I’ve been made aware that many Avant Greensboro readers are Wes Anderson fans, eagerly awaiting the May 25 release of Moonrise Kingdom. Fresh from Cannes, I’m pleased to report that Moonrise Kingdom’s opening scenes are classic Wes Anderson. It’s a forthright continuation and, what’s more, intensification of the rigorous aesthetic preoccupations and occasionally precious thematic concerns that have long marked Anderson’s films. Another Anderson pillar, period detail, is never less than faultless.

Set in 1965 with a looming natural catastrophe on the horizon (told to us by narrator Bob Balaban), Moonrise Kingdom is a preteen love story (another Anderson hallmark: adolescent precocity) centered on fugitive Khaki Scout Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and fantasy novel enthusiast Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward). Its first half chronicles the young lovers on the run and the adults tracking them down, including Bill Murray. Other faces new to Anderson films like Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton round out the film as well as the familiar Anderson mainstay Jason Schwartzman.

Visual and sonic textures are mesmerizing, shot compositions and motivated camerawork by Robert Yeoman makes scenes such as the woodland chase seem effortless. The second half details rescue operations, emotional as well as literal, on the part of the chastened, hence, wiser adults. Mood and morale darken, and Anderson uses Hank Williams tunes brilliantly. Moonrise Kingdom’s conclusion brings to mind the Coen Brother’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?, another programmatic, yet affectionate homage to times past and present. Read my full review here: www.slantmagazine.com/house/2012/05/cannes-film-festival-2012-moonrise-kingdom/

Budd Wilkins is Staff Critic for Slant Magazine, a film scholar and instructor based in Greensboro. He is currently covering the 65^th Annual Cannes Film Festival in France.

AG Contributor Keith Warther

As always, if you have any contributions, add them to the comments!

THURS

-#avantonair @ WUAG 103.1 FM // WUAG.net, 7-9pm
-Laura Boswell @ The Green Bean, 8pm
-Imperial Blend @ The Blind Tiger, 10pm

FRI
-Amelia’s Mechanics @ The Blind Tiger, 7:30 pm
-Laila Nur, The Microphone Cables, Jackknife Stiletto, and Like Handshakes @ Glenwood Coffee & Books, 7:30 pm
-The Moon and You, The Painted Skulls, and Laura Jane Vincent @ The Green Bean, 7:30pm
-The Tremors, The Piedmontsmen, and The Old 1-2 @ New York Pizza, 9pm

SAT
-Laser Rays @ Taylor’s House, 9pm
-The Broadcast and House of Dues @ The Blind Tiger, 10pm

SUN
-Hand-to-Hand Spring Market @ The Blind Tiger, 1pm
-Hand-to-Hand afterparty with Paleface and Crooked Fingers @ The Blind Tiger, 8:30pm
-Jack David Carter, Laura Jane Vincent, and Avalon Thornton Kenny (weee!) @ Teresa Staley’s Gazebo, 7:45pm
-Giant Scrabble @ The Flatiron, 10pm

MON
-Old School Game Night @ The Blind Tiger, 6pm

TUES
-Intertwyned, Knightmare, and Spirit Slave @ The Blind Tiger, 10pm

WED
-Matty Sheets & The Blockheads and The Village Tricycle @ Brewski’s Tavern, 8:30pm

THURS
-Monkey Mind, Sam Robinson, and The Heritage @ The Blind Tiger, 10pm

I’m quite fascinated by branding since it’s a big part of what I do for a living. However, I’d still never actually heard the term “brand agent” until I asked my friend Tye Fussell what he did for a living. I’m also very interested in forming business relationships with people in Greensboro, so over a lovely lunch at Saffron, Jay Young and I attempted to unravel this mystery so that I could send him some interview questions. Being a brand agent just sounds really cool, you know? Tye also used to be a goth. Score!

Tell us a little bit about what you and your partner do at Greenlight Brand Agents.

We are a full service advertising and marketing agency. We create, build and sustain brands through award winning integrated campaigns (TV, Radio, Print, Outdoor & Promotions) and Public Relations. We also help shore up selling efforts if needed. But we don’t stop there. We also delve into our clients businesses to find better and more efficient ways for them to run their businesses internally.

What exactly is a brand agent?

I see that you’ve just scored your first international client. Do you find that it’s more difficult to work for a client that’s so far away?

Not at all. We approach our relationship with them in very much the same way as we do our local clients. We have our regular, weekly status calls and we occasionally meet with their top brass personally in D.C. or here in Greensboro. Additionally, we find that creative can be easily and effectively presented through video conferencing services like Skype, Webex or GoTo Meeting.

How does the Greensboro business scene compare to that of the other cities where you’ve worked?

There’s a Greensboro business scene?

Does your company outsource or is everything done in town?

Do you think that Greensboro is receptive to entrepreneurs and startups?

Yes! Local clients and other startups seem to strive to support one another.

What can we do to encourage more people to stay in town and create businesses here?

More communication among like-minded professionals. Whether it’s the local Ad Club, or via LinkedIn, or another organization, it would be great to share ideas and best practices with others in an open type of environment where everyone can benefit.

When we had lunch you mentioned that you strive to make your business one that has ethics that you can feel comfortable with. At times that can be a luxury even though we definitely need more of it. What ideas can you give us for all making sure that what we do for a living coincides with how we see the world?

It’s simple. If you wouldn’t do something personally, it’s probably not a good idea professionally either. And conversely, if you find particular tools/tactics/practices that enhance your professional performance, chances are they also will translate well to your personal life. We have turned away opportunities in the past to work with brands that we don’t see as “ethics leaders.”

Prepare to be dazzled by the opening solo sax & electronics set by Laurent Estoppey.

Preview the musical stylings of Peter Evans here. Don’t miss this unique show!

Event Details:

Friday, May 18th 9PM
CFBG
930 South Chapman Street, Greensboro NC (Map)
$8 regular / $5 students

A dear friend and fellow artist is in need of surgery…. which he’ll now be getting thanks to the wonderful folks who either invested their time or donated cash to help an artist and strengthen our community.

It all went down Wednesday night at the Green Bean. The man of the hour, Chris Lubinski, created a living work of art in the form of body painting while everyone else helped to commission a painting made over the course of the evening.

This round featured performances by:

• The Slowdrivers (awesome first show!)
• Whiskey Christy & The Half Pint Orchestra
• Dalton Village
• Laura Jane Vincent

For more photos from this event (and many others) visit the kateichan facebook photo page.

AvantGreensboro took over the airwaves for their first (of many) shows which run on WUAG 103.1FM every Thursday from 7pm until 9pm. We’ll have special guests, great tunes, funny stories, and so much more. You can also livestream around the world via www.wuag.net or follow on twitter at #avantonair.

Tonight’s featured guests are Ed Whitfield (7:30 PM), Laila Nur (8 PM), and Emily Stewart and Matty Sheets, representing Teresa Staley (8:40 PM).

Also, tune in next week for a special theme song from Matty Sheets recorded in On Pop Of The World Studios!

You can hear WUAG from your radio at 103.1 FM or streaming on your computer – WUAG.net. As always, keep it locked!

AG Contributor Keith Warther

As always, if you have any additions, leave them in the comments!

THURS MAY 10
-3 Brained Robot, Forget The Times, Bubblegum Octopus, Br’er, and Cost Ghost @ The Karate Dungeon, 8pm
-Drunken Prayer @ The Blind Tiger, 8pm

FRI MAY 11
-Big Attack, Dirty Gs, The Radio Reds, and The Raving Knaves @ New York Pizza, 9:30pm
-Unknown Hinson @ The Blind Tiger, 8pm

SAT MAY 12
-The Leeves, Movers and Shakers, and Jack Carter & The Armory @ New York Pizza, 9pm
-Emily Stewart and the Baby Teeth, Mitch and Erin Hayes, and Matt Frye @ The Flatiron, 9:30pm
-House of Fools @ The Blind Tiger, 8pm

SUN MAY 13
-Fero Lux, Courtships, and TBA @ The Karate Dungeon, 8pm
-Giant Scrabble @ The Flatiron, 9pm

MON MAY 14
-Old School Game Night @ The Blind Tiger, 6pm

-Laughter in the Dark presents “Shampoo” @ The Creative Center Room 213, 7pm

TUES MAY 15
-Open Mic @ The Flatiron, 10pm

WED MAY 16
-Freekbot and Boomtronik @ The Blind Tiger, 8pm

FRI MAY 18
-Amelias Mechanics @ The Blind Tiger, 8pm
-The Moon and You, The Painted Skulls, and Laura Jane Vincent @ The Green Bean, 7:30pm
-The Tremors, The Piedmontsmen, and The Old One-Two @ New York Pizza, 9pm

-Art Films present “Girl With a Pearl Earring” @ The Creative Center Room 213, 7pm

At intervals throughout the 1990s, writer-director Whit Stillman quietly unveiled the loose trilogy Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994) and The Last Days of Disco (1998). Chronicling the lives and loves of the “urban haute bourgeoisie,” a hitherto little-known species Stillman anatomized with equal measures earnest identification and affable chastisement, these low-key films were filled with dazzling displays of verbal dexterity, a kind of sophisticated, literate humor that had few peers in the world of independent filmmaking. (Critics often fell back on the likes of P. G. Wodehouse’s genteel novels when casting around for analogues and precedents.) In other words, Whit Stillman made films like nobody else.

After an absence of almost 15 years, Stillman returns with the daft campus comedy Damsels in Distress. Its very title indicates the film’s anachronistic aspirations: a throwback to the Golden Age of Hollywood filmmaking, only projected through the prismatic lens of today’s twee-heavy indie paradigm (the worst trait uniting films like Little Miss Sunshine and Juno). However akin Damsels feels to his earlier films, albeit in mostly superficial ways, it’s my sad duty to report that Stillman’s latest is nearly universal in its failure. The comedy is often painfully unfunny, at best droll or wryly amusing when a gag does work, its conceits so packed with self-aware whimsy that the film ends up swallowing its own tail and choking on it.

At Seven Oaks College, a trio of flowery-named femmes led by Violet Wister (mumblecore maven Greta Gerwig) swoops in on newcomer Lily (Analeigh Tipton) during student orientation. Violet has developed her own wonky code of conduct, a combination of smarmy self-fabrication (hence the floral names) and supercilious condescension (dating inferiors of the opposite sex under the guise of reclamation projects), and she’s looking to indoctrinate Lily. The girls’ ersatz philanthropy extends to volunteering at the campus suicide prevention center, where they believe donuts are the first step to total recovery, and there’s no depression so deep that therapeutic tap dance routines won’t work wonders. Their services may even be necessary, given the spate of attempted suicides coming from the Ed School, where misguided saps continually fail to snuff it after jumping from the second story, a situation that leads to the film’s funniest line: “If they can’t even destroy themselves properly, how can we expect them to shape our nation’s youth?”

True to the perverse strand of reverse psychology that runs rampant throughout the film, Lily ultimately emerges as its lone individualist, even as she counter-intuitively preaches conformity and normalcy. But it’s the inmates who have taken over this particular asylum, and, true to form, the film ends with an extended song-and-dance routine that plays like a discarded outtake from Everybody Says I Love You. As if that weren’t quite farcical enough, Stillman indulges in end credits faux-footnotes that “correct” some of Violet’s more egregious factual errors, a po-mo gesture better suited to David Foster Wallace’s brand of meta-fiction than Stillman’s rarefied but essentially realist sort of cinema. You can’t fault the filmmaker for wanting to branch out, trying to experiment a bit with form and content, but you certainly can wish he’d chosen more rewarding trends to emulate.

Budd Wilkins is a writer, film reviewer, instructor, and staff critic for Slant Magazine. Follow Budd on his blog at www.buddwilkins.com.

Jonathan Scales Fourchestra

The Jonathan Scales Fourchestra performed Friday May 4th at the Green Bean for a small, enthusiastic crowd. Scales refers to his music as jazz/rock fusion, a genre/style that some of us older folks grew up with. Fusion jazz came to life as a style with Miles Davis. The album “In a Silent Way” laid most of the ground work and the seminal work “Bitches Brew” brought it to fruition. The cast of musicians became the Who’s Who of jazz fusion – Chick Corea and Lenny White (Return To Forever), John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra), Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul (Weather Report), all became known for the fusion jazz hits of the day. These were the last days before FM radio turned to formatting and all of these groups gained extensive airplay.

Fusion survives to this day in various groups and Scales is great bearer of the standard. The band consists of Jonathan Scales on steel drums, Phil Bronson on drums and Cody Wright on bass guitar. The group expertly weaves fun into the performances, rendering what some might term somewhat complex music accessible by all. The members, for the most part, are seasoned musicians, choosing wisely how they interact harmonically and rhythmically. The most important part in this context is how they were able to hook in the audience, something the early fusion jazz pioneers had to learn.

The best example of audience engagement was Weather Report. Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter were literally giants of the jazz world and had to transition to the new fusion style where the audience was no longer the intimate jazz club, but the larger auditorium and arena venue. Having more than just a little foresight, Joe Zawinul hired a young amazingly talented bass player named Jaco Pastorius. Jaco was just as at home with an R&B or rock show band as he was a small jazz group. Pastorius provided the point of engagement with audience that the other fusion groups didn’t have – showy enough to grab the audience and bring them fully into the more complex harmonic and rhythmic content of fusion jazz. Weather Report quickly rose to the top of the fusion world as a result, while the other pioneers took longer to make this transition.

The Scales Fourchestra does this very well on their own terms with subtlety beyond their apparent ages, giving the audience references with rockish, bluesy riffs moving in and out of the more complex tonal structure of jazz.

The performance was one of the best I’ve seen in Greensboro at a small club in a very long time – something that comes a bit close to the level last seen at the seminal concert by Weather Report at the old Triad Sports Arena in 1977. That is a big accolade and this group could very well rise to that degree with more time and performances under their belt.

Which brings me to my only criticism. Cody Wright is an excellent bassist, especially considering that he has only played the instrument for just over a year after transitioning from guitar. He plays with a pick, a bit unusual in jazz but there are notable exceptions like Steve Swallow. His lines are creative and very well played but lack a bit of cohesion. This will come with time and more performances on the instrument, especially outside of the context he’s currently in.

The bottom line is that there should have been a standing room only crowd for this show. These are world-class musicians, deserving of much more.

Wake up, Greensboro – some of the best live music anywhere is right here in your town!