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Documentary celebrates life of influential film critic

 

 

Cancer took the life of film critic Roger Ebert in 2013, 14 years after it claimed former TV co-host Gene Siskel.

Unlike Siskel, however, Ebert did not sneak off into the great beyond. Even after thyroid cancer necessitated the removal of Ebert’s lower jaw—taking away his ability to eat, drink or speak—he remained a public figure with help from a prosthetic chin and a computerized voice.

Director Steve James (Hoop Dreams) recaps Ebert’s storied career in Life Itself, a documentary named after the critic’s 2011 memoir. Because James began his documentary only five months before Ebert’s death, it also serves as a record of his harrowing final days.

It may be due to the unexpectedly short time James had with Ebert that Life Itself comes off as a bit messy. Though it follows a generally chronological outline, some segments seem to be stuck here and there for no particular reason.

Fashion Meets Music Meets Boycott

 

 

As you may or not be aware, on Friday, August 29th the “Fashion Meets Music Festival” will be coming to the Arena District. From a cursory review of its website, it includes hipster bands, “Access to Excess VIP Badges” and the kind of people who hang out at the patios on the 670 cap. Also, “urban camping,” presumably a cleaner and puma-free version of regular camping.

 

Frankly, the thing looks like a hurricane of suck, some sort of Lolapalooza for idiots wearing those nice black shirts with the subtle patterns. Admittedly, my general preference is that fashion not meet music, so take that with a grain of salt.

 

Headlining the festival will be R&B singer R. Kelly. Kelly is famous both for his music, which is terrible, and for 2002 allegations that he made a professional quality sex tape with a 14 year old girl which included footage of him urinating on her. He was acquitted of the charges brought against him, likely because prosecutors were unable to establish the identity (and therefore the age) of the female in the video. 

 

A Slow Death by Neglect in the Franklin County Jail

 

 

 

 

MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is a bacterial infection that is resistant to most antibiotics, contagious and potentially deadly. Commonly found in hospitals and afflicting health care workers, it leads to large pusfilled masses on the skin which must be incised and drained. A specific, special antibiotic regime must be followed to cure the infection and prevent blood poisoning. As of the time of this writing, July 24, 2014, according to sources at least one inmate in the Franklin County Jail has this infection, is not being treated as per the orders of doctors at Grant Hospital, and is in the general population with a fist-sized hole in her chest oozing black pus. Pictures smuggled from the jail show the wound without gauze or a bandage on her emaciated body. The pictures are included in this story.

On the Origin of the String Band

In 2004, the transplanted Nashville act Old Crow Medicine Show came into the public consciousness with their massive hit, “Wagon Wheel.” Unlike standard millennial country acts, OCMS was an all-string ensemble of double bass, banjo, fiddle, guitar, and something called a gitjo (presumably a distant cousin to Bertie Wooster’s banjolele). They billed themselves as an “old time string band.”

 

In the wake of “Wagon Wheel,” old time string band acts have sprung up like daisies. It’s to the point that upstanding American youth are forsaking their Stratocasters and developing a lyrical obsession with geography, particularly mountains and bodies of water. Indeed, geographical terms frequently work their way into the names of these acts -- Yonder Mountain String Band, the Lost Bayou String Band, and the On Pearl Alley Right Behind Long’s Bookstore String Band. Like goddamn Mapquest with fiddles, really.

 

Beware of strangers who ask to use your bathtub

 

 

Borgman reminds me of a movie I kind of liked. But it also reminds me of a movie I hated.

The flick I liked was the recent Under the Skin, starring Scarlett Johansson as an alien who uses sex to lure men to their doom. The flick I hated was 2007’s Funny Games, in which two creeps take over an upper-middle-class household and begin treating the family in a most sadistic manner.

Borgman has eccentricities all its own, but it contains elements of both films. Like Under the Skin, it’s about a mysterious figure whose malevolent actions are never quite explained. And as in Funny Games, the individual’s target is a well-to-do family.

Written and directed by Alex van Warmerdam (Voyeur), the subtitled Dutch film begins with a scene that sets the off-kilter tone: A priest leads a Communion ceremony, then grabs a shotgun and leads a small posse into the woods. There they locate and attack the underground bunker of a grizzled man who goes by the name of Camiel Borgman (Jan Bijvoet).

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