Video Librarian:Memphis - The Original Broadway Production [Blu-ray], Aggression in Young Children[two-disc set], Everyday Sunshine - The Story of Fishbone, HD Yoga[four-disc set], The Love We Make[Blu], The Opportunity to Succeed - Inclusion in Music Education, Outside In, Resilience, Songs Along a Stony Road, Valentino's Ghost, Cirkus Columbia, Domaine, Roadie, Morocco Fantasia - Al Di Meola[Blu], Strange Fruit - The Beat- les’ Apple Records, The Richard Thompson Band - Live at Cel- tic Connections[Blu], and World on a Wire - Criterion [2-disc set], Attenberg, Before Your Eyes, Echotone, and Lovelorn.
Endnote: Channing image from Otto Preminger's Skidoo.
Video Librarian:Janie Jones, Jess + Moss, The Doors - Mr. Mojo Risin’[Blu-ray], Queen - Days of Our Lives [Blu-ray], Trou- badour Blues, Last Fast Ride - The Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess, The Other F Word, Charlotte Rampling - The Look, The Love We Make[Blu], The Mighty Macs, Summer Holiday.
Endnote: Illustration by Heidi Estey from Have You Ever Had a Beard? The film plays the Northwest Film Forum on Mon., 3/5. The directors (Kathy Wolf and Pat Thomas) and participants (Calvin Johnson and Chris Estey) will be in attendance.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
January Reviews
These are the reviews and other pieces I'm working on this month.
Video Librarian:Green Guys, Bad Actress,Pearl Jam Twenty, Trigger,Tyrannosaur, Twisted Sister - From the Bars to the Stars [five-disc set],Usher OMG Tour - Live from London[Blu-ray], The Women on the 6th Floor, Barbershop Punk,Dish - Women,Wait- ressing and the Art of Service, Fingerplays! Hands That Tell a Story,Going Blind,The Great Race, Made in India,Mutant- es,People in White,Ready, Set, Bag!, The Shaman & Ay- ahuasca - Journeys to Sacred Realms, The Fat Boy Chronicles, Special Treatment, and Thunder Soul.
Some of these films premiered in the US in 2010, but didn't make their way to Seattle until this year, in which case I deferred to lo- cal release dates. Some missed the city altogether, in which case I caught up via DVD, Blu-ray, or download. Altogether, I saw over 250 titles, and wrote about most of them for Amazon, Siffblog, Line Out, and Video Librarian (the links lead to my reviews).
Just as my 2011 music list revolves around post-punk, a post- punk vibe runs through many of these films. Animals also a- bound, as do animalistic human beings, like Ryan Gosling's Driver with his scorpion jacket (a clue to his true nature).
The Tops: 1.Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn) 2.Poetry (Lee Chang-dong) 3.Hugo (Martin Scorsese) 4.Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki) 5.Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga) 6.Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt) 7. The Skin I Live In / La Piel Que Habito (Pedro Almodóvar) 8.Project Nim (James Marsh) 9.Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt) 10.Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives / Loong Boonmee Raleuk Chat (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Runners-up: 1.The Descendants (Alexander Payne) 2.Attack the Block (Joe Cornish) 3.A Screaming Man / Un Homme Qui Crie (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun) 4.The Help (Tate Taylor) 5.Beginners (Mike Mills) 6.Weekend (Alexander Haigh) 7.The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius) 8.Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino) 9.Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin) 10.The Time That Remains (Elia Suleiman)
Note: I enjoyed The Help. I realize I'm supposed to hate it, but I can't stand it when people do my thinking for me or assume that I don't know anything about African or African American cinema.
I can like The Help and I can like A Screaming Man, too. The thing is: Tate Taylor's mainstream movie got to me in a way Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's art house entry didn't. Which doesn't make it the superior picture; just one that had more personal resonance. I live for '50s-style melodramas about ordinary women, especially those who triumph over their small-minded oppressors, whether they're white, black, or red-eyed space aliens. The critical opprobrium heaped on this film carried a trace of misogyny that made me deeply uncomfortable.
Apparently, I'm not supposed to like The Artist either, in part because Harvey Weinstein produced it. But he didn't direct it, and the story centers on a man who refuses to compromise or to impose his will on others--un-Harvey-like qualities. In the film, he triumphs over adver- sity. In real life, it doesn't always work that way, but The Artist and Hugo are movies about movies and their makers. Not their producers.
Second Runners-up: 1.A Separation (Asghar Farhadi) 2.Moneyball (Bennett Miller) 3.The Princess of Montpensier (Bertrand Tavernier) 4.Norwegian Wood (Tran Anh Hung) 5.Hanna (Joe Wright) 6.Melancholia (Lars Von Trier) 7.Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen) 8.Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson) 9.The Yellow Sea (Na Hong-jin) 10.Winnie the Pooh (Don Hall and Stephen J. Anderson)
Openings:Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opens at the Metro Cinemas (and other theaters) on 1/6 and A Separation on 2/3 (venue TBA).
Worthy of note:50/50 (Jonathan Levine), The Arbor (Clio Barnard), Aurora (Cristi Puiu), Bellflower (Evan Glodell), Car- ancho (Pablo Trapero), Circumstance (Maryam Keshavarz), Contagion (Steven Soderbergh), Curling (Denis Côté), Gods / Dioses (Josué Méndez), TheGuard (John Michael McDonagh), Henry's Crime (Malcolm Venville), The Girl / Flickan (Fredrik Edfeldt), Hideaway / Le Refuge (François Ozon), The Ides of March (George Clooney), Kaboom (Gregg Araki), The Piano in a Factory (Zhang Meng), Putty Hill (Matt Porterfield),The Rum Diary (Bruce Robinson), Submarine (Richard Ayoade), Toast (S.J. Clarkson), The Tree (Julie Bertuccelli), Vampire*, Vanishing on 7th Street (Brad Anderson), The War Horse (Steven Spielberg), Warrior (Gavin O'Connor), Win Win (Tom McCarthy), X-Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn), and Young Adult (Jason Reitman).
* I left out the director and don't want to reformat the whole paragraph. Vampire is the first English-language effort from All About Lily Chou Chou's Shunji Iwai.
They've done better:A Dangerous Method (David Cron- enberg), The Future (Miranda July), My Week with Marilyn (Richard Curtis), The Sleeping Beauty (Catherine Breillat), Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols), and The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick).
Worthy of note:Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press), Broken Doors (Goro Toshima), Color Me Obsessed (Gorman Be- chard), Crooked Beauty (Ken Paul Rosenthal), Girls on the Wall (Heather Ross), (POM Wonderful Presents)The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (Morgan Spurlock), Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (Stuart Schulberg), Pearl Jam Twenty (Cameron Crowe), Rachel (Simone Bitton), Silver Girls / Frauenzimmer (Saara Alia Waas- ner), Sin by Silence (Olivia Klaus), Still Bill (Damani Baker and Alex Vlack), The Weird World of Blowfly (Jonathan Furmanski).
Missed (or haven't seen yet):13 Assassins (Takashi Miike),A Brighter Summer Day / Gu Ling Jie Shao Nian Sha Ren Shi Jian (Edward Yang), The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg), Cap- tain America (Joe Johnston), Carnage (Roman Polanski), Cedar Rapids (Miguel Arteta), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher), Incendies (Denis Villeneuve), The Interrupters (Steve James), J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood), Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan), Margin Call (J.C. Chandor), The Muppets (James Frawley), Mys- teries of Lisbon (Raul Ruiz), Nostalgia for the Light / Nostalgia de la Luz (Patricio Guzmán),Shame (Steve McQueen), Source Code (Duncan Jones), Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder), Terri (Azazel Jac- obs), Tomboy (Céline Sciamma), The Trip (Michael Winterbot- tom), and We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay).
Note:Tomboy, which played the 2011 Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, opens at SIFF Cinema on 1/6. Certified Copy, Nostalgia for the Light, and Of Gods and Men made my 2010 "missed" list...and I still haven't caught up with any of them yet. Looking forward to it.
Yes, I did see...Bridesmaids. And I sure didn't laugh much, but I'm glad that Jill Clayburgh, perfectly cast as Kristin Wiig's mother, went out with a hit. Clayburgh's daughter (with David Rabe), Lily Rabe, who also got her start on the stage, proves her own mettle in Christopher Munch's Letters from the Big Man, an animal-oriented film almost as strange as Uncle Boonmee.
A final thought: Shame on The New Yorker's David Denby for breaking the review embargo regarding Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--but more so for his spoiler regard- ingThe Skin I Live In. And shame on his colleague, Richard Brody, for spreading the disease by quoting from Denby's Skin review (though I still enjoyed Brody's comments about Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol). Critics!
Endnote: A work in progress. Drive image from Collider.
To clear up any confu- sion: This isn't a list of film scores or soundtracks. It's a list of music recommended for movie lovers such as myself. Some independent film fans prefer mainstream movie fare. Similarly, some art house aficionados prefer major-la- bel music. There's nothing wrong with that; I just can't relate to it (and try to avoid giving the Man my money whenever possible).
If you share my taste in movies, there's a good chance you might share my taste in music. And to further clarify matters, I've drop- ped Swingin' from the title of these posts, i.e. Songs for Swing- in' Cineastes. I thought it was funny, and I can't resist a Frank Sinatra reference, but I think I'm gonna make 2012 about par- ing things down and eliminating some of the gobbledegook.
Links lead to my reviews for AndMoreAgain and Line Out.
Runners-up: 1. Girls Names - Dead to Me (Tough Love/Slumberland) 2. La Sera - La Sera (Hardly Art) 3. Sonny & the Sunsets - Hit After Hit (Fat Possum) 4. AM & Shawn Lee - Celestial Electric (Eighteenth Street Lounge/Fontana) 5. Keren Ann - 101 (Blue Note/EMI) 6.Still Corners - Creatures of an Hour (Sub Pop) 7. Thee Oh Sees - Carrion Crawler/Dream (In the Red) 8.Swiftumz - Don't Trip (Holy Mountain) 9. Cave - Neverendless (Drag City) 10. The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (History Always Favours the Winners)
Note: listen to the entirety of An Empty Blisshere.
Worthy of note: Dum Dum Girls - Only in Dreams (Sub Pop), the Fresh & Onlys - Secret Walls (Sacred Bones), Iceage - New Brigade (What's Your Rupture), Jacuzzi Boys - Glazin' (Hardly Art), Jeffrey Lewis - A Turn in the Dream-Songs (Rough Trade), Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will(Sub Pop), James Pants - self-titled (Stones Throw), The Strange Boys - Live Music (Rough Trade), Times New Viking - Dancer Equired (Merge), Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring for My Halo (Matador), Vivian Girls - Share the Joy (Polyvinyl Record Co.), Rusty Willoughby - Cobirds Unite (Local 638), and Wooden Shjips - West (Thrill Jockey).
Love what I heard (need to hear more): Alvarius B - Baroque Primitiva (Abduction), Charles Bradley - I Believe in Your Love (Daptone), Dirty Beaches - Badlands (Zoo Music), Kaleidoscope - self-titled (Shadoks), King Midas Sound - Without You (Hyperdub), The Men - Leave Home (Sacred Bones), Moon Wiring Club - A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding (Gecophonic), Nouvelle Vague - Couleurs Sur Paris (Kwaidan), Peaking Lights - 936 (Not Not Fun), Roll the Dice - In Dust (Leaf), Sea Pinks - Dead Seas (CF/Recs), Various Artists - Those Shocking Shaking Days: Indonesian Hard, Psychedelic, Progressive Rock and Funk 19- 70-1978 (Now-Again), Various Artists - Fac. Dance: Factory Records 12" Mixes & Rarities 1980-87 (Strut), and Various Ar- tists - Wallahi Le Zein! Wezin Jakwar & Guitar (Latitudes).
On my list: Can - Tago Mago: 40th Anniversary (Mute), The Fall -This Nation's Saving Grace: Omnibus Edition (Beggars Ban- quet), Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou - The 1st Album (Ana- log Africa), Brenda Ray - Walatta (EM Japan), The Red Crayola - God Bless the Red Krayola and Parable of Arable Land (Snapper- Charly), ROB - Funky Rob Way (Analog Africa), Talk Talk - Laughing Stock (Ba Da Bing), Vagrants - I Can't Make a Friend (LitA), and Willie Wright - Telling the Truth (Numero Group).
Top singles (I like pop, too): 1. Adele - "Rolling in the Deep" (Columbia) 2. Lady Gaga - "Born This Way" (Interscope) 3.James Blake - Tie: "A Limit to Your Love" and "The Wilhelm Scream" (Atlas/A&M) 4. The Horrors - "Still Life" (XL Recordings) 5. TV on the Radio - "Caffeinated Consciousness" (Interscope) 6. Tie: Spoek Mathambo - "She's Lost Control" (Sub Pop) and Luis & the Wildfires - "Digital" (Wild/Norton) 7.The Pack a.d. - "Haunt You" (Mint) 8. Radiohead - “Lotus Flower” (TBD) 9.Bill Callahan - "America" (Drag City) 10.Cate Le Bon - "It Puts Me to Work" (The Control Group)
Worthy of note:Black Bananas with Kurt Vile - "Before They Make Me Run" (Drag City), Field Music - "(I Keep Thinking about) A New Thing" (Memphis Industries), Lykke Li - "Youth Knows No Pain" (Atlantic), Neverever - "Wedding Day" (Slumberland), and Young Magic - Tie: "Sparkly" and "Slip Time" (Carpark Records).
Labels of the year: Sacred Bones, Slumberland, and Sub Pop.
Bonus: Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad (paperback edition). Some of the music biz details ring true, some don't, but Egan is a brilliant structuralist, who ties all the disparate stories and eras together in an ingenious manner.
Rest in peace: Trish Keenan of Broadcast. Too fucking soon.
Endnote: The usual disclaimer applies. This list doesn't represent the best music of the year, but the best of the music I heard (I'm primarily a film writer, and my movie list provides a more accur- ate snapshot of my taste). Given unlimited time, financial resour- ces, and industry connections--which I have in the smallest of quantities--it might look different. Except for Henge Beat.
Image: My pic of Total Control's Dan Stewart at the Crocodile.
Thursday, December 01, 2011
December Reviews
These are the reviews and other pieces I'm working on this month.
Video Librarian:CD Highway[six-disc set], Eastern Voices,I'm Glad My Mother Is Alive, The Piano in a Fac- tory, Boardwalk Empire - The Complete First Season[5- disc set], Mildred Pierce [two-disc set], Putty Hill - Col- lector's Edition [two-disc set], When Strangers Click, Placebo - We Come in Pieces[Blu-ray], God Bless Ozzy Osbourne [Blu-ray], Daddy Longlegs,and Deep Purple with Orchestra[Blu-ray].
Endnote: ACR image from Amazon/SoundUnwound.
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
November Reviews
These are the reviews and other pieces I'm working on this month.
Amazon Theatricals: Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss, Alexander Payne's The Descendants (with George Cloon- ey), and Martin Scorsese's Hugo (with Asa Butterfield).
Video Librarian:From Trash to Tunes, Girls on the Wall,Pink Saris, Queen of the Sun- What Are the Bees Telling Us?, Riot Acts - Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance,Silver Girls, Women in the Dirt,Yogiños - Yoga for Youth: Vishnu's OHMazing Journeys,Fambul Tok, Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power Live, Mr. Nice, Out Late,A Passionate Woman[2-disc set], The Tree.
Endnote: Image from Wikipedia (screen grab from video taken at the Soft Moon show on Feb. 6th, 2011).
I write about popular music and film and the relationship between the two. I'm Irish on one side, Italian on the other—British on both. I was born in Connecticut (Far From Heaven), raised in Alaska (Northern Exposure), and I've lived in Seattle, WA (Trouble in Mind) since 1988.
March Reviews
