feeling so blahg

Disjointed, Messy, and Intelligent: #occupywallst and Occupy Wall Street is What We Needed

2011-10-13T22:26:00.002-04:00

Yes, #occupywallst and Occupy Wall Street...two separate but related entities. This week, in my course Self & Society in Virtual Contexts, my students are reading and contributing to the discussion on the theme: Negotiating Identities, Online and Off; my students in a course (unfortunately) called Strategic Presentation Methods are reading about the potential efficacy of web-based/facilitated social movements (crudely, Wired magazine and Dave Karpf stand on one side; Malcolm Gladwell and Micah White on the other).

The sentiments criticized in the Occupy Wall Street movement are old; they are peculiar to late capitalism. I detailed the trend in a slew of recent documentaries to try to shed light on the effects of corporate culture on American citizens' lived realities, and many of these were Oscar contenders. These complaints aren't new, nor are they radical.

But perhaps in order to get anything done, something radical needs to happen. Something as radical as taking over a private park, open to the public, in lower Manhattan, and amassing a group of people so large it is impossible to ignore them. Social media and digital technologies in general have allowed the movement to find allies in the employed, the geographically dispersed, and those that have stepped out of ~~Zuccotti~~ Liberty Park -- that has been a nice complement to the movement. But that can't be all.

How often do you hear the words "corporate greed/malfeasance/irresponsibility" in the news? Consuming information through media -- especially digital media -- allows one to easily ignore whatever one wants to easily ignore. Unless one is glued to television or radio news, one consumes news a la carte. With digital technologies, certain users can be unknowingly kept from information with filter bubbles.

And so, Occupy Wall Street.

One of my closest friends is currently mired in a project at work. Quite apart from the quality or quantity of coverage on the protests, he was too busy to be informed. And even when he tried to find a point of entry into understanding the movement's motives, he felt detached. "Can I follow someone on Twitter? Who are these people?" he asked. I found it difficult to make it personal. The movement is a collective. They hold public assemblies nightly to discuss their priorities, their grievances, their demands. No one person -- not even Naomi Klein -- is a spokesperson for the movement. It is leaderless but informed (new CNN host Erin Burnett looks like a fool when she makes attacks on the protestors' choice of leisure activities and thinks she can bring them down with one fact not presented with proper context; SNL alum Victoria Jackson had one fact in her arsenal too -- the President of GE has donated to Obama's campaign -- she apparently forgot Occupy Wall Street is not an Obama rally.).

All of this is to say that an unfortunate fact of the movement is that it doesn't translate well or easily to those only passively observing. The true value of the campaign is feeling like you're a part of it -- talking to other people about the problems. Like our psychologists have been encouraging us, it's best to talk about our ills, and it seems we have a lot to say about globalized capitalism. The #occupywallst movement (i.e. the online component) has been beneficial only to those who have engaged in it, have felt like they are taking part in a conversation, where repressed feelings are finally coming out into the cyber-air. Sadly, the original ~~Zuccotti~~ Liberty Park location of Occupy Wall Street might be gone tomorrow, and we will have lost a symbolic physical space for an airing of our feelings, of our grievances.

Online, the 99% groups, tumblrs and memes have been effective in creating a place to mull over the issues and contribute to the conversation. Responses to groups calling themselves the 53% (the % of Americans who pay taxes) have been incredibly constructive and useful -- powerful. It's all fine and dandy to be flaunting your Protestant work ethic, but wouldn't you rather all work be put to better ends than it is in a corporate culture?

And it will take much effort to find new physical spaces and to encourage digital ones to continue this therapeutic experience. It's been good for us.

Matt Taibi in Rolling Stone has an attractive plan of action, but wouldn't it be more exciting to work it out together?

Tomorrow we find out if we have a new geography.

photo credit: christina dunbar-hester

photo credit: Mat McDermott

Too Many Ph.D's? Maybe.

2011-04-25T23:35:00.000-04:00

I had a really great day today. I feel really great about the path my life is on. Thinking back to myself a year ago, it's surprising that today I'm happy about my decision to pursue a Ph.D.

I have two stimulants for these thoughts. One was a surprise. An article reposted by a friend: "Are we giving away too many Ph.D's?" The answer in the case of this article, which deals with the dearth of science Ph.D.'s with nowhere to work, is no. We simply don't value knowledge. I'm not prepared to defend the cult of the expert -- to place myself on a pedestal and beg all you non-soon-to-be-doctors to bow down to my great wealth of brain wrinkles. No, but we do need to value resourcefulness, passion for knowledge, and a zeal for critical thinking, especially when they are paired with humility and compassion. Not everyone with a Ph.D. is worth employing, no (I see those who are so far removed from "the real world" all too often); however, the life track exists for a noble reason. It's base reason for existence is one worth supporting.

My other stimulant for thinking about all this is more persistent. On Friday, I'll receive my questions for my qualifying exams: a formality through which my committee of advisors will certify me as sufficiently expert in the fields of "marriage and the politics of sexuality" and "media and resistance in the information age." I've been busily reading (sometimes skimming) through the lists I've deemed worthwhile to my studies.

My blog is a silly thing. When I'm writing in it actively, I live for the self-discipline of writing for myself and a small audience of friends and strangers who happen upon an entry through a relevant search. There's a thrill in knowing that my inner thoughts (I try to be as frank as I can...how very livejournal of me) may be slightly useful to others, but I don't have the energy for the hubris to think I should try to cull a large audience. My inner thoughts are too lame for most.

I realized today that I stopped writing on my blog partially because I was devoting too much of my time to "gathering my thoughts." I have avoided getting in touch with people who have a great wealth of knowledge on my dissertation topic because I fear my own thoughts on the matter are not "solidified" enough. "Gathering my thoughts" has suffered by not daring to make bold claims on subjects that interest me and airing them in public. It's why I have my blog. I want people to disagree with me. Along with reading, interacting with and reacting to those who disagree with me is the only way I'll think better.

And so I've resolved to write more, here and elsewhere. It's part of the process of gathering my thoughts. I nearly lost myself in the trap of thinking that simply following the infrastructural tracks of the Ph.D. would inherently make me a more critical thinker and better citizen. That was wrong. I need to (gather and) air my thoughts.

As I prepare to embark on my qualifying exams, feel free to browse the reading list I've subjected myself to, with the help of my advisors:

Major List: Marriage and the Politics of Sexuality

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City

Leo Bersani, Homos

Leo Bersani & Adam Phillips, Intimacies

bell hooks, “Feminism: A Transformational Politic”

Bikini Kill, “Riot Grrrl Philosophy”

Sasha Cagen, quirkyalone

Pat Califia, Public Sex

Ryan Conrad, ed., Against Equality

Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History

Nancy Cott, Public Vows

Angela Y. Davis, “Outcast Mothers and Surrogates: Racism and Reproductive Politics in the Nineties”

Samuel Delaney, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

David Eng, The Feeling of Kinship (Intro & Chapter 1)

John D’Emilio & Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters

John D’Emilio, “Capitalism & Gay Identity”

Lisa Duggan & Nan Hunter (Editors), Sex Wars

Lisa Duggan, Twilight of Equality

Dossie Easton & Catherine A. Liszt, The Ethical Slut

Friedrich Engels, Origins of Family, Private Property, and the State

Lee Edelman, “Tearooms and Sympathy”

Susan Faludi, Backlash

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Vol. 1

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3

Betty Freidan, The Feminine Mystique

Jaclyn Geller, Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique

Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy

Ian Hacking, “Making Up People”

Eleanor Leacock, Myth of Male Dominance

Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors

Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”

David M. Halperin, “Is there a History of Sexuality?”

Laura Kipnis, Against Love

Saba Mahmood, The Politics of Piety

Angela McRobbie, “Postfeminism and Popular Culture: Bridget Jones and the New Gender Regime”

John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism”

Richard Mohr, “The Outing Controversy”

Donald Morton (editor), The Material Queer

Jasbir Puar, “Mapping US Homonormativities”

Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”

Gayle S. Rubin, “Thinking Sex”

Eve Sedgwick, The Epistemology of the Closet

Ruth Vanita, Love’s Rites

Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal

Virginia Wright Wexman, Creating the Couple: Love, Marriage, and Hollywood Performance

Supplemental readings in gender/sexuality studies:

Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera

Leo Bersani, Is the Rectum a Grave?

M. Gigi Durham, The Lolita Effect

Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women

Lee Edelman, No Future

Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics

Gayatri Gopinath, Impossible Desires

Roger Hallas, Reframing Bodies

Guy Hocquenghem, The Screwball Asses

Kamala Kampadoo, Global Sex Workers

Audre Lorde, “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”

Catherine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “ ‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggle”

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”

Cherrie Moraga, The Last Generation

Jose Munoz, Cruising Utopia

Jasbir Puar, Terrorist Assemblages

Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics

Minor List: Media and Resistance in the Information Age

Arjun Appudurai, Modernity at Large

Chris Atton, An Alternative Internet

Nancy Baym, Personal Communication in Digital Media

Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks

Lance Bennett, “Communicating Global Activism”

Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes, & Trevor Pinch, The Social Construction of Technology

Bruce Bimber, Information and American Democracy (Chapter 1)

Jay David Bolter & Richard Grusin, Remediation

Bertolt Brecht, “The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication”

Manuel Castells, Communication Power

Andy Chadwick, “The Political Information Cycle in a Hybrid News System”

Gabriella Coleman, “Code is Speech”

John Downing, “The Independent Media Center Movement and the Anarchist Socialist Tradition”

Christina Dunbar-Hester, “Geeks, Meta-Geeks, and Gender Trouble”

Christina Dunbar-Hester, “Beyond ‘Dudecore’?”

Steven Duncombe, Notes from Underground

Ron Eglash & J. Bleecker, “The Race for Cyberspace”

Ron Eglash, J. Croissant, G. Di Chiro, & R. Fouche, Appropriating Technology

Rayvon Fouche, Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”

Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool

Alexander Galloway & Eugene Thacker, The Exploit

Mark Hansen, Bodies in Code

Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto”

Christine Harold, Ourspace

Pekka Himanen, The Hacker Ethic

Philip Howard, Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

Kevin Howley, Community Media

Frederic Jameson, Intro & Chapter 1 of Postmodernism

Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture

Henry Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, & Gamers

Steven Johnson, Interface Culture

David Karpf, “Looking Beyond Clicktivism”

Mary Celeste Kearney, Girls Make Media

Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur

Christopher Kelty, Two Bits

Naomi Klein, No Logo

Daniel Kreiss, “Open Source as Practice and Ideology”

Calle Lasn, Culture Jam

Lawrence Lessig, Code V. 2.0

Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media

Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were Knew

Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion

Lisa Nakamura, Digitizing Race

Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital

Lisa Parks, Cultures in Orbit

Eric Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs

Alison Piepmeier, Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism

Stephen Shiels & Robert Ogles, “Black Liberation Radio”

Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

Aram Sinnreich, Mashed Up

Susan Leigh Star, “Power, Technology, and the Phenomenology of Conventions”

Lucy Suchman, “Located Accountabilities in Technology Production”

Douglas Thomas, Hacker Culture

Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen

Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture

Judy Wacjman, “From Women and Technology to Gendered Technoscience”

Mackenzie Wark, Hacker Manifesto

Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?”

Sally Wyatt, “Non-Users also Matter”

Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet…And How to Stop It

Supplemental Reading (Other media technology or media & resistance readings)

Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry”

Theodor Adorno, “The Culture Industry Reconsidered”

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities

Bela Belazs, “The Close-Up”

Walter Benjamin, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

Michael F. Brown, “Who Owns Native Culture?”

James Carey, “Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph”

Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

John Dewey, Art as Experience

John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems

Susan Douglas, “Popular Culture and Populist Technology”

John Downing, Radical Media

Claude Fischer, America Calling

Mary Gray, “Negotiating Identities/Queering Desires”

Dorothy Kidd, “Indymedia.org”

Ronald Kline, “Resisting Consumer Technology in Rural America”

Ronald Kline and Trevor Pinch, “Users as Agents of Technological Change”

Holly Kruse, Site and Sound

Martha McCaughey & Michael Ayers, Cyberactivism

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of man

Nelly Oudshoorn, Els Rommes & Marcelle Strienstra, “Configuring the User as Everybody”

Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch, How Users Matter

Lynn Spiegel, Make Room for TV

Susan Leigh Star & Bowker, Sorting Things Out

Judy Wajcman, TechnoFeminism

Jesse Walker, Rebels on the Air

Raymond Williams, Television

Sally Wyatt, “Challenging the Digital Imperative”

On Getting Your News, And Not Getting a Journalism Degree

2011-02-17T20:30:00.000-05:00

Last semester, I taught a course in the Journalism and Media Studies department at Rutgers University. The course was titled Development of Mass Media, and the students were an enthusiastic and eclectic bunch, coming to it with various perspectives and expectations. On the first day, I asked them what issue in contemporary media intrigued them the most. They all answered the death of the newspaper. (I have been informed by my successor that the obsession du jour is Twitter in her class.) Perhaps those that answered with such solemnity at the death of the newspaper were victims of the contagion of an easy answer for the ever-awkward first day ice breaker, but their discomfort at the loss of newsprint persisted throughout the course.

This trend was made all the more bizarre, when my suspicions were confirmed: none of these wannabe journalists had subscriptions to print publications. Who would want to pay for that, knowing full well the pages will only be used to soak up spilled PBR and the vomit of first-years? The most frustrating question for me was: why couldn't I get them to be comfortable with their own news reading habits?

The students may have been onto something with their worry over the death of the newspaper; their current news reading habits don't feel like reading news. I don't consider myself in the upper reaches of my well-informed friends, but I stay fairly up-to-date with my understandings of the current workings of the world.

I'll be clear here. Too often we're ashamed of what or how we read. My news-reading habits are set in stone. I get most of my news by reading headlines and/or following links from friends' Facebook posts (mostly pointing to New York Times, Slate, queerty, LA Times, and The Guardian). I'm also a religious reader of the New Yorker. When I had cable, I'd do laundry and make dinner to MSNBC. For years, I was an avid Perez reader; those salacious headlines gave way to the ones on tech blogs, mostly hosted by Wired. There is also the film publication that I work for, indieWIRE. I read that and our competitors regularly. I admire several film writers greatly, but I'd be detracting from the point of this if I listed those favorites here. Writing this, I realize that I don't much read the gossip blogs and the other sensational that I used to be obsessed with. Upon reflection, I'm able to get that news through the headlines of friends; what use is it actually reading something on Perez.

I find my news-finding abilities fairly adequate. There is always a wish that there was more time to fully grasp the world's more complex situations. (New developments in the recent Egypt unrest often had to be summarized for me by friends; with a general understanding of what was going on, I found it hard to keep with new developments and their ramifications.) Some situations change so quickly that it's hard not to be left in the dust. One cannot be expected to use 24/7 news coverage to wait for the news to happen.

As we now have "journalists" in all corners of the world: geographically everywhere, ready to go in every bio/chem/tech/phys/health lab, ready to follow celebrities around anywhere, it becomes impossible to follow news everywhere. Enough about the ability to consume more content; with the ability to produce more content, shouldn't there be more opportunities for more good journalism.

With i-Reporters, citizen journalists, and all the catchphrases that simply translate to free news content for the corporations that own the means of dissemination, there certainly is an infinite opportunity to "do" news.

The curse of the journalism degree, or the English degree, is that translates to a degree in public relations for most graduates who get communications-related jobs. This is a natural consequence of our corporatized culture. The graduated journalism major has been certified for a job that CNN tells me "i" can do.

The successful journalist is not skilled at "journalism." They have a passion for knowledge of a certain kind. The Wired team is a bunch of nerds that have been hobbyists, collectors of random facts, enthusiasts of all sorts, for their lives. New Yorker writers often come from the industry they write about or have followed it obsessively for years. I often mention the Cahiers du Cinema as a wonderful ideal of journalism in my own field -- practitioners spouting off about others in their craft. Filmmakers' blogs, as independent and hidden as they are, don't do the same trick. The value of these "expert" journalists is in being informed, of being experts, of being subjective (sometimes called, gasp!, bias).

The average journalism student too often comes to their course of study vaguely interested in something, and wants to be a journalist of x. But instead of majoring in x or something close to it (I'm trying to imagine what the closest thing to a major in "celebrities" would be.), most students take their passive interest in x to be enough to motivate their career.

The field's obsession with objectivity makes students afraid of getting to close to the subjects they're interested in. I never studied journalism, but I've carved out a niche in the film journalism world. Who knows how long this will last, but I've spent several years devoting time and energy to all aspects of the film world. And I'm incredibly biased. It's what allows me to pick stories worth writing. Otherwise, why write?

The future of journalism comes not in treating at a job, a career option, that has a future. The Huffington Post just signed a multi-million dollar deal. The writers will still not get paid. Soon enough, the best of HuffPo writers will move on to write pieces sporadically for publications that recognize their worth. Or they'll realize that the labor of writing isn't worth the publicity that comes with it. The future of journalism, though, is realizing exactly that, that not unlike academic writing, journalism is an opportunity for informed citizens to allow their ever-valuable biases to live in public. Once more ways are found to organize these smart voices (Facebook and HuffPo are good prototypes, but they also only benefit the wallets of a few at the top). Surely, there has to be an option that benefits more the readers and the writers more directly and efficiently. There will still be a place for the devoted few who want and earn their space writing news exclusively, but this should only be the goal when you've got the insatiable quest for knowledge -- the full picture.

I'm not asking for all people doing journalism to expect to go unpaid -- but I would encourage us to look outside the newsroom for voices. Sometimes that means combing YouTube for future iReporters. More often, it means realizing how many experts, on various and diverse topics, we have around the world.

When it comes down to it, I'd rather a journalist of the Middle East know Jordan over gerunds.

Bryce's Top 10 Films of 2010

2010-12-31T15:25:00.001-05:00

10. Let Me In

The remake of Swedish horror film Let the Right One In did indeed prove the naysayers wrong when it actually improved on the carefully crafted vampire flick from just a handful of months before. I'm perfectly fine with it existing as a smoother, better played version of the young vampire story. The two leads (The Road's Kodi Smit-McPhee and Kick-Ass's Chloe Moretz) are wonderfully subtle. It's a shame their hard work wasn't seen by more Americans.

9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I

Film nerds find it easy to call the third Harry Potter installment the best. It is, after all, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, the famed director of Y Tu Mama Tambien. We would be remiss, though, to assume that the indie cred director has provided us with the best Potter film. For some reason, the deep character exploration, beautiful locations, and steady script of the first half of Deathly Hallows has not gotten its due. So what if Warner Bros. broke up this film into two to sell more tickets and DVDs and the director is the same as the last two mediocre HP flicks? It works.

8. Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky returns to his more bizarro form, with a film unfortunately not bizarre enough, but still enough to make it one of my favorites. God Winona Ryder is amazing. And, Natalie Portman is quite tolerable...good, even.

7. The Oath

Laura Poitras is back with an absolutely fascinating exploration of devotion and morality, following two men who had ties to al-Qaeda earlier in their life. Sadly, this one is wholly absent from the awards race. What gives?

6. 127 Hours

James Franco, you're amazing! And don't forget Boyle and Rahman.

5. Marwencol

A fascinating story of a man who suffered brain damage after a barfight. Afterwards, he develops a WWII landscape in his backyard filled with Barbie and Ken dolls. There's a big reveal at the climax that changes the whole story. This is a lo-fi high-quality story that was my favorite doc of the year.

4. Mother

A high drama mystery about the devotion of a mother with top notch performances form Kim Hye-ja and Bin Won.

3. Fish Tank

A mother. A daughter. A man. Big fucking drama. Andrea Arnold has big talent, as do her three leads.

2. Blue Valentine

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams will depress the Hell out of you, but more importantly, they make you feel. A couple in a downward spiral, their relationship slowly wilting, it all feels a little too real.

1. Dogtooth

I confess. In the first act of Dogtooth, I may have checked my watch. As the film's concept slowly unfolded, it turns out at just the right pace, this family drama is one of the most mind-blowing experiments in science fiction or psychological drama (it depends on your own ideology) that has ever been brought to the screen.

The Award for Best Portrayal of Technology in a Feature Film Goes To...

2010-11-18T22:54:00.002-05:00

No, not Inception for its dream machine. The technology in Inception is sci-fi, and not the kind of dystopian sci-fi that warns us of going along on some terrible trend. And admitted social network Luddite Aaron Sorkin sounds like he's writing dialogue for a bunch of White House staffers, not a bunch of status-obsessed undergrad geeks and frat guys. While he hits the mark on the Zuckerberg-programming montage (I suspect he got help), that scene is inconsequential to the rest of the film. And in the film's most important scenes, I expected Zuckerberg's character to have a more complicated, informed argument for defending his actions and himself in the legal troubles he encountered. The Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross soundtrack for the film, however, is an amazing use of musical technologies for film soundtracks. Though it's a shame that it's being used for a painfully overdramatized scene such as this:

That note on music is a good segue to the 2010 film that incorporates technology in the most provocative, useful way: Danny Boyle's 127 Hours. And the synth-heavy, guitar driven, melodic Hindi film pop of A. R. Rahman (who got many accolades for his work with Boyle on Slumdog Millionaire) lends the film, which easily could have gone the easy route and given into its real-life character's (Aron Ralston) predilection for jam bands like Phish. But Boyle's faith in the high energy work from Rahman paid off when it came to complementing his usual music video-influenced editing and dramatized perspective shots (including the film's brilliant use of a fluid-through-the-CamelBak-tube motif). And so there's also the technology that provided those perspective shots and the perception that Franco's arm was really lost.

But in light of the film's portrayal of an avid hiker who encounters the worst on his day in the park, the film's script, no doubt inspired by the details in Ralston's own account (documented in the unfortunately titled Between a Rock and a Hard Place), provides a fine-tuned portrait of what exactly the serious hiker or outdoors enthusiast relies on technology to do. The shots of the CamelBak remind us that for Ralston's character, a water bottle is not conducive. There's also the question of communication. In an era of perpetual communication, Ralston's story highlights the ways we rely on anywhere anytime communication to get us out of even the most unexpected of problems. Not so in the land of no cell signal or no cell phone. In framing many of the flashbacks in the equipment shop where Ralston worked, this reliance on technology is foregrounded, and in so doing, highlights the care we take to find the right technology for our serious hobbies. There's also the frustration-induced cursings of cheaply made flashlights and utility knives, made in globalized factories where cost takes priority over quality. And in those cursings, the Ralston character also blames the uninformed customer (in this case his mother, who bought the set as a stocking stuffer), reminding the hobbyist in all of us the endearing well-meaning nature of our caring and encouraging but ill-informed friends and family. There's also a recreation of Ralston's use of his camcorder, where in a dehydrated self-entertaining delirium, he imagines himself as the guest of his own talk show. Everything is spot on as a representation of the myriad ways we use our technologies, for the serious, the silly, the mundane, the life-saving. And, by now, I can't be blamed for spoiling the ending when I say that we see the payoff of hard work and ingenuity when it comes to using simple machines to complete even the most daunting, nerve-wracking (...or nerve-slicing...) of tasks. All of this, without even mentioning the importance of Ralston's current life, in which he has a mechanical arm, and considers how reachable he will be anytime he hikes, an activity he has not given up.

In a year with such attention given on so many technology-focused films, 127 Hours deserves praise for its wide vision of the ways we rely on technology and the ways in which it enters and alters our lives, often in unexpected ways.

-- bryce j. renninger

"Never Let Me Go" Reaction: The (Teen) Love Regime Prevails

2010-09-16T22:31:00.001-04:00

In the credit sequence for Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go, subdued colors flash across the screen. The film, like the Kazuo Ishiguro contemporary classic novel, is, indeed subdued. It is a subdued science fiction dystopia in which bodies are farmed in order for their organs to be used to be implanted in those not farmed, promoting their lives to never before seen lengths. Central to the story are three children who grew up at the Hailsham school. The students, with no parents, develop with each other and their instructors as guides. They are raised with the expectation that the world outside Hailsham is scary and unsavory, a doctrine that is challenged and quickly censored when it is espoused by a new instructor.

The three children we follow most closely, Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth, are like all the other students at Hailsham except for the fact that they are involved in a young love triangle. Kathy had intentions on Tommy but was thwarted when Ruth went in for the kill and was received warmly by Tommy. Eventually, the students realize their role in the world, and in the film, the child actors (Isobel Meikle-Small, Charlie Rowe, and Ella Purnell) become the adult actors (Carrie Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, and Keira Knightley) in a wonderful set of casting decisions. They go out into the world, living on a commune shared by students at other schools who went through similar upbringings. There, our three protagonists meet Rodney and Chrissie, who have convinced our heroes that the harvesting of organs can be prolonged if love can be proven, so the grapevine says.

Life goes on, and harvest time comes. Kathy, though, is delayed in her own harvesting by her temporary assignment as a carer, one who oversees and encourages the donator emotionally and spiritually. And as Kathy and Tommy continue to get one organ at a time plucked out at them, the three realize that their youthful coupling took the altogether wrong course. In a film, which (teeny spoiler alert) preaches the gospel of the universality of human emotions, it is an unbelievable move to privilege pre-teen love to the status of immutable truth and destiny. Kathy and Tommy go back to the Madame, the woman who was seen as the school's evaluator to use their artistic spirit and apparent love and affection for each other to justify the need for a delay to their expiration. But as one of the only people I know who have read the book and been left mostly unaffected by the melodrama of the formulation of these arguments I realized watching the actors, with precision, care, and restraint (save for a few moments when, for no good reason as far as I can tell, tears run down cheeks but no sobs are heard), depict the story of beings who believe in what seems to be a terribly vapid fiction of love as destiny, destiny as love. If there is a certain degree of verisimilitude proposed by this measured dystopia, the reliance on love as immutable and as real at twelve years old as ever, is an unfortunate crutch to rely on. And all this becomes all the more troubling when, especially the readers of the source text, become utterly enraptured in one seems to me a highly nonsensical romance. We are only furthering our blind devotion to and idealization of love in wrapping ourselves up in the resolution of this otherwise bold story -- which ends, as it should, with a quiet meditation of the human condition.

-- bryce j. renninger

TV Top 9: Beach Bods

2010-09-04T01:02:00.002-04:00

After a very exciting summer (that has further contributed to my own absence from this year blog), I am finally going to the beach this Labor Day weekend. But in an attempt to live like its summer all fall long, we're tackling the top 9 TV beach bods for this summer's TV Top 9. I'm glad to welcome two guest blahggers -- Dana C. Gravesen, and Linde Murugan -- who have filled the void of my co-blahgger Arielle, who saw this whole vain thing as below her. To that I say -- Let's hit the beach...

9. Dan Cortese (MTV Sports & Veronica's Closet)

In the long list of straight-forward sexy white jock boys, Dan Cortese stands out as the only one to star alongside Kirstie Alley on the small screen. Cortese's turn as Perry in Veronica's Closet allowed him to strip down from time to time as a worker in Veronica "Ronnie" Chase (Kirstie Alley)'s lingerie office. Cortese got his sexy clothing-lite start on MTV as one of the lead correspondents for MTV Sports in the nineties. His talent as a smiley good-looking presenter has landed him recently on the shows Crash Course and Money Hungry.

8. Dana Delany (China Beach)

Sure, China Beach was set during the Vietnam War, only lasted three-and-a-half seasons, and was a medical drama. Not sexy. Not sexy at all. BUT WAIT: Dana Delany's Nurse Colleen managed--despite her strange (even for the late-1980s) hair--to make the beach scenes sizzle (in a red bikini, no less--the characters on Grey's Anatomy could learn a thing or two from China Beach). Delaney found the defining role of her career as McMurphy; Colleen's "everyday woman" appearance, dedication to her job (she stayed in the war even though she was eligible to return home), and straightforward, tough demeanor allowed her to navigate both the forward advances of her colleagues as well as the deep waters of the war. Maybe not altogether sexy, but definitely stellar.

7. Michael Cade (California Dreams)

Surf dudes with attitudes, kinda groovy? You bet! And no one was hotter than Sly. Yes, he may have been the most annoying and sleaziest, but could you say no to this bod? In "The Fashion Man," Sly reveals his six-pack, and the in-studio audience squeals. Furthermore, what makes him worthy of our accolades is that the dude is still a babe after all these years, causing me to squeal a bit, when I saw him on the show's reunion on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. You're not dreaming. He's just that great.

6. The Cast of Reno 911!

While the silly coppers only got the prime opportunity to show off their beach bods when they took to the big screen for Reno 911: Miami, seeing each cop in their perfectly characteristic beach get up in the film reinforced what made the characters so damn lovable. Though their beach bods couldn't save the film, seeing Raineesha (Niecy Nash) in that extra large suit, Clem (Wendi McLendon-Covey) strut her stuff, Lt. Dangle's classic short shorts and Trudy Weigel (Kerri Kenney-Silver) attempt to pad her suit in an attempt to hide her frumpiness, we were reminded what made us fall in love with these characters, who belonged on the TV, in the first place.

5. Sally Field (Gidget)

Though many have played this character in films and tv specials, it was the adorable Field, who will be the best 'gidge' (a nickname her boyfriend Moondoggie gave her). FYI: Gidget = Girl + Midget. Though this equation might not describe the hottest babe, Gidget was the epitome of a beach-ready bod because of her love of surfing. The show presented an active female body, competing with the boys, getting into trouble, but of course staying a "good girl." Still, whatever "proper" version of adolescent femininity ABC was trying to sell in 1965, anyone can appreciate cute-as-a-button Field in some stylin' bikinis, even if she never 'actually' surfed.

4. Zach Morris (Saved by the Bell)

When I wake up in the morning and my clock gives off a warning, I don't think I'll ever make it out on time to see "Cali Dude" Zach Morris shirtless on Saved by the Bell. We all know What'shisface Lopez was the show's "jock" figure, but Gosselaar's Morris was as charming as he was sleazy, and between the bleached blond hair and single eyebrow raises I could barely contain my adolescent hormones when Saved by the Bell debuted HOUR LONG episodes featuring the Bayside gang working at a beach club. Swim wear? Check. Volleyball? Check. Treasure hunts? Check. Leah Remini? Check. Wait wait wait--scratch that last check: that chick needs to get out of my mind's eye so I can go back to thinking about licking zinc off of Zach Morris's nose.

3. Daniel Dae Kim (Lost and Hawaii Five-0)

At the beginning of the Lost episode "What Kate Did," a shirtless Jin emerges from a tent, revealing a gorgeous set of abs and tan skin to a very-impressed audience. Though the scene is a tender moment between Jin and Sun, after being estranged from each other for some episodes, it really solidified Kim as a sex symbol. Though Matthew Fox and Josh Holloway may have fans swooning all over them, they cannot compare to the hotness that Kim brought, and continues to bring to the beach. Check him out this fall in the CBS reboot of the classic Hawaii Five-O. Along with featuring more Asian actors than the show from the late '60s, the O of the original has been substituted with a zero.

2. David Hasselhoff (Baywatch)

The appeal of David Hasselhoff isn't immediately apparent. In fact, I'm not even quite sure it's apparent at all, no matter how much you look for it. But the man with questionable morals and impeccable green screen skills singlehandedly anchored the quintessential sexy beach show, Baywatch. After the show was canceled at the end of its first season, Hasselhoff and a few others got together to save it and allow it to become one of the most watched (maybe the most successful) television shows in the history of the world.

1. Dawn Wells (Gilligan's Island)

Ginger might have been sultry, but think of how many times she reused those same fake eyelashes and wigs on Gilligan's Island—that's an infection waiting to happen! The real beach bombshell of Sherwood Shwartz's mid-1960s megahit about a band of misfit castaways was Dawn Wells as Mary Ann Summers. Kansas-bred Mary Ann was smart, sweet, and gorgeous--a deserted island Dorothy Gale for the ages. Summers brought genuine charm to what could have been a very one-note role. And whenever she donned a swim suit? (Where did they get so many swimsuits??) RAWR.

-- bryce j. renninger, dana c. gravesen, and linde murugan

Music Top Dahgs: Fall on Your Sword & Hi Fashion $9.99, Marina and the Diamonds, and School of Seven Bells

2010-07-29T19:49:00.000-04:00

Bryce's Pick: Music for the YouTube Generation: Fall on Your Sword and Hi Fashion $9.99

As the twenty-first century rolls on, two ways of collecting music have become the paradigm: there is collecting mp3 and m4a files, free and illegal; $.99 and legal, and there is collecting a list of search strings to plug into YouTube. Too often, though, this latter choice, though it allows for audio-visual entertainment, becomes purely audio when its users minimize their screens. But certain phenomena, like the numerous cutesy animals, go viral because of the medium specificity of YouTube: the ease and delight of watching short videos. As YouTube becomes an infinite jukebox for this generation, there are acts that make their videos specifically for time-wasting at work and sharing amongst friends. Think OK Go here. Two (relatively new) musical artists with whom I've just become acquainted are tailor made for this new outlet and the kinds of entertainment being sought on the site. The first, Fall on Your Sword, is new to me, but old hat for many (their brilliant "Shatner of the Mount" has hit 1 million views on YouTube). They are brilliant remixers of kitschy movie gold. They played indieWIRE's Rooftop Films birthday bash (which I unfortunately missed)...and raised the...sky...playing before a sneak preview of a film they scored, Kitao Sakurai's Aardvark. As they continue to get work on commercials and films, keep an eye on these astute entertainer-musician-multimedia artists and check out their short form work on their site. While Fall on Your Sword was on a rooftop in the LES, I was in LA, where I got to see Hi Fashion $9.99, a band whose short set was accompanied by a troupe of Cousin It's performing lyrical dance to the band's technofunartmusic (how's that for "there aren't words?"). Irreverant yet thoughtful, the L.A. band will become a YouTube sensation when they make their first video, or if more people take cameras to their live shows.

Arielle's Pick: Marina and the Diamonds' videos:

The name Marina and the Diamonds may not be familiar to you now but if I were you I'd write it down somewhere (I'm sure your phone has an app for that) so when this lusciously-voiced singer finally breaks in the States you can tell all your friends that you tooootally knew about that chick ages ago, like where have you been? Marina's debut album The Family Jewels dropped in the U.S. over four months ago and has steadily been picking up steam on this side of the pond (of course the Brits were all over this Welsh delight months ago) with some help no doubt from her other worldly video choices. Take the one for "Mowgli's Road") a ridiculously catchy track that perfectly shows off Marina's versatile voice (the screechy bit at 2:20 is probably my favorite part) - is so simple yet totally mesmerizing. There's something about those accordion legs that won't let me turn away. And then there's her latest video, this one for "Oh No!" a slightly more straight forward pop song but with deeper lyrics than your regular pop fair. The combination of bright colors, cheesy comic book graphics and insane fashion choices reminds us that while Marina and the Diamonds has some important things to say (songs on the album cover everything from girl power to American greed) Marina always remembers to do it with a shifty smile and a wink.

Landon's Pick: School of Seven Bells, Disconnect from Desire

Two years ago, School of Seven Bells produced one of the best debut albums of the tail end of the past decade with Alpinisms, and last year I saw the band play magnificently despite their Austin venue’s clear technical setbacks, so it comes to no surprise that, with the release of their second LP Disconnect From Desire, SVIIB remains one of the most fascinating bands to watch flourish and create. The difference is a give and take when compared to Alpinisms as Disconnect From Desire doesn’t contain quite as strong a sense of collective wholeness between songs, but their approach to the construction of individual songs shows no threat of losing its luster. I wish I could put it more eloquently, but it stands to fact that songs like “Heart is Strange” and “Babelonia” kick epic ass, containing an addictive energy molded by Benjamin Curtis’s irresistible guitar hooks and the stream-of-consciousness lyrics and angelic, ethereal vocals of the sisters Deheza. There’s no experimental exploration of new territory here, just a building and improving upon what was already a wonderful and unique sound, and in Disconnect From Desire SVIIB has found a way to let their songs build, transcend, and ultimately breathe with an elegance and an energy that’s hard to compete with. The music here is better honed yet still comfortably familiar. It’s exactly what one both wants and expects to hear from this band. Disconnect From Desire is improvement where one thought it was neither needed nor possible.

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

Music Top Dahgs: Sleigh Bells, Black Keys, The National & More

2010-07-03T20:27:00.000-04:00

It has been far too long dearies. We're back for good... [Apologies if these seem outdated ;) ]

Bryce's Pick: Sleigh Bells, Treats

When Sleigh Bells' singles, "Crown on the Ground" and "Tell 'Em" were being passed around, with the Interwebs abuzz, I must admit I was quite intrigued to see what mastermind Derek Miller and his vocal muse Alexis Krauss would have up their sleeves for their LP. Treats is, indeed, as much fun as the teaser tracks/EP: Miller's guitar screams, the synthesized percussion is heavy, and Krauss is on point. Krauss's vocals, it seems, are love 'em or hate 'em, and I find her tone smart and aware enough to handle the alternating irony and seriously self-reflexive self-encouragement (wow!) of the duo's lyrics. Balls to the wall guitar-cum-electro is not the duo's only mode; in their "Rill Rill," they do indeed "have a heart, have a heart." On this song, the guitar is acoustic and the vocals are sweet. It shows the duo's versatility in what is a meaty 33 minute introduction to a new, welcome face from Brooklyn.

Arielle's Pick: The Black Keys, Brothers

Just for full disclosure I'll admit right off the bat that The Black Keys are a top five band for me - of rock, of blues, of the moment, of all time. Dan Auberach's voice is probably one of my most favorite things in the world. He could sing me that really irritating "Birthday Sex" song and I'd probably enjoy it. So it's no surprise that I'm a huge fan of their most recent release, Brothers. But there's more to it than just my insane Black Keys fandom, this album is above and beyond what they've released in the past. The songs vary from classic Black Keys ("The Only One"), to up tempto and playful ("Tighten Up" & "Sinister Kid" probably my two favorites tracks), to heartbreaking ("I'm Not The One"), to just downright funky on the instrumental "Black Mud." Whatever mood you're in, Brothers is sure to deliver. Probably most surprising was Auerbach's falsetto on a few songs on the album, including the first "Everlasting Light." It's a new sound for him and it's exciting that they chose it to lead off the record. I'm sure I'm reading too much into it, but I'd like to take it as a sign of a change in the band's career. It's been two years since their last release and in that interim they put out the Damon Dash collab Blackroc. Put that album (which is amazing by the way so go get it now) and Brothers together and you get an unexpected, but completely enjoyable, accomplishment by a band that I thought had already sufficiently impressed me. I guess I was wrong.

Landon's Pick: The National, High Violet

Through five studio albums, the Brooklyn-based band The National have witnessed a slow, subtle evolution to their sound, the nervous and frenetic heart-wringing of 2003’s Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers morphing into the lyrical reflection of their breakthrough work, 2007’s Boxer. Their most recent release, High Violet, continues in the sonic vein of Boxer, producing what might possibly be an even more aurally introspective album than its predecessor. And while I do miss some of the angry, escalating fury of some of their louder, higher tempo songs (Alligator’s iconic “Mr. November” comes to mind), Matt Beringer’s lazy-yet-insightful baritone is best served slow. The National’s lyrics have frequently fluctuated between the “their-singing-about-me” brand of profundity and the sprinkling of bizarre-yet-fitting doses of quirk (“I was afraid/that I’d eat your brains/’Cuz I’m evil” from the incredible “Conversation 16”), and High Violet represents something of a perfect achievement of balance for the band as it features some of their most impressively executed hooks to date. I haven’t heard a more addictively revisitable album since, well, the previous album by The National. With Boxer it took me many, many listens to obtain a grasp of its genius, High Violet is striking and magnetic in its first listen the same way Alligator was for me when I first listened to – or rather, was impacted by - the band half a decade ago. I would call it the album of the year, but I have to hear it 50 more times first.

Other Picks from Our Blahggers We've Missed because We Took a Much Needed Break:

LCD Soundsystem, This is Happening
Robyn, Body Talk Vol. 1
MGMT, Celebration
Beach House, Teen Dream

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

I Heart SXSW Film

2010-03-22T14:47:00.000-04:00

As American independent cinema begins to enter a period defined by filmmaking activity in a few select regions. As New York and Seattle and its sister creative bastions in the Northwest figure out how to best organize and brand their community, Austin is distinguishing itself as the most recognizable American regional cinema center. While New York is surely a cinephiliac town, it doesn't necessarily foster its filmmaking community as well as Austin does its. And while New York's theatrical exhibitors faun over foreign and documentary cinema much more than other American cities, Austin's film culture is able to foster two strands of film culture that are actually quite dissimilar -- genre flicks and the independent cinema movement that grew out of "mumblecore." The film component of South by Southwest is adept at negotiating these two audiences and film cultures. The film's programmers have much to celebrate in creating a schedule that epitomizes the future of the city's importance in American filmmaking and film viewing. As far as surviving and thriving in a film culture that is rapidly evolving, SXSW has the added bonus of being surrounded by technophiles at the festival's interactive program and audiophiles at the once overwhelmingly popular music fest.

Take note, Sundance, that Utah will need to develop a film culture if America's most popular jumping off point is to continue its reign as the arbiter of America's indie taste of films. Also, Tribeca could take note in Austin's ability to excite its regional film culture. There must be a way for New York's premiere film event to take over the auteurist stronghold of New York festival culture currently held by the New York Film Festival. New York filmmaking is as distinct but it does not regard itself with the same sense of community as one feels in Austin. So for New York, and for Tribeca, the challenge is for the filmmakers themselves to define their own "New York" character and to work together to brand the NYC filmmaking culture. The "Made in NY" stamp is not enough.

That being said, I was elated to spend a few days in Austin, and I am excited to return. Kudos to the programmers for providing a distinct and provocative program.

Winter's Bone at Sundance/SXSW '10

2010-03-12T14:03:00.002-05:00

The Grand Jury Prize for the U.S. Dramatic Competition went to Debra Granik's Winter's Bone, based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell. This slow-moving noir is primarily concerned with mise en scène, at the expense of any complex understanding of interpersonal relationships between the film's richly painted characters. We follow Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) as she searches throughout the Ozarks to find her father, who is wanted by the cops for his trial indicting him for running a meth lab. Ree goes from house to house, down dirt and gravel roads, only to find unhelpful hillbillies with little nice to say or do for her.

Ree, a young woman, is the default matriarch of the fatherless family. Her mother is debilitated and mute. Ree must care for her and her two younger siblings. Lawrence shows intuition moving through the rural landscape. If only the same could be said of the director's maneuvering through the mountains. Granik shoots the Ozarks in a staid blue, filling the screen with the browns and dark greens of the Ozark's underbrush, underbelly, underworld. And that's effective. When Granik puts the camera on the mass of mountain-dwelling people, however, she ends up painting blank, ineffective cutouts. There's even a scene that features a jug band -- banjo and all. For atmosphere?

There's a sort-of surprise ending to the film, but for me it wasn't worth it. It feels as though all of the atmospheric/mise en scene work was to justify and lead us to this ending, but that the ending didn't work as the only piece of straightforward narrative storytelling meant that all of the work setting the Appalachian scene was for naught. Lawrence's performance, the cinematography, and one particular Ozarkette with a violent streak and a hidden side are the film's redeeming elements, but in the end they are just not redeeming enough.

Music Top Dahgs: Broken Bells, We Aren't the World, Yeasayer

2010-02-27T10:39:00.001-05:00

Arielle's Pick: Broken Bells' Broken Bells

Have you ever listened to an album over and over, amazed by how much you can love a debut release by a band you've never heard of before, excited over this new and amazing discovery...only to realize that the band is actually a combo of two artists you're already a big fan of, and then you just feel stupid. No? Me either. And that's definitely not what happened when I first listened to an advance copy of the first album by power duo Broken Bells (dropping later this month). Broken Bells is the new musical venture by DJ/magician Danger Mouse and Shins lead singer James Mercer, a band I was a much bigger fan of before I saw a certain Zach-Braff-film-that-must-not-be-named. Oh and there was that time one of them beat up his formerly-of-America's-Next-Top-Model girlfriend, but I digress. Broken Bells is an unexpectedly enjoyable mashup of Mercer's mellow vocals and Danger Mouse's groovey synthesizer, none more groovilitious than on "The Ghost Inside," a stand-out track on the album. Mercer's high pitched vocals is something I'd normally shy away from (Passion Pit I'm looking at you) but here he makes it work. And, yes, I'll admit that I'm a sucker for any track with clapping on it, but "Ghost" like the rest of the album is too great in it's unpredictability, something I regard highly in any new release. Each track is unique, full of synthy twists and lyrical turns leaving me a little confused by the end but definitely entertained and a whole lot more mellow than when I started.

Bryce's Pick: Self-Respecting Artists who Opted out of "We Are the World 25 for Haiti"

The day after the Grammys, some people stayed over in LA for one night more to help out Haiti. But instead of flying down or shelling out some cash or writing checks, they decided to reprise the 1985 classic "We are the World." Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie are back; Michael Jackson also makes it back for a chorus and a bridge. I'll start responding to the video/song there. As MJ comes back from the dead to sing the chorus, he is joined by an inspired JJ, singing in awkward harmony in front of a green screen that harkens back to MJ's "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough." "We are the World 25 for Haiti" features the music industry's worst tics: Enrique Iglesias's breathing, Miley Cyrus's pained singing face, Lil' Wayne and T-Pain's standard autotune; the industry's least desired comebacks: Tony Benett, Barbra Streisand in Transitions frames, LL Cool J (who gets the honors of leading the rap interlude), and Toni Braxton (okay, just kidding...Come back Toni!); and industry voices in which it's difficult to find compassion: Justin Bieber, Nicole Sherzinger, Jamie Foxx doing a surprise Ray Charles impression, and Fergie (who yells "C'mon y'all let me hear you) . The one saving grace: a straightforward performance from the spot-on Pink. Why'd you do it Pink?

Landon's Pick: Yeasayers' Odd Blood

In December I called Yeasayer’s single “Ambling Alp” the best track released in 2009, the song signaling a departure for a band who, like so many alternative groups recently, have chosen straightforward pop hooks in favor of the meandering stylistic confrontations of their previous work. Yeasayer have basically continued along this trajectory with their second full-length album, Odd Blood, but the band has quite a few surprises in store as they go about their newly embraced pop sensibilities in a way I could never have predicted. The oddest thing about Odd Blood is that it’s one of the last things I’d ever expect Yeasayer to release: a dance album. What’s so startling about Odd Blood is not that it embraces pop, but that each track appropriates a wholly different set of pop sensibilities. A cohesive album Odd Blood is not, but it does display an impressive range for a band that showed promise with their 2007 debut All Hour Cymbals but seemed stilted with the repetitive marijuana-soaked haze of that album’s sound. Here the tracks range between channeling a band as appropriate for current indie sensibilities as Fine Young Cannibals (“Rome”) to the truly unexpected, such as a track comes across as their version of a Gloria Estefan song (“O.N.E.”). “Ambling Alp” is still the album’s addictive centerpiece, but track-by-track Odd Blood is unexpected fun in that its combination and resurrection of sounds which, by all accounts, shouldn’t really work, but actually do.

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

Grammy Predictions: Will 2010 Be Gaga's Year?

2010-01-31T13:23:00.000-05:00

Tonight in LA, the Grammys will be coming out in full force with a motley crew of mediocre talent. There's no excuse for the DMB best album nomination. Beyonce, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift were this year's Grammy darlings, but it's unclear whether any of them besides Beyonce is actually a true Grammy favorite. This year's Grammy predictions come from me and two of the most obsessive music industry fanatics I know, Michael Nordman and Lindsay Truesdell.

Record of the Year

Beyoncé - "Halo"
Black Eyed Peas - "I Gotta Feeling"
Kings Of Leon - "Use Somebody"
Lady Gaga - "Poker Face"
Taylor Swift - "You Belong With Me"

Michael's Pick

Black Eyed Peas - "I Gotta Feeling"

This one was hard and I was deciding between I Gotta Feeling and Poker Face. If Single Ladies was nominated here, I would've maybe picked it because of all the YouTubes. Tay Tay is the dark horse and if she's going to win in any of the big 4, it'd be here. BEP though will long be remembered as the song the defined 2009, for better or for worse.

Lindsay's Pick

Lady Gaga - "Poker Face"

It was the biggest song of the year. If "Single Ladies" was nominated in this category I'd pick it, but it's not so I can't.

Bryce's Pick

Kings of Leon - "Use Somebody"

The poppy foursome will cancel each other out here and reward this year's rock gem from a band who's quite popular within the industry.

Song of the Year
(awarded to the songwriter)

"Poker Face" (Lady Gaga & RedOne)
"Pretty Wings" (Hod David & Musze)
"Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" (Thaddis Harrell, Beyoncé, Terius Nash & Christopher Stewart)
"Use Somebody" (Kings Of Leon)
"You Belong With Me" (Liz Rose & Taylor Swift)

Michael's Pick

"Poker Face" (Lady Gaga & RedOne)

WTF? Single Ladies and You Belong With Me? Not exactly the most inventive lyrics. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Gaga sweep as this song also defined 2009. With lyrics like "bluffin with my muffin" and clever card gambling references, I couldn't resist! I also think Kings of Leon would be the runner's up in spite of the fact that they repeat the title for most of the song.

Lindsay's Pick

"You Belong With Me" (Liz Rose & Taylor Swift)

Taytay's gotta win one of the big ones and since I'm sure Grammy voters don't know she lifted the concept from Saving Jane, they'll give her this one.

Bryce's Pick

"You Belong With Me" (Liz Rose & Taylor Swift)

This category is usually about sentimentality, and Maxwell just isn't popular enough.

Best New Artist

Zac Brown Band
Keri Hilson
MGMT
Silversun Pickups
The Ting Tings

Michael's Pick

Keri Hilson

It's Miss Keri Baby! Ting Tings and MGMT cancel out the hipster votes. Country artists shouldn't win this (I'm looking at you Gloriana at the AMAs). Plus "Knock You Down" is a great song and I refuse to believe otherwise.

Lindsay's Pick

Keri Hilson

Do I really think Miss Keri Baby is going to win? Questionable. But since she is my personal mentor, hero and role model, I have to pick her.

Bryce's Pick

Keri Hilson

Though she's hugely mediocre, she's a she. Nearly all of the best new artist winners of the past decade have been women. If Lady Gaga, Drake, or Kid CuDi would have been eligible, you would have seen them take the prize. Alas, Grammy rules bar Lady Gaga from entering because of her Dance Recording nomination last year. Kid is nominated for "Day N Nite" this year and Drake is nominated for "Best I Ever Had." Neither has an album in the eligibility period, so there's no nomination for them next year.

Album of the Year

Beyoncé - I Am... Sasha Fierce
Black Eyed Peas - The E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies)
Lady Gaga - The Fame
Dave Matthews Band - Big Whiskey & The Groogrux King
Taylor Swift - Fearless

Michael's Pick

Lady Gaga - The Fame

They've got to make up for Lady Gaga not getting her assumed best new artist and I don't think the Grammys are ready to award Tay Tay in the big 4 yet. Beyonce's album was just eh and seems way dated. I hate Dave Matthews Band, so unless the college stoner block comes out - I'm going to go with the artist who's first 4 singles were #1!

Lindsay's Pick

Beyoncé - I Am... Sasha Fierce

I feel like the real contenders for this category are Beyonce, Gaga, and Taylor Swift, and since this is the Grammys, Beyonce gets the win for being around the longest and being the biggest star.

Bryce's Pick

Lady Gaga - The Fame

I'm suspecting that Gaga will do everything she can to make tonight her night. And Grammy voters, recognizing her zeal will probably give her this one.

Animal Kingdom at Sundance '10

2010-01-30T22:27:00.001-05:00

An Australian thriller about two generations of men in a psychopathic criminal family with a similarly psychopathic matriarch with Guy Pearce as a pestering detective. Sounds fantastic? Unfortunately, David Michôd doesn't exactly live up to the expectations one can have knowing the one sentence synopsis. The film starts out with a promising scene. The Australian version of Deal or No Deal on the television, a young man sits on the couch with his mother. He's staring blankly at the television, with a dishwashing glove on one of his hands. After a few moments, paramedics arrive to take away his mother, dead of a heroine overdose. A few beats later, the man, J (James Frecheville), calls his grandmother (Jacki Weaver) to tell her that his mother has died. Next thing you know, he's living with his uncles (I'm still not quite sure how many...somewhere around four to six) who are involved in various aspects of drug dealing and senseless crime.

In what follows, J develops a relationship with a neighborhood girl whose family he hopes will take him in as their own. This escape from the family business is less successful than he could hope, and his uncles have much to (senselessly) say and do about the ways that J deals with his newfound family and newfound predicaments. The ways that J tries to escape from his uncles' pursuits are absolutely ridiculous and laughable. The resolution, save from an awkwardly melodramatic glance from one of the uncles does redeem the film's narrative a bit.

There's a great set-up and great characters (especially the grandmother, Smurf) written into this project, but the execution is scattered, half-hearted, and poorly acted. The people behind this film would be smart to take this as a springboard and use the characters and situations to start a TV series. 'Tis a shame this jury award winner is the best of world dramatic features the Sundance jury could find.

Cyrus at Sundance '10

2010-01-29T10:50:00.000-05:00

"Open your eyes, Molly!" John says in a pivotal scene. Another game-changing scene plays out with a door in between two characters. Cyrus is a film based on looks, exchanging glances, so these two plot devices, at moments when the stasis of the film unhinges, are telling. It's a film based on close-ups of the three main characters, John (C. Reilly), Molly (Marisa Tomei), and Cyrus (Jonah Hill). The latter two actors are absolutely impeccable at showing deep emotions through their eyes. Jonah Hill, in fact, shows incredible acting chops by turning a caricature role into a deeply effective, sinister character.

In Cyrus, John is encouraged by his ex-wife (Catherine Keener) to come to a party with her new fiance's circle of friends. There, John swings and misses with several ladies. While peeing in the bushes, Molly approaches him and comments "Nice penis." After a few words, John is generally impressed, but is brought into the house by the DJ's selection of Human League's "Don't You Want Me." From there, a dance party ensues. It works. It's delightful. We see John and Molly fall for each other. Their first night is unexpected but, in the end, believable. She, after all, leaves in the middle of the night.

This departure is a foretaste of the feast to come. It turns out that Molly has a son, a young man in his early twenties, Cyrus. Cyrus, a home-schooled master of the synthesizer, is a bit too close to his mother. When John comes into the picture, Cyrus doesn't know how to react. Unfortunately for the pacing of the film, there's only this one dilemma at stake, so some scenes do feel a bit redundant. Nothing comes of as unexpected, but the performances, especially Hill's, keep you on your toes. Its a nice Hollywood-ish debut for the Duplass brothers (Baghead, The Puffy Chair), one that shows all they can do with a small script and big talent.

--bryce

Blue Valentine at Sundance '10

2010-01-28T02:41:00.000-05:00

Followers of my movie tastes will know that something in my brain gravitates towards films about the dissolution of relationships, the improbability of love. So maybe when I say that Blue Valentine is absolutely brilliant, you should not take too much stock. But here it is: Blue Valentine is absolutely brilliant. Why, you ask? Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams (Dean and Cindy) are darling as a couple falling in and out of love. Absolutely, horrifically believable. The couple, who are raising a child together is at the end of the rope when we meet them. Through flashbacks, we see them meet in Brooklyn, before they move to her home in suburban Pennsylvania. We also see the meltdown, the moment that solidifies the end. This meltdown happens, in all places, a futuristic room in a kitschy hotel with themed rooms.

I fell in love with every step of the relationship, every up and every down. There were a few strange missteps -- there is an odd moment when Cindy is in a wheelchair as a "learning experience" (we're supposed to take it that she's doing a nursing school project...I guess) and the ending is a bit melodramatic. There's a phenomenal dramatic moment in a doctor's office. The scene in the Future Room was an emotionally debilitating mix of interpersonal and architectural artifice. The two have such chemistry (and whatever the opposite of chemistry is). And Faith Wladkya is phenomenal as their young daughter, Franky.

All of the specs are spot on. The score is done by Grizzly Bear, who have turned a number of their songs into an instrumental score. Derek Cianfrance has proven himself as a capable auteur. From the first scene, in which he plays with rack focus as Franky searches for their lost dog. Later on, he uses everything at his disposal, not least his actors to create impeccable and effective drama.

--bryce

Music Top Dahgs: Animal Collective, Charlotte Gainsbourg, The Knife

2010-01-26T02:29:00.000-05:00

Arielle's Pick: Animal Collective's Fall Be Kind

I never really understood the use of an EP to an established band. And while I still don't entirely get it, with the release of Animal Collective's Fall Be Kind EP I can, at least, finally appreciate the EP. The album isn't as strong as their previous full lengths but it's definitely enough to keep any rabid Animal Collective fan (this one included) satisfied until the next LP is released, or at the very least one of their side projects. Even though I found the EP as a whole to be a little disjointed - the opening track "Graze" sounds like a cross between a psychedelic Beach Boys song and the opening to a Doris Day film while the next track "What Would I Want? Sky" (which received an illustrious 10 out of 10 from Pitchfork) was far more experimental - each track was a perfect slice of Animal Collective. None of the tracks ended where they started which made the album appear much fuller than its modest five songs. While the band continues to work on new material, and even a film premiering at this year's Sundance Festival, it's nice to have a small, if not entirely perfect, reminder why of I was such a huge Animal Collective fan to begin with and if Fall Be Kindis any indication of what's to come in the band's future, I'm more than happy to wait.

Bryce's Pick: Charlotte Gainsbourg's IRM

You saw (500) Days of Summer and you were annoyed when the filmmakers used Carla Bruni's "Quelqu'un m'a dit" as a trendy little ditty from across the Atlantic, right? I mean, soooo 2002. If the francophile in you wants to listen to something French (but bilingual), trendy, new, and sonically delightful, look no further than Charlotte Gainsbourg's new album. She had a great 2009. She starred in "Antichrist" and released her new Beck-produced album IRM. Beck and Gainsbourg have succeeded in producing a mix of songs that are sometimes often light and categorically French ("Time of the Assassins") and sometimes down-and-dirty indie rock (the pair's duet "Heaven Can Wait"). "Le Chat Du Cafe Des Artistes" (which translates to "The Artist's Cafe Cat") is a true success as noir-sleekness. The album shows Beck's talents as a versatile alt-pop producer and Gainsbourg's great character as a chanteuse. The two ride the latest trends in indie music while harkening to many a golden age in popular music. While Bruni tries to establish herself as a serious film star (she's set to be in Woody Allen's new film), Gainsbourg has blown her out of the water in one regard.

Landon's Pick: The Knife feat. Mt. Sims and Planningtorock), "Colouring of Pigeons" (free download)

“Colouring of Pigeons” is Swedish electronica duo The Knife’s first released track from their opera Tomorrow, In a Year (digital release date: January 28). The opera was a project commissioned to The Knife by Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma in an effort to create an opera based on Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species, and the final product has been performed around Europe since September 2009. The most brilliant thing about this track is not only its exhibition of the band’s shocking, heretofore hidden range, but that the Knife (and their collaborators) seem to have found a fitting sonic analogy to the very process of evolution itself. “Colouring of Pigeons” comes across as the aural equivalent to the science of evolution, as it starts with one simple musical arrangement that has other hooks, instruments, and sounds deliberately added onto it until the overall musical atmosphere has unexpectedly transformed into something different entirely. The track even seems to suggest a slow evolution towards human language and rational thought, as the vocals don’t enter the mesmerizing 11-minute tune until over three minutes in. This impression was likely intentional, as much of the composition ofTomorrow, In a Year was based upon Richard Dawkins’ gene trees. Opera has been known since the era of Wagner as that art potentially containing all other art forms, but The Knife extend this possibility of aesthetic containment to the art of science. If “Colouring of Pigeons” is any indication of the strength of Tomorrow, In a Year as a whole, The Knife may have found their ideal medium for music.

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

Music Top Dahgs: Best of the 2000's

2010-01-05T13:20:00.000-05:00

Arielle's Top 9 Albums of the Decade

1. Mars Volta, De-Loused in the Comatorium
2. John Frusciante, Shadows Collide With People
3. Slipknot, Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses)
4. Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion
5. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
6. Brand New, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me
7. Against Me!, As The Eternal Cowboy
8. The White Stripes, Under Blackpool Lights
9. Muse, Hullabaloo

Bryce's Top 9 Artists that Defined Music in the 2000's

Timbaland
DJ Danger Mouse
Jay-Z
T-Bone Burnett
The Arcade Fire
Lady Gaga
Beyonce
Thom Yorke
Outkast

Landon's Top 9 Musical Moments of the 2000s

9. Coldplay's First Two Albums - Whatever your opinion is of them now (as pop music pioneers or the lovechildren of U2 in the worst way possible), there's no denying that Parachutes and A Rush of Cold Blood to the Head are two really damn good albums - no matter how sick you are of "Yellow" and "Clocks" - released at a time early in the decade in which truly great music was really, really hard to find.

8.. Radiohead's In Rainbows - It's cliche to repeat this, but this album was truly a radical event which gave credence to the all-too-obvious change had already happened in the manufacturing and consumption of music which seemed obvious to everyone but the music industry itself, also legitimizing the guerrilla-style distribution practices already exercised by Clap Your Hands say Yeah and Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine. It's also just a damn good album.

7. The Mash-up - Further evidence of the changes in the manufacturing and consumption of music that In Rainbows evidenced, mash-ups (in both audio and video form) were this decade's truly liberating form of art. The biggest props go to the unadulterated genius of Girl Talk.

6. The Death of 'Garage Rock' - The first hint of a sea change in alternative music came around 2002 when heavily publicized bands like The Hives, The Vines, The Strokes, and The White Stripes came into the forefront from obscurity. But the lesser of these bands quickly fizzled out as The White stripes proved themselves to be a band not fitting into any of these simple group labels, and Jack White being the closest thing this decade had to a legitimate rock star. The fizzling of Garage Rock also thankfully made way for the far more real sea change that would happen in...

5. 2004 - This was the year the floodgates open. When emo in 2003 threatened to be the only accessible alternative source to mainstream music, Arcade Fire, TV on the Radio, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Modest Mouse, and many more artists all released groundbreaking work mere months apart, drastically altering the musical landscape of the decade for those of us fortunate enough to be in college at the time.

4. The 80s Return in a Good Way - From brief comebacks by Morrissey, The Cure, and New Order to 80s-sound-summoning bands like Interpol, She Wants Revenge, Ladyhawke, La Roux, M83, and even the Madonna-channeling Lady Gaga, this decade embraced the true musical depth and worth (or the shameless synth pop) of Reagan-era New Wave and popular music, appropriating it into unique-but-heavily-influenced sounds without a hint of irony. Okay, maybe there was a little irony.

3. "Side Projects" - Every great musician this year seemed devoted to so many other musical groups and projects that they never seemed to ever devote themselves to any "main act" (ex., Jack White, Wolf Parade, the entire concept of Broken Social Scene), thus allowing musicians to show off the extent of their versatility and unique talents

2. Brooklyn - The decade's (for better or worse) self-appointed mecca of tragically hip culture offered us some truly great music (TV on the Radio, The National, Yeasayer, School of Seven Bells) that rose above any of the borough's mustachioed, gentrifying trust fund baby cliches.

1. Canada - Canada offered us Tegan and Sara, Metric, The New Pornographers, Death From Above 1979, Arcade Fire, Feist, Broken Social Scene, Wolf Parade, and many of the decade's other defining bands and talents, which makes our neighbors to the north the primary determinant of this decade in music. It's almost enough to forgive them for Nickelback. Almost.

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

Bryce's Top 10 Films of 2009

2009-12-30T19:17:00.001-05:00

10. Julia

Tilda Swinton carrying a movie? I know, hard to believe. Swinton transforms herself for this twists-and-turns caper film. Perhaps the film was a hair too long and had one twist too many, but the lady in red pushes this film over the top.

9. An Education

All the praise is going to Carey Mulligan on this one (she's good), but I was most surprised at Peter Sarsgaard's swindling performance as the older man charming his way into soon-to-be high school grad's (Mulligan) life.

8. La Nana (The Maid)

Brilliant character study that was nominated for a best foreign language film Golden Globe (fingers crossed...it's better than the others). See review here.

7. Avatar

It pains me to put this on the list. The film, which is anti-imperialist (and anti-capitalist?), is an exercise in excess (let's not talk about the price tag). The visuals are mostly stunning. Though most of the characters are incredibly flat, the film's protagonist, Jake Sully, is compelling and well-situated within the drama. It would have been higher if it didn't turn into so much of a shoot 'em up spectacle in the last act.

6. (500) Days of Summer

I'm a sucker for a well-written postmodern love story. Aren't we all? There's also the indie darlings Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, who earn our oohs and ahs as they do their usual things in their element.

5. The Messenger

I love a good no-combat war film. The Messenger, though it shows not a single battle sequence, is an incredibly brutal portrayal of war and its effects. Ben Foster and Samantha Morton are great. Woody Harrelson is brilliant. See review here.

4. District 9

The tops in globalized sci-fi, this film deserves all the praise it has gotten. See review here.

3. Up in the Air

I left the theater laughing...really. It put me in such a good mood. So well written, so timely, such a surprise! George Clooney is better than I've ever seen him. I don't understand the fuss about Anna Kendrick -- fun character, unfortunate performance...erm, that hotel lobby breakdown? Jason Reitman struck gold again.

2. Inglourious Basterds

Loved it. Almost every minute of it. (But I don't understand everyone's gushing over Christoph Waltz.) See review here.

1. Tokyo Sonata

As timely as Up in the Air in its way of handling the financial crisis, this film is a brilliant portrait of a family which is bent on feeling successful, no matter how untalented, unemployed, and uninteresting they are. Brilliantly paced, brilliantly structured, brilliantly acted. Truly awesome.

--bryce

TV Top 9: Shows that Defined a Decade

2009-12-25T22:28:00.001-05:00

9. The Hills

Even though Laguna Beach was the first show to introduce us to a group of kids that would become famous for nothing more than their bikinis and bickering, The Hills showed us all that reality celebrity is not only real it is enduring. The Hills managed to bring in some of the highest ratings on any cable network and introduce television watchers to a new form of reality - one with created situations. The 2000's was the decade where we learned that it was easy to become famous for nothing, that sometimes reality wasn't exactly what it seemed, and that Spidey was definitely here for good.

8. Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List

Forget The Osbournes &The Simple Life; Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List is the televisual epoch of celebrity reality shows. Between Britney's breakdown, Lindsay's lawlessness, and Paris's pouting, this decade has seen its share of celebrity obsession. But nobody does celebrity obsession and critique better than Ms. Griffin. Hilariously searching for more fame, better networks, and constant adulation, Griffin both exemplifies and skewers "fame culture." In its sixth season, it's also still one of the funniest reality television programs around.

7. South Park

Although the show premiered in the late 90's it has still managed to remain the highest rated show on Comedy Central (it's early success in the ratings encouraged more carriers to include the network in it's lineup, bringing all of Comedy Central's stars to a wider audience). From celebrity deaths to the green movement to Scientology there's no subject too taboo for the show to take on and without a doubt South Park has crossed more lines in it's past 13 years on air than anyone thought possible. Co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone downplay the show's political viewpoints but the fact that both the right and left can come together over one show proves that in the long run maybe we all can get along.

6. Grey's Anatomy

Water-cooler catch phrase chatter about a single network television program hasn't been this hot since the heyday of Seinfeld: who's McDreamier; who's dying; what's with all the explosions? Overcoming cast controversies, oddball story-lines, and time slot shifts, Grey's Anatomy has remained a mainstream millennial favorite that represents U.S. audiences' resurgent interest in primetime serial drama. Desperate Housewives may have instigated the contemporary re-trend, but Grey's brought out the beast. High emotion and lowbrow shock have never looked better.

5. Freaks & Geeks

First airing from September 1999 to the summer of 2000, Freaks & Geeks never found an audience on air. Creator/writer/co-exec producer Paul Feig was just too in touch with himself. However, years after its DVDs hit the shelves, with original soundtrack in tact, the show was officialy a huge cult classic. For those uninitiated that wanted to see the genealogy of the Judd Apatow (exec producer) oeuvre, the Freaks & Geeks set was a no-brainer. But for me, it will always be that one TV show in my teenage years that I felt was written and made just for me. I mean, really, Daniel Desario...are you...real?

4. Lost

Though we may never know everything, no other show embodied the convergence generation quite like Lost. ABC may have tried to develop its own Wiki (they tried again with Flash/Forward) for the show, but it just goes to show you that rabid fandom will happen on its own for its own reasons. Lostpedia is a ridiculously amazing resource for followers of the show that is a true testament to how easy it is to gaga over the mystery, intrigue, romance, and time-and-space jumping on this crazy modern saga. I just can't believe it's almost time to say goodbye!

3. Survivor

Sure, The Real World came first, The Amazing Race won a slew of Emmys, and Big Brother offered an early ratings challenge, but throughout the 2000s no (nonperformance-based) reality program has had the impact and staying power of the juggernaut that is Survivor. Ratings may have eroded over the years (the show started with over 40 million viewers per episode), but if one can put a finger on the turning point of primetime broadcast television from fictional fare to “reality TV," Survivor introduced the rules of the game, and, in its 18th gazillion season, refuses to play fair.

2. The Daily Show with John Stewart

John Stewart took over the reins of The Daily Show from Craig Kilborn in January 1999. It was almost instantaneously a different show. The most important change Stewart made to the show: it was now relevant. Kilborn's show was a whole different beast. Stewart's show, after all, is a political and TV genre game changer. Without The Daily Show, MSNBC would look very different today. It deserves a place on this list for keeping the media in check. And for stopping the constant rightward drift of television news. And for getting Stephen Colbert back on television. Alright, I'm gushing. Smooches, John.

1. American Idol

Holding the #1 spot in Neilsen ratings for half the decade, American Idol introduced the country to Simon Cowell, Ryan Seacrest (and let's not forget the career it helped build for him), Paula Abdul's antics, the word "pitchy" and a slew of new Top 40 talents. As many viewers tuned in nightly to laugh at the William Hungs of the world as did to marvel at the Kelly Clarksons and the Youtube generation realized once more that fame was closer than ever before - whether you actually had any talent or not.

-- bryce, arielle, and dana c. gravesen

Music Top Dahgs: Albums, Artists, and Tracks of 2009

2009-12-23T02:55:00.002-05:00

Arielle's Top 9 Albums of 2009

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Dark Was The Night
We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls
Fever Ray - Fever Ray
Dead Weather - Horehound
Arctic Monkeys - Humbug
Brand New - Daisy
Dan Auerbach - Keep It Hid
Miike Snow - Miike Snow

Bryce's Top 9 Artists that Defined Music in 2009

Lady Gaga
Animal Collective
Dirty Projectors
Passion Pit
Grizzly Bear
Karen O
Owl City
Black Eyed Peas
Jay-Z

Landon's Top 9 Tracks of 2009

Yeasayer, “Ambling Alp”
Wild Beasts, “All the King’s Men”
Atlas Sound, "Walkabout"
Dirty Projectors, "Stillness is the Move"
Memory Tapes, "Bicycle"
Passion Pit, "Folds in Your Hands"
Animal Collective, "My Girls"
Firekites, "Autumn Story"
Matt & Kim, "Daylight"

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

Top Dahgs: Adam Lambert, Lady Gaga, Yeasayer

2009-12-06T14:29:00.001-05:00

Arielle's Pick: Adam Lambert's For Your Entertainment

As much as I'd like to consider myself an indie music snob, I will take a chance and openly admit here that for the past few days I have been obsessively listening to Adam Lambert's debut album For Your Entertainment. And as someone who's never actually watched an entire episode of American Idol I'm still a little bewildered by my new found love for Glambert. Maybe it's because he teamed up with a random collection of great songwriters (Matt Bellamy, Rivers Cuomo, Linda Perry...the list goes on) creating not necessarily an Adam Lambert album, but an album where Adam Lambert covers songs from some of my favorite bands. Or it might be his unabashed (alright, completely over the top) glam rock look. (His outfits in the video for "For Your Entertainment") are to die for. Chains and spikes on a suit? Yes, please.) Or maybe it's that the genre is finally moving itself away from the sugar sweetness that saturated most of the 90's and that artists like Glambert (and Lady Gaga of course) are making pop music alright to like again.

Bryce's Pick: Lady Gaga's The Fame Monster

After the huge success of her debut album The Fame, which already warranted a headlining tour, Lady Gaga was poised for a second trip as a headliner. But wouldn't she need new songs? The eight songs of The Fame Monster kicked off Gaga's current tour with Kid CuDi. The EP proves the Gags to be a versatile artist with a kick-ass voice and a mastery of many a musical form. She takes to the piano with a tinge of old-time country twang on "Speechless." There's also the ridiculously corny "Alejandro," in which she seems not to remember her Latino lover's first name, sifting through a list of standbys. But as far as smart pop, a genre that Gaga has perfected, grabbing Middle America by the shirt collar and getting them to listen up to her less than middle-of-the-road artistic and political stances, this EP is tops. There is, of course, "Bad Romance" and it's brilliant video, directed by "I am Legend" helmer Francis Lawrence. But most importantly, there is a collaboration with Beyonce on "Telephone" and the album's standout track, the carnivalesque "Teeth."

Landon's Pick: Yeasayer, “Ambling Alp"

The perfect way to end 2009’s year in music is by getting a tease of what’s to come in 2010. And if Brooklyn-based Yeasayer’s recent single is any indication, the new decade looks quite promising. With their 2007 debut All Hour Cymbals, Yeasayer adeptly balanced clap-happy memorable hooks and—emanating more burnout hippy than ironic hipster—an almost anachronistic approach to art-pop-alt-rock with tracks like “2080” and “Wait For The Summer.” “Ambling Alp” is a dangerously addictive, energizing single further unifying this dual-sided approach. If this single is any indication of the larger sound encompassing their second LP (to be released in February), then it seems Yeasayer has found the perfect balance to their balance, forsaking the occasionally awkward search-for-defining-sound that took place on the clunkier tracks of All Hour Cymbals in favor of an inspired, joyful embrace of their potential. At its core, “Ambling Alp” is relentlessly catchy and even—dare, I say it—inspiring. Rising up from muted, possibly water-based sound design, the music breaks forth through a sonic barrier and elevates until it belts at us what seems like one of the most sincere chorus/anthems to be found in an indie rock song since I-don’t-know-when (unfortunately, the self-conscious weirdness of the Alejandro Jodoworsky-style music video dilutes the song’s seeming wholeheartedness). The repetition of “You must/stick up for yourself, son/Never mind what anybody else’s done” invoked a shocking burst of positive energy upon each listen for this reviewer. It’s simple and straightforward, yet honest and profound, and it’s something we might not know we need to hear more often. “Ambling Alp” is not only the best song to start one’s day, but possibly a new year as well.

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

Defending and Double-Snubbing the Oscar Doc Snubs

2009-11-21T02:40:00.001-05:00

The film blogosphere is up in arms about the popular docs that got snubbed when the Oscar doc shortlist was unveiled. Missing from the ranks were docs like "It Might Get Loud," "Anvil!: The Story of Anvil," "Tyson," "Capitalism: A Love Story," "The September Issue," "We Live in Public," and "Collapse" have all been noticed as big Oscar snubs. Unfortunately, I have not seen the first two docs (not a big music doc fan...though I do plan on giving these two a try eventually). I decided to give the four that I did see their fair chance in the spotlight, and give one of them my own award for best Oscar snub.

Rightly Snubbed: The Lackluster Capitalism: A Love Story

I have to admit that I'm one of those people that just eats up what Michael Moore spits out. Except for this film. And Fahrenheit 9/11. In both of these films, Moore's attempt to strike chords with the audience's emotions fall flat on their face. Few of the many people whose loss of homes Moore captures in Capitalism actually come off as worthy of sympathy. The only thing Capitalism is great at doing is recounting the intricate government maneuvers in reacting to the recession. He is, indeed, critical of the Obama administration, though he certainly is happy he is in the office, but his reluctance to do any cross-cultural comparisons à la Sicko make Capitalism a thin analysis of capitalism.

Too Flashy?: Tyson

Wanna feel like you're living in someone else's alternative universe where morality, common sense, subtlety, and humility are foreign? Watch James Toback's Tyson. The argument here, told overwhelmingly through the subjects words is that Mike Tyson has been punched around too many times. It's sad, sure, that he thinks the way he does, but in this equation, scary > sad. The doc may have been a bit too highly stylized with its distracting graphics, but the story is artfully constructed to tell the story of a man who got famous a bit too quickly and never really knew how to deal with it all. Perhaps Tyson will get more play if his complaints about the nomination procedure produce some more publicity.

Dated?: We Live in Public

DiG! director Ondi Timoner came back this year with a self-distributed doc about dot-com entrepreneur/artist Josh Harris. Harris developed internet television before anyone really had broadband. He also did an installation piece where people, well, lived in public. And man was it crazy! Really important people were doing all of their intimate dealings, cameras pointed on them with a live feed to the Internet. In an age where webcam sites seem oh-so-passé and the Internet has no limits, this doc is really only for a Gen X'ers nostalgia. It captured the doc jury at Sundance, but understandably failed to gain a theatrical audience.

Too Paranoid?: Collapse

Chris Smith's new doc (after directing last year's fiction feature The Pool) is a look at the frantic, information-overloaded Michael Ruppert, a former CIA employee who Smith initially went to for information for another story. Despite centering around images of Ruppert talking and smoking in a chair situated in the middle of a barren studio, Collapse is by far the most visually compelling on this snub list. Though Ruppert's worries could easily be found by listing all the worries of the faculty of any liberal arts college, to such vehement and well-rounded paranoia on any one person is incredibly effective and horrifying.

My Winner...Maybe Too Conventional: The September Issue

The September Issue may be a conventional behind-the-scenes vérité doc, but the film will go down in history as being the moment when the brain behind the September issue of Vogue will no longer be thought of as Anna Wintour. Grace Coddington, who was the creative director behind most of the 2007 issue that director R.J. Cutler follows in his doc, is absolutely graceful, endearing, and a breath of fresh air in the lofty world of high fashion. Surely Wintour is the star of the show, but Coddington, a former model who stopped that craft after a car accident, is the hero (suspiciously, she is missing from the film's imdb page). Wintour, after all, can't crack. That would be the end of her, and what would a profiling doc be without vulnerabilities? Nada. Great soundtrack on a film that just zips by.

--bryce

Music Top Dahgs: Atlas Sound, Menya, Flaming Lips

2009-11-05T03:23:00.001-05:00

Arielle's Pick: Atlas Sound's Logos

I don't know much about psychedelic indie rocker Atlas Sound, but everything I do know, I love. This ambient pleasure is actually the solo side project of Deerhunter lead singer Bradford James Cox and after hearing the recently released Logos, Atlas Sound has quickly shot up from one of those bands I keep meaning to learn more about to one of my favorite finds of the year. The album opens softly with the unbelievably mellow "The Light That Failed" that slowly coaxes you into a 45 minute ride of bliss. The tracks on the album almost seem to bleed into one another, creating a seamless album that surprisingly still has completely distinguishable tracks. The most stand out of them is probably the first single, "Walkabout," which is a collaboration between Cox and Panda Bear of Animal Collective. The pop vibe of the song almost makes it sound like a lost track from The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. This pop quality definitely makes the song a black sheep amongst the other more ambient tracks, but in no way takes away from the completeness of the album. Whether its the intangible yet addictive collective of beats set in the background of each track or the excellent collaborators that join Cox on the record, this album is every prog rock fan's dream.

Bryce's Pick: Menya's The Sleepover Series (Vol. 1) free download

Sure, their name sounds like the Scandinavian singer that scored a mediocre hit with Ricky Martin in 2000 and they have an aching desire to be the next Girl Talk with less than stellar mash-ups and their big break may come from Perez Hilton, but Menya's Sleepover mixtape is delightfully fun if you think of them as a postmodern hipster Weird Al. Amidst snarky pop and hip hop reappropriation, are some stellar parodies of 3OH!3 and a former top dahg, Kelly Clarkson's "I Do Not Hook Up." In "(So What) I Hook Up," the trio of self-aware twenty-two year old's tell it like it is, defeating the pop superstar's virginal message. The true coup for the group, though, is their cover of Vanessa Carlton's "White Houses." By allowing the only male member, Good Goose, to make it into an unsettling punky hip-hop ode to an unsettling high-pitched pop princess song about losing your virginity. Yes Vanessa does actually sing "My first time. Hard to explain. Rush of blood. And a little bit of pain. He's my first mistake." Download this f-u-n here.

Landon's Pick: Flaming Lips' Embryonic

The new Flaming Lips album has caused quite a polarized stir amongst fans—with some proclaiming Embryonic a landmark moment in progressing the sound of this longstanding enigmatic band, with others declaring it the worst type of overproduced noise rock. Consider me part of the former category. The Flaming Lips have always been characterized by continuous evolution, morphing from lazy stoner underground tunes that defined much of their 80s and 90s work (“Bad Days,” “She Don’t Use Jelly”) to their smiley-faced irreligious spiritual rebirth with 1999’s The Soft Bulletin, an about-face to sincere positivism that still overshadows the cultish joy of The Polyphonic Spree. The Lips continued in this sonic and thematic direction in their work since, and probably reached the creative limit of this sound with At War with the Mystics, a joyfully listenable yet ultimately forgettable entry into their canon. (This 2007 album fit contemporaneously alongside the most accessible efforts to date by bands ranging from Modest Mouse to Blonde Redhead, an amalgamation of friendly radio play that cemented ‘07 as a year that rendered officially indistinguishable the line between indie and mainstream, between art and pop.) The Lips are either helplessly compelled agents of innovation or have the foresight necessary to change direction before the well ran dry, as Embryonic marks yet another major sonic shift, favoring experimentation over their previous lullaby psychedelia in a way that marks a wonderful return to darker territory (heralded with last year’s Wayne Coyne-directed experimental pop film Christmas on Mars). Coyne’s similar-but-not-the-same approach to lyricism may have read as dreamy in his previous work but comes across here as brooding and haunting, challenging you with elusive meaning complemented by rocktastic hooks of—yes, I admit it—noise (e.g., the “I wish I could go back/Go back in time” refrain in “Evil”). With a necessary dose of insincerity, Embryonic reinforces the Lips’ proven ability to be one step ahead of their listeners.

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

Wild Things is a Chance for Kids to See Art and Themselves

2009-10-22T21:35:00.000-04:00

The Times had a piece on its Room for Debate blog on what makes a children's movie scary -- is there a difference between animated and live action films? The post was inspired by the release of Spike Jonze's adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are. To be sure, it did not seem that the editors nor the commentators, academics in media, psychology, and child studies, had seen the film either. Now that I and many others have seen it, no one seems to be saying that the film is actually especially scary. Lots of people who have seen the film say that it is for older children and adults. And yet, from all I've heard, children are liking this film. Not many reports of young young children going to the film, but I'm certain that they'd like it. After all, the film's success is being attributed to a high degree of nostalgia amongst hipsters, and what are hipsters but young adults expressing themselves without many age-imposed inhibitions.

The film is centered around Max (Max Records), an angsty little boy with a grand imagination and a number of things to be angsty about. To a boy, around the age of ten, your mother (Catherine Keener) having a new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) is no fun. Especially when he doesn't know how to act around kids. Equally incomprehensible is why your sister's friends would knock down your snow fort. These two factors motivate Max to bite his mother and go off into a fantasy world of large monsters inspired by the Maurice Sendak classic book of the same name. The land of the wild things is truly magical, a land of expansive forests and deserts; monsters played by people in suits with CGI-manipulated faces. The voices are pitch perfect. Paul Dano, Lauren Ambrose, James Gandolfini, Catherin O'Hara, and more create an uneasily bizarre community in which houses are destroyed and rebuilt in new forms for no reasons, kings are eaten, and arms are broken off to the exclamation "That was my favorite arm!" Like the book, Max is declared king upon his arrival, and like the book, Max doesn't necessarily like this world of wild things. In the end, his mother's arms are the most comforting inviting environments on whichhe can depend. There is certainly warmth amongst the weirdness or "scariness" in this film. While this is not the existential brilliance that is Being John Malkovich or Adaptation, the material is not the same with Wild Things. To succeed, it couldn't have been handled any other way.

In the New York Times blog post I started this article with, my former professor Robert Thompson said this about the propensity to Disneyfy everything for children, specifically by trying to give them "scary" or difficult narratives in animated rather than live-action form: "Little kids like this stuff, of course, but one might speculate that perhaps the very young might also like a whole range of other stuff as well." Once young children get a hold of Where the Wild Things Are, I think they'll latch onto the nonsensical world of the wild things. For young young children, it'll be just like watching the wild world of adults, only the people doing the silly bickering, the illogical planning, and the grandiose posturing are a lot more fun to look at. When these children grow up, they'll see the symbolism, the allegory, the upside down world that is the wild things -- they'll understand that there's nothing wild about them. They'll understand the feeling that you're so angry you want to bite someone and go into a world of wild things. Only once you grow up, the wild things are only this -- metaphors, allegorical symbols. To go back into the psyche of Max will be the one reason adults will return to the film -- it's why the book itself is so popular. And it's why the film, though imperfect, will be a classic.

--bryce

TV Top 9: Theme Songs

2009-10-20T16:34:00.001-04:00

Music is back on TV thanks to American Idol, yes, but it's actually making good TV in the case of Glee. Yes, leave it up to the co-creator of Popular and Nip/Tuck to make "quality television" that incorporates fun music. In honor of the brilliant phenomenon that is Glee, here are the top 9 TV theme songs:

9. True Blood

Okay, so the theme wasn't recorded for the series, but it's incredible how much this spooky bluesy country song by Jace Everett fits the opening credits to the little vampire show from Bon Temps. Before "Bad Things" was responsible for introducing every episode of the HBO phenomenon, the Evansville, Indiana native released the song as a single in 2005. Country radio didn't catch on, but given the choice, let's be honest, who wouldn't prefer being featured on one of HBO's most successful series ever? I bet the royalties aren't bad either.

8. All in the Family

With references to Glenn Miller, Herbert Hoover, and bowling, the opening theme to All in the Family prepared the viewer for exactly what s/he was about to get: social commentary (in sitcom form) on the state of the Union from the perspective of the ever-present, American middle class. With Archie and Edith singing (badly) over the opening credits, the theme song to All in the Family was, and is, an iconic experience. In the 1970s, Archie, Edith, and their brood exemplified the “Nuclear American Family”--good and bad. And for better or worse,the family Bunker illustrated shifts in the tide of the nation for over a decade.

7. Inspector Gadget

The syndicated animated series' theme was developed in a corporate office of the Saban Capital Group, and, in this case, songwriting-by-committee works brilliantly. The song was unfortunately sampled in the song "I'll Be Your Everything" from the boy band Youngstown for the equally unfortunate live action remake of the series. But its proven to be one of the most fun songs to recreate in unusual ways. There's a flute/beatbox version, a streetside beer bottle bangin' version, and a, wait what?, "digitech whammy pedal on the hands" version.

6. The Adventures of Pete & Pete

Despite the fantastic characters and storylines that Pete & Pete has to offer, one the most memorable parts of the show was, without a doubt, its theme song. Written by Polaris, a band who only released one album and that album happens to be the Pete & Pete soundtrack, "Hey Sandy" is probably most famous for being almost unintelligible and fans of the show still argue over the lyrics and meaning. Even if you couldn't figure out the rest of the song, everyone knew those two simple words that you could scream along with during the show's intro. When it comes down to it, using a song about a student killed at the Kent State shootings for the opening of a show named after two brother's is an odd choice, but one that fit the show perfectly.

5. Batman

The spinning screen, the animated characters, the simple yet addictive melody and the annoyingly offtune singers - combine all of these and you have one of the best tv show openings of all time. The original Batman series was the pinnacle of cheesy and it all began with that unforgettable opening song. Though can it really be called a song when its nothing more than one single lyrics and a handful of chords repeated ad nauseum? Then again it does have a really long wikipedia entry where Adam West claims that the voices singing "Batman!" are actually instruments. Oh Adam West...Even though it's as simple as theme songs come it's still one of the most famous. What other theme song has been covered by both The Who and Snoop Dogg?! And don't forget The Simpson's take in The Joy of Sect episode, where the Batman theme music was used to brainwash Homer into joining a cult. Now if that doesn't make a great theme song, I don't know what does.

4. Roseanne

A harmonica and a saxophone: that's all it took to invite America into the Conner home in 1989. And to knock The Cosby Show out of the number one position in the Nielsen ratings. The round-table, all inclusive nature of Roseanne's opening is indicative of the warm, working-class aesthetic of the show itself: above all, family and communication trump trends and tragedy. Sometimes controversial and often irreverent, throughout nine seasons of Conner family ups and downs (with lyrics—coauthored by Roseanne herself—added in the final season), a panning camera and Midwestern charm is all it took for viewers to know they were “home.”

3. The Mary Tyler Moore Show

“You're going to make it after all.” And she did. The Mary Tyler Moore Show's (TMTMS) theme song—“Love is All Around” by Paul Williams—is perhaps one of the most iconic in sixty years of sitcom history. Full of “go get 'em” attitude and incredibly exemplary of the self-consciously infused feminism of TMTMS (though it's worth noting that Mary's interminably impressionable hat-throwing started in season two), this theme is brilliant. Williams' music and lyrics proved to a generation that Dick Van Dyke's former wife-du-jour could indeed make it on her own.

2. The Andy Griffith Show

Family friendly television is not known for the amazing music it has produced. Just look at the work of Jesse Frederick, who wrote the songs for "Perfect Strangers," "Full House," "Family Matters," and "Step by Step." In the case of The Andy Griffith Show nothing could be cooler than the pitch perfect whistling, "The Fishin' Hole," written by Earle Hagen, that told you that it was time for the Barney Fife and a cast of characters to make the world giggle during the '60's more innocent times. It's apparently also a really fun song to teach your singing bird.

1. The Addams Family

"They're creepy and they're cooky. Mysterious and spooky. Altogether ooky. The Addams Family." There's only one thing you can do when you hear this song - and that of course is the double snap. Half of the song doesn't is instrumental and you could say that the snaps are by far more memorable than any of the actual lyrics. Especially when shown over the opening credits. For a family friendly series that had such a catchy and nonthreatnening theme song (it contains the word "ooky" for god's sake!) its intro is still undeniably creepy. The way John Astin stares at you as he, and the audience, waits for the time to snap is suprisingly unsettling today and speaks perfectly to the nature of the show - The Addams Family thinks this is perfectly normal, so why don't you? An Addams Family musical is set to open on Broadway in 2010 and one can only imagine what Morticia's snapping will sound like with a full orchestra behind her.

-- bryce, arielle, and dana c. gravesen

"The Maid": A Character Study that Needs to be Seen

2009-10-15T17:07:00.000-04:00

Roles have been accused of being studies for years and films have been called character studies for a fair amount of time. But in recent years, especially amongst the Sundance crop, the character study film has had an impeccable surge of popularity. There are certain ones, which to me, seem flat (Sherrybaby), and there are others whose richness lie in the lead actors' artistic bravery (Wendy and Lucy). La Nana (The Maid), which premiered and won awards for director and actor at Sundance, from Chilean writer-director Sebastián Silva is one of the latter. And it's lead, Catalina Saavedra, even more than Michelle Williams in Wendy and Lucy, impeccably inhabits a unique character. In this film, Silva's talents are center stage; unlike other recent character studies, this film is wacky. Saavedra's maid Raquel is absolutely insane, but like the family that surrounds her, we keep her around.

Raquel is the maid for a wealthy Chilean home. After she becomes sick, it is decided that Raquel needs help around the house. The only problem is Raquel does not deal well with help around the house. Raquel acts up against the other maids in ways so absolutely ridiculous and with such nonchalant force that there are very few moments when jaws aren't dropped or sneers aren't forming amongst the audience. There is much more versatility in the character of Raquel than in most of the other recent character study films, and for that we have to thank Silva's script, co-written with Pedro Peirano. What a delight to see Saavedra go from quiet to laughing to sick to contemplative and back again and all over the place.

While other films of this genre are vanity pieces for credible indie starlets, this film is made by a relative unknown who's had stints on telenovelas. Though this will not do what the others will do, make sure a respectable actress's career has legs, with any luck, this film will have legs on the indie circuit.

--bryce

National Equality March: Holding Gaga to her Word

2009-10-15T00:52:00.000-04:00

I spent my Sunday at the National Equality March. I spent several hours in the nation's capital marching, with a plea for Barney Frank to show solidarity and not divide the movement written in marker on my shirt. From a park in the Northwest part of the city, I passed, with hundreds of thousands of others, the White House on my way to the Capitol building. It is no coincidence that a gathering of support for LGBT rights this big has not happened in ten years; most of those years were spent under the Bush administration and lots of morale defeats. In signs and chants on the march and speeches on the step of the Capitol Building were begging the new man in the White House to live up to his campaign promises. High on most people's lists was Don't Ask Don't Tell (which is hard for me to stand up for, when I think the highest priority of our military should be to reduce its hawkishness) and a repeal of DOMA, specifically this one that was brought to the House floor earlier this month. There were, of course, mentions of the fact that national hate crimes and discrimination laws were not on par with the protection afforded to other citizens when it comes to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people.

Out LGBT people were the primary speakers at the rally. AIDS activist Clive Jones was passionate and fiery. Cynthia Nixon was incredibly stoic and poetic in her appeal for civil rights for all in the United States. City Council Spokeswoman and key supporter of the infamous third term Christine Quinn was also inspirational. Out bisexual British "Kiss the Rain" chanteuse led an embarrassingly artificial rendition of "America the Beautiful." But it was clear who most were excited for. At the announcement of her name, there was a sizable shift of the audience towards the podium. A sign with emblazoned with "Fierce Advocate" (fierce in glitter) could be seen to inch up -- no, yard up -- to the stage. Please welcome to the stage Lady Gaga!

As the Gags made her way to the stage, she told the audience "I know Obama's listening to us." And then screamed, "Are you listening?" At this moment, I remembered how much I love this woman. Her pop stardom is incredible because she is more performance artist than any other top tier pop princess could ever aspire to be (even Madge). But Gaga said something very interesting in her speech. In the echoing of her MTV VMA award speech, "This is for God and the gays," Gaga echoed the same calls for LGBT liberation. She also said one thing that she didn't need to say -- that she would do her best to combat misogyny and homophobia in the music industry. I was immediately shocked by her comment. Of course, I am for the cause, and I wasn't shocked because the topic is tired (see recent discussion on the hip hop phrase "no homo" -- Slate article and current_ video). However, how can Gaga say this when she was signed to the label of one of hip hop's stars most concerned with a macho image -- one that has led for him to get flak for humping a fifteen-year old onstage and for building up a hard-ass prison image that was less than honest. This may be the only time I agree with Michelle Malkin and Bill O'Reilly, who famously insisted that Verizon pull its sponsorship of Akon's tour with Gwen Stefani. Malkin and O'Reilly, though, were probably motivated by a little more than their superficial reason of the misogyny of lyrics like "Bananza (Belly Dancer)," but that's neither here nor there. If Gaga is going to address music's gender and sexuality problem, she needs to explain the boss situation. Otherwise, it looks like this might be a case of not biting the hand that feeds you...okay, stroking the hand that feeds you...or something... So what's the deal, Gaga?

--bryce

Music Top Dahgs: The xx, Kid CuDi, School of Seven Bells

2009-10-08T02:11:00.000-04:00

Arielle's Pick: The xx

It would seem that bands like The xx are a dime a dozen. A group of kids from London wear all black and strum their guitars listlessly while mumbling some lyrics into their mics. The one difference with this band is that somewhere along the road they managed to get it right and their self titled album, released in August, is something of a breath of fresh air from all the other slightly melancholy brit pop bands out there that got their start on Myspace. (After all, their page lists both CocoRosie and Rihanna as influences. How could that combination be bad!?) Maybe it has something to do with the skilled way bassist Oliver Sim and guitarist Ramy Madley Croft share vocals. The male/female combination has worked in the past (see: The Kills, Arcade Fire, Rilo Kiley, etc.) and without a doubt it's what gives this band an edge over the rest. Not to say that their songs wouldn't stand up on their own. The first single off of their debut album, "Crystalized," is probably one of my favorite songs of the year. It's extremely catchy without being overdone. It's perfect in it's simplicity. And the way Sim and Croft throw the lyrics back and forth it almost feels like we stumbled in the middle of a very personal conversation that just happens to have a great orchestral background soundtrack. When they sing you feel like they're sharing something private with you. Even the video for "Crystalized" is oddly personal. Watch Sim's eyes while he sings and it's easy to see why The xx was chosen as one of NME's 50 Bands of the Future.

Bryce's Pick: Kid CuDi's Man on the Moon: The End of Day

While I was tempted by the Whip It soundtrack (the pool scene with Jens Lekman playing is just brilliant) and Kristin Chenoweth's jaw-dropping, career-blazing performance on Glee, the Top Dahg of the past two weeks is by far Kid CuDi, with his eagerly anticipated debut, Man on the Moon: The End of Day. Kid CuDi had a minor summer hit with "Day N Nite," a spooky club track that persists long after you stopped dancing. Listening to the album is like listening to Timbaland before he became obsessed with heartbreak and reigniting fading popstars' careers. Though the album is dripping with ego (the track "Heart of a Lion" is called his theme music), there's also a lot that's unabashedly breezy and light. He talks about Facebooking and Twittering, but instead of cringing, I keep on with the flow. I predict "Up, Up, and Away" will be his de facto entrance into the pop world, the same way slick guitar chords took "Ride Wit Me" to the top of the pops. His take on "Poker Face" with Kanye West and Common, "Make Her Say," makes ME say "Oh oh oh oh oh oh" and is the album's next single. A collaboration with MGMT leads to a really fun track, with lyrics so questionable they distract from a stellar track:

Crush a bit, little bit, roll it up, take a hit
Feelin’ lit feelin’ light, 2 am summer night.
I don't care, hand on the wheel, drivin drunk, I'm doin’ my thing
Rollin the Midwest side and out livin’ my life getting’ out dreams
People told me slow my road I'm screaming out fuck that
Imma do just what I want lookin’ ahead no turnin’ back
if I fall if I die know I lived it to the fullest
if I fall if I die know I lived and missed some bullets

Eek! Definitely worth picking up, though. Lyrics like these need to be brushed up. And please don't go on tour with a guy who heard his first rap song, Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life," in his teens (ahem, Asher Roth).

Landon's Pick: School of Seven Bells at Emo’s 10/01, Austin, TX

While Wye Oak and The Walkmen dominated the more expensive ticket on the outside stage at Austin’s well-known downtown venue, on the comparatively modest indoor stage a little band from Brooklyn called School of Seven Bells sent ears ablaze in a stunning, intimate show in front of an audience that could not have exceeded sixty persons. Mixing a restrained aesthetic of psychedelia (a colorful, trippy, and sometimes 80s-retro video accompanied the band on loop in the background featuring a curious anachronistic mix of visualized electronica and manifestations of Warhol-esque lofty party vibes) and former Secret Machines guitarist Benjamin Curtis’s commanding hooks and rhythms with the ethereal, haunting choral harmony that make sibling vocalists Alejandra and Claudia Deheza sound like robot angels from the future, SVIIIB felt, amazingly enough, just as freshly original, irresistible, and hallucinating live as they did in their debut LP Alpinisms a year ago (which I named my second-favorite album of 2008). Emo’s isn’t known for having the best sound setups, and this unfortunate lack of balance in the mixing made me realize that, through no fault of the band’s own, there was a better live experience elsewhere to be had (I hope those who saw them at Austin City Limits music fest the next day have a better story to tell). Yet their performance blew me away nonetheless. I’ve never seen a band play so well as to rise above such a stupidly common technical setback. The vocals remained beautiful, and the music magnetic, even playing a few new songs that I hope shows up on whatever they release next. School of Seven Bells has lived up to their promise."

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

Lars von Trier's Antichrist: Horror Filmmaking Therapy

2009-09-26T02:24:00.000-04:00

In an enlightening and vulnerable press conference that I covered for indieWIRE, Lars von Trier said that he made Antichrist at a time when he was going through an extreme bout with depression unlike any he had experienced before. The result is a film that is intense, at times startlingly beautiful and at other times, just startling. "Antichrist" starts with a slow motion black & white sequence in which two things are happening in the same house: a couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) is having sex and their child is roaming around the house, eventually falling out of a window to his death. Back to regular speed and color, the mother faints at her son's funeral. Her husband, a therapist, takes her mental care into his own hands. Through a visit to the cabin in which she wrote her thesis on the history of misogyny and the torture of women, Dafoe's character hopes to get to the route of his wife's demons.

IFC, in its efforts to distribute the film, must be careful to market this film correctly. Not having been prepared, I wasn't sure what to make of it. In order to appreciate this film, the audience must be prepared to see a horror film. It seems like the people behind the film get that. Not only did von Trier make it clear that he thought of the film as horror, but it also is getting a screening at this year's Fantastic Fest. Unlike some of the other genre fare at the Austin festival, this film does not have a light-hearted backbone. It is unlikely that anyone going to a von Trier film would expect their experience to bright and cheery. However, up until this point, von Trier's emotional manipulation has only been in the areas of melodrama (Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Breaking the Waves) and slapstick (The Idiots). Bringing Takashi Miike-style torture and shrieks into a von Trier film is almost debilitating. It won't make you cry, but it will make you cringe. A lot.

Some would argue, I'm sure, that this is pure art. That the acting and the film's intense control of its audiences is its only attribute. There is suely a lot to muse about after watching this film. It's additionally interesting to see von Trier not use the simplistic stylization of his other films, not the least of which are his signature dogme films. While von Trier said that he was sorry he didn't film Antichrist in a dogme style, I was happy to see that von Trier could be a master of a more cinematic style. In fact, the stylization of the film was one of the most stunning of anything I have seen in a long time. As an examination of the human psyche, Antichrist is a classic. A date movie -- a date horror movie even -- it is surely not.

--bryce

Move Over Diablo Cody, "Whip It" Brings New Scribe Star

2009-09-26T01:26:00.001-04:00

Diablo Cody received her Oscar because she has a talent (though some wouldn't call it that) for quirky dialogue. I'm not sure, though, that other people love her work on The United States of Tara as much as I do. And her latest Jennifer's Body didn't really make a dent into the cultural landscape. If she is being taken from her throne, then I know a worthy replacement. Her name is Shauna Cross. She is the author of Derby Girl, a novel based on her experience in the Texas roller derby culture. The novel was published in the midst of the mild roller derby mini-explosion in pop culture. Cross adapted her novel for the screen in Whip It, the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore. The film is fantastic, like a good pop song: never boring, it follows an established formula and hooks the audience all the way.

In the film, Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) is pushed into local country club beauty pageants by her mother (Marcia Gay Harden), and is stifled by her little Texas town until she goes to Austin and finds a home in a roller derby team, the heavily-tattooed Hurl Scouts. The Hurl Scouts are happy with being the big losers in their league, too much of a motley crew of party animals to care about winning. All that changes when another team's leader, played by a totally bitchy Juliette Lewis, makes the competition a bit too personal. Luckily, their new player, Bliss, is a speed demon. Unluckily, Bliss's parents would probably not approve of the derbying if they knew (well, her father (Daniel Stern) might, but he would never say that in front of his wife!). The ensemble cast of Hurl Scouts is nicely cast and beautifully scripted. Kristen Wiig is toned down, giving a career-best performance as Bliss's role model, a crazy aunt figure. Barrymore, as a perpetually high free spirit, does well in providing small bits of comic relief. The film's break out star, though, is Arrested Development's Alia Shawkat, who plays Bliss's straight A best friend, who must negotiate the knowledge of Bliss's double life and her own aspirations to go off to an Ivy League school.

Barrymore's direction lends to the film's gooey bubble gum sheen. Her most daring scene is one of my favorites: Bliss and her boyfriend (played by pop rocker Landon Pigg) have a romantic fully-clothed dance underwater. Between the film's casting and Barrymore's direction, Cross's script gets a respectable treatment for a story that could so easily go down the ridiculously flashy route. The hard-ass girls of the roller derby league are fully realized as incredibly round characters. Wiig's character is exemplary. Scenes with her son and Bliss allow Bliss to better understand her taught relationship with her parents. Sarcastic bad ass girls have never felt so real. And damn are they hot!

--bryce

Music Top Dahgs: Muse, Mika, Wild Beasts

2009-09-15T11:08:00.001-04:00

Arielle's Pick: Muse's The Resistance

I always imagined that if I was ever a part of a mass political revolution my soundtrack would consist of a collection of Muse tracks (and I guess some 70's folk rock just for cred), but it seems that with the release of their latest album, The Resistance, they've given me the perfect collection. Like the rest of Muse's discography this album is full of the requisite epic solos, high pitched crooning, and plenty of catchy choruses that large groups of people can sing together in the streets while throwing their arms up in the air. While the new album isn't my favorite (that honor still goes to Origin of Symmetry) it's in no way a letdown. The first single "Uprising" is a powerful display of vocalist and guitarist Matt Bellamy's strength as both a singer and musician. My favorite song on the album, the grandiose almost seven minute long track "Unnatural Selection," is the perfect example of exactly what Muse does best. It's an amalgamation of sounds and melodies that you don't think should work together, but in reality turns out to be seven minutes in Muse heaven.

Bryce's Pick: Mika's The Boy Who Knew Too Much

Mika is many things. He is a twenty-six year old Lebanese-born American. He is a classically trained opera singer, which has produced a killer falsetto. He is post-gay (see here for some commentary that I don't agree with). He is also back this month with a new album. The first single, "We Are Golden" is a fully energized channeling of Spring Awakening, Polyphonic Spree, and (as usual for Mika) Freddie Mercury. In the video directed by the man who can do no wrong (see: Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi") Jonas Akerlund, Mika dances around in his skivvies, mirroring many a pre-post-gays' reaction to the song's high energy choral refrain. So pumped for the world to be dancing around in their rooms to great dance tracks like "Golden" and "Blame it on the Girls." The album's also got the same overall feel of his debut, Life in Cartoon Motion, but it still feels fresh. It's the proverbial not fixing it cuz it ain't broke. There are important differences beyond the booming chorus of "Golden." "Blue Eyes" takes its oomph from Paul Simon. And is it Etta James he's channeling on "Pick Up Off the Floor"? It's jarring to hear the worlds of Imogen Heap and Mika come together on "By the Time," a song she is featured on. And I mean jarring in the best possible way. The grand Canadian of upbeat violins, Owen Pallett (better known as Final Fantasy), plays on the album. All is good. Check it out.

Landon's Pick: Wild Beasts, Two Dancers

These days it seems difficult to find an indie band easily identified by an exceptionally unique vocalist that doesn’t remind you of that guy that sings in that other band. The UK’s Wild Beasts, however, have two, with Hayden Thorpe’s idiosyncratic and polarizing falsetto alternating with Tom Fleming’s more accessible tenor. Thorpe’s falsetto is credited by most who have written about the band as its most immediately apparent identifying characteristic, and one’s ability to warm up this rare use of vocals for alt rock music will make or break their acceptance of Wild Beasts as a whole. I for one think it works splendidly—and once looking beyond just the vocals, Wild Beasts have proven themselves with each listen to be a band of rewarding layers. Their new album Two Dancers replaces the energetic flamboyance of their 2008 LP debut Limbo, Panto with subtle, haunting guitar hooks and immersive layers of mood and atmosphere. It’s far and away one of the best albums I’ve heard so far this year and works on every level as a complete LP experience, each track building upon themes and sounds explored previously. I hope Thorpe and Fleming don’t pull a Wolf Parade and focus on side projects (as each of their vocal capabilities could sustain a band all their own) because their unusual but inspired artistic collaboration works in a magnificent and original way that I haven’t seen in music in quite some time.

Recommended tracks: "Hooting & Howling," "All the King's Men"

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

To Love or Hate the Emmys? That is the Question.

2009-09-14T23:39:00.030-04:00

The Primetime Emmys are right around the corner and while my fellow blogger already gave his opinion on what was wrong with the nominees (and occasionally right), I'm here to share mine (and also point out why Bryce is wrong, wrong, wrong!)

1. All Hail 30 Rock and Mad Men. First off, let me just come right out and say it - Mad Men and 30 Rock are pretty much the only good scripted shows on TV these days. So no, I'm not at all upset to see them dominating the categories. I'm just relieved that The Sopranos is finally off the air so someone else can get a chance at one of these statues. Though I will be baffled until the end of time as to what is the big deal with Charlie Sheen's acting on Two and a Half Men. One of these days I'll actually have to watch an episode to find out. And right after I assume that hell might freeze over.

2. Give NPH an Award Already! No, a hosting gig is not the same as recognition for outstanding work. No, being nominated is not enough of an honor. And seriously, Jon Cryer for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy? Again? Duckie, I love you but enough. Neil Patrick Harris for President.

3. The Sarah Silverman Program is either genius or completely retarded. I'm still torn on this one. At times, this show can be the most entertaining 30 minutes I've had in a very long time (see: "High, It's Sarah") but then again it can easily be a mish-mash of chuckle worthy moments that I'm amazed made it to broadcast. Either way, I'm glad to see the Academy go outside their box for once and honor someone that the entire country might not get.

4.The Steve Martin 30 Rock episode was hilarious!! Seriously, are we still arguing about this? Amazing. Period. Steve Martin as a crazy shut-in FTW.

5. Let's give Breaking Bad two more Emmys. I didn't watch the show last year when it was nominated, but I have since become hip to the utter genius and pure joy that is Breaking Bad. Let's pray for another win this year. Though I would have liked to see it get a nod in the writing category. Alright, Bryce I concede. Four noms in one category is a bit insane.

6. Please, please stop encouraging Kathy Griffin. Kathy, your show was funny for the first two seasons. But girl, you really need to learn when to stop. At this point you're only hurting yourself.

7. Thank you for realizing the brilliance of Joss Whedon. Dr. Horrible's Sing Along blog gets an Emmy nod! And all is peaceful in the world again.

And that's it. I'll leave it at lucky number seven in hopes that all my dreams will come true this Sunday night. (Go NPH!!)

-Arielle

TV Top 9: Monsters

2009-09-10T00:28:00.002-04:00

This Sunday, we'll go back to Bon Temps, Louisiana to find out if Sookie, Bill, Jason, Andy, Sam, Lafayette, and his aunt will be helped by Eric, Tara, or Eggs as they try to destroy that crazy Minotaur monster thing Maryann's orgy takeover of the town. What will the vampire queen (Evan Rachel Wood) do about it all? Will she just keep sucking on her playthings with Bill? Gahhh....The suspense!!!! In celebration, the blahg is naming its Top 9 TV Monsters. Boo!

9. Krumm (Aaahh!!! Real Monsters)

What's more useful than detached eyeballs? How about armpit stench that can knock out even the largest of creatures. Krumm of Nicktoons' Aaahh!!! Real Monsters has both these skills AND he can eat just about everything. These may not seem like useful trades for the real world, but when you're a monster in training in the Newark garbage dump they certainly can come in handy. The ever vigilant lookout, Krumm often felt like a backup character, there to push along his friends' exploits. But when Krumm was the star of the show those episodes were usually the most enjoyable. Who could forget the quick witted pimple that popped up on his forehead in the first season? Or that time he insisted on carrying his eyes in a purse so that he had more use of his hands? While the Aaahh!!! Real Monsters movie was shut down because it was deemed too dark for children (you can only imagine what the plot might have been), Krumm's adventures will be able to live forever now that the first two seasons are available on iTunes.

8. Grandpa (The Munsters)

The Grandpa of the Munsters, a Mr. Sam Dracula, Count of Transylvania was the funniest member of the Munsters, a family that made its television debut on CBS the same year The Addams Family debuted on ABC. The rest of the Munster family was concerned with keeping up, or cultivating, their middle class status. Grandpa (played oh so snarkily by the late Al Lewis), on the other hand, was locked up in his basement concocting a potion or two to really stir things up in the family and wasn't too interested on the thoughts and feelings of the outside world. Grandpa and son-in-law Hermann Munster have an endearing troublemaking relationship that leads Lily, Grandpa's daughter and Herman's wife, to do a lot of eye-rolling and explaining. Not only is this one naughty and sarcastic old monster with excellent magic abilities, Grandpa can also turn into a bat at will. He also attacked (well, tried to attack) a sleazy gas company man by turning into a wolf. So what are you grandpa, a vampire or a werewolf??!?! A truly classic TV monster!

7. Marjory the Trash Heap (Fraggle Rock)

Rife with sage wisdom, Marjory always seemed very grandmotherly to me. A cross between Master Yoda, Mother Winslow, and God, Marjory provides spiritual and practical guidance to the fraggles and viewers alike. She is flanked by two loyal if inept heralds whose relationship is symbiotic and beautiful. Also, she can sing the blues like a diva to help you with your problems. Case in point: "I've Seen Troubles"

6. Lorne or "The Host" (Angel)

Basically the Frank Sinatra of the underworld, Lorne, or "The Host" as he prefers to be called, runs a popular Karaoke bar in the underworld of Angel's version of Los Angeles where he exploits his ability to read people's futures when they are singing. His dry wit and killer one liners are always a breathe of fresh air in the generally serious and violent world in which he finds himself. Never fully comfortable there he splits for a short period to work as a singer in Vegas and maybe it would have been better for him to stay there (despite his run ins with the mob) because once he returns to LA and Angel's ever destructive universe he is forced to suffer one tragedy after another eventually leaving him a broken man (deman?). While the world is coming to an end and most of the main characters are falling to the waistside (or being left behind in hell) watching the destruction of The Host's happiness was the saddest plot twist of all.

5. Gordon Shumway (A.L.F.)

Gordon Shumway is just like you and me. When this Alien Life Form (A.L.F.) crashed into the Tanner family’s garage (no relation to Danny and Michelle) and America’s living rooms in 1986, the world changed for the better. Mischievous, uncouth, and undeniably lovable, Alf’s exploits and attempts at outsider assimilation remind us of the peculiarities of American life in the 80’s. Not to mention his immortalization in the Simpson’s, “Alf’s back, in pog form.”

4. Bill Compton (True Blood)

Originally a creation of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels, Alan Ball took True Blood to HBO last year and has given the network its biggest ratings? Why is the show so darn popular? Well not only is it a brilliant mythical soap opera full of kitsch, intrigue, and blood, but it is also an incredibly effective romance. Though Alex Skarsgård's vampire sheriff Eric is inching in to Sookie, 174-year-old vampire Bill Compton has done the unthinkable. He has fallen in love with a mortal human. After going public with his love of Sookie and becoming the laughingstock of the vampire community, Bill Compton's love for Sookie and willingness to help her no matter what situation she is in (even if it's during the day!) makes him the hottest vampire in our book (Take that Eric and Robert Pattinson!)

3. Oz (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Initially introduced as a side character in the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Oz eventually made his way into the opening credits (and Willow's heart) in the third season proving that a geek/musician/werewolf can hang with the Scoobie Gang. Though Oz is turned into a werewolf in the least exciting way possibly (he's bitten on the finger by his baby cousin who turns out to be a werewolf), the realization that Willow's new beau has to be locked up in a cage once a month lent a surprisingly kinky air to the show. Or it could just be a very obvious metaphor for the inner torment and anger that most people harbor inside them. Either way, every Buffy fan was sad to see Oz go in the fourth season when he decides that he must spend more time understanding his werewolf side by meditating in Tibet. *Sigh*

2. The Crypt Keeper (Tales from the Crypt)

This guy epitomizes the word raunchy. The HBO show is known for accolades having several noteworthy actors and directors (Michael J. Fox, Demi Moore, Tom Hanks, Robert Zemeckis), but the post-mortem host was always my favorite part. Vulgar and decaying, each week the Keeper would introduce the upcoming creepy tales with some pun-filled anecdote and conclude by summarizing the cautionary lesson for us. His signature cackle embodies the show’s kitschy, charming, and kind of creepy vibe to a T.

1. Cookie Monster (Sesame Street)

Debuted by Jim Henson Productions in a training video for IBM, Cookie Monster gained fame as a character on, of course, Sesame Street. Known for such classic gems as "C is for Cookie" and, in a 2005 change of pace "A Cookie is a Sometimes Food." You see, it seems that there were too many children ravenously gobbling up ginger snaps, choco chips, and snickerdoodles in emulation of their favorite monster. Or something like that...So there was a bunch of speculation that Cookie Monster would be no more and that (Shock! Horror!) the Veggie Monster would replace him. Let's just say his googly-eyed monstrosity still graces the PBS airwaves and the preschool set is all the better for it.

-- bryce, arielle, and lance kozmo edwards

Music Top Dahgs: Arctic Monkeys, The Big Pink, Tiësto and Tegan & Sara

2009-09-03T00:11:00.004-04:00

Arielle's Pick: The Arctic Monkeys' Humbug

The Arctic Monkeys have long been one of my favorite bands. Yes, I bought into the hype that was being thrown at me long before they ever had an actual album released. But all that hype turned out to be true! So when I heard that they were teaming up with Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, I stayed cautiously optimistic about what this pairing could turn out in the studio. And what that turned out to be is the best Arctic Monkeys album, and one of my favorite albums, to date. AC has always been known for their quick tempos and raucous live shows, but they outdo themselves on this album. Drummer Matt Helders must have grown an extra foot to produce the intense beats that accompany the songs on the record. Combine that with the dark tunage of Homme and you have some of the deepest yet melodic music I've heard in a while. Take the first single Crying Lightning. It's really a perfect example of the combination of the two sounds. The song has a definite AC tilt to it, but the dark, twisted riffs in the background hint that there's something different going on here. And that nudge in the back of your head only gets more insistent through the rest of the album. The track that seals the deal is also my favorite. Pretty Visitor comes hard straight out the gate and doesn't let up for a minute. And by the time you get to the almost Black Sabbath-esque chorus you know that these boys are definitely trying something new. Something that I hope we'll see a lot more of in the future.

Bryce's Pick: The Big Pink

The Big Pink is a UK band whose website conveniently (and not so coincidentally) shares a name with an album from The Band, Music from Big Pink. Melodic electro vocals are heavy on the reverb and are laid atop haunting noise tracks and persistent baselines. "Domino" shouts while standing on the tips of its toes. While "Crushed Water" is a Buddhist monastery with a heavy dose of contempt. "Crystal Visions" is a crooning trippy mess. There are no easy words to describe the deeply affective music that Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell have produced for their project, A Brief History Of Love, available later this month. The only misstep may be an utterly drab cover of The Cure's "Love Song." Check out the US tour, which starts in November in the Northwest and gets to New York for two dates, December 3 and 4. The videos are absolutely incredible, too. Check out, "Dominoes," a visual ode to ice sculptures and silhouettes.

Landon's Pick: Tiësto and Tegan & Sara's "Feel You In My Bones"

There’s a lot of new music releases this fall I have to look forward to. Some of my favorite artists—including Kings of Convenience, Minus the Bear, and Snowden—are all slated for new releases and accompanying tours this October, but one of the most anticipated fall releases for me is Tegan & Sara’s sixth studio album Sainthood. In anticipation of an album’s worth of new material, the Calgary duo have teased their fans with a single (not featured on the forthcoming album) collaborating with Dutch electronic artist Tiësto (and featured on his new album Kaleidoscope). The track is refreshing in that it’s not a remix of an existing Tegan & Sara song, but an original track composed with an electronic sound in mind, so the seemingly random collaboration works surprisingly well to the point that one is befuddled as to why Tegan & Sara haven’t incorporated more electronic sounds before. The song mixes the duo’s signature escalating pop hooks with heartfelt yet simple, universal lyrics (which are clichéd, but the kind of cliché that makes you realize why they exist in the first place). At the 3-minute mark the song becomes overwhelmed by Tiësto’s dance-thumping sound, making it seem like the singing/songwriting duo are being forcibly molded for a club scene that they don’t really fit in. But “Feel It in My Bones” still makes me hope that Tegan & Sara experiment with electronic music in their future work, as they have alluded to in past tracks like the synth-heavy, 80s-channeling “We Didn’t Do It” (from 2005’s So Jealous).

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

Whitney Houston: Not the Year's Big Comeback, but Still a Gay Icon

2009-08-30T02:50:00.001-04:00

I'll start by saying that I have very eclectic music tastes -- from the most bubble gum to the most stripped down folky. And so a new Whitney Houston album does mean something to me. And while her publicists are touting this as the comeback of the year, that's not really possible. Though it happened through unfortunate circumstances, Michael Jackson has had the most remarkable insurmountable comeback (just look at yesterday's packed Prospect Park Spike Lee dance party for the legend's birthday). One thing is for certain -- Whitney Houston is still a gay icon, and this album will be a gay club mainstay for years to come.

The album is a bit awkward in its mix of nineties aesthetic and contemporary production. The title song, written by R. Kelly, out-saps Diane Warren. Oddly enough, Ms. Warren is on the disc, writing the album's most captivating ballad, "I Didn't Know My Own Strength." "Strength" is perfect for soft rock radio, but is probably the only song to make a huge dent there. Swiss Beatz comes with one of the album's first singles, "Million Dollar Bill," which is slick but not quite authentic enough in its attempt to be an update on Peach & Herbs. Something about Akon's collaboration with Whitney on "I Got You" and "Like I never Left" comes off as forced. The greatest success on the album is Whitney's ode to techno and Lady Gaga-era divadom, with the songs produced by Timbaland protege Danja and Norwegian producers StarGate with their danciest songs yet.

All in all, the album probably has a few too many calls out to haters and players, and calls to throw your hands up, to be a real classic. But in her sixth studio album (yes! only six true albums! i know!), she is back to being memorable (What, you don't remember "Whatchulookinat"?). Bodyguard soundtrack this is not, but take a listen to "Nothin' But Love" why don't you? I dare you not to dance.

--bryce

Inglourious Basterds Didn't Just Get Lucky with Twitter; It's Glorious

2009-08-28T01:29:00.000-04:00

You may know that I'm fascinated by the way middle-aged professionals love Twitter. Since when could our congresspeople talk about how boring a President's address to the nation is? Well, apparently, it's fair game on Twitter. And this same socioeconomic demographic, in the form of entertainment journalists, is obsessed with telling us to follow celebrities on Twitter and to attribute films' failures on the bad word of mouth that Twitter users have been spreading (see my indieWIRE article on Bruno). Well, according to AdWeek, the trade magazine of the organization that just wets themselves at the thought of Twitter's importance, Inglorious Basterds is Twitter's first success story. Here's the logic: reviews from an earlier cut at Cannes from professional critics were mediocre; responses to the film by laypeople were positive; all other films that had success (like District 9) had already had good buzz. This assumes that the greater public actually cares about critics' reviews (sure, some do! but we all know A LOT of people will see ANYTHING.). Such theories are ridiculously simplifying and don't factor in the number of factors that help make our movie-going decisions.

Inglourious Basterds follows two plots to kill Adolph Hitler. One is by a motley crew of American Jews and some European Jews they picked up along the way. The group, the Inglourious Basterds, is led by a Tenessee Jew played by Brad Pitt. They plan to blow up a movie theater at a premiere of a Nazi propaganda film. The other plot is hatched by a projectionist (Mélanie Laurent) whose family was killed by the Nazis. In disguise as a French Christian, the projectionist is wooed, much to her chagrin, by a Nazi soldier played slyly by Daniel Brühl. There's a huge cast, all great (except for Mike Myers in a throwaway scene), which includes the winner for Best Actor at Cannes, Christoph Waltz.

Let's not be surprised, that Tarantino had his best opening ever after gaining super cred with his Kill Bill series (And let's excuse the mediocre double feature Grindhouse/Death Proof debacle.) Sure, the film was marketed as an action flick and a Brad Pitt star piece. Both things it was not. But all this goes to show is that a great script, fantastic acting, and a ridiculously fun attitude can make any film have great word of mouth. While it is true that the greater public tends to avoid talky films, there was nothing boring about this film. Had I not been conditioned to think the film would be "talky," I would have walked out of the theater talking about how the violence was perhaps excessive (especially the gun play...the scalping was fun). The truth is that American audiences will sit through a lot of dialogue. If there's something that's getting them in the theater (in this case it's the Tarantino name and promise of violence). Once there they're, no matter what they expect, if it's good it's good. Bottom line, this is my favorite Tarantino film. The premise is inventive. The story lines come together beautifully and with great suspense. The film is a delight. The only potential problem is that the film may cause some who fell asleep in history class to forget that Hitler actually didn't die in France.

--bryce

Face It, District 9 Should Get an Oscar Nomination

2009-08-20T14:53:00.007-04:00

I'm slowly getting won over by genre films. Well, I'm learning not to say no to them automatically. Helping me get there are great films like District 9. Special effects genius Neill Blomkamp directs this masterpiece of sci-fi, which is an expansion of his short film "Alive in Joburg." Blomkamp, a special effects artist and commercial director by day, was the man slated to direct the Peter Jackson-produced Halo. According to Wired, Peter Jackson found Blomkamp after seeing several of the short films he made in his spare time (The relatively subdued and farcical "Tempbot" is my personal favorite). The film, though, is still on hold, despite rumors that Steven Spielberg was stepping in as producer.

The film follows Wikus Van De Merwe, the head of a task force for MNU (Multinational United), which must evict the alien inhabitants of a tent city (District 9) from their homes to another area, District 10. And sure, the script by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell is a nearly transparent reference to apartheid, specifically Capetown's District 6, but it's much more than a racial allegory. In an article by our friend Landon Palmer at Film School Rejects, Landon argues that District 9 is a high-brow, albeit entertaining, commentary on social realities. Sure, the film is about how we treat (human) beings that are unlike ourselves. And yes, there is an allegory running through the film. But what makes the film decidedly not high-brow is that the allegory is so well done. That is, the relationship between the plot and the apartheid allegory is at once literal -- apartheid is mentioned; various characters delineate the South African population based upon race -- and figurative -- the script uses the structure of apartheid so seemlessly that one remembers only after the dust has settled that this is not truth, that this is something based on truth. In other words, the acting, the script, the carefully crafted rules of this alternative world are so airtight that we are living in the fictional world for almost two hours. After the credits start rolling, viewers that are so inclined will remember that we were in South Africa that whole time and will begin to make the allegory connection.

But that's the thing. Not everyone will do that. In fact, that's the greatest thing about this film. The script is so airtight, the action so engaging and narratively worthwhile that the film really is about characters. This is not a film where humans are trying to eradicate aliens and we don't learn their names and we don't really care about the humans names, only the size and power of their guns. No no no, this is a film with one of the most engaging, loveable, despicable antiheroes to ever cross the big screen. I left so much out, because I want all of it to be a surprise. District 9 deserves all the love we're willing to heap on it, and after The Dark Knight fiasco of last year, it's time to honor a great action/sci-fi genre flick with the industry's biggest honor. Let's use the new 10-film rule for good! And I'm not the only one who thinks so. (OK, I don't actually think Dark Night deserved a nomination.)

--bryce

TV Top 9: Men in Suits

2009-08-11T14:03:00.016-04:00

With only 5 days to go until the Mad Men season 3 opener (August 16 on AMC), we here at the blahg wanted to take a break from madmenning ourselves to rank the hottest men in suits ever to grace the small screen.

9. Jimmy Fallon (SNL and Late Night)

Though he may not be able to keep a straight face throughout a SNL sketch and he may not have had the smoothest start on his Late Night Show. There's no denying that, whether he's next to Tina Fey at the Weekend Update newsdesk or calling over to ?uestlove to play some funky music Jimmy Fallon is simply stunning in a suit. Okay, maybe not stunning, but at least cute in a junior high picture day kind of way. He tries so hard. And those cheeks just deserve to be pinched. And...btw, the current show is getting better.

8. Agent Fox Mulder (X Files)

The epitome of Geek Sheik, Agent Mulder, as played by the delicious David Duchovny, serves as "the believer" to the more pragmatic and realist Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) on The X-Files. Dedicated partner, capable detective, and victim of scientific research, Mulder not only faces the most twisted circumstances imaginable but does so with almost unbearable sex appeal and humor. Nerdy (in the best possible way!) men and women have their ultimate sex symbol pariah in Detective Mulder. Fox, indeed.

7. Chance (Noah's Arc)

Though he is the most straight-laced of the Noah's Arc crowd, Doug Spearman as Chance is as cute as a button in his 9-to-5 shirts and ties. Though he might not bring on the laugh-out-loud antics like his co-stars, Spearman is a rock in the show and a stud in his dapper wardrobe. Kudos to Spearman to for being the only one to be featured on The Advocate -- and to be the first of the Noah's Arc cohort to disclose his sexuality.

6. Det. Elliot Stabler (Law & Order: SVU)

Though the best suit he's ever worn was of the birthday variety on Oz, Christopher Meloni is certainly contemporary television's man-in-a-suit-extraordinaire as Detective Elliot Stabler on Law & Order: SVU. Conflicted, dedicated, tattooed, occasionally out of control, and even more occasionally bare-chested, for ten years Stabler has helped convict "particularly heinous" New York sex crime scum alongside hottie Detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay). Despite his sometimes questionable behavior, Stabler is the kind of man you want in your corner should the worst arise.

5. Clark Kent (Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman)

Before Teri Hatcher was on Desperate Housewives and before Dean Cain was...was...hosting Ripley's Believe it or Not!..There was Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Though CGI had just begun to be tinkered with and therefore the "super"ness of Superman's superpowers is a bit dated, there wasn't a single computer needed to make Mr. Cain a stunning force in the nerd chic movement, which needs to continue on for all time, if you asked me. Lois and Clark reruns! Here! Here!

4. Mr. Big (Sex & the City)

Good times & bad times, you know they've had their share, but--let's face it--Sex & the City's Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mr. Big (Chris Noth) are made for each other. Mr. Big is a force, a larger-than-life business mogul to Carrie's mostly modest writer. But when Mr. Big rescued Ms. Bradshaw from Paris, every Sex & the City heart fluttered. Mr. Big is an independent dreamboat, perfect for Carrie's unbalanced lifestyle. It might have taken him "a really long time to get here," but here equals a place in every fan's heart. Abso-fuckin-lutely hot.

3. Dr. Who (Dr. Who)

With each Dr. Who comes a new outfit and with each outfit comes a defining accessory. The third doctor preferred velour and frilly shirts while who could forget the fifth doctor's ever present celery pinned to his lapel. But my favorite outfit by far was worn by my favorite Doctor (we all have one), the tenth doctor played by David Tennant. His vintage pinstriped suit gives him an air of authority while still letting him maintain some kind of sense of style (described by Tennant as "geek chic"). But what really tops it off is his requisite pair of Chucks always on his feet whether he's battling Daleks or dancing with the Queen of England. And don't forget the long brown overcoat given to him by Janis Joplin. The combination of all these pieces plus his adorable face and bed-head hair definitely makes him the doctor of my dreams.

2. Remington Steele (Remington Steele)

Alright, who are we kidding? Pierce Brosnan would look hot if he was wearing a potato sack. This man doesn't need a suit to make him look good, but then again it couldn't hurt. And to be sure, it definitely helped get his career off the ground after being cast as the title character in Remington Steele. The film noir-inspired episodes of the show blended perfectly with Brosnan's old Hollywood good looks and flawless outfits. While Remington Steele could be seen as practice for the real suit that Brosnan would wear as 007 years later, if you're looking for a hot man in a suit look no farther than the repeats of Remington Steele.

1. Don Draper (Mad Men)

Sure he's got a gorgeous face and an even better looking head of hair but whenever Don Draper comes on the screen the first thing I notice is his impeccable outfit. Mad Men takes place in a time when men always wore suits and women always wore gloves, a time that no longer exists but part of me wishes that it did. Only a man wearing such a perfectly tailored suit (and alright, an even more perfect smile) could possible talk his way out of the situations Draper is always finding himself in. Take the scene in the first season where he just walks past a group of cops in a downtown drug den while he's stoned, because a man in a good suit can get away with anything.

-- bryce, arielle, & dana c. gravesen

Music Top Dahgs: Lollapalooza Edition

2009-08-11T01:19:00.007-04:00

In the middle of this great land of ours, on its northern edge lies one of the greatest music festivals in this here nation. Sure it's not quite the experience that Coachella and Bonnaroo offer with their camping options in middle-of-nowhere locations, but Chicago's Lollapalooza is a festival that cares about pleasing its guests. I was treated to free sunscreen and water on a scorching day, reasonably priced food, no service fees on the $80/day tickets, and plenty of great music. And as far as that goes...here are Lollapalooza's Top Dahgs.

Acts with a Bedazzler

Depeche Mode's Martin Gore may be the most notable entry in this category, with his black sequined jacket. Far from just a fashion trend, the bedazzled is a testament to a certain kind of stage presence which Lollapalooza had in abundance. Though I could have done without the New Wave band's overdone projections, they haven't missed a beat since they left the radio airwaves. Though the Killers left their bedazzler at home, their light-up set was bedazzle-inspired, and they did not disappoint, especially with an acousting version of their "Smile Like You Mean It." Pakistani-born Bat for Lashes sang her beautifully haunting chants in a rainbow sequined number that complemented the scorching sun but not necessarily her downer jams -- though they were a nice anecdote to the rumpshaking I had been doing all weekend. Finally, of Montreal was all decked out in bedazzled frocks and more, like plaster of Paris masks and other demented Halloween outfits, making for a truly entertaining show and a great performance of "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games."

Acts with a Synth

Harkening back to the days where Depeche Mode was oh-so-cool were plenty of bands that did oh-so-much justice to the synth. Syracuse's own Ra Ra Riot delighted the crowd with the songs from The Rhumb Line, so much so that lead singer Wes Miles actually seemed surprised to see so much dancing from people who may or may not have known they'd be stopping by their stage when they came to Grant Park that morning. Passion Pit stunned with songs from their debut LP. On a side stage overflowing with admirers, the guys rocked out so hard they broke their drum kit kick pedal. And my big discovery was Chicago band Hey Champ, who blew me away with their ridiculously fun synth-pop dance-inciters.

Acts with a Twang

Finally, I must give it up to those bands that were sporting cowboy hats, and if not sound like they should have been. Neko Case, with that deliciously spooky voice of hers was absolutely pitch-perfect singing songs mostly from the awesome Middle Cyclone, admitting "The Pharoahs," my favorite song on the album, was written about her first boyfriend. Band of Horses, who had an oddly amazing slot playing right before Jane's Addiction had the displeasure of going on late due to Lou Reed "do do do doing" to a politically correct version of "Walk on the Wild Side" way over his time limit. Thus, Band of Horses' over-time set included Jane's Addiction's hired helicopter search light as an added bonus. But don't worry, the guys in Band of Horses got their chance to shine as they belted out songs to adoring fans chantin' 'em right back. Maybe Fleet Foxes don't have a twang, but there's something very earthy about their album (and their beards), from which they harmonized like crazy, to much delight.

--bryce

R.I.P. John Hughes

2009-08-06T16:45:00.005-04:00

TMZ is reporting that filmmaker John Hughes has passed away. He was 59 years old.

Even though I saw most of Hughes' films later on in life when I was outside the teen demographic, I can't help but identify with most of them. Who knew that a straight, middle aged man would know exactly what most teenage girls were growing through - awkward phases, unhealthy crushes on boys that would never notice us, changing bodies, disloyal friends...the list goes on and on. And I still get excited each time I rewatch any of the movies because when it comes down to it I think everyone can relate to at least one of his characters, if not more.

Andie Walsh made me feel better about wearing clothes that didn't look like my classmates'. Ferris Beuler made my classroom daydreams way more colorful. Anytime Anthony Michael Hall came on screen I was reminded that even if I was kinda nerdy, at least I wasn't that bad. We all dreamed that one day our parents would leave us home alone like Kevin McCallister. And I know at least one of you plotted out places to plant traps in order to catch the robbers that would eventually try to break into your house.

And let's not forget that Hughes created the first hipster! Duckie is without a doubt one of my favorite characters of all time. And if I actually went to a coed high school I know that he would have been my best friend too.

John Hughes will surely be missed by all, but at least we have his amazing films to remember him by. And as a farewell tribute, check out this amazing brat pack mash-up to Phoenix "Lisztomania."

-Arielle

Music Top Dahgs: Mars Volta, Dolly Parton, & Dirty Projectors

2009-08-04T13:24:00.007-04:00

Arielle's Pick: The Mars Volta's Octahedron

Anyone that knows anything about my music tastes is fully aware of my Mars Volta obsession. This band made me understand why hippies would follow around the Grateful Dead. The Mars Volta is the one band that has ever made me want to quit my job, sell all my belongings and follow a band around the country in a smelly van. And my love has only grown since the release of their latest album, Octahedron. The band's past few albums had been getting less and less accessible (not that they made me love them any less) but Octahedron is a throwback to the album that started this love affair, the band's first album De-Loused in the Comatorium. The songs are a lot more straightforward, but still carry the same musical punch (or really it's more like slap) as the rest. Dubbed as their "acoustic album" by guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López, it really does get as close to acoustic as a band that uses this many electrical anomalies could hope to get. As front man Cedric Bixler-Zavala puts it, this is "what our band does -- celebrate mutations. It's our version of what we consider an acoustic album." Mutations is a perfect word for this band. If you've ever seen them live (and I suggest everyone see them at least once. I've seen them four times.) you can barely recognize any of the songs from the albums because in reality each show is a giant jam session with one song perfectly leading (or mutating, aha get it!?) into the next. Some West Coast dates have been announced and I'm excited to see them when/if they make it to the East Coast, just so I can see how these new songs mesh with the rest of their catalogue.

Bryce's Pick: Dolly Parton's music for 9 to 5

This past week brought very sad news to Broadway, 9 to 5 has a closing date. On September 6, the Marquis Theater will take it's bubbly posters off the walls and the Great White Way will be stripped of one of its only good fun musicals. Though the most exciting element of the performance is the acting by its 3 leading ladies (Megan Hilty with her Dolly Parton impression, the tragic Stephanie J. Block, and the absolutely commanding Alison Janney in the Lily Tomlin role), Dolly Parton has joined the ranks of Elton John & Tim Rice and Duncan Sheik in moving from a successful recording career to flawlessly executed music & lyrics for Broadway. While the music doesn't allow itself to seep into your regular iPod playlist like Mr. Sheik's songs for Spring Awakening, Parton should have been more rewarded for making perfect songs for ALL of her characters. Though "Backwoods Barbie," a song Dolly released as a single from her album of the same title simultaneously with the musical's New York premiere, may be one of the best songs in the play, her other songs are not tainted by a country twang. That after all, would be too easy, and what is great about Dolly's work here is that it is absolutely true to the story, based on the classic movie that made her a movie star and gave her a #1 single. See it before it goes away. So much fun!

Landon's Pick: Dirty Projectors' Bitte Orca

Friends have told me repeatedly to listen to Dirty Projectors, and after continually sampling their sounds on myspace, I just couldn’t get into it. Band mastermind Dave Longstreth (all other band members change with each album) fancies himself more a composer than a pop/alt/indie/whatever-you-want-to-call-it musician; so while his past attempts may have been interesting in terms of progressive sound experimentation, they were neither fully avant garde nor entirely willing to divulge into pleasant musical harmonies, thus relegating himself to an awkward, indecisive middle ground. Bitte Orca seems to have changed all that, as if Longstreth finally realized that a thoughtful, informed, even groundbreaking musical approach does not need to be mutually exclusive to creating an engaging, accessible sound. The resulting perfect marriage between progressive sound and pop access makes for one of the most cohesive and fascinating albums released this year. Bitte Orca is both a strong work of art and a great listen, never too challenging while simultaneously undiluted and uncompromised. Notable tracks that evidence the album’s range include the hook-heavy single “Stillness is the Move” and the erratic-but-pleasant “Useful Chamber.” It’s only nine tracks and 41-minutes long, but every moment of Bitte Orca is complex and irresistible.

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

I Just Read the Best Book Ever

2009-07-27T20:16:00.004-04:00

One night, I was getting textbooks and was feeling I could trust Amazon's influence, as it recommended Man Booker Prize finalist A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz. I bought the book along with a few others, and forgot about Toltz's book until now. Despite the fact that it came out in February 2008 in the US, I still feel the need to spread the word on this book's absolute brilliance. The first half of the book's first pararaph reads:

You never hear about a sportsman losing his sense of smell in a tragic accident, and for good reason; in order for the universe to teach excruciating lessons that we are unable to apply in later life, the sportsman must lose his legs, the philosopher his mind, the painter his eyes, the musician his ears, the chef his tongue. My lesson? I have lost my freedom, and found myself in this strange prison, where the trickiest adjustment, other than getting used to not having anything in my pockets and being treated like a dog that pissed in a sacred temple, is the boredom. [Read more on the official website.]

What follows is a book that has fantastic philosophical interludes like this opening one peppered into an absolutely riveting tale of one young man (Jasper Dean), his father (Martin Dean), and his uncle (Terry Dean). The book, in essence, is told through the son, though much of it is his father's story of growing up with Austrailia's most beloved murderer. The book chronicles Martin's self-destruction most closely, as he struggles against his own haunting nihilistic philosophies to prove something, anything, in the face of his brother and all of the effects and affects of his young life.

I REALLY don't want to give any spoilers here. I was disappointed that I even read the back of the book and found out the novel's settings. The journey from one story and character to the next is one of the most enjoyable, richest I have ever experienced within the written word. The reviews and the blurbs for the book focus on the novel's humor. And while I think the book is funny and made me smile about, the most remarkable thing about this book is just how smart it is. How much it grips you and forces you to blaze through its 500+ pages. There was no point of this book I ever wanted to put it down. The philosophical diversions always fit smoothly and were never clunky, as you might expect them to be when they come up as often as they do.

I'm certain that some day soon, the entertainment trades will have a small blurb that announces that some film production company has taken the rights to the film. This is a scary prospect for anybody that has had the pleasure of reading this masterpiece. If there was anyway to ensure that the Coen Brothers, though I'm not the biggest fan, could pick this book up, I think they could quite possibly be the only filmmakers smart enough to cull through the book to find its cinematic heart. Such a sprawling book can not easily be made into a film, and perhaps its author would never let that happen. But the amount of creative thinking and excitement it spurs in its readers makes me anticipate this pipe dream. As I wait with baited breath for this small headline, please read A Fraction of the Whole.

--bryce

TV Top 9: Nicktoons

2009-07-19T22:05:00.006-04:00

This week, we celebrated the 10th birthday of Spongebob Squarepants, which has led us to reminisce on the greatest Nicktoons of all of time.

9. The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius was Nickelodeon's first fully computer-generated animated program and exemplified a lovely attribute of former Nicktoons productions: a focus on characters who are smart, outside the norm, and love to create. Jimmy Neutron featured the title character, an eleven-year-old inventor and resident of Retroville, his family, and his friends (including Goddard, Carl Wheezer, and Jimmy's rival and almost-girlfriend Cindy Vortex) as they cope with life, grade school, and annoyed Retroville residents (who are somehow always negatively-affected by Jimmy's less successful inventions). Fantastic animation, great pacing, and fun, frisky dialogue combined to turn this cartoon into a marketing juggernaut: Jimmy and friends were featured in commercials for cars, public service announcements, oodles of merchandise and, most notably, the Academy Award-nominated and incredibly fun feature film Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

8. Hey Arnold!

"Move it football head!" yells perpetually playing hard-to-get Helga at the end of the opening sequence to Hey Arnold! Arnold, whose last name seems to be Shortman, may go down in animated record books as being the only main character to be voiced by five different voice actors. The whiny pre-teen, who lives with his wise but discombobulated grandparents in a city, Hillwood, that resembles New York but also stole some attributes from Portland and Seattle, is apparently an easy voice to replicate. The series originally started as a comic strip by Craig Bartlett, published by Matt Groenig. It was adapted first as a series of claymation shorts, and spent five seasons on Nickelodeon, as a child's introduction to the streets.

7. Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

Before there was Monsters, Inc., there was another monster training ground. Aaahh!!! Real Monsters had a run on Nickelodeon from 1994-1999. Featuring the voice of Rugrats' Chuckie as Oblina and some really great guest voices, Jim Belushi, Bronson Pinchot, and Tim Curry, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters is the best glimpse at sewer life since Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The creators at Klasky Csupo were imaginative in their conception of the elflike growable Ickis, the candy-cane striped ever-hidable Oblina and Krumm, who held his eyes above his head. As Ickis, Oblina, and Krumm made their way through their monster school, we were enthralled with their scaring adventures.

6. The Ren & Stimpy Show

Considered one of the dirtiest cartoons to ever be marketed to children, The Ren & Stimpy Show broke more barriers than most live action shows on at the same time. Based around the adventures of a fat, "brain-damaged" cat and possibly Mexican, ill-tempered dog most of the shows were a half hour of violence, farts, phlegm and sexual innuendos. But the most memorable moments from the show were probably the fake commercials stuck in between the show's segments. Because who wouldn't want a log? It's big, it's heavy, it's wood!

5. Fairly Odd Parents

Nobody likes little Timmy Turner. His parents are never home. And his teenage babysitter is a bitch. All is going down the tubes until one day Timmy's fairy godparents show up and really just spin his world upside down. You see, the fairly odd-parents will grant Timmy any wish he wants, but sometimes Timmy gets a bit too overzealous and the wish needs to be taken back. Craziness ensues when a bulky Terminator-like fairy seeks to ruin Timmy and Timmy's teacher is keen on discovering his fairies. Now in its 6th season, Fairly Odd Parents has culled some amazing voice talent like Tom Arnold, Ben Stein, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Irwin. The fantastical world of Timmy's imaginat--err..godparent's is a treat for the young and old alike.

4. Spongebob Squarepants

Spongebob made me believe in cartoons again. In a sea of identical anime shows crowding the air waves, Spongebob was a breath of fresh air. From its quirky yet catchy theme song to it's use of live action puppets when the characters left the water - Spongebob was unlike any other show on TV when it first premiered and it seems to only have improved with age. And having evangelical groups protest the show for possibly promoting homosexual behavior only made the characters that much more lovable.

3. Rocko's Modern Life

Rocko's Modern Life taught us many things - what a wallaby was, that a cow could be raised by wolves and accepted as one of their own, that the inside of a turtle's shell is actually the size of a house and that any cartoon that spoofs The Shining will automatically become a classic. It's smarter than usual story lines (see reference to The Shining), off kilter animation style (nothing was ever drawn quite right on the show) and the fact that Rocko worked in a comic book store made me love this cartoon even if I didn't always understand what was going on. Like most cartoons from the '90's Rocko's Modern Life deserves a second watch through if only to catch all the dirty jokes you didn't get the first time.

2. Rugrats

Disney Channel programs weren't always the “be all/end all” of tweendom: in 1991 Nickelodeon debuted the Klasky/Csupo/Germain animated series Rugrats (along with Ren & Stimpy and Doug) to great acclaim—and created a miniature phenomenon in the process. Rugrats featured the misadventures of babies Tommy, Chuckie, Angelica, Lil, Phil, Dil, Kimi, and Susie as well as their families. Still the longest-running program in Nicktoons history (14 years),Rugrats lasted 172 episodes; only “Nicktoon” Spongebob Squarepants, currently on episode 173 in its tenth year, has surpassed it. Rugrats also spun-off two massive hit films (and a third box office dud crossover film with The Wild Thornberrys) and a number of highly-rated television specials and direct-to-video features, spawned any number of branded products, and was rewarded with its own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The show's style and humor has never been matched by another Nickelodeon program; truly original, colorfully animated with what look like magic markers, and as popular with adults and parents as it was with children, Rugrats discreetly brought life's misgivings, religion, race, and social issues to the kiddy sphere.

1. Doug

Even with some of the best animated characters ever (and character names: Doug Funnie, Porkchop, Skeeter Valentine and Patti Mayonnaise included), the real stars of Nickelodeon's Doug were Doug Funnie's imagination and heart. Created by Jim Jinkins, the show (particularly while aired on Nickelodeon and not Disney) was about how Doug couldn't be classified; Doug was Doug and that was just fine. He was a bit nebbish, clumsy, and somewhat unpopular, but Doug knew who and what he liked, and he used his diary and imagination to make his dreams as real as possible. Never a runaway hit or a merchandising darling along the lines of SpongeBob Squarepants or Rugrats, Disney's Doug did make it to the big screen arena in 1999 with Doug's First Movie and Doug was featured in a video game and quite a few books. Still a cult favorite in syndication, call it “Daria Light” if you like and call us if they start airing new episodes.

-- bryce, arielle, and dana c. gravesen

Activist Cinema: By God, See "The Cove" and "Food, Inc."

2009-07-18T17:13:00.007-04:00

Two of the summer's most horrifying films have the distinction of being documentaries about human threats on two of the most non-threatening things on this here world of ours -- dolphins and food. Bottom line, see them!

Louie Psihoyos's The Cove, which has the distinction of winning the audience award for best documentary at this year's Sundance and is winning the world over, takes on a small town in Japan, Taiji, that is the center of the world's domesticated dolphin supply. The thing is, you see, that these dolphins are not just bred in the town. They are pushed into the titular cove and those dolphins whom the workers do not deem perfect or fit enough to perform at Sea World or any number of places across the world are killed. These dolphins are then often served as food (sometimes as school lunches), despite the fact that dolphins have unsafe levels of mercury within their fat. The documentary was created by the organization that was established to expose "the cove" and its star member is Ric O'Barry, the dolphin trainer for the classic television show Flipper who has become an animal rights activist, denouncing his former work. Though the documentary is in many ways fascinating and the work of the activists is harrowing in exposing to the world, to Japan, and various other ignorant communities, the practice within the cove, the frenzy it has been causing at festivals worldwide has more to do with its cute victims than its narrative mastery. Still, it's a fascinating and urgent look at what brings the always-smiling Flippers to the Sea World near you. The Cove will open in limited release at the end of this month.

Food, Inc., on the other hand, is just as impressive within the doc world. The doc just became the highest grossing limited release doc of 2009, surpassing Valentino, but behind the behemoth of Disney's Earth. The doc is based primarily on the wildly popular duo of food industry exposés, Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, and as a companion piece to the two books, it actually pulls its own wait. Director Robert Kenner has produced a film that actually has visually delicious moments but provides an outright, multi-pronged attack on the food industry.

There is the inspirational story of a food activist fighting for the passing of a law that closes down consistently contaminated food plants, who was pushed into action after she lost her two-and-a-half year old son to bacterial poisoning of a Jack-in-the-Box hamburger. But there is also the heavy handed profile of a family, which goes to painful lengths to decide whether foods are worth the health factor or if they must settle for a meal off the dollar menu. In this segment, the family's inner discussions come off as forced and designed for the documentary's specific argument. This segment could have done better with an investigation on just how one can make local-grown or organic food more affordable, even if on a governmental level. And just when you think that it's time to be vegetarian, you're reminded that 90% of the nation's soy beans carry a patented modified gene, which causes eternal economic strife for the farmers of the crop. There are countless other profiles in food, but perhaps the most enlightening is a business deal shown on camera between organic milk company Stonyfield Farms and Wal-Mart. I won't ruin the many gems that come from both sides of the many interviews shown of both sides, but suffice it to say that this story has perhaps the most insights on how the system can be corrected.

There's also a Purdue farmer who loses her contract for being too humane, a livestock farmer insistent on doing it the old way, various immigrant food workers who slowly get deported in a government and industry sponsored scheme, and loads of facts that create a movie theater full of informed consumers. Perhaps more could have been made of the government's implications in all this racket, but it provides a more complete look to an issue brought up on film most notably with Morgan Spurlock's sensational but fun Supersize Me. There is certainly a greater diversity of information dispensed, and more points on which to make changes. I should also add that I saw the film in a special-screening-PR-move sponsored by Chipotle, a fast food company formerly owned by McDonald's, that is committed to buying meat from carefully chosen farms. While imperfect, the company certainly beats its former owner's practices, which provided much of the basis for the film, as Schlosser's book is quick to point out. Start getting informed at the film's website.

--bryce

9 Things Wrong with the Emmy Nominations

2009-07-16T16:16:00.003-04:00

The 2009 Emmy nominations are in, and we at the Blahg are here to tell you what went wrong. Here goes...

1. 30 Rock dominates the comedy writing category. The perennial winner for this award and the best comedy award is nominated in four of the five slots. The true winner, though is clear, the only script to fully deserve the honor: Matt Hubbard's genius script for "Reunion," where Tina Fey is "Carrie"d. No Fey-penned episodes made the shortlist, a good news for the rest of the writers, who will probably get some recognition with a win.

2. No class. Farting out of your vagina is finally noteworthy! I don't think I like the sounds of a Sarah Silverman nomination in best lead actress. But you may convince me otherwise...

3. People who don't work for 30 Rock apparently don't matter. Unfortunately, Emmy

voters decided to vote for mediocre actors, Jack McBrayer and Tracy Morgan, just because they're on the hit show. I'm a loyal watcher of the show, but it's certainly not all-hits-no-misses.

4. No love for Tara. While I know the schtick is not for everyone, I love The United States of Tara! At least the ever-deserving Toni Colette got a nomination.

5. Mad Men dominates the drama writing category. By god, all of the good comedy writers work for 30 Rock and the dramatic writers work for Mad Men. Well, according to the Emmy voters at least. 4 out of the 5 slots in the dramatic writing category are for the ad agency period piece.

6. Steve Martin for guest actor. Never before has someone so comically smart made me laugh so little as Steve Martin as the crazy businessman Gavin Volure. Meh.

7. Jeremy Piven. Wait...he's not nominated. It's about time he's not gonna win. So I guess the next logical "wrong" would be...

8. Past wrongs. May they be righted! his is the year where the Emmys apologized for its former snubs like Flight of the Conchords, How I Met Your Mother, Big Love, etc. And Phil Keoghan is now up for a hosting award (though he's already won when Amazing Race won for best reality competition).

9. There wasn't much wrong with this year's nominations. The Emmy organization, which is famous for snubbing viable shows, actually did smart things, like taking ratings favorite Two and a Half Men out of the best comedy category. It feels like all of the old members have been voted off the island. All in all, a good year. Kudos!

--bryce

Music Top Dahgs: Patrick Wolf, Among the Oak & Ash, Firekites

2009-07-15T19:46:00.007-04:00

Arielle's Pick: Patrick Wolf's The Bachelor

When I heard that British pop wiz Patrick Wolf was putting out a new album I didn't pay too much attention at first. I had heard a few singles here and there off his previous albums and while I liked what I heard I never bothered to look much deeper into his catalog. That changed when I was sent the video for the second single off Wolf's third album The Bachelor. Wolf's voice is almost Rick Astley-esque and I mean this in the best way possible. When you first see the pixy haired singer there is no way to expect the heavy, luscious voice that comes out of his mouth; a voice that only adds to the depth of his music. Combined with a strong backing string section and a long list of guest vocalists (including actress Tilda Swinton who appears on a number of the tracks as a "voice of hope" guiding Wolf through the album) makes for an incredibly diverse album with an odd combination of dark and sunny moments ("The Bachelor," "Who Will"). A companion album, The Conqueror, is set to be released in 2010 and I can only imagine what Wolf will manage to come up with in the coming year.

Check out the video for "Hard Times" here (Go day glo!)

Bryce's Pick: Among the Oak & Ash

Among the Oak & Ash is Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' Raising Sand minus twenty-five years. The two members, though, are not the leaders of their respective musical genres. Instead, they are two indie-folk singers with significant cred. Garrison Starr and Josh Joplin are the ones responsible for further carrying bluegrass across America and into the twenty-first century. Recorded in Starr's Nashville studio, the album is not quite as polished as Raising Sand (duh!) but it is an honest, spiri ted, and at times fun update of the genre. As Joplin says in one of his solo albums, "I sound like Michael Stipe," and upon playing one of the album's song that is most familiar to the singers' conventional styles, "Bigmouth Strikes Again" my roommate asked me "Is this R.E.M. covering The Smiths? No, certainly, but the entirety stands as an incredibly enjoyable rustic-contemporary summer album.

Landon's Pick: Firekites' "Autumn Story"

Acousmatic indie bands are a dime a dozen these days, but when a certain sound comes out of the haystack with a song that resonates, a handful of simple but profound melodies show the potential to rise above the rest and wedge their place into the zeitgeist. Such is the case for the single "Autumn Story" by Australian band Firekites. Ever since a friend of mine posted the chalk animation music video (that effectively complements the striking beauty of the tune) on their facebook page this spring, I haven't been able to resist revisiting this song again and again. Unfortunately, their album isn't yet available stateside, but the video has received about 10x more hits on YouTube since I first encountered it a few months ago (now reaching over 100K), so hopefully this Internet-based buzz will enable the type of word of mouth necessary to get them to sign up with some minor American label, which will 1) keep me from giving into the temptation of shelling out the cash to import a copy of their LP and 2) hopefully bring the band itself stateside and give Jose Gonzales a run for his money. As for the song itself, "Autumn Story" has never lost its loveliness or power with each of my obsessive revisitations. In its sad but never self-loathing depiction of heartbreak, the song tacitly reminds listeners that, while broken hearts are indeed a universal occurrence, it sure as hell never ever feels that way.

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

Michael Mann's Public Enemy is Digital Video

2009-07-08T01:23:00.003-04:00

When I first saw the trailer for Public Enemies, I was excited to see it. And that surprised me. I'm not crazy about Michael Mann and I don't go gaga over Johnny Depp. A slick trailer and, dare I say, a sexy suave Johnny Depp convinced me that this would be a movie for me. And what's sexier than a 1930s U.S. period piece? And by God, we've got a glowing recommendation from the perpetually plagued producer Harvey Weinstein.

The story tells the last days of John Dillinger, starting from one prison break and hopping from Robin Hood bank robbery to bank robbery. Meanwhile, he falls in love with a girl and cavorts with other thugs. And that's all So what's good? Well, the costumes are suave. The music is slick bluegrass. Marion Cotillard as Dillinger's French-Native American girlfriend is endearing and is powerful in one of the most painful moments of the film, an abusive interrogation. And hey, Christian Bale isn't annoying, and he has a normal voice.

In his review of the film, our good friend Landon Palmer at Film School Rejects, notes Mann's use of digital video:

Mann’s digital approach thankfully hits here more than it misses, as Dante Spinotti’s cinematography captures certain moments of incredible beauty and vibrancy of color that simply feels like a fresh departure from film; and once you allow yourself to sink in to the unique visual style of Public Enemies (which may take awhile), the digital aesthetic complements and stratifies rather than detracts from the film, despite the odd decision of choosing digital for a period piece. But it doesn’t work all the time. The incredible sequence at Dillinger’s wooded hideout exhibits the best and worst of the technology: it has given Mann and co. the ability to shoot with unparalleled detail, especially at night (thus replacing the annoying “day-for-night” blue hue usually used in film), but it seems like no filmmaker, including Mann, has quite mastered the art of rapidly moving the camera without it looking at least a little amateurish.

And with Landon, I respectfully disagree. He's right to say that Mann looks amateurish in his rapidly moving camera shakiness, but here the cons of digital filmmaking outweigh the pros of making such a film in the newer medium. From shot to shot in these tense scenes, the shaky cams go from in focus to out, from sharp to under-saturated. BUT as far as the cabin hideout scene, I was delighted to see a conventional scene in a new way, the muted colors are intriguing and the angles permitted by lighter cameras feel fresh in an all too conventional shoot out scene. For those that like tommy guns and dapper 30's dress and cars, this film is for you. For those that like story over style, go see something else. And as for Harvey's contention that this is the film to beat at the Oscar's this year, that's more a testament to a weak slate of movies this year than a case of a stellar film.

--bryce

Gossip Meets Rick Rubin, Bring Back Old School Rock

2009-07-02T16:05:00.011-04:00

Who knew that a simple loss of an article could do wonders for a band?

After getting some mild mainstream success off their last album, Standing In The Way Of Control, indie darlings Gossip (Who needs a "the" these days? We are in a recession anyways.) all but disappeared back into the indie buzz from which they came. There were rumors of a new album in the works. Legendary producer Rick Rubin had suddenly taken interest. They were written up in all the major music mags. I even caught them on a random tour a couple years back. But for the most part all the news of any new material seemed to hypothetical. Enter Music For Men, the band's fourth studio album produced by Rubin and released digitally in the states last week. It may have taken three years for the album to get here, but after the first listen I think it's easy to say that it was worth the wait.

When I first heard that the new album was being produced by Rubin I was skeptical. For a while he was the King Midas of rock, any album he touched automatically turned to gold. Not to say that still isn't true, all of his projects are extremely commercially successful but that's all they seem to be made for - commercial success. Sure, Metallica's Death Magnetic was better than St. Anger but wouldn't have anything been better? And I'll admit it, I used to sorta like Linkin Park, but even I have to draw the line at listening to their emo inspired album. His work with System of a Down were some of my least favorite albums to come from the band. It's as if his magic touched has been reduced to merely a gold sheen. (I want to make it clear that I'm in no way belittling Rubin's accomplishments. If I had even an ounce of his success and skills I could die happy.) And needless to say, all of my fears were for naught.

Music For Men is a reminder of what a great rock album should be - a collection of songs that are at the same time extremely catchy and upbeat but also mind-blowingly original. This album is a huge step for the band and shows exactly what kind of difference a major label can make for an indie band with buckets of potential.

The moment I hear Beth Ditto singing on the opening track ("Dimestore Diamond") I remember why I had been so anxious for this album to come out in the first place. Voices

like this just don't come around that often. The passion,

range, and perpetual growl (see: "8th Wonder") draws obvious comparisons to Janis Joplin. And just like Joplin I think that Ditto's strength is in her live performances because that's when he voice really gets to shine. So when the band comes around again, which I imagine will be in the Fall sometime, make sure to get your ticket ahead of time because it's definitely not a show to miss.

Check out the insane video for their first single, "Heavy Cross"

-Arielle

Music Top Dahgs: Miike Snow, Stephin Merritt, St. Vincent

2009-06-30T11:22:00.003-04:00

Arielle's Pick: Miike Snow

The Swedes have done it again! Well two Swedes and one American to be exact. Formed two years ago in Stockholm, Miike Snow (named for the Japanese horror Director Takashi Miike) finally released their self titled album last month. I've found it hard to describe their sound exactly if only because it's so complicated in its simplicity. From the first track "Animal" (my official feel good song of the moment) that's a cross between electro-pop and a barber shop quartet to "Black & Blue," a song that sounds like a straightforward ballad that is the love child of a Prince single and a Casio. But then again, two-thirds of the group are the masterminds behind Britney Spears' hit "Toxic" (a song that everyone I know loves, even if they won't admit it) so you can't help but end up with a laundry list of infectious tunes that are hinting at more than merely what's at the surface. I'm even completely obsessed with their remixes, like th is one that they did for Vampire Weekend's "The Kids Don't Stand a Chance." Their recent show at Mercury Lounge sold out quickly proving that their indie hype is definitely more than just that. They come back this September and you can be sure I'll be first in line for tickets.

Bryce's Pick: Stephin Merritt's music for the stage production of Coraline

In an all-too weird stage musical adaptation of Neal Gaiman's novel Coraline, Stephin Merritt's (Magnetic Fields) compositions and lyrics are what gives the production its only useful idiosyncrasy. Most useful not when it is Coraline, inexplicably played by an...old...actress, Jayne Houdyshell, but when it is sang by the chorus of creepily whispering and screeching supporting characters and the writer of the book, cross-dressing Other Mother David Greenspan. In the film's climactic moment, where Coraline confronts her Other Mother, Greenspan's voice goes from baritone to falsetto in a moment that defines the character's fantastical, inexplicable existence. More jack-in-the-box melodies than indie rock fare, the music to Coraline absolutely befits the magical otherworldliness of Gaiman's original work. More than the movie based on the same material and the musical itself, Merritt's music is the most fitting of all the pieces of auxilliary works inspired by the novel. Coraline leaves the Lucille Lortel Theater July 5.

Landon's Pick: St. Vincent's Actor

A friend of mine very aptly described the core appeal of Annie Clark’s (aka St. Vincent’s) sound, and I’m going to steal it here: her vocals always stand in stark contrast with her music. The former Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens backing vocalist has an elegant and calming voice that seems inherited with the capability to sooth a tired soul on a lazy Sunday afternoon, though this is not to say her vocal talent is without a great deal of range. Luckily, her music is coupled with the vocals in an equal, and sometimes challenging, range of sounds meant not to accompany the oh-so pleasant reverberations of her voice, but seem to contrast it with disruptive, confrontational, and sometimes tense tunes. Yet St. Vincent’s second full-length album is hardly meant to be inaccessible. The marriage between Clark’s vocals and her music is an odd one, but results in a cumulative sound that is surprisingly fitting and matured, an album that shows a remarkable preoccupation with composition from such a young artist rather than a an extended effort to identify her persona as primarily associated with her voice. Neither music nor vocals accompany one another here, and instead collaborate in an ideal complementary form, an aspect of her sound that remained in tact during her remarkable US tour-ending performance at The Mohawk in Austin, Texas on June 19. St. Vincent aptly mixes the beautiful and the odd, but neither of these concepts are treated in this album as being mutually exclusive. Favorite tracks include “Save Me From What I Want” and “Just the Same But Brand New.” Actor is a work of remarkable depth, and should be listened to again and again.

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

1 Year of Blahgging!

2009-06-25T00:32:00.007-04:00

When I was a wee sophomore at Syracuse University, I had to take a Pass/Fail course that made us youngsters experience the "true culture" of Syracuse. Included in this "culture" was a trip to the Syracuse Symphony. I don't remember what piece was being performed but I do remember wishing I didn't have to be there in the face of all that small city snobbery. The professor for the class made us write a review of the performance. Though I completed a review of ample length with substantive criticism of the absurdity of the aristocratic posturing of people living in -- erm -- the middle of New York State, my paper did little to bolster the high culture standard the class was so meant to preserve. I received a D- on the paper. I was asked after class to write a replacement paper about another event. I didn't complain to Professor William West, but I was pissed. Bitching doesn't count?

Thank you Professor West! I get paid to feel blah now (Thanks Google Adsense!)!

And now for a list of our most popular posts:

1. Twilight Review
2. United States of Tara Review
3. TV Top 9: Sluts
4. TV Top 9: Series Finales
5. TV Top 9: Talk Show Hosts
6. Female Rapper Manifesto
7. Bryce's Top 10 Films of 2008
8. Arielle's Top 10 Films of 2008
9. Dare at Sundance Review
10. Yang Yang at Berlin Review

--bryce

TV Top 9: Judges

2009-06-24T23:44:00.008-04:00

It's summertime, and as I spend most of my days before 3 PM within the confines of my apartment, I've taken to courtroom TV shows. No, I'm not ashamed. Though I don't think you should refer to any of these shows for legal counsel, I'm taking to the blahg to name the top 9 TV judges of all time with a little help from Arielle and Dana! -- bryce

9. Judge Elizabeth Donnelly (Law & Order: SVU)

There have been plenty of judges on the many incarnations of Law and Order throughout the years but few have made the same impression as Judith Light's Judge Elizabeth Donnelly. Maybe there was something exciting about seeing Angela Bower reincarnated as an attractive, older judge, but the episodes where Judge Donnelly presided are the ones I tend to remember. She's lied to detectives about issuing a warrant in order to convict a child molester. She's stepped in for the D.A. and argued cases on the other side of the bench. And, most importantly, she's shown the difficulties of being a female judge. She was recently poisoned by a CSI intern gone insane, but we SVU fanatics expect her to make a full recovery in time for the next season.

8. Judge Mills Lane

Triply eligible for this list of TV judges, Mills Lane is both an iconic boxing referee and a (maybe forgettable) courtroom TV judge. After throwing Mike Tyson out of the highly publicized Tyson-Holyfield fight in 1997, Mills Bee Lane III hosted Judge Mills Lane for three seasons in syndication. Known for his stuttering stupefying utterances, Lane was fair but impatient. Though Lane also voiced the referee for Celebrity Death Match, he needed to stop after a stroke paralyzed him in 2002. All in all, the best judging Lane possibly did was what contracts to sign, as he seemed to get more of his fifteen minutes than a referee should possibly get.

7. Judge Zoey Hiller (The Practice)

One-of-a-kind Academy Award-winning actress Linda Hunt brought cache and originality to her role as Judge Zoey Hiller on David E. Kelley's preposterous (most of the time) legal drama The Practice. Whenever Judge Hiller was featured in an episode, excellent dialogue between the main characters, surprising conflicts, and the most interesting cases were sure to follow. With a panache for keeping the kooky lawyers of Robert Donnell and Associates in check with biting, sarcastic (but legally binding) comments, Judge Hiller usually ended up (often begrudgingly) siding with their arguments. Many of the show's cases were morally problematic and many of the characters' dilemmas controversial, and Judge Hiller was the perfect foil. One of the great secondary television characters in primetime drama's history.

6. Judge Mablean Ephriam (Divorce Court)

Though she never served as a judge in the "real world," Judge Mablean Ephriam was the presiding "judge" of Divorce Court where she, more often than not, sat flabbergasted at the feuding wife and husband in front of her. She demanded too much $$ for hair, make-up, and her salary, and her contract was not renewed. Lynn Toler, a former judge, took over, and ratings plummeted. (Could that be because they're now pulling stunts like "Before the Vows" week? Huh?! I recently watched an episode of a married couple who, after the episode, wasn't sure whether they were going to get divorced afterwards.) This shouldn't affect her standings on this list but she did star in many a Tyler Perry film a-judging Madea.

5. Judge Joseph Wapner (The People's Court)

The man who brought small-claims court to the small screen deserves a spot somewhere on this list right? Sure! Judge Joseph Wapner, though a Hollywood High School graduate, was certainly not as full of panache as she-who-solidified-the-trend Judge Judy but his trailblazing efforts gained him twelve years behind The People's Court bench and two seasons on a worthless little Animal Planet show called Judge Wapner's Animal Court.

4. Judge Penny Brown Reynolds (Family Court with Judge Penny)

New to the courtroom TV show game, Judge Penny Brown Reynolds is from the same Atlanta court system as Nancy Grace and Judge Hatchett. Like her two famous colleagues, her compassion is more important than her verdict. Reynolds is the most level-headed of her Atlanta cohorts. Though all three focus on children and families, Judge Penny is the first to name her show after the people she is trying to help. You could call this "practicing what she preaches," because Reynolds is a recently ordained Baptist priest. Come August, I wouldn't be surprised if Judge Reynolds takes away the second-ever Courtroom TV show Emmy.

3. Judge Marilyn Milian (The People's Court)

For the last eight years, Judge Marilyn Milian has presided over The People's Court. When insanely popular Judge Joseph Albert Wapner resigned the post he'd held for twelve years, there was little positive buzz that any replacement could retain the show's momentum (and a couple interim judges did indeed fail pretty miserably); however, Judge Milian blew away audiences right from the get-go in 2001. Though (unfortunately) often overshadowed in the press by Judge Judy Sheindlin of Judge Judy (whose husband is, coincidentally, one of the failed hosts of the revamped People's Court), Judge Milian is notorious for having the hardest edge of any judge on daytime television--and for occasionally flipping out. She never misses a beat: under her reign the program has been nominated for two Daytime Emmys. Oh, and she was on As the World Turns--bonus!

2. Judge Harry T. Stone (Night Court)

One of the most popular American sitcoms of the eighties and early nineties (remember when NBC had it in the bag for three decades?), Night Court featured a cast of incredibly talented character actors (namely John Larroquette in his career-making and unforgettable role as well as Markie Post as his foil) anchored by Harry Anderson's "straight" Judge Harry Stone. But "straight" is such a relative term, isn't it (wink, wink)? Harry was a Mel Torme fan, a prankster, a magician, and (most importantly) fairly frustrated by his job and coworkers; a fine and "time served" was his tpyical sentence for criminals dragged into all-night proceedings in downtown Manhattan. Anyway, sincere and genuinely funny, Judge Stone was an interesting and original character at a time when there were too many Sam Malones on television.

1. Judge Judy

She's loud, she's sassy, and since her premiere in 1996 she's been the top rated TV judge. With eleven Daytime Emmy nominations under her belt, it's no wonder that Judge Judy has been renewed for a seventeenth season. Her attitude made take notice (anyone that gets joy out of embarrassing people in front of 10 million people is alright with me) but her catchphrases aka "Judyisms" are what made her a household favorite. And, lest we forget, behind every loud mouthed judge there must be a straight man bailiff and it doesn't get any better than Petri Hawkins-Byrd, Judy's loyal bailiff since the show's inception. Her one liners are golden but watching her make the ever stoic Hawkins-Byrd crack up makes them all the better.

-- bryce, arielle, and dana c. gravesen

Letters to the President and the Iranian People

2009-06-17T01:09:00.004-04:00

Last week, Iran held its national elections to elect a President. The official announcement was that incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the winner. Since then, people have taken to the street to both protest the supposed results and to support Ahmadinejad. The divide is as clear as clear as red state-blue state. The President has a rural fan base that is rabid in its religious rhetoric and belief -- much like the followers of a certain US President from Texas. The issues are as frustrating as anyone only familiar with the American situation earlier this decade can imagine. After so much media attention on the protests against Ahmadinejad, I think it's important to understand why the man who supposedly won the election does have some support from some of his people.

To do its best at explaining this, I'd like to recommend a film that I had the pleasure of publicizing in its early life [Ed. note: I am no longer affiliated with the film] -- Petr Lom's Letters to the President. [See it's HBO schedule here. And the website here.] A direct decendent of Robert Drew's Primary and all of its direct cinema brothers and sisters, the film is an absolutely entrancing exploration of the rural appeal of Ahmadinejad's populism. The film is centered around the conceit of citizens writing letters to the President. In a brilliant PR move, the President has asked the citizens to send him letters with any request and a response will be sent out. Ahmadinejad sends money directly to those in need, should they write him expressing said need.

This is the missing piece of the puzzle needed to understand the Iranian political situation: How is Ahmadinejad so darn popular? Well, to some, he inspires hope and faith! Sound familiar? Maybe, but what doesn't sound familiar is something that gets no coverage in the film (to the disappointment and outrage of many liberal Iranian viewers) and too little coverage in the US news media: the horrible human rights abuses that occur within Iran in the name of the Ahmadinejad administration (most glaringly killing gays and lesbians and other social outcasts as well as a declared opinion that sounds a lot like Holocaust denial). While Obama has played it cool in order not to provoke another war, the US media would do better if they provided a more full understanding of the Iranian situation that goes beyond just reporting on the scary protests that have been erupting lately. After all, if we are going to tiptoe around this, we should be fighting PR against PR. But in order for a PR war to be successful, we all need to be informed.

--bryce

$9.99 is Probably Worth a Bit Less

2009-06-17T00:45:00.004-04:00

I elbowed my way into a public screening of $9.99 before it has its theatrical release this weekend. Though the packed crowd was responsive and moved throughout the screening, I couldn't help but notice a collective "huh?" when the credits started rolling. There was a lot to "huh" about. Many people were gabbing about the film's magical realism: how they should watch the film high or how the film is something that will make you think days after with all of its pesky symbolism. But some, like me, were "huh"ing because the various sub-stories, worthy of a Robert Altman comparison, hardly came to a conclusion. In fact, much of the film was spent giggling at the motley crew of quirky characters in zany situations: a burly guy shaves off all of his body in order to bed a model; a young, directionless teen attempts to better his life by sending away for self-help books for the low price of $9.99; a stoner talks to his miniature Indian in the Cupboard-sized friends.

But giggle-inducement does not a good film make. Not even a good stop-motion animation film. The film is surely fun. It understands how to do magical realism. But, truthfully, a good film transcends absurd situations and ironic solutions to ridiculous problems in order to assure the viewers a worthwhile viewing experience, some kind of payback for sticking with a narrative. The charaters in the film, based on the short stories of Israeli writer Etgar Keret (who wrote the screenplay) are rich. However, the script allows the characters no opportunity to interact with each other in a way that is in any way vindicating or exciting as a viewer.

What can be marveled at beyond the idiosyncracies of some of the characters is Israeli director Tatia Rosenthal's adept stop motion animation. In one scene of the film, a character puts his wallet back into his back pocket. He is walking while he is doing this, but the real evidence of mastery can be seen when the character miscalculates where his pants pocket is and then on a second try gets his wallet in. It is by no means important to the plot that the character missed his pants pocket on the first try. The movement was so subtle I'm surprised I noticed it, and it is ingenious movements like this that allow one to suspend disbelief with the figurine characters. All in all, though, the production suffers from a weak script that lets a myriad free radical-narratives dash around a Sydney apartment complex without reaching any satisfying or memorable destination.

--bryce

Music Top Dahgs: Grizzly Bear, Discovery, Matt & Kim

2009-06-16T00:22:00.005-04:00

Feeling So Blahg's Music Top Dahgs
**we love lame puns**

Arielle's Pick: Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest

What’s better than a group that fights about harmonies and sings about dories? These are only two of the things that make Grizzly Bear’s new album, Veckatimest, so refreshing. While their last album was extremely experimental, the melodies on Veckatimest make it much more accessible and give it a haunting feeling that will stay with you after the first listen. The first single “Two Weeks” sounds like it’s being performed by the ghosts of doo-wop’s past and the video only lends to the supernatural undertones. The combination of ethereal harmonies, the band’s use of natural sounds and the song topics (have I mentioned the dories) makes this album sound almost like a Pet Sounds for the new millennium. Let’s just hope none of them turn into a Brian Wilson.

Bryce's Pick: Discovery

When I heard that vocalist Wes Miles from Ra Ra Riot and Vampire Weekend's instrumentalist extraordinaire Rostam Batmanglij would be getting together for a side project, Discovery, I was confused as to what these two could do that their respective bands couldn't. After listening to half of Discovery's new LP on their website, I can attest to the fact that something is actually gained when all of Wes's backing music is synthesized. Batmanglij has developed snappy appropriations of contemporary hip hop beats that when meshed with Miles' slick often Japanesey (as in Japan-referencing) lyrics bring pure bliss. The duo also remixed Ra Ra Riot's hit "Can You Tell" as a teaser for the album, and with its overuse of the autotune, I'd like to thank the duo and their "people" for not including it on the LP track listing. UPDATE (6/25): "Can You Discover?" is back on the LP.

Landon's Pick: Matt & Kim's "Daylight"

It’s easy to associate certain songs with specific points in your life, and it seems there’s no more associable time of the year for great tunes than summer. Sometimes specific events jog your memory, and other times it’s the catchiness of the song itself, and such is the case for the single “Daylight” by Brooklyn duo Matt & Kim. “Daylight” can best be described as infectious—a song that, once listened to, refuses leave your head, but that’s okay because you don’t really want it to. The earnest positivity and general sense of reckless fun that Matt & Kim permeate throughout this song are as contagious as its simple piano progression is catchy. I regrettably first got wind of this song through a Bacardi mojito commercial—a questionable but arguably necessary process for bands like Matt & Kim to get on the radar—but I’m glad I did because it would’ve taken me awhile to get in touch with this tune otherwise (I apparently saw the duo perform, and have the pictures to prove it, at SXSW two years ago, but my drunken haze at the time prevents me from recollecting their live vibe). I myself wouldn’t associate the song with mojitos (PBR maybe), but whatever I remember about the summer of 2009 down the line, “Daylight” for me will no doubt be on its soundtrack. Bonus points for the band’s refreshingly unironic shoutouts to Williamsburg, which make “Daylight” perfect for a stroll down Grand St.

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

Outrage is not as Outrageous as I Wanted it to Be

2009-06-10T00:26:00.008-04:00

Kirby Dick was all the talk of the TriBeCa Film Festival with his film Outrage. Since then, it's been having meager ticket sales in limited release in major markets across the country. The film has been a scandal in political news media. It seemed to gain most attention because it ended up being marketed or thrown about the rumor mill as "Go see this film to see who's gay in national politics!" Well, just look at the blog at the center of the film, Blog Active. A simple visit to this website will give you the information that former Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), former Rep. Ed Schrock (R-VA), Rep. David Dreier (R-CA), former Rep. James McCrery (R-LA), former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), various senior GOP Senate, House, and Presidential staff members are G-A-Y-Gay! The documentary is more than that, though, it is an indictment of the hypocritical members of politics who use gay issues to gain votes but are closeted, spiteful gays on the side. But it's more than that, too; it's an indictment of all politicians who use hatred of gays (no matter how sincere they are being in their homophobia).

But let's not forget the central point of the movie -- exposing hypocrisy. In their media tour for the film, Blog Active founder Michael Rogers and director Kirby Dick insisted that their film was meant to expose hypocrisy. To show that there are filmmakers that are not interested in outing people. On The View, Rogers aligned himself with Elizabeth Hassleback, saying that he too did not agree in outing, but his ethics compelled him to do so for the good of politics and truth. Dick agrees with him at this point. I'm a bit confused, then, why the film outs Fox News newscaster Shepard Smith. As Fox News's "straight" news guy, he is not quite responsible for the network's infamous right wing spin. The clip of Smith on Fox News brings up another revulsive element of the film -- Internet-quality clips pervade the film...all from TV broadcasts. If you can't get it at broadcast quality...wait, why can't you get it at broadcast quality?? You're an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker. I will back down from my soapbox here if it's the case that Dick couldn't get the clips licensed due to the nature of his doc.

Finally, there are some really great interviews in the doc. I CERTAINLY don't agree with the politics of GOP gay group Log Cabin Republicans, but past leaders Rich Tafel and Patrick Guerriero were excellent in noticing the hypocrisy in their own party. But the most effective, eloquent speaker on behalf of gay Republicans and, in fact, an eventual proponent of outing is former Rep. Jim Kolbe. In his interview, he describes being out as one of the greatest reliefs of his life. Kolbe outed himself after The Advocate intended to out him in retaliation for his vote against the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA). From the other side of the political fence, Larry Kramer was probably the most consistently articulate voice, with his recounting of historical New York City political hypocrisy in the 1980s. Though the Larry Craig case was Dick's most constant referent, only a few moments in that case stand out as being particularly effective: I can picture vividly the experience one of Craig's tricks had as he was kicked out of Craig's house after a sexual encounter. And Craig's wife has a surreal expression on her face as she denies entering a marriage of convenience in an interview with Matt Lauer. All in all, the film has ended up preaching to the choir, and will probably not thwart Charlie Crist's prospects of becoming a Florida US Senator in the only state that has been outlawing gay adoption (though this has been declared unconstitutional and is being sent through the court system as I write). Good try, Mr. Dick and Mr. Rogers! Heres to hoping you can have a few more notches on your cleaning-up-the-hate belt! And here's to hoping that an Oscar nomination can happen and more attention can be brought to these issues and politicians.

--bryce

Music Top Dogs: La Roux, White Lies, and Company of Thieves

2009-06-04T12:42:00.006-04:00

Feeling So Blahg's Music Top Dogs for the month of May (a few days late!)

Arielle's Pick: La Roux

The 80’s are back in a big way and no one is bringing it better than La Roux. From their electropop sound to singer Elly Jackson’s flashy retro style, which consists mostly of geometric shapes and bright colors, this brand new Brit duo is already stirring up plenty of indie buzz without having yet released an album. The kind of buzz that could work against them, but in true indie darling style (think Arctic Monkeys) their product has lived up to the hype. The second single “In for the Kill” has already reached #2 on the UK charts and I’m pretty sure their next one will surpass it. Check out the video for “Bulletproof” and I guarantee you’ll be humming it all week.

Bryce's Pick: White Lies' To Lose My Life...

When the blahggers went to see Friendly Fires/White Lies at the Bowery Ballroom a month or so ago, we were surprised that the opener, White Lies held their own to Friendly Fires' flailing fun. The 80's are back in a big way when it comes to the White Lies too, with lead singer Harry McVeigh channeling Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan. Their newly released Geffen debut album is a haunting but powerful experiment in talented songwriting and a musical balance of gloomy and fun. From the brute "Death" to the breezily poetic title track, White Lies lends just enough pep to the brutally honest emotions of the album's lyricism. "To Lose My Life" begins:

He said to lose my life or lose my love,
That's the nightmare I've been running from.
So let me hold you in my arms a while,
I was always careless as a child.
And there's a part of me that still believes,
My soul will soar above the trees.
But a desperate fear flows through my blood,
That our dead loves buried beneath the mud.

Landon's Pick: Company of Thieves' "Oscar Wilde"

I’ve been teetering back and forth on this song the past week, but I can’t help coming back to the first single from Chicago-based Company of Thieves again and again. While the lyrics seem, on initial listen, sparse, clichéd, and even a bit

meaningless (they sound at first like a random assemblage of words to go with the far superior tunes), the hooks are irresistible. And while I was initially turned off by the appropriation of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore for the music video, I find myself enjoying the song a lot more accompanied with the video than just listening to the song by itself (this partly has to do with the fact that I’m kind of in love with frontwoman Genevieve Schatz). “Oscar Wilde” is a simple progression between building and receding hooks, and is very repetitive, but that’s exactly what makes songs like this so re-listenable. Although the band looks like they’ve come straight out of an American Apparel ad and the video’s channeling of Anderson, who even hipsters have by now rejected as a hipster spokesman, seems rather dated, the repeated lyric “live like it’s the style” can be read sardonically. On second glance, then, the song can possibly be interpreted as criticizing blanket, superficial appropriations of culture by hipsterism (from indie films to skin-deep referencing of important literary figures like, say, Oscar Wilde), thus making ourselves “our own devil” to culture. Lyrics and meaning aside, listen to it for the music.

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/author/landon

TV Top 9: Series Finales

2009-06-02T18:29:00.011-04:00

This season saw the end of favorites The L Word, Pushing Daisies, The Shield, Without a Trace, King of the Hill, MadTV, and Kyle XY. It also saw a whole bunch of new series flop, maybe never to return: Kings, Kath and Kim, Life on Mars, The Unsuals. This month, we ask who knew how to end with the most panache. We give to you the 9 best TV series finales.

9. Seinfeld

Even if you didn't watch Seinfeld regularly, everyone and their mother tuned in to watch the series finale. I can say this because my parents refused to pick me up from a school trip until it was over. And when they finally did get me, theirs was the only car on the road. A veritable encyclopedia of the best Seinfeld characters, the finale gave fans a chance to say goodbye to the entire cast all at once. From the Newman, to Bubble boy, to the Soup Nazi we were reminded what made Seinfeld such a great show to being with - the secondary characters and the horrible ways in which they were treated. The last episode closed with the joke from the first episode, truly bringing the story of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer to a perfect end.

8. Freaks and Geeks
We all know that this Apatow/Feig masterpiece was canceled way before its time, but at least we were left with a worthy series finale. I’m not sure what was better - watching James Franco play Dungeons and Dragons in a basement with a bunch of geeks or Seth Rogen scream “Disco sucks!” at a sparkly jumpsuit clad Jason Segel. The only moment that could outdo those two is the closing scene where Linda Cardellini’s character hops into a hippie van to follow around The Grateful Dead for the summer. Freaks and Geeks was always so entertaining because it was so realistic and the finale captures this perfectly. Freaks become geeks and

geeks get to travel on the road with hippies and we’re reminded of that time in our life when we realized it was all right to do something new.

7. Newhart

Though more inconsistent than comedian and writer Bob Newhart's earlier flagship sitcom The Bob Newhart Show, Newhart's debut in 1982 initiated another eight years of ratings succes for the deadpan star. Independent of the somewhat jarring series, however, exists “The Last Newhart.” Aired May 21st, 1990, the finale to define all sitcom finales self-reflexively pokes fun at the series itself, sitcoms in general, and the contemporary tendency for dream sequences in mid-to-late eighties series (particularly the Dallas shocker in which 31 episodes were dispensed as a dream belonging to a main character). Dick Loudon (Newhart's character), tired of running the Stratford Inn and dealing with its off-the-wall denizens and errant golf balls, decides to leave. On his way out the door, Loudon is struck by a golf ball. After a fade, Newhart wakes up as Bob Hartley, his character from The Bob Newhart Show. In a

gag that was common on his first show, Hartley and his wife, Emily, discuss his dream while constantly turning the

lights on and off, simultaneously winging another zinger at the other's expense. Brilliantly conceived and written, there has never been another sitcom finale that even comes close.

6. Golden Girls

Dorothy Zbornak gets married? To Leslie Nielsen? Say it is so! The Golden Girls series finale featured Dorothy moving into a resplendent estate with Blanche's relative with whom she was having a fake relationship that was more fun than she bargained for. Seven seasons of aging women jabbing each other with below-the-belt scathing lines came to an end when Dorothy says "You're angels. All of you." Leaving behind her three best friends, she goes to live the life she never got with ex-husband Stanley. Not to be outdone by Leslie Nielsen, Stanley is featured in the episode, giving his blessing to the girl he cared so much about.

5. The Mary Tyler Moore Show

“I cherish you people,” bellows Lou Grant, and with those words, the staff and talent of the WJM news team—having, with the exception of Ted, been unceremoniously fired—leave their familial workplace and turn out the lights on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Aired March 19th, 1977 “The Last Show” (as it was subtly titled) was, at the time, an anomaly in American sitcom history. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was still an incredibly successful sitcom but, rather than fading away into ratings oblivion, the producers (including Mary Tyler Moore) decided to end the series rather than see it canceled by the network. With the return of spun-off but lovable characters Rhoda and Phyllis, the finale of The Mary Tyler Moore show was original, funny, touching, and, most importantely, precedent-setting.

4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

What’s better than a show with two series finales? Well, a series with two totally kick ass series finales of course! First we have “The Gift,” written before Buffy the Vampire Slayer was picked up by UPN for two more seasons. Buffy dies, everyone cries and this fan wishes it had remained the only the season finale of the series because it brought an intense feeling of closure that the second one didn’t quite have. The close up shot on Buffy’s tombstone reading “She saved the world…a lot” is unforgettable. The second go at a series finale, “Chosen,” didn’t quite hit the same emotional cues (except for when they killed Anya and Spike, why!?!) but it still managed to tie up all the loose Sunnydale ends while still leaving the story open for the rest of the franchise.

3. The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

 
After 30 inimitable years, Johnny Carson emerged from that tacky multicolored curtain for the final time on May 22nd, 1992. Though Johnny's final comments made US late night hearts flutter, the penultimate episode featuring Bette Midler and Robin Williams was the real star of the two night event. Robin was simply Robin at his best, but Bette was simply divine—her performances of the tailored-for-Carson number “You Made Me Watch You” and “One For My Baby” brought down the house (and the host). No talk show in history has ever retained the respect or ratings of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Fifty million people viewed the series finale (the episode aired sans guests but featured Carson interacting with Doc and the rest of the gang). I think, along with Carson, his audience “enjoyed every single minute of it.”

2. Six Feet Under

Viewers of Six Feet Under were used to watching people die, but they may not have been ready to see the whole cast die in the series startling 1.5 hour finale, "Everyone's Waiting." After the character's 2005 storyline comes to a close neatly and heartwarmingly, Sia's breathtaking "Breathe Me" begins and the roller coaster of a lifetime begins. I won't ruin what happens to each of the characters here, but suffice it to say that what happens is an absolutely perfect ending to one of the best dramas to ever grace the silver screen.

1. M*A*S*H

M*A*S*H, the wildly successful sitcom based on the wildly successful Robert Altman film based upon some book that I'm sure was wildly successful, went all out for its 1983 finale. The 2.5 hour finale was watched by more viewers than tuned in for any television series episode. A record that will probably never be beat. Directed by Alan Alda, the episode ended a war, dealt with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder just a few years after it entered into the public consciousness as a concept, and ended one of the tamest and most popular criticism of the Vietnam War. "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen" is an episode to remember!

-- bryce, arielle, and dana c. gravesen

Dana's blog can be found at http://theglitterparade.blogspot.com/

Eminem Gets Ass in Face; I Get a New Desktop Background

2009-06-01T00:45:00.005-04:00

In a hilarious stunt for his new film based on the gay Austrian fashion plate Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen stuffed his crotch in rumored homophobe Eminem's face. Homophobe? You ask. I thought he sang "Stan" with Elton John at the Grammy's a few years back. Well, true, he may not be a homophobe. But the question was whether or not Eminem's storming out of the MTV Movie Awards was a publicity stunt in itself. Usually, Cohen's victims are unsuspecting, but I'll give the Eminem the benefit of the doubt here.

However, I'm not going to give Macho Em the benefit of all doubts. You remember when critics think that Eminem is the greatest thing since well...since hip hop was created? Well I'm sick of that, and I'm sick of his self-important, fight-picking, nickname-creating music getting fawned over by everyone who writes about music. Thank God the new single, with a hook sung by "Jessica Simpson" AKA Charmagne Tripp fell fat on its face. Too bad, though, that the album debuted more or less across the globe at number one. Do people want to hear him talk about important he is and how much we missed him?

--bryce

Up is Not All Ups

2009-05-30T02:28:00.007-04:00

Don't take the title of this post to make you think I didn't like Up; I did. It's just that after reading all the reviews telling me how funny it is, I didn't expect to cry. Three times! The film tells the story of Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) who marries his childhood sweetheart Ellie. Carl and Ellie are explorers at heart. They met imitating their idol, a Charles Lindburg-like Charlton Heston-lookalike Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), who like Lindburg had a PR gaffe that forced him into reclusion. While Carl and Ellie dreamed of visiting South America to visit Paradise Falls and perhaps one day live by the falls, their dream never comes to fruition and Ellie dies. The majority of the film follows Carl as he is joined by a young neighborhood boy, Russell (Jordan Nagai), a member of a group equivalent to the Boy Scouts, as they escape from their overdeveloped town for Paradise Falls...via balloons tied to a house a la the peach in James and the Giant Peach. Their journey to South America is not without hitch as the two encounter many a hurdle (talking dogs, big endangered birds, cliffs) in the South American jungle, the most daunting of which is the former idol Muntz himself.

Up is a totally enjoyable film; however, I think the film is less accessible for children than any other Pixar film before it has been. Kids didn't seem to laugh as much as they did in other Pixar films. And they weren't enthralled like they were in WALL-E. In fact, it seemed like they didn't get major plot points. Ellie's death is told in montage, and while the meaning of Carl alone in a funeral parlor is cue to adults that she is dead, the reference falls flat on children's limited frame of reference. "Where's his wife?" one girl in my movie theater asked to her father ten minutes after this montage.

At one point during the movie, the same girl said to her father, "I'm taking my glasses off. Nothing's popping out!" Did I forget to mention I saw it in 3D? In an attempt to appeal to lovers of visual ostentatiousness and children, the producers thought that this film really needed to be seen whilst wearing silly glasses on their face. I must say, I didn't appreciate the $2 up charge for this gimmick. Especially because I didn't have a say in the matter. The film was being projected in Real D. Therefore, I wore the glasses and paid the $2. When is the world going to realize that 3D glasses does not a movie make? The film is great on its own. And maybe the subtle 3D renderings are a symptom of the future of 3D projection -- glasses for every screening!

Barring the dog scenes, it may be a good idea to leave the kids at home.

--bryce

Music Top Dogs: Kelly Clarkson, Handsome Furs, The Dead Weather

2009-04-27T00:50:00.006-04:00

Feeling So Blahg's Music Top Dogs for the month of April

Arielle's Pick: The Dead Weather

There’s nothing better than a new supergroup. From Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to the Travelling Wilburys to the musical genius created from Josh Homme’s Desert Sessions - when you get a group of seasoned musicians together in a room you know they’re going to come out with something special. And that’s exactly what happened when The Dead Weather played their first concert this month at Bowery Ballroom. Comprised of Jack White on drums, Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone age on guitar, Jack Lawrence of The Raconteurs on bass and Alison Mosshart of The Kills on vocals and occasional guitar, The Dead Weather has me already convinced that they’re here to save the music industry. I was almost happy to read the New York Times’ lackluster review of the show - they just didn’t get it. Sure, the band gave off a complete I don’t give a fuck attitude, but that was because they didn’t. The show wasn’t about the band, it was about the music. And at the end of the night that made the experience more real, more raw and without a doubt more fucking rock and roll.

Bryce's Pick: Kelly Clarkson's "I Do Not Hook Up"

A good Kelly Clarkson single is like...well...it's a lot like her smash hit "Since U Been Gone" (and I would argue her flop "Low"). No matter how much cred this blahg tries to claim and no matter how much Arielle hates me for saying this, Kelly's new single "I Do Not Hook Up" is fantastic. Its chorus gets me singing as loud as "Since U Been Gone," but the hook is so much more fresh. Sure the lyrics need a complete overhaul (they seem to be going after Taylor Swift's cash friendly audience), but "I Do Not Hook Up" is pure bubble gum fun. And that's exactly what Kelly's latest album All I Ever Wanted is all about, a departure from her commercially unsuccessful My December, which attempted to prove her to be a talented songwriter and serious chanteuse. The latter is clear and we're all singing with her.

Landon's Pick: Handsome Furs - Face Control

The sophomore effort by Wolf Parade co-frontman Dan Boeckner and his wife Alexei Perry is as eclectic and unpredictable as one imagines their very relationship to be. Face Control is deliberately inconsistent, altering throughout in sound and theme, from a rocktastic post-punk singalong (“I’m Confused”) to droll introspection infused, oddly but effectively, by a repetitive ass-shaking dance beat (“Officer of Hearts”). While not having the sense of wholeness and cohesion as an album that Plague Park did, Face Control does represent, song-by-song, a sonic branching out by the Furs that, while may sometimes miss its projected target, works far more effectively than Wolf Parade’s similar exercise last year in the overly ambitious
and messy At Mt. Zoomer. It’s taken me a few listens to really appreciate the album, but Face Control ultimately offers lots of great surprises, and an appreciation that grows with each listen.

-- bryce, arielle, and landon palmer
landon's blog can be found at http://talkalotsaynothing.blogspot.com