Tag: review

Review: The Stringer graphic novel

Mark Scribner

StringerThe details about the declining US press are so accurate. You might think that the graphic novel The Stringer was a piece of nonfiction. Surely writer Ted Rall has captured the essence of newsrooms experiencing severe budget and layoffs.

As the publisher’s description notes, “veteran war correspondent Mark Scribner is about to throw in the towel on journalism when he discovers that his hard-earned knowledge can save his career and make him wealthy and famous.” All he has to do is reframe his entire journalistic ethos.

The title, incidentally, describes “a newspaper correspondent not on the regular staff of a newspaper, especially one retained on a part-time basis to report on events in a particular place.” They are generally poorly paid, with little or, usually no job benefits or security.

The Stringer shows how “fact-based journalism,” which means reporters on the ground, has often taken a hit. What’s more important in an age of social media, is to get eyeballs to view your “content” on social media. It might make someone rich and famous but at the potential cost of one’s soul.

Mark Scribner, as shown by Rall and Pablo Callejo, has figured out the system and how to game it. The book is an “action-packed timely statement about how a society without a vibrant independent culture of reporting can degenerate into chaos and a warning of the dangers of sophisticated new technologies that enable the manufacture and modification of ‘truths’ with no basis in fact.”

Would Bryan Cranston approve?

Some have compared Scribner to the Walter White character in the TV series Breaking Bad. He was once a decent person who, due to circumstances, ended up committing acts that he once could not have imagined doing. And cynically rationalizing it.

Publishing Weekly calls the conclusion “well-crafted overkill,” and I would agree, though I found Scribner more than “two-dimensional.”

Ted Rall is “a nationally syndicated political cartoonist, columnist, graphic novelist, editor, author, and occasional war correspondent.” Rall and Callejo have worked together previously on The Year of Loving Dangerously, a semi-autobiographical tale about getting booted out of college, then grifting.

The Stringer is available from NBM Publishing, Amazon, and Target.

Documentary movie review: Rewind

home videos

RewindSasha Joseph Neulinger dug through a ‘vast collection” of home videos. He reconstructed the “unthinkable story” of a child “and exposed the vile abuse passed through generations.” What is remarkable is that the abused child was Sasha Joseph Neulinger.

Rewind is a difficult film to watch. Yet it was not as awful as it might have been. Piers Marchant of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette nails it. “The old footage of Sasha clearly cracking under the strain of his family’s betrayal contrasts poignantly with the strong, centered man he has become.” Making a movie as therapy, perhaps.

It is also a fascinating story about memory – what you remember, what you – possibly necessarily – forget. Indeed, there is a bit of the investigative reporter in Neulinger. He interviews his parents, psychiatrists, prosecutors, and the police to fill in the gaps in his memory. In doing so, he “builds a disturbingly precise picture, conveying both the cyclical nature of such secret horrors and the difficulty in prosecuting cases that involve children.”

There is a small piece of this tale I do vaguely recall because it involved a somewhat prominent person. Not incidentally, we discover yet again that the criminal justice mechanism is not always a level playing field.

Young Sasha was clearly pained in the home videos, but it was unclear to his mother why. What makes this tolerable to watch is the adult Sasha, who takes an almost arm’s length investigatory role. Despite the subject matter, Rewind isn’t salacious or grubby.

And – not really a spoiler – adult Sasha is OK, even thriving, and apparently not bitter. He has a new name and a mission to try to help others who were in the position he was in.

The 44 reviewers from Rotten Tomatoes all gave this documentary a thumbs up. I would thoroughly agree.

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart

How can you stop the rain from falling down?

How Can You Mend a Broken HeartBarry Gibb says he can’t watch the entirety of the documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart. He told CBS News’ Anthony Mason, “I think it’s perfectly normal to not want to see how each brother was lost, you know?”

But you should. I saw it on HBO last month. The film was directed by Frank Marshall.

This is the story of Barry (b. 1946) and his fraternal twin brothers Robin and Maurice (b. 1949), who lived in Manchester, England. They were more like triplets, Barry said, listening to the same music and by 1955, singing together. The family moved to Queensland, Australia, where they achieved their first chart success with Spicks and Specks, their 12th single.

They returned to the UK in January 1967. Producer Robert Stigwood began promoting them to a worldwide audience. They wrote and sang a series of hits, including To Love Somebody, Words, Massachusetts, and I’ve Got To Get a Message to You. But fame is not forever, and their excess lifestyles caused division in the trio.

461 Ocean Boulevard

A change in venues, to Miami, and the right compatriots, got them back on track. In fact, they lived at the same location that Eric Clapton had stayed when he created his “comeback” album, 461 Ocean Boulevard.

They created the Main Course collection, with the hit Jive Talking. Then the enormous, and unexpected success of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. And, coming along as a complementary artist, was baby brother, Andy Gibb (b. 1958), with hits of his own.

As dance music was co-opted, and pale imitations of it were created – think Disco Duck – a backlash ensued. It was epitomized by Disco Demolition Night, a Major League Baseball promotion on Thursday, July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

One of the ushers recalled that there were LPs of several non-disco black artists, such as Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, and Stevie Wonder among the recording to be destroyed. The fans rioted during the event, and the White Sox ended up having to forfeit the second game of the doubleheader.

This time of changing fortunes, the brothers were able to pivot to becoming primarily songwriters, for Barbra, Celine, Diana, Dionne, Dolly, and Kenny, among others. This allowed them room to reach their next act in their careers. It was supposed to be with Andy Gibb as an official member of the Bee Gees. Unfortunately, he died on 10 March 1988, at the age of 30, as a result of an inflammation of the heart muscle.

Barry, by himself

Then Maurice, the chief negotiator between Barry and Robin, died unexpectedly on 12 January 2003, at the age of 53. He suffered a heart attack while awaiting emergency surgery to repair a strangulated intestine.

The surviving brothers bounced between solo gigs and the occasional duet. Late in 2011, it was announced that Robin Gibb had been diagnosed with liver cancer, which he had known about for several months. He died on 20 May 2012 of liver and kidney failure. He was 62.

The Bee Gees, though in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 1997, has been, to my mind, undervalued and unnecessarily vilified. Their resilience and reinvention over the decades alone are praiseworthy. Recorded music they’ve performed and/or written is in the hundreds of millions of units.

The documentary had a few new insightful interviews with other artists. Eric Clapton was also signed to Stigwood. Nick Jonas and Oasis’ Noel Gallagher amplified the tricky balance of performing with one’s brothers.

Barry is still performing and recording. But he noted that he’d give up all the fame if he could have his brothers back. How Can You Mend a Broken Heart indeed?

“I can think of younger days when living for my life
Was everything a man could want to do
I could never see tomorrow, but I was never told about the sorrow.”

Movie review: Blow The Man Down

Greek chorus

Blow the Man DownThe movie Blow The Man Down begins with David Coffin and other men singing the title song. You may know the tune from Popeye cartoons. The singers are a Greek chorus of sorts, I suppose. I enjoyed them quite a lot.

The story proper begins with the funeral of Mary Margaret Connolly in Easter, Cove, Maine. She had two adult daughters, Priscilla (Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor). The mom had three good friends Susie (June Squibb), Doreen (Marceline Hugot), and Gail (Annette O’Toole) who say they’ll be there for the daughters.

Part of the trio’s mission is to change the profile of the local, er, B and B, run by their former colleague, Enid Nora Devlin (Margo Martindale). The proprietor seems disinclined.

Meanwhile, a murdered body washes up on the shore. Officer Coletti (Skipp Sudduth) and his younger, more eager colleague, Officer Justin Brennan (Will Brittain) are investigating the homicide.

That’s all I’ll say about the plot. The story was written and directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy.

Satisfaction

Leonard Maltin’s observations seem applicable. “Blow the Man Down hasn’t great ambitions but fulfills its modest goals nicely. It’s well worth streaming, especially if you have a cup of chowder handy.” In fact, 98% of the critics gave the film a thumbs up, ranking #29 on the Rotten Tomatoes list for 2020.

General audiences were a bit more critical, with 75% liking it. Some found it too slow, or too much like Fargo. A few complained about the resolution; I thought it was one of the best elements. Others didn’t like the singing fishermen, for which I say, FIE!

Maybe it is that I am particularly fascinated with family secrets, many of which do not come to light until after someone dies. This narrative felt emotionally true for me.

I’ve liked June Squibb ever since I saw her in the movie Nebraska back in 2014. But the scene-stealer in this film is Margo Martindale, who is the focus of every scene she’s in.

I watched Blow the Man Down on Amazon Prime.

Graphic novel: Michael Jackson in Comics

as talented as he was eccentric

Michael Jackson in ComicsA friend of mine provided me with a digital version of Michael Jackson in Comics, a 190-page item from NBM Graphic Novels, officially released on February 12. Conceptually, I liked the idea of a narrative, broken up by various artists showing bits of the story.

It’s interesting to me that I actually knew a fair amount of the Michael Jackson story beforehand. I was familiar with his abusively controlling father, Joe trying to whip the Jackson 5 into shape. Like millions, I watched the 25th anniversary of Motown, when he debuted the moonwalk. But I had forgotten about his friendship with young Ryan White, who had become the face of HIV/AIDS in America.

Specifically, I wrote a paper in library school about how MTV didn’t allow black artists on the channel until the Columbia/Epic label threatened to pull ALL of their artists. Now, it’s hard to think of MTV without the videos from the Thriller album.

But the writer gingerly deals with the more “wacko” elements, such as his surgeries, his children, and the allegations of abusing young boys. Clearly, he believes Michael’s versions of the stories or thinks we just don’t know the facts.

The graphic pieces, done in the many styles, I enjoyed, for the most part. I preferred the pieces that actually expressed a point of view, rather than merely restating what was in the text. In particular, I thought Vox’s The Man With the White Socks, about a goofy fan, was a bit humorous.

Prolific

I take it that someone named Céka wrote both the text and scripted biography. He’s noted on Amazon as “also the author of the Rolling Stones in Comics. Formerly a copywriter in advertising, he has scripted over 30 graphic novels.”

The narrative is much better with the art. While some of the text was necessary, especially in the beginning and the very end, the story got very repetitive. If those text sections were edited down by about 50%, it would be a much better collection.

Moreover, he tended to use a lot of exclamation marks unnecessarily! And whoever did the layout would put hyphens to break up words in a most bizarre way! Mon-ths, for instance!

MJ was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Twice in five years. As the introduction to Michael Jackson in Comics notes, well beyond his passing in 2009, he “remains one of the most adulated and mysterious stars in the world.” I expect that is still true.

“Incredible singer, brilliant musician, amazing performer, he was just as talented as he was eccentric, adored as well as reviled with sordid accusations, sadly caught between a stolen childhood and a suffocating star system.”

Ramblin' with Roger
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