Month: October 2014

Let it hereby be known that director Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington are the only team in Hollywood capable of making middle-of-the-road action scripts into movies that are way better than they have any right to be.

Before Training Day became the legendary character study it is and the first film in decades to feel truly dangerous, it was just another police corruption slog with a white dude in the lead; Gary Sinise, Tom Sizemore, and Bruce Willis were considered for the role of Alonzo Harris. Enter Fuqua and Washington, and the ho-hum yarn about a crooked cop who owes money to the Russian mob becomes a crackling examination of power dynamics. In fact, we’re willing to bet you even forgot about the whole Russian mob thing; it’s so good that it overcomes the weakness of its own central plot.

While the Fuqua-Washington reunion in The Equalizer does not reach the same heights of Training Day, the fact that it is the best possible version of itself might be just as impressive. A super-violent update to the 1980s show of the same name starring Edward Woodward, The Equalizer casts Washington as Robert McCall, an unassuming, charming man living out his days in a barebones East Boston apartment while working at a home improvement store. A late-night regular at his local diner, McCall befriends and attempts to mentor a teen prostitute (Chloë Grace Moretz). When his kindness results in even worse treatment for her, he decides to do something about it—peacefully at first, then bloodily, then even more bloodily, then spectacularly bloody.

One would be forgiven for hearing that description and visualizing a remake of Death Wish retooled as a latter-day Liam Neeson vehicle, and in some ways you wouldn’t be far off. It’s an old guy revenge flick, with bad guys so evil that there’s no justice for them but death. Washington’s version of McCall could be seen as a variation of Neeson’s “man with a certain set of skills.” Fuqua is able to make his version rise above the rest with crisp direction, punchy dialogue, and incredibly gratifying action scenes that may be the first to truly understand Boston’s layout and potential for suspense (hint: it’s not a high speed car chase kind of town).

But the two main things that separate The Equalizer from other films that Netflix is likely to recommend based on a positive rating are McCall the character, and Washington as the man portraying him. As we see McCall in action, it becomes clearer to both the audience as well as the Russian baddies that he’s not what you might expect. He’s not a regular citizen who’s just had enough, a retired cop, or any other excuse you might go into the film expecting. (I could go into more detail here without spoiler’s remorse, but it’ll be more fun to guess as you watch.) He’s not out for Death Wish-style “street justice” that’s really just reactionary, Curtis Silwa-esque vigilantism. He’s not out to kill anyone in his way, he’s out to disassemble the criminal chain of command, and will only kill you if you mean to harm him or anyone else. He’ll even let you live if you decide to do make it up to the innocents you’ve wronged.

Given that this is a franchise, there were likely talks with at least a dozen action stars of approximately Washington’s age to play McCall. All of them would have sucked. Bruce Willis would have smirked and mugged his way through the whole thing. Liam Neeson would have watered down McCall’s optimism. Denzel brings intelligence, drive, and morality to a character that might have gone either campy or glum. Despite the surge in self-aware angry old men actioners these days—The Expendables, The November Man, too many Die Hards—The Equalizer is the only one that makes wading into familiar territory worthwhile.

Playing this week

The Boxtrolls
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Boyhood
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Dolphin Tale 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Drop
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Giver
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Gone With the Wind (Wed.)
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Guardians of the Galaxy
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hundred-Foot Journey
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Let’s Be Cops
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Maze Runner
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

My Old Lady
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

No Good Deed
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Skeleton Twins
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

This Is Where I Leave You
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

A Walk Among the Tombstones
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

In a 21st-century world that pushes education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, anyone studying philosophy or English has likely gotten bashed with the question, what are you going to do with that?

Rob Vaughan, president of and co-founder of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, has spent a career defending and demonstrating the value of the humanities.

In 1974, Vaughan traveled across the state with University of Virginia president Edgar Shannon to find out what people wanted from the humanities, from colleges, the arts, and museums. During that listening tour, he learned that people put a “tremendous value” on history, law, language and literature, ethics, philosophy, religion, the arts, and anthropology.

From a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the VFH was born and now is celebrating its 40th birthday.

One of its best known events is the Virginia Festival of the Book, and the foundation has seen what Vaughan calls “explosive” growth in radio. Under the motto “Explore the past, discover the future,” VFH has 13 major programs, including those devoted to folklife, African American, and Virginia Indian programs.

For Vaughan, the question is simple: “How do we consider our contemporary culture in light of our past?” And as Virginia has grown increasingly more diverse—he noted Latino, Ethiopian, Jamaican, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian communities—those cultures influence who we are just as we influence who they are.

Getting people involved in those cultures outside the classroom and in public scholarship is a primary goal for the VFH. “Radio is a way to create a larger audience for the humanities,” said Vaughan. The foundation produces two well-regarded shows: “With Good Reason” and “BackStory with the American History Guys.”

Vaughan credits the idea for “With Good Reason” to Mike Marshall, now editor of the Crozet Gazette. “To me, it was knowledge outreach by Virginia’s public universities,” said Marshall. Like now, the General Assembly was squeezing the amount it funded state universities, and having academics share their expertise was a way to show taxpayers a “knowledge dividend,” explained Marshall.

For state folklorist Jon Lohman, who heads VFH’s folklife program, the humanities are “at the very heart of who we are,” he said. “Living in a world that’s increasingly digital, increasingly franchised and standardized, community-based arts and community-based practices are sort of what makes us human.”

That’s why preserving traditions like accordion making, beekeeping, or the Sephardic Jewish ballad singing of 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Flory Jagoda are important. “She’s not just the keeper of the songs and language,” said Lohman. “She’s the keeper of the flame. When she goes, we don’t want that flame to go out.”

Other states have humanities foundations, but “we’re by far the most expansive,” said Vaughan, and the only one connected to a university. With a budget of more than $5.8 million, the foundation has grown in recent years to a staff of 42 people. “We’re constantly innovating,” said Vaughan. “It’s a very entrepreneurial staff.”

For example, VFH now has digital initiatives like Encyclopedia Virginia, which opens its homepage with the eye-catching “Virginia’s Hair Hall of Fame” and seeks to document the state’s history and culture. “We’ll be building on that the rest of our lives,” said Vaughan.

The foundation has awarded more than 3,000 grants of up to $10,000. “We were the first funders of Ash Lawn Opera,” said Vaughan. Ditto for the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton.

Back in 1974, some people in humanities organizations wouldn’t touch religion, said Vaughan, but in 1977 the VFH commemorated the 200th anniversary of the Virginia Religious Freedom Statute. “I don’t know anybody today who would not say that’s part of the humanities,” he said. “Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are all so integral to the development of cultures—sometimes for good, sometimes for ill.”

The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities also promotes scholarship through fellowships, like a recent one that allowed author and journalist Earl Swift to write Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead and 57 Years of the American Dream. “It’s General Motors, it’s car manufacturing, it’s the history of Norfolk and Suffolk from the 1950s,” enthused Vaughan.

His definition of the humanities is ever expanding, and the lines between science and the humanities are blurred in a 10-part “With Good Reason” series on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education. “I get frustrated by a dividing line between science and humanities, between philosophy and science, between religion and science,” said Vaughan. He mentioned his own interest in astronomy and wondered, “What’s going on with all the new discoveries and how they relate to us?”

Theoretical math is about the only discipline he conceded might be hard to incorporate.

One of Vaughan’s favorite endeavors is the Furious Flower Conference at James Madison University. He called it “far and away the largest conference focused on poetry by African American poets.”

With the foundation’s fingers in so many cultural pies, has anything ever flopped?

Vaughan thinks for a moment and recalls that back in the ’80s there was an anniversary of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. “Nobody cared,” he said. “Nobody was interested.”

One dud out of more than 40,000 programs over 40 years? That’s a pretty astounding return on investment.

The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities will celebrate its 40th anniversary October 2 from 5:30 to 7pm at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.