For anyone out there with the guts to read another blog:
"Conversely" of "Upper Limit Music; Lower Limit Speech" has joined forces with me in starting up a new blog titled "The Paterson Project." The blog is an ongoing journal where he and I will work together on an album of music/poetry based on Chapter III of William Carlos Williams' "Paterson: Book Four." Sound totally rad to you, too? Well, you should check it out, then. The web address should be linked above, but if you need it, it is:
http://patersonproject.blogspot.com
Posts should be coming frequently over there - we have a lot of work to do. As for "Atom Smashing," it's still up and running, even if the entries have slowed down since the Fall term started. I'll do my best to get back on schedule over here.
As the Magician said to Frosty the Snowman: "Busy, busy, busy!"
Friday, September 22, 2006
Monday, September 11, 2006
GENERAL.
In honor of today's anniversary, please forgive me for saying a few more words:
Five years ago today, most of us watched on television as far too many of the nation's policemen, firemen and rescue workers went back into a burning building to save the victims of a tragedy they too would ultimately become victims of. Their shared belief that the worst was over, documented in interview after interview in the months that followed the morning of September 11, echoes far too loudly now, in a time when no situation can begin before its most disastrous outcome is anticipated. We have resolved ourselves, those of us who are here, to never again experience the shock of that morning, that sweeping sense of disbelief at the sheer magnitude of an event that paralyzed so many of us at a time of such desparate need. And in this preparation, we have shed more than our perceived vulnerability.
As the son and brother of firemen, I thank those who have and continue to help others. I would like to remember, in whatever small way I can, those who were lost in the attacks of September 11 and those who have been lost in the conflicts resulting from that day. And I also hold out hope, foolish as it may be, for a time when the belief that good can still be done again outweighs the fear and darkness of a violent act.
In honor of today's anniversary, please forgive me for saying a few more words:
Five years ago today, most of us watched on television as far too many of the nation's policemen, firemen and rescue workers went back into a burning building to save the victims of a tragedy they too would ultimately become victims of. Their shared belief that the worst was over, documented in interview after interview in the months that followed the morning of September 11, echoes far too loudly now, in a time when no situation can begin before its most disastrous outcome is anticipated. We have resolved ourselves, those of us who are here, to never again experience the shock of that morning, that sweeping sense of disbelief at the sheer magnitude of an event that paralyzed so many of us at a time of such desparate need. And in this preparation, we have shed more than our perceived vulnerability.
As the son and brother of firemen, I thank those who have and continue to help others. I would like to remember, in whatever small way I can, those who were lost in the attacks of September 11 and those who have been lost in the conflicts resulting from that day. And I also hold out hope, foolish as it may be, for a time when the belief that good can still be done again outweighs the fear and darkness of a violent act.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
The "Mid-Year" Top Ten, #5 - #1
MOVIES.
5. BUBBLE (dir. Steven Soderbergh)
***1/2 out of ****
Steven Soderbergh has made a career out of rotation. Rising into the Hollywood limelight in 1989 with the small-market indie SEX, LIES & VIDEOTAPE, Soderbergh has spent the majority of his career attempting to balance big-budget projects like the Danny Ocean films and 2000's TRAFFIC with smaller, more personal films financed through his own production company that, as he admits, are designed to "keep him true to his roots." Whether or not this process works is debatable - certainly, OCEAN'S 13 feels like a paycheck movie - but it has also led to some of Soderbergh's strongest work, including 1996's SCHIZOPOLIS, the ERIN BROKOVICH follow-up, SOLARIS, and now the blink-and-you'll-miss-it BUBBLE. The idea behind BUBBLE is simple: write the bare bones of a script about three co-workers in blue collar America, cast non-actors in the main parts, rely on improvisation for 90% of the film's dialogue and let the essential low-budget independent movie unspool in front of you. Yet even more impressive than the guts behind this experiment is the strange and humbling film that this apparent stunt produces; BUBBLE is a shockingly well-realized movie with a tight and meaninglful plot, strong visual direction and startlingly good performances. The result of this collective effort excels not only as an efficient "purge" for its Hollywood crew, but also as a moving statement about the drama that fuels human lives - and the genuine horror of a cause-and-effect situation that entangles the film's three main characters in a way that feels as fated and unavoidable as the jobs and lives they each possess. Released simultaneously in theaters and on DVD, I recommend checking this one out - unfortunately, you won't see anything else like it this year.
4. MONSTER HOUSE (dir. Gil Kenan)
***1/2 out of ****
Alright, for those of you who are throwing out my credibility right about...now, I offer the following items for my defense: THE PRINCESS BRIDE. THE GOONIES. STAND BY ME. For those of you who turn your noses up at the notion of celebrating a "kids" movie, just take this moment to look back at your own childhood and the movies that shaped it, and now tell me with a straight face that there wasn't something special and united in the movies you remember. Maybe it was a sense of daring, a seemingly-unnecessary curse word, the sight of something gross or scary or mean-spirited that at the time seemed so delightfully out of place in the movie you were watching. For me, I think about two things: the faces melting in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and the dead body in STAND BY ME. I'll never shake how much seeing those two images made me feel like I had finally grown out of Saturday morning cartoons and moved into an infinitely more tantalizing and taboo adulthood. Now, is MONSTER HOUSE one of those films? In a way, yes - there are dead bodies, murders, suicides, even a snaggle-toothed Jason Lee drinking and pissing on an old man's lawn. But more importantly, MONSTER HOUSE is a movie about those kinds of films, and particularly, those kinds of moments - and when it comes to mixing the shock of the macabre with the curious delight of childhood, Kenan's very-solid animated film delivers on both fronts. And it should also be noted that it has one helluva monster house. Don't say I didn't warn you.
3. V FOR VENDETTA (dir. James McTeigue)
***1/2 out of ****
Often unfairly compared to the MATRIX films, McTeigue (who directed exactly none of the Matrix movies) gives us a film that relies on style, sure, but one that also tries awfully hard to have something more to say by the time the credits roll than "Whoa." VENDETTA, which uses a dystopian London as an obvious stand-in for contemporary America, does its best to not only critique a global power system that seems to slant ever-dramatically toward authoritarianism, but also indicts quite harshly those truly responsible in any democratic state: the masses. The moves within the film to this extreme - the masked anyman and everyman, V, the tempered rebel Evey (played very well by Natalie Portman), the pattern of social injustices aimed not at individuals but transparent types - all work incredibly well, and by the time the film reaches its climax, it has not only braved the question of terrorism, it has moved through it and past it to a conclusion that feels frighteningly right - and that is by far any film of this nature's greatest strength and accomplishment.
2. THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA (dir. Tommy Lee Jones)
***1/2 out of ****
It is surprisingly difficult for me to sum up my thoughts on this movie. Jones's film, which weaves in and out of a variety of flashbacks to tell the story of a Border Patrol agent (Barry Pepper) who accidentally kills a Mexican man only to face the vengeance of that man's best friend, American cowboy, Pete (director Jones), works less as a film narrative and more as a film experience. To clarify this awfully fuzzy distinction, let me talk about Pete: Pete is that rarest of movie characters - a man of marginal intelligence played both convincingly and without condescension. For Pete, Melquiades's death is an absurdity, something almost entirely incomprehensible. The Mexican man, whom Pete hired and worked with on a small Texas farm, means so much more to the cowboy than even a traditional Hollywood notion of love encompasses - he was, simply put, Pete's best friend, and for his life to be taken in an act of allegedly instigated violence goes against everything Pete understands about his world. All that follows this initial act - Pete's kidnapping of the Border Patrol agent, the disastrous journey - with corpse in tow - to Melquiades hometown in Mexico - is still tied deeply to Pete's own grieving process, and this beautiful and tragic fulfilment, paced literally to the steps of Pete's understanding, works not only as an enjoyable and moving film experience, but also as a singularly unfolding depiction of cause and effect as it might exist when removed from linear constraints. Okay, fair enough - you say that's impossible. But watch the movie. Then tell me what you would call this trick Jones's film does so, so well.
1. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (dir. Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris)
***1/2 out of ****
So, the top of the list. What can I say? I've bought into this year's indie darling, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. I knew this was going to happen. I saw it coming, slowly from town to town, in releases larger and more widespread, and I tried to brace myself for its stream of adulation, its wave of both gotta-see-it love and don't-buy-the-hype cynicism that would, inevitably, shape my own view of the film. But this last Saturday, as I walked out of the theater, I couldn't shake this amazing smile that, if only for a moment, kept me from thinking along the lines of any of the dozen reviews and articles I'd read since SUNSHINE debuted at Cannes last spring. Instead, all I could focus on was just how good the movie I just saw was. I don't know exactly what I can say to defend this position; sure, the plot worked alright, the characters were all unique and enjoyable, the big point of the whole thing felt good and unforced, but there was something else in this movie that really clicked with me, and it wasn't until I was half way home from the theater that I realized just what it was: I really, really dig unironic symbolism. There was something so downright pleasant about the metaphorical family vehicle that was that bizarro family's yellow VW van - this immediately-available and sincere image of a totally misfit family sticking together simply because they couldn't get anywhere alone. From the moment that van's clutch went out and I saw Steve Carell's suicidal homosexual Frank pushing alongside eight-year-old beauty contestant Olive, the Nietzche-obsessed misanthrope Dwayne and their ridiculously self-help obsessed father, Richard, I knew this was an image I wouldn't shake - and sometimes, that's perfect. You can complain about coincidence all you like, but there's no attempt here at realism - this is a movie about a wacked-out family driving 70o miles to deliver their bespectacled daughter to a beauty pageant she's a fish-out-of-water at - but its shooting at something both accepting and cohesive about the way we interact with each other - and if a movie can do that and make me laugh out loud - well, I have to say, it's on to something wonderful.
So, there we go: the Mid-Year Top Ten. Are there some big holes here? Well, yep, there's not denying it. But believe me, we could do worse than those top few movies - and with any luck, these next four months will bring a lot of movies that are even better. I know I've got my picks for the fall season, as I'm sure you do (that's a whole different list), but for now, these ten will have to do - and warts and all, these are movies we owe it to ourselves to remember before that Oscar rush sweeps all us movie-lovers up in an awards-crazy wave that each and every year leaves a special handful of movies from the previous spring and summer behind - unless, of course, we take the time to "list" them. After all, what could be more debatable than that?
Until December, enjoy yourselves everyone.
KMC
5. BUBBLE (dir. Steven Soderbergh)
***1/2 out of ****
Steven Soderbergh has made a career out of rotation. Rising into the Hollywood limelight in 1989 with the small-market indie SEX, LIES & VIDEOTAPE, Soderbergh has spent the majority of his career attempting to balance big-budget projects like the Danny Ocean films and 2000's TRAFFIC with smaller, more personal films financed through his own production company that, as he admits, are designed to "keep him true to his roots." Whether or not this process works is debatable - certainly, OCEAN'S 13 feels like a paycheck movie - but it has also led to some of Soderbergh's strongest work, including 1996's SCHIZOPOLIS, the ERIN BROKOVICH follow-up, SOLARIS, and now the blink-and-you'll-miss-it BUBBLE. The idea behind BUBBLE is simple: write the bare bones of a script about three co-workers in blue collar America, cast non-actors in the main parts, rely on improvisation for 90% of the film's dialogue and let the essential low-budget independent movie unspool in front of you. Yet even more impressive than the guts behind this experiment is the strange and humbling film that this apparent stunt produces; BUBBLE is a shockingly well-realized movie with a tight and meaninglful plot, strong visual direction and startlingly good performances. The result of this collective effort excels not only as an efficient "purge" for its Hollywood crew, but also as a moving statement about the drama that fuels human lives - and the genuine horror of a cause-and-effect situation that entangles the film's three main characters in a way that feels as fated and unavoidable as the jobs and lives they each possess. Released simultaneously in theaters and on DVD, I recommend checking this one out - unfortunately, you won't see anything else like it this year.
4. MONSTER HOUSE (dir. Gil Kenan)
***1/2 out of ****
Alright, for those of you who are throwing out my credibility right about...now, I offer the following items for my defense: THE PRINCESS BRIDE. THE GOONIES. STAND BY ME. For those of you who turn your noses up at the notion of celebrating a "kids" movie, just take this moment to look back at your own childhood and the movies that shaped it, and now tell me with a straight face that there wasn't something special and united in the movies you remember. Maybe it was a sense of daring, a seemingly-unnecessary curse word, the sight of something gross or scary or mean-spirited that at the time seemed so delightfully out of place in the movie you were watching. For me, I think about two things: the faces melting in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and the dead body in STAND BY ME. I'll never shake how much seeing those two images made me feel like I had finally grown out of Saturday morning cartoons and moved into an infinitely more tantalizing and taboo adulthood. Now, is MONSTER HOUSE one of those films? In a way, yes - there are dead bodies, murders, suicides, even a snaggle-toothed Jason Lee drinking and pissing on an old man's lawn. But more importantly, MONSTER HOUSE is a movie about those kinds of films, and particularly, those kinds of moments - and when it comes to mixing the shock of the macabre with the curious delight of childhood, Kenan's very-solid animated film delivers on both fronts. And it should also be noted that it has one helluva monster house. Don't say I didn't warn you.
3. V FOR VENDETTA (dir. James McTeigue)
***1/2 out of ****
Often unfairly compared to the MATRIX films, McTeigue (who directed exactly none of the Matrix movies) gives us a film that relies on style, sure, but one that also tries awfully hard to have something more to say by the time the credits roll than "Whoa." VENDETTA, which uses a dystopian London as an obvious stand-in for contemporary America, does its best to not only critique a global power system that seems to slant ever-dramatically toward authoritarianism, but also indicts quite harshly those truly responsible in any democratic state: the masses. The moves within the film to this extreme - the masked anyman and everyman, V, the tempered rebel Evey (played very well by Natalie Portman), the pattern of social injustices aimed not at individuals but transparent types - all work incredibly well, and by the time the film reaches its climax, it has not only braved the question of terrorism, it has moved through it and past it to a conclusion that feels frighteningly right - and that is by far any film of this nature's greatest strength and accomplishment.
2. THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA (dir. Tommy Lee Jones)
***1/2 out of ****
It is surprisingly difficult for me to sum up my thoughts on this movie. Jones's film, which weaves in and out of a variety of flashbacks to tell the story of a Border Patrol agent (Barry Pepper) who accidentally kills a Mexican man only to face the vengeance of that man's best friend, American cowboy, Pete (director Jones), works less as a film narrative and more as a film experience. To clarify this awfully fuzzy distinction, let me talk about Pete: Pete is that rarest of movie characters - a man of marginal intelligence played both convincingly and without condescension. For Pete, Melquiades's death is an absurdity, something almost entirely incomprehensible. The Mexican man, whom Pete hired and worked with on a small Texas farm, means so much more to the cowboy than even a traditional Hollywood notion of love encompasses - he was, simply put, Pete's best friend, and for his life to be taken in an act of allegedly instigated violence goes against everything Pete understands about his world. All that follows this initial act - Pete's kidnapping of the Border Patrol agent, the disastrous journey - with corpse in tow - to Melquiades hometown in Mexico - is still tied deeply to Pete's own grieving process, and this beautiful and tragic fulfilment, paced literally to the steps of Pete's understanding, works not only as an enjoyable and moving film experience, but also as a singularly unfolding depiction of cause and effect as it might exist when removed from linear constraints. Okay, fair enough - you say that's impossible. But watch the movie. Then tell me what you would call this trick Jones's film does so, so well.
1. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (dir. Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris)
***1/2 out of ****
So, the top of the list. What can I say? I've bought into this year's indie darling, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. I knew this was going to happen. I saw it coming, slowly from town to town, in releases larger and more widespread, and I tried to brace myself for its stream of adulation, its wave of both gotta-see-it love and don't-buy-the-hype cynicism that would, inevitably, shape my own view of the film. But this last Saturday, as I walked out of the theater, I couldn't shake this amazing smile that, if only for a moment, kept me from thinking along the lines of any of the dozen reviews and articles I'd read since SUNSHINE debuted at Cannes last spring. Instead, all I could focus on was just how good the movie I just saw was. I don't know exactly what I can say to defend this position; sure, the plot worked alright, the characters were all unique and enjoyable, the big point of the whole thing felt good and unforced, but there was something else in this movie that really clicked with me, and it wasn't until I was half way home from the theater that I realized just what it was: I really, really dig unironic symbolism. There was something so downright pleasant about the metaphorical family vehicle that was that bizarro family's yellow VW van - this immediately-available and sincere image of a totally misfit family sticking together simply because they couldn't get anywhere alone. From the moment that van's clutch went out and I saw Steve Carell's suicidal homosexual Frank pushing alongside eight-year-old beauty contestant Olive, the Nietzche-obsessed misanthrope Dwayne and their ridiculously self-help obsessed father, Richard, I knew this was an image I wouldn't shake - and sometimes, that's perfect. You can complain about coincidence all you like, but there's no attempt here at realism - this is a movie about a wacked-out family driving 70o miles to deliver their bespectacled daughter to a beauty pageant she's a fish-out-of-water at - but its shooting at something both accepting and cohesive about the way we interact with each other - and if a movie can do that and make me laugh out loud - well, I have to say, it's on to something wonderful.
So, there we go: the Mid-Year Top Ten. Are there some big holes here? Well, yep, there's not denying it. But believe me, we could do worse than those top few movies - and with any luck, these next four months will bring a lot of movies that are even better. I know I've got my picks for the fall season, as I'm sure you do (that's a whole different list), but for now, these ten will have to do - and warts and all, these are movies we owe it to ourselves to remember before that Oscar rush sweeps all us movie-lovers up in an awards-crazy wave that each and every year leaves a special handful of movies from the previous spring and summer behind - unless, of course, we take the time to "list" them. After all, what could be more debatable than that?
Until December, enjoy yourselves everyone.
KMC
Monday, September 04, 2006
The "Mid-Year" Top Ten, #10 - #6
MOVIES.
Alright Ladies and Gentlemen, it's that time again. August is over, we're into the last four months of the year, and now (at long last), the marketing-driven enigma that is Hollywood will start that slow-ebb building to a dam-burst of quality film releases that will push its way through limited releases from now until the true end of the movie year - the 2007 Oscars. So what, you say? So it's time to put together a modest Best Of - the greatest of all Lists - for the year thus far, of course. But aren't the best movies of each year held back until the Fall? For the most part, you know it! And doesn't that mean the pickings are slim? You bet! But every year, you can count on a handful of films - small indies, odd little studio experiments, and occassionally that rarest of rare species, the good summer blockbuster - to be found amidst the endless schlock horror flicks and THX-fueled action spectaculars (such an odd term, don't you agree?) of the first eight months of the year. So without further ado, here are my picks for the best ten flicks this year released between January 1, 2006 and the up-to-the-minute present. Interested?
10. CLERKS II (dir. Kevin Smith)
*** out of ****
Kevin Smith's return to the Quick Stop, made famous in 1994's slacker-comedy for the townie set, CLERKS, is a pretty pleasant one, especially for those with a healthy respect for Smith's small town Jersey-film universe. The jokes work a fair amount of the time, the raunchiness and audacity are both welcome and used in controlled doses, and most importantly, the storylines for our returning heroes - perpetual fall guy Dante Hicks and indulgent smart-ass Randal Graves - feel natural; it doesn't seem out of place for the two to still be working in service industry jobs - in fact, it feels more appropriate than the first film's "maybe-college" ending did. Although the plot itself has a few rough patches - most notably the absurd notion that Rosario Dawson would ever be interested in the very Jersey-looking (and -sounding) Dante Hicks - the ending is not only strong for its interests within the film, it reminds us of the cultural relevance the first film had; what is out there for twenty-somethings that either couldn't or chose not to go down the bachelor's degree path? It's a good question, I think, and I'm glad Smith chooses to ask it - especially this time of year, even if the jokes that were smart twelve years ago (STAR WARS) are only a source of embarassment now (STAR WARS).
9. A SCANNER DARKLY (dir. Richard Linklater)
*** out of ****
Ah, A SCANNER DARKLY. Rarely has the convoluted nature of a film's title so accurately predicted the movie that follows it. Linklater's take on the Philip K. Dick short story makes for an excellent study of the art of adaptation, particularly as it treats the director's interpretation of Dick's dystopian view of law enforcement and its cultural concerns, but despite a handful of revelatory moments, the overall film here falls a bit flat (especially at the end). The strengths of the film that deserve fair credit lie mostly in the performances of several of the leads, most notably Robert Downey Jr., whose performance somehow slips around (or perhaps through?) a winking treatment of his own past with drug abuse to a much more moving and affective look at the strange reality of paranoia. Where this film works best is in its depiction of its titular "scanner's" home life, where he wastes time away with friends and sporadic doses of the mystery drug, "D." Linklater's decision to show the joys and pleasures of addiction in addition to the costs of drug use - most clearly expressed in a scene in which Keanu Reeve's scanner is forced to watch a friend skirt death from a monitoring station - work to question the viewer rather than lead him or her, resulting in an approach that allows us to buy SCANNER's closing dedication to "those who were punished far too severely for their crimes" much more than a more straightforward take on the original short story might have.
8. MIAMI VICE (dir. Michael Mann)
*** out of ****
I've got to say, this is a movie that disappointed me. You see, Michael Mann was the director I picked up off waivers in the Hollywood Fantasy Draft, and I've always relied heavily on him to deliver surprisingly good movies on what seem like cookie-cutter premeses. Curious about my success? See LAST OF THE MOHICANS, THE INSIDER or COLLATERAL. Every time, Mann delivers the goods, at least to the point of making the movie far better than it really has any right to be. But with MIAMI VICE, perhaps I wanted to much. I went in looking for another HEAT, and instead I got another MANHUNTER (the first in the Hannibal Lecter trilogy, if one wanted to know). And that isn't necessarily an all-bad thing - both films work in a specific way, but they aren't what you want, dammit - I can't put it a better way than that. MIAMI VICE has a goal: it wants to drop you deep undercover in as realistic and emotional a way as possible. But it chooses perhaps a too-real way to do that - the film opens without any credits, without a studio logo, without anything: you're in the middle of a club, looking through a crowd at Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrel, and you can't understand a word they're saying. And that doesn't change. The entire film is an exercise in picking up on a conversation, trying to slip by unnoticed, being undercover, but as clever as this strategy is, it's still a movie, for pete's sake. There's still a booming soundtrack, a series of quick-cuts to reveal the gunshot wound from the most cinematic angle possible. The movie has its moments - a shoot-out in a trailer park, a final gunfight - and there is no denying the aesthetic joy of watching Mann shoot a movie, but in the end, you need more than the circumstantial evidence this movie gives you, and although the effort is a uniformly interesting one, its just not enough to really secure the verdict I think Mann is looking for. (Take that, punny Gene Shalitt!)
7. WORLD TRADE CENTER (dir. Oliver Stone)
*** out of ****
Oh wow, I'm not sure what to say about this movie. It floored me. That I should get out of the way. I wept in the theater, I wept on my way home and if I think about the wrong scene as I'm typing here, I might break down over the keyboard. But I can also say firmly that Oliver Stone's film deserves only a small part of the credit for this reaction. As a film, WORLD TRADE CENTER manages a handful of impressive ideas, but it ties itself so closely to a format clearly designed to honor its subject without asking unsettling questions that it never really gives us any exceptional moments. It is raw, and perhaps most impressively, it uses our knowledge of the events of September 11, 2001 to establish seemingly-undirected foreshadowing; what I mean is, we don't get set-ups or visual cues to impending disaster - no "this thing's gonna collapse!" lines - but instead we are forced to watch the characters behave with absolute innocence, and that is, quite deliberately, the film's most horrible aspect. But once the Towers fall, we're left with a rescue story. That's it. We see our lost policemen in the dark, talking about each others' families, struggling to stay alive; we intercut these dark scenes with mourning wives and mothers, people waiting by telephones, rescue workers frantically searching for one thing or another they have to get right this second...but we know they will. It's not a question, there's no doubt - just as we knew the World Trade Center would get hit, that the buildings would collapse, that it was a deliberate act of international terrorism. The result is a film that teeters on individual relevance - Maggie Gylenhal's performance is a beautiful study of how to grieve for someone you don't know is dead, Nicholas Cage's reliance on his wife to stay awake and alive in the rubble is half-realized as more than a cliche - but in the end, WORLD TRADE CENTER settles for playing on the pre-existing relevance of its topic rather than its own artistic efforts. The result is a film that moves you deeply not by opening your eyes to something you haven't seen but to something you have - and have wanted to close them to ever since. Whether or not that's admirable is up for debate, but if the question is whether or not it works; for better or worse, it does.
6. PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (dir. Robert Altman)
*** out of ****
This is a simpler review. Altman's PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION is exactly what it seems to be at first glance: a charmingly simple film wrapped around the last night of a semi-fictitious radio show. What's so beautiful about this set-up comes from that appeal: the ease of Altman's script, written in part by Prairie Home mainstay, Garrison Keilor, both teases out the artifice of Keilor's radio show's "old-timey" affectation and imbues it with a much more sincere warmth. At the film's end, it's not so much that we want Tommy Lee Jones's "Axe Man" to be stopped from cancelling the show as it is that we hope he changes his mind; for all the silliness of the songs and jokes and biscuit advertisements Companion plays, its the show's community that wins our hearts - and we sincerely hope it will win his in the end, too. Of course, such a premise is right down the fairway for Altman, whose notoriety as an "ensemble director" is well known. I've wondered before (and I am wondering now) if this play on community that PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION focuses so much on is a wink to those of us in the audience who wonder if Altman is capable of doing anything else - maybe a show about an ensemble makes singular what his movies so often make plural, not unlike putting enough fish together leaves you, in the end, with a school - but then again, that man is aaawwfully crafty, and if nostalgia has taught me anything, it's that old men always have a trick (or a false set of dentures) in their pockets for any kids who spend too much time nosing about. To that extent, I'll be happy with what he has left us: a fine, sweet film about pretty downright nice people, mixed with juust enough metaphorical (and allegorical) whispering to keep your brain working on the drive home - and of course, if we're in the Midwest, that could be a long trip indeed.
THE "MID-YEAR" TOP TEN, #5 - #1 COMING SOON.
Alright Ladies and Gentlemen, it's that time again. August is over, we're into the last four months of the year, and now (at long last), the marketing-driven enigma that is Hollywood will start that slow-ebb building to a dam-burst of quality film releases that will push its way through limited releases from now until the true end of the movie year - the 2007 Oscars. So what, you say? So it's time to put together a modest Best Of - the greatest of all Lists - for the year thus far, of course. But aren't the best movies of each year held back until the Fall? For the most part, you know it! And doesn't that mean the pickings are slim? You bet! But every year, you can count on a handful of films - small indies, odd little studio experiments, and occassionally that rarest of rare species, the good summer blockbuster - to be found amidst the endless schlock horror flicks and THX-fueled action spectaculars (such an odd term, don't you agree?) of the first eight months of the year. So without further ado, here are my picks for the best ten flicks this year released between January 1, 2006 and the up-to-the-minute present. Interested?
10. CLERKS II (dir. Kevin Smith)
*** out of ****
Kevin Smith's return to the Quick Stop, made famous in 1994's slacker-comedy for the townie set, CLERKS, is a pretty pleasant one, especially for those with a healthy respect for Smith's small town Jersey-film universe. The jokes work a fair amount of the time, the raunchiness and audacity are both welcome and used in controlled doses, and most importantly, the storylines for our returning heroes - perpetual fall guy Dante Hicks and indulgent smart-ass Randal Graves - feel natural; it doesn't seem out of place for the two to still be working in service industry jobs - in fact, it feels more appropriate than the first film's "maybe-college" ending did. Although the plot itself has a few rough patches - most notably the absurd notion that Rosario Dawson would ever be interested in the very Jersey-looking (and -sounding) Dante Hicks - the ending is not only strong for its interests within the film, it reminds us of the cultural relevance the first film had; what is out there for twenty-somethings that either couldn't or chose not to go down the bachelor's degree path? It's a good question, I think, and I'm glad Smith chooses to ask it - especially this time of year, even if the jokes that were smart twelve years ago (STAR WARS) are only a source of embarassment now (STAR WARS).
9. A SCANNER DARKLY (dir. Richard Linklater)
*** out of ****
Ah, A SCANNER DARKLY. Rarely has the convoluted nature of a film's title so accurately predicted the movie that follows it. Linklater's take on the Philip K. Dick short story makes for an excellent study of the art of adaptation, particularly as it treats the director's interpretation of Dick's dystopian view of law enforcement and its cultural concerns, but despite a handful of revelatory moments, the overall film here falls a bit flat (especially at the end). The strengths of the film that deserve fair credit lie mostly in the performances of several of the leads, most notably Robert Downey Jr., whose performance somehow slips around (or perhaps through?) a winking treatment of his own past with drug abuse to a much more moving and affective look at the strange reality of paranoia. Where this film works best is in its depiction of its titular "scanner's" home life, where he wastes time away with friends and sporadic doses of the mystery drug, "D." Linklater's decision to show the joys and pleasures of addiction in addition to the costs of drug use - most clearly expressed in a scene in which Keanu Reeve's scanner is forced to watch a friend skirt death from a monitoring station - work to question the viewer rather than lead him or her, resulting in an approach that allows us to buy SCANNER's closing dedication to "those who were punished far too severely for their crimes" much more than a more straightforward take on the original short story might have.
8. MIAMI VICE (dir. Michael Mann)
*** out of ****
I've got to say, this is a movie that disappointed me. You see, Michael Mann was the director I picked up off waivers in the Hollywood Fantasy Draft, and I've always relied heavily on him to deliver surprisingly good movies on what seem like cookie-cutter premeses. Curious about my success? See LAST OF THE MOHICANS, THE INSIDER or COLLATERAL. Every time, Mann delivers the goods, at least to the point of making the movie far better than it really has any right to be. But with MIAMI VICE, perhaps I wanted to much. I went in looking for another HEAT, and instead I got another MANHUNTER (the first in the Hannibal Lecter trilogy, if one wanted to know). And that isn't necessarily an all-bad thing - both films work in a specific way, but they aren't what you want, dammit - I can't put it a better way than that. MIAMI VICE has a goal: it wants to drop you deep undercover in as realistic and emotional a way as possible. But it chooses perhaps a too-real way to do that - the film opens without any credits, without a studio logo, without anything: you're in the middle of a club, looking through a crowd at Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrel, and you can't understand a word they're saying. And that doesn't change. The entire film is an exercise in picking up on a conversation, trying to slip by unnoticed, being undercover, but as clever as this strategy is, it's still a movie, for pete's sake. There's still a booming soundtrack, a series of quick-cuts to reveal the gunshot wound from the most cinematic angle possible. The movie has its moments - a shoot-out in a trailer park, a final gunfight - and there is no denying the aesthetic joy of watching Mann shoot a movie, but in the end, you need more than the circumstantial evidence this movie gives you, and although the effort is a uniformly interesting one, its just not enough to really secure the verdict I think Mann is looking for. (Take that, punny Gene Shalitt!)
7. WORLD TRADE CENTER (dir. Oliver Stone)
*** out of ****
Oh wow, I'm not sure what to say about this movie. It floored me. That I should get out of the way. I wept in the theater, I wept on my way home and if I think about the wrong scene as I'm typing here, I might break down over the keyboard. But I can also say firmly that Oliver Stone's film deserves only a small part of the credit for this reaction. As a film, WORLD TRADE CENTER manages a handful of impressive ideas, but it ties itself so closely to a format clearly designed to honor its subject without asking unsettling questions that it never really gives us any exceptional moments. It is raw, and perhaps most impressively, it uses our knowledge of the events of September 11, 2001 to establish seemingly-undirected foreshadowing; what I mean is, we don't get set-ups or visual cues to impending disaster - no "this thing's gonna collapse!" lines - but instead we are forced to watch the characters behave with absolute innocence, and that is, quite deliberately, the film's most horrible aspect. But once the Towers fall, we're left with a rescue story. That's it. We see our lost policemen in the dark, talking about each others' families, struggling to stay alive; we intercut these dark scenes with mourning wives and mothers, people waiting by telephones, rescue workers frantically searching for one thing or another they have to get right this second...but we know they will. It's not a question, there's no doubt - just as we knew the World Trade Center would get hit, that the buildings would collapse, that it was a deliberate act of international terrorism. The result is a film that teeters on individual relevance - Maggie Gylenhal's performance is a beautiful study of how to grieve for someone you don't know is dead, Nicholas Cage's reliance on his wife to stay awake and alive in the rubble is half-realized as more than a cliche - but in the end, WORLD TRADE CENTER settles for playing on the pre-existing relevance of its topic rather than its own artistic efforts. The result is a film that moves you deeply not by opening your eyes to something you haven't seen but to something you have - and have wanted to close them to ever since. Whether or not that's admirable is up for debate, but if the question is whether or not it works; for better or worse, it does.
6. PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (dir. Robert Altman)
*** out of ****
This is a simpler review. Altman's PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION is exactly what it seems to be at first glance: a charmingly simple film wrapped around the last night of a semi-fictitious radio show. What's so beautiful about this set-up comes from that appeal: the ease of Altman's script, written in part by Prairie Home mainstay, Garrison Keilor, both teases out the artifice of Keilor's radio show's "old-timey" affectation and imbues it with a much more sincere warmth. At the film's end, it's not so much that we want Tommy Lee Jones's "Axe Man" to be stopped from cancelling the show as it is that we hope he changes his mind; for all the silliness of the songs and jokes and biscuit advertisements Companion plays, its the show's community that wins our hearts - and we sincerely hope it will win his in the end, too. Of course, such a premise is right down the fairway for Altman, whose notoriety as an "ensemble director" is well known. I've wondered before (and I am wondering now) if this play on community that PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION focuses so much on is a wink to those of us in the audience who wonder if Altman is capable of doing anything else - maybe a show about an ensemble makes singular what his movies so often make plural, not unlike putting enough fish together leaves you, in the end, with a school - but then again, that man is aaawwfully crafty, and if nostalgia has taught me anything, it's that old men always have a trick (or a false set of dentures) in their pockets for any kids who spend too much time nosing about. To that extent, I'll be happy with what he has left us: a fine, sweet film about pretty downright nice people, mixed with juust enough metaphorical (and allegorical) whispering to keep your brain working on the drive home - and of course, if we're in the Midwest, that could be a long trip indeed.
THE "MID-YEAR" TOP TEN, #5 - #1 COMING SOON.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
A Small Thing
BASEBALL.
When I was younger, I remember a man once saying to me, most likely in language much less poetic than my memory of it, that it was no worthwhile thing to play Little League baseball each summer. It was spring, maybe March or the beginning of April, and at eleven years old, I was preparing to wash out of the only sport I ever made much of a pass at. My friends were signing up for the local league and the man - an elder in my church and a Korean War veteran - answered my question about letting the list pass by me unsigned by saying, "It's a small thing to hit, a baseball."
I remember the oddity of that statement: was this a casual observation of my weakness at the game? A commiseration? A statement of resignation, or - perhaps best of all - a scruffy, old-man validation of my own (and perhaps his own) desire for lethargy? It seemed impossible, that an adult of the most statured positions would encourage me to not stick something out or give it the old college try - an anamoly of nature, somehow; a slip-up from a wry, if not ornery, old man too damn close to whatever it is old men are close to to care about the goings-on of a slow, awkward kid.
Still eight months from my twelfth birthday, I took what I thought to be his advice and stayed home for the season. I remember very clearly missing the games, even from my spot on the bench where I usually experienced them. It was something, being a part of that game, I have always understood that. But there were practices and drills and laps that were less missed, and dads and fear and failure. I thought of baseball so much in terms of hot, humid South Carolina afternoons and bees buzzing around the outfields I most often found myself standing so uselessly in. So, it was a trade I took then knowingly and willingly, with not so much a sense of regret as a sense of nostalgia - a hallmark of this particular game for as long as people have played and failed at it, I imagine. After all, it is a small thing to hit, a baseball.
But as I'm sitting here thinking about all this now, writing things down I didn't sit here intending to discuss, the Braves are winding up a game on the television in my office and I keep catching myself drifting off just into the sound of it. For once we're winning, I'm proud to observe, and convincingly: it's the bottom of the eighth and the home team is up 13 to 5, with both Jones boys going deep and this season's hero, Brian McCann, going 1 for 3 with an RBI. I feel good about it, I'm realizing, and not as I might about something I quietly root for, like discounts at the supermarket or the outcome of treasury elections, but in a way that puts a smile on my face even in a room where I know I'm alone. It moves me, baseball does, even at an age growing alarmingly far from the twelve I almost was the last time I turned down the opportunity to play it.
And more, it does this at a time and in a season that couldn't mean less. The Braves are a team I love, at times to an alarming degree. I anticipate the beginning of each season the way you wait for a check to come in the mail: with no patience and a thousand plans for how to spend it. I follow the camp journals and the scouting reports and the injury logs, I plan a handful of evenings when I might be able to make it to Atlanta, and most of all, I expect to win. For a long time, I've only known one kind of disappointment - that of losing thirteen of fourteen times in the playoffs - but it came in such rushing and violent moments of extremity that it almost tempered itself: there is no pain as sharp to a fan of at least this game as that of losing at the very end. Baseball embeds itself in me to such an extent each Spring that I forget each and every season that it is not a constant - and when it is ripped away from me in October, I feel, every time as if for the first time, that I am a fish who has swallowed a hook and been allowed to forget it entirely before a dozing fisherman sets it, now at a point so much deeper than I could have imagined it would go. But done enough times, this pain is more akin to a bandage pulled off in one rush - excruciatingly brief. However, this year I'm remembering something I've been allowed to forget for a long, long time: what its like to know the end is near from almost the beginning. Baseball this season has been five months of living with a dying relative for me; hope and the abandonment of hope, hope and the abandonment of hope. I speak hyperbolically, but only in an effort to put an image up to something that seems irreversibly internalized - something in me is tied to basball not as a hobby or interest or even a love, but as an expression. I think I see this small, strange game as an investment at its most basic level, and maybe what draws me (so closely) to it is knowing that the game - with its rhythm and skill and play - is a knowable, perservering thing. Baseball is what another old man once said it was: above all, a game we can all imagine playing. The simple mechanics of it - hitting, catching, fielding with a glove - these are things we see and understand in their essence immediately. There are no playbooks for it, no apparent call for extreme athleticism, yet almost no other activity produces the same moments of elation and impossibility and amazement that baseball does: a diving catch, a sweeping curveball, the mightiest of deep-fly home runs...and all from something I feel so interminably close to; a myth I drink down readily in exchange for the belief that I also dove once, I also hit a small, round ball well with a bat and could do it still. It is at once distant and close, and I believe we let it blur these lines not because it elevates us as individuals but because it brings the possibility of the incredible so close.
Yet at least for me, this wonder for baseball as a game is irreversibly tied to the same Braves club that just disappeared into the tunnel leading to their lockers across the room from me - a team that has devastated me for five long months with losses and failures and, more than either of those and at once the same as them, warned me from the very beginning that their term here, at least this season, would be a painfully short one.
But here I am, watching again, even hoping again, at this late hour. But I'm smiling agian, too, over the smallest of things: a hit with two outs from a pitcher, a home run in the seventh inning from a player I like in a game decided since the third. Rounding the bases, Andruw Jones stumbled over the toe of his own shoe and fell to a knee, getting back up only to laugh his way home. As he headed back into the dugout, the rest of the team waited at the steps before attacking him with pats on the shoulder and slaps to the helmet, laughing and warning him about the ledge between the field and their seats. It was a small and ridiculous scene, but I laughed out loud with them, sharing, I imagined, in that small, unforeseen moment in a game and a week and a season that seems to already be so definitively settled. It doesn't make the best anecdote, but it connects somehow to that memory of me as an eleven year old. Looking back, I have no regrets about not finishing things out as a baseball player; frankly, I was pretty bad at it, and despite the game's appearances, it's not something anybody can do. It's an awfully thin bat that you've got to hit with, and if you can't handle that part of the game, there's really not much for you - even at eleven. But I do miss being in the dugout when a teammate comes back with a sheepish grin, knowing despite the score that he's going to get it from everybody inside. Games seem so entirely filled with these moments, points in the large gaps in action that are more baseball than the hit and the pitch, I think. It's those things I miss most from being there, but those are also the moments baseball, of all games, most lets us share in from the stands. It isn't entirely a myth, that thought that any of us could be there on the field in starched white uniforms. Like you might expect, there is that sliver of truth still in it, somewhere in between the grounders and pop-outs and double plays. Somewhere in there, a game is being played that doesn't just promise another season, it gives us moments that seem, impossibly, to succeed even in the midst of losing. That was by far the area of the game I was most adept at, at eleven and ever since.
But it's an awfully small thing to hit a baseball.
When I was younger, I remember a man once saying to me, most likely in language much less poetic than my memory of it, that it was no worthwhile thing to play Little League baseball each summer. It was spring, maybe March or the beginning of April, and at eleven years old, I was preparing to wash out of the only sport I ever made much of a pass at. My friends were signing up for the local league and the man - an elder in my church and a Korean War veteran - answered my question about letting the list pass by me unsigned by saying, "It's a small thing to hit, a baseball."
I remember the oddity of that statement: was this a casual observation of my weakness at the game? A commiseration? A statement of resignation, or - perhaps best of all - a scruffy, old-man validation of my own (and perhaps his own) desire for lethargy? It seemed impossible, that an adult of the most statured positions would encourage me to not stick something out or give it the old college try - an anamoly of nature, somehow; a slip-up from a wry, if not ornery, old man too damn close to whatever it is old men are close to to care about the goings-on of a slow, awkward kid.
Still eight months from my twelfth birthday, I took what I thought to be his advice and stayed home for the season. I remember very clearly missing the games, even from my spot on the bench where I usually experienced them. It was something, being a part of that game, I have always understood that. But there were practices and drills and laps that were less missed, and dads and fear and failure. I thought of baseball so much in terms of hot, humid South Carolina afternoons and bees buzzing around the outfields I most often found myself standing so uselessly in. So, it was a trade I took then knowingly and willingly, with not so much a sense of regret as a sense of nostalgia - a hallmark of this particular game for as long as people have played and failed at it, I imagine. After all, it is a small thing to hit, a baseball.
But as I'm sitting here thinking about all this now, writing things down I didn't sit here intending to discuss, the Braves are winding up a game on the television in my office and I keep catching myself drifting off just into the sound of it. For once we're winning, I'm proud to observe, and convincingly: it's the bottom of the eighth and the home team is up 13 to 5, with both Jones boys going deep and this season's hero, Brian McCann, going 1 for 3 with an RBI. I feel good about it, I'm realizing, and not as I might about something I quietly root for, like discounts at the supermarket or the outcome of treasury elections, but in a way that puts a smile on my face even in a room where I know I'm alone. It moves me, baseball does, even at an age growing alarmingly far from the twelve I almost was the last time I turned down the opportunity to play it.
And more, it does this at a time and in a season that couldn't mean less. The Braves are a team I love, at times to an alarming degree. I anticipate the beginning of each season the way you wait for a check to come in the mail: with no patience and a thousand plans for how to spend it. I follow the camp journals and the scouting reports and the injury logs, I plan a handful of evenings when I might be able to make it to Atlanta, and most of all, I expect to win. For a long time, I've only known one kind of disappointment - that of losing thirteen of fourteen times in the playoffs - but it came in such rushing and violent moments of extremity that it almost tempered itself: there is no pain as sharp to a fan of at least this game as that of losing at the very end. Baseball embeds itself in me to such an extent each Spring that I forget each and every season that it is not a constant - and when it is ripped away from me in October, I feel, every time as if for the first time, that I am a fish who has swallowed a hook and been allowed to forget it entirely before a dozing fisherman sets it, now at a point so much deeper than I could have imagined it would go. But done enough times, this pain is more akin to a bandage pulled off in one rush - excruciatingly brief. However, this year I'm remembering something I've been allowed to forget for a long, long time: what its like to know the end is near from almost the beginning. Baseball this season has been five months of living with a dying relative for me; hope and the abandonment of hope, hope and the abandonment of hope. I speak hyperbolically, but only in an effort to put an image up to something that seems irreversibly internalized - something in me is tied to basball not as a hobby or interest or even a love, but as an expression. I think I see this small, strange game as an investment at its most basic level, and maybe what draws me (so closely) to it is knowing that the game - with its rhythm and skill and play - is a knowable, perservering thing. Baseball is what another old man once said it was: above all, a game we can all imagine playing. The simple mechanics of it - hitting, catching, fielding with a glove - these are things we see and understand in their essence immediately. There are no playbooks for it, no apparent call for extreme athleticism, yet almost no other activity produces the same moments of elation and impossibility and amazement that baseball does: a diving catch, a sweeping curveball, the mightiest of deep-fly home runs...and all from something I feel so interminably close to; a myth I drink down readily in exchange for the belief that I also dove once, I also hit a small, round ball well with a bat and could do it still. It is at once distant and close, and I believe we let it blur these lines not because it elevates us as individuals but because it brings the possibility of the incredible so close.
Yet at least for me, this wonder for baseball as a game is irreversibly tied to the same Braves club that just disappeared into the tunnel leading to their lockers across the room from me - a team that has devastated me for five long months with losses and failures and, more than either of those and at once the same as them, warned me from the very beginning that their term here, at least this season, would be a painfully short one.
But here I am, watching again, even hoping again, at this late hour. But I'm smiling agian, too, over the smallest of things: a hit with two outs from a pitcher, a home run in the seventh inning from a player I like in a game decided since the third. Rounding the bases, Andruw Jones stumbled over the toe of his own shoe and fell to a knee, getting back up only to laugh his way home. As he headed back into the dugout, the rest of the team waited at the steps before attacking him with pats on the shoulder and slaps to the helmet, laughing and warning him about the ledge between the field and their seats. It was a small and ridiculous scene, but I laughed out loud with them, sharing, I imagined, in that small, unforeseen moment in a game and a week and a season that seems to already be so definitively settled. It doesn't make the best anecdote, but it connects somehow to that memory of me as an eleven year old. Looking back, I have no regrets about not finishing things out as a baseball player; frankly, I was pretty bad at it, and despite the game's appearances, it's not something anybody can do. It's an awfully thin bat that you've got to hit with, and if you can't handle that part of the game, there's really not much for you - even at eleven. But I do miss being in the dugout when a teammate comes back with a sheepish grin, knowing despite the score that he's going to get it from everybody inside. Games seem so entirely filled with these moments, points in the large gaps in action that are more baseball than the hit and the pitch, I think. It's those things I miss most from being there, but those are also the moments baseball, of all games, most lets us share in from the stands. It isn't entirely a myth, that thought that any of us could be there on the field in starched white uniforms. Like you might expect, there is that sliver of truth still in it, somewhere in between the grounders and pop-outs and double plays. Somewhere in there, a game is being played that doesn't just promise another season, it gives us moments that seem, impossibly, to succeed even in the midst of losing. That was by far the area of the game I was most adept at, at eleven and ever since.
But it's an awfully small thing to hit a baseball.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Get Loneliest
MUSIC.
Today is August 22. Do you hear it? That last gasp of summer? That long exhale, like a friend looking over your shoulder in the middle of a conversation, telling you to make no mistake: there is something sneaking up behind you and you cannot get out of its way. For myself and at least one other friend reading this, that something coming is Friday's first wave of freshmen at South Carolina. I can't say I don't want to see them. And I can't say I do, either.
But friends, there's hope. Of a sort. This August 22 is not just the last Tuesday of your summer, it is also the release date for the newest album from any reasonable human being's favorite twosome, The Mountain Goats. For those unfamiliar with John Darnielle and Peter Hughes's indie-acoustic stylings, shame on you; get out of here. Nobody wants your kind loitering about. For those who have, I bring good tidings: thanks to the magic (yes, magic!) of illegal music downloading and client-to-client engines, I have heard and am now listening to this latest effort, entitled Get Lonely by our friendly songsmiths. It's on its third or fourth cycle, and I feel adequately prepared to say: good news - its nice. I would say more - perhaps throw a little zip into it - but its the damndest thing: I'm sorta down. This album delivers on its premise, gathering together under a fairly vague banner an emphatically serene (?) collection of tracks in keeping with the "slow stuff" of the Mountain Goats' most recent offerings. "Maybe Sprout Wings" and "Wild Sage" pick up on the winter-parking-lot motif of The Sunset Tree's closer, "Pale Green Things," kickers like "If You See Light" and "Cobra Tatoo" favor many of the offset tributes to Darnielle's friends of various eras that populated 2002's We Shall All Be Healed, namely "Linda Blair is Innocent" and "Mole," and the album's handful of light pop-infused tracks like the first single "Woke Up New" and "If You See Light" crackle in the rhythm of the album the way a song like "Peacocks" did on earlier albums: they become striking and beautiful mostly because they are such a departure from where the album seems to be taking you. As in most of the more reflective tracks from TMG's last three albums produced in part by John Vanderslice, Darnielle reverts back to a fairly simple "man with an acoustic guitar" model with light accents of electric guitars, brushed drums and a clean, harmonic bass. Pianos also make an appearance on several tracks and serve their purpose nicely, breaking up the rhythm of the album and providing a different tool for J.D.'s melancholy.
And of that there is plenty. Again, this album is difficult to discuss or review (if that is what this is); its tone is exactly what its title sets out to be, and it achieves this remarkably well, with diverse and varied lyrics, all of which find a way to touch that nerve Darnielle seems to have perhaps contemporary music's greatest link to: that small buzzing inside of us that sees children's love through the lost eyes of adults. There are mornings alone, walks in the dark, cold city streets, puritanical misjudgments; moments of frustrated release and bitter restraint and all of it timed and tuned to an entirely believable and authentic, well, thrust that pushes what should be a cumbersome album forward. The result is exactly what you want it to be: a slow processional of an album that somehow avoids the temptation to wander, instead moving evenly through the frozen scenes of a disparate and fairly crushing loneliness.
Although criticism of Get Lonely has to, thanks to that awfully conspicuous title, address this work as a unified whole (lets not say 'concept album,' okay?), the individual tracks here have been rightly described as "shuffle-able." You've got a lot of strong songs here, particularly the downright painful "Woke Up New," "Wild Sage," "Half Dead," "Moon Over Goldsboro," and my favorite of the bunch so far, "New Monster Avenue," which allows an almost-dissonant bass rumble to build as Darnielle waits for "neighbors with torches" to take him away; the song's play with both persecuted and persecutor is incredibly sharp, reminding us perhaps most deliberately of the self-aware nature of loneliness (as opposed to that word that will no doubt find its way into many a review: depression). Also exceptional is the album's briefest and most instrumentally dynamic track "If You See Light," which begins with horns before a strikingly efficient slap-bass line drives what becomes the back half of the album's answer to "New Monster Avenue," reminding us of the previous song's - and the album's - immediacy:
When the villagers come to my door
I will hide underneath the table in the dining room with my
Wings drawn up to my chest
That sense of almost-allegorical layering with Darnielle's lyrics is perhaps the album's most significant step forward for The Mountain Goats; in keeping with the emotional purge that was The Sunset Tree, Get Lonely is alive with both a keen and decidedly un-ironic emotional sincerity and a renewed grip on metaphorical expansion that seemed to cross into new territory on the previous album, particularly in songs like "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?" and "Up the Wolves." This escalation of Darnielle's typically incidental and isolated (although always astute and moving) lyrics continues here, suggesting he is not done growing yet; there will be much more to Get Lonely to in the future, I suspect, and plenty to celebrate as well. In a line that Darnielle shouldn't be so modest about from "Cobra Tatoo," he sings "God did not need Abraham / He could raise children from stone." Is this a reminder that Get Lonely is just that - an exercise for an extremely talented group in putting together "downer" songs in a music environment clamoring for more and more energy right now? Is Darnielle trying to tell us that his own output shouldn't be pigeonholed but celebrated for its dedication to its titular topic? After four listens now, I can't honestly say. But its a damn good lyric. And at least when it comes to those, on Get Lonely, there's plenty of good company to go around.
Today is August 22. Do you hear it? That last gasp of summer? That long exhale, like a friend looking over your shoulder in the middle of a conversation, telling you to make no mistake: there is something sneaking up behind you and you cannot get out of its way. For myself and at least one other friend reading this, that something coming is Friday's first wave of freshmen at South Carolina. I can't say I don't want to see them. And I can't say I do, either.
But friends, there's hope. Of a sort. This August 22 is not just the last Tuesday of your summer, it is also the release date for the newest album from any reasonable human being's favorite twosome, The Mountain Goats. For those unfamiliar with John Darnielle and Peter Hughes's indie-acoustic stylings, shame on you; get out of here. Nobody wants your kind loitering about. For those who have, I bring good tidings: thanks to the magic (yes, magic!) of illegal music downloading and client-to-client engines, I have heard and am now listening to this latest effort, entitled Get Lonely by our friendly songsmiths. It's on its third or fourth cycle, and I feel adequately prepared to say: good news - its nice. I would say more - perhaps throw a little zip into it - but its the damndest thing: I'm sorta down. This album delivers on its premise, gathering together under a fairly vague banner an emphatically serene (?) collection of tracks in keeping with the "slow stuff" of the Mountain Goats' most recent offerings. "Maybe Sprout Wings" and "Wild Sage" pick up on the winter-parking-lot motif of The Sunset Tree's closer, "Pale Green Things," kickers like "If You See Light" and "Cobra Tatoo" favor many of the offset tributes to Darnielle's friends of various eras that populated 2002's We Shall All Be Healed, namely "Linda Blair is Innocent" and "Mole," and the album's handful of light pop-infused tracks like the first single "Woke Up New" and "If You See Light" crackle in the rhythm of the album the way a song like "Peacocks" did on earlier albums: they become striking and beautiful mostly because they are such a departure from where the album seems to be taking you. As in most of the more reflective tracks from TMG's last three albums produced in part by John Vanderslice, Darnielle reverts back to a fairly simple "man with an acoustic guitar" model with light accents of electric guitars, brushed drums and a clean, harmonic bass. Pianos also make an appearance on several tracks and serve their purpose nicely, breaking up the rhythm of the album and providing a different tool for J.D.'s melancholy.
And of that there is plenty. Again, this album is difficult to discuss or review (if that is what this is); its tone is exactly what its title sets out to be, and it achieves this remarkably well, with diverse and varied lyrics, all of which find a way to touch that nerve Darnielle seems to have perhaps contemporary music's greatest link to: that small buzzing inside of us that sees children's love through the lost eyes of adults. There are mornings alone, walks in the dark, cold city streets, puritanical misjudgments; moments of frustrated release and bitter restraint and all of it timed and tuned to an entirely believable and authentic, well, thrust that pushes what should be a cumbersome album forward. The result is exactly what you want it to be: a slow processional of an album that somehow avoids the temptation to wander, instead moving evenly through the frozen scenes of a disparate and fairly crushing loneliness.
Although criticism of Get Lonely has to, thanks to that awfully conspicuous title, address this work as a unified whole (lets not say 'concept album,' okay?), the individual tracks here have been rightly described as "shuffle-able." You've got a lot of strong songs here, particularly the downright painful "Woke Up New," "Wild Sage," "Half Dead," "Moon Over Goldsboro," and my favorite of the bunch so far, "New Monster Avenue," which allows an almost-dissonant bass rumble to build as Darnielle waits for "neighbors with torches" to take him away; the song's play with both persecuted and persecutor is incredibly sharp, reminding us perhaps most deliberately of the self-aware nature of loneliness (as opposed to that word that will no doubt find its way into many a review: depression). Also exceptional is the album's briefest and most instrumentally dynamic track "If You See Light," which begins with horns before a strikingly efficient slap-bass line drives what becomes the back half of the album's answer to "New Monster Avenue," reminding us of the previous song's - and the album's - immediacy:
When the villagers come to my door
I will hide underneath the table in the dining room with my
Wings drawn up to my chest
That sense of almost-allegorical layering with Darnielle's lyrics is perhaps the album's most significant step forward for The Mountain Goats; in keeping with the emotional purge that was The Sunset Tree, Get Lonely is alive with both a keen and decidedly un-ironic emotional sincerity and a renewed grip on metaphorical expansion that seemed to cross into new territory on the previous album, particularly in songs like "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?" and "Up the Wolves." This escalation of Darnielle's typically incidental and isolated (although always astute and moving) lyrics continues here, suggesting he is not done growing yet; there will be much more to Get Lonely to in the future, I suspect, and plenty to celebrate as well. In a line that Darnielle shouldn't be so modest about from "Cobra Tatoo," he sings "God did not need Abraham / He could raise children from stone." Is this a reminder that Get Lonely is just that - an exercise for an extremely talented group in putting together "downer" songs in a music environment clamoring for more and more energy right now? Is Darnielle trying to tell us that his own output shouldn't be pigeonholed but celebrated for its dedication to its titular topic? After four listens now, I can't honestly say. But its a damn good lyric. And at least when it comes to those, on Get Lonely, there's plenty of good company to go around.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
A (Second) Shot at This...
MOVIES.
I'm posting, for the first time, my list of the top 100 films ever released. To be brief, my intent in putting this up in this forum is twofold: first, I would like to open a discussion about film on a larger scale on this blog - I welcome any and all comments about anything this post brings up - your thoughts, agreements, disagreements, suggestions, even your thoughts on lists in the larger sense, if that's what strikes you. Second, I hope to use the feedback from my friends and others to improve my own posting - in short, I want to make this the best list I can.
So, here goes: A top 100 films, selected and ranked on grounds of artistic, cultural and creative merit. Although in large part unavoidable, my attempt in making this list was to ignore either contemporary relevance or temporal considerations. In other words, I believe David Lean's 1956 version of "Great Expectations" is better than versions both before and after its release not because it broke any technical ground, but because I believe it is a more focused and emotionally satisfying creative work than any other rendition. Similarly, I leave "Birth of a Nation" off this list not because it is racially offensive, but because, frankly, I believe there have been 100 movies better than it made in the last 100 years or so.
On with the show:
Honorable Mention
I'm posting, for the first time, my list of the top 100 films ever released. To be brief, my intent in putting this up in this forum is twofold: first, I would like to open a discussion about film on a larger scale on this blog - I welcome any and all comments about anything this post brings up - your thoughts, agreements, disagreements, suggestions, even your thoughts on lists in the larger sense, if that's what strikes you. Second, I hope to use the feedback from my friends and others to improve my own posting - in short, I want to make this the best list I can.
So, here goes: A top 100 films, selected and ranked on grounds of artistic, cultural and creative merit. Although in large part unavoidable, my attempt in making this list was to ignore either contemporary relevance or temporal considerations. In other words, I believe David Lean's 1956 version of "Great Expectations" is better than versions both before and after its release not because it broke any technical ground, but because I believe it is a more focused and emotionally satisfying creative work than any other rendition. Similarly, I leave "Birth of a Nation" off this list not because it is racially offensive, but because, frankly, I believe there have been 100 movies better than it made in the last 100 years or so.
On with the show:
Another Top 100 List
*draft 2 - major changes include additions of "Blade Runner" (1982) and "Cool Hand Luke" (1967), expansion of honorable mentions to 25 entries*
- Citizen Kane (1941)
- The Godfather (1972)
- Schindler’s List (1994)
- The Godfather, Part II (1974)
- The Searchers (1956)
- Seven Samurai (1954)
- La Dolce Vita (1959)
- The Graduate (1967)
- Psycho (1960)
- The Bicycle Thief (1949)
- On the Waterfront (1954)
- Gone With the Wind (1939)
- The Seventh Seal (1957)
- The Maltese Falcon (1941)
- Rashomon (1950)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
- The Third Man (1949)
- The Great Dictator (1940)
- Raiders of the Lost
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
- Annie Hall (1977)
- Vertigo (1958)
- It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
- Sherlock Jr. (1924)
- Raging Bull (1980)
- Jaws (1975)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
- Ran (1985)
- High Noon (1952)
- Sunset Blvd. (1950)
- It Happened One Night (1934)
- Metropolis (1926)
- Dr. Strangelove (1964)
- Star Wars (1977)
- To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
- Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
- Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
- The
- Taxi Driver (1976)
- Duck Soup (1933)
- Easy Rider (1969)
- Rear Window (1954)
- Bonnie and
- Days of Heaven (1978)
- Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind (1977)
- Apocalypse Now (1979)
- All About Eve (1950)
- Network (1976)
- 8 ½ (1963)
- The Gold Rush (1925)
- Paths of Glory (1957)
- The Lord of the Rings (2003)
- Midnight Cowboy (1969)
- Touch of Evil (1958)
- Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
- The Wizard of Oz (1939)
- The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
- A Clockwork
- All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
- The Lost Weekend (1945)
- Strangers on a Train (1951)
- The Elephant Man (1980)
- Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (1969)
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
- Blade Runner (1982)
- Double Indemnity (1944)
- Nosferatu (1922)
- Great Expectations (1956)
- The Sting (1973)
- Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
- King Kong (1933)
- The Battleship Potemkin (1925)
- The Quiet Man (1952)
- Notorious (1946)
- Life is Beautiful (1999)
- A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)
- Patton (1970)
- Doctor Zhivago (1965)
- The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
- E.T. – the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
- Kill Bill (2003)
- Miller’s Crossing (1990)
- Cool Hand Luke (1967)
- La Strada (1954)
- The Night of the Hunter (1955)
- The Conversation (1974)
- The Man Who Shot
- Unforgiven (1992)
- The Big Sleep (1946)
- Rebel Without A Cause (1955)
- The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Honorable Mention
- The Deer Hunter (1976)
- Goodfellas (1990)
- The 400 Blows (1959)
- McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
- M (1931)
- The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
- Some Like It Hot (1959)
- The Last Picture Show (1971)
- The Right Stuff (1983)
- Modern Times (1936)
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
- Mr. Smith Goes to
- Requiem for a Dream (2000)
- The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
- Beauty and the Beast (1991)
- Blow-Up (1966)
- The Wild Bunch (1969)
- The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
- North By Northwest (1959)
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
- Traffic (2000)
- Platoon (1986)
- This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Monday, August 14, 2006
A Call to All Listmakers
MOVIES.
The day has finally come:
I can no longer distract myself from making a Top 100 Movies list. Sure, it's cliche and, to be blunt, a set up for failure - but dammit, I need to do it. I've thought about it, pondered about it, wished about it, dreamed about it for too long! So, over the coming week, I'm putting it together.
But there is a problem. When you've seen roughly a thousand movies in your life, it can be hard to remember the 'great ones' - especially when the pressure is on. So what I'd like to do is this: I would like to ask that anyone reading this post - anyone at all - respond with a list of their own ten personal favorite movies. Top ten (10) lists from everyone. It doesn't have to be detailed or thought out or even "artistic"; hell, it doesn't even have to be ten (10). But please, post 'em up. It'll be fun. And, maybe more importantly, fun to argue.
So that's it: I'm begging. To get us started, here's mine (as of now, anyway):
1) Citizen Kane
2) The Godfather
3) Schindler's List
4) Casablanca
5) Lawrence of Arabia
6) The Godfather, Part II
7) The Searchers
8) Seven Samurai
9) La Dolce Vita
10) The Graduate
Your turn.
The day has finally come:
I can no longer distract myself from making a Top 100 Movies list. Sure, it's cliche and, to be blunt, a set up for failure - but dammit, I need to do it. I've thought about it, pondered about it, wished about it, dreamed about it for too long! So, over the coming week, I'm putting it together.
But there is a problem. When you've seen roughly a thousand movies in your life, it can be hard to remember the 'great ones' - especially when the pressure is on. So what I'd like to do is this: I would like to ask that anyone reading this post - anyone at all - respond with a list of their own ten personal favorite movies. Top ten (10) lists from everyone. It doesn't have to be detailed or thought out or even "artistic"; hell, it doesn't even have to be ten (10). But please, post 'em up. It'll be fun. And, maybe more importantly, fun to argue.
So that's it: I'm begging. To get us started, here's mine (as of now, anyway):
1) Citizen Kane
2) The Godfather
3) Schindler's List
4) Casablanca
5) Lawrence of Arabia
6) The Godfather, Part II
7) The Searchers
8) Seven Samurai
9) La Dolce Vita
10) The Graduate
Your turn.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Hall Yes?
BASEBALL.
A question for the forum: what do we do with Shoeless Joe? I ask because last night, in celebration of my mother's birthday, my family and I visited downtown Greenville, SC in order to tour both the new minor league baseball stadium (designed as a dimension-replica of Fenway Park, presumably in order to 'prep' the members of their single-A club, the Greenville Drive) and the beautifully renovated downtown "Falls Park." As we worked our way down Main Street, I was surprised by a small courtyard that had been set up on the far West End of town dedicated to none other than Joe Jackson. Now, as you may or may not know, Greenville was the birthplace and longtime home of "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, an exceptional Major Leaguer from 1909 until his expulsion from baseball in 1920 as part of the Chicago "Black Sox" team accused of throwing the 1919 World Series. In his eleven years in the Major Leagues, Jackson batted over .350 nine times, won the league batting title twice and was voted MVP of the 1917 World Series, and as a large plaque informed me last night, the courtyard and statue on Main Street stand on the ground where his childhood home had been located before being moved last year to the outfield of West End Park - the pseudo-Fenway mentioned earlier. As part of the Joe-mania of the surrounding area, a large shop window has been decorated with a collection of Jackson memorobilia underneath a slogan reading "HALL YES! INDUCT SHOELESS JOE!" The window also contains various stat sheets from Jackson's career, a retrospective of his "flawless" play in the 1919 Series, and a copy of the U.S. Court report declaring Joe and 7 of his teammates "innocent on all counts of conspiracy" that ended the players' criminal trial in 1920. A petition is also posted on the store's window, requesting signatures from any citizens "wishing to see Joseph Jackson inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame."
And as I took all this in last night, reading about Jackson's life and career, witnessing a town celebrating its hero, I couldn't help but hesitate for a moment before I put my name down on that piece of paper - and now, Sunday afternoon, I still can't make up my mind about Shoeless Joe. What is there to say about a cheater? Was he one? These seem like particularly prescient questions for baseball fans, don't they? And what do we make of a career cut short in any fashion, especially one so incredibly controversial? Can the city of Greenville celebrate someone like Joe? And, as that window made so painfully clear, can what made Jackson so undeniably great in his eleven years of play ever be recognized without working through what has made him so infamous in all the time since?
I'm writing this post because I'm not sure - and I really want to love the guy. After all, I'm from a town only twenty minutes away - he's practically my hero, too. But should he be? And what do we do for him (and the list of other offenders, which seems to grow by the year)? Can we recognize merit alone?
These seem like questions worth asking, I think, so there they are. Your thoughts?
A question for the forum: what do we do with Shoeless Joe? I ask because last night, in celebration of my mother's birthday, my family and I visited downtown Greenville, SC in order to tour both the new minor league baseball stadium (designed as a dimension-replica of Fenway Park, presumably in order to 'prep' the members of their single-A club, the Greenville Drive) and the beautifully renovated downtown "Falls Park." As we worked our way down Main Street, I was surprised by a small courtyard that had been set up on the far West End of town dedicated to none other than Joe Jackson. Now, as you may or may not know, Greenville was the birthplace and longtime home of "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, an exceptional Major Leaguer from 1909 until his expulsion from baseball in 1920 as part of the Chicago "Black Sox" team accused of throwing the 1919 World Series. In his eleven years in the Major Leagues, Jackson batted over .350 nine times, won the league batting title twice and was voted MVP of the 1917 World Series, and as a large plaque informed me last night, the courtyard and statue on Main Street stand on the ground where his childhood home had been located before being moved last year to the outfield of West End Park - the pseudo-Fenway mentioned earlier. As part of the Joe-mania of the surrounding area, a large shop window has been decorated with a collection of Jackson memorobilia underneath a slogan reading "HALL YES! INDUCT SHOELESS JOE!" The window also contains various stat sheets from Jackson's career, a retrospective of his "flawless" play in the 1919 Series, and a copy of the U.S. Court report declaring Joe and 7 of his teammates "innocent on all counts of conspiracy" that ended the players' criminal trial in 1920. A petition is also posted on the store's window, requesting signatures from any citizens "wishing to see Joseph Jackson inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame."
And as I took all this in last night, reading about Jackson's life and career, witnessing a town celebrating its hero, I couldn't help but hesitate for a moment before I put my name down on that piece of paper - and now, Sunday afternoon, I still can't make up my mind about Shoeless Joe. What is there to say about a cheater? Was he one? These seem like particularly prescient questions for baseball fans, don't they? And what do we make of a career cut short in any fashion, especially one so incredibly controversial? Can the city of Greenville celebrate someone like Joe? And, as that window made so painfully clear, can what made Jackson so undeniably great in his eleven years of play ever be recognized without working through what has made him so infamous in all the time since?
I'm writing this post because I'm not sure - and I really want to love the guy. After all, I'm from a town only twenty minutes away - he's practically my hero, too. But should he be? And what do we do for him (and the list of other offenders, which seems to grow by the year)? Can we recognize merit alone?
These seem like questions worth asking, I think, so there they are. Your thoughts?
Friday, August 11, 2006
Modus Operandi
This blog is intended to serve as a forum for comments and discussion on a variety of topics, including but not limited to: baseball; music, namely of indie, folk, rock and post- stratification; movies, namely movies of exceptional artistic, cultural or social merit; philosophy, namely broad discussion of language as both communicatory means and cultural artifact; alchemy, in particular the pursuit of altering devalued earth elements into the fetishized ore forms of a present consumerist state; archery, as both reclaimed tool and leisure-class indulgence; and the all-important detachment of signifier to signified.
Blogging, for example.
Blogging, for example.
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