All right, former Pirates of Penzance cast members, sing it with me: "for I was born in leap year / and that birthday will not be reached by me til 1940!" "Oh, horrible!"
Do something ridiculous and indulgent today, my kittens, and enjoy your extra 24 hours.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
No Country, Michael Clayton, & Bon Iver
No, I did not watch the Oscars this weekend. No, I do not feel bad about it. And, no, I did not like No Country for Old Men when I finally saw it about a week and a half ago. It's not even an active dislike. I actually felt profoundly indifferent to it, which means that, yes, it probably is the defining film of '07, just in a different way than the Academy meant. I found it fairly vapid, even tedious, which, if I give it too much credit, I could conceivably believe it meant as The Point. But, I think it's more a case of emperor-has-no-clothes. Motivation-less evil holds no interest for me in film right now, especially, in Chicago, mere days after the NIU shooting. I almost could have wept for the waste of Javier Bardem as Chigurh; you could just feel the stoppage of life force in him, and for what? To make some inane point that bad people exist and do bad things sometimes for little apparent reason? Whatevs. I'll take a pass on this one. I did kind of like Woody Harrelson in it, though, and Josh Brolin really had quite a year, didn't he?
Michael Clayton, though, I liked. Quite a lot, actually; way more than I thought I would. I liked especially how, post-Erin Brockovich, it didn't really even pretend to be "about" the ethical issues raised in the lawsuit, that at its base, it was really just saying, mostly through the Clayton character, "this is what it feels like to be an adult. You've got a lot of shit hanging over your head, every day, and the moment you make a choice in one direction or another, whether it's the 'right' choice or not, it will inevitably affect about sixteen other things going on in your life, mostly in ways that your family and friends won't understand or probably like." It feels right. Wilkinson I love and it was certainly the flashy role, but I'm glad Tilda Swinton won the Oscar. People often talk about an actor's lack of vanity, but I think the notion couldn't be truer of her performance here (much more so than something broadly creepy/gross like Charlize Theron in Monster). Between her sweaty pit stains in that early scene in the bathroom and the almost imperceptibly slight roll of pudge bulging out over the line of her pantyhose when she's getting dressed for the day, this is the true face of evil in the drag of incredible banality.
All I want to listen to right now is Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago. I think I listened to it four or five times in a row on Monday. I can't even rave about it properly; it's so good that all I can really do is state its goodness like fact. It is a very good album. Listen to it now before it gets co-opted by soundtrack supervisors who will borrow its magic for dubious marketing aims.
Did everybody catch Bill Hader's incredible DDL/Daniel Plainview impression this weekend in SNL's inevitable Food Network spoof [link updated] "I Drink Your Milkshake"? The conceit is obvious, and I'm pretty much over the catchphrase-aliciousness of the whole thing at this point, but the way he yelps "I'veabandonedmychild! I'veabandonedmyboy!" (at minute2:19 1:50) like it's all one word fucking killed me. Great stuff.
Michael Clayton, though, I liked. Quite a lot, actually; way more than I thought I would. I liked especially how, post-Erin Brockovich, it didn't really even pretend to be "about" the ethical issues raised in the lawsuit, that at its base, it was really just saying, mostly through the Clayton character, "this is what it feels like to be an adult. You've got a lot of shit hanging over your head, every day, and the moment you make a choice in one direction or another, whether it's the 'right' choice or not, it will inevitably affect about sixteen other things going on in your life, mostly in ways that your family and friends won't understand or probably like." It feels right. Wilkinson I love and it was certainly the flashy role, but I'm glad Tilda Swinton won the Oscar. People often talk about an actor's lack of vanity, but I think the notion couldn't be truer of her performance here (much more so than something broadly creepy/gross like Charlize Theron in Monster). Between her sweaty pit stains in that early scene in the bathroom and the almost imperceptibly slight roll of pudge bulging out over the line of her pantyhose when she's getting dressed for the day, this is the true face of evil in the drag of incredible banality.
All I want to listen to right now is Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago. I think I listened to it four or five times in a row on Monday. I can't even rave about it properly; it's so good that all I can really do is state its goodness like fact. It is a very good album. Listen to it now before it gets co-opted by soundtrack supervisors who will borrow its magic for dubious marketing aims.
Did everybody catch Bill Hader's incredible DDL/Daniel Plainview impression this weekend in SNL's inevitable Food Network spoof [link updated] "I Drink Your Milkshake"? The conceit is obvious, and I'm pretty much over the catchphrase-aliciousness of the whole thing at this point, but the way he yelps "I'veabandonedmychild! I'veabandonedmyboy!" (at minute
Monday, February 11, 2008
Recent Enthusiasms
"You can't go on suspending judgment forever--that would be to forgo genuinely enjoying music, since you can't enjoy what you can't like. But a more pluralistic criticism might put less stock in defending its choices and more in depicting its enjoyment, with all its messiness and private soul tremors--to show what it is like for me to like it, and invite you to compare. This kind of exchange takes place sometimes between critics on the Internet, and it would be fascinating to have more dialogic criticism: here is my story, what is yours? You might have to be ready, like Celine, to be laughed at. (Judge not, as the Bible sort of says, unless you're eager to be judged.) In these ways the embarrassment of having a taste, the reflexive disgust of distinction, the strangeness of our strangeness to one another, might get the airing they need." --Carl Wilson, Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste
Yes, the book is every bit as remarkable as you've heard/read. I feel like I need to take another spin through it immediately, so I can get more into the heart of the thing rather than, as I did throughout my initial reading, just facepalming myself every page and marveling, "holy shit, he's really going to pull it off!" I have at least eight or nine other pages dog-eared on my copy marking quotes that easily could have subbed in for the one above, but it's such a strong, bold work, his arguments really deserve to be taken as a whole, not just cut-and-pasted to show off the flashier bits. Highly recommended.
I was in San Francisco this past weekend, taking a whirlwind tour of the city and the general bay area. During a quick spin through the SFMOMA, I enjoyed, despite much walking fatigue, a nearly transcendent moment in front of Andy Warhol's National Velvet. I feel kind of irrationally insecure about the fact that so much of my favorite art was made by white men in America in the mid-twentieth century, but there it is. (Talk about the embarrassment of having a taste!) It's such a heartbreakingly fragile work, an effect that's really only enforced by its large size. It made me want to cry for Elizabeth Taylor, for Andy, for film, for the march of time, for the fleetingness of youth and beauty. I saw in the repetition of the images not just the flicker of a strip of film through a projector, but a heartbeat at once worried, ecstatic, ephemeral, and very, very human. It's good to go out and wander around and open your eyes and look at things, kittens. You never know what's going to hit you and when.
As for the musics, lately I've been digging Illinois, whose official studio recordings come off with the same kind of shiny Rogue Wave/Margot & the Nuclear So & So's thing that's pleasant and catchy without being as ruthlessly hooky as, say, the New Pornographers or the Shins, but live, their energy has a much sparkier/spunkier edge, in a cute indie rock boy kind of way that makes you want to meet up with the lot of them for a beer at the local dive bar, and, if you're lucky, score a snog in the back corner with whoever's single enough and desperate enough at the moment. Likewise, White Denim's stage presence doesn't come anywhere near matching their sound, in a really fantastic brain-fuck of a way. Their EP Let's Talk About It is all attitude, attitude, attitude, but live, they're just a bunch of beautiful idiots, mumbling under their breath to each other between songs, the vocalized internal monologue bleeding through the fourth wall (if there can even be a fourth wall at a rock show like this) and becoming every bit as valuable to the overall effect as their squawking guitar and old-car-backfiring-in-an-alley bass rumbles and spastic, frantic drumming. Really addictive stuff. The jury's still out for me on Vampire Weekend, but "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" is just ridiculously catchy, almost infuriatingly so. And I'm still parsing what I think about Times New Viking, being as all over the place with the "huh, reallys?" as they are, but, DS schools us on why those huhs might be more worthwhile than I would have given them credit for on my own.
Yes, the book is every bit as remarkable as you've heard/read. I feel like I need to take another spin through it immediately, so I can get more into the heart of the thing rather than, as I did throughout my initial reading, just facepalming myself every page and marveling, "holy shit, he's really going to pull it off!" I have at least eight or nine other pages dog-eared on my copy marking quotes that easily could have subbed in for the one above, but it's such a strong, bold work, his arguments really deserve to be taken as a whole, not just cut-and-pasted to show off the flashier bits. Highly recommended.
I was in San Francisco this past weekend, taking a whirlwind tour of the city and the general bay area. During a quick spin through the SFMOMA, I enjoyed, despite much walking fatigue, a nearly transcendent moment in front of Andy Warhol's National Velvet. I feel kind of irrationally insecure about the fact that so much of my favorite art was made by white men in America in the mid-twentieth century, but there it is. (Talk about the embarrassment of having a taste!) It's such a heartbreakingly fragile work, an effect that's really only enforced by its large size. It made me want to cry for Elizabeth Taylor, for Andy, for film, for the march of time, for the fleetingness of youth and beauty. I saw in the repetition of the images not just the flicker of a strip of film through a projector, but a heartbeat at once worried, ecstatic, ephemeral, and very, very human. It's good to go out and wander around and open your eyes and look at things, kittens. You never know what's going to hit you and when.
As for the musics, lately I've been digging Illinois, whose official studio recordings come off with the same kind of shiny Rogue Wave/Margot & the Nuclear So & So's thing that's pleasant and catchy without being as ruthlessly hooky as, say, the New Pornographers or the Shins, but live, their energy has a much sparkier/spunkier edge, in a cute indie rock boy kind of way that makes you want to meet up with the lot of them for a beer at the local dive bar, and, if you're lucky, score a snog in the back corner with whoever's single enough and desperate enough at the moment. Likewise, White Denim's stage presence doesn't come anywhere near matching their sound, in a really fantastic brain-fuck of a way. Their EP Let's Talk About It is all attitude, attitude, attitude, but live, they're just a bunch of beautiful idiots, mumbling under their breath to each other between songs, the vocalized internal monologue bleeding through the fourth wall (if there can even be a fourth wall at a rock show like this) and becoming every bit as valuable to the overall effect as their squawking guitar and old-car-backfiring-in-an-alley bass rumbles and spastic, frantic drumming. Really addictive stuff. The jury's still out for me on Vampire Weekend, but "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" is just ridiculously catchy, almost infuriatingly so. And I'm still parsing what I think about Times New Viking, being as all over the place with the "huh, reallys?" as they are, but, DS schools us on why those huhs might be more worthwhile than I would have given them credit for on my own.
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