Well, count me in with the rest of the filmies who are saying The Soloist is so much better than you think it is. Yeah, it’s a tortured musical genius movie, but it’s also way more stylistically ambitious than it needed to be. I mean, the sound editing on this thing, you guys—I saw the movie at the Davis, which I love having accessible within walking distance from my apartment, but now I wish that I’d seen it down at the River East or somewhere with better acoustics. Their use of voice over and the rest of the stuff on the soundtrack is really a fairly brilliant way to deal with the inherently uncinematic nature of both movies about writing and movies about music. It swings for the fences in a lot of places, and misses, sure (I reeeeally could have done without that final shot of all the mentally ill people dancing at the end, and the ranging, impressionistic shots of LA’s homeless communities with Jamie Foxx reciting the Lord’s Prayer in voice over was a bit much as well), but it also gets a hell of a lot right. The 2001-esque (yeah, that 2001) sequence of dancing lights when the two lead characters go to a symphony rehearsal was so unexpected and so nice, and the shots of those two birds flying over LA while the cello music swells on the soundtrack was so overwrought that it curved the circle all the way back around to incredibly moving. Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx’s performances are likely to win all kinds of plaudits this year, so, whatever, I don’t need to pile on here, but I absolutely adored the moment when Downey Jr. is hanging around at the community center interviewing that old lady, and he throws his head back with this narcissistic glee and laughs, “you’re so awesome!” It was such a wonderfully honest moment of writerly enthusiasm—he was totally not in the moment with this other human being but was already busy mentally constructing a probably condescending anecdote about her. I’ve totally been that kind of asshole, and it was both bracing and weirdly comforting to see on screen. Don’t let the sappy trailer fool you on this one, y’all. It’s worth a look.
Whereas last year I was busy boo-hooing into that Bon Iver album for months on end because it was all gentle and full of pain, and stomping around the neighborhood listening to the Dodos strum their acoustic guitars and bang their drums, this year all I want to listen to so far is the spazziest, most annoying music I can find. I mean, the Neko Case album is gorgeous and all, and I know I’m going to really like it a lot more when I’m in a better headspace for it, but I just can’t pay attention to it right now because I’m busy jonesing for anything that’s full of harsh, electronic sounds and beats that are so aggressively irritating that they’re like ohrwurms on Viagra. There’s Animal Collective, of course (“My Girls” is a given, but OMG, you guys, “Brother Sport” has been killing me lately: “OH-pen up your OH-pen up your OH-pen up your throat a luh-tel”). Per Dono’s recommendation, I’ve given a few listens to Dan Deacon’s Bromst (still letting it grow on me, but I dig what it’s doing). Like everybody and their Tumblr crush, the Micachu and the Shapes album is making me ridiculously happy (right now I have five tracks starred in the smart playlist I call “songs to watch out for”—and there could be five more by the end of the week the rate things are going). And the granddaddy of ’em all: Max Tundra’s Parallax Error Beheads You. The explosive brilliance of that album makes my teeth chatter. There’s so much going on in it, and it seems so overwhelming (ahem), but then once you start to learn it, you realize that he’s in complete control of every vintage keyboard blip and drum machine stutter. Plus he’s funny as all hell, dopily insecure, and laser-focused on pointing out really subtle instances of a certain kind of hipster bullshit (fashion, wanky film students who’ve read a bit too much theory). It's an astonishing achievement, and I'm sooo glad I didn't let it slip by just because it kind of flew under my radar upon its release at the end of last year.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Hey, That's Me!
I'm delighted to have been asked to contribute to this month's "snack away" series over on eat!drink!snack! My post is up today.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Charlyne!
And, just like that, a new video with Charlyne Yi popped up online yesterday (via). To make it even more awesome, it's for the Man Man tune "Rabbit Habits" from last year's excellent album of the same name and also features Fred Armisen.
Well, let's just go ahead and make it an all-video edition today, shall we? (BTW, if you follow my Tumblr, you've probably seen all these already.)
Here's the song that's been stuck in my head for the past couple days, Max Tundra's "Which Song" (via):
Via Cassius, some awesome old-school John Roderick from his Western State Hurricanes days, doing an early version of "Carparts" (aka, one of five songs Merlin Mann would "love to hear performed by a competent junior high marching band"):
And, just because it makes me happy, the Divine Comedy doing "Tonight We Fly" for La Blogotheque:
Speaking of the Divine Comedy, if you haven't been checking updates to the sidebar at left, you may not be aware that I started a Divine Comedy oeuvreblog a couple months ago. Progress has been slow so far (ugh, there's this other little thing in my life called a day job), but maybe broadcasting about it here will be a good way of publicly shaming myself into doing more work on it more consistently.
Man Man "Rabbit Habits" - watch more funny videos
Well, let's just go ahead and make it an all-video edition today, shall we? (BTW, if you follow my Tumblr, you've probably seen all these already.)
Here's the song that's been stuck in my head for the past couple days, Max Tundra's "Which Song" (via):
Via Cassius, some awesome old-school John Roderick from his Western State Hurricanes days, doing an early version of "Carparts" (aka, one of five songs Merlin Mann would "love to hear performed by a competent junior high marching band"):
And, just because it makes me happy, the Divine Comedy doing "Tonight We Fly" for La Blogotheque:
Speaking of the Divine Comedy, if you haven't been checking updates to the sidebar at left, you may not be aware that I started a Divine Comedy oeuvreblog a couple months ago. Progress has been slow so far (ugh, there's this other little thing in my life called a day job), but maybe broadcasting about it here will be a good way of publicly shaming myself into doing more work on it more consistently.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
The Omnipresence of Apatow
Sigh. Judd Apatow (or rather, the idea/signature style/cinematic sub-sub-genre of "Judd Apatow") is like that person from high school that you keep bumping into once, twice, sometimes three times a year, usually at other people's parties, sometimes out on the street somewhere, and whenever you see him/her you're like "WTF? Are we friends? Why are you still in my life?" But after those WTF moments have happened several years in a row, you just kind of give up and accept the fact that your social circles are inextricably and inexplicably linked, to the point where you almost kind of look forward to the random run-ins, despite whatever stress they may cause you.
Which is to say, for as many issues as I've had with Apatow and his loosely affiliated stable of cohorts over the years, somehow, on this rare weekend when I had both time and money to spare, I found myself taking in I Love You, Man and Adventureland at the theater. WTF? Are we friends? Why are you still in my life?
I Love You, Man, despite peaking early and featuring one of the worst end-of-movie wedding scenes since The 40 Year Old Virgin, is very funny, and Paul Rudd is absurdly charming (srsly, this is the kind of role I didn't even know I wanted him to play when I mentioned in my write-up on Forgetting Sarah Marshall that he needed to start carrying movies on his own again). But, perhaps predictably, it left me wondering why there isn't more space for female oddballs in these films. I mean, when I think of the majority of women I hang out with on a semi-regular basis, it's kind of awesome to realize that they are all extremely weird in totally wonderful ways. They're all super foxy and successful in their fields and many of them are in loving, functional relationships, and there's no doubt that they can match my dude friends pound for pound with The Funny. Obviously I'm biased and my control group is probably way skewed, but you get my point. Why is it seemingly so hard for writers and directors to represent this reality in these movies that have come to dominate our notion of contemporary film comedy? I'm sure Rashida Jones is a fine actress and it's cool that she's doing work on all these TV and film comedies, but her role as Paul Rudd's fiancee was so boring and lame. How much more interesting would this movie have been if she were swapped out for the "wacky" friend played by Sarah Burns (or hell, even Jaime Pressly, with her signature turbo intensity perpetually cranked up to 11), and then treated as the romantic lead, with all her tics and neuroses intact? To this date, Charlyne Yi in Knocked Up, who obviously wasn't even close to a having a prominent role, is the most memorable female character for me in any of these movies, and it's really because she was so gleefully fucking bizarre. More like her, please. This is the reality we live in. There's a reason why people love Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Kristen Wiig so much. They're the exceptions that prove the rule.
Despite being billed as "from the director of Superbad," I was really, really delighted to find that Adventureland is a sweet and sensitive little movie, full of tenderness and sadness and a nonjudgmental attitude toward the very true-to-life and occasionally morally compromised situations the characters find themselves in. I think if I were just a few years younger, it probably would have knocked me out even more. Jesse Eisenberg is perfect (I gotta check out Roger Dodger again sometime; I remember loving it when I saw it in the theater and totally forgot Eisenberg was the kid in it), and it's so cool to see what a smooth, unforced actor Ryan Reynolds has become, even in this small role. Though I, of course, understand why the movie needed its last scene, part of me wishes it would have seized the ambiguous ending and faded out just before that, with Eisenberg's character on the bus to New York, gazing out the rain-streaked windows, with the lights of the city shining through the raindrops like hundreds of light-emitting diodes, with the Replacements' "Unsatisfied" blaring on the soundtrack. It was such a beautiful moment.
In case you missed it last week, over on Fluxblog, Matthew Perpetua, man of the people, in his infinite wisdom, gave the Internet what it truly wants: kittens, cheeseburgers, and dreamy photo montages of President Obama.
Also in case you missed it, Shawn has been rolling out many exciting changes and additions to the Eat! Drink! Snack! empire: a site redesign, the daily "Nosh Nook" entries, a Twitter feed, and, every Wednesday this April, entries written by special guests from around the world (the first from Germany's very own Jonesalicious).
I AM A LLAMA; YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID
Which is to say, for as many issues as I've had with Apatow and his loosely affiliated stable of cohorts over the years, somehow, on this rare weekend when I had both time and money to spare, I found myself taking in I Love You, Man and Adventureland at the theater. WTF? Are we friends? Why are you still in my life?
I Love You, Man, despite peaking early and featuring one of the worst end-of-movie wedding scenes since The 40 Year Old Virgin, is very funny, and Paul Rudd is absurdly charming (srsly, this is the kind of role I didn't even know I wanted him to play when I mentioned in my write-up on Forgetting Sarah Marshall that he needed to start carrying movies on his own again). But, perhaps predictably, it left me wondering why there isn't more space for female oddballs in these films. I mean, when I think of the majority of women I hang out with on a semi-regular basis, it's kind of awesome to realize that they are all extremely weird in totally wonderful ways. They're all super foxy and successful in their fields and many of them are in loving, functional relationships, and there's no doubt that they can match my dude friends pound for pound with The Funny. Obviously I'm biased and my control group is probably way skewed, but you get my point. Why is it seemingly so hard for writers and directors to represent this reality in these movies that have come to dominate our notion of contemporary film comedy? I'm sure Rashida Jones is a fine actress and it's cool that she's doing work on all these TV and film comedies, but her role as Paul Rudd's fiancee was so boring and lame. How much more interesting would this movie have been if she were swapped out for the "wacky" friend played by Sarah Burns (or hell, even Jaime Pressly, with her signature turbo intensity perpetually cranked up to 11), and then treated as the romantic lead, with all her tics and neuroses intact? To this date, Charlyne Yi in Knocked Up, who obviously wasn't even close to a having a prominent role, is the most memorable female character for me in any of these movies, and it's really because she was so gleefully fucking bizarre. More like her, please. This is the reality we live in. There's a reason why people love Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Kristen Wiig so much. They're the exceptions that prove the rule.
Despite being billed as "from the director of Superbad," I was really, really delighted to find that Adventureland is a sweet and sensitive little movie, full of tenderness and sadness and a nonjudgmental attitude toward the very true-to-life and occasionally morally compromised situations the characters find themselves in. I think if I were just a few years younger, it probably would have knocked me out even more. Jesse Eisenberg is perfect (I gotta check out Roger Dodger again sometime; I remember loving it when I saw it in the theater and totally forgot Eisenberg was the kid in it), and it's so cool to see what a smooth, unforced actor Ryan Reynolds has become, even in this small role. Though I, of course, understand why the movie needed its last scene, part of me wishes it would have seized the ambiguous ending and faded out just before that, with Eisenberg's character on the bus to New York, gazing out the rain-streaked windows, with the lights of the city shining through the raindrops like hundreds of light-emitting diodes, with the Replacements' "Unsatisfied" blaring on the soundtrack. It was such a beautiful moment.
In case you missed it last week, over on Fluxblog, Matthew Perpetua, man of the people, in his infinite wisdom, gave the Internet what it truly wants: kittens, cheeseburgers, and dreamy photo montages of President Obama.
Also in case you missed it, Shawn has been rolling out many exciting changes and additions to the Eat! Drink! Snack! empire: a site redesign, the daily "Nosh Nook" entries, a Twitter feed, and, every Wednesday this April, entries written by special guests from around the world (the first from Germany's very own Jonesalicious).
I AM A LLAMA; YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
