Kultur

Why "Avatar" Did Not Deserve Best Picture

2010-03-10T15:16:00Z

The 82nd Academy Awards are in the can. The only box scores that matter are those for James Cameron's Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker. Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Achievement in Directing and Best Motion Picture of the Year, winning three for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Sound. The Hurt Locker was also nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning Best Achievement in Sound Mixing; Best Achievement in Sound Editing; Best Achievement in Editing; Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen; Best Achievement in Directing, and Best Motion Picture of the Year. This is as it should be.

A certain amount of grumbling has come from the geek gallery that Avatar should have won Best Picture. For sure, Avatar is the greatest technical motion picture accomplishment to date, costing conservatively some $400 million-plus in production and promotion costs, and completely redefining not only what is thought of as "special effects" but the entire concept of how movies will be made in the future, thus setting a very high production bar. Having said this, why did Avatar not deserve Best Picture? Because, in the end, it was just a cartoon, with a cartoon plot.

Motion pictures are vehicles for all genre of art employed in their production. Kiss of The Spider Woman (Island Alive, 1985) was a mediocre film that served as the vehicle for William Hurt's superb performance as Louis Molina, a homosexual pederast imprisoned for his proclivities. Amadeus (Orion Pictures, 1984) was a brilliant revisionist history whose whole in performance out-weighted the sum of its parts. The former won a Best Actor Academy Award for Hurt's grand performance and the latter won Best Picture (among others) for a compelling portrayal of period, character, and plot. The difference between Avatar and The Hurt Locker is one of the quality of the story and how it was told.

In the case of Avatar, director Cameron, as Hollywood oft does, crammed every utopia-conflict-resolution feel-good cliche into his film, recreating the story of Pocahontas for his lack of plot rendering effort. Like another Academy Award-nominated film, District 9 (Tristar, 2009), he beat the word viewer over the head with the fabled tolerance-anti-prejudice club until we were brain-damaged. Like guitarists Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and their ilk, all of the technical ability in the world can't make up for the lack of a story.

Best Picture Oscar cannot be awarded for technological achievement alone, particularly when that technical achievement is applied to comic book plot, giving it, in effect, a technical blow job that might wow the Adderall-addled collective unconscious of a generation but not a more measured opinion.

(About) 100 Words on...Dean Koontz's "Odd Hours"

2010-02-24T19:08:00Z

Odd Hours

Dean Koontz

Narrated by David Aaron baker

Bantam Books

2008

ISBN 0553807056

"...Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

Dean Koontz's character Odd Thomas was presented as an Everyman St. Michael The Archangel casting Lucifer to Hell in Odd Thomas (Bantam, 2003), Forever Odd (Bantam, 2005), and Brother Odd (Bantam, 2006). After leaving St. Bartholomew's Abbey (and finally helping the spirit of Elvis to the other side) Thomas heads West toward Magic Beach, picking up the spirits of Frank Sinatra and the dog Boo in transit. In Magic Beach, the virginal, naive fry-cook from Pico Mundo meets the mysterious and pregnant Annamaria (a Madonna/Magdelena figure, anyone?) who is in danger of being harmed by some bad characters. She asks Thomas if he would die for her...well, you are beginning to get the picture. Odd Thomas descends into a rabid gumbo depiction of the Holy Family, where our intrepid protagonist plays all of the parts. Unlike the previous three novels, Odd Hours lacks a beginning, a sound plot, or an adequate end. Thomas can still turn a phrase, though.

A Final Word (for Now) on Elvis

2010-02-24T12:58:27Z

It all started with the death of Michael Jackson June 25, 2009. The circumstances of the King of Pop's death were eerily close to those of the King of Rock some 30 years before. Like the Kennedy assassination (the first one) I remember exactly where I was: in the print shop of the National Investor's Life Building in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. I had just graduated from Catholic High the previous May and was preparing to start Hendrix College in the Fall. On August 16, 1977, THE biggest news was Elvis dying on the crapper.

I hadn't given a damn about Elvis since the mid-1960s, when the first song I ever knew all of the words to was "Return to Sender." No, the King was a Vegas leftover for me in the late '70s. Yes, the 1968 Comeback special had been cool and that song "Suspicious Minds" was memorable, but the Rolling Stones, Allman Brothers Band, and Little Feat were occupying my listening time. And I didn't think of Elvis much. But then Michael Jackson had to go and die from his own excesses and this led me to the library.

A legion of demons were born in print after the death of Elvis Presley. The most recent of these was Dr. George Nichopoulos's The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me (Thomas Nelson, 2010), where Dr. Nichopoulos attempts to vindicate himself and his treatment of Presley in the final years of the singer's life. One need not doubt that Dr. Nichopoulos and Presley were close and quite fond of each other and the doctor does partially exonerate himself as trying to "manage" Presley's ever increasing chemical dependency.

But as detailed in The Death of Elvis: What Really Happened (Robert Hale, 1992), authors Charles Thompson and James Cole reveal not only Nichopoulos' prescribing habits for Presley, but for his entourage also. Nichopoulos' over-prescribing of controlled substances is further verified by former bodyguard Marty Lacker's Elvis: Portrait of a Friend (Bantam, 1980) for whom Nichopoulos prescribed a mountain of Placidyl, as well as Steve Dunleavy's bone-smoking hack job with former shit-kicker bodyguards Dave Hebler, Red West and Sonny West, Elvis: What Happened - Three of His Closest Companions Tell A Shocking, Bizarre Story (Ballentine, 1977).

Every White Trash low-life that ever met Presley wrote a book. One must consider the motives of the authors before reading any of them. The vast majority are sappy remembrances that attempted to 1) maintain Elvis' supposed image or 2) even a perceived score. Those doing the latter exposed Presley's more profligate tendencies, of which he had many. Almost all of them claim that, "...had Elvis only listened to me [insert any of a million names], none of this would have happened." What moonshine! Presley was so far gone in his dependency that he would not have listened to anyone if he could.

There was no Celebrity Rehab or Intervention in the '70s and chemical dependency treatment had not yet become the money-making cottage industry it would in the '80s and '90s. But Imagine for a minute Dr. Drew Pinsky introducing his class of 1977: "Well we have the King, Chet Baker, and William Burroughs here at the Pasadena Recovery Center." All three would have told the prissy bastard to go fuck himself. No, at the time there was nothing anyone could have done for Elvis Presley. He had already unwittingly seal his chemical fate years before. That is why the question as to why no one helped Presley is so asinine: not only were they all beholden to him, Presley would not have listened anyway. Presley's death was the law of nature taking it course to the only conclusion it could.

Perhaps the most even and honest memoir was written by Presley's road manager Joe Esposito, Good Rockin' Tonight: Two Decades on the Road and on the Town with Elvis (Simon & Schuster, 1994). Esposito ends his account thusly,

Nearly two decades after his death, Elvis Presley still reigns unchallenged as the king of rock 'n' roll, the greatest superstar the world has ever known. All the crude jokes and ugly rumors can't change the fact that there was never anyone like him and there never will be another again. Elvis was the most extraordinary ordinary man.

That pretty well sums it up. A body of music that includes Presley's Sun Sides, his first RCA long-player, From Elvis in Memphis, and Elvis: From Memphis to Vegas/Vegas to Memphis could not have happened anywhere else, by anyone else.

(About) 100 Words on...Steve Dunleavy's Elvis: What Happened?

2010-02-12T18:38:00Z

Elvis: What Happened?

Sonny West, Red West, and Dave Hebler as told to Steve Dunleavy

Ballentine Books

1977

Elvis: What Happen?, a crude tell-all about Elvis Presley as dictated by his three recently fired bodyguards was published July 12, 1977, just days prior to Presley's August 16, 1977 death. The previous July, the singer’s father VernonPresley fired his son’s bodyguards, Red West, Sonny West, and David Hebler, reasoninga need to reduce operating expenses. Red West had been a friend of the singer's since the 1950s. The three were justifiably hurt by the snub and agreed narrate the book, ostensibly to give Presley a wake-up call that his behavior was damaging himself and others. The result was a poorly written series of loosely connected vignettes detailing some of Presley's more outrageous behavior.

To be sure, the stories in Elvis: What Happen? are more than like true and not the victim of hyperbole. Recounting them is not necessary as Elvis stories have solidified into Urban Myth. While unflattering to Presley, the book does reveal him as an immature, selfish, egocentric personality, a personality profile since identified and associated with the chemically dependent. The three body guards were rightfully hurt and angry by Presley's apparent dismissal of them and they wanted to send the King a message. It was a poison one as validated by Sonny West and Marshall Terrill's 2008 Elvis: Still Taking Care of Business (Triumph Books). Elvis: What Happen? should be considered a part of the Elvis Presley Story rather than a description of it.

(Way more than) 100 Words on...The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me by Dr. George Nichopoulos and Rose Clayton Phillips

2010-02-08T02:05:00Z

The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me

Dr. George Nichopoulos and Rose Clayton Phillips

Thomas Nelson Publishing

1595551719

2010

Writer's Note: A longer review will appear at All About Jazz.

The 1977 death of Elvis Presley and its inevitable aftermath led to the publication of several books, all one way or another related to Presley's flamboyant and often paranoid behavior as a vector of his well established drug use. The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me details Nichopoulos' attempt to manage Presley's drug use - a feat tantamount to directing the Titanic's sinking with the same inevitable outcome.

On a technical note (and not included in the All About Jazz article): By the time Dr. George Nichopoulos entered the picture in 1967, Presley already had an established abuse pattern of stimulants and depressant that, more than likely, led to the singer's infamous insomnia. This insomnia (and Presley's de facto dependency on sedative/hypnotics) is what what Nichopoulos was trying to manage at the end of Elvis' life. Presley's post-autopsy toxicology screen revealed multiple barbiturates, non-barbiturate sedative/hypnotics and benzodiazepines.

While not identical to, this scenario is chillingly similar to that of Michael Jackson 32-years later. Conrad Murray was attempting to manage Jackson's insomnia with his stepwise employment of sedative benzodiazepines, hypnotic benzodiazepines, and finally propofol. In The King and Dr. Nick, Nichopoulos inaccurately dismisses the apparent similarities between the two singers' deaths. Where he does get this right is in culpability.

Where Presley died while under the deliberate care of Nichopoulos of most likely a cardiac pathology, Jackson died while his physician was administering intravenously a powerful general anesthetic that led directly to his death. Murray was present when Jackson expired. And the central question in both cases is, "did drugs cause the deaths. In both cases this answer is yes. Did Elvis Presley die of a drug overdose? No. In the case of Presley, a life of immoderate consumption of everything, including drugs, led to the debilitation resulting in death.

Did Michael Jackson die of a drug overdose. Yes, and therein lies the biggest difference.

The similarities between the two artists are more striking than their differences. Both had humble upbringings were relatively suddenly thrust into fame, making a pile of money in the meantime. Both evolved from artists into industries, employing armies of people...armies of people beholden to a single figure for their livelihoods. This sets up a people-pleasing paradigm where the employees do what is necessary to keep their employer performing, always in the short term.

Both artists were eccentric, peculiar, if you will, with peccadillos and appetites that provided the media with years of water-cooler fodder. Both were lavish in there spending and indiscriminate in their generosity. Both changed popular music in ways in which they had and have no peers. Nichopoulos, for his part in the life of Presley and his associates, never adequately explains his prescribing practices. That Nichopoulos loved Presley is beyond doubt, but did the doctor act in Presley's best interest is less clear.

(About) 100 Words on...Eric Clapton - "Bottle Rockin'" Columbus, Ohio 07/04/1974

2010-02-01T21:16:00Z

Eric Clapton
Bottle Rockin'
Columbus, Ohio, 07/04/1974
Qualitybootz

The early 1970s found Eric Clapton a mess. Heroin addiction sidelined him between the demise of Derek and the Dominoes (with the death of Duane Allman October 29, 1971 and the release of 461 Ocean Boulevard (RSO, 1973) (though he did appear at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh (Apple, 1971) and Peter Townsend's Rainbow Concert (RSO, 1973)). Once off heroin, Clapton began drinking heavily as evidenced by his singing performance during this soundboard collected concert in Columbus, OH. Pleasantly hammered Clapton is not. He behaves in an arrogantly belligerent manner that can only be forgiven by his corrosive performance of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing" and his near supernatural guitar break in "Key to the Highway. This is Clapton in the '70s to be sure – bloated, lazy, and sloppy. But like Charlie Parker's Dial "Lover Man," Clapton summoned something special to this performance…or else he was just lucky.

Disc 1: Easy Now; Smile;Let it Grow;Can't Find My Way Home; Key to the Highway; Willie and the Hand Jive / Get Ready; Little Wing. Disc 2: Mainline Florida; Layla; Presence of the Lord; Badge; Little Queenie; Crossroads.

(About) 100 Words on...Joe Cocker and Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA 04/26/1970

2010-02-01T19:09:00Z

Joe Cocker and Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA 04/26/1970

Qualitybootz

This concert took place about one month after Cocker and company stormed the Fillmore East in New York City for the recording of what would become the two-LP release Joe Cocker and Mad Dogs and Englishmen. That collection has gone through several evolutions finally releasing the performances in their entirety on Mad Dogs and Englishmen - The Complete Fillmore Concerts. The set lists changed little during this short tour but these soundboard recordings from Cocker's concerts wrapping up his MDAE tour did sport the welcome inclusion of "The Weight" in better performance than the released extended MDAE. Cocker proves to be the best of interpreters of other's music. He slays John Sebastian's "Darling Be Home Soon" and Leon Russell's "Delta Lady." Largely absent from these soundboards is Leon Russell, who contributed no sotto voce asides as he did on the official release. Cocker sounds tired but anything but defeated. A little piece of history.

(About) 100 Words on...Elton John at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, 12/22/1973

2010-01-29T01:53:00Z

Elton John

Hammersmith Odeon, London, 12/22/1973

Qualitybootz

I saw Sir Reginald Dwight in concert in Memphis, Tennessee while he was promoting Peach Tree Road (2004). It was a splendidly performed concert, geared directly for the nostalgic sod such as myself. But 30 years prior, in both our salad days, Elton John was at the top of his game, having just released Goodbye Yellowbrick Road, whose contents were well represented at the Hammersmith Odeon that December evening in 1973. Recorded from Pre-FM reels, this Elton John concert is near perfect save for no material from Tumbleweed or Madman. But that is okay, Honky Chateau is well represented, with "Hercules" and "Rocket Man" being exceptional. Davey Johnstone performs searingly with Nigel Olsson registering as an earthquake.

(About) 100 Words on...Lowell George Live at Hard Rock Cafe, New York City, 06/22/1979

2010-01-21T17:17:00Z

Lowell George

Live at Hard Rock Cafe, New York City, 06/22/1979

Qualitybootz

In the same way that Little Feat is not, part and parcel, Lowell George; Lowell George is not Little Feat. This June 1979 concert was part of George's last tour, one he undertook after leaving the band. George was to die of cardiac arrest a week after this show. George is in fine voice and slide guitar, but on the Feat material he sorely misses his band, particularly drummer Richie Wayward and guitarist Paul Barrere. The performances of "Fat Man in the Bathtub," and "Spanish Moon" are spirited, but "Dixie Chicken" and "Willin'" do not quite work, in spite of a capable horn section. Selections from George's 1979 Thanks I'll Eat it Here are are uniformly fabulous. "Honest Man," "What Do You Want a Girl to Do," and Ann Peebles' "Can't Stand the Rain" rock while Rickie Lee Jones' "Easy Money" serves as "Dixie Chicken's" introduction. Where the Feat were heading in a jazz-rock fusion direction, George was choosing to address R&B. I fine and sad coda.

(About) 100 Words on...Howlin' Wolf Live at Key Largo, Chicago, IL 02/23/1969

2010-01-20T21:31:00Z

Howlin' Wolf

Live at Key Largo, Chicago, IL 02/23/1969

Complements of Qualitybootz

Chester Burnett, AKA Howlin' Wolf's life spanned the breadth of blues history from Charlie Patton to the decline of Chess Records. Like Skip James, he was a singular talent not willing to be creatively pigeonholed. This live set captures Wolf at the height of his considerable powers in his adopted home of Chicago. Wolf's blues were not sophisticated like Muddy Waters and Walter Jacobs. They were Mississippi Delta dirt bona fide, electrified and Southern fried. "A Million Miles Away" and "Killing Floor" kill with a ferocity unmatched before or since. Wolf's harmonica and guitar are well represented and Hubert Sumlin shines throughout.

(About) 100 Words on...A&E's Hoarders (Monday Nights, 10:00/9:00PM CT)

2010-01-19T17:19:00Z

Hoarders

Monday Nights, 10/9 Central

Arts and Entertainment

A&E's Hoarders is a spin-off of Obsessed (on hiatus after the 11-episode first season in 2009) which, itself was a tangent from the highly successful A&E series, Intervention. Obsessed dealt with obsessive-compulsive disorder generally with an occasional episode on pathologic hoarding. Hoarders is all hoarding all of the time and each story has the same theme:

Jane Doe is a middle-aged mother of two who has been hoarding since the premature death of her dog, Bowser. Her house is filled with Bowser's feces and new and old doggy toys from floor to ceiling in every room, including bathrooms. Jane sleeps on the back stoop of her house in a sleeping bag as she can no longer get into her bedroom. Jane has had to rent a port-a-potty, which she is now filling the dog paraphernalia. Jane's children were taken from her long ago and have since grown up, retuning home to help their mother.

Enter Dr. Kimberly K. Psychologist, and expert in OCD and Meagan Ann Organize, a professional organizer. The two meet with Jane and form a plan of action. Things start swimmingly, with Jane receptive to throwing away Bowser's feces. By midafternoon, Jane has become anxious, unable to choose which to keep among Bowser's 25 Bo-Boes. The staff of fifteen people stand by while Jane rationalizes, in a sing-song baby's voice, why she must keep Bowser's dog bowl full of 10-year-old Purina Dog Chow. By that evening, Jane has retrieved Bowser's feces and has barricaded herself in what space remains in her garage. The show ends with Jane sucking her thumb on her back stoop.

A&E should consider a new show called Cure. In Cure, instead of a professional organizer, the show employs a company by the same name with a perfect record for cleaning hoarding domiciles. In this series, after the introduction, the Cure team enters the house, sits the hoarder in a chair, gags his/her mouth, nails his/her feet to the floor and cleans the house out from stem to stern with the principle watching. Each episode will be followed up to see if the hoarder has returned to hoarding and if so, what relapse treatment is prescribed. Forget all other shows, this one is a sure bet and this review is well over 100 words long.

(About) 100 Words on...The Hughes Brothers' The Book of Eli

2010-01-18T02:52:00Z

The Book of Eli

Directed by Albert and Allen Hughes

Alcon Entertainment/Silver Pictures

2010

The Book of Eli is not exactly the type of movie one expects Hollywood to make. Never mind that typical blockbuster fare is at best propaganda, The Book of Eli turns the tables by retelling the story of the aftermath of Rome's fifth century fall. The world is 30 years post apocalypse and life is cheap. Denzel Washington plays Eli, a drifter protecting a mysterious book. Except that this book would only be a mystery to a blind moron with a brain infection. It is the Bible, stupid. Eli protects the book from the literate and diabolical Carnegie (Gary Oldman) . Eli enters into cahoots with Solara, played by Mila Kunis (That '70s Show, where is Kelso when you need him), bringing the book to the American equivalent of the Irish shore to be copied by the post nuclear equivalent of Irish Friars. Sadly predictable with some first rate ass-kicking.

(About) 100 Words on...Duma Key (Audiobook) by Stephen King, Narrated by John Slattery

2010-01-16T13:13:00Z

Duma Key
Stephen King
Audiobook
Narrated by John Slattery
Simon & Schuster Audio; Unabridged edition (January 22, 2008)

Duma Key is a most unlikely buddy story between the recently crippled Edgar Freemantle and the oddly omnipresent Jerome Wireman (King's most interesting creation since George Stark/Alexis Machine in The Dark Half (Viking, 1989). Add the elderly and mysterious Elizabeth Eastlake and the King staple themes of old age, physical and psychological damage and repair, and ancient evil, or course, and we have King's finest offering since Insomnia (Perfect Learning, 1994). Mad Men's own John Slattery provides the most convincing narration since James Woods in "Secret Window, Secret Garden" from Four Past Midnight (Penguin-Highbridge, 2008).

(About) 100 Words on...The Georgia Satellites: Sun Plaza Boogie - Tokyo Nakano Sun Plaza Hall 04/23/87

2010-01-06T21:58:00Z

The Georgia Satellites
Sun Plaza Boogie - Tokyo Nakano Sun Plaza Hall 04/23/87
FM Broadcast - Lineage Unknown
CD>EAC>TLH
Courtesy of Qualitybootz

Sometimes a greasy dive-bar cheeseburger and a Schlitz are the only things that will satisfy one's near-carnal gastronomic requirements. The same is true for rock Music. The new Century has yet to produce bone-crunchin', ass-stompin', southern fried rock. Instead, we are treated to Coldplay, Hinder,Nickelback and any number of American Idol turds floating in the cultural punchbowl. Enter this 23-year old bootleg of the most primitive rock the 1980s could produce. The Georgia Satellites were a cracker garage band who scored big with "Keep Your Hands to Yourself." Here on their first Japanese tour, these sons of Georgia reach a Chuck Berry critical mass with Rod Stewart's "Every Picture Tells a Story." This ismusic written in your bones.

A Few Thoughts by a Pacifist with a Gun...

2010-01-04T18:27:00Z

We are no safer today than we were September 10, 2001. This is no failure of a particular Presidential Administration; it is a failure of the American Intelligence community.

Pop culture would lead one to believe that American Intelligence is some mysterious space-aged web of loosely associated organizations, all known by initials and acronyms.

Nothing appears to be farther from the truth. It is doubtful that the American Intelligence community could pour piss out of a boot reading the instructions on the heel. While the Obama Administration cannot be blamed directly for recent breaches in United States security, he can be held responsible. America could stand to be just a bit more paranoid and a little less smug in the pollyanna belief that we are so well protected that the odds of a second 9/11 could no longer happen.

We were shown different Christmas Eve and it was dumb-ass luck that we are not in shock now.

President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

2009-12-10T14:23:00Z

Is it really any surprise that the Nobel Committee awarded United States President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. We have long known that this is a highly politicized award that the Nobel Committee has welded like a club.

And that is fine.

President Obama was awarded the prize for, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Well, no.

President Obama represents the fruition of the dream of a previous recipient, Dr. Martin Luther King. King's selection for the Peace Prize rightfully highlighted his fight against the Jim Crow, cracker, peckerwood politics of the United States in the period before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

President Obama deserves the award to having the guts (and fortune) of being the first African American President of the United States. Let's hope he lives up to the responsibility.

Tiger Woods

2009-12-10T14:16:00Z

Tiger Woods personal problems are not news. He is not the first philanderer to get coked to the gills on Ambien and Vicodin and run his car into a tree. I suspect he shares these experiences with those who do believe his personal problems are news.

Poetry Fragment

2009-12-09T18:05:00Z

Quiet my mind and hush my thought

Make me forget all that I've been taught;

Make me sit still, soothing my fight

that I might know the difference between day and night.

A Limerick About...St. Patrick

2009-07-05T15:59:00Z

In these lines the most popular's Patrick,
Who spawns nasty comments by the hat trick.
Thomas Cahill be damned;
By those he is slammed,
Because Pat was a Brit not a Mick

A Limerick About...Liberals

2009-06-23T02:30:00Z

Forever a pernicious rumor
That liberals have no sense of humor
Politically correct
They say, "What the Heck,"
And not with a bang, but a murmur.