The art of recording music has been born and revolutionized time after time in just the last century and a bit. One man, with a beautiful heart and a soul that was simply musical, is little known to the lovers of modern music but made undisputable contributions to several of those revolutions and helped give us an amazing amount of many different types of hugely popular music.

Tom Dowd and the Language of Music is a loving biography of that man, made in the months before Dowd passed away, during a time when he was still making new music with modern talent in his mid-70s. He began as a recording engineer when Atlantic Records was founded in the late ’40s, built the first real commercial stereo and multi-track studios and took to the computerized studios of the ’90s and later like he was born to it.

Who did Dowd record? Jazz and R&B artists like John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Otis Redding. And rockers, man did he work the board magic for rockers: Eric Clapton (both The Cream and Derek and the Dominos), The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Young Rascals, The Drifters, Bobby Darin, Dusty Springfield, Rod Stewart and Cher. So many more, just an awesome discography.

There isn’t too much detail about the technical aspects of what Dowd did, though he does go back to the original Layla tapes and give a little taste of how the individual tracks fit together in the mix. Some discussion of his pioneering work in stereo and multi-track recording. Lots of interviews with artists he worked with–Clapton talks about believing so much more in Dowd’s musical instincts than his own and Gregg Allman cannot say enough about Dowd as a man. Plus his important partners at Atlantic Records, his boss and company founder Ahmet Ertegun, producer Jerry Wexler and protege Phil Ramone.

A sweet taste of the last half century of music. A portrait of a man who was a key piece of connective tissue across musical eras and genres.

Recommended

A lot of people liked this movie. Not enough for it to make a profit but a lot of, um, the right people, the cool people, the people who were into the post-NewWave English music scene of the early ’80s. For them Twenty Four Hour Party People is a trip home, I guess, but for me wasn’t even worth finishing. I couldn’t connect with the dark humor and not being a fan of Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge TV character nor the bands involved (Joy Division, New Order) so I hit the delete button after about 45 minutes.

not recommended

At first I was confused but after a few minutes realized that This Boy’s Life isn’t A Bronx Tale even though they both came out in 1993 and co-star De Niro– for some reason I though DiCaprio, who is in today’s flick, also played De Niro’s son in the other but he doesn’t. Lillo Brancato was the actor in A Bronx Tale.

Simple plot here, set in the late ’50s: Single mom and her teen son move around a bunch looking for opportunity and wind up in Seattle where somehow she meets a car mechanic who lives in a tiny town several hours drive away. They date a bunch and he’s just so charming, nice to her friends, friendly to her son. Meanwhile the boy’s getting in trouble time after time.

Solution? Boy moves up to live with the mechanic, who has three teenage children of his own (though we never learn where the mother is or went), and get straightened out. If the trial goes well, the adults will marry. They do and, of course, the mechanic is not quite so nice and charming. To sum up: he keeps telling the boy that “I’ll either cure you or kill you.”

Given that this film is based on the autobiography (best seller, written years later) of the son, DiCaprio’s character, I can’t say the story isn’t realistic. But like so many movies based on true stories, it isn’t great either. De Niro is terrific, Barkin and DiCaprio aren’t bad and that’s the best I can say for it.

not recommended

With the film successes of Tommy and Quadrophenia in the bank, Pete Townsend and Company capitalized with The Kids Are Alright. While the first two were ‘real’ films, with plots and everything, this one is more a collection of film clips and interview bits massaged together–if Kids came out 15 years later it would have been an MTV special or DVD release. But if you’re a Who fan, this is well worth the time to see and enjoy. Lots of classic tunage, including a great and revealing live version of Shout and shimmy and nicely done recording studio footage of then-new Who Are You, and some primo Moon looniness topping.

Recommended

When most of us think of the ’60s and the hippies these days, we remember San Francisco’s Summer of Love, the scene in Greenwich Village, or the Mods in London but not too much about the little pockets that surfaced all around the country. Like one that just happened to root for awhile in Stockbridge, Masachuesetts. Ray and Alice Brock, who’d taught some exceptional students at a nearby school, bought Trinity Church there in 1964 and made it into a place where their friends and former students could hang out and explore themselves.

So when Arlo Guthrie, son of famed folksinger Woody, found himself booted from college and at loose ends the next year, he hitched rides and made his way there. Alice also opened her restaurant in town and Arlo recorded a quick ditty for a radio commercial; that later became the chorus of his most famous song:

You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.
Walk right in it’s around the back.
Just a half a mile from the railroad track.
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.

But then came the infamous Thanksgiving dinner that ended up causing so much hullabaloo. As depicted in the film, the dozens in attendance had a wild, wonderful time, full of love and happiness, with Vietnam and the world’s other troubles far, far away. Really, the problems were all afterwards, when Arlo and a friend packed up all the garbage they’d made into his VW Microbus and went looking for a place to dump it. Then, thanks to Offier Obie, a blind judge, and a building full of military madmen Guthrie encountered during his draft physical, he was able to turn it all into a classic folk story song, perhaps the greatest of that decade and surely better than any I’ve heard since.

Hollywood, of course, couldn’t resist such an obvious low hanging fruit. They made a deal to have Arlo star as himself, brought in a name director (Arthur Penn), and threw something together fast, clearly made in a haze of sweet smoke. A movie so bad it was almost good but, to be honest, not really. Yet still enjoyable if you can ignore the soap opera subplot and focus on Arlo’s antics and the inserted for the movie scenes with his dying dad. Woody (played by a semi-anonymous actor) lays flat out on a hospital bed and never moves, he’s too far gone with Huntington’s Chorea. James Broderick, Matthew’s dad and the only well-known actor in the cast, plays Ray; his professionalism shows and stands out almost as an oddity in this bunch of amateurs.

The efforts of Arthur Penn, a director generally held in high regard and coming off his Oscar nomination for Bonnie and Clyde, are barely noticeable throughout the film. As Charles Tatum, writing on the eFilmCritic site, says, there are really only two scenes where Penn seems to be actually working sober: the very last shot, of Alice standing in front of the church with a sad look on her face watching Arlo drive off as the camera swings around the yard, the trees occasionally cutting in front of her and Shelley’s funeral, featuring only an extremely young Joni Mitchell standing among the mourners, playing her guitar and singing her Song of the Aging Children.

Here you go, the lyrics and tab. Arlo’s semi-official website used to have the full 30+ minute performance for free download but not any more. I looked through Google but couldn’t find any free sites that have the whole song. Which is too bad because it’s a lot of fun to hear and it really isn’t in the movie.

Worth watching, a semi-authentic look at ’60s hippy life.

This movie is an excellent example of absurdity; possibly one of the best movie examples of the genre in many years. I greatly enjoyed Confessions of a Dangerous Mind though in order to be complete I should say that the buddy I went with was bored. Since I was laughing about every third minute I can’t explain his reaction.

Sam Rockwell, to me, is the key to this film. He does an amazing job of filling the skin of a real man, one familiar to most of us from when he hosted The Gong Show, bringing out a constant level of jittery energy. Chuck Barris, the man Rockwell plays, not only hosted that lunatic’s asylum, he also created many other fine examples of 1960s and ’70s game shows including The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game. But in his “unauthorized autobiography” and the interviews he gave that form the basis for this film, Barris also claims to have lead a double life as a contract killer for the CIA.

Besides Rockwell, the other really strong performance here is from Drew Barrymore as his longtime girlfriend and eventual wife. Talk about long suffering, Barrymore’s Penny goes frmo an early free love advocate to a love-sick puppy who can barely abide Barris’ inability to commit to a permanent, loving relationship. Though she does look fairly chunky throughout, a definite disappointment though perhaps(?) reflective of the real woman. George Clooney and Julia Roberts have the other two major roles but neither brings sufficent life to their parts; Clooney especially seems to think a cheesy mustache is enough to overcome a perpetual monotone. Roberts has a couple of scenes in which she could have done so much more: after her first encounter with Rockwell, when they make love in West Berlin, and when she meets Barrymore while chastising Rockwell for standing her up (so he can dine with Drew). As for her death scene, forget about it. Puh-lease is the correct response, I believe.

Perhaps, you might say, Clooney’s acting was not all it could be because he was so focused on directing for the first time. How does he do there? Not bad, but not great. The staging and pacing are just okay; I did like the way he put together both scenes Rockwell has with Rutger Hauer. The main credit, though, must go to scriptwriter Charlie Kauffman, who has come out of nowhere (TV shows like Ned & Stacey and Get a Life) to just rock Hollywood with the scripts for Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and now this–watch out for his next effort, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I think even the studio execs are scared of what amazing weirdness would happen if they ever let Kauffman direct!

No one I know of believes that Barris was a hitman for the CIA. My buddy suggested that all the scenes involving that aspect of his life were Beautiful Mind-like hallucinations with Clooney playing the Ed Harris role. My own theory is not so dissimilar but caused more by Barris’ actual childhood troubles such as his mother dressing him as a girl until, after several years later, his sister was born and a feeling of guilt he carried for having caused the death of a stillborn twin from his umbilical cord wrapping around the other’s neck in the womb. Probably some chemical imbalances thrown in for good measure.

All these troubles just bubble along under the surface, hardly seen in his daily life by those near him, until his shows are cancelled at the end of the ’70s. Then he snaps, on air during the taping of the last Gong Show. After nearly drowning in this disease he finds relief (cure?) in writing this autobiography. Not quite cured, though he is able to finally marry Penny and live quietly. Good for him.

Trivia note: Did you know George Clooney is exactly two days younger than me? The only movie star that IMDB shows as sharing my birthday is Mary Beth McDonough, who played the middle daughter on the Waltons.

Definitely recommended

A John Williams composition that sounds more like Henry Mancini and a cartoonish title animation that’s heavily reminiscent of the Pink Panther’s set a breezy tone for Steven Spielberg’s Christmas Candy confection, Catch Me if You Can. They’ve even recreated the old game show What’s My Line? with our boy as the mystery guest. But unlike the candy, this film is not just sweet empty calories but a terrific entertainment; quite a surprise since most recent movies based on true stories, as this one is, are terrible.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Frank Abagnale Jr., an extremely smart 16 year old from the New York City suburbs who freaks out when his parents (Christopher Walken and Nathalie Baye) split up. Instead of choosing a parent to live with, Frank runs away. He begins to impersonate almost anyone, starting with airline pilots, and to forge checks and other useful documentation. Smart or not, one bit that shouldn’t have been left out is how someone his age learned how to do this.

After awhile–long enough for the boy to scam enough to buy his bankrupt dad a new Cadillac–he attracts the attention of Carl Hanratty of the FBI’s Bank Fraud squad. This is a very interesting role for Tom Hanks, quite opposite the killer of Road to Pertition. Hanratty is the quintessential workaholic, he’s left his (since remarried) wife and young daughter behind, and is even in the office when Abagnale calls him on Christmas. 15 years ago Hanks made a Dragnet movie and he, without going over the top, almost takes Dan Ackroyd’s Joe Friday as his model for this role.

The con, and the pursuit, go on, with the capture almost made time after time. What drives Hanratty the most seems to be his inability to outwit a teenager. Spielberg emphasizes this by coming back, again and again, as Hanratty asks Abagnale how he cheated to pass the bar exam in Louisiana; this just doesn’t seem to be something that the boy could talk his way through. After his stint as a co-pilot who never actually takes the controls, our hero decides to settle down for awhile as a doctor in Georgia–he talks his way into a supervisory position that doesn’t require him to put hands on a patient.

While there he meets and falls for a lovely blonde (Brenda, played by Amy Adams) and, although the audience never sees this, presumably senses that his time is running short. He asks Brenda to marry him, she is all over the idea, and they’re off to visit her parents. Daddy’s (Martin Sheen) a district attorney in New Orleans, so Abagnale mentions he has a law degree in addition to his M.D. and sure enough the next month he’s working as an assistant DA.

But all good things, the vision of familial love he so desires and sees in the Strongs, are illusory to an 18 year old. Hanratty has tracked him down to the huge engagement party the Strongs put on and he has to run. He wants to take the girl with him but she’s too weak and he flees to Europe in the company of eight comely young wanna-be stewardesses. The chase needs to conclude and so we aren’t shown the escapades on the Continent, just told that there is more than enough to get Hanratty on a plane to France for a final confrontation.

Interspersed through the film have been short scenes of Abagnale’s French prison and flight back to America courtesy of Uncle Sam. Arriving at LaGuardia Airport, he makes one more escape only to find that the reason for all of his efforts the past three years have been for nothing, and just like with Humpty Dumpty, the pieces couldn’t be put back together again. To be honest, I would have ended the movie right there, with DiCaprio running on the tarmac, but the story continues as we see imprisonment and eventual redemption by using his understanding of bank fraud as an employee of the FBI.

Another change I would have made, to cut Catch Me from 140 minutes to 100: The movie opens with over 30 minutes of buildup to his departure, which does give us a very solid grounding in our protagonist and his motivation, but one thinks a director as skilled as Spielberg could have cut this act in half without sacrificing any clarity. Certainly, one can’t hold the screenwriter, Jeff Nathanson too accountable–this is his first serious production, since I would barely count Rush Hour 2 and Speed 2 not at all.

One observation: DiCaprio is great as Abagnale but I wonder just how long he’ll be able to get away with playing teenage roles. His next part, not yet in production is the title character in Baz Luhrman’s Alexander the Great. Much of the meat of the story takes place before the Macedonian king’s 21 birthday.

Definitely recommended

Woody Allen’s 1999 release, Sweet and Lowdown is the portrait of a man to whom everything comes so easy that he is unable to appreciate any of it until reality turns him smack around. Makes one wonder if, or how closely, Allen identifies with this character.

Sean Penn, who takes roles I can’t appreciate all too often, plays this man, adrift in the 1930s, a virtuoso guitarist who keeps reminding people he is probably the second greatest player in the world, only that gypsy Django Reinhardt ahead of him. Instead of putting his head down and seeing where his talent might take him, Penn’s Emmet Ray fritters away his time on schemes, alcohol, and emotions he is unwilling to understand or develop. Samantha Morton is also superb, playing his mute lover, going the whole movie without a word of dialog other than what she can convey with body language.

No doubt that the movie has a great soundtrack. Dick Hyman assembled an all-star line-up to make fresh takes on the sound of the small group swing era featuring guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli as the lead instrumentalist. Much of the music comes naturally in the structure of the film as being played by Ray’s combo, rather than just being background to other scenes.

Allen is, to my mind, one of the top five American moviemakers in my lifetime. In Sweet and Lowdown, he gets away from his obsession with young women to return to a time he adores and writes a complex, meaningful character. In many interviews he has expressed a certain level of dissatisfaction with his work; even this month when he was honored with a major European lifetime achievement award he called himself a mediocre artist. So there is some truth to my thought that Emmet Ray is a commentary targeted at himself, though I believe in the last 10 or so years Allen has learned to be satisfied with who he is and what he’s done (so perhaps all his years of therapy did pay off).

I was a little disappointed in the ending, it was not as conclusive as I would prefer. But Allen’s own life, his career, has not yet ended so perhaps he isn’t ready to write that scene.

Recommended

Wow, this was a weird movie, the kind you watch and then ask yourself where the fuck did writer/director/lead actor Eric Schaeffer come up with this? Wirey Spindell is an autobiography of someone named Wirey Spindell, the child of hippies, a kid who doesn’t make it to age seven without becoming a sexual predator, who shuttles from school to divorced parent to elsewhere, always fueled by drugs, alcohol, and sex. Until, in college, he realizes that he either stops or dies. And so he goes into rehab and gives up the toxins…and the sex. Until he meets the lovely Callie Thorne (who was a detective towards the end of Homicide: Life on the Streets). Schaeffer tells this story through flashbacks, with three actors playing his younger self, until we get back to the present. Let’s just pray this wasn’t his autobiography.

Recommended if you like weird artsy films

Heath Ledger goes a little over the top in this fictional biography called A Knight’s Tale. Gleefully filled with anachronisms, imagine one of the better teen flicks of recent years (such as Ledger’s own 10 Things I Hate About You) set eight or nine hundred years ago. The locals know the words to Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and dance to Bowie’s “Golden Years.” The tournaments of knights go from town to town and lead up to a World Championship, sort of like a WWF without the scripting.

One of writer/director Brian Helgeland’s amusing creations is using Geoffrey Chaucer (yes, he of the Canterbury Tales) as a kind of PR flack/herald for Ledger’s character. Not to mention Chaucer (Paul Bettany) first appears to us nude after losing his clothes to a gambling addiction. Rufus Sewell is a very good baddie and Helgeland wisely makes no attempt to give him any redeeming qualities. Shannyn Sossamon makes her screen debut as the love interest and she is quite beautiful; not another generic blonde but also not too impressive in the, um, curves department.

The principals must have enjoyed working together quite a bit as Helgeland, Ledger, Sossamon, and Mark Addy (Ledger’s primary squire) have reteamed for The Sin Eater, a religious themed murder mystery due out later this year. Anyway, if you’re in the mood for something goofy, fluffy, and medieval, A Knight’s Tale is

recommended.