Buddy Holly Lives On

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 26 July 2011 05:00

Written by Lloyd Carroll

Buddy Holly
Icon (UME)

Various Artists
Rave On (Concord Music)

Rock & roll is chock full of "what if" questions. Certainly on the top ten list of most rock aficionados’ lists would be "Could you imagine how much richer American pop culture would have been had Buddy Holly not died at age 22" in a plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and JP "Big Bopper" Richardson in Clear Lake, Iowa on February 3, 1959?

Twelve years later, Don McLean further immortalized Holly to Baby Boomers with his iconic "American Pie" that referred to that fateful frigid night as "the day the music died." Holly also inspired a Broadway show and a 1978 biopic that starred a still sane Gary Busey.

Buddy Holly would have been celebrating his 75th birthday next month if he were alive. Concord Records commissioned a number of artists to record their favorite tunes associated with Holly, while Universal Music Enterprises, which holds the rights to Holly’s original recordings, has compiled a dozen of his best in a new recording titled Icon.

Paul McCartney owns the publishing rights to Holly’s catalog, so he clearly had the pick of the litter here. On "It’s So Easy," which was a big hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1977, he tries so hard to give a different interpretation that the song is unrecognizable and quite awful to boot. He bizarrely attempts to emulate Dave Edmunds' 1971 hit cover of Smiley Lewis’s "I Hear You Knocking" by singing through a fuzz box.

Sir Paul is happily the only weak link here. Fiona Apple duets with Jon Brion on a touching version of "Everyday" while Graham Nash -- of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young -- delivers a faithful, heartfelt version of "Raining In My Heart" to close the album.

Other veterans who deliver are Kid Rock on the lively Motown-style "Well All Right"; Lou Reed on a very moody take on "Peggy Sue"; and Patti Smith, who shows a rare romantic side for her with "Words of Love".

The biggest surprise is Cee Lo Green, of Forget You and Crazy fame and one of the hosts of NBC’s The Voice. He wonderfully captures the sound of Holly and his backup band, the Crickets, on the rather obscure "(You’re So Square) Baby, I Don’t Care" that was written for Holly by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame composing/production team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

As fine as the aforementioned Holly tribute album is, as the old cliche goes, there’s nothing like the real thing. Icon captures a dozen of Holly’s most memorable recordings, from such catchy seminal rockers as "Oh Boy!" and "Maybe Baby" to the full orchestral ballad, "True Love Ways", which was recorded in New York City mere weeks before his untimely passing.

Also included here are tunes that were written by fellow up-and-coming pop stars at the time, Paul Anka and Bobby Darin, "It Doesn’t Matter Anymore" and "Early in the Morning", respectively.

Stevie Nicks
In Your Dreams (Reprise)

Judging from both the album cover and her voice on her new album, In Your Dreams, Stevie Nicks has found a way to cheat time. She looks and sounds just the way we all remember her when she was cranking out hits with Fleetwood Mac in the mid to late 1970s.

As has long been the case in her music, Nicks is full of contradictions. In the opening cut, "Secret Love", she is content with a no-strings-attached relationship, while on the very next track, "For What It’s Worth" (not the Buffalo Springfield classic), she yearns for a grand romance.

It has been six years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, so Stevie’s concern for the city in New Orleans may be a bit late. But it serves as a reminder that the Crescent City is still not what it once was.

Nicks has been singing about spooky characters way before Twilight, HBO’s True Blood and the CW’s Vampire Diaries, so we have to indulge her slow ballad, "Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream)".

The title track, "In Your Dreams", is the kind of snappy, up-tempo, hummable tune that we haven’t heard from Nicks since Stand Back, Edge of Seventeen and Stop Dragging My Heart Around back in the early ‘80s.

In Your Dreams shows that Stevie Nicks can still carefully craft fine pop music.

Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast: "Captain America: The First Avenger"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 25 July 2011 14:38

Written by Daniel Persons

We're betting Paramount would've preferred that Captain America: The First Avenger had come out on the Memorial Day or July 4th weekends. However, martial-arts-happy animals and big-ass robots claimed those two slots, so here we are in later summer, trying to get our patriotism going for a red-white-and-blue bedecked super hero doing his bit for mom, apple pie, and gas-guzzling automobiles in the thick of WWII.

Does director Joe Johnston's Rocketeer-tested period style work its magic for this final bit of table setting before next year's The Avengers? Are two hours enough time for an origin story, rescue adventure, and ultimate clash between good and evil? And where the hell are all the Nazis? Join Cinefantastique Online's Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons as they discuss these issues and more.

Also in this episode: Dan gives his capsule review of the moody, science-fiction drama, Another Earth.

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Kevin's July '11 Digital Week IV

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 24 July 2011 10:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
Arthur (Warners)
The very definition of an unnecessary remake foregoes the disarming charm of Dudley Moore in the original for the far less amusing Russell Brand, who’s funny in things like Get Him to the Greek but who can’t carry a movie like this. While Helen Mirren doesn’t have the sublime dryness of John Gielgud, she’s good fun, as is, surprisingly, Jennifer Garner. Too bad Greta Gerwig is already getting repetitious, and much of the time I was missing Moore, Gielgud and even (God help me) Liza Minnelli. This Arthur gets a decent hi-def transfer; extras comprise on-set footage, interviews, a gag reel and deleted scenes.

Beauty and the Beast (Criterion)
Jean Cocteau’s 1946 fantasy is truly a film for the ages; even those entranced by the animated version should watch this to see where Disney borrowed many of the most enchanting images. Josette Day and Jean Marais are perfect in the lead roles, but it’s Cocteau’s visual magic (with an assist from Henri Alkan’s sumptuous photography) that makes this a classic that gets better with each viewing. The restored version Criterion released a few years ago receives a superb Blu-ray upgrade; extras from the previous release include two commentaries, a 1995 documentary, Screening at the Majestic, and the audio of Philip Glass’ dull opera, but why anyone would listen to that instead of Georges Auric’s gorgeous score and the voices of the original actors is a mystery.

Boyz n the Hood (Sony)
John Singleton’s 1991 drama about life in South Central L.A., which deals seriously with living in one of the country’s most dangerous neighborhoods, holds up 20 years later, despite some melodramatic shortcomings. Singleton’s truthful writing, realistic direction and a cast of then-unknowns (Ice Cube, Cuba Gooding, Laurence Fishburne, Angela Bassett) make this a gripping slice of life. The movie looks decent on Blu-ray, but the transfer is a little soft; extras include new interviews with Singleton and the cast, deleted scenes, a making-of featurette and Singleton’s commentary.

Buster Keaton Shorts (Kino)
The latest valuable Kino release of Buster Keaton’s movies on Blu-ray is this three-disc collection of 19 two-reel short films made between 1920-3, including such gems as Hard Luck, The Boat, Cops and The Frozen North. Keaton’s timeless physical comedy should win new adherents thanks to these terrific HD upgrades, even if some visual debris unavoidably remains. Extras include 15 illustrated visual essays, alternate shots/scenes, and four of the shorts presented in their original forms and digitally altered versions.

Don Pasquale (Deutsche Grammophon)
Donizetti’s comic romp, staged for maximum hilarity by Otto Schenk, gets a first-rate workout in this Metropolitan Opera production. Conductor James Levine leads the Met Orchestra and Chorus, along with an exemplary cast led by the always intrepid soprano Anna Netrebko and her excellent co-stars, bass-baritone Mariusz Kwiecien and tenor Matthew Polenzani. Schenk’s colorful staging looks dazzling on Blu-ray (so does Netrebko, of course). Extras are short intermission interviews with the cast.

Limitless (Fox)
A less convoluted Inception, this high-octane thriller stars Bradley Cooper as a struggling writer whose shady ex-brother-in-law gives him a new drug that expands his horizons in many ways, but with disastrous (and dangerous) results. The far-fetched premise is belied by a fast pace that minimizes nagging doubts about believability. The always chameleonic Aussie actress Abbie Cornish and ubiquitous Robert DeNiro give the slickly handsome Cooper solid support, and Neil Burger’s eye-popping visuals translate well to hi-def. Extras include a lame alternate ending, Berger commentary and on-set featurettes.

The Music Room (Criterion)
Bengali director Satyajit Ray, best known for his Apu trilogy, introduced Western audiences to the marvels of Indian cinema. So it’s strange that the first Ray film on Blu-ray is this inferior 1958 drama about a once-wealthy aristocrat whose crumbling world is symbolized by a rundown music room where he once held concerts and parties. Much of this static film is taken over by interminable music-making sequences; the result is a film more important as part of Ray’s filmography than as a drama. The black and white film, while restored, retains a somewhat blurry patina. Extras include a 1981 roundtable discussion with Ray, interviews with director Mira Nair and biographer Andrew Robinson and a two-hour 1984 documentary, Satyajit Ray.

Peep World (MPI)
This dysfunctional family reunion dramedy might have been devastatingly dark if it had delved more deeply into the dynamics of the trio of siblings and their parents at its heart. Instead, we’re treated to nasty but somehow cutely inoffensive swipes in one brother’s first novel, a veiled version of his family. With a sputtering Lewis Black as narrator and Sarah Silverman, Ron Rifkin, Lesley Ann Warren, Michael C. Hall and Rainn Wilson as the feuding family—not to mention marvelous support by Kate Mara, Taraji P. Henson and Judy Greer as the women in the men’s lives—this should have been more biting and bitter. It’s given a solid Blu-ray transfer; extras comprise deleted scenes.

DVDs of the Week
Kate Bush—A Life of Surprises (MVD)
For someone as notoriously publicity shy as Kate Bush, she’s had a lot of television interviews and appearances in England over the years, excerpts from which are shown in this “unauthorized” documentary of Bush’s unique career since she made a splash with “Wuthering Heights” in 1978 at age 19. There are interviews with musicians and journalists (notably ubiquitous BBC vet Paul Gambaccini), but Kate’s musical appearances over the course of this three-hour retrospective, from her debut album The Kick Inside to her last album of new material, 2005’s Aerial, make this a given for Kate’s fans, especially since she never performs live any more.

Omnibus—American Profiles (e one)
This impressive unearthing from the Archive of American Television selects 14 episodes from a biographical series that ran on all three networks successively from 1952 to 1960. The profiles range from humorist James Thurber and novelist William Faulkner to conductor Leonard Bernstein and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. There’s even a segment with Dr. Seuss, Theodore Geisel, who narrates a walk through the “ultimate museum.” Narrated by Alistair Cooke, who also conducts most of the interviews, these Omnibus episodes show off the artistic and cultural bounty once available on network television

Wish Me Luck, Series 3 (Acorn Media)
This British made-for-TV series, originally telecast in 1989, continues the grippingly told true story of English women who were Allied secret agents while France was occupied by the Nazis. These eight hour-long episodes lead up to D-Day, as the London home office gives the spies orders to perform dangerous missions in the hopes that they divert  German attention away from Normandy prior to the June 6 invasion. A top-notch cast is led by Jane Asher (best known as Paul McCartney’s pre-Linda fiancée) as the embattled chief of the home office.

CDs of the Week
Bacewicz—Chamber Music (Deutsche Grammophon)
Ginastera—Cello Concertos (Naxos)
These discs of two of the 20th century’s most underappreciated composers prove that some record companies still release recordings that fill gaps in a shrinking repertoire. The haunting chamber music of Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969), including her two masterly piano quintets and the forceful 2nd piano sonata, is passionately played by fellow Poles: pianist Krystian Zimerman and a string quartet. Argentine Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) composed two dramatic cello concertos inspired by his wife, cellist Aurora Natola, both unabashedly modern without embracing atonality or 12-tone complexity. Mark Kosower performs the concertos with controlled intensity, accompanied by conductor Lothar Zagrosek and the Bamberg Symphony.