Olde Tyme Atom Smashing

Best Songs of 2011

2012-01-20T20:36:00.000-05:00

[claps hands together] Okay, let's talk about the year in music. The albums have been listened to, the articles have been read, the annual "Best Of" lists have been scoured, and my personal mixtape has been made: it's time to think about how the most interesting and even perplexing music of 2011 addresses--or, as was often the case this year, argues--with where music has been and where we think music might be going.

Before we get to the point of this article--a rundown of my picks for the best songs of the year--I want to take just a second to offer some thoughts on the year as a whole, as well as the processes by which these songs were selected:

First, the year in review. For me, 2011 was one of the most jarringly different years in music since I started paying closer attention to annual trends in 2004. The move towards programmed synths, pop-ambience, and dance this year hit me as a total surprise, and as the year progressed, I found the indie-mainstream's (can that be a thing?) total embrace of chillwave in particular and reverb in general to be perplexing. Of course, the solidification of chillwave as "a thing" this year also points to what made this year so fascinating, namely: it's not really new. The sounds embraced in 2011 by bands like Cults, Lykke Li, Foster the People, and Youth Lagoon all have immediate predecessors in Animal Collective, Deerhunter/Atlas Sound, Panda Bear, etc., all of whom have been making records with similar sounds (meaning similar uses of drone in pop song structures, reliance on spectral vocals and heavy reverb, common moves away from traditional rock song structures and arrangements) for half a decade. In short, there's not that much new in 2011's new sounds. And yet, the year felt not just different, but almost revolutionary. Why?

I think the answer is in the diversity of ways the chillwave and dance movements of the past 5 or 6 years are now impacting the development of newer bands. Even more precisely, I think the reason 2011 felt different is because 2011 was the first year in almost 2 decades that didn't bear the distinctive imprint of the alternative music movement. For 20 years, musicians have been responding continuously--in both direct and indirect ways--to the revival of DIY, 3-chord, distorted rock-and-roll...but 20 years after Nevermind, we're running out of 30-somethings who are still willing to live with those old ghosts. What we're hearing in 2011 is a new wave of kids, really, who seem utterly intoxicated by the scope of what rock-and-roll has been, and what we're seeing now is not a shift in allegiances, but a multiplication of inspirational sources: blues (Black Keys), folk (Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, et. al.), country, (Wye Oak), R&B (Beirut), dance (The Weeknd), electronica (Cut Copy), teen-pop (Cults), 60s garage (Secret Cities), flat-out Bruce Springsteen impersonations (The War on Drugs). In 2011, the game changed: it ceased to be about taking indie/alternative rock approaches to your parents' record collections--which is to say, making something from back then sound like something from more recently back then--and became about incorporating the sounds of those record collections into something that sounds like now. Of course, "now" has its keystones (the most important of which is, apparently, REVERB!), but there's still a growing sense that the music of the 2010s wants to be a thing unto itself. And that's something we haven't really seen since, well...1991.

As for how I arrived at the "mixtape" song-list below: this year, I tried to put together songs that sounded less like what I love about rock music and more like what 2011 seems to love. I avoided a lot of my favorite artists, and even among artists I do love (Bon Iver, Dave Bazan, Efrim Manuel Menuck), I tried to select songs that sound like this year...even if they weren't my favorites. Anyway, enough of my rambling. I've listed the songs below with links to YouTube for each of them. I've also written a few sentences about why I selected each song. I hope you like the list, and most of all, I hope you listen to it. If you have thoughts, type them up here or shoot me an email: I would love to talk.

Take care, all. Enjoy 2012.

Oh! One more note: if you listen to this mix, listen to it loud. Trust me: it's better.

1) Cut Copy -- "Need You Now"
2 things: 1) Cut Copy is definitely not my typical cup of tea. 2) This is one of my favorite album-openers ever. The slow build-in mixes rock-synth rhythms and dance in a way that is propulsive without seeming artificial, and peak at the second chorus is, well, wonderful. This song changed my mind about this band--I hope it does the same for you.

2) Cults -- "Oh My God"
This song mixes all the things Cults does well into a single track: '50s-reminiscent, dream-pop female vocals; cute-but-not-precocious teenage lyrics; big-time hooks; and a crazy-good bassline. If you like this, you'll like everything they do.

3) Foster the People -- "Houdini"
Foster the People won this year's Vampire Weekend award (taking the crown from reigning champ, Phoenix) as the crowd-pleasing and quirky footstomper of 2011. I echo pretty much everyone in saying "Pumped Up Kicks" is the weakest song on Torches, but I think I'm out on an island a bit by suggesting this is the best. I absolutely love the clipping lead guitar line, and FtP demonstrates here that they can control their dynamic ranges better than either of those other bands. This band--and this song--deserve a pretty big share of the praise they've been getting.

4) St. Vincent -- "Cruel"
St. Vincent has now made three really, really good albums in a row, and, for me, the element that keeps getting stronger and stronger is her confidence in her guitarwork. If you've seen her live, you know she shreds...and her produced material is catching up. This song is great for the story, great for the hooks, but mostly, I love it because it fuses St. Vincent's penchant for the abrasive and disjunctive with rock-solid pop song structure.

5) Hospital Ships -- "Carry On"
This song wins the "Buyer Beware" award for 2011: great song by a mediocre band with a sub-par album. Lonely Twin is, frankly, weak...and the biggest reason is because the guitar that explodes halfway through "Carry On" is nowhere else to be found on that record. Listen to this, love it, and use it in all your future mixtapes...but steer clear of the record.

6) Youth Lagoon -- "Cannons"
Speaking of awards, Youth Lagoon's The Year of Hibernation wins my inaugural "Sleigh Bells Award." Here's the thing (before you get too excited): Youth Lagoon doesn't flat-out rock the way Sleigh Bells does...but man, I cannot stop listening to this record. It's not all that helpful to describe it--filled with teen angst, immature, melancholy, uncomfortably close to what you imagine your ex might cook up with GarageBand in their college dormroom over a weekend--but there's just a simple sonic balance to this record. This song gets everything right: the vocals are hushed (as are just about all the vocals this year), the keys are simple, and the guitar line is maybe 5 notes altogether...but "Cannons" proves that if you've got the right melody, sometimes the most important trick is restraint. I love this song, and I love this band.

7) Beirut -- "East Harlem"
I love what happens with the drums and the piano at the beginning of this song. I find the horns during the turnaround to be a bit much, but you know what: this is some of the most confident songwriting we've seen from Beirut in the last 4 years.

8) Akron/Family -- "Light Emerges"
This one (and the next one) were the tracks I wrestled with the most for this mix. Here's the dilemma: I totally love Akron/Family. But, aside from my friend Graham (with whom I share half of my brain), nobody else really seems to care about them. This tells me that when it comes to A/F, my musical sensitivity compass (or MSC, natch), is broken. So, my thinking here is that 1) you'd be a fool not to love the bass/electric guitar drive in this song, 2) the drums are unavoidably killer, and 3) the lines "Alley cat behind a garbage can / I bet you'll never catch him / Chase him up and down the alleyway / Faster feline" is the most awesome quatrain of the year. Anyway, I hope you dig this, and I hope you dig this band; if it helps, you should know that Graham and I are almost always right.

9) Deerhoof -- "Super Duper Rescue Heads!"
This song is weird, sure, and it's awesomeness is also fairly apparent, right? But the reason it's on here is that I think, in addition to being one of the most cohesive Deerhoof songs I've heard in a few years, it's a great example of where things seem to be going: the wonkiness of the synths that drive this song are not something Deerhoof would have done 5 years ago...but it makes total sense now. There's less of a rock underpinning here and more of something else...and that something else (whatever it is) is a lot more fun for this particular band. I like "SDRH!" because it sounds like Deerhoof enjoying themselves; that's something I hope we see more of.

10) Efrim Manuel Menuck -- "i am no longer a motherless child"
This song is the most confident thing Menuck has done since Silver Mt. Zion's Horses in the Sky and maybe the most confident thing he's done since Godspeed You! Black Emperor, if only because this doesn't sound like GY!BE. Instead, the song is divided nicely into two pieces: the first half is a mournful solo guitar bit that's tighter than most of Menuck's recent work with Zion, and the second half is a looped, reverse-guitar track with a beautiful singing-in-the-round bit laid on top of it. The refrain itself is just the right mix of mournful and ambiguous, but the layers of vocal harmonies do just the right trick: it's Menuck singing both with himself and over himself, and as the layers compound, the melody is eventually crushed and lost; it's a beautiful piece of work, and, for what it's worth, my favorite song in this mix. A great, great piece.

11) Lykke Li -- "I Follow Rivers"
First of all, I just found out that Lykke Li has been dubbed a "crossover success" this year; I willingly accept the hit on my hipster cred. Also, this won't be a long entry: this was one of the first songs I loved this year, and I felt it earned its way onto this list. I dig the chorus, and mostly, I dig Lykke Li's growth as a pop artist: her last album had beautiful moments ("Dance, Dance," for example, which was on my best of 2009 mix), but it seemed to veer alternately towards atonal songdrifts or repetitive bites of pop; this record is more developed and effective. "I Follow Rivers" is just one of the record's standouts.

12) Dave Bazan -- "Eating Paper"
Listen to this song 3 times in a row: tell me it's not the most bold and tattered song you've heard this year. This is the song Bazan needed to open last year's Curse Your Brances--his vaunted "breaking with the faith" album--with. It's raw, emotional, and ultimately flawed not through naivete but through ambition: there are too many chords, too many melodies, and too many hooks, and its Bazan's effort to wrange these elements in the song's structure which give his lyrics (and the crisis of faith they portend) so much weight:

Why would you sweat my confession
what I claim to be
when you see the fruit as it hangs on the tree?
While this may be the rare occassion
where high tide lifts all boats
I'm keeping my head down under the water
'cause man, I've gotta get there on my own.

13) Bon Iver -- "Calgary"
Here's what I hear about this song all the time: "I didn't think I liked that song..." Exactly. Bon Iver is this year's biggest indie crossover success story: he released a fuller, more complete, and intricately-produced album which received mainstream praise and enjoyed solid sales, and he did all of this while not only staying true to what fans loved about his first record, but also expanding and complicating his sound. In short: Bon Iver is awesome, and this has certainly been "his year." But the thing "Calgary" gets that other standout tracks like "Holocene" don't is that Bon Iver's songs have never really been about hooks; instead, they've always been about textures and moments. It's easy to forget Justin Vernon's other band, Volcano Choir, but in many ways, that group "gets" him more: the dude loves creating vivid and affecting pieces of music...and then assembling them into musical "pieces." Bon Iver is just such a piece, and "Calgary," although it may lack the hooks of a few other tracks, gets the parts right. Listen closely: you'll be rewarded.

14) The Antlers -- "I Don't Want Love"
Bad news first: This year's Burst Apart was a pretty big let down. The Antlers' last record, 2009's Hospice, was my pick for the best record of that year (and one of the best of the decade), and so my hopes for this year's outing were incredibly high. But Burst Apart trades quite a bit of the gravity of Hospice in for a more (relatively) upbeat tempo throughout and a heckuva lot more processed synths. The highs are all still here: quavering, impossible male vocals; simple but effective clean guitar work; propulsive bass and complimentary drums. But this time through, synths take over for acoustic guitars and do the bulk of the heavy rhythmic listening. The results are at their best in songs like "I Don't Want Love," which finds a pop center in the midst of post-rock-esque instrumentation, and ultimately ends up as one of the more compelling pieces of evidence for my post-grunge thesis about 2011.

15) tUnE-YaRdS -- "Bizness"
At last, a song that really does speak for itself! Go. Listen. I can wait.

Back yet? Cool. That was awesome, right? Yeah, the whole album (W H O K I L L) is equally awesome: bigger in scope than bIrDbRaInS without sacrificing even the slightest drop of manic energy. Basically, it's the opposite of a sophomore slump: a follow-up that expands on the promise of the artist's debut album by giving them the tools and resources to complete the scope of their sound. "Bizness" is a great song among great songs, and W H O K I L L is one of two great albums from this year. Get yourself a copy.

16) Secret Cities -- "The Park"
This song simultaneously represents the best and worst impulses of the chillwave movement. On the "best" side of things, "The Park" has an almost unbelievably haunting and beautiful chorus, and this chorus is married to tight structuring, an unexpected (and awesome) organ, and an old-school garage rock lead line in the breakdown; even better, these parts are accompanied by a slipbeat drum part that allows the song to slide back into the 2 and 4 and roll itself forward like some kind of audio perpetual motion machine. But there's the "worst" side, too, and it goes like this: "The Park" ought to be an anthem. Take this song and put it in the hands of any of a 1,000 pop-rock bands in this world and it would have made it into a BP commercial by now at the very least. The song has the hooks, but it's so submerged in the echo-cave of its production that feeling its groove is like tapping your foot to the band on the festival's third stage while the main stage is setting up the next act: it catches your ear, but not enough to sacrifice your seat. If you're listening Secret Cities, I have a homework assignment for you: listen to more Deerhunter. One of Cox's strengths is finding the balance between atmosphere and catchiness; you guys have the chops to take that skill a step further.

17) The War on Drugs -- "Baby Missiles"
This was a late edition to the 2011 mix, as I only got my hands on this record about two weeks ago; however, I fell in love with "Baby Missiles" almost immediately. This song might be the best song Bruce Springsteen never recorded: in fact, it's got so much energy it's hard to even listen to it without imagining Born to Run-era Boss dancing across a stadium stage while Stevie van Zandt sweats half his body weight into an oversized bandana. During the song's chorus, Adam Granduciel sings, "I don't mind when all the pioneers go soft on me" in a Dylan-twang that's almost indecipherable; if "going soft" is the problem, "Baby Missiles" doesn't give any indication that The War on Drugs plans on giving in to it, or much of anything else. Rock on.

18) Wye Oak -- "Civilian"
This was a tough one, too. I've had Wye Oak's Civilian for about 4 months, and during that time, I've probably listened to the record in its entirety at least a dozen times. But despite all that time with the band, it's hard for me to put into words exactly what the band does so well. On the surface, the appeal of the band--and why it fits in with a mix like this one--is pretty clear: they take country/folk and marry it to the reverb-heavy push of the contemporary indie scene, with results that are consistently winning but rarely memorable; as a result, their "sound" ends up being more important than their "songs," and the attention they have gotten and will continue to get in end-of-the-year lists reflects more of their effort than their accomplishment; to put it in teacher-speak, Wye Oak are the Honors-class kids in a subject where an AP-class is offered: likable, lovable, bright-enough B students. But as a went through Civilian again this past week, I realized that "Civilian" is more than adequate; in fact, it's damn good. The hook, I think, is the electric guitar, which rips in with a force the song never sets you up for. It's a good trick...and it's one that speaks to where Wye Oak can go.

19) Washed Out -- "A Dedication"
I'll end in uncharacteristically short fashion: this is just a beautiful, beautiful song: softly melodic, emotionally engaging, and driving, if only quietly; it's totally 2011...and maybe more, too.

Well, that's it, folks. I hope this has been fun...and I hope you like this list.

Haiti Pictures

2011-06-28T00:08:00.002-04:00

As most of you already know, I was in Haiti this past week. These are my favorite photos from the week:

Pictures

2011-06-16T22:19:00.000-04:00

The full moon last night; a few pictures from Annapolis, MD

Schizopolis

2011-04-25T22:55:00.000-04:00

SCHIZOPOLIS
D: Steven Soderbergh

Wow, I'm honestly at a loss as to how to do this. For a decade now, this has been one of my very favorite movies. The reasons I first embraced it are typical, in some ways: it's well shot, the plot is idiosyncratic, the narrative devices are clever, the soundtrack and score are great, and it's funny as hell. However, the reason the movie has remained so firmly stuck in my brain--and that really is the way to describe what this movie does to you: it sticks in your brain--has taken much longer to discern.

...but I think I'm getting closer.

There are two key scenes in the film. The first is a brief scene late in the third act, when Attractive Woman #2--betrayed, frustrated, and lost in her own life--seizes an opportunity to perform the same "body swap" Soderbergh's Munson takes part in earlier in the film. Like Munson, Attractive Woman #2 stumbles on a lookalike (played, of course, by the same actress) whose life--at first glance--seems infinitely more appealing. In this case, her double is sitting across from her in a coffee shop reading a magazine. Her demeanor and body language are relaxed, and she seems pleasantly distracted by her reading. She is also wearing something new: whereas Attractive Woman #2 (AW2 from now on) and her lookalike, Munson's wife, have spent the entire movie in a plain cotton dress pulled over a t-shirt, this woman is dressed in a way that is both casual and mature. Read: she does not have a husband or children. Seeing her opportunity, AW2 closes here eyes and, through the magic of editing and shifting sound cues, she opens them as her alternate self: holding the same cup of coffee in her hand and glancing over the same magazine. Instantly, she is at peace: her husband is gone, her parental responsibilities are relieved, and she is free. She breathes a sigh of relief--and as she exhales, Soderbergh takes the seat across from her. Although much better dressed, she has done it for the third time: she has ended up in a romantic relationship with a man who we immediately know will be self-involved, panicky, easily threatened and numb. Her eyes widen slightly and the weight of her situation settles softly in them. Soderbergh's unnamed third character begins to speak: his voice is dubbed in French. We see AW2 (or is it AW3?) look him over and say quietly, "I want to get out of here." Like Pavlov's dog, we have been trained how to read this line, and Soderbergh's off-camera tone of voice suggests he is reading her the same way. But then she responds: "No--back to your room." The scene cuts and we open in, presumably, his hotel room. She is lying on the couch with her head in his lap as he strokes her hair. She speaks: "I could just lie here forever and do nothing but this." This, we must be clear, is not starting over. But it is moving on. In this way, Attractive Woman #2--whose very name attempts to marginalize and mute her--gets the last laugh: in a movie which cycles three times back through its own beginning, she has found independent--if tragic--agency.

The second key scene comes near the very end of the film, when the exterminator (and lady's man) Elmo Oxygen is being interrogated by two detectives. The detectives are questioning him about his attempt to assassinate the film's keynote speaker, T. Azimuth Schwitters. Their questions are obvious and--if they think they are talking to a madman--useless: why did you do it? Were you angry with Mr. Schwitters? Had Mr. Schwitters wronged you in some way? Where did you get the gun? Oxygen replies in his own language (and, incidentally, the only successful language in the film): he calls them houseplants. Oxygen goes on to ramble only semi-coherently about his role as the film's resident prophet, and, as we should expect, the detectives stare at him confused and befuddled. His speech concludes in two parts. The first is linguistic: he tells the detectives he can "make sense out of yesterday--can you understand how important that is?" The second is both verbal and physical: he stands (his head above the frame) and begins to unzip the crotch of his jumpsuit. We hear him say, "You will learn something from me," and then the camera jumps back to the full bodies of the detectives, both of whom are covering their eyes now and screaming hysterically as Elmo stands with his back to the camera, holding his jumpsuit open. Now, obviously the scene is absurd: it plays for laughs, and (at least from me) it always gets them. But I think the point here is necessarily aggressive--even more aggressive than Oxygen's "revelation": Elmo's phallus is the only thing these two "dicks" can understand. Now, I apologize for that crudeness, but I think this pun is essential to the language games the movie plays: if what distinguishes Elmo from every other man in the film is his ability to communicate with women (an ability verbalized in an apparently non-sensical code of "aardvarks," "nose-armies," and "zygotes" which only he and the film's various housewives understand), it makes to sense to position him as Soderbergh's cypher. Therefore, in his exposure, we see another anti-linguistic move which solicits a clear response: when he unzips his jumpsuit, the detectives see in him exactly the horror they went into the room expecting to find.

Schizopolis is littered with language games: dubbing, subtitles, half-heard conversations, doublespeak, psychobabble, and criticism. Most of these deserve close scrutiny and analysis, and I have to admit my own sense of inadequacy in dealing with this movie, if only because I don't know that I can do even one part of it any justice. But before I close, I feel obligated to a take a stab at that title. Schizopolis is a compound word, built from the Greek "schizo," meaning "to split" and "polis," meaning "city." Of course, it also carries psychological overtones connected to the disorder, "schizophrenia," which is commonly misunderstood as "split-personality disorder," although a clinical definition would more accurately characterize it as a disorder in which the brain struggles to accurately distinguish fantasy and reality. In the case of this film, all three definitions are applicable and, to varying degrees, intended: the title references a "split city" that is itself inhabited by people of two (or three) minds, each wandering among the others, oblivious of (or skeptical towards) the possibility of connection. The vision is cynical, and this cynicism is manifested in Soderbergh's use of a pants-less man to bring in title cards for the film which have been conveniently printed on his shirt(s).

However, there is more to the notion that these characters are of "two minds." Pioneering linguist and semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure theorized that all language systems are built on a fundamental instability between a "signifier"--the sound-image used to refer to a thing or idea--and the "signified"--the thing or idea itself. According to Saussure, all our communicative acts rely on the impossible notion that we can ever "name" a "thing" in a way which makes it possible to truly and completely communicate that thing to someone else. However, the presence of language suggests this action is, in fact, possible. To give an example: when I write the word "tree," I am thinking of a particular kind of tree--specifically, the tree at the end of my parents' driveway. However, there is nothing I can do short of taking you to my parents' house to ensure that you truly "see" the tree I "mean;" instead, you are going to picture your own tree, forever changing the linguistic action ("signification") taking place between us and eliminating my tree from the equation altogether. Obviously, the more words we introduce into our interaction, the more impossible the process ought to become. But what Saussure found was that language is strangely tenacious, and that tenaciousness is rooted not in its codes but in its flexibility--it succeeds because we want it to, trading not on words and images, but on "Signs," or the combined forms of "signifiers" and "signifieds." Now, I know that's a bit tortuous, but stick with me:

In Schizopolis, Soderbergh converts his characters--and us--into embodied "Signs." We each contain two distinct parts of ourselves: the selves others see and the selves we believe ourselves to be. The issue here is not that we don't listen to each other, but that we don't speak for ourselves. That's what these (male) characters have lost: Munson, the speech writer; Kolchak, the platitudinous dentist; Schwitters, the arrogant mouthpiece of a pseudophilosophical cult. But the movie isn't a motivational poster--the point here isn't to match our public personae to our personal goals; rather, the point is that our public personae are and have always been the only "real" selves we have: just as "my" tree became yours when I spoke it, we become ourselves when someone hears us. We don't have a right to a private self...because we don't even speak our own language. As the film's anonymous "host" (and secret speechwriter) tells us near the movie's end,

"We are who we pretend to be...because we pretend to be who we--really--are."

This is the theoretical move which grounds the paranoia these characters verbalize over and over again, and in this sense, Nameless Numberhead Man is right when he whines about feeling that he is at the mercy of forces beyond his control. We don't determine ourselves--we are made in the Schizopolis.

All-Covers Disc

2011-04-17T00:11:00.001-04:00

Here's the tracklisting. Click for videos, when available:

1. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bob Dylan cover) -- BECK
2. I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground cover) -- DAVID BOWIE
3. Glue (Gerbils cover) -- NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL
4. The Sign (Ace of Bass cover) -- THE MOUNTAIN GOATS
5. Sweet Child o' Mine (Guns N' Roses cover) -- TAKEN BY TREES
6. Kid A (Radiohead cover) -- JOHN MAYER
7. Where Did You Sleep Last Night? (Leadbelly cover) -- NIRVANA
8. Heartbeats (Knife cover) -- JOSE GONZALEZ
9. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (traditional) -- SUFJAN STEVENS
10. No Depression (Carter Family cover) -- UNCLE TUPELO
11. I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor cover) -- CAKE
12. Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What A Wonderful World (2x cover) -- ISRAEL KAMAMAWIWO'OLE
13. Atlantic City (Bruce Springsteen cover) -- THE HOLD STEADY
14. I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself (Burt Bacharach cover) -- THE WHITE STRIPES
15. Hung My Head (Sting cover) -- JOHNNY CASH
16. After the Gold Rush (Neil Young cover) -- THOM YORKE
17. Political Science (Randy Newman cover) -- PEDRO THE LION
18. Wonderwall (Oasis cover) -- RYAN ADAMS
19. Ocean Breathes Salty (Modest Mouse cover) -- SUN KIL MOON

* I did not include Buckley's "Hallelujah" because...well, obviously.
* I also didn't include Cash's cover of "Hurt." Same reason.

Thoughts from the deliberate masses?

The Thin Red Line

2011-04-08T21:25:00.000-04:00

The Thin Red Line (1997)

Recently, I watched Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line for only the second time since its release almost 15 years ago. Again, I was surprised by how badly I misremembered a film. At the time of its release, it seemed impossible to consider The Thin Red Line separately from Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, which was released a few months earlier and which seemed to me when I first saw it to be a far superior film. Spielberg's war epic had everything Malick's movie seemed to be missing: a strong central character, a driving narrative, a sense of heroism rising from a visceral depiction of the chaos and horror of war. By contrast, Malick's movie was overlong, spacey, and disjointed, meditating when it ought to teach and hesitating when it ought to use its special context to propel its plot forward. Even after a few years' perspective (and exposure to Malick's other films) broadened my view of what genre-based films 'ought' to do, I still thought of The Thin Red Line as a misfire of sorts, lacking in focus and confused in plot. It was an indulgent film, and it was obviously marred by a general sense of rustiness on Malick's part after more than two decades away from moviemaking. However, after finishing my rewatching of The Thin Red Line last week, I realized my initial response was not only ungenerous, it was immature in a way that reflected my own biases as a moviegoer and, perhaps, as a person.

One of the scenes I remembered most clearly from my first viewing was the opening sequence of the film. In this sequence, Witt (Jim Caviezel), who has gone AWOL in the South Pacific, swims in a blue crystal lagoon surrounded by hyper-romanticized native islanders. As he swims, he meditates on his circumstances via voice over narration, pondering how and why the world of the West has fallen so far from its edenic beginnings. The connection is clear: these people have it right--no war, no fighting, but most importantly, no distrust of one another. For Witt, this is the West's great sin: we don't have any faith in one another, and as a result, we elevate ourselves and our own desires over the desires--and the rights to being--of others. Witt's raison-d'etre for the rest of the film becomes living out the trust he longs to see in the world. After being brought back to his unit, he accepts a disciplinary reassignment to a stretcher bearer unit, where he works with compassion and drive until he is called back up to his squad. Once with his squad, he is an avid volunteer: he scouts, he leads, and in the end, he willingly sacrifices himself for his peers. On my first viewing, the message seemed clear, and it seemed to be understood and enacted by the Christ-like Witt, whose sacrifice (we hope) opens the eyes of his comrades-in-arms. Although interesting, one supposes, this argument seemed flimsy to me in 1997 and it continues to seem flimsy now. Does the movie really expect us to believe that all we need, really, is a little more love?

But there was another scene I had forgotten since that first viewing, and for me, it changes everything. Approximately two-thirds of the way through the film, Witt has another encounter with natives--this time, the natives of Guadalcanal. Wandering the countryside during a five-day stint away from the front, Witt makes his way into a native village. Once there, he clearly prepares himself for another return to paradise, removing his shirt and gun, smiling, waving, and making a quick offer of food to the first village child he sees. However, this visit is met with hostility on the part of the natives: they glare at him, fearing his ability to act with violence free from accountability, but distrustful of his skin and face. Witt is startled by this, and if The Thin Red Line had been directed by an inferior director, this moment may have been a sufficient rebuttal (or, at least, a challenge) to Witt's earlier fantasy. But Malick directs the scene with tremendous care, and his decisions here shape and interpret many of the questions from the rest of the film. Here's my memory of the shot sequence following Witt's rejection in the eyes of the natives:

Witt looks at a female villager, who refuses to meet him in the eyes. Witt sees an older male, who glares at him while nonetheless backing away and lifting his hand up to protect children standing near him. Witt sees a child, also refusing to see his face. He looks past one child at another, this one starving and with dozens of bite marks from flies and other insects scarring its back. Voices arguing quietly can be heard off camera. Witt sees another fearful and hateful male villager, this one in his mid-20s--around Witt's age. Voices continue. He sees the dilapidated conditions of the huts. Voices continue. He sees the water, just through the trees; we see his eyes, remembering his first experience AWOL. He finally sees the sources of the voices: two older village men, arguing with one another. We realize that, were it not for his presence, they would be fighting physically and openly.

For me, this scene offers the skepticism I thought the film lacked 14 years ago, and it does so in a way that is both sincere and tragic: Witt's utopia is impossible in all places but the minds of men. The "thin red line," it turns out, is not the line separating us from civility and barbarity, it is the line we are walking: narrow, bloody, and one from which it is impossible to deviate. The sadness of the film--and the unity of the film--come from Witt's slow realization that his decision to look around himself and see his world does nothing to help him access it. It's this underpinning which supports the natural beauty of Malick's movie, which I will refrain from going on and on and on about. It also justifies (and makes useful) the visions we so frequently get of the natural world's role, proximity, and relation to the soldiers involved in this conflict: these aren't men hiding behind concrete barricades--these are boys crouched in tall grass, encroaching on a world that cares not a bit whether they are there or not.

One closing thought which, thankfully, remained consistent from 1997 until now: The Thin Red Line, like all of Malick's movies, is truly beautiful. If you haven't seen it, it is streaming on Netflix in HD, and you honestly owe it to yourself to give it a look. Even if Malick's vision isn't for you, there is an undeniable craftsmanship at work here that you ought to experience. This is the kind of movie that confronts you--aggressively--with the magnitude of what movies are capable of. Don't miss it.

Southland Tales

2011-04-08T01:04:00.002-04:00

*An indictment of Richard Kelly*

Exhibit A: "Man, American guys sure do (did) equate big cars with sexual prowess (in the 1950s)! So, I've got an idea..."

Exhibit B: "Man, we've got Justin Timberlake in this movie, and he's a great singer and a great dancer! So, I've got an idea..."

Exhibit C: "Man, Quentin Tarantino sure does write awesome dialogue about pop culture! So, I've got an idea..."

Exhibit D: "Man, Cheri Oteri...wasn't she great on Saturday Night Live?? So, I've got an idea..."

Exhibit E: "Man, isn't it funny when Asian people get hurt by stuff?? So, I've got an idea..."

The prosecution rests, your honor.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

2011-04-07T14:20:00.001-04:00

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

This movie is far, far stranger than I remembered. Before rewatching it a few weeks ago, I would have summarized my thoughts on this movie as follows:

   - Paul Newman and Robert Redford are bona fide movie stars whose charisma is unparalleled
   - That "Raindrops Are Falling on My Head" scene is crazily out of place

But after watching it again, I have to revise both of those statements. Per the first: yes, Paul Newman is at his personable, witty best. His Butch Cassidy is funny, charming, and instantly memorable. However, Robert Redford's Sundance is decisively uncharismatic. He's quiet and morose. He drinks too much. He fights when he shouldn't and pushes those weaker than him simply to stroke his own ego. He's not just a jerk, he's abusive and cruel to his girlfriend (who is much more clearly endeared to Butch) and, in most respects, a lousy friend. He's also a total creeper.

Which brings me to point number two: the Burt Bacharach score isn't weird, it's entirely typical of the film. The "Raindrops" scene is memorable not because it is an anomaly in the film, but because it is the first of a series of anachronistic and disjunctive scenes. It's worth noting that the musical number immediately follows one of the more distressing moments in the film: Sundance's quasi-rape of his girlfriend in the middle of the night. In case you've forgotten, the scene I'm talking about begins with Sundance waiting in a chair inside a girl's room; when she enters, he points (and cocks) a gun at her and forces her to strip. Slowly. And completely. In the end, he grabs her and forces himself on her, kissing her hard on the lips. It's only after this kiss that we get any sense of our bearings in the scene: the girl glares at him and growls: "Just once I wish you would show up on time!" Some comfort. It's also followed by the first of two strange train robbery sequences, both of which end with the same hapless railroad employee being blown up by dynamite (the first time, we see him face down and unconscious afterwards, blood running out of his ears). Again, levity is played against violence, and our horror--with our heroes' actions; with the reality and proximity of death to these characters--is juxtaposed with action-entertainment. This becomes the dominant theme of the second half of the film, culminating in Butch and Sundance's killings of a group of Bolivian outlaws who attempt to rob the bank convoy they are protecting. After the slow-motion shots of their deaths and the fixed-camera images of wind blowing dust over their corpses are over, Butch quietly asks his partner what, exactly, they've done by "going straight." The point the director Hill emphasizes is that it doesn't matter for these two which side of the robbery they are on--whether they're blowing up trains or warding off bandits--they are men capable of dealing death. As a result, their screen charisma breaks down and the audience is reminded that despite their wit or sexual allure, they are at heart mysterious--and being mysterious, by definition, means being the subject of the gazes of others. Perhaps this is one reason Sundance engages in the role-playing game with his girlfriend earlier in the film: it offers him a chance to stop being the subject of the looks of others and permits him to become the voyeur. Is this comfortable territory for an audience? Certainly not. However, it does help us understand the odd nature of the film's rhythm and editing as one more tool in Hill's arsenal, complementing his work on not only the reality of death, but its close proximity to precisely those characters we want to believe are immune to it.

Without a doubt, this is the most striking feature of the film upon a second viewing: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid  is a movie about the irreconcilability of who these outlaws are and who we wish them to be.
And this, ultimately, is what makes the movie so effective (and, even, great): we realize that our love for Newman and Redford is a mirror of our love for Cassidy and Sundance. In both cases, we fall not for men, but the images of men, not as pictures of themselves, but as symbols for a mythical kind of life.

Best 125 Films of All-Time

2011-03-26T22:01:00.001-04:00

Hey, folks. A few people have asked me recently if I've ever made a list of the best 100 movies I have ever seen. The short answer to that question is "yes," I have. However, the list I used to keep had not been updated in the last 5 or 6 years. So, tonight, I decided to tackle the project again.

Fair warning: I feel this list is about 95% complete. There are a handful of universally-recognized "great films" I have yet to see, including Jules et Jim, L'Avventura, Giant, and several others. However, I have seen a tremendous number of films from a wide collection of other critics' lists, and I do feel firmly that this is a useful list for all practical intents and purposes. Additionally, the blog post format allows me the opportunity to edit the list as the need arises. My hope is that I will be more diligent in this over the next few years than I have been over the last few.

Alright, get ready to fire up those Netflix cues--there's work to be done. Without further ado:

The Top 100

Citizen Kane (1941)
The Godfather (1972)
Casablanca (1942)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Schindler’s List (1994)
The Searchers (1956)
The Godfather, Part II (1974)
La Dolce Vita (1959)
Seven Samurai (1954)
Psycho (1960)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Gone With the Wind (1939)
Rashomon (1950)
The Bicycle Thief (1949)
On the Waterfront (1954)
The Graduate (1967)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Third Man (1949)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
The Great Dictator (1940)
Chinatown (1974)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Annie Hall (1977)
Vertigo (1958)
It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Raging Bull (1980)
Jaws (1975)
Ran (1985)
Days of Heaven (1978)
Sunrise (1928)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
The Lord of the Rings (2003)
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Metropolis (1926)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Duck Soup (1933)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
It Happened One Night (1934)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Easy Rider (1969)
There Will Be Blood (2007)
All About Eve (1950)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Rear Window (1954)
Network (1976)
Paths of Glory (1957)
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Blade Runner (1982)
The Apartment (1960)
Unforgiven (1992)
Close Encounters of the 3^rd Kind (1977)
Nashville (1975)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Double Indemnity (1944)
8 ½ (1963)
Star Wars (1977)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Notorious (1946)
The Quiet Man (1952)
Touch of Evil (1958)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Badlands (1973)
Kill Bill (2003)
Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (1969)
The Elephant Man (1980)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Nosferatu (1922)
Brazil (1985)
The Sting (1973)
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
High Noon (1952)
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
Miller’s Crossing (1990)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
King Kong (1933)
The Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Life is Beautiful (1999)
Black Swan (2010)
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Patton (1970)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
E.T. – the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
La Strada (1954)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
The Conversation (1974)
The Big Sleep (1946)

Honorable Mentions

Rebel Without A Cause (1955)
The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Fargo (1996)
The Deer Hunter (1976)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
Goodfellas (1990)
The 400 Blows (1959)
M (1931)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
The Last Picture Show (1971)
The Right Stuff (1983)
Modern Times (1936)
United 93 (2005)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Munich (2005)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Traffic (2000)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Blow-Up (1966)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
North By Northwest (1959)
This is Spinal Tap (1984)

Give me feedback here! What have I missed? What are you surprised by? Let's talk this through in the comments section.

Movie Night: Children of Men

2011-03-08T23:34:00.001-05:00

A few quick observations on last week's movie, Children of Men:

1) Man, there are a lot of animals in that movie. I mean, there are animals in literally every scene. A rundown: Children of Men features dogs (lots of 'em), cats (climbing up Clive Owen's legs), zebras, camels, ostriches, a flying pig, a wild deer, more dogs, more cats, cows, goats, horses, cow corpses, a pig corpse...lots of animals. It must have been literal hell for the producers of the film: really? A zebra and a camel for the background of a single shot? Why?

Well, I suppose the conventional reading would be that in a world without children, animals become fitting substitutes, accepting the love and nurturing that we, as people, want to give. But the wrinkle in that reading is the stark and upsetting vision the movie casts of humanity: without hope for a future, men and women are themselves animalistic, destroying the arts (hence Danny Huston's "art ark"), killing one another in droves, wrecking cityscapes and (in one advertisement in the film) destroying entire countries. Why would compassion redirect itself towards animals? What hope do they offer anyone?

There's also the issue of rebellion organizations in the film. Julianne Moore's character is the acting leader of the "Fishes," a terrorist cell seeking equal rights for "Fujis," or illegal immigrants (or, more accurately, refugees). The name of the group isn't an acronym, nor is it incidental: in one scene, a cell member explains to Clive Owen's character that his wife is a "cod"--an "English fish." The Fishes also hide out on an old farm, and in one critical scene, Clive Owen's character finds out exactly what he's committed to in a barn, where the film's female lead stands naked in the midst of a dairy cow pen. The message is confusing: is this girl actually cattle? She seems worried about this, as her comments about the mutilation of cow udders to "fit the machines" hints. But then again, maybe that's the whole thing: maybe the problem isn't animals, it's the subordination of animals to the causes and desires of human beings. In that sense, the udder comments make a lot of sense: almost intuitively, the girl realizes that she is not being cared for by the Fishes, she is being used by them: first, as a vessel for her unborn child, and second, as a kind of "flag-bearer," whose body is a symbol for an otherwise absent God's implicit blessing of their particular political cause.

I suppose what I'm suggesting is that the animal imagery seems truly ambivalent: animals are, in a sense, surrogate children in this film, receiving the lost affections of mothers and fathers who are otherwise unable to love something young; however, animals are also instrumentalized over and over again, their bodies taken and used as emblems and symbols for groups with little or no interest in their value. It's an interesting paradox in the film--and one that begs a retitling of this post: "Is Children of Men the First 'Veganist' Film in Hollywood?"

2) Children of Men is a master class on direction. Cuaron isn't just telling a story with a camera here, he is making a complete and well-wrought film. His decisions in this movie--the animals, the tone, the casting of Clive Owen, the unbelievable long tracking shots--are of paramount importance to the film's vision of humanity. The long tracking shots are a perfect example of this point: whereas one could imagine a thousand easier and similarly effective ways to film the major action sequences of the film, Cuaron's decision to film the biggest action set pieces in two long, single shots produces an almost unbearable sense of tension and dread. By removing the cuts, Cuaron takes away our ability to "breath" as we watch the scene unfold, and as a result, the sense of peril in these sequences becomes truly, smotheringly real. Adding to this is Cuaron's decision to keep Owen's character barefoot for the vast majority of the film: not only does Clive never pick up a gun or even threaten another character (he does, of course, smash one guy's face in with a car battery, but in many ways, that's different), he is consistently under the very tangible threat of death. His shoeless feet give this a sickening gravity: he is unequipped for the conflicts he is a part of, and his life (and our window into the film) is constantly on the verge of being lost.

I suggest a sort of Litmus test for people who have seen the film: imagine the script. It's an interesting concept, right? A world without children; one man has to escort the first child born in 18 years to a secret medical ship in international waters to avoid that child's (mis)use as a politcal symbol? It's great. But here's the trick: imagine, for a moment, how different this movie would be if it had been given to Michael Bay. Zach Snyder. Steven Spielberg. Ron Howard. I'll tell you this much: Clive Owen would have found shoes, and in them, (more than likely) two matching handguns with pearl-inlay on the grips. There's no way any of those directors would have made the decisions Cuaron did--to leave his hero out of the action; to give his characters room for self-sacrifice; to allow his shots to breath for 4, 5, even 7 minutes without a cut or (except in the rarest cases) an explosion. The movie would have looked different, and as a result, I think it would have been weaker.

To sum that up, Children of Men is the perfect movie to watch if you want to think about what it means to direct a film...and how that job is different than simply framing shots and overseeing an editor in an editing bay. With Children of Men, Cuaron announced himself as a true talent capable of a complex, inviting, powerful, and excellent film. If you want to see a direct doing his job unbelievably well, watch this movie.

3) Children of Men has a natural companion piece, if you're interested in branching out, in District 9 (2009). Both films deal with the last issue I want to raise here (and only raise--I'm running out of space): the need to reach a sensible balance between Homeland Security operations and human compassion. More specifically, both films deal explicitly with immigration issues, and in both cases, a government defends itself from global chaos by turning away or locking up people/aliens who are simply seeking asylum. I don't know what to make of this in this film, but I wanted to introduce it as a topic: are these reasonable portraits of the immigration issue? How can we balance our responsibilities toward the least of these and our need to keep our nations and the values they stand for strong and consistent? Where is the line in the sand, so to speak, between selfishness and self-preservation? I honestly don't know the answer to that, but I think it's worth thinking about. Also, if District 9 only stokes the fire, it's worth watching or reading The Road--it's take on this issue is perhaps the most clear and poignant.

4) The future loves Banksy, even if the Academy doesn't. Notice that one of Banksy's works--a graffiti painting of two male British police officers hugging and kissing one another--is in the foyer of the "Art Ark," just before we see Michelangelo's David and Picasso's Guernica. No Future, indeed.

Best Music of 2010 - The Full List

2011-03-06T20:52:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone enjoyed the write-ups on the three "4 star" records from last year (at least, in this blogger's opinion). Now, on to the full list. Click each link to hear a sample song from the album.

1. Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
2. Jonsi - Go
3. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
4. Sleigh Bells - Treats
*This is maybe my favorite new artist of the year--click this, and stick around for the kick-in
5. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest
6. Beach House - Teen Dream
7. Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz
8. The National - High Violet
9. Girl Talk - All Day
10. Menomena - Mines
11. Owen Pallett - Heartland
12. Nest - re told
13. Wavves - King of the Beach
14. Sam Amidon - I See the Sign
15. The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt
16. Thee Silver Mt. Zion - Kollaps Tradixionales
17. The Black Keys - Brothers
18. Buke and Gass - Riposte
19. The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
20. Vampire Weekend - Contra
21. Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
22. LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
23. Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record
24. The Walkmen - Lisbon
25. Damien Jurado - Saint Bartlett

OTHER ALBUMS I LOVED:

--. The Books - The Way Out
*best music video of the year? best music video of the year.
--. Roky Erickson (w/ Okkervil River) - True Love Casts Out All Evil
--. Best Coast - Crazy for You
--. The Morning Benders - Big Echo
--. Surfer Blood - Astrocoast

...I hope you guys enjoy the links and please, let me know what you think. Take care, all.

Best Music of 2010 - #2 and #3

2011-02-26T23:48:00.000-05:00

2. JONSI - GO

Former Sigur Ros frontman Jonsi's first solo record--Go--is everything great about Sigur Ros, but faster and more propulsive. What amazes me most about this record is not just its inventiveness and its style--although those two elements are impressive--but its consistency. Jonsi makes songs that ought to be impossible--orchestral-fused dance-mix folk pieces--and not only pulls them off but makes them beautiful. His move to broken English, about which I was skeptical, actually clarifies the entire "Hopelandic" mess. It's not "invented" the way a code might be, it's spontaneous and cathartic. I know I rate this album more highly than most people, but I think the reason more people aren't blown away by what Jonsi is doing is because he makes it seem, by album's end, so commonplace. If you've got this record, listen to it again and tell me why a song like "Tornado" is any less aurally spectacular than those first two tracks--go ahead; the comments section is open, and I'd love to hear what you think. For me, this record never lets up.

Talking about Jonsi reminds me of a drive I took with my brother, Chris, probably in 2003. We were on our way to play a show, and for the entire 2 hour drive, we listened only to Sigur Ros. After an hour or so, Chris looked at me said, "It's impossible not to be happy when you're listening to this." I think Jonsi's Go is Chris's kind of a record--a record that you can't help but be in love with and in love to.

3. KANYE WEST - MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY

We'll get to it a bit later, but to me, Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an (even) better version of what Sufjan Stevens is up to with The Age of Adz: it's paranoia--of self, of fame, of craft--ripped open and writ large. Kanye isn't being "just" an egomaniac here, he is being all-out psychotic. In tracks like "Power" and "Monster," he vacillates by the verse between being a cocksure "A"rtist and being pathetically insecure, between seeming untouchable and suicidal: it is a strange thing to behold. Like Sufjan, Kanye's album seems to be the product of not simply a desire for reinvention, but a desire for reinvention fueled by 21st century expectations: Kanye can't get through a song (much less an album) with a singular vision of himself in mind, and his lyrics reflect this tension. In "Power," West recognizes but then counters the industry's perceived "blackballing" of his career after his interruption of the 2009 Grammys with his own "black balls," insisting that he "know[s] damn well [we're] feeling this shit"--he's right, of course: the song is an unmistakable hit. However, the more insightful moments come on the back half of the album, highlighted, at least thematically, by his inclusion of indie folk artist Bon Iver on two separate tracks. It's hard to read Bon Iver's inclusion in this collection coherently: is this crossover moneygrubbing? A critical kowtow? Or did West just dig Iver's stuff and then bring him on board? That last option seems most likely, but it just leads to another question: what in the hell was Kanye freaking West doing listening to Justin Vernon's "Blood Bank EP" in the first place? Was it because he was interested, or because it made sense for him to be interested? I think this question is answered in some ways by the retreats into the past in songs like "Monster": God only knows what Kanye means with that "sarcophagus" lyric, but its pretext--that Kanye isn't just "like" a pharaoh, he is one--feels less like a search for a power metaphor and more like an attempt to ground the instability of his own paranoia and fame in what he imagines as a more stable and survivable past. After all, pharaohs weren't crazy, they were exploitative, greedy, prideful, warmongering assholes. They were monsters. For Kanye, even being a monster feels a bit too cliche...which means even that role is relegated to a (beautiful? twisted?) fantasy.

My read is that the tension that makes this album great is the same tension that makes Kanye so simultaneously typical and enigmatic: he can't seem to go a moment without seeing his musical and personal selves through the eyes of others, and as this feedback loop closes--sample, song, praise, criticism, inspection, obsession, fear, paranoia, rebellion, exploration, sample again--Kanye seems to be increasingly driven to spell out the names others give to him. Of course, what makes this record great is that it does all of this so well and so unabashedly: for all their postmodern musings, these tracks are almost-all killers, and the guests Kanye rings along--Kid CuDi, Niki Minaj, Jay-Z, etc.--don't just take verses and fill them, they inhabit spaces in these songs that are custom tailored to who they are as both musicians and individuals.

So sure, blame it on Twitter, blame it on UsWeekly, blame it on whatever you want, but this record gets two things right, and sets them in stone: the loudest voices in your head are almost never your own, and you can't sell out something that was never entirely yours in the first place.

Best Music of 2010

2011-02-26T19:51:00.001-05:00

Alright folks, the first entry in the list nobody asked for: my picks for the best 25 records* released in 2010, unveiled 1 (or 2...or 5) at a time. Tonight, I'm going to start with my #1 of 2010: Titus Andronicus's The Monitor. But before I get started, a quick note on how this list was compiled: although I listen to as much music each year as I can, I am by no means a music expert. When it comes to evaluating art, I'm much more comfortable talking about movies than I am records. But, like I said, I listen to a lot of music each year--somewhere between 70 and 100 albums--and while I'm doing that, I oftentimes stumble on records that worth sharing. This list, in part, is the end result of that effort: this is me, trying to share stuff I like with you.

I hope you find something to spin and dig it.

[re-loops pony tail; slips bare feet out of home-made sandals]

1. (BEST RECORD OF THE YEAR)

TITUS ANDRONICUS -- THE MONITOR
Okay, I'm not going to write-up every one of these entries, but this record deserves the extra praise: The Monitor is a brilliant piece of music. The album's conceit embodies most everything I like about it: it purports to be a "punk record about the American Civil War," and in order to do this, Titus Andronicus thematically arrange songs to mirror the progression of the conflict, use multiple re-recordings of period speeches by Lincoln and others to ground lyrical abstractions in specific historical moments, and, of course, cribbing that sweet cover photo of the deck gun of the U.S.S. Monitor, one of the first American ironclads (suck it, Merrimack!). But a close listen to The Monitor reveals its not, exactly, historical audio-fiction: it's a punk record, with all the requisite hook-ups, break-ups, and angsty teenage ravings you might expect to go along with such a record. Which, of course, is what makes this thing so downright awesome: Titus Andronicus set you up for the concept record with such gusto that its function as a metaphor seems so hyperbolic that it never can quite settle into cliche--obviously, a break-up isn't as dramatic as the single most devastating conflict in American history...but to a 16-year old boy, it is. It's obviously worth noting that the music itself is spectacular--vocals are just the right kind of punk-raw; guitars are overdriven and sloppy-great; songs are propulsive, but organized in movements rather than in chopped-up 2:00 minute screams; and even the lyrics are wonderful (see above)--it's a fantastic listen, and standout tracks like "Richard II," "A More Perfect Union," and "Titus Andronicus Forever" get the energy and the sound of 2010 alt/folk/bar/punk as right as...well, I guess as right as that kind of mix-up can get.

So, why The Monitor? I'm not sure...but I like that the historical Monitor is best known for two pretty darn punky things: first, it was armored to the teeth. Second? It sank.

Movie Night: Best In Show

2011-02-25T22:29:00.001-05:00

BEST IN SHOW (2000)
D: Christopher Guest

First of all, I've seen Christopher Guest's Best In Show at least a dozen times: I've shown it to friends (new and old), I've watched it with my wife, I've watched it with my parents, I've caught half of it on TNT at 2 in the morning, I've put it on while grading papers or making lesson plans or listening to Braves games or...well, almost anything; I know the jokes, I know the characters, and I know the scenes like the back of my left hand (or, maybe, my left foot). But there's a funny thing about Best In Show, and it has little-to-nothing to do with Fred Willard: despite all the times I've seen it, I'm still not sure what, exactly, I think it's up to.

Now, that needs a little explaining. After all, what are any movies "up to"? I suppose what I mean when I say that is that I believe most movies are made with an argument in mind. Sometimes, that argument is simple: The Back-Up Plan wants to convince thirty-somethings love is still out there for them (or, at least, it wants to convince them to spend $12 to be told love is still out there for them); Saw VI wants to get you off on grossing you out. Heck, even Yogi Bear wants to convince you of something (Bears are poor aeronauts? Points to the best answer to this question in the comments section). But some other movies--movies I, subjectively, think of as "better" movies--try to do a bit more: Inception wants us to question what exactly happens when we sit down to "share a dream" in a movie theater; Inglourious Basterds wants to convince us that art makes its own history (and that history leaves a mark); Toy Story 3, of all things, wants desperately to convince us that its the fragility of our lives that makes our relationships meaningful. In short, movies like these challenge us to think about things earnestly and carefully, and--these movies hope--that will help them move beyond the spectacle (where we are passive) and to a point of true communication (where we are active participants in the exchange of ideas).

But that's where I don't quite get Best In Show. Best In Show has all the earmarks of a movie with an agenda: it's sharp, it's certainly targeted at a particular group of oddball people, and it's edited with an edge to it--a willingness to let discomfort sit on the faces of its characters (and, at least in Beatrice's case, its dogs) in a way that "begs" us to question what, exactly, we're really laughing at. And that's what bugs me. For all the laughs I get at the expense of these yuppies, hicks, schlubs, and golddiggers, I'm not really sure what's being taken apart. Is the point just that dog show people are freaks? Who didn't know that already? Did someone think the dog show world had a quiet dignity we were all simply missing? Or is the target the broad gathering of regional and cultural stereotypes who bring their dogs to this zoo? Are we supposed to be laughing at the mumbly North Carolina ventriloquist because all North Carolinians are equally driven towards a kind of lackadaisical curiosity? Is the short-fused anger and aggression underneath the surface of that yuppie couple--and maybe their desire to perpetually deflect blame or responsibility--an indictment of Starbucks (and L.L. Bean) elitists? If this is true, what does that make the gay couple here? Or Cookie Googleman? I don't know the answer, but the line of logic is strange to me: are these characters just grotesques?

Alright, I know I ran off on a tangent there, but let me bring it back to something simple: it seems to me Best In Show never cares much for these people. That doesn't mean it isn't funny--I laugh at that damn Busy Bee every single time--but it does give me an answer to why I prefer This Is Spinal Tap and even Guest's follow-up, A Mighty Wind: their characters aren't just losers, they're lovable, too.

One last thought to close out this stream-of-conscious return to the blogosphere:

Last night, while watching Best In Show I noticed something I hadn't noticed before: it is an exclusively white movie. The closest the movie comes to a non-Anglo character--Ed Begley Jr's hotel manager, who literally looks like a Scandinavian ghost--has his ethnicity reassigned by the script as "Irish-German" ("like Robert Duvall in The Godfather!" notes John Michael Higgins' loud and gay Scott Donlan). This makes me wonder if one of the questions this movie is asking (or, I suppose, one of the arguments is making) is whether or not these kinds of freak shows--the dog shows, the beauty pageants, the sci-fi conventions, the PBA--are endemic, somehow, to whiteness; that they are a truly peculiar development, stemming less from a real passion for dogs (for a movie about doglovers, it's amazing how little it seems these people love their dogs!) and more from a peculiar cultural licensing of oddity and fancy. That's an incredibly obnoxious sentence, so let's try again: Maybe what Best In Show wants us to think about is not only why people are interested in this kind of goofiness, but also why our culture permits and encourages these kinds of curiosities over other kinds.

Hmm. I'm not sure what I think about that. But I do know this: that is the only time I've ever done it on a rollercoaster.

An Unfortunate Post

2007-08-08T16:54:00.000-04:00

I feel compelled to post about this, so here goes:

Barry Bonds is without any doubt whatsoever a steroid user, a liar, a cheater and a general bastard to any and everyone who has crossed his path. Not only is his 756th home run a dark stain on a wonderful game, it's a stunning display of selfishness and ego that shames all of us who follow America's great pastime. No future indictments, fines, punishments or even record-book asterisks can ever make up for my embarrassment for baseball at this moment, or the deep feelings of remorse and regret I feel for those who have already given up on the game's integrity. Today, it feels genuinely awful to be a fan.

File Under "Ruminations"

2007-08-07T01:59:00.000-04:00

In addition to a shocking look-alike discovery involving a scientist, a billionaire, and Bud Selig, I realized during tonight's Giants-Nationals game on ESPN2 that I have been giving a certain man's cranium short shrift on this blog: shortstop Omar Vizquel, your time has come:

I would like to take just a moment on this fine, hot August evening to celebrate the head of a man who may not be one of my personal baseball heroes, but whose mighty, mighty skull must rank among the very greatest heads the game of baseball has ever known. It's list of on-field accomplishments needs no embellishment: Omar Vizquel's head has won 11 Gold Gloves, looked down the barrel of the bat at more than 2,500 career hits, and pulled the rest of his body forward for more than 350 stolen bases. But even off the field, Vizquel's head has done wonders for the game, expanding the Major League hat size options for players from "Small" through "Large" to include "Extra-Extra Large," for the cranially embellished, and by sporting his own cap at a height of more than five inches above his eyebrows, Vizquel's head has made him easy to spot in crowds for more than 18 years in the pros. Yes, Omar Vizquel's mighty headspace is a true trailblazer for brain-pans everywhere; not only a gifted skull, but quite possibly a living legend. Take a moment to look back at the great heads Major League Baseball has seen in the past: Babe Ruth's basketball-shaped skull, the sharply-angled mouse-face of Billy Martin, Ted Williams' squared G.I. Joe jaw, and most recently, Barry Bonds' massive, potato-like cranium - each of them signifying not only individual athletic greatness for their owners, but, in a very special way, symbolizing the very elements of exceptionality that made the bodies beneath their necks so noteworthy. To see "The Head of Omar Vizquel" in such company is long overdue.

Omar's head, let me be the first to congratulate you: caps off.

OMAR VIZQUEL'S HEAD
1989 - present

A tribute to the greatest hydro-cephalic shortstop of our generation.

The Simpsons Movie

2007-07-27T01:58:00.000-04:00

A review in five minutes or less:

The Simpsons Movie, oh great apprehensive wonder that it is, gets several things very, very right: it's true to its characters, edgy in its content (at least, relatively so for a show so established in its mores), and careful with its plot: the "Homer does stupid thing and then has to fix it" premise may seem threadbare, but the writing is clever and allows reasonable complicating actions to stretch the concept out without pushing it too far into dangerous territory. That is, of course, the most common pitfall for screen adaptations of TV shows, sitcom sketches (any SNL movie?) and, ever increasingly, Dr. Seuss stories (the "Horton Hears a Who" movie gets a preview plug before this one). However, Matt Groening and company keep The Simpsons Movie at a brisk tempo, and by the time Homer saves the day, you find yourself wondering if the movie could possibly be over already - which is a refreshingly pleasant feeling for a movie these days. The Simpsons Movie is also surprisingly funny, moreso than most television episodes of the show, and clever enough to appease "old school" fans who might feel the series has dropped off in the last, oh, I don't know, ten years.

Nonetheless, I didn't leave the theater exactly satisfied. I laughed, sure, and I enjoyed connecting with the characters in an environment that allowed them to be themselves more, free of the constricting time and rating issues that go along with a spot on primetime television, but I couldn't help feeling like the movie was more of a "Bart Goes to Australia" episode, where the joy is in the absurd and clever nature of the gimmick, than a "And Maggie Makes Three," where the show's real magic comes through in the way it makes us feel (and feel deeply) for its characters. The truth of the matter is, The Simpsons is and has always been at its best when its stories are small, when they connect with real, American life. In these moments, the show's cleverness isn't a hipster merit badge, it's a way to strike a comedic balance with moments of genuine empathy. In episodes that take interpersonal character development for granted, the cleverness still shines through, but in a way that feels detached and, ultimately, disposable, and it shouldn't surprise us that so many of the series' weaker episodes can be traced back to such an approach. With The Simpsons Movie, we get a little of both worlds: some scenes do go for the emotional jugular, but even in teary moments between principal characters, you still just can't shake the feeling that it's all play-acting - and the sly winks the movie slips in every two or three scenes to pop culture, the current political climate, environmental issues, movies and (as always) the Simpson's' network, Fox, make it hard to believe the movie wants you to feel any different.

So, to close this thing out: The Simpsons Movie delivers characters we know and love doing genuinely funny things in an extreme situation, but in writing a script that required such hyperbolic "stakes" in its adventure narrative, The Simpsons Movie ultimately suffers from its detachment from the "every day family" relatability that has always anchored the series. Should you see it? If you're a fan of the show, definitely - it's not only geek-out and in-joke heaven, it's genuinely fun - and if you're new to the series (seriously?), it's still a nice ride. Is it as good as it could be? No, but it IS as good as it SHOULD be, and that's something to feel pretty nice about.

You want a grade? I say 3 out of 4 donuts.

What are your thoughts?

300; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Male Dudity

2007-03-16T16:28:00.000-04:00

So, a brief review of "300," the movie that is, well, everywhere right now:

I want to start by saying I did my absolute best not to get excited about this movie. Previews have been showing everywhere for at least six months, my wife has been begging to see the movie for at least that long, and despite all the positive word-of-mouth and exuberant test screenings, I have been doing my absolute best NOT to give into the hysteria. Why? Well, because I've been burned by movies like "300" before. If we take the preview at face value, here's the information we know: 1) it's based on a comic book. This is a hit-and-miss proposition. 2) it is hyper, hyper stylized. Again, although I love to see the cinematic art form advance, I'm sick of movies that think crazy editing and pretty pictures equals significant growth for motion pictures. For evidence of this, see movies like "Domino." And 3) it's written by Frank Miller. Alright Joe, hold on - let me clarify: I love Frank Miller's comics, they're brilliant. We're not disputing that. But there's something that happens when you take the badass-ness of a Miller comic, with all its dark pictures and brooding dialogue, and attempt to turn it into a movie. It's very possible I am the only 25 year old man on the planet who didn't really like "Sin City." To me, the movie pushed the noir style about two steps too far, and suffered for it. I didn't like the sexual exploitation of women in the film, and I felt that the "noir" dialogue, with all its curt one-liners, ended up hammy and stupid in the finished product. Also, Michael Madsen is one of the worst actors ever. And the movie was slow. And everything except for the Marv storyline had big, big flaws all over it. But that's not the issue. Let's get back to "300":

So, what's going on with this movie? Well, I have to say: I thought it rocked. Director Zack Snyder brings a visual flair to the film that extends beyond mere panache and works to actively engage the medium of film itself. To pare that down a bit: this movie looks like a series of moving paintings, one after the other, and it does this very, very, very deliberately. In addition to the plain kick-ass-ness of the fight scenes (I've never cheered for men in loincloths before...), the movie frames itself brilliantly, letting the hyper-stylized movement of it all - the hard rock soundtrack, the slow motion scenes, the giants, the mutants, the innumerable waves and waves of Persian soldiers - take place as a campfire story, told by the only surviving Spartan from the Battle of Thermopylae to a new army of Spartans on the eve of a new battle. This simple narrative device allows so much of what follows to embrace the fantastic in a way that feels, somehow, entirely authentic, and gives license to our own lionizing of these soldiers. In a word, "300" is impressive. In terms of the artistic nature of the direction, the "moving-portrait" approach to the cinematography not only thrills the viewer as a work of art, it uses the nature of cinema to enhance the power of a story. This is, of course, no small task - many a movie is made that gains nothing by actually BEING a movie - "300" could not work the same way in any other medium.

Of course, the film isn't without its flaws. I felt the emphasis on a sexual economy for the women in the film was condescending, and although the film's opening in Sparta works to build up the strength of its one female lead, episodes later in the film, including an encounter with an oracle and an incredibly inarticulate subplot involving a weasel of a senator, undercut all the progress the film's opening makes. I also felt that the militaristic dedication of Sparta, however historically accurate, was translated here for specifically political purposes - the Spartans' violent resistance to the decidedly black Persian empire shifts at some point in the film from an attempt to "defend our wives and children" to a need to kick the asses of all "others" in order to communicate the message of "freedom." Certainly, incorporating lines like "Freedom isn't Free," which is also a popular conservative bumper sticker slogan, into the dialogue of a film in which the decidedly white Greeks go to war against the evil armies of the Middle East can't be entirely chalked up to chance. In any case, the lack of any sustained emphasis on either of these points keeps them from deeply troubling the film, but I think it would be remiss to not point them out at least in passing.

Alright, so to wrap this up: "300" is an exciting, incredibly beautiful and visceral war movie that energizes film as a medium and whose hyper-stylized battle sequences will, without any doubt, be picked up and copied by every crappy action movie for the next five years, ad nauseum. We will refer to this occurance as the "Matrix effect," and we will do our collective best to weather the storm.

"300" - 3 1/2 out of 4 stars

This and That

2007-03-15T11:16:00.000-04:00

Note: I am awesome at updating my blog regularly. I will not accept comments to the contrary.

That being said, here is the first (in a series) of scattered notes, reviews and updates, some of which have been promised for a month, others I have just come up with.

1) EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY - LIVE IN ASHEVILLE

So, last night my friend Graham and I went to Asheville to see Texas's own Explosions in the Sky. For those of you who are not familiar with either this band or their music, they are best known for their score-work on both "Friday Night Lights" the TV show and "Friday Night Lights" the movie. They are an instrumental post-rock band from West Texas, and they have been playing together for, I don't know, seven or eight years. They seem like very nice fellows. In any case: last night, we headed to the Grey Eagle, on the west side of town, which, as it turned out, was a very nice venue. The room was big and open, there were a lot of signed and framed posters on the wall, everything was clean, the floor was made of plywood, and there was a grill/bar in the corner - basically, it had everything I ever want in a concert venue: space, food and room. Even a nice courtyard with a giant abandoned mansion a la "Psycho" looking over it from a nearby hilltop. In a word: pleasant. Explosions had two openers: a one-man-band by the name of Eluvium, and a four-piece rock/rap/metal outfit in the vein of Limp Bizkit called The Paper Chase. Eluvium was a very, very nice surprise with a sound that cried out to me: reading music! reading music! The guy played mainly on piano/organ with a few tracks performed on guitar, all worked through a mixer/modulator that controlled loops/feedback. Things came together nicely, and I'm sure I'll hear more from this guy soon - I dug it.

Conversely, The Paper Chase were pretty awful. Their sound was reaching for Rage Against the Machine and falling both far short (the Bizkit effect) and rather late (mid nineties? really?). I won't go into it in detail, but the set was short and a pretty noticeable "bomb" - the room cleared out quickly and there was little applause.

And then Explosions in the Sky. I should say that I have been waiting on an Explosions in the Sky show to come anywhere remotely near South Carolina for about five years. I started listening to the band in 2002 when their first major record - "Those Who Tell the Truth..." - found a sort of tragic notoriety when its release date - September 10, 2001 - and its title track - "This Plane Will Crash Tomorrow" - inspired a handful of odd-coincidence articles in regional magazines in newspapers. In any case, I was amazed at what I heard - I have long been a fan of the big guns of post-rock - Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, etc. - but Explosions in the Sky made the genre real to me in a startlingly intimate way. There was something so amazingly honest about their reliance on a traditional four-piece rock band set up - two guitars, bass, drums - that made the goals and interests of post-rock so much more real for me. I felt that I understood what these guys were about, and it wasn't the apocalyptic wastelands of GY!BE or the walls of noise of Mogwai, but something textured and resonant and beautiful. EITS's next record did not disappoint me on this front, and since "The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place" was released in 2003, I have been an avid follower of the group's various side-projects and recording endeavors. To say I was looking forward to seeing a rock show last night was an understatement.

So, on to the all-too-brief review. Explosions in the Sky were absolutely amazing. I say this with all the judicial reservation I can possibly muster - this is not an "I love the band, so I'll love their show" statement, it is not cheerleading - these guys were incredible to hear and to watch. The entire set - which ran about an hour and ten minutes - was fused into a single song with movements of various tracks, spanning their catalog's four albums and EP. Bridges were written to connect the different movements, and the energy - this band gives their entire, entire soul to this music. They didn't sway or jump or move or whatever because it felt like the right thing to do (listen up, Paper Chase), they did it because the sounds of what they were doing moved them to do it. They love their music, deeply, and it engages them, even on an international tour, each time they sit down and play it. That alone is an amazing thing to see at a rock show. To point out highlights is difficult, given the nature of the show as a whole, but the band caught the audience with the third "song" of the set, "Your Hand in Mine" off of "The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place." " Your Hand in Mine" has always been one of my favorite Explosions tracks, and it was used wonderfully in the "Friday Night Lights" movie as a recurring theme, but I never totally understood what that track was about until last night. Its softer moments are tender, even romantic, that's for sure - as the title implies, it is a song about affection, protection and human trust - but it is also a song about fierce, fierce passion, too, and how that passion can be about loving and defending something with equal intensity. I don't know why, but I think of fathers. It was an amazing moment to share with those four young guys from West Texas, and they deserve all the luck that comes their way. I know I'll be the first one to sign up when they come through here again.

SHOW: obviously, 4 out of 4 stars.

2) EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY - ALL OF A SUDDEN I MISS EVERYONE

Okay, given the enormous length of the previous review, I will keep this brief. I've been listening to this record for about a month, and frankly, I was struggling with it - the first track - "The Birth and Death of the Day" - is amazing, and it struck me as such the first time I heard it. In their most recent EP, "The Rescue," EITS made it clear that they were ready to shift the emphasis of their sound, and I don't know if it was the first track's evocation of Mono or perhaps my own anticipation, but as much as I loved this first song, the rest of the album felt like a long slide-off from what I imagined was the direction of their new sound. In other reviews, a fair amount of commotion has been made about the album's 13 minute third track, "It's Natural to be Afraid," but of all the songs on the album, this one was the one I had the most trouble listening to. I honestly didn't think it was worth the effort. But last night, driving home, I decided to give the album a fresh listen, and I have to admit: I was totally, totally wrong. "All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone" is a beautiful step for Explosions, taking threads of the music they had gotten so good at making and playing each of them out in a way that refuses any immediate expectations. "Welcome, Ghosts," the LP's first single, gives post-rock purists what they've been looking for, taking the somewhat conventional movements of the genre and bouncing around them quickly, spending only a minute or two on each theme before leaping to another one connected only by the smallest of threads, before rising to a sparse and sparkling finish. "It's Natural to be Afraid" echoes the movement of the previous track but in development rather than diversity: the song builds the foundational blocks of a movement and then, just before the last piece is put in place, pulls back from the structure and starts something new - it frustrates, but in a way that increases the clarity of the music and the project. Tracks 4 and 5 move us in another direction entirely, each functioning as fully-figured, singular songs but confining themselves in 5 and 6 minute blocks, pushing the musical payoff forward into the song and allowing a proper climax - something post-rock has been scoffing at in the last few years. As for the album's last track, "So Long, Lonesome," Graham said it best last night - "all I want is more of that song." "So Long, Lonesome" shifts the emphasis from instrument to instrument while undercutting each "lead" line with a deeply subdued and reflective tempo - the result matches the title marvelously, as "solos" become mournful affairs that seem to strike out and then fade quickly away. It is a beautiful, beautiful song. Today, looking back on "All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone" after a month of sonic "digestion," I think it's a remarkable album. Certainly, Explosions in the Sky is committed to growth, and to finding a series of sounds that not only convey an image, but a place. The album's cover art - a lone man in a boat, holding up a lantern as he drifts in the dark past buildings half submerged in flood waters - gives us both of these things: an image and an emotion, a space and a feeling for it. It is an impressive and exciting thing that Explosions in the Sky is able to give us the sound.

ALL OF A SUDDEN I MISS EVERYONE - 3 1/2 out of 4 stars

Happy Fun Time Oscar Predictions, Extraordinaire

2007-02-23T22:59:00.000-05:00

Ah, the Oscars - for a movie critic and fan, the greatest love-hate spectacle of them all. For so many of us, the Oscars represent an incredibly important award ceremony gone sour; a Hall of Fame riddled with problems of popularity and politics, scarred by a ridiculous and short-sighted approach to daring works of cinema and fundamentally undone by the always problematic "make-up award" (meaning awards given to industry figures not for the merit of their current work, but for the Academy's failure to recognize previous accomplishments). But for reasons I wish I didn't understand, I still find myself glued to my television set every Spring, waiting on the announcements - and even worse, checking the Internet daily for the scoops, skinnies and leads on nominees and winners. So, what's the big deal? The big deal is: movies are amazing. They capture us with amazing, escapist ease, and yet they hold within themselves the power to make truly moving and important artistic statements. To say they are the dramas of our time, the cinema house our century's Shakespearean stage is to deny the originality that, I believe, makes movies so special: they are a NEW art, an NEW medium, and when all the pieces fit, the way they are able to speak and to move...well, it's amazing. So, I'm for efforts, no matter how flawed, to reward the many, many people who make this amazing, collaborative art what it has the potential to be (well, not Golden Globe-flawed...). I'm an Oscar fan, dammit, and I will stand and applaud the spare handful of moments this Sunday night when that statuette goes to the man or woman that most deserves it, popularity or box office or politics be damned. If it keeps artists interested in using the popularity of their medium to draw attention to the things art is all about, I say bring on the red carpet.

Now, on with my picks for this year's awards:

BEST ACTOR - Forrest Whitaker - The Last King of Scotland

This is a good place to start. Although a few people I liked got left off the list, Forrest turned a magnificent performance, and he has all but run the ticket in the other award ceremonies thus far. Consider him all but a lock. If there's a dark horse, I would say it's Peter O'Toole, who has the whole "lifetime achievement" thing going for him.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR - Eddie Murphy - Dreamgirls

I didn't see Dreamgirls and I have no regrets about it, but from what I hear, Murphy has two big things going for him: 1) he channels the R&B greats almost as well as he channeled those spirits in Haunted Mansion, and 2) his long career in Hollywood. I loathe that type of prestige - it deters people from actually recognizing performances - but it seems it will be enough to get Murphy to the podium, despite Eddie's campaigning against himself this past month with Norbit.

BEST ACTRESS - Helen Mirren - The Queen

I saw The Queen and honestly didn't think that much of it, but Mirren's performance is spot-on, and in a year that was a bit down for female parts. This is definitely the single most iron-clad lock of the evening, and a miss here would be, well, disastrous for my chances of winning twenty bucks off my friends...

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS - Jennifer Hudson - Dreamgirls

This is traditionally the category where the Academy goes the most crazy, often throwing the "safe choice" to the wind to honor sometimes the most bizarre of token nominees - however, this year, the relative mediocrity of Hudson's competition would make any attempt to dislodge the season favorite seem like an intentional slight - something the Academy, recently celebrated for its diversity, would not want. Hudson is a lock, but if you're looking for a dark horse, my pick is Abigail Breslin, who could pull that cute-kid-wearing-a-fat-suit crap and sucker grandparent voters. Is there anyone I didn't offend at least a little with this post?

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY - Little Miss Sunshine

Of course, if Breslin doesn't nap the supporting actress statue, the Academy still has to throw a bone somewhere to the little comedy that could this year, and my guess is that it will be in the screenplay category. The writing is fine, to be sure, and I really liked the movie, but I think this is a cheap win, and there were several more interesting and more provocative scripts out there. In any case, look for the yellow VW bus to make its way up at about the two hour mark for Original Screenplay.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY - The Departed

This pick is a little bit dicey, but I think the movie has the buzz recently to pull it off. Although the screenplay William Monohan adapts The Departed from is already pretty damn good - Hong Kong's Infernal Affairs - the translation not only of language, but intent - and then the removal of the action to Boston and its accompanying social environment - is pretty astounding, and my heart is in this pick as much as my wallet is.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY - Children of Men

This will be CoM's lone award this year, and that's a shame - the flick is downright sensational - but its a good pick up, as the film's staggering visual command not only helps the viewer to feel right at home in the 2030s (after all, Spielberg already did that in Minority Report, didn't he?), but it also makes those "oh my God" moments of action feel downright visceral. Violence in this film is shockingly close, and it is the camera-work in particular that makes the documentary realism of the film work so well. A good win.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE - An Inconvenient Truth

This is another no-brainer - has anyone even heard of any of the other nominees? Has any documentary ever had such a large impact on our world? Hold your tongue, Fahrenheit 9/11 supporters! You can't gloat if you didn't change the outcome of an election - and by God, An Inconvenient Truth might actually get somebody into the 2008 race. Pretty impressive, whether you consider yourself someone who believes 200 years of industrial growth is behind the well-documented and scientifically verified changes in our global environment, of if you are still tacking melting ice caps up to the anger of Apollo as he is being pulled across the sky in a mighty chariot. I'm sure you're both a little right, so, you know, whichever.

BEST FOREIGN FILM - Pan's Labyrinth

Oh, I love this category. Few categories goes as right as this category does most every year, and when Guillermo del Toro takes the stage Sunday night and accepts an Oscar for what is without a doubt one of the year's most ambitious and successful films, I, for one, will be absolutely ecstatic. Pan's Labyrinth is marvelous, and if you still have it in your town, please, please, please go see it.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM - Cars

...and as much as I love the foreign film category, I hate this one. Although it seemed like a good idea when we were getting half a dozen solid animated films each year (when was that, exactly? 1995?), now this category has turned into a race to find the tallest man to walk on the moon (the point being, there aren't many candidates). In any case, if Pixar runs, Pixar wins, no matter how mediocre Pixar's entry into the contest might be. So Cars it is, even if Monster House, which never did find an audience, is the far superior picture.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE - The Queen

I usually like this category, but I couldn't care less this year. The best music I heard was the Kronos Quartet's work in The Fountain, but nobody else saw the movie, it seems, so it got left out. I thought Clint Eastwood's work in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima was awfully nice, but nobody cares about that, either. So, sure, go with The Queen. It's won all the other awards so far.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG - Dreamgirls

Again, I don't care. Dreamgirls wins this, so just mark it down and send more mean letters to Robert Redford for creating this category with that stupid song in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

SOUND MIXING - Dreamgirls

People sing, people dance - it sounds fresh, it sounds period - honestly, I don't really know what this category even means.

SOUND EDITING - Letters from Iwo Jima

Hey, at least it will take home an Oscar. Good try, Clint - maybe next time you should come up with a more original or meaningful idea than retelling the story of one of the most grisly and important battles of the 20th century's most significant global conflict from the respective points of view of each side, making a dramatic statement for peace in a war-torn time, over the course of two ambitious and largely successful motion pictures. Sound editing is what you get, pal. Now go make more indulgent, operatic nonsense like Mystic River so we can reward you properly.

ANIMATED SHORT FILM - Matchgirl

Never heard of it. Picking this name at random.

LIVE-ACTION SHORT FILM - West Bank Story

Never heard of it. Picking this name at random.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT - Blood

Never heard of it. But it has that "Holocaust documentary - Oscar gold" feel to it, doesn't it?

VISUAL EFFECTS - Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest

Seems like a crappy movie always wins this category. Here's to hoping I'm right and it ends up being this one.

COSTUMES - Dreamgirls

Period costumes, bright lights, lots of dancing and singing: dark horse = Marie Antoinette.

MAKE-UP - Pan's Labyrinth

I actually care about this award sometimes, especially times like this year, when the winner will actually deserve recognition for doing something special that advances the scope of the field. Hooray.

FILM EDITING - The Departed

How do you make a two-and-a-half hour police thriller overwhelm you with speed and action? I have no idea, but The Departed did just that, and I can't imagine anyone seeing the movie and feeling otherwise - an accomplishment, of an editorial sort, I imagine. Your dark horse is Babel.

BEST DIRECTOR - Martin Scorsese - The Departed

Do you see what I did here? I started with interesting categories, then went through all the boring ones, and I saved two of the most interesting categories for last. How's that for pacing and rhythm? In any case, this is the night's big story, with Martin Scorsese, five-time Oscar nominee and a director already enshrined in the Hollywood pantheon, finally receiving the little gold statuette that will solidify the significance of his film career, post 1980. The Academy has been trying to give him this award for some time, but the movies haven't been up to snuff: Gangs of New York, The Aviator. But this year, Marty's got the movie, he's got the box office, he's got the buzz, he's got it all - and Sunday night, this will be the speech to watch. Congratulations, and consider this category wrapped up.

BEST PICTURE - Babel

I almost chickened out here - this year's Best Picture race is as close as it gets, with no clear favorites out of the entire pack. An argument can be made for any of the five films nominated, and although I feel incredibly shaky about this pick, especially since I'm arguing that Best Picture will be Babel's only Oscar win, the bottom line is: Babel has the award credentials, it has the director, it has the performances, it has the dramatic subject matter - it has everything it needs to win Best Picture, and maybe even to rinse our palates of the filthy stench of Crash from a year ago. If you want to rank the other contenders, I think The Departed is still poised to sweep, Little Miss Sunshine is the legitimate dark horse, The Queen has 'safe choice' pedigree, and even Letters from Iwo Jima has Clint Eastwood as its director, and you can never, ever count Clint out of an Oscar race.

So, there you have it. My guess: I'll nab 19/24 - that would be the average over my last three years guessing this thing. Even if I don't win the twenty bucks from my friends, I think these picks are good enough to keep you in the running of any office pools you might be a part of, and hey, them's braggin' rights, buddy. If there's nothing else to say (I hope there's not...), then best of luck everyone - tune in this Sunday night and we can all see what happens together. It's a crazy time of year, to be sure - one that wrecks the yearly movie calendar with reckless abandon, one that inflates Hollywood's already substantial ego to the absolute bursting point - but recognizing achievement is what this society is all about (for better or worse). I know I won't be able to look away.

KMC

Top Ten Madness

2007-02-09T23:11:00.000-05:00

Top Ten Movies of 2006
*I will be fleshing this out in the coming days - keep checking back for more mini-reviews for the films listed!

10: Little Miss Sunshine - ***1/2 out of ****

Ah, what would we do without our yearly indie darlings? Try as I could, I could not dislike this movie - I went into the theater hoping to come out with a "meh" response that would allow me to stay smug and ignore the Independent Spirit Awards this year, but the damn movie wouldn't let me do it. In the end, it's the character work these actors do that lift this movie above its script and its concept - underneath the easy jokes about family disfunctionality (didn't we get enough of that with "Cheaper by the Dozen"?) lie some downright brutal scenes that push past the immediate laughs and reveal how anger and distrust and disappointment within a family can eat away at the bonds that we all know in our heads are so meaningful and important for, well, our sanity. You sense the reality of the scars underneath the cheap jabs these people take at one another, and not only do you end up hurting with them, you find yourself rooting for them on as a family because, as cheesy as it may sound, you think they deserve at least a minute's happiness. Getting that message across in a genre film as formulaic as this one was no easy task, and the cast and director deserve all the praise they get for pulling it off.

9: Borat - ***1/2 out of ****

This review needs to be kept brief, if only to keep me from quoting the movie so extensively that it might take away from your need - yes, need - to see it. Put simply, "Borat" is really, really funny. The humor is sharp and satirical, the laughs feel fresh and original, and the concept - to take a Daily Show-type faux-reporter and use him to expose the ignorance and prejudice of others - is one that, for better or worse, speaks intimately to the current generation. In fact, the movie ends up working so well as a comedy that much of its substantive agenda is easily overlooked in the first few viewings; it's hard to remember that even if "Borat" creator Sacha Baron Cohen isn't actually a Kazakh, he's not an American, either, and his journey through the heartland is significant not just for the laughs it brings, but also for what his outsider's perspective really does illuminate about who we really are in this country. Certainly, as an instructor and Ph.D. student at the University of South Carolina, I was affected and embarrassed by the way a handful of U.S.C. frat guys behaved in the movie, and to see "Borat," at least to me, was to see a movie that exposed our biases and prejudices in very real way. To use examples from the film, I may not buy a Hummer so I can use it to run over gypsies, but I might buy one for the factory-standard "pussy magnet" Borat insists must be hidden inside the glove compartment. Ouch, right? It's an odd thing to say "I laughed until I cried" and mean it, sincerely.

8: Letters from Iwo Jima - ***1/2 out of ****

7: Babel - ***1/2 out of ****

6: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada - ***1/2 out of ****

5: Children of Men - ***1/2 out of ****

4: Apocalypto - **** out of ****

"Apocalypto" represents an astounding piece of kinetic filmmaking. Mel Gibson seems to embrace the challenges inherent not only in telling a story in a foreign language, but in making nearly all of the voices, moods and affective techniques of American cinema work in both a tongue and world that can best be described as entirely alien to an American audience. Specifically, "Apocalypto," using almost no dialogue, finds a way to make us laugh, empathize and fear for the lives of the characters we are watching simply through the careful control of camera, movement, color and rhythm: the movie is a case study on the active use of a film camera, and should be recognized and rewarded as such. Additionally, "Apocalypto" features several very fine performances and an attention to the graphic and gruesome that seems in some ways to be an appeal for Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" - "I understand the roles violence and gore can play in a film," he seems to be saying, "and by using them for alternately comedic, dramatic and horrific effect here, my intentions in 'Passion' should be re-read as deliberate and meaningful." Not that I would ever put my words in a director's mouth (especially Gibson's).

3: Pan's Labyrinth - **** out of ****

2: The Departed - **** out of ****

1: United 93 - **** out of ****

Long Break

2007-02-01T00:27:00.000-05:00

Wow, so here we go again...

I apologize for the incredibly long absence - there are no good excuses, but I will say I have had quite a bit of difficulty adjusting to my schedule this semester - there seems to be quite a bit of free time, but never at the same times there used to be. In any case, now that things are settling somewhat, I plan on making a more concentrated effort on posting. Speaking of, I have a few posts that are in the works for some time this weekend/early next week:

1) My end-of-the-year movie lists - I've almost seen everything "important" that I set out for myself to see, and I shall report back on this shortly. In brief, I would like to strongly recommend "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Children of Men" - they are both excellent, excellent films playing right now, and you should see them before they disappear from the local cinema. These movies are big-screen experiences and deserve the extra time/attention. You'll thank me, I promise.

2) More posts from The Paterson Project!!! Several, several poems and songs are in the works and should see the light of day soon. Additionally, Conversely and I are planning a trip to the town of Paterson, New Jersey at the very beginning of March. We will certainly keep any and all interested parties informed about this experience.

3) Music reviews: I'm currently digesting the new Explosions in the Sky record, the new Shins, the new Andrew Bird (to be released in April!), the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! and many others. I'm not much for musical top tens, but I think I might at least put up my personal favorite 5 or 6 records from last year and the ones I'm most looking forward to in 2007.

4) Oscar picks! This is where the money is. If you have an office pool, you need to keep checking back here until this goes up. I have won Oscar pools with my friends three years running and I am also the reigning champion at both the Dutch Square Mall Waldenbooks AND the Harbison Blvd. Best Buy. I am an Oscar betting machine. Get in on this while the getting is good.

5) Braves, Braves, Braves. The greatest of all games is soon to start again, and I will have to share my thoughts, hopes, dreams, etc. with the blog-o-sphere at large as soon as possible. My hope is that Conversely will engage in a similar project...

So, with all of this on the horizon, I once again feel daunted. Thanks for nothing, Internet.

Talk to you soon,
T. Az

Another Side Project

2006-09-22T19:31:00.000-04:00

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!"

2006-09-11T00:16:00.000-04:00

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.

The "Mid-Year" Top Ten, #5 - #1

2006-09-05T22:25:00.000-04:00

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

The "Mid-Year" Top Ten, #10 - #6

2006-09-04T20:59:00.000-04:00

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.

A Small Thing

2006-08-29T22:49:00.000-04:00

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.

Get Loneliest

2006-08-22T00:19:00.000-04:00

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.

A (Second) Shot at This...

2006-08-16T00:07:00.000-04:00

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:

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)
Casablanca (1942)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
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)
Chinatown (1974)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Annie Hall (1977)
Vertigo (1958)
It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Raging Bull (1980)
Jaws (1975)
Sunrise (1928)
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 Apartment (1960)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Duck Soup (1933)
Easy Rider (1969)
Rear Window (1954)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Days of Heaven (1978)
Close Encounters of the 3^rd Kind (1977)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
All About Eve (1950)
Network (1976)
Nashville (1975)
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 Orange (1971)
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Badlands (1973)
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)
Brazil (1985)
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 Liberty Valance (1962)
Unforgiven (1992)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Rebel Without A Cause (1955)
The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Fargo (1996)

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 Washington (1939)
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Blow-Up (1966)
Munich (2005)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
North By Northwest (1959)
Manhattan (1979)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Traffic (2000)
Platoon (1986)
This is Spinal Tap (1984)

A Call to All Listmakers

2006-08-14T18:41:00.000-04:00

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.

Hall Yes?

2006-08-13T14:21:00.000-04:00

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?

Modus Operandi

2006-08-11T22:34:00.000-04:00

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.