For those not in the True Blood-know, here’s a quick recap: Creator Alan Ball, responsible for the late, great Six Feet Under, happened upon Charlaine Harris’ Southern vampire mystery books while browsing in a Barnes and Noble and was quick to see promise in Harris’ fictional world. In the first season, a synthetic material called True Blood is released on the market, allowing vampires to reveal that they live among humans. Despite this, vampires are still widely persecuted. In the Louisiana town of Bon Temps, the mind-reading Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) falls in love with sultry vamp Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), admist cries of vampire-phobia by her . We’ll be re-capping True Blood each and every week here on Crit Mass.
As Bill and Sookie lie languidly in post-coital bliss, Bill discusses the emotional difficulties the newly turned vampire Jessica is facing, his Civil-war era drawl makes the conversation seem epic and thus quite trite. But moments like this reaffirm the uniqueness of the show, and where there is no real excuse for overt narrative exposition, within lies an homage to the Southern way of storytelling.
Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) sees her family on television pleading for her safe return, as they are unaware that she has been abducted and transformed. Sookie makes the mistake of allowing the impetuous nubile vamp to go observe her family home, under the condition that she may not interact with her relatives. Trouble ensues when Jessica super-speeds ahead of Sookie’s grasp, only to be found by her mother and sister, who are unaware of Jessica’s transformation. All seems peachy and darling, as Jessica plays it human, until her father arrives home and their abusive relationship becomes apparent. Jessica’s fangs come out as she throws her father against the wall and it is Bill that comes to stop her as Sookie looks dumbly on. But first, in a nod to vampire lore, Bill must be invited inside the house in order to enter and he hypnotizes Jessica’s little sister into doing just that.
Meanwhile, the flamboyant V dealer (V short for vampire blood, which induces a high when had by humans), Lafayette Reynolds (Nelsan Ellis), is held prisoner by the fanged track-suited aficionado Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard) and his band of loyal vamps at the local vampire-only bar Fangtasia. Lafayette pleads for his life, and when this fails to interest his captors, pleads to be made into a vampire, saying, “Not only will I be a badass vampire, but I’ll be your badass vampire.”
Why nobody over at the human-hangout, Merlotte’s, is wondering where Lafayette has disappeared to is a weakness in plot, but bar-owner and Lafayette’s former boss Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) seems too preoccupied with the oddly powerful Maryann (Michelle Forbes), a strange woman from his past who quickly turns his bar into an orgy. When he complains about her influence in the safety of his office, she shakes and simmers and suddenly turns Sam into his dog form (as he is a shape-shifter, naturally), threatening to do the same in front of his customers who are unaware of his powers. Earlier, Sookie hears Maryann’s thoughts, which are in a masculine voice and another language, leading the audience to know that something’s up, but still a bit confused as to Maryann’s origin and why she wants people to get it on so bad.
But the best storyline is Jason Stackhouse’s, Sookie’s dolt of a brother (Ryan Kwanten), trip to a pseudo-fundamentalist bible camp. There, he and the fellow followers are treated to a rendition of “Jesus Asked Me Out Today”, an overtly sexual rock-and-roll tribute to the man upstairs, and a song that sure to be climbing the Christian music charts.
Next week’s episode, “Scratch My Back,” promises a lot of drama with Sookie and Bill, and maybe even a love interest for Jessica, but what hopefully comes to fruition is a Lafayette with fangs.
Monday: Glasgow’s Camera Obscura sounds quite a bit like their fellow Scotsman Belle & Sebastian. Frolicking Chamber Pop with plenty of memorable hooks and soothing vocal melodies. At the TLA, 8 p.m., Tickets are $15-$18.
Tuesday: Expect a night of hair metal and arena anthems from “Pour Some Sugar on Me” to “I Want You To Want Me.” Def Leppard, Poison and Cheap Trick are in town!! This will be like a live version of that cheesy ’80s night your friend who’s in a frat always invites you to, despite your constant lack of attendance. At the Susquehanna Bank Center, 7 p.m., Tickets are $20-122
Wednesday: Former punk rock group The Lemonheads, who used to do an awesome cover of
Mrs. Robinson” now play less-intense rolling indie-country rhythms. I guess it makes sense that XPN is sponsoring this event then. At Johnny Brenda’s, with It’s a King Thing & Appomattox, 9 p.m., Tickets are $20.
Thursday: Featuring members of Straylight Run and The Format, Destry plays bright upbeat indie pop. This small chapel show should be quite a treat for those interested in either of the members’ previous bands. At the First Unitarian Church’s Chapel with The Narrative, 7:30 p.m., Tickets are $10.
Friday: Sonic textures of synths, club beats, and slightly creepy vocal melodies define Telepathe. When I saw them live last year, they appeared to be nothing more than an extremely pretentious female Animal Collective ripoff, but now that I listen to their recordings I realize there is something more interesting brewing amongst these ladies. At Johnny Brenda’s with Lemonade and Jotto, 9 p.m., Tickets are $10.
Saturday: Continuing in the footsteps of his father, Hank Williams III is living off the name of his successful grandfather playing country jams. At the TLA, 9 p.m., Tickets are $20.
Sunday: Violent Kin play infectious indie-electro pop with playful vocals and a sneering attitude. At the M Room, 8pm, $8.
City Paper contributer Gary M. Kramer went to Silverdocs — a festival in Silver Springs, Maryland showcasing more than 100 nonfiction shorts and features features from the around the world.
Discovering films and filmmakers who profile such unique personalities is what makes Silverdocs worthwhile. While distribution is likely for many of the films , most of them will only screen Philadelphia at film festivals or through other limited exposure — if at all. Hence the silver lining of attending. Here are a trio of notable films from this year’s strong program:
Ondi Timoner’s We Live in Public is a portrait of Josh Harris, “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of.” Harris created web-based TV before selling it for millions. Super-rich, he became an insane party clown and he found his greatest pleasures (and personal guidance) in Gilligan’s Island. He soon took a chunk of his millions to create “Quiet,” an underground lair/bunker that was part endless party, part social experiment. As We Live in Public shows in naked detail, more than a hundren people lived for the last month of 1999 in a “kooky cult kingdom,” where participants were filmed eating, sleeping, shitting and fucking. Harris played God until things got out of hand. When Quiet ended, the mad scientist became the lab rat and used his home surveillance cameras to record him and his girlfriend Tanya 24/7 for viewers. This experiment also backfired, eventually forcing Harris to reinvent himself again. Timoner’s shrewdly-edited film took 10 years to make from the 5,000 hours of footage she collected; the longterm schedule in similar to her previous film Dig! Her painstaking efforts pay off.
Another person who became famous for being overexposed is Jack Rebney. His f-bomb laced flameouts while making an instructional video for Winnebago had him dubbed, “The Angriest Man in the World.” Bootleg videos of this infamous rant circulated for years before turning up on YouTube. Ben Steinbauer’s crowd-pleasing documentary, Winnebago Man considers what happened to this former newsman turned unexpected folk hero. Steinbaeur discovers a very different Rebney than the one we see on the Internet, but he is still profanely provocative. Steinbauer uses his film to raise topical concerns about cyber bullying while also considering how someone might reclaim their sullied reputation. (Take a lesson, Christian Bale.) At the post-screening Q&A, Steinbaeur got Rebney on the phone. He chatted about politics among other topics with his characteristic piss and vinegar. The DC crowd was appreciative.
Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri’s October Country is a remarkable feature twist on the home movie genre, taking home the festival’s Sterling U.S. Feature Award. The film chronicles a year in the lives of Mosher’s family who, as the matriarch says, “wouldn’t know normal if it fell on us.” Don has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because of a tour of duty in Vietnam. He does not speak to his sister, Denise — a witch. His wife Dottie loves her foster son Chris, although he steals from them. Their daughter, Donna had an abusive husband and a daughter too young. That daughter, Daneal, continues the cycle, also marrying an abusive husband, and having a daughter too young. Donna’s other daughter, Desi, may be the smartest member of the family, though perhaps not when she admits, “the bright side of playing video games is that I watch less TV.” Mosher and Palmieri infuse their film with a touching lyricism. Images of lingering smoke or shots of the house before a custody hearing echo the emotions of these all-to-real people who painfully discuss the ghosts that haunt their lives, Moser the filmmaker seems to be exorcising some of his own personal demons here in this extraordinary family portrait, and he is well aided by his partner’s outsider perspective.
Little Joy’s greatest attribute is the plangency inherent in their sound, a thrilling evocation on ready display at The Khyber on Friday night. An early gem was frontman Rodrigo Amarante’s ethereal delivery on “Evaporar,” which he performed solo, his guitar trilling away while his earnest emotions transcended any language barrier (the lyrics are in Portuguese, a nod to his native Brazil, which largely shapes the band’s sound).
Co-founder Binki Shapiro was disarming, her soft voice trenchant and powerful, a fitting complement to Amarante’s subtly forceful near-crooning. Her occasional play on the xylophone and keyboards heightened the dream experience of compositions atmospheric yet never dilute. Amarante and Shapiro — not in the least hindered by the absence of third founding member Fabrizio Moretti — hardly overpowered the music; spirited strumming buoyed the vocals and laid a cadence aptly supported by the drums, while the rhythm guitar elevated each track further.
Jambase has an excellent article on the state of The Roots.
Questlove looks at the show’s guest list one month in advance so that he can get legal clearance from song publishers for clever walk-on choices. A typical walk-on rate for a five-second clip is a few hundred dollars, but that number gets bigger fast for big-name artists. “In the case of Justin [Timberlake], he’s more expensive than The Beatles or Eric Clapton,” Questlove says. That forced The Roots to make a last-minute audible for Joan Rivers’ recent entrance, as Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” was deemed too expensive. As they cut to commercial break right before Rivers was to appear, Questlove jumped online - he keeps a laptop next to his drum kit at all times in case he wants to Twitter - and downloaded Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.” “We had exactly 35 seconds to learn ‘Poker Face,’” he says. “It was like, ok, uh-huh, ok, got it, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Joan Rivers!’”
“That’s probably the hardest part of the show,” he says.
(This is a red band trailer but it’s not that scandalous)
Ok, so vampire overload, right? Enough with the little suckers, let’s get on it with it. Ah, not so fast. Badass to the max Korean director Chan-wook Park (Oldboy, Sympathy of Lady Vengeance both of which are awesome) throws his hat into the ring with Thirst. One of the reasons vampires are so prevalent with in pop culture is that they are easy to ascribe symbolism too. The immortality, the Otherness, the penetration — it’s all easy to tweek the idea of a vamp so it comes out the way you want it to. And while I’ve seen vampire as homosexual (True Blood, pretty much anything Ann Rice has ever touched), vampire as dashing hero (Twilight) and vampire as the catalyst for teen drama (Buffy), I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vampire as Jesus scenario. This guy sacrifices himself, doesn’t want to see people die, is a savior in a a really twisted way. Ok, my sense of symbolism may be off because I’m looking at a couple minutes long trailer, rather than a full length movie but damn!
Thirst is scheduled for a July 31 limited release. No word yet on a Philly date.
Post-Rock. It is an elusive term. I have heard it described as “what would be left of rock after the apocalypse,” “rock instrumentation… not-rock music.” The implication is that rock has progressed so much that it has actually surpassed the boundaries that made it a distinct genre in the first place, like a tree planted in a sidewalk panel removed, whose roots have begun to destroy the pavement surrounding it. Like a poorly formed and immature caterpillar emerging a beautiful butterfly from a cocoon. But at what point does prog-rock out-prog its rockiness? Where is the line?
On Tuesday night it was in the basement at International Waters (532 S. 48th St.). Be it the undulating kinetic pulse of Big Ocean’s explosive drumming and intertwined guitar/organ polyrhythms, Bear Is Driving’s long, through-composed landscapes and stories, headliners Upsilon Acrux’s intense assault on meter and melody, or the joyous magic strewn about the room by costumed show-closers Make A Rising, something new is bubbling up from the fault lines in pop-culture. A new kind of tree is emerging out of it and beginning to bear fruit. I say let’s eat.
Admit it, you want more from this week’s Movie section.
Year One[B-] did not screen in time for publication, but we sent Pat Rapa anyway. Here are his thoughts on the matter:
Biblical comedies have a decision to make regarding the jokes/story ratio. Will this be a Python-esque romp or a Mel Brooksian schlockfest? Harold Ramis’ Year One — wherein Jack Black and Michael Cera wander into the Old Testament from the Stone Age — falls somewhere between the two, and falls quite a bit. The problem is not Black’s hyper mugging or Michael Cera’s flustered muttering, as you might expect, but the strange shifts in tone from wacky to serious. Too many scenes end with plot-advancing dialogue where a zinger would do. That would work better if “plot” were something this collection of character-driven sketches appeared to be striving for throughout. So many holes. How’d they escape the snake? Why is rival Marlak suddenly their friend for 5 minutes? The thing is, Year One is hilarious when it wants to be, full of gross-outs and cameos. David Cross makes a great weasely Cain. Hank Azaria has his least annoying film moment ever as Abraham. Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, Matt Besser and McLovin all have their scene-stealing moments. Let them all get stolen, Mr. Ramis. You have a schlockfest. Let your people go.
Meal Ticket: What was the inspiration behind this film? Did you have some kind of motivating personal experience?
Robert Kenner: It wasn’t really that. I was just curious, you know, to find out where our food comes from. An interesting exploration. I wanted to talk to all the different producers of our food system, and I found out agribusiness did not want to talk. Not only could I not see into their kitchens, they didn’t want to speak to me at all. I was a threat. They don’t want us to know where our food comes from. Food has fundamentally been transformed without us seeing it, or thinking about it. What we realized was that there is a movement percolating — we didn’t know about it until we got out there. It’s going to take a movement to change things.
Like the old adage goes its all fun and games until someone gets hurt, this definitely holds true in Fifth Form. Set against the first Gulf War, An elite New England prep school Hudson Academy becomes the battle ground for the prank war of all prank wars. Think getting hit with paint balls after getting out of the shower, from someone in a Nixon mask. The new Jewish student Josh Schuster takes center stage in the battle. But the jokes and laughs all end when it turns into an all out racial battle, with Fifth Formers Harold and Ravi being dragged through the mud, culminating into the most stereotypical and racially offensive newspaper image you could imagine depicting a white, an Asian, and an Indian (just think Ku Klux Klan gear, Asian miner getup and a man in a turban).
No doubt the rambunctious guys make for an interesting movie, and some humorous boys-will-be-boys lines. Even with the bro humor and pranks Fifth Form falls a bit short. Not that the movie doesn’t have what could and is a good storyline, but the plot feels undeveloped. The tone shifts from the teenage guys fooling around to racially tense situations. The real story is Josh’s coming of age, as we see him deal with a long distance relationship with his kid-crush Amanda and people from various backgrounds. Still, without a well developed central storyline it feels typical.
During this trailer, Eric Bana asks Rachel McAdams if it’s creepy that technically the first time that they met was when she was six. She’s all, “I think it was magical.” Naw, dude, that’s creepy.
Staff Blog
Blood Lust: True Blood, “Keep This Party Going”
