The Pimpin' Page

This being the page on which we review and rave about other endeavors in multiple media that strike our fancy... Newest entries are at the top.

Three Films Worth Watching

Before I get to the pimping stage, I need to fill you all in on a bit of history: twenty years ago, give or take, a small arthouse film had a profound influence on me. I became so obsessed with it, in fact, that I wrote a number of papers and close textual analyses about the film in college. I think it's probably accurate to state that My Beautiful Laundrette helped me form my worldview, and played a huge role in determining my own, personal ethical code. The other thing that can very squarely be blamed on My Beautiful Laundrette is a near-obsessive infatuation with films about the alien within society--particularly those societies I am familiar with. And it's three relatively recent variations on that theme I'm going to pimp here now.

Head On, directed by Fatih Akin, is a tour de force of juxtaposed culture shock and alienation. Its two protagonists are 40-something Cahit and barely legal Sibel, two radically different Turkish immigrants to Germany. Cahit, who emigrated to Germany at a time when complete assimilation was the only possible option, barely remembers his language, and has few connections to the country of his birth. Sibel, born and raised in Hamburg in a very traditional Turkish family, is desperately trying to escape the shackles of that tradition and lead a modern, Western life. They meet in a psychiatric hospital after both attempt suicide, and Sibel persuades Cahit to marry her, to allow her to escape her family.

The original German title "Gegen die Wand" literally means "Up Against the Wall," and in the context of the film, it has multiple meanings. In the superbly edited opening sequence, Cahit tries to kill himself by driving head-on into a wall at high speed, but as in English, the idiomatic expression also implies being trapped without any means of escape--and they are. Having exchanged the prison of the mind (Cahit) and the prison of an orthodox family (Sibel), for the prison of a disastrous marriage, their lives continue spiraling out of control. Staged like a Greek tragedy, with acts set apart by a modern interpretation of a chorus, superbly photographed, and with a great soundtrack, this might possibly be the contemporary German counterpart to My Beautiful Laundrette.

Kebab Connection, directed by Anno Saul, is a comedy about a young Turkish man, Ibo, again born and raised in Germany, who wants nothing more than to become the director of the first German kung-fu movie. While waiting for stardom to strike (and a film producer to take him up on his plans), he directs kung-fu commercials for his uncle's kebab shop that star his German girlfriend, an aspiring actress preparing for the auditions to a prestigious acting school. Things take a turn for the worse, though, when the girlfriend gets pregnant, Ibo's family disowns him, and he gets embroiled in a feud between his uncle and the owner of the Greek taverna across the street. Hilariously funny, the films seamlessly melds cultural commentary with kung-fu movies and Romeo and Juliet.

Unveiled, directed by Angelina Maccarone is a quiet tragedy about well-educated Fariba fleeing Iran and seeking asylum in Germany. Finding herself unable to admit during the asylum interview that she would be persecuted in Iran because she had a lesbian relationship, Fariba lies to officials and that lie results in her application for asylum being denied. Just before she is supposed to be deported, Fariba stumbles upon the body of a fellow Iranian asylum seeker who committed suicide just before his asylum application was approved. Desperate, she decides to disguise herself as a man and take her countryman's place. While in a refugee camp, she gets an illegal job in a Sauerkraut factory in order to save up enough money for new papers, and soon falls for one of the German women working there. Low-key and superbly acted by Jasmin Tabatabai, this film very believably illustrates the lengths that desperate people will go to.

All three films are available for rental from Netflix.

Smash the Windows by Mischief Brew
available for order from Fistolo Records

It's pretty rare that Casper and I argue over who gets to listen to what CD at any given time, but that's pretty much what's been happening with this one since the day it arrived. In fact, I just lost the "on my office stereo or the stereo in the living room" debate.

Erik Peterson, the man behind Mischief Brew, is someone Casper first met during Punk Days in Ann Arbor when he played under a freeway bridge, which, according to Casper, was one of the best live shows he's ever attended. The CD ordering process is similarly nonconventional: send some money via PayPal, check, or well-concealed cash, wait and wonder for a couple of weeks, and receive a jiffy bag with a CD and a handwritten note thanking you for the purchase and alerting you to the fact that Mischief Brew might be touring in California during the summer. It's totally worth it. This might be the best record I'll buy all year.

You can forget a number of recent attempts to emulate the Pogues through the use of Irish accents and bagpipes, this is the real deal quite without the accoutrements. This is a musician on a par with the Pogues at their most biting and innovative, their most political and playful; a musician capable of the same achingly beautiful lyrics as Shane MacGowan at his finest. I'd go as far as to say that Smash the Windows is to America in the 00s what the Pogues' Red Roses for Me was to London in the 80s: social and political folk-influenced punk rock with an intense raw honesty that has gotten lost from more commercial releases over the past twenty years. Besides, any record that has a rights blurb that reads, "All rights reserved, or whatever. Do what thou wilt, but remember that it's nice to support independent bands, artists, labels, distros, and stores" would be punk by my definition of punk even if it featured a classical strings quartet.

The opening track, "The Reinvention of the Printing Press," an ambiguous paean to progress and literacy (the book was the lash and the word was the law/but the tyranny ended with ink on a block) is timely and filled with irony considering the current political situation and the US press' penchant for self-censorship, while "Lightning Knock the Power Out" is an anthem of political dissent both immediate and playful, using the story of the three pigs and the wolf as an analogy for American complacency to the current administration.

"Citizens Drive" is a condemnation of small-town America's fear of difference coupled with our generation's fear of growing into our elders. A theme that is revisited later in "From the Rooftops" and perhaps the best track on the album, "Nomad's Revolt," a bittersweet lament to settling down:

We'd go down to throw rocks at the river
curses at the parade
wedge a stone in the gears of the clockworks
try to keep us from acting our age
swore we'd carry on like this forever
'til the free spirits bled
but now can you believe who's a mother
and that so-and-so's cut off their dreads?

"The Lowly Carpenter" is a beautiful ballad combining socialist thought with religious imagery, delivered in a style that reminded me more than anything of Cat Stevens' "Father & Son," while "Roll Me Through the Gates of Hell" retains those socialist and religious overtones but wraps them in much more anger and rebellion, reminding me a lot of the Pogues' "Boys from the County Hell."

"The Gypsy, the Punk, and the Fool (A Tale)" couples a children's choir and storytelling reminiscent of Leonard Cohen, with the garage rock roots of punk for truly spectacular results, while "A Liquor Never Brewed" and "Ain't It the Life?" are the requisite drinking songs, which nevertheless manage to maintain the socialist tendencies exhibited elsewhere on the record.

There truly isn't a single track on this album, right down to the instrumental "Swing Against the Nazis," that isn't single material. There isn't a single track on the album that doesn't need to be listened to over and over again. It's really that good.

Samples available at Mischief Brew's website.