Month: November 2013

Categories
Arts

Classic films have a lot to offer at this year’s festival

Ray Harryhausen's 7th Voyage of Sinbad is one of the family-friendly matinee classics playing on November 9. Image: courtesy of VFF

In recent years the Virginia Film Festival, under the leadership of Jody Kielbasa, has increased the number of new releases, concentrating on up-and-coming filmmakers, local productions, and sneak previews of high-profile independent features destined for wider release over the holiday season. It’s a wise choice for the festival, which has broken attendance records since 2009.  The repertory screenings—revivals of older and classic films—are still a part of the schedule, now organized by Wesley Harris, a longtime festival employee who was promoted to the festival’s programmer.

As someone who grew up attending (and worked for) the Virginia Film Festival, the classic films have always been one of my favorite parts.  This year offers several strong options, some of which will be shown on original film prints, rather than digital projection. “It’s a great opportunity to see something on 35 [mm] that you might never get the chance to see elsewhere,” Harris said.

At the top of the list is The Birds. Alfred Hitchock’s body of work as a director is nearly unparalleled; he made over 50 films, stretching from the silent era through the 1970s, and at least a dozen of them are perfect. The Birds (1963) is a late career highlight, and considered the Hitchcock’s last masterpiece.

Hitchcock was one of the first directors to become a widely recognized celebrity, in part because he fashioned himself as something of an armchair psychoanalyst of the public’s tastes and desires. More often than not, his plots were based on sordid crime headlines or lowbrow bestsellers, and he would trot out the latest pop-psychology claptrap as a justification or inspiration.  The Birds is therefore somewhat unique in the Hitchcock canon, because it draws much of its horror from the fact that absolutely no explanation is given—neither scientific nor supernatural —for the films’ terrifying events.

It begins as a superbly crafted domestic drama—a Bay Area socialite pursues her latest crush up the coast and engages in a passive-aggressive domestic clash with his rural, domineering mother. The film slowly becomes apocalyptic as the area’s birds—first seagulls, then chickens, sparrows, and crows—start violently attack the fishing town’s human population without warning or reason.

The film’s conventionally dramatic scenes and edge-of-your-seat horror sequences are brilliantly constructed, and much of the eerie power comes from the total lack of a musical score—Hitchcock’s experimental tendencies were not always successful, but this one paid off. Legendary composer Bernard Herrmann, who had previously scored Pyscho and Vertigo (and had a famously combative relationship with the director), was put in charge of the film’s sound, and generated the electronic bird sound effects.

Hitchcock was also notorious for clashing with his actors; never more so than his famously contentious relationship with Birds star Tippi Hedren. By all accounts, the controlling Hitchcock effectively terrorized the actress, but her performance in the film exudes a weary tension and bottled-up anxiety that serves the role perfectly. Hedren appears at the festival to discuss the film at Friday’s screening of The Birds, at 7:30 pm on November 8 at the Paramount Theater.

Ray Harryhausen, who passed away this spring, was a master of special effects, and the majority of films he worked on over the course of his career (beginning with Mighty Joe Young, and ending with Clash of the Titans) were essentially forums for his elaborate stop-motion set pieces. Jason and the Argonauts is his probably his best-remembered film, but the comparable Sinbad trilogy is equally enjoyable.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger were made decades apart, and unlike today’s franchises, no effort is made to connect the films, which have different lead actors and no connecting threads other than the trappings of Middle Eastern-flavored seafaring adventure films. They also contain Harryhausen’s finest work, and serve as an overview of his career, showcasing the technological advancements he pushed with each new film.

In 1958’s 7th Voyage, journeyman character actor Thorin Thatcher manages to make his villainous magician a specific, memorable character rather than a generic racist cliché, and Kerwin Matthews and Kathryn Grant are indelibly charming in the lead roles (though the same can’t be said of the inexplicably morose child who plays the Genie).  The nonsensical quest plot gives Harryhausen the opportunity to animate a giant cloven-hooved Cyclops, a belly-dancing snake woman, a dragon, several two-headed birds, and in a preview of the delights to come in Jason, his first sword-fighting skeleton. Also boasting a classic Herrmann score, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad screens on Saturday, November 9 at 3pm at the Newcomb Hall Theater.  It’s a matinee classic that still retains much of its charm.

Another film recommended for younger viewers is 1955’s The Court Jester, a Robin Hood pastiche that is arguably the career peak of dancer/comedian Danny Kaye, whose 100th birthday provides the opportunity for the screening. It’s a tour-de-force performance for Kaye, who gets to sing, dance, engage in swordfights both sincere and slapstick, and in the films finest moments—riff on Abbott & Costello-esque wordplay.

The always excellent Basil Rathbone reprises his villainous role from the Errol Flynn Robin Hood two decades earlier and what’s fascinating is that Rathbone’s performance is nearly identical to the one in the original swashbuckler; yet another instance of the actor’s uncanny ability to find significant overlap between deadpan humor and straight-faced genre performance (see also: 1939’s Son of Frankenstein, in which he is funnier than anything in Mel Brooks’ remake).

The rest of the supporting cast is superb as well, from the adorable Glynis Johns to a young Angela Lansbury, and the set design and vivid Technicolor rivals that of the original adventure films this one parodies. (Harris says he’s still unsure whether The Court Jester will screen digitally or on film.)

Though some parents may be drawn to the screening of Disney’s 1953 Peter Pan— a repeating feature at the festival shown again this year in a newly restored digital version—they should be advised that the film contains many shockingly offensive caricatures of American Indians, which effectively derail the film’s final half hour.

Far more harmful than the short-sighted “soft racism” inherent in the exoticism and “othering” of films like Sinbad, the racist depictions in Peter Pan are deliberately mean-spirited and cruel, and it’s unconscionable that the film continues to be shown widely, without any disclaimers or explanations for younger viewers, especially since Disney has now shelved other films from its’ catalog which contain racist caricatures (such as Song of the South, and several shorter cartoons).

I would instead recommend the Court Jester; though it’s live action instead of animation, it’s similarly comical and lighthearted, and features plenty of swashbuckling. Slightly older children with a tolerance for frightening adventure should steer towards Sinbad (and talk to them about the film’s portrayal of Middle Eastern cultures) and for tweens, teenagers, or adults who can handle a good scare—The Birds is an absolute must.

Categories
News

Albemarle County feeling blue after big Dem wins

And the winners are: Jane Dittmar (D), Scottsville; Diantha McKeel (I), Jouett; Liz Palmer (D), Samuel Miller; Brad Sheffield (D), Rio. Contributed photos.
Election day delivered a big shakeup in Albemarle as Democrats swept three races for seats on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and a left-leaning independent took a fourth.
Democratic newcomer Jane Dittmar had the biggest margin of victory, taking 57.73 percent of the vote in the Scottsville special election to Republican Cindi Burket’s 42.05 percent.
But the two other Dems, both running as challengers against Republican incumbents, also won by double digits. In Rio, Brad Sheffield bested Rodney Thomas 56.64 to 43.17 percent, and Liz Palmer beat Samuel Miller rep Duane Snow 56.63 to 43.30 percent.
 In Jouett, independent candidate Diantha McKeel, who has said she tends to align herself with Democratic ideals, saw a decisive victory over Republican-endorsed independent Phillip Seay; she took 69.86 percent to his 29.64 percent.
That means the female-to-male ratio on the board will now be four to two instead of one to five. It also means Rivanna District representative Ken Boyd is now the sole Republican supe in Albemarle.
“I was surprised that everyone won,” said Palmer, reached the morning after the election. “I thought someone was going to end up losing. Somebody had to have an upset, but I hadn’t looked at numbers specifically. Obviously, I’m very, very happy.”
“I think all the candidates worked really hard,” said Brad Sheffield, an hour after his victory was announced. “I know they did and it really paid off.  With voters, the different campaigns resonated.”
And what’s first for Sheffield in the new job?  “Transportation,” said Sheffield, who is an assistant director at JAUNT .
Indeed, of all the current issues facing the new supes, transportation has been the highest profile of late—specifically the Western Bypass, which was brought back to life in June 2011 with a late-night vote to change the county’s stance on funding the project, and is now awaiting approval from the Federal Highway Administration. Many see the defeats of Bypass proponents Rodney Thomas and Duane Snow—who, as Albemarle’s representatives to the Metropolitan Planning Organization played a key role in the revitalization of the project—as a referendum on the road and a mandate for Dems to undo it.
That, however, could be easier said than done. Palmer said there’s been some discussion about what steps the new board must take to reverse course on the bypass.
“There are legal ramifications,” she said. “It’s going to take a lot of community participation on how to move forward. A lot of money has been expended, and you’ve got to go through a process to undo it. Everybody recognizers it’s a process—it’s not just the board saying we don’t want it.”

While dems were backslapping and celebrating the sweep, their opponents weren’t feeling as enthusiastic.

“It’s a surprise, I have to be honest with you,” Rodney Thomas said as the county Republicans’ gathering at Lord Hardwicke’s on Emmet Street closed down. “It’s kind of hard to defeat the Democratic Party when the vote down from the top. But maybe I just didn’t do the things I needed to do.”

Now, he said, “I’ll get to get back into business.”
Categories
News Uncategorized

Update: Arrest in Woodland Drive shooting

Charlottesville police have made an arrest in last month’s shooting death of 22-year-old Jarvis C. Brown.

Twenty-one-year-old Charlottesville resident Tsaye Lemar Simpson has been charged with first degree murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Police responded to a 911 call to the 2500 block of Woodland Drive in the Fry’s Spring neighborhood at approximately 3:15am on October 17 and found Brown dead of a gunshot wound.

According to a police release, Simpson was arrested on the charges on November 5 at the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Jail, where he was being held on an unrelated charge. According to court records, he had been arrested and charged with being a nonviolent felon in possession of a gun on October 22— five days after Brown’s death.

This is not Simpson’s first high profile brush with the law. Back in August 2009, Simpson—then 17 and a rising junior at Charlottesville High School—led police on a high speed chase in a stolen car. After topping 85 mph going down Rugby Road, Simpson was unable to navigate the turn onto Preston Avenue and crashed through a barrier, ripped through the roof of a house and then somehow escaped the mangled wreckage seemingly without injury. Arrested three months later and tried as an adult, he  pleaded guilty in January 2010 and was given a 22-year suspended sentence as an adult and ordered to serve three years— until his 21st birthday— in a juvenile detention center. According to court records, Simpson’s birthday is April 19.

Brown was an employee of UVA food service provider Aramark and a dedicated father of a two-year-old daughter, according to an account in the Daily Progress.

Simpson is scheduled to appear in Charlottesville District Court on December 5.

Nov. 7, 12:17pm: Story updated with details about Simpson’s previous arrest 

Categories
News

What happened to Pat Collins? UVA grad student’s bones turn up in NY police locker

Photo courtesy of family.

Twenty-seven years ago UVA graduate student Patrick Collins vanished, leaving behind a mystery that would haunt his family, obsess local reporters, and raise questions about UVA’s handling of the case. On August 10, New York State Police identified Collins’ partial remains, which had languished in a storage locker for 25 years. While the circumstances of the discovery strongly suggest that Collins took his own life, how he got from Charlottesville to a small town on the shores of Lake Champlain—and why he left his keys, wallet, driver’s license, and glasses in his backpack in UVA’s Jordan Hall—is as puzzling today as it was in 1986.

Here is what we know now. Hikers discovered Collins’ remains on June 4, 1988, atop a rocky bluff on the outskirts of Port Henry, New York. Police also found a space blanket, ditty bag, and two hypodermic syringes—but nothing that could identify their owner. Subsequent forensic examinations established that the remains belonged to a white male between 20 and 30 years old, but never confirmed the cause of death. In 2007, DNA from the remains was entered into the National Database for Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), but it would take five more years and prodding from a volunteer with a missing-persons network to finally connect Collins to the body the hikers found.

I began investigating Collins’ disappearance in 1996, and, for the next 17 years, I believed that he had been murdered. In part, this was because so many of his most valuable belongings were still on his carrel desk in Jordan Hall, which made it look like he had just stepped out of the room. Could a killer have deliberately staged the items to throw investigators off the trail?

Two years ago, Carol Haber, a volunteer with the Doe Network, read my account of Collins’ disappearance online and made it her mission to get his familial DNA into the NamUs database. She had contacted the UVA Police Department (UVA PD) several times but never got a response, so when Haber e-mailed me in November 2012, I forwarded her message to Collins’ brother Michael. He contacted UVA PD and, at that point, DNA was collected from Michael and his mother, entered into NamUs, and, on August 10—Collins’ birthday—matched to the remains in Port Henry.

UVA PD’s Lieutenant Melissa Fielding, when contacted by the Daily Progress earlier this month, said she “began talking with [Pat’s] brother and mother this year about submitting their DNA….Without DNA advancements, I don’t think we would have ever identified him.”

Fielding’s comments ended UVA PD’s at times controversial involvement with the case. Relations between the UVA PD and Collins’ family soured shortly after his disappearance in the spring of 1986, when his mother and stepfather, Barbara and Clarence Shannon, came to Charlottesville from California to search for him. Clarence, a retired San Jose police officer, was vocal about what he considered negligence on the part of the UVA PD; no neighbors and only a few students had been interviewed, and no forensic work had been done in Jordan Hall or at his apartment. The Shannons believed that Collins had been murdered, and blamed the UVA PD for not finding his killer.

Theories about what had happened to Collins abounded, and I had my own. I knew, for instance, that on about a half dozen occasions the next-door neighbor had seen a man standing on her side of the fence, staring at Collins’ basement apartment. He had only been enrolled at UVA for 11 weeks when he vanished. Could he have had a stalker who turned lethal?

In 2011, to accompany a story I wrote in The Hook to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Collins’ disappearance, I created a website (patcollinscase.com) and posted Clarence’s investigative notes, correspondence between UVA and the family, and pictures. I also excerpted letters he’d written to a woman, Maria, he’d briefly been involved with in July 1985. Although their romantic relationship had lasted only one weekend, Collins expressed deep feelings of affection for the woman in a flurry of letters. In addition to writing what amounted to a novella describing their relationship and its effect on him, he also penned and sent her a poem, “The Flight of the Snow Geese.” Collins had written it in response to her confession, in late July, that she was already involved with another man—and that he had moved with her to Florida, where she was attending graduate school.

In the poem Collins describes the long journey snow geese make every spring: “Northward they fly at winter’s end/Pleading and crying to find their friend.” I knew, from his letters to Maria, that Collins was emotionally needy—and wanted, almost desperately, to connect with someone. Could the man at the fence have been one such attempt?

Then, on September 9, Michael e-mailed me with news of the DNA hit, and the story began to coalesce around a previously puzzling detail. Hawes Spencer, a local writer and former Hook editor, began delving deeper into Collins’ disappearance, and, along with C-VILLE senior reporter Courteney Stuart, came to a startling—but, I believe, convincing—theory about Collins’ disappearance and death. Spencer’s detailed account was published last month in Metroland, an Albany, New York weekly.

Spencer seized on a detail that had been dismissed as a red herring at the time, but suddenly took on new meaning: On the evening of March 20, Collins called the Amtrak reservations line, but didn’t make a reservation. When Spencer researched the remains’ precise location, he learned that the remote bluff was within easy walking distance of the Port Henry Amtrak station. He also learned that in 1986, no ID was required to buy a train ticket.

Collins had ready access to syringes in the lab where he’d been hanging out, along with the drugs used to sedate and euthanize lab animals. But why would he travel 570 miles to kill himself? Spencer and Stuart, poring over Collins’ letters, came back to the poem: As snow geese migrate north, one of their main stops is Lake Champlain.

In the weeks following the news that Collins’ remains had been found, the family continued to insist that he had been killed. More recently, Michael told Spencer that the family is “going to quit theorizing and go back to healing again. We’re going to get Pat’s remains back. We feel like we’ve won the lottery.”

It appears that a number of factors may have combined, at the end, to make Patrick Collins believe that a final journey was the only solution—one that will continue to haunt everyone who ever cared about him.

For more about Pat Collins’ disappearance, visit patcollinscase.com.

Categories
Arts

Filmmaker and actor Brian Wimer on freedom in expression

Brian Wimer (right) has his hand in two of this year’s Virginia Film Festival features. He is the co-director of CLAW, and stars in the werewolf road movie Faux Paws. Image: Douglas Bari

“There’s a point in Peter Pan when Peter and Wendy are pretending to be parents to the Lost Boys. Peter says, ‘Are we playing or is this real?’ Wendy says, ‘Oh it’s a game, but it’s real.’ Eventually Peter says, ‘I’m tired of playing this game, let’s play a different one.’ But that’s the reality of our lives. We’re all playing roles.”

Brian Wimer paused. I watched the co-director of the Virginia Film Festival’s center-piece movie, CLAW, and star of Faux Paws, a VFF film about two werewolf lovers on the lam, adjust my recorder on his knee. I felt acutely aware of my reporter’s posture: perched on the edge of my chair, nodding while typing.

He smiled, blue eyes bright under wild curls. “People may think that someone starring in X-Men at Regal Cinema is the actor, but no. Every one of you is a character and a role, and you have a script,” he commented.

A drama major in college, Wimer credits his philosophy in part to the surrealist Theater of Cruelty and plays by Antonin Artaud, Eugène Ionesco, and Samuel Beckett. “You’d walk away with a lot of questions,” Wimer said. “But that alternate reality on stage was somehow more vital than your own.”

More vital than the corporate life Wimer lived after college—10 years spent in advertising, developing print, TV, and radio campaigns for brands like Citibank and Snapple. “I was always looking for something different,” he said. “Advertising promotes things you don’t need. Art supplies, often for free, something that life is lacking and truly lacking.”

After a marriage to a Yugoslavian woman at the height of the Balkan Wars and time traveling overseas, Wimer discovered a new way to pull back the curtain on reality: independent filmmaking. “I don’t want to create movies that people walk out from and say ‘O.K., that was two hours of entertainment, now let’s go eat a piece of cake’,” Wimer said. “You want to create a piece of entertainment that a little bit changes their lives.”

Wimer’s features and shorts have appeared in past Virginia Film Festivals, often as part of the Adrenaline Film Project, the 72-hour filmmaking competition in which three-person teams write, cast, shoot, edit and screen films. Despite jury and audience awards for some of his Adrenaline films, however, the high profile status of CLAW at this year’s festival came, he said, as “a very welcome happy surprise.”

CLAW is a feature-length documentary that follows the growth of the Collective of Lady Arm Wrestlers from its origins in Charlottesville to 25 cities around the world. The brainchild of Wimer, photographer and filmmaker Billy Hunt, and actor and CLAW co-founder Jennifer Hoyt Tidwell, the film, like the movement, is an exercise in collaboration: shared cameras, time bank swaps, and sleeping on foreign couches.

While support networks allow independent filmmakers to create high-quality movies on relatively low budgets, collaborative direction isn’t so easy. “Us creative types often have huge egos, so it can be difficult for us to play well with others,” Wimer said. As co-directors on CLAW, Wimer and Hunt did not share aesthetics—Wimer is prone to non-sequiturs, and Hunt “is a lot more linear”—but they respected one another’s criticism and managed to agree on over five cuts of the film.

“The movie’s not perfect, but CLAW itself is not perfect. That’s part of the beauty of it. You could plan everything perfectly, but someone could break an arm.” Part philanthropy, part pageantry, and part sport, lady arm wrestling “isn’t scripted,” Wimer pointed out. “We try to keep some of that spirit in the film, of you don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

The story of CLAW’s incredible growth is one of speed bumps, personality clashes, and yes, injuries. Flour-slinging housewives, pregnant brides, and giant bananas: the free wheeling strangeness that whips crowds into frenzies made choosing a narrative “like playing Tetris or something.” Wimer and Hunt needed to analyze the themes of a women’s empowerment movement, which some participants thought two men couldn’t do, and they needed to identify the film’s antagonist. Wrestlers smack-talked and fought, of course, but they also saw CLAW as a big sisterhood. So what were the women really struggling against?

“To a certain extent it’s the state of genders today. It’s the world of men, but it’s also the stereotypes that women have allowed themselves to be stuck into,” Wimer said. “The theme that I found was women acting out against the state of the world, regardless of whose fault it is.”

“Jen [Tidwell] will talk about a fourth wave of feminism, and others will talk about what feminism means to them,” Wimer said. “But I’m not a woman. I’m a white guy in America, and I’ve kind of got it made, and seeing these women act out in this way makes me understand their position and where they want to be.”

The playful freedom of CLAW allows women to be beautiful or gross, vulgar or prim, “to tackle their own demons about what they don’t like about themselves or the limits that have been put upon them,” Wimer said. By climbing on stage, a woman can celebrate any part of herself, from her mind to her butt to her muffin top, and exalt, however briefly, in freedom.

The same sense of freedom shows in Wimer’s on-camera work. “I didn’t give him much direction and much of that was on purpose,” said Doug Bari, the writer, director, and co-star of Faux Paws. “Brian does his best work, his most vulnerable work, when he flies by the seat of his pants a little.”

After four years at work on a script written with Wimer in mind, Bari began production of the film, which follows two werewolf lovers who flee from their lycanthrope reservation to werewolf-tolerant Maine with bounty hunters in pursuit. “Brian borders on being fearless,” Bari said. “And I knew he’d do anything we wanted him to.”

Which included sleeping in glued-on wolf hair for three days. “It’s weird and amazing,” Wimer said of the film. “I don’t think people could walk away and help but think about it.”

Films like Faux Paws and movements like CLAW may owe some of their success to the Charlottesville arts scene, which Kevin O’Donnell, a singer/songwriter and supporting actor in Faux Pas called “a haven where people’s dreams can be visualized and heard.” But even though self-expression “is welcomed and encouraged in this town,” day-to-day life still reflects social norms.

“As nice as Charlottesville is, we’re still searching for another reality that is more satisfying,” Wimer said. “When you walk into a place like CLAW, for those two hours you get to behave differently. You come away going, ‘Oh wow, how do I do that? How do I get the feeling of CLAW in my life?’ And it’s tough because it’s about not accepting the roles. At age 43, I can say that most of my life has been a role-playing game, and I want to start writing the script myself.”

He glanced out the window, at the sunlight and people milling past. “What do we want the story to end up saying? Is it a happy ending? Because we’re writing it right now. We’re writing it every day.” he said. 

 

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The Editor's Desk

Editor’s Note: Turning the camera around

A reader recently called what I do in this column “simple-minded pablum.” Another reader, maybe I could even call him a fan, called it “an interpretive ethnography of our own people.” It’s not, as you know already, an editorial column in the strictest sense. I don’t interpret the news. Most of the time I don’t even react to it.

Pablum, as you probably know, is not something you want your writing associated with. Pablum in its literal sense is pap, which is essentially gruel. Intellectually, that means my writing is thin soup, easily digested and far from nourishing.  As I got to thinking about what I do, being as thin-skinned as any writer, I came back to pap, and a South African friend who used to speak lovingly about mielepap, the starchy porridge he grew up eating with stew. It was stick-to-your ribs food that staved off hunger and kept the working man working. I felt better (except for the bit about being simple-minded) and told myself that there are worse things than ladling out white collar grits to the working schleps of our post-industrial town.

Actually, the truth is that I write a weekly bit of prose in a couple hours’ time introducing our newspaper’s cover story, always trying to situate in its cultural context, which in turn obliges me, in this postmodern world, to speak as the “I,” the subject overseeing an object. Occasionally, I try to connect that subject to the I-and-I, if you follow, but you’d have to read every week to notice. I never really know how much what I say matters, or how much you care, or even whether I’m blowing like Coltrane, or Kenny G, or a bag of hot air. Stay with me now.

There are no juried prizes at the Virginia Film Festival. In fact there are no awards at all. There are no red carpets and very few A-listers. It is not a place to make deals or to be seen. But as this week’s feature attests, it is a place to discover films and to rediscover what you love about film. For me that’s Alfred Hitchcock’s subjective lens: a peephole, a person peering through, and the fear that at any moment the camera may turn on you.

Categories
Arts

Easy Star Records helps U.S. reggae step out of Jamaican shadow

The Green (L to R: Zion Thompson, Jordan Espinoza, Caleb Keolanui, JP Kennedy, Ikaika Antone, Brad “BW” Watanabe) is leading the way for a U.S. reggae breakthrough, thanks to the stalwarts at Easy Star Records.

If Lem Oppenheimer is at all worried about perpetuating the stereotypes that come with being in the reggae business, he didn’t show it when he walked into a Belmont coffee shop for an interview on October 18.

Tall and lanky with close-cropped hair, Oppenheimer clutched a handful of CDs produced by his record label, Easy Star Records, and took off light-tinted aviator style sunglasses as he stepped across the La Taza dining room. On his shirt was the name of a popular indie reggae band: 10Ft. Ganja Plant.

It’s easy to disregard the reggae industry as some dope-smoking college kid’s passing interest—the musical equivalent of black light posters and lava lamps. But best believe: Oppenheimer and Easy Star take the music very seriously. After more than 15 years in the business, the Charlottesville and New York-based label has become one of the major players in a rapidly growing genre.

“U.S. reggae is kind of at a tipping point,” said Oppenheimer, who co-founded Easy Star in New York shortly before moving to Charlottesville in December 1997. “For the first time, U.S. reggae artists are using their own voice rather than imitating someone else.”

The U.S. reggae movement arguably got to jammin’ about a decade ago on the strength of an Easy Star release, Dub Side of the Moon, a rearrangement of the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon, which has sold about 200,000 copies worldwide since its release in 2003. The record, performed by the label’s house band the Easy Star All-Stars, was the first big hit for Easy Star, and it tipped off a whole new audience that there was more to reggae than old Bob Marley tunes.

Today, Easy Star produces records for about a half dozen acts that fall under the vague heading of “progressive reggae.” There’s Passafire, a rock-reggae outfit with a decidedly 311-like sound. There’s John Brown’s Body, which manages to feel both traditional and futuristic by infusing classic reggae rhythms with plenty of keyboards and guitar pedals. There’s Cas Haley, roughly resembling Sublime’s Bradley Nowell, and adding an indie singer-songwriter vibe to the modern reggae movement.

Then there is the one that got away.

“We actually turned down Soja’s first demo,” Oppenheimer said of the Virginia-based reggae band that recently played the nTelos Wireless Pavilion. “It is what it is. At the time, if I had know they would become as popular as they are, would I have wanted to be involved with that? Sure.”

The most popular act produced by Easy Star at the moment is The Green, a quintet from Hawaii that’ll skank into the Southern on November 6 with a smooth, radio-ready sound. Indeed, by debuting at number one on the Billboard reggae chart and hitting number 77 on the top 200 chart with its latest LP Hawai’i ‘13, The Green has delivered Easy Star its biggest opening week for an album ever.

“They’re kind of like a reggae boy band,” Oppenheimer said. “They’re on the pop end of the spectrum, and they have these five guys with different personalities all blending voices.”

“Boy band” may capture The Green’s wide appeal, but Oppenheimer admitted it is probably selling the group short. Sure, there are tracks that sound like sappy teenage love songs ( “Never Before”), but there’s a dark edginess to other tunes (“Good Vibe Killah”), and Marley’s influence is never far away.

“Gonna make it real nice for the people upstairs/make it real nice for people everywhere,” they rap in “Something About It.” “The young man said, never give up the fight/never give up the fight, and you know it’s true.”

Reggae probably won’t—and shouldn’t—ever get too far from its roots in the Caribbean. But Oppenheimer said the genre is as popular in the U.S. now as it’s ever been, and that’s a sentiment echoed by Charlottesville-based Red Light Management’s Elliott Harrington who manages Soja and has worked with Easy Star over the years.

“In the past decade or so, it has been growing, and I think different walks of life are starting to appreciate this somewhat young genre,” Harrington said. “It is becoming less and less of a niche genre and more and more of a genre, just like hip-hop, rock, and folk.”

What’s the ceiling for reggae’s popularity? The “sky,” according to Harrington. If that’s so, Easy Star Records and Oppenheimer certainly stand to be among those pushing the ascent. According to The Green’s co-manager Seth Herman, the label has always done things the right way, with a combination of high profile releases and interesting independent artists that give them credibility.

“When you see artists returning to a label again and again, it’s a good show of strength,” said Herman, who also operates Rootfire, a collective of music industry professionals dedicated to growing reggae. “I think you can look at the history of record labels and draw the conclusion that not every label is good on its word. Easy Star saw the bigger picture and never tried to make a quick buck.”

Justin Pietro, a Charlottesville-based reggae producer who goes by the name of Dub Architect and oversees Easy Star’s online presence, said one of the things that sets the label apart is its commitment to producing physical albums and pressing vinyl. As Oppenheimer stood up to leave La Taza after an hour of chatting about reggae, presumably headed home to his wife and two daughters in Woolen Mills, he started to pass along his stack of CDs to spread his love of reggae. Then he stopped himself.

“Do you have any way to listen to these?” he asked. He shook his head. Better not to take chances. “I’ll just put them on SoundCloud.”

Categories
Arts

The Virginia Film Festival spotlights up-and-coming filmmakers

The documentary on local heroines of arm wrestling, CLAW, gets a primetime screening on Saturday at the Paramount. Image: courtesy of VFF

The red carpets are rolling out as the Virginia Film Festival returns for its twenty-sixth year. While the schedule once again offers the caliber of cinematic fare, guests, and events that have made it a local institution, this year’s line-up distinguishes itself by beefing up the local and independent offerings with more slots for undiscovered filmmakers.

“We have made a conscious decision to bring in more filmmakers who are young in their careers, but have tremendous potential to further reinforce our reputation as a festival that supports emerging talent,” said Jody Kielbasa, UVA’s vice provost of the arts and film festival director.

With something for everyone, the festival kicks off with director Alexander Payne’s acclaimed Nebraska. The film tells a haunting, darkly comic story of an estranged father (Bruce Dern) and son (Will Forte) on a bizarre journey. An award-winner at the Cannes Film Festival, Nebraska was also nominated for the prestigious Palme d’Or.

The film that beat out Nebraska for the Palme d’Or is the notoriously sexually explicit Blue is the Warmest Color, which leads this year’s contingent of foreign films. Among the outstanding dramas is Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, and on the indie side is Computer Chess, another hit on the film fest circuit.

Festival guests include producers Ron Yerxa (Nebraska, Charlie Countryman) and (UVA grad) Julie Lynn (The Face of Love), familiar faces from previous VFFs. Representing Hollywood’s golden age is Hitchcock muse Tippi Hedren, who will appear at the screening of the director’s The Birds.

As always, filmmakers in Virginia and Charlottesville are amply represented. The documentary CLAW chronicles the off-the-wall history of Charlottesville’s own Collective of Lady Arm Wrestlers. Screenwriter Matthew Jones is (locally) premiering his new thriller, A Single Shot; resident experimental film guru Kevin Everson is presenting some of his latest work; and Scott Haze, who attended school in Albemarle County, will be here for a Q&A about actor/director James Franco’s Child of God.

The large stock of documentaries includes promising titles like Our Nixon, featuring Nixon aides Dwight Chapin, John Ehrlichman, and H.R. Haldeman’s pre-Watergate home movies of the ousted president. Producer Brian Frye and Governor Gerald Baliles will be on hand to oversee the proceedings. The popular Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction chronicles the life and career of the unforgettable character actor/singer.

The festival will screen only a handful of classics, with a major highlight being Douglas Sirk’s subversive All That Heaven Allows starring Rock Hudson. The centennial of comic Danny Kaye’s birth will be commemorated with his beloved family-friendly medieval farce, The Court Jester, and influential animator Ray Harryhausen, who died earlier this year, is memorialized with his Saturday-matinee fantasy favorite, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

This is only a sampling of the celluloid marvels set to unspool in our darkened theaters this week. Check out the schedule at virginiafilmfestival.org, and don’t you dare leave your cell phone on.—Justin Humphreys

Choice cuts: Best bets for your film festival docket  

All That Heaven Allows

Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows is perhaps the quintessential example of the genre somewhat pejoratively referred to as the “housewife melodrama.” Years of reassessment by queer and feminist film directors and critics have rehabilitated the reputation of the genre in general, and Sirk’s work in particular (his other notables include Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life). It’s impossible to imagine the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder without such films, and Todd Haynes’ 2002 award-winner Far From Heaven is practically a re-make of Sirk’s original. Like the best of the genre, All That Heaven Allows utilizes lush, classic lighting and cinematography to dramatize internal conflict. In this case, widow Jane Wyman’s affair with her gardener Rock Hudson meets the disapproval of her upper-class peers. While the drama is heightened somewhat by what we now know of the stars’ personal lives (Wyman’s failed early marriage to Ronald Reagan and Hudson’s closeted homosexuality), there’s more than enough repressed angst onscreen already. (November 10)—James Ford

Blue is the Warmest Color 

If you’ve heard about Blue is the Warmest Color, you know it’s filled with long, explicit lesbian sex scenes. (If not, you’ve just been told.) You should also know it’s one of the most honest portrayals of a young person’s life ever put on film. In its three-hour running time, we follow Adèle as she slowly comes out (to herself, but not her family), finds love (and nearly obsession), and makes a life as a young professional.

And we see every aspect of Adèle’s life, from the way she thinks to the way she eats to the way she sleeps (alone and with Emma, played by Lea Seydoux), to the way she handles her first job. There are countless beautiful scenes, but for my money, its best expression of human emotion is watching Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a teacher, dance with her kindergartners at a school function, as she tries not to burst into tears after a particularly messy break-up. Blue is the Warmest Color is wonderful, and a must-see. (November 9)—David Riedel

CLAW

When it first began, in the back room of the Blue Moon Diner in February of 2008, few would have dreamed that CLAW would go so far. At first, Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestlers was merely a fun idea that caught on quickly—women in absurd costumes matching muscles to raise money for charity.

Within three months the crowd had grown so large it had to be moved to the parking lot behind the diner—and now, five years later, it’s become a legitimate pheno-menon known as the Collective of Lady Arm Wrestlers, with chapters sprouting up around the country. Charlottesville-based photographer Billy Hunt (known for his fun, high-concept portraiture) was there from the beginning, and together with local director Brian Wimer, he’s made the definitive document of the CLAW movement. In addition to a fascinating peek into a subculture that’s allowed women to re-frame their identities and overturn the traditional attitudes towards feminine roles, you can also expect absurdity, spectacle, drunken revelry, and a few broken bones. (November 9)—James Ford

Computer Chess 

The novelty of Computer Chess’ look isn’t the point—it was shot with retrofitted Sony AVC-3260 tube cameras—but it goes a long way in making you feel as if you’re in 1980. We join a group of programmers in an unnamed city at a cheap hotel for a convention showcasing their latest and greatest creations: computers that can play chess against other computers. The computer that wins will face Henderson (Gerald Peary), a human player who’s never lost to a machine.

The characters are people we’ve come across at some point in our lives, and the beauty of Computer Chess is that they’re great with machines but terrible with each other. Much of the comedy is derived watching Peter (Patrick Riester) try to interact with people, including a couple that wants to involve him in a threesome. There’s also Papageorge (Myles Paige), an officious programmer who loses his hotel room and spends the bulk of his time trying to find a place to sleep in a hotel filled, inexplicably, with cats. Watch for an excellent Wiley Wiggins—the kid who grabbed his nose a lot in Dazed and Confused—as a programmer looking for deeper meaning in the circuits. (November 7)—David Riedel

The Deflowering of Eva van End

Director Michiel ten Horn and his co-writer, Anne Barnhoorn, take from Wes Anderson, add cruelty (albeit mild cruelty), and let the perfectly staged cameras roll. How else can one describe the shot compositions, which are expertly planned and executed, and the increasingly outlandish behavior of the participants? In fact, it feels like it has a touch of Todd Solondz thrown in, too.

The Deflowering of Eva van End is a satire, albeit a breezy one, of married life, school, the suburbs, and contemporary notions of beauty. Eva (Vivian Dierickx) is a miserable teenager, an outcast, and from the looks of it, she doesn’t like herself much.

When she brings German exchange student Veit (Rafael Gareisen) home, her family is shocked. Soon after, beautiful Veit—as his character must in a movie like this—starts to have a profound effect on everyone. Eva, who spends most of her time as the audience surrogate, ends up in bed with Veit (that’s not a spoiler—it’s the title of the movie).

There are other films about strangers coming to town and sparking change, from Pasolini’s Teorema to Hal Ashby’s Being There, and while The Deflowering of Eva van End doesn’t break new ground in the story department, its visuals are sharp, with tight editing and camera work, and there’s excellent production and costume design. And it has a happyish ending. (November 8)—David Riedel

I Used to Be Darker

At what point do we put away childish things and live as adults? For Bill (Charlottesville’s Ned Oldham), that’s now. For his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Kim (Kim Taylor), that’s later. It’s not entirely fair to pigeonhole either of them in such a manner, and director Matthew Porterfield and his co-writer Amy Belk do well to show Bill and Kim as complete, difficult people at crossroads in their lives.

Further complicating things is the unannounced arrival of Taryn (Deragh Campbell), Kim’s niece, who’s run away from her home in Northern Ireland and found them in Baltimore. The camera gives the actors plenty of room and there’s great music, with a standout performance by Taylor. Campbell and Oldham are also excellent. (November 8)—David Riedel

If We Shout Loud Enough

For 10 years, the Baltimore band Double Dagger made obnoxious, yet infectious, art-punk, gaining notoriety for its live shows, which were frequently provocative and occasionally very good. Its secret weapon, and possible recipe for success, is that the band members all had day jobs as graphic designers (the name comes from a term from typography), and its show posters, album covers, and T-shirts were all impeccably designed, frequently outshining the music contained within. Though the group called it quits in 2011 (there was an ill-attended yet memorable stop here in town on the final tour), a new documentary about the band is bringing more attention than ever. If We Shout Loud Enough uses the band’s members, and its music, as a window into the passionate world of underground DIY music. The director will be on hand for a Q&A following the screening. (November 7)—James Ford

Kevin Everson’s Short Films

Though most locals know him as UVA’s film professor, Kevin Everson is a well-established and widely admired filmmaker in his own right. A regular on the international art and film festival circuits, Everson is alarmingly prolific, cranking out dozens of films and videos per year, that range from quick, conceptual shorts to full-length experiments. They often examine multiple facets of African-American culture in ways that are clever, conceptually rigorous, and cinematically engaging. His 2011 feature Erie was one of the single best works screened at the Virginia Film Festival in recent years, and this year’s 50-minute program of short films will showcase selections from Everson’s short works. (November 8)—James Ford

Le Joli Mai

When Chris Marker passed away last year, he left behind a unique and wide-ranging body of work that continues to be admired and treasured by film lovers around the world. A unique mixture of essay film, political documentary, fictional construction, and cinematic poetry, his films are difficult to describe or classify but even harder to ignore. 1963’s Le Joli Mai is a two-and-a-half hour portrait of Marker’s hometown of Paris at the end of France’s war in Algeria. The film is being shown for the first time in U.S. theaters to celebrate its 50th anniversary. (November 8)—James Ford

Museum Hours

Filmmaker Jem Cohen may be best known for his work with musicians—he shot Document, the Fugazi documentary, as well as the unforgettable Benjamin Smoke and a handful of classic music videos—but his broad body of work stretches well beyond that, from the gorgeous hand-crafted lo-fi snapshot experimental films he’s been making for decades to his narrative cuts. In recent features like Chain, he’s controversially upturned traditional distinctions between fiction and non-fiction styles, creating confusing yet insightful films that at first appear to be unusually intimate documentaries before gradually revealing themselves to be carefully staged stories. Museum Hours tells the tale of a relationship between an art museum security guard and one of the museum’s visitors. Shot in Vienna, the film reportedly contains copious footage of classic works of art, lovingly photographed. (November 10).—James Ford

A Single Shot

Sam Rockwell is one of the best actors working today. Wholeheartedly and unselfconsciously committing himself to projects both inspired and tragically flawed—even if the film he appears in is sub-par (and they often are). Rockwell is always a captivating presence, portraying sympathetic and foolhardy schlubs with remarkable subtlety and range. He stars alongside equally dependable actors William H. Macy and Jeffrey Wright in the new film A Single Shot, a promising neo-noir thriller with a wintry setting that recalls Fargo, A Simple Plan, and the recent Thin Ice. (November 9)—James Ford

Categories
News

Democrats win Charlottesville City Council seats

Newly re-elected Charlottesville CIty Councilor Kristin Szakos on election night. Photo: Christian Hommel.

For more of our election wrap coverage, check c-ville.com throughout the day. To see the blow-by-blow from last night, scroll back through our election day liveblog.

After a late night waiting on a delayed vote count, Charlottesville Democrats celebrated big wins on election day, with incumbent Kristin Szakos and her running mate Bob Fenwick taking the two open seats by a margin that surprised their Republican challengers, Mike Farruggio and Buddy Weber.

Incumbent  Szakos led the pack, taking 36 percent of the vote, and Fenwick took 32 percent. Farruggio took 19 percent, and Weber 12 percent. Together, the Democrats had 14,016 votes, more than twice the Republicans’ 6,438.

Farruggio and Weber conceded the race before all nine city precincts had been totalled—still late in the night, thanks to a “password error” that city registrar Sheri Iachetta said required all voting machines to be toted to the basement of City Hall and hooked up to a secure computer for vote tabulation. The mood at Bashir’s Taverna on the Downtown Mall, where the two challengers and a few dozen other city Republicans had watched the evening’s vote totals roll in, had become increasingly glum. By the time dessert was laid out around 9:30pm, it was clear the night hadn’t gone well for the GOP in the county or city.

The significant margin of defeat bewildered Farruggio and Weber, who both said they’d been greeted all day at the polls by Democrats who were promising to vote Republican.

“I was really quite hopeful,” said Weber as he and Farruggio addressed the supporters who lingered. If pressed earlier in the day, Weber said, he might have guessed Republicans and Democrats would end up splitting the vote 50-50.

Weber congratulated Szakos and Fenwick, but said they and the others on city council can’t ignore that the Republicans made a strong showing.

“They might have won this campaign, but the issues we ran on are not going to go away,” Weber said. “We’re going to be here to continue to pursue them.”

Farruggio agreed.

“We talked about things our opponents refused to talk about the whole campaign, and I hope the people of Charlottesville will keep the city councilors on task,” he said. “I’m hoping this makes the Democrats step up their game, get to the table [and] do the hard work that we were willing to do.”

On the other end of the Downtown Mall at Escafe, Democrats from city and county watched the results in an atmosphere of escalating good cheer, punctuated by whistles, shouts, and back slaps as the victories piled up.

Kristin Szakos said the margin of victory she and Fenwick had seen, which had so surprised the Republican challengers, was important.

“It shows voters liked the direction the city was going,” she said. Weber and Farruggio “did their best,” she said. “They ran a strong race,” but in the end, the city spoke—and chose a solidly Democratic council once again.

And their neighbors chose similarly in surrounding Albemarle, she pointed out.

“I’m really excited about the results in the county,” she said. “This is going to make city-county relations stronger. We don’t always see eye-to-eye on all issues, but we certainly have the same goals.”

Back at Bashir’s, as he pulled campaign signs out of the brickwork on the Mall outside the restaurant, Farruggio said he wanted to stay active in city politics—but he wasn’t ready to say if he’d run again in two years.

“We need a couple days to decompress, because of all the emotions that come along with it after you put your heart and soul and your life into it and your family’s life into it for four months,” he said. “I love this city. I’ve been here for 25 years. So I care so deeply about it.”

Categories
Living

Here today, gone tamale: Eppie’s delivers with weekly Mexican classic

Chicken and cheese tamales may stray from the southern comfort cuisine at Eppie’s, but private chef Ana whips up nearly 100 of them every week using a classic Mexican recipe passed down from her grandmother. Photo: Elli Williams

I’ll admit it. I don’t love tamales. I do love the idea of tamales. Believe me, the first time I was at a hipster bar in Chicago’s Bucktown and a Mexican woman walked in carrying a cooler full of hot masa dough surprises, I was first in line, lack of FDA-oversight be damned.

But the reality of the meal never lives up to my expectations. Masa, the dough that comprises a tamale, is by nature bland—it’s just corn flour, water, a touch of oil or fat, and seasonings—so the ingredients used to fill the mixture have to carry the team. And if I suspect even for a second that my tamale purveyor has pushed the dough-to-filling ratio too high, it’s hasta la vista, baby.

So when I heard about the popularity of the chicken and cheese tamales at Eppie’s on the Downtown Mall, I was intrigued, if not inspired. What made people line up for these things week after week? What were they doing on the menu in the first place?

It turns out if you want the story of Eppie’s tamales, you’ve got some work to do. Dan Epstein, who owns the joint with his brother, is one busy dude. He works a full-time job in addition to running the restaurant. He has a young daughter and a second kid on the way. He seems to be in meetings constantly. As for Epstein’s brother Charles, he’s a silent partner in the business. And “silent partner” isn’t just a clever name.

Then there’s Ana, the private chef who worked full-time at Eppie’s years ago but now comes in only two or three days a week to make the tamales. It’s easy enough to find her—she preps ingredients every Monday afternoon behind the Eppie’s counter and mixes dough and fills cornhusks every Tuesday. But she’s shy and speaks almost no English, so for a non-Spanish speaker like me, communicating with her is like taking a test to see how much awkwardness you can handle.

Fortunately, another Eppie’s employee offered to translate last Tuesday afternoon when I asked Ana about her signature dish. He said Ana told him the tamale recipe was her grandmother’s, and I can confirm hearing something that sounded like “abuela.” Beyond that, Ana wasn’t giving away too many tamale secrets, but she did say her dough includes minced jalapeños, tomatoes, and onion. As for the mole that goes in the chicken tamales? It’s “a lot of ingredients,” according to my faithful translator.

Epstein, who took a break from running around like a one-armed biscuit maker to save me from embarrassing myself in front of Ana, shed a little more light on Charlottesville’s best known tamales. When Eppie’s opened, he knew he wanted to do daily specials to give people a reason to come in every day of the week. It was an idea he borrowed from a deli in D.C. that drew long lines for its “meatloaf Thursdays.” The only question was what kind of dishes Eppie’s would feature.

“The tamales were a suggestion of Ana’s,” Epstein said. “She made them for herself one day and brought them in. She said Eppie’s should serve tamales, and I was like, yeah, if you want to make them, let’s try ’em.”

It turned out to be a good decision. Despite the tamales being a bit of an outlier on the menu, they’re probably the most popular special, Epstein said.

“How do I measure that? The amount of wrath I would feel from the customers if we said, ‘no tamales,’” he said.

Unfortunately, “no tamales” is something Eppie’s has to say from time to time; when something that takes three days to make runs out, there’s no making more.

The whole process starts by soaking the corn husks that hold the tamales in place during cooking, and slow simmering chocolate, cinnamon, roasted nuts, chili peppers, and even some animal crackers for the mole.

“When Ana first gave me the list of ingredients for the mole, I was like, huh?” Epstein said.

Next, Ana slices the onions, deseeds the jalapeños, and prepares a bowl of cheddar to assemble the vegetarian option. Once she’s cooked the chicken directly in the mole and mixed the dough, she wraps everything up in a tasty little package. By the end of the day each Tuesday, the whole batch of chicken and cheese tamales is stacked in a pan, placed in a fridge to cool, and ready to be steamed for 30-45 minutes the next day. Epstein said his line cooks have started doing one batch in the morning for lunch and another in the afternoon so the dinner crowd isn’t disappointed.

The question is, can Eppie’s keep us tamale skeptics from being disappointed? I wouldn’t call myself a full convert, but there’s a lot to enjoy in the effort. The cheese version is slightly more interesting for someone who doesn’t love masa dough itself, as the crunch of the veggies takes away from the density of the dish. The chicken tamales come across a bit plain, but a side of the intense mole, with its smokiness and nuanced sweetness, gives them a boost. Don’t go overboard with the sauce, though; it’s flavorful enough to drown out the rest of your meal. If you’re into heat, reach for the Cholula or Sriracha on every table at Eppie’s to bring it. The jalapeños in the cheese tamales are completely neutered by deseeding, and the mole is mild.

One might wonder why a restaurant that primarily  excels at southern comfort food—perfectly roasted chicken, ham “biscuits” (country ham on pumpkin bread), and downhome sides like collard greens and mashed potatoes—would even mess with a Mexican standard like the tamale. Epstein just shrugs.

“It doesn’t really fit,” he admitted. “If we struggle with anything, it’s answering the question, ‘What kind of restaurant are we?’ It’s not that we have something for everyone, but we do have a lot of good stuff.”