Dark to Light (and back again)

I was just starting to settle down and get back into a life rhythm that felt a little more positive than before when I got hit with another wonderful (read: sarcasm) round of bad news.  Long story short, my father was diagnosed with a hereditary liver disease.  It's definitely treatable, but left unchecked (as it had been in my father for years) could lead to serious issues down the road.  He emailed each of us, letting us know the deal so we can get checked out, and I'm gathering up the steam to do just that.  When I went through the year of getting prepped for the kidney donation, one of the biggest hurdles I had to get over was bad liver counts - a real Spartan existence with regards to diet and exercise helped a lot, but now I'm wondering if maybe this thing my father has may have been trying to rear its ugly head earlier.

All that to say that every time I looked at the dour black of the blog - the blackness I purposefully changed because I was feeling so crappy - was now reminding me that I felt crappy, and goading me into continuing to feel crappy.

Which I don't want to do.  At all.  So I changed it back to the original, brighter format. 

I also went out during lunch and picked up a new box of Legos for Jack, the next stage from the massive baby blocks we've been using, but still not the small edible pieces of destruction we all used as kids.  Another couple of years before those, I'm figuring - it's amazing what he'll occasionally think to put in his mouth.  I also bought a small toy helicopter and airplane: nothing big or fancy, but he's been on a big airplane kick lately, pretending to fly whenever he's in the tub, lying face down with his arms outstretched.  And now all I'm thinking about is getting home so we can open them together, and build an airport to park them on.

On a completely different topic, I realized that I'm really attracted to ending a lot of my writing with a simple sentence or two, trying to encapsulate the gist of whatever I was writing into something simple and, hopefully, truthful.  A shallow little nugget of wisdom, an apology for taking so long to get to the point.

I wonder if there's some connection between that and my need, my wish, to wrap everything in my life up the same way, a neat and tidy package that people will see and remark, "ah, how nice," and I realize I'm doing it again...

Nine Inch Nails @ Terminal 5: 8/25/09

It's seemed fitting: the first time I saw Nine Inch Nails was at Lollapalooza back in 1991, when Trent Reznor and co. were touring off of Pretty Hate Machine, a debut that hit all of us like the proverbial ton of bricks.  Eighteen years later, at arguably the top of his game, he's giving up NIN as a live entity with a series of 11 gigs - his "Wave Goodbye" tour.  I was lucky enough to snag an extra ticket from Indie Maven Sean, so last night we hiked it over to Terminal 5 in NYC to check it out.

Opening was a band called The Horrors, pretty reminiscent of 80s goth like Bauhaus and Joy Division, but with a loud modern indie flair.  According to Sean they've made some significant departures in their sound compared to their debut, which had more of a punk ethic.  This was my first chance to hear them, and I liked it - little did we know how appropriate the vibe would be later.

Did I mention I actually brought a camera this time?  No crappy phone pics for once!

The Man Himself.  After a lengthy setup period where nothing seemed to happen except an overabundance of smoke, the band blasted out of the gate with "Home", a b-side from With Teeth.

Although Sean preferred the setlist from the Webster Hall show a couple of days ago, where they played The Downward Spiral in its entirety, the show at Terminal 5 (besides being a crappy venue filled with jocular dirtbags only out to get drunk and punch somebody, but that's MHO) was exactly what I wanted - an insane mix of old and new, covers, hits, and unexpected gems from back in the catalog.

A couple great moments: breaking out "I'm Afraid of Americans", "March of the Pigs", pretty much all the old stuff...it's amazing how great the older tracks from Pretty Hate Machine through The Downward Spiral translate when played in the warmer, organic style Reznor's been playing with ever since With Teeth.  LOTS of music off The Fragile, an album I didn't really appreciate before, but am dying to go back to in light of the performances.

The battery in my camera starting crapping out at a certain point, so no pictures unfortunately of Peter Murphy from Bauhaus (see - the reference would pay off eventually!) came out and completely killed on "Reptile" as well as the Bauhaus' "Kick in the Eye."  he also came out during the encore to do Joy Division's Dead Souls, which NIN covered for the soundtrack to THE CROW.

I don't know if the pictures really convey it, but Reznor has honed himself into a ROCK GOD: he looks about the size of Henry Rollins, and his stage presence was ridiculously cool - jumping, sweating, basically whipping the crowd into a frenzy from the second he stepped out onto the stage.  If last night's show was any indication of how he usually is, he's leaving at the height of his powers.  As the band launched into "Head Like a Hole" at the end of the normal set, the entire crows chanted every word, raising their hands in tribute, mirroring Reznor as he bellowed out the "bow down before the one you serve."

It was hard to tell who was doing the bowing, but I suspect it was both.

Prelude to Bubbles

I love the intense look of concentration on his face, willing the bubbles to come when he pulls the trigger.

There are days when he's a frustrating devil, and there are days like this.

This is the Story of LOVE and HATE

Trying to diminish the enormous stack of Criterion DVDs at the house, I watched DO THE RIGHT THING for the first time the night before last. When it ended I immediately watched it again, galvanized by the experience.

My review, excerpted below, is up over at Celluloid Moon.

After the final image fades from Spike Lee's DO THE RIGHT THING, two seemingly disparate quotes appear: one from Dr. Martin Luther King, one from Malcolm X. One speaks out against violence, citing the morality of those faced with the choice of whether or not to exercise it. One advocates its use, stating it's no longer violence when used within the loose context of self defense. The quotes are followed by a photograph of the two famous activists, smiling with their arms around each other.

Two quotes, seemingly at opposite ends of the spectrum, yet beautifully married and understood when placed in the context of Lee's colossal achievement: an empathetic look at racial tension and violence that doesn't pass judgment, but seeks to observe and understand. DO THE RIGHT THING was one of the films I had long held off watching - I was not a huge fan of some of the other Spike Lee films I had seen at that point, and the stream of accolades heaped upon it pushed me further and further away from seeing it. Now, 20 years after it first came out, I was worried about whether the experience, great as it could be, would feel "dated" or out of touch so many years later.

Check out the full review here.

Do the Right Thing (1989)

After the final image fades from Spike Lee's DO THE RIGHT THING, two seemingly disparate quotes appear: one from Dr. Martin Luther King, one from Malcolm X. One speaks out against violence, citing the morality of those faced with the choice of whether or not to exercise it. One advocates its use, stating it's no longer violence when used within the loose context of self defense. The quotes are followed by a photograph of the two famous activists, smiling with their arms around each other.

Two quotes, seemingly at opposite ends of the spectrum, yet beautifully married and understood when placed in the context of Lee's colossal achievement: an empathetic look at racial tension and violence that doesn't pass judgment, but seeks to observe and understand. DO THE RIGHT THING was one of the films I had long held off watching - I was not a huge fan of some of the other Spike Lee films I had seen at that point, and the stream of accolades heaped upon it pushed me further and further away from seeing it. Now, 20 years after it first came out, I was worried about whether the experience, great as it could be, would feel "dated" or out of touch so many years later.

There are maybe a handful of films that, immediately upon seeing I wanted to go back in time to relive the experience again. With DO THE RIGHT THING, it was the shock at how powerful, how much in command the movie was - having mostly been exposed to his later films, I was completely caught off guard by how stylized the film was, how much in command Lee is with every frame, every tone and inflection in the movie, beginning right away with the unique opening credit sequence, where Rosie Perez dances to Public Enemy's "Fight the Power", the lighting, framing, and expression on her face slowly boiling in a foreshadowing of the tone and pacing the film proper would use:

And from the setting up a masterful first shout, the slow zoom out from Samuel L. Jackson's Señor Love Daddy, the DJ and chorus of the film:

His hat, lying on the console in front of him, is perfectly captured in the reflection of his sunglasses as the camera moves out. It seems like an obvious shot, meant to show off, but it also begins to set up the visual tone of the film, an idealized palette that belies the tensions running underneath. Plus, it's just so good I don't even care - among the many injustices to the film at awards time was the omission of Ernest R. Dickerson for cinematography.

For those unfamiliar with the film, I'll briefly sum up the action: The film takes place roughly over the course of an entire day and night in the Bed-Stuy section of Brooklyn, on one of the hottest days of the year. The neighborhood focal point is Sal's Famous Pizza, owned and operated by Danny Aiello in an Oscar-nominated role as Sal. Together with his two sons he's been serving pizza to the neighborhood for 25 years.

The other players in the drama circle around the block, but chief among them is Mookie, played by Lee himself in an incredible performance. Oddly, of all the great acting in the film I think Lee's stood out the most for me, but (alas), it was only Aiello who got a nomination. Mookie's trying to get his life together - he lives with his sister, a couple blocks away from his girlfriend and their young son, and he works as Sal's pizza delivery guy. Two seemingly innocuous and unrelated incidents occur near the beginning of the film, and the day goes on and the temperature rises, the result of those incidents culminate in a vicious act of violence, which in turns sparks the community into retaliating (sorry - I'm being as purposefully vague as I can). The next morning, two people meet who, the day before, had a very different relationship. The movie ends, and we see the quotes and photograph mentioned in the opening of this review.

If the above summary sounds eerily similar to Rodney King and the Los Angeles riots of 1992, bear in mind that DO THE RIGHT THING came out 2 years before that, and the echoes it shouts out relate to similar incidents that might not stand out as clearly in our mind, but certainly did to Lee. The movie is peppered with allusions to current events (Howard Beach, Tawana Brawley), other films - NIGHT OF THE HUNTER figures very prominently - not only in Radio Raheem's LOVE and HATE rings, but in his beautiful monologue about how they go together, again foreshadowing and sadly commenting on the violence and response to it later in the film's climax.

It would be a mistake, though, to think that the film gets bogged down in the message it's trying to get across. DO THE RIGHT THING is filled with tiny moments of beauty and love as it moves up and down the streets of the neighborhood, peeking in on the lives of its inhabitants. Mookie's sister Jade (Joie Lee, Spike's real-life sister), fussing with the hair of Mother Sister (Ruby Dee), the matriarch of the neighborhood. Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), the patriarch of the 'hood and his tender wooing of Mother Sister. Mookie's tender moment with his girlfriend Tina, seductively rolling ice over her body and whispering in her ear. Lee wants the viewer to know the neighborhood, to make it and its people a single organism you grow to care about so that, when the climax happens, it's all the more sad.

I can probably write an entirely different review of DO THE RIGHT THING, focusing on all of the minor characters (John Tuturro feels as much embedded in Lee's universe as he does with the Coen Brothers). It's the rare film that maintains its passion, its message undimmed a generation later, and the high-water mark of an expert filmmaker and commentator for our times. I can't say enough about how incredible this movie is, but this review is getting a little long, so I think I'll just leave, and watch DO THE RIGHT THING AGAIN.

Read Roger Ebert's Great Movie Essay about DO THE RIGHT THING here