 I love Boy Bands.
Well, a particular flavor of them, more in the mode of New Kids on the Block that N*Sync or Backstreet. Maybe it’s that I came of High School in their peak period and once had an NKOTB bedspread. Maybe it’s because "Step-by-Step" is an absolute bop, and "Please Don’t Go Girl" has everything a ballad needs. Who knows, but also, it’s good stuff. Fanatic is the kind of short that wakes me up from a slump of those films that never quite hit. In fact, it did it so thoroughly, I ended up watching it twice. Charlie and Gerald used to be a boy band in the early 2000s, arguably the high-water mark for American Boy Bandery. They fell out of favor, and now, well now things are tough. They need an infusion of cash, and faster than a bunch of quickees behind a dumpster can provide. And then there’s a contest! This contest could save ‘em up real good, and there’s stiff competition, and old wounds to overcome. This is kinda a ‘We Gotta Put on a Show to Save the Farm!’ short, and it does that really well. There’s more layering here, with hilariously dark humor, Behind the Music sensations, and an overall spirit that Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland would have been proud of. Probably Judy a bit more than Mickey... The real key to this short is that these are two characters who are utterly lovable, even if they might not be surface likable. You pull for them despite their flaws, and hope that they’ll reach for the brass ring, and maybe grab it. These are characters with charm, and flaws, and flawed charm, and all of that adds up to making us root for them not in spite of those flaws, or even because of those flaws, but with those flaws they carry along the way. That is something a great film does - it lets you see what might be your story as seen through the eyes of someone else. Not me though; I can't sing. Andrew Chappelle, who I’ve been seeing just about everywhere the last few years, is great as the co-star and wrote the piece. The direction by Taran Killam (of Saturday Night Live fame, but more importantly, the best thing about Drunk History re-enactments!) is superb, and that entire short plays out as a crowd-pleaser that takes a turn or two before you realise that those are the kind of turns that happen only in a world where songs like "U + Me = Us (Calculus)" or "I Want it That Way" could be a reality. The world we’re given here is far more full of joy and potential than ours, and the lens we view it through is an excellent example of how you film a fantasy without filming a fantasy. Fanatic shows as a part of Something Funny on Sunday, August 20th at the Hammer Theatre in Beautiful Downtown San Jose, and then again at the ICON Showplace in Mt. View on Friday, August 25th. https://tickets.cinequest.org/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=292635~a12ee803-7eae-437e-8208-1c4d52da2020&epguid=330ab4d6-45cd-4e3a-a87e-02c739b12dbb&  The story of America in the 20th century is the story of Jazz.
The major names in the history of Jazz are some of the most fascinating humans who made it through those decades. Names like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, and Billie Holiday are widely known even today, decades after they’ve passed. They were icons of talent, who re-defined American singing traditions, and among their number, though less known today by non-afficianados, is Carol Sloane. Her talent, staggering. Widely-held by other performers as one of the great jazz interpreters, Carol Sloane was in the midst of some of the most important moments in the development of American music. Not only was she a contemporary, and friend, of folks like Ella and Carmen McRae, but she was there as the world of rock ‘n roll became the dominant form of popular music. The documentary Sloane: A Jazz Singer, looks at Carol Sloane’s career as she prepares for a show at Birdland. Now in her 80s, she’s got a show at such a legendary venue and it’s built around the reveal of the power she still possesses in performing for a live recording. And as powerful a performer as she still is, her personality is even more powerful. Sloane telling us her story, the ups and downs of several decades, from the heights of the Tonight Show and performing around the world, to working as a legal secretary, she has had a life and knows how to pass her memories to us with clarity. She imparts her triumphs and her failures with the same passion: the passion of the performer. She’s giving us the story, her story, and when things get heavy and darker, she doesn’t shy away, she goes into it, through it. She demonstrates that she is a human who understands the path of time, and what every decision means, and what it meant. She seems to understand her life as a road, and it passed through some unpleasant, and often boring, neighborhoods, but it also gave her grand vistas. This is a film constructed around interviews, but formed through the use of archive materials. Television performances, hundreds of photos, and perhaps most impressively, audio tapes. The way it plays visually is so impressive, and deeply textured, both in image and sound. This isn't verite, not even slightly, nor is it archive-constructed like Amy, but a hybrid that takes the best of both and runs in the interplay. At times I was brought into the world of the archive doc, but the moment I got the familiar feeling of oversaturation in memorabilia, bam, Carol Sloane of 2019 reappears and takes it all over again. The incredible stuff is the stuff that is closer to Carol than to the many superstars whose names are still widely celebrated. When we see or hear Carmen McRae or Ella or Dizzy, we recognise them, but we connect with Carol, she engages us so deeply that they become a part of her story, not Carol Sloane being an ornament on their legendary tree. Perhaps nothing makes the point of the power of Carol Sloane more than the fact that when he hits us with that show we've been waiting for, and we're through to the end, I instantly wanted to hear the whole thing. This is a wonderful documentary, and director Michael Lippert has choreographed a film that is the story of a life and its intersections. Sadly, Carol Sloane left us in January, but this documentary serves as a stronger, more-lasting memorial than any tombstone ever could. Sloane: A Jazz Singer shows Monday, August 28th at the Mountain View ICON Theatre. https://tickets.cinequest.org/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=292610~a12ee803-7eae-437e-8208-1c4d52da2020&epguid=330ab4d6-45cd-4e3a-a87e-02c739b12dbb&  A few years ago, in the Before Times, I reviewed a short called Followers. That film looked at the dangerous world of making your mark with more and more extreme content that is required to build the brand. That film was about the capture, the hunt for fame. I was lucky enough to see Under the Influencer which is about one who has finished the hunt, caught the rabbit, and now needs to find a way to keep catching it when the audience has started looking elsewhere.
Under the Influencer should be depressing as hell; it’s about Influencer World, a setting as dark as Hollywood in the 1920s. Instead of hitting us like Requiem for a Dream, it feels like it's going to play out almost like a good-hearted All About Eve if it were directed by Frank Capra, but then it does something completely unexpected. It becomes the story of a life. We follow Tori (played with incredible emotional flexibility by Taylor Scorse) as she navigates a continuing social media presence that may well have peaked. She’s in her mid-20s, and her team is attempting to keep her in the limelight. She, though, has grown weary of that world, but still keeps going because moving on could easily mean moving out of the public eye. While the professional side of her life seems to be on a slide, her world is broader and more entangled than her viewers could understand. Now, the parts of this absolute feast of a film are magnificent, adding up to a sum that can’t be denied, but there are intangibles that toss us into another dimension. Taylor Scorse is fantastic, largely because at no point does she feel as if she’s trying to play Norma Desmond. Instead, she goes in for a human trying to avoid becoming a caricature that an audience can love. This is a tightrope that any actor would have trouble with, but at the same time, it is not a performance that is made by the material, but one that turns the solid script into something nearly brutally realistic. Because we’ve seen this, right? We’ve watched the rise, burn, and crash of stars, right? We’ve seen one YouTube sensation after another do everything to make it, then claw and scream and fight and fall and inch themselves back up a bit before the drastic, the drama, the endgame. We know this arc; Kenneth Anger loved it when he imagined it for every Tinseltown star of the Golden Age. This time, we’re given the kind of performance that makes us not only fall for our lead the way an audience online would, but the kind of presence that infuses a film with both warmth and confusion. Nowhere is this more apparent than when we she her finally takes a jump into music, a dream of hers that her assistant had been trying to get her to dive into. The segment, and the montage that plays out under it, is exactly what a film like this needs. It's not a triumphant step; it's a real step. That moment nearly had me in tears…which really would have worried my officemate. The vulnerability of Tori is baked into the script, as is a devil-angel dichotomy for her producer and assistant for the first half of the film. Maybe it’s not a devil-angel thing, but more a Ghost of Christmas Past vs. Ghost of Christmas Future sorta thing…only way less dark. There’s a Ghost of Christmas Present, too, and it’s another exceptional performance. The entire character slate is full of classic film archetypes, only brough forth into something newer, or at least less pat. There's the mysterious stranger, the mystic, the plucky (and persistant) sidekick, the hired gun, the rising star, and even a sorta whacky neighbor. Somehow, these don't add up to something that feels like everything else, though. They feel like the people in your neighborhood, the people that you meet while you're walking down the street each day. When its boiled down to syrup, and we get the great reveal of the reality behind Tori, there you feel a turn out of the city and into the desert we only vaguely know. It doesn't feel like Tori is lost, though. It feels like Tori is finally finding herself. She is far more lost when she is in her element than when she takes herself out of it. Pulling that trick off is the mark of a filmmaker who knows what they’re doing, and actors who understand that a performance is an enabling process. When we get a lovely one-on-one exchange between Tori (I’m sorry, Vicki…) and a young man she just met, the dialogue is infused with patter and reaction and reflection, and most importantly, retention. We can see how she draws it in and lets it stew, and every moment from then on reflects on that in a way that is clear. That montage I mentioned earlier? Same thing happens, and it plays out across the rest of the film too. Same with her breakdown. Same with everything. Every moment infuses every scene, and you can sense the changes in Tori, and more importantly, in the entire film. This is a film that feels as if its an evolution, and not just a plot that plays out; it is a reality that we just happen to get a glimpse of through a screen. Also there is the single sweetest, most perfect moment I’ve ever seen on screen. It surprised me with the simplicity, the perfection, and the absolute joy it filled me with. I can’t recommend Under the Influencer enough. It’s one that made me think, and feel, and ultimately, want to get up and tell people. But here, not on YouTube. tickets.cinequest.org/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=292620~a12ee803-7eae-437e-8208-1c4d52da2020&epguid=330ab4d6-45cd-4e3a-a87e-02c739b12dbb& Under the Influencer shows on August 21st at 930pm at the Hammer Theatre in San Jose, and then again August 24th at 11am at the ShowPlace ICON Theatre in Mountain View. |
Klaus at GunpointA Film Journal dedicated to all film.A segment of Office Supply Publishing. Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
