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(Photo cortsey All Music.com)

Music review: Gnarls Barkley, “The Odd Couple”

BY JACQUELINE HLAVENKA 

            There was something so pleasant about going crazy with Gnarls Barkley (a.k.a Cee-Lo Green and Danger Mouse) circa summer 2006. Never in recent pop history has a band reached the top of the charts with a jam that seemed both post-apocalyptic and downright groovy.

            On their sophomore effort, The Odd Couple, the guys in Gnarls Barkley are still cranking out brooding, funky grooves with a darker edge. This time around, the pairing seems somewhat off.

            Not to say Gnarls Barkley isn’t at the top of their game. The Odd Couple gives the listener the same hip/hop, electronica-soul fusion like their debut, St. Elsewhere, but fails to deliver the same hooks and panache overall.

            The first track, “Charity Case” paces itself and unravels slowly, with a steady beat that doesn’t seem to pick up at the end. Luckily the smoky, slinky bass of “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul” is eerily beautiful, as Cee-Lo belts out a cry for redemption. Listen for the cracks in the vocals that make the song all the more human.

            Nevertheless, as a band, Gnarls Barkley is still looking for a place they belong, like on the driving, dreamy “Going On,” where they try to find “a place in the sun” somewhere beyond this world. On the following track, “No Time Soon,” they still carry the weight of a sadness that will only heal with time.

            The album’s latest single, “Run (I’m a Natural Disaster)” is catchy, but lacks the depth of 2006’s “Crazy.” After the tremulous drums and tribal chants in “Open Book,” The Odd Couple seems to fall into a blur. Tracks like “Whatever” and “Blind Mary” are downright tedious in style and structure. The album picks up with the funky surf rock progression of “Surprise,” which can easily become a summer beach anthem for shore towns across the country.

            Where the album’s strong points lay are in the subtle moments. The closing track, “A Little Better,” a modern rhythm & blues ballad, Cee-Lo says “I got a whole lotta pain in me, and it will always remain in me” with a stunning amount of grace.

            With the success of their debut and The Odd Couple, Gnarls Barkley is on the road to making their first great soul record—but they’re not quite there yet. At least it’s a fun journey.

Grade: B

 Movie Review: “Shine a Light” (2008)

BY JACQUELINE HLAVENKA 

Academy-Award winning director Martin Scorsese always had a love affair with the Rolling Stones. In 2006’s cat-and-mouse mob thriller The Departed, the Stones’ “Let It Loose” from Exile on Main Street played through the burned-out streets of South Boston; “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” rocked 1973’s Mean Streets; the heavy “Gimmie Shelter” defined Goodfellas in the early 90s.

            Scorsese’s latest rock-documentary, “Shine a Light” seems to be a natural move for him. By combining his love of the Stones and filmmaking, the film not only sheds light on Scorese’s passion for the band, but the Rolling Stones’ ability to maintain a 45-year performing career without burning out—or fading away.

            “I wish I could create music, but I can’t,” Scorsese said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. “What I can do is put images and music together.”

            When Scorsese first heard the Rolling Stones, it was 1965 while driving on the Long Island Expressway. Out of the mono speakers in his Volkswagon, he heard the opening licks to “Satisfaction” and became inspired to explore more of the Stones’ albums. He felt Jagger’s voice was a musical instrument, Keith Richard’s guitar like a motor—fueling the unremitting energy into films like Mean Streets and Taxi Driver.

            Shine a Light works differently. It is by far no “Behind the Music” VH1 special or a complete documentary of their musical career—after all, that’s been done.

            What Shine a Light lacks in visual acuity makes up for it in performance. Scorsese gives you the Stones in their purest form: up-close, energetic, still going strong.

            The show was recorded over two nights—October 31^st and November 1, 2006— at New York’s Beacon Theater for the Stones’ “A Bigger Bang” tour. The movie was originally slated for filming in Rio with one million people and fifty cameras, but Scorsese ultimately works better when there’s a sense of intimacy involved. What the viewer will feel is an intense connection between the Stones’ performance and the film itself—just like being front-row center.

            All the classics are here: a lively version of “Some Girls”, “Sympathy For the Devil” and a revved-up “Brown Sugar” that closed out the show. Singer Mick Jagger paired-up with special guest Jack White on an acoustic version of “Lovin’ Cup”, legendary-blues guitarist Buddy Guy on “Champagne and Reefer” and even kept up with octave-shattering pop-star Christina Aguilera on a sexy version of “Live With Me.”

            Showing where they’ve been, Scorsese gives the audience what it wants: vintage video clips of the band that contrast where they are now. Interviews with the Stones from the 1960s featured footage of a young, shaggy-haired Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in-between the performances. When asked by a British television reporter if they envisioned themselves playing rock music at age 60, Jagger simply answered “yes” without question or hesitation. And they still do.

            Shine a Light confirms the Stones can play harder, longer and heavier than their youthful counterparts. But they’re not out to prove anyone wrong.

            “I just want to go out there and play a good show,” Richards said.

            Now that’s rock-and-roll—and I like it.

Grade: A

(Photo Courtesy New York City Parks Department)

Rebuilding the Tent of Tomorrow—Today

Partnering with UPenn, the New York City Parks Department is taking steps to make history come alive once again in Flushing

BY JACQUELINE HLAVENKA 

            Just off the Grand Central Parkway in the heart of Queens lies something familiar inside Flushing Meadows Corona State Park.

            They are the towers from 1997’s smash hit Men in Black, the dreamlike backdrop for rock band They Might Be Giants “Don’t Let’s Start” music video, the valley of ashes from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic book The Great Gatsby, and a sanctuary for slow-witted cartoon character Homer Simpson from season nine of The Simpsons—who thought ‘Flushing Meadows’ was a land of many toilets.

            In person, three space-age concrete towers overlook the Long Island Expressway as noisy airplanes from LaGuardia airport depart above. Inside the park’s “Tent of Tomorrow” from the 1964 World’s Fair, also known as the New York State Pavilion, pieces of a forgotten time lay behind—a time where the future seemed infinite, luxurious and modern. Anything was possible, optimism was high and American industry was booming.

            Today, the shiny vision of the future became tarnished. The towering, majestic escalators and elevators ascend to nowhere, now corroded and decaying; broken-down concrete cover the ground with patches of grass spurting out of the cracks; there’s busted-out glass that once was a rainbow-colored canopy, and a road map on the floor with no destinations.

            “It was nothing that no one had ever seen,” says John Krawchuk, Director of Historic Preservation for the New York City Parks Department. “The unencumbered space, which is a large oval space, had all the exterior edges on the Tent of Tomorrow. It was huge, massive space both in its floor plan and type.”

            But faced with structural problems, vandalism and urban decay, The “Tent of Tomorrow” and the New York State Pavilion would have become a thing of the past— only to live on in photographs and artwork—until now.

            The New York City Parks Department, according to a statement, is “dedicated to preservation and is eager to conserve the important historic elements of the New York State Pavilion and also consider adaptive re-use concepts that will meet the needs of the space and community.”

            After working closely with the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), the NYC Parks Department received a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a federal program, to restore the Pavilion’s famous Texaco road map.

            “Approximately three years ago, we were approached by the University of Pennsylvania, they have a graduate program in historic preservation and they have an interest in working on the significance of a 20^th century modern structure, they had an interest in working on contemporary structures,” Krawchuk said. “They were looking for a project that would be of interest for the students and the University by being there.”

            As a native New Yorker, Frank G. Matero, Chair of the Graduate Program of Historic Preservation at UPenn, approached the Parks Department to concentrate on a small part of the New York State Pavilion—something that would be identifiable and doable with a modest budget.

            “He [Frank] suggested we look into conserving the terrazzo floor within the Pavilion, the great Texaco road map that many people remember very fondly visiting and interacting with,” Krawchuk explained.

            Back in 1964, renowned architect Phillip Johnson created the design for the Pavilion with three main elements: firstly, the Tent of Tomorrow, which is the large oval circular-like area with the Texaco road map, secondly, the observation towers, and lastly, the ‘Theaterama’, a two-story round concrete building now occupied by the Queens Theater in the Park.

            In particular, when the Texaco road map was designed with help from the Rand McNally Company, the map of New York State was enlarged 64 times and made into terrazzo, a type of concrete that visitors could walk on.

            “They recall the great Texaco road map because it allowed people to see the areas where they were born or where they have visited, and it was all done in this beautifully exaggerated scale,” Krawchuck recalled. “One of its most popular stops was New York City and there was a ‘you are here’ section on the terrazzo floor, which a lot of people would stand by their towns and be photographed. The ‘you are here’ was very popular.”

            Visitors from far-and-wide also recall the suspended cable ceiling, featuring 1500 fiberglass panels, creating a stained-glass canopy effect—or “tent”—for the Pavilion. Elevators called the ‘Sky Streak’ (226 feet in height) gave people a birds-eye-view of the entire World’s Fair and all five-boroughs in the distance.

            But what seemed like forever finally came to an end. The fair closed in October 1965 and demolition took about a year to complete. The grounds were dedicated as a park in June 1967, but most of the pavilions and other fair structures, with a few exceptions, were gone by then, according to the Parks Department.  In 1976, the ceiling on the Pavilion was removed due to weather damage. At night, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park became a scene of vandalism and crime. The once beaming symbol of the future of America, the State of New York and the city itself, showed an ugly side—and crumbled.         In 2007, the New York State Pavilion has been ranked among the most endangered buildings by the World Monuments Fund, a group that looks at sights of significance all around the globe.

            Despite its problems, New Yorkers and visitors alike became attached to the towers and the Pavilion: whether they ride on the 7 train, drive by it on their way to LaGuardia or Shea—the World’s Fair is deeply embedded in New York’s social and cultural history forever—both physically and psychologically.

            Now, preservation groups have come together to save the remainder of the Pavilion. The Parks Department recently commissioned a study on saving the Tent of Tomorrow by evaluating the concrete columns, outer steel ring, inner concentric steel ring, and cable ceiling, privately funded by Unisphere Inc., aiming to be completed by the fall of 2008. Once NYC Parks finds qualified engineers state the Pavilion’s immediate needs, money will be raise for the stabilization of the project.

            Parks has been working closely with the Queens Museum of Art on community awareness of the history of the 1964 World’s Fair—and why the people should pay attention to its priceless artifacts.

            When imagining its glory days coming back to life, Krawchuk pauses and reflects on what could be.

            “You really feel the power of space,” he explains, reminiscing. “It definitely symbolized the future. I think it’s taken a while, and I think it’s taken the next generation of people like me who have grown up in the 1960s and 70s to really recognize that the architecture we all grew up with is significant and has importance, cultural importance.”

(Pulse Magazine) 

(photo by Chris Langan)

From Dempster Hall to CBS
Hofstra grads make it big on the web

By JACQUELINE HLAVENKA 

Before Brian Amyot, Angel Acevedo and Steve Tsapelas created the hit web series “We Need Girlfriends,” the three friends made the journey through Hofstra just like any other student: they crossed the unispan, ate Sbarro pizza, hung out in the Rathskeller and went to off-campus filmmaker’s club parties on Rhodes Avenue in Uniondale.

            Today, inside their two-bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens, just blocks away from the rickety elevated N, R, W subway line at Ditmars Boulevard, the place resembles a grown-up dorm room—walls covered in movie posters from The Rules of Attraction, Kill Bill and Friday the 13^th—topping it off with a 350 plus DVD collection that nearly covers the living room. There’s equipment lying around, laptops hooked up in their bedrooms, cell-phones at their side. It’s early February on a Friday afternoon and the writer’s strike is still raging on. The only sound is the shake of the subway train.

            “There are things I miss about college, but I’m done now,” class of 2004 graduate Brian Amyot laughs, now 26-years-old, sitting at home in his apartment in Astoria with roommates Steve Tsapelas and Angel Acevedo, creators of Ragtag Productions, a full service video and production company, specializing in short films and video editing.

            “I miss meal plans. I like dorm rooms. I miss my dorm room,” Tsapelas nods and sighs, folding his hands and bursting into a laugh.

            “Yeah, Steve really misses college a lot. He cries about it,” Amyot joked.

             “Go buy a dorm room then. You should make a story about that, a guy living in his dorm room,” Acevedo said, jumping into the conversation.

            “And where would it go from there?” Tsapelas asked.

Angel looked over at Steve, shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

            “There’s a lot of stories, man.”

After graduation in 2004, the guys of “We Need Girlfriends” tossed their caps-and-gowns and became virtual pioneers of the web industry—becoming the first ever web-series to be signed to a national broadcasting company.

A Reel Beginning

            In the year 2000, freshmen Amyot and Acevedo joined Popcorn Flick, an on-campus film appreciation club, where they met Steven, a sophomore, class of 2003. As they continued to attend the club’s movie screenings, Brian, Angel and Steven became friends. But there was something missing.

            “There was a small group of us in the club that wanted to actually make a film,” Amyot explained. “It was based on a script that I wrote, the three of us and three other guys just decided to take over and said ‘this is what we’re going to do’. We’re going to make films, and show them. That’s how it [Hofstra Filmmaker’s Club] got started—just six people getting together and wanting to make a film.”

            From there, the Hofstra Filmmaker’s Club was born, but the beginning of the club had a rocky start. Meetings were under-attended, conference rooms were impossible to book and little became accomplished.

            “I would go to the meetings and it would be seriously people in the Rat [Rathskellar] just talking, and that was it,” Tsapelas said.

            Eventually, Brian, Angel and Steve took over the club later in the year when the other three original members dropped out the project.

            “The guy whose idea it was said, “Do you want it? Just take it,” Amyot explained. “And we were already in the process of doing this film, which would be the first Hofstra Filmmaker’s Club film.”

Take one

            During a 10-day shooting period, Angel, Steve and Brian worked on the first Hofstra Filmmaker’s Club (later abbreviated to ‘HFC’) movie called “The Next Day,” a 45-minute feature film that made its grand debut at the student center theater—generating a huge response from the student body. They self-financed all production costs, bought food out of their own pockets, but found actors and actresses that would work for free through Hofstra’s drama department.

            “There was a lot of excitement,” Amyot recalled. “The club went from being like six people to the next year, a lot more. It was more established, but we thought we could do more than probably should have.”

            After the success of the first festival, Brian, Steve and Angel had a better understanding of the limitations of the club, and how to make HFC more effective.

            “That was the year the Filmmaker’s Club was such a development over time because the first year we were figuring out what we wanted to do and the second year we just learned a lot working with each other,” Amyot said.

A Changing Landscape         

            As HFC looked to bring students together, in early 2001, the environment for Hofstra’s film and television majors in the School of Communication was much more divided. The idea of media convergence—the coming together of many forms of written and visual communication—was only blossoming, not a reality.

            “There was no real connection between your senior year and your freshman year,” Tsapelas recalled, as a film production major and English minor. “What I think we did the best is that we got freshmen, sophomores and juniors together because, I mean, freshmen would come in and be PAs [production assistants] on senior film shoots, and there was a real knowledge and network for crew members. We helped with the learning process. When we started, you would make three films in your entire film career—but now, people are making so many films, working on so many films.”

            Generally, the scene in Dempster was different too. The film kids didn’t mess with the T.V. students, and vice versa, according to the crew. What the group hoped was that students of all ages—whether freshman or seniors—earned a good deal of experience on film shoots and figured out their strengths.

            “When Angel and I were freshmen, I didn’t know what it was like to work on a senior film,” Amyot explained. “I didn’t have any of these experiences, but though the Filmmaker’s Club, we could use it as a system to give people new opportunities.”

From Short Films to the Web

            After paving the way for future film students, Brian and Angel left HFC in the hands of a new generation once they graduated in 2004, and joined with Steve to form Ragtag Productions—an all-purpose film editing company—out of their apartment in Queens.  To get their feet wet in the New York City film scene, the crew began entering city-wide 24-hour and 48-hour film competitions and created a series of short films.

            “We kinda just developed our skills a little bit more,” Tsapelas recalled. “Around that time, the internet was really just taking off. Well, it already had taken off, but sites like YouTube and all those video sites really got popular.”

            From there, they traveled around the country to different film festivals—from Indiana, Chicago, Georgia—back to Long Island. Though the festivals helped Brian, Steve and Angel gain experience and exposure, the costs began to add up: airfare, festival entry fees started to drain their wallets—and energy.

            “We wanted to do a longer project, we wanted to do a feature, but we didn’t have the resources…time and money,” Acevedo sighed. “We all were working full-time jobs, and we didn’t want to make a feature length movie by shooting it on the weekends.”

            Then, they had the idea that changed television history.

            “We combined the idea of doing short films with a longer story by doing a web series. It would be an extended story, but short episodes. Combined together, it would be a feature length movie. Internet video was exploding,” Acevedo explained.

The Anti-Entourage

            After being simultaneously dumped by their girlfriends, Tsapelas created caricatures of not only himself, but his friends into a story called “We Need Girlfriends”: an anti-Entourage for geeky twenty-somethings; a love letter to post-grad life; a witty, delightfully neurotic look at the struggle of dating for both men and women.

            “It was just this idea. We were watching Entourage a lot and we were kind of the opposite of that,” Tsapelas laughed. “It wasn’t easy for us to pick up women. It was a constant struggle out there.”

            After developing a plan to film one episode a month, the crew cast actors that were somewhat exaggerated versions of themselves—hothead schemer Rod (Evan Bass), earnest sweetheart Tom (Patrick Cohen), and nerdy Henry (Seth Kirschner). To cut down on production costs, most of the episodes were filmed in their Astoria apartment or around the neighborhood. The actors and actresses worked for free. The equipment was free from the crew’s full-time production jobs. The only major costs were providing food for everyone on film shoots.

            “We shot all locations around and people doing favors for us,” Amyot explained. “These are places where people knew us, and they pulled us favors. We pulled everything we had and just tried to use it.”

            The shots have a ‘man-on-the-street’ feel: the camera moves with the actors, walking and talking, always keeping the audience involved. The House of Sudz Laundromat down the block—where Brian and Angel do their laundry—became a popular shooting location for the show. The sweeping camera shots of the Triborough Bridge, Astoria Park and rooftop gardens set the mood for the show’s characters: these are city kids on the brink of adulthood—looking for love in a landscape of infinite possibility.

Team Rod, Spank Bank, Squirrels: How WNG created a Phenomenon

            By using social networking websites like MySpace and YouTube, Brian, Steve and Angel set-up MySpace pages for the characters to generate a fan base for the show.

            “People were friending them and treated them as real, and that’s how we built our audience,” Acevedo explained. “And then, when we released the first episode, they realized these are characters in this new show.”

            Within a day, the pilot episode reached thousands of hits. Over time, the fans wanted to talk to the characters. They read the blogs, they wrote on their walls and entered contests—in a way, the fans were part of the show itself.

            “They were messaging the character pages, they wanted to talk to the characters!” Amoyt laughed. “We kept this interactivity with the fans so they could feel like they are part of the show.”

            As the gained more popularity on the homepages of MySpace and YouTube, the show coined a few popular phrases—“don’t scam on my squirrel” and “spank bank”—that soon became trademarks of the show itself. T-shirts immortalizing episode four’s ‘Jenga’ squabble between Rod and Henry are sold on the We Need Girlfriends fan site.

            The show subsequently provided a launch pad for local bands wanting their music to get heard—and gave “We Need Girlfriends” a unique soundtrack not found on any other show.

            “We would find bands on MySpace and let us use their music and we would get their fans, they would get our fans, and we built-up all these relationships,” Amyot explained.

WNG’S Big Break

            The show was booming. People were sharing it all around the web, as each episode had a half-million hits a piece. Advertisers wanted to place items on the show. Fans wanted to know what it was like to be with Henry, Tom or Rod. It was time to take “We Need Girlfriends” to the next level.

            During summer of May 2007, the creators took time-off from their jobs to Los Angeles to meet with film executives interested in the “We Need Girlfriends” franchise just after the completion of their seventh full-length episode. There, Brian, Steve and Angel signed with an agency called United Talent and got a manager.

            “We thought we would get someone to finance We Need Girlfriends Online, and television wasn’t necessarily it,” Amyot explained. “At the same time, Greg Daniels contacted us, who is the creator of the American version of The Office. He was a fan of We Need Girlfriends and we met with him.”

            Daniels knew all the lines. He knew every episode.

            “He [Greg Daniels] said it would make a good television show,” Amyot said with a smile.

            After coming back to Astoria to film more episodes, the creators went back to Los Angeles in July 2007 when another opportunity came knocking.

            “We Need Girlfriends” was finalist for an Online Emmy Award for Best Comedy and caught the eye Darren Starr, writer, producer and creator of HBO’s hit, Sex and the City.

            “We got contacted by someone that works with Darren Starr,” Amyot explained. “There’s a producer named Clark Peterson and said ‘oh, you should check out these guys, they are funny.’ They brought it to another guy named Dennis Erdman and he loved it, and had worked with Darren Starr, and Darren Starr watched it and loved it too.”

            Housed underneath the Sony Pictures and Darren Starr, “We Need Girlfriends” became the first web-series ever signed to CBS.

The Future

           Once “We Need Girlfriends” launches on CBS for the first time, the creators want the dynamic of the show to stay exactly the same—even though the medium is going from web to television.

            “We want to tell stories that aren’t on TV, we want to give these characters a voice,” Amyot explained. “We want to connect with the same type of audience.”

            Looking back at their Hofstra years, the “We Need Girlfriends” audience has grown up with the show itself—but at least certain things will never change.

“I remember we were at a Halloween party, and game of spin the bottle broke out and I wasn’t participating and Angel was playing,” Tsapelas explained. “These two girls kissed, and Angel looked over at me from the other side of the room. He just yelled out spank bank!”

They laugh. Steve looked around the apartment with a certain nostalgia he could barely define. “No one said that line quite like Angel,” Tsapelas reminisced.

“I didn’t make that up, that’s been around,” Acevedo noted. “I did it to be funny.”

But like “We Need Girlfriends” as a whole, Brian, Steve and Angel discovered their niche through film: setting a standard for aspiring filmmakers all around the country.

            “You made it your own,” Tsapelas said.

(center) Joe Mondello is a local boy at heart.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Mondello graduated Hofstra University in 1962 and taught social studies in Woodlawn and East Meadow. He served as a councilman of the town of Hempstead from 1979 to 1987.

Known as a fiscal conservative, Mondello became the Chairman of the Nassau County Republican Committee in Westbury. On February 2nd, about 100 volunteers and visitors visited the Nassau Republican Party Headquarters for a meet and greet session about GOP hopeful, John McCain.

“I originally supported Rudy Giuliani,” said Mondello. “But the minute it was shown he [Giuliani] was out of the race, I’m backing John McCain.”

Mondello backed Rudy based on his leadership as mayor of New York City and how he handled the terrorist attack on September 11th. Now, with Giuliani out of the race, Mondello is pleased to see that Rudy is endorsing McCain as well.

“Both Rudy and McCain got standing ovations last year at a party at the Sheraton Hotel in New York City. You could see how well they got along, even then,” Mondello said.

In the end, Mondello believes McCain’s experience and dedication to the country “outclasses” challenging GOP, Mitt Romney.

“He [McCain] connects with people and a great administrator. He’s a dedicated public servant,” Mondello said.

(Photo and story by Jacqueline Hlavenka, The Chronicle)