There are layers to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and then there are LAYERS to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. So many of them, in fact, that it’s often difficult to separate true fact from fiction.

Therein lies the sweet spot known as Room 237.

Equal parts gambit and goosechase, Room 237 succeeds because it is both in on the joke and wholly fixated on the punchline. Was The Shining a stark treatise on the Holocaust? An homage to the American Indian? Was it some multi-layered work of genius? Or just a weak-ass romp about some asshole in the woods?

The truth – according to most die-hard conspiracy theorists – is that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is more than likely all of the above. Keep in mind, we are dealing in deep shades of psycho-babble here, some of it so absurd as to reduce the magic bullet to a jumping bean. And yet there still appears to be a subtle grain of truth to the affair; some subtle nuance, perhaps, that suggests an air of possibility.

The lasting value of Room 237 is largely based upon its depth. An average poster represents the fate of Theseus? an Adler type-set, Nazi Poland? 237 hits its mark because it allows stark-raving inmates ample run of the asylum. The end result feels like some meta-satire, if not a brilliant commentary on the allure of motion pictures themselves.

(Room 237 arrives at The IFC Center in New York City this coming Friday, 3/29, with a rollout in most major markets set to begin on April 5th.)

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“Look, it’s all good. I’m not telling anyone what to think. I’m not trying to even defend it in that way, or say that this was my intent or that was my intent, or that this is what I was trying to say. That’s not for me to argue. I’m trying to make something that’s amazing, something that’s beautiful, something that lasts. Since I was a kid, I stayed to myself, and I was always just paying attention to the light at the end of the tunnel. There can be all those types of interpretations, it’s all part of it. I enjoy it. There is purposefully a large margin that’s left undefined. If it was something I could just articulate or explain or say this or that, I probably wouldn’t do it anyway. But I also wouldn’t make the film like the film is.”

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“I remember a musician once saying to me that he wanted to create the perfect sine wave. And the interesting thing is that the most boring sound in the universe is probably the perfect sine wave. It’s the sound of nothing happening. It’s the sound of perfection, and it is boring. As David Byrne said in his song, ‘Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.’ For me, perfection represents the absence of character. If I get anything even close to a perfect sine wave from my synthesizer, I send it to an amplifier so that it starts to get imperfect and becomes distorted. Distortion is character, basically. In fact, everything we call ‘character’ is the deviation from perfection. So perfection to me is characterlessness.”

There are certain American pastimes that inevitably lend themselves to smoking – All-night Poker, arena Boxing, and horsetrack-betting chief among them. You can add the Delta Blues to that short list, as well. Because it is the Blues – from Robert Johnson all the way through dame Adele – that’s always been wrought with a down-and-dirty feeling of modernity. And while The Museum of Contemporary Art’s Blues for Smoke takes it name from a little-known improvisational technique, it is also highly indicative of the tooth-and-nail struggle for equality, if not the unmitigated role of race in this country.

Billed as a interactive installation, Blues for Smoke combines audio and video with the occasional toy train, in an attempt to chart the evolutionary course of mainstream Blues, including all of the unfortunate bumps and bruises that have occurred along the way. There are paintings. There is commentary. There is even an infinite loop featuring Coltrane and Monk, with a brief sampling of James Brown in between.

What’s most intriguing about this exhibition is the way it seamlessly incorporates civil rights into its architecture, most effectively via works like Martin Wong’s painting, La Vida, and Glenn Rigon’s oil, No Room. All in all, it’s a fascinating study in both an era and a feeling, if not the overwhelming genre that brought the two of them together.

(Blues for Smoke runs through 4/28 at the Whitney Museum, $18 general admission, 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street.)

Five More For the Offing:

• Myth & Memory: Personal Iconographies by Leigh Behnke @ Fischbach Gallery (Free, 3/21-4/20, 210 11th Avenue at 25th Street, Suite 801)
• We Ate The House by Michael Reafsnyder @ Ameringer, McEnery, Yohe (Free, 3/21-4/20, 525 West 22nd Street)
• The Painted Photograph by Duane Michaels @ DC Moore Gallery (Free, 3/21-4/27, 535 West 22nd Street)
• Paintings, Etc. by William Klein @ Howard Greenberg Gallery (Free, 3/1-4/27, 41 E. 57th Street, Suite 1406)
• Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Free with suggested donation/admission, 2/26-5/27, 5th Avenue at 83rd Street)

If there is one thing worth despising about the average mainstream movie critic, it’s that he or she makes no worthwhile distinction between the terms review and recap. I mean, forget about the fact that spitting back an entire film in one tidy 3-inch chunk is just as rude as it is lazy. Consider – instead – what an absolute disservice it represents to one’s readers. The only way any critic could possibly justify such behavior might be in the event he or she was warding audiences away from a bad movie. Above and beyond that, you’ve really got to wonder how or why some of these people got their pedigree.

Never has said dynamic been on more embarrassing display than when considering a full-length feature like My Brother the Devil. Reason being, this is a film in which everything from the actual name to the actual game is completely incumbent upon key plot twists. Present a full-time recapper with a conundrum like that, and he or she will more than likely end up qualifying the entire review with some weak-ass media tagline like “SPOILER ALERT” or “Do not read beyond this point if … “. And the crime of it is, most editors won’t only endorse this type of behavior, they’ll simultaneously consider it a worthwhile means of traffic.

Fuck you, Mr. Mainstream Movie Recapper. Fuck you, and the advanced fucking journalism degree you wandered in on.

But I digress.

The point being, the best way to do justice to a movie like My Brother The Devil (at least in any film critic’s capacity) is to simply recommend that your audience go see it. My Brother offers up some pretty stunning bait-and-switch, combining elements of Shakespeare, The Bible, The Quran, and even West Side Story along the way. The screenplay is taut, the cinematography is crisp, and the acting is believable. I mean, sure, My Brother puts the audience through stiff rigors in order to get where it is going, but the film ultimately succeeds because it manages to transcend veiled lines of race, creed, strata, and gender. It’s Romeo and Juliet made for the modern era, quite frankly. And – assuming you have any interest in such things – My Brother the Devil is most certainly worth the time, if not the admission, to go see.

(My Brother the Devil opens this Friday, March 22nd, at the Landmark Sunshine in New York City, with a national rollout to follow.)

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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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