How much weight does lineage hold? L.A. producer and DJ Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, has managed to distill his perfectly.
The great-nephew of jazz pianist Alice Coltrane and cousin of saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, Ellison's ear has been finely tuned by history and genetics. His palette of beats, samples, and breaks made last year's stellar third LP Cosmogramma (Warp) required listening, mainly in that headphones should be required, and it should be approached as a whole album, with one song feeding the next.
So, the inevitable question: How would it sound live?
It's not easy to watch a DJ, especially of the laptop variety, but Ellison was always engaged in the music, eyes shifting from one piece of equipment to another, scanning for the right cosmic mix. Jazz, soul, and hip-hop are the points in his constellation, no doubt polished from bouts at L.A.'s weekly beathead meetup, Low End Theory.
Snippets of the low-key "MmmHmm" and Tyler the Creator's strident "Yonkers" made their way into the mix as well, as Ellison tried to keep the peace between all the factions. Stuttering, offbeat, slinky.
Rumors of Erykah Badu joining him evaporated, but it would have been nice to have an emcee or live band, even for a few songs. Ellison occasionally yelled a phrase ("Party like there's no Monday!"), but relied mostly on the syrupy beats he was weaving.
The energy of the set was high, and Ellison had a smile on his face most of the time, shrugging off any expectations of a detached DJ. That genuine love for the music made his alien sounds even more impressive, challenging the way people listen to it live, the mass of nodding heads and cloud of smoke hanging above them the seal of approval.
Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway in The End of Oak Street.
Steven Spielberg is the iconic director of the last 50 years, so it’s no surprise that many other filmmakers have borrowed from his classic films. But most of the time those come in the form of references or homages, not straight up theft, which is what it feels like watching The End of Oak Streetplay out in front of your eyes.
Set in the early 1980s in an idyllic suburban neighborhood of an unnamed city, Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) are parents to two teenagers, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). They’re also possibly heading toward divorce, as Audrey is secretly writing a novel with a thinly-veiled plot about their life, and Brian is cagey about having to earn extra money with a pizza delivery job.
That all gets put on the back burner when a mysterious event takes their entire neighborhood back to the time of dinosaurs. Armed with little more than a shotgun and sledgehammer, Audrey and Brian do their best to keep the family safe in their house. But the longer the ordeal goes on, circumstances force them out onto the streets and into the increasing danger that’s all around them.
Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, the film tries immensely hard to be like the Spielberg movies its filmmaker clearly adores, but fails at almost every turn. It never earns the broken family in ‘80s suburbia vibes that were prevalent in E.T., going all in right away in the opening scene with a neighborhood block party that feels forced. Other elements like a bully who has it out for Brian, the family dog that disappears, and an angry neighbor come across as the tropes they are and not as organic parts of the plot.
When it finally gets to its dinosaur sequences, they pale in comparison to those found in Jurassic Park. The strange manner in which the dinosaurs appear is a big part of that, but the action involving them forgoes ominous moments that could build tension for those that play up gore in an unexpected way for a PG-13 movie. Many of the attacks have so little emotional meaning that they come off as comical, which is entertaining but in a hollow way.
As if those weren’t enough, Mitchell — perhaps at the behest of producer J.J. Abrams (who made his own Spielbergian film, Super 8) — tries to honor Spielberg in other ways. Just like in Jaws, he employs the use of a split diopter lens, which keeps characters in both the foreground and background in focus. But instead of using it judiciously, it’s brought out in three separate scenes, including a laughable one with the four family members where it turns into overkill.
Hathaway, coming off of a role in The Odyssey that could earn her an Oscar nomination, is the best part of this film. But even her evident skills are dragged down by the ridiculousness of the story, which requires hysterics that even she can’t sell. McGregor can normally be counted on for a good performance, but he gives several line readings with strange cadences that make his already-underwritten character come off worse. Stella and Convery are okay, but their roles are unmemorable overall.
Mitchell and his team can never settle on exactly what type of film they were trying to make, and so even though The End of Oak Street has a few moments that work, they’re surrounded by many others that don’t. In trying to emulate Spielberg — there’s even a blatant Back to the Future (produced by Spielberg) rip-off towards the end — all Mitchell has done is show how difficult it is to be the master.
---
The End of Oak Street opens in theaters on August 14.
