“Film noir at UVM: 'I could tell this was gonna be no two-bit film series' - Burlington Free Press” plus 1 more |
| Film noir at UVM: 'I could tell this was gonna be no two-bit film series' - Burlington Free Press Posted: 14 Oct 2010 03:10 AM PDT My walk to the Sept. 30 premiere of the UVM Film Series — which in its initial year is focusing on international film noir — felt like the opening scene to a film-noir movie. I hiked up the College Street hill in a steady drizzle on shiny, rain-slicked sidewalks, and reached the University of Vermont campus where mysterious figures carrying umbrellas created shadows as they passed beneath street lamps. Two things I'm not big on — cliches and inserting myself via fantasy into a make-believe world — don't apply when it comes to film noir. The bleak but gloriously shot black-and-white films that typify filmmaking of the 1940s and '50s are veritable cliche factories with their fedora-wearing investigators and gun-wielding femme fatales, but I love 'em; the familiar images create a language that immediately places you into that world as soon as a film noir starts, allowing you to just sink into the pointed dialogue and evocative images that fly by. And my little flirtation with imagining myself as one of those iron-jawed detectives walking alone in a world of dreary shadows wasn't the first time I've appropriated film-noir imagery into my life: For instance, I recently starting calling my wife "baby doll." I'm pretty sure that, as a smart, strong woman, she's not real keen on being referred to as if she's the property of a 1940s thug, but I can't help myself. After watching dozens of film noirs over the years — including "Touch of Evil," "Murder, My Sweet" and my favorite movie, the film-noir-inspired "The Third Man" — the lingo is starting to infiltrate my life. The film that opened the UVM Film Series at the Fleming Museum was "The Big Heat," a 1953 movie by Fritz Lang, the famed German director best known for a couple of other moody, dark films, the futuristic "Metropolis" and "M," the frightening tale of the hunt for a child killer. "The Big Heat" has all the film-noir conventions: A sharp-jawed, fedora-topped investigator, played by Glenn Ford, snoops around the world of organized crime while getting his information from faded beauties in smoky gin joints populated by strange-faced denizens whose mere expressions tell the cop he's not welcome. "The Big Heat" has a fair amount of that smart dialogue that makes film noir a treat for a language fan such as myself ("I can still talk to the newspapers," a witness tells Glenn Ford. "You can talk yourself into a lot of trouble," he snaps back). It's probably not as shadow-filled as most film noirs, though the shading is often subtle; people's faces are frequently concealed in a thin veil of darkness with the only illumination on their eyes, which of course in the duplicitous world of film noir tell a lot about a person's character (or lack thereof). "The Big Heat" differs from traditional film noir by making the lead character not a lonely misanthrope but a loving husband and father whose case becomes a mission of vigilante justice — a "hate binge," one of his fellow cops crisply tells him — when tragedy befalls a family member. Film noir villains (and heroes) often employ mental cruelty to get what they want, but "The Big Heat" exhibits a shocking amount of physical cruelty that made it fairly controversial in the otherwise tame world of 1953 Hollywood. I realized during the post-film discussion led by Hilary Neroni, the program director of UVM's film and television studies, that my interest in film noir is a pretty shallow one. The points made by many in the audience, especially the students, hit upon observations I hadn't noticed while I was busy absorbing all the atmosphere: When Ford has his badge taken away from him for being a rogue cop, it frees him to investigate the case to his fullest; the beautiful woman who becomes a heroine does so only after she's disfigured, which likewise frees her to pursue her own version of justice; and "The Big Heat" not only refers to the temperature being turned up on the lives of the characters but the many occasions where something burning changes the course of the plot. I got to chew on all this while heading back out into the rain, which by now had become a blinding deluge that obscured the street lamps and left the sidewalks not just rain-soaked but flooded. Mother Nature, that femme fatale, was making a mockery of my film-noir obsession. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Posted: 14 Oct 2010 01:51 AM PDT Steinbeck Center to screen documentary on The Wrecking Crew, unsung heroes of the music industry in '60s and '70s The story goes that when these young musicians walked into a Los Angeles recording studio wearing T-shirts and blue jeans, sporting longish hair and cigarettes, the older (and better-dressed) recording artists said they were going to wreck the music industry. Not only did these new musicians not wreck the industry, some would say they built it — at least the recording industry at that time and place. These talented players were the sound of West Coast studio music of the 1960s and 1970s. Years later, looking back on this memory of the older generation's prediction, they became known as The Wrecking Crew. This group of behind-the-scenes musicians recorded music for a wide variety of artists, including Frank Sinatra, The Monkees, The Byrds, The 5th Dimension, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, Sonny and Cher, The Carpenters and The Beach Boys. They also recorded many of the familiar film and television theme songs, such as the saxophone part in "The Pink Panther" or the guitar lead in "Hawaii 5-0." But they've remained mostly nameless and faceless in the public eye, until now. Denny Tedesco's award-winning documentary film "The Wrecking Crew" finally brings this cadre of talented studio musicians into the light — and gives them the credit they deserve. Tedesco's father, Tommy Tedesco, was the world's most-recorded guitarist and one of the legendary members of the Wrecking Crew. Tedesco gives viewers a glimpse into a time capsule of this period in musical history with live recorded interviews, rare video footage and a soundtrack of the studio music of the '60s and '70s.This Saturday night, "The Wrecking Crew" will be screened for the first time on the Central Coast at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas. "Rock and Roll Evening with the Wrecking Crew" is the next in a series of "Night at the Museum" events that are coordinated monthly at the Steinbeck Center. The goal is to promote people coming out to Oldtown Salinas for safe and fun nightlife. "It's hard to get people to come out to Salinas at night because it has a stigma," said Jenny McAdams, event coordinator for the Steinbeck Center. "But I love Oldtown. The merchants are passionate about the area. It's really clean. There are great restaurants, places to hear music and get a drink." And one of these places as of late is the Steinbeck Center. The doors will open at 7 p.m., with a mixer that includes a full no-host bar. The museum will play songs from the soundtrack of the film on its house sound system. After mixing and mingling, "The Wrecking Crew" will begin. The screening will be followed by a question and answer session with Denny Tedesco as well as Wrecking Crew keyboardist Don Randi, who recorded "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" with Elvis Presley. After the Q&A, another mixer with the guests of honor will follow. In the spirit of encouraging new talent, the Steinbeck Center has invited students from "Guitars Not Guns," a program at Rancho Cielo that provides at-risk youths with free guitars and lessons, to come to the event for free. In addition, any music student can come for free; all they have to do is call ahead to reserve tickets. Jenny McAdams first decided to book the event for the Steinbeck Center when she overheard her father, local singer and guitarist Jack McAdams, talking to a drummer he worked with about a film he had seen in Los Angeles — a film about The Wrecking Crew that had 120 songs recorded by these studio artists, but that were technically owned by many different record labels and so carried along with them a tangle of legal issues. Because of this, the film can only be shown at film festivals and to nonprofit organizations. Herself a drummer, Jenny McAdams thought it would be an important event for local musicians, as well as anyone interested in musical history or the era of the '60s and '70s. She also thought it would be a perfect event for "Night at the Museum." Since the Steinbeck Center is a nonprofit organization, they could screen the film. "As a well-rounded listener, consumer and player of music," said Jack McAdams, "it's fascinating to get to know anything about the faceless pros that cranked out the soundtrack of my life in the '60s. Denny was lucky enough that he was raised with these people over at his house. They would film each other and (he captured) stuff I would never see. He also got these big guns to give interviews — Dick Clark, Cher, Jimmy Webb, Brian Wilson." Growing up, Tedesco wasn't aware of the musical legacy his dad would leave some day. "He was like my friend's dad across the street," said Tedesco. "His dad was an accountant, my dad was a musician. I didn't realize until years later that that was my dad on 'Batman' or 'Bonanza.'" When his father was about to pass away in 1997, Tedesco thought, "I'd better get a jump on this." "This is not one of those poor musician stories about guys that got screwed," said Tedesco. "They made good money. Those guys were happy to work for a living. The only reason they didn't get credit was because it would have looked really silly to have the same guys on The Byrds, Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys. "These guys could go into it not knowing what was behind the door, read the music, play it, get in and out. They would have a Monkees date and that evening be with Frank Sinatra. They were chameleons in their diversity of sound." Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys wrote music that his band members couldn't play. But the Wrecking Crew could. They would go into the studio, knock out the song and the band would learn it from the recording. The Wrecking Crew's mistakes became the licks we are familiar with today. "This (phenomenon) will never happen again," said Tedesco. "Technology has changed everything. Anyone can record anything. Everything is so computerized that there are no mistakes anymore." He described the modern process of recording music as akin to fixing a photo with Photoshop. "You can choose what you want, take a solo from one thing, put it on another." Though Tedesco continues to raise money to pay various record labels for permission to use the songs included in the soundtrack, he still has about $300,000 to go before the film can be shown in a regular theater or released on DVD. People have said that he should just cut some of the music, to make the legal issues easier to untangle. That he doesn't have to use everything. "But that's the whole point," said Tedesco. "They recorded everything." Lily Dayton can be reached at montereybaylily@gmail.com.GO! FILM EVENT ·What: Rock 'n' Roll Evening with The Wrecking Crew ·Where: The National Steinbeck Center, 1 Main St., Salinas ·When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 16; doors open at 7 p.m. ·Tickets: $10 at the door; free admission for music students — call ahead to reserve tickets: 775-4735 ·Information: www.steinbeck.org, 775-4735 This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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