First Half

I think I set a goal to watch 180 movies or so this year. It might have been as low as 150. Well, I'm on track for 200.

Anyway, most of the stuff I've watched has been at least good, and some of it great. I tried to select ten things, not necessarily the ten that I enjoyed the most, but the ten that I would make you watch if I could*, perhaps the ten I would program if I had a film series. They are unordered.

• Slacker [Richard Linklater, 1991]
• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada [Tommy Lee Jones, 2005]
• Histoire(s) du Cinema [Jean-Luc Godard, 1997]
• L'enfant [Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2005]
• La Ciénaga [Lucrecia Martel, 2000]
• Innocence [Lucile Hadzihailovic, 2005]
• Le Trou [Jacques Becker, 1960]
• 2046 [Wong Kar-Wai, 2004]
• The Death of Mr. Lazarescu [Cristi Puiu, 2005]
• 3-Iron [Kim Ki-Duk, 2005]

You may notice that only two are American. Three are French, four if you count the Franco-Belgian L'enfant, one is Argentinian, one from Hong Kong, one Romanian, and one Korean. There are probably many reasons why this is so, many of them logistical.

* Of course, the premise is that you care about movies in the first place, enough to expend at least a little effort on your part as the viewer.

Bloomsday Party Mix

Mostly understated and laid back.
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The Coasters "Poison Ivy"
Big Star "In the Street"
The Fall "Victoria" (Kinks cover)
Blondie "Hanging on the Telephone"
Joe Jackson "Is She Really Going Out with Him?"
Nick Lowe "Heart of the City"
Spank Rock "Sweet Talk"
The Four Tops "Reach Out, I'll Be There"
Sam Cooke "Another Saturday Night"
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark "Enola Gay"
David Bowie "Ziggy Stardust"
Fleetwood Mac "Second Hand News"
The Crystals "Da Doo Ron Ron"
Sam Cooke "Twistin' the Night Away"
Camera Obscura "Let Me Go Home"
The Mountain Goats "Dance Music"
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks "Fractions and Feelings"
The Rentals "My Summer Girl"
The Unicorns "I Was Born (A Unicorn)"
Tapes 'n Tapes "Insistor"
Love "Always See Your Face"

Bad News Bears

From the A.V. Club's interview with Richard Linklater:

AVC: Moving on to another suburban underclass film, do you feel up to talking about Bad News Bears?

RL: Sure.

AVC: What happened there?

RL: What do you mean?

AVC: Why didn't that movie… work?

RL: It didn't? [Pause.] It's my second-highest grossing film.

AVC: Really?

RL: I mean, it wasn't a big hit or anything. [Pause.] I don't think it's seen as a bomb. They clearly shouldn't have released it when they did, up against Charlie and the fuckin' Chocolate Factory. They should've brought it out in the fall. It would've been the only comedy out, and done much better. Little bit of regime change there at Paramount. That kind of thing happens. Again, I got no control over that.

I think it works. I like the film. It works on the level it was meant to. I think it's a good baseball movie, too, by the way.

This is kind of an example of why I don't regularly read the A.V. Club, because they're so quick to dismiss things that don't fit exactly into their narrow cultural view, or at least that's the sense I got back when I did read it a few years ago.

Anyway, I just watched Bad News Bears last night, and it's really a delightful little comedy, slightly too raunchy for the "family" label. All Movie Guide, which I'd read before seeing it, dismissed it as "slight," but I don't find that to be a failing. The shallowness of many of Linklater's characters, the quick pacing, and the goofball humor remind me of classic Hollywood-era comedies that didn't get bogged down in a lot of loathsome family drama or pathos or heroics. We hit the ground running, expected to know the basic set-up as this is a remake, and Linklater spends much more time on Billy Bob Thornton's memorably crude one-liners and the antics of the ballplayers. The writers don't delve too deeply because, hey, it's supposed to be fun.

Sad Sap Sunset

Bob Dylan "Girl from the North Country"
New Order "Dreams Never End"
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah "Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away"
Radiohead "Stop Whispering"
Pedro the Lion "When They Really Get to Know You They Will Run"
My Morning Jacket "The Way That He Sings"
Wolf Parade "This Heart's on Fire"
Belle & Sebastian "If You're Feeling Sinister"
The Field "Action"
Sigur Rós "Svefn-G-Englar"

Thoughts

David Byrne recollecting his thought pattern at a Sunn0))) show in New York:

I thought of global warming (again) the melting icecaps, the earthquake in Java, the Mayan ruins in Yucatan, computer viruses, government surveillance eating itself from the inside out, Donald Rumsfeld’s mind, ant colonies, big science, Jesus’ dick, Mary’s cunt, and the McDonalds meal a suicide bomber ate, minutes before detonation.

This is contemporary theater.

Upcoming, Revised

Charles today bequeathed to me quite a number of SIFF passes, so here's the new schedule. Tomorrow I'll see Maxed Out, Saturday Three Times, and Sunday it'll be Seven Swords. Next Saturday I'll make a double feature out of A Comedy of Power and, hopefully, A Scanner Darkly. Sunday I'll see either Backstage or Jonestown, or both.

Upcoming

Taking a look at the upcoming events calendar, the next two weekends should be pretty full. At this point I'm definitely going to Neumo's this Friday for the Mountain Goats/Barbara Morgenstern show, and I'll be seeing Three Times Saturday afternoon. Beyond that, I'll almost certainly be at the Crocodile next Friday for the Futureheads, whom I've missed at least three times for varying reasons. I think I'd like to see at least two more festival films, and I'm leaning toward Seven Swords this Sunday and either Backstage or Jonestown next Sunday.

Yes, this post was much more for me than for you.

June Tracks

1. The MFA "The Difference It Makes (Superpitcher Remix)"

Just posted at Disco-Not-Disco. I'd heard the original on Total 6 (speaking of which, is this summer's Total 7 going to be just as good?), but the bass here just grabs hold and won't let go.

2. Run the Road, esp. Lady Sovereign

I got this from the library last month, and grime finally came together for me. I've got some other Lady Sovereign stuff as well, and I'm enjoying her on so many levels.

3. Camera Obscura Let's Get Out of This Country

Brian Howe makes a good point in his Pitchfork review that, rather than simply occupying the same aesthetic space as Belle & Sebastian, Camera Obscura have rather claimed the "intimate chamber pop" throne that Belle & Sebastian have either outgrown or vacated.

4. Sami Koivikko Live at Flash / Rose Garden & Ezekiel Honig Live at Percussion Lab

Two minimal mixes I really enjoyed this past week.

5. Booka Shade "In White Rooms (Elektrochemie Remix)"

As you might expect, Adam posted some great electronic stuff over the past term on the KRLX Music Blog. This track is still up. I'm also partial to Holden's "A Break in the Clouds," the Loscil track, and I'm assuming he posted the Who Made Who track on that minimix I posted a while back.

PY Archive

My final column, a reminiscence about stereos, will appear June 18.

• No. 1
• No. 2
• No. 3
• No. 4
• No. 5
• No. 6
• No. 7
• No. 8
• No. 9
• No. 10
• No. 11
• No. 12
• No. 13
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• No. 18
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