Rolling Thunder Revue

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
seen @ IFC Center, New York NY

I opted to see Rolling Thunder Revue with Virginia at the last minute because I was afraid it would rain on Sunday (it did) and Toy Story 4 wasn’t out yet (though she doesn’t have much interest in that), but when I realized this is a Netflix film getting a theatrical release, I felt funny about paying money to see it.

With Roma, the big attraction in seeing that theatrically was Alfonso Cuaron’s beautiful visuals and deft compositions on a wide screen — not to mention the excellent story. That was worth paying for, and I did, twice in fact. Nothing about Revue screamed “See this on a big screen”; I doubt most documentaries “need” to be seen that way. Martin Scorsese’s next film, The Irishman, will also come out theatrically and on Netflix simultaneously, and at this point I’m not sure if I’ll make the same choice.

So. Bob Dylan. I told Virginia after the film that it was difficult for me to truly appreciate what a cultural icon he was during the 60s, as much as I’ve read about him, watched videos about him, and listened to his music. Revue helped, but for someone who wasn’t there during his creative peak, what he meant to people still strikes me as peculiar, especially now that songwriting skill in general feels devalued these days.

In 1975, Dylan organized a tour with Joan Baez and other folkies, plus counterculture figures like Allen Ginsberg, in which he played small towns in smaller venues, riding around in a bus which he drove himself. It was called the Rolling Thunder Revue. Concert footage from that tour, plus new interviews with Dylan and others, comprise this doc, continuing a streak of concert films Scorsese has pursued on and off for years, including The Last Waltz (The Band), Shine a Light (the Rolling Stones) and George Harrison: Living in the Material World. It also captures some of the zeitgeist of the era.

And it includes material Scorsese simply made up.

Why? He comes close to explaining his rationale in this interview, though if you look at the film on its own, you could easily be fooled into thinking the whole thing was genuine. Theories abound — here’s one — but ultimately this doesn’t bother me as much as it probably should. Dylan always struck me as this enigmatic, almost mythical figure. The pompous subtitle kinda implies there’s more going on here than what lies on the surface, something that feeds into the myth of Dylan — and Scorsese’s not the first filmmaker to recognize this. Remember that Todd Haynes “biopic” of Dylan, I’m Not There, in which “Dylan” was played by, among others, a black child and a woman? Something about Dylan seems to inspire reinterpretation... but I’m not the one to explain why.

Virginia really dug this movie. She had wanted to see it before I off-handedly suggested it, and not just because she did live through the peak Dylan era. She knew peripherally a couple of people in the film from musical performances she was part of in the past — a fourth or fifth degree of separation, I think. She kept telling me about it during the film.

Watching it with an audience, I felt like everyone else understood Dylan and his career, not to mention the people involved in this story, better than me: there was knowing laughter in spots I didn’t think was funny, and even Virginia made “mm hmm” noises to herself in recognition, as if she was having a conversation with the film to which I wasn’t privy. I half-expected this sort of thing. Every time I think I’ve gotten a handle on 60s culture (Dylan is of the 60s, and this movie feeds off that vibe), something new comes along — like this.

The Death of Stalin

The Death of Stalin
seen @ IFC Center, New York NY

I'm gonna do a quick post about this one because I'm still a bit behind and I wanna catch up as soon as possible. This was Vija's suggestion, and if you've heard anything about it, you know it's gotten spectacular reviews.

Cold War-era Russia has been the subject of comedy before, but mining the demise of its most notorious ruler for laughs is a new one to me, and it's actually pretty good, no matter how little or how much you know about Stalin and his cabinet. You see the atrocities of the Stalin regime, but you also see the bumbling and the weirdness too — and one can't help but be reminded, to a certain degree, of the current administration here in America. 

Director and co-writer Armando Iannucci lets the international cast (including Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev!) keep their native accents; no one speaks with a Russian accent, which lends a somewhat surreal aspect to the story, but hey, if black people can portray the founding fathers of America, anything's possible, right?

The Oscar-nominated animation shorts plus an Oscar wrap-up

Here's something new for the blog: every year, in select theaters around the country, the Academy releases the Oscar nominees in the short film categories — live action, documentary and animation.

I'm not sure, but I think last Friday may have been the first time I went to see some of them theatrically, before the Oscar telecast. It was actually Virginia's idea; we were gonna have a late lunch near the IFC Center in Manhattan and she decided she wanted to go to the movies also. I opted for the nominees for Animated Short. The late lunch turned into an early dinner.

Dear Basketball

I hadn't been to the IFC in some time. They're in the process of trying to expand their Greenwich Village venue, but they've run into some problems that may threaten their future in that location. I remember signing a petition in support of their proposed expansion. I don't need to explain to you how important it is for them to remain viable, in the wake of the demise of the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, so I hope everything works out for them.

The nominated films are the following:

Garden Party

- Dear Basketball. Hoop superstar Kobe Bryant reflects on his lifelong love affair with the game. This may be the sentimental choice. I know little about Bryant, but I'm aware he's a top NBA player, and this seems like a heartfelt tribute. The art is a lot like the video for A-ha's "Take On Me": sketchy and subtle, yet energetic and metamorphic.

- Garden Party. A bunch of frogs and other creatures explore an abandoned mansion — but why is it abandoned in the first place? This one was my favorite. The ridiculously photorealistic art is enough of a treat on its own, but the mystery of the mansion and what happened there before the frogs came may be even more tantalizing, especially since we're only given bits and pieces of the puzzle.

Lou

- Lou. A playground bully and thief gets his comeuppance from an unusual creature born of his spoils. The token Pixar entry, "Lou" is also a mystery, but who and what it is ultimately counts for less than how it handles the bully. It's Pixar, so you know it's good.

- Negative Space. How packing luggage unites a father and son. This one's in stop-motion; it's probably the least of the five, but it's visually appealing, and it has a clever ending.

Negative Space

- Revolting Rhymes. Based on a Roald Dahl story, this is a mash-up of classic fairy tales in a modern setting. Dahl's slightly skewed humor is at play here, taking archetypal characters like Snow White, Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf and others and reimagining them while sticking to the original tales. The CGI art was fine; no complaints. There were also some honorable mentions included with the screening.

Virginia liked these shorts but thought a number of them had a dark undercurrent, particularly Rhymes (gunplay, animals devouring other animals), though it didn't really bother her.

I could easily see Basketball winning, though I would give the Oscar to Garden.

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Revolting Rhymes

Now it's the day after the Oscars, and it turns out I was right: Dear Basketball did win. Like I said, it struck me as the sentimental choice, although looking further into Bryant's history, I doubt his win will be celebrated in certain circles.

I didn't bother watching; I knew The Shape of Water would take top honors, and it did. Del Toro got Director too. I can't argue with either choice. 

I knew Oldman and McDormand would get the lead acting Oscars, but I'm thrilled to also see Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney take the Supporting ones too; they're both fine actors I've admired for a long time.

Bibi and Eric had shared their predictions with me and other friends by email last weekend. They will be pleased to see Get Out take Original Screenplay; they liked that one a lot; they were less excited about Call Me By Your Name, even though that won Adapted Screenplay. Eh. It's over now, so we can all get on with our lives.

Here's the full list.

The Witness

The Witness
seen @ IFC Center, New York NY

I don't consider Kew Gardens "my" neighborhood, but it's one of the parts of Queens I like most, and within which I feel comfortable. A big reason why is the presence of the Kew Gardens Cinemas, which I've written about here lots of times, but there are other reasons: places to eat, parks, the nice houses. Yet for over half a century, this neighborhood has had to live with the memory of not only a brutal murder committed there, but a reputation for apathy that may not be entirely earned.

I learned about the murder of Kitty Genovese through pop culture. There's a chapter in the famous graphic novel Watchmen which goes into the origin of the sociopathic antihero Rorschach. One of the reasons he provides for becoming a masked vigilante was shame over her story: as reported in 1964 by the New York Times, Genovese was attacked, raped and killed outside her Kew Gardens apartment late at night. 38 people allegedly saw or heard what was going on, but did nothing to prevent it happening. Within the context of the fictional superhero tale, I didn't recognize this as a piece of real-life history when I first read the book, and I was too young to even know about it.

Over time, I learned it was all too real, but it wasn't until recently that I was able to process it as something that happened in a part of town I knew. In the 2014 book Tomorrow-Land: The 1964-65 World's Fair and the Transformation of America by Joseph Tirella, a chapter is devoted to the slaying, which took place as Queens was preparing to put on a World's Fair that would put it in the international spotlight. Queens was put in a spotlight, all right, but not the kind it expected:

...Citizens, clergy, politicians, journalists and psychiatrists offered numerous opinions in an attempt to explain the horrible crime, and the larger issues it invoked. President (Lyndon) Johnson mentioned it on a radio address, as the murder of Genovese quickly became a symbol of all that was wrong with America's cities. The silence of those thirty-eight witnesses would be debated for decades to come; sociologists even gave a name to this new disease that was infecting urban America: Genovese syndrome.

Now comes a new documentary, The Witness, which looks at the murder through the prism of the surviving Genovese family members, specifically Kitty's younger brother Bill, who is the film's narrative center. Driven by a need to understand what really happened that night in 1964, when he was a teenager, we follow him as he examines old police records, visits the Kew Gardens street where it happened, as well as Kitty's old apartment, and talks to many people associated with Kitty and her death, including other siblings, police, lawyers, journalists, co-workers, her former roommate, the son of the killer, and most of all, Kitty's former neighbors, who may or may not have been among the infamous 38. We learn that the story of the 38 might have been an exaggeration, certain aspects of the story went unreported, and the story itself went unchallenged at the time.

Bill Genovese, Kitty's brother

I either hang out or pass through Kew Gardens a fair amount, mainly because of the movie theater. The neighborhood has become quite familiar to me. In my mind, it's difficult, bordering on impossible, to imagine something like this, an event the whole world knows about by now, taking place on a street I've walked up and down countless times. If you go to Austin Street now, there's no indication of what occurred that night, not that any should be expected. Other than the Long Island Railroad trains passing through every so often, it's a quiet community - not as diverse as Jackson Heights or as gentrified as Long Island City, but it's okay.

The Witness showed footage of Kew Gardens from the time of the murder, and I was amazed to not only see the neighborhood as it was over fifty years ago, but to see Kitty Genovese within it. The portrait the film paints of her is of a cute, lively, fun-loving young woman who was a cut-up around her friends and a confidant to her little brother Bill. I can easily imagine her as a friend.

Winston Moseley, Kitty's killer

There's a scene late in the movie where we see an actress, on Austin Street late at night, re-create Kitty's last moments, with Bill watching. When asked why he arranged to have that done, he cited his experience in Vietnam as an impetus. His fellow soldiers were there to save him when he got his legs blown off, but no one was there for his sister when she died. The reenactment was a kind of catharsis, to let Kitty's spirit know he is there for her. I suppose we all have our own ways of dealing with grief.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Jiro Dreams of Sushi
seen at the IFC Center, New York, NY
3.9.12

In recent months, I've taken faltering baby steps into the world of the culinary arts. I can't say whether it was any one thing that inspired it; I guess I simply figured cooking was something I oughta have a little bit of skill in. Of course, there were already some things I was (and am) fairly confident I could cook without too much trouble: a hamburger, a grilled cheese sandwich, pancakes. Still, I felt it was time to stretch my boundaries a bit. (Feel free to laugh where appropriate.)


I remembered how my mother would occasionally make Rice-a-Roni when I was a kid, so one day I picked up a box at the supermarket and gave it a shot. Unfortunately, no one told me how difficult it is to actually make rice! (Even if it's only Rice-a-Roni.) I used too much water, it didn't cook long enough, and it was a great big mess in the end. The second time I tried, I overcooked it, and although this made it slightly more edible, it still wasn't something you'd wanna serve to dinner guests. So much for rice.

Pasta was a lot easier. Making spaghetti is easy and fun! Can't believe I never made it on my own sooner. As a kid I always ate that Franco-American canned stuff, but now, it's Ronzoni all the way! Once I mastered that, I tried rigatoni, and that worked out fine as well, but then I got cocky. On the back of the box, there was a recipe for chicken cacciatore. I looked at it and I figured I could try that as well. But see, chicken cacciatore requires a lot of different ingredients, and as I slowly filled my shopping cart with them, I thought to myself two things: (1) This stuff is getting really expensive, and (2) when I inevitably mess up - because there's no way I was gonna get it right the first time - I'm gonna be left with ingredients that I may not use for anything else. They're just gonna sit around the kitchen taking up space, and I'll have wasted money. I concluded that I didn't need to learn how to make chicken cacciatore that badly.


When I was in junior high I had a home ec class where I learned a little bit of cooking. (Do they still have home ec classes?) We had to keep a notebook for writing down recipes. The only thing I remember making in that class was biscuits, and I considered that a major triumph.


I have no ambitions to be a master chef like those on TV. I don't watch any of those cooking competition shows and have no aspirations to enter any of them. Cooking just strikes me as a pleasant and useful thing to be able to do, and I don't care that much if I can't make rice properly as long as I can make a few things.

The one and only time I can remember eating sushi was well over a decade ago. I'm pretty sure I was with Jenny at the time. We were at a sushi joint in the East Village in Manhattan. I knew what it was (I think), and I wasn't all that eager to try it, but I did, and I was less than impressed, to put it mildly. Haven't touched the stuff since, although I have eaten other kinds of Japanese food; the last time being at my sister's wedding. I suppose it's possible that I haven't found the right kind of Japanese food, but honestly, I'm in no great hurry to look. I don't even know how to hold chopsticks right!


Given that, I very likely would not have chosen to see a movie called Jiro Dreams of Sushi on my own, but this was a night out with friends: Vija, with whom I haven't gone to a movie in awhile, this young dude named Donald, another fellow artist, and this lady named Alicia, whom I met once before at one of Vija's parties. This outing was her idea; she's trying to make such nights a regular thing. The choice of movie was Don's idea.

So the Jiro in the movie is Jiro Ono, an octogenarian master sushi chef in a tiny shop in Tokyo. Dude's been making sushi most of his life and he's obsessed with making it the best it can possibly be, and as a result he has been feted for it, both at home and abroad. This doc covers his career and what goes into making great sushi. It's well made, even if I didn't necessarily find all the gorgeous close-ups of sushi appetizing.


Also featured in the film are Jiro's two sons, who have followed him into the business. At one point Jiro says that they wanted to go to college, but he coerced them into becoming sushi chefs instead. The oldest son admits that there were other vocations he wanted to pursue as a younger man, but doesn't seem to have any regrets. I have to admit this part troubled me. While there may be more to this aspect of the story that the director chose not to go into, on the face of it, I find the thought that Jiro strong-armed his kids into his profession disturbing. The oldest son also said that when Jiro dies, he'll be expected to be twice as good as his father because Jiro has set such a ridiculously high standard for great sushi. If true, that's insane. There may be cultural mores at play here that I'm unaware of, though; the oldest son also said that in Japanese culture, the eldest son is expected to succeed the father, so it's entirely possible there are nuances that I'm not grokking. I dunno. Still liked the movie, though.

The IFC was packed! There must have been a great deal of anticipation over Jiro; the place was almost sold out and people still kept coming in 5-10 minutes after it started, and afterwards, there was a huge line of ticket holders waiting outside. I suspect part of the reason for the big crowd was that director David Gelb was in attendance. He said his Japanese was minimal, so he worked with several translators in conducting the interviews, and when it came time to edit the footage together, sometimes he'd have to go through hundreds of feet of film thinking Jiro or his sons were saying something important about sushi and it turns out they're only talking about baseball. He said it was worth it, though, if it meant he could find something meaningful to the story he was presenting.


Alicia came late to the theater, and as a result the rest of us didn't catch up to her until afterwards, but afterwards we went out for pizza and talked about the movie and other stuff.

Being Elmo

Being Elmo
seen @ IFC Center, New York NY
11.1.11

Okay, first of all, can I just say how absolutely TERRIFYING this poster for Being Elmo is? I mean, look at it. That damn muppet looks like he's been summoned from the lower regions of hell by Kevin Clash for the specific purpose of vivisecting you and offering you up as a sacrifice to the Elder Gods. It looks like a poster for a 70s grindhouse horror movie. Seriously, what were they thinking when they put this together? This is without a doubt the wrong image you wanna present for what is a positive, uplifting, feel-good movie. Am I the only one who thinks so? I doubt it...

Anyway. Sesame Street. I watched it as a kid, like everyone else. Snufflufagus was kinda scary, Cookie Monster was awesome, and Big Bird was sweet. I don't remember too much about watching the show, just a few scattered memories here and there, so I can't say to what extent I learned stuff from it. I'm sure I did. (I have better memories of watching The Electric Company, and I definitely learned from that show, but that's for another post.)

Elmo, of course, became a star long after I had stopped watching Sesame Street, and I remember being annoyed at seeing him everywhere after he blew up. I suppose I thought at the time that he was the show's answer to Barney, from what little I saw of him. Still, I didn't care too much. It wasn't until I started hearing about this documentary and saw that Elmo's muppeteer was a black man that I took any interest.

I never had any great dream to make muppets or puppets like Clash did. If anything, Being Elmo shows that it's one thing to be able to make a cool-looking puppet, but another thing altogether to create a personality for it. We see footage of Clash as a teenager hand-sewing puppets and learning about the materials that go into making them and he certainly has a talent for that, one developed at an early age. To bring these puppets to life, however, takes something extra, and in seeing the teenaged Clash make voices for them and animate them - that, to me, was the truly remarkable part. There's one scene where he explains to another muppeteer the subtle differences in showing expression on a muppet, and you can tell how great an expert he has become at it, how he makes it an art form.

I have to admit, I'm disappointed that Being Elmo is only playing at the IFC. If ever a movie deserves a wider audience, this is one - black audiences in particular need to see it. We get to see Clash's family, his humble beginnings as a poor kid in Baltimore, and how he single-mindedly pursued his dream. That's a story that transcends race, but it's also a story with resonance and relevance for black audiences in particular, and it's unfortunate that no theaters in Harlem or downtown Brooklyn or Jamaica are showing this.

I don't think I've talked about the IFC here. The IFC is a relatively recent addition to the West Village, replacing the old Waverly Theater. (I saw Scream with Jenny at the old Waverly!) It's not as aesthetically pleasing as other art house theaters, but the seats are comfortable, the bathrooms are clean and the selection of films is always top-notch. The last film I saw here was Antichrist (NOT MY IDEA!! Jenny really wanted to see it - and even then, we almost walked out on it). Plus, the IFC sells these really cool T-shirts that have the names of foreign directors in the style of heavy metal logos - for instance, "Ozu" in an Ozzy (as in Osborne) logo, or "Von Trier" in a Van Halen logo. One day I'll have to buy one of those.


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Related:
The frog prince: The legacy of Jim Henson

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Cave of Forgotten Dreams
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY
5.17.11

The first thing we studied in my high school art history class was cave paintings. I don't remember which ones specifically; I suppose it may have been the ones at Lascaux. It didn't leave that big an impression on me, though. Part of the reason why may have been the format of the class itself: while I had a good teacher, she had to cram a whole lot of information into a relatively short amount of time, so information was dispensed rather quickly. Mostly, though, I think it was because we were looking at slides and not the real thing. That wouldn't have been possible, of course, but still, at the time I think I regarded cave paintings as little different from other paintings - they were just a lot older and on a different canvas.

In that sense, I understand why Werner Herzog chose to film Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3D. To be able to see these images on the surfaces of the ancient rock, the way primitive man saw them as they were being made, in a format approximating three-dimensionality, makes you more aware of the reality of this work. Whenever I see a painting, especially one with thick amounts of paint, my instinct is to want to touch it. Recently, I was at an outdoor art fair in New Jersey and one of the artists had paintings that he encouraged people to touch. It was a wonderful feeling.

One doesn't need to feel a work of art to appreciate it any better, but by doing so, one gets a greater sense of it as a physical object, one made by human hands. This movie comes as close as we'll ever get to evoking that feeling for these cave paintings, because by shooting it in 3D, these images come alive in a way that they wouldn't if it were flat.


This is the first 3D movie I've seen since Avatar. Comparisons may have been inevitable, but ultimately they're fruitless. Avatar was so busy creating this new world that was full of unusual sights and objects; there was always something neat to look at. Cave doesn't have anything unusual outside of the cave paintings themselves, so half of the time you're looking at things like talking-head interviews and offices and beautiful-yet-real-world-based landscapes in 3D as well, and there's nothing particularly breathtaking about that, at least not in comparison with Avatar.

Give Herzog credit for trying something new. It's encouraging that elder statesmen like him continue to find new filmmaking challenges, and he made the most of this, especially given the fact that he and his film crew were being granted exclusive access to Chauvet Cave for a limited period of time. I doubt there was anything in his long career to prepare himself for this. It's becoming cheaper to make 3D movies now, so one can only hope that the bar will continue to be high for 3D movies when they're of this quality.

I saw Cave in Queens, but I had planned on seeing it in Manhattan with Vija. I had told her about it on Facebook, and she seemed excited about it, especially since she hadn't heard about it, so we planned on last Sunday, the 15th, at the IFC Center in the Village. She invited Franz to come along as well. Sunday came and they arrived first at the IFC and got their tickets. I came later, at 2:30, for a 2:55 show, thinking there was still plenty of time, but the 2:55 was sold out!

This was a surprise to all of us. When I got there, they were on a long ticket holders line that Vija said formed pretty quickly. I saw the line, but didn't see them at first; I got the bad news at the box office and came back and found them, so they ended up seeing the movie without me. I had to spend two hours waiting for them in Washington Square Park. As I left, I distinctly heard a couple saying how surprised they were that the show was sold out, since the movie has been out for awhile. I took some comfort in that.


Anyway, afterwards, I caught up with them and we all went to have Chinese for dinner. (Vija treated me.) They told me how much they loved the movie, and I ended up learning bits of information about what to expect - which was fine with me, since I had already read some interviews with Herzog about it, so I wasn't too lost in the discussion.

I still can't help but feel a little embarrassed about the whole thing; normally I'm a stickler for getting to a movie far enough ahead of time that something like this would never happen. In this case, I underestimated the demand for Cave, especially at an art house theater like the IFC on a weekend. At the Kew Gardens it was obviously much different. I walked in five minutes before showtime and got my ticket, no problem.