Useless Film Snob Reviews

35 Shots of Rum/The Headless Woman

2010-12-30T09:05:00.006-05:00

35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis, 2009) [7] / The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2009) [8]

Both of these occupy similar space in my head, even if they aren't quite the same films. The Headless Woman feels like a Denis film while 35 Shots is a fairly straightforward film with moments expected out of Denis' work.

Coming after the intriguing but nearly incomprehensible The Intruder, 35 Shots of Rum is about as straightforward as you could get out of Denis. Focusing on a father and daughter and their relationships with a circle of friends and perhaps former lovers, the film is more a lyrical mediation than an actual narrative. Like most of Denis' films, the best moments for me are found in the moments where narrative takes a back seat. The opening sequence of trains moving through Paris sets a tone that anyone familiar with Denis can comprehend. The film's coup de grace is the much noted barroom scene, where the characters dance quietly to The Commordore's 'Night Shift', a moment that finds similar ground as Beau Travail. It's a beautiful moment in an understated film that lack of complexity is its best virtue.

Lack of complexity is not something to be attributed to The Headless Woman, a near inscrutable work that dabbles into class struggle, fantasy, and Hitchockian eeriness. What the film lacks in an understandable narrative it more than makes up for in Martel's formal mastery, as the film is brimming with fantastic shots. The story, from what I can gauge, centers on Vero, a well off dentist, returning home from a party. While driving home, she hits either a dog or a child, what exactly she or the viewer is never quite sure. This leads to Vero becoming more and more detached from her daily tasks, as she passes from scene to scene with only the help of others to get her through. This leads to one of the most striking scenes I've seen in film this year, as Vero is sort of "shocked" back to reality, where a burst of light and noise capture the screen. It's a scene of realignment for Vero, as she returns to consciousness but still racked with guilt over what she hit. Not much is concretely explained beyond that but Martel use of space and focus in composing her shots are excellent, almost mimicking Vero's existence as she navigates the film. I'm not familiar with Martel's previous work but knowing she deals heavily with social satire and class, one of the film's most interesting dynamic is the the class distinction in Vero's world. She, with blonde hair and European ancestry (to my best estimate) has a lucrative position as a dentist in a rural area with a large indigenous ancestry population. Many of these people work for Vero and they help her guide her through her "headless" state. The scene mentioned above is almost the epitome of this master/servant relationship. Outside of that, making much of heads or tails out of The Headless Woman is a fruitless exercise. Yet, its formal excellence makes dismissing it nearly impossible. It's certainly impressive in its inscrutability.

Useless Film Snob's Favorite Music of 2010

2010-12-12T11:46:00.007-05:00

Juggling a full time job with master's course work isn't the ideal situation. Lack of content will be a continuous theme for the near future. The very least I can do is post my year-end album list. These are my favorite albums of the year but that's just my opinion:

Honorable Mention:
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - Up From Below
Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
Shout Out Louds - Work
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Beat the Devil's Tattoo
Mountain Man- Made the Harbor
Woods - At Echo Lake
Trampled By Turtles - Palomino

25) Horse Feathers - Thistled Spring
Low key folk out of Portland for a band that should get more attention.

24) Joshua Radin - The Rock and the Tide
Radin's music is known for being Grey's Anatomy background music but by making things more uptempo, it makes it more interesting. The one unexpected selection that's needed on any list.

23) Blitzen Trapper - Destroyer of the Void
A bit too proggy in spots for my liking but 'The Tree' makes up for that.

22) Band of Horses - Infinite Arms
Nothing much new out of Band of Horses but I liked everything before.

21) Ryan Bingham - Junky Star
Bingham's songwriting is topical and more consistent and 'The Weary Kind' is a great song.

20) Spoon - Transference
Another Spoon album, another solid effort but nothing that overly wowed me.

19) Lower Dens - Twin-Hand Movement
18) Beach House - Teen Dream
Two Baltimore groups that create ethereal music with tinges of psychedelia.

17) Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do
Not quite up to my expectations of a DBTs album but not one to just throw out.

16) Old 97s - The Grand Theatre, Volume One
Like Spoon and Band of Horses, I'm going to like anything by the Old 97s even if it doesn't do anything spectacular.

15) Delta Spirit - History From Below
14) Phosphorescent - Here's to Taking It Easy
These feels like very similar albums to me, taking roots elements and blending into distinctive sounds for each group. Phosphorescent has improved with adding more musicians.

13) Ray LaMontagne & the Pariah Dogs - God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise
It seems ever LaMontagne album has its mopey moments but the new band behind him takes the songs somehwere a bit different.

12) Mavis Staples - You Are Not Alone
The title track shows Mavis Staples can still sing.

11) The Walkmen - Lisbon
A more sophisticated album that has been slowly building interest but the competition is just too tough.

10) She & Him - Volume Two
It feels a bit twee all together but I'll fall for anything with Zooey Deschanel.

9) Dr. Dog - Shame, Shame
Another band that puts out consistent albums, I think the live feel of the record works in its favor.

8) Josh Ritter - So Runs the World Away
It has a few too many mediocre songs to be great but when it hits its high marks ('The Curse', 'Folk Bloodbath"), it's really good.

7) The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
It has a similar structure and feel to their debut, and it's a better effort than their last.

6) The Gaslight Anthem - American Slang
It may have too much Petty or Springsteen to it for some, but what I like about the Gaslight Anthem is that have no fears about wearing their influences.

5) The Black Keys - Brothers
This sounds like an earlier Black Keys album with more instruments. There's less of the quirks that Danger Mouse brought and that's probably the way I like it.

4) Tom Jones - Praise & Blame
This isn't a joke. Working with Ethan Johns, Jones brings his still strong voice to blues and gospel songs. It's been a tactic for an older artist to re-invent their career with an album of this type but for Jones it succeeds because he knows the music and his voice was made for it.

3) Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More
Let me say for my own smug purposes, I was into Mumford & Sons before they became a fixture in Itunes top 10 albums. Their success is confounding mostly because this is all being done on word of mouth. Yet they still are being relatively successful. I played the hell out of this for the first six months of the year and 'White Blank Page' earns choice track of the year.

2) The Hold Steady - Heaven Is Whenever
The Hold Steady stretch out a bit musically but Craig Finn is still writing about the same old same old. What I said about the Gaslight Anthem goes for the Hold Steady and the infectious nature of their music holds a place at the top of any list for me.

1) The National - High Violet
The National have created a trio of stunning albums with this as well as Alligator and Boxer. No band uses the studio so intricately to create their sound but also not sound like a product of overproduction. There may not be a bad song on the album. For the second time in two albums, The National have my favorite album of the year.

R.I.P. Solomon Burke

2010-10-11T19:08:00.005-04:00

I like quite a bit of music but don't have that many musical heroes. Solomon Burke, who died over the weekend, was one of them. The King of Rock & Soul was in the midst of a late career renaissance and he deserved all the new accolades he was getting. The list of great songs he had ranks up there with any of the soul greats: 'Cry to Me', 'Everybody Needs Somebody to Love', 'If You Need Me', 'Down in the Valley'. The work of his last few albums, the highly regarded Don't Give Up on Me and Nashville show what a great interpreter of material he could be, from Van Morrison to Tom Waits to country music. Here's a great link to a song The Blues Brothers made famous, 'Everybody Needs Somebody to Love'. The man will be missed.

Hiatus

2010-07-19T18:14:00.002-04:00

As you can see by a lack of posts, Useless Film Snob Reviews is currently in an indefinite hiatus. Posting, if any, will be sporadic for a while.

Colossal Youth

2010-06-10T10:08:00.004-04:00

Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2007) [9]

There are numerous times during this viewing that I thought Colossal Youth was tedious and even boring, definitely testing my patience. Even so, I admire the hell out of it in all of its inscrutable glory. Costa makes no effort at traditional storytelling, instead blending fiction and reality into a highly repetitive, minimalist work of observation. Focusing on a handful of characters in a Lisbon slum, the central an older man named Ventura, as he shuffles in and out of a series of settings and characters. In the thinnest elements of plot, Ventura has been forced out of the Fountainhas slum, home mostly to Cape Verde immigrants like himself, and into a new housing settlement. This is the springboard for the examination of memory and identity that Costa gets at through his subtle means. The film is rigid in its execution, Ventura going from scene to scene, each one mostly single takes with minimal action. He is there to be acted upon by characters like Vanda, who scenes are near soliloquies about her life. Another sequence features Ventura and another character with most of the interaction between the two being the constant recitation of a letter Ventura wants the man to write down. While not being much in linear storytelling, these scenes as well as Costa's aesthetics, create a haunting, lonely work that still manages to mesmerize. I am one who normally despises DV but Costa works with it here to give it a documentary feel but also take advantage of natural light to create some interesting images. It creates a film experience that makes it worthwhile to get through it upon later reflection, only because the viewer has not much idea of what's going on while watching. Colossal Youth won't be positive for practically no one but for those who give it a concerted effort, its rewards only come in the days after seeing it.

Zombieland

2010-05-23T15:09:00.004-04:00

Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer, 2009) [4]

I normally could care less about horror movies. It is by far my least favorite genre and it takes something other than just blood and guts to get me to see one. I was led to believe that Zombieland was a bit different, that it took an ironic wink at the the zombie film subgenre. Not really. It has all the ridiculous gore that seems to be pre-requisite with horror films these days and a few amusing moments but not much else. The problem here is the humor, which is so self-amusing in its writing ("Hey! Let's make the characters go to Bill Murray's house so maybe Bill Murray can be in this!", the stupid rules that keep popping up) that it creates far too many groan-inducing scenes for me. Most of it is a whirlwind of picking off zombies and half-hearted stabs of emotional development as the main characters come to grips with what this world of zombies have left them. That is the film's greatest lost opportunity, to take a serious examination of these characters and meld them into the horror genre, but it does not. Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg have some fairly good moments together early on but as the body count increases, that fades away. What makes something like Dawn of the Dead (the Romero original, the only horror film I think rises above genre) is that it actually has a serious critique underneath its splatter. Zombieland takes moments that one could think have this possibility but then let it fitter away in mostly weak humor.

Listening Post - May 2010

2010-05-16T10:03:00.002-04:00

The next couple of weeks find a glut of new releases, many from some of my favorite groups. The National and The Hold Steady albums will definitely be contenders for album of the year. Next week will also see a remastered re-release of Exile On Main Street, which I think is one of the best albums ever made. A lot to keep track of.

The National - High Violet
The Hold Steady - Heaven Is Whenever
Dr. Dog - Shame, Shame
Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
Horse Feathers - Thistled Spring
Josh Ritter - So Runs the World Away

As for Josh Ritter, the new album is a little bit of a letdown. It's still quite good but even after quite a few listens, it doesn't seem to have the three or four fantastic songs that his previous two albums had. I went down to Baltimore to see him live last Monday, and even in the live format, where his material often sounds better, most of the new songs feel a little disappointing ('Change of Time' and 'Rattling Locks' the two biggest exceptions). I still like the album quite a bit but it seems like it was bound to suffer from letdown syndrome. As for the crowd, it was quite different from what I experience up here in Central New York. Almost no chatter through quiet material and a good majority of the crowd knew all of Josh's material. It could be that Ritter is a cult act with a devoted following (part true) or that people down there actually know how to behave at a concert (part true also). Anyway, it was one of the better concert experiences of the year.

Up In the Air

2010-04-25T09:40:00.004-04:00

Up In the Air (Jason Reitman, 2009) [5]

Let's stop all the bullshit with this being some 'film of the moment.' From accounts, Reitman had been working on making this film before the economic meltdown and he fortunately stumbled into such a series of events that somehow makes it seem like he has the pulse of the current climate. In fact, Up In the Air fits perfectly into the current anxiety but like all Reitman's material, never actually manages to say anything important about what his film's are supposedly talking about. What you have here is a story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a smug guy whose job consists of going around the country firing people. In his frequent flier world, he has built up his own walled-in philosophy, the one element of the film that makes the most sense. His world gets thrown into turmoil by two events; one being a young hotshot (Anna Kendrick) convincing the company to fire people via video-conference, and the other being a romance with a fellow traveller (Vera Farmiga) who makes Ryan question the philosophy he's laid out for himself. The "prescient moments" of people being fired talking to the camera have really nothing to do with story. The biggest error Reitman makes is that almost all these scenes don't directly address the Clooney and Kendrick characters. This displacement loses any credibility that the film wants to have about having a message. With that particular hurdle out of the way, there are moments in the film that are not bad, especially Clooney and Farmiga together near the end. Anna Kendrick is the only real character that you could say works in the moment; she's a smart, pro-active idea person with no idea how the complexities of what she's doing will affect her or other people. That is something which could have been used more effectively. Jason Reitman is a competent director but he has a habit of taking socially relevant material and making it less effective for my liking. If everyone would get off thinking 'this is an important film' bandwagon, Up In the Air could have been an alright character study. But if you want this extra baggage attached to your film, than this is not what everyone thinks it is.

Broken Embraces

2010-04-24T08:44:00.004-04:00

Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodovar, 2009) [8]

Hitchcock has always been in Almodovar's back pocket and Broken Embraces is probably the most overt homage that the man has made. This is also the strongest Almodovar film since Talk to Her, in a highly productive decade of solid filmmaking. At this point in my film-viewing career, the main elements of Almodovar's work come shining through: a focus on female characters, lush, colorful visuals, Hitchcockian plot twists and an adaptation of Sirkian melodrama. This film has all of that as the story centers around a blind former film director (Lluis Homar), whose intense affair with an actress, Lena, (Penelope Cruz) led to his blindness and her death. Complicating matters is Lena's husband, an industrial magnate with a dangerous obsession with her straight out of Hitchcock. We also come to learn that Harry/Mateo the director is just as obsessed with Lena as her husband and the film gets entwined in a series of events that lead to the main characters' demise. The first two-thirds of Broken Embraces is expertly constructed, perhaps the best filmmaking that I've seen from Almodovar. The only issue is the last third, which delves a little too much into syrupy melodrama and tepid revelations that it take some of the punch out of the ending. Almodovar has a way working with Penelope Cruz that is at times spellbinding, and he always manages to get the best of out of her performances. Here she ranges from being incredibly sexy to vulnerable and tortured by a horrendous marriage with ultimate confidence. Almodovar always has a way of writing strong female leads and Broken Embraces is no exception. It's not quite a great film but in the hands of Almodovar, is something better than almost anything else working with the same themes and genres.

Some quick reviews to prove I'm still here

2010-04-12T18:45:00.007-04:00

There have been some difficulties here of late but none the less, I'll make a quarter-assed effort to get some reviews out there.

Post Grad (Vicky Jenson, 2009) [3]
I like Alexis Bledel. I try to hype myself up into believing that she can pull off a good performance outside of the rigid Gilmore Girls universe. Her performance in this doesn't help matters much. Everything about this is borderline insufferable, hacky, and pretty much not funny. It sums up everything I hate about studio comedies; instead of trying to meet their audience with a shred of intelligence, it has to dumb down everything to try to attract a general audience, all the while creating a film no one will like. Someone give Alexis Bledel a role that doesn't make her some innocent over-achiever. And why the hell can't Michael Keaton do better than this? He was Batman, for fuck's sake!

The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009) [6]
This is one of those Soderbergh projects that becomes so ingrained to a particular style that it almost becomes taxing. From Matt Damon's rambling voice-overs to the lilting Marvin Hamlisch score, The Informant! adds a lighthearted gloss to a story that has a lot of serious threads running through it. Upon a little reflection, the story of Marc Whitacre blowing the whistle at ADM because of his own delusions makes a little more sense but the collision of the the tone of the film and what actually went on doesn't sit that comfortably with me. The film plays so much like a 70s picture like The Sting that it's hard to see beyond its stylistic structure. It's all impressive on a certain level but it never comes across as a much more than a film stuck playing between genres.

Both of these films are extremely strange in that they have an abnormally large number of pretty funny comedians in them. Post Grad has Fred Armisen, Demitri Martin, and Kirk Fox while The Informant! has practically every supporting role filled with them, from Paul F. Tompkins to Patton Oswalt to Tom Papa. I'm not sure if it means anything or not but it's certainly an interesting coincidence.

Vertigo

2010-03-26T19:29:00.004-04:00

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) [8]

It may seem useless to review a film that has been cemented as a classic but how could this site live up to its name if it didn't? All kidding aside, I've never been a true believer in Hitchcock. Vertigo definitely falls on the better part of the spectrum but I have no doubts in calling this just a good thriller. It has all the standard Hitchcock elements (blondes, landmarks, rousing finish) but I've never found any of that impressive for myself. There is no doubt that Hitchcock is an expert craftsman, knowing when to pull his punches. I actually quite liked the revealing of the story as John Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) falls into his web of deception and vulnerability. There's a fairly predictable one-eighty to turn the story around and some of the visual tricks look like someone with a rudimentary knowledge of what experimental film should be about. Even so, what seals this as a favorable film for me is the performance that Stewart morphs into. Through years of popular thought saying how Jimmy Stewart always is the nice guy, there's a bit of surprise seeing him turn into an obsessive, somewhat crazy, unlikable guy. Credit should also be due to point out that the film doesn't let Ferguson off the hook for his behavior as the film ends with a less than favorable ending for films of the time. Vertigo isn't quite an impeccable film for me, but then again, I don't care much for Psycho and North by Northwest is my favorite Hitchcock film. Hitchcock seems to be one of those directors that I just can't form a concrete opinion on if I want to like him or not.

Listening Post - March 2010

2010-03-24T20:04:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since the last listening post column, so here's the best of what I've been listening to recently or the best of what's just been released:

Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do
She & Him - Volume Two
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Beat the Devil's Tattoo
Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More
Big Star - #1 Record/Radio City (for obvious reasons)

As for Mumford & Sons, they seem to be getting a lot of shit (especially from the holier-than-thous at Pitchfork) for being unoriginal and derivative of the Avett Brothers, Bon Iver, etc. So, what? They've made an engaging album that makes for any supposed deficiencies in the earnest belief in the music the group performs. I've been on the fence about going to Bonnaroo but after really getting into this album, going to see Mumford & Sons might be worth it.

Lorna's Silence

2010-03-22T18:33:00.004-04:00

Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2009) [7]

I've never been overly infatuated with what I've seen of the Dardenne's work but after seeing Lorna's Silence, I'm beginning to get it. The Dardennes take characters, drop them into trying social circumstances, stand back, and examine what goes on. On the surface, it's seems very passive, minimalist cinema. Within their clinical, incessant examination comes a subtle, lyrical portrait of their characters, decisions, and societal norms. Lorna's Silence focuses on Lorna, a recent Albanian immigrant, played by Arta Dobroshi. Lorna is in a sham marriage to a junkie to get citizenship and then marry a Russian, all to open a snack bar with her share of the money. The film comes in as all the arrangements have been made and the plan is already started. What complicates the entire situation is that Lorna has grown compassion for Claudy, the junkie as he attempts to get clean. This new-found clarity of herself complicates everything else for Lorna, as well as her agreements with Fabio, the small change gangster arranging all this. The plotline here follows the same sign posts that have defined the Dardenne's cinema but they execute their films so well repetition is not really an issue. In fact, I like this film much more than their previous effort L'Enfant, mostly because I understand the brother's style a bit more but also I think the film, like Lorna itself, shows a bit more compassion for those involved. Lorna is the focus and Dobroshi plays her with the right amounts of stoicism and wounded spirit to make everything believable. The ending is up for a little debate if it fits the rest of the film. I find it intriguing but on further thinking, find it out of step with the social realism that defines most of the rest. Make no mistake, Lorna's Silence is still fairly bleak and unrelenting in its social accuracy but by opening up just a little from their previous work, maybe there's a new road coming through the brother's cinema.

A Serious Man

2010-03-16T18:28:00.004-04:00

A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2009) [8]

I've had my issues with the Coen's more serious material but have seen to turned a corner after loving NCFOM and finding Burn After Reading lackluster. A Serious Man is a bleak yet blackly comic story of a physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) who finds his life engrossed in a series of Job-like tribulations. His wife has divorced him, his tenure at the university he teaches at is trivialized by anonymous disparaging letters and a troublesome student, and his unemployed brother (in a great small role by Richard Kind) in legal trouble. It's a series of trying experiences that Larry can't comprehend and seeks guidance through a trio of rabbis, whose interactions are the comedic highlights of the film. The film has Jewish characters and is set in the Midwest of the late 60s so a lot has been made of it being somewhat autobiographical in regards to the Coens. Knowing their films, I don't see much other than using time and place to tell a standard Coen Brothers story. Judaism is prominent but is never the featured element of the story as the tenets of faith are used for Larry to question whether he is really a serious man. I happen to feel the film treats Judaism lovingly but isn't afraid to throw a barb or two in. The scene near the end with Rabbi Marshak and Larry's son Danny is superb. It circumvents the notion of this esteemed man being someone of great insight or resolution. The film ends with little explanation for Larry and the viewer for why he had to go through with this exactly. Questions are never answered and perhaps that's a good thing. Like the Uncertainty Principle, the closer the film gets to knowing one element, the less everything else becomes.

Crazy Heart

2010-03-08T19:18:00.004-05:00

Crazy Heart (Scott Cooper, 2009) [6]

This one is a bit of a disappointment. Jeff Bridges's performance certainly is good, the whole film relies on him to pull it through. While Bridges instills Bad Blake with all that we expect to see in a broken down country singer, the flaws with the film rest in the character itself. It feels to me that every thing in Crazy Heart has been seen in any other musician picture. The problem is that going over the same territory again; Bad Blake is a faded star, struggling to get by, consumed by alcohol, with only a new relationship with a reporter (Maggie Gyllenhaal) to pull him out of it. It's pretty much the same old story, told with nothing new or innovative about it. It's a bit of shame because I'm a huge fan of Bridges and to not be impressed by his performance as Bad is pretty hard. The music is certainly one of the best elements of the film, especially Ryan Bingham's Oscar winning 'The Weary Kind' which actually has a key role in the film. These work to get me over the hump into liking it but the film never engages me much through plot or visuals. What's left is good performances left in a mix of standard plot points that make it much of nothing extraordinary.

Hunger

2010-03-04T18:31:00.004-05:00

Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008) [10]

Living in a place like Binghamton can be hard when you really want to see a film. Even with an independent cinema in town, some films will always manage to slip through the cracks. Hunger has been on my radar for over a year and has finally seen the light of day on DVD. With no understatement, it is a masterful film. The best of 2008 as well as the best of the last decade. It is visually spectacular, no surprise considering McQueen's background. What makes it more than just visually striking is that McQueen tinkers with the idea of a message picture. Telling the story of IRA volunteer/prisoner Bobby Sands is going to fall in the realm of political picture. Yet McQueen never really makes the film solely about Sands and his ultimately fatal hunger strike. The film covers quite a bit of ground, giving a greater picture of "The Troubles" than just Sands' act of martyrdom. There's an examination of the stress and peril that the prison officials face, on the inside and the out. The film actually starts out focusing on other prisoners other than Sands. What I think McQueen is attempting to do is not make the Bobby Sands martyrdom picture that so many would expect and instead make a more nuanced, less black and white view of the situation. I approve of this maneuver even though some will not. Above all else however, the poetic nature of the visuals trump all themes and politics. The feces smeared walls of the prisoners' cells, the flying batons and crumpled bodies being beaten, Sands's (played with an act of physical bravado by Michael Fassbender) emaciated figure at the end, they're all ingrained in my mind with their visceral nature. There's a sixteen minute long take, between Sands and a priest, that is dazzling filmmaking, not just in its length but its composition of the figures bathed in shadows. For a first time feature director, McQueen has created an enviable result. Even days later, there are still moments I'm in awe over. I feel to really get Hunger, you have to really appreciate it a visual level, no matter how unsettling and jarring some of them may be. If you have strong feelings about Irish Republicanism, which I do, it may not be the type of film politically you'd expect. Yet, the film resonates for totally different reasons other than its main character.

The Duchess of Langeais

2010-03-01T09:41:00.004-05:00

The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette, 2008) [7]

Rivette has always been a director willing to take his time to tell a story and The Duchess of Langeais is a perfect example of that. There are some extraordinary moments in this film but it also contains moments that can try your patience and become cumbersome. The story is really an examination the maneuverings of a relationship as well as a conflict between courtly high society in Europe and the more romantic ideals that were becoming popular in the mid 1800s. General Montriveau (Guillame Depardieu) falls for the married Duchess (Jeanne Balibar), who coyly exploits Montriveau's feelings knowing that the society she occupies will never allow the relationship. Rivette gives a subtle yet effective examination of the Duchess and Montriveau's back and forth, a clash of emotions and social standing. About midway through, the film switches its power structure, with Montriveau dictating the two's actions and revealing the way the Duchess really feels about him. It succeeds because Rivette keeps the camera fixed to capture the complexity of the two's relationship. The film takes its time to get to its finish but for only the occasional stray scene or two, it never loses its focus. There are some great moments of emotional sparring between the two leads. In terms of a character study, it's hard to do much better. Twenty minutes or so cut out would have made it classic.

Moon

2010-02-28T09:52:00.005-05:00

Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009) [8]

Moon hearkens back to when Science Fiction films were challenging films that told human stories more than special-effects laden fantasy pieces. Existing somewhere in the realm of 2001 and Solaris, Moon is not quite in their realm but is a very accomplished film with a great performance by Sam Rockwell. Rockwell plays Sam Bell, who has been solitary stationed at a helium mining moon base, his only companion a HAL-like robot voiced by Kevin Spacey. It's getting near the end of Sam's three year contract and thing begin to go haywire. Sam's psychical and mental state being to deteriorate. Out on a routine maintenance mission, Sam's state causes an accident. Sam awakens in the base's infirmary with no memory of the accident, except with a hint that things may not be right. Sam ends up finding another version of himself and the rest of the film attempts to unravel the mystery of why there are numerous cloned Sams running the base. That that particular question is never concretely answered is both the appeal and confusion with Moon. The film addresses the notions of isolation and identity in a human way, not having any omniscient answers. Yet there are holes in the logic of the story that are frustratingly not answered (why the Sams life spans are only three years and why do they even need clones in the first place come to mind). For all its unclear answers, there's no denying that the acting and execution of the film are first rate. Rockwell's performance is surely underrated, playing at one point three different versions of Sam. That he occupies almost all of the film's running time and manages to keep rapt attention on his performance is a really good achievement. The film itself has the look of classic science fiction, down to the non-CGI special effects. Duncan Jones for the most part, has a command on the film and story that keeps its from delving into crackpot babbling. It's a superb effort in a genre that all too often is overly concerned with visuals and nonsensical characters or settings (this may or may not refer to Avatar).

The Hangover and Big Fan, A Pair of Sixes

2010-02-22T10:15:00.009-05:00

The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009)/Big Fan (Robert Siegel, 2009) [6]
The Hangover is by no means the comedic masterwork that its word of mouth and box office had led me to believe. I had known Phillips is a one-note director, as his male bonding over crazy situation comedies all follow the same basic template. Here a group of various guys head to Las Vegas for the standard crazy bachelor party. Where The Hangover differs a little is in its structure, where it places the viewer in the same predicament as its characters in putting together the pieces to figure out what happened. Outside of that, the film is consistently amusing but has few truly hilarious moments. Not surprisingly, Zach Galifinakis provides the funniest moments, many of them ad-libbed or taken from his stand up act. In a testament to the sad state of Hollywood comedies, this passes for something considered hilarious where I find nothing that remarkable about it.

Big Fan features a great performance by Patton Oswalt but is bogged down by its lackluster direction. Oswalt is at times hilariously out of touch and tragically demented as Paul Auifero, a Staten Island parking garage attendent whose entire life is wrapped up in the New York Giants. A chance encounter with the Giants star linebacker ends up with Paul getting beating up which puts the Giants' season and Paul's alliegance in limbo. What Siegel does right is nail the fine line between being a die-hard fan and being a borderline delusional fanatic. This is highlighted best in Paul's calls to a sports radio show. Paul works all day on these rants/responses and the end result is nothing more than the nonsenical drivel that is spewed out daily on sports radio. But it also captures the idea that this these rants are the only element of Paul's life that he actually cares about and how his fandom overrules evertyhing else in his life. Siegel highlights these points well but the film offers nothing more than a blank space to show all this. The only instance where the film seems to grasp Paul's character and mental state is at the end, which has a amusing twist that saves Big Fan from being underwhelming. Where The Hangover mostly maxed out its potential, the main issue with Big Fan is that it could have a bit more visual substance to match its main character's performance.

You, the Living

2010-02-14T18:24:00.011-05:00

You, the Living (Roy Andersson, 2009) [10]

Some reviewers have stated that You, the Living is more or less part two of Songs From the Second Floor, Andersson's previously lauded feature. While the two have their stylistic similarities, You, the Living may be the better film, and I'm a huge fan of Songs. Andersson works in a very recognizable visual style, heavy on offbeat characters and situations, with a static camera and lots of long shots. While not as visually striking as Songs, You, the Living embodies with its look what its characters feel. It's full of lots of ugly, miserable people describing their ugly, miserable lives. The film is unrelenting as it depicts of the failures of life and love as almost all the characters are mired in depressing circumstances. What's most amazing is how Andersson makes these characters so physically unappealing, and how the manufactured landscapes these characters occupy only enhance the dour, absurdist elements of it all. Yet through its absurdities and depressions, the film is punctuated with fantastic moments of black humor, often with help from a brass band highlighted by a tuba. It's not an understatement how the music shapes the moments of humor in the film. The major difference from Songs is that that film was almost unrelentingly bleak and you get the feeling here that Andersson is much more sympathetic to his characters. That through all their trials and tribulations, the film attempts to get at a true understanding and appreciation of human nature. Andersson never treats his characters with contempt or flippancy. It's a fantastic blend of pathos and humor, absurdity and seriousness that makes it worth the time.

Blogger's note: I am counting this as a 2009 release because of its U.S. commerical theatrical release. Most sites list its release date as 2007 but I try to keep film organized by their commercial dates, since that's the only way I'm going to be able to see them.

Che

2010-02-12T18:19:00.006-05:00

Che (Steven Soderbergh, 2008) [7]

For a film over four hours long and split into two parts, Soderbergh's Che Guevara biopic is never boring or overly didactic. It's a testament to Soderbergh's craft that he created a very good visual film that has its striking moments. The film is very much defined by its two parts: part one, The Argentine, that follows Guevara's rise through the Cuban Revolution and the cementing of his legend and part two, Guerilla, which shows everything that went right in Cuba go wrong in Bolivia. Understanding the failure of Che in Bolivia clearly hinges on understanding what he accomplished in Cuba. Soderbergh also casts distinct look and feels for each part, as the vibrancy of Cuba is replaced in Bolivia with cooler hues of blue and green. All throughout, the film has an even-keeled tone of observation. The success lies in that is not an outwardly political film but gains its efficacy from its focus on Che and his actions. Benicio del Toro is solid as Che not playing him as an epic figure but as someone whose knowledge and understanding of Latin America made him an admired figure. His performance, like most of the film, is lack of any fireworks but very carefully goes along to get the details right.

The Hurt Locker

2010-02-04T18:28:00.005-05:00

The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009) [6]

The Hurt Locker may be a visceral, taut, well-made thriller that gives an in-depth and intense point of view of the soldiers charged with disposing IEDs. Yet I get the feeling watching this that Bigelow has sacrificed any nuanced discussion of the Iraq War and political policy in general in favor of all action all the time. The Hurt Locker does what it does exceptionally well - give a glance into a hectic situation with a good amount of formal accomplishment. Focusing mostly on the macho posturing of Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner) and the idea of war being a drug, the film is practically stridently apolitical. And for what benefit? It apparently drags all sense of nuance out of what James and his crew are doing. They hop from situation to situation diffusing roadside bombs as if in a video game, with Sgt. James perfectly cast as the ballsy hero. The film asks no questions and has no willingness to probe into the geopolitical situation or even address the psychological nature of their characters except to assign traits on the characters. Bigelow has a background in large budget action films and this really operates no differently, the exception being that it has to deal with the Iraq War. Aside from the fact that it is a well constructed film, I have no idea why critics would fawn over this. If they're saying an apolitical film like this says more about the war than some of the other more strident films that have been released, they're wrong. At its core, the macho bluster of action pictures overtakes any keen political discourse The Hurt Locker may have had.

Monthly Listening Post - January/February 2010

2010-01-31T18:17:00.005-05:00

The new year is off to a busy start as a number of favorite bands have already released or planning on releasing new material in the next couple of weeks. Here's what I'm listening to:

Spoon - Transference
Beach House - Teen Dream
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - Up From Below (there's always one album that never quite makes my best of the year list and 2009's would be this)
Sam Cooke - One Night Stand - Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 (may be the best live Soul recording ever)
Lucinda Williams - Little Honey (I know it's from 2008 but I just recently got it)

On a music related note, tonight are the Grammys, which happen to be the most ridiculous and worthless awards in anything. The Grammys either award popularity over artistic achievement or act as some kind of lifetime achievement award for established acts. Going over the nominees in the major categories makes my head hurt. This steaming pile of shit is the best music of the year? I know the Grammys actually want people to watch and the music busyness has become so fractured and niche driven that it's hard to find anything good that appeals to everybody, but this is terrible. There's the worthless throwaway pop of Lady GaGa and the Black Eyed Peas. You have the Kings of Leon, a once promising band that threw away any credibility they had with me by wanting to be the next U2. The Dave Matthews Band is nominated and will probably win for Best Album even though they haven't made an album worth listening to since I was in high school ten years ago. That leaves the ubiquitous Taylor Swift, who is apparently a country act, even though none of her music actually sounds like country music. I don't begrudge the girl for having success and the amount of records she's sold in this age is astounding but her shtick has worn out its welcome. Playing the puppy dog, lovestruck teenage girl gets a little worn out after a while, especially when you have a flat, uninteresting singing voice. She is the musical equivalency of the teenage girl who makes a masturbation video and sends it to the boy she wants to like her.

Adam

2010-01-29T22:37:00.004-05:00

Adam (Max Mayer, 2009) [4]

Dear Fox Searchlight and Mr. Mayer,

Please immediately stop releasing this schmaltzy pablum and passing it off as having an independent sensibility. Adam is nothing more than a standard romantic comedy with characters that just happen to be a little different than what is see in Hollywood pictures. This goes for all your films Fox Searchlight, which have fallen into an all too predictable formula that gives real independent cinema a bad name. This film in particular is full of cloying moments and dialogue, all under the guise that it's a little different because one of the main characters has Asperger's Syndrome. Mr. Mayer does his best to manipulate Adam's disability to garner sympathy not just from the female lead but from the audience also. Your film was nothing more than trite fluff that was almost redeemed at the end when you actually tried to seriously address the problems with your characters. Instead you wrapped it up a little too perfectly, mostly because it makes the audience feel good. That is the easy way out sir. It's seems all too simple and shallow that everything worked out for Adam and Beth when something as complex as Asperger's is used as a plot crutch. Mr. Mayer, you also deserve some shame for not making me able to hate this as much as I want because I can't direct that hate towards a character with Asperger's. Mr. Mayer, I expect better. As for Fox Searchlight, will you please stop making me so mad with your films. There's only so many films I can reluctantly like but deep down want to hate so much more. Choose one or the other.

Thank you,

Useless Film Snob Reviews

Up

2010-01-24T12:30:00.004-05:00

Up (Pete Docter & Bob Peterson, 2009) [9]

While not quite leaning on the auteurist side of thing like Ratatouille and WALL*E, Up may be the most sincere, funniest, and most entertaining film Pixar has produced. It's really the first Pixar film to focus primarily on human characters, and yet the film has heavy elements of fantasy and adventure, which to say the least, test the waters of believability. That the film can move through its variety of action and adventure and still connect with an audience on a human emotional level is its greatest testament. Up focuses on Carl Fredrickson (voiced by Ed Asner), who we see from an adventure loving young boy to his long marriage to his wife, Ellie, to her death, to Fredrickson being alone, his home engulfed by commercial development. The first ten minutes of the film, which tell Carl and Ellie's backstory, is the best work Pixar has ever done and are the best moments of anything I've seen from a 2009 release. It's emotionally resonant and it does it all with a minimum of explanation. It's a bit of real life that feels a bit out of place with the rest of the film, the only reason I didn't give this a 10. The rest of the film follows Carl, his house, and an interloping child, Russell, head for Paradise Falls, Carl and Ellie's dream destination. There, they run into Carl's childhood explorer hero, who has been in the falls attempting to capture a bird that ruined his career. The story is a mix of old adventure serials, fantasy, and humor (the scenes with the dogs are sure to get laughs out of any dog lover). Through all of it, there's still real character development as Carl starts to become a father figure to Russell, and while their relationship may be nothing that couldn't come out of a Spielberg picture, it still roped me in. The animation may have a lot to do with it. The vibrant color scheme as well numerous sequences where the action looked like live action show how advanced Pixar has become in making superb animation. That they consistently put out quality stories to go with that animation (this will be the 3rd consecutive Pixar film to make a top ten list for a particular year), only makes this as well as all they do so remarkable.

In the Loop

2010-01-21T10:06:00.005-05:00

In the Loop (Armando Iannuci, 2009) [8]

Good political satire is a difficult accomplishment, and In the Loop succeeds because of its verbal fireworks. Following the path of a partially incompetent British cabinet minister (Tom Hollander) as he continually sticks his foot in his mouth in the run up to war with a certain Middle Eastern country, the film borders on sharp satire and vulgar absurdity. The film is filled with big talkers and cutthroat political opportunism and is big on profanity and laughs. Peter Capaldi steals just about every scene as the extremely foul-mouthed Scottish press officer attempting to wrangle the minister's gaffes. Often it feels that a lot of the political action of the film gets taken over by the mesmerizing profanities, but since they are the funniest moments of the film, it's hard to say they aren't the best part. The seemingly useless scenes with Steve Coogan as a near-crackpot concerned about the minister's constituency's crumbling wall offer some of the funniest moments. When the film does get the political points right, from David Rasche's arrogant neo-con to the nuts and bolts of fudging the intelligence to get to war, it reveals the chilling cynicism behind its colorful characters and language. The best satire reveals an uncomfortable truth behind its humor and in its simplest execution, In the Loop does just that.

The Limits of Control

2010-01-15T13:48:00.004-05:00

The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, 2009) [6]

The Limits of Control is certainly a film to be examined on its surface. It's a character study that never really delves into its character. The story is filled with quite a bit of existential discussion on seemingly nothing and a lot of repetitive actions and dialogue but never moves anywhere with any immediacy. Lone Man (Issach De Bankole) is a perpetually suited hitman planted in Spain to carry out a job, the pieces revealed by a series of eccentric characters. Lone Man' activities are structured round a series of repetitive actions, drinking two espressos in seperate cups or exchanging match books with his auxiliaries. The repetition suits the style of the film to a T, as it blends effortlessly with Jarmusch's minimalist style. Christopher Doyle's cinematography adds a vibrancy of color and a tone of coolness to the proceedings. But the real question is what comes out of the film? Outside of its impressive structure and images, there is a void of anything substantial in the film. Lone Man gets his instructions and carries out his mission and nothing seems that important about it. If it was Jarmusch's intention or not, the film ends up feeling completely void of any lingering sentiment about what was just seen. Even though it looks good, The Limits of Control vanishes almost as quickly as the credits roll.

Taking Woodstock

2010-01-06T19:06:00.005-05:00

Taking Woodstock (Ange Lee, 2009) [5]

It's near ridiculous to make a film about Woodstock. Michael Wadleigh's documentary is such a landmark piece of cinema, essentially creating the Woodstock mythology, that anything else is going to pale in comparison. Lee has the right idea in Taking Woodstock, in that he goes into a specific person's interesting story of how Woodstock came to Bethel, New York. The problem with the film is that it can never decide if it wants to be a dysfunctional family comedy or a larger, more profound coming-of-age story with the biggest musical event of the 60s as the backdrop. Demetri Martin plays Elliot Teichberg, an interior designer who has packed up and headed back to help his parents run a dilapidated Catskills motel. Elliot lucks into finding that the Woodstock festival needs a new location and he just happens to have a permit and knows of available land. The film plays out as partly the telling of how Woodstock took shape and the happening at the motel, with Elliot trying to get his stereotypical Jewish parents to lighten up and accept these Hippies. There's just too much going on in the story with too many minor characters that no aspect is that effective. Lee is smart to keep the action on the periphery of the festival, showing no concert footage, to differentiate Elliot's story from the festival. The problem is I never found his story that interesting. His story arc follows the standard coming of age storyline with his homosexuality tossed in at times but never examined deeply. Martin is o.k. in the role but his comedic background interferes with seeing him ingrained in the character. Lee does his best I guess, and his re-enactment of certain iconic images in the Woodstock film are intriguing one level but serve no real purpose in his film. The air of nostalgia and near sickening idealism hangs over everything involving Woodstock, making it hard for anything involving it to escape from its large shadow. Taking Woodstock definitely got swallowed up in that cloud.

Film Decade List #1: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2009-12-31T20:47:00.005-05:00

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, USA, 2004)

2004 was a pretty good year, wasn't it? Both my music and film choices happen to come from the same year, which I didn't realize until to preparing to write them. Anyway, I may claim to be a film snob but the films that really get my attention are the ones that still can tell a good story with some feeling to it. Through all its visual gee-wizardry by Gondry, ESOTSM has a really authentic story at the heart of it. Charlie Kaufman's script still has its outlandish and mind-bending moments but at its core, the film is really a simple love story well told. Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) have gone through a devastating breakup. Joel finds a company that has the technology for the user to have painful moments removed from their memory. This leads to the unspooling of Joel and Clementine's relationship and the realization in Joel that perhaps those memories aren't better off erased. Both Winslet and Carrey give career best performances in roles that seem almost opposite their know screen persona: Winslet as a outre spirit, and Carrey as a brooding sad-sack. Gondry's visual flair add that something to the film that make it jangled last half work extremely well. Both of those only go to enhance what is again, the hear of the film, Kaufman's screenplay. It carries the offbeat elements that can be expected out of a Kaufman script but underneath its uniqueness are some fairly good points about love and memory. The nature of wanting to banish painful memories is something familiar in just about everybody but they can also be beneficial, to help live out what's ahead. That Joel comes to a recognition of this and realizes that the bad memories will take out a lot of the good ones is important. It could have been told in a flat, cynical way with a lot of Gondry fireworks and been a complete bomb. Eternal Sunshine succeeds because no one in it was afraid of being sincere with the material. That it told its fairly standard love story with a exuberance and inventiveness not really seen in mainstream cinema, it deserves to be the best of the decade.

Music Decade List #1: Ray LaMontagne - Trouble (2004)

2009-12-31T20:27:00.007-05:00

Ray LaMontagne doesn't deviate that far from the singer-songwriter norm. There are elements of and a familiarity with classic artists all over Trouble. Yet, none of it sounds tired and stale, mostly due to the emotion LaMontagne pours into his songs and his belief in what he's doing, whether it's original or not. That, his voice, and the material itself all make Trouble the album I've spent more time listening to than any other this decade. A lot of initial comparisons of LaMontagne were to Van Morrison vocally but musically, the album has a lot of similar elements to Morrison's early 70s output. These are folk songs accented subtlety, as strings on the title track and 'Shelter' demonstrate. Producer Ethan Johns does a great job in knowing where the power of the songs lies in LaMontange's emotional delivery, highlighted by 'Burn' and 'Jolene'. It is in these more intimate songs that the power of the album really comes through and not just because of Ray's voice. I have no real good way of describing it but it creates a visceral reaction that very few albums of this decade have. I really, really like every song here That's pretty much it. If I was going to pick my favorite album of the decade, it would be an album where every song's good. Trouble is that album.

Blogger's aside: No matter how many people want to shit on him, Zach Braff gets some credit on this one. Around Garden State time, I was following Braff's blog and he wrote a little blurb about Trouble. I went and checked it out and here we are. Some of Braff's musical choices I couldn't disagree fast enough with but thanks on this one. Give the guy a break.

Film Decade List #2: No Country For Old Men

2009-12-31T16:33:00.004-05:00

No Country For Old Men (Joel Coen, USA, 2007)

Up until seeing No Country For Old Men, I had preferred the wackier Coen Brothers to the serious ones. I would much rather watch The Big Lebowski or even The Hudsucker Proxy over Fargo or Miller's Crossing. I always felt the brothers rigid, insular world always lent itself better to comedy than to drama. No Country For Old Men blows that idea completely away, as the two have crafted a taut, near flawless thriller out of Corman McCarthy's novel. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is out hunting one day and comes across a drug deal gone bad. He finds a suitcase full of money, takes off, and a set of violent circumstances follow, most of them carried out by a man named Anton Chigurgh, played with menacing intensity by Javier Bardem. Working as a meditation on the greediness and evil of man, the film is helped by the Coen's meticulous, exacting style. The chaos of the story is reigned in to a serie of memorable moments, especially the Chigurgh coin toss at the end. At the the center of the story is the local sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones), increasingly perplexed and horrified by the trail of destruction left in the wake of Llewelyn and Anton. He's a man who can't see himself being able to contain men such as Chrigurgh. That the world seems to be descending into more violence and humanity is doing nothing to stop it is a key point of McCarthy's novel and the film. The film works as a perfect allegory for that idea. The film gets every other detail right, from the West Texas landscape to the pitch-perfect performances. That it still has some black humor is a nice Coen brothers touch, but this isn't a comedy. It proved me wrong on all grounds about the Coen's films but in a good way.

Music Decade List #2: Bob Dylan - Love and Theft (2001)

2009-12-31T15:59:00.004-05:00

Love & Theft is Bob Dylan's best album since Blood on the Tracks, and in that middle 25 years, he tried a lot of different styles but never found one that fit as well as here. Taking a variety of styles, from blues, bluegrass, jazz, and swing, these are a set of retro sounding songs that fit the croaky rasp of his that has defined his current years. I prefer the bluesier or more upbeat numbers on the album, songs like 'Summer Days' and 'Lonesome Day Blues' with Dylan and his crack touring band tearing out propulsive rhythms. The albums sounds much more vibrant and punchy compared to more rueful, swampy Daniel Lanois production of Time Out of Mind. Above it all, Dylan's songwriting is at the fore but here it takes on a different vein. These aren't "important" folk songs nor are they the dense, imagisitc works of his mid-60s heyday. The material is more direct here, with humor and an adaptation of styles that make everything sound authentic. There's a joke about every stanza in 'Summer Days' and for those who think the man can't write a great song, check out 'Mississippi'. Everything about Love & Theft has a easiness about it, that Dylan could toss out a couple of sessions and the results are this, another great record that sums up the history of the man and his influences.

Film Decade List #3: Songs From the Second Floor

2009-12-30T21:10:00.004-05:00

Songs From the Second Floor (Roy Andersson, Sweden, 2000 (festival) or 2002(U.S. theatrical) )

Bleakly comic, absurdist, and visually captivating, Songs From the Second Floor is like no other film I've seen this decade. Andersson's film has the dark sensibilities of Bergman filtered through the absurdist storytelling of Bunuel. Not operating as a whole story but more as a series of vignettes, the film shows a modern capitalist society as dour people operating in a ugly city with a constant traffic backlog and almost everybody failing at doing anything. The film uses its dark humor to mask a bit of the serious critique that is behind what Andersson is doing. Like Bunuel, often the best way to criticize society is to make it completely absurd. Still, no message of the film can hold up to its amazingly rigid structure. Andersson films with a maximum amount of minimalism, holding the camera in place and never filming anything closer than a medium shot. It creates a bit of a distance between the viewer and film, never allowing to really feel drawn in. That could be a hindrance but since the world and characters of the film are a bit alien to begin with, the detachment of the camera in addition to the emotionless, sterile world of the film actually strengthen it. Andersson has created such a unique visual experience that I've never seen before or since here. It exists as almost something completely different than every other film on this list. Yet, it intrigues me as much as any film this decade.

Music Decade List #3: Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

2009-12-30T20:38:00.004-05:00

For all the publicity surrounding the turmoil in releasing it, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's execution pretty much lives up to all the hype. Throwing away just about any semblance of their alt-country beginnings, Wilco move in a direction dealing heavily with sonic experimentation, creating sprawling, dense songs that have no basis in any genre. 'I Am Trying to Break Your Heart' and 'Ashes of American Flags' are bleak songs only helped by a background of ominous ambient noise. 'Kamera' and 'Heavy Metal Drummer' are more propulsive, straight ahead rockers but there are little flourishes in each, notably the end of the latter, that still keep it from being something expected out of the group. The input of Jay Bennett seems to be a point of issue, as Sam Jones' film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco documents. There's no doubt Bennett played a role along with Jim O'Rourke in creating the new sonic textures of the album. It also appears true that the new direction ultimately led him out the door in an acrimonious break up. It doesn't diminish the fact that at the time, Wilco was one of the few established bands willing to try an entirely new direction and be able to pull it off and make them even more popular in the process.

Film Decade List #4: The Royal Tenenbaums

2009-12-29T18:58:00.004-05:00

The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, USA, 2001)

For all its visual and plot quirks, The Royal Tenenbaums is Wes Anderson's best at getting real emotion out of his story and characters. A lot of criticism of Anderson has been he places his visual world above reliable storytelling but here, I don't feel that argument can be made. In telling of the dysfunctional Tenenbaum family, he creates characters and situations that are grounded in backstory and are a true function of their characters' experiences. Gene Hackman is great as patriarch Royal Tenenbaum, back into his family's life, telling them he's dying but just in need of a place to stay after getting booted from his hotel. Royal interjects a lifeblood into the family that had apparently been missing for some time, and at the same time bringing back old wounds. It's a work of melancholy disguised as comedy but the lighter moments make the darker moments more poignant and the funny one funnier. Anderson set this all this in a highly fabricated world that seems to turn off as many cineastes as it appeals to the average moviegoer of my age. His visual quirks and use of rock music definitely appeal to a certain audience and I happen to be one. I find the film to be a sweetly portrayed dark comedy that has an auteurist flair that prevents it from being twee or artificial.

Music Decade List #4: Drive-By Truckers - The Dirty South (2004)

2009-12-29T18:08:00.004-05:00

More than any other band of these times, no one is more tied to a sense of place than the Drive-By Truckers. They've made a career out of crafting songs on just what it means to be from the South, and The Dirty South is a series of songs about those on the bottom end of life down in Alabama and points surrounding. Whether it be about Sherriff Buford Pusser ('The Buford Stick'), the moonshine gangs he tried to stamp out ('The Boys From Alabama') or people just down and out ('Puttin' People on the Moon'), Patterson Hood crafts expert songs that convey what life is like in a certain area for people like myself who view it as an alien world. Why The Dirty South rises above the output of the group's earlier albums are the songs contributed by Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell, who match Hood in effectiveness and melody. Cooley offers a handful of very good selections, especially 'Carl Perkins' Cadillac' and 'Cottonseed.' Isbell's songs don't quite fit the story structure of the rest of the album but they may the standout tracks for the album; a re imaging of Johny Henry ('The Day of John Henry Died'), or a somber reflection on The Band ('Danko/Manuel'). Sadly, this would be his last output with the Truckers as he left to pursue a solo career. With the solid contributions of all three, on top of the powerful sound the band can produce, The Dirty South may sum up best what the Drive-By Truckers have been striving for over the last decade.

Film Decade List #5: In the Mood For Love

2009-12-28T22:21:00.005-05:00

In the Mood For Love (Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong, 2001)

Almost completely sublime in its atmosphere and look, ITMFL exists almost in the ether, in a dreamlike state that make the images here feel otherworldly. A lot of credit has to do with Christopher Doyle's cinematography, which only enhances the scenes and characters Wong creates. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung play neighbors in Hong Kong who come to realize that their spouses are having an affair with each other. Since their significant others are away for quite a while the two bond, but being sure never to become like their spouses. What Wong really achieves through these two characters is how unkind unrequited love can be. Leung's Mr. Chow clearly has feelings for Cheung's character but can't resolve it with the stand both have taken following their spouse's affair. The yearning of the characters is only enhanced through the gorgeous images and colors the film is bathed in, creating a dream world where the key point is the only element not matching. This is just such a fantastic film to look at that it is a bit easy to forget how bittersweet the actual story turns out. Leung and Cheung are both phenomenal in their roles, locking into the insecurity and yearning that lies beneath their friendship. No film this decade so accurately portrayed the bittersweet nature of love, all the while looking so good.

Music Decade List #5: Damien Rice - O (2003)

2009-12-28T22:07:00.004-05:00

With O, Damien Rice made a standard singer-songwriter album with a little something extra. The songs here are fairly standard folk tunes, yet Rice adds additional instrumentation and a wide spectrum of emotion that raises them above being just average. 'Delicate' starts off as it says, but has an added orchestral sweep thanks to a cello. 'Volcano' and 'The Blower's Daughter' are enhanced by the vocal of Lisa Hannigan. 'Amie', 'I Remember' and 'Eskimo' venture out of folk territory and experiment with various sounds, whether they be opera or ambient noise. Still, at its essence the basic song structure has to be good or no amount of bells and whistles would make it worth a listen. That the songs cover such a wide range of emotions, whether it be downbeat and reflective or into full-blown earnestness, there's a level of sincerity in Rice's lyrics and vocals that can draw the listener into the material. Rice has never quite reached the level he achieved on O, whether it be the loss of Lisa Hannigan, whose contribution cannot be overstated or perhaps the material here is something that can never be reached in scope or in execution.

Useless Film Snob's 25 Best Albums of 2009

2009-12-27T17:46:00.004-05:00

Once again, we can get into this discussion of best vs. favorite. I realize that musical taste is extremely subjective; someone might think Mastadon's Crack the Skye is the year's best album, I would rather get hit in the head with a hammer. So, I guess what I'm saying is what I call the best may be someone else's worst. We'll go ahead and call this the best purely superficial reasons: I just want to be put on those lists with all the other egotistical music snobs. Here are my choices for the best (favorite) of 2009:

25) Magnolia Electric Co. - Josephine
A somber, semi-concept album for Jason Molina & company, about what I'm not to sure.
Choice tracks: 'The Rock of Ages', 'Whip-Poor-Will'

24) Phosphorescent - To Willie
A spirited interpretation of Willie Nelson's catalog by Matthew Houck. Houck's vocals have the same wavering timbre of Nelson's which keep the material firmly grounded in its original sound.
Choice tracks: 'I Gotta Get Drunk', 'Can I Sleep In Your Arms'

23) Woods - Songs of Shame
Songs that border on oddball sonic experiments, psychedelic jams, and quirky vocals.
Choice tracks: 'To Clean', 'Rain On'

22) Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses - Roadhouse Son
Bingham's brand of alt-country has been done before but his ragged vocals and Marc Ford's production give the feeling of Bingham living what he writes.
Choice tracks: 'Tell My Mother I Miss He So', 'Wishing Well'

21) Mark Olson & Gary Louris - Ready For the Flood
A welcome return to the former Jayhawks frontmen that shows they still can make some great songs and harmonies.
Choice tracks: 'Bloody Hands', 'The Trap's Been Set'

20) Built to Spill - There Is No Enemy
A rejuvenated sounding Doug Martsch leads Built to Spill a group of more energetic and concise set of songs from their previous album.
Choice tracks: 'Nowhere Lullaby', 'Tomorrow'

19) The Black Crowes - Before the Frost...Until the Freeze
Recorded in front of a live audience, the album captures the band in their best element but the double album format could have been pared to one really good one.
Choice tracks: 'Good Morning Captain', 'Last Place Where Love Lives'

18) Bowerbirds - Upper Air
Delicate acoustic material with some simple yet catchy melodies.
Choice tracks: 'House of Diamonds', 'Northern Lights'

17) Wilco - Wilco (The Album)
The second straight record of pretty straight-ahead material could be seen as treading water but Jeff Tweedy and company seem content in a simplified direction.
Choice tracks: 'You Never Know', 'I'll Fight'

16) Diane Birch - Bible Belt
Completely retro in its early 70s AM Radio influence, there are elements of soul, gospel and Brill Building pop mixed in, all led by Birch's fantastic voice. The out of left field choice of 2009.
Choice tracks: 'Valentino', 'Rise Up'

15) Langhorne Slim - Be Set Free
Like Bowerbirds and the Avett Brothers, Langhorne Slim is taking acoustic styles in idiosyncratic ways. An album that harkens back to the singer-songwriter heydey of the mid 70s.
Choice tracks: 'I Love You But Goodbye', 'Cinderella'

14) Derek Trucks Band - Already Free
Derek Trucks continually makes albums that should find a bigger audience outside of the jam band universe. Truly fantastic band interplay with perhaps the strongest set of original material on a Derek Trucks Band release.
Choice tracks: 'Sweet Inspiration', 'Down Don't Bother Me'

13) Great Lake Swimmers - Lost Channels
More ethereal music from this Canadian outfit. A bit more in the way of uptempo songs but the slow, somber ones are still their best.
Choice tracks: 'Pulling On a Line', 'Stealing Tomorrow'

12) Dawes - North Hills
A band from California who made the best blue-eyed soul/classic rock album I've heard in quite a while. It is uniquely Californian, sweeping and cinematic in its sun-drenched Americana.
Choice tracks: 'When My Time Comes', 'God Rest My Soul'

11) The Felice Brothers - Yonder Is the Clock
My upstate brethren continue to make music sounding straight out of Big Pink, this one with a bit more of studio polish.
Choice tracks: 'Run Chicken Run', 'All When We Were Young'

10) Bob Dylan - Together Through Life
Sprinkled with Tex-Mex accordion and Chess covers, Dylan continues to re-interpret various genres to a consistent degree of success almost 50 years into his career.
Choice tracks: 'Beyond Here Lies Nothing', 'It's All Good'

9) The Low Anthem - Oh My God, Charlie Darwin
Another band, this one from Rhode Island, based in roots styles but adding their own touch. They can handle up tempo material just as well as their expertly crafted quieter ones.
Choice tracks: 'The Horizon is a Beltway', 'Ticket Taker'

8) Roadside Graves - My Son's Home
A band from New Jersey that makes surprisingly good roots based rock. Notice a trend through this list yet?
Choice tracks: 'Far and Wide', 'Take a Train'

7) Grant-Lee Phillips - Little Moon
Criminally under appreciated as a solo act or with Grant Lee Buffalo, Phillips has made another album of unassuming yet great songs.
Choice tracks: 'It's Not the Same Old Cold War, Harry', 'One Morning'

6) Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
A band that can take a variety of styles and create some challenging, densely layered yet enjoyable music.
Choice tracks: 'Two Weeks', 'Cheerleader'

5) The Cave Singers - Welcome Joy
A band that greatly enhanced their songwriting with their second album. Still with a unique voice, this time the Cave Singers have stronger songs to go with it.
Choice tracks: 'Leap', 'Beach House'

4) Todd Snider - The Excitement Plan
Snider may be the best storyteller out there and this album shows it off, whether it be songs about pitching no-hitters on LSD, from the perspective of a tree, or a seemingly toss-off about the benefits of fame.
Choice tracks: 'America's Favorite Pastime', 'Money, Compliments, Publicity (Song Number Ten)'

3) Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion
A much more accessible record than their last one, they may be the modern day, post-irony version of the Beach Boys. At its core, these songs have a vitality and a expression of joy that can be overshadowed by their technical and sonic achievements.
Choice tracks: 'Summertime Clothes', 'My Girls'

2) The Avett Brothers - I and Love and You
Working with Rick Rubin had cries of selling out coming from their hardcore fans. I happen to think it's their best album to date, and the move away from their established sound actually help in their songwriting. Less shouting and more nuanced song craft created an album that still has traits of the old Avetts but shows them going in a broader direction.
Choice tracks: 'Ten Thousand Words', 'Incomplete and Insecure'

1) Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
The most consistent, strongest set of songs Case has put to record. An album that shows off more than her great voice, it puts the songs themselves right up there too. 'People Gotta Lot of Nerve' is my choice for choice track of 2009.
Choice tracks: 'This Tornado Loves You, 'People Gotta Lot of Nerve', 'I'm an Animal'

Film Decade List #6: Wonder Boys

2009-12-27T11:02:00.004-05:00

Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson, USA, 2000)

Wonder Boys is the type of picture that Hollywood studios have all but abandoned, an intelligent, somewhat offbeat film that appeals to people don't want to see special effects and a shitload of explosions. That the film's marketing was completely fucked up is an understatement as Paramount opened it up in the pre-Oscars dead season, and attempted to re-release it in a last ditch attempt to garner awards. Plus, it didn't find an audience of anybody but critics and myself, who saw it in a theatre with eight other people. It really was a shame because this may be the most underrated film of the decade, based on Michael Chabon's novel, with great performances. Michael Douglas gives a great performance as a shaggy, pot-addled professor/author stuck on a massive follow-up to his acclaimed first novel. The film centers around a weekend where Grady (Douglas) gets sucked into a series of events that strain his clandestine relationship with his boss's wife (Frances MacDormand) and get him involved with one of his talented yet troubled students (Tobey Maguire). The film makes intelligent and keen observations about the world of writers and addresses it audience with an expectation of intelligence, now almost absent in studio pictures. The plot isn't much more than a loose series tied together by the character's presence but it succeeds because everyone, from Douglas and Maguire, to bit parts, are so good. Hanson gives a workmanlike directing job, keeping things moving, never being flashy, and preserving a lot of Chabon's novel. That the humor has a level of sophistication probably means it won't appeal to everybody, but this film should have found a much bigger audience than it did.

Music Decade List #6: The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls In America (2006)

2009-12-27T10:36:00.004-05:00

Boys and Girls In America has everything you could want in a Hold Steady album but has the added benefit of an expanded, well-rounded sound. Craig Finn's story songs about fuck ups, children of suburbia, and addicts are still there, whether it be about compulsive gambling ('Chips Ahoy') or hooking up with other drug causalities ('Chillout Tent'). Here they have the added benefit of Franz Nicolay's keyboards, which cannot be understated, that give the record much more of a Springsteen feel. The piano on the opener, 'Stuck Between Stations' and the organ on 'Chips Ahoy' gives those songs an anthemic quality that would have gone missing without them. The reason for this, whether it be the keyboards, the sing along choruses, or the Thin Lizzy-esque riffs and solos carry these songs beyond anything that was on the band's first two albums. 'Massive Night' and 'Hot Soft Light' have catchy riffs and chorus that really propel Finn's lyrics being just stream of consciousness. The songs here don't have the same depth and intertwined nature of Separation Sunday but they make up for in their new musical power. That isn't to say the album is all hooks and choruses, as 'Citrus' and 'First Night' show a more contemplative side with the band knowing where to reign it in. It's an album that sums up everything good about what The Hold Steady are doing and it shows a band that truly loves what they do.

Music Decade List #7: Josh Ritter - The Animal Years (2006)

2009-12-25T17:47:00.004-05:00

I was completely blown away the first time I heard The Animal Years. Ritter's literate singer-songwriting style is completely in my wheelhouse. There's nothing that drastically different that Ritter is doing but his command of lyrics and songcraft carry his work beyond most of what passes for male songwriters these days (Matt Kearney, Joshua Radin, and James Morrison being main examples). Ritter has a lyrical command and complexity much more advanced than these guys and his experimenting with different sonic textures, more than likely thanks to producer Brian Deck. 'Thin Blue Flame' is the apex of the album, a culmination of everything Ritter seemingly wanted to accomplish with the album (and Stephen King's #1 song of 2006 for what it's worth). There are other great songs on the album also, whether it be the propulsive 'Wolves', the lighthearted and silent film allegory 'Lillian, Egypt', or the moody minimalist 'One More Mouth'. With this album, Ritter really separated himself from the singer-songwriter pack as someone worth taking notice of. That his live shows are fantastic, showing a love of performing for an audience, don't hurt either. I saw Josh open for Gomez at the Haunt in Ithaca, and the majority of the crowd was there to see him and not Gomez. I think that goes to show that if you put your heart into your craft, people will come around. The Animal Years shows this perfectly and while Ritter may not have planned it that way, it certainly worked on me.

Film Decade List #7: There Will Be Blood

2009-12-25T17:30:00.010-05:00

There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2007)

As Michael Sicinski so succinctly put in his review of There Will Be Blood, this truly is the closest thing to a Kubrick film you could ask for without the man himself directing it. This should come as no surprise as Anderson has always worn his influences on his sleeve, whether it be Scorsese or Altman. Here he goes in almost the opposite direction, as the detached viewpoint associated with Kubrick becomes the viewpoint rather than the kinetic storytelling of his earlier films. Daniel Day-Lewis stars as a oilman so corrupted with greed that it shatters everything else in his life, from his relationship with his adopted son to his ongoing conflict with a young preacher who may also be a grifter (Paul Dano). The fingerprints of Kubrick are all over this film from its sparse, almost dialogue free beginning (similar to 2001) to its macabre, theatrical ending (shades of A Clockwork Orange). This similarities formally aren't as much as a detriment as you would think, as following this new formal structure seems to reign in a lot of the excesses that populated Anderson's earlier films. As someone who had no issue with that, seeing him alter direction some is a bit of a surprise but just as effective. Day-Lewis is such a powerful and enigmatic force that he carries the entire film on his shoulders to great success. There Will Be Blood is essentially a character study and Day-Lewis gives what may be the performance of the decade as a man who will stop at nothing to possess what he wants. That the rest of the film stands up is a testament that Anderson may be one of the best of the new wave of auteurs that came of age this decade.

Blogger's aside: There Will Be Blood also spawned one of the greatest series of events of film criticism of the decade. Kyle Smith of the New York Post, who also happens to be the worst film critic in the world (at some point there may be a raging diatribe about this if I ever get to it), saying that the film has an essentially Conservative message about fathers and sons. Glenn Kenney of Premiere wrote one of the best rebuttals I've ever read basically saying how Smith has had his head so far up his own ass he has no idea what he's talking about. Read it here if you want to see a no-talent twerp get his ass handed to him.

Film Decade List #8: Munich

2009-12-23T19:03:00.004-05:00

Munich (Steven Spielberg, USA, 2005)

Munich succeeds because of its ambiguities. It is neither a pro-Israel revenge movie, as its source material reads as, nor is it a polemic screed against either. Instead, Spielberg uses the events of the 1972 Olympic hostage crisis and in its aftermath, a clandestine Israeli mission targeting those responsible, as an interpretation of the Israel-Palestine conflict as a conflict with no real good or bad guys with no real end in sight. Eric Bana plays a Mossad agent responsible for organizing a team that will carry out retribution against those involved, directly or indirectly, with Munich. The group initially carry out their mission dutifully, but as causalities mount and targets become less and less directly involved, the film dives into its moral quandaries. The Bana character and the film itself realize that violence only spurs more violence and that by the end of the film, nothing has changed. The Israelis are still fighting terrorism and the Palestinians are still fighting for a home. Some may charge that Spielberg never taking sides is a cop out but the film works because it shows each side using pretty much the same tactics and getting nowhere. The film's main message is that the damage inflicted in human lives is not worth what the end goals may be. Spielberg ends up crafting out of all of this an expertly made thriller. There are certain scenes, such as when the group is attempting to defuse a bomb before an innocent girl is killed, that is Hitchcokian in its hair-raising iciness. That the film catches the causalities with such an unflinching eye makes it even more potent. It never cops out to any one side and it isn't mindless action either. Spielberg is one of the few directors that could successfully juggle this excess of action and still have a message out of it.

Music Decade List #8: Ryan Adams & the Cardinals - Cold Roses (2005)

2009-12-23T17:46:00.006-05:00

Everything about Cold Roses, down to the album cover, has the imprint of the Grateful Dead running through. That's not to say that everything on the albums sounds like the Dead, there's still a lot of country influenced songs that Adams was doing before. Whether or not they had a direct influence on the material here, there's no escaping some similarities. There are more obvious examples of this influence, as 'Magnolia Mountain', 'Easy Plateau', and the title track have the type of tempo and guitar running through that wouldn't sound out of place in any of the Dead's early 70s work. What is most important to the quality of the album is that Adams is clearly trying to make a band record over a solo one. The type of collaborative effort that a band oriented record takes seems to have focused Adams on making a solid return to the material that first got him attention. Cold Roses also contributed to Adams cleaning up his act, playing some underrated shows with Phil Lesh, and focusing on being a live act with a slightly different lineup of Cardinals than present here.

Of course I'm going to be biased towards the material that skews towards the Dead-like material as the whole second disc wears much more of its influence. The first disc is a little weaker with filler material like 'Beautiful Sorta'. Still, there are some classic sounding Adams like 'Sweet Illusions' and 'How Do You Keep Love Alive'. The second disc shows Adams and the Cardinals veering into jamming territory, as 'Easy Plateau' and 'Cold Roses' demonstrate. This wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for the Cardinals, who seem to have mellowed out Adams a bit and allow for this new direction. It would an understatement to say how the band had a positive on Adams, who up until Cold Roses, had lost some of luster for me. This album was a welcome return to what I like best about Adams and it has done nothing but made his subsequent work just as interesting.

Film Decade List #9: Brokeback Mountain (2005)

2009-12-22T18:44:00.004-05:00

Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, USA, 2005)

Through all the attention and jokes it has gotten since its release, Brokeback Mountain is a film that has the grace and emotional power of any love story, let alone one about two cowboys. Ang Lee's film toys with a lot of conventions of the Western or cowboy movies but the film is not a Western. It has elements of melodrama in it but never feels saccharine or watered down. The film seems not so concerned in its characters' sexual orientation as it does showing the obstacles they had to face. It all essentially boils down to the performances of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as well as Ang Lee's direction. Ledger is exceptional in his role as the more closed-off of the two. It's the type of slow burn performance that gets more noticeable in its effectiveness the more it's seen. Gyllehaal's character, while not in the same performance level, is needed to act as a sort of counterbalance to Ledger's character. These characters could easily have been caricatures but come across as prototypical movie cowboys that evolve into something other than to be expected by Hollywood archetypes. Still, it might not have worked with Lee's direction, taking the vast landscape shots that can be found in Westerns and making them somehow feel intimate and unique. He lets the camera linger on the image in the first hour of the film and that's really important for establishing a tone that allows the relationship to emerge out of this landscape. Lee treats the material with a seriousness, knowing that the true nature of love isn't any different for these characters as it would be for a man and a woman in a similar situation. It's an expertly crafted film without an auteur quality that still has a commanding presence.

Music Decade List #9: Marah - Kids in Philly (2000)

2009-12-22T17:59:00.004-05:00

I would have never heard of Kids in Philly if it wasn't for the cover art. Seeing the picture at allmusic, it intrigued me enough to find out who Marah was and what the album is all about. Kids in Philly is a sprawling, ambitious album that merges so many different rock styles that it keeps the band from sounding derivative. There's Greetings From Asbury Park era Springsteen present in 'Point Breeze.' 'Barstool Boys' is a take off of The Faces all the way down to its play on the title. 'Round Eye Blues' sounds like a mash of Phil Spector, Motown, and CCR. The album is tied to Philadelphia, from Mummer's banjo on the opener, 'Faraway You' to particular neighborhood sketches like 'Christian St.' and 'The Catfisherman'. Dave Bielanko's lyrics are consistently fabulous, painting a vivid picture of a Philadelphia that he clearly knows and loves. The Springsteen parallels are present not only in the phrasing of songs but in the kind of people Bielanko is writing about: those down on their luck, those that can only really be found in cities on the Eastern Seaboard. The album tells so many stories, with such vivid detail that it creates an astounding group of songs capturing a place at a certain point in time. It's intense regionalism may explain why it wasn't much of a success, but Kids in Philly is still the high water mark for a band that spent the rest of the decade never becoming as big as they should have been.

Film Decade List #10: All the Real Girls

2009-12-21T18:45:00.004-05:00

All the Real Girls (David Gordon Green, USA, 2003)

At its heart, All the Real Girls is a film of moments, in all their shambling, awkward, unironic glory. It is basically a love story, between two young people in a small North Carolina town, Paul (Paul Schneider) and Noel (Zooey Deschanel). Green and his actors handle this relationship with all the idealistic ideals and uncertain nature that young people in love have. The film is a subtle examination of moments, of conversation, of the emotions of Noel, who is fairly inexperienced in relationships and Paul, who is quite the opposite. The dialogue between the two is often awkward, vulnerable yet profound in its portrayal the idealism these two have in each other. These moments don't make up a straightforward narrative and it would be easy for the film to derail into insufferable muck. Green makes the difference here as his lyrical style, very reminiscent of early 70s New Hollywood, makes the difference. Working with fantastic cinematography by Tim Orr, the lyricism and talent in Green's images are a perfect compliment to tie these moments together. His minimalist style let the dialogue and the emotion present in the characters linger over the screen, permeating the film with its romantic view. It's an almost perfect execution with style and substance. This may be the best looking film of the decade. Green, Schneider, and Deschanel deserve a lot of credit in this age of irony and cynicism for crafting a heartfelt romantic film that is messy, as it often is in real life. They should also be given a lot of credit for making a cynical ass like me like it.

Music Decade List #10: The National - Boxer (2007)

2009-12-21T18:06:00.004-05:00

Boxer and The National were a slow grow on me. When I first heard the album, I thought it was fairly good but nothing to really fawn about. Numerous more listens in and I became hooked. The set of songs on Boxer are mean to be listened to repeatedly to really get deep down into what The National are doing. The opener, 'Fake Empire' starts off slow and simple but grows into a web of horns, guitar, drums, and piano that transport it somewhere beyond how it started. Nuance is the main theme here, as something as little as a drumbeat or a bass line make create a sound that is expansive yet incredibly refined. Matt Berninger's vocals are distinct and work with the moody sonic textures of songs like 'Mistaken For Strangers' and 'Green Gloves.' Then something like 'Apartment Story' comes along and shakes everything up with as much as a straight ahead rock song the band could come out with. It's such an accomplished studio accomplishment, using the studio to refine and enhance the material without sapping it of all life. The songs here on Boxer don't really differ that much from the band's earlier material but it polish show a band perhaps hitting its high water mark.

Music Decade List #11: My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves (2003)

2009-12-20T18:02:00.007-05:00

When other music critics are pouring over their best of the decade lists and come to My Morning Jacket, they will probably go with other options over It Still Moves. Dectractors of the album will point to its overt Classic Rock influences and would say that the new directions of Z and Evil Urges show the band crafting a more original sound. I for one, find nothing wrong with wearing influences on sleeves and the album's re-interpretation of various Classic Rock forms is still the My Morning Jacket I love best. It Still Moves starts off with a powerful 1-2 punch, with 'Mahgeeta' and 'Dancefloors' offering up the killer guitar solos and reverb vocals that define the classic My Morning Jacket sound. It coming home from Bonnaroo 2003 listening to the mix they gave you on the way in that I discovered 'Mahgeeta'. I had missed MMJ at that Bonnaroo and of all the songs on that compilation, it was the one that knocked me out. It's just such a killer track that I would probably have put the album on the list just for that. The rest of the album isn't any worse, however, as 'Golden' and 'I Will Sing You Songs' show that Jim James has some songwriting strengths over guitar jams. The scope of It Still Moves isn't as wide as their subsequent albums but the My Morning Jacket I'll take over any other exists here.

My Morning Jacket also wins honors as live band of the decade, as they put on two of the best shows: their Bonnaroo performance in 2004 before and during one of the most ominous thunderstorms I've ever seen and their first late night set at Bonnaroo 2006. They along with The Flaming Lips have been one of the handfuls of bands that have bridged the indie/jam band gap and become synonymous with Bonnaroo. And I would have probably not have noticed that early if if wasn't for that Bonnaroo sampler and 'Mahgeeta.'

Film Decade List #11: Y tu Mama Tambien

2009-12-18T18:28:00.008-05:00

Y tu Mama Tambien (Alfonso Curon, Mexico, 2001)
On its basic level, Y tu Mama Tambien is pretty much a teen sex movie. Instead of playing it for cheap laughs or a making it a complete raunchfest, Curon imbibes the film with a melancholy examination on what it actually means to come of age. The two main teen characters, Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Tenoch(Diego Luna) do go away with an older woman, Luisa (Maribel Verdu), with sex involved. What occurs on the trip is much more than that, as the film deftly balances a frank depiction of teenage sexuality with an examination of the economic disparity of Mexico. All these characters are from the more privileged classes of Mexican society and as they are on their trip, Curon never fails to show the (large) differences between the rich and poor in Mexico. If Julio and Tenoch were poor, they would not be on this trip. While the trip is filled with horny teenage shenanigans, the ending of the film reveals that the trip had a much different meaning for Luisa than it did for the two boys. It ends up creating an ending where these characters really did learn something about themselves. Bernal, Luna, and Verdu all work so well together, bantering, quizzing, and teasing each other that crackles with a vibrancy that is seen in nothing called a teen movie. Give credit for Curon for treating subjects that are all too often in American mainstream cinema used for shitty laughs and exploitative purposes and giving depth and meaning to a well-told story.

Music Decade List #12: The Arcade Fire - Funeral (2004)

2009-12-17T20:08:00.004-05:00

The Arcade Fire were one of the few bands of the decade to survive the massive fawning of music blogs and come out as something other than overhyped. Funeral rises above that mostly because it's filled with some strong emotion and never feels as detached as a lot of "indie rock" does. Listening to 'Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) and 'Rebellion (Lies)', there's a feeling of some real passion in those songs, whether it be fear, rage, or yearning. The band has a power that borders on the arena-friendly sounds of U2, only with more instrumentation. The big songs have an almost epic quality to them, thundering drums, chorus vocals, and strings. 'Wake Up' may be the epitome of what I'm trying to describe, a song that grabs you with its near anthemic qualities. The entire album is not all sweeping however as with 'Neighborhood #4 (Kettles)' and 'Haiti', the band shows they can turn out more intimate numbers with the same amount of emotional power. Funeral was the really first record praised by the Pitchfork crowd that I really liked. There's nothing here as esoteric as what (I thought) most of that type of music was like. Funeral hit at a point where my musical interests were shifting and it's proven to be a record that isn't limited by genres or scenes.

Film Decade List #12: The Prestige

2009-12-17T19:57:00.005-05:00

The Presige (Christopher Nolan, USA, 2006)

The Prestige is a perfect piece of screenwriting, something that Christopher Nolan has proven quite good at over the decade. That his screenplay mirrors much of what is going on in the film, a back and forth game of one-upmanshipship with a rousing twist that the magicians themselves would be proud of. This is clearly a film built on the strength of its plot and it works to great effect. The film tells the tale of two magicians, Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Borden (Christian Bale) as their friendship turns to a reckless rivalry as one tries to top the other's last trick. Besides focusing on the magic, Nolan also digs deep in to each man, how their jealousy, egotism, and macho nature blind them to everything but being able to top the other. Besides the story, this is the best looking film Nolan has made, full of great use of light/dark contrasts and getting a realistic portrayal of Victorian England. All told, I feel that The Prestige was one of the most underrated films of the decade and should be worth the time for anyone who likes taut storytelling (which I happen to do once in a while).

Film Decade List #13: Vera Drake

2009-12-15T17:45:00.005-05:00

Vera Drake (Mike Leigh, UK, 2004)

I've never been a huge fan of Leigh's films, but Vera Drake is by far the most emotionally powerful. Led by a fantastic performance by Imelda Stauton in the lead role, the film is a expert examination of working class Britain in the 1950s. That Vera is a doting housewife by day and still secretly helps women induce miscarriages (abortion being illegal) is really two sides of the same coin. Leigh has crafted the film through Stauton's performance, a character in Vera who will do almost nothing to help those no matter what the situation. That most of the women in need of Vera's help are poor, uneducated, and taking on a child would be a financial burden tells much more of class and status in Britain more than abortion. The film never really takes a political stance on abortion as it's using the issue to expose the characters and class issues. Eventually Vera is found out and the film turns a little bit from precise cultural examination into melodrama but it never loses its emotional punch. It's almost impossible to not see Vera as a victim as she repeats she was only doing what she could to help. Those with social agenda to grind will find fault in it, but it's awfully hard not to be swayed into sympathizing with her.

Music Decade List #13: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Howl (2005)

2009-12-14T18:22:00.004-05:00

Howl sounds like nothing else in Black Rebel Motorcylce Club's catalog and that's a good thing. Eschewing the heavy guitar driven sound of their first few albums, Howl finds the band going in a more roots rock oriented sound. Working with help from T-Bone Burnett, the album finds the band sounding nothing like they had before and perhaps better than they ever had before. Gone are noisy guitars, replaced by acoustic guitars, harmonica, and multi-track vocals. Even with the band going with a somewhat stripped-down sound, the album still has a vast, filled in sound, done with more nuance than just noise as the title track demonstrates. 'Ain't No Easy Way' sounds most like the old BMRC but with resonator guitar in place of overdriven guitars. Songs like 'Devil's Waiting' and 'Complicated Situation' show off this new acoustic, rootsy sound to a positive effect. In fact, it's somewhat surprising the band never adopted these elements earlier as Peter Hayes and Robert Levon Been's vocals work perfectly in the more bluesy, gospel tinged numbers. It really is a remarkable album when you think about where Black Rebel Motorcylce Club had been coming from with their earlier albums. Alas, Howl now is a one-off type of record as the band's follow up found them (regrettably for this listener) back to their "traditional" sound. Howl speaks to the power of the band to switch gears so seamlessly and show the band's embrace of traditional American musical stylings.

Music Decade List #14: Old 97's - Satellite Rides (2001)

2009-12-13T18:45:00.010-05:00

The fact that I think Satellite Rides is the best Old 97's album of the decade, full of catchy hooks and melodies, shouldn't mean I dislike the "old" Old 97's. But in crafting a catchy power pop album full of great hooks and melodies, it creates a bit of a dilemma. This isn't the hard-charging alt-country of their earlier albums and not quite what die hard fans probably wanted to hear. The simple fact is that Rhett Miller has always has fine understanding in pop songcraft in his material prior to this album and now the band is going full bore into Marshall Crenshaw territory. Why the album is so strong is that almost every song is got at least a little hook or chorus that gets in your head. The list of songs here that I would put in my favorite Old 97's playlist is astounding: 'King Of All the World', 'Rollerskate Skinny', 'Am I Too Late' (the closest to the "old" sound), 'Book of Poems", and of course 'Question', depending on the times my favorite song of the decade. Two or three more could be thrown in depending on the times. I happen to believe as the work of an album, Satellite Rides was the most consistent and had the best executed sound the band ever got on an album. As a live band, their a completely different animal but here, they got nearly everything right. As for the difference between the country and pop stylings, I like them no matter what. That Satellite Rides got me into the Old 97's would confirm it's a pretty fine album.

The Baader Meinhof Complex

2009-12-13T15:19:00.005-05:00

The Baader Meinhof Complex (Uli Edel, 2008) [5]

Given my interest in the Red Army Faction as a historical entity, it's a bit of a major disappointment that this film operates as a kinetic mix of violence, explosions, and sex with little regard for historical analysis. Everything in the film is apparently historically accurate but it sweeping scope, covering just about every major act the RAF pulled off from the late 60s to its leaders' suicides in the late 70s, leaves little room for analysis or solid character development. The character of Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleitbru) comes across more as an egotistical troublemaker than anyone with a sincere political agenda. The film also never dives into the character or Ulrike Meinhoff (one of the better performances of the film by Johanna Wokalek) until she is in prison awaiting trial. Her decision to leave her family and a prestigious journalism job to become a revolutionary is never shown well. It just happens as much of the film does, a series of events strung together through a haze of bullets, explosions, and breasts. It's amazing how much of this film feels like a standard Hollywood action picture, not just in what it shows but how it waters down the political and historical discourse the RAF wanted to create with simpleminded leftist slogans, almost stereotypical ones. What could have been a very interesting film ends up being a film really meant to offend no one politically, while dumbing down the history of RAF.

Film Decade List #14: Old Joy

2009-12-11T17:50:00.005-05:00

Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, USA, 2006)

Over the past decade, I've really gained an appreciation of Reichardt's film, with Old Joy definitely being my favorite. Minimalist to a fault, not a lot of "action" occurs, which in turn will get it called boring my some people. The power of the film resides not in the action of the two main characters, Mark (Daniel London) and Kurt (Will Oldham) but in the moments of silence between the two and of the film itself. The plot revolves around Mark and Kurt as they meet up to spend a day or two in the woods, heading out to some hot springs. The two haven't been close over the years and the trip only reinforces the distance and awkwardness their relationship now occupies. Reichardt handles the interaction deftly, and the scenes of quiet natural beauty she creates around these sparse moments only heighten the chasm of difference that has crept in between the two. The film ends on a note that Mark and Kurt have become two completely incompatible people: Mark with a wife, child, and (seemingly) good job, and Kurt just wandering through, living on a whim, never really "growing up." What is left is a sad feeling that there is nothing that can be done to repair this relationship. It ends with the two going their separate ways, a gulf between two men that once must have been close.

Music Decade List#15: The Black Keys - Rubber Factory (2004)

2009-12-09T18:32:00.007-05:00

Rubber Factory was a big step forward for The Black Keys. While not sounding all that different from their previous two releases, the production and songwriting are refined to a level that would create the sound that would define the band. Listen to '10 A.M. Automatic' alone and you get the idea. It has the killer guitar riff and melody but it's the finer points that really work in its benefit. The overdubbing of guitars was something that wasn't heard much in the bands first two albums and in this track, they enhance but never drown out the fact this is a two man group. The finer production details are what make Rubber Factory a solid album, from heavier tracks like 'Grown So Ugly' and 'Stack Shot Billy' to something like 'The Lengths', which was a big surprise when the albums first appeared. There's a great cover of The Kink's 'Act Nice and Gentle', which shows the band doesn't have to go full-bore to get a great song across. The Black Keys are really doing nothing more than re-interpreting blues and classic rock templates but what makes them different than a junk cover band or a band like Jet is that Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney are never imitating anything. They're taking a wealth of blues and rock influences and making something uniquely their own out of it.

Film Decade List #15: I'm Not There (2007)

2009-12-08T18:10:00.005-05:00

I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, USA, 2007)

The greatest attribute I can give to I'm Not There is that it's nothing like a conventional biopic. In a decade that has seen a host of musical figures have their lives reduced to a middling, middlebrow awards grabber, Haynes should get a lot of credit for his daring take on Bob Dylan. The follows not just the life of Dylan but is more of a thematic examination of the man, his work, and whatever people have called him over the years: poet, voice of a generation, fraud, you name it. The big news here was that Haynes uses six different actors to portray Dylan or various images of him, some being young black boy pretending to be Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin) to the renowned performance by Cate Blanchett as the mid-60s, post Don't Look Back Dylan. Some performances are more direct representations of the man, some like the Woody and Billy segments exist as metaphor or are being woven out of the mythology that has been created around Dylan since the 60s. Reflecting on this recently, the element of the film that really strikes me is not so much any of the plot points but how Haynes has constructed the film stylistically. The Woody/young black Dylan segments have touches of New Hollywood. The Jude Quinn sequence has strong Godard and Fellini elements. Godard bubbles up again in the Arthur Rimbaud sequences. The one element that seems odd at first viewing but may be the film's crux is the Billy (Richard Gere) segment. It's Haynes channeling Peckinpagh filmicly but it most closely resembles the old, weird America that Greil Marcus used in describing 'The Basement Tapes.' This may be the point of the film that truly gets to the center of what Dylan is all about, an unique amalgamation of various of American musical styles, deeply rooted in the past but distinctly modern. The Jude/Blanchett scenes may the most attention-grabbing scenes but the soul of I'm Not There reside in those Billy sections.

Music Decade List #16: Old Crow Medicine Show - O.C.M.S. (2004)

2009-12-06T18:40:00.004-05:00

Bringing back the acoustic string band sound could be hard to do without it being seen as either ironic, cheesy, or too indebted to the sound's traditional roots. Old Crow Medicine Shoe manage to do none of this on their excellent self-titled album, produced by David Rawlings. The group manages to mix traditional songs with their originals that would appeal to any traditional bluegrass fan but also managed to cross over to the jamband and roots rock world. That rests mostly on the strength of one song, 'Wagon Wheel', which I guess I would pick as the choice track of the decade. A great road song with fantastic vocal harmonies and fiddle, it should have been at least a Country hit (if Country Radio wasn't filled busy playing shitty rock music with fiddles). It would be a disservice to the band to say that one song may the band as the original material is strong and sounds very much like the traditional songs they cover. They can handle up-tempo barn raisers ('Tear It Down', 'Hard to Tell') as well as slower material ('Poor Man', 'Trials & Troubles'). The band pulls this off because they aren't being ironic in the least and truly have an enthusiasm for the music and the history without being too reverential. Maybe the greatest compliment I can give the album is that it seems to have found a new, younger audience for the classic string band sound. The energy and enthusiasm that the band has that comes through this album is nothing but infectious.

Film Decade List #16: Almost Famous (2000)

2009-12-04T18:22:00.005-05:00

Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe, USA, 2000)

Even though over time, the syrupy sentimentality Almost Famous sprouts at times becomes cloying, the fact that there is a true love about its subject is what makes it work. More than anything, this is love letter to rock & roll, and more specifically Crowe's youth, and I can't say I don't feel the same way about rock & roll that William Miller does. The plot revolves around William, a teenage aspiring rock writer as he cons his way into doing a Rolling Stone profile of an up-and-coming band named Stillwater. In the course of getting his story, he gets a head-first trip into the backstage world of rock & roll, including befriending a groupie, or Band Aid, played by Kate Hudson. The film isn't so much concerned with the actual workings of a rock band but more using them as elements in crafting William's own coming of age story. Of course stories like that border into schmaltz and there are a few moments where Crowe, who is never afraid of going for sentimentality in scenes, attempts to derail the film. It never really happens because everything else is so good, especially to those like myself who could see themselves in the character of William. The performances of Patrick Fugit and Hudson (who has seemingly never made a good film since) are serviceable but it's the supporting performances that work. Jason Lee and Billy Crudup work well as the egotistical, bickering leaders of Stillwater and Crudup goes a little further to become someone who can trust and has an interest in William. The scene stealer here is Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs, channeling all the sarcasm and sincerity that Bangs showed in his writing. His moments with William are great moments that tell a lot about what rock & roll was in the 1970s and what rock journalism used to mean in those days. It's told so well because Crowe was there. Almost Famous clearly shows a filmmaker telling a story he truly wanted to tell and nailing what a force music can be in some people's lives.

Film Decade List #17: The Brown Bunny (2004)

2009-12-03T18:04:00.004-05:00

The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, USA, 2004)

There has been no film that has received as much vitriol and condemnation this decade as The Brown Bunny. Most of it is unfounded and based on one scene, the infamous "blowjob" scene. If people were to look beyond that, they might be surprised that Vincent Gallo made a sincere, honest, heart-on-his-sleeve picture about loneliness and the search for redemption. Granted, not much happens in the film, and the scenes are slow and meandering, but it all creates a intensely brooding, melancholy film experience. It's a film experience that most will be rushed to call boring but I beg to differ. The control that Gallo shows is tremendous, as he lets shots and scenes linger but they still have an emotional punch to them. The scenes with Gallo meeting a woman named Lilly (played by Cheryl Tiegs) reflect everything I just said and sum up the film in a nutshell. It does nothing to really move along and with the exception of its infamous scene (which doesn't even really fit in that much structurally) but it reveals all the pathos and loneliness these characters posses. Only at the end does Bud (Gallo) receive some sort of redemption for the lonely and melancholy trip he and the viewer has taken.

Music Decade List #17: Jenny Lewis with the Watston Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat (2006)

2009-12-01T19:00:00.007-05:00

Rabbit Fur Coat may have shocked someone expecting to hear more of Rilo Kiley in Jenny Lewis's solo debut. The blues, soul, and country influences here were also beginning to move into some of the songs on More Adventurous, which makes this feel like a natural progression. The albums starts off in a more American vibe, with the vocal harmonies of the Watson Twins playing a prominent role in 'Run Devil Run' and 'Rise Up With Fists'. There's also some up-tempo numbers like 'The Charging Sky' and a cover of the Traveling Wilbury's 'Handle with Care' that run full bore into that category. I would make the case that when Lewis strength is the more soulful, introspective songs on the album. 'Happy' and the title track are bittersweet, more intimate songs that show off a more soulful side of Lewis. While she doesn't have a big voice, it fits much better into quieter, acoustic numbers than the more uptempo numbers. Overall, the decision to adopt more of a country and blue-eyed soul sound makes Rabbit Fur Coat much more appealing to me than a typical Rilo Kiley album. That isn't meant to say that Rilo Kiley is crap but Lewis's solo output finds the new direction working just as well.

Film Decade List #18: Far From Heaven

2009-11-30T18:48:00.004-05:00

Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, USA, 2002)

Haynes ode to Sirkian melodrama is a fantastic film, from its performances to its look, all the while taking a slightly different route than Sirk's most memorable films. Julianne Moore plays Cathy Whitaker, a prototypical upper middle-class housewife in the 1950s with a nice house and a successful husband, played by Dennis Quaid. Cathy's life starts to spiral out of control after spotting her husband kissing another man one night. As Cathy's seemingly perfect life seems to becoming undone, she befriends her African-American gardener, Raymond (Dennis Haysbert). As the two begin to find a connection and friendship, the social taboo of a white woman and a black man being seen together creates some unintended dangers. Working with a strong influence from All That Heaven Allows, Haynes does a near perfect job of recreating the look and feel of Sirk's films. The cinematography is gorgeous, with rich, warm colors and with more realistic set pieces. The film also accurately portrays the social climate of the 50s, especially in regards to race and sexuality. Moore plays Cathy as a character ahead of her time, never comprehending the vitriol the community has towards her relationship with Raymond. In their relationship, Haynes is drawing a bit of influence from Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, which itself had a lot indebted to Sirk's films. The racial climate surrounding the characters in each are very similar. Moore carries the film on her strong-willed performance and there's no doubt that the effectiveness of Cathy makes or breaks the film. Everything about the film is done with a reverence toward the 50s melodrama that it works. But that it also a little more forthright in its examination of social issues of the time make Far From Heaven a remarkably perceptive film.

Music Decade List #18: The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday (2005)

2009-11-29T15:54:00.004-05:00

The template laid down on Separation Sunday has come to define who and what The Hold Steady are. Almost Killed Me showed moments but here is really where everything came together, from Craig Finn's vocal delivery to a intertwined song cycle to the classic rock-isms. Revolving around a cycle of songs about Catholicism, growing up, going to parties, getting wasted, and meeting an assortment of characters, it can be seen as completely contrived. What makes it work is that The Hold Steady truly believe that Rock & Roll can be meaningful and that you can enjoy yourself and still play music. Songs like 'Banging Camp' and 'Chicago Seem Tired Last Night' have an explosive energy and while completely immersed in classic rock tropes, have infectious riffs in them. Coupled that with Finn's talk-singing, and numerous literary and cultural references, it creates a product that you will surely love or loathe. There seems to be no middle ground with The Hold Steady; you're either a true believer or want nothing to do with them. If you get into Separation Sunday, than unironic rock music can still have some sort of impact.

Film Decade List #19: American Splendor

2009-11-25T18:18:00.005-05:00

American Splendor (Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini, USA, 2003)

It's a testament to how entertaining a film American Splendor is when its central character is so cantakerous, moody, and difficult to like as Harvey Pekar. But the film, much like Pekar's work, take the mundane, soul-crushing existence that is most of Pekar's life and makes him a sympathetic, endearing character. Harvery as a person and as a character (played by Paul Giamatti) has his faults but his willingness to tell almost everything seems to wash over his less than desirable attributes. The film eschews traditional biography, instead blending fiction scenes with actors and the real-life characters sitting around talking to the directors. What really makes the two blend together so seamlessly is that the performances so perfectly match the people. Giamatti and Hope Davis as Harvey's wife, Joyce, nail every idiosyncrasy in their real-life character's personalities. The one who nearly steals the entire movie is Judah Friedlander as Toby Flenderson, Harvery's co-worker and self-appointed "nerd." Friedlander sticks everything, from Toby's body language down to his distinctive voice. It's a role that could be seen strictly as comic relief but like everyone else, Toby comes across so truthfully and sincerely, you never end up laughing at him but you identify. The basis of American Splendor is in the moments, to pick some semblance of truth in the human experience that make part of these characters present in everyone that lives in a crappy town, has a dead-on job and is looking for some way to seem worthwhile in life.

Music Decade List #19: Neko Case - Middle Cyclone (2009)

2009-11-24T18:07:00.004-05:00

Nothing on Middle Cyclone is all that different than what Case has been putting out on record for most of the decade. It is a quantum leap forward in precision and confidence of craft that make this album stand out. The number one focal point of Case has always been her fantastic voice but here, she has the consistent melodies to back it up. It's amazing songs like 'This Tornado Loves You' or 'People Got a Lotta Nerve' never became hit songs (though it probably says more for the state of the music business and radio than the public in general). The songs on Middle Cyclone don't follow any genre in particular but they are all crafted with an atmospheric bent that allows Case to belt or be more subdued at any given moment. The hint of reverb in something like 'Vengeance Is Sleeping' adds a little more to a simple guitar track. But once again, it comes back to the melodies, which I'll make the case that this is the strongest and most consistent set on any Case album. Besides the two I mentioned above, later tracks like the title one and 'I'm an Animal' have fantastic hooks. For an artist who always seem to have trouble getting her songs more attention than her voice, Middle Cyclone feels like that Case has discovered the right formula to accomplish that.

Film Decade List #20 - 2046

2009-11-22T18:15:00.004-05:00

2046 (Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong, 2005)
The one word I use to describe 2046 is ethereal. There's something other-worldly about the film and not that it teeters into science fiction territory. The story feels slight and that a host of strong elements (clunky symbolism, useless f/x or action) would completely overwhelm the delicate film that Wong has created. Operating as more or less a sequel to In the Mood for Love (which we'll get to later), 2046 follows the character as Mr. Chung (Tony Leung), this time as more of a playboy but still dealing with a lot of the same themes as that film. Chung again moves from lovelorn moment to moment while Wong throws in some science fiction elements. It all doesn't have the same emotional resonate of INMFL but in a formal sense, 2046 is much less tethered to reality and exists outside reality at times. Once again, Christopher Doyle's cinematography is enviable beautiful and the larger focus on surface images and color make 2046 a bit more of a visual oriented film. That being said, Wong never completely leaves story behind but it really plays second fiddle to creating that feeling that this film is fleeting and exists ever so briefly in the ether. It's incredibly difficult to describe exactly how I felt watching this. It could have been all too easy for this film to fall into a swirling mess without much grounding it. Wong is such an exceptional filmmaker that it feels like he's pulling important shots and themes out of practically nothing or at least sub-interesting material like science fiction (that's my opinion speaking). It's one of those 'either you get it or you don't films' but for someone like me, this is about an easy like as I can get.

Film Decade List #21: The Departed

2009-11-20T18:25:00.004-05:00

The Departed (Martin Scorsese, USA, 2006)

The Departed is by no means classic Scorsese but in regards to the other films he had released this decade, it was a welcome return to what you think a Scorsese film should be. The film works because it has all the hallmark elements of Scorsese's best work, the fast paced, kinetic camera and action, using rock songs in just the right moments, and another fantastic editing job by Thelma Schoomaker. Based on the Asian film Infernal Affairs, the plot focuses on a series of "rats", a criminal infiltrating the Boston Police Department (Matt Damon) and a cop infiltrating his former neighborhood crime racket (Leonardo DiCaprio). Damon and DiCaprio's characters are pretty much mirror images, as they behave and even go for the same woman (Vera Farmiga) as the web of subplots and double crosses unravels around them. It a smart, propulsive screenplay with an ear for Boston, not just in accents but in the behavior of the police and the criminals that occupy the film. Yes, it all makes an entertaining film and there was not many other directors that could have handled the material any better than Scorsese does. The film does get docked some minor points for the ham-handed symbolism at the end and Jack Nicholson seems to lag well behind everyone else in the film in terms of performance. Still, The Departed does enough right to deserve its place on this list.

Music Decade List #20: Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger (2007)

2009-11-17T18:20:00.005-05:00

After some highly conceptualized releases before it (the Deadsy Cold Roses, the country of Jacksonville City Nights), Easy Tiger was seen by some to a return to the form of Heartbreaker, in that Adams pares and combines his influences into one concise album. The album can also be seen as a more broad, commercially aiming record after the increasingly insular and niche albums that made up Adams's 2005 trio. Easy Tiger was definitely a grower for me, as further listens brushed the "too commercial" feeling I had about it at the beginning and now, it has become a record I go back to time and time again. Never being as big of a believer in Heartbreaker as legend has made it, I would take the songs here over a lot on that album. Like I said above, the album feels like a mix of the various albums that Adams had covered over the previous part of the decade: 'Goodnight Rose' wouldn't feel out of place on Cold Roses (especially when listening to the jammier live versions), 'Pearls on a String' could come from Jacksonville City Nights, even something like 'I Taught Myself How to Grow Old' could be on 29. Perhaps why I've come to like Easy Tiger so much is that you can pick a little bit out of every other Adams album and say "Yes, this song could be on ___". With that being said, it still works together because it feels like the strongest set of songs Adams put on record maybe ever. Nothing sounds meandering of like filler. I could live without 'Two' or 'Everybody Knows', the two most obvious hand-outs to radio, even though they have some merit. I'll take the acoustic numbers, definitely the strongest since Heartbreaker. 'These Girls' and 'Oh My God, Whatever, Etc.' are really exceptional songs. And even though this is titled as a Adams solo release it does feature the Cardinals lineup with Neal Casal, who I will argue makes a huge difference in Adams transformation as a live performer. With Adams, it seems to make a significant improvement in his recorded output using the same performers on every track. It may not be a great record to some, but Easy Tiger earned its place on this list with repeated listening.

(Author's note: The author of this post often spends too much time listening, pouring over, and analyzing the catalog of Ryan Adams. Be prepared for a dissertation-level write up of Cold Roses later on in this decade list.)

Jerichow

2009-11-12T18:48:00.005-05:00

Jerichow (Christian Petzold, 2009) [9]

A variation on The Postman Always Rings Twice, Jerichow is a different kind of neo-noir. The story is never really focused on the plot twists and surprises that populate noir but more by an evocative tone. Thomas (Benno Furmann) is a Afghan war vet back in his hometown with no money. By chance, he comes across Ali (Hilmi Sozer), a Turkish immigrant who owns a chain of snack shops and just happens to need a driver after getting busted for DUI. Thomas goes to work and earns the trust of Ali as well as becoming attracted to Ali's wife, Laura (Nina Hoss), a woman with a past of her own. The rest of the film settles on this simmering romance with Thomas and Laura with Ali left at the edges. It's a fairly standard noir plot but Petzold reworks the emotional ambiance of the story to a refreshing degree. The film has a detached, almost clinical eye to the story and its characters. Moments of passion, paranoia, and violence all play out the same way. The characters are beaten down but in different ways. Thomas and Laura have ended up in circumstances that as of a result of not having money, have created a situation with nowhere to go for them. Ali, while having a lot of money, is a victim of being a immigrant in a land that never really accepts him even with his wealth. He tells Thomas of going on a trip back to Turkey, where he and Laura are planning on permanently moving to. Or so Petzold lets you think. The only big revelation of the narrative comes after Ali returns from his trip and it shifts his character to a boozy, violent, unlikable man into someone that garners sympathy. Petzold is digging a little bit deeper than just into the passion of the characters and by examining race, wealth, and status, even briefly, he adds a dimension to Jerichow that I find appealing.

Film Decade List #22: Talk to Her (2002)

2009-11-11T18:58:00.004-05:00

Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar, Spain, 2002)

Almodovar has become known with the way that he handles female characters in his film but Talk to Her is almost in reverse as in it focuses on male characters and their interactions in similar circumstances. Marco (Dario Grandinetti) is a writer whose matador girlfriend ends up in a coma. Benigno (Javier Camara) is a male nurse looking after a patient who has been in a coma for a while. The two men bond over their similar circumstances and the ability to care for those women in their lives that are helpless. While that is a fairly simple review, Almodovar throws many more themes and surreal experiences that give the film so much more meaning. One one level, it's about these men coming to terms with tragic circumstances but there's a deeper underlying darkness to it, especially in Benigno's relationship. He has no real ties to the woman he's looking after other than being her nurse but he wraps himself so tightly in her life, there's a feeling of uneasiness about his relationship. That foreboding notion shows itself by the end, where the sympathy earned by Benigno in his actions earlier in the film comes crashing down in a jarring end. That Marco comes to Benigno after attempting to find an explanation shows a lot about the bond the two created earlier in the film. Talk to Her really is a fairly simple film in its execution but Almodovar creates a complete film universe with a caring storyline. He never quite loses his more surreal tendencies, as a silent vignette bawdily shows, but there's no denying how emotionally powerful the film is, despite how poorly I've described it. That Benigno, who does something truly unforgivable, and yet, you feel just as sorry for him as you feel outrage, is a testament to how strong a story Almodovar has wound. Talk to Her has been one of the films over the past few years that has always stayed with me as being a near perfectly constructed film, not just in story and characters but in emotion.

The Essential Collection: Z

2009-11-09T18:19:00.006-05:00

Z (Costa-Gravas, France/Algeria, 1969)

In retrospect, a lot has been made of the Academy Awards for 1969 when Midnight Cowboy took Best Picture and Z took Best Foreign Film, mostly because the Academy seemed to grow a pair of balls that it rarely has shown in the years since. Aside from its political tone, there is nothing in Z that couldn't be found in a well-made thriller to come out of Hollywood in the 70s. That's more than likely the reason that it was met with an embrace in America. It's a taut, economical film that speeds along on its narrative and takes subject matter that is obscure and inflammatory and makes great entertainment out of it.

Based on real-life events surrounding the assassination of a leftist Greek political leader, the film follows the attack on the Doctor (Yves Montand) and the subsequent investigation by a dogged investigator (Jean-Louis Trintignant) as he step by step uncovers a police and government role and cover-up in the "accident." Costa-Gravas bring so many elements and characters together, from those directly involved, to journalists, regular people, and government bureaucrats, that it would be easy for the film to devolve in a confounding web of different accounts and stories. It's really to his credit that he's able to take in all the surrounding stories and characters and still keep the kinetic pace of the central storyline. Because of that pace, the film has much more in common with Hollywood films than what people would think of a foreign films. It's incredibly easy to get caught up in this film without having to do much analytical work. That sounds a little like a backhanded compliment but there's something to be said about making a well-structured film that can keep up for two hours plus. It offsets the political tone of the film a bit, which is strongly anti-totalitarian, and while on one side of a fence, never feels oppressive. Z basically makes the viewer have no other options but to sympathize with the leftists, just out of the notions of justice and basic decency. And for that, which seems a bit radical now, is what made Z a fairly big film for its time.

Music Decade List #21: Nicolai Dunger - Soul Rush (2002)

2009-11-08T17:43:00.007-05:00

A while back, Allmusic used to have a feature on their homepage that would flip through their album picks for a certain period of time. The cover art on Soul Rush is what was initially intriguing about it, because I had never heard of Nicolai Dunger before. So I clicked to find out more and the first sentence of the review mentions Van Morrison and Astral Weeks. From that, there was no doubt that I was going to like this album. The Van Morrison comparisons are exactly correct as the similarities not just to Astral Weeks but also albums like Moondance and Saint Dominic's Preview are all over this. Dunger mixes in so many various elements, from jazz and country elements to more outright Morrison impressions like 'Something New.' Dunger's vocals have the same timbre as Morrison especially when he handles bluesier, more emotive material like the title track or 'Ballad of a Relationship.' But it's 'Doctor Zhivago's Train' that is the cornerstone of the album, throwing jazz drums and horns, a bluesy vocal and almost inscrutable lyrics into a mixture that was practically stunning. It was amazing to hear something like this come out of an act that even something of a cult act in his native Sweden. Dunger hasn't made quite as an impressionable album since, even though his American profile has been raised by working with Will Oldham and members of Mercury Rev on those albums. The blue eyed soul, blues and country combination that made Soul Rush so impressive should be enough for more people to take notice of Nicolai Dunger.

Film Decade List #23: Syndromes and a Century

2009-11-04T18:40:00.004-05:00

Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2007)

What makes a film like Sydromes and a Century great is almost impossible to explain to someone who hasn't seen it. It's a quiet yet vibrant film, full of immensely picturesque images but with a story that never follows a conventional narrative. The film is essentially the same story in two parts, with one focusing on a rural hospital setting and the second in a modern yet not real bustling metropolis. To really get the film, the focus has to be on the characters' interactions, to absorb all the small moments of the film and never look for any greater meaning. Reflecting upon this now, it becomes more clear that the relationship of the characters to the two worlds of the film is the most important aspect of it. There's not much greater meaning beyond the simple moments of sly humor and awkward interaction. Weerasethakul handles the scenes with a dream like delicacy, weaving his camera as easily through the lush rural landscape as he does the sterile lab environment of the city. I really don't know of anything better that I could say that would explain it any better. It's definitely not going to be for everyone but if you look beyond simple straightforward narrative, there's a lot to enjoy about Syndromes and a Century.

The Girlfriend Experience

2009-11-03T17:53:00.005-05:00

The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh, 2009) [5]

It's been Soderbergh's career to follow up big box office pictures like the Oceans series with these more "experimental", low budget films. Focusing on an upper-class escort (Adult film star Sasha Grey) and her interactions with her New York clientele, The Girlfriend Experience definitely takes more chances visually and structurally than Soderbergh's popcorn fare. Grey's character is more than an escort; she's a representation of the title, someone who these men can feel more attachment and share candid feelings, more than just a sex worker. Most of these interactions are dealing with the economic meltdown and the 2008 Presidential election, as the men run on about how each of them is being fucked by the poor economy. It's at these moments that the film turns as its not really so much about a high-class hooker. Soderbergh uses Chelsea as a vehicle to get in and examine the upper class of New York and the film becomes a reflection of a certain culture at a certain time. Even Chelsea's boyfriend, a personal trainer, gets caught with some Wall Street douchebags as they take the company Gulfstream to Las Vegas, where they get a suite at the ultimate starfucker casino, The Palms. Chelsea also takes the time to namedrop what designer shoes, dress, and have lunch at Craftsteak. It's this interaction of the film and its characters with a certain element of society that I find most interesting. I never find Chelsea or Grey herself to be that interesting. There are scenes where Chelsea is being interviewed by a journalist who wants to get to the "real" Chelsea. Grey, like her character, throws the wall up at the right time, to a predictable result. The viewer is left with questions unanswered even though we really don't need to have them either. Chelsea falls for a client but brief glimpses are all that are seen until it's called off. That sequence is sort of a general analysis of the film; that there is never much going on beyond the surface of the film, that nothing ever really goes beyond the experience and not the real thing.

Music Decade List #22: Marah - If You Didn't Laugh,...You'd Cry (2005)

2009-11-02T18:16:00.009-05:00

Marah's two previous albums before this one were hampered by not enough stanout tracks and a glossy production that never seemed to fit the band's more freewheeling tendencies. If You Didn't Laugh,...You'd Cry is a return to a more loose, live sound and it is a fantastic Marah album. Sporting the group's strongest lineup, the album consistently strong, full of maybe the best group of songs the group committed to one album. The strongest point of the album is the variety of songs the album has, from the raucous opener, 'The Closer', to more introspective numbers like 'So What If We're Outta Tune (With the Rest of the World)' to Dylanesque numbers like 'The Dishwasher's Dream.' Dave Bielanko lyrics have always revolved around street life and the assorted people that occupy his worldview and songs like 'Poor People' or the great 'Walt Whitman Bridge' show a more introspective side of songwriting not really seen on Marah's previous albums. Even though the album manages to throw every kind of sound and influence you can conjure up listening to Marah (The Replacements, Springsteen, Dylan), it works because it all sounds infused with an energy that had been missing on something like 20,000 Streets. People looking for something other than energetic, roots based rock & roll may be disappointed in If You Didn't Laugh,...You'd Cry but for Marah fans like myself, it was a big welcome back to the band that exploded out of Kids In Philly (more on that one later).

Film Decade List #24: 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days

2009-11-01T18:16:00.004-05:00

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (Christian Mungiu, Romania, 2008)

The abortion issue grabs much of the attention of 4M,3w&2D but I've always felt the main issue was living in the crumbling last days of the oppressive Ceausescu regime. Everything in the film is dirty, grimy, crumbling, not pleasant in general. Reflecting again upon the film, it's this overbearingly bleak setting that allows the other actions in the film to take place. The focus of the plot is on two women, Gabita, who needs an abortion, and Otila, her roommate who becomes involved in her helping her find one. What makes the film work is Mungiu knowing how to handle the material without being sensationalistic (to a point) and how to craft tension. Like the setting the two characters are living in, there is a climate of constant surveillance and paranoia hovering over Gabita and Otila, from them checking into the hotel to Otila getting back to check on Gabita after a family dinner. It's Mungiu's tactful pacing and manipulation of tension, even when there isn't much of it in reality, that draw the viewer in more than the social drama present in the plot. If the film wasn't so well-crafted, it would allow for the more dubious moments of logic to expose and hamper the film. Mungiu also creates a lot of sympathy in Gabit and Otila, even through their torrent of bad decisions. The only caveat is that the way they are portrayed leaves the door open for a bit of a feminist argument and how the two aren't strong women. While it could be a problem, the fact that it hasn't been brought up much and that world around is a partial explanation of their actions, it never hampers the film in my mind. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days showed that strong social drama can come from all places, except Hollywood.

Music Decade List #23: BrightBlack - Ala.cali.tucky (2004)

2009-10-25T18:33:00.004-04:00

Before Brightblack Morning Light became the group they are thought of now, they tossed out Ala.cali.tucky in 2004 to not nearly the recognition their last two albums have gotten. It's seem odd to me because the sound of Ala.cali.tucky is much more preferable to me than the more electro-funk/soul type sound they have now, which is still pretty good. This is still slow. languid, hazy music but there is more of a roots music base for the music here, with pedal steel, slide guitar and hammond organ in place of the Fender Rhodes and saxes that have graced Brightblack's other albums. It's a record that comes from the same place as their debut or Motion to Rejoin but by using different instruments and influences, it creates a record that has a more "Southern" feel to it, whether that's correct or not. Nathan Shineywater and Rachael Hughes's harmonies are sublime, especially on tracks like 'True Bright Blossom' or 'Old Letters'. The languid pedal steel on 'Own Time Woodland Song' fits BrightBlack's slowpoke pace so much it's astounding to me the group didn't stay on this course. Every song is steeped in the same pace but it's that dedication to not speeding up the music, to let the songs linger, that is the most appealing aspect of the album. It feels as if the album could double as a soundtrack for a film like Paris, Texas or Old Joy. Listening to Ala.cali.tucky, I get the picture of a cinematic western America, the deserts, vistas, and canyons that exists but certainly not in the context of the cinema of people like Malick or Wenders. I haven't encountered much music that I feel has the right timbre to recall a certain place or idea. Perhaps that is why this album made this list.

Film Decade List #25: Whale Rider

2009-10-22T18:56:00.004-04:00

Whale Rider (Niki Caro, 2003, New Zealand)

Whale Rider was really a film that I had no expectations for going in and like most people who have seen it, got swept into it. It's a deceptively simple coming of age story, of a girl named Pai (remarkably played by Keisha Castle-Hughes), dealing with pleasing her grandfather in patriarchal Maori society. The film revolves around Pai attempting to get her grandfather's approval not just in general but also with the possibility of becoming chief of the tribe, something that no woman has been allowed to do. The film really hinges on the performance of Castle-Hughes and she succeeds magnificently, giving Pai the right amount of maturity but with moments of youthful insolence. Caro has a keen eye for extracting the right emotions out of scenes and while nothing in Whale Rider is visually or that thematically daring, it never has to be. The film rides so much on its characters and their performances that it takes a fairly cold-hearted person not to be affected by the film. That Caro takes material fairly unfamiliar to most outside of Maori culture or New Zealand and that relates it to a young girl's struggle growing up is a testament to how universal some film themes are and when they're done well, how enjoyable they are to watch.

Hannah Takes the Stairs/Nights and Weekends

2009-10-21T18:07:00.007-04:00

Hannah Takes the Stairs (Joe Swanberg, 2007) [3]/Nights and Weekends (Joe Swanberg, 2008) [5]

Whether you want to call it mumblecore or not, there's a lot of elements that bug me about these films. I also happen to see some useful aspects of them, nor do I think they are a boil on the ass of cinema, as some cineastes have essentially said. I recommended the only Swanberg feature I had seen up to this point, Kissing On the Mouth, and after seeing these two film back to back, I may have to take that back. First, there are numerous reasons in regards to aesthetics that I find these films almost unbearable. Secondly, the films end up being so wound up in their own characters' inner workings, that every element surrounding them is non-existent in representation to the film. Both these films play so much as personal stories, not for the audience but more for Swanberg and the crew surrounding them, that can't but come off as self-indulgent. But as someone who has a bit of a soft spot for pretension and as of the relatively same age as the filmmakers, I can see in moments of what mumblecore can accomplish.

Hannah Takes the Stairs simply isn't that good. Shot on DV, which I absolutely hate, the film has no aesthetic sense. Swanberg's style has been focused much on his complete lack of style, as the camera jolts and wanders with no real focus other to be a fly on the wall. The problem for me is that it comes off as so completely amateurish but also with idea that the film is intentionally trying to be that way. I'll take a hermetically closed-off stylist like Wes Anderson or Kubrick to this any day of the week. The story isn't much better, as it focuses on Hannah (Greta Gerwig) and he mutters and stammers her way through a love triangles with two of her co-workers, played by Andrew Bujalski and Kent Osborne. Hannah is so wrapped up in Hannah that what she does at work, or what her relationship is with Matt or Paul, that it manages to offer no insight into her while allowing her to babble about anything is fairly amazing. Couple that with the lack of a visual eye and you get a meandering, banal film.

Nights and Weekends is a little more tolerable because Swanberg has found at least a little cinematic style here. The DV looks a little better and the inclusion of shadows and light make it more striking when the moments arises, the last scene of the film coming to mind. Focusing on the long distance relationship of James (Swanberg) and Mattie (Gerwig) as they try to make it work, drift apart and come together one last time, Nights and Weekends suffers from many of the same problems as the film above. The characters are so wrapped up in their own neurotic dialogue that we get no picture of anything deeper in their personalities. On one level, it can be considered extremely pretentious but there's something in me that finds it appealing in theory. It's just that the execution never lives up to how I picture it to be. There's something about Nights and Weekends that I find more appealing than Hannah, mostly because it's focus is on one relationship. And when Swanberg and Gerwig get some ideas right, like the awkward sexuality of James and Mattie's relationship, I think mumblecore might have something important to say...if it could get it's head out its ass for a full ninety minutes.

Music Decade List #24: Howlin' Rain - S/T (2006)

2009-10-19T17:53:00.004-04:00

In my best of, '06 edition, I described Howlin' Rain as a more menacing Grateful Dead. Full of psychedelic intensity one minute, and churning country rock the next, there's a lot of early Dead weaving itself through this album. Howlin' Rain was a side project for Comets on Fire front man Ethan Miller, but Howlin' Rain is preferable to me than anything in the Comets catalogue, mostly because Miller reigns in the fury of the Comets sound and focuses her more on a more laid-back vibe. There's certainly plenty of weirdness here however, as the breakdown in the middle of 'Calling Lightning with a Scythe' can attest to. It's that dual nature of the album, that it has some great guitar and vocal pyrotechnics by Miller but never looses the notion that there are some well-crafted songs here. 'Roll on the Rusted Days' has a Stonsey shuffle, sax outro and all. 'The Hanging Heart' and 'The Firing of the Midnight Rain' get closest to Live/Dead era Dead with their odd flourishes. It's 'Calling Lightning with a Scythe' that sums up almost everything about the album: good melody, psychedelic guitars, banjos, and Miller's vocal howl. It's a song definitely encompassing a lot of Classic Rock tropes and still coming out as something exciting and new sounding. Howlin' Rain clearly shows its Classic Rock influence throughout, and why should that be a bad thing? In an age where music blogs trying to find the next innovative new band, it's sure re-assuring to hear some freewheeling rock & roll back.

Capitalism: A Love Story

2009-10-16T18:43:00.004-04:00

Capitalism: A Love Story (Michael Moore, 2009) [6]

While I agree with a lot of what Moore is saying, he never gets all these ideas together to make a fine-tuned film. The film is too scattershot, with no real firm philosophy other than showing the ills of capitalism. It jumps to so many circumstances and ideas, from stories of specific people to Wall Street, that it suffers from a lack of focus of just what Moore is trying to say. On one level, the film is saying that true democracy is the cure for capitalism but isn't that the same system that has allowed capitalism to corrupt it? Moore calls for action but other than a call to action, he never gets specific. The most interesting parts of Moore's work, his attention-grabbing antics, fall flat for the most. Obviously, Moore wants to explain a corrupt system but he's ended up with a film preaching to the choir.

Also, there is the whole 'Michael Moore is a hypocrite' argument that comes out of this. Because Moore is making a film about how bad capitalism is while it has made him a millionaire, that on the surface makes him seem like a hypocrite. I will defend him to the extent that he's just working in the system that's been established. I do happen to think there is a big difference between someone who has become wealthy as an entertainer than as someone operating a corporation or lawyer or whatnot. Moore has become wealthy because people have chosen to see his films or read his books. He's not exploiting workers, or taking their jobs away, or profiting off of other's peoples' misery, tragedies, etc. So really Moore's film is attacking a form of corporate capitalism that has made him wealthy, almost in despite of itself. At least give Moore some credit for using his high-profile position to address some economic issues that more people should be paying attention to.

Introduction to the Music Decade List and #25: Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days

2009-10-11T17:59:00.011-04:00

Without the Internet, there is a almost certain probability that this list would have never materialized, or been much different than the actual product. 2000 was the heyday of Napster and led to the file-sharing revolution of the last decade. The Internet allowed someone like myself access and knowledge to artists that I would have never known of living in a place like Binghamton. There are not too many people in this town who know much about music and if there are some that do, I don't know them. It's really only because of what Napster brought as well as blogs like Stereogum and An Aquarium Drunkard that I've been able to get into so many different artists. At the start of this decade, my tastes ran almost exclusively towards classic rock and Jamband acts. My interest in both has severely diminished over the past decade and I consider myself a much more knowledgeable listener. But that doesn't mean that I'm any more of an authority over someone who has more of a interest in hip-hop or metal, two genres I have never had any interest in. So, this list isn't meant to be some hipness barometer like Pitchfork would put together, nor is it meant to be any definitive documentation of the decade. These are just the 25 records that are my favorite of the last ten years. Ten years from now, this list could completely be different; right now, it's just what I think right now.

#25) Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days (2004)

The release of Our Endless Numbered Days happened around the same time Sam Beam went from a little-known but respected artist to the top of the indie mountain all because of a song that isn't even on this album. Zach Braff's Garden State may have come out after this album but most people, like myself, only happened to pay more attention to Iron & Wine because of "Such Great Heights." I may have had The Creek Drank the Cradle before this album but I can't remember exactly. What puts Our Endless Numbered Days ahead of that album for me is that is Beam's first professional and cleaner yet just as intimate sounding album. While some may find the lo-fi, home recordings of his debut, the cleaner, fuller sound of Our Endless Numbered Days does so much more to enhance the material. The addition of additional instruments and vocal tracking makes Beam's songs much more full and appealing while never losing the intensity and introspective nature of his debut. The collection of songs on the album from top to bottom is the strongest in Beam's catalog. Most of the songs still have a plaintive quality to them but with the addition of bluesy shuffle on songs like "Free Until They Cut Me Down" and "Teeth in the Grass." But it's still the intimate nature of the more somber songs that are the album's strongest moments, whether it's the simple guitar and vocals of "Sunset Soon Forgotten" or the bit more elaborate but spectacular "Sodom, South Georgia." Our Endless Numbered Days has been the Iron & Wine album that has captured my attention the most over the past decade While Beam has expanded his sound to include ambient and African-influenced sounds, it's still the mostly straightforward folk music of this album that appeals to me the most.

Last Listening Post of 2009

2009-10-11T13:41:00.004-04:00

This will be the last listening post before I post my favorite albums of 2009. This aside from the top 25 list of the last decade which I swear I will start soon.

The Avett Brothers - I and Love and You
Built to Spill - There Is No Enemy
Alberta Cross - Broken Side of Time
The Black Crowes - Before the Frost....Until the Freeze
The Cave Singers - Welcome Joy

The lack of reviews and something new

2009-10-05T18:54:00.006-04:00

With myself really bearing down to apply to graduate school, expect about as few new reviews as there have been lately. Since I was just recently thinking about this being the end of the decade, a new idea struck. I will be adding a new feature that will countdown my favorite films and albums of the decade. Since music is such a subjective enterprise and calling some list the best makes it sound like you have some authoritative position on the subject, albums will be categorized as favorites. Since I think that I have a fairly good understanding and education in film, the film category will be the 25 best films of the decade. Each category will have 25 entries and they will be posted as individual posts, whenever I get around to it, hopefully finishing by the end of the year. Here are the criteria for each:

Music
-I've posted a best of list the last three years but the order of those lists will have no bearing on this list
-The number one factor in the list is continued listenability, basically if the album still gets a good number of plays years later
-Albums of original material only; no re-releases or live releases

Film
-Films are included based on their commercial U.S. release date. If that film had no release date, I will take IMDB or Netflix at their word.
-Experimental works won't be included. I just haven't seen enough over the past three years to even make a separate list.

Jeanne Dielman

2009-09-29T18:50:00.005-04:00

Jeanne Deilman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975) [10]

Long known for being extremely hard to see and extremely long, Jeanne Dielman is nothing short of a minimalist masterpiece. Derided by some as being 'watch Jeanne Dielman cook", it's the film's rigid structure that makes it work perfectly. That the film documents the often monotonous daily routine of the title character is a central theme of the feminist ideas that Akerman is addressing throughout the film. Jeanne (Delphine Seyrig) is a widowed mother living in Brussels, caring for her son and doing her daily chores while also serving men as a prostitute out of her apartment. As I said before, much of the film is static observation as Jeanne goes through her daily chores, from shopping to making dinner, to addressing her Johns, all in a highly structured manner. Akerman is addressing the stereotypical role of women in society, especially the idea that women should stay home and be caretakers. The genius of Seyrig's performance as Jeanne is that she goes through all these actions with a vaguely emotionless, detached presence. She becomes a prostitute for extra money but also for some excitement, which is another stereotype that Akerman brings up. That none of what Jeanne does is fulfilling is obvious but she keeps up her routine because she has nothing else to fill up her day. By the end of the film, fissures have started to show and there's a fantastic sequence of Jeanne quietly sitting alone in her apartment, her daily routine completely broken down and her left to contemplate. The only real scene of action takes place at the end, a desperate woman in need to get out of a desperate situation. What Jeanne Dielman and Akerman do so well is to use the structure of the film to critique women's' roles in society by showing and never really telling. It's obvious some will never get passed the "boring" nature of this. For someone like myself, who has waited years to see this, it was well worth it.

Some more quick reviews

2009-09-17T09:46:00.003-04:00

Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar-Wai, 1994/2008) [6]
A visually stunning film, but I never found it as engrossing as something like In the Mood for Love. The plot is a bit too obtuse and the subject matter never quite intrigued me. It does look nice though.

Made in U.S.A. (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966) [6]
Influenced by American film noir and pop culture, the film is really a strange hybrid of its influence. Anna Karina plays a woman investigating her boyfriend's murder but gets entangled in a mess of more murders and some other things, I think. Existing somewhere between Pierrot le Fou and Weekend it has neither the frantic scroll of the former or the revolutionary deconstructionism of the latter.

I Love You, Man (John Hamburg, 2009) [3]
A step below Apatow-like picture about a guy with no guy friends (Paul Rudd) out to find by the time he gets married. In what is essentially the same template as a romantic comedy, he finds an off-kilter man-child (Jason Segel) who almost sabotages the whole proceedings. Of course, all ends up well. The ideas and characters here are nothing that haven't been seen in any number of recent comedies. It's only Rudd's character at times that pulls the film from a complete piece of nonsense.

The Ice Storm (Ange Lee, 1997) [6]
A well-crafted film that suffers a little bit too much from important meaning syndrome. Focusing on a disintegrating family in Connecticut over Thanksgiving weekend, Lee is adept at conveying the whirlwind of emotions going on, especially the adolescent sexuality that is the strength of Rick Moody's novel. At the end, the film becomes too much of a 'serious indie' that it becomes stuffed with emotional moments that drag the film down a bit.

Adventureland

2009-09-08T10:17:00.004-04:00

Adventureland (Greg Mottola, 2009) [7]

Adventureland is a sweet, thoughtful film about early twenty somethings dealing with that strange middle ground between being thrust into the real world and still being able to hang out all summer and smoke pot. It's about characters who are somewhat misfits, who can talk about 80s college rock and Russian literature while working in a horrible amusement park job. It's about living in the mid 80s and yet it rarely uses its nostalgia for cheap laughs or exploitation. In short, it's just about everything that most Hollywood films of its kind are not: smart, thoughtful, and tethered to some semblance of reality.

James (played with the right mix of intellectual awkwardness by Jesse Eisenburg) is a recent college graduate getting ready to head to grad school. His family's financial situation forces him to take a thankless job working at a second-rate amusement park, manning the less than honorable games booths. It's in this lost summer that he falls for Em (Kristen Stewart), another games employee who is involved in a complicate relationship with her family as well as a clandestine affair with the park's married maintenance man (Ryan Reynolds). Both Eisenburg and Stewart are superb in understated roles; they're not flashy performances, but they're rooted in a truthfulness for characters their age. Things get moving, they get complicated, they fall apart but none of it feels forced or in authentic. Mottola, who never makes the characters over dramatic archetypes, cares enough about them to make them actual humans, which many movies about people this age completely ignore.

Every performance in Adventureland makes sense, from the purely comedic supporting roles of Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig to the more nuanced and fleshed out performances of Reynolds and Martin Starr as James's nebbishy, Russian literature loving co-worker. Reynolds' character especially, though not always prominent, is an interesting figure. As a musician who's supposedly played with Lou Reed, he's an epitome of cool to the kids working at the park. As the film progresses, his actions show him to be someone completely else to the world outside Adventureland, which James begins to recognize. It's the more colorful characters surrounding the two main ones that add to the film while never taking away from the central relationship story. These characters aren't cheap 80s stereotypes and they're not there for cheap laughs. There are definite 80s "guys" and there are characters used for laughs but they're all treated with some sense of thoughtfulness for their use. It's a credit to Mottola's smart writing that everything feels integral to the story at large.

The only issue I have with the film is its use of kindred spirit characters. James occupies a world that's on the surface appears very anti-intellectual and soul-deadening but ends up finding people like himself in Em and Joel. Granted, Pittsburgh, where the film is set is a bit bigger than where I live, but its seems a little too convenient that characters like this exist for James to connect to. I happen to work in a soul-deadening job in a depressing city and I have never met anyone in my job who could tell me who Dostoevsky or the Velvet Underground where. While I recognize and sympathize with these characters, I do feel a sense of jealousy for James in that you would be able to find someone like Em at a place like Adventureland. But after all, it's still only a film.

The Essential Collection - Woodstock

2009-08-27T18:25:00.008-04:00

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Michael Wadleigh, 1970) [10]

There is no doubt in my mind that without Woodstock the film, Woodstock the event would not have nearly the cultural cache it has enjoyed over the last forty years. Really, without the film, Woodstock would have probably been an afterthought of the hippie culture, a music festival where a lot of kids showed up, it rained, and almost everything else went wrong, from the throngs of people closing down roads, to not enough food, to bands going on at crazy times. It's a testament to Wadleigh's film that Woodstock and Woodstock are documents of a defining time in a culture that was essential to understanding America in the latter half of the 20th century. It's come to signify something a lot more than just a concert, just what is up for discussion, but there's no doubt that it's the power of cinema that made it so.

Woodstock is the greatest concert documentary ever made but for reasons other than its performances. Wadleigh clearly understood that something greater than a music festival was happening that weekend and he made sure to capture just as much of the surroundings and the people as the performers. There are some good to great performances in the film, Sly & the Family Stone, Santana, Ten Years After, and Joe Cocker among others. But there were nearly as many flat performances as good ones, due to bands often going on closer to daylight than midnight (even though there's a endearing interest in me for Jefferson Airplane's set at daybreak). The performance sequences are helped by the split screen format that Wadleigh adapted for much of the film. It works by allowing the film to cram as many different angles and as much action in the screen space as possible but it also helps intensify the performances. The edits and crowd shots during the Santana performance are practically flawless. It was a style that became imitated and adapted for many music documentaries that followed.

It can be argued that what Woodstock captured other than the music became the more important aspect of the film. What the film did that the press coverage really didn't do was cast a non-cynical eye on what exactly occurred. Clearly the film looks upon the young people with a sympathetic eye, and wants to capture just how peaceful and together the crowd was. What the film help emphasize and contribute to history was that Woodstock was something other than just a festival. Over the years the film has cemented the legacy of Woodstock and all its stands for in the cultural lexicon: how it was the high water mark for the counterculture and how that culture showed it can operate in less than stellar circumstances and operate the way they wanted. I feel some of this is just self-righteous Boomer nostalgia but there's no denying that a lot of shit went less perfect that weekend and how now, everybody that was there looks back with rose-colored glasses. That is more a testament to what the film achieved than what the event achieved because it cemented what Woodstock meant to the culture at large rather than just those who were there.

My favorite moment in the film is when a boy and a girl who hitchhiked to the festival are being interviewed. They're not even at the festival yet so the actual Woodstock experience means nothing here. What the interviewer asks are a series of broader questions that end with essentially, why did you come here? The guy answers that he, like many others, were looking for something. For what, he's not exactly sure but what he does know is that by coming here, maybe it would bring the answer, as was the case for many others. A scene like that shows the power that the music of that time had on the culture. That Woodstock and its acts was a representation of the mainstream youth culture of the late 60s is almost astounding to someone of my generation. I've been to Bonnaroo many times, which is the largest festival in this country but still essentially a niche festival. I guarantee two-thirds of the acts on a Bonnaroo bill would be unheard of by 8 out 10 people, even in my own age-group (18-34). There is no mainstream or unifying youth culture anymore. The Internet, while great in getting musical acts exposed, has fractured the music industry so much that something along the lines of Woodstock could never happen again. The meat head rape extravaganza of Woodstock '99 proved that. What may be Woodstock's greatest testament is that its belongs to an entire generation and not just an enlightened few.

Gigantic

2009-08-21T19:24:00.005-04:00

Gigantic (Matt Aselton, 2009) [7]

I've made my preferences known on these so-called quirky indie comedies. I don't particularly care for them. So why do I like this one? I really don't have a great answer other than there are a handful of moments in this film I really did like. I didn't find it nearly as cloying cute and quirky as something like (500) Days of Summer. By no means is this a great film in terms of how its crafted and how its story is executed. It feels to me that Aselton has an emotional timbre in his writing and his directing that connect with me. All the pieces of Gigantic don't quite meld together perfectly but there's just something on a personal movie going experience that I identify with in the characters and Aselton as writer/director.

As for the story, Paul Dano plays Brian, a morose mattress salesman trying to adopt a child from China. One day the daughter of a man who bought a mattress from him comes in (Zooey Deschanel). She falls asleep in the store and that leads to a relationship and a series of events you could label quirky if you wish. The story goes back and forth from being not being entirely believable to being too constructed to create something between the characters. That Dano and Deschanel are so likable and effective in their characterizations that keep the flaws in the story from being too obvious. Deschanel once again plays the same type of character she always seems to play but then again, she's the reason why I'm watching these films. She plays Harriet not as just a perpetually quirky girl but someone with some real conflicts. There is a underlying melancholy and directionless in Harriet as there is in Brian and these two characters together seem to be the answer for each other. Deschanel also sells the character by bringing sly elements of sexiness to the role, such as casually asking Brian if he would like to have sex with her in a doctor's waiting room or the way she takes her earrings off and lets them clang to a pool deck (a really great moment by the way). As for Brian, perhaps the reason I can identify is that the character is a little too close to myself, other than the wanting to adopt a kid part. Dano is an actor I've never had any particular interest in but he has the perfect look and temperament for the role. Brian is a lonely guy with a dead-end career looking for some sort of connection. I guess if you happen to see something in a character like that, the film will appeal to you.

The film's best moments are between these two. The quirk factor comes in from supporting perform aces by John Goodman and Ed Asner among others. And then there's the Zach Galifinakis character, as a homeless man threatening and attacking Brian, taking everything out into left field for a couple of sequences. What to make of it? I was completely perplexed by it at first but after reading some other reviews, it's become pretty clear (I don't want to give any spoilers so I won't reveal it here). The series of encounters never really explain itself in the film and that could be a major reason why it could be seen as the film biggest flaw. The average filmgoer has been expected to have everything that they see on the screen explained in full for them. It is alright to have some ambiguity and let the audience figure it out. Aselton isn't required to tell you everything and there's something to be said in my book for the way he handles the story, leaving a lot of ends open. It creates the feeling that a lot of Gigantic was just a brief glimpse of two characters at a certain point.

I've made this point before that saying that there are certain elements that can override flaws in a film. One I've never really brought up is how an emotional reaction to a film can make something that may not be seen as very good to others important to you. There's only been a handful of films that have an emotional timbre that really makes an impression to me, Lost & Delirious and Night & the City being the two best examples. Gigantic is just going to be a film that I will get a lot more than other critics or viewers.

Monthly Listening Post - August 2009

2009-08-20T09:31:00.008-04:00

I should really stop calling this the monthly listening post since I can't quite seem to keep it updated on a monthly basis. Since it has been so long, this month's list will be the five latest albums I've picked up.

Bowerbirds - Upper Air
Elvis Costello - Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane
Diane Birch - Bible Belt
Roadside Graves - My Son's Home (available only as mp3 download)
Jefferson Airplane - The Woodstock Experience (2 disc set that contains Volunteers, as well as their entire Woodstock set.)

Lengthy, rambling reviews coming up for Gigantic as well as Woodstock, a week or so after I intended to post it.

(500) Days of Summer

2009-08-16T18:50:00.004-04:00

(500) Days of Summer (Marc Webb, 2009) [6]

It's a testament to how shitty the romantic comedy genre is that a film that does anything out of convention gets big accolades. (500) Days of Summer certainly isn't a standard rom-com but it still has a lot of elements of that genre running through. Quirky characters, a non-linear structure, or a dance sequence to Hall & Oates isn't going to make it otherwise. One of the problems I have when trying to wrap up my thoughts on a film like this is how much I dislike film like these. Not dislike from being a romantic comedy but being another "off-beat" Fox Searchlight film that are supposedly indies but are just mainstream fare with something different. With the exception of the second half of Juno, I find these films to be nothing exciting, challenging, or interesting.

The one saving grace of (500) Days of Summer are the performances of its two leads: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Their characters and the situations around them are rooted in much of the cliches that make up the romantic comedy genre, but each give off enough likability that they let it pass. Gordon-Levitt especially, as the mopey dope who believes in true love, knows when to be subtle and reign in moments that easily could have been too much. Deschanel's performance is good mostly because she's been playing a variation of the same character in almost every other film she's in. And there are plenty of moments between the two that are cringe-worthy for someone like myself who doesn't like a lot of this stuff. Yet, through Webb's consistent handling of the characters and the material, there's just enough serious understanding and examination of relationships and what love means that make me not dislike it. Unlike most films of its sort, it tries to address the audience in an intelligent way about its story and characters. And for that, it deserves some credit.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

2009-08-12T11:45:00.005-04:00

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2008) [5]

I don't feel this is nearly as bad as some of the reviews out there but I may be a bit biased because I am such a fan of Chabon's writing. The main problem here is that the film has sucked almost all the lyrical flow of the novel out and what's left is a fairly standard coming of age film. It's a testament to Chabon that he took such a hackneyed story and made something truly interesting out of it. Thurber is handcuffed by his medium and his own over-earnest portrayal of the material. Art, played blandly by Jon Forster, is a character that instead of seeing the film through his experiences, mostly is acted upon by everyone around him. It ends up creating a character that practically sucks everything interesting and enjoyable out of the film. Peter Sarsgaard's performance helps keeps much of it afloat as much as a supporting character can. It's only at the end, with some scenes between Art and Jane (Sienna Miller doing nothing much up to this point) that finally get some of Chabon's themes effectively done.

I admittedly had dreadful expectations for this seeing that The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is one of my favorite novels and Thurber's only previous film was Dodgeball. He came into the film knowing the material and really tried to make a great film from a great book. That the film is so wrapped up in its a sense of overwrought obedience to the novel, it takes away much of the power of the written word. It creates a feeling that this film was the best anyone could have done with the material.

Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film 1947-1986

2009-08-09T19:01:00.004-04:00

Treasures IV: American Avant Garde Film 1947-1986) (Various Filmmakers)

All be told, this was a pretty underwhelming collection. Being a retrospective, there's going to be a wide range of filmmakers and styles present here, from the more abstract expressionist New York experimental film to less serious West Coast film to things that can't be categorized. There's a lot of big names here: Brakhage, Jacobs, Warhol, Baillie, Cornell, Land, Frampton, and Shartis. The problem with the collection as a whole may be that by trying to be an all-encompassins showcase, there's never any thematic continuity to the work. It's a little difficult to move from the abstract animations of Robert Breer to something along the lines of Warhol or Land. I believe to really understand experimental film, you've got to see more than one film of a filmmaker or have an in-depth discussion of that work. Watching these by yourself in your home leaves no where to turn to really figure out what's behind these works. Besides that, on a personal level, I find a lot of what's on these discs not all to great. The standout films on this collection were (nostalgia) by Hollis Frampton (which I've seen many times before), I, An Actress by George Kuchar, and Go! Go! Go! by Marie Menken. The Brakhage and Jacobs are films I'd hadn't seen but found them not quite my favorite of their works. Other filmmakers such as Owen Land, Bruce Baillie, Standish Lawder also have some interesting selections here but I would like to see more of their work to get a little better understanding. Even with all its flaws, the collection has to be commended for at least getting experimental work out on DVD and hopefully to more people.

Zabriskie Point

2009-08-08T18:34:00.005-04:00

Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970) [6]

In my opinion, not quite top notch Antonioni and certainly not an accurate portrayal of the counterculture. It's hard to try to portray what Zabriskie Point actually is other than a curiosity. The film's strongest scenes are its critique of American consumer capitalism. These are exceptional scenes on a more formal level. If I could base my opinion on just those elements alone, it would be a near exceptional film. It's when Antonioni attempts to tie in the counterculture movement, the film becomes ineffective. The two main characters are certainly Antonioni characters, yet they are out of place in the movement they're supposed to embody. It all ends up creating a final film that has its moments but has no real connection to the audience it was meant to find. Time has rendered some of the initial negativity to the film mute. The point could be made now that the film was never meant the type of counterculture youth film like Easy Rider. It's valid in regards to Antonioni and his work but there's no denying that it's examining a group of people that he really doesn't know them the way he might think. It still feels too out of touch with the actual reality of the times.

Backlog Update

2009-08-06T09:35:00.000-04:00

There will be some new reviews coming shortly.

A collection of one sentence reviews

2009-06-20T18:23:00.003-04:00

I've got a little backlog of films going on. Instead of laboring through reviews of each, I've decided to give just a few thoughts on each of them.

Momma's Man (Azazel Jacobs, 2008) [7]
A man at mid-life crisis decides to skirt all responsibilities and move back home. It's certainly more interesting when your parents are avant-garde luminaries like Ken Jacobs. Still, the younger Jacobs has some nice moments when dealing with how being a child never really leaves us at all.

Wilco: Ashes of American Flags (Brendan Canty, 2008) [6]
The live performances show a unit operating at peak potential. Beyond being a serviceable concert film, there's little intrigue or anything of interest.

Hollywoodland (Allen Coulter, 2006) [5]
A good noir story about the possibilities of the death of George Reeves gets bogged down with a similar story involving a down on his luck P.I. (Adrien Brody). The most interesting elements of the film revolve not so much in the characters' stories but in the subtle examinations of how classic Hollywood worked.

Fillmore: The Last Days (I can't remember, 1972) [6]
A clear knock-off in style from Woodstock, the performances by the likes of the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and a band called Lamb are good. The negative is that it's basically a puff piece for Bill Graham and his ego. Graham is a great guy in terms of building a musical empire but there's always been something about the guy that I've never really liked.

On Not Going to Bonnaroo and the Redemptive Qualities of the Hold Steady

2009-06-15T18:13:00.003-04:00

This past weekend I was supposed to be at Bonnaroo. I had a ticket, had a flight booked and had all my stuff ready to go. Then I looked at the weather for the weekend and had a massive anxiety attack. The threat of being stuck in just a tent with the threat of severe thunderstorms did me in. So, in a nutshell, instead of enjoying the relatively nice weekend in Tennessee, I threw away a couple of hundred dollars over basically nothing.

The whole weekend wasn't lost however, as the Hold Steady came to Ithaca last night. One of the only regrets I had about going to Bonnaroo was that I was going to miss this show. I'm kind of glad things worked out the way they did because seeing the Hold Steady in a small, intimate venue is one of the great concert experiences I've ever had. This is a band that is meant to be seen in a cramped, sweaty space with as many people as possible crammed into the place. Simply put, it was a great show. Both times I have seem them, there's no lack of enthusiasm in what The Hold Steady does and it clearly rubs off on the audience. It was rowdy, there was a lot of beer, a lot of fist pumping, a lot of singing along: all what a great rock & roll show should do. While the Hold Steady may not be the most popular band out there, I'm hard pressed to find a band that has such a intense, die hard following among the people that really care about them. They're a band with no real middle ground, either you really love them or you don't care for them. And from I saw in Ithaca, just about everybody there was there because they really love the music and not just there because a somewhat well-known band was in town.

There are certain groups or bands that make you believe that rock & roll means something more than just simple entertainment. For me, The Hold Steady is band that is all in and believe in what they do, that maybe rock & roll can save your soul. I want to thank them for making my weekend.