Smarter and Saltier: New Music from Roger Joseph Manning Jr., Marykate O'Neil, Mr. Russia, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and More

Roger Joseph Manning Jr., Catnip
Dynamite, Oglio Records [2/3/09]

By the name, I assumed that Roger Manning was the same
gent who recorded for SST and Shimmy Disc in the 1980s. Au
contraire! And I suppose that's partly why this arranger/session
musician/Jellyfish co-founder uses his middle name plus "Jr."

Manning's glam power-pop exists a solar system away from
that other fellow's antifolk tunes. Instead, he recalls ELO, Cheap
Trick, and Sweet—three of my favorite bands. Better yet, he
evokes the era of teenyboppers and shiny shirts without falling
into the tribute-artist trap. Manning comes close, but I'd rath-
er listen to a man who takes inspiration from Jeff Lynne and Rob-
in Zander than James Blunt and Michael Bublé (sorry, guys).
Plus, the US bonus tracks include Thomas Dolby's "Europa and
the Pirate Twins" and Elton John's "Love Lies Bleeding."

Mr. Russia, Teething, Lens Records [2/17/09]

This Chicago quartet pounds out screamo sans guitar. Sample lyrics from "XOXO": "Wanna get you down on your knees, baby baby, say please" and "Baby baby, let me under your skirt, baby
baby, I swear it won't hurt." Then in "Pretty Girls," Ivan Russia yells, "Pretty girls don't make mistakes!" Repeatedly. (Inset photos indicate on-stage megaphone use.) Granted, these charming lyrics might represent role playing, as in Husker Du's "Diana," wherein a predator speaks from his point of view, but it's hard to tell, though Russia has described the former as "a catcall," i.e. "the boy keeps trying to get the girl." I'll buy it—but I don't have to like it.

Marykate O'Neil, Underground,
Nettwerk/71 Recordings [2/3/09]

I just don't think the underground is ever
over, I just think sometimes it is harder to find.
--Marykate O'Neil

Combined with her forthright,
girlish vocals, Boston-to-New
York transplant MaryKate
O'Neil's piano-based melo-
dies make for a smarter,
saltier version of "Have
a Nice Day"-era pop.

On her fourth full-length,
O'Neil sounds like a folkier, slightly more nasal Carole King or
Nellie McKay (and I don't mean "nasal" as a putdown; O'Neil uses
more of a "head voice" than a classically-trained diaphragm voice).

If her faster-moving, mandolin-decorated cover of "Different for
Girls" can't quite compete with Joe Jackson's sublime original, it's
still refreshing to hear a woman take on his very male frustration,
i.e. "What the hell is wrong with you tonight/I can't seem to say
or do the right thing" (I fell in love with that song back in high
school). Jill Sobule ("I Kissed a Girl") provides "vocals, gui-
tars, casio, organ, drums, knee slaps, dancing, and producing."

Or, the Whale, Light Poles and Pines, Or, the Whale, LLC

Ever since we parted ways, my notes are flat.
--Or, the Whale, "Death of Me"

On Light Poles and Pines, this San Francisco collective ramb-
les their way through 13 tracks of tuneful indie-pop with country
trimmings. The wood-grain CD cover, with its stylized painting of
a farm, pretty well sums up the sounds within. Or, the Whale's
music isn't simple (or simplistic), but rather bright, clean, and
woozy all at the same time. My tolerance for country-oriented
anything is low at best, so I can't say I love this record, but it's a
pleasant enough way to pass the time. Extra credit for the well
honed harmonies, the omnichord, and the always-welcome saw.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart,
self-titled, Slumberland [2/3/08]

Jangle, jangle, jangle all the way home. On their buoyant deb-
ut, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart live up their extrava-
gant billing with a pure-hearted approach to noise pop. Previous
comparisons to House of Love and (early) My Bloody Valentine
make perfect sense, and yet this boy/girl quartet doesn't sound
much like the Vivian Girls, who've been compared to many of the
same shoegaze/C86 acts, but have a more pronounced girl group
sound (though closing track "Gentle Sons" does boast that immor-
tal "Be My Baby"/"Just Like Honey" beat). If you remember the
Mighty Lemon Drops with fondness, you're sure to feel the
same way about this fabulously jangly foursome.

Click here for an mP3 of "Everything with
You" And here for "Young Adult Friction"

Endnote: For more information about Roger Joseph Man-
ning, Jr., please click here; for Marykate O'Neil, here; for Mr.
Russia, here or here; for Or, the Whale, here; and for the
Pains of Being Pure at Heart, here or here. Cheap Trick
image from MOG; O'Neil (by Sarah Bastin) from her website.

World of Echoes (Reprise): Wild Combination

I recently reviewed the following for Video Librarian, and thought it was worth sharing. Click here for my review of the theatrical feature.

Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell [***1/2]

It's hard to be ahead of your time, even if, in retrospect, Charl-
es "Arthur" Russell wasn't doing anything all that unusual. He
sang, produced, and played the cello. There's nothing overtly
strange about his music, except that it's ethereal without ever
entering the more recognizable realms of psychedelia or new age.

And there you have the makings of a cult artist, which is
where Wild Combination begins, when Russell was just
another Iowa kid, playing in the school orchestra. After his
father, Chuck, discovered pot paraphernalia in his bedroom,
they fought, and Arthur hit the road. The year was 1967.

In an archival interview, Allen Ginsberg recalls meeting him in
the Bay Area, where Russell accompanied his readings, an association
that continued after he moved to New York in 1974. There, Arthur
combined folk, avant-garde, proto-punk, disco, garage, and house.

[video]
DVD extra - Jens Lekman performing Russell's "A Little Lost"

While he was experimenting with different musical forms,
he was also "transitioning" from straight to gay. Granted, his
musical approach wasn't mainstream, and he recorded under
a variety of pseudonyms, but he never really "played well with
others." It turned out for the best, since he was always meant
to be a solo artist, and it's in that mode that he recorded the
singular songs for which he's best remembered today.

Fittingly, Matt Wolf's debut is more than just a by-the-num-
bers biodoc about an obscure artist, since the 24-year-old
has unearthed an impressive array of rare material, staged
evocative recreations that rarely draw attention to them-
selves, and lined up eloquent speakers like Philip Glass, Er-
nie Brooks, and Russell's partner, Tom Lee. If his portrait
sounds more like a rock documentary than a queer film,
that's because it plays that way until the touching final act.

Extras include 25 minutes of performance footage (1985-
'89), a rambling yet revealing 1970 cassette letter to his par-
ents, Ginsberg's chant at his funeral, and spare and sympath-
etic covers by Arthur’s Landing (featuring Brooks), Joel Gibb
(Hidden Cameras), Verity Susman (Electrelane), and Jens
Lekman, who appears in the film. Highly recommended.

Endnote: This is the second title in my embarrassingly irreg-
ular Movie of the Month series. Click here for the first entry,
The Rabbit Is Me, one of the finest reissues of 2008, and here
for Chris & Don. Image from JamesWagner.com ("from Terrace
of Unintelligibility by Phil Niblock, courtesy of Audika Records").

December 2008 Reviews

These
are the
reviews,
interviews,
and other
ephemera
I'm work-
ing on
this
mon-
th.


Amazon DVDs: Poor Little Rich Girl - The Barbara Hut-
ton Story [two-disc set] (with Farrah Fawcett), Patti Smith -
Dream of Life, Wu - The Story of the Wu-Tang Clan,
and Saxondale - Complete Seasons 1 & 2 [three-disc set].

Amazon Theatricals: Doubt (Oscar bait with Meryl
Streep, Amy Adams, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman), Noth-
ing Like the Holidays (Latino dramedy with Alfred Molina
and Freddy Rodríguez), and Timecrimes (Spanish time-
travel thriller to be remade by David Cronenberg).

Still playing or yet to open: Breakfast with Scot, Burn After Read-
ing, Igor, Lakeview Terrace, Let the Right One In, Milk, Nick and Nor-
ah's Infinite Playlist, Rachel Getting Married, and Waltz with Bashir.

Seattle Film Blog: Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, Carl Theodor
Dreyer's Day of Wrath, and my tops of 2008 film list.

I also cleaned up the following: After the Wedding, Army of Shadows, Bamako, Brigitte et Brigitte, Colossal Youth, Eight Deadly Shots, Festival, Half Nelson, Mala Noche, Mutual Appreciation, My Suicidal Sweetheart (formerly Max and Grace), Russian Dolls, Skin, Skin, Sophie Scholl - The Final Days, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, The Witnesses, and chats with Gregg Araki, Lynn Shelton, Robinson Devor, Keith Fulton, and John Scheinfeld.
The pieces were searchable, but the old links pointed to corrupted pages. A blogger's work is never done!

Video Librarian: Gitane Demone - Life After Death [two-disc set], The House of the Rising Punk, Live from Abbey Road - Best
of Season One [two-disc set], Smashing Pumpkins - If All Goes
Wrong [two-disc set], Johnny Winter - Live Through the '70s,
Wu - The Story of the Wu-Tang Clan, ZOOM - Back to the
'70s [two-disc set], Deciphering Dyslexia, Going on 13, Grey,
Black and Blue – Nursing Home Violence, Just Me, Dear Talu-
la, The Female Face of AIDS - Crisis in Malawi, Nickelback -
Live at Sturgis 2006, Passion & Power - The Technology of
Orgasm, Living Colour - New Morning: The Paris Concert,
Chic - Live at Budokan, The Early Works of Cheryl Dunye.

Wu Tang images from Rock the Bells (Day 1)/Flickr 

(July 28, 2007) by Undisputed Wes (SitDownStandUp.com).

Essential Elegance: Just Like Heaven: A Tribute to the Cure, Copper Sails, Fugitive Kind, and More

Various Artists, Just Like Heav-
en: a Tribute to the Cure, Ameri-
can Laundromat Records [1/27/09]

After Dinosaur Jr. sunk their substantial chops into "Just Like Heaven," they rendered all subsequent Cure covers superfluous. It's not that Robert Smith's lipstick-smeared combo crafted ridiculously complex songs. On the contrary, admirers tend to embellish them needlessly, instead of finding a way to preserve their essential elegance. J. Mascis, Murph, et al got the balance right.

Of the 16 tracks on Just Like Heaven, Dean & Britta and the Wedding Present provide the finest. Respectively: a drowsy "Friday I'm in Love" and rambunctious "High." Other than stripping things down and playing with the pace, they honor the original material. Kitty Karlyle provides the weakest, an overly-emphatic "In Between Days." Though perfectly competent, it's just too
emo (the emotion is already implicit in the words and melody).

Other notable interpreters include Tanya Donnelly, the Rose-
buds, and the Submarines. Overall: neither bad, nor embar-
rassing; the entire enterprise is just largely...extraneous.

Click here for my interview with Dinosaur Jr.

Copper Sails, Hiding Place, self-released [1/13/09]

A lot of bands get compared to U2...because a lot of bands
sound like U2. Virginia's Copper Sails don't sound exactly
like the Irish quartet—they also recall Coldplay—but Boomer
Muth (bass) has a Bono thing going on, while Jonathan Crawley
(guitar) has an Edge thing going on (pianist Kyle Crosby and
drummer Jim Courtney complete the line-up). Even lyrics
like "I'm still lost" recall lyrics like "I still haven't found what
I'm looking for." Similarly, Hiding Place is earnest, melo-
dic, and features mixing by Mitch Easter and master-
ing by Greg Calbi who's done the same for...U2.

Fugitive Kind, You're Being
Watched, Castor + Pollux [1/13/09]

Indie-rock is just a marketing term!!
--From their MySpace Page

Amen, brothers and sisters. Produced by Ed Stasium (Ramones,
Soul Asylum), Boston's Fugitive Kind grind out hard, danceab-
le rock on You're Being Watched, a throwback to the days of
Heart, Quarterflash, and Alanis Morrisette (Lydia Marsala has a
Morrisette warble to her voice). Like too many indie outfits, they
could pass for a major label act, and this disc is most likely a bid
for a deal, i.e. a demo in all but name. As an independent adher-
ent, it doesn't do much for me, but I wish them the best. Plus,
they give a website shout-out to the underrated Shivaree.

Leopold and His Fiction, Ain't No
Surprise, Native Fiction Records

The important thing is not
to achieve, but to strive.
--Aldo Leopold (quote
from the CD booklet)

There are no Leopolds in
Leopold and His Fic-
tion, but rather Daniel
James (vocals, guitar, bass, organ, percussion) and Ben Cook (drums, Wurlitzer). To their credit, these San Francisco citizens
don't bring to mind musical images of the Black Keys, the White
Stripes, or any other contemporaneous duos. Instead, they in-
habit the more shadowy, reverb-drenched territory of the Doors,
the Black Angels, and Devendra Banhart. Though the organ and
the tambourine add a pleasingly retro element, Leopold
never enters the living graveyard of '60s revivalists.

Note: the band's bio cites a line-up change. Cook is out; Micayla Grace (bass) and Jon Sortland (drums) are in.

Sarah Rabdau and Self-Employed Assassins,
self-titled, Say It with Scissors Records [1/20/09]

Alternative pop with a classical swagger.
--From her MySpace Page

As indicated by the cover—the ivory-complected singer dab-
bled in rose-red blood—Boston's Sarah Rabdau shoots for
the stars. Her method: italicized vocals layered atop cinemat-
ic backdrops (heavy on mournful cello and minor-key piano).

It's pop music as theater; not musical theater mind you, but
Rabdau performs in both the musical and actor-oriented sense
of the word. She modulates carefully, moving methodically from
sotto voce to operatic trill. Truth be told, it isn't my cup of Dar-
jeeling, but I tip my (metaphorical) toque to her talent.

The Refugees, Unbound, Wabuho Records

The veteran musicians in the Refugees pluck, strum, and
harmonize their way through 12 tracks in the country-poli-
tan vein of the Dixie Chicks. No one will mistake Unbound
for a Wilco or Son Volt offshoot. No will they confuse the trio's
full-length debut for any kind of alt-country release, and hip-
sters might not appreciate the way vocalists/multi-instrum-
entalists Cindy Bullens, Deborah Holland, and Wendy Wald-
man reference Boomer acts like the Byrds and the Eag-
les. But I'll be damned if they don't do it well.

Endnote: This year marked the release of the 13th Cure al-
bum and yet another covers compilation called Perfect as Cats:
a Tribute to the Cure (featuring Bat for Lashes and the Dandy War-
hols). For more information about the latter, please click here; for
Copper Sails, here or here; for Fugitive Kind, here; for Leo-
pold and His Fiction, here or here; for Sarah Rabdau, here
or here; and for the Refugees, here or here. Images from
Why Pamper Life's Complexity and Planetary Group.

Revved Up: Mercury Rev's Snowflake Midnight

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I first heard Mercury Rev's Yerself Is Steam while volunteering at KCMU in 1991. My first thought: Wow. Pop-psych nirvana (small "n"). Tracks like "Chasing a Bee," "Coney Island Cyclone"—I loved them all...even if I had no idea what David Baker was going on about. It didn't matter. It was the era of the Flaming Lips and the Spacemen 3, and the vibe was king. Even the hazy neon-green packaging was cool.

Click here for the non-LP track video, "Car Wash Hair"

Then came 1993's Boces, and I wondered if I hadn't overreacted to the Buffalo's band's first record. Goofy cover aside, I didn't think their follow-up was bad; just that it was, by comparison, underwhelming.

So I moved on to other musical space cases, like Spiritualized and Spectrum, and forgot all about the Rev (I also lost interest in the post-indie label Flaming Lips, but that's a
story for another day...).

From time to time, I would hear a Rev track on KCMU as it turn-
ed into KEXP or I would catch a video, like the Anton Corbijn-directed "Goddess on a Hiway." Line-up changes aside--like Jonathan Donahue taking over from Baker--they still sounded good. But I remained underwhelmed.

Then, a few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to review this year's Snowflake Midnight, and found myself impressed all over again. Since I haven't heard any of their albums since Boces from start to finish, maybe I've been missing out or maybe the group really did lose the plot for a while there. I have no idea, but this record is a stunner. Click here for the short version; read on the full-length review.

Mercury Rev, Snowflake Midnight, Yep Roc

When they emerged from upstate New York
in 1989, pundits proclaimed Mercury Rev
neo-psychedelic guitar gods to rank with the
Flaming Lips (with whom they shared num-
erous ties). On Snowflake Midnight, the
intrepid trio enters the world of the machine.
Rev's seventh full-length, in other words, is an electronic record. Filled with references to forest creatures, it represents more of a change in tools than direction, since the introspective threesome retain their ties to psychedelia and shoegaze. Better yet, longtime associate Dave Fridmann (the 'Lips, Sleater-Kinney) handles the production reins, and the results, though initially surprising, nev-
er sounds like the work of dilettantes. While all nine selections ebb and flow in volume, like a shortwave radio half-heard in a dream, a few maintain a steadier motorik-meets-mutant disco pulse, such as "Snowflake in a Hot World" and "Runaway Raindrop," which re-
call New Order or the Pet Shop Boys after a dose of Thoreau (no, really). With Jonathan Donahue's woozy vocals bobbing along the waves, Snowflake Midnight proves that a veteran band can re-invent themselves without losing the plot. The revitalized Rev issued the disc alongside instrumental download companion Strange Attractor, available through their website.

Endnote: Though Strange Attractor is a free download, users first need to sign up for the Mercury Rev newsletter (hey, there's no such thing as a free lunch). And though I normally try not to judge CDs by their covers, the backlit bunny photograph emblazoned across Snowflake Midnight only makes me like it more. Images from the band, their label, and Amazon.

The Piano Tuners of Strange Imagery: An Interview with the Brothers Quay

From time to time, I'll be excavating unedited versions of interviews that aren't otherwise available online. To that end, here's the first draft of my conversation with the Brothers Quay. Because I was unable to record our call, there aren't many direct or in-depth quotations, but I took as many notes as I possibly could. The finished edition appears in the 4/07 issue of Resonance, which ceased publication in 2/08.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Welcome to a shadow world where plastic dolls walk, stuffed rab-
bits juggle, and dead opera singers return to life. That description
can only apply to the handiwork of filmmaking twins Stephen and Timothy Quay (born 1947), better known as the Brothers Quay.

Starting in January, a program of their short films will be traveling to select US cities. The British Film Institute has also produced a double-disc set, The Quay Brothers: The Short Films 1979-2003, which trumps Kino’s single-disc The Brothers Quay Collection: Ten Astonishing Short Films 1984-1993. Due in April from Zeitgeist, the new set includes 13 re-mastered films plus commentaries, an interview, and promotional spots.

Although many twins like to assert their unique personalities, that
doesn't seem to be the case with the Quays. Mention that their entries at the Internet Movie Database are identical, and they con-
firm that their filmographies are exactly the same. Frankly, they would prefer a single entry, suggesting, "If we write 10 letters, and
your friends write 10 letters, maybe we can get them to change that." (Over the line, it's impossible to tell the difference between the two friendly voices—if only telephones were stereophonic!)

Like Joseph Losey, Richard Lester, and Stanley Kubrick,
the Quays moved to England and never looked back. Born
in Norristown, PA, they left for London in 1969. The lure: The Royal College of Art. So, do they feel an affinity with their cin-
ematic predecessors? "Not really,” they answer, almost sad-
ly. "We're just not in the same league." (Au contraire, mes dears.)

What about fellow expatriate Terry Gilliam? "We know Terry,
but he we know him as a friend rather than a fan," they explain. That said, once Gilliam signed on to executive produce The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005), in which Catherine Breillat favorite Amira Casar (Romance, Anatomy of Hell) plays the doomed opera
singer, financing fell into place. For that, they remain eternally grateful. After all, 10 years have passed since their full-length deb-
ut, the haunting Institute Benjamenta with future Borg Queen Al-
ice Krige, Mark Rylance (Angels & Insects, Intimacy), and Fass-binder fixture Gottfried John, who returns in The Piano Tuner.

With the extensive in-cam-
era effects that populate their
pictures, amongst other fac-
tors, their features tend to
take longer to complete than those of fellow innerspace explorers Michel Gondry and
Guy Maddin. (The latter, in
his Piano Tuner review for Film Comment, proclaims it “absolutely entrancing!!!")

The Quays, however, are in no rush to start in on a third,
though it isn't out of the question. "We have an idea for some-
thing," they hint. For now, they’re focusing on two installations. "One is in a castle in the north of England, outside of Newcastle." Their task is to fill one of the 25 rooms as they see fit, "to respond to
the space itself." The second is for a Leeds opera celebrating
the 400th anniversary of Claudio Monteverdi‘s L’orfeo.

Film, however, is always on their minds, and the brothers men-
tion that they're working on a television project, an adaptation
of Bruno Schultz's Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass (1937). Throughout their career, the Quays have often turned
to the Polish writer, along with Franz Kafka, Lewis Carroll, and Robert Walser, while artistic inspirations include Max Ernst, Francis Bacon, Hieronymus Bosch, and M.C. Escher. For The Street of Crocodiles (1986), their most acclaimed short, they adapted Schultz, and for the B&W Institute Benjamenta (1995), they took on Walser's 1909 novel Jakob von Gunten.

In filmmaking terms, the name most often associated with the Brothers Quay is that of Jan Švankmajer, whose latest prov-
ocation is the gleefully wacked Lunacy (2006). Do they remain
in contact with the Czechoslovakian master? "He's a man we made
a documentary about [1984's The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer], and we occasionally meet at film festivals and the like, which is always a pleasure, but we're not in touch. He's just a giant. We
see him more as a teacher and a model." If they had to name one
influence, they insist, it would actually be Polish surrealist-turned-softcore artist Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006).

Like Švankmajer and Borowczyk, did the Quays always intend
to combine animation with live action? (Actors appear in a few shorts, but usually only fleetingly.) "We grew up watching featur-
es and still do," they reply. "It's like a short story writer, who de-
cides he wants to write a novel or a composer who decides he wants to write a symphony. Working in animation allowed both
of us to assemble, to learn all the métiers involved in directing."

Click here to watch the video for His Name Is Alive - "Can't Go Wrong Without You"

The brothers have also directed commercials, MTV promos, and
the 1988-93 "Stille Nacht" video series, featuring the music of Michael Penn and His Name Is Alive (starring a decrepit doll and dexterous bunny). Other efforts of interest: the brothers collab-
orated with Aardman Animations on Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgeham-
mer” video and contributed an un-credited sequence to fellow puppeteer Julie Taymor’s Oscar-nominated Frida biopic (2002).

This brings us to computer-generated effects. Are they using more now than when they started out? "No," they
say. Though they shifted from
35mm to high-def, they es-
chew CGI. "Everything is in-camera." Instead, they do "digital replacements” with blue and green screens. Was The Piano Tuner easier to make,
then, because of their experience with Institute Benjamenta?
"Not at all," they lament. "It was like a nail in our coffin. Because
it was so esoteric, it didn't pave the way for a second feature."
(Zeitgeist plans to release The Piano Tuner on DVD in 2007.)

One of the duo’s finest films, Anamorphosis (1991), a mini-
documentary about perspective in art, features the intrigu-
ing phrase, "An image grasped too quickly might not leave a
lasting impression." That could almost be a description of their work. "Yes," they readily agree. "It's a very good term. We're
trying to create a web of sense." But their favorite moviemak-
ing quote comes from Federico Fellini. They paraphrase: "Our duty as storytellers is to bring people to the station.
There each person will choose his or her own train…but
we must at least take them to the station”…with the help
of a few dolls, a stuffed rabbit, and a reanimated opera singer.

Endnote: The Short Films of the Brothers Quay play
SIFF Cinema on 11/23, as part of Zeitgeist: The Films of Our
Times. The 13-film series, which marks the indie distributor's
20th anniversary, continues through 11/26. SIFF Cinema is located
at 321 Mercer St. in McCaw Hall. For more information, please
call 206-633-7151. While I'm at it, click here for my chat with
Michel Gondry and here for David Lynch. Images from
Time Capsules, Sliced Bread Animation, and Culture Snob.

November 2008 Reviews

These are the reviews and interviews I'm working on this month.

Amazon CDs: Calexico - Carried to Dust, The Dirtbombs - We Have You Surrounded, Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight, James Hunter - The Hard Way, Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue, M83 - Saturdays = Youth, Mercury Rev - Snowflake Midnight, Shearwater - Rook, and Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls.

Amazon DVDs: The L Word - The Complete Fifth Season and 

Up the Yangtze (excellent doc from Canada's Yung Chang).

Amazon Theatricals: Milk (Gus Van Sant directs Sean Penn),
Breakfast with Scot (gay parenting with Ed's Tom Cavanagh),
and Let the Right One In (preteen Swedish vampires are go).

Still playing or yet to open: Burn
after Reading, I.O.U.S.A., Igor, Lake-
view Terrace, Man on Wire, Nick and
Norah's Infinite Playlist, Rachel Get-
ting Married, and Waltz with Bashir.

Seattle Film Blog: More chat with Tia Lessin (Trouble the Water) and a tiny tribute to Catherine Deneuve (A Christmas Tale).

Video Librarian: Frontrunner, Hannah's Story, Like a Ship in the Night, What's Your Point, Honey?, When I Came Home, The F Word, In the Family, The Legend of Sasquatch, Hair - Let the Sun Shine In, Shaun the Sheep - Off the Baa!, Wild Combination - A Portrait of Arthur Russell [click here for my Seattle Film Blog review], and Wrangler - Anatomy of an Icon.

Endnote: I had the pleasure of writing about the Dirt-
bombs several times this year, and their fourth full-leng-
th, We Have You Surrounded, tops my music list for 2008.

Click here for snaps from their Neumo's gig, here for a con-
cert wrap-up, and here for an alternate record review. The
Detroit five-piece returns to Seattle to play Chop Suey on
11/14. Dirtbombs image from their website, Harvey
Milk image from AfterElton. This is my 300th post.