palewire

Emboldened by the Parisian diaries of gourmand extraordinaire A.J. Liebling, my appetites roused me from evening routines to set out for Georgetown – Washington’s toniest, and Frenchiest, district – in search of fine dining at the late-night restaurant Bistro Francais.

What crap! The mussels nicoise were heated with a delicacy usually reserved for cans of Chef Boyardee’s microwave ravioli. The lamb’s texture and taste roughly matched hunks of beef churned out for M. Dinty Moore’s manufactured stews. The apple tarts fell short of protocols of freshness endorsed by virtually every multilateral organization, including the International House of Pancakes.

Despite its claims to the grand traditions of French cooking, the only arena where Bistro Francais surpasses other late-night feeding holes, such as The Country Kitchen and Denny’s Restaurant, is in terms of price. At $20 for a standard three-course meal, it matches the fees charged by nearby French restaurants of immeasurably superior quality, such as Bistro D’OC, a simple, sleepy nook trapped amidst the tourist bait surrounding Ford’s Theater.

Hardly more ambitious or painstaking an effort than his casual magazine essays, Woody Allen’s new comedic film, Scoop, will be lucky to inspire more than a few scant shouts and murmurs.

A young American journalism student (Scarlett Johansson) visits a magic show while studying abroad in England. When the magician Splendini (Woody Allen) stows her away inside a box for his grand finale, Johansson is visited by the ghost of recently deceased journalist (Ian McShane), who implores her to follow up on a juicy tip he picked up on the ferry across the River Styx. It would seem that one of London’s most respected, and most attractive, young noblemen (Hugh Jackman) may indeed be the secret identity of a notorious serial killer. Intent on getting the story, but unsure of her own abilities, Johansson quickly enlists Allen in her quest to get the story.

Don’t expect much. It’s a flip, disposable movie with a slack, disjointed script and lightly sketched characters—a tossed-off take on classic romantic mysteries like His Girl Friday and The Thin Man.

But slack and quickly castoff is a fair way to describe all of Allen’s work. Like his best films, Scoop succeeds when it yields center stage to the subject its director knows best: himself. Even at the age of 70, Allen can still capture your attention with his outrageous anxieties and gleefully nihilistic vaudeville. His banter with Johansson offers a low-wattage version of the urbane repartee that illuminates the male-female detective comedies Allen is out to imitate, but the roles are as ill-fitting to their players as dowdy glasses to Johansson’s face. It’s pathetic to see a beautiful woman pretend to be ordinary, and it’s shameful for such a talented filmmaker to shy away from exercising his strengths. What it leads to is dull film with a few small pleasures, but almost neurotic in its self-repression.

Despite the waves of empathy and adoration Johansson drew from young cinephiles and intellectuals with her minor-key performance in Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, it remains to be seen whether she can summon performances to match her ascendant stardom. Without a doubt, she’s lost here, wandering unconvincingly through her paces as Allen’s cross between Nancy Drew and Hildy Johnson. It’s hard not to wonder whether her career would be better suited if she let her body do the talking instead of a voice that, for all its husky allure, she has yet to master.

One of the more interesting developments of this film is Allen’s newfound role as father figure to his female lead. His critics have been happy to take the opportunity to underline their relief that he’s finally relinquished a romantic role (Mahnola Dargis of The New York Times damns Scoop with the faint praise that it has less pawing of young women than any Allen film in years). While we all need a good vent from time to time, it would be nice to see such bile saved for the people who deserve it, like the cynical liars and swill merchants who brought us the crime against enlightenment known as The DaVinci Code. A harmless old comedian playing out his fantasies seems such small game in comparison. Raising the blunt power of the press against so slight a film seems as cruel and unnecessary as robbing children of the pleasures they find in Splendini’s simple magic tricks.

Clearly, Brandon Flowers has loosened up. Dropping the shield of affected irony clutched by so many American rock singers, The Killers’ frontman shows he’s found the courage to break ranks and—avert your eyes, indie fans—write a big, anthemic rock song.

“When You Were Young” (real player, windows media) opens with an obnoxious riff that would easily fit in on Coldplay’s X&Y, then goes on to unfurl a Springsteen-like narrative of young love (”We’re burning down the highway skyline”) that culimates in a surging chorus and, no joke, a “10th Avenue Freeze Out” style guitar breakdown.

I’m excited anytime I see a musician mature out of the neurotic constrictions of indie rock, but, epic as it may be, this new song isn’t totally doing it for me. I enjoy a few of the elements, but it’s lacking the tight arrangements required to make an arena-rock act work (ex. any U2 song). The patchwork of Springsteenarian cliches doesn’t coalesce into an affecting story. The percussion lacks the necessary drive. And the all-important rising tension, obviously meant to climax with the slow build into the final chorus, isn’t positioned to land with the necessary force.

Regardless, it’s still encouraging to hear a young rock band growing in this direction. Putting aside the relative merits of The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, The White Stripes or whoever else, most of the hit indie bands in recent years seem to have arrived already full-formed, oftentimes sounding more predictable than the mainstream acts they’re supposed to be outpacing. The fresh thing about The Killers is that they seem to possess at least some potential to push beyond what they already are. Here’s hoping they can do it. I’m rooting for them.

I’m also rooting for another keen Stuart Price remix in keeping with his take on “Mr. Brightside.” If anybody can weave this thing into gold, it’s our man Jacques Lu Cont. So, Stu, if you’re out there, I think this could really work. Rebuild the song about the big hook and the bouncing drums and brief guitar build around 1:30. Then stitch the percussion around 2:20 into a more conclusive climax. Maybe cut that Jesus line. And, really, while we’re at it, can you just talk these guys into making dance records? Life would be so much better for everybody.

Less history than rehabilitation, Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos, a glitzy new documentary about America’s first, unsuccessful stab at a professional soccer league, is more about introducing a source of pride to America’s fledging soccer community than documenting the league’s short, unprofitable existence. By recasting the millions squandered on aging talents by media tycoon Steve Ross as the work of a committed visionary (photos of his face appear with a frequency usually reserved for dictators and religious icons) and puffing up petty indulgences and short-sighted decisions by players and managers alike as the type of European capriciousness proper to professional football, the movie aims to establish a new mythology; one that anoints the Cosmos as the lodestar of America’s gradually increasing interest in the world’s game. It’s a tenuous thesis, but the vintage footage and soul soundtrack do make for some enjoyable viewing—although a mindful viewer will wonder why Matt Dillon, our kindly narrator, needs to keep reminding the audience of what a good time it’s having.

In his adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s “A Scanner Darkly,” the director Richard Linklater has made a considerable achievement simply by conjuring images otherworldly enough to suit Dick’s arrhythmic work. By recasting reality in an eerie, hallucinogenic haze, Linklater has set the stage perfectly to play out Dick’s dark vision of a not-too-distant future where drug addiction and the technology of the police state have overtaken American society.

It was all done using a technique called rotoscoping. After a scene is shot with a conventional camera, the stock is loaded onto a computer where graphic artists create animations by tracing over the footage. In the days before computers, a projection machine — named, of course, the rotoscope — projected live footage onto a screen for the animator to trace by hand. Back then its primary use came as a reference tool, an aid for animators to help simulate complex movements like Prince Charming’s dance steps in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Linklater caught a lot of attention five years ago when he put the new digital version of the technique (the software is called Rotoshop) to use in his film Waking Life. His animators did more than just another trace job, instead splashing Linklater’s shots onto their digital canvas and morphing the mundane everyday into a fluid dreamscape where our narrator’s fantasies and longings could seamlessly float alongside his very lifelike movements.

Sadly, the frontier Waking Life opened has gone largely unexplored. Maybe the stoner philosophy at its center obscured the film’s achievements, or maybe other people don’t see the form’s potential as I do, but, for whatever reason, Linklater’s use of animation’s dazzling new vocabulary failed to inspire other directors to try and say something serious; the only significant followers coming from the world of advertising, where a brokerage house and an automotive company picked up on the technique to give their products a fresh, eye-catching look.

But, for all its sheen, Linklater’s animation turns out to be just as dependent on his characters as his best conventional work (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset), which, for all its visual verisimilitude, has always hinged success on the ability of his actors to connect with the audience’s empathy and compassion. As engaged and entranced as we might be by the hynopotic visual lure of Linklater’s images, they remain, tragically, centered on the image of one Keanu Reeves, a man with all the emotive range and timbre of a slightly overcooked brisket. While he certainly succeeds in emitting the abundance of one-liners Linklater’s script provides with his signature quzzical grunt, sometimes even a well-delivered “Whoa!” just isn’t enough, as the Matrix sequels and whole string of vapid romantic comedies have certainly proved.

Instead the film belongs to the supporting cast, especially Robert Downey Jr., whose heady performance as the paranoid drugdealer Barris thrills with its tempering of Hunter S. Thompson’s addled-yet-poised diction with Downey’s own cool California arrogance. It’s a shame that he and his fellow costars do not play a more central role. This is particularly the case with Rory Cochrane, who turns in a wild-eyed performance as an out-of-control addict. His early scenes, especially those in interaction with Downey, spark with a energy utterly lacking in Reeves, whose performance can be summed up by the many unimaginative and tedious reverse shots of his inert visage. The same lament should be made for Winona Ryder, who surprises by managing to express more of the confusion, despair and ambivalence meant to suffuse the screen’s every pixel in one scene than her leading man can in 100 minutes. Whoa, indeed.

I walked down near Ford’s Theater this afternoon to catch The War Tapes at E Street Cinema. The concept is simple. Along with the rifle, assault pack, body armor and other gear issued to the typical American soldier, five members of a National Guard unit from New Hampshire set for deployment to Iraq were equipped with a less conventional tool: the hand-held video camera.

The embedded journalist is one of the American military’s notable, if not altogether significant, innovations of the Iraq War. The unkempt scribe in khakis and shades, mail-order helmet askance, packing his bags and enlisting to travel with an individual unit, ceding independence in return for access. If softening coverage was, as many allege, the Pentagon’s intent, then this film should theoretically be an even greater realization of its mission. The bothersome vulture is disposed with entirely. Where the embedment program would cast the journalist as soldier, The War Tapes casts the soldier as journalist.

But the result isn’t the upbeat infomercial we’ve come to expect from the White House and the Pentagon’s civilian leadership. It’s a ground-level chronicle of the frustrations, dashed hopes and anxieties that have, unfortunately, come to characterize the occupation. Arriving for their tour well after the fall of Baghdad, our guides aren’t witness to much in the way of valor, or even combat. Instead it would seem that they spend most of their days sheparding contractors and support staff through a minefield of improvised explosives amid the palpable unease of the natives. Measuring success proves as elusive as understanding the enemy, whose appearances are limited to a few gruesome bodies strewn by the side of the road after a frenetic spasm of automatic gunfire.

Cynicism pervades the barracks, eventually afflicting even the once idealistic Michael Moriarty, a husband and father who rushed to New York after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and who, like many Americans, earnestly viewed the invasion as an unavoidable challenge imposed by the destruction of that day. He was so inspired by what he saw at Ground Zero, he says, that he was moved to leave his family behind and follow the president’s call to action. By the end of their tour, the common sentiment among the soldiers treats the war not as a benevolent, if flawed, liberation, but instead a brutish power grab in the war of all against all. Power and money is what war has always been about, Stephen Pink says after he’s returned home to Cape Cod, and his hope is that at least some regular Americans get to taste the profits from this one.

The majority of the venom we hear from the soldier’s lips isn’t directed at insurgents or Iraqis, but instead the American contractors Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton that has been outsourced billions of dollars worth of logistics work. The most frequent target is vice president and former Halliburton executive, Dick Cheney, who the soldiers routinely lampoon as a war profiteer.

And after the relief and joy of their safe homecoming fades away, the story turns grim again, as the soldiers struggle to overcome physical and psychological infirmities and grapple with the challenge of reconnecting with family and friends who are largely unable to relate to their distant experiences.

The recipient of nearly universal critical praise, having scored points for “not being preachy” and offering an “unvarnished” view of the war, it’s worth remembering that, as the Village Voice’s Michael Atkinson emphasizes in the lone dissent I could find among major critics, there’s one very important point of view that’s been left out of this and most other visual depictions of the war, the Iraqi perspective. Indeed, as Atkinson observes, although I will add the exception of a Lebanese soldier who speaks Arabic and strives to connect with the natives, the voices in the film almost exclusively “disdainfully observe the indigenous populace from a distance as if they were hyenas on the veld.”

While the American psyche may yearn to withdraw and nurse its wounds after the shock of the Iraq experience, can this country truly understand the global challenge issued on Sept. 11 or the responsibilities it accepted when it invaded Iraq simply by looking in the mirror?

I strolled over to the Black Cat on 14th Street last Friday night to catch the Swedish folk singer Jose Gonzalez. Thanks to a few good words from the indie press and his inclusion in a popular Sony Bravia advertisement, Jose, whose parents are Argentinean, seems to be making inroads in the States this year. The crowd was larger than I expected and surprisingly keen to see a frumpy European diddle around on his guitar for a most of an hour.

I dig Jose’s whisperish, Nick Drake-like sound, but his original compositions often leave me wanting more. I’m a melody guy. I like my songs sharp with personality and emotion. And most of Jose’s tunes are, like Drake’s, brief, elliptical and abstract. That’s why I think his strongest performances come when he covers other songs. The Sony ad is a remake of a song called “Heartbeats” by another Swedish band, The Knife. And, like his excellent covers of Kylie Minogue’s “Hand on you Heart” (for a little fun, compare the original video to the cover) and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” it succeeds wonderfully in bringing out the melancholy and dispair hidden in an otherwise upbeat song.

The Springsteen cover is, I think, particularly fitting. Despite its anthemic chorus, “Born in the USA” is hardly a celebration of America. By removing the refrain and unplugging the amplifiers, Jose emphasizes the lyric’s narrative of a Vietnam vet who returns home alienated from society and scarred by war. Click here to download an .mp3 recording of Jose’s recent live performance.