Author: Ben Popper

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Film Features Film/TV

9 Songs blends sex, cinema, and rock-and-roll.

Director Michael Winterbottom’s explicit series of erotic vignettes finds his characters and 9 Songs asking the same question: Is sex enough to hold your interest? What sets the film apart is that Winterbottom chose to film the actors having real, graphic sex, catapulting the film into the murky waters between art and pornography. The picture follows two lovers, a young American named Lisa and her older beau Matt, a British polar scientist who’s packing quite the pole of his own. The movie has no substantial plot and only a glimmer of character. It leaves the viewer to contemplate a relationship whose entire substance is sex.

Winterbottom is an accomplished British director, probably best known to American audiences for his film 24 Hour Party People, about the Manchester music scene. In 9 Songs, Winterbottom alternates carnal episodes with rock concerts the couple attends together, and he relies on this concert footage to carry almost as much of the film as the sex. Aside from a few truncated glimpses into their relationship and the metaphorical pivot of Matt’s travels to the icy Antarctic, the film is essentially confined to the concert hall and the bedroom.

Unfortunately, the film never capitalizes on either. What Winterbottom forgets is that context can be as fulfilling as the act itself. The concerts are filmed vérité-style, in hand-held digital video reminiscent of a good bootleg tape. Everyone in attendance seems to be having an amazing time, but Winterbottom is unable or unwilling to share the characters’ experiences in a way the audience can connect to.

The sex in the film is similarly isolated. The actors look great, they seem to enjoy each other quite a bit, and despite your best efforts, you will probably find yourself getting aroused. Slowly, though, it dawns on Matt and Lisa that sexual gratification, as a stand-alone experience, is a mechanical act of diminishing returns. The film translates in roughly the same way. As the shock of watching real sex on screen wears off — and these days, it’s not much of a shock — one begins to yearn for a single shared experience between the characters.

At the end of the film, after Lisa has returned to the U.S., Matt is flying over interlocking sheets of ice, heading out on another scientific expedition. “It’s really beautiful,” he shouts over the roar of the propellers, yet he doesn’t seem very convinced. In the end, this film left me feeling cold as well. Without anything to support its focus, the film feels distant and dull, interesting only because our bodies and our censors tell us so.

9 Songs

Opening Friday, October 14th

Ridgeway Four

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News The Fly-By

Pill Pushers

When the Help Is Here bus tour recently stopped by the Church Health Center, a crowd of patients sought their assistance.

“They were met by more people than they could possibly handle in a day,” says Scott Morris, founder of the Church Health Center.

After TennCare reforms cut 190,000 enrollees from the program and put severe prescription limitations on many others, some uninsured patients have turned to the drug companies themselves for help.

The Help Is Here bus tour is part of an outreach program conducted by the Partnership for Prescription Assistance (PPA), a national coalition of pharmaceutical companies, physicians, and patient advocacy groups. The PPA acts as a sort of clearinghouse, offering patients and physicians access to 475 industry-programs they can utilize to fill their prescriptions. The bus is a traveling enrollment center where patients can find out if they are eligible for assistance.

The PPA began enrolling patients in April. During its first three months the program matched about 12,000 patients to eligible programs. As the TennCare reform date of August 1st drew near, enrollment numbers swelled considerably. In July, the monthly figure jumped to 24,273 and reached a peak of over 28,000 in August. Last month, about 15,000 more people were added, meaning PPA has matched over 82,000 Tennesseans to assistance programs since its inception.

Morris warns that patients “have to be pretty savvy to understand these forms. Most uninsured people in Memphis don’t even know these programs exist.” The complexity of the forms is worsened by the fact that each company requires a different form with entirely different criteria.

And the criteria needed to qualify for the programs can be quite demanding.

“The companies want to make sure you don’t have any other options,” says Morris. “They will ask a minimum-wage worker about his stocks and bonds.”

Many of the programs require that participants have no health coverage at all, meaning people whose TennCare coverage has been reduced but not eliminated may be ineligible.

“If you’re capped at five medicines, what happens when you have a sudden acute illness?” asks Morris.

Christian Chlymer, senior director with PPA, says the coalition offers service to both the uninsured and the underinsured. He also says that PPA has tried to make the eligibility forms less daunting by offering a one-stop site on the Internet.

“We didn’t build this program in a bubble. We’ve been out there with patients, physicians, in clinics and with social workers, using their feedback to make this easier for folks,” he says.

But growing demand has created new problems.

“Some companies have begun to subcontract this process out to smaller organizations, which of course makes the process take even longer,” says Morris. And some private physicians, inundated with these forms, have begun to charge a fee for helping to process them.

Longview Heights resident June Fleming has no health coverage and uses an industry assistance program to obtain medication for her high blood pressure. On a recent morning, she sits in the waiting room of the Church Health Center in Midtown and says she considers the industry prescription assistance invaluable.

“Without these programs, there is no way I could afford the price of medicine. Even a regular doctor’s appointment is too expensive,” she says. “This is the best system Memphis has to offer.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

On The Scene

Christopher Johnson hunches nervously on his stool, waiting for the contest to begin. His hair is neatly braided ,and he sports a dapper sweater beneath his banana-yellow blazer. “I wasn’t even going to come,” he says, “but my wife convinced me.”

It’s Saturday afternoon, and Johnson is one of 15 contestants selected from the previous day’s auditions for Gospel Dream, a new television show. Now the final 15 wait anxiously at the Gibson Lounge, knowing that soon all but three will be eliminated.

Gospel Dream, which will air this fall on the recently formed Gospel Music Channel, follows the format of the wildly successful series American Idol. Three judges with music-industry clout travel from city to city, paring down the crowd of contestants from each location to three regional winners. Memphis was the last regional stop on the taping before the series heads to Atlanta for the finals. The show’s overall winner will be awarded a record contract.

Compared to the other locales on the regional circuit such as Atlanta, Dallas, New Orleans, or Chicago, Memphis is quite small. The city’s gospel community, however, turned out in force.

“This is by far the biggest turnout per capita we’ve had,” said Kim Lloyd, the show’s production manager. “Usually we have to move the empty chairs out during the taping, but here we have a packed house.”

The show treads a fine line between reality and piety television.

“This is the music I feel. It’s about drawing people in. It’s about the message,” says Johnson. When asked how he hopes to separate himself from the pack, the North Memphis resident says that he has performed not only on the gospel circuit but as an R&B singer as well. “Hopefully, from doing that, I’ve developed a stage presence that the judges will notice.”

The judges are well aware of the dual worlds the competition straddles. Music executive Max Siegel says, “We’re obviously looking for someone with the commercial attributes to compete in the industry, but we also want someone with a well-developed music ministry.”

Despite the fact that each contestant gets only 30 seconds, members of the audience are moved by the performances. The judges, however, make sure to remind performers that faith is only one part of the competition. Andy Argyrakis, the Simon Cowell of the show, chides one contestant, saying, “I would like to see you direct some of your attention to the audience and not just to God.”

In the end, only one Memphian — Johnson — is chosen to continue on to the finals in Atlanta. Overcome by emotion, he begins to cry onstage. “You go ahead and cry, baby,” someone shouts from the audience.

“When you sing alone, you can make a lot of mistakes,” says Johnson, “but if you let God in, he’ll turn the light on for you.”

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News The Fly-By

Keepin’ It Real

The casting director for MTV’s upcoming season of the Real World insists that they don’t have any characters in mind when they’re selecting people for the show.

“We’re just looking for charismatic people who can’t help being themselves,” Megan Sleeper says.

The crowd that gathered on Highland for the Real World casting call last week, however, came fully armed with the knowledge of what makes a good character on reality television and how they might be able to fit into one of those categories. For more than five hours, a line of young hopefuls waited for their chance to pitch their personalities.

The Flyer dropped by to ask what candidates felt made them qualified and what the Real World would be like if it was filmed in Memphis.

Marcus Miller, 21, Fort Campbell, Kentucky

“I think that I’ll get it because I’m such a good stereotype of the homosexual African-American. Of course, I would use my opportunity on the Real World as a platform to do good.”

Joaquin Tucker, 22, East Memphis

“I went and saw the house they used for the episode in New Orleans. It was way out in the suburbs. I guess that means if they ever had a Real World Memphis, they would probably live out in Germantown.”

Erica Holmes, 18, University of Memphis

“I don’t think I know exactly what they’re looking for. I’m here because I want to fuck with them.”

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News The Fly-By

Coppers and Choppers

It was a safe weekend to be at the mall.

More than 60 officers from the Memphis Police Department, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, and out of state converged on Wolfchase Galleria to compete in a motorcycle rodeo.

The River City Challenge, jointly organized by local law enforcement and Carnival Memphis, is the first in what the groups hope to be an annual event, with all the proceeds going to Carnival Memphis’ Children’s Charity Initiative.

As I get out of my car, I am greeted by the sound of revving bike engines and Metallica blasting from a convertible party bus. I try awkwardly to make my way across the parking lot to where the officers are lining up to start their runs. As the riders maneuver with remarkable precision, turning their large Electra Glide and Road King motorcycles in the space of inches, I creep around the edge of the cones like a timid rodeo clown at his first big show.

MPD’s Chuck Nelson, one of the co-chairs of the event, describes the rodeo as a competition of riding skill and speed. Each bike gets two runs on a course organized into five sections, all of which must be ridden consecutively. The five loops each present a different challenge to the rider.

 “The patterns are definitely taken from real-life situations. A large part of this event is giving our officers a chance to work on their skills and safety,” said Nelson, “with the added bonus that this is a competitive environment.” 

A crowd is lined up along the edge of the parking lot, and they holler encouragement during each run. Carol Truhan, one of the few female riders, finishes a near perfect run and is greeted with loud applause.

Truhan, who has been with the Sheriff’s Department since 1996, explains that a good ride is all about getting in the groove.

“When you pull in, you have to aim your tire for that sweet spot. If you can do that, you can steer pretty well with just your eyes and head,” she says.

The final two riders slalom through these intricate patterns of cones, often pitching their bikes back and forth at such a precarious angle that I can hear their metal footbars grinding along the surface of the parking lot.

“If you ain’t scraping the ground you aren’t going to make it through some of these courses,” said Rodney Askew, a motorcycle cop with the MPD.

In the end, Askew decides to give the crowd a rodeo farewell. Mounting his bike like it was a surfboard, he rides the course standing up, giving all the riders present something to practice for next year.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Move It

Pilobolus is a small fungus that reproduces by generating a spore-filled bladder that ripens and then explodes with incredible force. Jonathan Wolken, co-founder and artistic director of the dance company Pilobolus, wants the company to be similarly awe-inspiring.

“When the company is creating a dance or experimenting with a movement,” Wolken says, “I ask myself, Will this make people’s eyes pop out?”

Pilobolus will be at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre on Saturday, October 1st, and will hold two master classes, in the morning and afternoon, before performing later that evening.

Wolken claims to have lost some of his physical energy with age, but his imagination seems to be running at a fever pitch. “Creating a dance is like cooking food,” he says. “You just keep adding flavors, keep spicing things. You never want to limit yourself.”

Wolken describes Pilobolus as an amalgam of theater and movement. This notion of multiple ideas building to a more powerful whole has been part of the company since the beginning. The group, which was founded in 1971 by students at Dartmouth College, has always relied on a collaborative choreographic process to generate its work. “To create a piece we go into the studio and we simply play. The process is intended to be less dictatorial than most choreography,” says Wolken.

Pilobolus’ GPAC performance will feature four pieces, one of which, Aquatica, is brand-new and another, Walklyndon, is one the company’s earliest works. “I think we benefit as a company by returning to these touchstones, these seminal works in our history,” says Wolken.

Walklyndon was designed as a colorful romp, performed without any music, only the sounds of the troupe’s rollicking action. The attention to slapstick and vaudeville and the sheer physical intensity mark Walklyndon as a classic within the Pilobolus repertoire.

The bill also features Day Two, a work created nearly a decade after Walklyndon. This work follows life’s trajectory, from its earliest appearance on earth to the moment when life took flight. The piece has strong narrative elements and was created through collaboration. “Most of the time we don’t come into the studio with a fixed idea of what we’re going to produce,” Wolken explains. “The dances are created first, without music.” The plot and music are then layered onto the dance. In the case of Day Two, Brian Eno and the Talking Heads provide the soundtrack to the primal atmosphere.

“I may be a lot older than I was when I started this, but I’m still in love with the insanity of movement, ” says Wolken. Insanity may seem like a strange word to use, but seeing Pilobolus live changes the way you think about your body. Pilobolus is a company that defies expectations.

Having been in the business for 30 years, Wolken knows the importance of creating a dance that can stand on its own. “The people in the company change over time, the river flows on. As we get older, we get wiser, and we have to start to let some of these pieces speak for themselves.”

Indeed, Pilobolus, based in Connecticut, is a great company because its appeal is self-evident. You don’t have to be a hard-core dance enthusiast to appreciate the power and ingenuity of form that Pilobolus prides itself on. This is dance that revels in the appeal of movement, not the conceptual framework that may surround it.

“We are a company that never employs smoke and mirrors,” Wolken says.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Best In Class

“They say the best classes go to the fastest/Sorry, Mr. West, there’s no good classes/Not even electives, not even prerequisites/You mean I missed my major by a coupla seconds?”

On his new CD, rapper Kanye West sums up the horror of course registration, that free-for-all of academic ambition that pits college students against each other for a few available spaces in each class.

It’s a horror many know. “I remember registering in a huge auditorium and getting absolutely nothing,” says Glen Munson, now an award-winning registrar at Rhodes. Munson designed a system of advance registration that responds to student demand, adding sections where necessary.

So, what are these much-desired classes? Deans, registrars, and faculty from three local universities told us what classes top the list at their institutions. What we found is that college is still the way most of us remember: a place for young pagans to discuss sex, bodily excretions, and the finer points of public speaking.

Rhodes College’s Most Popular Class: Sex and Gender in the New Testament — a study of New Testament passages pertaining to sexual activity.

Why? “I think the boys probably take it because they hear the word sex and the girls take it because they hear the word gender,” says Ashley Kundif, a Rhodes sophomore.

Runner-Up: Astronomy — an introduction for nonscience majors.

Why? “It seems almost like we’re hard-wired to feel curious about the stars. We’re all pagans at heart,” says Jay White, the professor who teaches the class. Christian Brothers’ Most Popular Class: Christian Ethics — a critical investigation of the theological convictions grounding Christian understandings of doing what is right.

Why? “It’s a popular class because we discuss a lot of hot-button issues: the death penalty, homosexuality, and war,” says Professor Peter Gathje. “The students get very excited to discuss issues of sexuality.”

Runner-Up: Parasitology — the study of the morphology, taxonomy, life cycle, distribution, pathology, and control of parasites of man and other animals.

Why? “I think it’s a morbid fascination with the things that cause explosive diarrhea,” says Dr. Stanley Eisen. “This is a class you really experience. When I teach about ticks and lice, I can watch my students scratching themselves. When I teach about flukes and tapeworms, some of them start to lose weight.” University of Memphis’ Most Popular Class: Introduction to Film — a comprehensive study of the form’s function and a history of film art.

Why? “A lot of students sign up because they think it’s going to be easy, eating popcorn and watching movies,” says Professor Danny Linton, “and they end up getting an F.”

Runner-Up: Oral Presentation — principles and practices of basic oral communication.

Why? “I think students like this class because … you can stand up and speak without fear of your peers booing and throwing things,” says instructor Andre Johnson.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Macabre Matrimony

The animated Corpse Bride is first and foremost a Tim Burton film, the work of a director with an extremely recognizable style and macabre sensibility, both of which have earned him a legion of loyal fans. If you think Tim Burton is a genius, then watching this film will be like rediscovering the eccentricities of an old friend. All of Burton’s best quirks are on full display here, so much so that you wish the film would take the time to break from pure storytelling to indulge its characters.

According to Burton’s Web site, the story for Corpse Bride comes from an old Russian folktale in which a man accidentally recites his wedding vows to a buried bride. The tale was inspired by the rampant anti-Semitism in early-19th-century Russia, which led to the murder of many Jewish brides, who would often be interred in their wedding garb.

Corpse Bride takes this tale and turns into an adolescent romance. The leading man is Victor Van Dort (voiced by Burton regular Johnny Depp), the shy son of wealthy fishmongers. Victor is betrothed to Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson), the daughter of bankrupt aristocrats. The elder Everglots are by far the most visually stimulating couple in the film. Mr. Everglot (Albert Finney) is a frowning, Napoleonic Humpty Dumpty, and his wife (Joanna Lumley) is equal parts Elvira and Dudley Do-Right.

The young Victorians meet for the first time at their wedding rehearsal, but the two fall for each other immediately. When Victor bumbles his vows, he retreats to the woods in shame and ends up proposing to a buried bride. This sets the two families on their ear and gives Victor’s scheming romantic rival, Lord Barkus (Richard E. Grant), a vacancy to fill. The entrance of Emily, the corpse bride (Helena Bonham Carter), gives Burton free rein to introduce his world of gory (and Gorey) creatures. Emily takes her new husband down to her home, the underworld.

The film, like the Burton-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas (his only other animated feature), is a musical of sorts, scored by Burton’s longtime collaborator Danny Elfman. Victor is introduced to his new home in the film’s biggest musical number, a skeletal swing that culminates in a black-light ballet.

The joy of the film is in the details. The zombie bride manages to somehow look beautiful, shimmering in a luminous cloud that gathers around her tattered veil and wild hair. The chin of the villainous Barkus could be a character in itself, smirking and swaying with devilish grace. The drawback to these details is that stop-motion animation is a laborious enterprise, and this film, like The Nightmare Before Christmas, clocks in at only an hour and 15 minutes, which makes Corpse Bride feel rushed.

The humor is hit or miss. Burton packs the movie with posthumous puns, which mostly miss their mark. His humor works best when it emerges organically from his oddball cast, like the scheming maggot that lives in Emily’s eyesocket and speaks in a rasping imitation of Peter Lorre.

What is interesting about the film is that it doesn’t confirm what seem to be Burton’s own feelings about the dead — that they are somehow more interesting and attractive than the rest of us. In the film’s finale, denizens of the underworld are successfully reintroduced among the living, yet this love story cannot ultimately be between two people who don’t share a pulse.

Corpse Bride

Opening Friday, September 23rd

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

G

Conceived and produced by Andrew Lauren, who introduced the film in Memphis last weekend, G is a reworking of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s exploration of the class tensions between old and new money is re-imagined in this film as the struggle of hip-hop stars to adjust to wealth and status, still set against the backdrop of the Hamptons. It is an interesting transposition, since the question of class is now joined by and perhaps superceded by the issue of race. The film touches on these issues, but the core of the picture is the fraught relationships that must negotiate these boundaries.

In the film, the character of the mysterious playboy Gatsby is transformed into Summer G, a brooding hip-hop mogul played by Richard T. Jones, whose raucous parties in his new Hamptons home draw ire from his neighbors. Like Gatsby, Summer G appears to be an enormous success, but in private he is afflicted with an old loss. Unlike Gatsby, however, Summer G’s wealth is not a mystery, and the tinge of gangsta menace doesn’t equal the tensions created by Gatsby’s illicit past.

The role of Fitzgerald’s narrator is taken up nimbly by Tre (Andre Royo), a struggling writer for the hip-hop magazine True Flow, who has come to the Hamptons to wrangle an interview from Summer G. Tre stays with his cousin Sky (Chenoa Maxwell) and her rich husband Chip Hightower (Blair Underwood), who have a place in the Hamptons as well. Sky, the woman Summer G once loved, is playing the role of Fitzgerald’s Daisy Buchanan, and Chip is Daisy’s abusive and hypocritical husband Tom.

Chip takes on a more central and powerful role in G than his literary predecessor. He plays the gentrified black businessman perfectly, seething with hatred for Summer G and his hip-hop cronies. Chip’s father is the owner of True Flow magazine, and Chip treats Tre with equal parts contempt, malice, and false “brotherhood.”

Unfortunately, the film itself treats only upper-class blacks with respect. The duo of B-Mo-Smooth and Daizy Duke, who play two of Summer G’s artists, are portrayed stereotypically and provide much of the film’s comic relief. The two rappers sport absurd outfits, scour the Hamptons for Newport cigarettes and malt liquor, and generally embody all of Chip’s negative assumptions about race.

The film, according to Lauren, is “an aspirational black romance.” The relationship between Summer G and Sky is grounded in the language of Gatsby. “I built this world for you,” Summer tells Sky, appealing to her to give their love another chance.

But as the film develops toward its conclusion, it rapidly transforms from a literary adaptation to a melodrama. Without giving away the ending, I will say that it significantly departs from the original. The main focus of the picture is the drama and tragedy of the relationships, not the intricacies of the environment.

G

Opening Friday, September 16th

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Spotlight

You know you’re watching a great character study when the physical minutiae of the actors onscreen become as fascinating to you as their motivations. In Taxi Driver, it was Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle, clenching his fist above an open flame, whose form burned itself into the memory. In The Beat That My Heart Skipped, the new film by French director Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips), it is the roving hands and tormented posture of Thomas Seyr, played with fiery charm and saving cynicism by Romain Duris.

The film is a remake of James Toback’s 1978 film Fingers, starring Harvey Keitel. The plot involves a young man caught between a world of crime and a passion for art. The difficulty is how to merge these two worlds — in Audiard’s case, updated to the seedy underworld of Paris real estate and the highbrow landscape of concert halls — without making the character’s emerging struggle too contrived.

Because all the relationships Thomas develops along the way seem so genuine, the film is able to transition back and forth between the violent world Thomas has inherited from his father and the realm of concert piano, a musical legacy of his mother. Most satisfying is that the film does not end predictably, with a droll success. Rather it maintains its razor edge past the point of comfort. Like its predecessor, The Beat That My Heart Skipped culminates in bloody failure, but unlike Toback, Audiard does not conclude with his protagonist’s solitary disintegration. His epilogue attests to a film that is elegiac without being hopeless.

Opens Friday, September 9th, at Studio on the Square