The following review is part of our coverage of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. âQuirkyâ has become such an exhausted shorthand for a certain kind of forcibly twee indie filmmaking that it's sometimes hard to remember that good movies can still earn that description. But if âSundance-friendlyâ low-budget comedies have become one of the more maligned subgenres of film in recent years, Brigsby Bear offers a touching and daringly unconventional reminder of how no approach to filmmaking is inherently bad with the right mind at the helm. And as unorthodox comic minds go, few are more distinct than Kyle Mooney's. The deadpan, earnest Good Neighbor and SNL alum is the heart of Brigsby Bear, built as a vehicle for the actor and co-written by Mooney and Kevin Costello. Its uniquely weird tone is set early, as James (Mooney) goes about his daily rounds in his family's self-sustaining home. He does his chores, he attends his home-schooling classes, and he eats dinner around the table with his loving, awkward parents (Mark Hamill and Jane Adams). Mostly, though, James obsesses over Brigsby Bear Adventures, his all-time (and only) favorite television show. Brigsby teaches James about everything he could ever want to know, from the value of friendship to important lessons about how âprophecy is worthless, only trust your familial units.â James gets lonely sometimes with only his parents and his fellow Brigsby enthusiasts on the internet for company, but it's never so bad. Brigsby always has his back, even when James goes out onto the house's âpierâ and gazes with longing at the larger world beyond his home. It's clear from early on that all is hardly well with James, and when he's suddenly and abruptly ripped out of the existence he once knew, Brigsby Bear does away with convention in favor of a smarter kind of comedy about a man-child forced to confront the many, many things he doesn't understand about the real world. First-time director Dave McCary (a fellow SNL name of recent seasons, behind the camera) metes out information about the nature of James' upbringing in effectively small doses, allowing the film's equal doses of dark humor and pathos to come through naturally, rather than through a series of comic setpieces. When James is returned to his actual parents (Matt Walsh and Michaela Watkins), after learning that his life up to this point hasn't been what he thought it was, James is left to understand his new and terrifying future in the only way left that makes any sense to him: through Brigsby Bear Adventures and its lessons about heroism, loyalty, mathematics, and danger. And so, James sets out to make a final episode of the show, and find some peace in the process. It's a measure of how confidently well-made Brigsby Bear is that it rarely gets bogged down in its high-concept setup. While some characters get lost in the shuffle as the film goes on (particularly Claire Danes as a barely-there therapist and Greg Kinnear as a kindhearted cop who's played well but comes off like an interloper from a broader comedy), James anchors the story as an innocent blank slate onto which other characters try and impose their wisdom, and instead offer their neuroses and hang-ups. His parents are at first ecstatic to have him home, but struggle to understand exactly how and why James turned out the way he did. His new friends, as his sister Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins) points out, are too young for him, for as kind as several of them are. And as Mooney's cleverly stilted delivery suggests, it's not necessarily that James can't learn how to engage. It's that he doesn't want to, not when so little makes sense and nobody even knows who or what Brigsby Bear is. It's hard to argue with a confused man-child who just wants to reclaim some semblance of normalcy. Much of the pleasure of Brigsby Bear comes from the places the film goes with its seriocomic premise, so we'll try to preserve those here as much as possible, but Mooney gives a breakout performance as the maladroit, uncomprehending James. There's a sincere yearning to his turn that distinguishes Brigsby Bear from so many indie comedies about young men coming of age, and that Mooney uses to moving effect. The revelations seem to burst out of him uncontrollably; when he awkwardly declares that âI made a friend!â upon connecting with Spence (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), it's at one haphazardly dorky and sweetly unexpected. The idea of an underdeveloped young man finding himself is hardly new comic territory, but Brigsby Bear speaks to a more innate kind of need: for friendship, for love, for the chance to say something through art that will matter to someone else. It's also a well-considered comedy in its filmmaking, McCary lending a number of effective surrealist touches throughout, the most interesting of which are found in the Brigsby Bear Adventures episodes, which mine the grainy oversaturation of faded VHS tapes for both nostalgic chuckles and an understated, off-the-cuff menace that only continues to gather strength as the film goes on. (The episodes are both educational and littered with messages about the values of obedience and incuriousness.) And again, the film's other (and best) comic weapon is Mooney, whose expressive performance is good for everything from uncomfortably lengthy cutaways to a welcome streak of downplayed physical comedy, mostly stemming from Mooney's knack for finding small ways to fail at basic daily customs. Brigsby Bear is the kind of comedy where the laughs sometimes sting, tinged with a melancholy that beautifully compliments James' childlike sense of obsessive ambition. But it's also frequently hilarious, in its warm eccentricity and in its sense of wonder about the practical aspects of making a low-budget movie with your friends and anyone else willing to lend their time for an afternoon. Brigsby avoids some the bleaker realities of its story; one late conversation between Mooney and Hamill, in particular, is both a fun nod to one of the actors' filmographies and a moment of catharsis for both men in wildly different ways. It's the rare dramedy that ably speaks to both ends of that duality, as funny as it is touching, and it's a reminder of how a great movie can emerge from even the most familiar places. It just needs the right idea, and maybe a talking bear suit.
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Republican says pop star is part of 'an emerging leftwing fascism' after her comments at Women's March The former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich has said Madonna âought to be arrestedâ for telling the crowd at the Women's March on Washington that she had âthought an awful lot about blowing up the White Houseâ. The singer said on Sunday that she had been speaking metaphorically. âI am not a violent person,â she wrote on Instagram. âI spoke in metaphor and I shared two ways of looking at things - one was to be hopeful, and one was to feel anger and outrage, which I have personally felt.â Continue reading...Fibbers, York AJ Tracey has traded crime for grime. The young London MC was studying criminology at university before he withdrew from his studies when his music started making waves. He has hardly looked back. âYou said I wouldn't go far,â he raps at some imaginary naysayer. However, a plug from superstar Drake saw Thiago Silva â Tracey's collaboration with the rapper Dave â go viral in 2016, and he's already performing sold-out crowds such as this. A youngish audience clamber on each other's shoulders and greet his entrance with a chant of âAJ! Tracey!â The son of a Trinidadian rapper and a Welsh pirate radio DJ, Tracey gives an ever-evolving genre his own distinct style. His hook-laden grime combines rattling 140bpm beats, sci-fi-type electronic noises, dancehall-style reloads (where a track is stopped, then performed again) and lyrics that cover the young, black urban experience, from police harassment to a popular London fried chicken shop. His diamond-hard, aggressive delivery adds to the atmosphere of thrilling chaos. At one point, the small stage â inexplicably flanked by giant plants â is crammed with a dozen members of his touring party. Continue reading...Photograph by Clarissa Villondo The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and now the Presidency. As we approach the rejected issue of Marvel's What If? that is the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, the only place where the left might retain a power advantage in Washington, D.C. is its music scene. The Trump team's struggle to fill out its inauguration entertainment schedule has been well-documented by this site. As of this week, the headliners of Trump's âMake America Great Again! Welcome Celebrationâ include buttrock jobbers 3 Doors Down, hungover cowboy hat Toby Keith, and Lee Greenwood, the musical equivalent of the American flag-waving smiley in an email forward from your aunt. If you didn't snag a ticket to either of those, don't worry. While this weekend won't see a repeat of Barack Obama's jubilant (and culturally relevant) 2009 inaugural musical performances, there will be plenty of shows; from clubs around the city to a humble DIY house, the venues of Washington, D.C. will welcome musicians bent on reawakening the spirit of opposition in what promises to be one of the city's most important music moments of the decade. For some of the artists, inauguration weekend in D.C. is simply the quirk of a busy tour calendar. New York-based singer-songwriter Steve Gunn called his own Friday set with ex-Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo at H Street's Rock and Roll Hotel âan intense coincidence,â one that changed the meaning of the pair's entire tour. âOriginally, we were really excited to do this tour for other reasons, because we've both been on the road with bands for a long time, and this was an opportunity for us to pare our gear down and play some different material,â Gunn said. âOnce Trump got elected, we realized that we were going to be on the road during inauguration time, and we both feel that it's important to be out there, to be speaking with people and playing music. âI can't say that I'm excited to be there, but I think it's important. We're not really sure about what kind of shitshow we're going to step into, but we certainly want to be there in numbers,â Gunn added. Those numbers will include one Thurston Moore, who'll join the night for a just-announced cameo with his old Sonic Youth bandmate. Meanwhile, in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, around the same time Gunn and company take the stage, the guitar rock torchbearers of Public Access T.V. will be awaiting their own introductions at Songbyrd Music House. âLet's just say I've been watching a lot of footage from Chicago 1968 to get prepared,â guitarist Xan Aird told me. Although his own band's brand of nervy new wave-inflected rock never looks too closely to political topics, he recognizes the opportunity to help fans extend their day of dissidence. âEverybody has a duty to push back in some way,â Aird said. âMaybe we'll pied piper our crowd into some act of civil disobedience. We'll play the show, then we'll march to the White House and we'll all take a shit.â Of all the clubs in D.C., none has a busier inauguration schedule than the Black Cat. By the time Donald Trump takes the oath on Friday afternoon, the club on the now-trendy stretch of 14th St. NW will just be approaching the crescendo of a full week of anti-Trump coverage. Cheekily entitled Can't Grab This Pussy, the Black Cat's counter-inaugural programming includes dystopian film screenings, a cabaret night, and benefits featuring guests including Speedy Ortiz's Sadie Dupuis, TV on the Radio's Kyp Malone, Antibalas, and more. One performer making an appearance is Katie Crutchfield, better known as Waxahatchee. She'll join Dupuis on the bill at Thursday night's âNo Thanks: A Night of Anti-Fascist Sound Resistance in the Capital of the USA,â which benefits D.C.-area LGBTQ support center Casa Ruby and neighborhood leadership organization ONE D.C. In an email, Crutchfield said that despite a full schedule writing the follow-up to 2015's well-received Ivy Tripp, she's excited to lend her voice, and her ear, to the struggle. âWatching the election results was like watching a national disaster or tragedy unfold,â Crutchfield said. âI've tried to talk it out with friends, like process together, but mostly I've tried to just listen to people whose lives are directly affected by this more than mine is. I've been trying to tune out the noise and just prepare to be as supportive and conscientious and diligent as I can be.â Photograph by David Brendan Hall Behind the scenes at the Black Cat, while Crutchfield raises money, owner Dante Ferrando will spend the weekend keeping a close eye on the crowds. A veteran of numerous administration changes, Ferrando nonetheless senses that this year is different. He told me that, since the election, the bar's been more subdued, with the mood closer to that of 9/11 or the days of the D.C. sniper. âThere's this blanket of intense uncertainty over everything, which I just think, psychologically, is really stressful,â Ferrando said. âIt's had an emotional impact on people in this city and the rest of the country. It's hard not to know what the hell's going on.â For him, that means both business concerns (âWhat are we going to deal with in terms of customer base? Are people still going to want to move to D.C.? Is growth going to happen, or is there going to be a pullback?â) as well as incoming policy changes. It also means dealing with elements of the right emboldened to cause trouble. âThere's a lot of people tailing people and going to their work, and there's a lot of lists circulating on the internet of music places that need to get shut down and house shows that need to be stopped,â Ferrando said. âThere's definitely a background here of an assault on culture, arts, and music that is unique to this time period and that I haven't seen for a very long time.â If the Black Cat's schedule is the busiest, then the schedule at Comet Ping Pong may be the most symbolic. The pizza parlor and punk space at the center of Pizzagate, the post-election period's dumbest (and scariest) conspiracy theory, has soldiered on since the December incident, which saw delusional gunman Edgar Maddison Welch enter the business to liberate non-existent child sex slaves from a non-existent basement where they were held by a non-existent cabal of high-ranking Democratic Party elites.  All of this surreality (and added security) hasn't stopped Comet Ping Pong from being a haven for local bands. Three will take the stage on Saturday in solidarity with the Women's March on Washington. For Jimmy Rhodes, the drummer and manager of headliners We Were Black Clouds, the show is a chance to support a slandered venue while simultaneously giving protesters someplace to unwind. âWe wanted to fight the good fight,â he said. So too did the members of Foxhall Stacks, who open along with Loud Boyz. Made up of D.C. scene lifers from acts including Minor Threat, Jawbox, and Velocity Girl, the band boasts a lengthy local perspective that few acts playing in D.C. this week can claim. âI think people who call Washington home have seen these kind of cycles in the past,â said guitarist and former CNN contributor Jim Spellman. âI sat with a couple thousand other people in front of the White House in the early '90s watching Fugazi play in the snow before US military action in the Gulf. There was a very active scene under Reagan, as well. People are used to seeing these ups and downs, but Trump is such an unknown that I think it's a different kind of uncertainty.â It's a sentiment echoed by vocalist Bill Barbot, who also noted an uptick in the level of fear surrounding expressions of progressive culture. Spellman and Barbot also decried the December assault on the city's DIY spaces, part of an effort by the white nationalists of 4chan's Right Wing Safety Squad to leverage Oakland's Ghost Ship tragedy into a campaign against cultural spaces that members deem hostile to Trump's cause. Having dealt with threats to DIY culture's existence for longer than many of today's house show organizers have been alive, the pair remain optimistic about the scene's resilience. âAny effort that people make to shut places down almost immediately backfires,â Spellman said. âThere's such a rich history of bands playing in church basements or abandoned department stores or a park in front of the White House. D.C. has always been a place where there are alternative structures and a thriving scene of house shows and weird spaces, and I have no doubt that that will continue in proportion to the amount it is discouraged.â âShut down the Black Cat, shut down the 9:30 Club, we're still going to put on house shows,â Barbot added. âWe're still going to plug in wherever there's electricity and play until you drag us off in handcuffs.â The threat of the Right Wing Safety Squad campaign hit especially close to home at 16th Street House, the long-running DIY house that's the site of this week's Not My Inauguration Music / Arts / Wellness Festival. The space was one of numerous D.C. DIY spaces targeted in the December message board posts, which also led to the shuttering of longtime DIY resource site DoDIY.org. In a Facebook post, the house's residents responded: âBring it, cowards. As Barry Crimmins likes to say, 'We are whatever frightens you.'â When I caught up with 16th Street's Ben Tufts and Erin Frisby, that bravery came with a sense of humor. âWe were actually really flattered,â said Frisby. âThere's a certain defiance in knowing that outside sources who know nothing about you have listed your private residence as a place to be targeted. We don't want to give into that.â They haven't. Instead, they've spent the past months plotting the logistics of a home-brewed festival that's ballooned from two to four days and features a lineup that mixes local artists and friends with out-of-towners including Baltimore's War on Women and Winnipeg's Kino Kamino. In the grand Fugazi tradition, the fest's suggested donation is just five dollars, with all proceeds going to Planned Parenthood and the Southern Poverty Law Center. That same ethos also led Tufts and Frisby to set aside space for self-defense and legal training targeted at those heading to the protests, as well as yoga sessions for those returning. Though Tufts and Frisby see the fest as the beginning of their fight against the rising tides of the right (as Tufts put it, âIt's not like Planned Parenthood and the SPLC are going to stop needing donations after inauguration dayâ), their biggest enemy might not be Trump, but economics. Adjusted for inflation, rent in Washington has nearly doubled since 1980, a market trend that's as enticing to landlords as it is worrying to working artists. In an email after our initial exchange, Frisby revealed that even 16th Street, which has been home to shows and the people who play them for more than a decade, isn't immune: The property's owner plans to move back to Washington later this year, meaning that the house's time as a DIY space is coming to an end. âLike many artists and musicians in the area, we will be looking for space to work, perform, and provide community discussion and expression,â Frisby said. Until then, there will be more shows and more practices and more moments spent wondering what, in this new weird reality, could possibly happen next.
Lushlife has shared a new mixtape called My Idols Are Dead + My Enemies Are in Power. All proceeds from sales of the tape-available for one dollar or more-will benefit the American Civil Liberties Union, and it features appearances from Killer Mike, Moor Mother, Kool A.D., Sad13, and others. Check out the tape below, and purchase it here. His last album Ritualize came out last year. Lushlife said of the project in a statement:
 My Idols Are Dead + My Enemies Are in Power: 01 Sky Is Falling Two fine albums from a sadly under-estimated band. Jody Grind were only around for a few years, released two albums in 1969 & 1970 and featured Tim Hinkley and Bernie Holland as their main men.
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Maureen Lave
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