newcritics

Over at newcritics.com, it’s time to close the front door, turn off the lights ’round the bar, hang up the closed sign, and walk out the back way for the last time. This little group culture blog, which began as an experiment in the winter of 2006-07, is putting its xml to rest and moving on. No heavy heart accompanies the closure; newcritics.com was never more than a nifty digital hang-out for a squadron of bloggers who wanted a convivial crowd to shoot the breeze with over conversations about film, television, books, music and the like. In that way, it fullfilled its promise brilliantly.

“That newcritics crowd,” as it was known in some corners of the cultural blogosphere, came together original over politics at the old roundtable in the back of the Algonquin Hotel, grew via Wordpress, and convened virtually around esoteric filmfests, live-blogging Mad Men, and arguing about old Stones records. What a great group, especially the core of regulars: the gracious and fab M.A. Peel, who was most nearly my partner in organizing this temporary salon, the prolific Lance Mannion and the generous and witty Blue Girl, musicologists Jason Chervokas and Dan Leo, the serenely cinematic Siren and the erudite Robert Stein, the culturally agile NYC Weboy and the peripatetic Neddie Jingo, book maven extraordinare Maud Newton and comedy guru Dennis Perrin, Kathleen and Manny Maher (the Nick and Nora of our set), and the TV fashion bloggers Claire Helene and Jennifer Krentz, rock and roll wild men Tony Alva and the Viscount, the caustic Brendan Tween and film fanatic Chuck Tryon, to name just a few of the more than 50 bloggers who posted over there (not to mention outside linking support from Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott, a fan of the cultural scrum, and a hearty group of regular commenters).

What a crowd! And it was a privilege to invite them to newcritics every week for a couple of years, and kick the cultural zeitgeist around the saloon for a while. I loved it. But the party’s moved on. To Facebook and Twitter and other venues. What we did there was for and of its time - entirely worthwhile, but always time-limited and impermanent. A long conversation, but one with an end.

When I wrote CauseWired last year, I included a brief description of newcritics.com in the book, because I’d gained valuable insight into online group dynamics, and because I saw that conversation itself as a cause worth supporting. I still think it is - but it’s also clear that it will happen elsewhere. In some ways, the glory days of personal and immediate blogging have passed newcritics by; but in another sense, it’s really just part of a continued evolution in social media. The conversations I’m having on Facebook and Twitter with some of the very same people who used to hang out at newcritics are every bit as good as the ones we had at this particular web address.

So let those conversations continue. And thanks for stopping by.

[Note: we'll keep the archives up for a bit, then my guess is the site will go the way of all flesh. Comments are still on, but require full registration, so I don't expect many. I'll see you all at the next roadhouse.]

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It’s tempting to just leave this to the Trekkies and the obssessives, to let Star Trek be measured in its franchise terms: money, success, fealty to its origins. Doing that,though, would be a little cruel: Star Trek is an impressive accomplishment not because of how it “reboots” a familiar story, but because it is probably one of the best summer films ever, certainly in a long time (okay, maybe just since Iron Man - but even that suffers from Gwyneth Paltrow).

Just to be clear, I’m not a Trekkie… more like a very interested bystander. Star Trek was a formative experience for me - both the series and the initial 5 films - largely because of my cousin, Galen. He taught me the appeal of science fiction, the worlds of imagination it opened up (Galen’s artistic impulses were opened up through drawing spaceships), and tthe way science fiction could make a better world… and us, better people. I still believe in all that. And it’s why, Trekkie or no, I think Star Trek has a lot to live up to.

Star Trek takes the familiar elements of the legend - there’s not a lot of American science fiction where “myth” and “legend” so readily apply - and shakes them up: yes, it’s got the rainbow(ish) cast, the “can’t we all get along” vibe, the tension between logic and gut instinct… but mostly, it’s got a freshness and a willingness to modernize that should be celebrated. This is how “remakes” really should be remade. And full credit, clearly, goes to director JJ Abrams.

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine isn’t terrible… which is a shame, probably, because if it at least committed to being kind of kicky-bad that would constitute making a choice; as it is, the film sort of muddles along, winding up at somewhat unsatisfying, while teasing you with the notions of a smarter better film in there, somewhere.

Sharing that quality with Watchmen, Wolverine is more frustrating because the joyous, fizzy buzz of comic book adventure is much more obvious within it. And Watchmen, at least, had the sense to make things consequential: the “save the world, but lose your soul” aspect of its moral feels more consequential than Wolverine’s sense of personal drama trumping all else. Lonely man goes off to soldier alone… surely someone in a producing role noticed that the ending is, well, kind of a downer.

In these “dark comic” days that’s surely intentional, but in Wolverine’s case, the darkness just can’t contain the film’s aspirations. Partly that’s a function of the film’s leading actor - Hugh Jackman, giving it his all, is just not that into darkness. Unlike, say Christian Bale, whose icy depths offer a “love my dark side or fuck off” kind of choice, Jackman’s showmanship is more oldschool and eager to please. That’s not a flaw - Jackman’s star quality carries Wolverine and overcomes much of the slack parts - but it’s why Wolverine will never be mistaken, say, for The Dark Knight or Batman Begins. Bale is the darkness… Jackman shines too brightly to stay there.

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At this stage, the Bob Dylan test is simple: listen to a new record a few times and before you make your judgment, pretend it’s the work of a largely unknown old circuit rider named Robby Zimmerman playing bars and beer halls with his traveling blues band in the upper midwest.

Then decide.

By the high cultural standards generally ascribed to America’s generational poet, Dylan’s unexpected new album Together Through Life is light and occasionally pleasing, an interesting fourth record in a blues-based “comeback” that begin with his Grammy-winning Time Out of Mind in 1997. To Dylanologists and obsessive critics, it’ll never make the canon.

But to anyone scuffling through the the hard rain of springtime, 2009, the new Dylan record is a low and pleasing rumble of traditional blues and front parlor numbers, latched to the back-end of a cross country semi hauling one hell of a groove across the American wasteland.

If this were the work of an unknown veteran, in other words, the critics would be patting themselves on the back for their tremendous taste and ability to spot a new talent.

About that groove: the guitar work of Heartbreaker Mike Campbell and the accordion of Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo weave a border cafe filigree of melody and rhythm, while Dylan’s touring band - bassist Tony Garnier, drummer George Recile, and Donnie Herron on banjo, steel guitar and mando - lay down a rich bed of sound that’s part vintage Chess sides and part nouveau Texas swing.

Dylan’s voice has never been scruffier, a lonely warble grooved with years aural scars. But in other ways, his singing hasn’t been this good in a decade. It’s crisply enunciated. And the singer sells the songs completely, even though most of the lines turn downward these days at the end, the antithesis of the characteristic upward snarl of “how does it feel?”

This 67-year-old Dylan knows how it feels and the songs - mostly co-written with lyricist Robert Hunter - tell small and personal stories. Dark tales with dark humor and lost dreams: Dylan knows it’s late in his game (and perhaps ours as well). “I feel a change comin’ on and the fourth part of the day’s already gone,” he sings over happy upbeat blues on the record’s best song. Then he adds: “I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver and I’m reading James Joyce/Some people they tell me I’ve got the blood of the land in my voice.”

That he does. Most critics thought Dylan had finished his late-career blue trilogy (which also included Love and Theft from 2001 and Modern Times in 2006), but as Dylan sings in Jolene on the new disk: “I keep my hands in my pocket, I’m moving along, people think they know, but they’re all wrong.”

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Here is a new jazz release that features 18 tight songs all over the stylistic map, from moody meditations to funky blues to soulful swing. If you didn’t know who created it, you might guess it was a young composer trying his or her hand at different genres—yet there is a notable confidence to the songs and a relaxed skill to the presentation. No wonder: this is Chico Hamilton’s latest album. At 88 years old, with more than 50 albums to his name, the master drummer may be living proof that creativity keeps you young.

Chico Hamilton began his career in the 1940s as sidemen to greats such as Lester Young and Billie Holiday. He became a band leader in the ‘50s (making a brief but memorable appearance in the all-time-great movie Sweet Smell of Success). He has worked with greats from Eric Dolphy to Larry Coryell, and he has never slowed down.

The very fine “Twelve Tones of Love,” on the Joyous Shout! label features Hamilton doing what he does best: assembling talent both young and old, composing songs and laying down flawless rhythm for the band. Fifteen of the 18 songs are new and written by Hamilton. Unlike many marquee-name drummers, Hamilton doesn’t put his drums out front. There are no drummer solos here; no crashing intrusions; just an intelligent, shifting tempo that both drives and complements the other players.

While a few of the songs on “Twelve Tones of Love” have an elegiac feel, more of them are playful and teasing. Hamilton loves to shift moods with rhythm changes, and somehow (years of practice, no doubt) makes it always feel just right. The players he’s assembled here take turns in the spotlight and are clearly having loads of fun. Some of the highlights on this album are “Nonchalant,” a quiet, expressive blues; “Penthouse A,” a laid-back bossa nova vamp; and “Steinway,” with a cool Afro-Cuban rhythm.

To do some research for this review, I checked out the Wikipedia entry on Chico Hamilton. Under “genre,” it lists: cool jazz, west coast jazz, progressive jazz, soul-jazz, hard-bop, post-bop, crossover jazz, jazz funk and boogaloo. That about covers it, and with the exception perhaps of boogaloo, you can hear it all on “Twelve Tones of Love.”

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I can’t let Bea Arthur’s passing go by undiscussed, for many reasons.

For one thing, I stand for the idea that all of the stars should be rescued from being overly identified with The Golden Girls; long before Dorothy Zbornak, Bea Arthur was established as a Broadway and Television legend. The Golden Girls was mostly icing after that.

It’s hard to explain, in some sense, why Arthur was iconic; in some ways she was an improbable star. In another her stardom was too obvious: she was such a physical presence, so towering, so indomitable. Neither, really, is entirely fair.

I wouldn’t make you watch Mame to prove it, but what moments there are to improve the proceedings come in large measure from Arthur’s turn reprising her role as Vera Charles, Mame’s bosom buddy. That turn on Broadway - after also launching the role of Yente in Fiddler - is what made her a star (she maintained the real name of the show was “Vera”). By the time of the film in 1974, Arthur was already making her mark in television as well: after guesting on All in the Family as Edith’s cousin, she’d moved onto her own spinoff, Maude.

It’s hard, now, to imagine how challenging Maude was: the lead wasn’t entirely likable - not something normal among leading women roles in a sitcom (even now), and Maude’s politics were always up front and direct. It was easy to assume that Arthur was as direct, confrontational and political as her character (which, in real life, was actually developed from Frances Lear, Norman Lear’s wife), but really, that’s just how strong an actress she was, and she paid for it with a unique kind of stardom: controversy borne from her work, not from who she was. She was a big gal with a deep voice and it was easy to assume… many things. But none of our assumptions kept her, basically, from doing the work she wanted to do.

In that sense, it’s not hard to see how we wound up with Dorothy and the Golden Girls: after years of being seen as outspoken and challenging, Dorothy Zbornak was largely warm and nonconfrontational, and so was the show; yet, at her age it was undeniable that Arthur, Betty White and Rue McClanahan (who’d also been on Maude), as wellas Estelle Getty, were all comic veterans with impeccable timing and skills. It goes a long way to explaining why Golden Girls is what it was: safe, non threatening, extremely funny… but often mush. Bea Arthur could still be acid-tongued and perfect with a well timed zinger… but the zings were framed by a warmth and supportiveness. If it devolved into shtick… it was still incredibly well honed, well done shtick.

In retrospect, I think Bea Arthur is someone who did it right - it’s the work we’ll remember, the roles we’ll admire. As a person and a celebrity she seemed less knowable, distant, eager to let the work speak for her. And it should; it was good work. I just hope time will be kind enough to see Arthur’s roles in their totality, that she gets the credit she deserves, still, for Maude (really… who’s doing anything like that, these days?), and Vera, and all the rest… even as we get inundated, once more, with Golden Girls reruns. I could live with that.

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In John Baker’s thought-provoking, elegant new novel, “Winged With Death,” the past leads the present in an unstoppable tango.

The past is 1970s-80s Montevideo, Uruguay, where the military dictatorship is burying people alive, and a milonguero, a master of the tango, dances in cellar salons. The present is present-day York, England, where the dancer has returned to his home town and is drawn into the personal nightmare of a missing family member. “Winged With Death” is a sweeping novel and yet each step reveals a perfect pattern.

In 1972, eighteen-year-old Fredrick Boyle jumps ship in Montevideo, just as the military—with United States assistance—is capturing, torturing, and murdering people ever more ruthlessly. The people rely on a growing revolutionary group, the Tupamaros, to fight these death squads. But simultaneously, many if not most citizens struggle to deny that their friends and neighbors are disappearing all around them.

Fredrick is immediately befriended by Julio Ferrari, a skillful and well read Tupamaro, who on sight changes the Englishman’s name to Ramon Bolio, an identity he keeps. Thanks in part to Julio’s unwavering friendship, Ramon tutors the privileged children of the military. He falls in love with the tango, which in Montevideo is no ballroom dance. Rather, it “has none of the flamboyance…it is sometimes passionate and sensuous, often lyrical, even philosophical, but it is never for show alone unless it is a show of unity.”

Performed throughout the city, it is “a march for the dispossessed and exploited.” While mastering the tango, Ramon seduces the reigning milonguero’s protégée. With his beautiful, young partner, he becomes a dancer to the extent that the dance becomes his life.

“The inevitability of isolation is confined to the level of the senses. But there is a realm above that, to which we all subscribe, and there, there is the potential to move together, to be as one, to dance.”

Yet nobody is safe. When his neighbors disappear, Ramon has no way to respond. Except that like anyone, he is relieved that it isn’t him—this time.

The present era appears at first like an interruption. Ramon is back in York and his sixteen-year-old niece is missing. The parents, Ramon’s brother and his wife, are mentally slow. At first Ramon thinks the girl is taking a break from her obtuse parents and will soon return.

But time passes and Ramon finds he is again involved in a delicate, dangerous dance. “In the tango both leaders and followers lead and follow.” He bolsters and calms his devastated brother and sister-in-law. Every day he provides emotional support, expansive knowledge, and careful attention. Month after month, the teenage niece remains lost. Missing. Disappeared. “The questions are overwhelming, they hide a world that is too windy and wild to contemplate.”

Accepting the girl’s death is unbearable. Yet while mourning his niece, Ramon helps his brother and sister-in-law establish the rhythms necessary for waiting, grieving, and continuing on without their daughter.

He also finds his thoughts drawn back to Montevideo. During those years, long past, when people were faced with random, unrelenting murder and torture, survival depended upon shrouding reality and maintaining everyday denial.

Here John Baker’s tango comes full circle. “Winged With Death” resonates with time, demonstrating honestly how: “Each moment contains all that has gone before it, and each moment contains all that will follow.”

[Cross-posted here]

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At the age of 94 Studs Terkel finally sat down and wrote his memoir Touch and Go–a book so capacious in its varied carols and its assemblages of American curios that reading it is like falling down a flight of stairs while pasting rare stamps in an album. One is astonished by the worlds revealed and simultaneously affected by the simplest details. One is tempted to cry out: “Let me too be 94 if by God I can sound like the American Henry Mayhew.”

But its the small details that really get me. Writing of one of his brothers Terkel points to an American street tradition born in Italy and Ireland which has utterly vanished today. The street song which persisted until the 1950’s but which is now gone forever like the Studebaker. Here’s Terkel on a casual street corner opera and a local boxing match without rules:

My brother Ben was a true neighborhood boy. Schooling was not his true love; his mentors and patrons were the big guys on the corner. There was little doubt that of all the kids Ben was their runaway favorite. I can still hear their requests for his throbbing rendition of “Break the News to Mother.” They tossed nickels and dimes at him, though there was nothing patronizing about the gesture. It was as though sentimental passersby were paying tribute to a street singer. He picked up enough change in that manner to occasionally take me to a Saturday feature and a Pearl White serial. The Civil War song was to Ben what “Casey at the Bat” was to DeWolf Hopper, or “Over the Rainbow” to Judy Garland. Just break da noos to mudder Y’know how deah I love ‘er Tell her not tuh wait fer me F’r I’m not comin’ ho-o-me. Now and then, Dutch or Irish or Greek would engage Ben and Quinton, the ten-year-old wonders, to box a wild round or two. Winner take all–a dime. It would usually wind up in a draw and each warrior would be a buffalo nickel richer. Neither Ben nor Quinton knew of the Marquis of Queensberry rules nor did they much care. They aimed for each other’s groin; they rabbit punched. And even pivot punched, a maneuver that was outlawed a half-century before.

Of course this isn’t a good paragraph and yet I couldn’t care less.The man is talking aloud on audio tape and he’s remembering the vitality of provincial culture–we were a land of neighborhoods until the auto really took over and for the sake of argument I’ll say that you can’t find anyone singing on a street corner in America nowadays unless perhaps they’re selling something out of desperation like religion or spurious free merchandise. No one has permission to be moved in public anymore though fighting persists but not as sport.

IN fact what you feel reading Terkel’s Mayhew-esque reminiscences is nothing like nostalgia but more a wonder or a fear that local culture can’t be resuscitated in a time of ear buds and i-phones. Nowadays if a crowd assembles on the street they’ve been told to go there by Fox news or they’re hoping to see a celebrity but no one’s going to stand on a soapbox and talk about anthroposophism or anarchy or sing a slave song or even something by the Coasters.

But you canread Terkel’s  memoir the way I read Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” as a literary museum in which you can see how America was supposed to be.

Originally posted at Planet of the Blind.

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Consider, if you will, the end of The Wizard of of Oz.

I think as critics, we shy away from reexamining the “classics” of film, the real warhorses that are so bulletproof you can’t challenge the accepted wisdom (though it’s fair to counter that, I think, with the question of what, if anything, there’s left to say). I mentioned it a while back with that penchant we have for making movie lists, too - we’re conferring some notion of “classic” onto films that deserve more consideration, more examination, and always, more thought.

The Wizard of Oz is one of those things I’ve watched for years, but not necessarily considered deeply; like for many, it was my introduction to Judy Garland, and it took me years to see her as anything but Dorothy - gay icon, forever teenaged, pretty and perfect. And when I did broaden my appreciation of Garland, it sort of cheapened “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” - I’ve come to admire most the battle weary survivor, the gal who could still put on a show almost to the end, and the powerful singer she became. Those pretty, innocent early tunes have less call than “Hello Bluebird” or the no-stops version of “Just in Time” she did in her later years (or to bridge past with present, compare her teenage version of “You Made Me Love You” to the one from her concert years… that’s a woman who’s aching with desire, not a girl with a crush).

Watching The Wizard of Oz again while on my recent cruise - we got back yesterday - I was struck by the ending, and something I hadn’t noticed before: that what really bugs me about the film is the ending. You remember - when, Glinda tells Dorothy she had the power to go home all along, and Scarecrow asks “what have you learned?” and Dorothy says (I’m quoting roughly, because it’s not on IMDB) “I think I’ve learned that everything I need is at home. And if I think I need to go searching for something, I don’t need to go any further than my own back yard… because if it’s not there, than I probably don’t need it anyway.” And later, when she wakes up, Dorothy adds “Oh, but anyway, Toto, we’re home. Home! And this is my room, and you’re all here. And I’m not gonna leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all, and - oh, Auntie Em - there’s no place like home!” (That last line was on IMDB.)

That hokey ending, of course, is pure MGM; I spent my cruise finally reading Neal Gabler’s book on the Hollywood moguls and how they remade America through its dreams, and you can, as he writes, see the moralism of Louis Mayer in that ending. All the platitudes about home and family wrapped up in those sentiments, mouthed by Judy Garland, corseted into her role as America’s perfect child-woman sweetheart.

And of course… it’s not true; it’s not even true for the character of Dorothy and her actual experiences, considering that she’s just learned “there’s no place like home”… by not being at home. Moreover, it flies in the face of the other lesson American movies give us - that we need to go out into the world to become the self made people we are meant to be. There’s no place like home… that’s why we leave it. “I’m not going to leave it ever, ever again” is the voice of the shut-in, the paranoiac, the agoraphobe. We need to be out in the world.

Or consider Garland herself, who of course found a whole world by never wanting to go back to her own backyard. Indeed, Garland is in many ways the emblem of post-modernism as an adult: when she starts to deconstruct the pretty images created for her, to let us into the life behind the mask, the makeup and the costumes - A Star Is Born is her tour-de-force because it takes the manufactured elements of Garland’s persona and rips them apart: its a fake name, makeup, a wig… and none of it can hide - or define - who the woman actually is. Yet it does define her, lock her into certain expectations… always on, always performing…. always eager to please. You want the girl next door… go next door. The Wizard of Oz can’t be her best work because all it gives us - all she’s allowed to give us - is the picture perfect image of a total fantasy without the leavening of realizing that what we’re being sold is a lie; and many I think, supply The Wizard of Oz with more depth than it has by layering on what Garland became in real life… but of course… that’s not in the movie.

I’ve realized that what frustrates me about The Wizard of Oz is that lie it tells itself, and us - after seeing a world of such magic, such possibilities… it says we should want nothing more than to stay home, never search, never explore… never even dream. We’re given a Technicolor fantasy and then told we’re better off if we never go to it. And this, in the end, we celebrate. And call classic.

And yet… coming home from the cruise - five days at sea in a fantasy world of commerce and manufactured expectations - it’s true that coming home is, in its way, a relief. A return to the familiar, the expected, the way of life you already know… it’s comforting, safe. And less expensive. That’s the hallmark, really, of a good vacation - just enough of an escape from your everyday life to le you appreciate coming back to it. There’s no place like home. It’s good to be back. Forgive me, though, if I still believe in putting more faith in the value of escaping.

Crossposted, eventually, to NYC Weboy.

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At 92, best-known now as Michael Douglas’ father and Catherine Zeta-Jones’ father-in-law, a movie legend is taking “an audit of my life” and, of course, doing it on stage and in front of cameras.

Kirk Douglas’ career is at the heart of a larger 20th century American story: how the children of refugees from European cruelty went to Hollywood and, as John Updike put it, “out of immigrant joy gave a formless land dreams and even a kind of conscience.”

After World War II and the growing popularity of foreign films had paved the way for more realism, Issur Danielovitch followed a generation of Jewish studio heads and writers out there to explode on the screen with the kind of passion and intensity unseen in pretty-boy Hollywood heroes until then.

They changed his name, of course, and Kirk Douglas became the angry star of “Champion,” “Ace in the Hole,” “Young Man With a Horn” and “Detective Story,” among other tales of irresistible (in every sense) male aggression.

Along the way, according to his first biographical book, “The Ragman’s Son,” Issur-turned-Kirk played his role of sex symbol as avidly off screen as on.

He went on to become a producer who finally buried 1950s political blacklisting by giving Dalton Trumbo, who had been writing under aliases, credit for the screenplay of “Exodus” and continued aging passionately before our eyes for decades.

Now he is playing himself by recounting his near-death in a helicopter crash that killed two, his suicidal thoughts after a stroke in 1994, the loss of his youngest son to an accidental drug overdose five years ago and still trying to make sense of his relationship with a father who could never show love for him.

Over the years, our paths crossed a number of times, but what stands out is the time we were at one of those gatherings where the privileged babble away with no human connection whatever. To keep the conversation going, I suggested a game: Name the actor you would want to star in a movie of your life. “As for me,” I said, nodding at Douglas across the table, “I see Kirk in the part.”

He smiled the familiar dazzling smile that never quite reaches his eyes, a flash of the amused anger that fueled his movie-star charm. I smiled back in what I took to be a moment of shared irony between boys of dirt-poor immigrant parents being wined, dined and bored by the very rich.

Now he has finally stopped impersonating others and is playing himself, letting his inner Issur take a bow after all these years. As always, it must be a riveting performance.

Cross-posted from my blog.

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