Wednesday October 29, 2003

EYE ON THE ARTS. I actually crawled out the bunker and attended a few performances recently. I liked Intolerable Cruelty, but it also reminded me of why I used to dislike the Coens. They have sort of an manic stoner aesthetic – they’ll grab a tangent and run with it ferociously until they get distracted by a bird or an ant or a body rush and then BAM! they start running, with equal ferocity, in an entirely different direction.

The Big Lebowski loosened me up on them, though: now I let their baroque set pieces, camera angles, and characterizations wash over me, and find meaning in the overall impression. These meanings are usually very simple, even stupid -- O Brother, Where Art Thou? really is about how it’s better to stick up for people than to, um, not stick up for them, to the extent that it’s not about how cool it would be to name a movie after a Preston Sturges gag and make it about the Odyssey etc. But, eh, stupid fun is better than no fun at all.

Cruelty, I’m told, is based on some wretched piece of Hollywood feel-good crap, and I imagined I could feel the Coens' breezy contempt for the material throughout the picture -- as when Clooney, as the dentition-obsessed legal shark, appears before an divorce lawyers’ convention, chastened and with shirt untucked, to declare that “Love is good!” This makes for a giddy mood, if not deathless art. And this particular movie’s stupid meaning – love conquers all – is not a bad one to believe in for an hour and a half, anyway. (Maybe if the Coens’ work has any point at all, it’s that you have to be a little light-headed to believe in movie messages like these in the first place.)

Also saw the Mingus Big Band. This is a large ensemble dedicated to the preservation of the great man’s works and spirit. Sue Mingus is sort of Chairman Emeritus/Keeper of the Flame. The rotating cast of musicians has definitely got it in their gloves: they not only have the scores down, they also improvise in a relevant and impassioned way, and that’s the best of both worlds. Also, we were seated right in front of the baritone saxophonist, a very attractive and skilled young woman, and when she stood up and hit the intro to “Moanin’,” I wanted to live with her on the coast of France. Jazz shows are a sometime thing, but this was sometime.

Last night I met friends at a local bar and saw a well-attended performance by a hot new band. Their schtick is that they only play Brian Eno covers. I forget their name, which is just as well; they sucked. The cuteness of having sub-talented youngsters play “Here Come the Warm Jets” lasted less than five minutes. I don’t understand all these bands staffed entirely by teenagers who play with low energy. Is there an Epstein-Barr epidemic in that demographic? Or is rocking hard just too much of an effort?

Hey, I’m getting surly again. Maybe I should go back to writing about politics.