Film & Arts
At a special screening of Battleship for a select few at the Nite Hawk Cinema in Brooklyn -- where the seats had miniature tables attached -- there were bowls of regular and gourmet popcorn. Drinks were also served before and during the screening as waiters crouched down slinking through the aisles so as to not disturb the viewing.
This was a perfect setting for the interview that followed with singing star Rihanna via Skype who was in Hawaii -- where the sci-fi action thriller had been shot.
I began by asking the sultry pop music diva now making her acting debut what characteristics she shared with her sailor character Raikes -- a beautiful-yet-tough-as-nails gunner -- other than the same monogram.
“I think mostly being one of the boys,” Rihanna replied. “I really liked that. I was used to that, growing up with my brothers, and all my cousins. It was rarely any girls around, and I didn’t feel out of place.”
Boys love playing with guns and she went on to say that what she will miss most about playing her character were the guns. “Most of the fun was on set, doing the actual shooting, and using the weapons. That was some of my favorite parts, the weapons, all the stunts and the fighting scenes. I did a lot of training with a female soldier, who's a real weapons officer. She taught me a lot about weapons and drills, the whole etiquette, and the body language. I would have never had those experiences, had it not been for shooting this film. That was definitely fun to play.”
In addition to having fun, the Battleship shoot was very revealing for the Barbados-born Robyn Rihanna Fenty. “I actually learned a lot about myself,” the 24-year-old disclosed. “I mean, I had to delve into, you know, different emotions and things that I had been avoiding, I guess, not even knowing. I guess I put up this face, and I don't want people to see me weak or anything, or vulnerable. I did that for so long that I kind of had to break that down. And it really taught me a lot about myself. It was a great experience.”
The award-winning pop idol also learned that being a video queen does not help when on set of a big blockbuster movie. “I thought the [video work] would help,” she laughed, “but little did I know. It was a completely different beast. It was brand new, and it was a whole different experience. It was a much bigger set. I had to use dialog and I never really use that in my videos; it's usually just me acting to a track, a musical track. That was different. Having an accent, too.”
And director Peter Berg was taking no prisons, she explained. “Peter Berg, he's very spontaneous and fearless. He pushed me a lot and he threw me out there, right away from day one. I didn't even have a chance to really think about what I was doing. I was right out into the scenes.
"On the first day I had no lines. So I didn't have lines prepared, I was just in character. Then all of a sudden, It was like, I had 12 lines in my first scene. I liked that, the improv. I had to learn really, really quickly.”
She added, “Working with Peter as a director made me feel safe. His enthusiasm made me trust him and I believed he could really putt it [what he needed in the role] out of me.”
With a big budget movie under her belt, millionaire Rihanna, who is now #4 on Forbes’ Celebrity 100 list with an array of hit singles, has no intentions of putting music on pause.
“I don't think music could ever be on hold for me,” she acknowledged, “because it's something that I love to do. So even if there isn’t a deadline or a specific project, I will always feel empty not making music. I will always get that bug. Even right now, I'm still going a little crazy. I can't wait to go in the studio, just to play around with songs.
"I can do that, because that doesn't become work for me. I am going to make time to do some more films. I really liked my first experience with Battleship, so I'm looking forward to doing more. But I can't say goodbye to music.”
What do Edie Falco, Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts and Harvey Keitel have in common besides Actor's Equity? Google "Oran Etkin" and find out. Judging by the raves posted on his site, they're among the ecstatic parents whose children are now mini music mavens thanks to the Grammy Award winner's imaginative instruction.
Fairfield County parents -- and kids -- can see what the fuss is about when Oran presents PJ Jamboree: Jammin' in the Park on June 18 at Old Greenwich, Connecticut's Binney Park. (Details are at jccgreenwich.org, site of host organization JCC Greenwich.) They won't come away humming nursery rhymes. Rather, they'll be vibing to his global adventures and the melodies and rhythms he picked up along the way.
Oran is a linguist and a language teacher. That is, if you consider music a universal language. He does. The Israeli-born, U.S.-raised musician and composer is fluent in several dialects: klezmer, West African music and jazz. His method of teaching music to newborns-to-6 year olds, "Timbalooloo," incorporates the basic grammar and vocabulary of music through games, stories, songs and dance.
Do children learn music as instinctively as verbal language? When reached for insight, Oran confirmed that children have a natural musicality. "They’re always singing -- it’s like they live in a musical." He also gave a teaser of what to expect on the 18th.
Q: What are the perils of waiting till kids are older to teach music?
A: Like spoken language, the earlier they assimilate it the better. But it's also about how we teach at an older age. You take a course and after you´ve learned all the rules, you can kind of piece something together and it kind of sounds like a sentence -- but not -- because there are mistakes. You never see a child studying like that. We can teach all the techniques and rules about harmony, but it's not the same as internalizing it intuitively in early childhood.
Q: How do you teach music to infants?
A: For them it's more about connecting with the care-giver through rhythm and melody and starting to experience all the contrasts. Why do people enjoy music, what makes it fundamentally happen? A big part of that is all the contrasts. So you can break it down to the most fundamental contrast, which is sound versus silence. That’s kind of like a peekaboo game, if you will -- seeing versus not seeing. So even when the kids are very small, they enjoy that contrast between shaking the shaker and all of a sudden the silence when it stops.
Q: How do you teach instruments?
A: Once they’re verbal, it opens up a whole new world where we can teach them through storytelling and humor. They start to respond to silly things like the idea of a clarinet coming to the concert or class in its bed. In Wake Up, Clarinet!, I’ll tell the kids my friend Clara came and she’s really excited about being there but she's still sleepy. So I "wake up" my clarinet and she starts talking, "Ma Ma, I want Ma Ma." Pretty soon we're all singing and dancing.
Q: While learning music, what else can kids discover?
A: In a safe environment, kids can explore all the emotions they naturally feel. Music doesn’t always have to be superficially happy; there can be some kind of depth to it. For me, the deepest music has happiness and sadness and melancholy all mixed in. Kids also learn to listen to the silence and put something beautiful in there -- and then figure out how to add their own voice to create more beauty. When you think about skills for life, that’s one of the most important ones.
Q: So they can get more attuned to listening to people through music?
A: Even if you’re the CEO of a big company, what you're really doing is listening to what’s going on, and then trying to do whatever's necessary to create more beauty.
Q: Maybe they'll start listening to their parents...
A: Family therapy through music!
Q: At least they'll get good grades in History -- talk a little about how your storytelling approach gives historical and cultural context.
A: So for the older kids we´ll sing a Creole song called Eh La Bas, and there'll be a story about King Louis XIV that leads into a bit of the history of France and Louisiana -- because that’s who Louisiana is named after -- and why they speak French there. They see pictures of King Louis and start to get a feel and a flavor for that time period and what it was like to go for days over the ocean and see water all around until you come to land and suddenly discover a swamp.
They´ll also learn what the Creole lyrics mean. It's a fun story about a king that helps children personally connect to the song. With other stories they become very close to Dizzy Gillespie or Herbie Hancock or Mozart. I tell a story about Mozart as a little boy going to see the king and they imagine themselves in his place.
Q: How do you turn them on to jazz?
A: We tell a story about the kingdom of jazz with the Duke -- Duke Elington -- and the Princess -- Ella Fitzgerald -- that leads us into singing songs by Ellington, George Gershwin, etc. and learning to play some of them on the instruments. So we sing and play [the Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Clarke classic] Salt Peanuts. Then we take a trip around the world, all the way from Duke's place down to Africa. By pretending that certain notes are characters or places, we use the stories to explain how to play a song.
Q: Do they naturally take to different genres or is it like trying to get a kid who only likes cereal and peanut butter to sample exotic cuisine?
A: There's a wide musical vocabulary that comes from listening to music from all over the world. When you think about the kind of music we grew up with for children here in the US, things like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, it’s all quarter notes. The melody is all major scale 4/4; it’s all a very straight-and-narrow set of vocabulary. You wouldn’t talk to kids with such a narrow vocabulary; you talk to them with the full vocabulary so they learn everything.
When they hear different sounds, whether jazz, blues, classical or African, Cuban, Brazilian, they get to explore and be transported beyond where they are physically and understand that the world is bigger than what they see. They learn about each culture and see how they can mix and cooperate together.
Q: The name of your band, Kelenia, translates to “love for other.”
A: Yes, exactly.
(Adult fans may want to check out his "Kelenia" album on the Motema label, which boasts a fusion of American jazz and Malian sounds with oniony Jewish accents. It took a 2010 Independent Music Award for best world-beat CD.) It took a 2010 Independent Music Award for best world-beat CD.)
Blu-rays of the Week
Despite its long absence, several arias are among the most popular and memorable in the repertory, and Angela Gheorghiu and Jonas Kaufmann sing them passionately. The orchestra and chorus—led by conductor Mark Elder—are in good form. Visually, McVicar’s production has its peculiarities, with sets and costumes not of the period; the sound blasts out of the speakers. The lone extra is a making-of featurette.
The Criterion Collection deserves accolades for bringing back this modest masterpiece: perhaps its subtle politics will register where didacticism won’t. The low-budget film looks excellent on Blu-ray; extras comprise Young and producer Michael Hausman’s commentary, a new interview with Edward James Olmos (who has a small role) and a short 1973 documentary by Young, Children of the Fields.
Their chemistry—and some del Rio skin—help the bumpy 82-minute ride. The original 35mm print, courtesy of Rochester’s George Eastman House, has been satisfactorily upgraded, although there are inevitable visual blemishes.
The cast is in top form throughout, there are solid one-liners and enough guest stars (Linda Hamilton and Carrie Ann Moss, most obviously) to make the 13 hit-or-miss episodes endurable. On Blu-ray, the series shines; extras include featurettes, deleted scenes and audio commentaries.
The movie has a decent hi-def transfer; extras include on-set featurettes.
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are tastes I’ve yet to—and probably won’t—acquire, and despite the fact that one of my favorite singers, Aimee Man, loves them, and despite cameos from the likes of Will Farrell, John C. Reilly, Robert Loggia and William Atherton, this ill-conceived vanity project is DOA. On Blu-ray, the movie looks better than it deserves; extras include a commentary, deleted/extended scenes, interviews and featurettes.
Directors Marlind and Stein’s action sequences have occasional visual pop, but the belabored attempts to make these characters mythic weighs down the plot. The extravagant set pieces translate well to Blu-ray; extras include music video, making-of featurettes, bloopers and a picture-in-picture accompaniment to the film.
Andrea Riseborough and especially Abbie Cornish completely outclass their material, but aside from savvy art direction and Oscar-nominated costuming (both come off best in hi-def), there’s little else to recommend here. The lone extra is a 20-minute featurette.
Art 21: Season 6
Among those profiled are Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who could not attend the unveiling of his sculptures in Manhattan because he was jailed as a dissident; Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic; and British painter Rackstraw Downes. All of the artists discuss how their provocative art challenges their audiences.
The Architecture of Doom brilliantly dismantles the Nazi ideology of art, which was followed to its fatal end; Dear Uncle Adolf recounts ordinary Germans’ affection for their Fuhrer with an illuminating look at letters written to him; Hitler: A Career succinctly sums up his life and politics in 150 minutes; and The Top Secret Trial of the Third Reich unveils the show trial of those conspirators in the failed assassination attempt of Hitler on July 20, 1944.
Danny Huston is not bad as the narrating anti-hero, but Elisabeth Rohm is simply outstanding as the wife, giving a rare American film performance filled of naked—in many ways—eroticism. She transforms this cardboard character into a full-blooded woman; all that matches her are excerpts of Beethoven’s chamber music.
If you’re in the right mood, you might get a brief scare, but most viewers will be patently bored: and happy that several of the performers went on to bigger and better things.
Since she never appeared in another movie, having only this on her resume is nothing to crow about. Still, collectors of soft-core flicks will find something here to sate their appetite.
Soon, thanks to grassroots campaigns and bad publicity, it all fell apart for awhile. The director talks with former “patients” and leaders of the program, letting them have their say; extras include a post-Memphis Film Festival screening panel and Fox’s onstage marriage proposal to his partner.
Accompanied with equal parts finesse and power by Kozena’s husband, conductor Simon Rattle, and the Berlin Philharmonic, this live recording is crystalline-sounding.
In the hands of conductor Valery Gergiev, the London Symphony Orchestra plays it for all its worth in a truly dazzling performance. Scarcely less good is their traversal through Igor Stravinsky’s pungent Symphony in Three Movements. Too bad another substantial work didn’t round out this excellent but too short (58 minutes) disc, whose Super Audio CD surround sound is impressive.
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