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Reviews

Spooky Movie 2012, International Horror Film Festival in Washington, DC

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My coverage of the 2012 International Horror Film Festival, Spooky Movie, in Washington DC

Spooky Movie 2012, an international horror film fest running from Oct.12-18th at the AFI Silver Theatre, is a veritable twilight zone of too ghoul for school films. This festival is the thinking horror fan’s Mystery Science Theatre—the films will have you racking your brain for days afterwards, for better or worse.

 In its seventh year of bringing mystery, mischief, and mayhem to audiences, The Spooky Movie Festival delivers impressively on the thrills and chills with 21 features and 31 shorts, including festival standouts “Chained,” “Resolution” and “Excision.” Festival Director Curtis Prather remarked upon how happy he was to have finally landed the festival in the home he had always wanted for it, the AFI in Silver Spring.



One of the breakout films of the festival was “Chained,” the third major feature film by David Lynch progeny Jennifer Lynch, made its U.S. debut on Friday. A tour-de-force ride into the mind of an uber-misogynistic serial killer, “Chained” is the story of Bob and Rabbit [Eamon Farren], the boy whose mother Bob kills and who becomes a servant, a student, and for lack of a better word, a son to him.
 Lynch initially wanted to title the film “Rabbit” to take the focus away from the depersonalizing surroundings of the character and focus on the psychological aspects at play. She described her movie as a “tough watch—a story about how real monsters are made.”

When Lynch first read the “Chained” script, she said it ran too much like “torture porn” (a charge that was often leveled at her for debut film “Boxing Helena” which she made when she was nineteen). Lynch wanted to make a film that ran less like a typical horror gore piece and delved more into “figuring out why he is doing this and the relationship between him and Rabbit.”

The film is shot in a cinema verite/documentary style, essentially showing the world through the claustrophobic lens of Rabbit’s existence. Lynch explained that she likes to make movies about “people obsessed with other people or characters that are forced into an environment they can’t leave. The claustrophobia factor really interests me.” With no soundtrack to the movie save for the creak of floorboards, the thud of footsteps, and the screams of Bob’s victims, “Chained” is mercifully low on the gruesome and ghastly Saw-like sensibilities that have invaded recent horror fare.

In explaining her film’s milieu, Lynch said, “terrible things in broad daylight are much scarier than things that go bump in the night.”As such, the “house gone wrong” that Bob and Rabbit live in is the perfect setting for the father-and-son-like relationship gone wrong that take place in it. Bob’s question “Oh, you are not my son!? Point to one thing in this house that doesn’t say that,” is especially trenchant on so many levels.
  
“Resolution,” directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead and selected for distribution by the Tribeca Studios, upends a number of horror movie tropes to create a strange amalgamation of buddy flick-meets-Lost. Mike (Peter Cilella) goes to an abandoned cabin in the woods (natch) in a last-ditch effort to get best friend Chris (Vinny Curan) to stop his downward descent down the crack pipe by literally chaining him to a pipe so he can detox for a week. That one week proves eventful as Mike starts finding various eerie antique objects in the house and encounters a series of strangers odd upon odder, including drug dealers, a space cult, and a French gentleman. The greatest aspect of the film is the interaction between Mike and Vinny, which yields comedic gold in its dramedic ways, but also provides a poignant portrait of a deep relationship weather-beaten by the buffeting of…life. Vinny Curan is especially compelling in his portrayal of an addict hell-bent on convincing everyone to leave him alone to his “destiny” which he perceives to be drugs, yet as the week progresses, allows for the possibility that he simply has given up on believing he can beat this. The horror story aspect of the film is almost an afterthought, although Mike’s increasing obsession with figuring out what is happening, eerily parallels Vince’s own addiction. Ironically enough, “Resolution” does not offer one at the end—the ambiguous at best ending will have audience scratching their heads for quite a while, but the film’s theme of “every story has a beginning, middle, and end,” hints at something along those lines.
Reviews

Escape Fire Film Review

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My review of Escape Fire

Escape Fire: The Fight To Rescue American Healthcare, a documentary by Matthew Heineman and Susan Frömke, sets out to not only expose what ails the American healthcare system but also provide what the film posits to be creative solutions. Unfortunately, due to the byzantine nature of the subject matter, Escape Fire develops a strong case of The Corporation-itis: attempting to cover too much ground and sacrificing a strong cohesive story arc in the process.
The film’s title is a riff on the concept of an escape fire, which are lit to clear an area of grass in the face of an approaching wildfire. It creates a safe space with nothing left to burn in it; in other words, an inventive solution to a thorny problem or as the film’s website states, “an improvised, effective solution to a crisis that cannot be solved using traditional approaches.” This begs the question, however, about how “untraditional” the film’s solutions are: prevention rather than disease management, a lifestyle overhaul, and a move away from reliance on medications are ideas quite prevalent in the health-talk zeitgeist and, thus, not particularly innovative. Still, the breadth of topics covered by Escape Fire is impressively thorough: physicians’ fees, inaccessibility of health insurance, prevention vs. mere disease management, over-reliance on drugs, insurance companies’ focus on profit margins at the expense of patient care, patients’ insistence on expensive testing, maximum care, quick fixes, the rise of diabetes as a result of unhealthy eating habits, and the political stranglehold of the health care industry’s lobby.

Despite its penchant for positing truisms and rehashing topics better covered elsewhere, Escape Fire does bring up some great points. For example, the fact that other developed countries spend $3000 per capita on health care per person while the US spends $8000, yet is ranked fiftieth world-wide in life expectancy indicates the disparity between expenditures and actual health outcomes. The film argues that the fee-for-service system currently in place rewards physicians for doing more, expensive-test-wise; on the flip side, primary care in America is in great danger as primary care physicians are barely able to earn a living while specialists earn significantly more. This essentially endangering the livelihood of the people most needed to do preventative care. The film also takes a hard look at the pharmaceutical industry (the US spends 300 billion on drugs annually) and examines the issue from both sides—the almost limitless political power wielded by Big Pharma and the patients’ own penchant for panaceas and quick-fix pill solutions. The section on lifestyle changes and nutrition awareness is no uncovered ground and probably far better covered in other documentaries, but experts are clearly on to something with the fact that nutrition education is currently omitted from medical education. As a result, physicians are unable to advise their patients on such topics.
While interviews with well-recognized experts such as medical journalist Shannon Brownlee and others paint a sobering portrait of a system in dire crisis, it is the personal stories of people caught in it that pack the more poignant punch. The story of Sgt. Robert Yates, returning from combat in Afghanistan with physical injuries and PTSD so severe that he literally clutches a plastic bag full of dozens of medicines next to his chest, is the most visceral commentary on the depth of the problem. His path to recovery through meditation, acupuncture, and yoga speaks volumes about an often unreported story: the Army’s deployment of therapies that more conventional care givers are still reluctant to use. The story of Dr. Martin, a physician increasingly under pressure by Medicare to spend less and less time with her patients (the standard she is told to uphold is seven minutes per patient) illustrates the film’s theme that our “health” system is really a “disease management” system.
Escape Fire may not offer much in the way of outside-the-box solutions and it may be a bit scattered in its approach, but it is startling portrait of a very diseased system.

Reviews

Liberal Arts Movie Review

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My Review of Liberal Arts
Josh Radnor‘s debut film Happythankyoumoreplease flipped the hipster/indie rom-com formula on its head in the most endearing of ways. Liberal Arts, his sophomore effort as writer-director-stars, stumbles in ways his debut did not, occasionally treading too close to contrived territory but ultimately delivering an enjoyable film.
Radnor plays Jesse, a 35-year-old college admissions counselor in New York, who gets a call from his favorite college professor, Peter Hoberg (Richard Jenkins), asking if he’ll come back to campus and speak at the professor’s retirement party. And so begins the nostalgic trip that ultimately turns out to be a progression through a regression, if you follow.



On this jaunt, he meets Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen), a sophomore with whom he forms an unlikely connection once she gives him a mix CD of classical music from a survey class she took that “changed her life” by her own admission (groan). Before you roll your eyes at the predictability of it, this sentiment is at the core of the bookishness bend of Liberal Arts. Radnor does an amazing job of portraying the wide-eyed intellectual revelry that still remains the best part about college. As Jesse tells Dean (John Magaro), a student less enthusiastic about the college life than him, “it’s the only time you get to do this. Sit around, read books all day, have great conversations about ideas. People out in the world… they are not really doing that.”
The romance between Jesse and Zibby blossoms through the old-fashioned medium of writing letters to each other (in line with Jesse’s love affair with the British Romantics) and make for some light, mirthful moments. As it develops, however, the coming-of-age issues bring about a pretty strong element of discomfort, if not downright cringe-inducing dialogue, when Zibby wants to take their relationship into intimate territory. Oddly enough, once the absurdity of falling for a girl 16 years his junior dawns on Jesse, does he realize Zibby may not be the only one with some growing up to do and that he needs to get back to adulthood.
The comedic elements in Liberal Arts are to be found in some interesting places–such as Zac Efron’s turn as a tree-hugging hippie guru who spouts aphorisms like “There is no reason to be afraid because everything is OK.” Jesse’s friendship with Dean, the depressed student writer he meets at the college, also allows Radnor to hash out the theme of Liberal Arts: as great as college is, growing up is not all that bad either. Their interaction yields some of the more clever lines from the film: “I am taking you off post-modernists. There are these vampire books. They will empty your mind completely.”
Jesse’s line about “stumbling into something like contentment” rings especially true of adulthood. Maybe not all it’s cracked up to be, but it’s necessarily cause for nostalgia’ing one’s college years as the only good time in one’s life. Radnor’s dialogue comes off fairly ham-handed at times, but the message is definitely a positive one.

 If one can get past the romantic relationship [funny, since this is supposedly a rom-com] which is too cringe-inducing at times, the supporting roles are compelling and amusing in a droll sort of way. Radnor has a knack for imbuing his films with enough nerdishness to appeal to the English majors in all of us and as such, his films are well…heart-warming while avoiding maudlin territory for the most part, even if he does tread dangerously close to it occasionally.
Reviews

Kumare Movie Review

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My review of the movie Kumare
At first glance, Kumare, a documentary that bills itself as “the true story of a false prophet,” appears take a page out of Sacha Baron Cohen’s provocative oeuvre. How pleasantly surprising that this is not the case. Not only is Vikram Gandhi, the director and protagonist, significantly bolder in riling up a veritable hornet’s nest of hot-button issues, especially the big R-eligion, but he does away with borderline-mean-spirited snark in favor of a thoughtful presentation of a very relevant and timely social experiment.
Kumare is an inquiry into the nature of faith. Jersey-born, Brooklyn film maker Vikram Gandhi sets out to find out if there is a real-deal guru out there by impersonating one. His travels through India and study of religion in college do not bring him any closer to answers and instead reaffirm the idea that the gurus he encounters are egocentric, profit-minded, interested only in “out-guruing one another,” self-aggrandizing, and downright manipulative. He recalls the peacefulness emanating from his Grandma when she prayed and wonders about the source of that feeling. Thus, Kumare is born. Growing out his hair and beard, donning orange robes and an ornate walking staff, Gandhi transforms himself into a guru, modeling his accent after his Grandma’s. As any spiritual leader worth his salt, he heads into the desert. Phoenix, Arizona, to be precise. 



Kumare refreshingly works on two levels—in one sense, it pokes fun of the power of hype in building a mythos and get followers by merely surrounding oneself with the trappings of spiritualism—namely yoga moves, vague-sounding-enough platitudes, and a publicist. At the same time, however, Gandhi has clearly done his homework. Before he invents his made-up yoga hand-wind-milling bogus poses, he ostensibly has learned the real ones. His blue light meditation seems to have some roots in visualization meditation techniques. In other words, to learn how to be fake, he has to learn what passes for real first?
What shines through most in the film is that instead of being an expose on the dark underside of America’s billion-dollar-industry quest for spirituality-in-a-box quick fixes [the yoga “industry” as one major example], it is ultimately a story about humans and our basic search for a connection. Kumare’s disciples are people one could relate to—a death penalty attorney, a single mom with an empty nest syndrome, and a former cocaine addict/real estate agent. And like everyday people, they are looking for someone “with knowledge” to be the barometer/sign post for their own life’s direction. In other words, they need someone to tell them what to do and more importantly, make them believe that he knows more than they do so they feel confident in following his advice. There is the rub—Kumare’s ultimate message, revealed on his “The Great Unveiling Day,” is that the guru is within all of us. While not particularly ground-breaking, it is nevertheless, an often forgotten mantra. Instead of focusing on the more selfish, “just do what you want,” aspect of it, however, it is more along the lines of, “nobody knows much about anything, even if he calls himself a guru. Maybe especially so.”
To Gandhi’s credit, while the movie features some chuckle-worthy moments [as in when he meets a woman who espouse the visualization technique of making your wishes come true by gluing pictures of cars and money on her “desire board”], it doesn’t feel nearly as exploitative as it could have considering its snake oil salesman premise. There are also a couple of jabs in the film at the cultural appropriation nuances that come along with the West’s fascination with India and its yogic culture—as in, Kumare is revered by virtue of his being from India alone [as opposed to an American-born Indian from Jersey].
Gandhi genuinely starts caring for his “followers,” and ends up having a positive impact on their lives. His own journey throughout the film is also very compelling. Ultimately, the phrase “fumbling toward ecstasy” rings true. His disciples really just need someone to listen to them and pay attention and as such, Kumare is a trenchant commentary on the disenfranchisement that is pervasive throughout society and the distance between people that pushes them to seek that special contact and meaning that could just as easily come from another human being or oneself from a more mystical source.

Reporting, Reviews

Tongued-Thaid: My First Foray Into Food Blogging For BYT

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My very first food column for Brightest Young Things:

So, if you are vegetarian, chances are Thai eggplant or some permutation of tofu and vegetable stir fry is your usual meal of choice when going out for Thai. Surprisingly enough, Thai eggplant is a dish of relatively minimal effort to make at home, yet it is so thoroughly impressive that it is sure to leave your guests tongue-thaid as they marvel at your culinary prowess [my puns get better, I promise].

As you set out on the seemingly very daunting task of making Thai food at home, you are probably imagining it will be something very akin to this experience and, even worse, *gasp* require a trip to that mythical yet thoroughly dreaded place known as the suburbs to procure exotic ingredients you will only use once. Fret not–I would be far too remiss in my role as “pragmatic food blogger” if I recommended you purchase anything that cannot be used in a variety of dishes. For example, did you know that you could use fish sauce essentially as salt in mac and cheese? No, seriously. The cool part about any Asian cooking, especially Indian or Thai, is that there is a roster of staple spices/flavorings that will show up in some combination in most dishes. So any time you purchase ingredients, you can reuse them and, hopefully, that will encourage you to keep trying different things beyond that one time when you were trying to impress that one girl but stumbled ’cause your idea of cooking Indian was sprinkling curry powder on everything. The other part about making that “dreaded trip to the burbs” is that you are not just going to a store to buy “weird stuff.” You are getting an edumacation. Sure, you could get Japanese eggplants in Giant or Whole Bucks, but how predictable and DC centric is that!? Why not check out an H Mart, where you can at the very least procure things you had no idea could be shrimp-flavored!


OK, on to the recipe. As any self-respecting foodie, I first try to consult some venerated source of cooking lore, examine their recipe, and then completely ignore it [whatever, Martha!]. No…more like I look at the general technique and then adapt it/overhaul it/pragmatize it/what have you. So, for this one, I consulted Simply Thai Cooking. While their recipe appeared “legit,” it required a whooping cup of vegetable oil and deep-frying the eggplants. I don’t know about you, but my stomach would murder me if I tried to pull that stunt on it. BYT readers don’t stay in yoga shape by guzzling oil, thank you.

So, I modified and came up with adjustments, including my invention of *steaming* the eggplant [hey, coming up with all this takes a lot of hard work and a lot of eating of semi-messed-up things…I grew up during communism so we do not believe in throwing away food, comrade!]. It also called for far too little red pepper and making a sauce using sugar and cornstarch. While that is all fine and great, in my modification, you don’t even have to use cornstarch and do any sauce thickening. Although if you do not want to do that, that too is not terribly difficult.

Before you get started, get yourself properly amped with some Thai hip hop.

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 onion
  • 6 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1-3 red chillies (including seeds), depending on how spicy you like it or 2 T sambal oelek chili sauce which adds a depth of flavor
  • 2 Japanese eggplants [chopped into slices about an inch thick]
  • 1 red bell pepper
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 2-3 Tbsp. oil
  • roughly 15 fresh basil leaves
  • 2 Tbsp. soy sauce
  • 1 Tbsp. fish sauce [for vegans, omit the fish sauce altogether]

Preparation:

  1. Heat a wok or a large frying pan with *no oil* in it to the point where when you drop a drop of water in it, it sizzles. Then add about 1-2T of oil with a high smoking point [regular vegetable oil or grape seed but no olive oil] and add the chopped eggplant. Btw, here’s a little tutorial on the key to frying anything in a wok, including the very simple but often botched principle of cooking everything according to its cooking time, i.e. do not put something that cooks in a second first! Newbie move right there. No one likes broccoli mush, I assure. Not even cafeteria ladies!
  2. Stir fry the eggplant for about 1-2 mins. until it is browned. Then add 1/4C water to the wok/pan and cover it with a tight-fitting lid. This is the cool part I told you about earlier, where you avoid deep frying and instead *steam* the eggplant.
  3. Visually determine when the eggplant is cooked through–it will be soft. Remove from the pan and set it aside on a plate.
  4. Add a little oil to the still hot pan and stir-fry the onions first. At this high heat, it should only take about a couple of minutes. Then add the red pepper strips and stir fry those. Finally add the garlic cloves and stir fry that [burned garlic is an acquired taste for some people so do not let it burn].
  5. Add the soy sauce and fish sauce, stir-frying for a couple of more minutes. This is also a good part to add the sambal oelek sauce, which can be either store-bought or home-made. Note that if you are using both chillies and sambal, you may want to monitor the heatage level 🙂 I prefer using a mix of chillies and sambal as sambal, due to having lemongrass/ginger/lime in it adds a unique flavor.
  6. Add the cooked eggplant to the pan and half the basil leaves. Cook until the mixture is all heated through/incorporated.
    Do not overcook–should be less than a minute.
  7. Slide onto a serving plate and sprinkle the rest of the basil over top. Serve with brown rice.

Listen to some Onra while consuming said meal. Enjoy 🙂

Reviews

China Heavyweight Movie Review

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My review of China Heavyweight
China Heavyweight, a documentary by Yung Chang [Up The Yangtze], is a glimpse into the burgeoning popularity of boxing, a sport that had been banned by Mao. While the extensive footage of boxing training harkens a bit to other underdog stories like The Boxer and other recognizable sports tropes, China Heavyweight is very firmly grounded in its setting and provides an interesting look into an unfamiliar social landscape.
Set at a boxing school in the Sichuan province, the film follows two teenagers, Miao Yunfei and He Zongli. Their trainer is Qi Moxiang, a former professional boxer who still harbors dreams of returning to the ring despite being in his thirties. Without offering any extra commentary, it takes us deeply into the world of Confucianism-informed Asian culture through the eyes of the two teenagers and their interaction with their parents. While boxing is portrayed as a way out of their parents’ very hard life of being a tobacco farmer, we get the sense that boxing is also something that is not done for personal glory but for the greater community. The coaches frequently reference that boxing is what elevates you from your “Mother’s son” to a “son of the people.” Lofty ideals like bringing pride to your family and community, brushing shoulders with the very Confucian values of humility and honoring your elders.

“We have to be modest at all times,” repeats the father of one of the boys while remarking that he had heard people say his son is a great boxer. Yunfei Mao idolizes Mike Tyson and “the great ambience and the grand entrance” of professional boxing, yet respects his parents enough to give up his dream. China Heavyweight is also a poignant look into the highs-and-lows of a very brutal sport and the paternal relationship between the coaches and the boxers. “You must persevere because I believe in you,” says Qi to his young charge, yet when the talented boxer must leave training, he offers lifelong help to him, regardless of the loss to the school.
China Heavyweight is also interesting in its portrayal of how boxing fits within a very unfamiliar to the West social milieu.  We are offered brief glimpses into political leaders taking an interest in the goings-on from the perspective of recruiting successful Olympics athletes. Much more interestingly, however, the sport appears to have a tremendous mass appeal despite its very Western origin. The film does not really explore that aspect much, instead focusing on the fighters themselves, but it would have certainly added much value. Another loss is we do not learn much about the teenage girls that are also recruited into these boxing schools and who undergo similar training. There was a story there that remained untold.
Ultimately, a very universal, non-Western sentiment emerges from China Heavyweight. Boxing is about “not being afraid of losing” and “the more you fail, the more courageous you become.” The very non-goal/non-individual-focused ethos makes this documentary a refreshing departure from other pugilistic films and one definitely worth seeing, especially with its sweeping, beautiful shots of the mountain areas of China and subdued cinema-verite style.  While the pacing drags at times, there is enough to the premise and its setting to make it a film worth checking out.

Music, Reviews

ReadySetDC June Monthly Mixtape

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This month’s Monthly Mixtape is from Jangala DJ, a DC native behind the trail-blazing Temporal Fusion podcast, which showcases talented electronic dance music producers and DJs from around the world. Jangala, along with long-time co-conspirator Xunfusion, has been on a mission to expose unknown deejays and producers to a wider audience Temporal Fusion‘s seven year reign is a testament to its draw of a true “head” audience with a voracious appetite for drum’n’bass, glitch hop, hip hop, dubstep, and trip hop.

When Jangala DJ first added me as a friend on Facebook, his profile picture was that of a shell (not to mention he is so humble, I had to convince him to actually send me a picture of himself for the article). The shell was a reference to a poem about “the shell of jangala.” In Hindi, jangal means forest–appropriate reference for the offshoot/kind of drum’n’bass music known as jungle. The metaphor of the shell always stayed with me–Jangala’s style has an organic echo and resonance to it and his flair for chiaroscuro is palpable here. This set starts out sort of quietly ominous and brightens up as the sun shining through the leaves of a forest. Few drum’n’bass DJs are able to freely pick from the many branches of the genre’s tree, usually staying grounded in one style, but Jangala has a facility and an unique talent in that regard.
“I mixed this with a thoughtful attitude, wanting to harmonize the dark and light; the old and new; the masculine and feminine; the complex and simple. Mixed together in this set are tunes from new school d’n’b badboys like Dub Phizix, Roy Green, Protone, and DatA along with up-and-coming Russia producers Nuage, Getz, Z Connection, topped off with smatterings of Dillinja and Ray Keith for nostalgia and a sense of completeness.”
“Now settled in DC, I have spent a greater part of my life split between the East and the West and have finally been able to embrace the contrasting and contradictory nature of the universe by mixing heavy baselines and effervescent drum beats.”
Check out his exclusive boundary and genre-defying set for ReadySetDC here and open your ears up to the sounds of the shell of Jangala.

Reporting, Reviews

Feature: Baltimore Tattoo Convention

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My interviews and feature from the Baltimore Tattoo Convention

The Baltimore Tattoo Convention was a colorful celebration of all things body art–and str-ink-ingly its spirit was communal and well…downright cheery. For all intents and purposes, it might as well have been an environmental fest for all the smiling and good will going around.

It was a microcosm of what has happened in the world of tattooing for a while now–tattoos have long moved past the “freak factor” or its subculture roots and boldly flashed themselves to the mainstream. Not selling out in the process yet with the dissipating of their stigmatization, they have now become truly a medium of very creative and intensely personal self-expression. The artists who create them and the people who commission them come from all walks of life and have an equally broad palette of reasons for getting them.
Baltimore Tattoo
It could be purely aesthetic motivation like Baltimorean Caitlyn Meyer who says, “my tattoos mean nothing in particular at all. I just have so much respect for the artists that I trust that they will put something on my body that they think represents me. I just think they are beautiful so I am happy to wear them.” Or it could be a celebration of one’s heritage like the Japanese tattoos or a deep seated drive to really morph into a “different species,” as Baltimore’s Blue Comma.

Why do people go to tattoo conventions, you might ask? For one, for many people who do not live close to specific artists they wish to work on them, this is their one opportunity to get the work done. For some, like tattoo artist Marvin Silva’s friends, who had come all the way from New York, it’s a chance to both promote the studio/their friend and meet new people. “Yeah, I could have had him do the work in New York, but this is an experience. We wanted to party in Baltimore a bit.” [DC, for shame–people go to Baltimore to party!]. Then, there are all the stage shows taking place–think burlesque and sideshows like The Enigma and Serana Rose.

And the tattoo contests, which further give people a chance to promote the artists they admire–all the winners took their plaques to the booths of the tattoo artists that did the work. In other words, tattoo convention are regular lovefests of good will and camaraderie. Everyone I approached was all too happy to talk.

Baltimore Tattoo
Amongst the local tattoo shops represented was Way Of Ink, an apropos pun on Way Of The Samurai considering artist Duong Nguyen specializes in Asian-themed art. There, I met a mild-mannered pharmacist-by-day/sporting a full samurai suite tattoo under the lab coat–Ken Lee. He is friends with Duong and came to the convention to support him and to also get a Japanese-themed leg piece on Friday, which won him third place in the tattoo contest. On Saturday, Duong was diligently working on another Japanese-themed piece–the guy under the needle had already sat there for seven hours. Oh, that’s another thing–tattoos take a long time and a lot of hard work. Stafford, VA local, Cupcake, won 1st place for her massive tiger vs. dragon backpiece, which she explained symbolizes the balance between strength and peace. “It took 20 hours a week of work, for several weeks, to finish it!”

Then there was Jim Hall, aka Blue Comma, who by his own admission is the second most tattooed man in the world. You might wonder what compels an erudite, eloquent Baltimore city planner of 40 years, now retired, to cover his entire surface area in blue ink and undergo a series of major body modifications [think implants] to attain this new vision of himself. When talking to him, one gets the sense that this was a deep and well-thought out conversion and not one conducted for the sake of passerby attention-grabbing. He had a lot to say about the city of Baltimore and was clearly a man of ideas and a man with an intense love for his city, warts and all.
Baltimore Tattoo
So what’s “hot” right now in the world of tattooing? Well, for one, there was blacklight ink–ravers, take note. Oh, and bio-organic tattoos–as artist Marvin Silva described it, “it’s plants and nature but it’s all fantasy. Beautiful stuff like that may not exists in every day life–kind of like a meeting of sci-fi and plants.” I ask him what kinds of tattoos people are getting a lot of lately–“bigger work. People come in asking for half-sleeves as their first tattoo!” Julia Grow of Fyre Body Arts says,  “People either come in looking to do something small but meaningful or very large pieces. Whatever it is though, they really plan and think this through. We don’t get too many impulse tattoos.”

Julia Grow, the owner of Fyre Body Arts in Perkasie, PA, is only 28 and has owned a tattoo shop since she was 18. As she describes it, the job requires her to be “a psychologist, a mother, and a boss,” to her eleven employees. Her soft-spoken ways and kindness (she studied veterinary science in college, adores animals, and has four horses) bely the image of a business woman, especially in the very male-dominated world of tattooing, but a business woman she is and a good one at that. “I graduated high school at sixteen and was attending college so I needed a job. I started managing the shop and the owner eventually sold it to me when I was eighteen.”

How, you might wonder, is she able to have a booming business–the shop is about to expand to a second location in the future–in the farmlands of Pennsylvania. With Donald Trump-envy-worthy business skills–“Since everyone who works for me is a contractor, I am really very careful about who I hire to work for me. I look at portfolio, demeanor, loyalty…It’s important for me to have people that are not just talented artists but that also have the right attitude. I have too much on my plate to deal with primadonna egos. Sometimes the artsist that come here look around and see just farmland and they wonder who would get tattoos here, but we are super busy!” Julia’s own tattoos and body modifications have gotten recognition as well–she won a prize at the Philadelphia Tattoo Convention and has a cutting/scarification piece that was done by Steve Truitt, who studied under body modification guru Steve Hayworth.

Reviews

Concert Review: Beats Antique

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My concert review of Beats Antique for The Vinyl District

On Wednesday, the 9:30 Club opened its doors to the dubby, world-music-fusion sounds of Beats Antique.
David Satori and Tommy Cappel (who grew up in Springfield and gave a shoutout to his Mom, who was in attendance) provided a seamless sonic tapestry that was refreshingly organic despite the band’s seemingly electronic roots. With surprisingly minimal knob-twiddling and laptop-fidgeting, both spent a lot of time percussively propelling the show forward, with the flourishes of David’s banjo and violin-playing and a French saxophonist blending into the mix.
DJ Laura Low opened for the band, with a lackluster poppy-dubstep-by-the-numbers set that showcased why Skrillex has a lot to answer for and was especially bad following the brilliant Forward Festival this past weekend. Her dubstep remixes of M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” and even the Cranberries’ “Zombie” were downright cringe-inducing and her own amped-up demeanor was hardly contagious.


And speaking of the audience, there was a heavy belly [dancing-clad] contingent, along with the well-dreaded Burning Man cohort. In other words, there was plenty of hair-tossing about [“I whip my hair back and forth, real or not”], but more on that later.
The show opened with “The Porch” from the band’s 2011 album Elektrafone, and to their credit, Beats Antique’s musicianship is nigh perfect—the songs unfurled in a languid yet sonically-sound fashion and none of the usual concert-muddiness problem was present. They also played “Alto” and “Siren Song” from Elektrafone, as well as debuting a new more dubstep-leaning song, which was very well-received by the crowd.

The band clearly has a keen sense of showmanship; their roots in San Francisco’s performance art scene and their work on the music for the Bellydance Superstars (with whom Zoe Jakes dances) have influenced the stage show, which is very much carnival/sideshow-esque in its aesthetic.
Oddly enough, however, raucous and boisterous are not exactly words I would use to describe the show last night—despite the consummate musicianship and the fact that it very quickly started to sound like one long jam session as the songs started to meld into each other, it lacked a certain kind of playfulness and just general elan. In other words, this wasn’t a Balkan Beat Box show and definitely not an Eastern-European wedding (despite the band’s dabbling in the Roma/Bulgarian brass elements). In other words, it was oddly sedate. Yes, there was some dancing in the crowd, but I saw more at the Little Dragon show.

And speaking of dancing, Zoe Jakes, a renowned tribal belly dancer who is considered part of the band, performed almost throughout the entire show. Some of Jakes’ routines were truly beautiful, such as in the burlesque-influenced jazz dance she performed with giant feather fans, or the skeleton-Mexican-Day-of-the-Dead-like routine during “Beauty Beats.”
At other times, her style, which is essentially a mix of popping-and-locking (think breakdance) and some of the shimmies and hip and shoulder isolations from belly dance, is downright snooze-inducing when viewed for an hour and a half. Jakes’ dancing relies far too much on her wildly tossing her hair about, and the routines where she performed with another belly dancer were out-of-sync enough to make a pre-teen dance teacher cry. No doubt Jakes is a hard-working, seasoned performer… As to whether it is the kind of performance one could watch for extended periods of time is a matter of viewer preference.
Beats Antique’s stage presentation is definitely visually unique and showcases their knack for showmanship. Musically, the band’s palette of glitch, dub, and Middle Eastern and brass motifs is masterfully presented in their live show.

Reviews

Sound Of My Voice Movie Review

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My review of Sound Of My Voice

Following in the chilling footsteps of last year’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, Sound of My Voice’s premise is simple enough: couple Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) set out to infiltrate a cult, make a documentary about it, and expose the leader as a fraud. As in Martha Marcy May Marlene, however, reality and truth are eerie, elusive concepts. The process of joining  this cult is a disorienting and de-personalizing experience. To be allowed into the cult, they have to assume the identities of believers and, in the process, relinquish their real ones. Needless to say, Peter and Lorna’s journey quickly becomes an honest-to-god identity crisis. What’s more, the line between wanting to do a documentary on a cult and being in one is as enigmatic as the cult’s enigmatic leader. Who is she? Is she just a manipulative hack, or is she really from the year 2054, sent here to impart knowledge to a select group of “chosen ones?”
Co-writers Brit Marling and Director Zal Batmanglij, both Georgetown graduates, bring a mesmerizing, minimalist ethos to this film. In Marling’s other film Another Earth, Marling’s ethereal, luminous presence embodies her walking-wounded character. Her beautiful otherness is appropriately otherworldly and futuristic. Sci-fi tinge notwithstanding, Another Earthwas grounded in its human element, yet had enough of a flight of fancy to transport the viewer to a different dimension. The existential “anywhere but here” quest that underpinned is present in The Sound Of My Voice as well. Ultimately, there is this escapist search for meaning the viewer keeps hearing about in both.

The Sound Of My Voice is a gripping look down the rabbit hole of joining a cult. It thoroughly explores the psychology of the process. The stage of “preparing on the outside,” [which includes learning the at-first-seemingly-silly but later on important to the plot elaborate hand signals] is followed by Peter and Lorna’s first encounter with Maggie, to whom they are taken blind-folded and thoroughly cleansed [literally]. They are forbidden from asking questions or making any sudden movements—they are told these precautions are necessary because of the “special”/”chosen” status that is about to be bestowed upon them. The thrust of the message is one must have a great deal of faith and that faith comes at the expense of reason—in one of the movie’s most engrossing, stomach-turning scenes, Maggie likens the eating of an apple to the ingestion of reason and logic, which is bitter. Reason must literally be purged from the minds of the cultees [by throwing up the apple] and replaced by blind devotion. She demands that everyone “stop thinking and start feeling.” In that scene, however, the viewer also gets insight into the predatory, abusive, and manipulative nature of the relationship—when Maggie inexorably extracts the story of Peter’s abuse as a child, telling him how he was powerless then but is not now, the crushing reality of one abuser’s supplanting by another is made starkly obvious. The Sound Of My Voice does a phenomenal job of asking the tough question about who joins cults—at the beginning, Peter is convinced that these people “are weak and they are looking for meaning.” Despite Lorna and Peter’s superficial veneer of normalcy and their seemingly being different from the other members, ultimately, they are both brought here by a search for meaning and are no less “damaged” than the others or than anyone else, for that matter.

. Sure, Peter and Lorna’s very hipster/I am so tired of the scene asides add some levity to the matter [ e.g. bemoaning the superficiality of getting drunk at art installations and one’s life playing out like an episode of Entourage], but this search for something substantive and meaningful belies sweeping generalizations about the cult members as “damaged people” doing damning things.