Pages tagged “issue 44”

Mythical giant vs. the modern world—readers win

Moby-Dick has a white whale. Gravity’s Rainbow has outsized sexual shenanigans. Awesome, by Jack Pendarvis, has both.

The hero of this short, dizzying comic novel is the title character, a massive, handsome, supremely powerful man who strides the earth like nobody’s business. He wears a derby hat. He lives with his robot ward Jimmy, who is Robin to his Batman, and he has a kind of love affair with his downstairs neighbor, Glorious Jones. After his plans to marry her go haywire, Awesome is launched into a series of adventures that find him careering from odd situation to odd situation, applying himself gigantically wherever 
he goes.

Japanese fiction master gets personal

"What do you jot down about jogging?” late comedian Bill Hicks sneered about deceased health writer Jim Fixx. “Right foot, left foot—faster, faster, umm, go home, shower.” As if in direct response (or, more likely, in tribute to Raymond Carver), Haruki Murakami has written the new memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. As it turns out, there’s quite a lot to say.

Philadelphia revivalists refine Fabness

“Put that needle to the groove and sing, ‘ooooooooooooh,’” Dr. Dog croons on “The Breeze,” Fate’s opening track. The band’s fifth album employs unabashed Beatles arrangements as if the Fab Four were a genre unto themselves, and Dr. Dog merely traditionalists. There’s plenty of British music hall in “The Old Days,” but there’s also a hint of reggae’s aphoristic simplicity (“Chop! Chop! Chop! Tree gonna fall down”). Even on ooooooooooooh-absent “The Ark,” which borders on Raconteurish blues sludge, Dr. Dog eventually snaps to stateliness so dude can get his McCartney on. “From,” which follows, is virtually all harmonies, cool and pleasant. So instantly pleasing, the trickery is transparent, a hook to keep listening until the content of Toby Leaman and Scott McMicken’s songs makes itself known. One can’t blame them. If it feels good, do it. Right?

Hank Williams Jr. pulled his old man out of the big sleep for a take on “There’s a Tear in My Beer” in 1989, and Natalie Cole proved how profitable this approach could be on Unforgettable: With Love, the 1991 multi-platinum album of her singing on tracks with her late father Nat King Cole.

Iraqi treasure rediscovered

It’s easy to understand why Fadhil al-Azzawi’s The Last of the Angels was banned in his native Iraq when first published in 1992. His vision of Kirkuk in the ’50s is more than darkly comic: a place where Arabs, Turks, Kurds and Assyrians hate each other almost as much as the living hate the dead, and everyone is looking for a miracle to claim as their own—if only to use it against everyone else.

Rendering doughnuts from root vegetables might seem like an unappetizing prospect. But in 1939, brothers Al and Bob Pelton, bored with baking and French frying white potatoes, developed a sweet doughnut made from a mashed-potato base. The Peltons initially peeled each tuber by hand, but in the interest of increasing doughnut yields (and decreasing thumb lacerations) they developed a potato-flour mix which could be used as a starter for doughnut dough. Before long, the brothers had franchised more than 200 Spudnut shops around the country.

Gripping surf story

The adventure of surfing gets a big ride in Tim Winton’s latest literary feat. Told retrospectively through the eyes of Australian paramedic Bruce Pikelet, Breath is a novel that perfectly mimics its setting—Winton structures the book with brooding swells of action that underline the tension between Pikelet and his wave-riding companions.

Told with the heaviness that comes when confessing secrets of the past, Pikelet recalls his adolescent surfing days. Along with his thrill-seeking friend Loonie, he had become an enamored disciple of an old pro boarder named Sando.

Together, the three sought the extreme, riding waves in shallow, reefed waters and in coves that were the confirmed territory of great whites. The dynamic between Wynton’s characters is just as menacing and uncharted as the waters they tread. The three are not true friends. It’s worth the read to figure out why.

Willie’s on to something with this live-at-Lincoln Center jazz collab

Before this record, Willie Nelson had done collaborations in nearly every musical idiom—except the one that gives true context to the off-beat jazz phrasing he’s used throughout his career. This performance with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis feels like a long-overdue summit meeting. These renditions of classics—including some of Willie’s own—sound completely natural; even Willie’s old nylon-string guitar Trigger fits right in, though when he and Wynton get to jumpin’ and jivin’ on “Caldonia,” it makes you wonder how the music might’ve sounded had Willie picked up something with metal strings. As it is, you can envision him finger-popping while bassist Carlos Henriquez and Nelson harmonica player Mickey Raphael take their turns and Marsalis rips his solo. Marsalis’ slurs and squeaks on “Stardust” send the song into another dimension; “Georgia on My Mind” and “Night Life” are also re-energized in this Big Easy milieu, and “Ain’t Nobody’s Business” must’ve had the Jazz at Lincoln Center audience dancing in the aisles.

Release Date: June 10
Director: Justin Chadwick
Writer: Peter Morgan (adapted from the novel by Philippa Gregory)
Cinematographer: Kieran McGuigan
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, Eric Bana
Studio/Run Time: Sony Pictures/Columbia, 114 mins.

Women overrule the ruler in pretty, vacant period piece

If beauty is truth, The Other Boleyn Girl is a paragon of honesty. On the flip side of Keats’ epigram, however, the film's historical liberties counteract the radiance of both its young starlets and the verdant English countryside the movie depicts. Based on the bestselling novel by Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl is a sumptuous moving tapestry (shot in HD) about the most famous of Henry VIII’s wives—the ruthlessly ambitious Anne Boleyn (Portman)—and her innocent sister Mary (Johansson). The lesser-known Mary serves as the King’s mistress and bears him a bastard son before the conniving Anne elbows her way into the King’s arms and onto the throne. Director Justin Chadwick imbues his first feature with gorgeous wide angles of horses galloping through the surf and gauzy close-ups of the Boleyn sisters. But after a languid beginning, the film suffers the predictable casualty of adapting information-dense source material, and hurtles along to its conclusion at a dizzying pace.

Release Date: June 24
Directors/Writers: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud
Starring: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux
Studio/Run Time: Sony Pictures Classics, 95 mins.

A tender, animated look at Iran’s struggles

Finding black humor in totalitarianism’s contradictions, Marjane Satrapi's animated adaptation of her smash graphic memoir, Persepolis, is as canonically effective as her book. Detailing the Iran of her childhood (through revolution, repression and expatriation), Satrapi and co-director Vincent Paronnaud transform the stark lines of her illustrations into rich black and white. Filled with exotic curlicues, crosshatched shadows and iconic characters, the vocabulary is a tender extension of Satrapi’s eye. Hand drawn, the film resonates even without its moral center. A full-on anti-authoritarian, Satrapi's character—voiced by Chiara Mastroianni—fills the screen. Though Satrapi mostly observes her country’s turbulence rather than participating in it, she does so charismatically. “When you run, your behind makes indecent moves,” an Iranian policeman tells her. “Then stop looking at my ass!” she retorts, and keeps running. Equal parts contrarian and humanist, Persepolis— regardless of how it was inked—refuses to see anything in black and white.

The Lovers
Director: Louis Malle
Writer: Louise de Vilmorin
Cinematographer: Henri Decaë
Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Marc Bory
Studio/Run Time: Nouvelles Éditions de Films, 90 mins.

The Fire Within
Director: Louis Malle
Writer: Malle, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (book)
Cinematographer: Ghislain Cloquet
Starring: Maurice Ronet, Lena Skerla
Studio/Run Time: Nouvelles Éditions de Films, 108 mins.

Release Date: April 29
Director/Writer: Todd Rohal
Cinematographer: Richie Sherman
Starring: Will Oldham, Katy Haywood
Studio/Run Time: Benten Films, 97 mins.

Release Date: July 25
Directors/Writers: Jay and Mark Duplass
Cinematographer: Jay Duplass
Starring: Ross Partridge, Steve Zissis, Greta Gerwig
Studio/Run Time: Sony Pictures Classics, 84 mins.

The Duplass Brothers engineer lo-fi fun in genre-spanning horror spoof

Jay and Mark Duplass, the duo behind 2005’s The Puffy Chair, construct their latest indie venture with the craft and precision of Russian nesting dolls. What initially starts as a deadpan comedy undergoes a series of tonal facelifts, shifting between mockumentary, horror and drama. The plot follows a quartet of wannabe filmmakers (a role the brothers claim to be intimately familiar with from past experience) who retreat to a remote cabin to create a handheld-video masterwork. The film assumes an improvisational direction that avoids manufactured plot beats and rehearsed performances, letting the characters stutter and fumble into vérité extremes. But like their scripting skills, the filmmakers create a singular vision where even undercooked acting, intentional or otherwise, only contributes to the feature’s quirky premise and DIY aesthetic. While Baghead isn’t without missteps, its minimalist production houses a clever little gem of independent filmmaking that fits snugly into every genre it test drives.

Release date: July 3
Director/Writer: Jonathan Levine
Cinematographer:: Petra Korner
Starring: Ben Kingsley, Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby
Studio/Run Time: Sony Pictures Classics, 110 mins.

Kingsley’s acting carries gratuitous ’90s homage

It’s hard to determine whether director Jonathan Levine wanted to make a movie or an epic music video in this uncoordinated sophomore feature. The entire production romanticizes the nostalgic grit of NYC during ’90s gentrification, with its story buried in a litany of graphite dream sequences and hip-hop references. The two leads seek an urban renewal of their own, as Ben Kingsley, a psychiatrist suspended in mid-life crisis, and Josh Peck, a teenage pot dealer, cry over their shared inability to pick up girls. The script handles its coming-of-age tale adequately, buoyed by inspired acting. Kingsley carries the film with masterful range while Peck balances him as the straight man. But the film struggles to tie its distracting art direction and dialogue to its characters. The narrative is touching, but it could’ve resonated more clearly if the filmmakers relied on solid storytelling instead of its outdated MTV-video muse.

A young soldier returns to Arizona from Iraq, tormented by nightmares.

“I smoked myself in the mad smoke of war. Mothers’ hopes wrapped in bloodied rags,” Seeker, the heartsick warrior, sings his despair in a solo baritone. His wracking confession of violence and his poignant prayer for healing echo back in Navajo, voiced by a 140-member concert choir. A 76-piece orchestra carries the call-and-response storytelling on strings, brass and drums.

Despite the critical acclaim Billy Bob Thornton’s music has received since his 2001 debut album Private Radio, most people inevitably assume that any musical project from an actor is a vanity effort—an inferior product released by an artist slumming in a foreign milieu because fame and fortune allow it. But Thornton (who just released The Boxmasters, his new band’s self-titled album) has real musical cred: He’s played in bands since he learned the drums at age 12, he used to roadie for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and his directorial debut was a documentary on Widespread Panic.

First band: A trio called the Young Snakes. Mann was 20 and living in Boston.
“That was kind of an art-rock, noise [laughs], punk, post-New Wave band. I don’t know what the other two guys were thinking, but I sort of felt that our goal was to, you know—you’re young, and you’re like, ‘We’re breaking all the rules! Anything that’s been done before, we’re not doin’ it!’ And, unfortunately, that kind of included melody and song narrative. I remember we had this one thing where we wouldn’t use any cymbals. It was ridiculous.”

If you set up a million monkeys with a bunch of laptops, would they eventually produce Shakespeare?

Maybe not, but you might get new website One Million Monkeys Typing (1000000monkeys.com), a collaborative, evolutionary storytelling site. It’s like “Choose Your Own Adventure” for the 21st century: Users (lovingly dubbed “monkeys”) graft “snippets” of their own writing onto stories crafted by other monkeys. Snippets range in length from 50 to 300 words (sometimes in haiku or limerick), and each can sprout up to three branches. Stories are labeled in a tree-based vernacular, from seedlings to sawtimbers, and genres have included Westerns, pulp, sci-fi and many more.

The film is grainy, the color is off and the images are speckled with “film dirt.” But despite its flaws (or perhaps because of them), Super 8 moviemaking has survived since 1965. Indie directors Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell have used Super 8 in their most recent films, and less-visible Super 8 die-hards have started “small-gauge” film clubs everywhere from Liverpool to Athens, Ga. Super 8 has been compared to Fight Club—the only difference is that everyone wants to talk about it.

Disney is content to pretend that its 1940s feature Song of the South doesn't exist. Most contemporary critics have denounced the film—and its appropriation of slave narratives—as blatantly racist. But what of Joel Chandler Harris, the white author who created uncle Remus? Is his legacy tainted? Not if his great-great-great grandson has anything to say about it.

Name: Todd Rohal
Hometown: born in Columbus, based in Brooklyn
Film/Release date: The Guatemalan Handshake (out now on DVD)
For fans of: True Stories, Nashville

Twins’ songs need a fire under them

Hailing from Kentucky but based in Los Angeles, Chandra and Leigh Watson each possess a smoky voice, but their harmonies are more than the sum of their parts, so closely intertwined that they become indistinguishable and all the more powerful. The Twins added a gilding of AM country gold to Jenny Lewis’ solo debut, Rabbit Fur Coat, in 2006, but their own releases—mini album Southern Manners and their new full-length debut, Fire Songs—are much better showcases for their pristine vocals, wrapping them in a warm blanket of violins and folksy guitars. Unfortunately, the Twins aren’t so compelling as songwriters, and too many of these fire songs sound merely serviceable, with mellow hooks and humdrum sentiments. “Map To Where You Are” stands out, thanks to its Silvertone guitar and mariachi horns, but the rest of these songs—even a low-key cover of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven”—sound more or less identical.

Still got that soul

Maybe the third time’s the charm. Amos Lee’s eponymous 2005 debut was a polite, pleasant dollop of Starbucks soul, and though his 2006 follow-up Supply and Demand showed more grit and texture, it offered fewer hooks. Last Days at the Lodge finds Lee at his melodic and passionate best, given a considerable sonic boost from legendary Muscle Shoals session master Spooner Oldham on Hammond B3, and blues guitarist Doyle Bramhall, Jr.

People don’t brag about their MP3 collection. Where’s the glory in that? When blogs and search engines do all the heavy lifting, any imbecile can show taste. Buying physical records, though, reveals a lot about an individual. Sure, sometimes, what it says is embarrassing: “I have too much disposable income,” for example. Or: “My mania for Björk may one day feature in a psychology textbook—or on Court TV.”

People still go to record stores? I haven’t set foot in one in years. But as much as I love downloading, I fondly remember whiling away entire afternoons at my favorite record shop. First, there was the long drive down Interstate 40, which—like Proust and his madeleines—I recall vividly whenever I smell a mixture of state-maintained foliage and automotive exhaust. After navigating the hair-raising traffic around the shopping center—think Mad Max meets 2 Fast 2 Furious—the Wal-Mart Supercenter would shimmer into view like an oasis in a desert of asphalt, which meant I had nearly arrived at the homey glass-and-steel megalith of record stores, its huge, looming sign commensurate in size to the bargains waiting within.

Going to a record store in Detroit back in primordial times was an all-day affair for me. Mainly because I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was nearly 19, making me a bit of a pariah in the Motor City, which has always frowned on public transportation. If you wanted to get anywhere in Detroit, you either stole a car or hitchhiked. For me, hitchhiking was the far more dangerous proposition, especially wearing the micro minis that were de rigueur during that not-so-loveable Summer of Love. But more importantly there weren’t very many record stores there, no matter what you’ve heard. Sure, Berry Gordy founded the 3-D Record Mart back in 1953, but less than a year later it was gone, swept away in an early economic deluge that sent the nascent impresario to the Ford Motor Assembly Line—and it was there, not dusting his unsold Duke Ellington and Junior Walker discs, that he came up with his idea for Motown Records.

[Above: Jerry's Records, Pittsburgh]

People are no longer leaving their houses. They are content to wirelessly import digital music straight into nano-engineered storage devices implanted in their grey matter, and the digital revolution is killing brick-and-mortar retail. But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of the record store’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Just as people of faith need houses of worship in which to commune, music zealots are no less dependent on shrines dedicated to their own decibel-cranked passion. For that reason, Paste hereby celebrates the record store, bestowing superlatives on a few of America’s finest. May they live long and loud!

Anti-ingénue Laura Marling seems to embody weathered spirits in her spindly 18-year-old frame. The alt-folk singer/songwriter is quickly becoming the U.K.’s new darling—and she finds the wise-beyond-her-years accolades a bit silly. “I know a lot of people my age do exactly the same thing,” she says. “It’s completely relative to the person, you know?” But her debut album Alas I Cannot Swim is rigged with more tumult than a girl her age should understand. We thus present the following speculation about who Marling might’ve been in her former lives…

Hailing from Valdosta, a sleepy South Georgia town known for azaleas and high school football, the inventive MC known as Izza Kizza spouts goofy but clever lines that reference The Sixth Sense and encourage listeners to “party ’til you’re narcoleptic,” flowing in a deep voice that falls somewhere between Mike Doughty and Mr. Bubbles. His music recalls some of hip-hop’s best and most playful moments (like the classic 3 Feet High and Rising, and Deltron 3030), and he tentatively plans to drop his first full-length in early 2009. Meanwhile, he’s collaborated with Missy Elliott and legendary beatmaster Timbaland, and he’s posted a Family Guy viral-video promotion on YouTube that finds baby-genius Stewie Griffin asking, “What the deuce is Izza Kizza?” From the mouth of Izza himself, here are three more reasons to get down with his unorthodox talent:

"I don’t think of us as a rock band, really” Robin Pecknold, the bearded 22-year old frontman of Seattle’s Fleet Foxes says over a Saturday morning cup of coffee. “If anything, we’re pop.” Still, this is not the candy-coated dance-pop of Hot Chip or even the Kinks-y pop-rock of Fleet Foxes’ Sub Pop labelmates The Shins. Rather, it’s a kind of Old English pop, full of three-part harmonies and breezy melodies sung and strummed far away from anything resembling a backbeat. At times the Foxes recall the more Madrigal moments of The Zombies, or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (without so much of the Stephen Stills). It’s music that would be right at home in a particularly clean patch of old Appalachia, or in a Wes Anderson film.

Hip-hopper bravely gets comical

The graphics of hip-hop began on city walls and trains cars, where graffiti artists evoked the same scenes narrated by MCs. With his self-titled graphic-novel debut, hip-hop artist Method Man (of Wu-Tang Clan fame) brings this mix to the page with a biblically infused dose of urban-gothic storytelling.

Peerless Poe, once part of a monastic order charged with protecting the world, is exiled. His old cohorts ask for help, bringing with them past wounds and new enemies.

Method Man skillfully re-examines the “private eye” concept. Poe sees the real world with one eye and demons with the other. When his supernatural eye falls on a mirror, showing Poe his other self, the reader sees what happens when the inner beast is personified and weaponized.

Illustrator Sanford Greene and writer David Atchison bring sharp edges to a world that includes both sewers and Stonehenge. Likewise, a few hip-hop collaborators join Peerless on his quest. Wu-Tang forever.

Cassandra Wilson uses her voice—by turns subtle, sonorous and sweet—to tell stories, to conjure images, to wink at ironies, to jump genres and redefine jazz. For her, it’s a ministry of sorts, and she’s won all kinds of converts. Time Magazine in 2001 named her “America’s Best Singer,” and a year later—in a glamorous cover story celebrating her as an innovator—JazzTimes declared her “The New Standard.” Even on the rare occasion she records an album of standards, like her new self-produced Loverly, Wilson’s unexpected song choices (“Gone With the Wind,” “Black Orpheus,” “St. James Infirmary”), rhythmic arrangements (“rhythm is job one,” she says) and agile vocals make her work anything but standard. For the new record, she gathered an all-star roster of players—including Marvin Sewell on guitar, Jason Moran on piano, Herlin Riley on drums, Lekan Babalola on percussion and Lonnie Plaxico on bass—and sequestered them in a rented house in her hometown of Jackson, Miss. The noon-to-midnight recording sessions were so hot, they blew out the air conditioning. As Wilson intended, the blues practically seep through the album’s pores.

The other Wilson brother finally gets his lush, poignant solo album reissued

After serving as drummer and sometime songwriter for The Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson stepped out from his brother Brian’s shadow and became the first in the group to record a solo album—Pacific Ocean Blue, released to critical and commercial acclaim in 1977. Amazingly, it’s never been released on CD, which makes this two-disc collection a boon for collectors and the curious alike. Full of lush harmonies, grandiose orchestrations and poignant lyrics, these ambitious songs have lost none of their innocent melancholy over the last three decades. The second disc includes tracks planned for Wilson’s follow-up, tentatively titled Bambu, which was unfinished at the time of his death in 1983. Bambu’s songs—which have existed only as bootlegs until now—sound skeletal compared to Pacific Ocean Blue, but reveal the depth of Wilson’s considerable talent, hinting at what a tremendous second album it could have been, and what a storied career he could’ve had.

Release Date: June 11
Director/writer: Werner Herzog
Cinematographer: Peter Zeitlinger
Studio/Run Time: THiNKFilm, 99 mins.

Herzog's Antarctica documentary leaves us cold

"The National Science Foundation had invited me to Antarctica even though I left no doubt that I would not come up with another film about penguins," narrates acclaimed director Werner Herzog at the beginning of Encounters at the End of the World. “My questions about nature, I let them know, are different.”

Release date: June 13
Director/Writer: Guy Maddin
Cinematographer: Jody Shapiro
Studio/Run Time: IFC Films, 80 mins.

A pleasingly personal history—both metaphoric and civic—of the Canadian capital

In his ninth feature, My Winnipeg, Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin uses his native city in much the same way Michael Moore used Flint, Mich., in Roger & Me (if Moore were offering a requiem for a human soul rather than the American economy). With the 52-year-old Maddin providing macabre, occasionally snarky narration, the film employs silent-movie cards (“Fear!” to describe a workers’ strike), meditative motifs (“snowy, sleepwalking Winnipeg”) and—most uniquely—a cast of actors recreating Maddin's family in its former home, with his dead father portrayed as a lump under the carpet. “Who gets to vivisect his own childhood?” Maddin ponders, though he leaves himself almost entirely out of the vivisection, with much of the subplot unresolved. My Winnipeg—ostensibly about why Maddin has to leave the city—rarely ventures into what the director was doing while physically there. Nevertheless, it’s a wholly and wonderfully personal piece of filmmaking.