Hey, I Vaguely Recall That Film
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WP6 nationalpost.com WEEKEND POST NATIONAL POST, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2009 Don’t be the last person around the o∞ce watercooler to know arts NP about a certain B-list star’s profanity-laced Twitter outburst! Bookmark theampersand.ca, Canada’s best pop-culture blog viewers of the accolades of Hey, I the stars. (I always feel bad for the third-tier actors, though, when a trailer crows: “Acad- vaguely emy Award winner Meryl Streep, Academy Award nom- TOO MANY inee Amy Adams ... and Chris Messina.”) Trailers tell us that a recall new movie is from the guy who wrote, directed or even just paid for a well-known film. that fi lm A good parallel to Bad Lieu- tenant’s brand of “remember me?” is Quentin Tarantino’s recent hit InglouriousBast- A ‘re-visiting’ like erds. It took the title and MILES? rough outline of a 1978 spa- Bad Lieutenant ghetti war movie — The In- counts on that glorious Bastards was itself a cheap knockoff of The Dirty The forward-looking musician still has us looking backwards, sort of reaction Dozen — and remade it with better actors and worse spell- which only makes jazz seem more like a retrospective art form ing. It’s the kind of recycling that Tarantino does better than almost anyone else. Drawing inspiration from B Y MIKE DOHERTY come across as “a marketing the ghost of movies past ploy. There’s an emphasis on seems to be gaining in popu- t’s been 18 years since he looking back because some of larity. Last Christmas gave us passed away, but Miles the creative impetus is stuck The Curious Case of Benjamin I Davis is still the biggest back there.” Button, which borrowed the jazz artist on the planet. If Part of the problem, for title and ageing-in-reverse anything, the mercurial trum- Chambers, is the “academic C HRIS KNIGHT conceit from a 1921 short story peter casts a greater shadow crust on the jazz world that on Movies by F. Scott Fitzgerald. But now than he did when he was was not there until the 1990s. many critics pointed out that alive. Tributes to his legacy What’s missing for me is this the story was basically Forrest are everywhere, from a huge raw kind of feeling that play- espite similarities in Gump told backward. (Eric exhibition of memorabilia ers could communicate in titles, this weekend’s Roth wrote both screenplays.) in Paris to a 24-hour tempor- performance in days gone by.” D new release Bad In the summer, G.I. Joe: The ary satellite radio station on Davis himself dropped out of Lieutenant: Port of Call New Rise of Cobra appropriated the SIRIUS Canada, to a series of Juilliard after studying for a Orleans is not a remake of name of the 1960s action fig- concerts and tours led by for- brief period there in the mid- the 1992 movie Bad Lieuten- ure — itself christened after a mer sidemen and followers, ’40s: “He always said he learn- ant. But it’s also not the case popular 1945 film, The Story to books, to a Don Cheadle- ed more from Dizzy Gillespie of two films that happen to of G.I. Joe — for a fairly generic helmed biopic that’s in the at night than he did from his share a name, as with Spell- plot about world domination. works. On Tuesday, Sony will professors in the daytime.” bound, which is both a 1945 Though impossible to calcu- release a 71-disc box set of While Davis might have Hitchcock thriller and a 2002 late, at least some of the film’s Davis’s work. turned his back on the formal documentary about a spell- US$150-million box office (it The question arises: At study of music, his work will ing bee. (Calling that one Bee scored just 36% at rottento- what point does the constant occupy jazz musicologists for Movie would have made for matoes.com) had to be a direct paying of tribute turn into generations to come: because even more confusion.) result of brand recognition. fixation? And furthermore, is he was such a pioneer — from “Re-imagining” comes close, Calling it just The Rise of Cobra there a danger that in looking cool jazz to hard bop to modal although Edward R. Pressman, might have sliced US$50-mil- back at the career of someone jazz to fusion with rock and who produced both films and lion from its profits. Renam- who was always looking for- funk — it’s almost impossible is the only human link in the ing it Transformers: The Rise ward, the jazz world is ignor- to get around him in any study chain between them, calls it a of Cobra could have had the ing the innovation of a young- of the genre. Moreover, so great “revisiting.” Both feature a po- opposite effect, particularly er generation? has his critical and commer- lice lieutenant (Harvey Keitel among the “I’d watch Megan Certainly, from a commercial cial success been that it has in the original; Nicolas Cage in Fox in anything” crowd. standpoint, Miles Davis is an tended to drown out the work the new one) and both lieuten- Upcoming movies continue easy sell to crossover audiences of those around him — drum- ants are bad, but that’s where to borrow liberally from well- at a time when jazz is hardly a mer Jimmy Cobb, for instance, the similarity ends. known franchises. Next sum- commercial force. “John Col- the sole survivor of the Kind of This raises the question: mer brings us Marmaduke trane and Ornette Coleman, Blue sessions, makes the news Why play the same-name the movie, with Owen Wilson I don’t think, have sunk into only when playing concerts of game at all? Most likely it’s be- as the voice of the slobbery popular culture,” says André music from that one seminal cause in a crowded cinemas- Great Dane from the single- Menard, artistic director of the album. cape a film needs all the brand panel comic strip. Recently it Montreal Jazz Festival, “but “The spirit of having to go power it can muster. Bad Lieu- was announced that Sony Pic- Miles’s sounds have percolated backwards to be noticed sad- tenant is one of six new films tures had purchased the rights in most of rock and pop music, dens me,” says Toronto-based in Toronto this weekend, shar- to the board game Risk. Peter from what I hear all the time. … trumpeter Nick “Brownman” ing marquee space with Plan- Berg ( The Kingdom, Hancock) He has this crushing presence Ali. However, he suggests, there et 51, The Blind Side, Mary is making a film version of in the world of music.” is a way out: the key is not to and Max and a little number Battleship for release in 2011, Crucial to Miles’s appeal “photocopy” Davis’s sound or called New Moon. It’s not even and no less a directing talent is his unique, enigmatic star his playing but to concentrate first in the long-winded title than Ridley Scott is said to be quality. Miles the man appears on his spirit of “fearlessness department; that honour working on Monopoly. to have been as complex as his and irreverence.” In his own goes to Precious: Based on the As with Bad Lieutenant, music: no two people remem- recurring series of five-night Novel Push by Sapphire . board-game movies are un- ber him the same way. Biog- ILLUSTRATION BY KAGAN M C LEOD tribute concerts, Brownman The first Bad Lieutenant likely to bear anything beyond rapher Jack Chambers, who and a shifting cast of Canadian may not be that well remem- name resemblance to their wrote the acclaimed two-vol- EVEN MORE MILES and American collaborators bered, though it did win an predecessors. And if Port of ume set Milestones (1983-’85), celebrate different phases of early Independent Spirit Call New Orleans does well, calls the jazz legend “a mis- Davis’s music while attempting Award for Keitel. But movie- its producer might want to erable son of a bitch” and “a The Miles Davis discography is vast and unruly, and it promises to use the frameworks “to be goers will likely recall some- consider expanding the con- genuinely nasty man.” Menard, to become even more so on Monday with the release of the 70-CD original and play like we live in thing familiar about the title, cept to other movies. Imagine who presented Miles’s concerts Complete Columbia Album Collection, exclusive to Amazon. Con- 2009.” which might be just the tip- Samuel L. Jackson as a drug- on four occasions, suggests fusingly, the set doesn’t collect all the contents of Sony’s previous There’s always the hope that ping point it needs to beat The addled Jedi in Star Wars: Port that the trumpeter had a “con- 10 vault-raiding boxes, while it does contain a smattering of previ- a new Miles Davis may emerge Men Who Stare at Goats. of Call Tatooine. I’d watch crete aura that was very hard ously unavailable rarities, most notably the 1970 Isle of Wight con- to lead jazz forward, inspired Films are forever jostling that, and I don’t even have a to get through,” but that he was cert and a bonus DVD of a 1967 concert in Germany. Fans who own by the spirit, rather than the for this kind of recognition. clue what it’s about. nonetheless “a gentleman.” most of the albums will no doubt be disappointed at being asked letter, of the original.