A Prairie Home Companion: Review

Of all the renegade filmmakers who emerged from Hollywood in the ’70s - Coppolla, Scorcese, Spielberg, dePalma – the one with the least amount of commercial success was probably Robert Altman. Yet, few directors have seen such adulation from amongst their own, and his idiosyncratic influence can be seen in films as varied as Magnolia and Monsoon Wedding. A Prairie Home Companion was his last film (he died the same year it was released), and in many ways, it feels like the final film of a great director – a summation of personal style that also functions as a gently comic look at mortality.

A Prairie Home Companion is an actual radio show that broadcasts from St Paul, Minnesota. It is hosted by Garrison Keillor and features a mix of musical numbers, vignettes and fake jingles. In this film, scripted by and starring Keillor himself, the show is about to be closed down by the sponsors. Ostensibly a behind-the-scenes look at a radio programme, this film is also Altman’s way of orienting us with his views on impending death and how a true artist should deal with it.

Trademark Altman touches - an ensemble cast, overlapping dialogue - lend this film an off-kilter feel that recalls some of his best work (Nashville, McCabe and Mrs Miller). The cast, replete with Oscar nominees, is charming. Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson and John C Reilly are performers on the show (and do their own singing), while Keillor plays himself. Tommy Lee Jones is a morose corporate hitman and Kevin Kline is hilarious as a cut-rate Raymond Chandler-esque private eye fascinated by Virginia Mardsen, who is credited as “Dangerous Woman”. Watching all these actors bounce off each other, with their constant movement from backstage to live-on-air choreographed as intricately as a dance, one is left to conclude that Altman never lost his powers till the very end.

A version of this review appeared in Time Out Delhi.

Six from Steely

I think when I'm 60 years old I'm going to be listening to Mark Knopfler, Paul Simon and Steely Dan. I can't believe it took me so long to hear a single damn song of Dan's, and I credit my buying their boxed set as one of the better impulse purchases I've made over the past few years.

The Boston Rag

Greil Marcus described it as ‘inexplicably apocalyptic’ I can’t think of a better description for this song. The savage guitar stabs that accompany almost every line are played by Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, the only (semi) permanent guitarist to ever play with the band (Fagen and Becker decided after a couple of albums to disband the original lineup and work exclusively with studio musicians).

Kid Charlemagne

For those bordering-on-gospel backing vocals that are so unexpected that every time you hear the chorus, it’s a surprise. And the brainiest of solos, courtesy Larry Carlton.

Any Major Dude Would Tell You That

Steely Dan has a reputation as a dense, difficult band (and they can be that as well, musically at least), but so many of their tunes have moments that belie this; simple, melodic progressions that seem as natural as an arpeggio. The piano figure that follows the chorus in this song is one of them.

Any World (That I’m Welcome To)

“Perhaps I'll find in my head/ What my heart is saying/ A vision of a child returning/ A kingdom where the sky is burning/ Honey I will be there/ Yes I’ll be there”. Their most affecting song. A plea to escape one’s roots, upbringing, neighbourhood, country...who knows, except that it sounds desperate. Those who know their rock history will note that that’s Hal Blaine on drums.

Sign in Stranger

I guess it isn’t the most obvious of pairings, but doesn’t Warren Zevon and Steely Dan together make great sense? Both have a cynical, blackly humourous edge to their writing, both compose jagged pop songs backed by great sidemen. “Sign in Stranger” is typical Dan: genuinely funny, yet also dripping with unsubstantiated menace.

Time Out of Mind

The reason I like this track so much is because a) Mark Knopfler is on it and b) it sounds like everyone concerned must have had a great time making it (a ridiculous assumption, since everything down to the last beat in this song is so meticulous that it must have taken 48 takes and Knopfler threatening to set fire to his guitar before it got done).

The Battleship Potemkin

The year is 1905. Stretching before us are the great steps of Odessa, where townspeople have gathered to support the mutineers who have rebelled against their Tsarist officers and taken over a battleship. The atmosphere is joyous, all smiles and waves. Suddenly, the crowd starts running. At first we don’t see why, but then a line of Cossack soldiers comes into view, guns at the ready. They fire at the crowd. A woman is shot at point-blank range, a child is trampled on. Thus unfolds The Battleship Potemkin’s most famous sequence; manipulative, vivid, controversial till this day.

Released in 1925, The Battleship Potemkin was Sergei Eisenstein’s dramatisation of the unsuccessful anti-Tsarist Revolution of 1905. Sailors aboard a battleship refuse to eat maggot-infested meat and revolt. They take control of the battleship and later use it to blow up the enemy stronghold. The theory of Soviet montage is used to great effect here, with contrasting images of innocence and brutality presented in a series of rapid cuts. Predictably, it was labelled propagandist in the West and banned. There may have been more than an element of jealousy involved - the Americans and the British would make their own “war films” in years to come, none as stirring as this.

Sacred cow status aside, is there a good reason to see Potemkin today? Its methods of audience manipulation (personalise protagonist, dehumanise antagonist is always handy) have long since become part of cinema’s DNA. Montage was radical then, now it’s a Nike commercial. The Odessa steps sequence has been parodied and imitated in films ranging from Woody Allen’s Bananas to De Palma’s The Untouchables. 85 years after its release, there’s little that Battleship Potemkin can still teach us. Neither was this a film made to entertain. One might end up watching it for the same reason one visits monuments of old - to seek out the foundation of everything that came up after it.

A version of this review appeared in Time Out Delhi.

King Creole: Review

Man with a face like a cherub and a smile like a hustler does a bluesy duet from his balcony. A few minutes later, he’s rescuing a floozy in a bar, wielding off drunks with a broken bottle. He drops the floozy off, resisting her advances at first, then kissing her to prove a point to his gawking schoolmates. To top this manic sequence off, he punches one of them in the face and gets expelled. And this is just the first five minutes of King Creole, starring Elvis Presley.

Elvis movies were never high art, and King Creole doesn’t pretend to be so. But its great low art – imbued with the spirit of noir and offsetting the natural charm of Elvis with a toughness that’s very much of its era. Perhaps the director, Michael Curtiz (Casablanca), was more difficult to influence than the journeymen who directed the later Elvis movies. The musical interludes retain the anarchic energy of Jailhouse Rock; we’re still a few years away from the dreaded Hawaiian movies. And the action, when it comes, is fast and imbued with the spirit of noir.

King Creole has a grittiness that’s very much of its era - it isn’t difficult to imagine Brando or Newman playing the lead (Montgomery Clift was offered the role when it wasn’t a musical). It’s also interesting to note that “king” of the title isn’t Elvis, but Walter Matthau, playing a sadistic gangster. The Elvis of this movie is clearly aimed a notch higher than the teeny-bopper market - he falls for a hooker and mugs his own dad – and he seems believably tough (he looked naive anyway). You wouldn’t want to step on his blue suede shoes.

Sherlock Holmes - DVD Review

It’s ironic that the 2009 movie version of Sherlock Holmes is more successful in seeing through what Arthur Conan Doyle attempted in “The Final Problem” - namely, killing Sherlock Holmes. Not literally - the big guns at Warner Bros would have balked at the idea - but rather, killing off a certain idea of Holmes and replacing it with another. Gone are the deerstalker cap and the clipped British accent. In its place is a brawler-scientist who behaves like a cross between Johnny Depp in Sleepy Hollow and Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity.

Its fun to watch Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law quarrel like bickering lovers, but co-dependent hero-sidekick relationships are a common enough trope in action movies today without submitting Conan Doyle’s creations to it. Similarly surprising is Ritchie’s decision to use the vague mention of “baritsu” in “The Adventure of the Empty House” as an excuse to turn Holmes into a bare-knuckled brawler. Still, it’s all quite diverting while it lasts. Mark Strong as the criminal mastermind, Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler, and Eddie Marsan as Inspector Lestrade are appropriately menacing, spunky and befuddled. Downey Jr has fun with the titular role, but he’s a little too good-looking, and possesses such unending reserves of wit and brawn that even hardened fans might find the package tough to digest. Jude Law, though, makes a charming Watson, displaying the same virile charm he did as Errol Flynn in Scorcese’s The Aviator.

The DVD comes padded with an extra disc of supplements, including a making-of featurette, and closer looks at the production design, costume and casting. It is during the course of one of these that two comments, which sum the film up perfectly, are made. “This is best described as a Guy Ritchie version of Sherlock Holmes”, says one of the producers. “It’s the 1890s version of James Bond”, says another. Exactly.

A version of this review appeared in Time Out Delhi.

The Dirty Dozen: DVD Review

A sincere, if unlikely, tribute to The Dirty Dozen occurs midway through the romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle. After Rita Wilson has cried her eyes out over An Affair to Remember, Tom Hanks derides it as a “chick’s movie” and invokes Aldrich’s 1967 cult classic. The choice is no accident - Dirty Dozen is the quintessential anti-chick’s movie. It’s also the most anti-establishment war movie to ever come out of a Hollywood studio.

It’s been forty years since the dozen snarled and slouched their way into cinematic history, and while its influence runs deep (the ending of Inglourious Basterds is an unabashed tribute to the “turkey shoot” climax) this two-disc edition is a good opportunity to refresh one’s memory. Even though the story is pure pulp - 12 hardened convicts given a chance to escape their sentences if they agree to blow up a Nazi chateau behind enemy lines - the movie manages to capture the prevailing mood in society remarkably well. In 1967, America was deeply divided over the ugly fallout of the counterculture movement, race issues and the Vietnam War. One can only imagine the heat director Robert Aldrich must have taken for certain scenes, like the one where Victor Franco (John Cassevettes) responds to an order to kill every officer in sight with the question “Ours or theirs?”

If it’s true that a movie’s success lies is its casting, this would be a good case in point. Actors like Charles Bronson, Ernest Borgnine and pro-footballer Jim Brown were a different breed of movie star - ornery and utterly believable as sadists and killers. Lee Marvin plays the tough-as-nails Major Riesman, a role John Wayne rejected for its lack of patriotism. Aldrich also made some fortuitous oft-kilter choices - like the casting of indie legend John Cassavetes, whose anti-authoritarian rants have a joyful exuberance.

Despite a running time of well over two hours, the pace never slackens. Instead, a steady stream of provocation is aimed at every possible quarter – the military, the justice system, women, African Americans, rednecks, homosexuals. The unabashed cruelty of the finale is jarring even today - Aldrich insisted it remain so that audiences were left with no doubt that “war is hell”. Ultimately though, this movie both embraces and eschews realism, playing out like a demented version of Boy’s Own Paper. Special features include an introduction by Ernest Borgnine, a ”making of” featurette , audio commentary by some of the stars and a recruitment video for the US Army with Lee Marvin.

A version of this review appeared in Time Out Delhi

¡Happy Birthday Guadalupe!

Poetic. Poetic as hell. It seems very natural that the Killers, whom I've been raving about since way back, have matured enough to feel their way on upwards from "Mr Brightside" to "Read my mind" to this. Its a Christmas single, but I hope it lands up on their next album, 'coz God knows hip-hop's shallow cyphers and Jason Mraz and Rihanna and the Jonas Brothers and Kid Rock have no use for mariachi horns or genuine emotion, and not necessarily in that order. Anyway, hear it if you haven't. If the humour and the heartbreak and the catch in the Brandon Flowers' voice doesn't get to you...well, you can always turn on FM radio. Meanwhile, my friend and I will keep waiting for that one astonishing album that we're convinced The Killers have in them.

¡Happy Birthday Guadalupe!

Well I woke up Christmas morning and what did I see?
I saw a lovely señorita looking back at me
Named Guadalupe, with big brown eyes
Boy what did you do this time?

Made my excuses and a beeline for the bedroom door
She was beggin’ and a-pleadin’, screamin’, “¡Por favor,
Mi cumpleaños, stay with me,
Baby it’s cold outside!”

We are livin’ in a difficult time
We’ve been walkin’ down a difficult line
Put your feet up baby, it’s Christmas time
Cumpleaños feliz¡
Happy Birthday Guadalupe!

(Our time will come)
(We both hold on)

She gave me coffee and tortillas to console my head
Prepared the slippers on my feet before she made our bed
And blew the candles from her favourite cake
And we kissed beneath the mistletoe

I pulled her body close to mine and I had just one chance
I whispered, “Baby will you marry me for just one dance?”
Infatuation, the things you say
I got scared and I left that night

‘Cause we are livin’ in a difficult time
We’ve been walking down a difficult line
Put your feet up baby, it’s Christmas time
Cumpleaños feliz¡
Happy Birthday Guadalupe!

Deck the halls with rosaries
Wish upon a Christmas tree
Silent night please come to me
Bearing gifts from my… my Mexican angel

At night I wake up cold and lonely, bustin’ at the seams
She haunts the early morning hours of December dreams
My Guadalupe, with big brown eyes
I wanna break the spell tonight



‘Cause we are livin’ in a difficult time
We’ve been walkin’ down a difficult line
Put your feet up baby, it’s Christmas time
Cumpleaños feliz¡
Happy Birthday Guadalupe!


¡Happy Birthday Guadalupe!