9/9/09
9/8/09
9/7/09
9/1/09
Two More
Firstly, a heads-up that I'm going to make some major changes around here. Slowly contemplating things, as I am wont to do, and I'll get around to it.
Secondly (and thirdly), things that defy contemplation- the last of the summer movies.
I've got to say that District 9 was the second in two refreshing, heartening trips to the cinema (see previous post). Characters I cared about (none of them human, mind you- protagonist Wikus Van De Merwe has to be the biggest fuckup in a hero's shoes since John Locke of Lost), and therefore spent the film at the edge of my seat as their long-shot plans for escape went realistically awry again and again. I'm half-praying they don't sequalize this, but who am I kidding. We need more original concepts like this- look how they take hold of audiences, Hollywood, and stop banking on "known properties"...
...Or worse yet, continually fucking them up. I mean, what is there to fuck up about G.I. Joe? And before you roll out your "what did you expect?", let me explain.
G.I. Joe, in its odd way, is the reason I write, and the reason I went into acting. For years (maybe ages 9-12?) I concocted an elaborate, continuing storyline for my vast collection of toys and vehicles, a storyline for which I kept notes and taught myself things about plotting that I still use today (I didn't once see the cartoon, so the characterizations also became my own). Whenever I'm working on a script, there isn't a mental moment that goes by that I don't recall how I mentally bookmarked some action taken by Duke, or Flint, or Destro, as I played with those toys, and stored it away until the consequences of that action were to be dealt with in the storyline. And some serious stuff went down in my 11-year-old battlefield/bedroom: love, hate, betrayal, death, resurrection- so surely Hollywood could do better than an 11-year-old, right? I just had to go and find out.
Aaannnd, the answer was no. Sort of. The goofy nonsense that passed for plot in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra incorporated some stuff that, if you can believe this, overthought the concept: Cobra Commander and Duke being brothers, or whatever the fuck they were, and however that relationship worked. And the opposite: the playing down/simplification of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow's backstory, which was brilliantly done in the Marvel Comic of the 1980's (and I do mean brilliantly; that's not just emptyheaded trash culture fanboy flare; it was a magnificent and monumental series). Otherwise, boom-boom-pow, it was just like chucking plastic around the sand pit back in the glory days.
But this might stand as the utlimate example of a baffling line of thinking when it comes to making films about these pre-existing properties: why take iconic, memorable designs and slap black leather on them?????? Jesus, Murphy, I mean, it's even a good business decision to stick with some known elements; Transformers pulled a masterstroke by keeping some of the cartoon voices on the payroll, yet G.I. Joe took distinct design like this:
and 're-imagined' it as this:
Is this meant to be playing to world markets that didn't have the action figures/cartoon in their lives? Becuase that still doesn't make sense. I'm convinced they could have added $30-50 million to their box office if they'd reproduced some of the remarkable designs Hasbro came up with 25 years ago. I mean, Snake-Eyes, who is famously mute, had a mouth on his costume. How does this stuff get by 30 pre-production approvals and as many test audiences to be ridiculed by people like me?
Secondly (and thirdly), things that defy contemplation- the last of the summer movies.
I've got to say that District 9 was the second in two refreshing, heartening trips to the cinema (see previous post). Characters I cared about (none of them human, mind you- protagonist Wikus Van De Merwe has to be the biggest fuckup in a hero's shoes since John Locke of Lost), and therefore spent the film at the edge of my seat as their long-shot plans for escape went realistically awry again and again. I'm half-praying they don't sequalize this, but who am I kidding. We need more original concepts like this- look how they take hold of audiences, Hollywood, and stop banking on "known properties"...
...Or worse yet, continually fucking them up. I mean, what is there to fuck up about G.I. Joe? And before you roll out your "what did you expect?", let me explain.
G.I. Joe, in its odd way, is the reason I write, and the reason I went into acting. For years (maybe ages 9-12?) I concocted an elaborate, continuing storyline for my vast collection of toys and vehicles, a storyline for which I kept notes and taught myself things about plotting that I still use today (I didn't once see the cartoon, so the characterizations also became my own). Whenever I'm working on a script, there isn't a mental moment that goes by that I don't recall how I mentally bookmarked some action taken by Duke, or Flint, or Destro, as I played with those toys, and stored it away until the consequences of that action were to be dealt with in the storyline. And some serious stuff went down in my 11-year-old battlefield/bedroom: love, hate, betrayal, death, resurrection- so surely Hollywood could do better than an 11-year-old, right? I just had to go and find out.
Aaannnd, the answer was no. Sort of. The goofy nonsense that passed for plot in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra incorporated some stuff that, if you can believe this, overthought the concept: Cobra Commander and Duke being brothers, or whatever the fuck they were, and however that relationship worked. And the opposite: the playing down/simplification of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow's backstory, which was brilliantly done in the Marvel Comic of the 1980's (and I do mean brilliantly; that's not just emptyheaded trash culture fanboy flare; it was a magnificent and monumental series). Otherwise, boom-boom-pow, it was just like chucking plastic around the sand pit back in the glory days.
But this might stand as the utlimate example of a baffling line of thinking when it comes to making films about these pre-existing properties: why take iconic, memorable designs and slap black leather on them?????? Jesus, Murphy, I mean, it's even a good business decision to stick with some known elements; Transformers pulled a masterstroke by keeping some of the cartoon voices on the payroll, yet G.I. Joe took distinct design like this:
and 're-imagined' it as this:
Is this meant to be playing to world markets that didn't have the action figures/cartoon in their lives? Becuase that still doesn't make sense. I'm convinced they could have added $30-50 million to their box office if they'd reproduced some of the remarkable designs Hasbro came up with 25 years ago. I mean, Snake-Eyes, who is famously mute, had a mouth on his costume. How does this stuff get by 30 pre-production approvals and as many test audiences to be ridiculed by people like me?
8/23/09
Finally, A Film Worth Writing About
Just take a look at the previous post's date. It's been a wasteland of a summer, no? Star Trek- two hours of technicolor glee, but that was May. Up- a winner, and should be somewhere on the 1000 best films ever made. And since I'm full-time in Halifax now, I've blinked and missed anything critically notable like The Hurt Locker, and... um... The Hurt Locker. Instead it's been a parade of disappointment. When did movies stop making sense? Transformers, Harry Potter, Wolverine, Terminator- name your franchise; every one of them was like picking up issue #340 of a comic book I've never read. Maybe if you sit around thinking about Dumbledore's Army (but wasn't that what the last HP was about? And why not even a mention of said army in this new one?) or the internal workings of Jazz the police car Transformer (Is he the police car Transformer? Is he a he? Or an it? And was he even in Revenge of the Fallen?), you might be of another opinion, but you'd also be a child, and no one makes movies for grown-ups any more.
But- one that rides the line (meaning there's grown-up pleasures to be had, but if you just want to "Aw, Dude! That was fuckin this! That was fuckin' that!" all your way through it, fill your emotionally stunted boots) is the one I saw last night, Inglourius Basterds.
I've never been one to worship Tarantino to the exclusion of all else, but I've been a fan. I saw Reservior Dogs a year before it became an obsession at my and everyone else's university, and that's triggered an auto-reaction to every one of his films since (even Pulp Fiction): that there's never going to be that pure experience of being surprised by this filmmaker again. Or so I thought.
I think it's the classically evocative WWII setting that made so much of this movie pop for me. Every one of Tarantino's tricks that I'd grown so aware of worked for me here. As a writer I'm a huge fan of knowing the rules and promptly breaking them. This movie introduces characters, then shoots their nuts off before they've had a chance to do shit-all for the story or for themselves. There are extended scenes (or, in recent QT style, 'Chapters", such as the "Rendezvous in Nadine" sequence, that are as good as any stage script I've read in ages, that meander down entirely irrelevant roads (the 'King Kong' conversation b/t the undercover Basterds and the German officer), and pull themselves together just in time for the denoument, which is as abrupt as a gunshot to the face. Literally.
And there's just enough silence and breathing room in this film to set one's mind going. I found myself thinking, early on, 'Is this a film about good and evil? Or just about evil? Or just about war?' These are guys who don't beat them (well, in one sense of the word, they do), but join them. They're not glorious, and they're bastards. They, like their foul German opposers, don't think a lick about what horrid shit they're inflicting on hundreds of people. And that makes the nihilistic bent that Tarantino works with jive the best it has in any of his work.
There's a moment in the polar opposite of this film, the aforementioned Star Trek, where Kirk and Spock are trying to talk their way through an encounter with Nero, the planet-destroying villain, who of course doesn't want anything to do with diplomacy. And just when you think you might get one of those orations on humanity that Patrick Stewart did so well and Scott Bakula did so badly, Kirk just says "Fuck it. All we can do is shoot at him"
And Spock agrees. And they do.
That's what Inglourious Basterds is from start to finish. We all know why Shoshonna works with a steadfast resolve to burn every Nazi alive in her movie theatre- because that's what you do when the world's that way. And if you think these thoughts are far too lofty to have come out of this particular moviegoing experience, well.
I can't immediately bring to mind a war film that didn't have the protagonists coming to grips with the moral lapses they've expereinced in battle, which is something I suspect one doesn't do much of in The Fight. And before going to this movie I found my mind drifting over the PC implications of having Jews do this in a movie, but that's kind of all out the window now.
One of several scenes as good as a one-act play3/7/09
Review: Watchmen
Considering my brief, vitriolic post which appeared when the first images of this film were released, I thought it best to follow up with some quick thoughts after having seen the finished product.
This film's been 20 years in the making- the book, with it's po-mo take on costumed heroes, was perfectly timed in the comic world and has changed everything since. I'm not so sure how it fits into what is now a full-fledged film genre: we have ten dozen Marvel adaptations coming down the pike that may seem a little flighty after this full-on deconstruction of our Modern Myths; the film, like the book before it, does seem like the last word on the superhero.
Will it resonate with the mainstream? I write this on its opening weekend, so only time will tell. Unlike The Dark Knight, which set up Gotham as an Everycity in a heightened societal moment of Rotten Republicans vs. Dreamy Democrats, Watchmen is set in a skewed 1985 where Richard Nixon rules and nuclear apocalypse looms: it's a rarified, detailed setting that harkens way back to the Reagan Years. Now that we're in Obama-topia, dark social satire is seeming passe for the moment.
Yet as an enduring, effective story, it hits all the right beats and (amazingly, for a director like Zach "300" Snyder) covers every tidbit of the dense narrative. Having lived with the characters for 20 years, I was struck at how fresh they came off onscreen, and how effectively their traits and motivations were captured. Nite Owl & Silk Spectre's shared thrill at 're-entering the game', Dr. Manhattan's godlike enlightenment, Rorschach's moral perversity, it's all there- and in the end, its likely audiences will take these vivid characterizations away with them moreso than the tricky plotline. There's a weakness in the portrayal of Ozymandias, the rogue team member who becomes the story's villain, that takes the piss out of what could have been a more shocking, indelible Villainous Plan: the denoument of the narrative, which on the page played out in a hell of a page-turning final chapter, comes off as slightly lame in the film. But I can forgive a bad ending, since I can't recall a genre film with a bang-up third act offhand (even The Dark Knight mangled its ending a bit, with its protracted encounters with Two-Face). It's seeing these smashingly original characters brought to life that thrilled and chilled me. So I give five points for each of these characterizations (no point for Ozymandias), and one for not completely f**king things up: that's a six out of ten.
1/4/09
2009's Only Do-Over
So Baby New Year whispers in Father Time's ear... "Shitty 2008 list... you can do better in 2009... do it. DOOOO IIIIIT."
So the (not so) faithful blogger puts his head together with his (faithful) significant other after
this collection of side projects and duckers of the top-ten slurry-pile are guaranteed to delight! seek them out! really! you won't regret it!
Little Joy, Little Joy:
Like if the Strokes were a Carribbean house band on the most chill vacation you've ever been on. Fab (from said band) provides the hooks and a girl named Binki the occasional mellow vocal.
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, Sunday at Devil Dirt:
Campbell (former of Belle & Sebastian) and Lanegan (former of Screaming Trees & Queens of the Stone Age [?!]) together at last... if you read a top ten list and picked up She and Her, Volume One (Zooey Deschanel & M. Ward)- this is better.
Mount Eerie, Lost Wisdom:
Frontman Phil Elverum's favorite singer ever is Canada's own Julie Doiron, so he asked her to make a record with him and she made his dreams come true. This will make yours come true too.
And to round out the 'Amazin Collaborations' section, the most amazin of all:
Vic Chesnutt and Elf Power, Dark Developments
Onward to a brief stop in Canada:
Construction and Destruction, The Volume Wars:
These two cats live way, way deep in rural Nova Scotia, a place I can personally attest generates either vapid ennui or creative explosions, in their case the latter: this was the most promising & rewarding piece to come out of Nova Scotia's increasingly derivative indie-rock scene this year.
Nadja, The Bungled and the Botched:
The ultimate in doom/drone metal, and another guy/girl collaboration, this time between a poet and a bookbinder. If you're playing D&D all day, going on a real-life quest for the Dread Sword or some shit, or just laying on your bed buoyed by elation or oppressed by dread, THIS. IS. IT.
And, to round it all out, some surefire twang/poetry/catchiness/genius:
Silver Jews: Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
Twang/poetry
Blitzen Trapper, Furr
Twang/catchiness
Lambchop, OH (Ohio)
Twang/twang
Lucinda Williams, Little Honey
Twang/genius
Ahh, a proper ten, now I can sleep easy. Now get downloading! Happy New Year! Celebrate with music from the old year!
So the (not so) faithful blogger puts his head together with his (faithful) significant other after
- shameful feelings over the pathetic end of 08 entry (even tho it resulted in at least one illegal download of Accelerate; hey R.E.M. ain't hurtin for money)
- actually listening to those 'missing albums' mentioned in the previous post; and speaking of:
- Fleet *yawn- oop, excuse me sorry* Foxes. What great background music for a low-key winter party! But shame on anyone who called this anywhere near the "greatest album of the year". Maybe it spoke to people of an entirely different (lemming-like?) sensibility than myself, but I've seen the Zuppa Theatre Co. put together better choral rounds on an average morning in the rehearsal hall.
- Beck. I won't reserve the yawn here.
- Kanye West. Ever have those weird dreams where you see a movie or hear a record and it's, like, protracted, strange, boring? I'm still not sure if 808s & Heartbreak is one of those dreams.
- Guns N' Roses. Waking nightmare.
- My Morning Jacket. Jim James, wither thine voice? Why the falsetto? Oh, wait, maybe the Fleet Foxes guy scooped your impending patent on "soaring", "ethereal" vocals.
- Metallica. Not so bad.
- Conor Oberst. If his self-obsession didn't come and go like the tides, I might be motivated to actually start building an opinion about this guy. Doesn't it stand to reason that prodigies should at least approach selflessness? But I'll still stick by him to see if he rounds himself out by 30 (!).
this collection of side projects and duckers of the top-ten slurry-pile are guaranteed to delight! seek them out! really! you won't regret it!
Little Joy, Little Joy:
Like if the Strokes were a Carribbean house band on the most chill vacation you've ever been on. Fab (from said band) provides the hooks and a girl named Binki the occasional mellow vocal.Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, Sunday at Devil Dirt:
Campbell (former of Belle & Sebastian) and Lanegan (former of Screaming Trees & Queens of the Stone Age [?!]) together at last... if you read a top ten list and picked up She and Her, Volume One (Zooey Deschanel & M. Ward)- this is better.Mount Eerie, Lost Wisdom:
Frontman Phil Elverum's favorite singer ever is Canada's own Julie Doiron, so he asked her to make a record with him and she made his dreams come true. This will make yours come true too.And to round out the 'Amazin Collaborations' section, the most amazin of all:
Vic Chesnutt and Elf Power, Dark Developments
Onward to a brief stop in Canada:Construction and Destruction, The Volume Wars:
These two cats live way, way deep in rural Nova Scotia, a place I can personally attest generates either vapid ennui or creative explosions, in their case the latter: this was the most promising & rewarding piece to come out of Nova Scotia's increasingly derivative indie-rock scene this year.Nadja, The Bungled and the Botched:
The ultimate in doom/drone metal, and another guy/girl collaboration, this time between a poet and a bookbinder. If you're playing D&D all day, going on a real-life quest for the Dread Sword or some shit, or just laying on your bed buoyed by elation or oppressed by dread, THIS. IS. IT.And, to round it all out, some surefire twang/poetry/catchiness/genius:
Silver Jews: Lookout Mountain, Lookout SeaTwang/poetry
Blitzen Trapper, FurrTwang/catchiness
Lambchop, OH (Ohio)Twang/twang
Lucinda Williams, Little HoneyTwang/genius
Ahh, a proper ten, now I can sleep easy. Now get downloading! Happy New Year! Celebrate with music from the old year!
12/19/08
Two Thousand and Eight
So, it rolls to a close, this year of highs and lows. How one feels about 2008 speaks a lot to whether they're a glass half-empty person, or a glass half-full. There's a great new American president, but he's got about as much money to play with as a manager at Best Buy. Here in Canada, the lowest voter turnout ever re-elected us our moonfaced weirdo of a prime minister, but at the present moment his career hangs in the balance. I'm not going to cast my proverbial Tarot cards for 2009 just yet, and for now I'm going to take the glass half-full route and look back at what I liked the best about aught eight- at least in the untouchable realms of popular culture.
The Music
I'm hard pressed to post a full list of ten this year. There's stuff I had on last year's list that went huge (M.I.A., Lil Wayne), but that's not to say I'm ahead of the curve; I spent a lot of listening time this year with '07 music (Wilco's Sky Blue Sky, the I'm Not There soundtrack), and, after the installation of a turntable, much ancient material from the vinyl glory days. So at the moment I'm forging a superdisc of illegal downloads- maybe at the end of next year I can get back to you on Fleet Foxes, TV on the Radio, Blitzen Trapper, Beck, Land of Talk, Metallica, Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Guns N' Roses, Jenny Lewis, Kings of Leon, Deerhunter, The Black Keys, Lucinda Williams, Conor Oberst, and Kanye West. But for now I have no choice but to detail the five recordings that, for whatever reason, got spun again and again this year:
5. Tall Firs, Too Old To Die Young
This Brooklyn trio released a quiet, introspective disc a couple of years ago that largely resembled this year's #2, but with the addition of aspiring free jazz/former At The Drive-In drummer Ryan Sawyer, took things to a new level. This was released on Sonic Youth leader Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label, and, considering the lead singer's uncanny vocal resemblance to Moore, kind of sounds like the record Sonic Youth would have made had they grown up in the sticks. This is perfect for a night in with an afghan and a hot tea, but also makes for foggy day driving music, first date music, last date music...
4. R.E.M., Accelerate
I took a big crap all over this release from my First Beloved Band back in April, but after having the good fortune of seeing them tour behind this, began to get what it was all about, and to realize that no other band of their vintage maintains the integrity that they do. The apocalyptic sentiment behind this seems (thankfully) a bit dated already, but it's doom and gloom that have driven the best of their late-career recordings. Plus, they produced the year's neatest video from this.
3. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
I'm sure choosing this will continue longstanding debates well into the new year (I'm looking at you, girlfriend), but after some resistance myself, I just couldn't stop listening to it. Hype didn't do Vampire Weekend any favors, but you have to admit, if you'd seen this band debut at your university party (as they did at Columbia; the cover image is taken from that very night), you would have filled your pants and declared the second coming of pop music. "Who gives a fuck about an oxford comma", who gives a fuck if Moms like this; it brings a little Wes Anderson Movie into your day whenever it's on.
2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
It took me a while to (no pun intended) warm to this as well, even after seeing him do a stunning opening set for Black Mountain in my town earlier this year, but once it took hold it wouldn't let go. This is on piles of top ten lists this year, and it was nice to see something so genuine rise to prominence like it did. And I have a feeling Justin Vernon will do some really interesting things in the future.
Also a great driving record- if you have a ways to go through a bleak winter landscape in the next little while, take this along.
1. Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Lie Down in the Light
Something that wasn't on a pile of top tens this year (depending on what you read) was about the 50,000th astonishing release from Will Oldham. With all due respect to the two low-key & melancholy groups on this list, it takes another kind of talent to write something that's genuinely celebratory and happy. After getting bleaker and bleaker, dire and more dire (Jesus, The Letting Go? Almost got me into cutting.), Will took a left turn and composed an ode to happiness and satisfaction that avoids all sentiment and points to the things in life that earn that state of mind. For anyone who hasn't found their way to B'P'B yet, this is a perfect gateway into the strange career of one of the world's great songwriters.
The Television
Let me quote a journal from 2005: "Watched a bit of Lost. It's no X-Files."
Now let me state my 2008 opinion: "What in the hell was I thinking?"
The X-Files took hold of a little flare-up in the public consciousness and ran with it until it chugged along the side of the old Information Superhighway and ran out of gas. Lost found its audience the same way, whether they realized it or not: we were lost- spiritually, mentally, figuratively- we still are, and though the public sentiment is a bit more optimistic, this show, unlike X, is changing, morphing, avoiding a one-note cultural definition. It has, as many genre programs have, turned in on itself and is relying more and more on its own storyline- but what a storyline, and what storytelling.
I watch television to have something about society and humanity reflected back at me. There have been deeper commentaries on this (The Wire) and more up-to-date ones (South Park), but none are more compelling than this crazy, freestyle network television show.
The Movies
Nuff said. Did you happen to catch this?
But a couple of comments on the some possibly more divisive releases of the year:
- Despite the foul taste left by the aforementioned X-Files TV show, I actually stand by this year's I Want To Believe feature. Not that it was exceedingly great, but why does everything with a franchise name behind it have to, as Roger Ebert said in his review of this, feature a villain "as big as a building"? Chris Carter committed an almost punk-rock act by making a film that resembled the 70's TV and film that inspired his show in the first place, and no matter what you think, he didn't fuck up as badly as Spielberg and Lucas.
- Remind me to walk out of the next movie that Jennifer Jason Leigh turns up in as a bohemian character who lays around stoned on sofas- it's a surefire signifier that one is in store for a lengthy treatise on just how miserable we can make ourselves in the Western World if we try hard enough. Charlie Kaufman's I-Can't-Even-Bother-To-Spell-It, New York features a lead character so self-indulgent that he actually picks through his own excrement onscreen, before he worries himself to death over the course of two hours. The only benefit I got from attending this movie was in realizing how grateful I was to be able to see through horseshit like this. Sorry if you liked it; looking forward to the debate.
The Books
Oh, the books. Oh, the books! I haven't had the proper time to read anything beyond cooking instructions all year. So here's my intended reading list come January, when my New Year's Resolution to find that time kicks in:
The English Major, by Jim Harrison. The Other, by David Guterson. A Mercy, by Toni Morrison. I Should Be Extremely Happy To Be In Your Company: A Novel of Lewis and Clark, by Brain Hall. Who's Your City? How the Creative Economy is Making Where You Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life, by Richard Florida. The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama. Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis, by Rowan Jacobsen.
To name a few. See there was a reason I posted this before Christmas, hint.
Just kidding- Happy Holidays all, here's to 2009.
The Music
I'm hard pressed to post a full list of ten this year. There's stuff I had on last year's list that went huge (M.I.A., Lil Wayne), but that's not to say I'm ahead of the curve; I spent a lot of listening time this year with '07 music (Wilco's Sky Blue Sky, the I'm Not There soundtrack), and, after the installation of a turntable, much ancient material from the vinyl glory days. So at the moment I'm forging a superdisc of illegal downloads- maybe at the end of next year I can get back to you on Fleet Foxes, TV on the Radio, Blitzen Trapper, Beck, Land of Talk, Metallica, Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Guns N' Roses, Jenny Lewis, Kings of Leon, Deerhunter, The Black Keys, Lucinda Williams, Conor Oberst, and Kanye West. But for now I have no choice but to detail the five recordings that, for whatever reason, got spun again and again this year:
5. Tall Firs, Too Old To Die Young
This Brooklyn trio released a quiet, introspective disc a couple of years ago that largely resembled this year's #2, but with the addition of aspiring free jazz/former At The Drive-In drummer Ryan Sawyer, took things to a new level. This was released on Sonic Youth leader Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label, and, considering the lead singer's uncanny vocal resemblance to Moore, kind of sounds like the record Sonic Youth would have made had they grown up in the sticks. This is perfect for a night in with an afghan and a hot tea, but also makes for foggy day driving music, first date music, last date music...4. R.E.M., Accelerate
I took a big crap all over this release from my First Beloved Band back in April, but after having the good fortune of seeing them tour behind this, began to get what it was all about, and to realize that no other band of their vintage maintains the integrity that they do. The apocalyptic sentiment behind this seems (thankfully) a bit dated already, but it's doom and gloom that have driven the best of their late-career recordings. Plus, they produced the year's neatest video from this.3. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
I'm sure choosing this will continue longstanding debates well into the new year (I'm looking at you, girlfriend), but after some resistance myself, I just couldn't stop listening to it. Hype didn't do Vampire Weekend any favors, but you have to admit, if you'd seen this band debut at your university party (as they did at Columbia; the cover image is taken from that very night), you would have filled your pants and declared the second coming of pop music. "Who gives a fuck about an oxford comma", who gives a fuck if Moms like this; it brings a little Wes Anderson Movie into your day whenever it's on.2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
It took me a while to (no pun intended) warm to this as well, even after seeing him do a stunning opening set for Black Mountain in my town earlier this year, but once it took hold it wouldn't let go. This is on piles of top ten lists this year, and it was nice to see something so genuine rise to prominence like it did. And I have a feeling Justin Vernon will do some really interesting things in the future.Also a great driving record- if you have a ways to go through a bleak winter landscape in the next little while, take this along.
1. Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Lie Down in the Light
Something that wasn't on a pile of top tens this year (depending on what you read) was about the 50,000th astonishing release from Will Oldham. With all due respect to the two low-key & melancholy groups on this list, it takes another kind of talent to write something that's genuinely celebratory and happy. After getting bleaker and bleaker, dire and more dire (Jesus, The Letting Go? Almost got me into cutting.), Will took a left turn and composed an ode to happiness and satisfaction that avoids all sentiment and points to the things in life that earn that state of mind. For anyone who hasn't found their way to B'P'B yet, this is a perfect gateway into the strange career of one of the world's great songwriters.The Television
Let me quote a journal from 2005: "Watched a bit of Lost. It's no X-Files."Now let me state my 2008 opinion: "What in the hell was I thinking?"
The X-Files took hold of a little flare-up in the public consciousness and ran with it until it chugged along the side of the old Information Superhighway and ran out of gas. Lost found its audience the same way, whether they realized it or not: we were lost- spiritually, mentally, figuratively- we still are, and though the public sentiment is a bit more optimistic, this show, unlike X, is changing, morphing, avoiding a one-note cultural definition. It has, as many genre programs have, turned in on itself and is relying more and more on its own storyline- but what a storyline, and what storytelling.
I watch television to have something about society and humanity reflected back at me. There have been deeper commentaries on this (The Wire) and more up-to-date ones (South Park), but none are more compelling than this crazy, freestyle network television show.
The Movies
Nuff said. Did you happen to catch this?But a couple of comments on the some possibly more divisive releases of the year:
- Despite the foul taste left by the aforementioned X-Files TV show, I actually stand by this year's I Want To Believe feature. Not that it was exceedingly great, but why does everything with a franchise name behind it have to, as Roger Ebert said in his review of this, feature a villain "as big as a building"? Chris Carter committed an almost punk-rock act by making a film that resembled the 70's TV and film that inspired his show in the first place, and no matter what you think, he didn't fuck up as badly as Spielberg and Lucas.
- Remind me to walk out of the next movie that Jennifer Jason Leigh turns up in as a bohemian character who lays around stoned on sofas- it's a surefire signifier that one is in store for a lengthy treatise on just how miserable we can make ourselves in the Western World if we try hard enough. Charlie Kaufman's I-Can't-Even-Bother-To-Spell-It, New York features a lead character so self-indulgent that he actually picks through his own excrement onscreen, before he worries himself to death over the course of two hours. The only benefit I got from attending this movie was in realizing how grateful I was to be able to see through horseshit like this. Sorry if you liked it; looking forward to the debate.
The Books
Oh, the books. Oh, the books! I haven't had the proper time to read anything beyond cooking instructions all year. So here's my intended reading list come January, when my New Year's Resolution to find that time kicks in:
The English Major, by Jim Harrison. The Other, by David Guterson. A Mercy, by Toni Morrison. I Should Be Extremely Happy To Be In Your Company: A Novel of Lewis and Clark, by Brain Hall. Who's Your City? How the Creative Economy is Making Where You Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life, by Richard Florida. The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama. Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis, by Rowan Jacobsen.
To name a few. See there was a reason I posted this before Christmas, hint.
Just kidding- Happy Holidays all, here's to 2009.
11/5/08
New Morning
Last night I went to bed exhilarated, yet knowing I would sleep soundly and peacefully. I had seen something that was bigger than I could truly comprehend, something the likes of which I'd never seen in my lifetime. I woke early and saw the headline, triple-typefaced on the cover of the local paper- YES, HE DID. Like waking from a great dream I started to parse all of the things that had flooded my mind as I walked out the door, yet it was still too big to digest. Instead I noted the temperate weather & listened to the birds chirping in the trees. I thought of that same birdsong in the woods of Gettysburg, PA. On the dawn streets of Brooklyn, NY. Down in the Nevada desert. Everything was the same, yet different. Had someone really won a 330- seat electoral majority? Was that someone an American Democrat? Had they really, among a half-dozen other amazing, inspiring notions, reached out to gays and lesbians in their acceptance speech?
It was like things went from Star Trek to Star Trek: The Next Generation overnight. From chest-thumping, my-way-or-the-highway James T. Kirk to sublime, thoughtfully diplomatic Jean-Luc Picard. Like Americans had exerted an advanced sensibility that Star Trek creators hadn't expected to take hold until the 24th century. If that sensibility has existed enough in the hearts of the masses to be expressed in pop (speculative!) fiction, it must have laid dormant and unseen until now. But now someone was taking that positivity and running with it. Since we're talking in pop cultural terms (as this blog kind of has to)- this New Morning has come after a season-long identification with The Dark Knight.
But enough of that, because truth is greater than fiction. Truth now means that some might see how education, intelligence, and compassion makes one a valuable key in societies instead of a creepy, condescending snob. That some people on this morning, and in the days and weeks to come, might look on the people of African descent that they see around them with entirely new eyes, and be absolutely astounded at what they hadn't been willing or able to see before. That my Canadian self now looks on the image of the American flag in a completely different way than I did twenty-four hours ago. That I realize how subliminally stressed-out I've been over the last month or so.
I loved how Obama said he was looking forward to engaging with everyone, especially those he might disagree with. How my mind was racing and wrestling with all sorts of concepts during that speech, chief among them that hard work and hard commitment might get anyone anywhere. How John McCain, after seeming so dead-eyed with his own moral betrayals in the last few days of his campaign, gave the most graceful concession speech of all time. You could practically feel his relief at throwing off his horseshit electionmongering persona and ridding himself of a campaign in which he had to stand by and agree that everyone who ever attended a Republican rally was a Joe Six Pack or a Hockey Mom. When he shushed the booers during that speech with his hands, it seemed to translate as 'Okay. Now you can SHUT. UP. Thank God the best man won, I'm overjoyed to help him, and now I can more openly dismiss the people who call him an Arab and a terrorist.'.
Now you might be thinking, 'Come off it, Crawford, with all the dramatic language and overblown sentiments'. You might be sitting at work or at home pissed off that nothing good was on television last night, or discarding the rest of the newspaper to snap open the arts section. Maybe you've got a point. But maybe, come what may, you'll get the sense that something is vastly different about the world over the next little while. Maybe you'll begin noticing how Barack Obama will challenge our puffy, moonfaced, smug prick of a Canadian leader to step up his game. Or how all those Bruce Springsteen and Bright Eyes protest records from the last few years all of a sudden seem oddly outdated. Another record that hasn't aged well, and wasn't meant to, is fellow Canadian Neil Young's Living With War album. But I've been returning to one little lyric from that recording that seemed preposterously optimistic upon its 2006 release:
We're looking for a leader
To bring our country home
Maybe it's Obama
But he thinks that he's too young
Maybe it's Colin Powell
To right what he's done wrong
America has a leader
But he's not in the house
He's walking here among us
And we've got to seek him out.
Congratulations, America. You've got a real leader, finally. Now follow his lead, do what he suggests, don't stop working with him like you have been, and we'll see what happens.
plus
plus
equals:
"Just watch me." "I have a dream" to "Boldy go". Hurrah!!!!
It was like things went from Star Trek to Star Trek: The Next Generation overnight. From chest-thumping, my-way-or-the-highway James T. Kirk to sublime, thoughtfully diplomatic Jean-Luc Picard. Like Americans had exerted an advanced sensibility that Star Trek creators hadn't expected to take hold until the 24th century. If that sensibility has existed enough in the hearts of the masses to be expressed in pop (speculative!) fiction, it must have laid dormant and unseen until now. But now someone was taking that positivity and running with it. Since we're talking in pop cultural terms (as this blog kind of has to)- this New Morning has come after a season-long identification with The Dark Knight.
But enough of that, because truth is greater than fiction. Truth now means that some might see how education, intelligence, and compassion makes one a valuable key in societies instead of a creepy, condescending snob. That some people on this morning, and in the days and weeks to come, might look on the people of African descent that they see around them with entirely new eyes, and be absolutely astounded at what they hadn't been willing or able to see before. That my Canadian self now looks on the image of the American flag in a completely different way than I did twenty-four hours ago. That I realize how subliminally stressed-out I've been over the last month or so.
I loved how Obama said he was looking forward to engaging with everyone, especially those he might disagree with. How my mind was racing and wrestling with all sorts of concepts during that speech, chief among them that hard work and hard commitment might get anyone anywhere. How John McCain, after seeming so dead-eyed with his own moral betrayals in the last few days of his campaign, gave the most graceful concession speech of all time. You could practically feel his relief at throwing off his horseshit electionmongering persona and ridding himself of a campaign in which he had to stand by and agree that everyone who ever attended a Republican rally was a Joe Six Pack or a Hockey Mom. When he shushed the booers during that speech with his hands, it seemed to translate as 'Okay. Now you can SHUT. UP. Thank God the best man won, I'm overjoyed to help him, and now I can more openly dismiss the people who call him an Arab and a terrorist.'.
Now you might be thinking, 'Come off it, Crawford, with all the dramatic language and overblown sentiments'. You might be sitting at work or at home pissed off that nothing good was on television last night, or discarding the rest of the newspaper to snap open the arts section. Maybe you've got a point. But maybe, come what may, you'll get the sense that something is vastly different about the world over the next little while. Maybe you'll begin noticing how Barack Obama will challenge our puffy, moonfaced, smug prick of a Canadian leader to step up his game. Or how all those Bruce Springsteen and Bright Eyes protest records from the last few years all of a sudden seem oddly outdated. Another record that hasn't aged well, and wasn't meant to, is fellow Canadian Neil Young's Living With War album. But I've been returning to one little lyric from that recording that seemed preposterously optimistic upon its 2006 release:
We're looking for a leader
To bring our country home
Maybe it's Obama
But he thinks that he's too young
Maybe it's Colin Powell
To right what he's done wrong
America has a leader
But he's not in the house
He's walking here among us
And we've got to seek him out.
Congratulations, America. You've got a real leader, finally. Now follow his lead, do what he suggests, don't stop working with him like you have been, and we'll see what happens.
plus
plus
equals:
"Just watch me." "I have a dream" to "Boldy go". Hurrah!!!!11/2/08
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