Beth Hart killed last night (3/10/2017) in Nashville at the storied Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. Killed in the sense she slaughtered her material and slayed her audience. I have never seen a performer so committed to her material as Beth Hart. She has a power and a force that will blow you away! She simply gave it all she had. She is one of the best blues singers I have ever heard and she just keeps on getting better.
Beth looked great in a sparkly mini dress and high heel shoes which showed off her toned legs to great effect. She wore sheer nylon stockings with seams down the back. How sexy was that? She must be eating right because her tiny waist, beautiful skin tones, and irrepressible energy were much on display.
And the music! She has a great band around her including her guitar player who has been with her for 17 years. Beth writes a lot of her own material and there is as story behind each song which she generously shares with the audience before she delivers the goods. The audience loves Beth and she loves them back!
When she performed the song California, which is a paean to the one she loves, who should appear from behind the black curtain but her husband, who rushes up behind her and hugs her close and kisses her neck and we are swept up in the moment of an emotional highlight.
Throughout the show and on numerous occasions I was moved to the point of tears and the goose flesh was in motion.
She will be appearing in at the Louisville Palace in Louisville, Kentucky on March 19 as part of the Jimi Hendrix experience. I’ll be there.
The movie, I Am Not Your Negro, played to sold out crowds recently at the Speed Cinema here in Derby City. This movie comes at a most propitious moment in time when the American Negro is again under assault by the white ruling class now that the alt-right has taken over the White House.
It is a timely tale told by Samuel L. Jackson in the words of the brilliant novelist James Baldwin in a documentary filmed by Raoul Peck. It has been nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. The film is based on Baldwin’s work, Remember ThisHouse, which details the civil rights movement and assassinations of his close friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The film expands on the work and brings it up to date to modern times and the Black Lives matter movement.
Protesters at a Rally for American Values in Louisville, Kentucky
Protesters at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky
Greg Fisher, Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, gave a speech in support of immigrants and refugees, but stopped short of declaring Louisville to be a sanctuary city.
I had the opportunity to watch the wonderful Fannie and Alexander (1981), written and directed by Ingmar Bergman, last night at the Speed Art Museum Cinema here in Louisville, Kentucky. This is the first time I’ve seen it on the big screen since it first came out in 1981. It is a sheer joy to behold. It is perhaps Bergman’s greatest film, The Seventh Seal not withstanding. This is the most autobiographical of all of Bergman’s films and pretty well sums up his life and work.
Scrumptiously and lovingly photographed by Sven Nykvist, every frame is a visual masterpiece of beauty and composition for which he won an Oscar for Best Cinematography. The film also garnered three other Oscars nods including for Best Art Direction, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Costume Design. Bergman was nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Director.
According to the film notes the movie turned out to be extremely expensive and difficult to make. In terms of scale Fanny and Alexander became Bergman’s largest ever production with a cast of 50 actors. He shot over 25 hours of film. A made for TV version was pared down to five hours in length then he set to work putting together the feature film. Bergman’s first attempt came in at four hours. He tried again and got it down to 3 hours and eight minutes. Still long but manageable. The film is shown with an intermission which we did not take at the Speed Cinema.
Bergman said in his autobiography that after Fanny and Alexander there will be no more feature films for him. Feature films are a job for young people, both physically and psychologically.
According to Bergman the film had two inspirations. One was a picture from the Nutcracker depicting two children huddling together on Christmas Eve waiting for the candles to be lit on the Christmas tree. The other was Charles Dickens. The bishop in his austere and pure house and the Jew in his antique store filled with old furniture and magical incantations and creatures. The Children are depicted as victims.
Fanny and Alexander are brother and sister in a bourgeois Swedish theatrical family. The film starts off on a snowy Christmas eve and is perhaps the most lavish and beautifully filmed Christmas celebration ever. The movie takes place in Swedish provincial town in the early years of the 20th century. The two children, Fanny and Alexander, are growing up in the bosom of a large, happy, extended family. Their father, who is the stage manager of the theatre the family owns, dies unexpectedly. Later, their mother remarries a stern, authoritarian clergyman. The juxtaposition of the vivacious theatre family with that of the dour, cold, and authoritarian bishop’s family could not be more stark and has its roots in Bergman’s own history. His father was a clergyman.
There are ghosts in the film which only Alexander can see. He is also prone to telling the most outlandish and imaginative lies for which he is severely punished at one point by his stepfather. Alexander is also the master of the magic lantern with which he enchants his sister on Christmas Eve. It is not too far a leap to see the budding genius of Ingmar Bergman taking shape in the form of the young Alexander.
The movie is divided into three parts as in a three act play. We might remember Ingmar Bergman is as well known as a theatrical director (at least in Sweden) as a film director. In a scene in the third section, Emily says to Helena. “I am reading a new play by Strindberg called A Dream Play and there is a perfect part in it for you.” Oh, no,” says Helena, not that misogynist!” “Oh but this part is perfect for you…” and off they go to talk about their next project and adventure.
I remember reading in Bergman’s autobiography how he struggled with A Dream Play when he directed it. He went on at length about the difficulty he had in staging a certain scene. When he finally found the key to his conundrum he was relieved but he also extolled the virtues of meeting the challenge. When I watched the above described scene I had to smile remembering that passage from his autobiography. I am most certain that no one else got the reference but me but for me it was another piece of the puzzle fitting together nicely and another dot connected.
Everything is here: Love, Sex, God, and Death. Now we know where Woody Allen gets it from. Actually, we knew all along that Ingmar Bergman has been a major influence on the films of Woody Allen.
This is the film against which I judge all others, a bench mark if you will, and most others pale by comparison. That is why I am mostly disappointed with the current crop of films coming out of Hollywood these days.
Speed continues to bring to Louisville the best of the best movies and I couldn’t be happier.
Titus Andronicus is one of Shakespeare’s more out there plays. It was presented recently by Kentucky Shakespeare at a warehouse in the heart of Butchertown near downtown Louisville just in time for Halloween. How very appropriate in both cases for this was the most bloody and horror haunted of all the Bard’s pieces.
Titus was one of Shakespeare’s early plays and written when he was quite young. It is not one of his best plays but it is certainly one of his goriest. Perfect for the October Country and very fitting fare for Halloween.
Director Matt Wallace gives us plenty of atmosphere by staging the play in an abandoned warehouse with with dark interiors, concrete floors, exposed pipes, and plenty of fog. Lighting was from utility lamps pressed into service. The play is set in set in ancient Rome but the warehouse space and the costuming of the actors give the play the right horror haunted feel. Just right for torture and mayhem. The cast was dressed in black leather and Tamora, Queen of the Goths, was appropriately outfitted in a black leather corset suitable to her name.
Harold Bloom has called this play a testimony to patriarchy’s ultimate oppression of its females. In an act of revenge, Lavinia, Titus’s daughter, is savagely raped by Tamora’s sons, Demetius and Chiron. Tamora says to them, “…when you have the honey of your desire, let not this wasp outlive, us both to sting.” After raping Lavinia the boys cut out her tongue and slice off both her hands so that she cannot identify them.
Later Titus continues the cycle of revenge by killing both of Tamora’s sons by cutting their throats. He drains their blood and bakes their remains into a pie and then feeds the meal to Tamora unbeknownst to her. When she finds out horror ensues.
The actors were uniformly excellent and the play was as good a Shakespeare as you will see anywhere in the country. Titus Andronicus was a marvel to behold.
Third Street Dive Bar is located in the heart of beautiful downtown Louisville, Kentucky. Kentucky, as we know from previous entries, is the land of beautiful horses and fast women. But if you are fast enough, you can catch them! Louisville is full of dive bars and all manner of other drinking establishments. It is also known, as of late, for its bourbon tours. Tonight I visited the Third Street Dive Bar for the very first time. I wasn’t disappointed. It is a music venue but it was early when we arrived so no band was playing at the time.
My friend Dan and I sidled up to the bar and ordered drinks. The prices were right and they had plenty of specials. Don’t go with the well bourbon, though, because it is worse than rot gut. I switched to Beam and that was much better. I like my bourbon on the rocks with a splash of branch water. If you don’t have any branches any kind of water will do. But please, just a splash.
There were a couple of ladies at the bar to our left and of course Dan had to chat them up. He tried to talk them into joining us at another bar down the street about six minutes away. They demurred. It was just as well as they were both married and from Toledo and I don’t know what’s worse. They were here on convention and staying at the Hyatt.
I loved the decor of the Third Street Dive Bar. There was plenty of neon signs and graffiti on the walls, especially in the bathrooms. The back room had a pool table with a red velvet top that looked rather inviting.
We finished our drinks and went down to Meta. Meta is a cool hipster bar with a story all its own. We had a few drinks and struck up some conversation with some of the local hipsters then came on back to Third Street. By the time we got back a band was playing and another one was setting up. The place was starting to fill up with some pretty wild looking characters. So far so good. My friend Dan is a blues guitarist and singer. He talked a member of the band into letting him play with them. Dan did a rousing version of Jimmy Hendrix’s Along the Watch Tower. The crowd loved it!
We left shortly after that. All in all had a pretty good time.
Third Street Dive Bar, 442 South 3rd, Louisville, Kentucky
When I moved back to Kentucky a few years ago I got into the car business for a while to make some quick easy money. I did this for a few years with a little time off to do some teaching in the Jefferson County School System.
One day while I was at the car lot a customer came in and said he wanted to take a look at that Land Rover we had on our lot. I said sure and proceeded to show it to him. During the course of our conversation I noticed a medallion hanging around his neck from a gold chain. I recognized the symbols on the medallion and I asked the man, “Say, were you ever a Philadelphia Police Officer?” “Why, yes,” he answered, “But I retired from the force to move down here.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I lived in Philly for 18 years and I recognized the medallion. What made you decide to move to Kentucky?”
“The cost of living is much cheaper here,” he answered. Which is true. “And I got a job teaching kids with learning disabilities here in Louisville. It’s an easy $50,000 a year. You should give it a try.”
“I just might,” I answered. Little did he know he was the inspiration for my short lived career as a teacher.
As we got to know each other a little better during the demonstration process he let me know that he also did a couple of tours in Iraq.
“Wow!” I said. “Let me ask you, I just have to know, what was more dangerous, Philly or Iraq?”
Without an instant’s hesitation he said Philly. I smiled because I was pretty sure I knew the answer to the question. I thanked him for his service. I didn’t sell him the car, but I got a good story out of the deal.
Ghost Dog 