Dingo
March 30, 2022
All my fellow musicians were inspired to learn an instrument after seeing someone else play somewhere. And they all had dreams. Whether it was just to be good enough to play for their family and friends, or maybe at the local bars in town or to hit the big time while performing in concert halls and stadiums. Achieving this dream takes years of practice and experience, and more often than not, the reality of making a career in music becomes elusive. But this doesn’t keep folks from trying, and such is the goal of the protagonist in the 31-year-old Australian film called Dingo.
The story begins in 1969, in the fictitious town of Poona Flat in the outback of Western Australia. Three young kids are playing in the unpaved street when a private 747 plane carrying a band on tour has to make an emergency landing at the town’s tiny airstrip. It’s such a momentous event that the entire town jumps into jeeps and trucks and dashes out to see what is going on. The plane had some mechanical issues, and while it is being repaired the progressive jazz band sets up on the tarmac and plays some songs for the bewildered populace. Young John “Dingo” Anderson was so mesmerized that then and there he decided that he wants to learn how to play the trumpet like band leader Billy Cross. After telling Billy, “That was the best music I ever heard,” Billy says, “If you ever come to Paris, look me up.”
Fast forward twenty years later, where the grown lad leads his own band called Dingo and the Dusters that plays at the local town hall on weekends. During the day he does handy work and tries to trap dingos that are attacking sheep. He’s got a wife and two young girls, and they live in a funky house out in the sticks. But he’s never forgotten the jazz players he saw two decades before, so he secretly stashes money away, and one day, while on his way to a job to repair fences, he changes his mind at a crossroads and flies to Paris instead where, in less than 24 hours he is staying at his idol’s house and they go out to a jazz club where Billy arranges for Dingo to sit in with a smoking band where, of course, Dingo blows everyone away, before he then flies back down under without his family knowing where he’s been.
Yes, the premise is farfetched, as the story is basically a modern day fairy tale with so many holes in the plot that our handy-man hero could make a lot of money just patching them up. But the characters are endearing, the role of Billy Cross was played by jazz icon Miles Davis, and the soundtrack itself – by Davis and legendary French composer Michel Legrand – is worth the price of admission.
The film was originally released in 1991 to little acclaim, and it will have a limited theatrical re-release before becoming available on digital video in April. It plays out more like a fantasy TV movie, but fans of Miles Davis will love seeing and hearing him play on the silver screen for his last time in Dingo.
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Blues on Beale
February 16, 2022
It may come as a surprise to listeners that some of us here at this show have to work elsewhere to support our movie reviewing habit. While I have been on the staff for 30+ years now, for the past 28 I’ve been singing the workingman blues on my day job in a high-rise office building on Beale Street in downtown San Francisco. So, when I first heard of new film called Blues on Beale, I was right on it, thinking that someone made a documentary about me! However, much to my surprise and satisfaction, while both streets are named after the same guy, this film is about another Beale Street, the one in Memphis, Tennessee.
While Nashville is known in some quarters as “Music City, USA,” Memphis, 200 miles to the west, has the title “Home of the Blues.” There are at least 20 nightclubs in and around Beale Street, and once a year The Blues Foundation hosts the International Blues Challenge, and the subject of this film is the event that took place in January of 2020, just before COVID shut down the clubs. There was no festival last year, and the next one will take place this coming May. The Challenge is a worldwide search for blues bands and solo/duo acts that are ready for the national stage but haven’t yet had their big break. Performers come from all over the world. Two years ago, there were 232 entries from 17 countries, and what the makers of this documentary did was to pick ten acts to follow during the quarterfinals. There are shows and interviews with the chosen bands as well as clips with former winners, club owners, record labels, writers, and more. But man, there was an abundance of artistry on the stages, and having been a talent judge for a different genre of music, I’m sure glad that I did not have to pick any of the winners here.
If you’re a fan of the blues and want to get a behind the scenes look at some fabulous upcoming acts before everyone else does, then you’re going to love watching and bopping to Blues on Beale. Make sure that you watch the credits at the end, as there is an all-star jam interspersed with are some hilarious outtakes.
The Tender Bar
January 19, 2022
It’s an age-old lament: “The book was much better than the movie!” Yet, Americans tend to watch way more movies than read books, because the former can be completed in an hour or two and at much less the cost, while the latter can sometimes take days to finish. Here’s a caveat that I am going to proffer right now: If you are going to watch a film after reading a book, wait a while, instead of doing what I did, which was to cue up Amazon Prime literally one minute after having read the memoir The Tender Bar.
“Coming of age” stories are grist for the mill in Hollywood, and people never seem to tire of them. Yet, rare is the time that the kid in these tales spends most of his youth in a bar. In this case, it’s Pulitzer Prize-winning author JR Moehringer who, while living in his grandparent’s house on Long Island with his single mom in the 1980s, got to hang a lot with his Uncle Charlie – played, ironically, by Ben Affleck, who has had well-documented issues with alcohol – and who was the main bartender at a nearby joint named Publicans in the town of Manhasset. JR’s absentee father was a ne'er-do-well deejay of some renown that the kid mostly got to know from hearing his deadbeat dad’s voice on the radio. His crazy grandfather – and who better to play such a part than Christopher Lloyd? – was hardly a good role model for the young JR either. So, it was left to Uncle Charlie and his denizen friends at the local gin mill to show the kid the ways of the world, and JR, who, at a young age, aspired to be a writer, was presented with a lot of material to write about after making his way, against all odds, through Yale and years of imbibing.
The Tender Bar was directed by George Clooney, and while there were countless changes made to the story from the book – including the ending! – in the end, it really doesn’t matter, as the gist of the story is still there, and as a result, Clooney and Affleck may be in the running for Oscar nominations in a couple of weeks. The teenage JR is ably played by Tye Sheridan, but one of real stars of this film is 10-year-old Daniel Ranieri, who plays the young JR. The kid, who had never acted before, got cast after Clooney saw him on the Jimmy Kimmel Show. Do a Google search for this, and you will not be disappointed.
If you’re looking for a wonderful new film that has no cartoon-like action heroes, explosions, car chases, serial killers or Adam Sandler in it, sidle on up to The Tender Bar. And while I highly recommend reading the book, just don’t do it right before watching the film, because you’ll get a terrible case of the DTs with all the changes.
Oh, and as for this Moehringer guy? If you’ve never heard of him before, you will soon, because he’s also been hired to write Prince Harry’s coming-of-age bio.
30 Years As a Reviewer/Swiss Family Robinson
December 15, 2021
December 11th marked my 30-year-anniversary on the show Movie Magazine International. Yeah, I know. Three decades. That’s a long time for anything. The average marriage in the US lasts eight years. Athletes are lucky to log 20 years in their sport. Few in Generation X will only ever work for just one company. Even longtime network news anchor Brian Williams left NBC last week just shy of 28 years. And while I feel fortunate to have been part of this show for this long, producer Monica Sullivan, co-producer Steve Rubenstein, webmaster Randy Parker, and reviewer Mad Professor Mike Marano have been here longer than I have. I’m proud to be part of this dedicated staff, and I look forward to many more years to come.
How did this all begin? Just by happenstance. In 1991 an acquaintance, who had been doing reviews for the show, had a last-minute conflict, so she called me in a panic to see if I could cover a forgettable film called The Last Boy Scout for her. I said, “I don’t know anything about writing movie reviews!” She replied, “You know how to write, you love films, you have an opinion, and you don’t have anything going on in your life.” Well, she was correct about the latter three. I’m still trying to figure out the first quip. 30 years later, I guess I must be doing something right.
Since the 11th was a cause for celebration, I tried to come up with a special way to commemorate the date, so what I did was I went and re-watched the first film I ever saw, and this took me back 60 years, when, as a wide-eyed seven-year-old, I saw the Disney pic Swiss Family Robinson at the Anthony Wayne Theatre in the town of Wayne, Pennsylvania. And rather than review it just as a jaded adult six decades later, my goal was to watch and imagine seeing it through the eyes of that impressionable red-headed kid from back in the day. By doing such, I was not disappointed.
The story is based on an 1812 novel that centers on a Swiss family of five that left Switzerland to escape the Napoleonic Wars and was headed for a new life in New Guinea. Their ship was attacked by pirates, the crew abandoned them, and in a storm, they end up – 150 years before Gilligan and the gang – on an uncharted and deserted isle, where in short order Father (he is never called anything but here) and his three sons – Fritz, Ernst, and Francis – use the remains from the shipwreck to build a magnificent tree house for them to live in while Mother provides for their daily well-being. It’s an action/adventure story that includes an array of jungle animals, pirates, danger, camaraderie, and even the introduction of a love triangle when a wayward girl becomes an extended part of the family. And the wrestling scene where Fritz is attacked by a giant anaconda? I had never forgotten this. The cast is first rate, with acclaimed actor John Mills as Father (he was also the real-life father of renowned Disney actor Hayley Mills), Dorothy McGuire as the always-perfectly-groomed-in-the-jungle Mother, James (Danno from Hawaii Five-O) MacArthur as the oldest boy Fritz, and Disney regulars Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran as the other two boys. From a seven-year-old’s point of view, this is a wonderful film for the whole family. If you can get your hands on the two-disc version, it’s well worth it as the bonus material is some of the best that I have ever seen.
But when viewed by a caustic and crusty critic? There are many issues. The family was locked below deck on the crashing ship by the wayward crew? How did they keep their clothes clean? What did they eat for food? How did the guys stay clean-shaven? If they were Swiss, why did Father speak with a British accent while the rest of the family sounded American? The last time I checked Robinson is an English, and not a Swiss, name. How did they get a pipe organ from the wrecked ship up into the tree house? What did the two dogs eat for food? And how did the young girl Bertie fit perfectly into Mother’s clothes while she was a good two inches shorter? If this film were made today animal rights activists would howl at the treatment of the animals, and there’s no way that the pirates would have been portrayed as stereotypical-for-that-era cutthroat Asians.
But such is one of the many marvels and mysteries of movies. They can be viewed differently depending on the era when they were made and by the age of the viewer. While I loved Swiss Family Robinson 60 years ago, after 30 years as a critic I’d have many questions.
All in all, I’ve had a wonderful time here on this show, I’ve covered about 150 films, and I’m not going anywhere. And, with any luck, I’ll still be here another 30 years from now.
Okay, probably not. But if movies keep getting made, and the good folks here are willing to let me offer up the occasional film review, I will continue and contentedly be signing off with the words “and for Movie Magazine, I’m Larry Carlin…”