mooooovies (#3)

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

(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

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)

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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.