BRIAN LIBBY

Score-sese

I was sure that every last molecule of sincere interest or belief I had in the Academy Awards had long since been driven from my body. Each year I ask myself why I even watch this four-hour snoozer of patting on the back, terrible musical numbers and handing out these most prestigious movie awards to the wrong people. But last night when Martin Scorsese's name was called for Best Director, I screamed with delight. And then in a matter of seconds, as he accepted the award, I quickly transitioned to fighting back tears. By the time The Departed won Best Picture a few moments later, it was almost anti-climactic.

Just a few days after I got to NYU as a freshman in 1990, Goodfellas debuted at the Waverly theater in Greenwich Village. The friends I'd made were almost all film students, and they idolized filmmakers like Scorsese, David Lynch and the Coen Brothers. I hardly knew anything about Scorsese at the time, but I was a quick learner. Soon I was watching his back catalog on video, with particular attention - of course - to Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.

Seeing Goodfellas in that time and place marks an important personal epiphany for me. Even though I wasn't a film major at NYU, I'd come there with a budding curiosity about the art of cinema that would eventually see me become a film critic for seven years. It all started that evening when Ray Liotta's character says in voice over "I always knew I wanted to be a gangster" with the screen in freeze-frame as he's just put a half-alive man in the back of his trunk out of his misery. The audience around us erupted in laughter.

Coming from a religious family but not personally of the churchgoing persuasion, I quickly identified with the way Scorsese imbued secular subjects and people with a great spiritual intensity. However, it has often been the the technical aspects of his directing I've enjoyed the most. The long Steadicam shot of Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco entering the Copacabana in Goodfellas is the touchstone for all those that have come afterward, gliding through a long sequence of kitchen and back-room spaces with exquisite smoothness, revealing mobster Henry Hill's high place in the pecking order amidst a Fellini-esque conglomeration of colorful peripheral characters passing in and out of the frame. There's also a shorter tracking shot in Taxi Driver that moves past Travis Bickle on a payphone to capture the street outside, subtly displaying his alienation. (It was shot in a back hallway of the Ed Sullivan Theater.)

Without question, my favorite Scorsese film is Taxi Driver. I adore Bernard Hermann's score - it's the only film score on my i-Pod (save for one Star Wars track), and it evokes his masterful past works for Citizen Kane and several Hitchcock films while using brass and electric piano to establish an identity of its own. I also find the cinematography and editing to be absolutely stunning. Just the simple vision of Bickle's taxi roaming the grungy Manhattan streets was beautiful.

I also identified with the angst Bickle feels about New York, for I'd come to NYU without ever having visited the city before-hand, and my pie-in-the-sky notions of Gotham had been trampled by rudeness and the smell of urine. Travis, it seemed, was on to something. Luckily over time I instead transferred my allegiances to the movie's maker.

A few years ago rumors surfaced of a possible Taxi Driver sequel. I wrote an essay for Salon that was an open letter to Scorsese begging him and Robert DeNiro not to do it. I didn't want anyone - even Scorsese himself - to change my perceptions of that movie.

I actually only saw The Departed a few days ago. I liked a lot, but would have to agree with critics who say it's not at all his best work. At the same time, if Scorsese was finally going to win the Oscar, I'm very glad it was for a quintessential Scorsese film.

By going from the list of Academy Award non-winners to winners, Scorsese actually abandons a prestigious list of filmmakers for a more dubious one. Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick have never won Oscars. Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson have.

Last year my opinion of the Academy sank to its all time lowest depths when Crash won. Not only is that not a great movie, but it's not even good. Nobody in their right mind expects the Best Picture award to go to the actual best film from that year in anything but a few fluke cases like The Godfather. While I'm also not a fan of the notion of giving Oscars to nominees as reward for their body of work, that doesn't stop me from cheering for Scorsese. The Departed is in my mind more or less as good as any of the Best Picture nominees, and that brings more than enough license to feel a sense of vindication and redemption.

And lucky, you couldn't find two more quintessentially Scorsese themes.

Matinee Idle

Earlier today I had the good fortune and humbling experience of seeing one of my films play at the Portland International Film Festival. It was part of a group show called 'Short Cuts III: Made in Portland".

The first film in the program, called Scardeycat, was by a good friend of mine, Andy Blubaugh. Andy's film also recently played at the Sundance Film Festival. My friend Ned did the music along with Eric Schopmeyer, who also did the music to my film playing in the same lineup today.

Scardeycat is a very compelling first-person documentary based on Andy's experience being attacked a couple years ago in an episode of random violence. In the film, he confronts his own demons about being obsessive-compulsive, fearful, and maybe even guilty of unintentioned racism. The honesty with which Andy looks at himself and ties his own journey to larger societal issues is breathtaking. I've known Andy for a few years now, and he also edited one of my previous films, and it's been amazing to see him progress as an artist and, through his artwork, even as a person.

There was also a film called Finca El Injerto that portrayed in beautifully evocative super-8 and 16-mm film the workers of a coffee plantation in Guatemala. The project was produced by Stumptown Coffee to shed light on the relationship they share with coffee farmers. But a huge amount of credit goes to Stumptown owner/founder Duane Sorenson for choosing two experimental filmmakers, Trevor Fife and Autumn Campbell, in order to make something other than a routine documentary. Although short in information, this film captured the spirit of place very well.

My film, Route 23, was one of the simpler, shorter and less ambitious works in the lineup. Consisting of a single time-lapse shot, it condenses a half hour double-decker bus ride through London to about four minutes. It's also enhanced significantly by a wonderful score by my friend Eric that's like a more whimsical version of Steve Reich: very rhythmic to propel the speedy action onscreen, but without a strong melody that threatens to compete with it.

More important than the content of the film, though - today anyway - was the surreal experience of crossing over from having written about films and filmmakers for several years and then being on the other side it. Putting your work in the spotlight can be very frightening, and I think more critics ought to appreciate that.

When my film first came on the screen, I was focusing on the things that didn't feel right, like the volume being way too low or the video looking more grainy on a big screen. Still, a couple of times I caught audience members responding positively, and that felt great. There's one shot where our bus (and by extension the camera) comes just a few inches from the back of two other buses, and the frame becomes split with just a sliver of London viewable through the alley of light between the buses. A few chortled just a bit like one does watching those point-of-view roller coaster shots. I love this, precisely because it's something totally different from what pushed my own buttons visually as I made the film.

Ultimately you make the film for yourself, not for an audience or the honor of having it screened in a film festival. At least that's how I approached it. I feel unburdened by the need to have people like this stuff - the fest notwithstanding. But it is a very invigorating feeling to have strangers respond to something one created, I must say.

At the end of the show, they had a Q&A session with the filmmakers, and one audience member asked me about the process of making the film: how many times did I ride the double decker bus before I got the idea to film it? The answer was zero: I just take my camera places with me (especially on vacation) and capture authentic experiences spontaneously. Having the chance to tell the audience about that felt as good as showing them the film.

It's not about this, but I also wanted to give a special shout-out to my old friend Joel Dunn. Joel has two young children and also teaches and coaches varsity basketball at Woodburn High School. In other words, he's really got his hands full. Just spending an hour with his adorable little tikes is exhausting to me, let alone shaping teenage minds all day. I told him several times it was no big deal to come, and that if I were him I'd use any available spare time just to relax. Joel also is not at all a follower of local and/or experimental film. He had to ask me for directions to the Portland Art Museum like five times. But there he was with a Woodburn High jacket, an open mind and a pat on the back. Thanks Joel.

Over the last year after giving up film reviewing, I've hardly watched any movies at all. I think Casino Royale and The Departed are the only 2007 films I've even seen. But it's invigorating to go a screening where the people sitting behind or in front of you made the films you're seeing. Every show like this of local work has its ups and downs. At least one film in this lineup had me looking at my watch a lot. But the do-it-yourself spirit can be very contagious. It's a continuous epiphany to me when I see a film or a piece of music or painting and think, 'I may not be able to or even want to make something just like the other guy did, but hey - I can do this'.

Childhood Cold War Art

Recently I was going through a plastic storage tub in the basement full of stuff I'd retrieved from my childhood bedroom at my parents' house. Until just a couple years ago, there was still my JC Penny simulated wood bedroom set there, the desk stuffed with childhood ephemera: saved copies of Sports Illustrated, comic books, old concert tickets, schoolwork assignments.

One manila file folder I found was full of information about Soviet military aircraft. My dad was in the Air Force reserves at the time, and he used to have a subscription to Air Force magazine. Apparently an annual issue in the magazine was its "Soviet Military Almanac", highlighting the USSR's arsenal. In my file folder are all kinds of graphs comparing NATO and Warsaw Pact (the Communist eastern bloc nations) as well as photos and artist renderings of Soviet fighters, bombers, helicopters, and tanks - all from the 1983 edition of the Almanac.

I was such a child of the Cold War. My dad spent most of his time running a restaurant in McMinnville, The Sage (which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary). But one weekend a month and two weeks a year he'd put on his uniform and become a military intelligence expert. He knew classified information! As a kid, I loved the intrigue. And of course I bought in to all the patriotic fervor of the noble USA standing up to the world Communist threat. Not that it was completely untrue, mind you. The Communist nations were horribly brutal dictatorships. I just look back on it today through the prism of adulthood and seeing that things are never so black and white as they're made out to be.

It was weird enough, particularly as a liberal now, to open up this special file folder that I as an 11 year old was creating my own research library on Soviet military aircraft. If I met an 11 year old today who had a file folder about Al Qaida, part of me would pity the kid for being obsessed with elements of death and destruction. But then I even found a drawing I'd made - actually just a tracing, I'd guess - of two Soviet planes. Somehow seeing the drawing made in my own hand of a MIG-29 Fulcrum and an SU-27 Flanker, with my child penmanship marking the names of the two planes, feels extra eerie. Perhaps it's because now I'm a visual arts critic. In a sense, this drawing is artwork, and thus I feel in part trained to look at the piece and try to see the thoughts and emotions behind it. So I see myself, a pretty privileged and well adjusted middle class kid with a good family, all things considered - and with an encouragingly early aptitude for learning, self-study, and intellectualizing. But also I see a kid at 11 already neurotic about the most dangerous forces in the world. I guess like a lot of the artwork I rate most highly as a critic, I'm drawn to the yin-yang of positive and negative forces.

Never Too Much

During my freshman year of college I had roommate named Dean who was a musician. He used to practice guitar in the walk-in closet late at night, playing intricat scales at breakneck speed like a second coming of Yngwie Malmsteen. Dean also brought his turntable and stacks of records, about which he was very passionate. He and I could be talking about John Coltrane, Sonic Youth, the Gregorian Chant or the Butthole Surfers, and in his Long Island accent he'd ask, "Ever listen to this record? Best - record - evuh!" A few seconds later a different album would come up: '"Ever listen to this one? Da best - evuh!"

I thought of Dean recently because I've developed a similar passion for one song.

I've been a Beatles fan all my life. My mom had a collection of about ten or twelve of their albums, including all the essentials such as Sgt Pepper's, The White Album, Let It Be, Abbey Road, Revolver, Help!, A Hard Day's Night, Magical Mystery Tour and Rubber Soul. She also had several older albums like Beatles '65 and Meet the Beatles. Their music was played in our house at dinner, evenings by the fireplace, and in the car on trips.

However, one album I never had access to growing up was Yellow Submarine. We had the song, of course, as it appeared originally on Revolver. But not the soundtrack album that accompanied the annimated "Yellow Submarine" movie. That's probably because there were only about four new songs on it. The rest consisted of previously released tracks such as "All You Need Is Love" and a couple of instrumental pieces from the score.

Recently, though, I've been checking out from the library Beatles albums neither my mom nor I had ever aquired. One song from Yellow Submarine has been a particular revelation: "It's All Too Much", a sprawling six-minute epic written and sung by George Harrison.

Right now, this song is "Da best evuh" in my book.

The song feels modern because its beat resembles a hip-hop loop. As usual with the Beatles, there is a dense instrumental layer-cake of sound in the background. For the first several minutes, the song is anchored by Harrison's lyrics, which are very spiritual lovey-dovey, but also at least for me very compelling, particularly in the context of the piece:

Set me on a silver sun, for I know that I'm free
Show me that I'm everywhere, and get me home for tea

What I love most about the song, though, is how it becomes this endless jam at the end, with Paul McCartney joining Harrison to repeat a continual mantra, 'Too much....Too much....Too much.' I'm not usually inspired to clap along with songs. When people do it at a concert or some other gathering, I always feel goofy joining in. But this song makes me want to clap along, or join in on some sort of periperal percussion instrument--a triangle, cowbell, maybe even the cliched tambourine--to keep time along with the band.

After only about 10 days, "It's All Too Much" is already about to crack my iTunes Top 25 songs list. Watch out J.S. Bach and Joe Strummer, here comes George! After all, I've got 35 years of listening time to make up. Then again, though, maybe George would warn me not to binge too voraciously:

It's all too much for me to take
The love that's shining all around here
All the world's a birthday cake,
So take a piece but not too much

I just wish I'd taken that advice last night, when I made a box cake and proceed to sample about four pieces after dinner. Maybe from now on when I start to overeat there should be an alarm going off in my head - only instead of a recurring beep, it could just be Harrison's sitar.

Steak Instructions

Earlier today my sister Sara emailed to say that she had bought a steak and was going to try and cook one for the first time. (Sara's quite a carnivore - the most excited I've ever seen her about a restaurant is a Brazilian place in Los Angeles where waiters wander from table to table carving slices of meat from long roasting spits.) She asked me for some step-by-step instructions, which I learned while working at Nick's Italian Café in McMinnville the year after college from a guy named John Barkus. I thought I'd share them here. If anybody sees any errors of technique, please fill me in.

Use olive oil and put it on medium to high heat. You don't want/need a ton of oil, just enough to coat the pan. It should be cooking on the burner, though, not in a pool of oil.

The temp setting depends on your stove, and you can always adjust the heat as you go along. Basically as hot as you can get it without burning, so maybe an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Use tongs if you have them, but otherwise a spatula or anything else will do.

Make sure you salt both sides liberally. The meat should be thawed but still cold (not sitting out at room temp). Let the pan get plenty hot before you put the meat or even the oil in. Put the oil in just a little bit before you put the meat in.

It'll cook somewhat fast. I can't tell you how long per side, but I'd turn it over about the time when the unturned top side feels about room temperature. It should need less time on the other side, and a good medium rare steak should be taken off about the time you see juices coming out of the top a little. But the best foolproof rule of thumb for taking it off the heat at the right time is just to whip it off the stove real quick, cut it open and have a look. When you take it off the stove for good, though, let the meat rest for a couple minutes before you eat it. You know it's supposed to be somewhat rare, but how much within that is up to you. You can always throw it back on if it's not done enough, but you can't un-cook it.

If all those instructions seem like too much, just cook both sides on medium-high for a few minutes, cut it open and see if it's done.

For a really awesome glaze over the top, keep the heat on and pour about half a cup or so of red wine, let it boil for a couple of minutes, turn off, and add just a little dollop of butter. Yum fucking city. If you don't have red wine, you could also de-glaze with white wine, a little beer, or broth. The liquid just picks up all that concentrated flavor off the bottom of the pan - you definitely want that.

No Longer Wincing after Wincing

Over the last decade I’ve become less and less interested in new rock or alternative music – at least to the degree that I rarely anticipate new albums coming out. There was a time in college when I thought of Tuesday as being the day of the week when new records were released. Now it’s just the day after Monday.

However, this Tuesday brought the release of two new albums by people who have made my favorite music of recent years: The Shins and Damon Albarn. I’ve listened to The Shins’ Chutes Too Narrow and Gorillaz’ Demon Days scores of times, and continue to marvel. I also love Albarn's collaborative Mali Music album. And this Tuesday, I benefited from Valarie’s traipsing off to snatch both albums up: The Shins Wincing the Night Away and Albarn’s partnership with bassist Paul Simonon of The Clash, The Good, The Bad & The Queen.

This week has also been a stressful one. In particular, I was upset about how something I’d written had made its subject angry, even though the writing was very favorable and admiring. It happens sometimes, and so long as there isn’t any nastiness, I’m contrite or at least understanding and diplomatic about it. But this time there was nastiness. And I reacted to it by going for long walks, reciting an embarrassing amount of teeth-gritted lines by Emperor Palpatine (“Are you threatening me, Jedi?”) and Darth Vader ("I Find your lack of faith disturbing") while listening to my i-Pod.

The delicate beauty of The Shins and their ambitious new album was a perfect antidote for the anger.

The Shins craft wondrously simple but contemplative, personal pop songs. Too often in others’ hands this kind of music makes me cringe. I think this music is deceptively hard to do well if you’re name isn’t McCartney or Lennon. But singer/songwriter James Mercer and company are up to that challenge, with compellingly vivid, picaresque lyrics that also remain elusive enough to keep me coming back.

Wincing The Night Away gives Mercer’s songs a more layered array of textures and sounds. The album shows a newfound fascination with keyboards, and there are countless other peripheral instruments such as banjo that come and go to weave a more complex tapestry than either of The Shins’ previous efforts. This is a transformation that many rock bands go through if they become successful, from stripped down to elaborate. For some, it ruins the effect. But if a band can achieve that greater sonic sophistication while staying true to the songs themselves as foundation, there can be nothing better. I’m thinking Beatles again here. I mean, what would you rather listen to: A Hard Day’s Night or Abbey Road? I know some people actually choose the former, but for me it’d definitely be the latter.

I’ve read a few reviews of Wincing The Night Away, which takes its name from the insomnia Mercer experienced while making the album. Although overwhelmingly favorable overall, the reviews seem somewhat divided on how well the Shins have achieved that balancing act of simplicity and sophistication. I think they’ve done a great job. I’ve only had the record for three days, but in that time I’ve listened to it at least 10 times. I’ve continually broken a personal rule of not listening to the same album twice in one day—I’m on thirds with this one.

This is my favorite moment in the process of familiarizing one’s self with what seems to be a developing favorite album: the in-between stage. Right now I’m increasingly familiar with the songs and their sequence, but I still have a lot left to discover. It’s like walking in a pool: you’re not just floating aimlessly, and you’re in control. But the reduced gravity still makes the simple act of movement a surprising treat.

I also feel a couple special connections to this album. It was produced by Joe Chicarelli, who produced one of my two or three favorite albums from the ‘90s: San Francisco by American Music Club. There are several moments on Wincing that remind me of San Francisco, particularly the incorporation of outdoor sounds (birds chirping), a sort of industrial feedback-twinged acoustic guitar, the cheeky by resonant ‘70s-esque keyboards, and the pairing of anxiety and gloom with brightness and gloss. People don’t talk about album producers all that much, but in some cases these guys are my heroes almost as much as the artists. When I was in college, a musician friend and I used to be obsessed with Mitchell Froom, Hugh Padgham, Tchad Blake, Steve Albini, Brad Wood, Nick Lowe and several other producers.

My other Shins connection of course comes from their residing in Portland. A filmmaker friend of mine, Matt McCormick, used to be friends with them back in Albuquerque before they all moved up here. (He directed one of their videos, "The Past and Pending", which is superb.) I’ve never met any of them, but I had the good fortune last year to go to the recording/filmmaking of Burn To Shine, a DVD featuring performances by a host of Portland bans: The Shins, The Decemberists, Sleater-Kinney, Quasi, Lifesavas, The Thermals, The Gossip. It was fun watching the various band members hang out all day and let their guard down as we stood in a garage grazing over sandwich fixings, chips and cookies. The Shins came in an unassuming white Subaru. Sleater-Kinney came in a sweet new Volvo.

I’m further behind when it comes to familiarizing myself with The Good, The Bad & The Queen, but I got excited the first time I heard it. Damon Albarn started out in the ‘90s Britpop band Blur, which I was never a fan of, and then under the Gorillaz moniker made two records partnering with great hip-hop producers, first Dan the Automator for the group's eponymous debut and then, for Demon Days, with Danger Mouse. (Who also mashed The Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album into—what else?—The Grey Album to brilliant effect.) The Good, The Bad is not a Gorillaz album, but it’s Albarn and Danger Mouse again, and that’s a great combination. (DM is another case of the producer being a collaborative partner.) Actually, though, that wasn’t what got me excited when I first heard the album: it was the influence of Simonon. Even though Albarn remains the principal author of this music, I could hear a twinge of The Clash, and, as Martha Stewart used to say, “It’s a good thing.” It also makes me appreciate more than ever Paul Simonon’s contribution to the band, which is easy to underestimate given the presence of Joe Strummer and Mick Jones.

There is an embarrassment of riches lately, because I haven’t even gotten to the new Decemberists album yet. (Coincidentally, my first purchased piece of artwork is a drawing by lead singer/songwriter Colin Meloy’s girlfriend, Carson Ellis.) They too were at the Burn To Shine filming. Can’t remember their vehicle make, but I do distinctly remember their accordionist wearing a dress made out of Star Wars bed sheets.