FRESH AIR

Over the 60 years that Mel Brooks has been in the entertainment business, his name has become synonymous with comedy. He is the man who broke Broadway records for most Tony Award wins with The Producers (an adaptation of his own movie), who satirized Westerns and racism in Blazing Saddles, and who poked fun at monster movies with Young Frankenstein. Before the films, there was his TV career: Brooks was a writer for Your Show of Shows, one of the most influential comedy series in television history and a precursor to Saturday Night Live, and he was the co-creator of the spy spoof series Get Smart. Brooks, who is the subject of a new American Masters documentary, “Make A Noise,” that premieres Monday, May 20 on PBS, says his penchant for spoofing genres was firmly in the tradition of poking fun out of love .

“I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films,” Brooks tells Fresh Air’s David Bianculli. “I had fun with them, but I also saluted the glory of the Western and the glory of James Whale’s Frankenstein and Dracula. Brooks grew up in Brooklyn, raised by a single mother (his father died of tuberculosis when he was two) who was just scraping by. Going to the movies was his introduction to a larger world and his mother recognized this. Even though she couldn’t afford it, she encouraged his enthusiasm, one time even asking a neighbor for the final penny to pay the price of a movie ticket. The neighbor acquiesced. “I was able to go see the Western,” Brooks remembers. “So I cherish those movies because they really lifted my spirits and are indelibly ingrained in my brain as important steps in my world education.”

That neighbor made an excellent investment. Brooks is one of eleven people to have won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards — widely considered something of a benchmark in the entertainment world. And his position as an American institution was further cemented in 2009, when he was tapped for the Kennedy Center Honors. Funny story, Brooks says: It wasn’t the first time he’d been offered the award. “I shouldn’t say this … but I’ll say it anyway,” he says. “I was offered this — the Kennedy Center Honors — maybe a year or two before, and I said, ‘Well, I’m going to wait for another president, if I’m still alive, if you don’t mind.’ I just didn’t feel comfortable when Bush was president to accept the honors. … Had I not gotten 110 awards — you know, I’m an EGOT so I don’t need any more. … The Kennedy Center Honors, at the moment, I didn’t need them…The only award I haven’t received, I think, is Woman of the Year.” MORE

Sometimes you don’t realize how much you missed somebody until they come back.

THE TELEGRAPH: Across the state, 21 people were injured, not including those who suffered bumps and bruises and chose not to visit a hospital, said Keli Cain, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. “You can see where there’s absolutely nothing, then there are places where you have mobile home frames on top of each other, debris piled up,” Pottawatomie County Sheriff Mike Booth said after surviving damage in the Steelman Estates Mobile Home Park. “It looks like there’s been heavy equipment in there on a demolition tour. “It’s pretty bad. It’s pretty much wiped out,” he said. A storm spotter told the National Weather Service that the tornado left the earth “scoured” at the mobile home park. MORE

Italian Market Fest, 9th St. 12:02 pm by JONATHAN VALANIA

EDITOR’S NOTE: The arrests begin around the 49 second mark. The audio is completely blown out, so you might want to turn down the volume.

PHILLY NORML: Federal Park Rangers and Philadelphia City Police disrupted the monthly “Smoke Down Prohibition” protest at the Liberty Bell calling for marijuana legalization and made several dramatic arrests. On Saturday May 18, 2013 a crowd about 150 gathered in front of Independence Hall. At 4:20PM, the moment when much of the crowd participates in civil disobedience by openly smoking cannabis, dozens of aggressive law enforcement moved into the crowd. Those on stage speaking to the crowd were targeted for detainment, including one of the organizers. There were at least five arrests, including NA Poe of the comedy crew The Panic Hour. Ed “NJWeedman” Forchion was briefly detained but released. One unidentified woman was roughly carried away but also quickly released. Also arrested were Adam Kokesh host of AdamVsTheMan and Don DeZarn a New Jersey Libertarian candidate for US Senate. The protests take place in front of Independence Hall permanently reserved by the National Park Service for First Amendment activity. Despite the targeted arrests and a heavy police presence, dozens in the crowd continued the action by openly smoke marijuana from 4:20PM-4:45PM. NA Poe and Adam Kokesh are still being held in the Federal Detention Facility at 7th and Arch Streets. A solidarity demonstration will take place in front of the jail today starting at 2:00PM.

RELATED: The DN’s Jason Nark is live tweeting from the vigil outside the Federal Detention Center

VARIETY: The sounds of the early 1960s folk music revival float on the air like a strange, intoxicating perfume in the Coen brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis,” a boldly original, highly emotional journey through Greenwich Village nightclubs, a bleak New York winter, and one man’s fraught efforts to reconcile his life and his art. A product of the same deeply personal end of the Coens’ filmmaking spectrum previously responsible for the likes of “Barton Fink” and “A Serious Man,” this darkly comic musical drama with an elliptical narrative and often brusque protagonist won’t corral the same mass audience as “No Country for Old Men” and “True Grit.” But strong reviews — for the pic itself and its stupendous soundtrack — should make this December release an awards-season success for distrib CBS Films.

As they did with the 1940s Hollywood setting of “Barton Fink,” the Coens have again taken a real time and place and freely made it their own, drawing on actual persons and events for inspiration, but binding themselves only to their own bountiful imaginations. The result is a movie that neatly avoids the problems endemic to most period movies — and biopics in particular — in favor of a playful, evocatively subjective reality. Perhaps most surprising to some viewers will be the pic’s surfeit of something the Coens have sometimes been accused of lacking: deep, heartfelt sincerity.

Where Clifford Odets provided the inspiration for “Fink’s” eponymous playwright, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) has been similarly modeled on the late Dave Van Ronk, a mainstay of the ’60s New York folk revival whose vaunted reputation among musicians never translated into the commercial success enjoyed by many of his contemporaries. Yet for all the pain in “Inside Llewyn Davis,” there is also abundant joy — the joy of the music itself, exquisitely arranged by T Bone Burnett and sung live on set by the actors themselves. Both dramatically and musically, the film excels at depicting the many varied styles that wound up grouped under the folk umbrella — from corny, Kingston Trio-esque harmonists to protest singers like Pete Seeger and self-proclaimed “neo-ethnics” such as Van Ronk.

Above all, “Inside Llewyn Davis” is a revelatory showcase for Isaac, who sings with an angelic voice and turns a potentially unlikable character into a consistently relatable, unmistakably human presence — a reminder that humility and genius rarely make for comfortable bedfellows. Tech contributions are outstanding on all counts, especially the wintry, desaturated lensing of Bruno Delbonnel (pinch hitting for usual Coen d.p. Roger Deakins) and the inspired period detailing of production designer Jess Gonchor, whose bygone Greenwich Village abounds with cramped cold-water flats and Kafka-esque hallways narrowing toward infinity. MORE

Photo by RORY MCGLASSON

Less than hours 24 hours after wowing fans at the WXPN-hosted Non-Commvention at World Cafe Live on Thursday night, Sir Tom Jones was at back behind the mic for a sold out “Evening With Tom Jones” show at the TLA. The 72-year-old legend, with the one-of-a-king baritone voice, treated Philadelphians to an intimate set of deep-cut covers — John Lee Hooker, Bob Dylan, Jerry Lee Lewis — from his last two records: 2010′s Praise And Blame and the just-released Spirit In The Room. The new album is a Johnny Cash/Rick Rubin-style cover album collaboration with Kings of Leon producer Ethan Johns.  Jones kicked off Friday’s set with Spirit’s opening track, Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song.” Jones’ raucous, irreverent take on the introspective song set the mood for the majority of set-list, which to some fans’ disappointment was sans Jones’s greatest hits.  One fan threw a pair of red panties that made it to the front of the stage, but it wasn’t that kind of show.  Jones dodged the undergarments, and a roadie scooped them away, without mention. Message: Not tonight. Sir Tom also dealt with a microphone malfunction seven songs into his set, “You might want to get some tape for this thing,” he said with wry smile. The microphone was fixed, and the silver-haired legend went back to business, covering Richard Thompson’s “Dimming of the Day, Paul McCartney’s “(I Want To) Come Home” and the best song of the night, Mickey Newbury’s “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In).” Sir Tom is of course best-known as the booming baritoned lounge lizard king belting out just-shy-of-Vegas-kitsch classics like “What’s New Pussy Cat,” “Delilah and “It’s Not Unusual,” but it’s easy to understand why Jones left those songs at home.  Those songs don’t mix with the Johnny Cash-like gravitas of the new direction — a direction that very much suits Sir Tom in this the autumn of his life.– RORY MCGLASSON

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS (2013, directed by J.J. Abrams, 132 minutes, U.S.)

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The sequel to the J.J. Abrams 2009 Star Trek movie is not lacking in entertainment value. It’s as spectacular on screen as only a couple hundred million dollars can be but sad to say, it isn’t much of a movie. Never being more than a casual fan of the ubiquitous 2009 Paramount reboot, it is not quite sacrilege I feel regarding Abrams re-imagining of Roddenberry’s original series. Instead, it is disappointment at the Abrams’ Trek being so undistinguished on its own, its power mainly stemming from its endless pilfering from the original. It’s like a Star Trek “Greatest Hits” pasted together by a game dinner theater troupe, an idea that might have it charms, but is hardly praise-worthy in comparison to the ingenuity of the original.

Where the TV show’s original mission was exploratory, Into Darkness finds The Enterprise drawn into commission as a military ship. A former Starfleet commander (played able by the golden-throated Benedict Cumerbatch) has gone rogue, waging a one-man terrorist war on the Federation and killing Commander Pike,  Captain Kirk’s mentor/father figure/Obi Wan (is it personal this time? You bet!) Kirk is given The Enterprise and 72 photon torpedoes with the mission to slip into Klingon territory (think Waziristan), where the rogue commander has taken refuge, and vaporize him.  As things develop, neither the mission nor the quarry are quite what they seem and Kirk, the crew, and The Enterprise will find themselves pushed to their limits. Oblique references to current political events are given timid lip service, and just even this mild questioning of the military’s jurisdiction after a terrorist event seems responsible for the odd final title-card, dedicating the film to American’s post-9-11 veterans.

Despite all this tomfoolery, what lover of the past half-century of pop culture can resist the charms of the Star Trek franchise: the matching uniforms, the candy-colored lighting, The Enterprise in flight, and the arch of Spook’s eyebrows? The design of the original show was the bedrock of much of its allure, and it is still a thrill in the second go-around to see the set and costumes re-imagined with a blockbuster budget. Just watching The Enterprise rise from the ocean’s floor or seeing the stars blur when shifting into warp speed, or even hearing some of the same old sound effects, can send chills down one’s spine. It’s as if the TV-fed brain is defenseless against this kind of butter-and-salt for the mind.
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Photo by RORY MCGLASSON

The light turned from red to a deep blue when Josh Ritter took the stage and walked up to the mic. Supple, genuine and totally alone, he almost stuttered his first words to Philadelphians: “We’re gonna’ leave it all here.” Philadelphia was not Josh Ritter& the Royal City Band’s last tour city, but it was the city where Ritter’s parents fell in love. Undoubtedly, the talented singer/songwriter is looking back in admiration on his parents’ marriage, which represents a longer-lasting union the one he and his ex-wife, singer/songwriter Dawn Landes, shared. That was just two years ago and a little over a decade into the musician’s career.

Their divorce was the inspiration for Ritter’s The Beast in Its Tracks, the breakup record whose bare and wistful sound was heard frequently last night. Songs like “Hopeful,” shed light on all the addled angles of the breakup and Ritter’s attempts at recovery. Remarkably, it couched the pain of rejection in upbeat, lilting melodies. Cunningly crafted “Nightmares” was even more polarized by the dark content and light, freewheeling tone. In an interlude, the artist related his experience of writing the album and how – after sitting alone and depressed for weeks, cranking out what he called ‘awful, miserable music’ – he reached the turning point of his grief. Disenchanted with marriage, his thoughts turned to all of the other people still hopeful about finding the love of their life. He wondered: don’t they deserve to keep their hope?

Ritter, himself, may still be struggling with acceptance of his loss, but no one could tell what emotions were at work under the musician’s exuberant smile and swoon-inducing eyes. His work was his motivation here. They played other longtime favorites, some from his breakthrough album, Hello Starling. By the time he came around to “In the Dark,” the audience was enraptured. The crew turned off all the stage lights, and Ritter went totally bare-ass acoustic. The performance was full of the sensitivity and the perfectly hemi-spherical smiles that have become Ritter trademarks. Indeed, looking around at the Philadelphian following the artist has gathered made me wonder at the year. With all the international turmoil, national frustration and tragedy, Ritter’s pocket of self-determined optimism was maybe just what we all needed. – BRANDON LAFVING

Tom Jones plays the TLA tonight. Tom Jones is an icon. He has lungs of fine Corinthian leather. He’s been bringing sexy back since BEFORE your parents were born. And he still is. Respect must be paid. Pass the Asti Spumante and bring some throwing panties.

Photo by PETE TROSHAK

Let’s not kid ourselves, Foxygen‘s irresistible We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace And Magic – think  The Royal Tenenbaums as a twee, technicolor indie-rock album  — is hands down the catchiest album of 2013 thus far. No one else need apply. In fact, nobody needs to release another album this year. Not even kidding. When I listen to it, I feel like one of the Magi following the star that will lead us all to the manger. Go tell it on the mountain. Bring frankincense and myrrh.  They play at World Cafe Live tonight as part of the Non-Comm convention. Earlier this year, we got Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado on the horn to share with us some tidings of comfort and joy. Comfort and joy. — JONATHAN VALANIA

PHAWKER: So, let me just say up front that I fucking love you guys. You’re my new favorite band. Seriously, your record is like album of the year in my book, the one to beat.

JONATHAN RADO: Oh, wow. That’s cool.

PHAWKER: Totally dig it. You said that you had some tire trouble. Are you guys on the road right now?

JONATHAN RADO: Yeah, yeah. We’re on the road. Someone let the air out of our tires this morning.

PHAWKER: Someone let the air out?

JONATHAN RADO: Yeah.

PHAWKER: Where are you?

JONATHAN RADO: Houston, Texas.

PHAWKER: Do you have enemies there?

JONATHAN RADO: We don’t have any enemies that I know about. I don’t even know any rival bands that are in Houston. Or any rival bands really anywhere that I know of.

PHAWKER: Where are you guys based out of these days?
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We have a pair of tix to see Josh Ritter, aka Americana’s James Taylor/Paul Simon, and his Royal City Band at the Troc on Thursday to some lucky Phawker reader. Why? Because we’re trippin’ balls right now and just realized that Bill Hicks was totally right when he said “all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.” So why pay for Josh Ritter tickets if you don’t have to? To qualify for the ticket giveaway, all you need to do is drop us a note at FEED@PHAWKER.COM telling us you have signed up for our mailing list (SEE beneath our masthead to the right) with the words TAKE ME TO THE ROYAL CITY in the subject line. Trust us, you want to sign up for our mailing list. Among other perks, you will get first crack at future concert ticket giveaways. The 25th person to sign up for our mailing list wins! Good luck and godspeed!

Edgar Campbell III and Edgar Campbell Jr. outside Sheet Metal Local 19 Union Hall, Monday, by RORY MCGLASSON