Yoshinori Kobayashi

Here is a column I wrote in 1997 about the “comfort women” issue, which was still relatively new at the time. In light of the controversy sparked by Mayor Toru Hashimoto’s comments, I thought it might be instructive to see how the matter was discussed 15 years ago.

Several groups are now trying to prevent junior high school students from learning about the women who were brought to the front lines to provide sex for Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. These groups object to the inclusion of such information in government-approved textbooks, though they don’t deny that the system existed. Because the euphemism ianfu (comfort women) is going to be used in the books to describe such women—thus reinforcing the implication that they were providing a service—the only logical reason for opposing the inclusion is to keep sex out of the classroom.

On December 2, the Group to Make New History Textbooks held a press conference at a hotel in Tokyo and claimed that merely mentioning “comfort women” in textbooks would have a harmful affect on impressionable adolescent minds, a naive assertion, to be sure. The media bombards junior high school students with sex—much of it violent—and an innocent-sounding term like “ianfu” mentioned in passing in a dull history textbook will not likely cause a mass outbreak of guilt and self-recrimination. The group, however, has a larger purpose, which is to revise what it feels is the “masochistic” reading of its modern history foisted on Japan by the West.

Cartoonist Yoshinori Kobayashi is a member of the group and participated in the press conference. In fact, he reported what went on there in the January 15 issue of the semi-monthly magazine Sapio, in installment #33 of his cartoon-essay “Shin-Gomanism Declaration.” Goman means “arrogance,” and the cartoon is pure, unabashed polemic.

Kobayashi’s job is to be provocative and therefore he has a vital role to play in Japan, where provocateurs are rare and the status quo becomes more threatening every day, as shown by last week’s steep drop in the Nikkei. His cartoons have covered burakumin discrimination, the AIDS scandal (which he was instrumental in bringing to the attention of the media), and the Aum case.

His main stylistic trait is caricature. He draws himself as a handsome young man who has the mettle to stand firm on his convictions no matter what, while his enemies are depicted unflatteringly. The cartoon used to run in the magazine Spa, but Kobayashi withdrew it because he objected to what he felt was the magazine’s wishy-washy policy of simply printing both sides of an issue without taking a stand itself.

In the October 9 installment, Kobayashi admitted that Japan’s intentions in the Pacific War were imperialistic. He goes on to say, however, that no amount of apologizing will ever quell the justified anger of Korea and China, so it’s pointless to do so. He prefers to honor the “old men” who sacrificed their lives to fight in what they believed was a war to rid Asia of European and American dominance. In one box, he glares out at the reader, saying, “You can’t judge these men by the values of the present age and those of foreign countries.” Kobayashi sees himself as courageously defending a “silent minority” that has no one to speak on its behalf and which is demonized whenever the media shows videotape of former comfort women weeping hysterically.

In a subsequent installment, Kobayashi sets forth his belief, shared by revisionists in general, that these comfort women were not coerced by the military, but, instead, were either professional prostitutes protected under Japanese law (prostitution was legal in Japan at the time) or women who weren’t prostitutes but, nevertheless, knew what they were getting into.

Last Friday, Kobayashi appeared on TV Asahi’s late night discussion program “Igiari” (Objection). Two men and two women who support the comfort women’s claims challenged Kobayashi on specific assertions he made in “Shin-Gomanism,” namely that 1) the “comfort stations” were solely the work of private agencies, 2) the Japanese military observed the human rights of the comfort women, 3) the only point worth discussing is whether the military “forced” these women into prostitution, 4) there is no evidence that any were actually forced into prostitution by the military, and 5) soldiers who raped civilians were punished by their superiors.

The hour-long discussion touched on many details and points of contention without ever arriving at any conclusions. The two sides could never agree on the definitions of terms like “force,” “trafficking,” and, especially, “rape” (a word the Japanese media is uncomfortable with, anyway). But what mainly prevented meaningful engagement was Kobayashi’s blanket assertion that no objective evidence exists to prove that these women were forced into prostitution.

Kobayashi’s main weapon was GHQ testimony taken from comfort women who described fair treatment and favorable working conditions. His point was that the allies who were looking for evidence to prosecute Japan further found this instead. Obviously, he didn’t see the documentary about comfort women that NHK aired on December 28, and which showed actual U.S. Army documents of interviews with Korean comfort women left behind on the Philippines at the close of the war. Those documents told quite a different story.

His selective evidence is more problematic than the comfort women’s lack of corroboration. As with American WWII veterans’ insistence that any discussion of Hiroshima must conclude that the dropping of the atomic bomb was necessary, the revisionists’ demand for solid evidence obscures a more complex and disturbing set of truths. The revisionists say that the comfort women’s testimony would never stand up in court, but it doesn’t need to. The world believes them because, knowing what the world knows about the behavior of men and governments during times of war (as well as, to borrow Kobayashi’s logic, the “values” of an earlier age), there is no reason not to believe them. And regarding the question of who ran the prostitution operations, the military or private enterprise, it doesn’t matter: Japan was under martial law at the time.

The problem is that gomanism recognizes no middle ground. It is effective for fighting monoliths like the Health and Welfare Ministry or hypocrisy as practiced by Shoko Asahara. But it is inappropriate for dealing with a complicated issue like the Pacific War. It is especially inappropriate for emotion-charged issues like the sex slave controversy. In Kobayashi’s mind, accepting the comfort women’s accusations is automatically a betrayal of the “old men” who fought in the Pacific War. At one point, he asked the panel in frustration, “Why do you insist on making your ancestors criminals?” It is impossible to honor both the “old men” and the comfort women, so one or the other must be discredited.

He also accused the panel of “going to a great deal of effort to find documents that make me look bad,” meaning that the vehemence of the panel’s position somehow makes their methods suspicious. Arrogance is born of pride, and Kobayashi has admitted that any opposition to his views will be taken personally and dealt with unsparingly. This kind of extremism comes off better in his cartoons, where it looks candid and gutsy, than it does in debate, where it seems petulant. By the end of the hour, he was accusing his opponents of “repression,” as if they were censors.

Toshiaki Endo, who is in charge of the LDP’s English proficiency proposal, though he admits his English is pretty bad.

Here’s this week’s Media Mix, which is about the government’s proposal to boost English language proficiency, mainly through utilization of TOEFL. Near the end of the column I mention the “parochial” nature of Japan’s world view, a stereotype I normally try to avoid. Japan is no more insular than any other country, but what I hope would be more widely discussed is how language learning or at least exposure to it affects this general outlook. I don’t want to give the impression that a more universal attitude automatically accompanies acquisition of a second language, or that non-acquisition indicates small-mindedness. But I do think the more you know about anything in the world the more likely you are to understand why people do the things they do. What was apparent from Tokyo Governor Naoki Inose’s faux pas regarding the city’s Olympic bid  is that his understanding of Islam and international relations in general isn’t fully formed. How much of that misunderstanding could have been cleared up by a greater command of English is impossible to know, but in this particular circumstance in his own mind he was partially shielded by his use of Japanese, since afterwards he used the tired defense that he had been misunderstood by his interlocutors. That doesn’t wash any more, and had he been more conversant in English he might have been more circumspect with his language, which, in turn, would have made him question his logic. In next week’s column, which will be about Inose, I want to talk about the way people in the public eye tend to get a pass from the media with regard to these kinds of verbal screwups simply because reporters don’t challenge them at the time they’re made. Inose made intemperate remarks to the New York Times because he is used to saying whatever he likes. People who speak a second language are always cognizant that they could be making mistakes. That may sound like a small technicality when it comes to developing a global outlook, but it’s also a part of the process that can’t be discounted.

Another aspect of English language learning that needs to be addressed is motivation. The Gendai article I reference makes the case that some people who strive to become fluent in English take on elitist, even superior airs, and while I think this says more about Gendai’s insecurity than anything else, there is something to be said for it. Many Japanese people I know have told me they learned English just to be different from everyone else, and it wasn’t until they started using the language on a daily, utilitarian basis that they overcame this “complex,” as my partner calls it. As anyone who has read the Bible knows, “pride” has many manifestations, and it may not be a good reason to learn a language since there will always be a competitive component to one’s usage. In one of the articles I read a Japanese scholar commented that the most sobering realization he had about English language acquisition was when he went abroad and talked to students “from developing countries” whose English was perfect even though English wasn’t a required language in their native lands. He understood then that nobody really cared that his own English ability had been acquired through long hours of hard work and study; but instead of feeling humbled, he felt liberated. Knowing English doesn’t automatically make you a better person, but it gives you one more tool to become one.

Like father like superstar

In his newest sci-fi blockbuster, After Earth, Will Smith plays a man who is incapacitated during a crash landing on earth some thousand years into the future and in order to survive he has to send his own son, played by his real life son Jaden Smith, on some perilous errand to retrieve a vital object through a landscape that has “evolved to kill humans.” Apparently, homo sapiens destroyed earth back in the 21st century and had to relocate to some other planet and earth isn’t looking to let bygones be bygones. At least that’s what I got from the 16 minutes of footage that was shown to the media prior to the press conference for the movie in Tokyo. It consisted of the two existing trailers spliced with three complete scenes from the movie. Smith is uncharacteristically stoical in the role. He treats his son as a soldier rather than his progeny, and that seems to be one of the hoary themes of the film, that these two will by the end learn to be father-and-son rather than commander-and-subordinate. That theme also carried over to the press conference, where the Smiths parodied their public image as a way of demonstrating that it wasn’t as serious as we might imagine.

No one sells himself as a movie star as aggressively as Will Smith, not even Tom Cruise, whose self-image is so circumscribed that he seems to have every response scripted. Smith wants you to know how much he enjoys his job and isn’t scared to wing it if it thinks it will endear him to the people who count, and here the people who count were the Japanese press, delighted to be privy to his every awkward ad lib. With Jaden he had a practiced straight man, and while their forced-funny banter was diminished by the dry translating of the interpreter, the audience relaxed immediately and didn’t seem to mind the lack of substance and Will’s penchant for pointless hyperbole. One guy sitting in back of me was a little too relaxed, letting out a studied guffaw at every gag.

“About two-and-a-half years ago, Jaden was working on The Karate Kid with Jackie Chan,” the elder Smith explained in response to the first question, “and I saw how much fun they were having working together, and I was jealous. I said, ‘Jackie, that’s my son.’ So I started thinking about a project that we could do together, and it started out in the present day about a father and son, and then one day I just had the inspiration of putting it a thousand years in the future, and from there I called M. Knight [Shyamalan] on his birthday and he said, ‘I don’t want birthday wishes, pitch me a movie,’ and I was just in the middle of it and I pitched him After Earth, and he loved it from that point.” It should be noted that Jaden Smith, who is now 14, made his feature film debut as Will Smith’s son in The Pursuit of Happyness in 2006, so it’s not like the pair had never worked together before. Maybe Will meant that it lookd like fun to do a totally frivolous piece of Hollywood product, since Pursuit was more or less serious, being about homelessness and all.

Or maybe it’s because Jaden has become more of an actor? “He’s gotten a lot more command and control of his emotional spaces,” Will said about his son’s skills. “When he was younger he had a very difficult time with emotional scenes because he would feel it so much that it took him a long time to get back to himself . What I saw on After Earth was that he was getting a lot more command of the trauma and emotion of being able to deliver a difficult scene without carrying it with him for the rest of the day.” In other words, he’s learned to turn it off, which is sort of a hallmark of Hollywood acting anyway, so I guess that means Jaden has arrived. As far as what the younger Smith learned about his father during the shoot, it had more to do with commercial exigencies. “I realize now how much he’s driven, and how serious he is about getting a movie done and how he wants it to be perfect because that’s what will be on the screen forever. You can never take it off, and all of us can see that.”

A different theme in the movie, environmentalism, brought out the platitudes, thus indicating there wasn’t much to ad lib when it came to the touchy subject of the fate of the earth. “Jaden’s generation is going to have a much more serious, much more difficult problem than our generation,” Will said, and then, catching his own seriousness, joked to the male reporter who brought the subject up, “You’re probably a little bit older than me, so it might be less of a problem for you.” Jaden, who had learned how to handle a press conference well by now, still wasn’t going to take any chances. “This movie is a big wake up call for a lot of people out there,” he said. “I really believe that after seeing this movie we can all make a difference.”

Jaden was honored more directly by Sony Pictures with the presence of several dozen junior high school students who had been bussed in just for the occasion. He jumped off the dias and ran over to the uniformed kids, high-fiving and hugging them, saying “how’s it going” in a loud voice that was spontaneous without being disruptive. He was learning fast from the master, and, in fact, one could often pick up a note of rivalry between father and son: Who would steal more hearts? More pointedly: Who would get the last word?

When one boy asked in English which scene was the “hardest” and which scene was the “happiest,” the Smiths concurred on the former, which was one of the scenes in the footage shown earlier, an argument between their two characters that ended with a typical bit of adolescent defiance. “As much as it’s acting you have to be careful about carrying the negative emotions,” Will said, belaboring the point. “After that scene, you get to the end of the day and as a parent get an overwhelming urge to put your costar on punishment.” However, the second part of the question flew over their heads until the emcee clarified that what they boy meant was which scene was the most “enjoyable” to do. Again they both agreed at the expense of the movie. The press was asked not to reveal too much of the plot, but for some reason nobody bothered to tell the Smiths that. “We were almost never together,” Jaden said. “And anyway there weren’t too many happy scenes, until the very end.”

Though some of the questions did try to focus on the film and one person actually seemed interested in knowing what M. Night Shyamalan’s contribution was (a concept called “ghosting,” apparently, which sounds like a Jedi Knight trick), Will inevitably hijacked the p.c. “So what was it like working with your father?” he asked in a stentorian announcer’s tone. Jaden, struggling to find a humorous egress from this potential cul-de-sac, kept his cool for as long as possible and went along with the joke, but after several questions he had to bring dad down a notch. “As you can see in the poster, I have the weapon, you don’t. I get to kill stuff, and you’re just watching me do it. I’m like the game and you’re the remote control.”

“That’s good,” Will said, more impressed than the media, who couldn’t make the right connections quickly enough. But dad got the last word anyway. “I mean, I was there. And I got most of the money.” It was the big laugh he’d been looking for all along.

Old Sock
-Eric Clapton (Bushbranch/Universal)
Electric
-Richard Thompson (Proper/P-Vine)
Though he’s still God to some boomers, Eric Clapton hasn’t tried very hard to maintain his edge as a rock artist or even a blue guitarist since…well, he quit heroin. Few popular musicians will ever be able to claim responsibility for something like Layla, the greatest rock guitar album ever made, and this collection of covers, mostly done in a relaxed reggae style, appears to represent what Clapton appreciates as he nears his eighth decade and moves away from the stresses of pleasing a major label. Even those of us who would still pay money to see him play the blues live have a hard time understanding what he gets out of sit-down acoustic versions of Gershwin and Kern, or sappy duets with that other nostalgia-beater, Sir Paul. The sunny sleeve photo and smiley vocals offer answers: the comfort of retirement. Even “Angel,” a dark song by a writer, J.J. Cale, whom Clapton has a close affinity for, is breezier than Montego Bay at sunset. Tempos never accelerate past a trot, and the reggae breaks and backing vocals keep a lid on the energy level. He even adds a children’s chorus to “Every Little Thing,” one of only two originals on the record. However, the other one, “Gotta Get Over,” is a loping blues, and if the vocal growl doesn’t sound lived in enough, the guitar work retains the magic touch that still makes him peerless as an instinctive stylist; and his tribute to Gary Moore, a slow burner done in a cocktail jazz groove, proves that whatever he’s lost in youthful fervor he makes up for with ingrained facility. No one has to try so little to deliver so much. Richard Thompson, another singer-guitarist entering his twilight, has the reputation of trying too much, though as conscientious as he is as both an instrumentalist (he still practices two hours a day) and a songwriter (no one conveys misanthropy with as much verve and variety) he has tread water creatively since his strong run of solo albums in the early 90s. After a decade of mostly acoustic records necessitated by a touring regimen that can’t afford a band, Thompson jumps back in with an album that wears its rock pedigree on its cover. Recorded in Buddy Miller’s Nashville studio, Electric is effusive and brisk, though it doesn’t have the presence of his last album, an original set recorded in front of an audience. That record was mostly electric even if the songs themselves didn’t always lend themselves to the added voltage. The new songs have been designed for maximum volume and rhythmic concision, resulting in a few numbers that nag as incessantly as a Carly Rae Jepsen couplet; and the playing is as knottily compelling as ever. Only time will tell if this collection keeps longer than the last few. The problem with being a serial over-achiever is that no one expects less from you.

The 20/20 Experience
-Justin Timberlake (Sony)
Justin Timberlake can do anything he wants even if he’s made his reputation doing exactly what people want him to do, so it must have taken nerve to release ten new songs averaging six minutes each. The 20/20 Experience contains radio-ready melodies galore, but there’s no single cut a profit-motivated FM station would play if it were by anyone but JT. The added lengths incorporate clever intros and codas that flip the purviews into new territories—a greasier tempo change for “Pusher Love Girl,” a Philadelphia International prelude for “Suit & Tie.” And while sex is always in the air, JT eschews come-ons for playful turn-ons; the atmosphere is personable without losing that pumping propulsion R&B hardbodies insist upon. If JT’s oft-wielded falsetto seems to be covering up a lack of vocal originality, he uses it rhythmically rather than texturally. It’s pop that really pops.

The Invisible Way
-Low (Sub Pop/Traffic)
A Midwestern band more famous for their subdued sound than their songs, Low has finally hired a producer sympathetic to the cause, Jeff Tweedy, whose sullen Americana tendencies elevate rather than reduce Alan Sparhawk’s spare miserablism. Some listeners will find the prospect daunting, but Tweedy has had enough experience translating his own depression into inviting music to understand that Sparhawk’s uniqueness as a performer can’t be boiled down to words and chords. The reverbed piano on “So Blue” poses the possibility of redemption, pushing the twinned vocals of Sparhawk and Mimi Paker into the domain of hope so at odds with the lyrics. Even the gentler numbers benefit from the artificial crispness, which clarifies whatever feelings are on display. “Feeds my passion for transcendance,” sings Parker on the truly transcendant “Holy Ghost,” a song so charged with the need to express that you forget it’s about despair.

Bloodsports
-Suede (Imperial)
When future historians argue over when Britpop formally began, not a few will stump for Suede’s 1993 debut, though the band’s subsequent output saw them losing ground to more consistent groups. Ten years after their last original album and several records into leader Brett Anderson’s contemplative solo career they release this surprisingly vital reunion effort, thus handing their critical contingent something with which to press their case. Though the dripping dissipation in the lyrics indicates a desperate attempt to recapture past glories, the music gains from guitarist Richard Oakes’ sabbatical from trying to come up with the kind of soaring melodies Suede was famous for. Consequently, there are more of them, and I myself will advocate they’re sturdier than any they’ve played since that first album. Maybe it’s too late to come out from under Bernard Butler’s shadow, but it’s never too late to shore up your legacy.

Mata Ashita Ne
-Biidoro (& Records)
Since 2000 this indie power trio has released four albums of delicately rendered emo rock, a resume that doesn’t prepare you for the thundering confidence of “Kujira no Hankaiten,” the six-minute opener on their latest record. Behind Takashi Aoyagi’s searing guitar and clipped, ridiculous vocals is a rhythm section to rival Crazy Horse, not to mention the kind of choral input few Japanese bands ever attempt. The cut is such a startling artifact you immediately play it again to make sure you weren’t hallucinating. The rest of the record follows the band’s usual m.o.—meandering melodies and jokey, stream-of-consciousness poetry—but when Aoyagi gets hold of a particularly emotive idea he lets the guitar talk, often with violent results. The effort to maintain a measure of idiosyncratic cred can undermine the songs’ melodic integrity, but the struggle between immediacy and calculation makes it all worth exploring.

Shaking the Habitual
-The Knife (Brille/Pachinko)
The title of the formidable Swedish sister-brother act’s fourth album provides more information than we need to know. At 78 minutes (98, if you buy the 2-disc deluxe edition), Shaking the Habitual comes across as a long self-exorcism, and in the effort to stay outside their established electronic comfort zone the duo strains against what some would call their better musical impulses. But by eliminating anything deemed conventional they are left with a mad tribal urgency and Karin Dreijer’s animalistic vocal affectations. Though not as accessible as their previous best-seller, this one is actually more addictive and, to put it plainly, better suited to dancing. The monumental “Full of Fire” contains a full album’s worth of interesting ideas, and just because they throw them in your face without regard for development it doesn’t make them any less appealing. Primitivism, it would seem, abhors a habit.

Girl Talk
-Kate Nash (Hostess)
After a debut that earned her favorable comparisons to Lily Allen and a second record that earned nothing of the kind, this clever Brit chucks the studied irreverence for the hardcore type, with a collection of ravers that prove when in doubt just bang out some power chords. Since Nash is still clever she understands her ability to speak truth to male entitlement need not be diminished. “I made a deal with death,” she purrs on the Ronettes-meets-Bikini Kill centerpiece smoker as a means of explaining how the fearless rush to oblivion that is youth’s prerogative can still apply to someone as canny as her. If she tries on too many outre getups (“Rap for Rejection,” “Lullaby for an Insomniac”) it only goes to show she still has the wherewithal to be a positive force in popular music. Let’s hope she doesn’t get married before that happens.

A Love Surreal
-Bilal (eOne/Victor)
Though the reclusive Bilal identifies with the current R&B crowd, his methodologies and sensibility recall classic-era Prince. It’s not just the funky undercurrents that flow through all his songs, but the conscious effort to mold and carve his voice into shapes it wouldn’t normally take on; and songcraft that uses the studio as its main instrumental ingredient. A Love Surreal is so insularly produced it doesn’t even feature guests, though given how often he appears on other people’s records he certainly has friends in high places. Maybe it’s because the vibe is jazzier than R&B mavens would feel comfortable with—hip-hop is notably absent. If surreal love is the theme, he still takes an occasional peak out of his window. The nervous, off-tempo “Back to Love” takes in the entire workaday world as a rationale to get away from it. That’s not surreal, it’s downright radical.

Wing Beat Elastic
-Mike Keneally (Exowax/MSI)
A former member of his childhood hero Frank Zappa’s last band and something of a legend among serious rock musicians in Southern California, Mike Keneally teamed with XTC’s Andy Partridge last year for Wing Beat Fantastic, a one-off album of quirky pop highlighted by Keneally’s formidable instrumental capabilities and recording studio acumen. Though Partridge’s sturdy melodies were immediately recognizable, he didn’t play or sing on the album. This follow-up of remixes and alternate takes would seem to appeal only to true fans of either man, but with such painstaking musicians often the process can be just as interesting as the results, and the pop-psychedelic predelictions of the original material assume headier proportions. Guitar solos seep out of the cracks and vocal overdubs overwhelm their masters. I’m not sure the anal retentive Zappa would approve of all this indulgence, but Todd Rundgren surely would be inspired.

Paramore
(Fueled By Ramen/Warner)
The plain cover and eponymous title indicate that America’s most popular emo band is starting over after the contentious departure of Josh and Zac Farro, and while some claim this is the best thing Paramore has ever done it doesn’t change the fact that Hayley Williams is still the undeniable focus—which is what pissed the Farros off in the first place. It might be unfair to co-songwriter Taylor York to describe Paramore as Williams’s solo debut, but it wouldn’t be unfair to say that the album’s success has as much to do with producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen. Keyboards take on the bulk of the labor and that gospel choir on the winning “Ain’t It Fun” probably wasn’t Williams’ idea. This is not to take anything away from the band or the album; but I wonder how faithfully the former will be able to reproduce the latter on stage.

Here’s Willy Moon
-Willy Moon (Universal)
The retro couture and “big label presents” intentions of the packaging are enough to attract attention to this kiwi singer-producer even before you recognize “Yeah Yeah” as that iPod CM song, but it doesn’t accurately represent Moon’s prevailing style, which is 50s R&B stirred up with hip-hop production values. It’s surprising that Jack White looked past those values when he invited him to open his UK tour since White is such a purist, but maybe Moon is more stripped down in concert. The sonic processing compensates for songs that are wholly derivative, but not by much—it says something that by the time you get to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” it sounds more original than any of the true originals that came before it. And does Moon think we’re fooled by titles like “I Wanna Be Your Man”? We weren’t born yesterday.

Comedown Machine
-The Strokes (RCA/Sony)
We never bought the received opinion that said the Strokes were the second coming of the 70s NYC demimonde, and we get the feeling they didn’t either, regardless of what they were trying to accomplish on their first album. They deserve credit for constantly trying to not repeat themselves, but “try” is the operative word here. The disco beats and electronic touches that dominate their new record make the group sound less dissolute than they did on their last two, but with a singer like Julian Casablancas you can never be too peppy. Having tasted solo stardom his arty ambitions here work at cross-purposes to those of his bandmates, waxing laconic while Albert Hammond lays down a staccato funk riff. So while the range of styles is impressive, the execution of each isn’t. They make it sound really hard to be a modern rock band in the ’10s.

Bye Bye 17
-Har Mar Superstar (Cult/Magniph)
Sean Tillman was a minor scandal in the indie rock community about ten years ago after writing several successful songs for the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears and then snagging a record deal with Warners. The Pitchfork crowd called bullshit on his chubby-white-guy-sex-machine shtick and he eventually faded back into the woodwork, releasing only two albums in the interim. Bye Bye 17 proves he’s still got a knack for soul hooks and the voice to deliver them, and maybe it’s his irrepressible need to provoke but the overburdening production doesn’t do him any favors, burying his charms beneath liquid waves of distortion-laden horns and a persistent electric piano. Sometimes, it works, in a mid-60s, car AM radio sort of way, as with the Motown-catchy “Restless Leg” or the Otis-channeling ballad “Rhythm Bruises.” What’s the guy got against being a real star rather than an ironic one?

Sarcasm & Sincerity: Songs I think would sound good on the radio

M1. “Old World,” The Modern Lovers (1973)
An anti-hippie without being a jerk about it, Jonathan Richman was once the self-declared savior of rock’n roll but retreated into innocence and earnestness. In 1973 a rock musician had to have guts to pledge allegiance to his parents.

M2. “The Funky Western Civilization,” Tonio K. (1978)
At one time Tonio K. rivaled Warren Zevon for the title of Los Angeles’s most cynical singer-songwriter, though he made his money writing conventional songs for other artists. The sarcasm on this particular song is timeless, which is not necessarily a good thing considering the subject matter.

M3. “He Never Got Enough Love,” Lucinda Williams (1992)
A pure country song and one of the few Lucinda has co-written (with Betty Elders), “He Never Got Enough Love” utilizes all the cliches of the form but from a different emotional perspective. A man could never have written this song, much less sing it with any credibility.

M4. “What Good Am I Without You,” Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston (1964)
Since this is Motown I’m sure it was played on the radio but I never heard it until the early 70s when I found it on the first Marvin Gaye anthology. I love Tammi Tyrell but Kim Weston was a better duet partner. And that piano is just plain crazy.

M5. “Mistaneek,” Natacha Atlas (1999)
Club music’s most entertaining polymath, Natacha Atlas was raised in Brussels by an English mother and a Sephardic Jew father. She speaks five languages and was a professional belly dancer before joining Transglobal Underground as a singer. I have no idea what she’s singing about here. It could be about God or it could be about sex. Or it could be about both.

M6. “Take a Walk,” Spoon (2001)
Austin’s best indie band became tighter and leaner on their third album, Girls Can Tell, though not as tight and lean as they are now. This two-and-a-half minute tune epitomizes what I want in a radio song: immediate pleasure and a vocal that cuts through titanium.

M7. “Your Old Lady,” Andre Williams & The Sadies (2012)
R&B’s most enduring bullshit artist was 75 when he recorded this song. He should do a duet with Ice Cube. (no link to the song available)

M8. “Dig It,” The Coup (1993)
A proud communist, Boots Riley insists that his politics can’t be separated from his sense of fun. He would refine both his rhetoric and his humor later on, but this opening salvo from his first album is one of the funkiest cuts he ever made. (note: the YouTube clip seems to be the “clean” version)

M9. “Get Ready to Ride the Lion to Zion,” Culture (1978)
I assume that this song was played on the radio in Jamaica when it came out, but I’ve never been to Jamaica.

M10. “El Camino,” Elizabeth Cook (2010)
I understand why Nashville rejects Elizabeth Cook’s songs about “pervy” 70s-obsessed Romeos and the like, but I think if they gave her version of family values a chance they’d learn to appreciate it. Or at least enjoy a good laugh. (note: link is to a live version of the song, not the album version I played)

M11. “Ne Me Fatigue Pas,” Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba (2013)
This is new, and I always think a radio show isn’t complete without one good guitar solo, even when it’s played on the Malian ngoni.

M12. “Talent Show,” The Replacements (1989)
Some say the Replacements could have been the Great American Rock Band if they’d been more serious, but it was the lack of seriousness that made them irresistible; that, and Paul Westerberg’s gift for hooks. This is not their best song, but it captures their unique blend of sincerity and sarcasm better than most. (here’s a live clip from TV where they censor the line “feeling good from the pills we took”)

M13. “The Long Goodbye,” Miranda Lee Richards (2001)
A publicist from Toshiba EMI once called and asked me to write about this song, saying it was going to be a hit in Japan. I never heard it on the radio and Virgin soon dropped Richards. It’s one of those rare songs that benefit from over-production. Her knack for 60s-style melodies (she’s the daughter of San Francisco underground comic artists) is ably served by David Campbell’s arrangement, and I can never get enough of that huge 12-string acoustic guitar sound.

M14. “Locked in Closets,” Solange (2012)
Beyonce’s little sister plays Diana Ross to her own Supremes in a dark club at the end of a long night.

M15. “My Life,” Iris DeMent (1994)
I dare you to listen to this and not feel inadequate to the task of being human.

M16. “Dance With Me,” Iron City Houserockers (1979)
I love Bruce Springsteen and the working class values he stands for, but the experiences he describes in his songs are second-hand. He’s never held a job. The members of this Pittsburgh bar band live the lives he sings about. Springsteen, in fact, is a fan and a friend of leader Joe Grushecky. Their music should have been played to death on the radio, and I have no idea why it wasn’t. (note: can’t find an album version of this song on the web; the link is to a Gruschecky live rendition of the song from a few years ago)

Ek Tha Tiger
Former documentary filmmaker Kabir Khan has become successful in Bollywood with socially charged subjects that don’t necessarily fit the template engineered for the genre. His latest is an espionage thriller. Tiger (Salman Khan) is the Indian intelligence agency’s secret weapon, a killing machine so tireless he has no life outside of work and laments to his superior that he’s never been in love. On assignment in Ireland to keep tabs on an Indian missile scientist who may be trading secrets with Pakistan, Tiger falls in love with the scientist’s student assistant, Zoya (Katrina Kaif), who turns out to be a Pakistani agent. “Of all the countries in the world, you had to fall for a girl from Pakistan,” says Tiger’s colleague. Of course, that’s the point, and the Romeo-Juliet aspects of the relationship don’t get in the way of the action sequences, but there are only two big musical production numbers, and one of them is banished to the closing credit roll. I have no problem with Bollywood taking on touchy themes, but some priorities are sacred. In Hindi and English. (photo: Yash Raj Film Pvt. Ltd.)

Gangster Squad
Any movie with Sean Penn in it is automatically going to recalibrate to his intensity, regardlesss of how small his role is. Though the amount of screen time dedicated to Penn in the big budget ensemble period piece is spare compared to some of the other actors, the movie feels overheated just by his presence, and since Penn is playing real-life 1950s gangster Mickey Cohen he gets to act out in the most uninhibited way. No one does rage as scarily or convincingly. Suffice to say there isn’t much in the way of subtlety in Gangster Squad. In the first scene, Cohen supervises the splitting of a disobedient underling in half as if it were something he had to attend to before dinner, so you can imagine what it’s like when he gets really mad. That tone carries over to the other side of the law, represented by Los Angeles police sergeant John O’Mara (Josh Brolin), who gets introduced in a similarly ultra-violent fashion when he single-handedly invades one of Cohen’s brothels and shoots up the place. Because he’s the only clean cop on the force, no one backs him up and Cohen’s bribes to higher-ups in the department, not to mention the judiciary, guarantees his men are immediately back on the street. The put-upon commissioner (Nick Nolte, whose resemblance to Brolin is a little too close for comfort here) asks O’Mara to assemble a squad of cops who will go after Cohen off the books, meaning the department will disavow their activities. The bunch O’Mara recruits contains one of each Hollywood crime movie type, including two visible minorities (Anthony Mackie, Michael Pena), a veteran Wild West gunslinger (Robert Patrick), and a tech nerd (Giovanni Ribisi), all of whom are stoked to rid L.A. of the Cohen plague by any means necessary, which includes blasting up public spaces. Though writer Will Beall implies some reservations about this strategy, it doesn’t mean director Ruben Fleischer holds anything back during those set pieces when bullets and bodies are flying. The only character with any depth is Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), simply because he goes from insouciantly apathetic about O’Mara’s secret society (“You’re working too hard”) to equally determined to join after a shoeshine boy buys it during one of Cohen’s casual drive-bys. Predictably, the women—Emma Stone’s conflicted moll and Mireille Enos’s helpful wife—are only there as plot thickeners, but the men on both sides of the law are so stubborn you assume their fates were decided at the time of birth; in other words at some script meeting. This is based on whose idea of a “true story”? (photo: Warner Bros. Entertainment)

God Save My Shoes
Once you get past the self-satisfied narration and the upper crust world view, this documentary about women’s obsession with shoes can be quite educational, especially with regards to the appeal of high heels to both the wearer and the observer. The talking heads (feet?) comprise famous names in pop culture, fashion, high society, the arts, and even academia. In the movie’s most cogently presented passage, the evolution of the high heel is traced from Renaissance times to the middle of the 19th century, when men stopped wearing them, to the flapper age, when they became associated with political freedom, and then to the look’s most celebrated phase in the 50s, when even housewives wore heels at home to emphasize a sexually heated femininity that had been cooled during the war years. After feminism lowered heels in the 70s, stilletos made a huge comeback in the 90s, mainly through the influence of Sex and the City. Sex is as central to the story of women’s shoes as commerce, and the bugbear of comfort vs. looks is given its due. In English and French. (photo: Caid Productions Inc.)

Hysteria
Though set in Victorian England and produced by an English company, Hysteria delivers the same battering ram sensibility that characterizes Hollywood historiography. Maybe it’s the quirky subject matter. Dr. Granville (Hugh Dancy) embraces the new theory of germ-laden disease and is dismissed from his hospital job. He lands a position with a gynecologist, Dr. Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), whose hands are famous among London’s housewives for relieving the titular malady, a catch-all phrase for what is essentially sexual frustration. Being younger and handsomer, Granville becomes even more of an attraction, and the work load becomes so heavy he develops a cramp that makes the “massage” ineffective. Though the movie’s hook is Granville’s solution to this problem—the invention of the vibrator, with the help of a rich, layabout inventor friend (Rupert Everett)—its theme is female entitlement as embodied by Dalrymple’s rebellious daughter Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who stumps for women’s suffrage and gives her father’s money to the poor. The romance is automatic and prompts the viewer to take the historical truth of the matter at face value. (photo: Hysteria Films Ltd. Arte France Cinema and By Alternative Pictures)

Killing Them Softly
The Japanese title of this itchy crime noir, Jackie Cogan, inadvertently points the viewer to its source material, George V. Higgins’ novel Cogan’s Trade, and makes him wonder why director/scenarist Andrew Dominik changed it to Killing Them Softly. The apparent answer is that Dominik wanted to use Higgins’ story about a hit man, the aforementioned Cogan (Brad Pitt), assigned to rub out two small-time crooks, for purposes that Higgins could never have imagined, much less countenanced; namely, the state of the union circa 2008, when Barack Obama was elected president. On the surface, the premise is intriguing though the execution becomes more and more strained. The America we see (actually, New Orleans awkwardly filling in for Boston) is derelict and sloppy, like the two ne’er-do-wells (Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot McNairy) hired by a small-time operator to knock off a poker game. This mini-play is the best thing in the movie, a compact drama that moves lithely from the disaffected caustic patter between the two robbers in their car to the extremely tense standoff in the warehouse where the game takes place under the supervision of mob factotum Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta). The less-than-clever idea is that Trattman once engineered a holdup of his own game and that a second sting will automatically place the onus on him, deflecting attention from the real robbers. And while it doesn’t work that way, the reasons have less to do with narrative logic than with crime-noir exigencies: Trattman not only gets worked over in gratuitously gory detail, but the ever more corporate-leaning, faceless organization, as represented by a mousy, unnamed bagman (Richard Jenkins), feels it needs to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, so it hires Cogan to make the necessary whack. Cogan, who knows Marky, disagrees with the assessment and in any case doesn’t want to “kill someone I know,” so he subcontracts Mickey (James Gandolfini), an alcoholic friend who needs the work but can’t break out of his depressive funk long enough to get the job done. I don’t know whether all these elements are presented similarly in Higgins’ novel, but Dominik can’t make them work together in a way that satisfies his thematic intentions, which is to show how crime is America’s business and vice versa. I’m sure if Higgins had such a theme in mind he would have sublimated it without the need for such obvious analogies and statements of purpose. In fact, Cogan says as much by stating baldly, “America isn’t a country, it’s a business. Now give me my money.” That might have been a great line to open the movie with, but Dominik chooses to close with it. Does he think we’re as dumb as those two holdup guys? (photo: Cogans Film Holdings LLC)

The Last Stand
As much of a pushover as he’s been in Hollywood, even Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn’t presume after almost a decade away from movies to be able to return to acting with his old persona in tact. Though he’s outfitted with the requisite terse one-liners and gets to beat the shit out of the bad guy, he acts his age and looks it to boot. Some say he’s grooming himself for a twilight career in the Eastwood mold, and there is a certain similarity in terms of limitations, but it’s difficult to think of Schwarzenegger adapting his meat-truck screen persona to codger roles. Ray Owens, the small town sheriff he plays in this efficient actioner, is about right, at least for now; a guy who was once a big city cop and now just wants to chill in a sleepy Arizona backwater where the worst he has to contend with is an overly entitled mayor and residents a little too fond of their firearms, but, hey, this is America, and nobody understands what Americans like better than this son of Austria. One of the premises of The Last Stand is that guns are readily available at a moment’s notice, so when the army of a deadly Mexican drug kingpin moves in to clear the way for his escape from federal custody, you’ve already got that well-regulated militia the second amendment guarantees, even if none of these stray dogs and weekend warriors probably know how to spell “constitution.” Andrew Knauer’s script is strictly functional, and director Kim Jee-won, in his American debut, knows how to fill it out. Though the FBI, headed by a nervous, bull-headed Forest Whitaker, has spared no expense to get their prisoner from Las Vegas to a nearby penitentiary, the kingpin’s minions execute a brilliantly complex breakout, complete with crane-and-electromagnet and dozens of orange-suited decoys. What’s more, the kingpin (Eduardo Noriega), has arranged for delivery of a kind of super-Batmobile that he plans to drive himself to freedom just so he can show those pussy Feds that he can. The only thing between him and the border is Owens and his ragtag bunch of deputies. The fact that both the drug army and the Feds underestimate this lawman is the movie’s simple but effective dramatic hook, and if it works more credit goes to Kim than to Arnold, who does what he’s told but is diminished by the action set pieces. If the memento mori of post-70s American cinema is the confluence of the internal combustion engine and the automatic rifle, then Kim deserves honorary citizenship. He orchestrates the tension masterfully in a car chase through a cornfield and choreographs the requisite shootout in the middle of town for maximum congency. This is a man who not only knows his High Noon, but his Bullitt, too. He makes Arnold look good, which was not at all guaranteed. (photo: Lions Gate Entertainment)

Lincoln
Though it’s to director Steven Spielberg’s and screenwriter Tony Kushner’s credit that this movie about the passing of the 13th Amendment, which banned slavery, is coherent and entertaining, all eyes (and ears) are on Daniel Day-Lewis, whose portrayal of the iconic 16th president of the United States is mesmerizing not because it’s so truthful (how would we know?) but because it’s so strange. The diction, the stooped gait, the flighty gestures contradict the image we have of Lincoln as a towering Biblical figure of command while at the same time reinventing it for all time. That’s why he deserved the Oscar, and why the movie can’t hope to match the performance. Spielberg’s eagerness to prove how emotionally important the issue was tests the viewer’s understanding of human nature. At the center of the conflict is the need to secure peace. Though Lincoln had just won reelection, his mandate was limited by the public’s exhaustion with the War Between the States. Congress was howling for an end to hostilities as soon as possible, but despite the Emancipation Proclamation, the end of slavery wasn’t guaranteed by law, and it was assumed the Confederacy would force a compromise in return for surrender, so the only way Lincoln saw to abolish slavery once and for all was to pass a constitutional amendment to that effect before the conclusion of the war. That he accomplished this superhuman feat in four months is a dramatic enough fact to obviate the need for holding back on spoilers (though, considering the state of history education in America, it can’t be assumed that the average moviegoer won’t be in suspense as to the outcome), but then the viewer also has loitering in the back of his mind the tragedy that caps this momentous interlude. The only thing to do is dive right into the backroom deals, everyday racism, and cloying Congressional speechmaking, and with the exception of some colorful characters, like Tommy Lee Jones’s radical abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens and James Spader’s crafty lobbyist W.N. Bilbo, they all blend into a chaotic mess, which was probably deliberate but also contradictory to the high moral tone Kushner tries to convey. He gains more on this count with the relationship between Lincoln and his wife, Mary (Sally Field), since it is there that the political becomes personal as Lincoln has followed Mary’s proscription that their son, Robert (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt), not be sent into battle, despite Robert’s belief that he can never face his peers if he doesn’t. When Lincoln discusses destiny with his black servants the movie is forced to confront the reality behind the myth. “I believe you deserve to expect what I expect,” he tells his housekeeper (Gloria Reuben), “and I’ll get used to you.” It may not be what we want to hear from the Great Emancipator and he probably didn’t even say it, but it sounds about right. (photo: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. & Dreamworks Dist.)

Love Is All You Need
Though Hollywood has been good to Danish director Susanne Bier (an Oscar for In a Better World) her tinsel town work hasn’t been as noteworthy as her Danish films. Her latest feels like a halfway measure, an American-style romantic comedy with Danish characters set in a beautiful Italian coastal town, but, thanks to a script by Anders Thomas Jensen, it delivers the usual Bier-ish discomfort. Trine Dyrholm plays a middle aged woman finishing up chemotherapy who discovers her husband’s affair with a younger woman on the eve of their daughter’s wedding. She flies to the nuptials in Italy alone, but in the airport parking lot gets into a fender bender with Philip (Pierce Brosnan), who happens to be the father of the groom and an irritable bastard to boot. Such meet-cute plot devices are de rigeuer and Bier doesn’t mess with the formula, but her strikingly unlikeable supporting characters and their all-too-real inability to do the right thing in the right situation keep the film interesting until the predictable ending, which is all the more affecting for it. In Danish and English. (photo: Zentropa Entertainments29 ApS)

3 Idiots
After it was released in 2009, 3 Idiots became the biggest international box office hit in Bollywood history. What global audiences supposedly found more appealing was the sophomoric gross-out humor suggested by the title, but don’t expect an Indian knock-off of The Hangover. As with most Bollywood stories, this one is manichean, and if the gags scan more easily toward the scatalogical, the sex and bad behavior never stray outside the polite precinct delineated by industry mores. In fact, 3 Idiots is even more didactic than most masala movies. Amir Khan plays Rancho, a iconoclastic undergraduate at the Imperial College of Engineering, one of India’s most exclusive universities. Unlike his fellow students, Rancho questions his teachers, in particular the imperious Professor Viru (Boman Irani), who demands total adherence to a methodology that involves inculcating a spirit of competition among his charges since it is the only way they will succeed in the cutthroat world of technology. Rancho simply believes in the virtue of learning for the sake of knowledge, and is there to improve his understanding of mechanical principles for practical purposes. Viru immediately brands him an “idiot,” which means Rancho’s two best friends, the relatively mediocre but good-hearted Farhan (R. Madhavan) and Raju (Sharman Joshi), are also relegated to also-ran status in the eyes of the faculty and the more ambitious students, including transfer bootlicker Chatur (Omi Vaidya), whose propensity for silent flatulence is one of the film’s more tiresome running jokes. What makes Rancho more than a well-meaning hero is his own penchant for practical jokes, some of which indicate a darker cast to his personality. In one scene, he and his mates crash a wedding reception to get some free food, only to discover it’s for Viru’s daughter. Another daughter, a medical student named Pia (Kareena Kapoor), takes issue with Rancho’s boldness and he, in turn, takes issue with her hypocrisy, a gambit that proves both his integrity and his arrogance, but, of course, Pia is intrigued. For once, the production numbers advance the story, though their folk-poppish attributes, clearly meant to appeal to a cosmopolitan demographic, could alienate Bollywood diehards. And as with a lot of recent, more conscientiously social masala films, the balance between slapstick and melodrama is unstable, especially in one passage where a raunchy song is followed by a jarring suicide. Structurally, the movie works better than it should, since it is told in flashback some ten years after graduation as Farhan and Raju, accompanied by the greedily successful Chatur, search for their old friend and discover something surprising. 3 Idiots isn’t as funny is it thinks it is, or as socially provocative as it could be, but as a compelling story it reaches its destination in one piece. In Hindi and English. (photo: Vinod Chopra Films Pvt Ltd.)

The We and the I
Michel Gondry’s reputation as a commercial film artist with a taste for the absurd is forthrightly tested in this experimental work that reportedly was two years in the making. During that time, the French director hung out with students in a Bronx high school, conspiring to make a film that proposed to capture the rarefied feeling of adolescence in both specific and general terms, the “we” and the “I” of the title. The setting is a public transportion bus that is taking the kids home after the last day of school gets out for the summer. Since the ride lasts the length of the movie, the story skirts the realm of fantasy, but the situations and interactions are real enough. The bullies take their rightful place in the back of the vehicle, a vantage point from which they cast their hurtful arrows at the other cliques—the nerds, the artists, the two openly gay couples. Ethnicity is less of a bond or badge than a sensibility, the willingness to be open and honest or deceitful and deflecting. The overlapping dialogue is distracting at first, but soon storylines take shape on nothing but strands of information: the sweet 16 party that is a point of contention between two best friends and the satellite acquaintances who want to get invited; the remembrance of an embarrassing drunken encounter between two passengers at an earlier party; a strange viral video of a problem boy who isn’t on the bus; a burgeoning accusation of infidelity. Though none of these tales seem dramatic, their interwoven dynamic creates a chaotic forward momentum that holds the viewer’s attention; and with each stop the cast gets smaller, tighter, more focused on two personalities, Michael (Michael Brody), an ostensible bully who eventually cops to his insecurity, and Teresa (Teresa Lynn), a budding draftsman who channels her lack of confidence about her looks into an aggressive neediness that blows up back in her face. Since the script was devised by the cast, nothing can be done about some of the more earnest lines. Likewise, the actors are stiff, especially in the more ensemble-oriented scenes. But there’s more truth here than in a dozen Breakfast Clubs, and it has nothing to do with the inner city milieu, which is actually played down. In the struggle to make sense of their inchoate yearnings, these kids demonstrate how dependent the individual personality is on the group experience. It’s fashionable to berate the herd mentality, but no one creates a persona in a vacuum. Like movie-making itself, it emerges from trial-and-error, and the more painful the process, the more incisive the experience. They don’t call it the formative years for nothing. (photo: Next Stop Prod. LLC)

Welcome to the Punch
Confused by its own impulse to lead the viewer on, this shiny Brit noir could use a good compass. In the opening set piece a detective, Lewinsky (James McAvoy), chases down some night-time bank robbers without backup, getting shot in the leg just before the thieves get away. The leader of the crew, Sternwood (Mark Strong), becomes his obsession over the years, a bad dream he can’t shake because of the chronic pain he has to deal with as a result of the shooting. When Sternwood’s son is arrested for gun-running, Lewinsky and his lover-partner (Andrea Riseborough) assume the gangster will return to London from exile in Iceland and they lay in wait, but the plan is confounded by higher ups who seem to have a secret agenda. Thanks to colorful supporting players like Peter Mullan and Jason Flemyng, the movie resists becoming just another pale imitation of American shoot-em-ups, but gunplay is the only element director-writer Eran Creevy has any interest in; that and the way city streetlights reflect off of moving sleek black sedans. (photo: The British Film Institute)

AFP-Jiji

Here’s this week’s Media Mix, which is about the current administration’s attitude toward the constitution as demonstrated by its handling of the vote disparity issue. This attitude might have met with more criticism from the media if the judiciary were stricter about its own enforcement of constitutional precepts. Maybe I’m making too much of something that doesn’t merit close scrutiny, since a constitution is simply a blueprint for governing and lawmaking. The American constitution included the Bill of Rights, though it should be pointed out that it was an amendment. Those who want to rewrite Japan’s constitution often make the case that the Americans wrote it, which is only partly true, but in any case they use it as an excuse to say they want to make the document more Japanese. Regardless of Article 9′s renunciation of war, these people feel that the present constitution stresses citizens’ rights at the cost of responsibilities, and they want to correct that imbalance, as they see it. The whole point of defining civil rights is to check the power of the state, since the people are sovereign in a democracy, and it is this aspect that the current administration doesn’t seem comfortable with. Last week during a Lower House budget committee hearing, the Democratic Party of Japan’s secretary-general, Goshi Hosono, questioned Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s interpretation of the constitution, in particular the “three principles”: people’s sovereignty, pacifism, and civil rights. Abe said he understood them well and did not plan to change them. But he added that he believed the document should have a fourth principle since in the current charter the citizens “impose limits” on the state’s authority. “We have to include in the constitution the idea of what kind of country we want to make,” he said. Hosono, obviously alarmed by this statement, countered that the purpose of the constitution should be to limit the state’s authority. The real question, then, is do the Japanese people think that the constitution is a satisfactory charter? At the moment the media is convinced that the citizenry supports the Abe administration and so it would be easy for him to change the constitution, but the country simply thinks that Abenomics is worth a try. There’s really no consensus about the constitution. In a recent Kyodo News survey a majority of respondents said that the government should keep the law that stipulates approval of at least two-thirds of the legislature is necessary to change the constitution, which would seem to indicate they aren’t anxious to change it. My feeling, however, is not so much that the people like the constitution, but rather that they don’t think it’s broken enough to warrant fixing.

edit: In the original post there was a typo that said 75 percent of the legislature had to approve a change to the constitution.

Tadami Line

Here’s this week’s Media Mix, which along with another article we posted on our JT blog completes a double this week on public transportation. Though the two pieces address different news stories, both bring up the issue of what sort of obligation private companies have toward the public. The reference to Cerberus Capital, the company that is trying to buy a controlling stake in Seibu, is central to this issue because Cerberus is American and represents a very powerful financial trend of the past forty years. Though the company seems to want to play down the specifics of its reconstruction aims for Seibu, it’s obvious that Seibu itself, not to mention other entities that might be affected by the company’s restructuring ideas, fear the outcome. Several media reported that Cerberus wants to shut down five of Seibu’s smaller railway lines because they are losing money, and this is easy for Japanese people to believe. Just look at the state of public transportation in the U.S. Outside of a few major cities, it has never been less popular, and Amtrak is considered a joke, mainly because it still has to be propped up by the federal government. I remember reading an article in one of the online magazines late last year that described conservative American politicians’ deep-seated hatred for public transportation.

Trains in Japan were originally a mix of public and private lines, but when the government privatized JNR in the late 80s, the public dimension vanished, at least on paper. JNR left billions in debt that the central government (meaning you and me) is still paying off while the various JR entities are now turning a profit. The question of what sort of responsibility private railway companies have toward their patrons becomes more complicated when you realize those companies would have never existed in the first place without public subsidies, especially in those cases, like the Tadami Line, where local residents have no other means of transportation unless they can drive. The background of the railway is instructive. The tracks that eventually became the Tadami Line were built to transport construction supplies to the sites of several hydroelectric dams. When the last of these, the Takogura Dam, was completed, JNR bought the tracks and turned it into the Tadami Line. According to Tokyo Shimbun, the line has always been in the red ever since it became a people moving enterprise, but it was a public entity designed to serve the local people. After JR East took it over, it started looking for an excuse to close it down, and the floods that knocked out bridges in 2011 provided that excuse. JR East just doesn’t want to spend money to repair those bridges. This is the prerogative of a private company, whose mission is supposedly to bring profits to its shareholders. The central government still believes that any public transportation entity, even a privately owned one, must be regulated since its services are vital to the well-being of patrons who depend on it for their livelihoods. In America, that idea now seems old-fashioned, maybe even radical to certain diehard capitalists. In Japan it’s still debated, and it should be. Japanese private railways have done an excellent job of serving the public, particularly in and around the major cities, but one has to wonder how well they would have performed without that public element.

Amok
-Atoms For Peace (Hostess)
Evidence
-John Foxx and The Maths (MSI)
However one interprets the work of Thom Yorke, as either a member of Radiohead or a solitary creative unit, his choice of electronic music over the more conventional electro-acoustical forms deserves more scrutiny since he’s probably done more to promote what is still disparagingly called “electronica” to the masses than any Warp artist or major label hip-hop producer. Though Yorke is ostensibly fronting a band on this project, the listener will likely not register individual performances since one of the hallmarks of electronica is its ironically organic gestalt. No matter how many “players” are participating it sounds programmatic by design; which isn’t to say it sounds artificial, only that it’s more difficult to distinguish the personal affectations that usually constitute collective pursuits. Yorke writes and sings everything here, and if the compositions are more free-form than his Radiohead work, they also lack the intramural tensions that makes Radiohead’s music so compelling, even if AFP’s propulsive rhythms qualify it as more of a dance outfit. As bassist, Flea sports the most recognizable musical mannerisms and provides more melodic distraction than Yorke might be comfortable with, but he isn’t half as funky as he gets with the Chili Peppers, even when exercising his Afrobeat druthers on “Before Your Very Eyes.” The percussion is even less notable for its power than for its textures, suggesting that Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco knew they weren’t hired primarily to keep the beat. What we’re left with is Yorke’s vocals, which despite the uniform wistfulness never fail to engage. It’s not just the flesh-and-blood contrast with the surrounding machine, it’s the effort to break free of the machine, which is the greatest irony of all for an artist who named his solo project after a phrase that attempted to soften the image of the most destructive technology ever invented. Or maybe it isn’t. John Foxx, formerly of Ultravox, is a pioneer of electronic pop, and his new outfit the Maths is more forthrightly analog-sounding than Atoms For Peace, which doesn’t make it any less mechanical, but that was always the point of synth-pop anyway, right? The pioneer of this sort of ghost-in-the-machine style was Peter Gabriel’s Genesis, and if Foxx’s similarly processed diction sounds pretentious it’s also accomplished. The vocals are certainly more impressive than Yorke’s if only because so much care has gone into the multi-tracking. Sometimes it can get ridiculous—the Boris Karloff inflections on the Matthew Dear-assisted “Talk,” for instance—but Foxx starts from a more familar place, the dark recesses of the psyche that so much electronica endeavors to plumb. His methodology is more melodramatic than Yorke’s, indicating a classical approach to art rock. That’s the weird thing about old electronic pop: despite the label it made no claims to pleasure. It was totally caught up in meaning. Blame it on David Bowie if you want to, but when such music succeeds in its aims, it can be thrilling.

Kaleidoscope Dream
-Miguel (RCA/Sony)
By the time 2013 dawned, this mongrel lover man had pulled even with Frank Ocean as the year’s breakout R&B talent, even though Kaleidoscope Dream is his second major label effort. His first was more Prince than R. Kelly, but this one isn’t easy to peg on anyone’s influence, which is why it’s superior, and if it still falls short of Channel Orange it mostly has to do with a lack of lyrical distinction. I don’t mind the pumped up pickup lines, but when the most interesting verses are stolen from the Zombies you have to wonder how hard he tries. He certainly puts more effort in the tracks, which contain so many contrasting sounds and melodies he doesn’t need guests. The album’s most exciting song, “Use Me,” features the artist in a developing vocalese contretemps with himself, as if challenging his own ability to make an impression.

Exai
-Autechre (Warp/Beat)
The latest by Rob Brown and Sean Booth wouldn’t qualify as a double album during the LP era. It wouldn’t even qualify as a double album during the early CD era. At more than two hours, the duo’s patented schematic sound constructions test the listener’s fortitude in getting through the whole thing. The industrial textures and inverted rhythms are pleasing in small doses, but some of these tracks go on and on, as if Autechre were struggling to get a bead on their hard disk full of tricks. Once you understand their methodology, which is to throw ideas at each other in real time and see the reaction, the album makes sense intellectually, but sonically it’s a slog that might have benefited by a bit less thickener. Shorter tracks? That would probably make sense. Some musical forms lend themselves better to sprints than to marathons.

Halcyon
-Ellie Goulding (Interscope/Universal)
Though this British singer-songwriter made her initial splash three years ago with a cover of Elton John’s sappiest ballad, her own material more closely resembles Captain Fantastic’s bombastic mid-70s pop singles in terms of tone and effect. Goulding would be nothing without her synthesizers, but her songs of love and longing are classic piano-pounders-with-strings, starting bold and just getting even more dramatic. Since her voice is high and purposefully girlish, cognitive dissonance kicks in on mature-sounding compositions like “My Blood” and the practically stentorian title track. Half of the electronic effects are her processed vocals, so Goulding gives the impression of being totally in charge if not completely in your face. She’d be overbearing if her songs weren’t so undeniably catchy, but that sort of dynamic has always delineated the fine line between success and laughingstock. Goulding obviously means to be around forever.

Strike Gently
-The Virgins (Cult/Magniph)
Old story. Good-looking kid raised in the maw of the NYC demimonde gets scouted by modeling agency, forms band with ambitious punks, grabs attention at loft party, scores network TV exposure and major label contract, goes nowhere. This sophomore album, released on a boutique label founded by a member of The Strokes, is where all that easily won experience pays off. The Strokes are the obvious influence, but few groups with the good fortune of The Virgins have made that influence mean as much. Donald Cumming’s hushed singing style, two parts Lou Reed insouciance to one part Chris Isaak throb, leads rather than follows the tasty instrumental backing. Like Robert Quine, Wade Roberts’ knotty guitar adds tension when the energy level flags. The stinging leads on “Flashbacks, Memories, and Dreams” work against the song’s melancholy grain. Nothing startling here, just solid craft in the service of spiky attitude.

Forward/Return + Torey’s Distraction
-The Album Leaf (P-Vine)
This locally compiled double album of two 2012 releases bear no distinction from the sort of ambient pop instrumentals that characterize Jimmy LaValle’s dedicated albums. One is a 30-minute EP, the other a soundtrack to a little-seen 2009 documentary. In fact, the latter’s bite-size song structures and spare instrumentation give a better idea of LaValle’s special gift for the haunting musical phrase, which under normal circumstances is usually stretched out past its point of interest. Working with isolated images, LaValle plucks out a guitar arpeggio or pumps a simple organ pattern to get at the emotional kernel of whatever is to be shown on the screen. In concert, The Album Leaf usually plays to background films and videos, which make up for the lack of lyrics in music that begs for a voice to fill it with meaning. The soundtrack also lacks the canned percussion AL is famous for.

Holy Fire
-Foals (Warner)
On their third album, the ambitious Oxford quintet goes full out with the funk that was only hinted at on their previous post-punk-inspired releases. The feeding frenzy feeling of the record’s best track, “Inhaler,” won’t do much to advance the group’s introspective rep among eggheads but it could convince a booking agent or two to take a chance on an arena, which they can easily fill up with their multivalent sound, and if the keyboards make short work of the guitars Yannis Philippakis’s singing has finally come out of heaven’s pantry to address the mortal fans on their own ground. Confidence borne of actual accomplishment is no small thing in pop, or even rock for that matter, and Foals deserve their promotion to full-fledged major label status. The only fear I have is that someone mistakes them for Muse and the comparison goes to their heads.

No World
-Inc. (4AD/Hostess)
What’s with this sudden fascination for quiet storm? As a subset of late 70s/80s R&B it was hugely popular among a demographic that has nothing in common with the young white producers who are now digging into it for their own indie cred strategems. Admittedly, the Brothers Aged trick it out with heavy weather atmospherics that should be flattering to their new label, which was famous back in the day for making pop sound important, but the breathy vocals and uniformly druggy tempos betray their almost scholarly command of an idiom that was perfected by Peabo Bryson and resurrected as art song by D’Angelo. That’s an imposing legacy to honor. And while the Ageds get the inflections right, they can’t get worked up enough to raise their voices above a murmur. Storm isn’t in it. More like a drizzle set to drum machines.

Forever Endeavour
-Ron Sexsmith (Cooking Vinyl/Imperial)
It seems inauspicious that the first two songs on Ron Sexsmith’s 12th album contain the word “nowhere.” To say that Sexsmith’s career hasn’t fulfilled the potential suggested by his songwriting gifts is saying nothing, of course. After all, he’s made it to 12 albums, all of which feature professional production and arranging. Besides his clever turn of phrase, his greatest strength has been his talent for tune, a Simon-ish ability to avoid repeating melody lines too often. As to the charge that he was born too late, well what did being a boomer do for John Prine? Fortunately, the punningly revelatory title isn’t the best thing about his new album. It’s the mix of jaunty and melancholy, the way Mitchell Froom’s production complements rather than overwhelms the singer’s modest performance style, the refusal to accept aging as a losing proposition. He’s still got somewhere to go.

Ora
-Rita Ora (Sony)
Newbie R&B divas laying seige to the citadel of Rihanna would do well to come at the opponent from an oblique angle. Rita Ora was born in Kosovo, raised in London, and bred as a singer in the crucible where every music style has equal value. Though her presentation is as tough as necessary and the diction sufficiently Caribbean to appeal to trans-pond skeptics, there’s a refreshing wit that gives Ora an edge. “I wanna party and bullshit,” she says repeatedly on “How We Do,” a confession of humility in a genre obsessed with sexual candor. The offhanded way she delivers the ex-GF-dissing “R.I.P.” implies a more honest approach to the commonplaces of songwriting-by-committee (the track boasts eight authors), which is to say that Ora tends to be better than her material, drawing out the pop appeal that the producers apparently aren’t being paid enough to provide.

Clarity
-Zedd (Interscope/Universal)
Carving out an identifiable niche as dance pop producer may be easier than carving out an identifiable niche as a dance pop performer. Anton Zaxlavski’s marquee cred as a remixer was made on material that had already made lots of money: songs by Justin Bieber, Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga. He even redid a Skrillex track, which is like gilding the lily. On his debut as a name artist he smartly intensifies these identifications by keeping the tracks short and the melodies simple and up front. He didn’t name it Clarity for nothing. Since he doesn’t sing and his songwriting calls for components that do, he makes use of people whose star power is enough to attract attention without eclipsing his own. But dance music will always have its way, and most of the cuts here are basically synth noodles in thrall to the god of break beats.

Push the Sky Away
-Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (Hostess)
Having never taken to Nick Cave’s dark, literary folk-rock I didn’t awaken to his charms until the uncharacteristically hard-rocking Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! After getting all that out of his system with his Grinderman project, Cave returns with the kind of brooding art rock that made me yawn in the past, but I’m now more appreciative of his resources as a writer and actor, not to mention the Bad Seeds’ ability to make him sound as important as he thinks he is. The poetry doesn’t always connect, but the haunting sea metaphors of “Mermaids” and “Waters Edge” at least make sense thematically and, connected to the very human sounding music, invite deeper study. If I initially thought “Higgs Boson Blues” was the album’s requisite light moment, waiting for the other shoe to drop proved to be a more harrowing experience than I was prepared for. Touche, Mr. Cave.

To Dust
-Alice Russell (Tru Thoughts/Beat)
The positioning of “A to Z” as the lead cut on Alice Russell’s newest album might indicate to the faint-hearted that she’s on Adele’s case. Either it’s such a shameless ripoff of “Rumour Has It” or that song has become so ubiquitous that it’s become familiar in every post-millennial soul pastiche. Cognescenti who know Russell’s been singing this sort of stuff since when Adele was a single integer know her debt to classic R&B has been paid in full for a while now. Mostly eschewing ballads and burners, not to mention melisma, she keeps the focus on the loins. The pumping Prince/Chaka mash of “Hard and Strong” is a new avenue of exploration and as such stands as the album’s highlight, while the title track utilizes the sparest instrumental elements to underline a call-and-response gimmick you wish would go on forever. Russell isn’t just involved, she’s instigated.

Anna Karenina
Arguably the greatest novel ever written and one of the few whose scope translates easily to the screen, Tolstoy’s love story is treated as a candy-colored melodrama by director Joe Wright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard, a movie that is as much about its own capacity to dazzle as it is about the source material. Keira Knightley plays the title character as if she were an idol of St. Petersburg’s smart set. Smartly downplaying the more philosophical Levin storyline, this Karenina comes close to Harlequin territory with its breathy love scenes between Anna and the showy, incautious Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). An indication of the filmmakers’ desire to make this a story that appeals to unsuspecting youth is the counter-typecasting of Jude Law as the cuckolded Karenin and his suitably fuddy-duddy reaction to his wife’s infidelity, which starts the ball rolling toward her famous fate. Though the contrast between the amoral, instinctive Anna-Vronsky affair and the chaste, spiritual Levin-Kitty courtship remains the story’s nexus of contemplation, in this version love is simply a train that runs you over. (photo: Focus Features)

Arbitrage
Though director Nicholas Jarecki knows whereof he preaches, his central character, hedge fund manager Robert Miller, has too many dramatic roles to fill, and despite a passionate turn by Richard Gere comes across as neither sympathetic nor sufficiently venal. Without going deep into the financial mechanics forcing Miller to sell his fund before it collapses, Jarecki saddles him with an accidental death whose responsibility Miller has to dodge in order to make the sale happen. The story is so carefully worked out you can hear the gears grind into place. Miller lost his soul years ago, so the only comeuppance the audience derives from his misfortune is the disgust of his wife (Susan Sarandon) and daughter (Brit Marling), neither of whom are sympathetic either. The only character who registers emotionally is Jimmy (Nate Parker), the son of Miller’s late driver, whom the financier inadvertently implicates in his crime, but even that outcome disappoints. Jarecki is sensitive about his own exploitation of racial dynamics, as if having amassed all that ill-gotten lucre weren’t enough to condemn Miller. (photo: Arbitrage LLC)

Beasts of the Southern Wild
The (relative) mainstream success of this left-field indie contradicts its unruly premise, that since nature is unpredictable why should movies be? Made with almost no money and without personalities to sell it, the film relies almost completely on the performance of Quvenzhane Wallis, who was six when it was shot, and while too much has been made of her acting, not enough has been said about how successfully director Benh Zeitlin has conveyed her point-of-view. This is a movie that captures your attention with the vividness of its childlike detail but vanishes immediately from consciousness because it has no purchase on your current experience. It’s completely subjective in that its subject’s purview is all there is. Falling into line with literature’s greatest child characters who, like her, are mostly from the South, Hushpuppy lives with an alcoholic father, Wink (Dwight Henry), in a low-lying corner of New Orleans called the Bathtub, probably because it fills with water practically on cue. Through premonition, Wink sees disaster, which could be his own chronic though unspecified illness or a Katrina-like deluge, but in any case both father and daughter understand that her survival depends on her personality. Though the story is based on a play its development is neither linear nor expository. Hushpuppy’s “adventures” for the most part exist in her head and have no tale to tell, but Zeitlin depicts a very real milieu, a place where poverty and everyday ingenuity combine to startling effect. Wink and Hushpuppy live in separate trailers, and seem to exist on different planes, which is important because the little girl, despite her facility with a blowtorch, will be on her own as Wink gets sicker and the elements become nastier. Representatives of authority move in like an invading army, ready to evacuate the vulnerable from this ad hoc but surprisingly resilient community, and Hushpuppy escapes, alone against the prehistoric beasts that have been unleashed as the polar ice caps melt per Wink’s prediction—or was it hers? “I’m a little piece of a big universe and that makes things right,” she says in the overly literal voiceover that occasionally undermines Zeitlin’s purposeful naturalism. Some critics have taken the director to task for sentimentalizing margin dwellers like the inhabitants of the Bathtub, but the characters are too vividly delineated to fit any sort of preconceived idea of “the poor,” though they definitely are that. If anything, innocence makes poverty a moot point, or at least it does here. Hushpuppy’s interactions with the drunks and layabouts around her teach her responsibility, and in the end when she vows to go out into the world “to find my mama,” you actually think she’ll succeed, not because she can work miracles, but because the world is only conquerable by those who don’t know any better. (photo: Cinereach Prod.)

Beyond the Hills
Christian Mungiu’s newest provocation is more difficult to peg than his abortion shocker 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Some viewers will react negatively to the Orthodox cloister that provides the setting, and when 20-something Alina (Cristina Flutur) comes to the primitive, ascetic compound, which sits on a remote hilltop overlooking the Romanian town where she was raised as an orphan, you expect her skepticism to rule the movie’s moral tone. She’s there to reclaim her best friend, Voichita (Cosmina Stratan), with whom she grew up and formed an attachment that goes beyond comradeship, but Voichita is thinking of taking her vows. At first, the psychological power the convent’s Father (Valeriu Andriuta) has over his brood of nuns seems untoward, and Alina, upset with Voichita’s reluctance to come away with her and work on a cruise ship, suspects him of perversion, but his devoutness is pure whereas Alina’s convictions are erratic and disruptive. Her presence threatens to implode this closed system, and Mungiu’s gradual methodology, all long takes and cumulative dialogue, pulls the viewer into the emotional morass. In Romanian. (photo: Moltra Films-Why Not Productions-Les Films du Fleuve-France 3 Cinema-Mandragora Movies)

Cosmopolis
From the moment we see and hear Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson), the center of the universe in David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Don Delillo’s novel, we understand him to be not a normal human character but an analogue of the forces that have made the 21st century as alienating as it wants to be. With skin as white and clear as bathroom porcelain, Packer tells his bodyguard (Kevin Durand) in an affectless tone that “we need a haircut,” as if discussing his posse. The bodyguard and the stretch limo parked at the curb tell us Packer may hold sway over a particularly large posse, and as the movie progresses inside that resourceful vehicle we learn that he is one of the richest men in the world, a self-made techno-billionaire whose particular talents have less to do with engineering the physical properties of the cosmos than with manipulating the human dimension of monetary flow. During his drive uptown to the barber he patronized as a little kid, he consults with a computer nerd (Jay Baruchel) in a hoodie, has sex with his “art advisor” (Juliette Binoche) before asking her to buy the famous Rothko Chapel for his penthouse, and interacts in decidedly unconnubial fashion with his newlywed wife (Sarah Gadon), whose complexion is as clear and unyielding as his. The picture is not so much of a rich young man out of his depth, but rather of someone who occupies a position that’s never been occupied before, and the neoligistic nature of the title comes into focus: Packer’s huge fortune is evaporating by the minute, subject to a bad call regarding the yuan, and thus analogous with the entropic nature of the universe, which has always been Delillo’s overarching theme. There are interruptions along the way for lunch, toilet breaks (the limo has a commode under the back seat), traffic jams caused by a coincidental visit by the U.S. president and the attendant public protests (Mathieu Amalric makes a very funny cameo as a “pastry assassin” who lands a pie in Packer’s face), and even a prostate examination during a heated discussion with his chief of finance (Emily Hampshire). These disparate, often absurd narrative elements come to a head not in the penultimate haircut, which feels like a brief respite from the pressures of being an economic black hole, but in the meeting with the ultimate disgruntled ex-employee (Paul Giamatti), whose outlook on the balance of nature is exceedingly material. “You have to die more than others,” he tells his former boss while holding a gun to his head in a dark, dingy apartment. The universe, as it were, will not be denied, and if balance can only be achieved through violence, well, nature doesn’t know from violence in the first place. (photo: Cosmopolis Prod./Alfama Films Prod./France 2 Cinema)

Hitchcock
When making movies about real people, directors don’t often pay enough attention to the pitfalls of hindsight. It’s not enough that Anthony Hopkins gets the breathy, strained vocal inflections that Alfred Hitchcock was famous for in this recreation of the making of Psycho, screenwriter John J. McLaughlin has to also address the popular image of the Master of Suspense as being enamored of blondes, profligate with both budgets and menus, an acute alcoholic, and a lovable snob. Though that’s four vivid character traits, they don’t add up to a human being, and the trouble with Hitchcock is that it won’t tell you anything you don’t already know; even less, in fact. It will, however, give you a fair idea of what it was like to be married to the guy, since the real focus of the story is the relationship between Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, who, according to legend, was as responsible for Hitchcock’s signature style as he was. And it might have been interesting if that’s all it was about, but it’s also about Janet Leigh’s figure (or Scarlett Johansson’s), Vera Miles’ (Jessica Biel) fall from grace as a Hitchcockian object of desire, Anthony Perkins’ (James D’Arcy) identification with his character, Norman Bates, and the general thick-headedness of the movie industry. Director Sacha Gervais, understanding he’s out of his depth, indicates we shouldn’t take it seriously by framing the production as one of Hitch’s TV shows, with the host facing the audience and providing pithy, dry background, in this case about serial killer Ed Gein, on whom Bates was supposedly based. Having recovered from the box office failure of the ambitious Vertigo with the safe, studio-pleasing North by Northwest, Hitchcock decides to cash in his success with something nasty and perverse, but the suits don’t buy it. He figures if he’s going to do Psycho his way he’ll have to pay for it, and whatever drama one derives from Hitchcock is in the undramatic possibility that Hitch and Alma will have to give up their palatial Beverly Hills digs. Then there’s Alma’s unexciting affair with a stuffy, unexciting screenwriter (Danny Huston) who is penning a Hitchcockian script of the old sort and flatters her into helping him out, so amidst all the intrigue on the set with regards to shower scenes and bedrooms and how to get it all past the censors we have Hitch fretting over his connubial situation, and not being credible about it. It isn’t Hopkins’ fault. Though you recognize the actor beneath all those startling layers of latex, he creates something compelling, a portrait of an effete, self-satisfied epicure who likes little dogs and probably was never much of a sexual adventurer or even a film esthete. That sounds more like Alfred Hitchcock than the pathetic figure McLaughlin and Gervasi depict, though, in truth, it isn’t half as compelling as the druid Toby Jones created in the HBO biopic The Girl. Compared to that movie, Hitchcock is hagiography. (photo: Twentieth Century Fox)

Holy Motors
Like Cosmopolis, Leos Carax’s first full-length feature since 1999 is mostly set in a limousine. It’s episodic by design, a series of short subjects that comment on film lore—Carax even references his own work. In fact, Holy Motors has as much to do with its star, Denis Lavant, who has appeared in many of Carax’s films, as it does with its director, who appears in the first scene, getting out of bed and then unlocking a secret door in his room that leads to a darkened movie theater. Lavant appears on the screen as a family man, Mr. Oscar, leaving his luxurious, modernistic house for what appears to be a typical work day. He is picked up by his older chauffeur, Celine (Emily Scob), and while being transported to his first “appointment” gets into character, that of a homeless beggar woman, who is deposited on the Pont-Neuf bridge, the setting for Carax’s most famous film. For the rest of the movie Mr. Oscar is shuttled from one appointment to another, using the limousine as a dressing room where he prepares for the next role, and while Carax never explains who has arranged these appointments and what purpose they serve they are very obviously arranged and purposeful, as indicated by the appearance of Michel Piccoli, who at one point scolds Mr. Oscar for not taking his work seriously enough. This is a joke in itself, since no one takes the job of acting as seriously as Denis Lavant, whose transformations are so complete as to be scary, even when they’re meant to be funny. Recreating the milky-eyed, claw-fingered “gaijin” derelict of Carax’s Godzilla-quoting portion of the 2008 omnibus Tokyo!, he emerges from the sewer in a Parisian graveyard and crashes a fashion shoot, biting off the fingers of a hapless assistant and then spiriting away the model (Eva Mendes) to his underground lair, where he shows her his semi-enthusiastic manhood. She doesn’t seem impressed, which is another joke since the character is one crazy freak. Whether playing a cautious father, a sentimental lover, or a bald, clumsy assassin, Lavant/Oscar earns his salary and brings more entertainment value to Carax’s enterprise than does the script or the visual style, which is impressive without being moving, integrated without being coherent. The pleasures are fleeting, demonstrating care in the details and not the totality, like the haunting love song that Kylie Minogue sings as she wanders through an abandoned department store, or the comical interlude when Mr. Oscar’s limo and another engage in a bout of road rage even though they seem to be the only vehicles in Paris. Make of the title, and the ending, what you will. You’d be a fool to read too much into it. In French and English. (photo: Pierre Grise Productions)

Jack the Giant Slayer
Bryan Singer lets his tech crew have the run of this ultra-mash 3D fantasy based on two-count-em-two fairy tales. There isn’t much to the story or the characters, and the CG is cheesy. The central intrigue is how innocent, good-hearted farmboy Jack (Nicholas Hoult) will win the favor of the the plucky Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson), who is betrothed to the dastardly court factotum Roderick (Stanley Tucci), who happens to have in his possession the fabled magic beans, which come into Jack’s possession and then out of them. The resulting beanstalk is a thing to behold as it takes Jack’s house and the princess to the land of giants in the sky, thus predicating the need for Jack to slay them. Actually, there’s little bloodshed on view, though a lot of gross antics given that the giants are pigs. And except for the one with two heads, there’s also little imagination at work. If you know the basic story and saw any other fantasy blockbuster in the last six months you could write this review yourself without even seeing it. (photo: Warner Bros. Entertainment)

The Master
The title of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest epic confrontation with the American experience refers to the character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lancaster Dodd, the head of a pseudo-scientific religious cult that is based in part on the career of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. But the movie is actually about a guy named Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a World War II vet who drifts from job to job in the late 1940s in a kind of antisocial, alcoholic haze that indicates he’s bipolar, possibly schizophrenic. Obsessed with sex and the inventor of a personal brand of potent, seemingly hallucinogenic moonshine, Quell stows away on a pleasure boat that has been chartered by Dodd for his daughter’s wedding reception, but rather than have Quell put ashore, he engages him in conversation, intrigued by the younger man’s inability to filter his responses to outside stimuli, not to mention the peculiar properties of his “elixir.” In the movie’s most intense scene, Dodd puts Quell through the motions of his patented “process,” a type of psychoanalytical interrogation that means to uncover traumas experienced in a past life. We’ve already seen Quell undergoing psychological testing in a military hospital and his resistance to treatment, but the game that Dodd plays, while arrogantly intrusive, delights Quell and an indescribable bond is forged. “I’m the only one who likes you,” Dodd says in all seriousness at one point, and if the feeling isn’t mutual it at least explains in simple terms why the Master tolerates this volatile cipher. Anderson doesn’t provide much in terms of background to explain Quell’s desperation except rudimentary flashbacks, prompted by Dodd’s therapies, to a relationship with a teenage girl he knew from his hometown, and in the end Dodd has no lasting benefit for Quell. Does that make Dodd a fraud? Hardly, but his reputation as a charlatan is still in development. As his adult son tells Quell in a moment of atypical clarity, “He makes it up as he goes along,” an observation given creedence when a moneyed acolyte (Laura Dern) questions a change in dogma and Dodd responds angrily. It becomes clear that the real power behind the movement is Dodd’s wife (Amy Adams), the embodiment of feminine resolve in the sense that she will do anything to ensure her man succeeds. Eventually, Quell drifts away from this collection of monsters, but not out of disillusionment. He is simply distracted, and one of the most frustrating aspects of Anderson’s method is how difficult it is to distinguish Quell’s waking life from his imagined one. If Dodd and Quell are made for each other it’s because they share a capacity for total self-delusion. Dodd has just managed to turn that capacity into profit. (photo: Western Film Co.)

Om Shanti Om
Director Farah Khan calls her 2007 sophomore effort an homage to classic Bollywood rather than a parody, as some people see it, but since we’re talking Bollywood in the first place the distinction would seem to be academic. Utilizing an ingenious two-part structure and a reincarnation tale that reverses the roles of the two romantic leads, Khan gets to not only exploit her love of 1970s musical excess in a witty and heart-pounding way, but send up the whole contemporary culture of the industry that pays her. Each part is highlighted by a production number featuring the biggest Hindi-language stars of their respective eras, with the second, post-millennial breakout lasting a staggering 15 minutes. Superstar Shah Rukh Khan makes fun of his own reputation as a temperamental diva in the second half after camping it up convincingly as a Gene Kelly manque in the first. His opposite number, former model Deepika Padukone, can’t quite work up a discernible personality in her first big screen role, but her smile is a knockout, and that’s all director Khan needs. In Hindi. (photo: Eros International Ltd.)

Oz the Great and Powerful
As critics have already pointed out, L. Frank Baum’s beloved fantasy series has been adapted numerous times for the screen, but almost all were made before the war. Sam Raimi reportedly had his hands tied with this prequel to the beloved 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz, since the rights to that film and its specific references now belong to Warner and he’s working for Disney. Still, there’s enough dedicated imagery in the material to qualify for collective consciousness status and Raimi doesn’t have to strain to make connections, so it seems like a joke that he frames the Kansas scenes in black-and-while and the Oz scenes in color, just as the Victor Fleming movie did. However, such attention to detail and the feelings of big studios doesn’t explain the inertness of this movie, whose blockbustery exertions seem winded right from the start. James Franco is an inspired choice for the carnival magician Oscar Diggs. The actor has a rep as a con man, and so he doesn’t have to go deep to convince the viewer that his exploitation of country rubes is anything but a natural inclination. It’s his reactionary morality that stirs skepticism, and after he’s transported by a twister to the the Emerald City and its environs, the two sides of his personality are constantly at odds (at Oz?), which should lend the story tension but mostly just makes it confusing. The script by Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire has a simple enough premise—the origin story of the wizard himself—but in addition to taking the audience’s familiarity with the Oz story for granted it becomes enamored of quirky characters and the need for studio-dictated bombast, thus compounding the confusion. There are three witches, Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz), and Glinda (Michelle Williams), whose various shifting rivalries provide the tale with its requisite conflict. Theodora believes Diggs to be the savior of the land once prophesied, and the rapscallion in the magician goes along with it with the encouragement of his newfound sidekick, a bellhop-bedecked monkey named Finley (voiced by Zach Braff). That all three witches exhibit the hots for Diggs is perhaps another joke but one that feels anemic. Franco lacks the brashness to pull off this sort of acting feat, but the biggest drag on the movie’s entertainment potential is its earnest determination to achieve the sort of critical mass necessary to justify its standing as a prequel. We have to get to that place where all presumed future Oz movies will start—and past Oz movies, too. Warner notwithstanding, Disney’s gambit means nothing without its identification with one of the most beloved movies of all time. This film is brighter, cleaner, and more antic than Fleming’s, but it’s also much less necessary. (photo: Disney Enterprises Inc.)

ParaNorman
The subtle charms of this 3D stop-action animated feature may be lost on moviegoers who understandably have had it up to here with horror tropes, regardless of how they’re presented. The hero, a middle school boy who sees dead people, is bullied for his gift and even grounded by his parents when his spooky capability gets out of hand. He lives in a suburban community whose only claim to posterity is being the setting of a colonial era witch trial, and what his neighbors accept as a quaint tradition Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) suffers through as the only mortal being in town who undertands the feelings of one of those witches. This knowledge provides him with an unavoidable mission to prove his courage, but such Disneyfied cliches are fortunately downplayed in favor of a more imaginative kid-group dynamic. In his determination to save Blithe Hollow from a zombie invasion Norman the misfit recruits his vain older sister (Anna Kendrick), a dumb bully (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and a somewhat compromised jock (Casey Affleck), all winning comic inventions. (photo: Universal Studios)

Quartet
Maggie Smith continues her breathless end-life run of leading roles as Jean, a proud opera diva who gives in to old age and checks herself into a nursing home, which happens to cater to retired musicians. Based on a play by Ronald Harwood that he adapted himself, Quartet askes the audience to take a great deal for granted—not so much that such an institution exists, but that it has to look like heaven on earth. Who wouldn’t want to die on such a gorgeous English estate? For some reason the place is in financial straits, thus precipitating a “gala” where all the illustrious inmates will perform, and three fellow singers (Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins, Billy Connolly) try to persuade Jean to join them for a performance of the quartet from Rigoletto. She refuses, horrified that her diminished talents would be exposed for everyone to hear. Harwood’s cardboard themes and hackneyed dramatic devices are treated with all sentimental seriousness by first-time director Dustin Hoffman, who gives new meaning to what one of the characters refers to as “dignified senility.”(photo: Headline Pictures [Quartet] Ltd. and the BBC)

Rust and Bone
What Jacques Audiard leaves out of his romantic melodrama could fill a book that would probably be a lesser work. As it stands his tale borders on the trite, with Matthias Schoenaerts playing a brutish boxer with a five-year-old son and Marion Cotillard as a marine park animal trainer left handicapped after a worksite accident. Audiard doesn’t push matters. These two meet under the most banal circumstances and nothing happens between them for the longest time, thus allowing the viewer to get to know them as separate forces. Ali channels his inchoate rage into illegal fights and sex on the run, while Stephanie simply takes each day at a time, and when Ali, who has been acting as a helpmate, offers her casual intimacy she accepts, but isn’t prepared for his total lack of guile or emotional demonstration. Set in the blue collar milieu of southern France, the movie’s naturalism is multi-faceted, taking in the social and economic, as well as emotional, situations of these characters without making much of them, and then Audiard drops a bomb. In French. (photo: Why Not Prod.-France 2 Cinema-Les Films du Fleuve-Luranime)

Shun Li and the Poet
Zhao Tao, the muse of Jia Zhangke, plays the title character in this debut feature by Andrea Segre. Shun Li is paying off her debt to the Chinese syndicate that paid her way to Italy, where they shuttle her from one shady operation to another. Anxious to make enough money to send for her 8-year-old son, she does as she’s told in the face of callous disregard for her feelings. While working as a waitress in a small bar on the island of Chioggia near Venice, she strikes up a friendship with Bepi (Rade Sherbedgia), an older Yugoslavian fisherman who emigrated to Italy 30 years before. Both share a love of poetry and the melancholy bond of exile, but the Italians and the Chinese see something untoward in the relationship. It’s easy to understand why Shun Li’s Chinese bosses disapprove of the liaison—their status in the community is precarious at best—but the resentment of the Italians seems merely reflexive. Still, the relationship is touchingly geniune, owing mainly to the way Zhao holds her emotions in check. In Italian and Mandarin. (photo: Joliefilm S.r.I.-Aeternam Films S.a.r.I.-ARTE France Cinema)