Month: February 2010

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Watching Grass Grow

Okay, where were we? Hard to remember with all these distractions, and … well, with a fridge full of goodies just sitting there, saying eat me, gobble me up … Hmmm, anyhow, as we were saying, Yep, early Dylan was the best Dylan, and … What were we saying?

We jest. This is not a representation of our own clean and sober and ever-nose-to-the-grindstone thoughts, nor, we can assure you, does it indicate the thought processes of Dr. Mahmoud A. ElSohly or any of his colleagues at the Marijuana Project of the National Center for Natural Products Research, housed at the University of Mississippi.

But those, er, symptoms that so many members of the current power generation may recall from their youth (misspent or otherwise) are the very same mannerisms induced in subjects of this internationally famous research project, which has been going on — under our noses, so to speak — at Ole Miss since 1968.

For the record, Dr. ElSohly says, “I have never smoked marijuana, even though I have all the supply I need.”

He can say that again. Crops of various degrees of potency are grown on what is now 12 acres, up from six acres a few years ago and from one-and-a-half acres when the project began in 1968.

The Marijuana Project owed its creation, obviously, to the hue and cry about what had obviously become a major social occurrence back there in the late ’60s, and it has continued to be federally funded because of the enduring nature of those concerns, as well as newer notions that the practice being studied may have beneficial medical consequences.

In an address to the Memphis Rotary Club on Tuesday, Dr. ElSohly enumerated the medical problem areas for which marijuana is now known — thanks largely to the ongoing research at Ole Miss — to be useful: among them, AIDS, glaucoma, pre-operative anesthesia, smoking cessation, and the list is growing. It is no accident that, in an escalating number of states, marijuana has been legalized as a drug of choice for several of these conditions. And, yes, to be honest, in a few of these states — California, in particular — restrictions have been relaxed to the point that recreational use of marijuana also has become commonplace (though not that much more commonplace, interestingly, than it was in the days of its official infamy).

Two caveats here: First, the crops at Ole Miss, though bountiful and including every variety known to your casual and not-so-casual pothead, are heavily guarded by hardware, electronics, and ample human security. And the other caveat: Yes, for all the giddy pleasures induced by marijuana and TCH, heavy concentrations have also been found to induce paranoia. (Some here gathered surely knew that already.)

One other thing: Did you know that the Ole Miss project uses suppositories as one of its delivery systems?

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Into the Fray

When I finished college in 1994, I had no intention of working for my hometown newspaper. But then 15 years and thousands of Commercial Appeal bylines later, I had no intention of leaving.

That’s basically what I told Brian Stephens and Darrell Cobbins when they approached me over Christmas vacation about joining their new civic undertaking, a coalition called Rebuild Government.

With the Memphis and Shelby County Charter Commission charged with writing a charter for new government that voters will consider in November, Brian, Darrell, and their allies created Rebuild Government to generate a county-wide conversation about the enormous opportunity this community has to reform and reunite.

Come join us at Rebuild Government, they said. We want to inspire citizens to imagine the possibilities for a new, better, more efficient and effective government — and make sure the Charter Commission clearly understands the hopes, values, and concerns of people throughout this county.

Their arguments tugged at a part of me that, at age 38 and with two young children, felt a yearning to advocate for causes that aligned with my values. In short, I had an itch to stop being professionally neutral — to get off the bench — and Brian and Darrell offered an unexpected opportunity to scratch it.

I had gotten to know Darrell a few years earlier and had come to value his insights as one of Memphis’ most civic-minded and respected young businessmen.

He’s the Democrat in this civic partnership. Brian is the Republican and Army veteran who successfully rallied neighborhood groups to prevent Walmart from adding another big-box store in Cordova and to keep a strip club off Germantown Parkway.

“We can be a part of helping people in this county consider a new constitution that includes the protections we all want,” Brian told me. “The city-county model we have is broken.”

Darrell’s business background has shown him the limitations of our current government model. “What we have is antiquated, rusted, and not transparent,” he said. “We want to have a conversation about building a new government that responds to the challenges and opportunities we face in 2010.”

Deciding to leave the newspaper was not easy, but ultimately I became convinced that no cause holds greater potential for generating the positive change Memphis and Shelby County so desperately need. That Rebuild Government is bipartisan, diverse, and includes active participants in neighborhoods throughout Shelby County only makes it more attractive.

Like Brian, I’m self-conscious about how idealistic we can sound talking about the possibilities, but it does make me think about my 7-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter. What kind of future do they have in Memphis and Shelby County? Will they have any interest in sticking around after college? Will we even be able to afford the colleges if the Memphis region’s stagnant economy continues to smother the earning potential for residents in all communities?

Right now, Rebuild Government is focused on getting people together from throughout the county for small group meetings where people feel comfortable being candid about priorities for a new government.

We are listening, we are organizing data, and we are studying how reformed metro government models have helped peer cities such as Nashville, Louisville, Indianapolis, and Jacksonville accelerate past us toward healthier, more prosperous futures.

When my wife and I told my son that I was leaving the newspaper, he surprised us by getting emotional. Trying to reassure him, I said that Rebuild Government allowed me to try to make this a better community for him and his sister.

“But weren’t you already doing that at the newspaper?” he asked. How do you explain to a first-grader about a daily newspaperman’s duty to not take sides, to stay neutral, to suppress personal convictions?

Near the end of my first week at Rebuild, at school pickup, his teacher stopped to say my son had shared the news with his class. “He said you were going to help make a better future for him and his friend,” she told me.

At Rebuild Government, we recognize that’s an audacious goal. But we think it’s worth talking about and invite you to join the conversation at rebuildgovernment.org or 347-8523.

(Zach McMillin is a former Flyer intern and Commercial Appeal reporter who now serves as communications director for “Rebuild government.”)

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

L’Chaim, Ya’ll!

What could be more Jewish than bagels? And what could be more Southern than barbecue? Combine the two, and you get “Bagels & Barbecue,” an exhibit opening Saturday, February 6th, at the Pink Palace Museum — an exhibit on the history and heritage of Tennessee’s Jews, who began arriving in the 1770s. It’s a joint project of the Tennessee State Museum and groups throughout the state, including the Memphis Jewish Federation, so look for donations and loans on display of local significance (including the original delivery truck from Seessels grocery).

And on the subject of groceries: Simply Southern with a Dash of Kosher Soul (brought to you by Memphis’ own Wimmer publishing company) is the name of a new cookbook, which comes with its own stories about Mid-South Jewish communities. Proceeds from sales of the book go to Memphis’ Margolin Hebrew Academy, and those sales have topped 1,900 copies. (Yes, that’s one thousand nine hundred.)

It’s a cookbook of traditional Southern recipes designed for any kosher kitchen — any kitchen, for that matter — and the folks who put it together have been busy since the book appeared late last year: busy shipping copies to all corners of the country and beyond; busy with local booksignings, the latest of which is at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on Thursday, February 4th.

That signing also will include a tasting of dishes drawn from the cookbook, and according to Dena Wruble (co-editor along with Tracy Rapp), cooks are already turning in more dishes for a possible future volume.

Not so fast, says Wruble, who admits she wasn’t quite sure what she was getting into here: “I knew the cookbook was going to be fabulous, but we’re taking this one step at a time. We’re going to enjoy this one book right now. For a few months at least, we’re thinking we’ll just celebrate Simply Southern.”

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Strong Spirits

August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-wining play The Piano Lesson, which opens at the Hattiloo Theatre this weekend, is an atypical ghost story and a potent family drama. Set in the 1930s, the fourth play of Wilson’s Pittsburgh cycle finds the Charles family fighting over their future while wrestling with horrors from the past. The drama begins when Boy Willie, an ex-con, and his friend Lymon steal a truck in Mississippi, fill the bed with watermelons, and head to Pittsburgh to visit Willie’s uncle Doaker and his sister Bernice. In addition to selling the melons, Willie hopes to sell the family’s only heirloom, a piano that’s been carved with images of his ancestors. He’s prepared to sell this one connection to the past in order to purchase the land his family once worked as slaves, even if it means tearing his family apart.

Theatergoers who missed T.C. Sharpe’s boisterous take on Troy Maxon, a Negro League heavy-hitter turned garbage man in August Wilson’s Fences, missed one of the last decade’s most exciting performances. But Sharpe, a versatile performer with a knack for wringing every drop of meaning from Wilson’s prose, is back at the Hattiloo this season in the pivotal, if less flashy, role of Uncle Doaker, the play’s chief storyteller. Sharpe is joined by Cooli Crawford as Boy Willie, Mary Pruitt as Bernice, and Anthony Bell as a past-his-prime blues singer called the Whining Boy. The show is directed by Hattiloo’s founding producer, Ekundayo Bandele, who says he’s attracted to Wilson’s plays because of “the cultural nuances that are throughout each script.”

“I especially like The Piano Lesson because of the otherworldly references and the honorable mention he gives to the African tradition of ancestor reverence,” Bandele says.

Categories
Music Music Features

Not Just a Girl in a Band

CREDIT: Ali Smith

Exene Cervenka may have been born in Illinois and raised in Florida, but she will always be identified with Los Angeles. That’s where she co-founded X, one of the city’s best and most legendary punk bands, which in the late 1970s and early ’80s took strains of country and rockabilly and revved them.

Theirs was a complex view of the city, eschewing Sunset Strip glitz-rock and Laurel Canyon folk for wrong-side-of-the-tracks punk and portraying L.A. as seedy, hostile, dangerous — with a tension so combustible it was perpetually antagonistic. Generous and heartfelt despite the setting, X’s music has proved so durable that the band is still touring behind its early albums 30 years later.

Until recently, however, Cervenka was only a spiritual presence in Los Angeles. Earlier in the 2000s, she moved to a remote farm in rural Missouri, which may not be the obvious setting for punk’s grand dame, but she wanted to leave L.A. “I wanted to get out to the country and be somewhere beautiful,” she says. “I had a big farmhouse with a barn, all that stuff. It was fun but very isolating.”

The setting proved to be conducive to writing songs and creating art: “I like to create in a vacuum, so for me it was perfect,” Cervenka says. “Other people would have gone crazy.”  

Her sojourn into the Midwest lasted four years, after which Cervenka returned to Los Angeles. “The people here are more important to me than Missouri,” she explains. “As much as I love Missouri and had a really good experience being there, I finally decided to come back.”

That homecoming was part of a year of extreme ups and downs for the singer-songwriter. In October, she released Somewhere Gone, her first solo album in 13 years and her fifth overall. The songs are low-key, mostly acoustic, and genially countrified, like X stripped down to its essential parts. Cervenka’s lyrics convey her isolation, even when she’s singing about traveling, playing, loving, or just living. Some songs are heartbroken (“Why does my everything sleep in someone else’s light?”), others randy and ambiguous (“You do that insane thing to me!”), still others playful and unguarded in their imagery (“Catching raindrops in the parking lot/steam rising from the asphalt”). 

The rambling sound, which often places Cervenka’s vocals over nothing but an acoustic guitar or spare violins, gives the album a spontaneity, as if these were no-pressure demos recorded during a laid-back session. “I didn’t want to make a band record,” she explains. “I wanted to make an intimate, simple, plain folk record, because that’s the way the songs seemed to be translating best.”

Her compositions determine their own fates, Cervenka says. “Songs are like little miracles, because when you’re finished, it’s almost like you’ve given birth to something. It’s an amazing process, but then you have to figure out what to do with these little miracles to make them reach their potential. That’s the tricky part.” 

Ultimately, Somewhere Gone is also an album about inspiration, which is fitting for an artist working in so many media at once. Cervenka is well known for her folk-art-inspired collages and found-art sculptures created from old prints and materials. She likens them to a kind of recycling: “Especially with old photographs and stuff like that,” she says. “People get rid of their family heirlooms in thrift stores or auctions, which is where I find stuff. And I like to give it new life, give it new respect.”

In 2009, she opened two art shows — a solo exhibition titled “Celestial Ash: Assemblages from Los Angeles” at the Craft and Folk Museum in L.A. and a joint exhibition, “We’re Not the Jet Set,” with Wayne White at Western Project in Culver City. She currently has a piece in “Never Can Say Goodbye,” a show organized by New York art collective No Longer Empty and set up in an abandoned Tower Records store on Broadway.  

While the music and the visuals come from similar places, she says, they don’t really intersect: “They replace each other at intervals. I’m so happy that I can do two or three different things, because if I were just doing songs, maybe I would take that ability for granted or not do it as much. But I can go back and forth between two different things, so I never get tired of one.” 

If 2009 was a year of big highs for Cervenka, the big low came in the spring, when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. That news, she says, was not out of the blue. “I was expecting the diagnosis,” she says, “because I had been sick for a long time with weird things, so I just figured there was something weird wrong with me.”

Nevertheless, it came as a shock to her friends, who she says have been unfailingly supportive and ultimately turned that low into a high.

“It’s going to be a pain in the ass someday, but right now it’s been very positive because I learned a lot about people. I’m getting lots of advice, lots of recommendations, and it feels like the cumulative reward for working all these years, just to know that there are all these people out there. I always knew they were there but didn’t know to what extent they were capable of feeling for a girl in a band.”

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Kiss the Cook

CREDIT: Oxfordsquare | Dreamstime.com

Courting with Vegetables

I’m an amazing eater who will try anything as long as it doesn’t involve mayonnaise, and this is due to my beloved’s patient and persistent efforts. 

Years ago, my Achilles’ heel was what he adored the most: vegetables. Whenever a plate of them appeared in front of me, I died inside a little. Sure, I’d attempt a few bites, but I’ve always liked my food rich and a little on the sweet side. My husband, Justin, on the other hand, has the preferences of a particularly voracious bunny rabbit. In his view, raw carrots are an indulgent snack. Vegetarian stir-fry is a thrilling dinner. Every time we go out to eat, he orders a huge salad. (More often than not, we have to switch plates since servers assume that the chick is the one who ordered something healthy and low-fat.) Recently, I watched him bite into a leaf of spinach and deem it “a little sugary.”

This difference in our tastes can bring forth some issues at mealtime. I won’t eat anything that’s even remotely bitter, and he turns his nose up at most desserts. Somewhere along the way, though, my husband devised a sly and stealthy plan. He started courting me … with veggies. First, they were roasted and chopped up small in a lush, hearty spaghetti sauce. Next, he brought together intense flavors and spices that made butternut squash soup taste like candy. After much consternation, he finally allowed me to balance out sour notes in a dish with a pinch of sugar or a teaspoon of agave nectar. On the day he smoked and caramelized brussels sprouts, I was fully convinced. If I knew it was possible for vegetables to taste like this, I mused, I would’ve been a fan all along. 

Soon, I discovered that there were other things I’d been missing: spiky rambutan fruits, tender pork belly, gooseberries, oxtail, raw milk cheese, and prickly pear. A world of possible new favorites opened up to me, and I’m so grateful for the intervention-with-vegetables that kickstarted it. Now that love has unleashed and expanded my dormant palate, what’s often said about love rings true: It really can overcome all. — Amy Lawrence, married to Justin Fox Burks for five years

Let Him Eat Cake

When Tony and I were first married, we loved getting the Williams-Sonoma catalog. I envied the cookware and kitchen gadgets; Tony liked the recipes. Frequently, he would tear one out and leave it for me to see. Occasionally, I actually made one, including an incredibly complicated cranberry-orange cake. Man, was that a mistake.  

First, I needed dried cranberries. (Trip one to the store.) Next was the one cup and two tablespoons of sour cream. (I only had one cup. Trip two to the store.) Then I had to grate the orange zest. (What a mess that was.) The recipe had 16 ingredients, including orange marmalade and half a cup of pecans — roasted and chopped. 

Despite my struggles, the finished cake was lovely, thanks largely to my fancy bundt pan. It tasted pretty good too: a moist pound cake with a little crunch from the pecans and a delicate citrus flavor. But here’s the rub: It wasn’t chocolate, which for me, is the only valid reason for dessert. Not so for Tony. For the next 18 years, his request for special occasions has been the same: “I’d like that cake with the orange rind,” he says. I groan, I complain. Sometimes I comply. 

Other folks must like the cake too, because the recipe is still available on the Williams-Sonoma website. Search recipes for “cranberry-orange cake” but be forewarned. You won’t have all the ingredients in your cupboard. — Pamela Denney, married to Tony Yoken for 19 years

The Twain Shall Meet

My husband, Warren, and I are locked in a constant struggle between eating in or going out. In my family when I was growing up, going out to dinner was always an adventure — one I looked forward to. In Warren’s house, his mom cooked Japanese dishes, or washoku, from her homeland. So Warren learned to cook, and I learned how to find a good restaurant.

Now that we’ve been married for more than 10 years and have two young sons, we’ve found a good rhythm. I’ll admit that it took me awhile to understand that when Warren went shopping at three or four grocery stores, then spent two hours making dinner, it meant he loved me, not that he was trying to starve me.

Over the years he has introduced me to all of his mother’s specialties: sukiyaki, gyoza, tonkatsu; dishes we both enjoyed in Cameroon (where we met as Peace Corps volunteers): koki, njama njama, whole tilapia; favorite dishes from local restaurants: curry shrimp, banana lumpia, fish tacos; and his very own creations: barbecue sushi, crawfish gyoza, and corn-meal-encrusted chicken wings.

I return the love by asking for seconds, doing the dishes, and immortalizing his best meals on what we call his tribute blog, Chop Fayn (chopfayn.blogspot.com). Sometimes I even let him pick a restaurant.

– Stacey Greenburg, married to Warren Oster for 10 years

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

First Impressions

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Okay, I admit it. I’m a bit of a food snob about franchise restaurants, so I was surprised last week by the excitement I heard about Mellow Mushroom, a new pizza and hoagie restaurant in Germantown.

At Easy Way, two women picking through the green beans were ecstatic about the restaurant’s funky vibe. At the liquor store, folks were debating possible locations for the next Mellow Mushroom. “Just let it be near me,” someone said. Even Flyer staff writer Bianca Phillips tapped out this enthusiastic e-mail, and she’s a vegan: “Whoa! Do we have a Mellow Mushroom now?! Holy crap! I love the place.”

So what in the world is going on? How about pizzas with hippie names like Magical Mystery Tour (pesto, portobello mushrooms, spinach, feta, and jalapeno), calzones and hoagies (including Phillips’ favorite: teriyaki tempeh), 32 beers on tap (the list begins with Abita Amber and ends with Yuengling Lager), and a charming mural with caricatures of Memphis music icons.

“We had a thousand customers on opening day. It was insane,” said Cary Fairless, who owns and operates Mellow Mushroom with his wife, Lori Fairless. “A lot of people know the brand and the quality of the food. They like the cool environment and the type of service we are giving.”

After one visit, it’s easy to understand the restaurant’s reputation. The choice of pizza ingredients is a little mind-blowing. First, there are four kinds of pizza dough: olive oil and garlic, pesto, red, and barbecue. Next are the cheeses: blue cheese, cheddar, feta, Parmesan, provolone, ricotta, and fresh mozzarella. Fruits and veggies? There are 20. Proteins? Select from 20 more, including four kinds of tofu, anchovies, and jerk chicken.

Started in 1974 by a trio of college kids at Georgia Tech, Mellow Mushroom now includes 100 restaurants in 15 states. The Germantown restaurant — located on Poplar in the former Old Navy location — is the first of several restaurants that the Fairlesses plan for the Memphis area.

“Hopefully, by early summer, we’ll get focused on the next location,” Cary said. “There are lots of great possibilities.”

Mellow Mushroom, 9155 Poplar,

mellowmushroom.com (907-0243)

Marilyn Weber was an experienced baker before she opened Gigi’s Cupcakes last Saturday in East Memphis. But she still attended the franchise’s “cupcake college” to become swirl-certified.

“It was a humbling experience,” she said, laughing. “With Gigi’s, it’s all about the swirl.”

The three-tier swirl of butter cream or cream-cheese icing adorns every cupcake at Gigi’s, but no two flavors are alike. In fact, Gigi’s offers so many kinds of cupcakes that employees hand out cupcake menus so customers can keep it all straight.

“One of the things that makes us unique is that many of our recipes are family recipes that have been time-tested,” Weber said. “Our wedding-cake cupcake comes from a recipe that has been used for generations.”

Daily cupcake specials also mix up Gigi’s standard cupcake selection. A pecan-pie cupcake called “Memphis Mud” was available last Wednesday. “It’s gooey, yummy, and absolutely delicious,” employee Elizabeth Schriner said. (She was right!)

Cupcakes sell for $3 each, and already, bakers are cranking out 900 a day. “We’re not just selling cupcakes,” Weber explained. “We are selling the experience.”

Gigi’s is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Gigi’s Cupcakes, 4709 Poplar,

gigiscupcakesusa.com (888-2253)

Charley’s Grilled Subs, a worldwide franchise with 400 locations, opened its first Memphis restaurant last week in Oak Court Mall. Started in 1986 on the campus of Ohio State University, the sub shop sells six variations of a Philly cheese steak, another six types of deli subs, and finally, seven Charley’s “favorites,” including barbecue cheddar steak.

In addition to breakfast sandwiches and all-natural lemonade, Charley’s specializes in gourmet fries, loaded with cheddar, bacon, or ranch dressing. On my visit, I stuck with the originals: strips of fried potatoes with the skins, seasoned with a few shakes of Charley’s seasoned salt. Yum.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

A Year of Wine

CREDIT: Elena Elisseeva | Dreamstime.com

Now a month into 2010, this year holds numerous opportunities to learn about, explore, and taste new wines. The year promises to be filled with winemaker dinners, tastings, and large and small events. One of the better ways to seek out these events is on the website localwineevents.com. Promoters from across the globe post wine events on this site for free. Visitors also can sign up for e-mail alerts that notify them when new events in their area are posted.

One of the most exciting series of events in Memphis is the Brooks Museum’s “Art of Good Taste.” Each year the museum hosts winemakers from across the country and around the world during a series of some of the most well-organized events in the Southeast. This year’s theme, “La Dolce Vita,” will showcase the vibrantly beautiful wines of Italy and some of the best wineries, including Badia a Coltibuono. From the wine dinner with Silver Oak and Twomey to the Grand Auction on May 8th, this series has something for every wine and food lover at every price point. Many of the region’s best restaurants will be serving samples of their cuisine, making it a perfect opportunity to get acquainted with them as well.

Make sure to sign up for the e-mail newsletter, Twitter account, or Facebook page of your favorite restaurant and wine shop. This will keep you up to date on new menu items, wines, events, and specials that they may only send to people on those lists. Many times throughout the year, retailers receive highly allocated and highly sought-after wines that they sell out of before they even hit the sales floor. Snatching up a few bottles via Twitter or e-mail is a perfect way to build up your collection.

The best way to learn about wine is simply to drink it. When eating out at a restaurant, scan the wine list for something you haven’t had before and order it. If you aren’t quite sure about it, ask your server or the manager to give you some information. Start with something by the glass so you don’t have to commit to a full bottle. Or better yet, select a half bottle if you are dining with a companion.

“Many of our guests love the fact that we have a wide selection of half-size bottles,” says Rusty Prudhon of Napa Cafe in East Memphis. “It’s a perfect way to have a variety of different wines throughout the course of a meal, especially if you want to pair each course with an accompanying wine.”

Develop a relationship with your favorite wine shop and ask advice and follow suggestions on new and interesting wines. Purchase a journal or use your computer or handheld to write notes about new wines you taste. That way you can remember what you liked or explore more about a particular grape type, region, or producer.

No matter what your budget, there are good wines to be tasted and enjoyed. If possible, save up a little money or go into your favorite shop with a budget and ask them to put together a case or a few bottles that you’ve never had. Ask for a little info on each wine so you have a starting point. You have a whole new year to explore wine. Make it a good one!

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Safety of Objects

In a turn of good fortune, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art will screen Olivier Assayas’ lovely but poorly distributed 2009 film Summer Hours at 7:30 this Thursday evening. The screening at the Brooks is also deliciously (and possibly deliberately) ironic — for in spite of its solid, low-key ensemble cast, the most affecting stretches of this film concern the fates and futures not of people but of displaced works of art.

Some undisclosed time after a celebratory birthday party at her posh but weather-beaten French country home, lively and elegant matriarch Hélène (Edith Scob) dies, leaving her eldest son Frédéric (Charles Berling) to divide the loot with his two siblings, thorny Adrienne (Juliette Binoche, warmer and more beautiful than ever) and pragmatic Jérémie (a subdued Jérémie Renier).

At first, Frédéric is convinced that everyone else in the family will want to save the house and preserve its many treasures, because Hélène’s uncle, who used to own the house, was a famous painter who decked the place with Corot paintings, Odilon Redon panels, Degas plasters, and Art Nouveau cabinets. But it’s soon clear that the family members have other plans.

Any American movie that set such narrow parameters would probably try to liven up the proceedings by heaping big oily dollops of sloppy broad comedy or shrill, self-lacerating melodrama onto the audience. Refreshingly, these unobservant, ignorant touch-ups are missing from Summer Hours. After a brief discussion, the family agrees to part with Hélène’s possessions — which was what she wanted anyway. Instead of the airing of family grievances and the opening of decades-old psychic wounds, Assayas shows us smaller, more grown-up moments, like internecine chuckles shared at dinner or quiet moments when grief springs on the mourner unaware.

As it turns out, the characters aren’t really the focal point of the film anyway. As the process of boxing up, categorizing, and pricing the loot continues, the fates of the characters are casually revealed — Frédéric has a dustup with his daughter over shoplifting, Jérémie goes to China, Adrienne puts some items up for auction at Christie’s — without feeling terribly important. Meanwhile, the film spends more and more time meandering around the house via smooth long takes that absorb its sunlit and shadowy spaces, vistas, and memories.

The continuing adventures of all that stuff exert a strong, bittersweet pull; in fact, Summer Hours focuses so much on the objects taken from Hélène’s house that it’s no exaggeration to say the main characters in the latter portion of the film are pieces of furniture. This means that the film’s most mysterious and moving moments are almost unblemished by the presence of flesh and blood beings. One long take cases a writing desk that, in its new home at the Musée d’Orsay, now looks as foreign and lost in time as a dinosaur skeleton. Across from it, a flower vase sits unused and already forgotten behind glass. You almost feel happy for that vase’s companion piece, which the housekeeper took because she thought it wasn’t anything special.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Bangin’ in the nails.

Balding except for some hair plugs, with a face tending toward Droopy dog and a frame that seems smaller after all these years away, Mel Gibson is back on the big screen in Edge of Darkness. Don’t call it a comeback — that would suggest he’s been washed of the transgression of his 2006 drunken, anti-Semitic run-in with the law. Instead, it’s just a return, a pickup in an acting career that last left off with Signs, The Patriot, and Payback. For the moviegoer who is able (not to mention willing) to trade fact for fiction, that’s a good thing.

Gibson stars as Thomas Craven, a Boston detective welcoming home his somewhat estranged daughter, Emma (Bojana Novakovic, who gives a brief but effective performance). Just reunited, a shotgun blast kills Emma on Craven’s front porch, and the cop is left piecing together the mystery of why, assuming the bullets were meant for him.

Here, Gibson gets to act the emotions he’s drawn to again and again, from Mad Max down to Signs: rage, grief, existential haunt. And, as before, his movie’s plot advocates a violent cleansing, a ritual purification bathed in blood. Ain’t that America?

What Gibson so often inflects this brand of violent cinema with is paternalism. Craven, like Mad Max‘s protagonist — and like Gibson roles Tom Mullen (Ransom), Benjamin Martin (The Patriot), and the Rev. Graham Hess (Signs) — is a father first. He’s a man who’s been injured by the world and has the power to set things back in balance by righteous action. It’s a little like playing God. Is it any wonder Gibson himself drove in the crucifixion nails in The Passion of the Christ — not only because he’s the sinner who necessitated the action but because he’s the Father who saw the necessity of it. A line from Edge of Darkness: “You had better decide whether you’re hangin’ on the cross or bangin’ in the nails.”

In Edge of Darkness, the sins of the world are political and capitalistic. As Craven follows the murder plot, he finds an unholy collusion between an industrialist with defense contracts (the great Danny Huston at his creepy best), a Massachusetts Republican senator (Damian Young), and a leftist militant environmentalist faction called Night Flower. In his crusade to find out the truth, Craven is a middle-of-the-road warrior who cuts across party lines to avenge his daughter. (In corporate America’s defense, the crimes they commit in the movie are almost too heinous even for them.)

In addition to Craven, the other rogue agent at play is Jedburgh (Ray Winstone), a national-security consultant assessing and influencing the situation for an unknown employer. Gibson and Winstone share some really nice scenes of dialogue. The script — by William Monahan and Andrew Bovell adapting from Troy Kennedy-Martin’s renowned 1980s BBC miniseries of the same name — is mostly smart, though it is inclined to the overkill. Monahan was responsible for The Departed, which was similarly inflicted.

Up next for Gibson, per IMDb, is a starring role in a movie in which “a guy walks around with a puppet of a beaver on his hand and treats it like a living creature.” Um, that doesn’t fit any theories I have.