WMRW “Green Mountain Globa-Local”
Monday, July 21, 2008
“An All-Vermont Evening”

Michele Fay Band - The Outsider
Patrick Ross - Gold Rush
Lewis Franco - Hat On Your Head
Red Hot Juba - Pay The Man
Jazz Mandolin Project - Country Open
Banjo Dan and the Midnight Plowboys: Fire in the Sugarhouse
Mad Mountain Scramblers - Breathing Blue
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals - Ah Mary
Elizabeth Von Trapp - Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Pete Sutherland and Colin McCaffrey - Wilderness Road
Woods Tea Company - She Loves The Rain
Adele Nichols - Fly Me To The Moon

The day I went to see director Christopher Nolan’s edgy new film “The Dark Knight,” I received an e-mailed article from my colleague Peter Phillips at California’s Sonoma State University. Phillips, a sociology and journalism professor, annually publishes a book called Project Censored, a collection of significant ongoing news stories underreported or ignored in the U.S. mainstream press. His article cited a January 2008 Opinion Research Business report that indicated that approximately 1 million Iraqi citizens – one million – have been killed since the U.S. invasion and occupation – with 1/3 of those deaths being caused by U.S. air attacks on Iraqi neighborhoods, and fully ½ of those deaths “attributable to U.S. forces.”

I bring this up because, in an era where so much of our mainstream news is censored by a number of filters, sometimes popular culture – take Hollywood, for example – can shine a light in dark places, bringing us illumination, and, perhaps, a bit of wisdom.

Now I know what you are thinking. Dude, it’s summer. Lighten up. Go with the flow. But I know, as anyone who has seen his masterful 2000 sleeper “Memento” knows, that Christopher Nolan is a smart film director, and he does things for a reason.

“The Dark Knight,” as any comic book or film buff knows, is a morality play about the complicated nature of good and evil, and the tension between the two. It is a film that endorses vigilante justice, electronic eavesdropping, and other extra-legal activities (which seem, these days, to be acceptable tropes in post 9/11 pop culture – a sign of the times, perhaps) and stars a gigantic cast, including Christian Bale as the conflicted billionaire-by-day/vigilante-by-night himself, Gary Oldman as James Gordon, Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes, and of course, Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox and Michael Caine’s Alfred the Butler in supporting roles. Nolan also introduces two charismatic new characters into the mix – Aaron “Thank You For Smoking” Eckhart as Gotham City D.A. Harvey Dent, and the late Heath Ledger as the Joker.

My old friend Sara Voorhees, a nationally syndicated film critic, called Nolan’s new film “near perfect” in a review last week. I’d concur - there is much to like about this film, easily the best action movie of the summer thus far: larger-than-life Gotham grandiosity; heart-stopping and dizzying action sequences; gadgets, gizmos and smash-‘em-up street chases galore; and camera work that continually spins around the characters regardless of where they happen to be – a Nolan-esque signature trademark, as familiar to sharp-eyed viewers as Michael Mann’s use of rack focusing or Scorcese’s gratuitous blood. Heck, there’s even a very small cameo by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy – a longtime Batman fan (you can watch the clip on YouTube – seriously).

But it is the characters in Nolan’s film that compel – unusual for a summer action film, I know. Bale’s Batman (or “The Batman,” as he is continually called in this film) is as tightly wound as ever, caught between his desire to do the right thing as a force for good working outside the law, and his hope of living the normal humdrum life of a Lamborghini-driving billionaire. Eckhart’s aptly-named Dent emerges as the hero of the story – until things take an unlikely turn and he emerges as “Two Face” (and he does, indeed, have two – go see the film to see what I mean).

And yes, the advance buzz about Heath Ledger’s “The Joker” is right on the money. I grew up watching Cesar Romero play “The Joker” on television, and thought Jack Nicholson’s rendition in Tim Burton’s 1989 version not bad. Ledger dominates the film, though, in a mesmerizing portrayal of anarchy incarnate, chaos in a clown face.

And “The Joker” – repeatedly referred to as a “terrorist” - is a character for our times, embodying the collective corruption of a civilization in decline, and able to network and feed off human vice and weakness. Whether it is greedy mobsters, frail civilians, or malleable public servants, Ledger’s Joker, the most psychologically sophisticated villain since Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter, uses all of them in equal measure. His motives are inscrutable, beyond a desire to cause calamity. And this may be Nolan’s point: in a world where there are no clear-cut heroes (which is to say - the real world), evil manifests itself in often-unpredictable ways, and we all have roles to play in the outcome.

And, in one neat “prisoner’s dilemma” sequence towards the end of the film (involving two ferries of Gotham residents), the Joker (and Nolan) remind us that no one is innocent, and that we all have choices to make. What lessons you might draw from Nolan’s film for our own time, as citizens of the richest and most powerful government on the planet fighting the “evil terrorists,” I leave up to you – suffice to say, I left the theater with more to think about than I anticipated.

So here’s to a summer action blockbuster with brains - maybe the best film of the summer.

I’ve got two words for you.

“Shoe Phone.”

Or four.

“Sorry ‘bout that, Chief.”

Or nine.

“Would you believe Chuck Norris with a BB gun?”

OK. True confessions. As a kid, I loved “Get Smart.”

Everything about it.

The television show, dreamed up by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, featured Don Addams’ Agent 86 (goofily serious) and Barbara Feldon’s Agent 99 (raise your hand, gents, if you had a crush on her) - two intrepid CONTROL agents fighting the forces of KAOS (the “Red Menace” - Communism, remember?)

Now, director Peter Segal attempts the impossible – bringing “Get Smart” to the silver screen for a new generation that has never known the shoe phone, the “cone of silence,” and the wondrously silly world of Cold War Era American television.

The film’s plot, as is often the case in these matters, is razor-thin. Yellowcake uranium and other nuclear materials have gone missing, and compromised CONTROL agents have been mysteriously targeted by a Bosnian terrorist group working with KAOS led by a man named Krstc. Agent 86 (Steve Carell) and Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway) get the call to crack the case and catch the bad guys, with help from a huge cast of supporting characters, including Alan Arkin as the Chief, the Rock as Agent 23, and Bill Murray as Agent 13. The supporting actors have way more fun on screen than you might anticipate. “We’re not people who jam staples into other people’s heads,” says the Chief to Agent 23, after one unfortunate comedic incident. “That’s CIA crap.”

Indeed.

The banter between 86 and 99, on the other hand, is a bit forced, and Steve Carell’s character spends too much of the film reflecting on his shedding of 150 pounds in an ongoing weight-loss program. This is a bit unfortunate, as it takes away from Carell’s otherwise humorous turn at playing a much-beloved television character, which he does with a mix of dry wryness and a bit of goof. Anne Hathaway more than holds her own, mixing brains and beauty in equal measure, though she lacks the same sort of exasperated affection for Max exhibited by Barbara Feldon’s 99 in the TV series.

There are some great sight gags and other funny moments. My two favorites: a sky-diving scene borrowed from James Bond’s “Moonraker,” featuring Richard “Jaws” Kiel as a bad guy, and a wonderfully hilarious dual dance number featuring Carell shimmying with a woman five times his size, in an attempt to show up Krstc and 99.

What’s fun about the film, too, is the playful way in which the director brings the technology up to speed for the early 21st century – flash drives, high intensity lasers, and yes, exploding dental floss, though the film’s talk of Homeland Security and yellowcake uranium (remember ambassador Joseph Wilson and the Valerie Plame affair?) is a bit troubling, if one were to stop and think long enough.

Think? Heck – this is summer movie season. Bottom line – die-hard “Get Smart” fans ought to approach this film with caution – the mojo is very different than the TV show, and, after all, the Cold War is over, right? – but the movie version plays reasonably well for a summer season comedy/ adventure.

Gotta go. My shoe phone is ringing.

Smirkusology: The Science of “Circus Smirkus”

I’ve always liked the circus, and, like many, have considered running away to join it from time to time, as the old adage goes.

For those who haven’t seen Vermont’s very own “Circus Smirkus,” it is a unique one-ring show, featuring teenagers trained at the Greensboro-based circus camp in all kinds of Big Top-related activities – juggling, clowning, tumbling, and hanging by various parts of one’s body from all manner of contraptions suspended from the top of the tent.

Having been to “Circus Smirkus” for five summers running with my kids, I was feeling, on my sixth visit to the “big top” at the Bundy Center for the Arts, a little less like an open-eyed kid, and more like a long-suffering parent, recognizing many of the names and faces in the program, and knowing that, at the end of the day, much of what I was about to see I’d seen before. This feeling was compounded by the theme of this summer’s “Smirkus” event, entitled “Smirkusology - A Science Extravaganza.”

“Science at the Circus?” I thought to myself? Sounds like a yawn fest, even after reading creative director Jesse Dryden’s breathless program description:

“Circus (he writes) is not an exact science. It is a volatile combination of danger and amusement, with a delicate balance of laughter and awe. Take some young artists with endless energy and astronomical skills. Put their hopes, their hearts and their lives into the ring. Mix in plenty of mirth and mayhem. Coat with whimsy and a pinch of artistry and emotion. Stir in some silly, and magnify it all under the Big Top. Just add an audience and let the chemical reaction inspire. The results are truly magical.”

OK, I thought. But science at the circus?

This slightly-jaded parent couldn’t have been more wrong. This summer’s 21st annual “Circus Smirkus” program may be the best “Smirkus” show to date.

One reason (as always) has to do with the hard-working members of the Smirkus troupe, who somehow manage to keep their energy up for more than two hours of big top fun. And there was some new stuff, too – like acrobatics on this dangling rectangular (sort of) cube structure, and the couple from Cali, Columbia (Francisco Javier Hartado and Leidy Tatiana Zainiga Vidal), who finished the first act with a stunning double display of balancing virtuosity involving a giant circular metal ring (It must be seen to be fully believed).

But there was more going on here than I remember, theme-wise. Seeing clowns dressed in scientific lab coats and glasses proved remarkably amusing throughout the show – a sort of visual cognitive dissonance that made their antics even more goofy – and the writers made some seriously funny hay out of this ongoing visual gag, featuring, for example, a nerdy-looking clown kid pulled from the crowd at show’s beginning who metamorphoses into a “wonder juggler” (complete with shiny jump suit) at the beginning of the show’s second half. New juggling tricks – including a wonderful moment involving 3 clowns juggling the same series of multi-colored balls and some serious fun with unicycles and uber-stilts – kept things fresh, too.

And then there was the sonics of Smirkus. The sounds of the 2008 summer show proved vital to its freshness this time around, and a big “hats off” to music composer Tristan Moore and sound technician Mike Cress for melding sound and story in such a compelling way – gadget noises, robotic and experimental mood music, and sonically-driven sight gags (my favorite involved some out-of-control robot hands, in reality, a pair of over-sized ice hockey gloves) kept audiences howling, and gave the clowns additional support and a sonic “foil” to play off of. Really nifty.

If you missed “Circus Smirkus” in Mad River and are kicking yourself – have no fear. You can catch them all over New England this summer – check out the schedule online at www.smirkus.org. They’ll be back in Vermont on July 3-6 (Essex) and August 11-13 (Montpelier) and August 15-16 (Greensboro) for their grand finale. The scientist, the clown, and the kid in you won’t want to miss it!