Month: October 2021

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Grizzlies Get Scorched by Heat in 129–103 Blowout

Desmond Bane takes the ball to the basket against the Miami Heat. Image courtesy of Grizzlies Twitter

Well folks, here it is — the Grizzlies’ first wire-to-wire blowout of the season. The Miami Heat looked every bit like a team just one season removed from the NBA Finals, and, unfortunately, the Grizzlies looked every bit like a young team that hasn’t managed to work out all the kinks in their roster.

Let’s get into it.

The Heat opened up the first quarter shooting like fire from beyond the three-point line, at one point they were 5 for 5 from distance and closed out the quarter 7 of 10. The Grizzlies by contrast shot 2 of 6 from deep and 8 of 19 overall in the first, and it all went downhill from there.

The Grizzlies won the scoring battle in the second quarter, barely. Memphis managed to eke out more points, but it took them a lot of shots to do it.

They went into halftime down 13, a deficit they have managed to overcome in the past, even this season. But the Heat came back from the break and put their collective feet on the Grizzlies’ neck and did not let up.

 When the final buzzer sounded, Miami had packed up Memphis with mostly their bench unit; in fact, three of Miami’s starters (Jimmy Butler, P.J. Tucker, and Duncan Robinson) did not play a single minute in the fourth. Jimmy Butler’s game-high 27 points all came in the first three periods.

Being outclassed by a better team is nothing to be ashamed of, but getting dragged by their second string while most of the first unit watches might be. Woof.

By the Numbers:

Ja Morant had his second lowest-scoring game of the season so far, notching a team-high 20 points, 4 rebounds, and 7 assists.

De’Anthony Melton also closed out the night with 20 points, while shooting 4 of 7 from deep.

Desmond Bane followed closely with 17 points and 5 of 10 from distance.

Kyle Anderson led the bench unit with 13 points, including 3 of 4 from beyond the three-point line.

Jaren Jackson Jr. and Steven Adams, the starting power forward and center for Memphis this season, combined for an abysmal 14 points and 8 rebounds. That the two of them couldn’t come up with a double-double between them is less than ideal, to put it mildly.

It’s only game six of the regular season, and the Grizzlies have a lot to prove in the coming months. But there is a whole lot of season left for them to prove it.

If it’s true that this team really is better than advertised, then their success last season should be easily replicated going forward. Reality is a little more complicated and, truth be told, it is far too early into the season to make any informed predictions about how the team will fare.

Ja Morant’s star continues to rise and his ceiling as a player seems to be nowhere in sight. It’s easy to forget that the electrifying young point guard is only in his third year in the league. Watching him play, with his genius-level basketball IQ and unshakeable swagger, Morant is everything that Memphis needed Mike Conley to be. It would not be a stretch to say that he’s the most talented player to ever take the court in Beale Street blue.

Jaren Jackson Jr.’s return from injury has not been the seamless transition fans hoped it would be, and the areas he struggled in before still plague him now. Without Jonas Valanciunas to carry the rebounding and offensive load, Jackson Jr. has his work cut out for him. Whether or not that is a role that the young big man can assume remains to be seen.

Who Got Next?

The Grizzlies are staying home for a few games. Monday night they will face off against the Denver Nuggets and reigning MVP Nikola Jokic. Tip-off is at 7 p.m. CDT.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Last Night in Soho

Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Sandie in Edgar Wright’s new thriller, a Focus Features release. (Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh / © 2021 Focus Features, LLC)

There’s no such thing as “the good ole days.” The past was just as full of horrors as the present. You just forgot how bad it was, or nobody wrote the bad parts down — or maybe you just didn’t read the people who wrote the bad parts down. 

That’s the ultimate theme of Edgar Wright’s new thriller, Last Night in Soho. It’s definitely a case of an artist trying to have their cake and eat it, too. Wright both luxuriates in nostalgia, and undercuts it at the same time. For an unapologetic popster like Wright, the director of Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and Baby Driver, examining the dark side of his obsessions has led to the deepest work of his career. And he got there without sacrificing any of the visceral thrills he’s so good at delivering. 

Thomasin McKenzie as Eloise (Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh / Focus Features)

The film’s object of nostalgia is swinging London of the 1960s. That’s the scene that gestated The Beatles and The Who, but Wright’s attention is on the slick pop of Dusty Springfield and Sandy Shaw. That’s the music Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) is listening to in the film’s opening sequence as she dances in a dress made of newspaper. Wright immediately reveals the essentials of her character by whipping his camera around her room. She wants to be a fashion designer, she lives in a small town, where her ’60s obsession marks her as a girl out of time, and her mother is a ghost. 

About that last bit. Ellie has visions, often of dead people, and Ellie’s grandma (Rita Tushingham) reveals that her mother did, too, and these visions eventually became so disturbing and uncontrollable that Ellie’s mom killed herself. When Ellie is accepted into the London College of Fashion, grandma is supportive, but warns that if life in the big city becomes too overwhelming, don’t be afraid to ask for help. 

Dame Diana Rigg as Miss Collins

Her idealized version of London is dispelled immediately, as her cab driver taking her from the train station to her dorm creeps on her. Things get worse when meets her roommate Jocasta (Synnove Karlsen), a coke-snorting mean girl who calls herself “Hurricane Jocasta.”  These living arrangements aren’t tenable for the studious, and somewhat mentally fragile Ellie, so she finds a cheap room in a boarding house run by Miss Collins (Diana Rigg, in her final role). In order to pay for it, and clothes from the fashionable West End shops that surround the college, she gets a job in a dive bar called The Toucan, where she serves drinks to an old barfly (Terence Stamp) who takes an interest in her. 

Matt Smith, a former Doctor Who, as Jack

Ellie does get more sleep in the new room, but that sleep comes with vivid dreams of the West End in the mid-’60s featuring a girl named Sandy (Anya Taylor-Joy), an aspiring singer who falls for Jack (Matt Smith), a manager with an eye for new talent. The beautiful, confident Sandy represents an ideal self for the mousy small-town girl, and when Ellie dyes her hair blonde like Sandy’s, boys start to notice her. But Ellie’s dreams take a dark turn as Sandy falls deeper into the seedy side of London. The 1960s produced great music and fashion, but it was a man’s world. Young women like Sandy put up with brutal misogyny, even from men who professed to love them. The mystery of Sandy’s fate starts to weigh on Ellie, as her visions invade her waking life.  

Wright is inspired by stylish English films of the period by directors like Nicholas Roeg, but the screenplay, co-written with Penny Dreadful scribe Krysty Wilson-Cairns, critiques the material it celebrates. It’s the director’s first film with a female protagonist (although he has created many memorable women, such as Ramona Flowers), and the change in perspective seems to have invigorated his imagination. The cast is aces, including veterans like Rigg and Stamps and the brilliantly paired co-leads of Taylor-Joy and McKenzie. 

Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomasin McKenzie make out with Doctor Who.

Wright’s one of contemporary cinema’s most inventive visual stylists, and this film is a feast of in-camera effects and plain old misdirection. While in the visions of the past, Ellie and Sandy can only see each other in mirrors, even as their identities are merging, Persona-style. This presents endless opportunities for Wright to pull some boffo visual gags. But even as the director is emptying his trick bag all over the screen, the story keeps humming along at a brisk pace. This helps later in the film, when it gets harder to keep all the plot plates spinning. Last Night in Soho is a pop confection that’s not just empty calories. Don’t miss this opportunity to see a master like Wright at the top of his game. 

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

It’s Time to Get Excited for Pantà, Opening Saturday

Bocadillo de Plato a les Landes: harissa roasted duck on baguette with chermoula slaw (Credit: Pantà)

It’s fair to say that excitement for Pantà has been buzzing in Memphis for a while now. Chef Kelly English announced earlier this year that he’d be flipping Overton Square’s longstanding Restaurant Iris space into a new Catalonian concept, something he’s dreamed of for decades since a six-month trip to Barcelona in his early twenties.

Pantà finally opens to the public tomorrow at 2146 Monroe, and the building’s complete decorative and culinary transformation is sure to make a splash with hungry Memphians. Despite a hectic week getting ready for opening night, several key members of the Pantà team – English, manager and bartender Aaron Ivory, and designer David Quarles IV – made time to speak to the Memphis Flyer about their excitement for the restaurant.

Flyer: Pantà is a departure from your other restaurants. How did you come to settle on this style of cuisine?

Kelly English: When I lived in Barcelona, that was really when I fell in love with both food and wine, so this is something I’ve had in my head for a while. And during the pandemic, one of our pivots was a three-month pop up of Catalan food that we did here at Iris, and it really helped put food on the table for our staff. And we realized that operating a 12-table fine dining restaurant that needed valet parking wasn’t going to be sustainable.

So we made the deal to move Iris to the former Grove Grill space at Laurelwood, and it then just seemed so natural to turn this into Pantà. We’d seen the concept work and how much fun it was for us, and how much joy it brought to others. I really do live this type of food and the way they live. And what we want is to be known as a later night establishment. We’ll be open Thursday to Saturday from six to midnight, and then on Sundays, we’ll do a siesta service from two to six, for people who might not be up in time for brunch, or for those who work brunch and might want to do something when they get off.

What are some of the specialty dishes that diners can look forward to when they come to Pantà?

English: We’re not going to do anything that isn’t super specifically Catalan, with the caveat that we reserve the right to ‘Memphis’ anything that we need. A great example is patatas bravas. It’s a very traditional dish. They’re fried potatoes with a couple of different aiolis on it. Then there’s also a different version of that called a Bomba Barceloneta, which is the same idea, except they stuff braised meat in the mashed potatoes and they fry it. What we’re going to do is put Payne’s barbecue inside of these mashed potatoes.

So we’re really looking to put a lot of Memphis’ fingerprints on it. But our menu will be fresh, it will be vibrant; we’re going to have a lot of seafood, there will be a lot of vegetable-driven plates. We’ve only got a couple dishes on the menu that use red meat. And all our dishes are going to be small, and are meant to be shared among people while you order multiple things.

Peix Crua: fish, citrus, burnt butter, tarragon, jalapeños, and hazelnuts. (Credit: Pantà)

What was your approach when you started thinking about changing the interior?

English: Well, we wanted a space that simply didn’t exist yet. And that’s where David Quarles comes in. When we first met with him, we talked about what I thought about Barcelona, and we looked at Parc Güell, which is a big inspiration for how the space came together. When I look around now, we’ve got a really unique space here.

David Quarles IV: Kelly told me that they wanted a place where everyone felt welcome. It needed to be a place that kind of transported you out of Memphis a little bit. So I used the colors of Spain, and Barcelona, a lot to inspire the design. We landed on Antoni Gaudí. So I looked up a lot of his work, and we ended up landing on the Casa Vicens. And so I looked up the color inspiration there, the lines that are in his architecture, just everything, and used that as the base. That was one of his first projects, and since this is one of our first large-scale restaurant projects, it felt like it was lining up as it should.

The first design we came up with was the dining room. The colors in the wallpaper there are echoed in every single element outside of that space. I just wanted to really provide a visual experience for anyone who came in. The whole design style is based off a colorful memphis interpretation of art nouveau. You’re not overwhelmed, but you now have a problem choosing where you want to sit first.

Whenever I do spaces, I want the rooms to immerse with each other rather than yell at each other. I feel that now a lot of the spaces are speaking together, and having a good colorful conversation.

Aaron Ivory: It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. It’s vibrant, but still has a good nightlife vibe to it, where we can control the lights and change the mood. I cannot wait for people to walk in and see what David has done.

Pantà will have an extensive beverage list, featuring signature cocktails, Spanish wine, and gin & tonics. (Credit: Pantà)

In terms of drinks and cocktails, what can diners expect from Pantà?

Ivory: Me, my bartending partner Morgan McKinney [owner of Best Shot Co.], and our beverage director Laurin Culp have been working a lot on coming up with a great bar program. Morgan has come up with some really great cocktail ideas, and one of my favorites is the Naked Dragon, which mixes reposado tequila, some aperol, chili-infused yellow chartreuse, and lime juice. The dragon is kind of our mascot here.

Quarles: We came up with the idea of having our private dining are be the Dragon Room, since that’s the logo. It has a dragon mural painted by Frances [Berry] on the ceiling.

English: Laurin has put together a great list of curated Spanish wines, and we’ll have a whole section of the menu for gin & tonics.

Ivory: And I think the vibe we’ll have is something that will really complement Memphis. It’s a place that will be both low-key, yet high energy. You can come in, split a few tapas with your girlfriend or boyfriend or whomever, and drink some nice wine and just take it easy. You know, take the whole load off your shoulders here.

And it really lends itself to being a place you can go at any part of your night: pop in for a drink before or after dinner, or even stop by or a couple of cocktail before or after, say, going to the theater. We really want it to be an inclusive space for all of Memphis. And there’s been so much love and so much support going into this restaurant, so I can’t help but to be happy and ready and interested to see what types of people we bring in.

Pantà opens to the public tomorrow, October 30th. The restaurant is open from 6 p.m. to midnight Thursday-Saturday, and open from 2-6 p.m. for Sunday siesta service.

Categories
News News Blog

Bullying, Gun Violence, and Parenting Forum Concludes This Weekend

The Camp Chambers staff (Courtesy Camp Chambers)

There is seemingly no shortage of adults eager to talk about what’s wrong with kids today, though not everyone is as quick to offer a solution or a helping hand. That’s why Camp Chambers, a local nonprofit focusing on community outreach to promote educational and life skills, has hosted a month-long series of weekend seminars to do just that. 

The “Bullying, Gun Violence, and Parenting Forum” events seek to intervene with at-risk youth, particularly young people in the Juvenile Court system. The October series concludes this Saturday with a forum at Thomas Chapel Baptist Church. We spoke with Camp Chambers co-founder Ressie Chambers about the series.


Memphis Flyer: First, can you tell me a little bit about Camp Chambers? 
Ressie Chambers: Currently, our primary focus is to offer a wrap-around service for families. Camp Chambers was started by my husband and me in 2014 and received 501(c)(3) status in 2015. 

How did you become involved in working to help young people?  
My husband, Jimmy Chambers, is an investigator with the DA’s office and investigates gang and other crimes committed by youth. He also has an office at Juvenile Court of Memphis. He saw that the number of young people (specifically young Black men) involved in gang and criminal activity was alarming and wanted to implement an initiative to steer them in the right direction. 

What can parents expect to learn at these forums?  
First, bullying is harmful to their children, whether it’s the offender or the victim; second, gun violence is dangerous and shortens young people’s lives in record numbers; and third and most importantly, the need for parenting is imperative, now more than ever! 

You’ve been holding the forums throughout October — how has that gone?
So far, everything has gone quite well, and the attendees have shared that it was powerful, and they did learn from them. We have offered Covid shots (by ShotRx) at each event and testing by the Shelby County Health Department (October 2nd and 30th events). We have had several guest speakers attend. Amy Weirich committed to attending all events. Unfortunately, she was out of town and unable to participate in the October 9th event, however, Reginald Henderson, a lead prosecutor in the DA’s office, attended in her absence. Althea Greene attended on October 16th and addressed the group with a powerful message. Our speakers have included citizens from the private, business, and education sectors, as will our last event. Our forums conclude with a skit presented by the law enforcement sector, a Crime Scene Presentation, “Life on the Streets.” The presenters include Royal Chatman and officers from MPD, MGU, and the U.S. Marshals! It sends a powerful message to those in attendance. The goal is for the skit to leave an impression with the hopes they are affected enough to change. 

Most of the young people in attendance (90 percent) are males who all have gun charges and must attend a Cease-Fire Presentation at Juvenile Court. Due to Covid, Juvenile Court put the program on hold. My husband shared the information on the forums with his contact at Juvenile Court, and they felt these forums would satisfy the Cease-Fire requirement and change the mind of those convicted of the gun charges. We can only hope we have reached at least one.

Are you happy with the results?
Yes and no. I am satisfied with the results of our efforts and the people that participated, attendees and speakers. We posted on social media, Channel 3 news covered our first event, and digital billboards advertised our event for five weeks. Chick-Fil-A chose our nonprofit as their Community Champion for October, and the Bullying, Gun Violence, and Parenting forums were advertised in the ad that’s currently running. We attempted to bring awareness to the ongoing issues in our community by bringing the community and city leaders together.

My disappointment lies in the lack of parental and city leadership support. Although the parents needed to attend with their child (those ordered to participate in Cease-Fire), many did not. I sent an invitation to every city leader two months before the event; outside of Amy Weirich and Althea Green, I received zero responses. My husband reached out to Rhonda Logan after seeing a post on Facebook of an event she was attending outside of her district, and I received a call from her office last week that she would attend this upcoming Saturday. 

I find that often people want to focus on the negative, but you have found a way to acknowledge these problems while working to make the community safer. How do you find a balance in doing that?  
It takes more energy to focus on the negative; unfortunately, there are a lot of areas to focus on. On the other hand, focusing on the positive feels excellent, and we enjoy instilling hope in others and inspiring them to be the best. We like to think that we encourage people to change their mindset; that’s the key. When minds are changed, hearts are changed; if you don’t start with the mind, which controls all of our activities, you’ve missed an opportunity to make a difference! We know we can’t save each young person or parent that we encounter, but the reward of knowing that we helped at least one is well worth the effort.

Is there anything else you want the readers to know about?   
Yes, to the community, mainly parents, stop depending on the police and city leaders to fix the issues in our city. The fix is simple, parent up and teach your children values, morals, and the importance of respecting themselves and others. If you are not sure how to parent, ask for help. My last thing, please stop recommending more programs for these young people without hosting programs for the parents. Programs will not work if parents are not involved in their children’s lives. Children attend programs and go back to the same toxic environment that caused their behavior; children learn what they live and live what they learn.

The next Bullying, Gun Violence, and Parenting Forum event is Saturday, October 30th, from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Thomas Chapel Baptist Church.

Categories
Politics Beat Blog

Legislature Enables Partisan School Board Elections

Sen. Mike Bell: "better that all the citizens of the state of Tennessee know what hopefully is ... in some respect a worldview."

“Why are we making education partisan?” State Representative Larry Miller (D-Memphis) asked in a state House debate on Friday.  

Though overshadowed by the action of the current special session to establish central state authority over medical authority in home-rule counties, the General Assembly’s simultaneous action to enable partisan school boards extends the ever worsening political divide into a previously sacrosanct area — that of the search for, and distribution of, knowledge.

Miller’s question remains the essential — even the existential — one, even after subsequent House passage of the partisan election bill and with certain Senate passage pending later Friday.

The basic answer to Miller’s question was given by House bill sponsor Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) as “transparency.”

A fuller explanation of the motive for the legislation had been provided earlier in the Senate Education Committee by Senator Mike Bell (R-Riceville), who had wanted to make partisan school board elections mandatory everywhere in Tennessee.

Said Bell: “I don’t care whether it’s the teaching of critical race theory, the mandating of mask, or vaccines, or even as we saw, what happened in one county in Virginia, where basically a school board wanted to hide the fact that a criminal activity had taken place in a school, I think it’s extremely important to the citizens of our state. While it may not be a perfect measure, the citizens of our state know that being a member of one party or another at least gives them a good idea of the political philosophy of the person running for that office.”

That was too much even for Bell’s fellow Republican, Rep. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald), who successfully offered an amendment to make partisan school board elections permissive, but not mandatory.

“Now for the other county offices, those can be partisan or they cannot be partisan,” offered Hensley. “So that’s up to the local parties in each county, whether they want to have a partisan election or not. So it would work work the same way as the other county offices.”

It was this amended version that passed the Senate Education Committee  — with one vote, that of Senator Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis) dissenting.

Though he promised not to oppose the amended version (Hensley’s) in open session, Bell would indicate his displeasure with the change of the bill’s scope from mandatory to permissive.

He said, “I thought it was better to make this mandatory across the state. I thought it was better that all the citizens of the state of Tennessee know that philosophy that hopefully is … in some respect a worldview of the of the people running. It’s not a perfect measure, what political party you belong to, but at least it’s some measure.”

The Senate Education Commitee session, incidentally, was presided over on Thursday by vice chair Jon Lundberg (R-Bristol), not by Sen. Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), who resigned the chairmanship this week  following his federal indictment on campaign finance charges. Kelsey participated briefly in debate, asking perfunctorily a question about the authority of county political parties to decide for or against partisan school-board primaries.

Kelsey in Education Committee Thursday as ex-chairman

All votes taken on the measure in either chamber were along party lines, with Democrats opposing and Republicans, with few exceptions, endorsing the bill.

One Republican objector was State Rep. Patsy Hazlewood (R-Signal Mountain), who noted that making school board elections partisan would vastly increase their costs to taxpayer and candidates alike.

During House debate on the measure, State Rep. G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis) asked sponsor Cepicky if any school board in the state had requested the measure. Cepicky could not answer in the affirmative.

The action taken by the General Assembly on partisan school board elections highlighted, as did its action on health care authority, a continuing and basic distinction between the current era of Republican legislative domination and the previous one, lasting for decades, of Democratic domination.

The Republican supermajority has chosen, over and over, to expand the authority over essential public matters of not just the state but of party per se.

Categories
News News Blog News Feature

Covid: Employee Vaccine Opt-Out Bill Moves in Senate

Credit: state of Tennessee

A bill moving in Nashville would give Tennessee employees a host of Covid-related protections against employers unless those employers include Ford Motor Co., any business that has received state funds, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, private schools, jails, prisons, and more likely to come. 

Tennessee senators passed the legislation — what bill sponsor Sen. Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) called the “big bill” or “omnibus bill” — in a committee hearing Friday morning. It’s big because it does a lot. It says: 

• No employer (private, government, nor school) can take any adverse action against an employee who refuses to show proof of a Covid-19 vaccine.      

• Any employee fired for not showing proof of a vaccine can get Tennessee unemployment benefits from wages lost in the past and into the future. 

• No vaccine can be given to a child without parental consent. 

• Creates two triggers (called a “severe condition”) for mask mandates: The governor has to declare a state of emergency. Counties seeking a mandate have to have a case rate of 1,000 cases per 100,000 population. 

• Mask mandates in counties can last only 14 days. 

• School districts cannot implement a district-wide mask mandate.

• In a severe condition, individual schools may ask the school board’s permission to institute a mask mandate. If approved, they would last 14 days. 

• Only the Tennessee Commissioner of Health can stipulate details of quarantine.

• Only those testing positive for Covid can be quarantined, not those exposed with a negative test. 

• Any employer that violates the new rules would lose liability protections set out by the legislature earlier this year. 

As debate on the “big bill” began Friday, exemptions to it began to flow. Ford Motor Co., which was just given $500 million by lawmakers last week, would be exempt. Carve-outs were promised, too, for all ot the entities listed in the top of the story. 

Sen. Sarah Kyle (D-Memphis) urged caution on the sweeping legislation and pointed to a letter she and others received from a long list of Tennessee businesses, nonprofits, and chambers of commerce, including the Greater Memphis Chamber and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“We oppose any proposals that outright remove the ability of an employer to determine their own vaccination and mask policies,” reads the letter. “We believe that any legislation of this kind is unnecessary government intrusion into the operation of our businesses. Tennessee’s strong business climate is based on this fundamental principle, including the state’s employment-at-will law.”       

Kyle asked Johnson to consider removing the bill for now and to bring it to the body again when it meets in January during the regular session. Johnson said about 100 lawmakers signed a letter to create the special session to deal with these Covid issues, including those in the bill. 

Sen. Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville) said while he was voting for the bill, which he did, it was a “bitter pill to swallow.” He said he’d made commitments to many businesses in his district to not support the bill. However, he was given assurances that the legislation would be improved and his vote would allow other members to continue their work on it. 

“There’s a lot of work to be done and we’ll have to see what the final product is,” Briggs said. 

The bill was approved and moves on to the Senate Calendar Committee for a review next week.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Spooky Movies Haunt Halloween Weekend

Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare On Elm Street

Halloween is this Sunday, which means it’s the climax of horror movie season. Memphis’ big screens offer many options to slake your thirst for blood.

Saturday is the big day, beginning with a double feature matinee of classic horror beginning at 1 p.m. at Malco’s Paradiso and Collierville theaters. The Invisible Man was directed by the great James Whale, whose impact on horror cannot be underestimated. Filmed in 1933, after Whale had made the immortal Frankenstein and practically invented the haunted house film with The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man was the first of many attempts to adapt H.G. Wells’ groundbreaking sci-fi novel, and the only one with a script approved by the author himself. It stars Claude Raines in his breakthrough performance, beginning a career that would include such gems as The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca, and Lawrence of Arabia. Here he is absolutely owning the town constable who wants to know what’s going on in his secret lab.

Raines also shows up in the second film of the double feature, The Wolf Man from 1941. Lon Chaney Jr. stars as the titular fuzzy headed antihero. He can’t help it, he just gets moony sometimes.

Take a break for dinner and then head to the Malco Summer Drive-In for the annual Halloween edition of the Time Warp Drive-In. This year’s theme is American Nightmares — The Teen Horror Cinema of Wes Craven. The first film is, for my money, the best of the ’80s horror boom. A Nightmare on Elm Street brought surreal imagery and experimental cinema back to the center of American horror. Made for $1.1 million, it grossed $57 million in its initial run; the fledgling studio New Line Cinema would become known as “The House that Freddy Built.” It was also the debut of Johnny Depp, who gets one of the greatest death scenes in horror history.

In 1996, Craven would deconstruct many of the horror tropes he had a hand in building with Scream. This trailer is built around the film’s infamous opening scene, where Drew Barrymore takes a fateful phone call.

Craven’s 1991 film The People Under The Stairs is an early entry in the horror comedy genre. The class-conscious satire is a little bit like Home Alone made with a lot of blood.

The final film of the evening is The Hills Have Eyes. Made in 1977, it was Craven’s second film after The Last House on the Left; both films would go on to be cult classics.

The Time Warp Drive-In begins at 7 p.m. at the Malco Summer Drive-In. Admission is $25 per car for a night full of scares.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

New Moon Keeps On Being Creepy

A scene from "Shockheaded Peter" at New Moon Theatre Company (Photo by Gene Elliott).

Ten years ago, New Moon Theatre Company started its annual foray into producing thrills and chills for the Halloween season.

“Everybody involved with the company just loved Halloween,” says Gene Elliott, executive producer at New Moon. Look Away (A Civil War Zombie Tragedy) by Memphis playwrights Zac Cunningham and Stephen Briner had been staged by New Moon a couple of times before the 2011 production that started the annual scare fare.

Elliott says they company has been on the watch for something both odd and beautiful. A mix of plays from creepy to screamy were staged in subsequent years, including Bug, Frankenstein, The Woman in Black, Titus Andronicus, Cuddles, Buried Child, Lizzie the Musical, and The Pillowman.

This year offers, if you can imagine, one of the weirdest yet.
Shockheaded Peter (runs tonight through November 14th) is a musical version of an 1845 German children’s book of short stories and poetry about the consequences of misbehavior. The program describes it as a “tale of a childless couple that has their fondest wish granted in the most delightfully dreadful way imaginable, accompanied by songs, puppetry, and vignettes in which the hilariously horrible fates that befall naughty children everywhere are brought to darkly comedic life.”

Elliott, who has been involved in all the productions, says when he first encountered it, “I was kind of gobsmacked just watching what videos were available. And I read about it, everything I could. And it was just so wonderfully bizarre and just asking for no forgiveness.”

In other words, perfectly weird.

“It’s not an overly long play,” he says, “but it has so many moving parts. There’s little vignettes — it’s a vaudeville-feeling show. There’s little scenes that happen, but there’s puppets and people doing quick changes into bizarre costumes and it’s just nonstop. There’s 15 people in the show and every one of them are running backstage. It’s chaos and I just kinda sit back and laugh and watch them just running in circles. It’s so cool.”

But if it’s dark and weird, is it OK for children or not?

“It’s kind of like watching Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner,” he says. “Those are just cartoons. We have puppets. The violence is absurd and we’ve had a couple of older children watch it and they were laughing their heads off.”

Get tickets here.

Categories
News Blog News Feature

Average Covid Cases Fall into Double Digits

Source: Shelby County Health Department

Covid cases in Shelby County continued a prolonged fall from the record-high figures posted this summer as the Delta variant spread here.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases hit a milestone this week. That average fell below 100 for the first time in many weeks to 90 on Friday.

The lower numbers are the reason the Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) lifted the mask mandate here, in place for several weeks.

Another interesting data point published Friday is the rising number of vaccinations in the county. The daily average of vaccines here rose by hundreds (to 1,853) over the week, likely pushed higher by those getting a third dose of the shot or a booster. So far, 502,463 have been vaccinated in Shelby County. That is 71.8 percent of the total county goal of 700,000.

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Grizzlies Snap Two-Game Losing Streak, Battle Back To Beat the Warriors 104–101

Ja Morant doing Ja Morant things. Image: Grizzlies Twitter

The Grizzlies closed out their four-game west coast road trip Thursday night with a big win against the Golden State Warriors in their first overtime appearance of the season.

Coming on the heels of a brutal loss to the Portland Trail Blazers and a narrow defeat by the Los Angeles Lakers, this win against Golden State puts the Grizzlies at 2-2 for the road trip.

Let’s get into it.

Spoiler Alert: Steph Curry is still a menace from behind the three-point line, with 21 of his 36 points in regulation coming from distance.

This game wasn’t big in the sense that it was a blowout, more so that it was a big battle to overcome a 19-point deficit and Steph Curry’s hot shooting to secure the win. Forcing turnovers and converting them into points on the other end of the floor also contributed to the double-digit comeback.

Despite struggling for most of the first half and not holding a lead until deep into the fourth quarter, this Memphis team managed to scratch and claw their way to the season’s first overtime period. They hung on for dear life, not succumbing to enormous pressure from the Warriors. Pressure that would have overwhelmed them last season.

Ja Morant continues to do what he does, putting up 18 points in the third quarter alone.

Jaren Jackson Jr., Desmond Bane, and De’Anthony Melton combined to score 18 of the Grizzlies 25 fourth-quarter points. This was a marked improvement for Melton, who has struggled for the past two games, even going scoreless in the loss against Portland.

By the Numbers:

Ja Morant led the team in scoring with 30 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, and 4 steals.

Desmond Bane finished the night with 19 points, 6 rebounds, and 2 assists. Bane led the Grizzlies in three-point shooting with 15 of those 19 points coming from beyond the arc.

Jaren Jackson Jr. closed out with 15 points and 8 rebounds. Fellow big man Steven Adams put up 12 points and 7 rebounds.

De’Anthony Melton finished with 7 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists, 4 steals, and 3 blocks. Melton’s contributions on both ends of the floor were vitally important for the Grizzlies.

Kyle Anderson had 8 points, 9 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 blocks. Very important blocks, as seen below.

<Mike Breen voice> BLOCKED BY ANDERSON

Who Got Next?

The Grizzlies return to Memphis where they will face off against the Miami Heat. It’s going down Saturday night in FedExForum. Tip-off is at 7 p.m. CDT.