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Sunday, July 5th, 2009
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4:02 pm - Men at work
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Before the actual holiday, I saw a couple of all-American movies. Marisa and Sara and I caught Public Enemies on Thursday night, and it's the best Michael Mann movie since The Insider ten years ago. The movie's tone is curious: it has the emotional distance and deliberate pace of a procedural, but Mann doesn't actually spend a lot of time on how John Dillinger plans his bank robberies, or even how the feds stay on his tail (though there are some interesting detective details). Though the set-up is not dissimilar to Mann's Heat, Public Enemies is cooler, less operatic, less concerned with the ins and outs of criminal and law-enforcement organizations. It simply gives us a small section of Dillinger's life, which was mostly Dillinger's business, which was mostly robbing banks and then laying low, hiding out. In this way, it reminded me of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, though Mann obviously has his eye on more action than that anti-Western.
In action or not, though, Public Enemies is gorgeously shot, full of striking and memorable images that -- take note, Michael Bay -- actually fit together as a coherent whole. Mann has used digital video before, on Miami Vice and Collateral, mostly to accentuate the depth of vision in their many night scenes. There are several vivid night scenes in Enemies, too, but he also uses DV beautifully in the daytime -- I love the white-sky effect he gets in the opening prison break -- and while Dillinger is emotionally distant, the audience gets physically close to the action. There are a few moments where Mann's refusal of exposition gets the best of him and it's hard to tell exactly what is happening, but for the most part I found it oddly fascinating.
Then on Friday, Marisa and Jon and I went to see The Hurt Locker. I'd hesitate slightly before calling it overrated, because it's a solid movie, very well-acted and compelling, but it was maybe a touch overhyped to me. From the ecstastic, often breathless reviews, I got the impression that this Iraq war movie was sort of an indie version of The Kingdom -- a tightly coiled thriller but with more grit, less starpower, and more psychological realism. Though The Hurt Locker certainly has action and suspense, it's really more of a character study (and there I am, applying expectations of what kind of movie I expected to see, not what kind of movie this actually is). As a character study, though, I'm not sure if it has all that much depth; you sense what's going on with this character more or less at the beginning, and from that point you're just watching it play out. That's not to discount the skill: Jeremy Renner, in particular, is excellent in the lead, and Kathryn Bigelow balances character and action better than many directors can handle either. It's a good movie; I was only a little bit underwhelmed.
More movie notes:
*Lots of the type of people I'd typically see Bruno with are going to be out of town or busy this coming weekend, so I may wind up going to see I Love You, Beth Cooper first. That and The Time Traveler's Wife are still a source of great worry. I'm not used to seeing movies of books I love, because I usually either see the movie first (High Fidelity! Trainspotting!) or the movie never gets made (Kavalier & Clay, all short story collections).
*Marisa and Nathaniel and I are eyeing this Movies with a View presentation of Raising Arizona on Thursday, and Nathaniel and I are both thinking Evil Dead 2 in McCarren Park next Wednesday has to happen, too. Anyone else in?
*We're watching Jaws tonight; that and reading some past Fourth of July posts and the S-video cable I finally bought have made me want to throw on the Spielberg War of the Worlds.
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1:32 am - USA! USA!
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Finding a proper barbecue in NYC can be disappointingly challenging, so when they announced that this year's River to River July 4th concert would be Conor Oberst with Jenny Lewis, Marisa and I decided this would be our BBQ substitute for the holiday and committed to getting in. So this morning we got to Battery Park at 9:30AM and once we figured out where the line was starting, we were soon joined by Kyla, Andrew & Abby, and Katie. A few other friends-of-friends flitted in and out as the afternoon went on, but this became our core for the day. The line was led slowly around a maze of barricades, so we waited in line in like three different places over the course of the four hours before we were let in to the field and set up a blanket towards the front. Then it was hot for awhile. But the food helped. Collectively, we had bread, cheese, bagels, hummus, veggies, pita bread, pita chips, cookies -- and fruit leather that no one wanted to eat but me. So we sat and ate and sweat a bit.
When Jenny came on, she played pretty much the same set as last time, minus a few slower songs and with the order somewhat rejiggered. As such, I spent some time being one of those people taking pictures of everything she did; see further below.
I think the setlist was something like this:
See Fernando
The Charging Sky
You Are What You Love
Jack Killed Mom
Acid Tongue
Silver Lining
Carpetbagger
Big Wave
Rise Up with Fists!!
Handle with Care
The Next Messiah
Just Like Zeus
Born Secular
I'm not even going to try one for Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band. I have the last bunch of Bright Eyes records and the first Conor "solo" CD, but this band only plays stuff from that album and Outer South, their new record that I don't have (though this solo material is very much in the style of what Conor began "with" Bright Eyes on Cassadega). While I can't reconstruct a reasonable setlist, the band played for a long time so I think it's safe to say they played most of the songs on both of the non-Bright Eyes records. They definitely did everything that I really like so far: "Get-Well Cards," "Nikorette," and "I Don't Want to Die (In the Hospital)," so it's OK that they're not playing the likes of "If the Brakeman Turns My Way." I guess I should've seen Bright Eyes when Cassadega came out.
So should've some of this crowd, I think. After Jenny finished up, girls upon girls laid seige to our area in the front -- yes, Conor was attracting *more* girls to the front of a Jenny Lewis show -- so we high-tailed it out of there into the side-shade and sat for probably half of the set. But though Conor immediately attracted a ton of people, it seemed like he had some trouble hanging on to the full audience, maybe due to the lack of Bright Eyes tunes -- people were filtering out of the crowd all through the set, especially in the second half, double-especially before the encore. It may also be due to none of the Mystic Valley boys being as charismatic as J-Lew (although one of them is another Rilo Kiley member!) -- but the show was still pretty good. We were all just getting kind of sun-tired by the end, even after we moved into the shade.
Once the show ended, we walked up to Chinatown and eventually found someplace to serve us patriotic helpings of non-cookie Chinese food. Also, somewhere in there, after talking to Abby a bit about Connecticut-centric slang, I decided that we should start bringing back "blazin," which I was aware of but never had the chance to use myself (and, FYI, seems to mean "hot," not anything to do with weed; go figure).
Normally we can end of Fourth of July a few blocks from home, because our side of the East River has prime fireworks-viewing spots. But in light of some bullshit Hudson River ripoff, the NYC fireworks location bore a suspicious resemblance to the Nuje's fireworks, leaving us without a vantage point (REWIND THAT!) (sorry, that is near-involuntary at this point). So the six of us hit the Upper West post-Chinatown, and watched the fireworks from Riverside Park which I don't think I had actually visited before.
Then we walked some more. Then I came home and was so grateful to be sitting down that my body was willing to believe that it was no longer tired. Hence the post and Flickr futzing. All in all, as Marisa has said, a fifteen-hour epic.
In pictures, more at the click:
current music: fireworks... it really doesn't stop
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| Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
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11:53 am - When the police come to get me, I'm listening to dance music
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This may be a product of my ongoing aging and general decline, but I've found an increasing needing to admit that I don't really get it and/or am annoyed by a lot of up-and-coming music. Sometimes this actually makes me feel OK, because it serves as a reminder that I do have some critical faculty left in regards to music, because for awhile I felt like I was having the same mildly positive low-key head-nodding reaction to every new band I heard. In other words, it's totally fine for me to not like Grizzly Bear or Phoenix that much because I already like Vampire Weekend and the Shins and Belle & Sebastian and I admit the new Animal Collective record has its charms and I even tried my hand at liking Beach House so I'm obviously well-versed enough in indie-kid cliche.
But sometimes it also makes me feel like a crabby old man, like when I find myself asking WTF is up with terrible faux-ironic dance music. This sort of came to a head while thinking about Rolling Stone's cover story on Lady Gaga. It's probably my fault for reading Rolling Stone, but where else can I get breathless updates on what Tom Petty might be doing? The gist of the article, as far as I can tell, is that what's important about Lady Gaga is (a.) how she dresses and, way way further down, (b.) some of the lyrics to some of the verses of some of her songs, because they're like, sort of subversive or something.
Take away the faux-self-aware stuff about losing your cell phone, and every Lady Gaga song I've heard sounds like a one-off dance hit that turns up on a bunch of compilations with a chick in a bikini on the cover. What exactly about "Just Dance" is much better than any number of terrible songs I don't even know the names of that were all over the radio for like two months, like that "days go by and still I think of you" song or that "gotta get through this" song or the dance version of that "finding it hard to believe we're in heaven" song? I admit that I've gained some enjoyment out of "Poker Face," mainly from Marisa's cousin Stacey singing it while making hilarious faces. But it's still from the "Womanizer" mode of production where you can't even write enough words to fill a chorus so you just stretchstretchstretchstretch stretch out what you haaaaave. Oh, but Lady Gaga wears big sunglasses and throws out an occasional, vague reference to the fact that most of the people who enjoy her music might be kind of stupid, so it's just like Madonna.
I thought of this again while Marisa was watching the Cobra Starship video for their song "featuring Leighton Meester," and I was immediately interested because TV starlets trying their delicate hands at singing careers is usually at least a little bit hilarious, and also because "Leighton Meester" is almost as fun to say/type as "Hayden Panettiere." But the song is kind of terrible and Cobra Starship is kind of terrible and it's probably not considered worth pointing out that Cobra Starship is terrible because they're just some kind of Fallout Boy-family band and they treat themselves as a joke so if you say they suck, you're falling for it or something. But they do really suck. Again, it's basically a song that sounds like any number of cheesy/awful club songs, but because the guy in the video mugs a lot while he's doing it, it's ironic and pure fun. Also, most of their schtick seems to consist of cutesy faux-ironic sloganeering that's secretly self-congratulatory (i.e., we are having an awesome time being awesome). So, sort of like the Hives, except with lame songs.
Basically, people should stop using bullshit aesthetics as an excuse to listen to lame dance music. At least legit lame dance music doesn't have the pretension of actually doing something else, like being fashion-forward or postfeminist, or being "more fun" than other crap post-teenybopper bands with little frame of reference beyond Blink-182.
Oh, yeah, also, I get the feeling that Blink-182 figured that since Green Day went and put out a couple of ultra-ambitious, mostly well-reviewed, and very popular CDs after many years of not garnering much attention, that all they, as an extremely poor man's Green Day, would have to do would come back -- not even make new music! -- and be greeted with a hero's welcome. And it's mostly worked: people report on Blink-182 getting back together like they're seminal or something. How is Weezer opening for them on their summer tour? Even in pure numbers, hasn't Weezer sold more records?
(Maybe don't tell me if that's not true.)
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| Sunday, June 28th, 2009
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11:53 pm - More than meets the brain
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When I saw the first Transformers two years ago, despite my many misgivings and all of the crap I made fun of immediately following the movie, I said that it might be Michael Bay's best movie, because it was so fully a movie about giant robots destroying shit, and didn't suffer from the tonal deafness of The Rock or the dramatic bloat of Armageddon, not to mention the nastiness of Bad Boys II or the laughable idiocy of Pearl Harbor. Even before I sat down to watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with Jon and Rayme and Sara and Marisa, I was no long sure that was technically true, if only because The Rock and Armageddon have actual personalities (Cage, Connery, Willis, Buscemi, etc.) going through Bay's machinations, and because Transformers does suffer a little from long smashing-free stretches. And being sort of racist.
Since then -- really since Bad Boys II brought him back from the Titantic-chasing of Harbor -- Bay has apparently been hard at work owning his Michael Bayness and making the Michael Bayiest movie possible at whatever the cost, not honing his technique so much as inflating it until it blows up. His movies are now so purely Michael Bay that the old bit about him being a talented filmmaker with misguided sensibilities may no longer be true: Transformers 2 is an expensive, effects-packed spectacle that also plays like a complete rush job. Story threads and ideas and robo-characters are introduced and never developed in even a cursory way; classic hack-screenplay story points accumulate without the faux-satisfying hack-screenplay resolution. Certain cuts between or even within sequences actually make the movie make less sense; Bay doesn't seem to be cutting at quite the hyper-insane pace of Armageddon (or maybe he is and this stuff is easier to follow on an IMAX screen; I've certainly found that to be the case in the past), which makes it more clear when he's not just going over the top with editing speed but just plainly making incompetent decisions in between recycling meaningless directorial flourishes from the Tony Scott playbook. The movie manages to look expensive while still seeming like it was pasted together from a bunch of footage shot quickly and without much planning. For example, Bay had an IMAX camera at his disposal at some point, and while most of the midfilm battlebot royale appears in full IMAX (with a few awkward cutaways to action elsewhere in the regular aspect ratio), the super-extendo-climax in Egypt has random full-IMAX shots cut into the action, which seems to last about an hour, which itself is weird because for the first hour the movie has location-ADD in a way that is clearly designed to give it greater scope (the main character makes an entirely superfluous move to the east coast just so other characters can chase cross-country after him and bring him to other locations entirely), yet the conflicts essentially come down to big skirmishes in the forest and in the desert, and in fact several locations seem to be in the movie just so Bay can imply that other non-America places are shit, hence the gratuitous scene of the parents disgusted with French food, or Tyrese referring to the fucking Egyptian pyramids, unironically, as "this godforsaken desert." Make no mistake: this is a hulking, busy, sprawling mess... that, I must admit, hardly bored me at all for two and a half hours (though when Bay goes into his patented military-fetishization mode, it came close).
In some ways, in fact, it's better than its predecessor because what's at stake here is not even a simple story (indeed, Bay and his screenwriters labor to make an incredibly simple-minded story as convoluted and near-incomprehensible as possible), but Bay's ability to deliver something big, and then deliver more of it. Transformers 2 certainly delivers bigness and moreness. There are more robots, they do more stuff, and they have far bigger smashing fights with each other, with heavier robot and human casualties -- mostly faceless, with the former because eighty percent of the robots are still near-impossible to tell apart and the latter because Bay engages in classic action-movie bullshit where collateral damage is clear but no one with lies can be permitted to die.
In fact, speaking of that: so one of the opening sequences of the movie picks up with the Autobots (the good robots) in alliance with a secret military outfit, traveling the globe and tracking down Decepticons (bad robots) in hiding. They track one in Shanghai and there's a big chase with massive destruction and unseen (but clear) human carnage, ending in, spoiler alert, the Decepticon getting destroyed. The sequence is very enjoyable to watch, because it has robots smashing through buildings and stomping on puny humans. However, I noticed that before the Autobots and mlitary get there, this Decepticon has been in hiding and presumably harmed zero humans. The good guys show up, attack it, and a massive action sequence ensues during which I'd estimate at least one if not several thousand people are killed. Yet when the presidential liason shows up to ask what the hell is going on with this program that essentially wakes up hidden robots and encourages them to take a bunch of humans (and buildings!) with them as they die, we're supposed to regard him as a pointy-headed know-nothing asshole.
Classic big-movie bullshit is all over this movie, yet there are weird little endearments running around through it, like the continuing use of John Turturro at his nuttiest, or the Buscemi-sounding little Decepticon that Megan Fox tortures and then tries to keep as some sort of pet, or the elderly British robot who walks with a robo-cane. I can't much defend the fun I had at this movie, except maybe on the grounds that it's just as fun to talk about afterward (point of discussion: Optimus Prime, the world's worst commencement speaker) and all of the awfulness is a key component of that. Bay has successfully obliterated the line between terrible and spectacular.
We did some other stuff this weekend, like go to a wedding and work on our Scrabble tans with Nathaniel, but Transformers 2 has destroyed my ability to talk about much else for awhile.
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| Monday, June 22nd, 2009
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6:46 pm - Speaking of shoes, I don't care about shoes
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| Sunday, June 21st, 2009
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11:36 pm - The color of infinity inside an empty glass
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The fact that BAM is doing its own film festival managed to escape me even after Nathaniel basically told me about it when asking if we wanted to go see Big Fan and/or In the Loop, because BAM is always doing cool advance screenings that I'm usually not on-the-ball enough to catch. This fest is also sort of miscellaneous in nature -- lots of Sundance/etc. stuff getting a shot in NYC -- but being lower key, getting tickets seems a bit easier (and definitely more affordable) than, say, Tribeca. So Nathaniel and Marisa and I did catch Big Fan on Friday. I'll have a full review closer to its 8/28 release, but it's sort of a spiritual companion to Buffalo 66, if the Vincent Gallo character had inherited his parents' football mania to a greater degree. Here the team in question is the New York Giants, and the fan is played by Patton Oswalt, who turns out to be a pretty terrific actor. (Kevin Corrigan, the impeccably sketchy character actor who you might recognize as a variety of lowlifes from Superbad, The Departed, Slums of Beverly Hills, or that episode of Freaks and Geeks where they get fake IDs, even plays the dimmer-witted sidekick, just like he did, albeit even more dimwitted, in Buffalo 66. Yeah, he was Goon. Don't be sore at me, Billy.) The movie is a funny/sad little character study of this guy who loves the Giants more than anything, and loves calling into sports talk radio second-most. It was written and directed by Robert Siegel, who wrote The Wrestler, and continues to show a gift for portraying the margins of professional sports. Big Fan doesn't have quite the poignancy of The Wrestler, and amidst so many believable details, a few feel fudged for dramatic effect, but it's well worth checking out when it opens in August.
Then on Saturday night, Marisa and I went to see Year One with Andrew and Abby and yeah, get ready to get sick of this particular critical meme from me, it's a smarter and funnier comedy than The Hangover. I can see why some people have been let down by Year One since it's supposed to be the big comeback for Harold Ramis, the semi-legendary comedy actor/writer/director who, as a director, misses (Multiplicity) as often as he hits (Groundhog Day) and, I have to say, probably gets a fair cred boost off of being associated/confused/combined into one person with Ivan Reitman and/or John Landis. This makes sense as he's been a recognizable voice in a lot of movies that he didn't actually direct (Stripes, Ghostbusters, etc.); it's just a little weird to read all of these disappointed reviews of the new movie by the guy who did, after all, make Analyze This, Analyze That, the remake of Bedazzled, Club Paradise, and Stuart Saves His Family (and I like some of those movies -- but none of them are really acknowledged comedy classics).
So Year One is a little shambling and messy for such an experienced comedy guy, but it is consistently amusing and quite enjoyable. Jack Black and Michael Cera make a natural comic pair; Black doesn't have many classic moments on par with School of Rock or High Fidelity (or even Orange County, in which Ramis had a funny cameo), but he's actually kind of new to the buddy-comedy thing and doesn't overwhelm the movie with his Jack Blackiness. Cera is reliably funny, and the supporting people are all pretty top-notch, especially Hank Azaria as circumcision-happy Abraham and David Cross as shifty, shifty Cain. I've read some complaints/confusion over the way the characters start off seeming kind of prehistoric and then travel through some Bible stories and then wind up verging on Ancient Roman territory, but -- not knowing much about biblical-era timelines -- I actually really liked the way the characters seem to travel through far more than a week's worth of history; it doesn't make literal sense but it's logical. The movie works in a sketchy, throwaway, mid-level Mel Brooks kind of way.
Today Marisa and I caught up with The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, which is throwaway, mid-level Tony Scott. I haven't seen the earlier movie, but this one does a pretty good job of staying focused on the characters and situation, rather than amping up the action beyond reason; a lot of it really is MTA employee Denzel Washington just chatting with hijacker John Travolta, and the actors do good by the genre. Washington is used to elevating Scott's glorified B-movies, but Travolta hasn't been this good in awhile. He tends to (over)play villains as manic and craaaazy, but he actually makes those qualities sort of believable here -- dude is crazy, but I bought it; he doesn't cross the line, in the parlance of Waylon Smithers, "from ordinary villainy into cartoonish supervillainy." The movie is so reasonable, in fact, that the climax doesn't have a whole lot of drama or suspense to it; certain stuff happens more or less by chance, or at least without much influence by the major characters. But the real problem is a movie Washington did with another of his frequent collaborators, Spike Lee; Inside Man, it must be said, is a much better, more thoroughly New Yorky treatment of similar material that makes this one seem more than a little unnecessary before even dealing with the remake factor. After that, we snuck into Land of the Lost 'cause Marisa hadn't seen it and, you may have heard, I believe it to be funnier than certain higher-grossing comedies of the year.
So, yeah, mostly a movie weekend; I finally got to see Spring Breakdown and will have some kind of review-ish type thing on the L Magazine blog this week or next. Right before the weekend, I contributed one entry to this filmcritic.com list of the best movie girlfriends. I doubt this bothers my actual girlfriend as she's the only person I know who might like Natalie Portman as much as I do. Or at least she's more supportive of that entry than some others on this list.
current music: Bob Dylan - Mr. Tambourine Man
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| Thursday, June 18th, 2009
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11:30 pm - Bits
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I saw Whatever Works, the new Woody Allen movie, for review. I kinda liked it. It's mainly for Woody fans/completists, who will better understand when I say: better than Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Hollywood Ending, not as fun as Scoop, about on par with Melinda and Melinda while more resembling Anything Else, but better than the latter.
Year One has been getting some lousy reviews, but in the wake of this Land of the Lost nay/The Hangover yay that critics and audiences have been collaborating on, I'm more aware than ever that comedy is extra-subjective (although I'm not sure if I feel the same way about lazy filmmaking, which Hangover has too). Whatever, I'm seeing it. People have been a little too eager to declare things the Love Guru or Speed Racer of this summer, whatever that means. Speed Racer was awesome and even Love Guru is something far more rare than these comparisons imply. Even if you honestly disliked the hell out of Land of the Lost or Year One (which I haven't seen yet; maybe it does suck), not any old failed comedy is The Love Guru.
Tom (Saratoga Tom, not NYC Tom) sent me a hey-how's-it-going message the other day and pointed out that it seemed like, from what he could see on Facebook, that a lot of Saratoga people were going Republican (or revealing themselves as Republican), and he wanted to check in and make sure I was still, you know, OK. Less than a day later, I logged on to Facebook and saw that a completely separate dude I don't know very well from high school had posted this lunatic link about how Obama's bank regulations establish the new "banking dictatorship" augmented with equally insane comments talking about how we have to impeach him and how his health care plan is just like what the nazis did. So basically, not even low-key "I don't know about this Obama guy" Republican skepticism. Like, holy fucking shit type of stuff. Like oh NOW the country is headed the wrong way.
I ask again, as when I found out how many people in our high school class were already way married and/or with child (this was a few years ago, and even then I didn't count Jeff & Amy because, besides being awesome, they do not live in upstate NY): do I come from some kind of a hick town and just not know it?
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| Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
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10:43 pm - No Budokan
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The live album as an exciting stopgap release seems increasingly irrelevant with the popularization of downloads; without CD production, bands can essentially put out live albums whenever they want, as long as they have someplace to sell the files. The Hold Steady, for example, released their "first" full-length live record a couple of months ago, but their Lollapalooza set from 2006 has been iTunes for ages. This hasn't stopped the flow of proper live records completely, but I'm guessing that in five or ten years they will be diminished in favor of more iTunes or band-made sets.
As a nerdy fan, though, I've stockpiled a fair number of live releases over the years and still occasionally pick one up and when I got the Hold Steady record, it got me thinking about which ones I actually like. In related news, I also have an extensive collection of unwatched live or live-related DVDs that came with assorted live or non-live albums: Los Campesinos!, Ben Folds, Sleater-Kinney, and now (so far) the Hold Steady. Maybe I'll program a living-room film festival some day. In the meantime, here are all (I think) of the live records I've owned:
Hard Rain, Bob Dylan
My mom has repeatedly bought this album for me and for herself thinking it has "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall." It does not. That song is on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and for some reason it's not one of the nine tracks on this half-forgotten live album circa the Blood on the Tracks era. However: the cassette of this album is actually how I came to love Dylan, as this was the first place I heard "Shelter from the Storm," "Maggie's Farm," and this blistering version of "Idiot Wind" that I still prefer to the studio version. I have yet to re-buy it on CD but it's widely available for five or six dollars, so I really should someday.
Live at the BBC, The Beatles
Though they're the prototypical (and best) rock band in a million other ways, the Beatles have one major gap in their insanely productive history: they stopped doing proper concerts around 1966, understandably spooked by the shrieking hysteria but also denying themselves setlists with, you know, most of their best songs in them. Live at the BBC is a double-disc early-years thing that my grandma got for me, and it's pretty neat, especially to hear the extremely young lads joking and messing about, but the songs themselves are heavy on covers and way-early material.
Severe Tire Damage, They Might Be Giants
This wasn't the first live album I owned but it was definitely the only one I wildly anticipated and ran out and bought on the first day, or rather Rob did -- I remember clearly, I was working at Empire State College and Rob was working at the track while staying at my family's house, and Tuesday was his day off so he was charged with getting us both copies. Appearing around the time the next TMBG studio effort should've been released (and three years before it ultimately came out), I listened to Severe Tire Damage constantly, even while critiquing its flawed tracklisting and performance selections. Chief complaints: they didn't include a live version of "The Guitar," always a TMBG show highlight; they didn't include that awesome slow-fast version of "Ana Ng" they played at so many shows circa the 1998-1999 tours; they didn't include any performances from shows we attended. In fact, though it purported to capture their 1997-98 touring, several of the performances (at least "Birdhouse" and "She's an Angel") are slightly tweaked from a 1994 radio-only release, something I didn't realize until I got a cassette bootleg of that release a year or two later. Even later, TMBG started making individual shows available for purchase on their website, one type of fan-friendly innovation that's made live albums even less essential. Still, I have a lot of affection for this release as it has their improvised Planet of the Apes song cycle as bonus tracks, plus the studio version of "Doctor Worm" and the fast versions of "First Kiss" and "Why Does the Sun Shine?"
Show, The Cure
I bought this because it was five dollars at Borders or something and in truth have barely listened to it. I question how well it can recapture the experience of seeing the Cure live as CDs are only seventy to eighty minutes long.
I Might Be Wrong, Radiohead
This album-length but not quite concert-length release was dubbed an EP, I think mainly to keep fans from feeing gypped about the fact that it only includes songs from Kid A and Amnesiac (fine by me), as well as the unreleased "True Love Waits." For whatever reason, these tracks don't make it into my Radiohead rotation much, which is weird because this is probably my favorite era of Radiohead and they are phenomenal live (or they were when this came out; the summer before its release marked the only two shows of theirs I've been to).
Live from the Middle East, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
I bought this for a dollar off of half.com because it's sort of a de facto Bosstones greatest hits, which probably didn't exist at the time but probably does now. I never listen to it and really should just find mp3s of the studio versions of the good songs, because they only get hoarser on the live tracks.
Ben Folds Live, Ben Folds
Released to document the "Ben Folds and a piano" solo-ish tour before he went and did like a jillion of those, Ben Folds Live has the advantage of offering markedly different arrangements of familiar songs (as well as a couple of unreleased and/or cover tracks), because they're all played sans band. I rarely want to listen to the stripped-down versions en masse -- I've come to prefer a mix of just-a-piano and full-band arrangements at his shows -- but I do like having a high-quality version of "Not the Same" with the eerily beautiful audience backing vocals that's since become a staple.
August, Bishop Allen
For their EP-a-month project back in 2006, Bishop Allen set aside the August release as a live set with old and new songs. So while it's considered an EP, this is pretty much a full-length album for five bucks. It's not bad, but they've tightened up considerably since this recording, and the sound quality isn't fantastic -- if they ever do another live "EP," I'm sure it'll be better. This does get points, however, for having a live and therefore faster-paced version of "The Same Fire," always a highlight of their set.
The Tigers Have Spoken, Neko Case
I think this was the first Neko Case album I heard, and for awhile it was far and away my favorite. It's an oddball record in that it's album-length but featuring mainly covers and otherwise unreleased songs, with a couple of more familiar tunes thrown in. Based on how much I loved this and didn't much care for Blacklisted, I thought maybe I didn't actually like Case's songwriting. I've since come around on that, but I remain a big fan of her voice and therefore her takes on songs like "Rated X" and "Train from Kansas City," and several of the originals -- the title track and "If You Knew" -- are among my favorites of hers.
Getting Away With It... Live, James
This is another one I bought because it was five dollars which is a pretty good deal for a two-disc set that at least at some point was import-only although I'm not sure if that's still the case. Mostly it makes me feel like a bad James fan, because I don't have any of their proper albums, and a bad Oasis fan, because I've never worked up the interest to buy any number of six-dollar copies of Familiar to Millions (there's one in particular, still sealed I think, that's been sitting in Permanent Records more or less since I started going there).
The BBC Sessions, Belle and Sebastian
I'm kind of surprised that I only have one post-Beatles BBC Sessions record, but not that it's Belle and Sebastian. Many of these live cuts aren't so different from their regular counterparts, but there are some decent unreleased songs circa the early aughts, right before Isabel left the band and Stuart sort of buckled down and decided to make them a more reliable touring band. Like a lot of stuff on this list, this is more of a completist's souvenir than an essential part of the band's discography.
Remember, The Fiery Furnaces
I was attracted to a used copy of this extremely strange (in its faithfulness) recreation of the Fiery Furances live experience because (a.) I have all of the Fiery Furnaces albums, even though I rarely listen to Blueberry Boat and have yet to ever listen to Rehearsing My Choir and (b.) it's a double-live record, which I find vaguely funny.
A Positive Rage, The Hold Steady
I like the no-frills, straight-up approach of this record: it's a single night at the Metro in Chicago, in order and clearly not fussed with too much. Craig's voice is hoarse and he occasionally misses a lyric or two, and crowd noise extends beyond the canned-sounding post-song cheers -- it's basically a polished bootleg. I spent some time wondering what they cut out of this set to make it seventy minutes until I remembered that the internet, and specifically the Hold Steady wiki, exists (though I have to say, the TMBG wiki is way better-maintained than the HS one). So I can tell you: they cut out "Hot Soft Light," "Chillout Tent" (!), and "Modesto Is Not That Sweet," and this just happens to be a set where they only played a single song from Separation Sunday, which sucks but makes it understandable. At least the set has a decent helping of non-album tracks, including "Girls Like Status," "You Gotta Dance With Who You Came to the Dance With," and "Ask Her for Adderall." As enjoyable as it is, this record still reveals a live-album folly: The Hold Steady is one of the best live acts around right now, but they're not great band because of how different or superior their songs sound in that setting -- in fact, few if any of these tracks are superior to their studio counterparts. They're a great live band because of how they are on stage and how they get a crowd going, and because at any given show, no matter how much you love them, at least fifty percent of the crowd loves the band even more than you do.
That's it. Anyone want to have a go at naming a truly essential live record?
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| Sunday, June 14th, 2009
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11:59 pm - You confess it but it will not come
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The Landmark Sunshine is becoming a good luck charm or at least a just-plain-logical choice for seeing indie sci-fi movies. A couple of years ago, Marisa and I saw Sunshine, one of my favorite recent sci-fi movies, there during a break from marathon Harry Potter readings. Then on Friday, we finished up a much-delayed double bill by seeing Moon there along with Jon and Rayme. A small-scale but quite convincing movie about a lone worker (Sam Rockwell!) on a moon-based power plant, Moon will benefit from not knowing much about its premise, so I won't say much about the story. I can say that I dug the straightforward style of Duncan Jones (David Bowie's son!) -- he doesn't get too fancy trying to blow your mind or offer sterile, bargain-basement Kubrick. His movie does bring to mind probably a dozen other sci-fi movies, but that's pretty much how sci-fi movies work, and this is a good one. And yes, Rockwell fans, he gets a moment to do a little dance, as distinct and delightful and consistent an actor's trademark as I've seen lately.
Saturday was FeeBQh the sixth. Marisa and I were out of town for the fifth so we were extra-psyched for it, and I will say this for Prospect Park: McCarren may be my park, but Prospect's trees do a mighty good job of rain-shielding. It rained on and off and we didn't really get wet. That would not happen in McCarren.
The pictures I took at the picnic were mainly of bubbles and entirely on film. The latter was, in part, an effort to prove to myself that I can still use film with some degree of effectiveness following my disposable camera adventures during last week's concerts. I threw a set of the least awful ones up on Flickr because they do an OK job of preserving some rock & roll moments here and there, but they're largely a pretty ugly set of photos.
I hedged my bets a little, though, because when I met up with Chris and Stacy to check out the new Highline Park, I brought the digital camera. A few follow; more are up at Flickr.
Conclusion: the Highline is pretty cool. It will be cooler when there's not a line and it goes longer than nine blocks.
current music: Radiohead - Planet Telex
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| Friday, June 12th, 2009
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12:41 am - To be thirty-three forever (gig 4/3)
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Who: The Hold Steady. Again. For the 12th time, in fact.
Where: Music Hall of Williamsburg; last time I saw them here, it was Northsix, and Marisa and I ate dinner beforehand on the as-yet-unfurnished floor of our new apartment.
Who Else: Hype of the States, who we only saw for about two songs. The L Mag listing compared them to Garbage (the good kind, with Shirley Manson). They seemed pretty OK.
Plus: And then there were two: just me and the girlfriend for this one.
Pre-Show Ritual: None. I came home from the One Story meeting, changed my clothes, grabbed Marisa, and hit the show with a stomach full of pizza, which was not the disaster I feared whilst eating said pizza.
So I went back and hit one more Hold Steady show. It was really hard to say no to them playing a 15-minute walk from the apartment. Harder than going to work tomorrow? We'll see.
The other night was one of the calmest Hold Steady crowds I've seen over the past few years. This was probably not the craziest (though it was definitely rowdier than Monday), but it was definitely repped the most beer I've been hit with in a good couple of years. Related: throwing beer around from the floor, dumb but whatever. Throwing beer from the balcony: you are a dick. And also lame. People did this as Oasis, too. It's like some kind of wussy bullshit substitute for actually going nuts at a gig. In other words, if you throw beer with the risk that (a.) you'll get hit with it back or (b.) someone will get mad at you and kick your ass (even if both, especially (b.), are unlikely), fair enough, you're taking your chances. If not, you're kind of a dick. I know it might seem like splitting hairs, but the kind of person who wants to throw beer but doesn't want to jump around on the floor is pretty much the worst of both worlds if you ask me.
Anyway. Fun show, still, always. I was happy to see slightly more Separation Sunday representation this time, although I'm a little bummed that I missed the show (Tuesday at Bowery, I think) where they played every single song from it. It seems like they were loosely planning these four shows around their albums: Monday had a lot of Almost Killed Me, Tuesday had all of Sunday, Wednesday apparently had all of Boys and Girls in America (even "Chillout Tent"!!), and today was sort of de facto Stay Positive, although they didn't hit "Both Crosses" or Derrick's texted request, "One for the Cutters."
Also: THEY PLAYED FUCKING HOSTILE MASSACHUSETTS. I raise my beer-soaked hoodie to you, Rob and Craig. No sax, but it almost, almost didn't matter. They really need to do some shows with a small horn section to play on that and "Sequestered in Memphis." "Magazines" continues to be an unanticipated (by me) crowd favorite. I mean, I like it a lot, but people really flip out for it. It was great to hear "Certain Songs" -- I haven't heard a full-band version of that song in ages, and I think I've only heard it at all a few other times.
One more time, Marisa:
Stay Positive
You Gotta Dance With Who You Came to the Dance With
Navy Sheets
Chips Ahoy!
Sequestered in Memphis
Cheyenne Sunrise
Yeah Sapphire
Stevie Nix
Multitude of Casualties
Magazines
Hostile, Mass.
Sweet Payne
Massive Nights
Party Pit
Joke about Jamaica
Lord, I'm Discouraged
Constructive Summer
Your Little Hoodrat Friend
Stuck Between Stations
---
Certain Songs
Southtown Girls
Most People are DJs
Slapped Actress
As usual after the Hold Steady, I need a shower. And also to do some laundry.
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| Thursday, June 11th, 2009
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12:28 am - And the wanting comes in waves (gig 3/3)
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Who: The Decemberists
Where: Radio City Music Hall. I've only been there once before and maybe did an insufficient job of noticing how massive it is.
Who Else: Robyn Hitchcock, except we showed up as he was finishing his set, because Radio City shows start on time and end by 11, which is also why I got home earlier from a show in midtown than anything else this week.
Plus: Marisa, Meg, Clea, Kyla and her journalism buddy, although we were all sitting separately in twos.
Pre-Show Ritual: None, really, but we had dinner with Kyla.
The Decemberists have a stage presence not unlike They Might Be Giants, in that they're performing non-traditional rock music with high nerd appeal, but do so with a lot of energy, humor, and showmanship, such that they're more fun to watch than most bands. Seeing all of The Hazards of Love performed in sequence was pretty cool, but even better was the eleven-song superset featuring if not all, certainly most of my favorite Decemberists songs (no "16 Military Wives" and, more understandably, no "Mariner's Revenge Song" as Radio City has a curfew and that song is at least ten minutes in a live setting). Two different audience members got to play guitar during "Chimbley Sweep" and Colin went missing in the audience, Art Brut style. And the closing Radio City singalong with "Sons & Daughters" was beautiful. It all made me feel pretty good about a mostly sit-down, on-time, home-early type of show. If this is what I have to do when I'm old, it won't be so bad.
Fill our mouths with cinnamon:
Prelude
The Hazards of Love 1
A Bower Scene
Won't Want for Love
The Hazards of Love 2
The Queen's Approach
Isn't It a Lovely Night?
The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid
An Interlude
The Rake's Song
The Abduction of Margaret
The Queen's Rebuke/The Crossing
Annan Water
Margaret in Captivity
The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)
The Wanting Comes in Waves (Reprise)
The Hazards of Love 4
[break]
The Crane Wife 3
July, July!
Billy Liar
Sleepless
The Bachelor and the Bride
Dracula's Daughter
O Valencia!
The Chimbley Sweep
Crazy on You (Heart cover)
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Begin the Begin (REM cover)
Sons & Daughters
Tomorrow: encore time.
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| Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
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1:44 am - And now I'm gold (gig 2/3)
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Who: Jenny Lewis, sans Rilo, sans Watsons.
Where: The Music Hall of Williamsburg! Second best venue in the city? Certainly second-most convenient to my apartment.
Who Else: Deer Tick, who I had heard of but never heard, and mostly liked. They're pretty much of a piece with other Team Love country-folk-rockers. Not as fun as the Felice Brothers, but enjoyable. There was a pre-opener called Farmer Dave but he only played like five songs which I almost immediately forgot.
Plus: Marisa, Briana, Meg.
Pre-Show Ritual: Dinner at Red Bowl around the corner, which I have only eaten at in the around-the-corner-from-show context.
Seeing J-Lew solo remains less exciting than seeing full-on Rilo Kiley, but Acid Tongue, while seemingly far less beloved by critics and some fans than Rabbit Fur Coat, has given her live shows a boost by adding more up-tempo rockers to the mix. This set included two new songs, "Just Like Zeus" and (what Marisa heard to be) "Big Wave" (I thought "Be Brave" but her explanation made more sense), which were good, but sounded to me more like Rilo Kiley than a lot of her solo stuff, which may raise future questions from me about why exactly she's not doing stuff with Rilo so much anymore (on the other hand, a Rilo song that never made it to record, "I Love L.A.," would make a lot of sense as a Jenny solo track). But for now, I'll say: good songs. Oh, also: she totally played a Rilo song! I haven't seen her do that in previous solo shows. She did "Silver Lining" solo acoustic and it was lovely.
"Acid Tongue" was lovely, too, except for the girls in back of us trying to belt along with J-Lew. When the song is performed on an acoustic guitar with hushed backing vocals, singing along hard on "build yourself a FIIIIIRRRRRE" sounds pretty overpoweringly awful. But lots of other songs rocked hard enough to drown out singalongs. Poor Marisa and Briana had just discussed a distaste for "See Fernando" the night prior and Jenny tore into it almost immediately, but she busted out a ton of rock-star moves during it so it was fine by me.
Also, I should keep this gig in mind whenever I think that Jenny is way more popular as solo artist. We kept a spot closer to the stage than I've been at the last, I don't know, three or four Rilo Kiley shows. Which is not to say Jenny doesn't have picture-snapping hardcore-crushing fans in whatever context she chooses.
You can't change things, we're all stuck in our ways:
Silver Lining
See Fernando
The Charging Sky
You Are What You Love
Pretty Bird
Carpetbagger
Black Sand
Jack Killed Mom
Trying My Best to Love You
Happy
Rise Up with Fists!!
Just Like Zeus
Handle with Care
The Next Messiah
---
Acid Tongue
Big Wave
Born Secular
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| Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
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1:00 am - We still feel pretty sweet tonight (gig 1/3)
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Who: The Hold Steady!
Where: The Bowery Ballroom! Best rock and/or roll venue in the city.
Who Else: Right On Dynamite. They were OK. Decent, even.
Plus: Marisa, Briana, Katie, Jeremy. Better than decent!
Pre-Show Ritual: Bagels and Mountain Dew before going out: maximum energy without too much to jostle around in the stomach.
The Hold Steady always kicks ass, but this was probably the most subdued crowd I've seen since we saw them in Albany in 2006, when it seemed like there were only 70 or so people there (and I was way sweatier after that one). It was nice to stick with Marisa and Briana and not get shoved around too much or do any gasping for air (well, maybe a little after "Ask Her for Adderall"), but a little eerie. Maybe the crowd was calmer because it was a Monday show, but last time was a Monday and it was as moshy as I've ever seen. Maybe the crazies are going later in the week, or saving their energy for a four-night run.
It was still crazy fun, even though I'm a little confounded by their newfound interest in playing half of Almost Killed Me and almost nothing from the superior-to-most-albums-ever Separation to Sunday. "Most People Are DJs" fucking rules. I loved jumping to the hard coda of "First Night" (though I don't really see the point of playing that *and* "Lord, I'm Discouraged") (it's like "Yeah Sapphire" and "Party Pit" -- you really have to choose one). Opening with a slow-building "Killer Parties" as band members entered and added their parts one by one: inspired. Unexpected enthusiasm from the crowd: "Magazines."
Anyway, for a trio of above-mentioned reasons -- THS always rock, the crowd was subdued, and they didn't play "Your Little Hoodrat Friend" -- I'm considering adding to the three-show streak and seeing them at Music Hall of Williamsburg on Thursday (more tickets for both MHOW shows were just released). This may be a dumb 12:45AM type of idea but it is tempting. Even when I have tickets to something else awesome (like J-Lew on Tuesday or the Decemberists on Wednesday), I don't much like the idea that a Hold Steady show is going on without me.
Gonna build something this summer (thanks ML!):
Killer Parties
Constructive Summer
You Gotta Dance With Who You Came to the Dance With
You Can Make Him Like You
Sequestered in Memphis
Barfruit Blues
Sketchy Metal
Chips Ahoy!
The Swish
Magazines
First Night
Multitude of Casualties
Yeah Sapphire
Southtown Girls
Lord, I'm Discouraged
Stay Positive
Slapped Actress
How a Resurrection Really Feels
---
212 Margarita
Ask Her for Adderall
Stuck Between Stations
Most People Are DJs
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| Sunday, June 7th, 2009
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10:19 pm - Here comes the summer
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I must say, I'm pretty puzzled by a lot of these reviews for The Hangover. I saw it on Friday night with Marisa, Katie, Sara, and Jon, and I'm not really getting it. I understand why it's a hit. I understand why that row of bros behind us loved it, and in fact seemed to be experiencing some kind of screen identification on par with that three-year-old who explains the plot of Star Wars where they basically felt like the movie was happening to them and their buddies. But finding it "piercingly funny" or "perfectly shaped," yikes.
I did laugh. Todd Phillips has, in some respects, made a more polished movie than the likes of Road Trip or Old School, though I prefer Starsky & Hutch to any of them, including this movie, by a wide margin. The Hangover has a steady stream of inspiration from Zach Galifianakis (playing the weirdo with a kind of cracked innocence) and some good work from Ed Helms, and nicely lacks the overlit sitcom tones of so many studio comedies, but it's still sloppy and underdeveloped. Despite the clever (if essentially knocked off from Dude, Where's My Car?) story hook of three guys waking up after a wild, blacked-out night in Vegas and tracking down their missing buddy, Phillips still just stumbles from one comic set-piece to another without much sense; he doesn't have the patience to play up the story's mystery elements or even, after a certain point, the fertile comedy of implication. He's fine with any number of lazy techniques, like putting Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms into a variation on the tired adventurous-laid-back-wiseass/uptight-worrier dynamic, and, actually, having Bradley Cooper play Vince Vaughn minus wit or energy. He's basically what a Vince Vaughn character would be like in real life: kind of an asshole and not that funny about it. I think Cooper would actually be better in the straight crime-movie version of this story; Wet Hot American excepted, I'm not getting the sense that he's all that funny.
Also, the patented Phillips sexism is getting worse. Like way worse.
I know boys will be boys or whatever, but this movie isn't just vaguely sexist by omission, or by employing traditional gender roles. Phillips sees women mainly as cute sluts or raging harpies, and, worse, he sure as hell doesn't see them as funny in any context. Rachel Harris, a pretty funny lady, plays the hectoring girlfriend of the Ed Helms character, and she's not allowed to make this relationship at all funny or believable. Her job is to be straight-up hateful, a straw woman for the male's eventual declaration of independence. On the flip side is Heather Graham, playing a perfectly sweet-natured stripper-slash-hooker, but still not allowed to actually do much of anything beyond serve as a sight gag. Apatow sometimes gets flack for not having many interesting female characters, but Leslie Mann in Knocked Up and the girls in Superbad and Forgetting Sarah Marshall all at least seem like real people. And some of them are even funny beyond "gags" about their hotness. This movie is operating with a pretty clear hatred of women, thinly disguised as some kind of male-bonding sociology or point of view.
Still, it could've been worse; the original script came from the guys who wrote Four Christmases. The Hangover, even with its erastz-Vaughn, is much funnier than Four Christmases. But it's far less accomplished than any number of recent comedies that met with more mixed reviews: Observe and Report, Step Brothers, Hot Rod, or even, for that matter, this weekend's unfairly maligned Land of the Lost. Maybe that's just the nature of interesting comedy, though, that really good stuff isn't going to please as many people, even critics.
We chatted about the movie's shortcomings and bro-friendliness over ice cream (if you're going to nitpick comedy technique, Jon is great to have in your corner), and then swapped Jon for Nathaniel and Andrew and caught the midnight showing of The Great Muppet Caper at the Landmark Sunshine. I have seen this movie countless times -- for some reason, I guess the Happiness Hotel and the heist plot, it was my childhood favorite of the three original Muppet movies -- but not at all in the past few years, and never on the big screen, and it was a little eerie watching it and feeling the rhythms of the movie, so ingrained somewhere in that ninety percent of my brain that I never use, come back to me. It is a pretty awesome movie, though.
Then it was late so we went home.
Then it was sunny so we went up on to the roof and played Scrabble with Nathaniel. I'm secretly pleased that Marisa beat me because it will undermine her ability to beg off playing Scrabble due to lack of skills.
Then the sun was gone and we went to Kellogg's and came back to the apartment and went upstairs to play Mario Kart with Nathaniel. The only part of Mario Kart I'm good at is the game with bombs only, and even then, mostly just the level where all of the bombs are in the center. What you do is, drive around the center, pick up bombs, and set them off immediately. Do this fifty times or until everyone else is dead.
Then it was late so we went home.
This week is concert armageddon, and an oddly positioned three-day work week. So coming soon: a bunch of setlists.
current music: Conor Oberst - Get-Well-Cards
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| Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
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1:53 pm - Friday's movies today
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A bunch of movies come out this weekend and I have seen an unusual number of them already. The one I like best is Away We Go (review!), a new Sam Mendes movie just six months or so after Revolutionary Road, and a very different relationship story than that one, with John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph as an expecting thirtysomething couple looking for someplace to settle down.
I'm expecting more pans to come for Land of the Lost, but I rather enjoyed it -- it's a goofy, consistently amusing fantasy-comedy. If you ever find yourself going, "hey, Evolution was somewhat underrated in some ways!" then this is a good movie for you.
Finally, the worst of the lot is a movie most of you will probably never see, and that's fine because Downloading Nancy is wretched, one of the worst movies I've seen this year.
That only leaves The Hangover, so I guess I have to see it now despite my general aversion to Todd Phillips, Bradley Cooper, and Las Vegas (with exceptions granted for Starsky & Hutch, Wet Hot American Summer, and Con Air, respectively).
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1:21 am - The record-buying public shouldn't be voting
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Tonight, for the first time ever, two separate shows, one evening!
As more avid followers of my Twitter and/or Facebook updates might know, Mandy Moore set up this show at the Highline Ballroom where if you buy her record at Best Buy and bring the receipt, you-plus-guest get in, room permitting. I was already planning on doing that, but I also entered a contest courtesy of Pop Tarts Suck Toasted to win a pair of actual tickets. And I won! So this is how I wound up not just at a Mandy Moore concert, but in the front row.
Standing there, I was trying to remember how it was that I actually started listening to Mandy Moore, since my crush on her developed more from her movies, in which she typically gives an endearingly good performance in the middle of something that doesn't quite work (like American Dreamz or Saved! or pretty much any movie she's ever been in). But I know I had Coverage before I had seen her in a ton of movies. I think I first really saw her in How to Deal (see?), and liked her, and then maybe Coverage came out later that year? But I couldn't figure out why exactly I bought Coverage except that it got decent reviews and it made me curous, and I'm pretty sure Rob encouraged me (Rob also got my back when Mike was like, what the hell is up with Jesse going to Mandy Moore). Since then, I've been basically waiting for her to make a really good record. Wild Hope has some good stuff but large chunks of it are tastefully boring, and now this new one, Amanda Leigh, isn't quite there but it is pretty good, and Mike Viola producing and co-writing is exactly the right direction.
So I wound up in the front row of her little concert, which I believe is the second-closest to a celebrity I've had a longtime crush on, after the time I held Tina Fey's plant while she signed my ASSSSCAT ticket. You could tell it was more of a promotional event because there was no opening band, the set was under an hour, and it was almost all songs from the new record, which is understandable as most of the best songs she's ever co-written are on there. She only played one from Wild Hope, the title track and second-best song after "Gardenia," which I would've loved to hear.
It was all stripped down, with Mandy backed by Mike Viola and another guy, playing acoustic guitar and keyboards. She still seems to be making the transition back to recording artist from acting, and she obviously hasn't done a big tour in awhile (maybe since the teen-pop years?); between songs, she was all sheepish smiles and slightly interview-sounding soundbitey anecdotes. But in an endearing way. It's weird to watch her find her groove on stage considering she's kind of a natural in the movies, but it also creates the impression (illusion?) that you're seeing the "real life" version.
Anyway, I had a good time, especially as I never really planned on seeing Mandy Moore under these conditions (for free, super close). Songs:
Pocket Philosopher
Merrimack River
Love to Love Me Back
Fern Dell
Song about Home
Nothing Everything
Bug
Wild Hope
I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week
And then a cover for which I promptly forgot the key look-up phrase, but I think it had the word "roll" in it, and it sounded like sort of classic-rock/bluesy. It was cool. And not on Coverage.
The show was done by nine, so I hustled to the F train and went down to Mercury Lounge to meet Marisa and Craig for Art Brut. The main reason we got tickets to this show (Art Brut rules but I'm not sure if they weeknight-rule at this point) was that Ardsley kid Graham's band, Murder Mystery, was opening up, so it seemed like a good time to check them out. I entered the Merc about ten minutes before Murder Mystery came on, the kind of timing I can never pull off when I'm coming from home or work, and made a smooth transition from Mandy Moore to indie rock.
Murdery Mystery was fun -- they have kind of a Bishop Allen-y thing, for lack of a better comparison because it's late -- and then Art Brut came on and did their awesome thing. No use explaining Art Brut shows at this stage, but maybe I can annotate the setlist:
Alcoholics Unanimous
Nag Nag Nag Nag Nag
Moving to L.A.
The Passenger (not a cover)
Direct Hit
What a Rush (alternate title per Eddie: "Enjoyable Weekend")
Bad Weekend
Demons Out
Pump Up the Volume (not a cover)
Emily Kane
The KKK Took My Baby Away (cover! of the Ramones)
DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshakes
My Little Brother ("stay off the... crystal meth!")
Bang Bang Rock + Roll
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Formed a Band (I don't know if I've ever seen them play this straight through) (or with the intro to "Back in Black")
Twist and Shout (not a cover)
Modern Art (Eddie gets into the crowd and runs around as per usual)
And that was that, two shows in one night, NYC living justified. Way past my bedtime! Stay off the crack!
current music: hisssssss
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| Monday, June 1st, 2009
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5:35 pm - Hi there
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I sympathize with full-time film critics, I do, not just because they appear to be an endangered species, but because it must be getting difficult to figure out new ways to praise Pixar without resorting to recap, repetition, or flummoxed awe. Since the mild (and still thoroughly enjoyable) disappointment of Cars, they've made three movies in a row that screw with my ability to pick favorites out of their already-rich body of work. Up is one such movie, a lovely and buoyant cartoon that can stand with Ratatouille and Wall-E and the rest. It's one of the most purely emotionally affecting Pixar films -- check out, like everyone says, that dialogue-free four-minute sequence that takes Carl and Ellie from childhood to old age -- but also, to my surprise, one of their funniest. The Pixar animators have that old Looney Tunes gift for getting to the essence of animal characters, and having that essence seem perfectly true to their natures but also touchingly human. I'm not even a dog person, and I loved the dogs in this movie more than just about anything. The humans are pretty great, too.
A bunch of people wound up coming out to the movie with Marisa and me, and debating which Pixar movie that we love is in fact the least kid-friendly (I still say that's Ratatouille): Amanda, Nathaniel, Katie, Sara, Andrew & Abby. Plus Erin! Who was in town with her gentleman friend, and who I hadn't seen in years and who almost certainly caught showings of Toy Story 2 and/or Monsters, Inc. back at Wesleyan (that was when we were only getting a new Pixar movie every couple of years on average; their streak is even more amazing when you consider they've done four movies in four years and have three more slated through 2011). So it was great to hang out with the least-seen of my erstwhile Lawn Ave roommates.
After a one-year-old's birthday party on Saturday, Marisa and Rayme and Nathaniel and I went to check out Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi's return to horror. Though Raimi got his start in the genre, his contributions have really been pretty nontraditional; the Evil Dead trilogy (a.) tells about two hours' worth of story over its three movies, all of which contain some degree of remaking of prior installments, (b.) is funnier, on average, than it is scary, and (c.) concludes with more of an action-fantasy with horror elements. Oh and (d.) is awesome, obviously. Darkman and The Gift have elements of horror, too, and there's that scene in Spider-Man 2 with Dr. Octopus going bezerk, but for a guy associated with low-budget horror, Raimi has spent just as much screentime or more doing superheroes or human drama (For the Love of the Game what what!).
Stylistically, Drag Me to Hell has a fair amount in common with the Evil Dead pictures, especially the second one: sly humor, splatstick, a zipping camera. But it's not nearly as much of an all-out deranged Evil Dead horror show; it keeps at least one foot in the real world, or at least the B-movie world (Evil Dead 2 is a B-movie too, of course, but, seriously, have you ever seen a B-movie that even approaches the experience of watching Evil Dead 2, which after about half an hour really only has one character, and features about an hour of sustained mayhem with a major Three Stooges influence?). Drag Me to Hell isn't so relentless; it's more like a "regular" B-movie that keeps getting hit with Raimi-style blasts of insanity, which is a giddily effective technique. I've also heard it compared to an old EC Comics story; I've never actually read any old horror comics, but that sounds pretty damn apt. To that end, I wish it had a little more to it; there are times when the story feels artificially stretched out to 90 minutes, and the story could've used another good turn at some point (not necessarily at the end, which is extremely effective, just somewhere along the way), but it's still the most fun horror movie I've seen in ages.
On Sunday, in keeping with the B-movie theme, Marisa and Rayme made me and Nathaniel watch Dolls, a beloved horror movie from their childhood that slightly predated Child's Play (Amanda was also on hand, but was neither inexperienced in Dolls as Nathaniel and I were, nor co-chair of the Must Watch Dolls Committee with the other Ardsley girls). It's definitely only 75 minutes along. Actually, it's a lot better than I would've guessed, given the peculiar way Marisa and Rayme have been hyping it for the past two to five years.
A movie I saw awhile back but is just coming out now (and will probably be gone by the end of the week): What Goes Up, which I reviewed for filmcritic.com (now property of AMC, woot!). In researching whether I had, in fact, seen every movie Hilary Duff has been in so far (answer: yes, except Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and several TV movies), and, as such, I could reasonably make the claim that What Goes Up is the absolute worst (answer: maybe; The Perfect Man was pretty awful, but probably not as nonsensical) I found out that she's co-starring in the next movie by the Polish brothers, the guys who did Twin Falls Idaho (unseen by me) and Northfork (pretty cool). Huh.
This week: another screening, some more reviews going up, and trying to get into a free Mandy Moore show tomorrow night before a non-free Art Brut show across town. It'll be a good training session for the three-show run coming up next week.
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| Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
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8:19 pm - Well then I guess I'll just have to go to Claremont
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It's about time for one of these, I think.
The Top 40 Most-Played Songs on My iPod Right Now
1. "True or False" by Bishop Allen
One time Rob made me a mix CD that closed with Juliana Hatfield covering Weezer, labeled only as, and I quote, "JESSE'S PERFECT FUCKING SONG!" This doesn't quite have the layering because it's just the chick from Bishop Allen singing a Bishop Allen song, but it's the best song she's sung for them yet, so there you go.
2. "Your Little Hoodrat Friend" by the Hold Steady
If I remake my favorite songs ever list, as Jason keeps threatening to indirectly inspire me to, this will almost certainly be in the top ten. This would be even higher if you included the number of times I've played the live version on A Positive Rage (although that's the case for several of the Hold Steady songs on this list).
3. "Dirt on Your New Shoes" by Bishop Allen
4. "Stuck Between Stations" by the Hold Steady
5. "Arms and Hearts" by the Hold Steady
6. "Most People are DJs" by the Hold Steady
Yeah, kinda blah blah blah for 1-6, huh?
7. "The Modern Leper" by Frightened Rabbit
This song is astoundingly good to the point where I didn't care much about the rest of the album for awhile, but some of it has since crept up on me.
8. "We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed" by Los Campesinos!
I'm a little surprised this isn't even higher because this is arguably my favorite new song of the past six or seven months. Get ready to hear it on mix CDs for the next year.
9. "People Got a Lotta Nerve" by Neko Case
10. "Zero" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
I try not to let my crazy crazy love of this track dominate the rest of the very good Yeah Yeah Yeahs record, but it happens, oh well, I fucking love this song. In contrast, I'm kind of jazzed that my love of a single off of a Neko Case record can dominate the rest of it (also quite good -- love "I'm an Animal" but not in a "stop on it every time it shuffles on" way).
11. "Middle Management" by Bishop Allen
12. "Banging Camp" by the Hold Steady
13. "Stevie Nix" by the Hold Steady
"Stevie Nix" was way higher last time, but "Banging Camp" reclaimed its rightful place: a song one sliver superior to "Stevie Nix."
14. "South China Moon" by Bishop Allen
15. "Knuckles" by the Hold Steady
16. "Sequestered in Memphis" by the Hold Steady
11-16 = more blah blah blah.
17. "The Pigs That Rain Straightaway Into the Water, Triumph of" (live) by the Mountain Goats
18. "The Mess Inside" (live) by the Mountain Goats
Both of these Mountain Goats tunes are from the Music Hall of Williamsburg gig I went to last fall (supposedly the same guy taped the more recent acoustic show but was having some audio issues and I forgot to check back to see if it was ever posted). I find it harder to listen to the studio versions of both of these again just because the live versions are so propulsive. Also, sometimes I get chills from hearing the crowd's subdued cheer when John sings "we went to New York City in September..." and then its even more subdued cheer for "... to the Grand Army stop."
19. "Abel" by The National
I still say Boxer is better but I understand the Alligator boosters when I hear this song and, yes, can't calm down.
20. "Hop a Plane" by Tegan and Sara
This is one of the few songs I often listen to twice in a row, because it's only two minutes and the best part goes by even faster.
21. "Titus Andronicus" by Titus Andronicus
22. "Fireworks" by the Tragically Hip
23. "Virtue the Cat Explains Her Departure" by the Weakerthans
A way better sequel song than "Judy's Turn to Cry." I invite others to add to this sure-to-be-long-because-that-song-blows list.
24. "Girls Like Status" by the Hold Steady
25. "King of Carrot Flowers Part 1" by Neutral Milk Hotel
When Kate said she was getting into Neutral Milk Hotel and Jeremy said they never did it for him, I devil's-advocated that if someone wanted to call them overrated and say that In the Aeroplane Over the Sea gets by with three really good songs, I might secretly agree with that person. I'd feel bad about it because In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is also kind of great, but if I'm honest with myself, that record has two songs that make the world that much more worth living in, one song that I also really love, and seven that I can forget about it pretty easily unless I force myself to listen to them and then I'm like, oh, right, "Ghost" is really good too, and so are the rest of these. But I'm not that into On Avery Island so maybe it's OK that NMH only barely pretends to still exist.
26. "Under the Blacklight" by Rilo Kiley
27. "The Monitor" by Bishop Allen
28. "Oklahoma" by Bishop Allen
29. "The Ancient Common Sense of Things" by Bishop Allen
30. "Don't Hideaway" by Bishop Allen
31. "The Swish" by the Hold Steady
I have to fight the urge to title every other email I send "it was a blockbuster summer" and/or "moving pictures got us through to September."
32. "My Year in Lists" by Los Campesinos!
33. "You! Me! Dancing!" by Los Campesinos!
Fittingly, "Dancing!" has almost overtaken "My Year in Lists" as my favorite song from Hold On Now, Youngster (almost). In related news, I was bummed to have missed Gareth's Great T-Shirt Sale, though if these shirts were too small for him, I was probably a lost cause. But he had a Sleater-Kinney in medium! That might've almost worked! If I sucked it in!
34. "Sax Rohmer #1" by the Mountain Goats
35. "The Sign" by The Mountain Goats
There are several of these floating around; this one is the best I've heard, from one of the CD game entries a few years back.
36. "15" by Rilo Kiley
I actually haven't listened to this straight through in awhile; I OD'd on it a little when I was QAing last summer's CD game entry.
37. "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)" by the White Stripes
38. "Dimmer" by Bishop Allen
39. "The Lion and the Teacup" by Bishop Allen
40. "Rooftop Brawl" by Bishop Allen
OK, these last three, we're just getting to the point where I listened to Grrr... as a whole probably ten or twelve times on my iPod, not so much that I singled these out.
For you actual-top-forty fans, don't fret, Mandy Moore and Kelly Clarkson are well-positioned to show up here next quarter!
current music: Mandy Moore - I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week
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| Monday, May 25th, 2009
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10:46 pm - Threeday
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I feel like a lot of people are taking a wait-and-see approach to Terminator Salvation -- Dave and Jon were the only ones who made it out to see it with me and Marisa on Friday, but lots of people asked us how it was. Kyle cried "faint praise!" when I replied "better than Terminator 3," and initially I hesitated at that distinction but, no, faint praise is about right. As it currently stands, no one has figured out how to follow Terminator 2 in any kind of essential way. T4 is somewhat less inessential than T3 (despite the presence of Arnold in the third one) in that it doesn't simply remake T2 with a bleaker ending; the story is a reasonably interesting non-retread. But the end result isn't so different: entertaining enough as an action movie, not so much as sci-fi drama.
It's actually sort of interesting -- I feel like I see a lot of movies where I say the actors are more interesting than the material, and here, the basic materials are far more interesting than the actors, or at least how they're used here: grim and serious with very little depth, wit, or even much humanity. I've never seen a less engaging Christian Bale performance than his work as John Connor. This new Sam Worthington guy is just a generic tough-guy where a Jason Statham or an early Vin Diesel -- a charismatic hardass -- would've been really helpful. I don't know if McG just doesn't know what to do with actors, or if they weren't bringing their A-game, or what, but the only actor who really registers is Anton Yelchin (baby Chekov!) as baby Kyle Reese. Salvation actually gave me newfound appreciation for the character work on TV's The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which I still haven't finished and has certainly tried my patience in the past, but managed to give us interesting and convincing dynamics between John, Sarah, and a cyborg character.
For all my indifference, the movie actually surpassed my expectations in that it is a pretty enjoyable, lightly ridiculous sci-fi smash-em-up. Technically speaking, the action sequences taken by themselves are better than anything else I've seen so far this summer -- maybe because the Star Trek action is pretty thoroughly integrated with the characters and story while Salvation circles its set pieces in red pen. But: the action stuff is cool -- actually stylish and inventive, not just cut to hell for faux-intensity. So I didn't feel ripped off and enjoyed it in the moment and all that. It's just not a franchise with a huge potential for mythic expansion, no matter what Warner Brothers or whoever else shares the rights wants to believe. Cameron pretty much told the story. We don't need another trilogy. We didn't need a trilogy in the first place.
So at this point, Friday night, it was so far, so good for Memorial Day weekend. Marisa and I went to Kellogg's diner for a late dinner and then walked home and everything was great, until I woke up at 4:30AM, shivering. I fell asleep with the fan on and without covers, so it took me a little while to realize it was still hot out, I wasn't actually cold, and that I in fact had terrible chills. Marisa woke up and got me the thermometer and we watched as my temperature shot up over the next half-hour or so. By the time I was over 100, the shivering had subsided and I was more traditionally feverish, which was actually a huge relief because it made it a lot easier to fall back asleep (although poor Marisa was now awake and worrying). Eventually we both got back to sleep, and when I woke up again four or five hours later, I felt way better, my temperature was down to normal, and I wondered if it was something I ate Kellogg's, despite their semi-recent semi-classy makeover.
Saturday proceeded as normal for a few hours: we slept in and went to the park to eat and read. But when we got back from the park, I was a little cold and soon enough the cycle restarted: cold, hot, spike in temp, kinda achey. We nixed our evening plans and I stuck with the couch, watching Wall-E and some Sarah Connor episodes, with some light lamenting and Chinese food thrown in. Marisa was pretty patient what with the second half of the day being ruined and all.
And then the next morning I was fine again, and the fever never returned. So it was pretty much a 24-hour thing, except it was more like a five-hour thing, a long break, and then a nine-hour thing, and that was it for the week. My fever must be union or something.
It was up to Sunday to right the weekend, and the weather held out as Marisa and Nathaniel and I drove out to Rye Playland, cashed in a bunch of unused point cards (thanks Corinne!) and got unlimited-ride bracelets and rode rollercoasters and went in spookhouses and played skee-ball and got ice cream. No rain. Then Marisa and I headed to Manhattan to see Star Trek again. Usually when I see movies a second time, I make a point of going with at least some people who haven't seen said movie yet, but all ten of us were there for a second go-round, so this was really more of a Star Trek appreciation ceremony: Dear Star Trek, we all enjoyed you so much, even if Katie has some issues with how you use time travel or, really, it turns out, how most anything uses time travel. Do not come to Katie with an investment plan for your time-travel device.
All of this more or less repaired the damage my fever did to this weekend. Today we played catch-up with some movies. We went with Rayme to see Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian in (real) IMAX. First, let me list some actors who appear in Battle of the Smithsonian (oh, the havoc the Star Wars trilogy has wrecked upon sequel titling) so I don't sound like a complete idiot for saying I found it a little disappointing: Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Ricky Gervais, Hank Azaria, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Christopher Guest, Bill Hader, Mindy Kaling, Craig Robinson, Robin Williams, and Thomas Lennon. With voice acting included, some of these people even play multiple roles. As I mentioned in Friday's L Mag blog weekend preview, you'd be interested in most movies starring any five of these people. Maybe I wasn't so much disappointed in the movie as I was disappointed in not being happily surprised. I didn't hate the first Night at the Museum, and enjoyed lots of its incidental gags and asides, so I figured a movie packed with even more comedians doing more goofy asides and jokes about historical figures might actually be kind of fun.
But the sequel, as directed by Shawn Levy, whose shepherding of Date Night just became a huge red-alert warning to me, is an unruly mess, and not the fun kind. At first, after a funny (and very clearly improvised) bit with Jonah Hill as a security guard, and some funny business from Hank Azaria as the villainous pharoah, you think everyone's going to come on and get to do a little bit of schtick. But the movie scatters its resources heedlessly and refuses to develop scenes beyond thinking of reasons for them to begin and/or end with Stiller being chased. So you have Stiller and Wilson, an excellent and natural comic duo, barely getting a scene together; Wilson and Coogan, who played off each other well in the last movie, separated for most of this one; Azaria sometimes playing a real threat and sometimes playing a comically unthreatening bad guy; Hader locked in a closet for half the movie with other characters non-reacting to his character. Rather than clever asides, characters are pushed so far aside that little builds or adds up in any kind of workable comedic way.
The early scene with Stiller and Hill is a complete digression, too, but it has two funny actors, in a room, playing off of each other (Mindy Kaling has a similarly funny bit early on, too). Obviously this is a family movie and there are going to be some special effects and silliness and chasing around. But I really do like that stuff when it's done right, just not when it's so haphazard and sloppy. Once in awhile, Smithsonian pulls it off: there's a scene with characters jumping into paintings, knocked off from Looney Tunes: Back in Action, but fair enough, it's a neat trick and worth knocking off. Mostly, though, everyone just runs in circles.
There is an unsurprising but still-delightful bright spot called Amy Adams, who plays Amelia Earhart (or the museum version come to life), and does so with such charm and humor and even vaguely buyable emotion that I felt alternately grateful, that she was so much better than this movie needed her to bed, and annoyed at this movie for not being worth what she puts into it. Question, then: is there any movie Amy Adams could not substantially improve? (Ball's in your court, Julie and Julia.) (Actually, that movie looks sort of cute... mostly because it has Amy Adams. Tautology?)
Then we walked down to Chelsea to meet up with Ben for a make-up showing of The Girlfriend Experience, as that was one of our canceled Saturday plans. Turns out everyone else would've been fine with no make-up as I was the only one who liked it, but I did like it, maybe owing to my digging of Soderbergh in concise-but-semi-experimental mode. It's about a couple days, fragmented by the movie, in the life of a Manhattan call girl. At two hours, maybe Soderbergh's life-in-late-2008-as-a-series-of-slightly-panicked-transactions thing would've run thin, but it works fine at 75 minutes, and he has a way of filtering things that I might normally find dull in a way that I wind up finding interesting. For example: Sasha Grey, adult film star, in the lead of a decidedly non-sexy movie. Grey obviously isn't going to be the toast of the London stage any time soon, but the way Soderbergh uses her affectless voice and the sense that she's intentionally withholding something, shielding herself, is really smart and effective -- the performance works and without making much effort at all to make her particularly likable (except maybe in comparison to all of the even less likable characters). I like the Ebert review (as I often do).
That about brings me up to date and thinking about the next couple of weeks. For one thing, I am serious about trying to go to this even though I just bought Art Brut tickets for the very same night. I think it can be done. Also, how bout that album cover. I'm pretty sure she hasn't gone back to teen-pop but it looks like someone at the (her own?) record company wouldn't mind if you assumed she did.
current music: Green Day - ¡Viva La Gloria!
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| Monday, May 18th, 2009
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4:17 pm - Sucker
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Stuff for which I am a sucker in songs apart from just having a chick sing, most of which I've only fully realized in the past few months:
Delayed chorus -- not the audio effect, but not going to the chorus for several verses and/or minutes. (I've known that I like this for a long time, at least since I was listening to "Tiny Dancer" a lot.)
Speeding up the lyrics right before going into the chorus, like what Neko Case does on "People Got a Lotta Nerve."
Extraneous chatter before the song, best example being those two Pixies intros ("you fuckin' die" and "all I know, there were rumors he was into field hockey players...").
Extraneous chatter during the song, even/especially if it's halfway off-mic. Again, the Pixies represent here with the classic "rock me, Joe" in "Monkey Gone to Heaven." But it's not just them. Possibly my favorite part of any Marnie Stern song is when she says "all right, here we go!" on "The Devil is in the Details."
Harmonica. I know, right? Special exception for Blues Traveler. But if there's a band that generally doesn't use a harmonica but then busts out a harmonica for like one song? I will probably love that song.
Were anyone to combine all of these elements into a single song, maybe my head would explode, except now that I've said that I bet someone can find some Foghat song where they do all of that and it's horrible.
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