Word: levins
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...reflecting (countless times) with mellow but righteous indignation on the sorry state of the society that will not buy his bland music. The concentration of the camera and the script on Simon would be fine if he portrayed an interesting or at least three-dimensional character, but Jonah Levin is neither, and his colorless professional and domestic problems complement the monotonous musical score to make One-Trick Pony a very boring way to spend two hours...
...story of Jonah Levin unfolds on two levels, one of his career and the other of his marriage. An anti-war folk singer who had one big hit song in the '60s, he has since formed a band that tours small clubs and concert halls, playing a lyrical brand of soft rock similar to Paul Simon's more recent works. He yearns for and works to draw a larger following, but his devotion to his work, including weeks at a time spent on the road, has nearly destroyed his relationship with his wife and young son. The movie jumps back...
...befits the score for an upcoming film, One-Trick Pony has a consistent musical mood, sustained by a glossy studio sound which refines Fifties rock and r&b styles into a sophisticated whole. While Richard Tee's shimmering electric piano is overused and Tony Levin's bass lines are muddy at times, the overall sound mix is lovely, highlighting Simon's understated vocal manner to good effect. The basic tune-writing is strong--"Nobody" gently rocks to one of the prettiest melodies I've heard in ages. Simon put a lot of care into the composing, arranging and recording...
...landscapes have a constant air of expectancy. When empty, they seem to have been just vacated by actors; when they are peopled, the figures are posed and lit as though by a director, and their casual "ordinariness," their lack of ostentatious drama, is itself a charade. (One of Levin's more interesting suggestions is that one of Hopper's best-known images, the row of empty-windowed shops raked by horizontal light in Early Sunday Morning, 1930, was probably derived from a Broadway theater set by Jo Mielziner...
Hopper, one learns from Levin's catalogue, used to carry a worn quotation from Goethe everywhere with him, in his wallet. As well he might have done: for his paintings are (in the words of Goethe's title) Dichtung und Wahrheit, poetry and truth, the dignified utterances of a near genius whose modest attachment to the commonplace freed him from triviality, though not from doubt...