Spring Break
Here’s a little tip for you aspiring directors out there: if you’re going to make one of those movies that “say” something, make sure that thing you say is true.
I can’t elaborate on that point without ruining the movie. So, instead, let’s go over some other things first, and I’ll give you plenty of warning, in case you’d like to see the film.
Henry Poole Is Here is rated PG for “thematic elements,” which I thought were conspicuously absent, and “some language,” which presumably was Spanish. Luke Wilson stars as the eponymous Henry, George Lopez as a Catholic priest, and a couple others pass by.  The movie is a blessedly short 100 minutes.
Poor Henry is “Sad. And angry!” because of a very mysterious Terrible Thing that has happened in his past. We do eventually, and predictably, find out what that bad news is. He must deal with his sadness in the face of a mysterious stain on his new home’s wall- which his neighbor claims is the visage of the Big Man himself. Henry, an unfriendly atheist, or at least a-miracleist, just wants to be left alone to wallow. Deep plot ensues!
Wilson, looking like a less-awesome version of Christian Bale, doesn’t really fill the role like perhaps he should. Sure, he’s sad. He rubs his eyes very convincingly as if to say, “My, what a troubled life I lead.” But the shine wasn’t quite there.
The plot progresses as Henry is forced to deal with mounting interest in his wall. And it is here, dear reader, where I begin to spoil the movie.
SPOILERS! SRSLY!
So, the Miracle Wall of Jesus’ Face begins to exhibit all sorts of miraculous qualities- bleeding, healing people, all the standards. But cynical Henry can’t bring himself to touch the wall- he believes hope can’t heal you.
And, hey, wait. He’s right. Hope CAN’T heal you. Sure, there’s the placebo effect and all that. But the message of the movie ends up being “have faith in miracles.” And, friends, I am sorry, but I prefer to make my own luck. I’ll take laser surgery over a wall any day.
The Terrible Thing turns out to be a rare disease that will kill Henry in the near future. He continues to refuse to touch the wall, even as crowds form, and the Church proclaims it an official miracle. Finally, in destroying the wall, he accidentally grasps the pieces in his exhaustion. A soft-focus “miracle moment” follows.
The house collapses, and Henry is “reborn” out of the rubble- he’s just fine, the disease is gone! Didn’t see that coming!
It turns out he never had the disease in the first place. Lawsuit, anyone? But the message of the movie remains clear: if you hope enough, everything will turn out just great.
A nice thought, but simply false.
This blog post comes to you via my fancy-pants Sprint Instinct, a.k.a. the Sprint IwishIhadaniPhone.
I’m on the late-night Lollapalooza express train out of Chicago, which is packed with tired, smelly scenesters and a few very sorry Chicagoans. The kids across the aisle are debating the philosophical merit of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. The books, by the way, are “totally better than the movies, dude”.
We could do an act-by-act review of Lollapalooza, but you already missed it, so what’s the point? Instead, let’s go over a couple of acts you must not miss when you go to Virgin Fest this weekend in Baltimore (you are going, right?).
Chromeo is the coolest/only pop-funk electro throwback (?) band I have experienced. The duo had the crowd chanting “Chro-me-o, whoa-oh,” Wizard of Oz style, before they even took the stage. The band accompanies every funky beat and absurd lyric with an eye wink or an elbow jab, but the music is still fantastically enjoyable. Catch them at the dance tent on Sunday at Virgin Fest. [Sorry, no keytar picture right now. I’m on my phone, sheesh.]
Gogol Bordello’s live shows are about as close to a musical orgy as one can get. Although “gypsy punk” sounds completely unpossible, they pull it off, and they pull it off well. Gogol’s stage antics have made them legendary, and you will see why, if you aren’t completely consumed by the crowd’s almost riotous dancing (as I was).
Ok, yeah. Kanye was there. He’s pretty good. Fun show. He also seems to believe he is in the running for Emperor of the Universe and Commander of all Souls.
Although he won’t be at Virgin Fest, Girl Talk, which consists solely of DJ Greg Gillis, provided me with my bass fix for the weekend. His is among the most physically intense shows at Lollapalooza (save Rage Against the Machine), with the crowd nerly suffocating itself. I won’t spoil all the surprises: go see him yourself in October at Sonar.
The newest stoner movie comes to us in the form of Pineapple Express, (Rated R, 111 min. Out Aug. 6) with Seth Rogen bandleading and James Franco along for the ride. (Or, in this still, the reverse.)
I expected this movie to be a slew of “Dude, I am sooooo high” jokes. I even had a pad of paper handy, tallying such ribs. Surprisingly, there ended up being only about four. Sure, plenty more weed jokes, but not just giggling stoners for two hours. In an unrelated tally, there were three genitalia jokes that I counted.
What I should have been tallying was the body count. I wasn’t keeping track, but something like three dozen people are violently dispatched in this film. It’s very over the top, Rambo-style violence, where a character with no cover confronts and eliminates several opponents with an automatic rifle. I suppose it was supposed to be funny, this sort of violence, but it didn’t really seem to fit. As you can see in the professional graph below, Pineapple Express is an outlier in the Hilarity v. Body Count continuum. Click for full size.
That being said, the rest of the movie, was, in fact, hilarious- if you are willing to get into the proper mindset. No, most of the jokes don’t require a lot of prefrontal firing. But there were enough clever lines to keep me laughing throughout.
Not much is to be said about the acting. I think “mid-20’s loser” and “drug dealer friend” are staples for community college acting classes. Franco, the aforementioned drug dealer, pulled it off well, and had his share of laugh-alouds. Rogen ties up Franco’s character after accidentally witnessing a murder, placing the two of them in the middle of a drug war. The movie follows their bumbling attempts to escape their own deaths.
There is also a teenage girlfriend, whose “mature” relationship with Rogen’s character is unsatisfyingly resolved. But this oversight is forgivable in a movie that takes itself without any seriousness. A seemingly immortal drug underlord provides the ultimate proof that this movie does not take itself seriously in any sense.
Go spend your nine bucks. Just don’t forget to turn off your brain first- using your own favorite (legal) method.
On Friday, the $25,000 Sondheim Artscape Prize was awarded to Geoff Grace, one of six finalists for the award. In the art world, this was apparently a Pretty Big Deal. There was a fancy ceremony at the BMA, with a local TV celebrity (with whom I am much too indie to be familiar) presiding. Grace accepted the award meekly, to the hoots of what were presumably his friends in attendance. He seemed like a likeable enough fellow, so I was satisfied at that time with the judges’ decision.
After the ceremony, we were invited to view the artists’ pieces for ourselves in a special exhibition. All six finalists were given ample space in the museum to showcase their work.
Now, I’m pretty accepting when it comes to art. If you look up “pretentious bastard,” you find “college newspaper arts editor.” However, Grace’s installation it’s the linger, not the long was completely beyond me. Several life-sized clay drawings of giraffes were intermixed with scores of metal cogs, framed photos of seemingly random objects, and sketches of circles. I couldn’t even decipher any meaning after reading the accompanying few paragraphs on the information placard.
My favorite was Becky Alprin, who creates amazingly detailed sculptures that bring to mind topographic maps. Each of the remaining four artists had widely varying styles, ranging from works on handmade paper to enormous sculptures composed of rolled-up newspaper.
It was an interesting event- made much, much more interesting by the free wine and hors d’ouvres.
The exhibition is right on campus, and free, and showcases some pretty good stuff…
I was all excited to review “101 Wines: Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World” by Gary Vaynerchuk. See, what happens is, publishers contact us (that’s the News-Letter Arts team, codename Inferno) about books they think college students might like, and if we think they will too, we get a copy and review it.
This book is written exactly for me. It goes over the wines in a way that was easy to understand, even though I wouldn’t know a Pinot Grigio from a Shar-Pei. The author is almost negatively pretentious, and he stresses drinking wines that you like- not expensive wines, or wines from some specific region in France, or whatever.
So I picked out a couple of wines and headed over to The Wine Source in Hampden– the place to go for wine. The people there were very friendly and ultra-knowledgeable. I talked to the on-duty wine expert, who absolutely dazzled me with her extensive wine knowledge base.
To my great disappointment, they only carried about four of the wines listed in the book. How is this book going to “Bring Thunder” if it can’t even recommend me a couple wines that would be available in a wine megastore? The Wine Source expert was similarly confused- where does this Vaynerchuk get off pushing these hard-to-find wines?
With a little digging, we find that Mr. Vaynerchuk has a bit of an agenda. Clever, clever Gary owns wine stores in northern Jersey. And, you guessed it, carries nearly all of the wines listed in his book. What was originally an exciting prospect that involved me drinking as much wine as possible, turned into a crushed dream. The tattered remnants of my soul flap heavily in the wind.
Scene
Did you miss the Ladytron show last week at Sonar? Don’t worry about it too much, it was a bit low-energy: the crowd seemed more tranced than pumped. The afterparty was where the crowd got its $15 worth. Any time you see the words “dance party” on a Sonar flyer, you probably ought to go. A bass-thumping, stage-dancing, drunk-falling good time is guaranteed. This week’s big event is Friday’s Indepen-dance Day party, which Sonar predicts will fill all three of its rooms. The fun continues on Saturday night, but will be confined to the club room. Get your tickets in advance at www.sonarbaltimore.com
Music
Hey, did you hear? Coldplay released a new album this summer (you know how I know you’re gay?). Okay, but so did Sigur Ros, and Beck’s latest effort, released next Tuesday, is worth a listen for all you fans of the eccentric performer. It’s a little less electro-beepy than the last album, but it’s still got that classic Beck sound.
Theater
Strand Theater opens its doors on July 17 for its first production, “Non Stop Realism.” The theater group thinks that men currently dominate that Baltimore theater scene, and they seek to change that. I haven’t any idea if that is true or not, but if you want to go see their stab at a female-backed play, check out http://strandtheatercompany.org for tickets. Or, if you’re skeptical, check back here in a couple of weeks for a review.
Art
Feeling pretentious? Great. Me too. The newly-renamed Definition Gallery will be opening its exhibition “Nature and Geometry: New Works by Michael Marshall, David Peterson and Brendan Murphy” on July 11th. Go to www.definitiongallery.com for more info, or go directly here for a preview of the works that will be on display.
For a change of pace today, let’s take a glance at some moving pictures and preview an upcoming show.
A scene from Menged
African Film Festival National Traveling Series
The Baltimore Museum of Art
Feb. 2-3
African film generally comes to America in disguise. Films directed by African directors with African actors- whether sub-Saharan, north African, white, black- rarely arrive outside of film festivals in the United States, though they are usually snapped up much quicker in Western Europe where, slightly sheepishly, countries like Belgium and France screen them, with critics assuring viewers to see this willingness as an act of confrontation with the colonial era. While this limited release has led films like Waalo Fendo and the canon of Ousmane Sembene to become hits- at least in art houses- throughout Europe, they become cool catchphrases to mention in certain circles of American film gurus but little else. Instead, America has become very good at producing its own version of Africa- from Blood Diamond to Hotel Rwanda, Tears of the Sun to The Gods Must Be Crazy. Invariably these star ennobled whites, Americans, journalists, or aid workers alongside the morally upright African male- perhaps Djimon Honsou- or the crazed bloodlust-driven African genocidaire. To say that the Hollywood version of Africa is any more disingenuous than, say, the Hollywood version of funny, oversexed Italians or World War II battles is probably saying too much. But, contrary to Italy or the greatest generation’s war, Africa remains more or less unknown to the average American- largely through no fault of their own.
So the Baltimore Museum of Art’s annual screening of a traveling collection of African cinema is worth paying attention to, if only to clear up the embarassingly common misconception that Africa is a single country. While it’s safe to say that the films presented here- from the critically beloved Juju Factory- in which a Congolese immigrant is roped into a book deal dedicated to ‘introducing’ his homeland to Western visitors- to Les Saignantes- which stands as one of Africa’s first sci-fi movies- err on the side of the artistic, they make no bones about presenting a clear-eyed version of a place, a culture, and a vibrant individualism that, if nothing else, will add a new dimension to Hollywood’s square African peg.
There have always been those artists- like bus drivers, politicians, ditch diggers, and bankers- that would be great company over a beer. Many of us would look toward the past and choose a ‘master’ like Picasso or Matisse and watch them smoke and sketch on cocktail napkins. Choosing a drinking buddy from the ranks of today’s artists would perhaps prove a thornier challenge. One of my preliminary votes might be a photographer whose show arrives in Baltimore courtesy of S.C. Lord Design in Clipper Mill near the Jones Falls.
Gloves and Gun by Cameron Wolf
Cameron Wolf: Retrospective
Through March 1, 2008
S.C. Lord Design
3000 Chestnut Avenue
Studio 341
Cameron Wolf takes the obvious comparisons to Robert Mapplethorpe’s fetishism and turns them on their head. He does this primarily by cloaking his models in black leather and then taking the traditional symbols of sexuality and fetish and making them stand for something entirely different. Wolf is an AIDS activist, researcher, and student from the Bloomberg School of Public Health and now  works as a field coordinator for regional AIDS prevention in Thailand for USAID, so needless to say his photographs say something slightly more sweeping than the black leather and symbols of erotic fetishism that appear on the surface. Artists often play with profane symbols- Roy Lichtenstein’s Benday dots memorialized legion of comic strips- and Wolf does the same, taking the traditionalism of fetish- yeah, it’s been around for a while- and brings it an uncomfortable undercurrent. Needless to say, if Wolf’s photographs are any indication, he would have some stories to tell that would leave you thinking over your drink. He’s a good guy, as well: proceeds from his show benefit AIDS organizations in Baltimore.
Politics is far from necessary for art to singe itself into an audience’s brain, but it sometimes helps. While Rembrandt hardly suffered from a lack of Hillary ‘08 paraphenalia hidden amongst his chiaroscuro backgrounds, Faith Ringgold or Robert Mapplethorpe did little to hide their politics and were respected- as well as demonized, feared, boycotted, and taunted- for it. In Locust Point’s Gallery Imperato, an exhibit neatly demonstrates how both politicization and introspection can, in the hands of two different artists, lead to equally engaging art- by focusing on a subject dear to our hearts. Actually, a subject largely responsible for the continual fuctioning of our hearts.
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Photo Cells No. 63 by Laura McClanahan
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Newts and Fishes by Gwyneth ScallyÂ
Sub-Merge: Laura McClanahan and Gwyneth Scally
Gallery Imperato
Through Feb. 16
921 E. Fort Ave.
McClanahan goes for the microscopic, for the cellular, for a sense of pulsing and movement, Scally’s interests lie in the blob, the placenta-like form, and the whimsically political. One teaches art, the other calls herself a “political surrealist.” Yet Gallery Imperato sees a likeness in their work, and it doesn’t take the exhibit notes to make it plain. The theme of water is everywhere- it’s the medium that McClanahan uses to create her photographs and videos- recording the weird permutations of liquid and light on photographic paper (a previous series featured her intensive photographs of a miasma of fluids from a car wash)- and the source material for Scally’s cartooning, where politicians, pop culture stars, and headline icons dance among the bodies of primeval sea jetsam. With McClanahan’s photographs looking like little confused bits of DNA or flushes of kelp- both things that exist within a sort of watery ether- and Scally’s artwork redolent with jellyfish- most notably a life-size sculpture with draping tendrils and gossamer head- the comparisons to a biology textbook- which the exhibition hints at with coy flirtations with evolutionary controversy- are quick and easy to make. Like van Rijn and Ringgold before them, however, these two artists, through their clever constructions and sense of space, create work that will ultimately transcend the everyday flotsam and will carry a much more lasting appeal. Our bodies are, after all, 80% water. We biologically know what we like, and both McClanahan and Scally tap into that less than conscious desire.
Art can be a conveniently agreeable way to remind us that if we take time with the things we do with our hands, they tend to turn out better. While thinking about this, I moved my hands four times, to open a magazine, get a drink, sharpen a pencil, and type. Three typos later, I reminded myself of the fruits of well-paced labor on display in two exhibits under one roof in Baltimore’s Goya Contemporary, near the Jones Falls.
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Amber River Triptych by Soledad Salame. Mixed media.
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Queensboro Bridge, New York by Evelyn Hofer. 1964.Â
Soledad Salame: New Geographies
Evelyn Hofer: Photographs
Goya Contemporary Gallery
Until Jan. 26
Mill Center, Studio 214
3000 Chestnut Ave.
Salame hails from Chile, but makes her home in Baltimore, where she contributes set designs to the Baltimore Opera and works as a full-time mixed-media artist. Her ‘New Geographies’ is a trademark display of her work and perhaps some of the thought behind it, although its truly more fun to immerse your eyes in the sheer weight of the thick, layered canvases than perhaps try to understand them. Oriented always toward the organic, the fluid, and the wet, Salame’s paintings seem the result of a sort of composting of mixed media, with the breaking wave articulated in big swathes of paint but running rich with accents. These are the sort of details that are made for the eyes to appreciate before the brain- catching glimpses of black and brown, patterns, textures- scaliness, curliness, waviness, the -esses that our eyes catch and our gray matter can’t really understand. Her titles- like “Water Movement”, “Amber River”, and “Rapids” help us to process what we are seeing, and force our ever-analytical bits to try to piece together sky, river bed, sand, and water. But ultimately Salame’s careful layering- like those transparent diagrams of soil, bedrock, and roots that elementary schools rely on to teach kids about the carbon cycle- leave us mystified as to the plan behind the process, and the relentless attention to detail- and patience- that makes it work. These are not easy paintings to digest- like Anselm Kiefer’s encrustations, they seem like confusingly alive forms- but then again, they were not easy paintings to make.
 Evelyn Hofer, also on display at the Goya Contemporary, was a photographer active in the 1950’s and 60’s, taking street portraits and publishing retrospectives on life in New York and Washington D.C. with V.S. Pritchett, before becoming a fashion photographer in the 1970’s. Her work on display has the vivid color that seems to be the hallmark of photography from that period, and many of her portraits- which are admirable in themselves- take the tones and shadows that make black and white dynamic and ramp them up into color, without losing any of the drama. It takes a deft hand to accomplish this and a breathtakingly complicated process known as dye transfer- which, predictable in the digital age, all but died out in 1994 when Kodak pulled the plug on its darkroom product line- that composites three separate frames of magenta, cyan, and blue and a black overlay to create a final image. In a way, Hofer’s photographs look so good for precisely the same reason that Salame’s paintings thrill the eye: they took a considerable amount of patience to create.
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