Crotchety old drummer Ginger Baker has quite a story to tell in BEWARE OF MR. BAKER
BEWARE OF MR. BAKER (Jay Bulger, 2012)
City Winery
155 Varick St.
Tuesday, January 29, $5, 8:00
212-608-0555
www.bewareofmrbaker.com
www.citywinery.com
“A great virtuoso madman,” “scary,” “a motherfucker,” “a lovable rogue,” “a dope addict,” “the hammer of the gods,” “a force of nature,” “horrible,” “the world’s greatest drummer” — these are just some of the terms of affection heaped on legendary drummer Ginger Baker by his friends, relatives, and musical colleagues at the beginning of Jay Bulger’s propulsive documentary, Beware of Mr. Baker. In 2009, after spending three months with Baker and his family in South Africa, Bulger published the in-depth article “The Devil and Ginger Baker” in Rolling Stone. Two years later, Bulger went back to expand the story into a feature-length film, but Baker was not about to make it easy for him, continually insulting his questions, calling him names, and even cracking him in the nose with his cane. “He influenced me as a drummer but not as a person,” Bad Company and Free drummer Simon Kirke says of Baker, an opinion shared by many in this revealing film. Baker might be crotchety, but he also opens up to Bulger, particularly in describing when, as a child during WWII, he would hear the bombings outside, sounds that would have an impact on his playing. Bulger speaks with such other percussionists as the Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts, Rush’s Neal Peart, the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, the Police’s Stewart Copeland, Vanilla Fudge’s Carmine Appice, and Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, as well as such former Baker bandmates as Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Steve Winwood, who all rave about Baker’s remarkable abilities behind the kit while also delving into his self-destructive behavior, which led him through a parade of groups, home countries, and spouses. “I don’t know if it’s his ability to move on or it’s his inability to stay,” points out Baker’s third wife, Karen Loucks Rinedollar, a statement that applies to both Baker’s personal and professional lives.
Drummer Ginger Baker and director Jay Bulger developed a rather unique relationship during the making of fascinating documentary
Through photographs, old and new interviews, playful animation, and superb archival footage of live performances, Bulger traces Baker’s career path from the Graham Bond Organisation, Cream, Blind Faith, Ginger Baker’s Air Force, the Baker Gurvitz Army, and Masters of Reality to his little-known collaboration with Fela Kuti and his drum battles with three of his four major influences: Phil Seamen, Elvin Jones, and Art Blakey. (The fourth is Max Roach; Baker gets emotional discussing how all four men eventually became friends of his.) In ninety-two freewheeling minutes, Bulger crafts a fascinating portrait of a wild anomaly, an immensely talented musician whose difficult, unpredictable personality and selfish refusal to ever compromise continues to result in controversy and separation everywhere he goes. Yet through it all, everyone still speaks fondly of Baker; Bruce might talk about how much they hated each other and couldn’t stand playing together — Baker once punched Bruce onstage in the face for stepping on his drum solo — but in the end Bruce can’t help but profess his love for the enigmatic, eclectic Baker. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2012 SXSW festival, Beware of Mr. Baker is having a special $5 screening at City Winery on January 29 at 8:00, followed by a Q&A with Bulger; in addition, special wines will be paired with the different stages of Baker’s life and career as portrayed in the film.
Benny & Joon meets Little Miss Sunshine in writer-director David O. Russell’s cute but severely overrated Silver Linings Playbook. Adapted from Matthew Quick’s novel, the film follows the unusual relationship between Patrick Solitano (Bradley Cooper), a bipolar man who has just been released from a mental institution after beating up his wife’s lover, and Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence), a woman trying desperately to get past the untimely death of her husband. They both deal with their situations in very different ways: While Pat refuses to face reality, clinging to the thinnest of hopes that his wife, Nikki (Brea Bee), still loves him and will take him back, Tiffany sleeps with nearly everyone in her office and gets fired, forcing her to move back in with her parents. The interplay between Pat and Tiffany is absolutely gripping as they each battle with inner demons and mental illness. Pat also battles with his father, Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro), a casualty of the economic crisis whose serious OCD comes out during Eagles games. (The film is set in Philadelphia.) The first half of Silver Linings Playbook is a fascinating study of mental illness, sensationally performed by Cooper and Lawrence, but the second half goes off in ludicrous, ridiculous directions, with Pat Jr. and Tiffany training for a dance competition and Pat Sr. and his friend Randy (Paul Herman) involved in a silly parlay about dance and football. What had been a distinctly different take on two unique characters becomes a standard, conventional tale that nearly, but not quite, destroys everything that had come before it. Russell, who has has displayed a penchant for taking chances in such previous films as Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings, and I ♥ Huckabees and was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for 
Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War is one of the bravest, most explosive investigative documentaries you’re ever likely to see. Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated) busts open the military’s dirty little secret, revealing that episodes of horrific sexual abuse such as the Tailhook scandal are not an aberration but a prime example of a rape epidemic that seems to an accepted part of military culture. Dick speaks with many women and one man who share their incredible stories, describing in often graphic detail the sexual abuse they suffered, then faced further abuse when they reported what had happened. Their superiors, some of whom were the rapists themselves, either looked the other way, laughed off their allegations as no big deal, or threatened the victims’ careers. Dick includes remarkable Defense Department statistics — the government admits that approximately one out of every five female soldiers suffers sexual abuse and that there were nineteen thousand violent sex crimes in 2010 alone — even as such military officials as Dr. Kaye Whitley, Rear Admiral Anthony Kurta, and Brigadier General Mary Kay Hertog make absurd claims that they are satisfied with the way they are handling the alarming trend. The central figure in the film is Kori Cioca, a former member of the Coast Guard whose face was broken when she was raped by a superior and now keeps getting denied necessary medical services from the VA. Such courageous women as USAF Airman 1st Class Jessica Hinves, former Marine Officer Ariana Klay, USN veteran Trina McDonald, USMC Lieutenant Elle Helmer, USN Lieutenant Paula Coughlin, and even Special Agent Myla Haider of the Army Criminal Investigation Command also open up about the physical and psychological damage the abuse has left on their lives and careers. Inspired by Helen Benedict’s 2007 Salon.com article “The Private War of Women Soldiers,” Dick and producer Amy Ziering (The Memory Thief) have presented a searing indictment of an endemic military culture that has to come to an end, and fast. The Invisible War, which earned Dick and Ziering last year’s Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival at Lincoln Center, is back at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center for a brief run through January 24, celebrating its Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature.