Ice Cube
Rachel's
Death Cab For Cutie
Lyrics Born
Mars Volta
Space Team Electra
Rob Swift
Apples in Stereo
Jurassic 5
Sleater-Kinney
Nirvana
Sonic Youth
Amon Tobin
Dirty Three
Cat Power
Pixies
Fugazi
Frank Black
Breeders
Three Mile Pilot
Mogwai
DJ Shadow
Chuck D
Shipping News
Black Heart Procession
White Stripes
Built To Spill
Los Straitjackets
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

AND MUCH MORE!

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"There was some-
thing truly visceral about Cube's voice that made his ever-present snarl that much more serious. As he barked on Death Certificate and Amerikkka's, he was the nigga you love to hate as well as the wrong one to fuck with."

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"Even though Sonic Youth grabbed Cobain by his hypodermic needles and helped foist him into the spotlight, alterna-fans du jour didn't return the favor when the New York noisemakers lobbed this bottom-soaked missile their direction."

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"People are more aware of the world that they want to live in, and now they have to realize that they can actually create that world and fight for the things that are worth fighting for and not feel apathetic. We are all going to die. There is no point in holding anything back."

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"There's a scene in Richard Link-later's Waking Life where the protagonist crouches down to read a note in the street that says, 'Look to your right,' which he does, only to come face to face with a speeding car aiming right for his head. That's what it's like to listen to Mars Volta's De-loused in the Comatorium for the first time."

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"Well, well, well. President George was in one hell of bind when it turned that that Saudi Arabia funded Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Realizing we'd invaded the wrong country, Bush did the honorable thing: he's come out against gay marriages."

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"'When it comes to learning from its mistakes, corporate America has fallen off the rehab wagon more times than Robert Downey, Jr. A quick glance at last week's papers reveals that it's monkey business as usual on Wall Street."

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"By the time this page fully loads, Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard will have probably composed, performed, mixed and pressed yet another tightly coiled pop-rock nugget."

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"Unless his friends and neighbors turn bitch and completely bail on him, the hyperskilled Lyrics Born will be here later this day, that day or whatever day, until he's too old to physically rhyme or sing anymore. In that, perhaps he can take some solace, dropping that baggage off at the door in the process."

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"There is no doubt in my mind -- and in this I seem to have a lot of company -- that Transatlanticism is Death Cab For Cutie's best album so far, not bad for a group that's been professionally plugging away for just over four years now. And there is also no doubt that Ben Gibbard is one of pop music's finest talents. ."

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"There is no one thing to know in Lord of the Rings more important than the fact that everything is disappearing, and disappearing fast. Jackson's final film in his peerless trilogy tenaciously latches onto this theme and never lets go."

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"There's some thing in our psyche, this kind of right or privilege to resolve our conflicts with violence. There's an arrogance to that concept. To actually have to sit down and talk, to listen, to compromise, that's hard work. To go for the gun, that's the cowardly act."

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"The surreal-
ists wouldn't know what to do with Harvey Birdman. Its ingenious brand of adult animation owes as much to absurdists like Ionesco and Duchamp as it does to Bugs Bunny and Bullwinkle. Same goes with the other shows in Adult Swim's lineup."

Why the long face, baby? "It's the Depression, you're piss-poor, and your father's your pimp. What's a young girl to do?"

by Laura Picard

The next time you get into an argument with a social conservative (though these are best avoided, foolhardy you) about sex and violence in today's liberal media and the need for stricter controls, ask them if they think Frank Capra or Noel Coward poses a threat to the moral fabric. When they laugh, offer up this little bit of history.

In 1934, the self-styled guardians of American morality had decided that enough was enough. The sex and violence polluting the silver screen was exacting a toll on the country's moral health, and nothing but the threat of massive boycotts would stop it in its tracks.

That the boycotts would not have been massive (box office receipts in the early '30s were at a record high, despite the Depression) -- and that it was fomented by a small percentage of the population with a deceptively loud voice (sound familiar?) -- was still enough to make Hollywood's moguls quail. Fearing the threat of government-imposed censorship, film land's leadership succumbed and, in a preemptive strike, girded the loins of their own censorship system: The Production Code. It's newly revised motto was simple and sweeping in its stated purpose: "No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it."

Overnight, movies that had previously been seen by audiences of all ages were suddenly off-limits. Howard Hawks' Scarface? Banned. James Cagney in Public Enemy? Outta here. Noel Coward's Private Lives? Gone. Frank Capra's groundbreaking early films (Platinum Blonde, Miracle Woman, Ladies of Leisure)? Taboo.

In short, just about every seminal film of the early thirties found itself on the wrong end of the censor's stamp.

Life's a Lubitsch. "Noel Coward's witty menage a trois was right at home on Broadway, but its film version was a prime target for moralists."

What were their sins? They contained gangsters, machine guns, premarital sex, drunkenness, foul language, drugs, prostitution, lust, infidelity, and the absence of moral consequences (read: death or ostracism) for much of the above. They would not be seen again, intact, for another 20-odd years, and the Production Code's final death rattle would not be fully felt until the late '60s, and the advent of the '70s cinema revolution.

For those of us used to the ridiculously sanitized morality of Hollywood's "Golden Age," pre-Code films are a charming surprise. They're gritty, raw, profane and wised-up. Female sexuality is unfettered, urban violence springs from the harsh economy that bred it, and the morality of the day is far more elastic and forgiving than post-Code films would lead one to believe.

More important is the aesthetic freedom filmmakers had to depict stories and characters realistically, as apt reflections of their contemporary world. A world in which people did not sleep in twin beds, kiss with their mouths closed, abstain from cussing, or tragically die after the commission of a sin. A world much more like ours, in fact. And one which never went away.

Except on the silver screen.

So here are some salient examples of old-fashioned Hollywood freedom. Some are dated and creaky now, others surprisingly current and fresh. They may break no modern-day boundaries, but they're an effective retort to our current would-be censors. For if this is what got panties into a twist in 1934, how equally unthreatening are those works we seek to proscribe today?

Better dead than red? "Harlow is deliciously naughty and amoral as the unapologetic homewrecker."

RED-HEADED WOMAN (1932) d. Jack Conway; with Jean Harlow, Chester Morris
Jean Harlow knocked more than a few hats back with her unrepentant sexuality in this sly tale, scripted by Anita Loos, about a small town golddigger cutting a swath through her society "betters." Harlow is deliciously naughty and amoral as the unapologetic homewrecker, digging into her character's sexual voraciousness with a wink and a shrug and abundant good humor. Pre-Code heroines don't get any better than this.

RED DUST (1932) d. Victor Fleming; with Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Mary Astor
Harlow again, as the whore-with-a-heart-of-gold, rescuing Clark Gable from a steamy tropical melodrama. Again, what would have been unthinkable post-Code is presented here as completely natural and, in fact, preferred: Harlow's prostitute Vantine dwells comfortably in her sexuality, makes love freely, falls for Gable and, in the end, gets him. Without shame or apologies. At heart, it's a buddy film, with Gable and Harlow as the sparring pals, and Mary Astor as the married upper-cruster who comes between them. If made after 1934, Vantine would have been cleaned up into a wisecracking (but chaste) singer/dancer/whatever, and Gable and Astor might have kissed, but never had sex (as they clearly do here). The Production Code would also have cut lines like Vantine's (to the parrot who's cage she's cleaning): "What have you been eating, cement?" Nothing so impure would pass muster after 1934, and in such small ways was the depiction of real life reduced.

MIRACLE WOMAN (1932) d. Frank Capra; with Barbara Stanwyck, David Manners
One of a quartet of Pre-Code films that Stanwyck made with Capra (Ladies of Leisure, Forbidden, and The Bitter Tea of General Yen being the others), this one stands out for its topicality and its stance on religious hypocrisy. A thinly-veiled riff on the career of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, it's notable now for how much more sanitized Stanwyck's compromised preacher would have been after the censor's axe fell. It's also a chance to see Capra finding his feet as a director (already pretty solid) and employing those populist sentiments that would later define his work. Some fine acting shines in a now-creaky plot (and you have to hand it to Capra: when did he ever get less than great performances from his actors? A director's most underrated gift.).

Screwing your way to the top. "Chatterton's auto magnate tromps the competition while using her male secretaries for pleasure -- and dispatching them when they object."

FEMALE (1933) d. Michael Curtiz, William Dieterle; with Ruth Chatterton, George Brent
How many films of the '30s, '40s or '50s detail a female executive's rise to power whilst plowing a sexual path through her boy toy underlings? Not many, needless to say. But this 1933 hit starring Ruth Chatterton turns the tables on the classic male executive's droit de seigneur (what we'd term sexual harrassment today), with Chatterton's auto magnate tromping the competition while using her male secretaries for pleasure -- and dispatching them when they object. She uses sex as unapologetically as any man, and her business acumen is unquestioned. For all its latent morality (a man does come along who's her match and "teaches her a thing or two"), the film's depiction of female power must have been more than heartening to Depression-era sisters struggling into the early '30s work force en masse. Food for thought: it took another forty-odd years before Faye Dunaway's Network executive turned the tables on sex and power within the corporation, but that film's gimlet-eyed treatment of her role, for all its satirical implications, had none of the generosity of 1933's Female.

SCARFACE (1932) d. Howard Hawks; with Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, George Raft, Boris Karloff
A natural remake candidate for the '70s-spawned era of new directors, and Brian De Palma's version more than equalled, in contemporary terms, the shocking violence of the original for 1930s audiences. That violence is in no short supply in Howard Hawks' seminal gangster saga, where gang wars, bootlegging and lurking incest all culminate in a virtual symphony of machine gun fire. Audiences had never before seen anything so noisy, so gritty, so morally corrupt -- and they attended in droves. This film, along with Public Enemy, Little Caesar, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and sundry other gangsta pix of the Pre-Code era are as good an argument as any for just how much sooner the '70s era of Mean Streets and Taxi Driver would have arrived on screen without the interruption of the Production Code. They were already nearly there, as the following entry proves.

Fear of a Cagney planet. "Canny, brutal and painstakingly unsympathetic, Cagney's young hood was easily recognizable to urban audiences, who saw him on every street corner, or even at the dinner table."

PUBLIC ENEMY (1931) d. William Wellman; with James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Joan Blondell
Mean Streets circa 1931. For those used to the high production values of late '30s films, or even of film noir's heydey in the '40s, the gritty realism of this William Wellman-directed gangster saga is startling and disturbing. The movie made James Cagney an overnight star, and there is no questioning why. At a time when many film stars could still barely speak before a camera, this stage-trained actor had a precocious verbal and physical dexterity, and an uncanny naturalism, that made his Tom Powers leap off the screen. Canny, brutal and painstakingly unsympathetic -- his famous grapefruit-in-the-face scene here smashed all previous norms of "star" behavior -- Cagney's young hood was easily recognizable to urban audiences, who saw him on every street corner, or even at the dinner table. The movie itself takes pains to disavow its protagonist's choices, while reserving its real indictment for the crushing poverty and corruption that offered him so few alternatives. Audiences were stunned at the film's grim conclusion, and its haunting final image of Cagney still has the power to unnerve today. You can pretty much date the birth of the American anti-hero to this film and this performance, without which it is hard to imagine the subsequent careers of Gable, Robinson, Bogart, etc.

BABY FACE (1933) d. Frank Capra; with Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent
It's the Depression, you're piss-poor, and your father's your pimp. What's a young girl to do? Burn down the house and make for the Big City, that's what, where bigger suckers await the lessons you learned at Daddy's knee. Stanwyck is both scary and sympathetic as the ruthless player wreaking havoc on a New York corporation in her rise to the top, and this downbeat tale is the perfect Depression-era answer to the sunnier Cinderella fantasies which the Code would later demand.

JEWEL ROBBERY (1932) d. William Dieterle; with William Powell, Kay Francis
An absolutely delicious farce from director and arch-stylist William Dieterle. William Powell is the urbane jewel thief, Kay Francis the very well-kept socialite who falls for him in a love-among-the-sophisticates meringue that brooks no opposition to extra-marital sex, crime or even drugs. Famous for its marijuana-smoking scene, it is also a dazzling display of the speedy editing, dissolves and wipes that made the early talkies' land-locked camera move again. A gem.

I vant to be a bisexual. "Greta's bisexual Queen kisses her female lover and trysts memorably with John Gilbert as she struggles with the responsibilities of power versus love and personal happiness."

QUEEN CHRISTINA (1933) d. Rouben Mamoulian; with Greta Garbo, John Gilbert
Along with Camille and Ninotchka, one of Garbo's greatest performances, and a priceless pre-Code artifact (though artifact is too small a term to apply to anything directed by the incomparable Rouben Mamoulian). Greta's bisexual Queen kisses her female lover and trysts memorably with John Gilbert as she struggles with the responsibilities of power versus love and personal happiness. Witty, heart-breaking and gorgeously filmed, this is a prime example of cinema's sophistication circa 1933.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE (1932) d. Ernst Lubitsch; w/ Herbert Marshall, Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis
The famous "Lubitsch Touch" was always deliciously amoral, suspending all ethical considerations before the gale-force strength of l'amour-be it pre-marital, extra-marital, intra-marital or…whatever the hell. It was a predilection he had to subvert somewhat with sops to the moral majority post-1934 (and even then he was craftier than most), but this 1932 classic has all the easy wit and unquestioned frankness about love between adults that was later banished by the Code. Crime does indeed pay, after a fashion, when his two jewel thief lovers pull a con on a wealthy Parisian socialite, only to have their love and loyalties turned upside down into the bargain -- with Lubitsch keeping you always guessing as to who will win. And that's just the point. All are sympathetic here: thieves, con artists, illicit lovers, misbehaving widows…but such easy expansiveness was exactly what the Code targeted, and it would be upwards of two decades before such a light souffle was taken off the censor's list.

DESIGN FOR LIVING (1933) d. Ernst Lubitsch; with Gary Cooper, Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins
Noel Coward's witty menage a trois was right at home on Broadway, but its film version was a prime target for moralists, in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- its more cerebral than erotic portrayal of a woman in love with two men, and how the deuce to work it out? A threesome is the only, ultimate, answer -- and this faithful screen adaptation was subsequently forbidden for re-release or re-make after 1934. 'Nuff said.

All films made prior to July, 1934, are officially pre-Code, and contain much that would later be censored. For more info on the pre-Code era, check out Mick LaSalle's two excellent books on the subject: Complicated Women (St. Martin's Press, 2000), and Dangerous Men (St. Martin's Press, 2002).

09 February 03

Top Films of 2003 In a year that brought us an intractable global war, the darkly personal film shined just as brightly as its big-ticket counterparts. And whether the subject was cocaine, the Columbine massacre, zombie rampages or marriages on the brink in Japan, there was simply nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide . . . MORE	"Using Language Against Itself" With one foot in the art world and another outside of it, guerilla poster artist Robbie Conal is assuming the position. After all, taking garish potshots at Important White Men won't exactly make your friends in the echelons of power. But Robbie just wants them to feel the Burn. Our interview explains . . . . MORE	Year of the Fake Look back in anger, indeed. In the so-called greatest country on god's green earth, justice went blindly after bong makers, almanac readers and whistle-blowers while ignoring the liars, cheaters and swindlers. So where did that leave the truth, in all its ugly glory? In the gutter, where Bush likes it. Honesty has left the building . . . MORE
Five Reasons Culture Didn't Suck in 2003... Depending on who you ask, 2003 was either the year that the world came together or became irreparably polarized. We tend to take the middle road, and say that it more or less sucked but had some bright, history-making moments. In fact, whether it was Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings juggernaut or the rise of Howard Dean, life as we know it may never be the same again . . . MORE	...and Five Reasons Why It Really Did There were so many laughable failures in 2003, that it would simply be impossible to list them all. So where should we start? How about with an oil whore -- uh, war -- dressed up to look like a 9/11 payback? Or perhaps the sellout Democrats that let it all happen? Or maybe we should turn away from politics and just enjoy the lesbian lovefest between Madonna, Spears and Xtina? Or . . . . MORE	2003: Revolution Accomplished Lies, lies, lies. If 2003 had a running theme, it definitely had something to do with the constant barrage of bullshit escaping from the mouths of Bush, Rumsfeld, Blair, Thurmond and many, many more. But the year that was didn't stop there. There was also apocalypse, terrorism, and Jacko. Look back in anger . . . MORE