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Home , David Lowery (director), Jaki Liebezeit

TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2017 l i f e s t y l e MUSIC & MOVIES

Picture taken on December 1, 1971 shows members of the band “Can” (from left) , Jaki Liebezeit, Picture shows German musicians Jaki Liebezeit (left, drums) and Marcus Schmickler performing during a festival in , Ulli Gerlach, Holger Szukay and (foreground) posing in Hamburg, northern Germany. Moers, western Germany. — AFP photos Drum innovator Liebezeit of band Can dies

aki Liebezeit, the percussionist for German band Can who and early electronics. Liebezeit had his start in free jazz, moving the power of striking all drums with his arms rather than kicking want to say imperialistic, but it makes it so that you cannot think became an icon in avant-garde circles for a machine-like after his early studies to Barcelona where he notably played with with his feet and only sparingly used cymbals, while embracing in another way," he told the British cultural magazine The Jstyle that rejected standard drumsets, died Sunday. He was visiting trumpeting great Chet Baker. But Liebezeit grew disen- electronics and percussion instruments that are less common in Quietus in 2015. Can was nonetheless influenced by US avant- 78. His bandmates in Can, which he co-founded in in chanted with the jazz circuit. He sought to learn percussion from rock such as gongs. Liebezeit would explain that the standardi- garde music including rockers The Velvet Underground and min- 1968, said Liebezeit died suddenly from pneumonia. He died around the world and, with Can, developed a tight, metronome- zation of drumsets, contrary to popular imagination, was a imalist composer Steve Reich. In addition to work with Can, "asleep peacefully, surrounded by his loved ones. We will miss like method that to listeners became increasingly indistinguish- recent phenomenon and was meant for jazz rather than rock or which periodically reunited after the 1970s, Liebezeit played him hugely," Can said on its Facebook page. Can was one of the able from machines. In fact, Liebezeit-unlike so many purists- other forms. with artists ranging from synthpop chart-toppers Depeche pioneering bands in Krautrock, the broadly defined genre of was fully comfortable exploring the possibilities of drum By the 1990s he said he "tried to get rid of all American influ- Mode to ambient producer . — AFP artists from West Germany who took rock in a more psychedelic machines. ences, because I discovered the whole world." "I'd discovered it a and experimental direction by bringing in jazz improvisation He eventually scrapped the drumkit entirely. He preferred long time before, but American music is so dominant-I don't

Man of the hour goes back to indie roots

asey Affleck's stock is at an all-time chief film critic Peter Debruge, who high after his acclaimed performance describes Affleck as a "low-charisma mum- Cin Kenneth Lonergan's "Manchester bler who tends to keep his characters' by the Sea" made him one of Hollywood's emotions bottled up," points out that he is most recognizable faces. Yet the enigmatic one of the few actors who can convey as 41-year-old-a best actor Golden Globe win- much with a sheet over his head as with- ner and a frontrunner for the Oscars in out. "I know him so well at this point that I February-can next be seen in an obscure can just call him up and say 'can you come indie role, shrouded in a bedsheet and to Texas for two weeks and do something largely silent. "He and I have been friends kind of crazy?' and he's totally down to do for so long at this point that it's just fun to it," Lowery said. watch him get all the acclaim," director David Lowery told AFP Sunday ahead of Auteur the world premiere of "." "He, like myself, has so many different "Working with him is just like hanging interests as a filmmaker. It's exciting to see out with a good friend, and this is not a him not only be incredibly successful with typical movie for an actor of his caliber to 'Manchester' but to not rest on those lau- Left to right, Laura Dern, Judy Greer, Woody Harrelson and Isabella Amara, cast members do." Affleck may have been given his air rels and to go off and... make a small art in "Wilson," pose together at the premiere of the film at the Eccles Theatre during the fare to Texas to shoot "A Ghost Story," but film like this." 2017 Sundance Film Festival on Sunday in Park City, Utah. — AP it's unlikely it would have been his biggest Affleck was not at Sunday's screening at US actor Matt Damon smiles as he takes part in a meeting pay day. Filmed mostly in one house, it cost the Sundance Film Festival as he is having on the opening day of the World Economic Forum in almost nothing to make and was shot another go at directing after making the Sundance film review: 'Wilson' Davos.-AFP secretly over two months last summer in unloved mockumentary "I'm Still Here." But Dallas, Texas. his performance earned warm applause raphic novels, and the movies based Splendor," in which Harvey Pekar was a Lowery began working on the movie from the audience in Park City, Utah and on them, work better with certain top- bohemian grouch with attitudes a lot like just days after wrapping the big budget critics have been generous in their early Gics than others. Sixteen years ago, Wilson's, but Paul Giamatti endowed him Matt Damon says Disney remake of "Pete's Dragon" and reviews for the movie. Terry Zwigoff's "Ghost World," based on the with a streak of vulnerability. Watching found what little cash was required himself. IndieWire described "A Ghost Story" as graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, centered on "Wilson," you have to accept that the movie is A languid, hypnotic meditation on time, Lowery's best film to date, while the a pair of more-blase-than-thou teenage girls a kind of a cartoon character study (Harrelson legacy and belonging, "A Ghost Story" sees Hollywood Reporter predicted that it who walked, and talked, outside the loop of is good, but he never drops his guard). Once everything they deemed boring and conven- you do, though, it strings you along in its he'll pitch clean Affleck and together for the would find an admiring, if niche, audience. tional; it was the perfect movie about the per- pleasant absurdist way. It's a sign of the first time since Lowery's last indie hit, the "A Ghost Story," also written and edited by fect pomo hipsters at the perfect "Whatever" movie's stylized goofy lightness that we nev- water to Trump 2013 crime romance "Ain't Them Bodies 36-year-old Lowery, was inspired by an moment. "Wilson," directed by Craig Johnson er hear even two words about how Wilson Saints." argument the director had with his wife, ("The Skeleton Twins"), is also based on a survives (he has no job, but seems to feed actress Augustine Frizzell, about where att Damon took the cause of clean water to the graphic novel by Clowes, who wrote the film's himself and his dog and pay his rent with no 'Low-charisma mumbler' they should live. screenplay, and it's driven by the same spirit problem). But then, as the movie goes on, it's Sundance Film Festival, where he said he's hoping They play an unnamed couple who An indie auteur at heart, he has adopted to pitch Donald Trump on the issue. Damon told of reflexive adolescent alienation-only this all too willing to leave plausibility behind. M appear to be enjoying the trappings of the common indie kid strategy of paying movie isn't about kids. It's about a lonely mid- The Associated Press on Saturday that clean water accessi- domesticity in a secure relationship which for the labors of love with the big studio dle-aged bachelor curmudgeon misanthrope, Sundance staple bility isn't a partisan issue and demands "an all-hands-on- is ripped apart when his character is killed movies, and he is lined up for another named Wilson (we never learn if it's his first or When Wilson's father dies, and his one and deck approach to solve this." The actor has publically sup- in car crash near the start of the movie. He Disney remake, "Peter Pan." "It's just me fol- last name), who has let the entire culture pass only friend moves away, the isolation begins ported Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. spends the rest of the film as a ghost, com- lowing my creative instincts. I have all sorts him by, like a train he decided to jump off, to close in on him, so he hunts down his ex- When asked his response to the election, Damon pelled to inhabit his rural Texan home, of interests as a filmmaker and it would be only in his mind it's the train's fault. wife, Pippi (Laura Dern), a former drug addict demurred and said hopes Trump will be open to backing even after his grieving partner moves on a shame to not indulge all of them," Lowery The character is played, with a jaunty lack and prostitute who left him 17 years ago. She clean water programs like his nonprofit Water.org. Said and leaves. Draped playfully in the arche- told AFP. "I do want to make giant block- of self-pity, by Woody Harrelson, who wears now works as a waitress in a steak house and Damon: "Hopefully we'll get our turn." Damon in 2009 typal white bedsheet, Affleck is the kind of buster studio movies-that's really fun-but I horn-rims, a graying beard, and a nerd's prac- is trying to walk the straight and narrow, and founded Water.org with civil engineer Gary White. It uses comic specter you might find in "Scooby also love making really small, for lack of a tical wardrobe (plaid shirt, Dockers). Wilson as they rekindle their bond, Wilson learns that micro-finance loans to bring hygienic connections to water Doo," his sorrowful but inscrutable expres- better term, art films." — AFP lives with his dog in a cruddy apartment the child he thought she'd aborted was, in and toilets to impoverished communities. Damon also sion defined by two black eyeholes. stacked with old paperbacks, and when he's fact, given up for adoption. Just like that, he spoke about the issue at the Davos Forum last week. — AP It is an odd role for a big star, but per- out on the street, he'll go up to a stranger and looks the kid up! And she's living right there commence an eager-beaver "conversation," in town! And she's an alienated heavy-set haps one uniquely suited to an actor paying no heed to how little his company is teenage loser (Isabella Amara) who dresses in whose sensibilities have always been desired. He'll subject them to one of his cri- black and drops bitter pensees, just like the somewhat left of the mainstream. Variety's tiques of everything that's wrong with socie- heroines of "Ghost World"! The three form a ty, which he spins out with a kind of brash gently deranged ersatz clan, turning "Wilson," Actor killed while autodidactic literacy. If his observations were for a while, into a flaky version of that actually interesting, then maybe the people Sundance staple, the dysfunctional-family he was talking to wouldn't look like they were comedy, complete with glib scenes that mock filming scene for being assaulted. But Wilson tends to say the "normalcy" of the girl's adoptive parents things like "Aren't you a little old to be doing (Cheryl Hines and Bruce Bohne). But that all that computer stuff?" or "Why the hell do doesn't last long. Australian music video people move to the suburbs? It's like a living Harrelson brings his wide-awake edge to death." this performance, yet "Wilson" is a soft-head- n actor was killed while filming a scene for an ed comedy. Even when our hero lands in a Australian band's music video yesterday, Streak of vulnerability maximum-security prison, he winds up turn- ing the violent psychopaths around him into police said. The man died at a bar in the If suburb-bashing sounds a little...I don't A know, 1985 to you, then welcome to Wilson's puppies. And the always charming Judy Greer Queensland city of Brisbane while filming a scene world. He's not dim, but he's stuck in a soggy is on hand as the perfect mate for him: end- that involved several firearms, Queensland Police bubble of fraying boomer insights: technolo- lessly pliant and forgiving, the kind of woman Detective Inspector Tom Armitt said. He declined to gy is bad, hanging out is good, corporate whose very presence seals "Wilson" as a fairy release the name of the band, though confirmed it homogenization is bad, saying whatever tale. It's the sort of movie that's been known was Australian. During the scene, several actors fired comes into your head with no filter is good. to do business, and this one could (moderate- their guns and the actor somehow received wounds The hook of Wilson's personality is that he's ly). Yet how much better it would have been if to his chest, Armitt said. No one else was injured. an oddball-outsider who cuts through the the director, Craig Johnson, had grounded It was not immediately clear whether the guns bull. In truth, though, he sounds like an aging the laughs the way he did in his break- were loaded with live ammunition or blanks, Armitt cranky white male whose arbitrary com- through movie, "The Skeleton Twins," which said. Blank cartridges can still cause injuries if fired at plaints boil down to the world no longer was both funnier and more realistic. Watching close range. "I can't tell you whether they are live or being the one that he grew up in. (If this were "Wilson," I wondered what Wilson himself real firearms," Armitt told reporters. "I can't tell you 100 years ago, he's be griping about cars and would make of a cookie-cutter graphic-novel the type of ammunition that were being used. That telephones.) All of which is to say that in adaptation like this one. He'd probably call it will be a subject of the investigation." Police did not "Wilson," Daniel Clowes' voice, which was (rightly) so bourgeois multiplex. — Reuters release the actor's name. — AP Writer and director David Lowery, left, and actress Rooney Mara, right, pose at the once acerbically hip, sounds dated. premiere of "A Ghost Story" during the 2017 Sundance Film Festival on Sunday in Movies based on graphic novels don't Park City, Utah. — AP need to be superficial; just look at "American