219West: Janine Materna Profile from John De Petro on Vimeo.
Reported by Rima Abdelkater
Produced by John DePetro
Friday, February 12, 2010
New York Fire Houses Get the Burn
New York Fire Houses Get the Burn from John De Petro on Vimeo.
Reported by Rima Abdelkater
Produced by John DePetro
Murakami in Wonderland
Make the first left from the entrance of the Gagosian Gallery and walk in to see Takashi Murakami’s newest work not so succinctly titled Picture of Fate: I am But a Fisherman Who Angles In the Darkness of His Mind.
Greeting you as you enter the large room is a mammoth, four paneled painting of mixed styles from Japanese manga, traditional Chinese art and pop. Murakami depicts a large cat resting on a bridge of skulls as waterfalls of streaming blues, greens and reds surround the scene.
With it’s Cheshire Cat-like smile, the beast looks as if it’s pulled straight from the world of Alice in Wonderland. The cat however is a representation of an ancient mythological creature the Karajisi who was once believed to guard Buddhist temples.
The piece looks like it would be more comfortable residing on the side of a subway car or painted on the façade of an aluminum gate guarding a small business in Brooklyn. The work is common graffiti passed off as expensive and meaningful art.
But it works. The colorful cartoon pours over the viewers in an awe-inspiring way. The viewer feeds on the piece, devouring every red, green blue, black and yellow Murakami has to offer.
The Buddhist origins of the character may be lost to those who neglect to ask reception for the Picture of Fate press release, but even if the cat brings about recollections of reading Through the Looking Glass or memories of watching Garfield after school, Picture of Fate will leave a lasting mark.
An Empty Box
Writer/director Richard Kelly is best known for 2001’s overrated cult hit Donnie Darko. Darko is a twisted and puzzling muck of a tale so it is easy to expect something weird and confusing from his latest feature. But as baffling as Donnie Darko is, it’s nothing compared to the sci-fi suspense-thriller, The Box.
Arthur Lewis (James Marsden) and Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz) wake up one morning to find a mysterious package left on their front stoop. Inside the package is a box with a wooden base and a red push button on top. Later that day, a disfigured stranger named Arlington Steward (played by the lone bright spot in the movie, Frank Langella) shows up at the front door saying the box is a gift that comes with a choice. Choose to push the button and the Lewises will receive one million dollars in cash and someone they don’t know will die. Choose to, and nothing happens except they get to keep a hundred bucks as a consolation prize just for playing.
After engaging in very little debate over their options, Mrs. Lewis does indeed push the little red button and it does cause the death of someone the family does not know. I’m not giving anything away here. I mean the scene is in the movie’s trailer.
Steward returns to collect the box from the Lewis family. He informs them the box will be reset and given to another family the Lewises do not know. So that’s the twist. Without a chance to celebrate or enjoy their newfound fortune, they realize they’re the ones to be offed next when the next couple also decides to push the pretty red button.
What the previews don’t convey is all the craziness that ensues after Mrs. Lewis slams her hand on the button as if she were on the 80’s game show Press your Luck. With a push of that button, The Box lands on a big whammy and becomes completely bewildering as the plot turns from an interesting moral dilemma into a government conspiracy tale with alien intrigue and religious overtones. There’s also an unexplained horde of possessed zombie-like beings that get random nosebleeds. At one point, three water cubes rise from the basement floor of a public library. Each one offers Mr. Lewis either salvation or damnation. Or at least I think that’s what happened. So many questions get stuffed in the final hour of this Box there’s not room left for any answers.
Many interesting plot devices get thrown into the mix and are never fully developed. Mr. Lewis works as an analyst for NASA and wants nothing more than to be a full-fledged astronaut. His application is denied because he failed the psychological exam despite his levelheaded appearance. When this happens in the first 15 minutes, you may think the revelation of Mr. Lewis being possibly a bit touched in the head may have larger implications like Jack Torrance in The Shining. You would be wrong. Mr. Lewis’ mental capacities never really become an issue again.
As for Mrs. Lewis, she’s missing a few digits on one of her feet due to radiation poisoning. Either that or all her little piggies went to the market, I don’t quite remember exactly. But neither circumstance is very relevant to the plot anyway. Heartbroken by his wife’s disability, Mr. Lewis invents a Dr. Scholl’s-like foot prosthetic so he can dance with his bride at parties. Touching, but this has no bearing on later events in the movie either.
The premise is terrific. A morality play that pits human greed for personal riches against the Lewises’ conscience and willingness to snuff out another’s life for a suitcase filled with hundred dollar bills. But after that, this Box simply folds.
Even the actors seem to give up on the movie in its ridiculousness. In the first act, Diaz lays on a thick Virginian accent to play Mrs. Lewis. Halfway through the movie, her accent disappears. Marsden barely gives the southern drawl a try before abandoning it.
The music also takes the viewer out of the story. While the cinematography and lighting of the film set an ominous and dark tone, the score at times contradicts the visuals with lighthearted melodies. Imagine watching 1995’s Usual Suspects with the theme from Benny Hill laid over images of Kevin Spacey turning into Keyser Soze. The Box is meant to challenge the viewer’s own moral code. It wants those leaving the theater to ask themselves and each other whether or not they would be willing to sacrifice another’s life for money. The only question moviegoers will be asking as they leave the multiplex is, “what the hell just happened?”
Same Old Band, Same Great Tune
You’d never know 2010 is two months away by listening to Kiss’s latest studio album Sonic Boom. “The hottest band in the land”’s first new release in 11 years transports Kiss fans back to their parent’s basement circa 1977. They will think they have just popped in one of their old Kiss 8-tracks like Dressed to Kill or Love Gun as they get high off Funions, Hostess Sno Balls and Mountain Dew while preparing the game board for their latest session of Dungeons and Dragons.
After leaving a bad taste from 1998’s underperforming Psycho Circus, Sonic Boom is touted as a return to the classic Kiss rock-n-roll of old by founding members Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. And they’re right. By using the same old formula they invented 30 year-old formula of face-melting guitar solos, rhythmic chant inducing choruses, and lyrics laced with not-so-subtle sexual innuendo, Kiss has returned to their roots.
Sonic Boom starts off fast and hard and never lets up. From the moment Paul Stanley’s belts out his screeching vocals on “Modern Day Delilah,” the first single released off Boom, Kiss fans will know the good old days are back. His chest hair may be a little greyer, but Stanley’s voice hasn’t changed a bit or weakened with age. The smoking lead guitar sounds better than ever thanks to former Star Child Ace Frehley’s replacement Tommy Thayer as Eric Singer wails away on the endless set of drums that have surrounded every Kiss drummer since the days of Peter Criss.
The notoriously controlling senior members, rhythm guitarist Stanley and bassist Simmons, let Thayer have a shot at lead vocals on “All for the Glory.” His voice is generic but works on this track and fits in with the rest of his mates. On “Glory,” the band says what everyone already knows -- that Kiss is basically in music for the fame and adulation.
Kiss has made no bones about its purpose -- getting girls and getting rich—and this song is an ode to that goal. Thayer sings, “We’re all for one and we’re all for the glory/When it’s all said and done, they’re gonna know the story/Cause wall for one and we’re all for the glory/Glory now,” reinforcing the band’s egomaniacal persona as publicity hounds.
In the tradition of 1991’s Kiss classic “God Gave Rock and Roll to You II,” “Stand” is the commercial sounding anthem Kiss seems to include on each album. It’s catchy but it still comes off as a tad bit cheesy. The chorus, “Stand by my side – I’ll be next to you/Stand by my side and we’ll make it through/ I’m next to you,” gets the toes tapping and can hang around in your head for a few hours but doesn’t offer much in the way of deep meaning. Not that deep meaning has ever been what the band is interested in.
Simmons takes over the vocals on “Hot and Cold.” In the typical alpha male persona of the star of A&E’s reality program Family Jewels, Simmons sings, “If it’s too hot, you’re too cold/if it’s too loud your too old.” Simmons is on his way to replacing Dick Clark as the world’s oldest teenager with the creed of fast women, loud music and good times.
Lately Kiss has been known more for its licensing prowess and marketing strategies rather than its musical chops and song writing capabilities. The band continues to plug its products like the Kiss Koffin and the always-popular Kiss Kondoms. Sonic Boom is no different than these other moneymaking gimmicks.
Because Kiss is now partners with Wal-Mart, Sonic Boom is available for purchase only at the retail giant. For 12 bucks, buyers get the Sonic Boom CD, a DVD concert of the band performing in Buenos Aires, and a separate disc of re-recorded Kiss greatest hits which includes classics like “Rock and Roll All Nite” and “Detroit Rock City.” For newcomers thinking about enlisting in the Kiss Army, Sonic Boom offers most of the good, old Kiss to get acquainted with, (there’s plenty of bad, old Kiss to avoid) plus the new stuff to get them up to speed. The amount of content offered for that price is well worth the investment.
If a music fan hasn’t latched onto the music of Kiss by now, Sonic Boom probably won’t do the trick either. Just as the make-up hasn’t changed for over three decades, neither has the music. While Sonic Boom offers nothing new or groundbreaking, it may prove to be the way long time fans of the band like to be Kiss-ed.
No Love for Infant Monkeys
In the collection of short stories Love in Infant Monkeys, author Lydia Millet (How the Dead Dream) attempts to peel back the protective skin from a variety of celebrities. But unlike the many levels that make up an ogre, Millet imagines her celebrities to be simple, one layered bananas.
The group of stories is based on actual run-ins celebrities have had with animals. By using this device as a jumping off point, Millet sidesteps the process of actually having to develop most of the characters she is writing about. Instead of fleshing out her characters, she uses the reader’s preconceived notions of these celebrities. At the same time the animals play to the reader’s emotions by becoming the characters that evoke sympathy. The celebs play the part of the heel or the butt of the writer’s joke.
Pop singer and world famous egomaniac Madonna stars in the story, “Sexing the Pheasant.” This tale derives from the real life account of Madge importing pheasants, for the purpose of target practice, to her estate in England. Millet conjures up what she thinks would race through the mind of the 51-year-old diva when she shoots one of the birds. Unsurprisingly and unimaginatively the writer envisions Madame M behaving quite snobbishly as she looks down on her husband, her husbands, friends, religion, “faggots,” (12) and “retards.” While Millet’s Madonna is the one who is supposed to believe she’s on top of human hierarchy, it is Millet who comes off as having her nose stuck in the air.
The bright spot of “Pheasants” occurs when Madonna keeps reminding herself to act more British. She says Guy,”was acting out because he was pissed at her. (Self: peevish. Pissed meant drunk here.)” (4) But these asides get pretty annoying too after the sixth or seventh time.
In “Thomas Edison and Vasil Golakov,” Millet reimagines the circumstances following Edison’s public killing of an elephant. In reality, Thomas Edison filmed the electrocution of a killer circus elephant using rival inventor Nikola Tesla’s alternate current electricity to demonstrate its lethal potential compared to Edison’s safer direct current electricity. In Millet’s fictional world, Edison becomes obsessed with the footage. He begins to talk to the onscreen elephant, is haunted by and driven to the edge of sanity by the memory of the murdered pachyderm.
The story is told through found letters of Edison’s dismissed manservant I. Vasil Golakov. Golakov witnesses Edison’s ravings and then is no longer seen at Edison’s lab shortly after his discovery. This imagined scene of speculation is assembled awkwardly and in the end Millet pulls back the veil to reveal one of America’s greatest inventors is only something slightly more than a kook.
The high point of Infant Love in Monkeys is “Sir Henry.” In this sweet story a professional dog walker who loves the animals but refuses to own one, is asked by one of his clients to take in a dog he walks regularly. After some internal debate, the dog walker declines. But once his decision is made, he realizes that while he owns no pets, at the end of his day he takes every dog he’s ever walked and loved home with him inside his heart.
David Hasselhoff makes a cameo appearance in “Sir Henry” after being crowbarred into the story to make Millet’s celebrity quota.
“’Yeah. Yeah,” said Daivd Hasselhoff on the phone. “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” As he winked at the dogwalker, then swooped down, not stopping, to chuck Sir Henry on the chin. “Hey there little buddy.’” (49) And then as quickly as he came in, The Hoff vanishes from the story. Even in his diminutive role, Hassehoff is still portrayed as oafish.
The common theme shared amongst the celebs chosen by Millet is that they are past their prime and lacking in any real relevance today. Even Madonna, who is still an icon, hasn’t been pertinent musically in a decade. Millet misses a real opportunity to let her imagination run wild in this uneven collection. The celebrity plus animal equation is a cute gimmick but it ends up missing it’s potential.
Millet wants to tear back the layers of celebrity to expose an imagined truth, whatever it may be. However, instead of revealing something new and meaningful, Millet only manages to slip on her own banana peel.
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