A testbed for a new generation of 3D technology, U2 3D is no gimmick. One of the trailers was for the upcoming Scorsese-directed Rolling Stones concert movie and the difference was clear. Another trailer, by the way, was for a new 3D version of Jules Vernes’ classic SF novel Journey to the Center of the Earth and from the few minutes shown looks likely to be a bigger result than would be expected from yet another normal remake, even with Brendan Fraser as the star.

The 3ality technology made a qualitative difference for me, analogous to the difference between analog and HD TV. There were a few times, primarily when the overhead camera flew towards the stage over the crowd, that I was a bit overwhelmed, but in general the large,  spacious stage worked well. Their setup for this tour was a two level primary stage, mainly for The Edge’s electric piano setup at the left, with two long arms curving in towards each other 80 feet or so out from the main stage. Bono and Adam Clayton went out the arms into the heart of the audience the most but even Larry Mullen, Jr., got out their with a simple snare and cymbal kit for Sunday Bloody Sunday. The Edge, well, he’s an amazingly creative guitarist who rarely turns up in discussions of six string greats, though he ought to. I was quite amused to see him changing guitars for every song, with no repeats until at least the sixth song, and apparently believing that stomping his leg improves the output.

U2 don’t add any other musicians or backup singers, why should they when between them they create a huge walloping sound, and after 30 years have a quality relationship very few outfits can match–can you think of another band that has the exact same membership as the day their first record came out and is still producing the same high quality music?

The biggest negatives about U2 3D are that at 85 minutes the show is just not long enough–TS1 and I are big, big fans and 13 songs were about four or five too few–and there are no backstage scenes or anything but Route One performance footage. I would have liked to see a few minutes of what the band does immediately before running onto the stage.

The movie’s set list has few surprises; it was shot during the Vertigo tour (TS1 and I saw the San Jose show), in seven locations across South and Central America and Australia, though primarily in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1. Vertigo
2. Beautiful Day
3. New Year’s Day
4. Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own
5. Love and Peace or Else
6. Sunday Bloody Sunday
7. Bullet the Blue Sky
8. Miss Sarajevo
9. Pride (In the Name of Love)
10. Where the Streets Have No Name
11. One
12. The Fly
13. With or Without You

recommended

Alex Fletcher was one half of the creative force of ’80s British hair band PoP–think Andrew Ridgely of Wham but playing keyboards and doing more of the singing and songwriting–who sunk into the lowest rung of the oldies circuit after his better looking partner Colin went off to solo glory. Sophie Fisher is an aspiring writer of poetry and fiction who sunk into depression and substitute plant watering after her professor/lover diteched her when his fiance returned from sabbatical and then turned their affair into a bestselling novel with, of course, Sophie as the evil, talentless seductress.

Music and Lyrics is the charming story of the chance for Alex (Hugh Grant) and Sophie (Drew Barymore) to climb out of their holes when Alex is offered the opportunity to write a song called “Way Back Into Love” for hot young thing Cora Corman (Haley Bennett, making an impressive film debut). Fletcher, having been the composer to Colin’s lyricist in PoP, needs help since there are only three days to deliver and Sophie fortuitously mumbles some quality verse as she waters the plants in his apartment while he tries to work with a mercenary but successful lyricist.

Writer/director Marc Lawrence, who wrote several Sandra Bullock vehicles, such as Two Weeks Notice (his directorial debut, also co-starring Grant), Force of Nature and Miss Congeniality, does not stray terribly far from the well-worn romantic comedy path but does it well and has help from very good performances by the three lead actors as well as Brad Garrett (the current Fox sitcom ‘Til Death and Everybody Loves Raymond) as Alex’s manager and Kirsten Johnson (Third Rock from the Sun) as Sophie’s larger than life older sister/huge Alex Fletcher fan.

Lawrence opens the movie by showing us the video of PoP’s biggest hit from back in the day and trust me, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a big haired Hugh Grant prancing and singing in it. We’re watching the clip because Alex is at a reality TV show’s office as they want him to be a contestant in Battle of the ’80s Has Beens, in which two performers box for the chance to sing their old hit. He declines with some incredibly British wit, crisp enough that the producers don’t understand he’s turned them down until after the meeting. Garrett in turn cuts Grant down a notch with the news that several amusement parks and state fairs have cancelled his scheduled shows.

Out of the blue, Cora’s people call up with their offer. It turns out that she’s a huge Fletcher/PoP fan and wants a song from him for her new CD, a duet they can perform together. Getting there is the plot; of course they succeed, and fall in love too, but must overcome the usual obstacles.

Haley Bennet spends much of her screen time wearing incredibly skimpy costumes, showing a lot more skin than the least clothed photo I found on IMDB. In a sign that I’m truly aging, however, she really never got me excited. Ah well…
Adam Schlesinger of the band Fountains of Wayne provides most of the original music for the film, much as he did for the similar inside-the-biz That Thing You Do! (which I really ought to write up, having watched it again recently and very much enjoyed), though Grant, Barymore and Bennett do their own singing.

recommended

While the band was incredibly influential after blasting onto the rock stage in the early ’70s, the New York Dolls came along about two or three years too soon for me to really have gotten into them and by the time I might have the band splintered and David Johanson more or less spoiled things with his Buster Poindexter act. Not to mention I had second generation, “improved” versions in the form of the Clash, the Talking Heads and so on who took the raw inspiration of the Dolls and made it–let’s be honest–more radio friendly.

New York Doll is a documentary made in 2004 about Arthur “Killer” Kane, the Dolls’ bass player, by Greg Whiteley in the weeks leading up the band’s first reunion concert in nearly 30 years at the 2004 Meltdown Festival in London. Whiteley, a recent art school grad, had become friends with Kane through their membership in the Mormon Temple in Los Angeles and got the idea for the film after Arthur told him about the concert.

Its a small film, barely 85 minutes or so, with almost no production values, just a single camera pointed at whoever’s talking with a little footage of the old days and from the Meltdown shown cut in. Kane is the dominant character but not dominant himself, I felt like he was about at peace with the highs and lows of his life but that his life energy bank account was almost all drawn down. Meaning I was not surprised when, just three weeks after the big reunion concert, he died.

“Aging’s not for sissies” is a quote I heard years ago, apparently attributed to Lucille Ball though that’s not where I hard it, and Kane’s life is proof of it. At 21 he was riding high, literally of course from drugs and booze, just about becoming the next rock god, but at 31 he was in the gutter with no money, no skills, no friends. He got the chance to resolve the demons that plagued him after the band broke up, which is something quite rare.

A big part of this film’s appeal is that Whiteley doesn’t try and make a history of the Dolls. He doesn’t show us, for instance, how they came together or the details of their breakup but mainly shots of their flamboyant lifestyle and footage of their appearance on an episode of the BBC’s The Old Grey Whistle Test. Instead the camera follows Arthur on his bus rides to and from work–yes, the man is too broke to own a car… in Los Angeles–and comments from a few of his co-workers at the LDS Library of Family History and his bishops. Mainly we get Arthur, 30 years after he stopped wearing the makeup and dresses.

recommended

The latest marvel in computer animation, this movie has a couple of serious surprises: first, it delivers a powerful ecological message suitable to the kids who’re the primary audience; second, hot blonde Brittany Murphy shows off some powerful vocal talent on Boogie Wonderland and especially Queen’s Somebody to Love; and, third, director George Miller continues to march as far from his Mad Max roots as possible–his last picture was toddler-friendly Babe: Pig in the City. Happy Feet is a fine fictional compliment to both March of the Penguins and An Inconvenient Truth.

The story is fairly straightahead: Mumbles (Elijah Wood) is slightly damaged during incubation, so his singing voice is terrible, off-key and screetchy. In his village this is a big problem because everyone else is a fine singer and each penguin uses his or her own heartsong to attract the right mate. Mumbles’ parents, Memphis (Hugh Jackman, using a Presley-ish vocal with Heartbreak Hotel) and Norma Jean (Nicole Kidman, doing a nice version of Prince’s Kiss), try everything to fix his singing but to no avail.

Even his true love Gloria (Murphy) can’t get past it. Mumbles does have serious dancing skills, courtesy of Savion Glover and impressive motion capture software, but village elder Noah (Hugo Weaving, previously Agent Smith and Elrond) claims this is heresy likely to make their religious icon angry and only worsen the paucity of fish for eating. Our hero sadly leaves, aiming to find an answer to the food problems.

He meets up with Ramon (Robin Williams), a short Latino penguin, whose village believes that impressive pebble collections are the way to attract a wife. Ramon has more self-confidence than 10 Mumbles but is immediately a fan of the latter’s dancing and decides to help the poor guy out by taking him to mysterious guru Lovelace (also Williams, but using a sedate version of his Mork voice). The three, along with Ramon’s four bird crew, take off to a place where Lovelace had met strange aliens (humans) and gotten his guru-ji.

Adventure ensues, Mumbles returns to his own village, wins Gloria’s love and convinces even hardhearted Noah that dancing is a fine accompaniment to song. Happy Feet, with the script credited to Miller, his Babe co-writer Judy Morris, John Collee (the Russell Crow nautical mess Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World) and Warren Coleman, does a really nice job integrating the songs and dancing, and leaves plenty of room for Williams’ humor while still presenting a serious message about how people are destroying the sea ecology that supports lovable penguins in a way that younger children as well as their parents can understand.

recommended

I’ve been of two minds about seeing yet another biopic of a musician caught up in the demands of stardom and ego so it got past me in the theatrical run but with a little free time today and HBO On Demand finally saw Walk the Line, the 2005 movie about Johnny Cash, his rise to stardom and romance with June Carter. I suppose all those Oscar nominations, including Reese Witherspoon’s win for Best Actress, came from somewhere in the deserving territory.

Witherspoon actually is pretty good as the true love of Johnny’s life. Joaquin Phoenix, nominated for his portrayal of the Man in Black, was good but not far from his normal (IMO) scene-chewing standard job. The best acting for my money was Ginnifer Goodwin as Vivian, the first wife, though perhaps its sympathy for what her character went through only to lose her husband to addiction and the other woman. I also really liked Ridge Canipe as a very young Cash and Lucas Till as slightly older brother Jack, their interaction was sweet and natural in a few early scenes showing the source of Johnny’s core pain as well as his drive.

The film only really covers about sixteen years in the singer’s life, except for about six minutes (I just checked) of screen time with the young boys, from his Air Force service in 1952 through 1968, when June finally accepts his wedding proposal. Johnny actually had been asking her time and time again for years, clearly in love with her from the moment they met on a Sun Records tour in 1955. Vivian, of course, was home pregnant with their second child the night of that Texarkana show.

Phoenix and Witherspoon do their own singing, the movie doesn’t use the original recordings, which I think was a good choice, comparable to Gary Busey’s terrific job in The Buddy Holly Story, rather than Jamie Foxx’s lipsynching in Ray. Foxx was great, and definitely the better actor, but in this aspect Walk the Line surpasses the Oscar winner.

The script is by Gill Dennis and James Mangold, from Cash’s two autobiographies, and Mangold directed. I generally like Mangold’s work, especially Cop Land and Identity, though I think he could have easily made this better by cutting 20-25 minutes from the 136 minute run time. Some of the scenes were too soft and others unnecessary, like the tape bomb in the tree and the confrontation with record label execs over recording his Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison album.

recommended

I always thought that this sweet, musical movie deserved a better reception than it got but I guess in 1996 people were more interested in Kurt Cobain’s still fresh suicide than a look 40 years back. There must be something to it if Marty Scorsese put his name on as executive producer, right?

Grace of My Heart, written and directed by Allison Anders, uses the real life of singer/songwriter Carole King as its framework/jumping off point for Anders to explore life of a woman in the music business from the ’50s through the ’70s. King was a key member of the Brill Building songwriting crew, coming up with hundreds of hits–in partnership with first husband Gerry Goffin–for groups as diverse as the Shirelles’ “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” Bobby Vee’s “Take Good Care of My Baby,” Little Eva’s “The Locomotion,” (later turned into a hard rock classic by Grand Funk Railroad), the Chiffons’ “One Fine Day,” the Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” the Drifters’ “Up on the Roof,” and Aretha Franklin’s “(You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman.”

But King always wanted to be a singer. Numerous records she made flopped until, of course, her titanic megaseller Tapestry broke most chart standards. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon came along two years later and rewrote the books but for awhile she was as big as any act. King married again in the mid-70s; sadly her husband ODed just a year later and she retreated to Idaho for many years.

Illeana Douglas’s Denise Waverly is a Philadelphia steel hieress (nee Edna Buxton) and not a Brooklynite like King but she quickly partners and falls in love with Eric Stoltz’s beatnik wanna-be Howard Cazsatt, indicated by the annoying chinhair Stoltz wears and the watered down Marxist rhetoric he spouts during post-coital cuddling. Eventually, she walks in on him having sex with some unnamed tramp as their newborn naps in a crib at the foot of the bed.

She moves on to an affair with a married man of her own, an Alan Freed-like radio DJ, but he too leaves her in the lurch. Finally, her boss (an underwhelming John Turturro) gets her a one shot record deal as an attempt to get her back from Self Pity Land, with Brian Wilson Jay Phillips (Matt Dillon, who seemed to be taking the same drugs Wilson used back in the ’60s) to produce it. Of course they fall in love but Wilson Phillips goes off the deep end, literally here, walking into the surf with no board.

One ticket, one way, for Self Pity Land! Denise takes her daughter, her babysitter and the babysitter’s little son from a beach house in Malibu to a commune so they can plant vegetables and meditate in the mud for half a year until Turturro show up again to talk her out of her self-absorbed misery. The kids are just happy to get hamburger and fries for dinner. Denise dusts herself off and makes a platinum-seller that even her hoity-toity mom finally approves of.

Grace is better than this sounds. There is a bit of cliche in how Douglas keeps falling for the same type of guy and the ending is a little happily ever after, its not a perfect film. But Douglas, for once playing the lead and not the best friend or best friend’s wife, shows that she can act, given a chance. Sort of how King showed she could be the star, eh? And Anders includes dark touches honestly, like the reaction to the film’s version of the Shirelle’s controversial abusive love song and Phillips’ descent into madness.

recommended

Though it kind of sank without a trace on release in 1983, Eddie and the Cruisers has always been a favorite of mine. How could it not be? After all, the main character is a fusion of Bruce Springsteen and Jim Morrison, the music is John Cafferty’s closest Springsteen imitation ever and his band Beaver Brown does their best E Street too, and then there’s the whole Jersey cool aspect. A whole bunch of people picked up on the movie when it hit cable (Showtime originally, I think) and then video, but that just got us a crap sequel.

Basics: It’s 1983 and something strange is going on with people who used to be in a flash in the pan called Eddie and the Crusiers, there’s a surge of interest driven by rumors that never died of a mysterious second album made before Eddie died in a car crash. Flash back to 1963 or so, just before the Beatles tidal wave, and Eddie Wilson has broken his band the Cruisers big, after years of slogging in bars and colleges from the Jersey Shore to Ohio. We even get flashbacks on the flashback, to see the band as it came together.

There’s no doubt this is a trashy film, though probably better than the PF Kluge novel on which its based, but the story and the music are so cool I don’t care. Michael Pare is good enough as Eddie and Tom Berenger is just young enough to play the poet/piano player and his twenty years older high school English teacher counterpart but I imagine I was hardly alone in feeling the heat steaming off Helen Schneider as Eddie’s girl Joann. She was just so sweet to Berenger’s way out of his depth youngster and to this day I wonder why she didn’t ever show up again in Hollywood product. Joe Pantoliano had one of his first prominent roles, this was right around the same time as his pimp performance in Risky Business, as the band’s slick manager and you know he must have been good because all these years later I still think of him as sleazy.

Obviously recommended

PBS series American Masters broadcast the Bob Dylan documentary last week but I finally got to watch the second part last night. Zimmy is a musician who’s always been in the background for most people my age and younger, making new music occasionally, sending out some strange messages at times, but this film goes back to his origins and the days when he was very much in the spotlight’s glare.

Covering his life only until a horrific motorcycle accident in 1966, No Direction Home is a deeply flawed production though it offers a view of Dylan that’s informative and enlightening. PBS included after the second half a brief interview with Martin Scorsese (by the nearly useless Charlie Rose) during which the acclaimed director explained that all the interview segments we’d seen of Dylan were conducted not by Scorsese or a journalist but by one of Dylan’s associates. This explained the complete lack of any really probing questions.

In fact, if I understood correctly, all of the material in the movie was assembled prior to Scorsese’s involvement and his major contribution was to “find the narrative” and oversee an editor piecing together the footage. For just this part, I’d say he did a good job and overall I feel, other than a few slow spots in the second hour, the documentary is worth watching for any fan of American culture. I know that the man has never been interested in answering those questions, not seeing them as interesting or perhaps even possible, but I feel the lack of real insight from Dylan himself was a missed opportunity.

One of the strong points is that though interviews with contemporaries (Liam Clancy and Pete Seeger particularly), performance footage and some surviving radio interviews and press conferences we get a very good understanding of Dylan’s early development and his effect on the folk music scene. Most of the film, after all, takes place before he became a pop star; that really didn’t happen until about 1965, after his “shocking” electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival. 40 years on, there’s still controversy about the crowd’s reaction but the footage used shows that they did boo. In fact footage from the subsequent tour of Britain shows that audiences there were also quite upset with the change.

To some extent, after watching, I can understand it. Up until these concerts the show was Bob Dylan onstage with his guitar, harmoica and voice. Period. Hearing, for example, his original versions of “Blowing in the Wind” and “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” are revelations. No band behind him, I can see the simple power of his poetry; a lot of things about Bruce Springsteen are more understandable now.

No Direction Home is a very good film. I don’t think you need to be a big fan of his music to enjoy it. Scorsese could’ve used his scalpel a little better and reduced the run time by 20-30 minutes, and certainly the circumstances of the Dylan interviews should have been made clear. Nonetheless, worth watching.

recommended

A quirky little film, Grand Theft Parsons is the story of what happened when country-rock originator Gram Parsons died of a drug overdose in September, 1973. He and his pal Phil Kauffman (not the film director) had pledged that if one died before the other, the survivor would take the other’s body out to the Joshua Tree desert and set it free with fire.

Kauffman went through some shenanigans but eventually made good on his promise. The movie tells of the day, more or less, between Parson’s death and the pyre. Johnny Knoxville does an intersting turn as Kauffman, with Marley Shelton as his girlfriend, Mike Shawver as a druggie with a yellow hearse used to transport the coffin, Robert Forster as the dead star’s dad, and Christina Applegate as Parsons’ uberbitch ex-girlfriend.

Irishmen David Caffrey directs from Jeremy Drysdale’s script and neither really brings much to the party. Honestly the facts of the situation don’t leave them much room to maneuver and in hindsight one wonders if there’s really enough material to justify a 90 minute movie. Sure Parsons was a rock star but by ’73 drug overdoses had taken many greats, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Mama Cass, and he was more of a star to other musicians than the listening public.

not recommended

Back in the ’70s teen chick rockers the Runaways almost pushed it over the top but, sadly all too common in the history of rock and roll, fell apart in a frenzy of intramural ego battles, drugs and external manipulation. Of all the members only Joan Jett really went on to realize her ambition and commercial success with Lita Ford managing a few hits. Edgeplay is a documentary made by Victory Tischler-Blue, better known as bass player #2 Vicki Blue, that takes an honest look back in surprising detail at what happened from the inside out.

The two biggest drawbacks are that Jett wouldn’t participate and is heard only a few times on contemporaneous interview tapes and the other women, though clearly at times in physical proximity, never talk with each other (other than Blue’s questions) in responce to sometimes startling revelations. Lesser evils are a general lack of performance footage and Runaways music as well as very strange interspersed comments from the very strange Svengali who put the group together, Kim Fowley.

On the plus side, putting Edgeplay into the watchable column, the women are forthright in discussing the incidents and emotions which after all happened when they were between 14 and 20 years old. Drummer Sandy West tells us that during those years she was doing drugs and men to the point that after the band dissolved she was forced to become a mule and collector for dealers to support her habits, breaking down doors gun in hand. Original bassist Jackie Fox confirms longstanding rumors of a suicide attempt that sent her home early.

Lita Ford, still the hardbodied gorgeous blonde I remember from her late ’80s/early ’90s videos, comes across as less honest or perhaps simply remembers events from her own self-esteem supporting POV. I think the film’s biggest miss is a conversation/confrontation between Ford and lead singer Cherie Currie, the second to leave after one too many feuds with the guitarist.

recommended, barely