Is £ 4.45 enough?

I have yet to read an actual review of Radiohead's latest. It seems like all the buzz revolves around this "pay as you wish" concept. I still don't quite get it.

I sat, staring at the rainbow webpage, the cursor blinking at me. How much is enough? I wavered between 8 pounds (16 + dollars) and 2 (4+ dollars). They're giving me the choice, and I'm a poor student, I thought. As I entered in 2 pounds (and 0 pence - that was a crucial step to the purchasing process) I suddenly felt guilty. I don't exactly know why, but I did. Finally after much agonizing I settled on 4 pounds. 4.45 including a credit surcharge. I'm getting a .98 cent bargain over iTunes' 9.99 album rate. Should I feel guilty for *slightly* ripping off already wealthy artists?

Now, on to the album. "In Rainbows" has all the characteristics of the Radiohead that I know and love, yet I feel like it will become one of their more commercial releases, especially after the buzz around its release.

Right now I'm listening to "Nude" and its taking me on an ethereal voyage with Yorke's mellow voice floating mid-air. The next track, "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" is fabulous as well. They all are.

As I'm listening to the album for the second time through, I'm feeling an inverse buyer's remorse. I should have paid more.

"Fascist Aesthetics in the Films of Wes Anderson"

A friend of mine called me a relativist, among other names, because I didn't think Darjeeling Limited was as he put it "a piece of shit". So I went back to read more about it. At the House Next Door I stumbled upon this essay by David Nordstrom, "The Life Fascistic" (ha ha) a quest to uncover Anderson’s dark side (“within these lyrical motifs lurk elements of an ethos far more bitter than sweet”).
True, nothing is innocuous (not even, especially not Amelie which carries a more rancid ideology than Wes Anderson in my opinion) and many would agree that the "lifeless" Life Aquatic is Anderson's worst movie.
Nordstrom goes on to argue, quoting Sontag, that Wes Anderson's work shares the qualities of fascist aesthetics. [I wonder what Sontag herself would have thought about this.] "Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums offset or subvert their fascist aesthetic through irony. The lack of ironic counterbalance in The Life Aquatic allows Anderson’s fascist aesthetics to mutiny, to take over the film and run it aground".
"The elements of fascist aesthetics more or less latent in the first three films become patent in the fourth. Among them is a preoccupation with martial order, a system of rank and classification, expressed through themise en scéne , particularly through the uniforms and tokens that litter every frame. Sontag speaks directly to this characteristic: “There is a general fantasy about uniforms." Could the same thing be said of Darjeeling Limited's tyranical main character? Or does Sontag's argument resist displacement?
"Central to each of Anderson’s films is a self-elected, charismatic leader. This leader controls his followers by virtue of their blind devotion to his cult of personality." There is something totalizing about Anderson's fluffy world but the “leader” roles in his films mainly embody a simulacrum of power (contrary to Riefenstahl) -not actual power.
Nordstrom's semiology is a bit simplistic (what is the meaning behind those signs?). This is more convincing : "objects are exalted into fascinating characters and characters are reduced to boring objects. Again we encounter a propensity of fascist aesthetics: “The turning of people into things.” "Idealized eroticism, or sexual denial, is plain in at least two of the earlier films, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums".

And going back to quirk: "Sontag warns that the fascist aesthetic cannot be fully divorced from its ideological content, its anti-humanist implications. The danger lies in the fact that for some audiences the fascist aesthetic is “no more than a variant of camp.”

The Facebook Skit

I know this is not of cultural or artistic pertinence, however in this facebook era, I thought you would all be amused.

Casting call

Last week, this NYTimes article on the release of The Kite Runner kind of blew me away. If you're unfamiliar with the story, and not inclined to link to the article, here's a quick synopsis: The movie's director, Marc Forster (Finding Neverland) didn't "connect" with any of the child actors he auditioned from Afghan communities in California, Toronto, and The Hague. So, he went to Kabul and cast a couple kids from there to star in the film, which deals with ethnic tension, a childhood friendship between two boys -- one Pashtun and one Hazara -- and the rise of the Taliban. It also features a scenes in which one of the boys, a Hazara, is raped by a Pashtun bully. The families of the two boys who star in the film are now saying that were lied to and mistreated by the filmmakers, and they fear the release of the film, with its rape scene, may put their sons in danger.

Reading the article, the filmmakers come across as incredibly naive. While I'm sure they meant well enough, perhaps they should have thought a bit more about casting children from a politically unstable nation in a movie that deals explicitly with ethnic tensions. A few quotes from the article where the film peeps sound especially idiotic:

Finally, when Ms. Dowd [casting director] went to Kabul in May 2006, she discovered her stars. “There was such innocence to them, despite all they’d lived through,” she said.

and this

Mr. Forster emphasized that casting Afghan boys did not seem risky at the time; local filmmakers even encouraged him, he said: “You really felt it was safe there, a democratic process was happening, and stability, and a new beginning.”

Now, this being May of 2006, you would think the filmmakers would have at least thought about the protests and the 16 people killed in February of 2006 as a result of the controversy surrounding the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. A different situation for sure, but one that perhaps should have been at least taken into consideration before casting two boys from a country that is 99% muslim in a movie that has a rape scene between two boys from rival ethnic groups.

Still, it sounds like the movie peeps are now doing their best to deal with this "tricky situation." They're arranging for the boys and their families to relocate to the U.A.E., where they can get refugee status:

Those involved say that the studio doesn’t want to be taken advantage of, but that it could accept responsibility for the boys’ living expenses until they reach adulthood, a cost some estimated at up to $500,000. The families, of course, must first agree to the plan.

Wow, $500,000 x 2 could really cut into those opening weekend grosses, she blogged cynically.

Cynicism aside, I think this piece is worth taking a look at as a really interesting piece of arts reporting, dealing with a situation that raises some very complex issues.

Lesson: If you're a filmmaker casting a potentially politically charged film set in an unstable country, and you just have to cast children native to that unstable country because they have an amazing "innocence" despite having their living in a war-torn country, you may have to pay for them and their families to uproot their lives before you can release your movie.

Battle of the Glamour Girls

Since our last class I’ve been to two concerts, one of which I ended up leaving about a quarter of the way through. Had I actually paid for it I can’t say I wouldn’t have been equally tempted to get out of there. The musician in question? Patrick Wolf, ersatz Bowie heir and U.K. phenom. His sound is invariably described as “dark,” “melodic” and my personal fave, “haunting.” The music itself wasn’t actually bad—apparently Wolf expertly plays something like 10 instruments. Well, he had help I guess. In any case, vocally, the guy did absolutely nothing for me. Not sexy, not soulful, not even haunting like they promised!

And really, if you’re going to ever merit comparisons to Bowie, you need to up your sartorial game. Wolf gets on stage wearing white cutoffs that only enhance his pasty pallor and some kind of sleeveless American Apparel hoodie/cape hybrid. After a minute or so of playing “hide the hipster” under there, the tease, he lowers the hood, sans maquillage and nary a trace of glitter. And he’s wearing a crusty, misshapen broom-bristle wig. Awful. Just awful.

Thankfully I also got to see Natasha Khan and co., aka Bat For Lashes earlier in the week. All of the accolades erroneously heaped upon that weakling Wolf? Well, hackneyed as they may be, they apply to Bat For Lashes. Natasha sounds like a cross between Bjork, P.J. Harvey and Siouxsie Sioux. Her outfit veered toward Sonny-era Cher, but she was absolutely fetching as a boho Indian. Laugh if you will, I loved it. No attitude either. Just gorgeous, lush electro-pop. Natasha even played the triangle and shook(?) a rain stick! I will now buy their debut album and wear a feather in my hair, unironically of course. If you haven't already, check out the video for "What's A Girl To Do." Very Donnie Darko.

Words and Guitar

On Tuesday, Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney spoke at the New School, as part of their series with non-fiction writers. She started off by reading the introduction she wrote to a forthcoming book about the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls. It was good, though not unexpected, her descriptions of the camp’s greatness and necessity more valuable because of their source, but also just the kind of thing you’d expect from a member of one of the greatest bands of the last decade.

One of the greatest bands? Yeah. Greil Marcus introduced her, noting that for ten years Sleater-Kinney played some of the loudest, most surprising and all around best music there was. It’s great to hear a critic of Marcus’s stature (and generation) say this, though in the small, overheated room packed mostly with riot grrrls and their younger sisters, it was also kinda strange.

Next, Brownstein read a longer essay that started off being about the Portland neighborhood where she lives, an apparently un-hip place called Hollywood (named after an old local vaudeville-turned-movie theater). It began as a meditation about the authenticity of places like these, and the quirky specifics of this one in particular. Then it shifted to a discussion of Mark Lindsay, Portland native and former member of 60’s band Paul Revere and the Raiders (who have a MySpace page!). Not long ago, Lindsay opened up a shiny palace of neon lights called Mark Lindsay’s Rock n’ Roll Café, right in Brownstein’s understated, old-fashioned neighborhood. With photos of Lindsay in his prime projected on a screen behind her, Brownstein described her process of coming to terms with the gleaming establishment – from rage and embarrassment, to curiosity, to a deep and supposedly unironic love (due mostly to the place’s bizarrely sincere authenticity, and menu items like the Yaws Top Notch Hamburger and The Cornfurter).

She had a lot of insightful things to say about the weirdness of fame, and her own ideas about how to safeguard one’s legacy and the items that embody it (hint – she’s not so into the display of Lindsay’s guitars of a wall of his restaurant, nor his silly Raiders-era outfits encased in Plexi glass in the dining area). When the Experience Music Project opened in Seattle in 2000, the museum bought Brownstein’s first guitar to put on display. Seeing it there afterwards, she said, made her realize that the guitar is an object that’s meaningless out of context and without a voice.

Carrie Brownstein’s going to be doing a lot more writing, including an essay for a forthcoming anthology on Bob Dylan. She’s also collaborating with Fred Armisen on some video shorts, which you can check out here. She was adamant about never being “just” a musician. After her reading and some innocuous questions from Marcus, someone in the audience just came out and asked the question everyone was wondering: Why Did Sleater-Kinney Break Up?

“We were done,” she shrugged. And it made total sense.

Two guys and a crash helmet - now that's Punk Rock

I've spent the last couple of weekends covering hipsters out in Brooklyn, and I'm going to be honest: I've heard some pretty awful music. I mean, it doesn't take much to string a band together, if you really think about it. Surely, you don't need to prove you can play an instrument in order to buy it, or plug it into an amp, or play it in front of a group of people for that matter. A little over twenty minutes of last Saturday made all the wading into all of those middle-of-nowhere venues, listening to all those crappy sibling/best friend-based garage and basement bands worth while though. What might this be you ask? Why, two kids from Seattle playing in a sweaty basement on Wycoff Avenue, of course. The band is called Pillow Fight, and basically it consists of a guitar, a drum set, and a whole lot of undecipherable yelling. In other words, punk rock. The Sex Pistols used to unplug their bassist' amp, and Pillow Fight's gone one step further by getting rid of the son of a bitch all together. To top it all off, the drummer has wired a microphone into a crash helmet, which he then wears while drumming and screaming his balls off. Utterly fantastic. Check out the myspace page. Yeah, yeah I know... "No one uses Myspace anymore."

CBS's CSI: Doin' one for the Kids

I understand that cop dramas like Law and Order need to have convoluted plots. Nobody wants to watch an hour of television just to find out that the butler actually did do it. Hell, half of Criminal Intent's stories end up involving the NSA or some other such government agency. CBS' CSI has really pushed the cop drama to a new level though, with a plot involving Gary Sinise going into the virtual world Second Life to catch a computer program. The New York Times has already had a fun time going after the creators of CSI. I want to point out, specifically though, how funny it is that CBS is doing this to attract younger audiences, as if our attention spans are so cheaply bought. "Oh man, Murder She Wrote's got an IPhone featured in the next episode..."

Let's be honest, when we say constructive criticism we mean "ass-kissing"

Damn, it sucks that you can't see this whole strip. But click on it to enter a world of magic.

Shines

The fragility of life and our innate survival instincts never juxtapose more than in the aftermath of unexpected tragedy. And when they collide, nothing is the same. Such is Sin-ae’s heartbreaking fate; Secret Sunshine, the new film by South Korean director Lee Chang-dong, is her story.

Secret Sunshine screened at the Time Warner Center on Monday and Tuesday this week as a part of the New York Film Festival (Sept. 28-Oct. 14). The film stars actress Jeon Do-yeon as the endearing and deeply troubled Shin-ae, a recently widowed woman who decides to move herself and her five-year-old son, Jun, from Seoul to Milyang, her dead husband’s hometown. There, she opens a piano school and enrolls Jun in school, and life is almost normal.

But tragedy finds Shin-ae in Milyang too, and her life once again becomes unrecognizable. She continues on, fumbling and absorbed, unaware of the secret sunshine (the literal translation of the name of the town) that Lee weaves adeptly through the film. Gentle humor, well-intentioned friends and neighbors, and a bit of fun poking at the institution of Christianity—it’s life, unstoppable.

Jeon deservingly took home the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival this year for her incredible performance, but Secret Sunshine’s success is the net effect of countless deserving performances both on and off the screen. I could not conclude this review without mentioning Song Kang-ho, who plays a jovial, kind-of-nerdy auto mechanic madly in love with Shin-ae—he stands by her patiently, an unfaltering friend—to perfection.

The Misanthrope at the NY Theatre Workshop

Alceste, furiously mixing the spaghettis and the chocolate*.

At one point in the play, in a (post-modern?) emphatic gesture Alceste, the excessive and constantly irritated main character climbs on the lunch table and pours the entire meal over his head (spaghettis, ketchup, chocolate and whatever he comes across) before inserting a sausage in his pants. This moment qualifies as one of “the many arguably freakish, undeniably stimulating liberties put forth by Ivo Van Hove in his provocative gloss on The Misanthrope [Eric Grode in the NY Sun]. The characters make frequent use of their cell phones, play Second Life on their laptop and are being filmed at the same time –so far, nothing unacceptable.
What is interesting is how a 17th century play can still make perfect sense right now, in a different context. The problem is that The Misanthrope is built upon a fairly complex argument (which made as much sense when it was written as it does now) supported by equally complex characters. And the NY Sun article rightly quotes the following (from 1965) : "Molière's comedy, because it is so thoroughly ‘written,' resists the overextension of any thesis".
The NY Theatre Workshop is showing a new, modern translation (by Tony Harrison). There is nothing wrong with desacrilizing a text or an author, as long at its meaning is somewhat retained: but Harrison’s text strikes me as a bad modern translation (combined with Van Hove’s direction, it is even worse). “Mr. Van Hove's gut renovations of the classics” (like Hedda Gabler) doesn’t really work this time because the mise en scene doesn’t work with a text that is already weaker than the original. However exciting it may be (a modern Misanthrope!), the whole experience turns out to be pretty frustrating. The fact that the actors are trapped in a transparent loft, all wearing the same suits and all seemingly alienated by corporate culture grossly simplifies the meaning of the text. “Where’s the friction between substance and surface?” asks Ben Brantley in the Times. The argument of the play seems reduced to a stupid debate between silly people (should one always speak his mind / or should one compromise and lie for the sake of social peace?). Moliere’s play isn’t prescriptive, whether you should hate everybody or not is not the point. But except for Alceste (Bill Kamp), everyone else in Van Hove’s play is equally superficial and self-centered and indeed it makes you want to pour ketchup on yourself. It also makes you wonder why you should care for this play if it’s nothing else than empty –poorly written- chatting ("bavardage").

*He's the misanthrope.

Radiohead Releases New Album - Music Industry Vomits in its Mouth

Only Radiohead could have done this. The Oxford quintet had fans “WTF?!"ing across the planet when they announced today that their seventh LP, In Rainbows, would be available for download in ten short days. An album folks barely knew existed can be on their iPods in less than two weeks. You can pre-order the fool thing today and pay whatever amount you can afford! Fans can also pre-order something called a “discbox”(available to ship on or after December 3rd) that contains the full album plus a bunch of extra tracks on LP, a code allowing purchasers to download the album digitally, and Radiohead’s infamously cryptic album art. With the discbox running upwards of £40 ($81), it might make more sense to hold out for the basic CD which should be available early next year.

This is truly unprecedented behavior – particularly for one of the most commercially and critically successful rock acts in the Western world. Suddenly Britain’s consummate musical innovators are now certified marketing innovators. Radiohead’s provocative sales plan has everything to do with the fact that the boys have managed to extricate themselves form the major label grind. Their contract with EMI/Capitol ended after the release of 2003’s Hail to the Thief. Throughout the recording of In Rainbows, bets were laid on the band’s next move. Would they go major, indie, or go it alone? Thom and co. refused much comment (though the release of Thom’s solo effort, The Eraser, on indie stalwarts XL, at least suggested their minds were open to change.)

Now we know. Radiohead are the taking the piss out of the music industry and releasing one of the most anticipated records in years on their own. The details of their marketing plan – what amounts to an officially-sanctioned leak of the album combined with a premium/super-deluxe/balls-out LP, before the release of the regular CD – points to deep fissures developing in the music industry. The split here is between content (the actual music) and packaging (the value-adds, the artwork, the stuff you can hold in your hands). Content is ubiquitous. Everyone, including Radiohead, assumes access to the music. If the band didn’t “leak” the album themselves, someone else would. But people will still pay for packaging – particularly rabid Radiohead fans hungry for Stanley Donwood’s album art. Hence the $81 double LP – an LP that crucially doesn’t prohibit access to mp3s and the convenience of iPod portability.

Finally, it’s no coincidence that the CD is hitting shelves last and that it isn’t even available for pre-order. If you can download the album digitally for nearly nothing or pay a few bucks and get the album on digital and analog formats along with your weight in add-ons, why pay $18 for a piece of plastic?

Darjeeling Limited/ How can a train be lost –it’s on rail ?

Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Limited looks something like the Marx Brothers in the Orient Express with an endless supply of cough medicine to get high. Three nonchalant and clumsy brothers (look for the noses) travel together in a train through India (at first a neo-hippie retreat and the world’s greatest rehab center) in a climate of generalized suspicion. This fragile journey rests on an impossible pact (“say yes to everything!”).

A.O.Scott, in his review of the film points at two articles : a positive portrait by David Amsden in New York Magazine (with a photograph of Anderson “in his favorite taxidermy shop in Paris” thank you very much) and one in The Atlantic discussing his place in popular culture (“The unbearable lightness of Ira Glass, Wes Anderson..” etc).
In the Atlantic, Anderson is labeled and paired up with other “paragons of indie sensibility.” Indeed, to many in Europe and elsewhere Anderson is as the incarnation of American indie cinema (watching his films is in a way a moral duty, by way of which you contribute to a larger battle against Hollywood's superproductions and so on). That Anderson, like Michel Gondry, be so enthusiastically endorsed by hipsters can be annoying. But this -descriptive- essay doesn’t say much about the intrinsic qualities of his work.
On the other side, Amsden describes Anderson as new kind of termite artist, “European in his obsession with aesthetics” –I sort of see what he means but it is difficult to agree.

Hirschorn fears that contemporary quirk will become “an end in itself” (easy temptation!). Anderson seems aware of that problem (how could he not be) and then goes on to elude what seems like a rhetorical question (do filmmakers always make the same movies?).

One usually goes to see a Wes Anderson film based on vague assumptions: there will be predictable camera tics, it will be “ridiculous” and “absurd” (and, hopefully, funny).
As Scott points out, Darjeeling Limited is “precious” -because of its decorative qualities and the director’s great sense for details. Yet it isn’t complacent and forced as it could be –it is actually pretty great. Not because it isn’t frivolous (that it deals with life and death has nothing to do with it and I agree with Scott that the episode of the Indian child’s death is unnecessary to back up the story –but maybe it is part of the tribute to Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy).

The prologue of the film, Hotel Chevalier, is available on Itunes for free.

Quirkiness vs. "Quirk"

One commenter to this blog recently said, about the Helvetica documentary and related press,

“…a lot of this strikes me as literary narcissism. Is this just about writers talking shop or is there a genuinely worthwhile cultural conversation happening here? Do we think Luc Sante is a man of egalitarian principles because he uses a font that accords the same amount of space to each letter, "which I think is only fair to the i and the l"? Not particularly.”

To this I have to say, what do you have against literary narcissism? I may not think that Luc Sante is a “man of egalitarian principle” but I do find his attachment to a font endearing and revealing.

This brings me to the recently ubiquitous bitching about "quirkiness."

Take Michael Hirschorn’s recent tirade “Quirked Around.” I don’t understand the impetus to glorify his preferences via an ironic elitism that favors Judd Apatow over Wes Anderson. Hirschorn is affecting a contrarian snobbishness—the kind that drives people to talk about a surprisingly good “big” comedy as though it is the apex of contemporary art, while dismissing cult favorites for the very things that make them beloved. In this case, his normally gleeful populism (he is a programmer for VH1 after all) feels forced. He forgets that the elusive quality of quirkiness came before the cute aesthetic neologism “Quirk,” and if it is the driving force behind certain entertainments, maybe that’s because it makes people’s work unique and gives it style. That’s why people listen to This American Life, not because it’s cool. Public radio may now be nerdy-chic, but don’t forget the nerdy still comes first. And to criticize the show for having a formula…isn’t that tantamount to picking on the very idea of having an aesthetic style altogether?

I don’t think that’s what Hirschorn means to do. I think he is trying to pinpoint a specific “genre,” and he’s on the right track, connecting TAL with Anderson’s films, but he has opted lazily to write the whole thing off via rambling criticisms of these two examples rather than do the painstaking anthropological work of flushing out the categorization. Let’s face it, everyone loved Knocked Up, but it says more about a person that they love Ira Glass, or Helvetica. And Wes Anderson’s aesthetic is hardly in danger of taking over all of cinema.

Hirschorn recently asked, “Is there an easier position to take in polite society than to patronize reality TV?” Now it feels like he is taking the easy way out by joining his fellow appliers of quotation marks on the derision bandwagon. But “Mumblecore” hit on something. Even Melvin Jules Bukiet’s spurious whine about “Brooklyn Books of Wonder” offers a little bit of the pleasure of recognition in its specificity. I suppose the very process of defining something involves a bit of tearing down, but that makes it all the more important to have a subject a little more manageable than Indie-ness in general, i.e. weird stuff that not that many people like in the first place.

DUMBO

Cabbages on lightposts.The hunt for an elephant that paints (really). Stacks and stacks of iron stairs to climb, chasing abstract arrows to an artist’s open studio. A net, strung with glittering decoupage. The smell of Barbosal; $2 PBR. At least a half-dozen wedding parties—layers of ruffles; aqua, pink, chocolate brown, bobby pins and smiles—oblivious until they arrived. This was DUMBO’s Under the Bridge Festival, Saturday afternoon.

I adore festivals unconditionally; art, beer, books are among my favorite excuses. I particularly love festivals that I leave, inspired. The day is warm, sunny. Jeans, layered tanks, sunglasses, Converse. It’s not winter yet—yet. I hoard information in my satchel, constantly scanning, constantly scouring the flyers, the upcoming shows. It’s the hopefulness. I hoard the feelings of the day, determined to catalogue, so that in February I can remember it.

Rotten Fruit

Well, well well. Looks like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I was reminded of that quasi biblical-sounding adage while watching Jenna Bush last night on 20/20. The younger, “ditzier” Bush twin, ersatz authoress and recently engaged 25 year old was pimping her new book, Ana’s Story for Diane Sawyer--her first sit down interview, like, ever!

But nobody really gives a shit about Jenna's narcissistic endeavors here. Dedicating an hour to the foray outside of "Bush World," to borrow a Maureen Dowdism, entailed grappling with a great deal of ineloquence and of course, evasiveness. For those who do care, Jenna traveled to the Caribbean and Latin America, where she spent time talking to young women and children suffering from HIV and AIDS. Jenna brought Diane and Co. down to Jamaica to, I don't know, "re-enact" her experiences there?

Unfortunately, Jenna's trip abroad simply came across as self-serving, indulgent even, kind of like one of those "spiritual journeys" whereby enlightenment comes from realizing how much it must suck never to be able to leave such god forsaken places and go home to the good ol' U.S. of A... and then write a book about it.

Jenna has a habit of narrowing her already beady eyes when faced with questions she doesn't want to answer. Diane wasn't exactly softballing it here, but anything that didn't pertain to the book clearly made her uncomfortable. And, like her father, she gets a little petulant when prodded. Iraq was clearly a sore topic. Diane graciously showed the clip of Matt Damon's infamous Hardball spot, where he effectively asked whether the twins shouldn't also be fighting overseas like so many poor and working-class Americans. What did she think of it? Jenna's response could have come straight from her doofy Dad: "Obviously I understand that question and see what, what the point of that question is, for sure." Uh huh.

My favorite part of the whole interview/pr campaign was Jenna's "covert" infiltration of a Kingston slum. Having found an AIDS-afflicted woman willing to speak on camera, Jenna listened solemnly, nodding blankly. The woman told Jenna that she likely wouldn't find decent work anytime soon. "You can still get a good job. You can still get a great job," she reassured her. Right.

Then, Diane told the woman who Jenna actually was: The President's Daughter. Her eyes widened. Visibly flummoxed, the woman didn't know whether to believe them. "But you’re so simple," she said. Turning to the cameras, smiling now, "she’s so simple."

And You Thought You Couldn't Sing

I have to site The New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones, here. He alerted me to this gloriously ridiculous new development in thrash metal - animal lead-singers. There's Brooklyn's own Caninus, lead by two pit bull terriers named Budgie and Basil, and there's Hatebeak (yes, Hatebeak), led by a parrot (what the band describes lovingly as an "avian vocalist.") Caninus (myspace.com/caninus) and Hatebeak (myspace.com/beak666) recently released a split EP, "Bird Seeds of Vengeance," on Reptilian Records.

There does seem to be some motive to the madness. Caninus are strict vegans, while Hatebeak asks visitors to their myspace page to donate to the Wildlife Warriors Foundation. Caninus explains further: "the majority grindcore and fatal metal strips (orchestras) have the singers, trying to sound similarly to the broken (upset) deranged animals anyhow so they have decided to use a real thing." Oh, I see....

There really are no words.

More Helvetica

Sorry y'all, my Helvetica obsession continues, and I wanted to share this bit from Time Out London's review of the film (quoted in crappy PC ripoff font of Helvetica - Arial):


Could first-time American director Gary Hustwit be the architect of a New Banal documentary movement? With ‘Helvetica’ he produces a gleefully engaging investigation into the world’s most ubiquitous typeface, uncovering a minor shit storm in the world of graphic design as well as broadening the cinematic and analytical potential of the documentary form in the process.

...mail

So I saw something tonight that’s in development (am I allowed to be blogging about this? I will be judicious.) And it was awesome, even in its un-doneness. Writer-director-guru Aya Ogawa and tech-arts-guru Irwin Chen workshopped an early (and very unfinished) version of a theater show tentatively titled “Artifact” as a part of CUNY’s Prelude Festival. I will disclose few relative details—what do they matter anyway when they are subject to change—but this show did inspire me to think about email communication in the present age.

It’s funny. Email is generally perceived as the most off-hand, causal of forms, and yet, with its cursory computer-based text format, it’s more prone to revision than say… a handwritten letter. Maybe this just hit home for me tonight because I’m presently keeping a (handwritten) journal that will be reviewed by someone not myself, and I’m actually fretting about the spelling of those stupid words I can never spell correctly, but it was incredibly impactful to watch someone who you don’t even know (and can’t even see, really, their back is to you) to struggle to type out a letter that is… important to them.

In the way of salutations, in the way of how letters expressed real sentiment. But typed. They wrote, spontaneously. They paused, and reread. They deleated, by highlight. Other times, it was by cursor backspace.

We’ve all had those emails that are important, (emails that are letters?), where you edit yourself, because you can. That scene left me wondering, where do those feelings/ that initial sentiment/ go? It can’t just disappear. Energy expended only changes forms. What if… all of that energy we put into our super-composed emails… that form that is supposed to be so freehand… what if those original feelings are still, somehow, imbedded in the spaces in between?

First MoveOn, now Jake Paltrow?

Is it just me, or is it a bit weird that on the movies main page of nytimes.com they have an "exclusive premiere of the trailer for "The Good Night," directed by Jake Paltrow." Have they done something like this in their bizarro multimedia section before? I can't recall so blatant a piece of (paid?) promotion amongst the actual film criticism. But, maybe I just hadn't noticed before, until the annoying Paltrow name jumped out at me.

It jumped out at me, because last February, the Times let little Jake Paltrow make these ridiculous little short films to accompany Lynn Hirschberg's article on "Great Performers." The films don't appears to be online anymore, but the were pure film school schlock, grainy black and white moving portraits of Penelope Cruz, Brad Pitt, and the like, complete with cliched kooky close-ups of random body parts. They played like a masturbatory three-way between Paltrow, the Times, and the stars they featured.

The trailer itself for "The Good Night" doesn't help me to feel any better. While I reserve the right to completely change my mind and become Jake Paltrow's #1 Fan should I see the film next week, the trailer makes it look the Anglo bastard child of The Science of Sleep and Abre Los Ojos.

Font Freaky

Those of you who know me know I am rather fond of a certain typeface, Helvetica. But, even if you aren’t quite as font freaky as I am, I think the documentary Helvetica is worth a view, and it looks to be playing another week at the IFC.

One of the most interesting things about this doc is that it tackles a topic that is so not sensational or dramatic or seemingly important or entertaining even, especially when you compare it to some recent popular docs. Last year, the 5 docs nominated for Academy Awards dealt with the following topics: global warming, a priest and his molestation victims, a summer camp for frighteningly fervent religious teens, the occupation of Iraq (two films dealt with Iraq).

In Helvetica, director Gary Huswit (who produced the Wilco doc I Am Trying to Break Your Heart) doesn’t look at extreme events or occurrences, but rather a simple font that is ubiquitous in our everyday lives. But, his examination of this bit of cultural minutiae is surprisingly entertaining and insightful. Plus, it features font designer Tobias Frere-Jones, brother of music critic Sasha. And, speaking of music, the film has an impressive soundtrack, with tracks from Four Tet and Caribou.

This Fall's Boob Tube

TV and movie portrayals of men are more credible and nuanced than ever. Is this ever going to be true of the women playing opposite them? In this week's batch of NY Times reviews, Alessandra Stanley had some thoughts.

On at least two new shows (Chuck and Big Bang Theory), "the networks are giving nerds another shot." Stanley attributes this in part to the success of various Judd Apatow projects, wherein "the nerd is the hero, and he even gets the [ahem: hot, blonde] girl." In a review of Reaper that ran the very next day, Stanley namechecks Apatow again, this time comparing him to Kevin Smith (who directed the show's pilot episode).** Seems both are "connoisseur[s] of downward immobility, a status that appears to have lasting resonance in popular culture."

So, for a bunch of what I’ll very reductively call "boy shows," the ever-popular Apatow is a kind of spiritual guide. And of those shows, Stanley finds Chuck "very funny," Reaper "quite rewarding" and Big Bang Theory at least passably good.

But enough boys! What about Bionic Woman? Ah, despite the title, Stanley thinks it's "oriented toward young male viewers." And it seems the Grey's Anatomy spin-off Private Practice is at least as excruciating as it appeared in a preview last spring. The characters, Stanley writes, “collectively offer one of the most depressing portrayals of the female condition since The Bell Jar." It all makes her fairly pine for the original Bionic Woman, "an accomplished professional who was courteous, well balanced and actually seemed to like herself," and who appeared on television back in the days of an "overearnest women’s lib" that's ultimately preferable to this dumbed down "postfeminist sensibility."

**Smith was interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air this week. Explaining what attracted him to Reaper, he referred more than once to the novelty of its creators being "chicks."

Who's More Evol Than Starbucks?!

Anyone worried that Sonic Youth’s ageless cool may have been fatally compromised with the announcement this summer that the quartet would be releasing a compilation, entitled Hits Are for Squares, through Starbucks (!), should watch the following video. Videographer Liz Glover spotted Kim Gordon at New York’s recent Fashion Week and asked her why SY shacked up with the king of caffeinated ubiquity. Ms. Gordon, bless her soul, had just five words for Gordon and the bitching blogosphere: “Kim Gordon on the Starbuck Deal”

That, I suppose, is how you save face amid ceaseless cries of “sell out.” You take a back-hand to your own record label. You have to admire Gordon’s panache, and really, does anyone actually think this is about the money or the added exposure? Do we think Sonic Youth – with their 15 albums and 26-year history – are having a little late-game performance anxiety? No. The Starbucks move is simply provocative – stupidly so, for sure – and nothing more. The quartet is famous for waffling between elitism and populism – between the art house and the street fair. Gordon is only reminding us that Sonic Youth, a hallowed indie rock band, signed one of the most publicized major label contracts with Geffen 17 years ago – a fact that did little to affect their popularity and their subsequent canonization.

The Starbucks deal is a mistake, but not a particularly surprising one. And if this video is any evidence, Sonic Youth haven’t lost their edge.