PLAYLIST: Fear and Loathing in Milwaukee (04/20/18)

Here's the playlist for a special audio/visual mix made to accompany WMSE's Friday Night Freak Show screening of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, lovingly crafted by Milwaukee multimedia artist Sam LaStrapes and Mondo Radio. You can download or stream the piece here, and if you dig it, be sure to find Mondo Radio on Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter!

Artist - Song - Album

Elvis Presley - Viva Las Vegas - Elvis: Viva Las Vegas

Gram Parsons - Las Vegas - Grievous Angel

Buffalo Springfield - Burned - Buffalo Springfield

The Byrds - Medley: Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season)/Mr. Tambourine Man/Eight Miles High (Live) - Live At The Fillmore, February 1969

Bob Dylan With The Band - Highway 61 Revisited (Live, Isle Of Wight, 1969) - The Bootleg Series, Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971)

Brewer And Shipley - All Along The Watchtower - Weeds

Norman Greenbaum - Spirit In The Sky - Spirit In The Sky: The Best Of Norman Greenbaum

Grateful Dead - New Speedway Boogie (Alternate Mix) - Workingman's Dead

Jefferson Airplane - 3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds (Live At Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA) - The Roar Of Jefferson Airplane

George Benson - White Rabbit - Anthology

Oakenfold Feat. Hunter S. Thompson - Nixon's Spirit - Bunkka

Tomoyasu Hotei And Ray Cooper - A Drug Score - Part 3 (Flashbacks) - Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (Music From The Motion Picture)

FILM REVIEW: The Dicks from Texas

When it comes to documentaries, a fascinating subject can often compensate for a lack of style or technique, and that goes double for music docs. It's a category built on outsized personalities, archival footage and killer soundtracks, all of which can go a long way toward covering up the cracks in an otherwise clumsily made film. And since the viewer is there for the musical content as much as the craft, if not more so, a bad movie about a good band can still be worth watching in a lot of ways, and that's certainly the case with The Dicks from Texas, just released on DVD courtesy of MVD Entertainment.

If having a good subject is half the battle, the film certainly has that aspect covered. Though one of the most interesting early purveyors or American hardcore, the Dicks have long been criminally under-examined in the seemingly endless march of punk-era chronicles. That's probably because the Austin provocateurs' unusual music set them apart from the wider scene almost as much as geography did. A roiling mix of seething anti-authoritarian politics, blunt LGBT themes and profane gallows humor, all bubbling up through an unhinged, beer-and-blues-drenched din that is at once smart and as subtle as a fist, it was menacingly alien compared to the taut sounds of Los Angeles or DC.

Featuring plenty of interviews with the original members, as well as punk-doc regulars like Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins, the film does a decent job of recounting their tumultuous, short-lived anti-career, their lives thereafter and, of course, the inevitable reunion shows. Unfortunately though, while it boasts just enough interesting stories and vintage footage to keep you involved, the low-budget film, directed and produced by Cindy Marabito, is also rather amateurishly shot and put together, full of grainy, poorly lit talking heads and student film-style editing. As such, It's hardly the documentary the Dicks deserve, but ultimately the band itself is engaging enough to distract you from the film's many flaws.

FEATURE: The Best Norwegian Horror Movie Ever (Maybe): Lake of the Dead

Nowadays it's not at all uncommon to come across a new horror movie from Norway, but for decades that wasn't the case, making 1958's Lake of the Dead a rare gem.

Read the full piece here.

FEATURE: Second-Hand Giallo: Amer

There's no denying that the gorgeous, giallo-derived imagery of 2009's Amer is a pleasure to watch, but ultimately the film has little to offer beyond its good looks.

Read the full piece here.

FEATURE: Satire Isn't Always Smart: Prime Time

It's tempting to say the 1977 television send-up Prime Time was shelved by Warner Brothers for being too uncompromising but, in reality, it's simply an absurd disaster.

Read the full piece here.

FEATURE: Not the One You're Thinking of: Dark Side of the Moon (The Movie)

Somewhat surprisingly, 1990's The Dark Side of the Moon has absolutely nothing to do with Pink Floyd's iconic album and everything to do with Satan (yes, that Satan).  

Read the full piece here.

FEATURE: A Minor Hero of a Big Thai Poem: Sudsakorn

A relative bit player in the sprawling Thai literature staple Phra Aphai Mani captures the imagination of generations of filmmakers, with decidedly mixed results.

Read the full piece here.

FEATURE: Woody Allen Moves Toward the Serious: Love and Death

Woody Allen envisioned 1975's Love and Death as a simple and fun stopgap project, but the production quickly turned into a costly, frustrating mess. In the long run though, the difficult experience pushed Allen's career toward bigger and better things.

Read the full piece here.

FILM REVIEW: Medora

Like many American small towns, Medora, Indiana was hard hit by the recent economic downturn, which was in itself but a cruel exclamation point to decades of dwindling manufacturing jobs. Once the town boasted two big employers, a brick plant and an auto parts factory, that provided well-paying positions for a booming middle class, but with them out of business, Medora's population has dropped sharply, as have incomes and property values. Mirroring the town's seemingly unwinnable battle against changing economic forces is the plight of the local high school basketball team, the Medora Hornets, formerly one of the most competitive in the area, now a ragtag squad of underprivileged kids locked in a seemingly unbreakable losing streak.

Following the lives of these teenage athletes as they struggle to turn things around is the engrossing new documentary Medora, directed by Davy Rothbart, longtime publisher of Found Magazine, and Andrew Cohn. As hard as the team practices however, the deck is stacked against them, not only because their opponents come from incorporated high schools with more students and bigger budgets, but because the problems of a community caught in the grip of poverty, from alcoholic and absentee parents to run-ins with the law, provide a constant distraction, and compound the apparent hopelessness of their demoralizing cycle of defeat. Nobody in town is hoping for a Hoosiers-style championship run, just one much-needed win, no matter how symbolic. 

In a variety of ways, Rothbart and Cohn's film, which was produced in part by Steve Buscemi and Stanley Tucci, recalls 1994's Hoop Dreams, only inverted (and not as good, though it's probably unfair to compare it to a bona fide documentary masterpiece). While Medora takes place in a rural, predominantly white setting, not the slums of inner-city Chicago, and profiles perpetual losers instead of talented players with an embattled shot at pro-ball stardom, the issues that motivate them are very much the same. Both are about America failing its marginalized youth, consigning them to crumbling housing, substance abuse and a failing educational system, and how lessons learned on the court can help undo some of that damage. 

Filmed over the course of two years, Medora is revealing but compassionate when it comes to its adolescent subjects, none of whom have had any easy go of it, grappling with learning disabilities, homelessness and other adversity, and is effective at drawing you into rooting for these epic underdogs, but feels somewhat short on drama considering the competition and precarious situations involved. Yet, while it's not as gripping as it maybe could be, there's a wistful, earnest sense of melancholy pervading every lingering shot of dilapidated buildings, every desperate locker room pep talk and even the nail-biting finale, that proves subtly, quietly affective, largely because, in the end, a Hornet's victory isn't the game-changer Medora really needs.

FEATURE: Another Kind of Adaptation: A Boy and His Dog

L.Q. Jones' 1975 adaptation of Harlan Ellison's twisted short story "A Boy and His Dog" introduced the author's pair of post-apocalyptic wanderers to a whole new audience, but also had the unforeseen effect of keeping readers from seeing more of them.

Read the full piece here.

FILM REVIEW: She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column

It's always a treat when an obscure but important band gets the feature-length music doc treatment instead of some overexposed, already-iconic rock star, and Toronto post-punk outfit Fifth Column certainly fit the bill as underappreciated trailblazers, having had a huge impact on the direction of queercore, riot grrrl and other scenes, only to end up more or less overlooked. Giving them some welcome big-screen recognition is Kevin Hegge's entertaining documentary portrait, She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column, which makes a compelling case for why their music needs more reevaluation and attention, even if the film itself could stand to dig a little bit deeper.

Formed at the dawn of the 1980s, the arty, all-female Fifth Column, along with a loose collective of like-minded musicians, experimental filmmakers and zine publishers, took its inspiration from their utter alienation from mainstream culture, especially its strict sexual norms and the sense of endless conflict it fostered; even their name comes from military terminology for a group of agents who secretively destabilize an entrenched regime. Hegge does a good job of coherently unpacking their many complaints with their patriarchal North American surroundings, as well as the battles between band members themselves, whose dramatic quarrels over differing artistic visions actually proved good for their creativity.

The soundtrack is what really sells She Said Boom, but the documentary is visually engaging as well, kinetically splicing together live footage, clips from film projects and original interviews, memorably with founding member G.B. Jones and director Bruce La Bruce, a frequent collaborator. The film does have flaws, mainly a distinct lack of context, particularly surrounding their time with K Records and their place in the broader 1980s underground, which makes it seem deceptively as if the band's adventures were unfolding in a bubble, and at a mere 64 minutes, there's certainly room for more background. Still, while not that thorough, it's an enticing introduction

FEATURE: It's Not Just You, Balinese Witches Are Crazy: Mystics in Bali

In the West, the Indonesian occult is a pretty exotic, esoteric topic, but, thankfully, no prior knowledge of Southeast Asian witchcraft is required to enjoy Mystics in Bali, the blood-soaked 1981 cult classic from exploitation filmmaker H. Tjut Djalil.

Read the full piece here.

FILM REVIEW: I Am Divine

When Baltimore filmmaker John Waters bestowed the name "Divine" on his friend Glenn Milstead during their first cinematic collaboration, the 1966 short Roman Candles, it was never meant to stick, but with a brash drag alter ego to escape into, the shy, bullied Milstead found a whole new path as a performer, one that would blaze colorfully, but all too briefly, through the worlds of film, theatre and music. Divine's was a remarkably unique life, full of dualities, redemption and unapologetically trashy behavior, making him an all but irresistible documentary subject, and while director Jeffrey Schwarz latest effort, I Am Divine, is a snappy, affectionate portrait, it mostly succeeds by staying out of its protagonist's way.

Producer-director Schwarz has built something of a cottage industry chronicling interesting gay lives (Vito, Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon) and there's an experienced efficiency to the way he packs 42 years of anecdotes and identity crises into 90 minutes, from Milstead's lonely childhood to his falling in with Waters and the drugged-out coterie of Dreamlanders freaks, and on to his incandescent stardom and untimely demise. There are plenty of engaging original interviews from friends and co-conspirators, particularly Waters, who always makes for an entertaining talking head, but Schwarz also leans rather heavily on clips from Divine's films and talk show appearances, though considering his flair in front of a camera, that's not exactly a drawback.

The documentary isn't all surface, delving into his sexuality, the struggle to live down the Pink Flamingos-inspired image as a dog shit-eating maniac and get the respect he deserved as an actor or his distant relationship with his family, but there are times when you wish the offstage Divine, the quiet, generous man his friends knew, got a little more screen time. While it could be more intimate, the film has fun with the high points, the international infamy and glamorous celebrity hobnobbing, while keeping things grounded in the ultimately very human story of a repressed young man who found a way to escape, and did so spectacularly. There's a reason the name stuck.

FEATURE: Not the Same Old Symbolism: Buñuel's L'Age d'Or

With its bold but playful attempt at a pure surrealist film language, Luis Buñuel's 1931 dreamlike romp L'Age d'Or proves immune to conventional interpretation.

Read the full piece here.

FILM REVIEW: Computer Chess

Though it's a landmark moment that's now long since passed, before Garry Kasparov was defeated by Deep Blue in 1997, developing a computer that could best a human chess Grandmaster was one of the loftiest goals for generations of programmers and artificial intelligence researchers. The philosophical question at the heart of their quest was whether raw number-crunching power could ever compete with the uniquely human lateral thinking and creativity the game was believed to require and, if so, what kind of future could humanity have. These heady themes are omnipresent in writer-director Andrew Bujalski's new Computer Chess, permeating every conversation, but they ultimately serve more as a backdrop for his peculiar brand of offbeat comedy than the subject of any substantive exploration.

The film takes you back to an unspecified time in the early 1980s, as an oddball assortment of scientists and academics converge on a drab hotel for a weekend-long tournament pitting their chess-playing programs against one another. Though Bujalski has an eye for accuracy in regards to his retro setting, from the dorky clothes to the charmingly clunky computers, the film departs from reality fairly quickly, following the surreal goings-on between matches, including run-ins with paranoid drug peddlers, the kooky couples therapy retreat also utilizing the conference room, and a sentient, suicidal machine. None of these subplots are pursued with any real zeal, the hotel's mysterious cat infestation or the Pentagon's interest in the competition leaving a lot of intentionally unanswered questions.

Computer Chess won't appeal to every taste, the humor being of the supremely awkward, stuttering sort that earned Bujalski, director of Funny Ha Ha and Beeswax, recognition as the father of mumblecore, and its look, a grainy (mostly) black-and-white video appropriate to the era it's depicting without going full-on mockumentary, is purposefully cheap and sometimes feels more like an aesthetic exercise than a movie, but it's not without its own goofy appeal, which lies mostly in the convincing performances from perfectly cast unknown actors and the light, dreamlike feel. It's quirky strangeness, its technophile nostalgia and, at 90 minutes, its relative brevity, should serve it well once it hits Netflix, but as theatre fare, it's probably not worth leaving the house for. 

FEATURE: Behind the Curtain: A History of Bloopers

By their very definition, bloopers and outtakes are, quite literally, throwaway bits of footage, but they've attained an oddly permanent place in our popular culture.

Read the full piece here.

FEATURE: What a Visionary: Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Love him or hate him, you've got to admit that breast-obsessed filmmaker Russ Meyer was a one of a kind, and that his 1965 magnum opus looks and feels like little else.

Read the full piece here.

FEATURE: An Inevitable Cult Classic: Valley of the Dolls

Sometimes the films that achieve cult classic status can be kind of surprising, but looking at 1967's Valley of the Dolls, it's plain to see that this particular film was more or less destined to become a midnight movie staple.

Read the full piece here.

VIDEO: Doctor Who Weekend (Day 1)

In honor of the show's 50th anniversary, I'm proud to present part one of an entire weekend of Network Awesome programming devoted to Doctor Who, all curated by yours truly!

Watch day 1 here.

FILM REVIEW - Man of Steel

When Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman in the early 1930s, they never could have known how iconic the character would become, how the last son of Krypton would inspire countless imitators and make the leap from the pages of DC comics to a myriad of other media. First there was the hugely successful radio drama, followed by an endless stream of animated shorts, movie serials, stage plays, feature films and a vast array of TV productions of varying quality. Put short, DC has never been shy about pimping out Supes' archetypal premise for just about anything, which makes it so strange that we've seen very little of him on the big screen in recent years, even as comic book movies grew into an unstoppable force at the box office. Before Bryan Singer's mildly received Superman Returns in 2006, there hadn't been a single Superman film in nearly 20 years (the 1997 calamity Steel notwithstanding), during which time four different actors donned Batman's cape and cowl. Seeking to borrow some of the gritty credibility Christopher Nolan brought to his Batman reboot, as well as their main competitor Marvel's seemingly Midas touch, Zack Snyder's new Man of Steel aims at reinvention, but largely ends up missing the point.

The film opens, as any Superman movie naturally would, on the planet Krypton, with its final days fast approaching. Not fast enough though; far from just recapping the classic origin story and setting up key elements to unfold later, the film quickly gets bogged down in the conflict between Russell Crowe's Jor-El and the condemned leader of a military coup, General Zod, played by a hammy Michael Shannon. When the rocket containing the newborn Kal-El finally makes its way to earth and we're granted the first glimpse of uber-bland Henry Cavill as the iconic superhero, it's not a red cape flapping in the wind or even the milquetoast mild-mannered reporter, but a bearded crab fisherman and drifter. A series of awkward flashbacks never explain quite how he ended up there, but hammer home how Pa Kent (Kevin Costner) insisted his unusual adopted son never reveal his powers. Working an incredibly dangerous job and hanging around seedy waterfront bars seems like a bad way to go about that, and indeed enterprising gal reporter Lois Lane, played by an underused Amy Adams, figures out Clark's "secret" in seemingly no time at all, but that soon becomes irrelevant when Zod escapes his imprisonment and comes to earth to call out Kal-El.

There's nothing wrong with Snyder, or co-producer Nolan, tinkering with the order of events or the details of the mythology, Superman needs to be redefined for each new generation, but in the process they've thrown out a great deal of what made the character timeless in the first place. What people find compelling about Superman is his immigrant's struggle of trying to fit into a strange culture without sacrificing what makes him special, but without the tension of balancing his dual contrasting personas, he's just a really strong guy from outer space. The perfunctory script barely gives him one discernible identity let alone two, making very little time for characterization or developing any of its subplots, particularly with his supposed love interest. Even the dialogue is stilted and weird, what little of it there is sandwiched between endless knock-down, drag-out brawls; it's basically two-and-a-half hours of shit blowing up, without a trace of wit or a sense of adventure. What's more, product placement spoils what may be the film's best action set piece, tragically taking place between a Sears, an IHOP and a 7-Eleven. Hollywood has done Superman right before, and you've got to hope the figure out how to do so again; the Man of Steel deserves better than this.