I gotta be honest, Ottmar Liebert does not offer a lot in the way of one-liners for a smart-alec music writer angling to pen quirky quips about him.
There's something funny, or ironic, or something about the fact that Liebert is a German who was born to a Chinese-German father (huh?), and Hungarian mother and grew up to be one of the new masters of Spanish Flamenco music.
But as a writer, if you start poking fun at people's cultural heritage you're cruising for an e-mailbox full of letters charging you with hate crimes.
Liebert's also been ordained as a Zen monk which is also ripe for ribbing.
Religion, though. That's another sticky wicket with a lot of potential backlash.
Let's just leave it at this: Much like Yanni, Liebert is an internationally-renowned, Grammy-acknowledged artist and performer whose fame has not crossed-over as well in the United States as it has other places.
He has recorded with everyone from "Footloose" singer Kenny Loggins to blues guitarist Roy Rogers and his debut album, Nouveau Flamenco, has not only become one of the best world music albums ever, but is the basis for an entire musical genre of the same name.
No doubt Liebert's new album, Petals on a Path is yet another, flamenco delight down the path to enlightenment.
The chances of an award-winning, quirky-cultural, flamenco-strumming monk playing Houston again anytime soon are not good.
If this sounds like your cup of tea, don't miss it.
Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra, 8 tonight at House of Blues
The impact that writer/director/producer James L. Brooks has made on Hollywood cannot be understated. The 85-year-old created The Mary Tyler Moore Show, personally won three Oscars for Terms of Endearment, and was one of the driving forces behind The Simpsons, among many other credits. Now, 15 years after his last movie, he’s back in the directing chair with Ella McCay.
The similarly-named Emma Mackey plays Ella, a 34-year-old lieutenant governor of an unnamed state in 2008 who’s on the verge of becoming governor when Governor Bill (Albert Brooks) gets picked to be a member of the president’s Cabinet. What should be a happy time is sullied by her needy husband, Ryan (Jack Lowden), her agoraphobic brother, Casey (Spike Fearn), and her perpetually-cheating father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson).
Despite the trio of men competing to bring her down, Ella remains an unapologetic optimist, an attitude bolstered by her aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), her assistant Estelle (Julie Kavner), and her police escort, Trooper Nash (Kumail Nanjiani). The film follows her over a few days as she navigates the perils of governing, the distractions her family brings, and the expectations being thrust upon her by many different people.
Brooks, who wrote and directed the film, is all over the place with his storytelling. What at first seems to be a straightforward story about Ella and her various issues soon starts meandering into areas that, while related to Ella, don’t make the film better. Prime among them are her brother and father, who are given a relatively small amount of screentime in comparison to the importance they have in her life. This is compounded by a confounding subplot in which Casey tries to win back his girlfriend, Susan (Ayo Edebiri).
Then there’s the whole political side of the story, which never finds its focus and is stuck in the past. Though it’s never stated explicitly, Ella and Governor Bill appear to be Democrats, especially given a signature program Ella pushes to help mothers in need. But if Brooks was trying to provide an antidote to the current real world politics, he doesn’t succeed, as Ella’s full goals are never clear. He also inexplicably shows her boring her fellow lawmakers to tears, a strange trait to give the person for whom the audience is supposed to be rooting.
What saves the movie from being an all-out train wreck is the performances of Mackey and Curtis. Mackey, best known for the Netflix show Sex Education, has an assured confidence to her that keeps the character interesting and likable even when the story goes downhill. Curtis, who has tended to go over-the-top with her roles in recent years, tones it down, offering a warm place of comfort for Ella to turn to when she needs it. The two complement each other very well and are the best parts of the movie by far.
Brooks puts much more effort into his female actors, including Kavner, who, even though she serves as an unnecessary narrator, gets most of the best laugh lines in the film. Harrelson is capable of playing a great cad, but his character here isn’t fleshed out enough. Fearn is super annoying in his role, and Lowden isn’t much better, although that could be mostly due to what his character is called to do. Were it not for the always-great Brooks and Nanjiani, the movie might be devoid of good male performances.
Brooks has made many great TV shows and movies in his 60+ year career, but Ella McCay is a far cry from his best. The only positive that comes out of it is the boosting of Mackey, who proves herself capable of not only leading a film, but also elevating one that would otherwise be a slog to get through.
