Neutral

Neutral is the debut feature film (and it is indeed a film) from Asheville-based filmmaker Joe Chang. Gorgeously captured on old-school 16mm by the brilliant Greg Hudgins, Neutral is sort of like Asheville's Slacker, but it's sweeter, more whimsical, and reveals a sensibility all its own.

Chang is definitely a comer; he seems to have things going on his head that no one else does, that's for sure. As a fellow filmmaker who's had to sacrifice for storytelling, I most admire Joe's drive and his courage for taking chances and not backing down from making films that aspire to be real art. He's scary good. And, yes, the movie does feature the acting debut of yours truly, a walk-on cameo in a film that features over 70 small parts.

Neutral recently had its DVD release party (which I attended), and Joe showed clips from his film, and several bands played. Joe's amazing band Single Engine Airplane was there, Jason Smith's inimitable Night's Bright Colors -- see the post about them below -- and a dynamic young combo called Kovacs and the Polar Bear, which reminds me of a young Wilco, blew everybody away. No hyperbole here; they fucking killed -- look them up on Myspace, they're terrific and have a great future ahead of them.

Joe showed some clips from an upcoming project called Days of War, Nights of Love. On his own website, he describes it thusly:

Days of War, Nights of Love is the working title of
Joe's second feature, which he is currently writing.
It's a surreal magical dreamy circus western
knight's tale adventure vaudevillian story taking
place in it's own little world with swords and
crossbows, horses and ostriches, kings and queens,
lotus flower children and traveling gypsies, tricked
out bounty hunters and crappy headphones, air balloons
and dentist chairs, instrument trees and rear
projections, jug bands and men with microphone faces,
and much more....

Joe Change, everybody ... Check him out at his production company, Papercookie.net.

Yesterday's Tomorrows

I read a lot of old science fiction. I don't know why, but I have a great affection for that pulpy, early 20th Century fantasy and SF. I re-read A Princess of Mars recently, Burroughs seminal first novel, and frankly, it seemed modern (the fact that I read it on my iPhone using the Stanza app may have helped). But they're making a movie of it now, and it feels like it could be the next Lord of the Rings.

I don't know, perhaps there is an innocence in that material, or an optimism. Or maybe the patterns were being set back then, and much modern stuff is just ... variations on a pattern. I always want to go back to the real thing and experience whatever it was that got everybody so excited in the first place. So I'm drawn to early science fiction.

To tip the hat to that early optimism, here's an article I recently found on Futility Closet, a cool site about various oddities here and there:

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'Martians Build Two Immense Canals in Two Years.'

How's that for a headline? It ran in the New York Times Sunday magazine on Aug. 27, 1911:

Canals a thousand miles long and twenty miles wide are simply beyond our comprehension. Even though we are aware of the fact that … a rock which here weighs one hundred pounds would there only weigh thirty-eight pounds, engineering operations being in consequence less arduous than here, yet we can scarcely imagine the inhabitants of Mars capable of accomplishing this Herculean task within the short interval of two years.

The Times was relying on Percival Lowell, who was convinced that a dying Martian civilization was struggling to reach the planet's ice caps. "The whole thing is wonderfully clear-cut," he'd told the newspaper — but he was already largely ostracized by skeptical colleagues who couldn't duplicate his findings. The "spokes" he later saw on Venus may have been blood vessels in his own eye.

Whatever his shortcomings, Lowell's passions led to some significant accomplishments, including Lowell Observatory and the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death. "Science," wrote Emerson, "does not know its debt to imagination."

Laura Gibson

Not long ago I went to a Damien Jurado show, to check out some of his beautifully melodic and moody Appalachian-styled songs. The lady who opened his show, however, was a tall, thin chanteuse named Laura Gibson, who just absolutely knocked me out, coming across a little like a psychedelic Gillian Welch, or a female Tom Waits ... if he lived on a farm in the Northwest and didn't get out too much.

With a unique, quavery voice and a spooky and airy melodic approach, her music is both beautiful and jarring; the pieces don't quite fit, but in a good way. Her band plays saws and odd things and conjure up the creepiest but coolest (and, it should be said, often fun and jamming) vibe.

She seems to have a warm but steely stage presence, where she stares off into the audience, not really seeing anyone as she sings. She made long, uncomfortable eye contact with me, until I had to look away. But as I was looking into her eyes, and she into mine, I realized she wasn't seeing me. She was listening to herself sing. Spooky.

I've seen and heard a lot of music. This lady is something special.