The State of Madison Cinema Just Keeps Getting Better

Sundance Cinemas recently announced its opening day line-up for Sundance 608:

Waitress
TV Set
Black Book
Air Guitar Nation
After the Wedding
Away From Her

I've got friends ready to check the new cinema out with me and The Dulcinea. We're setting up a date for Air Guitar Nation. Plus I am keen on seeing Paul Verhoeven's Black Book. While I can honestly say that these two films are the only ones that really interest me at this time, just knowing that shortly there will be a lot more non-mainstream films in town is comforting. Still, don't forget to patronize Westgate and the Orpheum. Hopefully the increased competition will get these theatres to counter-program. It'd be nice to have a screen in town dedicated or, at least, giving significant time to revivals, for instance.



I found out via an e-mail from the Wisconsin Film Festival that a Romanian film festival is in media res at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

One thing that was absent from the otherwise comprehensive missive was that the Monona Public Library kicks off their Great Films For Grown-Ups series tomorrow with the Canadian film A Simple Curve.



The series continues on Sunday, May 6 with Familia, also from Canada. On Sunday, May 20 the Norwegian film Monstertorsdag (Monster Thursday) will be screened.

Madison moviegoers are gonna be busier than a French whore on dollar day.

Final Taste of "God Is Not Great"

The third and final excerpt from Christopher Hitchens' new book, God Is Not Great, was posted yesterday at Slate. It can be found here.

Cheddarvision

Behold cheese as it ages over the course of 3 months!



To watch the wheel age in real time, head here.

Sec's in the City

The Daleks return! Last week was "Daleks in Manhattan".

The handsome Lazlo is backstage with his dancing sweetie, Tallulah, as she prepares to go on for her performance. He gives her a white rose which she affixes to her outfit. It's showtime so Tallulah heads out leaving Lazlo alone. Hearing a sound, he starts poking around the room to find from where it came when he is attacked by a pig-man. This chimera has the body of a man and a porcine head with a very irate expression on its face. It lunges at him squealing mad.

Our heroes The Doctor and Martha land at the feet of the Statue of Liberty with the New York City skyline before them. The nearly-complete Empire State Building stands out. (And like one of Pavlov's dogs, I scanned the scene for the World Trade Center.) Martha finds a newspaper on a nearby bench which gives the date as November 1, 1930. The paper's headline reads "Hooverville Mystery Deepens". And so our intrepid investigators are off to Central Park where the Hooverville in question is located to find out what is happening there.

They arrive as a fight breaks out and is quickly broken up by Solomon, the de facto leader of the homeless folks who call the place home. The Doctor looks to him for information and it is revealed that people have been mysteriously disappearing at night. That Solomon is black as are others at the Hooverville is a great testament to Russell T. Davies. Add Martha into the mix and you can clearly see another aspect of the show that has changed dramatically with its new incarnation. I recently read an article in which Davies criticized another program for not having enough people of color in the cast. While Doctor Who is arguably still very white bread, non-whites (and women too) are being given much more prominent roles. Back in the 80s, you might see a black guy playing a guard or some such role but that was it.

The action shifts to an upper floor of the Empire State Building where Mr. Diagoras, a man of no humble sartorial taste, is unsuccessfully trying to persuade a foreman to hasten the completion of the building's mast. Upon refusing to do so, Diagoras lets the guy meet with his "master" whom is summoned via an elevator. When the doors open, Dalek Caan is there with two pig-men in tow. The foreman is taken away for "the final experiment". A short time later, Diagoras is at the Hooverville trying to recruit workers to clear a sewer tunnel that has collapsed. The Doctor, Martha, Solomon, and a young man, Frank, volunteer. The four of them now wander the sewers. The Doctor stumbles upon a green thing which resembles a jellyfish. Continuing, they reach the point where the collapse was supposed to have taken place but there's nothing wrong - with the sewers, at least. To the side, a lone pig-man sits quietly against a wall. As The Doctor tries to communicate with it, a large group of them appear which gets everyone running for their lives. The scenes in the sewers are perhaps not as dark and moody as similar ones in The X-Files, but, combined with the story taking place in the 1930s, there's a spooky, almost Lovecraftian bent here. Wandering around in the dark and encountering strange mutant creatures is be all-too familiar to Cthulhu fans.

Diagoras has found a crew to finish the mast. He informs them that they are to attach some oddly familiar metal plates to the base of the mast ASAP. The plates are from a Dalek – the lower bit with the gold spheres on it. Dalek Caan then engages Diagoras in a brief conversation in which the Judas to the human race finds out that the Daleks lost their planet in a war. Dalek Caan is almost envious as it gives the closest thing to an encomium that a Dalek can give to another species. It notes the ability of humans to survive and the rebuilding New York throughout time. Diagoras is then taken away to meet Dalek Sec (pictured above). Upon meeting Dalek Sec, it orders that Diagoras be held for use in The Final Experiment.

Back in the sewers, the gang of four find a manhole through which they can escape. Unfortunately, Frank is the last to ascend the ladder and is captured by the pig-men. Emerging from backstage in the theatre, they are greeted by Tallulah who is brandishing a pistol. She demands to know what happened to Lazlo. The Doctor gets her to calm down and she tells him how Lazlo has been missing a couple weeks. Solomon heads back to the Hooverville to let the others know what happened to Frank. Meanwhile The Doctor then begins to jury rig a device to analyze the DNA of the green thing he found below.

Back in the Dalek lair underneath the Empire State Building, Dalek Sec lectures his fellow pepperpots by saying that their race must evolve in order to survive despite Dalek ideology which holds that humans are inferior and several previous Doctor Who stories in which Daleks bleat about he purity of their race. Dalek Sec's case opens up to reveal the mutant Kaled within. Diagoras is thrust forward and is enveloped by one of Dalek Sec's tentacles which drags him into the case and shuts tightly.

Looking on from the wings of the stage, Martha watches Tallulah's dance routine when she spies a pig-man at the other end and gives chase. In another room, The Doctor has pieced together a contraption which identifies the creature's DNA as having come from Skaro. He then hastily tries to find Martha and only to discover that she's been captured by a pig-man. Going once more into the sewers, he cannot convince Tallulah to stay behind so she follows him. They stumble upon Lazlo whose transmogrification into a pig-man was not completed. Fully cognizant of his horrible fate, he agrees to help The Doctor.

Back in Mutant Central, Dalek Sec isn't doing too well as smoke cascades from underneath its black casing. Dalek Jast injects Sec with what is probably a final dose of catalyst.

Lazlo leads The Doctor and Tallulah to a group of captives, which includes Martha, who are being sorted out according to intelligence by Daleks Caan and Thay. They stick their plungers at the face of a specimen and thissomehow scans brainwaves. One wouldn't normally see a toilet plungers as being ominous but there's just something irksome about this scene. The Daleks were created back in the 1960s as a mirror image of the Nazis and seeing the captives here lined up is more than vaguely reminiscent of those lines of people in the concentration camps.

The Doctor and Lazlo convince Tallulah to go back to the theatre for her own safety. As the captives begin marching, The Doctor sneaks into line and soon enough the group is marched to the Dalek lab. They look on in horror as the Dalek evolution comes to fruition. Dalek Sec's casing opens to reveal this guy:



"I am a Human Dalek. I am your future..."

I believe that this is the first story that takes place in America in a long, long time. The English actors do entirely plausible American accents with Miranda Raison's Tallulah having a particularly grating and over the top New York accent ala Fran Drescher. A crew was sent to New York to shoot footage of the city for backgrounds and so many of the scenes, although CGI'd, feature the real deal.

The story will be continued today with "Evolution of the Daleks". Being a two-parter, the story is allowed to gradually unfold instead of revelations jumping out at us. And I was genuinely surprised to see the Daleks in a mode that's a bit less menacing than we're used to. They're in retreat as opposed to going around threatening everyone with extermination. The new series has really been kind to the Daleks in that they're no longer merely mindless automatons hellbent on destruction. True, they still seek to kill and subjugate, but they've been fleshed-out, so to speak. This story treads similar ground to that of "Dalek" from the first series with the fusion of Dalek with human DNA which creates a hybrid. In addition, that the Daleks fought the Timelords in the Time War means that Daleks in the new series are cognizant that they are the last of their kind and we get to see them contemplate this fate. When encountering the Daleks, The Doctor must confront his status as the last of the Timelords, the rest having been killed in the Time Wars. This gives writers the chance to dig into his psyche a bit more and to give nuance to the character who faces a vast chasm of loneliness being the last of his kind.

It seems unlikely that The Doctor is actually the last Timelord. The show has introduced rogue Gallifreyans before - witness the Meddling Monk, The Master, Rani, and Professor Chronotis. And remember the proclamation of The Face of Boe from the previous story, "Gridlock", in which he tells The Doctor he is not alone. As with the Bad Wolf thing in the first series, the season is building up for something big in the finale. The individual stories certainly stand on their own but each season has an arc to it with little clues being dropped along the way. Some characters return as well and all of these things combined leave hints at an even larger meta-story unfolding. This method of getting at something bigger over the course of a season is something that the classic series flirted with during the latter part of Sylvester McCoy's tenure as the 7th Doctor but it has really come to fruition with the new series.

The Last Town Chorus - Wire Waltz

Last weekend I interviewed Megan Hickey of The Last Town Chorus. While I received my copy of Wire Waltz about a week ago, I haven't had time to write much about it until now.

When I first heard about Hickey and the lap steel guitar she plays, my initial reaction was one of novelty. Was it a send-up of country? Hawaiian music? Sacred steel? After hearing her music, I find that there is perhaps something lurking underneath layers that's akin to country but, on the surface, it is only the instrumentation that Wire Waltz has in common with that music. The title track opens the album and features the omnipresent lap steel and a lonesome fiddle but the sound here is more expansive than anything country. Hickey's voice draws Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval to mind and it lingers breathlessly on the lyrics. It's a slow song – almost mournful - and sets the tone for the rest of the album.

"You" follows. Just when it gets going, it comes to a crawl, perhaps mimicking the adventures of the lovelorn singer. With barely a pause, we are ushered into a cover of David Bowie's early 80s hit "Modern Love". I thought this an odd choice after seeing some photos of Hickey. They don't betray her 32 years in the least. Upon finding out her age, it made more sense - this is a song she heard as a kid on the radio. While the melody is instantly recognizable, her treatment of the music is nothing like the original with the aching steel guitar solo a highlight. Too bad it is cut so short. However there is some great soloing in "It's Not Over", the sparseness of which would make Pete Townshend proud. Hickey proceeds to cut into it with angular, dissonant bursts. Her singing makes the song part protest, part lamentation. There's a steely resolve as she asserts that a relationship has not ended. But, after the powerfully simplistic solo, she repeatedly intones "it's not over" as if it were a nursery rhyme.

The cascading notes of the lap steel alternate with washes of fuzz on "Boat", which is one of my favorites on the album. Hickey's playing orchestrates the drama here quite effectively and, when she sings "I want us to disappear in a wave", you can't help believe her. If she was pleading on the previous songs, then her desires here are tinged with a bit of hope. The youthful nostalgia of "Huntsville, 1989" is the lone song here that I really can't get my head around. The programmed percussion is a bit too rigid with the rim shots seeming a bit too much like modern country for my taste. "Wintering In Brooklyn" seems the most conventional song of the bunch as it skips along. It also features the closest thing to Hickey cutting loose on her instrument.

There is a very plaintive honesty about this album that attracts me to it. Hickey's voice cuts to the bone with its deep longing. Sonically, the music on Wire Waltz is rather sparsely populated but there's a certain lushness to it that reminds me of Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball which was produced by Daniel Lanois. The performances sometimes sound like they could easily become overwrought but they never do. Rather they tread a very raw landscape and manage to avoid drifting into self-effacing sentimentality.

Doctor Who - "Gridlock"

I'm a week behind in viewing and two weeks behind in reviewing this season of Doctor Who. Let's look at episode 3 - "Gridlock".

We begin with a couple in a futuristic VW van that flies instead of rolls along. Something attacks their hippie bus but calls to the police go unanswered so the van and its passengers are torn apart.

In the TARDIS, The Doctor offers another trip to Martha so she can go into the future as well as into the past. She asks to be taken to his home planet. Rather dolefully, The Doctor reminisces about Gallifrey's beautiful orange sky and the Citadel before saying that he doesn't want to return to his home planet. Instead he takes Martha to New New York (or more properly, New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York) on New Earth. If that sounds familiar, then it should. The Doctor has taken Martha back to a place where he'd also taken Rose. It's a rainy alley that is kind of like Android Row lite. Instead of food vendors and barkers hawking androids, there are shopkeepers proffering transdermal patches of mood-altering drugs.



We then cut to the Face of Boe who is being tended to by Novice Hame – two characters from last season's "New Earth". The Face intones, "He has arrived. Find him before it's too late." Hame grabs a gun and departs.

Back in that rain-soaked alley, a man and a woman waving pistols burst onto the scene and kidnap Martha. They slap a sleep patch onto her neck and put her inside their dingy VW van and take off. Returning to the alley, The Doctor finds out how to get to the expressway. He discovers that it's a vast cavern with rows and rows of thousands, if not millions, of those same vans just hovering there – stuck in gridlock.

Martha regains consciousness and finds out from her kidnappers, Milo and Cheen, that she was taken so that they could use the fast lane which requires 3 adult passengers. Their destination is now only 6 years away. Meanwhile The Doctor has taken to entering one a hover van and finds out from Brannigan, a cat person, that he and his human wife have traveled 5 miles in a dozen years. In a fun sequence, The Doctor jumps from van to van and lets himself into each one with his new sonic screwdriver. He encounters quite a few characters including a nudist couple. Reaching the van of a business man which hovers at the lowest level before the fast lanes begin, The Doctor sees that there are Macra down on the surface. These crab-like creatures were first seen in the series back in the 1960s and they feed off of gases deadly to humans. In this case, a giant cavern full of exhaust fumes. This is bad news because Milo is taking his Cheen and Martha down to the fast lane. They end up nearly getting killed by the massive pincers of the Macra.

Hame finds The Doctor and transports him to the room where she and the Face of Boe have been living. She explains that a virus from some of those patches – for bliss – killed everyone living on the surface of New Earth. The lower levels, including the expressway, were sealed off so as to save the folks down there. Boe is wired to the system and is able to keep the lower levels afloat but he is not powerful enough to open it up and free the people there. And so The Doctor jury rigs something which fails. Boe then expends the majority of his "life force" to get the system running. The giant doors atop the expressway open, the sunlight shines in, and everyone is free.

The Face of Boe is dying but it delivers the message it promised to in "New Earth". He tells The Doctor "You are not alone". This enigmatic phrase causes Martha to ask The Doctor to explain it. He refuses at first but then tells her about the Time War, that he's the last Time Lord, etc. Fin.

I enjoyed "Gridlock" quite a bit but it's one of those stories that suffers under the new series' format. Apart from having cheesy special effects, it would have benefited from the old format of three or four 25-minute episodes. As it stands, the revelation of what was tearing apart hover fans in the fast lane came too soon for me. In the classic series, this would have come much later allowing for the mystery to build up more. Similarly, the explanation of what happened to the surface dwellers came all at one. I think it would have been more effective for The Doctor to find everyone dead and been forced to find out what happened. Here, it all comes in one fell swoop which lessens the impact.

But, as I said above, it was still fun. The Doctor and Martha were separated for most of the episode and we got a chance to see The Doctor at his most intense. He is desperate not to lose Martha as he lost Rose. For her part, Martha has got spunk and is quite capable of taking care of herself. When the hover van she is in is being clawed at by the Macra, it is she who figures out that they are attracted to the movement of the van and that powering down would buy them some time. OK, so she proceeds to tell Milo and Cheen that The Doctor will save them. Nonetheless, she used her brains and showed some initiative. Just give her some time and she'll be more than capable of holding her own.

The specter of Rose still haunts The Doctor but it was played up less here than in the first two stories this season.

Did anyone notice in the first episode this season, "Smith and Jones", that, during a news clip, someone says, "All this just goes to prove Mr Saxon right"?

More About How God Is Not Great

Excerpt 2 of 3 from Christopher Hitchens' new book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is now up at Slate.

Search Terms

You know, I don't mind it when someone googles "demonic spell of priapism" and finds this blog but, when the search terms are "brenda konkel circumcision", I get worried. Come on. Whoever did this, fess up. You're in Madison. We know you're there.

"Buying the War"

Did anyone else watch Bill Moyer's Journal last night? Presumably some potential viewers were in the midst of TV Turn Off Week. The episode was "Buying the War" and it looked at the failure of the mainstream media to challenge the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq. Here's a clip from the program:



If/when you have more time, the program can be viewed in its entirety by going to this page.

Moyer interviews "Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of MEET THE PRESS; Bob Simon of 60 MINUTES; Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN; and John Walcott, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers." And don’t forget about Phil Donahue. In addition, media critics such as Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post have their say as well. There's also plenty of footage from right-wing talk shows featuring pundits such as William Kristol & Charles Krauthammer and administration officials.

Bob Simon's beat was the Middle East and he gives some interesting comments about perception within vs. outside of the United States. Landay and Isaacson, who actually dug into the stories with healthy skepticism from their position outside of the Beltway, are two of a handful of MSM journalists who bothered to do so. Rather, Russert, etc. issue one mea culpa after another for not having done their jobs properly. Donahue recounts his days with a talk show on MSNBC. His face shows up less than the others but his comments are more chilling. Executives ordered the producers of his show to have 2 conservative pundits for every liberal one. Perhaps most damningly, his show was yanked off the air for reasons disclosed when an internal memo was leaked. Donahue was described as "a tired, left-wing liberal out of touch with the current marketplace" and executives were worried that MSNCN might become "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." In other words, it would be bad for the bottom line to have a show which attempted to give equal time to both sides.

Reporters and pundits on the right whose voices were heard loudly and clearly from the front pages either refused or were unable to be interviewed: Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, conservative pundit William Kristol of The Weekly Standard, president of Fox News and former Nixon and Reagan strategist Roger Ailes, Washington Post columnist and Fox news commentator Charles Krauthammer, New York Times reporter Judith Miller, and Times political columnist William Safire.

"Buying the War" had numerous salient points. One that stuck out for me was that it's quicker and cheaper for TV news to hire a pundit as opposed to someone who actually has direct knowledge and experience about the subject at hand. While Fox had Kristol and Krauthammer making a case for invasion by citing aluminum tubes, Bob Simon of 60 Minutes instead called scientists, called people who understood the process of enriching uranium to comment on the tubes.

Another disturbing bit comes when we watch several conservative commentators parrot the WMD line over and over again. Then Linday from Knight-Ridder shows how he went to the UN website where the progress of the weapons inspectors was posted for anyone in the world with Internet access to see. Linday read the daily reports of the inspectors which detailed how no WMDs were found.

Almost everyone interviewed mentioned the pressure they felt back in the period between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq from what Isaacson termed the "patriot police". Questioning the Bush administration and their war plans was deemed unpatriotic and doing so drew fire from viewers, advertisers, and others. There was a genuine fear in the press to tow the line. Amidst all the apologetics from the journalists, media critic Normon Solomon voiced his view that it is during exactly such times of frenzy that the public, the country needs journalists to be skeptical and critical the most.

One question that's important to me that the show didn't really try to answer was, given the MSM's performance in the run-up to the invasion, why should people trust them ever again? I mean, do you, dear reader, trust any of these people? Of those interviewed, I want to single out Tim Russert. To paraphrase Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, "Russert – you're a pussy!" He doesn't ask tough questions very often and, when he does, he lets his guests get away with sidestepping them or circumlocution. There's a classic scene in "Buying the War" where the Bush administration leaks info to the NY Times. The very next day Cheney is on Russert's show and Timmy boy looks all tough because he's drilling the VP on whatever it was in the Times that Cheney probably gave his personal approval to releasing. "Oh Tim, you've got me there."

That William Kristol and his ilk remain staples of the conservative talk show circuit speaks volumes about the human psyche. For months on end, they wrote column after column in favor of invasion; they went on TV and foretold doom because Hussein had WMDs. And now in 2007 none were ever found. Yet these people remain credible in the eyes of millions. Cognitive dissonance reduction is powerful indeed.

American Cities That Best Fit Me

American Cities That Best Fit You::

80% Chicago

75% New York City

65% Los Angeles

65% Philadelphia

65% Washington, DC

Which American Cities Best Fit You?

And they didn't even ask if it was important to have Polish hotties around.

Spanking fetishes make men happier

Or so a new study says.

People who engaged in the habit were more likely to be sexually adventurous in other ways, like trying anal sex and phone sex, looking at internet pornography or using sex toys.

“These are people for whom sex is a hobby,” Dr Richters said.

They were no more likely to have suffered sexual difficulties, sexual abuse or coercion or anxiety than other Australians.

In fact, says Dr Richters, men into BDSM scored significantly better on a scale of psychological wellbeing than other men.

Hitchens: Religion Is Poison

Christopher Hitchens' new book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is now in stores. Slate is going to be posting three excerpts from it with the first having been put up today.

Getting Old

I looked at my cell phone for the first time in a few days today and saw that I had a voicemail. Checking the Received list, I saw that it was one that I'd left for myself. You see, last Friday I was testing my hoolie which records phone conversations in anticipation of my interview with Megan Hickey of The Last Town Chorus. So I call my voicemail intending to delete the message. I hit "1" to listen so I can then erase it but a funny thing happened. The message starts playing and I hear my name being said and my brain started to ponder who it was for half a second. "Ooh! A message for me! I wonder who this is from..."

Ye gods, I am getting old.

New Harry Potter Trailer

The Dulcinea pointed this out to me - the new trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Could use a bit more Hermione but otherwise it looks fun.

Blacks & Whites Allowed to Attend Prom Together

It's two thousand and fucking seven and only this year did the students at Turner County High School have a racially integrated prom. And you can bet your ass that some white parents wouldn't let their kids go to it.

Dear southerners - when you hear Yanks saying that Sherman didn't finish the job, this is the kind of shit that precipitates such comments.

Save Our Chocolate

The horror...the horror...

The federal Food and Drug Administration is proposing to redefine the very essence of chocolate and to allow big manufacturers such as Hershey to sell a bar devoid of a key ingredient — cocoa butter. The butter's natural texture could be replaced with inferior alternatives, such as vegetable fats. And consumers would never know.

Head over to Don't Mess With Our Chocolate for info on giving the FDA a piece of your mind.

Bill Moyers Writes For His Journal Once More

It's been 13 years since we last saw an episode of Bill Moyers' Journal but the show begins anew this week. (Wednesday at 20:00 for my fellow Madisonians.) Whether or not it will be "devastating" as this article suggests remains to be seen. But it ought to be interesting to see Moyers examine the media coverage during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Among the few heroes of this devastating film are reporters with the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. Tragically late, Walter Isaacson, who headed CNN, observes, "The people at Knight Ridder were calling the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and finding out, you know, that the intelligence is not very good. We should've all been doing that."

At the close, Moyers mentions some of the chief proponents of the war who refused to speak to him for this program, including Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire.

Be prepared for a lot of people accepting blame and then passing the buck.

Sir Doctor of TARDIS and the Queen of Afric

Reading this article about a report which says that college students aren't getting enough Shakespeare reminded me of the wonderful Doctor Who episode, "The Shakespeare Code" which aired a couple weeks ago. In turn, this reminded me of the fact that I haven't really written much about the new season which is already a quarter over. To wit:



The first episode of the new season was "Smith and Jones". David Tennant is still The Doctor but Rose is gone so we are introduced to his new companion, Martha Jones, pictured above. That she is the first black companion in the show's history demonstrates just how far Doctor Who has come since its lilywhite inception back in 1963. Shedding thoughts about the color of her skin, Martha proves to be a classic companion in the mold of Sarah Jane Smith. She proves from the get-go that she isn't just an ignorant human needed to ask questions so The Doctor can give exposition. And neither does Martha simply scream when put in peril waiting to be rescued as so many previous companions in the show. She is smart & curious and helps move things forward instead of being swept along by the tide of events.

"Smith and Jones" introduces us to Martha as we see her walking to work while talking on her cell phone/mobile. Her parents are separated and she's caught in the middle of the planning for a family event between an angry mother and a father who is seeing a blonde woman many years his junior. While this is perhaps a rather hackneyed way of providing some motivation for Martha to join the TARDIS crew, the scene itself was fast-paced and funny and she has to constantly hang up with one person to accept an incoming call from someone else. In just a couple minutes, we are introduced to Martha, her family, and their dysfunction. This taut, compact method of storytelling serves the series well since most of the stories now have to be fit into 45 minutes.

Honestly, this is the only things that approaches a major gripe with me regarding the new incarnation of the show. For the majority of the classic series, most stories consisted of 3 or 4 parts that were about 25 minutes each. You had a cliffhanger most weeks and a total running time of 75-100 minutes. There are two-parters these days but "Genesis of the Daleks" had 6 parts and clocked in at about two and a half hours. I sometimes miss how plots could unfold slowly allowing for peripheral characters to take on something approaching a life of their own and for the subterfuges of the bad guys to build up. But so it goes.

The plot of "Smith and Jones" begins with, as I noted above, Martha heading to work. In this case, it's a hospital where she is a student doing her intern work. A doctor is leading her and other interns around to patients and having the students try to make diagnoses. When one of the curtain is pulled aside, our Doctor is lying there in the bed and it's Martha's turn to diagnose his illness. She applies her stethoscope and is befuddled by the fact that there are two heartbeats. The Doctor winks at her and smiles.

Then it gets dark & cloudy and begins raining. The next thing you know, the hospital has been transported to the moon. Patients and staff alike are screaming and crying but Martha keeps her cool. One nurse begins hysterically crying that they'll get sucked into the vacuum of space but our intrepid companion knows that, if that were to happen, they and the oxygen in the building would have been sucked out immediately. Soon tall rocket-like ships land nearby and an army begins marching towards the building. The figures are big and bulky and their outfits are these black spacesuits which no doubt caused older fans to think they were the Sontarans. However, when one takes off his helmet, we meet this guy:



The guy on the left, I mean – a Judoon. In a nice bit of misdirection, we learn that they are looking for a non-human alien amongst the hordes of patients and medical staff. They do this by scanning the faces of the people and marking the humans with a black X on their hands. The addition of a marker squeaking as they draw the Xs was a funny little touch. In yet another bit of misdirection, it is revealed that it's not The Doctor they're looking for, but rather a kindly old woman, Ms. Finnegan, who is in fact a plasmavore who drinks the blood of the hospital's head honcho by tapping an artery with a straw. She is wanted for murder. The Judoon turn out not to be the bad guys but rather these almost amoral gun for hire.

Of course The Doctor ends up saving the day but not before losing a bit of blood to the plasmavore and having his sonic screwdriver get fried. The hospital is returned to Earth and Martha makes it to her family outing. This turns out horribly and The Doctor is there waiting for her when she spills out of a pub with her parents and siblings. He promises her just one trip in the TARDIS as a reward, of sorts, for having saved his life after his run-in with the plasmavore. But this isn't just The Doctor getting a new companion. There are moments where he refers to Rose and, when he tells Martha that she can go for just one trip, it's obvious The Doctor has affection for and misses his former companion.

This is an area that the new series excels in. In the classic series, most companion changes involved a stoic handshake and then The Doctor got on with fighting evil in the universe. But, as "School Reunion" showed, there's more to it than that for both The Doctor and his companions. I would also mention that the audio dramas delve into this as well. Adric's death is brought up by Nyssa during an argument with the 5th Doctor while the friendship between the 6th Doctor and Evelyn is almost riven in twain by the events in "Project: Twilight".

Overall, "Smith and Jones" was a fun way to get the new season going and introduce fans to a new companion.

Martha's first trip with The Doctor brings me to why I started writing about Doctor Who today in the first place. The second episode of the season has sees our heroes travel to the London of 1599 in "The Shakespeare Code" This was a really fun episode which had great appeal to me as an Anglophile and as someone who's familiar with Shakespeare. It also stands in a long line of Doctor Who stories such as "The Visitation" which show historical events panning out as they do because of The Doctor's interventions in human history..

We open with a fair maiden, Lilith, who is atop her balcony and being serenaded by a suitor from below. Using her womanly wiles, she lures him up to what he supposes is her boudoir but the man finds the implements of witchcraft scattered about the room. She kisses him and, upon pulling back, we see that she has turned into a witch. Two other witches appear which Lilith describes as her mothers and they descend upon the hapless man.

The TARDIS lands in the middle of a street and, upon walking out, Martha barely misses having the contents of a bucket (chamber pot?) being dumped on her. She asks The Doctor if it's safe to wander about citing the Grandfather Paradox. "You're not planning on killing your grandfather, are you?" asks The Doctor. "No," she replies. The issue of race comes up when Martha asks how the sight of a black woman in the late 16th century will go over. The Doctor reassures her that it won't be a problem and we see two other black women walking down the street unmolested. He remarks that 16th century London isn't too different from the 21st century version by pointing out someone removing some horse manure – "See – they recycle!" Soon enough they're off to The Globe where they take in a performance of Love's Labours Lost. Shakespeare himself comes out at the end to thank the audience whereupon we see Lilith up in a balcony in the audience with a voodoo doll. She causes him to inform the audience that the sequel, Love's Labours Won would be performed the following night. This obviously piques The Doctors interest. While the play is mentioned in the historical record, no known copy of it exists. And so they seek out The Bard.



They find him at an inn where The Doctor introduces himself as "Sir Doctor of TARDIS". The Bard is smitten with Martha from the moment he sees her. Shakespeare flirts with her and calls her a "Blackamoor lady" and "Queen of Afric". The playwright is clearly being portrayed as a rock star of his time. While it was humorous, the scene also indicates that the issue of race has not been forgotten with just an assurance from The Doctor. Our hero also tries out his psychic paper on The Bard who is immune to its effect. This is proof for The Doctor of Shakespeare's genius. However, Martha is not immune and I laughed aloud when she pointed out that it had "Dr. Martha Jones" on it.

Humor is also provided by brief soliloquies, a.k.a. – The Doctor averting his gaze from everyone else and talking to himself. He quotes Shakespeare often and The Bard tells him that he likes the turn of phrase. At one point The Doctor quotes Dylan Thomas and, when approval was forthcoming, he tells Shakespeare that it belongs to someone else. And of course there are the witches.



Macbeth was probably written sometime between 1603-1606. In this case, the witches are Carrionites who seek to open a portal to allow the rest of their race through to the Earth. And how? The play's the thing! Lilith uses witchcraft to control Shakespeare and has him end Love's Labours Won with an incantation which would open a portal to where the rest of the Carrionites are trapped. The play is staged and the closing lines spoken. Then all hell breaks loose. The Doctor gets Shakespeare to use his gift of words to utter a counter-incantation. At the end, he struggles and Martha suggests "expelliarmus" (from Harry Potter) which does the trick. As the portal closes, all the Carrionites are sucked into it along with all copies of the play thusly sealing its fate as a "lost" work.

The story ends with The Bard once more flirting with Martha. He even begins reading a poem he has written for her: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" That's about as far as he gets because a couple actors anxiously burst into the scene saying the Queen herself has arrived. Elizabeth I enters and immediately recognizes The Doctor as her "sworn enemy". For his part, The Doctor is taken aback and claims he's never met her but is keen on finding out why she would have him dead. He and Martha dash back to the TARDIS just in the nick of time.

"The Shakespeare Code" is heavily-laden with CGI effects but perhaps the best visual is The Globe itself. The show was given permission to shoot at the modern reconstruction of the theatre which opened in 1997 and the scenes there look wonderful. Besides the visuals and just being a whole boatload of fun, the episode continued some of the character development of "Smith and Jones". There's a scene where The Doctor and Martha are given a room for the night which has but a single small bed. The Doctor lies down and pensive stares at the ceiling as he tries to get his brain around what's happening. Completely innocently, he invites Martha to share the bed with him. She takes this as meaning some amorous tidings are going to come her way but, when they are not forthcoming and The Doctor laments that Rose is not around to provide some insight, she angrily blows out the candle next to the bed. This whole I-miss-Rose thing was not overwrought, thankfully, and I can say having seen episode 3, that this will probably be coming to a close soon.

I know that there are fans out there who think that Martha is being modeled closely upon Rose. Perhaps a bit too closely for their tastes. I don't see this as being unfair but I prefer to give it a little time. Martha is a medical student whereas Rose, if I recall correctly, opted out of higher education. Rose has the street smarts whereas Martha is more educated. Leela vs. Romana, anyone? We'll just have to wait and see how it all pans out.

If you're not keen on downloading the series, then all you have to do is get cable and wait until July when series 3 begins airing on the Sci-Fi Channel.

On the Big Screen

While I will write something about the new season of Doctor Who later, I just have to say the watching it on our new 56" digital TV in surround stereo is fucking awesome! And tomorrow is a Dalek episode!!

The Doctor (to William Shakespeare): I'm Sir Doctor of TARDIS.

Shakespeare (referring to Martha): More to the point, who is your black-a-moor lady?

I must also admit that LOST looked really sweet on it too. We watched it on Wednesday night on ABC's digital channel. The panoramas of the island were absolutely gorgeous. The colors were so rich and the picture so sharp. For instance, Kate's freckles were much more visible. As soon as Becca chooses and hangs curtains, we'll screen our first porn.

Blogging The Great War: Part 1 - A Peace That Wouldn't Last

(Introduction)

I was taught the usual stuff in school about how World War I began. You know - it started with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian (Hapsburg) Empire, on 28 June 1914. While his death was ostensibly the cause of the war, after having done some reading and watching, it is perhaps better thought of as a catalyst. I mean, The Great War didn't just arise from a vacuum. Indeed, as we shall see, war didn't break out for a month afterwards.

The documentary I've been watching, The First World War, begins by looking at the state of affairs in Europe immediately prior to that fateful day in June that led Gavrilo Princips, a Bosnian Serb, to kill Ferdinand. It focuses on the tensions and downright hatred between the Hapsburgs and Serbia, which was an independent state at the time. But in his The First World War, historian John Keegan takes a broader view, both in time and space. So let's pull back from southeastern Europe for a moment.

In his first chapter, Keegan describes something I didn't expect – a virtual Pax Europa. Age-old tensions were present (Huns and Slavs had never gotten along too well), to be sure, but in the summer of 1914 the countries of Europe and Russia as well were in a state of economic interdependence that had never been seen previously. Populations were booming and the spread of empires in Africa and Asia meant that markets, both internal and external, were vastly increasing in size. The introduction of electricity and the automobile boosted industrialization. Steamship and rail were moving goods further and faster while the nascent telecommunications technology was, as we often hear about the Internet today, making the world smaller. The financial institutions and economies of European countries were dependent upon one another as never before.

This interdependence also led to cooperation. With the scale of international commerce ever increasing, bodies were established to standardize transactions. The gauge of rails for trains was standardized in Europe, for instance. (Though Russia, for some reason, just had to have a larger gauge.) Countries got together to allocate the newly-revealed airwaves so as not to interfere with each other's broadcasts. I mean, if you're a German, you don't want your broadcast of the Kaiser extolling bier und oompah music to suddenly cut out and be replaced with some French guy explaining how to make quiche. And the idea of stamped mail was born as well so all the new middle-class tourists could send postcards home.

Outside of commerce, countries got together to check the spread of disease and even regulate the sale of liquor and drugs. The countries of Europe also grew together culturally: "Europe's university graduates shared a corpus of thought and knowledge and, tiny minority though they were, their commonality of outlook preserved something recognizable as a single European culture." Perhaps most surprising to me was that in 1899, Tsar Nicholas II convened an international conference to limit armaments and to establish an international court at The Hague. My surprise is certainly born of ignorance but also of the knowledge of what was to come. A massive, bloody war is on the horizon yet countries are at peace and even talking about a neutral setting for settling disputes. What the hell happened?


(A larger map can be found here.)

Turning back to the political and that map above, let's start with Serbia. Serbia was part of the Ottoman Empire starting in the mid-15th century until 1876 when the Serbs drove the Turks out. In 1978 the Treaty of Berlin gave international recognition to Serbian independence. While Bosnia was also freed from the Ottoman Empire at this time, the treaty ceded the country to Austro-Hungary. The Hapsburgs, Russia, and the Ottomans all wanted control of the Balkan peninsula. Add to this the fact that Germanic peoples looked down upon Slavs and second class human beings and you have a situation fraught with tension.


(Some Serbian gentlemen taking a stroll.)

Serbia wanted the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as it encompassed many lands of Slavic peoples. Though a part of the empire, Slavs held almost no power within it. Many Serbs held as the ultimate goal a unification of Slavic countries into a single state – Yugoslavia. Ethnic kinship meant that Russia was sympathetic to the Serbian cause. Looking at the map, you'll see that Russia and Serbia are both purple. But so is France. This is because it and Russia began an alliance in 1882 and one upshot of this was that, should one country be attacked, the other would come to its aid. You can see where this is going.


(Emperor Franz Josef of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.)

The German and A-H empires are green. The two had common interests, common racist assumptions, and common ethnicity. Along with Italy, they formed the Triple Alliance. Ignoring the map for a second, understand that Belgium and the UK were basically neutral prior to the war.

Moving back to Eastern Europe, racial tensions flared within the A-H Empire in the first part of the 20th century. There were nationalist demonstrations in Vienna in 1905 and riots in the streets of Budapest in 1912, for example.


(Quelling the riots.)

Sitting here in 2007, it's easy to look back and see this situation as one fated to lead to war. But this wasn't necessarily so at the time as nationalism and ethnic strife do not necessarily equate to war. Keegan notes Norman Angell and his book The Great Illusion in which the British author noted the futility of a war in Europe. (Jean Renoir's classic 1937 film, The Grand Illusion was named in tribute to the book.) Conflict would cause a massive disruption to international credit so the powers that be had plenty of motivation to avoid it. And, if war did break out, it would be short-lived to minimize economic damage for everyone. Keegan quotes a speech Angell gave on 17 January 1912 entitled "The Influence of Banking on International Relations":

…that there must be confidence in the due fulfillment of mutual obligation, or whole sections of the edifice crumble, is surely doing a great deal to demonstrate that morality after all is not founded upon self-sacrifice, but upon self-interest, a clearer and more complete understanding of all the ties that bind us the one to the other. And such clearer understanding is bound to improve, not merely the relationship of one group to another, but the relationship of all men to all other men, to create a consciousness which must make for more efficient human cooperation, a better human society.

Reading this I found myself rooting for peace. I guess my brain was somehow able to ignore the fact that the fate of the world in 1914 was sealed long ago.

Black Gold

Black Gold, a movie about the struggles of Ethiopian coffee growers, will be screened on 30 April from 6-8PM at the Two Degrees Coffeeshop. It is located inside A Room of One's Own Feminist Bookstore.

The folks at Just Coffee are co-sponsoring the event.

On the Gramophone

This week at my podcast I feature The Decemberists. The show is their performance from Luther's Blues here in Madison on 21 September 2004.

The Gift of Second Site

Whether or not you agree with John McNamara's assertion that Willy Street Co-op members should vote no to a second site, you have to admit that he's right when it comes to what he labeled "propaganda". Here's what he wrote:

Lately, the uttering of management and the board seem like so much propaganda (keep in mind that they all get a significant discount for their food, so maybe they are guilty of not really knowing how much things cost). Recently I visited the 400 member People’s Grocery in Toledo, Ohio. The feel of the place was so incredibly different. It felt like a coop, not the mega-mart that Willy Street feels like. The General Manager ran the cash register. They only time that I see the Coop’s management staff is at the Crystal Corner (often with the GM holding court) after work or before a board meeting (not that there is anything wrong with that--in fact, I admire their choice of taverns). I have never seen the GM on the floor of the store!
The ballot area only has positive statements about the second site. This, in my mind, is a violation of the Cooperative principle of Education and Democracy. How can members make an informed choice if they are only offered management’s talking points through the mouths of directors?

I think the last bit is the most relevant here. I have the ballot sitting here right in front of me and it seems like management considers the second site to be a foregone conclusion. Just as the ballot area at the store only has positive statements about a second site, so it goes with the ballot itself. General manager Anya Firszt and Opportunities Committee Member Ingrid Rothe both get considerable space in which to express their support for the measure but no arguments opposed are given room. Firszt writes, "I encourage you to become informed about the issue". Well, if McNamara is right and the ballot area in the store has nothing but comments in favor, what is the best way to become informed about the other side of the story? (Manufacturing consent, anyone?) If you do become informed and decide to vote against the second site, the ballot itself has space for you to explain your deviation from the management-approved position. Just don't make a go of trying to be nuanced like McNamara. The ballot gives but you a line about 3" long. (Which I now see that McNamara pointed out.)

Honestly, I don't shop at the co-op much anymore and this is for a multitude of reasons. One is that I no longer work downtown. When I did, the co-op was on the way home and so it was convenient. Now that I work on the far west side, it is less so. Another is that my tastes and cooking habits have changed. I found out that the co-op was not the optimal place to shop for exploring Polish and German cuisines nor for going about recreating medieval recipes from hundreds of years ago. To be sure, the co-op was great for certain ingredients – most vegetables, barley, butter, et al, but not for many others. A large aisle of potato chips and other organic junk food to the contrary, there seems to be an unwritten rule at the co-op which states that non-Western cuisines, medicine, and ways of living are, in general, better than those of the West. There's a distinct lack of ethnic foods that aren't from the East; countless herbal supplements from an industry that has neither to prove the safety or efficacy of their products which are purported to be ancient remedies from the mysterious past of some Eastern country; plus there's lectures and demonstrations on varieties of homeopathy.

Regarding the ethnic food selection, I take that as a matter of course. No big deal – they're just catering to members' preferences and I cannot begrudge them for this. As far as promoting homeopathy, I don't have that great of a problem with it but I do hope that people don't forsake Western medicine completely. The only time I really have a major problem with homeopathy is when it comes to herbal supplements. I think the co-op ought to be ashamed of its promotion of them. When Wal-Mart hawks the stuff, consumers can see that the motive is profit. But when the co-op sells it, there's an endorsement of a certain lifestyle and ideology behind it. And I view it as one that denigrates science and paints a false picture of the manufacturers of these supplements. For starters this is the area in which the co-op most heavily endorses the fallacy that because something is "natural", it therefore must be good. Arsenic occurs naturally in the environment but it is hardly good for human consumption. Secondly, I think it makes hypocrites of the co-op. For all the bitching about agricultural mega-corporations, herbal supplement makers are hardly different. Smaller than ADM? Of course. But these supplements are not made by mom-and-pop apothecaries. The makers are corporations that have lobbyists making sure that the FDA stays off their backs so that they do not have to prove the safety or efficacy of their products. They can slap whatever herbal concoction they want into a pill and sell it as long as they don't say it cures or is intended to treat a specific ailment. Thusly the labels on the bottles are almost pure puffery. If Kraft started marketing food with no FDA oversight, you can bet the co-op community would cry foul – and rightly so. But when it comes to "natural" products, companies get a pass.

Along similar lines is the co-op's campaign to instill fear into its patrons regarding genetically modified foods. This can best be seen best by the use of the term "frankenfoods" in the store and in the newsletter. Last year when E.O. Wilson gave a speech here in Madison, someone asked about such foods. When he replied that he thought they could be part of the solution to global hunger, there was an audible groan from the audience, many of whom were, no doubt, co-op members. Because the evil hand of humankind was involved, they are deemed "unnatural" and therefore are bad. This is not to say that we couldn't stand to learn more about these foods but using a derogatory name serves only to cease discussion & investigation. Hence the manager's comment noted by McNamara - folks will eat this "crappy food and get cancer".

I don't shop at the co-op much anymore out of lack of convenience but also out of ambivalence. On the one hand, they do have wonderful products and I appreciate the emphasis on organics and stuff from local growers and producers. Cooking classes, music – there is in fact much to be positive about. But, the co-op encourages consumers to look at the big picture when it comes to foods they eat. Where did it come from? How much gas was used getting it to the store? Were chemicals used during growing or processing? That there are many consumers who considering these questions is something the co-op can justifiably be proud of.

But when I look at the big picture I also see that shopping there means supporting Luddites, of a sort, who engage in fear/smear tactics. It also means giving tacit support to "alternative medicine" and the herbal supplement industry which, to me, means that I'm lending support to snake oil salesmen.

Plus the place is really goddamn expensive.

What Are the Mi-go Up To?

So wondered a Cthulhu fan when confronted with this:



This hexagon is above Saturn's north pole. Now, before anyone thinks this is the work of Richard Hoagland, let me assure this is from NASA.

Cthulhu Pet

So simple, even an acolyte can do it!

"State failing to properly manage costly computer upgrades"

Or so says or so says a report from the Legislative Audit Bureau. I bet no state IT worker saw this coming...

The state has failed to properly oversee several complex, troubled computer projects, which are expected to cost taxpayers some $292 million, a legislative audit has found.

Since late 2003, the state agency charged with monitoring these projects across state government hasn't done so because it was consumed with dealing with its own boondoggles, according to the report released today by the Legislative Audit Bureau. Those included an effort to consolidate backroom computers called servers that could run as much as six years past its original deadline of May 2006.

See also this article.



(/sarcasm)

Battle in Heaven

If spending hours and hours at the Wisconsin Film Festival last week wasn't enought, last night I watched Battle in Heaven (Batalla en el cielo), a film by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas. I'd read some very positive comments about it when it played in Chicago a few months ago and so I was eager to check it out for myself.



Battle in Heaven begins with a close-up of a man's scruffy face. His blank expression and the absence of any sound betrays nothing. The camera slowly moves down over his bare chest and plump belly. Soon the long locks of a woman's hair move into frame and we can see that she is performing oral sex. We stay locked in this shot for a brief time before the camera gracefully moves in and around to the right. It closes in on the area below the man's waist. Suddenly the scene cuts and our view is from behind the man. Again, the camera begins moving in and around until we see the beautiful young woman slowly fellating the man's penis. Her eyes are shut and the scene is almost solemn. Moving in further, the woman turns her face towards the camera until it fills the screen. Opening her eyes, she stares at us for several seconds. Then black.

Aside from the graphic oral sex, this opening prepares us for the rest of the film with its slow camera movement and lingering shots. We are also introduced to the main characters – Marcos and Ana. We next see Marcos with his also plump wife propped up against a bright blue wall in a sterile, noisy environ. An irritating beep drones in the background as chatting people walk by. They have a small area staked out to sell snacks and nick-knacks in a corridor of a subway stop. Both of their faces are blank as they follow the commuters walking by them. The dialogue is sparse but we learn that a woman named Viky has lost her baby. Soon Marcos must leave for the airport.

Marcos meets Ana there. She is from a wealthy family and he is her chauffeur. Despite (because of?) her family's standing, Ana works as a prostitute at a brothel. Marcos takes her there and she offers to set him up with one of the ladies. "Fatso can't get it up," one of the women says, "He is asking for you," meaning Ana. She goes upstairs to find Marcos removing the condom and getting dressed. Sitting down next to him and asks what's wrong. He tells her that he and his wife kidnapped a baby earlier in the day and that it died. Ana lays back on the bed and the camera glides over her flat belly up to her face and pauses on it. The camera loves Ana or her body, at least and this kind of shot is repeated later in the film when she and Marcos are walking down the sidewalk. A man in a wheelchair being pushed by a nurse unexpectedly appears in front of them and we get a shot from the man's point of view. The camera shows us Ana's belly once again and it slowly moves up to her face again. In these shots, it's as if the camera is caressing her.

Contrast this with how Marcos, man grappling with the pangs of guilt and interminably lost in thought, is treated. There are several scenes which resemble the end of The Passenger. Take the one after Ana and Marcos have sex upstairs in an anonymous apartment. We voyeuristically look at them through a window and then the camera turns towards the urban landscape of Mexico City. It does a full 360 and returns to the characters still in the same position they were in when the shot began. Just as with Marcos' thoughts, the camera wanders and he gets lost from view. But, just as he is found again as the camera movement brings him back into the frame, so too does his mind return.

Blood is shed near the end of the film but I felt that Marcos finally found himself. It wasn't a happy reclamation of his mind and heart, but at least his tragedy came to an end. The very end of the film is a mirror of how it began but with one crucial difference – he smiles.

WI Film Festival - Cork n' Bottle String Band: The Ken's Bar Story

If Cork n' Bottle String Band: The Ken's Bar Story ever makes its way outside the friendly confines of Madison, the opening mock newsreel showing the band as USOers circa 1942 keeping American wartime spirits high will serve as a good introduction to folks unfamiliar with Madison's original slapstick bluegrass band. The movie started out as a video scrapbook of the CBSB's six-year run at the now-defunct Ken's Bar off the Square on Butler Street. It ended up as a feature-length bit of nostalgia and tribute to the power of music, friends, and beer. I saw CBSB at Ken's a few times back in 1997/98 when I lived not to far from the liquor store which gave the group its name and the archival footage and photos brought back some good memories.

The band's genesis is at the aforementioned liquor store where a few of the future band members worked and the rest shopped. Spruce Tree Music was next door and so bluegrass was an oft-covered topic. On New Year's Eve 1995, the guys decided that they'd form a bluegrass band. This necessitated not only obtaining instruments, but also learning how to play them. With the assistance of bartender Jeremy Smith, the band landed a gig at Ken's Bar on Wednesday nights which would last until November 2002 when Ken's closed. The allure was being able to get together with friends once a week to have some fun – and drink free beer. Did I mention that the guys like beer? I think every shot with a band member in it had them drinking the stuff except when guitarist David Landau is being interviewed as he drives around town. Even then, a can could have been in the cup holder just out of the frame.

As the members' abilities on their instruments grew, so did the crowds at Ken's. The first gig attracted a few stragglers but by the end of Ken's, the joint was packed beyond the reach of any safety code. There were countless regulars and some of them appear in the movie while even more were in the audience Saturday night. No doubt many viewers either saw themselves or at least someone they knew in the old photos or grainy footage from Ken's. The band members told many a story such as the time some hippies got their dreadlocks stuck on a newly varnished wall or when mandolinist Greg Dierks kicked a particularly annoying fan that was standing a bit too close. But from the occasional gasp or whispered comment it seemed like there were several audience members who had tales of their own to add to the story. They were an integral part of the Ken's experience too, after all.

Country music historian and WORT DJ Bill Malone adds some commentary and it was especially funny to hear the author of the definitive book on country music opine on the band one moment only to see them do Bluegrass TV Cribs (one of a few staged sequences) the next. For the record, I swallowed my gum laughing during that scene. But aside from comedy, the CBSB became great musicians. Featured were some great performance footage including "Big New", "Old Joe Clark", and "Pig In a Pen". "The Auctioneer" sung by Landau as if he were doing one of those old Federal Express commercials drew a large round of applause and cheers from the audience.

Cork n' Bottle String Band: The Ken's Bar Story has a built-in appeal for fans of the band but it should also find an audience with general music lovers and beer drinkers too.

WI Film Festival - Radio On

Radio On from 1979 was recently restored by the British Film Institute. Directed by Christopher Petit but co-produced by Wim Wenders, the shadow of the latter's existential style looms large over the film. Taking place in late 1970s England, it wallows in the decaying landscape that birthed that bit of nihilism known as punk rock.

A marvelous handheld shot opens the black & white film with the camera creeping up and into an apartment. We catch a glimpse of a man's legs in the bathtub but the camera soon moves on and meanders throughout the flat. At one point it stops on a piece of paper affixed to the wall which has some writing on it. It begins: "We are the children of Fritz Lang and Werner von Braun…" The shot returns to bathroom with the lifeless figure in the tub and the radio sitting on the ledge.

We finally meet the film's protagonist, Robert, who is a DJ. He's a silent and dour figure. When his wife (or girlfriend?) leaves him, it seems to barely register with him. His demeanor barely changes when he learns of his brother's death which sends him on a road trip to Bristol to find out what happened. Preparing for the journey involves having lots of road music and we see him open an envelope that contains a trio of tapes from Kraftwerk. Music is important in this movie. It has one life when there's tune playing on the car's stereo and other in its absence which usually means near-silence. There's a scene in which Robert is driving around and, when the camera is in the car, we hear the music cranking. When the scene cuts to a viewpoint outside, the silence is almost deafening. Music seems to be how Robert navigates his workaday world and adds color to its greys.

This is a road movie but one that most Americans will find odd. Robert picks up a hitchhiker. Without a job or hope, the man joined the army only to desert. And a young Sting plays an aspiring musician living in a trailer behind a gas station whose hopes of making a go at the music business seemed to have been dashed long ago. All of the encounters Robert has end up being dead ends. These people are like the abandoned factories that Robert drives by on his way to Bristol.

When Robert finally gets to his brother's apartment, he finds that he had been living with a woman and she is not the least bit interested in so much as talking to him. There are no remains, no items left behind for him to take home. His goal turns out to be just another dead end.

I enjoyed the cinematography and the film's slow, quiet pace even if I did get a bit bored with repeated shots of Robert brooding as he looks out the window. Being a big fan of music myself, I appreciated not only the soundtrack itself (David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Robert Fripp, Devo, et al) but the use of music in the film. It seemed to breathe life into the lifeless and give a sense that there's something beyond the dull, drab landscape of the film's visuals.

Although I think one can certainly get something out of Radio On without knowing anything about what was happening at the time in England, but I feel I got more out of it knowing about such things as the factory closings, IRA bombings, and the "Protect and Survive" pamphlets & films which instructed citizens on what to do in case of a nuclear attack which were produced at the time. Knowing about these things helped me understand not only the bleak terrain passing by through the car windows, but also the sullen landscape in Robert's head. While knowledge of modern English history helps in understanding Radio On, there are certainly enough universal ideas and feeling here for everyone to understand the ennui.

WI Film Fest - Cinematographer Style

Film geeks and curious onlookers filled room 4070 of Vilas Hall yesterday for the showing of Cinematographer Style, a film which looks at, as the name implies, cinematographers and their craft. If you've read this blog before, then you know that I fall into the former camp. I get all excited thinking about the legend that Gregg Toland carried a strip of film in his pocket demonstrating a shot with a depth of field from one inch in front of the camera to infinity. And so I was really looking forward to this film. The Dulcinea accompanied me and, although she had taken an intro to film class at MATC last year, I think she was tagging along more to be with her geeky boyfriend than for any interest in film.

When a movie begins with a shot of long-time Bernardo Bertolucci collaborator Vittorio Storaro holding a light bulb, I know I'm going to like it. And I did. Interviews with one hundred and ten cinematographers were utilized to give viewers a sense of how they do their job which, as one of them noted, was both a craft and an art. Veterans such as Storaro and Haskell Wexler were along side of newcomers like Matthew Libatique, best-known to me through his work with Darren Aaronofsky.

The film begins with the directors of photography introducing themselves and one of them was from Eau Claire. There were funny anecdotes about how they got into the business and lots of nebulous takes on how these people create their own unique visual styles. Storaro chimed in with his customary metaphysics of light & energy while others remained a bit more pragmatic by describing how they read scripts repeatedly and looked to artists such as Monet for inspiration.

Intended for a wide audience, Cinematographer Style largely avoided technical terms but there was a nice sequence with Roger Deakins who extolled the virtues of wide angle lenses and their more "natural" perspectives. Part of the scene was shot with a very long (telephoto) lens while the other was done with a shorter (wide angle) lens and the audience could see the difference for themselves. Along similar lines, there was Storaro and his light bulb. He showed how mood was created depending on where the bulb was placed around his head. And his metaphysics of color was demonstrated onscreen as the shot had a blue tint when he spoke about his use of the color in The Conformist. Another highlight was hearing one of the interviewees give a brief encomium for focus pullers.

Perhaps the most important thing a non-film geek can get from the film is that cinematographers have a huge role in making what audiences see on the screens at their local mulitplex. The relationship between the director and cinematographer is described as a marriage by one person. DPs don't just point and click, they craft scenes very precisely. Not only do they do so on a technical level so that the film is exposed correctly, but they also create elements of scenes that help tell the story in ways that the dialogue cannot. For example, the angle at which a person is shot and the interplay of light & shadow all direct the viewer's feelings towards the characters. That filmmaking is a collaborative process was also illustrated by comments from a few of the DPs about how they get together with the production designer to make sure the sets and costumes are just right.

If I had any complaints it was that I would have liked to have seen more of the demonstrations that I mentioned above. Film is a visual medium so show us, don't just tell us. A decision had been made not to show any excerpts from the films these folks had shot so illustrating the comments as I described is helpful to a lay audience. I know that The Dulcinea appreciated them.

There was a Q&A session after the showing with a gent whose name I cannot recall (sorry!) and someone asked about the paucity of women who were interviewed. The answer was that this is an accurate representation of the membership of the American Society of Cinematographers. One woman's work that I am going to keep an eye out for is Amy Vincent. Knowing that she worked on Natural Born Killers and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events piques my interest. Her latest is Black Snake Moan.

Walking out of the theatre, The Dulcinea remarked that she enjoyed Cinematographer Style much more than she thought she would and that she learned quite a bit. And so the film accomplished what it set out to do on at least one person.

The Selfish Gene - The Grand Masquerade

Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage?
~~~~~Erasmus


The Grand Masquerade is the sophomore effort by Madison's The Selfish Gene. The press release notes that album's lyrics involve "Orwellian concepts of deception, false identity, and doublespeak" and so the title implies that we mortals (we Americans?) don masks to hide ourselves from our fellow men. Musically the album is a bit of sonic alchemy with the band having mined the classic rock vein for substances to manipulate. While many influences are obvious, it rarely degenerates into being a copy of the original. Had The Grand Masquerade been released 30 years ago, folks would no doubt be talking about the melodicism of the first side and the more disparate and more somber second.

"A Grand Masquerade", which kicks things off, is a short string-laden prelude which builds to a climax amidst flailing backwards tape loops. "Weight of Light" is the first proper song and it opens with a bit of strumming that sounds like a lonely beacon struggling to be heard in the silence. Once the tune gets going, it turns into a pop song replete with a big build-up to the chorus. It runs the risk of sounding bombastic but manages to snare just the right amount of drama. The album's theme is evident from the get-go with the line "And our world, rarely viewed in true color".

"Overboard" is based around a perambulating guitar riff from Matthew Allen and the song features the band's wonderful vocal harmonies. (Three of the four members contribute their voice.) The admonishment "They're watching you" is contradicted in the next song, the Beatles-esque "Autopilot" which notes, "So sad, lost all surveillance". The more I listen to it, the more I love "Bad About It". The music has a touch of menace but it's almost light-hearted because the song's melody is so catchy. Plus Eric Andraska's nimble bass work here is a real treat.

Moving to the second side of the album, we encounter "Evolver" which is a flattering stab at late-period Electric Light Orchestra. Reviews often note a prog rock influence on the band's music but it's not really until "Bidding War" that this takes centerstage. The song would have almost sounded at home on Jethro Tull's Benefit. Also of note is the singing which is grittier with a hint of mania that recalls Van der Graaf Generator's Peter Hammill. "Archipelagos" opens with a fat drum beat clashing with synthesizers. It settles in a groove with rap-like singing. The guitar riffing is noticeably absent in the verses with sustained notes coloring the soundscape. "Foxhole" begins with the sound of howling wind as someone trudges along. A door opens and the footsteps continue down a hall until yet another door opens. Then a circus-like organ cuts in. I was reminded once more of the influence of The Beatles, specifically "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite". But instead of describing a circus, the lyrics vaguely invoke war and, more broadly, alienation. At the end of the song, the narrator is shot (or was the wound self-inflicted?), with his/her brains splattering on the wall. The backwards tape looping from the opening of the album returns for a chaotic finale as our victim walks toward the light.

Respite is found in the closer, "Wonderfall". It's a bit of sing-a-long on acoustic guitar with tambourine that ends with the hopeful line, "Give it a little more time."

The Grand Masquerade shows that The Selfish Gene's reach exceeds their collective grasp. "Archipelagos" was the low point for me with its attempt to sound current amidst all the tributes to 1970's touchstones. But the high points are numerous. These guys have a great ability to craft songs which are blatantly catchy yet have enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. Plus there's a certain exuberance here that's hard to pin down. The playing is solid throughout and the vocal harmonies are one of the band's great strengths, especially on "Idioum" which recalls the layered interlude in Yes' "South Side of the Sky". With all the diverse influences, one can easily imagine the band in the studio adding a bit of this and a touch of that until they had taken their rough ideas and transmogrified them into gold.

The Grand Masquerade will be released on 1 May and the album's release party is tonight at the Orpheum.

It's Happiness: A Polka Documentary

After stopping for Nepali food and some ice cream from the Chocolate Shoppe, it was off to the Historical Society on Saturday night for the first of two music-related films - It's Happiness: A Polka Documentary. It had been almost a year since I first wrote about the film and I was fired up to finally see it. The lecture hall was jam-packed and there were several folks clad in the yellow t-shirts emblazoned with the film's logo. No doubt some of them were featured in the film. I was reminded of seeing another documentary about Wisconsin at last year's festival - Triviatown. That screening too had a joyous atmosphere as a group of cheeseheads were going to witness their own at play. The filmmakers gave a brief intro and the lights went down.

Our eyes were assaulted with scenes from an instructional video on how to dance the polka which brought many a laugh. Interspersed with the opening credits were shots of people laughing, drinking, and dancing as well as commentary from folks such as polka legend Jimmy Sturr. Amidst the scenes of happiness was more sober commentary about how many consider polka to be a joke and that the accordion just isn't sexy. The struggle to get this musical embodiment of happiness into the public consciousness is one of the core elements of the film.

With the credits done, the scene shifts to Milwaukee and Art's Concertina Bar. We see shelves lined with concertinas and a crowd enjoying some live music. The owner, Art Altenburg, gets in on the action by lining up a row of liquor bottles and playing along with a pair of drum sticks. Watching the bar's patrons laugh and dance, the sense of communal revelry drips off the screen.

A couple familiar faces (familiar to me, anyway) make an appearance here too. UW folklore professor Jim Leary chimes in humorously and says that the polka was a Czech misinterpretation of a Polish folk dance. Rick March, the Traditional and Ethnic Arts Coordinator of the Wisconsin Arts Board, is also given some screentime. (Leary and March collaborated on the radio series "Down Home Dairyland".) The pair were used sparingly in the film giving the focus over to non-academic fans. But don't be fooled. I've met Prof. Leary and heard him speak and he's anything but a dispassionate observer of Wisconsin folk culture – it runs in his veins.

We briefly meet Greg Durst, a record collector with the largest collection of vinyl in the state and a huge polka fan, before being whisked off to meet John Pinter and the Wisconsin Polka Boosters. At a membership meeting, Pinter notes the group's low membership numbers and that most of the members are retired folks. The film perhaps lingers on Pinter's absentmindedness a bit too long, such as when he pulls his minivan out of his driveway with the side door still open. But it's his single-mindedness in promoting polka which is given centerstage. We also meet Vi Bergum, who lobbies to get polka taught in Wisconsin's schools.

With Milwaukee's ethnic neighborhoods changing, polka has moved out of taverns and into festivals such as Polish Fest and Pulaski Polka Days. Here we meet younger polka enthusiasts as well as some older, rowdier party people. We're also introduced to the invention of one woman, the Shot Ski. It's a ski with holes drilled into it to accommodate shot glasses so that multiple people can swig at the same time. The film introduces us to many colorful characters who are all out having fun in their own quirky ways. And there's a polka mass too.

While most of the interviewees were in common agreement about the film's subject, there were a couple instances of difference of opinion. The first that I recall was when LynnMarie, who combines polka with pop music, commented that, while she longs to be able to play her beloved Slovenian-style polka music, younger people have no interest in it and so she has to "compromise" to reach a wider audience. Hot on the heels of these comments come those of Ms. Bergum, methinks, who says that there is absolutely no reason that "purer" polka cannot find mass acceptance. It was quite a change from the norm to hear age being hopeful & optimistic while youth was more pragmatic. The other instance was when someone (Willie Nelson?) remarked upon Jimmy Sturr as basically being the living embodiment of polka while another person then said that Sturr really isn't polka. I personally am inclined towards the latter opinion as I find his style to be overly slick and too polished. But that's me.

The low point that evening was during a scene when Pinter is sitting at his computer pecking away at the keyboard with two fingers. In his voice-over, he relates the massive amount of time he puts into getting the WI Polka Boosters newsletter together each week. The audience laughed heartily and that seemed inappropriate. It really irritated me that most people saw this scene as a cue to mock someone's inability to type as opposed to seeing it as an illustration of a man's love of and dedication to polka.

The filmmakers returned for a brief Q&A session after the screening. One question was why there wasn't more polka featured in the film. DiBiase answered by saying that earlier cuts had more music but it was decided to focus on the people involved rather than the music/dance. Honestly, this question never occurred to me. Even if the film leaned towards character study, there was no paucity of the music. In his review for Isthmus, Kenneth Burns takes the film to task by asking "Why not try to convey what makes it so irresistible?" The filmmakers answer the question of what makes polka irresistible to its fans with the film's title – it's happiness. And so I have to wonder just exactly how much footage of people dancing and smiling one needs in order to understand that. Does a neuroscientist have to come on and explain how a 2/4 beat induces chemical reactions in the brain that make us happy? The question is not why do all the happy people on the screen love polka, it's why the number of people like that is so small. The film touches on the issue mainly with comments from Prof. Leary when he describes polka as a form of ethnic identity and how it was booted from the hit parade by rock'n'roll.

Another person asked the filmmakers if they knew how to dance the polka and producer/director Craig DiBiase replied, "Of course we do." Vi Bergum came out of the audience and ambled onto the stage with DiBiase which prompted the audience to burst into "Beer Barrel Polka".

It's happiness indeed.

I interviewed producer/director Craig DiBiase after the screening and you can download an mp3 of our chat here.

(Originally from April 2007)

Jesus Christ, That's Good Beer!

The King of the King of Beers - Jesus Beer!

"Cheese!"

Aardman Features, the British studio behind my favorite turophiliac and his hound – "Wallace & Gromit" – has disassociated itself from DreamWorks Animation and inked a deal with Sony. Apparently Flushed Away didn't make enough money so the two studios parted ways.

DreamWorks pulled out of its five-picture deal with Aardman in January following a hugely disappointing performance for last fall’s "Flushed Away," a CG toon the two co-produced. Jeffrey Katzenberg-led studio had to take a writedown on the pic, which cost more than $130 million and grossed only $179 million worldwide.

I am genuinely surprised at this considering that The Dulcinea and her kids have each seen the film multiple times and now have it on DVD. So, how will this deal affect us fans?

Aardman co-founder and exec chairman David Sproxton said: "We know from experience that we create our best work when we do it from our home base here in Bristol, using first-class talent from the nation and around the world."

That’s a reference to Aardman’s less-than-satisfactory experience making "Flushed Away" in partnership with DWA in Los Angeles. Both sides were creatively frustrated even before the pic opened.

British studio made clear, however, that it expects to have less creative input and interference from Sony than it had from DreamWorks.

Sony and Aardman have not yet settled on their first movie, although Aardman execs say four scripts are already in advanced stages of development, including a "Wallace & Gromit" sequel from director Nick Park.

Woo hoo!

WI Film Fest - Killer of Sheep

Immediately after work yesterday I headed downtown to begin the Wisconsin Film Festival. Things got off to a nostalgic start as I found myself in room 4070 of Vilas Hall where I'd spent many an hour in Comm Arts classes as a student at the UW. It got even more nostalgic when Jim Kreul, a former TA and co-founder of the festival, got up on stage to greet us and introduce the film we were to see. Kreul's sartorial sense has shifted since the mid-90s and he was clad in dress shirt, jacket, and slacks – a far cry from his jeans/grey hoodie days. Jim, leave the professorial get-up in North Carolina and bring back the hoodie!

Last night's showing was of Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep. Shot in 1972-73 as a student project, it was not released until 1977. While it won awards and much acclaim, it never saw commercial distribution due to the fact he never secured the rights to use 22 songs on the soundtrack which were by some very well-known artists. In 2000, Dennis Doros of Milestone Films heard about the restoration of Killer of Sheep at the UCLA film archives and he set out, with a healthy donation by Steven Soderbergh, to secure the music rights so the film could be re-released. His quest was successful and Killer of Sheep is now making the rounds.

Burnett's aim was to portray the lives of black people in L.A. in a realistic manner; to show well-meaning but also comparatively well-off whites that their ideas for helping the poor black communities perhaps needed a bit of rethinking. He has stated that the film was meant to be shown to communities privately and not for commercial distribution. Killer of Sheep looks at the life of Stan, a family guy who lives in Watts, which still shows the scars of the riots there just 7 years previously. Stan works at a slaughterhouse and the sturm und drang is making him numb to his family and life, generally.

The film lacks a 3-act plot and is more akin to Italian neo-realism with it's slice-of-life story and use of non-actors. Scenes with Stan at work are set against those with him at home where he can only muster a thousand-yard stare in the face of his wife's sexual advances. She also notes that he never smiles anymore. Stan's lethargy is contrasted by the activities of the neighborhood kids. They seem ostensibly happy as we see them running around, having rock fights, and playing on the railroad tracks amidst the vacant lots and dilapidated buildings.

The pace here is slow and deliberate. A two-minute scene of Stan and his friend are carrying an engine down a couple flights of stairs would be a 3-second shot in your average Hollywood movie. I really loved the cinematography with its judicious use of wide angle lenses and a great tracking shot of two thieves hauling a stolen TV down an alley. The way I'm describing this probably sounds like the film is a very fractured view of a man, his family, and the neighborhood they live in and I suppose this is true, in a way. But Burnett keeps things together with scenes in Stan's home. It's a modest house but it's a home for the characters. The shot composition varies so it never seems like the many scenes that take place in the kitchen are the same. And the scene with the girl singing to Earth, Wind, and Fire was absolutely charming. It's not Stan's home life which is the problem, it's his job killing sheep.

The music, which kept the film from commercial release for 30 years, is also very important here. Songs by Paul Robeson, Scott Joplin, Elmore James, Dinah Washington, et al not only add commentary to the scene in which they appear, they also serve to remind the viewer that the situation in which the characters find themselves are historically contingent. The Watts ghettos didn't just arise out of a vacuum in the wake of the riots of 1965.

The shot that sticks with me is one in the slaughterhouse. Two Judas goats are in the foreground while a herd of sheep are in the back blissfully unaware of their collective fate. I found this is be a very potent picture and actually feared for Stan after seeing it.

Killer of Sheep was declared a national treasure by the Library of Congress and it was put into the National Film Registry and deservedly so. The film is an antidote to the Blaxploitation films fetishized by the Quentin Tarantinos of the world and stands as a great American film.