Month: June 2018

New Coffee Shop Pitched for The Pinch

Post author By Toby Sells
Post date June 14, 2018

CREDIT: Center City Development Corp.

Center City Development Corp.

A new coffee shop may be headed for The Pinch District.

Comeback Coffee may help a now-vacant space come back to life at 358 North Main, a spot next door to the now-vacant T.J. Mulligan’s location.

Comeback owners Hayes and Amy McPherson called the space an “empty canvas” in their application for grant funds from the Center City Development Corp. (CCDC).

“The owners aim to create a space that is inviting and fosters a sense of hominess and belonging,” reads the application. “With the help of the Exterior Improvement Grant (EIG), every inch of the property, both inside and out, can cultivate those feelings and atmosphere.”
[pullquote-1] The entire project is slated to cost $129,866.37, according to the application. The McPhersons are asking the CCDC for $58,832.

The project would renovate the interior of the space and brings new signs and gates to the exterior. The building’s northern alley would be transformed into a patio with furniture, a stamped concrete floor, plants growing along the walls, and globe lights stretched overhead.

CCDC staff recommended the project for approval.

“Attracting new investment to the Pinch District is a high priority for the (Downtown Memphis Commission),” reads the staff report. “Approving an EIG for this project will enable the business owner to invest in creating high-quality exterior space in the underutilized alley.

“Additionally, adding new ground-floor commercial activity along North Main Street is a key strategy in the Pinch District Redevelopment Plan.”

The McPhersons live in the upper floor of the building, according to the CCDC. They hope to get the coffee-shop project moving next month and have it completed in October.

CCDC board members will review the plan on Wednesday, June 20th.

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Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Tom Lee Park Redesign ‘Totally Unrelated To Atlantis’ New Riverfront Chief Says

Post author By Peripheral Gibson
Post date June 14, 2018

Definitely not an irradiated Gill Man.

At a press conference in their Front Street headquarters on Tuesday, Carol Coletta, head of the Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP), previously called the Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC), told reporters that her organization’s plans to dramatically alter the landscape of Tom Lee Park have nothing to do with her predecessor’s ambitious project to raise the lost, subaquatic city-state of Atlantis from the depths of the Mississippi River.

“Our plan will activate the park space for all Memphians, and make it more attractive to Memphis In May festival goers,” said Coletta. “It’s totally unrelated to the RDC’s plans to raise Atlantis.”

Coletta joined the RDC in March, replacing Benny Lendermon, who had announced the public-private partnership’s multimillion dollar plan to spend millions of dollars on targeted nuclear explosives that would trigger powerful earthquakes bringing the long hidden city/state of Atlantis back to the Above World, presumably to rule over a golden age of peace and prosperity for Memphis and the Mid-South region.

“Now some people will say that the new undulating hills we’re building in the flood zone of one of the most powerful rivers in the solar system would be an ideal spot for burying the thousands of horribly burned gill-men cadavers that have been washing up on the banks of the Big Muddy, but you would be wrong,” said Coletta.
[pullquote-1] “We acknowledge mutation is an ongoing problem in this area of the river,” she added. “But we prefer to focus on making the riverfront great for everybody.”

Similarly, a rebranding effort that changed the name of a corporation devoted to riverfront development (RDC) to Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP), was in no way caused by news reports associating the RDC with the effort to raise Atlantis.

“Having a new name that doesn’t come up in Google searches next to the words ‘raise Atlantis’ and ‘nuclear weapons’ was in no way a factor in our decision to rebrand,” said Coletta. “Look, the truth is, there wasn’t much to the Atlantis thing. It was really overblown by the media, right from the beginning.

“When Benny’s crew of nuclear demolition engineers got to where they thought Atlantis was going to be, there wasn’t anything there. So, they left. That’s what happened.

“Those earthquakes you want to ask me about, we had nothing to do with those. Completely natural phenomenon.

“We’re just laser-focused on making the riverfront better by cleaning up all the radioactive material from the shoreline and disposing of it somewhere that’s not Tom Lee Park.”

Tags Atlantis, Eschatology, Parody, Riverfront Development, Tom Lee Park

Letter From The Editor Opinion

Survey Says … We Don’t Agree. About Anything.

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date June 14, 2018

Some of the “news” I was exposed to before 9 a.m. today:

An “urgent alert” post on Nextdoor.com that read, “I love my penis.”

A tweet that led me to a video link showing President Trump praising Kim Jong-un as one the “great leaders” of the world, and saying that he “loves his people.” (These would be the people he imprisons and murders, keeps impoverished, and denies basic human rights to, I suppose.)

A story in the print-version of The Commercial Appeal about the “grandma” who put her kids in a dog kennel in her car.

A link on Facebook to a story about the facilities in Texas where the separated children of (brown) asylum seekers are being kept in cages until they can be sent off to foster homes. America!

A CNN video of Dennis Rodman in Singapore wearing a MAGA hat and pitching a crypto-currency called PotCoin.

A Commercial Appeal email that sent me to a video of state Representive Reginald Tate talking to a Republican on a “hot mic” and saying his fellow Democrats were “full of shit.”

An NPR story about U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ latest ruling, one that categorically denies asylum to any (brown) woman who claims to be a victim of domestic violence.

Drake Hall playing “Miss You” by the Rolling Stones.

I also made two moves in Words With Friends on my iPhone.

I don’t think I’m particularly atypical. We are bombarded with “news content” from multiple sources these days. It seems unimaginable that just a decade ago, most of us woke up, made coffee, read the paper, and went to work, assuming we were reasonably well-informed.

Information now comes at us nonstop, a pupu platter of news, opinion, tragedy, nonsense, pathos, and propaganda. None of us get the same serving. All of us filter our information stream differently, picking and choosing what catches our fancy.

Is it any wonder we can’t agree about anything?

A survey conducted last week by the the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute found, unsurprisingly, that most Americans are unsatisfied with the current state of journalism and the news. Perhaps, surprisingly, three out of four journalists who were surveyed agreed with them. News creators and news consumers both want the news to be better, but for different reasons.

Journalists are feeling beleagured and threatened by the continued down-sizing of the newspaper industry, the dumbing down and politicizing of television news, and by the constant attacks on the media from the president, who denigrates any reporting he doesn’t like as “fake news.” The survey found that most journalists believe the public’s level of trust in news media has decreased in the past year. Forty-four percent of news consumers said it had.

Interestingly, the survey found that the public wants what most journalists say they want to deliver — stories that are factual and offer context and analysis — but 42 percent of those consumers who were surveyed said journalists too often strayed into non-objective commentary.

Here’s where it gets sticky. When newspapers ruled the Earth, readers pretty much knew what was news reporting and what was opinion. Newspapers had (and still have, for the most part) a clearly delineated “op-ed” section, where pundits unleash points of view about various subjects. It was easy to differentiate news reporting from opinion.

Now, not so much. Is that clip of Dennis Rodman news? Entertainment? A reality show gone rogue? Hell if I know. When that video of Trump and Kim gets posted to Facebook with a snarky comment from a friend, the video itself is ostensibly news, but the comment is opinion. The lines are blurred and getting blurrier. Most of the news we get via social media comes with an opinion attached. Too often, we react to the opinion rather than to the news itself.

Where do we go from here? I don’t know. But it’s worrisome that in a time when accurate, serious reporting has never been more important, most Americans can’t even agree on what it is.

Tags Commercial Appeal, death of newspapers, Dennis Rodman, Facebook, Kim Jung-un, News comes in many forms, nextdoorcom, PotCoin, Twitter

News News Feature

Memphis Literary Arts Festival Launches

Post author By Jesse Davis
Post date June 14, 2018

CREDIT: DBW Photography

If the prevailing stereotype of the

writer/reader is of a solitary individual, slaving away with bleary eyes, then the Center for Southern Literary Arts (CSLA) aims to challenge the traditional narrative. Because stories are inherently a means of communication and of reinforcing our connections — with each other, with the past, and with our cultures. To illustrate the communal aspect and intersectional nature of storytelling, in its many forms and genres, the CSLA is unveiling the inaugural Memphis Literary Arts Festival (MLAF) this Saturday, June 16th, in the Edge district.

“We founded the organization a little less than a year ago,” says Jamey Hatley, co-founder and creative director of the CSLA. In its not-quite-a-year in existence, along with planning the debut of the MLAF, the center has already brought some impressively mighty literary talent to Memphis. Last February, the nonprofit brought Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage, to the Orpheum for a reading and conversation with Hatley, who is a writer in her own right. “That event was the launch of our Main Stage series,” says Molly Quinn, co-founder and executive director of CSLA and a veteran of similar nonprofit literature festivals in New York and L.A. “We did two of those this year, and next year you’ll see somewhere between four and six.”

When Hatley and Quinn founded the CSLA (with co-founder/writer Zandria Robinson), Memphis did not seem quite as hospitable a place for practitioners of the literary arts. “When I was a young writer, I didn’t travel. My parents didn’t have a lot of money, and I traveled and experienced the world through books. We were at a point in Memphis where we weren’t sure if our big independent [bookstore] was going to stick around, the [Mid-South Book Festival] had stopped,” Hatley elaborates. “So I came back to Memphis into a situation that was more in peril than how I left it. As a working artist, that was very scary to me.” So, mindful of the importance of a space given over to the mingling of voices and ideas, Hatley, Quinn, and Robinson pulled together to create the CSLA.

DBW Photography

(l to r) Zandria Robinson, Jamey Hatley, and Molly Rose Quinn

MLAF is about connections, about creating new ones, and about celebrating existing connections that may go overlooked. “A lot of people might think that they have to go to New York to find mentors and people to inspire them, but we want people to know that that inspiration is right here in Memphis,” Hatley says. Hatley, a native Memphian whose work has appeared in the Oxford American, Callalloo, and the acclaimed Memphis Noir collection, knows the value of a space for writers to connect. She remembers waiting in a line at the now twice-rebranded Davis-Kidd bookstore to meet Crystal Wilkinson, an author with whom Hatley developed a friendship. Wilkinson will be in conversation with Hatley at MLAF, closing a circle that began when Hatley was a “baby writer … in the back of the line waiting to try to figure out something to say to the famous writer.”

Wilkinson will be just some of the talent on display at the MLAF. The festival is remarkable in its inclusion of different forms of storytelling. The lineup for the one-day festival includes Courtney Alexander, who made a tarot deck that engages with ideas about body image and archetypes, and Daniel Jose Older, a musician and author of a series of young-adult ghost noir books. There will also be journalists, muralists, musicians, and novelists. “We thought really hard about what kind of overlap and what kind of interdisciplinary spirit this lineup would have,” Quinn says. “In part because we believe that mixing those things together allows for the kind of accessibility Jamey is talking about.”

It’s fitting in Memphis, a city where some of the most illustrative storytellers haven’t even been literate, that accessibility is among the primary goals of the festival. Hatley explains that, with this goal in mind, they’re striving to marry the entertaining and the enriching, the highbrow and the whimsical. “We want to say that literature is the ‘then’ and the ‘now,’ and we want to make a bridge across to those communities,” Hatley says. “Voices need to be heard, and whatever route they can take, we want people to know all the ways. We want people’s voices to get out in a way that feels empowering for them.”

Memphis Literary Arts Festival is Saturday, June 16th, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Marshall Avenue between South Orleans and Monroe Extd.

Tags and Molly Rose Quinn, Center for Southern Literary Arts, Jamey Hatley, Memphis Literary Arts Festival, Zandria Robinson

Food & Wine Food & Drink

Consider a visit to Westy’s

Post author By Meghan Stuthard
Post date June 14, 2018

Here’s what you need to know about Jake Schorr: He’s Memphis-born and Memphis-raised, having never lived elsewhere outside of the six years he spent in the Navy. He is an ambassador of Memphis, one of its biggest cheerleaders and a true fountain of knowledge of the city he loves. His family is as ingrained in Memphis as the Mississippi River, having founded the Tennessee Brewery on its shores back in the 1880s. Like the Mississippi, the Schorr family winds its way through Memphis, having impressed itself upon the city with business ventures, bars, and most importantly, beer. Westy’s, old as it is, is still Mr. Jake’s most recent bar venture and his longest-running. Situated down on North Main, Westy’s has been in operation since 1983, serving as the go-to bar for locals, visitors, and both versions of the Pyramid.

Two friends and I met at Westy’s on a Sunday afternoon to, you know, drink beer. At this point, I didn’t know anything about the Schorr family, their legacy, or Goldcrest, outside of the fact that it had once been brewed at the Tennessee Brewery. The original Goldcrest 51 has been served for a while at Westy’s, but I went for the Goldcrest Bock, the recipe for which was thought to be lost, but happened to be recovered just a few years ago.

Here’s how chill Westy’s and its patrons are: We had a loud discussion about bands we saw on tour in the ’90s, and no one nearby appeared to judge us, even though names like Marilyn Manson and Veruca Salt were thrown around with wild abandon. Even after this discussion and several beers, the bartender, Haley, was still politely addressing us as “ma’am” and “sir,” though I can nearly guarantee none of the three of us were worthy of it.

Jake Schorr

Haley introduced us to Schorr, or Mr. Jake, as his staff calls him. He immediately remarked that he gets people from all over the world at his bar and each one knows more about Memphis than actual Memphians do. He told us the fantastic story of his life: how he started in the stereo business after returning from the Navy, how he once spoke on the phone with Elvis, and how he befriended Alex Chilton. He had stories about Ardent and the old Lafayette’s and nearly every musician who has passed through, and you’d think after all of this, he’d be done. But here’s another thing about Mr. Jake: He doesn’t sit idly by. His most ambitious venture yet is still in the works. The beloved Rainbow Room, located behind Westy’s, has been shuttered since it closed in 1983. His purchase of the former synagogue finally complete, he is renovating and reopening it as a music venue.

Westy’s is hardly a secret, especially for those who live in the Downtown area, but the law school and medical school populations that cram into other, more publicized Downtown bars might not know about it. It’s open until 3 a.m. each night and offers delivery until 2 a.m. It’s got a bizarrely shaped bar (which is one of my favorite things about it), booths, and tables; it’s large enough to accommodate groups both at lunch and late into the night. There’s a large patio out back and, some nights, live music. Most impressively, the menu has over 150 items by my count. Why so many? “I guess I just don’t know any better,” Mr. Jake confesses. Hell, the man wants to add even more. His favorite dishes are the patty melt and the jambalaya.

Haley

Eventually it wasn’t long before our discussion turned to Anthony Bourdain. All three of us are writers ourselves (well, the two of them are writers; I’m more of a barfly with access to a laptop) and one of us being a kitchen wizard, it was hard not to recall Bourdain and his many culinary, literary, and cultural triumphs, especially while sitting at a beautiful old, dark bar. Before long, we had befriended an English couple who had traveled all this way for — who else? — Elvis. It was fitting of Bourdain, to be in this crazy little dive, laughing and drinking with pals from far away, sharing stories about Memphis with two new fans. I urge everyone to do the same, wherever you may drink or dine, but consider a visit to Westy’s. Introduce yourself to Mr. Jake, and prepare to learn something new about this city you love.

Westy’s, 346 N Main, 543-8646, westysmemphis.com

Tags Jake Schorr, Westy's

News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1529

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date June 14, 2018

Dammit, Gannett

In the photograph above you can see an unidentified woman* holding onto a very special volleyball named Lauren Deaton. For those who don’t already know her, Lauren is a Harding Academy volleyball. Go Lions! She was very recently named “Volleyball of the Year” by The Commercial Appeal, Memphis’ once-proud, now-Gannett-owned daily newspaper.

Lauren’s father, Wilson, the sports equipment whose life was famously celebrated in the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away, said nothing of his daughter’s achievement. He just sat there in silence, almost like he was saying, “Why wouldn’t she be Volleyball of the Year?”

So, your pesky Fly on the Wall got all defensive and said, “Like, what’s your point, man?” But he just kept his silence while somehow also asking, clear as day, “Are you saying my daughter Lauren’s not good enough to be Volleyball of the Year?”

And I said “no” and we went on like that for some time before Wilson finally thanked me for my time and bounced down the sidewalk and into his car where Lauren waited for him. As the pair drove off, I couldn’t help but think I’d get better interviews if the CA would give awards to people instead of stupid balls. Maybe that’s racist, but I just don’t know anymore.

*Congratulations to the actual Lauren. We know you’re not gear no matter what the daily paper says.

News The Fly-By

P&H Summit

Post author By Maya Smith
Post date June 14, 2018

CREDIT: Maya Smith

P&H Cafe owners say developers of an infill project next to their Midtown bar “upheld their word” on a compromise but that they “still have concerns.”

A development group called 1544 Madison Partners announced in February they planned to build 230 new apartments spread over four buildings in a gated apartment complex on the vacant lot to the east of the P&H.

Bar owners Matthew Edwards and Robert Fortner worried the development would have gated off the one-way alley that runs behind the P&H. Many customers use that alley, Edwards and Fortner said, and gating it off would limit access to their business.

As the plan moved through the approval process at Memphis City Hall, Edwards, Fortner, and other neighboring business owners spoke out against the plan to close the alley. Still, the Memphis City Council and the city/county Land Use Control Board approved the development and the coinciding alley closure.

But the developers reconsidered the alley closure after Edwards, Fortner, and the owners of surrounding businesses — a self-serve car wash, an event space, and the Cotton Row Recording Studio — continued to oppose it. So, the developers, 1544 Madison Partners, agreed to meet with them to find compromises. City council member Worth Morgan facilitated the meetings.

Maya Smith

Midtown’s P&H Cafe.

Michael Fahy, president of Prime Development Group, a member of the development group, said revisions were made to the original plan.

Access for customers, emergency personnel, and garbage pick-up were shared concerns of the owners. To alleviate these concerns, the developers agreed to add a private alley off of Court to allow access to the existing alley behind the P & H.

Turn-arounds were also added at each end of the one-way alley in the event someone enters the wrong way. There will be gates at each turnaround that will allow access for emergency services, MLGW, and city of Memphis vehicles. Fahy said “we found a solution” that the business owners seemed to be “very happy” with.

“They went from being concerned to the point where we had emails endorsing this revised plan,” Fahy said. “We went from worry to thank you.”

Initially, Edwards said the development could be “devastating” to their business, but now he’s “as satisfied as I can be” with the new plan.

“They upheld their word,” Edwards said. “We asked for access and they gave it to us, but we still have concerns.”

Edwards said the functionality of the one-way alley is one of those concerns: “It’s still going to be a real issue, for sure.”

He also anticipates on-street parking availability for the bar’s customers to become limited once the apartments open. Construction of the development is slated to break ground by spring 2019, and Edwards expects another slew of issues to arise then, like the presence of construction trucks, fenced-off work areas, and noisy machinery. Edwards said he might consider changing the cafe’s hours to work around the construction schedule.

“We really won’t know anything until the buildings go up,” Edwards said. “It’ll be a trial-and-error process that will hopefully work out.”

Music Music Features

Harlan T. Bobo Returns to Memphis With a New Record

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date June 14, 2018

Harlan T. Bobo feels like pure Memphis to a lot music fans. His shows this week feel like a homecoming for many, including Harlan himself, though he’s not from Memphis, and he’s spent the past six years living in Perpignan, France, raising his son as his marriage gradually fell apart. Perhaps Memphis feels like home because this is where his voice was born, that wry perspective on love and self-sabotage that his first three albums convey so well.

His new LP on Goner Records, A History of Violence, is somewhat of a departure. What strikes the listener first is the band, now rocking harder, with a more sinister edge. His singing, while still seemingly perched on one’s ear in a confessional tone, is now addressing a world swirling around him more than the romantic entanglements of his earlier work. I sat down with him recently to try to understand these changes.

Memphis Flyer: It’s a pretty bleak bunch of songs. But I also sense an empathy there for down-on-their-luck characters. Which was almost a relief after seeing the cover.

Harlan T. Bobo: The cover picture’s of a woman in a band I travel with now and then, from Bordeaux. I thought the picture was so arresting. For me it captured the feel of the record really well. It was one of those old glass plate photographs, and the glass had broken. Nobody did that, the cracks were already there. I actually asked my ex-wife’s permission to use it. I said, “People are gonna think this is you.” People will automatically assume that it’s about her, but it’s not. Sure, a lot of the aggression and the frustration that was happening during the breakup is in there. But I only sing about her specifically twice.

The fact is, the record has very little to do my marriage. A couple songs are about that, but the rest of it is addressing something that’s disturbed me since childhood, and it’s that aggression wins, you know? It wins out on top of consideration for people, diplomacy, because all those things are very boring compared to the visceral excitation of aggression and violence. Even as a little kid, I just could not figure out why it is. And the place I live in now, it’s not violent like anything in America, but it’s very aggressive. and the way people raise their children and treat each other is really disturbing to me.

I can see how those questions have taken on a new urgency, raising your son and thinking about how aggression flows through generations.

Yeah, there’s a lot about raising children and passing this thing on. And it can be a sort of battle, between how much a kid’s gonna take from an aggressive side of the family, that’s addictive and exciting, and how much he’s gonna take from a parent talking to him, and the boring things.

This album’s less about you. You’re casting your eye out to other characters.

I think it’s just that I made enough records about my personal life. And maybe it’s just being a parent, it directs your attention outside yourself. That’s something I didn’t consciously do, but I did notice it after everything was coming together. I was like, “Oh, you’re not so freaking self absorbed on this one.” There’s actually social commentary on this one. So that’s progress, I think.

It’s hard to imagine replicating the sound of the band you use on the record (including players familiar to most Memphians, Jeff “Bunny” Dutton, Jeffery Bouck, Steve Selvidge, and Brendan Spengler), if you were to tour Europe.

Yeah. I don’t know what the difference is between rock-and-roll players in France compared to here, but it’s entirely different. You know, there are French bands that I like, and I’ve tried to play with these guys, but whatever I do has a very American feel to it. Like swing. I’ve noticed how loose some of these songs are. They sort of whip around. Those guys in France play a straight beat and it’s maddening. It loses its power.

With these Memphis guys, we only had two rehearsals before recording that record. But we’ve all played together in various other bands. It’s sort of my dream band. I actually tried recording this album in France. I had a band, we played together for a couple years. And they were fine replicating the older stuff. That’s kinda why I met them. But I knew what I wanted and I was not getting anywhere close with them. So I just eventually had to ditch it. They’re sending me emails now that they see the record’s out. [laughs]

Harlan T. Bobo and the Psychotic Lovers play Friday, June 15, at Bar DKDC, and Sunday, June 17, at the Levitt Shell.

Tags A History of Violence, DKDC, Harlan T. Bobo returns to Memphis, Levitt Shell

Film Features Film/TV

Ocean’s 8

Post author By Chris McCoy
Post date June 14, 2018

What is the appeal of the heist movie? Is it about watching a supremely clever person concoct an elaborate plan, and then reveling in the OCD perfection when all the pieces click into place? Is it about the powerless getting one over on the powerful? Or is it all about the charisma of the criminal mastermind, a way for the audience to harmlessly indulge their need for a leader?

The history of heist pictures goes all the way back to the beginnings of American cinema, and they’ve always been popular. The Great Train Robbery held the record for highest grossing movie from 1903 until Birth of a Nation in 1915. It was also the subject of the first remake in history, when Edwin S. Porter’s original film was redone by Sigmund Lubin and released under the same title in the same year.

The only heist movie that’s been remade almost as often as The Great Train Robbery is Ocean’s 11. The original is a curious artifact: a massive vanity project put on by the Rat Pack as their Las Vegas decadence reached fever pitch. It’s not a great movie. Frank Sinatra is visibly distracted, while Martin is visibly drunk. It’s a bunch of celebrities cynically cashing in on their fame, best enjoyed by fans who are content just to look at their heroes.

Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter star in writer/director Gary Ross’ Ocean’s 8.

That’s one of the reasons Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 Ocean’s 11 remake was so surprising: It was actually a pretty good movie. Just as the original cemented the Rat Pack as the pre-eminent stars of the early 1960s, so too did Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 11 define the first batch of 21st-century superstars: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, and Andy Garcia. Julia Roberts was the lone feminine presence to redeem the sausage fest.

Soderbergh took the barely-there plot of trying to rob a bunch of casinos at once and honed it to a razor edge. His editing was tight and cinematography outstanding. The 2001 Ocean’s 11 wasn’t just an object of fan admiration — although it unmistakably was on some level — but unambiguously good filmmaking. It’s trashy fun, but incredibly well executed.

A female driven remake was inevitable in the #MeToo era. The ragtag band of thieves camaraderie translates perfectly into the girl power moment, and high-powered talent agencies would love to see their clients put into the roles that women all over the world would imprint on. In the Sinatra/Clooney slot is Sandra Bullock as Debbie Ocean, the younger sister of Danny Ocean, who, we find out in the opening shots of the film, is dead. Probably.

The film gets off to a good start with Bullock faking sincerity in her parole hearing. She’s got the smooth prattle and irresistible charisma of the Ocean family down pat. Less than a day after being released from her five-year stint in the pen, she’s shoplifted a whole new wardrobe and fraudulently ensconced herself in a luxury hotel. Then, there’s the requisite gathering of the team: Lou (Cate Blanchett), a crooked New York nightclub owner; Amita (Mindy Kaling), a jeweler; Constance (Awkwafina) the pickpocket; a hacker known as Nine Ball (Rihanna); and Tammy (Sarah Paulson), a big time fence hiding out as a suburban mother of two. The plan, which Debbie came up with while in solitary confinement, is to steal a necklace called The Toussaint, valued at $150 million. To steal it, it has to be lured out into the open at the Met Gala, an annual, super ritzy fashion world party thrown by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To do that, the gang targets Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter), a fashion designer drowning in debt, to convince superstar actress Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway) to use her clout to convince Cartier to let the necklace out of the vault so she can wear it for the party.

During the scenes inside the simulated Met Gala, Ocean’s 8 functions extremely well as lifestyle porn with a more propulsive plot than Fifty Shades of Grey. The actresses are rarely called upon to do much more than stand around and look cool, so heavy hitters like Blanchett and Paulson are out-cooled by a spliff-smoking Rihanna. In that way, Ocean’s 8 is much more like the 1960 Ocean’s 11 than the 2001 version. Unfortunately, director Gary Ross fundamentally lacks the Soderbergh snap that was on display in last year’s Logan Lucky. But if you’re just in it to look at some of the best actresses in the business pal around for a frothy summer treat, Ocean’s 8 will do just fine.

Tags Anne Hathaway, Awkwafina, Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, Mindy Kaling, Rihanna, Sandra Bullock