Nepotistic Record Review #1

XYZR_KX Falls off the Curb, Chump Style.
“Actually, Records.”

“Full” disclosure: XYZR_KX is better known to me as Jon Monteverde, friend and musical partner/collaborator extraordinaire. The only other musician who appears on this album is my friend Pete Micek.

“Objective” opinion: Falls off the Curb, Chump Style. is a hard record to pigeonhole, because it merges several different musical styles without resorting to genre hopping. I think that the best compliment i can pay XYZR_KX on this CD is that, like many of my favorite albums it sounds like the realization of a personal musical vision more than an exercise within a particular tradition or school of music.

Which isn’t to say that Falls off the Curb invents a new genre outright. It’s more that it sounds like XYZR_KX is doing his own thing here, confidently and successfully. So what is his thing? The main elements are electronic sounds and freedom, a songwriterly sense of composition, and an early 90s indie rock feel for hazy distorted guitars.

I really like the way that these elements come together. Check out “LUV,” which features an extended introduction with cool crunchy beats and pretty synth tones. This instrumental part goes through several interesting developments and then merges seamlessly into the sound of an acoustic guitar that introduces a ballady vocal section, only to head back to a satisfying electro resolution.

In addition to the synthesis of directions on Falls off the Curb, the other striking characteristic is the vulnerability of the vocals. The singing is sincere, but not melodramatic, admirably able to emote without stage setting and grand gestures. The lack of affect does much for the honesty of the music and singing.

I guess this is the part of the reivew where i have to offer some criticism to maintain my credibility. Well, i suppose that the mix could have been a little crazier in a few parts. "I've Said this Before" has a good rocking beat and a really cool sheets-of-fuzz guitar sound, but i wish that the guitars or the vocals were a little higher to fill up the mix. There's also room for a little more craziness in general on the disc, but maybe i only say that because i've gotten a preview of some wilder XYZR_KX material still in the pipeline, and there's nothing wrong with laid back music.

“LUV” is emblematic of the album’s tendencies towards gentle ballads, epic instrumentals, and hard rockin’. Given the diversity of mood, Falls off the Curb feels like it always has a surprise waiting, and evolves nicely over the course of its eight songs, coming to a reflective close on “Symphoniphics.” This song contains one of my favorite moments on the album, a lonely voice singing, “we’re lost out here in the stars.” An appropriate closing to an album that takes you at least as far.

(Related) Movie Throw-down #1: Signs v War of the Worlds (2005)

talk about a wierd blog---how about yours....15th best of your critiques of race in film....cuz you've got at least as many....cuz your a closet racist---you're just like a homophobe lashing out violently at gays. stay away from my workplace.
-Aaron With

Our modern world sure is fraught with peril and strife. Economic instability, the breakdown of the family, political divisions at home and abroad, ecological meltdown, and the little matter of the impending energy crisis that no one has half an idea how to address, nor seemingly the will to do so.

Add to these worries the threat of invasion by hostile extra terrestrials and you’ve got a summer blockbuster on your hands. Hell, let’s toss in a film star who can’t seem to shovel shit onto a once gleaming career fast enough with bizarre (even for a movie star) behavior, special effects worth more than the governmental budgets of many small nations, an adorable child star, some truly ill-conceived alien baddies, and a voice-over courtesy of Morgan Freeman. It shall be known as War of the Worlds (2005).

Right about now you’re probably having flashbacks to Independence Day, which also combined amazing special effects with an offensively thin and emotionally manipulative story. And while that is certainly a connection i made when i saw War of the Worlds, i also thought of a very different invasion movie that nevertheless seemed somehow more relevant.

Signs was M. Night Shyamalan’s third feature film. It’s more sober and atmospheric than War of the Worlds or Independence Day, and is hardly a special effects fest. So what’s the common thread, other than being multi-million dollar Hollywood productions?

Both movies depict alien invasions of our world from the point of view of nuclear American families, and in each case it’s the “head” of the family, the father, who must rise to the challenge and more or less save the day. And in both cases the mother is out of the picture leaving it to father to shoulder the whole burden of an interstellar conflict. It’s hardly surprising that both movies extol the values of white patriarchy; doesn’t every movie these days (and all days?)

Of course, Tom Cruise’s Ray Ferrier (from War of the Worlds) is a very different dad from Mel Gibson’s Graham Hess (in Signs.) He’s a scruffy, immature working class guy, just a normal dude who has a tough time relating to his kids and accepting his responsibilities as a father. He’s a union man, but not some kind of socialist rabble-rouser; he’d rather be terrorizing the neighborhood with reckless driving in his pride and joy, an old muscle car, than attending a labor rally. Typical stuff for Spielberg, the secular liberal. Let’s see what Shyamalan has up his sleeve.

Gibson’s character is a widowed ex-minister (i’m sure it was a great acting challenge for him to portray a Protestant) who lives with his brother and two children on a farm. He’s your archetypal red state Bush voter. He’d definitely base his vote on “moral issues.” He’s a family values type guy, but he’s also having a crisis of faith in light of his wife’s death, and has left his ministry. I suppose he pays the bills with farming, but you never see him working. Must be some of those sweet government subsidies.

In both cases, the alien invasion unfolds as a means of illustrating, intensifying, and ultimately resolving the crisis in each man’s family. Can Tom Cruise gain the maturity he needs to be the head of his family? Can Mel Gibson be reborn in Christ and become a spiritual foundation for his children? Can these men become the rocks that their families need to weather the horrors of the alien incursions?

The aliens: manifestations of your average filmgoers most relevant anxieties. Spielberg’s aliens are interstellar terrorists. They are terrorists literally in the sense that they use terror against civilian populations. And Spielberg plays adorably on the famously (self-)censored line from E.T. when Ferrier’s young daughter asks “are they the terrorists?” after the invasion begins.

Of course this “terrorist” theory may not bear up under closer scrutiny as the aliens’ have no realistic goal for their invasion other than sucking human guts up into their war machines in order to… kill more humans. (As nearly as i can tell, the alien’s war machines are fueled by blood… blood for oil indeed.) Perhaps they are going to take over the world, although that doesn’t explain why they didn’t just do that in the first place, all those years ago before humans even existed (which is when we are told they buried their war machines in the earth.) More probably they resent our way of life. Actually, the alien invasion more closely evokes the horrors of the Holocaust in terms of its scope and reduction of human life to a morally inert substance.

But more chilling than Spielberg’s aliens are his humans. By far the most effective scenes in the film are the ones where Cruise and his family come into conflict with panicked humans, desperately trying to ensure their safety by any means necessary. Early in the story Cruise figures out a way to counteract the aliens’ electromagnetic pulse that has rendered all electronics useless, and gets a car working. He uses the car to flee the city, ostensibly to meet up with his ex-wife in Boston. On the way he encounter a group of refugees who, out of their minds with fear, try to get the car and end up pulling Cruise and his son right out of it. They begin to beat him and the teenage son. Cruise grabs his gun and puts an end to the beating, but another man draws a gun and takes the vehicle. Meanwhile, Cruise loses his gun, another man recovers it, and then uses it to kill the car thief, either for blind revenge or to take the car himself.

This scene is effectively foreshadowed when Cruise takes his gun from a box under his bed as he prepares to flee his home after the beginning of the invasion. We know, even if he doesn’t (and given that he’d already seen one of the war machines he should realize,) that it will be of no use against the aliens, and that it will surely end up being used against other people. When we eventually see the aliens themselves, outside of their war machines, they are hilariously adorable, with big, round eyes. They look like the bastard children of E.T. and H. R. Giger’s alien, if you can believe it.

The disparity between their actions as mass murderers and the behavior of the almost cute aliens as Cruise and a disturbed fat man (Tim Robins) spy on them in a ruined house is puzzling. Spielberg whips out some of his usual routine, showing the aliens exploring the unfamiliar world of earth: they spin the wheel of a bicycle hung on a wall, they’re startled when it falls off the wall, they babble in interstellar baby talk. It’s true that the Nazis were human beings, but i’m sure they weren’t this cuddly.

Shyamalan presents the inverse situation. He plays it coy when it comes to the aliens, leaving you in doubt for most of the film as to whether they even exist. It’s a long time before you catch a glimpse of them, and by that point your anxiety is reaching the boiling point. They were terrifying in the theater and sort of rubbery on a TV. These aliens are altogether more mundane, more pragmatic. They are using fear and limited ground combat against us humans to soften us up for a larger scale invasion with the ultimate goal of seizing our resources.

Although more humanoid in appearance than Spielberg’s creatures, these aliens are far more frightening. They’re intelligent (although they seem to have a lot of trouble with doors) and devious. They act like very effective soldiers. The most frightening scene in Signs takes place as Gibson’s family is barricaded in their basement as the first wave of the invasion has begun. Much of the scene takes place in near pitch darkness, which effectively highlights the sounds of the aliens’ forced entry. Shyamalan makes good on some of his debt to Spielberg by lending him the execution of this scene for use in Robbins's basement.

Meanwhile, Shyamalan’s humans are, in general, the salt of the earth. Everyone in his little farming town knows each other, and it’s all hand-holding, group prayer, divine revelation, and family bonding as they face the assault. The incursion is the occasion for Gibson’s reconnection with his faith, a test for humanity sent, the film would have us believe, directly from God.

Spielberg pulls out the God card as well, although in a much less provocative way than Shyamalan. I’ve called Spielberg essentially secular, and i’ll stick to that, as he evokes God in the most inoffensive, blandly P.C., “in-God-we-trust” sort of way possible, having Morgan Freeman inform us, in his characteristically friendly, paternal way, that God placed bacteria on earth to defend us humans from these sorts of alien invasion, and that there are no meaningless deaths (since all those who died from diseases were contributing to humans’ growing immunity to bacteria. Never mind all the people wiped out by the aliens, or those you’ve just seen killed in the panic following the invasion.)

Shyamalan really outdoes Spielberg (apparently his idol) here, crafting a very tense thriller (although its best scenes don’t translate well for home viewing and it has quite a clunker of an ending) with genuine suspense and some pretty good acting. Spielberg has cranked out a gruesome summer blockbuster, which i like to call “Holocaust: the Ride,” after my sister’s suggestion that War of the Worlds was more akin to a Universal Studios ride than a movie. Spielberg’s mind must be a real charnel house; even his fluff is full of mass murders.

Signs presents us with a worrisome thesis. That God will send us enemies to strengthen our faith. That only through this conflict can faith be strengthened and asserted. It’s easy to dilute this and claim that the aliens are here as a mere metaphor for spiritual struggles that we face (and not for, say, real flesh-and-blood enemies that we must combat,) but keep in mind that this is the analysis that many Christian fundamentalists actually applied to the terrorist attack of 2001. And its basis in doctrine concerning the coming apocalypse hardly needs to be mentioned (consider that the religious right supports aid to Israel on the basis that the wickedness of the Jews is an expedient to the judgment day.)

Furthermore, the September eleventh attack did nothing to change Shyamalan’s preoccupations (Signs came out in 2002, but i’ll play it safe and assume that it came together as a project before the terrorist strike.) Instead, he went on to make The Village, offering an even more disturbing thesis: that we must create our own enemies in order to preserve our values. Which, of course, the United States did in a sense, and more precisely, the global capitalist world system did by creating the conditions under which this kind of global terrorism can exist. Whatever Shyamalan was thinking when he made Signs (and that’s not really my interest) it is hard to look at it now except as a predictor of the Christian Fundamentalist response to the terrorist attack or an echo of apocalyptic prophesies.

It’s harder for me to make something coherent out of Spielberg’s movie. Perhaps this is because there is nothing coherent about Spielberg’s film. It’s a summer blockbuster with little substance. There’s Spielberg’s love for evoking average working class people and neighborhoods, which he does pretty well. There’s his disgustingly predictable penchant for casting adorable precocious girls. And of course, there’s the almost boundless brutality, atrocity, and death.

It’s easy to see what you might get out of a movie like Independence Day. It plays like one of those incredibly triumphant World War II movies, but by replacing the “Japs” or “Krauts” with aliens it remained uncontroversial while allowing the heroes to brutally beat their enemies sans irritating moral quibbles. It would’ve been not only disturbing, but likely a war crime if Will Smith had pulled a wounded Japanese pilot from a crashed airplane and repeatedly punched his head. Luckily there is no interstellar Geneva Convention, and if there were one, we could likely find a loophole large enough for an offshore alien detention center to fit through anyway.

So Independence Day glorified American spirit and prowess in battle at the expense of imaginary others to whom we have no apparent moral or ethical obligations. Of course we should suspect that jingoism will always have innocent victims. What does War of the Worlds offer? It’s hard to say when there is so little resolution to such a gruesome story, and few moments of anything approaching heroism. War of the Worlds hardly glorifies Americans or anyone else, for that matter, in relation to its aliens, presenting instead a chaotic world where life and death are meaningless except in the terms of bare survival, plunging twenty-first century America into Hobbes’s state of nature.

According to a recent article in the Chicago Tribune, War of the Worlds has, in its original and derivative forms, reflected social anxiety, over the fate of the British Empire, the United State’s fate on the eve of World War I, the Cold War, and of course, America’s current precarious position in global events. For a film as brutal and unrewarding as War of the Worlds, this indicates a pretty bleak outlook for America. Even if it's accurate, why is it that people want to see it on the screen? I’m not sure exactly what pleasure we Americans take in envisioning our own end, but it’s hard to argue that we aren’t fascinated by it. From disaster films to actual news coverage of the 2001 terrorist attacks, we replay images of our destruction over and over.

War of the Worlds seems emblematic of the lack of vision that liberals currently posses. Beyond tightening security (right up to the point where the constraints on liberties become intolerable,) there have been few ideas that address the problem of international terrorism. The line taken by neo-conservatives of strengthening foreign military presence will clearly lead to further acts of terrorism and international discord. Changing policy towards Middle-Eastern nations is the most sensible idea, but it seems doubtful that the idea will gain enough support. Even if it does, can enough be done to significantly erode the terrorist’s support and forestall further attacks? And to what extent do terrorists actually rely on broad support? My sense is that regardless of whether or not there is approval for acts of terrorism in a broad sense, funding comes from relatively few wealthy individuals or families, who would be difficult to sway.

The difficulty behind rooting out the threat of terrorism is that this threat is internal to our world-system, not an external one (as a clash of civilizations theory might suggest.) Terrorists play by the rules of international capital, moving information and funds across borders with the ease of high-speed communications and purchasing arms from black markets that are an inevitable side effect of “free” markets. They feed off the anger that is generated by the intrusion of markets as well as the support provided by rich countries to oppressive regimes and the establishment of foreign military bases that are necessary to maintain these markets. And it’s obviously impossible to stop the spread of markets without fundamentally altering the world economy. How is it possible to overcome this resistance that is part-and-parcel of the system itself?

But what’s more worrying, a lack of vision on the part of liberals, or the apparent strength and certitude of those who would dispense with liberal values? Shyamalan, as a presenter of the views of religious fundamentalists, welcomes the invasion and articulates the “proper” response: to reaffirm the values of his Christianity (including those of white male patriarchy.) He suggests that only such a threat can preserve these values.

But these films reveal another source of anxiety, the looming energy crisis. There is a near consensus that current consumption of oil is not sustainable. Meanwhile, China is poised to vastly increase its demand for oil and energy companies are taking only pathetic steps towards alternative energy sources. Once again, the demands of the economy, of continual growth, make it unlikely that a satisfactory solution can be found, especially in the time we probably have to produce one. The result could be armed conflict, possibly on a world scale.

A scarcity of resources is precisely the reason that the aliens in both War of the Worlds and Signs are attacking Earth. Like a clichéd Twilight Zone twist, is it possible that we are actually these aliens, driven to horrible acts by the depletion of our resources?

As a final thought, imagine an America in decline, struggling to retain its dominance overseas to obtain enough oil to prop up a failing economy. Who will be more likely to take up the leadership, the ones desperately pulling each other from cars in hope of a temporary salvation, or the ones who knew all along that there would be a reckoning, and welcomed it Bible in hand and eyes looking proudly up to the Lord?

While you’re pondering that, you should check out Wedding Crashers as a potential antidote to a floundering summer blockbuster season.

Special thanks to jon monteverde (thow-down concept, check jonnymo.blogspot.com) and aaron with (unrestrained id).

From the archives: Oscar night

Jesus, i'm a busy guy. I couldn't even get around to finsihing this post on the Oscars till now. Whatever, you're the one surfing the internet at work:

Every year i watch the Oscars and find new things to fuel my spastic fits of fist shaking and inarticulate sputtering. Maybe i should just stop watching. Given that this is pretty unlikely, possibly because i love complaining, i'll procced to this year's inevitable gripes.

Lately the Academy Awards telecasts have contained some electric moments that really expose the clumsiness and discomfort with which we americans confront issues of race. These events have pointed out how even the supposedly enlightened and liberal Hollywood establishment cannot easily broach these issues, not that that should come as a surprise.

I'm thinking particularly of the 2002 awards in which Denzel Washington and Halle Berry were both awarded Oscars for acting. Berry made a now (in)famously emotional acceptance speech proclaiming that she was proud to open the way for other women of color to gain more respect as actors (she was the first black woman to be awarded the oscar for best actress.) Although at the time i found this speech to be a grating, i liked what she said overall. I particularly appreciated the fact that she explicitly brought the question of race into an arena where it is often glossed over (if not ignored completely), at least in the main stream press. (I admit there certainly has been much discussion of race and film in academic circles.)

The same night, Denzel Washington made a very different speech, one that seemed to have a suggestion of resentment towards the academy, especially by comparison to Berry's emotive triumph. His opening comment was, "two birds with one night, huh?" while examining the award. For just a moment, i thought i could detect a certain sense of weary irony. To me, this suggested that the academy's awarding black actors was a move calculated to allow their organization to be painted in a favorable light, as progressive and egalitarian, and perhaps as a move away from the racism to be found in american film's history.

Am i reading too much into that remark? I would welcome anyone to offer their interpretations of his comment. And admittedly, the rest of his comments were of a completely different tenor, honoring fellow Oscar recipient Sidney Poitier, and thanking the usual assortment of movie people. But the saying "kill two birds with one stones" suggests that it is possible to deal with two problems with one act. This sense of taking care of providing a problem to a solution hardly gels with the stated goal of the Academy Awards as honoring excellence.

It is also important to recognize that the parts for which black actors are nominated tend not to be ones from movies with upfront political or social messages. Washington was passed over for an Academy Award (although he was nominated) for The Hurricane. At the time, commentators noted that Washington was uncharacteristically vocal about his desire to win this award because of the personal importance that this film and it's anti-racist message, held for him.

He did win an award for best supporting actor for Glory, which was essentially a white hero movie about a northern abolitionist who took a rag-tag group of ex-slaves and made them into honorable soldiers. Then they all march into some big guns and get slaughtered. In the end, the rich northern capitalists are allowed to keep their easy access to the agricultural products of the American south. There were courageous abolitionists and black people who fought for the union. I'm sure many of them fervently believed in their cause, and i believe that the Civil War was a step towards racial equality at a time when that goal was incomprehensibly far from realization. But Glory is still fee-good Hollywood, white-washed history, and that's always a detriment to real anti-racist efforts.

Training Day, for which Washington won the Oscar, was, to me, a racist and classist film, showing the South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles to be an urban jungle, inhabited by savage "natives" who are portrayed as alien and inferior to the middle-class cops played by Washington and Ethan Hawke.

The representation of the cops vs. "natives" was drawn directly, so far as i could see from Apocalypse Now, a similiarly racist film by Francis Ford Coppola. The first element of the film that drew this to my attention was the parallel between the car that the cops ride in and the boat that the solider protagonists occupy in Apocalypse Now. In both cases their vehicle is a safe haven from the strange and violent happenings on the shores of the river, or the sidewalks and lawns. In fact, director Anthony Fuqua himself admits that he drew inspiration for these scenes from Apocalypse Now on the commentary track to Training Day.

In both Apocalypse Now and Training Day the portrayal of people as "natives" is stereotypical and offensive. In Apocalypse Now, the indigenous people among whom Kurtz has become a god are incapable of initiative, of determining their own fate. They are either at the mercy of the warlord Kurtz or the enlightened Willard (Marin Sheen's character) who overcomes his own nihilism to offer them a path to peace. The film offers no alternative to white savoirs.

Similarly Hawke plays the white hero, Jake, in Training Day. While the residents of South Central are not necessary portrayed as evil, they are shown to be disposed to violent behavior, and unable to deal with Washington's corrupt cop, Alonzo, who exploits them in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the way in which Kurtz "goes native" in Apocalypse Now. Finally Jake is able to intervene and allow the people of South Central to deal with this corrupt cop in a final violent catharsis. Things work out fine in the ghetto as long as you have enlightened whites like Jake to see things through.

To be clear, i'm taking it for granted that the quality of the performance is of little concern in deciding the winner of a best acting Oscar (and i think the same holds true for all the awards.) It's entirely possible that Washington gave the year's best performance (although i didn't see all of the other films for which actors were nominated, and there can not possibly be a best in a subjective, aesthetic judgement, but i digress.) But every year, the critics who make predictions discuss a host of other factors that play into the Academy's decision process, and i'm only suggesting that race may be one of them.

I've only provided a few examples above, but i think it is enough to suggest the kind of bias that the Academy shows towards actoresses and actors of color. I'd welcome any additional comments about this. One can also point to forms of sexism in the awarding of Oscars. It has been widely commented on that women are more likely to win awards for roles in which they appear naked, and of course Berry acted in a famously racy scene in Monster's Ball, for which she won her best actress award.

***

The 2005 Oscars did have a bit of an edge, as would be expected from the host, Chris Rock. There was a pre-taped bit where Rock first asked filmgoers in a predominantly black neighborhood what they thought about some of the films nominated for best movie, and then asked them about the comedy White Chicks staring the Wayans brothers. Almost none of the interviewees knew about the films nominated for Oscars, but all told him that they had seen White Chicks and liked it.

I suppose that this could be a subversive comment on the classist and racist nature of the Academy Awards and the film establishment in general as it reveals the gap between critically lauded and celebrated films with those that "average" people, or in this case ostensibly middle-class black people, go to see. But doesn't the context (this is a comedy bit being shown at the Academy Awards) and the deliberate choice of White Chicks, a critically reviled film, which has a premise that virtually precludes the audience from taking it seriously as a film, actually serve to poke fun at these filmgoers themselves, and their, by implication, low brow taste in movies?

There was a much better moment that occured when Jorge Drexler accepted his award for best song Al Otro Lado Del Rio from the motorcycle diaries. Every year, popular musicians, occasionally the composer(s) and/or performer(s) themselves, play each of the nominated songs at various points throughout the broadcast prior to the award being given out. This song was performed by Spanish singer/actor Antonio Banderas and Mexican-American guitarist Carlos Santana. At first i mostly enjoyed the perfomance. I was somewhat surprised to find that i liked Banderas's singing (i had no idea he was a "real" singer until i looked it up later on) although i felt that Santana's characteristic bluesy soloing was completely out of place in the song, which sounded more like a Latin American folk song to me. I admit i know next to nothing about Latin American music, so feel free to lacerate me on this point, but i'm sticking to my guns when i say that Santana's contribution was distracting and superfluous.

But you can't appreciate the full meaning of this event until you learn the backstory. Jorge Drexler is a big star in Latin America (he's from Uruguay), writing and singing on his own albums. He had requested that the Academy allow him to perform the song that he had written at the awards. Apparently he wasn't a big enough star for them, and apparently there were no stars from Latin America big enough to perform on the Academy's stage, because they recruited Banderas and Santana. I don't mean to denigrate either as a musician or a person, but i find the academy's decision shameful. It would obviously have been relevant to have a Latin American performer sing this song about a Latin American Revolutionary who fought on the side of poor countries against the hegemony of the United States. But it just wasn't in the stars.

Drexler responded in a very graceful way, giving no acceptance speech, instead singing one of the uplifiting lyrics from his song. I guess i'd have perferred a fiery denunciation of the academy, and American liberals in general, but his way worked too, if you were listening and watching, critically.