers, came to grief across the river in New Jersey. Here are my positions.

I was pro-life when I was a congressman from Tennessee, but I am now pro-choice. This is not because I moved from Tennessee to New York but because the moral, ethical, and practical issues have changed in such fundamental ways in the past couple of weeks that it takes someone who thinks outside the box to fully understand them. When I said I was pro-life, I was referring to the old Time Inc. picture magazine. Some people are pro-People, some people are pro-Sports Illustrated, and I am pro-Life. I think the American people are with me on this.

On second thought, I have always been pro-choice. I have been consistent on this. It is my position on gun control that is evolving. When I was a member of Congress from a rural New York district, I got a huge stamp of approval from the National Rifle Association for opposing even moderate or, as some people say, sane gun legislation. Since then, I have come to understand that guns are sometimes used in New York City in the commission of crimes, and since I am anti-crime, I am modifying my position on guns. I think the American people are with me on this.

It’s true that I opposed gay marriage. But I did so only in the context of Tennessee and not New York. In the first place, like Iran, Tennessee has no homosexuals. New York has lots of them, including the speaker of the city council and Isaac Mizrahi, whoever he is. Still, I always favored civil unions, because I did not think that a civil union between gays threatened the sanctity of contract law, which is the bedrock of our Judeo-Christian-Muslim-Buddhist-Santeria faith. I used to think the American people were with me on this, and now I know I am with them. This is what democracy is all about.

I was the only Democratic member of Congress from New York to vote to fund the war in Iraq. In retrospect, I have modified my position, changing it ever so slightly so that “approved” becomes “disapproved,” which is just a difference of three letters, only one of them an all-important vowel. In Tennessee, I voted for the war, taking the position favored by most Tennesseans when I could have done the easy thing and not voted at all. This is what Barack Obama did on occasion in the Illinois Senate, and it made him president. I, however, would rather be wrong than be president.

I’m a Yankees fan. The Mets, too. Love the Knicks, the Rangers, the Giants, and the Jets. Pastrami goes on rye, hold the mayo. The Bronx is up, and the Battery’s down. If you can make it here …

Yes, I favored raids on illegal immigrants when I was a member of the House, in both Tennessee and upstate New York. But I’ve changed my mind. These are good people who have come here to work. Also, their relatives vote.

I am 43, but I used to be younger. I am 39 but promise to get older. I am woman (hear me roar), and I am man. That’s just the way things turned out. I am black. I am white. If you want me to be the other way around, I’ll gladly appoint a study commission. I am my own person. No one controls me. I vote my conscience. Also my district. Luckily, my conscience tells me to vote my district.

I know what you’re thinking: I have no mind of my own. I change with the wind. But how about you? Do you always tell the boss when he’s an idiot? Do you always tell the customer he’s wrong? Do you always tell your spouse the truth and always speak up in staff meetings even if you know what you’re going to say is unpopular? I thought not.

Vote for one of us, either Harold Gillibrand or Kirsten Ford. We’re the same person. In fact, we’re you.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

We Recommend We Recommend

Weekend Getaways

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date February 18, 2010

Whimsy is in the air this week as the University of Memphis and Rhodes College open a pair of singularly odd comedies.

While watching Noël Coward’s Hay Fever, it’s best to keep in mind that the only meaningful line comes somewhere in Act II when Sorrel, a bratty young bohemian, announces, “We don’t, any of us, ever mean anything.”

Coward’s wicked comedy of manners tells the story of the Bliss family whose members have all invited their romantic interests to come and stay for the weekend. When their potential paramours arrive, the mean, head-game-loving family begins an unusual courtship ritual that leaves the unsuspecting guests with no choice but to run for their lives. It’s quite possible that the revelers from Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show take their cues from Coward’s Bliss family, which at times appears to be from another (sexually dysfunctional) planet.

Craig Lucas’ Reckless, a much darker affair, is all about Rachel, a cockeyed optimist who finds herself on the lam on Christmas Eve after her husband confesses to having hired a hit man to kill her. Lucas’ surreal answer to Candide finds Rachel driving desperately through the streets of Connecticut, hooking up with a social worker and his deaf, mute, wheelchair-bound wife, and taking part in a bizarre game show that’s part Family Feud and part Let’s Make a Deal.

“Hay Fever” at the University of Memphis’ Theater Building Mainstage, February 23rd through 27th. Shows start at 8 p.m. tickets are $10 and $15 (678-2576).

“Reckless” at Rhodes College’s McCoy Theatre, February 19th through 27th. Shows start at 7:30 p.m. The final performance will be a matinee on Sunday, February 28th, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10 for general admission, $5 for students from the community, $7 for senior citizens, and $2 for Rhodes students (843-3839).

Music Music Features

Not So Easy

Post author By Andrew Earles
Post date February 18, 2010

Before “indie rock” was a meaningless marketing term, it was a specific style of music — a scrappy mid-to-late-’80s byproduct of existing styles (hardcore, college rock, and pop-punk) crashing into one another, a sound that none of its practitioners would cop to (“I don’t think of our band as ‘indie rock’ … we’re just a rock band”), and, finally, a style of music that loved to appropriate older, long-defunct movements or then-current but disparate trends. It jumped into bed and had its way with techno, metal, hardcore, free jazz, blues, and power-pop.

The last is a no-brainer, as a lot of indie-rock was often a few adjustments away from sounding like traditional ’70s power-pop anyway. The two core materials were already there: the giant hook and the song structure’s forward propulsion. Washington, D.C.’s Title Tracks isn’t just some indie-rock appropriation of power-pop, but the band’s sound does bear a striking resemblance to such indie power-poppers as the New Pornographers’ Carl Newman and Ted Leo & the Pharmacists.

Title Tracks is essentially a vehicle for John Davis, formerly one-half of the one-off duo Georgie James but perhaps better known by some as the drummer/vocalist for D.C.’s restless Q and Not U. Forming in 1998 and releasing their Dischord debut, No Kill No Beep Beep, in 2000, Q and Not U was one of those bands that could be all over the place while simultaneously staying within certain stylistic boundaries. And they sounded distinctly D.C. Q and Not U was like a power-pop take on D.C. hardcore staple Fugazi or a Dismemberment Plan without the Talking Heads fixation. Q and Not U’s use of clean, upfront yelped-sung vocals made them very much a band of their time. The band worked hard at it, releasing three full-length albums before breaking up mid-decade. Their final album, Power (2004), is worth seeking out, as the band was finding itself musically but coming apart internally — usually the formula for a great album.

Davis then formed Georgie James with Laura Burhenn. Seventies singer-songwriter and glam references were thrown about as influences, but the duo’s uncanny similarity to the New Pornographers was inescapable. Georgie James was not necessarily a dynamic entity, however, while Title Tracks is about as airtight and instrumentally defined as contemporary power-pop can get.

On the “band”‘s new debut album, It Was Easy, Davis played every instrument then farmed out these duties to friends for touring and video-shoot needs. This is quite impressive, as a great deal of skill and care went into building these 11 tracks, even the two covers (Bruce Springsteen’s “Tougher Than the Rest” and Gene Clark’s beautiful Byrds moment, “She Don’t Care About Time”).

Title Tracks’ MySpace page, along with other promotional materials, is conspicuously devoid of any post-1990 references (or artists that did their best, if any, work after 1990) in terms of influence. Of course, an artist can influence another artist in ways that are not easily heard or seen, and I suspect that’s where the inclusions of Bad Brains, Skeeter Davis, Chet Baker, and Booker T & the MGs originate. But this is still misleading, as this band’s real roots are more modern. The first sign of this comes via the vocal style, in which the hook and repeated melodies are often delivered in a rapid-fire, almost spoken-sung fashion that is exclusively a ’90s/’00s development, one perfected several years ago by Rob Crow/Pinback and done in a unique manner by all three vocalists in the New Pornographers. It should be mentioned that the Bruce Springsteen cover takes on a distinct Chris Bell feel (though Big Star/Alex Chilton/Bell are not mentioned as influences, oddly).

Big Star is mentioned in most critical assessments of Davis’ previous band, Georgie James, so Davis is probably sick of reading it. It’s all what you do with the source material, and Davis does make it his own by eschewing the quirkiness of the New Pornographers’/Newman’s songwriting style. There is the above-mentioned debt owed to Ted Leo, probably a friend of Davis’, given the shared regional origins and the fact that Q and Not U toured with Leo. Leo’s cathartic, urgent vocal delivery is also adopted by Davis on several tracks.

All in all, the material on It Was Easy is catchy from start to finish, wavering from suitably so to unforgettably so. And just because the music is derivative of contemporaries doesn’t mean that Davis flat-out thieved hooks from anyone. By virtue of the hooks, these are Davis’ songs, and a song with a great hook is the hardest form of rock/pop-based music to write. So It Was Easy was, in fact, not easy at all.

Music Music Features

Folkie Town

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date February 18, 2010

The annual International Folk Alliance Conference descends on Memphis this week, bringing some 1,800 guitar-wielding registrants to the downtown Marriott and Cook Convention Center for a sprawling, music-laden, five-day happening that runs from Wednesday, February 17th, through Sunday, February 21st.

While most of the conference is open only to registrants, the Memphis-based Folk Alliance has planned several open-to-the-public events in conjunction with the conference. Here’s a civilian’s guide to the conference. Look for an on-the-scene report from the Folk Alliance get-together in these pages next week:

Bartlett Performing Arts & Conference Center: BPACC will host two big public Folk Alliance shows this weekend. On Friday, “A Sacred Steel Gospel Revue” will bring together more than half-a-dozen noted sacred steel guitar performers, most prominently Miami’s celebrated Lee Boys ensemble. [UPDATE: The “Sacred Steel Gospel Revue” has been moved to the Center for Southern Folklore, same night, same time. It will now be free.]

On Saturday, “Songwriters in the Round Super Session” will unite four venerated modern singer-songwriters — Danny O’Keefe, Willis Alan Ramsey, Kevin Welch, and Memphis’ own Keith Sykes.

Both concerts begin at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

Center for Southern Folklore: This downtown venue will host a couple of public Folk Alliance shows Friday and Saturday night. Friday’s “Roots Music Spectacular” will feature Austin’s Stonehoney, British folk singer Martyn Joseph, Alabama’s Act of Congress, and alt-folk duo Hudost. Showtime is 7:30 p.m.

Saturday night, “Songwriters in the Round” will bring together a quartet of Nashville troubadours — David Olney, Will Kimbrough, Tommy Womack, and Phil Lee. A second set at 9:30 p.m. will feature Memphis folk stalwart Sid Selvidge, up-and-comer Amy Speace, ex-BR5-49er Chuck Mead, and New Englander Anais Mitchell.

All of these showcases are free.

Cook Convention Center: From 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. on Saturday, the Folk Alliance will make a portion of its conference open to the general public. Admission will be free but limited to the first 500 participants. Attendees can get a free CD with the donation of a non-perishable item for the Memphis Food Bank.

The public schedule begins with a series of kid-friendly events. At 10 a.m., there’s an “Instrument Petting Zoo” which will allow kids to test out a wide variety of musical instruments. Kids can also bring their own stringed instruments (or use one on hand) for a music lesson during the 10 a.m. hour. At 11 a.m., the “Folk Alliance Kids Music Revue” will present a 90-minute concert featuring children’s-music performers attending the conference.

Adult sessions get under way at 11 a.m. with a “Music Business Basics” panel touching on every aspect of the industry. A “Songwriters Workshop” follows at 1 p.m., with a panel on sponsorships and endorsements going on concurrently.

A trio of public events closes the session at 3 p.m. Local industry leaders, including representatives of the Memphis Music Commission, Memphis Music Foundation, and the local Recording Academy chapter, will be on hand for a panel on the Memphis scene. An open-participation “Community Sing” will also be held at 3 p.m.

Otherlands Coffee Bar: Otherlands will host Folk Alliance-connected shows nightly from Wednesday the 17th through Sunday. Wednesday’s show (admission: $7) will feature locals Susan Marshall and Kim Richardson. Thursday night ($7), Louisiana’s Dirtfoot and Austin’s the Trishas will share the stage. Friday night ($8), area native Cory Branan will host various guests from the conference. Saturday night ($8), Memphis’ Jimmy Davis leads a band of conference guests. Finally, Peter Hyrka & the Gypsy Hombres will perform on Sunday ($10).

For more information on the Folk Alliance Conference and related events, see Folk.org.

Art Art Feature

Top Form

Post author By Carol Knowles
Post date February 18, 2010

For “A Delicate Balance,” the mixed-media installation in the ArtLab at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis, Colin Kidder and John Morgan turn toy balloons into fine art. They bend, twist, wrap, and blow rubber balloons into amalgams of vegetable and animal life as they explore what happens when nature’s delicate balance is poisoned, globally warmed, and irradiated almost to extinction.

The only recognizable creatures in their post-apocalyptic jungle are the hummingbirds Kidder and Morgan have sculpted from Polymer clay. While the birds’ tufted bodies and wing feathers are still intact, their beaks are now pointed metal darts sharp enough to pierce the rubbery hides.

And it looks like they’ll be needing them as they hover and dart just beyond the reach of the hundreds of deep-purple, opalescent-orange, and electric-blue tentacles that reach out from the walls or scurry across ArtLab’s floor dragging what look like smooth pink intestines — turned inside out — behind them. Their bellies are stretched to the point of bursting as these phosphorescent, toxic creatures allure and then poison unsuspecting prey.

As edgy as they are instructive, Kidder and Morgan’s original, beautiful, and topical mutants make “A Delicate Affair” a must-see exhibition.

Through February 27th

In Pinkney Herbert’s four large pastel drawings at Playhouse on the Square, energy builds, coalesces into increasingly complex shapes, and culminates in a 100-by-125-inch pastel titled Alpha, one of the most inventive works of Herbert’s career.

A softly glowing, sable shadow, hovering in the background, sucks us in as we are swept across the surface by a spinning serpent. Something more profound is suggested by the serpent’s huge, hinged mouth, its deeply furrowed green forehead crowned with tufts of feathers or leaves, and the threadlike umbilical chord that loosely ties the free-floating shadow (womb? black hole?) to the creature’s belly where large black spermatozoa gestate. Herbert has assembled characters from several creation stories including Mesoamerica’s Quetzalcoatl, the British Isles’ Green Man, and the male and female principles of Shiva, the Hindu god dancing the world into existence.

Mounted in Playhouse on the Square’s impressive new performance and gallery space, Alpha can be read as metaphor for all artists (playwrights, actors, musicians) attempting to shape new ideas and new art forms out of the primordial stew.

Through February 22nd

Christian Brothers University’s current exhibition “Raw Silk” provides viewers with the opportunity to see the collages and silk paintings of two accomplished fabric artists working at the top of their form.

It’s late autumn in Japanese Torii, Contance Grayson’s most evocative collage, in which hundreds of pieces of kimono and Japanese money, stamps, advertising flyers, and vintage postcards are layered and stitched into a deeply textured tapestry of the gardens, sea coast, mountains, and Shinto shrines of Japan. Grayson take us through the gate of a shrine into the courtyard beyond where a tiny figure (the only human presence in the piece) meditates in the garden.

Phyllis Boger’s dyes and resist on silk include crisp, colorful, child-like geometries of Italian hill towns and translucent mosaics. But Boger’s most moving and strikingly beautiful work is Procession.

A weathered copper roof tops a sagging, deep-red facade. Three hooded figures, completely in shadow, stand on mottled royal-blue and teal tiles. One of the figures raises his cloaked arms and gives thanks for the tiny windows of light, umber woods, and rolling fields that border his town. Deep-green and raw-sienna shadows swirling inside the penitent suggest that, instead of merely going through the motions, he deeply feels the ritual he performs.

Through March 11th

Elisha Gold is best known for his metal sculpture, such as the nine-foot sunflower planted at Memphis Botanic Garden whose face is covered with 700 rounds of ammunition instead of seeds.

For Gallery Fifty Six’s current show “Forgive Your Enemies,” Gold has mounted a series of paintings that are as sardonic, socially conscious, and politically astute as his sculpture.

Replete with Ben-Day dots and comic-book-inspired scenes of military battle and beautiful women, Gold’s slick and crisp-edged enamel paintings are, in part, homage to Roy Lichtenstein. In Gold’s particularly chilling portrait of cynicism and presumed superiority, a socialite raises her glass of champagne and toasts the viewer with the work’s title, It’s True. The Bigger the Lie, the More Believe.

Tags Art Museum of the University of Memphis (AMUM), Gallery Fifty Six, Playhouse on the Square, Ross Gallery

Film Features Film/TV

In Brief

Post author By Greg Akers
Post date February 18, 2010

For some filmmakers, the short film is a proving ground to help raise funding to make a feature-length movie. For students, it’s a way to learn the technology and hone the tricks of the trade necessary to have a career in the industry. And for many homegrown filmmakers toiling around the world, the short is a way to scratch a creative itch: to tell that one story inside.

In other words, it’s not a novelty. The proof is on display this weekend when this year’s crop of Oscar-nominated shorts will be screened at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. The program is presented by the local film festival organization On Location: Memphis. All five nominees for Best Short Film, Live Action and five for Best Short Film, Animated will be screened.

The live-action nominees include a trio of modern-day nightmares, a black-as-death joke, and a palate-cleansing comedy.

Kavi is set in present-day India and shines its light on slavery in the world’s second-most populated country. Kavi (Sagar Salunke) is a little boy who is subjected to back-breaking, skin-tearing work making bricks to help his father pay off a debt. In the distance he sees other kids playing cricket, and he longs to be one of them. “School is for rich kids,” Kavi is told by the slave-camp master. “But cricket is for everyone,” Kavi responds.

There’s one word that’s never uttered in The Door that informs and colors everything in it: Chernobyl. Igor Sigov stars as Nikolai, a father and husband who must flee with his family from their home following the 1986 nuclear disaster. What they don’t realize at the time is that the refugees are “ticking time bombs” evacuated into the world.

Okay, Miracle Fish might be a little tough, too. For his 8th birthday, Joe (Karl Beattie) is given a little wish-fulfilling fish novelty by his father. Joe suffers at the hands of grade-school bullies, who taunt him and call his family poor, so he hides in the nurse’s office and takes a nap. He wakes to find that everyone in the school has disappeared. There’s a book about alien abductions left behind. Is that a clue? Joe doesn’t care. He’s happy to be by himself. He’s not alone, though.

Strangely, The New Tenants ties these other three together. It opens with a two-and-a-half-minute rant from Frank (essayist/actor David Rakoff), sitting at a kitchen table with his partner/roommate Peter (Jamie Harrold), who has heard it all before. Right now, somewhere else in the world, people are dying horrible deaths. Every moment of every day: misery and biological expiration. The couple then proceeds to be interrupted by a series of other tenants.

Instead of Abracadabra is different: It’s about 25-year-old amateur magician Tomas (Simon Berger), who still lives with his parents, and no one dies. It’s kind of a Swedish Napoleon Dynamite.

On the Animated side, the mainstay animated characters Wallace and Gromit anchor the field. The oblivious Wallace and his ingenious dog Gromit return in A Matter of Loaf and Death, another in Nick Park’s multiple-Oscar-winning films. There’s also a screed by an old woman who’s bitter about being cast aside by the younger generation (Grammy O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty), a comic tug-of-war between a doctor and death (The Lady and the Reaper), a karmic comeuppance for a man who has lost his wallet and can’t pay for his coffee (French Roast), and, best of all, a brilliant rendering of L.A. as a cacophony of corporate logos caught up in an action disaster plot like only Hollywood could imagine (Logorama) — worth the price of admission.

Film Features Film/TV

Love, L.A. Style

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date February 18, 2010

Garry Marshall is best known as the director of Pretty Woman and is beloved by me solely for his supporting turn in Albert Brooks’ Lost in America. But at heart, this Hollywood vet is a TV guy, having honed his craft for slight, easily digestible comedy as a writer/director/producer for such hit series as The Odd Couple, Happy Days, and Laverne & Shirley. Marshall’s filmography also includes a couple of writing credits for Love, American Style. That forgettable series seems to be the precursor for Marshall’s latest big-screen project: Valentine’s Day, a “star”-packed rom-com that raked in an estimated $67 million box office last weekend.

Where Love, American Style separated its barely written romantic/comedy vignettes into self-contained scenes, Valentine’s Day is somewhat more ambitious. Set over the course of a single Los Angeles day and night on the titular holiday, the film intertwines the romantic stories of roughly 20 primary characters, like a cut-rate answer to Robert Altman’s Short Cuts.

Filled with celebrities if not always movie stars, Valentine’s Day divides its cast into settled couples (Hector Elizondo, Shirley MacLaine), new couples (Patrick Dempsey, Jennifer Garner), bitter singles (Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx), and strangers passing in the night (Bradley Cooper, Julia Roberts). There are so many drop-ins here that Marshall has name actors (Kathy Bates) just standing around.

The location shooting adds some interest, at least more than the storylines, which are listlessly written and play as if the actors were handed scripts moments before shooting. Jessica Alba sleepwalks through a few scenes. Queen Latifah is forced into an awkwardly outdated bit of racial comedy. Taylor Swift’s big-screen debut is at first endearingly energetic and self-deprecating but ultimately overplayed. And we’re asked to take Ashton Kutcher seriously as both a florist (!?) and an adult.

But with no one given anything substantial to work with, the film emerges as something of a test as to which of its actors has real big-screen appeal, with two winners emerging, one expected and one not. Anne Hathaway is a struggling actress paying the bills as a phone-sex operator who specializes in accents — a phony character only a lazy screenwriter could love. And yet I kept wanting this overlong film (125 minutes) to drift back to her story anyway. Hathaway’s too good for this movie but doesn’t act like it. And I didn’t realize until the credits that the babysitter thinking about losing her virginity to a high school boyfriend was Emma “niece of Julia” Roberts, a young actress struggling to turn Nancy Drew into a franchise. She’s the most real thing on the screen in Valentine’s Day. Somebody find her a real role.