film classics

Hardcore (1979, Paul Schrader, United States)

You’ve surely seen the memes in which an apoplectic George C. Scott screams, “Turn it off!” repeatedly at some random movie or television clip. Now go back to the source, writer-director Paul Schrader’s second feature, to see the original context. Scott’s religious Midwest American father, Jake VanDorn, is reacting to a XXX film starring his until-then pious daughter. Making like John Wayne in John Ford’s The Searchers (a key text for Schrader and so many of his contemporaries), Jake travels to Los Angeles to infiltrate the erotic cinema underground, torturously risking — as many a Schrader protagonist does — his soul in the process. Despite the obvious influence of Ford’s knotty masterpiece, Hardcore conjures its own bracingly seedy ambience (one memorable strip-club scene imagines Star Wars characters dueling in a salacious cabaret) that engages with and examines humanity’s baser instincts, both pornographic and populist. (Streaming on MUBI.)

Forty Guns (1957, Samuel Fuller, United States)

From frame one, it’s clear that Forty Guns is no ordinary Western. Writer-director Samuel Fuller introduces us to rancher Jessica Drum- mond, played by a commanding Barbara Stanwyck, in an alternating series of wide and close shots as she gallops along a hillside with her male entourage. She looms large, as does most everything in this CinemaScope production, which packs so much into its 80-minute runtime it leaves you breathless. Fuller’s penchant for hairpin shifts of tone is fully evident: At certain points the film is a comedy, at others a tragedy, and even, in a few instances, a musical (guaranteed the song “High Ridin’ Woman” will be stuck in your subconscious for days). His use of widescreen is equally inspired, particularly in a memorable sequence involving the longest dining room table ever photographed. The film’s briskness and brusqueness has a philosophical weight that eludes all manner of more self-serious artists. (Streaming on Criterion Channel.)

Wavelength (1967, Michael Snow, Canada/United States)

Over forty-five captivating (and aurally challenging) minutes, Michael Snow’s avant-garde masterpiece slowly traverses the lengthy space of an apartment, from a wide shot to an extreme close-up of a photograph on

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JONATHAN HOGUE / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 18 ody is something of a love language. I had a real love for Stranger Things, and writing a parody of it was a means to stretch its for Barb? There was a “justice for Barb” campaign online that I built on — there were many things to consider. And once you

(Barb),” noted Hogue. “But it is how they run with it that matters. They bring themselves and their own moment to life within each character.

Hogue has a thing for parody musical making. His script for The Nations that preceded Stranger Sings! reads like a piss-take on The Book of Mormon with its “six millennial American Christian missionaries descending upon a little village somewhere in the third world for a nine-month mission of sharing the Gospel and changing lives.”

What draws Hogue to the form comes down to how naturally he has taken to it as a writer and that the satirical format has been part of his life and artistry since childhood. “I loved Mel Brooks, Monty Python and Saturday Night Live — you can take the familiar and see through it. Parody is about commenting on something that the audience may already have in its head. And par- scenes or tropes to logical — or illogical — extremes, while paying homage to everything that is great about that streaming show.”

What was the thing that was great, the hook that caught Hogue, concerning Stranger Things?

“The character of Joyce played by Winona Ryder, from the first season on — she is a very manic, eccentric mom,” said Hogue. “We remember Ryder from this whole generation of movies, from Heathers onward. And there was this insistent internet commentary about where Wynona ended, and where Joyce began. There was fun that could be had with that. And you could tell that this character wanted to sing — she is a true diva with her attraction and repulsion to flashing lights. Barb too is intriguing especially since she’s been missing for so much of this. Why didn’t anyone look and go down that rabbit hole — to say nothing of the fact that Stranger Things is a wealth of multiple homages to all things 1980s its icons and tropes — you can’t escape all of its joys and pleasures.”

Hair metal songs. Power ballads. Synthpop. All of these things and sounds are part of Stranger Things and Stranger Sings! But as a young gentleman who is still in school — by day, he is pursuing an MFA in Theatre Management & Producing at Columbia University — Hogue is part of another generation.

“Unfortunately, I am a 90s baby,” laughs Hogue. “But I still grew up on ET and Raiders of the Lost Ark, so there is something of a nostalgic vibe when I watch Stranger Things. That show connects me to my childhood, and I hope Stranger Sings! connects audiences with their levels of nostalgia, no matter when they were born.” n the opposite wall. In between, people come and go. A bookcase is moved into place. Two women listen to a distorted version of The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever.” A man collapses on the floor, and a

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The art school trope is: if you can’t make it good, make it big; and if you can’t make it big, make it red. But black and white is a vernacular that is unconcerned by color relationships, and sometimes it’s the best way to get an idea across — a clear melody instead of full orchestration.

Taking photos was more complex and less available to the average person until the digital age. My dad had a darkroom in the basement, where I learned to appreciate the language of light. City dwellers passionate about photography would build a darkroom in their closet. Now everyone has a camera at their fingertips, and in the city, somebody lives in the closet. More than a century was defined by black & white photos, but now the b&w genre, especially the chemical kind, has become a niche, artisan practice. Color photography has evolved from looking for naturalness or truth in hue to a point now where it is easily manipulated in any direction, and photographs themselves can’t be trusted. Of course, paintings never could.

Many of my New York memories emerge as black & white, even if they eventually hold ground in color. My father’s photos greatly influenced me, and those afternoons as a kid spent after school watching programs on our b&w television. Magazines and movies turned the world to color, but it was clear that it was just dazzle, and you could tell a good story without it. Sometimes better. Black & white comes in the door with an edge, talking tough in a fedora. Like New York. It suggests the viewer consider the historical aspect and not be distracted by a gleam of decoration. It seemed right for this painting.

woman, played by film critic Amy Taubin, calls the police to report a murder. At most other times, the space is empty. The color of the light shifts so that we can see outside the apartment windows, and sometimes not, trapping us inside. A hum on the soundtrack (the titular wavelength?) increases its eardrum-pulsating frequency throughout. The human drama is kept at bay. We have to reach the other side. That distant photograph beckons, promising some kind of release. It’s a literally interior journey during which a whole life is lived. But whose? (Streaming on rarefilmm.)

Mary Poppins (1964, Robert Stevenson, United States) Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…a flying British lady with an umbrella? In the Walt Disney Studios’ classic fantasy, the best-ever nanny (Julie Andrews) descends from the clouds to bring some discipline and cheer into the life of the Banks family — children Jane (Karen Dotrice) and Michael (Matthew Garber), suffragette mom Winnifred (Glynis Johns) and uptight patriarch George (David Tomlinson). There are spoonfuls of sugar that help icky medicine go down, as well as a visit to an animated world of make-believe where you can lunch with dancing waiter penguins. Elsewhere, an ingratiating chimney sweep named Bert (Dick van Dyke) shows that there’s as much magic on the London roofs as on its bustling streets, though be sure to help the local bird lady feed those hungry pigeons for tuppence-a-bag. It’s all supercalifragilistic fun and games until the melancholy necessity to let go of childish things, for young and old alike, settles in. But even as things inevitably change, we can still go fly a kite. (Streaming on Disney+.) n

I wasn’t sure how I wanted to portray the south subway headhouse at the 72nd St. station, and I walked around imagining how it could be presented from various vantage points. I looked through the door glass on the north side and watched a couple of people pay their fare and go down to the platform. One guy waited until the others were through, then he took off his backpack and ducked under the turnstile. He was down the stairs in a flash. Obviously, he makes a practice of it because he has the moves down pat. I wondered if I would be thrown out if I set up my easel inside there. Of course, I would.

There are many black and white pigments to choose from when painting. I used ivory and lamp blacks with titanium and flake whites. Those gave me warm and cool grays, plus other neutrals on my pallet and many lighter and darker shades depending on the proportions of the mix. It’s not a huge temperature range, but enough to play with.

It helps to think of warm and cool as warmer and cooler than what the color is compared to. Just like “large” isn’t a thing, “warm” isn’t a thing. But “warmer” is. It is a comparison to something. These warm(er) and cool(er) grays let me do fun things, like suggest light and shadow. I can push areas of the image away by cooling them and bring others forward with some warmth. That glimmer on the tall building is made of cool white on the warm façade — purposely in opposition — so it reads separate and distinct from the building, like a sunlight reflection, and not a white-color top of a building.

It’s not so much the building’s details that attract my attention; it is that mission-like design. It sits squat in the open square, ringed at a distance by shoulder-to-shoulder tall buildings held in abeyance by… what? Time, I suppose. For now, it looks like a subway station outside of Albuquerque. There is sky and clouds and air. If a sunny day happens, you can find it here. It’s a place where a New Yorker might be tempted to look up. n mate change manifesto into a tense and involving thriller, one strangely tinged with humor and optimism. A group of disparate young characters teams up to, as the title implies, destroy an oil pipeline in Texas, with the aim of spurring worldwide systemic change that has been

Flaws aside, the series is in toto as affecting as the game, and (as a new season has now been ordered) it’ll be interesting to see how the cre- ators adopt the much more sprawling and ambitious (as well as virulently divisive) The Last of Us Part II. [N/R] HHH1/2 n

Solution to FORMING A BOND

frustratingly incremental, if not entirely stagnant. Goldhaber eschews didacticism, choosing to let the meticulously procedural actions of the crew speak for themselves. As these youthful radicals tend to their uncertain present, their pasts are sketched in via expertly interwoven flashbacks that tend to come at heightened moments of suspense. The whole film feels like a tightrope walk over a bottomless pit, which suits our own world’s current ethically and emotionally careening ambiance. You still may be unprepared for how galvanizing the movie ultimately is in its overall lack of doom and gloom. [R] HHHH

The Last of Us (Dirs. Ali Abbasi, Jeremy Webb, Neil Druckmann, Peter Hoar, Liza Johnson, Craig Mazin, Jasmila Zbanic). Starring: Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Best Videogame Adaptation Ever is, let’s admit, a low bar. And let’s also acknowledge that the hit HBO series The Last of Us, which just concluded its first nine-episode season, had one of the strongest source materials (a universally beloved 2013 PlayStation action-adventure) from which to extract a serialized narrative. Still cocreators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann’s efforts to transpose the emotionally charged tale of bereaved father Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) and prickly pre-teen Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as they traverse a world upended by a global funghi-initiated pandemic pays plenty of dividends. The two leads have a terrific chemistry that believably thaws over the course of the season, and the series looks like the millions of bucks that were spent to bring it to life. That said, it’s best when sticking close to Joel and Ellie, less so when it separates them or removes them from the story entirely. (I’m one of those who finds the digressive third episode featuring Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett as a gay couple navigating the post-apocalypse together too maudlin for its own good.)

The strange theme answers form the name of an actor who played James Bond. The missing one is Daniel Craig, which can be formed by combining ACCRA and IGLOO to make ACCRA_IGLOO.

VALLEY / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12 fith’s sidekick on the TV series Matlock and who co-starred as Jay Leno in the TV movie The Late Shift, which chronicles Leno’s latenight rivalry with David Letterman. Exceptionally genial and curious, Roebuck has traveled a galaxy from his youthful training at the Pennsylvania Playhouse in Bethlehem. (1:00 and 6:00 p.m.; Roxy Theatre, 2004 Main St., Northampton; $25; eventbrite.com; 610-262-7699; roxytheaternorthampton.com)

Lehigh University’s Zoellner Arts Center is the only Valley venue big enough, and big-pocketed enough, to present the fabled New York Philharmonic — not once, not twice, but thrice. On April 15 its annual gala will showcase the first local performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra, another fabled ensemble with a mighty long, mighty legacy. Guest conductor Keith Lockhart, the longtime leader of the Boston Pops, will share the stage with boffo Broadway baritone Brian Stokes Mitchell, whose impeccably balanced, cobweb-sweeping voice served him well in the original role of Coalhouse Walker Jr. in “Ragtime” and in his Tony-winning turn in “Kiss Me, Kate.” The concert opens with performances by Bandaloop, a boundary-breaking dance troupe, and singer-songwriter Zia Victoria, whose credits include a tune she composed for the educational foundation of Novak Djokovic, the tennis hero. (8 p.m., Baker Hall, 420 E. Packer Ave., Bethlehem; $75 ticket includes dessert reception; 610-758-2787; zoellner.cas.lehigh.edu)

Nature blends with human nature on the Water Street Park trail, which is pretty pleasing without being particularly pretty. The graveland-earth path runs through woods past an abandoned coal-storage pit, its domino-like concrete walls painted with fairly charismatic graffiti; the big scowling face of a big cat somehow reminds me of the eyeglass billboard by the ash graveyard in The Great Gatsby. The trail follows the bending, rushing Saucon Creek and ends underneath a rusty iron-trussed bridge closed to cars and overlooking a cantilevered house hedged with a huge crop of bamboo. What makes the path unique are its east-west neighbors: a bike-and-hike trail created from an extinct railroad line and an ex-dump with butterfly bushes and wickedly tough trees, the Valley’s version of a desert. Across Water Street are two welcoming pit stops: PA House, which serves wood-fired pizzas in a spiffy indoor/outdoor former garage, and Hello Joe, which dispenses coffee and pastries in an Airstream trailer near Adirondack chairs on a creek bank. (Water Street Park, 90 W. Water St., Hellertown; 610-838-7041; hellertownborough.org)

The first Allentown Film Festival is a four-day, four-venue feast featuring everyone from an Allentown mayor’s wife to a pumpkin sculptor to Bill Murray signing and not signing autographs at a Berlin film festival. A baker’s dozen of blocks survey music and mayhem, comedy and horror, family and bad behavior (i.e., a banker jumping into a life-changing trade on 9/11). Every block but one costs $10; the exception, “What Is Art?,” includes a live talk by actor/artist Robert Shields, one half of Shields & Yarnell. (April 13-16, various locations; allentownfilmfestival.org)

The sixth annual Jim Thorpe Independent film festival is a four-day, 18-block banquet of shorts and longs exploring such topics as Mourning Glory and When I Consume You. As in past editions, there will be opening and closing parties, after-screening Q&As with directors, an awards ceremony and a Hollywood-esque hoopla. (4/20-23, Mauch Chunk Opera House, 14 W. Broadway; jimthorpeindependentfilmfest.org) n

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2022 — is returning to the live stage on April 14 at the Wells Fargo Center, surely between breaks of filming his new hardcore Safdie Brothers movie. I caught the show in Atlantic City’s Ettess Arena at the Hard Rock Casino with friend and fellow one-time Saturday Night Live cast member Rob Schneider as the Sandman’s opening act — and the entire show just killed. Including Sandler’s emotional finale dedicated to another old pal and SNL alum, Chris Farley. Don’t miss this. He’s only going to become a bigger film star as time goes by. If he wins an Oscar, BOOM — no more stand-up.

I’m not sure how good things are looking for the Philadelphia Phillies, yet, at the start of their new season at South Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park in April. The last time we saw the Phills was during the autumn and their World Series Red October effort — but, see, we were the lambs that got slaughtered by the Houston Astros. So, are you still excited? Are the Phillies still hungry? Wait and see.

Philadelphia native singer and songwriter Ron Gallo, I believe, has left town for the West Coast and career-making moves, which is only fitting considering his polish and stature. On April 8, Gallo returns to Philly, Northern Liberties, and its Johnny Brenda’s tower of song for a run at his newly released album, Foreground Music, and its surprisingly politically-charged new material and fuzz-toned guitar sound.

From April 1–9, Tony Award-nominated playwrights Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow’s musical dramatization of the Tudor Dynasty and all women Mrs. Henry the VIII (SIX) runs through the Academy of Music on the Kimmel Cultural Campus. SIX has been called “500 years of heartbreak turned into 21st-century empowerment.”

The Wine Walk Philly at XFINITY Live! on Sunday, April 2, sounds scary as I only know this venue to be a beer and bites palace. Clearly, an afternoon of unlimited tastings of nearly 50 wines and pay-as-yougo artisanal food will either change my mind or give me a headache.

Actually, it is THIS sort of thing that I would expect at XFINITY Live!: the rip-snorting, two-day April 14–15, two heavy metal and crushing craft beer fest put together by marauding music’s publication, Decibel than 2023. I just try to deal, musically, with where I am in my current state — whatever that current state may be. For Retox, then Rise Up, I had just started taking more pop gigs, that scene, so my mind was there. As time went on, including what went on with the pandemic, I began to concentrate on creating more legacy pieces to my work — to evolve past the expression of only one way or one sound.

A.D. Amorosi: I’ve noticed between what you have done with, say, Pursuance, as opposed to Phoenix, is that your saxophone’s tone THEN was more expansive and welcoming. On Phoenix, there’s much room for more noise and odd angles. How has the inspiration of the Coltranes moved on, carried on, since Pursuance, and what can you say about the angularity of Phoenix?

Lakecia Benjamin: After spending so much time with them and their music and pursuing their mission of healing messages and peace, I will always move forward with that vibe. I think that that was something I couldn’t just leave behind. I look up to the Coltranes and hope to embody their spirit on my own plane, my own personality, and my own growth. That album was a flashpoint for me — once it happened, I could never go back. You start down a path and keep moving. That said, with Phoenix, I did not plan an album. I was forced to do an album. All of my other albums were long-planned and thought out. Not Phoenix. Things are moving within their own systems now. Now, in my own way with my own music, I’m trying to spread my message and who I am — but also, the Coltranes are branded onto me.

A.D. Amorosi: Having an album push for it to be made is fascinating. Do you think your accident catalyzed such force for Phoenix? How did the accident impact you psychologically and musically?

Lakecia Benjamin: I didn’t have any albums planned before the accident, and didn’t want to just do something. [laughs] I had to think hard about what I wanted to do after such huge work as Pursuance Not only did the accident put me, physically and psychologically, through trauma, it added to the trauma I was living through with Covid. Three weeks after the accident, I went on a tour of Europe with my jaw broken, playing my Coltrane music for a month and a half. That kind of pain changes you.

A.D. Amorosi: Is the accident still a problem?

Lakecia Benjamin: At first, I was fine on stage while playing. But as soon as I got off stage, I was in excruciating pain. At the top of this year, I finally regained motion in my right arm. I’m still limited, but it is at around 80% better. Before that, it was 20%.

A.D. Amorosi: Once the process of Phoenix commences and the composition begins — are they written during or before the album records?

Lakecia Benjamin: I wrote it all before so that the band would have something to play in the studio and recorded fast for two days. This is the same band that toured with me, playing Coltrane music all this time. They were already in that Coltrane vibe with me.

A.D. Amorosi : Along with Terry Lyn Carrington producing Phoenix, the album also features Angela Davis, Diane Reeves, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Patrice Rushen, and Sonia Sanchez. Were you looking to create some positive feminine dynamic going into this album?

Lakecia Benjamin: I don’t believe that thought was in my head, but maybe in my heart. Before the accident, I was forming a bond with Patrice Rushen and knew I wanted to work with her. I was getting clos- er to Dianne Reeves, so maybe the universe moved it that way. I was looking to focus on people who impacted me by watching how their careers grew. People who had to fight to make their way or make a name for themselves. Look at Patrice Rushen. She is just now getting recognition for what she’s done and the jazz chops she’s always had beyond “Forget Me Nots.” I know all of her albums. She is teaching and changing lives. Pursuance was, of course, about highlighting the elders. I wanted to look at people still out here, doing what they’re doing in an elevated fashion, doing the people’s work — even in their 80s.

A.D. Amorosi: Doing the people’s work: I can’t help but think that you picked on Black activism’s brightest and boldest longtime voices in Angela Davis and Sonia Sanchez. Can you talk about that process?

Lakecia Benjamin: Besides it being amazing (laughs). I didn’t just want musicians and singers on this album. I spoke to choreographers, dancers, to impactful people. That's what I wanted for Phoenix. As soon as you hear their names, you know who they are and what they stand for, can envision their careers, and imagine what part they might play on my album. Resilient? Think of that word, and you think of these women.

A.D. Amorosi: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that you have the legendary saxophone giant Wayne Shorter reading poetry on Phoenix. How did that happen?

Lakecia Benjamin: After the women recorded their parts, I still felt something was missing. I knew I had female guests, but there was another story that I wanted to tell a certain way. The idea of me wanting to do legacy work, something to pass down to the next generations, meant finding someone that when they speak, we listen. Who was an elder that would stop our tracks AND be gender-less, genre-less, no race, almost from another planet? How should we move forward, someone with a personality where anything could come out but could make us question how and why we were here. And the answer came back Wayne Shorter.

A.D. Amorosi: Talk about writing “Basquiat” from that perspective. There’s an Ornette Coleman-esque feel to that track.

Lakecia Benjamin: There are two secret messages that I can tell you here: One, I wrote the song “American Skin” which is on this album, thinking about Ornette Coleman. I thought of his “Lonely Woman” and wanted to write that classical melody. I wanted a trumpet on the bottom, and I wanted that vibe. And two, Basquiat is actually a suite. Terri Lyn wanted to terrorize you guys and put the entire suite, all 20 minutes, on the album. The idea was to continue that theme of resilience, and who also may have been cut short. Basquiat was cut short. But what he put forth — has lasted when you consider how people dress and how art has changed. Basquiat embodies the change we see today. His avant-garde, his abstraction is today’s normal. I’m looking for my albums to be complete bodies of work with themes and actions and their own dramas.

A.D. Amorosi: Is that why you’re utilizing more electronic instrumentation and atmospheres than usual in places and spaces within Phoenix?

Lakecia Benjamin: The entire album is about exploring — who I was, who I am now, and who I might be. I wanted the album to have a produced feel rather than an acoustic jazz feel. I didn’t want to move backward. I wanted the listener to be right where I am within the production. I wanted them to move forward with me. n