Every Sha-la-la-la

TIFF: Finally!

2008-09-09T17:47:00.001-06:00

I'm standing on the east side of Yonge St, half a block north of Queen St. Waiting in line to get into the Winter Garden theater to see "Synecdoche New York". There are two movies lining up; the other is Soderbergh's "Che", in the Elgin. There's another lineup for Visa cardholders, to get into the the Visa lounge beforehand. The irony of getting into the Visa lounge before "Che" is, no doubt, lost on most of these people.

On the sixth day of the festival, after seeing nearly two dozen movies, I finally saw an undeniably great movie. Finally!!! And that movie was, unsurprisingly, "The Wrestler". Darren Aronofsky adds another winner to his resume, even though it's a much smaller, more personal, movie than his last couple. He is, simply and truly, one of the greatest filmmakers working today.

The movie, however, belongs entirely to Mickey Rourke, in a performance that will generate tons of Oscar buzz. It's every bit as intense and physical - and brilliant -- a performance as De Niro's in "Raging Bull". Unforgettable.

TIFF: Restless

2008-09-08T19:15:00.001-06:00

So although it's only Monday, I'm well past the halfway point of my fest. I'm about to see my 21st movie... and I finally get to sleep in tomorrow. The only way I could do the fest and not lose my mind entirely is to have a top-heavy schedule. My first four full days of festing had 5, 4, 5, and 6 movies. Tomorrow's a much lighter day, since I'm only seeing three movies. ("Only". No wonder normal people think us festers are nuts.

Oddly enough, though, I have yet to see a great film at the fest this year. I've seen some really good ones (including another Scandinavian one today, "Cold Lunch"), but nothing that's gotten me too excited. It's another reason I'm looking forward to tomorrow, since I'll be seeing both "Synecdoche New York" and "The Wrestler".

I had some great screenings over the weekend, including "Zack and Miri Make a Porno". The movie itself is a lot of fun, and easily among Kevin Smith's best, but the whole point of going to that movie was to see Smith himself. And boy does he give good Q and A. And Elizabeth Banks has a really dirty mouth, too.

Now I just need to find someone to practice the Double Dutch Rudder with.

TIFF: Idiot Walk, Part 2

2008-09-06T21:45:00.006-06:00

Quote of the night:

"Can't anyone in this party pull out of ANYTHING?"
- Bill Maher, in reference to Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin's pregnant teenage daughter.

"Religulous" was a hoot. Definitely controversial, but it also delivers the goods.

And here are a couple of shots of the protesters outside the Ryerson theater. There were about 10 of them, and they were there when I showed up about 90 min before the movie, and they were still there when the movie and Q/A ended, about 4 hours later. They're so cute; I wanted to walk up to them, pinch them on the cheeks, and say (in the voice I use when talking to my three-month-old niece Sawyer), "Who's protesting a movie? You are! Yes you are!"

(There was some debate in the lineup and in the theater as to whether the protesters were real, or if Maher and Larry Charles had staged the whole thing. Maher answered that question: "If we had hired them, they would have been a lot more creative!")

TIFF: Must-see

2008-09-06T18:31:00.001-06:00

As if I weren't psyched enough for it, I see that Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" won the Golden Lion in Venice. Awesome. This should help redeem his reputation after it undeservedly took a hit after his misunderstood masterpiece "The Fountain" was released to tepid reviews two years ago. I'm seeing "The Wrestler" on Tuesday... can't wait!!

TIFF: Idiot Walk

2008-09-06T17:49:00.001-06:00

Note to self: sending photos to the blog from my phone doesn't work well.

Y'all will just have to wait a few hours to see photos of the handful of protestors outside the Ryerson, where Religulous will be screening later tonight. They're so funny.

TIFF: About Horten

2008-09-06T14:24:00.001-06:00

I mentioned that I have a thing for absurd Scandinavian comedies. "O'Horten" is a prime example why. Odd Horten (his name, but also an adjecrive that describes him) is a train engineer facing retirement, and trying to decide how to spend his remaining years. The movie's melancholy tone and subject matter are reminiscent of Alexander Payne'a great "About Schmidt", but the oddball characters are quintessential Scandinavians. The movie is directed by Bent Hamer (my new favorite name) and worth keeping an eye out for.

TIFF: The Axemen

2008-09-05T22:28:00.004-06:00

Left to right: Thom Powers, TIFF documentary coordinator; Jack White; Jimmy Page; The Edge; producer Thomas Tull; director Davis Guggenheim; producer Lesley Chilcott.

From the premiere of the documentary "It Might Get Loud". The documentary itself was pretty good, but the screening and discussion afterwards were fantastic.

Now if only The Edge would get back to the goddam studio, so U2 can finish their new album.

TIFF: Your movie sucks

2008-09-05T18:08:00.002-06:00

Toronto audiences are notoriously polite. Even after the worst movies, there's generally a smattering of applause. So I knew that one of the movies I saw today must have really sucked, because no one applauded when it was over. Although the fact that it was ovee should have inspired a bit of applause.

The movie in question is called "The Sky Crawlers", and it sounds really good on paper. It's a Japanese animated movie about young pilots fighting in WWII-type war. It's a beautifully animated movie, but absolutely deadly to watch.

My other movies today were much better, especially "Revanche", a terrific Austrian movie involving a cop, his wife, a criminal, and his illegal immigrant prostitute girlfriend. The movie zags when you expect it to zig, and it's nice to be kept off-balance.

Tonight: "It Might Get Loud". Bring it on!!

TIFF: Morning Bell

2008-09-05T07:21:00.002-06:00

I keep forgetting that there is one serious drawback to my fest planning: I'm just not a morning person.

Here it is, only the first full day of screenings, and I'm already wishing I could just sleep in. Unfortunately, I won't get to sleep in until Tuesday, when my earliest movie is at noon.

Plus, I'm not a coffee drinker, so that's not helping.

But this is another reason I like to front-load my schedule... I'm usually fine for about five days, regardless of the number of movies I see. Once the middle of next week gets here, even the most exciting movies might not be enough to keep me awake.

Of course, if the movie's just bad, I appreciate the chance to nap.

TIFF: Edison and Leo

2008-09-04T21:43:00.003-06:00

The first movie I saw at TIFF 08 was a gem of a movie called "Edison and Leo". It's the first full-length stop-motion animated movie ever produced in Canada. The title characters are an inventor and his son, and the movie's plot involves a bizarre series of events that lead to Leo, the son, becoming electrified. The movie was co-written by George Toles, who often collaborates with the great Guy Maddin; "Edison and Leo" has the spirit of Maddin's work, which is a good thing, and not just because Maddin is absent this year. (He's had movies at the three previous TIFFs I've attended.)

Tomorrow brings the first full day of screenings. I've got five lined up... including what I hope will be a chance to get up close and personal with Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White at the guitar documentary "It Might Get Loud". With any luck, I'll have a chance to update the blog from my Samsung Instinct during the day, while I'm either standing in line or quickly wolfing down Teriyaki Experience. For now, I should attempt to get some sleep. You don't realize how exhausting it can be to watch movies until you try to watch 20 movies in a four-day period.

TIFF: Hello

2008-09-04T21:13:00.004-06:00

Hello, Time of My Life readers.

Brian assures me he's got, like, millions of readers, so I'll shocked if my readership (of four) doesn't at least DOUBLE throughout the next week.

In his recent post discussing the evolution of TIFF, Brian makes some good points about the festival itself: yes, the business end of things has become very important. And more often than not, the movies that GET the gala spots don't actually DESERVE the gala spots. ("Ghost Town"? Really? I liked that movie ok the last time I saw it, when it was called "Heart and Souls" and starred Robert Downey Jr.)

But here's my dirty little secret: I LOVE that the galas are awful. Let the corporate honchos pay $40 for something I wouldn't even watch on an airplane, and the real film fans will be over *here*, watching the interesting movies.

This is the fourth year I've done TIFF, and if all goes according to plan, I will be seeing 35 movies by the end of the festival. Some of the movies are higher profile movies - I can't wait for Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" or Kaufman's "Synecdoche New York" - but of course I'll also be seeing my share of random, offbeat, foreign movies. I've got a thing for absurd Scandinavian comedies, so expect to be hearing about a few of them. I do not, however, have a thing for social-realist European dramas, so I doubt you'll be hearing about any of them. Unless the fest's guide really misled me on some titles.

Now I think it helps to know what types of movies I like, in order to compare my opinions to yours. I know that I respect the opinions of certain critics (like Owen Gleiberman in the increasingly trashy EW) because I tend to agree with them. (Whereas others, I often disagree with, like Ebert. Yet I always read Ebert, because I find him thoroughly entertaining.) So, to properly place my opinions in context, here's a list of some of my many favorite movies.

Nashville (the greatest movie ever made), The Searchers, Cabaret, The Lady Eve, The Shop Around the Corner, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Jules and Jim, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Some Like It Hot, A Fish Called Wanda, Aliens, Short Cuts, Toy Story.

I think The Godfather Part 2, Citizen Kane, and Singin' in the Rain are good, but overrated.

I think that the best directors working today are David Lynch, Alfonso Cuaron, Darren Aronofsky, and Steven Spielberg. I have very little, hardly any, use for non-narrative cinema.

I think that, as good as Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg can be, Guy Maddin is the greatest Canadian director.

Brian would describe my music taste as "MOR". (Not that I'm still bitter about that, Brian.) U2, REM, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Springsteen, 1972-and-earlier Rolling Stones. I think REM's "Automatic for the People" is the greatest album ever made, and I think Arcade Fire is the best band in the world today.

Some TV: anything by Joss Whedon. The Office, 30 Rock, Mad Men. I think The Wire is the greatest thing ever produced for television. I watch Lost, but I've always thought it was terribly overrated.

One other note about this blog: I started it as a way of keeping track of my attempt to listen to everything on my iPod, including lots of terribly embarrassing stuff. The name of the blog is a reference to a certain lyric in a certain song that really exemplified what the blog was to be about. Then I got super-busy at work, and that project (and the blog in general) got put on the back burner over the summer. Now that fall is here, I expect to be much more actively blogging. If you like what you read, or if I say something that pisses you off, I hope you'll stick around.

TIFF: Line up in line is all I remember

2008-09-01T08:18:00.001-06:00

It's Labour Day morning, and for film festers, this usually means standing in lines. The first lineup is for picking up the ticket orders that got processed over the weekend, and this line moves pretty quickly. But the second lineup - at the box office, trying to use up unused tickets - is long and moves slowly. Seriously, it's not uncommon to spend ALL DAY trying to get shit taken care of.

But because we did so well in the random draw on Friday, there was no great need for us to pick up the tickets today. I've still got two tickets to try to use, and I might move some stuff around in an attempt to get into the other "Synecdoche New York" screening (or I might hope tickets become available for the one I tried to get into)... but it's just not worth the hassle of waiting around in line.

So I think I might go see "Man on Wire" this afternoon. Because god knows I'm not going to be seeing enough movies on this trip.

TIFF: The results

2008-08-31T07:39:00.001-06:00

Well, we did really well in the order processing.

The three of us had orders for 115 movies, and we actually got 112 of them. Unfortunately, I didn't get 2 out of the 3 of those... including one that near the top of my must-see list, Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche New York". I'm going to spend some time today rejiggering the schedule, since there are also a few titles I got that I'm not sure I want to see anymore.

Off to see Avenue Q this afternoon. I saw it in NYC last November, and can't wait to see it again. Back with more on TIFF later today.

TIFF: And so it begins...

2008-08-30T21:36:00.000-06:00

So here I sit in the Calgary airport, awaiting my flight to Toronto for this year's film fest. I won't get to post this to the blog until I arrive in Toronto, so this is technically a message from the past. Spooooooooooky!

This will be the fourth straight year that I've attended TIFF, and it's a lot of fun. It's one of the most important festivals in the world, but unlike the other majors (Cannes, Sundance, Venice, New York) TIFF is very public-friendly. Altogether, there are over 300 titles, and multiple screenings of each. (Usually 2 or 3.) The screenings are held in various venues in downtown Toronto, all within maybe a 20-minute walk of each other. Screenings start at 9 am, and run throughout the day, including midnight screenings of assorted genre pics.

Of course, because Toronto's got a great reputation as a public-friendly film festival, demand for tickets generally exceeds supply. (Except during daytime screenings during the week, which is when I tend to watch a bunch of movies.) But the TIFF folks actually have a pretty good process in place, which is likely as fair as it could possibly be.

Early July: tickets go onsale. There are assorted packs available, including a 50-movie Festival Pass for the truly hardcore. And while it's physically possible to see 50 movies throught the 10 days of the fest, I know my limits. I start going a little funny in the head sometime around 30. The last three years, I've bought a Daytime pass (good for 25 movies starting at 5 pm or earlier) and a 10-coupon Book (good for 10 movies anytime). This definitely works for me, and is also the cheapest option for that many movies.

Aug 19: The complete film list was posted on the fest website. Assorted press releases in the weeks leading up to this date gave us information about some titles that would be screening, but having the full list really gives us the chance to figure out the movies we want to see, the movies we might see, depending on the schedule, and the movies we want to avoid. It's a curious process, especially for some high-profile movies: do I try to get tickets to movies that I'll get to see in a few weeks anyway, or should I try for some more obscure titles that sound potentially interesting? I try to balance it out, and attend a few high-profile titles, especially if the director and cast will be in attendance. I've also got a thing for absurd Scandinavian comedies, so I always try to keep track of those titles.

Aug 26: The complete schedule is released, at which point all hell breaks loose. Between Tuesday morning and Friday at 1 pm, we need to plot out a first draft of the schedule and drop it off at the box office. The process of drafting a schedule can take a couple of hours (me), or a day and a half (my friend Steve). But, even if later buzz makes you want to remove some movies and add others, that's no big deal. Even if screenings are sold out, tickets generally become available. THE hottest ticket last year was Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution", which I didn't get into but Steve did. I considered just camping out at the box office and asking them "Are any Lust, Caution tickets available? How about now? How about now?" but I decided against it.

Aug 29, 1 pm: the random draw occurs. I need to explain one other thing: when you drop off the order envelope at the box office, it gets put into a box. The box has a number; altogether, this year there were 78 boxes. They randomly draw a starting box (this year: 9), and then process the boxes sequentially from there (9, 10, 11... 77, 78, 1, 2, ... 8). We were in box 41, which places us comfortably in the top half of the order processing.

Sidenote: a couple of years ago, I had what I thought was a moment of genius re how to maximize our chances for a particular screening. Because you could purchase multiple tickets to a movie with the 10-Coupon book (and the now-defunct 30-Coupon book), I filled out my order ASAP to get into a low-numbered box, and Steve dropped his off as usual on Friday, and each of our orders had two tickets to this movie. This gave us a good split in the processing, and based on the random draw, I got two tickets to the movie, and Steve didn't. The movie in question: Guy Maddin't silent extravaganza "Brand Upon the Brain!", featuring live narration, foley artists, and a castrato. Most of the rest of the audience had no idea what they were in for, but Steve and I loved it.

So, the orders are currently being processed. I'm expecting an email some time today, with the details of what movies I got and what I didn't. (Let me check now... brb...) Nope, nothing yet. It'll likely be in my inbox when I get off my flight.

Back with more details about certain titles once I get the (fingers crossed) good news.

This is only a test

2008-08-08T21:47:00.001-06:00

Attempting to post via email from my Samsung Instinct. That is all.

Oh MERYL

2008-07-22T23:27:00.001-06:00

Some thoughts on the worst movie of the summer, "Mamma Mia":

- Do we like ABBA just for the songs, or also for the recordings? The arrangements and instrumentations, and the multi-tracked vocals contribute as much or more to the songs' brilliance than simply the melodies, choruses, and lyrics. The songs do hold up, even when being "sung" by some of the cast members here, but some of the magic is missing. (Contrast with, say, the songs of Leonard Cohen. Listen to kd lang or Jeff Buckley covering "Hallelujah" -- they simply transport the song to a level that Cohen simply couldn't on his own.)

- The stage is far more forgiving of a story with this plot than the screen is. On stage, "Mamma Mia!" is a completely joyous experience, a concert of some of the best pop songs ever written with a few story threads running through it. On screen, the story's narrative problems are accentuated -- the fact that the movie actually removes scenes that contribute to character development only makes things worse. The movie never really establishes any connection between Skarsgard's Bill and Walters' Rosie, or between Baranski's Tanya and Pepper the bartender. So there's really no oomph when those pairs of characters get their big numbers ("Take a Chance on Me" and "Does Your Mother Know", respectively).

- Director Phyllida Lloyd stages the musical numbers almost completely without imagination ("Money Money Money"), or just bizarrely (why ARE Walters and Skarsgard crawling across a rooftop?). My favorite ABBA song and my favorite number from the stage show is "Does Your Mother Know". The original song is a bit creepy, what with the male singers flirting with a much younger woman. But the instrumentation, with its horns and piano, is the closest thing ABBA came to writing a Stones song. In the musical, Tanya, the maneater, sings the song to Pepper, the flirty bartender, as a way of showing how far out of his depth Pepper is.

- For a bunch of Greek boys running around without shirts, they certainly are a hairless bunch. Maybe Pierce Brosnan had a clause in his contract saying that his chest had to be the hairiest on screen.

- I didn't think I would ever say this about a movie musical based on ABBA songs, but the movie's simply not gay enough. Where's the playful shots of well-built guys, their torsos glistening in the sunlight? The movie's in such a hurry to tell its story (not realizing that the story is actually the least interesting part) that it never takes time to enjoy itself.

- As for the setting, even sun-drenched Greek islands get bored after a while. The climactic wedding sequence takes place at a church so remote that even Werner Herzog would dismiss its location as "too remote".

- And when, exactly, is the movie set? It would seem to be present-day, based on the comments about Sky creating a website for Donna's crumbling hotel. And yet, the flashbacks to 20 years ago actually refer to the characters as, I think, flower children... although that may just be the lyrics of one of the songs. And Brosnan's Sam mentions that he's got "two grown children", even though Sophie herself is only 20 years old, and Sam was childless but engaged when he and Donna met 21 years earlier. Still, it's best not to expend too much energy worrying about something that the film-makers obviously didn't care about.

Mental Image of the Day

2008-07-16T23:32:00.002-06:00

From an article in the Calgary Herald:

Julie Wright has seen dog feces, used needles and condoms walking to work from her Bankview home.

Ahem. Grammar much?

Kim!

2008-06-27T10:39:00.002-06:00

From my hometown newspaper, apparently Elisha Cuthbert enjoys the quiet pace of PEI, which she's currently visiting with boyfriend Dion Phaneuf. Says Cuthbert: "You’ve got everything here. You have water, you have golf, you have fishing, you have great food. It’s just a beautiful place."

No mention, unfortunately, of PEI's biggest selling point: a refreshing lack of mountain, and therefore a refreshing lack of mountain lions.

Ten by Ten

2008-06-17T23:02:00.003-06:00

Tonight, CBS aired the latest of its AFI "Top 100" lists. A bit different this year -- they counted down the top ten American movies in each of ten different genres. And while I freely acknowledge that such a list is, as always, complete bullshit... well, that doesn't stop me from having an opinion on them.

Animated
10. Finding Nemo
9. Cinderella
8. Shrek
7. Beauty and the Beast
6. Toy Story
5. Fantasia
4. The Lion King
3. Bambi
2. Pinocchio
1. Snow White and the Seven Drawfs

As expected, it's largely the Disney canon. (The rules of the list process limit it to American movies, so that excludes Miyazaki or "The Triplets of Belleville".) No major complaints; I'd have "Toy Story" at the top of my list, and my second Pixar movie would be "The Incredibles", not "Finding Nemo".

Fantasy
10. Big
9. The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
8. Groundhog Day
7. Harvey
6. Field of Dreams
5. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
4. King Kong (1933)
3. It's a Wonderful Life
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
1. The Wizard of Oz

Tough one. A really broad category, since it includes both "It's a Wonderful Life" and LOTR. Should Cuaron's "A Little Princess" be classified as fantasy? If so, it's every bit as good as "The Wizard of Oz". (Yeah, I said it.)

Sci-Fi
10. Back to the Future
9. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
8. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
7. Alien
6. Blade Runner
5. The Day the Earth Stood Still
4. A Clockwork Orange
3. ET
2. Star Wars
1. 2001

I can't really argue with much of this list. I'd personally pick "The Terminator" and "Aliens", and likely "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" over "ET" if I could only have one Spielberg.

Sports
10. Jerry Maguire
9. National Velvet
8. Breaking Away
7. Caddyshack
6. The Hustler
5. Bull Durham
4. Hoosiers
3. The Pride of the Yankees
2. Rocky
1. Raging Bull

"Tin Cup" really really REALLY should be on this list. I'm not sure if I've seen too many movies that are more overrated than "Rocky". And I know it's heresy, but I prefer "The Color of Money" to "The Hustler". I've also not a huge "Raging Bull" fan, but... fine.

If you're going to count pool as a sport so you can put "The Hustler" on the list, then I sure as hell can put cheerleading ("Bring it On"), bowling "Kingpin"), or poker ("Rounders") on mine.

Western
10. Cat Ballou
9. Stagecoach
8. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
7. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
6. The Wild Bunch
5. Red River
4. Unforgiven
3. Shane
2. High Noon
1. The Searchers

What, no "Johnny Guitar"? (I'm kidding.) (Sort of.) Still, I'm impressed that they remembered Robert Altman, a director who's been notoriously absent from most of these lists. On the plus side: no "Dances With Wolves".

Gangster
10. Scarface (1983)
9. Little Caesar
8. The Public Enemy
7. Pulp Fiction
6. Scarface (1932)
5. Bonnie and Clyde
4. White Heat
3. The Godfather Part 2
2. GoodFellas
1. The Godfather

Fine. I still haven't seen either "Scarface", or "Little Caesar", but I can't really complain about the other 7 titles. I'm not the hugest fan of Coppola's Godfather movies, particularly the second one

Mystery
10. The Usual Suspects
9. Dial "M" for Murder
8. Blue Velvet
7. North by Northwest
6. The Maltese Falcon
5. The Third Man
4. Laura
3. Rear Window
2. Chinatown
1. Vertigo

Omigod, do I hate "The Usual Suspects". But apart from that (and possibly "Dial M For Murder"), you really can't argue with this list. There's a handful of the greatest movies of all time, right there. (I'd also include Lynch's "Mulholland Drive". Not to take anything away from "Blue Velvet" of course, but MD is one of the very few greatest movies ever made.)

Romantic Comedy
10. Sleepless in Seattle
9. Harold and Maude
8. Moonstruck
7. Adam's Rib
6. When Harry Met Sally...
5. The Philadelphia Story
4. Roman Holiday
3. It Happened One Night
2. Annie Hall
1. City Lights

Whoa. No Preston Sturges, no Ernst Lubitsch, no Billy Wilder. TWO screenplays by Nora Ephron, but no Sturges or Lubitsch or Wilder? For shame! (On the plus side, they picked the best Tracy/Hepburn movie with "Adam's Rib".)

Courtroom Drama
10. Judgment at Nuremberg
9. A Cry in the Dark
8. In Cold Blood
7. Anatomy of a Murder
6. Witness for the Prosecution
5. A Few Good Men
4. The verdict
3. Kramer vs Kramer
2. 12 Angry Men
1. To Kill a Mockingbird

Um... "Inherit the Wind"?

Epics
10. The Ten Commandments (1956)
9. Reds
8. Saving Private Ryan
7. All Quiet on the Western Front
6. Titanic
5. Spartacus
4. Gone With the Wind
3. Schindler's List
2. Ben-Hur
1. Lawrence of Arabia

... fine. I'd prefer "The Bridge on the River Kwai" as a Lean picture, but for such an eclectic category, this is a pretty good list.

Read the full post.

Shades of Grey

2008-06-12T22:16:00.001-06:00

So Katherine Heigl is in the news again, this time for removing her name for Emmy consideration. The "Grey's Anatomy" star says: "I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization."

People are, naturally, frothing at the mouth about this. Heigl has established a reputation of being outspoken, a bit of a pill; she's also had some choice words about her big-screen breakthrough "Knocked Up" (calling it "a little sexist"). Previously, she'd used her powers for good, saying that former Grey's costar Isiah Washington "needs to not talk in public" after the whole TR Knight / Patrick Dempsey / "faggot" episode.

And while her words may have been a bit indelicate, they shouldn't hide one simple fact: Heigl is right.

Her character, Izzie Stevens, had an awful AWFUL year, dating back to late-season 3, when she all of a sudden developed a mad crush on her married best friend George. George/Izzie as a couple made sense to NO ONE who watches Grey's Anatomy, and it was perhaps the primary reason why the show's fourth season suffered in quality. Fortunately, by the end of the season, the relationship was long dead, and Izzie had finally returned to being the likable no-nonsense character we'd known in the show's first couple of seasons. (Grey's itself had a tremendous resurgence post-strike, and it looks to be on track for a terrific fifth season.)

Heigl's win last year was a huge surprise; she was nominated against two of her superlative co-stars, Sandra Oh and Chandra Wilson, AND the brilliant Lorraine Bracco and Aida Turturro from "The Sopranos". (Also Rachel Griffiths from "Brothers and Sisters", which I've only seen a couple of times.) Heigl herself was shocked at her win, as she should have been -- LOOK AT THAT LIST. I like Heigl, but there's no comparison.

I also love that Heigl is outspoken. She even corrected the Emmys announcer when she mispronounced "Heigl" when presenting an award. She's not a shy wallflower-type, and that may be why people are turned off by her comments. If you believe the cynics, it may simply be an attempt to get out of her contract, but that doesn't make her comments any less true.

"And I want a million dollars..."

2008-06-10T13:41:00.000-06:00

So, since posting yesterday's complaint about the TIFF website, I see they've updated it with info, stating that it will be updated at the end of the month. And, this morning, Coldplay has reshuffled their tour, and they're now NOT coming to Calgary at the end of the month. With this, and my earlier sports predictions, apparently I'm a jinx. I've already learned not to make sports predictions (on that note, should I then officially cheer for Tiger at the US Open?), so maybe I should stop talking about all future events altogether, and just focus on stuff I've done.

Now I've just got to start doing stuff, in order to have stuff to write about.

Catching up...

2008-06-09T21:03:00.002-06:00

And because I've been super-lazy the last couple of weeks, here's a brief post touching on a bunch of topics:

1. I go through phases where I'll read, like, 10 books in two months and then nothing for the rest of the year. And this is one of those busy-reading phases... more specifically, it's an Ian McEwan phase. I read Atonement last fall, before the movie came out, and in the last two weeks I've read "On Chesil Beach" and his brilliant Booker-winning "Amsterdam". I'm currently reading "Enduring Love"; "Saturday" and "Black Dogs" are on deck.
2. I also read Julie Andrews' memoir "Home", which I loved. I particularly liked her thoughts on her voice and her singing lessons; since I can hit precisely one note when I sing (the note of the long second syllable in the word "complain", leading into the chorus of "Friends in Low Places"), I find it fascinating, if a little abstract, to hear someone talk about how they developed and maintained their instrument.
3. I've also been going through a bit of a Broadway phase... using youtube to track down some classic clips. This, from the Tony Awards a few years back (which I wish I'd seen), is particularly cool (it may take a while to load, but it's totally worth it):

4. I also discovered that Corey Reynolds, whom I love from his work on "The Closer", originated the role of Seaweed in "Hairspray" on Broadway. I'd LOVE to see a clip of him performing "Run and Tell That".
5. Why the HELL hasn't the Toronto Film Festival website been updated for 2008 yet? It's less than three months away!
6. Downloaded the new Coldplay album this weekend. And it sounds like nothing they've done before. Early standouts: "Lovers in Japan" and "Strawberry Swing". They're in Calgary at the end of July; can't wait to see them live again.
7. I've been getting caught up with "Psych" on DVD. Great, great show! Unfortunately, it (like Burn Notice and The Closer) isn't airing on a Canadian station, so it's looking like it'll be a summer of torrents for me.
8. I'm TOTALLY buying an iPhone next month. The Wii can wait.

If I'm to be your camera...

2008-05-30T22:37:00.015-06:00

Here are a few photos from the REM concert in Vancouver, May 23 2008.

Opening act 1, The National. They kick all sorts of ass:

... and, of course, the collection of dinosaurs:

Read the full post.

Chorus and the Ring

2008-05-30T22:15:00.003-06:00

Well, now that I've finally found the goddam cable that connects my camera to my computer (it was in a box with assorted audio/video cables, including approximately 50 feet of coax cable. God.), I can finally upload some photos I took (soon), and the video of the gorgeous acoustic version of Monster's "Let Me In". You can see how great my spot right in front of the stage was. I missed about the first 30 seconds of the song, because I'm an idiot. But here's the rest:

Broadcast Me a Joyful Noise

2008-05-24T02:22:00.004-06:00

Just got back from the fantastic REM / The National / Modest Mouse concert at Deer Lake Park in Burnaby. It's a gorgeous venue, if not exactly the most accessible. (Not as bad as Thunderbird stadium at UBC, though.) This was the third time I've seen REM... I don't think this show offered any revelations for me, but it didn't change my opinion that they are one great fucking rock and roll band.

For the second time at an REM show, I was pretty much in the front row. (And given that, at the third show, I was in the 10th row, that's a pretty great track record.) I managed to get some great photos... which I would have posted with this item if I'd remembered to bring my camera-to-computer cable with me to Vancouver. Oh well... when I get home.

I arrived at Deer Lake Park sometime around 4:45, made my way thru the slow-moving line to get into the venue by around 5:15. This venue's a huge general admission amphitheater setup, so most of the people already there were lounging on blankets or in the beer tent or what have you. A small cluster of folks were gathering at the stage, so of course I joined them. And proceeded to stand on the same spot for pretty much the next five hours. And my back and legs will, I'm sure, be sore for days.

The National appears on stage earlier than I expected -- a bit before 6. Actually, I expected them much later, since I just assumed it would be Modest Mouse first. (I think I just expected the acts to appear in the order in which I was interested.) The National tore thru about 10-12 songs, mainly from Boxer and Alligator, and they're terrific live. Watching them perform, rather than just listening to their albums, I see that the Arcade Fire comparisons actually make a bit of sense, in how they attack the songs and the instruments. Singer Matt Berninger's a little too introverted, though. As I'd hoped, "Abel" and "Mr. November" kicked all sorts of ass live.

Modest Mouse were... well, they weren't as bad as I'd expected. In my head, I'd lumped them together with bands like Death Cab For Cutie, but they're a lot more energetic and feisty (as opposed to Feisty) than that. I actually recognized a couple of the songs, which I wasn't expecting.

REM took the stage just before 8, and (as I expected they would) ripped into the opening track of their fantastic latest album Accelerate, "Living Well's the Best Revenge". Over the next two hours, they played another 7 tracks from Accelerate, and about 17 songs from throughout their brilliant career. Some titles: "Electrolite." "Sweetness Follows." "Country Feedback." "Disturbance at the Heron House." They even went as far back as their first couple of records, pleasing some of their longtime fans... "Time after Time (Annelise)" and "Second Guessing" and "West of the Fields" and "Gardening at Night". Fucking GARDENING AT NIGHT, people. That makes up for the fact that they didn't do anything from Lifes [sic] Rich Pageant.

They even did an acoustic version of "Let Me In", which I've got some video footage of. I hope the footage turned out; I'll post it, if it did.

In Rolling Stone's review of Accelerate, David Fricke alludes to the two different REMs of the last decade: the one that made the (subdued, reflective, experimental) albums, and the one that rocked like nobody's business in concert. It simply took Accelerate (an album they really, really needed to make) to help most people realize that they're still the best American rock and roll band in the business. (Who's their competition? Seriously, I'm asking.)

And DAMN do those Accelerate tracks sounds great live!

Read the full post.

Heading West

2008-05-21T23:12:00.003-06:00

Well - that unannounced hiatus lasted longer than the planned couple of days.

My brother was in town last week, and I spent some time entertaining him. Good time. Then the long weekend happened, and I spent the entire weekend doing sweet fuck all. I didn't even see a movie. Well, I did hang out with friends, had a barbeque and played their Wii. I MUST BUY A WII.

And now I'm off to Vancouver for the weekend. I'm really looking forward to it; I haven't been to Vancouver in about 2 years. I spent most of 1999 (and about half of 2001) in Vancouver, and although I have no interest in living there again, I love going back for visits. It's a beautiful city; I just can't wait to walk around downtown, hop on the ferry to North Van, come back downtown and wander up Granville Street, visit the gay village, and walk the seawall along English Bay. One of my favorite spots in Canada is the hill by the beach overlooking English Bay and Stanley Park and the islands. I could just sit there for hours. And have.

I'm also going to try and visit my Vietnamese girlfriend. When I lived there, I frequented a Vietnamese joint at the food court at the Pacific Centre, and I got the same thing pretty much every time. One of the staff there started referring to me as her boyfriend, and would recognize me every time I'd come back, even months or years later. I don't think I've seen her since some time in 2005, though, so I'm sure she's long forgotten me by now.

The main reason for the trip to Vancouver at this particular point in time is the REM concert on Friday night. I've been a huge fan of REM for a long, long time, and I've had the pleasure of seeing them live a couple of times already. There a phenomenal live band, and their brilliant new album Accelerate ought to translate well to a live setting. Opening for REM are Modest Mouse (meh) and The National. A friend of mine, the unrivalled King J, had recommended The National to me over a year ago, as a band he'd admired since their debut. (He's a rock journalist, and knows whereof he speaks.)

And because I've been getting into The National lately, I've kept the iPod Project on hold for an extra couple of weeks. I've spent much of my spare time listening to some new (and new-to-me) music lately: The National's Alligator and Boxer. Madonna's new album Hard Candy (which took a long time to grow on me). Duffy's Rockferry. And Robyn's new album Robyn. (Remember her? "Show Me Love"? Her new album's fantastic.)

And I'm about to start listening to Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago, after reading two recommendations of it, from my friend Brian and from the inimitable former Miss Alli at TWoP, Linda Holmes at Things What Things. But soon: I've got thousands of crappy songs on my iPod that I've got to get back to!

Coming soon: A full review (hopefully with pics) of the National/REM show!!!

Fastlove

2008-05-21T19:52:00.003-06:00

Um, did they just make the gay stripper say the line about being "bold and naked by your side" in the Father Figure portion of the George Michael medley on the American Idol finale?

Well then. Carry on.

Don't Forget the Lyrics!

2008-05-12T12:39:00.001-06:00

This was a lot of fun.

Primary Colors

2008-05-10T10:43:00.002-06:00

So I was doing the dishes tonight, grooving to the Hairspray soundtrack. (Oh, shut up. It's awesome and you know it.) And while "The Legend of Miss Baltimore Crabs" was playing, it occurred to me: omigod, Hillary Clinton is Velma Von Tussle!

No really. Velma's all about the shameless self-promotion, even going so far as to use questionable techniques in an election (stuffing the ballot box in the Miss Teenage Hairspray for her daughter; screwing the judges in her own Miss Baltimore Crabs pageant years earlier). And no one really likes her.

And then, while listening to the fantastic "Run and Tell That", it occurred to me: Barack Obama is Seaweed J Stubbs. Both are charismatic black men of the next generation who were raised by single mothers. And, since Michelle Obama isn't white, that's pretty much all I got by way of comparison.

Still, one of Seaweed's lyrics seems to work in this analogy as well:

I can't see
The reason it can't be
The kind of world where we all get our chance
The time is now!
And we can show 'em how
Just turn the music up and let's all dance!

I tried to carry the Hairspray analogy further, but then had a bit of cognitive dissonance, because John Travolta already basically played Bill Clinton, so let's just leave it at that.

No Sweat, Part 2

2008-05-06T20:55:00.001-06:00

So the city-wide hunt for a new anti-perspirant might be over. I've tried three different products over the last 10 days, and I think I might have found an adequate replacement for my longtime choice. Here's the rundown.

1. Degree Ultra Clear Cool Rush. Not a bad scent. It's one of those supposedly "clear" solids that nevertheless makes it look like you've got pit dandruff hours after putting it on. I HATE white flakes on my pits. God.

2. Right Guard Spray. Not bad. I accidentally grabbed the "scented" rather than unscented one, and holy hell does it have a strong scent. Still, I'm not really a fan of spray-on anti-perspirants, if only because I'm simply not that coordinated with my left hand. PLUS, it leaves a white flaky residue. More pit dandruff - argh!

3. Gillette Power Beads Clear Gel Cool Wave. Basically, this is as close as I could possibly get to my old favorite. Same brand, same scent, different form. The gel goes on surprisingly well, and doesn't take long to dry at all. It's a bit messy (just a bit), but not enough to drive me to any of the alternatives.

At least I don't have to try Tag Body Spray for Sick Cats. (And I would totally provide a link so that comment would make sense, if FOX weren't such assholes about youtube, or if I could access Hulu in Canada.)

So now that this issue of utmost importance has been settled, we now return to our regularly scheduled pop culture ranting.

iPod Project: Reconsidering How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

2008-05-06T20:13:00.001-06:00

So I've kinda put the iPod Project on hold over the last couple of weeks. I'll get back to it soon, but I wanted to spend some time acquainting myself with The National before the REM concert in Vancouver in two weeks. And I wanted to spend some time with the new Madonna album (which has gradually grown on me -- but it's not as good as Confessions on a Dancefloor).

I've also been spending some time with a couple of old favorites. I recently saw Young@Heart (more on that soon), and that's made me want to listen to Coldplay's X&Y. (Plus, their imminent new album has gotten me in a Coldplay state of mind.) I also finally had the chance to see U2 3D a few weeks back (ten-second judgment: great filmmaking, ok set list that would have been better if it had been the full-length concert).

But seeing U2 3D has led me to revisit U2's last album, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. I was hard on it when it first came out, and I still don't think it stands up to their best work... but it's got more highlights than I initially gave it credit for.

I really like "Vertigo" -- it's a great way to start the album, and it's got one of the greatest riffs The Edge has ever come up with. I don't like "Miracle Drug", and "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" is a great bridge in search of a worthy song. "Love and Peace Or Else" is a song I made fun of for the longest time, and I think it's still a bit of a mess, but it is better than I first gave it credit for.

Things pick up with "City of Blinding Lights", one of those big sweeping "Streets"-like epics that keep me coming back. "All Because of You" is a lot of fun, even if Bono cribbed the "choice"/"voice" couplet from Leonard Cohen and that he's likely singing about God, not a woman.

I still hate "A Man and a Woman". "Crumbs From Your Table" is ok, but I still hate the line "Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die". "One Step Closer" is just kinda... there. It doesn't really build to anything. It's a bit of a shrug.

And then: "Original of the Species". This is the best song on the album, period. One of my favorite Bono lines ever is "I want the light of what you got, and I want nothing that you're not." My favorite moment on the album is this song's bridge - Bono has no words for his joy, and all he can come up with is a string of "doo"s. (It must be something special if BONO of all people is speechless.) The album proper closes with "Yahweh", which I find profoundly humanistic, even if it's a conversation between Bono and God. (Some copies of the album, including mine, have a bonus track: "Fast Cars", which in an earlier incarnation was "Xanax and Wine", and it's a fun track.)

So, long story short (too late), time has been kind to How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. And I can't wait to hear what they come up with for their new album, due out by the end of the year.

4 Games to 1

2008-05-03T21:56:00.001-06:00

Na na na na...
Na na NA NA...
HEY - EEEYYY - EEEEYYYYYYY!
GOOD-BYE!

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

2008-04-30T20:18:00.002-06:00

I recently stumbled across an old episode of Cheers. It was a show I watched regularly in high school, starting around the time Shelley Long left. The ep I saw recently was featured both Diane and Coach, so it was well before my time.

Anyway, Diane was telling Coach about Thoreau's "Walden", and she quotes from the text.

Diane: In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.

Coach: Why did he say "Simplify" twice?

Not necessarily the funniest joke, but it still made me laugh.

Anyway, I was thinking about this scene when I was packing up for the move to Calgary. I got rid of so much stuff: All my CDs, almost all my kitchen stuff, a bunch of clothes. I even let my magazine subscriptions expire. I'd been a subscriber to Entertainment Weekly, off and on, since the magazine debuted. It's still one of my main resources for movie reviews, because (as I've previously discussed), Owen Gleiberman is the film critic whose opinion best matches mine.

But with the internet, I get to see Owen's new reviews every Wednesday. And, for some reason, it would take FOREVER for the latest issue to reach Calgary. If an issue of EW appears on newsstands in Toronto (and Vancouver) on Friday, it's not until the following Tuesday - ELEVEN DAYS LATER - that it appears in Calgary (on newsstands, and in mailboxes). For a weekly magazine, that's a concern. And considering Calgary is Canada's fourth largest (and, right now, likely most important) city, it's just inexplicable.

So anyway, I was hoping that the magazine distribution had improved in the couple of years since I left. And, alas, it has not. I hadn't bought any issues since moving back to Calgary, but I wanted to pick up the Summer Movie Preview, because I like their preview double issues. And I knew it appeared in other cities almost two weeks ago now... and when did it show up here? YESTERDAY. Gack.

On the plus side, it's looking like it could be a fun summer at the movies. Wall-E. Hamlet 2. Shyamalan's The Happening. Indy 4. Mamma Mia. It's all good!

Snap Judgment: "Violet Hill"

2008-04-29T19:13:00.001-06:00

Today, Coldplay released a preview of the first single from their upcoming fourth album. The album has the unfortunate title Viva La Vida, Or Death And All His Friends.

I've been a fan of Coldplay since a friend encouraged me to buy their debut album Parachutes when it was released stateside in late 2000. And while I acknowledge that the band can be a little...um... obvious with the emotions (cf., "Fix You", which I love but would never defend), I think many people miss that the band has a bit of an edge.

Thus far, their masterpiece is A Rush of Blood To The Head, their amazing second album, released in 2002. And it's got some dark songs on it: the thrilling, almost amelodic opener "Politik", the surprisingly aggressive "God Put A Smile Upon Your Face", and the amazing title track, which is still their best song. (Even 2005's X&Y was not without its dark moments, on songs like "White Shadows" and "Low" and "Twisted Logic".) Basically, if all you know of Coldplay is "Fix You" and "Yellow", that's not the full picture of what the band's about. (Not to take anything away from "Yellow", which still gives me goose bumps.)

So what's up for the fourth album? There are rumors of Spanish influences, although I don't expect them to be as blatant as they are in, say, Madonna's work. If "Violet Hill" is any indication, the band has not forgotten "dark", that's for sure.

There's a driving piano, which definitely sounds like it came from the same band that wrote "Politik"; there's some nice guitar work, and really interesting percussion. Best of all, there's not much falsetto. (Not that I'm opposed to ALL Chris Martin falsettos, but he did seem to be relying on it an awful lot, last time around.)

The best thing about "Violet Hill", for me, is that I can't wait to hear what the rest of the album sounds like. Two months to go!

iPod Project, Day 95

2008-04-28T21:26:00.003-06:00

In which Randy experiments with moving beyond his "white guys with guitars, or Madonna" range of his music collection.

Most of my listening experiments with techno occurred in the late-90s, which got me thinking. Were there any key rock albums released in the late-90s? Between, say, "OK Computer" in summer 97, and "All That You Can't Leave Behind" in October 2000? Most of my favorite artists were going thru assorted phases in the late-90s. U2 released Pop, which landed with a thud; Radiohead retreated into the studio and emerged with Kid A, easily the weirdest album to debut at #1 on the charts. REM, dealing with the retirement of Bill Berry, released Up, a really good album but hardly a rocking one. Springsteen was MIA. PJ Harvey released Is This Desire, a notably electronic (but also brilliant) departure from her earlier albums. Beck released the very mellow Mutations. Liz Phair released her great album whitechocolatespaceegg, which I still adore but it hardly set the culture on fire.

Really, it wasn't until 2000-2001, with U2's return and then the explosion of bands like The Strokes and The White Stripes that rock music really made a comeback. Hunh.

Anyway...

It was a bit of a slow week, because I've been listening to the new Madonna album , which has taken some time to sink in, but it's pretty fab.

Chemical Brothers, Dig Your Own Hole
Chemical Brothers, Surrender
DYOH is, 11 years later, still an incredible album. "Block Rockin' Beats" is one of those legendary late-90s songs that's held up remarkably well. "Setting Sun" features Noel Gallagher and sounds like "Tomorrow Never Knows", so even when he's not with Oasis, Noel can't help but sound like The Beatles. The album ends brilliantly with "Where Do I Begin" and "The Private Psychedelic Reel"... and if you'd told me I'd love a song called "The Private Psychedelic Reel" I'd be convinced you were crazy.
Surrender isn't as good, but it does feature a couple of killer tracks: "Hey Boy Hey Girl" and "Let Forever Be" (again, with Noel Gallagher).

Underworld, Beaucoup Fish
I picked this one up when it came out back in 99. There didn't seem to be much in the way of interesting rock music coming out that year (until Beck's underrated Midnite Vultures that fall), and this album got raves, and I loved "Born Slippy" in Trainspotting, so it was a natural purchase for me to make.

Fatboy Slim, You've Come A Long Way, Baby!
"Rockafeller Skank" rocks, and always will. "Praise You" is also legendary, and not just for its genius Spike Jonze-directed video. I also like "Soul Surfing".

Massive Attack, Blue Lines
It wasn't until years after this 1990 album came out that I actually picked it up. I'm sure I saw it on a "You must own all these albums!" list somewhere, at some point, which prompted the purchase. Never listened to it til now. I can see how it's a seminal work in its genre... but it's just not for me.

Daft Punk, Homework
"Da Funk" and "Around the World" hit it big when I was working at a dance club. And they're still pretty cool, but I really don't why I bothered buying the damn album.

Basement Jaxx, Rooty
Another of those albums I bought and doubt I ever listened to. It was part of the great album purchase streak of 2001, when I was living in Denver but in Vancouver for work for months, and taking advantage of the exchange rate. I must have bought close to 50 discs that spring. "Where's Your Head At" is the big single here, although I doubt I could have identified it as theirs before now.

The Prodigy, The Fat of the Land
"Firestarter" and "Breathe" are still great, great singles. The rest of it... meh.

Hal feat. Gillian Anderson, Extremis
THIS is indicative of how big an X-Files fan I was back in the day. This howler features Anderson whispering and moaning idiotic lyrics over a slow-tempo electronic backbeat. This single contains four versions of the song, each siller than the last. (Well, the intro to one of the versions has a vibe similar to Madonna's "Secret Garden", so that's not too terrible.)

Deee-Lite, World Clique
Doesn't really fit with the rest, since it came out about 8 years earlier. "Groove is in the Heart" is on the short list of the all-time greatest dance songs, period. The rest of the album, especially a track like "Power of Love", is pretty fun too.

Touch and Go, "Would you...?"
I bought this single after moving to Vancouver in spring, 1999. I was homesick for Halifax, where one of my roommates at the time was a DJ, and this was a minor hit in the club where both he and I worked. The lyrics aren't particularly subtle - the rest of the title question is "... go to bed with me?" - but the horns are terrific.

Propellerheads, Decksanddrumsandrockandroll
Miss Shirley Bassey singing "History Repeating"!!!! And... that's all I got.

Moby, 18
Moby, Play
I had Play's "Natural Blues" on another collection, and completely fell in love with it. The whole album is pretty good... even if every time I hear it I keep thinking of Eminem's classic dis: "You don't know me / you're too old / let go / it's over / Nobody listens to techno!"

Tricky, Angels With Dirty Faces
Bought it because PJ Harvey appears on "Broken Homes". Pretty sure I never listened to it til now; don't expect I will again.

Just past three months:
- Total number of songs: 7748
- Total duration of songs: 20.94 days
- Total number of songs listened to: 3062
- Total duration of songs listened to: 8.29 days
- Total number of songs remaining: 4686

I think I'm still well ahead of schedule, which means I'll have to start downloading lots of new stuff.

Read the full post.

No Sweat

2008-04-26T20:34:00.001-06:00

So you might have heard about the latest worldwide grocery crisis. I was at my local Safeway the other night, and was shocked and appalled by what I saw when I went up and down the aisles. I even checked out my local Co-Op, and saw the same thing. It's even extended beyond grocery stores -- the crisis was noticeable at Zellers, Wal-mart, even Shoppers Drug Mart and Rexall. You don't know how much something like this matters until it actually affects you personally, ya know?

Omigod, you guys, Gillette has stopped making my favorite anti-perspirant!!

I'm sure most people are brand-loyal when it comes to personal care products. (Well, when I was growing up, my mom wasn't -- shampoo and toothpaste were whatever was cheap. On the other hand, the soap was always Zest.) You find a set of products you like, and you keep using them. Soap-wise, I'm an Irish Spring guy -- I'm sure it's some type of residual homoerotic advertising brain-washing, from the hot guys the Irish Spring ads used to feature.

But for years, I've been using the Gillette Series Clear Stick, with the Cool Wave scent. NOT the invisible stick (the white stick that claims to be invisible, yet it still flakes and stains shirts), and NOT the clear gel (because the gel is cold and takes forever to dry). It's a clear stick, pretty much transparent, and it works well. But as I was wandering the aisles in grocery and drug stores over the last couple of days: gone!!!

And it's not the first time I've had to switch anti-perspirant brands, either; I think this was my third regular brand over the last 18-odd years. God, if I'd known it was going off the market, I'd've hoarded a few years' supply, like Elaine and the Today Sponge on Seinfeld.

So now I'm experimenting with different brands, different types. I'm trying a Degree Invisible Solid right now (it's got a good scent, but we'll see about the flaking and the shirt-staining issues). I might even try the gels again... maybe sprays and roll-ons even. (If you've got any recommendations, let me know.)

I Can't Explain

2008-04-22T21:31:00.004-06:00

In an email to a friend of mine earlier today, I said: "The more I think about Feist, the more I fucking hate her. So precious and twee. She's Canada's Belle and Sebastian." And I know that about 25% of my regular readers (by which I mean, of course, 1 of my 4 regular readers) are fans of Feist, so, uh... sorry, Brian!

The comment itself was pretty much apropos of nothing. We had chatted about her Juno wins (where I was more appalled by the fact that Arcade Fire lost Group of the Year to Blue Rodeo, because apparently it's 1988), and the fact that the ad for the Bell Lightbox at the Toronto Film Festival last year featured a snippet of Feist's song "I Feel It All". But it's the ubiquity of her "1234" in all those goddam iPod ads that pushed me over the edge.

So that got me thinking about other things I despise, either rationally (Michael Moore) or irrationally (Mariska Hargitay). So here's a partial list of Things I Despise Beyond All Reason.

Actors:
- Mariska Hargitay. She's the gold standard for things that irrationally drive me nuts. It's all because I hated her character on ER. I even had to stop watching SVU, regardless of my undying love for Chris Meloni, when I remembered who Mariska Hargitay was.
- Denzel Washington. Because he SHOUTS. ALL. THE. TIME.
- Sean Penn. Because he doesn't know the meaning of the word "subtlety".
- Russell Crowe. He lost me sometime around Gladiator, but it wasn't until he started talking about Ron Howard's "honor" that he made my "shut the fuck up" list.

Movies:
- Crash, American Beauty, A Beautiful Mind, because they won Oscars for their perceived yet mistaken importance, not their quality.
- Cars. The one flaw in Pixar's otherwise great library.
- Anything by Michael Moore, because he's a complete fraud who's more interested in self-promotion than in exposing truths.

Music:
- Belle and Sebastian, whom I had the displeasure of seeing live.
- Nickelback, because they suck.
- "Staring at the Sun", "Hey Jude", "Angie": songs I detest by bands that I love.

Etc:
- Hillary Clinton. And it's possible to hate her without being a misogynist.

Oh well

2008-04-21T23:20:00.002-06:00

So the Bruins couldn't do it. Still -- forcing the Habs to play 7 games in the opening round does not bode well for Montreal's chances to go all the way. So that's something, at least.

And here I sit, just building sandcastles in the sand...

BELIEVE!

2008-04-19T20:22:00.001-06:00

So I'm not exactly the biggest hockey fan. In terms of the Big Four sports in North America, I much prefer baseball and NFL football. I tend to only get interested in hocky during the playoffs, and usually only if a team I like is doing well. (Of course, now that I'm back in Calgary, I'll remain interested in the playoffs as long as the Flames last, which may only be another 26 hours.)

I approached the Boston-Montreal first round series with a certain amount of pragmatism: the Habs were the top team in the east, and hadn't lost to the Bruins all season. How could the 8th-place Bruins possibly beat them in a 7-game series. Well, we're now 6 games into that series, and the Bruins have won three of the games... including the two most recent ones.

Boston was down 3-1 in the series; Boston sports fans, with memories of the Red Sox' unbelievable comeback against the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS, scoffed at the suggestion that being down 3-1 is some kind of challenge. And yet, the fact that we're now two days away from game 7 is beyond unexpected. And it looks like Montreal's controversial goaltending decision -- trading Cristobal Huet, putting their fate in the hands of Carey Price -- might be coming back to bite them in the ass.

The Bruins embarrassed Price in game 5 the other night, and tonight's unbelievable third period suggests that Price may have reached his limit for his rookie season. At the end of the second period, the score was 2-1 Montreal. The final score of the game: 5-4 Boston. Six goals were scored in the third period. Five of those goals were scored in a five-minute chunk of the second half of the period; it was some of the most exciting hockey I've ever seen. (Keep in mind, of course, that I'm not the biggest hockey fan, so there's quite a bit of hyperbole in that declaration.)

Game 7 is Monday night. In Montreal, of course. Carey Price is going to have the weight of the world on his shoulders, being at the center of the biggest controversy in the best rivalry of the NHL's most storied franchise. If he doesn't fold under the pressure, I'll be incredibly surprised.

It should be one hell of a game.

Lazy Friday

2008-04-18T23:33:00.003-06:00

Because I wanted to post something, and because I simply don't have the energy right now to comment on Forgetting Sarah Marshall or U23D (both of which I saw today), or tonight's spectacular episode of Battlestar Galactica (I can't believe that did that to !!! Shocker!!!), here are a couple of random, hilarious images I stumbled across today.

Nicked from a friend's facebook profile:

And from an email containing fake motivational posters:

I'm a Baracker, baby I'm a Baracker

2008-04-16T23:31:00.005-06:00

Bruce Springsteen comes out of the closet!

No, not like that -- he's simply endorsed Barack Obama for president, in a message posted on his official website. Bruce also supported John Kerry in 2004; but, like, many of us, that support was more a vote against Bush than it was a vote for Kerry. (And that's why Kerry lost.) And after Reagan's misguided attempt to appropriate "Born in the USA" back in 1984, I don't blame Bruce for picking sides and letting us know.

In the message, Bruce states, about Obama:

He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where "...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone."

That last line is a quote from the great song "Long Walk Home" from Bruce's amazing 2007 album "Magic". The verse in "Long Walk Home" containing that line is perhaps the most damning indictment of the Bush administration, all the more so for being so understated:

My father said "Son, we're lucky in this town
It's a beautiful place to be born
It just wraps its arms around you
Nobody crowds you, nobody goes it alone.
That flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't."

Its gonna be a long walk home.

Really, what else needs to be said?

iPod Project, Day 83

2008-04-16T20:43:00.002-06:00

I'm nearing the end of my greatest hits collections phase... not sure where I'm going to go next. Maybe random Canadian stuff? Early-90s alt rock? More soundtracks? Hmmmmm. But for now...

Cher, Greatest Hits
Well, of course. But there are some GREAT songs here. "If I Could Turn Back Time" is a late-80s classic. This collection unfortunately doesn't include Cher's duet with Butt-head on "I Got You Babe", opting instead for the original version.

Ace of Base, Gold and Platinum Collection
In my defense, I didn't actually buy this. (I've got friends with bad music taste, so I can take advantage of their collections from time to time.) Having said that, "The Sign" is actually a pretty good song.

Boney M, 20th Century Hits
Many fond memories of "Rasputin", still one of my favorite dance songs ever.

ABBA, More Gold
The original ABBA Gold might contain all the heavyweights, but this is still a great collection.

Erasure, Pop! The First 20 Hits
In North America, at least, this title is quite the misnomer. Let's see... there's "A Little Respect"... and that's about it. (This collection also pre-dates their only other notable North American single, the beautiful "Always".)

New Order, Best of New Order (UK)
As with Erasure, here's another band that was never that big in North America. So this sixteen-track collection contains "Bizarre Love Triangle"... and "Blue Monday"... and a bunch of stuff I've never heard before, and won't again. (Fortunately, I've got their great single "Temptation" on the Trainspotting soundtrack, since it ain't here.)

Nina Simone, Verve Jazz Essentials
A cheap-bin purchase, after I became interested in Nina Simone, thanks to Before Sunset and the ads for Six Feet Under. Got "Four Women" later, which has many of the same tracks.

Patsy Cline, 12 Greatest Hits
More for her voice itself than for the country genre. "Walking After Midnight" and "Sweet Dreams" and "She Got You" and "Crazy" are mandatory.

Chris De Burgh, Spark to a Flame
Because "Patricia The Stripper", campy as it is, is still pretty great. I'm not much of a fan of "Lady In Red", but "High On Emotion" is pretty fab.

Violent Femmes, Add It Up (1981 - 1993)
Not necessarily for "Blister in the Sun" - which is, of course, the only Femmes song most hipsters can identify -- but mainly for "American Music", which just takes me back to first year university. I grew up sheltered in PEI in the 80s; there wasn't much exposure, pre-internet, to things like "college radio" or "alternative rock". "American Music" was, thanks to my friend Kyona, one of my first introductions to cool music.

The Animals, Forever Gold
A cheap bin pick-up, after I fell in love with a couple of covers of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood".

Shirley Bassey, Solitaire
A cheap-bin purchase at the same time I bought The Animals, but every music collection should have "Goldfinger" and "I Who Have Nothing".

Shirley Bassey, Get The Party Started
Last summer, RollingStone.com posted a link to the video for Miss Bassey's cover of Pink's "Get This Party Started". And omigod you guys, I'm not even kidding, it's one of the most awesome things I've ever heard. The rest of this album contains remixes of some other Bassey songs AND featured her wrapping her magnificent voice around "I Will Survive". (Wow, this whole thing is really, really gay.)

Prince, The Hits / The B-Sides
Listening to this 3 disc collection in one sitting, it's easy to make an argument that Prince was the greatest and most important solo artist of the 1980s. (His 90s stuff isn't nearly as compelling.) So many great songs: "When Doves Cry", "Let's Go Crazy", "Raspberry Beret", "Kiss", and on and on and on. I got this as an asked-for Christmas gift back in, I think, 1993. I then proceeded to muck up the actual disc of Disc One (some scratches some stains -- only half the songs would play), which I then replaced about 8 years later via Columbia House. Also, my one actually *good* karaoke performance occurred with my buddy Matt at a work Christmas party in 1999 (ha!), when we did an absolutely extraordinary duet of "Kiss". Because it's all falsetto, you don't actually need a good singing voice to perform it. Of course, I was also drunk to the gills that night, but existing video evidence actually supports my claim. (Side note: that night is also the reason why I refuse to drink alcohol at work Christmas functions (well, technically it was the final nail in that particular coffin), but there's no need to get into the details.) Still, why no "Batdance" or "Party Man"? (And I'm only half kidding.)

As I near the three-month mark:
- Total number of songs: 7711
- Total duration of songs: 20.86 days
- Total number of songs listened to: 2864
- Total duration of songs listened to: 7.64 days
- Total number of songs remaining: 4847

Read the full post.

Juxtaposition of the Day

2008-04-15T12:30:00.001-06:00

Two headlines this morning from the main page of Toronto Star's website, thestar.com:

Monroe film: Some like it very hot
Kennedy would have pulled out, film suggests

The first headline, of course, refers to the recently discovered Marilyn Monroe sex tape. The second headline, alas, refers to Vietnam.

Red

2008-04-13T22:05:00.003-06:00

Sunday night, 10:05 pm. Sitting here in the La-Z-Boy, half-watching an episode of Family Guy. It's a beautiful night, about 20 degrees. (Celsius, of course.) The balcony door's open. All of a sudden I hear this low rumbling noise outside, followed by a some loud, raucous cheering.

"Oh, the Flames must have scored," I thought. Turned the channel to the hockey game... and indeed the Flames scored, tying the game at 3. (San Jose scored three goals in, like, the first three minutes of the game, which for some reason I found hysterical.)

I live in a great neighborhood. Technically called "Lower Mount Royal", it's just south of 17th Ave SW, the infamous Red Mile of the Flames' 2004 playoff run, where thousands of Calgarians partied in the streets as the Flames continued their unlikely run to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals that year. We're only three games into the playoffs this year, so there hasn't been much in the way of public partying... yet. If the Flames manage to pull this win out of their ass in the next 30 min or so, I expect we'll see the first street celebration.

The funny thing is: during the playoff run four years ago, I hated the Red Mile shenanigans. (Much like every summer, I hated all the foolishness that went on during the Calgary Stampede.) And yet, when I moved to Toronto, it was one of the things I surprisingly missed about Calgary. (And yes, I even missed Stampede. Although maybe that was just the Mini-Donuts.)

It's just one of the many reasons why, when my plane flew into the Calgary airport on Nov 23 and I had a great view of the downtown skyline, I simply knew I was home.

Face the Music

2008-04-08T21:40:00.004-06:00

I love Camille Paglia. I may not always agree with her (although I do agree with her about Hillary Clinton), but I love the way her mind works, and I love the way she writes. I haven't read any of her books, though I keep meaning to pick up Sexual Personae sometime.

During her most recent column on Salon, in which she answered reader mail, someone asked her what she thought of "Madonna's new face" when she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Camille responded:

Madonna fans of the world (among whom I number myself, despite my sniping) should view her as a very grand architectural monument in slow stages of repair and restoration. As with the bitterly controversial cleaning of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, we will all have our opinions about whether the conservators have gone too far or not far enough. But Madonna's still out there kicking, so she needs as much lamination as she can get. We don't want her retiring like a creaky recluse to her flat, as her role model Marlene Dietrich had to do at the end in Paris. So go for it, Madge, but we won't be surprised if one of these days you smash into a thousand tinkling shards right onstage.

Hee hee.

iPod Project, Day 75

2008-04-08T19:07:00.005-06:00

Another week of greatest hits collections. All these greatest hits albums, and I DON'T have Paula Abdul? Or Roxette? Or Culture Club? Or Sass Jordan?

I've also started listening to Boxer, by The National, as prep for the REM concert in Vancouver at the end of May. But I'll need a few more listens of that one.

Don Henley, Actual Miles
It's a little odd that I actually like Don Henley, since I really don't have much use for The Eagles. But Henley's solo work - especially songs like "The Boys of Summer" and "The End of the Innocence" and "The Heart of the Matter" and especially the stunning "Last Worthless Evening" - is pretty great. I have a very specific memory of "The End of the Innocence": I once saw the video on MuchMusic on a cloudy August afternoon, at about 1:45 pm. It's a little weird, I know... but much like Heart's "These Dreams" takes me back to junior high, this song just takes me back there. (This collection includes Henley's cover of "Everybody Knows". Apparently, I have versions of this song performed by at least four different artists: Henley, Rufus Wainwright, Concrete Blonde, and Leonard Cohen's original.)

Aerosmith, Big Ones
Not a bad collection -- it's fortunately missing "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" -- but I'm still not quite sure why I bought it. "Love in an Elevator", maybe? Or "Janie's Got a Gun"? "Dude Looks Like a Lady"? Hmmm.

Blondie, The Best of Blondie
Classics: "One Way or Another", "Atomic", "Rapture", "Heart of Glass"... even "The Tide Is High". Great stuff! Sidenote: I can't believe Kirsten Dunst is apparently playing Deborah Harry in the upcoming Blondie biopic. It really should be Scarlett Johannson. (Nothing against Dunst, whom I generally really like.)

Tears For Fears, Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82-92)
Mandatory if only for the amazing "Woman in Chains", featuring Oleta Adams. I have fond memories of "Shout" and "Everybody Wants To Rule The World", but my god "Shout" is a long song. Six and a half minutes! Of repetitive choruses! Still, as I listened to this album, I realized I knew more TFF songs than I thought I did. Hunh.

Crowded House, Recurring Dream (Greatest Hits)
For "Something So Strong" and "Don't Dream It's Over" and (my fave) "Better Be Home Soon".

John Mellencamp, The Best That I Could Do
I will admit a soft spot for "Jack and Diane" -- after a few (or a few too many) beer, who HASN'T observed that life goes on "long after the thrill of living is gone"? Mellencamp might be, like Bon Jovi, grade-B Springsteen, but "Jack and Diane" is as close as most people could get to, say, "Thunder Road". I'm also a big fan of "The Authority Song". I don't mind songs like "Little Pink Houses" and "ROCK in the USA", even if they make me cringe a little. I think I bought this to round out a Columbia House purchase requirement at some point... I'm pretty sure I never listened to it until now.

The Doors, Greatest Hits
While they're not really my thing, I think every CD collection should include "Break On Through". And likely "Light My Fire", which helped the team I was on win Name That Tune at Money Pennies a few weeks back. See, for the bonus round or whatever, you had to identify the song as quickly as possible. My hand was up the second I heard the opening drum beat... of course, I thought it was Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone". Fortunately, by the time the host turned off the music, the distinct keyboards had already started, so it was an easy victory.

The Who, Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy
When it comes to Major British Rock Bands From the 60s-70s, I definitely prefer The Rolling Stones. (Obviously.) I picked up a couple of discs by The Who in a cheap bin at one point, and this one features some great singles like "Magic Bus" and "I Can See For Miles" and "My Generation" and "Pinball Wizard", a song that makes me chuckle and wince for reasons relating to drunken shenanigans back in Halifax. (And I'm glad, really, that Peter keeps bringing it up, so that all of my Calgary friends know the story. GOD.)

The Clash, The Story of The Clash (Vol 1)
So. London Calling is an absolutely superb album, one of the greatest rock albums of all time. And "Should I Stay or Should I Go" (formerly my ringtone) is a great fuckin' song. But I can't say that I'm especially impressed with what I've heard of the rest of The Clash. (I'm a philistine, I know.)

Simon & Garfunkel, Greatest Hits
"Mrs. Robinson", "The Boxer", "Cecilia"... classics. "America" makes me think of Almost Famous... from back when Cameron Crowe knew how to make movies. Simpsons nerd note: until I heard this, I had no idea that Mr. Burns quotes "The 59th Street Bridge Song" right before he got shot.

Poison, Greatest Hits
"Talk Dirty To Me"? "Fallen Angel"? "Unskinny Bop"? If you don't like these songs... well, you obviously weren't a teenager in the 80s. And in terms of big hair band ballads, you can't beat "Something To Believe In" or especially "Every Rose Has Its Thorn". (Still, at 18 tracks, there is A LOT of filler here.)

Stevie Nicks, Timespace - The Best of Stevie Nicks
Random thoughts while I listened to Her Royal Highness, Queen Stevie: the South Park goat in Afghanistan... Lucy Lawless's definitive Stevie impersonation on SNL, opening a Tex-Mex restaurant ("Now there you go again, you say you want burritos..."). And "Stand Back" always makes me think of Jason (aka Bebe) and his hilarious impersonation.

Dolly Parton, The Best of the RCA Years
Look, Dolly's a legend. If only for "Jolene". Or "Nine to Five". Or her beautiful, original version of "I Will Always Love You" (which is still better than Whitney's, if you ask me). I also have a fondness for "Islands in the Stream" (unfortunately expressed via karaoke duets a couple of times). In fact, remember when she stepped on Kenny's foot while they performed the song live at, I think, the American Music Awards? Well, her "Excuse me, Kenny" has become part of the vernacular among me and a certain group of my friends.

The Supremes, The Ultimate Collection
After partying and working at Reflections for a couple of years, I'm completely conditioned to expect the ugly lights to go on when I hear the opening notes of "Reflections". It's 3:30 am and I'm frantically downing the last half of a beer I likely shouldn't have ordered in the first place. Good times.

Ike and Tina Turner, Greatest Hits
Of course, their cover of "Proud Mary" is justifiably legendary, and "River Deep, Mountain High" is an absolutely exquisite song.

Pet Shop Boys, Discography
Lots of great tracks, and I always loved their version of "Where the Streets Have No Name" which also mixes in "I Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You".

Elvis Presley, The Top Ten Hits
I'm most definitely not an Elvis scholar, and would consider myself at best a casual fan. This collection is a pretty good overview, I guess. *shrug*

Chuck Berry, The Great Twenty-Eight
The Ramones, All The Stuff and More
Two collections by artists who basically wrote the same song over and over again.

David Bowie, Greatest Hits 1969-74
Got this from a friend of mine recently. And it's made me decide that I need to get some more Bowie, ASAP.

Sly and the Family Stone, Greatest Hits
If only for "I Want To Take You Higher". Oh, and "Dance to the Music". And "Everyday People".

Janet Jackson, Design of a Decade
So many classic songs from her first two albums! "Nasty" has always been a favorite, and I adore "Love Will Never Do (Without You)". I still like "Escapade", even though I once heard it on an endless loop for about 90 min at the Pizza Delight in Summerside. (The only thing missing is "If", from her third album.)

Mariah Carey, #1s
Um... I think I must have bought this because I love "Vision of Love", her first and best single. "Love Takes Time" is pretty good too. Never listened to the thing in its entirety until now... don't think I ever will again.

After two and a half months:
- Total number of songs: 7711
- Total duration of songs: 20.86 days
- Total number of songs listened to: 2590
- Total duration of songs listened to: 6.91 days
- Total number of songs remaining: 5121

About 1/3 of the way thru. Not bad.

Read the full post.

Twelfth? Right.

2008-04-07T19:44:00.004-06:00

This post will not make any sense if you don't watch Battlestar Galactica. Move along; nothing to see here.

As of the third season finale, we've met 11 of the 12 Cylon models. Four of the "Final Five" were revealed in the finale, and some of them - particularly Saul Tigh - shocked the hell out of me. Tigh, who fought beside Adama in the first Cylon war and who killed his wife for collaborating with the Cylons, was one of them. Of course, he didn't know it until "All Along The Watchtower" happened, but still: that reveal left me doing my best Ricky Ricardo "You got some 'splainin' to do..."

(Side note: and how frakking GREAT is Michael Hogan in the role of Tigh? He's right up there with The Wire's Andre Royo as an actor whose great work is woefully underrated.)

The reveal of the Four Cylons really opened up the possibilities for the identity of the final Cylon. It could be absolutely anyone. And we know that the identity of the Final Fifth (tm Alan Sepinwall) will be revealed this season. I don't spend any time trolling around for Galactica spoilers; I pretty much only read the weekly recaps at The House Next Door and What's Alan Watching and Television Without Pity (and you should read them, if you don't). Just something to keep in mind as I now make concrete my prediction for the Final Fifth.

It's GOT to be Laura Roslin.

"President Roslin? That makes no sense!" you say. Oh, and Tigh DOES? Still, I really have no great reason for thinking it might be Roslin. Well, I've got one reason. Remember the opera house dream in the season finale, which turned out to be a shared folie a trois among Roslin, Sharon, and Six? Why should only two of the people who had the dream be Cylons? The opera house dream is analogous to the "All Along The Watchtower" scenes that united Tigh and Tyrol and Tory and Anders, as they discovered their Cylonicity. (Similarly, Roslin's chamalla-induced visions aren't really that different than what Three (that's Lucy Lawless's model number, right?) did, as she attempted to see the faces of the Final Five herself.)

Plus, I've got a great idea for how Roslin's Cylon nature could be revealed. After years of simmering sexual tension, Roslin and Adama finally give in to their baser instincts. And as they (tastefully, of course) commingle, Roslin rolls over on top of Adama... and we see her spine glowing red.

Seriously, how mother-frakking awesome would that be?!?!?

Like I said, I don't scour the web for BSG spoilers, and this is just my own rather unthought-out prediciton. But there's no way in hell it could be worse than the last prediction I made on this blog.

White and Nerdy

2008-04-05T19:25:00.002-06:00

I wouldn't be surprised if this kid gets the holy living snot beaten out of him regularly at school:

Still, this is the type of thing I might've done in school if youtube (or, shit, the internet) existed in the late-80s. Geeky to an extreme AND somewhat closeted? Yeah, those were my high school years.

Back in the day, we did have the opportunity to make movies as assignments in French class. And since I had the best French-speaking abilities of my group of friends, I tended to have the major role by default. I even played a chubbier Dieter in an SNL Sprockets parody. (Like I said, geeky and closeted!)

The Shining

2008-04-04T23:52:00.004-06:00

Some thoughts about Martin Scorsese's fabulous Stones concert film Shine A Light:
- Ya know, all things considered, Mick Jagger looks pretty damn great in IMAX. (Keith Richards, however, does not.)
- In fact, I think the IMAX presentation actually highlights just how magnetic a performer Mick Jagger really is. (He IS big; it's the rock stars that got small.)
- The opening sequence of the movie was brilliant. Snippets of Scorsese and the band and various others trying, long-distance, to work out the logistics of the filming... Scorsese wishing Mick would put together a setlist, Mick wishing Scorsese would limit cameras and camera movement... Scorsese finding out that certain lights would actually burn people alive if kept on for more than 18 seconds.
- Lisa Fischer, their backup singer, is fuckin' hot.
- Bobby Keys on sax! Of course!
- The third song is "She Was Hot". Really? A songbook that deep and rich and you do "She Was Hot"? And ya know what, it was actually pretty great.
- There may be a bit too much Some Girls on the setlist for my taste, but oh well.
- And speaking of "Some Girls", they cut a couple of lines, including "Black girls just wanna get fucked all night / I just don't have that much jam." Hard to tell if the band cut the line out of the performance, or if it was simply edited out. (I actually think it might be the latter.)
- One early highlight: "Loving Cup", featuring Jack White. It's one of my favorite Stones songs ("I'm the man that brings you roses when you ain't got none" is one of my favorite Jagger lyrics), and Jack was downright giddy. He's clearly a huge fan, and just loves being able to perform with the band.
- Keith does a fantastic version of another of my favorite Stones songs, "You Got The Silver". His voice hasn't really aged well, but it's not like he had a great singing voice to begin with.
- Christina Aguilera dueting with Mick on "Live With Me" - fantastic. Until now, the only thing she had in common with the Stones was the fact that they both had albums named "Stripped".

Great stuff -- and more enjoyable than anything else Scorsese has done this decade!

Ruined

2008-04-02T19:00:00.002-06:00

Apparently, one of the most anticipated spring movie releases is the adaptation of Scott Smith's novel The Ruins, a book about a group of tourists who explore some ancient Mexican ruins and the horrible events that happen while they do. EW called it the second best novel of 2006 (next to Cormac McCarthy's The Road), and Stephen King has called it, so the ads for the movie tell me, the best horror novel of the new century. The movie itself doesn't have much of a pedigree, but there was enough buzz about the book, so that should be enough.

So... why aren't there any reviews published online yet?

None of the major publications, like Variety or Hollywood Reporter or EW, have published reviews yet. As of 6:30 pm MDT, there are NO reviews for The Ruins on Rotten Tomatoes. No screenings for critics AND no sneak previews for general audiences? That's a sure sign of a quality film, right there.

So, if the movie's as bad as I think it will be, maybe that will help people realize that The Ruins was just an awful book to begin with. The book shifted perspectives among its four main characters, which only highlighted how interchangeable the characters actually were. It ultimately doesn't have a plot, since nothing the characters did - apart from not going to the ruins - could have changed the outcome. And the ruins themselves are just stupid. They've apparently evolved or become alive or something, and can mimic the ringing of a cell phone. Run away!!!!

I loved Smith's first book, A Simple Plan, and the movie that Sam Raimi made from it. Smith then made us wait, like, 12 years for a follow-up. Maybe he shouldn't have rushed it.

Well, obviously

2008-04-01T00:33:00.002-06:00

So I'm sitting here in the La-Z-Boy, planning for a really late night because I'm monitoring some work stuff until, like, 4:30, and I see an ad for The Tonight Show. Jodie Foster's a guest tonight. And, the announcer helpfully tells us, tonight she'll be "confronting her fear of snakes".

Ahem.

Headline of the day

2008-03-30T17:01:00.002-06:00

From the Calgary Herald's website:

Calgary's Earth Hour effort uses more power, not less

HA! Calgary's gesture was apparently emptier than most other cities'. I can't take all the credit, but I did have all of my lights on for the whole hour, including the light in my microwave and that oddly placed light just outside my bathroom and bedroom. Every little bit helps.

Toasters!

2008-03-29T21:22:00.003-06:00

So I must be excited about this week's return of Battlestar Galactica, quite possibly the best show on TV that's not named The Wire. While walking in my neighborhood earlier today, I passed by a store called Spy City, and I had to stare at its windows for, like, 30 seconds before I could figure out that what I thought said "fracking systems" was actually "tracking systems". I blame it on the font and the lower-case t.

As a refresher, here's a terrific recap of the first three seasons of BSG. It's not as good as the similarly styled recap of the first 5.5 seasons of The Sopranos, but it's a thorough summary, and it's got some big laughs:

iPod Project, Day 65

2008-03-29T19:38:00.002-06:00

Before getting into a bunch of greatest hits albums this past week, American Idol's two weeks of Beatles / Lennon-McCartney songs led me to listen to a couple of my less-favorite Beatles albums. But after that, the cheese-fest begins!

The Beatles, The Beatles (The White Album)
It's definitely not among my fave Beatles albums. It's representative of their growing divergences in the late 60s; the album is actually anti-cohesive. The "John" songs have nothing in common with the "Paul" songs, which have nothing in common with the "George" songs. There are still some undeniable classics here -- "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Back in the USSR", "Don't Pass Me By", "Blackbird", "Birthday", "Helter Skelter" -- but there are also some odd disasters. "Honey Pie" is ok, but "Wild Honey Pie"? Seriously? And then there's "Revolution 9", which I don't think I ever managed to listen to in its entirety until now. And I never will again.

The Beatles, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Here is one of my more controversial assessments: this is the most overrated album in the Beatles' catalogue. In fact, if you remove "A Day in the Life" (one of their two or three very best and most important songs), Sgt Pepper is a perfectly mediocre album. I get that it's an important record, and it showed that a pop band could seriously explore different instrumentations, different musical styles, and all that. However, just because the Beatles COULD do it didn't mean they SHOULD do it. Apart from the title track, "When I'm Sixty-Four", "Lovely Rita", and of course "A Day in the Life"... most of it is just boring. Experimentation for experimentation's sake.

Wham!, The Best of Wham!
First off, "I'm Your Man" is one of the best songs of the 80s; that song alone is worth the price. "Freedom" and "Everything She Wants" and "Last Christmas" are also great tracks, and I'll also admit a fondness for "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." (Oh, shut up.)

George Michael, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Best of George Michael
One disc of ballads ("For the Heart"), one disc of dance stuff ("For the Feet"). You've likely only heard of about 6 of the ballads, but some of them are classics: "Careless Whisper", "Father Figure", "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" with Elton John. The dance stuff is great: "Freedom 90" is the best thing he's ever done (and the accompanying supermodel-studded video directed by David Fincher is one of the best videos ever), and I also love "Fastlove", "Too Funky", "Monkey", and "Faith". It's almost unforgivable that the album doesn't include the real version of "I Want Your Sex", instead including "I Want Your Sex pt 2", which is basically a footnote to great original track.

Whitney Houston, The Greatest Hits
Like George Michael's, this collection is divided into slow and fast discs. The first disc collects her fantastic ballads, songs like "You Give Good Love", "Saving All My Love For You" (which I hadn't realized until recently was about an affair with a married man -- one of many things that went over my pre-teen head in the mid-80s), "All At Once", "The Greatest Love Of All", "All The Man That I Need" (which, for drag-queen related reasons, makes me chuckle EVERY time I hear "He fills me UP!"), "Didn't We Almost Have It All" -- wow, she really racked them up on her first couple of records. As for her later ballads, I prefer Dolly's original "I Will Always Love You"; I think "My Love Is Your Love" is one of her best songs. Disc 2 has some problems -- it's almost exclusively remixes of both her slow and fast songs. So, it doesn't include the original "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" or "It's Not Right But It's OK" or "Step By Step". Oddly enough, disc 2 concludes with her fantastic Olympics anthem "One Moment In Time" and her stirring rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner", which she performed "live" (were the vocals pre-recorded?) at the 1991 Super Bowl. And now that she's dumped her deadweight crack-addict husband, I can't wait for Whitney's inevitable big comeback.

Aretha Franklin, Greatest Hits
I bought a 2-disc collection of the Queen of Soul's hits when I lived in Denver; I believe this particular collection was only an import from the UK. Hard to argue with her voice, or with legendary songs like "Respect" or "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" or "Natural Woman"; I think my favorite of her songs is likely "Think". This collection also features her version of "Son of a Preacher Man", a song I have on my iPod four separate times by three different artists.

Eurythmics, Greatest Hits
Aretha led to Eurythmics because of "Sisters are Doing it for Themselves". There's a bunch of really great stuff on this disc -- my two fave Eurythmics tracks are likely "Would I Lie To You?" and the minor hit "Angel". (Not to be confused with "There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)", which is nearly as good.) I wish this one-disc collection included "Right By Your Side" and "IT's Alright (Baby's Coming Back)", but I don't miss those tracks enough for an upgrade.

Fine Young Cannibals, The Finest
For "She Drives Me Crazy" and "Good Thing" and "Johnny Come Home" and "Don't Look Back" and their terrific cover of "Suspicious Minds".

Rick Astley, Platinum and Gold Collection
Oh shut up. You KNOW you love "Together Forever".

Belinda Carlisle, Greatest Hits
Look, "Mad About You", "Heaven Is a Place on Earth", "Circle in the Sand", "Leave a Light On", "I Get Weak" and "I Feel The Magic" are classics. And "Summer Rain" has got to be one of the best songs of the 80s.

Taylor Dayne, Greatest Hits
Another of the best songs of the 80s is Dayne's "I'll Be Your Shelter". This collection also includes the great singles "Tell It To My Heart", "Don't Rush Me", "I'll Always Love You", "With Every Beat of My Heart" and "Love Will Lead You Back".

The Bangles, Greatest Hits
"Manic Monday", "Walk Like an Egyptian", "In Your Room" -- what's not to like there? Bonus points for "Eternal Flame", which we've been known to give the full-on drunken falsetto singalong treatment, from time to time.

Heart, These Dreams: Greatest Hits
Oh, those junior high dances, trying to slow dance awkwardly to "These Dreams"!

The Police, Every Breath You Take: The Singles
The first cassette I ever owned was Synchronicity. It was a Christmas gift in the fourth grade, the same day I got my first cassette player. (I got my second cassette later that day, a compilation named "Chart Action!, which was awesome.) Looking back, I can't say that I'm a huge fan of The Police, and every time I hear "Roxanne" I think of the friends episode where Phoebe was singing it to Ross as "Ross can!"

Tina Turner, Simply the Best
I know this isn't the most original insight, but Tina's just AWESOME. It's funny, though, that this collection isn't really stronger than it is. She had her huge comeback with Private Dancer, which had only a couple of great tracks -- "What's Love Got To Do With It", "Better Be Good To Me" -- but she's just such an unequalled icon that it's almost moot.

Wilson Phillips, Greatest Hits
Ok, so I never actually *bought* this (even I have my limits), but they had a handful of good singles -- "Hold On", "Release Me", "Impulsive". And remember the video for "Hold On"? With the trio walking along the beach during the bridge of the song? I love that walk. (It's seriously, like, only four steps, but friends of mine make a big deal of me HAVING to do that walk while listening to the song.) (Oh, shut up.)

Cyndi Lauper, 12 Deadly Cyns
And speaking of songs that went over my head when I was 12, I had no idea "She-Bop" was about masturbation until years later. This is a good collection of Cyn's great songs: I'm particularly fond of "True Colors" and "Time After Time" and her exquisite cover of Roy Orbison's "I Drove All Night" (suck it, Celine).

Bonnie Tyler EP
Just a four-track disc I picked up in a cheap bin. It's got "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Holding Out For a Hero" and "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" and "Faster Than The Speed Of Night".

Duran Duran, Decade
And yet ANOTHER song that went way over my head in the mid-80s: "The Reflex". It's pretty blatantly about sex, innit? "Wild Boys" still fuckin' rocks, though.

Bon Jovi, Crossroad
"Bad Medicine", "You Give Love a Bad Name", "Lay Your Hands On Me", "I'll Be There For You", "Wanted Dead Or Alive". For a band that's, at best, grade-B Springsteen, those are some killer tracks. (Where's "Living In Sin" or "Born To Be My Baby", though?)

So I've just passed the two-month mark, and here's where things stand:
- Total number of songs: 7711
- Total duration of songs: 20.86 days
- Total number of songs listened to: 2119
- Total duration of songs listened to: 5.77 days
- Total number of songs remaining: 5592

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Leave A Light On

2008-03-27T20:56:00.000-06:00

So this Saturday night, from 8-9 pm, it's "Earth Hour". To acknowledge the effects of climate changes, people everywhere are asked to turn of their lights for an hour. Entire communities, towns, cities are getting into the act, by turning off all non-essential lights in municipal building everywhere.

Pardon my French, but that's fuckin' retarded.

I know that I'm not the most objective observer here. I remain a global warming skeptic. I refused to see "An Inconvenient Truth" not for environmental reasons but because it offended my film-snob nature: it's a filmed POWERPOINT presentation, people. And, yes, the Ayn Rand-admiring part of me can't help but think that the root of the environmental movement is fundamentally anti-human: "The earth would be so much better off if we'd never evolved!" Isn't that what this empty gesture of turning off lights is about?

Ya know what it reminds me of? That idiotic "30-hour famine" thing that high schools do. "Let's not eat for 30 hours, so we can feel what it's like for all those poor, starving people in Africa. Wow, look what GOOD PEOPLE we are. We stopped eating for MORE THAN AN ENTIRE DAY." And, yes, raising money for less-fortunate parts of the world is a good idea (I have seen 6 U2 concerts...), but can the self-important bullshit already.

Anyway.

I'll be the guy in Calgary whose apartment is fully powered from 8-9 pm Sat night. All the lights will be on. The TV, DVD player, and VCR will all be in use. The iPod will be attached to the home theater, and something will be blaring out the window. Haven't decided what, yet; maybe I'll make a "lights" playlist. The stove will be on, the microwave will be on, the toaster oven will be on. I might not even be cooking anything! Shit, I might even keep the fridge door open. Maybe I'll plug in the air conditioner, for good measure. If you're near 17th Ave SW Saturday night, stop by. I'll be easy to find!

And wouldn't it be funny if the sudden power surge caused by entire cities turning on their lights at 9 pm caused outages?

Top of the Worlds

2008-03-23T22:30:00.004-06:00

Wow, what a week for Canada at the World Figure Skating Championships! For the first time in 20 years, Canadian skaters won medals in three of the four disciplines; in the fourth (Ladies), Joannie Rochette finished fifth. With the Olympics in Vancouver less than two years away, things are looking good for the home team.

In fact, looking at the medal results, Canada was the only country to win 3 medals. Actually, Canada and France were the only countries to win more than one -- and at least none of Canada's medals was won by a cry-baby... Brian Joubert. Let's take a closer look at each of the four disciplines.

Pairs
Canada sent three pairs teams to Worlds; the lowest of them finished eighth. That's simply extraordinary. Current Canadian champs Anabelle Langlois and Cody Hay were the weakest of the three teams - held back a bit due to Cody's illness. Meagan Duhamel and Craig Buntin finished sixth, which is a shocking result considering they've been together for less than a year. And Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison, the best pair team in Canada (no offense to Langlois/Hay), won their first medal, a bronze. They had an exquisite skate, the last performance of their brilliant but fortunately now-retired routine to Blower's Daughter. Dube/Davison are still growing too -- yet they're already an effortlessly in-sync team. If they continue to grow as many - myself included - expect them to, they'll be in the gold medal hunt in Vancouver.

Ladies
I know I may be a bit biased because of national pride, but Joannie Rochette is simply a beautiful skater, and she has a maturity and sophistication that most of the other ladies lack. The only thing Joannie is missing is a bit more complexity in her jumping -- the only thing holding her back (and she knows it) is that she's missing a triple-triple combination. Mira Leung, unfortunately, hasn't had the growth that many of us hoped she'd have when she burst onto the Canadian scene a few years ago; she's immensely talented, but she might still be a little young to be peaking in Vancouver. And if Cynthia Phaneuf completes her comeback, there's a chance she could be a factor in the next couple of years. But, really, it's all about Joannie.

Ice Dance
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir have had an unprecedented meteoric rise in the ice dance ranks these last couple of years: world junior champs two years ago, 6th at their first senior worlds last year, and silver medallists this year. In the bad old days of the 6.0 scoring system, that NEVER would have happened. (Ask Shae and Vic.) And Tessa and Scott stand out from the other teams, much like Sale and Pelletier did in Pairs a few years back -- rather than being theatrical, over-the top, Tessa and Scott are subtle, clean, sophisticated, and their gorgeous "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" free dance highlighted all their best qualities. And they're incredible skaters who are completely in sync with one another -- they may only be 18 and 20 years old, but they've already been skating together for, like, a decade. They're easily among the frontrunners in Vancouver. And should Dubreuil and Lauzon decide to stick around and compete in Vancouver after taking this year off, Canada will be in amazing shape in ice dance.

Mens
Wow! Jeffrey Buttle wins gold! And it was a completely deserved victory too. He was the only skater to have two completely clean programs, and his skating is so excellent that his lack of a quad was a moot point, regardless of what Brian Joubert says. (Those are some sour grapes!) I think what the men's competition highlighted this week is the risk inherent in attempting the quad. Now that the judges are slow-mo reviewing to determine if all four revolutions were completed in the air and there's an objective point deduction quantification for failing to complete the revolutions and/or stepping out on the landing, it might just not be worth it. I was glad that Jeff had a perfect skate of his brilliant "Ararat" performance -- after struggling with it at Worlds last year (due to injury), I'm glad his masterpiece got to be seen in all its glory, on the biggest stage in the world. Patrick Chan had a terrific debut at senior worlds, finishing ninth. He's incredibly talented, and there's a chance both he and Buttle will be contenders in Vancouver.

So, all in all, this was just an incredible week for Canadian figure skating. In the four disciplines, our best finishes were 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th. And not just that -- but they were completely deserved finishes; none depended on collapses by key competitors. The Canadian figure skating team has breadth and depth (next year, we'll sending 11 out of 12 possible competitors), and the best Canadian skaters have a natural, subtle sophistication that many of the other best nations lack. Whatever home-grown programs have gone into making the Canadian team the best in the world today have definitely worked.

Bring on Vancouver!!!

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iPod Project, Day 54

2008-03-18T21:25:00.003-06:00

I spent most of the week checking off discs in my "Various Artists" category. What an odd collection of music. And it's only going to get better from here -- I'm preparing myself for a deluge of greatest hits albums from 80s artists in the next couple of weeks. That'll be fun. (One thing I've excluded from this list for now; REM's new album "Accelerate", which I managed to track down a couple of weeks before its official release. And holy CRAP what a fantastic album!)

Crazy for Gershwin
A collection of Gershwin songs, recorded by Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, and others. I think I picked this up in a bargain bin during one of my "I should broaden my musical horizons!" phase.

Golden Throats 2
This is fun. William Shatner's "It Was a Very Good Year". Leonard Nimoy's "Put a Little Love in Your Heart". Mae West's "Light My Fire. It doesn't get much better than this! (Which reminds me, I keep meaning to track down the first Golden Throats collection...)

The Truth and the Light: Music from the X-Files
Songs in the Key of X: Songs from and inspired by The X-Files

I think I might have listened to these a couple of times back in the mid-90s, at the height of my X-Files obsession (seasons 3 and 4 of the show). There's some nifty stuff on "Key of X", including William S Burroughs' reading of REM's "Star Me Kitten" and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' "Red Right Hand" (used so memorably in the show). Mark Snow's score on "The Truth and the Light" really highlights just how effective he was at contributing to the show's spooky atmosphere. There are also some classic snippets of dialogue included: "They drilled holes in my damn teeth!!!"

Dead Man Walking
Soundtrack to Tim Robbins' astonishing movie. Like the movie, the soundtrack's not exactly the happiest experience. Songs of death and despair from the likes of Springsteen, Waits, Lovett, Vedder, Cash. I don't think I ever listened to it; can't say I'm ever in the mood for music that makes me want to slit my wrists. (Similarly, I've only ever listened to Springsteen's Nebraska maybe a handful of times.)

DGC Rarities, Vol 1
As the title implies, it's a collection of tracks by DGC artists in the early 90s - including Beck and Hole and Nirvana, who contribute "Pay to Play", an earlier version of the Nevermind song "Stay Away". I... don't think I ever listened to this before. Glad I finally got around to it, over 10 years later.

If I Were A Carpenter
Early-90s alt-rock acts covering various Carpenters songs. I'm a long-time Carpenters fan (the title of the blog is actually a reference to one of their songs) and this is a nice tribute from artists you might not expect. One of the standouts is Sonic Youth's gorgeous cover of "Superstar", which was also recently featured in "Juno".

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
Soundtrack to the recent Cohen documentary/tribute concert film. This features various Leonard Cohen songs performed by, among others, Teddy Thompson, Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave, and Jarvis Cocker. Some highlights: Rufus's "gay rhumba" version of "Everybody Knows", Teddy Thompson's beautiful "TOnight Will Be Fine", and Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla'a stunning version of "Anthem", which gives me goosebumps every time I hear it.

Batman & Robin
Batman Forever
The alt-rock compilation soundtrack hit a peak in the mid-90s, with bands like REM and U2 and Smashing Pumpkins and PJ Harvey all contributing songs to the Batman franchise. (The soundtracks are better than the movies, that's for sure.) U2's contribution "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" is definitely one of the highlights; so is Seal's "Kiss From a Rose". What the hell Jewel's "Foolish Games" is doing on the Batman & Robin soundtrack, I have no idea.

Now That's What I Call Music (Vol 4)
Now! 4
Two compilations from the end of the 90s. I bought Now! 4 (which is a Canadian thing, but not Canadian artists) because it had The New Radicals' "You Get What You Give" and U2's "The Sweetest Thing". And I bought the other one because... well, I'm not sure. Eiffel 65's "Blue" was ok at the time, but like "Mambo #5" or Roberto Benigni winning an Oscar, it looks really embarrassing in hindsight. Oooh, and Sonique's "Feels So Good" is a pretty great song. Maybe that was it.

Much Dance 80s
Much Dance 90s
Two fun, two-disc compilations of great dance stuff from their respective decads. Lots of fun!

Groove Station 5
Groove Station 6
Two dance compilations from the late-90s, put together by Canadian DJ Chris Sheppard. I think these help prove that the late-90s was a really good time for dance music, especially remixes of songs by female artists. Whitney's "Heartbreak Hotel" and "My Love is Your Love". Deborah Cox's "Nobody's Supposed to be Here". Faith Evans' "Love Like This". Cher's "Believe". Amber's "Sexual". Great, great stuff.

Party Central
Viva Las Vegas!
Ok, when I moved to Denver in 2000, I was really susceptible to impulse purchases based on TV advertising. In addition to the already mentioned Teen Riot, there are these two two-disc collections. Party Central's got a rather random collection of songs from the 80s and 90s, but I didn't have Crystal Waters' "100% Pure Love" or Haddaway's "What Is Love" (which we were dancing to, long before A Night at the Roxbury) anywhere else, so I had to buy it. And Viva Las Vegas! has stuff like "Danke Schoen" and "Moon River" and "Mack the Knife" and "It's Not Unusual" - I would have been mad NOT to buy it!

Progress, after 54 days:
- Total number of songs: 7711
- Total duration of songs: 20.86 days
- Total number of songs listened to: 1750
- Total duration of songs listened to: 4.72 days
- Total number of songs remaining: 5961

Ya know, I think I'm making pretty good progress. After not quite two months, I'm approaching the 25% total. Considering I was forecasting a full year for this, I guess I'm ahead of schedule. Yay for listening to music at work!

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You Can't Take The Sky From Me

2008-03-17T21:40:00.004-06:00

So apparently, George Lucas hasn't yet finished picking the carcass of the Star Wars universe. According to the New York Post (always the most reputable source of information):

STAR Wars" creator George Lucas is reportedly at work on a new, live-action TV series with the tantalizing description: "Deadwood" meets "The Sopranos" in outer space.

The series won't feature the characters from the movies, but it will be considered "canon".

I don't know about you, but I loved that series the last time I saw it - when it was called "Firefly". The one thing I'll give Lucas credit for is his creation of the Star Wars universe. The only truly great movie of the series is "The Empire Strikes Back", which he neither wrote nor directed. Episodes 1, 2, and 3 are almost complete disasters, in which the advanced technology that allowed their creation couldn't hide the fact that there was absolutely no inspiration at play. And yes, I'm still bitter over the fate of "Firefly" (thanks for asking), but as a storyteller, George Lucas isn't capable of holding Joss Whedon's jockstrap.

I just hope Lucas's involvement hasn't fucked up the new Indiana Jones movie too badly.

The Heart of the World

2008-03-17T21:09:00.003-06:00

Since I mentioned Guy Maddin's "The Heart of the World" yesterday, I figured the least I could do is provide a link to it.

A bit of background: to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Toronto International Film Festival in 2000, the fest commissioned short films celebrating cinema from a number of directors. These shorts would screen before the regular festival screenings. You can imagine that the hard-core festers (those that see anywhere from 30 to 50 movies over the 10 days of the festival) grew sick of these shorts long before the festival ended. Shit, the perfunctory two minutes of ads from TIFF sponsors grows tiresome after the fourth day. (I wasn't there in 2000; my first TIFF year was 2005.)

Maddin has made numerous shorts over the years. Of the few I've seen, my favorite (other than this one) is "Sissy-Boy Slap Party", the title of which is a completely literal representation of the story of the short. But "The Heart of the World", currently the fourth best movie of the decade, is on a completely different level:

And the score! It's a piece of music called "Time, Forward!" by Russian composer Georgy Sviridov. I know pretty much nothing about 20th century Russian classical music, and how it may or may not be somehow representative of Communism, but I love this music and how Maddin uses it.

After his "big budget" disaster "Twilight of the Ice Nymphs", Maddin has really been on a roll. Since "The Heart of the World", he's given us the filmed ballet "Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary", his most accessible movie "The Saddest Music in the World", the museum installation "Cowards Bend the Knee", the silent movie extravaganza "Brand Upon the Brain!" and the brilliant docufantasia "My Winnipeg". There's a chance he is the best AND most important Canadian director working today.

The Best Movies of the Decade, 2008 Edition

2008-03-16T22:33:00.004-06:00

In an earlier life, I designed a webpage for what I thought were the 100 best movies of the 1990s. It was a fun project to complete -- and yet, no sooner had I finished the list and published the site that I wanted to make some changes. It's almost as if the very act of completing the list made me want to change it.

Also, I think most serious movie fans know that their thoughts about various movies change over time. New life experiences, more understanding of film techniques and history, viewing other movies by the same artists -- these can all contribute to reassessments of movies over time.

My friend Steve and I compiled our lists of the best movies of the half-decade (2000-4), as a way of starting the process of thinking about the movies that will stand the test of time. (And, we're both movie nerds who like the debating involved in putting things in lists.) At the time, my top-ten list looked like this:

1. Mulholland Drive
2. Requiem For a Dream
3. Before Sunset
4. The Heart of the World
5. Widow Of Saint-Pierre
6. Spider
7. Memento
8. Kill Bill
9. Million Dollar Baby
10. Minority Report

Of course, the lists reflects my taste and interest - primarily American movies, definitely nothing too terribly experimental. The notable exception, of course, is the inclusion of Guy Maddin's extraordinary 6-minute short "The Heart of the World". I *do* see more than my share of foreign movies, but - based on the criteria by which movies matter to me - I tend to prefer English-language movies.

Now, three years later, what does the list look like? Have I seriously reconsidered anything on the list? Have I seen other movies from the decade's first half that I should have included? What about the movies released from 2005 to 2007? And here's what I've come up with for the updated list:

1. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
I strongly doubt that I'll see a better movie this decade. This was one of those movies that benefitted from a second viewing, because it allowed me to get properly oriented within the movie's levels of dreams and reality. And once I was, it's final half hour affected me like few other movies; I left the theater completely devastated.

2. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)
As time goes by, it becomes clearer to me that this is the definitive romantic movie of my generation. 90 minutes of real-time conversation and wandering around Paris, leading to the most swoon-worthy of endings in modern movies.

3. Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)
A dark, depressing, challenging, exquisitely made movie about drug addiction. Aronofsky announces himself as a world-class filmmaker here (after his promising debut, Pi); it's a shame it took 6 years for his follow-up to be released.

4. The Heart of the World (Guy Maddin, 2000)
My one complaint about Maddin's feature films is that his technique can be overwhelming in movies that long. Not so here: the delirious pacing, the frantic editing, the dry humor all crystallize perfectly in this astounding 6-minute short.

5. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
The movie hits like a punch in the gut, and it's the one movie from 2007 (sorry, "No Country For Old Men") that is likely to be considered among the all-time greats.

6. The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky, 2006)
It may have taken 6 years, but it was worth the wait. Poetic and meditative where "Requiem for a Dream" was depressing and demanding, "The Fountain" plays like equal parts "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Aguirre the Wrath of God" and "Mulholland Drive" -- and is actually worthy of the comparisons. Mark my words, this movie's reputation will be redeemed as the years pass.

7. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006)
Cuaron, perhaps the most sensual director working today, goes post-Apocalyptic, with stunning results. The movie also contains two of the best, most challenging tracking shots in the history of movies.

8. Spider (David Cronenberg, 2002)
Cronenberg's masterpiece features Ralph Fiennes' best performance. And given the spectacular careers the two of them are having, that's saying something.

9. The Widow Of Saint-Pierre (Patrice Leconte, 2000)
Elegant and gorgeous, just like its star Juliette Binoche. Seriously, is there a better looking actress than Binoche? And she seems to get more beautiful with each passing year, too -- just like Catherine Deneuve. Damn the French.

10. INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch, 2006)
Lynch currently bookends my top ten with movies that are like black-mirror reflections of one another. This three-hour extravaganza is easily his most experimental feature, and not exactly his most rewarding. But if you're on the movie's wavelength, it's impossible to shake.

I plan on revisiting the list in 12 months time, to see if anything changes between now and then.

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iPod Project, Day 47

2008-03-11T21:32:00.003-06:00

Ok, so I got a little heavy with the soundtracks this week. Rather than randomly picking stuff by artist, I spent a couple of days focussing on soundtracks. I mean, if I'm going to listen to everything, why not do it categorically? I think I also start tackling the tip of the embarrassing iceberg, which is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

Kenny Rogers, 10 Best Series
Oh, shut up. "The Gambler" rules. It was always our last-song-before-heading-to-the-bar song back in the day.

Edith Piaf, The Very Best of Edith Piaf
After seeing "La Vie En Rose" last summer, I had to download some Piaf, and this seemed as good a collection as any. I'm thinking I should add "Non Je Ne Regrette Rien" to my list of personal theme songs.

Dusty Springfield, Dusty In Memphis
Why are white British people so good at creating music that is traditionally African-American? This album, for hipster Tarantino fans like myself, might be most notable for "Son of a Preacher Man", but the whole thing is incredible. I particularly like "Windmills of Your Mind"... which was so memorably used by Neil Jordan in "Breakfast on Pluto".

Arcade Fire, Funeral
The greatest album of the decade, already discussed here.

Jeff Buckley, Grace
Beautiful. Particularly notable for Buckley's amazing cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" (I agree with Salon movie critic Stephanie Zacharek, who once said that "Hallelujah" is "surely one of the most beautiful songs in the English language.")

Radiohead, Hail To The Thief
Radiohead, In Rainbows
I could go on for hours about Radiohead, and maybe I'll get around to that once things settle a bit at work. Their two most recent albums are worthy additions to their library. After experimenting with Kid A and Amnesiac, these two album find the 'Head rediscovering the joy in creating honest-to-god rock songs. "2+2=5", "Myxomatosis", "A Wolf at the Door" and the glorious "There There" are among Thief's many highlights. (And you should SEE them perform "There There" live. The song's got great percussion, and features Ed O'Brien and Jonny Greenwood pounding on drums during the song's first half.)
And while sexy might be too strong a word for any Radiohead album, In Rainbows is close. The band, of course, made headlines when they released it independently over the web back in October... and I say more power to 'em. After having their previous few albums leaked to the web early (thanks to the slow release strategies of their former label), this was the easiest way for them to gain full control over their music again. And shit, they're one of the biggest bands in the world; they can do whatever they want.

Soundtrack, A Clockwork Orange
Strange electronic versions of Beethoven and Rossini? What's not to love?

Soundtrack, Almost Famous
A terrific list of 70s rock song... notable for also being the last time Cameron Crowe made a good movie

Soundtrack, Fiddler On The Roof
I've seen this on stage twice; once at a high school in Halifax, and once in Toronto. I love the show and its soundtrack, even if some of the politics make me roll my eyes. (Not that I'm, like, a Tsarist or anything.) I also love that the inimitable Bea Arthur originated the role of Yente the matchmaker; oh, would that I could have seen that!

Soundtrack, Magnolia
Mainly for the Aimee Mann songs, not the Supertramp ones.

Soundtrack, Moulin Rouge
Meh, it was 2001. The remake of "Lady Marmalade" was all over the place. But I also love Rufus Wainwright's beautiful cover of "Complainte de la Butte" (which I cheekily - heh - refer to as "My Ass Hurts"), Beck's cover of "Diamond Dogs", and Ewan McGregor's gorgeous version of Elton John's "Your Song". (Ewan, in fact, is one of the stars of the imaginary musical I'm writing in my head. He and Hugh Jackman play brothers... and Catherine Zeta-Jones and Kristen Bell play their love interests. That's all I got right now.)

Soundtrack, O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Mainly because I love the Coen brothers' movie, more than because I have any interest in early-20th century American music. It's great stuff, though.

Soundtrack, Nashville
Soundtrack, Short Cuts
Robert Altman is one of my favorite filmmakers, and if you ask me Nashville is the greatest movie ever made. (Short Cuts, on the other hand, is merely the best movie of the 1990s.) The two movies are, of course, sprawling epics about 20th century American life - each with a couple of dozen characters whose live intersect at fortunate and inopportune moments. But as much in common as the two movies have, their differences are equally important, and reflected in the differences in the soundtracks. Nashville's folkish optimism is apparent in many of its brilliant country songs - I especially love "Keep A Goin'" and "My Idaho Home" and "It Don't Worry Me". Short Cuts has a series of classical pieces mixed with some jazz songs, performed by Lori Singer and Annie Ross respectively, who play a daughter and mother in the movie. The Annie Ross songs are incredible - I love "Conversation on a Barstool" (written by Bono and The Edge), "Evil California" (featuring Iggy Pop), and the great, bitter "To Hell With Love". And I could write an entire thesis about "Prisoner of Life", and what it means in the context of the movie as a whole, and within Altman's career in general. Maybe some other time.

Soundtrack, The Crying Game
Soundtrack, Trainspotting
Neil Jordan and Danny Boyle both use music incredibly in their movies, and neither was better than he was here. Trainspotting's a perfect Oasis-free summary of mid-90s Brit-pop, leaning towards the more electronic. The Crying Game, like the pivotal character in the movie itself, is a bit of an oddity - some classic soul, some gay dance stuff, some winky covers - Lyle Lovett doing "Stand By Your Man", BOy George's "The Crying Game" - but it all works.

Soundtrack, This Is Spinal Tap
"The bigger the cushion, the sweeter the pushin'." It's poetry, people.

Various Artists, Teen Riot!
It's a 2-disc collection of awful/great pop songs from the late 80s / early 90s, that I purchased from a TV ad when I lived in Denver. It's got, among others, New Kids on the Block, Tiffany, Martika, Glenn Medeiros, Young MC, Tommy Page, Debbie Gibson. How could I resist?

Progress, after 47 days:
- Total number of songs: 7688 (soon to increase, really I mean it this time)
- Total duration of songs: 20.8 days
- Total number of songs listened to: 1393
- Total duration of songs listened to: 3.8 days
- Total number of songs remaining: 6295

Long hours at the office coming up over the next couple of weeks; we'll see if that means I'll make better progress - or worse.

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Track By Track: Funeral

2008-03-07T22:53:00.003-07:00

So as part of the iPod Project, I wanted to do something a bit different with some of my favorite albums: I actually want to, basically, "live-blog" while I listen to them... talk about the tracks themselves, maybe live performances of the songs, just see where the mind wanders while the album's playing. And what better place to start than the greatest album of this decade: "Funeral" by Arcade Fire. So, here goes.

Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Cue the piano... cue the strings... cue the guitar. I get goosebumps hearing the opening few seconds of this song, because it begins the beautiful, amazing journey of this album. And this song is such a slow-builder, too. The drums don't even start to kick in until about the 1:20 mark. And apart from the music, the lyrics provide such great imagery too: a snowstorm buries the town, and all the kids build tunnels from their rooms out into the town. And the song's still building - at the 3:00 mark it's almost unbearable... and it just explodes. Wow.

Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
If there's a song I'm not particularly fond of on the album, this might be it. The band plays the hell out of it live - Richard Parry and Will Butler provide nice visual effects, banging on anything and everything with drumsticks - and the accordion is a nice effect, but the song just kinda stays stuck in second gear. Hunh. I hadn't realized that "Laika" was the name of the first living creature in space. Thanks, wikipedia.

Une Annee Sans Lumiere
In the middle of the "Neighborhood" suite, we get this gorgeous song. My favorite thing about it is the tempo change with about one minute remaining -- that's the type of thing we listen to Arcade Fire for. I also love the "Hey!"

Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
Now we're firing on all cylinders! When I heard them play this song in Calgary in 2005, when I was in the front row next to the speakers, I was SURE I was going to lose some of my hearing. They had a bit of a break before playing this song, so it had gotten a bit quiet... and then the band just EXPLODED on the opening note. (Seriously, my ears hurt.) Another funny thing about this song -- it reminds me of Guy Maddin's brilliant short film "The Heart of the World". I once tried to synchronize the song with the movie, but alas the song's about a minute too short. But the chorus ("When the power's out in the heart of man / Take it from your heart, put it in your hand.") would fit superbly. Right after the first chorus, I love the musical break, with Sarah's violin gradually building until it and the band just spill over into the song's second half. It's amazing to watch them perform live. They don't really have much in the way of visual tricks in their shows, but they're such visual, visceral performers. Just watching THEM play their instruments - especially on an intense song like this one - is all the special effects they need.

Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)
Well, we definitely need a bit of a breater after Power Out. This is a nice conclusion to the Neighborhood suite of songs. The four songs - the album as a whole, actually - are about community, connections, loss, growth, aging, death. Heavy stuff. (Makes me think of the hilarious bit in Rattle and Hum, when BB King says to Bono "You mighty young to be writing such heavy lyrics!") Can't say that I'm fond of the line "Can't raise a baby on motor oil", though.

Crown of Love
THIS is my favorite Arcade Fire song. Like Tunnels, it's a slow-builder; like Une Annee, it's got a great tempo transition. I love how the instrumentation just builds and gets more ornate as the song itself builds. As Win sings about "If you still want me, please forgive me...", the music echoes the increasing desperation of his pleas. As the song hits the three-minute mark, it's almost unbearable - the swirling strings, the desperate piano, Win's lyrics. The song's center can't hold... And then! "Your name is the only word, the only word that I can... SAY!" And the center couldn't hold, the music morphs into this lovely, pleading, almost disco beat for its final minute. Stunning.

Wake Up
And speaking of stunning, how about the opening 30 seconds of THIS one. It's easy to see why U2 used Wake Up as their "We're coming to the stage!" song on their Vertigo tour; it's unfortunate for U2 that the opening minute of Wake Up was more emotionally overwhelming than anything U2 did in that show. I'm a sucker for choruses with big sweeping "Oooooooh!"s, and there are none bigger or sweepier than what the band does here. I've seen Arcade Fire three times, AND I'VE ONLY SEEN THEM DO THIS SONG ONCE MY GOD. And it was the first live song I heard them do, when I saw them in Calgary in 2005. They should be forced to do this song in every concert. As great as it is, it feels like an oddly structures song, even though it's got chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus for its first half. It's the third song on the album to have a brilliant tempo transition, and that helps put the song over the top: the chant-like structure of its first 3:40 is replaced by a great dance beat for its final 1:40. This song alone makes Arcade Fire worthy of the U2 comparisons. (And they've performed it with David Bowie, which was awesome. Still, even watching this doesn't really give you anything close to the feeling of what it's really like to watch them perform this song. But it'll do.)

Haiti
This is the only real "political" song on the album (it effectively points the way to some of the themes of Neon Bible), but it also fits comfortable with the themes of the rest of Funeral, since it's about loss. Regine is from Haiti, and even though the song has a rather light island-sort of beat to it, you can sense her anger (mixed with sadness) in the performance. (Having the translation of the mixed English-French lyrics helps to.) In a way, the song reminds me of REM's great "Flowers of Guatemala." This also tends to be one of the highlights of the band's live shows, because it allows Regine to take center stage, and she's got some nice moves. Another thing I love about it is how it effortlessly morphs into the next song.

Rebellion (Lies)
This is one of their best-known tracks... it came closest to being a hit single. (There's even - shudder - a dance remix out there somewhere.) This is pretty much the band's standard main-set closer in their live shows; all three times I've seen them, the main set has ended with Power Out transitioning into this. Mix it up a bit, guys! If there was something I'd complain about wrt this album, it might be that they lyrics are largely about children, like Win and Regine's songwriting hadn't fully matured yet. But the songs are written from the perspective of someone looking back at their childhood, particularly in light of the loss of close family members (which famously haunted the making of this album). Oh, and I love the handclap after the final "Scare your son, scare your daughter". It was fun watching them perform this live -- I noticed maybe a dozen people in my area of Massey Hall (where I saw them twice in May 2007), myself included, doing the handclap. We're nerds.

In the Backseat
They actually ended one of the Massey Hall concerts with this song. Which seemed like a rather... subdued way to end such an energetic show. Don't get me wrong -- it's a great song, but it's NOT the last song of an encore. (Especially of a show where they haven't played Wake Up. Jesus.) Of course, like Regine, I'm not much of a driver, and "I like the peace in the back seat"... I like how that provides a nice metaphor for reflecting upon the deaths that haunt the rest of the album: "I've been learning to drive my whole life". And here it comes... at 2:37... the subdued first half of the songs gives way to the great, sublime, intensely moving second half. Just an absolutely perfect way to end this album. (But not a concert!)

My friend Steve saw Arcade Fire in April 2005, and he commanded me to buy Funeral, which I did shortly after. It was in nonstop rotation on my iPod for the rest of the year, and I still play it more than most of my music. (Of course, THAT is why I have about 1000 songs on my iPod that I've never listened to.) I really do think it's among the handful of greatest albums I've ever heard, and it's easily the best thing I've heard this decade. Neon Bible proved that Funeral's success wasn't a fluke, and the band's got the live chops - like Springsteen, like U2 - and the epic sweep to make very good music for a very long time.

This is one HELL of a debut album.

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The Wire: A Quantum of Solace

2008-03-05T20:44:00.004-07:00

I was a Randy-come-lately to The Wire. In spring 2005, my friend Tom (hi, Tom!) told me I had to check it out. This was around the time he made sure I checked out Veronica Mars (which premiered about 9 months late in Canada, and don't even get me started on that), which I fell in love with about 10 minutes into the pilot. So if Tom called The Wire "the greatest show on TV", I at least had to give it a shot.

At this point, the show had finished airing its third season, but only the first two were available on DVD. So I rented the first season, and devoured its 13 episodes in a matter of days. I was immediately drawn into the world that David Simon and Ed Burns had created, not only for its scope, but also for the honesty and even-handedness with which they portrayed it.

But it was season 2, which I rented a couple of weeks later, that truly got to me. I can't say that I have much experience with the world of housing projects and drug deals as presented in season 1, but the world of the docks they explored in the second season rang really true to my blue-collar background. By the time we get to Frank Sobotka's long, slow walk to a certain doom at the end of the season's penultimate episode, I was beyond hooked.

The Wire is not an easy show to get into, except from the beginning. No show has ever demanded more from its audience (I'd guess that there are at least five dozen characters to keep track of), and no show has ever rewarded its fans so completely. Unlike The Sopranos, which announced itself as a revolution when its pilot aired, The Wire was a slow-burner. And The Wire's reputation has only grown with each passing year; few shows have benefitted as much from the TV-on-DVD revolution. By the time the fourth season premiered in Sept 06, all previous seasons were available on DVD, which allowed people to see the show as it was meant to be seen: from the beginning. And the buzz was deafening.

Now, nearly 60 episodes in, we come to the series finale on Sunday night. It would take a LOT more time than I have on my hands to even adequately describe the narrative of the show. (Sheeeeeeeeeeee-iiiiiiiit, it would take a lot of time to properly describe the plot of a given episode. Broadly speaking, The Wire is about cities, and how their institutions are broken. It's not just about street-level drug dealers, but about how the system (schools, foster homes, police) let them down and led them down this path. It's not just about cops, but about how the best of them work within and fight against they system at the same time. It's not just about politicians, but about how their efforts to effect real change might be impossible within the confines of the system that keeps them going.

That last paragraph makes the show sound like a masters thesis in sociology, but the show is most assuredly not that. It's far more entertaining than it has any right to be. The show may be about the institutions, but it's the characters that populate the show that make it the truly great experience that it is. From screw-up drunk cop Jimmy McNulty to businessman/drug dealer Stringer Bell to Mayor Tommy Carcetti to lovable recovering addict Bubbles to Bodie and Poot and Bunk and Kima and Prez and Marlo and Omar and Brother Mouzone and Brianna Barksdale and innumerable others, The Wire is populated with endless fully drawn realistic people. (Many of whom are based on and/or named after real Baltimore people.) No show - not even the great Sopranos - is as richly and deeply drawn.

Now, in spite of the fact that the show is about the myriad problems facing America's crumbling inner cities (and you can sense Simon and Burns anger seething from the screen), it can be surprisingly warm. The Wire would be unfathomably bleak if no character was allowed a happy ending. A phrase that I keep thinking of when I think of this great, unmatched, shattering show is "A Quantum of Solace". I'm not particularly fond of that phrase as the title for a Bond movie, but I love the poetry of it.

We get occasional happy endings, minimal though they might be: like Namond, the son of an imprisoned drug dealer who gets a second chance when adopted by Bunny Colvin. Or like Bug, who gets to live with his aunt after his older brother Mike sold his soul to protect him. Or like Kima telling her own version of "Goodnight Moon" to her ex-lover's son Elijah. Or like Bubbles, the character most of us have been rooting for from the beginning, who looks like he may finally have managed to get himself clean. These aren't necessarily the best endings for the best characters, but they are victories nonetheless. And because some characters manages to triumph against impossible odds, their happy endings are that much more devastating. (If you weren't a wreck watching Bubbles tell his story at NA, you don't have a soul.)

And even though Simon and Burns are angry at the systems that imprison (metaphorically and literally) so many people, it's a completely rational anger: they show us exactly how and exactly why the systems are broken. And by making such a clear-eyed view of the situation, they might implicitly offer solutions, offer ways to fix what's broken. In the immortal words of Leonard Cohen:

"There is a crack, a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in."

I have no idea what's going to happen in the finale. There's a lot of story that needs to be resolved. And I have complete faith in Simon and Burns that they won't fuck with us the way David Chase did in the finale of The Sopranos. (I loved the finale of The Sopranos, but for very different reasons.) But come Sunday night, the greatest television program I have ever seen (I'm trying to resist the hyperbole of calling it "the greatest TV series of all time") will come to an end. Some characters will win, many more will lose. (McNulty, particularly, is screwed.) But I have no doubt that the ending will be satisfying, a perfect way for this great achievement to conclude. I've already cried while watching this show about 5 times this season, and I have no reason to believe it won't happen again on Sunday.

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iPod Project, Day 40

2008-03-04T22:02:00.004-07:00

Well, that's progress. I've got the iPod on most of the day at work (it helps me focus and drown out the random office noise all around), so I've plowed thru a whole lotta stuff in the last 6 days. At this rate, maybe it WON'T take me until the end of the year.

U2, Pop
This is an album I'm not particularly fond of. I love the opening three tracks (especially "Discotheque", and it's hilarious video -- it's the zenith of U2's mid-90s experimentation). And the band's great performances of "Gone" during the Elevation tour in 2001 helped rescue it from obscurity. But I just find so much of the record to be... boring. And I hate no U2 song as much as I hate "Staring at the Sun."

Travis, The Man Who
A good album. Notable, of course, for their North American breakthru single "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" *shrug* Not much else to say.

Beck, Midnite Vultures
Beck's a lot of fun, and this is an underrated album. It came out in late-1999, and it's pretty much an end-of-millennium dance party. "Sexx Laws" and "Milk and Honey" and "Nicotine and Gravy" and "Mixed Bizness" are just a riot. But the great track on this album is its hilarious closer, "Debra". As in "I wanna get with you and your sister Debra"... an R&B slow jam with Beck singing in a Prince falsetto. Awesome.

Mary Chapin Carpenter, Come On Come On
I'm not a huge country music fan, but this is a great record. I bought it because I loved "I Feel Lucky" and "He Thinks He'll Keep Her."

Beethoven, Ninth Symphony
So I'd gone thru a phase where I attempted to expand my musical horizons, largely based on classical music that appeared in Stanley Kubrick movies. I really don't have anything else to say about this; I'm far too uneducated in classical music to comment intelligently. It's great music to study by, though.

Rolling Stones, Some Girls
I'm a huge fan of the Stones... especially their albums from 1972 and earlier. I only recently got a copy of this one, so it's still kinda new to me. Great stuff, though.

Soundtrack, Once
Yay for "Falling Slowly" winning an Oscar! The whole soundtrack is amazing. If you're, you know, in the mood for romantic melancholy.

Soundtrack, Reservoir Dogs
I remember seeing Reservoir Dogs in Halifax, on a chilly fall afternoon in 2002, when there were about 6 other people in the theater. And the movie blew me away. (The first of at least 4 of Tarantino's movies to blow me away.) The soundtrack kicks ass... and includes snippets of Steven Wright's hilarious DJ comments from the movie, as well as QT's hilarious explanation of the meaning of "Like a Virgin." Gay much?

Liz Phair, whitechocolatespaceegg
It might not be as shocking as her breakthrough debut or its underrated follow-up, but whitechocolatespaceegg shows real growth for Phair. Trivia: I believe this album also features the last recording of a song featuring Bill Berry on drums: he and Peter Buck and Mike Mills guest on "Fantasize".

Various Artists, Oh What A Feeling 2
This is one of those collections that I don't think I ever listened to. It's a four-disc compilation of songs by Canadian artists; I bought it (on a trip to Vancouver) when I lived in Denver... and then it sat there, on my bookcase, for about 7 years. But now it's been listened to once, at least.

Various Artists, Billboard Top Hits 1977
One of those cheap compilations I bought for one reason: Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way." I fuckin' love that song.

Various Artists, Women & Songs - The 80s
"Flashdance" AND "Gloria" AND "Bette Davis Eyes" AND "Rise Up" AND "We Belong" in one place? Come on!

Various Artists, Grammy Nominees 2001
I'm... not quite sure why I bought this one, since I would've had all the tracks I love on it. (Well, except "The Real Slim Shady".) Still, it's got "Beautiful Day" and "Optimistic" and "Sexx Laws" and "Music" and "I Try". And that really creepy bizarre Steely Dan song, "Cousin Dupree".

The Strokes, Room On Fire
Not really much growth between their debut and this one, but it's still got a bunch of good songs. And they're a fantastic live band, too. (Vancouver 2004; Toronto 2006.)

Coldplay, X & Y
Coldplay, A Rush of Blood to the Head
I don't care, I love Coldplay. Even "Fix You" -- nearly ever fiber of my being is telling me to hate it... but I just can't. Rush of Blood actually has a bit of a nasty edge to it, especially in its brilliant title track, so I really don't think Coldplay are entirely hugs and bunnies. Can't wait to hear what direction they go in when their new album comes out in a few months.

Bruce Springsteen, Magic
Some critics have called this Springsteen's best album since The River. Shit, I don't even think The River is his best album since The River: Tunnel of Love is more focused, and The Rising remains the towering artistic statement of 9/11. Magic finds Bruce, like so many of us, completely disillusioned in the direction that the US has taken in the last few years, especially in "Long Walk Home" or "Gypsy Biker" or "Living in the Future" or the gorgeous "Devil's Arcade". And yet, there's balance: "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" is one of the best songs in his already legendary songbook.

Bruce Springsteen, Live 1975-85
Again, this is one of those collections I bought (it's 3 cds!), but don't think I ever listened to, all the way thru. (Which is surprising to me, because I love Bruce live.) And there is some fantastic stuff on this collection, not least of with is the live version of the greatest rock and roll song ever written, "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)". (Yeah, I said it.) AND there's no "Dancing in the Dark"!

REM, Around the Sun
To borrow a lyric from a song on the album, I always thought Around the Sun was "beautiful and much maligned." Inexplicably underrated. It's got a handful of great songs ("Leaving New York", "Aftermath", "Wanderlust", "Boy in the Well", "The Ascent of Man"), and one classic worthy of comparison to the best songs in the REM catalog - the breath-taking title track. I hope the band doesn't disown it too much in the build-up to the release of its back-to-rock album Accelerate.

U2, Live, Dublin 12/31/89
Got this from a coworker, in exchange for a copy of the Vertigo tour Chicago show. Good show.

Radiohead, Live, Toronto 06/08/06
A mediocre bootleg of a FANTASTIC show. (I was there!) This was part of Radiohead's brief tour, where they premiered a bunch of new tracks, most of which ended up on 2007's In Rainbows. Most of the new tracks were fully formed in 2006; the only notable change on any of the songs is the handclap on "15 Step". The crowd ate up all of the older songs; the band's performance of "Fake Plastic Trees" was one of the most gorgeous things I've ever heard. I've seen the 'Head three times; can't wait to see them again.

Leonard Cohen, The Future
This album has three tracks I completely adore: "The Future", "Anthem", and "Closing Time". One of my alltime favorite lyrics is from "Anthem": "There is a crack, a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in." (And you should really see the fab documentary/concert film Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man for a totally stunning version of the song, by Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen. It gives me goosebumps every damn time I hear it.)

Progress, after 40 days:
- Total number of songs: 7688 (soon to increase, really I mean it this time)
- Total duration of songs: 20.8 days
- Total number of songs listened to: 1093 (14.2%)
- Total duration of songs listened to: 3 days (14.4%)
- Total number of songs remaining: 6595

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Jack Ass

2008-03-01T15:51:00.006-07:00

So, this is a little weird. Apparently (hat tip, Andrew Sullivan), Jack Nicholson has made a video announcing his support for Hillary Clinton:

Of the clips from Jack's movies this endoresment includes, one is a bit from "A Few Good Men" in which his character Colonel Jessep (who, it should be noted, is a complete asshole, is the villain of the piece, and gets his ass handed to him at the end of the movie) states "There is nothing on this earth sexier, believe me, gentlemen, than a woman you have to salute in the morning."

That's not, however, the whole line. Col. Jessep continues: "Promote 'em all, I say, 'cause this is true: if you haven't gotten a blowjob from a superior officer, well, you're just letting the best in life pass you by."

Ahem.

Then again, Clintons in the White House are rather synonymous with blow jobs. Oh, and it gets better - the entire plot of the movie is about illegal activities taking place at Guantanamo Bay... which Col Jessep attempted to cover up. With friends like these...

Everybody here comes from somewhere

2008-02-29T20:19:00.004-07:00

I've been meaning to write about the fantastic new REM single, "Supernatural Superserious", which you can listen to here. (The link also contains snippets of two other songs; based on 30 seconds, I already adore "Horse to Water".) REM's one of my favorite bands; I even thought their last album, the much-derided Around the Sun, was a pretty great record. A common complaint about their recent work - the three albums since the departure of drummer Bill Berry back in 1997 - is that the band doesn't sound like REM anymore. Where's Peter Buck's jangly Byrds-like guitars? Where's a rock band playing rock songs? The REM of old came thru a few times -- most notably on Reveal's great "Imitation of Life". But, based on the evidence, the REM of old might be back.

The band premiered their new material during a week of concerts in Dublin last summer. Reports indicated that the new material was closer to the type of songs on the band's brilliant early albums. That the band filled out the setlists with tracks from these early albums seems to confirm this. But the thing I love most about "Supernatural Superserious": MIKE MILLS SINGS!!! One of the secret weapons of some of the band's best work has been bassist Mills' backing vocals: tracks like the incomparable "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" or "Find the River" or "Departure" wouldn't be nearly as great without Mills' harmonies on the choruses. (When I saw REM in 2003, Mills actually sang lead on a surprise performance of Rockville. I nearly creamed.)

In fact, I think "Supernatural Superserious" marks the first time Mills has sung on an REM song since New Adventures in Hi-Fi... in other words, since Bill Berry left the band. To me, that's as much of an indicator of the band rediscovering itself as anything else. Could Accelerate be their All That You Can't Leave Behind, a homecoming after a decade of experimentation? My fingers are crossed.

iPod Project, Day 34

2008-02-27T21:37:00.003-07:00

Wow, getting caught up almost two weeks later. Now that I'm back at work, I'm sure I'll be plowing thru a bunch of music while sitting in my cube, writing PL/SQL code. (Writing PL/SQL code and listening to music? It's so wrong how happy that makes me.)

Amy Winehouse, Back to Black.
This is just a stunner of an album. I'll admit to being a latecomer to the Amy Winehouse phenomenon; I only bothered getting it after EW listed it at #2 on their albums of the year. (The other top 4: Springsteen, Arcade Fire, Radiohead. Good year for established rock bands.) It's almost impossible not to think of Amy's own troubles while listening to it; it's like listening to Live Through This 14 years ago. "Rehab" is undeniably great, catchier than any song with that subject matter has any right to be. And the album only gets better from there!

Arcade Fire, "Us Kids Know"
I'll have MUCH more to say about Arcade Fire as the project goes on. This is their debut EP, which is really untitled, but is informally known as "Us Kids Know", after a line in the song "No Cars Go". As a debut EP, it's really good. It's no Come On Pilgrim or Chronic Town, but it's still noteworthy. (And yet, the growth they show between it and Funeral is mind-boggling -- but that's more due to Funeral being one of the greatest albums of all time.) Regine sings lead on a few songs, but she hasn't fully found her voice yet; here, she's a little too Bjorky. And thought the band rerecorded (and dramatically improved) the EP's highlight "No Cars Go" on Neon Bible, "Us Kids Know" is still worthy in its own right.

Elastica, Elastica
Elastica, The Menace
I love Elastica. Love em. I thought their debut self-titled album was one of those really, really underrated albums. Sure, they stole a bunch of their sound from Wire, but still: Justine's sneer is undeniably her own. There's 16 tracks on this album, and I think at least a dozen of them are classics. Best of all is "Stutter", the best song ever written about a boyfriend who may be faking impotence because he's cheating on his girlfriend. The Menace was their long delayed second (and, alas, last) album, which came out, like, five years after the debut. It's got a nice cover of "Da Da Da" and a few really good tracks - I particularly like the opener "Mad Dog God Dam", and "Your Arse My Place", which is one of my favorite song titles ever.

Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand, You Could Have It So Much Better
Speaking of bands I love! Of the bands that made it big back in, like 2004 or so (like The Vines, The Hives, etc), I think Franz Ferdinand worked best for me because lead singer and driving force Alex Kapranos is roughly my age. (I could relate to him and his music more than These Kids Today...) "Take Me Out" is a classic, but so are "Darts of Pleasure" and "Jacqueline" and "Come On Home" and especially "Michael". Their follow-up album showed them with a bit harder edge (so great on "The Fallen" and the title track), and also a softer one (three really nice, Beatles-esque ballads). Can't wait for album three!

Pixies, Doolittle
This was the first Pixies album I bought, at the inexplicably late date of 2003. God, it's almost embarrassing to admit it took me until then to get into Pixies. I pretty much only knew them from "Here Comes Your Man", which had been on a mixtape friends made for a party back in university. It's a song I still love, even if it is a little unlike most of the rest of their stuff. When you start an album with "Debaser", in which Frank Black references Un Chien Andalou and shrieks about "Slicin' up eyeballs, I want you to know!", you're really throwing down the gauntlet.

PJ Harvey, Rid of Me
PJ Harvey - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
I got into PJ after buying To Bring You My Love back in early 2006. I immediately fell in love with that album, and with her. More on that one later. Rid of Me is the one album of hers that took me FOREVER to get into; it doesn't really have the rhythms of much of her other work, and Steve Albini's production is often aggressive and off-putting. But I finally gave in to its charms, and it's a great fuckin' record. Espcially its second side: "50 Ft Queenie" and "Man-Size" and "Yuri-G' and "Dry" and "Me Jane"? Awesome, awesome work. (And her cover of Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" is, if you ask me, better than the original.)

Stories is a much more accessible album - easily her most accessible work. Great rock songs; I'm especially fond of "This Is Love" with its great opening couplet "I can't believe life is so complex / When I just want to sit here and watch you undress." And the Thom Yorke duet "This Mess We're In". I saw PJ Harvey live four times in 2001 - three times when she opened for U2, and then a solo show five days after 9/11. She's an absolutely phenomenal live presence... and seeing her perform so soon after 9/11 was strangely cathartic.

Radiohead, The Bends
Radiohead, In Rainbows bonus CD
If it weren't for Arcade Fire, this would be my pick for the Best Band in the World (Right Now). I didn't get into them until OK Computer came out, but then I went back and picked up The Bends, which is just a fantastic record; not a weak track in the bunch. "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" is on my short list of best album closers ever.

I was one of those people who paid for In Rainbows when they released it on the internet back in October. More power to 'em, I say, and I wanted to support a band that I've loved for a decade, especially with none of the money going to a record company. This is the bonus disc, that was released in the special "Disco-Box" edition in December. It's 8 tracks (although two are moody instrumental bits of a minute long each), and while some of the tracks are definitely b-side quality, there are a couple of classics. "Bangers and Mash" is Radiohead at their most rocking, and "Down is the New Up" is a true classic. It features really tense strings that seem like they evolved either into or out of Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood. It's a monumental song.

REM, Chronic Town
REM, Reckoning
Two early works from one of my alltime favorite bands. Chronic Town, their debut EP, is a stunner: by the time they recorded it, their sound was almost fully formed. Reckoning doesn't have the same status as their full-length debut Murmur, but if you ask me it's just as good. It would be a keeper for "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" alone.

Rolling Stones, Stripped
The Stones were one of the first bands I really got into, thanks to my friend Steve. And this, as the title implies, is a collection of stripped-down acoustic versions of a bunch of their earlier (read: when they were the greatest rock and roll band in the world) songs... and some relatively obscure songs as well. "Sweet Virginia"! "Shine a Light"! There's also a terrific version of "The Spider and the Fly", in which Mick updates some of the lyrics: "She was nifty, thrifty, she looked about... fffffifty." The way he slurs the fffff is hilarious. The second half drags a little -- "Angie"? Really? -- but it's still a terrific collection. (It also includes their rather controversial cover of "Like a Rolling Stone": could any of the Stones really imagine how does it feeeeeeel?)

Rubyhorse, Rise
Great little band, from Ireland via Boston. I first heard them, thanks to a friend of mine from Boston who sent me a mix cd of local bands as a thank you for lending her my VHS tapes of Alias, season 1. I bought the CD Rise when I was in Boston for a conference in August 2003. I love Boston.

Rufus Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright
Terrific debut album! I only got into it after I'd bought and fallen in love with its follow-up Poses. It's a terrific debut, eclectic and operatic and catchy and wonderful -- everything a Rufus Wainwright album should be.

Soundtrack, Hedwig and the Angry Inch
I always have a special place in my heart for this movie, because it was the last movie I saw before certain events in 2001. Right before ITI went bankrupt, when I was living in Denver, but working temporarily in Vancouver (long story), I actually saw it twice. I saw it a third time, the weekend before Sept 11. (I think this helps explain why I reacted so strongly to Mitchell's follow-up movie Shortbus. But that's a story for another time.) This is just a terrific soundtrack - the movie had me at hello, with its fantastic opener "Tear Me Down". Funny, fabulous, and rocking - the song is everything you could hope for in a rock musical. And then we also get tracks like "The Origin of Love" and "Sugar Daddy" and "Angry Inch" and "Wig in a Box" and "Wicked Little Town"; fantastic!

Stars on 54, "If You Could Read My Mind"
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was the late-90s, and dance remixes were cool.

Starsailor, Silence Is Easy
Starsailor should be as big as Coldplay. This, their second album, has a number of great songs (I love "Music Was Saved" and "Fidelity" and "Four To The Floor" and "Born Again" and the title track...), and I just don't understand why the band never really broke in North America. Bad marketing, perhaps?

The Pipettes, We Are The Pipettes
My friend John (hi, John!) turned me on to this English girl group last summer. And they're lots of fun. Seriously, they're a girl group, with the matching outfits and the choreography... and maybe a little bit of the Elastica sneer. I saw them live on my birthday in November. Really fun show. Can't argue with songs like "Pull Shapes" or "Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me".

The Strokes, Is This it?
I remember back at the end of 2001, SPIN Magazine half-derisively referred to The Strokes as "Dude - the male Elastica!" And... it's kinda true. This is still a great album, even if it is a little derivative of 20 other bands.

The White Stripes, Icky Thump
The White Stripes, White Blood cells
It took me a long time to actually GET the Stripes. I bought their debut album a few years ago... and it really didn't do anything for me. ("Why can't their drummer drum?!?!?") Some time around Elephant, I started giving into their charms - "Seven Nation Army" was a big turning point. But anyway. I think White Blood Cells is 2/3 of a great album -- its final few tracks, starting with the "song" "Aluminium" are just awful. On the plus side, it's got a song that's basically entirely dialogue from Citizen Kane - how great is that?! Icky Thump was, I thought, a fantastic, underrated album. Its second half, especially, is really great. "Catch Hell Blues" might be the apotheosis of everything Jack and Meg wanted to do with the band.

U2, Live in Chicago, 05/12/05
One of the few live bootlegs in my collection. I wanted THIS concert specifically, because it featured the most unique setlist on the Vertigo tour: "Until the End of the World" and "Bad" make rare appearances, and "All Because of You" appears near the beginning, not in the second encore. I could still do without the preachiness of parts of the show, but what are you gonna do? It's Bono.

So, after just more than a month:
- Total number of songs: 7688 (soon to increase, really I mean it this time)
- Total duration of songs: 20.8 days
- Total number of songs listened to: 706
- Total duration of songs listened to: 1.82 days
- Total number of songs remaining: 6982

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Oscar Picks

2008-02-23T20:11:00.002-07:00

Some thoughts on the key categories before tomorrow's Oscars.

Best Picture
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Will win: No Country For Old Men
Should win: There Will Be Blood. The one movie of the year that left me feeling like I'd been punched in the gut.
Where is: Hairspray? Just because it's the most fun movie of the year doesn't mean it's not one of the best.

Best Director
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Julian Schnabel
Juno, Jason Reitman
Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy
No Country for Old Men, Joel & Ethan Coen
There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson

Will win: The Coen brothers. They're due.
Should win: Paul Thomas Anderson, if only for the movie's mind-blowing final scenes.
Where is: Sidney Lumet for Before the Devil Knows You're Dead?

Best Actor
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeny Todd
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

Will win: Daniel Day-Lewis
Should win: Daniel Day-Lewis. An epic performance in an epic movie.
Where is: Gordon Pinsent in Away From Her?

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Laura Linney, The Savages
Ellen Page, Juno

Will win: Julie Christie
Should win: as much as I love Ellen Page, I've gotta go with Julie Christie.
Where is: Nikki Blonsky in Hairspray?

Best Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck, The Assasination of Jesse James
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

Will win: Javier Bardem
Should win: Tom Wilkinson
Where is: Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood? He holds his own against Daniel Day-Lewis -- no easy feat!

Best Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Ruby Dee, American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan, Atonement
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

Will win: Cate Blanchett. Imagine someone winning Oscars for playing Katharine Hepburn AND Bob Dylan.
Should win: Amy Ryan, and not just because I'm a fan of The Wire.
Where is: Helena Bonham Carter for Sweeney Todd?

Best Original Screenplay
Juno, Diablo Cody
Lars and the Real Girl, Nancy Oliver
Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy
Ratatouille, Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco, Brad Bird
The Savages, Tamara Jenkins

Will win: Diablo Cody
Should win: Diablo Cody
Where is: Julie Delpy's smart, observant, funny 2 Days in Paris?

Best Adapted Screenplay
Atonement, Christopher Hampton
Away from Her, Sarah Polley
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Ronald Harwood
No Country for Old Men, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson

Will win: the Coen brothers, even though Cormac McCarthy's book pretty much IS the screenplay.
Should win: Paul Thomas Anderson. "You're a bastard in a basket." "You're the afterbirth. You slithered out on your mother's filth." "I drink your milkshake... I drink it up!"
Where is: Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard's great Gone Baby Gone?

Quick thoughts on some other categories:
- Robert Elswit should win Best Cinematography, but it'll likely go to Roger Deakins. As long as it's for No Country and not Jesse James.
- Atonement should win Costume Design for Keira's green dress alone.
- If "Falling Slowly" doesn't win Best Song, there's something deeply wrong with the world.
- Michael Giacchino's deserves the Best Score Oscar... for The Incredibles. But a win for him in Ratatouille will do.
- I'd love it if Persepolis beats Ratatouille for Best Animated Picture. At least the execrable Simpsons movie wasn't nominated.

Well, it might get bears to attend games...

2008-02-23T18:54:00.002-07:00

I... don't know how I feel about this. Certainly can't be worse than watching the Marlins play, at least.

And before you know it, they'll be writing Family Guy episodes.

The Corrections

2008-02-19T20:04:00.000-07:00

November 16, 2005. My boss pulls me aside for a private chat. Turns out the company I work for is in the process of centralizing our team. I'm going to be offered a transfer back east, to my choice of Toronto or Montreal. Second prize wasn't a set of steak knives, but was rather just an ok severance package and a kick in the ass out the door. Let me back up a bit more.

Since leaving home for university, it's been a bit of an adventure. Four years undergrad in Halifax, 20 months in Toronto for a masters degree, then back to Halifax for what started out to be a PhD but that didn't quite work out. Another masters degree followed (this one in IT education), then a few other moves: Vancouver, Denver, Calgary. As of November 2005, I'd spent almost 4 years in Calgary - just about the longest I'd stayed in any one city without moving. Was it time for another change?

I really wavered while contemplating the transfer. On the one hand, I love Toronto, and I really liked the vision for my new role that my boss had outlined. On the other hand, most of my close friends live in Calgary, and I really like living here. If it were up to me, I'd have stayed in Calgary in the same role I was in; unfortunately, it was time for a change. But which change would it be -- a new job, or a new city?

So I accepted the transfer. About a week after I completed the move, my boss got fired. And as he went out the door, so did his vision for the team and what I'd be doing. Well, shit. I spent most of 2006 in work limbo -- the company was very very slowly trying to restructure the team, and I spent about 10 months doing nothing. Well, "nothing" isn't quite true... I spent about 10 months doing work that was far beneath my salary and experience. And because the primary (almost only) reason I accepted the transfer was the vision that my now-fired boss had outlined, it was an extremely frustrating year.

October 2006. I was trying to work out a way that I could move back to Calgary -- I was trying to get to a point where I could afford to up and move back without having a job. Meanwhile, I did a bit of job searching in Toronto -- in fact, I only did one evening of job searching, and it led to a job offer. This job was a trainer with a small software company -- given my background in training and in databases, I was a perfect fit. The job offered a lot of travel, and it was pretty much my dream job -- six years ago.

Something I realized soon after starting the new job was that I'd become much more of a creature of habit in my 30s, and I really didn't want either the regular travel or the uncertainty of what city I'd be in a week later. It was fun for a while, but the job also got boring -- I needed something with more of a technical challenge. (Like I said, this would have been my dream job six years ago -- before I started getting into data warehousing.)

October 2007. So then it hit me: why don't I just move back to Calgary? I was finally in a position where I could actually afford to be without a paycheck for a few months, while I worked thru the move and got a new job. I had spent much of the last two years just feeling so... off-center, that this was the best way for me to get my equilibrium back.

Things happened quickly. October 22 2007: while in a hotel room in Atlanta, I officially decided I was moving back to Calgary. October 29: I give my notice at work. November 4-9: my last work trip, which turned out to be the BEST work trip ever, to NYC. November 12: my last day in the office. November 23: I fly to Calgary on an apartment and job hunting mission. I meet with a couple of recruiters, and find a great apartment. December 7: back to Toronto for the final packing details. December 21: home to PEI for Christmas. December 29: out to Calgary for good.

I spend some time in January interviewing for assorted jobs. A couple fell thru at the last minute, which was frustrating. I didn't think those jobs were a "perfect" fit, but they were good jobs. But then everything fell into place: tomorrow, I'm starting a job that meets every item on the checklist for my perfect job: downtown Calgary, full-time, big company, database developer on the company's BI team. I get to use most of the skills I've developed over the years, and I'll have the opportunity to develop new skills.

So I think I've finally corrected the mistakes that I made when I accepted the job transfer at the end of 2005. And ya know what? For the first time in over two years, everything just feels right. And I don't think I've ever been as excited about going to work as I am for tomorrow morning.

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iPod Project, Day 23

2008-02-16T09:47:00.004-07:00

After spending the first couple of weeks of this project listening to mostly "cool" rock music - some White Stripes, Fratellis, Trews, Arctic Monkeys, etc - I figured it was time to really gay things up. I'm not quite ready to get into some of the truly embarrassing music on my iPod yet, but wow. There's some really gay stuff on this list.
Also, because I'm a computer nerd, I wanted to come up with a way to simply gather some stats about the progress of the project. Because I can export the entire playlist from iTunes, I actually built an Access database and a series of queries and macros to automatically calculate the progress. See, this is what I do when I don't have a job. Fortunately, I'm rejoining the land of the productive in 4 days.

Kylie Minogue, Light Years.
I love Kylie. Love her. And this is just a fantastic, fun disco album. (She actually beat Madonna to the punch by a few years.) There's really no point in trying to resist songs like "Disco Down" or "Koocachoo" or "So Now Goodbye" or "Under the Influence of Love" or "Butterfly" - your disco needs you, after all.

Shania Twain, Up!
One of the reasons this album was notorious was that Shania and hubby/producer Mutt Lange actually released multiple versions of it, in a blatant attempt at world domination. Me, I prefer the "country" version of the album; Shania and Mutt's instincts are pop enough even with all the banjos and fiddles. (Sidenote: have you heard the "world music" version of the album? That is some fucked up shit, right there.) And while I don't need this multi-jillionaire to criticize our consumerist culture in TWO songs ("Ka-Ching!" and "What a Way to Wanna Be!", easily the two worst tracks on the album), I think the true heart of the album is on "I Ain't Goin' Down", a song about teenage pregnancy that provides a nice analogy for Shania's teen years of caring for her siblings after their parents' death.

Shania Twain, "You're Still the One".
The ONLY reason I bought this single: the terrific dance remix of "Don't Be Stupid".

Pet Shop Boys, Very.
Pet Shop Boys is one of those groups I should likely be into more than I am. This is a terrific record, most notable for their cover of The Village People's "Go West", although my favorite track on the record is "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing."

ABBA, ABBA Gold.
There's a chance this album may have been described by me (circa summer 2002) as the Old Testament in the Gay Bible. It's an almost unbelievable collection of hits from one of the most underrated bands of all time. (Well, I guess they're not really underrated anymore - ABBA's gotten enough critical praise in hindsight.) Oddly enough, my favorite track on the record might be the odd one out - the more rocking "Does Your Mother Know?" featuring the guys on lead vocals. It's all great, though.

Antony and the Johnsons, I am a bird now.
Antony himself is such a contradictory presence - a huge man with the softest voice. And this album features appearances from Lou Reed, Boy George, AND Rufus Wainwright, so it's a veritable who's-who of gay artists.

Soundtrack, Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Such a bad movie... such a great soundtrack! Seriously, start-to-finish, this is just fantastic. (Why it excludes the song "You'd better wise up, Janet Weiss", I'm not sure - unless it's because that song includes the line "A mental mind-fuck can be nice", which would be the only cursing on the soundtrack.)

Soundtrack, Chicago.
This is the movie version of the soundtrack, not any of the Broadway cast recordings. (Although I've been meaning to get my hands on the Bebe Neuwirth version.) I've seen Chicago on stage as well, and I really like both versions of the show. The stage show, as it stands, wouldn't work well as a movie; it needs a bit more of a narrative kick, and screenwriter Bill Condon did a good job of shaping the story. The movie also benefits from some great casting - I especially like Queen Latifah's Mama Morton, John C Reilly's Amos Hart, and especially Catherine Zeta-Jones's Velma Kelly. Zellweger and Gere acquit themselves nicely, but I still can't help but think of them as the weak links. (I also can't help but imagine Hugh Jackman as Billy Flynn; THAT would have been great casting.)

Liza Minnelli, Liza With a "Z".
Wait, let me explain. At the Toronto International Film Festival in 2005, one of the special screenings was the world premiere of the restored, remastered 1972 tv concert Liza With a "Z". Liza herself was in attendance, and did an entertaining-as-all-get-out 45 minute Q and A afterward. And oh, the stories!! The concert itself was breath-taking. Directed by Bob Fosse and featuring some songs by Kander and Ebb - the whole team was riding high from the HUGE success of the movie version of "Cabaret", which had been released a couple of months earlier. The concert is an important work, both because it was out of circulation for a while and because it represents one of the few filmed works featuring Fosse choreography. Its importance was elaborated upon by me to my friend Jon (hi, Jon! Hi other TO guys!) in what I'm sure was a 15-minute dissertation, after a few too many bevvies one night.
And of course I had to buy the DVD when it came out, and not just because it includes the Q and A from TIFF. It also included a CD copy of the concert... which could very well be the gayest thing in my music collection.

Rufus Wainwright, Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall.
No, wait - this is the gayest thing in my music collection. As the title indicates, Rufus Wainwright - one of my favorite artists - recreated the legendary 1961 Judy Garland Carnegie Hall concert, start to finish. And while he's (clearly) no Judy, it's still a tremendously entertaining show. He even recreates bits of dialogue from the show ("Do you like A Foggy Day? I like A Foggy Day..."), tells a hilarious story about "melting" like the Wicked Witch of the West when he was a kid, brings a few guests on stage (sis Martha sings a beautiful "Stormy Weather"; mom Kate McGarrigle plays piano on "Over the Rainbow"; Lorna Luft duets with Rufus on "After You've Gone"), and actually manages to pull the whole thing off.
I think this show has also helped turn Rufus into a great showman. I've seen him in concert four times; twice in 2004 before this concert, twice in 2007 after this concert. And while the 2004 shows were wonderful, I think the Carnegie Hall show helped improve his sense of pacing, drama, style. And you haven't lived until you've seen this: Rufus, in full-ass Judy drag, and his band recreating, with remarkable fidelity, the climactic "Get Happy" sequence of the Judy Garland/Gene Kelly movie "Summer Stock."

Indigo Girls, Shaming of the Sun.
The first two songs - "Shame On You" and "Get Out the Map" - rank with their best work. I particularly love the line from "Get Out the Map": "I'm gonna love you good and strong / While our love is good and young." (See, I'm not bitter and jaded and cynical ALL the time...) The rest of the album is solid, too. I had the privilege, when I lived in Denver, of seeing the Indigo Girls at Red Rocks. Good show, absolutely amazing venue.

So, as of Day 23:
- Total number of songs: 7688 (soon to increase)
- Total duration of songs: 20.8 days
- Total number of songs listened to: 424
- Total duration of songs listened to: 1.12 days
- Total number of songs remaining: 7264

So, I'm getting there - just about 5% done. Stil, I gotta pick up the pace if I want to finish by the end of the year.

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Playlist: Black Thursday

2008-02-13T21:44:00.007-07:00

There is a certain subset of people - some call them "realists", others call them "bitter, single misanthropes" - who aren't fans of the idiotic Feb 14 greeting card holiday. I've decided to put together a playlist to help get through Black Thursday relatively unscathed. If you play these songs (or a similar list), I can't guarantee that you'll feel better, but you're more than likely to bring down anyone who's within earshot. A minor victory, but a victory nonetheless.

These aren't sad songs about lost loves or things like that -- this is all about the bitter. I've limited the list to one song per artist; otherwise, it would have been much much longer. If you've got other suggestions, please pass them on!!

Part 1
Annie Ross and the Low Note Quintet (from Short Cuts), To Hell With Love. "I'm gonna like somebody and let them like me. Goin' further means chains, and I was born to be free."
Amy Winehouse, You Know I'm No Good. "I cheated myself like I knew I would."
Leonard Cohen, Everybody Knows. "Everybody knows that you've been faithful, give or take a night or two."
Beck, Guess I'm Doing Fine. "It's only you that I'm losing, guess I'm doing fine."
The Carpenters, Goodbye to Love. "Loneliness and empty days will be my only friend."
Rufus Wainwright, One Man Guy. "I'm gonna bathe and shave and dress myself and eat solo every night."
Bruce Springsteen, Brilliant Disguise. "So when you look at me, you'd better look hard and look twice. Is that me baby, or just a brilliant disguise?"
Sinead O'Connor, The Last Day of Our Acquaintance. "You used to hold my hand when the plane took off."
Liz Phair, The Divorce Song. "And the license said you had to stick around until I was dead. But if you're tired of looking at my face, I guess I already am."
PJ Harvey, Catherine. "Til the light shines on me, I'll damn to hell every second you breathe."
Bob Dylan, Idiot Wind. "You're an idiot babe, it's a wonder that you still know how to breathe."
U2, So Cruel. "To stay with you, I'd be a fool."

Part 2
Stars, Your Ex-Lover is Dead. "I'm not sorry I met you, I'm not sorry it's over, I'm not sorry there's nothing to say."
Fleetwood Mac, Go Your Own Way. "Loving you isn't the right thing to do."
Franz Ferdinand, Walk Away. "And I am cold, yes, I'm cold, but not as cold as you are."
Martha Wainwright, BMFA. "Oh, you bloody motherfucking asshole."
Kelly Clarkson, Since U Been Gone. "I can breathe for the first time."
Eurythmics, Who's that Girl. "The language of love has left me stony grey."
Shania Twain, Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under. "I know I'm not the only girl you run to."
Kenny Rogers, Lucille. "This time your hurting won't heal."
Loretta Lynn, Mrs. Leroy Brown. "I'm gonna grab her by her phony ponytail, I'm gonna sling her 'round and 'round..."
Nsync, Bye Bye Bye. "I just wanna tell you that I had enough."
The Cliks, Cry Me A River. "Your bridges were burned, and now it's your turn."
REM, I'll Take the Rain. "If this is what you're offering, I'll take the rain."

Part 3
Cher, Strong Enough. "I don't need your sympathy, there's nothing you can say or do for me."
Toni Braxton, He Wasn't Man Enough. "Do you know I made him leave? Do you know he begged to stay with me?"
Whitney Houston, It's Not Right But It's OK. "Pack your bags up and leave. Don't you dare come running back to me."
Janet Jackson, Son of a Gun. "Stupid bitch in my beachhouse."
Outkast, Roses. "She's the reason for the word 'bitch'."
Madonna, Sorry. "You're not half the man you think you are."
Deborah Cox, Absolutely Not. "All the ugly words that I heard you say made me stronger everyday. Now I live my life for me."
Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive. "I'm not that chained-up little person still in love with you."
Destiny's Child, Survivor. "You thought that I'd be weak without you, but I'm stronger."
The Pipettes, Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me. "You better hear me clear, I want you out of here. Don't send me wild, you're just a child."
Liza Minnelli, Mein Herr. "It was a fine affair, but now it's over."
ABBA, The Winner Takes It All. "But tell me does she kiss
Like I used to kiss you?"

Part 4
Prince, When Doves Cry. "Why do we scream at each other?"
Snow Patrol, Ways and Means. "I can leave you if I wanted, but there's nowhere else that I can go."
The Walkmen, The Rat. "You've got a nerve to be asking a favor.'
Violent Femmes, Add It Up. "Believe me I know what to do,
but something won't let me make love to you."
Nirvana, Where Did You Sleep Last Night. "My girl, my girl, don't lie to me."
Radiohead, Morning Bell. "Light another candle and release me."
The White Stripes, The Nurse. "The nurse should not be the one who puts salt in your wounds."
Ben Folds Five, Song For The Dumped. "Give me my money back, you bitch!"
Alanis, You Oughta Know. "And are you thinking of me when you fuck her?"
Elastica, Never Here. "You were far too busy writing rhymes that didn't scan."
Rolling Stones, Soul Survivor. "Where you are, I won't be."

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This Week's Video Rentals

2008-02-13T20:44:00.002-07:00

This week I went for a three-pack and two new-ish releases from Rogers:
- The TV Set, because I love David Duchovny and Sigourney Weaver.
- Family Guy: Blue Harvest, because it looks funny, and because I'm slowly slowly coming around on Family Guy.
- Cronos, because I'm still working through Guillermo del Toro's filmography.
- Phantom of the Paradise, because Brian De Palma is one of those directors I should likely watch more of.
- The Good German, because I feel bad about neglecting it in theaters a year ago.

As for last week's rentals, I liked them all but didn't have particularly strong feelings about any of them. Nothing terribly shocking there.

iPod Project, Day 17

2008-02-10T19:38:00.000-07:00

I've been out-and-about a bit more over the last few days, and it will of course be a much more regular thing, once I officially start The New Job. For now, I've been sticking to some of the albums I listen to (quasi-)regularly... so I've really got to start mixing it up a bit more. Maybe I'm just a little scared of acknowledging some of the more embarrassing music on the iPod. (And oh yes, there's LOTS of enbarrassing stuff to come.) Here's the latest roundup.

Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.
Cheeky British Bastards, part 1. I saw these guys live twice; once at the ACC in Toronto when they opened for Oasis, the second time a night later at the Phoenix. And while the British press hasn't exactly been reserved in their hyperbole, the Monkeys deliver the goods. This is a terrific album. In a way, it's a song cycle that could have been inspired by Pulp's "Common People" - 13 songs about guys who want nothing but to dance and drink and screw. It's starts with the brilliant "The View From The Afternoon", and ends with the morning-after hangover of "A Certain Romance". It drags a *little* bit in the middle (I'm not a fan of "Riot Van" or "Mardy Bum"), but with songs like "Fake Tales of San Francisco", "Still Take You Home", "When The Sun Goes Down", and the amazing single "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor", that's a minor complaint.

The Fratellis, Costello Music.
Cheeky British Bastards, part 2. (Well, they're Scottish, but close enough.) I don't really have a lot to say about this album. I really like it - especially tracks like "Henrietta", the unavoidable "Flathead" and my favorite "Whistle for the Choir" - and it almost makes me wish I was on a rugby team, so I could raise a pint with me mates after a game and sing along. Fantastic album cover, too.

Soundtrack, Hairspray.
Ok, so after finding out that I got the job, I was making my way out to Kate and Bethia's place for dinner/drinks/general merriment. The ONLY thing I wanted to listen to on the walk/train/bus was this. Everything about this movie and this soundtrack just makes me so damn happy. I listened to this album almost nonstop while I was job and apartment hunting back in Nov/Dec - Tracy Turnblad's enthusiasm is completely infectious. Some particular highlights for me would have to be "Ladies' Choice", "You Can't Stop The Beat", and Seaweed's spectacular ode to going black and not going back, "Run and Tell That".

Liz Phair, Liz Phair.
I know that the initial reception to this album bordered on the vitriolic. Like, how DARE Liz Phair, indie darling of the early-90s, work with The Matrix and make such purely poppy songs? It's as if killer hooks were something alien to Phair's early albums -- and that notion is clearly bullshit: "6'1" and "Mesmerizing" and "Strange Loop" and "Super Nova" are all great pop songs. The only new element here is the sheen of the production. (It sure beats her recording on a four-track, that's for sure.) I think a handful of this album's 14 tracks rank with Phair's best work. "Rock Me" is a funny, aggressive celebration of sex with a younger guy; only Phair could come up with a couplet like "Your record collection don't exist / You don't even know who Liz Phair is." Tracks like "Love/Hate Transmission" and "My Bionic Eyes" and "Take a Look" benefit from the great production values, and "Little Digger" - a song about Phair observing her toddler son apprehensively size up her new
boyfriend - is one of those poignant songs that show Phair at her best. Hell, I even like "HWC"; it's got a chorus with handclaps and a harmonica solo... who cares the title is an acronym for "Hot White Cum"?

The Trews, House of Ill Fame.
The Trews are from Nova Scotia, like Sloan. However, where Sloan is more influenced by The Beatles, the Trews are more influenced by The Rolling Stones. (In fact, The Trews had the privilege of opening for the Stones at their secret show at The Phoenix in Toronto a couple of years back. (I wish I could've seen that.) House of Ill Fame is theri debut album, and it's phenomenal. There are 12 tracks, and they're all winners. The band was best known in Canada for its two big singles, "Not Ready To Go" and "Tired of Waiting". And both of them are as good as any other rock song you could name. Especially "Not Ready To Go" - which might be the Great Canadian Rock Song.

The White Stripes, Icky Thump.
I love the Stripes. Love em. I used to make fun of Meg's "drumming", but that was before I saw them live. Together, Meg's basic technique complements Jack's guitar virtuosity nicely; she keeps him grounded, but he elevates her. This album didn't really get the critical response that most of their earlier work did, but I think it's almost as good as anything they've ever done. The album's second half is particularly strong; I love "Little Cream Soda" and "Rag And Bone" and "I'm Slowly Turning Into You" and "Effect and Cause" and (the bonus track) "Baby Brother" and especially "Catch Hell Blues", which features Jack playing the role of guitarist as trickster. There's a chance "Catch Hell Blues" is the best Stripes track ever.

The Walkmen, A Hundred Miles Off.
Here's another great live act. This album isn't as good as their spectacular "Bows + Arrows" -- too many of the songs almost seem to lack melodies. The album starts out brilliantly - the horn section in "Louisiana" takes my breath away - and ends brilliantly. I was shocked when I found out that the closer "Another One Goes By" was actually a cover (of a song by Mazarin, who opened for The Walkmen when I saw them in June 2006), because it's more of a Walkmen song than most other tracks on the album.

So, as of Day 17:
- Total number of songs: 7688 (soon to increase)
- Total number of songs listened to: 254
- Total number of songs remaining: 7434

Read the full post.

Finally, I can stop suffering and write that symphony.

2008-02-08T15:58:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last couple of days in what's felt like suspended animation... waiting to hear back about a job I interviewed for on Monday. It's a great job -- pretty much exactly the type of work I want to be doing. And, as of about 45 minutes ago, I'm no longer an unproductive member of society. Woo!!

I'm too wired to post anything else right now.

The Best Films of 2007 - Runners-Up

2008-02-05T23:32:00.000-07:00

There were a number of other 2007 movies I really liked, but didn't quite make the list. There were some great crime movies: Zodiac, Michael Clayton, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Eastern Promises, and Gone Baby Gone. There were two great movies about losing an elderly loved one: Sarah Polley's wonderful Away From Her, and Tamara Jenkins' The Savages.

From the spring, I also really liked Grindhouse (especially Tarantino's Death Proof), Hot Fuzz, Year of the Dog, Waitress, and La Vie En Rose. A summer that gives us Once and Hairspray and Harry Potter 5 cannot be a bad summer, and it also gave us Ratatouille and Superbad and Sunshine and The Bourne Ultimatum and 2 Days in Paris.

TIFF also brought a few other really good titles: Persepolis, The Mourning Forest, You the Living, Forever Never Anywhere, Paranoid Park, To Love Someone, Stuck, Dr. Plonk, and Boy A.

The fall awards-movie season also gave us some really good titles, movies like Lust Caution, Atonement, Sweeney Todd, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Like I said, a good year!!!

The Best Films of 2007

2008-02-05T22:46:00.000-07:00

I know it's a bit late, but it takes a while to get caught up with all the end-of-the-year releases. Turns out there's only one movie I saw since the end of December that ended up making the list, but it ended up being a rather important one, so it was worth the wait.

Looking back at 2007, although there ended up being only one movie I loved loved LOVED, it actually was a pretty good year for movies. As I started putting this list together, and identified all the films I was enthusiastic about, there were likely close to 30 titles. 30!!! I knew most of them would be quickly removed from consideration for this list, but I still ended up with a dozen titles I wanted to acknowledge. Like I said, good year.

12. SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO (dir Takashi Miike).
11. My Kid Could Paint That (dir Amir Bar-Lev).

Two faves from the Toronto Film Festival. See the TIFF postings for more details about them. Still, I can't believe SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO didn't get a North American distribution deal out of the festival; fanboys would eat this shit up.

10. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (dir David Yates).
The best of the Harry Potter movies to date. Yates and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg condense a big, sprawling, complex novel to its bare essentials, and turn out a crackerjack political thriller. Imelda Staunton's Dolores Umbridge is as memorable and creepy a villain as Anton Chigurh, and the showdown between Dumbledore and Voldemort is one of the great sequences of the year.

9. The Orphanage (dir Juan Antonio Bayona).
Another festival fave, and one of the few great horror movies of the decade.

8. The King of Kong (dir Seth Gordon).
The latest of the geekumentaries (after movies like "Spellbound", the Scrabble doc "Word Wars", and the crossword doc "Wordplay") might be the geekiest of all. It's the quintessential battle of good vs. evil... in the guise of two nerds trying to get the world record score of Donkey Kong. If, like me, you ever spent a day wasting a fistful of quarters on arcade games in the mid-80s, this movie might hit a little too close to home.

7. Juno (dir Jason Reitman).
Now that the backlash is fully underway, the backlash-backlash can start. NO, all the characters in Juno do not sound the same. NO, Juno herself does not sound like a typical teenager, just like characters in a screwball comedy don't sound like real adults. Juno's a charmer, and will stand the test of time.

6. Hairspray (dir Adam Shankman).
Confession: I've now seen Hairspray seven times. Five times in theaters, and twice more on planes between Toronto and Calgary. The soundtrack's been in heavy rotation in my iPod since the end of July. This movie and everything about it just makes be happy. From the moment Tracy Turnblad (a wonderful debut from Nikki Blonsky) starts singing "Good Morning Baltimore" I've got a goofy smile on my face... and it stays there for the whole movie. I particularly liked James Marsden, whose work as Corny Collins made me re-evaluate his entire existence, and Elijah Kelly, whose performance as Seaweed was absolutely electric.

5. My Winnipeg (dir Guy Maddin).
Guy Maddin is a Canadian national treasure. This "docu-fantasia" about his hometown isn't really anything new from him, but if he keeps repackaging his techniques in ways this entertaining, that doesn't matter at all.

4. 14ème Arrondissement (dir Alexander Payne, from Paris Je T'Aime)
It could be argued that this shouldn't count, because it's a short film, and part of a larger movie. But with the exception of one movie (see number 3 on this list), no movie had the emotional impact of Payne's masterful short of a lonely American tourist (memorably played by Margo Martindale) in Paris.

3. Once (dir John Carney).
2. No Country For Old Men (dir Joel and Ethan Coen).

It was a toss-up for the numbers 2 and 3 spots: do I prefer the movie that's all heart and no technique, or the one that's all technique and no heart? Once is a no-budget miracle, sweet and funny and incredibly moving. And the songs... oh, the songs!!! If you don't get goosebumps listening to "Falling Slowly" or "When Your Mind's Made Up" or "Say It To Me Now", I think you should check for a pulse.
As for No Country For Old Men, the Coen brothers have always had masterful technique. Here, however, they finally shed the cutesiness that has marred much of their earlier work, and created a near-masterpiece.

1. There Will Be Blood (dir Paul Thomas Anderson).
One of the great epic American Movies of all time, worthy of being mentioned with classics like Chinatown and Citizen Kane. Daniel Day-Lewis's epic performance as Daniel Plainview is a great addition to the actor's already legendary career; shockingly, Paul Dano actually goes head to head with Day-Lewis... and Dano holds his own. Of course, that's all just a set-up for the movie's extraordinary final act, which features a descent into madness, bowling pins, bastards in baskets, and drinking milkshakes.

Read the full post.

iPod Project, Day 12

2008-02-05T19:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, so here's the thing.

I tend to listen to music more regularly when I'm out-and-about... either shopping or wandering around or going to work or what-have-you. Because I'm not working right now, and because it was bloody cold in Calgary last week, it's taken a bit longer than expected to get this project fully off the ground.

I had initially wanted to try to get thru everything on my iPod by the end of 2008. A rough estimate of the time required told me that I would have to listen to almost two hours of different music A DAY to do this.

That's likely not going to happen. But we'll see. Here's the latest update.

Indigo Girls, Rites of Passage.
This is one of those albums I keep going back to. "Galileo" is, of course, one of the three or four quintessential Indigo Girls songs, and rightfully so. But the album's also got a number of other great tracks: "Joking", "Love Will Come To You", "Airplane", "Let It Be Me", and Amy Ray's gorgeous cover of Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet" (which is better than the original, if you ask me).

New Pornographers, Twin Cinema.
One of the rare chances I had to see these guys live when I lived in Toronto was when they opened for Belle and Sebastian. I sat thru fuckin' Belle and Sebastian to see New Pornographers. At one of the worst concert venues in Toronto, The Docks. Which is about a 30-minute walk from anywhere. And it was about -30 out. Oh, was I cranky when it was over.
The incomparable Miss Alli of Television Without Pity lists the "hey-la" section of "The Bleeding Hearts Show" among her favorites, and why should I disagree with her? (I'm a sucker for heys and las anyway.) The Neko Case tracks "The Bones of an Idol" and "These Are The Fables" are also highlights, but the best track for me is "Sing Me Spanish Techno". I still fuckin' hate "Falling Through Your Clothes", though.

Oasis, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?.
I've seen Oasis live a couple of times, and I was shocked when I saw how fanatical some of their fans are. I just... didn't realize that they would inspire that kind of devotion, on this side of the pond at least. This was the album that made them stars in North America in the mid-90s, thanks to the gorgeous "Wonderwall". My favorite track on the album (and my favorite Oasis song, period) is Noel's gorgeous "Don't Look Back In Anger".

The Beatles, Help!.
If there's such a thing as an underrated Beatles album, I think this is it. I guess it might get a bit lost when compared to the heavy hitters that followed. It's got "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" and "Ticket To Ride", two of the alltime great Beatles tracks. I've always thought "Yesterday" was a nice song, but not worthy of the legendary status bestowed upon it - the real gem of the later tracks of this album is "I've Just Seen a Face".

Madonna, Erotica.
Oh, Madonna. You're such a provocateuse. 13 bass-heavy, beat-heavy songs about sex, perversions, and general naughtiness. I LOVE THIS ALBUM!!! "Deeper and Deeper"... "Rain"... "Erotica"... "Bad Girl"... classic singles all. But perhaps my favorite track is the great "Thief of Hearts" - one of the great kiss-off dance songs.

Sheryl Crow, Sheryl Crow.
I was a huge fan of Crow's first few albums, but she kinda lost me in the last few years, mainly because I don't like Lance Armstrong. (I know - that in itself is odd, but the fact that it affected my feelings for Crow's work is even odder.) Since she's got a new album out (and since she and Lance split up a while back), I decided it was time to revisit some of her earlier work, and started here. Great stuff - even "Everyday Is a Winding Road", which conceptually isn't that far from Tom Cochrane's dreadful "Life Is a Highway", but is just so much better.

As of Day 12:
- Total number of songs: 7688 (soon to increase)
- Total number of songs listened to: 157
- Total number of songs remaining: 7531

I've really got to pick up the pace!!!
Read the full post.

DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT

2008-02-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

Well. That sucked.

There were some really bizarre things going on with the clock in the final two minutes of that game, that I'm sure gave the Giants extra seconds on at least two plays in that shoulda-been-stopped-at-least-twice game-winning drive.

And I can't believe that either Manning brother has a Super Bowl win, let alone both of them. Shit.

Bring on baseball season.

This Week's Video Rentals

2008-02-03T12:53:00.000-07:00

Another six-pack from Rogers:
- Prime Suspect 3, because I'm still working through the whole set.
- Infamous, because it's got Daniel Craig, and some people thing it's better than Capote.
- Miller's Crossing, because it's the one Coen brothers movie I really need to revisit.
- The Virgin Spring, because I feel like I really should see a few more Bergmans.
- Last Days, because it's latter-day Gus Van Sant.
- Not Another Teen Movie, because I fell in love with Jaime Pressly on My Name Is Earl. And because after those five movies, I need something a little lighter.

As for last week's rentals... Prime Suspect 2 was a fantastic showcase for Helen Mirren. Becket was one of those wonderful grand historical movies, like A Man For All Seasons, that they just don't make any more. The Notebook was sweet, but not especially memorable. Idiocracy started out brilliantly, but I don't think Mike Judge fully worked out the logic of his movie. JSA was surprisingly sentimental, but still contained some typically gorgeous Park Chan-wook direction. And The Devil's Backbone was surprisingly un-fantastical for a del Toro ghost story, but it was still very nicely done.

XLII

2008-02-02T21:43:00.000-07:00

So the New England Patriots are going to win the Super Bowl tomorrow.

They won their first Super Bowl on Feb 3, 2002 - the day after I moved to Calgary. They followed that up with two more Super Bowl wins in Feb 2004 and 2005 - again, while I was living in Calgary. I moved to Toronto almost a year later; the night before I left Calgary, they lost in the AFC playoffs to Denver, in a truly terribly officiated game. (I know, I know -- after the Patriots dynasty started thanks to the questionable Tuck Rule call in the Snow Bowl against Oakland, I'm really in no position to complain about questionable officiating.) The following year, they lost to the Colts in the AFC championship game, a game the Patriots really should have won, while I was living in Toronto. I decided to move back to Calgary partway thru the NFL season, sometime around when the Patriots were 6-0. Now they're one win shy of a perfect 19-0 season... and I'm happily back in Calgary. The rule of Randy Happily in the Mountain Time Zone means that they're a lock for the victory tomorrow.

Of course, they're also the best team in the league. Their offense is going to *shred* the Giants' defense... Randy Moss is going to score two brilliant touchdowns, Wes Welker is going to catch 15 passes across the middle, Laurence Maroney is going to rush for 100 yards, and Mike Vrabel's going to score a touchdown too, just for the hell of it. And Eli Manning's going to look like a deer trapped in headlights thanks to the confusing defense Bill Belichick is going to send to the line. Final score: 49-13, New England.

And yet... there have been more allegations in the last few days about the Patriots illicitly taping other teams. Clearly, this is a black mark against the team -- a team that is so stacked with talent that they didn't even need to do shit like this. Also, I know it's against the rules -- but really, how BAD of a rule-break is this?NFL games are filmed from umpteen different angles anyway, so how much advantage could this possibly give a team? (What can I say? The Patriots are my team, thru the good times and bad. This season has often been the best and worst of times.)

From the Archive: TIFF 2007 Round-up, Part 2

2008-02-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

The Really, Really Good Movies

Persepolis. Cannes prize-winner number 1. Animated French movie, based on the graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi, co-directed by Satrapi and Vincent Parronaud, about Satrapi growing up in Iran, and spending her teen years in Europe. Absolutely gorgeous movie -- it should be a shoo-in for Best Animated Feature at next year's Oscars. Parts of it are breathtakingly moving - particularly the segment with her uncle - but ultimately a bit too episodic. Still, keep an eye out for it -- it'll be showing up soon.

The Mourning Forest. Cannes prize-winner number 2. Japanese movie about the relationship between an elderly widower and the nursing home attendant he bonds with. Gorgeous, gorgeous movie, and the performances of the two leads - particularly Shigeki Uda as the old man, in what IMDB lists as his debut! - are wonderful.

You, the Living. Absurd Scandinavian comedy (again), directed by Roy Andersson. It's a series of scenes featuring loosely linked characters (not unlike, say, Slacker), but what distinguishes the movie is its filmmaking. Most of the scenes occur in static, unbroken shots (generally about 10 minutes or so), and the assorted doorways, windows, and other frames within frames add a surprising three-dimensional depth to both the filmmaking and the stories. One of my favorite sequences involves a man telling us about a dream he had, involving the classic pull-the-tablecloth-from-the-full-table gag, which we get to see, and is brilliantly executed.

Eastern Promises. Cronenberg's "A History of Violence" follow-up, which in many ways is a black-mirror reflection of that movie. I wasn't a huge fan of AHOV (I thought the movie nearly fell apart completely in its third act); EP is better, but its storytelling is on a smaller scale. Great performances by Viggo Mortensen, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Vincent Cassel, and Naomi Watts, but the centerpiece of the movie is the fight scene, with Viggo's character fighting two thugs in a Russian steam bath. While naked. The sequence is already legendary.

Forever Never Anywhere. Absurd Austrian comedy (not quite Scandinavian, but close) about three men who get stuck in a car after an accident, and the twists and turns that occur after they're discovered by a budding young scientist/sadist. Surprisingly fun, and a nice ironic kick at the end.

Paranoid Park. Gus Van Sant's latest, about disaffected Portland youth and the skate park that gives the movie its title. Oh, and there's some type of murder mystery involved, too. Van Sant uses mostly unknown young actors, tosses in cinematography by Christopher Doyle, and makes a nice - albeit minor - movie. It's not as formally structured or as moving as "Elephant", but it is a nice companion piece.

To Love Someone. Swedish drama about domestic violence. Lena is married to Alf, but her ex-husband Hannes is about to get out of prison, where he's served time for beating her. Against her better judgment, Lena finds herself drawn back towards Hannes; against his better judgment, Hannes lets her. The movie is astoundingly sympathetic to all its characters, even Hannes; the lead actors all do really nice work.

Stuck. Nasty, efficient thriller from Stuart Gordon (of Re-Animator fame). Mena Suvari plays a young woman who accidentally hits a down-on-his-luck IT guy (played by Stephen Rea) with her car; she panics, and leaves him, well, stuck halfway thru her windshield. Good stuff!

Dr. Plonk. Australian director Rolf de Heer (a festival fave with his "10 Canoes" last year) found some expired filmstock, rejiggered a camera to be hand-cranked, and decided to make a silent comedy. And while he doesn't turn the silent movie into something new and unexpected (unlike, say, Guy Maddin), he does make a sincerely funny movie. In the early 1900s, scientist Dr. Plonk (played by an Aussie street performer, Nigel Lunghi) discovers that the world will end in the year 2008. He then builds a time machine to prove his point. Wacky hijinks ensue, often involving an adorable but completely crazy puppy.

Boy A. In the opening scene of "Boy A" a young man gets a chance to start a new life, with a new identity. It turns out he was 'Boy A', one of two youths convicted of a terrible crime some years earlier, when they were maybe 12. Peter Mullan plays his counsellor / parole officer, and turns in a wonderful, completely sympathetic performance. The movie itself pursues themes of rehabilitation, forgiveness, starting over, and its ending was quietly devastating. I have to dock it a few marks, though, for stacking the deck - a braver movie would have more fully explored the story from the perspective of the victim's family, and it also would have showed us the crime in question.

The Great Movies

7. SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO (Japan, dir Takashi Miike).
There's long been a back-and-forth between Japanese and American culture, in certain genres of movies in particular. The western inspired Kurosawa movies like "The Seven Samurai", which in turn led to "The Magnificent Seven". "The Hidden Fortress" led to "Star Wars". All of this back-and-forth led to Tarantino's "Kill Bill", which combined both the martial arts movie and the western into one fantastic showcase. And then... Miike (always unpredictable) delivers this.
"SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO" (like Lynch with "INLAND EMPIRE", apparently we're supposed to use all-caps to refer to the title) is a samurai movie, set centuries ago, starring all Japanese actors (with one exception). BUT... it's fashioned like a western... and all the dialogue is English. And not dubbed English, either -- the Japanese actors actually say the English dialogue, with the heavy accents and questionable emphasis that always comes when you use a language other than your mother tongue. And damned if the whole thing doesn't work.
If this sounds like it could be a Tarantino movie, it basically is. (It's also a really good looking movie, too.) Tarantino actually appears in the movie, and he's hilarious. He's not the most naturalistic of actors (to put it mildly), but with Japanese actors reciting their lines in English, he actually fits in pretty well. I really, really hope this gets some sort of North American release.

6. Encounters at the End of the World (US/Ger, dir Werner Herzog).
Herzog goes to Antarctica. This isn't simply a nature documentary (although it's that), nor is it about the noble stupidity of the penguin (although the movie gets a couple of nice digs at the expense of "March of the Penguins") -- it's also about the people who live in Antarctica. Really, what type of person WOULD be a cafeteria worker at an Antarctic settlement? Fascinating characters with fascinating stories, plus some stunning nature photography (inclding underwater), and some terrific, just-biting-enough voiceover from Herzog himself.

5. My Kid Could Paint That (US, dir Amir Bar-Lev).
Terrific documentary about child painter Marla Olmstead, who may or may not have been a child prodigy when she became a superstar in the art world for her abstract paintings. It's an endlessly fascinating movie, talking about the creative process, the nature of whatever "modern art" is, the conscious/unconscious influence of parents on their kids, and the documentary process itself -- is what we observe in a documentary different because it's being observed? (It's all very "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle"...)

4. The Orphanage (Spain, dir Juan Antonio Bayona).
A woman, raised in an orphanage, decides to reopen the orphanage, with her husband and adopted son. Moody, creepy, and always surprising, this is the best horror movie I've seen in years. (Well, either it or "The Descent" is the best horror movie I've seen in years -- both of them are certainly a terrific antidote to the current generation of "horror movies".) "The Orphanage" has a terrific pedigree -- it was produced by Guillermo Del Toro (even if I may be the only person who didn't adore "Pan's Lanyrinth"), and it features one helluva scene-stealing performance by Geraldine Chaplin as a psychic.
Director Bayona provided an entertaining Q and A after the screening, in which he acknowledged his influences -- movies like "The Omen" and "The Exorcist" and (for me, the greatest horror movie ever made) "Rosemary's Baby". Like those movies, "The Orphanage" is fundamentally about motherhood, and it can stand alongside those as a classic of the genre.

3. Juno (US, dir Jason Reitman).
TIFF audiences are notoriously polite. Even at the worst movies, there will be a smattering of polite applause, and you can tell how the audience feels about a movie by the number of people that leave before the Q and A. So, it may be a case of festivalitis affecting my response to the movie -- the audience ADORED this movie. We could barely wait for the end credits to begin before giving it a rapturous standing ovation.
Of course, I think we all loved the movie even before the screening started. Two years ago, the fest had the world premiere of Reitman's debut feature "Thank You For Smoking", and boy oh boy did we love that movie. We *made* that movie the (admittedly minor) hit it was. Plus, Reitman's Canadian; he OWED us... and he did not disappoint.
Canadian actress Ellen Page (whom you may recognize from "X-Men 3" or, even better, "Hard Candy") plays Juno, a high school student who gets knocked up by her close friend, played by the always welcome (and budding superstar) Michael Cera. JK Simmons and Allison Janney play Juno's dad and stepmom; Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner play the married couple whom Juno plans to allow to adopt the baby. Such a great cast, and so perfectly used! But the real star here is screenwriter Diablo Cody, who has created an entire movie of terrific, unique characters with distinct voices; best of all is Juno herself. Some critics have complained that the movie might be "too clever"; oh, if every teen movie had that problem.

2. My Winnipeg (Canada, dir Guy Maddin).
As I find myself more and more frustrated by Atom Egoyan, and as I find myself not fully satisfied with David Cronenberg's latest couple of movies, maybe those fans of obscure Canadian movies are right. Maybe Guy Maddin IS the best Canadian director working today.
He's certainly the most idiosyncratic, and also the most distinctive; watch five seconds of a Maddin movie, and you KNOW you're watching a Maddin movie. Inspired equally by silent film and Soviet montage and German expressionism and 30s/40s melodrama, Maddin movies are like longlost spectacles, movies that have been stored in a leaky vault for 80 years. "My Winnipeg" doesn't really add anything new to the Maddin oeuvre, but when the movie is as funny and as perfectly imagined as this one is, who cares?
"My Winnipeg" is, in theory, a documentary about Maddin's hometown of Winnipeg, and his love-hate relationship with it. But while documentaries tend to strive for something resembling objectivity (well, the best ones do, anyway... suck it, Michael Moore), "My Winnipeg" is as subjective a movie as I've ever seen. There are references to real Winnipeg events, some of which are so preposterous they sound made up -- and this, of course, is made crazier by Maddin's inimitable style. There are also some fictional elements (at least, I hope they're fictional) involving Maddin's mother, here played by film noir actress Ann Savage.
I have no idea when/if/how/where this would ever play outside of a Canadian festival environment, but it's a treasure.

1. No Country For Old Men (US, dir Joel and Ethan Coen).
Cormac McCarthy's novel seems like a perfect vehicle for the Coen brothers -- plot-wise, it shares elements with movies like "Blood Simple" and "Fargo". There's a crime gone bad, there's a case with $2,400,000, and there are different people trying to find the money. But on the other hand, the novel's tone is much starker than the Coens' movies -- their tendency towards a snarky tone is my biggest complaint with their movies. Here, they manage to tone down their Coen-ness, and they make what is likely the best movie of their career.
The movie is astonishingly faithful to the book - pages of dialogue are lifted wholesale - that it becomes a bit shocking when the movie deviates from the book's plot, which it does towards the end. I will admit that I have issues with certain aspects of the plot, but the Coens manage to construct this movie almost perfectly. The movie is shot by Roger Deakins, so, naturally, it's gorgeous; the cast (including Woody Harrelson and Josh Brolin and Kelly Macdonald and Tommy Lee Jones) is uniformly good. But the standout is Javier Bardem, as the creepy, villainous Chigurh. Wait til you get a load of him.
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From the Archive: TIFF 2007 Round-up, Part 1

2008-02-02T20:51:00.000-07:00

I've got a few things that I've written between my blog lifetimes that I sould likely post here. The first couple of posts are my round-up of the movies I saw at the Toronto International Film Festival, in September 2007. (The second part of this goes nicely with my soon-to-be-published list of the best films of 2007.)

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The general consensus seems to be that the 2007 Festival was a great one. And... with a couple of caveats, I think I'd have to concur.

I didn't see anything this year that I loved as much as "The Fountain" or "Shortbus" last year, but of the 34 movies I saw, I really really liked 10 of them, and flat-out loved another 7. Toss in only a small handful of duds, and that's a pretty good batting average.

There were a bunch of big titles I didn't see for assorted reasons - either I didn't want to, or I figured I could wait until they came out, or I tried to get a ticket but was unsuccessful, or they were playing in theaters I wanted to avoid, or there were scheduling difficulties, etc etc. I tried my damndest to get a "Lust, Caution" ticket, but that was pretty much impossible. Even if I'd shown up at the box office at 7 am the morning of its second screening, I likely would have been out of luck -- it was clearly one of the hottest tickets of this year's festival.

So here's the first half of my fest rundown, containing all the movies I didn't really really like or love.

Movies outside the rank:

Bucking Broadway. Long-lost John Ford movie from 1917. Recently rediscovered in France, and remastered. Presented as part of the Fest's "Dialogues" programme, which included an hour-long discussion with noted filmmaker / film historian / namedropper Peter Bogdanovich. The movie itself isn't very memorable - although it does have a few elements that Ford would later master - but the discussion afterward was terrific.

I'm Not There. I can spend hours analyzing Mulholland Drive, or Memento, or INLAND EMPIRE, or any number of other head-scratchers... but this one has me at a loss. Ostensibly a "bio-pic" about Bob Dylan, Todd Haynes' latest movie comes across as either (if I'm being generous) an imaginative fantasia about self-created mythologies and 60s counterculture, or (if I'm being cynical) a frustrating exercise that could be a graduate thesis in Dylanology and film theory. The movie makes explicit and implicit references to assorted 60s filmmakers - like Godard, Antonioni, Lester - whose work, if I'm being perfectly blunt, has aged terribly. Critics seem to be tripping over themselves to come up with new superlatives in describing how much they loved it (many of these critics likely would have come of age during the 60s, and likely have a soft spot for the terribly dated movies Haynes references), but it mainly just left me cold. I'm still willing to give the movie the benefit of the doubt, though, so it's gonna take me some time to figure this one out. If nothing else, the "Jude" scenes (starring Cate Blanchett) are spectacular.

The duds:
Les Chansons D'Amour. A French movie about a menage a trois that also happens to be a musical -- how could this possibly be bad? Well, for starters, the songs suck. Second, no dancing or choreography of any kind. And third, the division of the movie into three parts actually makes no sense in light of what it is ostensibly about, but whatever.

Chrysalis. "Stylish" French sci-fi movie. The director cites James Cameron, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and (god help us) Luc Besson as influences -- but I think he learned the wrong lessons from each of them. And to think I could've seen "George A Romero's Diary of the Dead" instead.

With Your Permission. Norwegian movie about domestic abuse... that attempts to be a comedy, because it's about a man being beaten up by his wife. Laughing yet? If the genders were reversed, people would have been outraged by this movie's tone.

The Exodus. The opening shot (a long, slo-mo reverse tracking shot) is like something out of Park Chan-wook or John Woo. And the last five minutes - an absurd elaboration on the movie's premise, that there's a secret conspiracy among the world's women to kill all the world's men - are terrific. It's the 100 minutes in between - in which the movie treats its premise with 100% seriousness - that's the problem.

The Disappointments

Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge. Hou Hsiao-Hsien's latest movie, is about a frazzled single mother (how do we know she's frazzled? The blonde dye job), played by the luminous Juliette Binoche, and the nanny who looks after her son. The movie comments about film and other artforms, and how they recreate "reality" in various ways... but the movie is mostly improvised, and much of it does feel like an Actors Studio exercise.

Help Me Eros. Asian movie about a bored young man who becomes obsessed with growing marijuana, and the chubby female help-line operator he forges a virtual friendship with. Their lives are largely unsatisfied, their story largely unsatisfying.

Gone With the Woman. Absurd Scandinavian comedy (is there any other kind?) about a relationship between a man and the woman who just starts showing up at his house. There are some really fun sequences in the movie (particularly when the couple travels to France -- one bit of dialogue provided possibly the biggest single laugh of the festival), but overall it doesn't add up to much.

La Fille Coupee en Deux. Legendary French director Claude Chabrol directed this movie about a woman torn between two lovers - perhaps literally. The movie has a very 70s vibe to it. It's certainly well-made, but it just left me rather uninterested.

Death-Defying Acts. Guy Pearce plays Harry Houdini; that bit of information made sure I bought a ticket. It's a fictional story about a relationship between Houdini and a psychic/fraud (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) that's certainly easy enough to watch, but not nearly as interesting as, say, "The Illusionist" or "The Prestige".

Angel. French filmmaker Francois Ozon's first English-language movie, about the romantic trials and tribulations of a turn-of-the-century romance novelist. And, basically, it's a 40s melodrama. Now I loves me a good 40s melodrama, but that's because they feature actresses like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, or one of the Joans (Crawford or Fontaine). And it's still possible to make a really good 40s melordrama -- see "The Painted Veil", for example. "Angel", alas, doesn't quite work.

The Documentaries

L'Avocat de la Terreur. Barbet Schroder's exhaustive, exhausting documentary about Jacques Verges, lawyer to some of the 20th century's most notorious criminals/terrorists. There is A LOT of information in this movie, and most of it is really interesting, and Verges gives really good interview, but I think the movie simply tries to do too much.

My Enemy's Enemy. Kevin Macdonald directed this standard documentary about Klaus Barbie. Disappointing - the whole thing has the feel of a "work-for-hire" (thanks to Steve for that description).

Callas Assoluta. Straightforward biography of Maria Callas. Excellent archival footage of her performances and interviews, but pretty much just the facts. (Also noteworthy for the narrator's inability to properly pronounce the word "epitome".)

Obscene. A look at the life and work of American publisher Barney Rosset, who struggled to bring controversial works like "Tropic of Cancer" and "Naked Lunch" to publication. The topic is completely fascinating, so it's ok that the technique is pretty standard.

Here Is What Is. Impressionistic documentary about musician/producer Daniel Lanois. Some wonderful studio scenes, including some intelligent discussion of Lanois' technique. The first-time filmmakers (including Lanois himself) try to make things a bit too visually "playful", unnecessarily; when you're showing the world five minutes of clips of material that U2 is currently working on, you don't need any other tricks.
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Us Kids Know

2008-02-01T16:28:00.000-07:00

It's strangely gratifying when a critic, whose reviews I tend to agree with MUCH more often than not, reveals other likes that match up with mine. Such is the case with Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman. I've been reading Owen's writing since the beginning of EW back in 1990 - I was in high school at the time, and starting to fall in love with movies. Over the past 18 years, he's been the first critic I go to - if he gives a movie an "A", I know I've got to keep an eye out for it. We don't always agree (he did call "O Brother Where Art Thou" the worst movie of 2000...), but we'd easily be "Best Friends" using the Movie Compatibility Test on facebook.

A few years back, I stumbled across this great interview with Owen. One part that really stood out for me was his discussion of music. He liked "The Love Below" and not "Speakerboxxx" - just like me. He loves ABBA - so do I. (Clearly.) And he mentions getting into Nina Simone, thanks to the use of some of her songs in movies, including the brilliant ending of the great romantic movie of this generation, "Before Sunset". It was that sequence, as well as the fantastic ad campaign for that year's "Six Feet Under" that used "Feelin' Good", that initially got me interested in Nina Simone myself.

Anyway. Owen recently reviewed "U2 3D"... which, by the way, I'm totally geeked about seeing. In the A- review, Owen says:

It's routine wisdom to say that U2 is the greatest rock & roll band of the past 25 years (depending on the day, I'd go with R.E.M., but who's quibbling?),

Wow -- I hadn't realized he was as big a fan of REM as I was. That's really cool. (Of course, can you name many other bands that have been around for most of the last 25 years? Springsteen and the E-Street Band, maybe -- but Bruce has spent as much time in that period NOT being Bruce that I don't think he counts.) Count me among the minority who thinks REM's recent work is underrated -- especially the shockingly misunderstood "Around the Sun". I can't wait for their upcoming "Accelerate"!!

Owen also says:

Will the next 25 years produce a band with the passion and power, the transporting sweep, of U2? The rise of the tween-fashionista mechano-pop juggernaut Hannah Montana doesn't bode well.

I think we already have the answer to that question, actually: Arcade Fire. Their first two full-length albums ("Funeral" and "Neon Bible") have the scope, the sweep, and the transcendent highs that even U2 at their best are lucky to be able to attain. (Have you HEARD the first 30 seconds of "Wake Up"? Or the last two minutes of "Neighborhood #1" or "Ocean of Noise"? Or all of (the Neon Bible version of) "No Cars Go"? I still get goosebumps.) (If you haven't heard any of those songs, why the hell not?)

I've also had the great privilege of seeing Arcade Fire live, three times - and that is as close to a religious experience as I'm likely to have as an adult. There are (at last count) seven full-time members of the band, and I think they generally tour with two or three others. So the stage is pretty crowded, and all of them put EVERYTHING they have into the performances. It's like what I imagine the E-Street band was like when they were young - except the members of Arcade Fire jump from instrument to instrument like they're on speed.

There are still rumors of Arcade Fire doing a Canadian tour this spring; nothing would make me happier than seeing them live again. I expect that, soon enough, they'll be too big an act for most Canadian cities -- and I say more power to 'em. I would love for Arcade Fire to be the biggest band in the world - they've got the songs and the live act to make it almost inevitable.
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iPod Project, Day 4

2008-01-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

So I spent the last couple of days kicking of the iPod Project by listening to a few old favorites, just like one would stretch before running a marathon.

REM, Fables of the Reconstruction.
I wanted to start off the Project with a little REM (since they're quite likely my favorite band), but I wanted to save their major albums for a time when I could give the music my full attention. Of all of REM's albums, Fables was the one it took me the longest to actually get into. I still think it's the least of their first four albums -- but that's hardly an insult, considering the other three of those albums are Murmur, the underrated Reckoning, and Lifes Rich Pageant. The highlights of Fables for me are likely "Can't Get There From Here" and "Life and How To Live It".

U2, Achtung Baby.
After seeing The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which featured a snippet of "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)", this seemed like the perfect audio accompaniment while I killed time waiting for The Savages. This is such a fantastic album. Don't ask me to say whether this or Joshua Tree is U2's best album; that's a question whose answer changes, depending on my mood, the phase of the moon, what I'd eaten for dinner, etc. And sometimes I actually lean towards Zooropa.

Pixies, Come On Pilgrim.
Because I like listening to complete albums, and because it was about a 20-minute walk home from the movie theater where I saw The Savages, Pixies' debut EP seemed like a good fit. This is a great record, highlighting the strengths that would allow the band to create its great full-length albums. What I find interesting about this EP is that each song is better than the one before.

Rufus Wainwright, Want One.
I love Rufus. Love him. I've seen him in concert four times now, and he's such a fantastic showman. He's also a fantastic songwriter, as Want One tracks like "Oh What a World" or "Go or Go Ahead" or "Harvester of Hearts" or "Beautiful Child" or (my favorite) "14th Street" show without argument. Want One is one of those albums I keep going back to when I'm in a mood.

Soundtrack, Avenue Q.
I saw Avenue Q when I was in NYC in November 2007. (I also saw Spring Awakening and The 25th Avenue Putnam County Spelling Bee, so it was a great trip.) The soundtrack's been on heavy rotation in my iPod since, thanks to songs like "The Internet Is For Porn" and "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" and "You Can Be As Loud As The Hell You Want When You're Making Love".

Madonna, Confessions on a Dancefloor.
In a previous blog life, I raved about this album here... and my feelings for it have only deepened over time. My version of the album also includes to bonus tracks: "Fighting Spirit" and "Super Pop". Both are ok, but both are appropriately not part of the album proper. Remind me to tell you some time about the three amazing Madonna concerts I've seen.

As of Day 4:
- Total number of songs: 7688
- Total number of songs listened to: 80
- Total number of songs remaining: 7608

Oh wow, this is gonna take a while.

This Week's Video Rentals

2008-01-28T18:42:00.001-07:00

So I live in a great location -- minutes from three excellent video stores. I'm about six blocks from Casablanca Video, three blocks from Bird Dog Video, and I can almost see the Rogers Video on 17th from my balcony. On my way home from a job interview this afternoon (and holy flippin' snot (TM Jolene) is it cold in Calgary right now), I stopped off at Rogers to pick up a six pack of rentals (for $15) for the week. With temperatures likely not to reach the good side of -25 for the next couple of days, what better time to hunker down with some DVDs? (The fact that I've got dozens of unwatched DVDs on my bookcase is moot.) So, this week's viewings:
- The Devil's Backbone. Because I want to check out all of Guillermo Del Toro's movies, even though I wasn't the hugest fan of Pan's Labyrinth.
- JSA: Joint Security Area. Because I love Park Chan-wook's "Vengeance Trilogy" and wanted to check out this earlier movie of his.
- Prime Suspect 2. Because I love Helen Mirren.
- The Notebook. Because I love Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams.
- Idiocracy. Because I love Mike Judge.
- Becket. Because friends of mine with extremely good taste in movies raved when they heard this was finally coming out on DVD.

But first...

2008-01-25T20:00:00.000-07:00

... a still from the best movie of the year.

(Thanks to the great folks at I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER for their Lolcat builder.)

Numbers

2008-01-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

So, here's the deal.

I'm going to use this blog to document (among other things) my quest to listen to everything on my iPod. There'll be plenty of other commentary (movie reviews, sports comments, whatever crosses my mind... standard blog stuff), but the iPod quest is this blog's raison d'etre.

Some rules that I'll be using:
1. iTunes will be the tool I'll use to determine when a song is played. iTunes tracks statistics like "Last Played" and "Play Count", so it'll be easy to keep track of my progress.
2. No short cuts. This means I'm even going to listen to things I would normally skip, like The Beatles' "Revolution 9" or The Beta Band's "Monolith". There are, of course, artists who'll include bonus tracks or noise at the end of the last track (I'm looking at you, Beck) after minutes and minutes of silence. This might be the one spot where I'll take a short cut. The iTunes statistics don't update until the end of the song, so I might fast-forward to the end.
3. I'm not going to limit myself to songs I haven't listened to yet. (I'd go nuts if I could only listen to, say, In Rainbows or Achtung Baby or Want One once until this project is complete.
4. My iPod is, of course, not going to be static. I've got too many songs to listen to now, but I'll be adding more as the project goes on.
5. I'll mix it up. I'll of course be listening to full albums, but I'll also go to the iPod's Shuffle function from time to time, which I'm sure will lead to no end of "I had this song? Hunh." reactions.

So, as of Day Zero, here's where things stand:
- Total number of songs: 7688.
- Total number of songs listened to: 0.
- Total duration of songs: 20.7 days.

ALMOST 21 DAYS OF MUSIC. Good Lord. This is going to take a while.

Exodus leads to genesis

2008-01-24T16:46:00.001-07:00

A guy can only move so many times before he gets really tired of lugging shit around.

I bought my first CD at the end of May, 1993. U2's The Joshua Tree. Over the next 14-odd years, I added quite a few CDs to the collection -- not as many as some people, but more than almost everyone I know -- and moved about a dozen times. Some of those moves were just cross-town; others were cross-country. And the CD collection continued to grow.

In April 2001, while I was living in Denver, I purchased a complete home theater systems, which included a 300-disc CD player. Once it was filled up with discs, it became that much easier to listen to any album I wanted -- I didn't need to futz with cases, or getting fingerprints on the discs, or anything like that. I had a complex - but to my mind fully rational - organizational system for the CDs in the player: first "rock" organized by artist (Beatles, then Stones, then Springsteen, REM, U2, etc -- my "straight" CDs), then to my poppier, dancier stuff (Madonna, Janet, Shania, etc -- the "gay" section), then to soundtracks, greatest hits collections, and a few leftovers.

So, of course, I would tend to gravitate towards my more commonly played discs -- Exile on Main St, Abbey Road, OK Computer, Is This It, Music, Rocky Horror Picture Show, etc -- and eventually, I had an entire box full of CDs that weren't in the player and were therefore hardly ever played.

In May 2005, I purchased my first iPod. It was one of the U2 Special Edition 20 GB ones, with the red and black casing. Easily the best looking iPod model, I (like innumerable other U2 fans, no doubt) christened it the Zooropod. (Thanks, Kay!) Until then, my portable music needs had been tenuously met by a 10-year-old off-brand disc-man that would skip easily unless I actually held it in my hand. Not exactly the most convenient way to listen to music while walking.

But the iPod really revolutionized how I listened to music. Instead of figuring out what CD I wanted to listen to on my commute to AND from work, I had most of my music collection at my fingertips. (Oddly enough, even to this day, I don't do a lot of randomizing when I'm listening to music - I remain primarily a "whole album" kind of guy.)

In June 2007, I bought my second iPod, an 80-GB black one; although it wasn't a U2 Special Edition, I still christened it Pod Part II for U2-related reasons. I decided that THIS was going to be my new music library -- I'd create digital versions of all my CDs, get rid of the still-in-good-shape-but-bulky CD player, and likely even get rid of all the CDs. Once you hit the 100-disc mark, they just become too bulky; by this point, I think I was over 500.

So after deciding I was going to move back to Calgary from Toronto and was in the process of selling my discs to a used record store, I realized that there were quite a few discs I'd rarely listened to, and even a few dozen that I'm sure I NEVER listened to at all. Which is how this idea came about. To be continued...