The Baron of Arizona (1950)

There is something inherently interesting in films about forgery. Still images flicker to create the illusion of motion. Actor take on costumes and accents to portray someone they are not. Whole towns are built in the desert only to be struck a few weeks later.  History is rewritten to boost the drama. What is film if not the fake played off as the real McCoy?

The Baron of Arizona retells the exploits of James Reavis, a scheming opportunist who almost swindled Arizona out from under the United States government. Through forged land grants and a hollow marriage Reavis nearly stole away Arizona before it got a chance to become the 48th state of the Union.

Vincent Price portrays the Reavis with gentlemanly villainousness. Still, he is Vincent Price and even if he is wearing a cowboy hat.  There is little getting past the familarity of Price from all those horror films.

While Price cannot help but be Price and not James Reavis, Samuel Fuller could have done more to help the Baron’s story. Told through expositional narration that sounds straight off an AP wire, the story of James Reavis sounds factual, but it is wrought with fraud. Much like his previous film, I Shot Jesse James, The Baron of Arizona hangs upon a love story. While it is true that James Reavis married in the hopes of wedding his name to the Peralta Grant, there is certainly no proof that love blossomed from this sham nuptial. The real James Reavis was not the debonair, master defrauder that Fuller makes him out to be, nor was it his love for his wife that eventually lead him to turn himself in. It was the dilligent detective work of Royal Johnson, a man who’s name never gets mentioned in the film that brought the Baron’s chicanery to light.

The fact that Fuller plays loose with facts and motives could be seen as a detrimental fault to his film or it could simply be in keeping with the spirit of the subject. However, this is not F For Fake, a film that defrauds its audience while exposing famous frauds. Fuller appears more interested into seducing you into the Baron’s transformation from greedy landlord to loving husband.

Heima (2007)

I have never been to Iceland, but I have seen Sigur Rós in concert. Heima offers the opportunity to have both experiences at the same time. When the atmospheric sounds of Sigur Rós meld with the beautiful, sparse imagery of Iceland’s countryside the film reaches resplendent heights. Yet, it fails to capture the breadth of both a Sigur Rós show and, I must presume, the experience of visiting Iceland.

Continually interrupted by interviews with band members and broken into chapters that highlight each of the free, unannounced shows the band performed across Iceland the film’s segmented structure abruptly cuts into the aural accession that occurs at a Sigur Rós show.

On album or in concert, Sigur Rós music plays out like a force of nature. In Heima, the experience is reduced to something more akin to a television special on hurricanes. Albeit, this is a rather poetic weather report, but it is distanced, safe, and fails to capture the weight and magnitude of that which it documents. Perhaps, had the theater been equipped with a proper surround sound audio system and had the projector been of high definition caliber or at least adjusted to properly show the richer black tones, the experience may have been more transcendent.

Minor as this quibble may sound, a document about sound must recapture the experience with the same intensity as seeing a real concert. Why a Hollywood blockbuster can have sound design that can rattle my fillings and vibrate my rib cage, but Heima does not, begs answering.

A more major quibble is the overly sentimental imagery of bucolic towns and their inhabitants. A cross between J. Crew catalogs and maudlin long distance commercials, the strained tenderness is counterfeit. Were a car company to license Sigur Rós’ music and set it to such imagery fans would decry the action as blasphemous. Heima is not selling cars or phone service. It is selling Sigur Rós and Iceland. Since it is a documentary filmmaker working with the artist I must assume they are both comfortable with the syrupy depiction. For my tastes many of the images are too mawkish.

As for a final raucous number in the city of Reykjavik, the projected images of rapid-fire, digital-detritus that shroud the stage are unfitting and out of place. Images of static are old chestnuts in the world of bands who trade in feedback and distorting. They usurp the beauty and power of Sigur Rós’ music. These images change the origin of the band’s sound, placing it inside the mechanics of their instruments and not from the land they love.

I Shot Jesse James (1949)

I respect Sam Fuller, but for all that he brings to I Shot Jesse James I really have to question the heavy handed use of music at key dramatic junctures. Each musical cue pushes the film towards melodrama. Even though it is bundled as part of the First films of Samuel Fuller box set, I find myself asking really how much control Fuller had over the end product. We think of an auteur as leaving their mark on the film, but often that is before the movie enters post-production. Fuller’s finger prints are obvious in both his direction and his writing, but the music sticks out like a sore thumb. I suspect this to be more the workings of executive producer Robert L. Lippert. The swollen music only helps to bolster the underlying love story and attract a female audience accustomed to similar musical cues from soap operas. The over orchestrated prompts detract from the existential journey of a man branded a coward and no place better proves this fault than in a quiet saloon where a traveling musician sings a tale of the coward Robert Ford, right to Ford’s face. It’s not the music that brings the tension, but the silence that comes between the singer’s frightened pauses and Ford’s demands that the man carry on. It’s the difference between getting it right on set and trying to fix it in post.

Art School Confidential (2006)

Before the Internet, hyperlinking possessed an air of mysticism. One moment you are reading a Raymond Chandler novel, the next you mind recalls a line from a Greil Marcus essay that reminds you of an album by Stan Ridgeway you have been meaning to pick up. You track down the album at about the same time you finally sit down to watch Art School Confidential and as if by fate or the alignment of stars you are given new eyes.

In his essay Flat, Toneless, and Tiresome Greil Marcus reviews Ridgeway’s album The Big Heat. Marcus evokes Chandler’s reference to the American language as being one that comes “alive to cliches”. Chandler’s writing, like the lyrics on The Big Heat, are in language anyone can understand. One could accuse them both of being flat, toneless, and tiresome. In the same way you could easily accuse the characters of Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential of being the same. The students and faculty who inhabit the  fictitious Strathmore College are all flat, stereotypical cartoons.  The school itself is a cliche and the story that is set there feels as hackneyed as a teen comedy. All of this has been used against the film.

Like a carnival caricature artist happily depict his subject with a mixture of honest depiction and comedic flare Zwigoff has created a cast of targets all ripe for skewering. That he is a film director and not a cartoonist may have helped confuse audiences. The fact that graphic novelist Daniel Clowes wrote the screenplay only adds fodder to the notion that Art School Confidential as a two-dimensional construct. Still, comics and comedies are supposed to give us someone to sympathize with as much as someoen to laugh at. However, with no one in this film being free from criticism it is hard to position yourself as a viewer with any one character. Most problematic is the fact that the protagonist Jerome is a fraudulent construct. On the surface Jerome looks like your typical hero in waiting, his heart set on winning the eye of the girl and molding himself into the world’s next great artist. Jerome is talented, but he is no lover of art. He is a lover of fame and power. He makes art in the hopes of getting pussy and in his most lucid moments he knows this.

That moment of self-awareness, when the mask slips from the character’s face. When they realize the lie they are hiding behind is as troublesome as it is beautiful. Just about every major character in the film has one of these epiphanies. However, this moment of revelation never summons a change in the right direction. Instead, it is a call to put back on the mask. For Jerome, it is easier to embrace the cliche than to find a new language to speak in.

That Terry Zwigoff is not revered as one of America’s preeminent directors is a horrible oversight. I know of no other director working inside the movie industry so deft with characters and conventions. He is able to both depict and distort tropes and modes so recognizable to general moviegoers that he has unsurprisingly found his worked misunderstood and panned. He speaks in cliches. He finds the truth inside of them.

This is not to say that he damns his characters for being cliche posers. No, Zwigoff is compassionate with his criticism. When a hippie student exits her parents luxury vehicle barefooted and steps on broken glass he does not hate her for being an idealistic, free-spirit. He loves that about her at the same time he can’t help but point out the irony of her social status or the less than pragmatic approach to footwear. If he were merely looking to take the piss out of everyone he would have easily created a masterpiece of distanced comedy that would have been more readily embraced by fans and critics who could safely laugh at the posturing of the art school students. By positioning the audience somewhere between the shallowness of the students and faculty at Strathmore College and the idealistic dream of fame and financial success that drives so many to art school and to the movies Zwigoff creates an uncomfortable position that shakes off the masks we all wear.

I’ll be the first to admit that Art School Confidential disturbed me. It made me question who am I, why I make art, and why I teach. I feared that I might exhibit the uglier traits I saw on the screen. If anything it pointedly portrayed something I’ve uncomfortably told students time and time again, “If you want to make a splash, shoot someone famous.” Charles Manson was musician unable to get a record deal until he changed his tune. Now, I can just tell my students to see Art School Confidential. That message is there, but the comfort of finding a kinship in a success story is not. Sure, in the end the boy does get the girl and the eye of the art world, but this is not the cliche story you’ve seen before. This is the cliche brought to life. This is art – a reminder that life is not just a pretty picture and we are not always what we appear to be.

The Long Riders (1980)

Between 1975 and 1984 Walter Hill directed an impressive string of action films.  Each film tackles a different era in time, but every one of them feels in some way like a Western.  From the gritty depression era tale of street fighters portrayed in Hard Times, to Streets of Fire, a self-proclaimed rock ’n’ roll fable, Hill directed seven features with a flair for the depicting life outside the law.  Only The Long Riders sets its narrative squarely in the Western era.

The Long Riders is memorable, if for no other reason, because Walter Hill cast four sets of actor brothers. Stacy Keach and James Keach are the Frank and Jesse James. While David, Keith, and Robert Carradine are the Younger brothers. Randy and Dennis Quad are the Millers. Christopher and Nicholas Guest are the Fords.

Such casting could be seen as a concept meant to inflate interest in the film and certainly the tactic has brought curious viewers to the film. More importantly, this casting re-affirms the centralized importance of family that plays throughout the picture.

By 1980, the story of the James-Younger Gang had been given ample screen time, both big and small. The principal figure of Jesse James often out-shadowed the other members of the gang and Hollywood having little care for both the politics of the era and for the events that make up the legacy of Jesse James went along with the mythology of Jesse as a Western Robin Hood. The retelling of this fabled chapter in American History has often felt like young boys playing dress-up. Men in dusters and cowboy hats proclaiming to be Jesse James, robbing banks and making a name for themselves.

Director Walter Hill does not look to de-mythologize the gang. He simply declines to add to their folklore. In an effort to tell the legacy of the James/Younger Gang in an accurate and fresh light, Walter Hill strikes upon a convention that both grounds the film in reality and personalize the actions of America’s most notorious bank robbers. Discard the film’s dialogue and The Long Riders plays out as if a chronological chart plucked from an encyclopedia. A crazy quilt constructed of robberies, killings, funerals, and weddings, the film’s fabric are factually based scenes sewn together by relations and revenge. Scenes do not propel the narrative so much as they feel like separate storylines woven together. The final construct is a sampler depicting a gang of brothers in search of family.

The Long Riders is distinctive for relaxation and rambling, for appealing to character, atmosphere and factuality. Under the formidable direction of Walter Hill the legend of the James-Younger Gang is told against the backdrop of faithful costuming and set decoration, if not a bit too free of dust and dirt, as well as exemplary soundtrack by Ry Cooder. Laconic lines of dialogue give witness to the larger political and personal motifs that drove the James-Younger gang to crime and helped write them into the annuals of history.

If Hollywood is short on memory, it is long on myth. The image of Jesse James as a Southern Robin Hood was perpetuated by John Newman Edwards of the Kansas City Times as much as it was pushed by Hollywood. Walter Hill’s depiction of James and gang is one of postbellum animosity towards the Union.  The residual effects of the Civil Ware are a catalyst for both the action of the James-Younger gang and the defense of their actions by those who knew them personally.

“You can say the war drove us to it. If it weren’t for the war we might have been something else,” one Younger brother tells a reporter. Whether he is speaking of the Younger-James Gang or the entire Confederacy is questionable. The Civil War left Missouri a divided state. Jesse James, his brother Frank, most of the Younger brothers and associates such as Clell Miller all served as bushwhackers against the Union. Finding it difficult if not impossible to return to civilian life after the war, they turned to robbing banks. This decision was not so much an act of greed as one of Rebellion against Reconstruction, with the hope that someday they might all return to the quiet civilian life.

At the funeral for her youngest son, a boy that never rode with the James-Younger gang, but who’s death was the result of a Pinkerton’s firebombing, a reporter asks the mother of Jesse and Frank James if she is afraid her they won’t end up like her youngest. Her contempt filled face and pensive non-reply says it all. In more direct terms, the brother of Clell Miller states that he would rather lose four months in prison that help the Pinkerton’s catch a the same gang that kicked him out. He knows that even if the Younger and James brothers were to be caught and executed they have family that would come looking for him.

As family and friends are made victims by their affiliation and silence, they are unified by blood and a desire for revenge. The never-ending cycle of retribution and revenge does not escape Jesse James. Portrayed as a quiet, steely-eyed man caught in an existential crisis this depiction of Jesse James is refreshing and it makes one wonder why James Keach has not had a more prominent career.

By the film’s conclusion Jesse James finds himself at home with his family. The disastrous raid on Northfield, Minnesota has unraveled the James-younger Gang. With Robert and Charley Ford he hopes to start a new gang. History tells how Robert Ford cowardly shot Jesse James in the back while Jesse fixed a picture on the wall. In The Young Riders, Walter Hill portrays this seen for a symbolic squaring up. As if resigned to his fate, sick of living outside the law, and knowing he can never live the civil life, Jesse James deliberately walks unarmed towards the wall, turning his back on the Fords. Saying only “The sampler, it ain’t straight” Jesse straightens the decoration and waits for Robert Ford to pull the trigger.

Death delivers Jesse James from the cycle of killing that has prevented him from his family and taken most of his surrogate family from this Earth. If one concedes that the actions of the James-Younger Gang are both political and personal, then the death of Jesse James and the surrender of his brother Frank can be seen as prolonged end to the Civil War. That he dies in the comfort of his home, transforms James’ death into a form of assisted suicide. In this manner, his straightening of the sampler becomes a symbol as indicative of Jesse’s desire to rebalance the lives set asunder by the War, as it is Walter Hill’s use of factually verifiable events to tell the true story of Jesse James.

The Wizard of Speed and Time (1989)

The Wizard of Speed and Time is one of two films.  It is either a 1979 short film showcasing the stop-motion animation talents of Mike Jittlov or it is a 1989 feature film comically detailing Jittlov’s struggle to bring his fantastic visions to the big screen.  Many fortunate souls privileged enough to have the Disney Channel during the early days of cable television fondly remember the hyper-kinetic antics of a green-cloaked Wizard with the power to magically race across space and time.  Few people ever had the opportunity to see the feature length version and perhaps it is to their benefit that they did not.

The feature version The Wizard of Speed and Time is not a great, but a curious film. Unlike the short, the feature is not the purely whimsical, good-spirited celebration of movie magic that made so many fans of the 1979.  No, the 1989, feature is a cathartic film.  It is an airing of grievances against a movie industry designed to shut out the individual spirit.  The feature is a fictional retelling of the battles Jittlov had to endure to make it in the film industry.  Standing in Jittlov’s way are crooked producers, unforgiving unions, and cops asking for countless permits.  To an eccentric and gifted artist like Jittlov, the film business is one more focused on following rules than following your heart.  Where as Hollywood is concerned with the bottom line, Jittlov’s only concern is dazzling his audience and making them believe in the magic of movies.  It is an innocent, foolhardy ambition, but one he full believes in.  As both a character in the film and the creator of the film, he sets out to prove them wrong by telling his own story.

Mike Jittlov’s story is complicated. If it starts anywhere, it starts at in the early 70’s at UCLA.  Not knowing what he should study, Jittlov enrolled in a basic animation class to fulfill a mandatory art requirement.  He quickly discovered he had a knack for animation.  Jittlov’s very first effort, a handcrafted nightmare entitled Good Grief impressed UCLA so much that they had it blown up to 35mm and submitted to the Academy Awards.  Jittlov’s student work competed along side professionally produced short animations.  While it did not win, the Academy deemed Jittlov’s one-man production good enough to be a finalist.

After college, Jittlov turned his entire house and garage into a one-man production studio.  A natural born inventor and a self-proclaimed Renaissance Man, Jittlov has not only created his own animation stands, camera rigs, and camera motion controls, but he can also whistle in three-and-a-half octaves, speak seven languages, and write 23 lines to the inch. A perfectionist at heart, Jittlov poured hours of energy into creating highly elaborate stop-motion and kinestasis (photo-cut out) animations that marveled fans and professional filmmakers alike.  From his humble, homemade, studio Jittlov produced works of pure mirth that won him awards and high praise.  However, what Jittlov really wanted to do was make a feature film.

In the hopes of catching a big break, Jittlov created two films of pure whimsy to display his talents.  The shorts Animato and Time Tripper, caught the eye of Regis Philbin, then a Los Angeles anchorman, who insisted on showing them immediately on television.  As luck would have it, a Disney executive just happened to catch Jittlov’s work on the tube. When Nick Bennion met Mike Jittlov, he could not believe that one man had created everything he saw on television that fateful night.  Jittlov further surprised Bennion by handing him a feature length script entitled Godspeed.  The sheer audacity of an unknown writer and director asking for a feature film, production deal caught Bennion off guard.  The Disney executive convinced Jittlov that if he could recreate the zippy stop-motion on display in Time Tripper for an upcoming special that Bennion was doing on special effects that Jittlov’s talents might catch the eye of some higher-up Disney executives.  Jittlov agreed to create a short piece specifically for Bennion’s special and thus the short version of The Wizard of Speed and Time was born.

At seven minutes in length, the original Wizard of Speed and Time is a break-neck, globe trotting flight of fantasy.  A fleet-footed, green-cloaked wizard, played by Jittlov himself, zooms down a highway.  He scoops up a country girl bound for Hollywood and delivers her to California.  Instantly, she becomes a star.  The Wizard then sets off across the globe, carrying an Olympic torch and leaving behind a trail of goodwill. His travels end when he slips on a banana peel ascends into space, swings off the arm of the Space Shuttle and lands squarely in front of the Hollywood sign.  The short ends with the Wizard saluting the sign and smiling to the camera.

Within this short film and the character of the Wizard Jittlov’s view of the film industry is explicit.  To Jittlov movies are wild fantasies dreamt up by magicians.  They are pure imagination brought to life and designed to bring joy to the audience.  The ear-to-ear grin upon the Wizard’s face not only expresses the joy he receives from bringing enchantment to those he encounters, but it also communicates a maniacal obsession.  The speed of the Wizard is the speed of Jittlov’s own mind, frantically racing from one idea to the next, continually thinking of new ways to amaze.  However, for all that the Wizard does it takes dumb luck, a slip on a banana peel, to land him in Hollywood.  This is, of course, where the Wizard belongs – a magical land where dreams really do come true, if only on the big screen.  It is no wonder he salutes the Hollywood sign.

After making the short version of The Wizard of Speed and Time Disney was so impressed that they asked him to make a very special animation for the 50th Anniversary of Disney Animation.  With total creative control and unprecedented access to a vast collection of Mickey Mouse memorabilia, Jittlov produced Mouse Mania.  This singular short piece about a rabid Mickey collector delighted fans and could bee seen for years on The Disney Channel.  It was not, however, a feature and it was not exactly Jittlov’s own idea.  Subsequent offers came from Disney, but the one thing they never suggested was that Jittlov produce one of his feature length scripts.

Upset and slightly disillusioned by his experience, Jittlov set out on his own.  Rather than attempt to make one of his feature length animations, Jittlov did what many writers do best.  He wrote what they knew. The narrative of a talented, green-jacketed, special effects wiz with an aversion to shaking hands who tries to make it in the movie business is straight from Jittlov’s own life.  In film form, the Jittlov story is a live action underdog story told in a family friendly style with cartoon flair.  Inter-spliced throughout the film are snippets of Jittlov’s previous animated work, like Time Tripper, Animato plus the seven-minute version of The Wizard of Speed and Time.  Were it not for the anger and vitriol Jittlov harbored after years of struggle the film would play out like a multitude of kid’s films where the goodhearted hero stays true to his ideals, defeats the one-dimensional forces of evil that set out to ruin him, and walks off into the sunset with the girl.

While the fictional Mike Jittlov stays relatively optimistic in his pursuit, the real Jittlov uses his film to make jabs at everyone from greedy producers to George Lucas to his most detested enemies, the unions.  Throughout the film, Jittlov ridicules the exclusive nature of unions.  For a man who touts 100 film positions to his credit, but holds no union card the necessity for union works to produce a film must be maddening.  Of course, in the movie Jittlov succeeds. That is the luxury of scripting.  In the end of The Wizard of Speed and Time, the world gets to see the fruition of Jittlov’s work and he gets the girl.

In reality, few people ever saw the feature length version of this film. Jittlov accuses his distributor of mishandling the release of The Wizard of Speed and Time.  He goes so far as to say that his film was buried just to that it did not directly compete with the Nintendo financed, The Wizard, starring Fred Savage.  In another odd occurrence of life imitating art, the unscrupulous businessman in Jittlov’s movie was also his business partner in the real world.  To this day, he accuses his partner of ruining the film. What little credence exists to these claims, the truth is that The Wizard of Speed and Time quickly disappeared from the box office and the few videotapes produced were quickly lost to the dustbin of time.  Online, Jittlov has created a small following of devoted fans.  While they find his troublesome saga through the gears of the film industry of some interest he is remembered more for his upbeat, short animations that revel in movie magic.

Mike Jittlov’s failure is certainly not due to lack of talent, at least as an animator.  Considering his place in history, he could have been George Lucas, another independent minded, union hating, dreamer.  As a live action, feature film director, Jittlov is nothing spectacular.  Then again, neither is George Lucas.  Nevertheless, it must be considered that feature version of The Wizard of Speed and Time is not a feature film  Jittlov intended to make.

No, The Wizard of Speed and Time is both a rebuke of Hollywood and a misguided, second attempt to prove that Mike Jittlov is a talented artist deserving of a spot in the film industry.  It is quite amazing to watch someone desperately wanting acceptance while at the same time he curses out the same system he wishes would embrace him.  Whether Jittlove is overly confident in his talent or purely naХve to the inner workings of the film industry is uncertain, perhaps it is both.  His child like view of the world that helps him construct such imaginative animations seems to blind Jittlov to the harsher realities of an adult world that has long given up on the notion of wishing upon a star.  It is as if he is incapable of seeing that perhaps he himself is to blame for his own lack of success.  Rather than concede that his own peculiarities and his refusal to play by the rules of those holding the purse strings kept him from achieving his dreams Jittlov has positioned himself as the hero, fighting the good fight.  Through it all, it is quite amazing that Jittlov has refused to give up his dreams or at least his belief in magic. Jittlov feels his faith in movie magic will one day vindicate his approach to filmmaking.  When the monster that is the film industry is slain then the world might see Jittlov as the Wizard who brought down the dragon with his magic.  Of course, in order to perform this fete of artistic wizardry, Jittlov has continually sought the backing and approval of that which he looks to admonish.  Here in lies the paradox of Mike Jittlov.  He is a man in love with movies and at war with Hollywood.  Yet, he has turned his back on both Hollywood and for now, on movie magic.

Swim Team (1979)

Swim Team is the sort of film you can watch out of the corner of your eye and still see too much. Stephen ‘Flounder’ Furst of Animal House fame provides fat comic relief and adding the sole note of credibility to this less dead in the water project. It’s a PG rated low-ball sex comedy, that lacks in sex and comedy and begs the question, “Which is more heinous, to offend or bore?” This film choses to do the later and it’s no wonder that its fate was resigned to the fifty-cent bin of a thrift store.

On particularly esoteric side note, I do believe the poster design is very indicative of the one done for Gums. Perhaps there is a poster artist who specializes in aquatic comedies?

The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980)

This made-for-television film puts Loni Anderson in the central role of the buxom blonde. Relatively unknown at the time, Anderson was certainly not cast for her dramatic skills. Arnold Schwarzenegger landed the role of Mickey Hargitay in The Jayne Mansfield Story. Physically, Schwarzenegger fits the bill as Mansfield’s body building husband. However, resting the story’s narration on his broad shoulders surely stands as a new benchmark for cinematic mis-steps.

For fans of Jayne Mansfield the film provide little insight into her life. The movie is a mere retracing of the highs and lows that build up the infamous auto accident that took her life. The only real reason to seek out this work is to enjoy the mangling of the English language by the future Governer of California. Highlights include a domestic squabble midway through the film, when Mansfield drinking begins to take control of her life. In this scene you not only get Schwarzenegger adding the letter ‘q’ to the word popcorn, but you get to hear him say, “That’s the vodka talking.” Provide your own accent.

Made prior to his breakout roles Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator, The Jayne Mansfield is a great leap for the former Mr. Universe. Like Mansfield, who spent a good portion of her career trying to shed her blonde bimbo image and sink her teeth into more serious roles, Schwarzenegger must have taken the role hoping to prove that he was more than muscles and a smile.

It’s hard to fault director Dick Lowry for casting Schwarzenegger. Hargitay was a former Mr. Universe. So was Schwarzenegger. Hargiaty was from Hungary. Schwarzenegger was from Austria. Close enough. If you have to fault Lowry for anything you can still hold him accountable for helping to create Project ALF, a made-for-television abortion.

What’s Wrong With Christian Rock?

According to host Jeff Godwin – EVERYTHING!

What’s Wrong With Christian Rock? is an hour long lecture that opens with the warning:

Before Viewing This Video Seek God’s Wisdom [,] Discernment and Protection Through Prayer

What follows is a serious of questioned posed by Jeff Godwin. After a pregnant pause Godwin answers his own questions with a combination of examples and scripture.
However, do not think that Jeff Godwin is your typical bible quoting preacher waging a crusade against secular rock music. No,  Godwin’s ire is aimed at so-called Christian rockers and CCM artists. CCM being a favorite anachronym used by Godwn in place of Christian Contemporary music. Where as everyone knows that secular music is the spawn of Satan, Godwin argues that Christian Rock and Contemporary Christian Music is not doing the work of the Lord and has become a tool of the Devil.

At the start of the video Godwin asks,  “Can you plug Jesus Christ in to a stage with bombs going, smoke blowing, hair teased up to the moon, in skin tight Spandex and leather bouncing around with a bass guitar and rubber necking while the crowd screams?” The simple answer is “No, you cannot.”, but Godwin refuses to keep his argument simple. Esoteric is more his style and he has a mountain of unsubstantiated evidence to prove that Jesus and Rock don’t mix.

Big name Christian artists such as Amy Grant, Stryper, Carmen, and Michael. W. Smith have all fallen under the influence of Satan. Let Godwin prove it to you. Through a frame-by-frame breakdown he shows Amy Grant flashing devil horns at a concert. Stryper dresses in the colors of the occult and they evoke Alistor Crowely through their use of the number 777. Carmen uses elements of gore and comedy. He glorifies Satan by making him look tough and he belittles Jesus by humanizing him. Michael W. Smith spelled his name backwards on an album and he used a font indicative of Druid runes. Who knew? Who cared?

Obviously, Jeff Godwin. You have to give the guy some credit. He not a great speaker or even that convincing, but he’s got conviction and by attacking Christian rock he has created quite a niche for himself. But, don’t think his insight is limited to Christian rock. No, he also wants to caution you about Christian Rap (“What is rap music anyway? It’s a vain repetition”) and Christian Thrash. Those too are WRONG!

A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky: 12 Stories About John Zorn (2002)

Don’t let the title throw you. A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky: 12 Stories About John Zorn is really a personal documentary about the filmmaker, Claudia Heuermann. After hearing John Zorn’s music, she just had to meet him and make a film about him.

As an autobiographical movie it’s not that good. As a musical documentary it’s just awful. Like a school girl with a crush Heuermann is left inarticulate in the aura of her love interest. Her visuals are clumsy. Her editing is either showy, but not artistic. And, her narration stinks of bad acting.

She cloying tries to sound philosophical as she attempts to present Zorn’s wildly unclassifiable music. Zorn is not an easy target to pin down. He doesn’t enjoy giving interviews. His music, in his own words, is best served without visuals. The last thing he wants are people putting images to his sounds. He’s spent a good portion of his life avoiding this. So, making an visual work about Zorn’s music is a Sisyphean tasks. Heuermann understands this complication and tries to incorporate her struggle into the film.

It doesn’t work and instead you have vain attempts to approach her visuals and editing in the same fashion Zorn approaches his musical compositions. Zorn works in what he calls ‘blocks’. They range anywhere from one second to many minutes in length and they are always complete statements, but they are only part of the large piece. By truncating her story into 12 pieces I believe Heuermann is trying to act in a similar way, but her blocks are not complete and they only get in the way of the more lucid moments when she presents factual information about Zorn, his life, and his music in much more traditional documentary approach.

The whole thing would be a complete loss were it not for those moments when Zorn and his music take center stage. Footage of him playing with his groups Masada and Naked City, make the rest of the garbage worth enduring, though why it should be endured at all is so very questionable. I leave the film knowing only a little more about Zorn and too much about the director.

This is far more enjoyable and director free: