The Power of Early Sidney Poitier

Though he hasn’t made a film since 1997, Sidney Poitier remains one of the most important actors in the history of American cinema. It’s not that every movie he made was great—many of them would be considered exploitative by today’s standards. What Poitier brought to all of his roles was a quiet sense of dignity and pride hitherto unseen by a black performer in America cinema. The Bahamian born actor, in 1963, became the first black actor to win the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Lilies of the Field. By 1967, thanks to his roles in To Sir, With Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, he was the #1 box office attraction in America.

The Sidney Poitier Collection, recently released by Warner Brothers Home Video, consists of four of Poitier’s lesser known, earlier works that nonetheless illustrate his commitment to making socially relevant films from his earliest days. The films included are Edge of the City (1956), Something of Value (1957), A Patch of Blue (1965) and A Warm December (1972).

Edge of the City is the earliest of the movies in this collection, and is easily the most powerful of the lot. It’s one of the earliest, if not the first, American film to explore an interracial friendship. Set in the New York dockside railyards, it features Poitier as a labor gang foreman who befriends John Cassavetes, a laborer with a past that makes him beholden to a rival, bigoted gang boss, played by Jack Warden. The film also marks the directorial debut of Martin Ritt, who went on to direct Hud and Norma Rae.

Over a half century after its release, Edge of the City remains relevant, not so much because of its racial undertones, but because of its examination of inequities that still plague some segments of the blue collar workforce. Bullies in the workplace still abound, just as they did when Edge of the City was released. The only difference now is that they’re more readily recognized. This early work featuring Poitier and Cassavetes was among the first to recognize them. Its message is as important now as it was then.

Pity the same can’t be said for 1957’s Something of Value. An early effort by director Richard Brooks (In Cold Blood, Looking For Mr. Goodbar), it’s a very Hollywood-ish adaptation of Robert C. Ruark’s novel about the Mau Mau uprising against British rule in Kenya after the close of World War Two. Call it a creature of its times, but its messages about racism and warring cultures are painted in the broadest of strokes. It’s all very formulaic, with Rock Hudson as the noble b’wana and Poitier as the black man raised white, but driven by his inner cry for freedom, forced to join the Mau Mau rebellion. It’s a Hollywood B- movie, with Hollywood backlots and soundstages substituted for the publicized native locales. It’s a Rock Hudson vehicle to be sure, but it’s Poitier as the emotionally tortured Kumani, who brings substance to this otherwise lackluster attempt to explore race relations.

Much more subtle and infinitely more satisfying is A Patch of Blue. This 1965 film, directed by Guy Green (Best Cinematography Oscar, 1946 Great Expectations) works on the simple tag “Love is color blind”. In it, Poitier plays easy-going Good Samaritan Gordon Ralfe, who unwittingly becomes involved with a blind girl, Selina D’Arcey (Elizabeth Hartman.) Besides being blind, Selina lives with an emotionally abusive mother of questionable repute (Shelley Winters) and a well-meaning but hopelessly alcoholic grandfather (Wallace Ford.) Selina’s only refuge is the park, where she meets Gordon, and since she can’t see, she has no idea he’s black. Gordon takes her under his wing, teaching her how to dial a pay phone, cross the street and various things that sighted people take for granted.

A Patch of Blue is a Cinderella story of sorts, but not necessarily one with the requisite “happily ever after”ending. It’s a love story to be sure, but it’s a story that focuses more on social conscience and the greater good than personal desires. Shelley Winters won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role, and Elizabeth Hartman won a Golden Globe Award for her efforts.

The final movie in this collection is A Warm December, a 1972 film Poitier directed, as well as starred in. It’s a clumsy effort, playing more like a made for TV travelogue romance than a drama. Poitier plays a widowed American doctor vacationing in London, ostensibly to race dirt bikes in a European competition. Only minutes into the film, however, while strolling around London, he encounters Catherine (Esther Anderson) who enlists his help in eluding a mysterious man who is following her. She promptly slips away, of course, and Poitier, his curiosity piqued, follows her. What follows is a lighthearted romance at this point, a mysterious intrigue at that, a nod to Love Story here and a mention of sickle cell anemia and its disproportionate effects on people of African descent. None of it gels in the end, and its only worth a look to see Poitier’s early attempts at directing, which he would late hone more decisively.

What makes The Sidney Pointier Collection worthwhile is not that it that it contains his better known films—the only one included here that may be largely familiar is A Patch of Blue, and that because it was released at a post-segregationist awakening. It’s certainly not the special features included in the set. They mostly consist of the individual films’ theatrical trailers—only A Patch of Blue offers any special features, and even those are sparse—a commentary feature by director Guy Green, and some stills galleries and notes. All of the movies here are presented in widescreen, and with the exception of A Warm December, they’re all B&W, with excellent reproduction and very good contrast.

Where this collection ultimately succeeds is that it shows that even in his earliest work, Poitier (and the people who worked with him) wanted to present a portrait of America where dignity, love, prestige and worth knew no color. We take those principles for granted today, but in the 1950’s and sixties, those were radical concepts. Sidney Poitier paved the way, at least in film.

The Blues As Cultural Compass

If the blues is not the foundation of all modern pop music, it comes pretty damn close. Jazz was an outgrowth of the blues, originally adding brass to the 12 bar structure of the blues. Country music was born alongside the blues, and, as marketing worked in those early days, differentiated primarily only in the race of its performers. Rock and soul are lineal descendents of the blues, and their offspring, metal and hip-hop, owe their heritage to the genre. In fact, even modern classical music pays homage to the blues. Had it not been for the blues, there would have been no Count Basie, no George Gershwin, no Sinatra, no Hank Williams, no Elvis, no Beatles, no Stones, no Led Zeppelin, no Beastie Boys, no Springsteen, no Jay-Z—at least not as we know them.

The blues is as integrated into our modern psyche at least as much as Prozac, and as such, flows through us largely unnoticed. But it’s always there, lying dormant until some contemporary riff awakens our collective unconsciousness, and we realize it was inspired by something born in the Mississippi Delta, and nurtured across the States, particularly in Chicago. And from there, the blues spread across the world, finding an unlikely home in England, where it spawned a new legion of fans who became the next vanguard of rock and roll.

Late in 2008, UK-based Acrobat Records branched out with a series of reissues available for the first time in America, dubbed collectively as “The Premier Collection.” The U.S. label debut features 15 reissues include jazz/big band, blues, country, R&B, doo-wop and rock. But what really caught my attention were two blues titles by Howlin’ Wolf and B.B. King, previously unavailable domestically.

Howlin’ Wolf: Rockin’ the Blues Live in Germany 1964 was recorded in Bremen, Germany, and was part of the American Folk Blues Festival that enthralled Europe at the time. The Wolf was at his height during this set, maybe bolstered by the fact that the Rolling Stones had just topped the charts with their cove of his “Little Red Rooster.”

That song’s not included on this set, but the nine tracks here are impressive in their own right, and immediately recognizable to fans of blues or rock. They include Willie Dixon’s “Shake It for Me,” Wolf’s “Rockin’ the Blues,” and the duo’s collaboration “Howlin’ for My Darlin’.” The quartet of musicians backing the Wolf up are legendary in blues circles—frequent cohort Willie Dixon on bass, Sunnyland Slim on piano, longtime guitarist Hubert Sumlin, and Clifton James on drums.

This is hardly a definitive Howlin’ Wolf collection, however. The recording is left intact from the way it was released in 1964, which means its mono, and there’s nothing to suggest it was recorded before a live audience. In an odd way, though, that endears it to the context of the time. What remains intact is the raw power of Howlin' Wolf’s voice, and the virtuosity of the band. This is a rare grouping, and listening to them jamming seamlessly makes up for any shortcomings in the editing. Consider it a primer on Howlin’ Wolf’s inestimable influence on the evolution of rock.

While Howlin’ Wolf’s large footprint is all over rock, it’s B.B. King who’s brought the blues into the mainstream of pop culture. B.B. King and His Orchestra Live is a testament to that premise. Recorded in 1983 in Cannes as part of a jazz concert that included Pat Metheny and the Dave Brubeck Quartet, the album is part soul revue, part big band jazz and a very large part blues, all wrapped into a palatable package.

King’s band director at the time, the late trumpeter Calvin Owens sets the tone for the concert, with a funky extended intro that heralds King’s arrival to the stage. It gives Owens and King an opportunity to expand on the musical idioms that the blues introduced—particularly big band jazz and soul, even touches of country. In fact, a third of the set is an instrumental collage of those influences. ”Why I Sing the Blues” and “Darling, You Know I Love You” are performed as instrumentals once King takes the stage, and he delights in playful guitar variations as he performs them.

From the extended intro, King smoothly segues into his recognizable repertoire, with powerful renditions of King standards, such as “Everyday I Have the Blues,” “The Thrill Is Gone” and “Paying the Cost to Be the Boss.” Perhaps most telling is his cover of Louis Jordan’s Caledonia.” It’s here that King blurs the lines between jazz and blues, not unlike Jordan did when he blurred the lines between R&B and jazz on his original.

The best way to experience the blues is to hear it performed live, preferably in a club setting. There’s something about the genre that dares the listener to step inside the performer’s heart and brain, and discover we all share common joys and pains. While B.B. King and His Orchestra Live tries valiantly to create that experience, it falls short, due to editing that reduces audience reaction to cross-fades detween the numbers. The performance of King and his orchestra, however, make up for those shortcomings.

While neither the Howlin' Wolf or the B.B. King releases are essential in a blues collection, both offer insights into how the blues have been integrated into our mindset. Howlin' Wolf shoved the blues into British rock, which, in turn, returned it to America and transformed American rock, causing musicians to research their unknown roots. B.B. King has pretty much singlehandedly brought the blues into the 21st century, where it, more than ever, is the foundation for almost everything we hear from presidential inaugurations to pharmaceutical commercials.

The blues is far from being dead. It’s in a constant state of evolution.

President Barack Obama and His Journey Chronicled

As I write this, MSNBC and CNN are all aflutter with their continuing coverage of Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th President of the United States. Right now, they’re covering the president-elect’s whistle stop train tour as he makes his way from Delaware to Washington DC. I’ve been watching it off and on for several hours now, and frankly, it’s becoming redundant. It’s kind of like watching the SuperBowl pre-game show or one of the interminable red carpet warm-ups to all the movie and TV awards programs flooding the airwaves these days. I mean, the warm-ups are nice and all, in a fawning all over ourselves sort of way, and they do give us ample time to collect up our chips, dips and assorted beverages before settling into our comfy sofas for the main event.

And I’m ready for the main event already. There’s only so many chips, dips and adult beverages one can consume between now and Tuesday, when Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America. We’ll say our farewells, fond and otherwise, to Dubbya, and finally, finally stop referring to Barack as President-elect Obama. We’ll breathe a collective sigh of relief on Tuesday, even as we look with some trepidation to the future. It’s not that we fear the change that has finally come—it’s the glut of souvenirs from third parties that will send our heads swirling.

Don’t get me wrong. I have my own little collection of Obama memorabilia—campaign buttons that I acquired during the journey, my “Yes We Did” poster from MoveOn, an article I wrote nearly a year ago supporting him-- little items I treasure from the campaign itself. I’m equally proud that I don’t own any of those so-called limited edition Franklin Mint Obama gold coins. And I haven’t bought any of those “Special Edition” news magazines commemorating Obama’s election. Nor do I recommend anybody rushing out to buy the various cable news channel DVDs that are already available for pre-order.

I will recommend one DVD, however. Barack Obama: The Man and His Journey is released today, and as souvenirs go, it’s about as good as it gets. As you might expect, it’s a bit on the sentimental side, and lacks a lot of depth. But as a straightforward biography, it contains several nuggets that have hitherto gone unnoticed in the whirlwind of the 2008 campaign. For instance, as a state senator in Illinois, he introduced an unprecedented 800 bills, 181 of which were passed into law. We also realize that his multi-ethnic heritage forged his viewpoints—not fitting in anywhere in the traditional senwe made him fit in everywhere. And it may very well be that his love of basketball, both as a participant and as a spectator, shaped his competitive prowess.

What really stands out in this portrait, though, is the attention given to Obama’s formidable intellect and his determination to make things happen. Narrated by Blair Underwood, and featuring exclusive interviews with Martin Luther King III, George Lopez, Hill Harper, Roland Martin, Linda Johnson Rice, Congressman Jesse Jackson as well as other prominent national personalities in the fields of politics, entertainment, religion, business and academia.

This is a portrait created out of admiration. Co-produced by Ebony/Jet and Vivendi Entertainment, it doesn’t offer a lot of controversy, though there are clips of the McCain-Palin gaffes during the latter days of the campaign. Even those, though are brushed off as part of Obama’s strategy. So are the sparse extra features, consisting mainly of seven vignettes that showcase Brian McKnight’s song “Yes We Can,”and also showcase Obama’s view on economics, family, the war, economics and the like. Oh, and there’s also an official Obama holographic trading card.

President Barack Obama The Man and His Journey is a somewhat uneven of the man’s meteoric rise to the presidency. It would be nice if it spent a bit more time on his struggles, and a little less on how he triumphed despite those odds. The new President has major obstacles confronting him, as do all of us. But for now, celebrating his ascendancy is an inspiration to all of us. For the first time in our history, we can really believe theat mantra that anyone can rise to any position they want o attain.

Yes we can, indeed.

The Village In Her Head

Something about the Winter Solstice awakens the human spirit, regardless of one’s particular faith. It’s a time of whimsical magic, and it transports us to a realm where our sense of wonder is the only compass we need to guide us. It truly is “the most magical time of the year,” despite all the humbugs with which contemporary life attempts to burden it. Sadly, the calendar changes far too soon, and we ring in the New Year with a toast to the past and a vague hope for the future before succumbing to all those humbugs that tailgate our existences through the rest of any given year. Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza and all the other Winter Solstice celebrations, all about renewal in one way or another, fall sway to economic uncertainty, unnamed wars, collapsed 401Ks and any number of conditions that keep us up at the most inopportune times.

At least, that’s how it works for most of the population.

There are people on this planet, however, who find magic in the most mundane quarters. Elke E is one such person. As a child of eight or so, living in Germany, she had the grand idea of making a doll house from an old shoebox that she found in the attic of her parent’s house .She cut and glued and painted and drew until she had a perfect little home of her very own, replete with table, chairs, bed and probably other things that are important to an eight year old girl. Not content with her cardboard furniture, she took it a step further and upholstered them with bits of fabric.

Fast forward some forty years later. The eight year old girl is married now, and living in America, happy, but not on the soundest financial footing as Christmas approaches. She also has a three year old niece, and minimal funds with which to buy her presents. But she still remembers her dollhouse, and she still has her sense of wonder. Rescuing a storage box from work, she sets about to resurrect that piece of her childhood and bequeath it to her niece Shelby. Using bits and pieces of things she already had, or were otherwise going to the trash heap, she constructs, by mid- December, a lavishly furnished home for Shelby’s dolls, and adds other hand-made characters and pets to keep them company. It’s an instant hit, not only with Shelby, but with Shelby’s circle of friends, and eclipses in popularity the store-bought toys they had all received.

Perhaps more importantly, the project reawakens Elke’s own inner child and inspires her to make impromptu gifts for her friends, who, in turn, show them off to their friends, who urge her to take her crafts to the next level, and sell them commercially. She initially shrugs off such suggestions, though, considering it too time-consuming and labor-intensive to be a viable undertaking. Besides, she reasons, nobody would pay money for sculptures made from recycled cardboard packaging. For her, it’s a labor of love, and a way to share her magical memories of childhood holidays spent in Stein am Rhein, Switzerland.






As enchanting as these miniatures are, what’s even more amazing is the care that goes into each handmade piece. Elke’s blueprints for her works are in her head. She starts with a vision of how the finished product will look, and works backwards to make the vision a reality. This entails an enormous amount of resourcefulness, creativity and preservation, since she works, with the exception of her environmentally friendly paints and glue, only with cardboard packaging that would otherwise end up in a landfill somewhere. Thus, otherwise discarded frozen dinner packaging, empty cigarette packs and various and sundry throwaways become the foundation for her creations. . Once she’s completed the basic construction, she spends days painstakingly detailing each piece by hand, even adding frosted windows that reveal lighted interiors. In the end, each miniature stands on its own, but is easily integrated into a larger village.

With the Holiday Season of 2008 winding down and the uncertainty of 2009 looming before us, it’s heartening to know that some element of magic remains to remind us that it wasn’t such a bad year after all. Elke E’s villages serve as a reminder that every year holds its own magic. They’ve proven so popular, in fact, that she’s decided to expand her crafts to include other holidays and everyday events. As well as introducing a site that showcases her work and includes her thoughts on a variety of subjects. It’s currently under construction, but, once live (in early 2009), should be entertaining and informative. In any case, Elke E is set to launch her childhood dreams into a vibrant reality.

Watching the Watchmen

When Watchmen was first published in 1986 by DC Comics as a 12-part miniseries, the term “graphic novel” was barely known in the United States. The Europeans and the Japanese had been taking the comics medium seriously for years, though, with the French referring to their publications as “albums” and the Japanese unabashedly gearing their work to adult audiences. In the States, where the medium was invented, they were still comic books, largely relegated to a literary and graphic ghetto. A revolution had been quietly festering for years, however. Jim Steranko’s work on Marvel’s Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. built on Jack Kirby’s action style, and redefined what could be told in the confines of a 7”X10” vertical layout. Neal Adams and Denny O’ Neil laid the groundwork for resurrecting Batman from campy cartoon to grim avenger. Mostly, only the comics diehards took note at the time. That all changed in 1986, when writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, along with colorist John Higgins, teamed to produce a 12 part series for DC called Watchmen.

Watchmen wasn’t a superhero story so much as it was a tale of youthful excesses and midlife crisis set against a backdrop of murder, conspiracy and global turmoil in an alternative 1980’s. That it continues to reflect the uncertainty of Western Society As We Know It may explain why those 12 issues evolved into a single edition that’s never been out of print since first published, It also explains why a movie version, once thought impossible, is scheduled for release in March 2009. And it definitely explains why Time named it one of the 100 most important novels of the last 75 years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4blSrZvPhU

Twenty some-odd years later, comes Watching the Watchmen, artist Dave Gibbons’ recollections on how the masterpiece came to be. At 256 pages bundled in a 12”X9.5” hardcover edition, there’s no denying that this is a book that any fan of Watchmen would consider an essential companion piece to the series that became a graphic novel. Given Watchmen’s cult status, that’s not surprising.

But Watching the Watchmen is much more than a coffee table book. Sure, there’s a wealth of art (early sketches evolving into finished illustrations), and that would be enough from a historical perspective. Dave Gibbons’ detailed memories of how it all came to be paint a landscape of the world before computers and FedEX, where everything was actually done by hand, and delivered via cab to the participants in the project. Consequently, the book works as a time capsule that seems somewhat quaint today, even though it all came about scarcely twenty years ago.

It’s hardly necessary to be a fan of Watchmen to appreciate Watching the Watchmen. What Gibbons achieves here is more than a memoir of the creative process that goes into any collaborative effort. It’s a personal recounting told from the illustrator’s point of view—writer Alan Moore’s perspective is absent here, due to his ongoing disputes with DC. That’s all the better in this case. Because of his writing prowess, Moore tends to eclipse his collaborators. To see in detail the creation of this seminal work from the artist’s perspective is is resultantly quite refreshing. As much as Moore’s story deconstructed the superhero mythos, they would have been shallow without the almost detached approach Gibbons’ nine panel grids imbued the characters with a sense of ennui in the face of global devastation.

At its core, Watching the Watchmen is more art book than scholarly history. The design of the book, by Chip Kidd and Mike Essl, both of whom are noted for their design work on various adaptations of Batman in film and graphic novels, ensure that Gibbons’ sometimes scattered sketches and remembrances remain cohesive. As a result, the artwork, from marker layouts to pencil sketches to the rare finished art is a joy to behold.

With The Dark Knight a serious Oscar contender and Frank Miller’s The Spirit opening Christmas Day and the film adaptation of The Watchmen coming out in March, superheroes are the new canon of 21st century literature. “Who watches the Watchmen?” is no longer merely a clever catchphrase—it may be a clear indicator of movie trends in 2009. That in mind, Watching the Watchmen may be the perfect gift for anybody interested in pop culture, film evolution, contemporary art or graphic novels in general. It’s a book I’d strongly recommend as a gift this year.

What Jack Bauer Did on His Summer Vacation

When last we saw Jack Bauer at the end of Day Six, some eighteen months ago, he was psychologically battered and bruised, sitting at ocean’s edge, contemplating his next move. Saving the world from certain annihilation, one day at a time, is a thankless job, and by the end of Day Six, Bauer was getting no respect. He was, however, in deep ka-ka because some of his more (ahem) aggressive methods in making the world safe for truth, justice and apple pie. Faced with the possibility of Federal indictment, not to mention the insurmountable forces of the Writer’s Strike, Bauer did what any action hero would do: he cut his losses, got the hell out of LA and toured the world.

We catch up with Bauer in 24: Redemption, finding him doing missionary work in the fictional African country of Sangala., which is a sort of Uganda, Somalia and a number of other hot spots rolled into one. Oddly enough, the man who runs the school for troubled boys is an old cohort of Bauer, Carl Benton (Robert Carlyle, Trainspotting, The Last Enemy, The Full Monty), a redeemed man with a never fully disclosed past.

This is 24, however abbreviated as it may be—the events take place between 3 PM and 5PM (Is that Sangala time or Washington DC time?) and events quickly go south. Jack is served with a subpoena to testify before Congress about the more unsavory operations of CTU and his direct involvement in torture of suspects. Before he can bail to parts unknown, however, a local warlord attacks the school where Bauer is working, in an attempt to “recruit” new child soldiers in his rebellion against the government there.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, newly-elected president Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones) is about to be sworn into office, amidst all orts of nefarious shady doings, most of which appear to be instigated by Day Seven’s high villain, Jonas Hodges (Jon Voight), a corporate slimeball who apparently has some dealings with the rebels in Sangala.

24: Redemption borrows heavily from other sources, particularly the film Blood Diamond, and it doesn’t stray far from the 24 formula. Bauer is called into action, however reluctantly, and by my count, kills 14 rebels in the first shootout, which lasts about 90 seconds. Surprisingly, the story holds together, more because of Carlyle’s character than Sutherland’s.

What really makes this 2-disc edition worth owning are the special features. Besides the obligatory audio commentary that accompanies the extended edition of the feature, this set includes featurettes not usually seen in what is essentially a promo for an upcoming season. Of course, there’s fluff in the featurettes. “24: Season Six in Four Minutes” succinctly highlights the story points of that flailing season without getting into all the plot holes that make us wonder why we sat through that semi-season. “The Exclusive First Look at Season 7,” consisting of the first 17 minutes of the premiere episode airing in January opens up a whole new can of intrigue and assorted worms that remind us why we watch week after week, ignoring all 24’s time warp improbabilities.

“The Making of 24: Redemption” is a nice little piece, and illustrates the differences between filming in Los Angeles and South Africa. Even lighting presents a new set of challenges because of the country’s proximity to the South Pole. It’s interesting to note, too, how the South African crews imparted time-saving techniques to the American crews. It’s rare to see these kind of tidbits in a TV feature DVD, and it leaves even the most casual viewer with an appreciation of how film comes to be.

By far, the best of the special features is the mini-documentary “Blood Never Dry.” The child soldiers portrayed in 24: Redemption are a reflection of very real presence in our world, and this documentary tells the tragic story of the “child soldiers.” These are children, often as young as eight or ten, snatched from their homes, often seeing their families killed before their eyes, indoctrinated to be killers through brainwashing and forced drug addiction. It’s an insidious, and overlooked, disaster confronting the world. More information can be found at unicef.org and child-soldiers.org.

The DVD also offers the broadcast version of the movie (87 minutes) and the extended version (102 minutes), although those but the most dedicated 24 fans will notice any difference in the two versions.

24: Redemption is by no means a work of art. Many times, it seems like a lukewarm, made for TV version of Blood Diamond. And you can’t escape the feeling that it’s a promo made to revive interest in as series that was running the bases in Day Six. That being said, 24: Redemption is a nice segue between Day Six and the upcoming Day Seven. Considering that Kiefer Sutherland’s contract runs out in 2009, and considering that this is, after all, Day Seven, it might be time to retire Jack Bauer with dignity.

Creedence Revived

As much as we wax nostalgic about all the great music that came out of the sixties, precious little of it is remembered by the twenty-first century public. Sure, the Beatles stood the test of time, and the Rolling Stones continue to limp their way into immortality. But I can pretty much guarantee you that if you mention the Yardbirds, the Dave Clark Five or even the Kinks to the average person under forty, you’ll get a blank-eyed response. American bands fared no better. Does anybody today remember Country Joe and the Fish or Quicksilver Messenger Service or Jay and the Americans?—no, people remember catchy tunes they heard on their tinny transistor radios. We remember the Doors because of “Break On Through” and “LA Woman.” We remember Creedence Clearwater Revival because of a remarkable string of hit singles.

Of course, I’m oversimplifying here, and I certainly don’t want to discount the contributions of artists like the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane of the Velvet Underground. The vast majority of people may know “Sweet Jane” or “Truckin’” or “Somebody to Love”, but they’ll be hard-pressed to name the artist, much less tell you anything about them. Nor are they overly interested in doing so. It’s the songs that matter, man.

And that’s why Creedence Clearwater Revival, or Creedence, or CCR, or whatever your pet name might be for them, are still a mainstay of American rock and roll after all these years. They hit on a common chord in the American psyche, some sort of racial history rooted in the blues, the swamp, the bayou, that mythical arena of arenas where everybody shares some common ground, regardless from where they hail. The members of Creedence were from the San Francisco Bay area, not the bayou swamps they made the personification of America. They nonetheless tapped into a spirit that was uniquely American—the same restless force that birthed the blues, country and western and even rock and roll. What they pulled out of that was a distillation of where American rock began, and a portent of where it was going.

Forty years after the debut of CCR’s debut, Fantasy Records (now under the auspices of Concord Music Group) has released the six albums that comprised their career as a quartet. In essence, it’s a complete Creedence Clearwater Revival collection. Granted, there was one more album, Mardi Gras, but it hardly represents the canon of the band—the band was splintered by infighting, and Tom Fogerty had left the band, reducing them to a trio that was bored with each other. And it showed in that final effort—it was a critical and popular flop, and it was the end of CCR. All good things come to an end.

But the six albums Creedence released at a breakneck pace from 1968-70 earned the band, and particularly John Fogerty, a lofty place in rock history. The band’s eponymously titled debut, propelled by their hit version of Dale Hawkins’ “Suzie Q,” launched them into stratospheric fame, missing Billboard’s Top Ten by one point. Another cover, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” introduced thousands of suburban kids (myself included) to a grittier, darker bayou sound, and prompted us into an investigation of the roots of the sound that CCR espoused. Another highlight of the debut is “Porterville,” a song Fogerty had written some years earlier, and considers his first “real” composition.

What makes this freshman effort important is it marks a departure, and a transition, in rock’s late adolescence from flower power to more of an everyman experience. Creedence was a band that had spent years (in various incarnations) honing their craft in clubs and bars. In the process, they built their own version of rock mythology, one more closely aligned to bar patrons than making social statements. The album largely reflects the values of a working band stretching their wings. The 40th anniversary edition of Creedence Clearwater Revival is a noteworthy remaster of the debut album, containing four bonus tracks, including “Call It Pretending” (the B-side of the band’s first single), their first recording of Bo Diddley’s “Before You Accuse Me” (found later on Cosmo’s Factory), as well as live versions of “Ninety-Nine and a Half” and “Suzie Q.” Former Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres, wrote the booklet notes, which also includes reproductions of the singles’ package art, and photos of the band at the time.

As auspicious as the debut was, “Suzie Q” barely missed cracking the Billboard’s Top Ten, topping at #11, and the second single never made the Top 40. It wasn’t until the dying days of 1968, when the band released “Proud Mary,” and its B-side “Born On the Bayou,” that the band exploded on the scene. Released in advance of the band’s sophomore album release Bayou Country, the single was a smash hit, and inspired countless covers. No less a personage than Bob Dylan declared it his favorite record of the year. Creedence were suddenly stars, and Bayou Country went platinum. The British Invasion and psychedelica were effectively demolished.

Bayou Country was more than CCR’s first major hit—as San Francisco Chronicle critic Joel Selvin says in the notes that accompany the reissue, “it announced Creedence Clearwater as a bright, vital force in rock and staked a place for what was yet to come.” Creedence had created a sound that was born of a mythical south that never existed, but resonated with the romance of a Mark Twain novel combined with a vaguely outlaw spirit. Besides Selvin’s illustrated notes, the reissue includes an extended take of the jam “Bootleg,” more definitive of the Creedence sound. It also features versions of “Born on the Bayou” and “Proud Mary” from the band’s farewell 1971 European tour. By this time, Tom Fogerty had left the band, and these recordings are interesting historically, showing a band on the verge of dissolving. While those performances represent a shadow of the band at its prime, the 1969 live jam “Crazy Otto” displays the band at its most playful.

Bayou Country showed CCR were no one hit wonder—they knew how to work a room, and they were on a roll. They released two more albums in 1969. Green River debuted in August of that year, and its title track was an instant radio hit. It also yielded “Bad Moon Rising,” which has gone on to be the unofficial theme song of every vampire and werewolf movie made since the eighties. Taken in context, though, the album shows a band restless to be more than a Top 40 band, hiding relevance in catchy tunes. That sentiment is most eloquently expressed in “Lodi,” about a singer who barely missed his gold ring.

Green River illustrated Creedence’s greatest strengths, and it also showed some of its insecurities. They were a bar band made good, after all, and they knew how to rock a room. “Commotion” and their cover of Ray Charles’ “Night Time Is the Right Time” prove that. But the band had also begun to resort to filler, and some of the lesser known tracks are more rambling blues jams at best. The bonus tracks on this reissue seem thrown together, consisting of two unfinished jams, and three uninspired live performances (as a trio) from their 1971 farewell tour. Dave Marsh, of Rolling Stone fame, provides the liner notes.

Willie and the Poor Boys, released later the same year, further solidified CCR’s standing as the hit machine of the time. More importantly, it placed the band in the center of the social upheaval of 1969. “Fortunate Son” wasn’t an anti-Viet Nam war song so much as it was a diatribe against the machinations of wealth pitted against the powerless who served in the war. It was one of the few times that CCR was overtly political, and it’s relevant to this day. “Down on the Corner,” the hit that details the everyday routine of the mythical Willie and the Poor Boys is also a sort of an origin story of CCR, and a tribute to American working bands. These two songs alone would make the album noteworthy, but it’s also a more sure-footed album than Green River, and includes polished covers of blues classics “Midnight Special” and “Cotton Fields.” Bonus tracks include previously unreleased live performances of “Fortunate Son” and “It Came Out of the Sky”, both from the 1971 European farewell tour. As other performances from that tour, they’re rather flat. But the live version of “Down on the Corner” from a jam session Creedence did with Booker T. & the MG’s in 1970 more than makes up for those shortcomings. Liner notes are by NYT contributor Ed Ward.

Cosmo’s Factory was released in August 1970, and it was the biggest, and arguably the best, of the five consecutive Top Ten albums the band released between 1969 and 1970. Two singles in advance of the album’s release had already generated the requisite buzz for its success—“Travelin’ Band/”Who’ll Stop the Rain?” had been released in January, and “Up Around the Bend” followed in April. Cosmo’s Factory is, by any standards, one of the essential rock albums. It encompasses all the elements by which rock lives in one masterpiece. It seamlessly pays homage to rockabilly, blues, country and soul, melding the genres into something that sounded unique. It certainly contained some of their biggest FM hits—“Run Through the Jungle,” “Lookin’ Out My Back Door,” “Who’ll Stop the Rain?” and their signature cover of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard it Though the Grapevine.” The reissue also features three bonus tracks—a bare-bones take of “Travelin’ Band,” with no horns overdubs, a live version of “Up Around the Bend” from the 1971 European tour (Could they be thinking of releasing this performance as a future album?), and an unreleased version of “Born on the Bayou,” recorded with Booker T. and the MGs. Legendary Village Voice critic Robert Christgau provides the liner notes.

By 1970, Creedence was the best-selling band in the world, surpassing even the Beatles. If Cosmo’s Factory was CCR’s White Album, its successor, Pendulum, was certainly their Let It Be. The band was imploding, with the other three members rebelling against John Fogerty’s autonomy, insisting they should share some writing credits. He finally agreed, and Pendulum would be the last Creedence album he produced. It’s a disjointed affair, with band members laying down their parts remote from one another. Even at that, it produced two last gasp hits for the band—“Hey Tonight” and “Have You ever Seen the Rain?”. For the most part, though, the internal tensions of the band can almost be felt—it’s as though they’re phoning in the performances, and, in many ways, they actually were. Tom Fogerty left the band two months after Pendulum’s release, effectively ending Creedence Clearwater Revival as we think of them. While the remaining members would release one more album, Mardi Gras, it was a critical and commercial failure.

The bonus tracks on the reissue of Pendulum are lackluster, consisting of “45 Revolutions Per Minute (Parts 1 & 2)”, a promotional single that hyped Creedence’s popularity, and compared them to the Beatles. It’s a satire of “Revolution No. 9” that doesn’t quite work. The other bonus is a previously unreleased live version of “Hey Tonight,” recorded during --are your ready?—the 1971 European final tour. Joel Selvin returns to pen the liner notes.

The Creedence Clearwater Revival 40th Anniversary reissues are a handsome collection, with packaging that reproduces, as nearly as a CD can, the cover art of the original vinyl editions. The supplemental material accompanying each disc enhances the historical significance of the band’s short career, and the remastered sound is flawless. Though a case could be made for packaging the reissues as a boxed set, hearing them as individual works, and savoring them in the context of the time they were released is more satisfying. Creedence was a band based on individual songs, not concepts. They had no pretensions to art, and it’s only in retrospect that we realize their importance in the rock canon. Creedence and their mythical American South paved the way for Springsteen’s equally mythical Jersey. Mellencamp’s Midwest and countless other bands still sweating it out every night in seedy rock and roll bars.

It’s about the song, after all.

Crash Is Only a Fender Bender

Nothing is random in the universe. Molecules collide and interact constantly, shaping events in a dance that’s anything but haphazard in retrospect. The film Crash personified that motif as it detailed how seemingly unrelated lives intersect in utterly unexpected ways. In the process, it examined the prejudices that quietly shape us as individuals. It was a quiet film, unsettling in its pedestrian pacing. It went on to win the 2005 Best Picture Oscar. While a case could be made that Crash won by default, cancelling out the achievements of its competition, which included Brokeback Mountain, Munich, Good Night and Good Luck and Capote, the fact remains that Crash took a fresh, if sometimes heavy-handed look at the subtleties of the prejudices that divide us.

With its ensemble cast and intersecting storylines, Crash often played like a TV episode. In fact, it was originally envisioned as a TV series before it became a movie. As cable network Starz’s first foray into original programming, Crash has come full circle.

Sorta.

Starz touts Crash the TV series as a groundbreaking entry exploring similar themes as the original movie, but nothing in the first two episodes quite connects. In fact, there’s little that compels the viewer to care overmuch as to how the various plotlines might eventually connect. The characters here, by and large, are unsympathetic, propelled by cliché devices that hardly lend any credence to the notion we’re all connected. Dennis Hopper, as wacked out, over the hill and over the top record producer Ben Cendars, appears to be the centerpiece character of this hodgepodge. The first episode opens with him exposing himself to his female driver, while muttering Greecian-inspired, albeit incoherent, poetry. It then cuts to a soft focus sex scene—you know, the kind that shows nothing, but places the curves where the imagination fills in the blanks—which introduces us to the obligatory tainted cops in the series. From there, we cut to the Brentwood home of a real estate developer for whom things are not going well. His wife is going through a midlife crisis, while still trying to maintain their lifestyle. To top it all, her father has a choking problem in the middle of dinner. The EMT in the ambulance happens to be a Korean who has a Korean gang past.

It’s not so much that these characters don’t have the potential to be compelling. But they’re drawn so broadly, and their situations so irrelevant to Reality As We Know it, it’s hard to sympathize with any of the principals. Admittedly, Crash the movie had only about two hours to make its point. As a TV series committed to thirteen episode, it can move at a more leisurely pace. That being said, the fact remains that it’s essential to grab the viewer within the first ten minutes of the pilot. With the first ten minutes of Crash, we got bad poetry and masturbation. By the end of the second episode, we got requisite bad cops and A Streetcar Named Desire pleas to illicit lovers. If Starz wants to be a player in premium cable original programming, it’s going to have to pick up the pace.

You can see the first two episodes of Crash here. It’s also playing throughout the month on both Starz and its sister network, Encore.

The Last Enemy: A Future That Feels like the Present

If you think you’re being watched, you’re not paranoid. If you know you’re being watched, you’re a realist. In our digital world, every move you make is being tracked by somebody who laughs at the notion that crosscut paper shredders enhance out personal security. In a universe of 1’s and 0’s, paper trails are replaced by bits and bytes colliding in cyberspace. You’re being watched all the time, from red light cameras to surveillance systems that rival Vegas planted in your neighborhood grocery to instantly accessible street view pictures of your domicile to every yahoo with a cell phone.

The Last Enemy, the debut entry of Masterpiece Contemporary (premiering on PBS Sunday 5 October, 9P EST) is a chilling, all too real cautionary tale about our devotion to security at the cost of personal identity. Originally broadcast earlier this year on BBC, the five-part miniseries is theoretically set in a near future, but its theme of a society underscored by personal surveillance strikes unnervingly close to home.

Stephen Ezard (Benedict Cumberbatch, Atonement) returns to Britain from a four year stint in China, where he was researching the mathematical structure of the Universe, to attend his brother Michael’s (Max Beesley) funeral. Michael was apparently killed in a roadside bomb n Afghanistan, and to Stephen’s surprise, he’s mourned by numerous acquaintances due to his relief work in the region. Even more surprising to Stephen is that he finds himself in an affair with his brother’s widow, Yasim (Anamaria Marinca) the same night. He was late for the funeral—she didn’t attend it.

If all that sounds a bit convoluted and more than a little murky, it’s because it is. It’s also the foundation around which most of the events in The Last Enemy revolve. Stephen is a stranger in his own land, which has instituted more stringent surveillance on its citizenry after a terrorist attack on London. He barely recognizes the England he left years ago, rife as it is with biometric ID cards, security cameras virtually everywhere, and the implementation of the “Total Information Awareness” program, which gives the government unfettered access to personal data of every citizen. It isn’t long , however, that Stephen finds himself the media spokesman for TIA.

In the first episode, the viewer may come away feeling as confused as Stephen Ezard. He’s reintroduced to an old college flame, Elinor Brooke (Eva Birthistle, The State Within), who is now the minister responsible for pushing through Parliament. He’s also kidnapped and terrorized by a rogue government agent played by David Carlyle (The Full Monty), determined that the bewildered Ezard knows all about a conspiracy.

The Last Enemy looks at the side effects of a society trading personal freedoms in favor of heightened security, and the corruption that inevitably ensues when bureaucrats are imbued with power owing as much to corporate interests as it does to national security. In the end, it asks if the individual must be trampled, revealed as “the last enemy” of a secure state.

Throughout the miniseries, The Last Enemy holds that proposition close to its sleeve, and forces us to look at our willingness to sacrifice personal liberties in the name of the State’s greater good. That it does so as a taut, action-mystery only enhances its message. It's to writer Peter Berry's (Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness) that it's a tale that is so in tune with reality that it never comes off as obvious. In fact, nothing is as it seems at first glance. It’s not a series to watch casually, requiring the viewer pay attention to the clues it drops haphazardly along the way. But for the viewer willing to invest five and a half hours to unravel its mystery, it’s ultimately a satisfying, if often unsettling, experience.

Dexter in Decline?

Watching the season opener of Dexter, I couldn’t escape the feeling the series has settled into a state of complacency. In the first season of the series, we had a dark antihero dispensing unholy retribution to those who had escaped justice by slipping through cracks in the justice system. Dexter was almost a merry prankster of mayhem in those days, slicing and dicing evildoers with elfin abandon by night, and dispensing doughnuts to his coworkers at the Miami police department by day. We liked the guy, and it was all so deliciously silly, we didn’t mind a bit that he was a serial killer, albeit a serial killer who only preyed on other killers.

The second season of Dexter was a little more complex, as Dex realized that he wasn’t as emotionless as he thought he was, and he discovered that he liked girls after all. The fact that the pieces of his victims were inadvertently discovered by treasure seeking divers off the Miami coast complicated his dreamy world, of course, but only in the smallest way. Dexter was still operating under Harry’s Code, even after he realized that most of it was based on a lie his adopted father had perpetuated. Dexter emerged unscathed, though, as we knew he would all along. Sure, it cost some lives, most notably his nemesis Doakes, and it caused him to reexamine the Code. But what mattered was that Dexter had affirmed himself as no longer a student, but a master of dealing out death to the deserving.

“Our Father.” the season premiere of Dexter, is essentially Dexter telling his dentist how he spent his summer vacation. It’s darkly comic, of course—he went to the carnival, which was a secret killing ground for a child predator. His relationship with Rita has blossomed apparently, with sex being an overriding factor. In fact, most of the time we see Dexter and Rita together, they’re doing the nasty. He’s also settled into the role of surrogate father with Rita’s kids. It’s almost a Leave It to Beaver lifestyle they have, sans the June Cleever pearl necklace. (Come to think of it, nobody ever knew exactly what it was that Ward did when he left their cozy suburban home.)

We do know what happens when Dexter leaves the house. When he goes to delete a drug dealer who got away with murder years before, things go horribly wrong. The dealer gets away, and Dexter ends up in a struggle with a person who wasn’t supposed to be there. It’s a battle involving a knife, with predictable results. Dexter, in his very personal view of ethics, grapples with the fact he’s killed somebody without knowing if they met the criteria of Harry’s Code.
And in his twisted logic, he begins investigating his latest victim, mostly to justify his killing.

Complicating matters is the fact that his victim appeared to be a community activist, who also happened to be the brother of renowned prosecutor Cuban immigrant and ambitious Assistant District Attorney Miguel Prado (Jimmy Smits). who also happens to be an old flame of Lt. LaGuerta (Lauren Velez) Thus is the cat and mouse game established for the season.

Admittedly, I’ve only seen the first episode of the new season, and I’ve been watching Dexter from the beginning. Maybe that’s part of the reason I can’t escape the feeling I’ve seen this before. Deb is vying for a promotion, and she’s involved with wrong guy once again (this time a fellow cop being investigated by IA), oh—and she got a haircut. Angel has been promoted to Detective Sergeant, filling the void left by Doaks’s death. The ghost of Harry is still influencing Dexter’s actions, regardless of how he proclaims himself the new master. And Dexter is still adhering to the first rule of Harry’s Code: don’t get caughet.

Dexter’s producers have said the first season represented Dexter’s birth, the second season his adolescence and the current season his adulthood, Umm, okay. My question is, does adulthood also represent a realization of mortality? All good things come to an end, and while I want to believe that Dexter has a lot of surprises in store, my gut feeling is that this will be its last season. And I’m hoping it goes out in a blaze of glory.