Clash of Cultures

In praise of smaller films: "Oblivion" can kiss my "Moon".

This week I saw two different American movies. One a big-budget sci-fi action movie with a major Hollywood star that is earning many millions at the box office. The other a small, dark drama from a not-yet-well-known director that may disappear quickly from theaters. Guess which one I liked better.

First, the sci-fi movie: "Oblivion" takes place after the Earth has been attacked by aliens and most of it destroyed by nuclear blasts. The surviving population have been shipped off to some inhabitable moon, leaving only poor Tom Cruise and a female companion to maintain and protect the water-mining operation that continues on Earth from marauding mutants/aliens. After a ship crash lands on Earth containing a woman that Tom has been dreaming about, he begins to suspect that Things Are Not What They Seem.

Unfortunately, the audience has figured this out after about five minutes, which means a lot of waiting to see what else is going to happen. The answer is, not much. At least not much that is not totally predictable. The film looks good and the actors, especially Andrea Riseborough as Tom's companion, Victoria, do what they can to make it emotionally compelling. But I couldn't help feeling the film was bloated and boring and would've been much better if it were a smaller, more intimate film.

Then I realized that it was a smaller, more intimate film. It was British, came out in 2009 and was called "Moon." "Moon" stars Sam Rockwell as the lone worker on a lunar mining station who is having strange dreams about a woman and begins to suspect Things Are Not What They Seem. Unlike "Oblivion", a lot of unexpected things happen after that, which I'm not going to give away here. Suffice to say that several of "Moon's" important plot points turn up in "Oblivion", which may be a total coincidence. But if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, let's just say that "Moon's" writer-director Duncan Jones should be verrrry flattered.

The second film I saw this week was "The Place Beyond the Pines", writer/director Derek Cianfrance's follow-up to "Blue Valentine", which got a lot of critical acclaim and I have unfortunately not yet seen. But I plan to, because this guy is clearly a major talent to watch out for. "The Place Beyond the Pines" is a complex story, or rather a trio of inter-connected stories about fathers and sons. The first part of the movie follows Ryan Gosling as Luke, an itinerant motorcycle stunt-rider who discovers that Romina (Eva Mendes), a woman he hooked up with a year ago gave birth to a son, Jason. Rather than splitting town, like his father apparently did, Luke decides to stick around and try to provide for his family (no matter that Romina is actually living with a very decent guy who considers himself Jason' father).

As in all film noir, Luke's desire to do the right thing leads him down the wrong path, namely robbing banks. This does not end well. (And if you don't want to hear any more about the plot, skip the next few paragraphs). A robbery goes bad and Luke is cornered and shot by an idealistic, but inexperienced cop named Avery. The story then unexpectedly switches to follow Avery, played by Bradley Cooper.

Avery is trying to differentiate himself from his powerful judge father by being a man of the streets, but soon discovers he's not really cut out for the violence and corruption in the police force. In addition, Avery has a boy the same age as Jason and he is haunted by the fact that he left Jason fatherless. Eventually, Avery has to choose between his loyalty to the police and his own future. After finally turning to his father for help, he opts for the latter.  

The film then cuts ahead 15 years. Both Jason and Avery's son, Troy, wind up a the same school. Jason is a bit of loner, a bit of a stoner, but basically a decent kid with a loving family. Unfortunately, Troy, who has been neglected by Avery most of his life, is a grade-A asshole who walks and talks like a Jersey-shore reject and pulls Jason into his partying, drug-fueled lifestyle. I won't go into more detail about where the story goes from there. Suffice to say, that all the skeletons come flying out of the closet, leading to an extremely tense, heart-wrenching conclusion.

"The Place Beyond the Pines" is an unusually dense story, one that is rare to see in cinema unless based on a book. Are there a few too many coincidences? Is the theme underlined a bit too much? Maybe. But the film's exploration of the influence fathers have on their sons, either by their presence or by their absence, is never simplified or feels false. In addition, the actors, from the leading roles to the smallest supporting parts, are all outstanding (come on, Ryan Gosling, giving up acting now would just be cruel). The film is also stylishly directed by Cianfrance, who really knows how to use the camera to bring us into the inner world of his characters.

I guess there's no point in lamenting the fact that "Oblivion" will probably make eleventy-gazillion dollars while smaller films like "The Place Beyond the Pines" and "Moon", as critically acclaimed as they may be, will be lucky to break even. After all, I thought the "Oblivion" trailer looked great and bought a ticket the day after it opened.

But I do believe there's a place in the world for both kinds of films and I sincerely hope that anyone reading this will be at least curious enough to check out either of these smaller films. By paying to download/stream them, you will help the directors finance their next projects more easily. But more importantly, you will get to see two kick-ass films that will stay with you long after "Oblivion" fades into you-know-what.

Holy Chatons! The Proopcast in Paris.

Anyone who follows this blog knows that I LOVE podcasts. So much so, I spend much of the day walking around with headphones in listening to my favorite comedians, storytellers and educators. My husband and kids are constantly complaining about my addiction. Luckily I can't hear them.

This past year I've even tried creating my own podcast, which unfortunately has been held up by the unavailability of the sound engineer I was working with (that's what you get when you ask people to work for free) but I haven't given up on the idea. In the meantime, I continue to enjoy the immediacy and intimacy of the podcast form and one of my faves is "The Smartest Man in the World" from comedian/actor Greg Proops.

Most people in the US probably know Proops best from the TV show "Whose Line Is It Anyway," which shows off his improvisational comedy skills. In fact, his podcast, which is usually recorded live at Bar Lubitsch in Los Angeles, is really one long riffed monologue about such subjects as current affairs, food, drugs, the negro baseball league and ancient Rome. As the title suggests, the breadth of Proops' knowledge and interest is impressively vast and his genius is in pulling all these topics together to make a coherent show while still being incredibly funny.

Proops lived and worked in London for many years and I think is one of the few American comics who regularly tours in Europe. So when I heard he would be performing the podcast live in Paris, I immediately reserved tickets. The show took place at the La Java, a club in the 10th arrondissement which apparently regularly hosts Anglophone comedians and musicians. I don't know why I'm only learning about this now, but in case I'm not the only ignorant one, check out the Laughing and Music Matters website for schedule info.

I'm always a little wary of meeting my favorite entertainers in person, because frankly, sometimes they're dicks. But Proops did not disappoint. Attending the show was just like listening to the podcast with the added advantage of being able to drink (well, I guess I could drink at home while listening, but I tend to be unloading the dishwasher). The topics than night included trying to communicate with Parisian cabdrivers, electronic cigarettes, obnoxious teens at Notre Dame, the death of Olivier Metzner, lawyer to the rich and scandalous, as well as a question and answer session. While I can't quote any particular jokes, Proops made all of these subjects fascinating and hysterically funny.

Proops likes to interact with his audience, often taking them to task for not laughing enough, but he also took the time to go around before the show shaking people's hands. Plus he gave me a free Kittens McTavish t-shirt! (well, he waved it in my general direction and I reached up a grabbed it). If you want to know what Kittens McTavish refers to, I suggest you download his brilliant podcast from itunes or the Smartest Man in the World website, or go see him in person. And to all the other podcasters out there, I urge you to come to Paris and perform in front of a very appreciative international audience. All the cool cats are doing it...

Mad About Poetry: MMPoetry 2013

I had previously decided that 2013 would be a year of taking creative risks. For me that means not just thinking about writing, or even actually writing, but sharing my writing with others. This has been a big block for me in the past as I tend to take rejection very personally. But there's no way around it. To pursue a creative endeavor means getting used to rejection.

So while working up the nerve to submit my middle grade manuscript to agents and editors, I've been taking baby steps by joining an on-line submission support group, registering for my first writer's conference and entering some writing contests. 

One of these contests is Ed DeCaria's March Madness Poetry Competition, featured on his site, Think Kid, Think! Although I loved poetry when I was younger and often make up silly rhymes for the kids, I'd never focused on writing kids' poems. But this competition, which is modeled after the NCAA tournament (of which I know nothing), sounded like a fun way to flex those muscles.

The basic premise is that 64 poets are chosen to compete in head-to-head match ups, each given a randomly selected word to use in their poem and only a few days to write. The winners then move on the next round and more head-to-head match ups. The catch is that the prompt words that square off are of varying difficulty and in the first round, I got one of the toughies: "bastardized".

While my poem did not win against my opponent (who wrote a funny, playful poem with her word, "potion") I still got a lot out of participating. Not only did it respark my interest in children's poetry, it also introduced me to a whole community of children's authors who have been incredibly supportive and encouraging.

So while losing never feels good, it was a lesson that by putting myself out there, I have a lot more to gain. MMPoetry2013 is still going on, so I encourage all of you to check out the poems and vote for your favorites. Vive la poésie!

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March Madness Poetry

Guys. #MM2013 Round 1 voting has started! Read some fun poems, vote for your faves. www.thinkkidthink.com/1-potion-vs-16-bastardized .

#MMPoetry2013 contest starts tomorrow. Read enjoy vote! Thinkkidthink.com

Concert review: Transported by Sigur Ros

Although this is a cultural blog and I sometimes write about music, you may have noticed that I've never reviewed a rock concert. This is because I do not go to them. Even in my teens and early 20's, I rarely went to hear rock music live. The couple of big concerts I saw (Wham! and the Jacksons, if you must know) I went to because friends were going. I think it must be a mix of hating crowds and feeling like I'm just too dorky to really rock out, even to bands I like.

One of my favorites of the last few years is the Icelandic group Sigur Ros, led by angelic-voiced Jonsi (who also has a great solo album, Go). I'd heard they were amazing live, so when a younger, cooler friend of mine suggesting going to see them, my first thought was, "it sounds fun, but I can't". My second thought was, "Why can't I?"

So I bought a ticket and headed across Paris to the Zenith, a cavernous space in the Parc de la Villette with a large standing-only section in front of the stage. For those of you who've never heard Sigur Ros' music, the words "ethereal", "hypnotic" and "sweeping" come to mind. Jonsi has a pure falsetto voice and sings in a mix of Icelandic, English and gibberish that is pretty much incomprehensible, so it's all about the mood.

If you visit the band's site (sigur-ros.co-uk) you'll notice that they put a big emphasis on visuals and even sponsored a collection of a dozen experimental films inspired by their music. So I did have expectations that the show would be as visually entrancing as the music, and I wasn't disappointed.

The concert began with the group playing behind a semi-transparent curtain on which were projected dreamlike images perfectly timed with the music, punctuated by dramatic lighting. At a certain point, the curtain dropped and the videos continued on a large screen behind them.

The thing was so tightly choreographed, there was no room for chitchat.  But the lack of talking to the audience, which I generally like, contributed to the feeling that we had somehow ended up inside a 3D science-fiction movie and were travelling across the universe together.

My friend and I started off sitting in the stands, but he suggested we move down to the floor to be closer. While I generally don't like standing for a long time (because I'm old), he was right that being down center was an even more intense musical and visual experience. The only downside was how loud everyone was screaming on the floor. Luckily, earlier I had invested in a pair of special earplugs (because, you know, I'm old).

But apparently not too old to enjoy an amazing live rock concert and I highly recommend doing the same if Sigur Ros comes to a town near you.

Movie review: Hollywood does Victor Hugo - "Les Misérables"

I'm a pretty unabashed musical fan, so it's surprising even to me that I've never actually seen a stage version of Les Misérables. Chalk it up to bad timing. I was away at university when it opened and was in France for the revivals. (And yes, I know it was originally a French show, but it's never played here in its current form). Nonetheless, I've listened to the soundtrack many times and have also seen the doc on the making of the London production more than once. All of which meant I was pretty excited to see the film version, despite hearing mixed things about it.

And my impressions are decidedly mixed. The film is kind of a strange hybrid of the theatrical and the realistic and it might've been better to go with one or the other.  As is often the case with sung-through musicals, a lot of patter is pretty disposable, although there are some great songs here. Another thing that bothered me was the compressed time-frame, which meant that characters were making life-changing decisions, falling in love and getting deathly ill in a matter of seconds. And frankly the whole section about the Paris Uprising of 1832 is just ridiculous. (I'm guessing these flaws existed in the stage version too).

What director Tom Hooper does do well is making us care about the fates of Jean Valjean, Fantine and to a lesser degree, Cosette, Marius and Eponine. A lot of people apparently don't like his reliance on close-ups but I thought it helped forge a connection with the characters. I'd also heard a lot of negative things about Russel Crowe's performance as Javert, but I thought he was pretty solid. I was actually a lot more disappointed in Hugh Jackman's singing, although that may be that's because I still have the voice of Colm Wilkinson, the original Valjean, ringing in my ears. (Seriously, u-tube that shit if you haven't heard it, but have a box of tissues handy).

However, I think acting-wise Jackson was good, especially the moments where he is torn between self-interest and doing the right thing. This is a show that talks a lot about God in an unironic way and he was able to convey Valjean's religious conversion pretty convincingly. Special mention also to Sacha Baron-Cohen and Helena Bonham-Carter, who seem almost too obvious a choice as the Thénardiers, but they were pretty close to perfect.

As the young lovers, Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne are suitably attractive and earnest. It's not really Seyfried's fault that Eponine (beautifully played by stage actress Samantha Barks) is a far more interesting character. Nor is it Redmayne's fault that he has the misfortune to appear next to Aaron Tveit (as the revolutionary Enjolras), who has about 10 times the charisma and 10 times the voice.

Which brings me to Anne Hathaway. Now I'd heard a lot of great things about Anne Hathaway's performance in this film, so much so that I figured I would be too conscious of  her "performance" to actually be moved by it. But about 30 seconds into her big song, I was bawling, along with the entire audience in the theater with me. That woman is truly an alien from the planet Talent, and all the haters out there better just accept her future world domination.

Being in Paris, I don't get a chance to see the big UK/US musicals anymore and I refuse to see the Frenchified versions. The Théâtre du Châtelet has finally started to import some of the classics in VO, but for newer ones like Avenue Q or Spring Awakening, I guess I better just cross my fingers and wait for the movie versions.

 

Pura Fe's Amerindian Blues

I'm still trying to shake this horrible Australian flu that's going around Paris, which means my cultural outings have been seriously curtailed. I even missed a performance of the Alvin Ailey dance company, which I'd been looking forward to all year. My husband took my daughter, so the ticket wasn't wasted, but it wasn't the mother-daughter bonding experience I had been looking forward to.

Then this week I had sort of the opposite experience, where I dragged myself out of bed to attend a concert by the blues singer Pura Fe, only to be stood up by my husband, who apparently "forgot" about it (although I gave him the ticket that morning so he could meet me). The only good part about all this is imagining his face as he walked in the door and the kids informed him that Mommy was going to "kill him" for not showing up. 

Luckily, I had a couple of other friends attending the show so that while I did sit by myself, I didn't feel totally abandoned. It was one of the few times I've been to this theater when it hasn't been full, but the low-key atmosphere actually created a kind of intimacy once the concert got going.

Pura Fe is not an artist I was at all familiar with before this year. A singer-songer of Native American descent, originally from New York, but now living in North Carolina, she has a voice imbued with life experience and can sound close to Bonnie Raitt or Joni Mitchell, depending on the song.  She isn't the most charismatic performer when introducing the music. There wasn't much patter or attempts to charm. But when she sang it was a whole different story and she had no trouble drawing in the crowd and winning it over.

The concert was a mix of straight blues, protest songs, and traditional Native chanting. In addition to lead vocals, Pura Fe played the lap slide guitar, not an instrument you see too much of in Paris, and was backed by a trio of other musicians: Pete Knudson on percussion ( a "cajon" which looks basically like a wooden box), Corey Morin on lead guitar and Charlie Lowry on backing vocals. Each member of the group was given a chance to shine and it was another reminder of how many truly talented musicians are probably toiling out there in obscurity while auto-tuned crap clogs up the airways. But I digress.

It was just what I needed to pierce the fog that seems to permanently encase my head these days. And while that cottony, dizzy, shaky feeling has returned this morning, at least I have the memory of an authentic musical night out to keep me comfort me. 

Art review: Free spirit to starving artist, the myth of the Bohemian.

Just under the wire, I caught another fine exhibit at the Grand Palais called "Bohèmes." Gathering together over 200 works from the 17th to the 19th centuries exploring the identity of the "Bohemian", it's a fascinating show both on the artistic and thematic levels. 

The first part of the show located on the ground floor covers a lot of historical material about the Bohemians' (or Gypsies, or Tziganes, as they're also known) spread across Europe. The exhibit proceeds chronologically and is very well commented, tracing how the Gypsies' exoticism, nomadic life and penchant for music and dance quickly made them choice subjects in drawings, painting and sculptures. 

Early works tended to split the Gypsy identity into two parts, portraying either the virginal, angelic woman, or the corrupt seductress. The show includes several paintings of the Virgin Mary dressed in Gypsy garb, as well as paintings of the Gypsy fortune teller out to fleece the rich. Towards the 18th century, the Gypsy became more of a romantic figure. The fortune teller was the harbinger of love and the artistic, free-spirited Gypsy woman became a popular figure in books and the theater.

In the 19th century, paintings focused on the Gypsy as dancers and musicians, living apart from urban society, in touch with nature. Landscapes depicting Gypsy encampments in France became popular with some artists, while others depicted the hard scrabble life of Gypsies in Spain. A small portion of the downstairs section is devoted to the Gypsy influence in music (Liszt's use of hungarian folk themes, Bizet's "Carmen") and in an unusual touch, Tzigane music is piped in throughout the ground floor space. 

Throughout the 19th century, marginalized artists empathized with the Gypsy-as-outcast image and eventually appropriated the word "Bohemian" to describe their artistically rich, but poverty-stricken lifestyles. The center of the Bohemian movement was in Montmartre and the upstairs section of the exhibit is devoted to artists' depictions of their own run-down studios as well as the cafés and cabarets they frequented.

Works by Degas, Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec are on display in this section, as well as poems by Rimbaud and Verlaine, and a couple of the rooms are done up to resemble an artist's garret or a café. There was an definite emphasis at that time on the melancholy side of the artist's existence so that the word Bohemian eventually became associated with the starving, misunderstood, self-destructive artist (see the opera, "La Bohème).

Despite this bleakness, the Gypsy as subject and theme remained popular until Hitler declared it a prime example of "degenerate art" and started deporting and killing gypsies en masse. Somehow, this cooled the appetite for paintings and plays about exotic Esmereldas.

I tend to like thematic exhibits as they can be a great way to discover new artists or see little-known works by familiar artists. The stand-outs for me here were a couple of portraits by Courbet and the Montmartre section. I also loved learning about Callot, a 17th century printmaker who actually ran away from home and joined a band of gypsies.

This exhibit is closing in Paris, but may be moving on to a town near you. In the meantime, I will be waiting to see what takes its place at the Grand Palais.

Ballet review: Ballet Preljocaj and the Stockhausen syndrome

As I was away over the holidays, I've gotten a bit behind in my cultural outings. But 2013 has gotten off to a good start with a performance of the Ballet Preljocaj at the Palais Garnier. Preljocaj is probably my favorite contemporary choreographer. He just hits that sweet spot for me between classic and modern, abstract and emotional. He also pushes me out of my musical comfort zone as he often likes to work with avant-garde, atonal music.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not such a big fan of music I can't hum. I might find it intellectually interesting, but most often it begins to grate after a while. Both of last night's pieces were set to music by Karlheinz Stockhausen, one of the pioneers of European electronic music. Needless to say, my husband was thrilled by this, since he studied Stockhausen's music when he was a student at the conservatoire and even attended some concerts with Stockhausen himself.

The first of last night's ballets was entitled "Helikopter" and the music consisted of atonal synthesizers mixed in with - you guessed it - the very loud sound of helicopter rotors. The music was pre-recorded so unfortunately we were not witness to the live version, where it's apparently performed by a quartet flying aboard 4 separate helicopters, then piped back into the theater via videostream.

Instead we were treated to 6 dancers who not only managed to dance to this strange rhythm, but embody the discordant sounds and make them harmonious. In the past, I've only seen the Paris Ballet dancing Preljocaj, but this was his own company of dancers. Their style was a bit more muscular than the elegant Opera de Paris dancers, but that suited the piece well as the dancers came together and broke apart in various jagged, sometimes violent, combinations.

Adding the intense ambiance were Holger Forterer's video projections on the floor of the stage, which ranged from rotor blades, to geometric figures, to ripples of turbulence following the dancers. At first, the thrumming of the helicopter blades was almost uncomfortable to listen to, but in the end, the all-encompassing sound did help create a striking, visceral experience.

The second piece of the night, "Eldorado (Sonntags-Abschied)" was much more fluid and sensual. The dancers seemed to embody religious statues come to life performing some kind of ritual, although that just may be my interpretation. In honesty, I don't remember much about the music except that it was again pre-recorded synthesizers. But maybe that's progress for me, since I didn't outright hate it. In any case, I was able to fully concentrate on the intricate choreography and beautiful dancing. (Of course, the glass of champagne I had at intermission might have helped things, too.)

Let's make 2013 the year we all move out of our cultural comfort zones!