FLIX MIX Vol. 1

Welcome to the first volume of a weekly offering from FLIX AND FOOD. From the most sweeping orchestral scores, to the cheesiest synth-based oddities, FLIX MIXES is your  gateway to the sounds of celluloid and television.

FLIX MIX Vol. 1 by Flix Mixes on Mixcloud

This weeks playlist -
01 - Jerry Goldsmith - Hyper Sleep - from ALIEN
02 - Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Exodus From The Underground - from AKIRA
03 - Lalo Schiffrin - Chase to the Convent - from THE 4 MUSKETEERS
04 - Acanthus - Drunk With Carnage/Isabelle's Demise - from LE FRISSON DES VAMPIRES
06 - John Williams- Into the Estuary - from JAWS
07 - Bernard Hoffer - Battle in the Sky - from THE THUNDERCATS
08 - Jon Brion - Zombie Attacks in the Eighties - from PARANORMAN
09 - Adriana Caselotti - Someday My Prince Will Come - from SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES
10 - Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe - Mel-On-Cholly - from MEGAMIND
11 -Falling in Blue - Swing Girls - from SWING GIRLS
12 - Simon Boswell - Crossing The Border - from PERDITA DURANGO
13 - Stelvio Cipriani - Titoli - from LA POLIZIA STA A GAURDARE
14 - Riichiro Manabe - Abominable Blood - from THE LAKE OF DRACULA
15 - Akira Ifukube - Deformed Juvenile Vagrant - from FRANKENSTEIN VS. BARUGON
16 - John Barry - Waterfall - from KING KONG '76

See ya next Sunday with Vol. 2!!! 

HIT SO HARD Is Both A Back Slapping And Back Biting Ego Fest

Full disclosure here: I bought the debut HOLE album "Pretty On The Inside" back when it was first released. Being a fan and very early supporter of the Seattle scene, I was anxious to hear what Bay Area ex-patriot Courtney Love and her half LA-based half Seattle-based band sounded like. Truthfully, I came away far less than impressed. I was also a professional recording/gigging musician at the time, with very close ties to bands like THE MELVINS (who my then band SACRILEGE BC played with when we would tour in the Northwest area), CLOWN ALLEY, whose two core members Mark Duetrom and Lori Black would both eventually take their respective turns at holding down bass duties for Buzz and Co. (Mark also produced the SACRILEGE BC album "Party WIth God" when we were all on Alchemy Records, musical incest was rife in our scene), after THE MELVINS' original bassist Matt Lukin stayed home to form MUDHONEY while THE MELVINS moved to San Francisco. Buuuut that's a whole other life and another story completely. Let's just say I already had a love and an insiders knowledge of what was going on during that time in "the scene", even from my vantage point in the suburban refinery town of Martinez, CA, which was a few miles from the East Bay area of Oakland/Berkeley.

That said, I always welcome a chance to go back and flesh out the history I was lucky enough to share with many who are considered "legends" now. Comparing the romanticized history to the actual truth can be a tricky and subjective thing as well, with many not-so-talented artists reaping a status they don't necessarily deserve in a creative sense, while many other more deserving individuals and bands go by the wayside (see: VICTIMS FAMILY, a proto prog-punk act also from the Bay Area...oh, never heard of them? Check them out HERE). This semi-embittered diatribe brings me to HIT SO HARD, the documentary supposedly about Patty Schemel, the original drummer for HOLE.

First off, the first half of this film should be called KURT COBAIN'S FRIEND PATTY, since a huge part of the film is home video footage of the NIRVANA frontman hanging out with his family and small group of friends. It comes off like everything and everyone in the initial wave of grunge (ugh, that media term still makes me shiver with disgust...it was always plain old hard rock to me, no matter how it was dressed up) defers to Mr. Cobain. Sure, the dude wrote pointed, scathing, and admittedly clever lyrics, and he was incredibly deft at marrying those to hook laden riffs and melodies...but so were American hard rock pioneers CHEAP TRICK, who had been subverting their hesher audiences for years with well concealed irony, and arrows of clever sarcasm aimed directly at a large number of their listeners.

When it finally gets around to Patty and her drumming, I had trouble not rolling my eyes. Her peers (most of them hackneyed pseudo musicians themselves, commercial success not withstanding) and Patty herself fawn over her skills. Sorry folks, but as Billy Corgan so brilliantly said "Shitty is not an aesthetic", and when these statements and outbursts of humble-shrouded ego are coupled with footage of Patty's playing, which is hamfisted and grooveless, it kind of makes my blood boil.
The other female drummers they have on camera, like Gina Shock from the GO-GO's who tout Patty, only add to my argument. Shitty musicians complimenting and stroking other shitty musicians...it makes me want to barf. You want good female drummers? Check out Sheila E. doing a drum solo that would shame most male drum gods HERE, and leave the Mo Tuckers and others of her ilk to the sexist apologists. I'm sorry, but we had a saying in the rehearsal room, "Shit in equals shit out" meaning, well simply put, shit is shit no matter what it's wearing,  what it smells like, or what's between it's legs.

When it seems like the heights of delusional, self-congratulatory dialog can get no higher here comes Courtney Love. Do I even have to go there with quotes? No. The footage of her lackluster and forced knocking over of mic stands onstage and posturing in her baby doll dresses, while giggling, is insulting to anyone who has really taken it there as far as getting their anger out in an artistic sense. This is not cathartic release, it's self-serving and self impressed posing. Again, sorry, but "shit in equals shit out".  So when she starts running her mouth it's hard not to embrace a MENTORS like attitude. She of course keeps making it about herself, and at one point in not-so-passive-aggresive fashion claims that the only people who "get her" are women, gay men, and "evolved males, the few there are". Uh, no. Keep telling yourself that, I personally believe it's the fact that many male rock fans, with pent up angst, tend to see through the bullshit, and would rather engage with an act that doesn't attack them simply for being men. It's the flip-side of the sexist coin. Don't assume you are being maligned, especially in a musical sense, because you are female. In the case of Miss Love, it's merely because her music sucks. Thank you very much. Her grab at street cred, and bragging about having "a lesbian drummer" is the piss flavored icing on her nasty ass cake too. Really? Wow, ok. SO we're going to be that much of a hypocrite, and believe that someones gender preference makes them a better musician and more desirable as a band member? Give me a fucking break!

Now, see? HIT SO HARD spends so much of it's time meandering between bragging and shit talking, that it's a little difficult really getting to know Patty (who despite her lack of talent and over-abundance of musical confidence, does actually seem like a nice enough person, and is undeniably a survivor, even though the "Live Through This" chapters in her life were all self-imposed), which is an issue I lay at the feet of director P. David Ebersole.

There, however, were a couple of true voices of reason in the picture. Patty's mother, who comes off incredibly loving, and admirable, especially when recounting her daughters coming out as a teenager. A feat in itself, because of the area and community she comes from in the more rural and back-asswards area of Washington state, Marysville. For me, this is where the heart of the film lays. The other, to my surprise, is Mellisa Auf De Mer, the well bred replacement for HOLE's original bassist, Kristan Pfaff, another OD casualty of the heroin infested Seattle scene of that time. The fact that Pfaff died the month after Cobain isn't only sad, it's disgustingly telling of the self-centerdness of these people, who believed they were above it all in some way, and bought into the notion of being romantically wasted. In contrast, De Mer, who was very young when she joined the tumultuous band, exudes honesty, and a modicum of class missing from the rest of HIT SO HARD.

To be fair, when the film gets into Patty's descent into crack cocaine, and recounts her time living homeless in Seattle, the films tone shifts to something more real, and as a retired musician myself who has many aged out peers still trying to grab the brass ring (which honestly told, is a myth anyway) when they should be living their lives, my disgust ironically receded. Her survival of that situation, and the fact she got her shit together brought me the respect the film asks the viewer to have for her. Not her friendship with Cobain, not her drumming, not the fact she went through hell being gay in a town full of asshole hicks. Also, watching her teach drums to other young girls (though I shiver at what they AREN'T learning) is a constructive and kind of wonderful thing.

Is HIT SO HARD a good documentary? Hmmm. Well, putting my personal misgivings about the level of talent, and its lack thereof, being heralded here, and the whining of First World Problems from privileged white  people, female or not, I am guilty of being entertained by the train wreck. But, also, in the end it was indeed nice to see the Phoenix-esque resurrection of Patty The Human Being, and her ability to stay sober and put her life back together, which now seems much more normal and sane sans the drugs and rock music. It ends with her and her doggie day care business, which is now her life. Some of the more talented musicians I know (many of whom you've heard of if you listen to metal/punk/or alternative music) could take a clue from their less gifted counterpart.

As a documentary, HIT SO HARD was a mixed bag for me. Three parts annoying, two parts, aggravating, one part inspiring, but all things said, I watched the entire thing, and was entertained in a tawdry reality tv kind of way.

Serve with -
Spaghetti-O cheeseburgers
Lukewarm and flat Pabst Blue Ribbon
Bong resin

If you like HIT SO HARD, check out these other entertainments -
Another State Of Mind (classic old school punk documentary)
This Is Spinal Tap
Some Kind Of Monster (the sad Metallica doc that's actually funnier than Spinal Tap)
You're Gonna Miss Me (about Roky Erickson)
TAD: Busted Circuits, Ringing Ears

The First Time Ever I Saw - ALIEN

Any hardcore cinegeek knows that certain films are more than just things we love, and have set in some nostalgic and romanticized mental time-capsule. No. Sometimes a certain flick will resonate so hard it actually becomes a sense memory, and the mere mention of it takes us back to a specific moment in time, with almost absurd clarity.

 

Now with the impending release of Alien: Isolation, the videogame that looks to have finally nailed the tone of the original film (we shall see!) there is activity on the Nostromo once again, making me feel the undeniably intense thrum of my past, so I thought it would be a good time to take a trip down memory lane and revisit the film that started the rumbling in the first place, Ridley Scott's Alien, the mega-classic, which attached itself like a Facehugger to my little psyche when I first saw it 35 years ago.

Woah. 35 years ago.

Now, jump in the Wayback Machine with me and return to May 25th, 1979. It was a few days before my 12th birthday, I lived in Oakland, the only child of a single mom, and we didn't have a lot of money. Luckily, I was a cheap date, it was the release weekend for Alien, and all I wanted to do was get my butt into a seat opening day.

I was already years-deep in serious movie geekdom, and as versed in old school and (then) new school horror and sci-fi as anybody, trained by the best, a gang of Baltimore area film students, who got hold of me and warped my still-forming mind as a wee lad, when mom and I still lived back east. My "Uncle Woody" and "Uncle Steve" in particular were genre hounds, and dragged me (or was that the other way around?) to literally dozens of Johns Hopkins screenings by the time I was 5. So, Ray Harryhausen, Universal monsters, Roger Corman (both the atomic horrors and the Poe stuff), Godzilla, Hammer films, were all firmly on my list of favorite movies by the time this 12h birthday rolled around.

I was a Starlog magazine (RIP) reader too, and they had been running teasing little sidebars now and then on Alien, all of course meant to amplify the mystery behind the film, which was being kept way, way under wraps. My anticipation for the ambiguously titled film was at a fever pitch, when mom and I boarded the BART train in downtown Oakland, to make our way into Berkeley. My big Alien birthday started with hitting my favorite stop on telegraph Ave, Comics And Comix, where I picked up the graphic novel style adaption of the Dan O'Bannon screenplay, illustrated by Walt Simonson (who artist Frank Miller owes a huge part of his style too, in this nerd's opinion), as well as The Making Of Alien. The tie in books had just been laid out to coincide with the release in theaters that day, and I had a little scratch from my birthday money, so I immediately snapped them up. Here's where some of the sense memory kicks in: I also remember deliberating between the second Garfield book of collected comic strips, by Jim Davis, or H.P. Lovecraft's The Tomb And Other Tales (a British edition from Penguin). I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday but I can remember that. I chose Lovecraft, for the record.

After gearing up on swag, mom and I meandered up the Ave to Blondie's Pizza to eat (Alien birthday memory: two root beers, basic pepperoni slice, and then for my encore slice, I tried jalapeno's on a Hawaiian, copying the UCB student that was ordering ahead of me. Yes, I liked it.). As we sat and ate, I leafed through my new treasures, and immediately knew with excited certainty this was no goofy space opera. I flipped to the half page splash of the xenomorph attacking Dallas, in the comic, and immediately shut the book. OK. The tagline "In space no one can hear you scream" now made absolute sense. I played fair ball with myself (er, that sounds kinda wrong...), and held off spoiling anything further. I had just enough to go on. I would use the graphic adaption, and the Making Of book to re-savor the experience of the film at a later date, but not to spoil the sacred event before it even had a chance to happen. We wrapped up eating and took the leisurely stroll down from Telegraph to the Shattuck area through the UC Berkeley, which deposited us at California Theater, right off the campus border. The air was full of chirping birds, and the sound of the local Hendrix impersonator playing for change, up in the plaza. 100% Berkeley summer. Instead of enjoying it though, I hurried mom along, sure were weren't going to get good seats.

Strangely, when we got to the theater, there was no massive line like I had been expecting. I actually made the same mistake the year before, when we still lived in Chico, with Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. The nerd in me was always sure there was going to be another Star Wars-sized line for these films. I waited, camped out all night by the ticket booth, with an older-brother type, only to be rewarded by us being the first in a line that, well, never really formed. At least I made a new friend that night/next day...Miles Montalbano, another kid who thought the same thing, and later actually went onto to become a filmmaker himself, with the semi-recent indy Revolution Summer.

Sorry, I digress.

So, 45 minutes later, I'm sitting in the auditorium, and there are maybe 30 people in there with us. Granted, it was the first showing that Friday afternoon, and surely these people had not been eating up every little tidbit in Starlog and on morning TV, like Good Morning America. This was also the first time I sat a little away from my mom, loosing myself from her protective emotional tether that had seen me through screenings of movies such as The Exorcist, The Omen, and Jaws already. If I sat away, maybe it would be even scarier!

As the lights went down, and the California Theater's huge velvet curtain rolled back, magic took over for the next couple of hours. The amazing, and sparse, Jerry Goldsmith score rumbled as those amazing and delicate titles slowly spelled out A - L- I - E - N. That glorious pan of the massive space-faring oil rig The Nostromo, which seems to reference a shot of a certain Star Destroyer (cough Star Wars cough), tossing out the niceties of a pristine and clean Empire, instead hitting fans in the face with a big. dirty, lumbering vessel more fitting of a Gothic horror film than a "sci fi flick". The hypnotic opening of the Nostromo's lonely, seemingly deserted interior, and the reveal of the pristine white, almost heavenly chamber, where her crew slowly wake, being born back to consciousness. 

I was still expecting laser guns to possibly show up, as the crew of the Nostromo resumed their identities and roles on the ship. Pretty quickly though, it was apparent even to the 12 year old me that the gadgetry in Alien was going to be industrial based, and totally rational. I was all for it. Heck, I was the kid, who at the ripe age of 9 decided to correct Ray Bradbury of all people, at a lecture, when he called himself a science fiction writer. I raised my little hand and asked/stated "I thought you were a fantasy writer, because your rocket engines don't really work.", heh. While Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was still too intellectual for me. I'd tried twice at that point, when it played on a double bill with Westworld...it would take 4 more years and psychedelics to finally grasp that film for me, but that's another story! Still, I indeed craved a harder edge to the sci-fi stuff. It turned out, to my extreme joy that man oh man, Alien had that in spades. So, I settled into watch the cinematic successor to so much of the pulp sci-fi I'd already consumed (thanks for the tip off's through the years Uncle Forry!) come to life, at 24 frames per up on the massive California Theater 35mm screen, and walked back out into the still bright Berkeley summer day, a couple hours later, changed.

Like The Exorcist.

Like Jaws.

Like Jason And The Argonauts. 

Like The Omega Man.

Alien bore into me, attaching itself to my DNA, making me it's host-body, and me committing to that relationship for the duration of my puny human life.

I don't think I need to go into a blow-by-blow hash of the act of having my mind blown scene after scene, but that's how it went down. A weird aside though, I was strangely not scared of the film, while the adults around me were completely shaken, odder still in that I sat away, as I said, from my mothers protective maternal bubble, trying to increase the deliciousness of the terror I was sure was going to grip me. Nope. The 12 year old Big Boy Pants worked a little too well that day. I was however, moved to my core.

Later, as I got older, I started seeing the relation more clearly to the first Alien film, and things like H.P. Lovecraft's special brand of cosmic horror, and the phallic and vaginal sexual imagery in H.R. Giger's design work, which became more a pronounced, and obvious, the older (and hornier) I got. The one major thing about the film that may have been lost on me though, was how groundbreaking the Ripley role was. Heck, I even call those types of strong-survivor-female characters the "Ripley Role" now, especially if it's in the context of an action/sci-fi film. I was being raised by a woman, who happened to be the strongest person I knew, bar none. A female hero was no revelation to me, I lived with one.

And on my 12th birthday, she took me to see ALIEN for the first time.

Serve with -
Blondie's Pizza (if you live in Berkeley, CA...otherwise a decent peperoni and jalapeno slice will do)
Root beer
Hot buttered popcorn
Milk Duds
Jujyfruits

If you like ALIEN (and who the F*** doesn't???) check out these other entertainments -
Aliens (DVD)
Contamination (DVD and FullMoonStreaming)
Galaxy Of Terror (DVD and FullMoonStreaming)
Dark Horse Comics' many Alien related titles

LIFE ITSELF Is A Film Everyone Should Embrace

             

I think it's a sure thing everyone reading this blog is at least familiar with the name Roger Ebert. The Chicago Sun-Times critic, who along with another scribe from the competition across the street, Gene Siskel from the Chicago Tribune, ended up turning film critique into entertainment itself with their AT THE MOVIES /AND THE MOVIES show(s).
If for some reason you haven't owned a television since 1976, but you read, then you must know him as the author of numerous collections like GREAT MOVIES,  EBERT'S ESSENTIAL 27 MOVIES FROM THE DARKSIDE, and the hilariously honest I HATED, HATED, HATED YOUR MOVIE. The fact that he also wrote books like the traveling foot-trekkers THE PERFECT LONDON WALK, and the screenplay for the Russ Meyer classic BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS just argue for the point that this man deserves to be immortal. At least figuratively.

Sadly, no one lives forever.

Cancer took Ebert's lower jaw and part of his throat, leaving him unable to eat or speak. Supporting him in the on-going battle and supplying emotional strength was his wife Chaz. The documentary, by one of Ebert's favorite filmmakers, Steve James, whose HOOP DREAMS Ebert championed early on, follows the couple and and reflects both on Ebert's long running career as a film critic. and the family that surrounds him. James illuminates that acerbic yet tender relationship between Ebert and his proverbial other-half professionally speaking, Gene Siskel, and includes family and friends reflecting on their reluctant yet undeniable friendship. We see outtakes of their AT THE MOVIES tv ads, in which they snipe and poke at each other anytime one flubs a line or gives unwanted direction.  We also come to understand Ebert's sadness over never being told his cohort had an inoperable brain tumor, and the fact he was never able to properly express his love and say his final goodbyes. This led Ebert to deciding he was always going to be open should something like that happen to him. True to his word, regrettably, tragedy strikes in the form of cancer, yet Ebert indeed heads face forward into the situation, to the point of allowing photographs of himself post jaw-removing operation, which at first glimpse, can be very shocking.
This is where we truly begin to see the incredible spirit of Ebert, who approaches his life with as much unflinching honesty, and wonderful zeal, as he did his work in film criticism. We get to know a man who was born to the news business, and came up in a time when the print industry was full of hard writing and hard drinking journalists, who would pound down a handle of their favorite poison, then a scant few hours later be at their desks pounding out three thousand words, before repeating the process all over again. We also see a love story between a man and his profound love of art, be it cinema, literature, or even food.
LIFE ITSELF, under James' masterful eye for honesty and the profound, is a deep gazing, deft look at an incrdibly multi-layered life. Thanks to the tenacity and strength and closeness of the Ebert family, LIFE ITSELF also avoids being a maudlin, tear jerking exercise in tragedy. Instead, the documentary is an uplifting and celebratory piece, that leaves the viewer stronger in their belief that meeting ones eventual end need not become the controlling factor in whatever time may be left. The film is more akin to a New Orleans burial than some dour funeral dirge. It is not a lamentation, but a true celebration. Here's to Roger and his family, and to the incredible legacy of words and insights he left to us all, cinematic and otherwise.Many of those those treasured words can be found HERE at his official; website, where a fleet of other writers, including his wife Chaz, are keeping the legacy, and Roger's memory alive for future generations of film lovers. 

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Serve with -
Hamburgers
French Fries
Root beer flavored milkshakes
...in honor of Ebert's undying love for Steak N' Shake
Red Hots
Licorice flavored Chuckles

If you like LIFE ITSELF, check these other entertainments out -
Milius (DVD or Netflix)
It Came From Kuchar (DVD)
Val Lewton: The Man In The Shadows (DVD)
Hoop Dreams (DVD)

CHEF Is Cinematic Comfort Food

Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) is a waning and semi-bored once celebrated chef working in an upscale, but uneventful restaurant, cooking a menu that has become rote, cliche, and lifeless. When the chef and his team, mainly two right hand men Martin and Tony (John Leguizamo and Bobby Cannavale), have a chance to really shine when local power-blogging food critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt) informs them he is coming, the restaurant’s uncreative owner Riva (Dustin Hoffman) insists that the artists in his kitchen “cook the hits”.
This, of course, leads to a horrible review, and subsequently Chef Casper blowing up on Michel in the middle of his restaurant, where the chef spews a venomous monolog that ends up going viral as a video on social networking. Soon, he parts ways with the food he’d been making for ten years, and is free floating and out of work.
This isn’t Casper’s only life-issue either. Even more important, is the son he shares with his beautiful ex-wife Inez (Sofia Vergara). Little Percy (Emjay Anthony) just wants and needs some quality time with his father, who is always consumed by work. After things pretty much completely implode on Casper, he finally agrees to meet with (hold on now it gets a little confusing) his ex-wife’s other ex-husband (Robert Downey Jr.) and field an offer to start a food wagon.
We all know one of the Golden Sentimental Movie tropes is “If you build it they will come”, and build it they do. When Casper refurbishes the rundown food truck (in a father-son bonding montage scene that see’s them make the fastest food truck restoration team in the universe) and starts cooking the Cubano food of his wife’s (oops! Ex-wife’s I mean…) culture the food truck becomes a traveling sensation, as Casper, his son, and his loyal line-man Martin drive the truck from Miami to Los Angeles. The wee lad is of course a social networking wizard, and spins the trip into a money making journey. Of course, when he and his father make it back home they have found a new closeness, as father passes the culinary torch to his small son, and possibly…finds his way back to love again with Inez.
Cornball? Yes. But CHEF is also an extremely solid piece of sentimental wish-fulfillment film making. What’s wrong with a little fantasy daydream dressed up with set pieces featuring delicious looking food, and carrying a message of “teach your children well”? Not a thing I say.
Now, as I wrote in this blogs intro, I work in the kitchen of an award winning Salt Lake City restaurant. I took one of my chef’s to see the review screening I attended, and we found ourselves laughing at little touches some of the other viewers in the room were silent about. When Chef Casper’s hand hovers over ingredients, momentarily doubting himself, and knowing that the least bit of something can ruin culinary perfection. When Casper explains the importance, versatility, and functionality of a proper chef’s knife. When they find a grease trap that has been closed far too long (well, everyone laughed at that!). So, for anyone who has worked in the proverbial back of the house, preparing food for a constant stream of hungry customers, CHEF is satisfying. I bet it also tastes darned good to anyone who likes a good food flick, or coming of age story. Sentimental. Corny. But very entertaining.

Serve with -
Classic Cuban sandwiches
Fried plantains
Dos Equus beer
Churros with chocolate sauce and coconut ice cream

Other entertainments for those who like CHEF -
Babette’s Feast (DVD or HuluPlus)
The Big Night (DVD or Netflix)
Jiro Dream’s Of Sushi (DVD or Netflix)
Anthony Bourdaine’s Kitchen Confidential (book, ebook, and audio book)