Note: Max here. Not sure how I let this get so long. Please read it anyway. It’ll crack you up. I think it’ll be more enjoyable if you are listening while you read it, so try to make that happen.

I never got around to making a top albums of 2008 list. I think it has quite a large sum to do with personal laziness, but I’m going to take the time to write a couple short reviews for some albums from last year that I think deserve mentioning.

Let’s start with Razia’s Shadow: A Musical, by Forgive Durden, which is easily the dorkiest record I heard last year, and unabashedly so. It’s an album inspired by immense theatre geekery, but also a good heap of fantasy. Razia’s Shadow is a concept album to the extreme. It’s essentially the soundtrack to a musical too elaborate and dorky for anyone to ever put on, and it’s awesome. It’s by a band called Forgive Durden, whose previous work I’m completely unfamiliar with. I heard of the project because of the many guest vocalists on the album, a myriad of emo/pop-punk stars, all of whom play a certain character in the story. Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou (whose upcoming album is eagerly anticipated by this critic) narrates with a brilliant, croaky charisma.

The plot is difficult to decipher without a little effort– Thomas Dutton, who wrote the thing and plays the main character in both halves of the story, spared us the exposition– but wikipedians came to my rescue, and a quick read of that page made the listening experience much better, once I figured out what was going on. Most of this review is plot summary, because I think it’s kind of needed in order to parse this album and appreciate its awesomeness or its silliness.

Like I mentioned, there are two halves of the story. In the first, a God-like character named O The Scientist (Casey Crescenzo of The Dear Hunter), creates the world. An angel named Ahrima (Thomas Dutton) feels like he’s not given enough credit for his skillz (which are never really made clear) and gets pissed off. Then, a spider called Barayas (Max Bemis of Say Anything, altogether cool raspy-voiced guy who pulled a similar emo-guest-party on his album In Defense of the Genre) lands on his shoulder, and I guess he’s some kind of would-be terrorist, because he convinces Ahrima to “bring those lamps back to me, don’t leave them in one piece” to gain everyone’s respect. The thing is, destroying “those lamps” for some reason pretty much destroys the world. It doesn’t make sense to me either, but it works, and this is one of the best songs on the album.

Despite the world being burned down, everyone’s okay. They just move somewhere else. I don’t know, whatever. But Ahrima must be punished, so Toba The Tura (Chris Conley of Saves The Day) arrives to fuck him up. Conley rocks the song, starting out as a sort of understanding, sweet-voiced guy, and building to a frenzied condemnation. Everyone moves to a new, “light” world, separated from his “dark” one by a mountainous wall of stone.

And then the plot skips ahead a century. Now the world is split in two, and this is symptomatic of the lack of love in the world or something. It’s silly. It’s fun. Let’s go with it.

The two songs that mark the jump are The Oracle, in which it’s prophecized that someday there will be two people whose “true love will be strong enough to erase the wrong we’ve done, the dark and light will become one” and “A Hundred-Year, Minute-Long Intermission” whose title I kind of adore. Both feature Danny Stevens of The Audition, who I’ve never heard but have me sold on the strength of their singer.

When the plot picks up, both the light and dark sides of the world have developed their own societies of people. The new main character is Adakias, again played by Thomas Dutton, who grew up on the dark side, which is later described as “forever shaded, where the jaded are never wrong.” He wants to be the one to fulfill the prophecy and restore the world via his ability to love. Other people who live on the dark side laugh at him, because obviously they’re dicks, they live on the dark side. When his brother Pallis (Brendon Urie of Panic At The Disco, who I submit to be underrated) learns of his plan to leave and search for love, he sings, “You are so foolish. The Dark has been your home. If you elope, I’ll hunt you down, through suffering you’ll atone.” Fucking yikes.

So he leaves for the Light side to search for love, and in the next song he finds it in Princess Anhura (Greta Salpeter of The Hush Sound). This song, “It’s True Love” is so silly and schmaltzy. She sings, presumably not long after meeting him, “I never would guess your touch could fill me with such thoughts to marry you, have your babies, too.” I love it. The duet builds to a powerful and, somehow, believable height. Salpeter here deserves loads of commendation for being committed to singing these lines with the conviction she does, especially when she needs to sing the name “Adakias” with affection.

The couple meet with Anhura’s father, the king (Nic Newsham of Gatsby’s American Dream, who I saw open for Bear Vs. Shark years ago), who is suspicious of Adakias and seems to suspect that he’s from the dark side (oh yeah, he’s hiding that fact). The king opens with one of my favorite lines, the absurd, “So you’re the boy I’ve heard so much about from my daughter’s open mouth.” He doesn’t approve. Adakias probably doesn’t help things when he sings, “I just want your daughter’s heart, you fool.” Dutton and Salpeter’s voices are really wonderful together here again, when his simple plea of “I love your daughter and she, well, she loves me back” builds to “All we have is love, my King, so let’s sing ‘la-da-da-da!’ You probably have to hear it to believe it, but it’s a magical moment.

Without his approval, they decide to elope in secret. However, Anhura begins to fall sick. Adakias knows this is because he’s from the dark side. Uh oh. His love is gonna get her dead! We learn this from the narrator, and the next song is poorly sequenced, as it takes a detour from the revelation we just learned, but it’s a visit to the Bawaba Brothers (John Gourley of Portugal. The Man, lending his new found Alaskan soul vocals and Kris Anaya of An Angle, AKA the most transparent rip off I’ve ever heard; he sounds just like Conor Oberst). I’m not really sure who the Bawaba Brothers are, but they tell Adakias that he’s a descendent of the guy that separated the world, and that story is more than mythical lore, which gives him confidence that he’s destined to fulfill the prophecy and restore the world. This song is one of my favorite musically, it’s just gorgeous, but probably should have happened a couple tracks sooner.

Back to our dying princess. They go see the doctor (Shawn Harris, The Matches, who are a kickass band), who is probably my favorite character here. Harris is just absurd here, he has so much fun. His Dr. Dumaya is absolutely insane. He starts out laughing maniacally and then starts coughing… maniacally, obviously. He informs them “Now what you got ain’t no quick fix, it ain’t no common cold. What you need’s a bona fide doctor’s miracle.”

What follows is so ridiculously dumb and ridiculous that I don’t know what to do besides laugh and love it. He tells her he’ll heal her on the condition that she stay with him forever. “I promise to take care of her, well rather, she’ll take care of me for the rest of her life in the Dark, fulfilling Doctor’s fantasies.” I can imagine that, but not what follows. Anhura resists, but Adakias makes her! He says “it’s the only way.” So she consents. Jesus.

So the doctor heals her…. and just then, Pallis bursts in! In the likely case that you forgot who that is, it’s Adakias’s brother who promised to hunt him down if he eloped.

This is the final song, and it is fairly epic. There is some kind of hilarious but well-written wordplay in this encounter. I just gotta quote it.

Adakias: Casanovas have charmed with chiffons, so chichi. Chased her with conceited coteries.
Anhura: Maharajahs have magniloquently mouthed their love for me through their menageries.
Adakias: She’s been propositioned, propounded by every pompous prince. Given panniers of peerless pears and plums, polished.
Anhura: I’ve been seduced with shimmering, sparkling stones. Squired by suitors to sizable chateaus.
Adakias: And I’m the one she chose.

These tongue twisters are belted out confidently to a jazzy bounce. Pallis, however, sees fit to reveal that Adakias has been lying about being from the Dark, and he’s the reason she’s dying. Of course it comes out like this. It’s kind of a tired plot contrivance, but we’ll let it go for now, because right after Pallis reveals this, he sings, “But I suppose it’s in vain, since her life is ending, when I thrust this blade into her heart-a-thumping.” Ahh!! And then comes the most gloriously, theatrically emo moment on the album, as Adakias sing-screams, “Brother no!!!” and, as we soon realize, dives in front of the blade.

This sacrifice demonstrates his true love, and the two parts of the world reunite in a showstopping, cheesy fucking display as we’re reminded that love and sacrifice conquer all. The narrator takes us out, and the curtains drop.

It’s hard to say what we just experienced. What’s great is that the melodramatic theatrics of the emo genre match perfectly with, well, melodramatic theatre. It’s a surprisingly perfect fit.

-Max Jacobson

Benjamin Button, played subtly and stoically (too much so for any real shot at Mickey Rourke or Sean Penn’s Oscar) by Brad Pitt, ages backward, and grows up in an old folks home where he is left by his horrified father immediately after birth.  Though his body ages backwards, his mind is where his real age lies (a radical departure from the source material which at least one person I know thinks is awful).  His unique situation leads inexorably to an interesting life – people tend to be drawn to him at all stages of his life except for the radical edges, when they are repulsed.  When his body’s old but his mind is that of a preteen, people like my favorite character, Captain Mike, are charmed by his youthful enthusiasm despite his (apparent) advanced age.  Captain Mike helms a tugboat with a ragtag (of course) bunch of sailors that eventually sails to Russia, taking the mentally-teenaged Benjamin with them.

Okay, I just caught myself at really stupid plot summary.  Instead of continuing that, I’m going to give a list of people who affect Benjamin’s life in a meaningful way.

• Queenie – Benjamin’s mother for all intensive purposes.  She raises him, gives him guidance rooted in a deep, deep faith and a seemingly endless well of kindness.  Although this kind of down-home, southern black TLC female character has gotten plenty clichéd by now, that doesn’t mean the role is just in the bank no matter what actress you pick.  Taraji P. Henson owns this role.
• Ngunda Oti – Probably the most minor of these roles, but one of my favorites.  He’s the African pygmy who (based on a true story) lived in a zoo after being taken from his home in Africa.  He lived for a time in the old folks’ home with Benjamin, and taught him about self-confidence.  Rampai Mohadi was incredible here, he stole his scenes as a person who has that special light around him, the kind that makes any audience want to know him, and want him to have what he desires – to be home.
• Thomas Button – Benjamin’s father who abandons him at birth, he’s the head of Button’s Buttons, a successful button company, and after running into (mentally) young Benjamin, decides to keep tabs on him and invite him out for the occasional drink.  The sheer emotional anguish of these encounters from Thomas’s side is fascinating, since he’s not really a monster – he just made a bad decision.  That doesn’t mean he’s a good person either (we never really can tell), but he has plenty of humanity.  Thomas does care about Benjamin, leaving his button factory to him at death, and (SPOILER) though Benjamin resents him after the reveal for abandonment and subsequent deceit, he can see what we see. (END SPOILER)
• Captain Mike – Don’t we all wish we knew a Captain Mike? He’s radically free-spirited and independent, but with a killer sense of nobility.  When called upon at the outset of World War II, he knows what he (and members of his crew) must do. (SPOILER) Mike’s death slams home like a hammer, the hardest death of the movie, mostly because he was the only one that died before his time.  Up until this point, Benjamin’s only knowledge of death was the old folks who came through the home at which he grew up.  There, death was natural and expected.  But here, Benjamin learns that death can be surprising, and can be tragic.  Mike’s last words were my first almost-cry of the movie.  The hummingbird bit, though, seemed a bit much.(END SPOILER)
• Elizabeth Abbott – I’m split about this one.  She’s the wife of a British spy in Russia, played with sort of a cold warmth that only British ladies like Tilda Swinton can master.  There are some lines in her sequence that are the most realist of the whole movie – natural, as opposed to literary, like the rest of the movie.  But there are some lines that are also stilted, shoehorned in to give context.  Really watchable, but not as profound as the rest.
• Daisy – Where to begin.  As a child, she was okay – the well-known curious girl that a boy her age can’t help but like.  But once Cate Blanchette takes over, she is devastating.  Maybe my favorite narrative function of this movie was due to the framing of the piece as being told to Daisy from Benjamin’s journal on her deathbed while Hurricane Katrina was closing in on New Orleans by her daughter.  What this allows for is the completely realized perspective of both main characters.  Although some have criticized this part as director David Fincher and writer Eric Roth talking down to the audience, I really appreciate knowing character’s motivations instead of being forced to assume, sometimes without enough information and sometimes incorrectly.  Daisy’s narrative presence as the grounding force (that is, the perspective of someone aging forwards) is a crucial part of this story, and makes it feel as whole as it does.  And the fact that she gets so damaged, so affected by Benjamin’s condition might be my favorite part of the movie.

As you can tell, not a perfect movie, but an extremely good one, completely filled with huge, huge emotions.  Of course, there’s a lot more to this movie, like the painful, wrenching limits of time – but I can’t really say it in any more profound a way than AintitCool’s Moriarty did in his swan song review for the site.  This is really the best I can do.

And there’s also this old guy who talks about getting struck by lightning a bunch of times that provides some classic comic relief stuff.  This movie, until the real heart of the Daisy love sequence, isn’t tragic – it has some wry moments.  But these little lightning scenes took the audience by such surprise that a little soundless clip got huge, HUGE laughs.  And the last bit, even in the midst of some of the heaviest moments, made the audience laugh just as hard, but through their tears.

It seems we finally have our theme for comparing 2007 and 2008 as years in movies.  Although no one would begin to argue that 2008 rivals ’07 as far as the quality of their movies (I hope), what ’08 does provide that ’07 didn’t (except for in a couple of instances) were movies about big emotions, big feelings, as opposed to big concepts, big thoughts like in There Will Be Blood.  And as far as the magnum opus of each year, that movie really fits into my comparison when against, say, The Fall, which I’ll deal with in my year-end list, and against this movie.  I look forward to seeing this again when I don’t have to crane my neck.

Okay, I realize I did this character list twice in a row.  But they were far apart, the reviews both took a long, long time to finish each, so cut me a break.  Reviews of Milk and Let The Right One In will be my last before the year-end list.  After that, this blog will hit a crossroads that might need a full post in itself to discuss.

However, there are a couple movies that I acquired that I hadn’t seen, and figured HD was the way to do it.  The first of these that I’ve seen is Sunshine, the last movie from director Danny Boyle before he made critical darling Slumdog Millionaire, which I’m still waiting to see.  Let me tell you – I do not ever want to see this movie in any lower quality now.  The visuals here are completely breathtaking.  Is this what HD movies really are all like? Because the other ones I have look incredible, but they don’t quite look like this one.  Maybe it’s the sci-fi aspect of it, whatever.  I’m getting a little preoccupied here.

And the fact that the visuals are incredible really informed my opinion of this movie more than visuals usually do, and they kind of keyed a mindset change for me.  I’m going to try to do that every time – not say “well, this movie has great visuals, but it sucks because the story’s stupid.” I think that’s a bad way to look at movies -  a movie can be bad despite great visuals, but the visuals still have to come into play – good visuals make a movie better, simply.

And I don’t think this movie is terribly smart, but I have a positive feeling about this movie because of the sheer wonder of the visuals.  The score gets a little too imposing at times, but for the most part it just serves the visuals perfectly, like at the beginning, when you’re getting the feel of the spaceship.  The string swells are so warm, I felt welcomed to this place – Danny Boyle’s trademark, everyone says, is highlighting the pure humanity of his characters.  Here you get that a lot.

But though the characters were incredibly fully realized, I thought they fell a little too much into tropes.  For this bullet point section, there are abundant SPOILERS.

• Cillian Murphy as Capa: The main character, thoughtful, a little introspective, is blamed for a lot of things, a bit of a martyr complex, a bit reflective of all the neuroses of the rest of the crew.
• Cliff Curtis as Searle: The guy who has an obsession with something weird that creeps out the rest of the crew, that is reflected in his demise.
• Michelle Yeoh as Corazon: The female crew member who is all about good-naturedness (and nature); her name’s fucking Spanish for heart, for chrissakes.
• Hiroyuki Sanada as Kaneda: The captain who is chill and under control, self-sacrificial.  He dies pretty soon, of course.
• Rose Byrne as Cassie: She’s a little out of place, because her character is a straight-up horror movie chick character – and I mean chick.  All she does is get scared and do things as a result of being scared.  Actresses who bore the crap out of me in interviews when they say “I only want to play strong roles” say things like that because they’re complaining about these characters.  Come on.
• Benedict Wong as Trey: The guy who fucks up, and can’t get over it.  Easy.
• Chris Evans as Mace: The badass/asshole who gets everything done.  Generally, you’re not supposed to like characters like him 100%, but I do.  He’s totally badass, and the mission would have gone nowhere without him.  The crew seems to like him begrudgingly, but they also seem to recognize that he’s always right – about EVERYTHING.
• Troy Garity as Harvey: The smug prick with a little power who is always looking out for #1.
• Mark Strong as Pinbacker: You’ll find out.

And since I don’t want every meaningful bit of analysis to be spoiler-laden, let me just say that I had problems with the ending.  Everything stops making sense, which Sam Walker tells me (and Danny Boyle would agree, I’m sure) is by design, but that didn’t get through to me while I was watching it.  There were just too many what-the-fuck moments that took me out of the film at the end – things that are in bad horror movies that badass mofo’s like myself who are NEVER SCURRED laugh at because they’re totally stupid.

But like I said earlier, I have to give this a positive review – the negative things I pointed out were really my only problems with it, and this movie was exquisitely watchable (in the most positive connotation of the word), and had a sort of surreal/real interplay – the story was obviously not grounded in reality, but the psychology of the characters seemed very realistic and relatable – something that I canNOT enjoy a movie without.  And that makes me very excited for Slumdog Millionaire, which I plan on seeing very soon.

I should have seen this before, Apatow, yah yah, well, it’s very funny, but not elite like Superbad or Knocked Up or Anchorman…Jason Segel, you could have made this movie without showing us your penis…Kristen Bell is good in this and there’s plenty almost-boobage, but she doesn’t do the comedy as well as she does the emotional scenes – shame…Russell Brand is un-fucking-believable as the rocker.  A brand of humor we haven’t seen before in Apatow movies – mayb it’s the British thing.  Best line in the movie is his introduction, “Excuse me, missus, I’ve lost a shoe… like this one. It’s like this one’s fellow… it’s sort of the exact opposite in fact of that – not an evil version but just, you know, a shoe like this”…Jonah Hill has finally become annoying…Mila Kunis is smoking hot when she’s not acting like a shallow high school bitch in That 70′s Show…I couldn’t help thinking every time the black bartender was on screen that Craig Robinson could have done it better.  Still, he had some awesome one-liners…I really hope that the Dracula song gets the Oscar for best song – it’s in the final 50, at least…I don’t know, Paul Rudd, you had a lot of classic potential in this character, but you played up the stoner aspect too much…I was constantly expecting a hilarious joke from Bill Hader while he was on screen, but he was painfully straight…best moment of the movie is easily Jason Segel’s reaction when the photos are deleted.

Good breakup movie – the emotion is genuine, as we’ve come to expect.  But you can feel with this movie that the Apatow gold had finally worn off – this was still better than most comedies this year, but something was missing.  And then Drillbit Taylor came out.

1. You & Me – The Walkmen
2. Dear Science – TV On The Radio
3. Red, Yellow & Blue – Born Ruffians
4. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
5. For Emma, Forever Ago – Bon Iver
6. Visiter – The Dodos
7. Devotion – Beach House
8. Feed The Animals – Girl Talk
9. Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
10. Third – Portishead
11. Nouns – No Age
12. In Ghost Colours – Cut Copy
13. Heart On – Eagles Of Death Metal
14. Los Angeles – Flying Lotus
15. At Mount Zoomer – Wolf Parade
16. London Zoo – The Bug
17. Flight Of The Conchords – Flight Of The Conchords
18. Conor Oberst – Conor Oberst
19. Antidotes – Foals
20. Microcastle – Deerhunter

1. You & Me – Not a lot of drama to this one.  This gets the top spot for a number of reasons: 1) All of its songs put together are better than all of the songs of any other album this year put together. 2) Its whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which are already pretty great. 3) The reason why #2 is true is because the album is put together so damn well – the Walkmen absolutely nail the album’s tone, which means that they’re smart enough to recognize how to pace the album and put one song in front of the other brilliantly. (3 highlights: Four Provinces, Red Moon, The Blue Route)
2. Dear Science – An overstimulus of complete joy, righteous anger, social frustration, and sexual prowess rolled into one.  David Sitek’s production blows my socks off.  The utilization of the horn section is masterful, the absolute talent of the two frontmen (there are two now, did you know that?) vocally, and IT’S A GODDAMN TV ON THE RADIO ALBUM.  HOW COULD IT NOT BE IN MY TOP TWO.  THE FACT THAT IT’S NOT NUMBER ONE IS BEYOND EVEN MYSELF. (3 highlights: Lover’s Day, Golden Age, Crying)
3. Red, Yellow & Blue – Born Ruffians live by the KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) code of music.  They don’t overproduce ANYTHING – in fact, the main negative point against it on the interwebs is that it’s underproduced.  The lyrics don’t get overblown in scale, even for love songs (Luke LaLonde’s awesome voice also helps the innocence of those hit home).  And even though LaLonde is a great guitarist (trust me, you need to see him live) and Mitch the bassist is also pretty badass, their musicianship is kind of stunning in its lack of bravado.  Goddamn, did this album really just charm its way into the top three? (3 highlights: Barnacle Goose, Hedonistic Me, I Need A Life)
4. Fleet Foxes - Every time I thought about the best albums of the year, the above three came up, along with Third, Devotion, and Vampire Weekend occasionally.  For some reason, this never entered my mind, even though I love it a whole lot.  Anyone who loves this band can tell you why (beautiful harmonies, easy naturalism, yada yada), but I think maybe the reason behind it all, the real reason why Fleet Foxes has in some way captured the indie zeitgeist, is that it’s a lot like late 60′s classic folk rock, and even more to the rock side in some ways.  The fact that they channel it so well and in such a fresh way is the main source of their popularity to me, because people still really love the Band, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and other bands like them, even if they never listen to them any more because they’ve internalized it all.  And Fleet Foxes combines a lot of the bands’ best characteristics, so they feel more complete to me. (3 highlights: Tiger Mountain Peasant Song, Sun It Rises, Ragged Wood)
5. For Emma, Forever Ago – Like I said for “Skinny Love,” the only reason I didn’t review this album is because it was just beyond words for me.  And while that description alone seems to make it a candidate for number one, it’s not an equal statement to the one I made about The Dark Knight.  It’s just that this album is so organic, it doesn’t really seem like art or anything analogous.  Sure, the harmonies are totally sublime and the album is really insular and gives you that recorded-in-a-cabin-in-Wisconsin-winter feel (because it was), but this doesn’t really seem like it was made, more like born.  That’s the most rewarding aspect of the album for me. (3 highlights: Skinny Love, Creature Fear, Flume)
6. Visiter – You can tell how painstaking the process of putting this album together was – how do you make songs that sound so much the same not get old, while still making the album feel continuous? Well, just increase the quality of the songs, duh.  This also has three crucial short interlude songs that, while still real musical, are enough of a break to not make the album feel like a chore.  I’ve heard this called “freak folk,” but I don’t get it.  It’s just guitar and drums, with a couple studio flourishes.  But those two instruments really make the music feel fully realized, which is a feat.  Most of the credit should go to vocalist/guitarist Meric Long, whose guitar really fills the space. (3 highlights: Fools, Red And Purple, Jodi)
7. Devotion – Sometimes I like to read iTunes’ reviews of albums that I like.  It’s fun, because a lot of the time it’s diametrically opposed to the Pitchfork review of the same album (see Fighters, Foo), and just as much of the time is equally as self-important as Pitchfork, which is even funnier for iTunes in ways too obvious to go into here.  But the iTunes review of this album got me a little mad, because it called the music lonely and haunting, reminiscent of a beach house only “stranded on a winter night so desolate that summer isn’t even a memory.”  I vehemently disagree.  I think there’s a real warmth to this music, a laid-back calm reflective of the porch of a beach house in late August, when the parties are beginning to wind down but the general feeling of goodwill remains.  (3 highlights: Heart of Chambers, Gila, Wedding Bell)
8. Feed The Animals – Speaking of summer albums…I referred to this as a perfect summer jam way back when I reviewed this (man, that was really long ago, come to think of it), and I stand by my statement, even though it’s December now and I still love the album.  The pacing of this isn’t identical the whole way, but it stays consistent enough to keep people on the dance floor for this whole album.  There were a couple albums this year that went on longer than I was expecting them to, but still managed not to drag – it just seemed like a pleasant surprise when there was another song.  This is one of them, as is Visiter, as is Conor Oberst (to be mentioned later), to a lesser extent.  And come on, even Ethan liked this one.  If Ethan likes it and it’s made after 1990 and isn’t Lenny Kravitz, then it’s only because it’s impossible not to like.  (3 highlights: Play Your Part pt. 1, Let Me See You, What It’s All About)
9. Vampire Weekend – What, you thought I forgot about our little Columbian buddies with the afrobeat rhythms and the Nautica wardrobes?  They’ve been around long enough to be pegged and pigeonholed, passed by, labeled as passé, remixed, jibed, joked about, and all that.   And yet their music is still catchy, still grabbing, and still smart (note the Oxford comma in that sentence).  Now the only thing left for them to do is make more music.  Let’s hope it doesn’t get old as fast as the Strokes did. (3 highlights: Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa, M79, Walcott)
10. Third – Back to the enjoyment of iTunes reviews – The last two sentences of this one are, “Songs shut down abruptly, or clang on with battered electronics.  Intense.” Come on, guys.  That’s something I would write – on a bad day.  Take some pride in your work.  On the subject of the album, I can see people disliking Beth Gibbons’ voice as being a little off, but to me that just adds a layer to music that would appeal to anyone just based on creep-out factor.  So if you begin to dig this album, chances are you more than begin.  This album really came at me from all angles – creepy ukelele track (“Deep Water”), check.  “Iron Man”-style guitar interruption (“Hunter”), check.  Creepy, but still catchy and head-bobbing downward arpeggio synths (“The Rip”), check. (3 highlights: The Rip, Silence, Machine Gun)
11. Nouns – A surprisingly varied, complete album from an LA duo that I frankly didn’t see coming at all.  I kind of liked last year’s album, Weirdo Rippers, but eh – a little too noisy for me.  And I kind of liked them live when they came to Oberlin in February.  But then I got a hold of this album a week or so before it came out, and I was thinking, whoa.  Where did this come from? And although that was just a more roundabout way of repeating the first sentence, I hope it just lends weight to my saying that you owe it to yourself to give this album multiple listens.  Even if it seems abrasive at first, this album will reward you for giving it a chance.  (3 highlights: Things I Did When I Was Dead, Eraser, Brain Burner)
12. In Ghost Colours – This album would easily be in the top ten, maybe even the top five, had it been able to keep up the pace of its first half.  Seriously, it comes out of the gates swinging a baseball bat dipped in Day-Glo paint that replaces the heads it’s just bashed in with disco balls.  Non-ironic, totally non-sucking disco balls.  But, sadly, the album does drag about the time it gets past “So Haunted”.  So sue it.  Put the first seven tracks on repeat and act like it’s one of the best albums of the year.  (3 highlights: Out There On The Ice, Lights And Music, Feel The Love)
13. Heart On – Seriously, do I need to write about this one again already? Just read my review, it was so recent. (3 highlights: Now I’m A Fool, How Can A Man With So Many Friends Feel So All Alone, Solo Flights)
14. Los Angeles – There’s something really brilliant and organic going on behind this album.  It doesn’t matter how fast or how slow each individual track is, there’s something in each one that makes me want to keep listening, even in the ones that don’t have as great and as varied a progression as “GNG BNG”.  I don’t know, maybe half a year spent reviewing things has finally worn on me, but this is out of my league. (3 highlights: GNG BNG, Comet Course, Camel)
15. At Mount Zoomer – Talk about your growers.  If you go back and read my original review, then you can see that my original feelings were…tepid.  But after seeing them live, and after listening to the album a bunch more, I’ve been forced to reconsider.  The raw ambition on display here is really impressive, especially on the closing track; I think this band’s main strength is their fearlessness.  If they want to change keys, they don’t give a fuck; they just do it.  If they want to fuck with time signature, full steam ahead.  They go big.  And though this isn’t the triumph that their debut was, Wolf Parade go big here, and a lot of the time, they hit their mark.  Just as much of a surprise to me as anybody.  (3 highlights: Kissing The Beehive, Soldier’s Grin, Fine Young Cannibals)
16. London Zoo – You’ll be able to tell in 3o seconds whether or not you’ll like this album.  Did you enjoy the West Indian/British accents, the angry rapping, the ballsy, immediate production? You did? Good, then strap yourself in, because you’re in for a whole lot more.  And it’s real good shit.  Whether it’s downtempo or storming onward, the beats are central here.  And why wouldn’t they be? The Bug is the producer for all these tracks; what changes is the MC.  And thank god, because the beats are absolutely incredible to me.  (3 highlights: Angry ft. Tippa Irie,  Jah War ft. Flowdan, Judgement ft. Ricky Ranking)
17. Flight Of The Conchords – Funny guys, these guys.  The humor in their earlier music used to come from the jokes in the words primarily; hence all the weird-New Zealander-Tenacious D comparisons.  But now, the primary source comes from the music itself – the lyrics may not be very jokey, but the spot on-ness of the music towards the genre it’s parodying is startling and makes me smile every time.  The fact that the lyrics match up in their subject matter, but have FOTC’s now-signature awkward, self-deprecating twist.  And let’s not forget their silver bullet of musical appeal: awesome New Zealander accents. (3 highlights: Inner City Pressure, Think About It, The Most Beautiful Girl [In The Room])
18. Conor Oberst – So help me, if this guy’s next album doesn’t have him on the cover smokin’ a cig in a white button-down shirt and skinny jeans, then he’s deceiving us.  Oberst is turning into Dylan, we all know this.  And we all wish we could do it as well as he.  Of course, since he started out screaming emo anthems for whiny high school sophomores, he is more confident putting some 11 in his voice (get it?), like in “NYC – Gone, Gone”.  This gives him a key element in carving his own path, so that there’s something in listening to his music, instead of just wishing you were listening to the real Dylan.  And of course, no one’s questioning his songwriting by now – note the Dylan comparisons. (3 highlights: Get-Well-Cards, I Don’t Want To Die (In The Hospital), Moab)
19. Antidotes – Big ups to Jesse Goldstein for the tip on this one.  I’m a giant hypocrite for this, but it does take me a while to get into music that other people show me – I think it’s that I don’t have the joy of discovery that opens my mind for other things more immediately, so I just don’t absorb things as fast.  But as soon as the lock clicked for me, I realized that these guys are damn good.  Their songwriting needs work – actually, scratch that.  They need songwriting, because so far it seems like their words are totally meaningless.  But musically, they have a great sense of how to keep a groove and pound it home.  Helena said that this reminds her of Minus the Bear, and after relistening to some of their stuff, I have to qualify it a bit: like Minus the Bear, but good.  A lot of the similarity is derived from the tight, minimalist guitar throughout.  But these guys don’t go for false emotion; they don’t want to make you feel anything.  They’re just doing their thing, and I think that gives them a giant edge.  (3 highlights: The French Open, Cassius, Big Big Love [Fig. 2])
20. Microcastle – It kind of hurt a little to put Deerhunter on the list (if you go to Oberlin or read Pitchfork consistently, and know me, you understand why), but what can I say.  They cleared up their sound, so now they’re making good music that’s pretty easily accessible.  I have to give them credit for that.  And in songs like “Nothing Ever Happened,” they do kind of rock.  They rock, there I said it.  But mostly, their songs have kind of this underwater feel going on that is understated enough not to get annoying, but present enough to make them really identifiable and unique.  Et tu, Bradford? (3 highlights: Nothing Ever Happened, Agoraphobia, Saved By Old Times)

Once I get back for winter break, you can expect a rash of movie reviews as I get my ass to the theaters.  I hope to see Frost/Nixon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Valkyrie, Milk, and a host of others before the new year.  Wish me luck.

So I would like to extend an offer to my lucky readers. If you would like me to mail you a copy, just comment saying so and maybe send me an email (matthew.rothstein@oberlin.edu) with your address. If you’d like me to give you a copy in person, please tell me so I can burn enough CD’s now to give them all out the first time I see somebody.

I promise you that you will enjoy this mixtape. Two discs of me flossing my extreme mixmaking skills.  And they are extreme.  And they are skills.

And no, I haven’t seen any movies lately.  And the albums list is under construction.  Thanks for asking.

1. “Barnacle Goose” – Born Ruffians, Red, Yellow & Blue
2. “Skinny Love” – Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
3. “Lover’s Day” – TV On The Radio, Dear Science
4. “Four Provinces” – The Walkmen, You & Me
5. “Fools” – The Dodos, Visiter
6. “Red Moon” – The Walkmen, You & Me
7. “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” – Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
8. “Play Your Part (Pt. 1)” – Girl Talk, Feed The Animals
9. “Out There On The Ice” – Cut Copy, Lights & Music
10. “The Blue Route” – The Walkmen, You & Me
11. “Golden Age” – TV On The Radio, Dear Science
12. “Hedonistic Me” – Born Ruffians, Red, Yellow & Blue
13. “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” – Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
14. “Canadian Girl” – The Walkmen, You & Me
15. “Creature Fear” – Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
16. “Crying” – TV On The Radio, Dear Science
17. “Heart Of Chambers” – Beach House, Devotion
18. “Kissing The Beehive” – Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer
19. “Water Curses” – Animal Collective, Water Curses EP
20. “The Rip” – Portishead, Third
21. “Things I Did When I Was Dead” – No Age, Nouns
22. “Buriedfed” – Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
23. “GNG BNG” – Flying Lotus, Los Angeles
24. “Ready For The Floor” – Hot Chip, Made In The Dark
25. “Let Me See You” – Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
26. “Modern Guilt” – Beck, Modern Guilt
27. “The French Open” – Foals, Antidotes
28. “Mykonos” – Fleet Foxes, Sun Giant EP
29. “Sun It Rises” – Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
30. “Blind” – Hercules & Love Affair, Hercules & Love Affair
31. “Gila” – Beach House, Devotion
32. “Now I’m A Fool” – Eagles Of Death Metal, Heart On
33. “Red And Purple” – The Dodos, Visiter
34. “Lights And Music” – Cut Copy, Lights & Music
35. “Angry (ft. Tippa Irie)” – The Bug, London Zoo
36. “I Need A Life” – Born Ruffians, Red, Yellow & Blue
37. “Flume” – Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
38. “Wedding Bell” – Beach House, Devotion
39. “Get-Well-Cards” – Conor Oberst, Conor Oberst
40. “You Remind Me of Something (The Glory Goes)” – Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Lie Down In The Light

1. Barnacle Goose – This was an easy choice that got harder as the year went on.  But the sheer brilliance of the lyrics combined with unbelievable catchiness makes this song number one.  I’ve listened to this song a good 100 times this year, and I still love it to death and sing along (correctly) every time.
2. Skinny Love – I really should have reviewed Bon Iver, but by the time I was able to form words that matched the pure, visceral response I had to this music, I had listened to it too much and would have broken my own rules about the blog being about giving first impressions.  There is so much raw emotion here, I can’t take it.  Richie, Helena and I listened to this over and over in the space of two long car rides and had memorized it completely.  All we wanted to do was watch the moon and listen to this song.  That’s still how I feel.
3. Lover’s Day – Even though the two songs above this are love songs, this is the best love song of the year.  It’s so uplifting and joyous, it actually does a great job of conveying the pure emotional power of physical intimacy – better than any song I’ve ever heard.  Emotional and physical love are normally so far apart in music, that to have them completely inseparable makes even the “c” word have real emotional weight.
4. Four Provinces – There’s a complete easy grace to this song that grabbed me immediately.  Hamilton Leithauser’s voice, the rim-shot drum beat, the lyrics, all of it – just easy, relaxed, and incredible.
5. Fools – This song doesn’t necessarily make me want to dance, but it sure as hell makes me want to bounce.  It is murderously catchy.  This melody won’t leave you for months.  Also, drummer Logan Kroeber is a total badass.
6. Red Moon – A great waltz, and a real showcase for Leithauser’s voice.  Most singers would wilt under such naked exposure on those high notes, but he doesn’t just keep his confidence, he fucking owns those solos.  Great lyric: “I see you now, you shine/like the steel on my knife.”
7. Tiger Mountain Peasant Song – Speaking of voices, I think everyone who’s heard him agrees Robin Pecknold has the best voice of anyone in any new band.  Unadulterated beauty, and it’s on full display here.  His words don’t even matter; the small catharsis of when his voice comes in on that high note is enough to put this song in the top 10.
8. Play Your Part (Pt. 1) – What an introduction.  If someone has never heard Girl Talk before and they hear this song, you can bet they’re thinking, “Oh shit, this is going to be awesome” as soon as the first mash-up kicks into gear.  Girl Talk wants to blow you away as soon as you hear him on his albums so you remember who you’re dealing with, and that’s why when you’re picking your favorite track of his, it’s probably going to be the first.
9. Out There On The Ice – By all accounts, this should be just another Top-40 electropop song.  The lyrics aren’t particularly brilliant.  But the music behind it is so well put together; I cannot overstate how much I love this production.  The production sells the lyrics so hard and so well that a lyric like “If that’s what it takes, don’t let it tear us apart/Even if it breaks your heart” sound earnest and cathartic (countdown on how many more times I’ll use that word: 3 more times, at most).
10. The Blue Route – For all the words I’ve written about this band and this album, I still feel like there’s something I’m missing, something beyond words that I still can’t capture that I feel would make everyone agree with me about this album if I could enunciate.  But I guess it’s just that lack of words to describe songs like this that gives it its power.  “What happened to you?”
11. Golden Age – Goes from sexy funk to uplifting, brass-section touting, um, funk.  So it’s a funk song.  I double-dare you to listen the chorus with the volume turned up and not smile.  I triple-dare you to not at least tap your foot to this song.  It’s even my ring tone, goddamit.
12. Hedonistic Me – Sweet, innocent love song.  Again, great, great lyrics.  I love how they’re not impatient to say what they want to say.  They know this song would do best at a slow, playful pace, and that’s the way they play it.  I also love singing along, “There’ll be Ma and Pa and Grandmama/And all the children I have fathered ahhhh….”
13. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa – V-dub in the hizzie.  You can find reasons why this song is great all over the interwebs, but I’ll just say that the guitar figure is genius.  How it hasn’t gotten old to me by this point is inexplicable.
14. Canadian Girl – You didn’t think I could stop at just three Walkmen songs, did you? The guitar is featured more in this song, but not in a solo/rock band kind of way.  It’s just a different instrument that guides the song.  The little woodblock figure is ultra-charming as well.
15. Creature Fear – This song starts out as a beautiful hymnal piece, with Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) multitracking his own harmonies.  Then it just explodes (if that’s possible with just adding more vocal tracks, a bass, louder guitar, and a beat) and my eyes just got wide as saucers.  The juxtaposition between the delicate verses and the lofty choruses makes this song.
16. Crying – It’s so obvious to hear what I like about this song just when you listen to it.  Just listen to it.  But the lyrics like “And Mary and David smoke down in the trenches/While Zion’s behavior never gets mentioned/The writing’s on your wall” help a whole lot.  And the brass figure at the end.  And the way Kyp Malone’s voice sounds when it gets loud and confident.  Fuck, does this mean you won’t listen to it now?
17. Heart of Chambers – Victoria Legrand’s voice is so ethereal and lovely (I like it better than Feist, and, well, I can tell the difference easily), but that’s not what makes this track great – that’s what makes Beach House great in general.  What makes this track great is the guitar.  Oh, that guitar.  When the song opens, that guitar just knocks me back and puts a bit of a tear in my eye.  It’s so emotive – I can tell it’s a love song before the lyrics even start.
18. Kissing the Beehive – Huge, epic, sprawling, multi-chaptered á la “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” but stops short of masturbatory.  Actually, it doesn’t stop short of shit.  It just isn’t masturbatory because it’s too good to be.  I think my view of this is better than most, because I’ve seen them do it live.  They did this fucking 11-minutes-long song fucking LIVE.  And it was otherworldly.  But it’s still damn good, DAMN good in studio.  And the false ending doesn’t feel overdone to me – it just feels like they’re in too much of a groove to end the record (this was the last track).
19. Water Curses – From super-heavy, super-huge rock epics to light pop pieces draped in water effects and noises (not noise, noises – big difference).  The light catchiness of this song is almost obscured by the hyper-intelligent production, and that toeing of the line is why the song isn’t higher on the list.  But I love the key changes that just make the song happier and more upbeat, impossibly.  And if you can make out the lyrics (tough, I know, but worth it), they say things like: “I want to be like water and slip into your throat/and make you feel alive and good/I want to be like water and never have a doubt and/reflect what is around my pool.”
20. The Rip – I kind of feel like I’m betraying the rest of a great record by choosing a song that’s radically different from all of its neighbors as my favorite – but hey, it’s not my fault that they do such a departure so well.  Portishead is all about darkness, of feeling and tone and all that, but the way they approach it – by juxtaposing the sad female vocals and lyrics with a light guitar figure – makes it even more crushing than the dark electronic pieces that Portishead is known for.  And the electronic breakdown halfway through just hammers the point home, albeit as a danceable point.
21. Things I Did When I Was Dead – Circular, introspective, atmospheric -  not things that No Age is generally known for, if it’s known at all.  But No Age is surprisingly versatile, as Nouns proved.  A tight, head-bobbing piece that’s a great break from earsplitting tracks on that album.
22. Buriedfed – “This is my last song about myself, about my friends/Found something else to sing.” Liar.  This is actually MBAR’s first song about himself that we all hear, and damned if it’s not heartbreaking and rousing at the same time.  He does a great job of crashing the meaning of lyrics up against the tone of the music, so that a normally joyous piece sounds just uproariously angry.
23. GNG BNG – I don’t know if this song title really means “Gang Bang,” but I like to think that it does.  It’s a song in two halves: 1) A great bass line, a great middle-eastern melody line.  2) A badass bass line that is the melody, and an awesome, DJ Shadow-like drum sample, which wrestles for control with the aforementioned bass-melody line awesomely, before the first bass line comes back and closes out the song in really spaced manner.  Fucking great.
24. Ready For The Floor – Juxtapose this with “Out There On The Ice” and you get two totally different ways to get a great dance track, though they’re related.  Both have shiny synths and not-too-deep bass, and about the same beats-per-minute (BPM).  But this one’s production is very straightforward, and the voice part is higher, so this tips the scale from electropop to straight electro and disco, in a great, great way.  Please don’t tell anyone I sing along to the line “You’re my number one guy!”
25. Let Me See You – Girl Talk will make you dance, whether you like Gwen Stefani (canned) or R. Kelly, or booty rap (tuned down), or 80′s-movie soundtrack style guitar, or M.I.A.  What’s that? You don’t really like any of that? Well, you do now, because it’s all shoved together, and the old theory about greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts is in full effect here.  When you hear “Every day I’m hustlin” rapped over “Rebel Rebel”, you know you better get on that dance floor.
26. Modern Guilt – DJ Danger Mouse in full effect, bringing that Beck flair back.  I love that drum beat, and this song is so simple (drum beat + guitar line + Beck singing + occasional extra guitar and piano = “Modern Guilt”) that the song really doesn’t have any room to not be great.
27. The French Open – The opening track for Antidotes, shown to me by Jesse Goldstein and a sneaky good album, has a lot going on.  It starts out as a simple guitar shuffle with syncopated drums, and gets faster and propulsive with the stiff guitar picking getting more intense, and then we get these kind of chants (in French, maybe?) and staccato brass.  Before you know it, your head is bobbing and the song is big and fully realized.
28. Mykonos – Let’s play spot-the-influence: Led Zeppelin with the drum climaxes in the second half, CSN(and sometimes Y) in the a cappella harmonies, Led Zeppelin again with the mythology references, The Who with the use of acoustic guitar mixed up with a full rock song, and why not Kansas, with the power harmonies way up high.  I listen to this song alone in the car all the time, but rarely with others anymore.  When I sing along to this, I turn it way the fuck up and basically shout along so I can get that high.  It’s super fun, you should try it.
29. Sun It Rises – It’s interesting to see the stark differences between Fleet Foxes on their EP and on their eponymous LP.  The former is rooted in classic rock of many different types, but the LP seems so firmly entrenched in backwoods folk, that I have to believe that they have many more songs all ready to go, just waiting for the correctly themed record.  The climax here is the definition of musical catharsis.  And then we get a great, simple, moving guitar figure – throw in a little banjo harmony with it, and cap it off with more a cappella harmonies.  You got yourself a fucking great song.
30. Blind – Speaking of disco, this is the closest you’ll get to the 70′s outside of Barry Gibb’s closet these days.  And man, what a voice Antony, the singer here, has.  So unique, so perfectly suited for this song (and in my opinion, almost nothing else), and really affecting, especially in harmony.  The little trumpet figure is a nice touch.
31. Gila – Let this be the end of the “Geela/Heela” debate.  If Victoria Legrand says the former, then by God, let it be true.  Again, the entrance of the guitar is too good.  But this song is nothing without the shimmering organ behind it all and the woozy drum machine, and these are my favorite Beach House lyrics: “Give a little more than your life/Pick apart the past, you’re not going back/Don’t you waste your time.”  I might trade awaybeing a man for having a singing voice like this (if draft picks were included).  Did you know she sang LED ZEPPELIN in high school?! That’s sexy.
32. Now I’m A Fool – Although this may be the least-hardest-rocking song (I can’t say softest-rocking, that doesn’t sound right) yet to come out of the Eagles of Death Metal, it’s their most well-developed.  Actually smart lyrics, great bass line, subtle little ooh’s, and a guitar that for once, sits back and is a member of the supporting cast.  Of course, if this wasn’t part of a totally badass record, I probably wouldn’t appreciate it as much, but hey, what are you gonna do.
33. Red And Purple – The Dodos seem a little immature, a little underdeveloped – you get the feeling that maybe two records from now, they will be fucking amazing, but they’re still really great here.  They’ve just got an x-factor working for them that makes me want to sing along to everything, and air-drum everything as well.  Great drum line again here, but the chorus is what makes this song.  It’s simple, doesn’t have a lot of deep meaning, but it’s earnest, and it’s melodic.  I love it dearly.
34. Lights and Music – There’s really not much more to say about this track than there was on the previous Cut Copy song – they still use the same alchemy to create beautiful electronic pop songs, a little more guitar-heavy this time, and not as completely sublime.  Still awesome though.
35. Angry (ft. Tippa Irie) – Black British people rapping about being angry over a completely awesome beat by The Bug? Sign me up.  A closer look shows that Tippa Irie is really rapping about getting pissed at society for being so fucked up, like poverty in Africa and suicide bombers, but that’s not really what makes me like this song.  It’s the pure, gritty, hip hop dance beat.  Plus, it gets me really pumped for playing frisbee. “So many tings dey get me angry,/So many tings dey get me mad!”
36. I Need A Life – “I’m lookin’ down/Come help me up/From stumblin’ round tryin’ to fill my cup/It’s half empty/So come pour some in and/Take me out tonight.” “I need meaning/I need a mission/I need a path/I need conviction/I need a life I’ve never had/I need much more good/and much less bad.”
37. Flume – Less intense than “Skinny Love,” this is just a low-key dirge where the music of Justin Vernon’s voice is far more important than the words he sings as far as the emotion he conveys.  He’s mournful, he’s tender, but there’s some hope there.  And the combination of those three has brought me back to this song time and time again.  That and the fact that “Skinny Love” is only about three minutes away once the song ends.
38. Wedding Bell – Less immediately emotional than the previous two Beach House songs on this list, but it’s a little more uptempo, and it’s the most catchy.  There aren’t any dominant elements here either, it’s a very balanced, complete work – that is, until the great, multi-tracked guitar solo.
39. Get-Well-Cards – Well, hello there, Bob – I mean, Jeff – dammit, I mean Conor! I think we’re safely beyond emo at this point, which is why Conor Oberst seemed to see fit to drop the Bright Eyes moniker.  With dumber lyrics and a pronounced keyboard, this could be a John Mellencamp song.  Thank god it doesn’t have those things.  It’s its own great song.  “Right there, that’s the postman sleeping in the sand./He’s got a get-well-card to deliver, he’s gonna do it by hand.”  Mr. Zimmerman, your rebuttal please.
40. You Remind Me of Something (The Glory Goes) – If this was Pinetop Seven, the start of the song would turn into an uptempo ballad about prairie murder.  But this is a happy Will Oldham, and as a result, it turns into a tight, humble folk song about insecure companionship. The fiddle is the perfect supplement to such a song; it’s like it’s telling you, “it’s okay, it’s a real folk song, you can like it wholeheartedly.” And I do.

Well, that was a workout; about 3400 words.  Maybe someone will read about 1000 of them.  Oh, well, at least I don’t have to think about it any more.  Now I’m going to go pass out.  You guys will probably have to wait a while for the albums list, but I bet you’ll get a couple of movie reviews from me in between.  The movies list will come in January.

UPDATE: I would just like to point out that Pitchfork’s shiny new Top Songs list is a fucking joke.  The simple fact that they have Hot Chip as number 3 when they spent January being disappointed in them merely goes to show that the main function of their year-end list is to say that the best music of the year will always be something that you didn’t pay enough attention to (according to them).  Last year, they did an okay job with both the albums and songs lists, but this is beginning to smack of 2006′s injustice.  If Hercules and fucking Love Affair wins best album of the year, I will stop reading Pitchfork.  Maybe.  But I’ll definitely be supremely pissed off.

Continuing along my delayed Hitchcock kick, I was inspired to finally watch Notorious by my discussion with the aforementioned seasoned blogger about Hitchcock during some downtime at a certain debate tournament at which a certain less-seasoned blogger made a certain sum of money for judging a certain activity.  He brought up that Notorious certainly deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as Rear Window, Psycho and Strangers on a Train (were those the three?), and was probably above any breath that involved Vertigo and North by Northwest.  Rope, I think we agreed, was probably not even part of the same respiratory system (in a…good way?).  So that pushed me over the edge into seeing a movie I was already planning on seeing.

So that was an incredibly roundabout way of simply saying that Notorious, directed by Mr. Alfredonius Hitchcock himself and written by some guy named Ben Hecht, (Just kidding.  You can’t be considered just “some guy” when you write two movies like Notorioius and Gilda in the same year.) is the movie I’m reviewing this time.   The absolute first thing that jumps out at me about this movie is the unique and interesting way it uses three of the biggest actors of the time: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains.  Well, that’s more fair to say of the first two than of Rains – we’ve established even within the humble confines of this blog that Mr. Rains was a chameleon; a god among character actors, who manages to make all of his roles complicated and interesting.

But enough hero worship of Claude; we’ll discuss him more specifically to this movie later, along with the other biggies.

Notorious is the story of Alicia Huberman (Bergman), the daughter of a German-American convicted of war crimes committed during World War II who is asked by the United States Federal Government to work undercover in Brazil trying to catch some of her father’s associates doing…bad things.  Her liaison, TR Devlin (Grant), whom she meets at a party she threw to drink until she can’t feel anymore in reaction to her father’s conviction, is the one who introduces her to the mission.  She accepts after being reminded how much she loves America (and thus hates Nazis), deciding to abandon a family friend who wanted to take her on a boat cruise of the world, I think.  While in Rio (by the sea-o) de Janeiro, awaiting assignment and generally just hanging out, guess what the pair do? Give up? They fall in love.

But when they get the assignment, they find that Alicia has to woo an old acquaintance who is all kinds of creepily in love with her in order to get information.  He’s Alex Sebastien, played by Claude Rains, and he’s a former Nazi socialite.  It would be pretty stupid to do plot summary from that point forward, for a number of reasons.

As far as Grant goes in this movie, it’s not the only time he was in a Hitchcock movie (I count three: this, To Catch a Thief, and North by Northwest), and though I haven’t seen To Catch a Thief, I know that in North by Northwest, Grant also has moments where he (Devlin) vilifies his love interest for being unfaithful to him while in the line of duty.  But here, what’s interesting is he never even gets attached to Alicia (Bergman) to begin with.  He doesn’t trust her because of her history, even though he falls for her, and his exchange with Alicia about her seduction of Sebastien is less about feeling hurt and betrayed, and more about taking sick satisfaction in twisting the knife over Alicia’s guilt about her mission.  The racetrack scene is just fascinating, and what happens immediately after is positively Hithcockian (duh).  But that’s too spoilable to talk about, regrettably.  You’ll just have to be satisfied with me telling you it rules.

Bergman’s Alicia character is an incredibly compelling one, and for my money it blows her performance in Casablanca out of the water because Alicia actually has depth – emotions that go beyond “I’m conflicted.”  This is an incredibly well-developed and fully-realized character, and I was so impressed by her subtlety of expression.

Claude Rains, though, is the absolute top dog here.  You’re introduced to him as Alex Sebastien, a former Nazi before he ever steps on screen, so my feelings towards his every action were that everything was coated with this sinister, invisible layer.  But the more I watched Alex around Alicia (which is 90% of his screen time), the more I came to realize that his feelings for her were sincere, despite his evildoings.  In reflection, I feel that Rains lent such depth to his character that I could analyze it til the cows came home, and still be interested.

So this review has kind of turned into boot-licking, and I’m going to cut it off there.  Just know that the strength of this movie is in the lead performances, possibly more than any other Hitchcock film.

(I tried to find a youtube video of them playing The OC to link to, but all I could find was a german dub. It’s pretty surreal. Enjoy.)

The first single for this album is called “I will possess your heart.” It has maybe 4 minutes of build up before Ben Gibbard starts singing, which some might find excessive, but I think is worth being patient for. When the song kicks in proper, it doesn’t feel unnecessary. I don’t know what it does exactly, but I like it. It makes the song seem more important, even though without the long opening it would be just another pretty good song on the album. Okay, maybe it’s unnecessary.

“Cath…” is the next single (why am I focusing on the singles?) and it’s pretty pretty, if a little beentheredonethat. It’s a song with a story to tell about a gal named Cath who’s having second thoughts at the altar. I really like this lyric:

As the flashbulbs burst
She holds a smile
Like someone would hold
A crying child

Awww, right?

“No Sunlight” was an early favorite for me, what with its general bounciness and specific sense of being an actual rock and roll song from Death Cab For Cutie, which is weird, but pretty rad.

But now I have a new favorite.

Absolutely essential to comment on is the song “Grapevine Fires.” For me it’s the clear standout of the album, and worth buying just for it. The first comment on that youtube video is “Ok, now THIS is music!” I was going to say something about the song, but I guess that’ll do. No, that would be lazy, here you go: it’s so gorgeous, and gets the fuck away with the lyric “There I knew it would be alright. That everything would be alright.” I’m dying to hear a playlist of songs that contain that lyric and variants on it. They’re fucking endless, and the more you notice them the more trite it gets, but here Gibbard and co. totally sell it.

The rest of the album kind of blends together into something very pleasant but sort of bland. Sometimes that’s what you need to listen to. That’s a niche isn’t it? The production is really great. That Chris Walla fellow deserves credit beyond having a really cool name. The way the guitars sort of burble on “Your New Twin Sized Bed” is pretty and hypnotic. The opening shimmer of “Bixby Canyon Bridge,” the album’s opener, gives way to to a jarring ratatat of loud fuzzy notes which build to a great height, all the instruments coming together with the common goal of rocking out. I guess it’s just on songs like “Talking Bird” and “The Ice Is Getting Thinner”, these ballads with these slow, long notes without a lot of melody that lose me. They sound great, but the fidgety thirteen year old in me needs some kind of payoff for sitting through them.

How do you end a review again?

-Max Jacobson

Last night I went on a downloading binge (legal, if anyone asks, I guess), focusing on Madlib and J Dilla, two hip hop producers that got hot around the mid- to late-90′s, and started making their own music in the early 2000′s for the most part.  Their production is really interesting and a joy to discover, but they collaborated once before J Dilla died of a rare blood disease in 2006.  That collaboritive team was called Jaylib (get it?) and they released one album in 2003, titled Champion Sound, bred from each of them rapping over each other’s beats.  That album has become my favorite hip hop album of all time in the space of hearing it twice over the past two days.

When it comes to hip hop, I guess I cheat a little bit when it comes to how I approach listening to the music.  Because my primary interest in music is rock and things resembling it, I tend to take a step back when listening to something and try to take in as much as possible.  Most of my “effort” with listening comes from trying to absorb the piece as a whole (probably the reason why I like complicated music like Animal Collective, but have a harder time with noise and stuff).  As a result, I have to really concentrate hard to listen to the lyrics of something unless they’re really prominent.  Which means that when I listen to hip hop, I get more preoccupied with production than most.  That’s why I love Spank Rock so much – it’s so interestingly put together.  And that’s why I love J Dilla and Madlib so much.

Which is why Jaylib is mindblowingly good to me.  Now, reviewing hip hop is almost as much of a challenge for me as reviewing things like dubstep – it makes me insecure not being tapped into the greater culture, because I fear having some guy who’s like, “I know hip hop, and you’re a stupid asshole.” I know that would probably never happen, but then again, that’s why it’s an insecurity.  But the way I see it, having a visionary producer rapping means that that rap has a finely tuned ear for how to flow with the production.  As I noticed (and as was pointed out to me by some other reviews I read), the lyrics here aren’t all that deep or all that interesting – they’re fun, but pretty shallow, not dumb, but not at all contemplative or declarative either (except as far as declarations of Jaylib’s prowess or simply, their new existence).  But their production.  Oh, their production.

It’s not exactly like nothing I’ve ever heard (it seems to take influence from instrumental hip hop producers, most notably [and most famous] DJ Shadow), it’s put together so interestingly that it’s this whole new animal when combined with the vocals.  It’s just, music.  It’s hip hop by every defining definition, but if you’re someone who’s heard too much absolute shit blasted at you by top-40 stations and mixtape rappers who have great rhymes but couldn’t care less what it’s over, it doesn’t sound like hip hop.  It sounds like something too fully formed.

The whole album has this laid back, but still energized vibe to it that’s really engaging for me, and it’s really conducive to full-album listening.  When your production is good enough, your only worry is overloading the listeners, and they do a great job of not doing much.  But their first proper track, after cool intro “L.A. to Detroit” (each of their hometowns), is “McNasty Filth” (cool name, right?), and it blew me away entirely.  They loaded so much into it and it’s not fast-paced, but extraordinarily high-energy.  It’s definitely a statement track – the duo saying that they are a force to be reckoned with.

Some other highlights are “The Heist” and “The Mission,” back to back, and for the same reason – their ability to keep downtempo hip hop interesting and fresh is absolutely astounding to me.  But really, after “McNasty Filth”, Champion Sound tends to maintain about the same level of laid-back awesomeness.  And that’s good enough for me.  Honestly, this is the best thing I’ve heard all year, and I’m seriously considering putting it in my all-time top 20, but I feel like it would kind of decrease the stature of the list if something could break into it after two days.  I’ll wait a while with it.

Thanks for the feedback on the changes, guys.  And keep those comments coming, it’s nice to know I’m still relevant in some way or another.

Oh, and my favorite news.  I Ate My DVD Collection is now officially at http://iatemydvdcollection.com.  That’s awesome, though it costs money, but I have a pretty good job, so I can take the $13 hit.  Whatever.  The old link works too, but now people who remember the name of my blog can look that up and find something that makes sense.

Of course, if Max and/or anyone else has more ideas for something to add to make the site more tolerable, by all means, leave a comment (for once, you assholes)(just kidding, I love you guys deeply).  And “more posts” doesn’t count – if you want more content, write it yourself, remember?

Also, two more observations:

1) I’ve seen a few things on Pitchfork (yes, I read it, fuck you) lately that have signaled to me that it’s time to start thinking about my year-end list of music.  That’s terrifying, especially because I’ve accumulated more current music in the year of 2008 than in any other year of my life by far (48 albums, by my iTunes count – and probably 40 of which I think about positively in some way) in time to put them in a list like this.  I have to get started on it now, or else I will feel like I cheated myself.  You’ll get no more music reviews out of me until my list, because I don’t want to spend all those thoughts and then have to say something new about the album on my list (even if it’s just a sentence’s worth).  As a result, this list will probably be pretty painstaking and masturbatory, so deal with that in advance.  Also as a result, it will probably be far too long for anyone with anything to do in their life to read in one sitting, so be prepared for that as well.  It will probably be a top-20.

2) I just got “musical genitalia” as one of my Top Searches.  That is teeeeerifying.  Whoever you are, I hope you enjoyed the review, and I hope equally as much that it is not what you were expecting.

All right, that’s enough of that.  Zack and Miri Make A Porno is exactly what a Kevin Smith movie should be – and it’s probably just as much of a central thesis to Kevin Smith movies as Chasing Amy.  If you’re not a Kevin Smith fan by now, this review will not be for you, but by all means, read on.

I only saw Chasing Amy a couple of months ago, and it lived up to the hype of being the central Kevin Smith movie in that it had a really well-constructed plot, well-written characters, incredibly obscene dialogue, and Jay and Silent Bob, as well as a not-completely-absurdly-but-still-pretty-happy ending.  Throw in a love story, and there’s your Kevin Smith movie.  Now, of course, every Kevin Smith movie doesn’t have all of these – in fact, none but Chasing Amy do, even Zack and Miri – but they all have all of the first three, and one or two of the latter three.

But if Chasing Amy is your paint-by-numbers Kevin Smith thesis movie, then Zack and Miri is your big-picture companion.  There’s just this feel that you get with this movie, with the absolute great chemistry of characters and just the joy that comes from the eye of the camera at spending time in the world and spending time with the people.  One of the central motifs of all of the small-scale Kevin Smith movies (read: not Dogma or Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back) is that none of the central characters are bad people, or even unpleasant (all right, unpleasant in a bad way).  Life’s not all roses and lollipops, of course, but any dick isn’t given more than one scene to stink up.  All the drama in these movies (especially Zack and Miri) is between good-natured people who may have a kink that doesn’t mesh with others or just may be human – and that’s the source of drama.  That’s what’s so relatable and great about Kevin Smith movies.

Here, the two main good people are Zack and Miri, lifelong best friends in a less homoerawkwardly way than Jay and Silent Bob, who are absent from this movie, to some’s delight and some’s regret (I fall in between, and I’ll explain later on).  There’s definite sexual tension between them, but it often gets defused pretty quickly, just because they’re such good friends, and most of the time, it’s pushed on them by others.  Because they’re completely broke (and thus desperate) and they run into a gay couple, one of whom is Miri’s high school crush, which is why they meet, and one of whom is a porn star, played INCREDIBLY by the INCREDIBLE Justin Long (and thus inspired), they decide to make a pornographical moving picture, with a nice loan by the inimitable Craig Robinson, who plays Zack’s friend and coworker.

I don’t really like the story idea on the whole, but Kevin Smith is so damn talented as a writer that the central story comes about organically.  That’s what impressed me the most.  What also impressed me is, well, everything.  To be honest, though I was really excited about this movie, I wasn’t expecting lofty things because I didn’t like the idea of the story – I just felt it was an excuse for more Kevin Smith sex jokes, brilliant as they are – and because I kind of feel awkward at how pervasive Judd Apatow’s influence has gotten over the comedy landscape.  It just feels like if a comedy is in any way publicized or popular over the last couple of years, it has some Apatow in it.  And the farther away from actually being an Apatow picture it is, the worse it is, because they all try.  The ones that try independently, fail.  And I originally felt that Kevin Smith’s switch from his time-honored favorites to an Apatow roster was a little like selling out – that Smith saw the landscape, and was afraid of his inability to keep up, so he just ditched his stalwarts (for whom Smith’s movies seem to be their only roles) and made his play.

And while I still feel that way generally about Apatow, though I’m as huge a fan of his (actual) movies as anyone, Smith saved himself from falling into that pattern by writing a) Elizabeth Banks better than anyone has before, and turning her into not just a humongous new crush for everyone who feels like they missed their chance with Joey Lauren Adams, but a comedienne to be feared, b) a Craig Robinson character with some actual depth, so he is now guaranteed to have a real, hopefully incredible and long, acting career, and c) a romantic comedy that everyone can get behind.  Seeing this movie as a couple is a treat – thankfully I have that opportunity – because whereas movies like Love Actually (which is really the ceiling for the category I’m lumping right now) are great, there are always moments that make the girlfriend fawn and the boyfriend roll his eyes, and that could get awkward, Zack and Miri has absolutely zero of these moments, and the scenes that would normally have them are totally honest.  And that above all is the strength of these movies.

I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I got a little scared after Clerks II, even though it was hilarious, because it seemed like his only options as a filmmaker were making okay romance films like Jersey Girl that no one could love, but some could definitely hate because it was so rude to all of the fans that loved his comedic writing, or movies entirely rooted in his View Askewniverse that were about the same people, and he would make those movies until they were set in some New Jersey retirement home.  I though that that could happen, and while the movies would be good, they would get depressing fast.  Zack and Miri Make a Porno is probably better for me and Kevin Smith fans than it probably is in a vacuum because it gives Kevin Smith a real future as a filmmaker, a film that tells people he can make whatever movie he wants and pull it off too.  And thank God for that.

I know I didn’t comment on anything like the great performances by the leads and the music or anything like that like I normally do, but you can go anywhere else for that.  And besides, I can’t think about those things when I think about this movie; they get washed out by my above thoughts.  And if you really want all that stuff, just go here or here or here.

A DISTANT, CRASHING SOUND

A distant, crashing sound
is what your heart hears
through the pipeline inside you
when your brain hears my voice
from across Chicago, canned
and processed like bad fruit.
Your heart wonders
what all the fuss is about,
because you just think you’re hurt.
Your heart forgot me in May,
when the days are coated
in a humid foam that I waded through
to get to your window
where my brain made

A distant, crashing sound
that my heart only heard
just last night.
Tissues in the wastebasket,
shouldn’t that prove I care?
But I won’t lie, telling you
that it wasn’t hard to go,
since my brain was walling me off
while my heart was catching up.
Our long car silences
must have clued you in.
Last week especially,
when the CD scratched,
and through the silence,
all we heard was

A distant, crashing sound
and we looked at each other
quickly.
After I pulled over
to let the ambulance by,
you kissed me abruptly
and when all I did
was look at you funny,
we both heard again
a distant, crashing sound.

HOW TO ASSEMBLE A DOOMSDAY DEVICE

Am I just trying to be loved?
That’s the second-to-last thought that runs through the mind of an ideal supervillain just before he (or she, potentially) detonates his doomsday device.  The last thought is, of course, No, I’m doing it because – and insert your own personal motivation there (good examples are: to show them all, to prove that I’m the most evil, to bring everyone down to the same level, to destroy the world, etc., but use your imagination!).
The road to true supervillainy is not for the faint or kind of heart.  It is a series of tough tests of ruthlessness, single-mindedness, and savvy public relations (after all, if no one pays attention to you, what does blowing up the earth really accomplish?).  And, of course, if you’ve really hit it big, it requires the defeat of at least one superhero, possibly even a whole team.  And it takes more than those three to really become a star of the world of supervillainy – unparalleled brilliance needs to come into play, because let’s be honest, if you already had super-strength, you’d be fighting for the other side so you had more excuses to beat up on people without being brought up on charges.
We here at the J. Robert Oppenheimer Evil Genius Fellowship Association appreciate all of this, which is the reason we are the place those of the evildoing persuasion come to us when they need funding for their death rays, teleporters, weather control devices, and what have you.  You and we know that villains don’t have a mythical gold card with which to obtain inexplicably huge amounts of funding for ambitious projects.  It must come from somewhere, and we want it to come from us.

—————————
Remember when you are first assembling your doomsday device that every part is important.  Falling asleep in your lab when you should be welding is no excuse when a bolt pops loose, disablign the rotator mechanism or the cooling unit or what have you.  All that will get you is a timer stopped at 0:03 and a gloved fist to the face.  Supervillainy is a game of inches, like baseball.  Or jai alai.
The second thing to remember about doomsday device assembly is comprehensive setup.  While that may sound like unnecessary business jargon, the explanation is easy enough: if it is easy to remember how you’ve put your doomsday device together, then it is easy to fix problems and it is easy to dismantle if you’ve had a change of heart.  The only thing worse than being thwarted from destroying the world is accidentally destroying the world when you no longer want to.  And remember, the emergency shutoff wires must be a combination of red, blue, green and yellow wires (in keeping with the Oppenheimer Association by-laws).  Which wire is the correct wire is up to you, so use your imagination.  Don’t be afraid to pick the yellow wire – no hero will ever guess the yellow wire, you have our guarantee.
Thirdly, always make sure that your doomsday device has a timer.  A remote detonator, while providing more instant gratification, allows two different contingencies to happen more easily: one, the theft of the detonator.  Unless you plan on keeping this detonator in an invincible safe until the absolute split-second you plan on using it, there is always the chance of theft by a hero that may have super-speed or that may be able to phase through walls.  We here at the Oppenheimer Association know that the supervillain’s problems are varied, and we simply wish to simplify, always simplify.  The second contingency is that of cold feet.  Though we respect a well-thought decision to not destroy the earth, we also believe that most instances of the villain failing to detonate his/her own doomsday device are due to mere garden-variety nervousness or temporary moral pangs.  These should not be tolerated as they are reflective of a level of commitment below the standards of the Oppenheimer Association.
And that brings us to the most important point we will have in this manual, the point that we introduced at the very beginning – you must always know what you are fighting for.  A crisis of motivation has made many a great supervillain come crashing down on himself in the moment of truth.  Because, when you are looking at the soon-to-be-destroyed earth in the rear-view mirror of your private space shuttle powered by ketchup (or mustard, depending on the type of fuel-injection system you use), the only thing that will make you turn back (provided you have disabled the world’s space defenses, but come now, J. Robert Oppenheimer could do that from his grave, rest his soul) is you.  Without commitment, then all of this is moot.  Just ask Iratastrophe (see Appendix for details).
We do regret that this is the end of this instructional paper, but it is our firm belief at the J. Robert Oppenheimer Evil Genius Fellowship Association that each supervillain and/or evil genius should be as creative and self-motivated as possible.  After all, if we showed everyone how to be a supervillain, then how would anyone be different? If you’re still unsure of certain aspects of your prospective life of supervillainy, though, please be on the lookout for other installments in this series of instructional papers, such as “How to Hold Someone Hostage/For Ransom,” “How to Hold Multiple People Hostage/For Ransom,” “How to Introduce Yourself to the International Community,” “How to Reduce a Superhero to a Blubbering Ninny,” and of course, “How to Apply for An Oppenheimer Fellowship.”
Good luck with any of your endeavors, and as Dr. Oppenheimer would say, “You break it, you buy it.”

APPENDIX

World Saved, Iratastrophe Behind Bars After Confrontation With CapyBaron

NEW YORK, NY – After coming within minutes of total destruction, humanity can take a deep breath and go on with its daily life, thanks to the heroics of  the CapyBaron in defeating supervillain Iratastrophe.
The so-called “Long, Rodent-like Tooth of the Law” was able to disable Iratastrophe’s thermonuclear device before it could be sent to the core of the earth via a super-submarine that would have entered through the Puerto Rican trench in the Atlantic Ocean.  The device is reported to have been carrying roughly 300 times the amount of nuclear payload of the “Fat Man” atomic bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki.
“It’s all part of the job,” smiled the CapyBaron as he humbly accepted a cash reward of $100,000 from the President of the United States.  “I’m sure anyone as powerful and righteous as I would have done the same thing in my position.”
Although Iratastrophe was not available for his normal lengthy pre-imprisonment press conference, he was heard to yell, “I never should have listened to you, Claire!” at a woman behind the cadre of reporters and police officers who appeared to be weeping behind a pair of pink sunglasses.
When asked to describe the scene at Iratastrophe’s lab during their final confrontation, the CapyBaron explained: “I had just burst through the door of his inner sactum, where he was arguing with some broad – I beg your pardon, woman – and after sneaking aboard his submarine, I heard both of them begin to cry.  Really, they were just crying like babies.  That bought me enough time to chew through the correct wire with my super rodent teeth and save the world.”
When asked which wire was the correct one, he smiled broadly and laughed, “Blue, always blue.”
Iratastrophe, whose real name is Ira Gould, was escorted from his laboratory, which was located on the top floor of the apartment building in which his mother lived on Pinehurst Avenue in the Upper West Side, by local police appearing to have received a severe beating and showing multiple bite marks, is awaiting trial, but is expected to plead guilty on two counts of nefarious conspiracy and eight counts of attempted genocide in exchange for a life sentence as opposed to capital punishment.
The CapyBaron has requested to inform readers that anyone wishing to make a donation of thanks can send checks or money orders to: Schwartz, Goldstein, Hertz and Schwartz, Esq., 1120 W 46 St, New York, NY 10003.

And of course, they’re both on the Oberlin Horsecows Ultimate Frisbee Team Organization, Esq.

Now, I know that i said I was going to do a rap roundup for my next review, but then the Eagles of Death Metal released a record, and that’s a drop-everything moment for me.  I haven’t given their first album, Peace Love Death Metal, much of a listen, but their sophomore effort, 2006′s Death By Sexy, is one of my absolute favorites.  It rocks so hard, and is so much fun.  When trying to describe their visceral appeal to others, I often fall back on the expression, “It’s like music with a giant cock.  Like, huge.”  And I think that’s fairly accurate.  You can feel the machismo ooze out of their music.  Frontman Jesse “The Devil” Hughes is cocky with a capital Cock, and he’s famed(ish) for his outlandish attitude with fans at shows, and his mustache, which is a lady tickler of the highest degree.  This guy still lives the life, as it’s obvious.

I first got into EoDM when Morgan showed me them saying they reminded her of Queens of the Stone Age, a band I had shown her.  It turned out she was unwittingly prophetic – Josh Homme, lead singer of Queens of the Stone Age, is the drummer for EoDM and the secondary creative force.  Since then, it’s been a constant love affair between the band and me – whenever I want some hard-ass rock that is more contemporary than Led Zep and things of that nature, EoDM is almost always the first place I turn.

Heart On, EoDM’s third album, is less super-kinetic than their first two, and as a result is a step behind as far as pure fun, but this is easily their most musically well-developed album.  This band is no longer my version of Top 40 (meaning music that I can listen to just because it’s fun but lacks any real depth).  Now they’re just a damn good band.

Eagles of Death Metal is by no stretch of the imagination a death metal band; it’s not really a joke name, just really a “you had to be there story”.  Whatever.  There are worse band names out there. (I’m looking at you, Portugal. The Man.) They’re a blues/roots rock band to their core, with the hard-charging guitars and their fairly constant set of chords that just beeeeg to be air-guitar’d.  Jesse Hughes adds that final bluesy piece – even though it’s bluesy, not blues, since, you know, he’s white and sounds white.  There’s no grit to his voice, just a lot of confidence and just as much strong falsetto.  Hughes used to spontaneously break into an “Elvis From Hell” impersonation mid-song (see “Chase the Devil” off of Death By Sexy), but that’s left behind on this album, sadly.

As far as musicianship goes, it’s rare you see a rock band this in sync with such a high level of play all-around.  Both guitar parts, bass and drums are all on fucking fire throughout the whole record.  In a way, it reminds me of Led Zeppelin or Cream – yeah, more like Cream, actually – because no part of the band ever really chills out.  Sure, one instrument will have the most attention drawn to it at a point, but multiple listens reveal that every part is still playing its ass off.  Really great stuff.  I especially noticed it in the last song, “I’m Your Torpedo.”

That song title brings me to another point that I didn’t mention back when I was talking about the band’s masculinity.  A lot of this music’s power along that vein is in its bare sexuality.  This is “I’m-a sex you up” music, only not in a romantic way – in a fantastically egocentric way.  The courtship is all about the grandstanding, not about the end result.  Pure, brash masculinity.

If you consider that the ideal of the band, then “(I Used to Couldn’t Dance) Tight Pants” would probably be your favorite track.  The guitar work is ultra-sexy here, and really, there’s not much more to say about it than that it rocks out ultra-hard.  It’s really ditto for the rest of the album, so I’m going to spare readers more song-by-song analysis at the risk of getting even more repetitive.  I’m actually surprised this album is so consistent; even Death By Sexy had one amazingly horribly annoying song (“The Ballad of Queen Bee and Baby Duck”), and Heart On doesn’t have it.  This is a surprisingly unified album, and works fantastically as a continuous listen.  I now know at least one album that’s getting played in the car rides home for Bump and Thanksgiving.

I’m going to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno tomorrow, so expect a review of that up pretty soon.

Okay.

First off, the performance of Thandie Newton as Condi is the only real weak spot as far as acting goes.  It realizes the fears that every movie fan had of the whole movie in that it delves into caricature and becomes largely unwatchable.  And, as Harry Knowles of the very same Aint-it-Cool-News to which I linked you pointed out, that’s kind of how she already is, which means that those who like Condi may not mind Newton’s performance.  But I don’t buy that 100%.  Also, SPOILER the final dream confrontation between the two Bush presidents is really cool on the W. side of things (that should go without saying, since Josh Brolin rocks every scene), but I think Cromwell as H.W. in the scene plays it a bit too smugly and makes it a comedic scene when it really shouldn’t be. END SPOILER And I think everyone should see this movie if they like politics even one little bit.  It’s a really self-affirming movie for those of us who do.

Okay, now let’s get to the real meat.  Choke is a book by Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fame, and from what I’ve heard by Chuck fans, it’s not one of his best.  Still, there seems to be something about his works that makes adapters drool.  David Fincher did an unbelievable job with Fight Club, of course: I don’t think there’s ever been a movie that’s had the clichéd “incendiary” title slapped on it as much as that one, and it deserved it all to boot.  But those who are expecting Choke to be for sex what Fight Club is for terrorism are in for a rude shock.  It’s really a character study of Victor Mancini, played by the awesome Sam Rockwell.

Hi, his name is Victor, and he’s a recovering (kind of) sex addict.  He takes absolute joy in being a degenerate who flouts the rules of the pre-American Revolution historical site at which he works as a reenactor/peasant and makes extra cash by choking at restaurants and asking the people who save him for money by mail.  This is his life – being a half-assed colonial American, choking for money, and having lots of meaningless sex with random people.  Oh, and visiting his mother who has severe early-onset Alzheimer’s so bad that she doesn’t even know who he is.

Victor’s a complicated guy, which is made harder by the fact that he’s a total asshole, and revels in it.  The ongoing conflict for the viewer is whether or not to root for Victor.  His undying attachment to her is totally selfless at first glance – she thinks that her son never visits and turns the whole hospital against him, despite his devotion – it turns out that his repeated death wishes on her aren’t just latent resentment; he actually wants her to die, just only after she discloses his father’s identity.  And that search takes such a ludicrous twist that I won’t even go into it at all.

The other thing that happens at the upscale hospital where Victor’s mother (played incredibly by Anjelica Huston) is staying is that Victor meets Paige Mitchell, a new doctor taking care of his mother.  Where their relationship goes is purely fascinating to me, but other people I talked to were not as impressed.

This movie was adapted and directed by Clark Gregg, who also plays Victor’s boss (and kick-starter of most of the funniest scenes in the movie) and played Agent Coulson of SHIELD in Iron Man over the summer, for those who want a better mental image.  I really like the direction – the flashbacks are all necessary and don’t feel cheap, which lots of flashbacks do when they’re pulled off wrong.  I’m pretty sure this is Gregg’s first effort in both writing and directing, so kudos for him and I hope to see more work.

I think the strength of the screenplay is that all of the major characters are dynamic – their personalities, or at least how the audience views them, change over the course of the movie, so that the audience doesn’t feel like they’re a step ahead of the script – in a way much different from Fight Club, I feel compelled to add.  While Huston’s turn as the mother is obviously the best supporting job, I think that Denny, Victor’s best friend, played by Brad William Henke (I haven’t heard of him either, but he’s apparently in the upcoming Star Trek movie playing some guy named “Uncle Frank,” which makes me twice as excited for the movie just because there’s an Uncle Frank) is pretty close.  He goes from a chronic masturbator with an attitude almost as bad as Victor’s into a genial, peaceful guy that just seems content with who he is and what he does.  It doesn’t seem like an earth-shattering transformation  while it’s going on, but when I thought about the movie after, it really hit me how much he changed and how much for the better.

Sorry for the delay in posting this – again.  It was one of the tabs on my browser, half-written, for days and days.  I think I’m going to do another combo review next – a rap roundup, if you will, of some major hip hop releases of the year, like Lil’ Wayne and T.I. and maybe something else.  Stay tuned.

I also got a chance in Dallas to do a lot of listening to music, so I’m all set for a little while as far as subject matter for the blog goes.  First up is a CD that’s been growing on me steadily for a few weeks, after I got my hands on it much earlier(it was then ignored for a long while).  It’s called Los Angeles and it’s by this guy who calls himself Flying Lotus, which sounds both like an emo poem and a karate technique.  But neither of the two have much to do with the music, which is kind of like dubstep (a genre that I touched upon in this review, in which I linked to this Wikipedia article that attemps to explain it), but since no one really wants to come out and just call it dubstep, I don’t think I’ll rock the boat.  I think it may be that this album has a little brighter feel than the generally overpowering dread that powers dubstep.  It’s instrumental hip-hop at its core, I guess.

A quick way to decide whether or not you will enjoy this album is to think to yourself: do I mind almost constant, sometimes-subtle, sometimes-not static as an instrument in music? Because it’s used basically the whole way through, and if you’re going to be annoyed by something like this, small as it is, then it’s best you skip it and ignore what’s going to be a positive review from me.

Of course, that’s only a first test.  If you don’t mind static, then the rest of the music is still left.  Like all instrumental hip-hop, it’s focused on the beat, which goes beyond just drums.  As far as I know, the drumbeats here are all drum machine or samples, which is fine.  But there’s also the prominent sub-bass, which is what makes me think it’s a lot like dubstep, and some auxiliary percussion like the bells in “Camel”.  That means that to get the full effect of this music, don’t listen to it on crappy laptop speakers.  These beats are simple and cool, and they subtly progress in each track like a good little instrumental track should.  But the tight packaging of each track, as opposed to painfully long techno songs, make this a very accessible record for the electronoob.

Above the beats, all bets are off, as the (electronic) instrumentation is different on each track and is always super-cool, though there’s a very strong common thread throughout the record.  That’s how I would describe this whole album – just plain cool.

To get a little bit more specific, a few of my favorite tracks are “Comet Course,” a bit more uptempo than the rest of the album, and a bit more cosmic, as the title suggests, but still in the overall milieu and an awesome beat, “GNG BNG,” which has two separate and completely awesome beats which I always bounce too, and “RobertaFlack,” which seems a lot like just an electronic version of a cool jazz track.  Very mellow, very groove-oriented, and with some wispy female vocals snuck in there (that happens more often as it gets towards the end of the album – still, we call it instrumental because the voice is just part of the mix – wholly an instrument as opposed to that term being lauded upon just a great singer, ahem Fleet Foxes).

P.S. – Did I mention that Flying Lotus, real name Steven Ellison, is Alice Coltrane’s great nephew? Alice Coltrane was John Coltrane’s wife, don’tcha know.

P.P.S. – Thanks to the one person who voted in my last post’s poll.  I know it’s only been a couple of days, but really, guys? I thought somebody read this blog.  I guess it’s just a little more masturbatory than I thought.

Dear Science may wind up as my favorite album of the year, and even so it’s a little disappointing.  That’s just a function of the ludicrous expectations an album like Return to Cookie Mountain creates, especially when it’s just the second album by a band, especially a dynamic band like TV On The Radio.  I think that a lot of die-hard fans like myself have reacted like myself – initial shock and ambivalence, followed by a gradual warming.  This is not an album like TV’s first two, but then, Return to Cookie Mountain wasn’t like Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes either.  The third album by any band gives you a sense of what they’ll be in the future, and TV On The Radio have told us here that they’re going to keep changing and keep surprising.  Thank fucking god.

Dear Science is not really a rock album.  Not at all.  The closest genre I can pin it on is funk, but only because it’s so funky.  It’s not really funk either, more like where funk wants to be in 20 years (maybe post-funk? Yeah, I like that).  But this album isn’t so uniform, so I think I’m just going to go track-by-track, like a real fanboy.

1. “Halfway Home” – Damn catchy, the most memorable song of the bunch (though not really the best).  The beat is almost as propulsive as “Wolf Like Me,” but the vocals keep it more snakelike and soulful as opposed to charging like its predecessor.
2. “Crying” – One of my three favorites on the album.  I like the little tight guitar figure, something that we really haven’t heard from TVOTR much.  This is the closest to funk or soul that they get throughout the album, and I think it really colors the rest of the whole piece.  Kyp Malone establishes himself here as on almost equal footing with Tunde Adebimpe as a singer, and he sings just about the same amount on this album.  Their voices are subtly different, Malone’s a bit more versatile, Adebimpe’s a bit stronger.  He sings all three of my favorite songs on this album, but that’s not Tunde’s fault.  By now though, we know that Kyp’s a better songwriter.
3. “Dancing Choose” – Okay, Tunde raps here.  That’s cool enough.  But if you need more, a) he can really do it, b) his lyrics are really clever, c) the chorus is really catchy, and d) like on nearly every track, the horn section is badass.  There.
4. “Stork & Owl” – Least memorable track on the album.  Kyp Malone does some great work with vocals, and the production is all there and cool, but something doesn’t mesh with me.  I think this is what separates Dear Science from You & Me, meaning that You & Me is better by just that much.  Not a lot, but I don’t have any bones with any song there, and this is just a little bit off.
5. “Golden Age” – And just when Dear Science was about to lose momentum, here comes another off-the-wall-in-its-funky-awesomeness track.  TVOTR loves itself some Track 5 – “Mister Grieves” from Young Liars, “Ambulance” from Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, “Wolf Like Me” from Cookie Mountain, and now this.  There’s nothing really eloquent to say here, just listen.  I can only say that this is the most immediately appealing (read: mainstream) song they’ve ever done, and the second of my three favorites.
6. “Family Tree” – The only real mellow track on the album.  “Stork & Owl” and “DLZ” are both downtempo, but they have a lot of angst that they work with, whereas this reminds me a little of Coldplay, except, you know, better.  There’s delicate piano throughout, but the minimalist percussion (drum machine? Jaleel Bunton, what say you?) keeps the pace slowly going.  This is not TV On The Radio, but it’s very lovely and nice.  It works.
7. “Red Dress” – And back to the awesome funk.  The best lyrics of the album open this track, and it only stays awesome from there: “Fuck your war/’Cause I’m fat and in love/And the bombs are fallin’ on me/fo sho/But I’m scared to death/That I’m living a life not worth dying for.”
8. “Love Dog” – This is more like the TV On The Radio I know.  A little shuffle with some vibes, some “ooh”s from Tunde, and you have just another very good TVOTR song.
9. “Shout Me Out” – Straightforward, catchy, relaxed pop.  Constant guitar triplets in the first half add depth and keeps the song moving forward.  And then it breaks loose and we get the classic “Amen break” drum beat, scientifically proven to be the most propulsive beat in music.  Really good song.
10. “DLZ” – Tunde’s voice owns this track.  The way he growls the word “nevermind,” turns a word that normally is the most passive into a war cry.  Jesus.  Deep, dark funk.  The production can be credited for the dark feel, with the drums’ echo and the horns section.  I love this goddamn song.
11. “Lover’s Day” – This song is the third of my three favorites, and it’s an “I’ma sex you up” song in the classic vein of “Sexual Healing”.  The only twist here is that it’s a celebration, a rejoicing of carnal sex on an epic scale.  The song just gets bigger and bigger, even though the lyrics stay ludicrously intimate, like “I’m gonna take you/I’m gonna shake you/I’m gonna make you cum/Swear to God, it’ll get so hot/It’ll melt our faces off.” Yeah.  That other C-word was used, in a non-smutty and non-ironic way.  Did it just blow your mind? No? Well, it’s cool anyway.

The star of this album throughout is unquestionably David Sitek’s production.  As Sam Walker told me when we geeked out to each other about this album, this production is unbelievably immediate.  The music isn’t clouded in haze like Desperate Youth or the way prog-rock seems to be going these days.  It’s catapulted into your face, but in a very unique way, because that’s the only way Sitek knows how.

I will now wipe the fanboy semen out of the inside of my pants, and hope that you will forgive me and continue to read this blog, because it won’t happen again on our second date, it’s just that it was just so hot, oh god, oh god…..

That’s good, because this weekend might be my most insane weekend ever.  Friday night is a decades costume party for a friend’s birthday (I’m going in a zoot suit), Saturday morning-afternoon is a frisbee tournament, Saturday evening another birthday party, Sunday morning-afternoon the continuation of that  same frisbee tournament, Sunday evening my birthday party, which is really just going to a Born Ruffians concert in Cleveland.  Homework, we hardly knew thee.

Speaking of party, there isn’t a party on Earth that could top the jubilation Harold and Kumar must have felt at the instantly-classic bottomless party in Harold and Kumar 2: Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Oh sure, the party has very, very little to do with the plot of the movie, as do most of the events, but it is easily the most memorable scene.  It’s hard to forget full frontal nudity, both the easy-on-the-eyes female kind and the as-hard-on-the-eyes-as-two-diamonds-scraping-together male kind.  HK2:EGB follows much the same formula as the first movie: Harold and Kumar are constantly on a singleminded mission, but spend more time sidetracked with crazy people in crazy situations than actually moving toward their purpose.  And Neil Patrick Harris is a crazy bastard.

This movie is not as fantastic as some people make it out to be, but it’s also by no means bad or even mediocre.  It’s a funny movie with some pretty serious flaws.  What pushe HK2:EGB into the positive side is the great delivery of every single line by John Cho (Harold).  He is so pitch-perfect in this movie, even making mundane lines funny.  If I type out, “We’re on a plane to Amsterdam.  It’s the weed capital…of the world,” nothing special.  With Cho’s delivery, it becomes a quotable quote.

Kal Penn as Kumar is funny too, he has some great lines, but he gets scenes stolen from him left and right.  Mostly by Cho.

Rob Corddry’s character, the unbelievably stupid Homeland Security agent who is the profiler and the massive racist, is pretty divisive.  People who love watching assholes and who don’t mind horribly bigoted actions like dropping pennies in front of Jews as an interrogation torture technique will probably like his character.  People who quickly get tired of Al Qaeda and North Korean jokes will not.  I was kind of on the fence, but I definitely didn’t like him.  I’m on the fence about whether I hate him or not.

Neil Patrick Harris is a god.  Anyone who’s seen this movie or Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog, reviewed on this site, probably knows this by now.   I just wanted to let you know, whoever you are.

Also, keep an eye out for “Terrible” Terry Tate.  I really wanted him to tackle Rob Corddry after the grape soda incident.  Just know, we got Triple T up in this bitch.

I’ve done plenty of watching movies recently, not so much listening, and some creative writing.  So we’ll go easy on the music reviews for the time being, but being at Oberlin – meaning being within Oberlin’s majestic file-sharing network – should give me plenty to stock up on.

My first review of the semester is Martin McDonagh’s brainchild In Bruges, actually his first feature film.  It’s quite ambitious for a debut, though he must have had some confidence based on the fact that his only other studio film, a short subject titled Six Shooter, won the Oscar for best live action short back in ’04.  In Bruges, like Six Shooter, is an incredibly dark comedy.

I’ve never seen the short film, so I’ll stop making comparisons at this point.  In Bruges is about two hitmen, Ray and Ken, played greatly by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, ordered by their boss to hide out in Bruges (pronounced broojh), Belgium, after a job gone bad.  We don’t exactly know what exactly went bad, or why Bruges, but this movie isn’t about the mysteries of that.  Gleeson and Farrell take time debating it out loud, so the audience doesn’t have to get too preoccupied with it.

The entire film’s formula goes as follows: the dialogue is hilarious – exactly what you imagine British/Irish repartée to be in film, with some midget and drug jokes thrown in (Lots of midget jokes, actually),  And the action and plot events are black as the night.  Everything goes sideways, people’s past actions come back to haunt them, etc.  And when I say “formula”, I don’t want that to be taken as an insult.  I really only realized this about the movie now, and I saw the movie a couple of weeks ago.  It didn’t tarnish my viewing at all.

The writing in this film is a joy (see above, British/Irish repartée), with lots of merry cursing (“You retract that last bit about my cunt fucking kids!”) to liven it up.  Colin Farrell seems like kind of a divisive, or at least divided, actor.  He has mostly done pretty bad movies, but has made a couple interesting choices, and he seems to be getting better into his 30′s.  I personally liked Alexander, though it was a bit long.  I thought Farrell was great, although overshadowed by the even-more-interestingly-careered Val Kilmer in their scenes together.  Here Farrell is very good, if not the strongest actor in the movie.  He really knows how to get a laugh, it’s when he gets weepy that he drops off a bit.  But not all that much.

The strongest actors are Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, Fiennes a bit more so.   Gleeson is paternal, wise, workmanlike, a bit presumptuous, and a bit simple.  Those may seem contradicting; they don’t to me and aren’t in the movie.  Fiennes is a cunt. (The movie’s words, not mine.  But I would have to agree.) A wondrous, wondrous cunt who, when his wife tells him to stop bashing a phone against a desk in anger (“It’s an inanimate object!”), screams “You’re an inanimate fucking object!” (Farrell notes, “Jeez, he swears a lot, doesn’t he?”)

This review was pretty crappy and fragmented, because it was written in spurts over a month’s time.  I promise to come back stronger with my next review.  Keep your ears to the ground.

The reason I felt the need to sum up was because I think I’m going to take a break until I get to Oberlin, which is August 19th.  This next week’s going to be very crazy, and this blog would complicate things too much.  But I will check up every so often to see if anyone else wrote reviews to fill the void (hint, hint).  But once class restarts, I will be in a creative writing workshop, so get ready for creative writing pieces to start becoming a bigger part of this site.  I don’t know if they will take the place of reviews the day they post them; I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I knew Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson first when he opened for TV On The Radio at their free awesome concert at McCarren Park Pool last summer, and I thought he sounded a lot like Alec Ounsworth of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but he seemed really cool and he was as good as any opener-for-an-opener I’ve seen.  So when I saw Pitchfork review his debut album, and I found it available online, I wanted to give it a try.  Wouldn’t you?

Well, having given the album a really good listen or two, I can say that my comparisons of MBAR to Ounsworth were not as accurate as I had thought, but not completely off.  His self-titled album (Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, for those keeping score) is at once classic singer-songwriter fare and anything but.  Listeners can tell that his studio recordings are just beefed up versions of songs originally meant for one man and his guitar, and his songs are very personal (and fucking DARK); but his influences of Grizzly Bear and TV On The Radio (GB’s Chris Taylor produced the album, and TVOTR’s Kyp Malone contributed to it as well in ways that I’m not exactly sure about, but I’m guessing they at least included backup guitar) take the songs to a shambling, ethereal place reserved for the aforementioned bands that have such a clear idea of their own sound that they can do anything within it.  And speaking of shambling, ethereal places, I should mention that this album is entirely about drug use and depression, using personal experiences which are way more intense than I anticipated.

Well, not every song is chiefly about drug use, but it’s all at least inspired by it and tangentially having to deal with it.  Album opener “Buriedfed”, also the best track on the album (why does that always happen? Have some place to go, people!), is a story about a man who kicks open the casket at his own funeral and the crazy things that happen to him after.  But there’s also an aside about drugs, in which MBAR slurs, “Reckless ruin is killing high/A great, fine victory we’re still alive/My, my, what a surprise/I got home late, I don’t care/Better late than never, dear.”  It starts out contemplative and mournful, and turns into a rousing anthem (though I don’t want any anthems to exist for drug use or kicking open caskets) and campfire chant.  It’s also one of two songs whose lyrics I could get in their entirety; the only other one was second track “The Debtor,” which is more directly, and more poetically, about, ahem, drugs.

In it, Miles mumbles, “Tried to stop the bleeding/It’s a shame that you failed/The red fell so hard, it hailed/Tried to kick on Tuesday/But I didn’t succeed/The air was too thick to breathe.” I don’t want to imply that MBAR is unintelligible, he just acts like the druggie he portrays in his songs, and was before and after this album was recorded back in 2006, though he, if you read the article I linked to, is clean now, meaning he smokes a ton of weed, but nothing else.

After reading that article, I found that MBAR fascinates me.  If his success grows, he will have lived the rock star life to its fullest, in the best and worst ways.

As a whole, this album is very compelling, and musically interesting, but it lacks charisma after the first few songs, which means that even at a reasonable length, this album drags.  But then again, that’s the difference between MBAR and bands like Grizzly Bear and TV On The Radio: they’re more developed, more confident, so they know what to do with their sound.  So I can’t give this album a positive review, just a pretty good.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to his next.  I think Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson can go places, especially if he finds something better to call himself.  Jeez.

Magnolia is incredibly dense, incredibly deep and on an incredibly wide scale.  Clocking in at just over 3 hours long, this movie screams epic.  It interweaves nine separate storylines, all taking place in the San Fernando Valley.  PTA said he wanted to make “the epic, the all-time great San Fernando Valley movie”, and I can’t help but think that he succeeded.  In fact, there’s so much to this movie that I’m going to have to resort to bullet points, and I don’t know how far that will take us:

• I just read the Wikipedia article for this, and it really gives you a sense of the depth of this movie, what with all the storylines and the thematic elements and such.
• John C. Reilly is a chameleon.  He can be as silly or as serious as he wants, he can be in fucking Step Brothers or he can be in an incredible string of Oscar bait movies like Boogie Nights (also PTA), Chicago, Gangs of New York, The Hours, and The Aviator.  I just want him to come back to serious roles again, so he can be remembered for not just being Will Ferrell’s sidekick.  Then again, an Oscar nominee who makes viral comedy videos is amazing.  Oh, well.  By the way, he’s incredible here as police officer Jim Kurring.  That was my original point.  He seems to be one of three purely good souls that are main characters here.  The other two are about to follow, but I just want to say that if you want to remake any movie that had Karl Malden in it, please please please cast John C. Reilly.  They seem like they’d be perfect for each other’s roles.
• The second good guy is Philip Seymour Hoffman as Phil Parma, and word has finally gotten out that this could be the best actor in Hollywood.  He hadn’t yet come into his own here, and I personally liked his work from Boogie Nights better, but he does the “I know how serious this moment is” cry very well, and a lot.
• The final good guy is child actor Jeremy Blackman as quizboy Stanley Spector.  He’s solidly in Haley Joel Osment territory here, with big eyes that are very serious and a way of carrying himself that gives away how intelligent he is, or his character at least.  His character is possibly the most interesting.
• I really wish Tom Cruise wasn’t a fucking douchebag Scientologist.  The douchebag part is more important, because everyone still loved Isaac Hayes, even after he quit South Park over his beliefs.  RIP Chef.  I wish Tom Cruise wasn’t a douchebag because he’s a great actor, really really creepy and awesome here as Frank T.J. Mackey, a guy who teaches other guys how to, you guessed it (actually, I really hope you didn’t guess it), turn women into their sexual playthings.  He gets a great reveal.
• I get to talk about Jason Robards again! He’s so amazing here as “Big” Earl Partridge, probably my second favorite performance, and he gives vitality to a character on his deathbed throughout the whole movie, while adding the authenticity to that very deathbed.  He’s one of those actors that’s always himself as the role, like George Clooney or Cary Grant, but he makes it work better than anyone I’ve seen.
• My favorite performance goes to William H. Macy as former quizboy Donnie Smith, a man who was warped by the childhood that Stanley Spector is on his way to having – his dad took all his prize money, and as he says, “I really do have love to give! I just don’t know where to put it.”  He’s so great and twitchy, I just love his character even though he has such little inherent pathos.
• 728 words and only talking about the actors so far.  Jeez.  Okay, so the writing is so good it’s beyond comprehension.  The way that unrelated stories come together without you even realizing it – I mean, it’s not your classic come-together story in that all the stories converge on one point, it’s that every story influences another story in the movie, whether at the beginning, middle or end, and these connections are what the preamble of the movie talk about, how interlocking circumstance is really what makes the world go round, and if enough circumstances come together, real shit goes down.  And it goes down.  In addition, the dialogue has that great combination of being real and being cinematic and dramatic that now seems to be PTA’s trademark.
• Let me backtrack for a second.  Paul Thomas Anderson is an incredible young filmmaker.  His three biggies have been, in succession, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood.  All of them are long, deeply interesting, engaging films that make you think, and hard.  He is on my shortlist of filmmakers to watch as I grow older.
• He was the writer-director on all three of those films, and his directing here is also incredible, if a little Kubrickian in its mercilessness.  Its long closeups on the pained expressions of Cruise, Robards, Philip Baker Hall as game show host Jimmy Gator (also great here), and others are probably the trademark of this film.
• Thematically, apart from the chance encounters thing that I talked about earlier, a lot of this is how familial relationships shape our interactions with the rest of the world, with Robards influencing Cruise, Stanley’s dad fucking him up, and others.  It’s a really tough theme, but PTA handles it well.
• PTA’s director of photography for all of his movies, Robert Elswit, was great if not “oh my god look at that camerawork” great here.  Elswit did win the Oscar for TWBB, though I thought that Roger Deakins deserved it for the second best movie of last year, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.  Still, Elswit rules – he also did work for Michael Clayton, and surprisingly, Good Night and Good Luck, and anyone who’s seen that movie can tell you how much he did for that movie.

SPOILERS

• If this film is remembered for one thing, it will be the frogs.  Oh my god, the frogs.  Why they fell from the sky, no one tells you when you’re watching the movie, except for Stanley when he says, “This happens” at his moment of childhood serenity that happens for most kids at the end of movies of depth (see the two good M. Night movies, Star Wars Ep. I, literally any teen movie that has a protagonist).  See the wikipedia article for its significance, I’m still not entirely sure about it, but what I do know is that it’s done so artfully and epically that I don’t need to know what it means.  It seems like it fit at the time when a beloved TV icon was about to kill himself after revealing that he may have molested his daughter, when the greatest misogynist the world has ever known cries at his father’s deathbed for abandoning his mother, and when a quizboy-turned-thief has a change of heart for the wrong reasons.
• I didn’t know that kids say remarkably profound monologues when they pee their pants.  I want to see if that happens a lot.
• The whole issue with Donnie Smith and the braces made me want to cry in the best way, because it’s such pure heartache and unadulterated, adolescent love in the craziest way that I have no idea how else to react.

Okay, nearly 1400 words is enough.  Hope you got through it all and don’t hate me for it.  I know you won’t, Kriti, I’m talking to everyone else.

So okay. Joe Camerlengo (“boy vocals, acoustic guitar” as he credits himself on their myspace) has kind of a strange, effeminate singing voice (“He pretends he knows how to sing, but he knows he knows how to pretend to moonwalk.”) that might turn off listeners who prefer their frontmen manly (I’m pretty sure he’s studying to be a nurse), but it really is quite good and fits the songs perfectly. And these songs are just absurdly cute, witty, and uplifting.

I first heard their album “Missent To Thailand” in 2006, and at first I just didn’t know what to make of it. I kept thinking that it sounded so sloppy, but I couldn’t stop listening to it. It felt like a guilty pleasure, but then I just succumbed. Particularly to the song “L-O-V-E” which is so adorable and catchy and sort of inspiring. This is one of the 3 songs that was re-recorded in a studio by a professional producer Mike Green for free. The new version loses some of the DIY charm, but is probably more palatable to most. In any case, “Missent To Thailand” is a wonderful way to pass a half hour with pop songs that sound so warm that it’s a wonder so much other music of its ilk comes off sterile and crunchy (whoa, I just used the word “ilk.” What the hell?). Ultimately though, it was recorded with a “cheap computer mic” and now and then it does get a little in the way. But not often. Of it, they write, “it sounds different than we do now.”

And I am okay with that, because since then they’ve released a bunch of wonderful songs marked with higher production values, more diverse and accomplished instrumentation, and I haven’t thought of them as a guilty pleasure once since. In fact, I really appreciate those things most of all now which originally I wasn’t sure about. The band is kind of a great role model on the whole equality front, with two of the band members being girls, the frontman being uninhibitedly and unabashedly girly (one song is called “Obviously, doctor, you’ve never been a 13 year old girl”, another “Cute boys are for kissing.” Another has the lyrics “What’s a girl like me doing in a place like this? What’s a pretty girl like me doing in a place like this? I don’t know. I’ll have what he’s having.”) and making great, really positive music.

And when the song “L-O-V-E” builds to this moment, it’s kind of impossible to be a cynic or pessimist about life and love. You might need to hear it to believe it, and it’s not on their myspace or purevolume but there is a rendition of it on youtube, so check it out at the end of the post. This is kind of a weird review, but I’m not sure what else to say except maybe I’ll do a more proper one when “Keys to Cat Heaven” comes out.

I’m seeing stars
And cartoon birds circling my head
Like an anvil wrinkled me
So this is love

All I’ve got up my sleeve is love
And I know it’s good enough for you (for you for you)
For us

-Max Jacobson

So I crossed another movie off of my IMDb top 250 list, and this one was a biggie, one of the real culturally important ones: Vertigo, the Hitchcock classic.  Having proclaimed myself a Hitchcock fan to those with whom I talk about movies, I’ve often received incredulous looks for this gap in my film catalogue.  I’ve now seen Vertigo, Strangers On A Train, North By Northwest, Psycho, and Rear Window, and I think those are the real biggies.  There are plenty more on the list – he’s the biggest director on it, which I guess means that IMDb users consider him the best director of all time.  Though that’s not exactly fair; he was extraordinarily prolific in comparison to almost every other filmmaker, so quantity is not exactly the best indicator.  Still, most of his titles are substantially up there.  But I digress.

No longer will I have to apologize, explain away, or shrug my shoulders, for I now know what all the fuss was about, and it was certainly about something.  What separates Vertigo from the other Hitchcock movies I’ve seen is that there isn’t much of an undercurrent of suspense.  Oh, sure, there are suspenseful scenes – Hitchcock is called “The Master of Suspense” after all – but we aren’t kept on the edge of our seats the whole time.  Most of the movie involves star James Stewart as John “Scotty” Ferguson either following or interacting with Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster, trying to decipher the mystery of her and Carlotta Valdes, whose spirit appears to have possessed her from beyond the grave.  Even after the semi-climactic scene about two thirds into the movie, the pacing is very naturalistic – the scenes are functional, the plot is structured in a very rational way, so every scene is necessary, but just a logical progression.  Scotty isn’t on the run from the law, isn’t trying to prevent his own death, he’s just doing his job at first, and trying to piece his life back together later.

SPOILERS

I absolutely loved the writing decision to have Judy actually write out the letter, then tear it up.  It’s one of those brave choices in a movie – that, coupled with the flashback, lets the audience know the real deal though the protagonist doesn’t, turning it into a different kind of movie than it was before, less about figuring out what’s really going on and more about Scotty’s increasingly disturbing attachment to Madeleine.

It’s such sick pleasure along the lines of the Henry Fonda scene in the movie that I just reviewed last week to watch Jimmy Stewart turn into a crazy person who tries to control someone’s life, just the kind of scumbag you would hate with every fiber of your being if you caught his story too late in its arc.  But you still kind of half-sympathize, especially with the knowledge that the person who drove him to it is now the victim.

END SPOILERS

Stewart is, of course, still a god here, like in every other damn movie he makes.  You just can’t find fault in his performances, especially under Hitchcock.  What’s interesting here is that he doesn’t do the same trick he does in lots of his other roles that I’ve seen, where he kind of tilts his head back and looks down the bridge of his nose when he’s confused or curious about something.  No, that move is too warm for this movie, and Stewart’s character, while pleasant, is not really a nice guy, and gets less and less so as the movie unfolds.  I love that both Stewart and Hitchcock recognize that this is not just another Jimmy Stewart movie – it’s not really about him, it’s about what happens to him.

I also love that the title of the movie as a theme isn’t beaten to death, it’s only selectively used at key points.  This makes the scenes where it is used more effective and anxious; because every time Scotty goes up stairs, we hold our collecive breath a little, so when the vertigo does kick in, we don’t exhale, and that’s how Hitchcock wants it.

Novak is serviceable here, but as far as I’ve seen, Hitchcock’s only great female role/performance was Janet Leigh as Marion Crane in Psycho.  All the other female leads have just been functional, exactly what they needed to be, but not eye-catching in anything but looks.

Yawn, just another fantastic movie to add to my ever-expanding list of favorite movies on facebook.  But I refuse to subscribe to the growing trend of people who want to distill by saying bullshit like “I like movies, all movies” or “movies that don’t suck”, or “Tarantino, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Bay…no, that can’t be right…” It’s okay to have a bunch of favorite movies.  I have a huge amount of favorite movies; that doesn’t make Fargo not a favorite movie just because it’s not on my top 10 list.  I love Fargo!

P.S. – It seems to be deadlocked 1-1 between those who want to stay out of the know, and those who want more detail.  I think I’ll just cordon off the spoilers until I get a definitive majority, like they do it over at AintItCoolNews.com.  Cheers all.

Pineapple Express is another way.  Pineapple Express‘s way is to describe how you can accidentally witness a murder while getting high on the clock when you work as a process server, and suffer raging paranoia for hours which snowballs into getting hunted down by crooked cops and hitmen, and getting caught in the middle of a massive drug war.

Pineapple Express is another in the line of classic Apatow comedies, though this is another one that mixmaster Judd only produced; Superbad geniuses Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote the script for this, and relatively unknown (but apparently hugely respected in the industry) director David Gordon Green helmed this stoner action comedy.  Because as far as genres go, once you have this movie labeled as such, it really is that straightforward.

First, let’s get the character actor handshakes out of the way.  Craig Robinson and Kevin Corrigan were amazing as the hitman combo Matheson and Budlofsky.  Robinson is better known for his roles as Darryl Philbin in The Office and as the bouncer in Knocked Up, and he’s never been anything but laugh out loud funny, mostly because his deadpan, while rivaling that of Chevy Chase or Bill Murray in its pure comedy, is more an “I’m gonna fuck you up if you say one more word” deadpan than a “What a hilariously awkward situation” deadpan.  Corrigan, best known to me as terrifingly sketchy party host Mark in Superbad and for his role in the show Grounded For Life, in which he played Kramer, if he was less physically weird, and just turned up the “I’m probably a wanted felon for a number of reasons” sketch-o-meter to 11, is also great, if only for the way he just shrugs his shoulders while disappointing or deceiving whomever he’s talking to.  But he’s not as funny as Robinson.

Or James Franco, who the big handshake goes to.  He’s so hilarious in this movie because he pulls off the “I’ve smoked so much weed that I am never not high” vibe so well it’s scary.  Check his face when he and screen-sharer Seth Rogen realize their car battery is dead.  Unbelievable.  Danny McBride as Red here is also incredible, more in the Craig Robinson school of daring you to laugh at his painfully straight face.  Rogen, writer and star if you haven’t been taking notes, lets other characters play off him for the most part, but he gets his fair share of laughs, mostly in his exchanges for his high-school girlfriend, Angie.  He’s 25 in the movie, by the way (26 in real life).

The real star of this movie is the writing, though.  It’s less like Knocked Up and Superbad because it’s not structured or reliant on one-liners for its comedy.  The comedy here is in entire exchanges or scenes; the way things are put together, like Rogen and Franco in their holding cell at the head dealer’s hideout, punctuated by, you guessed it, Robinson.

For my money, however, all the funniest scenes come from just watching how Rogen and Franco react to things when they’re high, most of all being their onset of paranoia in the woods, which I really can’t go into a lot of, because I already spoiled the surprise for Ben before he saw it with me (I had seen the film clip on Comedy Central the day before).  Oh well.

On that same token, I’ve been trying to go easy on the spoilers in my movie reviews.  Would any of my readers prefer that I go into more detail, or continue to save the movie for those who haven’t seen it?  Feel free to comment with your response – every time you comment, I get an email, and I love to get emails.  They make me feel like the world recognizes my existence.

P.S. – Hey, this is the 50th post on this blog! What a ways we’ve come, eh? Thanks to all of those who have prevented me from losing my faith in this site so far.  Keep up the readership, it means a lot!

…and THAT WAS THE FIRST AND LAST VIDEO GAME REVIEW BY IAMDC!!!!! CONFETTI!!!!!!

Okay.

Los Campesinos! is the name of an enthusiastic young Welsh(!) band – so enthusiastic that they put an exclamation point in their band name, which is also each member’s stage name; hence, Gareth Campesinos! is the lead singer, Aleksandra Campesinos! plays keyboards and also sings, and so forth.  There are seven Campesinos!’s, meaning seven very young, very active Welsh kids jumping around and playing through popbescence, a term I just coined for music centered around youth and coming-of-age.  Man, that would have been useful for the intro to my Walkmen review.  Oh, well.

Los Campesinos!’ debut full-length, Hold On Now, Youngster… is what I imagine high school emo poets are really trying to say when they make poems about dead leaves and shit.  Los Campesinos! sing about sexual frustration, trying desperately to impress the opposite sex, and just…fucking growing up, dude, you know?  I’ve never heard music outside of Weird Al that relied so much on the lyrics to be appreciated fully.  When I hear lyrics like “You should have built a statue, and so I did of you/And you were ungrateful, and slightly offended at the dimensions of it/You said you looked less like the Venus de Milo, and more like your mother in a straitjacket” in the song “We Are All Accelerated Readers”, that makes me sit up and take notice, and google song lyrics like they want me to.  The main tragedy of this album for American listeners is Gareth’s intense Welsh accent which makes the lyrics kind of hard to understand if you a) aren’t watching him sing them (music videos help), or b) don’t look up the lyrics.  By the by, I found lyrics for it here.

This album fascinates me, to be honest.  I do sincerely regret not having listened to it a week earlier, so it could further put The Walkmen in perspective, but it mainly fascinates me because it seems so in the moment, so contemporary (two songs are titled “Knee Deep at ATP”, which is a series of music festivals, and “2007: The Year Punk Broke (My Heart)”), but feels like something that people are going to love for a long time, one of those albums that will be rediscovered and rediscovered with new mini-generations of young, awkward indie kids who can really connect with these lyrics on a visceral and intellectual level.  I guess I get a feeling of importance from this record.

That being said, I don’t think it’s one of my top albums of the year so far, because of the paradox of necessary-to-the-music words that are hard to understand, as well as an abrasiveness that goes beyond intended levels because let’s be honest, these guys can’t sing very well.  So that’s that for the review, but I want to post a few more snippets of song lyrics, because they’re really fun to read.

From “Knee Deep At ATP”

And though underexposed, i could see from the quality, his K Records t-shirt and you holding his hand
And I know he took you to the beach, I can tell from how you bite on your cheek, every time the sand falls from your insoles
And when our eyes meet, all that I can read, is “you’re the b-side”.

From “My Year In Lists”

You said “send me stationary to make me horny”
So I always write you letters in multicolours
Decorating envelopes for foreplay
Damn extended metaphors, I get carried away

From “This Is How You Spell ‘HAHAHA, I’ve Destroyed The Hopes And Dreams Of A Generation Of Faux-romantics’”

The trails on your skin spoke more to me than the reams and reams of half finished novels you’d leave lying all over the place
And every quotation that’d dribble from your mouth like a final, fatal livejournal entry
I know
I am wrong
I am sorry

• This is the only album I’ve heard of Billy’s other than his classic I See A Darkness, which was around a decade ago.  It is said that Lie Down In The Light is the counterpart to that, what with the former being about darkness and despair, and the latter being all about the affirmation of life and such.  This one isn’t quite up to snuff, but it’s still very good in its own right.
• Will Oldham, AKA Bonnie “Prince” Billy, has a voice that has so many quirks that I often wonder if he could possibly sing the way he does intentionally.  It just seems like he misses a lot of notes in really charming ways.
• As much as I See A Darkness was a record that skewed the expectations of conventional folk music – when the lyrics were supposed to be heartbreaking, the backing music was warm and welcoming, and in a song called “Death to Everyone”, he sang, “Stars turn, balls burn/Coming kids are raging”, which sounds a lot like it’s about ejaculation, Lie Down In The Light is just plain straightforward folk.  There are fiddles, songs of love and companionship, and songs about faith.  Sounds about right.
• I was about to say “this is musically unassuming and uncomplicated, but charming,” but then I remembered that I was really impressed by how subtly great the arrangements here are, only after a few listens.  If you listen to this album, really roll up your sleeves and listen to it multiple times, because you owe it to this record.

There, that’s it.  Sorry about the two hasty reviews in a row, I’ll try to be better tomorrow, but if this blog has taught me anything, it’s not to make promises about future content.  Later alligators.

• Hey, I didn’t know a Geico caveman was in this movie! Oh, wait, that’s Charles Bronson as Harmonica.  I know every guy in this movie was made up to look leathery and sun-toasted, but God, he looks like the inside of a catcher’s mitt.  Oh well, it makes him look badass on the countless extreme close-ups on his face.
• For any fan of 50′s-60′s movies, having Henry Fonda do what he does at the beginning of this movie as Frank is like having Barack Obama discovered as the guy in what everyone thought was R. Kelly’s sextape.  It’s twisted.
• After this, I’ll move on from the acting: Fonda, Bronson, Jason Robards as Cheyenne, and Gabriele Ferzetti as Morton are all beyond words as far as their acting goes.  The latter three are the ones with ambiguous motivations, and all of them at times look more menacing or sinister than Fonda.  Classic Leone directing, and my dad would be proud of me for giving big ups to Robards, who I think is the best of all of them here.
• Ennio Morricone is the most famous movie music maker other than John Williams, and he’s in top form, with his separate themes for all the main characters, giving each of the characters a bit more depth without anyone saying anything.  Brilliant.
• Before Frank comes on screen for the first time and after he leaves for the last time, this movie slows to an almost unbearable crawl.  I don’t think it’s because of his acting, I think it’s because without him, there’s no conflict, but still some plot, so Leone is kind of unsure of himself.
• I love the revealing of Harmonica’s motivation.
• I don’t think I would be remotely alone if I were to say that this is overall Leone’s best work other than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, despite what I said about the movie slowing down.  If it didn’t have those problems, I’d seriously consider it right along with GBU, seriously.

Maybe another movie review tomorrow, who knows; but I do have a general outline for my next few music reviews – I’ve done a bit of catching up with music released earlier this year that I hadn’t heard at first, so watch out for Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Los Campesinos!, Flight of the Conchords, and Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson.

The series officially starts off with an untitled 7-minute special made to support Children in Need. Despite being so short, it’s a pretty important piece connecting the first series finale and the new season. The Doctor has just regenerated, and Rose, his companion, is confused and frightened of this new man. It’s David Tennant’s first appearance (aside from the brief cameo at the end of The Parting of the Ways), and he is instantly endearing, with his infectuous enthusiasm.

Next up is the 2005 Christmas Special, “The Christmas Invasion”. The Doctor is unconscious, recovering from regeneration, but Earth is being invaded. Rose is still apprehensive about this new Doctor, and her apprehensions only increase as he is too weak to do anything about the invasion. It makes for a really fun and well-written episode, and in true British fashion, tea saves the day. We also meet Harriet Jones, now Prime Minister (introduced in “Aliens of London / World War Three”) again. and Penelope Wilton does a fantastic job playing her. I could go on and on about it, but I’ll stop now.

“New Earth” kicks off the official second series with the Doctor returning to the year 5,000,000,000 in response to a message received on his psychic paper. A sisterhood of feline nuns is cloning humans to experiment on finding cures to fatal diseases, and an old enemy, Cassandra (from “The End of the World”) is also plotting to gain a new body. This is not one of my favourite episodes, it seemed contrived and very preachy. The kiss between Rose (possessed by Cassandra) and the Doctor seems to be shoehorned in, and the Doctor is incredibly moralistic about the cloning.

The Doctor meets Queen Victoria in the next episode, “Tooth and Claw”. This is a pretty good episode, the drama is absolutely perfect, and the twist at the end (I won’t spoil it) is completely unexpected. Queen Victoria is portrayed very well, but the giggly games that Rose plays with her get a little annoying. This episodes also seeds the spin-off show, Torchwood, pretty strongly.

“School Reunion” is one of my favourite Doctor Who episodes ever. Sarah Jane Smith and K-9, two of the best-loved Classic Doctor Who companions, return. The episode plays really well on the themes of, as Mickey puts it, “the missus and the ex”, Rose is startled to discover that the Doctor has always had companions, and Sarah Jane is saddened to discover that the Doctor hasn’t ever talked about her. It’s very poignantly written. Oh, and did I mention that all this happens while they save a school from its staff, who just happen to be huge bat creatures intending to conquer the universe? Elisabeth Sladen does an absolutely stellar job, and Sarah Jane now has her own spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures, which is a totally awesome show, too!

The Doctor has a new companion for “Girl in the Fireplace”, Rose’s boyfriend, Mickey Smith, who joined at the end of “School Reunion”. My favourite Doctor Who writer, Steven Moffat, writes this one. He handles the rather touchy subject of the Doctor having something akin to a romance very subtly and well, and the relationship between Reinette (Madame du Pompadour) and the Doctor is wonderfully portrayed. And clockwork robots in ridiculous 18th century French costumes? Priceless!

Next is a two parter set in an alternate Earth – “Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel”. The Cybermen, one of the Doctor’s most famous classic enemies return, and are absolutely wonderful villains. Rose’s father is still alive in this universe, but Rose never existed, and Mickey also has a parallel persona, named Ricky – this adds quite some drama to the proceedings. Roger Lloyd Pack, who plays Barty Crouch Sr. in the Harry Potter movies is John Lumic, the creator of the Cyberman, which is really interesting to me as a HP fan, because David Tennant, the Doctor, plays Barty Crouch Jr. in them. Mickey has finally found a cause and a place where he is accepted, so he stays backon the alternate Earth to help rebuild, which I didn’t really like – Mickey made a very different companion, which is a good thing.

“The Idiot’s Lantern”, set during Queen Elizabeth’s coronation and the introduction of the television in Britain, is a pretty mediocre episode. An alien is “feeding” on people’s brains through the new invention of television. This episode is preachy again, which I really dislike – the Doctor and Rose humiliate a selfish father / husband, and we’re supposed to cheer. I really liked the portrayal of 1950s England, though.

Next up is a two-parter again, “The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit”. The Doctor and Rose arrive on a sanctuary base on an “impossible planet” – it is orbiting a black hole without falling into it, to find trouble, of course. The episodes were pretty good as a whole, but were spoiled (to me) because of all the Doctor/Rose shipping and corny lines like “If there’s one thing I believe in.. I believe in her! [Rose]” while talking about belief in gods and demons. The Doctor finding the “lost” TARDIS just in time also feels a little contrived, but is understandable.

“Love & Monsters” is one of the most divided episodes in fandom, but I really liked it. It’s proof that Doctor Who can make episodes of any genre, which is one of its strongest selling points. The episode centres around L.I.N.D.A, a Doctor fan group of five people that develops a strong friendship until a new member arrives. It’s a very human story, and it’s refreshing to see ordinary people portrayed on the show. It’s a huge departure from regular Doctor Who, but that’s what makes it unique.

“Fear Her”, set during the London 2012 Olympics, had a great plot, but not very good writing. Matthew Graham, who wrote this episode, also wrote for Life on Mars and does a very good job there. :/. I don’t really have very much to say about this episode – the idea had lots of potential (drawing people, and the people getting sucked into the drawing), but the execution was bad, and the whole “Olympic torch is a symbol of love, and love will save the world” plot resolution was absolutely horrible.

Finally, we get to the season finale, “Army of Ghosts / Doomsday”. I’m usually not the biggest fan of Doctor Who season finales – they always try to make them as BIG as possible, and lose the story along the way. The Cybermen and the Daleks return, and it was very amusing watching two sets of killer robot-y things advance on each other, yelling “DELETE!” and “EXTERMINATE!” respectively. Rose leaves (finally!) and I guess I was supposed to be sad, it was certainly written to evoke sadness, but I was just really excited – I’m not happy with her character devolving from a smart, sarcastic working class girl to a giggly, petulant teenager in LOVE with the Doctor. The series’ arc word (mentioned in every episode of the series), “Torchwood,” finally comes to a conclusion, as the finale takes place in Torchwood One in London (a very different place from Torchwood Three, in Cardiff, where Torchwood is set.)

Overall, it was a very inconsistent series, especially towards the end. As someone said, though, you’re only a true Doctor Who fan if you have things to complain about for every episode, but still keep watching the show .

I’m overjoyed at how my contributors have stepped up their game of late.  Their reviews, probably as a result of being less frequent, are overall better than mine, which I love.  Feels like bringing in hired guns (and if you wish to see that analogy explored further, check out my own contributor bio over at BOTO).  And I also know that this is probably a punctuated equilibrium thing, and that these runs will be the exception, not the rule, and I’m perfectly cool with that (but I do dare my contributors to prove me wrong).  Still, if it gets me to step up my game, awesome.

This review was long-delayed, and I think it was because I wanted this review to be bigger than the album itself, because I think this jumped to my favorite album of the year basically the second time I listened to it all the way through and has only solidified itself as such since.  I was just looking for an angle, and thanks to previewing it with Ben and Kriti, I think it’s well-developed enough to finally write about here.

I think that this album is important in balancing out this year in music.  Up until this album’s release, the physical version of which will happen on August 19th (you can buy it digitally for 5 bucks that go to charity here! Do what I did and be a good person!), the great indie rock albums of the year, which in my opinion are: Devotion by Beach House, Red, Yellow & Blue by Born Ruffians, Visiter by The Dodo’s, Nouns by No Age, and Vampire Weekend’s self titled album, have all been youthful.  When I say youthful, that can be applied in different ways; Born Ruffians is about teenage awkwardness and the love that is borne and hampered by it, Vampire Weekend is so college it just switched majors from “Being like by all the cool kids” to “Being dismissed, but still secretly liked, by all the cool kids”, Nouns is an album that glories in being undeveloped, ragged, and teenaged, The Dodo’s are just generally bright-eyed, and Beach House implies in both theme and the name of their band what they stand for – a summer vacation.

The Walkmen stand for none of these things on their newest album, You & Me.  The one word that has stayed in my mind about it is mature.  All of the albums mentioned above were either the first or second full-length from their band; this is the Walkmen’s fourth LP, fifth if you include their note-by-note cover of Harry Nilsson’s 1974 Album Pussy Cats, titled Pussy Cats Starring The Walkmen, and you can really hear how confident they are in their sound.  In addition, all the above albums except for No Age were released in March or earlier, with Nouns coming out in May.  The music industry had taken its yearly break for summer tours and festivals, and those of us who can’t blow hundreds of dollars one weekend for a music festival have been without something fresh for a while.  So here comes You & Me, the perfect introduction to the second half of the music year, hopefully an indicator of things to come, in addition to showing us why child’s play is just that.

Beyond that, however, you can tell that this album is about adult love, not young love.  And this isn’t even the adult love I talked to Kriti about, where you go on a first date, a second date, and you begin a relationship with having a relationship as the stated intent (as opposed to young love, where you see a girl in your chemistry class and you Chem Is Try to get her to make out with you).  There’s both the “I’m still in love with you, after all these friggin’ long years” love (“On The Water”), the “we’re both older and without love, so what the hell” love (“Canadian Girl”), there’s the “I’ve spent so long being your friend that I’m fucking tired so I wish were in love” love (“Seven Years of Holidays”), and a different kind for every song.  None of these loves are physical, except in “Red Moon”, where the “you’re beatiful” line still feels more like an emotional thing than lust.

This album really could be considered a concept album, in that I can imagine that every song here can be sung on some old riverboat going gently down the Mississippi River, just with different characters with different histories on each song.  This goes beyond just maturity, it’s world-weariness that’s downright charming and enrapturing.  I mean, all of these lyrics (and this is a mark of incredibly well-developed songwriting) could be just read as a poem and still be understood and appreciated.  In “Postcards From Tiny Islands”, lead singer Hamilton Leithauser croons: “I’ll be drunk before too long/And I’ll keep up this sappy talk/This letter does it all/It’s too much to enclose/These postcards from tiny islands/do more than you know.”  Leithauser is best known for having the most Dylan-esque voice around, if a little raspier and higher, but throughout the album he takes the similarities a bit further, adding Dylanesque sentimentality to his bag of tricks, while keeping the songwriting a little less verbose, a little more “read-between-the-lines”.

On a purely musical level, this album doesn’t really have any flaws, and isn’t all that ostentatious.  The drums from Matt Barrick are totally solid, but not spectacular like on previous records, but that’s more than tolerable; this isn’t as drum-centric as 2004′s great Bows & Arrows was, but as Drowned in Sound, the only journalistic review I could find already published, says, “The musicianship is almost routine in its excellence; Matt Barrick’s drums in particular kick and roll throughout, propelling the songs with a sick-at-sea feel…”

The classic Walkmen sound is back, with lots of space in the music for echoes (not reverb) from the guitar and the cymbal crashes.  But the difference here is that unlike previous albums, either with the keyboard in their first two or the brass band in A Hundred Miles Off, the four key rock components (vocals, guitar, bass, drums) are the only primary sounds on the album.  A couple trumpet flourishes aside (most notably, and beautifully, in “Red Moon”), this is a self-contained effort, and I think the album benefits from it.  These songs don’t need a keyboard to make them better; they’re great as is.

Individual highlights, while hard to pick out since really, every song is great, are probably these: “Red Moon”‘s slow, slow waltz is absolutely sublime, and “Canadian Girl”, which follows it, shows Leithauser channeling Motown with his “ahh-ah-ahh’s”, and flexing a bit of versatility.  “On The Water” is the most aggressive song on the album, but it still manages to keep some benign influence to prevent it from being just another repeat of their breakthrough single “The Rat” from back in ’04.

Well, 2008, you don’t seem to be done cranking out the great music, but you’ve still got a lot of work to do if you want to surpass ’07.  If TV On The Radio matures like the Walkmen have in their third effort, that should make it a lot easier.

A movie review will probably come tomorrow.

I admit it: I am a Joss Whedon fanboy. It truly is hard to deny; I’ve enjoyed just about every project he’s ever made. He manages to take truly outrageous concepts, such as a cheerleader fighting vampires or cowboys in space, and turn them into intelligently written, entertaining character plays. All his TV shows would certainly be classified as dramas, but they pack as much of a comedic wallop as any sitcom out there. Based on Whedon’s creative tendencies (including his attendance of Wesleyan University), I would imagine that he got picked on a lot in high school, because even his shows about adults still explore insecurities that the outcasts always have for the cool and popular kids, who Whedon, of course, always ends up cutting down to size.

So when I heard that Joss & Company had created a 45 minute webisode in response to the boredom of striking, I felt intrigued. Then I found out it was a musical. Most of you probably know that most TV-length attempts at musicality are abysmal. Scrubs’s attempt at a musical episode was mildly entertaining at best, thanks to its 3-minute song about feces (cleverly using the word “poo” in just about every line) and Dr. Cox’s ranting song, which, although relatively clever and enjoyable, is simply a blatant theft of “Modern Major General.” Also complicating matters is the reality that, like most TV casts, the actors on Scrubs CANNOT sing. Despite this cloud of doubt, I found myself optimistic about this project, because Whedon had already succeeded once before in making a musical. His 6^th season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, entitled “Once More With Feeling”, was easily the high-point of the series, and featured half a dozen songs that to this day I still find myself humming absent-mindedly. Sure, it helped that many of the cast members could sing, and that he could explain away the sudden singing by the appearance of a demon that, you guessed it, causes people to sing (a mild benefit of having such a ridiculous TV universe to begin with). But Joss spent a year writing the 50-minute show (well, a year teaching himself to play the guitar and then writing the music and lyrics), and the effort showed. This new project, entitled Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog, was done in half that time, without an existing universe of characters to build off of.

The three acts feature Dr. Horrible, a wanna-be super-villain who is always thwarted by his nemesis, Captain Hammer (or “Captain Hammer: Corporate Tool”). Meanwhile, he is unable to work up the courage to talk to a girl at the laundromat that he has a crush on. Neil Patrick Harris is absolutely brilliant in this role, bringing out his characters goofiness and determination as he works to defeat Captain Hammer and win the girl of his dreams. Of course, Dr. Horrible is the protagonist of this story, as Whedon’s spin on the typical superhero vs. bad guy dynamic is anything but typical. Horrible honestly believes, “The Status is not quo. The world is a mess, and I just have to rule it,” while Captain Hammer seems less concerned about the helpless & homeless and more about his hair and his “hammer.” Their struggle is, expectedly, played as a love triangle with the lovely lady, because in Whedon-land, everything is a love triangle.

The first few minutes of the episode feature Whedon’s usually sarcastic writing as Dr. Horrible riffs on just about every cliché of the superhero universe (trans-matter rays, freeze rays, Wonderflonium, and applications to the Evil League of Evil), spotlighting Harris’s impeccable comedic timing. In a summer with this never-ending onslaught of superhero flicks, it’s nice to get some perspective on how ridiculous some elements of the comic book shtick can be. Then the music kicks in.

The songs are truly fantastic throughout this show, and quite noticeably parallel those in “Once More With Feeling”. The first song features a short, bouncing chord before the protagonist launches into the lyrics – venting their insecurities while performing a mundane task, which of course draws attention to how out-of-place both the character, and the singing, really are in this scene (an example of Whedon’s ever-present self-deprecation). Harris has a great voice, as does Felicia Day in the lead female role. Nathan Fillion is really in the show solely for his ability to play a hilarious, overbearing asshole, and he fakes his way through his songs with intense bravado and half-decent tone. The songs themselves (there are a good dozen or so) bounce their way from haunting slowness (in “On The Rise”) to power chords (in “Brand New Day”) to light and catchy (in “Freeze Ray”), but just about all of them are quite enjoyable.

In any review of Dr. Horrible, special praise should go to Neil Patrick Harris. Every subtlety of his performance is spot on, from his eye-twitch when he says, “Putting the power in…different hands” to his delivery of “crazy random happenstance.” His delivery of “On the Rise” is also a show-stopper, and it’s the song I keep singing to myself when I’m bored. I hope he gets more mainstream roles after his return to power with this and Harold and Kumar. Nathan Fillion plays a one-dimensional part one-dimensionally, but he owns that one dimension of absolute dickishness. And Felicia Day (she and Nathan are 7^th season Buffy veterans) contributes a simple but very pleasant performance as Dr. Horrible’s love interest. Also throwing his two cents in is Simon Helberg (of Studio 60 “fame”) as Moist, making him (I think) the only actor to have done TV work with both of my favorite writers, Whedon and Aaron Sorkin. By the way, look for Joss’s brother and co-writer Jed as a member of the “Bad Horse Chorus.”

The Dr. Horrible character is sympathetic, but I found myself unsure of the third act the first time I watched it. I got through the first two acts and enjoyed them immensely. However, I had forgotten that this was Joss Whedon, not just a hilarious YouTube video. The third act, featuring perhaps the best songs of the show, reminds the audience that Whedon meant Dr. Horrible as a full story, one that is supposed to actually make you care about the characters, as opposed to simply using them as gags to set up punch-lines. The final shot of Dr. Horrible in the third act, after his final triumph, is downright haunting. Even during Penny and Billy’s first interaction when Billy can’t really pay attention to her, Whedon portrays the ultimate conflict in Dr. Horrible’s life between the girl and his dream of being a feared super-villain. We know from the beginning that he can’t have both, because Penny is nice and probably wouldn’t look kindly on a life of crime and villainy. With the first few lines of “A Man’s Gotta Do,” the audience can see that Dr. Horrible’s ultimate priority is in his life of crime; he’s locked into playing the part of the bad guy, just as Captain Hammer has to play the cocky foil to his plans.

Bottom line is that everyone should watch this. It’s proof that great filmmaking can be done with a small budget, some extras, frozen yogurt, a fake mustache for Neil Patrick Harris, and an ability to write good songs. Buy it on ITunes for $4 if you want or wait for the DVD (it was available for free download for a few days, but apparently Whedon has dreams of paying his crew and his actors), but please give it a chance. It’s 45 minutes of pure entertainment, and it doesn’t really have a slow point. I know that some of Whedon’s projects seem cheesy at first, but they turn out to be totally sweet.  Sometimes television is layered like that – there’s something totally different underneath than what’s on the surface…like with pie.

As far as classifying them into a genre, I’m sort of at a loss. It takes the best elements from emo, country, and christian rock (ooh, everyone just stopped reading) and manages to be all kinds of wonderful. The sound is lush and angelic, with singer Nathan Pettijohn leading the back. He sings, “I’ve made my peace with the world and all that it brings. I’m holding my own.” It’s a matter-of-fact and honest take on spirituality. Later, he sings “I hope Jesus is the one, but what if we’re wrong and he doesn’t come? Who will give us love?” I love it! It’s not blind faith, it’s a hope. I can relate to that!

Religious music always gets me interested, in a “maybe this will show me where all that faith comes from” kind of way. On Mending, Pettijohn doesn’t constantly sing about Christianity, but there are the references. One lyric that keeps sticking with me is “Babies scream when they are born, so I’m not afraid of passing on.” It’s all-at-once a beautiful thought and frustratingly stupid. Because no, babies don’t scream because they’re transitioning from heaven to earth, it’s just really uncomfortable and scary being born. But the sentiment remains charming and well-sung, and for a passing moment it had me sold. Especially because it’s delivered betwixt gorgeous harmonies and delicately plucked guitars that continue to bring to mind images of angels with amplifiers.

There’s a moment in “Walking on Stones” that convinced me that this is is noteworthy stuff. Everything drops away except the acoustic guitar and (again angelic) vocalizing and it’s jaw-droppingly beautiful, and then there’s a nearly menacing electric guitar hello, and then it’s like your stomach dropping out as the whole band kicks in again.

At the moment, the entire album is available to stream from their purevolume page, so try before you buy. I say it’s pretty nice stuff. Maybe some people will find it lacking balls? I’m not sure what people wouldn’t like about it, but probably the balls thing.

-Max Jacobson

As a female living in New York City during the school year, seeing “Sex and the City:  The Movie” provided all of the impetus I needed to revisit the T.V. series and see whether I couldn’t review it from a more objective standpoint than I could have five years ago.  As it turns out, the comfort of watching the entire series in a dorm room, in order and with a critical eye, was far preferable to the glances stolen behind a mother’s shoulder.

Admittedly, the show is easier to review from a defensive stance:  the allure of New York City’s glamorous backdrop; the equally exotic fashion labels that are constantly name-dropped; and the chemistry among the fabulous four (Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha), who shop, meet for breakfast, and have sex ’til they drop is rarely contested when debating the merits of the sitcom.  I’ve therefore decided that the bulk of this commentary will address the most frequently aired complaints against SATC.

-”SATC is so unrealistic and promotes a culture that places too high a premium on labels and other expensive finery.”

Sure, the girls have impossibly extravagant lifestyles – brownstones in the Upper East Side or apartments in the Meatpacking District?  Closets filled not with skeletons, but with hundreds of pairs of Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik shoes?  Four successful women unremittingly discussing men?  While none of this may seem feasible, remember that, unlike other popular sitcoms set in New York City (“Friends” comes to mind), SATC features a quartet, comprising a newspaper columnist, a self-employed public relations executive, a corporate lawyer, and an art dealer, whose members can conceivably flourish in an expensive metropolis.  (Carrie’s financial situation seems less believable than the others’, though – if anyone can tell me how a weekly columnist and, later, freelance writer for Vogue magazine can survive comfortably in New York without a day job other than “sexual anthropologist,” let me know.)

The key to pulling off a dramatic comedy about four single women is the self-deprecating humor of its four main characters.  The girls consume as much inexpensive Chinese food as they do pricey martinis.  Carrie sacrifices a trip of international excess with Amalita Amalfi because she admits that she has to pinch pennies.  Miranda bakes a chocolate cake rather than purchase a $94 gateau because her boycott of men can only get so expensive.  Although they are proud of being able to support themselves comfortably in the big city, the girls accept their financial shortcomings with tongue-in-cheek, good-humored grace.

But then the girls tackle less humorous situations and respond in similarly realistic ways.  The girls vilify Charlotte’s decision to quit her job to become a full-time mother, insisting that financial independence is part of her leverage as an individual.  Charlotte gives Carrie her wedding ring, without which her friend could not afford the down payment on her apartment because her excessive spending habits have disqualified her from being a viable loan contender (could Carrie’s penchant for excessive footwear have been spotlighted more negatively?).  Miranda realizes that she must move to Brooklyn and take care of her ailing mother-in-law because of the commitment she made to her family.  The idea here is that, throughout the series, the girls are presented with everyday conflicts about money and independence and respond in kind.

When in conflict, the girls prioritize intimate romance over expensive items and surrender lavish lifestyles in Paris in the name of “ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love,” as Carrie does with Petrovsky.  Do women everywhere unconsciously crave Louis Vuitton bags and Manolo Blahnik shoes more than they did before witnessing the barrage of materialism that SATC entails?  Maybe, but the intelligent viewer can also internalize the self-deprecation of the fabulous four and realize that, while the fashion-related items in SATC function as symbols of the girls’ go-getting personalities and unapologetic self-expression, the show places a much higher premium on values than on retail therapy, as friendship and love are dubbed the real “labels that never go out of style.”  (This line is actually from the movie, but who’s keeping track?)

-”SATC promotes the objectification of men.”

It is true that Carrie has referred to at least one man as “something she’s trying on.”  But just as they do with the girls’ outlandish spending habits, the writers of the show make sure to punish such behavior.  Several examples of such karma-driven retributions prove that the series should be taken with a grain of salt and that the girls’ exploits should not be tried at home:  for instance, when Charlotte attempts to “double-book” dates, both men, who turn out to be charming and engaging, reject her in an unfortunate encounter among the three involved parties.

But the girls are made to do more than atone for their behavior; rather, they realize that men are neither socialite contenders for marriage to be ranked based on an aggregate score of wealth, looks, and manners, nor are they simply people with whom to have sex and promptly dispose of afterwards.  By the end of the show, Miranda marries her down-to-earth, funny, and consistently supportive yet assertive best friend, whom she was initially all set to dismiss as a one-night stand.  The commitment-phobic Samantha finds her perfect match in a devoted, practical, and (of course) sexually astute young actor.  Carrie, of course, is looking for, and ultimately finds, something Big.  And, perhaps most notably, Charlotte ends up with a man who is “so not her type.”  He is not a refined socialite:  instead, he is an uncouth divorce attorney.  He seems unaware of his baldness or his stocky stature, but he is all too aware of Charlotte, and, while he proves intolerant of her religion-based guilt-trips (“I gave up Christ for you, and you can’t give up the Mets?”), he unabashedly adores her.  It turns out that Charlotte was not looking for a handsome, rich, charming bachelor; rather, she fell for the opposite of her ideal partner, simultaneously highlighting the show’s real take on perfect men and further condemning the worst kind of bourgeois materialism that her previously-held views on men espoused.  SATC values individualistic men and independent women equally, which proves all the more appropriate when analyzing the couples that result at the show’s conclusion.  What do these couples say about “Sex and the City”?

By the end of the show, the couples in SATC complement the best in each character and mitigate their negative traits:  Miranda learns to compromise, Samantha embraces intimacy, Carrie reevaluates her true goal in life, and Charlotte rejects her old prejudices.  But the men are not merely catalysts for the girls’ self-actualization, as they are legitimate characters unto themselves, with their own appeal and conflicts.  While the girls may try men on for size throughout the show, those with whom they find a perfect fit are so fabulous precisely because they are not objectified:  they challenge the girls’ preconceived, reductionist notions about men.

-”SATC is shallow, not smart.”

As I’ve already focused on the subtle interplay between materialism and values and on the generalizations and realizations concerning men, I’ll address specifics of the writing.  Firstly, the show is littered with razor-sharp one-liners:  ”Cupid has flown the co-op.”  ”Everywhere I looked, people were in twos.  It was like Noah’s Upper-West Side, Rent-Controlled Ark.”  ”Samantha could always be counted on to take life’s lemons and turn them into Spanish fly.”  The dialogue is undeniably clever:  although the plot has recently been reduced in parodies to four women clustered around a circular table, trading euphemisms and puns while sipping Cosmopolitans, the characterization of the bubbly Carrie, the sardonic Miranda, the starry-eyed Charlotte, and the self-possessed Samantha is never more sharp (or humorous) than during their chats over brunch.  Furthermore, the way each episode is framed around Carrie’s thematic questions and narrative insights on the girls’ sexual escapades is instantly recognizable in the world of television:  to watch SATC is to witness the formation of each of Carrie’s articles.  Coupled with its nuanced treatment of materialism, men and self-esteem, “Sex and the City” is ultimately as smart as it is fabulous.

Lastly, my favorite thing about the show is that the plot embraces real, compatible love:  Carrie ultimately eschews the grand gestures of Aleksandr Petrovsky and the confining affection of Aidan Shaw because she realizes that she is looking for something Big.  In the end, that is what “Sex and the City” is about:  prioritizing your relationship with yourself before attempting to find someone who can love the things you love about yourself.

Despite my personal gripes with the show (Why do they keep dressing the fair-skinned, redheaded Miranda in red?  Why does Carrie’s narrative voice become increasingly shrill as the show goes on?), I’ve realized that there’s no need to defend “Sex and the City.”  It’s a light-hearted show about living in the city in a Big way.  What could be more fabulous?  Of course, the answer is, actually living the dream.  Is such a thing possible?  Maybe I’ll start writing a weekly column and get back to you in a few years.  Blogging seems like a decent start!

Anyway, The Sting is one of the all-time classics, so I’m told, directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, AKA two of the all-time Hollywood pretty boys who could act to boot.  Their other great duo feature was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, also directed by Hill.  The two movies have a little similarity in the way the two leads play off each other – in both, Paul Newman plays the wisecracking, confident senior partner, while Redford plays the roguish, dashing young gun with a chip on his shoulder.  Hill’s directing probably has a lot to do with it, since lots of the looks these guys give are the same – the looks, I feel, are more a director’s influence than the delivery of the lines, since it’s harder to control the way an actor says each word than whether or not he raises his eyebrows, and here it’s Newman’s smirk and his sideways glance, and the way Redford looks down, rolls his eyes and grits his teeth when he gets shut up or has to take an earful.

If you think that analysis was a little too subtle, then you probably think that The Sting‘s greatness is a little too subtle, because on the surface, it’s like an older, smaller-scale Ocean’s 11 – a movie about con men getting personal, getting dangerous and looking good doing it.  But where the latter movie is the slickest of slick entertainers, the former is gritty and more believable.  In Ocean’s 11, you never really feel any sort of danger for the characters; Terry Benedict seems intimidating, but he’s more comical than anything.  Robert Shaw (also known as Quint from Jaws) is downright scary as Doyle Lonnegan, and in other scenes, you really think there’s a chance Redford’s Johnny Hooker could die at the hands of Lonnegan’s men.

You also never lose the feel of the Great Depression era that the film is set in.  That’s why it won/got nominated for all the technical Oscars; it had an authentic feel, even if it was inaccurate (and I didn’t look it up, so I don’t know.  I’m not a Wikipedia fiend all the time, like some people).  The music was also great, and it won a terribly-worded Oscar for that as well, so I’m not sure what its qualifications were.

I actually don’t have much else to say about this movie, because it was so straightforward, which is I think what people dig about it so much – it didn’t try to make anything more artistic or more stylized than necessary to tell the story well, and the film is really carried by the actors.  Other than the three that I previously mentioned, who were all incredible, Charles Durning was great as the Joliet crooked cop who goes a little overboard and winds up in over his head.  If you recognize that name from something recent, it’s because he won this past year’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actor’s Guild.  As a character actor whose IMDb page is too long to believe, he really did deserve it, and I can’t wait to see the movie that he’s most famous for, Dog Day Afternoon.

I’ll see if I can knock one more movie review off tomorrow before I get back to random combinations of music and movies.  Also, keep on the lookout for some more guest contributors making their debut, because I’m looking forward to them probably more than you guys all are.

Anyway, Patton, directed by Franklin Schaffner, was made in 1970 and is based on a couple of biographies of the famous World War II general.  One of the biographies, A Soldier’s Story, was written by General Omar Bradley, who is the second most prominent character in the movie, so unlike most “based on a true story” or even “inspired by a true story” movies, I found myself assuming and believing that most of the events of this movie actually happened.  That’s a lot of the appeal of the movie for me, to see a story like this that would more often than not be told by smiling bearded historians with voices so dry that firemen would attach the Sahara desert to a hose to douse them.

So that’s what we have here: a living history.  And just what, exactly, gives Patton such life? Well, let’s start with the obvious: George C. Scott as the title character is phenomenal in both subtle and obvious ways as the eponymous character; a role for which he won the 1971 Academy Award, though he rejected it on the grounds that he did not feel he was competing with other actors.  But enough has been said about his performance already, though I will just say that I loved how many different things his crazy-ass smile could mean throughout the movie.  Karl Malden as Omar Bradley was his usual incredible self; he’s just one of my favorite character actors from bygone days, and this is late-period stuff for him, but he’s still the same stand-up guy he was in On The Waterfront.

The music in this film, though, is the standout to me.  Anyone with a modicum of pop culture or film knowledge will recognize the trumpet figure that is prominent throughout, but the incorporation of bugle calls and military themes and their modernization was just incredible to me.

Patton’s character, though not the creation of the movie, fascinated me to a great degree, what with his interest in reincarnation and his granite moral center that was incredibly predictable, though it gave him an outward appearance of unpredictability.  He stands as one of those enigmatic, brilliant military leaders that seems to come around once an era, yet maybe not ever again.

The cinematography, sound, editing were all incredible, because it didn’t glorify the battles, even though they were shot from afar.  The shots had a touch of realism, that feel that the movie was a documentary played by actors that I really dug.

Still, for all of its technical beauty (and there was a lot of it), I couldn’t help but feel that the movie wasn’t seen through fully, for the single reason that so many of the one-line characters, the non-central supporting cast, seemed stiff and poorly directed/poorly cast.  The string of stiff, dull small characters irritated me.  But that was really my only gripe with the film – that it wasn’t perfect, and this was its imperfection.  It’s still one of the better movies I’ve seen, and I can imagine wanting to rewatch it with someone willing to give it some time with me.

So I started this review uncharacteristically early and finished it uncharacteristically late as a result.  Just goes to show me, once you have a routine that works, stick to it.  Stupid Matt, stupid stupid Matt.

UPDATE: The Siren review has been submitted for review on BOTO, and will be up shortly, so head on over using the link on this page or on the handy-dandy sidebar.

In a blog post titled “But why?” they write, “A lot of individuals have been saying they would have paid for Howl. But you know what? We would rather have you spend that money on CDRs and burn copies for friends and family. Music is about sharing.”

I gotta respect that. I get that it’s a legitimate strategy for jump-starting a career, but it’s still a very modern and risky thing to do. They’re relying on the powers of word of mouth and self-promotion (from their myspace blurb, “The anticipation of hearing this act over a year in the making may be hard to withstand, however, it’s important to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were Empires.”).

So when I obligingly downloaded the zip file and noted the aesthetic of the cover (which curiously has the entire tracklisting on it) and the title I sort of expected some disposable, poorly recorded hardcore (not to knock that genre). Then, glancing at the pdf liner notes I saw that the one thing they ask in return is that you “PLAY LOUD. Thank you.” Uh oh.

So going in with that expectation, I was honestogod blown away by the first track, Spit the Dark. It’s a fantastic song that so caught me off guard and surprised me that I don’t even want to describe it. I want you to go download it if only for this song, and don’t be afraid to play it loud. I’ll wait right here.

Because, unfortunately, the album opens really strong but suffers from weird song order and trying to do too many things on one album. If the first song on an album makes a promise for what the album will be, then Howl doesn’t keep it. The first three songs are all radically different genres, though still distinctly the same band. It’s weird. I give them credit for experimenting with several sounds, but it seems to me that the band recorded a dance-rock EP, an experimental rock EP, and some filler songs, then put the best song first, shuffled the rest, and called it Howl.

I think most everyone will find a couple songs they love on Howl, but I doubt many will find an ALBUM they love. Personally, I’m not so much into the dance-rock vibe going on in some of songs. They’re good enough on their own, but they don’t feel like they belong on Howl. I dig the epic rock songs and the goofy acoustic songs. And so, because my main issue is the sequencing and genre misgivings, I decided to take a stab at how it should have been. My version is an 8 song, 28 minute album (compared to the original’s overlong 15 songs and 53 minutes).

1. Spit the Dark
2. Midnight Land
3. Believe!
4. Under the Bright Lights
5. All Night Long
6. Don’t Let It Fool You
7. Anywhere
8. Hayley

So if you get all jarred up, try making a playlist like this and give it a second shot (if you don’t, by all means enjoy the dancier songs). I’ve never done that before for an album, was that rude? To the band, I mean. Now I’m going to say some nice things about these songs so I don’t feel bad. Self-produced by Empires guitarist Max Steger, the band sounds really great. It’s so professionally done that it really is a marvel that it was made completely independent from labels and outside producers. You can really hear each instrument contributing– the sounds never cease to be the product of an instrument. And yet, they come together to really make something special. Do you know what I mean? I mean that there’s no suspension of disbelief about what it is I’m hearing. It’s a bunch of guys playing instruments, it’s not the musical manifestation of society succumbing to industrialization or something bullshit like that, and it’s better for it. Does that make sense?

Spit the Dark, Midnight Land, Under the Bright Lights, and Anywhere are the aforementioned “epic rock songs” and that’s really what I dig them for. Their epic-ness. Some of them have really great sing-along choruses, but all of them are successfully fist-pumping anthems. They’re nicely balanced out by the other four, acoustic-guitar based songs which range from the goofy acoustic Broadway-esque song that is “Believe!” to the relaxing interlude “All Night Long”, the possibly Radiohead-influenced “Don’t Let It Fool You” and soothing closer “Hayley.”

So it’s cool they put it out for free. I see good things in this band’s future. They’re super versatile, and singer Sean Van Fleet has a powerful voice and isn’t afraid to use it. So enjoy.

-Max Jacobson

I caught about half of Parts & Labor’s set at Siren by my estimation, and what I saw was pretty good, but it kind of annoyed me that singer B.J. Warshaw (who had a cool, Matisyahu-esque beard) sounded as close to Billy Joe of Green Day as Ben and Nicole said that Victoria Legrand of Beach House sounded like Feist, though Nicole tells me that he sounds just as much like the lead singer of Brazil (though I’ve never listened to them) than Green Day, so I guess I don’t know shit.

Anyways, they weren’t as boring as Islands, but were by no means memorable, so I almost forgot that I could review them as my third, and probably final, Siren-related review.  I was trying to decide between the Dodos, to whom I’ve already listened a million times, or The Helio Sequence, whom I never saw at Siren.  But that dilemma was solved.

When I looked up Parts & Labor in various corners of the internets, I was told that they were noise rock.  Based on their latest album, last year’s Mapmaker, I don’t really believe that.  I think they’re a little out there, but not as far as say, Dragons of Zynth.  They sound pretty close to early Green Day as a band, just with some craziness added on top, so in that vein, they can be considered like punk, I guess.  I’m never quick to label something punk; I have very little experience in the genre, and my first instincts are normally wrong in regards to anything beyond, say, the Ramones.

It seems a bit shallow to say that the reason they’re considered noise rock is because they have noise, but that’s pretty much it.  They have standard, real songs, they just add a little weird noise either at the beginning, somewhere in the mix in the middle, or more likely, at the end.  That’s really all there is to it.

They all seem to be really good musicians, which is refreshing.  Drummer Chris Weingarten is unbelievable on this album, plowing through lots of parts with incredible speed on multiple drums that I’m really pissed I didn’t take notice of while I saw them live.  Another key difference that makes their CD experience better than their live experience is that keyboardist Dan Frier takes more of the singing duties than in the live set, which makes me think less of Green Day, which is good, because I like to have a band have their own identity in my mind beyond something “that sounds like this other band”.

Unsurprisingly, Mapmaker‘s best song is its opener, “Fractured Skies”, which comes in on an awesome drum beat by Weingarten, which gets layered on top of it a guitar effects loop, followed by heavily reverbed vocals that make it hard to make out the lyrics at all (this goes for the whole album, but strangely, I don’t see it as a problem this time; there’s enough stuff going on for the lyrics not to be necessary), which builds into a great crescendo and release.  Then the release gets even better when they add a brass section later – gotta love the huge sound.

Although from there on out, the pacing of the album varies, with slower songs like “Long Way Down” and “Ghosts Will Burn” smack dab in the middle, the ridiculously fast drumming of Weingarten keeps the energy up the whole way – and I do like the idea of putting some balls-to-the-wall drums in a ballad to fuck shit up.  Seems pretty badass to me.

Then again, this album isn’t perfect.  I think some of the noise flourishes go overboard, and I think that it’s easy enough to make the lyrics of a song intelligible – if you take the time to write them, why not allow them to be understood? But as I said before, the second one doesn’t really negatively impact the effect of the album, I just think it’s a bit n00bish.

P.S. – I realize this review was horribly written, but I’m tired of writing music reviews right now.  After my Siren review for BOTO, I may be refreshed, but I’ll try to get a couple of movies in the next few days, after my off day tomorrow.

P.P.S. – Look out for Nicole’s inaugural review on IAMDC; I believe it is a review of the show Sex In The City.  We’re all waiting with bated breath, Nicole.

(Note: I just edited out about 200 words with more half-baked review philosophy. You’re welcome. In short: I’m probably only ever going to write about things I like.)

Starting with this EP that came out earlier this year via iTunes. It’s called Señor and the Queen by New Jersey band The Gaslight Anthem. It’s the follow-up to their debut album “Sink or Swim” which I can’t seem to find anywhere (including stores!). This is the first in a series of reviews called “Great Music Never Featured on Pitchfork Media.” Really though, it could just as easily be called “Cause for concern that my pop-punk phase isn’t a phase.”

Not that The Gaslight Anthem plays pop-punk, really. Brian Fallon’s gruff, charismatic singing and the bombastic guitar and drum backing could be punk, but the production gives it a fresh sound. It’s never abrasive, and oddly homey. As for pop’s half of the hyphenate, it’s not. This is punk rock if anything, with a dose of soul.

At just 11 and a half minutes and 4 songs, I can spare a few words about each:

The EP opens with the title track, Señor and the Queen. With five beats of the drum and a drawn out chord strummed, the song begins proper. These are the kind of songs that are wordy in a good way, that demand to be sung-along-to and that race you to the finish. The song starts fast but the tempo shifts about, and Fallon’s voice gamely navigates the tricks and turns.

On the next track, “Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis?” there are some of my favorite lyrics on the album. Check it out:

Now I got scars like the number of the stars, my head’s full of vipers. I got the dust of the desert in my bones, and they’re coming through the amplifiers.

But you gotta hear it. Here’s another tasty sample:

Walking in my old man shoes and my scientist heart. I got a fever and a beaker and a shot in the dark. I need a cadillac ride, I need a soft summer night. Say a prayer for my soul, señorita.

It’s got this great sense of world-weariness and americana (with a good dose of mexicana thrown in, with the constant use of señor and señorita, and the lyric from gorgeous closer “We like our choruses sung together / We like our arms in our brothers’ arms / Call every girl we ever met Maria / But I only love Virginia’s heart.”) But I’m getting ahead of myself…

On track three, “Say I Won’t (Recognize)” he sings an ode to the great american party, but hidden within is a ballad to this girl (named Maria, naturally) who he’s trying to get to come with him. In an interview, Fallon said the EP is “just about summertime in New Jersey and it’s about kids experiencing summertime. You know that weird thing that happens as soon as the weather gets hot and everyone goes crazy and starts going outside and there’s those parties that happen and carnivals everything like that-it’s just about that. It’s almost this romantic view of how life should be when you’re young.” And it is on this song that this is most evident. He sings “Come on out Maria and lose the tragic / Come on out Maria and we’ll show you some magic / Meet on the warm sand and waltz out twilight / and watch the carnival lights explode.” At first it’s a rollicking party song (which, ironically, probably wouldn’t play so well at parties…) with Fallon singing straightforwardly “We’re having a party, everybody swinging” at the beginning, but only with The Gaslight Anthem would that same song end with the lyric “Don’t make me dance all night alone.”

So to recap, the first three tracks are badass sing-along anthems with their “heart on their jeans,” and that brings us to the final song, “Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts.” This song is just magic. It’s not quite the requisite softy ballad, though I can imagine it being unfairly pegged as such. They really are all softy ballads, this one’s just the prettiest. He sings the chorus like it’s a future classic lyric, and the truth is that I kind of believe him. (“Still we sing with our heroes, 33 rounds per minute / We’re never going home until the sun says we’re finished / I’ll love you forever if I ever love at all / With wild hearts, blue jeans, & white t-shirts”)

So there you go. It’s a fair 4 bucks for a solid EP you can listen to over and over, and if you come to love it like me, go ahead and anticipate their new full-length album “The ’59 Sound” which comes out in a few weeks. Thanks for reading.

-Max Jacobson

I love DOZ, but I don’t love their music.  I like it, I think it’s pretty good.  They call their music “Afrotek”, and it’s just a bit (really, not a lot) less pretentious than it sounds for them to have come up with their own genre.  It really is a whole different animal, though; this music is fucking hard to describe.  Really, my TV On The Radio comparison isn’t fair.  Only on atmospheric “Anna Mae” are the similarities definitely there, and less obviously on closer…ahem, “Closer”, and beyond that, they are loud, they are unconventional, and they are black.

Don’t think that calling them black was for some stunted shock value or just to be funny; they wear their identity out on their sleeve here, like with the beginning of “Who Rize Above,” which combines a Jimi Hendrix-ish guitar dabble with hip hop self-introduction before launching into a raucous “beat explosion” coupled with the shouts and yelps of Aku O.T., the lead singer who can do anything he wants with his voice.  They then just jam at this ridiculous pace in their Esau to jazz’s Jacob, abrasively, but then again, they aren’t making this music so you’ll like it.  They want to “show their intent,” as they say in the above article.

The next track, “Take It to Ride”, sounds like a kind of parody of “Ticket to Ride”, but it’s really an apocalyptic version of Caribbean rap, as I understand it.  You get the little glockenshpiel (I think) figure, sounds pretty straightforward, and then you get unrelenting, half-screamed raps over equally unrelenting mashed guitars that mirror the original glockenshpiel beat.

But I haven’t even mentioned the best song on the album yet.  That’s second track “Breaker”, which, after a little pause from the opener, just breaks your skull with a badass guitar riff straight out of Guitar Hero that I did NOT see coming the first time I heard it.  It was one of my favorite moments in music that came out in 2007, looking back.  Another one comes a few seconds later, when the guitar goes almost to your breaking point in pitch, and hangs while Aku sings/yells “Send sweet, unholy breaker…” As he hangs on the “y” in unholy, the song just explodes in a fit of percussion and hard guitars which look a lot like this:

Aku O.T. being badass with a guitar

And the song goes on from there, in much the same vein of badassery.

Now, I can completely understand someone not liking this album, or not even wanting to hear it based on my review.  It’s some of the most out-there shit I listen to, and I didn’t realize it until I heard these guys at Siren right along with yawn-inducing Islands and when they gave Ethan a headache with measly laptop speakers.  I’m not going to push these guys on anybody.  I’m just happy and content in my knowledge that these guys are completely out of their minds and glorying in it.

Again, a bit of a short review, but two in one night will do that to a person.  You’re cool with 645 words, right? Right.

I only got to see Islands for about 45 minutes of what seemed like an hour and a quarter-long set at Siren Music Festival, and I was less enthusiastic about them than my companions, and we agreed that it was probably because I’d already heard them on their album, so it didn’t strike me as novel, and I had already pretty much made up my mind about the band.  But I’ll talk more about that in my upcoming (read: as soon as BOTO lets me) review of the festival on another, more widely read medium.

Arm’s Way, Islands’ second album, was almost as hard to make up my mind over than Coldplay, because it doesn’t just have both good and bad, it has great and horrible, often at the same time, and I think I know why.  The music is very compelling, lots of good, tight harmonizing here, with good energy throughout, but the lyrics are so intellectually bankrupt that I just can’t get behind them.  It just seems like lead singer/songwriter Nick Thorburn just looked for words that kind of made sense in a rhyming dictionary.  There’s no heart, no sincerity to them.  In “Creeper”, he sings: “Right from the start, I was stabbed in the heart/didn’t/know i wasnt breathing/didn’t know i had been bleeding”.  Groan.  From opener “The Arm,” he opens with “You faded into/a different shade/a completely different hue/of a kind of blue”.  And no, blue has nothing to do with the rest of the song.

Really, this album seems like a poor man’s version of Muse, the band that is huge everywhere but America, and probably the most mainstream of all of my favorite bands.  Muse’s songwriting chops aren’t really up to snuff in regards to the other bands I listen to, but the music is put together really well, and the music has a lot of charisma and a lot of “sing-a-long-ability”, in addition to an edginess that makes even the major-key songs seem a little aggressive.  Basically the same is true of Arm’s Way, only the songwriting is even worse, and the music is not quite as good, though it’s close.

Final gripe with this album: it’s long, and too one-note to get away with it.  Though it only has 12 tracks, it runs 68 minutes long, and that’s because the second half of the album is exclusively songs that are 5 minutes and up, with the closer, “Vertigo (If It’s A Crime)” being an inexplicable 11 minutes long.  But I’ll cut the review off here, to prevent similarities.

AintitCoolNews.com: Alexandra DuPont, Capone, Quint, Moriarty (companion piece with Hellboy II)

New York Times: Manohla Dargis

LA Times: Kenneth Turan

New Yorker: David Denby (WALL-E review on page 2)

New York magazine: David Edelstein (Mamma Mia! review on page 2)

New York Observer: Andrew Sarris

The two Davids are negative reviews; figured I’d add some ideological (EDITED) fluidity, but I don’t agree with them.

Das Boot is a German movie made in 1981, written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen and starring Jürgen Prochnow.  It is not the weird-ass drinking game featured in the climactic scene of Beerfest, though that also featured Prochnow, coincidentally.  I assure you, he is not a strangely non-threatening corporate villain here.  He’s a totally badass, half-crazy submarine captain.

This movie clocks in at 3 and a half hours, meaning it’s a real commitment of a movie, and like most commitments, you’re not really sure that everyone will survive the whole way through, and by the end, you’re sure everyone will not survive.

But let’s get one thing straight: this movie kicks total ass.  I would not have expected a movie that’s so dark and introspective to have so many awesome badass moments, but this movie was choc-full-o’ them, and most of them came from Prochnow.  He had this look that he would give from time to time that I would just pump my fist at, where his eyes would just narrow and slide lazily from a thousand-mile stare towards the person he was addressing, and he would break into a smile that was either rueful or sly, depending on the situation.  I really was thinking, “Wow, this guy’s either totally insane or the most sane guy ever, but I can’t tell which yet.”  However, as the movie progresses, I leant more towards the crazy side, though that really took nothing away from his character’s pathos.

Like with most of the movies I have reviewed positively on this site that may not be the most watched among my readers, I’m going to stray from spoilers, so I’ll focus on the technique side of things, since the plot is pretty consistenly great and in my mind, unassailable.

The writing: Awesome, because it has those long pregnant pauses that can build drama like words never can, and a great movie knows when to let a moment breathe; it also has those one liners that are like the word GRAVITAS!!!! scrolling across the bottom of the screen – like when the submarine is shipping out to sea and the reporter is taking pictures, Prochnow’s character says, “Take pictures of the crew returning, not putting out to sea.  They’ll have grown beards by then. It would shame the Tommies to see mere boys give them Hell. Baby faces. Ones that should still suck mama’s breast.”  He shows cynicism for the higher-ups in war, and for war in general, but he shows nothing but pride for his men, even though he knows they’re still children.  The perfect leader.

The acting: Beyond Prochnow, it’s mostly awesome, though there were a couple of the minor sailors I thought were just not developed actors – not really anyone’s fault, they needed to cast young, so they got young actors.  However, a couple supporting characters really caught my eye.  Heinz Hoenig played Heinrich, the boat’s sonar operator and medic, and it’s sad that the movie was made nearly twenty years ago.  Otherwise, I would have a new mancrush.  He’s completely magnetic, and that comes without overplaying a single line.  His performance was flawless.  Also, Hubertus Bengsch plays the 1st Lieutenant, who is the staunch patriot for Hitler, who says all the right things, whose beliefs get broken down as he gets more broken down over the course of the movie.  When he starts growing a beard with everyone else, you can tell and it rules to see that kind of character development.

The technical aspect of the movie, from directing to editing to sound and everything was the real star, however.  I don’t want to get into real specifics, I just think that the very intimate and claustrophobic submarine setting was emphasized incredibly well, and I wish that people who see this movie after reading this try to keep that in the back of their mind when they watch the movie, because it really deserves appreciation.

This is one of my longest reviews, which is appropriate for a long movie like this, so I won’t drag it along any farther.  Good movie.

A personal note first, though: I submit to Nicole a nomination for a BOTO pick for worst shoe salesman ever – the guy at Finish Line who recommended these Nike Shox shoes because I told him I had low arches.  He gave me a size 10 shoe along with “ThinFit” insoles, meant to be worn in dress shoes that you’ve outgrown but would still like to fit in (read: NOT RUNNING SHOES).  What’s so wrong with that? Well, there’s a story that explains that.  When I went out for my first run in these new shoes, after about two minutes of running, my feet were in excruciating pain that was making its way up all the joints of my left leg.  I decided something was wrong and went back the next day to Finish Line, and talked to the manager.  Turns out that my feet were actually 11′s, and I was informed about the insoles I previously mentioned.  Rage, then the purchasing of New Balance shoes, followed.

Dante’s Peak is a hilariously bad movie, the reason I chose to watch it rather than the last hour or so of Das Boot, the review of which will come tomorrow.  I wanted the review I came back with to be a light one, and what could be more light than a town-destroying volcano?

I’m not going to go into too much depth about the movie itself, and this won’t be a terribly long review.  Here are some quick hits:

• Wow, they really tried to make Pierce Brosnan an American character.  Wow, did it not work.  At all.
• I love how the giant cloud of ash overtakes the entire town in mere seconds, save for the one street on which Pierce Brosnan’s truck is driving, natch.
• If you read this and then watch the movie, try not to imagine the red-bearded guy as Timothy Busfield.  Go ahead, try not to.  Now you can’t.
• Aw, the mayor still works at the coffee shop she owns in town.  You’d think that between those two jobs, she could pay for one waitress.
• Speaking of the mayor, if her last name is Wando, she’s not blonde and blue-eyed, and she doesn’t live in the Pacific Northwest.  At least if it was Watto, she’d be more qualified to run the coffee shop, provided it sold a few spare parts and gambled away a few child slaves.
• All hail Pierce Brosnan’s shirt, which has the power to withstand sulfuric acid better than a metal boat.  All hail.
• Here’s to you, Grandma Ruth.  Let’s go over how many different ways she fucked up: She suggested a swim in the acid lake, refused to leave her cabin-on-the-volcano, which prompted her idiot grandkids to drive up to try to save her, prompting their idiot mom and idiot Pierce Brosnan to drive up and save them, which led to them all going boating through the acid lake, where, when the acid ate the propeller of the boat they were taking across, she jumped into the acid to pull the boat to shore, then seemed surprised to find that the acid was, in fact, painful.  After being carried halfway down the mountain, her last words were, “At least I got to die on the mountain,” completely ignoring that the mountain, in fact, murdered her.  Here’s to you, so drink.  Drink up.  Drink up.  Drink up.
• Props to Ethan for pointing out the worst-delivered and worst-written line in the movie.  I can’t possibly relate how bad it was in text, so just watch the last ten minutes and find the line by the mousy-haired girl on the volcanology staff.  It will probably jump out at you.
• There were a couple of what I like to call “foreshadowing hammers” here (meaning, times where the movie hits you in the face with a hammer labeled FORESHADOWING), but my favorite was when the squirrels were laying around dead, and the mayor of the fucking town, responsible for the well-being of the town says, “Must be some sort of squirrel epidemic,” then just moves on.  Well, doucheclown, don’t you think it’s your job to alert some sort of person qualified to investigate “squirrel epidemics”?
• My favorite “oh my god, that’s actually blatantly false” quote comes from Mayor Wando and rounds out this review that wound up pretty long because I like bullet points: “A man who looks at a rock must have a lot on his mind.”

Their third LP, cleverly titled LP3 (Hey! Yeah! I get it! Exactly like Portishead did earlier this year when their third album was called Third! Exactly the same! Sooo clever! Ha ha! Cleverness!), is thankfully a progression, and if you like midtempo electronic music, I have a hard time seeing why you wouldn’t like this album.  As opposed to being just guitar-onica, this uses more straight techno influences as well as some latin spice thrown in (“Shempi” could come from a Kinky album, if it was a little faster and a little softer).  I mean, two of the tracks are Spanish words, for chrissakes.  But really, none of these terms apply to every track on the album, and I think that’s the biggest step for Ratatat: a more varied approach.  Classics, and even Ratatat to an extent, was downright boring because it was so one-note.  This keeps it varied.

“Brulée” has a bit of a Margaritaville tinge, if you can believe it.  “Mumtaz Khan” has some definite Middle Eastern and Indian influence, with a smidge of Reggae thrown in.  I really think Ratatat is at the top of its game here; its influence-mixing is really great to hear, but that’s the one problem I have with Ratatat that I don’t think is possible to fix.  Even at what I think is their peak, they’re not good enough to rise above their influences, which is really the mark of a great band.  Though their sound is unique, it’s really on more of a horizontal level, as in, using influences to be different on the same level, than on a vertical level, which is using influences to create something that goes beyond.

I think this is as good as Ratatat gets, which is very good, but not great.  But hey guys, prove me wrong with LP4 (which is actually the fucking name of the next fucking album, completely fucking serious), why don’t you?

I’m a Beck fan, despite the fact that it’s no longer trendy to like him, and I even liked Guero a considerable amount, and didn’t think The Information was too awful.  The one gripe I’ve had with almost all of his albums though, has been that they’re just too long.  I try to appreciate albums from beginning to end, and I take points off personally when it’s a struggle to do that.  I think that the fact that Beck’s brand new album, Modern Guilt, is only 33 minutes long, is a positive stroke, and that alone will bring people back into his camp.

As many know, DJ Danger Mouse, whose genius is becoming more and more universally accepted, produced this album, and though it’s not as obvious as his work with Gorillaz on the awesome Demon Days, it obviously helps, and the tracks that are more unique for Beck (and thus, better songs, because unique Beck = good Beck) are the ones that Danger Mouse had a bigger hand in.

This album isn’t great, but thank God, it isn’t half bad either.  Unlike the great Beck albums of yore, the first track is decidedly not the best on the album – gone are the days of “Loser”, “Devil’s Haircut” and “Sexx Laws”.  The album doesn’t really get going until the last minute of the second track, “Gamma Ray”, when the instrumentation shifts a little.  I had a little “Awww yeah” moment there.  Third track “Chemtrails” is pretty good, as well, and gets way better in the second half.  It’s easily traceable to Mutations, though.

The title track, number four, is the first really good Beck track here.  It’s an insecure shuffle which I really enjoy, and as opposed to afore-mentioned Mutations and Sea Change, sparse instrumentation actually helps drive the pace along, á la Spoon.  The future-hating theme is accentuated by the canned strings in the latter portion of the song.  Fifth track, “Youthless”, is probably the highlight, mostly because, like “Modern Guilt”, it’s a little tough to place among the rest of the Beck catalogue.  It’s closest to Guero, but it moves a bit too fast, and the production’s a bit too slick.  It doesn’t fit Midnite Vultures either, it’s a bit to unsettled.  So here we go, unique Beck.  Awesome.

I’m not going to keep going track-by-track, but I will say that the album keeps going great until the last song, “Volcano”, which drags pretty badly.  But then again, what are you going to do, it’s the last song on a Beck album, that’s what last songs on Beck albums do.  Beck has never been perfect, merely awesome.  Here, he’s not awesome, merely very good.  I’ll take that at this stage of his career; hell, by this point in their career, Pink Floyd had fallen off a bit, so we can cut Beck a little slack.

I had this incredibly weird dream this morning, in between the alarm and the snooze alarm.  I dreamt that Oliva knocked on my door and invited me to go see a Yankee game with me.  It started at 7, and it was 6:35 right then, which I pointed out to him.  He responded, “Yeah, that’s why we need to get the fuck going.  I’m sending the others down in a Coach bus, you’re riding with me.” That’s where the dream ended, and I don’t want to analyze it really, I just felt that my high school friends would enjoy that in a creepy way.

So, to the music.  In Our Nature was released by José Gonzalez last year, iTunes tells me.  It feels like it’s been sitting in my library forever, with me only listening to one song, his cover of Massive Attack song “Teardrop”, better known as the opening song to TV show House.  And I listen to that song a whole lot, which is why this isn’t going to be the most initial-reaction kind of review that previous ones have been.  But I don’t care, because I haven’t had a fully positive review in a while, and I wanted to do one.

This album is so good I can’t stand it, and I wish it had come out this year so it could vie for the top spot in my year-end list, which I already am looking forward to making, with Vampire Weekend, Born Ruffians, the Dodos and Beach House.  It’s just so goddamn interesting, so simple and so analyzable at the same time, kind of like WALL-E in that way.  The music is very rarely more than guitar and multi-tracked vocals, sometimes with muted bongo drums, but never noticeably.  However, the music never seems empty, it just seems intimate, and I think a lot of that can be attributed to Gonzalez’s beautiful finger-picking – his ability to fill the music with his guitar is pretty awesome.

There are two more important aspects of his guitar playing that make this album what it is – for the first, I will quote iTunes in saying that “his style of performing is just very sharp, direct, and built around rhythym as opposed to melody.”  He hits the beat hard on his guitar, which gives it a pretty unique sound.  The second part is really just a result of the finger-picking.  He seems to be playing two parts at the same time, like an alt-folk Robert Johnson, which is what gives this album its sound.  With less complicated parts, this album would be unremarkable, and would fall in with so many other singer-songwriters.

This is a short album, and if you’re not careful, it just goes by without you noticing, which would be a real shame.  It’s a testament to the album’s quality that you can listen to it on any level of your consciousness and be pleased.  And let’s not forget José’s voice.  Oh, his voice.

It’s so tender and clean, and he never has a false step, and it just envelopes you completely.  His voice is really one-of-a-kind, in my opinion, for both the above reasons and for just its makeup and tonality.  He was born in Argentina and raised in Sweden, which gives him a unique accent that I dig completely.  Plus, I feel like he has a low speaking voice in real life and just sings highly, which gives his voice something extra – I don’t want to say ethereal, but it seems kind of appropriate.

Okay kids, I’m not making any promises about what kind of review you’ll see tomorrow, but you will see one, maybe not from me (nudge nudge, contributor-readers) but it will be here.  Until then.

P.S. – One last thing – does anyone want to go to this event with me on Monday, July 21st? I’d rather not go alone, but I’m going one way or another, and it promises to be a great time.

So let’s get the first negative review on this site out of the way.  Beerfest sucks.  Beerfest is a movie made by the Broken Lizard guys and directed by Jay Chandrasekhar, the guys who made Super Troopers.  Super Troopers was awesome. Beerfest sucks.

The plot of the movie goes as follows, and this is laden with spoilers because, let’s face it, who gives a shit about the plot anyway, even if you like the movie: Two brothers, after their grandfather’s death, take his ashes to his homeland, Germany, during Oktoberfest.   While there, they stumble onto a secret beer drinking and drinking game competition, Beerfest.  They get humiliated there and go back home to start an American team to compete at the next year’s competition, encountering numerous twists and turns while training, like ram’s piss and man whores.  You know, the usual stuff.  They get to the competition, losing to the unbeatable German team, and then improbably win a sudden death matchup.  Yawn, seriously.

As you can tell, this movie relies almost entirely on beer jokes and drinking/drunk jokes, all of which have been told in some way before by other people, none of which are more than a little funny here.  I can’t think of a single person who was funny in this movie except for Jay Chandrasekhar, who was pretty funny to start, and got less funny as the movie went on.  Then the outtakes in the credit sequence got funny again.  That was just about it.

Outrageous amounts of fake beer are drunk in this movie, and none of it is all that convincing.  I’m pretty sure they didn’t even drink the fake beer.  Also, most of the characters, while drunk, didn’t really act all that realistically drunk.  I mean, it’s hard to act drunk when you’re not drunk, and they would have to dynamite their livers in order to be drunk enough to do this whole movie realistically.  Not to mention that they wouldn’t be able to remember their lines or things like that.

Just for “shitsandgiggal”, as is said in the movie once or twice, let’s reel off the actors who weren’t funny in this movie: Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske, Cloris Leachman, Jürgen Prochnow, Bjorn Johnson, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme (as the least-convincing geek Jew EVER), and the list goes on.  I’ll just wrap this up by saying I’ll probably have another music review for you guys tomorrow, and to encourage any and all of my contributors to just shoot me a review whenever they’d like.

• There is an official appreciation society (fan club) named ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha after the sector of the galaxy in which The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says the planet Earth is located.
• 18610 Arthurdent is a small main belt asteroid. Felix Hormuth discovered it on 7 February 1998. It is named after Arthur Dent, the bewildered hero of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The name was officially published and announced by the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union on either 9 May or 10 May 2001 (accounts differ) – a day or two before Adams’ death.
• On 25 January 2005, it was announced the asteroid with preliminary designation 2001 DA₄₂ had been named 25924 Douglasadams in his honour. It was chosen because it referenced the year of Adams’ death, his initials and the number “42“.
• Every 25 May, Towel Day is celebrated in recognition of Adams.
• In various British Universities, notably Cambridge, Oxford, York and Exeter, student societies, known as a “Douglas Adams Society”, or “DougSoc” for short, were formed to honour the spirit engendered in Adams’ works. At Cambridge, the appreciation group was called the Cambridge University Life, the Universe and Everything Society (CULUES)
• On May 17, 2001 MIT students hung a banner reading “So long and thanks for all the wit” and a towel. This hack was not taken down for an entire day.
• Deep Thought is a chess computer developed by IBM and named after the fictional computer in the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
• Richard Dawkins‘ book The God Delusion is dedicated to Adams.
• The British pop-funk group Level 42 took the numeric part of their name from Deep Thought’s answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything from Adams’ books, adding the ‘Level’ part “to pad it out.”
• The 2005 DVD release of the Doctor Who serial City of Death includes the documentary “Paris in the Springtime.” Written by Jonathan Morris and produced by Ed Stradling, the documentary pays tribute in some detail to Adams’ contributions to the hit BBC series, and includes excerpts from two interviews with Adams himself conducted by Kevin Davies, who had worked as an animator on the 1981 BBC Hitch Hikers’ TV series . In 2007, Adams’ first Doctor Who serial, The Pirate Planet was included in the BBC/2|entertain DVD release of The Key to Time. This included another documentary, Parrot Fashion, produced Davies himself and featuring archive material of Adams, along with anecdotes from cast and crew, Adams’ half-brother James Thrift and his friend and biographer Nick Webb.
• St John’s College, Cambridge awards an annual “Douglas Adams Prize” for a humorous piece of writing. Not to be confused with the Adams Prize in mathematics, also from St John’s.
• Citizens of Portland, Oregon are petitioning the city to rename 42nd Avenue to Douglas Adams Boulevard.
• The Black Library novel “Fulgrim” written by Graham McNeill, contains a passage saying “…Improbably the ship The Heart of Gold was destroyed…”, a direct reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its infinite improbability drive powered ship The Heart of Gold.

Add a new one to the pantheon – the third track on Coldplay’s new album, Viva La Vida, or Death And All His Friends, is titled “42″, and as the lyrics suggest, is about Adams’ death and lead singer Christ Martin’s views on death in general.  Adams was a self-proclaimed “radical atheist”, so titled to preempt any confusing his atheism for agnosticism.  His dying, as well as the death of famous atheist George Carlin, leads me to be a little more sad, because if those two are right, that means that they are not rewarded for being remarkable people with heads screwed so firmly on their shoulders that they actually enlightened large numbers of people to their viewpoints.  If they are right, then they just sit there in the ground like any old dead schmo.  The concept of afterlife terrifies me.  It’s absolutely impossible to imagine anything other than full consciousness.  When I’m dead, is there just empty blackness? What happens to my mind and viewpoints? Is my consciousness transferred to someone else? What HAPPENS? I honestly need to stop talking about this, because every time I think of this I get filled with dread completely.

I interpret Martin’s lyrics in the chorus of “42″ as sharing my confusion about death.  He sings, “Those who are dead are not dead/They’re just living in my head oh…/And since I fell for that spell/I am living there as well oh…/Time is so short and I’m sure/There must be something more.” Even though Martin’s lyrics aren’t the most literate or deep, there seems to be real meaning behind them, like here and in the album’s best track, “Viva La Vida”, which also seems to have a bit of a preoccupation with death.

This album is really incredibly listenable – you can just coast right on through it, and enjoy it at any level – whether in close listening or as background music.  A big part of that is Chris Martin’s voice, which is like Thom Yorke’s if you removed all of the angst and took it down a couple of notches in pitch.  Another part of that is the production, which is very…soft.  Only a handful of times does one instrument break through to be a dominant part of the mix, and in those times, it’s normally just a strumming acoustic guitar or a keyboard, nothing jarring.  As a result, this album is very comfortable, even if it deals with unsettling material.

In fact, I really can’t single out any track as a worst, they are all pretty good at least, and I genuinely like this album; it just isn’t remarkable.  My main drawback is that sometimes the mix gets a little too soft, like a towel that has too much fabric softener and doesn’t really dry very well.  The music is so overproduced sometimes that it loses some of its functionality.  Also, none of these tracks seem like great artistic leaps, and while that sounds pretentious, I feel that if an artist is just doing something that they already know they can do well, and have done before (or that has been done before by plenyt of other people), what’s the point of the artist making more of the same thing?

And that’s really the central fault of the album – it doesn’t seem to have a raison d’être, it just kind of is.  And none of these songs are as good as the best song on X & Y, “Speed of Sound” – and I agree with basically everyone who says that’s a really crappy album.  So, go ahead and get this album, listen to it, enjoy it, just don’t expect something that grabs at you.

Run Lola Run, written and directed by Tom Tykwer, to use Harry Knowles‘ term, is bugnuts.  It’s only around 70 minutes long, and starts out with immediate intense action with only two small breaks.  Lola, played by Franka Potente (better known as the female lead in The Bourne Identity), is called by her boyfriend, Manni, who asks her why she was late and tells her that he’s a dead man because of it.  We (the audience) are confused.  We find out more from the rest of the conversation associated with flashbacks, and we discover that Manni, standing in a payphone, needs $100,000 in 20 minutes or he will rob the grocery store across the street, which is essentially suicide.  Lola’s job is to try to get the $100,000 before he does just that.  She goes to her father for the money, with varying degrees of success.

The story is told three times, each starting the same way and varying more and more as slight differences affect other events which interconnect and create three radically different storylines in a really cool way.  Most of all three involves Lola running.  Run, Lola, run.

The acting is really fun and cool in this, with some outrageous performances coming while being played straight-faced, especially from the father.  The writing is utilitarian – after all, it’s only a 70-something minute movie, so lines are short and sweet.  However, the concept of the movie is part of the writing too, and we can’t discount how awesomely this movie is thought up.

But, the part that makes all of this work is the directing.  I have no idea who Tom Tykwer is, but he really owns this movie.  The short animated sequences are awesome, the quick shots which sum up people’s lives in photos (really), the fades and split-screens, all of them are used perfectly and the movie just fucking bolts you to your chair while you’re watching.  I couldn’t believe how tightly this movie was made, how fast it moved.  In a way, I wish that this movie was longer, because the direction was so blissfully awesome and the feel of the movie was so bugnuts, but in a bigger way, I like how short it was, because that’s how short it needed to be.  Any longer, and the sequences would have to be slower, stories would have to be extended to near-breaking point, and the movie just wouldn’t work as well.

I don’t think this was a perfect movie, but this movie wasn’t built to be perfect.  People would love this movie like they would love Shoot ‘Em Up – don’t ask why, just enjoy the shit out of this movie because it forces you to.  I kind of feel dirty analyzing the movie as it is, because it is so NOT that kind of movie, but that’s why I’m not getting into plot choices or anything like that.  Suspension of disbelief is so key to this movie that overanalysis would sap enjoyment from this movie dumb quick.  I highly recommend this movie, and will show it to anyone who says they want to watch a fun movie and don’t have a lot of time.

P.S. – Franka Potente is super hot in this movie, so you know.  Rocking the pink hair.

Anyway, In Ghost Colours by Australian electropop outfit Cut Copy is a solid album that failed to wow me.  It was a Pitchfork darling a while back – Pitchfork seems to have a soft spot for synth-heavy sweety-pie pop music á la Junior Boys.  But where Junior Boys (just two Canadian dudes) and Cut Copy (Three, count ‘em, 3 Australian dudes) differ apart from their number is that Cut Copy seems way more focused on the dance floor than Junior Boys, more kinetic than subtle and contemplative, and as a result lots of the tenuous quality of Junior Boys doesn’t come to Cut Copy as easily.

Let me explain.  Junior Boys seems a lot more fragile and intimate in their music, and that has a lot of appeal for close listeners, especially when the album that is all about fragility is a breakup album like the great So This is Goodbye.  Cut Copy really just powers along and seems almost too efficient for its own good.  Add to the mix that the albums is very continuous and mixed very well, and it just seems like one dance-pop track, which is not a bad thing by any means.  It just doesn’t feel like a fully-realized album.  As a result, I can’t really pick highlights and lowlights, though “Out There On The Ice” jumped out at me a little more than the others.

As far as the music itself, Cut Copy uses lots of synths and a surprising amount of guitars that are mixed to sound like synths.  The result makes the music seem very dense and layered, which is really cool, and I feel like it’s the only thing that it really holds over Junior Boys (who you can tell I feel is their closest comparison), which often just have one or two synth tracks with the vocal track.  Also, interestingly enough, I could have sworn that they sounded Swedish.  Their accents, probably combined with the kind of music they make (seems sort of crystalline to me, which could be compared with icy, I guess) give the distinct Swedish imprint.  I mean, just compare the singer to Jens Lekman.  Seriously.

And as far as sheer danceability, I imagine with some more bass, this album wouldn’t be all that beatable.  It’s an almost continuously flowing work, as I mentioned before, and I’m sure it translates to great live shows.  In a way, it kind of reminds me of minimalist techno guy The Field with its unhurried but constant motion.

Okay, I’m cutting this review off here because I realized that probably no one who reads this blog will have heard of any of the people I just talked about.  Better review tomorrow, hopefully of a movie this time.

EDIT: I now realize that the title of this post should have been “Libraries, like morals, are for squares.” Oh well.

That same man knocked again, more insistently and more rapidly, and I realized he was knocking at me.

“Oh,” he says, in the Goodfellas-style Italian-American vernacular.  For the WASP layperson, that translates to: Hey! or, more formally, Excuse me! I turn around almost involuntarily.

“Two of ya girls over there,” he mumbled and jerked his head, indicating their position on the far platform.  I swiveled, searching for my girls, and finding three sitting on a bench directly under the Dobbs Ferry sign.  One of them flipped her hair and grinned at her friends; she had blonde hair, white teeth, and wore sunglasses at 10 o’clock at night.

“Lots of legs they showin’,” he chuckled.  I gave him a sideways glance and said nothing, hoping that he would understand what I meant by sitting back down in silence.  He chuckled again.

——————————————————————————————–

The Tappan Zee bridge was a thousand points of light, orange and green stark against black sky, obscuring the pale headlights of the small cars it carried across the Hudson.  The way our train moved gave me the impression that the bridge was pivoting, using Nyack as its center and moving south to latch on somewhere downriver.  I smiled inwardly and broke out my notebook, wanting to record what I felt was one of the more literary thoughts I’d had in a while.  The train shook and trembled every time my hand and its pen drew nearer to the paper.

The floor around my feet bled coffee in long streaks.  A mug had rolled from the front of the car to the back, someone muttered when I slipped and fell down while attempting to trace the source of the train’s flesh wound.  Funny, I thought, I didn’t smell coffee.

——————————————————————————————–

As I exit the train, the woman ahead of me on the stairs from the platform is carrying a bike.  I hadn’t seen her on the train.  The back wheel of the bike is rotating from the up-and-down of the stairs.  The wheel clicks as it rotates, and when it slows down, the slowing of the clicks reminds me of the Wheel of Fortune, when one click is the difference between a puny $300 space and a trip to California.  I wonder if I would win the trip to California, but the bike doesn’t stop clicking while I’m watching.  Imagine how maddening that would be for a live studio audience.

My name is Matt.  All of the things stated above actually happened on a recent train ride which I took from New York City, with no exaggeration on my part in the telling of the story, not even of my own thoughts.  What follows from this point did not actually happen, and is in fact completely fictionalized.

This is as yet untitled, and is Part One of a story that has numerous parts.  I don’t know how many parts, and I don’t know what will be in them.  To be perfectly frank, I haven’t written them yet.  Stay tuned.

When I went to see Pixar’s newest contribution to modern, feature-length animation, my expectations were more than a little high.  Ever since its inception, Pixar has continued to blow me away with their advances in just about every movie.

Toy Story recaptured much of Disney’s old glory, and created a series of moments that will always stick in my memory.  Bug’s Life was less adult than its contemporary, Antz, but had much more heart.  Toy Story 2 was in no way a step down from the original.  Then came Monsters Inc., which, both visually and emotionally, opened up a new era.  The hair on the monsters was lifelike, and demonstrated that CG animation could look real without focusing on characters that were, well, plastic.  More importantly, Pixar reinforced its dedication to the heritage of animation.  The sequence in which Sulley believes that Boo is being crushed by a garbage machine is a marvelous tribute to the classic shorts of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, but doesn’t feel like Pixar is just rehashing old ideas.

Since then, Pixar has continued to do nothing but raise the bar on itself.  In the end, this studio has been successful because they’ve hired and kept the best talent: Brad Bird – Ratatouille and The Incredibles, Andrew Stanton – Finding Nemo, and John Lasseter – Toy Story come to mind.  More importantly, unlike Dreamworks, they understand that classic cartoons can entertain viewers of all ages, without resorting to peppering pop culture references and sexual innuendo sporadically into a kids’ movie.  And perhaps most importantly of all, these filmmakers understand the heart and soul of moviemaking.  These movies entertain, but you end up caring about the characters, and they’re people (or fish or creatures or action figures) that you’ll always remember.  The Incredibles demonstrates that honoring superhero mythology can succeed with a wide audience if you do it in a fresh, innovative way.  Ratatouille was an enormous step forward in animation, as particularly the first kitchen sequence illustrates how vividly the animators can create a universe and then portray it from the point of view of a mouse.

This summer, Pixar has brought us the latest and final creation resulting from that first creative meeting that brought us A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, and Monsters Inc.  Needless to say, I had enormous expectations for this movie.

WALL-E begins on a desolate, futuristic Earth, abandoned by mankind due to over-pollution.  Left alone to clean up the mess, WALL-E has developed a distinct curiosity in the items he finds in the trash, and, more importantly, feelings.  He has a strong affinity for his cockroach companion and an obvious soft spot for Hello Dolly (this is one of those times where you have to suspend your disbelief and accept that some people might actually like that film).  The first half hour of the film has very little interaction between characters; it merely features a lone robot interacting with his environment.  It is done with a great deal of heart, and no less than some of the most effective physical comedy Pixar has ever given us (and that’s quite a complement, especially after the opening short film that accompanies WALL-E).  However, it took a lot of balls for Pixar to start a potential blockbuster with 30 minutes of what many young children watching may see as drudgery to sit through (although they probably won’t use such elevated diction).

Soon, EVE arrives, and WALL-E has a companion, albeit one that resembles an iPod with a laser.  Their interactions are very sweet, as WALL-E tries to establish a connection with another being, having not had anyone to talk (or in this case, beep and hum) to for centuries.

Just when you think this movie is going to result in a simple story about robots in love, Pixar decides to change things on its audiences.  As I mentioned in the title of this article, Pixar had raised the bar so high that I don’t think it would have been possible to jump over it with this film.  Thus, as innovative filmmakers would, they decide on a different strategy: Andrew Stanton straps this film (and its protagonist) to a rocket and shoots it into outer space, well above whatever bar critics were holding it to.

I don’t want to spoil the final 2/3 of this movie for any of you, so I will avoid major plot points.  Basically, this movie has a great deal of commentary on the current direction of our society and our social interactions (some of you might recall my ranting about the evils of iPods during a few sequences).  It also continues Pixar’s proud tradition of recognizing its cinematic roots, and appreciating the movies that came before it.  Although I didn’t catch any overt R2-D2 references (even though the “voice” of WALL-E, Ben Burtt, was the sound designer for all Star Wars products in the last 30 years), the film spoofs 2001: A Space Odyssey and Titanic.  Both of these jokes are done with love, and far from the sort of style you’d expect from something like Family Guy.

The movie truly is captivating.  The plot moves along quite well, and despite throwing some very heavy revelations about our consumerism in our faces, it never lingers too long on darkness surrounding the plot, preferring instead to move the plot along.  I like this element of WALL-E; I think it achieves a great deal as a science-fiction movie, but decides to ultimately be a family flick.  The movie itself is surprisingly dark.  I can’t recall a children’s movie with as dark a view of humanity in my lifetime.  It (as far as I know) is also the first Pixar film to mix some live-action shots into the CG universe (which is handled quite well by the ever-dutiful Fred Willard), but these never end up distracting you.

The strictly limited doses of dialogue may throw some people away from this movie.  I urge you not to be turned off by it.  Not since Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton have filmmakers been truly able to speak the language of movies without dialogue, but this film pulls it off with little more than a few beeping noises.

I admit being afraid, when I first began seeing advertisements for Pixar’s latest creation, that this would be a cute, talking-robot comedy – something akin to Robots.  I now realize the error of ever doubting Pixar (with the exception of Cars), but I still am reminded of Anton Ego’s wisdom at the end of Ratatouille:  “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends.”

This movie dares to achieve greatness without the use of significant dialogue (and aspiring filmmakers should take that lesson to heart).  I hope that none of you are turned off by this decision, but instead appreciate it for what it is: a glorious addition to the already proud collection of Pixar movies.  I’ll be slotting it in my list just below Ratatouille, right next to Monsters Inc, and just above Finding Nemo, Toy Story, and The Incredibles.

I hope to do some more blogsturbating on this site soon, when I am not preoccupied with my own, less culture-related blog.

Get Smart was a really fun movie that was based on a 1960′s TV show to which it bore very little resemblance.  Steve Carell plays Maxwell Smart, a pencil-pusher for spy agency CONTROL who is reluctantly pushed into service (a day he loudly dreams about) when the secret identities of almost all the agents are compromised.  In the TV show, Don Adams plays Maxwell Smart, and the differences between the two are immense.

While both are awkward and prone to all-too-quick thinking, the main difference with which I had a problem was the fact that Steve Carell’s Smart is actually a good agent, making correct judgments and doing his job.  Adams’ Smart did no such thing, and managed to save the day using pure dumb luck.  I can understand playing the character differently, since there are no two Don Adamses, but such a 180 is low-level blasphemy.

The other main character difference is expected with such a difference in actors; while Don Adams was cross-eyed and vacant, with hardly a smart word ever coming out of his mouth, Carell has an obvious twinkle in his eye as soon as he becomes an agent; both Smart and Carell enjoy the hell out of this movie.

These were basically my only problems with the entire movie, and in light of all the hilarity that goes on otherwise, they are small gripes.  The sight gags are all fantastic (the code word is swordfish).  Alan Arkin is gold as The Chief, as are David Koechner and that guy who played Damon in Friday After Next (Terry Crews) as Larabee and Agent 91, respectively, Masi Oka (Hiro/Franklin)  and Nate Torrence (Studio 60 rookie) as Bruce and Lloyd, the tech guys, and Bill Murray (!) and Patrick Warburton in small roles that just killed me.  Did I mention that Steve Carell is hilarious in this? Because he is, no matter how different he played Smart.

Anne Hathaway and Duane (formerly known as “The Rock” in casting, presently known as “The Rock” to the world) Johnson are good with each of their roles, but not great, and they do nothing to take away from scenes – they basically clear the path for the pros.

The action in this movie is good, not great, but I don’t get what I heard about it splitting time between its action and its comedy – there are plenty of gags in the middle of action scenes, like the banner behind the plane, etc, etc.  And every comedy has to wrap up somehow, or else it’s just a super-long episode of live action Robot Chicken, as amazing as that would be.  So you can’t really fault it for that.

I don’t think anyone is expecting to be blown away by Get Smart – they were just expecting a really funny action movie and another Steve Carell vehicle.  That is exactly what we have here, so go and see it and have a great time.  Just don’t expect an episode of the old show.

P.S. – Who the fuck am I kidding? NO ONE HAS SEEN THE OLD SHOW WHO WOULD READ THIS BLOG.  Jeez’m craw.  Sorry about the whole beginning wasting your time, but at least now you have a way to act pretentious about film interpretations to your friends if you talk about this movie.

My last Girl Talk review was a real review of a fake album, so here’s a fake review of the real album.  Ben told me while we were listening to a couple tracks off the fake that he could recognize that it wasn’t Girl Talk’s work.  I was taken aback, for two reasons: how could any rapid mash-ups be recognizable from others, as long as they’re done with any competence, and how was Ben a Girl Talk connoseiueiuoer? I will answer the first question, and you can ask Ben the second if you care to find out.

There’s a very good reason Girl Talk, AKA Greg Gillis, seems only to release albums during the summer.  These albums are perfect summer jams.  But then, what is a summer jam? I think I’d like to define a summer jam as a track you can play at a beach party with your friends (and probably some substances) and feel really glad you did.  Tracks or albums that could fit in there need to combine pure danceability with a lack of depth (you don’t want to think at a beach party) and a sense of catharsis.  You can listen to Girl Talk for less than 30 seconds and know it satisfies the first part, and probably for 30 seconds more and do the same for the second.

The third part is trickier, after all, musical catharsis is tough, and anyone can spot and frown at a moment of catharsis that isn’t earned.  But there has to be some sort of release that makes the listener go, “fuck yeah!” or something to that effect.  You can feel catharsis in your upper chest when it’s good enough.  That’s why Girl Talk makes Top 40 rap good – instead of just shitty rhymes over repetitive beats, Girl Talk mixes and matches until he gives you that catharsis.  See “Shut the Club Down” – near the end, I have no idea what that rap is, or what that 80′s music is, but they work so damn well together.  A better example is in “Still Here”, when Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” (hey! that’s actually a good song!) is preserved pretty well, and you get some head-bobbing going, and then you hit the chorus, and it’s played over FUCKING RADIOHEAD.  It works so well, and it’s a “fuck yeah” for sure.  The best example (though it doesn’t involve hip-hop) is the last 40 seconds of “What It’s All About”, and I just can’t spoil that for you.  You’ll have to hear that one yourself.

Feed the Animals is a better album than Night Ripper, pretty easily.  The mixes are tighter, the flow is better (Gillis lets the songs get up a head of steam before he switches them) and listening to the two back-to-back showed me how much more enjoyable the former is than the latter.  I said before that I would have reservations about putting Feed the Animals in my year-end list; I have no such reservations now.  It’s hard to imagine that too many albums will be ahead of this one.  At any rate, this has “summer jam” written all over it, and that counts for something.

I’m really glad Lawrence of Arabia came on two discs.  It provided a nice stopping point for those of us who can’t commit four hours to a movie at once – you  know, normal people, people with jobs that don’t involve watching movies.  I’m now one of those people, only without the money that normally comes with it.  I’m still laughing.

It’s impossible to review this movie in any concise way like I’ve reviewed movies so far, so I’m going to bullet this one.

• Writing: Impeccable.  There are so many lines that feel historic and monumental; the writing really suits a movie of such epic proportions.  I especially like the non-pejorative attitude towards the Arabs in the movie; it kind of reminds me of Syriana in that respect.  However, the quality of the writing could never have shone through if not for…
• Acting: Also fantastic.  Though Peter O’Toole is great and idiosyncratic as Lawrence, Omar Sharif stole the movie for me, much as Alexander Siddig did as Prince Nasir in, you guessed it, Syriana.  Lots of parallels between the two – proud leaders of their people who wish to bridge the gap between the West and the Middle East while retaining cultural pride.  Also, it’s a brave casting move to have cast a real Arab in the role, though they didn’t quite have the guts to do the same for the part of Prince Feisal – they still have the fabulous Alec Guinness in that part, wearing brownface.
• Directing: Very very good, but not visionary.  I wouldn’t disagree with any of the choices, and I especially like the decision to stage all action from left to right, to symbolize the film as a journey.  Still, everything about the movie semed like it wasn’t directed at all – like it was just a fantastic read-through.
• Claude Rains: A real favorite of mine, he’s fantastic in everything he’s in, adding a wry smile to every movie from Casablanca to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to this, which was basically his swan song.

This movie is a real commitment, but it’s one of those essentials that every movie fan should set time aside for – something that informs your opinion of all other movies and of what movies could be.

I promise to have a movie review tomorrow, probably of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru.  It’s so much easier to listen to music I haven’t heard before than it is to do the same for movies.  But for now, let’s turn our attention to mash-ups.

UPDATE: So, charitable commenter too_legit was correct, the version that I heard was, in fact, fake.  I didn’t think it was terrible at all, though.  Maybe I just don’t have a discriminating eye for these things.  Regardless, I will have an abbreviated review of the real version up later in the week.  Hey, two for one ain’t bad, right?

Mash-ups are interesting things – some people really love to get down to a mash-up of, say, “Country Grammar” and “Sweet Home Alabama” (that’s a great one, I swear), and some even deny the power of “Bittersweet Symphony/ Dirt Off Your Shoulder”, which is one of my favorites.  Regardless of opinion, everyone will agree that the combination of two or more songs in one creates something entirely different.  That’s its whole appeal – if not to the listener, than to the artist in making it.

Girl Talk (AKA Greg Gillis) is the king of the mash-ups.  As opposed to putting the lyrics of one track against the instrumentation of another, with adjustments for pitch, like most mash-ups, he combines lots of songs in one, with rapid-fire references and drastic changes in effect, like octaving up or down lyrics of one song to complement lyrics of another, while both play over the instrumental lines of one or two more songs.  The end result is basically Auto-DJ: hundreds of songs dumped into one album to blast at a party and let the partygoers grin whenever they hear a song they recognize.

As Pitchfork pointed out in their review of Girl Talk’s last album, Night Ripper, pointing out all the songs is half the fun of listening to his music.  And it is fun.  Oh, is it fun.  Is it fun?  Regardless, Girl Talk’s new album, Feed the Animals, is just that: fun.  I’m not sure if it has been officially released yet, but if it is, then it’s just a digital release for the time being.  Either way, I downloaded it…legally.  Legally.  Legally.  Hey, shut up.  Listening to it is just a joy for me.  But why?

By rights, I shouldn’t like this album.  Those who know me know well my total distaste for Top 40 music these days.  I just can’t stand it at all and I gnash my teeth and get morose and annoyed whenever I hear it.  But there’s plenty of it on here, so what gives? The only explanation I can give for it is two-pronged: a) the total mutation that music undergoes here means that you can’t really compare one version to the other, and b) the songwriting REALLY doesn’t matter here.  This is for dancing and head-bobbing.  This is club music.  People don’t listen to the lyrics in club music.

Feed the Animals gets better as it goes on, and the references get more grin-inducing.  My favorite is in the track “Rockin”, when the song “Freak on a Leash” by Korn (yes, that one – don’t tell me you don’t know it, you fucking do unless you’re Kriti) is octaved up so that the lead singer sounds like a freaky chihuahua/midget hybrid, like he’s meant to.  That is followed by a sample of the piano figure from “My Moon My Man” by Feist.  He really goes everywhere with these.

Other favorite samples include: Vampire Weekend, The Beatles (twice), Outkast (twice – including “Sorry Ms. Jackon), Eminem (thrice), Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix (with some Jamaican rapper over him [pitch-adjusted Sean Paul, perhaps?]), and the capper, DMX played over Queen and then Black Sabbath in “Watch What You Do”.  Now you know what I mean by grin-inducing.  I can’t say that this will be at the top of my end-o’-year list, because it doesn’t seem fair to put it over people who wrote their own songs.  Then again, I could have a change of heart by the end of the year because of how much fun this is.  Just plain fun.  That’s the one word you should take out of this review, because I’ll still be grinning from listening to this album when you’re reading this.

Anyway, Wolf Parade is another in a long list of bands about which I don’t know the full story.  This is what I know.  Their two frontmen are Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug.  Dan Boeckner is also the frontman for a band called the Handsome Furs; Spencer Krug is also the frontman for a band called Sunset Rubdown.  Both of them sing in kind of gruesome, wobbly tones that you either can tolerate or not.  I tend to tolerate it; the only annoying-voiced frontman I can’t get over is Colin Meloy of the Decemberists – don’t ask me why.  Maybe it’s because of that weird micro-vibrato? I really just don’t know.  But anyway, it’s hard enough to keep a band together with two lead singers and songwriters, and it’s even harder to keep it together when they have their own separate bands.  After their great debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary, they separated to pursue other projects, and had a really tough time reconciling the directions they had since taken.  There’s more to the story, I’m sure, but I just don’t know it.

The first thing that jumps out to me about this album is how conflicted it is.  I don’t think there’s a single song of these 9 that stays in minor or major keys the whole time, and often the switches go back and forth rapidly; sometimes you can’t even tell what key the song is in.  The tempos also are very fluid – lots of breakdowns, give-and-take with fast verses and slow choruses, and of course, two different singers that each take their own songs, until the 10-minute, 52-second closer, “Kissing the Beehive”, in which they trade in the middle.

Reading iTunes’ album notes, I discovered that most of this album was gleaned from improv sessions.  That doesn’t surprise me much – it has that kind of feel, that of searching for something great in the song, thinking that you found it, and trying to hold onto it for as long as possible when in truth, those kinds of great moments are almost instantaneous and always fleeting.  Take opener “Soldier’s Grin” for example.  The song is solid most of the way through, but it sounds undecided.  However, there are these two moments that are absolutely sublime, and they happen in close range of each other.  When Dan Boeckner sings, “Horse shapin’ fire dragging stereo wire” (I have no idea what it means either), his voice does a really cool trick on the word “stereo” that I just fall for.  Shortly after, as the verse gets more insistent and the guitar gets angrier (at about 3:10 in the song), the guitar finally breaks to the front of the mix to rip this fucking badass figure, going way down on the strings where only power chords dare to tread.  Thank god they don’t try to repeat that over and over – even the second and final time they do it, it lacks much of the same impact.

The album is a really good listen, especially for songs like “California Dreamer” – the title of which I do not condone and which doesn’t really represent the aesthetic of the song – and aforementioned closer “Kissing the Beehive”, which has a Pink Floyd-like patience about it that may turn some off, but not people like me who dig that kind of patience in putting a song like that together.

However, the constant conflict does get grating sometimes, and most of their choruses’ lyrics seem meaningless to me.  The in-verse lyrics are tolerable in a read-between-the-lines kind of way, but jeez.  Give some more effort on the lines you repeat.  Still, those two drawback don’t prevent me from liking the album on the whole, but I can definitely see this album getting lost in iTunes, only to be rediscovered down the line in a Party Shuffle session – sorry, but that sems to happen for everybody below TV On The Radio in the alphabet (especially sorry about you, Wilco).  Give it a try, though.  Tell me what you think.

Into the Wild was written and directed by Sean Penn, who has really had to work hard for my respect, since he just seems like such an ass.  However, he has proven himself as a great actor, and now a great filmmaker.  Into the Wild has vaulted itself into the second tier of my favorite movies – not all time best, but really really great.

Disgusted with the materialism of the world around him and scarred by a broken family life, Christopher McCandless left everything behind to pursue a life on the road, stopping to meet and get to know people on the way, and eventually deciding to live off the land in Alaska in an attempt to find purity and happiness in solitude, which is the way he saw that man was meant to be.

McCandless, who took the name Alexander Supertramp for his travels, leaves an indelible mark on all who cross his path, and the movie gives us the impression that all of his companions are better people when he left them from when he found them.  However, it’s hard to ignore the sadness and tragedy that each person felt when he moved on, and each time he does, I really wanted him to stay, because it seemed like he was happy where he was.

When he gets to Alaska, McCandless has an up-and-down existence, reading and making discoveries about himself that I won’t spoil for those who haven’t seen it.

There’s a real profound quality about the movie, in what Christopher McCandless, played by Emile Hirsch, says, in what the people he meets say, in the voice-over narration by McCandless and his sister, and in the actions of McCandless – whether reinspiring romance, showing an aging man a new outlook on life, or fighting for survival in the Alaskan wilderness.

It’s a credit to Penn as a writer and Hirsch as an actor that the character of McCandless was portrayed so believably, despite how outlandish he was.  At no point did I think, “No way could he have done that.”  He just seems like a once-in-a-lifetime person you meet, a person who makes you smile and frown at the same time when you remember him, because as Red put it in the Shawshank Redemption, “I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they’re gone. I guess I just miss my friend.” That line makes me choke up every time, and it couldn’t apply more to this movie.

It’s very tough to have this strong a message in a movie (that of finding happiness your own way, either through people, nature, what-have-you, outside of materialism, so it’s a real happiness) without getting preachy, but Penn pulls it off, mainly because the film never speaks to the audience about these things – it either speaks to the characters or to itself, which seems to make it all the more powerful.

And if the first half (or two-thirds) of the movie is uplifting with the spirit of freedom and independence, the latter part is just as heartbreaking with the sadness McCandless leaves in his wake – the old man (played for an Oscar nomination by Hal Holbrook) who loved him so much in a short period that he asked to adopt Chris, the young girl in Slab City, and most of all, his family.

In the movie, McCandless only interacts with his family once, after his graduation.  His parents are horrifying materialists, played by William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden (film buffs are beginning to realize now in this review how well-cast this movie is), but his sister is the deepest tragedy of them all, and it’s where I lost sympathy for Chris.  He left without so much as a letter or phone call to the one person he said understood him.  Her voice-overs are poignant, and progress from wistful to hurt and lonely over the course of the film.  However, all we get of the parents after he leaves are mute expressions of strangled guilt at the knowledge that they drove him away.

I really wish I could write more, because this review feels unfinished, but it took a lot out of me.  Looking back, I feel that the main strength of this movie was in its ability to get the audience really invested in the characters and the story.  I started to get bleary-eyed just while writing about McCandless’ sister.  I may come back tomorrow and flesh it out some more, but I’ll leave you with one thing for now:  this is a great, great movie, but it’s a real tough watch.  Its tragedy, unlike the darkest moments of romantic comedies or other cheap tear-jerker moments, is real and earned and doesn’t pull any punches or exaggerate.  The total palpability of the grief of everyone involved will weigh on you – don’t plan on doing anything fun right after seeing this movie.  But see it anyway.

This is the beginning of the body of text that will constitute my review of the 1981 horror film The Evil Dead. By the end of this body of text, you will feel a ravenous hunger for seeing this movie. Is that the point? I don’t feel driven to share my opinion with you. Should I? Sometimes I do. If I adore the shit out of a movie, I become missionary-like, spreading the good word of whatever to the tragically out of the loop. But that’s not really the case with The Evil Dead.

Because I’m a complete junkie when it comes to reviews, I’d heard it name dropped a couple times, and I had a vague notion that The Evil Dead trilogy was supposed to be hilarious and badass and so I was planning to watch it someday, way off in the future, but the impetus came the other day when I was chatting with some friends about rotten tomatoes. Someone said they didn’t think Wall-E looked that good. As it happens, I’m really looking forward to it, so I playfully offered a ten dollar bet that it’s going to be a masterpiece, and have at the very least a 95% score on rotten tomatoes. I thought for sure they’d take the bet; only 22 movies got a score that good last year. That’s good odds. Anything above 80% or so colors me impressed. But rather than accept the loaded bet, they steered the conversation toward this philosophical discourse on the worth of reviews, and the validity of a review aggregator like RT.

So here’s how it ties in to the subject of the review: The Evil Dead has a 100% on RT. What that means is that of all 40 reviews the RT could find of the movie, not a one of them was, essentially, thumbs down. It’s extremely likely that some if not many of them held small gripes, but overall they enjoyed it. My friend said it was so bad that he couldn’t sit through it. He’d tried watching it on 3 different occasions to no avail. He looked up some of his favorite movies and found scores in the high 80’s and was disappointed. One of his favorites, Boondock Saints, has a score of 18%. At first I tried to bring the conversation back to Wall-E, and how good it’s gonna be… but then I decided that if no one was going to accept my bet, I’d accept his challenge. I was to watch The Evil Dead and report back. And if I had any audacity at all, I was to enjoy it.
I watched it that night. I signed up for Netflix and was able to stream it straightaway. So picture me sitting in the dark with my laptop, headphones plugged in because everyone else is sleeping, staring transfixed as the titular evil dead possess anything and everything they can with the simply evil motivation of being really scary and really gross (The full title? The Evil Dead: The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror). White liquids come spewing out of wounds, eyeballs are pressed in, pencils are burrowed into ankles, and soon enough everyone’s covered in blood. Oh, and a forest rapes a woman. (“Did someone in the woods do this to you?” “The woods themselves did this to me!”)

And I did not enjoy it.

Because I was watching by myself, I kept pausing when I was worried that something particularly gross was about to happen. When Ash, the hero of the flick played by Bruce Campbell, sticks his thumbs into the eyes of one of the demons, I was mortified that they were about to pop with a squelch and that anonymous white goo was going to get loose. So I went and got a snack.

It’s worth mentioning that Bruce Campbell, then an unknown actor, is a really good sport. First of all, his character is named Ashley, which is actually kind of hilarious considering how badass a name Ash is (one of the few instances of humor in the otherwise strictly gross-out horror movie), but he also gets a lot of blood and guts sprayed on his face. In one nearly poetic moment, his possessed girlfriend is lunging for him and he swiftly decapitates her with a shovel, she lands on him… and just as I’m contemplating how if she still had a head, they would be kissing… squirt. A surge of neck-blood gushes onto his face.

What I love the most though, is that the writer/director of this repulsive indie horror movie would go on, some 20 years later, to direct the three hit Spider-Man movies. Seriously think about it. The same imagination that had Spider-Man and Mary-Jane Watson sharing a romantic date laying together on a web under the stars… that same guy compelled a woman to get branched. Oh, and the “assistant film editor”, Joel Coen, would go on to make some pretty great movies with his brother Ethan.

And so here I am at the crossroads between having every reason to like it other than the fact that I saw it and it was, in a word, unpleasant. Well, what did I expect?

I’m mixed. I’m irresolute. Then this ain’t a review, this is me blogsturbating!

Here’s a quote from Dustin Putman, a film critic who I half-seriously refer to as “my trusted reviewer.” On a day like today when I was worrying that if reviews are actually as destructive as I feared (read: causing people to dislike things they could have liked– what’s the point of that? Unless it in turn increases how much they like other more esoteric works and so it balances out? Even then?), then I definitely read far too many reviews, I sent him an email asking for some thoughts on the issue. I’ll just end on this excerpt from his reply:

The use of my review, I think, is the same as any review–to express a personal opinion, and maybe give the reader an idea of why something may or may not have worked. As long as I do this, and clearly describe the pros and cons of X movie, I feel I have done my job. And if, for example, I feel “There Will Be Blood” and “Atonement” are overrated, albeit ambitious failures, and yet actually enjoy “The Hottie and the Nottie” or “I Know Who Killed Me” for what they are, so be it. A critic should never apologize for how they feel, just as long as they’re honest and do not conform to the majority opinion for the sake of it. There’s no dignity in that.

That dignity is a big part of why I respect him as a critic, but now upon attempting a review, I’m realizing something else worth respecting: sure, he just honestly tells how he feels, but he has to know how he feels. Here’s what I know about how I felt about The Evil Dead: I did not have a fun time watching it; now and then the camera work really impressed me; despite the really bad effects I jumped at each and every one of the dozens of jump scares (seriously, I wish I had counted them. It feels like 50); I think it’s kind of rad that critics are on board with this out-there of a movie; and I’m actually pretty psyched to watch the sequel.

And that concludes the body of text that constitutes this review.

-Max Jacobson

Hello, I’m Kriti and I will be reviewing TV shows, I think. Here’s my take on the first season of the revived Doctor Who, on BBC. It was aired in 2005. I have the title of each episode, followed by what I think of it and a synopsis. Here we go.

Rose

This is the first episode of the revived Doctor Who, so it had a lot of expectations riding on it, I guess. It was not the first one I saw, so I can’t really talk about that aspect. It’s named after the Doctor’s new companion, Rose, and features the canon Ninth doctor (Christopger Eccleston) for the first time on TV. Eccleston does a fantastic job as the Doctor (no pun intended, although his catchphrase is “Fantastic!”) I’m not the biggest fan of Rose, but the episode is pretty good. The show definitely gets better, though – a lot of time is spent on character development, rather than defeating the Autons and the Nestene Consciousness.

The End of the World

Definitely a great episode. The Doctor takes Rose to the year five billion, when Earth is blown up by the sun. She sees her first “real” aliens, and realises how far she is from home. She’s also rather appalled at the people who have paid to come see the earth getting blown up from a safe vantage point. In the middle of this, passengers and staff are mysteriously dying, but who is killing them and why? The murder mystery style of the episode makes it even more compelling. The episode is also immensely witty – British humour (and spelling) is the best!

The Unquiet Dead

This episode wasn’t all that great, although I love the concept of Charles Dickens being surrounded by ghosts at Christmas. We are introduced to the space-time rift at Cardiff, which is featured in many other later stories, and in the Doctor Who spin-off, Torchwood. The Gelth, who lost their planet and corporeal form in the Time War are seeping through the rift and animating corpses in the funeral home built over the rift. The Doctor attempts to save them and give them a home. It isn’t as brilliantly written as most of the other episodes, and it wasn’t as gripping.

Aliens of London / World War Three

This is the first two parter of the series. An alien spaceship crashes into Big Ben, and an alien body is recovered, but the whole setup is found to be faked… by other aliens. It’s an entertaining story, and the alien antagonists, the Slitheen, make great villains. We also meet Harriet Jones, who reappears in other stories, and her characterisation is amazing. Rose’s mother finally understands what it means to travel with the Doctor, and the family drama is well written – it entertains, but does not dominate. Overall, a wonderful episode.

Dalek

I loved this episode. The Doctor lands in an alien museum on Earth, and discovers a Dalek. It is dying, but uses Rose’s DNA to repair itself, and begins to weak havoc. The museum’s owner is enthralled and refuses to destroy his prize specimen, and then pays the price for it. The Dalek has absorbed human DNA, though, and absorbs some traces of humanity, and the episode is very poignant. Rose is good, and Adam Mitchell, who joins the Doctor on his travels in this episode, is somewhat obnoxious, but well portrayed.

The Long Game

The Doctor, Rose and Adam land on a satellite during the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, but something is wrong. Humanity isn’t as advanced as it should be, and the answer seems to lie on Satellite 5, the satellite they are on. Simon Pegg is absolutely brilliant as the sinister Editor, and I’m proved right about Adam being obnoxious. The Doctor is as inquisitive as ever, and the plot is pretty well developed.

Father’s Day

This is another really poignant episode. Rose, whose father died when she was six months old, goes back to the day her father died to be with him when he dies. She cannot bear to see him die, so she saves his life, creating a distortion in time. There are some unpleasant emotional shocks for her, as she realises that her parents’ marriage wasn’t the idealised relationship that she had in her head. It’s wonderfully written, and the human drama never gets too overwhelming.

The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances

This award winning two-part episode was the first contribution to the revived series by my favourite Doctor Who scriptwriter, Steven Moffat. The writing is brilliant, fantastic, wonderful, amazing – whatever superlatives you choose to throw at it. It goes from poignant to extremely creepy to incredibly witty in the space of five seconds, and engages you completely. Hundreds of people’s physiology has been altered to the same pattern – severe internal injuries, a scar on the back of the hand, and a gas mask attached to their faces (physiologically), but they are not dead. I don’t really want to see more – this is a brilliant episode, and introduces us to the the Doctor’s new companion, Capt. Jack Harkness – a pansexual, charismatic renegade Time Agent from the 51st Century. Easily my favourite episode from the first season.

Boom Town

The Slitheen from Aliens of London / World War Three are not all dead! One survives, and is planning to take her revenge against Earth. In the middle of this, Rose is upset that her boyfriend is seeing someone else, even though she abandoned him to travel with the Doctor. This episode is rather subtly written, and makes the Slitheen a more complex character. Capt. Jack is as amazing as ever, and Christopher Eccleston does a wonderful, wonderful job.

Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways

The season finale. It starts off rather weirdly, with the Doctor, Rose and Jack being transmatted onto Satellite 5 and placed in different reality TV shows, a hundred years after they were last there. They discover that if you’re kicked off the show, you’re disintegrated, and that everyone on Earth is a potential game show contestant. This still does not align with the historically accurate Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, and the Doctor discovers that a Dalek fleet has been controlling Earth through Satellite 5 for a very long time. I’m not quite sure what I think of this episode. It’s a little bit too dramatic for me. The premise of game shows is innovative, but really? Come on! It’s Eccleston’s last as the Doctor, and that’s a little bit sad. Overall, I think it could’ve been better.

In fact, I didn’t even know that dubstep existed until I read Pitchfork’s Top 50 Albums of 2007 list, where Burial came in at number 10, so I looked around for him, and found music the likes of which I had never heard – but I really liked it, in a weird way.  I now know that Burial, in addition to sounding nothing like the rest of the music world, also sounds nothing like the rest of the dubstep world.

Dubstep, as I understand it, is all about fucking HUGE bass lines, minor keys, slow paces, and electronic instrumentation.  From there, the influences that can be traced have no significance to me – things like grime, 2-step, dancehall, and simply “dub”.    From what I can gather, these are all combinations of reggae influences on the British underground electronic music scene, which is huge and varied.  Dubstep is a totally new genre, just getting its start in the mid-2000′s, so it’s not totally concrete in itself.  Needless to say, just reading about it is interesting, and there are lots of places to get free samplers and mixtapes (which are apparently a large part of the dubstep scene, since full albums are rare, but singles are all too common).  That being said, Burial has made two full albums, which I enjoy, and other full-lengths I’ve gotten my hands on include Memories of the Future by Kode9 & the Spaceape (Kode9 is apparently the biggest name in dubstep), Diary of an Afro Warrior by Benga, and Skream! by Skream, which I will be reviewing here.

It’s hard to review something that you can’t quantify as good or bad – all I know is that I like this album and it’s really listenable for me.  I honestly can’t say that it would be for anyone else I know – dubstep has been the one thing I’ve been reluctant to push on people (if you know me, you know that’s a big deal).  Skream! was released in 2006, so dubstep has apparently moved beyond it at this point, but it seems like a good introduction, based on the more current stuff I’ve found.  It starts off with “Tortured Soul” which is a title that elicits groans from me, and it might be the weakest track on the album.  For someone looking to get into it, the only encouragement I will really give you is to tell you to be patient with this album – it reveals its goodness to me as I listen more, and I can tell it’s better than its first track as soon as its successor, “Midnight Request Line”.

This was the “big hit” before the full album came out; Skream released it as a 12″ and it quickly circulated.  It primarily utilizes ominous synth arpeggios over a syncopated bass line and minimal drum machine cymbals.  I found myself involuntarily head-bobbing.  Then the album kicks into high gear (quality-wise), in my opinion, with “Blue Eyez”.  Under an electronic reggae loop, you have the big bass line with a similar tune, but with added syncopation, and a more developed, but still unobtrusive drum line – and then the track shifts subtly, bringing the guitar in, changing the bass effects, and having a chorus of short “ah”s whenever the organ hits.

I don’t want to review every track individually, so just quick hits – the two vocal tracks, “Check It” featuring Warrior Queen and “Tapped” featuring JME are really fucking interesting, but I think I like “Check It” more; it seems more laid back and like a reggae party, whereas “Tapped” is about wiretapping, which is cool, but it’s too long to keep up the ominous Big Brother vibe. (Big Brother is actually name-checked in the song. Word.) “Stagger” probably has the best bass line on the album, “Rutten” has a fucking awesome flute part (hear that, Ben? something for everybody!) and a weird spoken-word monologue about “spliff politics” – what people do when someone’s passing around a spliff.  I guess this is a large problem in Britain.  “Summer Dreams” really just sounds like a salsa-jazz song with an electronic rhythm section.  It probably is.  It’s good though.

Overall, I like this album a lot – but I just have no idea whether it’s a “good” album and I don’t want to pass myself off as an objective judge – at least in this genre.  Other genres, where I have some background, I will judge until the cows come home

An additional note for those who either were patient enough to read to this point or impatient enough to scroll to the bottom: We have new contributors not named Matt Rothstein! Exciting! In all likelihood, the next post you will see on this website will be written by the inimitable Kriti Godey, and will introduce a new TV reviews section! That means that if you wanted to be a contributor, but felt left out because you only wanted to review TV shows, Kriti has blazed a trail for you! Exciting! I look forward to furthering the collaborative aspect of this blog, which should happen with posts in the near future from other people who, like Kriti, have blogs already but feel that this blog is okay too: Ben and Nicole (furious applause!!!!)!!!!!

I’m glad this post could end on such a happy note.  Thanks all.

Of course, the next day I got my battery replaced, and once my dad plugged the battery of the car back in, the car was fine, so Sunday was a bit of a reset and today was fine and uneventful. But I was reeling from an unbelievably crappy day, so after taking what I think will be my one day off per week (Friday), I had two days of bereavement leave, as it were.

So, Central Park, what are you going to do to me this time? I’m going back Friday night to see a free show of Mike Birbiglia, one of my favorite stand-up comics on the same stage (he’s performing with Stephen Lynch, whom I think is okay, but could get annoying if he goes on first, and if he goes on second, I’ll probably leave). If anyone wants to go with me who I haven’t talked to because it didn’t occur to me that you know/like/would like to find out about Mike Birbiglia, just contact me whatever way you can.

That was the longest prologue to a review I’ve done so far, so let’s move as quickly as possible to the business at hand.

So after I browbeated (browbate? browbote? everything comes up as wrong in SpellCheck, which comes up as wrong itself, so I don’t trust it anyway) Richie into sending me a copy of In This Room on the house since I’m as poor as Oliver Twist, if Oliver Twist lived in Cortlandt Manor (which would make him considerably less cute, if only because he would lose the British accent), I set myself to reviewing it, since the next piece of music I’ll review will probably be something none of you have heard of, so this will be a nice contrast. That was the longest sentence in WordPress history, I’m pretty sure. Oh, well.

After recording his first two albums in the studio, something that he couldn’t monetarily stick with, In This Room is his second homemade full-length, I believe. It’s the second homemade full-length that I have, at least. I will admit that I still listen to Nowhere Far more than the other two – there’s something magical about that album that seems to never get old for me. However, his first homemade album, Let Go, Let Go, still felt pretty polished, so I didn’t mind at all. Aside from the songwriting and the great voice work that we’ve now become accustomed to as Richie’s strengths, though, In This Room seems less developed than all three of Richie’s previous albums, more like a demo tape than a fully-realized album.

Don’t get me wrong, Richie’s in as strong a writing form as ever – two huge highlights are opener “Looking Up at the Stars” (fomerly “Walking”, I believe?) with everyone’s favorite lyric: “My days are starting off/With sunshine in the sky/My roommate’s getting high” and “Melting Snow”, the greatest strength of which is resisting the urge to get bigger as it goes on, like Richie does more commonly – the delicate quality of the song wouldn’t have survived such a crescendo.

However, this album really could have benefited from a less off-the-cuff approach. At times, the electric guitar part, provided by Charlie Schneider, though it adds a good third dimension and is played well, seems thrown on and not really synchronized. Also, the false starts and laughs with the vocals should have been held to once per album, at most – after the first time, it seems like a mistake instead of just being playful.

It’s been tough writing a review of an album made by one of my best friends that is anything but glowing, since not only do I adore the guy, I also have really loved his music until now, and I don’t doubt that his next work will return to form, if not surpass it – I hear tell of a full band album, which excites me to no end, as it should for anyone fortunate enough to catch his show at the Black Cow a couple of weeks ago.

Look for another, more obscure review tomorrow, and keep fighting the good fight all.

And The Flags At Shea Stadium Say Nothing

The wind is different
in every inch of the air it occupies.
Two leaves on one tree
move differently, each point imperceptibly
two directions arguing,
although they don’t realize the wind speaks
to each in different ways.
A golfer kills a handful of grass to judge
where to smack his ball,
though each will flutter away, independent.
To study these blades
is an exercise in the sociology of inches of wind.

A colored pinwheel
on the lawn of a ranch house in the Midwest
turns in one direction
because each piece of plastic, each dorsal fin
is attached to the next,
like the webbing between a human’s fingers
only more rigid –
moving only forward or backward – angering wind,
which values its own caprice.

Window Hemorrhage

Keeping the lights on inside a train
approaching Grand Central Terminal
creates a disturbing visual effect
as it burrows further underground.
I look out the window, which has become
a mirror of surprising accuracy, reflecting
the words in my notebook as the scribbles
of Da Vinci, making me feel both smart and crazy,
but more importantly, shows me that the lights
of the tunnel around the train are passing
through my body, cutting through my heart
and stomach and liver, causing what I assume
could only be massive, fatal internal bleeding.

Tonight I watched a great old film, All About Eve, written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, another on my IMDb list to watch.  At first glance it seemed to be a character study of Margo Channing, Broadway diva, played by Bette Davis, which made me wonder about the title, since Eve Harrington was only an admirer who is so sincere and deep in her admiration for the theater that she’s kind of creepy.  The only thing I had heard about this movie was that Bette Davis gave one of the best female performances ever.  She was great, no doubt about it.  However, Eve’s character was way too intriguing for me to concentrate only on Davis.

The acting all around is very good, and is a reflection of the culture all of the main characters are centered on: the stage.  In addition to the writing being very monologic, with long speeches being traded back and forth with only a few sparse reaction shots to pepper them, all of the characters seem to alternate between almost melodramatic eye contact and faraway looks to no one in particular (the crowd, perhaps?).

The one notable exception to this is the interplay between Davis and her character’s beau Bill Simpson, played by Gary Merrill, where the monologues are broken not by reaction shots, but by quick, snappy exchanges of one-liners or simple one-word contradictions (another theater influence).

I won’t spoil the majority of the plot, because it is really the pleasure of the movie to see it revealed, but I will say that I really did enjoy the movie and to see another one of a number of 1950′s movies that are really filmed plays (nothing against any of them; probably the best of the bunch is 12 Angry Men, which is frequently at the top of all-time lists).

P.S. – A younger Marilyn Monroe is in this movie, just as sexy as ever – I really don’t think anyone from our time compares to the pure sensuality that oozes from her in every second she’s on film.  At the risk of sounding creepy, I’ll continue talking about this, because it interests me.  Several women today seem to be hot without being cute (Jessica Alba, Megan Fox) or cute without being hot (Anne Hathaway, pre-ohmygodshe’saslutnow Lindsey Lohan), but Monroe really combined the two in a way not duplicated before or since.

One last thing.  Richie’s fabulous comment on my previous post confirmed that an idea I had was a good one – I would really love for this to be a more collective thing, rather than me just browbeating people into reading my opinions (and I know there are some of you out there who only read because I tell you to, and I am at once grateful and embarrassed for that).  I would be honored if anyone would like to write here, any and all comers, and review music or movies that they have come upon recently, or post their own pieces of creative writing, and allow me to be basically the shopkeeper.  Give it some thought; if you want to post just once or post just as frequently as me, it’s your choice, but you should all know that I’d love to have you aboard.

Fleet Foxes is a band that I had only heard of because my friend Richie tipped me off to the Pitchfork review of their debut EP Sun Giant because it contained a comparison of the band to Pinetop Seven, which is one of my favorite bands, in part because no one has ever heard of them.  Seriously, I have never met anyone who has ever heard of Pinetop Seven without me telling them.  Well, anyway, after hearing Fleet Foxes’ newly-released, self-titled, full-length de-but, I’m not ready to make that comparison just yet, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a great album.

The supposed similarity between the two bands is a nice jumping-off (jeez, how many hyphens can a guy use?) point though.  Lead singer Robin Pecknold has a similar voice inflection to Pinetop Seven frontman Darren Richard; a very throaty quality that is charming and enthralling, especially when their respective voices near the tops of their ranges.  However, where Pinetop Seven is dark and wide, giving the impression of an open road out on the frontier in the middle of the night, Fleet Foxes are bright and intimate, like a dense forest in summertime.

The quality of this music that jumps out the most at any listener is the frequent vocal harmony.  It dominates nearly every track, and as opposed to yesterday’s reviewee Born Ruffians, the lyrics themselves are only tangentially important, the voices are such powerful instruments.  However, I can’t shake the feeling that the album slows down in quality as it goes on.  “Oliver James”, the closing track, sounds very derivative of Simon & Garfunkel (which is ironic, considering it’s one of the few tracks on the album without harmony), which differs from the rest of the album in that it doesn’t seem to offer anything new – Simon & Garfunkel were great, but that music has already been made.

By the same token, the opener “Sun It Rises” is my absolute favorite track on the album, influenced in no small part to the hypnotic, very rhythmic guitar, which changes from acoustic to electric after a very Grizzly Bear-like crescendo.  Also, their harmony is at its most haunting, especially when the instruments are removed and we’re just left with their voices.

I really dig and recommend this album, as a great debut from a band that has really set itself up for a long run of consistently very good albums – it’s hard to screw up with voices like those.

Wow, that post was hard to finish.  I took lots of breaks and felt very procrastinatey.  Hopefully that won’t continue.  I’ll probably have another movie review tomorrow, so until then, stay out of trouble, you crazy kids.

There will be three kinds of posts on this blog: movie reviews, music reviews, and creative writing pieces – poetry, or short prose. Of course, there may be some exceptions; I already am planning on posting my treatise “How to Make a Totally Awesome Mixtape” which I wrote for my friend Kriti, whose cool website is linked on this site. I will probably edit it somewhat first, so I don’t know exactly when that’s going to happen. The reason this got started was because I was talking with aforementioned friend Kriti about her blog, which was created (I think) after her violent revolt against facebook letting people she didn’t really know into her person life as a way to let people who actually care about what she has to say keep up on her day-to-day. She told me to start my own blog. At first I dismissed the idea, but when she told me that I should write one about music and movies, it was hard to resist. Plus, now I get to make like Menick, with his almightily awesome blog (also linked here). And as Nicole would know, any way we can be more like Menick is a good way.

I, along with anyone else who thinks they’re hip and with it in the Metropolitan Area, will be heading to the Vampire Weekend show in Central Park this Saturday, but what caught my eye in particular about the concert was the slate of openers, one of which is a female rapper (Kid Sister) and the other being this band called Born Ruffians, who I remembered had received a cursory mention in Pitchfork early in the year for their debut album Red, Yellow & Blue. So I downloaded a copy (legally, of course, what kind of ideas do you have about me?) and gave them a try.

They are really fucking good.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just that the hype machine for Vampire Weekend has gone completely haywire, but lots of albums that I’ve heard this year that are kind of similar (shall we say, Zombie Holidays? or Werewolf Spring Breaks?), yet without the afro-beat ripoff that Sufjan Stevens himself hates, I find myself liking just as much as, if not more than, the Weekend. Maybe I need to take a break from them and check back later in the year to see how they really stack up, but right now I like Red, Yellow & Blue better than the Columbiads’ eponymous debut.

It seems more varied and fresher to me than anything else this year (I also love the new Dodo’s album, Visiter, but it’s like one ridiculously long song, which doesn’t do it for me some days), and it also makes me really eager to see them live this weekend – I want to see how this translates outside the studio.

Born Ruffians seem to have a very wide-eyed, childish way about them that is so innocent, I just fell in love with them almost immediately (read the Pitchfork review about that if you don’t believe me). This comes through in the lyrics – “Your smile, my smile/Our faces mash a while” in the song titled “Kurt Vonnegut”(!) – the high pitched, almost yelping (but thankfully not completely yelping) vocals from lead singer Luke LaLonde (whose name suggests part-time pornstar), and the simplistic instrumentation that one would expect in a sing-along CD for long vacations.

My favorite track on the album has to be “Barnacle Goose”, which is so fucking catchy I can’t stand it – and it’s about loving someone that no one else loves, but not being able to tell that someone, and who isn’t charmed by that?

The album has plenty of songs that develop as they go, rather than copping out to verse-chorus-verse structure that can get boring at times and could also hurt the meaning of a song, which is also refreshing.

Overall, there’s not much more to say about the album, but if you listen to it, I think you’ll understand what’s so appealing about these guys. A big recommend from me.

Ahem.

This will not be an aggressively alliteratory blog (damn it!), and I will swear on it, because that is how I talk. So, avert any babies’ eyes from the screen, but more importantly, who the hell reading this (if anyone is reading this) has a baby?

To business.

I saw Full Metal Jacket yesterday, as part of my continuing struggle to watch every movie on the IMDb Top 250 by the end of the summer. I would call myself a Kubrick guy; I love A Clockwork Orange and The Shining – and I would show them to anyone wanting to know what a classic Stanley Kubrick-directed movie looked and felt like – but I wasn’t the biggest fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which as I understand it, is one of the most divisive movies ever. Full Metal Jacket, alternately titled as “Kubrick Does ‘Nam”, was a very varied movie, but it never failed to impress me. Vin D’Onofrio is always interesting in his roles, and here he plays fat asshole Private Leonard Lawrence, and his assholishness takes a twist that is really interesting to watch as it develops.

Most of the movie is spent at basic training, with the main characters being Leonard, Private Joker, and the drill instructor, Sgt. Hartman (played by R. Lee Ermey, who you’ll recognize if you watch a lot of movies that have roles exactly like this one). Kubrick never assumes that basic is more than grueling routine that borders on disturbing, but manages to keep the viewer engrossed. Of course, once the movie shifts to ‘Nam, that isn’t all that hard.

I don’t feel like writing much more about it, so I’ll leave it with a big recommend if you like Kubrick, ‘Nam, D’Onofrio, or horrendous John Wayne impressions (you’ll see).

That’s all for now, thanks kids! I don’t know how long or how frequent these posts will be, but right now, it seems like a fun distraction.

One last thing: If you have recently discovered a movie or an artist, or even just one song, that you would like me to take a look at, just e-mail me at matthew.rothstein@oberlin.edu. I’ll most likely agree to it, but don’t expect always glowing reviews for things that I find, or that you find for me.