Forget-Me-Not's
Forgetting Sarah Marshall was good (I'm thinking now my favorite thing about these Apatow productions, besides that they're funnier and smarter and more humane than your standard-issue rom-com, is that they're just a little bit longer, too, which lets the material breathe and allows for scenes that aren't shorthand for anything--often, the movies' best moments, like the one where Paul Rudd teaches the writer-star-protag to surf or the puppet Dracula denoument, the most ecstatically odd theatrical set-piece since Stuck on You's Bonnie and Clyde musical); Metric was better (the new stuff sounds as strong as the old stuff, "Dead Disco" remains one of the five or ten most compelling rock tracks of the past five or ten years, and Emily Haines is a force of nature up front, though her posture is almost as lousy as mine and, damn, I wish they'd played for longer than an hour-fifteen, but what can you do, right?).
Forgetting Sarah Marshall was good (I'm thinking now my favorite thing about these Apatow productions, besides that they're funnier and smarter and more humane than your standard-issue rom-com, is that they're just a little bit longer, too, which lets the material breathe and allows for scenes that aren't shorthand for anything--often, the movies' best moments, like the one where Paul Rudd teaches the writer-star-protag to surf or the puppet Dracula denoument, the most ecstatically odd theatrical set-piece since Stuck on You's Bonnie and Clyde musical); Metric was better (the new stuff sounds as strong as the old stuff, "Dead Disco" remains one of the five or ten most compelling rock tracks of the past five or ten years, and Emily Haines is a force of nature up front, though her posture is almost as lousy as mine and, damn, I wish they'd played for longer than an hour-fifteen, but what can you do, right?).
We Major
Top 40, 2008: As always, the list is limited mostly, if not quite exclusively, to artists who've released new material within the past 18 months or so, and rankings are based much more on recent work than older stuff, though consistency is a significant determining factor.
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Top 40, 2008: As always, the list is limited mostly, if not quite exclusively, to artists who've released new material within the past 18 months or so, and rankings are based much more on recent work than older stuff, though consistency is a significant determining factor.
40.
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Grab a Boy, Grab a Girl
In lieu of anything more exciting to write about, below are brief notes on my favorite singles (or, you know, "singles") a fourth of the way through 2008. (The only long-player that's impressed thus far is the new Mountain Goats, which is better than the last one, close to as good as the one before that, and further evidence that Monsieur Darnielle is the most consistently excellent record-maker currently at work.)
01. Kelly Clarkson - "How I Feel" Gotta admit: While I like Kelly plenty, that good-girl-gone-goth cover art and relatively crummy word-of-mouth sort of scared me off My December. This fantastic should-be stand-alone--as good as any of her mega-hits--makes me wonder if I should back-track and give the source disc a spin. Either way, the fact that she's smarter about life and love and, right, fame than just about any of her peers is clearer than ever--and when she gets around to releasing that best-of so-far comp, the wealth of top-shelf cuts shouldn't surprise anybody with ears.
02. Lil Wayne featuring T-Pain & Gabriel Antonio - "Lollipop" (remix) The original Carter III lead-off is a serviceable enough entry in (take your pick) the obvious-sexual-metaphor canon (see: "Candy Shop," "Milkshake," etc.) and/or the minimalistic-filthy-sex-rap canon (see: "Wait," "Play," etc.). This official remix is shockingly lovely--a worthy, inevitable soundtrack to seductions sensual or otherwise. And, look, I don't just mean lovely for an obvious-sexual-metaphor cut, or lovely for a minimalistic-filthy-sex-rap track. Weezy can do absolutely anything. Whoever Gabriel Antonio is needs to start stealing some gigs from Akon.
03. Beyonce - "Beautiful Nightmare" Now that B. and Jay have finally tied the knot, you'd think Mrs. Carter could take a breather from her presumptive head-to-head with Rihanna. Think again--here, she's totally angling for summer '08's "Umbrella." She hopes it rains.
04. Snoop Dogg featuring Robyn - "Sexual Eruption" (remix) The original version gets by mostly on novelty appeal, and, fine, so does this one, but bonus points are due for enlisting everybody's favorite sassy Swede: "Wanna snuggle, wanna cuddle, wanna stroke my pup / Snoop Dogg, I'm gonna sex you up." 'Nuff said, right?
05. Madonna featuring Justin Timberlake & Timbaland - "4 Minutes" There is so much going on here that it doesn't really lend itself well to blurb-style criticism. Maybe there's too much crammed in for its own good? Perhaps, but that beat is vintage Timbo all the way, and I, for one, enjoy hearing Madge's vocal buried a bit in the mix. This one and "Hung Up" strongly suggest that she should work more often with producers who aren't intimidated by her.
In lieu of anything more exciting to write about, below are brief notes on my favorite singles (or, you know, "singles") a fourth of the way through 2008. (The only long-player that's impressed thus far is the new Mountain Goats, which is better than the last one, close to as good as the one before that, and further evidence that Monsieur Darnielle is the most consistently excellent record-maker currently at work.)
01. Kelly Clarkson - "How I Feel" Gotta admit: While I like Kelly plenty, that good-girl-gone-goth cover art and relatively crummy word-of-mouth sort of scared me off My December. This fantastic should-be stand-alone--as good as any of her mega-hits--makes me wonder if I should back-track and give the source disc a spin. Either way, the fact that she's smarter about life and love and, right, fame than just about any of her peers is clearer than ever--and when she gets around to releasing that best-of so-far comp, the wealth of top-shelf cuts shouldn't surprise anybody with ears.
02. Lil Wayne featuring T-Pain & Gabriel Antonio - "Lollipop" (remix) The original Carter III lead-off is a serviceable enough entry in (take your pick) the obvious-sexual-metaphor canon (see: "Candy Shop," "Milkshake," etc.) and/or the minimalistic-filthy-sex-rap canon (see: "Wait," "Play," etc.). This official remix is shockingly lovely--a worthy, inevitable soundtrack to seductions sensual or otherwise. And, look, I don't just mean lovely for an obvious-sexual-metaphor cut, or lovely for a minimalistic-filthy-sex-rap track. Weezy can do absolutely anything. Whoever Gabriel Antonio is needs to start stealing some gigs from Akon.
03. Beyonce - "Beautiful Nightmare" Now that B. and Jay have finally tied the knot, you'd think Mrs. Carter could take a breather from her presumptive head-to-head with Rihanna. Think again--here, she's totally angling for summer '08's "Umbrella." She hopes it rains.
04. Snoop Dogg featuring Robyn - "Sexual Eruption" (remix) The original version gets by mostly on novelty appeal, and, fine, so does this one, but bonus points are due for enlisting everybody's favorite sassy Swede: "Wanna snuggle, wanna cuddle, wanna stroke my pup / Snoop Dogg, I'm gonna sex you up." 'Nuff said, right?
05. Madonna featuring Justin Timberlake & Timbaland - "4 Minutes" There is so much going on here that it doesn't really lend itself well to blurb-style criticism. Maybe there's too much crammed in for its own good? Perhaps, but that beat is vintage Timbo all the way, and I, for one, enjoy hearing Madge's vocal buried a bit in the mix. This one and "Hung Up" strongly suggest that she should work more often with producers who aren't intimidated by her.
Adjusted Truths
Very brief notes, very good movies. Alas, too little time to string together as many words as they warrant.
In Between Days After nine months north of the border, I can say with some small authority that this feels entirely authentic as a slice of contemporary Canadian life. And while my immigrant's experience hasn't necessarily been the same as that of the film's Korean-Canadian Torontonians, it's certainly telling that, aside from a scene or two, you'd hardly know which hemisphere the story was set in. Not that it matters all that much to our heroine, Aimie, who might just as well be wandering around the surface of the moon, bundled up in layers from head to toe and seemingly perpetually lost in thought. This is a coming-of-age narrative first, a coming-to-(North)-America narrative second, and a thoughtful, sensitive success on both fronts for neophyte helmer So Yong Kim and her mostly non-professional, uniformly fine cast.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Sure, there's slow stretches. The damned thing runs 160 minutes while totally, admirably eschewing both biopic conventions and heist-flick mechanics. Like so many of my favorite films--say, The Magnificent Ambersons or Barry Lyndon or The Piano and it's legitmately deserved though probably unnecessary to name-check Malick here--it's luxuriously long: epically intimate, seductive in its rhythms, and painterly-gorgeous from frame one on. In a banner year for new American cinema (and, specifically, for variations on the post-Western template), this one ranks near the top of the heap, better than the Coen brothers' big Oscar winner and almost as strong as P.T. Anderson's superior also-ran. Granted, Brad Pitt is no Daniel Day-Lewis, and won't ever be, but he's getting better all the time at being Brad Pitt. Here he's at his best yet, even if Casey Affleck steals every scene they share.
Enchanted One could make a fairly compelling case against this New York-set fairly tale as the logical end-point of the Disneyification of Times Square and, by extension, Manhattan--a victory lap of sorts, around Columbus Circle, across Central Park, then back through the looking glass. Such an argument wouldn't even require more than a passing familiarity with recent NYC history and geography and a hipster's disdain for all things Disney. I'm not going to bother with it, though. This comes off much fresher and funnier than it sounds on paper, it's thankfully breezy and sweet-natured, and, hell, Amy Adams could steer a Pol Pot biopic into surefire charmer territory through sheer force of infectious ebullience.
Ploy Thai auteur Pen-ek Ratanaruang specializes in dreamy, sensually charged narratives that gain resonance upon reflection--it's something of a unique trick, really, which I dug in 6ixty9, admired more in Last Life in the Universe, and which he more or less perfects with his latest effort. This one's about a Thai-American couple who take a trip back to Bangkok and butt heads over a precocious quasi-orphan named--right--Ploy. He says he just wants to help her out, she thinks he really wants to--yeah yeah, you know. Meanwhile, their younger, sexier foils fuck like jack rabbits in the hotel room next door.
Lady Chatterley Speaking of s.e.x., Pascal Ferran's take on D.H. Lawrence's once-controversial classic is very nearly as exquisitely realized as its reviews would suggest. While I have a certain soft-spot for Ken Russell's Lawrence filmizations, their sexual politics feel, ironically, more dated than those found in The Rainbow and Women in Love. Ferran comes closer to matching the frank, quotidian eroticism that marks Lawrence's sex scenes, which makes for a beautiful, engrossing, decidedly non-dated Lady Chatterley. The final scene's a heartbreaker, as, of course, it should be.
Them While, as with Cloverfield, a shrewd preference for the suspense generated by suggestion provokes Blair Witch comparisons, the sources of horror in this French horror movie are located somewhere between Haneke's Funny Games and van Sant's Elephant. Which probably qualifies as a spoiler, but the kicker here is that it'll scare the shit out of you either way.
Michael Clayton George Clooney has gone from effortlessly oozing charisma to effortlessly oozing integrity (while still effortlessly oozing charisma, natch), which is only remarkable per se when you spot him in Roseanne re-runs or in basic cable airings of '90's throwaways like One Fine Day or The Peacemaker. Where he's progressively come to signify a sort of modern cross between Cary Grant and Henry Fonda, he used to just be that guy off E.R. who wasnt Noah Wyle or Eriq La Salle. Now, dude's like the white Barack Obama--or at least Bono minus the smug vibe and dumb sunglasses.
Very brief notes, very good movies. Alas, too little time to string together as many words as they warrant.
In Between Days After nine months north of the border, I can say with some small authority that this feels entirely authentic as a slice of contemporary Canadian life. And while my immigrant's experience hasn't necessarily been the same as that of the film's Korean-Canadian Torontonians, it's certainly telling that, aside from a scene or two, you'd hardly know which hemisphere the story was set in. Not that it matters all that much to our heroine, Aimie, who might just as well be wandering around the surface of the moon, bundled up in layers from head to toe and seemingly perpetually lost in thought. This is a coming-of-age narrative first, a coming-to-(North)-America narrative second, and a thoughtful, sensitive success on both fronts for neophyte helmer So Yong Kim and her mostly non-professional, uniformly fine cast.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Sure, there's slow stretches. The damned thing runs 160 minutes while totally, admirably eschewing both biopic conventions and heist-flick mechanics. Like so many of my favorite films--say, The Magnificent Ambersons or Barry Lyndon or The Piano and it's legitmately deserved though probably unnecessary to name-check Malick here--it's luxuriously long: epically intimate, seductive in its rhythms, and painterly-gorgeous from frame one on. In a banner year for new American cinema (and, specifically, for variations on the post-Western template), this one ranks near the top of the heap, better than the Coen brothers' big Oscar winner and almost as strong as P.T. Anderson's superior also-ran. Granted, Brad Pitt is no Daniel Day-Lewis, and won't ever be, but he's getting better all the time at being Brad Pitt. Here he's at his best yet, even if Casey Affleck steals every scene they share.
Enchanted One could make a fairly compelling case against this New York-set fairly tale as the logical end-point of the Disneyification of Times Square and, by extension, Manhattan--a victory lap of sorts, around Columbus Circle, across Central Park, then back through the looking glass. Such an argument wouldn't even require more than a passing familiarity with recent NYC history and geography and a hipster's disdain for all things Disney. I'm not going to bother with it, though. This comes off much fresher and funnier than it sounds on paper, it's thankfully breezy and sweet-natured, and, hell, Amy Adams could steer a Pol Pot biopic into surefire charmer territory through sheer force of infectious ebullience.
Ploy Thai auteur Pen-ek Ratanaruang specializes in dreamy, sensually charged narratives that gain resonance upon reflection--it's something of a unique trick, really, which I dug in 6ixty9, admired more in Last Life in the Universe, and which he more or less perfects with his latest effort. This one's about a Thai-American couple who take a trip back to Bangkok and butt heads over a precocious quasi-orphan named--right--Ploy. He says he just wants to help her out, she thinks he really wants to--yeah yeah, you know. Meanwhile, their younger, sexier foils fuck like jack rabbits in the hotel room next door.
Lady Chatterley Speaking of s.e.x., Pascal Ferran's take on D.H. Lawrence's once-controversial classic is very nearly as exquisitely realized as its reviews would suggest. While I have a certain soft-spot for Ken Russell's Lawrence filmizations, their sexual politics feel, ironically, more dated than those found in The Rainbow and Women in Love. Ferran comes closer to matching the frank, quotidian eroticism that marks Lawrence's sex scenes, which makes for a beautiful, engrossing, decidedly non-dated Lady Chatterley. The final scene's a heartbreaker, as, of course, it should be.
Them While, as with Cloverfield, a shrewd preference for the suspense generated by suggestion provokes Blair Witch comparisons, the sources of horror in this French horror movie are located somewhere between Haneke's Funny Games and van Sant's Elephant. Which probably qualifies as a spoiler, but the kicker here is that it'll scare the shit out of you either way.
Michael Clayton George Clooney has gone from effortlessly oozing charisma to effortlessly oozing integrity (while still effortlessly oozing charisma, natch), which is only remarkable per se when you spot him in Roseanne re-runs or in basic cable airings of '90's throwaways like One Fine Day or The Peacemaker. Where he's progressively come to signify a sort of modern cross between Cary Grant and Henry Fonda, he used to just be that guy off E.R. who wasnt Noah Wyle or Eriq La Salle. Now, dude's like the white Barack Obama--or at least Bono minus the smug vibe and dumb sunglasses.
Presenting...the JLT/JLT Ballot '07
AKA, our consensus picks for the best in film for the past year. Enjoy.
FILM
Black Book
Bug
The Man from London
Redacted
Still Life
DIRECTOR
Brian De Palma - Redacted
Jia Zhang-ke - Still Life
Guy Maddin - My Winnipeg
Bela Tarr - The Man from London
Paul Verhoeven - Black Book
ACTRESS
Marina Hands - Lady Chatterley
Ashley Judd - Bug
Lalita Panyopas - Ploy
Tang Wei - Lust, Caution
Carice van Houten - Black Book
ACTOR
Samuel L. Jackson - Black Snake Moan
Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will Be Blood
Viggo Mortensen - Eastern Promises
Seth Rogen - Knocked Up
Koji Yakusho - Retribution
SUPPORTING ACTOR
Talat Bulut - Bliss
Albert Finney - Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Kene Holliday - Great World of Sound
Tommy Lee Jones - No Country for Old Men
Christopher Mintz-Plasse - Superbad
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Zoe Bell - Death Proof
Jennifer Garner - Juno
Ann Savage - My Winnipeg
Tabu - The Namesake
Zhao Tao - Still Life
SCREENPLAY
Tracy Letts - Bug
Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent & Jaques Rivette - The Duchess of Langeais
Judd Apatow - Knocked Up
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen - No Country for Old Men
Seishi Minakami & Satoshi Kon - Paprika
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Norman Cohn - The Journals of Knud Rasmussen
Fred Kelemen - The Man from London
Chankit Chamnivikaipong - Ploy
Nelson Yu Lik-wai - Still Life
Robert Elswitt - There Will Be Blood
AKA, our consensus picks for the best in film for the past year. Enjoy.
FILM
Black Book
Bug
The Man from London
Redacted
Still Life
DIRECTOR
Brian De Palma - Redacted
Jia Zhang-ke - Still Life
Guy Maddin - My Winnipeg
Bela Tarr - The Man from London
Paul Verhoeven - Black Book
ACTRESS
Marina Hands - Lady Chatterley
Ashley Judd - Bug
Lalita Panyopas - Ploy
Tang Wei - Lust, Caution
Carice van Houten - Black Book
ACTOR
Samuel L. Jackson - Black Snake Moan
Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will Be Blood
Viggo Mortensen - Eastern Promises
Seth Rogen - Knocked Up
Koji Yakusho - Retribution
SUPPORTING ACTOR
Talat Bulut - Bliss
Albert Finney - Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Kene Holliday - Great World of Sound
Tommy Lee Jones - No Country for Old Men
Christopher Mintz-Plasse - Superbad
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Zoe Bell - Death Proof
Jennifer Garner - Juno
Ann Savage - My Winnipeg
Tabu - The Namesake
Zhao Tao - Still Life
SCREENPLAY
Tracy Letts - Bug
Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent & Jaques Rivette - The Duchess of Langeais
Judd Apatow - Knocked Up
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen - No Country for Old Men
Seishi Minakami & Satoshi Kon - Paprika
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Norman Cohn - The Journals of Knud Rasmussen
Fred Kelemen - The Man from London
Chankit Chamnivikaipong - Ploy
Nelson Yu Lik-wai - Still Life
Robert Elswitt - There Will Be Blood
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