Tribeca Film Festival Review: "Lou Reed's Berlin"

Phil Nugent — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Lou Reed's 1973 album Berlin, a song cycle about the abusive love affair between an American junkie and his "German queen" Caroline, has always been regarded as one of the legendary moments from the first ten or twelve uneven, often confused years of Reed's post-Velvets solo career. For a long time, the common consensus was that the record was legendary in the same way as the final flight of the Hindenburg; reviews from the time it was first released tended to rate it as something between an embarrassment and a war crime. But Berlin, whose reputation has improved markedly in recent years, has always spoken to a few of us lost souls, and Reed's great fan and baiter, Lester Bangs, was delighted when his hero told him, in the mid-1970s, that of all his solo releases, the only ones of which he was proud were Berlin and the famously unlistenable Metal Machine Music. What with one thing and another, the busy Reed never got around to performing the whole of Berlin live in concert until December 2006, when the first of several performances of the material was staged in New York City at St. Ann's Warehouse, with Reed's mother in attendance. (Maybe Reed put off doing it so long because he was waiting for his mother to become too deaf to hear what he was singing.)

Lou Reed's Berlin is a concert film directed by Julian Schnabel, who also designed the sets. Jonathan Demme demonstrated the perfect way to make a concert movie more than twenty-five years ago: take the cap off the lens and point the camera at the people on stage, preferably after making sure that they will be well lit. The only thing more mystifying than why nobody thought of it before is why anyone has chosen to do things any differently since. Schnabel, who had images projected on a screen behind Reed during the show (including "home movies" featuring Emmanuelle Seigner, who appeared in Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, as Caroline), sometimes lets these take over the movie for seconds at a time. To my surprise, I didn't mind this so much, maybe because it seemed almost like an homage to the cornball theatrics that the producer Bob Ezrin resorted to on the album, where they actually served to balance and undercut the sogginess of Reed's despair in its more callow moments. (Ezrin himself is in the movie, on stage with the musicians, wearing a smock with the word "BERLIN" stenciled on the back and "conducting" the band, and generally looking like a mad scientist on his day off.) I do wish that he hadn't fiddled with some of the shots of the performance itself. But the band-- which includes the invaluable and time-tested Fernando Saunders on bass, and Tony "Thunder" Smith, who during "Caroline Says (I)" looks so excited about what he's a part of that he's in danger of exploding and leaving a small mushroom cloud behind his drum kit--is in fiery top shape, and at some point early on the driving force of the music renders the movie undeniable. (There's just one conspicuous disappointment in the music itself: Reed almost wrecks one of Berlin's finest tunes--"Caroline Says (II)", as lovely a song as ever included the line, "You can hit me all you want/ But I don't love you anymore"), by trying to act it instead of just singing it.) The assembled back-up singers include young women from the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, dressed in green choral robes. I feel inclined to believe that if you can watch their shining, fresh-scrubbed faces as they sing Reed's nasty words while bobbing their heads happily to the music and not feel thrilled to death, you should probably consider relocating to another, duller planet.

“Pinocchio in Outer Space” and Other Forgotten Cartoons

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Have you seen Mad Monster Party lately? “Featuring the final screen ‘appearance’ of horror icon Boris Karloff, Mad Monster Party was co-written by comics legend Harvey Kurtzman, creator of the original Mad comic books, and featured character designs by cartoonist Jack Davis of Mad Magazine and EC comics — a genius at combining humor and grotesquerie.” Or how about Down and Dirty Duck? “Likely assembled as a quick cash-in on the underground success of Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat, Down and Dirty Duck was put together with the assistance of erstwhile Turtles (and Mothers of Invention) Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (nee Flo and Eddie), who contributed voice, music and plot elements. (The duo’s former employer, Frank Zappa, makes a cameo appearance during a particularly bizarre segment in which his head rises, sunlike, in the sky over the main characters.)”

These are but two entries in Bullz-Eye.com’s eye-opening Animated and Forgotten: Feature Length Cartoons You May Not Remember. (The key words there being “may not.” It’s a fun list, but how could we ever forget The Incredible Mr. Limpet and The Iron Giant?) You can read the whole thing here, but if you want to see video clips from some of these obscurities, you’ve come to the right place:

PINOCCHIO IN OUTER SPACE (1965)

One advantage to being a wooden boy: when you travel to other planets, no space helmets are necessary. But why is that goofy turtle trying to romance him?

MAD MONSTER PARTY (1969)

Little Tibia and the Fibias rock, but what could be more disturbing than a stop-motion Phyllis Diller unwrapping the poor Mummy while he’s trying to get his groove on?

THE POINT! (1971)

The animation in this acid-trip inspired Harry Nilsson musical is a little, how shall we say, crude by today’s standards, but you’re never going to hear a more charming ditty about decomposition than “Think About Your Troubles.”

ROCK AND RULE (1983)

Apparently Mick Jagger didn’t care much for Lou Reed’s performance as “Mok Swagger” in this “post-apocalyptic tale of satanic magic and the rock and roll lifestyle among mutated, extremely anthropomorphic, cats, dogs, and rats.”

LITTLE NEMO: ADVENTURES IN SLUMBERLAND (1989)

Not to be confused with Finding Nemo, this adaptation of the Winsor McKay comic strip is hard to find, but you can watch the whole thing on YouTube starting here:

The Screengrab : lou reed

Tribeca Film Festival Review: "Lou Reed's Berlin"

“Pinocchio in Outer Space” and Other Forgotten Cartoons