CD: Outkast, "Idlewild"

Only half of the new Outkast title Idlewild is correct -- the group's ever-developing sound is certainly wild, but it's far from idle. This particular album, designed as an stand-alone accompaniment to Outkast's musical film of the same name, isn't content to stand in one place and be labeled as mere hip-hop. Aside from the tracks attached to the movie (which is set in the '30s and fused to samples and styles from that era accordingly), the songs jump all over the place, from Big Boi's domestic dispute on "Peaches" to Andre 3000's catchy blues on "Idlewild Blues" and jazz of "When I Look In Your Eyes." No sooner have you settled into the straight-laced raps of "Mighty O" or "N2U," than the album splits to the marching-band rhythm of "Morris Brown."

This is akin to the members of Outkast themselves, who have taken to recording separate tracks even as they claim to remain together. Whatever they want to call it, group album or solo effort, movie soundtrack or companion piece, Idlewild is, simply put, an excellent album. There's an abundance of creativity and daring: for instance, when was the last time you heard two hip-hop artists ride the undercurrent of an electric-guitar for six minutes before coming in for some distorted rapping at the end ("A Bad Note")?

Big Boi winds up dominating the album, with solid and largely orchestrated hits like "The Train," "Buggface," and "Call The Law" holding down the fort as Dre splits off in a dozen different eccentric directions, from the powerful "Life is like a Musical" to the hit-or-miss "Chronomentrophobia" and the enjoyable but silly "Makes No Sense At All." The few contributions to the album by both personalities are rich, especially "Hollywood Divorce" (which also features Snoop Dogg and Lil' Wayne), but the overall production is so fine that the album works just as well as an anthology of different artists, from featured performers (like Sleepy Brown & Scar and Janelle Monae) to Outkast itself. When you throw this much talent into a room, at worst you get an unfocused collection of songs. At best, as is the case with Idlewild, you get a rich tapestry of sound and an addictive album.

[First posted on Silent Uproar, 1/29]

CD: Barenaked Ladies, "Barenaked Ladies Are Me"

Barenaked Ladies are certainly not me, even if their latest record, Barenaked Lades Are Me, claims to be. But from their universal (yet personal) lovesick struggles, I wouldn't mind if they were. Besides, the Canadians can actually write music, and they can play it too. Though one line says "I'm a tired old metaphor," their lines are slick: their "villainous imagination" leads to rhymes like "I need to love you like a secret list/I need to love you until you don't exist." A bunch of songs are about vanishing within (or because of) love, but Barenaked Ladies hasn't faded at all over the years. They've just shifted their emphasis, mellowed out, and decided to take things easier. To the fans looking for comic gems, those lines are few and far between ("I can't believe that you'd believe that I would fake it/wait--unless you count the things I said when we were naked"), and the few jokey songs like "Bank Job" (about a heist gone badly) don't have the punchy rhythms of previous hits. The only issue is that while the group seems to have deepened their sound with tracks like "Maybe You're Right," they've also produced a bunch of humdrum material, like "Vanishing," which lives up to its name but not the promising metaphor of magic ("With a wave of a wand/he'll pull your heartstrings").

The same thing happens to a bunch of songs with good lyrics, too. "Rule the World with Love" gets caught in the leaden beat, and even a medley of strings can't save it. The same doesn't go for "Sound of Your Voice," which avoids a similar fate by riffing on voice and guitar: this is a rock group that can sing really well. And their words are really entertaining: from the simple sweetness of the sleeper hit, "Adrift" ("The onion rings, the phone makes me cry/something isn't right/like the Deep Blue without the Great White") to the quick-stepping strength of the best song, "Wind It Up," which sums up the modern classicism of the group: "Throw your sticks and stones/throw your mobile phone." Also, somewhere in there, perhaps with the trick combinations of instruments (like mandolin and double bass), they've managed to evoke the warm feelings of home, as on "Home."

The banjo has influenced this newest album a lot, from actual tracks to acoustic rhythms in others (like "Easy"). The mellow sound of Coldplay shows up in the background of tracks like "Maybe You're Right" and "Take It Back," but BNL are less about crooning and more about a direct playfulness. The album's subtle and the music's effusive: this slow, easy-to-listen-to rock is suddenly under your skin. And you know what? If a group still does that after fifteen years, they are me (or at least for me).

[First posted to Silent Uproar on 1/27]

FILM: '06 In Review

Just to make this list more balanced, based on my woefully inadequate attendance of films in 2006, I've placed a qualifying set of films at the end that I still need to see from last year. Come on HBO, Aaron needs a new pair of shoes!

The Best of 2006:
10. Mission Impossible 3 - Action films are supposed to excite. This one did. Casino Royale is far more realistic and gritty, so it makes the upper tier of my list, but J. J. Abrams nailed the "spy" portion of this film and made the much maligned Tom Cruise look good.

9. Down in the Valley - Tragedy is what you make it, and this bleak film about modernity, love, and acceptance was Norton's chance to take on Taxi Driver. It's not stylized enough to do so, but it certainly has its moments, and the acting is top-notch.

8. A Scanner Darkly - Linklater's application of Waking Life to a trippy Philip K. Dick novel (I know, that's repetitive) works so well because the cast is outstanding. The film actually comes off as a comedy before it spirals into a bad trip, and Woody Harrelson and Robert Downy Jr. wholly steal this film (not that it's hard) from Keanu Reeves.

7. The Prestige - Christopher Nolan knows how to make a thriller: Memento and Insomnia, even Batman Begins, they've all led him to the perfectly paced period piece that is The Prestige. Though some may disagree with the third act of this film, there are few who can argue it isn't exquisitely performed by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman.

6. Lady Vengeance - Not nearly as good as Oldboy or Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, but Park-woo makes better films than Americans while sleeping. The past scenes, set in a favor-driven jail, are filled with humor and cheer; the present revenge plot is dark and violent. The execution of both is well-done.

5. Manderlay - Where were you when Dogtown came out? Manderlay, a self-contained sequel, is a wonderful period-piece done with only the essentials of scene-work, is like a staging of Our Town, minimal, but rich and deep. Exploring class issues, revenge theory, and the slave mentality, Lars von Trier draws so many parallels to today's culture than his film is almost required viewing, although it's granted that his chalk-outlined sets will seem a bit too artsy for those who don't understand that it only makes the storytelling more focused and the acting more intense.

4. Babel - Though it's certainly been overhyped, that doesn't mean that it deserves backlash. Inarritu's latest might not be better than Amores Perros, but it's a step up from 21 Grams, and it's a rare film that isn't just relevant but is also just a little bit timeless, too. The film manipulates emotion too much, but the festival scene, the desert exodus, and other spectacular scenes justify all of the off-kilter segments in Japan.

3. Casino Royale - Gritty. Violent. Pulse-pounding. Exciting. For a film that spends most of its time sitting around a poker table, Martin's managed to cram a lot of thrills into this latest James Bond flick, and his choice of leading man, Daniel Craig is a bold bet that beats all the odds. The film meanders toward the end, and there's too much pleasure taken in unimportant details, but the strangling grip of tension, bustling through the plot, keeps us paying rapt attention.

2. Children of Men - Speaking of tension, Cuaron has made one of the most atmospheric parables of all time. His film, which uses long, unbroken, shaky camera work to force us deeper into this great escape, doesn't have a dull moment in it. That's because he's brought surprise back to the theater and refused to yield to the easily optimistic ending. Very similar to 28 Days Later in scope, but more realistic, sans zombies. Well worth your time.

1. Pan's Labyrinth - Whether or not fantasy's your thing, Pan's Labyrinth is the film to see in 2006. It's the best-looking thing out there, the most elegant parallel for the unsubtle brutality of the world, and a fantastic (and epic) through-the-looking-glass adventure. Vibrant, excellently paced, even better acted, and horrifying blunt for a film that is built on escapism, Guillermo del Toro is an example of why movies like Blade 2 are such wastes of time.

Biggest Disappointment of 2006:
The Fountain - Darren Aronofsky took six years after the perfect Requiem for a Dream to make this much-cut and compromised film. The idea is epic, but the tangled story doesn't live up to it, and for all the lush visuals and good acting, the pacing is too slow for me to care.

Most Overhyped of 2006:
Brick - If you don't like noir, this modern translation will miss every mark it sets. It's a beguiling indie film that doesn't have much going for it beyond its gimmick, and the parallels don't work nearly as well as in the cinematographic violence of Sin City. The cartoon quality made the blood more realistic there; here, it's just callous and empty.

Aaron's Disclaimer (Noteworthy Films Missed in 2006):
Blood Diamond, Borat, Clerks II, Flags of Our Father, The Good German, The Last King of Scotland, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, Rocky Balboa, The Science of Sleep, Shortbus, Volver.

[First posted to Film Monthly on 1/29/07]

PLAY: "Silence"

The best part about Silence is that nobody ever shuts up. Whether speaking in a scene or narrating a series of compressed events, the show hurtles forward, filled with a melange of amusing topics and a series of surprising twists. Playwright Moira Buffini writes and "mans" a tight ship (that's a joke on the gender reversals of the play), the only trouble is that by the third act, she's strangled most of the comedy from this play, leaving us dangling in the Dark Ages without a light. But up until that point, you can think of this as an erudite and medieval Road Trip: a cast of five entertaining characters, each with their own secret baggage, flee Christian Canterbury for heathen Cumbria, crossing the open road to do so. A sixth character, a comic and childish tyrant king (like Richard Lewis in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, only darker) pursues them, intent on reclaiming what they have stolen from him.

I'm sorry. The best part about Silence are these characters, without whom there would hardly be a need to shut up. There's an agoraphobic priest, torn between his fears of a godless sky and his growing love for a stern but kind maid, servant to a blessed woman who is cursed with fits of madness, and who shows respect and compassion only to the young boy she is wed to, a boy who is not so much a man as something else entirely, and who has fallen in love with their barbarian escort, a man who has taken enough magic mushrooms to believe he can mindspeak with his companions. Phew! One can hardly shut up about them.

Director Suzanne Agins has managed to compress all this far more succinctly than I, although to be fair, she's got two hours, and Moira Buffini's script is far from complicated. When she uses poetic expressions, they are often debated or appear as confessional narratives, ala The Real World, devoid of subtext or secrecy. To wit, the two manage to build suspense even with the whole second act confined to a wagon (a marvelous feat of physicality), and an unexpected dream sequence and surprisingly dramatic "mushroom" scene keep the pacing from being predictable.

The show continues to build, and the climax is as striking as the plot (though not as satisfying). Because of all this action, the jolting transitions between our travelers and their pursuing king aren't so bad, and though the musical selections clash with the show, they do manage to elicit chuckles from the crowd. Silence isn't golden, but it's a clever play that's worth talking about.

[KELLY HUTCHINSON and MAKELA SPIELMAN in "Silence." Photo credit: Jim Baldassare.]

PLAY: Gutenberg! The Musical!

If you get to Carnegie Hall with practice, you get to Broadway with lasers, a million drunks, and the Holocaust (a show must have gravitas). Gutenberg! The Musical! isn't quite there yet; you see, Bud Davenport and Doug Simon (Christopher Fitzgerald and Jeremy Shamos) have this really exciting musical in their heads, but until a Broadway producer (perhaps the person sitting next to you) picks up their show, they'll have to do it all themselves. That's okay! Bud and Doug have a secret weapon: miles and miles of heart. And if you come to see their "staged reading," you'll marvel at how two talented actors can take on thirty characters, three big chorus numbers, and a fabulous kickline. Forget a shoestring budget: these two are going barefoot for the love of theater, and if you love watching the industry get slammed or want to see a musical dissected, this is absolutely the show for you.

For everybody else: seriously, what's not to love about two good-natured guys singing charm songs as vague and irrelevant as "Biscuits," songs as campy as "Haunted German Wood," or ballads as ridiculous as "Tomorrow is Today"? Fitzgerald and Shamos approach the work with such earnestness, from the bulging eyes of astonishment to the giddy squeals of excitement, that it would take a man far colder than the villainous (and eponymous) Monk to hate this show. Plus, the script was written (and originally performed) by two members of Upright Citizen's Bridgade (Scott Brown and Anthony King), so not a moment goes by that isn't fresh with humor. The music is clever and endearing, and the book is filled with hysterical truisms: "A metaphor is when you say one thing and mean another, but you're not lying" and "Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem."

If characters are your thing, Fitzgerald and Shamos have that covered too. Fitzgerald takes on characters as diverse as the ingenue Helvetica or the sinister Monk, along with all the random characters in between (like Drunk #2 or the Anti-Semitic Flower Girl). Shamos, as the shameless self-promoter Gutenberg, is also all over the place, taking on the roles of Young Monk and Old Black Narrator, just to name a few. They do all this while still playing the overarching roles of Bud and Doug, and it's as smooth as a Dead Child's bum.

There may not be a single true thing said about Gutenberg, but Gutenberg! The Musical! can do no wrong. Like stage adaptations of Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Cannibal! The Musical! or the recent, bloody funny Evil Dead: The Musical, this is a show that doesn't just earn its two exclamation points: it exclaims them, too. Be amused, be very amused.

[First posted to New Theater Corps, 1/21]