‘You’re only as healthy as you feel’

By Jeff

You either love it or hate it. So it shouldn’t be that hard of a decision if you’re even remotely considering buying this 2-disc DVD set, a vast improvement from the previous version released in 1999. If you love Taxi Driver , then this is a must-have. If you hate it…you actually might want to give it another go around…

So, ya’ll know the plot. Oscar winner Martin Scorsese directed this cult-classic about "honorably discharged" Vietnam-vet Travis Bickle (a brooding Robert De Niro) who returns home to a disheveled New York City and finds himself working graveyard shift for a taxi service, living in a scabby apartment building, condemning society and plotting mayhem.

It’s an experience that envelopes you more and more in its dark shroud every time you watch it, with many scenes that remain permanently ingrained your memory (for me it’s not so much the ‘gun-pointed-at-mirror scene’ as it is the slow-mo shot of De Niro grinning and pointing his finger like a gun toward his head as a bright-red stream of blood trickles off the tip).

It’s as visually arresting as it is perfectly scripted (by Paul Schrader) and expertly acted (De Niro is obviously gold, but so is Cybill Shepherd, Albert Brooks, Peter Boyle, Harvey Keitel and Jodie Foster in her infamous child-hooker role). While I’m at it, the haunting jazz score by Hitchcock-alumni Bernard Herrmann, his last, is possibly one of the most complimentary pieces of music ever composed to film. 

It’s interesting to point out that for as much praise as Scorsese’s opus on loneliness received back in 1976, it received a seemingly equal amount of criticism - and still does today. Veteran movie critic Leonard Maltin, who is usually dead-on with his reviews, calls Taxi Driver the "gory, cold-blooded story of a sick man’s lurid descent into violence, ugly and un-redeeming." 

But so many disagree. Especially Oliver Stone, Roger Corman, Robert De Niro, and many others who pay their tribute to the film and its director in an extensive featurette entitled "Influence and Appreciation".

Speaking of featurettes, I promised myself I would concentrate more on the special features than the actual film, but hey, I can’t help it. So, here’s the rundown:

• New Commentary by Writer Paul Schrader
• New Commentary by Professor Robert Kolker
• Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver (17 min) - Pure one-on-one Scorsese, exactly what you’d expect.
• Producing Taxi Driver (10 min) - The financial and timing difficulties of piecing the film together.
• God’s Lonely Man (21 min) - A probing look into Schrader’s own personal background and motivation behind his anti-hero story.
• Influence and Appreciation (18 min) - See above.
• Taxi Driver Stories (22 min) - Descriptive first-hand accounts of real-life NYC taxi drivers. Too crazy not to be true.
• Making Of Documentary (70 min) - Full-length collection of interviews with all those involved with this iconic film, including the entire supporting cast of Keitel, Foster, Shepherd, Brooks and the late Peter Boyle.
• Travis’ New York (6 min) - A glimpse into the grimy NYC of past times, before its rawness was replaced by ‘Disneyfication’.
• Travis’ New York Locations (6 min) - Side-by-side comparison of 9 locations from the original 1976 film verses 2006 footage, which is like viewing two different worlds.
• Intro to Storyboards by Martin Scorsese (5 min) - A concise insight into how to visualize a story.
• Storyboard to Film Comparison (8 min) - A step-by-step look into how Scorsese storyboarded the script. It’s amazing to see how many memorable scenes were sketched on paper before they were even shot. A must for film students.
• Animated Photo Galleries
• Original Screenplay

The Sony-released DVD is stacked. The only thing it’s missing is a full commentary by the man himself, Scorsese.   Maybe one day.

Another grand, operatic Tarantino mash-up of movie genres

By Jeff

Inglourious Basterds is broken into titled chapters (first is ‘Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France…’ ), very similar to other Quentin Tarantino movies. The style, tone, humor, characters, timing and pacing are also very comparable.

But for some reason, and maybe it’s the incredibly detailed WW2-era production value and cinematography, but Inglourious Basterds makes Tarantino feel more fresh and vivid than he has since the first Kill Bill .

To the great benefit of the film, there are no actors present who have stared in past Tarantino films. That is except for a couple short, somewhat necessary voiceovers from Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel, and a small role for Hostel -director/semi-actor Eli Roth, who shines in the sinister role of one of Lt. Aldo Raine’s (Brad Pitt) Jewish hit squad, nicknamed the ‘Bear Jew’ because he brutally beats Nazis to death using a Louisville Slugger (this is not a movie to bring the kids to).

While many people will probably see this movie because of Brad Pitt’s superstardom, maybe that’s a good thing, because it will open their eyes to the incredible new talent on display (Tarantino always seems to bring out the best of whoever he works with, whether known or unknown).

Since debuting at the Cannes Film Festival this past May (at 2 hours and 45 minutes, many people walked out, it’s since been cut down by about 15), many critics have been singing the praises of two actors in particular, Christoph Waltz and Melanie Laurent.

Waltz plays Col. Hans Landa, a charming but dastardly Nazi who considers himself a detective who is exceptionally talented at finding people, rather than a hired exterminator for Hitler (much to his dismay, he acquires the nickname the ‘Jew Hunter’). You never know if he really believes this strange rationalization, which ultimately makes the character all the more unpredictable and intimidating. Surely the most memorable on-screen villain since Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh a couple years ago in No Country for Old Men .

Melanie Laurent delicately plays an on-the-run Jewish girl named Shosanna Dreyfus who escapes Landa’s grasp in the nerve-racking opening scene, only to meet up with him four years later after moving to Paris and inheriting a cinema at which the Nazis decide to premiere their newest propaganda film in, with all their most important figureheads attending (including an impish Hitler).

Shosanna plans her revenge by devising an act of sabotage on the premiere. So do the Raine’s group of ‘Basterds’.

That’s pretty much the extent of the plot. Accept it. The real pleasure comes from watching the scenes of tension between the characters slowly unravel, Tarantino doing what he does best - chewing the fat.

A central theme in all Tarantino’s films is revenge. He is great at writing and directing tales of deception, rage, retribution, and vengeance. He is great at writing edgy dialogue that knows exactly how to pushes people’s buttons (sometimes without you even realizing that they’re being pushed). His films seem to grow on you more and more as you watch them.

They’re not perfect. They may not be what we had in mind.

But damn are they entertaining and hard to turn away from.

An in-depth look into the turbulent lives of a Bomb Squad

By Jeff

Kathryn Bigelow’s first film in seven years (since 2002’s K-19: The Widowmaker ) is more of a sci-fi thriller in the vein of her ex-husband James Cameron’s 1986 masterpiece Aliens than just another heavy message Iraq War-themed movie - which is precisely why it is now being hailed a masterpiece itself by critics and audiences across the globe.

There’s no denying that this film isn’t uncomfortably intense, with scenes of our main characters struggling to defuse roadside bombs unfolding at such a realistic, dread-filled pace, that you can actually feel your heart in your throat and your stomach at your feet.

Of all the jobs one could have, defusing IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) in the heart of the Iraq war must be one of the most straining and yet strangely satisfactory (to be able to stop a bomb from exploding at any second is almost a God-like ability).

This combination of danger (a horrible death) and victory (a transcendent reaffirmation of life) is exactly why bomb-specialist William James (played astonishingly by Jeremy Renner, who’s appeared in many small movies over the last eight years but has never exuded intensity to this magnitude before) and his two fellow soldiers (solid support-beams Anthony Mackey and Brian Geraghty) are drawn to the job, and in James’ case, addicted to the chaos of what it entails.

Allowed to film in Jordan, under strict shooting schedules, The Hurt Locker feels simultaneously like a sci-fi thriller and a documentary. The sense of being an American solider dropped straight down into the dense midst of a city ravaged by a war you’ve created is all too real and yet also alien.

As our characters work the crime scene in their protective anti-explosive gear (which looks exactly like a space suit, complete with shielded helmet), trying to determine where the bomb is, how it’s fused, and how it can be detonated, everyone around them is a stranger, a suspect (especially those carrying cell phones…) and the result is like being on a barren desert planet surrounded by aliens lurking in the shadows, waiting for their opportunity to strike out at their heavy-in-firepower/small-in-numbers invaders.

After a particularly hot n’ hairy dismantling of about a dozen gas-tank sized bombs hibernating in a car trunk (enough C4 to engulf a full city block), specialist James returns calmly to his seat in the Humvee and lights up a cig, taking a few puffs, and proclaiming to no-one, "That was good".

Amazingly, through the intimate direction of the scene, this seems like a perfectly nature human response to what he’s just gone through. This is the film’s strongest asset; it’s ability to make you sympathize with a character (Renner) that is openly obsessed with his highly suicidal job.

A title card in the beginning states the story takes place in the year 2004, which is both irrelevant and significant to the film. It could just as well be taking place right now, in 2009. A group of IED car bombs went off just this Monday in Mosul, killing 42 and wounding over 150. And that irrelevance (the fact we haven’t make any progress in all that time safe-guarding and re-building Iraq) is precisely why the film’s ultimate message is all the more significant.

If we are still fighting a losing battle after nearly seven years, what are we doing so wrong, and how in the hell are we going to fix things so we’re not still in the same situation come 2014?

By Jeff

When playing regular guitar is just not enough anymore…

You’re at home, outside, or in the car listening to music when suddenly a song breaks into an awesome riff or killer solo, and without even realizing it, your arms involuntarily begin to mimic the guitarist.

Congratulations, you are now playing Air Guitar, something every rock fan has experienced, yet most are ashamed to admit it. That is definitely not the case with the subjects of Alexandra Lipsitz‘s true-life documentary Air Guitar Nation .

With a plotline that oddly resembles 2006’s Broken Lizard-soirée Beerfest , Air Guitar Nation follows the exploits of two Air Guitarists from New York, David ‘C-Diddy’ Jung and Dan ‘Bjourn Turoque’ Crane, who aspire to represent the United States for the first time at the ‘Air Guitar World Championships’ in Finland.  These guys buy into their artificial ‘stage’ personalities so earnestly, it’s like watching method actors of Brando and DeNiro’s caliber. 

What makes Air Guitar Nation fun to watch is how Lipsitz manages to document these people and their world without condemning the absurdity of what they’re doing. The camera, as an outside observer, follows these "guitarists" as they travel from the first-ever US Air Guitar Tournament in New York, to the National Championship at The Roxy in Los Angeles, and finally to the small town of Oulu in northern Finland.  There, a crowd of over 5,000 gather to see the world’s most die-hard air guitarists battle for the crown. 

Surprisingly, this tournament was first held in 1996 and gets bigger and bigger every year. Now that air guitar has caught on in America, this harmless pastime has turned even more into a sacred cult-phenomenon.

Air Guitar Nation not only covers the prestigious tournament, but also explores the curious background of how this movement was started by college students who believed if everyone in the world carried an air guitar around with them, they wouldn’t be able to hold a gun. In Europe, air guitaring has been around so long that it is now considered to be a pure art form!  

 So, if you find yourself air guitaring a little more than normal and feel a calling to get on stage and show people what you’ve got, it might be a good idea to check out Air Guitar Nation to learn the ropes first.

Has Director Michael Mann lost his marbles or transgressed to a whole new level?

By Jeff

What a divider this one has been. Critics and moviegoers have either been all-for-it (New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells, Roger Ebert, the majority of my friends), or simply impressed by the high level of historical production value but ultimately unswayed and unsatisfied by the hi-def camera action employed throughout and powerful but somewhat silent and muted script phrasings.

No other director I have ever watched has as gradually enveloped me as much in his vision, upon repeated viewings, as Michael Mann (and maybe David Lynch). Mann’s other primarily cited masterpieces, Manhunter , The Last of the Mohicans and yes, 1995’s Heat , were all met by critics and audiences alike largely with ambivalent or negative reactions upon original release

Today, Heat is considered one of the top 10 best films of the 1990s.

With his last two films, the underrated Collateral and vastly underrated Miami Vice , Mann has been redefining the realism able to be captured by hi-definition handheld cameras…and as a result has left his fellow peers in the dust…namely Spielberg and Lucas who have become preoccupied with special effects).

His movies may not do very well in theaters, but they have an AMAZING shelf life. That’s how Mann still manages to pull in an estimated $100 million plus budget like he does on Public Enemies . Will the film gross that much in theaters? Doubtful, considering it’s crushed between the mass-popularity of Transformers 2 and Harry Potter . But will it over the course of its DVD/Blu-ray sales, rental figures, and premium channel/cable TV run? No doubt.

Public Enemies puts you in right in the shoes of the ever-watchable Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, notorious bank robber of the early 1930s Depression-era mid-west who was like a modern-day Robin Hood folk hero to the starving nation. We pick up the story with him strolling into a remote prison facility under an epically immense blue sky and breaking out his captive buddies in a hailstorm of bullets. There is no clearly defined backstory or motive to his seemingly innate criminality, the film just propels itself onward from this point, as though we are walking in at a certain point in the midst of someone else’s life. It’s thrilling.

For perpetrating across so many state lines, he eventually finds himself the prime target of newly instituted FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (played charismatically by Billy Crudup, although with a slight British accent), who puts a steely FBI ‘G-man’ (FBI slang for Government Man) on the Dillinger dilemma named Melvin Purvis (another haunted performance Christian Bale, who is not as disappointing as people say, just appropriately downgraded from his lavish Batman role). But he just can’t seem to get the job done with the very ‘green’, very ‘young’ men that Hoover keeps sending his way (I hope your picking up on Hoover’s underlying motive here).

Purvis realizes he doesn’t stand a chance against reckless yet efficient already-legendary outlaws like Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the like (operating badass Thompson submachine guns no less) with his adolescent FBI newbies.

He needs cold-hearted, experienced men that are numb to the wear-and-tear of everyday violence (as well as the help of some newly invented phone-tapping devices), and as Dillinger gets more and more reckless robbing banks with his unplanned blitzkrieg techniques, hoping to secure enough loot to steal away with his newly found soulmate Billie Frenchette (a captivating Marion Cotillard, who truly makes the most of what is a strong but pretty straight-forward girlfriend role), Hoover finally grants Purvis his wish…and you probably can guess the rest if you don’t already know.

Mann executes each scene, each moment, in such a low-and-gritty but highly stylized fashion that you feel 100% immersed in this old-time gangster world, more convincingly than you ever have before (Bonnie and Clyde , eat your heart out). He’s always been known as a director who shoots in the present tense, speaking to today’s modern dilemmas and also figuratively in terms of a story’s specific settings, uncaring about what came before or what came after, just concerned with the minute details currently in front of your eyes. And Public Enemies is the pinnacle of his ‘in-the-moment’ fascination, obsession, dedication.

In this way, Mann is the ultimate modernist director of our time. And as John Dillinger himself unabashedly proclaims during one scene,

"We’re having too good a time today. We ain’t thinking about tomorrow." 

 Attack of the Critic(s)

By Jeff

Ahh, where to begin.

This is robot porn people. Robot. Porn. And I mean that in as many different ways as you can think of.

Two and a half hours of robots bouncing all over the place, leaving behind a trail of blurred polygons, weirdly toned sexual jokes, references or undertones, and seemingly sporadic spots of racial stereotyping. All the female characters are nymphomaniacs, including hero Shia LaBeouf’s mother. There’s even a dominatrix-themed robot disguised as a super-slutty college mega-babe (newcomer Isabel Lucas, gee what a future she has).

At one point, a mini-robot furiously humps Megan Fox’s leg. But it’s not funny, it’s just weird.

Also thrown in, and I don’t know how this passed the Censors Board (oh wait, I remember, because the movie is going to bring in a half a billion Hollywood dollars worldwide by the end of August), are two Autobots (read: good robots) who talk in jive, and come across as somewhat-to-very racist toward African Americans, depending on the tolerance (or ignorance) of the person watching.

One of these robots has a protruding gold tooth. Both claim they aren’t smart enough to read. Some of the stereotypes used are astounding if you pay attention.

It’s controversial but ultimately OK in the case of Robert Downey Jr. playing a white character disguised as a smug black man in Tropic Thunder because the character eventually realizes the error of his ways. But sadly these negrotrons are the pure embodiment of the Sambo dolls of a past time.

On top of being perverse and racist, Transformers 2 is downright boring. At least the first one came across as somewhat fresh, with enough tension and originality to keep you interested.

All the tension generated by not knowing what’s coming next is crushed by wave after wave of CGI starch, practically blinding you with all the eye candy. It’s painful, like sucking on something so sweet it’s sour. What Michael Bay doesn’t understand, and I firmly believe will never understand, is that no amount of special effects can ever, EVER make up for a complete LACK of imagination.

Every summer ‘event’ movie of the past 35 years has tried and failed to copy that perfect, original combination first seen with the likes of Jaws , Close Encounters of the Third Kind , Raiders of the Lost Ark , E.T. , and Star Wars . And only every once in a while is there an exception to the rule: Terminator 2 , Jurassic Park , The Dark Knight . But not often enough.

Due to the advances in computer technology, story and script have slowly been ironed out of the picture. Why bother spending the required dedication and hard work honing a compelling narrative when you can easily forgo all that in favor of CGI and make just as much revenue in the end.

These executives, producers and directors (in this case the antichrist-like Michael Bay) aren’t looking to make long-standing ‘classics’ like the films mentioned above. They’re looking to make the type movie that will bring in the most masses.

I expect Transformers 2 will fade quietly from the steady streams of history and then, as time goes on, permanently vanish, maybe once in a great while being mentioned in passing as ‘that robot movie with a lot of silly, overkill special effects’.

Sex, Lies, and Economics

By Jeff

The Girlfriend Experience is like American Psycho but with uber-slick NYC wall street yuppie/delusional psychopath Patrick Bateman replaced by an uber-chic NYC call girl/jaded narcissist named Chelsea (played by real-life porno sensation Sasha Grey).

After her dates with some of New York City’s wealthiest men, Chelsea goes home and records her evening out in her ‘books,’ which she keeps to remember what certain clients like and dislike. She describes what movie her date takes her to, where they dined, what they ate, the type and price of the wine or champagne they drank, the luxurious evening dress she was wearing, and of course, what happened when they retired to the bedroom.

This is done to provide us an intimate look into a high-class hooker’s lifestyle as possible. We learn all about her boyfriend, Chris, who is a struggling trainer for an upscale gym. It becomes clear early on that both Chelsea and her boyfriend work in professions where people need them, whether for some late-night company and sex, or to improve their health and body.

Both of their ‘customers’ rely on having our main characters’ utter-most confidence instilled in them, all the time, which often requires Chelsea and Chris to pretend, fake, or lie their way through a session. They’ve developed strong armor, but after years of internalizing, where does that leave them emotionally?

The film is shot slightly fragmented, with certain scenes popping in immediately before or after the main narrative thread of the story. This adds an exciting, tense effect which raises the stakes of the story and certainly forces you to pay attention more closely than you would if the film unfolded in routine, linear pattern.

Also contributing to the unique tone of The Girlfriend Experience is the soundtrack, comprised of equal amounts authentic, straight-from-the-streets drum beats (that really work in heightening the movement of scenes), and a nicely contrasting, richly textured synth score that lies in wait underneath.

Director Steven Soderbergh has been on a role recently, with his epic two-part masterpiece Che having been just released last year to critical acclaim. Finally, it seems this renowned artist has moved on from telling stories of a certain sophisticated gang of con men repeatedly robbing Vegas casinos (see Ocean’s Eleven trilogy). 

Throughout his distinguished career, he’s always been able to capture beautiful camera sequences (a true master of composition), and draw out captivating performances (Sasha Grey surprises here with some actual depth and doesn’t come across as coy or over embellished). But the intimacy of the script and the low-budget production of The Girlfriend Experience is what really has drawn him back to the incredible ‘fly-on-the-wall’ intimacy and daring of his earlier work (namely sex, lies, and videotape and King of the Hill ).

The Girlfriend Experience , shot primarily with a handheld camera in only a few weeks, is absolutely rife with unabashed satire, timely societal concerns (the economic crisis is a major focal point throughout, make of that what you will), and a playful curiosity with the basic human condition (i.e., what makes us tick), that instantly declares it one of the best films to be released in a year that has so far been a ‘black pit’ for the state of grown-up cinema.

Warning: Don’t expect lots of nudity and gratuitous sex scenes people, you will not find it here.

‘To remake or not to remake, that is the question’

By Jeff

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three was a crackerjack thriller from 1974 about an NYC transit cop (Walter Matthau) drawn into a cat-and-mouse game with a criminal mastermind (Robert Shaw) holding possession of a crowded subway car for a ransom fee of 1 million dollars (hey, remember, it was a lot back then).

The original Pelham had a respectable workman-like aesthetic to it and an optimally-paced story that ended in a classic moment of perfectly realized absurdity that still brings a smile to my face when I think about it.

It grew into such a cult favorite that a remake was inevitably due. First came a television version in 1998 (I don’t think I have to tell you how that went), and now, it’s back on the big screen.

Directed by Tony Scott (the younger, ADD-riddled, less talented brother of the superior Ridley Scott), The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 sees Denzel Washington play NYC subway dispatcher Walter Garber (a nice throw-back to Mr. Matthau) suddenly engaged on morning in a twisty psychological battle with a subway train hijacker, played considered more unhinged and vehemently by John Travolta, looking particularly bad-ass and oozing a mixture of madman’s menace and relatable irritation at the world (his character’s been through some tough times, which helps evoke some sympathy from the audience - always important).

The leather-clad crook calls himself ‘Ryder’ and is instantly dubbed a ‘terrorist’ by the media, when he’s really just after a quick $10 million in cash from the Federal Reserve Bank.

Travolta brings more to the table than he has in a long time. The man took a massive credibility hit when he did Wild Hogs , and then signed up for the sequel to Wild Hogs , but this movie really does make you remember why you once might have liked him. Denzel, on the other hand, should take a break with these type of roles (this is his 5^th film with Tony Scott, and they are all starting to blur together in my head).

The new Pelham starts off generating momentum early on, with Ryder jacking the subway car in the first five minutes, and quickly reaches a steady cruise speed for the first forty minutes which sees Denzel and Travolta share some great back-and-forth dialogue exchanges. All is going well, Denzel and John are fighting an intriguing battle of wits, building their characters more with each new scene, and Tony is uncharacteristically restrained in his directing, keeping the camera steadily locked on the actor’s faces, where all the ‘real’ action is going on.

And then, after an hour in, the movie begins to break apart, as a long, incoherent, and frankly very unoriginal series of chase scenes occur. Character development goes out the window, in favor of gunshots and crashes. The last twenty minutes are probably the worst I’ve seen of a film in quite some time, maybe since The Blair Witch Project (just kidding…kind of).

It’s as though the filmmakers had 2/3s of a meaty script and didn’t know how finish squeezing the juice out of it. There’s no suspense in the end, as there was in the original, it now just beomes about wrapping up with story in as predictable and neat a way as possible. God forbid we want people thinking about the ending when they walk out of the theater.

You can’t entirely blame the producers for attempting the remake. Plenty of other movies are remade for no purpose other than a quick cash-in, but Pelham , with it’s themes of social injustice and monetary necessity, is actually ripe for an update to today’s 21^st century world, and could have successfully paid homage to the original while still being it’s own separate entity.

This is not that film though.

The Greatest Album Nobody Knows Of

 By Jeff

Recorded live at the Fillmore East in New York on New Year’s Eve 1969-1970, Band of Gypsys is without a doubt the greatest live performance of Hendrix’s all-too short career. 

Accompanying Hendrix on the stage was long-time friends Buddy Miles on drums and backup vocals (who sadly recently passed away), and Billy Cox on electric bass.  Together, these three musicians successfully molded blues, funk, fusion, and rock in a way that nobody had heard previously.

The performance begins with "Who Knows," which immediately draws the audience into Hendrix’s world as he conjures up a slow groove and then improvises like an uncoiling piece of string around that melody, creating an incredibly varied array of musical color and tones. The vocals are handled by both Hendrix and Miles here, at one point using an amusing call-and-response technique. About halfway in, the song descends into a peaceful bridge that allows Miles the opportunity to provide some soulful scat-singing (something he was famous for) before the instruments build up to a powerful crescendo that closes out the song.

The next song is really the masterpiece of the album (and Hendrix’s career for that matter). "Machine Gun" is a near 13-minute long epic that changed the way the instrument of guitar is looked at. The theme of the song was directly influenced by the Vietnam War and Hendrix reflects this not only in his incredibly poignant lyrics ("Same way you shoot me down baby, you’ll be going just the same, three times the pain, with your own self to blame") but also in the way he utilizes his guitar. Overflowing with a dangerous amount of pulsating feedback, Hendrix manipulates his instrument to literally create authentic sounds from a war zone - from rapid machine-gun fire, to bombs exploding, and even to jetfighters shooting across the sky. Hendrix is able to sum all these violent images in sound with his bare hands.

The rest of the album is nearly as stunning, with "Changes" being a short, fast-tempo piece with infectious melodies, and "Power of Soul" a high-energy shred fest with Hendrix cranking out amazingly catchy guitar riffs left and right with fluid ease. The album closes with "Message to Love," a very uplifting song with spiritual lyrics and funky melodies that make you want to sing along with them. 

All in all, Band of Gypsys , the last album that Hendrix would record before his death a short time later, is probably his least known work but arguably contains some of the most progressive and ambitious compositions he ever recorded.        

Highly recommended if you like music.

The Return of Sam Raimi from Spiderman Purgatory

By Jeff

It’s been damn near a full decade since the talented, frenetic Sam Raimi directed a movie that wasn’t about a humanoid man-spider slinging around the Big Apple, forcing me to believe that the studio in charge made him to sign a deal ensuring he would direct the Spiderman trilogy back-to-back-to-back, with no passion projects in between to allow for some fresh, creative sensibilities to fruit (this explains why Spiderman 3 was such a dud).

Well now, he’s back, with an Evil Dead /Tales from the Crypt inspired return to his mangled, old rotting roots. The film’s been garnering rave reviews and is already being referred to as ‘the word-of-mouth sleeper hit of summer’ (it’s not) and ‘the best horror movie in years’ (yea, sorry, that honor belongs to the vampiric melodrama Let the Right One In , followed closely by runner-up The Orphanage ).

Drag Me to Hell centers on Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), a quiet, humble loan officer with a loving boyfriend (Justin Long) and an all-too positive outlook on life, who one fateful morning makes the mistake of turning down a loan for a festering, toothless, one-eyed gypsy woman (Lorna Raver) in hopes of showing her boss she can take charge and is worthy of a promotion being offered. The old hag is insulted by an event that happens next and proceeds to place a curse on the girl that will result in her being swallowed into the fiery pits of hell within three days - by a demonized llama called a ‘La-mia’ no less, who comes across as very loud and angry but not always particularly terrifying.

There were some infinitely scarier apparitions in the Ghostbusters films of yore.

The best part of Drag Me to Hell is easily the over-the-top, gross-out gags (Evil Dead fans…eat your heart out), created with effective but often fake/distracting CGI effects (such as when Alison Lohman has a corpse barf embalming fluid all over her face, or when Alison Lohman has a ghost barf a glob of maggots down her throat).

It’s all really pretty nasty stuff, and the film should be gracious to have received the PG-13 rating it did. This would have easily been rated R if Raimi wasn’t Hollywood’s current sweetheart, having raked in over $2.5 BILLION for the industry with the Spiderman trilogy (Spidey 4, Summer 2011, start getting ready now).

The second best part is the thoroughly engaging performance by Alison Lohman as the cursed girl. Lohman, who replaced Juno ’s Ellen Page in the twelfth hour, knows just how to play it with the audience. She’s vulnerable and tormented, but not stupid and you don’t pity her. I can’t remember the last time I saw a young actress command the screen so well (her close-ups are incredibly compelling).

Too bad she’s forced to overcome such a repetitive and vapid script (written some time ago by Raimi and his brother Ivan).   

I’d imagine that like the Evil Dead trilogy, Drag Me to Hell is most enjoyable upon initial viewing, and preferably in a jam-packed theater late at night where audience members can play off each others shocks and squirms (of which there are plenty in this movie). It’s a lot of spectacle but with no lingering feeling of awe. A loud engine with not a lot of durability. I don’t expect repeat viewings to really intrigue and draw me in the way classics like The Exorcist , The Shining , or Susperia still manage to do after all this time.

But Raimi’s not trying to re-invent the wheel, he’s just trying to scare the pants out of moviegoers, and on some level, you have to appreciate him for being able to do that so well. Drag Me to Hell is fun, fast, and an utterly momentary thing. It will fly right by your eyes in that sweet and cool A/C-powered dark theater, but once your back out in the muggy summer streets, it will fade from your memory like a freshly-taken Polaroid photo developing in reverse.