Long Weekend Pop Culture Binge

I've had at least two conversations in the past month that have started with people asking me, "so, what did you think of Crash?" And I've had to disappoint both people, and tarnish my cinemaphile's reputation, by admitting that I hadn't seen it yet. So I made a point of inaugurating my weekend of moviegoing with it. It's a lovely and thought-provoking piece of work, both topically and formally. Jonathan Rosenbaum's meta-review does a good job of parsing the ways a film's structure (and our awareness of structure as structure) is inextricably bound to its ultimate impact on its audience; I found his methodology especially helpful as I was examining my own reactions to this movie. Like Rosenbaum, though I had some concerns about the script's dependence on coincidence, as well as the questionable emotional manipulation inherent in some scenes involving a saucer-eyed young Mexican girl and a deus ex machina in the form of a red box of bullets, I decided that I was willing to overlook these contrivances as tropes of the "we're all connected" genre (perhaps best, and most familiarly, represented by P. T. Anderson's Magnolia) and because I liked so much of what the movie was trying to do and say. Sure, it can be construed as weepie liberal feel-goodism (as both The Onion A.V. Club and Salon don't hesitate to loudly whine), but with so many wonderful performances and with such an earnest attempt to interrogate racial issues that pretty much no one else in popular entertainment has the balls to touch these days (even though we so sorely need it), I was more than happy to go where the movie was taking me. I'd especially like to single out Michael Peña's exceptional performance--I remember him from a few episodes in the second season of Felicity (you best wipe that smirk off your face right now) and was delighted to see him rise to the challenge of being (for me, at least) the vibrantly beating heart of the film.

Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle made for an enjoyable Saturday afternoon matinee, though I share a lot of Andrew O'Hehir's ambivalence about its relative worth in the grand scheme of Hong Kong things.

I'm a sucker for rough-and-tumble gangster-ridden Brit-noir, so I was eager to see the quietly lauded Layer Cake; however, having already seen the modern apotheosis of that genre in I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, there wasn't much left for me to get excited about here. It's clear the script was adapted from a book--it's way too talky, in the sense of "and now we will have ten minutes of spoken exposition." However, based on his performance as the never-named lead character in the film, Daniel Craig is the perfect choice for the next James Bond. And by that I mean he is a solid, competent, unflashy actor who looks stunning in his wardrobe. (Holy hell, can that man wear a suit. I'm not the most fashion-minded person on earth, but, as with Brad Pitt in Soderbergh's Ocean's movies, it's kind of hard not to notice the way even his slightest movements all but purr to the camera "this is how clothes are meant to be worn by a man.") If, as Doug Liman said in his recent interview in Entertainment Weekly, there's a "specific formula for James Bond where they [the producers in charge of the franchise] don't want it to be too original. . . . They want them to be just like the ones that came before," Craig was right to be chosen over Colin Farrell (too naughty), Clive Owen (too darkly smoldering), Hugh Jackman (too Aussie), or whoever else had once been up for the part because he's calmly and blandly appealing while still being enormously attractive and manly. But watch Michael Gambon mop up the floor with him as an actor, and it becomes apparent that he'll be right at home at the center of a splashy but mostly hollow blow-up franchise.

After finishing Denis Johnson's The Name of the World (lovely, spare prose, as ever, until he gets into the scenes where you have to spend time with yet another of his young, earthy, sexy, witchy, eminently desirable enchantress characters), I bowed to the zeitgeist and have just started reading Blink. I hope that I enjoy it as much as I enjoy a) the idea of the book, b) the synopses recounted to me by other folks who've enjoyed the book, and c) the idea of Malcolm Gladwell in general.

I continue to be enamored of Gimme Fiction, and I've begun to realize that a big part of it is that the album sounds to me the way that I always want Wilco to sound. I mean, I love me some Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but even that album just doesn't do it for me the way Spoon is doing it for me right now. (And three . . . two . . . one. . . . A and O, you can start posting your "heresy!" comments now.)

Photoblogging Comedy

This is the fucking funniest thing I've seen all week. (Link via Kittenpants, whose own commentary on the matter runs a pretty close second.)

Happy birthday to my sweet HLo today!

Dolour

All right, kittens, I'd encourage you to queue up (no, there along the wall, th-there, to the right) for your complimentary helping of Next Big Thing. You heard me.

Thanks to the beauty of the shuffle function in iTunes, I was recently introduced to the song stylings of Dolour, via their SXSW-approved MP3, "Cheer Up, Baby." On the strength of that single, which I've been listening to fairly relentlessly for the past two weeks or so, Giddy and I made the effort to catch their first-ever Chicago gig at the Abbey last night. (That's right, a Monday night rock show. I'd encourage you all to experience this phenomenon at your earliest convenience: ample parking, cheap drinks, enough room to stand on the main floor without an obstructed view, band members thankful to you for turning out at all.) Based on the combination of their strong, energetic set, ridiculously cute front man (songwriter and general Dolour mastermind Shane Tutmarc, all pointy Jimmy Fallon nose, bright white teeth, and complexion like a limpid pond tucked away in the Alps somewhere), hook-tastic songs, and go-get-'em rock 'n' roll attitude, I think they have the potential to be huge. Huge. I'm happy to be discovering them on their way up. (As touring bassist Robin Pecknold happily told us as we were chatting around the merch table at the end of the night, Giddy and I were the only two people there that they didn't already know. Points for us.) The new album is New Old Friends. You know you want it.

Openers (and Dolour friends) The Catch worked their self-awareness of being a chick band to the hilt, in the best possible way. Look for good things from them, too. (And, yes, before you cry sacrilege, lead singer Carly Nicklaus does earn her comparisons to a young Björk.)

CRP in the 'Fork

Ned Sublette's highly praised Cuba and Its Music gets another glowing mention in the press today, this time on the 'Fork. A nice Monday morning surprise.

Spoon

Damn you, indie tastemakers, damn you all to hell for being right yet again. Spoon's Gimme Fiction really is that good. Aurgh. (Stay tuned for the likely inclusion of "My Mathematical Mind" on my own year-end best-of CD comp.)

I'll Bring the Road, You Bring the Trip

OK, so who wants to go to St. Louis with me in late June to see Jonathan Richman perform at Blueberry Hill? I'm currently in the throes of a major Richman fixation (mostly thanks to his best-of collection Action Packed, with a healthy dose of Modern Lovers thrown in for good measure, of course) and would love, love, love to see him live. Alas, however, my lack of unsuspended license prevents me from just renting a vehicle and going it alone. So, c'mon--who's up for it?

Revenge of the Coffee Wench

In stark contrast to the lovely, lovely male baristas (baristers?) who work at my neighborhood coffee shop, there is one particular woman who, for reasons unknown to me, hates my motherfucking guts. I have griped about her on many previous occasions (such as the time when I accidentally ordered, in Starbucks lingo, a "tall," rather than a "small," coffee, and she told me they'd be happy to break my kneecaps for me if I didn't break that habit) and she's actually a big part of the reason why I don't patronize that fine establishment as frequently as I used to. (Well, that and I've come to enjoy the ritual--and the savings!--of just making my own damn coffee at home.)

At any rate, I was running late this morning and decided to stop in on my way to the train. Oh, and was I ever so pleased to see Suzy Sunshine behind the counter. I quickly and efficiently ordered a small dark-roast with room, paid for my fix, and skedaddled toward the brown line. I drank about half the cup on the train and the other half after I'd arrived at the office. Well, even though I've been at work for close to two hours already, I still feel sluggish and have developed a low-grade headache.

DO I HAVE TO SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU PEOPLE? THE WENCH SABOTAGED ME! I'M CONVINCED SHE GAVE ME A CUP OF DECAF!

Either that, or she's just got me so psyched out that my banner of paranoia and my standard of neurosis tend to fly a little higher after I've had a run-in with her. You be the judge.

2 More 5ives

Merlin updated his lists of five things today!

Five Things I'd Like to See Engraved on Little Rubber Bracelets

Five Favorite Spoodley-Spoodley Guitar Solos (Hee hee hee! "Spoodley-spoodley"!)

Hitchhiker's Guide

After much anticipation, I finally got a chance to catch up with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy yesterday. While I can't say it lived it up to all my expectations, I certainly enjoyed it and consider it an afternoon and a few bucks well spent.

It's been an age since I've read the book, so my complaints are certainly not of the trainspotting variety. And "complaints" is even too strong a word, now that I see it sitting there in pixels. It just felt a little off to me, and I think that can be chalked up to a) a first-time director who's still working on a sense of how to pace a major, full-length motion picture and b) the way that this movie, almost inadvertently, is an object lesson in the competing strengths and weaknesses of American and British styles of acting for the camera.

The three main Americans actors in the film--Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, and Sam Rockwell--are these glowingly beautiful, absurdly magnetic forces of nature. Your eyes are drawn, almost against your will, to the vision of these exquisite bodies in motion. They are three naturally gifted, ridiculously charismatic performers who command your attention with the sheer force of their presence. But then, when these bodies are in motion, which they are fairly relentlessly for the full 110 minutes, they're doing way too much. They don't seem to have much control over their spastic, rangy movements, and, when projected onto a full-size movie screen, they almost feel like they're lacerating your eyeballs. For the most part, they're unfortunately not using their substantial power for the good of the piece. The goofball, calculatedly "wacky" overacting just starts to feel exhausting. Of course, a lot of this could have been edited around or otherwise toned down by the director, so they're not entirely to blame for these faults.

The Brits, on the other hand, are much more subtle with their genius for language and in giving the camera tiny little fillips of unexpected emotion. I'm glad that I went into the movie as one of the last comedy-minded Anglophiles in the States who hasn't yet watched the original BBC version of The Office on DVD because I had absolutely no expectations of Martin Freeman and his performance as Arthur Dent. As such, I was able to appreciate the fact that he was pretty much, well, um, perfect. He held the movie together in absolutely all the ways that it needed to be held together. Bumbling, hapless Brit-schmuck demeanor? Check. Enough instant chemistry with Trillian that you actually hope they end up together at the end of the movie (and, more importantly, believe it when she chooses him over the dumb-but-dashing Zaphod Beeblebrox)? Check. An emotionally and dramatically satisfying mix of annoyance and wonder at his travels through the galaxy? Check. It was a thankless and huge responsibility for an actor to shoulder, to unite the many different, zany characters and scenarios, yet he manages it seemingly effortlessly. One particularly gorgeous example of his restrained underacting occurs when Slartibartfast shows him the factory floor where customized planets are built. That moment alone is worth the price of admission. Arthur kind of hunches over and covers his mouth with his hand in an expression of awe and wonderment, clearly overcome with a reverential sense of beauty and appreciation for what he's privileged to witness there. It's a stunning piece of acting. (Then, not five minutes later in the scene, after a brief conversation about how mice are actually the most intelligent beings on Earth, Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast says, "I don't quite know what you mean when you speak of this . . . 'cheese'." He slips the comedy in way under the radar yet delivers the line with such unshakable conviction that he actually makes you believe for a moment that you don't know what cheese is either.) It's these little jewel-like interactions that gave the movie an emotional depth that I honestly wasn't expecting.

Of course, nothing I've written above is in any way applicable to the acting style of John Malkovich, who, I think, must actually be from the same planet as his character.

Also, I'm happy to report that Neil Hannon is in exquisite vocal form on his heavy-swinging version of "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" that plays over the closing credits. (However, I'm rather annoyed with iTunes for declaring it an "album only" track, in effect forcing me to pay $9.99 for the entirety of the instrumental soundtrack if I want to be all completist about having the song in my collection. Fleh. Isn't that the whole point of iTunes? To be able to cherry-pick a specific song or two without forking over the cash for a bunch of other stuff that you're honestly never going to listen to?)

In other music news, John Darnielle all but revivalized me at the Mountain Goats show at the Logan Square Auditorium on Friday night. It was a great night out, all springtime humidity, Jim Beam on the rocks, Darnielle's peculiar voice, and his phenomenal little songs like emotional bottle rockets. Also, opening band Shearwater turns out to be something of a side project for Okkervil River's keyboard player Jonathan Meiburg, whose voice I vastly prefer to Will Sheff's. (Plus, as I told Meiburg and violinist Travis Weller at the merch table at the end of the night, I'm instantly a fan of any band who can rock a melodica the way they did.) Their brand of rootsy emo (earnest stream-of-consciousness lyrics, guitar feedback, and overly dramatic dynamics) isn't something I tend to want to listen to on my own time, but it's enjoyable enough live. Plus, Meiburg used to be a graduate student in ornithology, which is just another instance of the weird bird-related synchronicity in my life this spring.

And, a hap-hap-happy birthday to BAK today (you sexy thang)!

Cover Me

Oh my nerd, I am totally geeked out with excitement about this:

Shins, Decemberists, Spoon Head Believer Comp.

**swoon** They had me at "Bridges and Balloons."

(Also, a belated happy b-day to both Nick and Mike O'D. Love you guys!)

OCD

I often do not use the office supplies on my desk for the purposes the great office supply god, in his infinite wisdom, intended them. (Anyone who was around the day when I was slicing the plastic off an advance copy of a book with an Xacto knife and then punctured myself in the finger so deeply, and with such force, that bright crimson blood coursed down and around my knuckles can attest to this.) As such, my office supplies show a lot more wear and tear than the average person's.

Just for a change of pace, though, today I actually wanted to use one of my two silver letter-openers for the purpose of opening an actual sealed letter. I looked at both of them and realized they were both covered in a gooey, gummy substance. (Most likely remnants of packing tape that I'd tried to slice through on a previous occasion.) So, I went to the supply closet to fetch a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towel, then came back to my desk and started carefully and meticulously wiping off the gunk. A coworker walked past my cube and glanced down at me, my brow furrowed in concentration. With a quick, sharp sense of horror, I looked up at him, then burst out laughing, and said, "I bet this looks really obsessive-compulsive, doesn't it? Me, cleaning my letter-openers?"

Danny Boyle

Will somebody please start giving Danny Boyle the props he deserves?

I was finally, belatedly, able to catch up with Millions last night, and, aside from the film being lovely and touching and all that, I was bowled over by just how Danny Boyle-ish it was, and by how much I meant that as a sincere and laudatory compliment. Trainspotting has long been one of my favorite films, and I think I paid to see 28 Days Later in the theater twice because I liked it so much, and for a few moments, I considered the possibility that part of the reason I enjoyed Millions as much as I did was because his directorial tics (those kinetic opening shots, the cozy lilt of Scottish accents, his penchant for casting gorgeously round-headed leading men) simply felt familiar and thus safe. But, nah, I enjoyed it because brutha knows what he's doing.

As I started churning over in my mind some of the most resonant aspects of the above-mentioned films (as well as Shallow Grave), I realized that one of Boyle's main strengths as an auteur (oh, that word) is his emotional intelligence about family (both biological and socially constructed). Accustomed as we are to being fed ham-fisted, sitcom-esque depictions of families and friends that come across as collections of people who mean more to an unskilled writer or director's agenda than they do to each other, it's so rare and refreshing to see a group of actors assembled to actually function and relate to each other as a Group. Boyle has a keen understanding of the entropic self-loathing that keeps unhealthy relationships afloat, as well as the deep well of feeling that's usually buried underneath the soured interactions and general disgust that pollute bonds that have long outlived their expiration dates. He is also masterful at using actors capable of giving the camera a character's entire complex interpersonal back story in a few simple words or gestures (case in point: has there been a more powerful father/daughter moment on screen recently than the scene in 28 Days Later when Brendan Gleeson has about two seconds to convey to his daughter how much he loves her before he changes into a zombie?).

Millions is concerned with an actual, biological family that we follow much more closely than we do, for example, Renton's parents in Trainspotting or even Frank and Hannah in 28 Days Later, but, similar to the family units from those films, we see this unit living through a moment of panic. Yes, it's the panic of finding a sackful of British pounds that they must spend and/or distribute before the deadline for the changeover to the Euro, but it's primarily the panic of carrying on after their wife/mother's death. (A familiar trope of dark, Brothers Grimmish fairy tales that are of a piece with Boyle's sensibilities.) The attendant emotions of that experience are a perfect vehicle for a continuation of the paranoia, hallucinations, and slowly creeping dread that are more easily recognizable as his stock-in-trade as a filmmaker. But it also allows him to more explicitly address the spiritual yearning (ahem, "choose life") that is usually so far under the radar in his movies that even the characters themselves would likely deny it. It takes bollocks of bloody steel to risk talking about religion in a specifically Christian context in a movie these days and to pull it off with a flair worthy of Salinger that leaves no taint of Gibson behind. But when little Damian has a bedside conversation with St. Peter about the miracle of the fishes and loaves and when water flows from a well in the African desert (both as a baptism and a benediction) in the film's final shots, the subtext, while not particularly subtle, is powerful and deeply felt.

Though I don't remember much of anything about it, I know I did see A Life Less Ordinary in the theater when it came out in late '97 (at the late, lamented Von Lee in Bloomington, where I also had the good fortune to see other personal favorites Hilary and Jackie and Rushmore in their initial runs), and I sheepishly admit to blindly following popular opinion in my failure to ever see The Beach. However, I now feel I have some DVDs to rent and some cinematic research to do to determine if Danny Boyle is, as I suspect, one of my favorite directors out there right now.

Triple Word Score

God bless Yahoo. This isn't so much a headline as it is the kick-assingest game of Scrabble ever:

Chlamydia Outbreak Kills a Dozen Penguins

(All due respect and sympathy to the zoo keepers and general lovers of polar fowl, of course.)

Also, Neal Medlyn's personal essay about male bisexuality on Nerve made me laugh out loud today with this paragraph:

"Bisexuality is a disappointing, suspect, utterly chaotic identity. It seems to exist in only the foggiest regions of people's brains, like Pol Pot or the geographic location of Myanmar. They're not sure what it is, but they're pretty sure it's lame and/or bad."

Now, I charge you, on Mike O'D's behalf, to go educate yourself on the wherefores and whys of Mr. Pot with Philip Short's recent biography, Anatomy of a Nightmare.

And the birthday train just keeps on a-rolling: happy birthday to my dear, sweet sister, who leaves her teen years behind today!

Quintessence

It would be difficult for me to dream up a more quintessentially "Allison" night than the one I enjoyed yesterday: diagramming sentences at the bar in the Green Mill while sipping a Makers Manhattan and waiting for the Kurt Elling Quartet to take the stage. Delightful. May you all soon have a chance to blend a handful of your own disparate and eclectic loves into a night equally well-tailored to you.

(PS: happy, happy birfday, Mikow!! The committee volunteered me to give you your official welcome to the Early Late-Twenties, and I'm happy to oblige.)

CTLA & LBLA

Weddings rule.

(Incidentally, so do showers.)

More pictures of the Larson/Andrews wedding can be found at the official photographer's site.

To paraphrase a line from Sports Night, if you have half as much fun looking at these pictures as we had taking and being in them, well, then, we had twice as much fun as you. And, boy, did we ever!

Love and hugs to the new bride and groom!!