You never know which way the wind will blow me.
Yesterday, I was siting on a ferry behind a table of eight New Jerseyans unwilling to go below deck to smoke, so instead playing cards to pass the time crossing ("Who's in? Ten cents a card!" to which someone responded, "No, 20 cents a card!") and tonight I was watching a German expressionist film while listening to Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas play the soundtrack he'd composed for it.
Because I've been away all week, tonight was my first opportunity to take advantage of the James River Film Festival and with Lucas accompanying "Der Golem," I was getting a two-fer: music and movie. All I had to do to get a hat trick (eat-film-music) was stop by Asado on my way to the Grace Street Theater.
Crowded because it was happy hour, I took the only available bar stool, in between a couple of women razzing their male friend about all the texts he was getting from someone named Jazmyn ("You do know that proves she doesn't know how to spell her own name, right?" one teased) and a sullen young man nursing successive whiskey shots and staring at the wall.
Welcome to Friday, millennial style.
Meanwhile, I overheard one of the bartenders ask his roommate (who was finishing up a mound o' fries) what he was doing next. "I'm gonna go home and take a shower, then sit down and start drinking. When are you getting home?" The bartender explained that he was going to need to shower, too, asking if the drinking could hold off till he was ready, too.
"Not a chance," his roommate said without so much as a grin. Apparently Friday drinking waits for no man, not even your own roommate.
By the time I'd finished my honey sriracha shrimp tacos, there was a line of people waiting for seats, so I graciously gave up mine and walked over to the theater even though it was half an hour till showtime. I wasn't first, though, so I had the conversation of others to provide some entertainment.
I heard two women talking about the good old pre-GPS days of using maps, except one said they were inconvenient because you had to pull over to look at them and they got torn and creased. "Yea, but remember those Trip-tiks AAA used to give you?" the other asked reverentially.
It was funny to hear since Mac and I had just been discussing Trip-tiks and our fond memories of them while road-tripping to Cape May this week.
Then there was the conversation where someone was saying that he'd wrecked his mother's car coming home from an Edgar Winter, Peter Frampton, Bad Company show where he'd had second row seats in front of the Stacks. "When I left the concert, I was functionally deaf," he claimed. "I tried to tell my Mom that's why I'd wrecked the car."
From there they were off on a '70s tear. "I skipped school to see Todd Rundgren and I didn't even know who he was!" one humble bragged.
You get the idea about the make-up of the crowd. In fact, when JRFF organizer Mike Jones ("I'm basically the glue stick that makes this festival happen...with a lot of help") came out and began talking before the film, at one point he asked how many people had Depression-era parents and the majority of people raised their hands. Young we were not.
And I don't know whether it was the Frankenstein-like aspect to the film or that a musician who's collaborated with everyone from Jeff Buckley to Chris Cornell was playing, but I'm here to tell you that the audience was easily 80% men. Guitar nerds abounded.
Lucas, who is Jewish, spoke about how tickled he'd been to discover this 1920 silent film based on a Jewish folktale ("A Jewish monster and a rabbi saves the day, how cool is that?"), so much so that he'd written a soundtrack with a musician friend and performed it all over the world, earning him a spot in the JAM (Jewish avant garde music) pantheon.
His soundtrack was masterful, taking us through the story of a rabbi who foresees disaster for the Jewish people and creates a clay monster (immense and awkwardly heavy-footed, a precursor to Frankenstein) he asks the spirits to animate to help defend his people. All the potential problems you'd expect from creating a monster ensue, but it ends up dead and the Jews are saved.
Praise Jehovah and pass the Manischewitz.
As if that wasn't enough excellent entertainment for the evening, it was followed by local band Zgomot taking the stage and playing a couple of Lucas' songs set to experimental short films. Then the man himself came back out to join them, doing a couple more, including one he'd written with Jeff Buckley.
If I needed to be baptized back into the cultural world, I couldn't do much better than with one of the top 100 horror films you must see before you die, accompanied by a guitarist who's played the Venice Biennale and Shakespeare & Co. in Paris.
All I can say is, beats the hell out of playing for 10 cents a card. Or even 20.
Showing posts with label james river film festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label james river film festival. Show all posts
Friday, March 16, 2018
Friday, April 14, 2017
Hi-Ho From the Starship Bridge
Gemini, pace yourself, as you have a lot to do. You might feel as if something is bothering you on a subconscious level, which could be driving you much more than you are aware. Your anger is close to the surface.
And when my anger is closest to the surface, I seek out friends who make me laugh. Tonight, that was Pru and Beau as we headed to the VMFA for the James River Film Fest's final screening of "Truffaut Hitchcock," the kind of film that causes film nerds (and, as it turns out, people of a certain age) to congregate.
I was necessarily being collected at an early hour because of my refusal to conform. When Beau and I conferred about tonight's longstanding plans, I insisted on a slightly earlier time because I needed to pick up my ticket at the member services desk before the documentary.
They, on the other hand, had printed their tickets at home. Not my style.
A ticket, a real ticket, is a souvenir of an experience. I have tickets going back to the '70s that remind me of shows and plays, but it's also the retro aspect that keeps me from printing out a ticket. Mainly, it's the fact that I don't want my entire life standardized and printed on 8 1/2 by 11" sheets of paper.
We'll just call it a quality of life issue.
Heading to the museum, we immediately dove head first into a discussion about the difficulties of living with someone after becoming accustomed to living alone. Pru was the first to admit that her eccentricities have been showing, while Beau politely reminded her that everyone involved was already well aware of them.
Mine continue to come to light the more often I invite friends to stop by.
"Truffaut Hitchcock" turned out to be a cinema buff's movie, a film about film-making, one that covered Hitch's emphasis on style, how he was responsible for the "auteur" philosophy - that a director controls the artistic statement - with his ability to "write" with the camera and how he believed that logic was dull.
Tell me about it.
In addition to Truffaut and Hitchcock's conversation, so many good directors testified: Richard Linklater, Martin Scorcese, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader, among others,expounded on subjects such as how perverted "Vertigo" is (very), how Hitch deliberately made movies that played to 2,000 people, not just one and how "Psycho" was the first movie clearly drawn from the real world, so all the more disturbing for it.
One particularly satisfying takeaway is that cinema is a visual art form firmly rooted in silent films, so the long takes and leisurely pans that today unnerve and bore millennials actually make sense when referencing earlier eras. As one of our hosts pointed out, today's films have a climax every two minutes.
I don't know about you, but I find that climaxing pace exhausting. At the very least, give me a refractory period before tossing out any more expectations.
The film left us absolutely certain of Hitch's genius, but also of Truffaut's recognition of that fact, despite his relative youth. Some men catch on more quickly than others, that's all I'm going to say.
From the museum we headed to Secco for a post-film supper among the West End types that Beau pegged as being in the wrong part of town ("She's got to get home to the Barbie Dream House," Pru quipped of a stylishly-cut blond in white shoes and pricey-looking togs) whom we ignored.
Instead, we savored a bottle of Cherrier Sancerre Rose and not even two weeks after the last time we'd had grilled asparagus with breaded fried egg, oops, Pru and I had it again. Twice. There was my smoked fish brushetta with creme fraiche (tasting like pure Sweden), a special of gnocchi with oxtail (decadent and homey simultaneously) and Beau's creative entree of fried lentil pakora with artichoke, mushroom and cashew ricotta (a master class for its marriage of flavors and contrasting textures), all of which returned to the kitchen licked clean.
Because Pru and Beau once lived across the hall from each other, they keep bringing up memories I couldn't even imagine.
"Remember back in the '80s when you and Robert used to have depressing parties?" Pru asked, recalling soirees where the men smoked pipes and mulled, the music was the "Blade Runner" soundtrack and Beau turned his living room into a starship bridge ("Of course you did," Pru sniffed), whatever that might be.
Pardon my optimism, but I can imagine nothing less appealing than heading to a depressing party, although fortunately, I hadn't been invited. Or maybe I would turn it into an upbeat party and ask for dancing instead of depression.
Our final stop was Can Can for dessert, although our mistake had been in forgetting that they had an absinthe drip or we'd have headed there directly. Despite the late hour, our barkeep happily delivered chocolate fudge pudding cakes and three absinthe drips: two made with Trinity and one old school style, made from Grand Absinthe.
My only complaint was that he didn't do the drips in front of us for the pleasure that affords.
Extolling the sublime marriage of absinthe and chocolate, he became the enabler who fueled our last few hours, including procuring a baguette for the happy couple. Inexplicably, the baguettes we'd seen lolling in a basket behind the bar earlier were tossed when the kitchen closed, despite customers who wanted to purchase them. Go figure.
Appreciating the need to pace myself, I shared my second absinthe drip with Pru as the bar began to empty out and I ignored a restaurant owner leering from a nearby stool as he sipped a glass of red wine. Had ours been a depressing party, I might have asked him to join us. I didn't.
I'm pacing myself so my eccentricities don't show any more than they have to. I've been warned I have a lot to do.
Color me ready to do it.
And when my anger is closest to the surface, I seek out friends who make me laugh. Tonight, that was Pru and Beau as we headed to the VMFA for the James River Film Fest's final screening of "Truffaut Hitchcock," the kind of film that causes film nerds (and, as it turns out, people of a certain age) to congregate.
I was necessarily being collected at an early hour because of my refusal to conform. When Beau and I conferred about tonight's longstanding plans, I insisted on a slightly earlier time because I needed to pick up my ticket at the member services desk before the documentary.
They, on the other hand, had printed their tickets at home. Not my style.
A ticket, a real ticket, is a souvenir of an experience. I have tickets going back to the '70s that remind me of shows and plays, but it's also the retro aspect that keeps me from printing out a ticket. Mainly, it's the fact that I don't want my entire life standardized and printed on 8 1/2 by 11" sheets of paper.
We'll just call it a quality of life issue.
Heading to the museum, we immediately dove head first into a discussion about the difficulties of living with someone after becoming accustomed to living alone. Pru was the first to admit that her eccentricities have been showing, while Beau politely reminded her that everyone involved was already well aware of them.
Mine continue to come to light the more often I invite friends to stop by.
"Truffaut Hitchcock" turned out to be a cinema buff's movie, a film about film-making, one that covered Hitch's emphasis on style, how he was responsible for the "auteur" philosophy - that a director controls the artistic statement - with his ability to "write" with the camera and how he believed that logic was dull.
Tell me about it.
In addition to Truffaut and Hitchcock's conversation, so many good directors testified: Richard Linklater, Martin Scorcese, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader, among others,expounded on subjects such as how perverted "Vertigo" is (very), how Hitch deliberately made movies that played to 2,000 people, not just one and how "Psycho" was the first movie clearly drawn from the real world, so all the more disturbing for it.
One particularly satisfying takeaway is that cinema is a visual art form firmly rooted in silent films, so the long takes and leisurely pans that today unnerve and bore millennials actually make sense when referencing earlier eras. As one of our hosts pointed out, today's films have a climax every two minutes.
I don't know about you, but I find that climaxing pace exhausting. At the very least, give me a refractory period before tossing out any more expectations.
The film left us absolutely certain of Hitch's genius, but also of Truffaut's recognition of that fact, despite his relative youth. Some men catch on more quickly than others, that's all I'm going to say.
From the museum we headed to Secco for a post-film supper among the West End types that Beau pegged as being in the wrong part of town ("She's got to get home to the Barbie Dream House," Pru quipped of a stylishly-cut blond in white shoes and pricey-looking togs) whom we ignored.
Instead, we savored a bottle of Cherrier Sancerre Rose and not even two weeks after the last time we'd had grilled asparagus with breaded fried egg, oops, Pru and I had it again. Twice. There was my smoked fish brushetta with creme fraiche (tasting like pure Sweden), a special of gnocchi with oxtail (decadent and homey simultaneously) and Beau's creative entree of fried lentil pakora with artichoke, mushroom and cashew ricotta (a master class for its marriage of flavors and contrasting textures), all of which returned to the kitchen licked clean.
Because Pru and Beau once lived across the hall from each other, they keep bringing up memories I couldn't even imagine.
"Remember back in the '80s when you and Robert used to have depressing parties?" Pru asked, recalling soirees where the men smoked pipes and mulled, the music was the "Blade Runner" soundtrack and Beau turned his living room into a starship bridge ("Of course you did," Pru sniffed), whatever that might be.
Pardon my optimism, but I can imagine nothing less appealing than heading to a depressing party, although fortunately, I hadn't been invited. Or maybe I would turn it into an upbeat party and ask for dancing instead of depression.
Our final stop was Can Can for dessert, although our mistake had been in forgetting that they had an absinthe drip or we'd have headed there directly. Despite the late hour, our barkeep happily delivered chocolate fudge pudding cakes and three absinthe drips: two made with Trinity and one old school style, made from Grand Absinthe.
My only complaint was that he didn't do the drips in front of us for the pleasure that affords.
Extolling the sublime marriage of absinthe and chocolate, he became the enabler who fueled our last few hours, including procuring a baguette for the happy couple. Inexplicably, the baguettes we'd seen lolling in a basket behind the bar earlier were tossed when the kitchen closed, despite customers who wanted to purchase them. Go figure.
Appreciating the need to pace myself, I shared my second absinthe drip with Pru as the bar began to empty out and I ignored a restaurant owner leering from a nearby stool as he sipped a glass of red wine. Had ours been a depressing party, I might have asked him to join us. I didn't.
I'm pacing myself so my eccentricities don't show any more than they have to. I've been warned I have a lot to do.
Color me ready to do it.
Monday, April 10, 2017
Be For Real
As a long-time reader had to remind me today, "Too fine a day outside for us to be on the keyboard."
Amen, brother.
For the second weekend in a row, my passion for Nate's Bagels had me headed to his pop-up, this one at Blue Bee Cider, an easy walk for Mac and me, especially for the conversational time it afforded after not having seen each other in over a week and missing each other's smiling faces.
As we'd hoped, we were first in line as Nate got set up and ready to do business.
With Mac's glass of Blue Bee's bold-tasting Heirophant, an ice cider that's been fermented to dry, we took our bagels outside to the patio, the better to dish and chow down concurrently. And while we'd been the cidery's first visitors today, the next 10 arrived within minutes of us.
But, oh, the sheer pleasure of crunching down through that magnificent crust with its satisfying chew. We'd have walked far further than 2 1/2 miles to snag one.
I thought we were leaving to walk back but Mac led us directly to King of Pops where she had an orange dream pop and I, ever a creature of habit, succumbed to a chocolate sea salt pop, both eaten as we wound our way through Scott's Addition and back toward the Ward.
Despite the reminder from that favorite reader, I had no choice but to spend part of this fine day inside, having bought a ticket to see "The Sad and Beautiful World of Sparklehorse" at the Byrd back in mid-March.
After finding a seat in my favorite row, I listened as the crowd of a certain age filtered in, inevitably recognizing each other (one guy climbing over another: "Oh, it's you!" and another asking his seat mate about his kids) because so many in the crowd had either known Mark Linkous when he was part of the Richmond scene, or had been long-time fans of his music.
Spotting a lanky friend making his way down the aisle, I called for him to take advantage of the empty seat beside me, only to hear that he knew almost everyone sitting around me (which undoubtedly makes him far cooler than me).
The documentary was indeed sad and beautiful, like its subject, and much of that was because of its painful truth that untreated mental illness is a reality no one deserves, even the poor, even the musicians, even the uninsured.
It was also an unadulterated treat to hear so much lo-fi Sparklehorse music with its distinctive hushed vocals (he usually recorded while his wife was asleep upstairs and he didn't want to wake her) and utterly poetic sound.
Afterward, the music crowd gathered in clumps on the sidewalk in front of the Byrd, sharing impressions and memories. I heard a favorite couple greeted with, "Hi, chicken people!" (they liked it), was introduced to David Lowery (who'd been a talking head in the film), queried the Man About Town on his recent bout of bubonic plague ("It was just the flu") and held a movie poster so its owner could roll a cig.
When the Nerd - at least as big a geek as me, except he's also a singer/guitarist, which lifts him out of full nerd-dom - asked if I was off to the Bijou for the next film, I admitted to a need to eat, causing him to metaphorically roll his eyes. "I have an apple in the car to tide me over," he said before dashing to the Bijou.
Clearly he was the superior festival-goer with that kind of planning.
But once I'd put on the feedbag, I walked over to the Bijou for the Silent Music Revival, the James River Film Festival's final event of the weekend, with the Richmond Avant Improv Collective - a group I'd only seen for the first time a couple of months ago - improvising a soundtrack with a vocalist. They did it first to the 1924 classic "Ballet Mechanique" and then to 1928's "Seashell and the Clergy Man."
You couldn't really ask for a more suitable group to come up with a score on the fly for surrealistic films than this group, and that's organizer Jameson's real strength: pairing just the right local band with his choice of obscure silent film. I've been watching him do it for 10 years now and he only gets better.
Even Mike, one of the JRFF creators, admitted to being blown away seeing his first Silent Music Revival tonight and understanding how sublime the combination of silent film and live band is when witnessed.
Film over, I invited a teaching friend on Spring Break this week over for some record listening, knowing he usually pleads to early mornings and couldn't use that excuse this time. Asking for nothing more than a year as a starting point, he offered up 1973, because, he said, when he looks at the songs he plays on his radio show, the majority seem to come from that year.
Even though he's a musician and a music geek, I was able to stump him with my 1973 pick of McCartney's "Red Rose Speedway" before moving through Grin (also one he couldn't identify), Fleetwood Mac's "Rumors" (his choice because he and other musicians are covering it soon), Prince's "1999" (spotted as I was flipping through discs because he hadn't heard it in eons), Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (both of us bowing to that '70s testifying style) and closed out with the Chi-Lites because the Chi-Lites.
The fine day had finally given way to moonlit night, so all bets were off. We, on the other hand, had the windows open listening to obscure '70s and the Sounds of Philly with nary a keyboard in sight.
Mission accomplished, dear reader.
Amen, brother.
For the second weekend in a row, my passion for Nate's Bagels had me headed to his pop-up, this one at Blue Bee Cider, an easy walk for Mac and me, especially for the conversational time it afforded after not having seen each other in over a week and missing each other's smiling faces.
As we'd hoped, we were first in line as Nate got set up and ready to do business.
With Mac's glass of Blue Bee's bold-tasting Heirophant, an ice cider that's been fermented to dry, we took our bagels outside to the patio, the better to dish and chow down concurrently. And while we'd been the cidery's first visitors today, the next 10 arrived within minutes of us.
But, oh, the sheer pleasure of crunching down through that magnificent crust with its satisfying chew. We'd have walked far further than 2 1/2 miles to snag one.
I thought we were leaving to walk back but Mac led us directly to King of Pops where she had an orange dream pop and I, ever a creature of habit, succumbed to a chocolate sea salt pop, both eaten as we wound our way through Scott's Addition and back toward the Ward.
Despite the reminder from that favorite reader, I had no choice but to spend part of this fine day inside, having bought a ticket to see "The Sad and Beautiful World of Sparklehorse" at the Byrd back in mid-March.
After finding a seat in my favorite row, I listened as the crowd of a certain age filtered in, inevitably recognizing each other (one guy climbing over another: "Oh, it's you!" and another asking his seat mate about his kids) because so many in the crowd had either known Mark Linkous when he was part of the Richmond scene, or had been long-time fans of his music.
Spotting a lanky friend making his way down the aisle, I called for him to take advantage of the empty seat beside me, only to hear that he knew almost everyone sitting around me (which undoubtedly makes him far cooler than me).
The documentary was indeed sad and beautiful, like its subject, and much of that was because of its painful truth that untreated mental illness is a reality no one deserves, even the poor, even the musicians, even the uninsured.
It was also an unadulterated treat to hear so much lo-fi Sparklehorse music with its distinctive hushed vocals (he usually recorded while his wife was asleep upstairs and he didn't want to wake her) and utterly poetic sound.
Afterward, the music crowd gathered in clumps on the sidewalk in front of the Byrd, sharing impressions and memories. I heard a favorite couple greeted with, "Hi, chicken people!" (they liked it), was introduced to David Lowery (who'd been a talking head in the film), queried the Man About Town on his recent bout of bubonic plague ("It was just the flu") and held a movie poster so its owner could roll a cig.
When the Nerd - at least as big a geek as me, except he's also a singer/guitarist, which lifts him out of full nerd-dom - asked if I was off to the Bijou for the next film, I admitted to a need to eat, causing him to metaphorically roll his eyes. "I have an apple in the car to tide me over," he said before dashing to the Bijou.
Clearly he was the superior festival-goer with that kind of planning.
But once I'd put on the feedbag, I walked over to the Bijou for the Silent Music Revival, the James River Film Festival's final event of the weekend, with the Richmond Avant Improv Collective - a group I'd only seen for the first time a couple of months ago - improvising a soundtrack with a vocalist. They did it first to the 1924 classic "Ballet Mechanique" and then to 1928's "Seashell and the Clergy Man."
You couldn't really ask for a more suitable group to come up with a score on the fly for surrealistic films than this group, and that's organizer Jameson's real strength: pairing just the right local band with his choice of obscure silent film. I've been watching him do it for 10 years now and he only gets better.
Even Mike, one of the JRFF creators, admitted to being blown away seeing his first Silent Music Revival tonight and understanding how sublime the combination of silent film and live band is when witnessed.
Film over, I invited a teaching friend on Spring Break this week over for some record listening, knowing he usually pleads to early mornings and couldn't use that excuse this time. Asking for nothing more than a year as a starting point, he offered up 1973, because, he said, when he looks at the songs he plays on his radio show, the majority seem to come from that year.
Even though he's a musician and a music geek, I was able to stump him with my 1973 pick of McCartney's "Red Rose Speedway" before moving through Grin (also one he couldn't identify), Fleetwood Mac's "Rumors" (his choice because he and other musicians are covering it soon), Prince's "1999" (spotted as I was flipping through discs because he hadn't heard it in eons), Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (both of us bowing to that '70s testifying style) and closed out with the Chi-Lites because the Chi-Lites.
The fine day had finally given way to moonlit night, so all bets were off. We, on the other hand, had the windows open listening to obscure '70s and the Sounds of Philly with nary a keyboard in sight.
Mission accomplished, dear reader.
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Fight for Your Right to Post
Don't let anyone tell you it's the worst month of the year
This year's James River Film Festival will be the one remembered as the year of the wind. If I thought yesterday's gusts had moved on, I was sorely mistaken, as I discovered walking to the library for this afternoon's films.
And it's not just me getting blown around because the curator of last night's films never made it to Richmond at all because of his flight being canceled. And Guy Maddin, the Canadian director whose many films are screening this weekend, will be arriving on a later plane than scheduled because of windy weather.
But neither rain nor snow nor wind of afternoon would have kept me from today's screening of films devoted to protest and films that bore witness to history all the while questioning it. Most of the crowd who joined me were also of a certain age, including one filmmaker whom I overheard telling his seatmate, "I'm from a steamboat town...called Cincinnati."
I'm from a swamp town...called Washington, D.C. Just doesn't have the same ring, does it?
As it turned out, I'd already seen Gordon Ball's "Mexican Jail Footage" shot in 1968, because Ball himself had been at the Firehouse Theater in 2012 when his book about how beat poet Allen Ginsberg had hired him to run his farm in upstate New York.
Still, it was a kick to see Ball and his lean-as-jaguars (no high fructose corn syrup) buddies in a Mexican jail (being held without charges) and, in typical 1968 style, making the most of their time to the best of their capabilities. Hatha yoga sessions, smoking pot (one handful acquired from the jailer), an outing to a Chinese restaurant by said jailer (as well as a whorehouse), being taken to a fancy hotel for dinner by a friend's mother and, obviously, shooting footage on film smuggled in.
Clearly jails were held to different standards in the '60s, although it wasn't all fun and games, either. They had to pay local kids to go out and buy them food during their stay, meaning they quickly ran through their money and Ball had to sell his transistor radio to be able to eat. Luckily, he didn't sell the movie camera.
"Confrontation at Kent State" had been made in 1970 collectively by some faculty and students on Kent State's campus and featured interviews with students who'd been part of the mayhem, but also with townspeople about what had gone down.
Locals blamed everyone from the students to the governor to the school's administration to paid agitators for the deaths of four college students by National Guardsmen. It was appalling how many smug white townspeople said the students got exactly what they deserved.
Death for protesting? Um, I don't think so.
I don't know about the rest of the audience of a certain age, but I really knew nothing about the aftermath of the shootings: the tanks on campus, armed guards on corners, helicopters overhead rattling houses. Or even that students had burned a building in frustration after the deaths.
In the saddest possible way, it ended with the father of one of the victims reading a poem about his daughter.
"Buffalo Creek Revisited" about a West Virginia mining disaster caused by a coal waste dam collapsing and flooding nearby communities and killing 120 people, looked at the situation a decade later and things hadn't improved much.
Not just because the coal company didn't care but also because the land where people's houses had previously been located before being washed away had since been earmarked for a super-highway so they had nothing to go back to.
The final short had a local angle because the VCU film professor who introduced today's films was also the fresh-faced manager of the Biograph in a skinny tie being interviewed onscreen circa 1985. "Biograph Theater Handbill Rally" was a compilation of the three local newscasts reporting on the rally for freedom of speech issues after the city outlawed posting fliers on poles.
The idea was brilliant: place a pole on Biograph property and allow people to post on it, whether a copy of the Constitution, a lost pet flier or a music show, while gathering signatures for a petition to present the city to change the ordinance.
Meanwhile, behind him in the shots was the Biograph's marquee, clearly showing that "Stop Making Sense" was screening. Having to rally for the right to post public notices clearly demonstrates that sense was no longer being made in Richmond. I didn't get here until '86, but that's about the state I found it in when I got here.
As I recall anyway and I'm pretty good at recalling.
There was no recalling to do about poet Larry Levis because I'd never met him and he'd died of acocaine overdose heart attack in 1996, except that I had heard his name mentioned at poetry readings for years as part of VCU's literary legacy.
JRFF was screening at the Visual Arts Center tonight "A Late Style of Fire: Larry Levis, American Poet," a film I was especially eager to see for its local connections. A familiar poet sat down in the same row where I'd staked territory, so I did the only sensible thing and wished him happy poetry month.
Shaking his head, he joked, "It's the worst month of the year!" No, just the least celebrated and, worst of all, without cake.
The film provided a fascinating look at Levis' life, from growing up on a grape farm in California - where he'd concluded by his teen years that his choices were being a farmer or a poet - to the many wives and women he attracted, many of whom spoke lovingly about him on camera years after he'd let them down. Best of all, Levis' poems were read as part of the film, so the audience could get some sense of his words.
This was a man who could write a poem called, "Perfection of Solitude," yet he was also, as someone pointed out, a poet who kept a 12-gauge shotgun by the door, a rather un-poetic habit.
I especially enjoyed the inter-cut scenes of a reading he'd done in 1985, beer bottle at hand, looking very much the 40ish artistic/academic type who was as disarming reading to an audience as charming a woman. Ultimately, Levis believed he had to live self-destructively in order to create his best possible work so he was dead at 49 in Church Hill.
Ah, the siren song and simultaneous curse of self-medicating. Don't get me started.
The evening was capped off with a walk to Gallery 5 for their 12th anniversary celebration, a soiree with fire performers outside (whom I watched for 20 minutes standing outside in line waiting to get in), a burlesque show followed by Prabir's band and the Trillions inside and a multi-artist art show upstairs that included a giant kaleidoscope, a large sculptural piece with small doors of various materials which opened to show nude selfies sent to the artist (but not in a lustful way, the artistic statement assured us) and paintings, collages and drawings.
I've been in Jackson Ward for nearly 11 years, so Gallery 5 has me beat by one year, and at only 4 blocks from home, ranks as hands-down closest music venue for yours truly. In fact, when I finally got to the front of the line to get in, the door guy saw it was me and apologized that I'd had to wait in line given my frequent attendance cred.
No big deal. All that line time allowed for some fabulous eavesdropping from the lacrosse/soccer-playing female trio in front of me who could recall every game they'd played to the symphony musicians behind me who admitted they'd never been anywhere in J-Ward other than Gallery 5. Anywhere.
I don't have time to educate the entire population, people.
As it is, I barely have time to do all the things worth doing around here...or find people to do them with. The perfection of solitude is a work in progress.
This year's James River Film Festival will be the one remembered as the year of the wind. If I thought yesterday's gusts had moved on, I was sorely mistaken, as I discovered walking to the library for this afternoon's films.
And it's not just me getting blown around because the curator of last night's films never made it to Richmond at all because of his flight being canceled. And Guy Maddin, the Canadian director whose many films are screening this weekend, will be arriving on a later plane than scheduled because of windy weather.
But neither rain nor snow nor wind of afternoon would have kept me from today's screening of films devoted to protest and films that bore witness to history all the while questioning it. Most of the crowd who joined me were also of a certain age, including one filmmaker whom I overheard telling his seatmate, "I'm from a steamboat town...called Cincinnati."
I'm from a swamp town...called Washington, D.C. Just doesn't have the same ring, does it?
As it turned out, I'd already seen Gordon Ball's "Mexican Jail Footage" shot in 1968, because Ball himself had been at the Firehouse Theater in 2012 when his book about how beat poet Allen Ginsberg had hired him to run his farm in upstate New York.
Still, it was a kick to see Ball and his lean-as-jaguars (no high fructose corn syrup) buddies in a Mexican jail (being held without charges) and, in typical 1968 style, making the most of their time to the best of their capabilities. Hatha yoga sessions, smoking pot (one handful acquired from the jailer), an outing to a Chinese restaurant by said jailer (as well as a whorehouse), being taken to a fancy hotel for dinner by a friend's mother and, obviously, shooting footage on film smuggled in.
Clearly jails were held to different standards in the '60s, although it wasn't all fun and games, either. They had to pay local kids to go out and buy them food during their stay, meaning they quickly ran through their money and Ball had to sell his transistor radio to be able to eat. Luckily, he didn't sell the movie camera.
"Confrontation at Kent State" had been made in 1970 collectively by some faculty and students on Kent State's campus and featured interviews with students who'd been part of the mayhem, but also with townspeople about what had gone down.
Locals blamed everyone from the students to the governor to the school's administration to paid agitators for the deaths of four college students by National Guardsmen. It was appalling how many smug white townspeople said the students got exactly what they deserved.
Death for protesting? Um, I don't think so.
I don't know about the rest of the audience of a certain age, but I really knew nothing about the aftermath of the shootings: the tanks on campus, armed guards on corners, helicopters overhead rattling houses. Or even that students had burned a building in frustration after the deaths.
In the saddest possible way, it ended with the father of one of the victims reading a poem about his daughter.
"Buffalo Creek Revisited" about a West Virginia mining disaster caused by a coal waste dam collapsing and flooding nearby communities and killing 120 people, looked at the situation a decade later and things hadn't improved much.
Not just because the coal company didn't care but also because the land where people's houses had previously been located before being washed away had since been earmarked for a super-highway so they had nothing to go back to.
The final short had a local angle because the VCU film professor who introduced today's films was also the fresh-faced manager of the Biograph in a skinny tie being interviewed onscreen circa 1985. "Biograph Theater Handbill Rally" was a compilation of the three local newscasts reporting on the rally for freedom of speech issues after the city outlawed posting fliers on poles.
The idea was brilliant: place a pole on Biograph property and allow people to post on it, whether a copy of the Constitution, a lost pet flier or a music show, while gathering signatures for a petition to present the city to change the ordinance.
Meanwhile, behind him in the shots was the Biograph's marquee, clearly showing that "Stop Making Sense" was screening. Having to rally for the right to post public notices clearly demonstrates that sense was no longer being made in Richmond. I didn't get here until '86, but that's about the state I found it in when I got here.
As I recall anyway and I'm pretty good at recalling.
There was no recalling to do about poet Larry Levis because I'd never met him and he'd died of a
JRFF was screening at the Visual Arts Center tonight "A Late Style of Fire: Larry Levis, American Poet," a film I was especially eager to see for its local connections. A familiar poet sat down in the same row where I'd staked territory, so I did the only sensible thing and wished him happy poetry month.
Shaking his head, he joked, "It's the worst month of the year!" No, just the least celebrated and, worst of all, without cake.
The film provided a fascinating look at Levis' life, from growing up on a grape farm in California - where he'd concluded by his teen years that his choices were being a farmer or a poet - to the many wives and women he attracted, many of whom spoke lovingly about him on camera years after he'd let them down. Best of all, Levis' poems were read as part of the film, so the audience could get some sense of his words.
This was a man who could write a poem called, "Perfection of Solitude," yet he was also, as someone pointed out, a poet who kept a 12-gauge shotgun by the door, a rather un-poetic habit.
I especially enjoyed the inter-cut scenes of a reading he'd done in 1985, beer bottle at hand, looking very much the 40ish artistic/academic type who was as disarming reading to an audience as charming a woman. Ultimately, Levis believed he had to live self-destructively in order to create his best possible work so he was dead at 49 in Church Hill.
Ah, the siren song and simultaneous curse of self-medicating. Don't get me started.
The evening was capped off with a walk to Gallery 5 for their 12th anniversary celebration, a soiree with fire performers outside (whom I watched for 20 minutes standing outside in line waiting to get in), a burlesque show followed by Prabir's band and the Trillions inside and a multi-artist art show upstairs that included a giant kaleidoscope, a large sculptural piece with small doors of various materials which opened to show nude selfies sent to the artist (but not in a lustful way, the artistic statement assured us) and paintings, collages and drawings.
I've been in Jackson Ward for nearly 11 years, so Gallery 5 has me beat by one year, and at only 4 blocks from home, ranks as hands-down closest music venue for yours truly. In fact, when I finally got to the front of the line to get in, the door guy saw it was me and apologized that I'd had to wait in line given my frequent attendance cred.
No big deal. All that line time allowed for some fabulous eavesdropping from the lacrosse/soccer-playing female trio in front of me who could recall every game they'd played to the symphony musicians behind me who admitted they'd never been anywhere in J-Ward other than Gallery 5. Anywhere.
I don't have time to educate the entire population, people.
As it is, I barely have time to do all the things worth doing around here...or find people to do them with. The perfection of solitude is a work in progress.
Friday, April 7, 2017
Range Rover
If ever anyone wanted to understand the range of my taste, today would have been the day.
To start, it's the first day of the 24th annual James River Film Festival, which means kicking off a whirlwind of films between now and Sunday night, many of which call to me.
The first to get my seat in a chair was at the Main Library for the 1954 cinematic treasure (so says the Library of Congress' Film Registry and now that I've visited, I trust their judgment) made by a producer and director both blacklisted as part of the Hollywood 10 for refusing to name names.
Because of that, film labs refused to process the film and after a week, theaters refused to run the film about an actual 1951 mine strike in New Mexico.
Told neo-realistically with the director using a mixture of professional actors (including Grandpa Walton aka Will Geer, of whom host Mike Jones noted, "Grandpa Walton was a Communist" with delight) and local people - miners and their wives - for the cast, the film lacked any shallow Hollywood veneer.
And talk about ahead of its time.
What was completely surprising were the strong feminist themes as miners' wives fought for a voice in what the miners should strike for in addition to better working conditions and pay (say, indoor plumbing and hot water), but also in being allowed to physically walk the picket lines once an injunction rules that miners who strike would be arrested.
Watching these '50s-era Mexican immigrant women find their voices and take charge of the strike situation was positively inspiring. Matter of fact, the only thing more impressive was the women's expectations at neighborhood get-togethers: they'd make dinner and clean up while the men talked and played cards.
But after that, everyone knew the men were expected to dance with their wives for the remainder of the evening (even if they danced badly, the men, that is) to the radio. Or to a guitar player if it happened to be the night the radio got repossessed in front of all your friends.
So right out of the gate, the JRFF had fed my taste for American social history, early feminism, neo-realism filmmaking and it was only dinnertime.
That meant a trip to the VMFA to meet an out-of-town friend for a few hours before it was time for another film.
For me, taking the scenic route through the museum to get to the restaurant means cutting through the early 20th-century European gallery and midway though them, I saw a nerdy-handsome security guard engrossed in an Emil Nolde painting.
Teasing him about that being a perk of the job, he corrected me at once, "No, that's why I took this job." I liked him already.
Arriving at Amuse first, I scored a couple of mid-century chairs facing the majestic sunset resulting from today's bizarre revolving door of fronts - it's warm and humid, no it's cool and windy, wait, it's warm and drizzly - ordered a hibiscus lemonade of the most gorgeous pink hue and apologized to the older couple in the chairs across from me for interrupting their little cocktail hour.
The bartender was wearing a maxi dress as groovy as the chairs, complete with round holes the size of a quarter all over, making parts of the legs and shoulders visible through the holes. When she mentioned that she was getting the holes stuck on everything, I suggested that the problem was that the dress would be better worn at a party rather than work.
On the other hand, when you have a dress that cute, how can you not wear it?
Once my friend arrived, we moved so we both had a view of the sunset's cloud juggernaut over the former home for Confederate women, only bothering to look at the menu once our server had come back three times.
Creamy white bean soup with Tasso ham and scallions seemed particularly suited to the suddenly cooler temperatures and I followed that with a glass of Rose and a salad of beets, almonds, bleu cheese, pea shoots and mixed greens with an onion vinaigrette, while my companion stuck to variations on a French 75, citing a difficult week.
By the time the clock said that I needed to get to a movie, I'd been characterized as a life explorer, a Renaissance woman and someone unable to live anywhere but a walkable city with a plethora of options on all fronts.
To quote Bing Crosby, guilty as charged, I guess.
After goodnights and dropping off the auto at home, I walked over to the Grace Street Theater for what is easily this year's festival's finest movie title by a long shot: "Rain the Color of Blue with a Little Red In It," essentially a Nigerian remake of "Purple Rain," the clunky title a result of there being no word for "purple" in the Tuareg language.
As soon as I got to the lobby, I found familiar faces: the photographer, the world DJ, the record store owner, the Bollywood DJ, the writer, the pariah, the record collector, the metalhead, the power pop singer. As someone joked, it was all the cool kids, but really, he meant all the middle aged dudes and a couple of women.
Truth be told, not everyone's schedule allows for a 9:30 movie screening on a Thursday night, even one with multiple hooks.
Too bad for them because the film borrowed heavily from Prince's debut - troubled relationship with father, love interest who throws jewelry, envious fellow musicians, purple motorcycle - while being completely original given that it involved nomadic Africans who trade pop music gems on their cellphones as a way to hear what's new and happening.
Our hero even wore purple, albeit what looked like shiny purple African pajamas with flip-flops, which, by the way, is also what he wore to ride his motorcycle around the desert.
And of course the soundtrack was phenomenal, merging Hendrix-like electric guitar with traditional Tuareg music for something George Harrison would probably have loved.
So my second film of the day had satisfied my music lust, fulfilled my appreciation for DIY filmmaking and provided an African cultural lesson.
As for that range, it's only a long way from feminist communism to left-handed guitars if you don't go by way German-Danish painters.
Just ask any Renaissance woman.
To start, it's the first day of the 24th annual James River Film Festival, which means kicking off a whirlwind of films between now and Sunday night, many of which call to me.
The first to get my seat in a chair was at the Main Library for the 1954 cinematic treasure (so says the Library of Congress' Film Registry and now that I've visited, I trust their judgment) made by a producer and director both blacklisted as part of the Hollywood 10 for refusing to name names.
Because of that, film labs refused to process the film and after a week, theaters refused to run the film about an actual 1951 mine strike in New Mexico.
Told neo-realistically with the director using a mixture of professional actors (including Grandpa Walton aka Will Geer, of whom host Mike Jones noted, "Grandpa Walton was a Communist" with delight) and local people - miners and their wives - for the cast, the film lacked any shallow Hollywood veneer.
And talk about ahead of its time.
What was completely surprising were the strong feminist themes as miners' wives fought for a voice in what the miners should strike for in addition to better working conditions and pay (say, indoor plumbing and hot water), but also in being allowed to physically walk the picket lines once an injunction rules that miners who strike would be arrested.
Watching these '50s-era Mexican immigrant women find their voices and take charge of the strike situation was positively inspiring. Matter of fact, the only thing more impressive was the women's expectations at neighborhood get-togethers: they'd make dinner and clean up while the men talked and played cards.
But after that, everyone knew the men were expected to dance with their wives for the remainder of the evening (even if they danced badly, the men, that is) to the radio. Or to a guitar player if it happened to be the night the radio got repossessed in front of all your friends.
So right out of the gate, the JRFF had fed my taste for American social history, early feminism, neo-realism filmmaking and it was only dinnertime.
That meant a trip to the VMFA to meet an out-of-town friend for a few hours before it was time for another film.
For me, taking the scenic route through the museum to get to the restaurant means cutting through the early 20th-century European gallery and midway though them, I saw a nerdy-handsome security guard engrossed in an Emil Nolde painting.
Teasing him about that being a perk of the job, he corrected me at once, "No, that's why I took this job." I liked him already.
Arriving at Amuse first, I scored a couple of mid-century chairs facing the majestic sunset resulting from today's bizarre revolving door of fronts - it's warm and humid, no it's cool and windy, wait, it's warm and drizzly - ordered a hibiscus lemonade of the most gorgeous pink hue and apologized to the older couple in the chairs across from me for interrupting their little cocktail hour.
The bartender was wearing a maxi dress as groovy as the chairs, complete with round holes the size of a quarter all over, making parts of the legs and shoulders visible through the holes. When she mentioned that she was getting the holes stuck on everything, I suggested that the problem was that the dress would be better worn at a party rather than work.
On the other hand, when you have a dress that cute, how can you not wear it?
Once my friend arrived, we moved so we both had a view of the sunset's cloud juggernaut over the former home for Confederate women, only bothering to look at the menu once our server had come back three times.
Creamy white bean soup with Tasso ham and scallions seemed particularly suited to the suddenly cooler temperatures and I followed that with a glass of Rose and a salad of beets, almonds, bleu cheese, pea shoots and mixed greens with an onion vinaigrette, while my companion stuck to variations on a French 75, citing a difficult week.
By the time the clock said that I needed to get to a movie, I'd been characterized as a life explorer, a Renaissance woman and someone unable to live anywhere but a walkable city with a plethora of options on all fronts.
To quote Bing Crosby, guilty as charged, I guess.
After goodnights and dropping off the auto at home, I walked over to the Grace Street Theater for what is easily this year's festival's finest movie title by a long shot: "Rain the Color of Blue with a Little Red In It," essentially a Nigerian remake of "Purple Rain," the clunky title a result of there being no word for "purple" in the Tuareg language.
As soon as I got to the lobby, I found familiar faces: the photographer, the world DJ, the record store owner, the Bollywood DJ, the writer, the pariah, the record collector, the metalhead, the power pop singer. As someone joked, it was all the cool kids, but really, he meant all the middle aged dudes and a couple of women.
Truth be told, not everyone's schedule allows for a 9:30 movie screening on a Thursday night, even one with multiple hooks.
Too bad for them because the film borrowed heavily from Prince's debut - troubled relationship with father, love interest who throws jewelry, envious fellow musicians, purple motorcycle - while being completely original given that it involved nomadic Africans who trade pop music gems on their cellphones as a way to hear what's new and happening.
Our hero even wore purple, albeit what looked like shiny purple African pajamas with flip-flops, which, by the way, is also what he wore to ride his motorcycle around the desert.
And of course the soundtrack was phenomenal, merging Hendrix-like electric guitar with traditional Tuareg music for something George Harrison would probably have loved.
So my second film of the day had satisfied my music lust, fulfilled my appreciation for DIY filmmaking and provided an African cultural lesson.
As for that range, it's only a long way from feminist communism to left-handed guitars if you don't go by way German-Danish painters.
Just ask any Renaissance woman.
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Life, Better than a Reproduction Lecture
I am completely unable to ignore the man who first informed me - before I knew it myself - that I was a hopeless romantic.
Oh, I was flattered when I heard from the west coast, "Oh, shoot, is this the end of the blog? Say it ain't so...xo," but I was, alas, so much busier with work and a decided uptick in my social life that I had to let go of something.
I certainly wasn't about to let go of things like a poetry reading at Scott House, with verse dedicated to topics such as nosebleeds, elk offal, pyre-building and gray scum (Gregory Kimbrell's first reading from his completely disarming and disturbing new book of poems, "The Primitive Observatory") or Allison Titus' elegiac space rock poems about fireflies lamping the back yard.
As a result, I decided to use my usual blogging time for fun so I didn't have to miss out on anything like the screening of "Labyrinth" at Hardywood (my first viewing of the Bowie/Jim Henson classic) or an afternoon under the spell of K Dance's "Shorts," with works by Tennessee Williams, Suzan-Lori Parks and Shel Silverstein.
With no obligation to keep track of my comings and goings, I left town for three days, taking long walks in unfamiliar places, doing a lot of reading and savoring the lobster roll my critic friend recommended. When I got back, it was to an unexpected message, letting me know of the sender's "continuing appreciation for what you do to show a strong, smart, engaged approach to living."
There are people reading me who get that? Praise the lord and pass the biscuits.
Right, and there was that time I went to the new Early Bird Biscuit and shared my biscuit and blackberry jam with a homeless man who called me kind for doing so. I would call the person who wrote that to me kind as well.
When the French Film Festival hit town, Pru and I set out to get our yearly Francophile fix, except that what she really wanted to discuss for those three days was not cineastes but my absence in the blogging sphere, having been immediately suspicious when I'd stopped.
Over dinner at Secco one day, Amour Wine Bistro another and Bistro Bobette a third, she tried to get me back in writing mode. "All these amusing things I've been saying and no one's writing them down for posterity!" she lamented.
Days later, I get a message from her. "It looks like your radishes are growing fat instead of pithy at present...hmmmm." After much back and forth about my personal life, she offered advice not printable in a family blog...or this one. Her summation? "Get out there and get pithy!"
Can I not be pithy without blogging?
Perhaps I'm too busy flaunting my D.C. roots with a James River Film Fest screening of "S.E. 67," a documentary about a group of Southeast Washington kids offered free college educations back in the '80s. I sign a petition to save the Enid Haupt Gardens in D.C., aghast that their demolition is even being considered.
There's a show and dance party at Studio 23 of go-go posters from the '70s and '80s (the graphic style instantly recognizable because I grew up seeing them everywhere), along with two DJs playing nothing but go-go, something that rarely happens outside D.C.
I have a ball dancing, talking to fellow go-go fans and even to a guy who'd attended one of the shows advertised in the poster. I overheard so many fascinating conversations and shared none of them.
Not having to blog meant plenty of time for dinner at the ever-fabulous Acacia (duck heart salad with strawberries, my, oh my and squid ink pasta with clams) before seeing Quill Theater's "King Lear" and repairing to Can-Can for Shakespeare discussion among the Saturday night divorcee crowd.
Did anyone really need to hear my thoughts on the new bands I've been seeing lately? The new Scott Clark Trio, for instance, or Microwave's soulful sounds at Cary Street? Zomes at Steady Sounds or the killer chops of Ralston, Parker, Fonville at Balliceaux? Probably not.
I have taken epic walks with my new walking partners, shared an unexpected brunch with an attentive artist and gone to a late night screening of a movie about wine, "Premiere Cru." At the Valentine's final Community Conversation, I enthusiastically discussed Richmond's public spaces with strangers and people of opposing opinions.
If anyone actually cares that I saw the cult 1986 documentary "Heavy Metal Parking Lot," I'd be thrilled to hear from them. Personally, it was a kick seeing all those skinny kids in the Capital Centre parking lot, the scene of most of my concerts for the first 8 or 10 years of my concert-going life.
Paul McCartney, Elton John, Cher, the Who, Fleetwood Mac, Diana Ross, the Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith, all revealed themselves to me for the first time at ye old Cap Centre, but at this screening, I got the bonus of seeing the building's implosion, something I'd missed, having moved to Richmond by then.
But who cares?
And does anyone really want to know that I've been to Merroir twice in recent weeks, along with Metzger, Pizza Tonight, My Noodle and Bar (I'm besotted with the decor) and the Roosevelt for a wine dinner with Chatham Vineyards, their delightful and voluble winemaker seated at our table? Probably not.
When it was last minute company I needed, I found it with an empathetic friend at Sabai for dinner and the Broadberry for a DJ out of Phoenix who took the stage at midnight after two others and melted our faces off with European beats.
Walking out of Richmond Ballet's Studio 3 series after being gobsmacked seeing "The Rite of Spring" and a world premiere of Mark Annear's "City Life," I run into the mustached scientist, whom I haven't seen in eons.
"Well, that was better than a reproduction lecture,' he observes in his usual deadpan, referring to the class he should have been teaching while he was instead watching dance.
Just before I get ready to leave the house Sunday, my trusty land line rings and it's the college friend who now resides in Key West, calling to check on me for the simple reason that I haven't blogged in a few weeks. Am I okay, how's my love life, how can anyone, friend or foe, be expected to match my energy level?
Although it sounds like typical friend phone conversation, you have to understand that we don't talk on the phone. Or if we do, there are years in between conversations. Clearly, he must have been worried and we can't have that.
After all, he's the one who advised me back in 2009 when my life was in shambles that, "Loneliness and regret are mean friends and piss poor mates."
I'm working on having none of either, thank you very much. So the blog is back, in some fashion or another, probably a less revealing one so more of my business is my own. How's that for pithy?
Say it ain't so.
Oh, I was flattered when I heard from the west coast, "Oh, shoot, is this the end of the blog? Say it ain't so...xo," but I was, alas, so much busier with work and a decided uptick in my social life that I had to let go of something.
I certainly wasn't about to let go of things like a poetry reading at Scott House, with verse dedicated to topics such as nosebleeds, elk offal, pyre-building and gray scum (Gregory Kimbrell's first reading from his completely disarming and disturbing new book of poems, "The Primitive Observatory") or Allison Titus' elegiac space rock poems about fireflies lamping the back yard.
As a result, I decided to use my usual blogging time for fun so I didn't have to miss out on anything like the screening of "Labyrinth" at Hardywood (my first viewing of the Bowie/Jim Henson classic) or an afternoon under the spell of K Dance's "Shorts," with works by Tennessee Williams, Suzan-Lori Parks and Shel Silverstein.
With no obligation to keep track of my comings and goings, I left town for three days, taking long walks in unfamiliar places, doing a lot of reading and savoring the lobster roll my critic friend recommended. When I got back, it was to an unexpected message, letting me know of the sender's "continuing appreciation for what you do to show a strong, smart, engaged approach to living."
There are people reading me who get that? Praise the lord and pass the biscuits.
Right, and there was that time I went to the new Early Bird Biscuit and shared my biscuit and blackberry jam with a homeless man who called me kind for doing so. I would call the person who wrote that to me kind as well.
When the French Film Festival hit town, Pru and I set out to get our yearly Francophile fix, except that what she really wanted to discuss for those three days was not cineastes but my absence in the blogging sphere, having been immediately suspicious when I'd stopped.
Over dinner at Secco one day, Amour Wine Bistro another and Bistro Bobette a third, she tried to get me back in writing mode. "All these amusing things I've been saying and no one's writing them down for posterity!" she lamented.
Days later, I get a message from her. "It looks like your radishes are growing fat instead of pithy at present...hmmmm." After much back and forth about my personal life, she offered advice not printable in a family blog...or this one. Her summation? "Get out there and get pithy!"
Can I not be pithy without blogging?
Perhaps I'm too busy flaunting my D.C. roots with a James River Film Fest screening of "S.E. 67," a documentary about a group of Southeast Washington kids offered free college educations back in the '80s. I sign a petition to save the Enid Haupt Gardens in D.C., aghast that their demolition is even being considered.
There's a show and dance party at Studio 23 of go-go posters from the '70s and '80s (the graphic style instantly recognizable because I grew up seeing them everywhere), along with two DJs playing nothing but go-go, something that rarely happens outside D.C.
I have a ball dancing, talking to fellow go-go fans and even to a guy who'd attended one of the shows advertised in the poster. I overheard so many fascinating conversations and shared none of them.
Not having to blog meant plenty of time for dinner at the ever-fabulous Acacia (duck heart salad with strawberries, my, oh my and squid ink pasta with clams) before seeing Quill Theater's "King Lear" and repairing to Can-Can for Shakespeare discussion among the Saturday night divorcee crowd.
Did anyone really need to hear my thoughts on the new bands I've been seeing lately? The new Scott Clark Trio, for instance, or Microwave's soulful sounds at Cary Street? Zomes at Steady Sounds or the killer chops of Ralston, Parker, Fonville at Balliceaux? Probably not.
I have taken epic walks with my new walking partners, shared an unexpected brunch with an attentive artist and gone to a late night screening of a movie about wine, "Premiere Cru." At the Valentine's final Community Conversation, I enthusiastically discussed Richmond's public spaces with strangers and people of opposing opinions.
If anyone actually cares that I saw the cult 1986 documentary "Heavy Metal Parking Lot," I'd be thrilled to hear from them. Personally, it was a kick seeing all those skinny kids in the Capital Centre parking lot, the scene of most of my concerts for the first 8 or 10 years of my concert-going life.
Paul McCartney, Elton John, Cher, the Who, Fleetwood Mac, Diana Ross, the Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith, all revealed themselves to me for the first time at ye old Cap Centre, but at this screening, I got the bonus of seeing the building's implosion, something I'd missed, having moved to Richmond by then.
But who cares?
And does anyone really want to know that I've been to Merroir twice in recent weeks, along with Metzger, Pizza Tonight, My Noodle and Bar (I'm besotted with the decor) and the Roosevelt for a wine dinner with Chatham Vineyards, their delightful and voluble winemaker seated at our table? Probably not.
When it was last minute company I needed, I found it with an empathetic friend at Sabai for dinner and the Broadberry for a DJ out of Phoenix who took the stage at midnight after two others and melted our faces off with European beats.
Walking out of Richmond Ballet's Studio 3 series after being gobsmacked seeing "The Rite of Spring" and a world premiere of Mark Annear's "City Life," I run into the mustached scientist, whom I haven't seen in eons.
"Well, that was better than a reproduction lecture,' he observes in his usual deadpan, referring to the class he should have been teaching while he was instead watching dance.
Just before I get ready to leave the house Sunday, my trusty land line rings and it's the college friend who now resides in Key West, calling to check on me for the simple reason that I haven't blogged in a few weeks. Am I okay, how's my love life, how can anyone, friend or foe, be expected to match my energy level?
Although it sounds like typical friend phone conversation, you have to understand that we don't talk on the phone. Or if we do, there are years in between conversations. Clearly, he must have been worried and we can't have that.
After all, he's the one who advised me back in 2009 when my life was in shambles that, "Loneliness and regret are mean friends and piss poor mates."
I'm working on having none of either, thank you very much. So the blog is back, in some fashion or another, probably a less revealing one so more of my business is my own. How's that for pithy?
Say it ain't so.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Happy Times, Heavy Times
You can't go home again, right?
Maybe not, but today proved you can go back and see the X-rated animated movie your first boyfriend took you to see.
As part of the James River Film Festival, "Fritz the Cat" was showing at the Byrd. Munching my popcorn, waiting for it to start, I overheard a guy who looked like a VCU senior say, "Yea, I learned about it when I took an animation course junior year."
JRFF kingpin Mike Jones stopped to speak to the guy nearest me, saying he looked familiar. "I was in your film class years ago," the guy said.
It seemed everyone had a different reason for coming to see a pornographic cartoon today.
The movie's introduction was provided courtesy of a cultural history professor from Randolph Macon whose topic was, "How 'Fritz the Cat' started the sexual revolution in Richmond."
Opening at the stately and staid Loew's Theater, he emphasized that it was not considered date fare. Fortunately, my boyfriend and I were living 100 miles north, so we hadn't known that (or been too young to care).
It began ominously enough with writer and director Ralph Bakshi's voice saying, "Hey, yea, the 1960s? Happy times, heavy times" and diving right into all the big issues of the day: drugs, free love, race relations, college life, politics and hedonism.
So many jokes -"I've already heard 16 versions of 'Lemon Tree" -couldn't have resonated with the younger members of today's audience.
All the characters were animals (cops were pigs, of course, including one who was Jewish) and the dialog topical - "The president, after conferring with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, has agreed to send more arms to Israel, based on the return of New York City and Los Angeles to the United States."
Cars had clutches and Howard Johnson's always served a reliably good steak. When someone told you to have some joy puffs, they meant take a hit on the hash pipe.
Honestly, watching the film, none of it was familiar. My only memory of it had been of sex and drugs and there was plenty of that, but everything else about it had been forgotten. Or more likely, it just resonated differently now than it had in high school.
Over a massive supper of southern comfort food with a favorite guitarist at a crowded restaurant, we talked about memorable teachers from our past and why some people occupy a place in your mind for decades and others don't last a month.
Stuffed to the gills, we parted company so I could make a show at the Broadberry.
Hometown boy Matt White was playing a sold out show as part of his current tour behind the new album, "Fresh Blood," so I knew I was guaranteed plenty of familiar faces for company.
It was obvious they were expecting a crowd when I walked to find all the tables in the back of the room had been removed, something I hadn't yet seen at the Broadberry. Already the place was half full.
In no time, I ran into the photographer and his wife on their first overnight away from their toddler. Unused to a night out, they'd already made a caffeine stop to boost their alertness and were shooting for a major sleep-in tomorrow morning, say 7:30.
Sleeping in until 7:30, how cute is that?
My former neighbor said hello, bragging that he would be seeing Dylan for the first time tomorrow night after almost 60 years on the planet. He was clearly excited about the show, even if he did refer to Dylan's last record as "his Mel Torme phase."
The print-maker and photographer, always good for some stimulating conversation, offered reading recommendations (Ben Lerner's "10:04") and commentary after hearing I'd seen "Fritz the Cat" today ("Young people now take no pleasure in sex, no joy").
The jazz critic said hello, having scored a last minute ticket because he, like so many people mistakenly thought the show wouldn't sell out. So like Richmond to think that way.
Sleepwalkers were the opener and their pastiche of rock, soul and everything but the kitchen sink was a crowd-pleasing way to start the night. When I mentioned that I was most partial to their soul-inflected songs, a friend and Richmond native pointed out that that material sounded like what she had heard in this same venue 30 years ago.
Richmond has apparently had a scene long enough now that reminiscing is possible.
I'd have been shocked not to run into the dance party enthusiast whom I rewarded with my biggest smile when I saw him approaching, only to have another guy assume my effusiveness was for him ("Sorry, for just a second there, I thought you meant me") and he was in fine fettle.
Already he'd been to Hardywood for a show by Nelly Kate, Dave Watkins and Gull ("It was like the best kind of Colloquial Orchestra show"), the opening of the new Shoryuken Ramen ("Sean the bartender was making amazing drinks. I've never had a sake-based drink before") and now he was abuzz to see Matt White.
"I feel like Richmond is dating me today and it's great!" he grinned, a mild sake buzz somewhat apparent. He even allowed that there was a dance party later at Strange Matter and if he enjoyed that, he might let Richmond have its way with him.
Most surprising of everyone I saw was the father of triplets who'd seemingly dropped off the face of the earth when they were born. Tonight there were noticeable streaks of gray in his red beard ("It's the Obama effect, I went white overnight"), which I teased him about, causing his friend to tell me I was cruel.
Matt's drummer Pinson came to the bar to get a last minute gin, waiting nervously for the bartender to return with his credit card because he needed to get backstage and dressed for their set.
"I've got to change and it's always a game not to be the last one in to change." He got his card back and bolted for the back.
A couple of guys were left in his wake and shared that they were new to the venue. "It's not like a dirty punk club," one said, clearly surprised. I explained that it had previosuly been a gay club, hence the chandeliers, VIP section and massive lighting system.
"Do you work here? Are you in the band? Are you the owner of this place?" they wanted to know. No, no and no. How about I've just been here before, guys?
Leaving the talking crowd in the back, I moved much closer to the stage for Matt's gospel rock tinged set and a straight shot view of the musicians, three of whom I met as long ago as 2007. In fact, when he introduced the band, he referred to them as hometown heroes.
His first album, "Big Inner" landed him on all kinds of best of lists ("It took us further and faster than we expected") and "Big Love" got a huge crowd reaction tonight, one of many if you count that lots of us were dancing to practically every song.
Matt spoke often of how good it felt to be playing at home tonight after a month on the road. "If I were playing in other cities, I'd hate that people were talking. But this is Richmond and that's what Richmond does. It's refreshing."
Saying that as an introvert, he hated being told by bands to participate, so he'd vowed never to make his audiences do that. But for "Feeling Good is Good Enough," he offered the option of singing along on the "ya yas" if we were so inclined. "But no pressure if you don't want to."
Almost everyone did.
He talked about how fantastic Richmond's music scene is and how lucky we are, saying he tells audiences that in every city they play. Then they played "Will You Love Me?"
The answer from the blissed out crowd came back an enthusiastic affirmative. Because, yes, in some cases, you can go home again.
Maybe not, but today proved you can go back and see the X-rated animated movie your first boyfriend took you to see.
As part of the James River Film Festival, "Fritz the Cat" was showing at the Byrd. Munching my popcorn, waiting for it to start, I overheard a guy who looked like a VCU senior say, "Yea, I learned about it when I took an animation course junior year."
JRFF kingpin Mike Jones stopped to speak to the guy nearest me, saying he looked familiar. "I was in your film class years ago," the guy said.
It seemed everyone had a different reason for coming to see a pornographic cartoon today.
The movie's introduction was provided courtesy of a cultural history professor from Randolph Macon whose topic was, "How 'Fritz the Cat' started the sexual revolution in Richmond."
Opening at the stately and staid Loew's Theater, he emphasized that it was not considered date fare. Fortunately, my boyfriend and I were living 100 miles north, so we hadn't known that (or been too young to care).
It began ominously enough with writer and director Ralph Bakshi's voice saying, "Hey, yea, the 1960s? Happy times, heavy times" and diving right into all the big issues of the day: drugs, free love, race relations, college life, politics and hedonism.
So many jokes -"I've already heard 16 versions of 'Lemon Tree" -couldn't have resonated with the younger members of today's audience.
All the characters were animals (cops were pigs, of course, including one who was Jewish) and the dialog topical - "The president, after conferring with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, has agreed to send more arms to Israel, based on the return of New York City and Los Angeles to the United States."
Cars had clutches and Howard Johnson's always served a reliably good steak. When someone told you to have some joy puffs, they meant take a hit on the hash pipe.
Honestly, watching the film, none of it was familiar. My only memory of it had been of sex and drugs and there was plenty of that, but everything else about it had been forgotten. Or more likely, it just resonated differently now than it had in high school.
Over a massive supper of southern comfort food with a favorite guitarist at a crowded restaurant, we talked about memorable teachers from our past and why some people occupy a place in your mind for decades and others don't last a month.
Stuffed to the gills, we parted company so I could make a show at the Broadberry.
Hometown boy Matt White was playing a sold out show as part of his current tour behind the new album, "Fresh Blood," so I knew I was guaranteed plenty of familiar faces for company.
It was obvious they were expecting a crowd when I walked to find all the tables in the back of the room had been removed, something I hadn't yet seen at the Broadberry. Already the place was half full.
In no time, I ran into the photographer and his wife on their first overnight away from their toddler. Unused to a night out, they'd already made a caffeine stop to boost their alertness and were shooting for a major sleep-in tomorrow morning, say 7:30.
Sleeping in until 7:30, how cute is that?
My former neighbor said hello, bragging that he would be seeing Dylan for the first time tomorrow night after almost 60 years on the planet. He was clearly excited about the show, even if he did refer to Dylan's last record as "his Mel Torme phase."
The print-maker and photographer, always good for some stimulating conversation, offered reading recommendations (Ben Lerner's "10:04") and commentary after hearing I'd seen "Fritz the Cat" today ("Young people now take no pleasure in sex, no joy").
The jazz critic said hello, having scored a last minute ticket because he, like so many people mistakenly thought the show wouldn't sell out. So like Richmond to think that way.
Sleepwalkers were the opener and their pastiche of rock, soul and everything but the kitchen sink was a crowd-pleasing way to start the night. When I mentioned that I was most partial to their soul-inflected songs, a friend and Richmond native pointed out that that material sounded like what she had heard in this same venue 30 years ago.
Richmond has apparently had a scene long enough now that reminiscing is possible.
I'd have been shocked not to run into the dance party enthusiast whom I rewarded with my biggest smile when I saw him approaching, only to have another guy assume my effusiveness was for him ("Sorry, for just a second there, I thought you meant me") and he was in fine fettle.
Already he'd been to Hardywood for a show by Nelly Kate, Dave Watkins and Gull ("It was like the best kind of Colloquial Orchestra show"), the opening of the new Shoryuken Ramen ("Sean the bartender was making amazing drinks. I've never had a sake-based drink before") and now he was abuzz to see Matt White.
"I feel like Richmond is dating me today and it's great!" he grinned, a mild sake buzz somewhat apparent. He even allowed that there was a dance party later at Strange Matter and if he enjoyed that, he might let Richmond have its way with him.
Most surprising of everyone I saw was the father of triplets who'd seemingly dropped off the face of the earth when they were born. Tonight there were noticeable streaks of gray in his red beard ("It's the Obama effect, I went white overnight"), which I teased him about, causing his friend to tell me I was cruel.
Matt's drummer Pinson came to the bar to get a last minute gin, waiting nervously for the bartender to return with his credit card because he needed to get backstage and dressed for their set.
"I've got to change and it's always a game not to be the last one in to change." He got his card back and bolted for the back.
A couple of guys were left in his wake and shared that they were new to the venue. "It's not like a dirty punk club," one said, clearly surprised. I explained that it had previosuly been a gay club, hence the chandeliers, VIP section and massive lighting system.
"Do you work here? Are you in the band? Are you the owner of this place?" they wanted to know. No, no and no. How about I've just been here before, guys?
Leaving the talking crowd in the back, I moved much closer to the stage for Matt's gospel rock tinged set and a straight shot view of the musicians, three of whom I met as long ago as 2007. In fact, when he introduced the band, he referred to them as hometown heroes.
His first album, "Big Inner" landed him on all kinds of best of lists ("It took us further and faster than we expected") and "Big Love" got a huge crowd reaction tonight, one of many if you count that lots of us were dancing to practically every song.
Matt spoke often of how good it felt to be playing at home tonight after a month on the road. "If I were playing in other cities, I'd hate that people were talking. But this is Richmond and that's what Richmond does. It's refreshing."
Saying that as an introvert, he hated being told by bands to participate, so he'd vowed never to make his audiences do that. But for "Feeling Good is Good Enough," he offered the option of singing along on the "ya yas" if we were so inclined. "But no pressure if you don't want to."
Almost everyone did.
He talked about how fantastic Richmond's music scene is and how lucky we are, saying he tells audiences that in every city they play. Then they played "Will You Love Me?"
The answer from the blissed out crowd came back an enthusiastic affirmative. Because, yes, in some cases, you can go home again.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Flirtation with the New
You know you're running late when you're putting on mascara at a gas station while you fill your tank.
I made it to the VMFA with minutes to spare and got in line for my ticket to see tonight's James River Film Festival offering, "The Great Confusion: The 1913 Armory Show."
For an art history geek, the Armory show is legendary, the holy grail, the official introduction of modern art to Americans.
Even though I arrived after most of the crowd, I was able to slide into a choice seat because there was one (and only one) open front and center. It pays to be dateless sometimes.
On hand was the director Michael Maglara, an opera singer turned record label owner turned filmmaker who also happens to be an insurance consultant.
So there was that.
He began by talking about the American audacity of the armory show and went on to praise the bravery (and audacity) of Virginia for building an art museum in 1936 as the country was trying to crawl out of the Great Depression.
Telling us that the VMFA has works by 36 of the artists who exhibited at the show, he emphasized that the 1913 event represented the beginning of America's flirtation with the new.
I wasn't sure what to expect from Maglara's "essay in film," but what we got was an odd and disjointed look at the men behind the organization of the show (several of whom were drop dead handsome), shots that inexplicably panned over individual works from the show (instead of just showing us the entire work) and inappropriately swelling music to tell us when to feel strongly.
It's not that there weren't interesting parts to the story. I had no idea how much of the exhibit focused on European painters like Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin and Degas. The very first Cezanne to be purchased for an American museum came from this show,
The organizers from the Association of American Painters and Sculptors actually went to the studios of the European painters and hand chose things for the show. They took so long doing that that they left very little time to choose the American art.
Turns out the show was much bigger than I knew - 1000-1300 works of over 300 artists in octagonal galleries that forced juxtapositions of works to elicit associations and comparisons.
And, as it turned out, outrage. Gallery I became known as the chamber of horrors because of Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending Staircase," not that Matisse's "Blue Nude" didn't get quite a few panties in a wad, too.
Amazingly, the show was affordable with etchings, drawings and lithographs going for as little as $10 and paintings for $3000.
Although the film's narrative and execution turned me off, it provided scads of new-to-me artists whom I now want to research and see their work.
The brilliant colorist William Glackens, Odilon Redon who sold more pieces than anyone there, and the surprising number of female artists in the show: Edith Dimock, Florence Howell Barkley.
And in the "the more things change, the more they stay the same department," despite the exhibition running for a month, on the very last day of the show, 12,000 people came, causing a traffic jam on Lexington Avenue. Sounds a lot like the last week of VMFA's blockbuster shows, if you ask me.
I didn't stay for the Q & A with the director because I would have wanted to comment on what I didn't like about the movie- things like how the same stock shots were used over and over again- and since I've never made a movie, I really have no business judging someone else's.
Instead, I took myself upstairs to Amuse for a bite, happily running into a friend at the bar who invited me to join him.
The new Spring menu, both food and cocktail, premiered this week, and even has snacks on it now. Snacks at the art museum, could life get any better?
Starting with a glass of Montand sparkling brut rose (and isn't it wonderful that we're back in rose season?), I ordered housemade beef jerky, a pairing that perhaps only I could love (and did) while my friend told me about his new love interest.
He was especially pleased with himself because for the first time, he was purposely taking things slow, enjoying the wooing process and savoring the anticipation of each time they got together.
It was turning out to be terribly romantic, he said, making him wonder why he'd rushed into past relationships and skipped this delightful stage.
Beats me. I, for one, can enjoy the wooing stage as long as I have someone worthy willing to woo.
When I couldn't decide what to eat, I asked my server for a recommendation and ended up with roasted red and golden beets over deliriously decadent Marcona almond cream with sherry vinaigrette and - ta da!- a blue cheese doughnut.
Just thing about that for a minute: fried dough with blue cheese in the center. Hello, gorgeous.
A couple he knew came up to chat and they had also seen the film. While the guys talked, she and I discussed the film and found that we shared the same opinion of it.
"I felt manipulated by it and why did he show us just bits of the paintings that way?" she asked. When I mentioned the bad music and lack of narrative, she got worked up. "The more I think about it, the more I realize how much I didn't like it. I feel better knowing it wasn't just me."
And after she managed to drag her husband to an art film, too. "He'll never do that again," she sighed before high-fiving me as they left.
My friend is planning a trip to California, his first, so we talked about my experiences there - staying overnight on a vintage ocean liner, the pleasures of the L.A. Museum, oceanfront walking and wine tasting in Santa Barbara, the limited amounts of wine country I was lucky enough to see and taste through.
"Ooh, I want a Karen California itinerary," he enthused, but I had to deflect credit to my companion since all I'd had to do was eat, drink and absorb, with naps whenit all the wine became overwhelming.
When you're flirting with the new - a coast you've never been to, somebody you just met and are getting to know- sometimes it's best to take things slowly and savor the anticipation.
No one should be in so much of a hurry that they're putting on mascara at a gas station.
I made it to the VMFA with minutes to spare and got in line for my ticket to see tonight's James River Film Festival offering, "The Great Confusion: The 1913 Armory Show."
For an art history geek, the Armory show is legendary, the holy grail, the official introduction of modern art to Americans.
Even though I arrived after most of the crowd, I was able to slide into a choice seat because there was one (and only one) open front and center. It pays to be dateless sometimes.
On hand was the director Michael Maglara, an opera singer turned record label owner turned filmmaker who also happens to be an insurance consultant.
So there was that.
He began by talking about the American audacity of the armory show and went on to praise the bravery (and audacity) of Virginia for building an art museum in 1936 as the country was trying to crawl out of the Great Depression.
Telling us that the VMFA has works by 36 of the artists who exhibited at the show, he emphasized that the 1913 event represented the beginning of America's flirtation with the new.
I wasn't sure what to expect from Maglara's "essay in film," but what we got was an odd and disjointed look at the men behind the organization of the show (several of whom were drop dead handsome), shots that inexplicably panned over individual works from the show (instead of just showing us the entire work) and inappropriately swelling music to tell us when to feel strongly.
It's not that there weren't interesting parts to the story. I had no idea how much of the exhibit focused on European painters like Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin and Degas. The very first Cezanne to be purchased for an American museum came from this show,
The organizers from the Association of American Painters and Sculptors actually went to the studios of the European painters and hand chose things for the show. They took so long doing that that they left very little time to choose the American art.
Turns out the show was much bigger than I knew - 1000-1300 works of over 300 artists in octagonal galleries that forced juxtapositions of works to elicit associations and comparisons.
And, as it turned out, outrage. Gallery I became known as the chamber of horrors because of Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending Staircase," not that Matisse's "Blue Nude" didn't get quite a few panties in a wad, too.
Amazingly, the show was affordable with etchings, drawings and lithographs going for as little as $10 and paintings for $3000.
Although the film's narrative and execution turned me off, it provided scads of new-to-me artists whom I now want to research and see their work.
The brilliant colorist William Glackens, Odilon Redon who sold more pieces than anyone there, and the surprising number of female artists in the show: Edith Dimock, Florence Howell Barkley.
And in the "the more things change, the more they stay the same department," despite the exhibition running for a month, on the very last day of the show, 12,000 people came, causing a traffic jam on Lexington Avenue. Sounds a lot like the last week of VMFA's blockbuster shows, if you ask me.
I didn't stay for the Q & A with the director because I would have wanted to comment on what I didn't like about the movie- things like how the same stock shots were used over and over again- and since I've never made a movie, I really have no business judging someone else's.
Instead, I took myself upstairs to Amuse for a bite, happily running into a friend at the bar who invited me to join him.
The new Spring menu, both food and cocktail, premiered this week, and even has snacks on it now. Snacks at the art museum, could life get any better?
Starting with a glass of Montand sparkling brut rose (and isn't it wonderful that we're back in rose season?), I ordered housemade beef jerky, a pairing that perhaps only I could love (and did) while my friend told me about his new love interest.
He was especially pleased with himself because for the first time, he was purposely taking things slow, enjoying the wooing process and savoring the anticipation of each time they got together.
It was turning out to be terribly romantic, he said, making him wonder why he'd rushed into past relationships and skipped this delightful stage.
Beats me. I, for one, can enjoy the wooing stage as long as I have someone worthy willing to woo.
When I couldn't decide what to eat, I asked my server for a recommendation and ended up with roasted red and golden beets over deliriously decadent Marcona almond cream with sherry vinaigrette and - ta da!- a blue cheese doughnut.
Just thing about that for a minute: fried dough with blue cheese in the center. Hello, gorgeous.
A couple he knew came up to chat and they had also seen the film. While the guys talked, she and I discussed the film and found that we shared the same opinion of it.
"I felt manipulated by it and why did he show us just bits of the paintings that way?" she asked. When I mentioned the bad music and lack of narrative, she got worked up. "The more I think about it, the more I realize how much I didn't like it. I feel better knowing it wasn't just me."
And after she managed to drag her husband to an art film, too. "He'll never do that again," she sighed before high-fiving me as they left.
My friend is planning a trip to California, his first, so we talked about my experiences there - staying overnight on a vintage ocean liner, the pleasures of the L.A. Museum, oceanfront walking and wine tasting in Santa Barbara, the limited amounts of wine country I was lucky enough to see and taste through.
"Ooh, I want a Karen California itinerary," he enthused, but I had to deflect credit to my companion since all I'd had to do was eat, drink and absorb, with naps when
When you're flirting with the new - a coast you've never been to, somebody you just met and are getting to know- sometimes it's best to take things slowly and savor the anticipation.
No one should be in so much of a hurry that they're putting on mascara at a gas station.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Brief, but Complete
I saw my first spaghetti western tonight.
Thanks to the James River Film Festival, it wasn't a Clint Eastwood film, either.
Oh, no, to indoctrinate me into the big, bad and incredibly hysterical world of spaghetti westerns, I got to see "Django."
I'd have gone for the director's name alone: Sergio Corbucci.
So pardon me if I gush about things that are standard-issue spaghetti western material, but as a novice, I wouldn't know that.
Here goes, in no particular order.
Let's start with the incredibly dramatic theme song, sung while our hero Django drags a coffin across the lone prairie.
Long shot, tight shot, always from the back. of a man in a hat dragging his heavy load behind him.
It doesn't bode well.
Then there's the first set of bad guys, KKK-like and all of whom wear red scarves and/or red masks to hide their faces.
Naturally since they're Italians, they couldn't just wear a non-descript colored scarf or mask.
Despite trying to stay aloof, our hero eventually succumbs to the beaten half-Mexican girl (in a unique bit of casting, played by a blond with blue eyes) whom he saved from death.
He does this with the uber-romantic line, "Brief, but complete," after she professes her love to him and he enters her room to have his way with her.
Briefly, of course.
When Italians want to insult someone, they call him a pig, but it sounds like "porko."
This is far funnier when heard than I can describe here.
In the scenes of the scruffy, frontier town, the wind was always howling something fierce.
As it turns out, once inside the house of ill repute where Django and his coffin go, the wind howls just as ferociously.
Mind you, the curtains aren't moving an inch, but the wind is howling over the actors' words.
Because the movie was made in Italy in 1966, all the frontier women have swingin' '60s hairstyles and makeup.
In what was no doubt a fantasy of Sergio's, three of the prostitutes have a catfight in the mud, soaking their finery and looking quite fetching all wet and muddy.
And the violence for violence's sake, oh, my!
Django had to knock off multiple gangs of bad guys, so there was always shooting going on, men and horses falling to their death.
Oh, did I mention that he was carrying a machine gun in that coffin all along?
And, yet, there was a surprisingly small amount of blood for 138 people being killed
A Mexican or KKK would get shot and fall dramatically but with not a drop of red on him.
I've had nosebleeds that resulted in far more blood than what a gunshot did to this cast.
But it wasn't just gunfire that made up the cartoon violence.
In one scene, a guy's ear was cut off as punishment. Then he was made to eat it.
I didn't actually see this happen, but I heard it from one of the guys sitting near me that that was what was going on.
By the time I looked up, the poor guy was staggering away holding his ear when he got shot from behind.
So maybe it was mostly gunfire that made up the violence.
Because there were two groups of bad guys, every time one of them would ride the plains after the other, there would be blood-stirring music as they made their way.
The problem was that the music sounded far more triumphant than it probably should have given that they were evil.
By the end of the movie, the girl has been shot and Django has lost the gold in the quicksand, and it's just him against the last twenty bad guys.
Even though the other bad guy had destroyed his hands so he couldn't be a master shooter anymore, Django has managed to use his bandaged nubs to prop up a gun on a tombstone and take out the last traces of evil in the land.
I was doubled over in my seat I was laughing so hard by this point.
I was asked to keep it down.
Bullets were flying, bad guys were dropping like flies and one man, Django, is able to hobble away into the horizon.
Somehow I can't imagine I need to see another spaghetti western.
I bow at the dusty boots of Sergio Corbucci for has taken me to the summit.
Where the wind howled and the blood never flowed.
Django.
Thanks to the James River Film Festival, it wasn't a Clint Eastwood film, either.
Oh, no, to indoctrinate me into the big, bad and incredibly hysterical world of spaghetti westerns, I got to see "Django."
I'd have gone for the director's name alone: Sergio Corbucci.
So pardon me if I gush about things that are standard-issue spaghetti western material, but as a novice, I wouldn't know that.
Here goes, in no particular order.
Let's start with the incredibly dramatic theme song, sung while our hero Django drags a coffin across the lone prairie.
Long shot, tight shot, always from the back. of a man in a hat dragging his heavy load behind him.
It doesn't bode well.
Then there's the first set of bad guys, KKK-like and all of whom wear red scarves and/or red masks to hide their faces.
Naturally since they're Italians, they couldn't just wear a non-descript colored scarf or mask.
Despite trying to stay aloof, our hero eventually succumbs to the beaten half-Mexican girl (in a unique bit of casting, played by a blond with blue eyes) whom he saved from death.
He does this with the uber-romantic line, "Brief, but complete," after she professes her love to him and he enters her room to have his way with her.
Briefly, of course.
When Italians want to insult someone, they call him a pig, but it sounds like "porko."
This is far funnier when heard than I can describe here.
In the scenes of the scruffy, frontier town, the wind was always howling something fierce.
As it turns out, once inside the house of ill repute where Django and his coffin go, the wind howls just as ferociously.
Mind you, the curtains aren't moving an inch, but the wind is howling over the actors' words.
Because the movie was made in Italy in 1966, all the frontier women have swingin' '60s hairstyles and makeup.
In what was no doubt a fantasy of Sergio's, three of the prostitutes have a catfight in the mud, soaking their finery and looking quite fetching all wet and muddy.
And the violence for violence's sake, oh, my!
Django had to knock off multiple gangs of bad guys, so there was always shooting going on, men and horses falling to their death.
Oh, did I mention that he was carrying a machine gun in that coffin all along?
And, yet, there was a surprisingly small amount of blood for 138 people being killed
A Mexican or KKK would get shot and fall dramatically but with not a drop of red on him.
I've had nosebleeds that resulted in far more blood than what a gunshot did to this cast.
But it wasn't just gunfire that made up the cartoon violence.
In one scene, a guy's ear was cut off as punishment. Then he was made to eat it.
I didn't actually see this happen, but I heard it from one of the guys sitting near me that that was what was going on.
By the time I looked up, the poor guy was staggering away holding his ear when he got shot from behind.
So maybe it was mostly gunfire that made up the violence.
Because there were two groups of bad guys, every time one of them would ride the plains after the other, there would be blood-stirring music as they made their way.
The problem was that the music sounded far more triumphant than it probably should have given that they were evil.
By the end of the movie, the girl has been shot and Django has lost the gold in the quicksand, and it's just him against the last twenty bad guys.
Even though the other bad guy had destroyed his hands so he couldn't be a master shooter anymore, Django has managed to use his bandaged nubs to prop up a gun on a tombstone and take out the last traces of evil in the land.
I was doubled over in my seat I was laughing so hard by this point.
I was asked to keep it down.
Bullets were flying, bad guys were dropping like flies and one man, Django, is able to hobble away into the horizon.
Somehow I can't imagine I need to see another spaghetti western.
I bow at the dusty boots of Sergio Corbucci for has taken me to the summit.
Where the wind howled and the blood never flowed.
Django.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
An Evening Not Rued
Remember a time when everyone had a favorite poem?
Yea, neither do I.
My Monday night began at Rowland where, when I pulled up, I saw Chef Virginia picking herbs from her many herb beds outside the restaurant. Does a person good to see a chef picking fresh sage and rosemary. She followed me inside with her handful of herbs, asking what I'd like to drink, even suggesting something organic.
I'm as groovy as the next person, so I said yes to the Musaragno organic Pinot Grigio, a lovely crisp yet rich white, ideal for this beach-like weather day.
To go with it, I ordered lamb meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce over cous cous, one of the happy hour specials where you get way more flavor than you should for the price. I had to scarf them down in order to go pick up one of my favorite literati for the James River Film Festival.
We took seats behind a row of what looked like students, a surprise since I expected to find the audience full of poetry lovers of (ahem) a certain age. And there were some of those, too, for "Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World," an Academy Award-winning documentary from 1963.
The title comes from what he wanted written on his tombstone, "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." Now that's seriously poetic.
The beautiful black and white film showed Frost on his Vermont farm during the year before he died, along with several clips of readings and events he attended. First of all, my mental image of Frost was that of the man who Kennedy had asked to read at his inauguration (something no president had ever done).
In other words, old.
So I was completely unprepared to see pictures of him as a young, handsome man. I mean seriously handsome. My girlfriend and I were both shocked to learn that he'd been born in 1874, since we'd both thought of him as a twentieth-century man.
There were many scenes of a reading Frost was doing at Sarah Lawrence College, with him surrounded by scads of young female college students, none of whom wore a lick of makeup. As the camera panned the girls watching and reacting to Frost, it was obvious how engaged they were in every word the man uttered.
Their eyes never left his face, they laughed at every witticism he uttered and not a one seemed the least bit bored. I couldn't help but wonder if it'd be the same if a poet read at a college today. In another scene, people were asked their favorite poem and many of them cited Frost's "Birches."
Again, I posit that if you stopped 100 people on the street and asked them their favorite poem, most would be unable to name one. And, yet, in 1963, poetry still mattered enough that random people could name their favorite.
There were several shots with JKF, not surprising since Frost was an early advocate of the candidate.
"I was born and raised and stayed a Democrat, but, oh my, I've been worried since 1896," he said.
Watching him putter around his rustic house and surrounding farmland at 88-years old was impressive for how self-sufficient he was, but also fascinating because of his solitude at a ripe old age. But it was clear how much he enjoyed the talks he gave ("Hell is a half-filled auditorium") and how sharp he still was when students questioned him or challenged him.
One poem, "Dust of Snow" he not only read but then recited, the better to make his point that sometimes a poem is just a poem.
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of the day I rued
Forget black birds and hemlock, it's just a poem about the beauty of the random.
By the end of the documentary, I was totally charmed by the man, as no doubt people had been for years before me. "You work on your poetry and your life," he says. "And love for a season."
Sigh, the man couldn't open his mouth without sounding poetic. No wonder those girls were enthralled. I'm with them.
Meanwhile, of the three students sitting in front of us, one was sleeping, one was texting the entire film and the third looked bored out of his mind as he kept twisting in his seat.
Try asking them what their favorite poem is.
My only hope is that eventually they'll rue the day they had a chance to see a giant of a poet filmed while he was still alive in a beautifully-shot film. I know it gave my heart a change of mood - an appreciation for a time when poetry still mattered.
Or as Frost said, "A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom." My evening began in delight and moved right through to wisdom.
I'm just working on my life.
Yea, neither do I.
My Monday night began at Rowland where, when I pulled up, I saw Chef Virginia picking herbs from her many herb beds outside the restaurant. Does a person good to see a chef picking fresh sage and rosemary. She followed me inside with her handful of herbs, asking what I'd like to drink, even suggesting something organic.
I'm as groovy as the next person, so I said yes to the Musaragno organic Pinot Grigio, a lovely crisp yet rich white, ideal for this beach-like weather day.
To go with it, I ordered lamb meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce over cous cous, one of the happy hour specials where you get way more flavor than you should for the price. I had to scarf them down in order to go pick up one of my favorite literati for the James River Film Festival.
We took seats behind a row of what looked like students, a surprise since I expected to find the audience full of poetry lovers of (ahem) a certain age. And there were some of those, too, for "Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World," an Academy Award-winning documentary from 1963.
The title comes from what he wanted written on his tombstone, "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." Now that's seriously poetic.
The beautiful black and white film showed Frost on his Vermont farm during the year before he died, along with several clips of readings and events he attended. First of all, my mental image of Frost was that of the man who Kennedy had asked to read at his inauguration (something no president had ever done).
In other words, old.
So I was completely unprepared to see pictures of him as a young, handsome man. I mean seriously handsome. My girlfriend and I were both shocked to learn that he'd been born in 1874, since we'd both thought of him as a twentieth-century man.
There were many scenes of a reading Frost was doing at Sarah Lawrence College, with him surrounded by scads of young female college students, none of whom wore a lick of makeup. As the camera panned the girls watching and reacting to Frost, it was obvious how engaged they were in every word the man uttered.
Their eyes never left his face, they laughed at every witticism he uttered and not a one seemed the least bit bored. I couldn't help but wonder if it'd be the same if a poet read at a college today. In another scene, people were asked their favorite poem and many of them cited Frost's "Birches."
Again, I posit that if you stopped 100 people on the street and asked them their favorite poem, most would be unable to name one. And, yet, in 1963, poetry still mattered enough that random people could name their favorite.
There were several shots with JKF, not surprising since Frost was an early advocate of the candidate.
"I was born and raised and stayed a Democrat, but, oh my, I've been worried since 1896," he said.
Watching him putter around his rustic house and surrounding farmland at 88-years old was impressive for how self-sufficient he was, but also fascinating because of his solitude at a ripe old age. But it was clear how much he enjoyed the talks he gave ("Hell is a half-filled auditorium") and how sharp he still was when students questioned him or challenged him.
One poem, "Dust of Snow" he not only read but then recited, the better to make his point that sometimes a poem is just a poem.
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of the day I rued
Forget black birds and hemlock, it's just a poem about the beauty of the random.
By the end of the documentary, I was totally charmed by the man, as no doubt people had been for years before me. "You work on your poetry and your life," he says. "And love for a season."
Sigh, the man couldn't open his mouth without sounding poetic. No wonder those girls were enthralled. I'm with them.
Meanwhile, of the three students sitting in front of us, one was sleeping, one was texting the entire film and the third looked bored out of his mind as he kept twisting in his seat.
Try asking them what their favorite poem is.
My only hope is that eventually they'll rue the day they had a chance to see a giant of a poet filmed while he was still alive in a beautifully-shot film. I know it gave my heart a change of mood - an appreciation for a time when poetry still mattered.
Or as Frost said, "A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom." My evening began in delight and moved right through to wisdom.
I'm just working on my life.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Vamp and Punk
Without birthdays, there can be no death.
The birthday was my aunt's and it required me to drive up to Maryland for a luncheon.
Don't get me wrong, I love my aunt, a woman who was a role model for me in terms of her abiding passion for books and travel when I was a kid.
But having to spend my morning driving up soul-sucking I-95 is a lot to ask of me.
The luncheon was fine and to soothe my soul, I came home via Route 301 so I could avoid the aggressive drivers and speed demons than distract me from my road trip music.
By the time I meandered back down the back roads (it took 45 minutes longer than I-95), it was time to get on with the night.
It was a night of film, starting at Gallery 5.
The Silent Music Revival was breaking form and showing a long film tonight, Charlie Chaplin's "The Kid," billed as a "comedy with a smile and perhaps a tear."
Wolf//Goat was providing the soundtrack from behind the screen, a presence heard but unseen.
Organizer Jameson introduced the movie as a significant because it was Chaplin's first feature-length film and because it was made just after Chaplin's own baby son died.
No there was a poignant fact to contemplate and no doubt the source of the "tear" possibility.
He also said Chaplin had done everything for this film - directed, produced starred and even written the score- "But you won;t hear that tonight," Jameson reminded us.
As "The Kid" began, local band Wolf//Goat started with a rendition of "Amazing Grace" and the marriage of film and improvised score began.
The story of an orphan brought up by Chaplin's little tramp showed a man thrust into fatherhood (he found the baby in an alley) who handled it well.
I loved a scene of the adorable five-year old boy making pancakes for the two of them while Chaplin laid in bed reading the paper.
That was only way being a kid sucked in 1921, though; lots of other less than sterling things happened to the kid, from his real mother leaving him in a car to the welfare authorities trying to cart him off to the workhouse to his two-bit life of crime with the tramp.
I'll give Jameson credit; once again, he'd chosen the ideal band to match the film.
Wolf//Goat played much tighter tonight than the first time I'd seen them and their "score" was a terrific match for the movie's action.
One of my favorite moments came during the little tramp's dream sequence when a devil advises a woman to tempt him, instructing, "Vamp him!"
Haven't we all wanted to vamp someone at one time or another?
The minute the kid and the tramp found their happy ending, I was out of my seat and off to the Visual Arts Center for more James River Film Festival.
Tonight they were showing another documentary and since in my world you can never have too many docs, I'd gotten my ticket almost a week ago at Steady Sounds, who was co-sponsoring the event.
The room was nearly full of people of all ages when a fellow music-lover and I got there, with lots of musicians in attendance.
It was the story of three teen-aged black brothers from Detroit who'd started a band in the early seventies, which would've been no big deal if it had been a funk or disco band, but it wasn't.
It was proto-punk, which if it had gotten any attention at the time (it didn't), would have been a sea change in the music scene.
It would have been the first punk band.
But when black guys tried to do rock and roll in Motown in 1973 with a name like "Death," nobody much wanted to listen.
One guy at a record company believed in their sound, so they recorded an album's worth of material and released a single.
But no radio station was willing to play it, so the story basically ended there.
And even if it hadn't one of the three brothers, David, the leader and the one who refused to change the band's name to garner more of a shot at fame, died young of lung cancer.
And that's what was great to see, how the filmmakers documented when a few rabid record collectors got wind of the single thirty years alter and tracked down a few copies, leading to the son of Death's bass player getting wind of the band via a friend who'd heard the single and called it the best thing she'd ever heard.
You can imagine his surprise when he discovered that his Dad and two uncles had been that band.
To paraphrase one of the sons, how cool is that?
You can also see how a story like this would have never happened in the pre-Internet days.
The sons formed a tribute band and began doing shows of Death's music.
The old master tapes from the recording session were found in the family attic and the album mastered and put out.
And, best of all, the two remaining members of Death found a worthy guitar player to replace their brother and started playing shows to packed houses.
You can only imagine the fanatical interest of what is now multiple generations of punk fans getting to hear a band that was capturing that sound and energy, even that tinniness due to the era, before anyone else.
The diversity of the people at Death's shows roughly mirrored the diversity of the people at tonight's JRFF sold-out screening of "A Band called Death."
Like the son of Death said, how cool is that?
The birthday was my aunt's and it required me to drive up to Maryland for a luncheon.
Don't get me wrong, I love my aunt, a woman who was a role model for me in terms of her abiding passion for books and travel when I was a kid.
But having to spend my morning driving up soul-sucking I-95 is a lot to ask of me.
The luncheon was fine and to soothe my soul, I came home via Route 301 so I could avoid the aggressive drivers and speed demons than distract me from my road trip music.
By the time I meandered back down the back roads (it took 45 minutes longer than I-95), it was time to get on with the night.
It was a night of film, starting at Gallery 5.
The Silent Music Revival was breaking form and showing a long film tonight, Charlie Chaplin's "The Kid," billed as a "comedy with a smile and perhaps a tear."
Wolf//Goat was providing the soundtrack from behind the screen, a presence heard but unseen.
Organizer Jameson introduced the movie as a significant because it was Chaplin's first feature-length film and because it was made just after Chaplin's own baby son died.
No there was a poignant fact to contemplate and no doubt the source of the "tear" possibility.
He also said Chaplin had done everything for this film - directed, produced starred and even written the score- "But you won;t hear that tonight," Jameson reminded us.
As "The Kid" began, local band Wolf//Goat started with a rendition of "Amazing Grace" and the marriage of film and improvised score began.
The story of an orphan brought up by Chaplin's little tramp showed a man thrust into fatherhood (he found the baby in an alley) who handled it well.
I loved a scene of the adorable five-year old boy making pancakes for the two of them while Chaplin laid in bed reading the paper.
That was only way being a kid sucked in 1921, though; lots of other less than sterling things happened to the kid, from his real mother leaving him in a car to the welfare authorities trying to cart him off to the workhouse to his two-bit life of crime with the tramp.
I'll give Jameson credit; once again, he'd chosen the ideal band to match the film.
Wolf//Goat played much tighter tonight than the first time I'd seen them and their "score" was a terrific match for the movie's action.
One of my favorite moments came during the little tramp's dream sequence when a devil advises a woman to tempt him, instructing, "Vamp him!"
Haven't we all wanted to vamp someone at one time or another?
The minute the kid and the tramp found their happy ending, I was out of my seat and off to the Visual Arts Center for more James River Film Festival.
Tonight they were showing another documentary and since in my world you can never have too many docs, I'd gotten my ticket almost a week ago at Steady Sounds, who was co-sponsoring the event.
The room was nearly full of people of all ages when a fellow music-lover and I got there, with lots of musicians in attendance.
It was the story of three teen-aged black brothers from Detroit who'd started a band in the early seventies, which would've been no big deal if it had been a funk or disco band, but it wasn't.
It was proto-punk, which if it had gotten any attention at the time (it didn't), would have been a sea change in the music scene.
It would have been the first punk band.
But when black guys tried to do rock and roll in Motown in 1973 with a name like "Death," nobody much wanted to listen.
One guy at a record company believed in their sound, so they recorded an album's worth of material and released a single.
But no radio station was willing to play it, so the story basically ended there.
And even if it hadn't one of the three brothers, David, the leader and the one who refused to change the band's name to garner more of a shot at fame, died young of lung cancer.
And that's what was great to see, how the filmmakers documented when a few rabid record collectors got wind of the single thirty years alter and tracked down a few copies, leading to the son of Death's bass player getting wind of the band via a friend who'd heard the single and called it the best thing she'd ever heard.
You can imagine his surprise when he discovered that his Dad and two uncles had been that band.
To paraphrase one of the sons, how cool is that?
You can also see how a story like this would have never happened in the pre-Internet days.
The sons formed a tribute band and began doing shows of Death's music.
The old master tapes from the recording session were found in the family attic and the album mastered and put out.
And, best of all, the two remaining members of Death found a worthy guitar player to replace their brother and started playing shows to packed houses.
You can only imagine the fanatical interest of what is now multiple generations of punk fans getting to hear a band that was capturing that sound and energy, even that tinniness due to the era, before anyone else.
The diversity of the people at Death's shows roughly mirrored the diversity of the people at tonight's JRFF sold-out screening of "A Band called Death."
Like the son of Death said, how cool is that?
Saturday, April 13, 2013
I Couldn't Believe My Eyes
If I was going to see my first Harold Lloyd movie, the Byrd was the place to do it.
We were seeing a new restoration of "Safety Last" in a digitized format, as so many vintage films are now, done so that they can be shown in theaters which no longer have projectors.
When that fact was mentioned, From the front row, the Byrd's manager Todd called out, "They'll take the 35 mm projector out of the Byrd over my dead body!"
The laughter and applause were immediate.
We were also told that this was the very first screening in the country of this restored print.
I'm not ashamed to say I like being first.
In the grand tradition of the Byrd, the screening began with the legendary litter promo, although without the sound, so the crowd provided it.
Somebody needs parental guidance.
The credits were a study in simplicity.
The boy, the girl, the pal, the law. Who needs names?
The love story concerned the boy going off to the big city to earn enough money to marry and support the girl (who would not doubt become the wife).
He finds a job selling fabric in a department store.
This was a guy devoted to his mission, or as the screen said, "He couldn't have given more to his job if it was a position."
I found it an interesting cultural commentary that in 1923 we were still making the distinction between jobs and positions.
Another cultural observation was when the boy got in trouble for having his jacket off and gets called into the big cheese's office.
He is rebuked for having been on the sales floor in his short sleeves, thereby offending the female customers sense of refinement.
Boy, that sense has been dead in the water for a while now, hasn't it?
Even the language came across as arcane, as when the boss lamented that, "Something is very wrong with our exploitation," and wants to find a way to bring attention to the store.
Exploitation?
I think we call that branding or image now.
The boy suggests a way to exploit the store by having his pal, a skilled climber, scale the department store facade.
As it turns out, the pal is trying to elude a cop bent on arresting him for punching him earlier, so the boy has to make the ascent himself, and he's no skilled climber.
Using recessed bricks to gain a foot and handhold, he begins to slowly climb the store while hundreds of customers watch.
Naturally there are comedic bits like the iconic shot of the boy hanging onto the hands of a giant clock on the building.
But there's also a scene of a mouse running up his pants leg, making him do a dance on the ledge to try to get it out.
With each floor up that he makes it, another obstacle meets him and he's hanging from a rope, or has his foot caught in a coil or gets hit in the head and gets dizzy.
And with each new problem, he teeters precariously close to the ledge and a fall to certain death.
It was scene after scene of suspense to see if he'd make it to the top, get the money for doing so and be able to marry the girl.
But what quickly became apparent to me was how poorly I was handling all these scenes of him leaning backwards over the streetscape below.
Really poorly, that's how.
My palms began to sweat.
I had to look away more than once.
Maybe it's my own phobias, but I couldn't keep watching the boy almost fall to his death.
Meanwhile, all around me , I heard adults and children giggling madly at the action.
I'd dry my hands on my shirt and by the next scene, they were moist again as I cringed at the angle of the boy this time.
Sure, my rational mind told me it was only a movie and a romantic comedy at that, but watching a man (whom we'd been told did his own stunts) hover on the edge of ledges, windows and a roof, was a little too close to some personal fears apparently.
On the plus side, I found the bespectacled Harold Lloyd far more handsome than Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.
I'm just hoping the next Harold Lloyd film I see won't upset my women's sense of refinement quite as much.
We were seeing a new restoration of "Safety Last" in a digitized format, as so many vintage films are now, done so that they can be shown in theaters which no longer have projectors.
When that fact was mentioned, From the front row, the Byrd's manager Todd called out, "They'll take the 35 mm projector out of the Byrd over my dead body!"
The laughter and applause were immediate.
We were also told that this was the very first screening in the country of this restored print.
I'm not ashamed to say I like being first.
In the grand tradition of the Byrd, the screening began with the legendary litter promo, although without the sound, so the crowd provided it.
Somebody needs parental guidance.
The credits were a study in simplicity.
The boy, the girl, the pal, the law. Who needs names?
The love story concerned the boy going off to the big city to earn enough money to marry and support the girl (who would not doubt become the wife).
He finds a job selling fabric in a department store.
This was a guy devoted to his mission, or as the screen said, "He couldn't have given more to his job if it was a position."
I found it an interesting cultural commentary that in 1923 we were still making the distinction between jobs and positions.
Another cultural observation was when the boy got in trouble for having his jacket off and gets called into the big cheese's office.
He is rebuked for having been on the sales floor in his short sleeves, thereby offending the female customers sense of refinement.
Boy, that sense has been dead in the water for a while now, hasn't it?
Even the language came across as arcane, as when the boss lamented that, "Something is very wrong with our exploitation," and wants to find a way to bring attention to the store.
Exploitation?
I think we call that branding or image now.
The boy suggests a way to exploit the store by having his pal, a skilled climber, scale the department store facade.
As it turns out, the pal is trying to elude a cop bent on arresting him for punching him earlier, so the boy has to make the ascent himself, and he's no skilled climber.
Using recessed bricks to gain a foot and handhold, he begins to slowly climb the store while hundreds of customers watch.
Naturally there are comedic bits like the iconic shot of the boy hanging onto the hands of a giant clock on the building.
But there's also a scene of a mouse running up his pants leg, making him do a dance on the ledge to try to get it out.
With each floor up that he makes it, another obstacle meets him and he's hanging from a rope, or has his foot caught in a coil or gets hit in the head and gets dizzy.
And with each new problem, he teeters precariously close to the ledge and a fall to certain death.
It was scene after scene of suspense to see if he'd make it to the top, get the money for doing so and be able to marry the girl.
But what quickly became apparent to me was how poorly I was handling all these scenes of him leaning backwards over the streetscape below.
Really poorly, that's how.
My palms began to sweat.
I had to look away more than once.
Maybe it's my own phobias, but I couldn't keep watching the boy almost fall to his death.
Meanwhile, all around me , I heard adults and children giggling madly at the action.
I'd dry my hands on my shirt and by the next scene, they were moist again as I cringed at the angle of the boy this time.
Sure, my rational mind told me it was only a movie and a romantic comedy at that, but watching a man (whom we'd been told did his own stunts) hover on the edge of ledges, windows and a roof, was a little too close to some personal fears apparently.
On the plus side, I found the bespectacled Harold Lloyd far more handsome than Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.
I'm just hoping the next Harold Lloyd film I see won't upset my women's sense of refinement quite as much.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Ipanema on the Big Screen
There were multiple mysteries during the happy hours that are Gallery 5 After 5 this evening.
How did contra bassist Todd Matthews manage to play all the parts of a pop song, say Led Zepplin's "Kashmir," on his bass?
How did Science Museum educator David Olli make the red scarf and the water disappear from their respective containers?
And how does someone announce, "I'm dating a girl but she used to make out with my brother" in all seriousness and expect an answer?
Looping and talent.
Assorted magic tricks.
He'd already made peace with that fact and was using it for conversational shock value.
As difficult as it was to top such a thrilling start to my Wednesday night, the final showing of the James River Film Festival at the Grace Street Theater awaited me.
There was already a good-sized crowd in line when I arrived.
Being screened was Richmonder Rick Alverson's latest, "New Jerusalem," a film about an Afghan vet (and Irish immigrant) and his evangelical co-worker.
One scene was even set at the ROCK Mega-Church over on southside, a place I'd just been discussing with two G5A5 attendees (they'd both mentioned the music, the diversity of the crowd and the sheer energy of the service).
Funny how those kinds of coincidences happen.
The movie was filmed and shown in high definition, made all the better for the achingly gradual unfolding of the story.
Alverson used the kind of pacing usually only seen in much older films or foreign films; nothing was hurried or forced.
The film also featured Ipanema in all its dimly lit nighttime ambiance back in the smoking days; even if I hadn't been asked to the wrap-up party there afterwards, I'd have needed to go over there after seeing it on the big screen just for a reality check.
As several people noted at the bar, the film had been full of shots of the characters eating, making for a ravenous audience by film's end.
This film goer started with the eggplant-wrapped dates with harissa, flavorful enough that the usual bacon wrapping was forgotten.
Along with some focaccia and polenta fries, I was starting to pick up speed.
With all the film geeks in attendance, it was fun to rehash the festival: who'd seen what, which films were well attended or not (and why not?), what books need to be read now.
I was delighted when an unexpected friend showed up to have a glass of wine with me and do some quick dishing about upcoming restaurants, overly talkative chefs and copycats.
We'd have talked till closing if we hadn't already had plans to meet up tomorrow.
And so the James River Film Festival comes to an end, having provided me with outstanding film watching and speakers for the past week.
I don't know how I'll fill my free time without a festival program to fall back on.
Oh, wait, yes I do. No mystery there.
I've got so much going on at the moment, it's about time I reinserted myself into my real life.
I'm hoping for great reviews of my starring role...by the critics who count anyway.
How did contra bassist Todd Matthews manage to play all the parts of a pop song, say Led Zepplin's "Kashmir," on his bass?
How did Science Museum educator David Olli make the red scarf and the water disappear from their respective containers?
And how does someone announce, "I'm dating a girl but she used to make out with my brother" in all seriousness and expect an answer?
Looping and talent.
Assorted magic tricks.
He'd already made peace with that fact and was using it for conversational shock value.
As difficult as it was to top such a thrilling start to my Wednesday night, the final showing of the James River Film Festival at the Grace Street Theater awaited me.
There was already a good-sized crowd in line when I arrived.
Being screened was Richmonder Rick Alverson's latest, "New Jerusalem," a film about an Afghan vet (and Irish immigrant) and his evangelical co-worker.
One scene was even set at the ROCK Mega-Church over on southside, a place I'd just been discussing with two G5A5 attendees (they'd both mentioned the music, the diversity of the crowd and the sheer energy of the service).
Funny how those kinds of coincidences happen.
The movie was filmed and shown in high definition, made all the better for the achingly gradual unfolding of the story.
Alverson used the kind of pacing usually only seen in much older films or foreign films; nothing was hurried or forced.
The film also featured Ipanema in all its dimly lit nighttime ambiance back in the smoking days; even if I hadn't been asked to the wrap-up party there afterwards, I'd have needed to go over there after seeing it on the big screen just for a reality check.
As several people noted at the bar, the film had been full of shots of the characters eating, making for a ravenous audience by film's end.
This film goer started with the eggplant-wrapped dates with harissa, flavorful enough that the usual bacon wrapping was forgotten.
Along with some focaccia and polenta fries, I was starting to pick up speed.
With all the film geeks in attendance, it was fun to rehash the festival: who'd seen what, which films were well attended or not (and why not?), what books need to be read now.
I was delighted when an unexpected friend showed up to have a glass of wine with me and do some quick dishing about upcoming restaurants, overly talkative chefs and copycats.
We'd have talked till closing if we hadn't already had plans to meet up tomorrow.
And so the James River Film Festival comes to an end, having provided me with outstanding film watching and speakers for the past week.
I don't know how I'll fill my free time without a festival program to fall back on.
Oh, wait, yes I do. No mystery there.
I've got so much going on at the moment, it's about time I reinserted myself into my real life.
I'm hoping for great reviews of my starring role...by the critics who count anyway.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Raindrops on the Windshield Like Tears
I have a friend who nicknamed me "femme fatale" when he met me a few years back.
When he e-mails me, he addresses me as "ff." The friend of his that he introduced me to has me listed as "femme fatale" in her phone.
For the record, I am not a femme fatale. I have never used my charms to ensnare a man into a compromising or deadly situation. I don't use lying or coercion to achieve hidden purposes. And now that I've seen a B-film noir with a true femme fatale, I'm a lot less fond of my nickname.
"Detour" from 1945 was showing at Gallery 5 as part of, yes, the James River Film Festival. I suggested my recently uncoupled friend join me for the distraction of an over-the-top film noir cult classic and a couple of readings from "Richmond Noir."
Although I'd seen some of the A-list film noir classics ("Double Indemnity," "The Postman Always Rings Twice"), I'd yet to see one from Hollywood's "Poverty Row" studios.
To add to the overall seediness, it was a lousy copy, dark and fuzzy, but we were informed that all copies of this movie are beat up because it took so long for it to be recognized as a classic.
The dialog was pure 40s potboiler-style, like "If you act wise, well mister, you'll pop into jail so fast it'll give you the bends!"
There was corny dame bashing, like "I was tussling with the most dangerous animal in the world, a woman." And even trash-talking of men. "Shut up, you're making noises like a husband!"
But it was the femme fatale character of Vera (were nice girls ever named Vera? I'm going to guess no) played by Ann Savage that was, well, savage. She wasn't just scheming or deceitful, she was a shrew, shrill, sneering and condescending; she didn't have a single redeeming quality.
Her occasional cough seemed to indicate that she was ill but not even that could make me like her. A reference to Camille dying of consumption did bring a moment of levity to her sheer meanness, though.
But of course with film noir, you're not supposed to like everybody. There were flashbacks, a confessional voice over, and an acknowledgment of the raison d'etre of film noir: "That's life. Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you."
That's what I've been trying to remind my friend in his time of relationship crisis. As it turned out, "Detour" said it better in 67 dark minutes than I could have in twice the time.
Take it from Vera, my friend. "Life's like a ball game. You gotta take a swing at whatever comes along before you find it's the ninth inning."
Even this nerd gets that sports metaphor...and agrees.
When he e-mails me, he addresses me as "ff." The friend of his that he introduced me to has me listed as "femme fatale" in her phone.
For the record, I am not a femme fatale. I have never used my charms to ensnare a man into a compromising or deadly situation. I don't use lying or coercion to achieve hidden purposes. And now that I've seen a B-film noir with a true femme fatale, I'm a lot less fond of my nickname.
"Detour" from 1945 was showing at Gallery 5 as part of, yes, the James River Film Festival. I suggested my recently uncoupled friend join me for the distraction of an over-the-top film noir cult classic and a couple of readings from "Richmond Noir."
Although I'd seen some of the A-list film noir classics ("Double Indemnity," "The Postman Always Rings Twice"), I'd yet to see one from Hollywood's "Poverty Row" studios.
To add to the overall seediness, it was a lousy copy, dark and fuzzy, but we were informed that all copies of this movie are beat up because it took so long for it to be recognized as a classic.
The dialog was pure 40s potboiler-style, like "If you act wise, well mister, you'll pop into jail so fast it'll give you the bends!"
There was corny dame bashing, like "I was tussling with the most dangerous animal in the world, a woman." And even trash-talking of men. "Shut up, you're making noises like a husband!"
But it was the femme fatale character of Vera (were nice girls ever named Vera? I'm going to guess no) played by Ann Savage that was, well, savage. She wasn't just scheming or deceitful, she was a shrew, shrill, sneering and condescending; she didn't have a single redeeming quality.
Her occasional cough seemed to indicate that she was ill but not even that could make me like her. A reference to Camille dying of consumption did bring a moment of levity to her sheer meanness, though.
But of course with film noir, you're not supposed to like everybody. There were flashbacks, a confessional voice over, and an acknowledgment of the raison d'etre of film noir: "That's life. Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you."
That's what I've been trying to remind my friend in his time of relationship crisis. As it turned out, "Detour" said it better in 67 dark minutes than I could have in twice the time.
Take it from Vera, my friend. "Life's like a ball game. You gotta take a swing at whatever comes along before you find it's the ninth inning."
Even this nerd gets that sports metaphor...and agrees.
Sharing a Gothic Fable with Strangers
I'm going to go into movie withdrawal when the James River Film Festival ends after being spoiled with so many movie choices day and night since it started.
Tonight's screening of "The Night of the Hunter" was easily one of the most frightening movies I've ever white-knuckled through.
The story of a truly evil man who sets his sights on two children whom he believes know where their dead father hid stolen money was riveting. And deeply disturbing.
It was also gorgeous and artfully shot in black and white. Perspectives were distorted, shadows conveyed menace but not accuracy in relation to light source and strange camera angles made for an unsettling hour and a half at the Grace Street Theater.
Fortunately for me, I had a film buff seatmate for company. Afterwards, we talked about the innumerable lines that could be drawn from this film to the Coen Brothers and Spike Lee and to any number of films, both before and after this one was made.
The evening began with a reading by film critic Peter Schilling of the source material, which was the book of the same name (and finalist for the National Book Award), a bestseller in 1953. Appropriately, Chop Suey was selling a reprint of the book in the lobby.
Apparently director Charles Laughton was a huge fan of the book (passing it out to cast and critics) and of literature in general. In fact, he did a one-man reading tour using the Bible, Plato, Shakespeare and Kerouac for material. I can't imagine who would attempt such a tour today.
As dark as the movie was, and it was very dark in both subject matter and intensity, there were moments of levity.
The town busybody trying to get the widow married off to the new-to-town preacher was the source of much of it. "A husband's one piece of store goods you never know before you get it home and take the paper off." Amen.
But even the laughter at the lighter moments was limited. The audience seemed to be as on edge as I was and there was very little sound throughout the movie.
As the JRFF devotees like to point out, movies are meant to be seen on a big screen as a shared experience with strangers. And we were sharing suspense.
I think it's safe to say that we were all on the edge of our seats as the bad guy tracked the two children, threatening them physically and emotionally every chance he got.
Resolution came when he was carted off to be hung for murder of their mother, thus allowing the audience of strangers to let out their collective breath.
Even so, I question the British Institute of Film listing this as one of 50 movies you should see by the age of fourteen. Surely we have enough ways to mess up young minds by puberty without showing them Southern Gothic terror in black and white.
Wait, what am I thinking? If they can rot their brains with realty shows, they can certainly see a well-written book adapted into a culturally and artistically significant film.
Why, with all the references to a way of life long gone (lynchings, corporal punishment, sex for procreation only), it's practically a history lesson for the young'uns.
But I digress, perhaps I'm getting far too into these movies I'm seeing. What am I going to do with myself when the film festival ends?
Tonight's screening of "The Night of the Hunter" was easily one of the most frightening movies I've ever white-knuckled through.
The story of a truly evil man who sets his sights on two children whom he believes know where their dead father hid stolen money was riveting. And deeply disturbing.
It was also gorgeous and artfully shot in black and white. Perspectives were distorted, shadows conveyed menace but not accuracy in relation to light source and strange camera angles made for an unsettling hour and a half at the Grace Street Theater.
Fortunately for me, I had a film buff seatmate for company. Afterwards, we talked about the innumerable lines that could be drawn from this film to the Coen Brothers and Spike Lee and to any number of films, both before and after this one was made.
The evening began with a reading by film critic Peter Schilling of the source material, which was the book of the same name (and finalist for the National Book Award), a bestseller in 1953. Appropriately, Chop Suey was selling a reprint of the book in the lobby.
Apparently director Charles Laughton was a huge fan of the book (passing it out to cast and critics) and of literature in general. In fact, he did a one-man reading tour using the Bible, Plato, Shakespeare and Kerouac for material. I can't imagine who would attempt such a tour today.
As dark as the movie was, and it was very dark in both subject matter and intensity, there were moments of levity.
The town busybody trying to get the widow married off to the new-to-town preacher was the source of much of it. "A husband's one piece of store goods you never know before you get it home and take the paper off." Amen.
But even the laughter at the lighter moments was limited. The audience seemed to be as on edge as I was and there was very little sound throughout the movie.
As the JRFF devotees like to point out, movies are meant to be seen on a big screen as a shared experience with strangers. And we were sharing suspense.
I think it's safe to say that we were all on the edge of our seats as the bad guy tracked the two children, threatening them physically and emotionally every chance he got.
Resolution came when he was carted off to be hung for murder of their mother, thus allowing the audience of strangers to let out their collective breath.
Even so, I question the British Institute of Film listing this as one of 50 movies you should see by the age of fourteen. Surely we have enough ways to mess up young minds by puberty without showing them Southern Gothic terror in black and white.
Wait, what am I thinking? If they can rot their brains with realty shows, they can certainly see a well-written book adapted into a culturally and artistically significant film.
Why, with all the references to a way of life long gone (lynchings, corporal punishment, sex for procreation only), it's practically a history lesson for the young'uns.
But I digress, perhaps I'm getting far too into these movies I'm seeing. What am I going to do with myself when the film festival ends?
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Are You My Mother?
Ask a film critic to choose a film for a film festival and you're bound to get something interesting.
Ask critic Jonathan Rosenbaum and he'll choose what he considers one of the greatest films he's ever reviewed.
The James River Film Festival's morning offering was "Mix Up ou Meli-Melo," a French-made documentary about two English babies who were swapped at birth and raised by the wrong families.
The truth didn't come out until the girls were 20.
I suppose it was the bizarre nature of the film that drew a lot of people out to the VMFA theater at 10:30 on a Saturday morning.
Or maybe documentary lovers can do without a weekend sleep-in (nah, as I can attest, that can't be it).
Director Francoise Romand uses the two women as well as their surviving parents (one father had died) and siblings to share their memories of events.
One mother had sensed from the beginning that her daughter was not her own, but the other wanted no part of such thoughts.
They were an interesting contrast in motherhood; the one who refused to consider the possibility of a mix-up loved her daughter unconditionally, but the better educated mother who suspected the truth was never able to love or treat the daughter she got the same as her other children.
And, of course, children sense these things.
The film, made in 1985, was Romand's first and as such, a remarkable piece of documentary film making.
As the women involved talked about their feelings and memories of events, their deepest issues were revealed.
One had always felt that she belonged in a large family (like her biological one) and one always felt like she had the wrong physical features to be in the family she was raised in.
It was like watching time-lapse psycho-analysis of two understandably-scarred people.
Like any good documentary, there were no pat Hollywood happy endings.
How could there be?
Lives had been irrevocably altered by circumstance, something that happens to all of us.
Credit goes to Romand for making the film while almost all of the parties were still alive and able to tell their sides of it, heartbreaking as they were.
The bad '80s clothing and hairstyles were an unintended comic bonus.
Further credit goes to Jonathan Rosenbaum for choosing this little-known gem for Richmond to see.
I need to investigate this guy's must-see film list.
And extra credit goes to the James River Film Festival for eighteen years of presenting film lovers with the obscure, the important and the offbeat.
I don't get up early for just anybody on a Saturday morning.
No regrets, JRFF.
And a special thanks goes to the man about town, who got down on one knee, kissed my hand and complimented my brightness on this gun-metal gray day.
That, too, was worth getting up for.
Ask critic Jonathan Rosenbaum and he'll choose what he considers one of the greatest films he's ever reviewed.
The James River Film Festival's morning offering was "Mix Up ou Meli-Melo," a French-made documentary about two English babies who were swapped at birth and raised by the wrong families.
The truth didn't come out until the girls were 20.
I suppose it was the bizarre nature of the film that drew a lot of people out to the VMFA theater at 10:30 on a Saturday morning.
Or maybe documentary lovers can do without a weekend sleep-in (nah, as I can attest, that can't be it).
Director Francoise Romand uses the two women as well as their surviving parents (one father had died) and siblings to share their memories of events.
One mother had sensed from the beginning that her daughter was not her own, but the other wanted no part of such thoughts.
They were an interesting contrast in motherhood; the one who refused to consider the possibility of a mix-up loved her daughter unconditionally, but the better educated mother who suspected the truth was never able to love or treat the daughter she got the same as her other children.
And, of course, children sense these things.
The film, made in 1985, was Romand's first and as such, a remarkable piece of documentary film making.
As the women involved talked about their feelings and memories of events, their deepest issues were revealed.
One had always felt that she belonged in a large family (like her biological one) and one always felt like she had the wrong physical features to be in the family she was raised in.
It was like watching time-lapse psycho-analysis of two understandably-scarred people.
Like any good documentary, there were no pat Hollywood happy endings.
How could there be?
Lives had been irrevocably altered by circumstance, something that happens to all of us.
Credit goes to Romand for making the film while almost all of the parties were still alive and able to tell their sides of it, heartbreaking as they were.
The bad '80s clothing and hairstyles were an unintended comic bonus.
Further credit goes to Jonathan Rosenbaum for choosing this little-known gem for Richmond to see.
I need to investigate this guy's must-see film list.
And extra credit goes to the James River Film Festival for eighteen years of presenting film lovers with the obscure, the important and the offbeat.
I don't get up early for just anybody on a Saturday morning.
No regrets, JRFF.
And a special thanks goes to the man about town, who got down on one knee, kissed my hand and complimented my brightness on this gun-metal gray day.
That, too, was worth getting up for.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Smile for the Camera, Then Move!
It was a documentary dork's dream documentary at the James River Film Festival's afternoon offering today.
"Rothstein's First Assignment" was based on New Deal photographer Arthur Rothstein, who was sent to document the people being displaced by the creation of Shenandoah National Park back in the 1930s.
As the sturdy young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps. established roads and cabins and the other necessities of a grand national park, naturally the local folk had to go. But first we were going to take their picture before destroying their way of life.
Director Richard Robinson was at the screening and explained that the film was all about questioning the definition of documentary truth. "I call this my horror film," he said seriously; we soon found out why.
He'd initially begun the project to try to determine the degree to which Rothstein had manipulated his subjects for his assignment. And, of course, he had manipulated them.
After discovering that a photograph of a dust storm was posed and a tripod used to capture "candid" moments, Robinson dug deeper, talking to descendants of the displaced families and researching court records.
While some of the lucky ones were sent to a new development on cheerfully-named Resettlement Row, others were shipped to The Colony in Lynchburg where they were forcibly sterilized. In fact, Virginia forcibly sterilized something like 8300 people, the film said.
Granted, Arthur Rothstein was a young photographer when he was sent to document the Resettlement Administration's project in the mid-1930s, along with other notable photographers like Dorthea Lang and Walker Evans.
So perhaps he didn't know better and was just trying to create good pictures by arranging his subjects. Whether he knew of the Colony or not was not stated in the film; it's not like he could have done anything about it if he had known.
Robinson's quest to question the truth of Rothstein's photographs, though, is the the stuff that makes me a documentary dork in the first place. When I asked my seatmate at the screening why she was there, her answer could have been my own.
We find the New Deal era fascinating. The concept of putting out-of-work artists to work in difficult economic times makes perfect sense and yet seems inconceivable now. The WPA employed mural painters for libraries and post office and state guidebook writers, among other worthwhile uses of the creative but unemployed.
Writers were sent out to document local cooking and eating traditions, thus ensuring that important regional customs that were fast dying out were made part of our history for future generations. And photographers like Rothstein were sent out to record the faces and places of ordinary Americans.
And although we no longer have that sort of artistic push from the government, we are fortunate to have inquiring minds like Richard Robinson out there challenging the past and documenting the findings for us.
And as far as I'm concerned, truth is always more compelling than fiction. That's why I became a documentary dork in the first place.
"Rothstein's First Assignment" was based on New Deal photographer Arthur Rothstein, who was sent to document the people being displaced by the creation of Shenandoah National Park back in the 1930s.
As the sturdy young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps. established roads and cabins and the other necessities of a grand national park, naturally the local folk had to go. But first we were going to take their picture before destroying their way of life.
Director Richard Robinson was at the screening and explained that the film was all about questioning the definition of documentary truth. "I call this my horror film," he said seriously; we soon found out why.
He'd initially begun the project to try to determine the degree to which Rothstein had manipulated his subjects for his assignment. And, of course, he had manipulated them.
After discovering that a photograph of a dust storm was posed and a tripod used to capture "candid" moments, Robinson dug deeper, talking to descendants of the displaced families and researching court records.
While some of the lucky ones were sent to a new development on cheerfully-named Resettlement Row, others were shipped to The Colony in Lynchburg where they were forcibly sterilized. In fact, Virginia forcibly sterilized something like 8300 people, the film said.
Granted, Arthur Rothstein was a young photographer when he was sent to document the Resettlement Administration's project in the mid-1930s, along with other notable photographers like Dorthea Lang and Walker Evans.
So perhaps he didn't know better and was just trying to create good pictures by arranging his subjects. Whether he knew of the Colony or not was not stated in the film; it's not like he could have done anything about it if he had known.
Robinson's quest to question the truth of Rothstein's photographs, though, is the the stuff that makes me a documentary dork in the first place. When I asked my seatmate at the screening why she was there, her answer could have been my own.
We find the New Deal era fascinating. The concept of putting out-of-work artists to work in difficult economic times makes perfect sense and yet seems inconceivable now. The WPA employed mural painters for libraries and post office and state guidebook writers, among other worthwhile uses of the creative but unemployed.
Writers were sent out to document local cooking and eating traditions, thus ensuring that important regional customs that were fast dying out were made part of our history for future generations. And photographers like Rothstein were sent out to record the faces and places of ordinary Americans.
And although we no longer have that sort of artistic push from the government, we are fortunate to have inquiring minds like Richard Robinson out there challenging the past and documenting the findings for us.
And as far as I'm concerned, truth is always more compelling than fiction. That's why I became a documentary dork in the first place.
Weak, Engaged and In the Know
I sold out intellectual pursuits for a pink bubbly and sunny views. No, I'm not proud of that, but it's fact. Go right ahead and judge.
With ticket in hand for the "Community of Huguenot Goldsmiths" lecture at VMFA at 6, the plan was to stop by Amuse for a pre-lecture absinthe and then make my way downstairs to the lecture.
But when I took my seat at the empty bar (unheard of, but everyone else was doing their drinking on the terrace in the 82-degree weather), I got sidetracked.
Knowing my fondness for pink, I was immediately informed by two members of the staff about a new addition to the wine list. "Well, I'm here for absinthe and a lecture," I explained unconvincingly.
"But it's sparkling rose and from Champagne," bartender Stephen tempted me. "Would you like to taste it?" Well, who doesn't see where this is going? The Francois Montand Sparkling Brut Rose had me at the first sip. Pale pink, it had loads of flavor and beautiful bubbles.
As a consolation prize for not having ordered absinthe, I was given a slotted absinthe drip spoon, but told I should continue to visit Amuse for my absinthe fixes. Will do. We'll consider it a trophy rather than for actual use.
I was given a peek at Amuse's summer drink list, full of high end rum and tequila cocktails, all mixed with the flavors of summer.
By the time I thought to inquire about the time, it was 6:05 and I hadn't finished my bubbles, so with a little nudge from Stephen (who reminded me that tickets to the event were free), I changed course and decided to stay for a bit.
And as long as I was going to stay, I decided to eat a little something, not that I was the least bit hungry after a 3:00 Five Guys burger and fries, but why not if I was going to stick around? So I got the grilled asparagus (garlic, Pecorino, olive oil and absolutely delicious) and another glass of pink bubbles.
When the sun had dropped below the buildings and the shades began to raise up to let the early evening light in, one of the servers began singing appropriate music to accompany the incoming light.
When I asked if he did the same when they lowered them, he admitted he did. I've no doubt that a sense of humor helps in the restaurant business.
Determined not to be a complete cultural slug, I finally paid up and headed to the Grace Street Theater for another installment of the James River Film Festival. Showing was a restored 35 mm print of "Taxi Driver," all the more significant for this being the 35th anniversary of the film.
And then there's the fact that I'd never seen it (my film failings are well documented because of not watching TV) and since it's considered one of the greatest movies of the 70s, I knew where I needed to be.
The film was introduced by Trent Nicholas, he of VMFA's Film series, and he made a good point. "Seems appropriate to be seeing Taxi Driver's mean streets in the former Lee Theater, a porn theater. You're sitting in a lot of heritage here and not just X-rated heritage."
It was such a terrific way to experience the film for the first time. The virgin print we saw was flawless, clean, color-saturated and looking as sharp as the day it was released.
I didn't realize that Bernard Herrmann, the composer for so many of Hitchcock's films, had scored this movie, either. There were times when I heard enough of a similarity to know it was Herrmann and others when his innovative music was pure 70s. It was the last movie he scored, dying before it was released.
And I don't know who looked younger, Scorcese as a cuckolded husband in the taxi or DeNiro, looking lean of face and body. Boy, the 70s were a long time ago.
Favorite period details? The porno theater concession stand Travis Bickle frequented carried no Coke, only RC cola. And an RC and three candy bars cost $1.85.
At a political rally scene, there were young guys sporting Afros and middle-aged women wearing white gloves, making for a great visual metaphor for the cultural overlap still happening in 1976.
Nicholas' point that movies were meant to be seen on a big screen surrounded by other people for a shared experience was driven home tonight.
I was far from the only audience member who had never seen it and there was much squirming and murmuring during some of the more difficult scenes. It was good to know I wasn't alone in my reactions.
Of course, there was also the girl behind me who laughed at the line "You talking to me?" when it was anything but appropriate for the moment.
Such a heavy, albeit important, film had to be followed with much lighter fare and the Black Girls show at Balliceaux supplied that. Walking down the alley to get there, I heard the fireworks coming from the Diamond's opening night.
The group of white boys, with their pastiche of influences (KC and the Sunshine band, Modest Mouse, 70s funk) and multiple vocalists, get better with each show. Tonight's crowd danced far less than the Sprout crowd where I saw them last (there people were doing the bump), but not because the incentive to do so wasn't there.
I ran into a guy I hadn't seen in years who had just happened in to Ballcieaux tonight to meet a friend. I asked him how he was enjoying the band, since I was there specifically because of the band.
"They're amazing," he said enthusiastically. "So you knew to come and we just lucked into seeing a band this good?"
Well, yes, but I also sold my intellectual plans down the river this evening, so don't give me too much credit. Who knows when I'll get another chance to learn about Huguenot goldmaking?
Not that I have any interest in gold, mind you.
With ticket in hand for the "Community of Huguenot Goldsmiths" lecture at VMFA at 6, the plan was to stop by Amuse for a pre-lecture absinthe and then make my way downstairs to the lecture.
But when I took my seat at the empty bar (unheard of, but everyone else was doing their drinking on the terrace in the 82-degree weather), I got sidetracked.
Knowing my fondness for pink, I was immediately informed by two members of the staff about a new addition to the wine list. "Well, I'm here for absinthe and a lecture," I explained unconvincingly.
"But it's sparkling rose and from Champagne," bartender Stephen tempted me. "Would you like to taste it?" Well, who doesn't see where this is going? The Francois Montand Sparkling Brut Rose had me at the first sip. Pale pink, it had loads of flavor and beautiful bubbles.
As a consolation prize for not having ordered absinthe, I was given a slotted absinthe drip spoon, but told I should continue to visit Amuse for my absinthe fixes. Will do. We'll consider it a trophy rather than for actual use.
I was given a peek at Amuse's summer drink list, full of high end rum and tequila cocktails, all mixed with the flavors of summer.
By the time I thought to inquire about the time, it was 6:05 and I hadn't finished my bubbles, so with a little nudge from Stephen (who reminded me that tickets to the event were free), I changed course and decided to stay for a bit.
And as long as I was going to stay, I decided to eat a little something, not that I was the least bit hungry after a 3:00 Five Guys burger and fries, but why not if I was going to stick around? So I got the grilled asparagus (garlic, Pecorino, olive oil and absolutely delicious) and another glass of pink bubbles.
When the sun had dropped below the buildings and the shades began to raise up to let the early evening light in, one of the servers began singing appropriate music to accompany the incoming light.
When I asked if he did the same when they lowered them, he admitted he did. I've no doubt that a sense of humor helps in the restaurant business.
Determined not to be a complete cultural slug, I finally paid up and headed to the Grace Street Theater for another installment of the James River Film Festival. Showing was a restored 35 mm print of "Taxi Driver," all the more significant for this being the 35th anniversary of the film.
And then there's the fact that I'd never seen it (my film failings are well documented because of not watching TV) and since it's considered one of the greatest movies of the 70s, I knew where I needed to be.
The film was introduced by Trent Nicholas, he of VMFA's Film series, and he made a good point. "Seems appropriate to be seeing Taxi Driver's mean streets in the former Lee Theater, a porn theater. You're sitting in a lot of heritage here and not just X-rated heritage."
It was such a terrific way to experience the film for the first time. The virgin print we saw was flawless, clean, color-saturated and looking as sharp as the day it was released.
I didn't realize that Bernard Herrmann, the composer for so many of Hitchcock's films, had scored this movie, either. There were times when I heard enough of a similarity to know it was Herrmann and others when his innovative music was pure 70s. It was the last movie he scored, dying before it was released.
And I don't know who looked younger, Scorcese as a cuckolded husband in the taxi or DeNiro, looking lean of face and body. Boy, the 70s were a long time ago.
Favorite period details? The porno theater concession stand Travis Bickle frequented carried no Coke, only RC cola. And an RC and three candy bars cost $1.85.
At a political rally scene, there were young guys sporting Afros and middle-aged women wearing white gloves, making for a great visual metaphor for the cultural overlap still happening in 1976.
Nicholas' point that movies were meant to be seen on a big screen surrounded by other people for a shared experience was driven home tonight.
I was far from the only audience member who had never seen it and there was much squirming and murmuring during some of the more difficult scenes. It was good to know I wasn't alone in my reactions.
Of course, there was also the girl behind me who laughed at the line "You talking to me?" when it was anything but appropriate for the moment.
Such a heavy, albeit important, film had to be followed with much lighter fare and the Black Girls show at Balliceaux supplied that. Walking down the alley to get there, I heard the fireworks coming from the Diamond's opening night.
The group of white boys, with their pastiche of influences (KC and the Sunshine band, Modest Mouse, 70s funk) and multiple vocalists, get better with each show. Tonight's crowd danced far less than the Sprout crowd where I saw them last (there people were doing the bump), but not because the incentive to do so wasn't there.
I ran into a guy I hadn't seen in years who had just happened in to Ballcieaux tonight to meet a friend. I asked him how he was enjoying the band, since I was there specifically because of the band.
"They're amazing," he said enthusiastically. "So you knew to come and we just lucked into seeing a band this good?"
Well, yes, but I also sold my intellectual plans down the river this evening, so don't give me too much credit. Who knows when I'll get another chance to learn about Huguenot goldmaking?
Not that I have any interest in gold, mind you.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
No Spooning Allowed @ James River Film Fest
The James River Film Fest kicked off today at noonish and yours truly had volunteered to be T-shirt seller. Except that the T-shirts hadn't come in this morning as anticipated. Oops.
It didn't matter because I had planned to come anyway to see Silent Film for Lunch: "Juve vs. Fantomas" along with a couple of Mack Sennett shorts being shown on 8 mm (well, after a second projector was brought in after the first one got troublesome).
Since it was the first film of the first day of the festival, they'd chosen a movie from the roots of cinema, one where the mechanism of the projector provided the soundtrack.
Director Louis Feuillade was apparently a film pioneer and the film we saw today was part of a popular series based on the universal theme of a good guy and a bad guy.
Although some text was used between scenes, it was amazing how much of the story was moved forward through the use of notes, letters and telegrams telling us what had happened or what was coming next. And I loved the language used on what text cards there were, like these:
"With great daring one of the bandits uncoupled the coach."
"Nothing could now avert a fearful catastrophe."
When did bandits become villains and uncoupled become unhooked? Language geeks like me want to know.
The good cop and the newspaper writer spent the film tracking the bad guy, who always seemed to slap away at the last moment. When he escaped the mansion at the end, leaving the good guys inside, he set off an explosion.
The movie ended with, "But are Jules and Fandor dead? To be continued next week..." For a kid sitting at the theater in 1913, that must have been a nail-biter of a week.
The Sennett shorts were Keystone Cop-variety slapstick, non-stop motion and both we saw were focused on Sennett's favorite theme, that of courtship rituals and mating.
The first, called "Fatty's Spooning Days" centered on a time when there were "No Spooning Allowed" signs in public parks and cops spied from trees before blowing a whistle for backup to catch errant spooners.
The punishment for being caught spooning in public? Thirty days or thirty dollars; I kid you not. This turned out to be a learning experience for me since I hadn't been aware there were ever non-spooning laws. I was definitely born at the right time.
I walked out afterwards to find a parking ticket (the program had run long due to projection issues) but at least I had lunch to look forward to after such an entertaining mid-day film session.
A friend had invited me to lunch and he said our destination was a surprise. I couldn't have been much more surprised than when he pulled up to Five Guys. A long-time friend, he knew perfectly well I don't eat at chains.
"Ever been?' he asked, knowing that I surely hadn't (he's the same one who took me to Costco for a hot dog lunch once). "Just trying to show you the world, baby!" he said by way of explanation. His grin was pure evil.
Okay, I liked the baskets of peanuts everywhere. I can shell and eat some peanuts.I wonder , though, if it's off-putting for people with nut allergies, supposedly a growing population.
My "Little Cheeseburger" which was not little was tasty, I admitted, and the amount of fries completely obscene, although he'd warned me of that fact. Fries are obviously a big deal since the source farm for the potatoes was listed right there on the chalkboard.
Walking out, I teased him about wanting to share his guilty pleasure with me. "Just being perverse," he grinned. "I know you can appreciate perversity."
I certainly can. It's part of the reason I'd have been no good in the no spooning days. I'd have wanted to spoon just because the signs said I couldn't.
It didn't matter because I had planned to come anyway to see Silent Film for Lunch: "Juve vs. Fantomas" along with a couple of Mack Sennett shorts being shown on 8 mm (well, after a second projector was brought in after the first one got troublesome).
Since it was the first film of the first day of the festival, they'd chosen a movie from the roots of cinema, one where the mechanism of the projector provided the soundtrack.
Director Louis Feuillade was apparently a film pioneer and the film we saw today was part of a popular series based on the universal theme of a good guy and a bad guy.
Although some text was used between scenes, it was amazing how much of the story was moved forward through the use of notes, letters and telegrams telling us what had happened or what was coming next. And I loved the language used on what text cards there were, like these:
"With great daring one of the bandits uncoupled the coach."
"Nothing could now avert a fearful catastrophe."
When did bandits become villains and uncoupled become unhooked? Language geeks like me want to know.
The good cop and the newspaper writer spent the film tracking the bad guy, who always seemed to slap away at the last moment. When he escaped the mansion at the end, leaving the good guys inside, he set off an explosion.
The movie ended with, "But are Jules and Fandor dead? To be continued next week..." For a kid sitting at the theater in 1913, that must have been a nail-biter of a week.
The Sennett shorts were Keystone Cop-variety slapstick, non-stop motion and both we saw were focused on Sennett's favorite theme, that of courtship rituals and mating.
The first, called "Fatty's Spooning Days" centered on a time when there were "No Spooning Allowed" signs in public parks and cops spied from trees before blowing a whistle for backup to catch errant spooners.
The punishment for being caught spooning in public? Thirty days or thirty dollars; I kid you not. This turned out to be a learning experience for me since I hadn't been aware there were ever non-spooning laws. I was definitely born at the right time.
I walked out afterwards to find a parking ticket (the program had run long due to projection issues) but at least I had lunch to look forward to after such an entertaining mid-day film session.
A friend had invited me to lunch and he said our destination was a surprise. I couldn't have been much more surprised than when he pulled up to Five Guys. A long-time friend, he knew perfectly well I don't eat at chains.
"Ever been?' he asked, knowing that I surely hadn't (he's the same one who took me to Costco for a hot dog lunch once). "Just trying to show you the world, baby!" he said by way of explanation. His grin was pure evil.
Okay, I liked the baskets of peanuts everywhere. I can shell and eat some peanuts.I wonder , though, if it's off-putting for people with nut allergies, supposedly a growing population.
My "Little Cheeseburger" which was not little was tasty, I admitted, and the amount of fries completely obscene, although he'd warned me of that fact. Fries are obviously a big deal since the source farm for the potatoes was listed right there on the chalkboard.
Walking out, I teased him about wanting to share his guilty pleasure with me. "Just being perverse," he grinned. "I know you can appreciate perversity."
I certainly can. It's part of the reason I'd have been no good in the no spooning days. I'd have wanted to spoon just because the signs said I couldn't.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Getting a Brazilian Fix
Everyone should have a neighborhood restaurant where they know they can go and get great food and interesting conversation.
And when I want that combination with a Brazilian accent, I go to Bistro 27 for a surefire evening.
You see, the beauty of being a familiar face is the unexpected, like pheasant ravioli in sage butter sauce that arrived unbidden and melted in my mouth.
It's also the reliable, like the scallops wrapped in bacon with the most perfect al dente lentils, which I've had before and still can't resist for only $11.
Or getting my chocolate cup with mixed berries but instead of just mascarpone, the cold mascarpone on the plate is flavored with coffee and the mascarpone on top of the cup is heated.
It's a divine combination suggested by Chef Carlos to change up a dessert I've had before.
Usually he plants himself on the stool next to me, but I'd brought a friend tonight, so instead he just stood next to me to provide dinner banter.
He'd like to see a movement to move Valentine's Day to the second Sunday of February, thus assuring men plenty of time to shop for their women ("You know, the chocolates, underwear. Priscilla's will do a great business.").
The business benefits to restaurants of a full weekend devoted to the holiday wasn't lost on him, either.
He raved about the Big Apple, a Latino market on Jeff Davis Highway.
With its butcher and fishmonger, Carlos was caught up in all the un-American protein choices they offered.
I found out that brains are in stock at the Big Apple, since brains have been a hot topic around this blog lately.
He left with goat and beef tongue, which he promptly used to make tongue tacos; I would have loved to have tasted those.
He raved so much about the selection that I feel sure I'll be heading southward soon.
At the James River Film festival tonight, we saw Big River, a sequel to King Corn, and Big River Man, a documentary about a Slovenian endurance swimmer, Martin Strel, who swam the Danube, the Yangtze and the Mississippi Rivers before taking on the full length of the Amazon.
His intention was to draw attention to the plight of the rain forests and it ended up being a winner at the 2009 Sundance Festival.
Originally a gambler, now when he isn't swimming he gives flamenco guitar lessons; to say this is an unusual man is a colossal understatement.
When he begins the swim, the river is at flood stage and that turns out to be one of the minor bumps in this journey.
His navigator is a young Wisconsin poker player who took a leave of absence from his job at Walmart to make this trip.
Strel loses twelve pounds in the first nine days and by day 45 he is beginning to show mental illness from the stress.
Three weeks later the crew no longer treat him like a human being but rather like an animal or monster who had no energy for anything except swimming; they even spoon-feed him.
Much of the land they go through in Peru and ultimately Brazil is completely uninhabited.
When they do see a city, it's almost foreign to them, eliciting religious babble from the navigator about heaven and hell; he too appeared to be coming unhinged.
The footage of Strel's descent as his brain struggles to function under the stress is disturbing in that way that good documentaries put you right there.
Finally reaching the end of the swim in Brazil, Strel is met by huge crowds and media from twenty countries, but his health is so precarious he is immediately taken to hospital.
The final images of him in a Speedo and skull cap sprawled on a couch, looking at promotional posters of himself after squandering the sponsorship money are heartbreaking.
But the film itself is a testament to commitment and it wasn't hard to see why it had taken a Sundance prize.
It was also the first U.S. showing of the film tonight (besides Sundance) and it was a free event, put on by the Biggest Picture, RVA's environmental film fest of the last two years as part of the James River Film Fest.
Leave it to Richmond to provide me a very Brazilian evening to feed my belly as well as my mind.
And when I want that combination with a Brazilian accent, I go to Bistro 27 for a surefire evening.
You see, the beauty of being a familiar face is the unexpected, like pheasant ravioli in sage butter sauce that arrived unbidden and melted in my mouth.
It's also the reliable, like the scallops wrapped in bacon with the most perfect al dente lentils, which I've had before and still can't resist for only $11.
Or getting my chocolate cup with mixed berries but instead of just mascarpone, the cold mascarpone on the plate is flavored with coffee and the mascarpone on top of the cup is heated.
It's a divine combination suggested by Chef Carlos to change up a dessert I've had before.
Usually he plants himself on the stool next to me, but I'd brought a friend tonight, so instead he just stood next to me to provide dinner banter.
He'd like to see a movement to move Valentine's Day to the second Sunday of February, thus assuring men plenty of time to shop for their women ("You know, the chocolates, underwear. Priscilla's will do a great business.").
The business benefits to restaurants of a full weekend devoted to the holiday wasn't lost on him, either.
He raved about the Big Apple, a Latino market on Jeff Davis Highway.
With its butcher and fishmonger, Carlos was caught up in all the un-American protein choices they offered.
I found out that brains are in stock at the Big Apple, since brains have been a hot topic around this blog lately.
He left with goat and beef tongue, which he promptly used to make tongue tacos; I would have loved to have tasted those.
He raved so much about the selection that I feel sure I'll be heading southward soon.
At the James River Film festival tonight, we saw Big River, a sequel to King Corn, and Big River Man, a documentary about a Slovenian endurance swimmer, Martin Strel, who swam the Danube, the Yangtze and the Mississippi Rivers before taking on the full length of the Amazon.
His intention was to draw attention to the plight of the rain forests and it ended up being a winner at the 2009 Sundance Festival.
Originally a gambler, now when he isn't swimming he gives flamenco guitar lessons; to say this is an unusual man is a colossal understatement.
When he begins the swim, the river is at flood stage and that turns out to be one of the minor bumps in this journey.
His navigator is a young Wisconsin poker player who took a leave of absence from his job at Walmart to make this trip.
Strel loses twelve pounds in the first nine days and by day 45 he is beginning to show mental illness from the stress.
Three weeks later the crew no longer treat him like a human being but rather like an animal or monster who had no energy for anything except swimming; they even spoon-feed him.
Much of the land they go through in Peru and ultimately Brazil is completely uninhabited.
When they do see a city, it's almost foreign to them, eliciting religious babble from the navigator about heaven and hell; he too appeared to be coming unhinged.
The footage of Strel's descent as his brain struggles to function under the stress is disturbing in that way that good documentaries put you right there.
Finally reaching the end of the swim in Brazil, Strel is met by huge crowds and media from twenty countries, but his health is so precarious he is immediately taken to hospital.
The final images of him in a Speedo and skull cap sprawled on a couch, looking at promotional posters of himself after squandering the sponsorship money are heartbreaking.
But the film itself is a testament to commitment and it wasn't hard to see why it had taken a Sundance prize.
It was also the first U.S. showing of the film tonight (besides Sundance) and it was a free event, put on by the Biggest Picture, RVA's environmental film fest of the last two years as part of the James River Film Fest.
Leave it to Richmond to provide me a very Brazilian evening to feed my belly as well as my mind.
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