Two supremely entertaining documentaries in theaters now on
the power of music and dedication of musicians. Yesterday, Aretha Franklin’s Amazing
Grace, which we had to wait almost a half-century to see on screen.
A Tuba to Cuba
Unbelievably, two movies in the space of two weeks have
featured a tuba (see review of A Woman at War), but coincidence has
struck gold. A Tuba to Cuba tells the
story of a two-week Cuban adventure by members of New Orleans’s Preservation
Hall Jazz Band who in 2015 traveled there for a series of concerts,
get-acquainted sessions, and impromptu events. The documentary was directed by
T.G. Herrington and Danny Clinch (trailer).
The band members of all ages find much musical commonality with
their Cuban brethren, which they trace back to African influence, and they
delight in their discoveries and in each other. Each member of the current band
on the trip has a chance to shine as both performer and person.
Leader of the goodwill expedition is Ben Jaffe, whose
parents, Allan and Sandra Jaffe, moved
to New Orleans in the early 1960s, loved the music, and feared it was being
lost. His father played the tuba, and started the Preservation Hall Jazz Band,
for which the entire nation owes him profound gratitude.
The scenes around Havana, as well as several other towns, show the expected 1960s American cars and colorful houses, and a gorgeous concert hall in their final stop. But above and beyond the physical surroundings, the people—especially some jazz-loving young Cuban musicians—are terrific. The trip inspired the later PHJB album So It Is.
Don’t miss these documentaries about legendary musical
performers in theaters now. They are indisputable testimony about the power of
music to overcome barriers and speak to the heart. Tomorrow: A Tuba to Cuba.
Amazing Grace
Eagerly anticipated since its impending availability was announced some months ago, Aretha Franklin’s performance of gospel music, recorded and filmed at two successive nights at the Watts New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, 1972, sat unwatched for nearly fifty years. These two nights provided the live recording of the most successful gospel album in history. Originally filmed by Sidney Pollack and crew, “technical difficulties” with the soundtrack prevented its actual viewing until the project was resurrected by Alan Elliott (trailer).
Now, those difficulties are solved and Franklin’s genius as
an interpreter of gospel is like a blinding light. She receives strong support
from the other musicians, the powerful Rev. James Cleveland, and the Southern
California Community choir and its charismatic leader, Alexander Hamilton.
I was delighted to see and hear from her father, Rev.C.L. Franklin, too. I’d heard a lot about his role as an early leader of the civil rights movement in Detroit. Aretha felt his influence felt her entire life. There’s a lot going on in every scene, with her family, the congregation, the other musicians, the filmmakers, and, on the second night, Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts in the audience, but Aretha remains calm and centered in all this hubbub. It’s the music and its message that preoccupy her.
At that point in her career, with 11 number one singles and five Grammys, she could have done anything. She gave this her all.
If only I were as clever as Brad Parks who took his outrage
over the pass given to Wachovia
and Wells Fargo Bank execs who laundered many millions of dollars for a Mexican
drug cartel (and
they’re still at it) and turned it into a fantastic new thriller, The Last Act (my review here).
What you’ll read below has the seeds of innumerable great and terrifying
stories, but when I read it, I start spitting. These quotes were a handout for my
Great Decisions group, a discussion program sponsored by the Foreign Policy Association
“Our adversaries and
strategic competitors will increasingly use cyber capabilities—including cyber
espionage, attack, and influence—to seek political, economic, and military
advantage over the United States and its allies and partners. China, Russia,
Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cyber operations to threaten both minds
and machines in an expanding number of ways—to steal information, to influence
our citizens, or to disrupt critical infrastructure.” Daniel R. Coats, Director of National Intelligencestatement to the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence as he presented the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of
worldwide threats, 29 Jan 2019.
“Few Americans realize the extent to which foreign
intelligence services are stealing our most important secrets.” And “China is
without question the number one counterintelligence threat facing the United
States.” James Olson, former CIA Chief of
Counterintelligence
“The Russian intelligence services, the inheritors of the
legacy of their Soviet forebears, are our inexorable adversaries. They have at
one time or another penetrated every significant organization and agency in the
U.S. Government and, as evidenced by their recent efforts to undermine American
democracy, are the most professionally proficient intelligence adversaries we
confront.” Mark Kelton, former CIA Deputy
Director for Counterintelligence
“Foreign cyber criminals will continue to conduct
for-profit, cyber-enabled theft and extortion against U.S. networks.” And “Terrorists
could obtain and disclose compromising or personally identifiable information
through cyber operations, and they may use such disclosures to coerce, extort,
or to inspire and enable physical attacks against their victims.” Daniel R. Coats
“The sheer acceleration in the number of attacks, and their
rapidly changing goals, is one of several warning signs that we all are living
through a revolution, playing out at digital speed.” David E. Sanger, The Perfect Weapon
“We cannot afford to protect everything to the maximum
degree, so we’d better figure out what cannot fail.” Thomas Donahue, Senior Analyst, Center for Cyber Intelligence
Monday’s drizzle didn’t deter the tulip-lovers at Holland Ridge Farm, whose motto is “Don’t fly to Holland. Drive to Holland.” While I’ve studied the Facebook pix from friends who went to Keukenhof Gardens this spring with great envy, I realized, you know, we have tulips in New Jersey! This IS the Garden State.
On more than 150 acres in the community of Cream Ridge,
Holland Ridge Farm devotes 50 acres to its colorful stripes of tulips, the
largest tulip farm on the East Coast. The owners have brought their fields to
the point that the farm now has an annual Tulip Festival, in full bloom this
month. There must have been hundreds of people there, strolling the grounds,
smiling, but the areas is so large, it never felt crowded (Easter Sunday was
another story, I’ll bet).
Gift shop, café, U-pick opportunities, hayrides around the
fields, and lots more, with more tulips every year! While a leisurely walk around
the tulip beds may seem an old-fashioned, almost quaint pursuit, the farm’s FAQs
offer a sign of the times: No, you cannot fly your drone over the tulip fields.
Only an hour from Philadelphia and New York, getting there
entails a lovely drive through farmland and past horse farms. Buy tickets
online.
Metropolitan Museum
Last weekend in Manhattan we saw the Met’s “The World Between Empires” exhibit, “art and identity in the Ancient Middle East,” on view through June 23. Some of those empires I’d never even heard of before, so I definitely learned something. The exhibit focuses on the Middle East conflict between the Roman and Parthian empires.
The art and objects of the period (c. 100 BCE – AD 250) came from the civilizations along the great trade routes and show the influences of Arabea, Nabataea, Judaea, Syria, and Mesopotamia. Says The Wall Street Journal, “Nothing short of spectacular.”
Said Peter Goldberg in Slant Magazine, “Single-minded and direct in its execution, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s The Mustang is a hard look at the extremes of masculine guilt and healing” (trailer).
The main character, Roman Coleman (Matthias Schoenaerts) smiles only once, I think, in the whole film. For the most part, Coleman doesn’t interact with his fellow prisoners in a Nevada medium security prison. His attempts at a relationship with his daughter stall. We find out only deep in what his crime was, and the weight of it.
There’s a special prison program (in
place in Nevada and a number of Western prisons IRL) to train convicts to
work with wild mustangs, and tame them to the point they can be auctioned to
the border patrol, to ranchers, or for other uses. Putting a man like Coleman
in a corral with 1500 pounds of frantic horse seems more than a bit risky and
is. If only Coleman can learn relate to this one living thing—and vice-versa—perhaps
they both can be saved. As another prisoner/horse trainer says, “If you want to
control your horse, first you gotta control yourself.”
The parallels between the confinement and anger of this
mustang and this prisoner are obvious. Bruce Dern plays the elderly cowboy in
charge of the project, and he and the other prisoners are strong characters.
But it is Schoenaerts movie and, although the camera is on him throughout most
of it, he grows to fill the screen. Beautiful scenery too. (For one of the most
beautiful and moving films ever about men and horses, get ahold of last year’s The Rider.)Rotten
Tomatoes critics rating: 94%; audiences 74% .
Woman at War (2019)
This movie from Iceland director Benedikt Erlingsson has absurdist elements, real tension, and a lot of heart (trailer). Choral director Halla (played by Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, who also plays Halla’s twin sister Ása) is outraged at the prospect of booming unenvironmental heavy industry invading Iceland. She sets out to disrupt the development plans by sabotaging the electrical system, a bit at a time.
The authorities consider her protests eco-terrorism, and are determined to find whoever is carrying them out, with some nail-biting pursuits by helicopter and drone. To keep the story from becoming too anxiety-provoking, an absurd trio of musicians—piano, tuba, and drums—appears wherever she is, whether it’s on the heath or in her apartment. It’s the incongruous presence of the tuba that lets you know she’s ok.
She’s single and childless, until a four-year-old adoption
request is unexpectedly filled. A child is waiting for her in the Ukraine. From
this point, carrying out one last adventure before flying to retrieve her new daughter, Halla is
also accompanied by three Ukrainian women singers in full costume, as well. I
laughed out loud at this and some of the other antics. You will too.Rotten
Tomatoes critics rating: 97%; audiences 90%.
Beirut (2018)
Netflix provided this 2018 movie from director Brad
Anderson, written by Tony Gilroy, a controversial
political thriller set in Beirut, once the Paris of the Mideast, which has disintegrated
into civil war (trailer).
In 1972, John Hamm is an American diplomat and expert negotiator stationed in
Beirut who, after one tragic night returns to the States. He never wants to go
back. About a decade later, he does, when a friend is kidnapped, and he’s asked
by some highly untrustworthy U.S. agents to help in the rescue. Only Rosamund
Pike seems to have her head on straight. He finds a city in shambles, divided into fiercely
protected zones by competing militias. Finding his friend, much less saving
him, seems impossible. A solid B.Rotten
Tomatoes critics rating: 82%; audiences 55%.
Rembrandt (in
theaters 2019)
This documentary should be appended to last week’s review of
recent films on Caravaggio and Van
Gogh, a rare alignment of the planets that took me to three art films in a
week. This one describes the creation of an exhibition of Rembrandt’s late
works, jointly sponsored by Britain’s National Museum and the Rijksmuseum (trailer). Like those
other big-screen delights, the chance to look up close and unhurried at these
masterworks is the best part. There’s biographical information and commentary
from curators and others. The details of how the exhibition was physically put
together were fascinating too. One of my favorites among the works featured was
“An Old Woman Reading,” from 1655 (pictured). From Exhibition on Screen, you
can find a screening
near you.Rotten
Tomatoes critics rating: not rated yet.
What with Caravaggio’s frequent legal troubles and rejection of some of his best works and Van Gogh’s failure to sell no more than a few paintings during his lifetime, both artists would undoubtedly be shocked to learn they’re such hot topics for films (film, what’s that?).
Caravaggio: The Soul and the Blood
An Italian art film, in every sense, directed by Jesus
Garces Lambert (trailer).
Its most impressive aspect is the up-close examination of some 40 of
Caravaggio’s works, many of which are huge and hung high in various churches.
You’d never get this well-lit and detailed view seeing them, as it were, in the
flesh.
Three art historians comment on the significance of
Caravaggio’s work and the ground he broke—for example, in showing emotion and
using common people, even the poor, as models. At one point early on,
Caravaggio’s paintings were criticized for not showing action. He responded
with a vengeance through the rest of his career, as with the snakes surrounding
the head of Medusa, which practically writhe off the background.
All that was interesting, but the filmmaker layered in a contemporary
quasi-narrative involving a tormented actor (playing Caravaggio), three women,
and gallons of black paint. Meanwhile, another actor reads from Caravaggio’s
journal, presumably, against a discordant musical score.
A time-lapse camera recorded the deterioration of a bowl of
fruit, much like one Caravaggio painted, with the creeping mold, the rot, the
flies. The filmmaker ran that footage backward so that the fruit plumps and
colors. It was a nice effect. After that success, he used the run-the-film-backward
device several more times to less benefit.
Still, worth seeing for the art, if you can ignore the frame.
At Eternity’s Gate
Director Julian Schnabel takes a much more conventional approach
in depicting the late life of Vincent Van Gogh (trailer). The film stars
Willem Dafoe as the artist, Mads Mikkelson as his devoted brother Theo, and
Oscar Isaac as his destructive friend, Paul Gauguin. You see Van Gogh settling
into a small town, and if you’re familiar with his paintings, you recognize the
townspeople’s faces and attire as his future subjects. Seeing them is like
greeting old friends.
You could say the same for the stunning scenery, bathed in
the golden light Van Gogh perfected. While the end of the story is well known,
it isn’t entirely clear. Schnabel joins the speculation about Van Gogh’s
mysterious death, throwing in with the idea that local children, in a prank
gone wrong, shot him, rather than that he committed suicide, as has been
commonly believed.
Chris Hewitt in the Minneapolis
Star Tribune says “Dafoe’s elegiac quality hints at why the artist was
ahead of his time: because he saw more than anyone else could. It’s a towering
performance in a movie that casts a magnetic spell.”
Princeton’s McCarter Theatre
Center presents the world premiere of Ken Ludwig’s delightful new play,
directed by Amanda Dehnert. The Gods of
Comedy opened March 16 and runs through March 31.
In a university classics department, a normal day is about
to collapse into turmoil, thanks to a madcap mix of switched identities, characters
who become invisible, and not-so divine intervention. Daphne Rain (played by Shay
Vawn) is a bookish young classics professor entrusted by her colleague and
boyfriend Ralph Sargent (Jevon McFerrin) with the priceless manuscript of the
lost Euripides play, Andromeda. When
the manuscript goes missing, she calls on the ancient Greek gods out of
desperation. And who turns up? Dionysus and Thalia, the gods of comedy.
The boisterous Dionysus (Brad Oscar) and flirtatious Thalia
(Jessie Cannizzaro) turn Daphne’s life upside down as she tries to hide the
manuscript’s disappearance from Ralph and their dean (Keira Naughton).
Meanwhile, the dean is determined to showcase the prize that evening at a
Greek-themed costume party for the school’s big donors. One of these donors is a
glamorous actress named Brooklyn de Wolfe (Steffanie Leigh) who sets her sights
on Ralph.
Daphne and the gods have to devise a plan to satisfy the
dean and keep Ralph away from Brooklyn. A pretty effective distraction arrives
in the divine personage of Ares, god of war (George Psomas). Wearing his helmet
and cape and brandishing his sword, he’s mistaken for one of the party-goers,
and when he intones so confidently, “I am a god,” Brooklyn naturally responds,
“Yeah, that’s what all men think.”
The plot of a farce never benefits from minute dissection,
but Oscar, Cannizzaro, and Psomas create such strong and entertaining characters,
you willingly suspend disbelief, and the many clever touches pile up one after
another, keeping the audience roaring. There are a few lulls in act two, but the
pace picks up again when Dionysus and Thalia use their powers of metamorphosis
to become other characters—a tangle that is baffling for the other characters
and hilarious for the audience.
Vawn is sympathetic as the worried academic, simultaneously
grateful for the gods’ help and dismayed at the trouble they’re causing. McFerrin
is clueless, especially when under Brooklyn’s spell, and Naughton, once she
dons her Artemis costume, reveals a naughty side. Psomas plays two small roles,
in addition to Ares, each to perfection. And Jason Sherwood designed beautiful
sets, especially for Act 2.
McCarter Theatre is easily reached from New York by car or train (New Jersey Transit to the Princeton Junction station, then the shuttle bus into Princeton. The shuttle ends a short walk from the theater and the university’s new arts district, as well as two innovative new restaurants. For tickets, call the box office at 609-258-2787 or visit the ticket office online.
A recent trip to the Windy City (temperature: -1⸰) included a visit to the marvelous, that is, full of marvels, Shedd Aquarium. If you’re ever in Chicago on a business trip, don’t miss it; it’s right downtown.
We were minding the two kids, ages 7 and 9, and we thought by keeping them engaged there, we could spare ourselves the embarrassment of losing chess games to them.
We caught the new special exhibit “Underwater Beauty,” with over a hundred species, only one highlight of which were the charming blue polka-dot jellyfish you see one of here. Of course the reef fish were bright and colorful, and the seahorses adorable, but there also were creatures called “weedy sea dragons” I’d never seen before, pictured below. Rather astonishing.
The Oceanarium show with the beluga whales and dolphins, a
sea lion and an owl (?) is always a hit. As is the penguin play area, though
they’re outgrowing that. They enjoyed the nearby pet-a-starfish exhibit even
more. I could be mesmerized by the lobby’s circular, 90,000-gallon Caribbean Reef
tank for hours. In the 1930’s water for the aquarium’s saltwater tanks was brought
up from Key West on railroad tank cars.
What did the kids like best? Petting the bony backs of the armored lake sturgeon, where they plunged their arms into the water so deep and so often I ended up buying them new (dry) T-shirts. That -1⸰ thing again. Flooded with atypical modesty, they were reluctant to take their wet shirts off until a nearby mom opened her coat flasher style to give them some privacy.
Excuse me a sec, while I run into the kitchen and check the corned beef brisket.
Ahh…
Now, as the last year has whirled by and St. Paddy’s Day once
again approaches, here are my three most recent dives into the wellspring of
inspiration, imagination, and experience that is Ireland.
Earlier this year, we saw on Broadway, The Ferryman, which many reviewers said was “the ticket” for the winter’s season. From the promotional pictures (below), it looks like a multigeneration family sitting around the supper table, telling rollicking Irish tales, no? It turns out the IRA is involved, and, as everyone knows, the IRA is not The Clancy Brothers. Acting was super, especially the elderly Republican aunt who can’t give up her threadbare politics.
An Irish theme turned up unexpectedly in Angel Luis Colón’s Hell Chose Me (which I reviewed here). The American protagonist, Bryan Walsh, is AWOL from Afghanistan, and the only person he thinks can help him is his difficult and uncle Sean back in Ireland. IRA legatee Sean does give him a job for a while, as an enforcer and assassin, before Bryan returns to the United States (illegally). Lots else happens in this excellent thriller, but Uncle Sean’s menacing presence haunts Bryan evermore.
At the moment I’m reading (actually listening to) Tana
French’s Dublin-based best-seller, The
Witch Elm. I’m only a short way in, and while I know the book has received
raves, am waiting for it to pick up steam. One of the characters is a
genealogist, a profession I can relate to, who says that in the old days,
people came to him out of curiosity about their Irish ancestors, and now with
DNA evidence in hand, they come to him to find out who they really are.
Posts for past March 17s have focused on wonderful books from Irish writers, including the fantastic Irish crime/thriller writers, not only Tana French, but Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville too.
But, excuse me, the corned beef is done. Now have to spread
a mix of brown sugar and dry mustard on top for a final twenty-minute bake
while I stir the potatoes and cook up the onions, cabbage, and sour cream. In delicious
anticipation . . .
New Zealand director Peter Jackson has accomplished
something of a miracle. At the behest of Britain’s Imperial War Museum, he and
his team have created a documentary about World War I using archival
footage—scratched, faded, juddery—and restored it nearly to today’s standards (trailer). The process
achieves more than improving watchability, it brings these soldiers to life.
When he received the assignment, Jackson didn’t know what
the film would be, his brief was simply to “do something creative” with the
film archive in time for the 100th anniversary of the armistice last November
11.
He and his team melded the restored film with the voices of
men who had served, interviewed by the BBC decades later. They went to war as
ordinary soldiers, they were young (ages 15, 16, and 17, many of them), and their
reminiscences of the war were quite different than what their officers’ would
have been. This isn’t a movie with battle maps and arrows, strategy and
tactics. It’s not about the unique or memorable incident. It’s everyday
survival. Mud and lice and rats and cigarettes. I cried.
Stick around for the post-movie feature about how the film
was restored. The before-and-after examples of changing the timing, fixing
over- and under-exposures, how sound was added, and the colorization are fascinating.
Their devotion to detail pays off. Speaking of paying off, the film has broken
box office records for a documentary, and Jackson himself took no fee.
This isn’t a movie about heroes. It’s about everyday lads
doing the best they can in the worst circumstances. In the most important
sense, they’re all heroes.Rotten Tomatoes
critics rating: 99%; audiences 92%.
