Sundance ’16: Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall

It was a bizarrely mellow song for a trashy exploitation film about killer rats, but “Ben,” the theme from Ben, played a critical role establishing Michael Jackson’s identity outside the Jackson 5. His early solo years are often overlooked by the media that prefers either the Motown Moppet or the Moonwalking glory years. Yet, hipper fans have a special fondness for his late 1970s music. Spike Lee returns to documentary filmmaking with the awkwardly titled Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival in advance of its early February premiere on Showtime.

In a way, these years are the missing link between the two indelible Michael Jacksons we have in our mind’s eye. There are transitional, but the music was confident. In fact, this is probably the Jackson we should try to remember. Regardless of his shifting appearance and unfortunate media kerfuffles, Jackson was more or less playing a persona after the runaway success of Thriller. However, he seems really real in the archival interviews segments Lee assembles.

It is also cool to hear Jackson pay tribute to the masters who came before him, such as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Sammy Davis, Jr., and even Duke Ellington. Quincy Jones also remembers their long and fruitful association, starting with their work on the film adaptation of The Wiz. Lee talks to a lot of the studio guys, who were part of the process, including Bobby Colomby (Jaco Patorius’s producer), arranger Greg Phillinganes, and engineer Bruce Swedien. Getting their perspective helps broaden our appreciation for Jackson as an artist and a professional. Appropriately, Berry Gordy is also afforded plenty of time to talk about their work together. Regardless what you think of the Motown founder, you just can’t tell the story without him.

As a documentary, MJ’s Journey is pretty conventional stuff, largely alternating between talking heads and performance clips. However, there are a few moments of editorial slyness, like Charleston Heston introducing Jackson’s performance of “Ben” at the Academy Awards. Frankly, the doc just doesn’t have enough clips of the rats.

Regardless, Lee has a good sense of pace and his informal interviewing style elicits some candid reminiscences. Even if you are not a fan, Journey is highly watchable. It is sort of like a better installment of the old Behind the Music series, except it ends with Jackson on the cusp of his greatest triumph. Yet, we leave feeling maybe things would have been better if he had simply maintained this level of popular yet relatively grounded success. Worth checking out, especially if you are a fan or have an interest in music production, Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall screens again today (1/25) and Friday (1/29) in Park City, Wednesday (1/27) in Sundance Mountain Resort, and Saturday (1/30) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus: Ganja & Hess, Together Again

Duane Jones only had two lead roles in his trailblazing film career, but they were both truly iconic for genre film connoisseurs. The first was George Romero’s enduringly popular Night of the Living Dead. Remaking such a familiar film was a perilous proposition, as both makeup artist Tom Savini and team of filmmakers not affiliated with Romero have proved on separate occasions. Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess is a different story. Less well known, the 1973 experimental exploitation film exists in both director and studio cuts, making issues of authenticity more complicated. Nevertheless, Spike Lee remains devotedly faithful to Gunn’s narrative throughout Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (trailer here), which releases today on DVD and BluRay.

Dr. Hess Greene is an independently wealthy anthropologist, who specializes in the Ashanti people and their cultural obsession with blood (which Dr. Wiki has never heard of). He is about to commence a major research project when his jittery new research assistant, Dr. Lafayette Hightower stabs him repeatedly with a ceremonial Ashanti knife, before blowing his brains out. Strangely, Dr. Greene does not die. He merely wakes up rather the worse for wear, with a powerful thirst—for blood.

Eventually, Hightower’s hot but cold ex-wife Ganja comes looking for her disappointing former husband, but finds the very rich and highly interested Greene instead. Of course, he also happens to be undead. As they fall for each other he starts planning for their eternal future together, but Greene’s new existence will become more draining (in more ways than one) than he ever anticipated.

Yes, Ganja and Hess will essentially become vampires, but neither film really plays up the traditional Universal/Hammer/Anne Rice motifs. These are very existential vampires, isolated by privilege and addiction, like Howard Hughes or Brian Wilson. It is never exactly scary, but there are several sly “here-it-comes” moments. Lee also manages to maintain a distinctively icy vibe throughout the film.

Arguably, the best thing going for Sweet Blood is its soundtrack. This is easily Bruce Hornsby’s best and most jazz-oriented film work yet. Featuring contributions from prominent musicians like Vernon Reid on guitar, Lew Soloff on trumpet, Esther Noh on violin, Clark Gayton on trombone, and Patience Higgins and Stacy Dillard on tenor, it often sounds somewhat akin to his terrific debut jazz release, Camp Meeting.

If that were not enough, the soundtrack also includes licensed tracks from Milton Nascimento’s Journey to Dawn album, as well as performances from the church band previously seen in Red Hook Summer, with Jonathan Batiste returning as the Hammond B3 organist, “TK Hazelton.” It all might sound too upbeat and soulful for a tale of quiet undead desperation, but it really helps pull viewers through many scenes that would otherwise be rather slow and aesthetically severe.

From time to time, Sweet Blood does indeed intersect with the world of Red Hook. Considering how painful his last original narrative film truly was, this would sound like a very bad idea on paper. Yet, the excursions to the “Little Church” give the new film greater depth and heart. Frankly, unlike Lee’s ill-advised remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, Sweet Blood is a pretty good film. Perhaps it is time Lee swore off originals and just stuck to reboots and sports docs.

As Greene, Stephen Tyrone Williams is cold fish, by design, but almost to a fault. However, it is great fun to watch Zaraah Abrahams ravenously chew the scenery Ganja Hightower, the temptress who will not be denied. Naté Bova also makes a strong impression as Tangier Chancellor, Hightower’s potential rival turned target of seduction. By genre standards, Sweet Blood is quite sensual, but Lee must have directed Abrahams’ horny-porny scene with Bova in a raincoat. It is the one time the film’s disciplined restraint goes out the window.

Be that as it is, Sweet Blood gets under the skin precisely because it is mostly so reserved and cold-blooded. It is not one hundred percent successful, but it is an intriguing outing from a filmmaker who hasn’t been interesting outside of New York sports documentaries for some time. Recommended for fans of Lee and Gunn’s 1973 cult classic, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus is now available on DVD from Anchor Bay and Gravitas Ventures.

Tribeca ’15: Greatest Catch Ever (a Short Spike Lee Joint)

The sports media loves to depict New England Coach Bill Belichick as a football genius and the New York Football Giants’ Tom Coughlin as an anachronistic disciplinarian. However, Belichick has an O and 2 record against Coughlin in the Super Bowl, so the New York coach must be an even smarter genius. Of course, Coughlin had help from some spectacular play-making. None stands out more than David Tyree’s one-handed leaping grab to keep the Giants’ fourth quarter go-ahead scoring drive alive. That 2008 Super Bowl catch is chronicled, analyzed, and celebrated in Spike Lee’s documentary short, Greatest Catch Ever, which screened yesterday as part of a special ESPN Sports Film Talk at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

Spike Lee was watching Sports Center one night when he heard Tom Brady describe a teammate’s snag as the best he’d ever seen. That stuck in Lee’s craw and ultimately resulted in this short documentary. The format is simple. Lee interviewed the principle Giants players, in their practice facility, with their Super Bowl XLII and XLVI championship banners ever so conspicuous. Tyree, Coughlin, Plaxico Burress, Eli Manning, and linesman Chris Snee leave the trash-talking to Lee, but he is happy to fill that void.

However, Lee finds ways to open up the film a little, including traveling to the home of former New England safety Rodney Harrison, who is the Bill Buckner of the famous catch. He also compares and contrasts Tyree’s grab with subsequent Giants highlight catches superhumanly pulled in by Mario Manningham and Odell Beckham, Jr.

It is amazing how right Lee is on sports and how wrong he gets nearly everything else. Like Alex Gibney, he should pretty much stick to sports docs (or Scientology exposes, if he wants a real challenge). He was amusing ripping on Belichick both in the film and during the post-screening panel discussion. Yet, to Lee’s credit, he generously gave credit in turn to Harrison, for agreeing to face his ghosts on camera. Tyree, Burress, and Snee were also present, looking fit, and clearly enjoying the opportunity to reminisce and needle each other.

Even Giants fans will be surprised how many stories were intertwined with the big catch (depicted via stills, due to NFL Films’ difficulty playing nice with others). Christians in the audience were especially moved by the role Tyree’s faith played in the famous play. At about half an hour, Greatest Catch Ever always feels brisk and muscular—and never padded. In fact, one suspects Lee could have easily expanded it to forty-five minutes without repeating himself. Altogether, Tribeca’s presentation was a highly enjoyable trip down memory lane. New York Football Giants fans will love it when it eventually airs on ESPN, but the network’s Belichick apologists probably not so much.

2012: The Low Lights

As a year-end insult, film sites are eagerly reporting the VOD-destined horror movie Playback is the lowest grossing film of 2012, raking in a paltry $264.  There is no secret to its anemic performance, having only been released for one week on one screen, with no promotional fanfare.  It is not very good either, but there were far worse stink-bombs released in theaters this year, some of which were torturously defended by critics who should have known better.  Meriting a solid D, Michael A. Nickles’ Playback (trailer here) is considerably more entertaining and accomplished than Dustin Lance Black’s Virginia, Benjamin Dickinson’s First Winter, Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy, and Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer, 2012’s absolute low points.

Arguably, Black’s Virginia is the single worst film of the year, but it seems almost unfair to single it out.  After all, Black recognized how bad it was when it screened at Toronto and tried to fix it.  It didn’t work, but at least he made the attempt.  Next time he ought to start with a real story rather than merely lashing out at the Mormon Church of his youth.

Filled with endless scenes of urination, defecation, and disturbingly rough sex, The Paperboy is just a lurid sweaty mess.  A showcase for horrendous overacting, it deserves a long life on the Rifftrax circuit.  Indeed, many of the cartoonish characters seem like they ought to have serious issues with wire hangers.

Red Hook would have been painfully predictable and clichéd had it been released in the early 1990’s.  A tiresome attack on the Church and gentrification, RHS might well slow down the latter since it makes the Brooklyn neighbor look profoundly un-neighborly.

First Winter is pointlessly meandering hipster melodrama.

Comparatively speaking, Playback is impressively middling fare.  It starts with a gory buzz-killing opening, apparently choreographed to defy all common sense.  For some reason, notorious family killer Harlan Diehl had a thing about video-taping his crimes.   Playback appears to follow in the V/H/S tradition, but instead of telling five creepy stories, it tells one crummy one.  It also mercifully ditches the camcorder POV in the present day, for the most part.

Filming re-enactments of the Diehl murders as part of an ill-conceived journalism class project, Julian Miller becomes obsessed with the case. Eventually, he learns Diehl was a descendant of pioneering French filmmaker Louis Le Prince, whom his video store boss tells us was rumored to be Satan himself (Louis Le Prince = Lucifer Prince of Darkness).  As half-baked premises go, that’s not bad, but Nickles just lets it wither on the vine.  Instead, we see scene after scene of Quinn, a loser working for the local TV station, maliciously loading gear, apparently under the sway of Le Prince’s possession.

As Quinn, Toby Hemingway seems determined to do the world’s worst Johnny Depp impression.  Speaking of shtickiness, Christian Slater is also on-hand (indeed, he is taking the brunt of the media coverage) as Officer Frank Lyons, a cop paying Quinn for flash-drives of video recorded in the high school girls’ shower room.  Yes, how the mediocre have fallen.  On the plus side, Mark Metcalf (Neidermeyer in Animal House) has a few decent scenes as former reporter Chris Safford.

In truth, the rest of the cast is reasonably adequate as the dead horny teenagers.  However, there is absolutely no underlying logic to the supernatural goings on.  Essentially, Playback is a run-of-the-mill rip-off of The Ring, but it is relatively honest about that.  As a result, it stands taller than 2012’s more heralded quartet of shame.  It is now available on VOD and streams on Netflix.  There were plenty of films worth celebrating in 2012 as well.  To revisit some, check out my year’s best over at Criticwire.

Red Hook Summer: Bring Your iPad

For the final cut of Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino deleted a scene of Uma Thurman talking to John Travolta through the lens of a camcorder.  It was already too clichéd.  That was nearly twenty years ago.  In his latest film, Spike Lee heavily relies on a similar device, hoping the upgrade to an Apple iPad makes it seem fresher.  Such a strategy perfectly represents the tired blood of Red Hook Summer (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Colleen Royale can hardly stand her father, Enoch Rouse, introduced to viewers as “Da Good Bishop” of the Little Piece of Heaven church, or his old time religion.  Nonetheless, she deposits her anti-social suburban son Flik in her father’s Red Hook housing project apartment for the summer.  Like a little Spike Lee, Flik has a compulsive need to film the world around him, but no faith.  Thus begins a generational cold war, with the minister determined to bring the young cuss to Jesus.

Frankly, Hook’s first two sluggish acts are downright laborious, but grandfather and grandson seem to be building a relationship by meeting each other halfway.  That would be a worthy enough lesson we could all stand to be reminded of again, if the film followed through on it.  Instead, Lee foists one of the laziest, most obvious third act revelations on viewers, completely undermining any good will he might have built up thus far.  Remember Enoch Rouse is a man of the cloth.  Anyone who has seen a Hollywood film in the last twenty years should be able to guess the rest.

Yet, since Hook clearly implies Rouse’s daughter has a good idea what her father’s deep dark secret is, it is absolutely baffling why she would send her son to stay with him unsupervised, with only his annoying sense of entitlement for protection, unless she is just understandably sick of the sullen brat.  No matter, Lee is determined to pull Rouse through the gauntlet, which he does in punishing Grand Guignol style.

To be fair, Clarke Peters does his best to maintain Rouse’s basic humanity, working like his soul depends on it, but Lee stacks the deck against him.  Nonetheless, his performance stands head and shoulders above the rest of the cast.  That includes Lee himself, briefly appearing in the guise of Do the Right Thing’s Mr. Mookie, clearly hoping some of viewer’s enthusiasm for his defining film will rub off on this wan return to the County of Kings.

Hook is a bad movie, but it is not the fault of the musicians.  New Orleans’ Jonathan Batiste performs some stirring Hammond B-3 solos and brings some refreshing energy to film when appearing in character as “Da Organist” TK Hazelton.  Likewise, Bruce Hornsby draws on his jazz chops for a pleasing gospel influenced instrumental soundtrack.

Yes, Hook sounds great, but the paucity of originality is honestly depressing.  Perhaps it is time for Lee to follow Woody Allen’s lead and leave their beloved New York to make a psychological thriller with social climbing Londoners.  At least then he would not have the overpowering temptation to fall back on his predictable Spikisms.  Not recommended, Red Hook Summer will disappoint even Lee’s most dogged champions when it opens this Friday (8/10) in New York at the AMC Empire.

When Broadway Got Real: Passing Strange (The Movie)

It seemed like there was a revolutionary spirit afoot on Broadway in early 2008, when two new musicals brought the theater world an infusion of energy and hipness. While Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Latin-hip hop flavored In the Heights is still up-and-running, Stew’s hard-rocking Passing Strange closed far too soon, despite garnering excellent reviews and a Tony Award for best book. Yet it was too good to go undocumented, so Spike Lee brought his cameras into the Belasco Theatre to record Stew’s show in the live performance documentary, Passing Strange (trailer here), which starts a limited engagement in New York this Friday.

Passing is the semi-autobiographical creation of the uni-named Stew (at one time known as Mark Stewart), the show’s narrator, guitarist, bandleader, book and lyric writer, and co-composer/co-orchestrator with bassist Heidi Rodewald. Although Stew had an understudy listed in programs, it is difficult to imagine the show without him driving the band and offering witty musical commentary on the dramatic proceedings.

In a variation on the on-the-road story, the simply named Youth, feeling constricted by his lower middle class Los Angeles upbringing, sets out on a journey to find “the real.” Yet it is not clear whether the aspiring songwriter really wants to find it, preferring the excesses of Amsterdam’s bohemian hash bars and the hipster pretensions of Berlin. His expatriate voyage unfolds on an austere stage right in the midst of Stew’s band, with only a few plain chairs for a set.

At times the book is quite clever, savagely satirizing the self-important leftist performance art of the Berliners. Featuring sharply incisive dialogue, Passing challenges the audience’s expectations in shrewd ways, frankly addressing issues of personal identity and authenticity in race, sex, and art. When the Youth adopts a militant Black Power persona to impress the Berlin artist collective, his role-playing is undercut by Stew’s narration: “Nobody in this play knows what it’s like to hustle for dimes on the mean streets of South Central.”

Daniel Breaker is quite convincing as the somewhat immature Youth, perhaps benefiting the most from Lee’s cinematic close-ups. Likewise, the power of Eisa Davis’s performance as his mother remains undiminished by the show’s transition to the big screen. However, Stew dominates the show with his music and presence. Together with Rodewald, Christian Gibbs on drums, and Jon Spurney and Christian Cassan, both doubling on guitar and keyboards, they rock the house, far more than any previous so-called “rock musical.”

Indeed, the music of Passing is quite catchy and it legitimately rocks, but the program is a bit unbalanced, with most of the absolute killer showstoppers, like “Arlington Hill,” “Amsterdam,” and “Keys” front-loaded in the first act. Yet throughout the show, Stew’s effective recurring riffs like, “just when it was starting to feel real,” tie the music and drama together quite powerfully.

Employing multiple cameras over three nights of shooting, Lee and cinematographer Matthew Libatique capture the sweaty vitality of the show’s essence. However, it seems like they were a tad stingy with Rodewald’s screen time, which is a shame considering her contributions as Stew’s musical collaborator and her own talent as a musician.

Lee might have directed the film, but Passing is still undeniably Stew’s show. It was as real as it gets on Broadway. When the musicians and actors take their final bows on stage, cinema audiences will probably find themselves up on their feet, applauding along with the Belasco patrons. It is a fine send-off for one of the best musicals of the last decade.

It opens on the 21st at the IFC Film Center, with Stew and Rodewald attending the 6:15 & 9:20 screenings on Friday and Saturday, as well as the 3:30 screening on Sunday.