Day: August 19, 2013

John Fahey & Nels Cline: LFM Reviews Guitar Innovators

By Joe Bendel. John Fahey knew the blues. He eventually published his academic thesis on Skip James and “re-discovered” real deal bluesman Bukka White. He could also play the guitar, combining a legit blues attack with an avant-garde harmonic sensibility. Never a commercial sensation, Fahey developed a cult following. The idiosyncratic guitar master consistently defied arbitrary genre distinctions, as does Nels Cline (probably best known for his work with Wilco). Despite their stylistic differences, both musicians make an apt pairing in First Run Features’ Guitar Innovators, a theatrical double feature of two mid-length documentaries opening this Friday in New York.

The late Fahey’s chaotic life offers plenty of grist for James Cullingham’s In Search of Blind Joe Death: the Story of John Fahey. The longer of the two films, Death surveys the guitarist’s life and his prolific but under-distributed musical output. The artist who playfully adopted the “Blind Joe Death” moniker had nearly as many distinctive creative periods as Picasso, including a sojourn through the world of old school New Orleans jazz. Apparently, he had a rather traumatic childhood, which Cullingham addresses briefly and diplomatically (rather raising more questions than he answers). However, he fully embraces Fahey’s image as an artistic eccentric, including plenty of viewer-friendly anecdotes as part of his portrait.

Including short animated interludes and talking head segments with The Who’s Pete Towsend and Fonotone Records’ Joe Bussard, Death is strong on biography, but is oddly stingy when it comes to the actual music. It will convince viewers that Fahey was important and influential, but might not move a lot of CDs and downloads for his heirs. Still, it represents a rare cinematic fix for blues fans. (LFM GRADE: B+)

Steven Okazaki’s Approximately Nels Cline personally introduces viewers to the American experimental jazz and rock guitarist, but it is not intended as an exhaustive study. Instead, it captures Cline’s creative process in the studio with several simpatico colleagues. The free improvisation and electronic instrumentation of Cline’s group sounds worlds removed from Fahey blues-roots music, but their choice of time-honored folk songs like “Black is the Color” nicely parallels Fahey’s modernist approach to traditional fare.

Cline also recruits an enormously talented ensemble, including the unusually versatile jazz trumpeter Ron Miles, who brings an In a Silent Way kind of vibe to the session. Violinist-vocalist Carla Kihlstedt also sounds quite haunting on their dramatic rendition of “Color.” We also hear the more abstract side of Cline when playing with keyboardist-programmer Yuka Honda (who also happens to be his wife). At half an hour, it should not overwhelm aesthetically conventional ears, especially given the warm, handsome look of the performance footage shot by cinematographer Dan Krauss at the storied Fantasy Studios.

Death documents a fascinating life, while Approximately records some striking music in the making, but both films speak to each other in intriguing ways. Shrewdly packaged by First Run, both documentaries are highly recommended separately or together as the Guitar Innovators double bill, which opened last Friday (8/16) in New York at the Cinema Village. (LFM GRADE: A-)

LFM DOUBLE-BILL GRADE: B+

Posted on August 19th, 2013 at 8:14pm.

A Supernatural Shaft: LFM Reviews Abandoned Mine

By Joe Bendel. There are bureaucrats at the Interior Department who will have nightmares after watching this film. The rest of us should sleep pretty soundly. Four college-aged knuckleheads will indeed follow through on their wildly ill-conceived subterranean Halloween plans in Jeff Chamberlain’s Abandoned Mine, which had special one night only screenings in fourteen select cities and also kicked off a week long Hollywood engagement set for this week.

Brad is a former high school quarterback who never left his sleepy home town. His ex-girl friend Sharon temporarily left for college, but now she is back. While she was gone, he took up with her best friend, Laurie—and why not? Laurie is the one that is afraid of spiders, while Sharon is the one played by Alexa Vega from Spy Kids. Aside from that, they are pretty much interchangeable.

From "Abandoned Mine."

Brad has the really clever idea to get the old gang together and party Halloween night away in the old Jarvis Mine. Of course, he plans to punk his friends and videotape the results. The mine’s notorious history should have them primed for his pranks. Old man Jarvis and his two young daughters were murdered there by his own miners, doing the bidding of his partners in San Francisco. Considering everyone knows what happened, it clearly was not a well executed crime. Nonetheless, they say the spirits are restless in the Jarvis Mine.

Without question, the creepiest part of Abandoned are the eerie old photos of evil looking miners seen during the opening sequence. They set quite an evocative tone. Unfortunately, it is impossible to care about the dull, clueless characters, who really ought to know better – particularly our protagonist, Brad, who deserves a swift back-handed slapping. Only Charan Prabhakar projects any sense of an individual personality as Ethan, the first generation Indian honors student tagging along.

Mercifully, Abandoned is not a found footage film, per se. Chamberlain only occasional shows the audience flashes of their surviving video in befuddling snippets. To his credit, he also largely avoids the graphic gore, gratuitous nudity, and explicit language often found in horror films. Perhaps the audience is supposed to provide it instead.

Regardless, it is impossible to get around how jaw-droppingly stupid Brad’s plan is. Kids, you should never play around in deserted mines, even in broad daylight. It is especially foolish to do so during Halloween night, when emergency services are always stretched thin. Just sort of generic, Abandoned Mine will underwhelm genre fans. For diehard Vega fans, it screens for a week (8/15-8/22) at the Arena Cinema in Hollywood, U.S.A.

LFM GRADE: D+

Posted on August 19th, 2013 at 5:55pm.

LFM Reviews Blue Exorcist: The Movie

By Joe Bendel. True Cross Academy is sort of like Hogwarts, but with guns. That is definitely an improvement. While some of the senior exorcists wield ancient magical weapons, an automatic still has its uses against rampaging demons. Young exorcist-in-training Rin Okumura will face a rather different sort of supernatural troublemaker as well as the traditional city-leveling variety in Atsushi Takahashi’s Blue Exorcist: the Movie (trailer here), which screened this past weekend in select cities nationwide.

Marvel fans who remember Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, will be able to relate to Okumura. They both have the same father, but have renounced his infernal ways. As fans of Kazue Katō’s manga and the subsequent anime series already know, Okumura and his brother Yukio are the half-human, half-demonic offspring of Old Scratch. However, only Rin inherited the old man’s powers (and some of his features). Rin enrolls in True Cross to become an exorcist in order to avenge Father Shiro Fujimoto, the kindly priest who raised the two boys. Much to his surprise, he found Yukio had a head start on him. Already a full-fledged exorcist, his brother even teaches courses at the elite exorcist school.

Taking place sometime in between episodes, the staff of the academy is gearing up for the eagerly anticipated festival their town celebrates every eleven years. This fateful night, Yukio Okumura will be leading an operation to exorcise a haunted train traveling between our world, Assiah, and Gehenna, the demon plane. It does not go according to plan. As a result, a lot of oozing monsters start lumbering through the city—and it is mostly Rin’s fault. Suspended from exorcisms, the teen with a tail is forced to babysit Usamaro, an impish demon who resembles a young boy. When Okumura and the young scamp start to bond, it leads to all kinds of complications.

Although the manga and anime series are known for their religious symbolism, the movie downplays the allegorical for the sake of narrative compactness and Usamaro’s comic relief. Frankly, it gives us more than enough of the latter. Still, the stand alone feature quickly brings new viewers up to speed on its well developed fantasy world and offers some entertaining supernatural mayhem. The background cityscapes are unusually lush and detailed, while the big festival looks like an awful lot of fun.

From "Blue Exorcist: TheMovie."

When Blue Exorcist gets down to action, it nicely blends elements of the kaiju and martial arts genres. The scope and stakes of the film are rather large, even if it does not advance the overall series mythology. The way it incorporates an old children’s book into the narrative is also quite clever and visually stylish. In fact, the whole film looks quite impressive. There is just a little too much demon cuteness and the self-contained resolution is somewhat unsatisfying for reasons that would be spoilery to explain.

Those familiar with the series might be disappointed to hear that there is no service involving Shura Kirigakure, aside from her regular wardrobe. At least she gets a fair amount of screen time fighting. The fans it is intended for should enjoy this new adventure, while receptive new folks ought to find the world-building detail intriguing. Recommended for older teens who dig manga and anime, Blue Exorcist: the Movie screened this past weekend in New York and San Francisco.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on August 19th, 2013 at 8:10pm.

Hold That Cough: LFM Reviews Flu

By Joe Bendel. It is easy to understand why pandemic thrillers might strike a chord with Korean audiences. Watching a few SARS and Bird Flu outbreaks rip through our hemisphere would grab our attention, too. A year or so after unleashing Park Jung-woo’s Deranged, CJ Entertainment breaks out the hazmat suits again with Kim Sung-su’s Flu, which opened last week in Los Angeles.

Dr. Kim In-hae ought to have been more gracious when daring fireman Kang Ji-koo pulled her out of the massive sinkhole that gave way beneath her car. Unfortunately, infectious disease specialists are not always very warm and fuzzy. Her bedside manner will not improve when she learns what a human trafficking ring inadvertently smuggled into the country: a highly contagious mutated strain of avian flu.

From "Flu."

Through an unlikely set of circumstances, Kang befriends Dr. Kim’s adorable but demanding daughter, Mi-reu, in hopes that will pay dividends with her mother. As a result, when the health authorities lock-down the bustling Seoul suburb of Bundang, Kang becomes Mi-reu’s protector. Unfortunately, she seems to be developing a cough.

As in Deranged, human nature takes a nasty turn when confronting a virulent form of microscopic mortality. However, Deranged’s parasitic McGuffin manifested itself in a more intriguing way than this titular flu. Those afflicted in Bundang simply start to cough, break out in rashes, and die—except for the mysterious survivor of that fateful human cargo container.

It is all kinds of manipulative, but the relationship between Kang and young Kim is still highly effective. As the former, Jang Hyuk nicely balances grit and swagger, while Park Min-ha is cinematically cute and surprisingly natural on-screen as Mi-reu. Superstar Soo-ae is also appropriately intense as Dr. Kim. Alas, most of the authorities are just cardboard cut-out villains. Regrettably, this is especially true of the distinctly anti-American portrayal of various Yankee military and medical advisors, most notably the ruthless Schneider (not uncommonly a Jewish surname, adding an additional layer of awkwardness to the film). Only Ma Dong-seok’s Jeon Kook-hwan, a military officer turned rogue provocateur, is a worthy heavy.

Flu operates on an impressive scale, incorporating some big set pieces and a way-over-the-top climatic stand-off. In contrast, Deranged more trenchantly explores the perils of the mob mentality running riot. (Indeed, it is the superior outbreak movie.) A better melodrama than a viral thriller, Flu is just sort of okay overall. Mostly for Soo-ae fans and hot zone junkies, Flu opened last Friday (8/16) in Los Angeles at the CGV Cinemas and opens September 6th in New York (Queens) at the AMC Bay Terrace.

LFM GRADE: C

Posted on August 19th, 2013 at 8:06pm.