Brief Encounter


I've never seen the movie Twilight (or, for that matter, read any of the books), but I can't resist passing this short anecdote along: Earlier tonight, around 11:30 PM, I saw the main vampire guy and lead actress chick from Twilight hanging out, visibly stoned, smoking cigarettes outside a 7-Eleven in downtown Vancouver. I did a double-take and asked, "You're the guy from Twlight, right?" (I only made the connection a few moments later that the short, mousey, entirely ordinary-looking girl standing beside him was his less instantly recognizable costar.) In between weed giggles, he said, "No, man--I get that all the time, though." A heavyset 35-ish year-old man accompanying them laughed and mouthed to me, "it is them." Meanwhile, some girl went up to the two celebs and without saying a word to either actor, had her friend snap a picture. Then a street guy asked Twilight Guy if he could have the last drag on his cigarette. Without actually responding, Twilight Guy handed Street Guy the remainder of his smoke.

Alas, I didn't have a camera handy or else I'd be trying to turn a quick buck right now rather than merely jotting this down on the blog...

Not Fierce Enough


Is it reasonable to call Obsessed "disappointing"?

Yes, I think it is, actually. It's not like I was expecting Terrence Malick or even, say, Adrian Lyne; I try to be an optimist at the start of every movie, but I'm also a realist. What I was hoping for was a prime slice of camp-tastic psychodrama--the sort of thing that one can design a drinking game around and rewatch endlessly on VH1. This is precisely what the trailer seemed to promise: Beyonce saying things like "I'll show you crazy" and "she was naked in your hotel room?", Ali Larter flashing the guy from The Wire in his parked car, some obvious notes of Fatal Attraction for Dummies, etc.

Of course, these moments are in Obsessed, and there are a couple new choice snippets: an odd remark from Beyonce about carpet tattoos on her and her husband's asses and one from Larter where she refers to a gay co-worker she's known for, like, two days as "Patrick, you silly old queen." What isn't in Obsessed are the campier-yet moments that the trailer seemed to promise were in store. Unfortunately, almost all of the juicy, over-the-top stuff we've already seen (numerous times) going in. Most of the rest feels curiously...restrained? That's certainly not a word I thought (or hoped) I'd be using in this post, but even the climactic Beyonce-Larter death match feels sort of perfunctory. Obsessed? More like Overly Infatuated.

Alas, a dud for all the wrong reasons.

Living in a Hurricane


New Miranda track!

Between her Revolution and Blueprint 3, September really can't come soon enough!

10 Songs, 10 Sentences


Black Eyed Peas - "Boom Boom Pow" Putrid; unlistenable.

Ciara f/ Justin Timberlake - "Love Sex Magic" A grower, largely on the strength of that Much Music ad where it's intercut with "Circus."

Eminem - "Beautiful" If he hadn't yet lost it when he made "Just Lose It," he sure has now.

Keri Hilson f/ Kanye West & Ne-Yo - "Knock You Down" Not bad, but not this year's "American Boy" by any stretch.

Jay-Z - D.O.A. Gives real reason to hope The Blueprint 3 might be as good as The Carter 3, if not The Blueprint 1.

Lady Gaga - "Paparazzi" You know you were way off-base with the one-hit wonder tag when the fourth single is better than the three that preceded it.

Brad Paisley - "Then" On paper, it's considerably blander than the lofty lyrical standard to which he deserves to be held, yet the tenderness in his delivery goes--as usual--a pretty long way.

Asher Roth - "I Love College" Reminds me less of my own college experience than of that Gilmore Girls episode where Rory and Paris reluctantly head down to Florida for Spring Break.

Taylor Swift - "You Belong With Me" She has to know the the shy-nerdy girl thing has a fairly finite lifespan, especially if she wants to play Juliet--or at least Shania (unless, come to think of it, she'd rather be the distaff Brad Paisley).

Kate Voegele - "99 Times" The chorus is surprisingly catchy, though I'd be more surprised if I ever heard the name Kate Voegele again (though see above: Gaga, Lady).

Never Can Say Goodbye


Michael Jackson--arguably music's most broadly significant figure since the Beatles and, for better or worse, one of American culture's most singular personalities--is gone, and what are we left with? Well, first and foremost, the music. That's not all, of course--how could it possibly be with a man as complex and unrelentingly scrutinized as MJ?--but, more than autopsy results or family feuds or Michael's countless eccentricities, it's really what we should be collectively focusing on right now in order to best appreciate the hugeness of Michael's talent and impact. It's a body of work as accomplished and inexhaustible as nearly any in popular music--and, to my mind, it's also finally the best way to "know" this supremely enigmatic entertainer.

From "Ben" to "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" to "The Way You Make Me Feel" to "You Are Not Alone," his music seemed to be the one place (along with perhaps the notorious Neverland Ranch) where Michael felt at ease, where he was able to find real, if ephemeral, refuge from the pressures of fame and the critical, unblinking eyes of the media and public. Even his most vicious critics can hardly deny that Michael was nothing if not an uncommonly gentle spirit (and, almost certainly, an uncommonly naive adult). That's why relatively dark expressions of stored frustration like "Smooth Criminal" and "Scream" register more profoundly than they might've from, say, Prince or Madonna--mega stars more clearly in tune with extremes in mood and emotion.

That's the irony of Michael Jackson: His music was by and large as unambiguous and effortlessly pleasurable as his deeply private yet, inadvertently, messily public life was controversial, pained, and often puzzling. That doesn't matter, though. Not now anyway--the music does. Turn on "Rock With You" right now and listen to the warmth and affection with which every note sparkles. Then bid Michael goodbye with an equal measure of both. It's a tremendous loss.

Dog Days


Last fall, I very nearly got to see Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy at VIFF '08. Alas, we couldn't quite squeeze it into our schedule; we still lived on the Island then and we had a ferry to catch. If I had been able to see the film--which I've only now caught up with--it would've placed at or near the top of my subsequent year-end list. My esteemed viewing-partner-for-life thinks the film has suffered from over-hype. I say the consensus was right on the money.

If Clint Eastwood's Changeling (my pre-W&L #1 for '08) was the closest thing last year to The Passion of Joan of Arc, then Reichardt's film is its Au hasard Balthazar--formally spare, austerely beautiful, thoroughly naturalistic yet shot through with reserves of grace and stillness, and, finally, devastating. The most remarkable (and admirable) thing about Michelle Williams' tremendous lead turn is that, while a seasoned veteran of soapy tv and Oscar-oriented cinema, she "acts" here only a little bit more than Anne Wiazemsky did in Bresson's masterpiece. It's a performance as perfectly suited to the film's aesthetic as Angelina Jolie's more dramatic (and actorly) work in Changeling (expressive and cathartic, not unlike Falconetti for Dreyer).

As in Balthazar, the end results are happy for neither woman nor beast: Williams' Wendy finds her missing canine companion, but with her '88 Accord bound for the junkyard, she's left to train hop it solo the rest of the way (to Alaska, in theory). What we're left with instead is real tragedy--earned, timeless, and nothing if not timely. There's a scene early on where we see Wendy counting her remaining cash, presumably savings from a good long while: a modest stack of twenties plus some smaller bills. As her luck turns from bad to worse, we can do the math ourselves, and if the helpless feeling of a finite amount of money rapidly dwindling away doesn't feel queasily familiar, the film's impact may register as less immediate. But in this moment of widespread economic uncertainty, Reichardt seems to have netted the zeitgeist with a deceptively simple movie about a woman looking for her lost dog.

Another major-keeper that I only recently got around to is Sam Fuller's 1982 White Dog, a problematic look at a woman and her dog. That most basic description is enough to tie it to Wendy and Lucy for the purposes of a blog post, but it's also just about where the similarities between these two films end. Where Reichardt's film is understated, with a plot that could essentially be playing out in any number of dead-end American towns as I type this, Fuller's is a visceral, purposefully specific--a Los Angeles woman adopts a dog that she only later learns has been trained to attack black people, then desperately attempts to have it re-programmed by an African American animal instructor--parable that seems only mildly dated. Unless you believe the election of a black U.S. president equals the end of racism, Fuller's polemic remains vital; his singularly confrontational approach is as heroic in its way as Bresson's transcendental poetry.

I Send Vibrations in Your Direction


The new Metric is really good. Not just their most accomplished long-player to date (which it is) or the best thing I've encountered so far in '09 (ditto), but, like, the most inspired and thoroughly enjoyable rock record I've heard in years.

"Gimme Sympathy" ("who would you rather be/the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?") is their bid for shimmering pop-rock immortality--and, if they play SNL, say, five years from now, it'll be the track they'll be politely but insistently asked to play along with their then-current single. "Help, I'm Alive" ("I tremble/they're gonna eat me alive/if I stumble") and "Satellite Mind" ("I'm not suicidal/I just can't get out of bed") traffic in moody rock star paranoia unnerving enough that you might momentarily forget they're not really as big of rock stars as they should be--an annoying technicality that Fantasies should serve to correct. "Stadium Love" ("wanna make a trade/cougar for a snake/wanna fall in love?") is the most perfectly loose, crunch-tastic last-song-of-the-show (played-after-the-biggest-hit-natch)--oh man, I can't wait to see 'em live again!

And the other six songs are very nearly as terrific, which means as much or more than the four cited above being totally golden. Where their previous efforts paired killer cuts like "Dead Disco" and "Succexy" with half-realized experiments and straight-up filler, Fantasies never lets up, angling for the pop-rock canon and coming within spitting distance.

Top 40: '09


Same as it ever was, and, admittedly, not that strikingly different from last year's list, partly because consistency is criteria numero uno and partly because my new music in-take has, of late, been pretty meager. And, jeez, I really hope Joanna and Miranda put something new out soon so two of my faves can (by my more or less arbitrary list rules) re-enter my (more or less arbitrary) Top Forty.

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Five Covers Live

All Good Things


Some brief notes:

Kelly Clarkson - "My Life Would Suck Without You" Its title--a regretful though no less rawking flip-side to "Since U Been Gone"'s fill-in-the-blank--is prose poetry for Generation Facebook, but it doesn't explain why these three and a half minutes sound (no less persuasively than "SUBG") like our early single-of-the-year frontrunner. The key difference was that "Since" sideswiped our critical faculties, the likes of "Miss Independent" having not suggested rock-pop so vital. Since "Since" plus "Because of You" and "How I Feel," etcetera, the bar has simply been raised, and yet again, remarkably, she's up to it. So, with all due respect to Carrie Underwood, yeah, she's still the finest Idol product--duh.

Pink - "Sober" Pink aches almost as persuasively as Clarkson, and sings almost as good, too, when she feels like it, which she seems to here. If "Sober" isn't on the same level as "My Life..."--and it isn't--it's probably better, if not as immediately infectious, than "So What" (not to mention, for what it's worth, Tool's "Sober" and Evanescence's "Call Me When You're Sober"). Unlike most of her peers, of whom the reverse is true, Pink's always done fucked-up personal-melodrama better than let's-get-the-party-started-y'all and this slice of life-sucks is no exception. She might overplay her hand with that nutso video, but, right, it's Pink we're talking about here. Don't let her get her. She's a hazard to herself.

Beyonce - "Halo" Ballads with a sick beat are almost always preferable to the blander alternative, a truth it took Beyonce--for all her undeniable pop smarts--way too long to arrive at. Maybe one of these days she'll actually put out a long-player that doesn't require easy access to the 'skip' button. And, no, the inevitable/essential solo best-of doesn't count.

[REC] Trust me--to call this Spanish stunner the scariest movie I'd ever seen didn't feel at all like an overstatement for, say, the first week or two after I'd watched it; upon reflection, arguing that it's some sort of masterpiece doesn't feel like hyperbole either. On paper, it's 28 Days of the Living Blair Witch Dead. On screen, it's something else entirely--something unexpectedly frightening and impossibly claustrophobic, much more than the sum of its parts and altogether perfectly executed. Just do yourself a favor (or not, depending on your personal terror/suspense threshold) and rent it ASAP.

Dollhouse I've found something to like in every episode thus far, including the one about the suicidal singer that everyone else seems to hate. The last two were the best yet. Supposedly, this week is where it ascends from Mostly Really Good to Joss Fucking Whedon Good. We're psyched.

Castle Another Whedon alum doing--hooray!--something other than slumming. Well, that's the verdict after one episode anyway. I'm crossing my fingers that tonight's installment, and subsequent ones, will continue providing Nathan Fillion (and the seemingly solid cast around him) with such juicy comic-noir material. I don't really care if, big picture-wise, the show itself turns out to be something great per se, though that would be a cool bonus. For the time being, let's just hope Capt. Mal can keep this ship in the air.