Phawker

FUNNY PEOPLE (2009, directed by Judd Apatow, 146 minutes, U.S.)

SOUL POWER (2009, directed by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, 93 minutes, U.S.)

$9.99 (2006., directed by Tatia Rosenthal, 78 minutes, Israel/Australia)

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC

Right from the start Funny People,  the third film from director Judd Apatow, seems to have a few big things working against it, number one being the aging moron comic Adam Sandler.  Not just Sandler but Sandler in a cancer dramedy that clocks in at a laugh-exhausting two hours and twenty minutes.  Stunt casting, ballooning lengths and again with the endless guy-hang talk; it seems as if Apatow could be headed up his own rectum on a mission to become the Quentin Tarantino of film comedy.

But great talents overcome great obstacles; somehow Judd Apatow has taken these elements and transformed them into his most sustained and thoughtful film yet.  And surprisingly, his funniest.  Similar to Woody’s transformation from slapstick shmoe to leading man, Funny People is Apatow’s Annie Hall, the film that finally supplies the depth as skillfully as the jokes.

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WEIRD BEARD: Robin Pecknold, Fleet Foxes, Electric Factory, Last Night [Photo by TIFFANY YOON]

1. On a late July night in Philly, the Great Unwashed takes on a whole new meaning in the sticky, crowded Electric Factory. As the metal ceiling fans squeak futilely overhead, I’m hemmed in by Cousin-It-with-a-perm and a fresh-faced young fellow, no more than 17, who seems blissfully unaware that his T-shirt logo is imagery from the Third Reich.

2. Blue Öyster Cult had more than one album; more than one song, for that matter. When opening act Espers—Philly’s sleepy freak-folk celebs of choice—announce that they’re about to do a BÕC cover, calls for the cowbell are silenced by an admonishment from the band that no, they shall NOT be doing “Don’t Fear The Reaper.” “Come on, don’t you people know the first three records?” the band asks before launching into “Flaming Telepaths” from 1974’s Secret Treaties. Prompting the overgrown crowd of tall, lanky, underage indie boys to ask: “What are records?”

3. Fleet Foxes is a rock ‘n’ roll band. You might not guess it from the first half of the set, but “Ragged Wood” finds drummer Josh Tillman—who, though he blends in well with all the other beards, could easily pass for Jesus on open mic night at the Vatican —unleashed behind the kit, proving they’re not too precious to bring the rock when necessary. Soon after, they turn “Your Protector” into pure rock anthem, with deep tom-tom hits and a cavernous reverb that creates a wall of sound 20 feet thick.

4. Three or four songs in, the inescapable feeling that Fleet Foxes might be a bit of a one-trick pony starts to creep in. They do soft, near-flawless four-part harmonies rarely seen since the Beach Boys, but those harmonies are typically laid atop serviceable folk melodies—no more, no less. But then a crescendo begins to grow. Six or seven songs in, the vocal layers grow more complex and the arrangements more ambitious, and you realize that even if they are a one-trick pony, it’s one hell of a trick.

5. In a unique way, Fleet Foxes seem like genuinely nice guys. There’s none of the standoffish posturing, too-cool indie vibe or bloated rock-star ego. Lead singer Robin Pecknold spends most of the night drinking hot tea to nurse a strained voice, and the banter between him and his bandmates —and him and the crowd—isn’t forced-to-be-clever or overly terse. It’s just warm, making everyone want to go hang out backstage and keep refilling his tea. After just a few short minutes waiting for an encore, he comes out and apologizes, “Sorry that took so long. I was gargling saltwater.” Think Blue Öyster Cult ever apologized for anything? Never, not even for the cowbell. – JEFF BARG

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HERE WE GO MAGIC: Tunnelvision

JUST ANNOUNCED: At the TLA September 23rd with The Walkmen.

[Courtesy of  THE OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTOSTREAM]

BOSTON GLOBE: They did not link arms, and there were no public apologies. But a subdued meeting over beers on the White House patio last evening appeared to achieve President Obama’s goal of encouraging a deeper dialogue on race between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley. The White House, which carefully choreographed the event, kept reporters out and would not disclose what was said after the unlikely trio, joined by Vice President Joe Biden, sipped their cold ones. But after the images of a peaceful dialogue were beamed live on television, Crowley said he and Gates had agreed to meet again and will continue discussing their differences.

“Two gentlemen agreed to disagree,’’ Crowley told reporters at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington after he left the White House. “This was a positive step in moving forward,’’ he said, not only for Cambridge, but the nation. The meeting – convened by Obama – was an important icebreaker between two men whose confrontation two weeks ago blew up into a national debate on race, police power, and liberal elites. Accompanied by members of their families, Crowley and Gates began their visit with a tour of the White House; their separate groups met midway through the tour and joined as one large group for the remainder. “And that was the start,’’ said Crowley. “It was very cordial.’’

In a statement last night ontheroot.com, Gates applauded Obama for arranging the meeting and described his initial encounter with Crowley as “an accident of time and place…“It is incumbent upon Sergeant Crowley and me to utilize the great opportunity that fate has given us to foster greater sympathy among the American public for the daily perils of policing on the one hand, and for the genuine fears of racial profiling on the other hand,’’ he said. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: I’M WITH STUPID: Cambridge Police Union President Says Obama Owes Cops Everywhere An Apology

PREVIOUSLY: USEFUL INFORMATION: Getting Hassled By The Man

Now playing on Phawker Radio! Out August 18th on XL.

THE GUARDIAN: In fact, the really startling musical reinvention of 2009 is that of Jack Peñate. He hit the charts in 2007 as a kind of male equivalent of Kate Nash, a concept it’s hard to countenance, even now, without emitting a reflexive yell of panic. He peddled anaemic, bandy-legged gorblimey guitar pop with a side-order of anaemic, bandy-legged gorblimey cod-reggae. At least he did until March of this year, when he released Tonight’s Today, which seems destined to remain 2009′s premier WTF? moment, unless Bruce Springsteen is planning on using his Glastonbury slot to debut his new wonky techno direction. A luscious attempt to capture the disorientating moment when daylight and reality intrude on the glamorous nocturnal fantasy world of the all-night dancefloor – “I shuffle into the sunrise a zombie … she looks at me and says ‘What a sight’” – Tonight’s Today appeared to bear almost no relation to Peñate’s previous work, instead setting its cap at the nu-Balearic scene. The beats shuffled dancily along and the song was decorated by a genuinely magical guitar sound: equal parts the sparkling, African-influenced tone used by Vampire Weekend and the kind of echo-and-effects-smeared noise you would find on an old Cocteau Twins record, it succeeded in sounding simultaneously bright and woozy, like sitting in the sunshine in a deliriously altered state. It’s a sound much in evidence on Everything is New, a WTF? moment that lasts for 45 minutes: the songs are uniformly great, there are blaring horns, four-to-the-floor house beats, fathoms of dub-influenced echo, gospel-ish backing vocals and – perhaps evincing the influence of nu-Balearic’s all-embracing nothing-is-uncool ethos – the kind of mock-party sound effect found on Lionel Ritchie’s All Night Long. MORE

Apologies to Jersey Dan, we promised to post this snazzy flier and didn’t remember that we hadn’t until we were already at the show. But our word is all we have, so here ya go. And while we are coming clean, you should know that for at least two days we had up the headline WARNING: Do NOT Spill Bear On This Man re: the hoofties that beat a man to death at a Phillies game for spilling beer on them. And, it was our frenemies at Philebrity that pointed it out! Oh, the humanity! PW we feel your shame.

[Dir. by SCOTT COLAN]

The Fleet Foxes play the Electric Factory tonight with the mighty Espers.

PREVIOUSLY: QUEER AS FOLK or How Philadelphia Got Its Freak On

[Illustration by ALEX FINE]

BY JONATHAN VALANIA It all started, for me anyway, at Brooke Sietinsons‘ walk-up loft/hobbit hole on Second Street, somewhere in that OK Corral-esque strip between the Standard Tap and the 700 Club. Even though she no longer lives there, the exact location will have to remain a secret because, technically speaking, L&I could still fine her for dispensing the Morning Glory seeds of Philly freak-folkdom without a permit. But the select initiates invited to these hash-pipe hootenannies — culled from some of the most remote and impenetrable redoubts of local bohemia — know where I’m talking about. A Jesus-haired figure sits crosslegged on the floor, illuminated by flickering sepia-toned film footage, strumming an acoustic guitar and ululating like Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin locked in dual cunnilingus in a crater on the dark side of the moon. His name, I later learn, is Devendra Banhart. Soon enough, many will know his name.

Also on hand is one Greg Weeks, a recent transplant folker from New York and a dead ringer for Woody Allen in Sleeper. Together with Sietinsons, Ophelia-voiced Meg Baird and a revolving cast of red-eyed weird beards, Weeks would form the Espers, a strummy collective of whispery acid-folk that evokes sugar-plum visions of woodland fairies doing the maypole dance around Stonehenge. Soon enough, many will know the Espers too.

Then there’s Tara Burke, aka Fursaxa, a diminutive dark-haired pixie who builds magnificent wheezing chimeras of sound out of droning single-chord Farfisa, submarine bells and whistles, and narcotic Nico-esque vocal swoon. Sonic Youth and the Japanese psych cognoscenti already know who she is. The rest is freak-folk history, exhaustively documented in Pitchfork’s archives. Fast forward to now. MORE

The Secret Cinema presents ISLAND OF LOST SOULS *

Thursday, July 30th, 6 PM

American Philosophical Society Museum
Philosophical Hall
104 South Fifth Street, Philadelphia
215-440-3440

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BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Recently I was chatting with my three year old about his great passion, animals.  Sometimes you forget that a fresh mind needs all angles explained to them.  “We’re animals too,” I said.  His eyes grew wide.  “No way!” he shook his head in disbelief.  I’m do not think I convinced him although he stopped challenging me after I repeated the fact a few times; he saw the gap between humans and the world’s critters as being too wide to be under the same umbrella.

I’d imagine the general public was similarly horrified upon learning of man and beast’s common ancestry and in the 1930’s , as Darwin’s evolutionary theory of natural selection became publicly accepted, their fears were exploited by one of the nastiest of the 30’s horror films, Paramount’s The Island of Lost Souls.  Made just before the Hayes Code began to restrict the content of Hollywood movies, Lost Souls is what writer H.G. Wells described as his “youthful blasphemy”, a tale that traffics in torture, bestiality and sadism.  The film was banned in the U.K. for twenty-five years, labeled by the censors as “against the laws of nature”.  Seen today, despite it thirties theatricality, Lost Souls unnerves like few films of its era, comparable only to Tod Browning’s sideshow spectacle, Freaks in its vicious and morbid world view.

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BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer you towards the gooey center. Why? Because we love you!

ON THE COVER

CP: A deep, serious look at an all-too-common crime that brought a surprising result: a life sentence, without possibility of parole, for a 14-year-old boy. Matt Stroud , a reporter from Point Park University’s Innocence Institute, digs into the story of Stacey Torrance, locked up 21 years ago for a murder that happened after he was dropped off at home following a robbery.

In the summer of 1988, Stacey Torrance lived in his mother’s house on 17th Street between Master and Jefferson in North Central Philadelphia. On a sweltering afternoon, he received a visit from Henry Daniels, his 23-year-old first cousin. They talked about a conspiracy — a robbery. Daniels knew Torrance was friends with a local girl, Sarita Porter, and that he was occasionally seen with Sarita’s 16-year-old brother, Alexander. Daniels had recently been released from an eight-month prison term for robbery in California. Broke and on the lookout for an easy score, he had moved back to Philly to start again…Daniels and his accomplice told Torrance and Porter to follow them to a house in Germantown. When they got there, they parked on the street. Both pairs walked to the front door.

They talked. Discussion turned to argument. Uncertainty transformed into anger. Daniels told Porter that Torrance had “ruined the drug deal.” Daniels and his accomplice were much older and much bigger than Torrance and Porter, so they pinned the boys to the ground. They bound Torrance, gagged him, and threw him into the back seat of Porter’s car — a ruse to trick Porter into thinking Torrance was uninvolved in the robbery, and that he would be killed for spoiling the transaction. Then they took Porter’s keys and sneakers, tied up his hands and feet, wrapped him in a blanket, stuffed a sock in his mouth, and threw him into the trunk of his own car. This was where Torrance says he extracted himself from the crime. He didn’t know what was going on, and when he went to trial, the district attorney acknowledged that Torrance was involved in the planning of an initial robbery and nothing more. For years, Torrance has insisted that he didn’t even know he was to be tied up. But he was. And he was driven home in silence.

The scene-setting has an unbearable tension, and long-after-the-fact reporting with Torrance, his mother and officials involved in trying to reform the justice system is coldly heartbreaking. Apparently Torrance is a model prisoner now, and he’s had no contact with any of his co-defendants, who are all on life sentences as well. The only misstep isStroud overplaying his hand and detailing the great lengths he went to research this story. My-job-is-so-tough-ism in writing does way less to win over readers than the results of all that research he did.

PW: BMac takes up the Gonzo mantle for some doped-up reportage on Camp Bisco, the Philly-bred Disco Biscuits’ summer bacchanal. He puts forth a funky piece that’s a little bit about the music, a lot about the scene, and an awful lot about the drugs that are readily available.

Right at the crossroads of Where the Fuck Are We and Who the Fuck Cares sits Mariaville, New York, and a 200-acre slice of heaven called the Indian Lookout Country Club. Lush, green hills are broken up by strategic tree lines. Catch the right place to sit, and you can see miles of rolling wooded hills that make up Schenectady County, and one of the world’s most gorgeous sunsets.

Most of the year Indian Lookout is dead, but things heat up during the summer. Every third week of June the grounds play host to the Harley Rendezvous, one of the nation’s most popular motorcycle rallies.

On this weekend, July 16 through 18, the land belongs to Camp Bisco—the largest, most drug-crazed electronic music festival on the East Coast.

Bisco is headlined each night by the Disco Biscuits, the Philadelphia band that founded the music fest. Now in its eighth year, ’09’s festival is the biggest yet, with 10,000 people camping out for the three-day brouhaha.

He captures some great moments — the ecstasy dealer offering “$10 roll” like it’s a food item — and boldly posits the Biscuits as “the biggest modern Philadelphia band not named the Roots.” 
Elsewhere, the piece is strange and faintly disgusting (lots of piss), and outside of two guys chatting about bongs, there are almost no interviews with actual campers. They ought to figure just as largely in the article as the Biscuits, it seems.

INSIDE THE BOOK

CP: The Human Comedy, now with dick jokes. Taking the Moxie challenge. Re-reading the Book of Love. Sweet tips sink Center City Sips.

PW: A big, sloppy French kiss. Into the bookstore, out of the closet. A hefty dose of indie-rock geekery. The Nutter Museum: “Art in City Hall.”

WINNER: Drugged-out “tree thuggers” just can’t match up against a treatment of justice and the prison-industrial system. Especially not with BISCUITS spelled BISUITS on the cover. Shit happens, but still. CP takes it.

CNN: A baby believed to be ripped from the womb of its mother has been found, Massachusetts police said Wednesday. In addition, authorities have arrested a suspect in connection with the crime. Darlene Haynes was found slain and wrapped in bedding in her apartment closet, according to authorities. Police had searched for the baby since Monday, when her mother, Darlene Haynes, was found dead in the closet of her Worcester apartment. Officers received tips from women who became suspicious of Julie A. Corey, a friend of Haynes who turned up with a newborn girl at the time that Haynes went missing. MORE

Anti Records, home to such iconic artists as Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Mavis Staples, is proud to announce the signing of acclaimed symphonious pop purveyors Dr. Dog. The band, which has amassed a dedicated audience through four remarkable albums and a steady diet of exhilarating live shows, is currently preparing to record a new LP set for release in early 2010. Guitarist-vocalist Scott McMicken promises a subtle yet profound evolution in the band’s harmonic sound. (continued, with tour dates, after the jump)

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BY JONATHAN VALANIA A tomboyish siren with a thick red mane and lungs of fine Corinthian leather, Neko Case is equal parts gender warrior and indie aesthete, a potent hybrid aptly evoked by the Joan-of-Arc-on-a-muscle-car tableau on the cover her new album, Middle Cyclone. Case is also in possession of what is arguably the greatest voice of her generation — clarion in tone; trans-national in its reach; and bottomless in its capacity to transmute wryly-observed public fictions into inescapable private truths that all more or less boil down to: I am woman, hear me ruminate. That voice was in fighting form [April 10th, 2009] at the sold out Keswick Theater when Case put on a nearly two hour show largely comprised of material from her two most recent (and uniformly excellent) solo albums.

She opened with the fabulist allegory of “Maybe Sparrow” and closed her set with the resolutely gorgeous “Teenage Feeling,” before returning for a lengthy encore that included a wide-screen countrypolitan cover of Sparks’ “Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth” and ended with the surrealistic dead-lover lore of “Star Witness.” In between, Case and co. expertly recreated the starry night campfire reveries of “Middle Cyclone” and delivered a so-lonesome-I-could-cry reading of “I Wish I Was The Moon” that set the tone for the evening: autumnal, moonlit, like there’s a kind of hush all over the world tonight.

Willowy, ruby tress-ed, and dressed in all-black, Case performed in front of a kitschy movie screen, topped by a giant owl peaking over the top, upon which was projected all manner of grainy art flick b-roll that vaguely mirrored the thematic concerns of the songs. She was accompanied by crack five-piece band that included honey-voiced sidekick Kelly Hogan on backing vocals. Longtime friends and collaborators, Case and Hogan are adepts in the art of the wisecracking gal-pal back and forth, and their repartee was infectious and lent some welcome levity to a set list long on mid-tempo somberness. Complaining that the recent arrival of her period was taking its toll, Case informed Hogan that when show ended she was going to slip into a suit made out of sleeping bags and affix her mouth to the business-end of a backwards-working vacuum cleaner filled with potato chips. Hogan gave Case a look that said: I hear ya dawg.

[Illustration by ALEX FINE]

GAWKER: The idea that Eliot Spitzer ‘s downfall was engineered by the financial industry whose profits he threatened with regulation has made the rounds on the internet for a while . Now Vanity Fairis siccing two investigative reporters on the story. Gawker has learned that Vanity Fair ‘s Craig Unger and John Connolly are currently looking into the prospect that the banking and financial interests that Spitzer took on during his tenures as attorney general and governor of New York tipped off the feds to Spitzer’s proclivities and launched the investigation. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: INJUSTICE DEPARTMENT: Was The Spitzer Probe The Ultimate Fed Take Down Of A Dem Whistleblower?

PREVIOUSLY: Congressional Committee Wants To Know If Spitzer Sex Bust Was A Federal Takedown

PREVIOUSLY: Legalize The ‘Oldest Profession’

PREVIOUSLY: COMEUPPANCE: Spitzer Agonistes

PREVIOUSLY: JUST WONDERING: Why Are We Still Schocked — SHOCKED! — By The World’s Oldest Profession?

PREVIOUSLY: SHOCKER: NY Gov. Caught In Fed Prostitution Dragnet

PREVIOUSLY: Good Money After Bad

We have a winner for yesterday’s contest: Phawker reader TIM ALLEN correctly answered that Creation Records was the label that My Bloody Valentine nearly bankrupted with the costly making of their landmark Loveless album. But fear not dear reader, there are no losers here at Phawker, just people who haven’t won yet. With that in mind, let’s get one of you into a pair of tickets for Day Three of All Points West, aka Sunday August 2nd. Even though we have long believed that headliners Coldplay are little more than Radiohead for people who still buy Sting solo albums, this is still a good deal because Echo and The Bunnymen are playing (along with MGMT, Black Keys, Elbow, and Silversun Pickups) and that alone is worth the trip to North Jersey. We can still vividly recall the spring of 1984, furtively blowing bong smoke out our dorm room window while Ocean Rain blared from its semi-permanent perch on the turntable, only to be replaced by the Smith’s Meat Is Murder and REM’s Reckoning. Ah, good times — even if the jocks kept calling us ‘faggot’ because of our Ian McCulloch haircut (looking back at old pictures, we mighta brought that on ourselves, but still…). Anyway, because YouTube is in some gay war with Warner Music, there is no decent version of the Bunnymen’s classic “The Killing Moon” so we posted this swanky cover by Nouvelle Vague. The first Phawker reader to email us at Feed@phawker.com with correct answer to the following Echo and the Bunnymen trivia question – what 2001 film features “The Killing Moon” during a pivotal party scene? — wins two tix to Day Three of APW. Please include a daytime phone number. Good luck and godspeed.

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WARNING: Do NOT Spill Beer On This Man

ASSOCIATED PRESS: This is a photo released by the Philadelphia police of Francis Kirschner, 28, who is being sought in connection with the beating and kicking of 22-year-old David Sale of Lansdale, Pa., outside Citizens Bank Park during a Philadelphia Phillies-St. Louis Cardinals baseball game Saturday, July 25, 2009 in Philadelphia.

DAILY NEWS:  A rowdy weekend at Citizens Bank Park – punctuated by the killing of a fan in a brawl – marred the Phillies’ two wins over the Cards this weekend and dealt another blow to the reputation of Philadelphia sports fans. David Sale Jr., 22, of Lansdale, was beaten to death in a parking lot near the stadium following a dispute in McFadden’s restaurant in the Citizens Bank Park complex. In addition to that tragedy, there was a simmering controversy over spectators who targeted five Cardinals’ players with laser pointers late in Saturday’s game. According to MLB.com, during the seventh inning an unidentified individual targeted Julio Lugo and Albert Pujols with a green laser that resulted in a game delay as stadium officials searched for the errant laser-flashing fan. An inning later, another laser pointer – this one red – was used to target three other Cardinals. MORE