So here’s the list:

1. The Drums - Summertime!

Much has been made about the surf rock roots underpinning this indie band, but they sound more like 80s Britpop than Beach Boys to me. Still, it’s a sunny little EP filled with hummable tunes.

2. We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls

Another Scottish band that can’t hide its accent (see Big Country, The Proclaimers), We Were Promised Jetpacks delivers heart-on-the-sleeve anthemic rock with gusto. Plus they’ve got my current favorite band name.

3. fun. - Aim and Ignite

A little bit of this, a little bit of that. This band seems to have been influenced by the full gamut of 70s classic rock (minus any crunching guitars). Somehow it all adds up to a buoyant collection of, yes, fun songs.

4. Miike Snow - Miike Snow

Electronica sanded off around the edges combines with pop that has been roughed up a little. The mashup appeals to fans of both genres.

5. Wilco - Wilco (the album)

The problem I’ve always had with Wilco is that just when I’m getting into a happy groove they go off with five minutes of pure noise at the end of a song. There’s none of that on this one. Just happy groove.

6. Rancid - Let the Dominoes Fall

The godfathers of pop ska punk return with an album that sounds remarkably like they never left. This is good.

7. Regina Spektor - Far

Take Tori Amos’ piano and infuse it with Russian angst. Layer on some odd cadences and weird lyrics. Somehow it works.

8. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Pure indie power pop at its best. Give in to it. You won’t even notice that they’re French.

9. Metric - Fantasies

A little angry but always melodic, Metric falls into the tradition of great female-vocalist-driven bands like Throwing Muses and The Breeders.

10. The Airborne Toxic Event - The Airborne Toxic Event

Unlike most of the acts on this list, these guys actually got some mainstream radio airplay this year. I was hooked when Sometime Around Midnight got its David Bowie singing Heroes on.

11. Kelly Clarkson - All I Ever Wanted

Yes, Kelly Clarkson. What can I say. I like American Idol. I like Kelly. Every cut on this record is like cotton candy. And I’ll stick by my assertion that I Want You is the catchiest song of the year.

Such reveries have gotten less common as I’ve mellowed somewhat with age.  My adult life just doesn’t have the same unstructured blocks of time that allow for a good old-fashioned marathon pity party.  But I still enjoy a solid dark, sad or just flat out mopey song all the same.

So, here are 25 songs from my Ipod that, besides being great songs, are also perfect for the next time you just need to get in touch with your melancholy side:

1. Overkill - Colin Hay - Yes, I’m leading off with the Men at Work song.  But don’t listen to that version.  Pick up lead singer Colin Hay’s haunting acoustic version.  Stripped of the 80s cheese, this is a wonderful meditation on doubt.
Key lyric: I can’t get to sleep/I worry about the implications.

2. Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper - Another 80s classic, but this one works in any of its iterations (and is pretty much foolproof as a cover by other artists too).  My current favorite version is a duet with Sarah McLachlan (who shows up in her own right later on this list).
Key lyric:  After my picture fades and darkness has turned to grey.

3. Midnight Train to Georgia - Gladys Knight - OK, so I first have to admit that while I have the Gladys Knight version on my Ipod, it is really the live version by the Indigo Girls that kills me.  Seriously, I tear up every time I hear it.  The struggle of the singer trying to support someone they love who has failed spectacularly — that’s pretty damn sad.  In a good poignant way.
Key lyric:  But he sure found out the hard way that dreams don’t always come true.

4. Only You - Yaz - This song shouldn’t work on any level.  Simplistic cheesy 80s synthesizers and what sounds like a drum machine is the recipe for a crappy song.  Instead you get a classic.  It all rides on Alison Moyet’s voice, which will break your heart.
Key lyric: This is going to take a long time and I wonder what’s mine.

5.  Brick - Ben Folds Five - OK, time to get out of the 80s.  It took me awhile before I understood what this song was actually about.  It’s sad enough without knowing that it is a guy taking his pregnant girlfriend for an abortion.  One of the best songs about loss ever.
Key lyric:  Now she’s feeling more alone than she ever has before.

6. Piece of my Heart - Big Brother and the Holding Company - Janis Joplin has one of the best rock and roll voices of all time.  When she sings about hurt, you feel it.
Key lyric:  Never never never never never never hear me when I cry at night.

7. Can’t Fight It - Bob Mould
Key lyric: And it’s strange to see the friends you had all fade away.

8. I Don’t Like Mondays - Boomtown Rats - This is one of the first rock songs that I remember thinking about the lyrics.  The story of a girl on a shooting rampage in her school scared the hell out of me.  No key lyrics for this one — the whole song still just gives me a visceral reaction that humanity is going down the tubes.

9.  Better Be Home Soon - Crowded House - Desperation personified.
Key lyric: Stripping back the coats of lies and deception/Back to nothingness like  a week in the desert.

10. Five Years - David Bowie - Another story song.  This one makes me want to write a book about the slow burn lead up to an inevitable apocaplyse.  Now all I need are characters and a plot.
Key lyric:  We’ve got five years, that’s all we’ve got.

11.  Funny How Love Is - Fine Young Cannibals - In college, a guy on my floor was making a mix for his long-distance girlfriend.  All the songs had the word “love” in the title.  He was not happy when he realized it was a break-up song.
Key lyric:  I don’t want your magazines.  I don’t want your clothes.  Take them from my house, let me be alone.

12. Change - Fishbone - Not the usual loud raucous angry Fishbone. This is quiet melancholy and sort of angry Fishbone.

13. Landslide - Smashing Pumpkins - Yeah, I know it is Fleetwood Mac, but I like this verison. Deal with it.
Key lyric: Well, I’ve been afraid of changing ’cause I built my life around you.

14. Walking After You - Foo Fighters - Sad and creepy.
Key lyric: If you accept surrender, I’ll give up some more.

15. On Your Porch - The Format - Story song about a kid trying to do what’s right be a sick parent. Brutal.
Key lyric: What’s left to lose, you’ve done enough, and if you fail well then you fail but not to us.

16. Bizarre Love Triangle - Frente - Love the New Order original too, but this is another one that needed to be stripped down to understand the depth of despair in the lyrics.
Key lyrics: Everytime I see you falling, I get down on my knees and pray.

17. Shadow of the Day - Linkin Park
Key lyric: And the shadow of the day will embrace the world in grey and the sun will set for you.

18. Patience - Guns ‘n’ Roses - Not sure why this song gets me. But it does. Every time.

19. Black - Pearl Jam - I confess I don’t own Ten. In fact, I had been hearing this song for years before I even realized it was on their first album. And I didn’t know the title for another couple of years. None of that changes the fact that it is a brilliant song.
Key lyric: The pictures have all been washed in black.

20. Don’t Give Up - Peter Gabriel - How can a song about not giving up be so utterly depressing. Exhibit A.
Key lyric: I am a man whose dreams have all deserted.

21. I Will Remember You - Sarah McLachlan
Key lyrics: Weep not for the memories.

22. You’re Wondering Now - The Specials
Key lyric: Curtain has fallen, now you’re on your own, I won’t return, forever you will wait.

23. Don’t Grow - Stuart Matthewman - This was on the soundtrack of Twin Falls, Idaho, a micromini-movie about conjoined twins. You can’t fully feel the lyrics without realizing the plot hinges on the twins’ surgical separation where only one of them can survive.

24. Good Feeling - Violent Femmes - This band always felt like damaged goods. Rarely more so than in this song.
Key lyric: Good feeling, won’t you stay with me just a little longer.

25. Keep Me In Your Heart - Warren Zevon - Zevon knew he was dying when he recorded this. A deeply moving love song to living. Good to end this list with a reminder that melancholy can be uplifting in its own way, right?

In the meantime, realizing that my mythology show fix was disappearing, I’ve been looking for a replacement.  Actually, I’ve been auditioning replacements almost since Lost appeared.  And I’ve been let down by all of them.

Lost began in 2004.  In 2005, there was a minor explosion of sci-fi shows with overarching mythologies.  I watched them all.  Surface was about the appearance of strange new creatures in the sea.  Invasion was about, um, strange new creatures in the sea.  Threshold started with, er, something strange hovering, uh, out at sea.  OK, so per the usual tendencies of Hollywood, there were a lot of people chasing after Lost’s out of the box success, from the cryptic atmospherics right down to the one word title.  None of the three shows really worked, though I did enjoy Invasion until they canceled it.  Threshold was the biggest disappointment, mainly because it seemed to have the most promise at the beginning (which actually will be relevant later in this post).

2006 brought Heroes, which was great in the first year and has been on a steady decline ever since.  It’s not a replacement for Lost, but given my tendencies to stick with shows long after I should abandon them, it appears that I am stuck with it.   (Jericho also was a brief favorite of mine in 2006 until it got cancelled.)

A couple years passed where either there were no mythology shows, or more likely I just had given up hope of ever finding another good one.

But now I find myself watching two of them.  I’ve already written about the X-Files doppleganger Fringe.  But the one that has the most promise — and therefore the most potential to disappoint me — is FlashForward.

The hook is simply brilliant and maddeningly expansive.  One day everyone in the world blacks out for exactly 137 seconds.  While they are all unconscious, each person sees what will happen to them six months in the future.  Then, everyone wakes up — except for the 20 million people who died during the blackouts — and has to live with consequences of knowing what is yet to come.

The show has done a pretty good job of giving us interesting characters who saw interesting things.  An currently sober alcoholic sees himself drinking.  A wife sees herself with another man.  A woman sees herself pregnant.  A girl sees herself being killed.   A man sees his dead daughter come back to life.  And framing the whole thing is an F.B.I. team that is investigating the blackout.

Eight episodes in, it is still intriguing.  Up until episode seven, the world was assuming that what they saw was guaranteed to happen, leading to anarchic and nihilistic behavior for some and irrational joy and hope for others.  But no one was living their lives in the moment.  That’s a fascinating idea that was being handled well, but was starting to get stale.  Episode seven brought an interesting twist that called into question that assumption.  One character’s action to prove that his destiny was not foretold changed the world again.

I like the philosophical underpinnings of this show.  The questions of fate and destiny.  But it clearly is not going to survive if it needs a reboot every eight episodes.  I’m just not sure I trust it to sustain itself.  After all, what happens at the six month point (which will conveniently coincide with the end of the first season).  Another blackout?  That’s what I expect and that would suck.  The show is hinting that there will be answers.  Already we’ve met two characters who were part of the “experiment” that caused the blackouts.  And annoyingly one of them keeps saying they need to tell the world and then doesn’t tell the viewers anything.

And right there is the problem with a mythology show.  It needs to keep its secrets to keep us watching.  And yet all we want to know is the secrets.  The key to a good show is perfectly calibrating the slow drip IV that feeds us clue after clue leading to speculation and intrigue without spilling the beans.  That’s why Lost is so good.  It has been dripping away into my brain for five years without losing my attention.  I crave the next season.

With FlashForward, I am curious, but also nervous.  I don’t see how it can possibly live up to its premise.  I don’t even see how it can get to a second season.  And with a mythology show, it is 100 percent about trust.  This brings me back to Threshold — remember I said it would come back.  That show started fast out of the gates, but within a few episodes it had gotten repetitive and frustrating.  FlashForward is from the same creative team.  Maybe they learned their lessons.  I do have to say that eight episodes in the show still has my attention.  But it has a long way to go to earn my trust.

Where the Wild Things Are is overall a film about the difficulties of being a child.  The raw emotions.  The painful need to confront the injustice of the world.  The uncertainty of being completely reliant on adults who you slowly realize are just people like yourself.  All of this hits home powerfully in the introductory scenes between Keener and Records.

But as everyone who’s ever been child (and therefore been handed a copy of the classic children’s book at birth) knows, the story is really about the surreal and magical time spent with the Wild Things.  There is a potent touch of danger and malice mixed in with Maurice Sendak’s whimsy.

In the movie, Max runs away from home, gets in his boat and sails to the island where the wild things are.  And that’s where the movie falls apart.  Jonze makes a valiant effort at imbuing the giant puppets that look wonderfully just like the book illustrations with personalities and life.  He is a unique filmmaker and the movie is imminently watchable.  Fascinating in the effort.  Though a bit unfortunately like watching a really well done student film that wears its themes on its sleeves and doesn’t quite tell a compelling story.

It is not even that there are missteps in the narrative, save for one strange interlude where one of the wild things introduces two wordless and fake-looking owls as wise friends.  But it is intentionally episodic and rambling.  None of this is surprising given the brevity of the source material, but having to say that is nothing more than an excuse for not making a complete movie.

This is probably a good place for me to place myself in the camp that this is not really a kids movie either.  Yeah, I’ve read the interviews with Sendak that essentially say that kids should suck it up and not be coddled in their entertainment.  I get that maybe kids movies these days are a bit predictable and tidy and therefore cheat children of a transformative film experience.  But I also remember being scarred by Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (with Gene Wilder) which was surreal and creepy.  I was not mentally prepared to process it.  And I think my kids would have the same problem with Where the Wild Things Are.  It is soaked in ennui and melancholy.  Every character and giant puppet is having an existential crisis.  It is very hard to come to grips with mortality as a child — and I don’t think kids need a movie that rubs it in their faces.

In his few films so far, Jonze has proven that he is not going to be predictable.  Being John Malkovich and Adaptation were both narratively and visually unique.  Both of those films were written by Charlie Kaufman.  In the past, I’ve given more credit to the writer than the director for those two successes, but I think that was unfair.  (And Kaufman’s huge mess of a writer-director effort on Synechdoche, New York confirmed this for me.)  And I’ll say that Jonze probably did a better job with Where the Wild Things Are than should have been expected.  It would have been a huge disappointment if it had been CGI’d and script doctored to make the kid cuter and the wild things into anodyne buddies.  But I suppose it is faint praise to say the film was less disappointing than it could have been.

Watching the credits at the end, after a very brief return to the brilliance of Keener and Records sitting in silence at the dining room table, what I really wanted was for Jonze to make a straight-up family drama for his next film.  I think he’s ready to drop the plot gimmicks that have marked his work and just tackle head on a story about real people dealing with real life.  Not much of a high concept pitch, but I’d go see it.

I’ll just warn you up front.  I’m about to take a metaphor about dedication to TV shows and long-term romantic relationships way too far.  Deal with it.

So, I’ve started seeing this show called Fringe.  I had heard about it for a while.  It has been on the air for a full season and last year I flirted with adding it to my DVR rotation, but I could never quite commit to watching it.  Then, it heard about the finale (and actually ended up watching the rather mind-blowing last scene with Leonard Nimoy).  When the new season started, I decided it was time to start a relationship.

Now, I don’t believe in casual entertainment encounters (and particularly one-night stands) with TV shows.  We’re not talking about movies here, which love you and leave you, often in a tidy 94 minutes.  No, this is television.  And when I decide to try something out, I’m hoping that it will last.  I want to commit.  This can be problematic and disappointing when I can’t quite break off a bad relationship (as I’ve discussed in previous posts about 24 and Heroes).

I’ve now watched the first two episodes of Fringe for season 2.  I can’t say I’m loving it.  But it is somewhat engaging.  But the real problem is that I think I’m watching it for the wrong reasons.  You see, Fringe feels uncomfortably like one of my former loves, The X-Files, and I’m worried that I’m just using it to get back that feeling I used to have for that show.

I’m not totally crazy here.  Even the producers of Fringe acknowledge their X-Files debt (and did so quite publicly by having an X-Files clip playing on a TV in the opening of the latest season).  Both shows are set in marginalized offices of the F.B.I. that focus on unexplained phenomena.  Both pair a supremely competent, skeptical and attractive female agent with a slightly off-beat male agent/consultant.  There’s an invasion lurking in the background mythology of both shows.  The creepy atmosphere and tone are very similar.  Both shows have a no-nonsense boss who knows more than he lets on and fights the powers that be to allow the office to continue its work.  Both shows have shadowy figures that pop up at exactly the right time to deliver maddeningly cryptic hints to the broader story/conspiracy.  And as far I can tell there are even some parallel ideas about shape shifting and super soldiers.

Seriously, there are some ridiculous similarities here.  Can you blame me for wondering if I can recapture the magic I had with that other show?  No, I know you’re not the same show, but if you just wore your hair a bit different and we turned down the lights … OK, that was too creepy.

I’ll be totally honest with you.  I loved the X-Files.  And it hurt me.  It hurt me bad.  I was not a huge fan of the monster-of-the-week epsiodes.  But if you really love someone, you deal with their flaws.  It was the mythology that I couldn’t get enough of.  Even when it became clear that the show was going to disappoint me by not resolving itself in a satisfying way, I stuck with it.  I’m loyal like that.  And then the X-Files left me with a totally ridiculous finale that made me wonder if I’d wasted the best viewing hours of my life.  I know that it was bad at the end, but I still miss it.

(I did see run into it again at a movie theater a couple of summers ago — it was awkward for both of us.)

When a relationship ends poorly, it is only human nature to try and find some closure.  The two episodes I’ve seen of Fringe suggest I might be able to do that through transference.  I know, I know — it isn’t the same show — stop saying that.  But Fringe even structures its episodes the same way as the X-Files.  The season opener was a classic mythology episode with a mysterious incident happening to our heroine and tantalizing hints at the broader conspiracy.  I had that tingly feeling I used to get — the pure pleasure that the show knows where its going and I’m going to enjoy the ride.  The second episode did nothing to stop me thinking about my ex — er, I mean X-Files.  It appeared to have been stitched together from a number of monster-of-the-week concepts.  Something mysterious underground killing people.  A parent protecting a bloodthirsty mutant child.  Seemingly bucolic middle American landscapes with something to hide.

Fringe, oh, Fringe, why do you tease me so?  True, your underlying fabric is about infinite alternate dimensions rather than myriad alien races.  But I can overlook that if you’re willing to continue pretend you’re the X-Files for me.  You know, when I squint just right, I can make your crazy scientist/mad genius Walter look just like any one of the Lone Gunmen.

No, wait don’t leave.  I’ll try to love you for you.  I promise.  We can make this work.

Just one thing.  Would you consider dyeing Anna Torv’s hair red?  No?  I know, my bad.  Forget I asked.

fun.

Yes, that is the name of this band, complete with the period at the end and a lowercase f.  Nothing says indie band like punctuation in the name.  And nothing says 70’s nostalgia throwback like a 7:51 minute song with melodic choruses and instrumental breaks and anthemic interludes and piano accompaniment.  Take Your Time (Coming Home) is an epic homage to the lighter side of classic rock, evoking Queen, Elton John, Jackson Browne, Van Morrison and others in such an enjoyable way that I actually feel like I’m listening to an incredibly satisfying final track on a rock opera LP on the inadequate turntable in my childhood bedroom.  (And for the record, that’s even more impressive since I was never really a big fan of 70s rock even in the 80s when it was still relatively new.)  But that’s skipping way ahead.  The album, Aim and Ignite, opens with Be Calm.  This is also a mishmash of influences.  It starts with strings that echo Pachelbel’s Canon (really) and then turns into Eleanor Rigby before finally morphing into the Dresden Dolls (and some Ben Folds thrown in for good measure).  Yup, it’s that odd — and that mesmerizing.  Between these most interesting bookends, you’ll find eight more solid tracks of mix-and-match rock.  I Wanna Be The One is ska-tinged Joe Jackson.  At Least I’m Not As Sad (As I Used To Be) takes a little piano from Billy Joel, the horns from old Chicago, a vocal melody from The Jackson Five’s ABC and, here’s where I thought I had lost my mind, a touch of Harry Belafonte.  OK, there comes a point where making comparisons starts to get silly.  Particularly when I can layer them on as deep as with this album (and trust me these are just the beginning).  Most of all, however, these songs are just, yes I’m going to say it, fun.  I love it when a band that I’ve never heard of, not even in passing, turns out an album that I really enjoy.  If you’re looking for just one track to sample, grab the infectious All The Pretty Girls.  I’m not going to compare it to anything else despite the obvious nod to … oh never mind ….

Vampire Weekend

I spent a long time avoiding Vampire Weekend.  Unlike fun., Vampire Weekend seemed to be popping up everywhere a few months ago.  I had never heard any of their songs, yet they had enough buzz that I was pretty sure I didn’t like them.  (This happens to me sometimes, and then I need time to get some distance from the breathless fawning of the music press before I can give a band a chance, though once I do give the band a chance, I usually see what the fuss was about, such as with the Arcade Fire, and then I feel like a sheep, but a happy sheep listening to good music.)  So, with Vampire Weekend, I had pretty much decided to ignore them.  Then, I saw Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, which featured their song Ottoman prominently.  It’s a great song.  And time had passed.  So I downloaded their eponymous album.  Hello, my favorite new band (which is an often shifting target).  It is a little tough for me to find comparisons to make here.  Vampire Weekend has a truly unique sound.  It shouldn’t work.  Take the song One (Blake’s Got a New Face) — the title alone is a creepy sentiment.  If I was to consider the chorus uncharitably, I could describe it as, well, squalling.  And yet, it gets in your head and you want to walk around shouting, “Blake’s! Gotta new face!”  (Of course, the Bobby McFerrin vocal break in the middle is also cool — and that’s the last musical reference, I promise.)  Album highlights include Oxford Comma and I Stand Corrected, which both manage to bounce along amiably without feeling conventional or derivative.  And then there is M79, which appears to start out on a harpsichord.  You gotta love that.  Anyway, this album has me thinking that next time I see an overhyped band, I should jump on the bandwagon a bit sooner.

]]> http://mikelandweber.com/2009/09/vampire-weekend-and-fun/feed/ http://mikelandweber.com/2009/09/shall-we-dance-and-strictly-ballroom-and-a-brief-comment-on-how-i-like-phil-collins-cant-dance-2/ http://mikelandweber.com/2009/09/shall-we-dance-and-strictly-ballroom-and-a-brief-comment-on-how-i-like-phil-collins-cant-dance-2/#comments Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:10:43 +0000 admin http://mikelandweber.com/?p=546 Let’s just get something out of the way.  I can’t dance.  I’m not usually a big fan of watching people dance.  And I tend to get a little uncomfortable at functions where dancing might break out.  We’ve all got our things, and dancing most definitely is not my thing.

Maybe I’m just too self-conscious to let my body go.  I’m too tense to enjoy the act of it all.  I’ve got the requisite rhythm, more or less — I was a drummer back in the day — but my limbs just don’t want to feel the music and boogie down, so to speak.  (My seven-year-old son on the other hand has happy feet.  At the last wedding we attended he spent the entire time rocking out on the dance floor.)

So, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that movies about dancing just aren’t that interesting to me.  The new movie trend of attractive young people in difficult situations solving the problems of the team/school/community/world by having a dance-off don’t do much for me.  The old school flicks aren’t much better.  I have little patience for the movie musical.  Saturday Night Fever - blah.  Dirty Dancing - eh - (though I will watch the climactic scene if it is on cable to see if this time maybe someone will put baby in a corner).  With apologies to Kevin Bacon and Jennifer Beals, Footloose and Flashdance - not so much.  (Before you ask, I have also exercised a veto on watching Dancing With the Stars.)

So it is always a bit surprising to me (and yes, I do constantly startle myself) that two of my all-time favorite movies are about ballroom dancing.

Before Baz Luhrmann became world-famous international movie director, he made a charming little film about the Australian ballroom dancing scene.  It was Dirty Dancing redux - ugly duckling falls for dashing star, who teaches her to dance and realizes she’s beautiful - but it could not be a more different film.

While much of the plot is a cliche - let’s just say you know exactly how it is going to end - it is the way it is told that is riveting.  It crackles with life, borders on the surreal, and is funny as hell.  That, and it is one of the few movies that makes me tear up at the climax every time.  Anyone who has seen Romeo+Juliet or Moulin Rouge! knows that Luhrmann likes his visuals liberally sprinkled with jangly insanity.  With a limited budget, he achieves the same mania on Strictly Ballroom without making the viewer dizzy.

Where Strictly Ballroom is an oversized production stuffed into a too-small indie suit, Shall We Dance? is the very definition of a small quiet charming low-budget production.

(We’re talking about the original Japanese film here, not the better-off-forgotten U.S. remake.)

This is the story of stifled man who defies his life, ever so gently, by learning how to dance.  Of course, he is taught by a beautiful woman.  But this movie avoids cliche as deftly as Strictly Ballroom embraces it.  The love story is between the man and his wife, who is equally trapped in modern Japanese society.  The supporting cast is hilarious and poignant, including a flamboyant dancer who hides his persona at work and an overweight klutz who is learning to dance to impress his fiancee.

One other reason I love this movie is that it evokes strong memories of the year I spent in Tokyo.  More than any other movie, this one captures the essence of the Japanese people I knew.  The host family I lived with for a couple of months was similar to the family in the film, including the exuberant daughter.  The salarymen and women who are buttoned up so tight that they are prone to hilariously irrational behavior when given the opportunity remind me of the folks I used to teach English to and work with.  And the setting is not stylized - it is real Tokyo - not neon lights action movie Tokyo.  Layer on listening to the Japanese and I get nostalgic for a place I haven’t been in a while and may not go back to for many more years.

Both of these movies have lots of dancing and talking about dancing and the obligatory dance competition and then some more dancing.  And it is a testament to how good they are that I enjoyed them anyway.  (But I’m still not interested in taking dance lessons.)

That got me thinking about just how damn long I’ve been watching John Cusack vehicles.  I was entering my formative moviegoing years when he first came on the scene.  And he’s one of those actors who just never left.  According to IMDB, he’s been in 50 movies.  By my count, I’ve seen 34 of them.  OK, like any actor with a long career, there’s a lot of crap sprinkled in there among the gems.  But regardless of what I think of the movie, I pretty much always enjoy watching Cusack.

So, in my completely self-centered way, here is my retrospective of John Cusack’s most appealing career and what I thought of it every step of the way, including the 10 flicks that deserve to have must-see status.

Class - this was John Cusack’s first movie.  I’m pretty sure I saw it at a friend’s house on a videotape because it was the early eighties and we thought it might a teenage sex comedy with some nudity (which was a lot harder for thirteen year olds to come by back then in the pre-internet age).  I think we were disappointed.  No memory of Cusack in it (or actually of the movie itself).

Sixteen Candles - OK, it’s kind of silly to call this a John Cusack movie, but he was in it as one of Anthony Michael Hall’s geeky friends.  Still a movie I will watch anytime it is on TV.  So we’ll call this a MUST SEE Cusack movie with an asterisk.

Grandview USA — pretty sure I missed this one.

The Sure Thing — the year was 1985 and I actually had a date.  I took her to see this romantic comedy.  Cusack was so inspiring as a romantic lead that I made my admittedly clumsy move on the girl.  I was rebuffed.  Thanks a lot, John.

Better Off Dead — a wonderfully odd and surreal movie.  And really funny.  I suspect that this pretty much cemented Cusack’s rep as the quirky leading man that he still can’t quite shake.  I still smile at the thought of the paperboy pursuing him relentlessly for two overdue dollars.  Just writing this is making me want to see it again.  So it gets our first genuine Cusack lead MUST SEE rating.

One Crazy Summer — the team that made Better Off Dead tried to make lightning strike twice … and failed.

Stand By Me — Good flick.  Don’t remember John Cusack in it.  Oh well.

Hot Pursuit — Definitely saw it.  Definitely don’t remember it.

Broadcast News — See Stand By Me.  Same comment.

Eight Men Out — Holy crap.  John Cusack can really act.  The year is 1988 and I’m graduating from high school and Cusack is graduating to leading roles in movies for grownups.  Who knew?  For that alone, add this one to the MUST SEE list.

Say Anything — OK, so he didn’t completely graduate.  Cusack had one more classic angsty funny teenage romantic comedy left in him.   Only Cameron Crowe could have pulled off the cheesiness of Cusack holding a boom box over his head to win back the girl of his dreams.  If it had been any song other than Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes, that would have sucked.  But it didn’t.  MUST SEE.

Thus follows a five-year period where Cusack appeared in 11 movies.  The dude was a hot property in Hollywood.  The Grifters was lauded but I didn’t like it.  He had bit parts in Tim Robbins’ Bob Roberts and Woody Allen’s Shadows and Fog, but again I don’t remember him in those.  Seven other movies during that period don’t really merit a mention; some I saw, some I didn’t, all were forgotten.  Then, there was ….

Bullets Over Broadway — I believe this may have been the first time where another actor played the “Woody Allen” character in an Woody Allen movie.  And Cusack was wonderful doing it.  This is one of the last Allen movies that I actually enjoyed.  Scenes are stolen left and right by the likes of Chazz Palminteri, Jennifer Tilly, Diane Wiest and others, but Cusack rules the roost.  MUST SEE.

City Hall — this movie reeked of Oscar bait.  Um, didn’t quite work out that way.

Grosse Pointe Blank — Pure awesomeness.  John Cusack is back triumphantly.  MUST SEE.

Con Air — What the heck is John Cusack doing in this movie?  Nicolas Cage is suddenly an action star?  Huh?  Then, I realize that I’m really enjoying it.  Fun ride.  MUST SEE (though more for standout scenery chewing by John Malkovich and Steve Buscemi).

This is the point in the blog post where I realize just how long a 50-movie career is and start to regret my decision to review the whole thing.  But there is still good stuff to come, so I’ll persevere.  And skip some details.

Blah, blah, cartoon voice (Anastasia).  Blah, blah, best-selling book adaptation (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil).  Blah, blah, indies (Chicago Cab, This is My Father).  Blah, blah, prestige pics (The Thin Red Line, Cradle That Rocks).  Blah, blah, crap (Pushing Tin).  Blah, blah … hold the phone.

Being John Malkovich — there just aren’t that many movies that are so original in concept and method that you just stop and admire.  This is one of them.  Wow.  MUST SEE.

High Fidelity — following on the heels of blowing our minds, Cusack turns out one of his most enjoyable flicks as he riffs on music and love.  MUST SEE.

By now Cusack is an institution.  An icon.  And his choices for material start to betray, well, sorry to say this John, but a bit of laziness.  America’s Sweethearts, Must Love Dogs and Serendipity were all blandly harmless.  1408 and Runaway Jury were both relatively cookie-cutter and predictable for their genres.  Or maybe it is just that his smaller films that push boundaries a bit during this period, like Max and Martian Child, just didn’t quite work.

Still, I promised you ten must-see Cusack movies, so here’s number 10.

Identity — this movie is flawed.  No doubt about it.  The premise can easily be poked full of holes.  But it is still a doozy of an original premise and a tense contained thriller.  Cusack is the glue that holds it together, but Pruitt Taylor Vince should have gotten an Oscar nomination in the supporting category.  MUST SEE.

So that’ s the end of our John Cusack tour.  Ended with more of a whimper than I expected.  Come on, John, time for another winner please.  Wait, what’s that.  Looking ahead on his production slate.  Hot Tub Time Machine?  Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner.  See you in 2010.

The idea is amusing, though maybe not as original as everyone thinks.  A group of high school misfits (including a teacher) band together to show their peers (including teachers) that they are capable of doing great things.  In this case the vehicle is a Glee Club.  The first strike against the show is that there really is no way that they are going to outright fail.  Because that would be really painful.  So the interesting part has to be how they get to success.  So far that plotting is pretty predictable.

You could argue that the fun is in the musical numbers, which have sort of a kitschy charm.  But that’s only going to carry the show so far.  A glee club version of Don’t Stop Believin’ is amusing in the pilot, but if it turns into the cheesy 70s or 80s song of the week show, it is going to get old fast.

OK, I’m about to go negative here.  I do it with tough love.  Because I do want shows like this to survive.   I have some very specific problems with the show that are going to prevent me from becoming a true fan and so consider this an intervention.

First of all, a show about music should never take a wrong step on pop culture.  That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.  And yet Glee blows it twice in the second episode alone.   I get that the male lead is supposed to be a dumb football player, but to have him not know Justin Timberlake is stupid writing.  Do the writers really think there is any high school kid in America who doesn’t know who Justin Timberlake is?  They might not all like him, but between his music and Dick in a Box, that’s a little odd to assert.

Then, a major plot point in this same episode is that the teacher wants them to do a disco song at the assembly.  The kids want to do something a little more recent and less embarrassing.  Not a bad storyline.  The kids decide to defy the teacher and come up with their own routine.  And what recent song do they choose?  Push It by Salt n Pepa.  Huh?  The song is from 1987.   None of these kids were even born yet.  And I’m supposed to believe that that song got the high school assembly on their feet and on the Glee Club’s side?  To make matters worse, earlier in the episode the teacher himself pulls out a Kanye West song for them to do, which just drives home how far off the writers were on the Salt n Pepa song.

How about the character development?  More wrong notes abound.  The aforementioned football player and the nerdy girl who loves him are unfortunate cliches.  Other roles are caricatures rather than characters, such as the teacher’s wife who is such an unlikeable shrew that you can’t quite understand why this perfect teacher (another cliche) ever married her.  (Which is too bad, because the actress playing the wife, Jessalyn Gilsig, was really good in Heroes when given a small, but real, role.)  Honestly, the only characters who seem fully developed right now are Jane Lynch’s rival coach, but it could be that she is just fun to watch no matter what she does, and Iqbal Theba’s Principal, who has a great slow burn delivery.

OK, OK, it has only been two episodes.  Give them a chance on building characters, right?

Which brings me to the most egregious wrong note.  So, this is a show about the misfit kids in a ragtag glee club.  They’ve built the prerequite Hollywood PC collection of kids.  Jock who wants to sing (who is white).  Nerd who wants to be noticed (who is white).  Sassy African-American girl.  Quiter Asian-American girl.  Kid in wheelchair.  Gay guy.  I can just see the studio exec standing in the back of the first screening, smugly checking off all the affirmative action boxes on his list.

This might be alright if they had given these kids anything to do. Instead, in two episodes, the only characters that have been given storylines beyond singing with the group are white, straight and walking around on two good legs.  Seriously.  The writers on this show have not given any of these other characters hardly a line of dialogue outside of the group singing scenes.  There is something painfully wrong about that.  There is a hint that the gay kid is going to have a subplot about trying out for the football team, but the other three seem to be nothing more than diversity window dressing.

Look, I’m not about to call out Jesse Jackson for a march, but why bother having an interesting collection of kids, if it is clear that the people in charge of the show don’t find them worth writing for.  Glee has a large ensemble.  And big shows like that are only good when every single character in the show is real and interesting, no matter how small the role.  That is not happening at all now with Glee.

But, like I said, I’m pulling for this show.  It’s the plucky underdog in a sea of cop, doctor and lawyer shows (and it’s not out there enough to hang with the serialized sci-fi dramas either).  Its only real friend is Ugly Betty (which it should start watching because that show has done a really good job of making every character into a real believable person without losing its quirkiness).

So gather around, Glee.  Here’s what you’ve gotta do.  Start putting in the effort.  ‘Cause no one’s gonna help you out here.  Live up to your potential.  Be aggressive.  B-E aggressive.  Don’t let them throw you in the dumpster.  Believe in yourself and the world will rally behind you.

Oh yeah.  And how about writing some better episodes.

]]> http://mikelandweber.com/2009/09/hitting-the-wrong-notes-with-glee-even-though-i-am-pulling-for-those-plucky-kids/feed/ http://mikelandweber.com/2009/09/miike-snow-and-apsci-or-welcome-back-to-emusic/ http://mikelandweber.com/2009/09/miike-snow-and-apsci-or-welcome-back-to-emusic/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:37:53 +0000 admin http://mikelandweber.com/?p=510 I’ve written before about Emusic.  Great service for indie music.  I’ve found a lot of good stuff there.  But I tend to run out of things to download after a couple of months.  Anyway, they’ve sucked me back in with 75 free downloads (and you know I can’t resist free downloads), so here’s the result of my first troll through their recent catalog.

Miike Snow

First thing you need to know is that this group includes producers and songwriters who have worked with the likes of Britney Spears.  Second thing you should know is that you shouldn’t hold that against them.  Sure, there is an undercurrent of pop music’s current love of layered yet simplistic electronica here.  In some tunes you can feel the band vacillating - pop, indie, pop, indie.  And in a way, this is a perfect album to come to the realization that the line between the two is really not as bright as some might lead you to believe.  After all, a 3-5 minute catchy song is a 3-5 minute catchy song, regardless of the label.  Of course, there are also songs on this album, such as Plastic Jungle, which I’m convinced would be Top 10 hits if they had been given to Ms. Spears.  As Miike Snow, they are relegated to deep tracks on a good album.  Other songs also seem to be looking for another artist to perform them.  Sans Soleil sounds like it is auditioning for a spot on Roxy Music’s Avalon album (which for the record is not a bad thing).  The languid Faker longs for a female crooner in the Fiona Apple vein.  And there are a couple of straight-up electronica tracks, which always sound a bit generic to me.  Overall, the album does carve out its own identity and has some of the best tracks I’ve heard this year.  Both Burial and Sylvia amble along completely enjoyably.  With its alternating plucky guitar riff and breathy bouncy vocals, Song For No One should be getting airplay everywhere — it would have been a perfect summery hit.  And then there is Animal.  Complicated lyrics that make you pause, interesting melding of styles in the backing tracks, catchy but not cloying — OK, maybe there is a bright line between pop and indie.  Regardless, Animal would make my shortlist for best track of the year.

Apsci

There’s been a strange subset of indie music over the last few years comprised of male-female duos where the two musicians usually have a deeper relationship of sorts — brother-sister, husband-wife, etc.  The White Stripes, Matt&Kim, The Fiery Furnaces, The Raveonettes, Mates of State.  The common characteristics seem to be odd rhythms, surreal lyrics and occasional outbursts of pure noise.  They are all also capable of songs (and sometimes only parts of songs) that are blissfully melodic and catchy.  ApSci fits perfectly into this sub-genre.  In this case, the duo are husband Ra Lamotta and wife Dana Diaz-Tutaan.  I’ve seen Apsci billed as indie hip-hop, which I think is unfortunate because in my mind the tracks where they rap are by far the weakest on the album Best Crisis Ever.  Seriously, tracks such as Let’s RIP The Town Up and Afford Me This Poetry felt so forced to me that it was like watching the head cheerleader and star quarterback try to get their Kanye on at a high school assembly.  Not good.  Luckily, the right notes outnumber the wrong here.  Both Lamotta and Diaz-Tutaan have great voices that shine on the songs that lean away from hip hop toward indie pop and electronica.  I would happily listen to a whole album of tunes like Big Adventures and Crazy Crazy Insane (both of which have been featured on IndieFeed podcasts).  Or consider the tag-team vocals on The Tradeoff, which I guess leans toward their hip hop side but lowers the false-note bravado on their rhyming to allow their voices to shine and the song to be less juvenile.  But to really understand why Apsci is a band to keep an eye on, listen to their cover of R.E.M.’s Swan Swan H.  It is one of the most bizarre and compelling covers I’ve heard in a while.  Diaz-Tutaan’s delivery of Michael Stipe’s lyrics reinforces both how surreal they are and how beautifully they’re put together.  In this cover, Apsci lets their freak flag fly and I think that’s the model they should follow for work to come.