Month: September 2019

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News News Feature

King of Laughs: Comedian Kevin James Comes to Cannon Center

CREDIT: Tom Caltabiano

Kevin James will stop at the Cannon Center on his stand-up comedy tour this Sunday, September 29th, with a “new show, same beard, and the same IQ.”

James is known for his numerous television and movie ventures, including a starring role in CBS’ nine-season series The King of Queens, and producing, writing, and starring in Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Here Comes the Boom, and Zookeeper. Between those credits and co-starring in movies like Hitch, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, and Grown Ups, James is no stranger to the world of comedy.

Tom Caltabiano

Kevin James

Before he hit it big, the Long Island native got his start in the stand-up comedy circuit. He began with community theater, moving on to join his brother Gary Valentine’s improv comedy group. He spent some years performing at comedy clubs, where he met Ray Romano. The two temporarily went their separate ways, Romano picking up steam with Everybody Loves Raymond, and James gaining traction making it to the semi-finals with his stand-up comedy routines on Star Search. His big break came when he got the chance to perform at the Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival in 1996 with a routine about food, phone number rhythms, and relationships. It was then that he was asked to join the cast of Everybody Loves Raymond as Doug Heffernan, moving on to star as the same character in his own show, The King of Queens.

Now, years later, with a number of accomplishments under his belt, James has not forgotten his roots.

“I’m excited about doing a stand-up tour,” he says. “I originally started with stand-up, but I’d gotten away from it. I’ve done some good things doing a lot of movies and TV and stuff. And I’m still doing that, but I’ve been able to dedicate more time to my stand-up career, and I’ve really been able to put time into developing my standards.”

Last year, after a 17-year hiatus from stand-up, James dove back into the routine with a Netflix comedy special called Never Don’t Give Up, in which he speaks of his intolerance of people flaunting their lactose intolerance, sitting “third base” at Benihana and other restaurant and food observations, his interactions with fans and other celebrities, his dynamics with his four children, and more.

James says that his current tour still focuses on observational comedy, but it’ll be nothing like his Netflix special.

“I think [this routine] is even better,” he says. “It’s been working better because, on Netflix, you’ve got to rewrite a whole new hour. So I was concerned about how fast that was going to come to material. But this set seemed to fall in place much quicker than expected.”

One thing James says he loves about live shows is being able to connect with the audience.

“The audience and I feed off each other, and you get results right away, which is really good,” he says. “Right away, you know whether you’re good or bad by the way a joke lands. If it does well, you get that feedback instantly. So, I guess it’s that instant gratification. And you’re taking a chance every night, not knowing what’s going to happen. So it’s about trying different stuff. And it’s exciting.”

James, who speaks of his children often in his stand-up routines, credits them as being his biggest accomplishment. Although they’re not traveling with him on this tour, James still manages to spend as much time with them as possible.

“They like to come to different cities,” he says. “I have a Florida tour coming up later on, and they’re joining me on that one. So it’s great to be able to travel with them.”

James is looking forward to his stop in Memphis.

“I’m excited to come and hang out in Memphis,” he says. “Food will certainly make its way into the equation. There’s really good food in Memphis.”

Ultimately, James encourages Memphians to come out to the Cannon Center Sunday night and have a good time.

“This world is so crazy right now,” he says. “It’s nice to get away and to escape for a couple hours to enjoy yourself and really just not take things too seriously and have fun.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Of Bikes & Birds

CREDIT: Explore Bike Share

An Explore Bike Share (EBS) leader said the influx of scooters to the city has presented some challenges for the bike-share program, but ultimately, he sees both shared-mobility options as avenues to further improve connectivity in the city.

Executive director of the nonprofit, Trey Moore, said he’s excited about the way the city is “changing its attitude toward shared mobility” and the transportation opportunities they present for residents.

“At the end of the day, both programs working hand in hand certainly have made an impact on shared mobility in the city,” Moore said. “All of Memphis is benefiting from this usage. We’re starting to see habits changing, and people are discovering how to use these new modes of transportation in ways that are convenient and benefit their daily experience.”

Explore Bike Share

Explore BikeShare rolled out here about a year ago.

One thing that the introduction of scooters has challenged the nonprofit to do is “evaluate how we deliver bike-sharing,” Moore said. Because the bike-share system is station-based, it is “not quite as nimble” as the dockless scooters.

To make bike-sharing more accessible and the network more dense, Moore said EBS has gone from 56 stations when it launched last May to nearly 80 stations now. Some of that increase can be attributed to new stations, but Moore said the nonprofit also reduced the number of bikes at some stations and added them to new stations in close proximity.

“It’s still not going to be a bike sitting at your front door, but it’s going to be a bike maybe a block away,” Moore said. “We’re hoping that’s added some convenience that wasn’t there when we first launched.”

The “biggest opportunity” for EBS, Moore said, is to make bikes available in new neighborhoods. Continuing to expand EBS’ footprint will keep bike-share “available and relevant to more Memphians.”

EBS opened two new stations last week at Foote Park at South City, coinciding with the grand opening of the complex. Eight new stations are also slated to open in Binghamton in November when the Hampline is completed.

As EBS expands, it could have scooters of its own. Moore said the nonprofit is negotiating to be the operator of station-based, seated electric scooters here.

Additionally, Moore said EBS is working to add electric-assist bikes to its fleet in early 2020.

Electric-assist bikes will open up bike-share to a larger audience, Moore said, including “those who aren’t as physically fit.” Moore believes the electric bikes will also be more appealing during the Memphis summer heat.

Moore said EBS is still in the early stages of planning the launch of both the scooters and electric bikes.

“A goal for EBS is to be the shared mobility provider of choice in Memphis,” Moore said. “Because of our nonprofit, mission-based identity, we think we’re better positioned to deliver equitable and accessible alternatives than the for-profit ventures currently on the ground. This includes equitable distribution of product throughout all of our service areas, not just Downtown, and a focus on building relationships that change attitudes and habits, while seeking to reduce barriers to use.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Thigh Master, Parsnip, and Michael Beach Will Blow Memphis Minds at Gonerfest

When Matthew Ford lived in Memphis as a kid, he once went on a school trip to see a “Masters of Florence” art exhibition at the Pyramid. He remembers works by Leonardo DaVinci being on display.

“Now,” says Ford, leader of Australian guitar-pop group Thigh Master, “it’s filled with huge bears and BB guns.”

Time has a funny way of messing with — and informing — the trajectory of all things. Twelve years after leaving Memphis at 14 for his hometown of Brisbane, Australia, Ford is back this weekend leading an Australian pop invasion of Gonerfest 16.

Along with the Flying Nun Records-inspired Thigh Master are highly anticipated all-girl pop quartet Parsnip and Oakland transplant Michael Beach and the Artists. Though Thigh Master was originally Brisbane-based, all three groups now call Melbourne home.

Thigh Master

“There’s always so many Australian bands that play [at Gonerfest], so it’s cool to be able to do it,” Parsnip drummer Carolyn Hawkins says. “There just seems to be a nice Melbourne-Memphis connection.”

You could hook Ford’s history into that vein like an IV drip. The Toowoomba-born 26-year-old grew up in Germantown, thanks to his father’s job, and received his early musical education through his older brother Daniel’s passion for Goner Records.

This month, Goner, whose long-standing Flying Nun Records love is shared by Ford (Toy Love, The 3Ds, Bats, and The Clean are huge influences) — will be putting out Thigh Master’s second album, Now For Example.

“When I was in high school [in Australia], I was listening to a lot of Jay Reatard stuff, King Louie, early Ty [Segall], and then the Flying Nun stuff, so Goner has played a huge role in influencing my musical tastes,” Ford says.

Add them all up and you get what a 2016 article from Noisey Australia described as “emo music for those who drink XXXX Gold mid-morning at the Mansfield Tavern.” For the many non-Queenslanders out there, a reasonable local translation of that might be: “emo music for those who drink Miller High Life mid-morning at Alex’s.”

The needle definitely hits the groove. Beach, who’ll play bass with Thigh Master at Gonerfest in brother Daniel’s absence, says the vibrancy of the current Melbourne scene comes from the fact that sustainable success in Australian music is a virtual oasis — and everyone knows it.

“In Australia, you understand before you set out that there’s very little chance of being big or ‘making it,'” says Beach, a Californian transplant whose earlier bands, Electric Jellyfish and Shovels, previously made waves in the Lucky Country.

“It frees you up to just do whatever the hell you want to do for the reasons you want to do them. In America, it exists a little less because there’s always that feeling of ‘if I just do this, this, and this, I might not have to work a job anymore.’ It’s a pretty special thing in Australia. You develop a bit more of a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.”

That “pirate-smiling” Aussie mirth is there with Parsnip, whose poppy hooks will remind listeners of Flying Nun pillars Look Purple, Go Blue, but with a sharper dagger than Kiwis can ever muster. Paris Rebel Richens, the band’s bassist and songwriter, is a rising star on the Aussie scene, having already impressed music fans with Melbourne’s Hierophants.

While the rest of Parsnip are first-timers, this will be Hawkins’ third excursion to Gonerfest, having previously attended as a regular punter in 2012 and played with Melbourne guitar pop trio Chook Race four years later.

“It doesn’t feel, like, super industry,” she says. “It feels independent and genuine — and actually exciting.”

The Aussie acts will join an impressive overall bill at Gonerfest 16, some nights of which sold out a month prior to the first show on Thursday, September 26th.

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: B.B. King’s Google Doodle and a Tearjerker Reunion

Doodle for a King

B.B. King was given one of the internet’s highest honors for what would have been his 94th birthday last week. The bluesman got a Google Doodle, the home page images you find at google.com.

A video that accompanied King’s Doodle followed the man’s life from birth to death, highlighting his storied music career.

Viral Reunion

Memphis Animal Services (MAS) went viral last week with a video they warned came with a “tearjerker reunion alert.”

Artist Anthony (no last name given) and his dog, BoBo, live together on the streets of Memphis but were separated. BoBo was brought to MAS where a staff member immediately recognized the dog and reunited BoBo and his friend.

That reunion was captured in a video that got likes and upvotes all over the internet. It also got some digital ink in the New York Post and on the Today show.

Tweet of The Week

John Paul Keith (@johnpaulkeith): I’m absolutely convinced there’d be fewer Republicans if fewer people hit their kids.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

The Tigers Home Field Advantage is Real

The Liberty Bowl has become a Tiger cage for visiting teams. Since the start of the 2014 season, Memphis has accumulated a 30-5 record at home. You have to go back 11 previous seasons (2003-13) to count 30 Tiger wins at the Liberty Bowl. Only once over the last five years has Memphis lost as many as two home games in a season (Tulsa and USF beat the Tigers in 2016). 

It’s a remarkable run of home-field dominance that shouldn’t be taken for granted as the Memphis program aims for national recognition (both from those who vote in polls and from long-distance recruits interested in making large-scale impact). Thursday night’s tilt with Navy will be a test, the Midshipmen leaning on that vexing triple-option attack that causes fits wherever they play. Quarterback Malcolm Perry passed for two touchdowns and ran for four more in Navy’s evisceration of East Carolina in the teams’ American Athletic Conference opener. The Tigers lost a crusher (22-21) in Annapolis last season and have won only one of four meetings since Navy joined the AAC for the 2015 season. And yes, the Midshipmen are one of the five teams to beat the Tigers in Memphis since 2014.

To make this week’s game all the more meaningful, Navy and Memphis occupy the same division in the AAC. It’s as close to a must-win for the Tigers as you’ll see in September.

Larry Kuzniewski

Liberty Bowl

• The Tiger offense is averaging 37.3 points per game. What’s wrong? I kid. The 15 points scored in the season-opening win over Ole Miss will hurt this average for a few weeks, but the Memphis attack doesn’t appear to be suffering for the losses of Patrick Taylor or Pop Williams (the latter will miss the rest of the season). Freshman tailback (and Taylor fill-in) Kenneth Gainwell leads the AAC with 102.3 rushing yards per game. Quarterback Brady White has completed more than 70 percent of his passes. New offensive coordinator Kevin Johns isn’t surprised. When I met Johns during the preseason, he was effusive in his praise of Tiger head coach Mike Norvell. “Any offensive coach in this country would love to work at the University of Memphis,” he said. “For me, it’s a chance to learn from a great offensive mind. This is his show. I’m trying to learn it and teach it to the quarterbacks. As he and I spend more time together, there’s a chance for me to bring concepts from other places [I’ve been]. My philosophy is very similar to Coach Norvell’s: You keep a tight end on the field at all times and you find a way to run the football. That takes care of everything else.”

• The Tigers need to retire three more jerseys, and soon. It took some time, but the names (and numbers) of six honored Tiger football players are now proudly displayed at the Liberty Bowl: John Bramlett, Isaac Bruce, Dave Casinelli, Charles Greenhill, Harry Schuh, and DeAngelo Williams. It’s been six years since a Tiger has received this ultimate salute (both Bramlett and Schuh were honored in 2013). Thanks in large part to the amount of success the Memphis program has enjoyed since the turn of the century, three names need to be added to this pantheon.

First and foremost, Anthony Miller: the greatest receiver in Tiger history and a first-team AP All-America in 2017. Darrell Henderson belongs in the group, having rushed for more than 3,500 yards (in three seasons) and also earning first-team AP All-America recognition (in 2018). The third name isn’t mentioned as often: Danny Wimprine. Memphis has suited up some talented quarterbacks over the last decade, but none has approached the career passing records (10,215 yards, 81 touchdowns) Wimprine has held now for 15 years.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Tim and Eric’s David Liebe Hart Peforms at CANVAS

CREDIT: Jessica Pohl

David Liebe Hart, musician, puppeteer, and actor known for his bizarre puppetry and voice characterizations on Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Good Job!, hosts the Carnival for a Cause FunRazor at CANVAS of Memphis this weekend.

At this fund-raising event, Hart will bewilder and entertain the audience with songs about extraterrestrials, trains, and ghosts, with the help of partner-in-crime Jonah Mociun’s electronic beats and Hart’s puppet sidekicks.

“I do a mixture of electronic music, country western, and rock-and-roll,” says Hart. “I’ve experimented with lots of genres. The only music I just can’t get into is rap music because it’s sending out negativity of violence and disrespect for women, disrespect for the law, and killing each other. I just can’t go there.”

Jessica Pohl

David Liebe Hart

But, as it turns out, Hart’s main sidekick puppet, Chip the Black Boy, raps.

“That’s Jonah’s doing,” says Hart. “He’s got my puppet being bad. Chip used to be on a puppet show on The Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Program, but now he’s made to become an evil rap guy.”

Hart credits many notable artists as his influences, such as Jim Henson, a renowned puppeteer known for his work on Sesame Street and The Muppets.

“Jim Henson was my Sunday school teacher in the Christian Science Church,” says Hart.

In between musical numbers, Hart will share stories of his alleged alien abduction, relationship troubles, and whatever else comes to mind.

Hart says that not only will the performance help to raise funds for P.A.S.S. Forward Liberty, Memphis Arts Movement, and Pigtopia, but also the audience’s energy. “Music raises the vibrations of people to be happy and gives them energy to enjoy life,” he says. “Comedy does the same, and so does acting.”

Carnival for a Cause FunRazor, CANVAS of Memphis, Thursday, September 26th, 2 p.m.-12:30 a.m., $10 G.A., $30 VIP.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Two Fine Farmhouse Ales From High Cotton and Wiseacre

It was one of my favorite styles for its earthy simplicity and clean finish, an Old World beer brewed to be refreshing and not much else. I’m talking about a farmhouse ale. As the parade of short-run craft beers has rolled by, I’d forgotten about it altogether. Fortunately, you can find a great saison in Memphis; you’ve just got to know where to go.

Farmhouse ale is a family that includes styles like bière de garde, gueuze, or sahti. A saison is a farmhouse ale, but not all farmhouse ales are saisons. Got it? They are generally earthy, tart, and dry. Beer writers are always using the word “funky” to describe them. They were originally served as part of the pay package, what we’d call (limited) benefits, of the seasonal farmworkers — called Saisons. Paying people in beer wasn’t that weird in a world before shrink wrap or Advil.

By most accounts, the style was developed in Wallonia — the French-speaking part of what is now Belgium. That settles very little on the national pride front because beer is a lot older than modern Europe. Belgium itself was only thought up by the British in 1830 as a hilarious way to annoy the French.

What annoys me is how hard it is to get a pint in Memphis. The grocery stores I tried don’t have it, so I had to go to the Mothership — or more to the point, the taproom. Both Wiseacre and High Cotton have their expressions of saison on tap, and Wiseacre has it in a six-pack. They are both very good, and you should try both because they taste absolutely nothing alike.

I headed down to High Cotton in the “It’s not Downtown, but you can see it from here” Edge District. Their version, called, helpfully enough, Saison, is an earthy brew, which certainly delivers on the “funk” (not to be confused with the “skunk”).

To test the intended parameters of the beer, I drank outside where, just days before the start of fall, it was 94 degrees outside. It passed the test, because it was refreshing as hell. It is more spicy than tart, with little hops taste and a big, malty bloom at the end of it. If you are a fan of rye beers, this is probably right up your alley.

That seems about right for a farmhouse ale. In its original incarnations, no one was pedantically scouring the countryside for the finest ingredients, which accounts for its earthiness. Farmers often used unsold fruit that wouldn’t make it through the winter, which accounts for the tartness. It’s not terribly high in alcohol because you needed those seasonal workers to get up off their backsides when lunch was over.

Wiseacre’s saison is called Tarasque. It’s named after a mythical creature that was a vivisection that included a lion, a bear, a turtle, and a scorpion. Legend has it that a French nun sang it to sleep. Tarasque, the good people at Wiseacre tell us, leans toward the French style. My middle name is Jaubert, so I guess I do as well.

What Tarasque lacks in funk, it makes up for in tartness and a clean finish. True to the style, it gives the hops a break and has a great citrus zing to it.

Wiseacre’s saison lacks that big, malty bloom you find on the back end of the High Cotton version. It’s lighter on the palate, less of an aftertaste.

Despite both being true to style, comparing the two has an apples-to-oranges feel. For me personally, I feel about that big malt finish the way I feel about a fine cigar. It’s not that I dislike it, but I want to like it more than I actually do.

For my money, I’d buy a six-pack of the Tarasque. If you can find it. It might be my new favorite beer, at least for the moment. I can be fickle. I lean toward the French.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Why Republicans are Afraid to Challenge Trump

Last week, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley broke the Republican cone of critical silence on President Trump by tweeting, “This can’t continue …” as the federal budget deficit raced past $1 trillion. 

Juan Williams

Fear of a larger jail-break from the cult of enforced silence among Republicans about Trump’s failures is the big reason the president’s campaign officials have pushed state party officials to cancel Republican presidential primaries in Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, and South Carolina. And that fear explains why the Republican National Committee is withholding polling data on the president from GOP candidates for state and local offices.

“Republican consultants say the Trump information is being withheld for two reasons: to discourage candidates from distancing themselves from the president, and to avoid embarrassing him with poor results that might leak,” according to the investigative news site ProPublica. 

It is no secret that Trump’s approval rating has been sagging all summer. As of last week, 53 percent of voters disapproved of him, according to the RealClear Politics average of polls. Who knows how high that number might go if Republicans begin calling out Trump for never building that wall. And what happens if Republicans begin to ask about the missing health-care plan that was going to be better than ObamaCare?

Trump has already thinned the ranks of high-profile Republican voices willing to challenge him on his lack of results and his impulsive, autocratic behavior. GOP critics are shut down by the threat of being targeted by one of Trump’s angry tweets or worse — having Trump endorse a far-right opponent.

Then there is this odd political dynamic at play: After losing 41 seats in the midterms and watching the rush of current House Republicans into retirement, the remaining party faithful have concluded that despite Trump’s negatives, their only chance to hold on to power is to stick with Trump.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan turned down requests from Republicans who asked him to consider a challenge to Trump. He said it would have amounted to a “kamikaze mission.”

Why the talk of political death in launching a primary challenge against Trump? Here’s the answer, from a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll in June. Self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning adults were asked if they are “more a supporter of Donald Trump or more of a supporter of the Republican Party?” Fifty-two percent said they are loyal to Trump. How many held a higher allegiance to the party than to Trump? Only 38 percent.

Top Republicans believe they need Trump to hold on to those Republicans who identify with Trump more than with the party. The party can’t afford the loss of any voters because already 60 percent of all voters, according to a CNN-SSRS poll released last week, do not think Trump deserves a second term.

That’s why Trump is fighting to keep up the mirage of total GOP voter fealty to him. He keeps hammering the phony message that he has set the all-time record for support within the party for any Republican president. Yes, Trump does have strong support from Republicans — 82 percent, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll. But former President George W. Bush set the record in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Trump’s fixation with this very disprovable lie is revealing about his anxiety about facing a challenge in the primaries, even from fellow Republicans he has demeaned as the “three stooges.” He is referring to three men who have announced they will run against him in the Republican primary: former Representative Joe Walsh, former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, and former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld.

“I’m running because he’s unfit,” Walsh said in a recent interview with ABC News. “Somebody needs to step up, and there needs to be an alternative. The country is sick of this guy’s tantrums. He’s — he’s a child.”

“I think we have to have a conversation about what it means to be a Republican,” Sanford said on Fox News Sunday, adding that today’s GOP “has lost [its] way.” The Trump campaign’s ongoing effort to stop Republican primaries from taking place next year, Walsh said on CNN, is an effort to “disenfranchise voters.”

No president in my lifetime has ever short-circuited their party’s presidential primary process. It is contrary to the basic principles of democracy.

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

Categories
News News Feature

CannaBeat: Farmers Grow Hemp at Shelby Farms

CREDIT: Toby Sells

When I stepped off the hayride, I wondered if I was smelling what I was smelling or if I was only smelling it in my brain.

Before me was a stand of hemp plants for CBD, hundreds of them, each maybe three feet high. It looked to be about a half-acre of the deep-green plants I’d seen only in the pages of High Times. I’d seen the dried buds, of course, but I’d never seen the stuff actually growing out in a field like that. It felt surreal. It felt illegal.

Even though it wasn’t marijuana — you could smoke the whole field and not get high — it was a mesmerizing sight. It was made all the more mesmerizing by the traffic along Walnut Grove, sliding by casually and maybe obliviously. If those drivers saw the plot, they might have wondered, “Can you grow that at Agricenter International?”

Toby Sells

Steven Smith (left) and Boyd Vancil (right) discussed hemp production at Agricenter International last week.

The answer is yes. That plot is under the expert eyes of SBX Farms, a Memphis company unafraid of trying new crops here. Twenty years ago, the company planted a hemp crop (kenaf) at Agricenter.

Since then, SBX has planted sugar beets as a possible source of an alternative material for plastics, and switchgrass and sweet sorghum as alternatives for fossil fuels.

Last year, SBX planted its first stand of hemp for CBD (which they still just call hemp) at the huge agriculture research facility at Shelby Farms.

“We know these crops grow well in California, Oregon, and even in East Tennessee,” Steven D. Smith, SBX director of operations, said during a presentation at the Future of Ag Field Day last week. “They don’t tend to like the climate we have here in the Mississippi Delta. It’s hot, sticky, humid, with all sorts of diseases and pests. We want to see what’s going to work and what’s not going to work.”

The company will test the plants for everything from fertility to how well they handle stress.

No pesticide has been approved for use on hemp since the plant was made legal for commercial growing in the 2018 Farm Bill. Moves are in place to change that for the 2020 growing season.

SBX president Boyd Vancil said the company uses all-organic products on its Agricenter hemp stand. It’s a move with his customers in mind. For SBX, that means makers of typical products like skin creams.

“Some markets will absolutely not tolerate [residual pesticides] in your crop, and they will do testing,” he said last week.

By the time I left the CBD patch, I knew I was smelling that unmistakable scent. It was the future.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Ad Astra

Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness didn’t make much of a splash when it was published in 1899. But the writer’s reputation grew steadily in the first two decades of the 20th century, and by the time T. S. Eliot published his epoch-defining poem “The Hollow Men” in 1925, he began with a quote from Conrad. “Mistah Kurtz — he dead.” None other than Orson Welles wanted to produce Heart of Darkness for his first movie, but he had to settle for writing Citizen Kane instead. The story was most famously adapted in 1979 by Francis Ford Coppola in Apocalypse Now by moving the setting from Africa to Vietnam and replacing Conrad’s Charles Marlow, a naive young man who witnesses the horrors of colonial rule, with Captain Willard, a hardened assassin ordered to kill one of his own whose “methods have become … unsound.”

Director James Gray has become the latest to put Conrad’s framework to good use. The definitive adaptation of Heart of Darkness‘ subtle critique of the barbarity of colonialism will have to wait a little longer because Gray and writer Ethan Gross have moved the action to space. Ad Astra‘s hero is Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), an astronaut in the “near future” who flies for a fictional Space Command. When we meet the Major, he’s working at a prosaic post halfway up a space elevator, hundreds of kilometers above the atmosphere. But things go from boring to life threatening in a hurry — such is the astronaut life — when a mysterious energy surge from deep space hits the towering antenna and things get all explode-y. Roy, dressed, as he will be for most of the film, in a spacesuit, scrambles to contain the damage, then hurls himself off the space elevator and falls to earth, dodging flaming debris and hoping his emergency parachute won’t be too full of holes when it’s time to land.

Brad Pitt as Major Roy McBride in Ad Astra.

The opening sequence sets a high bar for the picture. The production design, led by Kevin Thompson, masterfully combines familiar elements with speculative design to create an air of realism. Space, in Major McBride’s world, is not fun. It’s trying to kill you a dozen ways all at once, and the most dangerous elements are the ones you never expect.

Roy, it turns out, is a second-generation astronaut. He followed in the footsteps of his father, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), who was the first man to lead a crew to Jupiter. The elder McBride disappeared 16 years earlier, along with the crew of the LIMA project — a mission to search the outer solar system and beyond for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Clifford took along what turned out to be an unwisely large amount of antimatter, which Space Command believes is the source of the mysterious energy surges emanating from the vicinity of Neptune that have continued to wreak havoc in the populated inner solar system. Furthermore, they have a classified reason to believe that Clifford is still alive and lurking, Kurtz-like, in Neptunian space. Instead of going up the Congo or Mekong rivers, Major Roy sets out to cross the solar system in an attempt to keep his thought-lost father from destroying human civilization.

At times, Ad Astra displays its Conrad fetish awkwardly. Brad Pitt’s flat-affect voice-over puts it squarely in Coppola territory and goes a long way toward establishing the depths of the Major’s malaise. The film’s surface commitment to realism is frequently at odds with its urge to be a rootin’ tootin’ space adventure, such as in a spectacular scene where our hero attempts a hazardous crossing of the rings of Neptune. In times past, the muddled science would have driven me nuts, but I have mellowed. I must give Gray props for being the first filmmaker to attempt to depict the eighth planet since the Mystery Science Theater 3000 anti-classic Invasion of the Neptune Men. (And yes, Neptune does have rings.)

In Ad Astra, Brad Pitt’s (above) eyes are as cold as the rings of Neptune (and, yes, it does have rings).

What holds it all together is a fantastic performance by Pitt. You can hear the echoes of both Martin Sheen’s “Saigon … shit …” and Ryan Gosling’s emotionally crippled portrayal of Neil Armstrong, but when the film threatens to spin off into excessively goofy space, Pitt’s there to reel it back in with his soulful blue eyes and clenched jaw. Major McBride is an unforgettable character for whom the Right Stuff has become a burden too heavy to bear, but too important to put down.

Ad Astra