The lesson a music fan can take away from the career of Kelly Willis may be this: If you resist the manipulation of major-label tools, you might not be invited to walk the red carpet at the CMAs. But at least there’s a chance you will earn respect through the virtue of solid songwriting and performing skills, and still get to be the same real you. Recording three albums for MCA, beginning in 1990, Kelly was a promising, attractive — if not a little bland — act that the label had a hard time marketing. After being released from her …
Movie Review: Heroes For Sale
1933. Starring Richard Barthelmess, Loretta Young. Directed by William Wellman. It wasn’t my intention to watch a movie about an economic depression, labor troubles and soup lines. I was actually hoping to find some escape from those topics. But the TCM Archives “Forbidden Hollywood” DVD series has been on my Netflix list for quite a while and I thought it might be a welcome alternative to the almost-always-pessimistic nightly news. There weren’t any financial troubles in the 1930s, right? Richard Barthelmess stars as Tom Holmes, a WWI grunt who takes a German machine-gun nest and captures an officer before being …
Country Music Reclamation Project: Mama Tried
If you live in Minneapolis, you’ve probably read the recent news item about a couple of teenage burglars who beat an 85-year-old man nearly to death in the process of stealing a few bucks from his modest home. The man has survived, but the photos they show of him on the news are sickening — red bruises all over his face, and stitches around and over the top of his scalp, the result of attempts to relieve swelling in his brain. This is the kind of thing that makes me sick and angry, and I don’t have any sympathy for …
Movie Review: Milk
2008. Starring Sean Penn, James Franco, Josh Brolin. Directed by Gus Van Sant. While watching Milk, I felt that I was seeing three stories told by using the same events. There is the biopic story of Harvey Milk, driven by an amazing performance by Sean Penn, telling the story of a 40-year-old New Yorker who realizes that who he is requires a drastic life change. Milk moves with his partner to San Francisco in order to be himself and, once fully becoming himself, finds his calling in city politics, representing the Castro District and, by extension, the gay community. There’s …
Movie Review: Band of Outsiders
1964. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Starring Anna Karina, Sami Frey, Claude Brasseur. I don’t pretend to fully understand what Godard was trying to say with this enthusiastic exercise in film, but I love watching the results. I think I like this film more than Breathless, his earlier and better-known film also portraying a criminal who seems more-than-usually inspired by American gangsters. Franz (Sami Frey) and Arthur (Claude Brasseur) are small-time crooks on the trail of a big score, with the help of their English-language classmate Odile (Anna Karina, who happens to be Godard’s wife). They case the house where Odile …
Movie Review: Let The Right One In
2008. Directed by Tomas Alfredson. Starring Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson. Oskar is a sad little kid. Living with his mother, separated from his father, taunted and tortured by classmates, a little too smart and too weird to fit in anywhere. Wintertime in Sweden is a bit on the bleak side too — snow drifting across a black sky, sterile apartment buildings, a quietly unsympathetic school. Then, one night, neighbors move in next door. He doesn’t really see the neighbors, only the cardboard and posters that now cover their window. He sits outside, watching his breath in the air, sitting …
Movie Review: Gone in 60 Seconds
1974. Written, directed and starring H.B. Halicki. I’m almost done with my drive-in movie phase. I’m building up to Vanishing Point. Gone in 60 Seconds is essentially two movies. The first half involves an insurance scam/car theft ring that requires the stealing and delivery of 48 cars in two days. H.B. Halicki portrays the lead of a team who steal some of the most beautiful cars (they refer to the different makes and models by women’s names) by deception or opportunism. They complete the theft of all the cars on their list, but one — a yellow Mustang they call …
Passings: Hank Locklin
I made a bad joke to friends a few years ago when Hank Cochran died that he was the fifth best-known Hank, and we were down to just a few contenders left. Well, I consider Hank Locklin the third best-known Hank, and the highest-ranked “living Hank” before his death yesterday. Hank Locklin’s greatest moment may have been “Send Me The Pillow That You Dream On,” a really sweet song, so earnest that it could never be recorded today, when the sentiment would be considered creepy. I believe that “Please Help Me, I’m Falling” was an even-bigger hit, although both songs …
Country Music Reclamation Project: Rank Stranger
A few years ago, I drove through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. Besides being one of the most beautiful places in America — the trip took place while the leaves were changing through an incalculable range of colors, and the damp cold could be felt on the mountaintops and in the shadier areas — there was an oppressive feeling of isolation, not only because the park is large and the visitors few that week, but because if there had been others in the park, you likely wouldn’t have seen them through the trees and around the endlessly …
Movie Review: The Bad Sleep Well
1960. Starring Toshiro Mifune. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. The great Toshiro Mifune plays Nishi, an ambitious corporate assistant eager to climb the ladder of a shady land development company, going so far as to marry the chairman’s daughter. But unlike the other bureaucrats and salarymen who bow and scrape as part of their job, Nishi doesn’t want the respect of his father-in-law or the money that comes with his position. He wants revenge. Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well has many of the elements found in American film noir, but instead of focusing on human corruption, it peels back the corruption …