(For a sidebar on Ellis Kell's efforts in music education and community programming, click here.)
What can you say about Ellis Kell? Better question: What can you not?
He's the director of programming and community outreach for Davenport's River Music Experience, and barring a six-month 2006-7 hiatus, has been employed by the venue since November 2003 - seven months before it opened its doors to the public.
He's an area legend among blues and roots musicians and fans - a 35-year veteran of solo and ensemble gigs who's an accomplished singer/songwriter, guitarist, and pianist (if, as he admits, maybe not the best trumpet player).
He's spent a remarkable quarter-century serving as bandleader and performer for The Ellis Kell Band, which has shared stages with, and opened for, the likes of Robert Cray, REO Speedwagon, Willie Nelson, Etta James, Little Feat, Johnny and Edgar Winter, and B.B. King - the latter of whom hugged Kell, on stage, during a 2008 Adler Theatre concert. (The Ellis Kell Band will celebrate its 25-year venerability and versatility in a February 6 concert at the River Music Experience's Redstone Room.)
And he is, by common agreement, one of the most engaging, and engaged, storytellers you'll ever hope to encounter, whether speaking at the RME or appearing in a special event at an area library ... or just sitting at a table, quietly recounting stories for an audience of one.
So why say anything about Ellis Kell when, in describing his road to local iconography, he can do it for me?
Like a squirrel gathering nuts before winter, I made a conscious effort to catch all five of this past weekend's debuting releases before our area was hit by the blizzard from Hell. (An oxymoronic expression, but whatever.) And because, with the exception of the museum's feature, even the really good one will likely be gone before the snowy onslaught begins to melt, let's take care of 'em quickly. In descending order of preference ... .
MORTDECAI
Music
FOXCATCHER
Friday, January 16, 10:05 a.m.-ish: My first and final quadruple feature of 2015 (yeah, right) begins with the Michael Mann thriller Blackhat, which opens with the camera racing within a computer module and deeper and deeper into the internal workings of binary code, like a burrowing reverse of Robert Zemeckis' introductory shot in Contact. At its climax, we discover that we've been watching the process by which a faraway cyber-terrorist sets off an explosion at a Chinese nuclear facility, and it's a juicy, unsettling prelude - so good, and so promising, that it probably takes longer than it should to realize the movie is goofy as hell.
It was awfully early in the morning, 5:30 a.m. Pacific, when the nominations for this year's Academy Awards were read by actor Chris Pine, directors J.J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón, and Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs. (Also, for the first time ever, the nominees in all 24 categories were read live, meaning we prognosticators didn't have to wait an extra six minutes to find out just how badly we screwed up Best Sound Mixing.) It might even have been a little too early for Ms. Isaacs, who, when announcing their names, approached true Travolta-ness by calling Julianne Moore "Julianne Moren" and Mr. Turner cinematographer Dick Pope "Dick Poop."
SELMA
If you're reading this hot off the (electronic) presses, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences only have an hour or so to submit their online or - less frequently these days - paper ballots for this year's Oscar race. (Voting officially ends today at 5 p.m. PST.) So this seems like an appropriate time to make my own final guesses for January 15's nominees, even if a better time would be January 15 itself - preferably just after the Academy's official announcement of contenders.
There are quite a few promising titles I've yet to see, including wintertime Oscar hopefuls such as Selma, American Sniper, Mr. Turner, Still Alice, A Most Violent Year, and Inherent Vice, and most everything bound to be nominated for Best Foreign-Language Film and Best Documentary Feature. The Quad Cities area is a relatively small movie market in the Midwest, and I don't get to Chicago (or New York or Los Angeles) very often. C'est comme ça.
