SINGER AND PIANIST Michael Feinstein has carved himself a unique place in American music. He was among the first artists of the current era to breathe life back into the "Great American Songbook" and re-popularize standards by tunesmiths like Cole Porter, Jule Styne and Irving Berlin. He's also an archivist and worked with the aging Ira Gershwin to organize the family's musical catalog.
Feinstein's newest CD, "The Sinatra Project," finds him in both of these roles, singing a dozen songs originally performed by Frank Sinatra and also unearthing some obscurities. Express caught up with him by telephone before a performance in London.
» EXPRESS: Was there an attempt on the new CD to avoid familiar chestnuts like "My Way" and "I've Got You Under My Skin"?
» FEINSTEIN: Yes. Well, I hate "My Way." Sinatra hated it, too. He quite frequently used four-letter words in his description of that song. "I've Got You Under My Skin" is such a definitive performance and recording that I saw no point in trying to copy that. So instead, I took another Cole Porter song, "Begin the Beguine," which he sang and recorded in the 1940s and interpreted it as if he had done it in the 1950s. People who hear it think that it's a vintage Nelson Riddle chart, but it's not. So, yes, I did want to avoid things that were so closely connected to him there was no leeway for a different interpretation.
AWARD-WINNING VIDEO artist and writer Joan Braderman chronicles the feminist influence in art and life in her latest film, "The Heretics," an insider's look into the New York artists' collective that produced "Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics" in the mid-1970s. Beginning with Braderman's transition from aspiring filmmaker to collective co-founder, the film tracks the group's response to the transformative social changes brought about by the civil rights movement and second-wave feminism.
A Washington, D.C., native, Braderman is currently a professor of media arts at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. She will appear Friday at American University's Katzen Arts Center to show and discuss the film.
» EXPRESS: Is "The Heretics" purely autobiographical?
» BRADERMAN: No. I use the narrative format as a kind of framing device because I think it's easier to get into a movie when you have somebody to identify with. It's really about the second wave and one of its greatest successes: the impact on the way art is made today.
Continue Reading "Art Expansion: Joan Braderman on 'The Heretics'" »
FILMMAKER JOE BERLINGER'S latest film, "Crude," is about the case filed against U.S. oil company Chevron by 30,000 rain forest dwellers in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador. They claim that for 30 years, Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, contaminated their water, air and land, and that the results have been health problems such as cancer and birth defects. Berlinger, who made the films "Paradise Lost" and "Some Kind of Monster," followed the court case and visited contaminated fields to tell this tale.
» EXPRESS: How did you get involved with this project?
» BERLINGER: Steven Donzinger, the American attorney [for the Ecuadorian plaintiffs], came to my office and asked if I'd be interested in the story. I went into it with reluctance since I'm a multi-viewpoint filmmaker who doesn't like to use narration — I let things unfold and let the viewer make up their own mind about what they're seeing. It's also been a 13-year struggle, and since my style is present tense, I felt like I missed the story. I was also concerned that I wouldn't raise money for this kind of film.
» EXPRESS: What made you change your mind?
» BERLINGER: I agreed to go to the region, and as soon as I landed in the jungle and smelled petroleum and talked to mothers forced to give their children poisonous water, I felt my resistance starting to wear down. I was shocked at what had been done to the region, and I was dumbfounded at the level of environmental degradation and disregard for the people who live there.
Continue Reading "'Crude' Art: Documentarian Joe Berlinger Discusses His Latest Film" »
ZEHRA FAZAL MAY end up offending people by how bluntly she tackles your stereotypes. That's kind of the point. With her latest one-woman show, "Headscarf and the Angry Bitch," the local actress combines her own experiences growing up in an Islamic household with the ones her friends and family had and, lo and behold: a personal comedy that examines what it's like to be a modern Muslim woman, complete with vignettes and folk-rock songs that parody everything from sex to Ramadan.
Before the show's last performances at the D.C. Arts Center Thursday and Saturday, Fazal talked about the parallels between her and the show's main character, Zed Headscarf, and audience's reactions.
» EXPRESS: How did you decide to focus on comedy?
» FAZAL: I have played a variety of roles both comedic and dramatic, but I tend to find myself most often cast in dramatic roles or vixen-type parts. … That's part of the reason I conceived "Headscarf" — I wanted to challenge myself to do a pure comedy.
Continue Reading "Comedian and Actress: Zehra Fazal on Her 'Headscarf and the Angry Bitch'" »
"THE WAY WE GET BY" is a bracing film documentary following three volunteer greeters who welcome soldiers returning home from war. It evolves quickly, though, into a mortality play about loss, aging and feeling forgotten. Director Aron Gaudet spoke with Express about his struggle and how he summoned the resilience to tell their story, in the midst of an unpopular war, before a politically polarized nation.
» EXPRESS: What inspired you?
» GAUDET: My mother got us interested in it. She had retired a few years before. When we started making movies, she was 70 years old. I was working in television and trying to bridge over to documentary filmmaking. But that's hard to do because news on TV is so over and done with in a matter of hours.
These great stories would come in but to do them right, you'd need days or even weeks. I was inspired back then from that. This is the opposite.
Continue Reading "Hitting Home: Aron Gaudet on 'The Way We Get By'" »
WHEN IT COMES TO COMEDY, NBC must have stolen King Midas' golden touch, because the network just can't be stopped. Thanks to established shows like "The Office" and "30 Rock" NBC is now the kind of contender that can go out on a limb and commission more quirky, irreverent shows to round out its sarcasm-heavy lineup.
And that generosity means we get to benefit from acting turns by comedian Aziz Ansari, the kind of guy who says Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. reduces him to the actions of a "little girl at a John Mayer concert" (check out the YouTube video with Eugene Mirman; it's hilarious) and who remixes Jay-Z's song "Hate" from "The Blueprint 3" by yelling over it and musing about how much he wants a sandwich.
As disgruntled government employee Tom Haverford on NBC's "Parks and Recreation" Ansari is the show's jaded, bitter lifeblood. And while the comedy returned for its second season last Thursday, Ansari is bringing his stand-up to Washington this weekend. We spoke to him before his show Saturday at Sixth & I Synagogue about how he got into the business.
Continue Reading "Funny Man: Rising Indie Comedian Aziz Ansari Comes to Washington" »
MUSIC ENTHUSIASTS GET their own silver screen love story with Davis Guggenheim's "It Might Get Loud," opening in D.C. on Friday. What happens when boy meets guitar is explored by the Academy Award-winning documentarian behind "An Inconvenient Truth," through the eyes and stories of three monuments of rock 'n' roll: Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, U2's the Edge and Jack White of, among other bands, the White Stripes, the Dead Weather and the Raconteurs.
Guggenheim centers the film on a two-day period during which three musicians were brought to a single soundstage, and then left alone. From that encounter, the individual musical journeys of each guitarist get fleshed out through intimate recordings. Page plays air guitar to his favorite records, the Edge digs through early cassette tape demos of "Where the Streets Have No Name," and Jack White beats out the hesitant rhythm to a new song — all on camera.
"It Might Get Loud" serves as more than a tender and graceful homage to the electric guitar — it's a celebration of storytelling.
Continue Reading "Creating Musical Journeys: Davis Guggenheim" »
HARVARD PROFESSOR Alex S. Jones has written a book, "Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy," which is actually a backward-looking tour of the historical evolution of the American press — with detailed breakdowns of the First Amendment and its subsequent litigation, the meaning of objectivity, various business models and the like. Jones is a newspaper family scion with a deep background in journalism, but he dclines to chart a path forward for the news, instead writing a paean for it.
» EXPRESS: Your book mentions the reporters who exposed the corruption of ex-congressman Duke Cunningham, won a Pulitzer and lost their jobs in short order. That's really telling.
» JONES: It's stories like that, repeated again and again and again, that prompted me to write this book. The people who do the kind of journalism that those reporters did are the people who provide the factual news that we have our national conversation about and is the core of the mechanism we have for governing ourselves. Power needs to be watched. When newspapers lose the muscle to do that kind of reporting, we suffer as a society.
» EXPRESS: So many people visit a newspaper's Web site but don't buy the newspaper. Do you see that as the main problem?
» JONES: The problem is to find a way to continue to pay for high-quality journalism. The Web is going to make it very difficult to charge for news. People will not pay for something that they think they ought to be able to get for free. Newspapers [have to] trim their operational costs to be reflective of the new reality and more modest profit-margin expectations. It will be something that is more stripped-down. It is not necessarily going to be as profitable. But it can be a profitable enterprise, nonetheless.
Continue Reading "Putting it Into Words: Alex S. Jones on 'Losing the News'" »
DANCE-CRAZED HIPSTERS shaking, pingpong balls flying, and 7-year-old girls belting out Clash songs — Comet Ping Pong isn't your typical pizza joint. It's not as if the green table-topped restaurant scrimps on the steaming, free-form pies — clams and sausage still live here — but, lately, folks are making the trek to Connecticut Avenue for more than just a meal; they come for the music.
Pizza and rock music bleeds American. Last year saw a steady stream of local and mid-level bands coming through the doors of owner James Alefantis' restaurant. Alefantis loves fostering music and community, but, without the booking help of Kalani Tifford and local label Gypsy Eyes Records, the eclectic shows — Thursday features songwriters John Bustine and Brandon Butler while Saturday has dance-mixers Beautiful Swimmers — might not be so common.
» EXPRESS: What's your relation to Comet Ping Pong?
» TIFFORD: We were looking to do some events there and then kind of wanted to do more. James is super-devoted to the arts in general, and without him, it would be impossible. He really wants to create a nice community place where everybody can come and have pizza and drink beer, play ping pong and listen to some music. ... He gives us free rein to book shows we like.
Continue Reading "Songs and Slices: Gypsy Eye Record's Kalani Tifford" »
D.C. IS IN the midst of Julia Child mania. To coincide with Friday's release of the film "Julie & Julia," Inox is offering a three-course menu of dishes from Child's cookbook throughout August, and the National Museum of American History received a donation last week of items from the film's production.
"Julie & Julia," which was written and directed by Nora Ephron, is an adaptation of Child's book about learning to cook in France and writing "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," and Julie Powell's memoir about cooking every recipe in Child's book and blogging about it. Ephron chatted with Express about her love of food, Julia Child's "lusty" marriage and why she chose Meryl Streep to play the iconic chef.
» EXPRESS: What inspired you to combine the two stories?
» EPHRON: Amy Robinson, one of the producers, had the idea to put the two stories together, and the minute I heard it, I just kind of understood the movie in some, "Oh, my God, how lucky can you be?" kind of way. I had read about Julie Powell and I knew all about Julia Child, but I think that putting the stories together made each of their stories a little bit more interesting.
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