FILM REVIEW: GOOD KILL By: Faiz No comments

Major Tom Egan (Ethan Hawke) in Good Kill.

Assassins to ashes

By Ed Rampell

In 2013 this reporter interviewed CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin, author of Drone Warfare, Killing by Remote Control, who asserted: “There were between 46 and 52 drone strikes under the Bush administration. And now there are over 400 -- that’s not counting Afghanistan.

Now a feature film has been made with major Hollywood talents dramatizing the dubious Unmanned Aerial Vehicle program and the controversies surrounding it. New Zealand writer-director-producer Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill is a hard hitting, thought provoking movie exposing and opposing drone warfare in Afghanistan and Yemen. Fresh from his Oscar-nominated role in Boyhood, Ethan Hawke portrays pilot Major Tom Egan, who, after repeat combat tours flying over the Iraq and Afghan theaters of conflict, is now stationed outside of Las Vegas, where he is deeply conflicted by his role in the UAV liquidation-by-remote-control project.

From the relative comfort of an air conditioned trailer in a military base at the Nevada desert the droners wreak Hellfire havoc on targets in deserts half a world away. The fetching if kvetching Zoe Kravitz (Mad Max: Fury Road, Insurgent, X Men: First Class), daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, plays fiery Vera Suarez, a Latina Air Force officer who has qualms after she joins the UAV team at the Nevada air base.

What Suarez bellyaches about are the moral implications (or lack of) of droning, which according to the movie (and Medea) is an imprecise method of murder which inevitably results in “collateral damage” -- including the deaths of unarmed civilians, among them, alas, children, women and the aged. According to the film, this killing of casualties, whose only crimes are being at the wrong places at the wrong times, is acceptable to the CIA. You know, that U.S. organization (your tax dollars at work, my Fellow Americans!) that LBJ called “Murder Incorporated” (hey, it takes one mass murderer to know another!), which has overthrown democratically-elected governments from Iran to Guatemala to Chile, etc., tortured more dissidents than the Spanish Inquisition, and so on.

Suarez denounces the CIA-directed droning of non-combatants, as U.S. "terrorism" and a "factory creating terrorists," because of the widespread anger and blowback these killings provoke and spread. During one testy trailer exchange with her commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Jack Johns (Bruce Greenwood) Suarez cheekily asks: “Was that a war crime, Sir?” To which Johns replies: “Shut the fuck up, Suarez!”

His conscience troubled, Major Egan can no longer “keep compartmentalizing,” as Lt. Colonel Johns advises. He has a drinking problem and his marriage to Molly (January Jones) is, like his liquor, on the rocks. Like Jeremy Renner’s lead character in 2010’s Best Picture Oscar winner, The Hurt Locker (co-produced by Nicolas Chartier and Zev Forman, who also co-produced the far superior war film, Good Kill), Egan has difficulty making the transition from the combat zone to the home front, although he is still at war, “taking potshots” at people across the globe being surveilled by remotely piloted aircraft with their lethal payloads.

But unlike The Hurt Locker’s PTSD-ed, traumatized psychopath, Egan finds a path back to his sanity. It’s a similar route blazed by veterans such as the courageous Ron Kovic, whom Tom Cruise depicted in Oliver Stone’s 1989 anti-war classic, Born on the Fourth of July: Taking a stand against orders to shoot Hellfire missiles from a drone at civilians.

Meanwhile, the gung ho Specialist Zimmer (Jake Abel) is the troop’s trailer trash, who represents the jingoistic dregs of military madness. Zim derides Suarez as “Jane Fonda” and quips about putting “warheads on foreheads.”

Perhaps Zim is one of the “gamers” whom the Pentagon recruits for its UAV program, which appears to play out like a videogame (albeit one with extraordinarily high stakes involving life and death). The Las Vegas vibe and backdrop enhances the sense of the inherently risky nature of drone warfare. Good Kill’s aerial footage, apparently shot in Morocco, has the look and feel of a videogame as it simulates what the Nevada-based airmen-turned-chairmen see on their computer screens as these not-so-Big Brothers watch Afghans and Yemenis from seats in their air conned trailer. This cinematic technique has a Brechtian alienation feel, as it distances film viewers from the actions, and Good Kill’s combat isn’t as viscerally exciting as that depicted in more conventional, pro-war flicks, like American Sniper or John Wayne’s Sands of Iwo Jima.

But that’s because Good Kill is an anti-war work of art that wants audiences to use logic and reason, not just emotion, when assessing the story onscreen.

 

TRAVEL REVIEW: PARIS LAS VEGAS By: Faiz No comments

Paris Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo courtesy of Paris Las Vegas.

French faux blurred

By Ed Rampell

In Part I of my two-part travel series on Las Vegas I wrote about experiencing Cirque du Soleil’s fab Fab Four show LOVE The Beatles. Here I write about an enjoyable place to stay, a great restaurant, an amusing magic act and more.

Abracadabra!

I’m not an expert on magicians (although Houdini was my childhood hero), and Reynold Alexander’s show at the Clarion Hotel and Casino is one of the few I’ve ever seen in person. Much of the bearded Alexander’s act consisted of a variety of card tricks, levitations, disappearances and reappearances. Of course, there is the obligatory, always crowd pleasing (and mystifying) sawing of the attractive ladies in half, too. Most of the deftly executed procedures left members of the aud scratching their noggins and wondering; “Hmm, how the heck did he do that?” The show also included the use of shadows, which reminded me of Indonesian “Wayang Kulit," or shadow puppets, and taped music, including Scott Joplin pieces.

As Alexander the Great hails from Puerto Rico his performance has a Hispanic flair. In addition to his two attractive female assistants who happily submitted to being vanished, banished and sliced and diced in various boxes, Alexander’s ragtime band included lots of comic relief. This came in the form of the corpulent Hansel, who opened wearing a white jacket and bowtie and black shirt and slacks, and humorously explained his trickery, such as pouring milk into a rolled up newspaper. Throughout the hour-or-so-long performance, just for gags a clownish caricature of Latino dancers burst onstage to “disrupt” the proceedings with a rather droll spoof (or perhaps homage to?) the type of goofy hoofer one might see in Hispanic variety shows.

Alexander’s routine ended on a touching, personal note that I’ve not seen elsewhere, wherein to mark the time we’d spent together the illusionist used sand to illustrate the nature of the passage of time. It was well done and moving.

Paris Las Vegas: The City of Lights in Sin City

I just watched Diamonds Are Forever on cable TV, and this was the first time since this James Bond flick was released in 1971 that I had seen it since. An interesting aspect of Diamonds Are Forever is that much of this last installment of Sean Connery in the Broccoli-Saltzman 007 franchise is its location shooting in Las Vegas. This seemed to be shot before the construction of the Strip, and those themed resorts. I stayed in one of the latter, the Paris Las Vegas, which is, obviously, modeled on the fabled City of Lights.

The sprawling, labyrinthine, cobblestoned walkways, hallways and lobby have a faux French flair. For example, cafés offer baguettesand brioches, crystal chandeliers hang above the main lobby where guests check-in, plus the Baroque-style architecture all enhance the Gallic ambiance. As does the blue, yellow and red hot air balloon structure bearing the “Paris” sign facing the Strip, which is illumined at night and was inspired by the Aerostat Réveillon, the balloon used in a September 19, 1783 demonstration for King Louis XVI in Paris by the Montgolfier brothers, for the first lighter than air flight.

Of course, the hotel’s Francophile pièce de résistance is its reconstruction of Paris’ most famous landmark, the Eiffel Tower. At 460 feet tall, the Las Vegas replica is half the size of its Parisian counterpart. The reason for this half-size scale is that the Paris Las Vegas is located too close to McCarran International Airport, so zoning and safety issues forbade building a 986 foot structure. This despite the fact that it, too, is lit up at night, making it one of the Strip’s most recognizable sights since fireworks were shot from it on Sept. 1, 1999, when French actress Catherine Deneuve performed the honors and with the flip of a switch illuminated the imitation City of Lights.     

It’s well worth a visitor’s time and money to buy a ticket to ascend the Paris LV Eiffel Tower on a sunny day (of which there are beaucoup in the Nevada desert) and/or at night, when the Strip is ablaze with neon, offering an entirely different fiery vista. In daylight the sumptuous, resplendent views stretch beyond Sin City’s limits to the mountains and deserts afar. For newcomers to Las Vegas, these panoramic scenes can help orient tourists to a cityscape that is often ajar with a profusion of crowds on sidewalks and traffic clogging the Strip and other streets. The views from on high offer different perspectives from ground level perceptions, providing a visual sense of place.

My room at Paris Las Vegas was spacious and comfortable with a large window facing away from the Strip (a room with a view of this stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard is more expensive). Paris Las Vegas' two-acre, outdoor pool is gigantic, although there is little shade for much of the time during those long, sunny Nevada summer days. (Tip: It’s shadier if you take repose on a lounge chair near the base of the Eiffel Tower.) Nevertheless, I had fun frolicking and hanging out poolside with my longtime friend, comic Tamayo Otsuki, that delightfully kooky kabuki player. Like a desert oasis, the pool cooled things off, as did the liquid refreshment provided by a poolside bar and bikini-clad waitresses.

Le Burger Brasserie: Gourmet Gluttony on the Bounty

One of Paris Las Vegas’ various restaurants is the wood paneled Le Burger Brasserie, which its passionate General Manager Jason Rinta described to me as being where “food fanatic meets sports fanatic.” Indeed, in addition to its many flat screen TVs, where fans watched the World Cup live during the soccer championship matches, as well as other sporting events, such as good ol’ baseball games, the classy yet reasonably priced Le Burger Brasserie’s cuisine tickles and entices foodies’ taste buds.

Playing off of the triple seven combination that spells luck for gamblers (it is Vegas, after all!), at the high end of the sports grille’s menu is a $777 (per person) dining experience that includes a half pound Kobe steak, lobster tail, foie gras, Dom Pérignon champagne and more. Needless to say, your struggling scribe ordered other dishes. To drink I had a nonalcoholic Daryl Strawberry Mint Lemonade minus the vodka, consisting of minty, club soda, strawberry, lemonade and perhaps lime, which not only cooled me off like a dip in Paris Las Vegas' pool, but refreshed my palate. Guided by our knowledgeable, good-natured waitress, Allison, who was tattooed with a musical motif, we ordered a somewhat spicy, very creamy concoction, Buffalo chicken dip with Point Reyes cheese and pretzels for dipping and bread (baking is done daily on Paris Las Vegas' property) for swiping. This was followed by a Pazanella salad composed, like a salad symphony, with bibb lettuce, artichokes, fresh mozzarella, pesto, vinaigrette and toast.

To tell you the truth this would have sufficed for supper, but as it is Le Burger Brasserie -- and the eatery does boast that it serves Las Vegas’ best burgers -- for my entrée I devoured a delicious, gourmet veggie burger with Portobello mushrooms and French (well, it IS the Paris!) fries. To help wash all this down we ordered a cereal inspired drink, a Captain & Crunch milkshake, which combines the breakfast cereal with vanilla ice cream and Captain Morgan rum. It was an interesting mélange, but after a sip, let’s just say that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

As if all this wasn’t enough, for dessert we indulged in S’mores Cheesecake, with toasted marshmallow ice cream, graham crackers, and various chocolates. It was a fitting grand finale for our gluttony, a not-so-deadly sin in Sin City, which we thoroughly enjoyed, along with Allison’s always attentive service. GM Rinta, who has worked in Las Vegas for eight years, explained how he’s trying to put his stamp on Le Burger Brasserie: “I try to be innovative. I launched a new menu in March. Before then it was more French-themed; now it’s more a la carte and fresh.”

Aside from the throngs and traffic, I enjoyed visiting Las Vegas, with its shows ranging from Cirque du Soleil’s LOVE to the magical Reynold Alexander, and staying and dining at Paris Las Vegas and Le Burger Brasserie. However, if you really want to get a sense of what the real (and not the ersatz) Paris is like, the next time you hit the jackpot run straight down to McCarran International Airport and book a flight to alight at France’s exquisite City of Lights.         

For more information: 

Magician ReynoldAlexander

Paris Las Vegas

Le BurgerBrasserie

THEATER REVIEW: THE BEATLES LOVE By: Faiz No comments

A scene from The Beatles LOVE. Photo credit: Richard Termine.

Yesterday and today

By Ed Rampell

As a reviewer of all things cinematic, operatic and theatrical I recently went to see a couple of shows in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is, after all, one of America’s top showcases of live entertainment. Cirque du Soleil’s The Beatles LOVE is a combination of the cinematic, operatic and theatrical -- along with the acrobatic, aerial, ballet, puppetry, projections, lighting, costuming to put Liberace to shame, and more, all presented with a circus-like panache. As soon as one gets out of the cram packed, standing room only lobby inside of the Mirage into the uniquely shaped and designed, custom-built theater in the round, with its scrims and screens for projecting 100 foot digital images upon, one has that “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” sensation of “pictur[ing] yourself in a boat on a river, With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.”

Once the show begins it’s as if “Somebody calls you… A girl with kaleidoscope eyes” as “Cellophane flowers of yellow and green, Towering over your head” draw you into a production that’s more of an experience and evocation of the Beatles, their music and philosophy, instead of a chronological, straightforward narrative of their lives and careers. Rather than a tribute band performing Beatles’ songs live, the Fab Four’s longtime producer Sir George Martin and his son Giles culled cuts from Abbey Road Studios’ master tapes which accompany the mise-en-scène of 60 performers and projections on huge front and back screens, played on a panoramic surround sound system.

The beginning references the quartet’s famous outdoor, impromptu performance on the rooftop of the Abbey Road Studio in 1969, with the Beatles belting out “Get Back” from the “Let It Be” album. But the spectacle that unfolds becomes far more than a reimagining of this plein air concert. Soon the gigantic twin screens are filled with imagery of the Battle of Britain, and for the first time it dawned upon me that the Lads from Liverpool were all children born during World War II; indeed, both Ringo Starr and John Lennon were born while the Nazis blitzed England. The Beatles LOVE made me realize that this played a huge role in their subsequent antipathy towards war and why, after he went solo, I heard John and Yoko croon that Lennon-composed anthem of the antiwar movement, “Give Peace a Chance," at a Manhattan rally in the early 1970s.

The show doesn’t shrink from other specifically political references: There’s a great flower power sequence, which leads to hippies fighting riot police as “Revolution” blares. Another one of the Beatles’ explicitly political songs, “Blackbird," is also played as clips of Dr. Martin Luther King appear onscreen and black performers take the stage.

Of course, although they were musical and lyrical avatars of their tumultuous Aquarian age, there was much more to the Beatles than countercultural politics. As the name of the show suggests, love was very much a concern expressed in the songs of these young men, and there is an exceedingly lovely conjuration of “Something” from the Abbey Road album. Female aerialists elude an earthbound male, who reaches out for them as if he’s seeking love, perfectly expressing the romantic longings of a young man in search of a partner to soothe a seething soul and end his solitude. The piece has the grace one would imagine a Nijinsky or Nureyev ballet would have had.

One of the great things about The Beatles LOVE is that along with their hits such as “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Lady Madonna” (featuring a pregnant black woman) the multimedia show includes some lesser known tunes from the Beatles’ oeuvre. Everyone knows “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” from the 1967 album of the same name, but do you remember “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” from the same LP? This track is ideal for Cirque, which launches into full raucous circus mode in evoking this perhaps forgotten (until now!) song about a festive fair. There is also a powerful version of “A Day in the Life” (which I’ve always considered to have an apocalyptic tinge), complete with a car onstage, from the same album.

And while Sgt. Pepper’s “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” is appropriately psychedelically rendered, complete with flying trapeze artiste, I was unable to understand a number of Cirque’s visualizations and expressions of some Beatles’ numbers. After a while I picked up on the probability that the four boys who were recurring stage characters represented the Liverpool lads during their childhoods. But I couldn’t quite grasp who other characters were supposed to be. For instance, there is a recurring old lady -- is she supposed to be John’s Aunt Mimi who raised him or a version of Brecht’s Mother Courage? Much of it went over this critic’s head -- but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy all of it, even if couldn’t quite get some of it. Somehow this only enhanced the magical mystical nature of this tour through the artistry of what is arguably rock’s greatest band of all time. (Has it really been half a century this year since they stormed The Ed Sullivan Show during the British Invasion of 1964?!)

Director/writer/co-creator Dominic Champagne’s ensemble work bubbles. Lighting Designer Yves Aucoin illuminates the space, put to stellar use by theatre and set designer Jean Rabasse. Video projection designer Francis Laporte enhances the visionary ambiance of the live performance, artfully choreographed by Hansel Cereza and Dave St-Pierre, with the cast of 60 fantastically costumed by Philippe Guillotel. Above all, the Grammy Award winning soundscape rendered by George and Giles Martin, sound designer Jonathan Deans, and last but not least, by -- you know -- John, Paul, George and Ringo is nothing short of exquisite.

Overall, The Beatles LOVE is, as Harrison wrote, a “Crème tangerine and montelimar, A ginger sling with a pineapple heart” feast for the eyes and ears. Whether you’re a Beatles fan before you enter the Mirage showroom or not, as the Fab Four sang: “A splendid time is guaranteed for all” -- indeed! Never has Sin City seemed so blissful. Yeah, yeah, yeah!

The Beatles LOVE is at: The Mirage, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd South, Las Vegas, NV 89109. For info and tickets: LOVE; 702-791-7111.

      

FILM REVIEW: SHOWGIRLS 2 By: Faiz No comments

Penny/Helga (Rena Riffel) in Showgirls 2: Penny's from Heaven.

Bore to culture

 

By John Esther

 

The follow-up to the notorious 1995, Showgirls, Showgirls 2: Penny’s from Heaven is actually better than its predecessor insofar as the original was not made to be the laughingstock, cult movie it has become whereas Showgirls 2: Penny's from Heaven is intentionally, unabashedly bad in order to satire wannabe movie stars, the entertainment industry and yes, its predecessor. In other words, it is so bad it is good.

 

Somewhat reprising her role from the original film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Joe Eszterhas (one of the worst Hollywood screenwriters ever), Rena Riffel wrote and directed this story about a Las Vegas stripper named Penny (Riffel -- now old enough to play an aging showgirl) who dreams of moving to Hollywood and becoming the star of a new dance show. Penny has no talent, formal training. or “X Factor,” but that is not going to stop this “whore,” “slut,” “trash,” “stripper,” and “bimbo” from making it.

 

However, just getting to Los Angeles is not easy. On the road west, Penny is robbed, then entangled in a multiple homicide.

 

Once in Los Angeles, Penny meets all sorts of egomaniacs, abusers, exploiters and television producers (but I repeat myself) who just want Penny, whose new name (sometimes) is Helga, for her flesh. Yet the whore with a heart of gold still believes in herself and those around her – no matter how many times they use her. Meanwhile, the authorities are on her track.

 

Deliberately pumped with histrionics, painstaking inane dialogue, soap operatic Sapphic sexual scenes, and editorial discontinuity that are outrageously tongue-in-cheek(s), the 145-minute film -- which definitely takes its toll on one’s patience (occasionally one’s feminism, too) -- makes the films of John Waters look like the work of Michelangelo Antonioni. Okay, I exaggerate for the billionth time, but so does just about everything in this hyperbolic striptease of wannabe stardom in Hollywood to make its point.