Category: Unhealed Wound

  For those of you who didn’t get a chance to read my Chinese New Year’s post on The Year of the Monkey–Anything Can Happen, here it is again!  This has been a crazy year — the most volatile in the Chinese twelve-year Zodiac cycle and who can argue with that after this Tuesday’s election.  Inauguration Day 2017 is January 20 and the Year of the Monkey officially ends on January 27, 2017.

“As the Year of the Sheep comes to an end and the Year of the Monkey arrives, 2016 will be a year of invention and improvisation, unpredictability and unexpected change. The Year of the Monkey is considered the most volatile in the twelve-year cycle.

Based on John le Carré’s 1993 novel, The Night Manager,  this AMC/BBC television miniseries is a spy thriller directed by Danish phenomena Susanne Bier (Of “A Better World”, see my October 7, 2014 review). Luxury hotel night manager Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston), situated in Cairo during the impending Arab Spring, faces off against Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie of “House” fame), a formidable gun-runner turned financier and philanthropist living on the island of Mallorca.   Roper is an international jet-setter who entertains his beautiful mistress and his entourage in the Swiss Alps, Mallorca, and wherever arms deals can be brokered.

Pine is contacted by an intelligence operative (coordinated between MI6 and the CIA) who asks for his assistance in taking down Roper by infiltrating Roper’s virtually impenetrable inner circle.  After several horrifically violent scenes,  Pine seems to have succeeded.

The combination of star power performances by Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston make The Night Manager fun to watch with a distinct James Bond feeling. Hiddleston is every bit as sexually magnetic as any of the past James Bond actors who elicits lust in every woman who meets him.  And seeing Laurie as the evil villain we’ve come to expect not in our curmudgeonly Dr. House but in every antagonist in a Bond movie, the viewer can’t help but enjoy Laurie’s performance even as we root for Pine.

Like a Bond movie, part of the  pleasure in watching the story unfold is suspending one’s disbelief at the preposterous plot lines and heroic battles.  The Night Manager is as easy to watch as it is to forget, with sumptuous shots of Mallorca and Switzerland that could hold their own against any travelogue.

Suffice it to say the spycraft in The Night Manager is entertaining with a quirky subplot on the sad bureaucratic lives of government intelligence officers.  The first episode of “The Night Manager” was broadcast on April 16 and past episodes are available at www.amc.com

 [This movie review can be also seen at Josephsreviews.com where I was a guest blogger on July 17,2015)

A 2013 documentary about an Alabama musical legacy, “Muscle Shoals“,  brings to light a group of musicians who never had their day in the sun.

Two iconic recording studios in the tiny town of Muscle Shoals Alabama—FAME (est. 1959) and its spinoff Muscle Shoals Sound (1960) —became the “must have” sound for, among others, Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, The Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, Etta James, and many other Rock-and-Roll legendary artists. The magic of a group of background musicians, who called themselves the “Swampers”, some of whom were classically trained, were the touchstone of FAME. The Swampers were all white. Keep in mind this is the early 60’s.  

 

 

 

 

“Muscle Shoals” is the love story of American music roots in the Deep South. For this viewer, some of the most spellbinding scenes focus on Rick Hall, the pioneer and open-minded founder of FAME studio. , Rick Hall’s own poverty and family upheaval perhaps allowed him to empathize with the racial hostility young music artists of color faced in most of the US, not just the south. Before the Civil Rights Movement really became a force shaping US history, FAME gave some of our most creative musicians their break in the music business. The movie gives the impression that the principals of FAME were unaware of the significance of their race-neutral music production.

Hall brought black and white music together. He produced signature music: “I’ll Take You There” and “When a Man Loves a Woman” by black musicians unknown at the time.

“Muscle Shoals” bears witness to how Hall’s color-blind passion for music infused a magnetism, mystery, and magic into the music that became known as the Muscle Shoals Sound. The filmmaker allows the key players to speak for themselves, with many cameo interviews of the legendary including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, and Etta James. On its own, the cinematography of Muscle Shoals, the backwater town along the Tennessee River is an eye opener. And “Muscle Shoals” is not to be missed for its music history, racial progressiveness, and its imagery. A visceral and magical vision indeed!

Postscript:

) The original Muscle Shoals Sound Studios building is listed on The National Register of Historic Places and maintained, by the Muscle Shoals Music Foundation. Their goal is to turn the historic building into a music museum.

2) FAME is still owned and operated by Rick Hall and his son Rodney Hall. Beats Electronics, after seeing this movie, is underwriting the renovation of FAME to support young musicians.

3) Actor Johnny Depp is developing this movie into a TV series, according to Variety (July 8, 2015).