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We Recommend We Saw You

Historical Inaugural Memphis Events: Memphis 901 FC Soccer, Malco Powerhouse, Coffee Expo

CREDIT: Jon W. Sparks

Jon W. Sparks

George Herman Ruth Jr. was known as ‘Babe Ruth.’ Michael Joseph Donahue’s new nickname is ‘Butterfinger’ after I tried my hand – in oversized gloves – at being a goalie – with the help of Memphis 901 FC goalie Jeff Caldwell.

Jon W. Sparks

I was more of a target than a soccer goalie. I thought being dressed the part would help, but it didn’t. I even ordered special gloves. A shout out to Hans Bermel, Buck Morris and Hayes Westlake for loaning me soccer clothes. And John Elmore for letitng me borrow his rugby cleats.

Jon W. Sparks

I can’t catch the ‘throwed rolls’ at Lambert’s Cafe in Sikeston, Mo. either.

Jon W. Sparks

A goalie and a ‘goalie.’

The Memphis 901 FC inaugural soccer game, held March 9th at AutoZonePark, was one of those Memphis happenings.

A crowd of 8,000 turned out to see the Memphis team take on the Tampa Bay Rowdies.

With all the rain, the day began a little sketchy for an outdoor event.

“I’m just glad the skies parted and we have sun,” says Carol Coletta, who attended the game with her husband, John Montgomery.

Coletta, president/CEO of the Memphis River Parks Partnership, was excited about the event for more than one reason. “It’s so culturally diverse.”

A Latino man told her, “This is the first thing I’ve ever felt was for us.”

The new soccer establishment did things right. They have ‘the coolest gear,” Carol says. And, she says, “I put the logo on my computer.”

She and John were planning to go to the Memphis Tigers game at FedExForum immediately following the soccer game.

Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau president/CEO Kevin Kane was pleased with the buzz and the throng of people downtown. “Downtown Memphis looks like spring break in Daytona Beach,” he says.

Michael Donahue

Craig Unger and Kevin Kane at the inaugural Memphis 901 FC game.

Michael Donahue

Carol Coletta and John Montgomery at the inaugural game of Memphis 901 FC.

Michael Donahue

The inaugural game of Memphis 901 FC.

Michael Donahue

Gorkem Yamandag, Noah Yamandag and Maria Turrubiatez at the Memphis 901 FC inaugural game.

Jon W. Sparks

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Michael Donahue

Bobby Levy, Joanie Lightman, Michael Lightman, Ainsley Lightman, David Tashie at the opening of Malco Powerhouse.

Another happening was the opening of the Malco Powerhouse Cinema Grill, which was held March 7th.

Karen Melton, Malco Theatres vice-president and director of marketing, says it was a “very successful evening.”

And, she says, “We had sellout crowds.”

The seven-screen boutique theater at 540 South Front features luxury recliner seats that you can reserve and a full-service restaurant with a wood-burning brick pizza oven. And more.

Michael Lightman with Malco and his wife, Joanie, invited first-nighters to watch the last 20 minutes – the concert scene – from “Bohemian Rhapsody” on the Malco-branded large screen MXT Extreme Theatre.

Rodrick Seals, who attended opening night with his wife, Tara, probably spoke for everyone when he said, “This is impressive.”

Michael Donahue

Sue Layman Lightman and Steve Lightman at the Malco Powerhouse opening.

Michael Donahue

Rodrick and Tara Seals at Malco Powerhouse opening night.

Michael Donahue

Terry and Phil Woodard at at Malco Powerhouse opening night.

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Michael Donahue

Rachel Williams and Daniel Lynn at Grind City Coffee Expo.

If you didn’t get your morning cup(s) of coffee on March 9th, you could have sampled coffee from Avenue Coffee, Comeback Coffee, Dr. Bean’s Coffee & Tea, French Truck Coffee, Launch Process Coffee, Reverb Coffee, The Hub, Vice & Virtue Coffee, and AWAL Coffee, They all were available at another inaugural event: Grind City Coffee Expo, which was held at Memphis College of Art.

More than 400 attended the event, which was co-founded by Daniel Lynn and Rachel Williams.

“I thought it went great,” Daniel says. “The reception from everyone who attended to all the vendors who participated was incredible. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. We’ve had nothing but positive reviews. I thought it was awesome as well. We truly exceeded our expectations from the crowd to the event itself. It was amazing.”

Asked the purpose of the event, Daniel says, “To bring the coffee community together under one roof.”

And, he says, “To create an environment where coffee is very approachable for the guests. So, basically, to provide an education for the attendee. To make them feel like they could go take home what they learned. That’s why the tasting cards were there. To learn the difference between the different pour overs. Like a V60 and a Chemex.”

Daniel says he learned as well. “I started this because I wanted to create an event I wanted to go to in Memphis.”

He got the idea after attending a Science of Beer event a couple of years ago at Pink Palace Museum. “I looked around and said, ‘Man, this would be cool if this was coffee.’ More my speed. That’s what I’m into. I started looking around and found there’s lots of coffee events around the country and in other cities. With the exploding coffee culture we have here, it just made sense to have it here.”

And, Daniel says, “We’re hoping to make it an annual event.”

Michael Donahue

Grind City Coffee Expo.

Michael Donahue

Kathleen Williams and Mats Jaslo at Grind City Coffee Expo.

MIchael Donahue

Ethan Scott, Joshua Scott and Nicholas Nolen at Grind City Coffee Expo.

Michael Donahue

Reggie Taylor, Chandler Murphy and Ryan Henry from The Hub Coffeehouse at Grind City Coffee Expo.

Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

News Makers 2: Chalkbeat’s Jacinthia Jones Proposes More Media Partnerships

Jacinthia Jones

This post is supplemental to the Memphis Flyer cover package Going to Pieces about the state of print journalism in Memphis. This, and other posts featuring additional commentary by Wendi Thomas of MLK50, Jacinthia Jones of Chalkbeat.org, Eric Barnes of The Daily Memphian, and Mark Fleischer of StoryBoard: Memphis were created to include voices and ideas that didn’t make it into the main story. They will be published throughout the rest of the week.

“I heard from another reporter today asking if we were having issues with the School Board,” Jacinthia Jones says. As it happens, Chalkbeat.org, the digital education policy newsroom where Jones works as Memphis bureau chief, had been experiencing problems gathering needed information. So she answered, “Yes.”

Sometimes Jones sounds more like a old school union organizer than a veteran reporter and editor: “There’s strength in numbers,” she says. “We’re all out there fighting this battle by ourselves instead of collectively fighting it.” She thinks the best bet for survival is some kind of strategic, symbiotic partnership between competing organizations.

“As government agencies and entities become tougher to get information from, there’s strength in us being able to go as a united front,” she says. “For us to be able say, “This is a public record, you shouldn’t be able to charge this ridiculous amount!” We’re all losing. Now we need each other. At the end of the day our goal is to tell the stories that need to be told here in Memphis.”
[pullquote-1] Jones’s proposal is a variation on the old riddle, “How do you eat an elephant?” On one hand, there is a lot of redundancy in reporting — many microphones in the same official’s face collecting the same boilerplate comments for various organizations. Meanwhile, there are complicated stories in Memphis that aren’t being told as well as they might be, if they are even being told at all — Stories large enough that every media organization could cover some unique aspect, playing into that newsroom’s specific strengths.

Mass partnership on a deep-dive topic might be a consumer-immersive way to take big, hard-to-reach stories apart, “one bite at a time.”

Memphis Flyer: This is maybe more of a prompt than a question. With search engines and social media gobbling up so much of advertising budgets the narrative is always about how competitive organizations have to be to compete over the scraps. There’s less talk sometimes, about the different ways they may lean on one another as newsrooms shrink and partnerships become more important, particularly in the not for profit world.

Jacinthia Jones:There is a competitive nature to what we do. But if you look at it just that way, we’ve got such a small share. And when I say “we” I mean traditional and online media, because of Google and social media, even though those aren’t news organizations. That’s where a lot of people go to get their news. So, from my position — particularly since I moved into the nonprofit world — is that things are better when you partner. We don’t have the money we used to. We don’t have the resources to staff these large newsrooms. So you’re seeing more and more topic-specific organizations and smaller newsrooms in general. In Memphis we’re all doing the same thing— local journalism. We may want the story first, but we also want to leverage the audience of our partners. That’s why at Chalkbeat we make our content free. We want everybody to re-publish. Another benefit of partnering — We’re all smaller now.

MF: Education is a community cornerstone. It’s always such an important issue at elections. It’s something that was always part of the daily news bundle — and still is. But the work you do is filling some big gaps.

JJ: One of the beats you see cut in traditional papers are education reporters. That’s why Chalkbeat was able to expand. Look at the cities we’re located in — places where the newspaper cut that part of coverage. Also, and obviously with notable exceptions, you typically see entry level reporters moved into that position. But once a reporter gets experience on the education beat you move on.

MF: It’s such a clear example of public interest reporting losing out to the newspaper economy. Education is allegedly something we prioritize. But the most important stories aren’t always the best read.

JJ: When started at The Commercial Appeal we had three education reporters and a higher-ed reporter. Now they have one education reporter and that’s not her title. She covers K-12 and also covers higher ed.
With other editorial responsibilities.

MF: So you are very clearly filling a gap in coverage resulting from layoffs and a shrinking paper.

JJ: And we don’t just cover education at Chalkbeat. We’re covering equity issues and inequity. You see newspapers you see them moving away from covering the large school districts chasing readers in the suburbs. This isn’t just chasing advertisers, but subscribers. It’s essentially chasing the money.

MF: Where do your readers come from? Or, how do they find you?

JJ: We have readers who come directly to us. We get a lot of support among educators, teachers, administrators, and policy makers because we cover education more deeply than mainstream media. Our mission is, we want to partner with as many people as possible. We want to partner with you! That enables us to reach audiences that may not know us and come to us. So yes, I want The Daily Memphian, the new kid on the block. I also want to partner with smaller, activist organizations like MLK50.

Editor’s note: Going to Pieces looks at Memphis’ information providers and news environment at a time when the city’s daily newspaper has been greatly diminished. We hope these excerpts provide some depth/context, and give readers a better sense about what’s unique about various organizations in terms of product and process. [content-1]

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Dethroning the King of Pop

CREDIT: Imagecollect | Dreamstime.com

So what am I supposed to do with my Michael Jackson albums now? In 20 years they’ll be collectors’ items, but presently, I’m unable to listen to them in the same way as before the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland aired.

How can you compartmentalize the artist’s work from the artist? For Jackson fans, the documentary was devastating evidence that Jackson preyed on boys as young as seven and seduced their families as well. Two victims of Jackson’s alleged predations, now grown men, have come forward to testify in graphic detail about the abuse they suffered at the hands of the “King of Pop.” Jackson himself admitted in a previous documentary that he shared his bed with young boys, but claimed it was in a non-sexual manner. In that film, Jackson claimed that it was all milk and cookies and video games, and that he felt most comfortable in the company of children because of their innocence, and that it was an effort to reclaim the childhood that he never had. We always knew that he was weird, but his explanation seemed plausible to Jackson’s fans who wanted to believe it, including me.

Imagecollect | Dreamstime.com

Michael Jackson

I’ll admit to being an unabashed fan of MJ, from the time he first appeared as the child prodigy lead singer of the Jackson 5, until his death. The first CD I ever bought was Off the Wall. I delighted in his first solo effort as a mature artist and even attended the Jackson 5’s “Triumph” tour at the Mid-South Coliseum in 1981.

When Jackson died in 2009, I wrote for this publication, “I truly believe that Jackson was an emotional man-child attempting to surround himself with the only group of people he felt he could completely trust: children. Even his trust in children was betrayed when the boy he tried to help with medical expenses and emotional support filed criminal molestation charges against him. After the young man and his mother were proven to be grifters and Jackson was acquitted of all charges, Michael was forever burdened with suspicions of pedophilia.”

Boy, was I ever wrong. Maybe the $24-million settlement to the family should have been a clue, but I chose to believe his earnest denials of impropriety because I thought Michael was a unique person whose sole purpose was to bring joy to his fans. He sure fooled me. As a result of the heartbreaking HBO documentary, I’ll never listen to “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” or “Smooth Criminal” without thinking of his abhorrent sleepovers.

Leaving Neverland came on the heels of the six-part Lifetime series Surviving R. Kelly, in which underage girls as young as 14 told harrowing stories of being abused and held captive by the 52-year-old superstar. In 2008, Kelly was acquitted of 14 counts of child pornography in a Chicago courtroom, but rumors continued to swirl about his penchant for mistreating young girls and creating a “sex cult.” His marriage to his 15-year-old protege, Aaliyah, in 1994, sealed the deal on his alleged pedophilia. The Kelly-produced Aaliyah debut album Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number should have been seen as an in-your-face confession. Kelly forbid questions about Aaliyah in his recent bizarre interview with Gayle King, in which he dissolved into a frightful hysterical denial of everything negative ever said about him. Does this mean I can’t enjoy “I Believe I Can Fly” anymore? I guess so. But if that’s the case, there are scores of other popular songs in question.

When Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin, back in the 1950s, it nearly ruined his career. But, here on his home turf, it was just thought of as a “Southern thing.” Chuck Berry was sent to prison for violating the Mann Act for transporting an underage girl across state lines for “immoral purposes.” Charlie Chaplin and Frank Lloyd Wright, among others, were convicted of the same offense. Even Elvis was known for his unusual proclivity for watching teenage girls wrestle in their underwear. His future wife, Priscilla, was 14 when Elvis met her, yet he somehow persuaded her parents to allow their daughter to move into Graceland at the age of 17. Little Richard led a life of such debauchery it caused him to quit rock-and-roll and become a minister. Bing Crosby beat his children, but his Christmas album is still a best seller.

The list goes on. Rick James was accused of torturing two women. David Bowie was famous for his dalliances with underage groupies. Rod Stewart has eight children with five different women. The Rolling Stones’ bassist Bill Wyman had sex with a 14-year-old girl whom he later married, when she was 18 and he was 52. Producer Phil Spector is currently in prison for murdering a female acquaintance. John Phillips of the Mamas and Papas had frequent sex with his own daughter, but you can’t turn on an oldies station without hearing “Monday Monday,” or “California Dreaming.” Gary Glitter was arrested for sexual congress with a 13-year-old and was considered so degenerate he was kicked out of Vietnam, yet in nearly every sports arena you can still hear his song “Rock and Roll Part 2,” with the signature “Hey” crowd response.

If the music “industry” — known for sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll — was purged of songs performed by sexual deviants, there’d be nothing left to listen to but Donnie and Marie Osmond — and I’m not even sure about them. Michael Jackson’s songs are being eliminated from playlists all over the country. But as distasteful as it may now seem, I believe people will be grooving to “Bad” again in the not-too-distant future.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Best Bets: Irish Vegetable Soup at Celtic Crossing.

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue

Irish vegetable soup at Celtic Crossing Irish Pub.

The only non-Irish thing about the Irish vegetable soup at Celtic Crossing Irish Pub is the color. It’s not green. It’s more of a light brown. But it may be as close to the Emerald Isle as you’re going to get – food wise – at a Memphis restaurant.

Celtic’s owner D. J. Naylor adds “traditional” to “Irish vegetable soup.”
“It is served in most traditional Irish pubs, particularly outside of Dublin,” he says.

And, he says, “For me, it’s akin to Achill Island. If you Google, it’s the largest island off Ireland. Close to where I’m from. Ballina in County Mayo.”

But, Naylor says, “ You don’t need a name. You just need a taste.”

He’s planning to serve quite a bit of it this coming St. Paddy’s Day. “I would say with the weather 55 and sunny, i would say a lot. Like a lot. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t 300 orders sold.”

The soup was offered as a special, but now it’s a permanent item on the menu, Naylor says.

“Originally, I brought some back from an Irish pub just to try to match it up. It’s almost the same everywhere. It’s basically a concoction of roasted root vegetables. Turnips, cauliflower, carrots, onions, potatoes, leeks, and celery.”

They also use cream. “For five gallons, you’re talking two quarts.”

Naylor brought 25 gallons to the recent Youth Villages Soup Sunday and served 2,000 little cups to visitors.


Naylor says he got a great reaction after he told visitors how good the soup is. “It was overwhelming. Like people would stop in their tracks and turn around say, ‘Oh, my God. He’s right. Jeez. This is good.’”

He’s going to let his sister, Rossa Martin, try the soup when she visits Memphis this weekend. “She’s a bit of a Soup Nazi,’ he says. But he knows she’s going to like it and say, “I feels like I’m in Achill Island.”

The soup probably goes great with green beer and Irish whisky, so give it a try while you’re celebrating at Celtic Crossing on St. Patrick’s Day.

A special brunch menu will be available between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. March 16th and 17th. This will be followed by a special dinner menu until 11 p.m.

Live music on the patio will be featured between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. both days. One of the entertainers will be Irish musician Ricko Donovan, who will play between 6 and 9 p.m. on the patio.

Best Bets: Irish Vegetable Soup at Celtic Crossing.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

AAC Tournament: Tigers 83, Tulane 68

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Having finished fifth in the American Athletic Conference, the Tigers barely missed an opening-round bye in this week’s tournament at FedExForum. They were grateful Thursday afternoon for the next best thing: a date with Tulane.

Larry Kuzniewski

Mike Parks Jr.

Memphis pulled away early and withstood a poor second half to beat the Green Wave (winless in league play this season) and advance to Friday’s quarterfinals where the Tigers will face UCF. Senior guard Jeremiah Martin scored 21 points and joined Elliot Perry and Joe Jackson as the only players in Tiger history to rank among the top 10 in career points and assists. Freshman reserve Tyler Harris connected on four three-pointers to add 12 points, Mike Parks contributed a double-double (14 points, 13 rebounds), and Kyvon Davenport scored 17 points to help Memphis earn its 20th win of the season.

“Tulane had nothing to lose, and they had a week to prepare for us,” noted Penny Hardaway after his first postseason win as Tiger coach. “We knew they’d have something for Jeremiah. We got a little away from our game plan, but lucky for us, we were able to get things under control and get a win.”

After shooting a blistering 54.5 percent in the first half, the Tigers shot only 36 percent in the second and committed 10 of their 15 turnovers. A Memphis lead that swelled to 23 points (65-42) early in the second half dwindled to nine (77-68) with just over three minutes to play before the Tigers solidified the victory.

“We did what we had to do to win the game,” stressed Hardaway. “If you lose the game trying to manage minutes, you don’t play tomorrow anyway. It’s an early enough game for us to be hydrated and be ready for tomorrow’s game. We didn’t disrespect Tulane.”

Hardaway received a collective spark from the rest of his four-man bench with freshman Alex Lomax drilling an early three-pointer and handing out four assists, Isaiah Maurice scoring seven points, and Antwann Jones handing out three assists.

Caleb Daniels led the Green Wave with 19 points as Tulane finished its season 4-27.

Larry Kuzniewski

Jeremiah Martin

Hardaway has tried to keep his team in “one-game-at-a-time” mode, despite the entire city discussing the possibility of a four-game winning streak that would earn Memphis an NCAA tournament berth. For such a streak to reach two, the Tigers will have to beat UCF in Friday’s quarterfinals (tip-off at 1 p.m.). Memphis beat the Knights by 20 points at FedExForum in January, then lost at UCF (79-72) last month.

“[UCF] might be the hottest team in our league,” said Hardaway. “They’ve had a lot of time to prepare. We’re gonna have to hit on all cylinders tomorrow. There’s only so much changes you’ll make before a conference tournament.”

“We’re not looking past the game we have right in front of us,” added Martin. “We know we have to win four games [to reach the NCAA tournament], but we’re taking it one game at a time.”

Ironically, the Tigers (now 20-12) opened postseason play in front of the smallest FedExForum crowd they’ve seen all season (8,046). Nonetheless, Hardaway relished the ovation that greeted his arrival to the court, and especially relishes the arrival of do-or-die basketball. “It got my juices flowing, the way they welcomed me,” he said. “No butterflies yet. I look forward to this time of year. I try to stay as calm as I can.”

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

MXT vs IMAX: Which Big Screen Format Is Better?

In Malco’s newest theater, the Powerhouse Cinema Grill, the region’s dominant theater chain debuted a new theater design they call MXT. In December 2016, theater one in the Malco Paradiso was converted to IMAX. The giant screen and booming sound system is generally considered to be the gold standard of theatrical film viewing experience. At the Powerhouse press tour on March 7th, Malco representatives were touting MXT as superior to IMAX.

Is that true? Well, it’s complicated. Creating a viewing experience is really more a matter of finding the best solution to a set of variables than it is simply buying the perfect equipment and plugging it in. Some of my best film memories are from squinting at a CRT in a dorm room, and I’ve had painful viewing experiences put on by supposed professionals. It’s all relative. As I tell young filmmakers when they ask about cameras, the best one is the one you know how to use.

Your average living room HD flatscreen presents an image that measures 1920 pixels horizontally and 1080 pixels vertically. If you sprung for a 4K TV last Christmas, you’re looking at a 4096 X 2160 pixel picture. The current highest possible resolution outside of a lab is 70 mm IMAX film. That venerable format, familiar from museum settings and Disney World, is said to be the equivalent of 8K digital video. But that number is a rough estimate at best, as comparing digital video to analog is apples to oranges. Most digital cinema screens installed in the last 10 years use 2K (2048 X 1080) projectors, which provide more than three times as much “visual information” over a much larger area than your home HD set. Digital IMAX screens, like the one at the Paradiso, generally use a pair of proprietary 2K projectors working together, which greatly increases the light and provides a stereo visual channel for 3D, but doesn’t significantly increase the resolution.

But projector resolution is only one variable. If you’ve got a 4K TV, but the movie you’re watching was shot on a 2K camera, those extra pixels aren’t going to do you much good. Even on a big home screen with a clean signal, the difference between a 1080HD and a 4K screen is not going to be terribly apparent to casual viewers. Only when you blow the image up to theater size will you begin to see a significant difference.

You might have done a little mental math earlier and come to the conclusion that conventional 35mm film stock would have a higher pixel resolution than the 2K digital projectors that replaced them. But once again, that’s comparing apples to oranges. The intricacies of information theory notwithstanding, digital projection as a whole has been an improvement, says Malco Theaters Regional Director of Digital Operations Scott Barden. Film projectors are fragile, complicated machines, and celluloid film runs the risk of damage every time it’s run through one. Yes, a pristine print on a finely tuned and perfectly maintained film projector with a brand new bulb will probably look better than 2K digital projection, but that has always a rare set of circumstances in the real world. Barden says digital projection has allowed Malco, who, unlike many theater chains, take their presentation seriously, to present a more consistent product to audiences.

Where IMAX has an advantage over conventional theater projection is in the control of the variables. The screens are huge, and the theaters are custom built to take advantage of the unique, curved geometry of the IMAX. Until last week, theater one in the Paradiso was the undisputed champion of the city’s screening rooms.

The new MXT theater in the Powerhouse Cinema Grill is built like a conventional theater. Malco VP Karen Melton said its screen is virtually identical to pre-IMAX Paradiso theater one. But the projector is a brand-new, state of the art 4K laser phosphor model. The new projector presents a number of advantages for the theater. For decades, the heart of the projector has been a xenon light bulb of enormous power. They work great, but they have a number of disadvantages. First, a lot of the electricity fed into the bulb is wasted, as it is converted to heat instead of light. All that access heat has to be removed from the projector through a vent that goes through the roof of the theater. Lasers are much more efficient at producing light, and so produce a lot less heat, which can be dissipated without sawing a hole in the ceiling. Second, the expensive bulbs wear out, losing lumens over time until they eventually have to be replaced. Running one full blast will result in rapid degradation. “We typically run xenon lamps at a certain level so we get a very even drop off of the light level,” says Barden. “You don’t really notice over time. There’s not going to be a big drop off a the end, the way we run the bulbs.”

Fresh out of the box! The newly-installed 4K laser-phosphor projector at the heart of the Powerhouse’s MXT theater.

The laser-phosphor projector uses high wattage blue lasers fired through a constantly changing matrix of color filters to produce an image. More light makes it to the screen, and there’s no bulb to burn out, which greatly reduces maintenance costs.

Last Thursday, the stars aligned such that I was able to make a direct comparison between the two systems. I watched the Live Aid sequence from Bohemian Rhapsody on the Powerhouse MXT screen, then caught the Captain Marvel premiere at the Paradiso IMAX.

Which one was better? Visually, I would call it a toss up. The clarity and color of the image from the MXT 4K laser projector is mind blowing. But that IMAX theater architecture really does have a big effect. For Captain Marvel, I bought my ticket only 10 days in advance, so I was stuck in seat A-13—front row center, and it was fine. It’s true there are no bad seats in that theater.

The big difference was the sound, where MXT has the advantage. In keeping with their goals of creating an immersive experience, IMAX is configured to maximize the subwoofer boom effect. Rattling the chest makes those big explosions feel more visceral. Malco opted to pair a Dolby Atmos system with the 4K laser projector in the MXT theater. “The audio is something we wanted to do specifically for large format,” says Barden. “It’s got full Dolby Atmos, a 38-channel surround sound system, which is spectacular for the auditorium.”

For creating an immersive experience, I’d much rather have Atmos than 3D. With the exceptions of Avatar, The Walk, and Alita: Battle Angel, 3D has never risen from gimmick to art form for me. But you should never underestimate the power of great sound design. The entire horror genre is practically built on it.

Inside the MXT theater.

For me, the bottom line comes down to the source material. If some or all of the film you’re going to see was shot in the IMAX format, such as Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, then you should see it in the IMAX theater. For any other film, including big Hollywood productions such as the digitally shot Marvel and Star Wars franchises, I would choose the superior sound at the Powerhouse MXT. But unless you’re a nerd like me, either theater is going to deliver a good experience — as long as the movie is good. Which is something else entirely.

[This piece was edited to clean up errant pixel counts.]

Categories
News News Blog

Do You Want to Be Jimmy Smits?

The production company that’s filming the Bluff City Law series pilot in Memphis is looking for Jimmy Smits. Well, not the real Jimmy Smits. They already have him. He’s the star. What they’re looking for is a stand-in for Smits.

Here’s the deal, direct from On Location Casting:

NBC will be in Memphis to film the pilot “ BLUFF CITY LAW”. We are looking for a “Stand In” for actor Jimmy Smits. He is 6’3”, 240lbs, with olive skin and dark hair. We would like to find someone who is a close match to these physical characteristics as possible. They will work 3/16-3/20 and 3/23-3/27. They will need to be available all days. Should you have someone who would like to apply please have them send their, Name, Photo, age, height & weight to Onlocationcastingmemphis.com .

Is this guy your doppelganger?

Then, you know what to do. 

Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

News Makers #1: Meet Madeline Faber of High Ground News and The Tri-State Defender’s Karanja Ajanaku

This post is supplemental to the Memphis Flyer cover package Going to Pieces about the state of print journalism in Memphis. This, and other posts featuring additional commentary by Wendi Thomas of MLK50, Jacinthia Jones of Chalkbeat.org, Eric Barnes of The Daily Memphian, and Mark Fleischer of StoryBoard: Memphis were created to include voices and ideas that didn’t make it into the main story. They will be published throughout the rest of the week.

Madeline Faber

High Ground News is an online publication that’s been in Memphis four-and-a-half years. It’s part of network of 15 small, digital newsrooms, each unique, but all parented by the Issue Media Group in Detroit. Issue was created to get beyond tyrannizing negative narratives that contributed to the Motor City’s decline, and tell more complete stories about the place and people who live there.

“We stand out among the other publications because we have this explicit focus on neighborhoods,” High Ground executive editor Madeline Faber says. A different approach to community engagement, combined with not being held to the rigors of daily publishing, creates a petri dish environment where new strategies can be tested.

• On identity and adaptability
“Our on-the-ground program within High Ground News started out as a kind of ‘special section’ where we would cover Memphis neighborhoods. Now that’s really all we do, because we saw people responded to this kind of coverage. It fills a gap in the landscape — covering neighborhoods in context.”

• On High Ground’s “pop-up” newsrooms:
“We open pop-up newsrooms for four months. The first month is for research, relationship building, and working with partners in neighborhood, followed by three months of weekly coverage — written articles, profiles of business owners, nonprofit leaders, elders, and video and photo essays. We’ve piloted community engagement techniques that other publications don’t really have the capacity to do. So we do a lot of face-to-face with our readers. We do that with community newsrooms. We have office hours where residents can meet with journalists, talk about how their neighborhoods have been depicted in the media. We convene residents and ask them, ‘What is the information you need about your neighborhood? What are the problems going on now? What are the themes here we need to really flesh out?’ And and events. We do lots of events. Storytelling panel discussions.”
[pullquote-1] • On a “positive” news identity
We’re not in the positive news business or the advocacy business, but I do feel like it’s our responsibility to put some heft in the other side of the scales that have been so unbalanced over the years. It surprises me there are still people who don’t know about Orange Mound’s legacy as the first subdivision where African-Americans could own their own homes on their own property, and that it was built on top of a former plantation. That’s such cool information.

But what we do is take that knowledge and consider it when we consider the fact that there hasn’t been quality affordable housing built in Orange Mound in forever. The affordable housing they have may not be quality affordable housing. The elders of the neighborhood don’t know how to encourage the young people to stay and grow because there isn’t any housing being built or rehab that speaks to a young professional demographic. We show that people choose to live there, thrive there, and open businesses. They shouldn’t be pushed to the margins because there aren’t multimillion-dollar deals happening in these neighborhoods. And a lot of Memphians don’t live in our economic centers, they live in neighborhoods.

• On capacity
We are limited by our capacity in what we can do. It was just me … But what we’ve been trying to do in our own small universe is rebuild trust in these neighborhoods with media. To explain to them, we’re not helicoptering in. We’re here to show a side of the neighborhood that hasn’t been shown. That’s important to us ethically as journalists and personally as Memphians.

• On Transparency
One of the antidotes [to issues in contemporary journalism] is going to be transparency. We should connect people to other resources … . It’s not up to us to hoard access; we should be sharing access as much as we can. Even putting footers at the bottoms of stories explaining how we came to stories. The more we decentralize that process the closer we get to information justice.

———————————————-

Executive editor and sssociate publisher Karanja Ajanaku has been with the Tri-State Defender since 2007. He had previously worked for the Commercial

Karanja Ajanaku

Appeal for, “26-years, 6 months, three weeks and two days.”

The Tri-State Defender is 68 years old, having launched in 1951. “Our intent was to be an expression of the desires and needs of the African American community,” Ajanaku says, quoting copy from an early editorial page. “That intent and that need is as fresh today as it was in 1951. That’s what we stay focused on,” he says.

Like many of Memphis’ print news businesses, The Tri-State Defender is trying to develop new revenue streams. Online content is being reorganized behind a paywall.

•On The Tri-State Defender’s unique position
“When we look at ourselves, we understand, generally speaking, what’s going on with the newspaper industry and the challenges. But when we look at it specifically relative to Memphis and specifically relative to Memphis, we’re in growth mode. We have reason to think we have been underperforming relative to our possibilities.
[pullquote-2] •On the Tri-State Defender’s role relative to The Commercial Appeal
“Even if the Commercial Appeal was at full capacity, the need that we meet isn’t affected. It doesn’t matter if the Commercial Appeal is at full capacity or goes out of business.”

•On being uniquely positioned to tell the story of African-Americans and Memphis
“We’re the longest ongoing entity that can tell the story from the inside out. The Commercial Appeal does a good job. I did a good job when I was there writing about the African-American community. But you still can’t quite tell it from the inside out. There is a value to that position.”

•On what matters.
“We have to do better as journalists, better in Memphis. What does better mean? We have to be what we’re supposed to be: Watchdogs. We have to ask questions. We have to get in there and dig. If we do a better job with that we may just find a larger market.”


Editor’s note: Going to Pieces looks at Memphis’ information providers and news environment at a time when the city’s daily newspaper has been greatly diminished. We hope these excerpts provide some depth/context, and give readers a better sense about what’s unique about various organizations in terms of product and process. [content-1]

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Meet Quark Theatre’s “Radiant Vermin”

Michelle Gregory, Lena Wallace Black, Chase Ring in ‘Radiant Vermin’

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done for something you really wanted?

Chase Ring likes attention. Ring — currently lending his talents to Quark Theatre — made his marriage proposal onstage at Memphis’ annual Theatre Awards, The Ostranders. He’s one of the players in Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin, opening at Theatre South this weekend, and he’s quick to tell stories about the lengths he’s been willing to go to for a little limelight — minor self-mutilation, skinny dipping in the Tony Garner memorial fountain in front of the McCoy Theatre at Rhodes College. None of it’s really bad, but Ring’s co-stars Michelle Gregory and Lena Wallace Black shrink a bit because, to hear them tell it, they’ve never broken the rules for any reason ever. Then, at length, another member of team Vermin makes a sheepish admission.

“I had a fake ID,” she says. I won’t say who engaged in this heinous criminal deceit, nor will I call out the other for fibbing to reporters about never veering from the straight-and-narrow because, as St. Augustine made plain in his Confessions, being a little bad can be its own reward. And once you get rolling it can be hard to hit the breaks.

We humans are infinitely adaptable creatures, all too willing to take risks, and subvert shame and conscious when the payoffs are suitably rewarding, and that’s the most I want to say about this condition as it relates to Radiant Vermin.  Sometimes we cross the line for funsies — like a little skinny dip here and there or fudging our ages for access.

Sometimes there’s a body count. Sometimes we’re all implicated in the carnage.

Meet Quark Theatre’s ‘Radiant Vermin’

I took the sound out of this video to enhance mystery and let users add their own soundtrack. Trust me, you’ll want to.

Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin is a comedy about a newlywed couple discovering the dream-home they’ve always wanted can be theirs, if they’re willing to do what it takes. And what it takes is …  a lot.

What are you willing to do for security? What are you willing to do for comfort? Luxury? To let folks know who you are? And here’s maybe the more important question? Did you even know you were doing it?

Caption contest?

“I almost hate to say the word, but it’s a very ‘meta’ kind of play,” Director Tony Isbell says. “Some have compared it to a sketch show. It’s not a naturalistic, at all, there’s a performative element to everything they do, and it’s funny.”

Ridley’s plays can be dark. The English visual artist and storyteller turned playwright pioneered what’s been described as the “In-yer-face” style. Radiant Vermin marks a shift in tone for Ridley but the fast-paced morality-farce still gets in the audience’s’s face at least a little bit. 

“His early stuff is funny but it can be dark-dark,” Isbell says. “This is more dark-light.”

Radiant Vermin opens this week at the best little basement theater in Cooper Young, Theatre South. Click here for details.

Categories
Music Music Features

The Gay Cowboy: Lavender Country Comes to the Hi-Tone

For about 15 years, Patrick Haggerty was content to play country standards for audiences at retirement homes. “The old songs from the ’50s I heard in my childhood stuck to my ribs,” he says. “Those were the songs people wanted to hear.”

Then, about six years ago, he got a call from a music label executive offering him a contract. “That never happens, right? Almost all artists push and push to get anybody to think about listening to their songs, much less offering them a contract. … I knew they were selling encyclopedias, that it couldn’t possibly be true. But it was.”

The label, Paradise of Bachelors, wanted to reissue an album Haggerty made in 1973 called Lavender Country. It was the first gay country album ever recorded. “I lived my whole life without acknowledgement and recognition. When we made Lavender Country, gay country was so completely out-of-the-ballpark absurd that no one would touch it with a 10-foot pole.”

Haggerty grew up on a dairy farm near the Canadian border in the 1950s. “Rural Washington in 1955 was very much like rural Tennessee,” he says. “Maybe a little more progressive, but not much. What we heard on the radio while we were milking cows was country music.”

Hank Williams, Jimmy Reed, and Bonnie Guitar made an indelible impression on him, but, he says “My real, true love, when it comes to country, was Patsy Cline. I really related to her.”

Haggerty was one of 11 children. His father bought him his first guitar at age nine. “He was an unusual man for his time and place. He looked like Pa Kettle. He had clodhopper boots and carried around a coffee can that he spit his juice into. He was missing half his teeth. He really looked like a bumpkin, but that was a disguise. … He never denigrated me or put me down. He never said I can’t do that, even though I was doing drag and wearing blonde, bailing-twine wigs, and singing show tunes, and dancing on his tractors — and being completely incompetent at farming.”

In 1969, Haggerty was living in Missoula, Montana, and playing in the burgeoning protest folk scene. “The day after the Stonewall riots happened, I came out — by myself — in Missoula. I just couldn’t stand it any longer. I heard the call, and I jumped out.”

Four years later, he gathered a band in Seattle to make Lavender Country. “People ask why I chose country as a genre to do gay stuff. Well, in 1973 it didn’t matter what genre you chose. You were on the outs anyway, so what did it matter?

“One thing that was really significant about the Lavender Country album, was that it was Stonewall Riot, out, gay liberationist folk who produced this album,” Haggerty says. “It was a community-sponsored event. I could have never done it by myself. I think it’s important, looking at the politics of it. Yeah, I wrote all the songs; I’m the lead singer. I get all that. But it was Seattle’s gay community that made Lavender Country.”

In 1973, the album made barely a ripple. “So I lived a life of political activism, did a lot of social work, and raised kids,” Haggerty says.

But all that changed with one phone call. Lavender Country was music review website Pitchfork’s Best New Reissue of 2014, and Haggerty has been drawing attention ever since. He’s been the subject of three documentaries and is currently in negotiations for a Hollywood biopic. After his spring tour, he will go to San Francisco to accompany the new Lavender Country ballet. On March 19th, Haggerty will play the Hi-Tone with Memphis bands the Dixie Dicks and the Paisley Fields.”I’ve never been to Memphis, so this is exciting for me,” he says. “Who wouldn’t want to do music in Memphis?”

Haggerty, a self-described socialist revolutionary about to turn 75, says he’s right where he wants to be. “At this stage of the game, especially given what’s been going on in this country right now, to be able to use Lavender Country as a vehicle for social transformation, the very reason I made it in the first place, is beyond a dream come true.”

Patrick Haggerty plays the Hi-Tone March 19th, with openers Dixie Dicks and Paisley Fields.