Yes More Drama

Girl/Boy Songs circa 2010

2011-03-29T18:13:00.002-04:00

Florence and the Machine - "You Got the Love (The XX Remix)"

Alphabeat - "Hole In My Heart"

Me to the rescue

2011-03-15T23:05:00.002-04:00

Deerhoof vs. Evil is really quite good.

Graphic Film Analysis #1: The Runaways

2011-03-15T00:09:00.001-04:00

You can see how this might be a problem.

No Direction Home

2011-03-02T23:13:00.005-05:00

From Nick Davis re: the Tom Hooper Best Director win:

I only got as far back as 25 years in asking myself, has any director ever copped this prize despite exhibiting less of a native knack for "getting" the cinema as an art form? I think Costner's best sequences trounce Hooper's, and Howard's populism and Minghella's swoony pictorialism connect to key valences of the medium. Mel Gibson's sadism at least feels alive on the screen if rabid and overdone. Sam Mendes, whose post-American Beauty struggles on screen have been sad to witness, at least had a lot of ideas in his Oscar-winning vehicle. Risks were taken. Who could say that of Hooper's work on The King's Speech? He's good with actors. So was Scott Cooper last year. He makes you feel. So did everyone whose movie got a Picture nomination, much less a Documentary or an Animated Feature nomination. So does the script by itself, and so does the historical incident that inspired the script. I simply don't get this win, and with divisive but fervently championed artists like Fincher, Aronofsky, Russell, and the Coens in the losing circle, it'll be even harder to validate...

Pretty much on point, I think. And there were things in this movie that felt maybe slightly unexpected - a few shots that follow a walking Firth, the low-angle outdoor stuff, the off center close-ups - but with at least the last two of those there really seems no good reason for them to be there. Worst award of the night for me.

Fluttering

2011-02-28T21:30:00.002-05:00

Chicago House icons Cajmere (aka Curtis Jones aka Green Velvet) and Gene Farris have put out another two track EP (cop here) of the type of jackin' yet fluttery house that I hope will carry me into the spring. The video they've uploaded for a preview of the track is basically, well, let's just say my parents were ballroom dancers.

FRANCO AND HATHAWAY IN...BIUTIFUL

2011-02-24T20:14:00.008-05:00

So, I could write a 10,000 word Oscar preview but my prose is not feeling very sharp. So how about a simple series of lists with the people/movie I think are gonna win in bold and, much more importantly, listed in my order of preference.

BEST PICTURE:

- Toy Story 3 (Genuinely shocking)
- The Social Network (Makes an honest effort to explore the relationship between the public and the personal)
- Black Swan (Wonderful trash horror about the relationship between art and personal sacrifice)
- Winter's Bone (Ozark noir, another sub-genre I never knew I wanted until I got it)
- The Kids Are All Right (It's really funny!)
- The Fighter (D.O.R. doesn't explode the Boston Movie or Boxing Picture, instead lovingly makes great ones)
- True Grit (fun, gorgeous, and well-acted, if not particularly revelatory)
- 127 Hours (50/50 between the great desert/rock scenes and the annoying Boyled flashbacks)
- Inception (Plotted very neatly, but oh how I wish so much of the plot didn't hinge on the Leo/Cotillard love stuff)
- The King's Speech (not all bad, but it looks terrible and doesn't quite attempt to say anything about anything)

BEST ACTOR:

- Jesse Eisenberg (brilliant, brilliant, brilliant)
- James Franco (absolutely nails the big interview scene)
- Colin Firth (better than the material required)
- Jeff Bridges (good, you know)

*Haven't seen the Javier Bardem one, realized I haven't really altogether liked an Iñárittu movie and it probably wouldn't worth it for me

BEST ACTRESS:

- Natalie Portman (uses her Portman-ness to great effect)
- Annette Bening (the Joni Mitchell scene is is jaw-dropping)
- Jennifer Lawrence (works hard throughout the movie for the big emotional payoff at the end)
- Michelle Williams (maybe the structure makes it easier to see what she's doing, but she does it real well)
- Nicole Kidman (the Kidman Forehead isn't altogether unrealistic for the character, actually)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
- Christian Bale (not subtle, obvi, but the physicality is awesome)
- Jeremy Renner (like a little Boston pitbull James Cagney, so entertaining)
- John Hawkes (emotionally mysterious and excellent, like most of the supporting performances in Winter's Bone)
- Mark Ruffalo (subtle Cali bro skills)
- Geoffrey Rush (charming)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
- Amy Adams (plays the Supportive Girlfriend type, but makes sure you know there's more going on than just Standing By Her Man)
- Jacki Weaver (the escalation of menace throughout the movie is gr8)
- Hailee Steinfeld (great shit-talking, though again, this is in every appreciable way a Lead Performance)
- Melissa Leo (fun, but I think less convincing in her mannerism than her opposite number Bale)
- Helena Bonham Carter (a decent performance in a nothing role)

BEST DIRECTOR:
- David Fincher (not an achievement on the level of Zodiac, but shapes the Sorkin script into a super fast yet super clear stunner)
- Darren Aronofsky (great delirium)
- David O. Russell (manages the tone brilliantly, throwing in some screwball along with the inspirational and dramatic)
- Joel and Ethan Coen (pretty landscapes and the usual Coen skill for creating fun supporting characters)
- Tom Hooper (movie is carried by the acting, can't tell that Hooper did anything positive, to be honest)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
- Toy Story 3 (the dialogue is great, the story is perfect)
- The Social Network (I was very worried when I heard Sorkin was writing this, but he did a great job, though I suspect the editing, acting, and direction aren't getting enough credit for how well they make his writing work)
- Winter's Bone (maintains both an air of mystery and emotional insight)
- True Grit (the broad comedy stuff might be my favorite, actually)
- 127 Hours (a lot of the Franco talking to himself stuff works, a lot of the psychoanalysis really doesn't)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
- The Kids Are All Right (to say that it's just a family dramedy and not a lesbian family dramedy undersells what it accomplishes)
- Another Year (insightful about aging, and much more insightful about friendship and other complicated interpersonal relationships)
- The Fighter (solid take on the various genres, but I think it's the direction and acting that's really special)
- Inception (the exposition is pretty good under the circumstances, but the character interactions don't interest me all that much)
- The King's Speech (solid prestige movie dialogue, as corny as expected, but solid)

DOCUMENTARY
- Inside Job (Very neatly laid out, super-intense, and even manages to justify its blood thirst)
- Restrepo (the editing is done really well; the quality of and balance between the art and journalism is dope)
- Gasland (makes a very compelling argument against fracking, narrator really sounds like Johnny Depp)
- Exit Through the Gift Shop (quite entertaining, however, there lingers a suspicion that's it's not actually saying anything about anything)

*Didn't get to see Wasteland

OTHER THINGS I HAVE OPINIONS ABOUT:

- Alexandre Desplat will probably win for his score for The King's Speech. He totally deserves it...for his score for The Ghost Writer.
- Alice in Wonderland is not the worst movie ever made (Helena Bonham-Carter is probably actually better in it than she is in The King's Speech), but it might just be one of the ugliest. Any technical awards for it will be sad.
- I don't mind the Art Direction in The King's Speech at all, but the cinematography, with its low angle street shots and slightly off center close-ups, is horrendous. I really hope Roger Deakins finally gets his Cinematography Oscar instead of dude from King's Speech.
- Will be cheering against Let's Pollute for Best Animated Short. It's not nearly as bad as last year's Logorama, whose Political niche it fills, but it does seem to me rather half-baked. All of the other nominees are better than it, including the big-budget, 30 minute long British-Actor-Filled adaptation of kids' book The Gruffalo, Pixar's Day & Night, and especially Madagascar, carnet de voyage, which you should totally watch.

God I hope the King's Speech doesn't win. But it will. Let's drink!

Beast mode

2011-02-15T18:54:00.003-05:00

>
Here's the title track from the Meltdown EP Ill Blu dropped today and it's an absolute heater. You can't really mess with these guys right now as far as rhythmic intensity, but "Meltdown" isn't completely free of subtlety either, like that twinkle that comes in around 1:55 and reappears once later on and can't help but remind me (is it just me?) of Mary J and Meth's "You're All I Need". I was kinda eh on their Hyperdub single last year, but this one places Ill Blu right back at the forefront of what I'm checking for these days.

Ah-ah-ah-ah-I

2011-02-14T21:28:00.002-05:00

I purposefully didn't embed the video, because its boilerplate brattiness honestly makes these lyrics sound even more boring than they already are. That said, I've been jamming this song a whole lot for the last month because the chorus kills me, mainly through those non-verbal runs (I've also been playing the ultra-classic "I'm With You" a lot since the Rihanna song that samples it came out). I've never been too invested in Avril as a persona, but when she gets hold of a great hook she can definitely sing it. Song of the month for January 2011?

Snap reactions after listening to the Britney single 5 times

2011-01-10T18:16:00.004-05:00

- Definitely hits harder than I expected it to.

- Full of sounds that I don't really like

- The chorus is full on 90s Euro-trance-pop-whatever. As far as contemporary stuff, it's much closer to mining the same territory as Cascada than Gaga, Katy, or Ke$ha.

- The breakdown will code as dubstep because of the wobble (and because dubstep is becoming just popular enough with certain folks that something will be able to "code as dubstep" in 2011), but rhythmically it's not at all extreme for, like, a slightly R&B leaning pop song.

- I actually really like the breakdown, Brit sounds great on it.

- Whoa trance buildup

- If this is actually just Max Martin and Dr. Luke, what the hell did Britney's actual sessions with Tiesto sound like? (did that even ever happen?) Actually, with the breakdown being what it is, it's like Luke and Max were just like, "she's working with Tiesto and Rusko? We can just do all of that ourselves!")

- I guess I don't like this very much, but if a track can fairly accurately be described as Dr. Luke doing Tiesto, I guess the odds of me liking it aren't very high.

YMD OFFICIAL SCIENTIFIC TOP TRACKS OF 2010

2011-01-09T22:15:00.006-05:00

Maybe this Sky Ferreira song will get a push and a re-release next year and maybe her album will come out. But with the way pop music works these days maybe it won't, so it's #1 for 2010. Another great year of traxxxxxxxxxxxx. Assembled for your listening pleasure is a YouTube playlist of the tracks from my top 90 of 2010 (the ones available at YouTube). Power Hour available upon request.

1. Sky Ferreira - "One" (Parlophone)
2. Taylor Swift - "Mine" (Big Machine)
3. Kingdom - "Mind Reader ft. Shyvonne" (Fool's Gold)
4. Willow Smith - "Whip My Hair" (Columbia, Roc Nation)
5. Young Jeezy - "Lose My Mind ft. Plies" (Def Jam)
6. Gyptian - "Hold Yuh (remix ft. Nicki Minaj)" (VP)
7. Girl Unit - "Wut" (Night Slugs)
8. Ciara - "Ride ft. Ludacris" (LaFace)
9. Big Boi - "Shutterbugg" (Def Jam)
10. Katy B - "Katy On a Mission" (Rinse)
11. The-Dream - "F.I.L.A." (Radio Killa/Def Jam)
12. Tensnake - "Coma Cat" (Permanent Vacation)
13. Robyn - "Dancing On My Own" (Konichiwa)
14. Yelawolf - "Pop the Trunk" (Interscope)
15. Caribou - "Sun" (Merge)
16. Javiera Mena - "Hasta La Verdad" (Unión del Sur)
17. The Fives - "It's What You Do ft. Vanya Taylor" (?)
18. Sade - "Soldier of Love" (Sony)
19. The Crystal Ark - "The Tangible Presence of the Miraculous" (DFA)
20. Little Big Town - "Little White Church" (Capitol Nashville)
21. FaltyDL - "My Friends Will Always Say" (Planet Mu)
22. Wacka Flocka Flame - "Hard In the Paint" (1017 Brick Squad/Warner Bros/Asylum)
23. Nebraska - "This Is the Way" (Rush Hour)
24. jj - "Into the Light" (Secretly Canadian)
25. Gucci Mane - "Electricity" (mixtape)
26. Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - "Bottled in Cork" (Matador)
27. Subeena - "Picture" (Opit)
28. Ludacris - "How Low" (Disturbing Tha Peace)
29. Duck Sauce - "Barbra Streisand" (Fool's Gold)
30. Justin Bieber - "Baby" (Island)
31. Roll the Dice - "The New Black" (Digitalis)
32. Keri Hilson - "Pretty Girl Rock" (Interscope)
33. Storm Queen - "Look Right Through" (Environ)
34. Diddy-Dirty Money - "Ass On the Floor" (Bad Boy)
35. Arcade Fire - "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains" (Merge)
36. Joanna Newsom - "Esme" (Drag City)
37. Funkystepz - "For U (ft. Lily McKenzie)" (Safe and Sound)
38. Kanye West - "Power" (Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam)
39. Jazmine Sullivan - "Love You Long Time" (J Records)
40. The Extra Lens - "Some Other Way" (Merge)
41. Lloyd - "Lay It Down" (Young Goldie/Interscope/Zone 4)
42. Lil Silva - "Perfussion" (Night Slugs)
43. Young Dro - "Freeze Me" (Grand Hustle?)
44. Hole - "Samantha" (CherryForever/Island Def Jam/Mercury)
45. LCD Soundsystem - "Home" (DFA)
46. Brad Paisley - "Water" (Sony)
47. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - "Round and Round" (4AD)
48. Los Campesinos - "Straight In at 101" (Arts & Crafts)
49. Enrique Iglesias - "I Like It" (Universal International)
50. Andre Nickatina & the Jacka - "My Middle Name Is Crime" (I-Khan)
51. Justin Martin and Ardalan - "Mr. Spock" (Dirtybird)
52. Zinc - "Wile Out (ft. Miss Dynamite)" (Zinc Music)
53. Miranda Lambert - "Only Prettier" (Columbia Nashville)
54. Glasser - "Mirrorage" (True Panther)
55. Wiz Khalifa - "Black & Yellow" (Rostrum, Atlantic)
56. Katy Perry - "Teenage Dream" (Capitol)
57. Corrine Bailey Rae - "Paris Nights/New York Mornings" (EMI)
58. Moody - "It's 2 Late 4 U and Me" (KDJ)
59. Laura Marling - "Alpha Shallows" (Virgin)
60. Rick Ross - "MC Hammer (ft. Gucci Mane)" (Slip'n'Slide/Def Jam)
61. Mad One - "House Girls 6" (Devine uk)
62. Horror Inc. - "Aurore" (Haunt)
63. Kourtney Heart - "My Boy (ft. Magnolia Shorty)" (?)
64. Teengirl Fantasy - "Cheaters" (True Panther)
65. Grinderman - "Worm Tamer" (Mute)
66. J Stalin - "D-Boy Blues 2010" (SMC)
67. Keith Urban - "Put You In a Song" (Hit Red/Capitol Nashville)
68. Emeralds - "Genetic" (Editions Mego)
69. Beeda Weeda - "Baserock Babies" (?)
70. Lindstrøm & Christabelle - "Lovesick" (Feedelity)
71. Ost & Kjex - "Continental Lover" (Diynamic)
72. Oneohtrix Point Never - "Returnal" (Editions Mego)
73. Damian Marley & Nas - "As We Enter" (Universal Republic/Def Jam)
74. Cassie - "Fuck U Silly ft. Nicki Minaj" (unreleased)
75. DVA & Fatima - "Just Vybe (Soul Power Mix)" (Hyperdub)
76. Dam Funk - "Hood Pass Intact (ft. MC Eiht)" (Stones Throw)
77. Shit Robot - "Take Em Up (ft. Nancy Whang)" (DFA)
78. School of Seven Bells - "ILU" (Ghostly International)
79. The Gathering - "In My System (Jef K System Mix)" (Silver Network)
80. Actress - "Maze (Long Version)" (Honest Jon's)
81. Erykah Badu - "20 Feet Tall" (Motown)
82. Yolanda Be Cool & Dcup - "We No Speak Americano" (Ultra)
83. Trace Adkins - "This Ain't No Love Song" (Show Dog/Universal)
84. Ramadanman - "Glut" (Hemlock)
85. Alphabeat - "Hole in my Heart" (Polydor)
86. Ajay D - "Sax Breeze" (?)
87. Âme - "Rrose Sélavy" (Innervisions)
88. Jam City - "Ecstasy Refix" (Night Slugs)
89. E-40 - "Lightweight Jammin' (ft. Clyde Carson and Husalah)" (Heavy on the Grind)
90. Nina Sky - "You Ain't Got It (Funk Dat)" (self-released)

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T20:53:00.002-05:00

My only resolution is to get this blog good again (and if not good, than at least updated). Here's to a stunning 2011.

YMD OFFICIAL SCIENTIFIC TOP ALBUMS OF 2010*

2010-12-30T12:20:00.005-05:00

It was a great year. These records are all awesome.

1. Caribou - Swim (Merge)
2. Yelawolf - Trunk Muzik 0-60 (Interscope)
3. Waka Flocka Flame - Flockaveli (1017 Brick Squad/Warner Bros/Asylum)
4. Taylor Swift - Speak Now (Big Machine)
5. The-Dream - Love King (Def Jam/Radio Killa)
6. Big Boi - Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty (Purple Ribbon/Def Jam)
7. Actress - Splazsh (Honest Jon's)
8. Ost & Kjex - Cajun Lunch (Diynamic)
9. Jazmine Sullivan - Love Me Back (J Records)
10. Lindstrøm & Christabelle - Real Life is No Cool (Feedelity Recordings)
11. Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh (Motown)
12. Diddy-Dirty Money - Last Train to Paris (Bad Boy)
13. Rick Ross - Teflon Don (Slip'n'Slide/Def Jam)
14. Los Campesinos - Romance is Boring (Arts and Crafts)
15. E-40 - Revenue Retrievin' (Day Shift) (Heavy on the Grind Ent.)
16. Ciara - Basic Instinct (LaFace Records)
17. the Extra Lens - Undercard (Merge Records)
18. R. Kelly - Love Letter (Jive)
19. Mad One - House Girls - the Album (Devine uk)
20. Mr. G - Still Here (Rekids)
21. Twin Shadow - Forget (4AD)
22. Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me (Drag City)
23. Sade - Soldier of Love (Sony)
24. Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here? (Editions Mego)
25. Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can (Virgin)
26. Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks (Matador)
27. Roll the Dice - Roll the Dice (Digitalis)
28. Grinderman - Grinderman 2 (Mute)
29. Ikonika - Contact Love Want Have (Hyperdub)
30. Efdemin - Chicago (Dial)

More writing to come. Singles list (w/ YouTube playlist) on 11/9 after it is counted down in a power hour format at my birthday party.

*science could reposition these ad infinitum, btw

OH HEY

2010-12-21T19:01:00.005-05:00

The ever-forward-thinking Sony (via J and Arista) (who did such a great time promoting this album, btw, have you heard about it?) won't let me post a YouTube of the huge, Salaam Remi-produced "Love You Long Time", so listen to the also very-good single, "Holdin' You Down", and then check out Jazzy's album Love Me Back.

A lot of the modern R&B I'm into (Dream, Ciara, etc.; Erykah is the big exception) spends most of its time going for futurism, and that's not what Jazzy does at all. But hers (and her producers') is not a conservative retro, but rather one open to playing and having fun with 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s R&B (and hip-hop and reggae), and her voice is one expressive and varied enough to put a lot off.

Year-end lists are coming, figured I should do some writing.

WUT

2010-10-26T21:32:00.002-04:00

MASSIVE AND BRILLIANT AND REAL

Ciara - "Gimmie Dat" video

2010-10-12T19:31:00.004-04:00

This shit is amazing.

POW POW POW POW

2010-10-11T16:21:00.004-04:00

Waka Flocka Flame's wonderfully named Flockaveli

The bad:
Most of the guest appearances by the less-known rappers are pretty forgettable, and there are a lot of them. The Wale verse in the middle of the otherwise excellent "No Hands" is such that I'm probably going to make an edit of the song without it ("I'ma put her on the train/little engine could" is the actual closing line of his verse) and the Gudda Gudda verse is a typically embarrassing affair.

The good:
Pretty much everything else. Driving from NY to Chicago and back in July, I told fellow traveller Molly (who loves Waka) that I didn't know if I could take a whole tape's worth of Waka at once but this album proves me about 100% wrong. He's not a bad rapper, but he's a great performer. If you think that ad-libs and yelling can only take a rapper so far, I think this might be the album to prove you wrong (listen to the last minute of "Bustin' At Em" to start. The mostly Lex Luger produced tracks are busy and jarring and loud-as-hell and they combine with Waka's energy as well as any producer-rapper tandem have in a while, and when Drumma Boy stops by with a Roscoe Dash hook for "No Hands", Wacka kills it as well. I'm still trying to figure out how this doesn't get boring for me over 72 minutes, but it's just such great high-energy rap that I keep putting it on. WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA FLOCKA FLOCKA FLOCKA FIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT! (oh, also, there's a song with Pastor Troy called "Fuck the Club Up" so you should listen to this now).

mooooovies (#8) (playing catch-up)

2010-09-16T23:05:00.012-04:00

The Ghost Writer (dir. Roman Polanski, 2010)
Anyone hoping for an Auteurist reflection on Polanski's legal flare-ups (are those people out there? I'm prolly just strawmanning) probably won't find much here, but it's definitely a solid thriller that falls apart in the last act (fucking Google) but is still totally worth it. MacGregor is fine, but Brosnan is great whenever he shows up as either a patsy or a master conspirator who's losing it or both. Olivia Williams is great too and Tom Wilkinson comes in at the end to grab a scene with his teeth and take it the hell away from Ewan. Finally, the score is ill.

Leaving Las Vegas (dir. Mike Figgis, 1995)
A few Sundays ago I went to a bar at 11am to watch Liverpool play, then took a cab to a different bar to watch the Bears play, then went home and roommate Sarah wanted to watch this one, which she had on Netflix. I hadn't seen it since the first time I saw it, at which point I was probably way too young to see it. The fact that Nic Cage won an Oscar for this amazes me, cynical Oscar obsessive that I am, because he's really not holding back any of his ridiculousness. The exchange about whether Ben is drinking as a way of killing himself or killing himself as a way of drinking is awesome in how the movie acknowledges the line's cleverness and dismisses it at the same time.

The 19th Wife (dir. Rob Holcomb, 2010)
Of course we were gonna watch a Lifetime Mormon Murder Mystery, though we probably could also have predicted that it might get boring after a while. It did. I'd rather be watching Big Love for my LDSploitation kick (though we are watching TLC's Sister Wives tonight).

Piranha 3D (dir. Alexandre Aja, 2010)
Aja is a talented dude (even Mirrors had like 2 good things in it) and it's nice to see he can do horror-laughs as well as tragic murder/rape/burning alive scenes. This was pretty much exactly what I wanted it to be, and Jerry O'Connell is surprisingly hilarious as Joe Francis. The only disappointment is (SPOILERS, but not ones that should make much difference ) that the main character doesn't end up leaving Jessica Szohr (not any more fun here than she is on Gossip Girl) for Kelly Brook. Elizabeth Shue is suitably heroic.

Greenberg (dir. Noah Baumbach, 2010)
I don't think the advertising for this accurately portrays how much of an asshole Ben Stiller's character is. So, for a while, I avoided the movie, thinking, though I don't know why I was being so pessimistic, that they gap between what the movie would expect me to feel for the character and my actual opinion would be huge. It turns out, Stiller's Roger Greenberg is a monster of a character prone to ill-timed freak-outs and being completely inappropriate, and he's not all that charismatic or charming, but Stiller plays him well enough to allow some empathy. and Rhys Ifans and especially Greta Gerwig are king-sized in this. Looks pretty too.

Catfish (dir. Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, 2010)
Whether it's faked or not (and if I had to bet money I would bet that at least some of it isn't exactly on the up and up), I'm kind of split on Catfish. On one hand, it does have an interesting subject (the one the fillmmakers "stumble upon", not the protagonist, who is not at all interesting) that raises some good questions about what we do with reality in the virtual space. On the other in hand, the more I think about the movie the more I think that the filmmakers could do better with it. The visual style that constantly reminds you that the movie is about the internet could go, for one. But the worst part for me is the narrators and how, once they find a subject that is obviously more interesting than their original subject (co-director Ariel Schulman's little brother Nev), they can't pull back a little and take themselves further out of it. I would still probably recommend this, but it would probably be better as a short subject that cuts a lot of the stuff with Nev out of it.

Kick-Ass (dir. Matthew Vaughn, 2010)
Kick-Ass has an oddly similar problem to Catfish, in that if it dumped it's main character for a movie about the endlessly more entertaining Hit-Girl and Big Daddy (the latter played by Nicolas Cage, so obviously he's awesome), it would probably at least stand a chance. As it is, I really disliked most of this. I've never read the graphic novel this is based on and I haven't read Wanted either, so maybe it's just a coincidence, but I think after these two movies it's safe to say that if you're adapting a Mark Millar book for the screen, you should probably just find a way to cut out the voice-over narration.

The Town (dir. Ben Affleck, 2010) (SPOILER below)
I had pretty high expectations for this after Affleck's excellent Gone Baby Gone, and I'm happy to say that I liked it a lot. The acting is the best part, especially from Jeremy Renner as a little pitbull of a man and Affleck as a local-boy-makes-good-makes-bad-tries-to-just-even-out. Blake Lively is a pleasant surprise too, more or less playing a younger version of Amy Ryan's Gone Baby Gone character as filtered through J-Woww. There's a good car chase, the heists are well-staged, and while Affleck is playing with a lot of types here, the characters work. Just like in Good Will Hunting and Gone Baby Gone, the concept of neighborhood is a major theme here, and I really dug the kind of optimistic fantasy of the ending, which has it both ways as Affleck's character is forced/able to leave the neighborhood but is still able to contribute to the neighborhood by donating money to build a new hockey rink. Considering the harsh moral decision at the end of Gone Baby Gone, it caught me off guard in a good way. If Ben wants to keep adapting crime novels or Boston novels or whatever, let 'em do it.

mooooovies (#7)

2010-09-07T22:26:00.004-04:00

Machete (dir. Ethan Maniquis and Robert Rodriguez, 2010)
A few weeks after The Expendables comes another long-awaited B-action movie and on the whole this one is probably a little better. Everyone here is king-sized, Michelle Rodriguez (once finally revealed in the eye-patch/leather ensemble) making as striking of an entrance as Trejo. But Trejo is great, no doubt about it; just like the Expendables wins by focusing on the faces of Stallone, Rourke, Lundgren and co., Machete makes the most of every wrinkle in his face (along side his comic timing, which is awesome, but not nearly as awesome as Cheech Marin, who is as funny here as he has been in a while). Also, the way Jeff Fahey's (villainous) character eats Mexican food at lunch ("pass the salsa") without comment is a better than anything in (the bad) Crash or Babel by far. (okay so the deaf club scene in Babel was pretty great).

the Crazies (dir. Breck Eisner, 2010)
It's kind of a sum-of-its-parts Horror Movie (let's see if I can make this work), by which I mean that the overarching concept isn't revolutionary or super-interesting (it is a remake, and I haven't seen the original but don't really know anyone who loves it), but the horror scenes themselves are so well done that it all works wonderfully. American Horror movies (dramas too obvi) have been mining the terror of rural Americana for almost half a century, but Eisner uses the grey landscapes more effectively than I've seen anyone do in a while. Farm equipment and (especially) a car wash are also used well, and hey, I guess I do pretty much like Timothy Olyphant.

This movie is probably going to be terrible, but...

2010-09-05T23:49:00.006-04:00

...what is it about the framing of this shot (from the trailer) that makes me almost sure that Carrie Mulligan is about to get hit by an oncoming truck?

Givin' you more of what you're funkin' for

2010-09-02T12:20:00.003-04:00

52. Funkadelic - "One Nation Under A Groove" (Warner Bros., 1978)

Perhaps the clearest statement of the part of the P-Funk ethos that sets out to unify everyone into one groove nation (and maybe the clearest statement of that by anyone, it's certainly not an ideal limited to George Clinton), "One Nation Under A Groove" is the kind of sloganeering that gives sloganeering a good name. I would say that if you only had to hear one P-Funk song it would be this one, but if you hear this song and don't feel like looking further into the catalog for more bass lines, harmonies, and total-body grooves like this one, we have fundamental differences, you and I. The 12" version is 11 and a half minutes long and about 8 and a 1/2 minutes in, when the synth-bass groove starts changing it up under the chorus, is when it goes from next level to that other level.

mooooovies (#6)

2010-08-30T18:29:00.003-04:00

Dude, Where's My Car? (dir. Danny Leiner, 2000)
Watched this on Saturday night with roommate Sarah and friend Petey, trying to take a drink every time they said "dude", "shibby", or "continuum transfunctioner", which I would imagine is, at worst, the second best way to watch this movie. One thing that seemed drunkenly apparent was that Ashton Kutcher was like ten times more entertaining than Sean William Scott (this might be because of the screenplay, I noticed Kutcher once in a while getting to say something that sounds like it makes sense, and then undo it with something incredibly stupid, whereas SWS just has to be dumb right off the bat). Either way, a Saturday night well spent. And Pete passed out before the movie ended.

The Time Traveller's Wife (dir. Robert Schwentke, 2009)
We decided that this was going to be better than the Emmys, and in the end that was probably the right choice (of a set we limited to two for no real reason). It gets a bit repetitive after a while, but it's not that bad, and the melodrama is at least focused on two very likable people. Bana's affability almost became a joke around the hour mark, actually, but what can I say, I like the dude. Honestly, the fact that it's a sci-fi movie very clearly targeted at the Nicholas Sparks audience is almost enough to make me like it on principle, and while it could be a little clearer on some of the details, it's still not a bad little movie.

I'm not a common tart

2010-08-30T13:23:00.003-04:00

I apologize that it has taken me so long to let all 4 of you know about Ost & Kjex's Cajun Lunch, one of my favorite albums of the year, and a treat for those of us who were close to giving up on the possibility of "quirky" as an adjective without a negative connotation. It's basically a house record with white-boy falsetto singing and lyrics mostly about (and sometimes from the point of view of) cheese, but it's well produced enough for all that to work. "The Yellow Man" is like the fifth different favorite song I've had on here, but it's the current one so it's the one I'ma use here. The drum programming is kind of bonkers, I think, in the way the hi-hats and sparely-used snares manage to hypnotize while not upstaging the (endearing, I think) vocals and then go kind of kitchen-sink interesting with a minute and a half to go. Cop this shit.

mooooovies (#5)

2010-08-29T15:44:00.002-04:00

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (dir. Jacques Audiard)
I should note that I watched this in two parts about 3 weeks apart, but I enjoyed this Audiard crime flick almost as much as his Oscar-nominated Un prophète. Like that movie, The Beat... focuses on the development of a young criminal, in this case a not-completely-legit real estate broker named Thomas Seyr and played by Romain Duris with a great nervous grin. Seyr's never altogether realistic dream is to escape a life of shady business to follow in his mother's footsteps as a concert pianist.

The way Audiard, who also co-wrote the movie, uses music is a great variation of a kind of cliche in which a troubled urban character is calmed and refined by art. Seyr never seems as nervous terrorizing squatters as he does trying to get his Bach piece right. Overall, it's an interesting portrayal of the difficulties of changing one's life, more specifically reconciling what one really thinks one wants (concert pianist like yr dead mom) with what one is used to (crook like one's dad, played here by Niels Arestrup, who is good but doesn't quite steal the show like he does in Un prophete).

The Brood (dir. David Cronenberg, 1979)
I'm going to slowly work my way through all the Cronenberg I haven't seen in the fall, I think. I guess it would be spoiling to say who the villain here is exactly, but the way his/her psychological damage is manifested is awesome. The colors, the blood, Oliver Reed's menace, the terrifying children, yes this is very good end-of-the-70s horror.

Then don't fucking come here, motherfucker!

2010-08-27T14:36:00.005-04:00

Friend Sarah informed us last night of the curse-filled trailer to the next in MTV's series of RW/RR Challenges, which have, despite the excellent Back to New Orleans season of Real World, been for the last few years consistently much more entertaining than the Real World itself. The preview gives no indication that this season is gonna be any less entertaining. But I would like to draw attention to the logo, which is well...

...at least somewhat confusing in what it signifies? Maybe I'm just more sensitive to this because I'm Eastern European (and love fonts) but why the Cyrillic Яs combined with the Bio-hazard imagery? Not that I don't think it would be cool to set a whole season of the Challenge in an abandoned but still highly radioactive Chernobyl reactor, but this is set in Prague (they use the Roman alphabet with some vowel accents there). Obvi "nuclear meltdown" is easy shorthand for tempers flaring and that's fine (again, can't wait for this shit), but the specifics of this logo are mad silly, no?

mooooovies (#4)

2010-08-26T12:07:00.004-04:00

The Expendables (dir. Sylvester Stallone, 2010)
It's not fair, really, from a critical standpoint. How could I not like this? Jet Li fights Ivan Drago here. Many modern action movies aim for intertextuality by referencing shots, quips, and cliches, but bringing together so many iconic actors (of so many iconic characters) to do an action movie is a whole different thing altogether.

There are things here that are not so good, the foremost of which is the CGI blood. I wonder what the price point difference is between CGI blood and physical fake blood, and whether it gets bigger for something that necessitates as much blood as this movie does, because this shit looks terrible (the fire isn't so good either).

For the most part, though, Stallone knows how to direct this kind of movie. He spends a lot of time on faces, which is awesome when the faces are so iconic. A speech delivered by Mickey Rourke, for example, is a-ok in its content, but the tight (blue-lit) close-up on his face is fascinating. I would imagine that if this movie sounds like a good idea to you, there is no reason you won't enjoy it (do I even need to say that Statham is great?).

Symbol (dir. Hitoshi Matsumoto, 2009, no US release yet scheduled)
Symbol is partly about a man that wakes up in a mysterious all-white room but it's not a horror movie. Instead, it's a (seemingly) absurdist existential comedy. The story of the man (played in kiddie pajamas by Matsumoto) is cross-cut with the (seemingly) unrelated story of an aging Mexican Wrestler getting ready for a match he is not expected to win (pro wrestling is competitive here). It's kind of hard to describe what happens without spoiling a major development that is presented with awesome cross-cutting about 3/4ths of the way into the movie, but let's just say that the scope of Matsumoto's story expands greatly towards the end.

Even before that revelation, however, I was having a lot of fun. The parts with the man stuck in the room, flicking little switches (which are actually little cherub penises) that make seemingly random objects appear and disappear are a great send-up of a style of video-gamey logic in which completely unrelated tasks eventually lead to a reasonable goal. Symbol really strikes me as quite a brilliant, original work and it's really worth going out of your way (internets) to see.

YMD Summer Jams 2010 #final

2010-08-25T00:19:00.003-04:00

Young Jeezy - "Lose My Mind (ft. Plies)"

The end of summer is near, so it's our duty to rectify the mistake of not yet writing about the song I've most enjoyed hearing blasted from car stereos in Bushwick and Beyond.

Much like Gucci's "Wasted" last year, "Lose My Mind's" most immediately gratifying feature is Plies absolutely ridiculous verse in the middle of it (it even has "white girls fun, cuz all them swallow" to rival last year's "I don't wear tight jeans like the white boys, but I do get naked like the white boys"). And I'm still not 100% on whether the hoes call Plies "fantastical" or "Fantastico" (I rap along with the latter) but it's an amazing line either way.

But much like on "Wasted", I realized after a few listens that I like the main rapper's verses as much or more than Plies'. There's the endlessly quotable "goons got goons/rooms got rooms" couplet (actually, it does that a disservice to quote that without the "house stupid-dumb-big" doesn't it?) that ends the first verse, but even that isn't as good as Jeezy's final one, on which his flow gets as playful as ever ("my nickname in the A: strapped up shorty" stuck in my head 24-7) over the lurching monster of a beat. The Recession is one of my two or three favorite rap albums of the last decade and while this isn't as amazing as the first single off of that one (few things are), it has me very very excited for Thug Motivation 103.

mooooovies (#3)

2010-08-17T11:46:00.006-04:00

The Invention of Lying (dir. Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson, 2009)
This was on HBO On Demand so I watched it on a Sunday night not expecting much, and I don't regret it. It certainly has many funny moments and Jennifer Garner does a very admirable job playing a character who is required by the plot to speak almost entirely in dialogue that would normally be obvious subtext (that's a way to look at this movie, I guess: a society without lies is a society without subtext?). The tone here sometimes edges from surprisingly sad to boringly sad though and, well, is it wrong to ask a comedy to be slightly, I don't know, nerdier? That is to say, if you're creating an alternate reality, shouldn't it be a little more detailed? Everything we know about this reality in which lying hasn't been invented seems to suggest that history for the most part has played out exactly the same as it did in our reality (except for/despite the absence of religion). This might be too much to ask, I dunno.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (dir. Edgar Wright, 2010)
Not being nerdy enough is certainly not a problem for this one and it totally exceeded my expectations, which were basically that I would enjoy some of the form but would be super-turned off by the story. I was happily only half right. From the initial 16-bitty Universal logo, Wright's synthesis of video game and comic imagery is totally fun, full of witty sight gags and useful transitions and characterizations (PS though, with regards to using video game stuff in movies, let's not forget Crank: High Voltage, which does it in a completely different spirit but just as successfully). And my fear that I would find Scott Pilgrim himself to be somewhat of a turd wasn't off, but with pretty much every other character calling him a turd at some point it totally didn't bother me like I thought it would. Basically, the Seven Evil Exes thing was a much more complex metaphor for relationships than I expected it to be (haven't read the books obvi) and this was really fun. (Also there's a scene of Scott Pilgrim talking to himself that made me wonder, who's gonna have the balls to pull the trigger on the Michael Cera/Jesse Eisenberg buddy movie?).

I should probably be spreading these out better.

Do you remember we were sitting there by the water

2010-08-17T11:05:00.005-04:00

(song starts 30 seconds or so into this YouTube)

By the time I had even heard about this leaking it was #1 on iTunes, such is the power of our Taylor. It's encouraging to hear her writing specifically about being a young adult ("yeah we've got bills to pay" and a line about cohabitation!) with the same skill that she wrote about being a high school kid. The "you made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter" is super-entertaining verging on annoying, almost in an Elvis Costello way, but I've grown to love it. Yet again Taylor takes a cliche and makes it beautiful.

So basically after a week or so with "Mine" (and, truth be told, a walk home from Greenpoint to Bushwick the other night listening to it on repeat) I couldn't be more excited for this album.

Quick word on poor M. Night Shyamalan and stock

2010-08-16T14:40:00.003-04:00

Saw Scott Pilgrim this morning (liked it ok, review to come), but funnier than almost anything in the actual movie was what happened during the trailer for Devil. Not having heard of it yet, I was enjoying the preview, thinking that it was something I might be interested in, and then came the magic words "a new nightmare from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan" and I, along with like 8 strangers in this movie theater full of like 17 people, audibly groaned (and then laughed heartily at the fact that we had all groaned together). Poor M. Night.

mooooovies (#2)

2010-08-16T13:55:00.004-04:00

Howard's End (dir. James Ivory, 1992)
This was the first Blu-ray I watched on New Roommate Sarah's Blu-ray player (after the HDMI cable came in the mail I basically just bumped up the highest movie in my Netflix queue available on Blu-ray). The first shot, of Vanessa Redgrave walking around the titular, err, End, is maybe the best thing in the movie visually, but it never goes too far downhill. Emma Thompson is A+ great, and I found myself quite selfishly concerned with her Liberal, middle-class character's fascination with the Upper Class as it parallels my love of all things set in beautiful English country estates. I assumed (having never read it) that the book gives a few of the key plot elements (Margaret and Ruth's friendship, Henry and Margaret's courtship) a bit more time to breathe and, perhaps oddly, that assumption being available actually did a lot to make me accept how rushed those things seemed in the film.

Green Zone (dir. Paul Greengrass, 2010)
Greengrass is one of my favorite directors and I liked parts of this a whole lot, but I'm conflicted about it on the whole, mostly because of Brian Helgeland's screenplay and how much it spells things that it has very clearly illustrated out in the dialogue. For example, when, during a climactic scene, an Iraqi character tells an American character "It is not up to you to decide what happens here", it seems a bit much, considering how much a) the theme of how American involvement affects the local people we are "liberating" has been hammered home in the movie b) how much it has become part of the Iraq narrative in general. But then again maybe I'm wrong on point b.

Consider summary of the movie on Netflix:

U.S. Defense Intelligence Agent Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) doesn't want to hear what Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) has to say about not finding the weapons of mass destruction -- evidence that could launch a war -- he's been sent to Iraq to unearth...

Considering that the movie starts with the invasion of Baghdad and then moves on to Miller and co. looking for the WMDs, "evidence that could launch a war" seems a bit of an odd way to put things. So maybe the story of what happened in Iraq in 2003 does bear repeating and hammering into the ground. And maybe I just wish it was done in a way that didn't introduce it very clearly in the subtext and then hammer it into you again in the dialogue.

Matt Damon is reliably great here, btw, and Amy Ryan does a decent job looking conflicted as the Embodiment of the Failings of the American Press. Also, the colors in the night-time action scenes are absolutely gorgeous, which actually made me feel a little weird in retrospect.

mooooovies

2010-08-15T21:38:00.003-04:00

The Kids Are All Right (dir. Lisa Cholodenko, 2010)
The moment I keep coming back to when thinking of this movie's appeal involves Julianne Moore's character being asked why she and her wife would enjoy male gay porn and, before being interrupted, actually trying to answer that question honestly. I was shocked, mostly because "why do you guys watch gay porn" (or however it was phrased) was a good enough punchline that I didn't expect it to be followed by something even funnier. This one is super-successful as a dramedy in that the laughs and the drama come from basically the same place, the brilliantly written and acted characters.

Inception (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2010)
I enjoyed it, but I couldn't help being a little disappointed (not based on my expectations coming in but rather on how cool some parts of it were and how boring I found others). I think the way time works in dreams is a brilliant conceit, and man, if you decide to heavily use Edith Piaf in a movie featuring an actress best known for playing Edith Piaf, that's gonna win you points from me nine times out of ten. But now that I think about it, I probably actually cared about the Leo love story here even less than the one in Shutter Island and, aside from some of the hotel stuff, the actual action here was kind of boring, no? And that one dream that was a kinda shitty Golden Eye level? And Ellen Page's boring-ass character? Tom Hardy's dope tho and on balance I still think there's more to like here than not. Plz no sequel.

Dead Ringers (dir. David Cronenberg, 1988)
I'm not quite sure why it took me so long to see this but wow oh wow was it not at all disappointing. At the risk of hyperbole, everything Jeremy Irons does here is brilliant, and ok, I guess most contemporary stories are in some way explorations of identity, but the ones Cronenberg gets are especially vivid and interestingly explicit with respect to this theme, no? Oddly, the scene in which Bev's "instruments" are exhibited as art, much to his chagrin, made me think it could be interesting to watch this with something like Dr. 90210 or Nip/Tuck, to see if we could possibly compare how "Artist" has become part of the myth of the Plastic Surgeon to anything here.

PROJECT RUNWAY (you're not really reading this)

2010-08-03T13:31:00.003-04:00

KORS!

While we were all watching Jersey Shore, one of our old favorites returned with a ridiculously long premiere. The contestants have potential, Kors, Tim Gunn, Heidi, and Ninagarcia are back in our lives, and an hour and a half is probably too long for this show. But what got me interested enough to write about the first episode of Project Runway season 8 is a new and interesting specimen in our collection of the many wonderful ways that Reality Shows break down reality.

The narrowing down of a group of hopefuls to a group of actual contestants/cast members in an Episode of the television show is nothing new. Before the days of cast lists and whole plots of seasons leaking instantly on the internet, MTV used to do that for seasons of the Real World in a casting special. Top Chef does a quick-fire that eliminates someone right away all the time. But never have I seen such reiteration of the concept of "we're not on the show yet" by people who are very obviously on the show. They're at the apartments, they're doing a challenge, and while a challenge in which more than one person gets eliminated isn't the norm on PR, it's certainly not unheard of.

So how does one process being told that the people competing on the television show you're watching are not really competing on the television show you're watching?

With Tim Gunn, all things are possible.

YMD Summer Jams 2010 #9

2010-07-23T09:19:00.001-04:00

Kourtney Heart - "My Boy (ft. Magnolia Shorty)"

This is far from the first thing I think about when listening to music, usually, but is there something about a song that seems to want to be a hit real bad but probably won't ever achieve that status that adds a touch of melancholy?

I seem to recall (I guess I should start taking down URLs of smart things I read for future citations) someone writing something not too long ago about how that kind of discourse used to be the reserve of indie-pop fans and now, with so many people making pop/popular-genre music, here we are talking about well-produced, well-performed, super-catchy R&B songs in terms of them deserving to be in the charts but not having a hope in the world.

Anyways, I read about this Kourtney Heart song on ILM last week and it's dope. Magnolia Shorty's "my boy!" backing in the chorus elevates it like 10 steps.

'Specially when you got a cold glass of wine

2010-07-09T13:04:00.002-04:00

53. The O'Jays - "I Love Music" (Philadelphia International, 1975)

I was in Boston recently to watch a Red Sox game, and as my friends and I were trying to get back on the subway with the post-game crowd, we saw a white girl about our age using her digital camera to record a video of an African American gentlemen playing some kind of hand drums for money. Being carried around the corner by the slowly moving crowd, she looked at the musician and very earnestly, perhaps as an affirmation of a common bond between them, said, "I love music, man."

Of course we've been laughing about this for weeks, as at the time it seemed like such a hilarious and meaningless thing to say. It has occurred to me, of course, that one of my favorite songs is this Philly-disco hit by the O'Jays. So why was my reaction to the girl in the subway something along the lines of "LOL, dummy" while my reaction to the O'Jays is "fuck yeah, I love music too dudes!"?

Is it because the O'Jays somehow earn the right to express this sentiment because they're making awesome music? Is it because the ecstatic nature of dance music allows us an appropriate context in which to express simple truths? Is it because there was something in a (seemingly) middle-class white girl (seemingly) trying to affirm the worth of an African-American street performer that made me uncomfortable? Was it just me assuming a good percentage of drunk people leaving Fenway are idiots?

Probably.

YMD Summer Jams 2010 #8

2010-07-07T19:41:00.004-04:00

Sky Ferraira - "One"

AMG agrees, this one is official. It's a single from teen-pop hopeful Sky Ferreira, and is produced by Bloodshy & Avant, who have in the past been responsible for three of our favorite Britney songs of the decade ("Toxic", "Piece of Me", and "Radar") and are hopefully taking a little break from their indie band. It wins (admittedly nerdy) points from me right away for the extra two beats thrown in before the first verse starts and then again before the chorus. There are a few surprises along the way, actually: the amount of direct and stretched out repetition, the barely verbalized bridge, the quickly ascending arpeggios in the chorus and the way they kind of grind to a halt in the coda.

And all those surprises have worked as well for me the 13th and 14th times for me as they did the 1st, yes, I'm obsessed with this song.

YMD Summer Jams 2010 #7

2010-06-29T16:36:00.003-04:00

Robyn - "Dancehall Queen"

"Dancing On My Own" is still an official summer jam, but since this morning this has been dominating my brain so thoroughly that it must be declared one as well. It's the second song in a row in which Robyn is dancing by herself, but unlike the last one, in which she is specifically dancing on her own to highlight her loneliness and rejection, this one is more ambiguous and, I think, more interesting.

"I came to dance not to socialize" is a great line, an example of how the narrator of the song foregrounds her objectives (dancing superiority and the recognition thereof) and methods (solitude) but not her reasoning. Is being Dancehall Queen an end unto itself? Should we, especially in the context of an album that includes "Dancing on My Own", assume that there are other emotional factors in the narrator's choice of solitude? ("I'll go down low like she won't..." in the bridge suggests this might just be a completely different way of dealing with the "Dancing on My Own" situation) (A different way of dealing with it through dancing, of course).

It wouldn't be nearly as moving, though, without the chorus melody, which I have to admit has a pretty ridiculous effect on me. It legit almost made me tear up on the train no less than three times today, and I fear what it might to do me if I hear it out/drunk.

That big dirty stinking bass

2010-06-23T20:36:00.004-04:00

In case this interests anyone, here's what I ended up playing at our fairly successful, last-minute-venue-changed party on the weekend. Perhaps I got a bit anxious and played more vocal and pop stuff than I had intended too, but hey it happens.

- Jean Claude Van Damme - "Troop-rallying Speech From Street Fighter"
- DJ Mujava - "Township Funk"
- Shystie - "Pull It (Ill Blu Remix)"
- Business Man - "Dubby Games"
- Aaliyah - "Rock the Boat (Ill Blu Remix)"
- Ame, Henrick Schwarz, and Dixon - "D.P.O.M.B. (version 2)"
- Noze - "Remember Love"
- Tatu - "All the Things She Said (Dave Aude Remix)"
- Outkast - "B.O.B."
- Kingdom - "Mind Reader"
- Ludacris - "How Low"
- Kyla - "Do You Mind (Crazy Cousinz Remix)"
- Ricky Martin - "La Copa de la Vida"
- Donae'o - "Party Hard"
- Public Enemy - "Bring the Noise"
- Whitney Houston - "It's Not Right But It's Okay (Thunderpuss Club Mix)"
- Vitalic - "La Rock 01"
- Big Country - "It's a Big Country (Pure Mix)"

Then the Tay-Tay and Gucci came out.

My big thing from the past few weeks dance wise has been rediscovering how hard Ricky Martin's 1998 World Cup Anthem bangs. I wasn't planning on a Ricky rediscovery but friend Balls suggested we put it on at HQ the other day and it exploded the speakers more or less.

If you enjoy me playing house music along with free drinks and photography, I will probably be playing stuff with a lot less vocals at this opening on Friday from 6 to 9. Come by and shake your ass in a way that suggests you're admiring art. More on that later.

YMD Summer Jams 2010 #6

2010-06-12T22:40:00.003-04:00

Robyn - "Dancing On My Own"

Initially, I kept wanting to see this in the same electro-pop tearjerker vein as Annie's "Heartbeat", but it's not really fair to compare every electro-pop tearjerker to one of the best songs of the last decade. It is quite good though, and if I was still frequenting Trash or whatever I would be very disappointed if this hadn't been added to the playlist.

And maybe it's instructive to compare Robin to Annie anyways. On "Heartbeat", Annie registers for me far more as a part of the track than as a distinct character (the thinness of her voice and ethereality of the vocal production might be a start as to why) She leaves a space in the song; this makes it easier for me to lose myself in it. Robyn, on the other hand, functions more like a traditional (post-Elvis, let's say) pop star. Her personality always comes through much stronger than Annie's, and that's not necessarily good or bad. On "Dancing On My Own", Robyn is clearly present as a well-defined character within the song, a character she's built throughout her career (this is even clearer in the video, where her dance moves become almost too distracting for me).

This all needs editing and expansion, I'm sure, but anyways, "Dancing On My Own" is a jam, and besides being yet another Valiant Heartbreak Anthem from Robyn (I'd imagine it will be balanced on the album by a song about how she'll kick your ass), proves yet again the unbeatable power of the wordless vocal hook.

YMD Summer Jams 2010 #5

2010-06-09T19:00:00.000-04:00

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - "Bottled in Cork"

Who said we don't summer with guitars anymore? Ted Leo, who I've seen live more times as all but 2 or 3 other bands, put out a very good record earlier this year, and the most suitable song for summer jamming is this, his newest travelogue. Something about the acoustic guitar actually reminds me of frisbee-rock also-rans Guster, but I promise that I mean that in the least insulting way possible. The closing repetition of "tell the bartender I'm falling in love" doesn't seem like it could be any more perfect for summer daydrinking at bars that have backyards (and especially for those Saturdays on which you realize there's not gonna be a break between the daydrinking and the nightdrinking, is there?).

Random Ad Links and the wonderful LOLS to be had

2010-06-09T10:21:00.000-04:00

Forgot to post this when I capped it last week, but anyways, is it just me that suspects that maybe authorities have caught a random senile old man, and the real Paul Clouston is hiding in plain sight, sticking out his tongue at the law and enjoying, I dunno, a fairly priced new life insurance policy?

Work the middle

2010-06-08T16:08:00.007-04:00

"What better way to spend a day off," I thought, "than to make a little mix to practice for the party we're throwing soon?" So I recorded this mini-mix and figured it went well enough (barring one or two less-than-professional transitions) to post. It starts with a few seconds of the homie Neil and moves through some UK Funky updates of a few classics, some techno, a classic Chicago jam, and YMD fav Tensnake's new remix of Mano Le Tough. It's summer! Come party!

Maciej's AMBASSADORIAL FUNK MIX:
- Neil Young - "When You Dance You Can Really Love" (Reprise Records, 1970)
- Lil' Silva - "Perfussion" (Night Slugs. 2010)
- Matthias Meyer - "Tout Va Bien" (liebe*detail, 2008)
- Geeneus & Katy B - "Good Life (Remix)" (2010)
- Aaliyah - "Rock the Boat (Ill Blu Remix)" (2009)
- Wighnomy Bros. - "Exvola Stupp" (Kompakt Extra, 2009)
- Lucien-N-Luciano - "House Tool's House" (Cadenza, 2010)
- Pierre's Pfantasy Club - "Dream Girl" (Hot Mix 5, 1988)
- Mano Le Tough - "Eurodancer (Dances For Euros) (Tensnake Remix)" (Mirau, 2010)

Download that shit! (Mediafire)

YMD Summer Jams 2010 #4

2010-06-07T10:43:00.005-04:00

Big Boi - "Shutterbug"

Obviously. Despite the fact that we're going to know the words to like half of Sir Luscious Left Foot's songs by the time it leaks, anticipation at YMD Headquarters and environs couldn't be higher. Big Boi has a very legit claim to the title of Best Rapper Alive right now, and he maneuvers this talking bassline with the ease and deftness we've come to expect ever since he was "catchin' buzz like a bumble bee" back in the 90s. The singing part of the chorus is maybe even more crucial than the raps though, as far as making this something to cruise summer streets to. "Baby baby" indeed.

YMD 2010 Summer Jams #3

2010-06-03T15:34:00.000-04:00

Gyptian - "Hold Yuh (Remix ft. Nicki Minaj)"

It's not very often you hear a song on Hot 97 without a kick drum (for good reason), but Gyptian and Nicki have been getting a decent amount of play both on the radio and here at YMD headquarters. Entrancing summer jam, though I think it could be a decent sweaty dancefloor break too.

YMD 2010 Summer Jams #2

2010-06-03T10:54:00.000-04:00

Terror Danjah - "Acid"

Yet more heat from both Hyperdub and Terror Danjah. The ravey build up in the first minute is hype as hell and the one-note synth riff is nothing if not insistent. Definitely a summer night jam, as much as these things can be controlled.

YMD 2010 Summer Jams #1

2010-06-02T16:45:00.007-04:00

jj - "Into the Light"

Maybe the only summer jam to ever feature audio commentary of a Zlatan Ibrahimovic goal, this is my favorite track of Swedish Balearic duo jj's new album. Their rap and R&B covers are for the most part decently fun novelties, but gorgeous stuff like this keeps makes them a legitimately interesting band (the fact that you can dance to this one sure doesn't hurt its summer jam status).

(PS, seeing if this embed ting works, will find a better way soon).

It's my life, and I'm living it now

2010-06-01T19:32:00.005-04:00

54. Armand Van Helden - "U Don't Know Me (ft. Duane Harden)" (Ffrr/Armed Records, 1999)

Starting a song with a sliver of a sample and then unraveling that sample after the intro isn't exactly an obscure technique, but I'm not sure I've ever heard it used to more ecstatic, glorious effect than it is on "U Don't Know Me", the Boston-born Van Helden's 1999 smash (#1 in the UK, don't you know). It's a song about how it feels to be misunderstood and judged harshly by folks who don't know you, and it sure is euphoric.

HYPERPOOP

2010-05-31T16:15:00.004-04:00

When I saw Cube back in the early 2000s, I was pretty impressed. I rented it with a friend to get drunk and laugh at, but a few minutes into it I realized I was honestly enjoying it, and even fairly scared at points. Which is why I was so pumped when I saw that its sequel Cube 2: Hypercube was on Netflix Instant. Disappointed isn't the right word, I mean I guess I was disappointed that it was so terrible, but I sure did laugh a lot, which I think makes it all OK. Although it's hilarious, it's such a train wreck that it becomes difficult to watch, even at its paltry 80 minute run-time. I'll save you some trouble and give you a detailed synopsis.

The plot is the same as the first, at least in premise. Six strangers are stuck inside a mysterious cube, with a door on every side that just leads to another cube. Sadly in Cube 2, these strangers are all terrible Canadian actors who try to mask their accents with what appear to be lisps. Among my faves, a blind Asian girl with super sonic hearing abilities, and an old lady with Alzheimers who can't find her dog. This character is more offensive than you can even imagine, but I feel perhaps it might be less offensive than actress Barbara Gordon's new Canadian TV series "Little Mosque On the Prairie." Oh boy.

With brilliant minds like these at work, it doesn't take them long to figure out that they're not in your average, every day regular massive cubic structure with hidden traps and moving walls, but a HYPERCUBE, or a cube with four dimensions." You see a hypercube isn't supposed to be real. It's just a theoretical construct" says one character. Oh but it's real my friend, and it's folding space time, trying to kill them by...collapsing them...in space time...with transparent, oozy...wall stuff?

And Windows 95 screensaver thingies...

Wait, let me fix something.

Yes, much better. The movie continues with absolutely nothing remotely resembling a plot and gives the view the feeling that at any moment it could turn into pornography. Spoiler alert: it doesn't, save for one Skinemaxesque scene in which two characters, without explanation, bone while floating in zero gravity (also not explained). But then things keep happening! Like crazy diamond pillars that are also somehow related to space time, and come out and...kind of...stab...people?

Aaaand then it turns into a black hole. Maybe not. But there's like, a space tornado, as seen here:

Or as I prefer it, here:

And now you've seen Cube 2: Hypercube. Congrats.

Electrocute a barracuda, I'm here to bring the drama

2010-05-13T15:02:00.006-04:00

55. Craig Mack - "Flava in Ya Ear (Remix ft. Puff Daddy, the Notorious B.I.G., Rampage the Last Boy Scout, LL Cool J, and Busta Rhymes)" (Bad Boy Entertainment, 1994)

Before we get to the complete headfuck that is LL Cool J's verse on here, let's discuss the stuff that's good in the conventional sense. First, there's Easy Mo Bee's beat, an unquestionable East Coast Rap classic, two notes and hazy waves that are perfect whenever they come in. It's not Biggie's best verse ever, but it's still a Biggie verse. Busta is 1994 Busta, so he's one of the most joyfully unhinged rappers ever. Mack has "your album couldn't fuck with one line," which is wonderful (in a recursive way) because if that's true of any line Craig ever said it's that line itself. Rampage is solid if unspectacular and Puffy, well, it's actually kind of impressive how sure he was of his impeding world domination (even for a rapper), considering they were pretty much just getting started here.

But the LL verse is what really elevates this to sublime. Remember this was after 14 Shots to the Dome, a relative commercial failure for him, and just before Mr. Smith, which had "Doin' It" and "Hey Lover" and pretty much established the grown up loverman LL we have today. So the vocal style at the beginning of his verse does, I think, prefigure that sort of thing, more calmly seductive than on his late 80s songs for the girls. But the content! What the fuck?

HEEESHEEE!
Uh! blowticious
skeevy (mmmm)
delicious
Give me cous-cous, love me good
Hollis to Hollywood, but is he good?
I Guess like the jeans, uh!
Flava like pralines
sick daddy knaamean?

They way people use the term "ironic" when it comes to enjoying music means either "enjoying something bad" which, you know, why would you, or "enjoying something for a reason opposite to which it was created" which, you know, how the hell would you know and who cares? Is it safe to assume from his MO directly following this song that LL thought screeching "HEEESHEEE" was sexy?

However you explain my enjoyment of LL's verse here, it's good enough for science to rocket this song up to #55 on our countdown. We should all be using the word "blowticious" more often.

Hey London

2010-05-11T19:42:00.004-04:00

This is the best dubsteppy thing I've heard so far this year, I think. It's called "Picture" and it's by Subeena, who keeps bringing the rhythmic variations subtly enough for them to flow together but often enough for it to be quite exciting. It's all pretty and danceable and interesting and fun, and you should go to Beatport or your preferred dance music mp3 merchant and cop it.

Heaven is Whenever is whatever (?)

2010-05-07T12:15:00.004-04:00

It's one thing writing about why I dislike something totally different from what I've liked before, or something from a scene I used to be into but have more or less given up on. That's easy enough. It's harder, I think, to write about why I don't like something by a band I've loved for a long time and for whom a new record isn't that huge of a departure.

That's as much of an excuse for the following lack of insight as it is my usual obsession with why I think and write the way I do potentially getting in the way of my writing, but anyways, I don't like this new Hold Steady record very much and, this being the first time I've not liked something by Craig Finn, I've been thinking about it a bit.

I don't think that Franz Nicolay leaving has much to do with it. As much as I enjoyed his presence (yes, on record too), I doubt any piano fills could liven up the stuff I don't like here. That stuff starts right off the bat with "The Sweet Part of the City", which is right now my least favorite Hold Steady song ever. It sounds them finally getting pulled into a 90s facsimile of classic rock they've always been more interesting than. That I, on balance, prefer Finn ranting to him singing should be no surprise, but this is the most that his lyrical hooks have ever felt lost in a song.

It's not all bad, of course. "We Can Get Together" is even softer than "The Sweet Part of the City" and references a bunch of songs and is mostly about Heavenly, of all bands, but does well with a sweetness that is one of Finn's more underrated attributes. And I've come around on "Hurricane J", a song about a girl that, for once, isn't named after a saint. But in the end, it mostly sounds to me like a bunch of anthems without nearly enough hooks. I might go read the lyric sheet.

I'm set free to find a new illusion

2010-05-06T20:04:00.005-04:00

56. The Velvet Underground - "I'm Set Free" (from the self-titled album, MGM Records, 1969)

Guitar solos are sweet, but I rarely listen to songs only for the solo. The rest of this song is good too, but the solo is one of those sublime moments that elevates every moment spent in its company.

Oh, Bono

2010-05-02T21:52:00.004-04:00

It's not about Politics, religion, or the economy
It's not about borders, history, trade, oil, water, gas, mineral rights, human rights or animal rights...

I realize that this being Bono's voice makes it extra-annoying, and I realize that ESPN is trying to position the World Cup to US viewers as an Olympic-style, world-uniting event (which it is), and that might be a pretty decent tactic.

But does this ad rub anyone else the wrong way, this explicit call-to-apathy, the idea that the World Cup is so wonderful (it is very, very wonderful) that it makes everyone's problems go away? Especially as they're running ads for the ESPN documentary about the political importance of the '95 Rugby World Cup during the same commercial breaks (a TV network trying to have it both ways, ring the alarm, I know). The World Cup is one of the happiest things in the world, and I will enjoy it immensely, but trying to depoliticize an event as Global as this seems odd. The histories of the nations involved and their current place in the world don't diminish the spectacle or the efforts on the field. At the very least they enrich the narrative and at best maybe some new bit of social consciousness can sneak through to the millions of people watching.

(I'm sure when ESPN is running human-interest stories instead of analyzing football for hours a day next month I will run a furious retraction)

Sobre el fascismo

2010-04-26T23:49:00.003-04:00

Has any Spanish-language (or English-language) (or bilingual) rapper done a version of this yet? If not, let's get on that, stat.

New Caribou album, people rejoice

2010-04-26T17:35:00.005-04:00

I finally listened to the new Caribou album (finally in 2010 parlance = less than a week after it was released, obviously) the other day and I'll be damned if it hasn't been haunting the stereo at YMD headquarters pretty much non-stop ever since. After five or six listens, it's pretty solidly my favorite record of the year (with only the Yelawolf tape in striking distance, really). I'm not sure what I was expecting from Mr. Snaith after the sunny psych-pop of Andorra but a House record wasn't really it.

Lead single "Odessa" shows the most obvious traces of Snaith's collaboration with the Junior Boys' Jeremy Greenspan, sounding more or less like a good Junior Boys track done with Snaith's textural preoccupations. It's great, but the second track, "Sun", is where things really start to open up for me, as warm as it's title implies and building on a familiar drum pattern to build something I would love to dance to outdoors this summer. On the next track Snaith starts getting crazy with the stereo panning and I love every second of it. It's exactly what a Caribou dance album would sound like, now that you think about it, and full of surprises at the same time.

Snaith talks in this Pitchfork interview about how both the structure and compositional tools of modern House opened up all kinds of possibilities for him and, while I'm cynical enough to think about how this won't stop Swim from influencing some terrible "it's like dance music, but by a real artist" writing (why do I Google things*) the more people on the dance floor the better, right? Best Caribou/Manitoba yet? Too early to tell, but maybe.

* Okay, I know, what's the point of getting upset about a site I only stumbled upon by googling "Caribou swim Jeremy Greenspan" but they gets advertising so it must be something, right? And I'm too old to be surprised by people having condescending attitudes towards dance music, but god damn, "a reputation for rigid structures" my balls. And the bit about Kelley Polar and Junior Boys (both of whom I love) "often ditching cliched components of electronica like auto-tuning and forced flanging for more structurally daring feats" is even dumber, right? Because what could "structurally" even mean that Auto-tune and "forced flanging" would have anything to do with it? And they're being structurally daring by applying pop structures to, respectively, disco and, err, electro-pop?

I am 100% for exploring and writing about music from genres and scenes you don't know shit about. But you have to be humble enough to admit that you don't know shit about them. I'm certainly guilty of not doing this once in a while too, but I promise, I'm trying.

Long nights crying by the record machine

2010-04-19T16:24:00.004-04:00

57. Elton John - "Crocodile Rock" (DJM Records, 1972)

Good to great songs about dances are a dime a dozen, as are songs about nostalgia for a rock and roll childhood. However, songs about doing an imagined dance to an imagined song during your rock and roll childhood are, as far as I know, quite a bit more rare and the creation of such a thing by Bernie Taupin is a wonderful move. Whether not actually inventing a dance to go with is laziness or allowing for creativity on the part of the listener or both I'm not sure, but it doesn't bother me. The famously and excellently annoying hook is either more important than the lyrical content or just a cherry on top, depending on my mood.

I've seen them kissing out in the hallway

2010-03-22T23:37:00.003-04:00

58. The Flaming Lips - "Superhumans" (from the Transmissions From the Satellite Heart album, Warner Bros., 1993)

This is the #1 Flaming Lips hit in my heart, for me the perfect mix of their scuzz and their world-conquering giddiness. The lyrics combine a message of personal sacrifice (one of Wayne Coyne's favorite themes) with with a combination of animal and space imagery that has pretty much become his bread and butter on-stage. The way Wayne strains for the melody here is completely appropriate for someone singing to a love object which seems to be as grand as a galaxy, and the when the guitar solo soars in, briefly, it soars towards the heavens.

Ever since the day you put my heart in motion

2010-03-16T19:31:00.004-04:00

So the Oscars kind of burned me out a bit, but we're totes back. Here's a wonderful song.

59. Amy Grant - "Baby, Baby" (A&M Records, 1991)

I'm no expert on Amy Grant. I know she's like the most successful Christian artist evehr and that she has a wonderful voice, but I've only really heard bits and pieces of her crossover stuff, my fav of which is surprise, surprise, her mega hit single "Baby, Baby". In my childhood memory, it shares space with early, curly-haired Mariah on VH1 (been doing lots of Mariah re-evaluation in preparation for a party we're throwing, more on that soon), and, listening to it now, it holds up just as well if not better than Mimi's wonderful early singles.

The lyrics are about all of nature showing love for that special someone and while, again, I don't know much about her Gospel stuff, some of the lyrics and imagery here (or is it just me that hears "devotion" and thinks religion) recall songs of worship. It's interesting to me hearing someone who sings about God using the same language to describe a more terrestrial love.

Of course, when I was six I had no idea Amy Grant usually sang CCM and I mostly loved her voice and the awesome solo.

Welcome back

2010-03-09T10:00:00.002-05:00

I was a bit worried that Tip's straight out of prison stuff might be "Dead and Gone parts 2-20". Luckily, this is very much not that. Can't wait to see what else he's got.

OSCAR FINISH LINE

2010-03-08T15:43:00.004-05:00

Things we made/some of our 25-30 guests brought to our Oscar party:

- An Eggucation (deviled eggs)
- An Edumame (Edamame)
- Avatarcado Relish (Guac with apples and blue food coloring)
- The Brownie Side
- Coco avant Pretzels (Chocolate covered pretzels)
- Crazy Liver (Chicken Liver Pate)
- Crazy Tarts
- Ginvictus
- Harry Pottered Rum
- The Hurt Lager
- The Hurt Latkas
- Inglorious Basil Pesto
- Inglorious Bas-tarts
- The Princess and the Frog Legs
- A Serious Amount of Cheese Balls
- Tuna Avatartar
- UPside Down Cake

An incomplete list, I'm sure. What a night.

OSCAR DEATH RACE PART ABRIDGED ENDING

2010-03-07T13:28:00.006-05:00

So, because of various factors such as my new job, my computer touch pad going insane, and general laziness, I'm not gonna be able to finish this as thoroughly as I wanted. So here are the rest of my winners, distilled for maximally concentrated anger and accuracy.

Visual Effects: Avatar. If it doesn't win this it won't win anything. But it will win this.

Cinematography: Avatar seems to be the favorite, but I don't have any faith in the Academy being willing to give cinematography to something that's mostly animated. So I'm going with Robert Richardson for Inglourious Basterds, possibly Tarantino's prettiest looking movie ever.

Animated Feature: There's a line of reasoning that says Mr. Fox gets this because Up's reward is the Best Pic nom. That's just not gonna happen. Up wins this, though I'm shocked that the Princess and the Frog isn't getting more Disney Return to Glory hype, regardless of it's quality.

Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique. 100%.

Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz 100%.

Best Actress: A week ago I still thought there wouldn't be enough people who liked Blind Side enough for Sandy to win. But the closer it gets the more I fall in line. It's actually not even that the competition isn't good this year, it's that I think Meryl, Carey, and Gabby will all get enough votes that none of them will be able to pull ahead of Sandra Bullock.

Best Actor: There's no reason I can see to bet against Jeff Bridges here.

Adapted Screenplay: This will probably be where they honor Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner for the former Best Picture frontrunner, the shallow, offensive, insipid, boring, stale Up in the Air. A win for In the Loop would be one of the most pleasant and shocking surprises in recent Oscar memory.

Original Screenplay: I liked all of the movies in this category, which is pretty crazy. Anyways, this is between Basterds and the Hurt Locker, and as stupid as I feel about picking Basterds for Cinematography and Writing and then Hurt Locker for picture, I just feel better picking the more talky Inglorious Basterds for a screenplay award.

Best Foreign Film: I've only seen the wonderful Un Prophete and the terrible White Ribbon, but we also have Ajami, which deals with the middle east, The Milk of Sorrow, which everyone seems to agree has no chance, and El Secreto de Sus Ojos, which is emerging into a sort of favorite because it's supposedly the most conventional and straightforward of the five, qualities which the Foreign Film voters have gone for in recent years ahead of innovation or critical acclaim. I'll buy that and go with the Argentinian entry, although I'm scared they might give it to Haneke and his ribbon.

Best Director: Even if they don't give Hurt Locker Best Pic, I'd be shocked if Kathryn Bigelow missed out on this award. She deserves it, too, and so much has been made of her potentially being the first woman to win it and the ex-husband narrative that I can't see AMPAS passing this one up.

Best Picture: Gaaaaaaawd I dunno. I'm just gonna say The Hurt Locker and be done with it. I think the backlash came too late.

Enjoy your Oscars, friends. Big party here.

DJ Paul is a dog, one you do not trust

2010-03-06T23:38:00.004-05:00

60. Three 6 Mafia - "Stay Fly (ft. Young Buck, 8Ball, and MJG)" (Columbia, 2005)

There are only a few minutes left in the annual day on which it is most appropriate to celebrate Tennessee's finest (3/6 of course), so we might as well do it with this monster, which made the transition from "Stay High" to "Stay Fly" effortlessly. I was absolutely overjoyed today when, on my walk to the subway, a dude rolled past me actually blasting Three Six.

OSCAR DEATH RACE CHOP CHOP EDIT

2010-03-06T11:11:00.001-05:00

Best Achievement in Editing

- Avatar - Stephen E. Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron
- District 9 - Julian Clarke
- The Hurt Locker - Bob Murawski, Chris Innis
- Inglourious Basterds - Sally Menke
- Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire - Joe Klotz

Editors. What do they do? Is it science? Is it art? Is it magic? It's a question that's forever haunted people without a film education trying to speak intelligently about the Oscars. So to help us out, we've brought in our friend Jawn Duffy, who actually sometimes edits video professionally (and should probably be doing so now instead of talking to us about it).

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: well Jawn, let's start with who got motherfucking snubbed

Jawn Da’vi: now I have to think about what movies came out this year

Jawn Da’vi:I really wish my category wasn't the hardest one to judge

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: Well then I'll start it off by suggesting two movies that had absolutely no shot at an Oscar nomination (but I certainly like more than Avatar).

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: Crank: High Voltage, which actually does its ADD style on purpose and is something special for it and House of the Devil, which as a horror movie is more or less ineligible for awards but has a better slow build than anything in a long time.

Jawn Da’vi: Well I should preface, that for me, I feel that editing is at it's best when I totally get lost in the world of the movie. People like to call editing "the invisible art" or whatever and that can be because there's always so much more that you don't see than what you do see (and wow, there is always so much more that you don't see). So when I judge editing, it's more about getting lost and not noticing things. Pacing is really important obviously, which is why action movies like Bourne that have recently won can be just as good as a slow burner. It's not so much about the technique, but more about the experience, which is why I love movies like Zodiac or A Serious Man, which I guess is one of my snubs, that and Parnassus

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: (which I still haven't seen, shame on me)

Jawn Da’vi: which I'm guessing was an absolute nightmare to edit

Jawn Da’vi: well, you have seen every other movie out there so it's ok (for now)

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: haha

Jawn Da’vi: but back to A Serious Man

Jawn Da’vi: I knew I'd like A Serious Man from the trailer alone. That is the most perfect trailer I have ever seen. It made me happy to call myself an editor. Which is good because that's how I go around introducing myself. Hi, I'm John Duffy, but you can call me The Cutter!

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: now, a question:

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: (as we move on to who should win) How much of a bloated, over-long film can be blamed on an editor? Like, if the editor of Avatar suggested that it be half an hour shorter, you figure Cameron would just be standing there, like no!

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: Although, wait, now that I look at it he's actually one of the editors argh.

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: but take that question in the abstract, I guess.

Jawn Da’vi: yeah, that movie was a mess. When you're in a movie theater and realizing how long something is, then it's just not good. A lot of that is probably Cameron's massive, facial-hair-needing head. When it comes down to it, Jimmy Camewrong is not going to want to get rid of something that he spent 18 years writing

Jawn Da’vi: like, the little seen or heard from guy that the Coens' work with seems to magically be on the same page as them

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: haha

Jawn Da’vi: it's almost like he's an extension of them. Which is why the realtionship between the director an editor is so important. Directors like Tarantino who work with the same editor over and over again is something that I like. There's a trust there where he knows what Sally likes to do and vice-versa.

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: I mean, I should note that I don't think length is Avatar's only editing problem.

Jawn Da’vi: Oh no, definitely not.

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: Several of its action scenes are completely disorienting in the worst way possible.

Jawn Da’vi: oh but it's an alien world so it should be right?

Jawn Da’vi: or I think it was a moon actually

Jawn Da’vi: man, I hate that movie (by the way, any defense of Avatar from me should be read as sarcasm).

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: noted. So which of these five is the best, you think?

Jawn Da’vi: well, I'll briefly run through the other 4

Jawn Da’vi: ok District 9

Jawn Da’vi: the first third of how this was edited had me completely freaking out. That is EXACTLY the kind of editing that I do, the connecting of ideas documentary style with broll on top, I felt legitimate while watching that. That and the Serious Man trailer made me really happy about what I've been doing with myself over the past 3.5 years

Jawn Da’vi: Inglourious Basterds I also really liked. The first scene alone, as mentioned by countless others, is exactly what film making should be. It took me a little while after that to realize what the film was trying to do, but I liked that, I liked how it turned out, and the storytelling kept me very interested throughout

Jawn Da’vi: Push, I haven't seen, but my question there is how great can the editing actually be with a title that long and ridiculous?

Jawn Da’vi: (pause for laughter)

Jawn Da’vi: OK, and finally The Hurt Locker

Jawn Da’vi: The Hurt Locker is exactly the kind of movie I was talking about in the beginning. From the first frame I was completely immersed. I'm so happy that there's no draft because if that's even a tenth of what it's like to be a modern soldier, I wouldn't even make it off the plane. I'm sure it did with many, I was physically affected watching that movie

Jawn Da’vi: Well maybe not really, but stuff was happening inside of my body

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: I feel like the tension in the Hurt Locker is something that us amateurs ofter give credit to the editor for.

Jawn Da’vi: that's true. I mean a tense movie is a tense movie for more reasons than the editing. But what that movie shows is that everybody from the top down all the way through post, was on the same page.

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: surprise, surprise

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: sorry, wrong chat window. haha.

Jawn Da’vi: haha

Jawn Da’vi: maybe it's just that we're talking about The Hurt Locker, but that "surprise, surprise" totally freaked me out

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: so is the Hurt Locker your pick of the 5?

Jawn Da’vi: yes, absolutely

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: MINE TOO!

Jawn Da’vi: one of the best I've ever seen

Jawn Da’vi: yay!

Jawn Da’vi: the world is safe!

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: OK, now that we've wasted all this time on our opinions, the more important question.

Jawn Da’vi: I've prepared myself to be ready if Avatar wins a bunch on Sunday, but if it gets this one, then something gonna get broke real fast

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: how scared are you that it will?

Jawn Da’vi: ooh, well. I feel pretty good about The Hurt Locker winning. It won the Eddie, right?

Jawn Da’vi: which is an actual thing

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: yeah

Jawn Da’vi: I mean, they can't give Cameron multiple awards

Jawn Da’vi: again

Jawn Da’vi: or maybe they can. But if he's gonna win one, it'll be for picture or director.

Jawn Da’vi: both undeserved

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: I agree.

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: and I also agree that Hurt Locker is taking this one..

Jawn Da’vi: if THL doesn't get it, maybe they'll skip down to Basterds

Jawn Da’vi: she's been in the game for a long time

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: Yeah, I wouldn't be at all upset if Sally Menke won it

Jawn Da’vi: she's to Tarantino what Schoonmaker is to Scorcese

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: Her work on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was pretty great.

Jawn Da’vi: and she was only working with half a shell

MaciejBasedOntheNovelMobyDickbyMelville: FIN

Jawn Da’vi: see, that's how you edit.

OK, so my computer is responding to the Oscars being tomorrow by being almost impossible to work with. I'll try, I promise.

OSCAR DEATH RACE PART REAL TALK

2010-03-04T11:34:00.002-05:00

Best Documentary Feature

- Burma VJ: Reporter i et lukket land - dir. Anders Østergaard
- The Cove - dir. Louie Psihoyos
- Food, Inc. - dir. Robert Kenner
- The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers - dir. Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
- Which Way Home - dir. Rebecca Cammisa

Who Will Win?: In many of the smaller categories it's foolish to pick a movie because it's the most popular or well known or has momentum. However, this is the category that only a few years ago honored March of the Penguins, so, lacking anything super-topical or about the Holocaust, I'm going to pick The Cove, which has won a few precursors and (whatever one says about its credentials as a Documentary) is pretty exciting. Everybody loves dolphins, right?

Best Documentary Short

- China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province - dir. Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill
- The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner - dir. Daniel Junge
- The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant - dir. Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
- Królik po berlinsku (Rabbit a la Berlin) - dir. Bartosz Konopka
- Music by Prudence - dir. Roger Ross Williams

Who Will Win?: Maybe one of these is a completely virtuosic example of documentary filmmaking, but I have nothing to go by except for subject matter. And while the death count of China's Unnatural Disaster might sway voters, I'd bet on the fact that if the Recession was enough to carry Up in the Air to Oscar Nominations and some kind of supposed relevance, I'm going to bet on it taking the day here too. That's The Last Truck, yall.

OSCAR DEATH RACE PART DESIGN

2010-03-03T15:54:00.003-05:00

Best Achievement in Costume Design

- Bright Star - Janet Patterson
- Coco avant Chanel - Catherine Leterrier
- The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - Monique Prudhomme
- Nine - Colleen Atwood
- The Young Victoria - Sandy Powell

Who Got Snubbed?: For how showy its costumes are and the fact that it got noms for Best Pic, Best Director, etc, Inglourious Basterds omission is quite a shock. Bridget Von Hammersmark and Shoshana's costumes alone are awesome, not to mention the leopard print hat.

Who Should Win?: I haven't seen The Young Victoria, Coco avant Chanel, or, shockingly enough Parnassus, sorry. But Bright Star has really ill costumes that go a long way towards developing the main character. So that one.

Who Will Win?: It may be oversimplifying, but never underestimate how much they love a royal period piece, never mind a Victorian one, never mind about the actual Queen Victoria. The Young Victoria is my pick then, though a movie about Coco Chanel could be trouble.

Best Achievement in Makeup

- Il divo - Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano
- Star Trek - Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow
- The Young Victoria - John Henry Gordon and Jenny Shircore

Who Got Snubbed?: Go figure the Oscars not recognizing a horror movie, but Drag Me to Hell should own this. As far as things that had an actual chance, District 9's snub here is very puzzling.

Who Should Win?: I've only seen Star Trek, and wasn't particularly impressed with the makeup. It was OK, I guess.

Who Will Win?: I think this'll be the one they'll actually give to Star Trek. Good for Eric Bana, I like that dude.

Best Achievement in Art Direction

- Avatar - Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg, and Kim Sinclair
- The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - David Warren, Anastasia Masaro, and Caroline Smith
- Nine - John Myhre and Gordon Sim
- Sherlock Holmes - Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer
- The Young Victoria - Patrice Vermette and Maggie Gray

Who Got Snubbed?: See, how can Inglourious win Best Picture when it's a period piece that can't get nominated for any Costume or Art awards? Forrealtho Coraline should walk this.

Who Should Win?: I don't think Avatar doesn't deserve this because it's largely animated. I think it doesn't deserve it because its world isn't particularly original. Not having seen Parnassus or Victoria (I promise I'll get better at this when we get to the majors), I guess Holmes' Dickens by way of Steampunk bullshit is better than Nine's boring bullshit.

Who Will Win?: I was thinking Avatar's gonna win this one, because Nine is so hated and everything. But John Myhre won this award for Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha adaptation, and that was even more hated than Nine, so I'ma go out on a limb here and say it. NINE!

Oscar Death Race part Sound

2010-03-02T19:02:00.006-05:00

Best Achievement in Sound Mixing

- Avatar - Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson, and Tony Johnson
- The Hurt Locker - Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett
- Inglourious Basterds - Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti, and Mark Ulano
- Star Trek - Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J. Devlin
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers, and Geoffrey Patterson

Best Achievement in Sound Editing

- Avatar - Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
- The Hurt Locker - Paul N.J. Ottosson
- Inglourious Basterds - Wylie Stateman
- Star Trek - Mark P. Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin
- Up - Michael Silvers and Tom Myers

Who Should Win?: Here's the thing. I know Sound Design is important in movies and I'm definitely affected by it when I'm in theater, but I'd just be pretending if I told you I could pick good from bad. So on this count, I abstain.

Who Will Win?: I try to look for reason in these categories every year. I know mixing's the one that once in a while goes to a movie that involves music (like Ray, Dreamgirls, Chicago, even Eastwood's Bird), but that's not an issue this year. I know Editing is the one that always goes to a really loud movie, but Transformers is nominated for Mixing! I know Mixing's the one that more often goes with the Best Picture, but Transformers is nominated for Mixing! The three in the last ten that have swept both categories have been Oscar heavyweights The Bourne Ultimatum, King Kong, and The Matrix. So who the hell knows?

Yet if you're gonna win your Oscar Pool, these will probably be important, especially in this year of seemingly sure things up top. In two categories that obviously have no fear of rewarding action movies, Star Trek could be a dark horse, especially because it missed out on a Best Picture nomination to that it was kind of supposed to get with the category expansion. But I'm gonna go with The Hurt Locker for Editing, because big, real explosions and gunshots are so integral to its plot. I'll split and take Avatar for mixing, because it's gotta win some shit, right?

Best Original Score

- Avatar - James Horner
- Fantastic Mr. Fox - Alexandre Desplat
- The Hurt Locker - Marco Beltrami, Buck Sanders
- Sherlock Holmes - Hans Zimmer
- Up - Michael Giacchino

Who Should Win?: I guess one could complain that Michael Giacchino's score for Up relies too much on one theme, but it's such a great theme. Of these 5 scores, I only really remember moments from Up and Sherlock Holmes, and I remember the former much more fondly.

Who Will Win?: I think Up will take it, actually. BAFTA, Golden Globes, and Crithatics Choice all bought it, and I see no reason that AMPAS shouldn't follow up. I'd imagine James Horner could play spoiler, especially if Avatar does well overall, but I'm not gonna bet on it.

Best Original Song

- "The Weary Kind" from Crazy Heart, written by T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham
- "Loin de Paname" from Faubourg 36, written by Reinhardt Wagner and Frank Thomas
- "Take It All" from Nine, written by Maury Yeston
- "Almost There" from The Princess and the Frog, written by Randy Newman
- "Down in New Orleans" from The Princess and the Frog, written by Randy Newman

Who Should Win?: "The Weary Kind" is the best of these. It's not amazing, or anything, but it works in the movie. "Take It All" is the best choice from Nine, I think, but that's not saying much.

Who Will Win?: I'ma put my money on the one that's sung by the guy who's gonna win Best Actor, written by a guy who looks exactly like James Cameron and the other guy who plays a guitarist in the movie and, in real life, has the same name as George Clooney in Up in the Air and is a bull rider turned songwriter. That's "The Weary Kind". It just seems so Oscary (especially with Randy Newman vote split, everybody hating Nine, and the other song being from a French movie that a total of 4 people in this country have seen).

The return of OSCAR DEATH RACE (shorts)

2010-03-02T15:43:00.007-05:00

We're just a few days from the Oscars, and just a few days after I finished talking way too much about movies I actually liked this year. Sadly, there's no other way to do it. So here we present our Oscar preview which, do to me having a job, is gonna be a hell of a thing to try and finish on time, never mind do with any amount of effort. Nevertheless, I feel like it's something we have to do. So the Oscar Death Race is going to be a sprint this year, but here we go, starting as we did last year with the non-Documentary Shorts, which might very well be playing in a theater near you as we speak.

Best Short Film, Live Action

- The Door - dir. Juanita Wilson
- Istället för abrakadabra (Instead of Abracadabra) - dir. Patrik Eklund
- Kavi - dir. Greg Helvey
- Miracle Fish - dir. Luke Doolan
- The New Tenants - dir. Joachim Back

Who Should Win?: By far my favorite of the five was Australia's Miracle Fish (which you can stream here, about a bullied kid who falls asleep at school and wakes up to find it deserted. It's not perfect, but the middle section in which our hero walks through the empty building is really great filmmaking.

Who Will Win?: I think that we can disregard The New Tenants, a silly little bit of violence with Vincent D'Onofrio getting emotional and Kevin Corrigan channeling Walken. I also think and pray we can disregard Instead of Abracadabra. I know everyone is saying that it's similar in style to Napoleon Dynamite, but I didn't think it was possible that a Swedish short film nominated for an Oscar could be this similar to Napoleon Dynamite.

So that leaves the two "serious" entries: The Door, which is about Chernobyl, and Kavi, which is about Debt Bondage in India. (I do think films being reduced to their subject matter sucks, but these are the Oscars). I'm split on whether the latter will be helped or hurt by its similarity in setting (and texture, it's mud not poop in this case, but it looks similar) to Slumdog Millionaire (that movie seems so long ago). In the end, I'll wager that it helps, and the main character's likability elevates it over the thoroughly bleak Irish/Ukranian film. That's Kavi for the win.

Best Short Film, Animated

- French Roast - dir. Fabrice Joubert
- Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty - dir. Nicky Phelan
- La dama y la muerte (The Lady and the Reaper) - dir. Javier Recio Garcia
- Logorama - dir. François Alaux, Herve de Crecy, and Ludovic Houplain
- Wallace and Gromit in 'A Matter of Loaf and Death' - dir. Nick Park

Who Should Win?: Probably Wallace and Gromit again, but I'd very much also like to praise La dama y la muerte, which is a jaunty little picture that seems to be of the opinion that if an old person wants to die, you should just let them die.

Who Will Win?: Nick Park already has three Oscars in this category (and one for Animated Feature), but I just don't see them giving it to anyone else, especially in a year when there's no hand-drawn option and no Pixar option either. Logorama is the only other noteworthy thing here is Logorama, an action cartoon almost entirely made up of corporate logos. It's conceptually interesting for about a minute, and then it's ruined by cop/Tarantinoesque dialogue that doesn't at all work as satire, so must just be written by idiots. French Roast and Granny O'Grimm are pleasant and shrill respectively, but both are minor even for this category. Wallace and Gromit all the way.

(Cartoon Brew has links to view all the animated shorts online here)

A palate cleanser

2010-03-01T22:28:00.004-05:00

We do on occasion remember that we are at heart a music blog, so as a bit of glorious respite from Year-End Movie Madness we present a track from Henrik Schwarz, Ame, and Dixon's new release on Innervisions. It's called "Berlni-Karlsruhe-Express" and it's certainly helping us start our week off in a forward-thinking manner.

Oscars soon. Then who knows what'll happen.

DUNNNNNN

2010-02-26T17:46:00.002-05:00

Finally, the big one, expanded to ten movies because there are like twenty deserving ones. I present to you the greatest pair of presenters ever to grace any telecast: Robert Mitchum and Sigourney Weaver!

YR NOMINEES

- Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
For Cage's performance, for the iguanas, for gleefully giving in its ending.

- Crank: High Voltage
For the great Statham surviving a fall from a plane, for taking cues from video games and actually meaning it, for sweet, sweet violence.

- Goodbye Solo
For Bahrani's continuing exploration of America, for the chemistry between Solo and Red, for the mountains.

- Hunger
For the shit, for the piss, for the acting.

- The Hurt Locker
For the virtuoso first scene, for William James, for the borrowed scene from Lost.

- Inglourious Basterds
For the gigantic pipe, for the dairy farm and restaurant scenes, for fun with regional accents.

- Pontypool
For the best new virus in quite a while, for Stephen McHattie's voice, for balancing theory, plot, and fun.

- Silent Light
For the sunrise, for the sunset, for everything in between.

- Summer Hours
For making a movie commissioned by a museum that questions the use of museums, for an amazing cast, for looking towards the future.

- Up
For those devastating 10 minutes, for the character design (Doug! Kevin!), for Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer's voices.

FINAL WINNER:
The Hurt Locker. So there.

We're gonna try to do an Oscar Preview next week, but God knows I haven't had anything new to say about movies in days now, so we'll see. (I guess luckily I won't have to talk about movies, just the Oscars. ZING!)

ALMOST DONE

2010-02-26T12:59:00.002-05:00

Actors! What can you say about 'em? Here's Halle Berry!

NOMINEES:

- Nicolas Cage for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
It's one of the craziest performances of his career, and you know that's saying something. His hunchback walk, his timing, his eyebrows, they're all excellent.

- Matt Damon for The Informant!
Damon's pretty much always good, but he's never been this funny, nor this good at subtly hinting at darkness even before things start to totally fall apart.

- Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker
The final shot of him here is as iconic an image as an actor can hope to have, I think. He has just enough swagger to pull this character off.

- Sam Rockwell for Moon
This movie had the potential to be dreadfully boring, but Rockwell's performance is hilarious and surprising in its wackiness.

- Souléymane Sy Savané for Goodbye Solo
He plays the title character with a kind of aggressive friendliness, but does wonderfully to make that friendliness not a mask to hide his inner troubles, but a genuine part of his personality.

- AND THE WIENER IS:
To the break of dawn! If you haven't seen Bad Lieutenant, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Cage is an absolute force of nature as usual, and with Herzog's help he gets a movie that fully rewards his madness.

WOMEN

2010-02-25T19:24:00.003-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen, to present the Maciej for Best Actress, I have to the honor to introduce two time Oscar winner (sadly neither for Big) and all-around hilarious dude, Mr. Tom Hanks!

- YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN:

- Isabelle Furhman for Orphan
Orphan is a very fun little horror movie that would be considerably less fun if Fuhrman wasn't so charming and evil. Creating a memorable horror villain is not an achievement that should go unrewarded.

- Charlotte Gainsbourgh for Antichrist
I'd assume that Embodiment of the Rage Felt at Thousands of Years of Oppressed Women is a role that many actresses wouldn't mind trying their hand at, but Charlotte attacks it with such a palpable darkness in her eyes that I have a hard time believing many other actresses could pull it off like she has.

- Maria Onetto for The Headless Woman
Lucrecia Martel's film about a woman who might have run someone over on a country road necessitates a supremely detached acting style, and Onetto, with her eyes, her movements, and her mumbling, very effectively gives the impression of someone who just isn't there anymore.

- Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia
She's so filled with joy here. The Julie parts of Julie & Julia are absolutely terrible, but any time Streep's Julia Child appears the fog is lifted. I just wanted to hear her talk and see her cook, and see her respond to people by leaning in with her head. My friends and I were left just doing the Julia voice for hours on end. If only this movie were just called Julia.

- Tilda Swinton for Julia
Obviously. She spends no time making her character likable and instead works on exploring the drunken mess for over two hours.

YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN IN THE SECOND ROUND OF CHOOSING:
Tilda, predictably. She's hella expressive whether she's wearing a black mask or a very shiny dress. The points in the movie at which you can tell she cares about the kid but not as much as she cares about herself are pure, wonderful character development by facial and vocal tics.

TELL ME WOT TO DO

2010-02-25T11:50:00.003-05:00

The lovely Liv Ullmann is with us this morning to present an award to the auteurs themselves. I've seen her direct a play and let me tell ya, the woman knows a little something about directing. WOOO!

THE NOMINAMANATED:
- Ramin Bahrani for Goodbye Solo
No one else this year synthesized narrative and observation of the everyday life of a community like Bahrani. His subtle nods to melodrama complement his neorealism perfectly.

- Kathryn Bigelow for the Hurt Locker
Who has any superlatives left for what she does here? The pacing, the repetition, the action, you can't fuck with any of it.

- Werner Herzog for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
This screenplay could very easily have been a slightly odd police procedural. Herzog shifts the tone to completely batshit and lets Nic Cage run wild and it comes out the other side as a sort of bizarro masterpiece.

- Steve McQueen for Hunger
Hunger, from the look, to the acting, to the ideas, is a very detailed film, especially considering that McQueen had to basically design three very different parts to it.

- Carlos Reygadas for Silent Light
Reygadas gave us more straight-up beauty this year than anybody else, which might be enough in itself. But he also made a great movie, delivering a story about a group of people I was completely unfamiliar with a nuanced exploration of morality and nature where lesser directors might have gone for exploitation.

- #1
Bigelow. Bigelow. Bigelow. Bigelow. Bigelow, Bigelow, Bigelow.

Obviously I'm running out of things to write about these movies, so luckily there are only three categories left. Sooon.

(original) WORD UP

2010-02-24T21:33:00.005-05:00

Our final award of the night (you think the Oscars take a long time), is presented by the lovely Holly Hunter. Have you seen Copycat? You should see Copycat. Harry Connick Jr.'s great in that too. Here's Best Original Screenplay!

- NOM'D:
- Olivier Assayas for Summer Hours
Whether or not you think Assayas coming back from B-movie Land is good, I'd think you'll be able to find something interesting in his reflection on what objects mean to us. The way he ends it (this is not the type of movie that can really be spoiled) with a new generation is wonderful.

- Bahareh Azimi and Ramin Bahrani for Goodbye Solo
The relationship between Senegalese driver Solo and suicidal old grump Red is written with warmth, grit, and an eye towards realism. It's another great movie from Bahrani (his 2nd co-written with Azami) about, to be purposefully reductive, America.

- Mark Boal for the Hurt Locker
Boal's script gives equal energy to investigating the psychological makeup of its characters and investigating the Action/War Movie Hero as a type.

- Ethan and Joel Coen for A Serious Man
It's some of the most effectively dark comedy they've written in a while, and it's overflowing with great ideas, not the least of which a character who for the first part of the movie is only heard screaming from the bathroom.

- Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds
I don't mean to keep harping on it, but Death Proof really sucked. So that the dialogue here is filled with so much tension, comedy, hell, even relevance to the plot and characters, is both a relief and an immense pleasure.

- WIN'D
I'll give this to The Coen Brothers for taking their style to an even darker place and doing so with a considerable amount of very hard earned laughs. The irony and cynicism not only let the emotion shine through; they enhance it.

(adapted) WORD UP

2010-02-24T19:22:00.003-05:00

It was much easier narrowing Adapted Screenplay down to 5 this year than it was narrowing down its Original counterpart category. Nevertheless, these 5 are awesome. Speaking of awesome, here's Gene Hackman to tell you about them.

-I NOMIT8 U
- Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Ianucci, and Tony Roche for In the Loop, spun-off from the TV show The Thick of It
Some characters in In the Loop are written so that you're almost scared for them to come on the screen, because they're gonna say something so darkly and angrily hilarious you might not be able to take it. That's a fucking comedy script.

- Neil Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell for District 9, expanded from Neil Blomkamp's short film Alive in Joburg
It's an excitingly plotted, politically interesting movie. The trope of a character who works for a giant organization or government and slowly discovers its evils is not an uncommon one, especially in movies about the future or alternate timelines, but Wikus totally works as a naive little prick who is in way over his head.

- Tony Burgess for Pontypool, adapted from his own novel Pontypool Changes Everything
Semiotic Zombie Flick is a great hook (if your target audience is me), and Pontypool delivers, even (maybe especially) when the characters have to talk their way through figuring out how they're gonna get out of their besieged radio station.

- Scott Z. Burns for The Informant!, adapted from the Kurt Eichenwald book of the same name
It's not saying too much that The Informant! had the most entertaining inner monologues of the year, but their progression from slightly unhinged and obsessive to completely out there is an achievement in both character development and comedy.

- Henry Selick for Coraline, adapted from the Neil Gaiman novel of the same name
I'm a sucker for kids stories that are both very dark and very gorgeous, what can I say? The differences between the "real world" and "other world" characters are wonderfully written.

- W1NN3RS:
All those In the Loop guys. It was the funniest movie of the year and it's not even close. To reduce it to a lot of cursing doesn't give it nearly enough credit, (though the cursing is really great). There's a wealth of great characters here, and about a billion great lines.

I WAS FRAMED

2010-02-23T20:20:00.005-05:00

Marty Scorsese is here. You may know him as that guy who only makes movies with Leo Dicaprio. They do look good though, so let's pretend he's standing next to a gigantic screen and gaze with him at stills from the movies nominated for the Maciej in Best Cinematography.

THE NOMINeeEeEeEES:

- Barry Ackroyd for The Hurt Locker
Ackroyd gets across the general grit of the Iraqi streets well, and the shootout in the desert looks awesome.

- Sean Bobbitt for Hunger
Whether in the harsh prison sequences at the beginning or the more ethereal stuff towards the end, Bobbit captures the texture of his scenes as well as anyone.

- Anthony Dod Mantle for Antichrist
The opening just looks so incredibly beautiful. I don't think think Dod Mantle deserved all the love he got for last year's hand held sprinting in Slumdog, but his black and white prologue is just unimpeachably gorgeous.

- Robert Richardson for Inglourious Basterds
After the disappointment of Death Proof I was very cautious in my optimism for Inglorious Basterds. The opening shot of the dairy farm immediately made me very comfortable.

- Alexis Zabe for Silent Light
You'd think that, after watching local news my whole life, a time-lapse of the sunrise wouldn't be such a big deal. You would obviously be very wrong.

WIN:

Alexis Zabe for Silent Light. There are a lot of wonderful uses of light in the movie, go figure, but it's not just cinematography calling attention to itself, it's absolutely essential to the thematic concerns of the movie. I really wish I had gotten to see this on a big screen and hope to at some point in the future.

AK-TINGH

2010-02-22T20:49:00.009-05:00

Two decades after being snubbed for his heroic performance as Balldozer in YMD favorite Vision Quest, Forest Whitaker won an Oscar for a very good performance in the otherwise very boring Last King of Scotland. Good for him. Here he is presenting the Maciej for Best Supporting Actress.

SUPPORT THEM:

- Marion Cotillard for Nine
Please don't take this as any sort of approval of Nine; it's quite the opposite. The fact that Cotillard was able to pull a memorable, human performance out of such a terrible mess of a movie is simply amazing.

- Mo'Nique for Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" By Sapphire
Completely batshit and understandable without being the least bit likable, Mo'Nique's performance is as amazing as everyone says it is.

- Samantha Morton for The Messenger
When you first see Morton's character she is reacting to her husband's death by consoling the messengers. She makes it seem like the most natural reaction one could have.

- Lorna Raver for Drag Me to Hell
Granted, a lot of this is makeup. But a lot of it is also awesome physical and voice acting. It's one of the most fun to watch performances of the year.

- Edith Scob for Summer Hours
As the matriarch in Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours, Scob is lively and thoughtful. Her eyes in an early scene in which she receives b-day presents are more expressive than Oscar Nominee Anna Kendrick's whole body.

MOST SUPPORTED BY ME:
I just can't bring myself to pick against Mo'Nique. Her performance is one of the most genuinely disturbing in years (and to be honest there's definitely residual love from Beerfest and her Real Talk with respect to the Oscar process).

DEE-ZIGN

2010-02-22T17:06:00.003-05:00

Moving along, here's Fordham University's own Denzel Washington to present an award to some folks who make fake worlds possible. Here it is, Art Direction and Production Design.

THE NOMINEES:

- Phil Brotherton, Bo Henry, Tom Proost, and Henry Selick for Coraline
Dark, fantastic, and slightly thrift store-y is pretty much what you would expect from Henry Selick and that's what's here. But it's great, and there's not one but two worlds of it.

- Karl Júlíusson and Tim Pannen for Antichrist
If you're gonna make a cabin/forest to stage Woman's explosion/revenge for a history of oppression, you better design the hell out of it. This is dark.

- Jess Gonchor and Nancy Haig for A Serious Man
Rabbi Marshak's office and Larry's neighbor's house are both absolutely perfect.

- Tom McCullugh and Brendan Rankin for Hunger
The shit-stained walls of the Maze cell have an incredible texture. Hypnotic shit.

- David Wasco and Sandy Reynolds-Wasco for Inglourious Basterds
The claustrophobic farmer's house, the grand theater on fire, the bar (with its tucked-away, villain-hiding corner), the tower in the film-within-the-film. The sets in this are

WIN:
The Wascos win it. I was going to give this to Coraline until the last second, but thinking about how many of the sets in Inglorious Basterds I remembered in detail swung it. It might be Tarantino's overall best looking movie ever.

DRESSY

2010-02-22T16:43:00.000-05:00

As at least one of the nominees (not to mention A Single Man) proves, pretty clothes probably won't make a terrible movie worth watching. But they can't hurt. Here to present some gorgeous clothes, the gorgeous Jane Fonda:

YOUR DESIGNERS ARE:

- Bina Deigeler for The Limits of Control
For Isaach de Banknolé's suits and Tilda Swinton's albino outlaw look (it would be gauche to thank for Paz de la Huerta's transparent raincoat and sweater, though the latter is the softest looking garment in the world).

- Monika Jacobs for The Last Station
Maybe I just got so bored of this terrible movie's plot, characters, and "ideas" that I had to focus on something, but I did really like some of the costumes, from some of Hellen Mirren's fancier dresses and hats to James McAvoy's more utilitarian work shirt, with the three buttons on the side of the collar.

- April Napier for Julia
This one gets nominated for the incredibly shiny green dress with gold shoes that Tilda wears in the opening and the solid black mask she uses later.

- Janet Patterson for Bright Star
It's essentially a movie about a fashion designer, so the costumes better be special. They don't disappoint.

- Anna B. Sheppard for Inglourious Basterds
Nazi uniforms are Nazi Uniforms, but Shoshanna's red dress is iconic and Bridget Von Hammersmark's outfits are even better. Her hat looks like it was made for that card to be sitting on it.

THE MOST BEAUTIFULLY ATTIRED:

Janet Patterson wins for Bright Star, which is a pretty good movie, by the way. The plaid worn by Paul Schneider is pretty great, but of course Abbie Cornish gets the best stuff. Her collars and hats help us understand the imagination of Fanny Brawne, who miss Cornish then plays quite well.

CHOP CHOP CHOP

2010-02-22T14:34:00.000-05:00

I think when we do an Oscar preview I'll have our editor friend Jawn come in and explain what a good Film Editor actually does. Until then, let's let a young John Travolta present my nominees for Best Film Editing and pretend we understand!

NOM/NEES:

- Chris Innis and Bob Murawski for The Hurt Locker
It's hard to recall an action movie this decade with so much tension, and I think tension is an achievement that can at least partially be credited to sharp, patient editing.

- Mark Jakubowicz and Fernando Villena for Crank: High Voltage
I don't know for a fact that Crank has more cuts than any other 2009 movie, but it sure seems like it. Neveldine/Taylor's mission of maximum visceral impact relies a lot on sudden, unexpected but meaningful ("WTF" is a meaning) edits.

- Sally Menke for Inglourious Basterds
Quentin's trusty editor again does a great job both in ramping up both the tension (the opening, the dessert scene, the bar scene) and the comedy (any scene with the Basterds and their victims). It's to her and the films credit that none of the scenes I used as examples of tension are free of comedy, and vice-versa.

- Joe Walker for Hunger
The film has three sections, all edited completely differently (rapid images of violence and squalor, a long, one-shot conversation, and juxtaposition of nature and a man dying) and successfully.

- Ti West for The House of the Devil
Ti West wrote, directed, and edited this 80s throwback, and the combination of slow dread, unexpected introductions ("are you the babysitter?"), and violent climax (not as good as the rest of the movie, but that was always going to be impossible) make this exquisitely-paced film an easy candidate for our editing prize.

W*NN*R:
At the risk of being like AMPAS and confusing "Best" with "Most" in a technical category, I'm giving the award to Misters Jakubowicz and Villena for Crank: High Voltage. "ADD," "MTV," and "short attention span" have been complaints about action movies for decades now, but no one has owned those things with nearly this much flair and insanity. It's an Achievement in Editing indeed.

MAKE UP BREAK UP

2010-02-22T11:18:00.003-05:00

In proud award show tradition, we retreat immediately from the glamour of an acting category into the depths of a so-called Technical Award. Here to present Best Makeup, the corpse of Jack Lemmon and the shockingly lively Cloris Leachman:

NOM NOMS (make-up design teams are huge, so whoever is most responsible for the winner can step up and pick the award up or have it mailed, lemme know):

- District 9
I think a lot of its best effects were combinations between Makeup and CGI, but the prosthetic work in District 9 is the most impressive makeup achievement in a Sci-Fi movie this year. I was suitably grossed out and interested in the transformation.

- Drag Me to Hell
Sam Raimi doing a B-horror movie was sure to mean some wonderful, gross prosthetic work, and there was definitely a lot of that in Drag Me to Hell. Most importantly, Lorna Raver gets turned into a walking old-person disease and the world is better for it.

- Hunger
You can't do a movie about a dude starving himself to death without a very committed actor and some good makeup, and Hunger thankfully has both. It's not just Bobby Sands though, and the hair and makeup of the other prisoners in the no wash protest is quite convincing as well.

- Moon
There's a lot of Sam Rockwell in this movie, and while the difference in his clean-cut character and his unshaven one isn't staggering, it definitely helps his character's considerably twisted arc.

- the Road
Viggo gets real gaunt and dirty, and while the movie itself may not be all that great, the look of the characters is never less than convincing.

A WINNER IS:

It's a two horse race here, and I'll take the silly horror make up of Drag Me to Hell in a photo finish over the sci-fi monstrosity of District 9. What can I say, I can't not reward a slobbery old hag with her teeth knocked out biting Allison Lohman's chin.

SPORTING ACTORS

2010-02-22T08:55:00.002-05:00

To introduce our first award of the evening, a very talented actress who you may know as the pre-Fred Thompson DA on Law & Order (or as a two time Academy Award Winner), the always elegant Dianne Wiest presenting Best Supporting Actor:

THEE NOMINEES IS:

- Peter Capaldi (In the Loop)
Everyone spits darts in In the Loop, but Capaldi gets the best lines and, even when his character is at a disadvantage, always seems like the most likely to either kill several people or implode completely.

- Woody Harrelson (the Messenger)
In retrospect, it's almost inevitable that Woody was eventually gonna get a part as a a troubled but hilarious alcoholic and hit it out of the park.

- Fred Melamed (A Serious Man)
There were some great monsters in the movies last year, and Fred Melamed's terrifyingly "nice" Sy Ableman is definitely one of them. I cringed every time he touched Michael Stuhlbarg's cuckold, and I'll take him here over Richard Kind's yelling from the bathroom (which was also great).

- Hilmi Sözer (Jerichow)
This is maybe, slightly category fraud-ish, but Sözer doesn't actually have the lion's share of the screen time in Jerichow and I need to honor him somewhere. The film simply doesn't work unless his performance is amazing, and it is.

- Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds)
He really is just so damn good in every scene of the movie he's in. Watching IB a second time, knowing the choice that Hans Landa makes at the end of the movie, made the way he builds the character seem even more impressive.

¡WINNER!:

Hilmi Sözer. Waltz deserves every award that he's getting (it's not like the Oscars were going to nom Jerichow), but I have to rep for Sözer here. He's tasked with giving a real emotional performance opposite actors who are being purposefully one-dimensional and he does it brilliantly. This awesome movie would be a disaster if he wasn't so good in it.

The Maciejs

2010-02-21T22:37:00.004-05:00

So the Oscars are coming up in two weeks, and we here at YMD HQ are busy planning the menu for our Oscar party and catching up on the last few pieces of terrible Oscar bait that we have yet to see. And, just like last year, we will get our epic Oscar preview some time next week. But this year, I'd like to spend some more time talking about movies I actually like. So, for the next few days, this blog will be the domain of the Maciejs:

Maciej Elegibility Requirements:
Debut, one-week theatrical run in NYC in 2009.

Oscar Categories that aren't Maciej Categories:
Best Song (they suck), Best Score (Up was the only one I remember standing out this year), Best Foreign Language Film (they're real movies!), Best Animated Feature Film (them too!), All shorts (I'll only get to see the Oscar nominees), Best Documentary (I've seen like two this year), Best Sound Mixing/Editing (I'm just not good with sound), Best Visual Effects (because Avatar ain't gettin' shit).

I've done entirely too much terrible Photoshopping for this. See ya tomorrow morning.

Ash Wednesday

2010-02-17T14:48:00.005-05:00

61. Miranda Lambert - "Kerosene" (Epic, 2005)
62. Big Black - "Kerosene" (from the Atomizer album, Homestead Records 1986)

"Kerosene" is a simple, direct title that, with a small amount of context, tells you most of what you need to know about the lyrical content of these songs. The female-sung, country "Kerosene" is about a wronged woman burning her cheating lover's stuff, while the Midwestern 80s noise-punk "Kerosene" is about a disaffected, small-town youth playing with fire. For a talented artist, a clichéd concept is as good a jumping off point as any, and these are very talented artists.

Krazy about Crazy Heart

2010-02-17T00:30:00.004-05:00

My expectations going into Crazy Heart were fairly low. Maybe it was the couple of friends who didn't like it, maybe I'm just so neck deep in Oscar buzz for shitty things that I'm starting to lower expectations right off the bat, I dunno. My friend Charles says I love any band that sings about drinking, and this movie has a bunch of drinking in it and treats itself like a big old country song, too.

And I'll definitely recommend Crazy Heart. I think it's a film that owns its clichés (conveniently also many of the clichés of country music). For example, when Maggie Gyllenhaal's character said that Jeff Bridges' character is just like "every other man," putting every ounce of twang available to her into that man, it for a minute seemed to me almost embarrassing. But soon after it became my key into the movie, an example well worn cliché, performed as one, that expressed a very true emotion. These kinds of traditional moments are infused into a contemporary world/story that contains alcohol rehab and songwriting royalties, and it's all filled out with well acted and written characters.

I'm not gonna say Bridges deserves an Oscar (anyways, I feel like his Oscar campaign is even more along the lines of "he's pretty good in this, but really, it's his turn" than most Oscar campaigns), but he's pretty much as good as a washed up country singer as you would expect him to be. His scenes with Robert Duvall are especially loose and wonderful. Gylenhaal is good too, as is Colin Farrell, whose character is a reflection of the movie's relative optimism - a modern country star who does his best to respect tradition while working within the Nashville system. It's not revolutionary, I know, but it seems to me both genuine and interesting, and I'll take that any day of the week.

Where you from? Oakland, smokin

2010-02-16T19:28:00.003-05:00

63. Luniz - "I Got 5 On It (Bay Ballas Remix ft. Dru Down, E-40, Humpty Hump, Richie Rich, Shock G, and Spice 1)" (Noo Trybe Records, 1995)

I was nine years old when this song came out and God knows I wasn't thinking of goin' half on a sack with anybody (maybe a sack of White Castles but my folks were paying for that anyways). Still, if memory serves (and it usually doesn't), this song coming on the radio or Rap City resulted in anyone within striking distance sinking further into their chair by about 6-10 inches (depending on height, starting position, and chair flexibility). I've never been to Oakland and am woefully undereducated on its history, but I have to imagine this is its civic anthem.

Cinema Shitaliano

2010-02-15T17:23:00.003-05:00

- You might think this screen cap is unflattering towards Penelope Cruz, but I swear it's no more unflattering out of context than it is in the scene I grabbed it from. Rob Marshall's Nine throws a bunch of very talented actors (and Kate Hudson and Fergie) into a creatively dead, ugly, boring movie and watches them try not to drown in a boring, misguided mess. Cruz actually does an admirable job once she starts acting, but before that happens the viewer is forced to sit through the above scene, in which she does a completely embarrassing SEXXY burlesque routine while singing a forgettable song.

- I can't decide whether Kate Hudson's "Cinema Italiano" scene is better or worse. With Penelope I was crying inside for this obviously talented actress trying to perform through a terrible costume and set; with Hudson at least I wasn't too troubled by her suffering. Kudos on casting Kate Hudson as a vapid, one-dimensional American blonde, I guess?

- I'd wager Marion Cotillard would be sitting on Cruz' Oscar nom right now if Harvey Weinstein hadn't gotten greedy and tried to run her as Best Actress (especially once it became apparent that people didn't like this movie). Besides her character having the most Oscar-y role and scenes, she's actually really great as Guido's wife. It's really impressive how much genuine emotion she gets from this material.

- DDL is just stuck here. His accent is silly, his mannerisms add very little, and I couldn't make myself give a shit about anything his character did.

- Fergie is well cast as what is essentially a monster.

- Nicole Kidman has nothing to do here.

- Sophia Loren has nothing to do either. She's just her because she's Sophia Loren.

- Judi Dench could do all of this in her sleep.

- How the hell does a musical based on 8 1/2 not have more interesting set pieces?

- Aside from very admirable performances from Cotillard and Cruz, this movie is exactly as worthless as you'd think.

Get me to the doctor

2010-02-11T21:05:00.006-05:00

64. David Bowie - "Blackout" (from the "Heroes" album, RCA, 1977)

I have been making beans and rice a bunch recently, as I don't have too much money and it really seems like something that someone who doesn't have that much money should be eating. Obviously beans and rice are also real delicious when prepared with even a tiny modicum of effort. I felt like really going in on some BnR today, so I thought I'd do the one thing that, in the 21st century, we all seem to agree makes any meal better. I threw an egg on it.

Beans and Rice with a Poached Egg (2 servings or so)

Make the rice however you want. There are hundreds of ways to make rice. I used Basmati cuz I had some laying around.

Start the beans by taking three slices of bacon and chop them up. Throw them into a medium-low saucepan that's heavy enough so as not to be useless. Render the bacon fat and then take it out with a slotted spoon, leaving the fat in the pan.

Next, chop half an onion and a stalk of celery and throw it into the bacon fat. Cook that stuff until it's soft and then toss in the bacon, a can of kidney beans, a 1/4 cup of chopped tomatoes, a teaspoon of something spicy (I made some chili powder a while ago, it's delicious, use hot sauce if you want tho), and some salt. Let that cook for like 15-20 minutes until it reaches the consistency you like.

When the beans and rice are done, poach an egg. Don't poach it too long, make it runny. Obviously I was too excited about this meal to transfer the egg properly but it looks even better this way. This should make enough beans for two dinner servings but I'll prolly do it in 1 1/2 cuz it tastes too damn good.

I saw your sister at the market

2010-02-10T23:22:00.002-05:00

65. the Exploding Hearts - "Throwaway Style" (from the Guitar Romantic album, Dirtnap Records 2003)

Yeah, they mostly died.

WHY ISN'T THIS A THING YET?

2010-02-10T15:23:00.002-05:00

If you enjoy tripping your balls off, laughing at political ads, and actors dressed up as wolves dressed up as sheep, you're probably going to like this gem from this lady:

She's running against Senate high elder Barbara Boxer in the fall, but first must take on her republican opponent in the primary Tom Campell, former financial advisor for the Governator. The gist of Fiorina's argument seems to be that Campbell has called himself a fiscal conservative, but is actually not. Somewhat of a "wolf in sheep's clothing," if you will. I bet you think you get the idea, but would be better served by taking that metaphor and acting it out for you over three and a half minutes:

Was I right? I was right, wasn't I?

It's definitely not TV.

2010-02-10T11:24:00.006-05:00

I don't always love everything put out by HBO. Tell Me You Love Me was the the first televised taint, and hopefully the last time I'll ever see one, Dane Cook's Tourgasm was a show starring Dane Cook, Bored to Death although better in the end, is still barely tolerable for me, and Arli$ was the worst thing to ever happen to my TV. Oh, also Entourage exists. My point is, they've had some misses in their past, every network has. And let's be serious, most networks haven't put out The Sopranos, Big Love, Six Feet Under, The Wire and about a dozen other critically acclaimed, obsession worthy shows. But here's my problem with their latest venture, How To Make It In America: they're not even trying. It's just another show about a tightly knit group of friends struggling to make it in the big city while living in their well-lit New York apartments in between going to swanky art openings and parties at rich people's lofts. It combines the relationship faux pas of SATCH (the H doesn't stand for anything, but makes for a more fun acronym) with the utter broness of that Marky Mark bullshit everyone keeps insisting is hilarious (it's not).

Yeah, this looks like the abode of a struggling artist.

This isn't a new thought, people complain about these shows all the time, but there's something so insipid and demeaning about How To Make It In America even for just a bad television show that really sets something off in me. It has a very Up in the Air-like "We're going to talk about the ECONOMY because THAT'S what REAL people are talking about" quality to it that just rubs me the wrong way, well...kind of like Up in the Air did. As someone struggling to make enough money to pay rent in New York (like I am) along with their close group of friends (like my friends) would tell you, it's hard, but also extremely boring. No, I don't want there to be a show about three people sitting in a Brooklyn loft apartment at 9am on a Wednesday drinking coffee, listening to music and talking about TMZ posts, because that wouldn't make for interesting television. But what I really don't want is for television and movie executives to make "relatable" shows that pander to idea that I want to watch anything that remotely resembles my life. Because they will fail. The shows I like have zero to do with my real life. I like to watch shows about deviant plastic surgeons, an island that may or may not be Purgatory, polygamy, and various "reality" shows which if you know anything at all, means anything but. While writing this I'm watching a movie about Nazi zombies directed by Joel Schumacher (I'm very split about how I will feel about this in the end, but you get my point). I know I'm not in the majority, Entourage is still pretty popular as I see from my facebook newsfeed. But I wonder if even they will embrace something as terribly written and produced as this pile of shit (note to writers: bros do not get down to Cobra Starship. Ever). I had high hopes for this show, as the opening title sequence is amazing, and was shot by one of my photographic heroes, Boogie, and I always enjoy a good title sequence.

In closing, this is the worst television show ever made. This is not my opinion, it is a fact. Disagree with me? Read the beautifully phrased subtitle at the header of this page (thanks, MacieJ), or watch the pilot here for yourself and decide. Or don't. I'm going to enjoy the rest of my snowday with some undead SS soldiers and close it with the new episode of Nip/Tuck.

Jerichow

2010-02-08T22:12:00.007-05:00

Tonight I will quickly recommend Jerichow, Christian Petzold's riff on James Cain's the Postman Always Rings Twice, at this point one of the foundational texts (Myths, even) of modern noir. Michael Sicinski wrote a great analysis of it at Cinema Scope, and on first viewing it's my favorite movies of last year. Petzold uses the traditional Postman myth to explore modern day Germany and its relationship with Turkish immigrants. So while Benno Fürmann gets the most screen time as the young poor dude who cuckolds the rich dude (and looking suspiciously like Randy Orton), it's the cuckold, a Turkish immigrant who owns a chain of snack shops and is married to a German woman, who is the center of his story. One of the ways this becomes clear is the performance of Hilmi Sözer, whose range of emotion stands in distinct contrast to Furrman and Nina Hoss, who mostly just brood, say their lines, and violently make out sometimes. But this works wonderfully, and is a great example of how by focusing on a single character and shading that character slighltly differently an old Myth can be transformed into something new. Watch a Postman adaptation (Luchino Visconti's Ossessione is awesome) (or, hell, read the book, it'll prolly take you the same amount of time), and then watch this movie. It's an adaptation that very much enriches the source material and is enriched by the viewer's familiarity with it.

(Netflix INSTANT)

An imminent attack upon my heart I fear

2010-02-08T10:31:00.004-05:00

67. Lene Lovich - "New Toy" (Stiff, 1981)
66. Lene Lovich - "Lucky Number" (Stiff, 1978)

Now that I've fully humiliated myself with my previous post, maybe I've ruined my chances of anyone reading this ever appreciating the wonderful Ms. Lene Lovich (I should have written this one first). As I said, when my best friend's mother gave me Stateless on vinyl, it rocked my world, and I listened to it pretty exclusively for a few months. These days, it makes a regular rotation every month or two, and hasn't lost a bit of its magic. Why she didn't completely blow up in the 80s will forever remain a mystery to me. All the components were there, but there might have been something about her performance arty way of doing things that turned people off. She wore brightly colored braids she fashioned into bows atop her head, performing her songs as if she was playing the lead in a fucked up gothic version of Grease, and occasionally involving half naked men and buckets of blood. So she did all of this, and made great pop music, and failed.

Yet some greater force allows Lady Gaga to remain alive, and successful. God is dead.

Tell me this song shouldn't have been a major anthem of 1980s materialism, Madonna be damned.

And finally, her biggest hit (to date mind you, she still makes music and I'm still waiting for her to blow up), "Lucky Number." Lovich once joked the song would have had more international success if there wasn't a chorus of men chanting "number two" at the end, but it makes her silliness even more endearing.

Short Film Sundays #1

2010-02-07T16:06:00.004-05:00

Since I'm usually too lazy (for no reason at all) to post on Sundays, I'm gonna start this thing (which I'm sure I'll forget to do next weekend. We don't watch enough short films. This film is by one of my favorite directors in the world, Guy Maddin, and was commissioned for the 2000 Toronto International film Festival. It's six minutes long, so watch that shit.

Would you like to come back as a laboratory rat?

2010-02-05T20:25:00.008-05:00

Way back in the day, I decided my cause of choice was animal rights. I don't know why. Wait, yes I do. Besides already hating meat, my official B-52's fanclub newsletter informed me that Kate Pierson was arrested for storming the offices of Vogue and protesting wearing fur (a New York Post headline read: "POLICE THROW PIERSON INTO LOVE SHACK" and no, I wish I was clever enough to make that up). I was enthralled. This phase lasted for a while, and while I still think that wearing fur, cosmetic experimentation, and vivisection are all disgusting and reprehensible, I'm certainly a lot more laid back about the whole thing these days (I still don't like meat though). When PETA and Rhino Records released a benefit CD together aptly titled Tame Yourself, I jumped at the bit.

Look at how early 90s epic this shit is. With the exception of the B-52's, who simply included a live performance of the classic "Quiche Lorraine," all the artists recorded new songs with messages of animal activism. Although the spirit of the record was respectable and the whole thing entirely well intentioned, it was a mess. The Indigo Girls AND Michael Stipe? No one can handle that. Lyrics like "Tame yourself tame/Blame yourself for you are to blame/Shame shame and with that bigger brain/You must tame yourself" kind of make me cringe to remember 1992 me thinking that this album was a stroke of genius. Yes, I thought the rhythm guitarist from the Go-Go's singing a song called "Fur" was genius. I was shocked and saddened when I couldn't buy a whole album of music by the band Fetchin' Bones. I was what you would call, a huge asshole. Self hatred aside, I found this CD in my house recently, and one great thing came out of this discovery: Lene Lovich. I'll be writing about her this weekend for the 303 countdown, but my discovery of this strange beast came from this very CD where she dueted with Erasure for the dancey number "Rage," and also with Nina Hagen on "Don't Kill the Animals ('91 Mix)." It should be noted that there are no other versions of "Don't Kill the Animals" other than the one mixed in 1991, but that is beside the point. According to an interview Lene says that she and Nina "wrote the song in about five minutes, it was actually really easy" which will soon be utterly shocking news to you as its lyrics are about as moving as a Puccini opera, and it utilizes (read: rips off) the beat from "Top That," the rap from Teen Witch. "How can that be bad?" I hear you asking. It can't. The video has Nina Hagen wearing a tail. I can't say anything to top that, so here it is:

Laugh at me, and my nine year old taste in music, I implore you. When my best friend's mother found out about my penchant for this CD however, she didn't laugh at me. She gave me Lene Lovich's Stateless on vinyl and changed my life forever (thank god).

You'se a Holmes (HOLMES!)

2010-02-05T13:52:00.003-05:00

I saw Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes yesterday (you know how seriously I take my Best Art Direction nominees) and I enjoyed it for the most part, though certainly not for the edgy-Dickens art direction nor the Original Score, which was fine or whatever (though, to be honest, paying attention to scores is not one of my critical strong suits). And Ritchie is still very far from an intelligent director; he makes something look interesting once in a while (there's a pretty cool looking scene on a dock with explosions and characters on different planes of action) but he still has absolutely no interest in subtext (the Holmes/Watson relationship here is not a subtext, btw, it's just out there, which is fine). And in a reboot that seems wholly focused on "updating" Sherlock Holmes for a new generation (a fast-paced one that doesn't have attention spans, as we've been told for 2 decades now), they really could barely have found a way to make the denouement any more obvious, clunky, or boring.

Now to Downey's Holmes, which is more obviously human (emotionally) than any Holmes I've seen on the screen. But that's not actually a compliment, just a symptom of the Modern Superhero Cinema, which requires that every Superhero (this is a Superhero movie for sure) be serious and deep (I must thank the screenwriters for sparing us a scene of young Holmes being ignored by his parents or something). It's a tribute to Downey that he is able take this less than interesting rewrite of an iconic character and makes him so goddamn fun (this applies on a smaller scale to Jude Law). Even when the mechanics of the plot, the shallow female characters, and the boring visuals grate, Downey's intelligence and physical skill (he def has some Chaplin in him here, it's not just the hat) keep this movie afloat whenever he's on screen. The Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Comedy was completely on point, it turns out. He's every bit as good here as he was in Iron Man, and probably even more impressive considering the kinda shitty movie he and Law are required to make fun.

L-A-T-E-R that week

2010-02-04T19:36:00.004-05:00

68. Len - "Steal My Sunshine" (Columbia, 1999)

I wonder (I also wonder whether or not the following is an example of getting too self-aware of how one enjoys music instead of just enjoying it) (but I don't think it is) whether if a song like this came out today, a goofy ("tribal lunar speak"?!?!) Canadian indie-rap song sampling a song I like (no matter how good it was), if there was any chance that I would like it. I'm not sure.

Luckily, this song came out in 1999 and it's amazing and I love it and I wish it was summer.

I am yours now

2010-02-01T17:54:00.004-05:00

While I don't agree with the Fader blog's description of Falty DL's remix of the xx's "Islands" (routine rhythms? gentle?! this track bangs!), I must thank them greatly for bringing it to my attention. Two of our favorite flavors of 2009 team up in 2010. I like it. Get the mp3 here.

Fashion request via Zhane

2010-01-30T14:26:00.005-05:00

Sorry for the low quality YouTube capture but ladies, can we please bring back this baseball shirt and cut-offs look this summer? So dope.

I might have a new Favorite Movie Named Election

2010-01-29T16:19:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I'm more or less joking, I've only seen Johnny To's Election the once and comparing it to Alexander Payne's wonderful film would be apples (for teachers) to (blood) oranges. But seriously, if you have Netflix (it's on instant) and like crime movies (and who is reading this and saying "Nope, don't like crime movies"), you could do a lot worse with an hour and a half than spending it with this movie about a Hong Kong Triad electing its next chairman.

Election is far from the first movie to present the mob as a business, but the way it does so is pretty wonderful, especially in the section that is essentially a long relay race (with a literal baton that is a symbol of power) in which you're not quite sure who is on whose side, but they aren't really sure either. The triad involved in the film has some well known and charismatic leaders, but when an organization so big and relatively shadowy starts breaking down, it's hard to tell who you should be taking orders from, never mind who the people around you are taking orders from. This is handled hilariously as a man beating the shit out of another man and his victim both receive phone calls with instructions to help each other out, then awkwardly do so.

It's not a John Woo-style bullet ballet, but there is some very effective violence. The acting is really awesome all around and the two stars are especially solid. Simon Yam plays the level-headed father of an adolescent son who is nevertheless the potential leader of a crime syndicate and Tony Leung Ka-Fai is his rival, who brings depth to a character whose wardrobe would probably be enough to make him reasonably awesome.

Heavily recommended, and I'm going to watch the sequel very soon.

21 years and I ain't ever met a good cop

2010-01-29T09:13:00.003-05:00

For someone who so often blasts the notion of there being any objective "good" when it comes to music, it's amazing the amount of disconnect (verging on disbelief) I feel every time I read/hear someone talking about Drake being good at rapping.

Two Lovers

2010-01-27T12:51:00.003-05:00

I fired up the Netfix Instant last night and watched James Grey's Brighton Beach melodrama Two Lovers, featuring Joaquin Phoenix as Leonard, a bipolar but in some ways very lucky (with the support of his parents, with the love of a Nice Jewish Girl who, for reasons not made all-the-way apparent, cares about him very much) man who lives with his parents and falls in love with his nothing-but-trouble neighbor, played by Gwyneth Paltrow with enough charm that you can see what he sees in her, but not enough crazy that you know very soon he should run away from her as quickly as possible (and that he won't). Vinessa Shaw (from the Hills Have Eyes) is great as the aforementioned Nice Jewish Girl, and the decision to have her character be not only caring and the daughter of the main character's father's business partner but also actually interesting is a great one. "Not only are you in love with a crazy person, Leonard," I screamed, "but you have this great girl who loves you who is amazing. Go back to her, you idiot!"

Yet there's something about Leonard's choices I understood, which I think is largely down to Joaquin Phoenix, who is as great here in his happy bits as he is in his mopey ones. He even raps and dances a bit which can't help but remind one of his recent whatever-the-hell-it-was/is, which works great, if you're me and love "real life" and movies interacting. And, while to color palette is kind of what you'd expect from a sad-ish 2010 movie about a loner in Brighton Beach, Grey has a hell of an eye for composition. I won't spoil the last shot, but everything about it, starting with the body positioning of the the two central characters and continuing with a zoom out to the rest of them, is just gorgeous.

RIYL: Melodramas, Joaquin Phoenix, New York Movies, Movies About Moving Back In With Your Parents, Visconti's Le Notti Bianche, GOOP (not really),