New Music-Related Documentaries

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man

Though the tributes seem to predominate the biographical aspect, the film still looks pretty good. Bono and The Edge appear to be all over the documentary. It's easy to hate them, and while I really don't, they're made out to be the premier musicians influenced by Cohen and I can easily see it getting irritating. The tribute performances look great, though. Antony. Nick Cave. Word.
70% on Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer

In theaters


American Hardcore: The History of American Punk Rock 1980-1986

Not a huge fan of hardcore, but I'm going to have to see this one. Looks fun and faithful to the formative phases of the scene. Henry Rollins is all over it, and you can't complain about his appearance.

In theaters September 22

The U.S. vs. John Lennon

We like to lionize John Lennon, which I guess isn't exactly so bad, but we often forget that he was kind of a prick, who was one of the farthest people from perfection. He was a great songwriter and he spoke out against some nasty political happenings at the time, but we're too quick to tag him as something beyond human. He headed a great deal of protests, but have we not yet realized that picketing and protesting against national government issues isn't exactly the most effective method? Back then, it was fine, they tried it out (while on too many drugs, mind you) but these days government doesn't allow for that sort of public opinion to affect much. The U.S. vs. John Lennon movie trailer attempts to galvanize its viewers into protest. It's as if they try to convince us that if we do as Lennon did we can end wars. It's a little silly, but it does look like an interesting flick.

In theaters September 15

A Nice New York Surprise

Electro-rock siblings, The Knife, are coming to New York to perform in the CMJ festival. It'll be there first show ever played in the States. Aren't we lucky?

I'm a little scared.

Wed 11/01 - 8:00 PM The Knife
Webster Hall $25

The Knife - Marble House

(The Swedes are strange.)

Beck Has A New Record Coming Out, Kids

And he is a man of little mystery, for now. Entitled The Information, Beck's latest Nigel Godrich produced album will be released October 2. Nigel likes producing Radiohead albums, though he's not slated to do their latest, and he also produced Beck's Sea Change. Sea Change was a scantily-clad record without the sex, but you can expect an electric-fuck-ta-freak record from The Information. Is anyone else getting the feeling that it's going to do some deeper roaming through the streets of hip-hop?...Yes, on acid, of course. (I just found the music video for the new single We Dance Alone. I was right. Damn; all betting is closed.)

The CD is to come equipped with a do-it-yourself-liner-notes. In case you haven't graduated junior high yet or you're really into useless activities, you've been offered, by Beck himself, to build your very own The Information booklet. A blank sleeve and booklet will be packaged with a sheet of stickers. Beck also revealed that he will award his favorite booklet designer with a mystery video game console so you can waste more of your time. Okay that last part isn't true, and I won't hold it against you if you put Beck's sticker set to use, or play video games for that matter.

The Information will also come with a videodisc with, you guessed it, a video for each song. Remind you of the previous post? Wanna sell records? Well make us unable to live without it! Trick us into thinking that playing with stickers post-adolescence is fuckin' shweet. Whatever it is, you gotta do what you gotta do, and if that means some clowning around via the physical album itself, then so be it. Personally, I'd like Beck to hold the stickers and give us a refund for Guerro, instead. I'm just kidding. I never bought it. This album, on the other hand...now that's a bargain, buddy! Right? Say I'm right.

Check out Beck.com's video section for the We Dance Alone video

When can Ashley Parker Angel and Saving Jane make it to #1?

Well, when their songs are on newest edition of the NOW: That's What I Call Music compilation, of course. The 22nd volume of our favorite technological-aged-lollipop-tool for pedophiles peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 and is resting easy at number two in its third week.

The saddest part in all of this is that if Angel and Jane made it to #1 it wouldn't thrust any of us into shock. There are a lot of implications that arise from NOW's uber-popularity, and we heard them all before. Obviously, the MP3 revolution is the most pronounced factor in this sad state. I don't try to convince myself that music is as vital to the rest of the country as it is with me. I like albums, and listening to the whole thing. Straight through! But it would be clownish of me to pretend that most people didn't just want to buy an album for their new favorite song of the month. You know, the CD that soon after gathers dust on their undulating Ikea rack. The MP3 has now opened up the opportunity to scrap their CD-as-furniture stance and get that cherry-wood bookshelf they always wanted to store their absent-of-the-jacket-first-editions of James Patterson and Danielle Steel novels that they "haven't gotten around to reading yet".

To be honest with you, I could care less. It's only hurting the record companies, and who really cares about them? Right? Maybe? Music listeners have always been sub-categorized by the avid music listener and the casual one. The casual one just so happens to be the more common one, as well. So maybe NOW aint so bad if it just reflects the popular taste in music. For all of you senseless haters, you might remember a certain little band called Radiohead who ended up on the first NOW compilation. It was Karma Police, if you're interested. Anyway, NOW don't see it so much as an ignitor as just a mirror for the state of artificial pop songs as Xeroxed copies of each other.

In any case, though, I sneeze at the record exec who doesn't take a chance on something different and then whines about how record sales go down. No matter what, as long as the MP3 stays alive, sales will remain low. We need a much more attractive package with the album. If people cared about every song on a record and every word in the liner notes, perhaps more people would buy records. Most of the artists who make it to the top of the chart these days feed into this cycle of single-frenzy, but it's difficult to say whether or not this is engineered to give into most people's instinctual desire for the one hit song or if its a problem that can be erradicated by popularizing a great album instead of a song that happens to be on a smegma-smelling album.


And instead of people like your humble commentator complaining so much, maybe we need to blame ourselves as a part of the music community. I love experimental music, blah blah blah, but couldn't some of us also make irresistable pop songs that could actually carry with it some respectable songwriting? Who knows, though? Maybe no matter what, that money-sweating record exec would ignore it because he'd be taking too much a risk.

All I want to know is, where's our Beatles!? Time will tell, I guess.

Heights - Review

Rating: C

Heights isn't exactly a new movie, but it's still relevant. A lot of young filmmakers fall into this trap, so pay attention, or something:

New York City is a funny place. We walk around on what feels like a treadmill—walking a great deal, while never getting very far—emotionally. It’s the distance we could make with anyone outside our enclosed social/business circles. Each day, we pretend that the people we walk past aren’t worth our time. In reality, though, they’re wandering screenplays—stories we can all walk away from that much wiser. And if not that, we can at least be entertained by them.

Heights tells a New York story that falls somewhere in between. The story is articulated with a lustrous breath of style, but first-time screenwriter, Amy Fox’ story feels highfalutin and its form contrived. It’s not that the narrative is inane or unimaginable. These days, relationships are often rickety and underhanded, which is why these characters feel so real. Fox’ honesty is limited, though. If the cosmos were aligned just right during that 24-hour period, this scenario could be feasible. I mean that’s what makes a film a film and not just a mundane account of habit and ordinary occurrences. In the case of Heights, though, the story is too conscious of its themes to come off realistic. As the film develops, every little piece fits too perfectly, and the big picture is a shrunken model of what the writer had intended. It’s the overachiever who does everything just right, but whose overall presence is dulled by a lack of real experience and raw passion. The film feels jaded by its own ability to stitch an impeccable and symmetrical web, and therefore lacks the true human experience. Would our lives hold as much meaning if everything happened for a reason and we were aware of the fact?

The drifting heart, muddled sexual identities, and life’s priorities are pillars of the intertwined lives in the film, but these pillars don’t seem so sturdy when the inflated conclusion comes. It was intended to shock us, but instead it backfires with a quiet boom of tacky character reactions to a surprise that could not have happened any other way. You kick yourself for not having envisioned the ending even when you had smelled it approaching the entire time. You’re too distracted by the other interconnections to predict it, which I suppose is clever in its own right, but the ending is muted because no other piece could have tied the rest of the stitching together. So, you’re left with the feeling that this just couldn’t happen to the average Joe. ‘If the writer could only achieve this “powerful” end by putting all of these very specific variables together in very specific places, than why would this ever happen to me?’ If that last empty space could have been weaved together with any number of possible pieces, than perhaps the filmmakers could have impacted their audience in the way they wanted. The film is just not as quick-witted as it tried so hard to have you believe.

Glenn Close and the team of young actors (James Marsden, Elizabeth Banks, and Jesse Bradford) render some tame but brilliant performances. Close never outshines the others, which is not to say that any of them offer flat interpretations of their characters. They prove to us they are just as capable and will surely bring us some unforgettable acting in the future. It’s unfortunate that they couldn’t deliver them here. Despite some skilled and grounded contributions, they are still contributing to a film that smothers them by the meticulous hands of a blemished script.

After the credits rolled, I was pleased, but not gushing. In retrospect, I had been tricked into believing that Heights was a pretty good movie. Relative to what’s out now, it is good. I praise the filmmakers for their effort to entertain us with puzzle-form, but their chic presentation isn’t enough to withstand its own youthful pretensions. With time, I think we’ll see something much more groundbreaking from them, but for now we’re left with a rickety, but stylized vehicle for some fairly important issues, most of which you can find in the superior film, Closer.

Synopsis
Heights follows five characters over 24 hours on a fall day in New York City. Isabel, a photographer, is having second thoughts about her upcoming marriage to Jonathan, a lawyer. On the same day, Isabel's mother Diana learns that her husband has a new lover and begins to re-think her life choices and her open marriage. Diana and Isabel's paths cross with Alec, a young actor, and with Peter, a journalist. As the interrelated stories proceed, the connections between the lives of the five characters begin to reveal themselves and their stories unravel. Isabel, Jonathan, Diana, Alec, and Peter must choose what kind of lives they will lead before the sun comes up on the next day.

Click Here for Heights Trailer

New Swan Lake Mp3

Swan Lake's All Fires MP3 Download

Dan Bejar (Destroyer) and Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes) are songwriters, too, you know, but their input is scarcely found in Swan Lake's first released song. All Fires is darkly and delicately powerful, but the melody and quiet tension building is typical of Spencer Krug's Sunset Rubdown. The guitar atmospherics act as the fluttering wires who carry and thaw out the literal acoustic guitar playing and Krug's characteristically grim, yet narrowly hopeful vocals. There are moments of Bejar's raw nostalgia, but I think this song is merely one of Krug's babies. Jagjaguwar was probably just playing it safe by releasing the song that sounds most like the work of the predominantly successful and recognizable songwriter. In this case it just so happens to be Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade popularity. I'm looking forward to the more obvious collaborations between Bejar and Krug, who share a similar aesthetic but assemble it in a very different armory.

For the last Swan Lake post and more information on their upcoming LP, Beast Moans, Click Here

New Portishead Album

Holy Shmoke! Portishead are back! It's been nine years since they last recorded a studio album. Founding member, Geoff Barrow told BBC 6 Music that he was surprised people thought Portishead split up, "We've just had our heads down really, we've never actually broken up, or parted, or whatever." Come on, guy. It's been nine years. Isn't it a fair assumption that you guys weren't interested in recording together again.

Not that I'm complaining. I'm kind of excited, but mostly worried for them. They're older; not so fresh, you know? Barrow has already said on their myspace page, "It's really hard not to sound like you're doing a bad impression of yourself." That's exactly what you would expect. The third LP was nearly finished when they revealed the news, but I'm thinking they're reevaluating the sound. It's a good thing. At least their spotting it. You can't fix it, if you can't see it.

When asked if they would collaborate with Danger Mouse, Barrow reveals, "I'd rather poo in my mum's Sunday roast, than have Danger Mouse produce a Portishead record...no offence like."

A little prickish. Not exactly well put, but I like his attitude.

Zombie's Halloween

I hate film remakes. They're cop outs. "Can't think of an idea? That's okay. Just take an already successful one, rip out its heart, send it through a digitizer, and slap it on a clever advertising campaign." It's terrible. We're creative people and we've been writing novels for too long to use the 'every good idea has been taken' execuse. No genre, director, or era can escape the recycle bin.

The 1978 classic horror film, Halloween (1978) is no exception. Normally, I would ignore the idea altogether, but Rob Zombie is slated to direct. Many write off his films, House of 1000 Corpses (2003) and The Devil's Rejects (2005). It's easy, isn't it? Shitty musician = shitty everything, right? Not so! Hell, look at 'N Sync's Joey Fatone. He was a much better actor than he was a singer. Just check out On The Line with gay co-star/bandmate Lance Basssss. For serious though, Rob Zombie is no joke. He has a real knack for the horror genre: the gore, the grime, the thrills, the twisted comedy, and I trust that his Halloween might even surpass the quality of the original. I'm not so sure you can beat out Jamie Lee Curtis, though, when you consider she once had the rare gift of vag-balls. You need a nice brassy pair to deal with that dude, Michael Myers, even if there's a vagina where your testes once were.

Anyway here's the scoop. Zombie told Yahoo: "I basically went back and just came up with the idea of basically - not essentially a remake, but a very extended prequel sort of combined with an update, say, of the first film.

"You're starting from scratch but in sort of a more detailed way. That's the way I thought it would be exciting for fans of the original, because it's not just the same old thing, and it would be exciting for people that never saw the original."

Not exactly the most eloquent guy you've ever encountered, but he is a country boy, so give him some slack. At least he's not writing the screenplay.

(Check out the pic. He's looking more and more like a prick director every day.)