Fresh Loaf

For years the Leo Frank murder case and lynching had been seen through its more obvious prisms of racism, anti-Semitism, class, socioeconomics and crime. For decades historians have sifted through Frank’s conviction for the 1913 rape and killing of Mary Phagan, the 13-year-old girl who worked at the Atlanta Pencil Factory that Frank managed.

The story’s legend was cemented with his death-sentence commutation courtesy Georgia’s outgoing governor and Frank’s subsequent lynching in Marietta after being kidnapped from a Milledgeville prison. It became the source of countless writings. But even just a few years after the publication of what many believe is the definitive examination of the case, the story remains compelling with issues yet unexamined. Emory film professor Matthew Bernstein deftly proves this with his exploration of the case through the media lens, so to speak, with Screening to a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television (University of Georgia Press). (more…)

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Any of the 2,500 or so people who head out to the Starlight Six Drive-In this weekend will feel like they’re attending a family reunion.

Drive-Invasion, the annual harmonic convergence of Atlanta’s lowbrow-culture scene, brings together punk-inspired rockabilly, garage and surf rock, hot-rod and custom-car contests, and a slew of old horror and science-fiction movies, shown from dusk practically till dawn.

It’s the signature event in a scene that over the past decade has flourished by celebrating fading cultural landmarks and old pop trends. With the help of a creative cadre of musicians, performance artists, promoters and tinkerers, ancient theaters such as the Starlight and the Plaza, and converted industrial spaces such as the Alcove Gallery, are taking the past and bringing it alive with a new, uniquely Atlantan energy. Lowbrow culture has taken root in Atlanta.

The word “lowbrow” has come to describe the embrace of a whole range of 20th-century pop-culture trends with a decidedly DIY spirit – from the hot-rod scene of the Roaring ’20s and the post-World War II tiki-bar craze to pop-surrealist, cartoon and comic-book art. The West Coast hipsters seem to celebrate all things lowbrow with a sense of irony that hints at trendiness.

But in Atlanta – where highways and power centers sometimes overshadow a more homegrown personality – a tightly knit group of creative spirits seems to have left irony behind in favor of an authentic lowbrow aesthetic with its own Southern accent.

Read the rest of this article here.

(Photo by David Lee Simmons)

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When I saw Jessica Elaine Blinkhorn’s artwork — first on her MySpace page and later at the 4 on the Floor reception — I was struck by her dark and moody images all stained with coffee and cigarettes. The women in her work often seem to be looking beyond themselves and their confines, sometimes at the viewer, sometimes off into the distance, maybe looking for something better. Blinkhorn attended the reception under difficult circumstances: Her brother, Gerald, had in the past two weeks succumbed to spinal muscular atrophy, the same form of muscular dystrophy that has confined Jessica to a wheelchair.

Tonight, in the upstairs lounge of Midtown’s Artistry, the Kennesaw native gets out of her chair to pay homage to her late brother with her performance-art piece MARKED, in which she will be lifted in the air and placed on a 5-by-5-foot canvas where she will “mark” areas with black paint.

This is how she puts it:

We all wish we could rewrite the world. When we realize this is not possible, we then begin to define ourselves in this world. We MARK those around us and are MARKED by the world we inhabit … Let the MARKING begin as I define myself through my art … .

The hour-long performance begins at 8 p.m., followed by a Q&A session. This will be her last week before Jessica turns her focus to the fall semester, in which the grad student will teach an art class at Georgia State.

(”Ponder” by Jessica Elaine Blinkhorn)

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On Tuesday (Aug. 5), the Starlight Drive-In will offer what feels like a tune-up for Labor Day Weekend’s Drive Invasion with “Hell Ride Rebellion.” The event features a screening of writer/director Larry Bishop’s neo-exploitation biker flick Hell Ride, starring Bishop, Michael Madsen, Vinnie Jones, David Carradine and Dennis Hopper. Plot? What plot?!? Quentin Taranton threw his name on the “Presents” title, so do with that what you will.

More fun comes from local rockers Thee Crucials and the Luchagors, along with a motorcycle/scooter showcase, a performance by Blast-Off Burlesque (whose Go West! show on Saturday at the Alcove was a hoot) and plenty of corndogs (natch).

The whole thing cranks up around 7:30 p.m., and the movie starts at 9:30 p.m. Here’s a look at the trailer. Vroom vroom!

(Photo courtesy Dimension Films)

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Jon Waterhouse has worn many crowns: filmmaker (“Basically Frightened”), magazine publisher/editor (Sideshow), wrestling manager (“Monopoly Man”), rock star (Van Heineken), actor (Retch, Silver Scream Spook Show) and freelance journalist (AJC, Esquire, Paste). But last week Waterhouse assumed the throne as the “The Pop Culture King,” a one-hour radio show on all things pop and entertainment in Atlanta, Friday nights at 8 p.m. on WMLB (1690 AM), “The Voice of the Arts.” (Full disclosure: Creative Loafing has a partnership with WMLB.)

Tonight, Waterhouse (pictured, with a portrait of one of his sons, Levi) interviews Nancy Simms, the heiress to the Varsity drive-in restaurant — which celebrates its 80th anniversary on Saturday. (The show will air again on Saturday at noon.) Nancy Simms tells delightful stories about growing up in the family business. “It’s all action,” she says, according to a press release. “There’s always something going on. You see friends, you make new friends, you see presidents and movie stars.” That includes an order by a presumably famished President Bill Clinton, as well as a multiple-burger addiction by Elvis Presley. Simms will even share with Waterhouse the incredible value of her onion rings. (“Actually,” she says, I traded one of them for an emerald!”)

(Photo by David Lee Simmons)

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We’ve all been getting a kick this morning out of the AJC’s report about Brand Atlanta (”Every Day is an Opening Day!”) running out of funding. There are so many jokes to what has become a kind of running punchline source, we don’t know where to start. One poster on ArtNews recommended the alternate motto “Everyday is Closing Day,” while another offered “Let the Power Fall.” My own suggestion: “Excuse Our Mess While We Regress.”

What’s yours?

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When R. Land debuted his first exhibit in Atlanta in more than five years, Summerland, back on June 28, there was a helluvalot going on, including the Silver Scream Spook Show evening performance as well as Corndogorama — that’s a lot of potential over-lapping audiences. And yet, about 700 people crammed into the temporary space Land rented in Little Five points. It was quite the scene, and since then about three-quarters of the 38 pieces on the wall found happy homes (not to mention the fully stocked merch booth that included his iconic “Pray for ATL” image.

The exhibit not only proved Land’s continued popularity in the city but also that a visual-arts exhibit need not be confined to the more traditional gallery setting. (Rent it, and they will come, gawk, mingle, and buy.)

But all good things must come to an end, so if you missed the opening (how’d you like that corndog?), you can still make the closing party on Saturday (Aug. 2), which won’t be as fantab as the opening but promises more art, more food, more drinks, and more music. Just scaled down. The party will run from 8 p.m. to midnight.

(Untitled image by R. Land)

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Find out tonight when McWilliams appears at Wordsmiths Books for a reading/signing for American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT (Columbia University Press). The book appears to argue that the war on insects has been about as counter-productive as the war on terrorism. The event starts at 7:30 p.m., and is free to the public. Here’s McWilliams talking about his book …

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Check out this week’s View from the Couch DVD-review column by Matt Brunson of Charlotte’s Creative Loafing. This week Matt takes a look at The Counterfeiters, Doomsday, The Inglorious Bastards and Vampyr (which I unfairly chastised Matt last week for not having reviewed).

We’re grateful that Matt got around to Vampyr; he likey!

There are images here that are staggering in their artistry: the shadow of a one-legged servant separating from its owner and taking off on its own; a ferryman wielding a scythe next to a fog-encrusted lake; the ultimate fate of the doctor, undone by (spirit-assisted) machinery even more imposing than the wheels and cogs encountered by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times; and, most famously, the POV shots that find a prematurely boxed Gray witnessing the activities occurring just above the glass window on his coffin.

(more…)

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Last fall we asked the musical question: “Will a new venue provide Atlanta Opera’s spring board to success?” Well, based on a recent press release from the company, the answer appears to be yes. The company reports that, for the third time in four years, it has finished its season with a surplus — this time in the neighborhood of $200,000. According to Dennis Hawthorn, who took over as the Zurich General Director for the company in 2004, the move to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre was a key to the success.

Also according to the press release, the Opera raised $4.56 million, about $100,000 over the original goal, thanks to a strong fundraising drive. (It’s a helluva lot easier to sell the community on the opera when it’s housed in the more intimate and acoustically appropriate venue like the Cobb as opposed to the Atlanta Civic Center.) That money comes from a mix of support from corporations, members of the company’s Society for Artistic Excellence, and local foundations, the release said.

The Atlanta Opera closed its season in April with a production of Puccini’s The Marriage of Figaro, and opens the 2008-2009 season with Madama Butterfly on Oct. 4.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Vernon Jones and Jim Martin will take their battle royal for the Democratic slot in the U.S. Senate race on Tuesday (July 29) at 7 p.m. in a debate carried by Georgia Public Broadcasting. WSB Radio’s Scott Slade will serve as moderator, while the panel will be filled by GPB’s Nwandi Lawson, the Macon Telegraph’s Charles Richardson and Dick Pettys of Insider Advantage. The event is co-sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club, and can be seen on www.gpb.org or heard on local GPB radio affiliates.

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I’m sure someone in Atlanta’s media somewhere commemorated the 20th anniversary this past week of the Democratic National Convention being held in Atlanta, where the Dems chose the cerebral Michael Dukakis to take a very smart ass-pounding by George H.W. Bush. But that wasn’t the best thing to come out of the convention; it was the sex scandal surrounding then-heartthrob Rob Lowe, who videotaped himself trying to get out the vote among some of the city’s younger women. (Giving a new meaning to the term “glad-handing.”)

The scandal provided a bit of a career road bump for Lowe, but provided a helluva career boost for Emory University graduate and former Creative Loafing intern Mike Sager (pictured), who wrote an amazing chronicle of the incident for Rolling Stone magazine in 1989. The story is included in the first of three collections of Sager’s magazine works, Scary Monsters, Super Freaks (Perseus Books); his second book, Revenge of the Donut Boys, came out last year. His third and final collection, Wounded Warriors: Those For Whom the War Never Ends, will be released in October, while his debut novel, Deviant Behavior, was released this past spring. Sager will promote his new books at next month’s AJC Decatur Book Festival, where I will have the privilege of interviewing him about his work.

As for Lowe, 20 years on, most people know about his new scandal that broke this past spring involving his nanny situation — which is now in the courts. For me, I’ll always admire Lowe’s work on the multiple-Emmy-winning TV show “The West Wing,” but also for the hilariously timed (and woefully underrated) 1990 thriller, Bad Influence, which had a little sex, lies and videotape moment of its own. Enjoy …

(Sager photo courtesy Perseus Books)

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There’s a decidedly libertarian streak that runs through Columbus-born and Atlanta resident Tim Wilson’s comedy, which continues through this weekend at The Punchline. As someone who waffles on what is and what isn’t politically incorrect humor, I have to admit to chuckling at some of Wilson’s stuff, which is easily accessed through the YouTube. For example, his song “Jeff Gordon’s Gay” is pretty funny stuff, particularly if you get the underlying message of the NASCAR star’s success coming at the expense of those huffy Dale Earnhardt fans.

Check it out:

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The Cinemama! film series concludes at the New Street Gallery tonight at 8 p.m. with a screening of the landmark 1968 Albert Maysles documentary Salesman, about Bible salesmen in the Midwest. The event is free, and there will be popcorn, drinks and the usual fluffy pillows.

Here’s a taste …

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Here’s this week’s View from the Couch DVD-review column by Creative Loafing/Charlotte’s own Matt Brunson, who reviews releases of 21, In Bruges (which Curt Holman reviewed for us) and more. Unfortunately, Matt didn’t touch on the Criterion Collection’s spiffed-up release of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 classic, Vampyr. (Don’t worry; I’m squirreling away ghoulish-movie DVD reviews for Halloween. Stay tuned.)

I actually found what appeared to be a full-length clip of the movie on YouTube, but in deference to Dreyer and Criterion, I’ll just post this clip of the first four minutes of the movie. Oooh, scary!

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Congratulations to Atlanta author David Fulmer, who announced this week that he will collaborate with local theater 7 Stages and New York’s New Federal Theatre for his first-ever script for the stage, Storyville. The play is based both on his Valentin St. Cyr murder mysteries set in New Orleans and the lone history book, Al Rose’s indispensable Storyville, about the city’s notorious red-light district at the turn of the last century.

There are lots of potential stagings for the play, although funding issues prevent Fulmer from revealing specific plans at this time. But options include a staged reading at next spring’s Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, and Atlanta certainly figures in the future.

(more…)

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Well, it’s official: the new hosts have been selected for the venerable movie-review show “At the Movies,” and the selections are, at best, not terribly inspiring. I don’t mean that as a personal or even necessarily professional dig at “E! News” fixture Ben Lyons or Turner Classic Movies weekend host Ben Mankiewicz, who were chosen to replace Pulitzer Prize winner Roger Ebert and his cardboard-cutout co-host Richard Roeper. (Ebert’s been ill for years, and wants to focus on his writing.)

(more…)

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There are Twinkies with more depth. There were probably better ways for Gene Kelly to finish off a big-screen career. There was never an opportunity for Olivia Newton-John to show off leg warmers.

But there’s no denying the musical power of the soundtrack to 1980’s Xanadu, which screens tonight at 9:30 p.m. as part of the Plaza Theatre’s Summer Camp series. Directed by (believe it or not) Robert Greenwald — more recently known for his politically charged documentaries such as Outfoxed and Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price — Xanadu sluggishly tells the story of a frustrated artist, Sonny Malone (Michael Beck) who inadvertently summons a roller-skating muse, Kira (Newton-John), just as his befriending an aging Hollywood hoofer (Kelly) leads to a partnership in a nightclub.

(more…)

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If the number-crunching reported in today’s Slate are correct, Atlanta and Georgia fare much better than the rest of the Deep South in the Great Starbucks Shrinkage plan of killing off 600 shops across the U.S. Georgia has the third-lowest percentage of closings, higher only than North Carolina (by a fraction) and South Carolina. (I didn’t count Virginia, just cuz.)

Slate author Chadwick Martin presents a pretty interesting breakdown of the closings, along with some thoughts on why, but the article also solicits opinions from Starbuckians at the local level to see what they think. As I mentioned in a recent Fresh Loaf post, most of the Atlanta-area closings seem to be outside the perimeter.

As recent coverage over the past year has suggested, independently owned coffee shops seemed to have thrived, not suffered, by the presence of a Starbucks in the general vicinity in that the chain has increased interest in and foot traffic for coffee in general. I wonder, then, how these closings will affect the Auroras or other, lesser-known chains in Atlanta. Will this interest/foot traffic lessen with this shrinkage, or will the indies consolidate their strength in this changing market?

Caffeine for thought.

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The music, movies and hot rods have all fallen into place for this year’s Drive-Invasion, which as usual hits the Starlight Six Drive-In on Labor Day Weekend — which in my humble opinion is the best weekend to be in Atlanta period. (Also see AJC Decatur Book Festival and Dragon*Con, among other events.)

The music on Saturday, Aug. 30, features headliner the California surf-legend Agent Orange (which also headlined at the Starlight’s sister weekender, the Tiki Invasion in Montclair, Calif.) along with Gargantua and the Forty-Fives, to name a few. The comedy-themed movie lineup is Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Blazing Saddles, Cheech & Chong’s Up in Smoke, This Is Spinal Tap and the truly classic Kentucky Fried Movie.

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As Mara Shalhoup reported last week in Fresh Loaf, Wall Street Journal Atlanta bureau chief Doug Blackmon will appear Wednesday Tuesday at Manuel’s Tavern (6-9 p.m.) to promote his critically acclaimed book Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. This, on the heels of Blackmon’s book creeping onto the New York Times Bestseller List.

To get psyched up for the appearance, here’s a video of Blackmon’s appearance on the always-excellent PBS show “Bill Moyers Journal,” which also includes on the link a full transcript of the interview if you’d like to read instead of watch. Here’s a key exchange, about Atlanta’s role in all of this (thanks to John Otte on ArtNews) …

BILL MOYERS: You say that Atlanta, where you live now, which used to proclaim itself the finest city in the South, was built on the broken backs of re-enslaved black men.
DOUGLAS BLACKMON: That’s right. When I started off writing the book, I began to realize the degree to which this form of enslavement had metastasized across the South, and that Atlanta was one of many places where the economy that created the modern city, was one that relied very significantly on this form of coerced labor. And some of the most prominent families and individuals in the in the creation of the modern Atlanta, their fortunes originated from the use of this practice. And the most dramatic example of that was a brick factory on the outskirts of town that, at the turn of the century, was producing hundreds of thousands of bricks every day.The city of Atlanta bought millions and millions of those bricks. The factory was operated entirely with forced workers. And almost 100 percent black forced workers. There were even times that on Sunday afternoons, a kind of old-fashioned slave auction would happen, where a white man who controlled black workers would go out to Chattahoochee Brick and horse trade with the guards at Chattahoochee Brick, trading one man for another, or two men.

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As we mentioned in our “5 things to do today” round-up this morning, author Stephen L. Carter will be appearing tonight at 7 p.m. at the Jimmy Carter Library & Museum to discuss his political thriller Palace Council.

Nice timing; on my way home from work Friday I heard an interview of Carter by “All Things Considered” co-host Michelle Norris, which I’ve linked here. The Yale law professor and bestselling author (New England White) in his new novel threads a mystery through several decades and through some potent historical figures:

Carter’s plot wraps in real historical personages, including Langston Hughes, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Those figures play important roles as the plot unfolds — especially Nixon, whom Carter describes as “one of the most fascinating and enigmatic — and in many ways, scary — figures in American political history.”
“He embodied something about America, but something that’s scary about America — and that is that we love winners,” Carter says. “We don’t ask how they won unless somebody — usually a journalist — rubs our nose in it. And then we say, ‘We had no idea he was taking steroids’ or whatever it may have been. And then we turn in a fury on this person, but we don’t ask, we don’t inquire how people win. We love that they win.”

Here’s an excerpt from the novel, also courtesy NPR.

(Photo by Elena Seibert)

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Plaza Theatre co-owner Jonathan Rej informed us they goofed on the Crispin Glover appearance at the venerable theater on Aug. 29-30, as we reported last week in Fresh Loaf. Glover will appear to promote his writing/directing debut, What Is It?, and not that other movie (which he as credited as a co-director, but neveryoumind). Here’s the plot synopsis for What Is It?:

Known for creating many memorable, incredibly quirky characters onscreen as an actor, Glover’s first effort as a director will not disappoint fans of his offbeat sensibilities and eccentric taste. Featuring a cast largely comprised of actors with Down’s Syndrome, the film is not about Down’s Syndrome. Glover describes it as “Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home as tormented by an hubristic racist inner psyche.” In addition to writing and directing What Is It?, Glover also appears in the film as an actor in the role of “Dueling Demi-God Auteur and the young man’s inner psyche.” Actress Fairuza Balk voices one of the snails..

We would expect nothing less from Crispin, who is pretty much God. Critics were split over this 2006 release; though I have yet to see the movie, I couldn’t help but chuckle how two different alt-weekly film critics (who also were split over the movie) both referenced David Lynch in their respective reviews. The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “Glover, who appears in the film as a kind of barbarian dictator-auteur, lacks both the self-imposed ideological innocence and the talent for composing sounds and images of David Lynch,” while LA Weekly’s Scott Foundas wrote, “It’s clear that Glover is less interested in narrative than in rekindling a rich midnight-movie/avant-garde tradition that encompasses everything from Maya Deren and Jack Smith to Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch.”

Hey, even bad David Lynch sounds interesting to me. Here’s Crispin talking about his film, Werner Herzog and more …

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Everybody’s favorite punchline to all jokes consumerism and Democrats, Starbucks now has become a rallying point for the caffeine obsessed. A week after the ubiquitous coffee announced it would be not so ubiquitous, the Wall Street Journal reports today that there are campaigns to protest those closings. (Yet another reason to switch to decaf, but whatever.)

The Atlanta area is scheduled to have 10 shops close, according to a report in the AJC, which listed each of them. (There are 13 total scheduled closings in Georgia.) No word yet any local initiatives to battle the closings, which include such intown stops as the one at the Georgia Aquarium and at Peachtree Street at 17th Street (Midtown). I would have loved to see what kind of battle cry would have sounded if the one in Little Five Points, whose opening I heard was the source of much anti-chain yelping. Any takers?

But this is no joke to the baristas, as the WSJ article points out

The closures mean Starbucks will eliminate about 12,000 jobs, which comes out to 20 for every location it plans to shut. In addition to creating jobs and generating revenue, Starbucks outlets serve as key draws for other retailers, making the loss of one a blow to the surrounding area.

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You know why Judah Friedlander (whose four-night stand at The Punchline continues through Sunday) is wicked funny? Because he made me laugh within the dreaded cone of pain: the 24 Mengelesque hours following the belated removal of my wisdom teeth. I was in so much pain — OK, severe annoyance — I even forgot to podcast the damn interview. It’s one of those you-had-to-be-there moments, because Friedlander is one of those comics who is so naturally funny that he reminds me of a friend of mine. That kind of funny. (My friend’s name is George. He knows who he is.)

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