Tom Petty & The Heartbreaker. Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band.
Some artists' identities are so intertwined with the bands they front that to remove them from the group changes their whole musical make-up. It's as if, without the band, they take on a different persona.
Such is the case for Booker T. Jones. You know him better as the keyboard prodigy and leader of pioneering Memphis Soul band Booker T. & The M.G.'s.
(And I bet you didn't even know his last name was Jones until I just told ya.)
Normally I would feel cheated if Booker T. came to town without the M.G.'s, the ensemble that was once the house band for the iconic Stax Records in the '60s and gave the world one of the most well-known instrumental riffs of all time with the bluesy hit, "Green Onions."
To hear him play selections from last year's Grammy-winning album "Potato Hole" however, I will make muzzle my protest.
For Potato Hole, Booker T. temporarily traded in the M.G.'s to record with the groovy, cowpunks the Drive-By Truckers. Neil Young also dropped by the studio to offer some guitar accompaniment.
The result are a mix of scintillating originals and reworks of diverse works like Outkast's "Hey Ya" and Tom Waits "Get Behind the Mule" that prove artistry is not dead and albums can still be gorgeous and alluring without a vocalist to coach the listener along.
Of course, none of these all-stars will be at Wired Live with Booker T., but my guess is that he has a few other tricks up his talented sleeves that should make this live solo experience a night to remember.
One of the oddest things about the blockbuster era we live in is that while Disney owns the rights to the majority of Marvel comic book characters, Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-Man and any affiliated characters. Since they’re sharing Spider-Man himself with Disney, Sony has been trying to capitalize on those rights by making stand-alone films using niche characters that only comic book fanatics would know.
Having exhausted Venom and whiffed on attempts with Morbius and Madame Web, they’re trying again with Kraven the Hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a self-styled vigilante who, as the film tells it, travels the world exacting vengeance on the truly bad people of the world. He’s the son of Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a hard-edged Russian oligarch, and brother to Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who is relatively weak compared to the rest of his family.
The origin story has Kraven gaining his animal-like powers - including super-strength, speed, and jumping abilities - as a teenager from a mysterious serum given to him by a girl named Calypso (played as an adult by Ariana DeBose) after he was mauled by a lion. The two maintain a tenuous partnership as adults, with Calypso helping him hunt down other villains like Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott).
Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, the film looks and feels enormously lazy, something made merely to hold on to potentially valuable intellectual property. Other than the tense family dynamic between the Kravinovs, little makes sense in the story. Kraven has an indecipherable moral code that has him going after poachers - because he’s part lion? - in addition to other high-powered criminals, with no clear goal except to … get back at his father?
The laziness extends to the action scenes, which feature Kraven being mostly impervious to any damage, whether it’s hand-to-hand combat, knives, or guns. The CGI-heavy scenes don’t even allow moviegoers to enjoy an R-rated bloody free-for-all, as all of the blood splatter is computer-generated, too. Since apparently one Spider-Man villain is not enough, three others make appearances with abilities that are under-explained and CGI that is poorly done.
That’s not even counting Calypso, another Spider-Man villain whose purpose in this film is nebulous at best. Her early connection with Kraven is so coincidental as to be laughable, and her continued reasons for helping him as an adult strain credulity as well. The only saving grace of her presence is that the filmmakers don’t try to shoehorn romance into the plot; perhaps they’re saving that for the (inevitable?) sequel.
Taylor-Johnson has had one of the most prolific-yet-anonymous careers in modern Hollywood, with appearances in big films like The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and Tenet that have made very little impact. Even as the star here, he fails to hold your attention, with the story and visuals doing him no favors. DeBose has followed up her Oscar win for West Side Story with schlock like I.S.S., Argylle, and this, which doesn’t bode well for her career. At least Crowe gets to chew the scenery.
With a contractual inability to mention the name “Spider-Man,” movies like Kraven the Hunter exist in a weird area that forces filmmakers to make up stories for characters to which most people have no attachment. And just like Sony’s previous efforts, it is a very poor way to spend two hours in a movie theater; avoid at all costs.
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Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.
