December 31, 2010

Kiarostami in the 2000s

Kiarostami’s recent work has been increasingly minimalistic and experimental. Like the later works of Samuel Beckett, they can be maddeningly impenetrable while also being some of the most innovative and singular experiences available in modern art. Here are short reviews of four of his most recent films.

ABC Africa (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2001). ABC Africa is a spirited documentary about orphans from Uganda shot on handheld digital cameras. It works best when Kiarostami abandons narrative in favor of beautiful images of curious and spontaneous children dancing, singing, and playing. Kiarostami’s natural sense of poetry, rhythm, and composition carries the film, which would otherwise be only a minor work of cultural (rather than artistic) importance.

Ten (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2002). Ten is a novel experiment with cinema and the role of the director (Kiarostami apparently only minimally presided over the film, allowing it to unfold from the periphery) that also offers a uniquely intimate view into the life of women in contemporary Iran, which marks an important shift from Kiarostami's previously male centered filmography. Kiarostami's marginalization of himself actually allows a more philosophically consistent elucidation of the concerns of women.

Five (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2003). Ostensibly an homage to Ozu, these five static and extraordinarily long lasting shots play like five stanzas of a poem. Despite its audaciousness, this film can be dazzling if approached with the right mindset—particularly at the unexpected revelation in the final shot.

Shirin (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2008). In Kiarostami's most explicitly dialectical film, 114 female faces watch a film we can only hear; instead, Kiarostami asks us to “see” the film through the closeups of their expressive faces. Shirin is fascinating and provocative, if perhaps a little too self-consciously so. [114, I feel compelled remind, is also the number of sura in the Qur'an.]

I have yet to see Tickets, a film he directed along with Ken Loach and Ermanno Olmi, or his latest film that premiered at Cannes this year, though I expect to be impressed by both of them in one way or another.

December 28, 2010

Random top ten lists

I discovered a couple in an old notebook. I discussed them with my brother and then slightly redrafted them to make them more consistent with my current tastes. They are roughly in the order or descending preference.

My top ten hip hop albums

  1. Madvillain: Madvillainy (2004)
  2. Freestyle Fellowship: To Whom It May Concern (1991)
  3. Dalek: Negro Necro Nekros (1998)
  4. J Dilla: Donuts (2006)
  5. Cannibal Ox: The Cold Vein (2001)
  6. One Be Lo: S.O.N.O.G.R.A.M. (2005)
  7. A Tribe Called Quest: The Low End Theory (1991)
  8. Black Star: Black Star (1998)
  9. Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988)
  10. Ghostface Killah: Fishscale (2006)

I find it interesting that half of my selections come from the 2000s, yet only one comes from the 1980s. There is plenty of hip hop from the 1980s that is quite aesthetically accomplished, but for some reason I tend to prefer more recent hip hop albums—though not just because they can be more experimental (One Be Lo and Ghostface Killah, while both forward thinking in their way, are also firmly rooted in traditional expression). I think, in certain circumstances, I could defend even the choices that might seem a bit odd (Fishscale instead of 36 Chambers? Any album here instead of Illmatic?).

Top ten short stories of the 20th century

  1. Isaac Bashevis Singer: “The Slaughterer”
  2. Flannery O'Connor: “The River”
  3. Jorge Luis Borges: “The Library of Babel”
  4. Raymond Carver: “What's in Alaska?”
  5. James Joyce: “The Dead”
  6. Ernest Hemingway: “A Clean, Well Lighted Place”
  7. F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Winter Dreams”
  8. Katherine Anne Porter: “Flowering Judas”
  9. Samuel Beckett: “Company”
  10. Franz Kafka: “A Hunger Artist”

If I remember correctly, I originally did this list in response to a dare. I considered including one of Chekhov's last short stories (he wrote about five or so in the early years of the 1900s before passing, and as a short story writer he smokes pretty much everybody), but I decided against it, since Chekhov really represents the 1800s.

December 24, 2010

Assessing Woody Allen

The admiration so many film critics and film-goers have for Woody Allen has become increasingly puzzling to me over the years. I appreciate some of his films, and I have seen most of them, but I cannot help but question Allen's much-touted intellectual depth. When people speak admiringly of Allen, I instinctively furrow my brow, which has led to some heated discussions amongst friends and family. My goal here is to work through Woody Allen's extensive filmography briefly, describing at each turn why I just don't get him.

Woody Allen's first films were an accessible but slight string of light comedies. I think even Allen's most fervent apologists cannot affirm their depth, though there is some early signs of intellectual posturing—regardless, Allen’s faux intellectualism had not yet become an intolerable blemish on his work. Bananas is the best of the bunch (forgive the pun, which I intended but somewhat regret), though it is essentially a reworking of Harold Lloyd’s much better silent feature Why Worry?

The late 1970s saw Allen's first “mature” work, including Allen's best film, Annie Hall, a winning romantic comedy (and despite Allen's obvious pretentions, it is just a romantic comedy and not some great artistic statement about the complexities of human relationships). Interiors (his first drama), on the other hand, is mind-numbingly awful; Allen is clearly out of his depth in trying to tackle actual human issues, and his sense of aesthetics is as boring as his worldview is absurd. Manhattan is his best-shot film (though New York rarely needs help looking beautiful when shot in black and white), but his on screen personality has already become grating.

Allen's 80s movies were increasingly uneven: the best two were Zelig, one that successfully captures the innocence of his early work, and Radio Days, which, for a novel change, was a pleasing attempt at making something of an honest film. Most of his 80s works, however, were failed attempts at capturing the essence of other, much greater artists. The Purple Rose of Cairo paraphrases Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. but flounders trying to make its point, while the overly sentimental Hannah and Her Sisters tries but fails to affirm life in Allen's frustratingly inconsistent worldview. Crimes and Misdemeanors is a decadent work that finally betrays the shallowness of Allen's philosophy and his equally shallow understanding of art. Allen is no more intellectually equipped to deal with moral issues than a chimpanzee is equipped to solve a quadratic equation.

Allen's work from the 90s onward has been largely irrelevant and self-parodic. He has become a filmmaker with no ideas, nothing to say, and no creativity; I have to assume that the only reason he cannot bear to deny the world his tiresome presence is because of his terminal narcissism.

December 17, 2010

Religion

The final of my seminar of religious studies class was to define the word religion in one sentence and then explain that one sentence in 250-300 words. This is what I came up with. An atheist friend said she was surprised at how rational it sounded, and my professor said Russell T. McCutcheon would probably like my definition. Personally, even though I have immense respect for McCutcheon, I found the first compliment much more flattering.

Religion is a conceptual category used by people to group sets of practices and teachings.

Religion as a conceptual category was originally produced by a variety of discursive processes and culturally conditioned assumptions with a distinctly Euro-Protestant flavor. The cultural functions of the Euro-Protestant set of practices and teachings were abstracted into an idealized (if somewhat inchoate) form, with the intention of being equally applicable in all social and historical contexts. Divorced this way from its original physical representation, the Euro-Protestant concept of religion was then projected outward into history and society to group human phenomena into distinct units, which were classified as “religions” based upon the assumption that they fulfilled an identical function in human life. The cultural assumptions that were unconsciously incorporated into the original (Euro-Protestant) definition of religion tend to confuse rather than elucidate the human phenomena that are the focus of the academic study of religion. For religion to be a coherent and useful conceptual category that is truly applicable in a variety of social and historical contexts, then, special care must be taken to avoid a definition of religion that assumes a basic social or historical function.

Instead, the two essential features grouped by the conceptual category of religion are practices and teachings. Religious practices are ritual processes regularized and performed by human beings; religious teachings are disciplinary rules or codes that are meant to govern certain aspects of human behavior. Since human beings use religious practices and teachings to fulfill a variety of functions, and since human beings are the ultimate curators of religious practices and teachings, religion as a conceptual category must be defined as the grouping of distinctly human phenomena.

December 16, 2010

It's Just...Facts: A play

CAST:
Man
Dude

SCENE: A classroom. Man and Dude are seated next to each other, talking before taking their final exam.

MAN: Dude, how do you think this test is going to go?

DUDE: I'unno, man. I usually do pretty well on the multiple choice, but the short answers kill me.

MAN: Tell me about it, dude.

DUDE: The worst thing about it is that you have to put your own opinion in there.

MAN: I know, dude. Next time, I'm going to just write, “And my opinion is...”

DUDE: I mean, I'm a history major, man. You don't put your opinions in history. It's just...facts.

MAN: Yeah, dude.

CURTAIN

December 15, 2010

Film reviews: The living and the dead

Taste of Cherry (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1997). Taste of Cherry is a minimalist masterpiece about the preciousness of life. Like Tarkovsky, Kiarostami shares a passionate, mystical yearning for metaphysical possibility, and this film seems to exist in a completely spiritual reality. With long, static close-ups of its human subjects and flowing tracking shots of a car driving through winding dirt roads, Kiarostami reaffirms the viewer's experience of time. At first, it might appear as if nothing is happening, but this is only half-true; the film “happens” within the viewer instead of on the screen, which the unambiguous but ultimately honest ending makes apparent. Taste of Cherry is a film--it isn’t “real” in any kind of tangible sense--and Kiarostami's aesthetic doesn't really allow a visceral reaction to his work. But the viewer's intellectual interaction with the film is real, and this is what must be affirmed. A.

Departures (dir. Yojiro Takita, 2008). Departures is a quietly composed film about death and the human need to say goodbye to loved ones. Despite coming from a culture with an awkward aversion to death, Takita’s film features candid depictions of traditional Japanese funerary rites. While obviously reverential, Takita also seems to be fascinated by these traditions and their complicated place in Japanese society and mind. Departures is flawed by the unnecessary narration and a few affected passages played for pathos that conflict with the quiet sense of humor that otherwise pervades the film, but it is noteworthy for its immense cultural importance. B+.

December 14, 2010

Religions of the Supercenters: Part 2


The second half of the essay. Ho ho ho.

Both stores showed plenty of evidence for both the secularization of the sacred and the sacralization of consumerism (Einstein 18). The inescapable approach of the holiday season has amplified this two-way cultural drift, and the resultant tension has reached a fever pitch of spiritual confusion as the two stores struggle to maintain their respective identities and keep their cashiers busy. Though the concept of Christmas as a patently spiritual holiday is a fairly recent phenomenon, both stores are forced to deal with the holiday season in remarkably dissimilar ways.

In the entryway of Wal-Mart stood a massive Christmas tree under a banner proudly proclaiming “Merry Christmas.” Based on this, I expected to find massive sections in every department devoted to Christmas, but this was not the case. For example, the DVD section had only one shelf of Christmas movies (including explicitly religious works like The Nativity Story and The Passion of the Christ, and Christmas movies with a “spiritual” but not religious orientation like Home Alone and the spectacularly titled TV special Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas), while the CD section featured only one lonely rack of Christmas albums. Instead, the vast majority of holiday-themed merchandise was concentrated in special areas set aside for Christmas, most notably “The Christmas Shop.” The Christmas Shop was converted from what was previously Wal-Mart’s greenhouse area. In the air was a pungent potpourri of cinnamon and clove, and on the shelves were all the implements necessary for a successful Christmas morning—snow globes, ribbons, bows, boxes, ornaments. By so stringently separating Christmas from their other products, I got the sense that Wal-Mart was trying to convince me that they genuinely believed in Christmas—and, therefore, that buying my wrapping paper from them would be some kind of religious transaction. Because Wal-Mart markets Christmas this way, the consumer is allowed a glimpse into Wal-Mart’s religious values, and she finds that more than simply marketing religion, Wal-Mart turns marketing into religion.

Target, on the other hand, favors a more indecisive approach; instead of “Merry Christmas,” the store favored less confrontational signs that read “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings.” To Target, Christmas is more of a common language of American culture that happens to move merchandise than it is a way for the store to affirm its religious identity—hence the Hello Kitty tree ornaments and the proliferation of artificially colored red and green food products. However, this allows Target to spread its Christmas cheer all throughout the store instead of containing it to specified areas as Wal-Mart does. When I visited, every department was dotted with holiday displays. One showcase, under the sign “Give jolly stocking stuffers,” included a hodgepodge of reasonably priced miscellany, such as “extreme” stress balls (for the decidedly unjolly member of the family), harmonicas, drinking straw eyeglasses, and so on. Another display towards the back of the store featured various picture books about Christmas, but only one of them actually appeared to relate the nativity story: Little Town of Bethlehem (“Learn about baby Jesus—Discover the miracle of love—Bound and printed in China—Batteries NOT included”). If Wal-Mart has consecrated cash in the spirit of Christmas, then Target has made a sales pitch using a holy context; and as the “secular and sacred continue to blur” (Einstein 18) in increasingly creative and unusual ways, the consumer is left with a light wallet and a dazed head.

One of the central conclusions in Einstein’s book is that “[R]eligion has to be marketed in today’s culture in order to remain relevant” (60). Due to the considerable presence of “faith brands” (92-94) in both stores (but especially in Wal-Mart), this conclusion initially seems solid; however, I cannot help but find Einstein’s argument reductive. It seems equally likely to me that the supercenters have to market religion and spirituality to achieve their economic aspirations. Conceiving of the relationship between marketing and religion as a discursive process (just as Einstein conceives of the interplay of the secular and the sacred) is a much more satisfying explanation for the mutually beneficial symbiosis Einstein proposes in Brands of Faith (74). If this makes supercenters like Wal-Mart and Target seem almost like living beings, then the items on their shelves are like neurons carrying their thoughts, which collectively reveal their self-image. The shoppers, then, become mirrors through which the stores see and understand themselves. Every beep of the barcode reader is more than a sale—when we buy, we are collaborating in a slowly unfolding creation.

December 13, 2010

Religions of the Supercenters: Part 1


In honor of the season, here is a comparative analysis of religious marketing in Wal-Mart and Target, which I wrote for my sociology of religion class this semester. Part of the assignment was to relate our findings to Mara Einstein’s book Brands of Faith. Part one deals mostly with branding, while part two will focus on the way the stores deal with Christmas.

In popular consciousness, Wal-Mart and Target are mutually exclusive brands. This can be experienced by anyone who shops at these stores—from the atmosphere and decoration to the very layout, every aspect of each store is carefully considered for the conscious (or, more often, subconscious) effect it will have on the potential customer. For the stores, however, a simple qualitative differentiation is not enough; the stores also go through painstaking efforts to present themselves as singular representations of distinct essences. This act of branding has profound ramifications on the way these two stores market religion and spirituality.

In Brands of Faith, Mara Einstein summarizes the respective brands of these two big box stores succinctly: she says Wal-Mart presents itself as a values-driven friend of the family, while Target affects hipness and trendiness by maintaining a youthful image (12). If branding is about “making meaning,” as Einstein suggests (70), what kind of meaningful relationship are Wal-Mart and Target trying to create and cultivate with an average shopper like me by presenting themselves these ways? How does this tell the consumer about what the stores believe? If one can understand the beliefs underlying the supercenters’ personalities, one must assume that supercenters can incorporate into their image a coherent position on grand philosophical problems—such as, for instance, the existence of God or the meaning of life. If Wal-Mart and Target do attempt to answer these questions for their shoppers, the evidence must lie somewhere in the products they sell.

Einstein argues that big box stores often try to capitalize on America’s significant Christian market, either by presenting themselves as sharing Christian values or including Christian merchandise on their shelves (39). Wal-Mart does both. While Wal-Mart’s book section is mostly filled with harlequin romance paperbacks and equally trashy teen fantasy novels, the most distinctive and carefully arranged display by far was the “Inspirational” section (see Einstein 49). This included Christian-themed potboilers like The Twelfth Imam by Joel C. Rosenberg and the Left Behind series (all published by Tyndale House) along with the usual assortment of Joel Osteen (FaithWords and Free Press), Rick Warren’s A Purpose Driven Life (Zondervan), Billy Graham’s Storm Warning (Thomas Nelson), and Bill Weise’s awkward pseudo-prophecy 23 Minutes in Hell (Charisma House). In her book, Einstein argues that the Christian book industry is becoming “consolidated” (47-50), but judging by my findings, a better word might be “compartmentalized”: there are still a variety of publishers producing Christian material, but only a handful of imprints could be considered “dependably Christian.” In addition to the faith inspired books, there was also an entire shelf of handsomely packaged and bound Bibles, all of which were published by Thomas Nelson. While Thomas Nelson obviously cannot have a monopoly on a work in the public domain, it is telling nevertheless that Wal-Mart would choose to carry only this publisher (and, as far as I could see, only two translations of the Bible: The archaic King James and the academically dubious New International Version).

It is obvious that the “Inspirational” section of Wal-Mart would only appeal to Christians (and more specifically, a niche market of Evangelical Protestants), but this is perfectly in keeping with Wal-Mart’s Christian image. However, to maintain this image, Wal-Mart seems obliged to install boundaries between their Christian merchandise and the rest of their store. Target, on the hand, is not so concerned with separating the sacred from the profane, which leads to fascinating juxtapositions. For instance, a day-at-a-time Bible verses calendar sat cheerfully next to a Jeff Foxworthy “You Might Be a Redneck” calendar. The literature department of Target suffered similar confusions. Instead of clusters of Osteen and Warren, Target featured vaguely spiritual books such as Eat Pray Love and Three Cups of Tea (both published by Penguin) smack in the middle of books featuring relationship advice, weight loss programs, and the fantastic adventures of vampires, werewolves, and the women who love them. The only section that was Christian in any essentialist sense was in the music department. But, as Einstein suggests, even popular Christian artists generally downplay dogma in favor of musical diversification and vaguely inspiring lyrics (54-55). Overall, Target’s approach to religion is subtle—if not minimalistic. Target is fundamentally different from Wal-Mart in this respect.

December 10, 2010

A short review of Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe

Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe paints a riveting picture of our current conception of the universe that also works as a sweeping summary of the most important progress in recent scientific history.

Greene is a good writer with lucid and playful prose. He has a particular knack for crafting analogies that, though they initially seem somewhat cumbersome and absurd (“Lineland,” this means you), ultimately allow him to relate complex, theory-heavy concepts in an accessible and engaging manner. This is a welcomed break from the sometimes dry writing of physics professors who seem to equate an antiseptic overview of their field with “interesting” writing aimed at nonspecialists. And unlike the esteemed Stephen Hawking, Greene doesn't come across as an arrogant know-it-all.

Sometimes, though, Greene sounds too much like a string theory apologist. In his overly defensive posture, he can even sound eerily similar to a theologian who's been backed into a corner by a particularly adept and persistent skeptic (my apologies to everyone in the scientific community for comparing a respected scientist to a theologian). Though Greene readily admits that string theory has many significant shortcomings (such as, for instance, that there is no experimental evidence for it), he seems disconcertingly preoccupied with convincing the reader that the aesthetic accomplishments of string theory will somehow minimize its glaring deficiencies.

The greatest strength of Greene's book is not the way he answers so many questions about the esoteric field of theoretical physics (though he certainly does do a fantastic job of doing just that); the greatest strength is that Greene actually provokes more questions than he answers, questions that the reader may not have previously considered. His book opens new ways for the scientifically disinclined or uninitiated to grapple with the great advances physicists are making towards a fuller understanding of the universe we inhabit--one that seems increasingly beautiful and charged with significance even if string theory ultimately turns out to be an intricately and elegantly composed misfire.

December 9, 2010

Pythagoreans: A Play

CAST:
A group of Pythagoreans
Philolaus
Brontinus
Pythagoras

SCENE: A darkened room. A group of Pythagoreans are gathered around a smoking cauldron, chanting, arrhythmically and atonally, the numbers “3,” “5,” and “9.” PHILOLAUS and BRONTINUS are mixing ingredients into the cauldron.

PHILOLAUS sprinkles some white powder into the cauldron and chants “12” in a strange, disembodied voice. BRONTINUS does the same.

PHILOLAUS sprinkles some green powder into the cauldron and chants “27” in the same voice. The smoke suddenly becomes green. BRONTINUS does the same, and the green smoke intensifies.

PHILOLAUS sprinkles some blue powder into the cauldron and chants “4.” The cauldron’s smoke now has a slight bluish tint. BRONTINUS gives him a strange look before sprinkling some blue powder into the cauldron and chanting “7.”

PHILOLAUS looks up, sprinkles in some more blue powder, and chants “4,” a little more forcefully. BRONTINUS again responds with “7.”

PHILOLAUS takes much more powder than necessary and throws it into the cauldron, saying “4” through clenched teeth. BRONTINUS kicks over the cauldron and shouts “7!” The group of Pythagoreans behind them stops their chanting except for a couple who have to be prodded to realize a violent outbreak is very near.

PHILOLAUS and BRONTINUS shout “4” and “7” back and forth at each other.

PYTHAGORAS enters with a large book. The group of Pythagoreans scatters. PHILOLAUS and BRONTINUS look up at him.

PYTHAGORAS opens the book, silently reads a small passage, and then looks up and says, victoriously, “19!” He snaps the book shut.

CURTAIN

[NOTE: I wrote down the basic idea for this in a notebook sometime this semester during a lecture that touched briefly on the Pythagoreans. Philolaus and Brontinus are the names of two actual Pythagorean philosophers, but this play is not historically accurate.]

December 8, 2010

Honorable mention

A followup to yesterday's list. These are nine more good albums that didn't quite make the cut but are nevertheless worth hearing. They are in no specific order.

Johnny Cash: Ain't No Grave. Despite having been deceased for several years, Johnny Cash's leftover recordings have consistently made for some engaging listens. The one original song (“1 Cor. 15:55”) is one of Cash's greatest, and the covers are expertly chosen and tenderly sung. [Since this is technically not a 2010 album, I have relegated it to “honorable mention.”]

Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz. Pretty great, once you get over the fact that this is really just Sufjan giving himself a 70-minute pep talk.

Arcade Fire: Suburbs. Sometimes Arcade Fire try to tackle too much, which is why I preferred the more modest social commentary of Neon Bible to Funeral, that extended ode to the terrifying architecture of youth. This album is somewhere between the two, with dazzling moments and draggy parts. Personally, I wish Win's wife would sing more if only because she doesn't sound like she's on fire.

Grinderman: Grinderman 2. Part two of Nick Cave's midlife crisis/side project finds him referring to himself variously as “the Abominable Snowman” and “Mickey Mouse” and coming on to housewives with lines like “I stick my fingers in your biscuit jar / And I crush all your gingerbread men.” Listener discretion is advised.

Flying Lotus: Cosmogramma. Conceptually and musically thicker than Los Angeles but somewhat less inventive. Also, it loses points for having the whiney-voiced Thom Yorke on a song.

LCD Soundsystem: This is Happening. I think I prefer it to Sound of Silver.

Madlib: Miles Away. Not quite as brilliant as Madlib's other jazz album this year, though if you prefer Miles to Ornette, you might like it better.

The Roots: How I Got Over. One of the Roots' finest efforts. It's shorter, more focused, and more cohesive than much of their recent works with some of their sharpest social commentary.

Shugo Tokumaru: Port Entropy. Not on the same level as Exit or even Night Piece, but it's still a delightful treat from a deliriously inventive artist.

December 7, 2010

Top 10 albums of 2010

Ranked roughly in descending order of preference (once you get past the first three, it's mostly random).

Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest. Past the awkward mood setting opener, Halcyon Digest is a brilliant work of song construction and dynamics. Bradford Cox has become quite an engaging (in addition to brutally honest) writer, and he has never sounded so comfortable in the context of a band. [See a previous post for more thoughts about the last song which I feel is more or less the album's thesis statement.]

The Tallest Man on Earth: The Wild Hunt. His sophomore release, wherein the frosty Scandinavian emerges as a better writer, more confident singer, and more refined guitarist than pretty much any of his contemporaries. I expect the Dylan comparisons will haunt him for his entire career, but Kristian Matsson's vision clearly stretches back past the Anthology of American Folk Music. [The companion EP, Sometimes the Blues is Just a Passing Bird, is really great, too.]

Janelle Monae: The ArchAndroid. Monae's genre hopping, heart stopping, mind blowing debut is impossibly inventive and impressively complex. Only the weird insertion of an Of Montreal song breaks the otherwise perfect flow. What a year for Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Gonjasufi: A Sufi and a Killer. The Gaslamp Killer's eerie production brilliantly matches Gonjasufi's disturbed fairy tale lyrics and his bizarre, unraveling voice. A remarkably forward thinking debut.

Joanna Newsom: Have One on Me. Three discs of new material, and most of it is great. Her writing is more conventional in places (Newsom even pens a few pretty love songs), and her voice has settled down into comfortable accessibility. Though this makes for a far less visionary opus than her masterpiece Ys, Newsom is still one of the brightest musicians to spring up over the last 10 years.

Young Jazz Rebels (Madlib): Slave Riot. The greatest hip hop producer on the planet indulges in his love of free jazz and the crackling texture of old vinyl records. Intense stuff.

Vampire Weekend: Contra. I fell in love with this album with the first couplet, where the singer rhymes “horchata” with “balaclava,” but that was mostly ideological. Then I was struck by how good the music is. Vampire Weekend are cleverer than they are profound, but this album is much cleverer than their first album.

No Age: Everything in Between. A more thoughtful and nuanced album than Nouns. Even some of the lyrics--the ones I can understand, anyway--are pretty good.

Das Racist: Sit Down, Man. The best mixtape of the year, rife with hilarious social commentary, giddy satire, and stoned exuberance.

Avey Tare: Down There. You might want to bring a poncho and galoshes to this album. The sound of kids jumping in puddles on their way home from school and ruminative rainy days watched through fogged over windows.

(List is subject to change as I continue listening to more albums and digesting the ones to which I already have listened.)

December 6, 2010

Film reviews: Two from Hong Kong

Hard Boiled (dir. John Woo, 1992). John Woo’s Hard Boiled features some well-choreographed and executed action sequences, but beneath its technical proficiency, there seems to be nothing going on except troublesome moral implications (cf. Dirty Harry). Woo essentially offers another mediocre buddy cop movie with clichéd, overdramatic characters. Woo uses visual flair to substitute for this meager framework, creating bizarre, testosterone-addled, and sometimes hallucinatory shootouts--Seijun Suzuki is the obvious reference--and equally bizarre, overly sentimental dramatic scenes. The fundamental incompatibility of its component parts becomes nearly nauseating by the climactic scene. D-.

2046 (dir. Wong Kar Wai, 2004). An overstuffed and mystifying meditation of memory, longing, and loss, Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 exists at the surreal intersection of spacetime and eros. Like Tarkovsky, Wong finds a philosophical sensitivity intricately woven into human experience. Wong often obscures his subjects as he shoots them, peering around corners or from behind various veils, which gives the film a hazy, half-remembered quality perfectly in keeping with the film’s content and tone. Sometimes 2046 feels divided by its own ambition, though such a heady ambition is hardly a fault; even if the film as a whole doesn’t hold together, its interlocking components are of salient intellectual interest. A-.

December 2, 2010

25 films

 I make a list of my favorite 25 films, books, and albums toward the end of every year as part of an ongoing analysis of my changing interests. Here are this year's films in alphabetical order (because it's hard enough to choose 25 without actually trying to rank them in some arbitrary order of preference):

After Life (dir. Hirokazu Kore-Eda, 1998)
Agguire, the Wrath of God (dir. Werner Herzog, 1972)
Andrei Rublev (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
Au hasard Balthazar (dir. Robert Bresson, 1966)
The Color of Paradise (dir. Majid Majidi, 1999)
Duck Soup (dir. Leo McCarey, 1933)
Flowers of St. Francis (dir. Roberto Rosselini, 1950)
The General (dir. Buster Keaton, 1927)
The Grapes of Wrath (dir. John Ford, 1940)
Grave of the Fireflies (dir. Isao Takahata, 1988)
The Human Condition (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1959-1961)
Ikiru (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
M (dir. Fritz Lang, 1931)
Play Time (dir. Jacques Tati, 1967)
Sansho the Bailiff (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)
A Serious Man (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009)
Spirited Away (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
Taste of Cherry (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)
The Third Man (dir. Carol Reed, 1949)
Tokyo Story (dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
The Treasure of Sierra Madre (dir. John Huston, 1948)
12 Angry Men (dir. Sydney Lumet, 1957)
Winter Light (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1962)
The Word (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
The World (dir. Jiangke Jia, 2004)

December 1, 2010

Film reviews: Double feature

Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, 1931); The Bride of Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, 1935). Despite Edward Van Sloan’s pompous introduction (only matched by the equally pompous preface to the sequel, featuring Byron and the Shelleys) and an underdeveloped filmmaking technique, Frankenstein is one of the most important and influential horror films to be produced in the Hollywood system. Though the film exhibits a disturbing fear of science, Frankenstein still speaks to major concerns of the human experience by subtly posing the question “What is life?” The sequel Bride of Frankenstein retcons the finale of the previous film to launch into a mostly incoherent story involving the predatory Dr. Pretorius and the monster’s burgeoning humanity (shown through interestingly subverted images from Christian narrative). The (overwrought) script is fascinatingly realized by the director: scenes between doctors Frankenstein and Pretorius are charged with curious homoerotic overtones while the film as a whole is saturated with colorful minor characters and broad camp humor.

Frankenstein: B / The Bride of Frankenstein: B+.