Author: rakemag

Frankly, if it’s well made we could watch a feature-length documentary on the invention of the toilet brush. Not to take anything away from Jonathan Caouette’s spellbinding debut, Tarnation, a Sundance honey that reimagines what a documentary can be. Using his Macintosh, Caouette wove snapshots, Super-8 home movies, and answering-machine messages into a portrait of an American family torn apart by mental illness and dysfunction. Beginning in 2003, when Caouette learns of his mother’s lithium overdose, the film follows him as he returns home to aid in her recovery. His raw display of self-destruction and rebirth announces the arrival of an exceptional new talent.

Director Marc Forster’s follow-up to Monsters Ball is a tale of magic and fantasy set in turn-of-the-century London, and based on the life of James Barrie, author of Peter Pan. Johnny Depp stars as J.M. Barrie, a kind of Toys ‘R’ Us man-child who befriends Kate Winslet’s four fatherless boys and relives his lost youth, imagining life as he wants it to be. Depp himself doesn’t cotton to the Peter Pan complex, having said in interviews that he enjoys growing old. Of course, though, he’s aging in a way that only the sexiest man alive can do. We’ll keep watching, that’s for sure. Also bumping this way up on our must-see list are roles featuring Julie Christie (unforgettable in Afterglow) and Dustin Hoffman, who’s going great guns lately.

Yarr, mateys. Here be a movie far more clever and entertaining than you’d expect from something based on a Disneyland theme park ride, produced by Armageddon’s Jerry Bruckheimer, and written by the guys who scripted Godzilla. A lot of the credit goes to Johnny Depp, who runs wild with his role as Captain Jack Sparrow, the buccaneer with a heart (and teeth) of gold, and mannerisms based on Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. (Word is that Keef himself will make a cameo in the sequel, currently in production, as Sparrow’s father.) The good cast also includes alterna-heartthrob and erstwhile elf Orlando Bloom.

Mike Hodges, who made one of the best British crime films of the seventies in Get Carter, reteams with his Croupier star Clive Owen for another dip in the same dark, icy pond. Like Carter, Sleep involves a hard-as-nails gangster antihero who returns to his old haunts to exact vengeance on those who killed his brother. It’s a familiar trope of the genre, but, to his credit, Hodges seems more interested in approaching the material from odd angles than offering up the same old story once again, and he isn’t afraid to make the viewing audience (gasp) think a little bit.

American Music Club, a name chosen for its deliberately nondescript qualities, turned out to be perfect for a band that tied together so many strands of the American musical fabric—rock, folk, punk, country, even crappy lounge—into a remarkably distinctive sound that wove darkness into the shimmering light of pop choruses. The San Francisco band was led by the volatile gutter poet/singer Mark Eitzel, who often acted as his band’s worst enemy. AMC shows often disintegrated into uncomfortable backdrops for Eitzel’s onstage shot-glass rants and drunken showmanship. Ignored by MTV and radio, the band languished in relative obscurity in the U.S., while at the same time earning a sizable European cult following. Lavish critical praise finally made the major labels take notice. Cue vicious bidding war. With the unleashing of 1994’s San Francisco, college radio fell in love with songs like “Wish the World Away” and “Johnny Mathis’ Feet.” As with all things sad and beautiful, their ending was inevitable, and the band dissolved in the mid-nineties. And as with so many good (and not-so-good) things, now the band has reunited after nearly a decade. If you missed them on their first go-round, see them now or forever remain a dollar short in a two-dollar alternative rock world.

Even as on-again/off-again fans (let’s not talk about All That You Can’t Leave Behind), we’ve got a soft spot for U2. They were first ever rock band we saw live; the boys were barely out of their teens and we were simply enthralled. Twenty-some years later, it sounds like they’re channeling those youthful selves in How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb: What we’ve heard is jangly and jubilant, soaring and slightly caustic—even a little sloppy. Another good sign is that producer Steve Lillywhite, so essential in creating the band’s early trademark sound, worked on this latest one, too. And a third: Bono calls this recording “a monster,” adding that “it’s driven by a guitar player who is sick of the sight of me shaking hands with dodgy politicians. The anger is unbelievable.” All right! Apparently U2 has left that bombastic miscalculation from 2000 far behind.

The odd-moment-out on Neko Case’s newest release is an outtake from an improvisational jam session she participated in at a cross-cultural arts conference. She threw it in, she says, to demonstrate the fluidity and facility of music-making, to invite listeners to join her in the fun. But any dreams of superstardom it might inspire are to be foiled by the rest of this album from our favorite “country chanteuse.” Tigers collects upbeat live recordings of new songs, hard-to-find Neko Case and New Pornographers concert favorites, and cover songs from her idols, like the Shangri-Las and Buffy Sainte-Marie. She turned up the volume (i.e., took a drummer on the road) and included nothing from her downer of a previous release, Blacklisted. These days, we’re happy to report, Case seems hell-bent on having herself a good time.

Ghosts of country music past reverberate beautifully in the bluegrass tenor of Handsome Family front man Brett Sparks. But somewhere deep beneath the eerie echo of Appalachia, shadowing the Carter Family influence, tucked behind the Autoharps, banjos, and lap steels—somewhere there seems to be an inside joke between this husband-and-wife team. All those death-obsessed compositions are spiked with some underlying silliness, an admirable trait that’s too easily lost amid the sparse acoustics off their studio releases. The irony in sad little yarns about suicidal welfare moms and haunted Wal-Mart stores is best felt alongside the Handsome Family’s old-timey stage presence. Brett Sparks intermittently wears Willie Nelson’s lethargy and Buck Owens’ shit-eating grin. 318 1st Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-338-8100; www.finelinemusic.com

The family band is a great rock ’n’ roll institution, from Oasis to the Black Crowes to Hanson. There’s something fascinating about the unstudied flow of sibling vocal harmonies and stage presence. Los Lonely Boys, three brothers from west Texas, began as their dad’s backing band. First off, let’s take a moment to imagine touring with your dad, watching him chase after-show tail, riding shotgun in a van knee-deep in fast-food wrappers and wearing five-day-old underwear. (Shudder.) Anyway, weaned on Tex Mex-style country and blues, Los Lonely Boys augment the basics with red-hot guitar playing and tight vocal harmonies. Perhaps their most ringing endorsement comes from the “Cannabis Messiah” of country music, Willie Nelson, who has called the Boys his favorite band and invited them to record at his studio. 612-332-1775; www.first-avenue.com

Jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux’s sophomore release, Careless Love, is earning high critical praise—and that’s no small feat for a musician who became best known on her first album, some eight years ago, as a twenty-two-year old who sounded uncannily like Billie Holiday. On her new album, you could say that Peyroux is going after something of a Holiday/honky-tonk fusion. Covers include Bob Dylan’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome,” Hank Williams’s “Weary Blues,” and Leonard Cohen’s delicious “Dance Me to the End of Love.” The swinging, swaying-with-your-sweetheart renditions that she serves up also have mournful folk currents running through them. But best of all, perhaps, is her version of the jazz standard “J’ai Deux Amours,” a whispery, sexy torch song to two loves: her native U.S. and her adopted hometown, Paris, France. 1010 Nicollet Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-332-1010; www.dakotacooks.com