jazz Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Roman mayor Walter Veltroni doesn't seem to be your run of the mill public servant. He lunches with celebrities, writes best-selling books and has even done some cartoon voice work.

Variety announced that Veltroni has made deals for film versions of four of his books; three features and one documentary about Africa have been planned for 2007. The first will be the doc God Isn't Feeling Well and is based on Veltroni's own diaries during a trip to Africa. Veltroni's collection of short stories Senza patricio, which is set in Argentina, was also optioned and will be directed by Gianni Amelio. Other projects include a biography of Italian Jazz great Luca Flores (who played with Chet Baker) with Kim Rossi Stewart in the lead and a thriller about international terrorism based on the best-seller La scoperta dell'alba. There have been some grumblings that Veltroni uses a ghostwriter for his books, but Veltroni (a former editor of the lefty Italian daily L'Unita) claims the books are entirely his own creation.

Luckily Veltroni says he is an insomniac -- which is a good thing -- because between his new career in the movie business and his political ambitions, it looks like he is going to be a busy man in the new year.

Hurricane Katrina and its effects on the Gulf Coast have provided material for a number of documentaries -- a whole category was devoted to these films during the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in April. One  documentary shown during the festival premiered in New Orleans on Sunday. In New Orleans Music in Exile, filmmaker Robert Mugge took his camera on a quest to find New Orleans musicians whom he hadn't heard about since before Katrina hit. Mugge traveled as far as Houston, Austin, and Memphis to track down musicians such as Irma Thomas (shown above with Mugge), Cyril Neville, Kermit Ruffins, Cowboy Mouth, and The Iguanas. He must have been at least partially successful, since most of those acts played Jazz Fest a week or two ago.

The film's New Orleans premiere was followed by live performances from Thomas, Ruffins, and the ReBirth Brass Band. If you don't live in New Orleans, you still have a chance to see New Orleans Music in Exile. The documentary will be shown on Friday and Saturday on the cable channel Starz. Since I know Cyril Neville and some of The Iguanas live in Austin now, I hope the documentary gets a theatrical showing here as well as in the other cities featured in the film.

If Andy Garcia should have learned anything from being in The Godfather: Part III, he should have learned to eventually model his directorial debut on the mafia series' earlier installments instead of the one in which he starred. His choice for a debut even sounds like the plot of The Godfather: Part II, as it features a wealthy family broken apart in the late 1950s amidst the Cuban Revolution. Unfortunately Garcia's The Lost City is nothing like Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 Oscar-winner, and is everything like the awkward mess that is Coppola's disappointment of 1990.

The Lost City opens on a lone man playing the trumpet, quickly diverts to an assassination by two men, then cuts quickly again to a mambo performance. Thinking back, I'm still unsure of which characters those two assassins are, and who it is they kill. Could this be a problem with my short-term memory, or could it be a problem with poor filmmaking? All I know is that those first few minutes of unclear focus are a foreshadowing of the abrupt, cursory style with which the film continues to proceeds through story and history.