la pomme du ciel

On paper, I’m easily impressed by movies. If there’s checkmarks for aliens, explosions, and sinister corporations and/or  governments, I’m usually in. I was raised on sci-fi movies, I am an unapologetic Star Trek fan, I fret about the potentiality of SkyNet and I still watch TRON (and was all kinds of jolly to see the trailer for the sequel). I am the perverbial fish in the demographic barrel Hollywood suits love to shoot at a couple times a year.

True enough to Mr. Barnum’s dictum, there is a (sad fanboy) sucker born every minute. Unfortunately, when you actually pay money for shitheaps like Alien Versus Predator, you’re only encouraging George Lucas to milk Star Whores harder.  I saw the preview for District 9 right before Terminator: Salvation locked my childhood in the basement for several hours and proceeded to abuse it (as if T:3 wasn’t bad enough). The logic that followed after I had expunged my rage in the parking lot was that anything had to be better than that: “Wait, that one trailer…District something…It’s got aliens, explosions, shit, what the hell? I love that stuff! I’ll be back.”

Niell Blomkamp’s film opens up with mock interviews, post-shit hitting the fan, letting you know that protagonist Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) had gotten into some shit, has disappeared, and that the people of Johannesburg hate the aliens living in the refugee camp/shanty town of District 9.

Good. Great. Aliens look believable (though I wish our imagination could go beyond the whole bi-pedal thing), sound cool, and then here’s Wikus, being filmed for a documentary, fumbling with new-found authority as the head toadie for MNU’s (MultiNational United) forced eviction of the aliens into a concentration camp well outside of the city limits.

Then Wikus gets into some shit. In the span of a few hours, he goes from a naive, loyal MNU stooge to guinea pig to a fugitive. There are explosions, lots of explosions, and the weapons in the movie are a sendup of every shooter since Doom. I am beginning to think that the R rating is the only safe way to watch movies anymore.

A lot of the footage is from the documentary, security cameras and the like, mixed in with some very striking shots of the arid squalor of District 9. Then there’s the nigh-seamless special effects. It was a treat to not have my intelligence insulted by hyper-real effects and a hyperbolic sis-boom-pow.

Plot, you ask? In full force, made all the more believable since not only are the actors all unheard of South Africans, but they’re damn good. From Wikus to the chillingly callous MNU executives to the trigger-happy head of MNU security, it’s all awful close to the mark, especially if you’re at all familiar with humanity’s history of medical research on itself, for one. It’s not too hard to concieve how blind of an eye would be turned towards the plight of non-humans.

The film is based on a short called “Alive In Joburg“, a six-minute short by the same director, which was apparently good enough for a studio to throw him a paltry 30 million for the best science fiction movie I’ve seen in awhile. It even trumps J.J. Abram’s Star Trek re-boot, suck it.

While District 9 is  a far cry from the gentle whimsies of the sci-fi films from my youth, I’m a big boy now, and I’ll take my screaming moral implications with gratiutous gibbage and Nigerian warlords.

Grade: A

It finally happened. I finally made it to a show. I haven’t been to one since, unless I am mistaken, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! What did I miss in the meantime? The Dears. And, oh, just Autolux. Just the Fiery Furnaces. Haven’t seen a local show since the Jenn Gooch CD release, unless you count bartending for the Beagle Brothers CD release show in June. Which I do. Not. As much as I love that album.

I’ve been a bit jaded about music as a whole, at least until a few weeks ago, when I discovered the Army behind Black Mountain. Ironically enough, I’d been pretty jaded about everything lately. I was about a fingernail clipping away from not giving a damn about a ticket I got in April. I mean, I was just hoping for a couple of my favorite songs from a band that put out one of the worst EPs I had ever heard. I hadn’t even bothered with the Hazards of Love, which kind of sounds like something the Arcade Fire would come up with.

I couldn’t think of a more perect mindset to go into a show with. My mind was blasted, blown and undone, as only the head of an apathetic can be.

First of, Heartless Bastards opened, and I was delighted to discover that they could be secret members of the Black Mountain Army, if their sound is any indication. It was a happy coincidence, and I was invested as soon as Erika Wennerstrom let those PJ Harvey-esque pipes soar. My favorite music will and always be the stuff you can let slip like the dogs of war in a bar that seems a little too sleepy for your tastes, and my fellow Ohians are now a part of that repetoire.

So that brings us back to the Decemberists. I had been content to give them The Crane Wife for a shark jump, especially after hearing “Valerie Plame” too many damn times. It took about ten minutes into their set, but then I figured it out- they were playing Hazards of Love in its entirety, which accounted for the two additional players upon the stage. So I settled in, and let the epic take me. I’m only just now taking my first real lesson to the album itself, nothing will ever compare to seeing and feeling it live.

While Wife had its threads and themes, the Decemberists had not really visited the realm of heavy consistent concept, at least in terms of making one long opera (Yes, I know they put The Tain (that is on The Tain) to music, but did you?).

The reviews are already out on the album, I know. It’s nothing like any other Decemberist album; comparing it as such is an insult to its sheer audacity and derring-do. It’s a landscape with oases and deserts, Cliffs of Insanity and blissful plains of purple buffalo, cracked crystals and hideous Nothings. It gallops, it stomps, it throws fits, its bones rattle to sublime dust. It’s a leprous healer with an axe to grind, because that chapel ain’t gonna build itself.

It’s an A.

Some bands manage to get to the part in the story where they can throw together a decent set, communicate on that higher level, and give the audience the best night they’ll ever have until they have it again. Other bands get past that part, where they so fully understand what the music is, and that they have less and less to do with the music the higher the audience is lifted; they simply let what they have crafted work for them. The Decemberists made it look easier than a dream.

As if that weren’t enough, they had a second set, something more along the lines of that former band, the one that does what they do with enthusiasm, but might never stride through the cloud deck like the giants do.

So we heard “July, July!”, my all-time favorite song of theirs, which was my only hope for the concert. You can see why I was floored by the experience. They also played “Shankill Butchers”, my second favorite song. I had heard in an interview that Meloy was a drama student, and that it came out in thier shows, so I was waiting a little on that, too. They re-enacted the Battle of Fort Pitt amidst the audience with a less than scrupulous or sensical account of history, halfway through “A Cautionary Tale”. Then got right back onto the stage for the second half with nary a beat missed.

With the song’s final admonition, they left the stage. I expected an encore, given the band’s flair for the dramatic, but was shocked and rocked by what they delivered:

Sadly, that’s the best of the videos. But you get the point.

I would be lying if I said the show didn’t provide an incredibly beautiful counterpoint to what my life is doing down here on the ground. As it goes with all inspiration, it tends to find you, slap you silly and get you imagining the day your head reaches above the clouds. Working towards it is another matter, but then that’s why we have heroes who risk, well, the hazards of love.

Grade:

The Decemberists at the Byham Theater, August 14, 2009: A+

The Decemberists: The Hazards of Love: A

(It’s a difference of seeing a play and reading it)