Stephen Malkmus/Jeff and Jack Lewis – 11/06/08 – Ancienne Belgique, Brussels

I was a Pavement fan back in high school (quite a few years ago now), but I never really got into singer/guitarist Stephen Malkmus’ solo stuff once the members of Pavement went their separate ways. So hearing that he was coming to play a gig in Brussels – and that he was being supported by Jeffrey Lewis, whose stuff I’ve liked for a couple of years – was great news: exposure to Malkmus’ solo material and I get to see Lewis perform live.

Jeff Lewis, for those who don’t know, is a New York-based singer/song writer. His songs tend to fall into two categories: slice of life songs about his life, and lessons on musical history, with the two sometimes dovetailing together, as in the fantastic Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror. He was performing with his brother, Jack, who provided bass guitar and backing vocals. The interaction between the two brothers and Jeff’s interaction with the audience were excellent, even if some songs (particularly those on musical history) tended to leave the crowd somewhat dumbfounded on how to react. His more slice-of-life and comedy based songs, such as If You Shoot the Head You Kill the Ghoul and The East River, garnered a better reaction, though I had a feeling that the audience couldn’t fully appreciate his storytelling abilities because of the linguistic divide. This may explain Jeff’s choice to include a large amount of visual techniques into his set. Jeff, also a comic artist, used his own work to illustrate one of his songs (Gentle Jim) and satirise an old Nirvana song (Sifting). Both great stuff.

To be honest, this was perhaps not Jeff’s best gig in terms of audience reaction (most people were there to see Malkmus, after all), but in terms of showmanship it was solid, and I enjoyed finally having an opportunity to see him live. It more than lived up to my expectations. Something that Stephen Malkmus utterly failed to do.

I think that Malkmus’ set may have been one of the worst gigs I’ve ever attended. Malkmus came out on stage, and proceeded to slowly crawl up his own arse. Let me explain that: what he performed cannot really be called songs, and only from a very forgiving point of view could be considered music. It was a long, dull, formless jam session. Mindless self-indulgence with little consideration for the people who’d paid to see him perform his songs. And this poses a particular problem in writing a review, as the old formulas like “he followed this with a rousing rendition of _______” and “wowed the audience with crowd pleasers such as _____ and _____” fail to be of any use when a set has no identifiable songs. During the gig, I thought that maybe he’d gone through some experimental prog phase that I wasn’t aware of, but I’ve listened to all his solo albums since then, and can safely say that what he performed on stage bears absolutely no relation to what’s on his albums. I didn’t want Pavement covers. But I did want to hear something representative of his solo work to see if it was worth buying (I just ended up downloading it instead, because I don’t want to give him any more of my money).

And based on audience reaction to his set, I’m not the only one who had this point of view. Most people stood stock still and looked on bemused as Malkmus wallowed in the mud of his own ego and produced pointless, unengaging noise. This was made worse by his complete failure to build any sort of rapport with the audience – he stared at his shoes and said as little as possible. The set was mildly redeemed by an encore which featured actual proper songs. But by then the mystified crowd had thinned out, and gathered around Jeffrey Lewis’ merch stand. Good for them!

Fantastic Four 2

I wasn’t really planning on writing a review on this film before I watched it, but it’s actually pretty good review fodder for a variety of reason. So...

I was pretty surprised when I heard that this sequel was in the works. The first film was competent but workmanlike, and primarily suffered from a misinterpretation of the basic premise of the Fantastic Four. Namely, it positions them as science fiction heroes rather than adventurers. It’s admittedly only a very vague distinction, but it nonetheless is a different subgenre. As the film stands, it belongs in the same group as Flash Gordon; the Fantastic Four should be more like Indiana Jones.

But the sequel is stuck with this interpretation, and tries to make the most of it. Unsurprisingly and logically given the above re-interpretation, the choice for our science heroes’ foe in this film is the Silver Surfer/Galactus combo. The image of the Silver Surfer lends itself to the screen, and the impressive CGI renders the character superbly. Galactus is only shown, however, as a swirling black cloud, which is probably for the best. His comic book design is preposterous and ugly. It was best avoided.

As for the plot, it varies widely. The basic idea of a galactic threat is handled well and Silver Surfer turning up as the herald, his subsequent bonding with Sue (who is still horribly miscast), and final sacrifice to save the planet is all fine. It’s in the peripherals that the film runs into problems. Principle amongst these is the return of Doom, the first film’s villain, without any explanation after his apparent death. The subplot with him stealing the Surfer’s board is embarrassing fanfic at best, though it does intersect with The Human Torch’s arc where he comes through for the team and stops going into business for himself, which at least ranks as character development. Of all the characters, The Thing is probably the one character who gets sidelined, but given that stories that focus on him tend toward the maudlin, perhaps that’s for the best.

The other aspect of the film that doesn’t sit well with me is the emphasis on the team as celebrities. This seems to me like an attempt the make it fit into the current reality TV and tabloid obsessed culture, and I feel making the film more timeless would have been a better strategy. Nonetheless, the film is superior to its predecessor. But still doesn’t come close to tapping the potential of the franchise.

Taichi Yamada: In Search of a Distant Voice

Taichi Yamada made his English language debut a few years ago with an excellent ghost story called Strangers, which dealt with a recent divorcee finding his dead parents alive and well. It was followed last year by this novel, which is actually taken from earlier in the writer’s career, having originally been published in Japanese in the mid-80s. It’s not even nearly as good as Strangers, but it does demonstrate a recent positive trend in Japanese literature in translation.

In Search of a Distant Voice is the story of Tsuneo, an immigration officer with a shady past who, as he begins preparations for an arranged marriage, starts to hear a woman’s voice. The voice becomes a haunting preoccupation for him to the point where it ruins his chances of marriage and he’s forced to take time off work. Once he confesses what happened when he was living in California, the mysterious woman agrees to meet with him.

Now, as an outline, that’s not a bad story – on paper it makes a decent supernatural thriller. Sadly, the execution is poor. The impetus of the story is governed by two major questions: ‘what happened in Tsuneo’s past?’ and ‘who is the woman?’, with an implicit link that there will be some sort of connection between the two that explains why Tsuneo can hear this voice, or why the woman is able to talk only to him. But ultimately, the revelation about Tsuneo’s past is anticlimactic. Now, this may be a cultural difference or just my broad pragmatic streak, but it’s nothing that shocking. To make matters worse, the mysterious woman’s identity is never revealed, and there no connection given between the two. It’s a potentially interesting plot chased down dead ends.

The other major interesting idea in the novel – the possibility that there is no voice and Tsuneo is just suffering from a mental illness - is dismissed, even though this would meld well with the revelation of his past, if it were revealed that he had post-traumatic stress syndrome. However, the novel goes out of its way to tell us that this voice does belong to another person, and then completely fails to provide a satisfactory denouement. One plus is that Tsuneo is a well-drawn character – an everyman at odds with his environment, as portrayed through the parallels between his current job and his situation while living in America. It’s a shame he finds himself stuck in such an ill-conceived plot.

But while the book isn’t wildly successful in its own right, it signifies a larger trend in Japanese literature in translation, and in literature in translation in general. Literature translated from other languages has long been regarded as intellectual. There are two major reasons for this. Firstly, many of the academics who work as literary translators on the side tend to turn there attention to more literary texts. Further, literary translation is a poorly paid enterprise and, particularly in Japanese literature, subsidies are awarded for translating more literary texts. These combined means that many of the works which are selected for translation into English are academic tomes with little interest for anyone outside of academia.

There are two results of this situation. Firstly, it’s very rare for a literary work in translation to be a commercial success, and as a result a publisher is hesitant when approached with any literature in translation. Secondly, it gives a skewed impression of foreign literatures: imagine if someone thought that English literature was just Austen, Dickens, Rushdie and other academic texts without King, Koontz, Asimov and all the other genre writers to set them off. The recent trend has seen more foreign genre literature being translated, making literature in translation, and the work of literary translators, more financially viable, and going a way to dispelling the myth that foreign literature is difficult, intellectual and impenetrable. So while In Search of a Distant Voice isn’t a particularly good story, I’m nevertheless glad it exists in English.

Tony Goldwyn: The Last Kiss

The Last Kiss was last year’s summer romantic comedy, and its biggest selling point was probably Zach Braff, better known as JD from good-but-getting-crappier-by-the-episode Scrubs. This is nothing like his work there.

I can understand Braff wanting to do something different with the three months of the year that he isn’t filming Scrubs, but this is truly an extreme antithesis. Scrubs is a fast-paced show with weird characters and hilarious cut-aways. The Last Kiss is… well, imagine a Kevin Smith film stripped of all the jokes and snappy dialogue, reduced to half speed and given an indy soundtrack, and you pretty much have it. Now, perhaps it’s not far to compare the film to the lead actor’s TV series, but that’s what most viewers are coming into this with a knowledge of, and the shift in gears is incredibly jarring.

But let’s look at the film on its own terms. It doesn’t bear up much better, but at least it’s fairer.

The film is the story of five couples, all having problems of various kinds: impending parenthood, current parenthood, a messy break-up, affairs, and a regular shag wanting a serious relationship. We stagger through scenes where not a lot happens and the characters are flat and not at all likable.

Admittedly, the film does have a point to make (basically, that relationships are hard), but it takes forever to make it, plodding through mundane moments in the lives of the stock characters, and smugly thinking it's cleverer than it really is. It has brief moments of genuine charm, but it could have really done with a bit more plot or more developed characters, or with losing about 30 minutes. As it stands, it’s a protracted a slightly pretentious film, likely to bore.

Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

I apologise for the extended dead air on the blog. I became quite apathetic to my job, and that apathy spread into my private life. I also dedicated a lot of time to watching stuff that really wasn’t interesting enough to review. I have a new job now, which isn’t nearly as boring as the last one, and so hopefully, this will be the first of a series of regular posts, as I have a pile of CDs and films to watch/write about, a few books that I’d like to get into, and I still haven’t done that analysis of The Dreamers which I was talking about ages ago.

But for now, let’s have a look at last year’s hit comedy Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. I hated it.

For those of you who don’t know, Borat is a creation of Sacha Baron Cohen (better known to most Brits as Ali G). He’s supposed to be from Kazakhstan and is in America to gather information on the country for the Kazakhstani government. Cue cultural misunderstandings as Cohen annoys people across an entire continent, and points out America’s faults in hilariously politically incorrect fashion.

I’m not a fan of political correctness by any means, but I think there are only special occasions when certain jokes should be made in a public forum, particularly jokes about Muslims and Jews. If these form part of some coherent critique or the expressing of a valid political point-of-view, I can understand it. But Borat isn’t a film with a political stance – it simply pokes fun at these targets for a cheap laugh, and I think that that’s a dangerous mentality and attitude when it comes to anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim sentiment: it renders the two acceptable by laughing off a very serious problem. Quite apart from that, the jokes aren’t even original. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Jews are greedy and want your money. Er, yeah...

Now, there’s some potential interest in the film as far as it being a snapshot of America, but even these insights lack depth, and don’t tell us anything we don’t already know: yes, the South is xenophobic and bigotted, frat boys are idiot man-sluts with all the rafinement of a boar, and Texas sucks. There’s a very cool scene with Borat and a group of black teenagers, who turn out to be the friedliest people in the film, totally toppling the stereotype. But Cohen’s aim isn’t to explore the culture, it’s simply to get a cheap laugh and run, and many potentially interesting scenerios and interviews are cut short because they’ve served that purpose.

If you want a politically incorrect comedy which actually makes an intelligent political point (and not one I necessarily agree with, but a thought-out political position nonetheless) try Team America: World Police. But avoid this crap.

The Tick TV Series

The Tick is a strange beast. It originally saw the light of day as a comic, which, as a medium, fitted perfectly with the premise. It is, after all, a superhero parody and as superhero stories are the dominant genre in American comics, it was a perfectly sensible melding of subject and media. When it was turned into a cartoon, the amalgam worked equally well, seeing as many comic superheroes had been adapted to Saturday morning TV, and the general reaction was a nod of agreement. (The cartoon being incredibly funny also helped greatly.) But when a live action version was announced, I couldn’t help but struggle with how it could possibly work.

This was because television has never leant itself to live action superhero programs, whether parodic or not. Let’s take a look at just a few of the low-budget entries – Batman, Wonder Woman, The Million Dollar Man. Arguments could be made that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was basically a superhero series, but while its popularity cannot be denied (and as much as I love Buffy), the series was very much a sanitised, mainstream-friendly version of the superhero genre, removing many of the more absurd genre trappings, possibly for the better. The Tick, as a spoof of superheroes, couldn’t take similar liberties when moving over to its new medium: in order to fully satirise the superhero genre, all the genre conventions, in all their ridiculous glory, had to be present. The notion of the resulting program raised suspicion and cynicism in my mind.

Sadly, the series didn’t last very long: only 9 episodes were made and 8 shown before Fox cancelled it, though frankly it's a surprise that they commissioned it at all. It’s been out on DVD for a while, and while the results are mixed, it’s certainly worth checking out simply as a curio.

The series opens with the Tick thwarting the evil schemes of a coffee machine at a bus station before he’s tricked into taking a bus to The City, where he meets Arthur, former accountant turned superhero sidekick, and they team up to battle a communist robot let loose by disgruntled postal workers and save Jimmy Carter. It’s brilliantly oddball stuff, with the Tick’s dialogue stealing the show, as shown with his confrontation with a coffee vending machine: "Empty your bladder of that bitter urine men call coffee… Java devil, you are now my bitch." Patrick Warburton’s deadpan performances here are to be applauded as he plays the character with just the right mix of stupidity and innocence.

One major problem, though, is the supporting cast. Not so much with the performances, which are solid given the material, but with the characters themselves. Arthur remains relatively true to the comic, but the comic’s Die Fledermaus and American Maid are reinvented as Batmanuel and Captain Liberty respectively, and neither character is very interesting. Both are turned into sitcom stereotypes, Batmanuel as an oversexed, Joey Tribiani-type character and Captain Liberty as an unlucky-in-love career woman. The only interesting thing about them is that they are rarely seen out of uniform, and neither are the Tick or Arthur. It's jarring at first, but them sitting around a table drinking coffee while wearing spandex makes for an interesting visual.

And I think that embodies what people didn’t like about the series. It blurs the line between two genres, the sitcom and the superhero action series, and the viewing public couldn't grasp the blend. This isn't helped by some of the plots of episodes which cover some very strange ground indeed for either of those genres.

Firstly, the aforementioned episode which never aired, somewhat unsurprisingly given Fox’s conservatism, deals with the Tick and Arthur’s relationship with obvious homosexual undertones. This is never any direct implication of the two being in a sexual relationship, but the allegory is pretty clear: Arthur’s mother and sister are worried about his choice to be a “sidekick” and have him institutionalised for his own good. The same hero/sidekick dynamic is used in another episode as an allegory for abusive relationships. But perhaps the strangest episode given the program's primetime timeslot is an examination of the difference between justice and law (in brief, they're not the same thing – the law is only an approximation of justice, and often acts as a hindrance to it), and the Tick’s trouble in accepting that the system isn't as perfect as his rose-tinted optimism thinks it is.

While I applaud the writers for these attempts to address some relevant and interesting social problems, I’m not sure that a primetime superhero sitcom is the place to do it, especially one which already has some huge hurdles to jump. I find the show absolutely hilarious, but I can also see exactly why it’s very much a failed experiment.

Kevin Smith: Clerks II

I’ve made my thoughts on Kevin Smith clear in a previous post. In a nutshell, I used to be keen on him, not so much now. And when I heard that he was making a sequel to what I consider his only good film, I was concerned that he’d somehow manage to ruin my happy memories of the original. So it was with a certain amount of dread, scepticism and schadenfreude that I downloaded and watched the film.

The film starts out by setting up a new status quo: after 10 years at the Quick Stop, Randall and Dante find themselves out of work when the place burns down. They end up working at Mooby’s, a fast food restaurant in the style of McDonald’s. Jay and Silent Bob are out of rehab and have found God, but are still dealing. Dante is engaged to some hot blonde and about to move down to Florida to start a new job and get married.

All this is established early on, and leaves Smith enough time and space to turn everything on its head. He introduces a complication with Dante’s one-night stand with his boss, and the whole film hinges on the question of what Dante will do. The answer is never really in doubt, but the twist ending is something completely unrelated and out of left field. As a piece of plotting, it’s very tight, but Smith has never been a filmmaker overly concerned with plot. People come to his films for the dialogue, and this film has some great moments.

Most of these are, of course, delivered by the awesome Randall Graves, played by the equally awesome Jeff Anderson. His various diatribes are fantastic, and his constant teasing of religious colleague Elias is often laugh-out-loud funny stuff. His reaction to Elias’ description of Pillow Pants and his recreation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as his attempt to take back the expression ‘porch monkey’ despite it being a racial slur are hilarious. Unfortunately, there are many less funny moments. As Mallrats proved, Smith doesn’t really have much of a sense for visual or slapstick comedy.

The great thing about the original Clerks film was that a lot of action had to take place of camera, principally due to budget restraints. In particular, I’m thinking of the necrophilic denouement. There is a similar scene here involving bestiality, but instead of taking place off camera, we get to see a lot more than I would have liked. Add to this that the joke wears thin very quickly once Randal realises there’s no woman involved, and I can only conclude that Smith find this far more amusing than I do. It simply goes on far too long to be funny.

In all, Smith manages to make a decent film. There are some genuinely funny moments, basically whenever Randal opens his mouth, and the plot and more especially the ending actually give a nice close to the franchise. So while certainly not on par with the original, at least Smith manages not to piss on his legacy.