Staff Picks Reviewer: Dylan

Talking heads Chronology [DVD]

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An official retrospective DVD compilation of rare footage and performances from throughout the Talking Heads illustrious career. The footage spans chronologically from mic tests and rough 1976 black and white footage of the band in NYC to television and festival performances during the height of their fame in the early 80’s. As the quality of the footage improves, the band becomes tighter and more assured, adding members until it culminates in the art-house funk monster period of Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues. This development and gradual expansion of the band in style and number mirrors the sequences of Stop Making Sense, the bands epic masterpiece concert film, but also allows a rare live glimpse of the late 70’s Heads whose angular tightly structured charm was just as innovative for its time as their later afro-cuban funk explorations. Talking Heads fans have waited for years without any significant “archived material” from the band and few releases outside of greatest hits compilations, and this release provides the perfect companion to Jonathan Demme’s 1983 concert film. The DVD is bound within a book with some great photographs of the band and extensive liner notes by Lester Bangs, who lets loose with his usual unrestrained hyperbolic blurt.

Submarine by Richard Ayoade [DVD]

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Olivier Tate (played by young actor Craig Roberts), the protagonist in Richard Adoaye’s quiet, quirky, charming, dark and thoroughly enjoyable film Submarine is a likeable precocious Welsh boy searching for an identity and direction in the stifling climate of small town coastal Southern Wales. He tries on affectations:”I’ve tried smoking a pipe, flipping coins – listening exclusively to French crooners, I’ve even had a hat phase”. This quote is immediately followed of course, with a shot of him at the family dinner table, wearing a Blue Stetson, looking fairly ridiculous. His teenage flailing about for identity finds its focus when he discovers the dark and indifferent charms of classmate Jordana (Yasmin Paige), who lures him into more and more morally reprehensible schoolyard acts. She is outwardly resistant to his charms except when he is misbehaving, and seems most allured by his taking part in the bullying of a fellow school girl. The cast is fantastic, both Paige and Roberts inhabit their roles fully and believably, while the adult characters (Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor as Olivier’s parents), are comically stuck in their own lazy unspoken despair, too wrapped up in their own ridiculous melodramas to offer guidance to Olivier. Paddy Considine appears as an almost incongruously broad comic foil and rival to both Olivier Tate and his father. Adoaye, most famous for his work on the UK sitcom “The IT Crowd”, who adapted the script from a novel by Joe Dunthorne, directs the film with care and fills it with beautiful shots of the beaches, woods and amusement parks of the Welsh Coast. There are aspects of the film’s plot, details and cinematic style which will appeal to fans of many other refreshingly offbeat comic films (Wes Anderson’s films in particular) but the unique characters, acting performances and Welsh character give it a charm all its own.

Winter in Wartime [Blu-ray, DVD]

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This beautifully shot period film follows 13 year old Michiel, a small town boy in Nazi-occupied Holland in the Winter of 1945.  Michiel’s childhood innocence and restless desire for adventure lead him into increasingly dark and morally ambiguous territories when the realities of war,  resistance and adulthood collide and converge upon his small town life. He is apprehensive about his father’s uneasy cooperation with their German occupiers and looks up to his uncle Ben, a resistance fighter whose connections, gifts and attitude intrigue Michiel. When an allied fighter pilot crashes near the village, Michiel and his sister, a young nurse, are drawn into the search for the pilot and must debate whether to take action or remain silent, and question who they can truly trust. The film, while somewhat conventional in some of its WWII era plotlines, offers enough twists and intrigue to keep the viewer’s attention, but its real appeal is grounded heavily in the films setting. The scenes are filmed beautifully and the village, woods, snow, bicycles, knitwear and natural light combine to give the film an enchanting sense of place, and ground the viewer in Michiel’s conflicted world, caught between action and fear, occupation and resistance and childhood innocence and the risks of adult responsibilities. This film is one of several Forbes films now added in Blu-Ray and DVD (both discs are included in one case, so patrons will not mistakenly get home and find the film unplayable), and the Blu-Ray is especially recommended for its crisp picture, which captures the film’s setting wonderfully.

Last Train Home [DVD]

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There are 130 million migrant workers in China, many of whom only journey home to see their families once a year on Chinese New Year. Lixin Fan’s 2009 award winning documentary follows the journey, conflict and struggle of one such family and is a film of remarkable impact. To its western audiences, the film is an eye opening look into the arduous lives of the thousands of low wage workers who produce assemble and manufacture many of our imported goods. While the film exposes the insidious impact of globalization and the poor working conditions of Chinese low wage workers, it is equally successful in capturing universal family conflicts and generational differences. The ‘mass exodus’ of Chinese workers home for the Spring Festival is the world’s largest human migration. The arduous journey of the Zhang family from their urban factory and cramped living conditions back to their poor rural village vividly illustrates the dramatic changes Chinese society has undergone as a result of its economic role in the global marketplace. The film is shot in a cinema-verite, fly on the wall style and the viewer is confronted not only by our role and responsibility as the world’s largest consumers, but by our perspective as the viewer of this hauntingly intimate look into the lives of this family. The parents of the family have sacrificed being present to raise their children for the purpose of sending enough money home to allow their children to pursue their education and have a better life than they have. When their rebellious teenage daughter confronts them about their continual absence and the pressure they place on her to succeed, she addresses the camera directly and the viewer can’t help but feel connected to this extraordinarily personal, politically relevant and remarkably timely film.

Girl Groups [DVD]

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This rare, long out of print copy of Steve Alpert and Stephanie Bennett’s 1982 film provides a joyous glimpse into the history and development of the girl group sound. In addition to candid interviews with key figures like Darlene Love, Mary Wilson, Ronnie Spector, Arlene Smith and Ellie Greenwich, the film includes rare performance footage discovered by the filmmakers in the damp basement of a local TV affiliate in Windsor, Canada. These clips and performances by seminal groups of the era were originally aired on Teen Town, Detroit’s local version of American Bandstand. The film traces the history of the girl group sound from song writers in the Brill Building in New York to Motown and beyond, and includes clips of the Ronettes, Martha and the Vandellas, the Shangri-Las, the Marvelettes, the Angels, the Dixie Cups, the Shirelles, Dee Dee Sharp and a rare short color film of the Exciters bizarrely miming “Tell Her” in the general direction of lions and bears in a zoo. The film quality is certainly dated and shows it’s age in places, and a segment on the Supremes runs perhaps a bit too long (Motown required a minimum of ten songs to be featured for the rights to the Supremes) while other important groups are barely mentioned. All things considered, the interview segments and performances more than make up for these faults and the film stands as a valuable artifact of the times, and must viewing for fans of the Girl Group Sound.

Birds of the Gods [DVD]

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This 2011 DVD release of the latest beautiful and informative documentary from the BBC/Nature series captures the spectacular beauty of the native birds of New Guinea. In the 16^th century European explorers named the gorgeous and elusive birds of the island “Birds of Paradise”. The local indigenous people have revered them for centuries and honor them as sacred ancestors by wearing their feathers as status symbols in elaborate headdresses during tribal ceremonies. This tradition, however, has made the more exotic and colorful birds’ feathers highly prized and, together with loss of habitat, has threatened the species’ survival and made them vulnerable to extinction. The ever-present BBC narrator David Attenborough introduces us to local biologists and conservationists, Miriam Supuma and Paul Igog, whose knowledge of the area and expertise guides us through the dense forests to document the elusive birds. The film does a good job of conveying the difficulty and challenges posed to researchers in the area, who must face incredibly difficult terrain, elusive and skittish subjects and are faced with centuries of local tradition and customs in their efforts to research and protect the birds of New Guinea. The joy of the researchers, when they do witness one of the elusive birds mating displays and dances, is palpable and infectious. The birds of New Guinea have evolved in relative isolation for thousands of years and have developed a wide variety of plumage, some with vivid iridescent blue and green coloring while others have tail feathers up the three times the length of their body. Overall, the film offers a satisfying, informative and visually captivating look at a corner of the world the viewer might not be familiar with and is a sure hit for birdwatchers and fans of nature docs alike.

Louis C.K. : Hilarious [DVD]

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The Good Earth by Pearl Buck [Book]

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Wang Lung, rising from humble Chinese farmer to wealthy landowner, gloried in the soil he worked. He held it above his family, even above his gods. But soon, between Wang Lung and the kindly soil that sustained him, came flood and drought, pestilence and revolution…
Through this one Chinese peasant and his children, Nobel Prize-winner Pearl S. Buck traces the whole cycle of life, its terrors, its passion, its persistent ambitions and its rewards. Her brilliant novel — beloved by millions of readers throughout the world — is a universal tale of the destiny of men.

The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig [Book]

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“Can’t cook but doesn’t bite.” So begins the newspaper ad offering the services of an “A-1 housekeeper, sound morals, exceptional disposition” that draws the hungry attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909. And so begins the unforgettable season that deposits the noncooking, nonbiting, ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee along with a stamped of homesteaders drawn by the promise of the Big Ditch — a gargantuan irrigation project intended to make the Montana prairie bloom. When the schoolmarm runs off with an itinerant preacher, Morris is pressed into service, setting the stage for the “several kinds of education” — none of them of the textbook variety — Morris and Rose will bring to Oliver, his three sons, and the rambunctious students in the region’s one-room schoolhouse.
A paean to a vanished way of life and the eccentric individuals and idiosyncratic institutions that made it fertile, The Whistling Season is Ivan Doig at his evocative best.

A House, a Street, a City : the Story of 17 Summer by Lu Stone [Book]

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Published as part of Northampton’s 350^th Anniversary Chapbook Series, Lu Stone’s remarkable history of the house and street she called home is a fascinating portrait of the many interwoven stories which make up our neighborhoods. Finely illustrated and impeccably researched, the book is a rich tapestry of the many lives whose fates crossed in the neighborhood in the 110+ years before she purchased the house in 1983. The subjects range from working class families and Olympic athletes to Lewis Warner, the President of the Hampshire County National Bank who suddenly absconded with hundreds of thousands of dollars from the bank in 1898. The book remains one of the finest examples of a ‘people’s history’ we have in the region, of dusty stories forgotten through the ages but rediscovered through neighbor’s anecdotes, dusty old newspapers, library microfilm and aging photographs cherished by relatives. The house in question, which sits today mere yards from 7-Eleven and Dunkin’ Donuts, around the corner from the generic strip that is present-day King St., stood on the edge between a neighborhood of working class families and the stately homes and towering trees of 19^th century King St. The book provides a priceless snapshot of local history, illuminating lives forgotten, reviving cherished memories and in the process helping us to understand the town’s history as a whole. This book is, as always, available to borrow from the library’s collection but is also, along with others from the 350th Anniversary Chapbook series, available for purchase at the Forbes Circulation Desk.

Plastic Ono Band by John Lennon [Music CD]

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The Plastic Ono Band LP is commonly referred to as the “Primal Scream” album as John and Yoko were going through Arthur Janov’s Primal Scream therapy during the album’s creation in 1970. While Lennon’s lyrics had been hinting at the pain of his childhood since “Help” and “I’m a loser”, on Plastic Ono Band he becomes overtly confessional and addresses directly the disillusionment and isolation of fame and the overwhelming pain of his youth. The cryptic and surreal wordplay that characterized many of John’s contributions to the Beatles albums of the late 60’s is abandoned here and the results are split equally between straightforward quiet love songs (“Hold on”, “Love” and “Look at Me” which more closely resemble his fingerpicked contributions from 1968 such as “Julia” and “Dear Prudence”), filthy distorted rockers (“I Found out” and “Well, Well, Well” which share the heavy tube distortion sounds of “Revolution” and “Cold Turkey”) and epic declarations of loss and rebirth (“Mother” and “God”, both of which feature ‘simple’ piano/bass/drums arrangements). Released in October 1970, in the wake of Altamont, Manson and Kent State, “Plastic Ono Band” addresses the disillusionment of the end of the sixties, the break-up and dispelling of the Beatles myth and the tragedies of John’s childhood. Opening with the intense primal therapy of “Mother” (in which John finally overtly addresses his feelings of abandonment as a child and his mother’s sudden death just as they were reconciling) and closing with the myth-busting “God”, the album is easily Lennon’s most cohesive solo work. Lennon famously hated the sound of his own voice unadorned, and was constantly imploring producers to swathe it in reverb or other effects, and his most famous Beatles contributions were often dense, sonically experimental psychedelic studio creations. On Plastic Ono Band, stripped of daft wordplay and overproduction (Phil Spector, who produced half the sessions, is most notable here for his uncharacteristic restraint), with exceptional accompaniment by Ringo Starr, Billy Preston and Klaus Voorman, Lennon produces his most complete raw and honest solo work.

Two Escobars [DVD]

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This riveting documentary film was made by Northampton natives Jeff and Michael Zimbalist as part of the excellent ESPN 30 for 30 series. It examines a harrowing period in Colombia’s history when rival drug cartels were warring in the streets and the national soccer team set out to win the world cup and by extension, create a new positive image for their country. The Two Escobars of the title are Andres Escobar, the softspoken but inspiring captain of the National Team, and Pablo Escobar, who was a notorious cartel leader and brutal drug baron, but also a team owner and folk hero to many poor people in Colombia. The documentary takes a clear eyed look at a period of Colombian soccer and society which stretched from the height of the phenomenon known as “Narco-Soccer” through their ignominious and ultimately tragic loss in the first round of the 1994 World Cup. Like many of the 30 for 30 series filmmakers, the directors succeed in showing the importance and influence of sport on society as a whole, how it reflects and is influenced by the best and worst aspects of our culture. As a result the film appeals to viewers who are not die-hard sports fans, ‘soccer’ fans or familiar with World Cup Football. One of the best of the ESPN 30 for 30 series and best documentaries of 2010, it was an Official Selection at the Cannes, Tribeca and Los Angeles Film Festivals.