Ethan's Woods

Fawns & Owls

2010-04-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

Went to the Echo last week to see Megafaun...really excellent show. Even better than I was expecting.

I wish I'd brought my camera so that I could have captured the bearded trio all wearing their Lakers jerseys (Worthy, Kareem, and, strangely enough, Eddie Jones) but, alas, I did not and I grabbed this non-event-specific photo from the internet instead. Oh well.

But, anyway, Megafaun killed it. I learned later that the members of Megafaun were former bandmates of one of my absolute faves, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, and while their music now isn't identical, they share a lot of aesthetic preferences. The core of Meganfaun is their beautiful singing and harmonies. They employ the kind of co-frontman thing with their two singers, brothers Brad and Phil, each taking the lead at different times but usually just singing together.

The concert started out with the airy, haunting "Kaufman's Ballad," which they nailed and which clearly established them as a cut above their opener, Breathe Owl Breathe (more on them later). Playing without a bass for the first song, the music floated over the audience, as if cutting through some forest fog. The set after that had a lot of sonic variance, as switches in instruments (guitars to basses, banjos to guitars) let them incorporate elements of rock and psychedelia into some numbers as well as more rootsy bluegrass into others.

Aside from playing a wonderful set, Megafaun also won over the audience with their hysterical, endearing banter. The two leads played effortlessly and naturally off of each other (they do know each other quite well) and they made jokes about Phil's (or was it Brad's?) misuse of sports metaphors and the wafts of dancehall music coming through the floor/walls. They even ended the set like a little league game with the band members leading two lines of audience members to congratulate everyone on a "good game." While so much silliness might usually strike me as distracting, their comments in no way lessened the seriousness of the actual music nor their focus during it. Plus, they were so genuine and funny, and so thankful for a respectful, moderately large crowd, that they were impossible to dislike.

Check out plenty of samples of Megafaun on their official site.

Breathe Owl Breathe also wrote pretty good songs and performed them adequately, but wasn't so successful in separating their "having fun" personas from the "we're serious musicians" personas. The songs often had unusual lyrics (about werewolves and swimming and such) but those mostly worked -- what hurt them, in my opinion, was their inability to just let the music speak for itself. Instead, the donned capes and snorkel gear and childish dance moves and hid behind this "we're zany!" schtick that was unnecessary and made the rest of their act seem disingenuous. As an concert-goer I can't believe that a musician is totally consumed and moved by their music (as they often acted like they were) when ten seconds ago they were joking around and being immature. Maybe the two mindsets exist simultaneously for them, but, for me, you're not in your music when you're constantly taking yourself out of it to semi-mock yourselves. They're a good band musically, they've just made some bad choices in the way they choose to present it.

They could take a lesson or two from Megafaun, but, then again, most bands could. One of my friends bought Megafaun's most recent album and, though I haven't listened to it much yet, so far so good. Maybe I'll follow-up on it later.

How to Sort of Make It in America

2010-04-21T17:51:00.000-07:00

Cool is a strange thing. We all know people who are ostensibly cool but without an obvious reason as to exactly why. These people might not be funny or smart or interesting or even that fun, but they still manage to be cool...mostly. Is it just confidence? Some kind of shallow charisma? Just looks? Whatever it is, HBO's How to Make it in America is their television equivalent.

Recently finishing up its first season, HTMIIA is a show that's all style and no substance -- but that style can take it farther you'd think it should be able to. It starts with an admittedly awesome title sequence, set to Aloe Blacc's "I Need a Dollar," and progresses to successfully glamorize the dreamer-class of young, good-looking urbanites. And, to that extent, it works, don't get me wrong. I watched all eight episodes and was happy to do so, but I can't praise it much more than that.

The show centers around Ben Epstein (played by Bryan Greenburg) and his best friend Cam (Victor Rasuk) and their attempts to start a clothing brand. Ben is likable and fun to root for and Cam is a classic "easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" kind of guy, but they aren't exploring any new ground nor or they remotely complex individuals. They're not particularly well-acted, but they don't make you wince either, which I suppose is something.

These characters, were they given better storylines, would be more than just the serviceable that they are, but, alas, the plotting is adequate at its best and lazy at its worst. For example, on two separate occasions, the pair happen to run into powerful fashion moguls that they somehow convince to help them out. One of the meetings, at a party, is okay on its own, but as the next is literally catching a glimpse of some designer on the street, it weakens both instances considerably. Granted, they do serve as good chances for Cam to be proactive and work his charm, but it's pretty far removed from the "surprising but inevitable" mantra. Similarly, in another episode, when Ben and Cam are looking for 300 "50/50s" (t-shirts that are 50% polyester and 50% cotton if I remember correctly), Ben befriends/flirts with a girl who works at a thrift store who then is able to take them to a secret warehouse full of such t-shirts. There is an effort to make Ben and Cam's journey difficult and full of obstacles, but when the solutions are just lucky and not creative/interesting it kind of defeats the purpose. Knowhatimsayin?

My other issue with the show is the B-stories that deal with Cam's older cousin, Rene, an ex-convict. While Rene is very well played by famous character actor Luis Guzman, his story doesn't really fit in with the average-NYC-life vibe established elsewhere. That is, if the show is supposed to be about trying to make it in America, like normal 20-somethings do, why do we need a mobster from whom the guys borrow money from and are afraid of? I feel like it shows a lack of confidence from the writers that they can't make the standard trials and tribulations weighty enough and want to add this dramatic, supposedly exciting element. Which is unfortunate sine Rene's criminal persona makes the show worse instead of better. I have the same issue with Friday Night Lights, as much as I love it, in that when they get away from the small town stories and involve murder and guns it makes everything seem less realistic. The extraordinary isn't always necessary to tell an extraordinary story.

And, yet, all those complaints aside, I did enjoy watching the episodes, because the show is still cool. Ben is pretty cool, his ex-girlfriend is pretty cool (until the last episode anyway), they eat at cool places, have cool friends, have cool parties, and so on and so on. That might not be enough to get me to watch next season, if there is a next season, and it's not enough to make it a good show, but it's still enough to make it a not a bad show.

Gettin' the Party Started

2010-04-14T19:18:00.000-07:00

All right, no more excuses. I've been out of town a bit but mostly just lazy, and I have plenty of new music and TV to write about...

A couple months ago I'd never really even heard of Party Down, nor was I aware that the Starz network had any original programming. As you can probably guess, I've now made my way through the first season of Party Down and, had I gotten to it in time, it would have made my Best of 09 TV Shows list.

The premise of Party Down is pretty simple: each episode is a different event/location that needs to be worked by the band of eccentric characters that make up the Party Down catering company. The show centers around a thirty-something named Henry (Adam Scott) who has recently given up on his acting career and has resigned himself to making nearly minimum wage at his old job, run by his "friend" Ken.

The tone of PD is similar to its premium-cable comedy brethren, Curb Your Enthusiasm, though the smaller scope, very play-like in it's nature, limits the customary Seinfeldian coincidences and tie-ins. But the darkness is there, as is the more adult comedy that network and basic cable shows can't touch. It's a sitcom, yes, but it isn't too sitcomy.

As all the episodes exist within the context of the a particularly party/event, the characters carry most of the show's comedic weight. While Henry is sort of the de facto straight-man, he's clever and self-loathing enough to generate his fair share of laughs. While Adam Scott is usually better known to play jerks* he's perfectly likable in this show and his chemistry with Lizzy Caplan's character, as they explore a romance in their recently turned-upside-lives (him because of abandoning acting, her fresh off a divorce), is excellent and provides a strong emotional core that can carry the show dramatically and create a serialization that ties the episodes together. Their romance is, in fact, one of the stronger elements of the show (and this from someone [me] who doesn't usually require a love story) and doesn't feel forced or manufactured in the way, for example, Community** has used Jeff and Britta or crappy shows on CBS and such have surely wasted their time doing.

* Apparently, I haven't seen him in much else myself.
** Though this show has really grown on me. More on it soon.

The supporting cast of PD is also great, with recognizable comedic actors like Freaks and Geeks alum Martin Starr as an aspiring sci-fi screenwriter and Jane Lynch as a washed up actress -- though she'll be replaced by Will and Grace's Megan Mullally for the upcoming second season due to Lynch's success on Glee. Starr is intentionally unlikeable at times, pretentious and arrogant, but he provides a hilarious counterpoint to actor/model/musician/handsome guy Kyle, who, though not a Rhodes scholar, actually turns out to be a genuinely endearing character.

For me personally, the show is extra engaging because I can easily relate to struggling LA folk biding their time while waiting to break into show business. Obviously that wouldn't be enough on its own, but this element makes me feel like my life is a little more interesting, since I myself might as well be scraping by at a catering company.

All in all, a very funny, well-written show and one that I'm glad I discovered. I hope it can keep it up when it starts its second season this Friday.

Sooooo Close

2010-04-05T22:12:00.000-07:00

What a heartbreaker...

Man oh man.

I haven't been so emotionally wrapped up in a college basketball game* in a long time. Had Hayward's desperation three banked in -- and it was so, so close -- that becomes arguably the most famous play in sports history. Obviously, time would be the ultimate judge of that, but one of the biggest upsets ever? On one of the craziest shots ever? Over the biggest, baddest, most hated program in the land? It almost happened. That game will still endure pretty well. A real classic.

* Financially wrapped up in a game perhaps, but not purely emotionally.

As good as Brad Stevens was this tournament, I don't think he necessarily made the right call in having Hayward go one-on-one to try and win the game. Granted, Hayward is a great player and he got a makable though difficult shot, and hindsight is 20/20, but Butler had actually gotten a couple of easy looks recently thanks to some nice passing. That said, it would have been even worse had they taken too much time and the 5th option hucked up a bad shot as the time expired. I guess I can live with Hayward trying to win it on his own, but, I don't know, it didn't exactly strike me as "The Butler Way" that we'd heard so much about. It was tough to see Hayward come up short. He seems like a good kid and he really carried that team for long stretches this tournament. He hopefully has some more big games ahead of him in college and then a successful NBA career.

Butler, though they lost, did prove something in that game. Because they don't play a pretty, fluid style it's easy to look at their games and view them as getting lucky, but they're a tough team that makes the other team work for everything. Barely losing to the nation's best team (and I'll give Duke their due, just ask West Virginia or Baylor) I think solidified that Butler was every bit as good as their tournament finish suggests. Their scoring droughts were excruciating to watch at times; they were probably just one playmaker, an athletic big man perhaps, away from being the kind of team that looked as good as they actually were.

As much as it's fun to rag on Duke, I don't have anything against any of the big three (Smith, Scheyer, Singler) especially after that story at halftime about Smith's dad dying. On the other hand, Zoubek is easy to root against and he made me think to myself multiple times, "He's just big! He's not even that good! Arrghh!" as he grabbed another clutch rebound or tapped the ball back out to the guards. Coach K is a tough one because I don't like him for the most part (not that he did anything wrong, politics aside) but he is the coach of Team USA. Duke may not be the Yankees but they sure seem like it when they're playing Hickory High.

I would have absolutely loved for Butler to win that game, though maybe their moment is just beginning, Butler only loses two of it's important players, and keeps Hayward, Mack, Howard, and Nored. Rematch in the 2011 Final Four?

Paradise Lost

2010-04-02T14:57:00.000-07:00

All right, so admittedly, March wasn't the best month for blogging. I'm not gonna make excuses, but feel free to make them for me. Unfortunately (or not, depending on your point of view) April doesn't look a whole lot better, so expect another month with an entry total closer to 10 than to 20.

Anyway...

"But I guess where I was originally going is that nobody wants to write endings in television. They want to sustain the franchise. But if you don’t write an ending for a story, you know what you are? You’re a hack. You’re not a storyteller. It may not be that you have the skills of a hack. You might be a hell of a writer, but you’re taking a hack’s road. You’re on the road to hackdom and there’s no stopping you because stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end." - David Simon (read the full interview here)

When I read this quote, the first thing it made me think of was Lost. Specificially, how hard it's going to be to create a satisfying ending. I guess we're about halfway through the final season, and, to this point, I'm cautiously optimistic that the ending is going to work well.

I wonder, on the one hand, if we basically have all the necessary information with the exception of what this alternate reality is about -- which, granted, is a pretty big exception. I suppose the the good vs. evil thing is the only thing grand enough for the ending to a show as epic as Lost, but part of me actually kind of longs for the mystery of wondering about the Others and Dharma and about who's good and bad and in-between. Also, keep in mind, I was never really one to complain about not knowing what was going on, isn't that the fun of a mystery?

So it seems, to me, that there are three competing powers: Jacob wants a successor to keep up the good fight/defeat the Man in Black; the Man in Black wants to get off the island, which will either destroy the world or destroy everyone who's involved with the island; and Widmore wants, possibly, to just blow the island up and end the whole fiasco.

My Widmore theory is possibly unsubstantiated, and I'm not sure why he would want to blow up the island, but his motives have been all over the place from the POV of the viewer, so I'm just guessing here. Also, perhaps tying into this possibility, as we've seen, blowing the island up doesn't necessarily blow the island up in all realities, so maybe Widmore knows this and his plan is much more complicated than I think. Especially since it seems like he wants Desmond to guard the island or something.

As for Jacob's plan, I'm curious as to whether it makes sense that Jack will be the New Jacob. Jack was, initially, the single main character of the show, though his role has kind of lessened as the show's gone on. It would be fitting on the one hand, completing his full-arc as a man of science to a man of faith, but I could see it being just as fitting for a resurrected Locke (the real Locke that is) or even Sawyer. Or, maybe, as some have suggested, it's Aaron or Sun and Jin's baby that will be the successor (or at least provide some loophole). Maybe that's why Desmond is back? We'll see.

Speaking of Desmond being back, I'm glad he's around again. I remember at one point (after "The Constant" one of my favorite episodes, the one where Desmond calls Penny on Christmas Eve) feeling like he was, in the grand scheme of things, the most important character. Of course, then we didn't see him for about a season and a half (maybe not that long) and I was proven wrong, but his episodes are always great and I find his romance is the most engaging. He's also gotten a raw deal so many times (from Widmore and from the sacrifice he had to make for the island) that he's easy to empathize with.

Anyway, as you can see, it's hard to write about Lost without being a super-hardcore fan, but now you at least know that I have indeed been watching it and that I haven't completely forgotten about my blog.

Back tomorrow or Monday.

Catching Up the Ears

2010-03-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

If I were a truly good blogger, I'd have given each of these albums/artists their own entires...but...well...you know.

First things first, stolen straight from a couple of my favorite music blogs, Soul Sides and HearYa respectively:

Listen to this awesome Aretha Franklin cover of Sam Cooke's "You Send Me." Initially, when the piano started up, I was a little confused about how the timing was going to work, but then these relaxed, sublime vocals come in and the rest is history. This is one of the better examples I've heard of doing an amazing cover of an already amazing song, yet having the new version be entirely different while still respectful.

I don't know much about Joe Pug (pictured above), but the guy knows how to write lyrics. His music isn't completely my style, but check out this little verse from "Not So Sure" (link from the Hearya.com live session):

I bummed expensive cigarettes,
I wrote John Steinbeck's books,
I undressed someone's daughter,
Then complained about her looks.

Damn. As R Kelly might say, that's real talk.

Owen Pallett - Heartland: I'm sure that someone has done an album kind of like this before, but I haven't heard it. Pallett (who used to go by Final Fantasy, and it's probably better he had to drop that moniker) has made a very cool, interesting indie pop album ... except he used an orchestra instead of a regular band. What results is kind of reminiscent of Andrew Bird in some ways, except many of the songs feel like a new-vocaled remix of numbers from a lost, melancholy Sondheim musical. It is a little odd at first, and some of the songs ("Flare Gun" especially) can be too showtuney, but overall the album works really well and is rewardingly well-crafted. Definitely work a listen; even if you don't like the album you'll appreciate the intention. Final Grade: B+/A-

This video doesn't include the full-orchestra, but you can kind of get the idea.

Surfer Blood - Astro Coast: This debut album reminds me a lot of the Real Estate LP from last year. It's definitely more of a rock album, and it lacks some of the charm and sophistication of the Real Estate album, but it's still pretty darn good. It's interesting, and this is something I've noticed in the music scene recently, that there seem to be a fair number of bands that are playing music that isn't exactly new or original, and in fact it sounds like music that was more popular a a few years ago, but it's been influenced by all the music that has come out in those few years and therefore does seem to be fresh, even if only slightly. For example, and this is why I bring it up, Surfer Blood sounds a lot like Weezer, but captures just enough details from the post-Weezer debut landscape to not be a worthless Weezer knockoff -- of which there were plenty when Weezer was at their apex. Bottom line, Astro Coast isn't exactly breaking new ground, but they're doing enough of their own thing, and doing it well. Final Grade: B+

Here's an in-studio version of "Floating Vibes." God, they're so young! I'm not going to pretend I'm not jealous.

Other Lives - Self Titled: When I heard the track "Paper Cities" I really, really loved it. I thought it was melancholy but mature and it gave this feeling that everything should be moving in slow motion when it was playing. And I still like this song, but, unfortunately, the rest of the album isn't quite as good. Most of the songs are too soft and poppy for my tastes and they're quick to welcome the melodrama. Clearly they have some potential as there are at least two other songs, "Don't Let Them" and "It Was the Night," that are more than decent, but I'm not going to be tracking their career waiting for them to make the jump. Final Grade: B-

This song is still great though. And it's from Hearya.com, so I guess I heard of this band through them too. Watching this video makes me wonder how I didn't like this album more.

Back soon with, likely, a full review of the new Gorillaz album, though maybe not, as I still want to give that a few more listens. Back soon with something.

Breaking It Down

2010-03-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

Most of this post is also over at Pop Culture Nerd.

“You either run from things, or you face them,” Jesse tells Walt in the Season 3 premiere of Breaking Bad, unwittingly nailing Walt’s current shortcoming. While, at least for today, Walt may be ready to choose family over meth dealing, he’s far from ready to face anything or anyone. Despite the glimpses of his solitary self-loathing, Walt never makes any sort of acknowledgement of his wrongs. He thinks that getting out of the meth game should fix everything, but in this episode he learns (even if he refuses to accept it) how far from the truth that notion is.

In the premiere, Walt has entered even more severe stages of justification and denial, as though his meth obsession has led to him likely losing his family, he’s still not quite capable of really leveling with Skylar. He admits that he has manufactured drugs, but he doesn’t get near an apology and is indignant when Skylar hands him the divorce papers. Walt has hidden the truth from Skylar for so long that he thinks revealing the basics to her should be enough to make her forgive him, but he can’t even understand that their problems run much deeper than the logistics of what Walt’s been up to. And, on top of that, when Skylar first accuses him of being a drug dealer he briefly denies it, even though he probably had no other story to explain anything, because lying to her has become so ingrained in him.

In addition, Walt also now has to find a way to ignore the guilt of more blood on his hands than ever before. Even if the crash was due to Butterfly Effect type circumstances, Walt can piece together, just as Jesse does, that whoever’s fault Jane’s death was (undeniably Walt’s, though Jesse has no idea) is ultimately responsible. But Walt is running away from this tragedy just as quickly, whether it’s by making painful assembly speeches about moving on (though the logic seemed a bit strained that Walt would be asked to say something, even if the payoff worked well) or by trying to convince Jesse that the crash was due to a mechanical problem and lack of government oversight. Walt knows that he’s done wrong, but he wants so desperately to believe otherwise that he’ll try and sell his fantasy to anyone who will listen. And so, we wonder, if these catastrophic circumstances can’t snap Walt into reality, then what can?

Well, perhaps unfortunately, probably more gangsters. Now, over the fantastic final episodes of Season 2, Vince Gilligan and Co. earned my trust, deftly intersecting their various story lines into a gripping, crazy, and even poetic finale. But, that being said, the rise in the quality in Breaking Bad also coincided with the extinction of over-the-top, cartoonish drug dealers (Tuco being the worst offender). Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by The Wire, but all the supposed “thugs” in Breaking Bad didn’t convince me as serious villains. I’m holding out hope that these silent brothers (though they may not be brothers, I’m just assuming) match the realism of the rest of the current state of the show, but if their shooting rampage and Nick Cage movie style walkaway from the exploding truck are any indication, perhaps I should prepare myself for more cringe-inducing bad guys.

Though, initially, I sort of felt the same hesitation for Jesse, who has turned into the best non-Walt element of the show. While Jesse didn’t dominate the screen today (not that I expected him to) we did get some excellent scenes with him, as well as some solid, seemingly permanent character development. The campfire scene in particular really resonated, when the audience was as blindsided as Jesse to find that this seemingly by-the-book square running the discussion had actually done something as unforgivable as anyone there, we could believe that such a revelation might be a wake up call for Jesse. Unfortunately, in classic, tragic Breaking Bad fashion, Jesse doesn’t come to the conclusion he probably should have, instead accepting and embracing his criminal persona. Even if he’ll theoretically refrain from using drugs himself, it was sad because once again we find Jesse, who is at heart more moral than Walt, falling victim to circumstance and taking the easy way out.

Which leads us to both of our main characters getting about halfway to where they need to be, then abandoning the course. Walt agrees to some facts, but he’s not getting at the truth, certainly not about himself. And while Jesse more or less makes peace with what happened, it’s only because he seems ready to carry the blame of Jane’s death with him indefinitely. With the pair now at least temporarily living together, it’s probably only a matter of time before their self-hatred boils over into more bad decisions.

Some other (exclusive) observations…

- I wonder if Walt remembers meeting Jane’s dad in the bar.

- We’ve seen Walt light matches and watch them go out. When he was tossing them into the pool I wonder if he was thinking of them as tiny planes crashing.

- I was glad to see Walt change his mind once he started burning all that money. I think that would’ve made the previous season feel less important if he’d just let it burn. Plus we got to him fish it all out.

- I liked seeing Hank misinterpret Walt’s honesty as a joke. This isn’t the first time this has happened. What will Hank’s reaction be when he inevitably finds out what Walt’s been up to?

- I’ve sort of been back and forth on Walter Jr.’s mental handicap thing, but in this episode I really liked the way it enables his character to ask the obvious, blunt questions. Such as, what the hell is going on? Why are my parents separated?

- The peanut butter and jelly sandwich was a great example to show how difficult it will be for Walt to live alone…though I do love a good PB&J myself.

- I mentioned this earlier, briefly, but what was the deal with that assembly? Do only like eight teachers work at this massive school? Why would that principal ask Walt, a teacher who has been away for so long and, from what she knows and we’ve seen, has been going through a lot, is not great with people, and hasn’t prepared anything, to say something to the whole school? It didn’t make any sense, though aside from the logic of it, it was a good scene.

- I wonder if Walt’s refusal of the $3 million job is a safe one. I assume that Chickenman has set things up so that nothing could ever be traced back to him, but for someone so careful and professional I wonder if he’s at all afraid of Walt ratting him out.

- Along those lines, Walt is definitely taking that job soon. He’s not out of the game for long, especially with what Jesse’s said about being the bad guy.

That's all for now.

Everyone Loves a Good Mystery

2010-03-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

One thing I like about music is that money and renown and advertising doesn't do a thing for quality. Four twenty year olds in their basement can make a better album than the world's most famous band. They probably won't make anywhere close to as much money with that album, but in terms of quality, it's a totally equally playing field.

The same can be said of comedy, to an extent. Sure, a movie might have Vince Vaughn (Wedding Crashers), a $35 million dollar budget (The Hangover), a solid-gold comedy director/writer (Funny People)...but that's no guarantee that those movies are going to be any funnier than a low-budget movie shot by NYC comedy sketch group in New Hampshire. Because they aren't. Money don't buy funny.

Derrick Comedy's Mystery Team has been playing in limited release (from what I can tell, one city at a time) since September or so. It got to Los Angeles recently and I was lucky enough to catch it at the Nuart Theater.

I wasn't sure what to expect going in, the trailer didn't have me convinced I was going to love it, and while it may not be a perfect movie, it sure made me laugh. A lot.

Mystery Team is the story of three friends (pictured above) who started The Mystery Team when they were little kids. They took cases about missing pies and pencils and wet-willys (or something like that) and it was all pretty normal and cute. The thing is, however, The Mystery Team never stopped. Now the three founding members are 18 year old high school seniors, a laughing stock, and looking for a way to earn some credibility. I won't give too much away, but once a little girl comes to their roadside stand and asks if they can help figure out who murdered her parents, hilarity ensues (though I guess it actually continues to ensue as it was funny before this as well).

What makes Mystery Team work so well is that they absolutely nail the necessary absurdist tone. Sure, you have to suspend your disbelief at times, but it knows what kind of movie it's trying to be and finds the perfect balance between silly and too silly, as well as realistic and too realistic. The writing, from a joke standpoint, is consistently excellent. Very clever, and often very unexpected. The actually plot could be a little tighter, and I personally could have had some of the gross-out humor scaled back, but since I never stopped laughing, those complaints seem more minor.

The movie was shot a couple years ago now, and in since then, there are many actors who have since made their way onto TV, coincidentally all on NBC. Donald Glover (Troy on Community) is the main character (center, above) and Aubrey Plaza (April from Parks and Recreation) is the other daughter of the murdered parents. Bobby Moynihan from SNL is also there, as are Dotcom and Lutz from 30 Rock, as well as Erin from The Office. For any Upright Citizen's Brigade fans, comedy genius Matt Walsh also makes a scene-stealing appearance.

I don't know if it's in theaters anymore, but get Mystery Team on those Netflix queues for when it's released in May.

"We're men, right?"
"We're drinking chocolate milk, aren't we?"

Escape from the Planet of DFW

2010-03-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

Wait...what's this? A new blog entry? Sac me bleu!

All right, so March hasn't been the best blogging month. Due to visitors and four full days of NCAA March Madness* my blog has been neglected though I'll try and finish the month strong, especially since I'll be hopefully going to a couple concerts this week. Stay tuned.

* Which was awesome by the way, one of the better tournament opening weekends I've seen, which makes me wish I'd followed the season more closely as it probably would've been even crazier. Especially loved the KU-NIU game, the Cornell games, and the St. Mary's-Nova game. The Murray State upset was pretty great as well.

Anyway, for now, my third* installment in catalogued my newfound affection for David Foster Wallace. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again is a compilation of non-fiction essays published in the 90s. I finished most of the book a couple of months ago, but one of the essays (more on it soon) dealt with the films of David Lynch and I felt I had to educate myself on the relevant films before reading that one. Thus, I only formally completed the book last week.

* Part one was about his incredible commencement speech and part two was his equally awesome short story collection Oblivion.

So, naturally, I liked some of the essays more than others. Some were not as culturally relevant two decades after their writing and some were too dense for me to get out of them what he likely intended, but others still resonated and were a joy to read.

My favorite was the title essay, one that was a lengthy (100 pages) first-hand account of DFW's trip on a luxury cruise at the expense of Harper's, the magazine he was writing for at the time. What I appreciate the most about his writing is the way he looks at society in a specific way. He often writes essays more broadly (more on those momentarily) but I like hearing of him interacting with individuals and groups and then drawing interesting conclusions about human nature. Never having been on a cruise myself, it was fascinating to have the experience explored by someone so observant and literate in that he could really convey to me the cruise culture: the kind of people that go on the cruises, the kind of people that work on the cruises, what the intentions of the cruise line company are, how the cruise is marketed, what kind of activities they are, how one passes time on the cruise, and so on and so on. Like most good writers, Wallace thinks about everything when he's in a place. He wonders about the parts of things (cruises in this case) that go mostly unseen, he likes to examine all sides of things, which I as the reader really appreciate. I also like it when he's at the center of the essay as I'm always curious about how someone as smart as him fits into normal situations, especially knowing that he was privately very depressed and, eventually, sadly, took his own life.

He treads similar ground in Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All in which he visits the Illinois State Fair near where he grew up. In this one he strictly adheres to kind of a log-type structure (e.g. starting each section w. something like 08/05/0905h) which sometimes works against him as certain parts of his visit were far less engaging than others -- in contrast to the cruise essay, with a generally chronological structure but still able to jump around for the benefit of the narrative. Nevertheless, the bits about discovering where in fact all those strange people buy those full-of-attitude shirts that say things like (and I'm quoting from the essay), "We'd Get Along Better...If You Were A BEER!" and "What Part of NO Don't You Understand?" were funny but also enlightening as such observations led to some pretty excellent ruminations on the difference slices of American society and geography and so on. I imagine I could someday write a similar essay that's about half as good on the Common Ground Fair back in Maine.

The more difficult essays to crack are the more broad ones in which, to put in bluntly, he talks about things I can't quite understand. For example, E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction lost me in some points, due sometimes to the fact that (as it was written in 1990 or so) most of his TV examples were ones that I was not even vaguely familiar with. Now, to be clear, since I'm a writer myself and furthermore a writer who watches and wants to write TV, some parts of the essay were right in my wheelhouse. But, even then, with some of them, like a discussion of TV as low-art vs. high-art, I had to ignore the fact that, thanks to HBO and a shift in TV that happened about a decade ago, some of the programs on TV now are as good as anything being produced in films or novels*, which wasn't really the case in 1990. What was really tricky though, was the way he referenced other essays and repeatedly referred to things as being "postmodern" when I didn't quite see how they were. I'm not exactly describing my difficulties with it the way I want, but I'll just leave it at that it was too dense at times and he's quick to coin terms and then use them frequently, often to the detriment of the average reader (i.e. me). This was also the problem in the short essay, Greatly Exaggerated which dealt with literary criticism instead of TV and begins with the alienating, "In the 1960s the poststructuralist metacritics came along..." and then goes onto to discuss Foucault and Derrida, people I know very little about. I can barely even tell you what that essay was about.

* I could name those shows, but if you've read this blog before you know what I think they are.

His two essays on tennis were interesting, and worked well with each other. The first, Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley, telling how his smarts and strategy as a young tennis player, especially in contrast to other immature opponents, led him to a lot of success, though he was eventually derailed by a lack of athleticism. Though, like most Wallace essays, it's about far more than that. So, by the time we got to an essay about mid-level ATP pro Michael Joyce (the essay has a long name and I don't want to type it) Wallace's credibility and background were established and he was able to, like in the cruise line essay, delve into a world (mid-level and low-level tennis pros) that most people know little about. And not just what it's like to be such a tennis pro, but the childhood and life decisions it takes to get there and some other really good stuff.

The last essay, as I've now mentioned all the others, was the previously alluded to David Lynch Keeps His Head. It was written before Lost Highway came out (one of the movies I watched before reading) and DFW talks eloquently about Lynch's status in the film world, his influence on writers with Blue Velvet, and conjecture on how, if really at all, Lynch judges and thinks about himself. What I really respect about DFW is that he does his homework (though I imagine for someone as wicked smaht as him it's more just living and learning instead of homework) and can expertly discuss film and Lynch's career in this essay, and then come back with a seemingly endless knowledge of literature and TV and tennis and anything under the sun. The Lynch essay worked on that level, though I don't think his movies have the same effect they have now, though as Wallace would surely argue that's because he's so influential that elements of his style are present in the movies of so many directors that, in retrospect, his films don't seem as revolutionary*.

* I kind of talked about this in this entry when analyzing Vonnegut.

Though more up and down for me than Oblivion (my hunch is that I prefer Wallace's fiction to his non-fiction, which may put me in the minority) I still thoroughly enjoyed the collection. In the same way it's fun to talk to someone who is really smart and has a lot of theories about the world, it's fun to read that kind of writer. While my next few books will probably be catching up on some heavyweight 20th century writers that I've missed along the way, I'm sure I'll be checking out more DFW in the next few months, though I'm torn on whether to tackle on his novels or another collection of fiction/non-fiction. Time will tell I suppose.

Back tomorrow with probably something about a movie or movies I've seen recently.

Adventures in Postmodernism

2010-03-12T17:25:00.000-08:00

Let's be clear, The Marriage Ref is a terrible show. There's really no two ways around it. The host is unlikeable and unfunny, it's rushed, the connubial quarrels are only chosen for their ridiculousness rather than their ability to be debated (i.e. the notion that there are "sides" to choose in these situations is only the case about half the time), and so on and so on. I caught a little of the premiere (I didn't turn the TV off in time after 30 Rock) and I witnessed Jerry Seinfeld play along and embarrass himself and try and sell it the way NBC was trying to sell it. It was kind of a disaster.

And yet, last night, I couldn't help but at least give it a chance to win my attention, as two of my favorite comedians/personalities, Larry David and Ricky Gervais were on the show. It didn't disappoint, but not for the reason I would have necessarily predicted (i.e. them being plain ol' funny).

Instead of embracing the format of the show, the quippy hamminess of it, they called a spade a spade. They brazenly acknowledged how weird the show was, how uncomfortable it was to be there, how fatuous it was that the two of them (with the uber-famous Madonna) were doling out relationship judgment, and how screwed up the couples were. It was awesome.

Here's what Ricky Gervais said after they finished with the first segment:

"What is going on? [pause, laughter] What is going on? This is a strange program. I feel like someone's put crack in my drink. What is going on? This is the weirdest show I've ever been on."

And he was right! The Marriage Ref is wildly bizarre. But what made the rest of the episode so fascinating was that Larry David and Ricky Gervais didn't pretend to try and fit in with the celebrity-on-TV nonsense that we've normalized.

For example, Dancing With the Stars, Celebrity Apprentice, The Surreal Life, are all shows in which supposed "celebrities" (and though I put that in quotes they are technically celebrities, we kind of know who they are ... usually) go on TV and take some inane competition with absolute seriousness* and the network and the celebrities and the audience (hereafter referred to as Audience A) enter into this strange pact of acceptance in which nobody seems willing to point out how goddamn ridiculous it is.

* Well, as far as I can tell. I don't actually watch these shows.

Which is why last night was something really crazy and enjoyable. In the middle of one of these shows, one in which the rules of artificiality and disingenuousness have been clearly established by a neutered Jerry Seinfeld and Eva Longoria and whoever else, two of the all-time hilarious cynics somehow found themselves in the middle of it and wouldn't or couldn't play along.

It was like the scene in Into the Woods where the characters notice the narrator on stage and bring him into the story. In this case we (the cynical Audience B, separate from Audience A established in the previous paragraph who like to indulge in these programs) were like Sondheim's ITW narrator pre-involvement, and then our exact sentiments and criticisms were voiced by David/Gervais in the show as they fulfilled the role of the post-involvement ITW narrator. The sarcastic and judgmental remarks that would normally only exist in my Audience B living room with my equally sarcastic and judgmental friends now existed within the program itself.

But, even more interestingly, this didn't destroy the established, "normal" procedure of The Marriage Ref. The host* continued his dopey shtick, and now juxtaposed to the realism that David/Gervais were bringing to this ludicrous venture, he became even dopier, goofier, and more awkward. But he was unrelenting in his inveterate hosting personality and the pre-chosen couples were just as surreal and outlandish and Madonna oscillated between the David/Gervais camp (as she's been a pretty outspoken celebrity guest for years) and the celebrities-as-themselves-on-TV status quo.

* If you haven't realized by now, I don't even care enough about him to google his name. I think they call him "Poppy" or "Tommy" or something. I don't know.

So, what resulted from this was this odd "two-shows-in-one" arrangement in which people on the show were both selling it and mocking it simultaneously. For many viewers (though I'm not sure TMR even has many viewers) it probably seemed like David/Gervais (and especially David) were just being cantankerous, but it was actually a self-awareness rarely seem under the reality TV umbrella. Kind of the way shows like Jersey Shore or The Two Coreys present themselves as serious for the enjoyment of Audience A, but are probably meant more to be laughed at and watched ironically by Audience B. But these shows do not acknowledge their popularity within Audience B. There is no voice of Audience B present in the shows, only the voice of Audience A. Last night's TMR, thanks to David/Gervais, directly appealed to Audience A and Audience B concurrently, seemingly without even the awareness of A-type personalities appearing on that show at the same time (viz. the host, the couples).

Of course, with a cast of celebrities for the future weeks who will be all too happy to be on TV and will no doubt do their best to banter with the host and make lame jokes*, I fear we've seen TMR's Haley's Comet. But, for that one night, it was one of the most delightful clashes of intent I've seen on TV.

* Next week: Cedric the Entertainer, Martha Stewart, and Jason Alexander! Oh boy.

Watch it here, if you dare.

Probably no more entires for about a week. Hopefully this will tide y'all over.

Paranoid Android

2010-03-10T16:57:00.000-08:00

My daily rounds on google reader led me to this crazy article about a scientist/programmer named David Cope who has created software that writes music. He is about to unveil his newest software model, Emmy Howell, an update from his original Emmy, a program that "produced thousands of scores in the style of classical heavyweights, scores so impressive that classical music scholars failed to identify them as computer-created."

Whoa.

What the original Emmy did (as far as I can tell) was use an algorithm perfected through Cope's intense analyzation of famous composers' tendencies and methods. Emmy could then generate her own compositions based in the style of a given composer. And that was all the way back in the 80s! The original Emmy is, in her own right, a pretty crazy invention.

"If a machine could write a Mozart sonata every bit as good as the originals, then what was so special about Mozart? And was there really any soul behind the great works, or were Beethoven and his ilk just clever mathematical manipulators of notes? Cope’s answers — not much, and yes — made some people very angry. "

So, if that weren't enough, now the new Emmy Howell can apparently write wholly original classical music. I'm not going to just recount the article, but the implications of this development are quite interesting. I didn't have any idea that such a thing was possible at all, much less right now. What could be possible in the future?

To me, it seems that classical music is the most mathematic of the major styles, and therefore the most easily imitated by computers, but perhaps all genres (lyrics aside) are equally penetrable. Jazz music, especially improvisation, is somewhat mathematical as well, manipulating scales and patterns. With in-depth cataloging of what certain jazz greats tend to play over specific changes, couldn't a program solo like Dave Brubeck? Or, for example, pop music has generally straight-forward chord progressions. Why couldn't a computer churn out some Top 40 hits? I find it hard to believe that a computer could create music that could blend the unpredictability and cohesion of say, Abbey Road. But, as Emmy and her daughter have suggested, maybe that's just my wishful thinking.

(Here come the rhetorical questions.)

Even beyond music, could a computer write a story? It seems impossible on the one hand, but aren't words essentially just little building blocks themselves? Though the programming would seem insurmountable, maybe the rules of word assembly to create meaning are not as advanced as we like to tell ourselves.

Or, could a computer paint a picture? We could give it a photograph and then it would analyze the pixels and use a robotic arm to paint a replica. Do we already have that? Furthermore, if we have a painting done by a computer, an exact, beautiful transcription of a real thing, does that mean it's good? Or is art something more than that? How can we tell? What if we didn't know the painting was done by a computer? Is Emmy's classical sonata better than Bach if it sounds better?

If nothing else, Cope's programs remind us that the same elements exist for everyone, people or computers. We all have access to the same notes, the same words, and the same colors. It's only in putting these elements together that we get anywhere. Wild stuff. I feel like we may be hearing more about Mr. Cope and Miss Howell soon.

In the meantime, here's an awesome song (from the Soul Sides blog) that no program could write...at least not yet.

The Dramatics: Whatcha See is Whatcha Get

End transmission.

Small Trades

2010-03-09T16:33:00.000-08:00

This entry is way, way overdue since I saw this exhibit over a month ago, but I made a note to write about it later and, dangnumit, I'm gonna write about it.

Though I'm not a real Losangelophile, I do have a crude sense of the city and The Getty certainly qualifies for the short list of my favorite places to go and show -- though perhaps more for the view and atmosphere than for the actual art ... more on this later*.

* That's right, a dash and ellipsis in the same sentence.

So, on this last trip there, I was particularly taken with the headlining exhibit, a large collection of Irving Penn photographs entitled "Small Trades." (Check it out here.) Now, what I really found striking about the show was how my perception of it as a whole evolved the more people/jobs/photos I saw.

That is, at first, the idea didn't seem all that exciting. It was a simple looking man holding a broom. Big deal. But then it was the street sweeper next to the milkman, and the milkman next to the busboy, and then the busboy next to the mechanic, and so on and so on. Soon, I felt very much connected to this collage of mid-century life. I felt like I almost understood how the identified cities (NY, London, Paris) functioned with all of these inhabitants working together to create a interchanging machine of industry, commerce, and just plain ol' livin'. It was, in some sense, a grand equation that revealed how society endures; all the variables and components were represented.

The people Penn chose seemed so apt too, their faces conveying such humanity. I could not help but imagine the lives of these people, those who possessed these small trades, who went to work such unglamorous jobs, every morning, day after day, year after year. Each snapshot was like its own window into an unwritten and unread novel, though some of these novels more engaging than others. The monotony of life, not as a condemnation but merely as a fact, was carefully expressed through these photographs.

Along with this, came the idea of definition, of being known through occupation. To themselves and maybe a few others, these workers were full, complete people, but to the viewer and to the other workers, they were, except in moments of reflection, only the longshoreman, or only the butcher. The exhibit does provide this necessary pause to examine the notion that we are all equally complete beings, living the same seconds and decades, but through its quantity it also mirrors the necessity of not giving everyone due time. Some must be forgotten. Some must be passed over. To consider the replete private lives of all these professionals is too overwhelming. It is literally beyond our ability to comprehend the magnitude of all these lives and this exhibit is, in some ways, as close as we can get.

On a lighter note, it was also just fun to see some of these bizarre professions. Some were entertaining in their specificity (I think watermelon man [or something like that] may have been one of them) or in their classicism (chimney sweep, for example). Had I been planning on writing about the show or taking notes (or not waited so long to recount the trip) I could've shared some of the best ones, but, alas, I fear you'll just have to imagine them.

It was both intellectually stimulating and emotionally moving. An excellent case of a simple subject matter (i.e. pictures of ordinary people) executed in such a way as to be significant. It has since left The Getty, unfortunately, but I believe there is a book that has most, if not all, of these photographs.

As for The Getty itself, as much as I love it, it's not the best place to actually go and experience art. While the Penn exhibit gained my full attention, the views of the city and beautiful architecture and gardens are almost too much to focus on anything else. The trip of The Getty is great, but the art is secondary, as opposed to, for example, LACMA, where the main course is the art. But maybe that's just my problem. Whatever balance one strikes at The Getty, it's not to be missed.

Fake Mailbag #3

2010-03-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

Nothing to break a blog slump like a bonafide, 100% fake mailbag...

As always, these are completely fake emails definitely not written by actual readers...

So the Oscars last night...zzzzzzz.... - Everybody, Everywhere

Good grief. I'm not going waste much time ragging on how bad the Oscars were, especially since nobody forced me to watch them (though since I live in LA I'm basically legally obligated to do so) but here are some quick thoughts...

- Just painfully unfunny. Maybe I'd expect such gaffs from Ben Stiller, but who wrote those jokes for Baldwin and Martin? Those are two of the funniest guys around and it hurt me to watch them for almost the whole show. Talk about your obvious jokes. Their joke for Woody Harrelson was, "Is he high?" That's not only the single most obvious joke/comment to make but it's the least creative phrasing of it. Martin/Baldwin would have, in all seriousness, been better improvising the whole show. Martin's best comment, after all, did come after Precious screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher's less-than-eloquent acceptance speech, when Martin quipped, "I helped him write that speech," or something like that.

- I am glad Avatar didn't win but, as my movie list made clear, it's not like I thought The Hurt Locker was as good as the night made it seem. Best picture/director I'm fine with, I realize Tarantino didn't have much of a shot, but I really think/suspect Inglourious Basterds deserved best original screenplay. Though, to be fair, I haven't read either of them, though I will within the week. I'll take it back if the HL script blows me away.

- I thought (okay, someone I was watching it with pointed this out first) that it was amusing that Chris Pine (Cpt. Kirk in the new Star Trek) introduced District 9, given that were it not for D9, Star Trek would have likely* been nominated.

* Source: nothing.

- This ceremony was so poorly planned I can't even begin to understand what they were thinking. Couldn't they have guessed that they might be short on time? The Best Picture announcement was so anticlimactic. I want more Hanks! I want some suspense! Maybe we skip the tribute to "horror" films (Twilight?) in case the show runs long. Right? The Hurt Locker dancers? Really? No example shots for best cinematography? Kind of a mess. The bar is already low for awards shows but this was one of the worst, most boring ones I've seen.

Enough of that. I don't like to complain so let's move on.

One of your favorite shows wrapped up its season and you haven't talked about it at all? Where's the FNL love? - Connie, Austin

Is that really true? Let me just check my new handy-dandy search bar...and...wow. That is true!

I loved Season 4 of Friday Night Lights. But, then again, I just love Friday Night Lights in general. FNL is at its best when it deals with normal, everyday life-type storylines, and though it veered into a few outlandish areas this season, it was mostly strong. I rewatched S3 recently, and though I was reminded of how much I miss the old JD McCoy, I think S4 is probably even slightly better than S3, though they are very similar.

They each have an all-time great episode (Smash's farewell of "Hello, Goodbye" in S3 and "The Son" in S4) and then finish really strongly. They differ in their flaws, S4's being continuity/logic, especially in relation to the past seasons, and S3 having some storylines that tie up too easily and don't really go anywhere. But all in all, great TV and I'll probably write some more about S4 as it re-airs on NBC next month.

Did you catch Zach Galifianakis on SNL last night? - Seth, NYC

I skipped around on Hulu. I thought his opening monologue was funny and I really liked the digital short of him wandering into the different sets of NBC shows.

But...

What I was really taken with on SNL though, was how well Vampire Weekend played. They sounded great, were loose and confident, and they seemed to be having a lot of fun. Not to sound too much like Malcolm Gladwell, but I think VW has performed enough now that they've trimmed the rough edges from their live act. I think this is a common occurrence for young bands in that at some point within the first year or two, they make a big jump and go from an average live band to a really good. I noticed the same thing with Fleet Foxes over the last two summers, although in their case they went from a really good live act to a great one.

Speaking of which...

Hey, how about this internet thing? Found any good stuff on there recently? - Al, Washington DC

Yes. Yes, I have.

First, my favorite singer Robin Pecknold (of Fleet Foxes) recently released a video of him covering a Joanna Newsom song. I'm really, really bummed that I'm not going to get to see him open for her on this tour. At least I have this awesome video...

This is the best thing that came out of last night...

This has been all over the internet, but I've still gotta post it in case some people still haven't seen it. I'm not a huge fan of OK Go, nor do I dislike them, but this video is crazy...

Is this blog going downhill? - Lex, Juniper

Hopefully not, but that's a fair question. With so many recent visitors and this weird thing called "work" that most people apparently do everyday, I've had less time for blogging, but I'll try and learn to overcome such petty obstacles.

Until then...

Baltimore Dreamin'

2010-03-04T11:05:00.000-08:00

Phew. Not a lot of time for blogging recently, as has been evident.

Anyway...

Back when I lived in Baltimore, I caught dream-pop duo Beach House a handful of times at various intimate locales around the city. The first time, I was pretty blown away. I loved how ethereal and enchanting their music was. I thought singer/keyboard Victoria Legrand had the perfect voice for the music. I thought the lead guitar lines of Alex Scally were elegant and beautifully crafted. And I still think all that. But by about the third time I'd seen them, there weren't any surprises left.

Beach House does one thing: pretty, mid-tempo, indie quasi-ballads. They do that one thing very well, granted, but they basically do one thing. They're kind of like the Michael Cera* of indie music. And I like Michael Cera and I like Beach House, but you know what you're gonna get.

* Though I hear he has some upcoming roles that may break his mold. So let's just be clear that it's Michael Cera circa March 2009. And, in case MC ever reads this, I really do like his work and think he's hilarious.

Teen Dream, which came out at the end of January, is full of good but not amazing songs that are all relatively similar and reminiscent of Beach House's past work. Beach House is at their best when an atmospheric, gliding guitar line is driving the song (like their previous "hit" "Gila") and on tracks like "Better Times" and "Zebra," that's just what happens. But, aside from those two and a few others ... I don't know. For someone who knows BH well, there isn't much truly memorable about this record.

It's a fine line between consistent and monotonous and BH doesn't tread on the latter, but it's close. I mentioned a little in my discussions of Vampire Weekend's Contra how VW tried really hard, and perhaps a little too hard, to create a record that was a different direction from their debut. And, as I said, I liked it and though I think they were too deliberate, I respect their efforts not to rest on their laurels. Teen Dream, as good as it is on its own, doesn't make me excited about Beach House. Only when I'm in a very specific mood am I going to put this record on and I don't think that's going to be too often. Good album? Sure. Their best yet? Yeah, definitely. Anything new on the table? Not really.

However, Teen Dream does work a little better in the context of the complete music scene.

That is...

Teen Dream in the BH catalog < Teen Dream alone < Teen Dream in the grand scheme of things

For as predictable as I might find BH compared to BH, there still isn't a lot of other music that sounds like BH. So, one could argue, if they are still distinct and unique, why change? If it ain't broke...

That said, if I want to hear the BH sound, I can still listen to Devotion. It's not like album doesn't exist anymore, even if if Teen Dream is better, it's basically a better version of Devotion.

I think I'm gonna cut this entry short, as I think I'm a little rusty and this post (ironically) is becoming somewhat redundant itself. Also, I think I resisted writing about this album for so long because my feelings on it were pretty simple: I like it, but I've heard it before.

Back this weekend with some more noise.

Leader in the Clubhouse

2010-02-25T16:58:00.000-08:00

Well, the marathon Top 10 movies mini-series is over. As a segue back into regular blog content, I think I'll go from my favorite movie from '09 to my favorite album (so far) of 2010*.

* Does anyone else agree that '08 or '09 looks fine but '10 seems weird? I feel like I have to write out 2010 for it to look all right.

My most anticipated album of 2010 was probably Vampire Weekend's Contra, but close behind was Local Natives' debut Gorilla Manor, which I had been really excited for, thanks to a couple preview tracks over at HearYa.com. The album was, for some reason, released in the UK in December or something, even though the band is from Silver Lake. Nevertheless, it is now available without being an import.

And I was not disappointed. Gorilla Manor is a really, really good album. I don't quite put it up with my favorite indie-folk-pop-harmony-hybirds of the last few years (Fleet Foxes' Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago and Blood Bank) but it's in the next tier perhaps, probably better than any of the My Morning Jacket or Band of Horses albums.

Gorilla Manor starts with probably its best song, "Wide Eyes," one which encapsulates most of what's so great about this album. It has a very melodic, folksy feel, but has a a kind of dark, mature mood to it. The guitar parts, no strangers to reverb, are both excellent, the lead line really setting the tone for the whole song. The percussion, as it is for much of the album, uses a lot of drum rims and clicks and, on this particular track, is rather intense. The song structure is unpredictable and effortlessly weaves in and out of sparse, open sections and driving ones. All their song forms, not just "Wide Eyes," are great.

When Local Natives are at their best, their songs incorporate the gorgeous neo-folk vocals and harmonies reminiscent of Fleet Foxes, with their own distinct rhythms and somewhat ominous atmosphere. However, this isn't what they do all the time. Most of their lighter songs work pretty well, but occasionally they tread into the pop domain just a tad too much for my liking. They never linger there too long, but I would rather they skip the sentimental, Gavin Degraw* sound entirely. The opening of "Who Knows Who Cares" is probably the worst offender, but once the band kicks in, it actually gets really quite good and showcases some of the best harmonies on the whole LP.

* Is he still around? For someone who likes to think he knows a lot about music, I don't know much about the pop scene these days.

My only other complaint, and it's fairly minor, is that they don't possess the lyrical grace of some of my other favorite bands. It's not just that some of their lyrics border on trite, but they sometimes try and fit too many words or syllables in, resulting in a rushed vocal melody. "World News" is probably the worst of them in that sense, though it's still more than passable, as we hear a sort of hackneyed bit about radio stations and NPR, while they kind of strain to give us all the supposedly necessary info about this story. It really is a tiny flaw though. Their sound in general is very mature, just the words don't always match the sleekness or precision of their music.

But, I hate to nitpick an A/A- album that really grabbed me from the first listen and hasn't let go since. Their songwriting is excellent in terms of not only the writing but thoughtful arrangement. I really look forward to seeing them live, since they are an LA band, but because of Coachella they won't end up playing their hometown on this tour. Someday soon though, no doubt. Until then, I'll just have to be satisfied with their wonderful LP.

Here's them playing "Cecilia" in their backyard from about a year ago...

No entries till likely the middle of next week. Get this album in the meantime. And/or check out the new search bar I've added since I now have a lot of entries, many of which have confusing names. Au revoir.

The Best (But Maybe Worst) Movie of the Year, Part 2

2010-02-24T11:29:00.000-08:00

#1. Inglourious Basterds. Part 2: Offense

First and foremost, I judge movies on their writing. There are other elements that can enhance and detract from my experience, but without good writing, chances are I'm not going to like it and with good writing, chances are that I am. I really believe that everything ultimately comes down to the writing, though I suppose I'm a bit biased in that sense.

So, it should be no coincidence that the #1 movie of the year as determined by me, is also the best written* movie of the year.

* Also, no surprise, I think Up and A Serious Man were the next best written movies of the year.

Tarantino takes a lot of heat, probably rightfully so, for his apparent glorification of violence. And I won't pretend otherwise, Inglourious Basterds has its share of excessive and unnecessary violence. But, honestly, I could take it or leave it. While many people love Tarantino's style and his slick trademarks, what I like about Tarantino is how razor sharp his writing his. The plotting of Basterds is brilliant, even in its slightly unorthodox five (?) chapter format; the dialogue is meticulous, memorable, and (when appropriate) hilarious; and, make no mistake, the man knows how to write a scene.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

As such, a perfect example of this is the movie's opening, in which the devious Col. Hans Landa (Oscar-fav Christopher Waltz) talks to the owner of a farm and convinces him to betray the Jews that he's hiding. Landa comes in and asks for a glass of milk, which he downs completely in one raising of his glass. Then, at first, when Landa asks the farmer to speak in English, we think that it's just Tarantino making it easier for the audience, but it's then revealed that it's a calculated move by Landa to disguise his conversation from the Jews that he knows are probably listening in...it's pretty good stuff. Landa gradually chips away at the farmer's resistance, bringing him to tears only with his words. It's a very powerful and fantastically written scene.

But, Tarantino later reminds us of this scene when Landa meets Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent) the only survivor from that fateful day, and Landa orders a glass of milk again, this simple act sending terror into both Shoshanna and the audience. Does he remember? Is he toying with her? It's an excruciating scene. The further detail of Landa playfully scolding Shoshanna to wait for the cream as well before she can eat her strudel is a great example of the kind of thought and detail Tarantino puts in his writing.

Another of the most impressive scenes comes when Landa realizes who the double-agent is. It all starts when Tarantino makes the decision to have the double-agent be the beautiful actress Bridgett von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger). The whole scene in the bar when she meets up with the Americans is excellent overall, but the path of one of the Nazis asking for autograph (which had to happen) on the napkin and then Landa finding that napkin in the remains after the meeting goes south is seemingly inevitable, but the previous steps are so effortlessly and naturally occurring that the audience forgets that she left it. It's all so perfectly planned.

While I could recount the genius in so many of these scenes (which, when all put together make for an amazing tapestry) I would be remiss if I didn't mention the general humor that Tarantino injects this script with. Pitt's Lt. Aldo in particular has such distinct, amusing lines that almost all of his scenes are laugh-out-loud funny. While occasionally Tarantino goes for overt humor (Aldo and a couple of the Basterds trying to pose as Italians) most of it is just creating a great character whose normal way of speaking is wildly entertaining. Landa's strength of character is the same way, though what is comedy for Aldo is replaced by shrewdness for Landa.

Also of note are the many interesting parallels Tarantino creates between his movie itself and what goes on in it. As I briefly mentioned yesterday, there is sharing of attitude between Tarantino and Aldo in regard to the treatment of Nazis, but there is more. For example, Tarantino creates a film that kills Hitler and defeats Nazi Germany and, in the film, Shoshanna and her beau literally kill the Nazis with reels of film by burning them alive in a movie theater. Furthermore, the Nazis cheer for a violent propaganda film in which soldiers are gunned down, just as the real audience is/is about to cheer for a violent propaganda-like scene in which soldiers/officials are gunned down. This, to me, is evidence that (as discussed in Pt. 1) Tarantino fully understands the kind of movie he is making, and he tries to leave clues for the viewer to convey this.

Some call Tarantino's long scenes and overly-clever dialogue self-indulgent, but I think it's self-indulgent in the way John Bonham's solo in "Moby Dick" is self-indulgent or Seinfeld's "The Chinese Restaurant" is. That is, it is, but sometimes you just have let the masters do their thing.

And Tarantino knows this. He may be a weird dude (at least from I can glean from interviews, etc.) but he can write a movie. And, so it's only fitting that Basterds ends with Tarantino-proxy Aldo looking into the camera at his last "artistic" endeavor and saying...

"I think this might just be my masterpiece."

The Best (But Maybe Worst) Movie of the Year, Part 1

2010-02-23T10:26:00.000-08:00

#1 - Inglourious Basterds. Part I: Defense

"Comedy is tragedy plus time." - Woody Allen*

* Though I believe Mark Twain said, "Humor is tragedy plus time," well before Allen ever wrote that.

Hmmmm.

Hmmmmmm.

I'm going to acknowledge that Inglourious Basterds [sic] could be argued by some to be the worst (worst as in most tasteless, damaging, offensive) movie of the year. The reasons for such a claim are no secret: writer/director Quentin Tarantino made a violent, comedic, factually-inaccurate, possibly exploitative movie about one of the most infamous, darkest, and serious chapters in all of human history. This much is pretty clear.

In the film, we have the Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) led Inglourious Basterds, a special group of soldiers created for the sole purpose of haunting* and killing Nazis. The Basterds strike fear into the cold, stone hearts of the Nazis and derive pleasure from terrorizing them. This is a group that is so utterly convinced of the complete and unforgivable wickedness of the Nazis that they view them as subhuman and undeserving of sympathy and respect.

* Not a typo, though I guess they do "hunt" them as well.

This is the crux of the entire film.

Tarantino chooses to view Hitler and the Nazis as, quite simply, less than human. Like his character Aldo, he refuses to give respect to the Nazis. They are evil, awful people that deserve only death and embarrassment. Tarantino says as much in Aldo's opening monologue, detailing the founding principles of the Basterds:

"I sure as hell didn't come down from the goddamn Smoky Mountains, cross five thousand miles of water, fight my way through half of Sicily and jump out of a fuckin' aeroplane to teach the Nazis lessons in humanity. Nazi ain't got no humanity. They're the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin', mass murderin' maniac and they need to be destroyed. [...] We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. And they will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us. And the German won't not be able to help themselves but to imagine the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the German will be sickened by us, and the German will talk about us, and the German will fear us. And when the German closes their eyes at night and they're tortured by their subconscious for the evil they have done, it will be with thoughts of us they are tortured with."

This is the human instinct. This is why the death penalty exists. This is an extension of revenge. Now, I don't agree with all this--the death penalty, for example, is idiotic-- but I will still watch and possibly enjoy a film that explores the nature of this atavistic reaction and the concept of: Nazis are bad, bad people deserve bad things, therefore, Nazis deserve bad things.

To be clear, Basterds is not a Holocaust film, it is a WWII film. None of it takes place in Germany (save for a few quick, non-Holocaust related flashbacks) and except for the opening scene (which is tastefully and terrifyingly done) no Jewish civilians are ever killed on screen, and even in this scene we don't actually see them die, we only see machine guns fired into the floor. Were Basterds Tarantino's take on the Holocaust, I might have a very different opinion, but it isn't; it's what Tarantino thinks of the world's most famous bad guys.

In an interview that my fav sportswriter Bill Simmons did with South Park co-creator Matt Stone, Stone talked about their similar take on Osama Bin Laden after 9/11 (which, in reference to our opening equation, obviously had a smaller tragedy, but a lot less time). Though I didn't really like this episode much when I saw it, I think it's pertinent to the discussion of Basterds:

"What better, more empowering thing than to take this Hitler or Tojo or something that's just so frightening, or Osama Bin Laden was in September, you know, October 2001, and just...fart in his face and make fun of him? [...] You have to get a psychological edge. [...] Let's go turn him into a cartoon character and, you know, beat him up." [emphasis added]

And I think there's something to this. There is something to the idea of looking at an enemy and just giving a giant middle-finger or farting in his face or saying, "We do not respect you. We will not legitimize you. You don't deserve anything more than to be laughed at." And this is what Tarantino does, at least to some extent.

Because of, in reality, the Nazi's ruthlessness and effectiveness and body count, it's difficult to succeed doing only this, so Tarantino even goes a step farther and places his narrative in a sort of parallel reality. His highly stylized, sleek, sharp filmmaking already doesn't strive for exact realism, but Tarantino makes no bones about rewriting history in his film. He doesn't ignore the Holocaust and Nazi success so much as he revises it. It is a fantasy in which virtually all the evil people get what they deserve: a fitting, poetic, ironic death (more on this in Part 2).

Some have criticized the Basterds for this lack of subtlety and moral depth, but I wonder, harkening back to the earlier points, do the Nazis really deserve to be humanized? Should we see why they're so wicked? How they were forced into their cruel roles? The moral depth of Basterds lies in how we view the Basterds, who are unmistakably sadistic in their own right. As much as many of us might hate the idea of Nazis, we couldn't bring ourselves anywhere close to inflicting the close-quartered pain we see in the film. Even our "good" characters in Basterds do things that (at least in times of non-war) are wrong and barbaric. But this too is the nature of war in that it can bring out our best and most heroic in some ways, but also our worst. Basically, do we have to turn into that which we hate to defeat it? The answer in real life is probably yes and no. In Basterds, it's probably just yes.

This criticism of Basterds also requires examining the context in which it exists. People can point out other films that better portray the complexities of the Holocaust & WWII, but (a.) are those films really so different?; and (b.) does Basterds have to try and do what other films have already done?

If one wants to compare Basterds to the (a.) other popular films of the last few decades, it's probably not any worse than Life is Beautiful, which, lest you forget, is mostly a lighthearted comedy (though it does get serious toward to end) about a father and a son in a concentration camp. As the title suggests, there are some "beautiful," heartfelt aspects to the story, but is that any less exploitative or, perhaps, disrespectful than Basterds? Granted, "cool" and "violent" are words that don't come up to describe Life is Beautiful, but, again, Basterds is a WW2 film and and LIB is a Holocaust one. Though, if you want to talk violence, the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan is more gruesome than all of Basterds. Or, to move more into the pop realm, the villains in Raiders of the Lost Ark are Nazis too. Why? As Indy says two movies later, "Nazis. I hate these guys." Yeah. We all do. How about the funniest moment in The Producers in which we laugh at a performance of "Springtime for Hitler"? Hogan's Heroes anyone? Tarantino is far from the first person to take, shall we say, advantage, of WWII and the Nazis.

Even Schindler's List, considered by most to not only one of the greatest WWII/Holocaust movies ever but one of the greatest movies ever period, does that not exploit the real life suffering of the Jews in some sense? To make such a film, that makes money, wins awards, and is at least generally consumed for entertainment...can that film be given a completely free pass?

Though to condemn Schindler's List probably means that no movie should ever be made about the Holocaust, as it is just too horrible and catastrophic to be dealt with. This is, of course, probably not the right path to take, as we must learn from history and keep such tragedies in our collective consciousness. Which (b.) in that so many films have been made about WWII/Holocaust that it's almost its own genre, it's not fair to ask each filmmaker (since we have established that such subject matter is fair game) to approach the process in the same way. Therefore, since Schindler's List and films of that ilk still exist, isn't it reasonable that Tarantino, one of the most distinct filmmakers around, should examine what hasn't already been done? Basterds is, if nothing else, thought-provoking (see: above essay) and that really counts for something. To make the viewer consider, "Is this okay?" means that the viewer is thinking not only about this film and its place among other films, but about the real events, how we treat those events, and, in a smaller, specific sense, about the rules and purposes of storytelling/historical fiction.

With all that being said, if someone finds Basterds wildly offensive, I can't exactly tell him he's wrong. If something offends you, it offends you. I can maybe ask some questions and discuss some ideas (again, see: above essay), but I can't exactly say, "No. This does not offend you." Tarantino, in general, is already wildly offensive in his depictions of violence and resulting (what some call) immorality, so teaming Tarantino with such fragile subject matter is like throwing a lit match into a pool of gasoline*.

* The Big Book of American Cliches, Vol. 8. Harper-Collins, New York. 2007.

But, for me, Basterds, though toeing the line of appropriateness, doesn't cross it as I think it really does provide meaningful commentary on morality, dealing with evil, the role of art/film in regard to those, all while being careful not to tread on the weightiest, most sacrosanct elements of WWII (i.e. attempted genocide).

Back soon with why I think Inglourious Basterds was actually the single best movie of the year, instead of just not the worst.

"Naw, I don't think so. More like I'll be chewed out. I've been chewed out before." - Aldo Raine

TTTMOTYADBM#2: And Away

2010-02-17T12:51:00.000-08:00

#2: Up

Good god, I love this movie.

Truth be told, I was a little skeptical at first, I wasn't sure if a Pixar movie with human characters that weren't superheroes would work, but by the time those old-timey "Spotlight on Adventure" reels started to roll and the announcer remarked, "And Jiminy Cricket, do the locals consider Muntz the bee's knees!" and little Carl pulled down his goggles and returned Muntz's on screen thumbs up, I was hooked.

Up is a lot of different things. It is wildly funny and charming and cute, yet it also explores some very difficult emotions. We begin with a wonderful intro, almost a short film on its own, in which young Carl and Ellie meet each other, and then go on through their married life. But then, as is usually the case in real life, one dies before the other. It's pretty sad*, but it's also authentic. That happens. There aren't a whole lot of movies made about an old grumpy man whose wife has died even though it inevitably occurs all the time. To call that subject matter "daring" is a bit of an overstatement, but it certainly wasn't a safe choice. And so Carl is left to answer the daunting question, now what?

* I've had people complain to me that this scene wasn't sad enough and others complain it was too sad. Can't please everyone I guess. I thought it was appropriate and tastefully done.

Ellie was Carl's life. They met when they were just kids and, from what the montage seems to imply, Carl has never really lived without her in any significant way. I think it's important to remember this when analyzing Carl's transformation. Carl isn't an inherently mean or selfish person, but simply someone who, understandably, finds life without as much to offer once his favorite thing has been removed from it. It's not that Russell and Dug change Carl so much as they reawaken him.

Up poignantly explores the notion of unfulfillment*. First, Carl, mostly as an extension of his wife's death, looks back on their life and is dissatisfied that they never went on the specific adventures they had planned on. Tying in more to the extra weight given to Carl as an older man, he is out of chances to make these wishes come true. And, as such, he is driven to make their pilgrimage to South America, even if it is more of a symbolic than literal completion. However, what makes this element redemptive rather than futile, is the beautiful scene when Carl finds he and Ellie's old adventure book and realizes that she has been filling it in all these years with their actual life. This scene is both necessary to inspire Carl within the context of the plot, but also to eliminate the feeling of guilt that burdens his character for feeling that he let his wife down.** Regret is a powerful thing, one that plagues nearly everyone to some degree, and this entire narrative serves to alleviate Carl's own regret in a way he never thought possible. Good stuff.

* Can someone explain to me why "fulfillment" is a word and so is "unfulfilled," "unfulfillable," and "unfulfilling" but not "unfulfillment"? English doesn't make sense sometimes.
** Had Carl listened to a little more of Dave Matthews Band's "The Best of What's Around" perhaps he would have already know that it, "turns out not where but who you're with that really matters."

As for that, "way he never thought possible," as classic as the pairing of Carl and Russell ends up being, I simply love Russell and adore their dynamic. The almost-final scene in which Carl surprises Russell and pins the Ellie badge bottle cap at Russell's ceremony...wow. Not only is the reemergence of the bottle cap one of the many great symmetric threads of the story, but it's the perfect expression of Carl's full acceptance that Russell is the continuation of the spirit that defined Carl and Ellie. While there is obviously a father/son & grandfather/grandson overtone, I think it's more of a discipular lineage than a blood lineage--though it is hard to ignore the fact that Carl and Ellie never had any kids. Either way, not only does Carl come to realize that he really shouldn't regret the things he didn't get to do with Ellie, he finds someone that can get tom more or less, have these adventures.

Even aside from this grand themes, Up is a movie that just grabbed me right away and never let go. The dialogue is so precise and carefully crafted, consistently hilarious and always maintaining this clever, imaginative tone. The characters are heartwarming, but not in a sappy or excessive way. The film is great to look at, colorful and detailed. It's really got it all.

Sometimes it just comes down to what makes you feel good, and Up made me feel great. There wasn't a movie I saw this year where I walked out of the theater feeling so unequivocally satisfied. While it was a close second on this list, it's still, by-far, the film I would recommend the most highly. No movie this year made me happier than Up, and sometimes that's all that counts.

"I was hiding under your porch because I love you." - Dug

TTTMOTYADBM#3: For Serious

2010-02-16T16:11:00.000-08:00

#3: A Serious Man
Of District 9 I said, "most people will find something to enjoy about it." I won't make the same claims for the Coen brothers' A Serious Man. That said, so long as you're not in the large chunk of people that might find the film too "slow," "unsatisfying," or (as I've even heard) "Jewish," A Serious Man is a meticulous, engaging, fascinating film with a great script and great performances.

Larry Gopnik (played immaculately by Michaey Stuhlbarg) is not a hero. In fact, he's barely even likable. He is harmless, accommodating, and nice, so there is really no reason to dislike him, but he's the antithesis of charisma. Instead of the usual formula of "likable protagonist challenged by obstacles" the Coens shift it slightly over to "not unlikable protagonist challenged by everything in his life going wrong." And it works. As such, we want Larry to succeed or, at least, sludge his way back to the state of neutrality he inhabited before.*

* All right. So I need to talk about the specifics to really explore this movie so, if you haven't seen it (and you should), but don't want it ruined, call it a day and come see me for #2 (or maybe skip to the last couple of paragraphs). Otherwise, read on.

And boy oh boy does everything go wrong, not in an entirely depressing way, but in a darkly comic way. Most of the comedy hinges upon the tacit, wussy acceptance of these ills by Larry (that and Richard Kind's hysterical turn as Larry's even-more-pathetic brother). Mainly, Larry's wife leaving him for the emotional, articulate, and hilarious Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed) is so feebly disputed by Larry, and compounded by the fact that Sy wants to move into Larry's house while Larry lives in a hotel until the divorce is finalized, that there isn't much to do but laugh at Larry getting talked into this nightmare. Then, when Sy dies, and Larry has to console his wife for her loss of the man she was leaving him for ... it's just all so delightfully bizarre. This is the basically the tone of the whole movie. And it works.

Which leads me to, The Ending. When I first watched it, I was left with a few moments of disbelief, stunned that the movie could end on such a traditionally unresolved note (kind of like No Country for Old Men), until I thought about it for a few minutes, or maybe it was over the course of a few hours, and realized that, like NCFOM, while the ending was unexpected, it wasn't unresolved.

A Serious Man is, the modern, Jewish version of the book of Job*, though, like in District 9**, don't take that comparison too far. Essentially, Larry is being tested by God. He searches for the meaning of all these disasters and consults a handful of rabbis, but nobody can answer anything for him. So Larry just keeps trying his best to be a good person, or, as it were, a serious man.

* Funny side note, I was once in the band for a production of a modern, black version of the book of Job called Jobriel. Gotta love Baltimore.
** By which I don't mean that District 9 is also a version of Job. Read yesterday's post if you're confused.

And, while the bad things keep happening, Larry is firm in his convictions. That is, until the end. Larry is a college professor seeking tenure, and throughout the movie, one of his students (a foreign student who is failing and afraid of losing his scholarship [or something]) and his student's father have been trying to bribe Larry into passing the student, with a substantial sum nonetheless. At the very end, when it looks like Larry is going to receive tenure and everything may work out, Larry suddenly finds himself owing $3000 to his (or maybe his brother's) lawyer. After deliberating one last time, Larry finally changes the grade to a C-. Instantly, the phone rings and his doctor tells Larry he needs to come into his office to discuss his x-ray results. Quite simply, Larry has failed. And now he's probably going to die. At least, that's my interpretation of the ending. And I thought it was great. Clever, unexpected, and darkly comic.

The Coens also, in my reading of the film, tease this ending or, at least, the idea of life not really having endings. At one point, Larry goes to see a rabbi who tells him a lengthy story about a dentist who finds a message in Hebrew on the backside of one of his patient's front teeth. The dentist is consumed by finding out what this message means, but cannot, no matter how hard he tries. Eventually, the dentist just goes on with his life. Larry, naturally, finds this wholly unsatisfying advice, in the same way that many viewers are frustrated to only have a vague doctor's phone call and tornado to discern final meaning from. I'm a sucker for microcosms and I'm pretty sure that rabbi story is one.

Even in a larger sense, the film is a perhaps a metaphor for religion in general. Everyone in the world lives, literally speaking, on the same planet. Everyone is a human being, born from other human beings. Despite this, our readings of the world and our relationship with a God or non-God are entirely, entirely different. Bafflingly so at times. Here the audience can view Larry's experience and his confusing relationship with God/non-God and come away with disparate meanings. Is it coincidence? Karma? Is a God testing Larry somehow the simplest and therefore most logical answer? We all look at the same world and some us see God in it and others don't. So much that people will even use that same world as proof and evidence supporting their own belief. In A Serious Man it's hard to be certain -- Larry sure isn't.

If nothing else, A Serious Man is a couple of the world's best and most talented filmmakers telling an unusual, layered story. Even if the various elements of it may leave some feeling unfulfilled (though this wasn't my experience) there is much to admire in the direction, dialogue, characters, and, well, practically everything.

"The Uncertainty Principle. It proves we can't ever really know what's going on. So it shouldn't bother you. Not being able to figure anything out. Although you will be responsible for this on the mid-term." - Larry Gopnik

TTTMOTYADBM#4: Revolution 9

2010-02-15T15:23:00.000-08:00

Again, ranking movies feels weird to me, I can make a pretty good case to myself that I like all the other movies I've talked about more than this one, but I can also make a case (as I believe I'm already doing) that the opposite is true.

#4: District 9
In the same way that one can call The Road "realistic," District 9 achieves a similar distinction. While nobody knows what it would exactly, actually be like if a spaceship of sickly aliens found themselves ostensibly shipwrecked on Earth, it sure seems like it would go something like District 9 imagines it.

However, once we realize where they have shipwrecked, we begin to understand the trouble with allegories. The aliens didn't come to New York or London, they picked Johannesburg. And so, naturally, everyone immediately decides that District 9 is an allegory for apartheid which, in many respects, is true. But to make too much of the setting and to fixate on the "alien segregation as apartheid" idea is to not only undersell District 9 but to undersell the ANC, Mandela, Biko, etc. That isn't the story of D9, and to pretend it is doesn't pay the appropriate respect to the real South African freedom fighters. While there are clear parallels between apartheid and the alien segregation (forced relocation, linguistic subjugation, etc.) to try and extrapolate anymore only makes the allegory weaker. What District 9 is really about is fearing what we don't understand, and then being forced to understand it.

District 9, without a doubt in my opinion, had the best twist of any movie this year. The trailers and the short-film the movie is based on (director Neill Blomkamp's Alive in Joburg) don't give away the true focus and, as it needs to be experienced for the full effectiveness, I'll refrain from revealing the surprising thrust of the story. What I will say about the twist is that, once it occurs, it transfers the specific themes that many viewers were analyzing (e.g. apartheid, corporate greed) to a much larger, universal theme of (among other things) identity, that can be examined to the extreme only in the sci-fi genre.

What makes D9 so great is that it manages to meld these specific themes (which certainly don't evaporate post-twist), with a grander one, while presenting it in the context of an adventurous, exciting, action-packed film. In general, action/adventure is rarely enough to get me to the theater without some promise of something more meaningful. So, while I welcome the adrenalized sequences of D9, they're not why I like the movie. However, as I'm sure many people did, one can enjoy the film strictly on this Transformers-type level and ignore the philosophical aspects. As such, I probably would have liked it even more had the ratio been tilted slightly more toward the intellectual elements of the film. D9 certainly presents plenty of ideas to consider and discuss, but it could have spent a little more time with them on screen.

But, at it's core, D9 is still a character drama. Everything depends on us feeling for the lead, Wikus van de Merwe (played by Blomkamp friend Sharlto Copley). Our engagement to him is slow, he comes off as out-of-touch and punctilious at first, but when the twist occurs, the budding sympathies we felt for him do well to yank us all the way into his predicament. While a few of the other characters are nearly of Avatar-level* convention, the believability of the world they exist in and the logical, developed hatred that a human might have for these intrusive aliens, make their motivations work. That said, some of the personalities (of both the aliens and the humans) occasionally border on silly, which can serve to break, or at least crack, the illusion.

* And there are a lot of comparisons one could make between the two films.

Nevertheless, D9 does an outstanding job blending the real with the unreal (much of the film is in a documentary style). Even though the premise is far-fetched, as are some of the alien characteristics, the execution of these ideas is precise enough that, so long as we accept the conditions/rules of the film, it won't disappoint or confuse us later. Blomkamp has expressed interest in a sequel/prequel and [POSSIBLE QUASI-SPOILER ALERT] in my opinion, this story won't be complete without one. [END PQSA] District 9 manages to pack a lot into one movie, and chances are that most people will find something to enjoy about it. I certainly did.

Follow the Leader

2010-02-11T17:40:00.000-08:00

I didn't think I wrote particularly articulately* about movie #5 and, since I want to do the final four justice, I think I'm going to take a day off from my top 10** and follow-up on a few entries that I wrote recently, plus toss out a couple unrelated bits.

* You can admit you're impressed by the pairing of those two words.

**Also, while I'm thinking about it, I'll say that, aside from my top 2 movies, my top 10 is in a fairly malleable order. Did I really like Zombieland more than The Road? It's tough to say. Maybe think of it more like my nominees with two winners.

Bon Iver - I named Blood Bank my top album of 2009 and, searching around iTunes the other day, I realized there were two Bon Iver songs I didn't have ("Wisconsin" and "Bracket, WI") and I promptly corrected this mistake. Nobody makes music quite like this. So emotional and raw. So great.

Contra - I watched Vampire Weekend on MTV's Unplugged yesterday. They were fine, and I'll see them live when I get the chance, though aside from Chris Tomson (drums) they really don't seem like they'll be that compelling of a live act. But, anyway, there were also some interviews spliced into the program and the members, particularly Rostam Batmanglij (and no, that's not a typo, he actually has the word "batman" in his last name) talked about how they really focused on doing something different from their first album and even resisted some of their songwriting inclinations. This is, to me, a double-edged sword, obviously it's good that they want to challenge themselves and make an album distinct from the first one, but I thought it was illuminating in that Contra does seem very intentional. It's often an inevitable side-effect of becoming successful that bands start to think a lot about what they should do, and it changes their songwriting. Instead of being uninhibited and writing what comes naturally, they try and write what they think people/critics want to hear. Again, Contra's a really good album, but it's designed and calculated in places and it doesn't ring true for me the way their debut did.

The Saints - I don't have much to add to the analysis of the Superbowl, but for the record, the interception was way more Manning's fault than it was Wayne's. Drew Brees has become one of my favorite non-Boston team athletes. What a guy. And here are two great videos relating to Brees and the Saints:

A NO bar reacts to the Porter interception.

Brees teaches his pre-game chant to a bar full of fans in NO.

Rachel Maddow - I've never written about her, or politics for that matter, but if you want to make yourself angry and have 10 minutes to spare, check out this video on the ridiculousness of the GOP in regard to the stimulus.

Cooking My Family - Also, my roommate Lauren is working on a cookbook and is also interested in photographing food. Check out what she's up to over at cookingmyfamily.blogspot.com. I've eaten all these dishes and they were all delicious and, apparently, in return I have to occasionally write about them on her blog. Stay tuned for that.

That's all for now. An easy day in Blog Land.

Back tomorrow with #4.

TTTMOTYADBM#5: The End of the World, Pt. II

2010-02-10T18:10:00.000-08:00

#5: Zombieland

When I first saw the trailer for this, I thought it was going to be really stupid. (Though I still think that trailer makes it look really stupid.) But I kept hearing reviews that, against the trailer-appraising skills that I pride myself on, it wasn't all that bad. And so, eventually, a couple friends and I actually got around to seeing it, the first movie I'd seen since I moved to LA. My expectations were low (always a plus) but I was nonetheless quite surprised to learned that Zombieland was, in fact, awesome. Sometimes a movie just needs to be fun. And if that fun movie is also really funny, then you're in business.

The trailer is also misleading in that it portrays Woody Harrelson as the lead when it's actually Jesse Eisenberg. Eisenberg's character (known only as Columbus in the film) even narrates the story, lending his Wedding Crashers-esque rules of zombie survival as a framework. Eisenberg's character, though mostly a standard stock one, is played with such humor and authenticity that he's easy to like and identify with. Harrelson is, however, a great addition, a peculiar mix of badass and softie that plays really well against Eisenberg. When this pair meets a couple of sisters (Emma Stone and an uneven Abigail Breslin*) who are basically [MINI SPOILER ALERT] con-artists [END MINI SPOILER ALERT] the amalgam of personalities is complete and there's the slowly and well-developed idea that a few people (who in the real world would never even interact) can become almost family in this horrific, zombie-infested world--or, for those non-zombie-world-people like us, that you can have great relationships with unexpected people under the right circumstances.

* That's right, I'm insulting ten year-olds**. Get over it.
** I just learned she's actually 13. And, yes, I realize I could've just altered the first asterisk.

Zombieland borrows a lot from the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg films (the premise is more or less from Shaun of the Dead and it's structurally very similar to Hot Fuzz with its extended action sequence endings) but it's very fresh, not feeling like any sort of a retread. Tonally it's very consistent, never forgetting that it is a comedy about zombies but also taking advantage of that in a way that only makes the film stronger. For example, when Woody and Jesse (still Zombieland, not Toy Story 2) stumble upon something that makes Woody say, "Thank god for rednecks!" (I didn't want to ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it) it is silly, but the tone of the film admits that and makes it a joke in its own right. Not to say that it completely ignores the heavy feelings of being some of the last people on earth, but it acknowledges them in a way that doesn't feel like you've suddenly started watching a whole new movie. I'll give a lot of the credit here to a strong, clever script with well-thought out details (for example, the "little things" as they're called in the movie).

I saw it again recently, and liked it a little less, this time knowing exactly what I was getting into, but it is definitely a well-made, stylistic, really funny film. There are some droughts of laughter that were a tad longer than I remember, but the good sequences (the extended cameo in the middle just kills from start to finish for example) more than make up for it. The three adult leads are all great, and even little Abby Bres does have some really good lines (like the one at the bottom of the page).

There is a rumor that a sequel is in the works to explore the future of these same characters. I don't always love the idea of sequels, but I think that there's a lot left to see in this world and I give the prospect my endorsement (which I believe is all they were waiting for).

Back soon with a more in-depth review of #4.

"No! She's only famous when she's Hannah Montana! She's only famous when she's wearing the wig!" - Little Rock

TTTMOTYADBM#6: Long and Winding

2010-02-09T17:18:00.001-08:00

Back with renewed vigor after a day two lay-off and a fantastic Superbowl...

#6: The Road
Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road is an amazing book. It's hard to pull yourself away from it (I read it in under 24 hours), it is psychological intense and realistic, and it's maybe the best post-apocalyptic story every told. So, clearly, the bar was set pretty high for this film adaptation.

Like almost always, the movie didn't quite reach the heights of the book, but it's a pretty damn good movie.

It's weird to call a post-apocalyptic story "realistic" since nobody really knows what it would be like, but if the conditions are anything like this, I feel pretty confident that this is what the world will be like. Mostly, a whole lotta nothing. Just the basics, eat, sleep, stay alive. And it would be really dirty. The few that survive will generally fall into two camps: those who will do anything to survive, and those who will try to survive and retain their morality from the world before (plus a third group of those who die as victims of cannibalism or by their own hand). As such, The Road, is kind of a slow film, in that actual events can seem few and far between, but it doesn't always feel slow, as horrific death could lie around every bend in the road.

Naturally, the heroes of this story fall into the second category of people: a father (Viggo Mortensen*) and a son heading toward the coast in search of some remnant of civilization. And, like the novel, this is where the truest strength of the story lies. For all the depressingly precise imagining of the end of the world, The Road is a love story.

* In all seriousness, Viggo probably deserved a Best Actor nom. I didn't see Colin Firth or Morgan Freeman's performances, but I thought Mortensen outplayed Jeremy Renner (Hurt Locker) and George Clooney (Up in the Air) even though those two were excellent. I'm not surprised Viggo was excluded, but a movie like this asks a tremendous amount of its lead and he delivered.

In this barren world, the only thing that keeps the man going is trying to give his son a life. There is a wonderful scene [SPOILER ALERT] when the man and the boy encounter an old man (played brilliantly by Robert Duvall) and, at the boy's insistence, they share a campfire together. The old man tells Viggo that he never thought he would see a child again and that when he did, he thought he had died and that the boy was an angel. To this Viggo responds, "He is an angel. To me he's a god." This, more than perhaps anything else in the movie, illustrates the love that the man has for his son. In a world where there is seemingly nothing left but savagery in people, the man has something to believe in, the one good thing left in the world. This belief gives him the power to sacrifice anything, his own well-being the well-being of strangers, so that his god can stay alive.

The man is a noble character, selfless to the extreme. But in a world of diminishing resources, he must make difficult decisions, many that his son, an empathetic and trusting boy, does not understand. Some of the hard decisions the man makes even make the boy angry with him, but even this is a consequence that the man is willing to endure. While, of course, the boy could never stop loving his father, the man will even risk his son loving him back if it means keeping his son alive.

It is an unavoidable fact that we are each the lens of our experiences, and, as not an orphan or anybody's estranged son, I could only view this film as a son with my own father who matches or even exceeds the nobility of Viggo's character. As bizarre as it is to envision one's self in the desolate reality of The Road, the similarities between the story I was witnessing and the one that I felt would inevitably unfold if I, as a boy, and my own father were in this dark world, became too many to ignore. Once I let myself fully succumb to this comparison, the film really began to take hold of me and, in a weird way, it became a twisted, tragic Field of Dreams. With the beard, Viggo even looked a little my own dad from time to time. As a result, there probably wasn't a movie I saw this year that was more emotional for me than this one as I was completely wrapped up in the two characters by about the mid-point. So while I can't claim that everyone will have the involvement I had, this movie seems to have been made for people who have/had/are a father like mine.

I was also pleasantly surprised at the way the movie dodged what I figured would be the two biggest downfalls of the adaptation. Firstly, and quite simply, child actors can rarely achieve the heights of their literary counterparts. Kodi McPhee, who plays the boy, wasn't perfect, but he was more than good enough to make the film work. For a kid robbed of his childhood and a normal life, he struck an excellent balance between showing the slivers of youth that would still exist but also the hardened, detachment needed to stay alive in this bleak future. The second pitfall was that since of the novel is mostly the thoughts of the man, I knew they would have to create the same worry and tension without the aid of explanation. This is one of the elements that will most clearly separate the two versions of this same story, but the film does an ample job of highlighting the mindset of the characters from the exterior.

While The Road isn't flawless, it can be as gripping and emotional as any of the year's films. It did seem to, at times, intentionally avoid drama (sometimes to its detriment) and the pace of the film could be difficult for some to deal with, but its complete envisioning of the post-disaster world and the strong, poignant performances make it a very worth-while, if melancholy, experience.

"All I know is the child is my warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke." - The Man

TTTMOTYADBM#7: The Dark Side

2010-02-06T13:14:00.000-08:00

I regret starting the trend of not just putting the actual title of the film in the title of the post. For some reason, maybe because "fantastique" is a french word that comes to mind often, I felt the need to play with the first title and I couldn't even come up with an interesting titles for the next two posts...oh well.

#7: Moon

[spolier free review]

Moon is a well-acted, sleek, thought-provoking piece of science fiction from a first-time director and first-time screenwriter.

[full review w. spoilers]

Damn. That was pretty trippy.

Are we our bodies or our memories?

Moon is a film that stays a couple steps ahead of its audience. It lures you into thinking you know what's happening and then acknowledges what you thought you'd figured out and moves on. For example, I thought the revelation of the whole movie was, "Clones!" but then, by the thirty minute mark, the Sams had figured out they were each clones and the movie was ready to explore new things.

But, more than that, Moon is a wonderful, solipsistic look at identity. When our original Sam comes to realize that he has, in fact, only been alive for three months and all of his memories, his entire life, is an illusion, something lived out by the real Sam Bell, a deep, profound sense of loss and helplessness is portrayed. It reminded me of watching The Matrix for the first time, in that you cannot help but indulge in a "what if?" scenario with yourself at the center.

What if you're just a clone of yourself, with all the memories of the original's life, but you haven't actually done any of those things?* If you're a clone of yourself, not animated until the "real" you dies, are you the real you? There is only one of you in the world, but clearly you are not the original. And, if the original isn't dead, then who are you?

* Quick aside on Back to the Future: when Marty McFly sets things back the way they're "supposed to be" so that his parents still get married and he and his siblings are still born, he does too good of a job and creates an alternate, better future for his family. Sure. Good. But, when Marty gets back to 1985 (or whatever year that was) he now exists in a timeline that he has no memory of. That is, while his family is his family in one sense, everything he has ever done with his family didn't happen to their knowledge. Won't this come up at some point? What happens when his family realizes Marty has no recollection of all their most cherished times together? Is this really a happy ending?

Without being obtuse or hitting you over the head with these questions, Moon simply tells a story based on these ideas, leaving you free to wonder about them but not spending much, or really any, time explicitly discussing the Sams' existential crises. And this is, in my opinion, one of the things that great science-fiction does. It takes a moral or ethical issue, one that may not exist in the current world, and exaggerates it to point that can only exist in science-fiction and then tells a great story based on this hypothetical issue. The Matrix, Gattaca, Blade Runner, and (to a lesser extent) Children of Men are all films that do this well.

Philosophical piquancies aside, Moon is a highly-original engaging, dark, precise film, with a strong performance by Sam Rockwell. Kevin Spacey voices GERTY the computer (an homage to 2001, but they resist the urge to make him evil, though the threat is always there) and has some good interplay as Sam's only companion. The music is excellent, minimalist and spaced-out, fitting the tone of the movie perfectly.

It's a movie that lingers in your mind, making you think about memory and the past and the few things we know to be real with certainty. Rumor has it that a sort-of-sequel is in the works, in that it won't feature Sam anymore, but will take place in the same futuristic universe. Jury's out on that one obviously, but, for now, I'll be satisfied with just knowing that Moon is an engrossing, thoughtful film that everyone should see.

"I hope life on Earth is everything you remember it to be." - GERTY

TTTMOTYADBM#8: Lockdown Defender

2010-02-05T12:31:00.000-08:00

#8: The Hurt Locker
Over the last couple of days there has been a small back-and-forth on The Huffington Post about the accuracy of The Hurt Locker. One vet says its too fictionalized to be good, another takes the opposite view.

At the risk of being inconsistent, as I've surely slammed movies in the past for being unrealistic and I'm sure I will again, I think the larger truths that The Hurt Locker explores are more important than whether the details are perfect. Granted, I've also said good movies get the details right*, but I since the intricacies of military conduct are beyond my ken anyway, I can't personally get hung-up on the little errors.

* From my Avatar review: "Great movies get the details right. Mediocre movies get details wrong and people like me get hung up on them."

As for the movie...

There's a social psychology principle that my old psych professor called "The Muhammad Ali Effect," though I'm not sure this is the accepted term within the actual scientific community. What it describes is the logical idea that we judge our self-worth with disproportionate weight toward what we're good at. That is, Muhammad Ali decided that being a good boxer was really important and derived a legendary amount of confidence from this assertion. I, on the other hand, despite being a pretty poor boxer, keep my self-esteem intact, at least as it relates to my lack of boxing skill. Pretty obvious stuff. Basically, whatever we're good at is what we value.

The Hurt Locker is about this very concept. It stars Jeremy Renner as SFC William James, a man who is basically the Muhammad Ali of bomb-diffusing. This leads to two overarching themes, as far as I see it: (1.) with his Ali-esque brashness, James disregards the traditional methods of doing many things, often to the detriment of those around him; and (2.) with his Ali-esque skill, little else in his life offers him the thrill and self-worth that comes with diffusing bombs. This second element reminds me a lot of Generation Kill's hero, Iceman Colbert, though Colbert is the consummate professional where James is the exact opposite in most ways.

The film makes no attempt to deceive the audience from what it will ultimately be about, opening with journalist Chris Hedge's quote: "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug." To couple this feeling, the aliveness that comes with being inches from death, with the desire to be special, to be truly great at something, creates an addict of the worst kind in Renner's character. Not that James is a bad person, merely that, like an addict, he will do nearly unforgivable things to get what he wants.

This film is mostly, a character study of James and his character is dissected through his inevitable relationship with his team, as well as through an unpredictable relationship with an Iraqi boy. As a result and, again maybe a little like Generation Kill, the movie doesn't follow a typical arc. Instead, it's more episodic, though not in a bad way and not without some build. Nevertheless, the movie is as tense and suspenseful as any movie released this year*; a bomb may, almost literally, go off at any time. At yet, it exhibits a great deal of patience as well, particularly exemplified in an all-day stand-off with Iraqi "snipers" off in the distance, each group waiting for the other to betray its position and give the opponents a clear shot.

* The upcoming #6 its main competition on this front.

My only real critique of the film, and the reason it isn't ranked higher, is that (and this is a note that I would hate to get as a filmmaker because it's so vague) it didn't really stay with me. I thought it was well-executed and well-directed (in this arena Kathryn Bigelow mops the floor with her ex-hubby James Cameron) but I didn't feel like I could relate to it; I didn't imagine myself in this war. One of things I really enjoyed about Generation Kill (and this is an advantage of having seven hours instead of two) was that there were so many characters that I actually spent time wondering how I would fit into this platoon, or, as was more often the case, how I would behave if I were the journalist tagging along. In Hurt Locker, though there is a fresh-faced twenty-something in James' group, I didn't really identify with him as he was more what I believed a typical solider to be. Again, this is no reason to criticize a film, this is simply why such a precise movie only makes it in at #8, though it is an honor just to be nominated.

If my #1 movie is destined to lose [clue alert] in the Best Picture and Best Director categories, though I'm still holding out hope, I would like to see Hurt Locker and Bigelow win something.* Also, if you care to try and predict what the rest of my top 10 is, remember that I said half of my ten were the Academy's ten, and through three films, one has been one that is nominated. That means four of my final seven are Oscar possibilities.

* I didn't used to care about the Oscars and I would imagine many of my friends and family couldn't recall many instances of me ever talking about them when I lived back East, but when writing about movies and ascribing them value, it seems to be difficult not to compare my tastes to that of the most prestigious film awards in the world. Either that or the non-perspectived, screen-worshipping LA lifestyle has already sapped my brain.

Back soon with #7.

Fake Mailbag #2

2010-02-04T17:27:00.000-08:00

As always, these are completely fake emails definitely not written by actual readers...

Ethan, the suspense is killing me. Screw that Wes Anderson, what did you think of Lost!?! - Carlton, LA

Loved it. It felt great to have it back in my life. I watched the "previously on Lost" hour that preceded the premiere and I was pretty amped when the show finally started. I'm going to do this rambling style...

- So the bomb did work, in some sense, and there is an alternate timeline kind of thing. Are we so sure that the world doesn't now have two Jacks and Sawyers and Kates? If this is, in fact, an entirely different timeline in another dimension, it'll be tricky to combine them or have some sort of cross-over. Though if there's any way to top time travel, it's alternate dimensions and co-existing timelines.

- I'm not terribly surprised we didn't see Michael and Walt in the new place sequences. I have a feeling Walt would've looked a little different this time around.

- New timeline Charlie is a real ass. How was Jack supposed to know you wanted to die!? I liked Charlie a lot more when he was sacrificing himself in underwater Dharma stations.

- Wait...so Hurley and Miles can both see dead people? Has that always been Hurley's problem or were some of those times him just being crazy?

- I want someone to catalog all the encounters that island-folk have had with the black smoke now that we know what it is.

- Is the island Atlantis? Is that what the foot at the bottom of the ocean could imply? And I realize that the foot at the bottom of the ocean seems to suggest there are two timelines...unless it's not the same foot.

- As for that bottom of the ocean sequence, those effects were laaammmmeee. It looked like a crappy computer game.

- Who are these new others? Are these the same others but with a different sense of style? Have we seen that stewardess-other before? I mean, I know we have, but where? There's a lot to remember in this show.

- Jacob is inside Sayid's body. That's my guess anyway.

I probably forgot a couple of other things I wanted to mention. We'll touch base with Lost next week probably.

This top 10 movies thing is off to a roaring start. One repeat post and then two days later you're already on to something else? Sheesh. - Horatio, Vancouver

Easy tiger. I'll be back with #8 for the next entry. Furthermore, Horatio, how did you send me that email before I even posted this blog?

Did you catch the Grammys on Sunday? I know you love music so that must be like your Superbowl! - Nikki, Tucson

Didn't watch a second of it. The Superbowl is my Superbowl. As I've mentioned before, the Grammys are really, really stupid.

How many Grammys did Led Zeppelin win? Zero.

How many Grammys does Kings of Leon have? Five. Or something like that. I don't care.

How many times better is Zeppelin than Kings of Leon? Like, a million. Literally, they are a million times better.

Zeppelin did get a "Lifetime Achievement Grammy" which is basically an admission of, "Whoops. I guess we weren't paying attention for the last couple decades. Take this and we'll pretend we've always appreciated you." This would be like Michael Jordan not winning any MVP awards as a player (losing to Christian Laettner, and Christian, I apologize for comparing you to Kings of Leon) and then David Stern giving MJ some sort of gold star in 2006.

As my quasi-idol Bill Simmons said, the Grammys are "out of touch." I agree with that, but I think it's more that the big record labels love to just pat themselves on the back and reward (in general) the most famous musicians.

At least Stephen Colbert won a Grammy. That was pretty funny.

And at least the Oscars are coming up...where the 47th best movie of the year is going to win Best Picture.

Sigh...

Are you going to watch the Superbowl on Sunday? I know you love sports so that must include, like, the Superbowl. - Veronica, Juneau

That sounds like a decent way to spend a Sunday. I really hope the Saints win, because it would be great for NO and I like Drew Brees, but also because if the Colts win then they'll complete a virtually perfect season, in which they only lost when they didn't play their starters, and that will further diminish the accomplishments of the 07 Pats.

That said, I don't see how the Colts don't win. Manning is on fire these days and I don't see the Saints stopping him enough to win, especially if their offense is as hot and cold as it was last week. We'll see. Maybe I'll get pleasantly surprised.

My pick: Colts 34, Saints 24

My hope: Saints 45, Colts 44

Now that you live in Hollywood got any exciting movie tips or gossip to tell us? - Bertly, New Haven

I read Alan Sorkin's script for The Social Network a couple of weeks ago. It's a film about the founding of Facebook starring Jesse Eisenberg (from Zombieland, The Squid and the Whale, Adventureland) and some/much of the film was shot at my old school, Johns Hopkins. The script is excellent. Really, really good. The story is actually full of intrigue and deceit, and Mark Zuckerberg (the founder) ends up with two different multi-million dollar lawsuits against him. This film has joined Inception and Toy Story 3 as the most-antcipated films of the year for me.

No more mailbags! - Nigel, London

Sorry, Nigel, no deal. You big baby. But I'll at least stop for today.

Back tomorrow/Saturday with movie #8.

TTTMOTYADBM#9: Le Renard Fantastique

2010-02-03T11:31:00.000-08:00

Fighting the urge to write about Lost...almost there...fighting it...

All right...

#9: Fantastic Mr. Fox
Wes Anderson is not for everybody. I distinctly remember watching Rushmore with my family and, at its conclusion, my sister (who generally has pretty good taste) saying, probably three to five times, "That was so stupid. That was so stupid." Granted, she was wrong about Rushmore, but the point is, some people don't like his style. Fair enough. I'm not one of them.

For example, take this "acceptance speech" that Anderson made recently:

From the opening title of "Acceptance Speech," the awkward handing off of the award, the delay in the words scrolling, the changing his mind and taking the award back, starting to exit the wrong way, and generally fumbling over words and talking very much the way people do in real life, but still with this sense of cleverness, this short little video exemplifies what Mr. Fox (and really all of his movies) are about.

To be honest, I was skeptical of Mr. Fox when I first saw the previews. I thought the animation looked a little clunky, I wasn't sure if Anderson was the right filmmaker to do a movie ostensibly for children, and I couldn't imagine his wry, droll sensibilities translating well to clay forest creatures.

Of course, I was wrong.

His charm translates easily to this sub-medium. I think, in fact, Fantastic Mr. Fox, may be his most accessible film because the quirkiness of character, that some people find jarring when attributed to live-action humans like submarine captains and prep school devotees, fits perfectly in the envisioning of woodland creatures. Foxes and badgers don't talk and have occupations in real life, so there isn't as much space to find qualm in their on-screen portrayal. Anderson even uses this to his advantage further as it gives him the chance to inject fun, purely animal qualities into their otherwise anthropomorphic characters. For example, they still growl, fight, eat, and dig like animals, but they are sophisticated and human-like most everywhere else.

The movie is also perfectly cast. We're this a staged play, none of the players would have to be swapped out, though we might need to make Meryl Streep a tad younger so that she and George Clooney could still convince the audience they were a couple. Anderson-fave Jason Schwartzman, as the insecure, teenage fox, Ash, is especially great.

The animation is really engaging as well. Since the aim isn't exactly realism when one starts dealing with fictile fauna, Anderson is given the chance to shoot some very creative, artistic sequences. For example, the way that they dig (kind of like how one might expect digging to be depicted in an old Nintendo game) is far from being true to life, but it's cinematic and endearing.

What keeps this film from being ranked any higher is that I thought the last-third of the story was a little jumbled. There were some false attempts at building to the conclusion which I found took me out of the flow a bit. That is, Mr. Fox and the animals would devise a plan or solution and then change tracks soon after. It's a minor nitpick, one that might disappear on a second viewing.

All in all, Fox is a film that is working on a lot of levels, from the way it looks, sounds (great music too), and progresses. It may not have taken the crown as my favorite of Anderson's films, but I may have to at least include it in the discussion. Certainly on of the ten best movies I've seen this year.

"I understand what you're saying, and your comments are valuable, but I'm gonna ignore your advice." - Mr. Fox

TTTMOTYADBM!

2010-02-02T17:42:00.000-08:00

That's right, it's The Top Ten Movies of the Year As Determined By Me!

It's actually a coincidence that my list is going to begin on the same day that the Oscar nominations are out. As I mentioned, I was going to start this yesterday but my fondness for Generation Kill pushed it back a day and now, damn Academy, I fear this list may be overshadowed by their Best Picture Nominees. Foiled again. You will all be impressed to know that my roommates and I had a bet about who could guess the most Best Picture nominees. Making our lists independently, we each got 9 of 10 correct. I only swapped Invictus for The Blind Side. So close.

I'm going to count down my ten, one per day, though probably with a few empty days and a few other posts thrown in to vary the subject so this isn't purely a movie blog for the next two weeks. Half of my list is also on the Academy's list, though I will put my other five up against their other five any day. Speaking of which, from the hilarious weirdo who brought us the 70 minute Phantom Menace skewering, a new 20 minute review of Avatar is up. I think it articulates fairly well why the movie is, at best, like a 6 out of 10. I urge Avatar fans to watch it.

In regard to my own list, I will admit that there are a few films that I wanted to see but haven't yet. So, if you're upset that Bad Lieutenant, Coco Before Chanel, White Ribbon, Where the Wild Things Are, Sherlock Holmes, Me and Orson Welles, or Bright Star isn't on here, it's because I didn't see them. Anything else--more obscure films aside--I'm fairly certain had no shot to make the list anyway. So, without further ado...

#10 - Crazy Heart
(disappointed groan from dedicated blog readers)
This is like promising a new episode of The Office and then showing a clip show instead. I already wrote about this one. You don't have to read it again. I still think Jeff Bridges was awesome, I still love the music, I still love the setting. I really can't believe that Maggie Gyllenhaal got an Oscar nom as I thought she was the weakest part of the film. Oh well. Avatar is going to win Best Picture (please no) so clearly the Academy and I are not on the same page. Since this film already got its due, I'm going to leave off the coveted "Good Things" tag for this post.

Having Crazy Heart as my #10 is actually okay since I can window-dress the list a bit and get everyone excited for tomorrow/Thrusday's all new entry. Most of us are probably too giddy about the Lost premiere anyway, though I guess it's already on for the East-Coasters.

In the meantime, if you have an hour to spare, check out this great Bill Moyers interview with creative genius David Simon. I was still on my kick from GK so I finally sat down to watch this today and it made me wish I'd included a few of David Simon's Wire themes (e.g. the failure of institutions, the manipulation of statistics) in my GK discussion. Oh well. Pretend that I did. Or, better yet, watch GK for yourself.

Back soon with number nine...number nine...number nine...number nine...

Talkin' 'Bout My Generation

2010-02-01T15:40:00.000-08:00

"Write this as you see it. I'm not here to stop you." - Lt. Nathaniel Fick, Generation Kill

For all those sticklers out there, the 10 part series I promised yesterday has been pushed back as I finished Generation Kill yesterday and it's too much on my brain for me to write about anything else.

For all those who missed it, Generation Kill was a seven-part mini-series that aired on HBO in the summer of 2008 and was made by my BFFs David Simon and Ed Burns (who did a little something called The Wire) and based on a book by Evan Wright (who also wrote on the series). The series/book tells the story of Wright's travels with the US Marines 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in the initial invasion of Iraq. By the end, I really loved it, I particularly thought the characters were fantastic, though since not many people have seen it, I'll try and discuss it in a way that isn't heavy on specifics of the plot.

Be warned though, those who may venture to view this series, you shouldn't expect a story in the way that Lost or Mad Men is a story. This is all based on the actual events experienced by Evan Wright when he joined the battalion on their tour of Iraq. He followed only this platoon* and was thus predestined to only be able to capture what actually happened. While Simon and Burns do a great job of using the actual events to highlight certain aspects of military existentialism and the morals of war, they didn't have the creative freedom to inject this project with the poetic justices and perfect cyclicalisms that characterized The Wire. That is, while the series builds thematically, bringing us deeper into the realism of the invasion, it does not build to a climax or ultimate showdown. Some people may find this disappointing, but I believe that as long as you don't give up on it early, it is a very worthwhile--and maybe even important--seven hours.

* I'm assuming words like "platoon" and "battalion" are interchangeable, but I'm probably wrong.

As such, Generation Kill moves the focus, quite successfully, to other places. Mainly, in my interpretation, (1.) trying to understand why the US is in Iraq, both in theory and then in reality; and (2.) why these people are in the Marines. In #1, I don't mean that once the troops are actually in Iraq that Bush has to revise his WMD justification, I mean that the soldiers (well, some of the soldiers) gradually come to realize the harsh truths about the unforeseen difficulties of "liberation" especially considering that the ones making the grand decisions are not the ones on the ground that have to interact with Iraqi citizens and insurgents. These two points are inextricably linked both in real life as well as in Generation Kill, as the way that the different soldiers interpret the answer to #1 is dictated by their own personal reasons for #2.

The lead humvee, the one that Wright rides in, is captained by the main character and "hero" of the series, Brad "Iceman' Colbert (pictured on the left above). Colbert is of the breed that wants to be a marine because it's what he's best at, and he believes in the power of the American military to do good in the world. Colbert is an outstanding leader of men, empathetic, collected, mature, and with an almost legendary reputation amongst the battalion. Like good heroes, Colbert is also pained, though Simon is careful to only let his past leak out on a couple of occasions. We learn--in brief moments, Colbert doesn't fancy talking about himself all that much--that his wife (maybe his girlfriend) left him for his best friend and that he was adopted by well-to-do, Jewish, middle-class, bleeding-heart liberals, who, while they raised a thoughtful articulate son, also (we are meant to infer) tried to mold him in a way that was against his natural, lone-wolf inclinations. The character is superbly played by Alexander Skarsgård and his portrayal is what makes much of the series work.

Colbert tries his best to be civil and helpful to the Haji (as the unit calls the Iraqis indiscriminately), but is frequently put in positions where there is no possible way to do so, no clear right and wrong anymore, especially in the face of orders and an uncompromising hierarchy. Through characters like Colbert, and his commander, real-life Dartmouth grad and now published author, Nate Fick (quoted above), the audience gets to see that people far more experienced, capable, and even intelligent than us, cannot make such a complex invasion an unmitigated success. In perhaps the largest connection to The Wire we see that the inability of our McNultys and Colberts to do their job is often due to their superiors not understanding the subtleties of the situation, though the insurgents and gangs aren't helping much either.

Colbert's humvee also houses the other two broad ingredients of solider portrayed in GK. His driver, Cpl. Ray Person (above, right), hilariously played by Wire-alum James Ransone, is the marine who joins in hopes to find himself. He is often crass and boorish, but is ultimately a good person and good at his job. He exists just outside the prevalent jock, tough-guy culture, but--at least at this point in his life--doesn't have any way to necessarily fit into another stratum of society. Wright called the young, gunner Cpl. Trombley the "face" of the term Generation Kill, in that Trombley is every bit the stereotype (at least at first glance) of the trigger-happy soldier who joined up because he wants to shoot a gun. When labeled by Person as a "psycho," Trombley is unembarrassed, barely even understanding that Person means it derogatorily. And yet, even Trombley possess a humanity about him that emerges in the strangest of ways; a particular exchange with Wright about how he's frightened of dogs and loves cats is perhaps the most memorable.

Each character in the series can be separated into the three primary colors of "thoughtful," "uncertain," and "aggressive." Most of the soldiers seem an even mix of the three, enough of the aggressive football mindset to want to be marines (the overuse of football metaphors by some of the officers is quite comical in a dark way) but with some degree of awareness and insecurity as well. These elements can be rearranged in a variety of formulas, but when used in conjunction with a wide array of character backgrounds and then tested by a similar range of external stimulus, the character of the unit really springs to life, creating a vivid story of the marines and the invasion as a whole.

There are a lot of well-executed details--the ubiquitous humor of the troops even in the most serious times, the slow bonding of Wright to the soldiers, the nothingness and anticipation, the unpreparedness of the US--but, ultimately, it all ties back to the "why are we here?" theme that exists on both a larger and personal level.

What I suppose is one of the true tests of art, Generation Kill stays with you. I admit it has only been about 24 hours since I concluded it, but it has scarcely left me for more than a few minutes since then. I watched interviews with the real Iceman, Person, and Wright*. It takes a lot to make one reevaluate preconceived notions. From my vantage point, it is easy to categorize and stereotype soldiers; if nothing else, Generation Kill broadened my world view, even if in a very small and maybe artificial way.

* The consensus, as I see it, is that the portrayal is quite accurate, though some soldiers feel the commanding officers' ineptitude is exaggerated. Wright, on the other hand, said, for one officer in particular, the bumbling, idiotic Cpt. McGraw, that he even had to omit certain details because they were so stupid that the public wouldn't have believed them.

All in all, an engaging, if slow and unexpected, account of what it was like to be one of the first units into Iraq. It's no Wire, but it has the same faithful tone and very skillfully presents the intricacies and complexities of a convoluted, interconnected situation. From Simon and Burns, I'd expect nothing less. I'm now looking forward even more, to their newest endeavor, Treme, due in March.

In the words of the Iceman himself, "Stay frosty."

Adventures in the Interwebs

2010-01-31T17:19:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I offhandedly composed this post, a none-too-positive review of an art show I went to. Then, after a little reconsidering, I followed it up with another, more accurate reflection on the show and my reaction to it. In my mind, that was case closed. Imagine my surprise, then, when I opened my email later that day to find a Facebook friend request from none other than Mr. Mararian, the artist himself. I suppose I can thank google alerts for that one.

My secondary reaction, after surprise, was confusion. Not in regard to accepting the request, but why was he friending me? Did he read my panning of his show, even if I revised my statements the next day? There was the chance that he only saw that there was a blog that mentioned him and then researched the author (me), did a simple search and figured he was contacting one of his newest fans? Since, in my mind, the only people who would ever care to read this blog are my mother and a few high school friends, it had never even occurred to me that someone mentioned as an actual subject (save for yesterday's post) could then actually read my comments.

This is naturally what real critics have to deal with all the time, so I guess it is even more incentive (though few critics/bloggers abide by this) to take extra care in crafting a negative argument. Had I know that Mr. Mararian would perhaps stumble upon my initial post, I would have been far less haphazard about my review of it. This isn't to say I would've tried to suck up to him and needlessly praised his work, but I would've been sure to have printed a more accurate appraisal of his show. Methinks there is a lesson to be learned here.

My next question was whether I should acknowledge his request in some way. I wondered if I should send him a message, apologizing for my first rash denigration of the pieces he had surely worked so hard to produce. Should I enter into some kind of dialogue? Was he expecting I would contact him? Should I make a peace offering by mentioning how much I really loved his Phobias series? Tell me, Al Gore, father and founder of the interwebs, what should I do?

Well, Al Gore didn't answer me, so I gave into my natural instinct, which is to do nothing. I accepted the request (why not?) and sent no message, as chances are the successful Mararian either (a.) didn't read my post; (b.) didn't care; or (b2) didn't care and then requested my friendship as his special way of letting me know that he didn't care.

In conclusion, the internet is a spatially unique place. Even a blog as small and insignificant as this one can still be found by just about anyone, which is a funny thing to think about when I'm writing, though I guess an important thing to keep in mind. One could use the ol', "If you don't have anything nice to say..." adage, but I think I'll lean more toward being careful that when I bash something, I better have my story straight (see: Avatar).

As for morals, I think I'll go with one of my favorite ones ever, courtesy of our good friends Calvin and Hobbes...

Calvin: Well, Hobbes, I guess there’s a moral to all this.
Hobbes: What’s that?
Calvin: Snow goons are bad news.
Hobbes: That lesson certainly ought to be inapplicable elsewhere in life.
Calvin: I like maxims that don’t encourage behavior modification.

Back in the next couple days with the first installment of a 10 part series that I'm fairly excited about.

Christopher

2010-01-30T20:07:00.000-08:00

It's not often that I get to read a real book written by someone I know. I've read some of the novels of my old college professors, but not until after I was "long" departed from their classes. So, on that level, it was a treat that I got to recently read Christopher, a novel written by my new LA acquaintance, screenwriter/author, Allison Burnett. Allison has been tremendously generous and helpful to me since I've been out here, but I'm not going to devote a whole post to how nice he is. Anyway, the novelty (no pun intended, but noticed and kept) of reading a book by someone I know would not nearly be enough to make my travels through the pages enjoyable. Luckily for me, and for anyone else who has had the pleasure of reading it, Christopher is great book.

Christopher tells the story, not surprisingly, of a young man named Christopher, who moves to NYC after his divorce to follow his dream of becoming a writer. This tale is, however, narrated by Christopher's next door neighbor, the highly literate, cunning, egocentric BK Troop, who has an immediate attraction to Christopher that blossoms into a full-blown love for his new idealistic, and unfortunately for him, heterosexual wall-sharer. Both characters are wonderful, endearing in completely different ways, and psychologically realistic. Through each other (though independently as well) they mature into better, more complete people than at the onset. (The book takes place in 1984, each chapter a month.)

There is a very clever element of post-modernism throughout the novel as, and I hope this isn't too much a spoiler for anyone, Christopher the character works on his first novel (a mostly autobiographical one), we are reading BK's version of what that novel could/should/would have been. This element brings the novel a fitting symmetry by the end, but I won't give that away any more than I already have. This is Allison's first novel as well, and I wonder how much of it is autobiographical since it kind of feels like its drawing on many elements from his own process and maturation as a person and writer.

It is a very fun read, quite entertaining, though not in a low-brow kind of way. The language is rich and the prose is graceful, but the plot too is easy to get wrapped up in. I enjoyed the many musings on being an artist and facing the obstacles of becoming a writer. That theme, which was most of the book, was especially relatable to me, particularly as I'm only a little younger than the protagonist. Granted, Christopher is much more up-and-down than I am, divorced, and haunted by a maniacal mother, but our end goals were more or less the same.

Not that I doubted the book would be good, but it's difficult to expect that a piece of art you know very little about will prove to be so excellent. Once I cleanse my palette with a bit of non-fiction (some more of the aforementioned David Foster Wallace) I'll probably tackle the sequel, The House Beautiful, still narrated by BK but without the object of his affection, after that. From what I understand, the sequel is more of a comedy that this one (Christopher was funny, but was a dramatic work at heart) and, I think, doesn't have the complete sprawl of a character's life in it. I'm looking forward to it.

If you want to read an amusing bit about how the sexual orientation of his narrator led to more than a couple misunderstandings for Allison, read one of his essays about it here.

Back tomorrow or Monday, perhaps with my tardy top 10 films of 09.

Vampire Weekend: The Sequel

2010-01-29T19:59:00.000-08:00

This is my first post to also run over at Pop Culture Nerd. I realize posting it here as well means today is my first ever double-dip, but I wanted to get that art show backtracking, shoddy journalism mess off the top of the queue. Though Michael Mararian requested to be my friend on Facebook, so I think one more entry to tie it all up and to reflect on the unusual nature of the blogosphere is in order.

In the meantime, my thoughts on Contra...

The second album usually determines the staying power of an artist. For every debut LP that suggests greatness, is a sophomore release that confirms or denies it. For me, the follow-up must both feel familiar—be faithful to what the band is—as well as explore new ground, because I want to hear the elements that grabbed me in the first place, but as something more substantial than just The Debut Album: Part Two. As such, after the firestorm of admiration around Vampire Weekend’s eponymous LP and the anticipation and hype that surround Contra, the question remained: Were they in it for the long haul, or would they burn out like so many former “next big things”?

The answer? Vampire Weekend is here to stay…probably.

Contra is definitely a good album, even a very good album, though I don’t feel it quite captures the simple genius or fun of their first record. Furthermore, the “indie Graceland” aesthetic—one of the elements that endeared me most to Vampire Weekend—is not as prevalent this time around. Despite this, Contra will likely be one of my favorite albums released this year. There is subtlety, thought, and purpose behind the music. Frontman/guitarist Ezra Koenig is at his best when his voice doesn’t have to work too hard and his melodies are so natural you feel like you’ve been listening to his songs for years—prime examples being “I Think UR a Contra,” a quiet, elegant tale of falling out of love, and “Diplomat’s Son,” a multifaceted yet graceful journey through an aristocratic adolescent romance (as well as one of the songs that best fulfills the formula of “new but faithful”). Vampire Weekend’s instrumental arrangements and rhythmic interweavings are even more advanced and challenging this time around, mostly to their benefit. From song to song and section to section, new instruments and lines drop in and out, sometimes sacrificing continuity, but also creating remarkable moments, such as the cascading faux-horn lines of “Run” and the layered, yelping choruses of “White Sky” (though I would have preferred if the yelps had been swapped for something nicer).

And yet…the Vampire Weekend LP was something I’d really never heard before. It was the rare feel-good indie “rock” record that wasn’t hokey. You could put it on and let it play right through—in a bar, at a party, hanging out in a basement—and people wanted to know what it was, independent of whether they even liked it or not (though most clearly did). Not to say that Contra won’t get it’s fair share of complete runs in a myriad of settings, but it sounds more like everything else this time around, even if slightly. It’s more produced than the debut, which compromises the balance of their sound. There are electronic drums and uncommon percussion and even some vocal effects, but it’s hard to find a place where any of this make their music better. For example, Contra’s “Giving Up the Gun,” while it’s new for Vampire Weekend, doesn’t seem to be charting any new territory as its pulsing, electronic background and vocal harmonies remind me more of a Postal Service song than my favorite musical Columbia literati. Similarly, their effortless, melodic sensibility—ubiquitous on the first album—is on occasion disappointingly replaced by frantic disjointedness, sections of “California English” and “Cousins” being the worst offenders.

Vampire Weekend’s guitarist-keyboardist, Rostam Batmanglij, told Rolling Stone, “Our first record kind of has one vibe, one tone. [Contra] goes in a thousand places at once.” To dismiss the debut as “one vibe, one tone” is to undersell the distinctness between the songs and to belittle the cohesion and flow of the old LP, but this quote sums up both what’s great and not-so-great about Contra: too many twists and alterations crammed into one record, but, as it is seeps into the bloodstream, enough detail and emotion to keep me coming back for years.

A Mulligan & Some Self-Analysis

2010-01-29T10:33:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to completely retract my previous entry, but I would like to point out some of its flaws and maybe think a little about some basic psychological principles in the context of why those flaws came to be. If you don't like self-indulgence, you may not enjoy this entry.

It started this morning with a response to my last entry from this fine artist, someone who, admittedly, knows a lot more about art and a lot more about what it takes to create a piece of art than I do. I, of course, know very little and one could make a good argument that, as such, I shouldn't be criticizing real artists. I'll get to the specifics of the response in a moment, but let's just say it made me reconsider.

Let me break my self-analysis down into three parts:

1.) Polarization: Writing about something, even in a venue as trivial and inconsequential as this silly blog, often seems to create this pressure to have an opinion and make a judgement. Rereading my entry about "Youth Parade" makes it sound like I pretty much hated it. And, as I was writing the post, I did pretty much hate it. Until I thought back to the night I actually was at the gallery, and realized that while I didn't love it, I sure didn't hate it. I remember making a couple complete rounds of the show, taking it in, and talking with my fellow gallery-goers about what the pieces meant, arriving at the conclusion I wrote about yesterday. Granted, it didn't take long to arrive at the conclusion, and one of the reasons I remember feeling ripped-off by the directness of the show was a melodramatic, depressing passage printed on the wall when I first walked in. (I don't remember the specifics, but it had some statistics about adolescent/college suicide among other things.) But, the fact remains, I really didn't hate the show when I was there, and yet when I started writing about it, the snowball of negativity started rolling down and I ended up with a rather scathing post. The post was more interesting to read (maybe) than a wishy-washy recounting of the show, but maybe not even that. Why did the article end up that way? Did I feel some odd pressure to either like it or hate it? When I tagged the post initially (before I started) the "bad things" tag was absent and I wasn't planning on including it--by the end it had to be there.*

* It has since been removed.

2.) Cherry-picking: We tend to pay more attention to those things which confirm our beliefs and arguments, and we tend to ignore that which challenges those beliefs. This is why most liberals think conservative pundits are idiots (okay, they are, bad example)--this is why most conservatives think liberal pundits are idiots. Anyway, I was tremendously guilty of this in my post yesterday. Now, it's a fine line between picking the strongest examples to make an argument and making an argument and then finding a piece of evidence that fits it. (For example, when I used to write academic essays sometimes I would write a paragraph and then leaf through the books I was supposed to be using until I found a quote that I could use without having to alter what I had just written.) So, yesterday, the only piece I really discussed at any length was one of the more unambiguous ones. While I still maintain that many of the pieces are saying the same thing, I completely and utterly ignored almost an entire half of the show, that is, the section with the guns with stickers on them and the different masks (only the Jon Bennet mask is shown online). What's even weirder, is that in the back of my mind I kind of knew I was doing this, but I never actually slowed down enough to really notice this and change my actions. Once my claims about the show were called into question, however, I was actually able to recall this nearly subconscious acknowledgment of my cherry-picking data, even though I mostly missed it at the time. Which leads me too...

3.) Cognitive Dissonance*: People are uncomfortable when they are forced to hold two contradictory beliefs in their heads. This is why #2 happens, so we can avoid such a feeling. When I got an email this morning defending parts (though not all) of the show I had previously ragged on, I suddenly had two conflicting beliefs: (a.) that this show was useless; but, also (b.) that a real artist, who knows more than me and whose opinion I greatly respect, did not think the show was useless. In this case, my desire to correctly appraise the art show was challenged by evidence (even if just in a casual email) that I was wrong. This whole post is perhaps just a way for me to iron out this dissonance. By revising my negative summation of the show as well as revisiting pieces in the show that were actually clever and creative, I can satisfy my need to "be more right." And, true to cognitive dissonance, I'm not forcing myself to change my belief on the show, it just happened, even to the point where I am now confident that my new belief is in fact the correct one.

* I think. It's been a while since I've studied any social psychology.

The circumstances for all of this are ideal in that my opinions about things I feel more knowledgeable about (i.e. music and TV) are far less capricious. If someone writes an impassioned case for why Glee is the best show on TV or for why Kings of Leon is the world's best band, my opinion on those two will not change at all. (I apologize to Glee for comparing it to Kings of Leon.) Another principle at work here (notice the bullet points have ended) is the pressures of social conformity. When someone, me for example, isn't confident discussing an opinion, I will be much more likely to adopt the opinions of others. My natural inclination is that I'm wrong, instead of everyone else being wrong (see: Avatar). While I'm not abandoning my former complaints entirely, I'll now admit that there were aspects of the show--the execution/precision, the stickers on the guns, the masks, some of the children--that were worthwhile. These are also the elements pointed out to me as, in fact, being good. Also, upon reexamination, I feel that categorizing the show's message as "too simple" doesn't accurately reflect that myriad of pressures facing kids. Some of the pieces don't seem to highlight a different pressure than the one before it, but many of society's ills are in fact covered.

So, in conclusion, I didn't love the show, but I didn't hate it either, and, more than that, I feel like I was the one who was too simple-minded for railing on it as I did. I guess I learned a lesson about the dangers of sacrificing accuracy when writing critically.

Here's my reparation...Mayer Hawthorne's "The Ills." I wish there was a good live video of this, but there isn't really. Alas.

The Kids Don't Stand a Chance

2010-01-28T21:22:00.000-08:00

I returned to the Corey Helford gallery in Culver City recently for a show called "Youth Parade" by Michael Mararian.

Did not care for it.

First of all, and most obviously, the images were not pleasing the look at--I picked the most harmless one for the heading of this post. This unpleasantness was clearly intentional and the art was meant to elicit a visceral response. Fair enough.

But where I suppose the art really fell short for me was that it was intentionally offensive/shocking to theoretically convey a message, but it did so in such an excessive manner that it failed to be effective.*

* One could obviously argue that this too was the point--that it has to be over-the-top to reach anybody in today's society--but (if anyone is making that claim) I would reject it and I think that the most powerful point is one that is given with subtlety and acknowledgement of all factors (like my go-to favorite example for all that is good: The Wire) rather than one that just smacks you over the head with itself.

The message, or at least the message that this art screams to the novice artgoer, is that grown-up society and all its ills and pressures, corrupt our kids before they even have a chance to succeed. To this I say, great. I can agree with that.* Where this show lost me is in two places...

* There's even a season of The Wire about that!

1.) The pieces are devoid of subtlety. They're blunt. I like when art (of any kind) makes me think. Take for example, a particular piece where a young girl (maybe about 12) wears a Yale t-shirt and a graduation cap. All up and down her arms are razor blade cuts. What's left to think about after seeing that other than, "Gee, people sure put a lot of pressure on their kids to go to good schools"? I agree with this point, but I didn't need to see a little girl who cuts herself to understand or be reminded of this.* Going so overboard to make what is perhaps a fairly innocuous point feels like cutting off someone's hand to teach them a lesson about shoplifting.

* To Mararian's credit, this is also one of the few pieces that actually has a background that contributes something to the piece, as it has an orange shadow/outline thing of a beautiful girl--who I thought was actually supposed to be Harvard grad & world class beauty Natalie Portman, but I could be wrong. Nevertheless, the message of this piece was still blatant.

2.) This kind of ties into the first point, but not only is there not much to think about, there really isn't much to look at either. I can only look at two toddlers with knives covered in blood for so long. There just isn't much happening on an aesthetic level. Throw in the fact that they're disturbing to look at in the first place and, well, it's not a great combination.

All in all, I think this is art in which shocking is masquerading as good. Mararian may think he's provoking a worthwhile response in me, but I'm not being illuminated as to any issues of our culture; my response is only, to be blunt as the show itself, "No shit."*

* Or, for the kiddies that read this blog, "Thanks, Captain Obvious."

Check out images from the show here yourself, let me know if you think I missed something. This link leads to the "Current Gallery" page, so once the next show goes up, you may have to navigate around into the "Past Shows" section. I'm sure you can figure it out.

In the meantime, go see some art that actually is good.

And, here's a where the title of this post came from. Speaking of Vampire Weekend, a review of their new album will be up soon too.

At Long Last: Lost

2010-01-27T16:10:00.000-08:00

With less than one week until the final season premiere of Lost, I think it's time to devote a little time to what's at stake for this season. Unlike a lot of other shows, being a dedicated fan/writer of the Lost universe means watching the show repeatedly and knowing all the connections so as to be able to formulate theories and hypotheses as to, you know, what the hell is going on. Despite being with the show since the almost beginning (I caught up on the seemingly extinct creature once know as "summer reruns" after season one) I'm not quite a Lost-scholar, so I'm going to look ahead more than I'll look back.

Where are we now?
Spoiler alert: Season 5 ends with a flash of white light that may or may not have killed everybody or reset the timeline or burned off Richard's eye shadow--nobody can say for sure. As such, this season could start anywhere. It may start exactly where we left off, the white light having no effect at all; it could be the exact way Season 1 opens, our familiar characters again strangers on a plane; or maybe it'll be hundreds of years ago with those two dudes (one of them is Jacob) from the beach. Nobody knows! I remember feeling this way after the dynamite Season 3 finale (the one where Jack meets Kate at the airport and proceeds to blow our minds) in that it was possible (though it didn't happen) that Season 4 might take place complete off of the island and follow the Oceanic 6 in LA or wherever they'd migrated to. Basically, anything is in play for Season 6, in regard to time, place, and characters.

Why did it have to be that way?
There were multiple occasions last season when I had to postpone my judgement on a plot twist as I needed to see if it was paid off in the last season. That is, a few things that happened last season seemed more than a little arbitrary, justified with no more explanation than someone declaring, "It has to be that way!" or something. For example, "recreating" the 815 flight seemed a little suspicious to me. Sure, this version of the flight is missing 90% of the same people, but, we gotta have Jack's dad's shoes! Let's just say that kind of device (which occurred more than a few times last season, though not being a Lost-scholar I can't recall them all [remember, this a blog, not a court case] but, trust me, this wasn't the only offense) can either come to make sense in the final fabric of Season 6 or will be exposed to be a manufactured obstacle to inject a little more drama into the last season.

Who are those guys?
Speaking of contrived, I hope I wasn't the only one who was more than little put-off when Lost seemed to so proudly pat itself on the back for tricking us into thinking Locke was still alive (will he be alive somehow in S6?) by making the other-dude-on-the-beach inhabit his body. That guy was never in any episode before that last one and it seemed a little deus ex machina for that to be the secret. Speaking of deuses, check out this Lost preview...

Is this just because Spanish Lost fans are more intrigued by the notion of Gods, or is that guy from the beach some kind of God? Is Jacob a God? Are they some kind of all-powerful aliens? Is this another Matrix-type Architect thing? To re-suggest what I mentioned in bold-type-section #1, could Jacob and his adversary be two of the more major characters in this season? With much of the action taking place a hundred or two-hundred or a thousand years ago?

When it's all over...
I swear that I wasn't forcing this whowhatwherewhenwhy thing until this point, the first three just happened that way...anyway. It's hard to believe, that this is all going to be over and we're going to get some kind of closure or, gasp, answers about this story. I was never one to complain that Lost gave ten questions for every answer. I, in fact, liked that*. I like putting in time for a pay-off later. That said, there better be a pay-off. If Lost thinks (and yes, by Lost, I mean Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, I imagine the show as a bizarre, smoke-like entity of its own) it's going to give us a Sopranos, No Country for Old Men, or 2001 type ending, there are going to be a lot of very unhappy people. Not that I think they will, but how can there possibly be an ending that's going to make everybody (or even most people) happy? The show has gotten into such a crazy place (time-travel, magic) that the revelation of what's happening isn't going to be some sort of simple solution, it's going to be nuts. Aside from what the ending is, it'll be kind of sad when it's all over. TV is about enjoying the ride, not getting to an end point (though Lost is perhaps a game-changer in this sense) and it will probably be an empty feeling when it's gone forever. Though, if the ending is good, watching it all again for clues and to better understand the arc may be fun as well. If end-theories are your thing, check this out one from a blogger who knows fifty times more about Lost than I do.

* If I have one complaint about Lost, it's that the dialogue and dedication to character has kind of been on the back-burner as the episodes become more and more jam-packed with plot and information. This is why I think Season 1 is the best, because it raises sufficient mystery and has a really engaging story, but also dazzles us with character building.

What...uh...What...hmm...
Just kidding. Obviously I could've come up with a title that started with "what." This paragraph is basically a continuation of the one before it anyway. Now, before everything gets wrapped up, there is still one highly-antipated season of Lost. Since Lost is more of a super-movie instead of a regular TV show, so much depends on this final season. Newsweek even ran an article this week discussing how pivotal this season is to the legacy of the show, basically, this is season is the show's legacy. If this season is a miserably failure (it won't be, but consider it anyway) this show is a failure in hindsight. If the grand plan is a house of cards, in a sense, then people will always be able to say that the only reason anyone liked it is that it built up the expectations for an unattainable climax. On the other hand, if Season 6 is a huge success, does Lost become one of the great shows of all time? Right now, it seems like it could be headed for the legacy of an ambitious show that bit off more than it could chew, but took it too far (and, honestly, has another show ever traveled farther away from where it was in Season 1?) and didn't work. However, it could end up as a triumph of storytelling, a masterfully crafted epic that was always three steps ahead of even the smartest viewers, right up to its final, tour-de-force season.

We'll see. For a show that's brought such stunning highs, I wouldn't be surprised if it pulls it off. And if it's not? We'll always have Season 1...that and Mad Men.

* One last note, while I was writing this I read that Howard Zinn died. He will always remind me of this quote from Matt Damon's character to Robin Williams' in Good Will Hunting, "If you want to read a real history book, read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. That book will knock you on your ass." May he rest in peace.

One for the (Sports) History Books

2010-01-25T20:55:00.000-08:00

What a game. What a finish.

Now, I'm no sportswriter and I'm sure there isn't much that hasn't been said about the Saints epic OT victory over the Minnesota Favres last night, but (if only just for me) I think a little time needs to be devoted to just how crazy that game was.

The Saints Were Dead. This is why games have to be watched live. No write-up nor set of highlights can ever recreate how over that game seemed as the Vikings were driving. I'd been rooting for the Saints but also for the game to be as close as possible--agonizing over the Vikings' repeated fumbling--but then was suddenly gripped with fear that the Vikes were actually going to win the game (barring a missed field goal, which, judging by these playoffs, was perhaps likely). This is why the Boise State-Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl was so incredible, this is why the Red Sox comeback against the Yankees was so amazing. In a movie, when the hero is about to die, we still have confidence he won't. Someone did, after all, write the movie and, as such, the movie will usually end well and will maximize the drama on the way there. Sports are the ultimate drama in this sense. Nobody knows what will happen. When the Saints seemed dead, in all likelihood they were dead. Except, as you know, they weren't.

The Vikings Blew It. Say what you want about the Saints' great effort, what it means for New Orleans, how their defense made big plays--the Vikings still blew it. I've never seen a team so brutally waste a chance at a long but makeable field goal--certainly not in a bigger spot. First, they got a 12 men in the huddle penalty. What!? 12 men in the huddle? How does that happen? Who's coaching that team? (Oh, right. Brad Childress.) This almost never happens. 12 men on defense, sure, that happens. But in the huddle? What a colossal penalty, pushing them just out of field goal range. Then, as a result, the Vikings had to throw the ball to try and get a few more yards. Which resulted, inexplicably, in Brett Favre throwing across his body--when he had some room to run--and getting picked off to send the game to overtime. The swing in emotion where I was watching this game (a living room full of Saints fans) was wild. Brett Favre's gunslinging ways had finally come back to bite Minnesota. After a shockingly good season, Favre's old fatal flaw reared its ugly head and cost the Vikings the game. And let's not forget the Vikings turned the ball over four other times! And twice in the Red Zone! That's the kind of loss that never goes away. Especially if you're...

Adrian Peterson. As an Adrian Peterson fantasy owner this year, I was flummoxed on the Vikings infatuation with throwing the ball so much this year, particularly in the Red Zone. I realize he got his share of TDs, but as a greedy fantasy junkie, it's not like they were dedicated to the run this year. Nevertheless, in the biggest game of the season Peterson was huge. 122 yards, 3 TDs. He did fumble twice, but neither was lost and the play where he recovered his own fumble--getting up off the ground and running ahead to dive on it--was one of the more athletic plays I saw this year. Fox gave us a great shot of him yelling about being taken out of the game, which could be labeled as selfish, but it looked more to me like a guy who just wanted it so badly that he almost couldn't understand that anybody could be playing as hard as him. I like Peterson and it was a shame he was on the losing end after such a monstrous effort. I read in Peter King's column today (I think it was King anyway) that Peterson came out of the locker room and silently watched the Saints celebrate on the field for 10 minutes.

The Officiating Could've Been Better, but it really wasn't that bad. The phantom pass interference on the Saints' game-winning drive was really the only one that I thought was bad, though there were others that were close. My argument against the interference call was that not only was the contact minimal, the ball was overthrown by too far for it to have been a catch anyway. Not that I thought the Saints wouldn't have scored anyway, but it would've been nice if the final drive had at least been penalty free. The review of Thomas' dive on 4th down wasn't incorrect as far as I could tell, but it's interesting how important those inches can be in regard to ball spotting when, (a.) most of the time the spot doesn't matter and it can be fairly loose; and (b.) spotting a ball is really, really hard and is almost arbitrary at times. Tough call for the Vikes, but it would've been an even tougher one for the Saints, so I'm all right with the call itself, even if the means of the call may be a little flawed.

Oh, Overtime. As Arizona showed us against the Packers in Round One, the defense can win overtime games, but it's always feels a bit unfair when a team wins the toss and kicks a field goal to win. I'm not saying the Saints didn't deserve it, but for such a hard fought game, it doesn't seem ideal that Favre and Peterson don't get to touch the ball in overtime. Imagine extra innings in baseball where the team in the field didn't get their at-bats if the first team managed to score. I don't think the NFL needs a system like the NCAA has, but I like the idea that if the first team kicks a field goal, then the other team gets one chance. If the first team scores a touchdown, I'm fine with it, but winning the toss and then getting a field goal seems too cheap at times. Once both teams get the ball, then it's regular sudden death, but offenses are too good these days and the toss is overly important as a result.

What a Superbowl Match-Up. Not since 1993 have the two #1 seeds met in the Superbowl. These have been the best teams all year long, they each have star QBs, and it should be a great game. If it can be in the ballpark of this NFC title game, then the NFL will certainly have made up for all those awful games in the early rounds--and, with this gem, they probably have already.

Oh, and Sean Payton Looks a Bit Like Hillary. See for yourself...

Coming of Age

2010-01-21T17:31:00.000-08:00

"Here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

A couple of months ago I caught up with a couple of classics that had somehow slipped through the cracks of my literary life: Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. I had previously read East of Eden and really enjoyed it, and had also read Galapagos and Cat's Cradle and liked them enough, so I knew that I would not only be exposing myself to essential literature but I would probably find it pleasurable as well.

But first...

Around that time, I'd had a discussion with a couple of friends as to whether The Wire* would ever become dated. We couldn't really decide (more on that later) and our conversation moved onto other TV and films--some of which hold up and some don't. Then we discussed music for a bit, thinking how much of it (Sibelius, Ellington, Zeppelin) doesn't require listening to it with different standards. It was great when it was written and it's great now.

* And, yes, I realize I mentioned The Wire in seemingly every post. It's awesome. Deal with it.

So...

It's pretty obvious why Of Mice and Men is read in every classroom in America (except for mine apparently). It's a quick read, the language is fairly simple, the characters are complex yet relatable, and the drama is universal and timeless. The latter two are why, even though the book was written seventy years ago, it can be just as effective today. The way humans behave and interact would have to change nearly unimaginably drastically* for Steinbeck's novella to lose its brilliance. For example, and this was my favorite part about the book, when the other workers (Carlson in particular) want to kill Candy's dog (Candy is the older worker who wants to join George and Lennie) Candy begrudgingly is convinced that this is necessary--to save his dog the suffering among other things. When the deed is done and Candy feels the guilt and emptiness sweep over him he tells George, sadly, that he (Candy) should've had the decency to put down his dog himself. This episode is, obviously, a microcosm of the climax of the novel in which George will become Candy and Lennie will become his dog. In this simple, natural scene, Steinbeck manages to create a situation in which the reader can understand that George has to kill his best friend. It's a phenomenal set-up.

* And to think I'm about to criticize Steinbeck's use of adverbs.

So, why do I bring this up? Basically, the reason that Of Mice and Men holds up is that nobody can craft human drama better than he already has. The plot of Mice is so deftly constructed that it can't be topped, only equaled and explored in new ways. This is the same reason people still read Shakespeare. The human condition only changes so much over time. If one can capture it in the 1930s or the 1600s, we can still relate to it now.

We love shows like Mad Men because they recreate an era and we feel like we could actually be there. Not to sound like a high school English teacher, but this is one of the amazing things about books. We don't have to pretend what the Great Depression was like--we can read Mice and Men! He was there. He knows. It's like a primary document. This isn't Matthew Weiner doing his best job of imagining 1930s California, this is Steinbeck actually being in that time. It's a slice of history, preserved forever in this book. Exactly as it was the day it was published and the same seventy years from then.

However, that is not to say that everything about Of Mice and Men feels current. While the human story may remain mostly consistent, the way people write changes--sometimes subtly but sometimes substantially. While most of Steinbeck's writing is concise and graceful, sometimes his writing is saturated with clunky adverbs and adjectives. One paragraph early on (and I wish I'd saved the book so I could write it here) read like something that really wouldn't make it through one of my college classes. This isn't to judge him harshly, only point out that our sensibilities about what prose should and shouldn't do are malleable.

Which leads me to why Kurt Vonnegut can never be experienced the way he was originally. When a high school kid (okay, anyone) reads Vonnegut now, there really isn't anything unusual about the way he writes. He's conversational, light, funny. We can easily label his prose as such and not think much of it. Heck, almost everybody writes like that now. But, when he first started publishing books, that wasn't what the status quo was. Not even close.

Cat's Cradle, when it first came out, must have blown people's minds! Not only was it about crazy shit but it was written like rock and roll music. Where Of Mice and Men can be a beautiful snapshot of an era, Slaughterhouse Five can never be truly experienced the way it was when it was written. The literary climate in the early 60s was so different than it is now that to read Vonnegut in the present day removes one of his most gripping elements. The writing still technically functions in the same way but has become so much the norm that even though it seems normal, it is dated. Such is the price of a being a game-changer: When everybody follows you, eventually, you may get forgotten as the one who did it first*.

* I realize Vonnegut didn't do it "first" but the argument is still the same.

So this is why, sadly, even for someone who loves The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, James Brown, Pink Floyd (well, I don't love Pink Floyd), I can never feel the significance they had in their time. I can imagine it and listen to their contemporaries and approximate what it must have been like, but I can never be someone in the 60s. The fact that these amazing artists and writers are still heard and read now is further proof of their greatness, but I can't experience them in a way that is reciprocated. (Though by the same token, I suppose someone from a the past can't look over the historical landscape like I can, so we'll call it a wash.)

So what does make something dated? Finding the essence of human needs will always be a constant. That doesn't date something. The way it's executed, as both Steinbeck and Vonnegut show, can become slightly dated. But writing, along with-- I guess--classical music* are two of the best ways to not be dated, since, arguably, the greatest of those fields came long before anyone currently on this planet was even alive. The novel and the symphony have already been perfected, and that's hardly an overstatement. Through the lens of history maybe those look like they reached their apex quickly, but that's far from the case. Humans have been writing and composing for a long, long, long time. And this is why our other forms of expression that are newer (film and music-that-incorporates-technology) date so quickly.

* If I were more knowledgeable about art I could include this too, but the different art movements are beyond my ken and I'm just going to leave it out to keep from embarrassing myself or weakening my overall point.

Old, great movies hold up when the stories are genuine and the drama is real. What doesn't hold up are, often, the effects or the sets or, basically, the things we didn't know how to do yet. Technology in terms of making our films look better has come so far that even movies from ten or twenty years ago don't have the same visual impressiveness as an atrocious film like Transformers 2. (This all ties in to why Avatar is quickly becoming the most overrated film of all time too.) To tie music and films together, sometimes the most dated part of otherwise excellent 80s movies like Blade Runner or The Terminator (see? I don't always hate James Cameron) is the laughably bad, corny music that takes full advantage of the clunky synthesizers that would be out of fashion five years later.

To bring it back to what I mentioned earlier, this is why something like The Wire (aside from a couple cinematic choices like shots from the view of a security camera that looked bad to begin with) will probably hold up for another century or so. There is no music in any of the scenes so we don't have to worry about that. People talk like real people and the human drama (not to mention the bureaucracy) seems like it will be pretty timeless. I imagine it becoming more of a Of Mice and Men, a clear, precise snapshot of turn-of-the-millennium Baltimore. Stylistic things about filmmaking will shift and may strike the future Wire viewer as odd, but I really believe that the story and characters will endure for years and years to come.

It may seem almost impossible to predict the trends and preferences of the future, but, as far as we can see from here, people will always be people. And the greatest storytellers, the Steinbecks and the Shakespeares, tell us stories that are about people--they could be from today, they could be hundreds of years old. The details and the window-dressings may change, but there is no substitute for emotion. To forget this is to move into gimmicks, tricks and distractions. These disguises may work for a while, maybe fabulously so, but eventually, in the end, the winds of time will blow them away, and a story will be left with its bare bones. And, if then, it still moves us and makes us feel, then we are experiencing something truly remarkable.

Well played, Steinbeck.

Sorry, Glee

2010-01-19T19:15:00.000-08:00

After mounting evidence that I should indeed check out Fox's hit series, Glee, I recently caved and started watching it. However, four episodes later, due to mounting evidence that this show wasn't for me, I stopped.

Now, fear not Glee fans, it will not be earning my dubious, career-ending "Bad Things" tag (here's looking at you, James Cameron), as I do think it's a mostly fun show that does make you want to know what's coming next, but, for me, the bad eventually outweighs the good.

Initially, after the pilot, I thought I was really going to like the series, and if the following episodes were more like the first one, I very well may have. What the pilot has that I thought they really got away from was a sense of humor about itself. Obviously, the show is pretty ridiculous: all the kids in this school are Broadway-quality singers (which I found really funny in the first episode as each of these prodigies auditions), instruments and more voices often come out of nowhere, the little, scrawny gay kid turns out to be a better kicker than Nate Kaeding, Will's wife fools him into thinking she's pregnant, the list goes on and on, and I'm fine with all that stuff (okay, not the pregnancy one). The problem is that the pilot seemed to acknowledge this and have these things be jokes in themselves; it was almost like Glee was a parody of other high school shows--which would've been great.

But, by the second episode, it seemed like every other scene had soft, melodramatic piano music underneath one character telling another how he shouldn't give up, how she felt isolated, or how he can do anything if he believes in himself--and none of this struck me as very funny anymore. What had come across as satire originally had quickly devolved into a show that wanted to have it both ways, that is, an outrageous unbelievable comedy and a moving, poignant drama.

That is, of course, not an impossibility. One of the reasons I think the quickly cancelled Freaks and Geeks is one of the best shows ever is that it places the comedy and drama alongside each other in a way that makes sense, both those elements exist together, just as they do in real life. Glee almost nails this formula, but it's absurdities are just a little too absurd to work with the more melodramatic moments (and vice-versa).

Allow me to try and further explain with this brilliant exchange from an episode of The Simpsons, in which the people at Itchy and Scratchy try and figure out what the kids want to have happen on the show:

Moderator: Okay. How many of you kids would like to see Itchy and Scratchy to deal with real-life problems? Like the ones you face everyday?
All the Kids (screaming): Me! I do!
Moderator: And who would like to see them do just the opposite? Getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers?
All the Kids (screaming): Me! I do!
Moderator: So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show that's completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots?

In other words, Glee can't have it's cake and eat it too*.

* Along with, "letting the cat out of the bag" this is one of the more confusing sayings in terms of its origin.

If Glee was dedicated to being a comedy, trying to funny and playing up the silliness of, well, everything that happens in it, I could enjoy it a lot more, but I can't justify spending my time watching it when it can't resist sliding into melodrama every other scene.

In it's defense, I did want to know what was going to happen, particularly to three main characters: Will, Rachel, and Finn. I'll admit I read on Wikipedia what happened in later episodes because I wanted to make sure that I could justify walking away (and I won't completely rule out that I may check in on it every now and then). The singing is really fun most of the time, though, depending on the song, I found myself skipping over a few of them. Also, as show choir can be (let's be honest) pretty lame, I can't help but cringe when, for example, Will "raps" over "Gold Digger."

All in all, Glee is a fine show, it'll just be continuing on without me. With time always being a factor and all of Generation Kill to watch before Treme starts in a couple months, and some other shows I would rather try out (Big Love, Sons of Anarchy), Glee got the axe.

Sorry, Glee. I hope we can still be friends.

Bridges Ties it All Together

2010-01-18T17:55:00.000-08:00

There wasn't much I liked about the Golden Globes last night (including the fact that I watched them), but Ricky Gervais did get in this hilarious barb and Jeff Bridges deservingly took home the Best Actor in a Drama for his role in Crazy Heart.

I caught Crazy Heart at the Arclight in Hollywood last weekend and really enjoyed it. As I've established fairly well on this blog, I'm a sucker for movies about music, so this one, which tells the story of Bridges as the fictional, washed-up country star, Bad Blake, already had a leg up.

Bad Blake was a fantastic character and Bridges played him brilliantly. At the onset, Blake is a man who is doing the only thing he knows how to do (singing country songs), even though his heyday is long past and he has to drive himself to pathetic gigs in a failing truck. The initial show, in which he is dismayed to find he's been booked to play a bowling alley, is an excellent choice to tell the viewer all we need to know about his career. Blake, though on some levels a proud, uncompromising man, is repeatedly forced to humble himself, whether that means taking a gig opening for his old protege, Tommy Sweet, (played well by Colin Farrell) or ending a set early on account of drunkenness.

One element I found particularly poignant was the way that his songwriting came back to life as he awoke from the sleepwalk that his life had been over the past few years. When Sweet asks Blake to write him some new material, Blake initially says no, telling him he hasn't written in years and that there are already too many songs in the world. Yet, once he finds himself recuperating under the care of Gyllenhaal's character, he is reinvigorated and the songs start pouring out of him. As one who has written songs and, more importantly, struggled with writing songs, this storyline resonated with me as sometimes you just don't feel like writing songs and forcing it only produces a slew of mediocre fragments. But, in times of great emotion, good or bad, the act is more natural, the music seeming an inevitable byproduct of the condition. Bridges performs the songs beautifully and since the songs were all written by T Bone Burnett (who gave a wild ride of an acceptance speech at the Globes) they feel like real songs--the magnetism and success of Blake makes sense.

While it was mostly Bridge's performance and Blake's reawakening that made the movie work, some of the smaller details and elements of the film were also outstanding: Robert Duvall, a producer on the film, is charming, believable, and hilarious in his small role as a bartender and Blake's only true friend; the setting (the American Southwest) is wonderfully shown and expressed, the only appropriate backdrop for a movie about this brand of country music; and the writing is sharp, with many great, memorable lines.

I took some issue with Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance--mostly, I didn't think she played it right. I had to convince myself that her character would do and say certain things, instead of her convincing me. But, it didn't ruin it for me and on my checklist of what I like in movies, this film filled in a lot of boxes.

It's not a perfect film, but it's one that was easy for me to become engaged with. It may gain a lot of steam as the Oscars near since Bridges may now be the favorite, but there is a lot to enjoy even in addition to his compelling performance. A worth-while trip to the cinema, especially for those who like a little country music now and then.

The Red Sunshine Pill

2010-01-17T17:12:00.000-08:00

"Once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you heard it."
- Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

If there was a way to erase our memory of a specific artistic experience, how often would we use it?

This isn't just to rip off the premise of Eternal Sunshine, and, in fact, let's consider it only for positive experiences: Would you take a pill that let you forget everything you knew about The Beatles, just so you could listen to all of their songs again for what would seem like the first time? Would I purge my memory of The Wire to treat myself once more to the surprise and tension that can only accompany a maiden viewing?

In some cases, perhaps to see a great movie for the first time (Eternal Sunshine for example) or to see a movie with surprising turns (like Shawshank) I would be apt to intentionally forget; but in others, like for The Beatles catalog, I doubt I would want to start all over, since I place value in all the subtle parts that took me many listens to notice--but the lure would be strong.

Would we be afraid of not even liking what we think we love? Are there things we think we like, but a fresh start would reveal that our previous affection was only due to circumstance? We like movies more or less depending upon who we see it with. We like bands more or less if our friends like them.

Or, even more simply, when we saw or read or listened to something for the real first time, maybe we're just different people now than we were then. Our favorite movie in high school--that still provides sweeping waves of nostalgia now--without that fond, extended memory, perhaps isn't anything we'd be interested in at all.

Get workin' on it, science.

D'Angelo Finally Finds Wallace

2010-01-15T16:02:00.001-08:00

"Where's Wallace at? Where's the boy, String?"
- D'Angelo Barksdale, The Wire

While watching the latest Friday Night Lights last night I finally witnessed the emotional reunion of The Wire's D'Angelo Barksdale and Wallace. I was as happy as anyone when I heard that Michael B. Jordan (the actor who played the tragic Wallace in Season One of The Wire) would be joining the cast of Friday Night Lights this season, and on last night's episode, as soon as there was mention of an "ex-gangster" I got the feeling that it just had to be another Wire alum--though for some reason I was expecting it to be Wendell Pierce (Bunk) or Robert Wisdom (Bunny) even though neither of them played gangster, because I thought they would nail the older, ex-banger coming back to do outreach work. Fittingly enough, it was Larry Gilliard Jr., another tragic figure done wrong by the Barksdale gang, though he didn't get to flex his acting chops quite the way he did in The Wire. (After watching Breaking Bad and some of the "street" scenes from this FNL season, I've come to the conclusion that nobody can write believable street dialogue even close to as well as David Simon & Co.) Anyway, if learning that "Where Wallace is" is playing QB for the East Dillon Lions wasn't a sign that I need to break down some FNL, then I don't know what is.

More than either of the previous two seasons, S4 had the greatest risk of failure as that the finale of S3 left the show turned completely on its head: Taylor was out as coach of the beloved Dillon Panthers, almost all of the core kids of S1 were gone, and suddenly it looked as though the only holdovers might be Landry and (gulp) Julie. Now, of course, the writers did themselves and the fans a favor keeping Tim Riggins and Matt Saracen around (at least for a while in Matt's case), but the critical mass of the show had shifted and that meant a new crop of kids that would hopefully be more The Wire Season Two than Saved By the Bell: The New Class.

I was ready to declare the new characters a success even after the first couple episodes--particularly after an amazing scene in which Tami had to tell Panthers star RB, Luke Cafferty, that he had to transfer to East Dillon because of where lived--and now that we're farther along, my only real complaint is that I wish we got more of the new characters. Vince (the aforementioned "Wallace" played by Michael B. Jordan) has had a great arc, gradually growing to trust Taylor and falling in love with football. I have a feeling though that something terrible may happen to him in the last few episodes as his drug addict mother and disreputable friends probably won't make it through the whole season without coming back to bite him. Luke is endearing, a classic polite, farmboy, though we haven't really gotten enough of him to fully enjoy the myriad of obstacles that have been thrown his way. Along those same lines, now that the off-screen one-night stand that he and Becky has had an unpleasant result, not only will I think we'll get to see more of Luke's personality and emotion, but Becky will cease to be a character that we only get to see when Riggins is around.

I, of course, wish FNL could get a full, 22 episode order as it did in S1 just so I could see more of it, but, as I just said, I really want to get to know these new characters without sacrificing my time with the old ones. I personally prefer S1 to any of the others and one of the major reasons is that we get a much longer arc for the team and the people whose lives revolve around it. If S4 had more episodes to work with, the new characters that seem to be getting the short end (Jess and her father particularly) would have motivations that were a lot clearer. Though I suppose I should be happy this show is on at all. Let's just say, as long as Eric and Tami aren't going anywhere, I'm not afraid of next season in which these new characters will have to carry the show.

As happy as I've been with the new characters and the consistently hysterical handling of Landry this year, I have been disappointed with the way two old characters have been changed: Julie and JD. Now, my gradual souring on Julie may have a lot to do with her mopey portrayal by Aimee Teegarden, but it seems like all she does anymore is whine. Aside from her link to Matt (who is so great that virtually anybody in his scenes/storylines will work) her relationship with her mother this season is so talky. To repeat an old writing adage, "Show don't tell," Julie has been doing a lot of telling and not much showing. Multiple episodes have been her teen-angstily blabbing to Tami about contrived things such as faith and college visits and whatever typical teens are supposed to hate. It's fairly uninspired plotting from an otherwise inspired show, as if they don't know what to do with her outside of Matt and they just give her different issues to briefly touch on. I can't say I'll miss her much next season.

However, at least Julie is still on the show, as opposed to JD McCoy who may as well have been banished to Alabama. JD was one of the best characters from S3, an incredibly gifted QB prodigy with an unforgiving father and a world of pressure. He struggled with wanting to have a real life and to find some self-esteem that wasn't tied to football. Unfortunately, over the summer, he apparently lost every shred of humility and empathy and became a cruel, jock stereotype whose only purpose is to play bad guy to Taylor's Lions and make fun of former Panther, Luke. It's a shame because there was a lot of potential for JD to be a great character, but he's so limited in screentime that he's been reduced to being easily labeled as spoiled and insufferable. With more episodes we could occasionally check in on the Panthers and JD, but with too many characters and not enough time as it is, JD is the most obvious casualty of the shift to East Dillon.

A few final, quick thoughts...

- There was some discussion over on What's Alan Watching? of whether Becky is actually going to get an abortion, which network TV rarely does, and I think she will. This is probably going to be another example of them "FNLing" something and doing a classic story in a distinct, honest way. My guess is, also, that the ordeal will naturally bring Luke and Becky together and that they'll become the new Lyla & Street/Riggins.

- It was recently announced that Taylor Kitsch will not be back for the final (?) season, which means we've only got a few episodes of Riggins left. I've never liked him as much as I have this season--which is saying something since I've always liked him--as I appreciate how he's growing up (in a two steps forward one step back kind of way) and really trying to figure out what he wants in life. I suppose there is a chance he might go to college and restart his football career or perhaps he'll chase Lyla to Vanderbilt. Either way, I just hope his chop shop doesn't put him in jail.

- I mentioned how funny Landry has been this year and I'm glad the writers kept him around--even if they had to change his grade to do it. I wouldn't be surprised if Jesse Plemons starts getting some choice supporting roles in some upcoming comedies. His courting of Jess is comedy gold and his Tyra-induced transformation to a more confident, charming suitor has been well-executed.

All right, that's probably enough FNL for now since not many people watch it (or at least are watching it on its DirecTV run) so I'll try to keep my comments on it to a minimum until the end of the season.

Texas forever.

Fake Mailbag #1

2010-01-14T17:21:00.000-08:00

I've been toying with a few ideas that aren't quite enough for their own posts, so I thought I'd blend them all together.

As always, these are completely fake emails definitely not written by actual readers...

Ethan, what are your thoughts on the Jay Leno/Conan thing? How can any of this really be a surprise to NBC? Isn't this exactly what everyone thought would happen ratings-wise, at least at first?
- Dora, Billings, MT

I agree, Dora. Look, anybody who had ever seen Conan, even if you liked him like I did, could've predicted that his ratings would be a big drop-off from where Leno's were. His style of humor doesn't exactly work for everyone and it certainly wasn't going to work with Leno's old viewers. I do think that however, Conan is very naturally funny, a genuinely good interviewer, and a smart guy who wants The Tonight Show to succeed so if he gets the chance, I have confidence that he'll figure it out and produce a show that satisfies not only his old fans but the Leno leftovers. Conan's statement was great--eloquent, humble, but unambiguous--and it serves, to me, as further evidence that NBC should stick with him as he's the one who really cares about The Tonight Show's legacy above all else.

The situation reminds me a little of The Green Bay Packers/Brett Favre/Aaron Rodgers fiasco actually. Consider this: long-time moneymaker, hero Leno/Favre announces an unsurprising retirement. NBC/Green Bay has been preparing for this for quite a while, and has the successor Conan/Rodgers prepared to take over. However, when push comes to shove, Favre/Leno decides he made a mistake and actually wants to stay, leaving Green Bay/NBC with the awkward position of choosing between Favre/Leno and Rodgers/Conan. Now, Green Bay went with Rodgers (and despite the two losses to Favre's Vikings and how the GB season ended, I think most people would say they made the right call) but it doesn't look like NBC will make a similar call as they were the ones who started this whole mess and they couldn't have realistically expected Conan to move to 12:05.

Which reminds me...

I know you're a big Patriots fan. What did you think of that weekend of football? Is the Patriots Dynasty over? Is Brady over the hill?
- Sully, Springfield, MA

Man oh man. Until Rodgers led that valiant comeback against the Cards that was probably the worst weekend of football I'd ever watched, and it may still be. The Saturday games were terribly boring--which I expected from Jets-Bengals but not from the Cowboys-Eagles. To cap it off, my Patriots team played their worst playoff game of the decade. Granted, it still wasn't on the same planet of pain as the Giants Superbowl loss, but they played much worse this past weekend. Awful, awful stuff.

That said, the loss of Welker was a lot to overcome. Even if Julian Edelman played well, Welker was the best player on the team this year and he was where the offense got most of its grit. Two or three times in the first half the Patriots had great field position and couldn't put any points on the board. Those are the kind of times when Welker gets first downs and moves the chains. With or without him, however, NE probably wasn't winning the Superbowl. Brady needs another year to get healthy and get used to being back in the saddle, and that defense needs another year to mature and, honestly, they're probably two or three impact players short. There were some truly embarrassing performances by the defense this year and the loss to the Ravens made sure that NE management won't be able to pretend it those regular season defensive meltdowns (Indy for example) were any kind of fluke.

How about that BCS Title Game? Do you think Alabama deserved to win? What an end for Colt McCoy.
- Hunter, Little Rock, AK

It was a great game, though I could've done with a little more life from UT on the drive with Garrett Gilbert's fumble that led to the Bama touchdown that sealed the game. If they could've moved the ball another fifty or sixty yards before that happened that would've made me think Texas might actually win and would've really amped up the drama, thereby cementing the game as one of the better title contests of the decade. As it was, a courageous performance by the Longhorns, though I think the Tide would've rolled even if McCoy had stayed in, the script of the game just would've been different. Nick Saban is a real wet-blanket too. He wins the national title and can't even smile! I'm sure he wanted to win with McCoy in the game--it was a shame it had to be that way. Check out McCoy's post game interview. Sad stuff.

As for my fellow Friday Night Lights fans, how about the parallels in the game? Star QB (McCoy/Street) gets injured, afterthought second-stringer (Gilbert/Saracen) comes in and plays terribly at first, then either leads the team to victory (Saracen) or almost does (Gilbert). In addition, I heard a rumor (though I'm 95% sure it's entirely made up) that QB1's girlfriend (Lyla/McCoy's girlfriend, Rachel Glandorf) was cheating on the QB1 (McCoy/Street) with the secondary star/QB1's best friend (Riggins/Jordan Shipley). What is true, however, is that in the aftermath of the injury, QB1 (Street/McCoy) asked his girlfriend (Lyla/Rachel) to marry him, and she said yes.

I don't know if Mack Brown has a daughter, but I wouldn't be surprised if she and Gilbert are dating soon.

Your blog is so great. Can we read you anywhere else?
- Mickey, Tacoma, WA

Yes! Thanks for asking, Mick. Though I haven't written anything yet, I've been picked up by the Pop Culture Nerd blog (and by "picked up" I mean, I applied to contribute) and will occasionally be writing some articles about television shows that I follow and have written about here (Breaking Bad, Friday Night Lights, and Mad Men perhaps) as well as chronicling some of my indie-music musings. The tastes of that blog are a little more mainstream than my own, so I hopefully I'll be a good compliment to what it's already covering. I'll be sure to link on this blog to anything I write over there.

That's all for today. I'm going to try and start posting with greater regularity as I've been lagging the last few weeks.

Until then, here's the new Animal Collective video to "Brother Sport", one of my favorite songs from 2009. The video isn't quite how I imagined the song would be represented, but it's still pretty good and definitely pretty trippy.

Why Avatar is Not a Good Film

2010-01-11T11:23:00.000-08:00

"Special effects are just a tool, a means of telling a story. People have a tendency to confuse them as ends in themselves. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing." - George Lucas*

I couldn't agree more, George. And that, my friends, is why Avatar is not a good film.

* That Lucas quote is from the late 70s or early 80s and is hilariously used in this 70 minute skewering [WARNING: Strong Language] of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which I am now convinced may be one of the worst movies ever made.

Be clear, I am not saying that Avatar is worthless or abysmal, simply that it is not a good film. One could argue that it is an impressive display of current technology, but I think we would be mistaken to assume that that is a substitute for a film that truly warrants heaps of praise and our admiration. Avatar had all the elements to be a great film, but it fails to deliver. I can't get behind something that so catastrophically underachieves.

Also, my dislike of this film is not purely backlash. I saw Avatar on opening night, in a packed theater, fully expecting that I would like it as it had gotten generally favorable pre-release reviews. Had everyone else's reaction been the same as mine I would surely not take the time to write this entry as, if everyone else agreed that Avatar was the grossest underuse of potential since Doc Gooden, I would only be echoing what a crummy movie this is. Though, rest assured, if everyone else hated it too, it sure wouldn't make me like it anymore.

Moving on...

1. The Story - Defenders of Avatar have been using euphemistic words like "simple" and "a little predictable" to describe the story, but those don't go nearly far enough. One of the biggest problems with this story is that James Cameron takes what could be a plot filled with ethical and philosophical quandaries and turns it into a flavorless "adventure" devoid of any subtlety or debate.

Consider this: At any point did the audience feel genuinely conflicted about what Jake Sully should do in regard to siding with the humans or the Na'vi? This is a movie based around a human being who betrays his own race (a line that is explicitly said in the film) and yet somehow manages to accomplish this without a moment of real uncertainty. How does Cameron accomplish such a feat? Because the humans with power (Colonel Quaritch and an utterly useless Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge) turn to being completely evil so quickly--and being motivated by nothing more than money, hate, and revenge--that right and wrong effortlessly become black and white for Jake.

Now, right and wrong as black and white is not necessarily a recipe for failure. In the original Star Wars Darth Vader is pure evil (at least for the first film); in Lord of the Rings there are good guys and bad guys; Heath Ledger's Joker is a despicable villain; so that's not the issue. The issue is that these characters in Avatar don't start out a bad guys, they start out as regular humans, just like us, doing their jobs, being afraid of what they don't understand. Their transformation is so clumsily and inexplicably executed that this theoretically incredible, poignant element of betrayal is cast lazily aside.

Furthermore, the circumstances for me to buy these humans as irredeemable, selfish villains is far from established. We are given a brief explanation of what future Earth is like: desolate, mined and pillaged to the extreme. For me to allow humans to act so callously toward that Na'vi I would need to know that (1.) humans have encountered so many alien species at this future point that contact with the clearly intelligent, thoughtful Na'vi would barely register on our collective consciousness; or (2.) that Earth is in such critical condition that this valuable element (the cringe-worthily titled Unobtanium) is absolutely essential to our continuation as a species. Because, as it is now, these guys want to make some money and are willing to engage in a genocide against a life form that's 90% as intelligent as we are (or maybe we're 90% as intelligent as they are). The logic of the premise was not convincing to me and was another instance where Cameron avoided an obvious opportunity to not only solidify the motivations of the characters beyond what was merely convenient but also to heighten the drama (i.e. maybe something vital is at stake for the humans as well other than their wallets). The only lure Jake gets from the other side is that he'll get new, working legs if he helps the General. Which he can get from the Na'vi too as we soon find out. Yawn.

What it all boils down to is that this story is a great premise but the script needed about five more drafts before Cameron spent the GDP of Germany to make this film. There are so many potentially fantastic elements that get ignored and leave us with a bland, dull story. And I haven't even mentioned that this story is one that's been done many times before. Read this quick, little ditty from FailBlog, for example. Putting this tired story on planet Pandora and then failing to take advantage of all that the setting offers keeps it from being something truly fresh or new. Just because there are aliens and Cameron changed all the nouns, so to speak, doesn't make it original.

That's my biggest qualm with this movie, but let's "quickly" hit a couple more points...

2. The Characters - Oh boy. There is literally not a single character in this movie that isn't a type*. Jake is the brash, unenlightened soldier who gains a new perspective on life; Neytiri is the thoughtful, strong heroine who goes outside of her people to teach the main character what he needs to learn; Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Augustine is the smart scientist who cares about the Na'vi and stands up to the General and his followers...and on and on and on. I'm getting bored just thinking about these cookie-cutter characters! From the arrogant chief-in-waiting who is suspicious of Jake and arranged to marry Neytiri, to the nerdy scientist who is jealous of Jake for getting to have his own avatar without the requisite training, everyone in this movie is a stock character.

* Yeah, that's right, and I'll use a double-negative to make it known.

But, even that isn't the problem. The real problem is that I don't care about any of these characters. There was one great moment where I actually cared about Jake Sully and it was in a voice-over when he was looking exhausted and saying something along the lines of, "The dream is becoming more real than the reality." It was an excellent insight into the character and made me think, "Oh yeah. That is what would happen. I can't wait to explore this further!" Naturally though, that was the last we saw of that thread. Also, I will admit that I did want Jake and Neytiri to get together, though I think that was just movies conditioning me to want the main characters of movies to get together. I suppose I can't convince anyone else that they shouldn't care about these characters, but outside of habit, I really don't see how these one-dimensional characters (none of whom were well-acted by the way) with terrible dialogue are meant to elicit any emotional attachment.

To compare it again to Star Wars (another sci-fi movie full of character types and campy lines) that movie makes me like the characters: Han Solo is cool, Obi-Wan is wise, Chewbacca is funny, Luke is a whiny little--okay scratch that last one. Or, compare it to other sci-fis from this year: Star Trek, though it had some flaws, had characters, particularly Kirk and McCoy, that were fun and likable, yet the movie still packed enough adventure and special effects to satisfy that need. Similarly, in District 9 when the main character Wikus has his "unfortunate incident" (didn't want to spoil it for anyone) the audience identifies with him and becomes wrapped up in his predicament. Point is, Avatar's characters could and should have been good, there was more than enough opportunity to give them real personalities.

3. The Little Things - Great movies get the details right. Mediocre movies get details wrong and people like me get hung up on them. I wrote this short post about the General/Colonel (I realize I've been mixing the two titles up) telling the troops, "They aren't in Kansas anymore." First of all, that's an awful, cliched line. Secondly, it doesn't make sense! Nobody in two hundred years know what the hell that means! Similarly, Sigourney Weaver calls the General "Ranger Rick." Ranger Rick? Ranger Rick is from a kid's magazine that people today barely know about. There probably one be a single human who knows who Ranger Rick is by the time the movie is supposed to take place. Plus, that line is stupid regardless. Also, Jake's wheelchair would be a piece of crap in 2010. It would really look the same in 2154? I wish I'd cataloged more of these poorly executed details but, I only saw it once and I'm sure not in any mood to see it again.

4. What I Liked About It - All right, I admit I'm getting tired of bashing this movie. I'll recharge for a moment with what I did like before I make my conclusions on why this movie is still a failure. The planet Pandora is cool. The scene at night with the colors and phosphorescent plants was pretty enjoyable. Same for the plants during the daytime and the chase scene in which Jake almost died. All good stuff. The effects were good, though I would never say that they looked real. The animals on the planet were interesting and I liked the physical way that the Na'vi could bond with the other living things. Basically, it was fun the way an episode of Planet Earth is fun, if Planet Earth felt the need to waste our time with silly characters and plot that may or may not make sense.

5. In Conclusion - In fifteen or twenty years, when Avatar's special effects become outdated, which is inevitable, Avatar will have nothing to fall back on. As much as people may want to pretend otherwise, this is not an iconic film with staying power. This isn't Star Wars. It's not Aliens.

Funnily enough, the overt message of this movie (green Earth=good, green money=bad) is, in an abstract kind of way, contradicted by the execution of the movie. Let's say that money is approximately equal to expensive special effects and the spirit and beauty that bonds us together is people and emotion, or, in other words, story and character. Here is a film that is all flash. It's all money and it's all effects. Emotion and thought take an inarguable backseat. By Avatar's own logic, is Avatar fighting against itself? And if it isn't, then I sure am.

I'll leave you with one last thought...

People often complain about movies being too concerned with action and effects and skipping time spent on actually making a good movie. The list is seemingly endless: Transformers, Fast and Furious, Star Wars; The Phantom Menace, ad infinitum. I wonder if the flooding of the market with these ghastly films has lowered our collective expectations to the point that a decent but not great movie, like Avatar, causes us to overreact and laud it as revolutionary and important, when it is instead a slightly better version of the kind of story that is corrupting the film experience. I realize this sounds pretentious and self-important, but the values of the American film goer are clearly weighted toward adventure instead of meaning. An interesting visual experience does not a great movie make.

"...filmmaking is not going to ever fundamentally change. It's about storytelling. It's about humans playing humans. It's about close-ups of actors. It's about those actors somehow saying the words and playing the moment in a way that gets in contact with the audience's hearts." - James Cameron, to Newsweek, Dec. 2009

In other words, do as I say, not as I do.

Back soon with better things to discuss.

Staying Power

2010-01-07T14:06:00.001-08:00

Just a quick entry today...

I'd heard earlier in the week that The Beatles were the top selling band of the past decade. After finding this article in Rolling Stone, I see that they released the top selling album, 1, (the compilation of all their #1 hits) and were only behind Eminem (bleh) in total album sales.

Even for someone as young as me, I've already experienced a handful of little resurgences in their popularity. Every few years something comes along to remind the general public of how great The Beatles were/are. Since I've been aware of The Beatles, I've seen a Beatles-Bounce because of the Anthology, the release of 1, George Harrison's death, and now the release of "Beatles: Rock Band" and the accompanying remastered catalog. I probably even forgot a few.

The Beatles debuted in America almost 50 years ago and somehow their popularity and universal love and acclaim has barely dwindled in those five decades. I often marvel at how innovative their music is, so much so that many of the songs would be innovative now. A band could release "Happiness is a Warm Gun" this year and (seeing as how this is in some alternate universe where The Beatles didn't exist and thus people had never heard this song) critics would laud it as fresh, daring, and brilliant.

There isn't much to say about the Fab Four that hasn't already been said, though I'm sure we'll have at least fifty more decades of new generations falling in love with them and trying to find fresh words to describe their Mozart/Shakespeare-like longevity.

Speaking of which, check out the pretty hilarious video below on just that topic... (sorry about the format, double-click on the video to open it in a new window where the margins are correct)

Back in a few days.

My Bad on Breaking Bad

2010-01-05T17:36:00.001-08:00

Forgive me readers for I have sinned.

Last week, I wrote this post awarding Mad Men my distinguished "TV Season of the Year" award. To be clear, I'm not taking it back. If I were to rewrite that post today it wouldn't change much. However, I feel the need to come clean as I misrepresented my watching of Breaking Bad in that, when I wrote that post, I actually had three episodes left* in the season.

* In my further defense, obviously Friday Night Lights Season 4 and the Parks and Recreation season are not done yet either and there was no problem with including them.

Don't worry dedicated fans of the "TV Season of the Year" award, it has not been compromised. Matthew Weiner, Jon Hamm...stay calm, you're still in first place. I just want to give Breaking Bad its full due since I commented on it before watching the last three phenomenal episodes of the season.

A well-executed drama series will, naturally, build up to the end. The Baltimore PD arrests Avon Barksdale, the Dillon Panthers roll toward State, Loch finally goes into the hatch...that sort of thing. Now, I knew Breaking Bad was building to something, but it turned out to be far, far better than I imagined.

Again, this is a weird blog post for me to write since I don't think anybody who reads it has ever seen Breaking Bad and probably knows nothing more about it than, "Hey, isn't that the dad from Malcolm in the Middle?" And, honestly, probably not even that--not that you should, Malcolm in the Middle isn't exactly The Great Gatsby of serialized television. So, I'm not going to talk about the specifics of the show so much as the devices it employs to really make the end the season come together in an incredible way.

I'm going to ruin one thing for any potential viewers because it's something you know right from the beginning: Walt's (Bryan Cranston) wife is pregnant. She's pregnant for two whole seasons. You kind of get used to it. And, sure enough, when that baby comes, it is at the absolute worst time for Walt. A phrase that used to get tossed around in my screenwriting class was "surprising but inevitable." That is, of course the baby was going to come at the worst time, it had to. It was set up that way for the whole season. But, yet, it's set up over such a long period of time that you almost forget it's coming (they make sure of this in a couple of clever ways as well) and then the show reminds you of that possibility a scene before it actually happens just to give you a few moments of, "Oh my god. Holy crap. Not now? Right? It couldn't be now...holy crap." It's a remarkable convergence of two story lines.

Along the same lines (of the surprising but inevitable) is tension and release. The whole show is predicated around Walt having one gigantic secret, capable of ruining his entire life. It is inevitable that this secret will get out (see: Draper, Don), otherwise there's no show. It sneaks out in little ways here and there, always just enough to really screw something up for Walt. Now, this isn't to say it necessarily gets all the way out at the end of Season 2 (it doesn't) but it gets out just enough to change things in a way the viewer couldn't have seen coming until about five minutes before. The release of this secret (in this slightly altered way) is among the show's most gripping moments.

Something I did mention earlier, the two leads are outstanding. It took me a while to get on board with Walt's partner and former student, Jesse (Aaron Paul), but he surprisingly becomes the more sympathetic and relatable character. At first I didn't like him because he seemed too goofy, but I realize now it was intentional in that, like many people who run in these dark circles, he was merely trying to fit in and play a part. Once the humanity and helplessness of his character is revealed he almost reminds me of one of the tragic school kids from Season 4 of The Wire. The interplay between the two is great: rich in comedy, full of contempt, and, eventually, transforming into a genuine yet unusual bond.

So, my apologies to Vince Gilligan and the folks over at Breaking Bad. You still didn't quite nab that gold medal, but you made it a closer race than I initially gave you credit for. I'm anxiously awaiting the Season 3 premiere in March.

Big Love is my next show to catch-up on. I'll probably be done with that in a few months, unless I don't like it--which seems unlikely given all I've heard about it.

Back soon with some more posts on books I've finished recently; I enjoyed writing about David Foster Wallace yesterday and I think I need to get a little more literature into this blog.

Cheers.

OMG DFW, U R GR8

2010-01-04T20:53:00.000-08:00

Dylan once said, "I could have written 'Satisfaction', but you couldn't have written 'Tambourine Man.'" - Mick Jagger, to Rolling Stone, 1968

Despite what your thesaurus may tell you, pretty, beautiful, lovely, gorgeous, and hot* do not mean the same thing. I've had, on more than one occasion, discussions with my friends to hash out this very fact. A girl can be hot, but certainly not beautiful. A girl can be gorgeous, but not necessarily lovely. Now, before this starts sounding too much like a pathetic attempt at a George and Jerry conversation...

* Okay, that one's probably not in the same part of the thesaurus.

Artists, in this case authors, can be (to use a generic, broad word) good in different ways, that don't necessarily overlap. This too is, of course, obvious. John Steinbeck is masterful. Michael Ondaatje is graceful. John Irving is majestic. Jonathan Safran Foer is innovative. Bill Watterson is imaginative.

David Foster Wallace is brilliant.

Wallace is singularly brilliant in a way that I have never encountered in an author before. That's not to say I don't find, for example, Steinbeck brilliant (I do), but DFW is so brilliant that he practically toys and plays with his brilliance, sometimes perhaps to his detriment, though he's brilliant enough that he must be well-aware of this, but sometimes to such staggering success that the conclusion of a story resulted for me a dazed state of shock, where I had to take literally a minute or two to process the literary brilliance I had just been treated to.

But let me take a few steps back.

A of couple weeks ago I wrote this unbrilliant post about DFW's fantastic graduation speech. Naturally, I was inspired to get my hands on some of DFW's essays or stories (the only novel of his I was familiar with, Infinite Jest, was far too large an undertaking to test if I liked DFW) and after a couple of trips to different libraries, I obtained a copy of Oblivion, a book of his short stories published in 2004.

To be clear, DFW is not for everybody. I call him brilliant and, for a few of these stories I just read in particular, I doubt anybody could convince me otherwise. However, for others, I think words/phrases like ostentatious, pretentious, brash, and intentionally convoluted would be their first choices.

Here's is what I like about DFW. Or, more accurately, what I like about this specific collection of DFW short stories that I just read:

1. Harkening back to his graduation speech, Wallace is a person that sees the water. As an aspiring writer who would like to have a fraction of DFW's observational skill or an infinitesimal amount of his brilliance, I try to see idiosyncrasies of life that are often overlooked. I try, sometimes more successfully than others, to be entertained by the small, funny slices of the world. So, as would be expected, I admire those who can find water in places I've never looked. Wallace's stories are oceans.

2. The layering, structure, and non-compartmentalization of DFW's stories are so fascinating and challenging that they generate interest in their own right. For example, "The Soul is Not a Smithy" is a story that is, at first glance, about a substitute teacher who takes a class of kids hostage. But, it's told from the adult perspective of one of the students in the class, who also has attention problems and is daydreaming out the window and concocting his own narrative about what he sees outside. Then, through this narrative and reflecting on his childhood, the story is really revealed to be about his father and the monotony of his father's life. Furthermore, this elaborate structure is not merely a construct for DFW to show-off, as it provides for the hilarious brief moments when the narrator snaps out of his fantasy to gather pieces of evidence about the teacher devolving into murderous derangement, as well as illustrates how it's difficult to look back on a time period of one's life without the domino-effect of recalling more and more feelings and impressions.

3. Brutal honesty. This could tie into #1, but I think it warrants its own thought, as the underlying reminder that Wallace killed himself can never drift too far away. In "Good Old Neon" DFW takes into the mind of a successful, popular businessman who knows himself to be a complete and utter fraud* who has suicidal tendencies. At the end, the structure is flipped on its head when Wallace suddenly brings himself (referring to himself in the third person as "David Wallace") envying this narrator in high school and thinking he had it all. So, this is NOT just to say, "Oh, DFW killed himself and he talks about a character wanting to kill himself, he's a genius." It is merely the most salient example in a collection full of such reflections. This is a trait of many a talented writer, but he addresses the universal insecurity of people head-on, making it one of the most moving and effecting elements of his stories.

* This, like the father's grind of daily life in "The Soul is Not a Smithy," is one of the many times that Wallace touches on ideas that he discusses in his graduation speech. This cooperation makes each a little deeper as well, the fiction and non-fiction sides of the same coin in a sense.

4. His creativity, not just in his structure, is very distinct. "Another Pioneer," likely an allegory for a few different things, tells of the story--which in DFW fashion is one unbroken 25 page paragraph, which is being relayed to the reader second-hand as the narrator overheard it retold by someone else on a plane--of a boy born in a remote, prehistoric (?) village who was blessed with a seemingly infinite wisdom. Then, how the evolution of that wisdom transformed his life, his relationship with the villagers, and the village itself. It seems part mythology, part Vonnegut science-fiction, and yet the logic of it is so inevitable and flawless that the reader is left with a sense of, "Yes. That would be what happened. That would be exactly how it would play out," and, in turn, that acceptance allows for it to be wonderfully thought-provoking. It is, in a word, brilliant.

Now, back to my labeling of David Foster Wallace as "singularly brilliant."

Like the boy in "Another Pioneer", escalating brilliance does not necessarily entail triumph as a teacher or a communicator.

1. Wallace's vocabulary is famously (okay, "famously") advanced. This is--to borrow a phrase that Wallace would probably put a red pen through had I been lucky enough to be one of his students during his professorship at Pomona--a blessing and a curse. I need to read Wallace with my laptop open, ready to type in to my Apple Dictionary the multitude of words I do not know the definitions of. This is a blessing in that he often chooses the perfect word, even if it was one I had never heard/read until then. On the other hand, it not only slows down the reading but he will periodically make up a word, either by inventing a derivate for a familiar word, or by manufacturing it all together. These occurrences can range from inconsequential to annoying to baffling. This is perhaps the most obvious example of his brilliance perhaps superseding common-sense, tradition, and rules, and thus maybe ceasing to be brilliance. Which leads us to...

2. Wallace hates rules. This manifests itself in him birthing his own words, using confusing abbreviations, and redefining punctuation; but these are all minor pitfalls that I can deal with. What is harder to deal with, especially for one who likes a good story and a satisfying ending, is that DFW will eschew any pretense of wanting to tie things up. There are really only two stories in the entire anthology that get "deserving" endings. In the others, Wallace intentionally ends too soon or without resolution. I begrudgingly learned to accept this as well, convincing myself that reading (cliche alert!) is more about the journey than the destination. It's difficult to remember all the scenes and dialogues in a novel, even as you're reading it. An ending can ruin/make a story, but Wallace doesn't seem to care; or possibly (and I would assume even probably) he thinks his atypical endings are superior. And maybe on some level he's right, but, for a non-brilliant like myself, I will admit that the endings are rarely the best part of the story.

If you think yourself immune to these requirements, I would highly, highly recommend reading some DFW. However, if you are quite understandably among the group that likes words you can understand and endings that make sense, he may not be for you. Furthermore, his prose is not beautiful or poetic. At times it is easy and conversational (this predictably varies greatly by story as well) but at other times it has more in common with a biology textbook than it does The English Patient.

Nevertheless, love him or hate him, Wallace was a brilliant man, undeniably born to be a writer and a thinker. These stories are as memorable and powerful as any short stories I've read, and I know that I will read at least a couple more of his books, despite his resistance of literary regulations, so that I may further bask in his brilliance.

My Favorite 09s

2010-01-02T17:45:00.000-08:00

This is my last semi-lame, cop-out entry about the best of 2009 and it's unapologetically stolen from Bill Simmons. The link below is to an iTunes playlist of my favorite songs from the past year.

My Favorite 09s!

Hooray.

The one song I tried to include but couldn't because the version in my iTunes is the radio version (or something) is "Exhibit C" by Jay Electronica. Now, I don't listen to that much hip-hop, but I would if it were more like this. I heard this song via Soul Sides, one of my favorite blogs, recommended to me by my friend Julian. It's sampled from this Billy Stewart song, which is plenty groovy in its own right, and when Jay Electronica's version unmistakably kicks in at the 0:27 mark (on the Youtube vid) that's as funky a moment as there is. I'm going to keep my eye on this kid.

Anyway, on to the real list, in alphabetical order by artist:

"Anonanimal" from Andrew Bird's Noble Beast - To be honest, Noble Beast was a bit of a disappointment for me. I liked it well enough but it was a clear step down from the fantastic Armchair Apocrypha and The Mysterious Production of Eggs. The songs were too similar to each other and he shyed away from anything really poignant or grand. Regardless, this is my favorite track from the "new" album, some nice, classic Andrew Bird looping and understated, racing vocals.

"What Would I Want? Sky?" from Animal Collective's Fall Be Kind EP - It was a great year for Animal Collective and this was the proverbial cherry on the top of that year. The first half is typical, mechanical, AC noise that gradually melts into accessible pop perfection for the second half.

"My Girls" from Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion - Before this album I really wasn't much of an Animal Collective fan. My previous experience with them had been the dense, somewhat robotic Sung Tongs and I never got into that record in any significant way. However, so many people whose opinions I respected swore by them, so I gave them another chance when MPP came out. My friend Robbie, one of those aforementioned people, told me to listen to "My Girls" five times, while reading the lyrics for at least one of those times, and that if I still didn't like Animal Collective at that point then they probably weren't for me. I only had to listen to it twice.

"Summertime Clothes" from Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion - A meticulously layered, soaring masterpiece. This piece, due in no part surely to the power of suggestion, really makes me feel like I'm out on a deck at night in midsummer with frogs and peepers in the distance.

"Brother Sport" from Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion - This track has turned into my favorite from this album. This one, to me, really epitomizes what's great about AC in its thick build-up of tension--over a minute and a half of computerized, androidal escalation--suddenly being pulled away into this sparse, sublime release. The first time I was really blown away by this song was when I fell asleep on a bus listening to MPP and awoke in the middle of the build-up, naturally making me think, "What the hell am I listening to?" The longer it went on the more grating and disorienting it became, but when the voices came back in and I was suddenly in this pulsating digital rainforest of sound, I thought it was the most brilliant thing I'd ever heard.

"Blood Bank" from Bon Iver's Blood Bank - The title track from my theoretical album of the year (detailed in full in the post below). This could have been any of the first three tracks from this gorgeous record. I think this one is the most memorable and, thus, it was my choice here.

"...And the Hazy Sea" from Cymbals Eat Guitars' Why There Are Mountains - I like how untamed and wild this song is, moving between frenzied almost-screaming and mellow verses. I got the full album based on my enjoyment of this song but didn't quite like the rest of it as much. There are some good moments on it, but they sound too much like a less-talented Modest Mouse for me.

"All the Money I Had is Gone" from Deep Dark Woods' Winter Hours - It's no "Leopold Canal" but it's a beautiful, if fairly standard, country-type ballad. I've yet to fully digest this album but I've really enjoyed their sound so far.

"Cannibal Resource" from Dirty Projectors' Bitte Orca - Most people seemed to get excited over "Stillness is the Move" from this album, but I found that track too Mariah Carey and I cringe every time I hear the lyric, "Isn't life under the sun just a crazy dream?" Nevertheless, the album on the whole was fantastic I think lead track "Cannibal Resource" voices its distinct, dazzling, fastidious mood right away. I was lucky enough to catch them live in DC this summer where they opened for and completely overshadowed TV on the Radio.

"Two Doves" from Dirty Projectors' Bitte Orca - It seems odd to pick a fairly avant-garde and innovative band like Dirty Projectors and then choose their most ordinary song, but I really love this one and it just goes to show that orchestration and complexity are never a guarantee of outdoing a simple guitar and a pretty melody (see: Pecknold, Robin ; Vernon, Justin).

"Two Weeks" from Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest - This song got more than enough publicity this year but I couldn't not mention it as no song on this list got more plays on my iTunes. It's just an amazing song. From its retro sound to its remarkable drumming to its magnificent backing vocals, it's a triumph of songwriting. The second vocal harmony at 3:17 is the best moment for me. They did an incredible version of this on Conan with Victoria Legrand from Beach House but it's not online anymore as far as I can tell.

"While You Wait for the Others" from Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest - Another standout track from a standout album. Grizzly Bear, like Animal Collective and Dirty Projectors, jumped a few levels in the public eye this year due to strong, accessible albums that didn't sacrifice their originality from past endeavors.

"Casablanca" from Malajube's Labyrinthes - This song is in French so despite studying that language for seven years, I don't really know what it's about. Either way, it's a bit of prog-pop splendor that has these really groovy interludes that bounce effortlessly along in the pocket, but also ornate guitar lines and key changes as the song develops.

"Your Easy Lovin' Ain't Pleasin' Nothin'" from Mayer Hawthorne's A Strange Arrangement - The feel good song of the year. Hawthorne may not have the vocal virtuosity of his contemporaries like Raphael Saadiq or the Dap Kings' Sharon Jones, but he writes wonderful, jovial foot-tappers that have just enough modern sensibility to differentiate themselves from the 60s/70s Motown/doo-wop that surely inspires him.

"Amber Gris"* from Medeski Martin and Wood's Radiolarians II - No band that I've ever heard--and I've spent a lot of time looking for one--is better at blending classical/pop song structures with jazz musicianship and improvisation. They are staggeringly good live and in the handful I've times I've seen them I have never been disappointed. Not all of their songs translate to recordings and this one, believe it or not, is no exception. Live, however, this song just explodes. My 2009 list wouldn't be complete without them.

* I just noticed iTunes didn't add this one to my list for some reason. Here is the music vid, which is probably better anyway.

"Repeater Beater" from Mew's No More Stories... - I've already written my encomium on Mew but need to give them one last nod here. I'm still listening to this newish album and have yet to pick out my favorites. This one will do for now.

"People Got A Lotta Nerve" from Neko Case's Middle Cyclone - I can't not love a song that sings, "You know they call them killer whales, but you seem surprised when it pinned you down to the bottom of the tank, where you can't turn around. It took half your leg and both your lungs and I craved I ate hearts of shark. I know you know it." Neko Case has the perfect voice for her folksy pop songs, though her lyrics and song forms are so creative I wish I could label them more flatteringly.

"Little Secrets" from Passion Pit's Manners - Passion Pit isn't my favorite band, but I really dig how imaginative their sound is. I caught them in Baltimore in the spring and they played a unrestrained, exciting set--though one that was barely over half an hour. The falsetto-screech singing can get a little tiresome, but I think they're one of the best examples of melding live performance with pre-recorded/computerized sounds.

"Suburban Dogs" from Real Estate's self-titled LP - I wrote about these guys when I saw them live this fall, and not much has changed in my regard for them since then. They write solid, unpretentious indie rock and probably have a nice career ahead of them. Unless an album is slipping my mind this was probably my favorite debut record this year. I could have gone with "Beachcomber" as my selection on this list, but I like the casual, laziness that "Suburban Dogs" demonstrates.

"Pistol Dreams" from The Tallest Man on Earth's Shallow Graves - A great guitar/vocal number that has this amazing sense of romantic old timey rambling. Could've picked any song from the wonderful Shallow Grave LP.

"Island, IS" from Volcano Choir's Unmap - A side project of Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. I haven't gotten to know this album as well as I should yet, but it is definitely a separate entity from his Bon Iver songs. More production, more oddities. It's not bad, though doesn't thrill me the way Bon Iver stuff does.

"New Theory" from Washed Out's Life of Leisure - Another artist I've already written about, though this EP has probably grown on me even more since then. "New Theory" is a beautiful machine, like the kind of song one would play over some fast-motion journey of watching a blueprint get drawn and subsequently turn into a futuristic construction site and then an assembly line for flying cars...or something like that.

"Percussion Gun" from White Rabbits' It's Frightening - I'm usually not the kind of person who listens to only singles, but this song occupies this weird space where I really like it (obviously even to the point of including it on this list) yet I haven't gotten the rest of the album. I have no idea what the rest of the songs on It's Frightening sound like, only that (in this song) when the guitar/bass enter underneath the vocals and drums that that moment is so good that this list would be incomplete without it.

"Rain On" from Woods' Songs of Shame - When this song first starts, it sounds like it's going to be a pretty standard indie number, until these bizarre falsetto vocals enter that sound like they're going through a guitar amp. There's something very eerie about this tune despite its mostly upbeat demeanor. Really worth a listen.

That's all folks. May 2010 bring even more and even better songs.

2009 Awards: Album*

2009-12-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

"That is the great power of the artist ... to paint something which we ordinary people feel but cannot reveal."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

In a pretty strong year for albums it seems strange to give a made-up award to something that technically qualifies as an EP, but I think this EP so completely adheres to my musical checklist that I cannot overlook it.

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2009 "Album of the Year":

Bon Iver, Blood Bank

Blood Bank is, in many ways, a simple project: it's only four songs, it runs barely over 15 minutes, and the whole EP basically consists of one musician, Justin Vernon, writing and performing everything. And yet, the results are remarkable--intensely personal, raw, haunting, uninhibited, candid. Each song speaks a volume, each distinct from the one before it, its own season in its hazy, mellifluous year.

Like I mentioned earlier in my Sigur Rós post, I have respect for and am drawn to those musicians which I feel (perhaps justified or not) are allowing themselves no privacy in their music. That is, not to just unambiguously share lyrically the worst things that have happened to them, but to identify a precise feeling they have, some small or large slice of their human experience, and somehow translate that into music that recreates that feeling for the listener.

Music that accomplishes this controls the situation. One might think it's easy to create a fun song to dance to, and, in some ways, relatively, it is; but, what it is far more challenging to do is write a song that makes people dance, one that compels and commands them, and gets even the wettest of blankets out of their chairs. Similarly, it's easy for artists to write music for the listener to pity himself to, one that the listener plays when he's lonely. It's another thing entirely to write a song that makes the listener lonely or, at least, conveys so devastatingly the loneliness of the singer/musicians that the listener cannot help but feel empathy and be thankful that the listener might not be lonely himself.

It is here that Blood Bank succeeds so wildly.* Here is a crop of songs that is vulnerable and truthful from the opening bar, every song building its own ethereal, complete atmosphere. They are as follows:

*In the interest of full disclosure, I will state that I obtained Bon Iver's Blood Bank (2009) and the even more staggering For Emma, Forever Ago (2008) at the same time and inextricably linked the two, such that my love for both cannot be fully divided into discrete chambers. As this is the case, my fondness for Blood Bank may be artificially augmented and I cannot say that one unfamiliar with Bon Iver can go buy Blood Bank and be able to replicate my experience (of course, this is always the case). If you don't have either, get both; if you have one, get the other; if you have both, congratulations, have a cookie.

"Well, I met you at the blood bank. We were looking at the bags. Wondering if any of the colors, matched any of the names we knew on the tags."

Track 1, "Blood Bank"*: This song begins with a rolling in of ghostly backing voices, melting over a solo electric guitar. The lyrics come in, double tracked (at least) with a clear tenor and a wistful falsetto combining to create this eerie yet beautiful delay-type effect. The choruses break in this beautiful way that opens the song up, at first slightly abandoning the pulse of the song, before the pulse returns to ground the song from seemingly floating away.

At points it seems a very standard love song ("I'm in love with your honor, I'm in love with your cheeks") but the mood of the song is so intense (not a loud, aggressive intense, an unadulterated, pure intense) that some acknowledgment of love seems the only subject strong enough to warrant the passion. The lyrics skirt along the edge of interpretability, giving us tangible scenes of considering mortality while gazing at their literal lifeblood or a late night in a cold, parked car, feeling like the only two people on earth; but also touching on larger yet more abstract concepts like the magnetic pull of familial ties, the surreal passage of time, knowing that the newness of your experience is not in the slightest way also new to humanity yet still feeling that you own this "secret" and know about some corner of existence that others do not. Maybe I'm extrapolating too much, but each of those slivers is in there somewhere much in this same way this night that Vernon paints was/is in reality/fiction an amalgam of emotion and wondering.

* None of these links are to official music videos, but you can at least hear (most of) the songs.

"But don't you lock when you're fleeing, I'd like not to hear keys."

Track 2, "Beach Baby": This song is the most delicate and easily the shortest--just a fragile acoustic guitar and soft, falsetto vocals (still double tracked?), eventually giving way to a sublime pedal guitar melody before fading out. This feels like the kind of song that could only be appreciated in dead silence, maybe by a lone candle in a cabin. Lyrically, it's in some sense the bleakest of the bunch, a gentle yet painful acceptance of an inevitable end. Where the title track is sweeping and grand, "Beach Baby" is small in scale but laser-like in its focus; it's a break-up song, but it's so forgiving, asking only to be left with this one, wonderful memory on some unnamed beach. The pedal guitar at the end is gorgeous, sliding on some notes and pulling off of the others. I imagine a camera rising slowly off of him, as he recalls this encounter that no one can touch, into a shot of the array of stars over a dense, dark forest.

"Summer comes to multiply. To multiply."

Track 3, "Babys": This song, while still sparse like the others, is the fullest in regard to instrumentation. It begins with an almost arrythmic piano figure, drifting into the now familiar falsetto vocals, this time present with a sense of renewal and optimism (e.g. the new summer). I feel the title must relate back to the previous track, indicating some ability to move-on and refresh (i.e. there are other fish/babies in the sea). The chorus (if one can identify it as that, it happens just once) is perhaps the most stunning moment on the whole EP, when the declaration (though it's almost impossible to hear what he's saying) of "My woman and I, my woman and I, know what we're for," lands perfectly with a bass note and chord on the piano. This amazing crash is given a moment to echo and stretch out, before the tinkling of the piano figure returns and the song moves on its way again.

"I'm up in the woods. I'm down on my mind."

Track 4, "Woods": This is the big surprise of the album, devoid of instruments and suddenly including auto-tune and probably other voice modulators. It repeats the same phrase over and over, adding new voices, including some nearly screeching falsetto. This is my least favorite of the tracks, though when examining the EP as a whole it provides some counterpoint as well as finality to the project. That is, it has to go at the end and a song in the vein of the previous three would be isolated were it to follow this one. It reminds me more of a "Fitter, Happier" or "Revolution 9" type song, though more inherently musical than either of those two. I suppose it's a testament to Bon Iver that a fourth of the EP is this song and I still tossed it my prestigious "Album of the Year" honor.

In conclusion...

It was a close race and I wanted to get into how great I thought Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion was but this post ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated and I think maybe they deserve their own dissection, maybe as 2009's "Band of the Year" as they also released a great EP, Fall Be Kind, and jumped a few levels in the public eye. Ultimately though, as incredible as that Animal Collective record was, I wanted to recognize/discuss how poignant I found Blood Bank to be. Of all the albums that came out this year, I listened to Blood Bank the most, perhaps the simplest and truest test of a record's effectiveness, and I imagine I'll still be listening to it next year, in ten years, and in twenty.

Happy New Year. I'll be back in 2010 with (probably) some posts on Animal Collective, why I didn't really like Avatar, why I was pleasantly surprised by Julie and Julia, why Billy Corgan is allegedly (i.e. Jessica Simpson) sullying his reputation as an artist, and so on.

Cheers.

2009 Awards: TV Season

2009-12-29T12:19:00.000-08:00

"You come at the king, you best not miss."
- Omar, The Wire

Admittedly, that quote has nothing to do with the rest of this post*, other than the fact that Omar is awesome, The Wire remains the gold standard of television and that now that its run is over it opens the door for another show to claim "Season of the Year" honors.* Granted I never had a blog before a month ago, but it's safe to say The Wire would have been the five-time defending champ.

* Or does it?
**Any show that either began or finished its season in 2009 is eligible for this award that I just made up.

Also note, it is internet law that bloggers must give out at least two end of year/decade awards so, like it or not, I have to do this. So, in that case...

HONORABLE MENTION:

Friday Night Lights: Seasons 3 & 4 - I'd give the slight nod to three right now, but four (as I've already detailed) has a shot to surpass it. Props to the writers for so gracefully incorporating new but still great characters like JD McCoy in Season 3 and Luke Cafferty in 4 (though JD has gotten considerably worse in four). I've said plenty on FNL and will say plenty more in the future so let's just move on.

30 Rock: Season 3 - I already wrote about how I think this current season has lost its way a bit , but Season 3 was comedy gold. What I like about 30 Rock is the way it can still manage to really surprise the viewer, especially one who is aware of tropes and likes to think he's really smart and can predict what's going to happen (sound likea anyone you know?). It's great at setting you up for a joke, then giving a completely different joke that you didn't see coming. It's smart, clever, well-acted--all those things that people gush about when describing it. Until Liz actually has some sort of overarching need or want it will continue to rely completely on joke-telling, but if you just want to laugh, there wasn't a better season this year.

Parks and Recreation: Season 2 - If you want my full take on this one, follow the link above in the 30 Rock section. Its one episode since that post hasn't changed my mind. It's a endearing show, is much more than an Office quasi spin-off, and has a fantastic cast and great writers. Plus it's fairly new so easy to catch-up on.

Breaking Bad: Season 2 - Hey, look, it's a show I haven't written about! The Wire really hurts this show for me as all the drug lords and criminals come off as extremely goofy instead of scary. Regardless, Bryan Cranston (the lead) is outstanding and the show does a great job not sugarcoating the various repulsions of the drug trade. All the characters are well-designed, appealing mixes of good and bad that make the viewer oscillate between rooting for them and yelling at them.

Which leads us to our winner...

And if you've read this blog before you've probably already guessed it...

Here's a hint...

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis from Between Two Ferns

That's right! It's G-Force: The Series!

I'll be here all week, folks.

THE WINNER:

Mad Men: Season 3 - I'll admit that I like FNL and Mad Men about the same, but Mad Men's third season was just a little better than FNL's Season 3. Mad Men is an almost flawless show; the logic and plotting is impeccably designed, virtually never suffering from continuity errors or inconsistent characterization. The only real complaint viewers can log is the breakdown of where the show spends its time, as, for example, I would have preferred just a little less focus on Betty Draper this season as Don's office offers more varied types of tension and a more colorful, rich assortment of personalities. But, that is a relatively minor qualm and, as this old post details, the best episode/scene of the season was, in fact, a Betty/Don storyline. No show I've ever seen, with the exception of The Wire, is as precise as Mad Men. It's a show that's thought of everything. Some call it a little slow (though no one I've talked to about it) but its character-based pace is what gives the big, dramatic moments their true explosiveness. An absolute gem of a season and the best that the world of television had to offer this year.

Back tomorrow with the album of the year.

Not Just A Game

2009-12-27T17:11:00.000-08:00

While online, tracking the late NFL games of what turned out to be a financially prosperous Sunday for me*, I came across this video on ESPN.com, a segment from their Outside the Lines program. The video focuses on a class action lawsuit being brought against the NCAA for the way that EA Sports' NCAA video games so clearly portray the specific athletes, yet the athletes themselves gain nothing from their likenesses being used.

*Fantasy football, not betting on the actual games.

Now, it is a slippery slope to try and decipher the issue of whether college athletes should actually be paid to play. On the one hand, athletes are given a free education, yet the demands and time constraints of playing a Division I college sport (or even a DIII college sport) are usually such that only the most driven and organized athletes can actually get the same education that his* peers receive. Take a glance at the abysmal graduation rates of big-time college football programs and you'll see that it's a fallacy that all these players, from the star QB to the back-up offensive tackle, are "paid" with an education. The best players** use their schools to get to the professional ranks and all the players are certainly privileged to certain perks (take, for example, this crazy video of the LSU football facilities), but for the most part, the schools just use their athletes to rake in boatloads of cash (from TV contracts, boosters, and bowl games) and to raise the school's profile.

* Yes, obviously there are female college athletes, but I am, for the moment, only focused on the two big money-makers: men's college basketball and football.
**Which also reminds me of the big "one and dones" in college hoops. What exactly is the relationship between John Wall, Tyreke Evans, and Derrick Rose and their respective schools? There's no education there. The only reason the go to college is because an NBA rule mandates it--what are they really getting out of that?

The NCAA is unyielding when it comes to athletes gaining anything tangible from their stature. Take, for example, star Oklahoma State receiver Dez Bryant who was suspended for getting some help/attention from Deion Sanders, or even Ohio State benchwarmer and internet celebrity Mark Titus who had to jump through endless loopholes to get readers of his blog simple t-shirts, of which, obviously, Mark can't make a dime from.

Clearly, I take issue with a lot of this, but there is a lot gray area here and maybe I'll sort these out further some other time, today I'd just like to "focus" (yes, I realize I've already been blabbing for a while) about the EA Sports snafu. Many viewers in the comments section (and in the video) rail lawsuit poster boy and former NCAA QB, Sam Keller*, for being a money-grabber; I don't think he really is, though he doesn't exactly remind me of Mark Madsen, but I feel his own intentions are beside the point. What we have, is the NCAA and EA Sports blatantly using likenesses of players to enhance the gaming experience and therefore sell more copies of their game with the players seeing absolutely no financial benefit. The give and take of schools and their players is a problem already, but I must say that I am complete agreement with Sam Keller and his attorney over the fact that this is basically stealing from the athletes.

* Keller is actually the perfect fit for this lawsuit in that he isn't a Michael Crabtree/Knoshown Moreno type player who has obvious money coming to them in the NFL, nor is he the anonymous small school lineman who is probably just stoked to be in the game, but Keller is significant enough that he is one of the athletes whose likeness gamers demand. That said, it would be nice if Keller were a little more articulate and worked at, say, a hospital, instead of a bar.

The video games are shameless money grabs, which would be fine if the stars of the games were the ones grabbing some money. This is like making movies and having George Clooney work for free. For the NCAA to justify this partnership with the technicality that the games don't include the players' names--even though the game is built to download rosters online to name the players previously identified by position and number only--is embarrassing. Such a loophole allowing the NCAA to benefit, only further confirms it as one of the most hypocritical organizations around.

Hopefully, Keller (and therefore all NCAA basketball/football players) will be successful and see their fair share. Not that long ago, retired NFL players won a similar case, so it seems quite likely that EA and the NCAA will have to dole out some sort of reparations, if not because of this particular case, then surely soon.

More Reasons to Love Sigur Rós

2009-12-26T20:03:00.000-08:00

Despite my long-time worship of Sigur Rós, I managed to miss the limited theatrical run of their 2007 documentary Heima (which apparently translates to at home). There was, if I recall correctly, even a one-night showing at a theater nearby where I used to live in Baltimore, but, alas, even that convenience couldn't prove enough to actually get me out of whatever else I had had to do that night. But, nevertheless, I finally got around to watching this beautiful, amazing documentary* and have to immediately rank it among the best music films I've ever seen.

*It's on youtube, though I recommend (nay, demand) one watch it with a higher quality to fully appreciate the landscape footage.

Now, keep in mind, I am a huge fan of Sigur Rós. I love their music and they have probably continuously been one of my five favorite bands since I was back in high school. I have no idea how this film would strike someone unfamiliar with their music, though I imagine there would still be a tremendous amount to enjoy about it.

This premise of the film is simple: After a worldwide tour, Sigur Rós returned to their home country of Iceland to play a series of free, unannounced concerts in cities, small towns, and countrysides alike. The film blends both performance footage, band interviews, and Icelandic scenery to simultaneously convey ideas of sharing music, connecting to a place, and preservation. It is not overt or condescending, trying to paint Sigur Rós as magnanimous music heroes or attempting to color progress and technology as unstoppable evils, it is instead an honest, uncomplicated chronicling of a band who wants to share their music with the people* and places that inspire them.

* Seeing the faces of the little, Icelandic children listening to Sigur Rós is one of the best details in the film.

Sigur Rós does, however, come off exceptionally well in this film. They are humble and unpretentious, good-natured and bashful. One of the qualities that I admire in musical artists--and one that is hard to define and relies often on hunches and feelings--is an unadulterated love of music and an innate desire to share that with other people. Sigur Rós is a band that, from all I have been able to discern, could do without the pageantry and attention of being rock stars, content instead to simply have people come listen to them and enable them to continue making music.

"I think on stage, when everything is how it should be, like good sound, and like when everything feels right, you just kind of float. And then it's just like the best feeling ever, to sing for people. And you actually don't know you're singing, you're totally empty-headed, you're just like kind of floating there."
- Jón Þór "Jónsi”" Birgisson, from Heima

Similarly, this film enforces that their approach to writing and composing is of a similar ilk, as while their music is quite different and their presentation of it often intentionally unorthodox, is also comes off as natural and unselfconscious. This quality is displayed by the way their music seems to represent so perfectly the Icelandic landscape and lifestyle. So perfectly, in fact, that there are times when it seems the music must have been written to score the shots on the screen. It reveals a deep connection with the land they grew up in and still call home. It voices not only the majestic beauty of it--the sweeping plains and foggy mountains--but also the desolation and the way it is threatened.*

* Numerous times in the film, the band speaks about how development and tourism has changed their homeland.

This leads me too, to another elusive quality that I seek to ascribe to the bands that I love--that I am listening to the songs that truly must be mined from deep within the beings of the musicians. Again, this is perhaps an abstract idea and difficult to defend, but I don't want to hear songs that are designed, I want to hear songs that are born. I want to hear songs that speak truths about the lives of their performers. I want to hear songs that the performers must work to find somewhere within themselves, something that only they could write.* Some bands make this evident through profound lyrics, speaking against oppressors or to the human condition, yet Sigur Rós still accomplishes this without words as their focus (some of their songs are in Icelandic** and others consist only of syllables). Their songwriting is preternatural, their song-forms taken more from the classical playbook than the pop vernacular. Ultimately though, their songs are utterly beautiful--ranging from ethereal masterpieces to fierce explosions of feeling. No emotion is absent from their lexicon.

* This will again be a theme when I reveal my album of the year.
** I also usually enjoy the English translations of their lyrics as quasi-poems.

Heima is a film that, I feel, speaks to this requirement I have. It allows me to understand Sigur Rós in a way I never was able to before. To see the places they choose to play, to hear them talk about the experience, is enlightening, confirming the feelings that their music already gives: that these are creators worthy of my attention and admiration. In this film, their personalities are so intertwined with the music and the land, it is, in a figurative way, difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

I cannot say what anyone else's reaction will be, especially since I was prepared so fully for this film by both spending years with the Sigur Rós catalog as well as having a romantic, idealization of my own cold, gorgeous landscapes (Maine), but Heima is, at worst, a beautifully filmed movie a wonderful soundtrack. At it's best though, it captures everything that is good about music. It shows what is possible from the desire to create and share, especially when removed from the distractions of posing and self-aggrandizment. It is a simple movie, straight-forward, but its two stars (Sigur Rós and Iceland itself) allow for an epic that is among the greatest unions of music and film.

Lazy "Journalism"

2009-12-22T12:40:00.001-08:00

Today I clicked over to some webisite called BuzzFeed, which had compiled a list of "The 50 Funniest Celebrity Quotes Of The 2000s." It was enjoyable. People say some stupid things. No, Arnold Schwarzenegger, gay marriage can't be between a man and woman, that's just regular marriage. Oh, Sarah Palin, that's like saying you don't read any newspapers. Walls at Wal-Mart? Nice try, Paris Hilton.

As you can see, all fun and games, until I got to this one:

#19 - Coldplay's Chris Martin, on charity work (2006): “Can we get on with this? I've got to do AIDS and Alzheimer's and land mines this afternoon, and I want to get back for Deal or No Deal. Plus, Gwyneth's making drumsticks.”

Yeah. That one was funny. You know why?

Because he said it on Extras! A scripted Ricky Gervais BBC comedy in which every episode features a celebrity playing an overblown, ridiculous caricature of themselves!

Here are clips from Chris' appearance. The quote is lifted from about the 1:39 mark:

Now, I realize it's also my fault for getting worked up about misinformation on the internet as it comes with the territory. But, still, seriously? You thought this was real, BuzzFeed? If he had actually said this it would have exposed him as a complete and utter fraud in regard to his charity work and vegetarianism. Didn't the folks about BuzzFeed think they should have heard about this revelation before?

Pretty embarrassing stuff for BuzzFeed, but also for Chris Martin* as anyone who reads that stupid list will have a completely different idea of him. Well, assuming that reader doesn't suspect foul play and do two seconds of research and, I don't know, google the quote. That was apparently too much to ask BuzzFeed to do, so I don't know why they would expect that from their readers.

* I'm sure he'll cry himself to bed on his pile of money next to Gwyneth Paltrow tonight.

Hopefully, BuzzFeed will take this down soon, I noticed people calling foul in the comments at the bottom so maybe a correction will be posted by the time you follow the link.

Until then, some absolutely brilliant appearances on Extras by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Hysterical stuff.

How's the Water?

2009-12-21T17:20:00.000-08:00

I was recently frustrated at the frustrating Beverly Hills Library searching frustratedly for some books that frustratingly weren't available. After previous trips there, looking in vain for a specific book, I this time had come armed with a list of no fewer than ten books that I hoped to locate and read. One of said books was David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster, which--shock of shocks--they did not have available. After declining to pay the fee to have them hold it for me, I browsed the catalog to see which of his books they did in fact have for check-out. Perhaps unsurprisingly, of the eight books or so that could potentially have been available, exactly one wasn't checked out.

I sought this lonesome book out, only to discover that it was an adaptation of the commencement speech that Wallace gave to Kenyon College in 2005. This immediately rang a bell with me as my friend, Colin, had once told me that he had read the speech online and found it worthwhile, poignant, observant, and so on. Despite that recommendation, it had slipped my mind until now and I jumped at the chance to finally take it in.

I read the graduation speech--it was of reasonable graduation speech length--and was very taken with the original, distinct message Wallace seeks to convey to the Kenyon class of 2005. From the speech:

"I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliché about "teaching you how to think" is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: "Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."

I'm not sure how clear this is as a solitary quote, so if you want to understand it better, the full address is here.

Much of this speech, I feel, is simultaneously about the mindset of a writer--though the two mindsets (intelligent college grad v. writer) are of course not mutually exclusive. Wallace articulates the potential to find worth everywhere in the world, just as every experience and every person can be observed and used as inspiration and written about. This connection fails to encompass all of what he is saying in that writers must inherently make judgments about these observations--is the situation dramatic enough? This character interesting enough? Instead, his proposed view is only that of a human being, one who looks at other human beings from the center of his or her universe. For me to paraphrase the eloquent way he describes this quest would be to do it a disservice. Again, read the whole thing.

This entry was originally going to be just about trying to apply this idea to real life--something I will certainly try to do--but then I remembered that Wallace died by committing suicide. Which makes the following lines from the speech all the more vivid:

"It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. And I submit that this is what the real, no-bull- value of your liberal-arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out."

And...

"None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head."

Now, like most all of these posts, I'm not the first person to talk about the prophetic nature of this speech, but maybe I'm the first person you've heard talk about it. So...

1. How does this change the effectiveness of this speech? How does it change the way that someone--let's say me--should take this advice? It had been my plan to try and reread this often, to refocus myself, but it seems strange to talk advice about being happy from someone who was clinically depressed to the point of suicide...OR, does that mean that he is, in fact, the best person to take advice from? Someone who is naturally happy knows nothing of how to be happy, they only are what they are, without effort. Wallace, a profoundly unhappy person apparently, would seem to know far more about the methods and approaches of finding happiness, even if ultimately he couldn't win that battle.

2. Was Wallace, as he says, "dead before [he] pulled the trigger"? Wallace didn't literally pull a trigger, instead hanging himself, and didn't make it to 50. Did he always know he was destined to kill himself? Were these methods he employed only a way to prolong the inevitable? Perhaps he felt/knew that he was a great thinker and writer with much to offer the world and that he owed it to those outside of himself (the ones he mentions so often in his speech) to generate as much as possible for those people to enjoy and digest. This was the only commencement speech he ever gave, which may be an illuminating detail in that he only needed to get this message out once and that he was not concerned with the money or prestige that being a graduation speaker brings. I wonder if he looked out on the unsuspecting, hopeful faces of the class when he read these lines about death and felt that he was in on a great secret, that he was actually one of the people that failed to live by these very words and that he would be dead long before they even understood the monotony he spoke of.

I was happy to have had Bill Nye* usher me from the collegiate to "real" world, but I can't say the Science Guy offered this kind of rumination on living life.

* On a lighter but related note, props to my friend Raffi for being the only person in a group of over 1000 supposedly smart graduates to have the idea/guts to walk over and shake Bill's hand after receiving his diploma.

More on DFW after I manage to get my hands on a copy of Consider the Lobster or Oblivion.

R&RHOF25AC Bonus

2009-12-20T17:34:00.000-08:00

Some videos from the aforementioned concert (discussed in detail as the focus of this blog's first-ever two part entry) have been uploaded onto youtube. I doubt they are there legally, but I thought I might as well link to them while they're still up.

More legitimate entries coming up in the next few days. Until then, enjoy.

Simon and Garfunkel: (these are all great)
- The Boxer
- The Sound of Silence
- Bridge Over Troubled Water

Jeff Beck
- A Day in the Life -- Like I said earlier: a tasteful, understated, well-done rendition.

U2 and Bruce Springsteen:
- I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

U2, Mick Jagger, Assorted Lame Pop Stars:
- Gimme Shelter

Bruce Springsteen and Sam Moore:
- Hold On/Soul Man -- When Bruce's intro is over and Max and the horns kick in it's really, really good. This one is pretty great all around.

Bruce and Billy:
- Born to Run

You may notice most of these videos are from the same user. You have my permission to watch the ones that I didn't link to. You're welcome.

Comforting Sounds

2009-12-17T14:29:00.000-08:00

On Monday I was lucky enough to catch one of my favorite bands, Danish alt-prog rockers Mew, at the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood. Already quite excited for the show, Mew unleashed a precise, monstrous, elaborate performance, exceeding even my expectations.

The first thing I'll speak to is how impressive of a vocalist lead singer Jonas Bjerre (above) is. His voice is incredibly versatile, both in terms of range and timbre--it is soaring and majestic when it needs to be, then ethereal, then robust. He didn't miss a note all night long and his voice may have cracked one time, but even that was hardly noticeable. Bjerre was also experienced enough to always know the position of his microphone in relation to his face, knowing how close to bring it for the falsetto and how far to bring it away for the louder parts. This may sound elementary, but I've seen enough singers suffer through being too quiet or far too loud to not appreciate his appropriately-leveled vocals. I have heard some fantastic vocalists live--Sharon Jones comes to mind right away--but I don't think I have heard a rock vocalist perform with the talents of Bjerre.

The musicianship of the whole group was similarly excellent. While none of the musicians--with the possible exception of lead guitarist Bo Madsen--are required to play anything that requires virtuosic abilities, they play exceedingly well together, moving deftly through the non-traditional song structures and rhythms. Not only do they frequent unusual time signatures, but even when playing in 4/4, the drummer, uber-Danish named Silas Utke Graae Jørgensen, often plays atypical patterns. There were numerous times when I started counting along with a beat because I was curious to figure out the time signature, only to discover the song was in standard meter. They are, in general, much more rhythmically interesting live than on their recordings, as seeing the drummer draws a lot more attention to it.

The big surprise of the night was the videos, imagery, and lights that were playing behind the band. The production quality of the show was closer to a stadium event than the mid-sized theater it was actually in. The show began with a multi-colored light display, pulsing and exploding in sync with the music, but turned into a video of five people, in robes, dancing in a line with deer skeleton heads instead of their regular human heads. That imagery would prove to be indicative for the rest of the show, as future animations included dirty orphan children with puppet mouths singing along to the music, human-cat creatures playing violins, ravenous dogs lunging at the screen, and stampeding giraffes. There were also shots of soaring through space, other dimensions, and flying over snowy nordic landscapes. I learned later that Bjerre creates and animates these videos himself.

This video gives a decent idea of what some of the scenes were like--particularly once it gets past the minute mark:

The only show-accompaniment that proved too much was at the very end, when a teddy bear with blinding white light shooting out from behind him came to tell the audience--in a booming, impossibly low voice--that we would always be friends. Pretty bizarre, especially since the band stopped playing music to let him talk. But aside from that, their occasionally clunky lyrics (they do sing in English), and some pushy high school kids* near me, not much to complain about.

* I remember being young and frustrated that not all shows were all ages. For example, my friends and I once got turned away from a Maceo Parker show that we assumed was lax in its 21+ rules. Now that I'm over 21 though, I'm always annoyed when I see a group of awkward, emo-looking high schoolers that like the same music I do. It's probably mean (okay, not "probably") but I could've done without these fellow concert-goers on this night.

All in all, a glorious night of music. I had often heard Mew referred to as "the world's only indie stadium band." It was a tag that I could imagine by listening to their records, but was fully realized when seeing them live. They closed with one of my favorite songs, "Louise Louisa" which was surprise to me, as I was under the impression that all their shows ended with "Comforting Sounds," which my friend David (who introduced me to Mew) has aptly called their "Hey Jude." For those who haven't heard Mew but are interested, I would recommend Frengers as the album to listen to, though David would probably suggest And the Glass Handed Kites. They released a new album recently, literally titled No More Stories are Told Today I'm Sorry they Washed Away No More Stories the World is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away, but I've only listened to it a handful of times and don't know it well enough to rank it against the previous two--it is good though.

"What a day I have had
What a day I have had
Now it's over, isn't it?"
- Mew

(The Eagerly Anticipated) R&RHOF25AC, Part 2

2009-12-15T18:10:00.001-08:00

Like any good concert, the big guns come out last. That doesn't mean my favorite guns went last--but come out they did.

Let's go to the tape.

- Jeff Beck may have actually gone before Metallica, but I can't remember and, for the purposes of this blog, it doesn't really matter. Anyway, Jeff Beck provided two of my favorite moments of the whole night: an absolutely rocking rendition of Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" with Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top (who I once saw walk by while I was eating Mexican food in Portland) and his awesome beard on guitar; and a tasteful, instrumental version of The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" (one of the greatest songs ever written).

- Gibbons annihilated "Foxy Lady." He and Beck (I don't like writing that because I think of the Guero Beck first) predictably traded solos and they both just killed it. It was also an interesting juxtaposition of the masculine, grungy Gibbons with the skinny, black-sleeveless-teed Beck, especially with Beck's absence of sleeves showing that he shaves in places he probably didn't shave back in the 70s. I know you're Jeff Beck, but come on, dude. You're a rock and roller! Fight the power! Weak sauce.

- A quick thought on Hendrix while he's on the brain: my good friend Will and I once had a discussion--and we're surely the millionth people to have this, there's probably a book on it for all I know--about how Hendrix's death basically killed black rock and roll instead of, potentially, if he hadn't died, launching the genre into the mainstream. Now, clearly, there have been plenty of amazing black guitarists since Hendrix died (I've heard many people argue, for example that Prince deserves to be in the conversation of best ever, this famous video is usually reason #1 why) but they're typically in groups that can't be classified as rock and roll. This isn't taking away anything from Slash, Prince, Lenny Kravitz, Kyp Malone or anyone, but black rock and roll, like Jimi Hendrix played it, basically died with him. Now obviously I've opened a can of worms here, you could certainly argue rock and roll doesn't have a color and it's stupid to assign color-based labels to genres, but as someone who has played music at a pretty high level with black and white groups, there are differences in approach and sound and had the black rock and roll genre been carried to a new generation by Hendrix we could be in a slightly different place musically.

- The "Day in the Life" cover was superb. It started quiet and understated, with Beck climbing an octave depending on the verse. In the bridge, there was some great interweaving between the bass and the guitar and the transition back into the A-section (like in the original) was wonderful. Unfortunately, like music tends to do, there isn't much I can say about it other than, "check it out yourself." Graham Nash, thankfully, did not run out on stage and yell, "That was for the Beatles! John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison!" afterward. And, if you don't know what I mean, go read part one again.

- As for Jeff Beck, how about the historical significance of the Yardbirds? This was a band with (though not all at once) Beck, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page. Good god. I feel like the Yardbirds aren't that famous or well-known anymore, I'll admit I'd never heard much of them other than "For Your Love" until I got to college, but, geez, what a lineup.

- Next up, the favorite band of people 10 years older than me, U2. U2 is a divisive band these days, most people can't get past Bono's outspoken (or ostentatious) personality and they have basically become the corporate, mainstream music that they opposed when they started out. Nevertheless, they know how to work a stage.

- In the HBO version of this show, it seems odd that Springsteen comes out and then does his set later, but, in reality, they each closed the two nights. Oops, spoiler alert, I guess. I'm sure you were on the edge of your set to find out who the finale was. Which reminds me, where was Sir Paul for all this? He was inducted as a solo artist in 1999 so he was certainly eligible. I mean, Springsteen is all right and all, but McCartney is in a class by himself. Anyway, Bruce comes on with U2 and they all bust out “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For." Even for someone who doesn't swear by either of these artists, this was a pretty amazing moment. Just to see Bono and Springsteen share a stage, two people who are that famous, looking like they're having the time of their lives singing with each other...I think that was what this show was all about. It seemed genuinely enjoyable for the rock and roll royalty to come together for these concerts.

- Then, once Springsteen left, they raised the bar with Mick Jagger. Jagger is pretty goddamn old, but he's still got the moves and energy that I saw from back in the Gimme Shelter days. His entrance was pretty exciting as well, as The Edge started with his rendition of the opening of "Gimme Shelter" to create on of those, "is he here? is he about to come out?" type moments. Of course, they also had Fergie and will.i.am on stage...so, you win some you lose some. Fergie proceeded to be better than I thought she would be, though I was expecting her to completely ruin the song. She sang the female vocal part (obviously) and had most of the necessary power, though repeated words over and over and threw in about three dozen too many "baby"s for my taste. Will.i.am* did nothing, which may have been because he was a hologram designed by CNN. "Gimme Shelter" is probably my favorite Stones song, but it never quite comes works live the way it does on that original recording. Oh well. The song ended with the stars embracing and Bono inexplicably hugging Fergie by putting his head on the side of her stomach. Weird stuff, folks. Weird stuff.

* I really don't approve of will.i.am being the modern version of Dylan in those stupid Pepsi commercials where he does his remix of "Forever Young" and the implication is that he is the voice of this generation. Hey, will.i.am, you know who your 60s counterpart is? Davy Jones. Leave me alone.

- Mick and Bono then did their part for Prop 8, singing “Stuck in a Moment” literally to each other. Want to see Bono tell Mick Jagger, "I am still enchanted by the light you brought to me. I listen through your ears, and through your eyes I can see"? Well, here's your chance. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

- Mick Jagger left and U2 launched into "Beautiful Day." Again, I'll admit it, it was pretty great. Say what you want about U2, but that's a good song and Bono can really sing it. Bono also didn't disappoint his detractors as--somewhere in this set, I don't remember where--he rattled off some convoluted, pretentious nonsense about music and coming together. Even Springsteen (I think it was Springsteen) seemed baffled by this one. Classic.

- Which leads us to our last act...drumroll...it's Bruce Springsteen! Is that the drummer from Conan? It is! Is that Danny DeVito? Oh...Stevie Van who? I suppose the Boss was a fitting end, though I started flipping to the game even more once he came out, but not before I got to see Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave) come on for his two big hits: "Hold On, I'm Coming" and "Soul Man." Sam seemed stoked to be there, he can still sing, and the backing band really nailed it. Again, Bruce looked like he was having a ball, which was pretty fun to watch and provided us with a little comedy hearing him sing those soul numbers.

- John Fogerty joined Springsteen for an All-American mini-set, hitting Creedence standards like "Fortunate Son" and "Proud Mary." It sure made me want to buy some jeans. Fogerty sounded good and Springsteen fit in with the songs much better than he just had with Sam Moore.

- And for the final special guest...Billy Joel. People often get mad at me for saying I'm not a Billy Joel fan but, well, I'm not a Billy Joel fan. The man knows his way around a piano, but his songs are just too silly for me. Maybe "silly" is harsh, but it's usually too schmaltzy or melodramatic for my tastes. Sorry, Bill, you don't need my approval anyway. So, unfortunately, the ending to this HBO show was anticlimactic, but it was still entertaining to see titans like Springsteen and Joel on the stage, especially since they were pulling a Brett Favre and, "just having fun out there!" I would have rather seen Paul McCartney joined by Jimmy Page, but maybe in another five or ten years. They closed with "Born to Run," which even I thought was cool, and then Jackson Browne and a few others came out for a massive cover of "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher." It was no "I Shall Be Released" but it wasn't bad.

All in all, a great to show to be able to flip to. It made me think a lot about what makes musicians famous, how they stay that way, and how they age, but more on that some other time.

Until then, in the words of Neil Young (who also would've been awesome to see), "Hey, hey, my, my. Rock and roll will never die."

R&RHOF25AC, Part 1

2009-12-13T20:57:00.000-08:00

Unintentional Comedy + Rock Legends = The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Concert

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame recently payed tribute to itself and the music it honors at Madison Square Garden with a veritable "who's who" of pop music legends. HBO broadcast much of the proceedings (the actual concert spanned two nights), in both a four-hour version and a condensed two-hour cut. I'm not going to claim to have watched every second, but I did see most of it when it debuted (opposite the Steeler/Ravens game) and it's been replayed often and I've tuned in occasionally to those as well.

The show proved highly, highly entertaining as it was simultaneously hilarious and awesome. It was funny to see many of these creaky legends, devoid of any sense of cool. At the same time, watching these combinations of rock gods and demigods bust through their classic numbers provided more than a few goosebumps-type moments. I would recommend getting to see some of this show for both reasons.

Here are my thoughts on the concert in chronological order:

- Tom Hanks kicked it off with a rousing monologue about the romanticism and importance of rock and roll. He was a great choice (he was also the producer I believe) to deliver the opening remarks--an American everyman* praising the music of the American everyman.

* Well, among billionaire Hollywood celebrities. He at least plays a lot of everymen.

- Jerry Lee Lewis comes out and absolutely kills all the momentum from Hanks' speech. Yikes. I've got nothing against JLL. He's tremendously important, an icon...but...wow. He can't even keep time anymore. It was awkward how old and uninspiring he was. He luckily didn't play too long. Let's just move on.

- Crosby, Stills, and Nash took the stage next and were periodically joined by such contemporaries as Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, and Jackson Browne. Raitt's "Love Has No Pride" was the highlight of the set.

- David Crosby was one of the few performers who looks like he's transitioned well with his age. He's enormous and is mostly bald with a long white ponytail, but still manages to look cool because he looks like an old hippie should look in 2009. He sounded great too, which didn't hurt. Graham Nash sounded great too, but is so ridiculously over-the-top with his facial expressions and arm movements that he looks like he's trying to spoof an enthusiastic singer. Good grief.

- Speaking of singers who have no idea how to look when they're singing, Paul Simon was up next. Paul Simon is one of my all-time favorites and has written some of the best songs ever, but if there isn't a guitar occupying his hands...holy crap. Is there a more awkward performer than Paul Simon? His moves (pointing, half-dancing) during "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" were so distracting and goofy. He sounded fine, but he is utterly clueless as a performer. I suspected as much after watching the Graceland concert DVD a couple years ago, but he's only gotten worse with age.

- Thankfully, once Paul got a guitar in his hands it was smooth sailing. Which I could've predicted knowing that he is responsible for one of the all-time best live music performances on TV: A stunning rendition of "The Boxer" on SNL after 9/11 with Giuliani and NYC firefighters and police on stage. What a moment. I wish I could link to it but apparently it's been taken off Youtube. This is about the 5th time (on this blog) I've wanted to link to a video I know I've seen online but doesn't exist there anymore. Anyway, now that Simon had his hands busy with a guitar, I was able to become genuinely hooked into the set.

- Crosby and Nash came back on stage and joined Simon for a pretty, acoustic rendition of "Here Comes the Sun", which Graham Nash clumsily closed with a, "That was for George!" Pretty silly and already pretty obvious. Maybe we can get him to come out after every Michael Jackson cover and remind the audience, "That was for Michael!"

- Art Garfunkel (who still sounds amazing) joined Paul Simon on the stage and they played beautiful renditions of "The Boxer" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water," among a few others. As someone who listened to a lot of Paul Simon (both with and sans Garfunkel) when I was younger, it made me feel good to see that they've still got some magic left. The audience really loved them too, as I think they may have been the only act to earn an encore--but I could be wrong, again I didn't see 100% of this.

- Next up: Stevie Wonder! Good times. While Wonder obviously has his infamous later work from the 80s and 90s to sully his resume, I will argue that his peak was superior to all but a select handful of artists. I would rank Wonder's peak even above Michael Jackson's (this might deserve its own entry later). Anyway, on this night, Wonder was in high spirits and sounded fantastic, hitting old favorites like "Uptight," "For Once in My Life," and "Signed, Sealed, Delivered," to start off.

- Smokey Robinson--who looks downright crazy these days, both in a dazed, drugged out kind of way and in a plastic surgery kind of way--came on for what I think is one of the best songs ever written: "Tracks of My Tears." From the opening guitar part, the beautiful harmonies, the great horn line under the vocals on the chorus, and even the simple but powerful lyrics, I think this song is tremendously underrated. Unfortunately, this performance of it didn't help its reputation as they played it too slow and way, way, way too schmaltzy. While searching to see if youtube had a good version I instead stumbling upon Adam Lambert's rendition of this song ... sigh. This song has seen better days.

- Stevie's set closed out strong though, first with Sting coming on for a "Higher Ground"/"Roxanne" medley and then with Jeff Beck coming on for "Superstition," home of the funkiest horn line ever. Sting held his own with Wonder, playing some bass and rocking a pretty excellent bushy beard. The last number in particular was a goosebumps moment as that song is just too good for it not to be. It's easy to take songs like that for granted but thinking that once upon a time he actually wrote that, made that horn line out of nothing, that's tough to top.

- Aretha Franklin was next (though in reality was on the second night while Wonder was on the first) and belted out her numbers with her predictable bravado. I didn't catch all of her set (I missed "Respect" for example) but I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Queen of Soul. She was briefly joined by Annie Lennox, who sounded fine but I will mostly remember for her "HIV POSITIVE" t-shirt--which I thought clashed inappropriately with the suits/dresses that everyone else on stage was wearing.

- Metallica and their "look-how-badass-we-are" music followed and I skipped most of this set as I do not find them "badass" at all and instead lean towards "goofy." I did catch a bit of "Enter Sandman" and was disappointed they couldn't get Mariano Rivera to run out on stage for that one (it was in NYC after all). I, unfortunately, missed the great Lou Reed joining them but did catch an embarrassingly past-his-prime Ray Davies (of Kinks fame) stumble through "All Day and All of the Night." It's a shame to see a singer not be able to pull off a song that he wrote and made famous. Davies also didn't look too happy to have been paired with Metallica, though I may have just misread him and he was instead upset about his own performance. Either way, probably not Davies' favorite night. I had to go listen to "Waterloo Sunset" just so I didn't feel bad for him.

I'll be back for Part 2--U2, The Boss, Jeff Beck, Mick Jagger--in a couple of days. Until then...

Leopold Canal

2009-12-11T10:39:00.001-08:00

Not much time for a real entry today, so I'll just share with you my current musical obsession.

Canadian neo-folk band The Deep Dark Woods recently did a live studio session for the Hearya.com website.

"The Banks of the Leopold Canal" is the highlight of that session and one of the best songs I've heard in a long time. It's just over eight minutes long but earns every second. It's beautiful, haunting, and rich. But, in the words of my childhood buddy LeVar Burton, don't take my word for it.