Reviews by JxSxPx

I’m growing tired of every other direct-to-DVD animated film from DC being about Superman, Batman, or a mash-up of the two of them. Granted, they’re the tent pole heroes of that particular comic publishing powerhouse, but can’t we spread the wealth around a little bit more? Would a movie about the Flash, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, or some more about Wonder Woman and Green Lantern be too much to ask for? I suppose so. But even more so then the tidal wave of Superman and Batman animated adventures, I’m tired of each of these outings forcibly adapting the artist’s style for the films.

Frank Quitely can be a very gifted, quirky and ingenious comic artist, but his designs don’t translate to animation at all. Superman looks egg headed with a Jay Leno jaw line and lips that look like he’s been sucking on exhaust pipes. And I don’t understand his gargantuan Parasite redesign. The fluidity and cleanness of the animation is nice, but the overall design of it is fairly ugly. The anime-inspired and already cartoonish drawing style of Ed McGuinness in Public Enemies was probably the last time this approach translated properly. Apocalypse left us with a Superman who looked a few more minutes away from coming out in Wonder Woman drag, amongst other design problems.

But even more problematic is the narrative. What’s refreshing about All-Star Superman is how meditative and melancholic its overall tone is. But the problem is that every five to ten minutes or so we’re introduced to another new plot element that doesn’t further the main storyline but instead drags off on an unnecessary detour. I know this can be traced back to the comic storyline from which they’ve been adapted, but the point of adaptation is to take the overall tone and characteristics of the work and translate it into a concise and manageable storyline for film. All-Star Superman fails on that front.

What was the point of the fight with Parasite in the jail? None, really, besides providing a cool action sequence that sees Clark Kent fighting off scores of prison inmates and Parasite while trying not to reveal he’s Superman in very clever ways. But it derails us from the fact that Superman is dying from radiation poisoning from too much sun exposure. If the film had foregone action sequences (each of which is more pointless than the last) and instead focused more on Kent/Superman making peace with Lois Lane and Ma Kent, saying his good-byes and setting up some kind of plan in motion to take his place it would have been much better. And shown more balls on the creator’s part in telling a superhero story in which the super heroics are left to the spiritual, emotional and ethical/moral planes.

I’ve never understood the constant need for writers to come along and try to kill off Superman or (re)introduce more Kryptonians which claim Superman as a betrayer of their people and try to overthrown Earth. These are two very tired and over-abused story elements in the Superman mythos which rear their heads here again. At least the possibility of Superman’s death provides a unique entry point for the story and his actions; since he is aware throughout that he is slowly dying. But the super-powered Kryptonians are useless. They whiz in and out of the movie in about five to ten minutes adding nothing but dead weight and overriding sense of filler. This overt, practically reverential, adaptation of Grant Morrison’s story also includes needless visual asides like Jimmy Olsen showing up in drag for no reason. Some of these things could have easily been cut and I doubt anyone would have missed them much.

All-Star Superman is quite easily the least satisfying of these films. With it’s uneven midsection and some poor character designs and vocal work (Christina Hendricks just doesn’t work as Lois Lane for me), it leaves a lot to be desired. Especially when it’s compared to the much better work done on say Wonder Woman or Batman: Under the Red Hood. All-Star is a very good idea that gets bogged down by the need to thrown in the noisy bits and pieces that derail the overall emotional and honest examination of Superman’s final days. Here’s hoping that the next solo Superman adventure will rise above and not fade away like the previous two.

My oh my, what could have been when it comes to an animated version of The Lord of the Rings. Has a fantasy property been more perfectly suited to the medium than J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic? It’s a pity that the film which we were dealt is so inept on every conceivable level.

Rumor has it that Walt Disney sought the rights to the property, and just think what his team of animators could have accomplished! With their hyper-detailed scenery and exhaustively detailed character work, Disney could have done the property some justice visually. Instead what we have is a film in which the environs and characters never truly interact with one another. The backgrounds remain still as the wind blows, or snow falls, or any kind of natural occurrence happens, but our characters interact with it. This disconnect becomes more and more distracting as time wears on.

And while other animated films make a point to explore and project their characters inner psychological motivations and emotions, this film is perfectly fine with rendering Frodo a child-like eunuch who is incorruptible and unbelievably dull. In fact, all the hobbits are reduced and simplified to childish ciphers from the more complicated and richly developed originals. The wonder and awe they feel while gazing upon Lothlorien is never felt. The splendid majesty of the Ents is never given full life since the hobbits vacantly clap their hands that the walking/talking tree doesn’t like Orcs. Not only are these characters never given a fully realized animated emotional life, but they’re underwritten and poorly conceived.

The static backgrounds could have been forgiven if some visual invention had been shown in the character details and animations, but they lack any distinct weight or grace of movement. They move along like rubbery dolls in the frame never co-existing successfully with their environments or each other. Think of the way that Treebeard holds Merry and Pippin in his hands but we never really see them in his hands when we see him walking in three-fourths view, but when we see a close-up of his hands there they are sitting and bouncing like small children being told a story that they love.

And the constant use of rotoscoping, if it can really be called that in this film, is a major distraction. Not only does it stick out loudly, but it’s an artistic choice that makes no true sense. It’s overused and never gels with the hand-drawn characters. The Orcs are men in suits who have been filmed in live action, drawn over frame-by-frame, and forced to interact with hand-drawn hobbits. The effect never successfully comes off. It’s always obviously two types of film-making techniques clashing together very loudly. One could say that about the entire film.

With the notable exception of the prologue, which sees black figures moving against a red background and acting out the forging of the ring, Gollum’s origin, and some of the events of The Hobbit before transplanting us in the Shire during Bilbo’s party, none of the film is a successful translation or adaptation of the source material. There’s about two, or more, different kinds of films fighting for dominance. By the end, it’s the audience that they’ve beaten.

This 1948 version of the Tolstoy novel is a sumptuously designed and beautifully photographed film, but it’s also the kind of elephantine literary adaptation that makes people roll their eyes and hate the entire genre outright. Sure, it’s positively lovely to look at, but it never quite takes off, remaining too remote, cold and detached for its own good to properly get us invested in Anna’s doomed and pre-destined march towards her ultimate fate.

The coldness wouldn’t have been an issue if we could have invested and believed in the central love triangle, but with all of the effort going in to the sets, costumes and lighting, I guess nothing was left over to give to the story. Leigh does her best with what little the director has given her, but she can’t overcome the obstacles involved in this hyper-tearjerker. In order for this story to work we have to have some passion and life involved. Think of the way that Garbo could invest so much into her version’s personal relationships with just a smile for her son, an erotic glance for Vronsky or a detached stare at her husband. That spoke volumes about the underpinnings and plights of the characters, and here we have none of that. It’s a very British affair with their emotions always kept at a distance and never coming even close to the surface for much of the film. I blame the director since the pacing is enervating. By the end I felt like somnambulist slowly staring at the screen waiting for the final moments to come.

And Leigh, in those final moments, creates something truly magical. It’s the only time in the film when the direction and performance come together to make something harmonious and beautiful. In a stylistic framing, Leigh’s Anna walks around the train station talking to herself, slowly acknowledging her madness and methodically walking towards the tracks. She pitches her voice deeper and with empathetic objectivity decides her fate. What was a kind of wishy-washy performance ends on a note of sheer triumph and haunting beauty. Instead of Garbo’s methodical planning and clear-headed thinking, we have an Anna that has slipped into depression, madness, destitution and isolation. Both readings of her final moments work wonderfully. This is a film that plods along assuming it’s own greatness because of the sheer opulence and finally shakes off the boredom and rallies itself to sock you in the gut with a sucker punch of pure visual poetry in the finale. If only the preceding hour and forty-some odd minutes could have matched that power.

While it never truly rises above the genre conventions and plot beats of both biographical and sports films, The Figher is still a very well made example of its type of film(s). The central quartet of performers are all finely balanced even when some appear to be flying towards caricature and over-the-top theatricality. But since a quick glance at footage from the HBO footage of the family proves that each of these actor essays are correct, we believe and care even more about The Figher. And isn’t it nice to see a movie about someone succeeding who truly deserves it after working so damn hard?

Unlike most boxing movies which focus solely and primarily upon the boxer’s training to gain or regain a championship, The Fighter spends most of its time showing us a family for whom the term ‘dysfunctional’ is a good starting point. Mark Wahlberg is the quiet, solid and steady fighter of the title, Micky Ward. He’s being trained by his older half-brother Dicky, played to twitchy motor-mouthed drug fueled perfection by Christian Bale, with his chain-smoking mom, a deliciously OTT Melissa Leo, as his manager and a pack of seven sisters from Hell on their trail. It doesn’t come as a surprise that Ward seems to be lacking a personality, when your mother is some kind of funhouse version of Snow White and your sisters are her aerosoled and bleached seven dwarves, the only proper way to rebel and carve out your own identity is to be a still and normal as possible.

And all of this feels right, because we’re given glimpses of the real family at the very end of the movie. Dicky really is that wild, unhinged, motor-mouthed and insane. And Micky really is that staid and calm center amongst the swirling chaos. The bigger the cigarettes, the cheaper the clothes and more blue the language, the more and more it feels like the proper family and place. But the real beating heart is the complicated relationship between Micky, Dicky and Alice trying to manage his career and his new relationship with Charlene, played by Amy Adams as a tough-as-nails working girl.

Dicky and Alice are distrustful of any outsider trying to worm their way into the familiar strum und drag. And Micky loves his family, but knows that they’ve got enough issues to keep a team of psychologists employed for decades. So when tough broad Charlene comes into his life, he’s not stupid enough to ignore it. Once Charlene enters into their lives she isn’t afraid to tell them to their faces what their problems are and how they’re disturbingly co-dependent on Micky’s failures and not his successes. If Micky continues to fail as a boxer, Alice will always be employed and able to have some control over his life. I wouldn’t call Alice a mother-from-hell, but she’s definitely some strange mutation of stage-mother. And how Dicky is really holding him back by teaching him his techniques only, and not teaching him to develop and hone his own style of boxing.

Notice that I have talked very little about any actual boxing in The Fighter, probably because that’s the least interesting aspect of the film. It is also the most perfunctory. It’s plain as day that David O. Russell was more interested in exploring the family dynamics, the flavor and emotional/social geography of Lowell, and the anger in this blue-collar community. The boxing, while an important aspect, is no different than any other boxing films, especially the climatic fight which distinctly lacks any energy, tension of dance-like choreography for the actors to try to execute. It’s clear that the genre conventions demanded that the ending occur exactly when and how it does, as does the real life story which this sticks very faithfully to, but that doesn’t mean it’s very interesting.

It seems like a fool's errand to properly discuss a band like Talking Heads, let alone their fourth album Remain in Light, when so many hipster bands are aping their style and seemingly don't even know it. The Heads were part of the CBGB punk/New Wave scene and like many of the great groups from that era (Television, Blondie, Ramones), they had a distinct look, sound and vision to go along with their musical might. Like Blondie they were an art project masquerading as a rock band, but they took it into an entirely different realm of pop exploration. While Blondie was a glamorous kind of downtown New York demimonde chic, the Heads were interested in creating some kind of tribal-punk-pop dance party to usher in the New World Order. They were arty, they were weird, they were a fucking brilliant band.

Their first two albums are nervous and twitchy artsy affairs, and with Fear of Music they branched out to include some experiments with world beats and tribal instrumentation. "The world moves on a woman's hips" -- indeed. Formed from loops and fragments recorded painstakingly one at a time, Light proves that the punk movement was truly an artist's playground to expand and move forward the vocabulary of rock music. Think of the way that the Ramones so progressively turned surf-pop and girl group sounds into head-banging noise, or the way that Patti Smith broke open the poetical possibilities for a song's lyrics and how she so successfully built upon her natural androgyny to perform as characters. The Heads were probably the artiest and weirdest of the whole lot, which is really saying something.

Light features a pop song which plays out more like an evangelical sermon delivered in a minimalist-disco in "Once in a Lifetime." Think of the way it builds upon itself over such simple parts. Tina Weymouth's bass note is really just a one-two and there's nothing terribly complicated going on with the drums, guitar work or layers of keyboards. It's the vocals that really push it into the stratosphere. Maniac, bug-eyed and nervous, David Byrne delivers each lyrics like Moses on the mountain top before sweeping in with a spoken-word chant of a chorus. It's a gloriously strange moment, and the entire album is built upon these kind of gloriously strange moments.

The way that "Born Under Punches" evokes a Beat-poet lyrical with its half-formed connections and symbols which seem to go nowhere in particular but on a wandering journey. Or the way that much like Blondie did with "Rapture" during the same year, "Crosseyed & Painless" features one of the earliest instances of rap released on a mainstream label. Like all the CBGB bands they had one finger on the pulse, images and sounds of the new generation(s) and the other on the past.

Just think of how easy it would be to list their progeny. "Animal" by Neon Trees isn't terribly unlike a Talking Heads song. Neither is anything ever released by Hot Hot Heat, the Killers, the Rapture, or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Much of what is happening to today is based on what the Talking Heads were doing during the late-70s/early-80s. Unless it's a female-fronted outfit then it seems to owe just as much to Blondie as the Heads. (OK, so I greatly enjoy two of the bands I named earlier, but whatever. Not the point.)

For a genre that was given the disposable label upon first being heard, the sights and sounds of the New Wave seem to have proven more than durable. Think of how the Heads manipulated images to go along with their songs. They were there on the forefront of MTV and music video technology and ideology. Byrne's over-sized suits and erratic dancing are just as indelible as any of the songs featured on this album.

The polyrhythmic art-school dance-rock of Light would only go on to serve as a manifesto for future releases like "Burning Down the House." It was here that rock musicians were expected and forced to explore their sound and take it into different locations. Think of the tremor that they caused. Remain in Light: a group of nerdy-white kids manifesto about punk-dance avant-garde tribal parties in the New World Order. Absolutely essential listening. DOWNLOAD: "Once in a Lifetime"

With 1996's Gone Again, Patti Smith reclaimed and returned to her throne as the only legitimate poet-rocker out there. Pretenders to the throne be damned! Smith gave you an album's worth which told her personal journey through death, grief and healing from the decade or so that lasted between Dream of Life and Gone, over a succession of alternative-folk songs that sounded as far-reaching and grandiose as Easter. Peace and Noise came out the next year, and shows that Gone Again was no fluke.

She's still got that hunger and fire under her ass that all great artists have. And while she might have made peace with the overriding death-obsessed atmosphere on her previous release, Peace and Noise is by no means a calmer album. Sure, it doesn't rock as loudly as Gone, but lyrically she's hitting just as deep. In "1959" she's exploring and expanding her memories of that transitional era when we collective lost our innocence as a nation and heralded into the irony-laced disconnected modern times. And "Spell" continues that obsession with the transitions in arts and culture by placing fragments of Allen Ginsberg's controversial poem to music.

She's also talking to us as a collective, taking a maternal view and seeing that things are not as they should be. She has raised her revolutionary flag and is ready to cause a ruckus for us and with us. Songs like "Death Singing" or "Dead City" explore urban malaise and decay. She has harnessed her proletarian fury into something beautiful to engage with.

But it wouldn't be a Patti Smith album without some overly long and complicated spoken-word dirge that's dizzying, exhausting and the highlight of its respective album. And on here it's "Memento Mori." She tells a labyrinthine story about a few characters before expanding outwards and telling us of our ancestors, our mortality, and to do something before it all comes to an end.

It's always a welcome experience to hear Patti Smith, and while Peace and Noise isn't quite as great as Gung Ho or Gone Again, it's still a very good album. It always makes me happy to hear her stand up, shaking her fists and readying herself for change. Perhaps the title should have been more about seeking peace through the noise? DOWNLOAD: "Memento Mori"

Darlene Love's voice is a grand instrument. Just think of the way that it jackhammers through Phil Spector's Wall of Sound with seemingly little effort on her part. She also had a church-soaked voice that could be longing, powerful, soft and scale high mountains. Truly, she is one of the most underrated and finest singers in the history of rock and roll. And even more than [Link removed - login to see], The Sound of Love proves this with smart song choices and keeps intact the wonderful mono sound that Spector crafted his mini-symphonies in.

Perhaps it's that her first hit, and still one of the finest pop songs ever, wasn't credited to her but to the Crystals that has resulted in Love being dubbed "the world's most over-qualified back-up singer." "He's a Rebel" played straight towards the fifties newly-emerging masculine image of the bruised loner. Think Marlon Brando in movies like On the Waterfront or The Wild One, or the damaged yet soulful teenager in each of James Dean's three films. That's the kind of guy she was singing about, and she made that type of boyfriend sound so appealing.

And some of her other hits were credited to Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, like the oddly missing "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" which is one of her finest vocal performances and was credited to that group. While "Zip" might not be one of my personal favorites from Spector's oeuvre, the way that Love swoops in and out with such grace and power is an amazing thing. The way she can add such oomph to a phrase like "Well, Mr. Bluebird" is astounding. Why wasn't it included as an excellent showcase for her vocals alone? Granted, she wasn't the lead, but harmonies and back-up vocals are dialed up to full force.

Ah well, it's a forgivable omission. Much like "Chapel of Love," a song which was originally recorded by her, then the Ronettes before Spector sold it off after being unhappy with both results. It's such a mature, rich and layered pop composition that I'm surprised it also didn't make the change over from The Best of to The Sound of Love. But, once again, it's omission is forgivable.

Why are these omissions so forgivable? Because The Sound of Love includes songs with her original group, the Blossoms. The three songs with the Blossoms are interesting to hear alongside the well-known Spector compositions. It's true, depending on which label they were signed to that their sound changed accordingly. But Love's voice could tackle anything thrown at it, and if her yearly appearances on David Letterman's Christmas episodes have proven anything it's that her rich voice is still in [Link removed - login to see].

But much like The Best of, The Sound of Love doesn't include one absolutely essential song: "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)." A song which could make you feel the snow come down in the middle of summer because of the power and passion Love utilizes. While a song like "He's Sure the Boy I Love" sounds like she's working at a full throttle, "Christmas" proves that Love can still hit harder and with more power when she wants to. That church-soaked, husky alto treats "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" like a gospel number, hitting you waves of emotional longing and joyous romanticism in equal measures.

The only reason this song's exclusion hasn't docked the album any points is quite simple: The Sound of Love includes too many great songs and tells practically all of her story from start to finish during her most fruitful and active years. Yes, she made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, but that doesn't mean she's still not an underrated artist. The Sound of Love seeks to make an argument for why she should have the respect she so richly deserves by the music industry long before 2011. DOWNLOAD: "Strange Love," "Not Too Young to Get Married," "Good, Good Lovin'"

Black Swan tells the story of one fragile woman’s dream coming true and quickly descending into a nightmare of her own making. Given the numerous headlines we have seen of artistic types having a tenuous grip on reality, Black Swan seems all the more tragic. Would no one help this poor lamb free herself from the slaughter?

The general fallacy of most viewers going into Black Swan is that it is somehow about a ballerina going crazy because of her commitment to a role, and a film steeped in eroticism with a hint of thriller and horror mashed in for good measure. But our ballerina is clearly struggling to maintain her grip on reality from the first moment that we see her. Her opening dream sequence in which she is the star of Swan Lake is a prophetic vision of the doom to come. As she dances with the demonic creature that has split her into two personalities and sends her to her eventual death, we can’t help but get the feeling that this girl takes this story far too seriously.

And then there are the moments on the subway or walking home from work where people’s faces transform into her own and back by the time she takes a second look. Surely, this is not the norm for most people. Or the way that her room and relationship with her mother are so repressed and infantilized. She has never truly matured past the age of, oh, twelve, let’s say.

Nina is not going crazy, Nina is already crazy. She has already taken the story of the White and Black swans into her soul and when she lands the lead role in Swan Lake she has already decided to re-imagine her life and the main players in it as the characters from the ballet. She possibly even invented entire characters to fit in with the roles and emotions needed to fulfill her self-selected destiny.

I was always riveted and intrigued watching this artist strive for perfection at all costs, allowing her fragile mental space to crumble as she seeks to free herself and mature as a dancer. Why did everyone just let her continue on? Could no one see that she wasn't just stressed, but having a complete emotional and mental breakdown? As Nina descends deeper into her paranoid schizophrenic state aspects within the film such as character traits and visual motifs change accordingly. Look no further than Mila Kunis’ Lily, a character who seems to be three different people depending on the prism through which Nina sees and relates to her.

There appears to be about three different Lily’s. The first is the femme fatale of the ballet company. She’s not as precision perfect as Nina, she’s more sensual, dangerous and care-free. She is a threat in a luscious package. The second is the frenemy that helps Nina adopt her Black Swan identity. Lily opens the floodgates for Nina to explore her latent sexuality, going out, having a good time and making stupid decisions. And the last is the woman who is gunning for Nina’s prime time slot. The proverbial Eve to Nina’s Margot. And Kunis’ performance is fiercely committed and smoothly changes from one to another. I wish that there would have been room for her in the supporting actress race at this past year’s Academy Awards as her character is made all the harder and more difficult to pull of since she must transition between these extremes within the same scene quite often. That's no small feat for anyone, let alone the girl from That 70's Show.

And, of course, there is Nina’s mother – a woman who gave up her dreams of being a prima ballerina to raise Nina. A narcissistic mother-from-hell that sees her daughter as a vehicle to live through her dreams and an enemy to be controlled and repressed, their relationship is the kind of sick borderline-incestuous co-dependent emotional mess that no one should live through. Does Nina’s mother know that her daughter is so painfully delicate mentally? And if she does, why did she never help her? She is the kind of stage mother who ignores their child’s own desires and dreams and forces them into a field they might not want to go into. She controls every aspect of her daughter’s life and has an emotional freak out when Nina starts to gain her own independence through the Swan Lake role. Barbara Hershey nails the role. Her taunt face is a mask to hide her own perfectionism and unstable mental state that she has inevitably thrust upon her daughter.

And in Natalie Portman’s central performance Black Swan has a heroically committed anchor to spin out all of its craziness. I love Portman’s lost-little-girl face in extreme close-up during the dancing sequences. As Aronofsky’s camera spins, twirls and moves with her character during rehearsals, Portman’s face expresses nothing but an eager-to-please-and-be-loved earnestness that feels so real for such a brittle dancer like herself. Portman is never anything but perfectly on point, emotionally speaking. Her newly made body – dangerously thin and sinewy – gives the perfect illusion of a dancer’s body. And the way she has learned to move makes her passable in the role. Much as been said about whether or not it is Portman in the dancing sequences, and since so many of them are framed from her shoulders up, I would say that yes that is indeed Portman. No one ever denied that she had a body double, so any controversy about her having a body double for full body dancing scenes is moot. She may lack great technique, but she is plausible in the role.

Black Swan’s screenplay may trade in clichés with its story beats and sometimes clumsy dialogue, but it always feels real enough in its phantasmagoric hallucinations and paranoid freak outs. The hand held camera always makes us one with Nina; we are always in her head from the start to the end. We are complicit in every thought and action she undergoes, and it can be a visceral, bruising experience.

Wanda Jackson sounds ready and up for anything that Jack White can throw at her, and it's through no fault of her own that Party doesn't quite work. White seems more interested in creating an over-stylized faux-50's rockabilly sound than crafting something viable for Jackson to perform with. There are moments when he hits it right on the money, but he doesn't manage to marry his production ideas to the artist he's working with. Van Lear Rose this ain't.

When you've got a voice as singular and iconic as Jackson's it seems fool-hardy to bury it within the mix or layer it in echo effects, but that is exactly what White does on numerous tracks. The opener "Shakin' All Over" starts off fine, gets rocking during the verses, but the chorus proves most distracting once Jackson starts to sound like she's singing through a pay-phone's poor connection. Or maybe it's through a tin can. And "Nervous Breakdown" doesn't even sound like Jackson, but in both instances she's performing the lyrics with everything that she's got.

In her early 70's, Jackson still sounds like a rough-and-tumble kewpie doll. Her voice is forceful and girlish in equal doses, and during "Rum and Coca-Cola" she sounds like any track off of Queen of Rockabilly. But when covering "You Know I'm No Good," it sounds more like a novelty that never quite takes off than an actual song. No matter how much conviction she tries to give it, something just doesn't mesh together correctly.

The same could be said of "Busted" and "Rip It Up." "Rip It Up" doesn't sound that much different than the version available on Queen of Rockabilly, except Queen's version is an authentic 50's rockabilly song and not a 2011 pastiche. And "Busted" just doesn't fit in with the rest of the album, sounding at once too much like a carnival and not fitting in with the rest of the cover songs. I don't blame Jackson for any of this. She's clearly having a great time in the studio and is a joy to hear. I blame White's insistence on thrusting his POV about Jackson as an artist instead of meeting her halfway and crafting an updated sound like he did with Loretta Lynn.

But White pulls everything together for a cover of Bob Dylan's "Thunder on the Mountain." Jackson performs the song with her patented artistry and phrasing and hits it out of the park. And White's production turns the song into a rollicking and rolling country-punk dance party. It's an amazing moment and one wishes that the rest of the album, namely White's production choices, could have matched the heft, power and might of this song.

[Author's Note: Having re-listened to the album over the past few months I have come to a few conclusions: I still maintain that Jack White was in the wrong for distorting her voice so much, or burying her so deeply in the mix. And "You Know I'm No Good" still rings false and like a novelty, and the final minute's descent into a near-carnival/burlesque ear-ache is a fatal misstep. But Jackson's energy is infectious, and many of the songs grow on you over time. I bumped it up a whole star, but I maintain many of my original views. So the body of the review hasn't been edited.] DOWNLOAD: "Thunder on the Mountain"

Faithful quite frequently to both the exact letter and the spirit of the novel, this television adaptation from the 70s is a hit and miss affair. One wishes that Rankin-Bass was given as much money as Bakshi in his unsuccessful animated version of The Lord of the Rings. This adaptation shows some visual invention, a certain flair for unique character designs of Tolkein’s beloved characters, but is hampered by a rushed atmosphere and moment of cheap or poor animation.

The orcs look like castoffs from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, and are never given the proper amount of menace or dread in their brief time. Gollum and Smaug are given highly unique, daring and different visual interpretations. Gollum literally given a salamander-frog-sunken humanoid creature design and Smaug is a fearsome dragon with a feline face. But other characters like Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarves are just literally picked up from the text descriptions and given life. That is a very good thing since these characters are so obviously described and envisioned.

I enjoyed much of the vocal performances but two particular choices stood out for all the wrong reasons. John Huston’s whiskey-and-molasses southern accent coming out of Gandalf is all wrong. Huston’s voice evokes presence, centeredness and demands attention – all things that Gandalf requires, but Gandalf’s voice should all sound like a Royal Shakespearean Actor booming from the mountain tops. Huston’s voice can’t do that, and something about that wizardry garments, long beard, pointy hat and a drawl doesn’t match. The other one is Otto Preminger as the Elvenking. That heavily Germanic voice coming out of the fey, ethereal looking wood sprite doesn’t sync up correctly either. If it had been a dwarf, goblin, orc or spider, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But a softer, more androgynous voice would have worked better with the overall look.

Overall, The Hobbit prefers to tell the tale less with time and care and more with the songs from the novel. It blasts through the earliest parts of the novel, but that’s understandable. As a made-for-television movie there was only so much space allotted for the running time, I just wish that they were given more time, space and money to make something truly great. This could have been so much better. As is, it’s just pretty good, a little dated but enjoyable.