Film

What’s up, Doc?

BVC checks out a new documentary on a historied cult band and a fuzzy bunny sequel

By Bryan VanCampen

Walking into Edgar Wright’s first documentary “The Sparks Brothers” (Focus FeaturesMRC-Complete Fiction Pictures, 2021, 140 min.), I confess I thought that Sparks was a one-hit wonder ‘80s new wave band, having only heard “Cool Places,” their 1983 collaboration with Jane Wiedlin. Little did I know that Sparks — Ron and Russell Mael — have been around since the late ‘60s in conjunction with other players.

If you show me a documentary about the Beatles or Monty Python, you’re preaching to the choir, as I feel I know a lot about them. But I love learning about stuff I knew nothing about, and “The Sparks Brothers” is a great crash course. And now I have decades of records to appreciate, thanks to the movie; I was talking to one of my co-workers after the fact, and he told me that he thinks “Kimono My House” (1974) is one of the greatest albums ever recorded.

Edgar Wright brings the same energy, humor and visual wit to his first doc that he brought to previous films like “Shaun of the Dead,” “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” and “The World’s End.” There’s plenty of archival footage from rock TV shows like “American Bandstand” and “Top of the Pops” but Wright uses lots of film clips and different styles of animation to tell the history of Sparks. The Maels have plenty to say in addition to early producer Todd Rundgren, many Sparks side musicians from over the years, and celebrity fans like Beck, Patton Oswalt, Flea, Jason Schwartzman, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Mike Myers, Fred Armisen and Neil Gaiman.

Having suffered through “Tom and Jerry” this year, I know just how poorly a beloved fictional character that everyone loves can devolve into corporate intellectual property that no one really cares about: “Eh, just put the cat and mouse into a dumb Chloe Grace Moretz hotel farce.” Believe me, “Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway” (Sony Pictures Animation, 2021, 93 min.) and its predecessor “Peter Rabbit” (2018) could have been so much worse.

Beatrix Potter fans should be happy that director Will Gluck and cast and crew have managed to preserve so much of Potter’s 1901 watercolor English country whimsy, melded with a Pythonesque sense of comedy that doesn’t feel sweaty or forced.

The movie opens with the wedding of Bea (Rose Byrne) and Thomas McGregor (Domhnall Gleeson), with Peter Rabbit (James Corden) and many other animals in attendance. Bea and Thomas now run a maternity shop, and she has self-published the very first Peter Rabbit book, which attracts the interest of a massive publishing house run by Nigel Basil-Jones (David Oyelowo). Peter gets fed up with Thomas blaming him for things he didn’t do, and takes off on larcenous adventures with an “Oliver Twist”-styled street gang.

Movies, especially sequels like “Peter Rabbit 2” never get extra credit for being clever, but Peter’s runaway storyline is nicely balanced by Bea’s dilemma in selling her book to corporate interests. The movie manages to have its carrots and eat them too—Bea frets about the dumb, actionoriented story that Oyelowo wants, and then does exactly that in the film’s frenetic third act. It does so without losing the characters and the comedy. Over the course of two movies, I’ve really come to appreciate the wacky comedic chemistry between Byrne and Gleeson. When they’re doing their heightened daft Johnand-Martha routines, you’re never tempted to run to the concession stand for a head of cabbage and some French beans.

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Working from — or indeed, with — dancers and other performers as well as traditional nude models, Sampson creates quick drawings meant to capture something of a direct presence. From these he edits and selects carefully, resulting in paintings that are clearly abstract but tied to their origins.

Sampson is also in charge at The Gallery at South Hill, located in Artist Alley in the South Hill Business Campus. Their early summer exhibition features a selection of his oils on paper and canvas. Up through July 31, this is their second since resuming new shows this spring.

His style is consistent, perhaps to a fault. Recalling stained glass, mosaics, or jigsaw puzzles, the “skeleton” of his paintings is an irregular net of thick black lines that divides his surfaces. Carefully shaped — almost sculpted — these borders have a stiffened, deliberate quality that appears at a remove from their origins in “gesture” drawing. In-between, he fills in areas of painterly but solidified, flattened color: Mondrian-esque primaries plus white; saturated greens, purples, pinks, and oranges; subdued evocations of flesh. It’s a lot to handle and one senses a struggle in even the best of these pieces.

Lines in drawing and painting — particularly of a generally expressionistic or “painterly” sort — can have a double purpose. On one hand, lines can serve as contours, individuating separate forms— whether familiar objects and figures or, as prominently in Sampson’s work, abstract shapes. On the other hand, lines can take on a life of their own, pulling the gaze in knots and capturing movement and dynamism.

Sampson’s black lines here have a static, contour quality. In an apparent effort to introduce — or reintroduce — a greater sense of fluidity, he goes over some of them in white or pale colored oil stick, lending his borders a chalky, drawn over quality.

As the artist writes in his statement, “I want the viewer to engage in the search for the figure.” In many pieces here, the figure is easy to spot — or at least it seems so.

“Jana, Everson March, Seated,” an upright oil on paper piece mounted to hardboard, is typical of these less apparently abstract works. Limned in steady black lines — sometimes snaking, sometimes more angular — a distinctly feminine, perhaps maternal figure occupies what reads clearly as a background space. She leans down, leftward, embracing what one imagines to be an infant. Like Picasso or the more abstract works of Matisse (though distinct in style), Sampson teases a familiar iconography while engaging in a freeplay of lines and colors.

“Gretchen,” a squarish canvas from Sampson’s “Handbalancer” series, pushes the overdrawing to an extreme. It’s a particularly vibrant piece. The black bones become conduits, rivers of oil stick white and intense, brushy saturated red. The whole thing has a scumbled, worked-over quality: writhing leaf-like facets of deep blue, chalky white, beige, cyan, pale pink, and yellow. I was hard pressed to find the intended figurative reference. But the whole piece twists and shouts.

Regardless of the difficulties here, this is ambitious painting. It is good to see a local gallery with a strong commitment to exhibiting what serious local artists can do with the medium. Sampson’s show comes on the heels of an even more striking exhibition by Andrew Paine, a textural, visceral abstractionist. Upcoming features later this year include Sidney Piburn, rooted in mid-century formalism, and Jessica Warner, who has been performing a daring re-invention of still life.

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who’s trained in crowd control of traffic management,” she said.

Alderperson Donna Fleming said the costs of set-up and security should not be the burden of the city, but of the organizers.

“We need to tell event organizers that they must be scaled back or not at all,” she said. “I’m not in favor of the city subsidizing these events by hiring security or the Department of Public Works to clean up. Event organizers have to build the expense into their plan.”

Holcomb said event organizers often justify the cost to the city by the amount of money brought in by the festivals.

“And I don’t want to ignore that,” she said. “They do stay in our hotels and frequent our restaurants and shop in our stores. In the long run the city sees that, in the short-term the individual departmental budgets don’t benefit. So there’s a difficult disconnect.”

Alderperson Rob Gearhart said he believes it hasn’t always been clear about what it takes to put on an event.

“We could have common ground that just needs fixed costs,” he said. “Security is probably one of those things.”

Holcomb said she needed to get this off her chest, and wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page.

“It’s hard for staff when we’re trying to hold the line and others aren’t,” she said. “I’m happy to stand arm-in-arm with you and agree these are the rules and we’ll all abide by them, so when the difficult decisions need to be made we’re all on the same side.”

The Gallery at South Hill

Located in Artist’s Alley at 950 Danby Rd. in the South Hill Business Center. Gallery hours are Friday, 5-8 p.m. and Saturday, 3-7 p.m.

-Tanner Harding

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