When someone sends you semi-anonymous cookies in the mail, it means you have done something right. Or you have just eaten a fatal dose of arsenic. For now, I'm going with the former, but if this is my last blog post, assume it was the latter all along.One of the nice things about being, at this point, primarily a vinyl listener is that you can get completely bogged down in one side of an album. That's what's going on with me and Beach House's "Devotion" right now. Beside the fact it's hardly come off my turntable at all (until yesterday morning when I was jonesing for Mingus with my coffee and eggs), very often after the need scratches the label on the first side, I just lift it back to the outer edge of the disc rather than flipping the whole thing over and exploring further. I love it when this happens, it's like planning a long trip full of stops you know will be amazing, but lingering a couple extra days with friends who are just too lovely to leave.
I saw these two open for Grizzly Bear a whiles back during my finish-the-book/visit-the-parents retreat and it was fantastic. Perfect music for the beginnings of a spring thaw. Diffuse light, cold with surprises. I thought I was hooked on the first track, but now I'm caught up on the third. Here they are, in order (the second, not included, is pretty swell as well):
Wedding Bell
Gila
Because some of you might enjoy it, here are a couple live tracks from the Super Furry Animals show at the store a couple weeks back. The one that was going to put the store on the map and ensure that we did tons of business for the rest of the semester? Well, the doldrums continue, but the show was one of those things where you just shake your head and wonder if it's really happening.
Rings Around the Moon
Runaway
Golden Retriever
In other reportage of things other people have known about forever, I finally got around to seeing "The Lives of Others". I mistakenly netflixed (it's a verb now) "Little Children" instead and forgot about my original target film. The Lawyer put it best (he so often does) in mentioning how remarkable it is that while American twentysomething filmmakers are largely producing meticulous mits of omphaloskeptic self indulgence (which is to say, "I saw 'Darjeeling Limited' this week"), this German cat, all of twenty four years, puts together this sprawling, near perfect commentary on, let's see, interpersonal relations, the role of the artist within the state, the history of the East German regime and the nature of the human soul under such an oppressive government. I'd be more enamored if the film dropped the "see what I just did" denoument, but it looks like my favorite recent films list just got another German in the mix.This weekend, I am learning James Dean. I've never seen anything of his other than "Rebel Without a Cause", so Sunday night is going to be a "Giant"/"East of Eden" double-header. Ideally, this is going to kick off a sort of American Icons series for me. I'm loading some John Wayne onto the Netflix cue, maybe some Gary Cooper. Given that I'm already well-versed in Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, who else should make the list? Maybe some Bogart? I dunno, Gregory Peck?
Take 'em to Missouri.
3 comments:
Your comment about 20-something film-makers might or might not be true, but Wes Anderson himself is in fact ... nearly 39:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_anderson
Whether that makes his flaws more lamentable is, I suppose, another matter (but personally, I couldn't believe how bad The Darjeeling Limited was).
Wow, that's terrible. Shouldn't Wes Anderson be, like, perpetually twenty-three? That makes "Darjeeling" the equivalent of having an early mid-life crisis where instead of getting a sports car, you get a Lionel train set.
It was dismal. I don't feel that I dislike his work as a whole - I feel fond of The Royal Tenenbaums, can perhaps understand why people admired Rushmore on its appearance - but this last picture was a terrible case of diminishing returns. The opening (hotel short film) was awful, with the awful 'Where Do You Go To My Lovely?' played about three times too many. The double use of 'Play With Fire', twice in quick succession, was dire. I can't really think of a single good thing about the film. Maybe the tableau where we saw a sequence of scenes on the train, people dreaming about things - maybe that was cinematically OK or interesting. But really this was pretty woeful from such a rated figure.
I don't know Lionel train sets; perhaps the equivalent in my country is Hornby.
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