When Rock Critics Go Bad

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My daughter Margeaux and I were in the Asian Arts Center the other day to check out an exhibition by contemporary female Vietnamese artists. That's not completely true-- we went there, as we do whenever she's in town, because of its quiet, understated beauty, and the solace it offers from the hectic pace of downtown Dallas. This exhibit was new, and a pleasant surprise, with works ranging from jagged portraiture to delicate brush and ink renderings that captured the breeze dancing on brooks better than any photo ever could.

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When Margeaux views a piece, she quietly inhales it, letting it wash over her to interpret it according to her own life experiences. She never attempts to second-guess the artist's original intent, and she has no patience for those who do. That explains why when the volunteer tour guides appeared from nowhere, we hastily retreated to the second floor of the Center, to further peruse Chinese and Indian antiquities in a more meditative environment.

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In a roundabout way, it also explains why Radiohead:OK Computer (A classic album under review) reduces OK Computer to a fanboy exercise of pretensiousness.

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It's been ten years since Radiohead released OK Computer, and depending on who you talk to, it's either the seminal canon of all rock music, or a paranoid post-industrial Luddite's vision of a bleak future. The truth is, it was neither. . . and it was both. At the time, I really thought that Radiohead was potentially the Pink Floyd for the new millenium. Ten years later, I realize they're a footnote, albeit an important one, in rock history. And while I still maintain it was one of the most important albums of 1997, that's all it was. Tom Yorke and company have moved on with their lives.

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The makers of this documentary, however, have not. What we have here is a collection of Brit rock critics dissecting every lyric, every chord, every note in some instances, in a vain attempt to elevate the album to a Work of Art. It's a valiant effort, but not a very compelling argument. They take each song on the album, inject it with their personal world visions and come to the conclusion that it's a work that's way too heavy for mere mortals to grasp.

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It's the sort of thing that gives rock critics a bad name. Albums like OK Computer stand as seminal works only because they add something to the subconscious vocabulary of pop culture. It came out at the right time, much the way Green Day's American Idiot or Pink Floyd's The Wall or any number of rock albums did. They spoke to a moment in our culture--nothing more, and certainly nothing less. For critics of questionable credentials to place any album on a pedestal from which hinges the course of civilization is to do a disservice to the artist, the listener, and to the whole business of constructive criticism itself. Yet, that's what these pundits attempt to achieve on this disc.

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Radiohead: OK Computer (a classic album under review) adds nothing to enhance the listening experience of the album. It may be of interest to the diehard fanboy, but for the rest of us, it's a stodgy, academician take on a work best left to individual interpretation. It's the sort of disc that makes me understand why Margeaux has an aversion to museum tourguides.

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Is Mike Doyle the New Jack Bauer?

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I've been a diehard devotee of 24 from Day One (no pun intended.) For five seasons, I gleefully accepted every leap in logic, every defiance of time and space, every torture scene (I'm thinking all of Day Three's plotline here) that they could throw at me. I never waivered from my devotion to Jack Bauer, no matter how preposterous the plotlines became. After all, the writers were working on the fly, and even they had no idea where it was going. You have to get behind that kind of moxie.

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After the ratings triumph that was Day Five, it was screamingly apparent that 24 would be around for a while. Sure enough, FOX guaranteed it at least three more seasons, and made Keifer Sutherland an executive producer of the series. It also became increasingly obvious at that point that the series was about to jump the shark.

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Let's face it: Day Six has been an almost incomprehensible mess, full of plotlines that sprouted like weeds, and were discarded just as quickly. It's as if the writers realized they'd painted themselves into a corner when they shipped Bauer off on a slow boat to China at the end of Day Five. From the moment Day Six opened, with Bauer released after 20 months of Chinese interrogation, nothing felt right. Within two hours, he got a designer haircut and a shave, (presumably debriefed while he was being groomed) and set about to doing what he does best: killing bad guys in creative ways. And that was all in his first couple of hours of freedom.

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Sure, other things have happened--nuclear attack on LA with 12000 casualties, failed coups, dueling terrorists, near-martial law in the US, paranoid romantic intrigues at CTU--but they were treated as minor annoyances. Bauer got all that cleaned up with six hours to spare--plenty of time to thread a new set-up poised to place Mike Doyle center stage next season.

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I'm not privy to CTU memorandums or FOX board meetings, but in my own private spoiler world, I'm almost certain that Rick Schroder's Mike Doyle will be the new 24 action figure next season. That's not to say Bauer will disappear--he may become next season's CTU director, a position befitting a TV series executive producer. Bauer's days as a renegade lone wolf world savior are almost certainly over, though. He's getting a bit long in the tooth to make it even remotely believable. It's time for Sutherland to pass the torch to younger blood, ala Bruce Willis.

Bauer can still be menacing, even in a desk job.

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The Mike Doyle character came out of nowhere this season, a sort of young Jack Bauer whose dedication to CTU was beyond reproach. While other characters in Day Six come across as plot devices with no discernible motivation, Doyle has been fleshed out as the season progressed, so that now we see him as a man with a shadowy past who keeps people at arm's length as a defensive mechanism. We know he's a student of comparative religion, that he is not above bending rules in the name of the greater good, that his dedication causes him to be reckless on occasion, that he will get his mission accomplished come hell or high water. But most importantly, he's playing Robin to Bauer's Batman.

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When I add all that together, and couple it with the fact that both Bauer and Doyle are blond, grimace at inappropriate moments and have similar tastes in street-fighting clothes, it's not a major leap of faith to see Doyle as Bauer's heir apparent. It makes sense in other ways, too. Schroder has time to grow into the stress lines that are part of Bauer's character. Since there is a bit of a similarity between the two, his presence wouldn't have a jarring effect on audiences. Since he's mysterious at this point, the series writers have a new sphere in which to work. And as the new world savior, he could serve as the perfect foil to a more seasones, wiser, more beauracratic Bauer.

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I could be wrong, of course. This is 24, after all. Doyle could be killed off next week. WWIII might break out, making Day Seven a post-apocalyptic snooze. I sort of doubt it, though. One thing is certain though. CTU is too small for two blond bad boy world saviors.

A Fair Performance by Fairport Convention

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Trying to chart the history of Fairport Convention is akin to drawing a family tree with branches that snake out in a multitude of directions. Credited with creating British folk rock, Fairport Convention has evolved, in the forty years since its original incarnation in 1967, from a band to more of an organic experience. In theory, that was their plan all along. Then again, history has a tendency to revise itself as time moves forward.

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It's easy to say now that Fairport Convention was conceived to be more of an ongoing experience with an ever-changing lineup, much like a football team or a classical orchestra, with an eye to a certain music tradition. But the truth of the matter is that tragedies, restlessness and shifting tastes took matters largely out of their hands. Still, despite more than a few breakups, Fairport Convention has maintained a foothold, albeit it a cultish one, in the annals of modern folk music. Think of them at this point as a sort of British version of the Grateful Dead, with ale subbing for psychedelics. They have annual "reunion" festivals, dubbed the "Cropedy Festival."

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Fairport Convention 35th Anniversary Concert, filmed at Basingstroke, England's Anvil Theatre in 2002 is a live performance by the longest-lived incarnation of the band: Simon Nicol (lead vocal, rhythm and electric guitars), Dave Pegg (backing vocals, bass guitar, mandolin), Ric Sanders (violin), Chris Leslie (lead vocal, fiddle, bouzouki, mandolin) and Gerry Conway (percussion and drums). Nicol is the only member of the original 1967 line-up, and though he soldiers on valiantly as a lead man, he frequently plays the role by rote.

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It's not that it's a bad show, but far too much time is spent on exposition between performances. I realize that explaining the origins of the piece is something of a folk tradition, but the band explains the story to death before striking the first chord. The resultant performance is punctuated by long verbal lags, as if the band doesn't give the audience credit to interpret the songs on their own.

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At 153 minutes, this DVD fails to do what a concert DVD must do--which is hold the viewer's attention. The first third of the set, particularly, plods along with a somnabolastic pace. It's only when Chris Leslie takes center stage that the show comes alive. When he and Ric Sanders trade licks between violin and fiddle, the concert finally shows sparks of life. They fuel a life in a band that probably should have quit two breakups ago.

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The last third of the concert harkens back to the days that made Fairport Convention legendary-- traditional English folk music transformed, electrically, into a modern context. It's powerful stuff, to be sure.

Unfortunately, it comes too late for the average viewer to care.

The Man Who Would Be Soul

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It's impossible to talk about the evolution of soul music without crediting Marvin Gaye as a prime exponent of its development. He wasn't necessarily the funkiest or the smoothest of the Motown stable, but he was unequivocally the most rebellious. Not content to churn out surefire radio singles in the Motown mode, he was often at odds with the label's founder Barry Gordy. In fact, his groundbreaking What's Going On almost wasn't released because Gordy didn't want to put the label in potentially controversial territory. After the album's phenomenal success. Gordy rethought his position, of course.

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Soul wasn't just a stance with Gaye--it was his lifeblood, and nobody infused the genre with more conviction than he did. In fact, he did more than sing his songs-- he ushered the listener into a place where words and music melded into a sphere that transcended vocabulary to reside in a universal emotion. He took soul music into a new frontier, making it relevant to what was happening to American society at large. It didn't matter what he sang about-- it could be anything from a simple proclamation of love to a a clarion call to social activism--when Gaye sang it, you believed it. He had a voice that sounded like silk soaked in cognac, and it transported you from gritty streets to silk sheets, all hinging on his mood.

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Marvin Gaye #1's is the latest addition to the everflowing well of "greatest hits" collections paying tribute to (or cashing in on, depending on your measure of cynicism) to Marvin Gaye's genius. In that regard, it doesn't really offer a lot that's new--since Gaye's untimely death in 1984, everybody and their dog has jumped on that bandwagon. A couple of things, however, make this release stand out from the gazillions of Marvin Gaye collections.

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Firstly, this album plays more like a soundtrack for an as yet-to-be-made biopic of Gaye's life, played out in flashbacks. It opens with some of his later work, the period when he was grappling with the dichotomies between spirituality and sensuality. He slithers through "Let's Get It On" and walks us through the animus of relationships with "Sexual Healing." Then we go back a few years, when social activism was his torch to bear, with the jazzy anti-war ballad "What's Going On," only to be whiplashed to his more innocent days, with "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing," one of his early duets with the ill-fated Tammi Terrell.

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It goes like that, skirting between timeframes, flashing from different personnae and different emotions-- seventeen songs in all and not a stinker among them. There are the obligatory tracks, like "I Heard it Throuth the Grapevine" and "Inner City Blues(Makes Me Wanna Holler)" counterpointed with innocent romps like "Ain't That Peculiar" and "I'll Be Doggone."

Admittedly, there's nothing here that's not on other collections, but as an introduction to the diverse stylings of Marvin Gaye, this is a nice package.

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The other thing that makes this set stand out has nothing to do with the music, but it bears mentioning. This is part of the Number 1's series by Universal Music Enterprises, and what makes them stand out is the packaging. Touted as "eco-friendly," the releases in this series are packaged, both sleeve and tray, in completely recyclable paperboard replacing the traditional jewel case and plastic tray. I'm all for it--it's a bit retro, considering vinyl was always packaged that way, but it's more environmentally friendly-- and it reduces consumer costs. However, I'm not buying the company's argument that they've eliminated the liner booklet to save trees thereby further helping the environment.

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Still, I'd like to see the industry as a whole adapt this sort of packaging. In the meantime, give Marvin Gaye #1's a listen. It's a perfect driving CD. And it works pretty well for late night listening.

When Superman Wasn't So Damn Super

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I was five, maybe six, when I discovered the awesome power of gravity. And I owe it all to Superman.

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Like most little kids at the time, I was a huge fan of the Superman TV series gtarring George Reeves. It didn't matter that virtually all the flying scenes consisted of a single stock shot of him flying in profile. I was more interested in how he made his takeoffs--that had to be the key to flying. Jumping up in the air wasn't working. But then I noticed the Reeves Superman did a sort of double jump before he flew, and that set my wheels turning. If I threw my legs out from under me on that second jump, I would obviously soar to the heavens. So I marched out to the driveway, confident I had at last unlocked the secret of flight.

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When my tailbone hit the concrete with a force I could have sworn shot my entire spine through my brain, I realized my plan was a wee bit flawed. I never tried to fly again.

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If only I'd seen the Superman serials from some years earlier, I might have figured out that Superman actually turns into a cartoon when taking flight, and most likely would not have contrived an experiment to turn myself into a cartoon. (That wouldn't happen until my college days, and it involved mushrooms. But that's a completely different story.)

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The point is, those old serials fueled your imagination and imbued you with a sense of wonder that made you really believe anything was possible, if you just never lost sight of the magic. That's why Superman: The Theatrical Serials Collection is a genuine treat to view.

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This four-disc boxed set comprises both complete Superman serials--"Superman" (1948) and "Atom Man vs. Superman" (1950). To enjoy them to the fullest, it's best not to view them through the jaded eyes of 2007, but to watch them with a wink and a nod to a time that wallowed in its wide-eyed wonder of a new era on the heels of the second world war. Somewhere in those two extremes lies the truth of why they were made in the first place. They were low budget entertainment delivered in 15 episodes of roughly 15 minutes each, filled with enough implausible thrills, chills and cliffhangers to ensure audiences would return the next week to watch the feature film.

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Superman as a character was late into the serial game--in fact, the Superman serials were among the last of the 15 chapter tradition. It didn't matter--after all, this was Superman, and this was the first time the iconic superhero was presented as a real live person. Kirk Alyn brought the Man of Steel to life with an exuberance that might have inspired Frank Miller, decades later, to refer to the character as "the big blue schoolboy." Oddly, Alyn wasn't credited with the role, supposedly because the studio wanted to maintain the illusion that he was, really was, Superman. And given the time, he really was. In those days, Superman was not the messianic figure we think of now--he was a bit of a goofus. Alyn played him exactly like the comic book--gleefully saving the world from destruction while not fully comprehending that was what he was doing. He never even picks up on Lois Lane's double entendres. ("Are you ready?", he asks, before flying her out of harm's way. "I was born ready," she coos, arms draped over his shoulders.).

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These two serials are by no means high art, and that's what makes them so endearing. They are Superman comic books come to life, and as incomprehensible as the plots may be, however crude the special effects may be, they possess an innocent charm that brings a smile even to 21st century eyes. Lex Luthor was a simple mad scientist out to take over the world back then, Lois Lane was just a spunky female reporter and Superman was just having a good time ducking into broom closets pretending to be Clark Kent.

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Oh. By the way, when I realized I couldn't fly, I set about devising Batropes.

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You live and learn.

The Tudors: Pragmatic Pageantry Among the Pawns

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With its third episode, The Tudors completes its introductory arc, setting the stage for a launch into the darker intrigues and alliances that marked Henry VIII's monarchy. What we've seen thus far has been an evolution of sorts. In the premiere, Henry came across more as a spoiled playboy, with affairs of state more an annoyance keeping him away from his more serious affairs, such as tennis, jousting and bedding ladies in waiting. By the second episode, he was settling more into the political weight his throne afforded him. In the latest installment, Henry's grown comfortable in his skin, and has learned to reconcile the playful passions of youth with the more deliberate maneuverings of diplomacy and power.

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It's not as though Henry had an epiphany-- from the beginning, he's used boyish charm to mask his calculating shrewdness. He was more reckless then, hastily declaring war on France almost as an afterthought, only to dissuaded by the pro-French Cardinal Wolsey from acting too hastily. Wolsey has his own Papal ambitions, of course, and needs the support of the French to fulfill them. And on Henry's other shoulder is his humanist conscience, in the form of Thomas More. For a while, it appeared Henry was easily swayed by either of them.

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Throughout most of the second episode, Henry seemed more a pawn than a ruler. The real battle for dominance seemed to be between Wolsey's quest to be Pope and More's humanist ideals. Even the Duke of Buckingham's execution for treason seemed vaguely orchestrated by Wolsey, more than by order of Henry. Henry, however, is entranced with the writings of Machiavelli, and wonders aloud if it's better for a king to be loved or feared. But once Elizabeth Blount bears Henry's illegitimate son, whom the king names Henry Fitzroy, his entire demeanor changes. We suddenly see Henry in a new light, and find that he's no longer a king to be taken lightly. By the episode's end, he's even "persuaded" Wolsey to happily turn over his palace to him.

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In episode three, any hopes for peace with France are all but extinguished. Even Wolsey has allied himself with Spain, and Charles V, King of Spain and the nephew of Henry's wife, Catherine. Henry, too, is anxious to ally himself with Charles, and the two strike up a pact to unite against the French. Because of the ramifications, Henry is careful to make it appear he and Catherine are blissfully married. But once he comes face to face with Anne Boleyn, Henry is once again smitten. . .

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Is The Tudors historically inaccurate in places? Of course it is-- that's why it's called "historical drama." Shakespeare's take on Julius Caesar wouldn't have played well to audiences if he'd done a barebones account, either. What's important in dramas of this sort is to capture the essence of the events, which, thus far, The Tudors does admirably. The sets, the costumes, the characterizations--all lend an air of sensuality necessary to capture the intrigues of the time. In a series like this, we're not interested in the plight of the masses--we want to know what is transpiring in the offices of power. What this series demonstrates, above all else, is the rich and powerful now are not that far removed from their 16th century boardroom equivalents.

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Showtime is showing the first three episodes of The Tudors back to back on 21 April, and they're all available on Showtime on Demand. They're loosely constructed if viewed individually, but seen together, they serve as an enticing preamble for what looks to be a series that delves deeply into the motivations of power.

A Voice Beyond the Wall of Words

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Elizabeth Hand, if not our finest fiction writer, is certainly among our most challenging and adventurous. Her stories blur the line between mundane realities and and the utterly fantasial. Saffron and Brimstone, aptly subtitled "strange stories," eloquently illustrates the quiet horrors of contemporary society from a personal vantage point.

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This is not a collection of horror, or even science fiction, genre fiction. It can't even be called a short story anthology. Hand's stories are typically novellas that explore the nuances of her characters and their environments. The resultant works read like rich tapestries, bleeding with muted colors and telling often abstract tales. Usually told in the first person, these stories not only lure us into the protagonist's psyche, but once there, trap us in a world we have no desire to escape. We relish our time there, and as exhausting as it may be, we find it to be a refuge of sorts. The opening sentences of "Cleopatra Brimstone" (the only story here not told in first person) demonstrate her mastery of words as dreamscape:

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"Her earliest memory was of wings. Luminous red and blue, yellow and green and orange; a black so rich it appeared liquid, edible. They moved above her and the sunlight made them glow as though they were themselves made of light, fragments of another, brighter world falling to earth about her crib. Her tiny hands stretched upward to grasp them but could not: they were too elusive, too radiant, too much of the air."

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Throughout, Hand's phrasings invoke a sense of remarkable imagery that lift her stories from what would be pedestrian chillers in lesser talents. "Cleopatra Brimstone" concerns a young rape victim who inadvertently discovers her fascination with butterflies affords her a means of revenge, but with unforeseen consequences. In "Pavane for a Prince of the Air," neo-pagan, drug imbued funeral rituals transcend the finality of death in almost romantic ways. And in "The Least Trumps," the tattoo artist daughter of a children's book author, finds love redefined and intertwined through a pair of errant tarot cards.

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As compelling, romantic and sexually ambiguous as these stories are, it's the quartet of tales making up "The Lost Domain: Four Story Variations" that best showcase Hand's talents as a prose stylist. The four stories here--"Kronia, "Calypso in Berlin, "Echo" and the haunting "The Saffron Gatherers"--interlace themes of Greek mythology and current tragedies with the transitory nature of relationships in ways that are at once both chilling and profoundly beautiful.

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Call it literary fantasy, if you must attach a label to Elizabeth Hand's writings. Even at that, her works are too grounded in the underbelly of mainstream culture to be sloughed off as genre fiction. What she does in Saffron and Brimstone is hold a mirror up to our fears and foibles, and gently urges us to take at look at what we behold. It's a reflection we'd be well advised to take seriously.

The Day After Death

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It's the evening after the morning that sent us reeling in disgust and horror as I write this. We've had a bit of time--not nearly enough--to come to grips with the fact that the unfathomable happened. . . again. We know who pulled the trigger so many times, and we can put faces to the victims. There are plenty of stories that go along with each of those faces, all of them tragic. It should be a time of mourning and respect, shouldn't it?

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One would think.

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Sadly, what has happened instead is the horror that happened at Virginia Tech has become a springboard in some quarters to relaunch political agendas across the board. Certainly a disaster of this magnitude warrants a reexamination of our core values. It's even understandable to ask how could we as a society allow this to happen--it's part of the grieving process.

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The short answer, of course, is we didn't allow it to happen, and we could never have prevented it. No matter how much we wring our hands and wail in retrospect, there is no way anybody could have seen this coming. Even though we know now the shooter wrote some terribly constructed, plotless and very twisted fiction, that's hardly enough to lock him away before he could have the opportunity to possibly kill.

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Advocates on both sides of the gun issue have attempted to weigh in on the tragedy with a "see-told-ya-so" rhetoric that makes proponents on either side of the fence sound like schoolyard rivals. This is not a Second Amendment issue, anymore than the "constitutional right" not to wear seatbelts is. To suggest if students and faculty had been armed, they could have cut the shooter down before he ever got off a round is ludicrous. By the same token, banning handguns outright as a preventative measure is also a pipedream. I will say, however, a restriction on how much ammunition anybody can buy at a given time might not be a bad idea. After all, nobody's had a problem with Sudafed purchasing restrictions.

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We've gone beyond denial and shock at this point. We're at the anger stage, and we're grasping at straws to make sense of it all. It will never make sense. Madness is not something that can be rationalized. We'll feel the pain in some part of our hearts forever, and in that part of our hearts, it will never subside. But this is not a time to advocate kneejerk responses.

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The Battle of Imus: Lessons Lost

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If the so-called Imus controversy taught us anything, it's that we Americans have way too much time on our hands--that, and we love a good brawl. Give us a few ill-chosen words on an early Friday morning, and we're pretty much set for at least a weekend of drunken punditry. In the Imus case, though, we just can't seem to shake the hangover.

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It's a hotbutton issue that has about as much meaning in the scheme of things as Avril Levigne getting married. Yet, we're fascinated by it, outraged by it, devastated by it and in a state of denial by it. Here's why: it forced us to look at ourselves.

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And we didn't like what we saw.

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While most of us nursed our wounds after the initial brawl, bullies from all corners smelled blood. And bullies being what they are, they made alliances. It's the way bullies work--it's how gangs are formed. It doesn't matter about your personal ethics--all that matters is a common foe. Once that's in place, you become invincible. And once that happens, there's no stopping you.
Your foot soldiers will do the rest, and you can sit back and reap the spoils.

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That's what's happened here--and what better time than an election year? Hilary Clinton was outraged, so Condoleeza Rice had to be indignant, also. Black conservatives with political aspirations suddenly spoke of a need for civility, and white liberals had to jump on that bandwagon, also. Snoop Dogg even weighed in, saying that when rappers say it, they're just reflecting a community that whites can't understand. It's all a matter of proper context, after all.

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Here's the thing: we Americans have no short term memory. We buy whatever message is sold to us, so long as it's served up on a cool soundbite or an iPod. We forget the message of Martin Luther King or Robert Kennedy or even Barry Goldwater, and we purposely divide ourselve according to race or ethnicity. This is 2007, and we've run out of ideas. Rather than forge ahead, we want to retreat to the idealized version of the 1950's, where nobody ever said a cross word, and blacks and whites lived happily in their segregated neighborhoods.

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Sure, it would be nice if we were a little more civil and polite. But who in their right mind believes a government can mandate civility? We face innumerable challenges as a nation. Slips of the tongue and coarse language only divert our attention from the real dangers we face. To paraphrase Jay-Z, "I got 99 problems, and the bitch ain't one"

We can go down that road, and ban everything we find personally offensive. Of course that will also mean not only an end to hip-hop, but those bare midriff commercials for everything from Slimfast to Bally's, all those adolescent fantasies disguised as body spray commercials, every program that may inadvertently slander a group — say Irish or Germans — ditch every politically offensive program — depending on your point of view — and, hell, get rid of almost all the programming we've come to love. We can create our new Mullah class, and we'll all be protected — or else.The other option is to shed our eggshell skins, and realize even a bad joke is better than no joke at all.

Where Were You That Night in June?

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We don't recognize the days that shape our lives until the moment has passed. They're just days, like any other day, unless some unexpected something comes along with such overbearing force that a particular day becomes seared in our memory-- where we were, what we were doing-- suddenly takes on an otherworldly significance.

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Bobby is a film about such a day. What writer/director Emilio Estevez attempts to do here is present June 4, 1968 as just another day that happens to culminate with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. It all takes place at the Ambassador Hotel, where Kennedy would be mortally wounded before the day's end, and focuses on the ordinary travails of staff members and guests at the Ambassador that fateful day. It's an ambitious, if uneven, effort that teeters between melodrama and significance.

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At its worst, Bobby plays like a cross between The Love Boat and Crash. The ensemble cast, featuring Anthony Hopkins, Sharon Stone, William H. Macy, Lindsay Lohan, Harry Belafonte, Laurence Fishburne, Christian Slater, Elijah Wood, Demi Moore, Freddie Rodriguez, Ashton Kutcher and a host of other rising and fading stars, often distracts from the intent of the film. Their substories are mostly banal--the alcoholic diva (Demi Moore) and her cuckolded husband (Emilio Estevez), the philandering hotel manager (Macy) and his silently suffering hairdresser wife (Stone), the reminiscing hotel retirees (Hopkins and Belafonte)--and don't add to the weight to which the film strives. They serve more as counterpoint to the more interesting stories interspersed with them. Lindsay Lohan is surprisingly good as an idealistic girl marrying Elijah Wood to keep him from having to serve in Vietnam. Martin Sheen and Helen Hunt portray aging liberal socialites representing the passing of more civilized culture, and the interaction between Fishburne and Rodriguez are quiet testaments to the evolving socio-racial awareness among minorities.

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The first third of Bobby establishes all these characters and their stories, and it's a bit haphazard at first, more a game of "spot the star" than anything else. But as the film progresses, their stories intertwine in remarkably subtle ways that reflect the timbre of the times. Kennedy himself is more metaphor than character through most of the movie, with archival footage of him punctuating the film's main point of how a single moment can alter the shape of a society.

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When it works--which it mostly does, once the establishing sequences are out of the way--Bobby is a compelling statement. Estevez doesn't dwell on conspiracy theories or political machinations. By taking the sociopolitical climate of 1968 and viewing it through the eyes of people unaware they were microcosms of the upheaval taking place all around them, he makes the assassination of Robert Kennedy deeply personal and moving. When he was killed, the dreams of many Americans for a more tolerant society were all but shattered. Yet, the senselessness of it, coming so soon after the assassination of Martin Luther King, united us in some ways, if even for a short time.

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As a film, Bobby sometimes overreaches its ambitions. But as a snapshot of American life and how we viewed ourselves on the day that RFK was shot, it's a powerful achievement. The DVD release has special features that enhance its significance, including a "making of " documentary and eyewitness accounts by people who were there the night it happened. It's not a masterpiece, but it is a movie that stands repeating viewings.