Thursday, January 31, 2008
Glover for Sayles
Posted by Jim Ridley on Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 10:25 PM
The new John Sayles film Honeydripper, a musical drama about a restless bluesman and the roots of rock 'n' roll, won't open in Nashville until Feb. 15. But you can get an advance peek without striking a deal with the devil. The film's co-star Danny Glover will appear 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 11, at Regal's Green Hills megaplex at a special screening and post-film Q&A presented by the Nashville Film Festival. Tickets are $15 or $12 for festival members; you can get them here.
Education How to Improve Metro Schools: Part 329
Posted by Matt Pulle on Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 2:25 PM
Jeremy Kane, director of LEAD Academy, who is featured in this week's Scene, has drafted a memo outlining a radically different way of approaching education. In it, Kane proposes we undertake a far-out, risky enterprise in which we look at what works at other school districts and see if we could apply any of those lessons here. Sure, that approach may not seem so revolutionary, but in the arena of public education the debate is typically between incrementalism and doing nothing. Kane's memo argues for more meaningful reform designed to foster smaller, more autonomous schools. We're not convinced all of the measures outlined here are feasible, but Kane's proposal is as good a starting point as any for a debate about our district. After the jump, a rough draft of Kane's memo. Though he hasn't finished citing all his sources, we pleaded with him to let us publish it now.
Breaking News Art of the Insult
Posted by Elizabeth Ulrich on Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 12:34 PM
Last week, the folks developing Nashville's Museum of African American Music, Art and Culture proposed a partnership between the museum—slated to open in 2011—and Fisk University to showcase the school's coveted Stieglitz Collection. In return, Fisk would get “a steady stream of revenue” to help the school recover from financial purgatory. Seemed like a good enough idea.
But it sure didn't take long for Fisk officials to crap all over the first real attempt to keep the art local. If there was any question about what Fisk thought about the new proposal—or about how the promise of making a quick buck stacks up against the significant cultural value of keeping the collection local and intact—university president Hazel O'Leary has cleared it right up. The Fisk prez called the Nashville museum's proposal “ludicrous” and “insulting.”
Yeah, we get that Fisk is in dire financial straits and a $30 million offer from the Wal-Mart heiress to ship the art to Arkansas is mighty tempting. And, as exhibited during her tenure as energy secretary during the Clinton administration, O'Leary doesn't exactly have the best judgment. But what's with all the sass?
Does Fisk's near-rabid desire to turn art into dollars really merit insulting a group trying to honor the influence of African American culture in Nashville—not to mention, trying to help Fisk? Course, the Nashville museum is still in the formative stages. But last time we checked, the Wal-Mart museum still looked like nothing more than a hole in the ground in Bentonville, Ark.
O'Leary even chided the museum for not having an “expert” on board, apparently a reference to some sort of curator. It's an odd blow, especially coming from the leader of a university that thought it would be a good idea to house an art collection hand-selected by Georgia O'Keeffe in a dank, renovated gymnasium with zero climate control.
Touch of Touch of Evil
Posted by Jim Ridley on Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 11:45 AM
Nashville. Music City. A wet kiss on the end of a fist. A filthy town where anything can be bought—for the right price. That includes a pass to the Belcourt's Nashville Film Noir Festival, starting tomorrow night at 7 p.m. and continuing through March 4.
Roll dice, flip a coin, throw a dart at the calendar. You'll be hard pressed to pick a movie in this 18-film series that won't rock your world, especially if you have any affinity whatsoever for crackling dialogue, sharp-brimmed hats, femmes fatales, and character actors whose mugs look like granite chiseled with a jackhammer. For an overview that barely hints at the hardcore jollies on tap, look here.
The opening-night feature is Orson Welles' baroque sleaze masterpiece Touch of Evil, to be introduced by The Rage's Jonathan Malcolm Lampley. Above, you'll find the movie's justly renowned opening, which captures in one unbroken shot the three minutes and change leading up to a deadly car-bombing in a Mexican border town. Much as I miss Henry Mancini's jazzy title music in this reconstructed edit, the layered sound design that defines the town is a marvel. I love the way the car radio fades in and out of the action, building suspense by cueing us in to its proximity. And the shot itself is noir distilled to a bouillon cube—the tilted angles, the looming shadows, the side streets seething with menace.
What are ya waiting for, an invitation? I'll post more on individual films throughout the festival. Check back in and report on what you see. I can't wait to hear what people make of Kiss Me Deadly, Point Blank and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
By the Way Red State Fred Portrait Sold!
Posted by Liz Garrigan on Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 12:52 PM
ACK breaks the news, which will show me to go get another cup of coffee before posting what I know: Drew Johnson and Trent Seibert of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research have purchased for $1,200 the Fred Thompson portrait featured here.
Crazy Crap / Politics Why We Don't Care About Ron Paul
Posted by Liz Garrigan on Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 12:33 PM
So some Ron Paul operatives dropped by the Scene the other day to leave some material, which our administrative assistant dutifully passed on to the edit department. But then, they came back—two of them. As Jeff Woods and I were in my office talking about upcoming stories, our colleague Brian appeared in my doorway to say they were waiting to talk with one of us. What ensued went something like this:
Me: (rolling eyes) What do they want?
Brian: I don’t know. To talk to you.
Woods: Tell them I got their shit.
Brian: But they want to see you.
Me: Brian, look, I’ll talk about coverage with pretty much anyone who shows up, but Ron Paul isn’t a Nashville story. Can you get rid of them?
Brian: I can try.
Woods: Hell, I’ll go talk to them.
Woods does and—I can attest because I was getting my mail and overheard it—was uncharacteristically cordial, friendly, attentive. When after a few minutes he said he was busy with some work and needed to get back to it, they ignored his attempt at a gracious exit and continued their strident advocacy. He said, “Thanks for coming by” or some such, but they wouldn’t take the hint. Finally, he asked them if they were "a bunch of Jehovah's Witnesses or something." In the end, he simply had to turn his back as they continued to peddle a libertarian masquerading as a legitimate GOP candidate—someone who has prolifically published all manner of racist, homophobic material (which he now claims no responsibility for).
Here’s the deal. We at the Scene don’t care about Ron Paul. He’s a single-digit wonder who doesn’t care about the environment ("Private property owners have a much better record of taking care of the environment. If you look at the common ownership of the lands in the West, they're much more poorly treated than those that are privately owned. In a free-market system, nobody is permitted to pollute their neighbor's private property— water, air, or land. It is very strict."), has no chance of success and is irrelevant to the Tennessee primary process.
But as much we may loathe what he represents, this isn’t a political consideration. It’s a practical one. You never saw us writing about Dennis Kucinich either. Save your tracts and your time and leave us alone, Paulites.
Politics Playing Abortion Politics
Posted by Jeff Woods on Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 9:29 AM
In a fine bit of political theater, Democrats showed up Republicans on the abortion issue this week in the state Senate.
Republicans, denying any political posturing for this year’s elections, are pushing a state constitutional amendment on abortion. They say it’s needed to nullify a Tennessee Supreme Court ruling that they say prohibits “commonsense” restrictions on abortion rights.
But Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday delayed voting on a bill by Democratic Sen. Roy Herron that would require just the kind of precautions Republicans have been saying are reasonable—informed consent and mandated periods of reflection before abortions. The legislation also provides an exception in cases in which an abortion is necessary to protect the health and life of the mother. And Herron produced a state attorney general’s opinion saying his bill is constitutional in spite of that Supreme Court ruling that Republicans hate so much.
"This is a pro-life bill, and any legislator claiming to be pro-life should support it," Herron told the committee, which is controlled 5-4 by Republicans. "There has been a lot of talk in the Senate lately about amending the constitution concerning abortion, but none of that would take effect for at least three years. If our goal is to protect unborn babies, we can pass this bill and begin protecting those babies immediately."
Democrats sent a press release this morning on the meeting in which pro-life Sen. Doug Jackson, a Democrat from Dickson, expresses dismay at opposition to the bill. "I feel sure this is a bill that Tennessee Right to Life can support," he says. "If they want to protect unborn babies, why wouldn't they support it?"
Update: Republicans respond with their own press release. They seem to have dropped their insistence that the issue is about providing "commonsense protections for women," as Sen. Diane Black put it. Suddenly, it's all about letting the people speak.
"Democrats seek to confuse a very simple issue: An activist court overturned laws that protected women and the unborn while SJR 127 seeks to return to the people the vote to address the issue of abortion ," state GOP chair Robin Smith says. "Rather than permitting voters to speak on the issue, Democrats are seeking to put this issue back in the hands of the courts, not at the ballot box."
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Law and Order Harassing the Homeless
Posted by Jeff Woods on Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 10:17 AM
Nashville’s homeless community is justifiably outraged by this YouTube video in which some chucklehead cruelly mocks a couple of street people. Charles Strobel, founder of the Room in the Inn shelters, brought the video to the attention of Pith. “The homeless showed it to us and our staff here is upset about it,” Strobel says. “It needs to be exposed because of the bigotry that’s there and the ridicule of people in an unfortunate condition.”
One homeless man, who asks not to be named, tells Pith, “This is exploitation of the downtrodden. I guess you can video anything you want and you can hate anyone you want, but that doesn’t make it right.”
This video surfaces at a time when Nashville is about to crack down on panhandling because beggars are bothering downtown tourists and residents. Isn't that ironic?
Crazy Crap Dispatch From Aztlan
Posted by Liz Garrigan on Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 10:15 AM
I got a love note yesterday from crazy Jim Boyd, or, as we characterized him in our December Boner Awards, "the Paul Revere of Brown Peril." Contained in the box that accompanied his sweet nothings were, as you can see above, some dirt collected from the Arizona-Mexican border and what is probably water laced with toxins.
Read the jump for his entire note, but before that, I share with you the recipe he enclosed with his offering:
1. Mix one part water with three parts dirt.
2. Fling mixture at those braver than yourself.
3. Run and hide so you won't get your pansy ass kicked by your intended target.
UPDATE: Aunt B. gets all philosophical about the picture above.
Education / Politics Sunnyside Up
Posted by Bruce Barry on Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 6:52 AM
Gov. Phil Bredesen sounded a few upbeat notes on education in his State of the State speech last night by invoking Education Week’s recent state-by-state report card on public schools:
Believe me, these kinds of grades and rankings should always be taken with a grain of salt, and they don’t always capture what is most important. But I’ll confess to you that it was nice to look it over this year. We’re still in the 40s on school finance, 41st to be exact. But this year for the first time they ranked states on overall scores – the measure that tries to take everything into account—achievement, standards, transitions, teachers, finance—the bottom line. In that ranking, this January, we’re not in the 40s. We’re not in the 30s. We’re not in the 20s even. Tennessee is ranked this year No. 16 in the nation.
In areas we have focused on, we do even better. In the category of “Standards, Assessments and Accountability,” we’re ranked number 10 in the nation. After the actions that our State School Board took last week to further raise standards, I expect this to climb even higher in the years ahead. And my personal favorite ranking: In one of the six categories they look at, “Education Alignment Policies”—this is where pre-K lives—we know we still have lots to do here, but in 2008 our Education Week rank nationally is one.It’s hard to fault the man for trying to find a little sunshine in the state’s public education darkness, but his bright spots were carefully chosen. A few other tidbits from the Education Week report that put things in perspective:
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