One need look no further than Pat Boone and Little Richard to understand just how long and hard the white establishment has been sticking it to black artists. I mean, way back in the days of Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building Sound the entire formula was patent – seek out black artists, pay them wooden nickels on the dollar, make off with all their publishing, then whore it out for shits and giggles.

Enter The Sapphires – a film about an Aboriginal girl group from Australia that can kick out the Blues as if their very lives depended on it. We’re talking about soul sisters here … all three of them homely and desperate and poor. They’re eventually joined by a half-bred white cousin from the city, rounding out the four-piece ensemble in more ways than one.

The Sapphires is an independent film, and it retains that indie sheen. The closest you’ll get to Hollywood frills in this film is the casting of Chris O’Dowd (Bridesmaids, Girls) – the lovable schlub for lovable schlubs by lovable schlubs. O’Dowd – much like The Sapphires itself – is marginally good, but falls far short of great.   

Ninety-percent of the reviews already written about The Sapphires have seen fit to compare it to 2006’s Dreamgirls. But the reality is, The Sapphires is much more about reclaiming something that was taken away a long time ago. What’s more, the film is largely based upon an Australian play … a play that premiered in 2004 … a play that was, in turn, based on a real-life girl group’s story … one that occurred way back in the late sixties (Oddly enough, the name Sapphires is actually a reference to a wholly separate ensemble that rose out of Philadelphia during that same era). So, if anything, it might be Dreamgirls that is guilty of taking early cues from The Sapphires. Either way, in the end, The Sapphires is a charming – if not cheesy – reminder that it really doesn’t matter if you’re Elvis Presley or Justin Timberlake … you simply cannot step out on that stage without casting a dark shadow behind you.

(The Sapphires opens in limited release today, with plans for a national rollout to follow.)  Continue reading →

“This is a seminal moment for us. Who are we? We’re defined in this moment, in our reaction or our non-reaction to the genocide in Darfur. You said two-and-a-half million people were being driven from there, burning. Y’know, we’re seeing in Darfur, 80-90% of those villages have been bombed or burned by the Government of Sudan, and their proxy Arab militia, the Janjaweed … 80-90%. According to the Lemkin definition of genocide, it’s pretty well complete. Two-and-a-half million people have been driven out of their villages and are being forced to live amidst deplorable conditions in these refugee camps; 230,000 have fled in terror into Chad – of all places, Chad. Where now – in the last year – the Janjaweed have crossed into Chad, and the women who have fled Darfur and have burned feet and have lost their children and have walked 10 days, [one of them] crossed my hand and said, ‘But now they’re here. Now the Janjaweed are here. We can’t gather firewood here. We can’t plant here … We missed the planting season.’ … I was in an area called Jebel Marra last June, and the children were waiting with signs. And one of the signs that they held up [read]: ‘We need water. We need food.’ And the biggest sign read: ‘We need protection.’ And they had taken pains to write it out in English – somebody had taught them how to say protection. And this was the plea from all across Darfur, and Eastern Chad, and Central African Republic – an extremely vulnerable population. Such good people; good parents … extraordinary. I could only hope that if I were in that situation that I would have that courage, that determination, and have the dignity that I witnessed there. I have never seen a people like that in my life. But the plea was for protection. We could do that. We should do that. We owe them that.”

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Sidiki Conde is a polio survivor. He is also an inspiration.

Conde, who’s been paralyzed since the time he turned 14, transformed his lifelong tragedy into triumph, teaching two hands to do the work of every other limb. Over the years, Conde has taught himself how to cook meals and dance; compete and busk. He educates young children. He jams with bands in Union Square. All of which might explain why Conde’s story seems so fascinating. The only problem being You Don’t Need Feet to Dance completely fails to do it justice.

Consider this: By the time You Don’t Need Feet to Dance has reached the 45-minute mark, Director Alan Govenar has already forced his audience to amble through Conde waking up, rolling out of bed, crawling to the bathroom, propping himself up, brushing his own teeth, taking a quick bath, feeding his cats, feeding himself, getting dressed, ordering a sandwich, praying at a Mosque, eating lunch, teaching children, beating drums, riding a bike, riding a subway, riding an elevator, buying a phone card, climbing up five flights, easing down five more, climbing up five more, easing down five more … every single frame of it set to no production value whatsoever.

The point being, as a filmmaker, you need to understand the middling difference between low-budget and low-rent. In this case, it was incumbent upon Govenar to portray Sidiki as the modern-day hero he so very is. Unfortunately, the former got so wholly wound up in minutia, he completely lost his sense of what the bigger – if not infinitely more effective – documentary might be.

(You Don’t Need Feet to Dance opens for a limited engagement at the Quad Cinema in New York City this coming Friday, March 22.)

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“One thing that perhaps helped me get over being a misfit – a school misfit – was that I became interested in photography at about the same time; around 12 or 13. Now I think that if you get involved in any kind of problem-solving in-depth – almost anything – it’s surprisingly similar to problem-solving [in terms of] anything. I started out by just getting a camera and learning how to take pictures and learning how to print pictures, then learning how to build a dark room and learning how to do all the technical things, and so on and so on. And then finally trying to find out how you could sell pictures and, y’know, would it be possible to be a professional photographer? And it was a case of, say, over a period of, say, 13 to 17 you might say, going through step by step by myself – without anybody really helping me – the problem-solving [aspects] of being a photographer. And I found that, I think – in looking back – that this particular thing about problem-solving is something that schools generally don’t teach you. And that if you can develop a kind of generalized approach to problem-solving, that it’s surprising how it helps you in anything. And that most of the deficiencies that you see around you in people that you don’t think particularly are doing their job right or something, it’s really that, I mean, assuming that they care – y’know, a lot of people appear to care, or may actually care – if they’re still not going about things completely the right way, when you think about it, I generally find it’s just that they don’t have a good generalized approach to problem-solving. They’re not thorough. They don’t consider all of the possibilities. They don’t prepare themselves with the right information, and so forth. So I think that photography, though it seemed like a hobby – and ultimately led to a professional job – might have been more valuable than doing the proper things in school.”

The opening line of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska – both the album and the song – declares: “I saw her standin’ on her front lawn/Just a twirlin’ her baton/Me and her went for a ride, sir/And 10 innocent people died.” That is a direct homage to Terrence Malick’s Badlands – the classic drama that forever changed the way Hollywood portrays its cops and robbers.

Badlands addresses the ’60s counterculture given the bleak benefit of hindsight. Rather than go wide – adapting his taut screenplay into epic – Malick set his sites on Dustbowl America. And in so doing he achieves a sense of voyeurism, if not a brilliant satire on the nature of celebrity, itself.

Badlands is equal parts Manson and Starkweather, with a shot of Easy Rider in between. What’s more, it came along during a time when Terrence Malick still had something left to prove – long before the ornery director would abandon linear construction altogether; long before a lot of A-list talent would openly disparage him in the press.

Right time. Right place. Right vehicle. That’s Badlands.

There was, of course, the prudent casting of Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek – most notably the wide-eyed Sheen, caught square in the deep throes of his big moment. In the 40 years since, Sheen has never, ever come off better – not in Apocalypse, not in Gandhi, and almost certainly not in Bobby. Sheen’s performance via Badlands plays like a thesis in restraint. His character appears as both lover and lothario; a beautiful loser wrought with magnetism and grace.

From a screenplay perspective, Malick sneaks in tidy references to modern gadgetry along the way – the early Dictaphone, the Videograph, and (most impressively) the Stereocticon. He incorporates a soundtrack featuring “Gassenhauer” (later used as the basis for Hans Zimmer’s score from True Romance), “Love is Strange” (later used in Dirty Dancing), and Nat King Cole’s “A Blossom Fell”. And, then, of course, Malick draws us in via that astonishing sequence on the lawn – (i.e., “I saw her standin’ on her front lawn/Just a twirlin’ her baton …” ).

Springsteen’s Nebraska, while representing the most overt of mainstream references, is also very far from the only work to pay homage. You can find unique aspects of Malick’s film sprinkled throughout Natural Born Killers, The Outsiders, and (perhaps most notably) A Perfect World. You can find Badlands tucked inside the nuance of Spring Breakers and The Wire. And – assuming you’ve got a stringent eye for such matters – you can more than likely find Badlands simmering just beneath the murky surface of Aurora, if not Columbine, Newtown, and Angelus Oaks, California (among others). Now 40 long years down the line, Badlands is still a haunting reminder of just how far ahead Terrence Malick really was, and just how much he has since fallen behind.

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One can only imagine what type of lather Jimmy Franco might be working himself into right this moment, what with the prospect of a good Franco versus bad Franco Franco weekend at the theater. So yin. So yang. So Franco. So what?

Here’s what: James Franco provides a pretty awesome turn via his role in Spring Breakers. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Franco puts 10x as much into this role as he did The Great and Powerful. And yet, Franco only represents one tiny fraction of the whole. You’ve got mad ballers, shot callers, and a real-life troupe of Mouseketeers. You’ve got hedonism and capitalism, both masquerading as evangelicalism. You’ve got degradation and exploitation; you’ve got free lunches set in mousetraps. You’ve got paradise and innocence, both of them disappearing in the muck. You’ve got a fast-humming screenplay, spinning by in a blur. You’ve got sex and death and love and fear, each of them sucking you down until you just can’t see the light. And – assuming you’re Annapurna Pictures or Harmony Korine – you sure as shit have got yourself one hell of a cult classic.

Spring break. Spring break. Spring break, forever.

Now that’s the way we OGs like it.

(Spring Breakers opens in limited release today in New York and Los Angeles, with a national rollout to follow.)

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It was more than 30 years ago when now-accomplished photogs Brian Rose and Edward Fausty began to document the Lower East. This was a time when New York City still retained its sense of grit; when Greenwich Village was still struggling to move ahead without forgetting. To experience that East Side today is to feel your Village heart laid low. It is the story of a disappearance, if not a slow migration. In that spirit, Time & Space presents the New York that we talk about when we talk about New York. The beauty of this exhibition being Brian Rose set out again a few short years ago, this time to document the same East Side a full three decades now removed. If anything, these photos serve as a reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same. But they also leave a sense of setting out again at twilight, if not the very awkward feeling it’s much later than you know.

(Time & Space runs through April 9th at the Dillon Gallery in Chelsea, Free, 555 W. 25th Street.)

Five More For the Offing:

• Asia Week: A Celebration of Asian Art @ various different galleries and outlets across New York City (Free, 3/15-3/23)
• Fashion + Street by William Klein @ The Howard Greenberg Gallery (Free, through 3/23, 41 E. 57th Street, Suite 1406)
• In Search of True Painting by Matisse @ The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Free with suggested donation, through 3/17, 5th Avenue at 83rd Street).
• Paper Like Skin by Zarina Hashmi @ The Guggenheim (Free with admission, through 4/21, 5th Avenue at 89th Street.)
• Sinister Pop by various artists @ The Whitney Museum ($18, through 3/31, 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street)

Little Danny Lutz is pushing 50 now. And yet the one-time boy from Amity still cops to hearing voices. Ask him frankly what these voices represent and he’ll tell you it’s possession. Ask any other rational adult the same question, and he or she might just say that it’s a shame. And therein lies the reason My Amityville Horror feels so altogether creepy – it’s a case of arrested development masquerading as deep science.

Is it entertaining? Sure. Right up until the moment that you realize what you’re watching. Is it compelling? Well, only in so much that it exploits a grown man’s illness. If anything, My Amityville eeks by because it exposes Nixon-era occultists for the kooks they always were.

For a while there, you tend to believe that’s just the point – that 26-year old director Eric Walter is simply handing these nuts ample slack to fashion their own noose. But it doesn’t take long before you realize Walter’s making no effort to counterbalance all their claims – chief among them the idea that spooky demons live inside us. And – as such – it really doesn’t matter how effectively Mr. Walter employs light and shadow; how often he insists upon conducting interviews with faded clippings strewn about. It doesn’t matter that he pulls in tight to create a sense of intimacy; or that he pulls in fast to create a sense of emphasis … because in the end all Eric Walter is really complicit in accomplishing here is the perpetuation of an illness that has haunted the same man for well over 30 years now.

That man – or manchild – is 47-year old Danny Lutz – one of three ill-fated children who moved into a house along Amityville back in December of ’75. These days, Mr. Lutz fancies himself a bit of a hard case – still imprisoned by false notions set in motion during childhood. The majority of what Lutz passes off as supernatural could just as easily be attributed to fact (e.g., some window dropping on the young boy’s fingers; random cold spots in the kitchen; a priest coming over to bless the house, etc.). And yet, it isn’t until Danny Lutz really sets to spinning yarns full-bore that one should offer him a wider berth. For it is at this point – amidst fast talk of flying beds and hanging dogs – that Danny Lutz begins to lose it (i.e., flailing arms, constant blinking, running roughshod over facts, etc.).

And this … this is where the shame – if not the sham – of My Amityville Horror takes its toll. Because the thing is, whatever that is (or was) Mr. Lutz reportedly went through, it is more than likely not a case of the incarnate. I mean, I suppose it’s entirely possible that Danny Lutz might know exactly what he’s doing. But the more likely explanation is that all those ghosts and goblins spinning madly in his head? They represent the only coping mechanism a scared young boy has ever known. To tear down those 10-foot walls without warning might be to reduce a grown man’s world to little more than smoke and rubble.

From a filmmaker’s perspective, My Amityville rides a thin line between curiosity and exploitation. While I’m sure Eric Walter would insist that it’s on the level, it certainly does not appear that way. In fact, it feels a whole lot more like the equivalent of someone driving up to Martha’s Vineyard just to hear worthwhile tell of the great white. Walter is manipulating most of the footage here, which is fine, because raw footage has no conscience set to speak of. But he’s also dredging up some really arcane bullshit – the kind that ultimately served to tear a young family apart. I mean, sure, one might argue all is fair in love and movies. But in this case, I’m fairly sure that I’d have to disagree. For in this case, one might walk out having realized Danny Lutz just spent the first half of his life just trying to exorcise one movie, and now he’ll spend the next half just trying to exorcise another.

And, meanwhile, you just paid to watch it happen.

(My Amityville Horror opens in limited release at the IFC Center in New York City this Friday, 3/15, with a staggered national rollout to follow.)

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