Owen Pallett (formerly Final Fantasy)

My cover story for February's Exclaim! is now online. Issue to hit the streets next week.

Owen Pallett Final Flight of Fantasy By Andrea Warner "I pretty much had a meltdown," Owen Pallett admits, laughing ruefully. "This record took a lot out of me." The 30-year-old violin genius didn't name his third full-length album Heartland for nothing. It's all blood, guts, emotion, and his own money that Pallett's poured into the epic, orchestral release, a project that was four years in the making, and according to some anxious and critical fans, long overdue. "It might seem like I did nothing for, like, four years," Pallett admits. "I made the mistake of going to the message boards yesterday and it was like, 'Heartland coming out!' and someone was like, 'Two years too late!' I'm like, 'You fuckin' loser. I've been so busy!'" Pallett laughs again, but the stress in his voice is evident. He has been busy, and, frankly, probably far more in demand than Pallett himself could have imagined when he began releasing violin-based indie-pop as Final Fantasy in 2005. His debut, Has a Good Home, and the geeky, fan-boy name earned him plenty of attention, but it was his live performances that proved electric and entrancing. Just a young man and his instrument, usually, Pallett would record his violin into a loop and craft large, textured songs live, with layers of sounds that defied the conventional boundaries of solo artists. His 2006 follow-up, He Poos Clouds, cemented his reputation as a cheeky avant-garde and netted him the first $25,000 Polaris Prize. His virtuoso skills also made Pallett the go-to person for indie rock's string arrangement and violin needs. By Pallett's own estimation, he's collaborated with about 30 musicians and bands since 2006, including Beirut, Fucked Up, the Mountain Goats, Arcade Fire, and Mark Ronson. He also began scoring films, writing the music for 2009's The Box (starring Cameron Diaz), and working on John Cameron Mitchell's new feature, Rabbit Hole. All along, though, Heartland was eking out in fits and spurts. "In early 2007, I sketched out this idea that I was gonna put out on Spectrum [14th Century], which is sort of the prequel EP, and it kind of bummed me out because Spectrum ended up taking a lot longer than I thought," Pallett says. "That was sort of the first time I knew the record was going to be set in this fictional world and I wanted to create it, not by making a map, but by making an EP." That map helped lay the foundation for Heartland's lyrics, which tell the story of Lewis, an "ultra-violent" farmer that Pallett conceived in a burst of creativity, writing 20 pages of lyrics on vacation in Lisbon, half of which would make up the album. The other half were posted online, Pallett says, so that people could laugh at him. In addition to lyrics, Pallett was still wrestling with crafting Heartland's sound. He knew he wanted something dense and full, and ultimately decided to record the orchestral elements with the Czech Symphony in Prague. It just also happened to coincide with another work commitment: composing the orchestrations for the London-based band, the Rumble Strips, album, Welcome to Walk Alone, with famed producer Mark Ronson. Pallett holed up in a hotel room and quickly finished the Rumble Strips' orchestral music, resulting in an extra ten days of free time to work on finishing Heartland's arrangements before Ronson arrived. With both albums set to record with the Czech Symphony within days, the pressure was on Pallett to nail Heartland's sound perfectly. But, the role of disciplined taskmaster quickly devolved, and he found himself teetering on the brink of a breakdown. "[It was] probably the lowest point of my life," Pallett says. "I'd only finished about half of the orchestral arrangements and the other half was all scraps flying around. So I spent ten days where I didn't get out of my bed in this hotel and I'd just order room service and occasionally I'd get up and do push ups or sit ups or something so that my body wasn't turning into a bag of shit. My sleeping patterns got really fucked up, because I'd eat a meal and then sleep for a couple hours and then work and then doze off and sleep for another couple hours, so I was really just working with these little naps all the time and it was really, really hard on me. "Finally the day came and all the scores were done and Mark was arriving the next day, I printed them off, recorded the session [with the orchestra for Heartland], and that night I was so, like verklempt from the crazy experience of not leaving the hotel room for ten days. My brain was polluted with thoughts of self-doubt, like maybe the session didn't go so well. I was kind of listening to it, but I couldn't really hear it because none of it was mixed, and I was like, 'Oh no, this was a big mistake.' And this was a lot of money for me to sink into a record to get an orchestra to play on it. The next day, I was like, on the verge of tears all day, but had to put on a bright and sunny face to work with Mark. So, he'd be there and we'd be doing these Rumble Strips arrangements and he'd leave the room to talk to D'Angelo or whatever, and I'd be crying and crying and crying and he'd come back in and I'd wipe my eyes, and be like, 'Okay! Time to work!'" Pallett recalls, laughing. "It was such a gruelling experience, and I walked away from it thinking, 'Okay, I'm never going to make another orchestral record again.'" The breakdown, it seems, was worth it. Heartland is Pallett's most ambitious record yet. Lewis's story weaves every song together lyrically, but the orchestral elements tell an auditory story as well. It's unlike any album you've ever owned. The opening bars of the sprightly "Midnight Detectives" introduce us to Lewis's world, and the music evokes discovery, immersing the listener into a new world where one's as likely to hear flutes and trumpets as synthesizers and violins. The story, the repeating orchestral elements, and Pallett's soft voice combine to make the connective tissue between each song palpable, while still allowing for easy distinction between tracks. A few songs even sound as though they could find a home on a progressive radio station, such as the dark but whimsical "Lewis Takes Action," with its light-hearted '70s soundscape, or even the delicately propulsive and impossibly catchy "Lewis Takes Off His Shirt." Whether Heartland actually makes the jump to mainstream remains to be seen, but a few high-profile friends and frequent collaborators have nothing but praise for Pallett's particular genius. Arcade Fire drummer Jeremy Gara had worked with Pallett on Arcade Fire albums, but never on any of Pallett's solo material, and was eager to play on Heartland. But even he admits he didn't quite get it at first. "I heard Heartland from demo, through recording, past overdubs, and during mixes," Gara says. "I'll be totally honest, I got lost in it at some point... didn't know how it would all work itself out. When I parted ways with the project, it was a bunch of great music. Since then, Owen's turned it into a great album." John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats agrees. Pallett wrote the string arrangements for the Goats' last album, The Life of the World to Come, and Darnielle's admiration for Heartland goes beyond being a Final Fantasy fan. "I think Owen's ear for a certain kind of wistful mood is pretty peerless," Darnielle says. "Kinda hate to compare him to John Cale, since the string-instrument parallel is so obvious, but I remember listening to the classic John Cale albums when I was a teenager and thinking, well, this is weird ― he's not angry, or mourning something, or possessed by teenage lust; he's somewhere knottier and more grown-up. Songs like 'Red Sun No. 5' from Heartland give me that same thornier-problems, deeper-waters feel, which you don't run across in pop music often outside of a few Pet Shop Boys songs here and there." Accolades like this might provide a bit of hope that all of Pallett's efforts have paid off. Beyond the record's grandiose sounds, it also marks some major firsts for Pallett: His legendary live show is evolving with a new looping system and he's added another body to what has historically been a very solitary effort. Thomas Gill, who had also recorded with Pallett's co-producer Leon Taheny, has been touring with Pallett for the last year throughout Canada and the U.S. "I was lonely on stage by myself so I wanted somebody else up there with me," Pallett says. "I'm hoping to integrate him into the creative process, but for now, he's just singing backups, playing some percussion and playing a mean guitar. He is a guitar virtuoso and I'm seriously under-utilizing him." He's also releasing Heartland under his own name, having decided to ditch the Final Fantasy moniker after years of dancing around Square Enix's copyright (the company develops the Final Fantasy video games). Plus, Pallett confesses, it's the first record he's actually made for other people. "I've always been a little surprised that people are kinda into my music," he laughs. "Up until Heartland, I haven't really felt like I was making records for people. I'm really proud of it. I don't think I've heard anything like it before. I'm nervous about it coming out though... there's a lot of hubris involved in this. I even kind of sing about it on the last song, 'What Do You Think Will Happen Now?' This is meant to be a love letter, it creates this thing that ought not to exist, 'cause I get it. This record might have been able to sell a million records in 1973, but it's not in that position by any stretch of the imagination. I was kind of aware I was leaving myself open, but I fuckin' love albums that make these grand statements. Maybe next year I'll make pop singles, but this is kinda what I want to do." Pallett's decision to make an orchestral pop album might flout mainstream conventions, but it's actually in keeping with Canada's recent biggest musical export. Arcade Fire, with whom Pallett collaborates frequently, are considered one of the biggest bands in the world, and are often classified as orchestral pop or baroque rock. Over the last decade, they've helped lift the curtain on Canada's music scene, shining a giant spotlight on acts like Feist, Broken Social Scene, and Pallett himself. But bring up the topic of increasing international acclaim for Canadian musicians, and Pallett can't help but get his back up. "I don't know. I like me some Broken Social Scene, but fuck that. International acclaim? Carey Mercer still has to work for a living and Black Out Beach has the best fucking record ever produced, and Hank and Deep Dark United, I don't see any international acclaim for those guys, so good for Stars and Broken Social Scene and Land of Talk, because I love those bands, but I think Canada really needs to start boosting some of these real fucking talents that are just being criminally overlooked by everyone." He's quiet for a moment, and then bursts into laughter, admitting that this is a touchy subject. "That was such a harsh response!" Pallett admits he's already mentally moved on to the next album, aching to perform new songs he hasn't even recorded yet. He's not one to linger in any one moment for too long, and after spending much of the last four years of helping other people add flesh to the bones of their projects, he's ready to focus on himself and a post-Heartland world. "I'm a little bit sick of collaborating with people," Pallett says. "Last year, I realized I wanted much more time with my own album. I'm 30 years old and I've got ten years of touring before it starts getting back breaking. I can do film scoring, I can do collaborative work at anytime in my life. I want to make albums."

St. Vincent

My interview with Annie Clark (St. Vincent) is online this week at WestEnder.com

Well red: Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent.

Credit: supplied

St. Vincent does it herself

Few musical careers have stranger or stronger foundations than that of Texas native Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent. At 12, an age when most kids are just starting to fiddle with their chosen instrument, Clark was recording and mixing her own songs on a computer patch-worked together by her step dad. Throughout her late teens, she served as the summer tour manager for her aunt and uncle’s jazz duo, Tuck and Patti. At 22, she donned a giant robe and lent her voice and guitar to the sprawling Dallas symphonic-rock collective Polyphonic Spree; two years later, she joined the backing band for wonderfully weird singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens.

Clark’s uncommon breadth of experience was evident on her first album as St. Vincent, 2007’s marvelously accomplished Marry Me, which was recorded when she was not yet 25. Its 2009 follow-up, Actor, was widely hailed as one of the year’s best albums (including a No. 12 placing in the Village Voice’s prestigious Pazz & Jop critics poll).

WE spoke with Clark over the phone about how an arty feminist from the American South managed to grow up into one of the indie world’s quirkiest talents.

How did you begin recording your own music?
My stepfather is actually an accountant, and he had a whole lot of computers, and he’s a really smart engineer kind of guy. So, he had a bunch of parts lying around the house, and with his help and the help of my uncle, who’s also a big kind of genius musician, but also a mathematician, I wanted to build a studio and record myself. This was in the days before Garage Band or anything like that; it was a PC — really slow, non-intuitive software. But as a result, I spent most of my formative music-making years alone making music, and I think that really has informed the way I do things now. I feel very empowered to really just DIY.

I’m just a few years older than you, but computers were often considered a “boy” thing back then. Did you run into that attitude?
I grew up in Texas, and definitely there are stricter gender roles there and in the South than you would necessarily find in Vancouver — just in general; I’m not necessarily indicting Texas. But, luckily, my mom’s a feminist, and I grew up with empowered women around me. My step dad’s a kind-hearted guy and a nerd, so if I was interested, he was thrilled and wanted to show me how to do that or how to clean a fish or how to change a tire or that kind of stuff.

Knowing the digital side would also put you in the unique position of not needing other people to make your music.
Yeah. I think, generally, there’s the concept that technology allows you to make music better than you are. If I can conceive of something, or hear something, maybe it’s painstaking to input it into the computer, but I can make something that’s harder than something I could normally play. It’s this way to push your creativity. You’re not limited so much by your own motor skills. It’s really empowering if you can harness it.

What was going on with you when you were writing the songs for Actor?
I’d pretty much been on tour, solidly, for a year. I’d never toured to that extent before. You spend a lot of time on tour in these non-spaces: in transit or a motel or hotel, where you don’t know who was there the night before or who’ll be there the night after. It’s all part of this non-space, so I started to feel like this non-human. And I’d just moved back to New York, and there’s something about the physical space of the city. I couldn’t make a lot of noise in my apartment, and you could hear other people through the walls, and ostensibly other people could hear you. I’d never really been in that situation where there’s so much anonymity and then a total lack of anonymity.

The music on Actor is just packed with ideas and sounds. What were your sources?
Partly it was the Disney films and the scores from the ’30s and ’40s. For a lot of kids in the Western hemisphere, our earliest memories and conceptions of magic are fairy tales and Disney... You have fairy tales that, on one hand, are magic and sweet, where the whole world can turn around with the flick of a wand. On the other hand, you have the really dark stories, with rape and famine and horrible things that happen in fairy tales that get cleaned up and repackaged into something you can sell at Walmart or whatever. That dichotomy in the fairy tales was really inspiring. I find that to be true to life, in a way. Nothing is ever very simple or a one-to-one ratio, and I wanted to combine that musically.

Owl City

My interview with Owl City runs in the Charleston City Paper this week.

Owl City: Computer World Pop

Adam Young's organic approach to digital music works

by Andrea Warner

Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube might be the denizens of the digital age, but MySpace is still good for one thing: creating frenzied online buzz and rabid fan bases for kids making music in their parents' basements. Meet Adam Young from Owatonna, Minn., better known as Owl City, the one-man electro-synth, indie-pop sensation who made his major label debut in 2009 with the 12-song Ocean Eyes (Universal). New fans went nuts for the hit track "Fireflies."

Even though Young's just starting out, he's already stirred plenty of controversy, with a sound that owes a major debt to the Postal Service and the strong Christian influence that pervades his sweetly hopeful songs.

In keeping with Young's internet inclinations, City Paper recently conversed with him about touring, faith, and frozen pizza.

City Paper: Are you still reeling from the rather sudden journey from making music in your parents' basement to selling out shows all over the world?

Adam Young: It's all still pretty surreal. The best part has been seeing all the new places I've never seen before. Having never seen the ocean before beginning to tour last year ... and getting to travel to Japan and China was pretty incredible.

CP: When did you compose your first piece of digital music? What inspired it?

AY: A few years ago, I started making music partly out of boredom, partly for fun, and partly because I once began making a hummus sandwich and realized there wasn't any Swiss cheese in the fridge. I was furious, so I wrote a song called "Hello Seattle."

CP: Does your faith inspire you, and if so, in what way?

AY: My faith is a big part of who I am and is the reason I do what I do.

CP: From what I've read, your life was a bit more sheltered before, and now you're traveling all over, dealing with a diverse fan base and diverse group of peers in the music industry. How have those experiences changed you?

AY: I don't think I've changed much, but it does make me smile when I go to the grocery store and buy the more expensive brand of frozen pizza.

CP: What kind of connection were you hoping to make when you put your music online?

AY: I write and record music just for fun. There was never a goal for getting attention; it was merely something I started doing to keep me busy. It makes me smile to know people are willing to listen.

CP: What do you think of the connection between technology and humanity? Does technology get in the way of people building relationships, or can it help foster relationships?

AY: I think it can go both ways. I think the internet has been a way out for a lot of kids — me included. It allows us to avoid awkward situations, life scenarios, etc. ... things our parents had to stand up and face. It makes me sad how the internet has, in some respects, stolen a lot of imagination and creativity from kids growing up today. At the same time, things like Facebook can be wonderful things, and I wouldn't be where I am now without MySpace. The internet has certainly been a wonderful thing for Owl City, and I'm certain the band wouldn't be nearly as successful without it.

CP: Who are some of your biggest influences musically?

AY: Mostly instrumental ambient music, oddly enough. I don't listen to much music with lyrics, so a lot of different things come into play when it comes to influence. I really connect with certain moods that I discover in film soundtracks. My two biggest musical influences are Jonathan Ford from Unwed Sailor and composer Thomas Newman.

CP: I can imagine you're probably sick of comparisons to the Postal Service, but have you met those guys before? Do you know what they think of your stuff?

AY: I haven't met anyone from The Postal Service, but a lot of people liken Owl City to them. While that was never the intention or the initial concept of the project, I'm totally honored.

CP: Have you been invited to collaborate with other musicians?

AY: I worked with Matt Thiessen from Relient K last year. Matt and I have become great friends working together, and I'm honored to have had the chance to collaborate with one of my favorite artists.

CP: What direction has your writing taken since you've started touring and the scope of your influences has changed?

AY: I've just learned a lot more this past year, and just like anything, the more you work at something, put your heart and soul into it, the better you get at it. I'm already excited to get to work on the next record.

Kris Kristofferson

I got to interview The Kris Kristofferson for the Charleston City Paper this week.

Kris Kristofferson feels it in the bones

The legendary songwriter thrives on his non-stop musical journey

by Andrea Warner

Songwriter Kris Kristofferson is ready for simpler times. One of the last remaining true American music legends, the 73-year-old has also had a sideline career as a successful actor. He isn't interested in reinventing country-folk music; rather, he wants to return to his roots, and he does so beautifully with his most recent album, Closer to the Bone. It's a thoughtful collection of Kristofferson classics: simple songs about love and family.

"Closer to the Bone evokes the kind of image of being stripped down, bare basics. Not a lot of tap-dancin'," Kristofferson laughs.

It's also the way he's spent the last several years connecting with his audience. The majority of his current performances are solo efforts, but he admits it was "scary at first not to have a band to hide in."

Imagining Kristofferson scared of anything is almost incomprehensible. Even his earliest accomplishments prove he hates backing down from a challenge. As a young man, he won a Rhodes scholarship and did a stint as a captain and pilot in the U.S. Army. Ultimately, he pursued songwriting, relocating to Nashville in 1965 and taking a job as a janitor at Columbia Records, where he hoped to meet some of his favorite musicians.

He did make connections, and, by the early 1970s, some of his musical heroes were playing his songs. Some of the most notable versions included Johnny Cash's rendition of "Sunday Morning Coming Down," Waylon Jennings' "The Taker," and, most famously, the Janis Joplin cover of "Me and Bobby McGee."

"I think one of the best things about being a songwriter is you can hear your work interpreted by other people, most of whom are a lot better of singers to my ears," Kristofferson says. "Like, to hear George Jones, or Janis singin' 'Bobby McGee.' A genius singer, and there are a lot of 'em out there, can make it something better than just the words. They can transform it into something better than it was. Jerry Lee Lewis did it with a song Shel Silverstein and I wrote, 'Once More With Feeling.' It's not a bad song, but it wasn't great 'til he sang it. It was incredible."

The '70s continued to be kind to Kristofferson. He released 13 albums, and made the jump to movies, including the Academy Award-winning A Star is Born, co-starring Barbra Streisand. At the height of his film popularity, Kristofferson's bare chest and bushy beard graced a bevy of marquee posters. By the 1980s, Kristofferson had also gained entry into the ranks of his musical heroes, forming the super-group, The Highwaymen, with Cash and Jennings.

Throughout the next 20 years, Kristofferson continued to act, record, and continue his social activism. On Closer to the Bone he pays tribute to freedom of speech with the song "Sister Sinead," an ode to the Irish pop singer who was vilified at a Dylan concert Kristofferson hosted, following her controversial Saturday Night Live appearance in which she tore up a picture of the pope.

"I've never ever seen everybody boo somebody. I'd never heard anything like it," Kristofferson recalls. "The guy who was runnin' the stage came up to me and he said, 'Get her off the stage — now.' It shocked me so bad, I walked up there to her and said to her, 'Don't let the bastards get you down.' And it went over the microphone!

"She said, 'I'm not down' and sang this other song, and then she wheeled around and she was so shocked I guess by what they were doing, she threw up on the stage. She may be wrong, but she may not be, you know? I've never seen an audience turn on a person like that. And the fact that it happened at a Bob Dylan show made it almost cosmic, you know?"

"Sister Sinead" is the fifth track on Closer to the Bone, a record that seems to double as a time capsule of some of Kristofferson's most personal moments. The album's eighth track, "Good Morning John," was written for Cash over 30 years ago, but it's never been recorded until now.

"There were different reasons about why I didn't record it, but I wrote it for him long ago when he was comin' off of rehab," Kristofferson says. "It's a special relationship I had with him. He was my hero and turned out to be my best friend." Cash died in 2003.

Kristofferson admits he's grown more reflective, but he's not slowing down at all.

"I'm sort of getting ready to finally write an autobiography I've been threatening to do, and people have been trying to get me to do," he admits when pressed about his future plans. "I've been resisting for a long time, but I feel I better get started while I can still remember what I had for breakfast!" He laughs loudly. "Seriously, as you get older, you really do have a hard time with names, or at least I do, so I think I better start writing."

Closer to the Bone might just be the perfect jumping off point for delving into his rich past, since he admits that songwriting is how he makes sense of his life experiences, good and bad. Kristofferson laughs happily as he considers what the rest of his life will look like.

"Listen, I'll probably be doin' this till they throw the dirt on me."

High Life

My review of the indie flick, Highlife, is in WE this week.

HIGH LIFE
Starring Timothy Olyphant, Stephen Eric McIntyre
Directed by Gary Yates
When Hollywood delves vein-deep into a druggie flick, the audience can usually be guaranteed at least one hallucination, a mumble-scream monologue, and careful layers of makeup — disguised as dirt — to subdue the pretty sheen of the actors’ faces. High Life delivers all of those requirements, and goes one step further by attempting to package a junkie-heist caper as comedy.

The basic premise is familiar: four losers hatch a get-rich-quick scheme (in this case, to rob a bank machine). The plot’s mastermind is Dick (Timothy Olyphant), a former lawyer who leads a group of stereotypical addicts, including hapless idiot Donnie (Joe Anderson), pretty boy Billy (Rossif Sutherland), and violent thug Bug (Stephen Eric McIntyre).

The “funny” parts of this dark comedy aren’t all that funny, coming as they do courtesy of the quartet’s crazy drug-fueled antics, and knowing nods to the early-’80s time period. (“Look, you can still smoke inside banks!” the film winks at us.) What does work, and to surprisingly moving effect, is the serious stuff under High Life’s facetious surface. Nuanced performances by Olyphant, as an absentee dad, and McIntyre, as an aging street hood struggling with his latent homosexuality, add layers of subtext to an otherwise lacklustre script.

Flying bullets, narcotics, and a body count can occasionally create comedic gold (hello, Pineapple Express!), but High Life isn’t an innocent little pot party. It dwells in the much harder, more devastating world of addiction, making it almost impossible for the film’s sketchy sad sacks to give an audience much to laugh about. ★★ —Andrea Warner

Debt: The Musical

My review of Debt: The Musical is online now at WestEnder.com

All due credit: The cast of "Debt: The Musical" busts a move for insolvency.

“Debt” goes for broke

With arts budgets slashed and burned, credit-card interest rates at an all-time high, and money increasingly elusive, has there ever been a more timely stage debut than Debt: The Musical?

Written by Leslie Mildiner, with songs by Todd Butler, Debt is a jubilant skewering of art and commerce, loosely structured around the stories of four people crippled by their finances. There’s the single mom/actress (Ellen Kennedy), the shopaholic (Tracey Power), the can’t-make-ends-meet dad (Tom Pickett), and the writer (Andy Toth), all of whom are tied together by a narrator, Spike (Simon Webb). Each attempts to cope in his or her own way with fiduciary tumult, with varying degrees of success — and plenty of singing and dancing.

The most interesting and fully realized stories belong to the single mom who dabbles in the phone-sex industry and also grapples with a bureaucratic welfare officer, and the writer, a daydreaming narcissist who thinks he’s too educated for menial labour.

The musical numbers negotiate the many aspects of falling into debt and climbing back out, from corporate to personal greed, kids, recessions, weak job markets, and the questionable economic value of being a college graduate. Butler’s songs cover a wide range of musical genres, but among the catchiest are the doo-wop-inspired “He’s Got a Degree,” lamenting the job situation for the higher-educated, and the reggae-influenced “Go Postal,” a tongue-in-cheek take on workplace violence. The sobering “Labour of Love” aims for the heart as an ode to struggling parents, but something about the harmony and the melancholy lyrics make it feel cheaply manipulative and out of place with the rest of the show’s well-crafted songs.

Mildiner’s script could still use a bit of tweaking, with perhaps more of a focus on the stronger characters to create a more tangible connective thread and narrative structure. Overall, this strong debut, with fine performances and a winning collection of musical numbers, makes Debt a worthy investment.

To Jan. 30 at Firehall Arts Centre (280 E. Cordova), 8 pm. Matinees Sat.-Sun., 2 pm. Tickets $16-$28 from FirehallArtsCentre.ca

—Andrea Warner

Gov't Mule

My feature on Gov't Mule appears in this week's Charleston City Paper.

Gov't Mule kicks its own style of Southern rock

More than a thread

by Andrea Warner

Warren Haynes follows closely in the footsteps of his blues-rock forefathers. From his appearance — long, dirty blond hair, scraggly gray goatee, man-in-black wardrobe — to his litany of influences, including B.B. King, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix, Haynes has made a name for himself as one of the world's best guitarists.

Not bad for someone who went from being a kid in Asheville, N.C., to a starring role in the Allman Brothers Band and forming Gov't Mule, his own award-winning Southern rock band.

Thanks to the release of a new Gov't Mule album and a massive international tour schedule, Haynes won't lose any momentum in 2010. Fans spent three years anxiously awaiting the rock quartet's eighth studio album, By A Thread (Evil Teen), which was recorded at Willie Nelson's Pedernales Studio in Texas Hill, and released in late 2009. The 11-song collection immediately earned critical acclaim. The accolades were nice, but they're simply an affirmation of a career that's spanned over 30 years.

"It feels like we're moving forward and backward at the same time," Haynes said in a recent press release. "Hardcore fans tend to not want us to move too far away from where we started, but the band never wants to stay in one place for very long."

Haynes was just 20 years old when he began playing guitar with country singer-songwriter David Allan Coe. He spent four years touring the world, and played on nine of Coe's albums. An opening slot for the '70s-era rock legends, the reunited Allman Brothers Band, introduced Haynes to lead guitarist Dickey Betts. Haynes and his friend, bassist Allen Woody joined the band in 1989, coinciding with its 20th anniversary.

In 1994, Haynes and Woody formed their own project, Gov't Mule, with drummer Matt Abts, dedicated to recreating the riffy magic of power trios like Cream, ZZ Top, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience, releasing their debut a year later.

After straddling both projects for three years, Haynes and Woody left the Allman Brothers Band behind to focus on Gov't Mule full-time, but they had just three years together when Woody died of an overdose in 2000, putting Gov't on a temporary hiatus. Haynes rejoined the Allmans in 2001.

The current lineup includes multi-instrumentalist Danny Lois and bassist Jorgen Carlsson.

For the last nine years, Haynes has juggled both groups, (with touring stints on guitar and vocals in The Dead). Recently his style of music has found new relevance, and a new audience.

By A Thread has been lauded as the band's best album since Woody's death. Haynes' voice alternates between a warm, gruff purr and a sexy, snarling growl. The album's opening track, "Broke Down On The Brazos" starts out hard and dirty, grinding the blues from its guitars' strings. It's a great contrast from the slightly psychedelic and bleak "Monday Mourning Meltdown." Even on a potential misstep like "Frozen Fear," which borders on cheesy with its '80s-era soulful saxophone wail, it's impossible to deny the skillful musicianship which pulls the track back from the cheddar brink. It's the sort of trick that only a true guitar hero knows.

Indie twists on Haynes' blues-driven Southern rock, like the Kings of Leon and The Drive-By Truckers, have found major mainstream success, inspiring younger audiences to seek out its pioneers. Gov't Mule's ability to bridge a generation gap isn't surprising: they're one of the few bands to encourage audiences to bring in their video cameras and recording equipment and tape the shows. Mule makes the songs available for purchase and download from their official website. Gov't Mule's presence online, from YouTube to MySpace to Twitter, is consistent with their forward-thinking approach, without sacrificing any of the sound that Haynes has so carefully cultivated over the last three decades.

PuSh Festival-Poetics: a ballet brut

My piece on the performance piece, Poetics: a ballet brut, appears in this week's WE.

New York-based performance artists the Nature Theater of Oklahoma take the mundane movements of everyday life and transform them into art with Poetics: a ballet brut.

Credit: supplied

Nature Theater PuSh-es the limits of dance

Posted By: Andrea Warner

01/21/2010 12:00 AM

Falling out of bed or eating pizza might not be the equivalent of a gravity-defying grand jeté, but to the folks from the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, a New York-based avant-garde performance troupe, there’s poetry and dance in everything we do. Hence, Poetics: a ballet brut, a confounding and often polarizing project that takes simple, everyday gestures and asks the audience to explore the inherent artistry of commonplace movements. WE spoke with Kelly Copper, Nature Theater’s co-founder and Poetics co-director, about the company’s Kafka-esque origins, the process of creating a non-dance dance show, and what to expect from the final product.

WE: Where did the name Nature Theater of Oklahoma come from?
Kelly Copper: [Co-founder] Pavol [Liska] originally comes from the former Czechoslovakia, now Slovak Republic, and his first home in the U.S. was in Oklahoma. He came here at age 18 on his own, a bit like the Karl Rossmann character in Kafka’s unfinished novel, Amerika. So, this is how we got our name. The last chapter of that book is called “The Nature Theater of Oklahoma,” and in it, this poor misfit who has had a myriad of awful jobs since he first set out to America finally is hired by a theatre company who advertise that they have a “place for everyone! Everyone in his place!”

Where did the idea come from for Poetics?
Poetics came from a sort of personal crisis Pavol was having about directing: Is [directing] enough of an art form on its own, or do we need a script? Is the script the essential? So, we started with just a map of a performance, with no language, with entrances and exits which were all determined by a throw of the dice. We gave the four performers this score and asked them to move around and say nothing. And we watched that for several weeks, just thinking about movement and what it means, and you notice it does mean something even on its own. When one person moves to stand next to another and then suddenly moves away — as an audience, you interpret that. So, we became very interested in the way an open system like this creates possibilities for the audience to author their own experience. And then, as we began scripting movement — again using dice, and incorporating observed gesture and posture of people on the street, people standing, sitting, sleeping — we realized we had a dance, and then we had to deal with that as well.

What were the initial reactions to the show?
Well, one artist said that for the first 10 minutes she thought that it was the worst thing she had ever seen, and then she was surprised that her own opinion kept changing through the piece, until in the end it was the absolute best thing she’d seen and she was amazed by the range of emotion she felt about it during the course of just 60 minutes. That always makes me smile, to think of her alternately hating and loving the show. It does that to people.The show will take anything from an audience and give back to them tenfold. It’s about that dynamic — spectator and spectacle. Which one are you?

Crazy Heart review

My review of Crazy Heart is in this week's WestEnder.

Jeff Bridges stars opposite Maggie Gyllenhall in director Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart.

CRAZY HEART

Starring Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal

Directed by Scott Cooper

Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) is a Nashville relic, a hard-drinkin’, hard-livin’ mess of a man. He’s also a brilliant singer-songwriter suffering from three years of writer’s block, now relegated to playing dive bars and bowling alleys while his protégé has hit the big time. If Crazy Heart sounds like a country album disguised as a movie, it is — to both good and bad effect.

Blake’s a beloved hero and bona fide star on the small-town circuit, sleeping with middle-aged groupies but barely able to afford a bottle of his preferred liquor. A stop in Santa Fe introduces him to Jane (Maggie Gyllenhaal), an aspiring music journalist who falls for his poetry and grizzled charm. The requisite “love of a good woman” story unfolds with just enough variation to keep up the momentum as Blake struggles to atone for his mistakes. These include alcoholism, abandoning his son, and pissing away his promising career. Together, they almost choke the movie with country-fried clichés.

But a rambling script can’t keep a good cast down. Gyllenhaal creates a genuine, believable spark with Bridges despite a 20-year age gap. And Blake’s frenemy, a newly-minted country star named Tommy Sweet, is a tasty bit of stunt casting. (It’s this particular actor’s best performance in years, and the surprise was a pleasant one, so we’ll keep his identity under wraps.)

The songs, mostly written by T-Bone Burnett, sound like old-school country gems, and Bridges makes every refrain resonate with his scratchy timbre. Audiences will smell each whiskey-soaked breath and feel every roughly calloused fingertip as Bridges sinks deep inside Bad Blake’s bones. It’s a performance so finely crafted and sympathetic that every screw-up deals a devastating, visceral blow. Ultimately one man and his music elevate Crazy Heart above standard-issue redemption fare. ★★★—Andrea Warner

Owen Pallet's Heartland reviewed

My review of Owen Pallett's Heartland is online at Exclaim! right now.


Owen Pallett
Heartland
By Andrea Warner

Owen Pallett's now recording under his own name, having shed the Final Fantasy moniker last month, just in time to make his most personal and ambitious album yet. Pop orchestral epic Heartland is tense, cheeky and emotional, a dense amalgamation of sounds that traverse an entirely fictional landscape of Pallett's making. Heartland's narrator, Lewis, has been described as an "ultra-violent" farmer, and while the lyrics certainly lead the listener into some dark places, it's surprising how much of the album plays like catchy, kooky electro-pop. "Lewis Takes Off His Shirt" owes a debt to '70s AM gold, a deceptively cheery sounding number that warns: "Got a thirst for liquid gold, I'll bludgeon 'til the body's cold."

Even songs that combine soaring string arrangements with (what sounds like) woodwind trills, such as exploratory opener "Midnight Detectives," have hummable hooks. There's plenty of moodier fare here as well, like the percussion- and keyboard-heavy "Red Song No. 5" and "E for Estranged," a beautifully melancholy piano-driven piece kept tense with a steady background hum featuring contrasting strings. It's a surreal experience, and Lewis's world is a place that demands to be visited again and again. Heartland is an entirely self-contained universe, with Pallett the master of this domain. (Domino)

Youth in Revolt

My review of Youth in Revolt is in this week's WestEnder.

Michael Cera broadens his acting range with a double role in the new black comedy Youth in Revolt.

YOUTH IN REVOLT
Starring Michael Cera, Steve Buscemi
Directed by Miguel Arteta
Youth in Revolt owes a lot to ’80s teen sex comedies, but the fresh twist here is that the teens are articulate, intelligent, and afflicted with high-brow quirks. Cue Michael Cera, who until now has been reliable but unchallenged playing variations on the same character from Superbad to Juno.

Loosely based on the 1993 self-published novel-turned-cult-favourite by C. D. Payne, Revolt is an unwieldy octopus of a film dabbling in multiple genres: coming-of-age, slapstick, art-house, and black comedy, to name but a few. Nick Twisp (Cera) is a 16-year-old virgin and aspiring writer with a penchant for Frank Sinatra and Fellini. His parents, Estelle (Jean Smart) and George (Steve Buscemi), are fuck-ups, but that doesn’t prevent them from constantly hooking up with others while Nick watches incredulously from the sexless sidelines. Everything changes, however, when the awkward hero meets his soul mate, Sheeni (Portia Doubleday), at a trailer park.

His desires thwarted by disapproving parents, distance, and Sheeni’s golden boy of an ex, Nick explores his bad side to secure Sheeni’s affections. He manifests a rebellious alter ego, Francois Dillinger (also Cera), and ‘together’ they commit a variety of crimes, including arson, car theft, and the botching of a fake suicide.

Cera is utterly charming as Francois, wholly inhabiting the character’s wispy mustache and confident swagger. He’s finally found a role that reveals another dimension to his comedic talent, while still making use of his trademark Cera-ness (an adorable old man trapped in a gangly, awkward body). He helps Revolt rise up from merely mediocre to genuinely entertaining. ★★★—Andrea Warner

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

My review of Blackbird Theatre's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Meg Roe, Craig Erickson, Gabrielle Rose, and Kevin McNulty star in Blackbird Theatre's production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Credit: supplied

This Woolf has teeth

By Andrea Warner

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee’s magnificent war of words, first eviscerated Broadway audiences in 1962 — and it would seem those wounds have never fully healed. Almost 50 years later, with divorce rates sky-high and families falling apart on reality TV, the Tony Award-winning play is still the ultimate portrayal of marriage and bittersweet misery, as proven by Blackbird Theatre’s new production.

George (Kevin McNulty) is a history professor who has been married to the college president’s daughter, Martha (Gabrielle Rose), for 23 years. Fueled by booze, bitter regret, and occasional glimpses of genuine affection, theirs is a symbiotic relationship in which dependence on each other has become the thing they despise most about themselves. After a night of drinking at a faculty party, Martha invites the new professor, young biologist Nick (Craig Erickson), and his wife, Honey (Meg Roe), home for a nightcap, kicking off three hours of emotional slaughter comprised of horrific insults, betrayal, and psychological warfare. George and Martha rip each other to shreds, and by the time the sun’s come up, they may have taken Nick and Honey down with them.

Blackbird’s casting perfectly complements Albee’s genius script. Roe sparkles as the young naif Honey; her infectious giggles as she becomes increasingly intoxicated offer much-needed levity betwixt the numerous moments of tension and verbal violence. Erickson is perfectly at home in Nick’s smug arrogance, but turns up the heat as he and Rose flirt and flaunt their attraction to each other. Rose’s ability to turn on a dime from drunken seductress to tragic clown is absolutely awe-inspiring.

McNulty, though, is the real revelation — he seems born to play George. Every phrase that comes from his mouth, whether spat out in vicious retribution or sliding silkily off the tongue as a thinly-veiled threat, is layered in subtext. Under McNulty’s skillful portrayal, George is pleasantly threatening, whether letting Martha’s emasculating insults seemingly roll off his back, or calmly letting Nick know that he’s lulled him into divulging secrets so that he can be more easily destroyed.

With a running time of a little over three hours (plus two intermissions), this isn’t the easiest play to sit through emotionally, but the time passes quickly, with plenty of laughter to temper the flurry of insults and double entendres. Ultimately, this is a rare night of theatre, in which a flawless cast brings new depth to an already perfect play. It’s weird to say, but this is a welcome punch to the gut, where the audience is left as broken as the characters, but in a good way.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? runs to Jan. 16 at the Cultch (1895 Venables). Tickets $15-$35 from Tickets Tonight.

Tegan and Sara

My interview with Tegan of Tegan and Sara for WE.

Tegan (left) and Sara Quin.

Credit: supplied

Tegan & Sara do the write thing

By Andrea Warner

Even casual Canadian music fans know the basic equation of one of Alberta’s most successful exports: twin sisters X gay + indie-rock = Tegan and Sara. What most of them probably don’t know is that after 14 years of playing music together, the 29-year-old duo, as famous for their onstage banter/bickering as for their numerous variations on the fashionably punked-out mullet, has marched into previously uncharted territory: co-writing songs together. The Quin sisters’ sixth studio album, Sainthood, is also a stylistic departure, with many of the songs straying from their tried-and-true folk and rock influences to flirt with electro-pop.

WE spoke with Tegan as she was enjoying a few days back home in Vancouver before heading out on a four-month North American tour.

Sainthood marks the first time you and Sara have co-written songs. How was the collaborative experience?

Tegan Quin: We were really proud of ourselves when we were able to accomplish writing music together, because we’d never done it before and there was this part of us that felt like maybe it would go badly and we’d fight or something. [Laughs] It was actually really fun and enlightening to learn how Sara writes, and we definitely learned a lot from one another. We ended up sending songs back and forth to one another and continued to collaborate... It was cool; it kind of opened a door after 14 years of being a band. We’ve collaborated a lot, but we’ve never written. It kind of made me realize that there’s this whole other part of what we do that we’ve never explored. We were really inspired by the idea that in the ’70s and ’80s bands wrote for each other all the time... I was like, “Fuck, we should be doing more of this!” We should write for other bands and with each other. Sainthood’s by far the most collaborative record we’ve ever done, and that’s really exciting.

Do you have a wish list of future collaborators?

I really like leaving that door open, and every time someone comes to it, I’m like, “Cool, yeah!” Like, we’re writing a song for Margaret Cho right now; she’s putting out a comedy album, but she’s making it with indie-rock artists, and I love that. We just did a Christmas song with Fucked Up, and that was kinda neat. But I just love leaving the door open, because the weirdest people come to it and I’m like, “Yes, we’d love to work with you!”

Do people feel left out of the collaborative process working with sisters, since you obviously have a bit of a shorthand together?

It’s interesting, ’cause Chris Walla [Sainthood producer and Death Cab for Cutie member] was quoted recently as saying we were, like, “hyper-democratic.” We always say that that’s our band: Everyone gets an opinion, always, but that doesn’t mean we’re not running it like a dictatorship. We are creating the illusion that everyone has an opinion. I think that Sara and I have learned over the years how to make each other feel that way. Ultimately, if I want something, I’m going to fight for it. And if Sara gives me at least a little bit of her time to hear me out, and then comes back to me with her thoughts, even if it doesn’t go my way, I’ll go for it because at least she heard me out. And that’s huge for us, because when we first started out, we were teenagers, you know? It was like, “NOOOOO! I want it this way!” We are hyper-democratic, and I think working with us is — well, we try not to make people have to go to therapy afterwards. We try to be respectful and responsible with others.

Neil Young was a really vocal advocate of you two from the beginning, and you’ve had some pretty influential mentors. What’s been the best bit of advice?

The best advice was on our first tour with Neil Young and the Pretenders. One night I was complaining about the press, and Chrissie Hynde was sitting at the end of the table, and she slid over at one point and told this really funny story about seeing Steve Buscemi at a press conference. Every question was stupid, apparently — just really terrible questions — and he kept giving really great answers anyway. And she was like, “Oh, my God. They print the stupid answers, not the stupid questions! I want to go back in time 25 years and do every interview over again.” And I thought, you know, it’s totally true. They print stupid answers, so it was really important to me, you know, with being a twin, being gay, being a woman in indie-rock — we have fucking taken a lot of fuckin’ shit over the years. Like, we have put up with... idiotic questions and ridiculous comments, and I’ve just taken it all in stride. But everyone’s still just doing their job, and if they’re asking stupid questions and you’re bored with it, there’s still a way to get through it without acting like a jack-off, you know?

Theater spotlight 2009

Steven Schelling and I wrote a look back at some of our favourite theatre moments from 2009 for WE.

Ken Macdonald’s breathtaking set for The Constant Wife (left) and Itsazoo’s modern, roving musical take on Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (right) were two noteworthy 2009 theatre offerings.

Credit: supplied

Dropping the curtain on 2009

By Andrea Warner and Steven Schelling

This past year might be remembered by the theatre community as the calm before the storm: Established and fledgling companies faced the recession head-on, taking over every stage (and park and beach) they could, only to be hobbled at year’s end with potentially crippling government budget cuts for 2010. But if the last 12 months showed audiences anything, it’s that Vancouver actors, playwrights, and directors aren’t backing down.

From innovative staging, to youthful troupes coming of age, to women reigning supreme, WE turns its spotlight on some of the year’s most memorable stage moments.

SISTERS ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES

Female performers, playwrights, and directors made major impressions in 2009. Kicking off the year was Arts Club’s production of The Constant Wife, W. Somerset Maugham’s Roaring Twenties-era comedy of manners. A classy middle finger to the notion that women should be reliant on men, this visually intoxicating, well-acted, and deeply subversive disguised-as-fluff comedy was further buoyed by leading lady Nicole Underhay’s portrayal of the nonchalant wife of a cheating doctor, and Moya O’Connell as her tough-as-nails spinster sister. At the opposite end of the theatrical spectrum — but no less effective — was Toronto-based playwright Linda Griffiths’s Victorian-era drama, Age of Arousal. A Touchstone Theatre Company and Arts Club collaboration, skillfully directed by Touchstone’s Katrina Dunn, Arousal explored feminism, women’s burgeoning sexual liberation, and the delicate balance of power between lovers Laara Sadiq and Susan Hogan. Ruby Slippers Theatre’s A Beautiful View featured a powerhouse Colleen Wheeler and Ruby Slippers co-founder Diane Brown blurring the line between friends and lovers. Capping off a phenomenal year in this area is Blackbird Theatre’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (currently running at The Cultch). Meg Roe lights up the stage as Honey, the young wife and comic foil to Gabrielle Rose’s wondrously venomous, gin-soaked Martha.

KIDS!

Well, they’re not really kids, but they are the relatively new kids on Vancouver’s theatre block. The past year offered a stellar showcase of up-and-coming theatre companies defying expectations to put on professional-quality productions that were both thought-provoking and pulsing with youthful energy. Itsazoo Theatre debuted resident playwright Sebastian Archibald’s modernized version of The Canterbury Tales. Entitled The Road to Canterbury, it was an entertaining and sly commentary on our muddy, modern society, with riffs on well-known Bob Dylan songs and jabs at our corporate culture, in much the way Geoffrey Chaucer’s Tales critiqued late medieval England. This was the group’s second summer using Queen Elizabeth Park as the setting for their special brand of roving theatre, hopefully signalling a new annual tradition to replace the summer meanderings of seemingly extinct production company Boca del Lupo. And Fighting Chance Productions — who in 2008 braved the not-so-biblical wrath of Westboro Baptist Church “God Hates Fags” pastor Fred Phelps for their production of The Laramie Project — literally shook the North Vancouver walls of the Presentation House with their brash and bold take on the ’90s Broadway hit, Rent.

SCENE STEALERS

Under Morris Panych’s direction, The Constant Wife was an immediate hit, but credit must be shared with Ken MacDonald and his Jessie Award-winning set design. All eyes were rivetted on the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage’s transformation into an Art Deco House & Home centrefold, featuring austere white pillars, rounded walls, and dreamlike sky-high windows. On a more economical and incongruous note, Vancouver playwright Andrew Templeton’s Fringe Fest hit Biographies of the Dead and Dying employed a rusted cast-iron bathtub as the centrepiece of its bare-bones set. Whether director Jeremy Waller envisioned some sort of overarching metaphor for his salvage-yard find or merely picked it up on a whim, watching cast members Heather Lindsay and Simon Driver lug it to and fro across the stage (or simulate violent sexual encounters on top of it) was, to say the least, unforgettable. But sometimes it’s the smallest details that stand out, even when watching an overblown musical comedy. Such was the case with Playhouse Theatre’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, in which a boardwalk bicycle transformed itself into the roulette wheel of a French Riviera casino. You may have missed the moment if you blinked, and yet, for those fortunate enough to catch it, it encapsulated in miniature all the innovation, wonder, and surprise that live theatre can offer.

A Single Man review

My review of A Single Man is online at WestEnder.com

A SINGLE MAN
Starring Colin Firth, Julianne Moore
Directed by Tom Ford

Fashion designer Tom Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man, is a study in contrasts: lusciously arty and achingly overwrought; remarkably assured, but lacking confidence; and heart-wrenchingly real, yet thinly veiled in artifice.

It’s the early 1960s, and George (Colin Firth in the defining role of his career) is a buttoned-up, closeted, gay professor immersed in a quagmire of depression and mourning almost a year after the sudden death of his partner, Jim (Matthew Goode). Having decided to kill himself, he sets about his last day on earth with a renewed yet resigned purpose. He packs his gun, goes to work, cleans out his desk, does the banking, and neatly lays out his burial clothes.

Confident in his decision, George allows himself a few small flirtations and last moments of human connection. He attends a bittersweet dinner party with his best friend Charlotte (a brave and unsparing Julianne Moore), who’s always carried a torch for him, he shares a cigarette in a parking lot with a handsome hustler (model Jon Kortajarena), and flirts with a baby-faced student (Nicholas Hoult, losing the fight against his British accent) who follows him home.

Ford’s vision for his creation is flawless, and his trust in his actors is handsomely rewarded with powerful performances. His belief in himself as a director, however, seems shaky. Ford’s major stumble is his continued insistence on needlessly manipulating the audience’s emotions. The majority of A Single Man is shot in flat colours, but for extended flashbacks or stretches where George is happy, Ford switches to saturated images, often accompanied by swelling strings. In the school of show-don’t-tell, this device has all the subtlety of an instruction manual.

It’s a shame because if the effects were used sparingly, A Single Man would be so much more than a very pretty face. ★★★—Andrea Warner

New York, I Love You review

My review of New York, I Love You was in last week's Fast Forward Weekly in Calgary.

New York, you’re pretty alright, I guess

Cinematic mash note isn’t quite ready to be loved

Published December 17, 2009 by Andrea Warner in Film Reviews

Emilie Ohana looking adorable in Big Apple tribute New York, I Love You.

New York, I Love You

In 2007, Paris, Je T'Aime made gentle waves in arty film circles, rightfully congratulated for its collection of Paris-based short films crafted by indie directors and packaged together as a loving ode to the French metropolis.

Americans have answered back with New York, I Love You, a hit-and-miss anthology of love stories. Meant to be a celebration of New York's frenetic energy, the film insists on uniting all of the shorts through a single, stubborn, wisp-thin thread (a quirky artist filmmaker who appears throughout) that ultimately forms a noose around the whole damn collection.

There are some notable standouts to be found. Among the highlights is Yvan Attal's sexy and sad encounter between Chris Cooper and Robin Wright Penn, who is absolutely stunning as a woman crushed by the distance growing between her and her husband. Anton Yelchin and Olivia Thirlby star in Brett Ratner's allegedly semi-autobiographical ode to an unconventional prom night. The young actors are unpretentious and charming as teens who grapple with an awkward blind date, an ex-girlfriend and wheelchair sex.

Even some of New York's weakest shorts have elements that work, such as Ugur Yücel’s haunting performance as a painter obsessed with a young Chinese herbalist. Drea de Matteo and Bradley Cooper make the most of their weak storyline about two strangers contemplating turning their one-night stand into a relationship, using their incredible chemistry to practically set the screen ablaze when they hit the sheets. Natalie Portman is luminous but miscast as Rifka, a Hasidic Jew resigned to marrying a man she doesn't love, spending the day before her wedding flirting with the Indian diamond dealer in Mira Nair's short.

Ultimately, New York saves its best short for last with Joshua Marston's brilliant, bittersweet vignette about a hilarious and bristling elderly married couple (the incomparable Cloris Leachman and Eli Wallach) simply taking a walk. If only New York was comprised entirely of self-contained films, like Paris, Je T'Aime, the two movies side by side might have been the equivalent of the Empire State Building versus the Eiffel Tower. Instead, New York drags on, and becomes almost a parody of itself by trying so hard to make sure the audience gets it. We're hit over the head with a clichéd, feel-good ending courtesy of a rooftop party where that quirky artist screens her film and all the characters come together. If only New York's editors had trusted American audiences to be as clever as the French.

Top 10 for Charleston

Charleston City Paper asked me to name my favourite albums of the year.

ANDREA WARNER'S TOP 10

click to enlarge

The record industry may be on its last legs, but that hasn't stopped independent artists from putting out innovative and occasionally brilliant releases in 2009. Neko Case offered up new depth in her strong but tortured anthems, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs made a gutsy choice to take their music in a new direction, and the Decemberists crafted a prog-rock opera. Phoenix and Sondre Lerche soared up the college radio charts, electro-dance friendly efforts by You Say Party! We Say Die! and Telepathe made our feet move, and gems from Land of Talk, Bon Iver, and St. Vincent weaved storytelling gems around catchy hook-laden indie-pop.

Neko Case — Middle Cyclone (Anti)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs — It's Blitz! (DGC/Interscope)

The Decemberists — The Hazards of Love (Capitol)

Sondre Lerche — Heartbeat Radio (Rounder)

Land of Talk — Some Are Lakes (Saddle Creek)

Bon Iver — Bloodbank (Jagjaguwar)

Telepathe — Dance Mother (IAMSOUND)

You Say Party! We Say Die! — XXXX (Paper Bag)

St. Vincent — Actor (4AD)

Phoenix — Wolfgang, Amadeus, Phoenix (Glass Note)

Andrea Warner is a freelance writer, pop culture critic, and a fan of peaceful chaos. She occasionally uses words like "toque" and "toboggan."

Terry Gilliam talks The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Heath Ledger

My interview with Terry Gilliam on the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is in this week's WE.

MOVIES: Terry Gilliam honours Heath Ledger’s final performance in ‘Imaginarium’

Posted By: Andrea Warner

12/23/2009 12:00 AM

The journey from storyboard to celluloid is fraught with complications for most filmmakers. But few have experienced the sort of kick-to-the-chest heartbreak that writer-director Terry Gilliam did when Heath Ledger accidentally overdosed and died January 22, 2008, in the midst of filming Gilliam’s grandly dark new fantasy, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

“I was lying on the floor in grief,” Gilliam admits, upon finding out that the star, who was also his long-time friend, had passed at just 28. “But then my daughter started kicking me and making me get up again. It was a different kind of pain, but it helped me keep going.”

Shortly before Imaginarium’s North American opening (the much-coveted Christmas Day slot), Gilliam is giving back-to-back phone interviews. Despite the sombre aspects of the film, the former Monty Python member is in good spirits. He jokingly introduces himself as Mr. Repetitive — after all, he’s been fielding the same questions about Ledger for almost three years, and he’ll now forever have the dubious distinction of being the director of Ledger’s last film.

Imaginarium was the pair’s second collaboration, Gilliam having first cast Ledger opposite Matt Damon in his 2005 fantasy-comedy The Brothers Grimm. By the time they reunited, Ledger had evolved as both an actor (his roles in Brokeback Mountain and The Dark Knight had catapulted him to a new level of stardom) and as a person — with a two-year-old daughter, and a dependency on a cocktail of prescription pills to help with sleeping, depression, and anxiety. But he was also more sure of his gifts, and was starting to show an interest in expanding them.

“Even the Joker — you know, he’d just play it and enjoy it and leap fearlessly into whatever the part was,” Gilliam says. “He was ad-libbing a lot on this film, and coming up with lines that were a lot better that what we had written. It was his way of showing he could write as well. This is a pretty extraordinary talent that was only just developing.”

Imaginarium could have shut down production following Ledger’s death — it’s been alleged that financial backers who’d put up money on the strength of the actor’s marquee appeal wanted to pull out. But Gilliam and his cast and crew persevered. The finished product reveals how almost eerily prescient Gilliam’s script proved.

Ledger’s character, Tony, is rescued by a down-on-their-luck band of travellers, led by the immortal Dr. Parnassus, an increasingly decrepit and drunk mystic who performs nightly, showcasing his mind-expanding abilities through a faux-mirror that leads to the Imaginarium, an alternate reality of the entrants’ making. His daughter, Valentina, is about to turn 16, but has been promised to the devil in a bargain made years ago. Tony, on the run from some shady mobsters, and attempting to escape his innately evil nature, keeps ducking inside the Imaginarium. Ledger hadn’t filmed these scenes yet, so Gilliam appealed to a few famous faces — Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell — to take turns playing the alternate-reality versions of Tony.

“Heath’s death didn’t really change my vision at all,” Gilliam says. “Except, of course, having to work with the three hacks who replaced Heath. [Laughs] You know, going down to the actor’s depot in Hollywood, they’re just hanging around, all desperate for work. It’s still the same movie I storyboarded in the beginning.”

Gilliam momentarily ditches his trademark gallows humour when he reflects on what it’s taken to adjust to a post-Imaginarium life. He admits that sometimes even he can’t quite believe he finished it.

“We had a film that really works, basically, because so many people loved Heath and came to the rescue,” he says. “That’s what it’s about. It’s like an ocean voyage where part of the crew died, and other people came to the rescue and we got there. That kind of outpouring of affection for Heath — Johnny, Colin, Jude, everybody involved in the process and the project — is what’s magical about it.”

As for the film’s critical reception, Gilliam confesses that the biggest weight on him has been honouring Ledger legacy. The morbid humour creeps back in, though, and one realizes how crucial it’s been for the filmmaker to keep himself laughing through what’s been one of the darkest periods of his life.

“[Imaginarium] is certainly more emotional for me, and dragged me in more... The biggest sense of responsibility while we were shooting was, ‘Is it going to be worthy of his last work?’ And some critics think it is, and others don’t, because they’re awful people that should die,” he says, beginning to laugh loudly. “But that’s alright; they can have their opinions. But they must also understand that death is swiftly coming their way. Vengeance will be ours!”

La Danse

My review of La Danse appears online at WestEnder.com and plays at Vancity Theatre to early January. Go see it!

LA DANSE
Directed by Frederick Wiseman
★★★★ —Andrea Warner

Frederick Wiseman's La Danse is an unusual sort of documentary. It drops the viewer deep behind the scenes of the Paris Opera Ballet for almost three hours, without any guidance. The audience is simply offered image after image of the ballet’s inner sanctum: bandaged feet, awkward conversations, and all.

Wiseman pays careful attention to all aspects of the day-to-day running of what is, ultimately, a machine. Maintenance people scrape plaster from ceilings, cafeteria workers serve food, costumers bend over tables to hand-sew intricate bead-work, a weirdly wonderful beekeeper atop the ballet’s roof harvests honeycomb... All this is juxtaposed with scenes of dancers sweating and suffering through intense practices.

Suitably, long stretches of La Danse are devoted to the dancers, but we almost never get to know any of them personally. In fact, at no point does anyone address the camera, nor does Wiseman feel the need to provide viewers with any real narrative structure. We get to know the dancers by watching them practice, seeing how they react to criticism, and their interactions with instructors and choreographers. We then see how the practice pays off, in beautifully rendered dress rehearsal scenes, where props and costumes bring the dances to full and vivid life.

Wiseman’s camera also takes us inside administrative meetings, as the marketing team and the company’s artistic director seek incentives for wealthy benefactors. When one marketer mentions a meeting with Lehman Brothers, the major face of the global financial collapse, it’s a reminder of the number of creative casualties caused by the economic meltdown.

If you can’t tell a plié from a pirouette, you might be tempted to shy away from La Danse, but you’d be missing out on one of the most intelligent and riveting films of 2009.

If you didn't catch A Beautiful View in Vancouver, head to the Shadbolt in Burnaby and check it out.

Colleen Wheeler (left) and Diane Brown star in Ruby Slippers' production of Daniel MacIvor’s A Beautiful View.

A Beautiful View

Posted By: Andrea Warner

12/11/2009 12:00 AM

With crippling arts cuts looming and a concomitant debate raging about the “worthiness” of arts funding, it’s easy to forget what the fight is all about. Ruby Slippers’ production of Daniel MacIvor’s A Beautiful View is a gratifying reminder of what’s really at stake: Achingly great creativity.

Moving along at a brisk 75 minutes, MacIvor’s nimble script runs the gamut of emotions without ever exhausting the audience, or exploiting his thoughtfully crafted characters. Two women, Linda (the reliably fantastic Colleen Wheeler) and Mitch (a winning Diane Brown), meet at a camping store, end up having an unexpected one-night stand, and spend 20 years tiptoeing around their love for each other, in all its various forms.

It doesn’t sound like much, but MacIvor’s script is so full of life, and so innovatively structured (he also directed), that every moment Linda and Mitch shares feels both familiar and fresh. View begins with the Linda and Mitch standing in front of the audience, seemingly prepared to be judged in some way, and arguing about how they got to this point. They then take us back, remembering their lives together, recreating key moments from the last two decades — from their meet-cute through to the almost-present. Wheeler and Brown address the audience directly, constantly breaking of the fourth wall. It’s a risky device, but it works here and succeeds at wrapping the audience up in Linda and Mitch’s history. (And, not incidentally, highlighting the viewer’s investment in the play’s ultimate question: Will they ever admit they’re in love?)

Spanning, it seems, the early 1980s to the early 2000s, neither Linda or Mitch can fathom owning the “lesbian” label. Fear is View’s third character, a point that MacIvor’s writing brings home eloquently and with dashes of robust humour. The sexual tension between Wheeler and Brown buoys every scene, but never detracts from the fact that we’re also watching two people try to build a life on a shaky foundation of unspoken, almost secret dreams.