Star Trek makes good

I love the movies and I see a lot of them. I don't usually write about them, though, largely because it's time-consuming (and movies get plenty of press.) Furthermore, when I do write up a movie, it's usually one that is seriously moving, especially artistic, or under-appreciated.

Star Trek Into Darkness is none of these. But I enjoyed it immensely. The franchise had lapsed for a while, most likely because some of the movies were lame or worse. What I liked best about this one was that it felt a lot like watching an episode of the original sixties TV version, with Shatner and Nimoy, except, of course, that the special effects are now on steroids. (I even broke my Imax-3D virginity and was duly rewarded with visual spectacle and pzazz. It was fun!)

I give the writers a lot of credit for recreating the characters, moods, and campy atmosphere of the dialogue from the sixties, something to which most of the previous Trek movies didn't aspire. I had to wonder, as I heard sporadic chuckling from around me in the audience, whether anyone who has never seen the original series would appreciate the humor injected into scene after scene.

Kirk was the cowboy congenitally disposed to break rules and disobey orders, Spock was excruciatingly inscrutable, Scotty suitably apoplectic, and Uhura both sultry and self-assured. "Bones" had many of the best lines. Some seemed lifted straight from the TV series (e.g., "Damn it, Jim; I'm a doctor, not a torpedo technician!")

If you are a hard core Trekkie I think you'll especially like the attention to details such as the incidental presence of a Tribble. (Don't worry, it's not subtle.)

Of course it wasn't all fun and games. Benedict Cumberbatch is excellent as the villainous Kahn, which he plays with thoroughly humorless intensity. And, like any action-adventure movie, you had to suspend disbelief in spades (just how many blows to the head can Kirk take without major, lasting trauma, anyway?)

But enough--if you want to read some real reviews, check them out on Rotten Tomatoes where the movie is rated at 86% / 89%. Hey, with ratings that high, they can't all be Trekkies!

Art, Film, and Music in Milwaukee: it all rocks!

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It was a good weekend for the arts here in Milwaukee. Three quick hits:

Visual art at Villa Terrace

On Friday evening the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum opened a small mixed media group show called “Chasing Horizons.”  Guest curators Nirmal Raja and Christopher Willey, who both have ties to UWM, assembled a diverse set of Milwaukee artists whose work uses the idea of landscape as a point of departure. It’s not the kind of show one typically associates with Villa Terrace.

Most of the work is installed gallery fashion in the cleared upper rooms of the historic mansion. My favorite pieces, however, were the two site-specific installations. Kevin Giese has inserted two slender, undulating trunks of stripped buckthorn into the steeply sloping, carefully landscaped “backyard,” which sweeps dramatically down to the lakefront.

Emily Belknap, whose show at the Chazen I recently reviewed, has taken wonderful advantage of the ambiance of the building. Her installation, called “Flight Zones,” is made up of three life-size bronze sculptures of robins. A precise circle of finely sifted dirt surrounds each, indicating the distance at which a person’s approach will cause the bird to take flight. The circles of dirt echo the decorative period moldings on the ceiling and the intrusion of the “wildlife” creates a curious dialogue with the portrait paintings hung on the walls.

If you didn’t get to the opening you have plenty of time. The show will be up through August 25.

The Oriental Theater offers another great movie

Since we were in the neighborhood and it was still early my wife and I checked out the Oriental. From amongst the several interesting choices we were glad we picked “The Place Beyond the Pines.” It’s being promoted as a “crime thriller,” and there are aspects of that in it. However, it’s a much more nuanced and complicated story than that genre generally implies. It would be hard to describe much of the story without ruining the many truly surprising plot twists.

It begins with a stunt motorcycle driver played by Ryan Gosling who goes on a crime spree for an unusual motivation. Things don’t turn out as planned but that’s the only thing predictable about this provocative and sensitive narrative. Go see it before it goes away. 

Read more on the official movie website.

The Milwaukee Rep and Janis Joplin

Although we are season ticket holders for the MilwaukeeRepertory Theater, we might have missed this show because it isn’t part of the regular season. But we were very happy that we took advantage of a special Cinco de Mayo offer and went to see it last night.

It isn’t exactly a concert and it isn’t really a musical play. But I’ve never seen the Powerhouse Stage rock like it did last night. The performers were outstanding and the music was as energetic as any concert I’ve seen—and then some!

I’ve never been a particular fan of Joplin. I was just a couple years too young to have gone to see her perform live. Anyone my age has heard her most famous songs (especially “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Mercedes Benz”) repeated endlessly on the radio, of course, as well as seeing video of her performing. But those don’t hold a candle to the actual experience. The show was a visual and auditory extravaganza that seemed to represent her onstage persona pretty accurately. The only thing missing was a pall of pungent pot smoke wafting over the crowd--but I only know that from heresay!

I could quibble that the attempt to add a story line to the show was flawed by the lack of any real arc to the narrative. The implications of her famous dissolution and untimely death were quite subtle and understated. Still, it was nice to see and hear the people who influenced her, including Bessie Smith, Odetta, Nina Simone, and Aretha Franklin. Blues singer Sabrina Elayne Carten recreated all of those voices and presences and she deserves credit equal to Mary Bridget Davies, who played Joplin.

The audience was an intriguing mix and far more diverse than usual for the Milwaukee Rep. There were plenty of folks who looked old enough to have seen Joplin live—and even a few that came garbed in authentic-looking “period costumes” like dashikis, tie-dye, colorful stripped bell-bottoms, and leather vests. However, I was glad to see a wide variety of ages amongst the appreciative crowd. At first it took a bit of urging by the cast to break through the Milwaukee/Midwest reserve, but by the end of the first set the entire audience was on its feet, clapping, singing, and generally rocking the night away.

As she sings in Bobby McGee, “…feeling good was good enough for me!”

The show is called “One Night with Janis Joplin,” but you have many nights to choose from before the show closes June 2 to join in the fun.

The best of 2012?

A dozen years ago or so, around the turn of the century/millennium, I was appalled to read a column by someone I’ll leave anonymous. She was asked who she thought was the best artist of the twentieth century. This columnist was not a specialist in the arts and in fact had no business, as far as I could tell, prognosticating about art in any way let alone passing judgment on who epitomizes the “best,” however one might construe that subjective concept.

And that is the most salient point, it seems to me: how do you define “art” before you decide who represents the best of it? She didn’t try. Her choice of Norman Rockwell (I’m not making this up) was bad enough in any case – even if we grant a definition of art that is limited to painting (which I definitely do not.) I won’t go into the pros and cons of her choice, except to say that it is not only a populist one but a blatantly culturally biased one. If it must be a painter I’d have to go with Picasso, but that’s not how I’d approach the question.

In order to get a handle on who might be the “best artist” of the twentieth century I believe we must decide what art form best represents that century. I didn’t at the time and still don’t think the answer is painting. In my opinion, it was the new medium of film. Since I’m not a film critic or historian I have never presumed an opinion about which of many great filmmakers best represents the art form. But I definitely am of the opinion that if one is to decide the best artist of the twentieth century that a filmmaker should be at the head of the class.

I do love the movies, though. All of this is to introduce my thoughts on films I saw in 2012. Again, I don’t presume to pronounce them “best” in an objective way. Some among my favorites, listed below, appeared on some actual film critics’ lists of the best of the year. Some did not. Some that I didn’t like also appeared on a few of those lists, including my choices for “most disappointing” and “stupidest.”

My list must be qualified by admitting that I have yet to see some of the films that are on many “best of 2012” lists. Several are in my Netflix queue. But that, I think, is the value of these rituals, isn’t it? To provide suggestions, encourage audiences for what might otherwise go unnoticed.

For instance, it won’t surprise anyone who has seen them (or read any of the “best of” lists out there) that Lincoln or Argo are among my own favorites. But they aren’t at the top. That spot is held in a tie by Life of Pi and Beasts of the Southern Wild.

However, rounding out my six favorite films of the year are two far less well known.

The Intouchables is a powerful and moving story about a paraplegic millionaire who hires a down and out ex-convict as a personal caretaker.

Robot and Frank is a heartwarming futuristic story with some surprising twists and quirks about a man whose family gives him a caretaking robot in lieu of placing him in a nursing home.

The biggest disappointment I mentioned? The Hobbit. I almost didn’t go to see it in fact, because I suspected as much. I love all three parts of The Lord of the Rings, but, of course, Tolkien wrote it in three volumes. Not so The Hobbit, a much lighter tale. I won’t waste money on the next two installments, which seem like the most egregious example of milking the franchise since the third trilogy of Star Wars came out. Perhaps worse.

The stupidest of the year: The Avengers wins hands down. (Of course this is still only considering movies I actually went to see.)

I don’t mind a good cartoon movie, either. My list of guilty pleasures, if that’s what they must seem, includes the latest iteration of Spiderman. I enjoyed all three of Tobey Maguire’s impersonations of my favorite cartoon character – to varying degrees. But Andrew Garfield simply was more suited to the role. It was worth the remake, I thought.

I also liked Skyfall. Bond movies have been all over the board in terms of quality and excess. So, this wasn’t a given by any means. After the success of Casino Royale, the last one with Daniel Craig (the name of which I’ve blocked from my memory) was awful. Skyfall is better than most Bond films and if it’s milking a franchise, at least it’s doing it well.

Although I waited until it came to the budget cinema, I was pleasantly surprised by The Hunger Games. I hope it’s not a prescient look at our future. My wife observed, astutely I think, that it was a combination of a futuristic version of what the Romans did in the colosseum and any number of “reality TV” shows taken to their logical extreme.

Was Magic Mike a guilty pleasure or something better? Raunchy but fun, I’m going to leave it in the guilty pleasure category.

Finally, my choice for favorite documentary of 2012: Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry. (If there were comparably good ones, as there must have been, I missed them.)

So, a few suggestions to add to your Netflix lists. Or not.