This is Best of Memphis week at the Memphis Flyer! We asked our readers who they think is the best of nearly everything in Memphis. You can see the full results here. We celebrated the winners at the Best of Memphis party last Wednesday night at Railgarten, with musical guest Salo Pallini.
This year, after much outcry, we finally created separate categories for original artists and cover bands in the music category. We’ve also got categories for rappers and singers. Let’s start with our Best Rapper, Memphis meteor GloRilla. Coincidentally, she just released a new music video “Hollon,” to prime the pump for her upcoming debut full-length Glorious.
The best in the Local Bands category is Lucero, a perinnial favorite of Flyer readers who have been touring relentlessly in support of their 2023 album Should’ve Learned By Now. Here’s the lyric video for “One Last F.U.”
Thank you to everyone who voted in the 2024 Best of Memphis! If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
The Memphis Flyer's Abigail Morici and Shara Clark at the 2024 Best of Memphis Party. (Photo: Chris McCoy)
On Wednesday, Sept. 18th, the day our Best of Memphis 2024 list was released to a waiting world, the winners gathered at Railgarten for a celebration.
I was there with my trusty iPhone camera to record the event for posterity. Thanks to Salo Pallini for the music, and for everyone involved in making this party a raving success.
Leila Farzad, Douggie McMeekin, Zosia Mamet, Saoirse-Monica Jackson, and Tony Hale try to get along in The Decameron. (Photo: Courtesy Netflix)
One strange thing about the pandemic is the effect it had on art. Economically, it weakened and destroyed arts organizations of all stripes. It’s even harder to make a living as a musician or actor today than it was in 2019 — and it’s not like it was easy in the Before Time. It’s also interesting that there is not a lot of great art that came from enduring the worldwide trauma.
It’s not like artists weren’t doing anything during the pandemic. Trapped in their homes for months at a time, working through anxiety, artists made a lot of art. Some of it, like Bo Burnham’s Inside, was pretty good. But once the pandemic was over, audiences were also over it. Nobody wants to think about the dark, scary days of the pandemic, so nobody wants to see movies or listen to music which brings those feelings back. Turns out, this is not a new phenomenon. Very little memorable art came out of the 1918 flu pandemic. After the mass death, people just wanted to party.
But there is at least one great work of art which happened as a result of a pandemic. The Decameron was written by Giovanni Boccaccio after the Black Death swept through Italy in 1348. In it, a group of young people flee the pestilence in Florence to hole up in a secluded country villa. There, they pass the time by spinning stories, some real, some made up. The 100 short stories Boccaccio wrote were revolutionary, both for the beauty of his prose and the positively liberated way he viewed women. The stories were sometimes funny, sometimes bawdy, and sometimes tragic. Chaucer was inspired by The Decameron to make his own loosely connected tome of short stories in English, TheCanterbury Tales.
Producer Kathleen Jordan responded to Covid lockdown by revisiting The Decameron. The book’s episodic nature makes it perfect for television adaptation. In the pilot episode, “The Beautiful, Not-Infected Countryside,” the young nobles of Florence are invited to ride out the wave of infection at Villa Santa, the estate of the Visconte Leonardo. Pampinea (Zosia Mamet) is Leonardo’s arranged fiancé, but she has never actually met the guy. She sets off to the villa with her impressive dowry and loyal servant Misia (Saoirse-Monica Jackson). Unbeknownst to Pampinea, Misia has stowed her commoner lover Parmena (Tazmyn-May Gebbett) in a barrel for the trip. It’s a dangerous gambit because not only is lesbianism frowned upon in heavily Catholic medieval Italy, but also because Parmena is showing signs of the plague.
Filomena (Jessica Plummer) desperately wants to get out of Florence and maybe meet some marriageable men at the villa, but she and her servant Licisca (Tanya Reynolds) are stuck tending to her elderly father, who is infected with plague. When he finally passes, their trip to the villa has scarcely begun before the pandemic tensions boil over, and Licisca pushes Filomena over a bridge. When she arrives at the villa, Licisca assumes her mistress’ identity.
Panfilo (Karan Gill) and Neifile (Lou Gala) present as an extremely pious couple. But the secret to their chaste lifestyle is that Panfilio is gay. Once at the villa, they both become infatuated with Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel), a himbo doctor in the employ of Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin), who is as wealthy as he is arrogant.
The visitors to the villa are greeted by Sirisco (Tony Hale), the steward of the villa, and Stratilia (Leila Farzad), the cook, who have a dark secret: Leonardo, the master of the house, died of the plague after he issued his invitation. As long as no one finds out, the servants can continue to be master of their own fates. The ensuing struggle for control of Leonardo’s property provides much of The Decameron’s overarching plot. The ensemble cast doesn’t tell stories as much as they live them, in the awkward and socially charged interactions that make up the series’ humor.
What keeps you off-balance in The Decameron is that anyone can die at any time. And they do, in various states of indignity and hilarity. The series’ casting is outstanding, and each of the ensemble gets a turn in at least one great scene. Neifile gets stuck in a well and won’t come out until God himself rescues her. The militaristic Tindaro is also a hypochondriac, and his doctor is milking the delusion for all its worth. As the social order breaks down, a group of mercenaries show up, and the nobles discover their claim to privilege disappears in the absence of guys with swords who will obey their commands.
As you might expect from such an episodic format, The Decameron is ultimately uneven. Some of the situations fall flat. But when the combination of talented comic actors and absurd situations click, it’s a morbidly good time.
Today we have a world premiere music video, which is a collaboration between two Memphis originals.
General Labor is Thomas Corbin, Elijah Posten, and Carlos Carrasco. “Illuminator” is a throbbing, screaming synth punk symphony.
“Though we work in repetitive, clock-synced instrumentation that rides on rails, we try to always leave space for magic,” says Corbin. “We draw heavily from Surrealist techniques and Oblique Strategies for finding our words and instrumental composition, so that the meaning seems to be coming from ‘somewhere else.’ For that reason, the lyrics are largely open to interpretation.
“However, in retrospect, ‘Illuminator’ seems to describe a fearless pursuit of wisdom and truth, trusting a process of transformation that carries one through the dark night of the soul. If this thread of meaning is followed, ‘Illuminator’ appears to be about ego death. It’s about finding the flame that burns inside of us all and harnessing it in a way that serves a higher purpose rather than fueling the will of self.
“The lyrics reflect a journey of self-discovery, transformation, and enlightenment through philosophical and alchemical lenses. It describes a search for hidden truths beyond the visible world, symbolizing the pursuit of deeper understanding by tapping into one’s subconscious mind, guiding the seeker toward a greater self-awareness.
The short answer is that we have no idea what it means!”
Thomas Corbin
“The alignment of senses that metamorphoses the seeker from a shadow self to illuminated self signifies the culmination of alchemical philosophy where body, mind, and spirit harmonize, and where the excess ‘dross’ of character flaws and maladaptations are burned off, revealing the purified gold within. That’s the long explanation, anyway. The short answer is that we have no idea what it means!”
The video was shot at a collaborative performance between the band and Graham Burks’ circuit-bending visuals.
“The live performance featured in the video was recorded at Black Lodge, to whom we are incredibly grateful for letting us pursue such an ambitious experiment,” says Corbin. “We wanted to stay true to this attitude of subconscious exploration and truth-seeking through artistic expression.
“There was no real concept other than to find the magic in the moment, all the way from the song’s inception to the audiovisual performance, recording, and current debut in video form.”
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
David Bautista in The Killers Game. (Courtesy Lionsgate)
The Killer’s Game
Dave Bautista stars as Joe Flood, a professional assassin who is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Unwilling to waste away, he decides to take out a contract on himself. But then his doctor informs him that his diagnosis was in error. Joe must now fight off his fellow assassins who he himself ordered. Also staring Sofia Boutella, Terry Crews, Scott Adkins, and Ben Kinglsey.
Speak No Evil
Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben (Scott McNairy) Dalton take their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) on an idyllic holiday in a rustic country house. The house’s owners Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) are welcoming at first. But then cracks appear in their friendly facade, as their son Ant (Dan Hough) exhibits strange behavior. Soon the Daltons are fearing for their lives, but Paddy won’t let them leave. This Blumhouse production is a remake of a 2022 Danish horror hit.
Blazing Saddles
Whenever someone says, “They couldn’t make a movie like that today,” they’re usually talking about Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles. The crux of the story is this: a frontier town in the Old West gets a new sheriff who happens to be Black, and that throws the racists among them into a tizzy. If that sounds heavy, it’s not. Brooks is a comedy genius who has tackled racism head on over and over again in his career. The film has a crackerjack cast led by Gene Wilder as a drunk gunfighter who helps the late, great Cleavon Little (who got halfway to an EGOT before dying at 53) get control of the town — after blazing up, of course. Blazing Saddles screens Sunday, September 15 and Wednesday, September 18 at the Paradiso.
Being There
Peter Sellers had a long and legendary career. But his real masterpiece didn’t come until Hal Ashby cast him in Being There. It was the film Craig Brewer (who is featured in this week’s Memphis Flyer cover story) chose when he appeared in my Never Seen It series. (Spoiler alert: he loved it.) The Crosstown Theater film series screens Being There on Thursday, Sept. 19.
In March 1966, Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted into the Army to fight in the Vietnam War, citing his Islamic faith as a reason and claiming conscientious objector status. At the peak of his boxing career, he was banned from the sport and spent the next four years in and out of the courtroom. In October 1970, he was finally granted a license to fight in Georgia, and on October 26th, he faced Jerry “The Bellflower Bomber” Quarry in Atlanta. In front of a sellout crowd, Ali took Quarry down in only three rounds, setting off a night of celebration in Atlanta’s Black community. At one infamous party, a group of Black gangsters celebrating the victory were set up and robbed at gunpoint by another group of Black gangsters, setting off a chain reaction of botched reprisals and mutual misunderstandings worthy of a Coen Brothers movie.
Years later, journalist Jeff Keating, writing for the Atlanta alternative weekly Creative Loafing, discovered that the person who threw the party, an ambitious hustler known as Chicken Man, was not killed, as had long been reported, but instead had survived the ordeal and was living under an assumed name in Atlanta. Keating recounted the too-weird-to-be-true story in his true crime podcast Fight Night. Released in 2020 during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, it became a huge hit. Writer/producer Shaye Ogbonna and comedian Kevin Hart pitched the story to Universal Television, who ultimately ordered an eight-part limited series for their new streaming service Peacock.
Craig Brewer poses at the Fight Night premiere in New York City (Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Peacock)
One of the first calls they made was to Memphis director Craig Brewer. “I got this job the old-fashioned way,” he says. “I got a call from my agents saying that [executive producer] Will Packer and Kevin Hart wanted to meet with me on a project. … Shaye, the creator, has been a fan of my films, particularly Hustle & Flow, which he saw in Atlanta.”
Brewer was intrigued by the story and impressed with the rough drafts of the first two episodes, which were all that existed at the time. “I remember reading the script and thinking to myself, ‘This guy Shaye and I, I think are gonna really get along.’ We have the same interests in movies and TV and music. But more importantly, it’s something I always remember John Singleton talking to me about: ‘Is there regional specificity to this voice?’ And I was like, yeah, this feels like a guy from the South, in Atlanta, making movies from his heart, his culture, and his experience. It felt real to me; it felt furnished and honest and, above all, exciting.”
Fight Night: The Million DollarHeist was on its way to the screen.
Putting the Team Together
Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat and Will Packer Media had produced the podcast, says Brewer. “Kevin was always going to be Chicken Man. That was from the jump. Then I came on and we started putting together the other cast members.”
Kevin Hart stars as Chicken Man, the small-time hustler who gets in over his head in Fight Night. (Photo: Eli Joshua Adé/PEACOCK)
Samuel L. Jackson, an acting legend who Brewer worked with in 2006’s Black Snake Moan, was quickly cast as New York gangster Frank Moten. Taraji P. Henson, who was the breakout star of Hustle & Flow, came onboard as Vivian, Chicken Man’s partner in crime. “She was always at the top of the list,” says Brewer. “Then Will Packer called me and said, ‘We gotta go get your boy Terrence.’”
Gangsters “Cadillac” Richie (Howard) and Frank Moten (Jackson) land in Atlanta with their entourage. (Photo: Parrish Lewis/PEACOCK)Jackson as Moten ignores the press before the big fight. (Photo: Eli Joshua Adé/PEACOCK)
The producers thought Terrence Howard, star of Hustle & Flow, would be perfect for gangster Richard “Cadillac” Wheeler. “I’m speaking to you from New Jersey, so I’m speaking to you from Cadillac Richie’s territory,” says Brewer.
Terrence Howard and Marsha Stephanie Blake (Photo: Eli Joshua Adé/PEACOCK) Taraji P. Henson stars as Vivian Thomas. (Photo: Parrish Lewis/PEACOCK)
After Hustle, Brewer had directed Henson and Howard in the hit TV series Empire. “I called up Terrence, and I was kinda talking him into doing the show. I said to him, ‘Listen, it’s me. I’m gonna let you get up on that tight rope like you usually do. I’ll be your net. What I want you to do is bring your creativity to this and create this character because he’s an important character as the series goes on. I’m gonna just agree to anything you wanna do and help you get it.’ Then he said, ‘Well, I wanna look like one of the Bee Gees. That’s what I wanna do.’ I just remember feeling like, ‘Oh no, what is this gonna look like?’ But then he showed up, and I thought, ‘This cat is gonna steal this show because he looks amazing. … I don’t know if he’s gonna take it off ever again.’”
Detective J.D. Hudson (Cheadle) protects Muhammad Ali (Dexter Darden) before the fight. (Photo: Eli Joshua Adé/PEACOCK)(Photo: Eli Joshua Adé/PEACOCK)
The final big get for the cast was Don Cheadle. The actor/director was on Brewer’s bucket list. “I have always wanted to work with Don, and it was everything that I could have dreamed for and more. He’s a great actor, yes. But I would say that with him — and I would put Sam Jackson in the same category — you’re not just getting somebody’s acting talent, you’re getting their experience of making, watching, and living the art of storytelling. They have an eye for things that some younger actors do not have. Are we telling the right story? They make you better because they hold you to a standard of making sure that you’re doing right, not only by their character, but how their character interacts with everybody. So there were countless times that Don Cheadle would take me and Shaye off into his trailer, and we would work a scene. By the time we left the trailer, Shaye and I would look at each other and just go, ‘Man, the scene is just so much better!’”
Fight Night is filled with star power, in a way very few TV shows have ever been. “The thing about movie stars is, they are decided by the people,” says Brewer. “This show is packed with five movie stars.”
Hotlanta
Fight Night was filmed in Atlanta, Georgia. The series features extensive location shoots among the split-level ranch houses of the suburbs and in the dense city center. Crucial scenes were shot in the distinctive Hyatt Regency Atlanta, whose 22-story atrium influenced hotel design for a generation.
“There is a crucial monologue in episode two that Sam Jackson delivers, where he’s talking about his vision for Atlanta,” says Brewer. “He wants Black people put in places of power, and for the economic future of Atlanta to be Black. It’s funny because you look at the monologue, and you can imagine if it were being said in 1970 to an all-white audience, it may seem outlandish. But last night at the premiere, there were cheers because you realize that dream is here and realized. So it’s very interesting to talk to young people about Atlanta at this crucial time in its history, in the early 1970s, where they were on a campaign that I feel is comparable to Memphis’ history, and to Memphis’ present, which is to deny that you are living, working, and thriving in a Black city. It is to your own peril if you fight against it.
“Atlanta is a city that is open for business. We’re too busy to be dealing with any of that racist bullshit. We’re here to make some money, and I’ll be damned if that’s not the Atlanta that I go to all the time when I’m filming these movies. This is my third project in Atlanta. I’ve been there the whole time that Atlanta has said that they wanna be the next Hollywood. And so many people saying, well, that’s not gonna last, or this is gonna be transitional, or the industry is gonna change. I am telling you right now, no one wants to call it out, but production in Atlanta is there to stay. I don’t see this returning back to Hollywood as long as there’s places like Atlanta.”
Brewer had worked on episodic network TV with Empire, but Fight Night was his first limited series, a form that has become more common in the streaming era. Brewer compares the experience to shooting an eight-hour movie. Brewer directed the first two and last two episodes, and collaborated on the writing of the entire series. He describes the process as a mixture of careful prep and on-the-fly improv.
“I got a call from Shaye saying, ‘We got this idea to do the scene between Sam Jackson and Don Cheadle in an interrogation room,’” Brewer recalls. “We locked ourselves in a room and banged out this scene, probably had it written by like 8 o’clock, 9 o’clock at night. Then, the following morning, I went down to the sound stage and there they were, doing the scene that mere hours ago we had worked on. It’s amazing how fast it all happened. It was just so special because there’d be these moments where Shaye and I would write something, and we knew, ‘Okay, right here, Sam’s gonna probably make this part better. So let’s move on and know that he’s gonna come up with something great to say here — and sure enough, he did! It was this great moment of watching these titans just being amazing.”
Kevin Hart, one of the driving forces behind the development of the series, took the most chances. One of the best-known comedians in the country found a new lane as a dramatic actor. “I had a moment where I saw something that I had never seen before, and it kind of knocked me on my ass,” says Brewer. “It’s in episode two where Kevin Hart’s character is in grave danger, and he has to make a plea for his life. I’m sitting there at my monitor, and I watch Kevin make this tearful plea. That was one of the most real things I’ve ever seen an actor do. I remember just sitting there in awe thinking, ‘How could someone as successful as Kevin Hart actually have a whole other store of talent inside of him that we’ve yet to see? How can it be that he could drop everything that he is as the funniest man on the planet and actually be a dramatic actor?’ You make an assumption about a person, that maybe they don’t have this particular arrow in their quiver, and then suddenly they hit a bull’s-eye. I was stunned. Everyone was stunned. Terrence came up to me and he goes, ‘That cat’s the real deal.’”
Making the Music
Fight Night is set in 1970, a high point in the history of soul, funk, and R&B music. For Scott Bomar, producer and musician behind such acts as The Bo-Keys, that’s his wheelhouse. Bomar and Brewer have worked together on five movie and TV projects, beginning with Hustle & Flow in 2005. “I feel like I got spoiled working with him early on because he’s so musical,” Bomar says. “I find that the way Craig shoots, the way he directs his actors, the way he edits, it’s got a rhythm to it. I’ve worked with him enough now to kind of know what his rhythm is.”
Bomar says he was in “summer home repair mode” when Brewer called him out of the blue. “He said, I’m working on this TV show. Theoretically, if you had this gig, would you be able to do it? Are you available? And I’m like, sure, yeah. I can do it. I knew it was a pretty quick turnaround, but I had no idea exactly how quick of a turnaround it was. I think there were people involved who had their doubts on whether or not it was possible to do what we did in the amount of time we did it.”
Mixing engineer Jake Ferguson and composer Scott Bomar lent their talents to the series. (Photo: Chris McCoy)
Bomar and Brewer recorded the score to Fight Night at Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis. They had one week to take each episode from concept to final mix. “I can’t say enough about my collaboration with Scott Bomar,” says Brewer. “It’s something that truly is a collaboration. I see the scene, and Scott and I start just kind of grooving to a beat, to a track that has yet to be written. We start with rhythm. It really is kind of a Memphis way of doing it.”
Bomar enlisted several of his stable of veteran Memphis players, including drummer Willie Hall, who played on Isaac Hayes’ “Theme From Shaft.” Joe Restivo played guitar; Mark Franklin, Kirk Smothers, and Art Edmaiston contributed horn parts, along with Kameron Whalum, Gary Topper, and Yella P. Behind the board were veteran producer Kevin Houston and Jake Ferguson, who recently returned to Memphis after collaborating with superstar producer Mark Ronson. Most recently, Ferguson worked on the soundtrack to Barbie. “I feel like Craig came in and basically taught a master class on TV scoring,” Ferguson says.
“It’s quite a bit different than film because the schedule’s so accelerated,” says Bomar.
A 1970s vintage mini Moog synthesizer Bomar found in a closet at Sam Phillips Recording played a major role in creating the series’ soundscapes. In some cases, Bomar says they didn’t have time to assemble a full band, so he would have to play almost all of the instruments himself. “I’d say that this is the closest thing to a solo record I’ve ever made,” he laughs.
“It was fascinating to hear Scott and Craig talk about Atlanta in the ’70s and all the inspirations they had,” says Ferguson. “Musically, it was so cool to see how we can take, quote, unquote, ‘modern instruments’ and make them feel like you’re back in the ’70s. When we finished the first two episodes, it was just incredible to see how much the scenes would come to life with the music we added.”
“When we had the first mix, one of the producers said, ‘We asked Scott to do the impossible, and he’s done it,’” says Bomar. “That’s one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten.”
Final Fight
The first three episodes of Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist premiered on Peacock Thursday, September 5th. New episodes will drop every Thursday for the next five weeks. The night before it hit streaming, there was a star-studded premiere at Lincoln Center in New York City. I interviewed Brewer the next morning, as he was beginning preparations for his next project, a film he wrote called Song Sung Blue starring Hugh Jackman. The director was still reeling from the reception to Fight Night. “When you’re dealing with a brand like Will Packer and Kevin Hart, that means it’s gonna be a party. You can’t just do wine and cheese and a floral arrangement. There were dancers dressed in some of the outfits from the show. There was a Cadillac in the middle of the dance floor. It’s just a party and everybody was there! My son [Graham], I had to pull his ass off the dance floor last night at like 1 a.m., saying, ‘I gotta work, son! Let’s go!’ But he was out there, doing the wobble with everybody else. … It was such a great thing to see it with a crowd. Yeah, I think we got a great show here.”
Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Winona Ryder, and Justin Theroux as the Deetz family.
Flappers, greasers, beatniks, hippies, punks, yuppies, and new wavers have all come and gone. But for some reason, goths endure. What is it about the floridly morose aesthetic that still compels kids and adults (excuse me, “elder goths”) to wear black and walk by night? Some say Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, the first novel that is unambiguously science fiction, was also the first goth chick. It’s hard to beat her commitment to the bit: She lost her virginity on her mother’s grave and kept her dead husband’s heart in a jar on her desk. The modern goth package started to come together in the post-punk era of 1979, with Peter Murphy’s plaintive wail on Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi Is Dead.” Siouxsie Sioux, one of the Sex Pistols’ Bromley Contingent, adopted the fright wig haircut and turned out songs like “Halloween” and “Spellbound” with her band, the Banshees. Her sometimes guitarist Robert Smith made depression sound fun (or at least cool) with the Cure.
In 1986, Siouxsie and the Banshees hit it big on U.S. college radio with “Cities in Dust,” a song about wandering through the ruins of Pompeii. Two years later, Winona Ryder copped her look for Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice. Ryder came by it honestly. At the time Tim Burton cast her as the girl who could see ghosts, she was a 16-year-old daughter of bohemian parents, who had raised her on a commune. LSD pioneer Timothy Leary was her godfather. When the literature-obsessed teen was introduced into a conventional California high school, she was relentlessly bullied by the popular girls, and retreated into theater. The combination of wide-eyed innocence and cynical angst she brought to the role of Lydia felt real because it was real.
Ryder and Micheal Keaton reunite in their roles after 36 years.
Beetlejuice was an unexpected hit. It was only Tim Burton’s second movie, after the rollicking Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, but his goth aesthetic was already fully formed. It was a manic free association of Hammer horror films and carnival fun-house craziness. Ryder would get goth with him again, opposite her real-life boyfriend Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands, and further burnished her goth bona fides as the outsider anti-hero in Heathers and as Mina Harker, for whom Gary Oldman “crossed oceans of time” in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. She proved herself to be one of Gen X’s best actors throughout the 1990s by stealing the show in Little Women and Night on Earth.
But Ryder, and everyone else, always had a soft spot for Lydia the proto-goth. When she signed on as the mom in Stranger Things, her only request was that they had to make room in her shooting schedule if the long-awaited Beetlejuice sequel happened. And now, after many stops and starts, it has.
Like its predecessor, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a glorious mess of a film. I’ve been rhapsodizing about Winona’s return to the black, but Michael Freakin’ Keaton is also back as the ghost with the most. He’s still stuck in the afterlife, but he’s moved up in the netherworld, now commanding an office full of freelance bio-exorcist ghosts and ghouls. On his desk is a picture of the one who got away, Lydia. But while he’s living his best afterlife, his ex-wife Delores (Monica Bellucci) reappears and starts re-murdering ghosts. This attracts the attention of ghost detective Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe).
Meanwhile, on the prime material plane, Lydia has committed the worst Gen-X sin: She’s sold out. She uses her supernatural detection talent as the host of Ghost House with Lydia Deetz. But while she’s taping the latest episode, she sees Beetlejuice, the only thing that ever really scared her, in the audience, and storms off the set. Her boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux) is also her show’s producer, and their relationship is troubled and uneven. “This is the last time I dig pills out of the trash for you!” he gripes, knowing full well he will do it again. Her first husband Richard (Santiago Cabrera) disappeared on a research trip to the Amazon, and their daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) is parked at a swank boarding school, where she’s relentlessly bullied by the popular girls. She’s there because her grandma Delia (Catherine O’Hara) made a big donation to the art school.
One of the cool things about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that the characters have actually grown and changed in the years that have passed. Lydia’s taken the cool-teen-to-troubled-adult pipeline, familiar to many Gen-Xers. Delia was a hopeless dilettante artist in the first film. Now, she’s got a huge gallery show in New York alongside the “Picasso of graffiti art.” While she’s still a raging narcissist, her art’s pretty good now. Astrid, like Lydia before her, sees right through the adults’ carefully constructed facades, and kinda hates them for it.
The plot of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is episodic and scattered. Burton’s visual sense remains impeccable, but he still misses the level of writers he had for Batman Returns and Ed Wood. What saves the film is its sheer exuberance. Michael Keaton is 72, but his manic energy is still intact. Ryder lets a little of the old Lydia peek out from beneath her exasperated mom routine. The whip-smart Ortega is a worthy successor to Ryder’s effortless intensity.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice never quite recaptures the original’s dark magic, but you’ll be having too much fun to care.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Now playing Multiple locations
You might know Michael Graber as a member of the long-running combo Bluff City Backsliders. The picker has a new project called Delta Stardust.
“Delta Stardust began as a studio project,” he says. “We were seeking that alchemical, psychedelic sound from blending acoustic, electric, and digital instruments. We also wanted to capture a haunted, mystical Memphis/North Mississippi vibe even as the music — the song forms and sonic undercurrents — kept expanding. We call the genre ‘roots psychedelic’ music.”
Graber provides vocals, 12-string guitar, electric mandolin, bass, drone box, percussion. Andy Ratliff plays acoustic mandolin and electric guitar. John Kilgore adds harmonium, mellotron, synth, and percussion, while Jesse Dakota plays drums.
Graber describes the first single “Owl in My Backyard” as “part of a talking animal series of ecstatic wisdom poems that I set to music.” It’s the first single off of the album Snakes Made of Light, produced by Graber and Kilgore, which will be released on the Robot Distro label in late October.
The music video by Blackfeather Studios is as charming and handmade as the music. The owls are not only in the backyard, but on a boat and in a kaleidoscope. They’ll help you unwind for five minutes.
If you’d like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice. (Courtesy Warner Bros.)
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Tim Burton’s all-time classic from 1988 gets a sequel after 36 years. Winona Ryder returns as Lydia Deets, the goth girl of your dreams now all grown up. She’s the host of Ghost House with Lydia Deets, and the mother of Astrid (Jenna Ortega), a teenager who is just as gloomy as Lydia once was. When they return to their old home in Winter River, Astrid discovers the portal to the afterlife in the family home’s attic, and releases Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton). Catherine O’Hara returns as Delia, Lydia’s art dealer stepmother, and Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, and Justin Theroux are along for the supernatural ride.
The Front Room
Brandy returns to the big screen as Belinda, a mother-to-be who is expecting her first child with her husband Norman (Andrew Burnap). But just as the couple is building their new nest, they have to take in Solange (Kathryn Hunter), Norman’s stepmother who was long estranged from his family. Now, they will realize why she has been estranged, and deal with the shocking consequences. Max and Sam Eggers, brothers of The Northman’s Robert Eggers, direct this A24 suspense film from a short story by Susan Hill.
It Ends With Us
Blake Lively stars as Lily Bloom in this hit adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestseller. Lily is caught between Ryle (Justin Baldoni) an intensely emotional neurosurgeon, and Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), her old flame. Can she stop her family’s generations-long cycle of abuse?
“Mama’s Sundry”
On Thursday, Sept. 12 at Crosstown Theater, a new collaboration between Memphis filmmakers Brody Kuhar and Joshua Cannon will make its debut. “Mama’s Sundry” is a 15-minute documentary about Bertram Williams and Memphis musician Talibah Safiya‘s neighborhood garden project.
Have you ever thought, “If I ever get super rich, I’m going to buy my own island. I’ll live there and do as I please.”
I sure have! Hell, Sartre said, is other people. Why not get away from it all and start a new country where I can do stuff the right way for once?
But there are two levels of wealth: Fuck You Money, which is enough money to quit my job and never have to work again; and Fuck Everybody Money, which is enough money to create my own reality. The latter may sound nice in theory, but in practice, it tends to drive people insane. The examples are numerous. There’s Henry Ford, the man who perfected mass production, who fell into a psychic morass of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Howard Hughes, aviation entrepreneur and Hollywood studio head, lived out his last days as a paranoid obsessive compulsive locked in a Las Vegas penthouse. John McAfee, the cybersecurity pioneer who brought antivirus software to the masses, retreated to an armed compound in Belize where he had sex with whales (consensual, he claimed) before dying while in prison on a murder charge. And then there’s Elon Musk, who is … doing whatever the hell that is.
Channing Tatum (right) is a billionaire who lures Naomi Ackie (left) and others to his private island.
If it seems like there’s more crazy rich people these days, that’s because there are. In the 21st century, wealth has become more concentrated than at any time since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. That means more people who can only handle Fuck You Money now have Fuck Everybody Money. And we’re all suffering for it, one Twitter (excuse me, X) post at a time.
For some people, these oligarchs are more than just annoying. Take the developers at Twitter who lost their jobs because Musk thought he knew better than them and wanted to look like a big man. Or the passengers who imploded with the Titan submersible. Or the girls Jeffrey Epstein trafficked into sex slavery for his well-heeled list of clients and friends. Maybe the right to riches is like the right to bear arms. Packing a pistol for personal protection is one thing; building an atomic bomb in your garage is another.
These issues are very much on the mind of Zoë Kravitz, writer and director of Blink Twice. Kravitz is an accomplished actress, who gave one of the standout performances in Mad Max: Fury Road and shone in HBO’s Big Little Lies. She started work on her debut film in 2017, at the height of the #MeToo movement and Jeffrey Epstein’s final scandals. There’s a lot of Epstein in Slater King (Channing Tatum), the tech magnate whose largely undefined business has made him Fuck Everybody Money.
When we first meet Frida (Naomi Ackie), she’s cyberstalking King in the place where most cyberstalking occurs: on the toilet. The news clips and videos she scrolls through claim that Slater has been rehabilitated from whatever horrible scandal he was implicated in and has found himself through therapy. That’s enough for Frida, who, with her roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat), is working the King Foundation banquet that night as a cater waiter. Last year, he made eye contact with her, so this year, maybe she can get some more personal attention from the billionaire. Frida and Jess smuggle in some cocktail dresses to change into, in an attempt to get into the more exclusive parts of the party. Lo and behold, it works! Frida hits it off with Slater, and Jess catches the attention of his friend Vic (Christian Slater). The night goes so well, Slater invites them to a long weekend on his private island, all expenses paid. No need to return to your apartment for your toothbrush, he’s got everything you’ll need.
Slater’s island lives up to the hype. Free clothes, free perfume, champagne brunch every day, and a virtual buffet of drugs. The partygoers include Cody (Simon Rex), the chef; Sarah (Adria Arjona), star of the reality show Hot Survivor Babes; Stacy (Geena Davis), Slater’s fixer; Heather (Trew Mullen), who rolls fat blunts; and Rich (Kyle MacLachlan), Slater’s therapist. After a couple of days of partying, the girls fall into a party haze brought on by Slater’s proprietary mix of psilocybin and MDMA. The only downside is that the island is infested with venomous snakes. That feeling of dreadful foreboding is probably just the paranoia from all the bud.
Or maybe not. One morning, Jess disappears, and no one but Frida seems to remember she was even there. Sarah doesn’t remember where she got those bruises. Even Lucas (Levon Hawke), the cryptocurrency himbo, is waking up with unexplained black eyes. Frida has to figure out what’s going on, and how to save herself, between snake venom shooters and bright blue skin-care masks.
Kravitz gets a lot right in her directorial debut. Her cast is relaxed and having fun. It’s always good to see Geena Davis working, and who can fault a movie where Haley Joel Osment gets a penis drawn on his forehead in sharpie? Kravitz has been watching Jordan Peele’s high-concept horrors, and while Blink Twice lacks the crystalline perfection of Get Out, it learns all the right lessons. Kravitz’ stylish visuals, sly humor, and satirical sense hold much promise for her filmmaking future. I’m excited to see what she does next.
