Rock Mega-Concerts

Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck at the 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival.

By David Ross. Two rock mega-concerts are now streaming on Netflix: the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th Anniversary Concert (2009) and the third installment of Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival (2010), each weighing in at something like five hours. I have nothing very nice to say about the Hall of Fame concert. Like rock itself in its thirty-five-year phase of senescence, the concert has a smarmy self-congratulatory masturbatory quality that quickly becomes nauseating. A fair representation of the rock aristocracy is present – Jackson Browne, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Mick Jagger, Billy Joel, Metallica, Prince, Lou Reed, Simon & Garfunkel, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Sting, U2, Stevie Wonder, etc. – but the music has a mere pretense of energy and inspiration. It’s a slick simulacrum of an inspiration that fled in the seventies. For the most part, this concert is no better than a Vegas floor show.

Little Anthony, Buddy Guy, Dion, B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Darlene Love are duly wheeled out, but their participation is gestural and patronizing. The baby boom billionaires can thereby flatter themselves as reverent keepers of a tradition that they have of course utterly sold out.

U2 particularly irks me, not because they’re not good – they are very good – but because they’re good in the wrong way. Theirs is a triumph of will – of sheer determination and professional organization and marshaled nerve; not for them the more equivocal experiments in interrogation, introspection, or poetry, the anxious plum-line dropped deep. Their real genius is steering their own ascension as icons and negotiating the cultural politics of their own global gigantism. Though they’ve made a lot of good music, they turn out to be oddly cognate with postmodern media manipulators like Madonna and Lady Gaga.

Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello at the Hall of Fame concert.

The only performance worth mentioning is the Springsteen/Tom Morello version of Springsteen’s dustbowl anthem “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” As much as he seems like he could use a good knock on the head from a cop during one of those IMF or World Bank melees, Morello, I have to admit, kills it. He may be the single-most annoying guy ever to play the guitar really well. For his part, Springsteen begins by issuing platitudes about “high times on Wall Street, hard times on Main Street,” which is a little rich coming from a guy who’s worth maybe $500 million, most of which, I hazard to guess, is invested by these very same Wall Street vampires. Springsteen has lost a good deal of his voice and looks increasingly like an aging tough guy from The Sopranos, but he’s still a rock’n’roll true believer, the last of them perhaps, along with Patti Smith. You won’t see him cavorting with Jay-Z and Beyonce at Cannes or hobnobbing with Sir Mick at the Monaco Grand Prix. Continue reading Rock Mega-Concerts

EXCLUSIVE: Libertas Reviews the Clint Eastwood-Leonardo DiCaprio J. Edgar Hoover Screenplay

Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar."

By Jason Apuzzo. • I had the opportunity recently to read Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay for the new Clint Eastwood-Leonardo DiCaprio film J. Edgar, set for release this October. Even though the film covers a fair bit of Cold War history, in terms of the FBI’s handling of communist infiltration, due to the fact that J. Edgar covers Hoover’s full professional story – from his rise in the late 1910s all the way through to the Nixon years – I’ve decided to talk about the screenplay outside the context of one of our regular Cold War Updates!. I would love to give the screenplay an even more exhaustive write-up, frankly, but due to my own time constraints I’ll have to keep things brief – and focus primarily on what the film will be saying about the anti-communist struggle.

I’ve decided to write about this screenplay publicly because it’s covering extremely important areas of history – 50+ years of it, in fact, dwelling on issues of law enforcement and privacy that still resonate with us today – and also because we’re dealing here with an actual historical figure, with a very public record. (I’ll also try to keep things here as spoiler-free as possible – with the understanding, again, that we’re dealing with Hoover’s long public record.) People should know, frankly, how the man who founded the FBI and shaped a large part of 20th century American domestic history is going to be portrayed.

Young Hoover arrives to investigate a bombing.

There’s a lot to like about J. Edgar in its first act. Hoover’s colorful rise is set against the struggle over communist infiltration of American society during the late teens and early ‘20s – a struggle rarely covered in cinema, as most people assume (mistakenly) that Soviet agents only first hit our shores during the 1930s. The screenplay actually begins with the bombing of Attorney General Mitchell Palmer’s home by communist/anarchist saboteurs in 1919, and we see famous figures like the young FDR and Dwight Eisenhower pour out onto the street in the aftermath – as a peppy, ambitious young Hoover arrives on a bicycle and begins piecing together clues over the bombing. In fact, if you’ve seen early set photos of DiCaprio as Hoover on a bicycle (see right), those images are likely from this opening sequence of the film – a sequence that sets the tone and mood of the film with America under a constant sate of siege (first from communist agents in the 1920s, then from criminal mobs in the 1930s, and finally from Soviet agents again from the late 1930s forward). We see Hoover and his maverick team take down Emma Goldman and a violent gang of communist-anarchist saboteurs, and Hoover begins to put the policies and procedures of modern criminal investigation in place.

The communist/anarchist saboteurs in this section of the film, incidentally, are not depicted as terribly pretty people. They’re made to look dangerous and deceptive – not as victims of a witch hunt, or martyrs. In fact, with their bomb-making factories, and attempted gamesmanship of the legal system, obvious parallels will be drawn with today’s Islamic terrorists. The message here couldn’t be more plain: a robust federal investigative force is needed to face down this threat, and ensure domestic security. Continue reading EXCLUSIVE: Libertas Reviews the Clint Eastwood-Leonardo DiCaprio J. Edgar Hoover Screenplay

Cold War Update: Michael Bay Rules the Summer, 007 Marries, Plus New Trailers for The Iron Lady, 5 Days of War & More!

Michael Bay & Co. premiere "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" in Moscow.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Libertas is about to break some major news regarding one very big, forthcoming movie related to the history of the Cold War, so stay tuned …

• .. although of course, the biggest Cold War-related news of late is the whopping debut of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, a film steeped in the lore and romance of the U.S.-Russia space race (see my review of the film here). Dark of the Moon had its huge, worldwide premiere just over two weeks ago in Moscow, and as of the writing of this post is already approaching the $500 million mark at the worldwide box office.

I’m liking this film even more as I ruminate over it – and over the entire Transformers series, which snuck up on me unexpectedly, in so far as I only ever saw the first two films on DVD. Some of you might ask, is it possible – or even healthy – to ‘ruminate’ on a Michael Bay film about giant toy robots? I’d say ‘hell yes’ it is, when the films are as well-crafted, warm and human as these are – not to mention freedom-loving. And although Dark of the Moon to some extent surrenders to its (admittedly fantastic) technology in the third act, it only feels that way because – once again – Bay does such a nice job setting up his characters in the film’s early sequences. This is the aspect of Bay’s work that is so consistently underestimated by critics: his ability to create sympathetic characters, who bring a human dimension to the mayhem that otherwise transpires in his films. Believe me, f this were an easy thing to do, more directors would do it.

Incidentally, it looks like Bay may actually complete the trifecta here. Both previous Transformers films were the top grossing films in their year (in part due to Avatar straddling 2009-10), and it looks like Dark of the Moon may complete the hat trick. I don’t think anybody’s done anything like this since the Lucas-Spielberg heyday. Dark of the Moon is also is tracking young, which has suddenly – and mysteriously – become Hollywood’s big problem this summer; plus, the film is also blowing up all of those silly, premature burials of 3D – most of which were based on bad 3D conversions.

In related news, Michael Bay talks-up the native 3D aspect of the film to The New York Times, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley talks about working with Bay, and Shia LaBeouf does this extremely colorful interview with Details. He apparently landed both Megan Fox and Isabel Lucas while making these films. That’s heroic. They’re not paying this kid enough. Continue reading Cold War Update: Michael Bay Rules the Summer, 007 Marries, Plus New Trailers for The Iron Lady, 5 Days of War & More!

LFM Mini-Review: Cars 2

By David Ross. THE PITCH: Hayseed tow-truck gets mixed up in international espionage. Strange alternate universe in which cars behave like people. No explanation. Kind of creepy.

THE SKINNY: Cars 2 brings Pixar’s exuberant twenty-five-year spree to a grinding halt. Call it a mid-life crisis. The problem is not moral – the usual descent into greed, cynicism, and indifference – but conceptual. The plot is a confused and hyperactive whirlwind of genre elements and action sequences, perhaps amenable to the ADHD generation, but constantly preventing the film from taking emotional or moral root. Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, and Toy Story 3 – Pixar’s three incontestable masterpieces – are likewise action oriented, but they have a certain organic rhythm, a pattern of pause and eddy. They feel human, in short, while Cars 2 rushes in unremitting machine rhythm, much like a NASCAR race.

WHAT WORKS:

• Pixar’s technical genius has reached new and incredible heights. In the opening sequence, Finn McMissile – a 007-style Aston Martin played by Michael Caine – plunges off an oil derrick into a stormy ocean. The rolling, frothing, thoroughly natural wave dynamics are pure geek showboating. Pixar has evidently conquered all the primary technical challenges of computer animation: water, fire, wind, hair.

• Larry the Cable Guy is full of hillbilly fun as the loyal bumpkin Mater. Olivier he’s not, but then again he’s playing a buck-toothed tow-truck. Apprenticeship with the Royal Shakespeare Company not required.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK:

• In my un-American, dubiously male opinion, cars have ruined the world with their noise, pollution, and facilitation of urban-suburban sprawl. Imagine a time when it was possible to open one’s front door, pick a direction, and walk for twenty miles without fear of being flattened or suffocated in toxic fumes. In light of which, a world consisting entirely of cars – a world that is already ours in some sense – is intrinsically obnoxious and unsettling. How about a world consisting of humanoid retroviruses? Anthropomorphized Iranian centrifuges? Continue reading LFM Mini-Review: Cars 2

The Price of Liberty: LFM Reviews Ironclad

By Joe Bendel. The price of liberty has always been high, in both blood and treasure. It was true during the revolution we just celebrated on the Fourth of July and it was true during the Baron’s Revolt against King John, which led to the Magna Carta – a flawed but important document that informed our founding fathers’ conception of constitutional rights. Preferring the divine right of kings to the rights of man, John tried to reassert his absolute rule and nullify the Magna Carta, but an intrepid band of warriors will defy him, to their last breaths, in Jonathan English’s rip-roaring Ironclad (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Tired of his cruel and erratic rule, England’s barons rose up against John the First (and only), but for political reasons, they left the weakened despot on the throne after securing his signature on their revolutionary document. Unfortunately, many were lulled into a false sense of security. When John makes his play, assembling a mercenary army and securing Rome’s support, he catches most of his foes unawares. Only Rochester Castle stands between him and London. However, twenty men assembled by Baron Albany are determined to hold it at all costs, in hopes that the French will arrive to install a proper monarch.

One of those men is William Marshal, a Knight Templar recently returned from the Crusades. Like the Twelfth Century equivalent of the IDF, the Templars are well accustomed to facing numerically superior enemies. Granted twenty against one thousand is a tall order, but thanks to its construction, Rochester can be ably defended by a small force. Yes indeed, the siege is on.

Ironclad delivers plenty of old school hack-and-slash action for Game of Thrones fans jonesing for a fix. However, equally striking are its scenes of the aftermath of battle, conveying the pain and bone-weariness of the warriors. The film also presents the best depiction of medieval siege techniques yet captured on film.

While the action is thoroughly satisfying, Ironclad proves to be a film of unexpected substance. The screenplay by Jonathan English and co-writer Erick Kastel (based on a first go-round by Stephen McDool) takes notions of faith and freedom deadly seriously. Marshal explicitly states that there is nothing noble about war, ever, yet some things are still worth fighting for—in nearly those exact words. Continue reading The Price of Liberty: LFM Reviews Ironclad

LFM Review: Battlefield Heroes

By Joe Bendel. War, what is it good for? The conscripts from Baekje have absolutely no idea. They perfectly demonstrate the superiority of a volunteer army. The men (and at least one woman) of the still independent (just barely) Goguryeo Kingdom are hardly there by their own free choice, but they have a stronger motivation to fight. Yet they will still do all the dying while the glory will be reserved solely for the officers in Lee Joon-ik’s caustic farce Battlefield Heroes (trailer here), which screens during the 2011 New York Asian Film Festival.

Prepare to get muddy, bloody, and absurd. If Brecht recast Braveheart in the Seventh Century Korea, it would look a lot Battlefield. Of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, Baekje has fallen to the Chinese-aligned Silla. The Tang Dynasty has enlisted the wary Silla in its campaign against the weakened Goguryeo. However, the crafty Silla general Kim Yu-sin is only biding his time.  He might look like an addled old coot, but he’s crazy like a fox.

None of these grand macro schemes matter to “Thingy,” a dirt poor disrespected serf from former Baekje. In fact, when he accidentally defects to Goguryeo, it would only mean switching from a besieger to the besieged, were it not for Gap-sun. Meeting the ardent Goguryeo lady warrior makes quite an impression on Thingy. Needless to say, it is not mutual.

Frankly, even as a medieval keep under attack, Pyongyang was probably more livable then than now. However, Battlefield is seen as something of an allegory, with the plucky but riceless Goguryeos signifying the North, the devious Sillas serving as the South, and the Chinese Tangs functioning as stand-ins for the good old USA. Yet, as Lee must understand, North Korea is not starving because of a Southern blockade, but through the deliberate policies of its government. Not to sound churlish, but good luck making veiled political commentary in the tightly regimented DPRK. As for the imperialist Chinese, perhaps they better represent, you know, China. Continue reading LFM Review: Battlefield Heroes