Being There

Directed by Edgar Wright

Rating:

Scott Pilgrim is not unlike the sorts of indie hipsters you run into on the streets of Toronto, or any other metropolis.

You see him at Bloor Cinema, catching the latest zombie movie.  You see him at Sonic Boom, shopping for records by bands you’ve never heard of.  You see him at Lee’s Palace, seeing those bands live – hoping that one day his band (or her band, for there are many female Scott Pilgrims out there) can gain the amount of respectability to get booked there too.

In many ways, Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is his generation’s Rob Gordon (the mid-thirtyish protagonist of High Fidelity).  He likes rock music, video games and girls – and as soon as a new one dazzles him, he’s forgotten about everything else in his life.  Pilgrim is happily dating a high school girl and playing in a band, until he meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), at which point the only priority in his life is winning her heart.

Unfortunately for Pilgrim, Ramona comes with some baggage.  In order to be with her, she warns him that he must defeat all seven of her evil exes.  This is where the video game motif comes in.  Each time Scott faces one of Ramona’s exes, we are immediately thrust into a world reminiscent of Street Fighter II or Dragonball Z. When Scott defeats Ramona’s first evil ex-boyfriend, Matthew Patel, he bursts into coins – much like a villain in Super Mario Bros. would.  Meanwhile, an old school computer font flashes a large “1,000″ for points scored.  After defeating another evil ex, Scott reaches for a “1 Up” icon of his face, denoting an extra life.

Each face-off with one of Ramona’s evil exes is staged like a video game level, with a different soundtrack, different backdrop and different villain.  All of these villains seem equipped with superhuman strength and some sort of supernatural or metaphysical ability.  Although sleek and agile, he must use his creativity to defeat each one of them, leading up to the group’s mastermind, music promoter Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman).

Elsewhere in the film, we get to see Scott interact with a great supporting cast.  His sister (Anna Kendrick) and roommate (Kieran Culkin) in particular try their hardest to keep Scott grounded in reality, even if it never manages to work for very long.  Also entertaining are Pilgrim’s bandmates Stephen Stills (Mark Webber), Young Neil (Johnny Simmons) and Kim Pine (Alison Pill), not to mention his initial girlfriend Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), who he ditches as soon as Ramona comes along.

Scott Pilgrim may be the titular character of the film and the one we find ourselves rooting for (when he’s not being an asshole), but the true hero of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is director Edgar Wright, who has taken visual and musical cues from video games, television and comic books and delivered a well-crafted, widly entertaining feature film.  Even the opening Universal logo and music are done up in the style of an 8-bit video game, and audio and visual cues are all over the rest of the film.

All of the important elements of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels have stayed intact, most importantly the uniquely Torontonian references and setting.  Admittedly, as a Torontonian, it’s a unique thrill to see a film produced by an American company and directed by a Brit take place in my city.  There are a few jokes that may be lost on foreign audiences, but I secretly wait in vain until one of my friends visits and requests the “Scott Pilgrim Experience Tour.”

\”Penny Lane\” as performed by David Bowie

I don’t have to tell you that David Bowie is a rock ‘n’ roll icon, known for dozens of original compositions in an array of styles – from “Space Oddity” and “Ziggy Stardust” to “Ashes to Ashes” and “I’m Afraid of Americans.”  The list is endless.

Most prolific songwriters wouldn’t bother with covering other people’s songs, let alone frequently; but Bowie has always made a point of it, looking to sources like George Harrison, Jonathan Richman and even Bruce Springsteen and Nina Simone to mix things up a little bit.

From deep in the Bowie archives comes this 1967 version of The Beatles’ “Penny Lane.”  It wasn’t uncommon at the time for emerging British pop stars to tackle songs that were already popular (people like Chris Farlowe pretty much made a point of it).

That’s where this track comes in. Up until this morning, I had no idea this cover version existed – some even deny its authenticity – but to me it sounds pretty much like you’d expect from ‘67-era Bowie, when he was still trying to find his footing and hadn’t quite hit it big yet. I’ll let you be the judge.

American VI: Ain't No Grave by Johnny Cash

Rating:

In a recent interview, Bob Dylan discredited the music Johnny Cash made towards the end of his life with producer Rick Rubin, calling it ”notorious low-grade stuff.”

For many, these comments couldn’t be further from the truth and border on the offensive. The music Johnny Cash made with Rick Rubin between 1994 and his death in 2003 are some of the most emotional, personal and earnest the country legend made in his nearly 50-year career.

Country fans and non-country fans alike embraced 1994’s American Recordings, which included solo acoustic renditions of songs by the expected (Kris Kristofferson and Jimmy Driftwood) and the unexpected (Nick Lowe, Tom Waits and Glenn Danzig). The album won Cash the highest critical acclaim he had received in decades, topped off by the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

Following American Recordings, Cash released more albums with Rick Rubin at the helm – Unchained, American III: Solitary Man and American IV: The Man Comes Around. As the albums went on, so too did Cash’s deteriorating health. He was forced to quit live performance shortly after the release of Unchained and his voice became less boisterous and more strained. What didn’t waver was his determination, and Cash took solace making as much music as possible in the recording studio.

American IV: The Man Comes Around was the last Johnny Cash album to be released during his lifetime. What many of us didn’t realize was that there would be a huge treasure trove of music left to share with fans after his passing. Fitting, then, that the album should close with “We’ll Meet Again.” Cash may no longer be with us, but his music still resonates.

The first posthumous gift from Johnny Cash came in form of Unearthed, a five-disc box set that collected a large number of outtakes from Cash’s recordings during his tenure with Rubin. These are hardly leftover scraps, but rather songs that simply did not fit on any of the released albums. Next came American V: A Hundred Highways, which was released in 2006 and consisted entirely of recordings Cash made after the release of American IV.

We thought that was it, but just as we thought the well of Johnny Cash’s American recordings had been tapped dry, Rubin has overseen the release of American VI: Ain’t No Grave.

Rather than a sequel to American V, American VI should be treated as a companion piece, as the music comes from the same sessions that yielded its predecessor. Nowhere to be found are the unusual sources like Soundgarden, Depeche Mode or Trent Reznor, whose songs had been featured on earlier American albums. Instead, this album sticks mostly to songs that are country through and through. Among the most successful renditions are “For The Good Times,” the last of many Kris Kristofferson songs recorded by Cash, and “Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream,” a hymn to peace composed in the early 1950s by Ed McCurdy.

One of the more unusual song selections comes from Sheryl Crow. Her “Redemption Day” appeared on 1996’s Sheryl Crow and is performed here to great effect.

The album closes with “Aloha Oe,” an age-old Hawaiian folk song that many will recognize. Here it’s performed mostly acoustically with Johnny Cash delivering the Hawaiian and English lyrics in his distinctive baritone. It closes with the line “until we meet again,” closing the circle of farewells that began with American IV: The Man Comes Around. We miss you, Johnny.

El Turista by Josh Rouse

Rating:

If music could be mapped out on a temperature scale, Josh Rouse’s albums would be all over the place, with Under Cold Blue Stars and Nashville on the colder, more autumnal end and 1972 and Subtitulo bright and summery by comparison. If you had any doubts about where El Turista falls on the scale, look no further than the cover, which finds Rouse standing on a rocky coast, looking out at the sea while holding his hat to his head.

Josh Rouse’s career has found him slowly journeying from Nebraska to Tennessee and finally Spain. El Turista is his third album since the move abroad and the first one that really allows Spanish influences to take an active role in its overall sound. Of the album’s ten tracks, four are sung in Spanish, and even those that are in English draw on the influence of Rouse’s surroundings.

Just when Rouse was starting to fall into a pattern where much of his music sounded the same, he has managed to shake things up and diversify. The album opens with the bossa nova-tinged, orchestral “Bienvenido.” It is a short track that sounds like a remarkable piece of film music and flows perfectly into “Duerme.” Rouse keeps the laid-back feeling of the album going and sounds very comfortable singing in Spanish, as bright piano and percussion accompany him. Later, Rouse challenges himself even more on the uptempo “Valencia,” sung in the Catalan dialect (lisps and all).

“Lemon Tree,” which initially appeared on the fan only compilation Bedroom Classics, Vol. 3, appears here in a different arrangement with airy flutes and Spanish guitar. “I Will Live On Islands” is among the most upbeat of the album’s English language tracks, kicking off slowly with a jazzy electric guitar lead before breaking into a very danceable arrangement.

The temperature is warm and breezy on El Turista. That is, until you get the closing track “Don’t Act Tough,” which sounds like an outtake from the melancholy Nashville. Rouse has consistently been able to release solid albums that appease his fans. The difference with El Turista is that he’ll likely be able to attract new ones with a new approach.

Alex Chilton

There are the bands we all know, and those that have somehow been kept a secret to the inner circle of music geeks. Alongside such legendary-but-obscure artists as Nick Drake, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Television and The Modern Lovers was Big Star, a Memphis-based rock band that made three critically acclaimed records for Stax including 1972’s #1 Record and 1974’s Radio City, both of which have been available packaged together, much like Gram Parsons’ first two records. Today’s mainstream music lovers may recognize “In The Street” as the song was used as the theme for TV’s That 70s Show.

Five years before #1 Record, Big Star’s primary singer and songwriter led The Box Tops on their hit single “The Letter.” Even at sixteen years old, Alex Chilton’s voice left a mark on listeners around the world.

Alex Chilton, lead singer and songwriter for Big Star, inspiration to so many – from The Replacements and Yo La Tengo to Wilco and Elliott Smith and so many more – passed away yesterday just as many of the acts he inspired were participating in the South-by-Southwest music festival. He was 59. The tragedy of his untimely passing is that a reunited Big Star were set to grace the SXSW stage this coming Saturday.

Big Star – Thirteen

Plastic Beach by Gorillaz (Virgin Records, 2010)

Rating:

Everyone’s favorite “virtual” band is back, and they’ve brought a huge slate of guest stars – from De La Soul and Snoop Dogg to Lou Reed and members of The Clash – along for the ride.  I’m speaking, of course, of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s Gorillaz project.  They’ve just released Plastic Beach, another wildly entertaining romp through hip-hop, R&B, electronic music, rock and pop.

The third Gorillaz album seems shrouded in this concept of a plastic reality.  And while it’s arguable as to whether or not Plastic Beach is a concept album,  it certainly starts like one.  “Orchestral Intro” is a short piece that simply sets the mood, much like “I Am The Sea” on The Who’s Quadrophenia or “Overture” on Tommy.  But unlike those albums, it doesn’t really offer the listener any hint of what’s to come.  Gears are shifted completely for “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach,” with its funky horns, punchy bass, and the distinctive emceeing of Snoop Dogg.

The album really hits its stride with “Stylo,” which incidentally is also the album’s first single.  The track perfectly illustrates the collaborative potential of the Gorillaz project, beginning with Mos Def’s distorted hip-hop riffing, into Damon Albarn’s melodic vocals and finally soul legend Bobby Womack, sounding every bit as good as he did on such hits as “Across 110^th Street.”  Supposedly Womack was encouraged to participate in this project by his daughter, and his flawless contribution to “Stylo” was supposedly improvised on the spot.

The next track, “Superfast Jellyfish,” starts with a 1960s-style breakfast commercial, a fantastic drum part… and De La Soul!  In their classic, distinctive style, the hip-hop heroes excitedly tell us about the latest in unusual breakfast treats.  Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals takes over for the catchy chorus.

A big part of what makes Plastic Beach such an interesting listen is the number of lead vocalists featured on the album.  One of the most intriguing of these is Lou Reed, and his contribution – “Some Kind Of Nature” – doesn’t sound out of place at all, apart from a production style that is unusual for him.  Another great voice in more of a conventional sense is Yukimi Nagano, who along with her band Little Dragon, are featured on “To Binge,” another album highlight.

Although most tracks on the album feature guest performers, Damon Albarn has plenty of room to shine.  “On Melancholy Hill” is a gorgeous song and a great showcase for his talents as a singer.

Plastic Beach is available in a variety of formats, including a standard CD edition and an “experience” edition that comes with videos and exclusive online content.  It’s also available on iTunes in a deluxe edition that includes content not available offline, including a storybook and “Making of Stylo” video.

Check out the official video for “Stylo” over at YouTube. Yes, that’s Bruce Willis.

Of the ten directors who have won Best Director over the past ten years, eight also saw their nominated film win the award for Best Picture.  The last three winners – Martin Scorsese (The Departed), Joel & Ethan Coen (No Country For Old Men) and Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) - all landed both Best Director and Best Picture wins. That tells you just how much investment a director has in the finished product.

The trend may continue this year. All eyes are on James Cameron and Avatar to sweep the two categories, but he faces some pretty tough competition, including ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow.

The nominees for Best Director:

Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker
James Cameron for Avatar
Lee Daniels for Precious: Based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire
Jason Reitman for Up In The Air
Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds

Interestingly enough, that is probably what the Best Picture category would have looked like if they had stuck with 5 nominees.  Instead, they decided to expand the category to 10 films for the first time since 1943.

The nominees for Best Picture are:

Let’s take a look at each film one-by-one, starting with those up for Best Picture and not Best Director.  Frankly, I’m not convinced that a film that wasn’t nominated in the Best Director category could possibly win Best Picture.

District 9 is a perfectly engaging sci-fi film, but one that seems like an extremely random choice to nominate for Best Picture considering some of the other possible contenders.  When they first announced that the Best Picture category would be expanded to include ten films, many speculated that this measure was so that more films in the acting categories could be represented, but where are A Single Man, Crazy Heart or The Last Station?  Surely one of these would have made for a better Best Picture candidate.

A Serious Man is hardly top-tier Coen Brothers.  They already won a few years ago for the greatly superior No Country For Old Men and many have debated as to whether or not this is a film that can appeal to non-Jews in the same way that it appeals to Jews.  I think it definitely deserves acclaim in the acting and writing categories, but Best Picture?  Probably not, even if it was one of my personal favourites of the year.

Up is a fantastic film and if there was ever a Pixar title that should be up for Oscar’s top prize, this is definitely it.  However, it seems a bit redundant to nominate it for Best Picture and Best Animated Feature.  It’s the likely winner for the latter, but an unlikely winner for the former.

The Blind Side is what I’ve been calling the Seabiscuit of this year’s Academy Awards.  Hollywood loves inspirational stories with a heavy dose of the The South and football (or basketball or baseball), especially when they’re actually based on true stories.  I enjoyed this film.  But Best Picture?  Really?  The only reason Sandra Bullock is nominated (and will probably win) is because this is the first role in which she’s really acted.  She already received a Razzie Award this weekend for Worst Actress in All About Steve. Maybe she’ll prove to be both Best and Worst in the same year.  As for the film?  A very unlikely winner.

An Education is clever, articulate and feel-good all at the same time.  Of the five films that did not score a nomination for Best Director, this is probably the one that could have ended up sneaking in there if it hadn’t been for the tough competition posed by the next five films on the list.  The film is also up for Best Actress (Carey Mulligan) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Nick Hornby) and will probably win one of those awards before it wins Best Picture.

Now onto the five films that actually stand a chance in this category; those that are also up for Best Director.

When Up In The Air first came out, people went nuts, quickly citing it as the best film of the year.  But as time has gone on, people have praised the film in a more realistic way.  It’s simply a good film about a man who fires people for a living.  Of all the nominations the film received, it’s unlikely that it has a shot at anything other than Best Adapted Screenplay.

Precious: Based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire already cleaned up this weekend at the Independent Spirit Awards.  The film relies on a mix of non-actors, comedians and musicians to tell a very harrowing, difficulty story.  Whether it wins or not, it proved that you don’t need to recruit Hollywood’s A-listers to make a great film that gets a lot of public attention.

Inglourious Basterds is a huge achievement for Quentin Tarantino.  It plays like a Tarantino film, full of music, gore, comedy and film pastiche, but it’s also the most mature and well-thought out movie the director has ever made.  People will continue to talk about Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, but I truly believe that with Inglourious Basterds Tarantino has upped his game.  It still probably won’t stand a chance against our next two nominees, but it’s still my favourite film of 2009.

Avatar will probably win Best Picture and Best Director for the same reason that James Cameron swept the categories with Titanic more than a decade ago.  It’s big, shiny and pretty much epitomizes what moviegoing is all about.  It also signed Hollywood its biggest paycheque in years.

Another scenario finds the Academy putting critical acclaim ahead of commercial success and handing the top prizes to The Hurt Locker.  The film is the first high-profile picture to examine the current Iraq war and will probably be remembered for years to come.

Ultimately, I predict Kathryn Bigelow will win Best Director for The Hurt Locker and Avatar will win Best Picture.

Who will win: Kathryn Bigelow for Best Director; Avatar for Best Picture

Who should win: Kathryn Bigelow for Best Director; Inglourious Basterds for Best Picture

The upset: James Cameron for Best Director; The Hurt Locker for Best Picture

Everyone from Mary Pickford and Katharine Hepburn to Hilary Swank and Kate Winslet have won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Meryl Streep has been nominated 13 times and won just once. Most recently, winners have included Kate Winslet for The Reader, Helen Mirren for The Queen and Reese Witherspoon for Walk The Line. Three of the last five winners have all been based on well-known factual characters.

This year’s nominees:

Sandra Bullock is the favourite to win after taking home the Golden Globe award and the SAG award. The Blind Side is truly a departure for her since it’s the first time she’s seemed like she’s actually acted in a film. It’s hard to believe the star of such modern-day tragedies as The Proposal and All About Steve is nominated for an Oscar, but it sounds like it actually could happen.

Next up is Helen Mirren, a talented actress who won a few years ago for The Queen and is up again for The Last Station and her role as Leo Tolstoy’s wife. It’s unlikely that she’ll win this year, even though her performance and the film have received widespread critical acclaim.

Then comes newcomer Carey Mulligan, a young actress who shined brightly in the leading role of An Education. She stands a better chance than Mirren, but faces some pretty tough competition if she’s going to make it to her first Oscar. Still, this is someone who everyone in Hollywood will be watching for their next move.

Gabourey Sidibe is another newcomer, but unlike Mulligan, she had never acted in so much as a TV commercial prior to Precious. While her performance was not quite as intense as Mo’Nique’s, hers was still a remarkable achievement and something to be proud of.

She may be batting 1 for 12, but Meryl Streep is one of the finest actresses in Hollywood and has remained just as vital (if not more vital) into her 60s as any other actress working today. In Julie & Julia she brings celebrity chef Julia Child back to life and pays tribute to her passion, spirit and humour. It’s easy to lampoon a character that is so impersonated and characaturized, as Frank Langella will tell you about Richard Nixon (who he did an equally good job of playing with integrity and honesty). I hope she wins.

To recap:

Who should win: Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia

Who will win: Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side

The upset: Gabourey Sidibe for Precious: Based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire

Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight. Javier Bardem as cold-blooded killer Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men. If the last two winners of Best Actor in a Supporting Role are any indication, the Academy loves its cold-blooded killers. And if they’re interested in continuing the pattern, there are certainly two very creepy individuals up for consideration.

This year’s nominees:

Matt Damon did a pretty good job with his South African accent for his role as soccer (football?) player Francois Pienaar in Invictus, but his performance in the film will likely be overshadowed by that of Morgan Freeman’s as Nelson Mandela.

Woody Harrelson has come a long way from his role as Woody Boyd on Cheers and celebrates his second Academy Award nomination for The Messenger. Unfortunately for him, the lack of awareness about this war film probably doesn’t help his chances at winning.

Christopher Plummer is a well-respected actor who receives his first Oscar nomination after 50+ years in the film industry for his portrayal of Leo Tolstoy. The Academy loves rewarding people who should’ve gotten the award years ago, so this may be Plummer’s moment. But probably not.

Which brings us to Creep #1. Stanley Tucci’s role is supposedly the only good thing about The Lovely Bones, a film that scored just 32% on Rotten Tomatoes’ essential Tomatometer. He certainly seems to transform himself into a disgraceful and perverted individual, but whether or not the Academy recognizes him for elevating an otherwise forgettable film remains to be seen.

The Oscar will most likely go to Creep #2, Col. Hans Landa himself, Christoph Waltz. In Inglourious Basterds, a film full of great performances by Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Eli Roth and Diane Kruger, it’s Christoph Waltz who really leaves us with a lasting impression. He’s a villain we find both terrifying and funny. In one of the film’s early scenes, he visits a farmer smoking on his modest corn pipe. Landa soon pulls out his ornate, almost comically-large pipe and smokes with the man. A few short moments later, he orders a massacre within the same walls.

To recap:

Who should win: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds

Who will win: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds

The upset: Christopher Plummer for The Last Station

Although supporting actresses don’t get the same amount of screen time as their leading role counterparts, often their roles are strong enough to shape the film. Take last year’s winner in this category as a prime example. Penélope Cruz burst into Vicky Cristina Barcelona as Javier Bardem’s lunatic ex-wife María Elena. More than anyone else in the film, she delivered a memorable performance.

Other recent winners of the Best Actress in A Supporting Role category have included Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton, Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls and Cate Blanchett for The Aviator.

This year’s nominees:

Hollywood has started relying less and less on A-List celebrities for its best films and most of this year’s acting categories are indicative of that. In fact, the most famous person on this list and last year’s winner, Penélope Cruz, is probably the least likely to win this year. Nine is nominated in a number of categories, but lacked the critical acclaim and general reception of the other films acknowledged in this category.

After Cruz, Maggie Gyllenhaal is probably the most well-known actress nominated in this category. This is her first Academy Award nomination, and despite a subtle and strong role in Crazy Heart, her performance is likely overshadowed by Jeff Bridges’ brilliant leading role. Still, she may prove to be the upset in this year’s competition.

Two actresses, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick, are first time nominees for their respective roles in Up In The Air. Both were great for their parts in the film, but neither really seemed to do much more than play a typical role. If I had to pick a preferred actress of the two, it’d have to be Farmiga for the one scene where Clooney arrives at her house unexpected and learns an important truth about her.

Mo’Nique is best known as a TV actress and comedienne, but Precious may change that. In the film, she plays an abusive mother to the film’s title character and does an incredible job. We hate Mary because of the way she treats her daughter, but feel pity for her because she simply can’t rationally accept the fact that it’s Precious’ father and not her poor daughter that’s the source of all of their problems. Mo’Nique has already won the Golden Globe and SAG awards for her performance, and she’s a favourite to win the Oscar as well.

Who will win: Mo’Nique for Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire

Who should win: Mo’Nique for Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire

The upset: Maggie Gyllenhaal for Crazy Heart