What begins with doughnuts and slapstick and ends with wine glass holder necklaces?
Another day in the life, of course.
Although I'm constitutionally opposed to events that begin at 10:30 a.m., I made an exception for James River Film Festival's Slapstick and Donuts program, not because I'm a huge fan of slapstick (I'm not especially) or because I thought they'd have my favorite chocolate-frosted cake doughnuts (they didn't) but because special guest filmmaker Guy Maddin was going to be there.
Other plans were going to prevent me from seeing any of his films the rest of the day, so it was my only chance to hear what brilliance might trip off his Canadian lips and that's what had me walking to the Bijou first thing in the morning.
Krispy Kreme doughnuts were laid out along with coffee, so I snagged a chocolate frosted one (though I've never understood why KK puts chocolate frosting on an already-glazed doughnut) and found a seat near a woman with a cup of coffee. when I challenged her on not having a doughnut (she'd already scarfed one) she challenged me back on not having any caffeine. Fair enough.
It was while a Laurel and Hardy short with a very young Jean Harlow (in which a baby chick was pulled out of a man's beard) and a Buster Keaton film were shown on 16 mm with the reassuring purring of the film projector the only sound that I realized that almost all of the belly laughs I was hearing around me were coming from men.
When I'm watching Buster Keaton balancing a ladder across a fence with cops on both ends trying to get to him and he's balancing precariously near the center, all I can think of is him cracking his head open when he falls while guys nearby laughed uproariously.
Then Maddin was introduced.
Laughing about Richmond, he joked, "If you don't get 'em with tobacco, you get 'em with Krispy Kreme," but he also raved about watching film on 16 mm and the accompanying clatter of a film projector. Reminding us how fragile nitrate film was and how it could cause projector fires, he commented that it would be nice to arrange an outdoor screening of a nitrate film where the projector could safely burst into flames.
It goes without saying I'd attend that.
We finished with Charlie Chaplin's "Easy Street," which I'd seen before, and I strolled home before noon, something that doesn't happen too often. After a few hours spent listening to my most recent used record acquisitions - Teddy Pendergrass, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, the Chi-Lites - I got ready for my couple date.
Flora, in the former Balliceaux space, welcomed us with a booth near the front and a stream of familiar faces - my favorite server from 821 Cafe who'd jumped ship to work here, a longtime Balliceaux server who runs the show and one of the owners thrilled to not be cooking southern - that had me jumping up and out of the booth repeatedly.
The changes to the decor were subtle yet made a statement that this was no longer Balliceaux. The porthole windows stayed (as well they should for the complete uniqueness) but the windows over the steps no longer open (a feature associated too much with Balliceaux). Bright pinks and greens, a peeling door covered with bright pots of succulents and textured walls contributed to a welcoming interior that hinted at Mexico without being cliched.
Conversation, as usual, swung wildly, with Pru getting major laughs for her matter of fact, "You know what's underrated? Chervil!" sending us off on a discussion of sorrel and other less common greens. Beau was also responsible for a bit of gum-flapping just to hear himself be corny, but we mostly ignored what Pru called his "murder of prose." Good times.
With a Spanish Rose that was tailor-made for the food's Oaxacan flavor profile, we dove into queso fundido with Chorizo, crunchy sticks of jicama with chili, lime and salt (and the ideal counterpoint to the queso's obscene creamy richness) and not one but two plates of what I will just go ahead and dub the most sensational and complex guacamole in Richmond, enhanced as it was by queso cotija and ancho.
Not content to be full when we could be stuffed, we moved on to pork shoulder tacos, tamale in banana leaf with mole negro and my choice, grilled shark tacos with a killer chipotle mayonnaise, cabbage, radish slices and a flurry of scallions. Every dish was solidly on point, although our final course of chocolate soup with marshmallows was a lighter milk chocolate than would've been my preference, not that I didn't finish it anyway.
We walked out agreeing that Flora should be part of our date rotation going forward. I say me having a date more often would be an even better plan, but some things are seemingly more difficult to achieve than well-executed Oaxacan food in the former capital of the Confederacy. Go figure.
Sitting chatting before we went to the theater, Beau mentioned Alanis Morrissette's song "Thank You" and specifically the line, "How about them transparent angling carrots?" and how he thought it referred to those crystal pendants people wear.
Funny, but I had to admit that I'd always thought the line was, "How about them transparent dangling carrots?" as a metaphor for always reaching for what you'll never attain. Invoking the power of his phone, we learned I was right. Don't mess with me and lyrics, I know my dangling parts.
Quill Theater was performing "The Heir Apparent" at VMFA, where we took seats in the fourth row and began scanning the Saturday night crowd. Beau got busy trying to adjust his new hearing aid so that it would pick up salient points but tune out Pru and I kvetching.
Our back and forth about his selective hearing got the attention of the couple behind us and the wife explained that it had taken much cajoling to get her husband to be tested and get an aid himself. "It's a man thing," she explained with the wisdom of a well-dressed 75-year old woman who's done it all.
Talk centered on how it's mainly certain shrill female frequencies that both men can't hear and Beau admitted that on occasion he turns his hearing aid down so he doesn't have to hear or respond. Immediately, the husband piped up, saying, "That's a secret you should not have given away!" He also admitted to Pru and me that he loved talking to pretty women and did so with gusto.
The play was fun and funny, an adaptation of a 17th century French play spoken in pentameter, so a pleasure to listen to, and nicely interspersed with references to the present day with comments like, "Of course, if we had national health insurance..."
Even better were local references. When a character asked what dying was like, another quipped, "Chesterfield County!" Amen, brothers and sisters, we can all get behind this one.
Like a Shakespearean comedy, we had masks and lovers, wills and death, plotting and scheming and a cast up to the verse, my favorite being Adam Valentine who made the Crispin character the one to watch at all times.
Post-show discussion went down at the Rogue Gentlemen for cocktails, mine embarrassingly dubbed a "wine glass holder necklace" but made delicious with dry Rose, Cochaca, Pimms, lime, pineapple and mint simple syrup and served in an hourglass-shaped orange-colored tumbler, easily the grooviest glass on the bar despite stiff competition.
As for the music, Whitney Houston first caught my ear, followed by the Carpenters (a favorite of both Beau and mine), which caused Pru to joke, "Omygod, everyone gets a sandwich!" which left the rest of us in stitches.
Mars and Venus used well-crafted cocktails as a means of discussing differences, but that chasm may never be closed. Trying to explain some sophomoric male humor while sipping our cocktails, Beau announced, "I'm 13 in all the right ways!" to which Pru responded, "There are no right ways."
How about them transparent dangling carrots?
Showing posts with label James River Film Fest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James River Film Fest. Show all posts
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Sunday, April 13, 2014
A Message for You
This was a week without enough time in it.
A reader recently commented that he didn't know how I had enough time to post as often as I do. I don't know, either.
Just this past week, I had lunch at a Salvadorean restaurant, but not enough time to blog it.
I spent a couple of days in Annapolis and never found a moment to write about it all - some fine meals, fabulous conversations, the scent of the night air from the Severn river- not to mention train rides where I was forced to play "quiet cop." My only reward was the handsome man sitting next to me who whispered, "Good job!" after I silenced the loud talkers.
Today began with a phone call from Steve, the knowledgeable man with the lisp who is replacing the windowsills on the front of my 1876 apartment, letting me know he'd arrived to begin work. Me, I was just beginning my day.
With him working on the roof of the porch below, I had a constant voyeur looking in my front windows as I went about my day in full view of him.
Occasionally, he'd ask me to plug in one of his tools or refill his water bottle, but basically I just tried to carry on like there wasn't a man merely a screen away.
I hope this doesn't mean I'm okay with being watched.
After a most productive day writing, I intended to enjoy a reading at Chop Suey, passing the hordes stuffed into the Baja Bean patio in the early evening sunlight, all but shoulder to shoulder. No, thanks, no patio is worth that.
At Chop Suey, I was greeted by Andrew, notable not only because he was reading from his new book tonight but because Andrew was the occupant of my apartment before me.
I didn't know him back then, but once I moved in and learned his name, I made a point to say hello. You'd be surprised how many times we've talked about this apartment and our distinctly different experiences in the exact same space.
Taking a seat near the back of the store, I soon had hands over my eyes as the poet greeted me, looking lovely as always, barelegged in shorts. A poetry power couple sat down in front of me.
Tom DeHaven read first from a book he'd written back in 1986-87 and thought he'd lost until his wife recently rediscovered it as they began packing for a move.
Interestingly enough, the book, "Painters in Winter" was about many of the same artists as the documentary I'd seen last night. Funny how often those kinds of coincidences happen.
William Glackens is following me and I like it.
The reading began with chapter one about John Sloan, a talented painter scratching out a living doing commercial freelance work (with "payment delayed on a whim" - tell me about it) when he wasn't sitting in the back room of his apartment studying the lives of strangers through windows in the building behind his.
Now you know where the Ashcan School got their inspiration.
Fed up with the publishing industry, Tom is publishing his book online chapter by chapter.
Next Andrew took the stage to read a story from his short story collection, "I've Got a Message for You and You're Not Going to Like It," one of eleven that he wrote over a period of ten years.
It was called "The Skunk Ape of Legend" and concerned a smelly skunk ape who impregnates a girl named Sara Marie.
Referring to the narrator getting his shoulder busted for the second time, he wrote, "My body told the weather like a goddamn almanac." Now that's a great line.
The moment the reading ended, I left for the Grace Street Theater to see "Phantom of the Operator," a documentary about telephone operators.
I said hello to the James River Film Fest guys on my way in, got a seat in my favorite row and motioned for the man about town to join me, which he did.
He'd seen "Hamlet" at the Byrd this afternoon, a film I'd have loved to have seen if I hadn't been neck-deep in work.
Tonight's documentary interested me hugely because both of my grandmothers were telephone operators for their entire working lives, part of the thousands of women who made careers of the jobs originally held by teen boys...at least until Ma Bell determined that they had no sense of customer service whatsoever and replaced them with estrogen.
As the company put it, "Women submit to management easily." Well, we did, at least.
Director Caroline Martel used vintage corporate film footage to trace the development of women as operators, women who were given physical exams as part of the interview process and hired to work until their wedding day.
I don't know about the men in the audience, but I could tell which decades the footage came from based solely on the women's clothing.
We saw Victorian footage, all the women looking like variations on a Gibson Girl, Roaring 20s operators with their flattened breasts and shapeless dresses and mod '60s girls in mini skirts, long hair and fake eyelashes.
Just so you know, the '60s was also the first time we saw any non-white women as operators.
Teaching the women, and by default, that meant my grandmothers, the importance of putting a smile in their voices, using good emphasis (no monotones!), a moderate rate of speech and a controlled volume, they created a legion of same-sounding operators, the precursors to automated speech.
Of course, eventually women began to be forced out of the industry as automation replaced them and the film raised a fascinating point: When did we start seeing all technological developments as human progress?
While she used the royal "we," I really don't include myself in that group. I'd be the first to say that just because we have the technology doesn't mean we have to use it.
Look at me - no cell phone, no TV, no cable, no air conditioning. A Luddite, to be sure.
And absolutely no guilt when I'm too busy having a wildly enjoyable time to stop and blog about it.
Can I get an amen?
A reader recently commented that he didn't know how I had enough time to post as often as I do. I don't know, either.
Just this past week, I had lunch at a Salvadorean restaurant, but not enough time to blog it.
I spent a couple of days in Annapolis and never found a moment to write about it all - some fine meals, fabulous conversations, the scent of the night air from the Severn river- not to mention train rides where I was forced to play "quiet cop." My only reward was the handsome man sitting next to me who whispered, "Good job!" after I silenced the loud talkers.
Today began with a phone call from Steve, the knowledgeable man with the lisp who is replacing the windowsills on the front of my 1876 apartment, letting me know he'd arrived to begin work. Me, I was just beginning my day.
With him working on the roof of the porch below, I had a constant voyeur looking in my front windows as I went about my day in full view of him.
Occasionally, he'd ask me to plug in one of his tools or refill his water bottle, but basically I just tried to carry on like there wasn't a man merely a screen away.
I hope this doesn't mean I'm okay with being watched.
After a most productive day writing, I intended to enjoy a reading at Chop Suey, passing the hordes stuffed into the Baja Bean patio in the early evening sunlight, all but shoulder to shoulder. No, thanks, no patio is worth that.
At Chop Suey, I was greeted by Andrew, notable not only because he was reading from his new book tonight but because Andrew was the occupant of my apartment before me.
I didn't know him back then, but once I moved in and learned his name, I made a point to say hello. You'd be surprised how many times we've talked about this apartment and our distinctly different experiences in the exact same space.
Taking a seat near the back of the store, I soon had hands over my eyes as the poet greeted me, looking lovely as always, barelegged in shorts. A poetry power couple sat down in front of me.
Tom DeHaven read first from a book he'd written back in 1986-87 and thought he'd lost until his wife recently rediscovered it as they began packing for a move.
Interestingly enough, the book, "Painters in Winter" was about many of the same artists as the documentary I'd seen last night. Funny how often those kinds of coincidences happen.
William Glackens is following me and I like it.
The reading began with chapter one about John Sloan, a talented painter scratching out a living doing commercial freelance work (with "payment delayed on a whim" - tell me about it) when he wasn't sitting in the back room of his apartment studying the lives of strangers through windows in the building behind his.
Now you know where the Ashcan School got their inspiration.
Fed up with the publishing industry, Tom is publishing his book online chapter by chapter.
Next Andrew took the stage to read a story from his short story collection, "I've Got a Message for You and You're Not Going to Like It," one of eleven that he wrote over a period of ten years.
It was called "The Skunk Ape of Legend" and concerned a smelly skunk ape who impregnates a girl named Sara Marie.
Referring to the narrator getting his shoulder busted for the second time, he wrote, "My body told the weather like a goddamn almanac." Now that's a great line.
The moment the reading ended, I left for the Grace Street Theater to see "Phantom of the Operator," a documentary about telephone operators.
I said hello to the James River Film Fest guys on my way in, got a seat in my favorite row and motioned for the man about town to join me, which he did.
He'd seen "Hamlet" at the Byrd this afternoon, a film I'd have loved to have seen if I hadn't been neck-deep in work.
Tonight's documentary interested me hugely because both of my grandmothers were telephone operators for their entire working lives, part of the thousands of women who made careers of the jobs originally held by teen boys...at least until Ma Bell determined that they had no sense of customer service whatsoever and replaced them with estrogen.
As the company put it, "Women submit to management easily." Well, we did, at least.
Director Caroline Martel used vintage corporate film footage to trace the development of women as operators, women who were given physical exams as part of the interview process and hired to work until their wedding day.
I don't know about the men in the audience, but I could tell which decades the footage came from based solely on the women's clothing.
We saw Victorian footage, all the women looking like variations on a Gibson Girl, Roaring 20s operators with their flattened breasts and shapeless dresses and mod '60s girls in mini skirts, long hair and fake eyelashes.
Just so you know, the '60s was also the first time we saw any non-white women as operators.
Teaching the women, and by default, that meant my grandmothers, the importance of putting a smile in their voices, using good emphasis (no monotones!), a moderate rate of speech and a controlled volume, they created a legion of same-sounding operators, the precursors to automated speech.
Of course, eventually women began to be forced out of the industry as automation replaced them and the film raised a fascinating point: When did we start seeing all technological developments as human progress?
While she used the royal "we," I really don't include myself in that group. I'd be the first to say that just because we have the technology doesn't mean we have to use it.
Look at me - no cell phone, no TV, no cable, no air conditioning. A Luddite, to be sure.
And absolutely no guilt when I'm too busy having a wildly enjoyable time to stop and blog about it.
Can I get an amen?
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Going as Far as You Need
And Dash makes four.
As in, Dash, the new restaurant in the middle of VCU is the fourth iteration of a restaurant I've visited in that space.
I also fainted there twice, but I've already told you that old chestnut.
And, I'll give them credit, it's a clean-lined, quick in and out space. although today the staff was sizable and the customer base small since they just opened, and that may have been a factor.
We'll see how speedy it is once the place gets discovered.
Six wines on tap (although no names, just the grapes listed on the paper on the wall, boo, hiss), two kombuchas (it's everywhere!) plus beer, but I chose Boylan Soda root beer and a Louisiana "lobster" roll of spicy crawfish salad on two New England-style split top rolls with a bag of Deep River kettle chips for a side, but only because they don't yet have the apple slaw I really wanted.
A server told me that once the dust settles, they'll have milkshakes and once they master milkshakes, they'll get liquor and then they'll have alcoholic milkshakes.
Oh, happy day, calories and intoxication in one glass! Count me in.
When I left there, it was for Black Iris Gallery again for night two of the pre-festival James River film fest screenings.
Pre-festival also means free and we know how I like that.
Walking over, I saw a friend getting out of his car and called out to him so we could walk together.
I knew he'd just seen the Kraftwerk reunion tour show in D.C. and I was curious to hear about it. We took seats in the third row and he told me all about the filmmakers' forum I'd missed and the controversy a couple of filmmakers had stirred up with their films.
We agreed that you never know what's going to offend people.
Showing tonight was the inoffensive black and white 1950 Jean Cocteau take on the myth, "Orpheus," set in post WWII Paris, considered one of his masterpieces and inspirational to the surrealists.
The opening credits were drawn by Cocteau himself (showoff!) and included such dated terms as "script girl." Because god knows in 1950 you wouldn't assign that lowly job to a boy.
Most interesting to me was seeing Juliette Greco's name listed since I'd only discovered the singer recently at the French Film Festival when I'd seen a documentary about the Parisian cafe scene in the '50s and here she was acting, too.
She's easy to spot - to me she looks like a young Cher with a better nose- but my Juliette Greco knowledge is increasing exponentially lately.
The movie began in the Cafe de Poets, a place I only dream could exist in the world where I live. I couldn't help but be fascinated by the world depicted, one where a poet was so popular that young women mobbed him for autographs on the street. Poetry comes through on a radio station.
When Orpheus' wife Eurydice is worried that her husband's head has been turned by another woman, she is reassured, "Yours is a perfect marriage but men can lose their heads."
Isn't that the truth?
Then Orpheus has to go and fall in love with Death, complicating everything. "I'd follower her to Hell," he whines. "You need not go that far," his spirit world guide assures him.
During the reel change, my friend leaned in and observed that it was funny how Cocteau's camera tricks had been recycled in the music videos of the early '80s. For that matter, the guards at the underworld tribunal where Death and Orpheus went on trial looked straight out of Daft Punk.
The entire cast was dazzlingly beautiful and handsome as if from the world of perfect people, but then the whole film came off like a dream, not far off since at the end Orpheus and Eurydice are sent back from the underworld to the real world with no memory of what they'd been through.
It was all very poetic and only slightly tragic. I loved every minute of it.
Sigh. I was born to be a poet's groupie.
As in, Dash, the new restaurant in the middle of VCU is the fourth iteration of a restaurant I've visited in that space.
I also fainted there twice, but I've already told you that old chestnut.
And, I'll give them credit, it's a clean-lined, quick in and out space. although today the staff was sizable and the customer base small since they just opened, and that may have been a factor.
We'll see how speedy it is once the place gets discovered.
Six wines on tap (although no names, just the grapes listed on the paper on the wall, boo, hiss), two kombuchas (it's everywhere!) plus beer, but I chose Boylan Soda root beer and a Louisiana "lobster" roll of spicy crawfish salad on two New England-style split top rolls with a bag of Deep River kettle chips for a side, but only because they don't yet have the apple slaw I really wanted.
A server told me that once the dust settles, they'll have milkshakes and once they master milkshakes, they'll get liquor and then they'll have alcoholic milkshakes.
Oh, happy day, calories and intoxication in one glass! Count me in.
When I left there, it was for Black Iris Gallery again for night two of the pre-festival James River film fest screenings.
Pre-festival also means free and we know how I like that.
Walking over, I saw a friend getting out of his car and called out to him so we could walk together.
I knew he'd just seen the Kraftwerk reunion tour show in D.C. and I was curious to hear about it. We took seats in the third row and he told me all about the filmmakers' forum I'd missed and the controversy a couple of filmmakers had stirred up with their films.
We agreed that you never know what's going to offend people.
Showing tonight was the inoffensive black and white 1950 Jean Cocteau take on the myth, "Orpheus," set in post WWII Paris, considered one of his masterpieces and inspirational to the surrealists.
The opening credits were drawn by Cocteau himself (showoff!) and included such dated terms as "script girl." Because god knows in 1950 you wouldn't assign that lowly job to a boy.
Most interesting to me was seeing Juliette Greco's name listed since I'd only discovered the singer recently at the French Film Festival when I'd seen a documentary about the Parisian cafe scene in the '50s and here she was acting, too.
She's easy to spot - to me she looks like a young Cher with a better nose- but my Juliette Greco knowledge is increasing exponentially lately.
The movie began in the Cafe de Poets, a place I only dream could exist in the world where I live. I couldn't help but be fascinated by the world depicted, one where a poet was so popular that young women mobbed him for autographs on the street. Poetry comes through on a radio station.
When Orpheus' wife Eurydice is worried that her husband's head has been turned by another woman, she is reassured, "Yours is a perfect marriage but men can lose their heads."
Isn't that the truth?
Then Orpheus has to go and fall in love with Death, complicating everything. "I'd follower her to Hell," he whines. "You need not go that far," his spirit world guide assures him.
During the reel change, my friend leaned in and observed that it was funny how Cocteau's camera tricks had been recycled in the music videos of the early '80s. For that matter, the guards at the underworld tribunal where Death and Orpheus went on trial looked straight out of Daft Punk.
The entire cast was dazzlingly beautiful and handsome as if from the world of perfect people, but then the whole film came off like a dream, not far off since at the end Orpheus and Eurydice are sent back from the underworld to the real world with no memory of what they'd been through.
It was all very poetic and only slightly tragic. I loved every minute of it.
Sigh. I was born to be a poet's groupie.
The Whole of Our Hearts
I'm getting to be a regular on the northern neck lately.
Today's road trip deposited me at my parents' house so I could help my father rearrange the furniture, which probably sounds odd, but isn't.
Growing up he regularly rearranged our bedrooms and the living room on a semi-annual basis and we just assumed all Dads did that, although I've since learned they don't.
The sweetest moment came when we arranged his and my mother's chairs on separate walls, hers near the glass door to the big porch and his closer to the stereo and TV. "Now how am I going to be able to hold your mother's hand?" he asked me.
Helluva romantic, that's all I can say.
Leaving there, I drove to Irvington to interview an artist who's lucky enough to have a light-filled studio in her house overlooking her sprawling garden and Carter's Creek.
She took me to the window and showed me the bend in the creek where people used to take their boats to get to services at Christchurch nearby.
Can't say I've ever known anyone who boated to church.
On the way back to civilization, I stopped at Parr's Drive-in in Tappahannock, where a statue of French Fry man holding a bouquet of flowers stands out front next to a phone booth (whether it's usable, I have no idea), eschewing fries for a hot fudge sundae, and ate it while chatting with a man named Robert who'd just gotten off work and was having a fish sandwich with tartar sauce on both sides of the bun (they asked and he specified).
I was in no rush to get back because I didn't really have any plans, not that I wasn't going out, but I had no time constraints. Or so I thought.
Once home, I saw an e-mail letting me know that it was pre-festival screening night for the James River film fest where they were showing surrealistic silent short films.
Best part was, it was at Black Iris Gallery, three blocks from home, so it was practically effortless to pull myself together and saunter over there.
James River Film Society grand poobah Mike Jones got things rolling by teasing the upcoming screenings and talking about how post post-modern it was to have actual printed program booklets (in addition to the online listings) and how we were going to see tonight's shorts like our grandparents did, listening to the clatter of a 16 mm projector.
Heaven knows, my grandparents were probably holding hands while they watched movies like these.
He talked about how the French surrealist crowd used to gather as a group and go to a theater, watch 15 minutes of a film, get up and go to another film en masse to watch 20 minutes of something else and do this all evening to ensure they had a disjointed surrealistic experience.
Or maybe just early signs of French ADD.
The surrealistic smorgasbord ranged from an early D.W. Griffith film with prehistoric special effects (a hawk awkwardly stole a baby) to "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend," a cautionary tale of what happens when you eat too much cheese covered bread and wine and try to sleep afterwards.
It did contain some magnificent footage of Greenwich Village circa 1906 beneath film of the glutton flying through the skyline in his bed.
In between films while the new reel was put on, Mike would talk film history to us, sometimes to hilarious results given the age range of the audience.
"The 'Great Train Robbery' was the 'Jaws' of its time," he said in all seriousness before realizing that 90% of the room hadn't been born when "Jaws" came out. "You could call it the 'Avatar' of its time," he said to knowing nods.
Know your audience, Mr. Jones.
He showed a 1913 gangster film prototype called, "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" with a very young and beautiful Lillian Gish playing the Little Lady who is in love with a musician who must go off and make money.
Charlie Chaplin's "Easy Street" had the audience feeling his pain, moaning "oooh!" and "ouch" when bad things happened to heads, which was almost constantly.
Our finale was Buster Keaton's 1923 "The Balloonatic," a back woods romance that began on a summer day at an amusement park, as so many romances do.
After trying the fun house and a hot air balloon, Buster retreats to the woods to canoe, fish and battle bears and there he meets a pretty girl who fishes better than him, cooks out far better than he does (although he lights a fire in his canoe, not the best idea) and even swims better.
The funniest part for me wasn't onscreen, it was a guy in the back row who chortled, "Oh, ho, ho!" at every calamity Buster faced. It was a distinctive laugh.
In once scene, Buster comes upon a squirrel and takes out his shotgun to kill it, causing several girls in the room to worry loudly about the squirrel's future. No one was ready to see a squirrel die, although I heard no complaints when Buster accidentally shot a bear.
As Mike had warned us, by this point in the film industry, audiences were already expecting happy endings, so this short finished with Buster and the girl flying through the air in his canoe but attached to a hot air balloon so when they went over the waterfall, they didn't crash.
Surrealistic or not, I'm pretty sure they were holding hands.
Today's road trip deposited me at my parents' house so I could help my father rearrange the furniture, which probably sounds odd, but isn't.
Growing up he regularly rearranged our bedrooms and the living room on a semi-annual basis and we just assumed all Dads did that, although I've since learned they don't.
The sweetest moment came when we arranged his and my mother's chairs on separate walls, hers near the glass door to the big porch and his closer to the stereo and TV. "Now how am I going to be able to hold your mother's hand?" he asked me.
Helluva romantic, that's all I can say.
Leaving there, I drove to Irvington to interview an artist who's lucky enough to have a light-filled studio in her house overlooking her sprawling garden and Carter's Creek.
She took me to the window and showed me the bend in the creek where people used to take their boats to get to services at Christchurch nearby.
Can't say I've ever known anyone who boated to church.
On the way back to civilization, I stopped at Parr's Drive-in in Tappahannock, where a statue of French Fry man holding a bouquet of flowers stands out front next to a phone booth (whether it's usable, I have no idea), eschewing fries for a hot fudge sundae, and ate it while chatting with a man named Robert who'd just gotten off work and was having a fish sandwich with tartar sauce on both sides of the bun (they asked and he specified).
I was in no rush to get back because I didn't really have any plans, not that I wasn't going out, but I had no time constraints. Or so I thought.
Once home, I saw an e-mail letting me know that it was pre-festival screening night for the James River film fest where they were showing surrealistic silent short films.
Best part was, it was at Black Iris Gallery, three blocks from home, so it was practically effortless to pull myself together and saunter over there.
James River Film Society grand poobah Mike Jones got things rolling by teasing the upcoming screenings and talking about how post post-modern it was to have actual printed program booklets (in addition to the online listings) and how we were going to see tonight's shorts like our grandparents did, listening to the clatter of a 16 mm projector.
Heaven knows, my grandparents were probably holding hands while they watched movies like these.
He talked about how the French surrealist crowd used to gather as a group and go to a theater, watch 15 minutes of a film, get up and go to another film en masse to watch 20 minutes of something else and do this all evening to ensure they had a disjointed surrealistic experience.
Or maybe just early signs of French ADD.
The surrealistic smorgasbord ranged from an early D.W. Griffith film with prehistoric special effects (a hawk awkwardly stole a baby) to "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend," a cautionary tale of what happens when you eat too much cheese covered bread and wine and try to sleep afterwards.
It did contain some magnificent footage of Greenwich Village circa 1906 beneath film of the glutton flying through the skyline in his bed.
In between films while the new reel was put on, Mike would talk film history to us, sometimes to hilarious results given the age range of the audience.
"The 'Great Train Robbery' was the 'Jaws' of its time," he said in all seriousness before realizing that 90% of the room hadn't been born when "Jaws" came out. "You could call it the 'Avatar' of its time," he said to knowing nods.
Know your audience, Mr. Jones.
He showed a 1913 gangster film prototype called, "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" with a very young and beautiful Lillian Gish playing the Little Lady who is in love with a musician who must go off and make money.
Charlie Chaplin's "Easy Street" had the audience feeling his pain, moaning "oooh!" and "ouch" when bad things happened to heads, which was almost constantly.
Our finale was Buster Keaton's 1923 "The Balloonatic," a back woods romance that began on a summer day at an amusement park, as so many romances do.
After trying the fun house and a hot air balloon, Buster retreats to the woods to canoe, fish and battle bears and there he meets a pretty girl who fishes better than him, cooks out far better than he does (although he lights a fire in his canoe, not the best idea) and even swims better.
The funniest part for me wasn't onscreen, it was a guy in the back row who chortled, "Oh, ho, ho!" at every calamity Buster faced. It was a distinctive laugh.
In once scene, Buster comes upon a squirrel and takes out his shotgun to kill it, causing several girls in the room to worry loudly about the squirrel's future. No one was ready to see a squirrel die, although I heard no complaints when Buster accidentally shot a bear.
As Mike had warned us, by this point in the film industry, audiences were already expecting happy endings, so this short finished with Buster and the girl flying through the air in his canoe but attached to a hot air balloon so when they went over the waterfall, they didn't crash.
Surrealistic or not, I'm pretty sure they were holding hands.
Friday, April 12, 2013
A Fine Film Frenzy, No Toilets
For the next week, my life revolves around film.
Tonight was the kick-off of the James River Film Festival, the annual festival "for the independent-minded."
I've been called many things and that happens to be one of them.
Candela Gallery was the site of tonight's festivities, conveniently four blocks from home.
I never watch movies at home because I believe film is meant to be a shared public experience, so I was looking forward to experiencing a couple of diverse films with a bunch of strangers reacting right along with me.
Food was provided courtesy of Comfort, Kuba Kuba and Proper Pie, meaning pimento cheese and chocolate chess pie were present and accounted for.
James Parrish of the JRFF got things rolling by saying, "All theaters have ghosts and although this isn't a theater, Amie of Candela asked me if we brought a ghost with us. Because both toilets are stopped up."
I immediately stopped drinking.
Kicking off the festival was "The Projectionist," a short film about a retired projectionist's lifelong love of movie theaters.
The story was told by the man himself, Gordon, old and bent over, but funny as hell and with a memory that went back to his youthful fascination with moving pictures.
Gordon, who worshiped the old-school movie places (like the Byrd), bemoaned the multiplexes ("cheap-looking affairs"), saying how they'd taken the beauty and magic of old time theaters away.
To feed his obsession, first he made drawings of imagined theaters, then small models and that got him by until the advent of TV and the decline of movie-going.
That's when his basement theater was born.
The miniature version of a grand movie palace, right down to the stage curtains, working organ and nine seats, was the site of many of the interviews in the film.
There were so many times I laughed out loud (he called his projectors "the girls") as Gordon recalled his army days and the outdoor "theater" he'd created while stationed in China.
Consisting of a piece of sailcloth he got from the Navy, he fashioned stage curtains, a marquee and touted it (with a guffaw) as "air conditioned."
Afterwards, director Kendall Messick did a Q & A, telling us he'd first seen Gordon's theater as a child and not again for 25 years, when he realized that he needed to document this slice of theater history.
The best part was hearing that he'd saved Gordon's theater, removing it from the house so it could be reconstructed at museums (it's currently at an American history museum in Delaware) where "The Projectionist" could be shown.
Fortunately, Gordon lived long enough to see his beloved theater saved and moved by Kendall, something that had worried him greatly in his later years.
James asked of the crowd if we'd like to see Kendall's theater come to Richmond, getting a boisterous affirmative from us.
Since we've already seen "The projectionist," which usually shows in it, James suggested "Cinema Paradiso" instead.
Brilliant.
Kendall's film had been a worthy, feel-good and funny start to the festival.
My fellow film-lover and I quickly scored some pizza from Tarrant's during the break, fortification for the punk scene that was to come.
The crowd was much smaller and younger for the second feature of the night, "Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard," about a Melbourne musician.
Jeff Roll introduced the film, saying, "Broken toilets, how punk rock is that?"
Probably more than I needed, but it was also funny.
Like the previous documentary, this one was also about a man now dead, albeit at a much younger age.
In fact, one of the early shots was of Howard being asked what he hoped to be doing when he was 60.
His answer involved loud feedback coming out of his house at 3 a.m., so kids walking by would find him rude.
Early footage of him as a teenager in bands showed a sensitive, talented kid often overshadowed by his band mate, Nick Cave.
The first fifteen minutes of the film required adjusting to some rather thick Australian accents (and occasionally, bad teeth) before settling into an absolutely compelling story of a guy I'd never heard of who was in a band I had (Birthday Party).
About his first important songwriting success, a song called "Shivers", the band's singer Nick Cave admitted, "It was difficult to sing because it had a melody and stuff."
Funny that memory, since several other people including Howard remember that they all thought Howard should sing his own song but Cave's ego prevailed.
Lots of musicians who came after Howard praised his groundbreaking guitar work, people like Thurston Moore, Nick Zinner and Henry Rollins, saying things like, "Two notes in and you knew it was Roland Howard. No one else sounded like that."
Being the documentary dork that I am, I loved how much archival footage the film used, both interviews and show footage, as well as present day interviews with band mates and Howard's old friends/girlfriends.
Seeing the skinny Howard dressed up like a romantic '70s-era dandy, writing passionate songs while waiting for life to happen to him, was both heartbreaking and compelling.
Every woman who spoke of him in the movie did so in the fondest way, with a genuine appreciation for a sweet soul who'd poured out his heart in songs and writings.
By the end of the film when it's clear Howard is deadly ill (liver cancer after finally getting off years of heroin use), all I could think of was what a shame it was that this talented man who'd finally gotten his act together, found a loving woman and was again making stellar music, died at age 50.
Now I need to go explore his music.
Well, not now now, because I still have six more days of movies to watch with people I don't know.
But after the festival, for sure.
That's the beauty of the JRFF. It's just keeps on giving.
Tonight was the kick-off of the James River Film Festival, the annual festival "for the independent-minded."
I've been called many things and that happens to be one of them.
Candela Gallery was the site of tonight's festivities, conveniently four blocks from home.
I never watch movies at home because I believe film is meant to be a shared public experience, so I was looking forward to experiencing a couple of diverse films with a bunch of strangers reacting right along with me.
Food was provided courtesy of Comfort, Kuba Kuba and Proper Pie, meaning pimento cheese and chocolate chess pie were present and accounted for.
James Parrish of the JRFF got things rolling by saying, "All theaters have ghosts and although this isn't a theater, Amie of Candela asked me if we brought a ghost with us. Because both toilets are stopped up."
I immediately stopped drinking.
Kicking off the festival was "The Projectionist," a short film about a retired projectionist's lifelong love of movie theaters.
The story was told by the man himself, Gordon, old and bent over, but funny as hell and with a memory that went back to his youthful fascination with moving pictures.
Gordon, who worshiped the old-school movie places (like the Byrd), bemoaned the multiplexes ("cheap-looking affairs"), saying how they'd taken the beauty and magic of old time theaters away.
To feed his obsession, first he made drawings of imagined theaters, then small models and that got him by until the advent of TV and the decline of movie-going.
That's when his basement theater was born.
The miniature version of a grand movie palace, right down to the stage curtains, working organ and nine seats, was the site of many of the interviews in the film.
There were so many times I laughed out loud (he called his projectors "the girls") as Gordon recalled his army days and the outdoor "theater" he'd created while stationed in China.
Consisting of a piece of sailcloth he got from the Navy, he fashioned stage curtains, a marquee and touted it (with a guffaw) as "air conditioned."
Afterwards, director Kendall Messick did a Q & A, telling us he'd first seen Gordon's theater as a child and not again for 25 years, when he realized that he needed to document this slice of theater history.
The best part was hearing that he'd saved Gordon's theater, removing it from the house so it could be reconstructed at museums (it's currently at an American history museum in Delaware) where "The Projectionist" could be shown.
Fortunately, Gordon lived long enough to see his beloved theater saved and moved by Kendall, something that had worried him greatly in his later years.
James asked of the crowd if we'd like to see Kendall's theater come to Richmond, getting a boisterous affirmative from us.
Since we've already seen "The projectionist," which usually shows in it, James suggested "Cinema Paradiso" instead.
Brilliant.
Kendall's film had been a worthy, feel-good and funny start to the festival.
My fellow film-lover and I quickly scored some pizza from Tarrant's during the break, fortification for the punk scene that was to come.
The crowd was much smaller and younger for the second feature of the night, "Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard," about a Melbourne musician.
Jeff Roll introduced the film, saying, "Broken toilets, how punk rock is that?"
Probably more than I needed, but it was also funny.
Like the previous documentary, this one was also about a man now dead, albeit at a much younger age.
In fact, one of the early shots was of Howard being asked what he hoped to be doing when he was 60.
His answer involved loud feedback coming out of his house at 3 a.m., so kids walking by would find him rude.
Early footage of him as a teenager in bands showed a sensitive, talented kid often overshadowed by his band mate, Nick Cave.
The first fifteen minutes of the film required adjusting to some rather thick Australian accents (and occasionally, bad teeth) before settling into an absolutely compelling story of a guy I'd never heard of who was in a band I had (Birthday Party).
About his first important songwriting success, a song called "Shivers", the band's singer Nick Cave admitted, "It was difficult to sing because it had a melody and stuff."
Funny that memory, since several other people including Howard remember that they all thought Howard should sing his own song but Cave's ego prevailed.
Lots of musicians who came after Howard praised his groundbreaking guitar work, people like Thurston Moore, Nick Zinner and Henry Rollins, saying things like, "Two notes in and you knew it was Roland Howard. No one else sounded like that."
Being the documentary dork that I am, I loved how much archival footage the film used, both interviews and show footage, as well as present day interviews with band mates and Howard's old friends/girlfriends.
Seeing the skinny Howard dressed up like a romantic '70s-era dandy, writing passionate songs while waiting for life to happen to him, was both heartbreaking and compelling.
Every woman who spoke of him in the movie did so in the fondest way, with a genuine appreciation for a sweet soul who'd poured out his heart in songs and writings.
By the end of the film when it's clear Howard is deadly ill (liver cancer after finally getting off years of heroin use), all I could think of was what a shame it was that this talented man who'd finally gotten his act together, found a loving woman and was again making stellar music, died at age 50.
Now I need to go explore his music.
Well, not now now, because I still have six more days of movies to watch with people I don't know.
But after the festival, for sure.
That's the beauty of the JRFF. It's just keeps on giving.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Sticking It to the Man (and Squeamish Woman)
About damn time I got introduced to the world of blaxploitation films.
That would be the kind where a man can get out of any scrape using the skill of his member.
But being my first such venture, I got dinner first to ensure I'd be able to handle a gritty 70s film about black power.
Pescado's China Street was quiet when we arrived but started to build while we ate dinner.
Starting with vinho verde and pork ano arepas (braised pork over South American cornmeal cakes, pork jus, pickled onion, apricot chutney with a spicy basil jalapeno sauce), I was immediately immersed in pig and corn, two Southern things I love.
As we were eating that, a foursome joined us at the bar. He was a local and his guests were visiting from central Pennsylvania.
There was some discussion of a dilemma about football team allegiance before the visitors turned to the menu.
It was obviously a switch from PA because the woman only half-jokingly asked, "Could I have the enchiladas? It's not going to come out with eyes, is it?"
And then bada bing, bada boom, our snapper Cancun, a whole one and a half pound fish, arrived upright as if it had been flash fried and swam onto the plate.
The look on the woman's face was priceless.
"How are you going to eat that?" one of the men asked.
Any way we could. Knocking it over, we began devouring the salty, crispy skinned fish while she looked away.
Fingers superseded forks for this endeavor, which no doubt repulsed her even more.
My companion noted that he hadn't fish so well prepared since he was last in Italy. High praise indeed.
After licking the salty fish juices from our fingers, we proceeded to the Grace Street Theater for a lesson in both cultural history and film history courtesy of the James River Film Fest.
I don't know about you, but there was no way I could pass up a chance to see "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" on the big screen.
An independent film from 1971 made by Melvin Van Peebles (with additional financing from Bill Cosby), it told the story of the black man's struggle to escape the authority of the white man.
Seen through the lens of the early 70s, of course.
Made during the black power movement days, it was required viewing for members of the Black Panther Party.
Film buffs could see that the film took many black influences and sifted them through the lessons of French New Wave (jump cuts, montages) for a story of a black Robin Hood.
I can even say I had two favorite credits: "Sweetback's Fashions by Mr. Y of L.A." and "Starring: The Black Community."
When's the last time you saw an entire community credited? And a good part of his wardrobe was his birthday suit, fine as it was.
It was 1971-hip with such anachronisms as spray deodorant and phrases like, "Can you take it, baby?" asked in a sing-song Barry White kind of voice.
Black pride and resentment permeated the script, like when someone said, "He died from an overdose of black misery."
Heavy. That's heavy, man.
The movie began with a scene of the young Sweetback losing his virginity (Van Peebles used his own kid Mario for that scene, which was questionable in and of itself) to a prostitute.
At one point Sweetback is asked to choose his method of confrontation and he chooses "f*cking."
Guess who wins?
After watching Sweetback beat white cops senseless, trudge the desert and eat a lizard and make love to plenty of women, I had an appreciation for Van Peebles message and sense of the absurd.
The film ended with "Watch out - a badaasss nigger is coming to collect some dues," so we were warned.
I feel certain there were film students in that theater who just got a cultural history lesson they could never have imagined.
Can you dig it, kids?
The Earth, Wind and Fire score provided the ideal 70s Greek chorus to the action of Sweetback's journey through white hell.
Finally indoctrinated into the world of blaxploitation, we took it down a notch by going across the street to Ipanema to hear the Blood Brothers spin records from the 60s and 70s.
Oddly enough, the same period as the black power movement.
Coincidence? It wasn't for me to say.
With Wineworks Viognier and two desserts (Mexican chocolate pie and almond cheesecake) we set up camp on the bench to hear some jumpin' tunes and watch the lively and changing crowd filter through the bar.
Until you hear how well these guys spin vintage records, you can't imagine the satisfaction of one great song followed by another perfect choice.
And talk about fine wardrobes - Jamie and Duane are the moddest things you could hope to see on a Wednesday night in Richmond.
Best line overheard, "A world without cheese, that's a world I don't want to live in."
I gave the guy a hallelujah behind that one.
Agreed, brother.
Hell, I'd have even raised my fist to that.
Now that Sweet Sweetback's shown me how it's done, I can take it.
Baby.
That would be the kind where a man can get out of any scrape using the skill of his member.
But being my first such venture, I got dinner first to ensure I'd be able to handle a gritty 70s film about black power.
Pescado's China Street was quiet when we arrived but started to build while we ate dinner.
Starting with vinho verde and pork ano arepas (braised pork over South American cornmeal cakes, pork jus, pickled onion, apricot chutney with a spicy basil jalapeno sauce), I was immediately immersed in pig and corn, two Southern things I love.
As we were eating that, a foursome joined us at the bar. He was a local and his guests were visiting from central Pennsylvania.
There was some discussion of a dilemma about football team allegiance before the visitors turned to the menu.
It was obviously a switch from PA because the woman only half-jokingly asked, "Could I have the enchiladas? It's not going to come out with eyes, is it?"
And then bada bing, bada boom, our snapper Cancun, a whole one and a half pound fish, arrived upright as if it had been flash fried and swam onto the plate.
The look on the woman's face was priceless.
"How are you going to eat that?" one of the men asked.
Any way we could. Knocking it over, we began devouring the salty, crispy skinned fish while she looked away.
Fingers superseded forks for this endeavor, which no doubt repulsed her even more.
My companion noted that he hadn't fish so well prepared since he was last in Italy. High praise indeed.
After licking the salty fish juices from our fingers, we proceeded to the Grace Street Theater for a lesson in both cultural history and film history courtesy of the James River Film Fest.
I don't know about you, but there was no way I could pass up a chance to see "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" on the big screen.
An independent film from 1971 made by Melvin Van Peebles (with additional financing from Bill Cosby), it told the story of the black man's struggle to escape the authority of the white man.
Seen through the lens of the early 70s, of course.
Made during the black power movement days, it was required viewing for members of the Black Panther Party.
Film buffs could see that the film took many black influences and sifted them through the lessons of French New Wave (jump cuts, montages) for a story of a black Robin Hood.
I can even say I had two favorite credits: "Sweetback's Fashions by Mr. Y of L.A." and "Starring: The Black Community."
When's the last time you saw an entire community credited? And a good part of his wardrobe was his birthday suit, fine as it was.
It was 1971-hip with such anachronisms as spray deodorant and phrases like, "Can you take it, baby?" asked in a sing-song Barry White kind of voice.
Black pride and resentment permeated the script, like when someone said, "He died from an overdose of black misery."
Heavy. That's heavy, man.
The movie began with a scene of the young Sweetback losing his virginity (Van Peebles used his own kid Mario for that scene, which was questionable in and of itself) to a prostitute.
At one point Sweetback is asked to choose his method of confrontation and he chooses "f*cking."
Guess who wins?
After watching Sweetback beat white cops senseless, trudge the desert and eat a lizard and make love to plenty of women, I had an appreciation for Van Peebles message and sense of the absurd.
The film ended with "Watch out - a badaasss nigger is coming to collect some dues," so we were warned.
I feel certain there were film students in that theater who just got a cultural history lesson they could never have imagined.
Can you dig it, kids?
The Earth, Wind and Fire score provided the ideal 70s Greek chorus to the action of Sweetback's journey through white hell.
Finally indoctrinated into the world of blaxploitation, we took it down a notch by going across the street to Ipanema to hear the Blood Brothers spin records from the 60s and 70s.
Oddly enough, the same period as the black power movement.
Coincidence? It wasn't for me to say.
With Wineworks Viognier and two desserts (Mexican chocolate pie and almond cheesecake) we set up camp on the bench to hear some jumpin' tunes and watch the lively and changing crowd filter through the bar.
Until you hear how well these guys spin vintage records, you can't imagine the satisfaction of one great song followed by another perfect choice.
And talk about fine wardrobes - Jamie and Duane are the moddest things you could hope to see on a Wednesday night in Richmond.
Best line overheard, "A world without cheese, that's a world I don't want to live in."
I gave the guy a hallelujah behind that one.
Agreed, brother.
Hell, I'd have even raised my fist to that.
Now that Sweet Sweetback's shown me how it's done, I can take it.
Baby.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Who's the Greatest Star?
Highlight #1 - Ice cream and deflowering
Visit #4 to the James River Film Festival at the Visual Arts Center was frigid (too much a/c) and charming (foreign and subtitled).
The short, "Bregman/As Follows" was about a Jewish Latin American kid about to have his bar mitzvah.
He studies, he practices, he has the ceremony and party.
And then dad takes him to lose his virginity. When he picks him up, he asks how it was.
The boy turns up the car radio.
Dad asks the boy if he wants to go for ice cream. Fin.
A charming film about a 13-year old being thrown into the deep waters of manhood.
Next was "A Useful Life," a Uruguayan film about a guy who'd worked in an art house cinema for 25 years.
When it closes, he has to figure out what to do with himself.
Like many a confirmed bachelor, he has no idea.
It was shot in black and white and the lead is played by a Uruguayan film critic, making for a particularly un-actorly performance.
I saw it as addressing the philosophical question, what do you do when everything you know goes away?
I seem to recall addressing that very issue just a few years ago myself, but not in nearly so stylish a black and white film.
Highlight #2- Half priced and washed out
Sunday supper came courtesy of Carytown's new gastropub, Burger Bach, and I went in eager to try a grass-fed, organic burger.
Instead we bellied up to a bar with four screens (a major negative and in hindsight it would have behooved us to sit at the community table and face Thompson Street) and went seafood.
Turns out every day from 4-6 is half off mussels, oysters and shrimp.
Each came with the option of four or five preparations, so we got mussels in a traditional sauce (garlic, shallots, parsley, lemon, white wine), oysters casino (bacon, peppers, onions, Parmesan) and shrimp in a French sauce (Dijon mustard, shallots, cream, garlic and tarragon).
The place had a borderline chain feel despite being a standalone, the wine list was all New World (although no U.S.) so there were several good South African choices and tons of Australian and New Zealand.
The music was spot on, doing enough interesting alternative to keep my ears pricked.
Anytime I hear Washed Out in a restaurant two night before I'll see them play out gets major points.
A stroll down Cary Street wound up at Amici where the front was completely open in the beautiful evening air.
Lots of people were catching a pre-show meal before Allison Krause but we just wanted dessert: panna cotta and chocolate mousse with a light breeze blowing in from the street.
Highlight #3: Song for a Ukrop
The Ghostlight Party at Richmond Triangle Players had been on my calendar for a month since I always seem to be out of town when they occur.
I knew from the organizer (a fabulous bartender and chatter) that it promised to be a rollicking good time and it was.
We arrived at 8:00 for naught; by the time it did begin, host Matt came out in a black bustier, panties, fishnets, black heels and lipstick.
"Sorry for the late start. Clearly we're on drag time," he said to much laughter.
And that's how the party began and I use party loosely because you pay your five bucks and you're at the party.
It's worth it for the parade of local theater talent who show up at one point or another during the four-plus hour soiree.
One of tonight's guests was actress Susan Sanford, whom I first saw in "The Merry Wives of Windsor Farms" so long ago that neither she nor I would want to admit it.
Although I still remember it as one of the cleverest adaptations of the Bard I've seen.
Back to my point, which was that despite having seen her in many shows, I had no idea she had such a great singing voice.
When called to the stage and heralded as "the best diva here," she was quick to toss an "Oh, shut up!" over her shoulder.
Everyone was a ham and it was great fun watching them tackle theater music whether they remembered every lyric or not ("Not the point," the host Matt insisted).
And it's a theater-savvy audience with people saying things to each other like, "You can't go wrong with a Richard Rodgers."
Matt switched to a leather jacket, cuffed up girl's jeans and hot pink platform pumps to sing a pouty happy birthday to Ted Ukrop.
Ted allowed that Matt's legs were the best he'd seen in a while.
Sarah Porter got up to do "A Single Tear" (and in Italian, too; it was impressive) since it's the 100th anniversary of the Titanic.
"Do we applaud that?" Matt ruminated out loud to the audience.
Good question. There was a smattering of applause.
We heard "Because the Night" and Joe Jackson's "Breaking us in Two," resulting in a funny moment when Andrew Hamm stopped playing piano and singing and said accusingly to Liz Blake-White, "Wait, you're not supposed to be singing the harmony there."
Her guilty face said it all.
One showstopper was Sanford doing "I'm the Greatest Star" from "Funny Girl" except that she substituted names Streisand wouldn't have known.
Instead of singing "Hey, Mr. Keeney, here I am!" she substituted "Hey, Mr. Kniffen, Hey, Mrs. Piersol, Hey, Mr. Maupin, Hey, Mr. Patton, here I am!" to make it RVA-funny.
And don't get me started about the two guys who shall remain nameless singing "Suddenly, Seymour" to each other as they tried not to crack up.
One guy was asked to remove his shirt before he sang (actually there was also unzipping of his pants).
Once we admired his body, we heard his beautiful singing voice.
That's just how they roll at the Ghostlight party.
The whole evening was truly like a party; the bar was open, there was all kinds of food (little savory meat roll-ups) and sweets (eclairs and cupcakes) and later snacks (pizza arrived around 11:30).
If you didn't want to hear a song, you went to the lobby and gabbed away.
And Matt and Maggie kept the whole show rolling along, collecting names of people who wanted to perform when not dancing or singing backup (Maggie) and making witty and/or dirty commentary between songs (Matt).
Both played mic stand at one point or another.
But let's be real here. Maggie did her job in flats and Matt was working in five-inch heels and major eye makeup.
You gotta give a man credit where credit is due.
That said, we couldn't have asked for two better hosts for an evening of divas, male and female.
By the time we left, all I could think was "Baby, Hit Me One More Time."
Scott's Addition has the best piano bar in Richmond.
I'd be a fool to be out of town for the next one.
Visit #4 to the James River Film Festival at the Visual Arts Center was frigid (too much a/c) and charming (foreign and subtitled).
The short, "Bregman/As Follows" was about a Jewish Latin American kid about to have his bar mitzvah.
He studies, he practices, he has the ceremony and party.
And then dad takes him to lose his virginity. When he picks him up, he asks how it was.
The boy turns up the car radio.
Dad asks the boy if he wants to go for ice cream. Fin.
A charming film about a 13-year old being thrown into the deep waters of manhood.
Next was "A Useful Life," a Uruguayan film about a guy who'd worked in an art house cinema for 25 years.
When it closes, he has to figure out what to do with himself.
Like many a confirmed bachelor, he has no idea.
It was shot in black and white and the lead is played by a Uruguayan film critic, making for a particularly un-actorly performance.
I saw it as addressing the philosophical question, what do you do when everything you know goes away?
I seem to recall addressing that very issue just a few years ago myself, but not in nearly so stylish a black and white film.
Highlight #2- Half priced and washed out
Sunday supper came courtesy of Carytown's new gastropub, Burger Bach, and I went in eager to try a grass-fed, organic burger.
Instead we bellied up to a bar with four screens (a major negative and in hindsight it would have behooved us to sit at the community table and face Thompson Street) and went seafood.
Turns out every day from 4-6 is half off mussels, oysters and shrimp.
Each came with the option of four or five preparations, so we got mussels in a traditional sauce (garlic, shallots, parsley, lemon, white wine), oysters casino (bacon, peppers, onions, Parmesan) and shrimp in a French sauce (Dijon mustard, shallots, cream, garlic and tarragon).
The place had a borderline chain feel despite being a standalone, the wine list was all New World (although no U.S.) so there were several good South African choices and tons of Australian and New Zealand.
The music was spot on, doing enough interesting alternative to keep my ears pricked.
Anytime I hear Washed Out in a restaurant two night before I'll see them play out gets major points.
A stroll down Cary Street wound up at Amici where the front was completely open in the beautiful evening air.
Lots of people were catching a pre-show meal before Allison Krause but we just wanted dessert: panna cotta and chocolate mousse with a light breeze blowing in from the street.
Highlight #3: Song for a Ukrop
The Ghostlight Party at Richmond Triangle Players had been on my calendar for a month since I always seem to be out of town when they occur.
I knew from the organizer (a fabulous bartender and chatter) that it promised to be a rollicking good time and it was.
We arrived at 8:00 for naught; by the time it did begin, host Matt came out in a black bustier, panties, fishnets, black heels and lipstick.
"Sorry for the late start. Clearly we're on drag time," he said to much laughter.
And that's how the party began and I use party loosely because you pay your five bucks and you're at the party.
It's worth it for the parade of local theater talent who show up at one point or another during the four-plus hour soiree.
One of tonight's guests was actress Susan Sanford, whom I first saw in "The Merry Wives of Windsor Farms" so long ago that neither she nor I would want to admit it.
Although I still remember it as one of the cleverest adaptations of the Bard I've seen.
Back to my point, which was that despite having seen her in many shows, I had no idea she had such a great singing voice.
When called to the stage and heralded as "the best diva here," she was quick to toss an "Oh, shut up!" over her shoulder.
Everyone was a ham and it was great fun watching them tackle theater music whether they remembered every lyric or not ("Not the point," the host Matt insisted).
And it's a theater-savvy audience with people saying things to each other like, "You can't go wrong with a Richard Rodgers."
Matt switched to a leather jacket, cuffed up girl's jeans and hot pink platform pumps to sing a pouty happy birthday to Ted Ukrop.
Ted allowed that Matt's legs were the best he'd seen in a while.
Sarah Porter got up to do "A Single Tear" (and in Italian, too; it was impressive) since it's the 100th anniversary of the Titanic.
"Do we applaud that?" Matt ruminated out loud to the audience.
Good question. There was a smattering of applause.
We heard "Because the Night" and Joe Jackson's "Breaking us in Two," resulting in a funny moment when Andrew Hamm stopped playing piano and singing and said accusingly to Liz Blake-White, "Wait, you're not supposed to be singing the harmony there."
Her guilty face said it all.
One showstopper was Sanford doing "I'm the Greatest Star" from "Funny Girl" except that she substituted names Streisand wouldn't have known.
Instead of singing "Hey, Mr. Keeney, here I am!" she substituted "Hey, Mr. Kniffen, Hey, Mrs. Piersol, Hey, Mr. Maupin, Hey, Mr. Patton, here I am!" to make it RVA-funny.
And don't get me started about the two guys who shall remain nameless singing "Suddenly, Seymour" to each other as they tried not to crack up.
One guy was asked to remove his shirt before he sang (actually there was also unzipping of his pants).
Once we admired his body, we heard his beautiful singing voice.
That's just how they roll at the Ghostlight party.
The whole evening was truly like a party; the bar was open, there was all kinds of food (little savory meat roll-ups) and sweets (eclairs and cupcakes) and later snacks (pizza arrived around 11:30).
If you didn't want to hear a song, you went to the lobby and gabbed away.
And Matt and Maggie kept the whole show rolling along, collecting names of people who wanted to perform when not dancing or singing backup (Maggie) and making witty and/or dirty commentary between songs (Matt).
Both played mic stand at one point or another.
But let's be real here. Maggie did her job in flats and Matt was working in five-inch heels and major eye makeup.
You gotta give a man credit where credit is due.
That said, we couldn't have asked for two better hosts for an evening of divas, male and female.
By the time we left, all I could think was "Baby, Hit Me One More Time."
Scott's Addition has the best piano bar in Richmond.
I'd be a fool to be out of town for the next one.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
If It Feels Good, Do It
What a long, strange trip it was.
The James River Film Festival kicked off today with the hippie-dippy screening of the documentary "Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place" at the Grace Street Theater.
Appropriately, waiting for the film to start, the music was of the era. "Only the Strong Survive," "Reflections," "Whiter Shade of Pale" and "Wild Thing" got us in the mood to visit the sixties.
The footage that made up the documentary had been shot by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters back in 1964 when they set out to make a road movie, driving a psychedelic school bus from California to the New York World's Fair.
Their goal was to experience the American landscape and heartscape (I know, very groovy, right?).
With lots of drug taking along the way.
None of the motley crew on the bus knew anything about movie-making, not that it stopped them from trying.
I have to say, it's pretty compelling to watch people tripping on acid, becoming one with the slimy algae in a pond or dancing through meadows with horses.
The filmmakers who were given all this footage by the Kesey family a few years back must have had a hell of a job assembling it into a cohesive format because none of the audio and video synced up.
It was as if all the drug taking affected the cameras' ability to shoot properly.
Driving the bus was seminal Beat member Neal Cassady (the model for Dean Moriarity in Kerouac's "On the Road"), always talking or singing.
"Cassady was like a radio," one girl recalled. "He never shut up. I guess it had a lot to do with the speed he was taking."
You think?
One especially compelling part of the film was the documentation of the early LSD experiments being done by Stanford and in which Kesey was a test participant.
Seeing Mom-looking nurses ask test participants what they were seeing and feeling as they tripped in the small, sterile hospital rooms could have only made the experience more surreal.
Like an acid trip needs more surreality.
Along the way across the country, participants dropped out (one girl because her brain got so scrambled after a bad trip) and people were hooking up left and right ("It was like Soap Opera 101").
Joints were endlessly passed back and forth on the bus and instruments were pulled out at every opportunity, whether people could play them or not.
Once they made it to NYC and to the futuristic fair, one Prankster noted, "The fair was trippy and great...if you were high."
Trippy or not, the consensus on the bus was that the trip had become more important than the destination.
Actually, that theory is the basis of an entire generation's model for how to live life.
Some of us still subscribe to it.
After the fair, they went to visit LSD guru Timothy Leary at his If If spread in upstate New York where, "West coast acid-heads met East coast acid-heads."
Turns out the two groups were incompatible. To each coast its own acid head type apparently.
The bus trip became a metaphor the the change that was happening in 1964 as the country lost innocence and began moving away from the Eisenhower country of the fifties.
An old commercial for LBJ for President began with a wide-eyed, freckled-face little girl and morphed into a bomb going off.
Under that unpleasant segue, the candidate was heard saying "We must all love each other or we all will die. The stakes are too high."
I feel certain no political candidate will ever again exhort the U.S. people to love each other.
Not surprisingly, the Grateful Dead and their music had great appeal to the band of acid heads.
An impossibly young Jerry Garcia was filmed saying, "The Pranksters were the first to get off on our music."
The whole film was like that, full of cultural touchstones of another era.
When Kesey is later arrested for possession of marijuana and serves jail time, he is asked by a reporter on his release, "Do you see yourself becoming square now, like one of us?"
"God, I hope not," he answers to the amazement of the press present.
Clearly you can take the marijuana away from the acid head, but you can't take the desire to experience something different away from a child of the sixties.
Thanks, James River Film Fest; the film was trippy and great...even if you weren't high.
Now can we all just love each other?
The James River Film Festival kicked off today with the hippie-dippy screening of the documentary "Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place" at the Grace Street Theater.
Appropriately, waiting for the film to start, the music was of the era. "Only the Strong Survive," "Reflections," "Whiter Shade of Pale" and "Wild Thing" got us in the mood to visit the sixties.
The footage that made up the documentary had been shot by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters back in 1964 when they set out to make a road movie, driving a psychedelic school bus from California to the New York World's Fair.
Their goal was to experience the American landscape and heartscape (I know, very groovy, right?).
With lots of drug taking along the way.
None of the motley crew on the bus knew anything about movie-making, not that it stopped them from trying.
I have to say, it's pretty compelling to watch people tripping on acid, becoming one with the slimy algae in a pond or dancing through meadows with horses.
The filmmakers who were given all this footage by the Kesey family a few years back must have had a hell of a job assembling it into a cohesive format because none of the audio and video synced up.
It was as if all the drug taking affected the cameras' ability to shoot properly.
Driving the bus was seminal Beat member Neal Cassady (the model for Dean Moriarity in Kerouac's "On the Road"), always talking or singing.
"Cassady was like a radio," one girl recalled. "He never shut up. I guess it had a lot to do with the speed he was taking."
You think?
One especially compelling part of the film was the documentation of the early LSD experiments being done by Stanford and in which Kesey was a test participant.
Seeing Mom-looking nurses ask test participants what they were seeing and feeling as they tripped in the small, sterile hospital rooms could have only made the experience more surreal.
Like an acid trip needs more surreality.
Along the way across the country, participants dropped out (one girl because her brain got so scrambled after a bad trip) and people were hooking up left and right ("It was like Soap Opera 101").
Joints were endlessly passed back and forth on the bus and instruments were pulled out at every opportunity, whether people could play them or not.
Once they made it to NYC and to the futuristic fair, one Prankster noted, "The fair was trippy and great...if you were high."
Trippy or not, the consensus on the bus was that the trip had become more important than the destination.
Actually, that theory is the basis of an entire generation's model for how to live life.
Some of us still subscribe to it.
After the fair, they went to visit LSD guru Timothy Leary at his If If spread in upstate New York where, "West coast acid-heads met East coast acid-heads."
Turns out the two groups were incompatible. To each coast its own acid head type apparently.
The bus trip became a metaphor the the change that was happening in 1964 as the country lost innocence and began moving away from the Eisenhower country of the fifties.
An old commercial for LBJ for President began with a wide-eyed, freckled-face little girl and morphed into a bomb going off.
Under that unpleasant segue, the candidate was heard saying "We must all love each other or we all will die. The stakes are too high."
I feel certain no political candidate will ever again exhort the U.S. people to love each other.
Not surprisingly, the Grateful Dead and their music had great appeal to the band of acid heads.
An impossibly young Jerry Garcia was filmed saying, "The Pranksters were the first to get off on our music."
The whole film was like that, full of cultural touchstones of another era.
When Kesey is later arrested for possession of marijuana and serves jail time, he is asked by a reporter on his release, "Do you see yourself becoming square now, like one of us?"
"God, I hope not," he answers to the amazement of the press present.
Clearly you can take the marijuana away from the acid head, but you can't take the desire to experience something different away from a child of the sixties.
Thanks, James River Film Fest; the film was trippy and great...even if you weren't high.
Now can we all just love each other?
Friday, April 17, 2009
A Magical Night of Movies
My friend Jameson has taught me to appreciate the silent film, especially when accompanied by the right music. So naturally I had to see what the James River Film Festival was showing for its night of shorts called "Magic and the Movies."
They started with film pioneer Gerorges Melies' "Extraordinary Illusions" (1903) (so un-PC with its Asian stereotypes) and "Untameable Whiskers" (1904) which was especially cool to see since Melies himself was in it. It was a textbook lesson in the use of stop-motion throughout.
Segundo de Chomon's "Diablo Rojo/The Red Spetre" (1903) was worth seeing because it was all hand-colored, mostly red and gold/yellow and again featured stop-motion.
Ferdinand Zecca's "The Invisible Thief" (1909) got the audience laughing a lot and I would guess that in 1909 the main character turning invisible on screen must have seemed amazing to audiences.
Leger's "Ballet Mecanique" (1924) was familiar to me because Jameson had shown it at his Silent Music Revival a while back. It suffered in this showing, however, because it had no musical accompaniment and it cries out for one with all its mechanical and repetitive images.
Len Lye's "Rainbow Dance" (1936) was so colorful and bright and had the most appropriate upbeat music, but what I liked best was the way he slipped in sponsor messages, from a local bank and the post office...art and commerce blending, so to speak.
Norman Mclaren's "A Phantasy" (1952) was supposedly important because of the techniques (painting directly on film, pixilation, a synthetic soundtrack) but it left me cold and kind of bored.
Lotte Reiniger's "Snow White and Rose Red" (1953) was sweet and the first film of the night with narration. Her paper silhouettes in stop-motion effect was charming to watch but must have taken forever to create. And while I had a faint memory of this fairy tale, it was enjoyable to see the story unfold.
Only a few of the shorts had musical accompaniment, like Red Spectre and Rainbow Dance, but I'm inclined to think some of the others would have benefited with music. Or maybe that's just Jameson's influence after enjoying so many of his film choices with local musicians improvising a score as they watch the films. But in any case, it was a fascinating evening of film history and I was glad I didn't miss it.
They started with film pioneer Gerorges Melies' "Extraordinary Illusions" (1903) (so un-PC with its Asian stereotypes) and "Untameable Whiskers" (1904) which was especially cool to see since Melies himself was in it. It was a textbook lesson in the use of stop-motion throughout.
Segundo de Chomon's "Diablo Rojo/The Red Spetre" (1903) was worth seeing because it was all hand-colored, mostly red and gold/yellow and again featured stop-motion.
Ferdinand Zecca's "The Invisible Thief" (1909) got the audience laughing a lot and I would guess that in 1909 the main character turning invisible on screen must have seemed amazing to audiences.
Leger's "Ballet Mecanique" (1924) was familiar to me because Jameson had shown it at his Silent Music Revival a while back. It suffered in this showing, however, because it had no musical accompaniment and it cries out for one with all its mechanical and repetitive images.
Len Lye's "Rainbow Dance" (1936) was so colorful and bright and had the most appropriate upbeat music, but what I liked best was the way he slipped in sponsor messages, from a local bank and the post office...art and commerce blending, so to speak.
Norman Mclaren's "A Phantasy" (1952) was supposedly important because of the techniques (painting directly on film, pixilation, a synthetic soundtrack) but it left me cold and kind of bored.
Lotte Reiniger's "Snow White and Rose Red" (1953) was sweet and the first film of the night with narration. Her paper silhouettes in stop-motion effect was charming to watch but must have taken forever to create. And while I had a faint memory of this fairy tale, it was enjoyable to see the story unfold.
Only a few of the shorts had musical accompaniment, like Red Spectre and Rainbow Dance, but I'm inclined to think some of the others would have benefited with music. Or maybe that's just Jameson's influence after enjoying so many of his film choices with local musicians improvising a score as they watch the films. But in any case, it was a fascinating evening of film history and I was glad I didn't miss it.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Inside the Body, Heart and Soul of a Hero
Opening night at the James River Film Fest featured "Body of War," a documentary about 25-year old Tomas Young, who was paralyzed from the chest down when he was shot by a sniper on his 5th day serving in Iraq, The film, directed by Richmonder Ellen Spiro, is an unsparing look at how this young man dealt with his disability, lack of rehabilitation and emerging anti-war feelings.
There were moments in the film that were excruciating to watch (his mom inserting a catheter on a road trip to say goodbye to his younger brother before he, too, is deployed), an anti-war march with hundreds of Gold Star Families carrying pictures of their lost sons and daughters (many wanting just to touch Tomas because he made it back and their child didn't) and Tomas having to take breaks while speaking because the pain overcomes him.
This film got made because Phil Donahue met Tomas, felt that his story had to be told and provided the funding to allow Spiro to shoot for nearly three years. Much changes in Tomas' life over that period and the audience is privy to a great deal of it.
It's hard to imagine a more powerful testament to one man's courage as he makes the journey from soldier to anti-war activist than this documentary. Occasional tears aside, it's the kind of film every American needs to see to be reminded of the human cost of an arrogant President's decision.
There were moments in the film that were excruciating to watch (his mom inserting a catheter on a road trip to say goodbye to his younger brother before he, too, is deployed), an anti-war march with hundreds of Gold Star Families carrying pictures of their lost sons and daughters (many wanting just to touch Tomas because he made it back and their child didn't) and Tomas having to take breaks while speaking because the pain overcomes him.
This film got made because Phil Donahue met Tomas, felt that his story had to be told and provided the funding to allow Spiro to shoot for nearly three years. Much changes in Tomas' life over that period and the audience is privy to a great deal of it.
It's hard to imagine a more powerful testament to one man's courage as he makes the journey from soldier to anti-war activist than this documentary. Occasional tears aside, it's the kind of film every American needs to see to be reminded of the human cost of an arrogant President's decision.
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