How To Say Goodbye: Coming-of-Age in Friday Night Lights

For those who haven't watched Friday Night Lights, this piece contains some spoilers. Ed.

Episodes 5 and 6 of season four of Friday Night Lights, which aired in 2010, may be the best two hours of television I’ve ever seen. They’re certainly the most poignant, and I couldn’t keep them out of my head for weeks after I watched them. Almost everyone I know loves Friday Night Lights, Peter Berg’s imaginative expansion of the H.G. Bissinger non-fiction volume about high school football in a small Texas town, yet it stayed under the radar and never made it into the running for the big awards. A narrow but steady audience kept it on the air for five seasons, though every year its fans were on tenterhooks, waiting to see whether it would get renewed for another season. When it returned for its second go-round, in 2007, the writers seemed to be caving in to network pressure to make it more conventional by threading in overblown plot lines. But the level of the acting, the series’ most striking element, never fell, and by the third season the melodrama had vanished and the writing was more delicately observant than ever.

The first three seasons of Friday Night Lights focused on the fortunes of the Dillon High School football team, the Panthers, led by Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), and on the lives of the players and of their parents and significant others, citizens of a town where the Friday night games are the most important event of the week and where Monday-morning quarterbacking is not just a tradition but a civic duty. (Eric inevitably has to sweep up the For Sale signs that jokers, probably in their cups, scatter on his lawn during the night after the Panthers lose a game.) In these episodes the Taylors are a thoroughgoing Dillon H.S. family: Eric’s wife Tami (Connie Britton) begins as a guidance counselor and then (in season three) becomes principal, and their daughter Julie (Aimee Teagarden) dates retiring, deeply sensitive Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford), whom Eric molds into an accomplished quarterback when the gifted, charismatic Jason Street (Scott Porter) is paralyzed in a football accident in the show’s opening hour. Jason loses his girl friend Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly) – the daughter of Eric’s best friend, car salesman and Panther booster Buddy Garrity (Brad Leland) – to his pal Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), a talented player whose ascension to adulthood has been hampered by alcoholic indolence, an ease at getting his way through sexual charm, a dearth of good male role models at home, and a deep-seated conviction that he’s essentially worthless. The other major teenage character is Tim’s ex-girl friend Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki), a plain-spoken good ol’ girl whose tough act conceals a terror that she’s not good enough to make it into college and the wide world beyond Dillon. In season two she has a relationship with Matt’s nerdy, generous best friend Landry Clarke (Jesse Plemons) and forges an unlikely friendship with Julie; the fact that both are A students suggests Tyra’s secret longing to be taken seriously. In the plausibly incestuous social landscape of the community, Buddy and his receptionist, Tyra’s mother Angela (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson), have an affair that breaks up his marriage, while Tyra’s older sister Mindy (Stacey Oristano) winds up married to Tim’s brother Billy (Derek Phillips), who has been his unofficial and semi-competent guardian since their ne’er-do-well father deserted them.

Movie Love: Ty Burr’s Gods Like Us, David Thomson’s Moments That Made The Movies and Sophie Cossette’s Sinemania!

I may not be particularly enamoured of the movies much of late – their overall quality is abysmal and they just don’t seem to have the cultural cachet they used to have – but I can still appreciate the enthusiasm of those that are still enthralled by the art form and, more so, enjoy the different approaches they take to expressing their love of cinema. Three recent books all find a way into the movies that is both atypical and idiosyncratic. They’re entertaining and informative in equal measure, fine tributes to the movie love that so many people still possess and a timely reminder of why I fell for the movies in the first place.

The Song is Over: The Television Media and the Enabling of Rob Ford

Is it possible that the nightmare of Rob Ford's rule over Toronto is finally over? It would be reassuring to discover that the release of the latest video of our inebriated Mayor smoking crack cocaine and an audio tape of him spewing more invective about gays and women would spell the end of him. But Ford has been a cat with more than nine lives. His political survival in the face of mounting corruption, bad behaviour and substance abuse has been nothing short of miraculous – or has it been? Watching the television coverage of the latest scandal, that continues to taint the political process and one's belief in good governance, what began to emerge was something as disturbing as Rob Ford's actions. If crack cocaine and alcohol have been our Mayor's drug of choice, the television media has made Rob Ford their own prize narcotic.

Coverage from CP24 to CBC Newsworld, so far, reveals a sickening prurience about our mayor's disgusting actions. You don't see reporters talking about the ramifications of Ford's remarks and what they actually say about women, gays and minorities. By watching the news, you would think that Ford's only real problem has been his inability to stay sober rather than the things he says when stoned. Last night, on CBC's The National, a reporter even told us before playing the recent tape recording that the language we were about to hear might be offensive. (As if naughty language is at issue here like in grade school.) Speaking as one who doesn't believe in the 'dirty word' concept, how does saying 'fuck' become more offensive than the Mayor endorsing sexual assault when he says he wants to "jam" mayoralty candidate Karen Stintz? Why are we so worried about four-letter words instead of what he is actually expressing? By avoiding the content of what Rob Ford believes, the news media just turns Ford into their bad boy who essentially keeps fucking up.

Making the Invisible Visible – A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton

Alex Chilton. I have to say, I never gave him much thought. A quick perusal of my record collection showed that I didn’t even have one song on which he sang including his first big hit, “The Letter,” by Memphis’s Box Tops. Not even on one of those “all American Hit Parade collections.” So why would I buy a book about him? That’s right, I bought the book, it wasn’t one of those galley proofs sent out by a publisher to recruit reviewers. I selected this from the wall of books at my local shop. Got myself a tall Pike while I was at it. But after the coffee was gone I settled down to read Holly George-Warren’s fascinating biography of a musician I didn’t know, A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton.

Over 350 pages later I know quite a bit about what happened during Chilton’s career, I even bought a Big Star album, and an anthology of Chilton’s later work, and Big Star collaborator Chris Bell’s solo CD, and a download of The Box Tops greatest hits. That’s a lifetime of music, and I’ve only scratched the surface. I watched the recent bio, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me. I’m even considering reading Rob Jovanovic’s book Big Star: the Story of Rock’s Forgotten Band. Just because there’s something eminently intriguing about a rock star who never really got there. The music that Chilton made haunts me. It ranges from the blue-eyed soul of the Box Tops to the power-pop of Big Star, through years of punk, and just about every genre in between.

Counterfeit Action – The Raid 2: Berandal

 Iko Uwais (left) returns as Rama, in The Raid 2: Berandal

The Raid: Redemption came as a surprise to action cinema fans when it surfaced in 2012, combining a rarely-seen Indonesian martial arts style with a ballsy, hyperviolent tone. The film didn’t bother much with plot, filling most of its runtime with intense and brilliantly-shot fight sequences, and it made a name for itself as an example of action purity; if you were going to make a movie filled with nothing but action, then your action had better be as jaw-dropping as The Raid’s. The entire film took place in one apartment block and focused on a rookie SWAT cop (Iko Uwais) who had to ascend each floor of the building, fighting through waves of baddies, until he could find and confront the head honcho. Other films – notably the overlooked Dredd (2012) – have used this video game-inspired formula, but few to such visceral effect. Curiously, The Raid 2: Berandal mostly abandons this simplistic structure in favour of a “reluctant undercover cop” narrative, which proves to be ill-suited to the style established by the first film.

Funny Men: Act One & Beyond Therapy

Tony Shalhoub and Santino Fontana in Act One, at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater (Photo: Joan Marcus)

The three plays I consider the funniest in the American canon came out within four years of one another: The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (1926), Chicago by Maurine Watkins (1928), and Once in a Lifetime by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart (1930). All three are hard-boiled comedies, a genre that has, unhappily, all but disappeared, though you’d think that the huge success of the movie musical version of Chicago, which restores more of the original text of the play than the stage musical did, might have had the effect of bringing it back into the culture. (The last great cinematic example of the genre before Chicago was probably Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, in 1970.) Hard-boiled comedies are tough, spirited and satirical. They view the world as essentially a lousy place, certainly a corrupt one, though if you’re clear-eyed and quick-witted and skillful at what you do, you can manage to succeed in it. The hard-boiled comic hero, often the representative of an exclusive group – like the Chicago reporters in The Front Page – is a wised-up pro with a sense of irony and a nose for bullshit, and though his (or her) behavior may not be saintly nor his motives pure, the fact that he’s neither pretentious nor hypocritical places us firmly on his side. The real target in a hard-boiled comedy tends to be institutional or cultural, anyway: politics (The Front Page) or the justice system (The Front Page, Chicago) or the American hunger for celebrity (Chicago).

Once in a Lifetime, my favorite American comedy, is about Hollywood during the chaotic, panicked transition from silents to sound, and its protagonists are a trio of vaudevillians who – since the talkies are killing what’s left of vaudeville – trek out to the coast to start a school of “elocution and voice culture” to take advantage of the general chaos and lack of direction at one of the big studios. (The play provided the obvious inspiration for Betty Comden and Adolph Green when they penned the best hard-boiled movie musical before Chicago, Singin’ in the Rain.) The script for Once in a Lifetime was a collaboration between a twenty-six-year-old novice named Moss Hart, who came up with the idea for it, and the most successful comic playwright of the era, George S. Kaufman; it began a collaboration that spanned a decade and included seven more plays, two of which, You Can’t Take It with You and The Man Who Came to Dinner, were turned into famous movies and are revived often. The only reason that Once in a Lifetime isn’t is that, as befits its subject matter, it’s extremely extravagant, with a massive cast and six sets, including a starry L.A. club and a Hollywood soundstage. The 1932 movie version preserves most of the original script and it’s quite enjoyable, though with a couple of exceptions it doesn’t have the cast the material deserves. The Broadway production is legendary, and the trials and tribulations that led to its ultimate triumph forms the last section of Hart’s 1959 memoir, Act One, which, dramatized by James Lapine, is currently occupying Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. (Lapine is also the show’s director.)

Dublin Fog: The Crime Noir Novels of Benjamin Black

Novelist John Banville, aka Benjamin Black, author of the Quirke detective novels ( Photograph: Cyril Byrne)

I suspect that most readers of the mystery genre anticipate that whatever heinous crimes are committed that they will be solved by clever, intuitive police work and that the perpetrators will be brought to justice. That kind of reassurance cannot be found in the novels of Benjamin Black, aka the Irish Booker Prize winner, John Banville. In the six Quirke Dublin mysteries that Black has written – Christine Falls (2006), The Silver Swan (2008), Elegy For April (2010), A Death in Summer (2011) Vengeance (2012) and Holy Orders (2013, Henry Holt and Company) – the scales of justice are frequently tipped to deny justice to murder victims because of official incompetence, the protection of perpetrators by powerful interests who are bent on “hiding the damage,” or suicide to avoid the courts. Then what is the attraction for reading these novels? Well, if the reader can accept the fact that the identity of the perpetrator is secondary to other considerations, it turns out that there are many reasons.

A Fashion Revolution: An Interview with Stella McCartney

Stella McCartney (PA Photos)

Stella McCartney is today as much a household name as her famous father, Beatle Paul. As the director of her eponymous Stella McCartney label, a global fashion brand whose annual profits are estimated to be around $7-million, the 42-year old fashion designer has attracted her own international following since starting her own business in 2001. Her fans – and they include A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Moss to everyday consumers who shop her stand-alone boutiques and websites – love her because no matter what it is she does, from women’s and children’s clothing to eco-friendly sunglasses and athletica for Adidas, McCartney comes across as straight-forward and honest, a woman designer proudly designing for other women, their real shapes and lives. Like her father and her late mother, the vegetarian activist and photographer Linda (nee Eastman), McCartney is also a keen environmentalist who has managed to create a 21st century luxury fashion brand without using leather or fur in any of her designs. 

She is not disposable fashion. She is fashion with a cause, winning three British Fashion Awards, an OBE and the honour of designing her nation’s Team GB Olympics uniforms in 2012. Besides edgy, sexy, uncomplicated design, what gives McCartney an edge is her commitment to sustainable fashion which, as she describes it on her site,www.stellamccartney.com, is a trend as important as recycling: “It’s really the job of fashion designers now to turn things on their head in a different way, and not just try to turn a dress on its head every season. Try and ask questions about how you make that dress, where you make that dress, what materials you’re using. I think that’s far more interesting, actually.” When not helping to lead a fashion revolution, McCartney is a busy mother of four young children and wife to Alasdhair Willis, the recently appointed creative director of British brand Hunter. She is also the devoted daughter of you-know-who, actively supporting Sir Paul in her fashion, like wearing a t-shirt of her own making emblazoned with the words, About Fucking Time, at Sir Paul’s induction ceremony into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame in 1999. They remain close. When Sir Paul married Nancy Shevell in 2012, the bride wore a dress custom-made by her new daughter-in-law. Father and daughter have worked together only once, for the making of a ballet. McCartney describes what that was like, and more, in the following interview.

Getting Real: Hot Docs 2014

In its early years, if the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto had been something of an industry event that gave filmmakers a chance to find a wider audience for their work, over two decades later, it's safe to say the audience is now there and continuing to grow. That growth has led to having their own movie house (The Bloor), which presents documentaries all year round. The Festival each year also showcases various themes such as Docs at Dusk, which shows free films every evening at 8pm with live music following, Hot Docs Talk, a seminar where this year social science experts and film-makers discuss the impact of agenda-focused documentaries, and this year, provide a welcome tribute to veteran documentary director Barbara Kopple (Harlan County U.S.A., American Dream) whose early films certainly helped popularize smart and engaging work on important social themes. Since technology changes as rapidly as the weather, it has also allowed for documentaries to be made on the cheap – often digitally –which have helped create wider definitions of what constitutes a documentary film. Part of the new shifts in technology even include the expanding use of social media, which not only makes possible the expansion of the audience (through Skype), but the technological shifts can also provide subject matter for any number of films including this year's opening night film, The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz, which examines the tragic life of the freedom of information activist who helped develop Reddit and RSS and was ultimately hounded by the U.S. government on outdated computer fraud laws.

Keeping It Real: David Gordon Green's Joe

Nicolas Cage (right) and Tye Sheridan in Joe, directed by David Gordon Green

For a guy who’s given a lot of pleasure to the world and who is in a risky, unstable profession where only John Cazale and possibly Maria Falconetti can claim to have achieved a perfect batting average, Nicolas Cage sure does take a lot of shit. When Cage was still in his twenties and sufficiently unguarded to talk about his artistic ambitions in a way that sounded nakedly arrogant, entertainment writers scored off him by calling him an ingrate who didn’t know how lucky he was to have been a part of an Oscar-winning crowd-pleaser like Moonstruck. When, after winning the Academy Award for Leaving Las Vegas, Cage recanted his expressed reservations about the mainstream and threw himself into the action-blockbuster marketplace with The Rock (in which he was very funny) and Con Air (in which he was less so), the wheel turned and it became fashionable to denounce the actor as a whore, and a hammy, eye-popping whore at that. Seriously, didn’t the world learn its lesson during that awful period when even the Bressonian purists at People magazine took to making fun of Michael Caine for his work ethic?

Cage, like Caine, clearly likes to work, and there are always too few worthwhile projects around. Just as clearly, the man has made some bad choices: say what you like about the very notion of a Ghost Rider movie, two of them are a lot. But compare Cage’s overall track record, and the jeering press he gets, to those of some other stars who the media treats reverentially, and you can see that not all bad decisions are regarded equally. Meryl Streep is supposed to be very intelligent, and after almost four decades of working in the theater and movies, she ought to have picked up on a few of the warning signs about which kind of plays transfer successfully to the multiplex and which ones don’t. Shouldn’t she have guessed how the film version of a stagebound scream-a-thon like August, Osage County was likely to turn out?

Deluge Delusions: Darren Aronofsky's Noah

Russell Crowe in Darren Aronofsky's Noah

If you want a spiritual understanding of the story of Noah and the Ark, I wouldn't recommend Darren Aronofsky's Noah any time soon – or any time at all, really. The mythical tale of the Deluge from Genesis communicates many truths, ultimately God's power over sin and saving of creation. Aronofsky grasps this basic idea, but then muddies it with New Age extra-biblical concepts, half-baked aesthetic choices, and excruciating melodramatic acting. Hollywood's track record with adapting the Bible isn't great, and Noah's not going to do much to change that. It's a missed opportunity that will leave many scratching their heads, believers and non-believers alike.

Songs We Continue to Sing: Rob Ford and the Culture of Corruption

The night Rob Ford was elected Mayor of Toronto, almost four years ago, he had just won a bitterly fought battle to lead the city, and he did it by marshalling and manipulating a populist rage towards city government. Ford had warned us of a "gravy train" of bureaucratic waste depriving us of our hard-earned taxed dollars. While he positioned himself as city saviour, he also began targeting those he described as 'liberal elites,' a pampered, educated and entitled bunch, whom he saw as the true enemy of the hard-working individual. If Margaret Thatcher had once casually dismissed the notion that society actually existed, Ford went a step further. He talked about the city of Toronto only in terms of the taxpayer rather than in terms of its citizens. Since we all pay taxes – even when we're homeless and buy a cup of coffee – taxpayer was merely a code word for property owner. To Ford, Toronto wasn't a diverse and multiculturally vibrant urban community, made up of those who are privileged and those who aren't; it was instead a dysfunctional corporation he was about to restore to efficiency. His message to the city, where he alone could determine those he'd serve and those he wouldn't, was communicated with obscene clarity on the day of his coronation. CBC Television broadcaster and former NHL coach Don Cherry had arrived in his flamingo pink suit to drape the chain of office around Ford's neck. It was Cherry who helped set the new tone for the city in his opening remarks. "Well, actually I'm wearing pinko for all the pinkos out there that ride bicycles and everything," Cherry began with cheers from the crowd in the upper rotunda while city counsellors sat in shock. "I say he's going to be the greatest mayor this city has ever, ever seen, as far as I'm concerned – and put that in your pipe, you left-wing kooks." One thing certain in those tone-setting remarks: contempt was now public policy.

Another Heiress: Victoria Stewart's Rich Girl

Amelia Broome, Sasha Castroverde, Joe Short, and Celeste Oliva in Rich Girl. (Photo by Mark S. Howard)

Victoria Stewart’s Rich Girl, which is receiving its Boston premiere at Lyric Stage, is a contemporary version of The Heiress, Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s superb 1947 dramatization of the Henry James novella Washington Square. Standing in for James’s heroine, Catherine Sloper, a retiring, socially awkward young woman who falls for a fortune hunter, is Claudine (Sasha Castroverde), the titular rich girl who is swept off her feet by an actor and theatre director named Henry (Joe Short). Catherine’s brilliant, icy father, who sizes up her suitor – and whose wisdom about the match is inseparable from what she correctly assesses to be a contempt for her – has become Eve (Amelia Broome), who runs a foundation that employs Claudine and hosts a popular show about finance.

FX's Fargo: Their Own Private Minnesota

Allison Tolman and Shawn Doyle in Fargo, now airing on FX

It's not a sequel. It's not a spinoff or a remake. Maybe it's more like a reboot? Right now I'm thinking of Fargo, FX's new limited-run television series, as falling into the "inspired by" category. My favourite theory is that its story is a riff on the same "true story" which playfully (and apocryphally) inspired Joel and Ethan Coen's feature. It shares a universe, an aesthetic of darkly comic, casual violence, and perhaps an area code with the Coen brothers classic 1996 film of the same name, but there is little other explicit overlap. (However, careful fans might observe a mysterious briefcase the show's opening scene.) Still, television viewers tuning in will be reminded of the film by the big skies, the unforgettable North Minnesotan dialect and exaggeratedly rounded vowels ("aw geez", "you betcha!"), and the signature pacing and tone. There are significant risks in toying with a beloved and critically acclaimed movie on the small screen, but so far, with nary a wood chipper in sight, FX's Fargo has already begun to stand on its own snow-booted feet.

Notes on the Method: Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe

Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe.

Is there anything trickier for an actor than playing a show-business legend? Jimmy Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl (1968) didn’t have to worry about getting down George M. Cohan and Fanny Brice because so few moviegoers would have been able to compare them to the personalities they were depicting – Cohan had made only one obscure film, and by the time Funny Girl came out Brice’s handful of screen appearances were long forgotten. They were stage performers (Brice also had a radio fan base); an established movie star like Cagney or a newly minted movie star like Streisand easily trumped a ghost from an earlier Broadway era. But Judy Davis in Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows and Geoffrey Rush in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers – both made for television – were playing movie stars of mythic status, so they had to find a way to replicate their eccentric physical presences while simultaneously inhabiting them from the inside, and miraculously both did. Davis, giving perhaps her greatest performance, burrowed so deep into Garland’s persona that when she lip-synched that famous contralto, with its spring-air freshness and warmth in the thirties and forties and its increasingly desperate tremolo in the fifties and sixties, the results were spooky. Rush approximated Sellers’s madly gifted clowning and made up the rest, since whereas the whole world got to see Garland’s neuroses – in A Star Is Born and on her TV show (and you can hear it on the Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall album) – Sellers’s complicated psychology was always completely separate from the characters he played in the movies.

Neglected Gem #53: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008)

Kat Dennings and Michael Cera star in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008)

I recently finished teaching a class on iconic cinema and iconic actors, such as Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin and John Wayne, among many others. One of my lectures, the last of eight, was devoted to youth culture, examining the iconic nature of everything from A Hard Day’s Night (1964) to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), to the films starring Saturday Night Live alumni – National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), The Blues Brothers (1980) and Ghostbusters (1984) – and, of course, the popular films of John Hughes – Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985). The sleeper of the bunch however is the little known Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008), a teen romantic comedy that is more authentic then Hughes’s contrived output (Sixteen Candles is a complete mess, actually). With its smart use of indie songs on the soundtrack, from the talented likes of Vampire Weekend and The National, and deft use of underground New York City locations, it’s a movie which packs an emotional, moving punch, albeit in a sweet, understated way.

The Unwatchable Watchable: Errol Morris' The Unknown Known

Errol Morris (and his subject) in The Unknown Known

Film director Errol Morris once worked as a private investigator and his best part is his investigative-journalist side – the muckraking detective. While planning a documentary about a forensic psychiatrist who became notorious for his “expert witness” testimony in capital punishment cases, he happened to come across a death row conviction that didn't smell right and made a film (The Thin Blue Line) that ended up getting an innocent man released from prison. But Morris’ reputation as one of the greatest living filmmakers, and very likely the greatest living specialist in documentary feature filmmaking, isn't based mainly on 25-year-old headlines generated by his breakthrough movie. It’s based on his being a “stylist” – on his artistic pretensions and the easily recognizable visual and aural tics that make up his style.

Morris has been known to reject the term “documentary” in favor of “nonfiction film,” because he feels that having his movies called documentaries lumps them in with films shown in classrooms and on public television. Frederick Wiseman may well be the most important documentary filmmaker of the past fifty years, but if you happened to walk past a TV set while High School or Basic Training was showing, you could take a glance for a few random seconds and mistake them for a clip from any old TV news show. Morris’ movies look and sound like Errol Morris movies. How impressed you are by the fact that, more and more, they all look and sound like the same Errol Morris movie may depend on whether you use the word “auteur” in casual conversation.

Taking Nothing For Granted: The Holmes Brothers' Brotherhood

The Holmes Brothers have just released their 11th album and these veteran musicians keep getting better with age. For the record, there are only two Holmes brothers, Sherman and Wendall. They grew up in a musical house in Christchurch, Virginia, nurtured by their parents who were schoolteachers. The boys took an interest in music beyond the Sunday morning Baptist hymns and spirituals by tuning to blues artists such as Jimmy Reed and B.B. King. Those influences took a creative hold of Sherman and Wendall who make a beautiful sound deeply rooted, but not confined to, gospel music.

Ebony Sails: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (Freedom Cry DLC)

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (Freedom Cry DLC)

Downloadable content (DLC) has been an inherent function of the video game industry for over a decade now, and it’s become both a blessing and a curse: it allows us to dive back into the virtual worlds we love and live in them for that much longer, but this comes at the risk of being nickel-and-dimed to death. Some unscrupulous video game developers have been known to split a full product apart and sell you the smaller pieces after the initial release, as though they were designed as "additional" content. The scrupulous ones, on the other hand, invent all-new content which enhances and builds upon the original experience, but instances of this kind of craft are rare in the industry. The Freedom Cry DLC for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag would have no place in the narrative of its mother game (simply because there just isn’t enough room), and so it sets out to justify its existence through a strong standalone story and engaging new mechanics. Black Flag was the story of Edward Kenway, legendary pirate, and this plays almost like a fan fiction set in that world – it’s a rich enough realm that it feels natural to visit it again through a different character's eyes.

Mr. Vaudeville: Remembering Mickey Rooney

When Mickey Rooney died on April 6 at the age of ninety-three, he’d been in show business for a surely unprecedented ninety-one years. (He was shooting not one but two movies at the time of his death, including the third in the A Night at the Museum series.) His parents were vaudevillians who introduced him into their act when he was seventeen months old; he started making film shorts in 1926, first as Mickey McBan and then as Mickey McGuire. He was all of fourteen when he played Clark Gable’s character as a boy in Manhattan Melodrama, the earliest of his many movies at M-G-M that film buffs are likely to have seen. (It’s a famous picture, though not because of its cast; it acquired instant notoriety when John Dillinger was shot down as he emerged from a Chicago movie house playing it.) A number of film personalities in the early days of the talkies began in vaudeville (Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, The Marx Brothers), but Rooney retained a special connection to it because the musicals he and Judy Garland made in the late thirties and early forties – Babes in Arms, Strike Up the Band, Babes on Broadway and to a lesser extent Girl Crazy, which was the best of them – were imbued with the vaudevillian spirit. They were about brave, persistent adolescents who want to put on shows and usually have to fight authoritarian adults with sticks up their asses who try to get in their way. In Babes in Arms, the flagship musical in the series, which was adapted from a hit Broadway show by Rodgers and Hart, Rooney and Garland and their cohorts are also the children of vaudevillians who are on the road, fighting the Depression in order to put bread on the table, and the success of their kids’ musical revue keeps the do-gooding locals from farming them out to orphanages. The message of all four of these movies was the same: talent will out. And though Rooney also starred in the fantastically popular homespun Andy Hardy series (twice opposite Garland), it was in these musicals that he truly made his mark.