It’s five days until city and county elections, people, and last-minute contributors to candidates are rolling in from private donors and special-interest political action committees (PACs) trying to push their man or woman over the top. Charlottesville Tomorrow, via the Virginia Public Access Project, reported the most recent donations to Albemarle County Board of Supervisor candidates.
Incumbent David Wyant recently raised $12,500 for his Board of Supervisors campaign. His challenger, Ann Mallek, netted $5,500.
White Hall Republican incumbent David Wyant racked up $12,500 in recent donations. The bulk of that comes from—who else?—business and developer PACs. His Democratic challenger, Ann Mallek, netted $5,500 in new donations, two grand from the Democratic Road Back PAC and the rest from her husband.
Rivanna Republican incumbent Ken Boyd got a whooping $9,000 check from the Monticello Business Alliance, a pro-business and economic development PAC. Its latest donation brings the group’s total Boyd contributions to $13,500. We couldn’t make this stuff up if we tried.
Feedback’s face lit up when we saw Brendan Canty‘s name on the list of this year’s Virginia Film Festival guests. We’ve seen Canty bang the skins a couple of times as drummer of renowned D.C. rockers Fugazi, but since the band went on hiatus in 2002 Canty has focused mainly on film-related endeavors. He now runs the Trixie DVD label, which has released the "Burn to Shine" series, featuring underground bands playing live sets in soon-to-be-demolished houses. Canty further combined his musical talents with his film prowess by composing scores for a number of films and other projects, including Sundance Channel‘s documentary The Hill. But when Canty comes to the film festival at the end of this week, he’ll display his more spontaneous abilities by helping provide live accompaniment for the animated films of Brent Green.
Brendan Canty, of Fugazi fame, will join Howe Gelb and filmmaker Brent Green to provide live soundtracks for Green’s animated films (a storyboard above) on November 2 at Gravity Lounge.
Visit vafilm.com for a complete festival schedule.
What are Green’s films like? "Southern gothic primitive," Canty tells us. "But I don’t think they are really primitive, or necessarily Southern, or gothic." But there’s nevertheless something penetrating about Green’s work. "As soon as I saw his films, I was completely blown away," says Canty. "He has such a distinct style. I just love how transparent his process is. It only helps further your appreciation for the final piece. Everything he touches is very consistent with his aesthetic, and I really appreciate that."
We were curious to know how Canty made his way from D.C. punk rocker to soundtrack composer, so we asked him how he first got involved in film. He told us that it started when film and computer game maker Teresa Duncan (who sadly took her own life this summer) asked him to make music to accompany an educational CD-ROM for girls. "I kind of employed all of the punk rockers when they weren’t on tour," says Canty. "She got me to write 10 pancake songs for the pancake jukebox in her CD-ROM. And once you do one or two soundtracks, then people hear you can do soundtracks and they ask you to do them. So it really all started with making pancake songs."
While you probably won’t hear any pancake songs when Canty comes to Gravity Lounge on Friday, November 2, you will get to witness an exciting collaboration. Green and Canty will team up with folk musicianHowe Gelb (who is also playing his own show at Gravity following the film screening) to create live soundtracks for Green’s films. Gelb will pluck the piano while Canty plays percussion. "I’ll bring my bucket of traps with me and rattle around in the back," he says. As for Green, he usually plays banjo, saw or guitar, while also assuming a commanding stage presence. "You’ll see how amazing it is that he gets up there and rants like a preacher while people are playing behind him," says Canty. We’re looking forward to both the music and Green’s films, which, with a quick YouTube glance, remind us of Tim Burton, but with a grittier, darker edge.
A video clip from Brent Green’s "Paulina Hollers."
Does this mean Thom will hang with Dave?
Rumors are a-flyin’ about the likelihood of Radiohead teaming up with Coran Capshaw for the traditional release of its new album, In Rainbows. As C-VILLE reported on October 5, Capshaw’s ATO Records or its fledgling offshoot Side One Recordings are likely choices for the British experimental rock superstars. Billboard.com noted in an October 4 article that Phil Costello, a former VP at Capitol Records (Radiohead’s previous label) is now at ATO. Feedback also noticed that Costello is thanked in the liner notes to Radiohead’s double-platinum (triple in the U.K.) album, OK Computer, another sign that he is likely tight with the band.
Radiohead, who recently released its new album online for whatever price fans want to pay, will likely team up with Coran Capshaw for a physical release.
Costello isn’t the only industry bigwig that has transplanted (jumped ship?) to Capshaw’s camp. Former Columbia Records chairman and president Will Botwin, former Elektra A&R rep Ron Lafitte and former RCA Senior VP Bruce Flohr are also part of Capshaw’s team. Signing Radiohead, who have caused waves (at least in the media) by self-releasing In Rainbows online for whatever price fans see fit, would bolster Capshaw’s stance as a successful helmsman amid the choppy sea of the music industry. On October 12, Flohr reflected that spirit in an Associated Press article. "I don’t think this is the death of anything," he told the AP. "I actually think this is the rebirth of us all."
Prophetic words, indeed. And we’d like to be able to predict the future, too. We’re pretty sure that future involves Radiohead calling ATO or Side One its new home. We haven’t heard any official word as of press time, but on October 20 TALENTFilter, a connected music industry blog, wrote that it "Looks like it’s official—well…as official as the latest rumor can be—Insiders tell us that Radiohead will release their physical album through ATO Records and NOT through Warner Bros., who were rumored to have been in the running."
When we tried to get in touch with Capshaw’s Red Light Management to learn more about the new Side One label, publicist Ambrosia Healy told us that they were very busy. Busy talking with Radiohead, maybe? Or possibly they were busy promoting Side One’s first release, Underworld‘s Oblivion with Bells, which came out on October 16. After a listen to Oblivion, we think In Rainbows would be a great labelmate for Underworld’s progressive electronic sounds.
Even if Radiohead signs with Capshaw, the actual disc likely won’t hit shelves until early 2008. In the meantime, Feedback plans on kicking back, listening to our downloaded copy of In Rainbows (get it from inrainbows.com) and imagining how awesome it would be if Radiohead came to JPJ.
Sabbath on a Wednesday
At the beginning of October Feedback ventured into Belmont to catch a practice of Mass Sabbath, a group of musicians that come together each fall to learn as many Black Sabbath songs as they can, perfect those songs and, as they put it, "whitewater raft on the melted faces of audience" on Halloween night. Our visit was fun, and we got to listen as a few of the members worked out vocal lines and guitar parts. It didn’t reach the level of face-melting, but we enjoyed hearing their renditions of songs like "A National Acrobat" and "Electric Funeral."
Practice makes perfect: members of Mass Sabbath preparing for their fourth annual onslaught of Black Sabbath covers. Catch them on Halloween at Satellite Ballroom.
When we stopped in again the other weekend, we could tell things would be different as soon as we stepped into their basement practice space. The number of amps crammed into the room had multiplied, as had the cast of musicians. We put our earplugs in and listened to the band tear through some of Sabbath’s best songs. The group is a spectacle to watch, even when they are practicing. Vocalist Butch Klotz wails like Ozzy; guitarists Nicholas Liivak, Paul Sebring and Marie Landragin juggled heavy riffs and blistering solos; drummers Jarrod Hood and Warren Hawkins pound out the rhythms; and bassists Aaron Sanders and Ian Williamson create a growling, earth-shaking low-end.
That’s not all, either. In addition to the already doubled rock setup, the band will have a three-piece string section (made up of Michaux Hood, Cathy Monnes and Jen Fleisher) when they descend upon Satellite Ballroom on Wednesday, October 31. This year will be the fourth incarnation of Mass Sabbath, and, though we haven’t had the pleasure of seeing any of the past performances, we’ve heard great things and are sure it will be a quality face-melting experience. The group only plays once a year, so get your costume ready and head to the Ballroom. You might even run into Mr. Feedback himself (doused in plenty of fake blood, of course).
Video of Mass Sabbath rehearsing for their show. [Note: Due to equipment limitations, the audio quality of this video is poor. In other words, Mass Sabbath rocked so hard that Feedback wasn’t able to accurately capture it on tape. For the real thing, come see the band on Wednesday night.]
Bring in da noise
Noise is often something we either ignore or dislike. We pay little attention to the buzz of the refrigerator and a blast of radio static can be downright painful. But some people love odd noises, and the performers at Noise in the System III, which will take place at McGuffey Art Center on November 2, are those people. Comprising UVA graduate students, the concert will feature a wide array of experimental compositions and installations. The concert itself starts at 8pm, but come between 5 and 7:30pm and check out Peter Traub‘s demonstration of his upcoming Internet-based sound installation, which will premiere on turbulence.org on November 15. Improvisational noise-experimentalists the Pinko Communoids will also play. Feedback saw them at the first Noise in the System, and we recommend checking out their subtle but intriguing sonic textures.
The Pinko Communoids will make peculiar experimental sounds at Noise in the System III on November 2.
Splitting atoms
Atomic Burrito has been serving tasty food and a diverse array of live music since 2004, but sadly those days are coming to an end. According to staff, the restaurant, bar and music venue will serve up its last burrito, PBR can and dance night on Wednesday, October 31, with DJ Steve Richmond laying down the soundtrack.
We would say that many great musical acts have graced Atomic’s stage, but the place never had a stage, and that was part of its appeal. "I really liked the vibe," says Brad Perry of local bands Worn in Red and Blur The Lines. "It was like a house show, but with a central Downtown location and a bar."
Al Suttmeier, a bartender at Atomic, says that it was the fact that bartenders were responsible for booking shows on the nights that they worked which led to a diverse and lively musical schedule. "One night you would see a country band and the next night you’d see an all-girl punk rock band," he told us.
Josh Lowry, who also tended bar and booked shows, remembers a show that his band, The Sheiks, played with Gito Gito Hustler, a Japanese female punk band, as one of his best Atomic moments. "It was probably the largest attended show that Atomic ever had. It was one of those really wild nights. Everybody just seemed like they were standing on top of each other."
We’re sad to see Atomic go and we’ll miss the delicious burritos almost as much as the great music. But whenever one local venue shuts its doors, it seems other options quickly pop up. We’re sure places like Outback Lodge, Miller’s and Mono Loco (which has been hosting some good shows on its patio lately) will pick up the slack. For now, though, (if you’re reading this before the end of October) head out and enjoy Atomic’s waning hours.
Occupation: Radiology tech student who works at Mincer’s
Where we spotted her: On her lunch break at Bodo’s on the Corner
Style sense: Melinda calls herself a "fashion bug," buying items from many different places and mixing them together. Her dress is from Target, her bag is Ralph Lauren Rugby, her shoes are from Belk and her silver hoop earrings are from a boutique on the Corner. She bought her glasses, which are sprinkled with rhinestones, from a store in Los Angeles, where her parents live and where she loves to shop.
Chizuru Cho
Occupation: Grad student of elementary education at Mary Baldwin College
Where we spotted her: Window shopping at Barracks Road Shopping Center
Style sense: Chizuru’s unique style is created from things that catch her eye and anything she enjoys. She loves her boots, which came from Marshalls. Her chocolate brown tights and shorts are from Gap and both of her sweaters are from Japan—she just moved to Virginia from there.
It’s a truism that hip-hop in Charlottesville doesn’t get a lot of attention compared to the other genres here that have had break-out local artists. But one hopes that’s changing, as Outback Lodge has started a new underground hip-hop night, beginning with last Wednesday’s Killa, Endless Mic and Touch show.
The show opened up with Dareales, a local rapper. He went on a little earlier than he had planned, and it showed a bit in his stage presence. Although he only performed a couple of songs, Dareales shook off his nervousness and got a call-and-response session going fairly quickly, with a slow, bouncy rhythm to his songs.
Droppin’ rhymes like nerds, ya heard? North Carolina’s Endless Mic give it their geeky-MC best during a set of hip-hop tunes at Outback Lodge.
Take a listen to "Watching Your World" by Endless Mic
After the laid-back feel of Dareales, Endless Mic’s sudden energy came on as a bit of a shock. Mostly playing beats off a laptop, they started rapping after the first note and suddenly were jumping around the stage and the audience like the second coming of the Beastie Boys. Endless Mic is just this side of nerdcore—the group is named after a "Pete and Pete" character, reference Skeletor from "Masters of the Universe," and sample from White Town’s "Your Woman." The crowd wasn’t particularly into it, and the fact that they weren’t using Ducktape as a live DJ made it harder to win the audience over.
After a brief break, Touch came on. Another local rapper, he was able to switch instantly from double-timing his verses over the beat from Ghostface Killah’s "Back Like That" to turning Mims’ "This is Why I’m Hot" into an ode to popping pills, with a suitably calm and menacing delivery. He managed to keep his cool throughout the set, even as more and more folks encroached upon the stage. During his last song, as the beat dropped out behind him, Touch kept rapping for another two minutes or so, crouching lower to the stage as the audience surrounded him.
It was nearly a quarter to 1am by the time Killa got up on the stage, following a few quick verses from local kids Q Black and Marqui, as well as Zano from Endless Mic. Killa’s set was pretty straightforward—holding a mic in one hand and a beer in the other, he made boasts over synth-heavy tracks from the DJ. But the late hour was taking a toll, sapping the energy of both the group and the audience. Charlottesville’s newest hip-hop night may have opened up with a burst of energy, but it ended anti-climatically as the crowd filtered out into the rain.
University of Virginia English professor Mark Edmundson was in his late teens when he stumbled across a copy of The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud while at a friend’s house, and began to read an excerpt from The Interpretation of Dreams. "I thought it was simply terrible," Edmundson recalls, but a few weeks later, when he found himself back at his friend’s, he tried Freud once more. "I picked it up again and skipped the first chapter and from then on I couldn’t stop," he says. "It was the most fascinating damn thing I’d ever read."
"I think if Freud looked out on our landscape today he’d see the makings of dictatorship in religious fundamentalism and in George Bush, and the makings of chaos in American popular culture," says UVA English professor Mark Edmundson.
The early infatuation led to Edmundson’s dissertation and first book, Towards Reading Freud (to be republished in November), and what is now a three decade-long preoccupation with the father of psychoanalysis. In addition to a 2003 introduction to a Penguin reissue of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the Harper’s contributing editor has also covered Freud in recent pieces for the New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education. The fascination has now resulted in his newest book, The Death of Sigmund Freud. "I’ve found Freud illuminating during the 30 years that I’ve been reading him and I imagine I will to the end," Edmundson explains, obviously rejecting the notion that Freud and his ideas are outdated. "People are constantly finding things the world has abandoned or turned away from and making them interesting again. That’s what I hope to do."
To accomplish that, oddly enough, Edmundson has narrowed his focus to Freud as he neared the end of his life in the late 1930s. Riddled with cancer of the jaw and laboring to finish what would be his last book, Moses and Monotheism, an 80-year-old Freud was also faced with having to relocate for his final years, his home country of Austria the first of many conquests for Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich.
While he was primarily known for his writing on sexuality and dreams, Freud had begun to concentrate on religious fundamentalism and totalitarianism. Suddenly, he was confronted with the apotheosis of this in Hitler, who only 30 years earlier was a street beggar in Freud’s hometown of Vienna. Then there was Moses, his final subject and the architect of Judaism, who had characteristically undergone a change in Freud’s possession, becoming a restrained and diverse model of leadership.
Freud was also dying, and Edmundson places us within this complete context, finding the psychologist’s ending years as revealing as his more recognized periods. "He continues to be illuminating," says Edmundson. "It doesn’t mean he has the last word, but once he says something it’s always worth taking seriously and worth debating. Of very few thinkers can that be said."
C-VILLE: In your new book, you outline Freud’s lifelong distaste for America.
Mark Edmundson: The attitude to America is fascinating. The line that stays with me is, "America is enormous but it is an enormous mistake." There are a lot of levels to Freud’s resistance to America. One level just seems irrational. He said everybody in America is a moneygrubber; he said people in America have crummy love affairs. Well, how did he know? He spent two and a half weeks here, and that was it.
The second level is a little more interesting. He thought democracy would eventually devolve in the direction of anarchy and that we would never develop the ability to listen to reasonable leaders. We would either be anarchic or slavish in our obedience to this or that leader.
Freud always thought that as soon as we had made all the money we could make—because that was our primary interest—that we would eventually embrace chaotic democracy or go over to dictatorship. Whether we are on the verge of either I’m not sure. I think if Freud looked out on our landscape today he’d see the makings of dictatorship in religious fundamentalism and in George Bush, and the makings of chaos in American popular culture.
There’s a third level to Freud’s resistance to America, and that involves his sense that the stories he had to tell about human beings tended to be dark stories, and that Americans were never going to listen to dark stories about themselves. They required a good deal of cheering up and optimism. So when he said, "We’re bringing them the plague, but they don’t even know it," he might have gone on to say, "And they never will know it either because they’ll never really take in the words I have to say, with their idiotic optimism." That was the gamut of Freud’s take on America.
Balanced against that was Freud’s resignation to Hitler, who he seemed to take in stride.
Yes, he did. Freud thought that we had a deep, abiding hunger for absolute authority. It came from our lives as children when we desperately wanted father figures and mother figures to organize experience for us, to tell us what’s good and bad, right and wrong. And Freud realized that when times got tough we were going to want to re-create that early experience of stability even at very high costs. One of the most disturbing things that Freud insists on through his work is that people never willingly let go of an agreeable emotional situation. They always try to get it back. In this case the situation is the security a father brings. Humanity, Freud thought, is addicted to patriarchy.
What about the dynamic of Freud as a patriarch versus all of his writings about the patriarchal system? There was a duality.
It’s the great paradox in Freud’s work. Freud is himself sometimes patriarchal: He wants to found a major movement; he wants authority; he wants to tell people what’s what. He can be very insistent in his tone; he can be domineering. He was also more than occasionally open to give and take; he could be kindly and flexible, and even to the end of his life he had one of the qualities that an ultimate patriarch or dictator never has, and that is a sense of humor. Hitler probably never told a joke in his life and never laughed at one. The Collected Humor of Adolph Hitler? There’s no such book. Freud wrote a whole volume about jokes with all of his favorites in there. Nobody who writes a book about jokes and loves jokes is a thoroughgoing patriarch. Loving jokes means having the capacity to appreciate off-beat and off-kilter views of the world. It means being drawn to subversion—which dictators hate. Then there’s the fact that Freud wrote so many books and essays designed to unmask coercive authority and our need for it. He was a great patriarch some of the time, yes, but he also wrote and frequently lived to put an end to patriarchy and all other forms of senseless domination.
You juxtapose the lives of Freud and Hitler. Is there any way in which Freud was contrasting Moses to Hitler?
Perhaps it’s implicit in his 1914 essay on Moses, where he talks about Michelangelo’s statue of the prophet. There he depicts Moses as somebody who is both a leader and an ambivalent individual. He feels two things at once. He’s not going to throw those tablets containing the Ten Commandments down—at least according to Freud; he’s going to restrain himself. He’s angry but he’s in conflict with his anger. He can be a divided being and yet a leader. Freud’s theory of the absolute leader—the Hitler type—is that he never shows self-division; he’s always at one with himself.
What Freud’s suggesting is that if we could become mature enough to have leaders who show self-division—rather than leaders who pretend they are fully unified—that would be a great step forward in maturity. I think Freud might be inclined to measure America by the way we responded to Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It was hard for a lot of people to say something like, "Yes, he’s a good enough president, but I can’t approve of his personal life." They couldn’t deal well with a leader they perceived as a divided person, good in some ways, bad or sub-par in others. He had to be all good or all bad.
Our current administration is intent in never varying from the same message. If you were a political guru it would almost make sense to read what Freud had to say about despotic leadership.
Yes, in fact there are people who think Hitler read Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. I don’t happen to be one of them. Bush may have taken some of these ideas in after his own fashion. A salient moment in the first debate between Kerry and Bush occurred when a questioner asked Bush what the most memorable mistake was that he had made as president, and he wouldn’t own up to having made a mistake on anything. This was after the Iraq invasion and after a multitude of other errors. He had plenty to choose from. I came to the conclusion then that Bush would win the election. He was providing that image of unity and total authority that people—no matter what they say—tend to hunger for.
Barack Obama does not know what a hitch ball cover is, and I am so happy! Come on, admit it, you are too.
The upcoming elections of 2008 are actually quite exciting now. Think about it: no more corn pone presidents. Fellow citizens, unite! We are 80 percent urban/suburban and yet we live in a land where the minority view of the 20 percent who live in Bubbaland skews the body politic like a plague of yellow journalism. Why are our presidents and presidential candidates catering to the 20 percent anyway? It’s such a crazy notion. Was it the Abe-Lincoln-born-in-a-log-cabin myth that they promote as a badge of machismo? Hard roots, dustbowl, chopping wood, pulling stumps. Arrrgh! This is the 21st century, dammit!! Act like it, you bumpkin morons. Same to you, electorate.
The most important thing about Rudy Giuliani isn’t that he’s the former mayor of New York City, but that he’s not one of the heads of Bubbaland: the 20 percent of America that plagues the body politic.
It’s time for our candidates and we-the-people to cast off the demons of corn pones past and move on (not-dot-org). Look at the idiotic mythology that wins the presidency:
George W. Bush: Texas oilman and rancher wannabe. Yeeeehi! Get out the hat, the gun, the missiles.
Bill Clinton: From a place called Hope, he’ll take you down to the licklog and tell all y’all ’bout the "new covenant" of his candidacy.
Ronald Reagan: From Midwest roots, actor-turned-ersatz-rancher (cue the flannel shirt and chopping of wood). Gave rise to the term "Cowboy Diplomacy." Death Valley, here we come.
Jimmy Carter: Southern peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, whose brother Billy will not only fix you up with a Billy Beer, he’ll gas up the General Lee and show you how to piss outside. Oh Jimmah, why’d ya do it? Naval Academy grad, master’s in nukes from Syracuse, submariner captain for gawdsakes, and you play up the peanut farmer from Plains?
Lyndon Johnson: Hound-dog-ear-pullin’-Texas-rancher-steer-on-the-spit. Whoowee! Are you being channeled by George W? You were a degreed teacher and coach? Did you really have to dumb yourself down to get elected?
Fellow Americans, we have an opportunity of a lifetime here! The top four candidates in the polls right now are totally and unapologetically citified! Hillary, Giuliani, Obama, Romney. Black, white, Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, who cares? They’re urban. Hello, anyone out there? Read my lips: No more corn pone!
Hillary’s from the Chicago burbs. Total urbanite. Ivy league. Knows how to deal with corn pone. Ask Bill.
Giuliani: New Yawka and Italian. Better shoes than Hillary. "Hey, Putin! Who you lookin’ at?"
Romney? Ultraprep from Bloomfield. Gazillionaire businessman from posh Belmont burbs of Boston. Would bring real golf back to the presidency.
And then there’s Obama: International and urban. Trés cool. Also from Chicaga, and he doesn’t know what a hitch ball cover is. That proves to us he’s one of the 80 percent, and 100 percent corn pone free!
Come on everybody, this race isn’t about Republicans vs Democrats or Conservatives vs Liberals. We can finally free ourselves of the shackles of corn pone politics and finally breathe the rarefied air of the city. Culture, creativity, opportunity, multicultural, urban chic, intelligentia-packed cities that make America great! Carl Sandburg didn’t wax poetic over Hope, Midland, Plains or Bubbaland. There’s not a song about Hope or Plains or Midland or…but there is "New York, New York" and more Chicago songs than I can remember, and oh yeah, "Gary, Indiana," "Allentown," "Viva Las Vegas…."
Randolph Byrd is a sometimes political commentator, analyst and, in his words, a "washed up political activist."
The American Shakespeare Center‘s production of Antony and Cleopatra on October 18 showcased acting talent, but the range of stage skills seemed to conflict and prevent collaboration onstage. The actresses showed great energy, acting range, and breathing capabilities; the actors matched their female counterparts in energy, but fell short of fully realizing Shakespeare’s men. Combined with few set pieces and rich costumes (Cleopatra’s bordering on striptease), the production maintained a fast pace but failed to sustain the emotional arc of a Shakespearean epic.
The three ensemble actresses successfully balanced emotion and textual communication with their sustained energy and strength in handling the language. As Cleopatra, Elisabeth S. Rodgers shouldered the burden of Shakespeare’s demands for mood swings at the turn of a phrase. Occasionally, it appeared as if Cleopatra was truly experiencing emotions rather than using her portrayals as manipulation; in some scenes, this left Cleopatra looking like a child, but Rodgers typically succeeded in connecting the Egyptian ruler’s mood swings. Allison Glenzer (multitasking as Iras and Octavia) provided a nice counterpoint in her characters, allowing a common thread to connect and motivate each character’s action. Susan Heyward also balanced Cleopatra’s emotions in her performance as Charmian, but her performance lacked depth. Between these three women lay the performance’s strengths in listening, motivation and collaboration.
Conquered! The current production of Antony and Cleopatra makes hungry where most it ought to satisfy.
As Antony, Jan Knightley was the exception among his male counterparts; he commanded the language and phrasing without over-enunciation and with enough breath. In a few moments of great emotion, however, he allowed emotion to overpower text and buried textual understanding. Benjamin Curns, playing the soldier Enobarbus, also struggled to balance text and emotion as he, along with most of the male actors, appeared to believe spit-eliciting enunciation can communicate the necessary emotions and textual meaning (although Enobarbus’ trademark speech describing Cleopatra as "[making] hungry where most she satisfies" remained a well-painted poetic picture).
René Thornton, Jr., in the role of Pompey, also succumbed to the belief that enunciation equals communication (In his secondary role as Alexas, Thornton spat less, which allowed him to communicate better through the text). Additionally, unlike the actresses who handled the fast pace and language with exceptional breathing power, the actors seemed rushed for air on the longer sentences.
Vince Lombardi stared down his Green Bay Packers, decades ago, declaring, "Once a man has made a commitment to a way of life, he puts the greatest strength in the world behind him. It’s something we call heart power. Once a man has made this commitment, nothing will stop him short of success."
Chanting defense: The Green Bay Packers’ mediocre defense needed some help, and so they called upon former Hokie Aaron Rouse, who was thrilled to become a part of Vince Lombardi’s legacy.
Lombardi has long since left us, yet his words still echo in the ears of anyone who puts on a Packers uniform, including a 2007 rookie from Virginia Beach.
"I came here strong," says former Virginia Tech rover Aaron Rouse. "The Packers expected big things from me." Green Bay drafted Rouse as well as former Tennessee tackle Justin Harrell to tighten up a defense that ranked 12th overall in 2006.
Rouse has been making good on the expectations by creating his own "Lambeau" leap into the Packers game plan rather than just idly sitting back and letting his inaugural year only be a verbal education.
"The NFL is the highest level of football," he says. "You have to be physical, smart and determined." That kind of attitude fits in well with the latest version of Lombardi’s legacy. "We have a lot of young guys playing together and also coming up together. They trust in one another and it shows on defense and shows on the field."
Rouse, who learned under Tech defensive mastermind Bud Foster, now studies under Green Bay defensive coordinator Bob Sanders and secondary coach Kurt Schottenheimer. Yet it’s a more unlikely person who has the greatest teaching effect on Rouse: "I’m trying to learn from Brett Favre because he’s been in the game so long that when I go up against him, it’s the little things," says Rouse. "When he tries to look you off or throw the outs your way. I try to learn the little things from him on offense so I get better on defense."
Facing the future Hall of Famer every day is just one of the pleasant experiences for Rouse in Green Bay. Another is the environment. "Lambeau Field—there’s nothing like it. Seventy-thousand [people] screaming your name. You’ve got flyovers with jets. It’s just an awesome feeling; you get chills before the game and you just want to go out there and bust heads."
Better than Saturdays at Lane Stadium? "Lane Stadium conquered the college world, but at this level it’s Lambeau Field and the Green Bay Packers," says Rouse.
The Packers are unique as they’re the only publicly owned company, with a board of directors, in American professional sports. Usually, a professional sports franchise is owned by one person or a small partnership. In Green Bay, the fans not only have an emotional share in their team but a small financial one as well. According to a 1997 article in the New York Times, "the benefits of owning Packer stock are very uneconomic, despite the Packers’ success." Instead, buyers "become a part of the Packers’ tradition and legacy and part of a unique community-owned team."
To Rouse, it was made immediately clear that the stockholders take care of their shares. "When I moved to my neighborhood, all my neighbors knew who I was before introducing myself. It’s definitely a football town." So much so, in fact, that Rouse thought in the first month he was in the football-town equivalent of Mayberry. "The people definitely love us. One time, I got up at 6am and I’m trying to get here for practice and to watch film and I forgot to take the garbage [out to the curb] and I come home and it’s already taken out for me. It’s small things like that make you feel like it’s home."
Still, Rouse prides himself on his Virginia roots. When the time comes, he says, to do his first "Lambeau Leap," it will be dedicated to the entire Commonwealth that he loves so much.
Wes McElroy hosts "The Final Round" on ESPN AM840. Monday-Friday, 4pm-6pm.
Jeff Wadlow, a Charlottesville native and a member of the Virginia Film Festival‘s board of directors, takes pity on all of the teams involved in this year’s Adrenaline Film Project, a 72-hour, hell-on-a-tripod film competition that he helped create in 2004. The long hours and audition processes are no strange productions to Wadlow, whose debut film, Cry_Wolf, was shot on a budget furnished by the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Contest that many established directors would consider smaller than Adam Sandler‘s critical acclaim.
In a call from Los Angeles, Wadlow brings your cinematic fanatic, Curtain Calls, up to date on this year’s Adrenaline Film Project and his own work. "I don’t know if the Adrenaline applicants really get this, but the reality is [that] I work in sales," says Wadlow. "You have to make your pitch, compel [film executives] to tell the story your way. What the teams have gone through is not dissimilar to what I’ve gone through."
Where filmmakers and sleeplessness intersect, there’s Jeff Wadlow: The Charlottesville native and director returns to call the shots for the annual Adrenaline Film Project, where he’ll keep aspiring cinephiles on their toes for three days straight.
Visit vafilm.com for a complete festival schedule.
When Wadlow last spoke with C-VILLE, he referred to Cry_Wolf as his "big, commercial film," a chance to make a name for himself on a slim budget with the hope of attracting some industry attention. His most recent project’s budget sits at a hefty $25 million, the bulk of which has been spent in Orlando, Florida, filming a mixed martial arts film called Get Some, which Adrenaline participants and crowds will catch glimpses of at this year’s AFP finale.
"I got offered a lot of horror movies after Wolf, and it was right when a lot of horror-porn films were taking off—Hostel, Rob Zombie," says Wadlow. "[Get Some] came across my desk, and I flipped for it."
The benefit that Adrenaline teams have in working with Wadlow is that they receive input from a young man still struggling to stamp his name firmly on the nation’s cultural conscience. Wadlow’s script for Hail to the Thief, a film he wrote with partner Beau Bauman and plans to direct, is dormant. "When you write something and sell it, "says Wadlow, "the upside is that you have steady income. The downside is that you don’t control the intellectual property."
Get Some, on the other hand, is a different story. "I had to go in and audition for the studio," says Wadlow, slated as the project’s director. "They had a start date, and it was fully financed."
In addition to identifying with the production plights of this year’s AFP teams, Wadlow both praises and commiserates with them over the project’s grueling schedule.
"You have to give us your life for 72 hours," says Wadlow, his voice reaching the heated pitch of a projector winding up the final scenes of a filmstrip. "These people love film, and they’re not going to go to a single screening!"
Curt, already planning his festival itinerary, is shocked to silence. Who in their right mind would attend the Film Festival only to skip the audience experience?
Meet your (film)makers
"I think there’s only one movie that screens when we’re not doing Adrenaline," says Matt Denton-Edmundson. "But I like watching the AFP films. It’s fun to see what they’re like because, usually, we only see what other teams do in passing."
Matt is a senior at Western Albemarle High School, and has been involved with local film nonprofit Light House Studio for roughly four years, where he made a documentary about graffiti that prominently featured local artist Max Fenton (who will make a cameo appearance later). In last year’s AFP, his team (Marshall Buxton and Miakoda Gale) submitted a short entitled Art Class, a quick-cutting and surreal film about a girl that flees a portrait class to spend time with a graffiti artist (played by local hip-hop musician Brandon Dudley, who recently won the local Virginia Teen Idol competition at the Music Resource Center).
"Last year, we had 20 minutes to get [the film] in, and there was a little part of the intro that Jeff wanted changed," says Matt. "We barely got in; you have to meet your own goals and bend to what [Wadlow and Bauman] want."
Matt is the lead director of one of two teams of high school students that will participate in the 2007 contest through Light House. The lead director of the second team, Will Tilghman, was the first to assemble a crew and tell Light House Managing Director Cassandra Barnett that he wanted to compete (which means, in essence, that he gave her the Adrenaline rush. Done groaning? Good.)
Will is a sophomore at Charlottesville High School and a former Light House student, where he completed a documentary about former professional wrestler Steve Musulin; his brother and Light House mentor, Luke Tilghman, was a producer of the Peabody Award-winning documentary Sahar: Before the Sun, about UVA student Sahar Adish’s move from Afghanistan to America.
"We’re all kinda rookies in film," says Will about his team, which includes Heddy Hunt (the team’s lead producer) and Drew Petterson (lead writer and, full disclosure, son of Curt’s editor, Cathy Harding). "But I’ve always had an eye for what makes a good shot."
Video clips from Adrenaline Film Project team members, as part of Light House Studios’ Youth Film Festival.
Cultural hazards
Of the films admitted under the banner of this year’s theme, "Kin Flicks," perhaps the most intimate portrayal of family offered is in Strange Culture, a dramatization/documentary of postmodern and biological artist Steve Kurtz, a founder of theCritical Art Ensemble. In May of 2004, Kurtz’s wife, Hope, suffered a fatal heart attack at their home in Buffalo, New York. Emergency response teams that arrived at the Kurtz household found a collection of Petri dishes and biological cultures that most likely flickered and flashed through their minds like a montage and gave a very quick, very strong impression of the artist with the odd medium.
Artist or bioterrorist? Peter Coyote stands in for Steve Kurtz in Strange Culture, a film that recreates the death of Kurtz’s wife (played by Tilda Swinton, pictured above) and the artist’s detention for an art project that the Department of Justice found a bit suspicious.
Detained and questioned by the FBI under the PATRIOT Act for the cultures discovered in his home (which Kurtz was using to educate audiences about the genetic modification of common food products), Kurtz has since been cleared of bioterrorism suspicions, but mail fraud charges are still pending against him. Strange Culture, a film by Lynn Hershman Leeson, carefully steps around the issue of self-incrimination by pairing documentary footage of Kurtz with dramatizations (featuring Peter Coyote in the role of Kurtz and Tilda Swinton in the role of his wife).
"If I didn’t have as good a media team as I have, I wouldn’t be speaking with you now," says Kurtz, fresh from a Critical Art exhibit in Spain. Leeson called Kurtz after the initial press buzz following his detention and pitched the film to him, but the artist maintains that he was skeptical at first.
"From what lawyers have been telling me, this case is going to drag out a while," says Kurtz. "’Put your patience hat on,’ Lyn said. ‘Who cares? Let’s show what happened now.’"
Curt asks Kurtz why he chose to depict the personal aspects of his ordeal—the death of his wife and his grieving process—rather than simply making a film about misunderstandings in a time of heightened national security and domestic terror. "I don’t want to make myself out to be a hero," says Kurtz. "I was a zombie, a bloody wreck.
"I’m not trying to represent the tragedy itself. It was only there to point out the intensity of the current Department of Justice’s abuses. …[W]e can show the way that they were, and that was the most important part of putting it on film—that they chose the most vulnerable people."
Young at art
Albert Tabackman is in his backyard studio, a half-sphere perched atop a deck of Brazilian cherry wood, showing off his first attempts at painting—a collection of large family portraits, oil versions of old photographs. Tabackman, owner of Quilts Unlimited and, in past lives, an architect and physician, among other odds and ends, has been painting for only a year, but is already extremely adept at creating large-scale realist pieces.
"Family Portrait," Tabackman’s first exhibit, opens on November 2 at the Bridge/Progressive Arts Initiative. The show will feature a selection of Tabackman’s paintings as well as video clips of the artist sharing stories from his life; while Tabackman leads Curt around his biodome, his eldest son, Ephraim, moves in and out of the sphere with a camcorder, capturing sound and image for the video project.
Tabackman gives explanations of each image—here, his son Max Fenton at age 13, arm-in-arm with his grandfather on the day of his bar mitzvah; here, Tabackman’s wife, Joan Fenton (who performs at the Gravity Lounge on November 9 with Saffire), clutches a guitar and sports a scowl—as he leads Curt in a slow circle.
While new to painting, Tabackman says that he has recently deferred people that have sought his advice as a physician so that he can concentrate more on painting, saying simply that this is what he wants to do now. He offers little in the way of revolutionary artistic ambitions, opting instead for a desire to magnify experiences caught on film—waiting for a photo "to speak to me and elicit the emotion that it has," in his words.
We are family: Three generations of the Tabackman-Fenton family, painted by local artist Albert Tabackman, are on display at the Bridge’s "Family Portrait" exhibit.
"I don’t make my paintings like the photographs," Tabackman says, eyes lit and smile betraying his white beard. "I make it like the feeling."
And it can be hard for audiences to channel the same feeling, but whether he connects with a crowd or not, Tabackman merits the tag of "artist" that he employs for himself, giving off the same eagerness to show and tell and create as the AFP team members as he walks back inside, gait steady, each pair of steps coming in two syllables, ef-fort, ar-tist, fa-ther.
To my knowledge, no mythology about horses with fangs exists. So it seems that, instead of basing their music on some ancient legend or folk story, the members of Charlottesville’s Horsefang have opted to forge their own epic. With song titles that refer to genesis, plagues and dead horses, the band’s debut EP evokes its own unique cosmic tale. Ultimately, though, its sonic narratives leave it up to you to imagine a more tangible storyline.
The first grinding riff of "Genesis in the Retort" swirls like a distorted sonic sandstorm, while the drums gallop forward like heavy hooves on a desert plain. The song covers a lot of ground (clocking in at eight minutes), but the stride gradually rumbles to a halt, and then the fangs take over. The bass growls as the guitars and drums take plodding stabs at your eardrums. The bite is deep, venomous and thick with tension.
"We Will Use Your Dead as Vessels" picks up where "Genesis" left off, but, as the title suggests, quickly injects an avalanche of riffs into the empty vessels that it has just trampled and poisoned. A serpentine guitar line slithers into the mix and writhes as the hooves return to shake the earth again.
Then comes the flood. Waves of distortion wash away everything and the water level rises with ascending, frenetic guitar licks.
"Plaguebreaker" charts the soaked terrain that follows and, as the EP’s shortest number, is armed with the most intense and focused power, letting loose riff after infectious riff as it coils into a feverish finale.
Finally, "River of Dead Horses" streams forth, murky and sluggish, with the sinister and eternal laziness of the underworld. The jabbing fangs of the drums return, but this time the points are dull and the resulting friction ignites into a desperate inferno. The inferno rages and the squealing guitar fights to escape. But the flames eventually smolder, and the ominous, bleak plodding returns again and hammers out the EP’s waning seconds, like the final nails being driven into a coffin.
Heavy, you say? Yeah, it’s heavy, both sonically and thematically, but the gravity, tension and release of Horsefang’s EP stands out against the gigantic sea of dime-a-dozen, verse-chorus-verse song structures. When you listen to this EP’s four songs, you’ll find more substance than on most full-length albums lying around the record stores these days.
