One Night, One Movie, Two Scores

In the days before sound, musicians would play scores live in the theater. The 2007 Syracuse Film Festival attempted to take that concept one step further. Sherlock, Jr. got double treatment Friday night at the Palace Theatre when Combo Nuvo and The James Emery Trio played to the 1924 Buster Keaton film. On the surface, organizers wanted to showcase how a score can affect a movie. In reality, audience members heard two jazz trios playing some music while watching a film.

Sherlock, Jr., for those unfamiliar, tells the story of a young movie projectionist, who doesn't have enough money to buy chocolate for his girlfriend. He imagines himself into a detective movie that has a conveniently similar story. A madcap romp ensues with Keaton's incredible physicality and seemingly insane stunt work. Sherlock, Jr. works, at least the first time. The second time through guffaws turn into chuckles, and stunts seem tamer. But no film could really be funny enough that a back-to-back viewing would hold up exactly the same.

On the other hand, the jazz scores felt uninspired the first time through. Neither trio put in the time (why should they without a commission for their effort) to compose a score for the film. A combination of improvisation and cobbled together existing works substituted for what could amount to months of work on a typical film. Jazz's art might lie in improv, but it's hard to evoke a mood on the fly.

Jazz can work brilliantly when thought goes into the pieces. John Williams made use of it to great effect in both Catch me if You Can and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Combo Nuvo and The James Emery Trio turned in fine jazz performances, but don’t expect to see their work on the next DVD.

Sherlock, Jr. is currently available on DVD. For more information about Combo Nuvo, check out combonuvo.com .

Puff, Puff, Passable

This piece initially ran in the Syracuse New Times on April 11, and can be accessed here.

A couple of drinks and smoke breaks into the evening, the crowd at Mezzanotte Cafe came alive as Afroman strode to the stage with two Colt .45 malt liquors in hand and a giant grin on his face. He was more than happy to have a little fun with the hip-hoppers during his March 24 show, but on his terms.

New songs made up the bulk of the set, which was the second of two New York stops on his current national tour, although fans showed up for the hits.

The rapper is out promoting his second holiday album, A Colt .45 Christmas (Hungry Hustler), and Waiting to Inhale, which is currently available for download at his Web site, www.afromanmusic.com, and at his shows. The rap star has found even more ways to talk about getting high and having sex after his viral hit, “Because I Got High,” swept the Web in 2001.

Bleating for Afroman’s trophy tune started halfway through the show, but he didn’t launch into it until the end of the night. When the turntable beats commenced, the singer’s presence felt little more than incidental to the white 20-somethings, who could and did sing along to the entire song. The singer gave in to the mood, let the audience have their fun and picked up his guitar. Surprisingly, he managed to play a solo instead of merely supporting the beat.

“High” peaked at No. 18 on Billboard’s Top 40 list in 2001, and is currently ranked seventh on the magazine’s ringtone downloads list. However, the ode to plans left undone undercut the night’s party vibe. The song moves from the innocuous (“I was going to clean my room/ but then I got high.”) to the tragic (“I messed up my entire life/ because I got high.”). As Afroman began staggering around the stage—the result of two now mostly empty beer bottles —it seemed clear his hit made for a pointless performance. However, nobody seemed too concerned with deeper meanings at the end of the hour-long set.

It’s hard to see why anyone should have been when “Let’s All Get Drunk Tonight” started off the show. Lines like “Drink that beer ’til your belly can’t hold it” don’t rely on much subtext, but the catchy up-tempo beat got the crowd dancing and shook off memories of the poor sound mixing that plagued the night’s two opening acts, The Forum and The Higher Connection.

Afroman’s parodies of holiday carols ooze a middle-school sensibility but have lyrics for adult ears only. Frosty the Snowman becomes a frozen lothario, and Afroman subs himself in for the jolly old elf in “Afroman is Coming to Town.” Even with a sexually explicit song directed at Beyonce, however, Afroman’s lewd catalog of tunes left something to be desired, as funny lyrics only go so far.

Still, it’s hard not to get absorbed in Afroman’s chill-out-and-have-a-good-time aesthetic. His lyrics might be cheesy and the rhymes may be obvious, but if they were better, they wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

A more complete review may be in the works, but here's a one minute review of Blades of Glory:

A 90-minute gay joke, where Will Ferrell again tries to get frat guys to love a sport they supposedly hate. But, a funny one.

Blades of Glory opens this Friday, March 30 in movie theaters across the country.

Toe-tappingly familiar

Despite the fact that they’ve never been paired together on screen before, there’s something familiar about Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant together in Music and Lyrics. Maybe it’s the ‘80s nostalgia, which Barrymore first successfully tapped into in The Wedding Singer, or Grant’s stock romantic persona that feels like that oldie you forgot you liked until you heard it again.

In Music and Lyrics, Grant’s stuttering charmer is Alex Fletcher, a has-been from the fictional ‘80s’ pop band called, conveniently enough, Pop!. He gets the opportunity to break free from playing high school reunions and on small amusement park stages, when the new teenaged bubble gum popstress, Cora Corman (Haley Bennett), taps him to write a new song for her, if he can do it in a week. Enter Barrymore’s endearingly eccentric Sophie Fisher to serve as muse and love interest.

The team of Fletcher and Fisher – a name not quite as smooth as Lenon and McCartney – meet their deadline with her lyrics and his melody. A melody that has shades of “Killing me Softly,” which was featured in Grant’s earlier film, About a Boy. Lyrics works best when looking backward. Most of the songs evoke the feeling of the decade of excess rather than mock it outright. On the other hand, Fletcher’s final solo sounds like a bad take-off of “Trapped in the Closet.” He’s not in a musical though, and singing your feelings directly doesn’t work in real life.

Barrymore and Grant slip into old roles with ease. Both know their way around the genre, and make the most out of writer-director Marc Lawrence’s script, which focuses so much on the comedy element of romantic comedy that it ignores the other side. Fletcher and Fisher will get together as they, or people like them, always do. When free from the binds of the plot, Lyrics makes tight pants, bad rhymes, and the Jeopardy theme sing.

Music and Lyrics feels a lot like 80s music. It’s not too serious, it’s not quite good, but so wonderful that you start humming along despite yourself.

Music and Lyrics opens Valentine's Day in theaters across the country.

Not Your Older Brother's 'Road Rules'

Fourteen years ago, MTV set out to find out what would happen if you took seven strangers and made them live and work together all while taped. Twelve years and fourteen seasons ago, MTV tried to find out what would happen if you did that with five people in an RV. Road Rules was born. Road Rules 2007: Viewer’s Revenge – the first season since 2004 – brings MTV’s classic reality show back from the dead. Or, it tries to at least.

This season’s “Roadies” still band together in a tiny RV while driving through exotic locales in order to attempt elaborate and “extreme” challenges – car bungee jumping, wrestle alligators, be a human mannequin in a store window wearing only body paint. But, that’s about all that’s left of the initial premise.
Six strangers has morphed into six Road Rules alumni. The RV is still around, but it has a new name. Gone are the mission mayors – replaced with a bland but overly enthusiastic host. The biggest, and must obnoxious change, is an over-elaborate elimination system, which involves viewer participation and takes forever to explain in the premiere episode. The cast nominates one guy and one girl, the viewers then decide which one they would rather see leave, that person has to compete against a member of ‘The Pit Crew’ for their spot on the RV. And that’s the short version.

Road Rules is not the only reality show that eliminates its characters, and it’s not even a new concept to Road Rules (the show’s producers first added the elimination angle in season 11.) However, those other shows managed to keep some sort of continuity in the larger group by starting with a large number that gets dwindled down as the season progresses. Now a rotating cast of characters is virtually assured with the potential for elimination every week.

With the success of other MTV reality shows, which don’t kick people off every week – Laguna Beach – it seems an opportunity to go back to the basics was missed. Instead the setup is more complicated and unnecessary than ever. As enthusiastic as the alumni were to have Road Rules back, you’d think someone involved might have glanced at another season.

Road Rules 2007: Viewer’s Revenge airs Tuesday nights at 9 ET on MTV. The show reruns various times throughout the week. Photo courtesy of mtv.com

'Texas Chainsaw' Fails to Carve a New Niche

The name might say “Texas Chainsaw,” but Johnathan Liebesman’s new film bears little other resemblance to the horror classic. Instead, it falls more in line with contemporary gross-out horror films like “Hostel” and the “Saw” series where nausea is favored over fright.

“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” attempts to fill in the back-story of both Tobe Hooper’s original movie and its 2004 remake. In the film, four friends start a road trip to California but wind up stuck in a small Texas town and having to fight their way out of certain death after being captured by the murderous family that produces Leatherface (Andrew Bryniarski), the Freddy Krueger of the “Massacre” series.

Unfortunately, “The Beginning” ignores elements like story and establishing character in favor of escalating gruesomeness. Leatherface beats someone to death with a sledgehammer within the first ten minutes of the film and then moves on to more brutal implements.

Even “Hostel” took the time to make its characters sympathetic enough for the viewer to want them to get out of peril before fingers start coming off hands. Screenwriter Sheldon Turner (2005’s “The Longest Yard”), however, places our heroes in danger so early that we know little more about them than how they scream and plead.

Despite the minimal attention seemingly paid to everything else, “The Beginning” succeeds in providing maximum gore. Chrissy (Jordana Brewster), the film’s female lead, spends the majority of the film with cuts all over her body. Leatherface cuts off someone’s face and then wears it like a mask.

The newest addition to the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” line wears the ‘more is more’ approach to horror proudly on its blood-soaked sleeve. But when all you have is a bloody sleeve, it’s time to throw away the shirt.

The unrated edition of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning came out on DVD January 16, 2007. This review refers to the theatrical version.