For years, the Greta Garbo of rock music was Sly Stone. Always erratic in the 1960s with Sly and the Family Stone (including a famous riot in Chicago’s Grant Park when he cancelled a performance), Stone’s appearances over the past few decades have been few, and when he did appear, Stone appeared drugged out.
Lots of people tried to find Stone, who had turned into a recluse, but I always imagined that he had a mansion somewhere. The truth is far sadder. Stone lost his mansion some time ago, and now lives in a camper on the streets of Los Angeles. The New York Post broke the news last weekend about Stone, and the camper.
Slash magazine has an interview with the singer in which, when asked whether he was clean, he says “I’ll tell you what, not like that kind of clean, but I sleep at nights, and the rest of the time I do my music.” In the interview Stone discusses his cocaine addiction, noting that he did the drug as recently as a “week and a half ago.”
Last April, Stone was arrested for cocaine possession, a charge he pleaded not guilty to. (Stone was also convicted in 1987 on cocaine possession charges.). But in the interview, he also expresses a desire to get better.
It’s very sad when a musician of Sly Stone’s stature cannot control his demons, but then again, perhaps that is a price of genius. It is sad that their music wasn’t enough to satisfy their needs. We have lost Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, most recently Amy Winehouse, and so many others to drugs.

A lot of coming of age stories, rock stars, and films about hockey comprise my 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. No film knocked my socks off this year, but, unfortunately, there were some clunkers of the 13 films I watched this year. As always, I will discuss them chronologically and also, this is a SPOILER ALERT. I talk about the plots of many of these films, so be warned.

Friday, September 9, 2011

For the second year in a row, my packet of requests for this year’s festival ended up late in the queue, so I only received 8 of 10 picks (my other films I purchased from my friend that I stay with). A one-hour wait (during which time, I had to fend off numerous pitches for me to become a member of TIFF even though I wouldn’t get the benefit of year-round membership since I don’t live there), but I was able to get one of the two films I had asked for in the first place. (The other, David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method,” was way past sold out, which is to be expected since Cronenberg is Canada’s best known filmmaker.)
Unfortunately again, my first film may have set a tone for the festival. “Hanaan” means “promised land’ in Korean, and this was the story of a man in Uzbekistan, which has a sizeable Korean population. The film opens following a group of young men, hanging out, talking about girls and the rest. At the center of the story was a man Stas whose workplace, a garage, was the hangout place for the men. The rest of the men weren’t distinguished from one another, so, when one of them gets robbed, it’s hard to know which one was which, or, more important, care. The gang goes out and finds one of the robbers, but the man who was robbed convinces his friends to get out of the car. He drives away, but on a beach, the robber comes to and kills the Korean man.
Cut to six years later; Stas is a cop who ends up arresting the killer on a drug bust, but he is freed. Turning down a bribe, Stas quits the force, becomes a junkie himself dependent on the killer. Eventually, Stas kicks dope and goes back to work at the garage. Overall, the film had a potentially interesting story to tell, but it did so poorly. The director, Rusian Park, besides not drawing all of the characters at the beginning very well, fell in love with a shot of Stas walking with the back of his head and shoulders in the shot. In the city, in the mountains, lots of shots following this guy walking. It was not interesting.
Fortunately, the second film I saw was a Norwegian film called “Sons of Norway.” It was my first coming of age story (many more to come), about a young man growing up in Norway in the late 1970s. The boy finds punk rock, dresses in leather and sticks safety pins in his ears and cheek and engages in a fair amount of juvenile mischief (including hitting a school official with a thrown bottle – it could have been serious, but it came off as laughable).
The film was more than a coming of age story – it was also about the relationship between the boy and his father, a hippie architect. The family suffers a terrible tragedy, which flips out the boy’s already far out dad (which raised an interesting question – how can you rebel when your parent(s) are on the fringe with you), which leads to a nudist colony; and the dad even playing in the son’s punk band.
The film was one of the few which have been allowed to use Sex Pistols music. The film even has an appearance by Johnny “Rotten” Lydon, spouting a weird kind of philosophy. Lydon was at the screening, telling us that if we didn’t like the film, we were all a bunch of “f435ing c$%ts.” I’m not one, because I enjoyed the film (of course hearing Sex Pistols music at high volume didn’t hurt).

Saturday, September 10, 2011

One of the films that I had requested but been shut out of was called “The Last Gladiators,” a documentary by Alex Gibney, Oscar winner for “Taxi to the Dark Side” and who also directed the excellent “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.” This was the story of hockey enforcers, and much of the footage was funny and reminded me of some of the great teams and players of the 1960s and 1970s.
What I wasn’t expecting was that it centered on the story of Chris Nilan, a Boston-born man who was an enforcer for the Montreal Canadiens in the 1980s, worked very hard to become a good hockey player too. Unfortunately, his aggressive tendencies led him to argue with coaches, and led to him being traded and playing for other teams.
What made the story poignant (aside of course from the fact that three current and former NHL enforcers died this summer from addiction issues and suicide, was what happened to Nilan after he left the ice. Liquor and painkillers that he had been prescribed as a result of his 22 hockey related surgeries, eventually led to heroin addiction, ruined relationships with his eventual ex-wife, his brothers and sisters, his children, and his parents.
One of the toughest moments had to be when Nilan’s father, an ex-military man said twice that he was ashamed of his son. The showing I attended was the second showing ever, and I was sitting in the same row with Nilan and I really felt for him watching his father say those things. You wouldn’t think that a hockey documentary would be so compelling, bit it was one of the best films of the whole festival for me (and not just because I’m a hockey fan).
Usually, I try to avoid big budget, Hollywood films at the film festival since they already have release dates and will be at my local multiplex, but I knew that on account of The Indignant Children, I might not get a chance to watch a film for awhile, and it fit my schedule, so I went to see “Moneyball.” The Gala premiere was the night before and the Toronto papers were filled with pictures of star Brad Pitt and his “wife” Angelina Jolie. So, I knew he wasn’t going to show up at our screening, and I was right. But it was a very good film anyway (even to the guys I was staying with, who are not baseball fans at all).
As you have probably read in other reviews Pitt plays Billy Beane, who had been a big money player out of high school who never panned out in the majors, but became GM for the Oakland A’s. The story begins with the 2003 American League Championship Series that the A’s lost to the New York Yankees. The next season, Jason Giambi, Jason Isringhausen, and Johnny Damon were all leaving small market Oakland via free agency because the A’s couldn’t compete financially with the big market clubs.
So, Beane had to come up with replacements with limited money. Eventually, he found a Yale economics graduate who was using some of the analytical tools developed by Bill James to analyze players beyond just the standard statistics and the old scouts “gut feelings.” The A’s didn’t win the next season (or up to now under Beane), but they did win a Major League record 20 games in a row, and watching the streak (using mostly television footage from the time) was truly exciting.
Jason Hill plays the youthful assistant and unlike his usual comedies, he plays the part straight and understated, and as a result, he gives one of his funniest performances. Pitt was particularly fine as well, holding the emotional center of the film (and looking good for the women in lots of close-ups. As I said above, even non-baseball fans enjoyed this film; for a baseball fan like me, it was very good.
My last film of the day was another documentary, and again for a passion on mine. “Comic-Con: Episode IV – A Fan’s Hope” is the latest film of documentarian Milton Spurlock who directed “Super Size Me,” and “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.” This film was different because for once, Spurlock was not a character in the film – this was a film about the San Diego Comic-Con, the biggest comics/pop culture convention in the US and probably the world. This convention started as a comics convention, but has morphed into a multi-media con with bigger sections for movies and video games than comics (which is, in part, the reason I have never attended).
Spurlock takes a common approach, following several people who were going to the convention, most with a purpose. There were the two guys who wanted to be artists; the dealer who was looking to sell a $500,000 comic; an action figure collector; and the most compelling story – a couple who had met at the con the year before and the young man had it all set up to propose to his girlfriend at the Kevin Smith panel, if only she would let him slip away to pick up the ring.
Interspersed with the human interest stories, there was coverage on the convention itself, and comments from various comics creators, fans, and famous movie and television personalities who were into, or wrote comics. Many of these were interesting – Frank Miller looked like crap warmed over (which could be a comment on his film career after the flop of “The Spirit”); as expected Kevin Smith made several comments (with lots of F-bombs); Matt Fraction, and Stan Lee (who executive produced the film) also made appearances. My personal favorite comment was from Joss (“Buffy The Vampire Slayer” and so many other credits) Whedon admitted that he had been star struck at the convention just a couple of times, one of which was when he met my all time favorite comic artist, Neal Adams. (That gets him many points from me.)
The film was good in that it concentrated on the comic aspect of the convention – most mainstream media coverage centers on the comic book, fantasy, action films and television shows that make appearances at the con in an attempt to build “buzz” for that particular project/film/show. My only complains are minor: first, there was no “plain” comic fan who was followed during the convention. Most of my friends are collectors who would be there to find rare comics, hang out with friends, and go to the occasional panel of comics professionals, or movie panels. My second complaint is that it makes the comic fans too proud of being geeks. The ”geek” moniker was thrown out so much, that I felt like I was drowning in it at first. Yes, there are many people in my hobby that never leave their parents’ basements. But there are many of us with jobs, families, children, and still love to get lost in the fantasy of comics. Small complaints though.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

On the outside, you could have forgotten that it was the 10th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks: the day was beautiful, the city was quiet, but it always is on a Sunday morning. But the papers were adorned with it, and, for the first time, TIFF did not run it’s usual ads and promotions before films on that day – a documentary about the day from the TIFF perspective was done and was the only “trailer” show at films that day. It was nicely done, but a little self-congratulatory for TIFF’s response to the attacks (closing down on 9/11, reopening on 9/12, but cancelling all parties and celebrations tied to films).
My first film of the day was the opportunity to be in the same place as a true film legend – Francis Ford Coppola. Mr. Coppola had a new film to show, “Twixt,” a dream that Mr. Coppola had and translated it to screen. In comparison with the “Godfather” films, ”The Conversation,” and even “Apocalypse Now,” it was a trifle of a film.
Val Kilmer plays a horror writer (called a low rent “Stephen King” by Bruce Dern in the film) who is going from town to town selling and autographing his new book. But he ends up in this small town which is decidedly odd. The clock tower has seven faces, but each clock has a different time (and now like a world clock where the minutes are the same, but the hours are different).
Kilmer’s character (a very overweight Kilmer – he was much thinner at the screening) gets involved in a murder and in his dreams, he is met by a young girl who may be dead, and Kilmer is helped in the mystery by the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe. Dern is the town’s sheriff who thinks the story can be a best seller with Dern’s character as the protagonist.
There are lots of flashbacks to a mass murder of children, and eventually, the film turns into a vampire story with lots of death.
The biggest gimmick of this film is that there are two sections, about 10 minutes in total, that are in 3D, I’m not a big fan of 3D under the best of circumstances, but it was weird when a set of 3D glasses appeared over the screen and then were taken off as notice to the audience that it was time to put on or take off the glasses. It was unnecessary to the story (such as it was); and made the effect even more of a gimmick.
As I said above, it wasn’t even second rate Coppola, it was third rate – the effort of a 20-year-old film student eager to show off, not the creator of some of the best films ever made. It was nice to see Mr. Coppola and Mr. Kilmer live (along with the Apocalypse Now quote that Kilmer slipped into the film).
Long time readers and people that know me know that I am a sucker for martial arts movie, particularly at TIFF. The Inginant Wife, who got me hooked on the festival, and I enjoyed watching Asian films in which there was plenty of blood let and asses kicked. So, one of the first choices was a film called “The Sword Identity.” It was the story of a city that was dominated by four schools of kung fu, but two men come to town wanting to open a new school, using a sword much longer than the norm, much thicker and only sharp near the end.
Unfortunately, the story is overly convoluted and unnecessary (a five minute conversation, or perhaps one big fight, could have settled the whole situation). Too many of the characters were buffoons (but not particularly funny); the “hero” appeared only sporadically, and didn’t fight enough. The worst part was that he enlisted a woman to defend him and she knocked out nearly an entire army using the same move behind a curtain on a house boat. Surround the boat and kill or capture everyone on board would have been very easy, especially late at night, but the “masters” never thought of that one.
Worse yet, the woman, a courtesan of some kind, had three assistants, who were captured by the town and the three were whiney, annoying, and completely unnecessary. (I should say, however, that the women were at the center of the best part of the film. The head of the kung-fu clans had finally had enough of the women, so he sent them to the dungeon under armed guard. The dungeon was, for some inexplicable reason in three feet of water. Anyway, the guards had decided that they were going to have their way with the women, but the women protested that there were five men to three women. So, the dummies fought and killed each other with the women being able to escape.)
The whole thing ended with the two men being allowed to open their sword school in the town. It was very bad, but unfortunately, not as bad as “Hanaan” which had a better premise and wasted it.

Monday, September 12, 2011

The day before, TIFF held the premiere of “Pearl Jam Twenty” (and it wasn’t even a gala), and everyone knew that Pearl Jam would show up. They had two concerts scheduled for the days in which the film played and the director Cameron Crowe was photographed in town. The Sunday showing is the only one I have ever seen for which people were scalping tickets.
I originally didn’t pick this film because it looked like something I would buy later and watch at home, but, like “Moneyball,” it fit the schedule. So, I had a ticket to the second show, and I didn’t expect anyone famous to be there, but I would be wrong.
First, the film; I have seen dozens of rock documentaries, and this was a good one (but not great). The first hour that covered the Seattle scene, Mother Love Bone, the band’s relationship with Soundgarden, and how the band came together with lead singer Eddie Vedder, was very, very good. There were lots of behind the scenes footage, a good overview of the band’s fight against Ticketmaster, and a very interesting section of the band’s relationship with Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain.
Unfortunately, after the tragedy June 30, 2000 at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark when 9 kids were crushed t and suffocated to death in the crowd, there wasn’t much drama in the band intself. The band continues to make albums and tour, but the band members step away from Pearl Jam when they need to, so there’s no big fights or issues. As a result, the film is 15-30 minutes too long (I’m a fan of the band, but not in the obsessive, almost Grateful Dead-like way some fans are).
As I said, a decent rock bio-pic. Before the film started, one of the producers and the film editors were introduced apologizing for the director and the band. When the film was over, I went to the bathroom, but I heard a whoop from the crowd and who was talking, Mr. Vedder himself. He told us that he had come to pick up Neil Young, who was watching the film with us. Very Cool!!!
The second boys “coming of age” story was a film called “I Wish,” the story of two boys – one living with his mother, the other with his father. The older boy wants the family to get back together, but there seems to be little chance of that – the father is a musician, and the mother works in a store while living with her parents. You can tell that a big problem was that the father didn’t have a “regular” job.
The older boy has a group of friends and they get into situations, but nothing gruesome or too horrible. The younger boy prods his father to get up for gigs and generally in the parent in the relationship.
The climax of the story is that the older boy uses his grandfather and even his teachers to get him and his buddies to skip school so that their group can meet up with the younger brother and his friends at a location along an intersection where the bullet trains pass each other at high speed. The kids believe that if you make a wish when then trains pass, it will be granted. One boy wishes for his dog to come back to life; another girls wishes that she can be an actress; and it is believed that the older boy will wish for his family to reunite, but in the end, he wishes for nothing. He realizes that his brother is better off with his father and he is better off with his mother and grandparents.
The film was a bit slow, but it was nice to see an Asian film where there was not a death. (Although I must say that I was fearful when the two groups of kids got together and one of the little girls wanders off followed by a man on a bicycle. As it turned out, he was a policeman and the kids end up being taken in by a old woman and her husband who lost their daughter and go along with the kids’ story that they were one girls’ grandparents. In that way, for one night, the old couple got their wish too.)
If it is the Toronto Film Festival and you are looking for Asian gangster films, it is likely that there is a film from the prolific director Johnny To. The Indignant Wife and I have seen several films by Mr. To including the fine “Election,” and “Election 2” as well as “Breaking News,” and most recently “Vengeance” a couple of years ago.
His 2011 entry to the festival was called “Life Without Principle,” the story of several people who are faced with moral choices. One is a woman banker who sells a high risk investment to an older woman right as the Asian markets crash. This same woman is a banker for a man who has lots of money – as it turns out, he is a loan shark, who gets killed in a robbery attempt.
One of the central characters is a character named “Rooster,” a low level gangster and a high level buffoon. He gets into all kinds of situations following money; making what appeared to be bad investments, but he is very lucky and he comes out of it all right. Of course, there is a cop in the middle of all of this, but his wife wants to buy a house, but the cop is reluctant, which puts a strain on their relationship.
There is a little violence, and as in an earlier film of Mr. To’s that I saw “Breaking News” a lot of characters whose lives interact on various levels. It was OK, but not among Mr. To’s best.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

As I mentioned earlier, I was eventually able to get tickets for 9 of my 10 tickets, but I had the hardest time finding a 10th film. There were almost no morning showings on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, and two of the three films showing on Tuesday morning were already sold out. So, I picked the third one, a film called “The Lonliest Planet.” It had gained modest interest from me when I saw it in the book, but something told me that I would like it. My gut feeling was right on.
Gael García Bernal (“Motorcycle Diaries,” “Y Tu Mana Tambien,” “Amores Perros”) plays a man who is on a sojourn through the Georgian mountains (Russian Georgia) with his girlfriend played by Hani Furstenberg. For the first hour of the movie, not much happens – they walk around, they party in local restaurants/bars, they make love. They eventually hire a local man to take them through the mountains.
They walk, they talk, they share discussions, but it was a pretty boring affair. (I should note that much of the photography was very pretty, but the director, Julia Loktev, tried to cut off the shot so that it wasn’t panoramic; more claustrophobic despite being outdoors. I was about to fall asleep, but then the wanderers come across another group of locals. Words are exchanged (in the local language), and the oldest man holds up a gun. The man instinctively holds up his girlfriend in front of his, but then realizes that this was a cowardly thing to do, and pushes her behind him.
No one is shot, but obviously, the relationship is broken. There’s a lot of silence after this as the Bernal’s character broods, and Ms. Furstenberg’s character is cold to him. Eventually, the guide opens up (in one of the better scenes) around the campfire; Bernal’s character can’t take anymore and goes to the tent to sleep. Both the guide and the woman are drinking heavily and, as one would expect, the guide asks for a kiss, and there is a moment of groping, but nothing happens.
The young woman returns to the tent where they couple begin to have sex, but the woman gets sick and runs out of the tent to throw up. Then, Ms. Loktev has the man do something so stupid that at that point, I realized that this was a man hating piece of feminist crap. Bernal spends time caressing her as she is getting sick, but when she’s finished, he asks if she “wants to continue” having sex. The woman has just thrown up, and no one has discussed the schism in their relationship, but he asks if she wants to finish having sex? Bernal’s character wasn’t stupid in the early parts of the film, just an average, if boring schlep. To do something stupid is one thing, but she had to “up the ante” and make him a reprehensible idiot. On top of that, in the question and answer session, Ms. Loktev said that she came from a sound editor background, which explained why three characters walking through a field was as loud as a standing room only crowd in Madison Square Garden.
I was in the middle of a row, and I didn’t want to appear rude to leave in the middle of the Q & A session, but with Ms. Loktev and Ms. Furstenberg on stage, I thought it would be impolite to ask why she had made a very good actor do 2 stupid things. The first incident was from a short story, and while it took a very long time to get to it, set up an interesting situation. Then, she made the man to be a shit, and at that point, I resisted the urge to ask the filmmaker if she had ever had a satisfying relationship with a man, or if she was a man-hater. But I held off – that was one of the longest Q & A’s I’ve ever had to deal with.
My final coming of age story was another Chinese film called “11 Flowers.” Again, we had a young boy growing up, but this time, it was in the final years of the Cultural Revolution. The boy’s father had a job in another town, which meant that he only biked home on weekends. Meanwhile, the home is run by the boy’s mother where he lives with his sister.
The boy has been noticed by one of the teachers and picked to lead the daily exercises, but he could use a new shirt. The boy’s mother who had been saving up coupons so that the kids could have new clothes for Christmas, relents and gets him a new shirt. Like “I Wish,” the boy has a group of friends and they have adventures. One day, they are playing in a nearby creek when the new shirt disappears. It turns out that the new shirt is being used to stop the bleeding of a young man hiding in the woods by this creek.
The man promises to get him a new shirt, but he tells the boy that he will kill him and his family if he reports the man to the authorities. It turns out that the man had tried to burn the local factory down because the factory boss had raped his sister. The man eventually succeeds; the boys eventually tell where they saw him; the man is captured, but the criminal’s father is a friend of the boy’s dad who has returned home for good.
The boy and his father eventually befriend the father and the girl who is understandably a shell of her former self. On one visit to the family’s house, the girl’s family gives the boy one of the criminal’s newest shirts – in this way, he did get a replacement shirt. The criminal is executed, which, we are told, is quite a waste since the factory boss would have been severely punished or executed if only they had brought the rape to the authorities. It was a very interesting slice of life story.
Finally, I saw a film called “Goon.” I haven’t seen many comedies over the past decade or so as I found them stupid and full of fart and dick jokes. “Goon” has it’s share of tasteless jokes, but I did laugh a lot. Seann William Scott (“American Pie 1 and 2,” “Road Trip”) plays a dimwitted guy who is a bar bouncer, but is a good brawler and becomes a hockey enforcer. He brings a humanity and a simple honesty to the part. He was very good.
Jay Baruchel (“Knocked Up’) wrote the screenplay and plays his friend who has a cable hockey program. Mr. Baruchel’s character isn’t funny and too loud and obnoxious and would have found the cutting room floor for most of his shtick. Liev Schreiber was very good as the old enforcer on his way out, a storyline made more poignant with the death of the enforcers and “The Last Gladiators” film.
Director Michael Dowse (“Take Me Home Tonight,” “It’s All Gone, Pete Tong”) keeps the film moving and while it isn’t as good as “Slap Shot” (still the ultimate hockey film), “Goon” was funny in parts. I did get a chance to speak with him after the showing – it turned out he had seen “The Last Gladiator,” and he was concerned that people would think that he was making light of enforcers, but the film is a broad comedy and I told him that I thought it worked. (The film did get distribution at TIFF, so, I’m sure he’s happy.)
One more complaint, the hockey announcer was trying too hard to be Bob Uecker in “Major League” to very limited success. He had one funny part, but then he was trying too hard and failing.

So, that’s the story for 2011. As usual, I will rank the films from best to worst in case any of these films ever make it to your multiplex (or Netflix).

1. The Last Gladiators
2. Moneyball
3. Sons of Norway
4. Goon
5. Comic-Con: Episode IV – A Fan’s Hope
6. 11 Flowers
7. I Wish
8. Twixt
9. The Sword Identity
10. Hanaan
11. The Loneliest Planet
Again, there was no “Miyazaki’s Spirited Away” (2002), “Hotel Rwanda” (2004), or “City of Life and Death” (2009) among this year’s films I caught; no great films that blew me away. Unfortunately, there were three bad films, one marginal film from a master (Twixt), and a group of good, but not great films. Only “The Last Gladiators” really made a big impression on me.
See you next year!

The big story for the end of the 2011 baseball season in Chicago is that Mike Quade wasn’t’ the first manager fired, although it’s coming. Ozzie Guillen, manager of the only World Series Championship for either team in a combined 190 seasons, was let go by the team yesterday, but it was coming. Not because the “smallest market big market franchise had just spent $125 million in payroll for a third place team; no, it was because Guillen pressed the issue.
Guillen had one more year on his contract and the team was probably going to allow him to continue in his current position, but the Florida Marlins have coveted Guillen to return to where he had been third base coach to be the manager to open the new stadium. So, Guillen could afford to push Owner Jerry Reinsdorf personally and through the media that he wanted a contract extension, and Reinsdorf couldn’t show himself to be pressured, so he let Guillen out of his contract.
But it was time. Guillen’s teams have underachieved since the 2005 World Series Champions, and the ongoing fight between Guillen and GM Ken Williams was an unwelcome distraction for the team.
Oftentimes, a professional team just needs to hear a different message, or the same message in a different way. The White Sox underachieved, in part, because the team tuned Guillen out. It’s time for a new voice in the dugout.
I just hope that Reinsdorf gives Williams a pink slip also.

I should have seen it coming, but earlier this week, R.E.M. announced that it was breaking up. Going out with a whimper, not a bang, if you will. I know (and have already read) some people would be asking jokingly “didn’t they break up long ago?” No, they didn’t and while their best music was early in their careers, I will still miss them.
My friend Tom Watson was the first person on the bandwagon, and he got me to listen to the EP Chronic Town and then the first LP “Murmur.” The atmospheric music took the jangly guitars of The Byrds and built a country vibe around it. Most of our friends were turned off by the indistinguishable lyrics from Michael Stipe, but we loved them anyway. As Tom and I used to say, every album (they were still albums then) had my current favorite R.E.M. song on it. “Murmur” opened with “Radio Free Europe,” the best opening song on a debut album in rock history (tied with “I Will Follow” on U2’s debut album “Boy”). “Reckoning” followed; then came “Fables of the Reconstruction;” with industry pundits looking to each album as being the breakthrough in sales. We however, loved them in their “littleness;” they were still members of our tribe; they were our little secret.
“My favorite album was next “Life’s Rich Pageant,” then came “Document,” whose “The One I Love” was close to the breakthrough the record company was looking for, and was the last one for I.R.S. records – the band signed with Warner Brothers where they would remain for the rest of their career. I remember being sad when I walked into a record store on the day “Green” was released – copies were literally flying off the shelves – our private house band now belonged to everybody.
“Out of Time” and Automatic for the People” were huge hits and deservedly so, but I wasn’t big on “Monster” and in general people didn’t like “New Adventures in Hi-Fi,” but I have always loved that record and argued its merits with people who disagreed. Drummer Bill Berry left the band after that, and the results were not good. “Up” was almost unlistenable; “reveal” was a little better; and “Around The Sun” was better yet. It was still not up to the earlier albums, but they were getting used to being without Berry.
I thought that the last two CDs – “Accelerate” and “Collapse into Now” were the best music since “Hi-Fi,” but with the Warner’s contract over, there was little reason left to remain together.
I will miss them.

And, let me take a moment to say Happy Birthday to Bruce Springsteen!!!

The NBA will be postponing the start of training camp and the league will begin cancelling preseason games as the lockout of the players continues. All summer, there has been no real sense of urgency, but now that games are effected, perhaps the sides will begin to get serious.
However, it doesn’t look good for NBA fans. The two sides met earlier this week, and while the players were offering a reduction of the players’ salaries from 59% of total revenues to 54%, the owners seem to be adamant in demanding salaries be rolled back to 47%. I know that the league is trying to crush the union, believing that the players will agree to anything once the million dollar salaries are cut off since they believe that the players are living massive paycheck to paycheck, but a rollback that large sounds like pure greed. The NHL players rolled back salaries to help end its player lockout, but the hockey league was in dire financial straights; the NBA is thriving. I know that union bashing is in vogue right now, but I would agree with a rollback of salaries that large if the owners committed to reducing ticket prices so that the average fan caught a break, but we know that will happen when Rush Limbaugh supports President Obama.

The Toronto Film Festival is over and I’m back with you. This year’s film festival recap is progressing; I hope to have it by the end of this week. In the interim, a few thoughts….
• Isn’t it hypocritical for the hyper-conservative Chicago Tribune to sensor last week’s Doonesbury cartoons? I went online and saw them and they tackle the allegations in the upcoming Sarah Palin book. I wonder why the Tribune feels it has to protect Mrs. Palin? Of course, if a cartoon like Prickly City wrote that President Obama had two heads and was born on Venus, the Tribune would print that, you betcha!
• The baseball season is coming to a merciful end here in Chicago. On the North Side, Cub Owner Tom Ricketts fired the GM, but is keeping the scouting head and the other front office personnel, which means that he is hamstrung for GM candidates. The first thing a new GM would want to do is to bring in his own staff, and if he is stuck with the old staff, the top candidates will not even want to be considered. It appears that only Mike Quade will be fired at the end of the season – not enough bloodletting for one of the best GMs to want to come here.
• On the South Side, Manager Ozzie Guillen or GM Ken Williams or both are going to get the ax after this year’s disappointing finish. It’s time to back up the truck.
• I may be the last person in Chicago who thinks Bear quarterback Jay Cutler can be the man. But I’ll say this – Cutler should tell anyone who says he isn’t tough to kiss his derrière. I watched yesterday’s game against the Saints, and Cutler got hit hard many times and got back up. I don’t think the ship has sailed on Cutler in Chicago, but he’s a tough s.o.b.

If it’s September, it’s time for the Toronto International Film Festival, which means it’s time for me to travel. I’ll be at the festival this weekend, my 10th, and as always, I’ll be putting together my thoughts on the movies, sights and sounds of this year’s festival shortly.
Have a good weekend, everyone!