Tag: Digital Media

It’s that time of year between the end of summer and the beginning of the Oscar races when, traditionally, the genuine crap starts hitting the multiplexes. (You’ll also find crap from January to March, and, depending on your point of view, all year.)

Rush, Ron Howard’s latest, is not crap. It isn’t Oscar-worthy, either, but after Howard’s last few pictures—among them the abysmal The Dilemma and Angels & Demons—just good is a nice change.

Rush is a simple biopic of two men. The first is Formula 1 driver James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth, who actually isn’t as good looking as Hunt was), a hard drinking, heavy smoking, drive-from-the-gut English stud with a privileged background, who would rather race cars than be a doctor. The other man is Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl, who’s better looking than his true-life counterpart; American audiences may know him best from Inglorious Basterds), an Austrian-born driver with impeccable driving and a discipline that makes him hard to beat.

Naturally, they hate each other. But over the course of the film they grow to respect each other as they prove to be the two best drivers of their era, the mid-1970s.

In real life, Hunt and Lauda liked each other much more than they do on the screen, but a screenplay without tension is boring. Maybe Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan thought the literally death defying driving wasn’t enough on its own. Maybe they saw Days of Thunder and thought, “Man we can do this much, much better, and with real people.”

Whatever the reasoning, Rush is quite a ride. It has nothing new to offer in terms of character development, racing insight, or screenwriting, but it does several things well that make it fun.

First, there’s Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography, which captures the grit of racing along with the washed out colors we’ve come to associate with the 1970s, complete with the visible grain. Then there are the period details, from the clothing to the hairstyles, which manage to capture the look of the time without its inherent—in our memories, anyway—corniness.

Lastly, there’s the driving, which is shot in every possible way, from inside the cars, to above the race courses, to on the ground. Mantle’s shots are well-composed and the breakneck pacing is an aid, not a hindrance.

None of that would matter without two compelling leads, and Hemsworth and Brühl acquit themselves well. Brühl, in particular, does excellent work, making Lauda both an irritating asshole and a likable realist. When he suffers a devastating crash, we’re really pulling for him. Hemsworth is good enough; though he doesn’t have much range as an actor, he’s found his niche—good looking tough guys with hearts of gold—and does it with vigor.

There are other characters, but they’re mostly used for comic relief or paper thin character development. Olivia Wilde disappears almost as quickly as she arrives.

But there are sharp moments amid all the gear shifting. One involves Hunt and his interaction with a reporter whom he thinks insulted Lauda. And there’s Lauda’s final voiceover, which puts his relationship with Hunt in touching perspective. Rush is good, and hopefully a resurgence for Howard after years of stumbling.

Playing this week

Austenland
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Battle of the Year
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Blue Jasmine
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Butler
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Despicable Me 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Family
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

In a World
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Insidious Chapter 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Iron Man 3
Carmike Cinema 6

One Direction: This is Us
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Pacific Rim
Carmike Cinema 6

Paranoia
Carmike Cinema 6

Percy Jackson:
Sea of Monsters
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Planes
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Prisoners
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

R.I.P.D.
Carmike Cinema 6

Riddick
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Short Term 12
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Spectacular Now
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Thanks for Sharing
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

This is the End
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Turbo
Carmike Cinema 6

The Way, Way Back
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Wizard of Oz
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

We’re the Millers
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The World’s End
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

World War Z
Carmike Cinema 6

Movie houses

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Let’s not mince words. It was a lackluster summer, movie-wise. For every decent surprise (Fast & Furious 6, which was better than it had any right to be; The Spectacular Now, which is a bittersweet rumination on growing up), there was a major letdown.

Take Elysium. The Matt Damon-starring, Jodie Foster-supporting progressive sci-fi bloodfest should have been a home run, but it was undone by several things, including Foster’s distracting accent and a protracted finale that, on second viewing, was way, way, way too protracted. Plus, I’m not sure how much I buy the notion that a guy whose body is being rapidly taken over by tumors can fight like RoboCop on his best day.

In the meh/so-so department, there is Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, which, though it had its moments, I found depressingly misogynistic—and not because of Andrew Dice Clay, who’s excellent. In the really bad department, there is R.I.P.D., which again finds Ryan Reynolds’ charisma going nowhere in a terrible screenplay.

And finally, in the this-may-actually-be-the-worst-movie-I’ve-ever-seen-no-joke-department, there’s Austenland, which doesn’t have a single thing to recommend it. Starting with the it’s-not-really-interested-in-Jane-Austen angle to the sure-Keri-Russell-can’t-maintain-a-relationship angle to Jane Seymour’s underbaked Prunella Scales-lite character to Jennifer Coolidge’s unrestrained and idiotic performance, it’s an unmitigated shit show.

Thankfully that’s all behind us. We never have to think about those movies until someone writes a Woody Allen career retrospective—again—but at least Blue Jasmine is better than, say, Mighty Aphrodite.

Now that it’s Autumn, we have two kinds of movies happening, the early fall crap-dump (see: Thanks for Sharing) and the early awards fodder (see: Prisoners).

The crap-dump (patent pending), for those unfamiliar with it, is the process by which a studio releases a movie at an inopportune time of year for filmgoers—say, back to school time when many households are concentrating on school, not recreation—that it has little to no faith in. Maybe the movie is bad or it has difficult subject matter or the studio simply doesn’t think it will find an audience. Although the movies probably won’t make much money at the box office, they may make some, and that’s better than none—which is to say, better than keeping the movie in the vault, unreleased. Hence a bad release date.

Movies released in September that reasonably qualify for the crap-dump: The Family (half-baked, stupidly violent, unblinkingly sexist); Riddick (an effort to revamp a once-powerful character by a passionate star, but the studio doesn’t care much); Thanks for Sharing (this is a guess, as its studio, Roadside Attractions, generally does smaller releases, but three big names—Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Ruffalo and Tim Robbins—usually means brouhaha and this movie has none).

On the other end of the spectrum, awards fodder is upon us with Prisoners, director Denis Villeneuve’s creepfest about kidnapped children and familial despair. Despite Hugh Jackman’s way overblown performance (he apparently learned interrogation techniques from Batman), the movie is a quiet winner that takes its time following leads and examining motives. Plus, it quietly tells us, “Oh, you want to watch a movie about endangered children? Well, it’s going to be excruciating.” Jake Gyllenhaal is excellent. Prisoners could have used more Terrence Howard and Viola Davis.

Coming soon in the early awards fodder category, we have Rush, Ron Howard’s biopic of Formula 1 drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Don Jon, which the star also writes and directs. In October there’s Sandra Bullock in Gravity, which is being advertised everywhere, a good sign for studio faith. There’s also Captain Phillips, which features Tom Hanks in serious mode, and why not? It’s a movie about Somali pirates, after all.

Of course, Machete Kills, Robert Rodriguez’s sequel to Machete, opens the same weekend as Captain Phillips. Crap-dump or not, guess which one I’ll be seeing?

Sarah Neufeld

Hero Brother/Constellation

With Hero Brother, Arcade Fire violinist and composer Sarah Neufeld has created a strikingly beautiful release. Ethereal and elegiac, this instrumental masterpiece transports you to another world and conveys its mysterious story in a unique way to each listener. “Breathing Black Ground” is a haunting piece of work that feels like a funeral dirge, and Neufeld’s frenetic playing on the title track invokes a dangerous urgency. The movements within “Dirt”—an otherworldly intro leads into a racing violin interlude before concluding as if an epic disaster has taken place—are breathtaking in their diversity. Neufeld proves herself a masterful player throughout tunes that are down-tempo and meditative, lively and upbeat, bringing a variety of moods to this album. Hero Brother promises to be one of the best albums of any genre in 2013.

Christa Wells

Feed Your Soul/Self-released

Raleigh-based singer-songwriter Christa Wells’ new album, Feed Your Soul, is a heartfelt release where she grapples with everything from God to our humanity and what makes life worth living. The swelling mid-
tempo pop track “For My Child” acts as a balm of reassurance concerning God’s ability to love, and “This Thing is Not Going to Break You” is a Sara Bareilles-like track offering encouragement in spite of difficult circumstances. “Vanity Vanity” is a groovy, bluesy number about the pitfalls of a life lived on the surface, and on the head-
bobbing title track Wells lets her hair down as her rich vocals head for the sky as she sings about nourishing your inner being. Wells aims for the heart on tracks like “More Than I Am” when she sings, “I’m made of more than my own flesh and bones,” and the album as a whole is a search for meaning. Feed Your Soul plays out in a deft exploration of the frailty and beauty of the human condition.

American Authors

American Authors/Island Records

If you enjoyed the debut from Imagine Dragons, but wished that they would lighten up a bit and add more pop, then American Authors is the band for you. The band’s debut EP is filled with epic choruses, loads of energy and skyscraping vocals, and is about to make a splash. From the happy anthemic pop rock debut single “Believer,” to the upbeat “Best Day,” which features tribal percussion and propulsive beats, a heavy dose of optimism fills this record. And even when a song deals with heavy subject matter (“Luck” centers on the struggle to chase your dreams even if you defy the expectations of those who love you), the content is juxtaposed with engaging rock riffs. “Hit It” is a driving bluegrass rap-pop track with lively chorus calls and a number of rapid-fire vocal deliveries throughout, and the closer “Home” is a swelling rocker that wraps up the album with a neat little bow.

When I think of Luc Besson or watch one of his movies, the thing I feel most is ambivalence. It’s refreshing to watch a guy use real violence in movies that are supposed to be comedies—violence isn’t all that funny, even when it’s played for laughs. A great example of horrific violence used for comedic purposes is Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain.

The difference is that Pain & Gain knows what it is, which is a lampooning of idiots who got into crime and quickly found themselves over their heads. The Family, Besson’s latest, has violence aplenty, but it’s so at odds with the tone of the rest of the film, it’s hard to know just how to feel.

I’d suggest that that’s Besson’s point—to make his audience feel uneasy at the idea of celebrating a fun-seeming family that uses violence to solve its problems—but that’s not his point. The Family isn’t that ambitious. Here, he just wants to make a movie where Robert De Niro sends up his tough guy image but also gets to remain a tough guy.

Why else would De Niro, as Gio Manzoni, a mafia sub-boss under FBI witness protection in France—he turned on members of his organization—beat up a French plumber who suggests a bribe in order to get a job done a little faster? If Gio (using a fake name, Fred Blake) had read Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence, the beating wouldn’t be necessary.

For that matter, why did Fred/Gio turn on his mafia family? Oh yeah, never explained. It’s the height of snobbery to gripe about logic gaps in a Luc Besson movie—the enjoyable The Fifth Element– makes absolutely no sense—but what else have I got when The Family seems so derivative?

For example:

1. Mafia family moves in under pseudonym to a town to avoid getting detected? Check. (See also: My Blue Heaven.)

2. Mafia family tries to live normal life? Check. (See also: The Sopranos.)

3. For God’s sake, the movie’s main character is a rat. (See also: State of Grace, Donnie Brasco, The Departed, and, to a lesser degree, On the Waterfront, and that’s just for starters.)

So what does The Family have going for it? De Niro, who seems to be having genuine fun. Michelle Pfeiffer is his wife, Maggie, who sends up her Married to the Mob character. Then there are the kids, 17-year-old Belle (Dianna Agron), and 14-year-old Warren (John D’Leo), who start running all the cons at their high school.

But for all the fun, there’s the ick factor; characters are dispatched, after 100 minutes of pleasant screen time, mercilessly. And when Belle isn’t being ogled creepily by Besson’s camera (a recurring theme in all his movies that feature young women—so, most of them), she’s beating the shit out of people who take advantage of her. I wonder if anyone else sees irony in Belle turning young men into mincemeat for treating her badly while the director is using her purely as a sex object?

Who knows? But you get where I’m going with the ambivalence thing, right?

Playing this week

Austenland
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Blue Jasmine
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Butler
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Conjuring
Carmike Cinema 6

Despicable Me 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Elysium
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Getaway
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Grandmaster
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Heat
Carmike Cinema 6

In a World
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Insidious Chapter 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Iron Man 3
Carmike Cinema 6

The Lone Ranger
Carmike Cinema 6

One Direction: This is Us
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Pacific Rim
Carmike Cinema 6

Percy Jackson:
Sea of Monsters
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Planes
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Riddick
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Short Term 12
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Spectacular Now
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Star Trek Into Darkness
Carmike Cinema 6

This is the End
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Ultimate Life
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Way, Way Back
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

We’re the Millers
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Wolverine
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The World’s End
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

World War Z
Carmike Cinema 6

Movie houses

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

When we last left Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel), in the boringly-yet-appropriately titled The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), he was installed as the leader of the Necromongers, a race of humanoids bent on turning everyone in the universe into Scientologists. Whatever else happened in The Chronicles of Riddick has been long forgotten, mostly because it’s a terrible movie.

Remember Pitch Black (2000)? The R-rated, super violent bloodbath where Riddick got his start pits him and lesser mortals against creatures on a desert planet that kill and eat anything they can. The catch: The creatures only come out at night and the planet has perpetual daylight, except for a month-long period every 20 years or so. And guess when Riddick and the gang arrive?

Forget that no creature that couldn’t survive in the sun would live on a planet bathed in sunlight. That’s totally stupid! But Pitch Black is fun, with lots of good killin’—if you’re into that sort of thing—and thankfully Riddick has much more in common with it than with The Chronicles of Riddick, even the things that don’t make much sense.

For example, in the new movie, how does Riddick know the creatures that survive in the dark are going to hunt him and the bounty hunters looking for him on this unknown planet? Because he’s Riddick, that’s why! Don’t question the script.

And why isn’t Riddick still leading the Necromongers? Simple: The script required it. Seriously, don’t question the filmmakers. It’s best to just roll with the movie if you want to enjoy it.

For anyone in the dark (ha) in Riddick’s first 10 minutes, fear not. There’s a prologue that tidies up as much as it can. It’s almost as if Diesel and writer-director David Twohy want to forget The Chronicles of Riddick, too. Wise choice. Unfortunately, it demands that we remember things that happened 13 years ago—there’s a subplot tied directly to characters from Pitch Black—but mostly it’s just an action movie.

In Riddick, our antihero has landed on an unnamed desert-like planet. He eventually finds a large piece of land that has vegetation and shelter. Then he finds an abandoned bounty hunter station and an approaching storm that looks bigger than any Category 5 hurricane. Riddick sets off a homing beacon and the bounty hunters come calling.

For Riddick, the idea is to steal a ship and escape. For the bounty hunters, it’s time to get picked off one by one Agatha Christie-style. Much like the Fast & Furious series that was so self-serious when it first appeared, Pitch Black and the follow-up take themselves so seriously they can be insufferable. Twohy and Diesel have learned to let Riddick have some yuks, and to let the other characters know they’re caricatures. The players realize they’re in a ridiculous situation and that makes Riddick infinitely more fun.

Riddick isn’t close to being a perfect movie, but it’s surprisingly entertaining. And sometimes all we need is a good popcorn flick.

Playing this week

Blue Jasmine
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Butler
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Closed Circuit
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Despicable Me 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Elysium
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Getaway
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Grandmaster
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Heat
Carmike Cinema 6

In a World
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Iron Man 3
Carmike Cinema 6

The Lone Ranger
Carmike Cinema 6

Man of Steel
Carmike Cinema 6

The Mortal Instruments:
City of Bones
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

One Direction: This is Us
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Pacific Rim
Carmike Cinema 6

Percy Jackson:
Sea of Monsters
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Planes
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Spectacular Now
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Star Trek Into Darkness
Carmike Cinema 6

This is the End
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Turbo
Carmike Cinema 6

The Ultimate Life
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Way, Way Back
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

We’re the Millers
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

White House Down
Carmike Cinema 6

The Wolverine
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The World’s End
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

World War Z
Carmike Cinema 6

You’re Next
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14
and IMAX
244-3213

Sorry, peeps. The World’s End just isn’t as good as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, the other features in the Simon Pegg-Nick Frost-Edgar Wright canon. Luckily, The World’s End is still a lot of fun, and Pegg and Frost prove once again to be captivating screen presences and fully committed, especially when dealing with the totally bizarre.

The World’s End starts with a simple premise. A down-on-his-luck loser, Gary (Pegg), wants to get his old mates back together to recreate the best night of his life, a 12-pub crawl in their hometown that ends at a pub called The World’s End.

Sounds simple, right? And for 45 minutes, that’s exactly what happens. In fact, Pegg-Frost-Wright fans may wonder just what, exactly, is this movie doing, playing itself so straight? The dialogue is sharp, to be sure, and Pegg is excellent as the ragged alcoholic trying to piece his life back together while not accepting that he’s a complete loser. The supporting cast—Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, and Eddie Marsan—take turns playing straight man to Gary, with Frost becoming more and more irritated at Gary’s shenanigans as they bounce from pub to pub.

Then The World’s End takes a wild left turn. Its left turn seems more random than anything that happens in Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, but once the craziness of it wears off, it’s just fun to sit back and let these guys do what they do best, which is make an audience laugh at the ridiculous.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know the lads’ hometown has been taken over by robots. One of the recurring gags is that the homogenization of marketing, advertising, and branding has made it easy for the robots to slip in undetected.

And just what is the point of the robots and their masters? I’m not sure. There’s something in Pegg and Wright’s script, and it comes out of Pegg’s mouth in the movie, that has something to do with individuality and personal freedom, which sounds strikingly American for a film set in England. But what do I care? It’s a larf fest.

Speaking of larf fests, the lads and old friend Sam (Rosamund Pike) come face to face with twins who have been replaced by robots. The robot twins try to kill Sam and Gary, and somehow one of the robots loses her arms while the other loses her legs. So, working as a team, the robots attach the legs to the robot with the missing arms, and she goes back to beating the piss out of everyone.

Wacky, right? And how often can I use the word robot?

Anyway, there’s the aforementioned message in the screenplay about homogenization, but it gets lost in the movie’s sturm und drang. Besides, it’s been better said in sci-fi (think Invasion of the Body Snatchers), and still, I’m not entirely sure that’s the point.

There’s a twist at the end that’s just as crazy as the twist at the 45-minute mark, and it looks like there’s a set-up for a sequel. I use “looks like” because who knows? The World’s End is all over the place, but it doesn’t matter. We’re having fun.

Playing this week

2 Guns
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

20 Feet From Stardom
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Before Midnight
Carmike Cinema 6

Blackfish
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Blue Jasmine
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Butler
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Chennai Express
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Despicable Me 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Elysium
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Fruitvale Station
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Iron Man 3
Carmike Cinema 6

Jobs
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Kick-Ass 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Man of Steel
Carmike Cinema 6

Monsters University
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Mortal Instruments
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Paranoia
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Percy Jackson:
Sea of Monsters
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Planes
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Smurfs 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Spectacular Now
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Star Trek Into Darkness
Carmike Cinema 6

Turbo
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Carmike Cinema 6

The Way, Way Back
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

We’re the Millers
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

White House Down
Carmike Cinema 6

The Wolverine
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

You’re Next
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14
and IMAX
244-3213

The Civil Wars

The Civil Wars/Columbia Records

After going on hiatus last year due to “internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition,” Joy Williams and John Paul White have a new album that begs the question: How could something so beautiful have come from two people who don’t speak to each other anymore? The longing and regret that permeates the gritty Americana rock single “The One that Got Away,” and the wistful country ode “Same Old, Same Old”’s story about a relationship ending are filled with autobiographical possibility. The raw, earthy “I Had Me a Girl” and the swirling, ominous rocker “Devil’s Backbone” are reminiscent of 2011’s Barton Hollow, and the way the duo carries a tune is still nothing short of rapturous. There’s a haunting cover of The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm,” but the album’s most difficult moment might be in the genial-sounding, laid back closer, “D’Arline,” in which there’s no indication of strife. The album is fantastically bittersweet, and we can only hope that it’s not the final effort from The Civil Wars.

BT

A Song Across Wires/Armada Music

Technologist/composer/DJ Brian Transeau, a.k.a. BT has fused dance with rock, pop, hip-hop, and jazz for years, and created technology that allows him to do things with music that were previously unimaginable. He is back with his first club record in some time, A Song Across Wires, and it is beautiful. BT demonstrates his skill by creating epic, echoing instrumental dance tracks like “Skylarking,” and takes things to a rave-worthy level with hypnotic beats and dubstep pyrotechnics on “Tomahawk.” He deftly switches gears on “City Life,” mixing in synthesized, Asian-style percussion just to keep you on your toes. BT shines as a lyricist and singer on “Love Devine,” taking the track beyond its instrumental foundation, and his all-star list of guest vocalists—including Jes, Emma Hewitt, Nadia Ali and Aqualung—turn in solid performances. BT is still leading the in the genre of original dance music.

Travis

Where You Stand/Red Telephone Box

2008’s Ode to J. Smith, was a disaster of a release for the Brit rock band Travis. Taking five years to complete the follow-up, Where You Stand, seems to have paid off, because it ranks among the band’s very best. The echoing piano pop shuffler “Boxes” quietly laments commercialism, while on the piano ballad “The Big Screen” singer Fran Healy sings about how insignificant he sometimes feels. The mid-tempo rock of “Moving” bemoans inevitable continuity despite some of our best-laid plans, and “Mother” lets out glorious piano pop strains. Singer Fran Healy’s delicate, sometimes cracking falsetto juxtaposes wonderfully against the troubling content. The album feels significantly lighter and more upbeat than previous releases, and is organic, subtly engaging, and absolutely gorgeous.

“If you go to the parking lot of the Ix building, you can hear the creek under you,” said Matthew Slaats. “It sounds like someone’s left their water running, but there’s actually a creek right there. There’s a ton of other underground creek spaces throughout the city. It’s something you never think about.”

Slaats is referring to Pollock’s Branch, one of Charlottesville’s two dozen underground waterways. They’re in every city. Natural creeks or drainage ditches that get covered up, built over, and integrated into a city’s maintenance system as urban areas grow.

Did you ever wonder where all that rainwater goes, once it runs down that grate in the street? In Charlottesville, it’s mostly a small network of underground tunnels ranging from a half-dozen blocks to a few miles in length, draining water and run-off from the city’s urban areas. In larger cities these are often vast tunnels, an arcane and idiosyncratic series of interconnected waterways vital to a city’s daily functions, but invisible and forgotten by its citizens, save for a handful of construction and maintenance workers.

Slaats is the newly-appointed director of The Bridge Progressive Arts Intiative, profiled in last issue. (Full disclosure: this writer was an employee of The Bridge from 2006-2009.) On Wednesday, August 28, The Bridge will screen Lost Rivers, a recent documentary about urban underground waterways around the world. After the screening, Slaats will lead a candlelight walk tracing the path of the nearest underground waterway, Pollock’s Creek. “It’s actually just across the street,” he said. “It goes down along Sixth Street southeast. It runs down through Friendship Court, through the Ix [building], and then pops out just south of Elliott [Avenue]. It drains most of Downtown. All of Downtown basically drains to a point just south of the train tracks.”

“The film is interesting,” he said. “It looks at a group of high school and college kids that started exploring these underground rivers in Russia and Italy. When they first started they were doing it illegally. But over time they got to know these things so well, and the cities started to recognize that, so they made them a kind of organization, and now they lead tours underground. So you’re seeing these kind of Roman structures that have other things built on top of them and then you have these rivers flowing underneath.”

“[The documentary] looks at Seoul and they look at Yonkers, both of which did these ‘daylighting’ projects of a river that had just gotten so bad that they just covered them up in the 20th century. And now they’re uncovering them. Like Yonkers—now all of a sudden they have this beautiful space in the middle of town and people want to be there, and so developers are coming in and developing it. It’s totally the same conversation as [the High Line in New York].”

“In the past I had done some projects about waterways,” Slaats said. “So I thought this film was interesting, and I’d been wanting to show it for a while. I just hadn’t had the opportunity. And it just so happens that there’s an underground creek right across the street from us, so it was an easy thing to make a connection to. But also there’s this whole conversation about the strategic investment area, which is this big development where [the city] has brought all of these consultants in. They’ve been doing this big study of the area south of Downtown to look at how it could be redeveloped. So they’ve been working on this for a while and it just so happens that one of the designs at the preliminary design competition is to ‘daylight’ that creek and make it a centerpiece of this plan.”

“So, the hope is to show this film, which brings up some questions, and then go for this walk,” he said. Slaats has invited several representatives of the city, as well as UVA architecture student James Moore (who has researched Pollock’s Branch), members of the strategic investment steering committee, and the PLACE design task force, among others, with the goal of facilitating further dialogue. He hopes to involve environmental activists, as well.

This kind of communication and transparency to the community seem crucial at a time when development in Charlottesville is expanding at an ambitious and exponential rate. “So many people see it as an either/or, like you’re either pro-development, or you’re against it,” Slaats said. “Development’s going to happen no matter what. But you hope you can do it in such a way that it’s thoughtful. So that people have a say in it.”

Slaats hopes the event will be both informative and interactive, perhaps drawing the sort of audience members that might not ordinarily attend a City Council meeting. “I like the idea of a bunch of people walking down the creek with candles, and marking it out and making it present for a little while,” he said. “It’s kind of performative and I really like that idea of creating opportunities for performance in some way.”

“My big push for the arts, here at The Bridge is that the arts shouldn’t be here ‘just because,’” he said. “I want to ask ‘what use, really, is art, in a community like Charlottesville?’ And so I want to try to push this idea of connection, bringing up questions, talking about art being a catalyst for new ways of seeing the city. So it has a big, more of a functional, mode to it, rather than just kind of being a visual experience. I want to play between those two things. Present the avant-garde film or music thing, but then also [ask], ‘how can music and images be used to facilitate a conversation?’”

Share your thoughts on developing the city’s underground waterways in the comments section below.

Led by teen singing sensation Alex Chilton and studio mastermind Chris Bell, the band name Big Star and the album title #1 Record were picked in jest, but the choice became increasingly ironic as the band failed to find any commercial or popular success. Though critics adored them, the group often played to near-empty venues. Bell left the band he had founded due to personal troubles, and Chilton carried on in near-obscurity. A third album was shelved without release, and the group essentially dissolved in 1974.

Luckily, Big Star’s music had a second act, as generations of new fans slowly discovered it. Though the Big Star story was tough and often bitter for those who lived it, it also made for a perfect legend, placing the band in the position of underdogs. As millions came to adore it, each new fan felt like he was making a private, personal discovery.

Big Star’s albums continue to be “lost classics” well after they have been “found.” Though they never became a household name, musicians have cited them as a formative influence, and they’re practically required listening for college radio DJs. It’s impossible to imagine the first wave of American indie rock—from R.E.M. and the dB’s through Yo La Tengo and The Replacements—without Big Star.

A new documentary, Nothing Can Hurt Me, tells the history of the band. It’s directed by New York-based filmmaker Olivia Mori (who was raised in Charlottesville) and it paints a full, coherent portrait of Big Star’s history. The film contains archival footage, extensive interviews with many who knew and worked with the band, and is packed from beginning to end with songs from Big Star albums as well as Bell and Chilton’s solo projects.

On Tuesday, September 27 at 7:30pm, WTJU will present the documentary at The Paramount Theater, followed by a Q&A with Mori. C-VILLE Weekly spoke with Mori by phone.

C-VILLE Weekly: Why Big Star? How did you come to make a documentary about that band in particular?

Olivia Mori: The project had actually started several years back, but it wasn’t going anywhere. When Alex Chilton died in 2010, that’s when I heard about the documentary. I had discovered the band shortly after college, so I was already a fan of their music, and I was interested. So production started shortly after his death in 2010, and I sort of immediately involved myself in the project.

So that’s the logical answer to your question. But in terms of the larger question of ‘why?’—we had sort of realized that there’s no comparable story out there. There are a lot of documentaries right now about bands that never made it, or almost made it, but that didn’t quite apply to them. There’s so many things about the Big Star story that you can’t really compare to anything.

I really had no idea how big the story would get. But once you start doing the research… so much of it has to do with bands from Memphis, and the cultural history from there.

I could spend the rest of my life making documentaries about Memphis. It’s completely unique. It has to do with the people. Everyone there is really talkative, and really smart.

That must have made your job easier when trying to get interviews with everyone who was involved in that story?

We actually had a really hard time with that. Mostly because Alex had just died, and [producer] Jim Dickenson had passed away just a year before that. Three or four of our interview subjects were dying of cancer—and these people were young, just in their 60s. There was a lot of death around, and at the same time, I think emotions were still very raw, we got some very candid stuff. A couple of people just weren’t ready to talk. Alex’s death, I think for a lot of people, was just a shock, it came out of nowhere. He was a really troubled character, and he didn’t maintain good relationships. [With] a lot of people, the last time he saw them, he probably was an asshole to them. How do you react when someone like that dies?

I imagine it was also more difficult to assemble all the source material you needed for the documentary when three of the main band members are deceased.

Oh, Alex never would have done it. Even in the late ’70s, early ’80s when the records were still starting to be discovered, the people who did discover them would track him down. So even way back when, he was still being haunted by these records. It was known that he would never want to talk about it, or play those songs. He did the reunion stuff in the end, honestly, to make money, because he was really poor. He did sort of reveal in one interview that he was really embarrassed by the lyrics in Big Star. They represented a certain period in his life. Like a lot of people feel that way about things they did when they were younger, that they were immature. He wasn’t comfortable with a lot of the lyrics, but he knew the music was good. But he also shunned any kind of adoration. If you came up to him and said something about Big Star, he would say ‘fuck you.’ But if you wanted to talk to him about classical guitar or Eddie Floyd or something else, then he could be sweet.

His life was really bookended by success, in a weird way. He had this huge hit with The Box Tops as a teenager, and then was commercially unsuccessful for years, and then finally got all this critical acclaim later in life. It seemed like enthusiasm for Big Star was at an all-time high when he died. 

I didn’t realize this until I started working on the film, but if you know them and you love them, you’re part of a club. That’s part of why the movie’s been so successful. Everyone who knows them loves them and wants to hear the story. Since the movie has come out, at every screening, all of the fans come out. So it’s been really great having the movie out and bringing them together. It’s kind of like a secret handshake. If you meet someone, and the topic of Big Star comes up, you just know you can trust that person. You share something with them.