The release of the four DVD set of Derek Jarman films under the name Glitterbox could not have come at a better time. Not only have there been retrospective viewings of Jarman’s groundbreaking, and sometimes controversial, films around the U.S., but also a documentary feature looking at the life and career of the English filmmaker will soon see wide release.

With this box set bringing together films from early in Jarman’s career with the three films that he completed before his death in 1994, it seems one of the best places to begin to draw out some understanding of his intentions as a filmmaker: to speak frankly about his homosexuality and infection with AIDS, to challenge the narrative constraints of modern cinema (especially in England in the late ’70s/early ’80s when he first arrived on the scene) and to bring to bear his avant garde/experimental and political leanings in an infinitely watchable form.

The latter is especially true of the two pseudo-biopics that are on this set – Caravaggio and Wittgenstein . Both weave the groundbreaking work of these men into the films (especially the challenging and beautiful paintings of Caravaggio) into stark evocations of their lives brought to bear on sparse sets and Brechtian stagings of key moments in their careers. Even with the tiny budgets Jarman had to work with, both films are filled with arresting imagery and capture the essence of the two men without resorting to over-dramatization or the dull recitation of facts.

Glitterbox also brings to DVD (for the first time, if I’m not mistaken) the film that Jarman is possibly best known for: Blue . The 76-minute film is a single shot of a blue screen accompanied by a stark and beautiful musical score composed by Simon Fisher Turner and the voices of Jarman and frequent collaborator Tilda Swinton (among others) telling the story of his life and ambitions and visions as an artist. It is a rare achievement and comes as close as any director has in capturing how one person views the world in a very literal sense.

What this set truly captures is how liberating viewing Jarman’s work can be. If you are willing to remove all kinds of expectations and thoughts about how a movie should be made or how a story should be told, you will get so much out of the five films on this set. They practically beg you to let the sure hand of Jarman and his nimble mind guide you. Until Matthew Barney and Guy Maddin arrived in the film world, no other director seemed willing to ask so much of an audience. For that alone, Jarman and this lovely set of films should receive the highest of praise.

Purchase the Derek Jarman: Glitterbox boxset on Amazon.com

In my formative years as a cinephile, I remember seeing the box for Diva on the shelf of my local video store – a reproduction of the iconic poster that apparently graced the walls of many a liberal arts college dorm room and studio apartment in the years following its release.

Knowing vaguely that the film was French, it seemed out of my league and above my level of understanding. It seemed, in a word, grown-up. That kind of thinking, unfortunately, kept Diva off my radar for exactly 27 years, which is the length of time from its theatrical release to this remastered DVD edition’s release date.

Now that I’ve finally watched it, not only do I see what the fuss was all about with this film, but I also regret that it has taken me this long to finally give myself over to its hyper-stylized beauty and riveting mise-en-scene.

Diva has often been called a thriller, which in some senses it is, but that kind of thinking seems to diminish its more poignant qualities. The title character is Cynthia Hawkins, an opera singer who refuses to be recorded for mass consumption. So, obsessive fans like Jules are forced to sneak tape machines into her recitals to make bootlegs. At a particular recital, Jules also decides to steal the diva’s dress. These items play important roles in the film, but are pure MacGuffins.

In fact, another tape is at the heart of Diva – the fast beating thriller heart of the film. It’s a confession by a former prostitute about an illegal trade in drugs and women going on in Paris. In her last moments, the prostitute sneaks the tape into the bag on Jules’s trusty moped, enmeshing him in a whirlwind of pulse-quickening chase scenes (including a much-talked about moped vs. man pursuit through the Metro) and sinister dealings.

Attempting to harmonize these two visions, one dreamy and romantic, the other hard-boiled and sordid, has undone many a filmmaker, but director Jean-Jacques Beineix is able to walk the tightrope between the two, while not losing a second of the film’s momentum and ecstatic allure. Although much of the credit should be handed off to DP Philippe Rousselot and set designer Hilton McConnico for capturing the unabashed cool of these bohemian Parisians, Beineix stitches it all together seamlessly with nice dashes of wit and goofball humor thrown in for good measure.

Purchase Diva on DVD at Amazon.com

The time has never been better for policy-driven documentaries, non-fiction films that hope to inspire people to change their ways or to work towards a better world. The lines of communication between the U.S. and the rest of the world is, these days, unprecedented, allowing us a glimpse at a changing climate, a variety of unfortunate human rights issues and of late natural disasters that threaten millions of lives.

This kind of access allows the Western world the opportunity to see the effects of the violence against the people of Darfur, Sudan with unblinking clarity as well as hear the stories of the millions that have been forced from their homes and their land by a paramilitary group known as the Janjaweed. It is their stories that truly lie at the heart of the documentary Darfur Now , a film that hopes to educate and embolden viewers to seek out information and fight for changes in that embattled region.

The film, however, does not solely stay focused on the people of Darfur, but instead puts the camera on a wide swath of people, all of whom are hoping to make a difference in the lives of the Sudanese. They range from a field officer with the UN’s World Food Programme to a prosecutor with the International Crimes Commission to the head of an American non-profit.

The stories that linger most are those being told about the people within the country. One story follows a sheikh who lives in a vast displacement camp, mediating and trying to make the lives of the refugees a little more comfortable. He is also the one who wants to make sure that stories of hardship and abuse are heard – his town hall-style meeting where he encourages people to recount their experiences, all of them welling up with sadness and anger, is one of the most moving sequences to be seen on screen in at least 15 years.

The most chilling aspect of Darfur Now is when the focus of the film is on a woman who, after losing a son at the hands of the Janjaweed, becomes a member of the Sudanese Liberation Army. Her talking head interviews where she expresses, without emotion, how easy it was for her to learn how to shoot a gun and how willing she is to sacrifice herself for this cause is both chilling and strangely inspiring.

Like most documentaries of this kind, though, Darfur Now is not meant to leave you with a sense of joyous redemption. By the end, you should feel shaken, angry, sad, and hopefully ready to do something on behalf of the millions of people suffering in Sudan. It is an encapsulation of the power of the moving picture and one that should not be shied away from.

Purchase Darfur Now on Amazon.com (only $4.99!)

Director Jean-Luc Godard has famously said that all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. I would like to think that one of his contemporaries, Louis Malle, decided with The Fire Within to test this precept, as both are key to the plot of this striking work.

The gun is a sleek-looking Walther pistol that Alain Leroy has tucked away in a briefcase in his room. A depressed recovering alcoholic, Leroy plans on using it to commit suicide, a fact he states plainly and free of emotion one evening (this scene was quoted through Wes Anderson in his film The Royal Tenenbaums in the harrowing scene where Richie Tenenbaum slits his wrists).

There are many candidates for the girl sprinkled throughout this movie, but the one that seems to haunt Leroy most is his estranged wife, Carol. Their strained relationship is what sent him into a drunken spiral and landed him in a detox clinic, where he is still living despite being considered cured.

There are other women to consider, though, many of whom Leroy encounters in a long journey through Paris. As he visits them and his old haunts in the city, the deeper portrait of this troubled soul starts to surface, one that paints Leroy and many of the people his age as spiritually empty, filling the void with alcohol, drugs and casual sex.

The film is as much a devastating critique on a generational malaise that was slowly seeping into French society, as it is a heartbreaking portrait of depression. Leroy is at the mercy of the demons that still reside within him, an idea Malle visually expresses with several shots of his main character trying to force his way through an ever-flowing stream of traffic.

It isn’t easy to watch, considering the questions that Leroy and his friends mull over during the course of the film, but it is made a little easier to swallow by Maurice Ronet’s sympathetic and heartbreaking portrayal of a man unhinged. He doesn’t wallow or rail against the dying of the light, but instead marks everything through his expressive eyes and drags on his ever-present cigarette.

The film is also a testament to the genius of Malle, a director who throughout the early part of his career reflected so much of contemporary society back on his viewers, and often not in a very sympathetic light. The questions asked in this movie don’t come with easy answers, but as Malle demonstrates, demand that we ask of ourselves and of others.

Purchase The Fire Within Criterion Collection DVD on Amazon.com

Alasdair Roberts
The Amber Gatherers
Drag City

You know when you are living in a brave new world when one of the biggest young bands in America, the Decemberists, handpick an unassuming Scotsman who plays plaintive folk music as the opening act for their victory lap tour of the States. It stands to reason considering Colin Meloy’s unabashed love of the folk idiom, but considering the number of “folk” artists twisting the genre to their own ends (Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom), it is a lovely gesture to have Meloy embrace a traditionalist like Roberts.

As he showcased on his last album, No Earthly Man, Roberts is a scholar of traditional folk ballads. On that disc, he took eight of his favorites and, with the help of friends like Will Oldham and Isobel Campbell, made them his own, adding a psychedelic tint to the songs’ pastoral visions. On his latest endeavor, all the songs are originals of Roberts’ but both the mood and lyrics hearken back to folk ballads of years long gone, rich with imagery and language that Meloy only scratches the surface of in Decemberists songs.

This isn’t to say that this album isn’t rooted in the here and now. There is Roberts’ backing group (featuring longtime cohort Gareth Eggie on guitar and erstwhile Teenage Fanclub member Gerard Love playing bass) who give even the most ancient-sounding rime a modern edge as well as those songs that appear to be touching on current affairs. One can’t help but think that Roberts is singing of either our head of state or England’s prime minister when, on “I Have A Charm,” he sings of “the very sire of Hell himself/rallying his bloody commonwealth.”

There will most likely not be a revival of the folk music explosion of the ’60s in our cynical modern era, but if there were, Roberts would surely stand at the head of the pack. As evidenced on this amazing and spotless album, he is a master musical craftsman whose lovely voice and guitar playing could very easily break down the hardest of spirits.

The Shins
Wincing The Night Away
SubPop Records

Expectations are a funny thing. The critical notices that have greeted the Shins’ third album are almost dripping with a feeling of being let down. Robert Christgau’s lucid assessment of the album in a recent issue of Rolling Stone is especially filled with an air of regret at a band that was supposed to be the American saviour of the three minute pop song (the Canadians have cornered the market on that in their neck of the woods thanks, in no small part, to Carl Newman, thank you very much).

I have never been one of those to buy into the notion of this group being one to shout about. Each of the two albums that have preceded this one left me with no impression whatsoever. Each song felt like a flat, vertical surface covered with a thin sheen of oil, leaving me with nothing to grasp on to for some kind of purchase. Needless to say, I had no preconceived life changing notions when I was asked to review the Shins’ latest release, Wincing the Night Away.

I’m not saying that this affords me any better of an idea about how to approach this record. In fact, now that the record hit #2 on the Billboard charts in the first week of its release, I’m wondering if I’m not missing something. Yet, try as I might, I’m still left wanting by what the group is trying to accomplish on this album. And what are they trying to accomplish? From the unassuming and tentative sound of the 11 songs on this new disc, nothing more than to give a young hipster couple something to half-talk about while trying to not look each other in the eyes.

That nervous tension emanates from almost every moment on Wincing. None of the songs move faster than a gentle gallop and each is imbued with an air of melancholy that weighs even the sunniest sounding melodies down.

What the band showcases throughout this album is their almost reflexive use of restraint when it comes to their playing and songcraft. No instrument dares to take a lead role, but settles in to a quiet lockgroove, especially in the case of drummer Jesse Sandoval whose has become a master at bare minimum beats. When someone attempts something resembling a solo (usually keyboardist Marty Crandall), it appears in an unsure fashion and disappears as quickly as it arrived.

It is then up to front man James Mercer to use his voice and his lyrics to mold the songs into divisions of verse, chorus, and bridge. Even there, the group runs into trouble. Mercer’s vocals have a quiet distinction, but their wavering quality turns even their best melodies into a warm mush. The saving grace could have been some bold lyrical content to open the songs up even a crack, but Mercer tosses imagery around in a haphazard fashion, leaving the listener picking up the pieces and wondering just what he’s getting at.

Maybe the world wasn’t anticipating an insular pop record from the Shins but it feels like Mercer wasn’t capable of anything more grandiose than this. It hasn’t felt like that from the start of this band’s career. If nothing else, Wincing is a showcase for a band settling comfortably into their self-appointed niche. And it sounds as if it would take a wrecking ball to break them out of it. Until someone does just that, the Shins will forever remain an enigma to me, buzzing in the background of the music world, giving off nothing to make me break my stride or change my life.

[mp3] The Shins - Phantom Limb

Oxford Collapse
Remember the Night Parties
SubPop Records

There was a time, at least 15 years ago, when children who were weaned on ridiculous ’70s hard rock and ’80s hair metal went to college. There they had their eyes opened by groups like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. and decided that they really didn’t need to shred, but could instead detune their guitars and try to be a little more melodic and artsy. Best of all, they could still rock out. It’s that kind of thinking that spawned some of the best bands of the indie music explosion of the mid to late ’90s from Superchunk and Archers of Loaf to Hum and Lotion. Continue Reading »

Grizzly Bear
Yellow House
Warp Records

The term “avant-folk” seems to be getting attached to any band or artist that features a heavy use of acoustic guitar and steers clear of conventional singer/songwriter fare. It’s a shame too because it tends to put those folks at a disadvantage, conjuring up images of poster boy for the avant-folk movement Devendra Banhart and his faux-naif antics. Hopefully with a tour opening up for fellow sonic daytrippers TV On The Radio, will help Grizzly Bear avoid such associations and show them to be the bold new step forward for the world of psychedelic and avant garde pop music that they truely are. Continue Reading »

Honeycut
The Day I Turned To Glass
Quannum Records

A hint of what this record could have been happens well into the fifth track, “Dysfunctional”. The track starts off promisingly enough with a saxophone loop that would make Rashaan Roland Kirk proud that lays into a slinky groove speckled with keyboard and horn stabs. The vocalist for the group, Bart Davenport, does his best version of a soul singer, but drags the whole song down with flat intonations and trite lyrics. But, at about the minute and a half point, a female voice comes to the fore and with one vocal line, makes the whole song burst to life. Alas, she doesn’t stick around for long and we are stuck with Davenport as our tour guide, taking us through a museum of well-worn beats and vocal melodies. Continue Reading »

Meet Henry Owings, #32 on Chunklet Magazine’s list of the 100 Biggest Assholes In Rock.

He should know since he compiled and edited the list for his own magazine Chunklet, one of the funniest and most scathing music and comedy publications ever. Each issue is full of smart interviews with amazing bands and the cream of the comedy crop (Jon Benjamin, Sarah Silverman, and Robert Smigel, amongst many others). On top of that, Owings and his gang of contributors pokes fun at the inflated egos of indie rock bands, celebrities, and, most importantly, themselves.

Yet, for every band Owings takes to task within the pages of his magazine, there are dozens more who he loves and supports. He books countless shows in Athens and Atlanta and, in Chunklet, champions many a band often in the same issue that they are excoriated.

Invisible Limb had a chance to catch up with Owings as he prepared to celebrate Chunklet’s 13th anniversary with a series of shows and events set for the end of October. Continue Reading »