Music Reviews-WAR, The O'Jays

WAR

WAR is one of my favorite funk/rock/soul/R&B/blues groups. The band was one of the founding proponents of the seventies West Coast funk/Latin sound. They could and did play some traditional blues numbers from time to time but they generally made updated urban blues that stretched out into many different genres. WAR was an excellent example of how several musics across the African diaspora are related. They created music that was often Afro-Cuban based, combined it with other Latin elements, threw in some jazz and funk and soul and were off to the races. As a group they also had one of the coolest (and largest) group of Afros ever seen in the seventies and probably since then. They were a "world music" and "jam band" before those terms had entered the popular vernacular. If I could only use one word to describe WAR that word would be organic. WAR was similar to a lot of other self-contained funk groups around in the late sixties and early seventies. They stood apart because of fearsome musicianship and a sense of togetherness and brotherhood. Most of the songwriting was credited equally to all group members. Everyone had a chance to sing and shine instrumentally. Although I wouldn't say any of them were great singers individually, their whole was greater than the sum of their parts. They sounded great harmonizing. While a few of them might have been tenors most were definitely bass or baritone voices. This gave their sound a certain depth and for lack of a better word, testosterone. WAR was the last band Jimi Hendrix jammed with.

Over time WAR's guitarist , Howard Scott, who probably was in truth the primary songwriter, took slightly more lead vocals. But unlike most other guitarists working in popular music then he very very rarely took long loud solos in the studio, preferring instead a very rhythmic and almost orchestral sound. Sonically, he was usually in the background. Live, it was sometimes a different story but even there WAR's primary emphasis always remained groove. There is a lot of space and silence in their music. Scott never lets his guitar get in the way of the groove. There's times when you can hardly hear him but then you immediately notice when he drops out. He shied away from a lot of effects. With a few glorious exceptions his solos are short or even non-existent. 

The drummer Harold Brown combined New Orleans second line drumming with the power of Buddy Miles or John Bonham and the swing and shuffle of Bernard Purdie or Earl Palmer. On some of his work I thought there were two drummers. I love it when the bass drum is audible and/or is a separate event from the bass guitar. There's usually no missing where the "one" is in WAR's music but "Low Rider" might initially fool you as Brown plays on the upbeats instead of the downbeats. BB Dickerson, the bassist and Scott's nephew, must be mentioned as one of the better, or at least louder bassists. He's always audible and holding down the bottom register. Listen to him laying down a typically thick sound on "The World is a Ghetto". That song gives the lie to the notion that black performers and audiences had turned their back on the blues post sixties. The harmonica player, Lee Oskar, was from Denmark and showed you didn't need to be black or even speak English yet to be bluesy or funky. Check out his deep delta blues work on "Blisters". Aside from Stevie Wonder was there a more popular harmonica player in the seventies? Lonnie Jordan, the organist and pianist did many of the vocal leads which Scott didn't do. Charles Miller, the saxophonist and lead vocalist on "Low Rider" and clarinetist on the cabaret jazz style "Babyface" and Papa Dee Allen, the conga player and percussionist, rounded out the ensemble. Everyone doubled on percussion and backing vocals. Often you'll hear Miller and Oskar playing harmony lines so perfectly that you might not be able to tell the difference between their two instruments.

WAR came out of Compton, California. They were first discovered by Deacon Jones the football player. They were then calling themselves Night Shift. After a few lineup changes they came to the attention of producer Oscar Goldstein. Goldstein hooked them up with English ex-Animals singer Eric Burdon, who was looking for a new band, and Lee Oskar. With new members and new name they went on tour. During this time they weren't quite Burdon's backup band but they weren't what they became later either. I like many of the songs they did during this period ("Spill The Wine", "Beautiful New Born Child", "They Can't Take Our Music Away") but when Burdon had medical issues during a tour WAR decided to soldier on without him and they amicably parted ways soon afterwards. 

WAR's musical and financial success improved after Burdon's departure and they became the quintessential live funk band, touring with people like Isaac Hayes, Santana, The Wailers, Mandrill and other now classic bands. Bob Marley acknowledged WAR's "Slipping into Darkness" as a primary influence on his own "Get Up Stand Up". "So" is a generic R&B song that somehow becomes more while "All Day Music" is a soul tune greatly influenced by Pharaoh Sanders' "The Creator has a Master plan". Isaac Hayes once kicked them off a tour because he found it too hard to follow their opening act. I don't know if they ever toured with The Allman Brothers but they really should have because both groups were dedicated to long flowing jams that started in one spot and over a period of time wound up someplace else entirely. 

All good things must come to an end of course and though they had a game try at disco and simpler funk styles by the 80's the band had run its creative course. Miller and Allen had died.
The band reformed briefly in the nineties with additional band members but it wasn't the same. They also discovered that long time producer Goldstein had somehow obtained sole rights to the name WAR. The band split up again with Goldstein and Jordan continuing to book performances with various other musicians as "WAR" while the remaining original members, or who I think of as WAR are now forced to perform as The Low Rider Band. Again, it just shows you how important it is to keep an eye on your so-called friends. Because everyone who claims to have your best interest at heart might not actually be looking out for you. When it comes to wealth and control people do strange things. Folks get funny when it comes to money.

Low Rider  The World is a Ghetto  Ballero(Live) Hey Senorita  Spill The Wine
Slipping Into Darkness(Live)  Leroy's Latin Lament   Why Can't We Be Friends
The Vision of Rahsaan  So  Where was you at 
Seven Tin Soldiers  Heartbeat  Bareback Riding
Beautiful New Born Child  River Niger
They Can't Take Our Music Away  Get Down (Live -partial)  Four Cornered Room
Blisters  Me and Baby Brother (Live)  All Day Music 
Babyface Sun Oh Son (Live) Cisco Kid  Galaxy




The O'Jays

The O'Jays were not a self-contained band like WAR but rather a singing group. They were also a close runner up to WAR for best Afros of the seventies. But WAR couldn't touch the O'Jays when it came to harmonized singing. Few musical groups could. The O'Jays had much greater vocal range than WAR.  The O'Jays were originally from Ohio but of course reached their greatest fame and fortune working out of Philadelphia with legendary songwriters and producers Gamble and Huff. As part of the process of turning the up and coming group into superstars Gamble and Huff smoothed out the rough edges, gave the trio much better material to sing and improvise over and got them working with quite talented musicians, including but not limited to people like Anthony Jackson, bassist extraordinaire and inventor of the six string bass guitar. Jackson's playing can be heard on the song "For the Love of Money". Obviously the O'Jays also worked with the famous session band, and later stars in their own right, MFSB.

The O'Jays walked that fine line between glamour and grit and were able to satisfy people who liked both or either in their music.  During the classic period the group included Walter Williams, William Powell and of course Eddie Levert. All three men sang lead and backup. There was a nice tension between Levert's slightly rougher voice, particularly in some of the ballads, and Williams' smoother one. I would kill to have Levert's voice.  My favorite O'Jays song of all time is not "For The Love of Money" or "Don't Call Me Brother" but "You Got Your Hooks In Me". If you don't know any other O'Jays music you should know that one. It doubles as a slow jam to dance with your baby and as a fun sing-a-long when you're driving home.

The O'Jays recorded lots of love songs but also served as a vehicle for Gamble and Huff's social commentary with songs like "Ship Ahoy", "Don't Call Me Brother"  and obviously "For The Love of Money". All of their music had excellent production. It wasn't overly loud but had clarity without sterility. I don't know whether you'd call them a funky soul group or a soulful funk group but I love their music. A lot of it is heard in commercials these days but there are some gems, the aforementioned "You Got Your Hooks In Me" and "Ship Ahoy" an extended somber suite about slavery.

Don't Call Me Brother  For The Love of Money  Give the People What They Want 
You Got Your Hooks In Me  Love Train   Living for the Weekend (Soul Train Line) 
 Use Ta Be My Girl  992 Arguments  Back Stabbers (live on Soul Train)  
 Put Your Hands Together  Time to Get Down  Ship Ahoy

Melissa Harris-Perry: Kids Belong To Communities

If you ever watch MSNBC you may have noticed a series of LEAN FORWARD commercials featuring their on air opinion talent earnestly giving bromides about how we're all in this together and we need to work collectively for the common good. Usually these things are calculated to be just this side of irritating to more moderate or conservative viewers as the unsaid implication in the spots is often that conservatives are doing every thing wrong. In some respects the commercials are examples of liberals being sore winners. A recent spot featured Professor Melissa Harris-Perry. The terminology and phrases she used sent conservatives as well as a few libertarians over the deep end in rage. 

Of course I doubt this was by accident. On some other boards I frequent occasionally extremely conservative or extremely liberal people will post stories or make comments that are designed to do nothing other than get a rise out of the other side. Flame wars can easily get started that way. I won't claim I've never done that in my life (ha-ha) but it is a pretty cheap way of getting responses and in my opinion usually not as good or mature as actually creating and sharing a deeper analysis. The person who instigates this often pretends innocence and claims to be above the obviously irrational, emotional and gratuitously nasty responses the other side is showing. Sure I poked the caged tiger in the eye with a stick but that's no reason for it to get upset...

When I read the phrases the good professor used I have to believe that she or the commercial creator had to be trolling somewhat. It was reminiscent of the old Looney Tunes cartoons when Foghorn Leghorn would stroll over to the sleeping dog and kick it in the behind. Foghorn would then wait just outside the limit the chained dog could reach. When the dog choked on its collar, sputtering in rage, Foghorn would say "Aw shaddup!!" and hit the dog again. What could the Professor have said to make some people start barking and shaking their jowls in rage? Well let's see.


            

She starts out and ends with the usual progressive idea that we don't spend enough on public education and need to spend more, or as she would put it invest more. Conservatives generally disagree of course. There are good arguments on both sides here and there's room for legitimate debate. I would tend toward Professor Harris-Perry's side on this but I can see the other side. So if she had just stated that of course conservatives would have disagreed as they usually do. But what turned the intensity of disagreement up was her statement that "..We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or that kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities."

Game recognizes game. This sent conservative trolls like Beck, Palin and Limbaugh into fits of fury. It also set off alarm bells of warning in more libertarian circles. Do you see why? 

It is a deliberate oversimplification for brevity but conservatives (with some hypocritical exceptions) broadly speaking generally want the federal and to the lesser extent the state governments to have less power regarding the individual and the family. Liberals tend to feel exactly the opposite way, feeling that the federal government ought to have more authority. Some look suspiciously at the family, often seeing it as a breeding ground for patriarchal and generally wrong-headed ideas.

So when you say that we need to get rid of the idea that kids belong to their parents or families, you probably shouldn't be surprised that that hits a nerve with conservatives and they respond. Of course in the strictest sense kids don't belong to anyone. Adults are stewards of the next generation, not owners. But that's just semantics.

Parents, not society, have the primary responsibility for children. Parents, not society, get to make virtually all of the critical decisions for children. If someone doesn't like the way someone else is raising their children, that's tough. It's the parent's job to make sure that their child has enough to eat, attends a good school, learns how to resolve conflicts, stays in good health, figures out the birds and the bees, and any number of other things. I do believe that society, or rather government has a role to play in ensuring there's a baseline to help parents do all those things but in my view that's where everyone else's role ceases.  And it must stop there. Why? Because to start with, we live in an increasingly diverse society and everyone has different ideas about how to raise children. The only way we can live together is for people to mind their own business and absent abuse let parents raise their kids as they see fit. There was another video of MSNBC personality Krystal Ball talking to her five year old daughter about gay marriage and coaching her to support it. Some conservative members of society were outraged and considered this abusive. Would Professor Harris-Perry think that since kids belong to entire communities the community would have a right to step in and teach the daughter differently? I doubt it. If you don't like how someone is raising his/her kids, either have some of your own and raise them differently or go sit down and be quiet. Those are really your only two choices unless you happen to be the child's other parent.

Secondly although it's somewhat harsh to say it, parents care more about their children than society does.That's their direct biological investment in the next generation. That's why parents have such an incentive to make sure their child does well. Law doesn't mess with that relationship lightly. Professor Harris-Perry had a follow up to her ad in which she argued that she was just deliberately misunderstood by right-wing cretins. Well maybe. But I doubt that anyone with the command of the language that the professor possesses didn't realize that confidently stating "we have to break through the private idea that kids belong to their parents" would invite attacks. And what she says in her post is different from the ad.

The elephant in the room around all of this is the fact that recently for the first time in American history there were more minority births than white ones. This raises legitimate questions and fears across the political spectrum about what will be the policy outcome of this change. Seniors or people without children already may have issues with taxes to support families. Will a more diverse workforce wish to fund retirement and medical coverage for a very white older generation? Will that white older generation feel it necessary to pay higher taxes to support schools full of children who do not look like their grandchildren? Time will tell. I think this is what the professor was really referencing.

Thoughts?

Do you agree with Professor Harris-Perry's ad?

Was she trolling?

Is this much ado about nothing?

Do you think kids belong to the community or to their parents?

North Korea: Crazy Like a Fox?

Have you ever used public transportation on a regular basis? I used to when I was younger. Fortunately I don't any longer. The problem with public transportation is the public. Most people are okay but there is often some joker at the back of the bus who stinks of excrement and body odor and spits when he talks. This person will often be carrying on a complex conversation with nobody in particular. Of course like most sane people you try to ignore this person but every now and then this person notices you. And they start a profane commentary about you, what you look like, who you're probably sleeping with (or not sleeping with), how much money you make or what a loser you are and how (occasionally depending on your gender) they would either sleep with you or knock you the f*** out. This last can escalate into threats and fights. Remember the epic bus man video or the woman who thought it was a good idea to hit the bus driver after a torrent of insults. But in most cases the person who's running his mouth all the time is generally harmless. His right hook is usually not as dangerous as his unwashed aroma. So you keep your eyes to yourself or laugh it off as the ravings of a lunatic and curse yourself for not getting a new BMW so you won't have to share rides with idiots like this. Often it's not worth getting into it physically with the crazy nut because the police might put both of you in jail or you might be late for work or the nut might have even crazier friends. Unless of course this person either assaults you or makes a credible threat to do so. Then, well you f*** with the bull, you get the horns.

In the world today that crazy bus vagrant with the killer bo would appear to be North Korea or more precisely its new leader Kim Jong Un.

North Korea has long had a reputation for unstable behavior that appears odd to those outside its borders. The new dictator, Kim Jong Un appears to want to keep up the family tradition.

He has been making threats against the US, Japan and South Korea and speaking of war as a distinct possibility. He's told foreigners that he can't guarantee their safety. He has taken more steps to put his country on high military alert. All in all he's been talking a LOT of smack, sounding similar to an East Asian Jim Jones. His neighbors Japan and South Korea are getting VERY nervous and starting to ramp up their own military readiness. Even the US is flexing muscles to show off its much greater capacity for organized violence. Everyone wants to be ready...just in case. As Sonny Corleone said in The Godfather "I don't want him [Michael] to come out of that bathroom with just his d*** in his hand!". If it's about to go down hard you probably want to get in the first shot. That's what I was always taught anyway. That's what Han Solo and Raylan Givens would do. And that's how nations tend to operate too if they can.

The problem however though is that North Korea has nuclear weapons although it may not have consistent delivery devices. So if anything like a nuclear exchange or conventional attacks did happen, it would likely be limited to the Korean peninsula and the surrounding area. As much of the surrounding area includes a little place called China, the Chinese government rather atypically released a statement that was interpreted by most observers to be a warning, or as I like to consider it, a collar pop, to North Korea.

The new Chinese President Xi Jinping, appeared to make an unusual veiled rebuke of North Korea on Sunday. "Countries, whether big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, should all contribute their share in maintaining and enhancing peace," Xi said at an international conference, the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua reported. No one should be allowed to throw a region into chaos for selfish gains, he said, according to Xinhua.

The question then is why would North Korea act in a seemingly "crazy" way? Well there are a number of hypotheses, some of which overlap with each other.

• Kim Jong Un really is crazy. Full Stop. He is someone that should have been locked up and pumped full of thorazine and ritalin every 6 hours. 
• Kim Jong Un is young and unproven. He hasn't made his bones. As a result, similar to some Western politicians, he's searching for an easy "win", one that will prove to his domestic military establishment and any ambitious subordinates who may be considering a sudden and permanent change of leadership that Kim Jong Un is no punk. He's got guts and isn't going anywhere.
• Kim Jong Un is peeved about increased sanctions against North Korea and is throwing a temper tantrum to attempt to get these sanctions reduced or only enforced in theory.
• Kim Jong Un has been deliberately let off leash by the Chinese to show the Americans that there are costs to confronting the Chinese about their own massive hacking and spying operations, financial manipulations, economic protectionism, intellectual piracy and nationalist expansionism in the Pacific Ocean.

I tend to lean towards the last explanation though the second makes a lot of sense to me as well. I don't think that Kim Jong Un wants to be vaporized in a nuclear exchange or see his toilet bowl nation routinely bombed with impunity. But in diplomacy it can often be useful to give the impression that you're crazy just to get what you want. Over the next 6 months let's watch US and UN policy very closely towards China and North Korea to see if there are any alterations or tips toward those two countries. This all may be a big game. As anyone who's ever been in a serious verbal conflict knows sometimes a person says things that can't be unsaid or does things which require a physical response. And the next thing you know you're either on your way to jail for hurting someone or experiencing the wrong end of a brutal beatdown, simply because you couldn't let something go. I hope this doesn't turn out to be the case here. Let's hope that Kim Jong Un is just running his mouth. This is why I sometimes think we should have let General MacArthur finish the job all those years ago but that's life...

What are your thoughts?

HBO Game of Thrones Recap: Dark Wings, Dark Words

Wow. This episode was a little heavier on the action and jumped around more than last week's episode did. It made some additional changes from the book, some of which I can mention and others which I can't. I am growing increasingly peeved at the direction in which they're taking the Catelyn character. I wrote about this before. That aside, I liked this episode. This episode moved a lot of the story chess pieces around for events that may or may not take place later. Although I've read the books, the story is different enough now that I'm not sure what's going to happen next. And that I think is a very good thing.

The story opens up with Bran running in the woods, so obviously he's dreaming. He hears and sees his brothers Jon and Robb advising him how to shoot his bow and hears his father Ned chiding them for their laughter when he misses his target, a three eyed crow. A boy tells him that he can't kill the three eyed crow because that is him. He wakes from his dream and Osha, looking suitably disturbed, says they need to keep moving. By the way all the children are noticeably older so I hope we get new books and new HBO seasons out ASAP.
While Talisa is trying to get to know her new husband better, emotionally, not in THAT way, Roose Bolton enters and brings bad news (thus the title of the episode). Hoster Tully,  Robb's grandfather and Catelyn's father, is dead. Bran and Rickon are missing. Robb decides for both personal and political reasons to attend Hoster Tully's funeral, something that Lord Karstark is not very happy about. He's of the opinion that time is wasting.

Theon is alive! He's been captured by people who won't identify themselves or where he is. A man rips out one of Theon's fingernails. Jaime and Brienne are still heading south and trading insults. Jaime figures out that Brienne was pledged to Renly and likely sweet on him. So he points out in his charming manner that Renly was gay and probably would have preferred a throne made out of penis. The two run into a man who says he's headed for Riverrun but who notices Brienne's atypical attire and size for a woman. Jaime's suspicions are aroused and he advises Brienne to kill the man but she says unlike Jaime she doesn't roll like that. In King's Landing Cersei tries to warn Joffrey of Margaery's ambitions and to find out what he thinks of her but he shoots her down with his normal sexist (and Oedipal?) comments. This guy is a real piece of work, let me tell you. 

Sansa has told Shae of Littlefinger's plans to help her. Shae says that all men only want one thing. Sansa, showing how naive she still is, says that Littlefinger was a friend to her mother and anyway is far too old for her. In the night's best scene Sansa is invited to lunch with Margaery and Margaery's grandmother, Olenna Tyrell. This scene really brings out how people use the weapons that they have. Unlike Brienne, who is mocked and despised for her androgyny and strength, the Tyrell women are not physical threats and can not battle in that arena. But they move with ease in the feminine suites of behind the scenes influence and political manipulation. 
I like Olenna. Like a lot of older people she seems to feel free to say what's on her mind, convention be dammed.
Olenna is dismissive of the men in her life-her late husband and her son Mace, the Family titular head. She would have preferred to stay neutral in the current conflict. But since Margaery (cleavage alert!) is to marry Joffrey, Olenna wants to know from Sansa what Joffrey is like. 

At first Sansa gives her normal canned response about her family being traitors. Olenna sees right thru that and along with Margaery demands the truth. After all they're just women, what harm could there be. Sansa temporarily drops her survival mask and speaks honestly about Joffrey's brutality and murder of her father, calling Joffrey a monster. From the way Olenna and Margaery look at each other we get the very strong feeling that they already knew much of this and wanted confirmation. I imagine if nothing else it must have been something of a relief to Sansa to let her true feelings out, if only for a brief moment.

Talisa and Catelyn have a brief heart to heart the upshot of which is that Catelyn (wrongly) blames herself for the horrific events in her life. I really really really hated this scene but that's all I'm gonna say about that. North of the Wall, Mance Rayder still doesn't quite trust Jon Snow. The wildling Orell can warg (possess or see thru the eyes of) eagles and has seen the battle between the Night Watch and the White Walkers. Meanwhile Sam is depressed, tired and being insulted by his comrades. He blames them for leaving him and they point out that as he was fat and slow it made no sense for all of them to die. That makes sense to me. The Lord Commander Mormont tells Sam to quit acting like a little ***** . He tells Sam's friends that they are responsible for Sam.

Summer and Osha sense something. It turns out to be the somewhat androgynous boy Bran saw in his dreams, Jojen Reed. Osha doesn't trust him but Jojen's sister Meera gets the drop on Osha. Meera is the one with the weapons. She's apparently rather skilled. And it turns out that Summer trusts Jojen. After all of that is sorted out Jojen explains that Bran is a budding warg and also has or will have the ability to see things which happen far away as well as see things in the future or the past. Either ability is rare but to have both is unheard of. Jojen and Meera are Howland Reed's children. Reed is a Stark bannerman who once saved Ned's life. Osha grumbles that Jojen should be ashamed that Meera is a better fighter but evidently the Reed children are unfettered by patriarchal concerns. It's interesting how Ned Stark inspired such loyalty that even after his death his bannermen, friends and even former Stark enemies like Osha take risks to protect his children. There's a throwaway scene with Shae and Tyrion where we see (again) that Shae is good at her job but also somewhat jealous of Tyrion's previous sexual encounters and his offhand appreciation of Sansa's beauty.

Arya, Hotpie and Gendry run across Thoros and the Brotherhood Without Banners, a sort of Robin Hood type group. Thoros is curious as to how the three escaped Harrenhal and takes them with him. Arya and Gendry are able to mix up some truth and lies. After a meal and demonstration that Arya's sword skills are not as good as she thinks they are, the three are given leave to depart when the Hound, who's been captured by the Brotherhood, wants to know what the Brotherhood is doing with Arya Stark.
There's another good scene with Joffrey and Margaery where Joffrey shows he might have been listening to his mother's warnings about Margaery after all. He verbally attacks Margaery for being with the traitor Renly and questions her loyalty but she deflects by saying she's just a woman and Renly was gay anyway. Joffrey says he's considered outlawing sodomy. Margaery also notices that Joffrey is VERY interested in weapons and killing things. It's about the only thing that gets him sexually excited. She quickly uses that to her advantage. I like how her character is able to read people so well.

Theon is being tortured again. People want to know why he attacked Winterfell. No matter what answer he gives, they torture him. After the torturers leave a young man says he was sent by Theon's sister and will help him to escape.
Brienne and Jaime are still having their insult laden road trip when Brienne makes the mistake of letting Jaime get too close. He steals one of her swords. You can feel Jaime come alive again. A duel commences, one in which Jaime finds himself, if not quite outmatched, certainly getting more than he bargained for. In fact Brienne has him at a serious disadvantage when the fight is interrupted by people from House Bolton, a northern house. They were led to the duo by the man Brienne refused to kill earlier. Well this is Westeros. No good deed goes unpunished.


*This post is written for discussion of this episode and previous episodes. If you have book based knowledge of future events please be kind enough not to discuss that here. Most of my blog partners have not read the books and would take spoilers most unkindly. Heads, spikes, well you get the idea....

University of Michigan: ONE GAME LEFT....

Michigan Wolverines Defeat Syracuse Orangemen 61-56

Louisville...you're in the way bub..

Details

Movie Reviews-Killing Them Softly, GI Joe: Retaliation, Justified Season One, The Possession

Killing Them Softly
directed by Andrew Dominik

This is a quiet little gangster movie and can be completely enjoyed (or not enjoyed) on that level. It's inspired by the novel Cogan's Trade by noir novelist George Higgins. But if you scratch the surface a little bit (the story has been moved to take place during the 2008 financial crash) it's as much about capitalism, failing masculinity, corporate politics and just general bleakness as it is about stereotypical gangsters. President (then Senator) Obama's speeches are often used as ironic backdrop for the gangsters' conversations. Indeed the hoodlums themselves comment on what they're hearing. There's a claustrophobic desperate feel here , which strangely enough reminds me of Glengarry GlenRoss, probably because similar to that movie, this film has no female leads. In fact there are only one or two women who even speak in this movie, if memory serves me correctly. No this film depicts a man's world and a very dark ugly one.

You get the feeling watching this film that the characters are just going through the motions. There aren't necessarily explicit references to glory days long gone but the constant squabbling over small amounts of money and a few asides about how someone wouldn't normally do something, but you know, the economy, set the stage perfectly.


In New Orleans a small time hood named Squirrel (Vincent Curatola) decides that the time is right to set up a robbery of a mob affiliated poker game. He gets two other low level scrubs, Russell (Ben Mendelsohn), a junkie and Frankie (Scoot McNairy) to perform the actual robbery since Squirrel thinks himself above such things and also is known to some of the people at the game.

When Frankie shares his doubts about the wisdom of robbing a game backed by the biggest sharks in the ocean so to speak, Squirrel tells him not to worry because everyone will assume that Markie (Ray Liotta) did it. Markie runs the game for the mob and some years ago set up a robbery of his own game. However, people liked Markie and though he admitted his crime in a moment of drunken candor, the powers that be pretended they didn't hear it and gave him a pass. But if the game is robbed again, well all bets will be off. Markie will be hit and Squirrel, Frankie and Russell will be in the clear. That's the plan anyway.

But stupid plans rarely work out because after all they're put together by stupid people. After the robbery Russell can't keep his mouth shut and a fixer for the mob named Driver (Richard Jenkins) arranges things with Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) a cynical, well read, well dressed and world weary hitter. In no short time Cogan knows everyone that was involved and knows what he has to do. I say he's cynical because even though Cogan knows that Markie didn't actually pull this job, he still votes thumbs down on Markie because everyone will assume Markie did it. And assumptions can be deadly. Look for James Gandolfini as an exhausted and out of shape hitman who would rather drink and bully prostitutes than do the work he no longer has the heart for. Pitt and Gandolfini play well off each other.
TRAILER



GI Joe: Retaliation
directed by John Chu

This was an amazingly silly movie. You can take that in either a good way or bad way. If you enjoy action movies you can turn your brain off and enjoy this. In fact you might not even wonder how Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson) can lead all two of the remaining Joes (Lady Jaye-Adrianne Palicki even says to him "You're our leader now") but at the end he is still an enlisted man while Lady Jaye gets a promotion from Lieutenant to Captain. Uh, if she was already an officer why wasn't she leading the team? And if Roadblock was leading the team and he was, shouldn't that have been worth a battlefield promotion? But I'm no expert in military protocol.

This takes up where the last movie left off but drops any romance and most sex appeal. Adrianne Palicki is no Rachel Nichols or Sienna Miller and besides a brief appearance in an evening gown and short shorts is more or less one of the guys. There is no Ripcord (Marlon Wayans).

Cobra Commander (Rex Lewis) and Destro have been captured and put in a secret "black" prison. But their subordinate Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) has successfully impersonated the President of the United States (Jonathan Pryce). When a revolt in Pakistan raises the possibility of Pakistani nuclear weapons falling into the hands of non state actors Zartan sees an opportunity to get rid of the GI Joes. He orders them all in to secure the nukes. Led by Duke (Channing Tatum) the Joes do just that. Zartan then orders Cobra air strikes and ground troops in to kill all the Joes. Weeping crocodile tears Zartan goes to the airwaves to claim that the Joes were attempting a coup and thus he had to terminate them. Having tortured the President to find out where Cobra Commander is imprisoned, Zartan sends Firefly (Ray Stevenson) and Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) to break the boss out. Destro is not so lucky. Walter Goggins plays the penitentiary warden with his typical flash.

Things are proceeding nicely from Cobra's point of view but unless you kill ALL the Joes you still have a problem. As mentioned Roadblock, Lady Jaye and Flint (D.J. Cotrona) are still alive and just a tad bit upset. They make it back to the states and get in touch with Snake Eyes (Ray Park), who either wasn't on that last mission or who also escaped. I can't remember and it's not very important. Snake Eyes has been sent by his clan leader Blind Master (RZA) to capture Storm Shadow. The Joes aren't necessarily the sharpest knives in the kitchen drawer but they figure out that the President might not be who he says he is. They approach retired General Colton (Bruce Willis), the original GI Joe, for assistance.

Obviously lots of things get blown up, cities get destroyed, multitudes of people get shot and there are plenty of fights. Special effects are good. The standout scenes might be ninja swordfights on Himalayan mountains. The movie is loud but not devastatingly so. I'm not a huge GI Joe fan but I liked the first one better than this. That's not saying much though. Johnson did a good job with what he had here.
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Justified: Season One
created by Graham Yost

This is an FX series that I had heard good things about. It's based on some stories by famous Detroit area crime novelist Elmore Leonard. I haven't watched it on TV but I did get the DVD for season one and two. Let's just get one thing straight upfront, this is not in any real way related to The Wire or The Sopranos, though there are definitely some characters who are shades of grey. This is set in Kentucky, a place to which I've never been and judging by this show probably wouldn't want to visit. Justified does play a bit fast and loose with stereotypes directed at the people known, fondly or not, as hillbillies. But all the same it also creates some strong interesting characters who will surprise you from time to time.

The outline of this season is that US Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) is assigned to the Miami office. In a tense showdown he shoots a Miami mobster, who he was assigned to bring in and who was trying to kill him. In a nod to the series title Raylan tells his office boss that the public shooting was justified. But his boss doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't hate Raylan but feels that Raylan just brings too much heat. Raylan has been involved in too many shootings. And bigger bosses feel the same way.

So Givens is unceremoniously sent packing back home to Kentucky. His new boss Art (Nick Searcy) is an old friend whose primary concern is just making it to retirement. Don't give him any problems (like lots of shootings) and he won't give you any problems. Although he will occasionally tear his subordinates a new one behind closed doors he zealously protects them from higher-ups or other agencies. Raylan doesn't like Kentucky. He's assigned to the Lexington office which has jurisdiction over Raylan's old stomping grounds of Harlan County.

Raylan really really really didn't want to go home. He's got history there and most of it's bad. It starts with his very close friend Boyd Crowder (Walter Goggins), a combat veteran who once worked with Givens in the mines and saved Givens' life. But now Boyd has become a white supremacist and fallen in with the rest of his criminal family. When he's not blowing up black churches or murdering possible snitches, he's making a play for criminal domination of Harlan County. Givens and Crowder have a love-hate relationship. If it comes to it they will kill each other but they would be damned before they let anyone else try. Ava Crowder (JoElle Carter) is Boyd's sister-in-law. She just killed Boyd's brother after a long string of abuse. Some of the other Crowders, possibly including Boyd's Daddy Bo Crowder (M.C. Gainey) feel that abuse or not, Ava might need to pay for that. Both Raylan and Boyd have complex (or maybe not so complex) feelings for the leggy Ava.

Raylan has a complicated relationship with his own father Arlo (Raymond Barry) who abused him as a child and was just generally a horrible parent, even absent the abuse. Arlo is a small time criminal who wasn't always as down and out as he is now. He may have some plans for a comeback. Arlo is now married to his former sister-in-law, Raylan's aunt. Raylan adores her but can barely speak civilly to his father. Raylan also runs into his ex-wife Winona (Natalie Zea) who despite being remarried to a more financially stable and successful man can't seem to stop dropping by Raylan's office to tell him how much she doesn't miss him.

But even with all the new frustrations and challenges in Raylan's life the Miami Mob has not forgotten about him. And it's not that far from Florida to Kentucky. And of course there is plenty of criminal activity unrelated to Boyd or the Mob to keep Raylan busy.
Although Olyphant is the lead of the show I'd say the very strong second or possibly even co-star is Walter Goggins. He's a good actor and his Boyd has an incredible amount of charisma. You don't even know when he's acting. The show plays with this across the season as after a life changing event Boyd suddenly drops the racism and criminal behavior and finds God, leading an interracial group of men in good deeds and prayer. It is a source of constant frustration to Boyd that neither his family nor Raylan believe that he can change or has changed. And Bo Crowder might have some things to teach Tywin Lannister about cruelty.
I can't say if this show got Kentucky right or not but from what I can tell it did do a good job capturing some southern gentility, belligerence, faux politesse and general aversion to using contractions or short sentences when long flowery speeches are available. Boyd is a master of this. Lithe, soft spoken and extremely dangerous, Boyd is a man who uses language in a way which is simultaneously quite precise and abstruse.
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The Possession
directed by Ole Bornedal

Look the only reason I bothered to watch this movie was because Sam Raimi (Evil Dead) produced it AND it had Jeffrey Dean Morgan aka John Winchester from the Supernatural tv series. Morgan was playing a version of that character. Unfortunately he didn't have much to play against in this movie. I got bored with it very quickly. I kept waiting for him to say "I need my boys" and make a phone call. Then Sam and Dean Winchester would show up in their (his) 67' Impala ready to kick some spirit a$$ for Dad. Well unfortunately that didn't happen. No, I'm afraid John Winchester Clyde Brenek was on his own in this movie. Clyde is recently divorced from his wife Stephanie Brenek (Kyra Sedgwick). He and his ex share custody over their two daughters Em (Natasha Callis) and Hannah (Madison Davenport). Stephanie is a bit of a stick in the mud whose primary complaint seems to be that Clyde was working too hard (he's a high school basketball coach) instead of listening to her screech about whatever was running thru her head at the moment. Ok, that might be a little harsh but geez just about every time the two talked, Stephanie eventually went into full "Everything's your fault and you're an d***!!!" mode. So it's probably a good thing they aren't living or sleeping together any more. I think this could have been slightly better written. Presumably Stephanie was the party that initiated the divorce. She's kept the house. And she hasn't wasted any time into moving the oleaginous Brett (Grant Show) into her life, her home and her bed. As you might imagine Clyde isn't overly fond of Brett, who is apparently more financially successful than Clyde. Clyde still carries a torch for Stephanie. I imagine that would be a bit of a pain having to watch another man raise your children and touch your wife places that used to be off limits to anyone except you. Just ask Seal.

Anyway, either being a high school basketball coach must pay better than you think or old Clyde had some funds that weren't found by Stephanie's divorce team because he's just bought a new home that is just a tad smaller than his old one. And it's his turn to have his daughters. He brings them over for pizza and fun. But Dad and daughters stop at a garage sale where Em is able to get her Daddy to buy her an old box with Hebraic lettering. Now the viewer already knows this box is bad news because in the opening segment a woman tried and failed to destroy it. And just to make sure we get the point the woman, who can no longer talk, sees Em with the box and tries to warn her against it.
Of course the box turns out to.. well heck it's not much of a spoiler. This IS a horror movie. What do you do with boxes? You put things in them. And what was put into this box is something that never ever should be let out. Of course there's no movie if the box is not opened and Em does just that. And I'll give you one guess who gets possessed.

In many of these types of films it's usually the Catholic Church who is presumed to have the inside info on demonology. I don't know why that is. Several religions and mythologies have stories of malign supernatural entities who roam around looking for ways to harm humans. In this film it's not Catholics who will be the experts but rather Jews. The expert in this case is Tzadok (the reggae singer Matisyahu who in a nice little nod to his real life career is shown listening to reggae and rap).  Unfortunately as an actor, Matisyahu is a great musician. Also the demon or rather dybbuk isn't quite malevolent or creepy enough for my tastes. When Clyde starts saying there's something wrong with Em and hinting at supernatural events Stephanie and Brett get restraining orders. But with the exception of a late night confrontation in the kitchen between Stephanie and the being wearing Em, I just didn't get a real feeling of danger from the dybbuk. I thought it would have been more effective if for example, we saw the dybbuk DO something to someone or had one of the parents wake up in the middle of the night and have the dybbuk looking at them or... (see the movie Orphan for more creepy dangerous kids.)

Scenes of bodily mutilation and general weirdness abound along with insect plagues that come out of nowhere but all in all this just wasn't a scary movie to me.
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Atrocity in Africa: Children murdered in front of mother!!!!

There is nothing a mother will not do for her infant but even she cannot protect it from bullets. About a year ago, killers attacked a family in central Africa. The surviving witness of the attack told us that the family's guards were completely outgunned. In the end, the mother, riddled with bullets and crying with pain and fear, was left to use her body to shield her baby. Her sacrifice was for naught; the baby was also killed. 
The above is from an article that I will link just below. Unfortunately this atrocity didn't get the media attention that it deserved in no small part because it's become too common in Central Africa. I was outraged and angered beyond belief when I read about it. Murdering a mother and her baby is beyond foul wouldn't you say. The kinds of people who would do such a thing need to be hunted down and either imprisoned for a long period of time or slowly and painfully permanently removed from the planet so that anyone else who would even think of committing such a crime can look at the corpses of those who did carry out this crime and hopefully take the proper and intended object lesson.

I mean how can you just shoot down a mother and her child. Where is your humanity? Why weren't the killers apprehended and tried in court? This needs to be stopped ASAP. I feel every strongly about such things. Don't you? You probably do feel that way having read what I just laid out. Most moral or normal people would. No one or at least no one who's not cartoonishly EVIL likes to read about the killings of a mother and her baby. That link between mother and child is fundamental to mammalian existence. 

But there's a twist here that may change your thoughts. What if I told you that the mother and child who were each murdered were not in fact human but rather elephants? And they were killed not to feed people or because they had threatened or killed humans but because some humans halfway around the world had a sick desire to use ivory for casual trinkets or displays of wealth. Would you say so what and click on another post? Would you think that the death of intelligent animals was worth this? Because I don't. I don't think it's worth it at all. And I think it must be halted. By what right do we kill an animal for fun? Is that something we ought to be doing? Do you think God gave you this right? Does God look kindly on the slaughter and sexual mutilation of creatures He created?

There is nothing a mother elephant will not do for her infant, but even she cannot protect it from bullets. About a year ago, poachers attacked a family of forest elephants in central Africa. The biologist who witnessed the attack told us that wildlife guards were completely outgunned. In the end, an elephant mother, riddled with bullets and trumpeting with pain and fear, was left to use her enormous body to shield her baby. Her sacrifice was for naught; the baby was also killed.

Such is the reality facing African forest elephants today.This mother and child were just two of the tens of thousands of forest elephants that have been butchered over the past decade. A staggering 62 percent vanished from central Africa between 2002 and 2011, according to a study we have just published with 60 other scientists in the journal PLoS One. It was the largest such study ever conducted in the central African forests, where elephants are being poached out of existence for their ivory.

In China and other countries in the Far East, there has been an astronomical rise in the demand for ivory trinkets that, no matter how exquisitely made, have no essential utility whatsoever. An elephant’s tusks have become bling for consumers who have no idea or simply don’t care that it was obtained by inflicting terror, horrendous pain and death on thinking, feeling, self-aware beings.

One of us recently came face to face with this horror while walking through a forest in central Africa. The sickening stench provided the first warning. As the smell grew more pungent, the humming sound of death that surrounds the body of a dead elephant became more pronounced: thousands of buzzing flies, laying eggs and feeding on the corpse. The body was grotesquely cloaked by white, writhing fly maggots; the belly was swollen with the gas of decay. The elephant’s face was a bloody mess, its tusks hacked out with an ax — an atrocity that is often committed while the animal is alive.

LINK

Now I'm from Michigan. Hunting season is huge here. Growing up I spent my summers down South, where hunting was also a cherished pastime. So I understand it. But I don't like it. I've never had interest in shooting something helpless. I take no joy in snuffing out a life. And there is a HUGE moral difference between killing an animal for your own survival or food, or because it's become numerically excessive and killing an animal strictly for fun, killing an animal which is intelligent enough to grieve and killing an animal which is already endangered and flirting with extinction. I think it's savage and immoral beyond words to murder an animal simply so you can have ivory jewelry. I am not a PETA member. But PETA isn't wrong on everything. You don't need to make deliberately offensive comparisons to slavery or the Holocaust to recognize that morally something is deeply wrong when humans kill rare animals for knick knacks. 

Although I do not like hunting and think it often morally problematic, deer in Michigan are a renewable resource. Deer are not being hunted to extinction. There is a department of natural resources which theoretically attempts to manage the deer population and identify and arrest poachers. When stray dogs and cats are taken into shelters and eventually euthanized I'd rather not think about that animal's last moments. But neither dogs nor cats are in danger of extermination. What the Africans and Asians are doing to the elephant species and for that matter the rhino population is something different in both intent and scale. The continuing existence of these species, among others, is at risk. 

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way for you to survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern... a virus.

I think Agent Smith was on to something. It is is increasingly difficult for 7 billion humans to live in balance with other life forms. What is the moral reason that we have for making distinctions between humans and animals? I'm no longer sure there is one. Perhaps if someone were hunting the poachers and their customers, they might understand that killing living creatures for fun isn't really a nice thing to do.

China, similarly to the US and maybe even more so, has some very ugly cultural traits. These were tolerable perhaps when China was poor and limited in its impact. But with China's increasing wealth and power there will be more conflict between China and everyone else over the world's natural resources and various flora and fauna. Just like with carbon emissions, the world may not be able to survive an unhinged and unchecked Chinese demand for natural resources. China has a lot to answer for and must play a more responsible role in future resource utilization. We can not  remove China as a player no matter how much that might help save the elephants so we must find a way to  force China, help China to alter its behavior, even as we change our own.

You would think that since in historical terms, African nations have only recently thrown off the chains of centuries long European resource exploitation via colonialism and imperialism, African nations would be a bit more wary of entering into more or less the same relationship with China. Unfortunately this isn't always the case.

In 30 years of fighting poachers, Paul Onyango had never seen anything like this. Twenty-two dead elephants, including several very young ones, clumped together on the open savanna, many killed by a single bullet to the top of the head.

Some of Africa’s most notorious armed groups, including the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Shabab and Darfur’s janjaweed, are hunting down elephants and using the tusks to buy weapons and sustain their mayhem. Organized crime syndicates are linking up with them to move the ivory around the world, exploiting turbulent states, porous borders and corrupt officials from sub-Saharan Africa to China, law enforcement officials say. 

But it is not just outlaws cashing in. Members of some of the African armies that the American government trains and supports with millions of taxpayer dollars — like the Ugandan military, the Congolese Army and newly independent South Sudan’s military — have been implicated in poaching elephants and dealing in ivory. Congolese soldiers are often arrested for it. South Sudanese forces frequently battle wildlife rangers. 

The vast majority of the illegal ivory — experts say as much as 70 percent — is flowing to China, and though the Chinese have coveted ivory for centuries, never before have so many of them been able to afford it. China’s economic boom has created a vast middle class, pushing the price of ivory to a stratospheric $1,000 per pound on the streets of Beijing. 

High-ranking officers in the People’s Liberation Army have a fondness for ivory trinkets as gifts. Chinese online forums offer a thriving, and essentially unregulated, market for ivory chopsticks, bookmarks, rings, cups and combs, along with helpful tips on how to smuggle them (wrap the ivory in tinfoil, says one Web site, to throw off X-ray machines).Last year, more than 150 Chinese citizens were arrested across Africa, from Kenya to Nigeria, for smuggling ivory. And there is growing evidence that poaching increases in elephant-rich areas where Chinese construction workers are building roads. 

“China is the epicenter of demand,” said Robert Hormats, a senior State Department official. “Without the demand from China, this would all but dry up.”He said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who condemned conflict minerals from Congo a few years ago, was pushing the ivory issue with the Chinese “at the highest levels” and that she was “going to spend a considerable amount of time and effort to address this, in a very bold way.” Foreigners have been decimating African elephants for generations. “White gold” was one of the primary reasons King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into his own personal fief in the late 19th century, leading to the brutal excesses of the upriver ivory stations thinly fictionalized in Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness” and planting the seeds for Congo’s free fall today. Ivory Coast got its name from the teeming elephant herds that used to frolic in its forests. Today, after decades of carnage, there is almost no ivory left...

LINK
Now why does this matter? It matters because elephants are rare, intelligent animals. Killing them for trinkets is profoundly morally depraved and filthy. It also matters because removing elephants from the ecosystem may have unforeseen effects. Fewer or extinct elephants means fewer forests means higher carbon emissions means greater climate change. And when that occurs some of the same nations engaged in or underwriting this slaughter will be making pious UN speeches blaming the US for climate change and begging demanding more money. It matters because we simply cannot stand by and allow an atavistic Chinese and East Asian desire for ivory wipe out an entire species. And finally it matters because the violence and corruption endemic in poaching inevitably and literally bleeds out into African societies. How can you have a lawful or peaceful society when well armed criminal organizations or corrupt armies and police feel free to ignore the law and kill those who try to uphold it? How can Africa grow and thrive if it continues to serve primarily if not solely as a natural resource provider to The West and increasingly to China? 

It can't. It won't.

For short term profit, Africans will slaughter the wild animals that live in their countries. Three decades from now when the animals are all gone those countries will probably still be impoverished. If you're interested in getting more information and learning what you can do to help combat this disgusting slaughter please visit these sites.
http://www.cites.org/
http://www.bloodyivory.org/stop-the-ivory-trade
http://www.stoprhinopoaching.com/register.aspx
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/06/ivory-poaching-sanctions-cites?CMP=twt_gu