Monthly Archives: May 2008

Sex and the City

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Sex and the City

 

Yep, I saw it. I work for the movie com­pany that pro­duced it, so I got to go for free. The stan­dard line with Michael Patrick King’s now decade-old Sex and the City fran­chise is that it has always appealed mostly to gay men and the women that love them. Even though this Dork Reporter is more or less a white­bread straight dude (while I like naked lady bot­toms and affirm Sean Con­nery is the best James Bond, auto­mo­biles and pro­fes­sional sports don’t move me), I don’t mean that as a dis­claimer. While I’d never seen more than por­tions of the orig­i­nal tele­vi­sion show, and I’d not vol­un­tar­ily pay see the movie in the the­ater or rent the DVD, I’m not ashamed to say I’ve seen it.

Sex and the CityAfter shop­ping, let’s go shopping

I had recently seen an advance screen­ing of a yet-to-be released film (that will have to remain name­less here) that had more than a lit­tle in com­mon with the plot and char­ac­ters of Sex and the City. Let me just say that in com­par­i­son, Sex and the City is a mas­ter­piece, and at least, watch­able by straight men. The male char­ac­ters in the film are endowed with more char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and com­plex­ity than I would have expected. When Mr. Big (Chris Noth) does some­thing “bad,” it’s because he’s con­fused and con­flicted, not because he’s a douchebag (which is the expla­na­tion of any and all bad behav­ior by male char­ac­ters in the afore­men­tioned movie-that-cannot-be-named-for-professional-reasons).

Sex and the CityHey there, Mr. Big Stuff

To get into the nitty gritty of the plot, there was one aspect that I just couldn’t wrap my head around: Miranda (Cyn­thia Nixon) makes an under­stand­ably bit­ter com­ment about mar­riage in gen­eral to Mr. Big that becomes one of many influ­ences upon his spon­ta­neous deci­sion to leave Car­rie (Sarah Jes­sica Parker) at the altar. Miranda neglects to tell Car­rie about her com­ment, and the event and its cover-up is weighted by the film as A) the worst thing one friend can do to another and B) the sin­gle rea­son why Mr. Big stood Car­rie up. When Miranda even­tu­ally comes clean, Car­rie reacts as if she sees Mr. Big and his actions in a wholly new light, and the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion begins. I just don’t get it; it seems to me, based on the fic­tional char­ac­ters’ actions and moti­va­tions in the world of the film, that Miranda’s minor indis­cre­tion is exactly that, and the true prob­lem is in fact Mr. Big’s ambiva­lence about Carrie’s desire for a dis­gust­ingly overblown princess wed­ding. But I sup­pose the answer to my con­fu­sion may sim­ply be that I don’t get it because I’m a dude.

And finally, a Dork Report Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ment for any other blog­gers search­ing the inter­webs for movie stills with which to illus­trate their reviews of Sex and the City: depend­ing on your incli­na­tions, exer­cise cau­tion when Googling “Mr. Big.”

Offi­cial movie site: www.sexandthecitymovie.com

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

 

Indi­ana Jones and the King­dom of the Crys­tal Skull is ulti­mately a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing, espe­cially if one reflects too much on its plot and basic plau­si­bil­ity, but it has plenty to com­mend it. It is also far from the worst entry in the fran­chise (that would be Tem­ple of Doom — blech! stay tuned for The Dork Report’s forth­com­ing tear­down of that stinky turd), which admit­tedly isn’t say­ing much.

The basic con­cept (report­edly con­ceived by pro­ducer George Lucas and viewed askance at by direc­tor Steven Spiel­berg and star Har­ri­son Ford) is sound. The orig­i­nal tril­ogy was set in the 1930s, and as such the first and third films mostly con­cerned Indy bat­tling the Ratzis. So, whom bet­ter for an older Indi­ana Jones to face off against in the 1950s than Com­mies and UFOs? In all seri­ous­ness, sounds like fun to me! Unfor­tu­nately, the end result is mud­dled with bits of busi­ness about El Dorado, and sad­dled with a dis­ap­point­ingly con­ser­v­a­tive tsk-tsk dis­ap­proval of the ras­cally Indy’s way­ward ways with women. But per­haps the focus on mar­riage and the restora­tion of a bro­ken nuclear fam­ily was also a con­scious allu­sion to the con­formist 1950s?

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal SkullVee haff vays of mak­ing you talk

Cate Blanchett is far and away the best thing in it, but then again, she usu­ally is. Impos­si­bly sexy in a severe bob hair­cut and out­ra­geous accent (the sub­ject of Indy’s best gag: “Well, judg­ing by the way you’re swal­low­ing your wub­b­ley­ous, I’m guess­ing Russ­ian”), Blanchett can take a line as bor­ing as “Take the thing and put it in the car” (I’m para­phras­ing) and steal the scene with it. How­ever, this Dork Reporter is puz­zled by the ubiq­uity of sud­den A-lister Shia LeBeouf. He is not espe­cially hand­some, funny, charis­matic, or even a skilled action per­former. But Stephen Spiel­berg seems to have a man-crush on him, so here he is. Let’s hope saner heads pre­vail and don’t make him the star of future sequels. There can only be one Young Indi­ana Jones; River Phoenix, we miss you. It’s a treat to have Karen Allen back at last. Unfor­tu­nately, there’s no John Rhys-Davies or Sean Con­nery to be had, but in a pinch, Ray Win­stone will do fine.

Of course mod­ern action movies get com­pared to video games all the time (often deri­sively, mostly deserv­ingly), but The King­dom of the Crys­tal Skull is one of the most overt offend­ers I’ve seen yet. Sequences like the one in which the gang must solve puz­zles like rac­ing down a spi­ral stair­case as the steps retract and the ground falls away will no doubt trans­late more or less intact into the film’s offi­cial game.

The biggest clas­sic Indy theme miss­ing from Skull is that of reli­gion. In the first film, Indy tracked down the honest-to-Moses Ark of the Con­venant. The MacGuf­fin of the sec­ond film was a set of Hindu (well, a deroga­to­rily fic­tion­al­ized ver­sion thereof) sacred stones. The third install­ment went back to the franchise’s Judeo-Christian roots and had Indy pur­sue none other than The Holy Grail. Indy some­times dis­misses reli­gious tra­di­tions as myth, but usu­ally doesn’t have any trou­ble accept­ing that the 10 Com­mand­ment tablets and the Grail are any­thing less than actual objects. There are no mere metaphors for Indi­ana Jones!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal SkullYou never intro­duced me to your father!

In keep­ing with the reli­gious over­tones, all three parts of the orig­i­nal tril­ogy end in psy­che­delic freak­outs: wit­ness an empty Ark explode Nazi heads, sacred stones mag­i­cally relieve a village’s famine, and a Grail cause an earth­quake. So as much as I may have hated Skull’s mys­ti­fy­ing, CG-drenched in which a bunch of alien corpses become one liv­ing being that does some­thing glowy to Irina Spalko and launches his space­ship off into another dimen­sion (all of which is like an unholy love child of the X-Files fea­ture film Fight the Future and Spielberg’s own A.I.: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence), it is actu­ally in keep­ing with the end­ings of the orig­i­nal three films (even the “good one,” of course, Raiders). If you don’t believe me, go back and watch them again.

Must read: Rod Hilton’s hilar­i­ous, cut­ting The Abridged Script.

Offi­cial movie site: www.indianajones.com

Laura Veirs, Bowery Ballroom, New York

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This Dork Reporter has been a big fan of the bespec­ta­cled, water-obsessed Laura Veirs ever since first dis­cov­er­ing her infec­tious song “Galax­ies” on the late MP3 blog Salon Audiofile in 2005. Why it was not a huge hit, fea­tured in iPod or car com­mer­cials and embed­ded in the denoue­ments of The O.C. or Gray’s Anatomy, I’ll never under­stand. Still, she’s evi­dently doing well for her­self, for I’ve now seen her live three times in New York City, and each time she’s grad­u­ated to a larger venue.

Laura Veirs

This is the first time I’ve seen her per­form solo, with­out her band The Salt­break­ers (whom she lov­ingly refers to as The Bearded Men). Like seem­ingly every other singer/songwriter these days, she employs live loop­ing tech­nol­ogy (pop­u­lar­ized by Joseph Arthur and ripped off by K.T. Tun­stall) to become a one-woman band, accom­pa­ny­ing her­self with looped beats and bass lines all gen­er­ated on a sin­gle acoustic gui­tar. The mood was great and she was well-received, and she later ranked New York City as the best audi­ence of the tour.

Laura Veirs

Offi­cial site: www.lauraveirs.com

Buy Laura Veirs’ lat­est album Salt­break­ers from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Youth Without Youth

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Youth Without Youth

 

Youth With­out Youth had a shock­ingly poor recep­tion for the first film in years from a major Amer­i­can film­maker, gar­ner­ing a mid­dling 43 on Meta­critic and a painful 29 from Rot­ten­Toma­toes. In Jan­u­ary 2008, this Dork Reporter found him­self in a room with a bunch of jour­nal­ists from genre pub­li­ca­tions like Fan­go­ria and ComingSoon.net (Weird, right? It was a work thing. Any­way…). Sev­eral of them had recently reviewed Youth With­out Youth, and the buzz was extremely neg­a­tive. Now hav­ing finally seen it myself, it is this Dork Reporter’s opin­ion it received an unfair bad rap.

Youth Without YouthRecline thy weary head betwixt my thighs, old man

Why would the likes of Fan­go­ria be inter­ested in a pres­tige period piece? Need­less to say, Fran­cis Ford Cop­pola is one of the most famous liv­ing film­mak­ers. Many young movie lovers first dis­cover an appre­ci­a­tion for film through the canon­i­cal The God­fa­ther Parts I & II and Apoc­a­lypse Now (and hope­fully later grad­u­ate to the sub­tler plea­sures of The Con­ver­sa­tion). Alas, he went trag­i­cally awry with the expen­sive folly One From the Heart in 1982, and spent decades dig­ging out of the finan­cial hole. Peo­ple have been wait­ing for years for him to return to form after many years of work-for-hire (The Rain­maker) and mis­judged sequels to past glo­ries (The God­fa­ther Part III). But the main rea­son for sci-fi & hor­ror fans’ inter­est in Youth With­out Youth is that it is in fact Coppola’s first sci­ence fic­tion. It is, how­ever, more in the con­tem­pla­tive mode of The Man Who Fell to Earth than Fangoria’s usual beat.

Youth Without YouthOh, Fran­cis, you know you’re going to catch flak for that beret…

The freeform plot mean­ders to say the least, which clearly isn’t the point, but will frus­trate view­ers antic­i­pat­ing a more lucid sci­ence fic­tion con­ceit. The aca­d­e­mic Dominic (Tim Roth) under­takes a project lit­er­ally too big to fin­ish in a life­time: a com­plete his­tory and analy­sis of lin­guis­tics. In a true exam­ple of careful-what-you-wish-for, the aged and sui­ci­dal intel­lec­tual is struck by light­ning and mys­te­ri­ously restored to his youth (Roth is at his best in these scenes, where he car­ries his younger body with the gait and pos­ture of an old man). As he strives to com­plete his mas­sive folly (could Cop­pola iden­tify?), he is aided by a sym­pa­thetic Pro­fes­sor Stan­ci­ulescu (Bruno Ganz), evades the Nazis, and is haunted by an incar­na­tion of his youth­ful love Laura (Alexan­dra Maria Lara). Youth With­out Youth is def­i­nitely an old man’s film (I mean that as a com­pli­ment, Fran­cis), for the themes of reju­ve­na­tion, dou­bles, and transmutation/reincarnation echo through­out Dominic’s extended life.

Please see Jaimie Stuart’s excel­lent and suc­cinct appre­ci­a­tion (at the bot­tom of page), sug­gest­ing that one pos­si­ble rea­son for the film’s poor reviews was that the dig­i­tal for­mat trans­ferred poorly to large screens but looks rav­ish­ing on DVD. It does.

Offi­cial movie site: www.sonyclassics.com/youthwithoutyouth

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

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Walk Hard The Dewey Cox Story

 

This Dork Reporter finds most so-called biopics want­ing. The two to three hour fea­ture film is more akin to an essay or short story than a book, and as such is ill-equipped to sum up the entire life of a human being in more than a string of high­lights. And yet stu­dios and film­mak­ers keep keep churn­ing out parades of Clas­sics Illustrated-like films that seem to exist mostly to grant actors Oscars and Golden Globes based on their abil­i­ties to imi­tate his­tor­i­cal fig­ures. The best of them ought more deservedly to be rec­og­nized for their abil­i­ties to cre­ate new char­ac­ters from whole cloth.

But I reserve a spe­cial degree of hate for musi­cal biopics; I’m look­ing at you, Bird, Ray, Walk the Line, La Vie en Rose, and El Can­tante! They all seem to forged from the same tem­plate of trou­bled genius beset by addic­tion, and the women that love them. Com­fort­ingly, the exis­tence of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story proves I’m not alone in bemoan­ing this most pathetic genre. Walk Hard touches on each cliché in turn: phys­i­cal infir­mity (Cox is trag­i­cally “nose blind”), drugs, dis­ap­prov­ing par­ent, dead sib­ling, etc.

walkhard1.jpgpssst… your bouf­fant is cramp­ing my style

At its best, direc­tor and co-writer (with Judd Apa­tow) Jake Kasdan’s Walk Hard is a his­tory of pop­u­lar music and nar­cotics from the 1950s on. The chameleonic Cox evolves with the times, begin­ning as a diamond-in-the-rough Ray Charles, break­ing through like a young Johnny Cash, becom­ing a pop super­star Elvis Pres­ley, pass­ing through a Bob Dylan folkie stage, and end­ing up as a Brian Jones, an obses­sive pop genius unable to com­plete his unachiev­able mas­ter­piece (like Jones’ own noto­ri­ous Smile). The best run­ning gag in the movie involves Cox’s con­cur­rent drug addic­tions (pot, cocaine, heroin, pills, and, well, every­thing…), which no doubt gave the MPAA a heart attack.

Lest I sound like I’m prais­ing the film for being clever, here’s the bad news. The self-proclaimed “The Unbear­ably Long, Self-Indulgent Director’s Cut” DVD edi­tion repeats the same jokes over and over. Its idea of hilar­ity is to repeat the name “Cox” as much as pos­si­ble, which should give some hint as to the over­all level of sophis­ti­ca­tion. Each char­ac­ter explic­itly ver­bal­izes and expli­cates the genre clichés and their own char­ac­ter types: the unsup­port­ive starter wife, the doomed sib­ling, the venal music stu­dio boss, and the dis­ap­prov­ing father (whose refrain “The wrong kid died!” fol­lows Cox through his life as both curse and moti­va­tion). His­tor­i­cal celebrity cameos are repeat­edly sign­posted with their full names, lest any­one in the audi­ence not catch on that the batch of four candy-colored lads from Liv­er­pool noodling on sitars in an Indian ashram are, in fact, The Bea­t­les. It is great fun, how­ever, to see Jack Black, Jason Schwartz­man, Paul Rudd, and Jack White do their best Paul McCart­ney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and Elvis Pres­ley, respectively.

walkhard2.jpgThe 70s were a decade of taste and restraint

One lit­tle quib­ble: as the char­ac­ters age, the makeup jobs are actu­ally too good, far bet­ter than, say the out­ra­geously silly age makeup for Jen­nifer Con­nelly and Rus­sell Crowe in A Beau­ti­ful Mind. This unfor­tu­nately ruins the gen­uinely funny gag that John C. Reilly plays Cox as a teenager with no attempt to hide his age. Why not carry it through to the end, with Reilly look­ing exactly the same as Cox is sup­posed to be 70?

Does any­body remem­ber when John C. Reilly was a seri­ous actor? I’m happy for him that he’s no doubt build­ing a sig­nif­i­cant nest egg off his recent string of low­brow come­dies (Tal­ladega Nights, Step Broth­ers, etc.), but I hope we will see more of the fine actor of Syd­ney (aka Hard Eight), Boo­gie Nights, and The Hours?

Offi­cial movie site: www.walkhard-movie.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

26 Albums I’m Told I Should Remove From My Collection

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100albums2.jpgThe author, with some of the offend­ing articles

Chalkills, the XTC fan­site, wants to help you sift through the detri­tus of your music col­lec­tion, pronto: One Hun­dred Albums You Should Remove from Your Col­lec­tion Imme­di­ately (spot­ted on DGM­Live).

I own (or once owned) a whop­ping 26% of these over­rated (so they say) canon­i­cal clas­sics! Hey, Chalkhills, what did I ever do to you? I love XTC (Apple Venus and Wasp Star being two of my all-time favorite albums, hands-down), so my tastes can’t be all bad, can they? But hav­ing read your list, I find that for every one of your selec­tions that brings steam out of my ears, there’s another with which I have to begrudg­ingly agree.

So here’s my anno­tated list, includ­ing, for fun, the for­mat in which I pur­chased each offend­ing title and whether or not I even­tu­ally dis­carded it:

U2 - The Joshua Tree
2. U2 — The Joshua Tree
20th Anniver­sary Edi­tion boxed set
U2’s true mas­ter­piece Achtung Baby was yet to come, but the com­plex depth of that record wouldn’t have been pos­si­ble with­out the unironic earnest­ness of The Joshua Tree. And yes, maybe I’m a snob (not to men­tion old) for upgrad­ing to the remas­tered anniver­sary edi­tion, but just the other day I lis­tened to the revived record­ing of “Moth­ers of the Dis­ap­peared” with my jaw lit­er­ally hang­ing open and the prover­bial chills run­ning up and down my spine.

Nirvana - Nevermind
3. Nir­vana — Nev­er­mind
cas­sette (dis­carded)
It was a gift, I swear. While I intel­lec­tu­ally under­stand what the mass-market break­through of Nir­vana did for music (basi­cally, spark­ing a fresh explo­sion of so-called “alter­na­tive” music com­pa­ra­ble to punk’s effect on a stag­nant world of disco and sta­dium rock in the early 1970s), I always pre­ferred the rock ‘n’ roll songcraft of Pearl Jam to the loud ‘n’ sloppy depres­sion of Nirvana.

The Beatles - Let It Be
5. The Bea­t­les — Let It Be
cd, The “Naked” ver­sion
Any antipa­thy towards the Bea­t­les seems a bit strange com­ing from an XTC fan­site — surely Andy Par­tridge and Colin Mould­ing are acolytes. Do I still have to dis­card Let It Be if I own the McCartney-approved “Naked” edi­tion, as opposed to the orig­i­nal with Wall-of-Schmaltz orches­tral over­dubs by Phil Spec­tor? Let it Be is not my favorite Bea­t­les long-player (that would def­i­nitely be The White Album), and obvi­ously one the lads tossed off at the tail end of their (actu­ally quite brief) asso­ci­a­tion. But how is that any dif­fer­ent, really, from their early quickie LPs recorded in mere hours with the aid of amphetamines?

The Police - Synchronicity
7. The Police — Syn­chronic­ity
cas­sette (dis­carded)
I agree with Chalkhills’ assess­ment that Syn­chronic­ity is a sur­pris­ingly dark album for a main­stream plat­inum hit, but I believe that’s exactly what makes it spe­cial. What other band, at the peak of their com­mer­cial suc­cess, released such a para­noid, neu­rotic album? OK, maybe Radiohead’s Kid A.

Lou Reed - Transformer
8. Lou Reed — Trans­former
vinyl
Agreed. “Walk on the Wild Side” and “Satel­lite of Love” are both mas­ter­pieces, but I couldn’t name a sin­gle other song from the album. Am I redeemed by own­ing the vinyl edi­tion? It must be said that it earns extra Cool Points for being pro­duced by David Bowie, but the back cover pho­to­graph of Lou with the boner in his tight jeans is just plain gross.

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
9. Miles Davis — Bitches Brew
Com­plete Bitches Brew Ses­sions boxed set
Yes, I am that poseur that owns the Com­plete Ses­sions boxed set. I have to very, very strongly object to Chalkhills’ dis­missal here (and I do I detect a strong anti-jazz bias?). Miles changed music for­ever when he plugged in to rock, fusion, and funk. Try­ing to pre­tend Bitches Brew never hap­pened is as fruit­less as still com­plain­ing about Bob Dylan going rock (or coun­try, or Chris­t­ian, etc…) or The Sex Pis­tols giv­ing the world the fin­ger. The dif­fer­ence is that it still sounds fresh and new.

Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
12. Led Zep­pelin — Phys­i­cal Graf­fiti
vinyl
I love me some Zep­pelin, but I have to agree that Phys­i­cal Graf­fiti isn’t a keeper. It is, how­ever, bet­ter than its follow-up Pres­ence (but that’s not say­ing much).

Beck - Midnite Vultures
19. Beck — Mid­nite Vul­tures
cd (sold)
Agreed. I lis­tened to it once, and then sold it as quickly as I could. Blech!

Derek and the Dominoes - Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
21. Derek and the Domi­noes — Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
cd (sold)
I could not agree more: two bril­liant songs in “Layla” and “Lit­tle Wing,” padded out with a for­get­table batch of filler. Leg­end has it the substance-abusing Clap­ton lit­er­ally does not recall record­ing the album.

The Who - Tommy
22. The Who — Tommy
vinyl (triple gate­fold with lyric book­let)
I don’t dis­agree that Tommy is loaded down with a lot of silli­ness and filler, but hey, it’s a rock opera, and the first one at that. What do you expect?

U2 - Zooropa
26. U2 — Zooropa
cd
I firmly, absolutely dis­agree. Zooropa may be a prod­uct of its time (the cut ‘n’ paste post­mod­ern media over­loaded 1990s), but it includes some of U2’s all-time best songs, includ­ing the title track and Stay (Far­away So Close). The mul­ti­lay­ered pro­duc­tion by Flood and Brian Eno may make the songs “sound weird,” but it also rewards a life­time of repeat listens.

The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
32. The Flam­ing Lips — The Soft Bul­letin
cd
I regret­tably agree. Give me Yoshimi Bat­tles the Pink Robots any day, but I just can’t get into this one.

Dave Brubeck - Time Out
34. Dave Brubeck — Time Out
cd
Blas­pheme! Blas­pheme! Again with the jazz hate! I was not aware any­body dis­liked this album. What’s wrong with you? If you had included Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on your list, I think I would have had an aneurism.

Wilco - Being There
39. Wilco — Being There
cd (sold)
Like the rest of the world, I loved Yan­kee Hotel Fox­trot, so I sought out some older Wilco albums. And I sus­pect like most of those peo­ple, I got rid of them.

The Police - Zenyatta Mondatta
42. The Police — Zeny­atta Mon­datta
cd
Dis­agree! Zeny­atta Mon­datta is my favorite Police album. Granted, “De Doo Doo Doo, De Da Da Da” is the epit­ome of pop silli­ness (except for maybe “Louie Louie” and R.E.M.‘s “Stand”), but the rest of the album is full of clas­sic reggae-inflected new wave pop.

Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking
44. Jane’s Addic­tion — Nothing’s Shock­ing
cd
As Perry Far­rell him­self once sang, “Stop!” Jane’s Addiction’s debut stu­dio album Nothing’s Shock­ing is a fan­tas­tic batch of songs. Perry Farrell’s wild per­sona and Dave Navarro’s famously louche lifestyle got all the press, but my god, haven’t you lis­tened to the rhythm sec­tion? Jane’s Addic­tion proved that prog could live with­out shame in a new world after Led Zep­pelin, and they got even bet­ter in their next album Rit­ual De Lo Habit­ual (before self-destructing, alas).

Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas
50. Cocteau Twins — Heaven or Las Vegas
cd
I don’t have a really strong opin­ion about it, but I enjoy lis­ten­ing to it from time to time. I didn’t even know it was espe­cially pop­u­lar. Sorry, jeez.

Radiohead - I Might be Wrong
51. Radio­head — I Might be Wrong
cd
It’s a fair state­ment that most live albums begin life as con­trac­tual oblig­a­tions. But what actu­ally does bother me more about I Might Be Wrong is that it’s basi­cally an EP sold at LP prices. That said, the per­for­mances are strong, and prove that the weird, arty music on Kid A and Amne­siac can and really do come to life on stage.

Tori Amos - Under the Pink
54. Tori Amos — Under the Pink
cd (sold)
I loved Tori’s offi­cial solo debut Lit­tle Earth­quakes, but I sus­pect my sen­si­tive teenager self may have been crush­ing on the cute & quirky red­head at the piano.

Arrested Development - 3 Years, 5 Months, & 2 Days In The Life Of...
55. Arrested Devel­op­ment — 3 Years, 5 Months, & 2 Days In The Life Of…
cd (sold)
”…non-threatening rap-lite for sen­si­tive white lib­er­als who want to “keep it real” and expe­ri­ence hip-hop safely.” Zing! Busted.

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon
64. Pink Floyd — The Dark Side of the Moon
30th Anniver­sary SACD
Again, blas­pheme! Yes, enough copies of Dark Side of the Moon exist on this planet to form their own con­ti­nent, but don’t you think there is a rea­son for that? Mere momen­tum alone can’t be enough to explain its appeal. If you want to sin­gle out one Pink Floyd album for being over­rated and over­pur­chased, please allow me to direct you to The Wall, which unlike most other Floyd albums, appeals to sullen imma­ture teenagers but does not grow in sophis­ti­ca­tion as they do.

Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
65. Sarah McLach­lan — Fum­bling Towards Ecstasy, Sur­fac­ing
cds (still on my shelf but I really ought to sell them)
Ouch! You got me here. I once liked both of these, but quickly fell out of love with them. I main­tain there are some decent songs under­neath the slick adult con­tem­po­rary overproduction.

U2 - War
69. U2 — War
vinyl
U2 charts no less than three times on this haters list, rival­ing the Bea­t­les and the entire genre of jazz for rais­ing Chalkhills’ bile. I sug­gest revis­it­ing “Sun­day Bloody Sun­day” and tell me if the drums don’t make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

R.E.M. - Out of Time
80. R.E.M. — Out of Time
cd
OK, maybe it’s not their best, and it is espe­cially dis­ap­point­ing for hav­ing come right after the leg­endary, essen­tial album Green. But “Shiny Happy Peo­ple” is maybe the best 3/4-time pop song ever, and the whole sec­ond half is superb.

Grateful Dead Reckoning
83. Grate­ful Dead — any album
Reck­on­ing (lp) & Infrared Roses (cd)
Yep, I picked up a sec­ond­hand vinyl copy of Reck­on­ing for pen­nies and it’s pretty loose and ram­bling, even for the Dead. But I do dig the crazy elec­tronic jams on Infrared Roses, man.

Sting - Ten Summoner's Tales
90. Sting — Ten Summoner’s Tales
cd (sold)
I’ll cop to lik­ing “Fields of Gold” back in the day. Oh god, did I just admit that out loud on the internet?

There, done. Finally, I just want to say that yes, I do have a sense of humor and I get the point of Chalkhill’s rant. Respond­ing to their List of Hate was just an excuse for me to scrib­ble out a few words about some of the dusti­est old arti­facts from my music col­lec­tion. Thanks!

100albums1.jpg

The Savages

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The Savages

 

The Sav­ages is the story of a frac­tured fam­ily, sep­a­rated not least by geog­ra­phy, that reunites on the occa­sion of an aged parent’s health. Both sib­lings haven’t seen their father in years, so what was prob­a­bly a slow decline seems to them a sud­den plunge into senil­ity. Both have their own prob­lems, and nei­ther is mature enough or equipped to care for their father. Who aban­doned whom?

Curi­ously, the two sib­lings have defined their lives by two very dif­fer­ent aspects of the the­ater: Wendy (Laura Lin­ney) is a frus­trated writer, end­lessly apply­ing for grants instead of actu­ally writ­ing. Rather, she brings a great deal of fic­tion into her every­day life: she man­u­fac­tures drama at every turn, not just with her lover but also with her own body (she has a mean case of hypochon­dria). She is def­i­nitely a nar­cis­sist; her lover is only slightly older than she, but to her he is an “older man.” Also, note her hys­ter­i­cal (in both senses of the word) ratio­nale for her belief that she is above an affair: “I have an M.F.A.”

savages1.jpgPhilip Sey­mour Hoff­man and Laura Lin­ney in The Savages

Her brother Jon (Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man) is a col­lege pro­fes­sor trapped in a per­pet­u­ally unfin­ished book ana­lyz­ing Brecht. Based on his atti­tude towards Wendy and her lover (a the­ater direc­tor), he evi­dently looks down on those that do the dirty busi­ness of actu­ally cre­at­ing theater.

In a coda, we see that both Jon and Wendy appear to have grown, and become unstuck in the careers and per­sonal lives. Unfor­tu­nately, the end­ing rings false, not in keep­ing with the tone of the events before it. Is writer/director Tamara Jenk­ins’ theme that the death of a par­ent is a final step­ping stone in grow­ing up? If so, how and why? As they did not wit­ness their father’s aging, the audi­ence did not wit­ness Wendy and Jon’s off­screen growth.

savages2.jpgLaura Lin­ney and Philip Bosco in The Savages

Two tal­ented Chrises make con­tri­bu­tions: Gbenga Akin­nagbe (Chris in HBO’s The Wire) appears as per­haps the most mature and sen­si­ble char­ac­ter in the film. And Chris Ware was an excel­lent choice to design the poster and DVD menus, for The Sav­ages would fit very nicely along­side his Acme Nov­elty Library comic book series.

Offi­cial movie site: www.foxsearchlight.com/thesavages

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

I’m Not There

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I'm Not There

 

This Dork Reporter always finds it inter­est­ing to pon­der his pre­con­ceived notions of a movie once he has seen it. The mar­ket­ing and buzz on I’m Not There mostly cen­tered on two talk­ing points: the quirky device of mul­ti­ple actors all play­ing incar­na­tions of Bob Dylan, and Cate Blanchett being just plain amaz­ing as usual (what else is new?). The first point is what gave me pause: how much sense would this film make to some­one who is not a Dylan fan and scholar?

All I really know about Dylan comes from the Mar­tin Scors­ese doc­u­men­tary No Direc­tion Home, and even that paints a sketchy pic­ture of the man. Dylan has been an enigma through­out his long his­tory in the pub­lic eye, often speak­ing in rid­dles, and (at least in his early years) invent­ing a fic­tional back­story. The press and even his own pay­ing audi­ences were often openly antag­o­nis­tic, so it’s no won­der he was so famously com­bat­ive and eva­sive. Pre­fig­ur­ing the modern-day chameleons David Bowie and Madonna, Dylan pre­sented a series of per­sonas: Amer­i­can roots folkie, polit­i­cal agi­ta­tor, rock ‘n’ roller, born-again Chris­t­ian, Hol­ly­wood actor, and so on. The ques­tion being: how much of this evo­lu­tion was sin­cere growth and change, and how much was per­for­mance art? Who is “Bob Dylan”?

I'm Not ThereAn Oscar nomination’s a-gonna fall

Direc­tor and co-screenwriter Todd Haynes, hav­ing already decon­structed David Bowie in Vel­vet Gold­mine, tack­les the many aspects of Dylan per­haps the only way pos­si­ble: frac­ture his key facets into mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters. As with the Bowie ana­logue Brian Slade in Vel­vet Gold­mine, none of the Dylan fig­ures are actu­ally named Dylan, but then again nei­ther is Dylan him­self, whose actual sur­name is Zim­mer­man. Chris­t­ian Bale plays Jack Rollins, inter­pret­ing Dylan’s Chris­t­ian period, and Richard Gere plays Billy the Kid, a pretty lit­eral inter­pre­ta­tion of Dylan’s years in the wilder­ness after his fame peaked for the first time. Adding an extra layer of post­mod­ern com­plex­ity, the late Heath Ledger plays Rob­bie Clark, a film actor famous for play­ing one of the fic­tional Dylans in a biopic. And of course, Cate Blanchett is amaz­ing. As Jude Quinn, a reluc­tant celebrity fend­ing off the attacks of the press, she tri­umphs by avoid­ing mere impres­sion. Sure, she’s wear­ing a fright wig and shades, but her expres­sions and body lan­guage cap­ture Dylan’s para­dox­i­cally wordy elusiveness.

The result is part faux doc­u­men­tary, part fic­tion, but pro­vides a truer over­all pic­ture of Dylan’s com­pli­cated char­ac­ter than a mere biopic ever could. Per­haps at some point after his death (may that be a long time from now), we will see a con­ven­tional musi­cal biopic made of his life story (à la Bird, Ray, or Walk the Line), but I cer­tainly hope crit­ics and audi­ences will remem­ber I’m Not There.

I'm Not ThereHey mr. gui­tar man

The DVD edi­tion is the only I can think of that incor­po­rates long on-screen text intro­duc­tions (more than one, in fact). Does this reflect a lack of con­fi­dence on the part of the film­mak­ers or dis­trib­u­tors in the home view­ers being able to com­pre­hend the film, or is it more in the vein of the schol­arly intro­duc­tions that pref­ace Pen­guin Clas­sics vol­umes? Either way, it only rein­forces the impres­sion that you have to be a Dylan scholar to appre­ci­ate the film (which, inci­den­tally, turned out to not be the case).

And finally, I detected a few ref­er­ences to direc­tor Richard Lester: Rob­bie Clark (Ledger) walks through the set of the 1968 film Petu­lia, dur­ing an early scene in which women in neck braces leave a freight ele­va­tor before a party to pro­mote high­way safety (attended by the likes of George C. Scott, Julie Christie, and the Grate­ful Dead, so it’s not at all unlikely Dylan could have been there too). But even bet­ter is the best Bea­t­les trib­ute I’ve ever seen: the Fab Four breeze through as the epit­ome of care­free fun, lit­er­ally speak­ing and mov­ing in fast-motion. They tempt Jude Quinn’s (Blanchett) desire to escape, until they are chased away by A Hard Day’s Night’s scream­ing sycophants.

Offi­cial movie site: www.imnotthere-movie.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Le Scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

 

Julian Schn­abel is an artist turned film­maker, evi­dently pre­oc­cu­pied with the lives of other artists and writ­ers: Jean-Michel Basquiat in Basquiat, Reinaldo Are­nas in Before Night Falls, and now Jean-Dominique Bauby in The Div­ing Bell and the But­ter­fly. Sev­eral years ago, This Dork Reporter designed Fine Line Fea­tures’ offi­cial web­site for Before Night Falls. But frankly, I had trou­ble work­ing up the enthu­si­asm to watch a biopic (absolutely not one of my favorite gen­res) about a tetraplegic. But please do not be dis­suaded by the admit­tedly depress­ing sub­ject mat­ter. The Div­ing Bell and the But­ter­fly is utterly beau­ti­ful in every way, and moved this hard­ened Dork Reporter to tears in the end.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Math­ieu Amal­ric (who resem­bles a more sym­met­ri­cal Thom Yorke) plays the real-life Bauby, a fash­ion mag­a­zine edi­tor who suf­fers a stroke. He sur­vives with “locked-in syn­drome,” the prover­bial fate worse than death: near-total phys­i­cal paral­y­sis but with full men­tal fac­ul­ties intact. In the true spirit of a French film, Bauby is sur­rounded by beau­ti­ful women. No less a French hot­tie than Emanuelle Seigner plays Céline, the estranged mother of his chil­dren. In a moment of bit­ter­sweet humor, the despon­dent post-stroke Bauby is par­tially con­soled when he first meets his two utterly gor­geous phys­i­cal and speech ther­a­pists (Marie-Josée Croze and Anne Consigny).

The Diving Bell and the ButterflyThe cam­era loves Emanuelle Seigner

Accord­ing to the DVD bonus fea­tures, screen­writer Ronald Har­wood con­ceived of the pow­er­ful visual device of using the cam­era as Bauby’s point of view, sim­u­lat­ing his sole means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion: blink­ing. He is, bless­edly, able to move one eye, and painstak­ingly dic­tates his biog­ra­phy let­ter by letter.

The sound­track is excel­lent, includ­ing Tom Waits, Joe Strum­mer (a really great song, new to me, called “Ram­shackle Day Parade”), and the best pos­si­ble use of U2’s “Ultraviolet.”

Offi­cial movie site: www.thedivingbellandthebutterfly-themovie.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Low in Europe

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Low in Europe

 

I came late to appre­ci­at­ing Low, but they have since become one of my favorite bands. I was vaguely aware that trainspot­ting music crit­ics had chris­tened a new genre to cat­e­go­rize bands like Low: slow­core, the dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of which being play­ing very qui­etly and slowly (an over­gen­er­al­iza­tion, it turns out, but it never hurts to be famous for some­thing unique). “Venus,” a free pro­mo­tional MP3 from A Life­time of Tem­po­rary Relief given away on Amazon.com, lived in rota­tion on my iPod for some time, and finally con­vinced me to buy the 2005 album The Great Destroyer. I first saw them live in Brooklyn’s McCar­ren Park Pool in 2006, sup­port­ing Iron & Wine (whom I like well enough, but if you ask me it should have been the other way around). Even in direct sun­light, their music is beau­ti­ful and engross­ingly enigmatic.

Low in EuropeThrill to the sounds of slow­core leg­ends tun­ing up

Direc­tor Sebas­t­ian Schrade’s doc­u­men­tary Low in Europe was filmed on their 2002–2003 tour of Europe, before they wrote and recorded my two favorite albums of theirs: The Great Destroyer and Drums and Guns. It’s part con­cert film and part doc­u­men­tary, but not enough of each. There are no com­plete musi­cal per­for­mances included, and although the prin­ci­pals are all intel­li­gent and inter­est­ing, the fact is the inter­views are some­times a lit­tle less than gripping.

The band first expresses their ambiva­lence about oper­at­ing within the com­mer­cial music indus­try. They address their rep­u­ta­tion for slow tem­pos and low vol­ume with good humor; in their early days, they played really slow, in the fuck-you avant-garde spirit but not the loud ‘n’ sloppy let­ter of punk, to antag­o­nize and chal­lenge the audi­ence. Their con­trary nature extends to their per­sonal lives: prin­ci­pal mem­bers Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, prac­tic­ing Mor­mons and a long­time mar­ried cou­ple, tour with their chil­dren and view it as a sim­pli­fied and focused way of life. This came as some­thing of a sur­prise to this Dork Reporter, whom feels per­haps he had a hereto­fore undis­cov­ered prej­u­dice that Mor­mons couldn’t be rock stars.

Low in EuropeOver to you, Alan

The heavily-documented Low can be fur­ther inves­ti­gated on the three doc­u­men­tary shorts included with the A Life­time of Tem­po­rary Relief boxed set, and on the forth­com­ing You May Need a Mur­derer, a new doc com­ing out June 3.

Offi­cial movie site: www.low-in-europe.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.