Month: February 2010

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.

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

Theater Theater Feature

Haunted

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date February 18, 2010

The weather hasn’t been kind to anyone of late, but a particularly dark cloud seems to have settled over the Hattiloo Theatre this February. The opening weekend of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, an urban blues drama about ghosts of the past and glimpses of the future, was postponed when a cast member was unexpectedly hospitalized. Director Ekundayo Bandele, pulling double duty as the show’s chief carpenter and techie, was sidelined by illness when the show finally opened on February 12th. His unrehearsed substitute blew sound cues and ran the light board with all the subtlety of a torturer trying to drag answers out of the audience. I wish that was an unusual circumstance, but tech at the Hattiloo has had a herky-jerky quality all season, reaching back at least as far as the retina-scarring cues in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Bandele wants to make Wilson’s work an annual event at his theater, which is an interesting prospect made doubly interesting by last season’s knockout production of Fences. But for a variety of reasons that may or may not be related to the show’s stuttering start, The Piano Lesson never quite delivers on its promise. A capable if not equally gifted cast struggle with their lines and move about the stage in forced fits and artificial starts. Things only spring to life when Anthony Bell swaggers, stumbles, or barges onto stage as Whinin’ Boy, a wandering entertainer trying to give up the blues. But even Bell’s winning go at Whinin’ Boy — one of the most dynamic performances I’ve ever witnessed — comes at the expense of Wilson’s words, which he butchers with ad-libs. Likewise, Bell’s cast mates are constantly upstaged by the sheer force of his personality.

Wilson’s play is a meditation on the meaning of legacy, symbolized by a piano with pictures of the family’s ancestors carved into it. The piano isn’t just covered in pictures, it’s also covered in blood, and shame, and horror. Some might even say it’s cursed. Boy Willie, played with great force and good humor by Cooli Crawford, wants to sell it and use the money to buy the land his family worked as slaves and sharecroppers. His sister Bernice, played with quiet strength by Mary Pruitt, won’t play the instrument for fear of summoning up evil spirits but will shoot anybody who tries to take it away from the family, even Boy Willie.

What Bendele’s take on The Piano Lesson lacks in polish, it makes up in charisma. Even the weakest players are imminently watchable as they wrestle with the script’s dark humor and troublesome ironies. It’s too bad all of the music was cut from this show, because if there was ever a cast that needed to learn how to jam together like musicians, this is it. It’s also too bad that Bell, the show’s most intriguing personality and an actor I’d like to see more of in the future, is also this Piano Lesson‘s greatest liability.

Through February 28th

Going Evergreen

Champagne corks popped this past Valentine’s Day to mark Circuit Playhouse’s transformation into the Evergreen Theatre, an extension of TheatreWorks.

Jackie Nichols, Playhouse on the Square’s executive producer, reflected on Circuit Playhouse’s 26 years on Poplar and the 250 productions performed in the converted movie house, including the first American production of The Rocky Horror Show starring musician Larry Raspberry as Dr. Frankenfurter. Rocky Horror was performed in 1977, while the building was still a functioning movie house.

“We anticipate a lot of wonderful theater happening by new and emerging groups,” Nichols said, noting that the new space has already been heavily booked. Pat Bogan, who has been with TheatreWorks since it evolved from her work with the Downtown Dream Machine in the ’70s, said that, like TheatreWorks, the Evergreen Theatre will be an affordable place for emerging artists to hone their craft and develop new works.

The Evergreen Theatre will officially open next weekend with a production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues.

Food & Wine Food & Drink

Locavoracious

Post author By Hannah Sayle
Post date February 18, 2010

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Over the past few years, the food world has been abuzz with talk of eating locally and seasonally. For Memphians, translating this movement into practice has become so convenient that excuses for not eating locally and seasonally are like the croissant bread pudding placed before me at my recent visit to Interim. That is to say, the excuses have disappeared.

Dinner at Interim is one way you can eat local foods that follow the seasons. Chef Josh Belenchia and staff do a complete overhaul of the menu four times a year (that’s one change for each season). Depending on availability, as much as 50 percent of their produce comes from local farmers markets. And it tastes good. I stopped in to sample the newest menu changes recently and had smoked salmon cakes served with fennel-apple slaw and citrus reduction and trigger fish with parsnip purée, braised fennel, roasted Brussels sprouts (my favorite), and citrus brown butter.

My companions also sampled some seasonal fare, including an incredibly tender pork shank served with locally made Delta Grind gouda grits, collard greens and whole-grain mustard jus, and the Springer Mountain chicken breast with caramelized onions, bacon, sweet potatoes, and Swiss chard.

Some staples are always on the menu, like Interim’s wildly popular burger made with beef from Neola Farms, located 30 minutes north of Memphis in Brighton, Tennessee. (The open kitchen at Interim offered a perfect vantage to see just how many Neola Farms burgers were coming off the grill. Answer: a lot.)

Meanwhile, new menu items were peppering the surrounding tables during my visit: sweet potato soup with crème fraîche and toasted hazelnuts, scallop puttanesca, steak of the day with Parmesan-truffle fries, sautéed garlic spinach and wild huckleberry sauce, and a pear mousse cake with spiced devil’s food cake, pear panna cotta, and pear mousse amaretto sauce.

Interim is proof that eating local, seasonal food doesn’t have to mean cooking it yourself.

Interim, 5040 Sanderlin (818-0821),

interimrestaurant.com

Of course, if you like to cook, Miss Cordelia’s grocery in Harbor Town carries a wide range of local foods to work with: herbs from Millstone Gardens in Hernando, McCarter Coffee from the Millington micro-roaster, honey by Robert Hodum from Collierville, and Bonnie Blue Cheeses from Waynesboro.

What you might not know is that Miss Cordelia’s also pairs up with local restaurants to make some of their foods more readily available. For instance, Las Delicias, known for its fresh Mexican dishes, chunky guacamole, and homemade tortillas, now sells their homemade corn chips at the Harbor Town market. And the sushi at Miss Cordelia’s? “Most people don’t realize that it comes from Umai,” says executive chef David Thornton.

Out of all Miss Cordelia’s local items, Thornton says Isa’s Cakes — made by Isaura Amill, originally from Puerto Rico — and the products from Big Ono Bake Shop on Front sell the best. Big Ono brings in fresh pastries, breads, and cupcakes every day, and since the bakery itself closes at 3 p.m., Miss Cordelia’s is the only place to find their fresh baked goods in the afternoon.

Miss Cordelia’s, 737 Harbor Bend (526-4772), misscordelias.com

Another local treat you might spy at the grocery store is a bag of Makeda’s homemade cookies. Ten local Kroger stores carry the brand, and you can always pick up a dozen at one of the three Makeda’s Bakery locations. The business was founded in 1999 by Pamela and Maurice Hill and four other family members and was named after their niece Makeda, who passed away from leukemia in 1997.

In addition to Kroger, Makeda’s cookies can be found at area restaurants such as Soulsville Grill on Shelby Drive and D’bo’s Wings n’ More in Cordova.

What’s their secret? “The premium ingredients,” Pamela Hill says: “100 percent butter and a lot of love.” The butter cookies are the number-one seller, but the bakery sells 16 types of cookies, including chocolate pecan, iced oatmeal, chocolate chip, macadamia nut, sugar, and peanut butter.

Tags Interim, Miss Cordelia's

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.