Every year the Northwest Film Center puts together a festival
of music on film that runs for about five weeks. The Reel
Music series is always popular, for many reasons--the least
of which is that many people love film and many love music.
Smoosh the two things together and you've got a big crowd
(right, Viacom?). But there's more to it: Factor in the Northwest
Film Center's ability to program a sweet series with lots
of variety, including live music, and topped with a buzz-worthy
opener (this year it's Woody Allen's latest). Add to that
the sad truth that Portland is filled to the gills with aging
music fans who used to go out to the clubs but now prefer
to get in touch with the scene via popcorn and a comfy theater,
with plenty of time to get home by 11 pm.
If the Reel Music fest calls to you, for whatever reason,
here's a run-down on the first week's showings. Check out
our Screen section for details
on what's running in the upcoming weeks.
More information is available at www.nwfilm.org;
you can also call the Northwest Film Center at 221-1156.Unless
otherwise noted, all films will screen at the Guild Theater,
Southwest 9th Avenue and Taylor Street.
Sweet and Lowdown
7 pm Friday, Jan. 7
Woody Allen's 30th film is a hilarious and clever deconstruction
of a fictional '30s-era jazz guitarist named Emmett Ray.
Played by Sean Penn, Ray is narcissism and arrogance personified,
but his talent makes a string of people endure his self-destructive
behavior in exchange for beautiful music. Ray's story is
told in a series of tall tales narrated by Allen
and various jazz experts and acted out by Penn in flashes
of witty charisma, infantile tantrums and angst-ridden delirium.
Allen always attracts famous actors to his films, but Penn
is one of the first leads in a while to be more than just
a stand-in for his director: He gives Allen's script vitality
and depth. Sweet and Lowdown doesn't reach the rapturous
heights of Manhattan or plumb the depths of morality
like Crimes and Misdemeanors. But it's a sweet Valentine
to jazz's golden age and a knowing portrait of one great-but-troubled
artist by another. PG-13 (Brian Libby)
Instrument
9:15 pm Friday, Jan. 7
Jem Coen's portrait of the legendary punk band Fugazi
provides a rare glimpse at one of the most fiercely iconoclastic
acts in American music. Much has been said and written about
Fugazi's loyalty to the underground in favor of corporate-rock
superstardom, and Coen surveys these choices and their meaning
without dwelling on them. More importantly, his cameras
are there, albeit shakily, to witness a rock band that beautifully
alternates wild abandon with sobering calm and razor-sharp
idealism with knowing mistrust. Fugazi treads in mass media
very carefully, which makes this fusion of concerts, studio
recording and archival interviews a priceless document of
true punk heroes. NR (Brian Libby)
Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Harold Arlen
2 pm Saturday, Jan. 8, and 4:30 pm Sunday, Jan. 9
Don McGlynn's documentary about the relatively underappreciated
and surprisingly unknown American popular composer Harold
Arlen is a wonderful chance to learn more about a man
who should be ranked right up there with Irving Berlin and
Cole Porter. His remarkable body of work dates from the
early '30s, when Arlen was writing for Cotton Club revues--the
most famous piece from this era is Stormy Weather,
a song so bluesy that many people couldn't believe a white
man wrote it. Arlen also wrote That Old Black Magic,
One for My Baby, Come Rain or Come Shine and,
of course, the great American bring-the-house-down number
Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which more people probably
know the words to than our own National Anthem. McGlynn's
film weaves together home-movie footage, old interviews
and performances by Arlen, touching discussions with his
friends, family and co-workers and some great numbers featuring
Lena Horne, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and the Nicholas
Brothers into this fascinating portrait. A lovely film about
a lovely man. NR (Kim Morgan)
The Silence of the Angels
4 pm Saturday, Jan.
8, and 7 pm Tuesday, Jan. 11
This is going to sound like nitpicking, but the biggest
problem with French director Olivier Mille's musical documentary
is that the subtitles whiz by so quickly that the viewer
has scarcely enough time to finish reading them. They are
also white, and they get lost in the film's beautiful terrain,
which includes the icy environs of Eastern Europe. One strains
to take in both the gorgeous photography and the translations
of the film's intriguing subject matter: the Orthodox music
of the Byzantine world. That aside (or if you are a speed
reader), the film's religious and musical journey through
Africa, Egypt, Greece and Russia is stimulating to listen
to and watch, and it's so otherworldly that one is simultaneously
happy and amazed that such things still exist in such similar
form across so many continents. NR (Kim Morgan)
Louis Prima: The Wildest
7 pm Saturday, Jan. 8,
2 and 7 pm Sunday, Jan. 9, 9 pm Tuesday, Jan. 11, 7 pm Wednesday,
Jan. 12, and 4:30 pm Saturday, Jan. 15
If there were a Mount Rushmore for mid-century Italian
crooners,
Louis Prima's face would be chiseled into the rock alongside
the faces of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Mario Lanza.
Born in fin de siècle Sicily and raised in
New Orleans, Prima's career spanned several decades and
survived many musical incarnations: In the '30s he led the
slaphappy swing of the French Quarter. During the '40s big-band
era, he produced the mega-hit "Sing Sing Sing." In the '50s
and '60s he combined rock rhythm, swing-jazz shuffle and
his own Italian heritage to forge a lasting identity as
a pop singer whose contagious enthusiasm could make even
the most tired tunes fun again. His onstage buffoonery sometimes
kept him from getting the respect he deserved, but as Don
McGlynn's affectionate if routine biography shows, Prima
knew that "When you're smilin', the whole world smiles with
you." NR (Brian Libby)
Driver 23
9:30 pm Saturday, Jan. 8
The way to succeed in heavy metal, one imagines, is to
plug in your guitar and let your id run wild through your
amp. Unfortunately Dan Cleveland takes another approach.
This documentary follows the angsty Cleveland as he tries
to claw his way to the top of the hairy mountain of heavy
metal in Minneapolis. Barely glued together by antidepressants,
Cleveland spends his time tinkering and talking instead
of actually making music. You see his talent, respect his
independence and appreciate his overly thoughtful approach
to life and music. You also understand his downfall: He
should ditch Minneapolis and hike out to Olympia, Wash.,
to hook up with the rest of the musical freaks. Ever wonder
how some of the suicidal artists of yore might have fared
in modern society, with its Prozac and therapy? This film
is a fascinating portrait of the artistic temperament unfurled
in today's world and the story of an ordinary schlub trying
to reach his dreams. Funny and sad. NR (Caryn B.
Brooks)
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Willamette Week | originally
published January 5,
1999
|
