Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
Oct 7, 2002 | 1) and 2) "Igby Goes Down," written and directed by Burr Steers (United Artists) and trailer for "The Man From Elysian Fields," directed by George Hickenlooper (Goldwyn)
Movie logic: At the end of "Igby Goes Down," Jason Slocumb Jr., played by Kieran Culkin, visits a catatonic man in a mental institution: his father Jason Slocumb. It's Bill Pullman, who we've seen in flashbacks willfully driving himself out of his family, out of society, out of his mind. The Western-hero face was still there, some years back, the features sharp, but even then this once-strong, silent man was silent because he had nothing to say. It's one bad step past the familiar: The father's sardonic smile, when he still recognized his son, is from the chump Pullman played in "The Last Seduction," the deadness in his eyes now from the terrified man he played in "Lost Highway" -- it's as if he's stepped out of those roles only to complete them.
The same confusion between art and life -- are Bill Pullman's previous roles part of his filmography or his biography? -- is at work in "The Man From Elysian Fields," where Mick Jagger looks at once like the gangster he played in 1970 in the "Memo From Turner" sequence of "Performance" and a desiccated version of a 60-year-old Jennifer Love Hewitt. Here he appears as the pimp Luther Fox, which is to say that he is also playing a version of James Fox, who in "Performance" played the real gangster, and for whom Jagger's "Elysian" character is half-named. Far more deeply, though, Jagger is appearing as a fantasy version of himself, 35 years after the Rolling Stones, last hitting with the 1965 "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," were definitively erased from public consciousness by the San Francisco sound of the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and It's a Beautiful Day. After decades as the highest paid gigolo in Europe, what else would he be doing but running an escort service?
3) Thalia Zedek, "You're a Big Girl Now" (Kimchee EP)
"I got tired," are the first words the relentlessly thanatopic singer and guitarist offers -- but except on Bob Dylan's title song, not tired enough.
4) Justin Timberlake, "Like I Love You" (Jive)
'N Sync update: While Joey Fatone takes Broadway in "Rent," Lance Bass "remains hopeful" that his backers will come through with the $20 million for his Russian space flight (His backers? He didn't have the dough himself? And what do they get? Product placement?), Chris Kirkpatrick weighs a bid for the Republican nomination to take on Sen. Bob Graham in '04 and J.C. Chasez considers trying to save the Devil Rays, Justin Timberlake has gone for the solo career. He's got the Neptunes at the board, the "Thriller"-period Michael Jackson hat, the "Bad"-period Michael Jackson yelps, the George Michael "Faith" arrangement and a paint-thinner voice.
5) Dave Morey, "Ten at Ten" on KFOG-FM (San Francisco, Sept. 11)
The matchless daily show that usually interpolates "10 great songs" and sound bites from "one great year" made a one-day switch, airing listeners' request messages and then the songs they wanted played to commemorate the attacks of the year before. Many of the messages were singular. A man noted that "Sept. 11 was always a happy day for me," because it was his father's birthday, then told how his father, a crisis manager in Iowa, immediately flew to New York to do what he could. Another man spoke of playing Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind" on a jukebox in a bar, upsetting the other patrons -- "but that was a time when you felt you could go up to anybody and start talking," and so he did. But of all the songs chosen -- from Don Henley's "The End of the Innocence" to U2's "Walk On" to the Corrs' "When the Stars Go Blue" -- only Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms" reached the event, and then only in Mark Knopfler's guitar playing, a hurtful funeral oration for a funeral that, you might have sensed, could take place only in the arc of the oration's own music.
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