For the Populist in You

Yesterday, Peter Howell ranted in the Star about the anti-audience sentiment of Steven Soderbergh's new Che Guevara film. He has a point. Art doesn't have to alienate or confound its observers to be considered great. If it resonates with the observer, even in a straightforward way, it's done its job as art.

Mixed Messages

Movie reviews occasionally cause me to wonder whether the authors of said reviews have watched the same film. Case in point - the newly released horror flick, The Strangers which is gushed about and panned today. Looks suitably creepy to me.

Narrow Stairs and Feel the Noise

Initial impression - Narrow Stairs isn't as wholly listenable as Death Cab for Cutie's previous two albums, Plans and Transatlanticism, but is still worthy of attention. Standout tracks include You Can Do Better Than Me, Your New Twin Sized Bed, No Sunlight and the first single, I Will Possess Your Heart. These are favourites from a musical standpoint (particularly the first two songs which invoke sunny afternoons in completely different ways). Haven't yet had time to digest lyrical strength. Fortunately, CBC recently introduced a weekly feature called Feel the Noise where two writers debate the merits of new discs and Narrow Stairs got the treatment earlier this month. The comments section is filled with disparaging remarks about the personal nature of Feel the Noise's concept but I like it. Anecdotes and life reflections are a nice break from the pretentious and unduly snide commentary that often comprises "proper" music reviews.

On a related Death Cab note - Ben Gibbard and Chris Walla cover Billy Bragg's fantastic You Woke Up My Neighbourhood here. Nice choice.

Saturdays = Youth

Graveyard Girl from M83's new album Saturdays = Youth is definitely my song of Spring and possibly the song of Summer too. It's synth heaven. Kim & Jessie first seemed like "bad 80s" but now seems like something I want to listen to a lot. Opener You, Appearing and closer Midnight Souls Still Remain are also good. Thanks to J for the introduction. Thanks to M83 for inspiring nostalgia for the days of Slush Puppies, Video Hits and listening to The Kinks' Come Dancing on vinyl in the Murphys' basement.

No Writing

Emdashes pointed to Slate recently for an article on the difference between writer's block and procrastination. I understand how distinguishing the two can matter to a writer because they may be perceived more favourably if they are blocked rather than lazy. Not sure perception really matters though when the end result - no writing - is the same.

Utility

Hardcovers are best avoided because they're heavy and awkward to carry around. But what if instead of trying to cram an ill-fitting hardcover into a bag filled with stuff, you carried your items inside the ill-fitting book?

Only in Europe

Eurovision seems a lot more fun than Canadian Idol or any of those other singing shows broadcast in N.A. Ireland's entry, Dustin the Turkey, is a controversial choice this year. Here's why.

Trailer Watch

American Teen - Follow the Jock, the Geek and the rest of the lot in this documentary about Senior Year. Why does the high school setting remain magnetic no matter your age? Maybe it's that the train wreck potential is great. High school is the only place where you're likely to hear this awkward crash and burn line uttered on a date, "there's a lot of grease on the table now, cuz I put my face on it."

Brick Lane - The story revolves around a young Bangladeshi woman who moves to London after entering into an arranged marriage. Found the novel by Monica Ali a bit less impressive than I'd hoped it would be. The pace was slow and the book dragged at points but movie adaptations are usually good at trimming the fat. Some of the secondary characters were really well done and that leaves me hopeful that their film counterparts will make the whole more enjoyable.

Hard Drive

"These are the feet I’m standing on
These are the hands that built a world
This is the bed I’m sleeping in
This is the shirt I’m buttoning
This is the pace I’m moving at
This is the tune I’m humming now
This is the road I’m walking down
These are the lips that form my words
This is the stone that I wanna turn
These are the people that I love
These are the eyes that look up above
This is the town I’m living in" - (Vocals - Evan Dando, Lyrics -Ben Lee)

True Notebooks

I've been suffering through a stretch of mediocre books. No one's to blame, I choose my own reading material. It's almost more disappointing to find yourself faithfully sticking with a 'just okay' title than it is trying to slog through something awful. I've learned to abandon works that are awful. But mediocrity often threatens brilliance and so you continue on, sometimes rewarded, sometimes not.

Thankfully, Mark Salzman's True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall disrupted all the so-so of late and was brilliant from the get-go. Salzman sits in on an L.A. writing class for teenage offenders and then begins his own. He starts the book with a list of reasons not to get involved. One of the most striking is that crime victims don't get free writing classes so it may be inappropriate that criminals do. His hesitation here speaks to the larger questions of offenders' rights and the role rehabilitation can play in prisons but his book doesn't draw black and white conclusions. Salzman doesn't sugarcoat the bad deeds of his students though he finds it difficult to reconcile their violent actions outside the prison with what he sees in their class work (fear, hope, depth).

True Notebooks does assuage another of Salzman's early concerns about getting involved: that his writing class will be futile because art doesn't matter enough. It does matter. A student writes, "I can create anything with my imagination, pencil, and paper, and before I know it I've created something that was in me the whole time, my pencil and paper just helped me let it out, freely."

Reprise

Way back in 2006, Joachim Trier's Reprise played the Toronto Film Festival. It's a shame it took almost two years to appear in North American theatres because it's a great movie that also happens to feature a good (and integral) soundtrack. The story follows the divergent paths of two young, Norwegian friends with grand literary aspirations. Read an article/interview here and then put it on your "should see" list.

World Music

Ever wonder what people are listening to around the globe? Gracenote's Music Map has intel.

Will Paul Pfeiffer Finally Get His Due?

Film sidekicks are stepping out of the shadows of their dreamy, perfect counterparts and Tina Fey is one step closer to ruling the world. How lucky we'll all be in the days of Tina-Rule.

Hot Docs Roundup: The Beetle

I understand, with absolute empathy, how difficult it is to part with a beloved, old car. An enamored owner believes signs of wear and functional deterioration are badges of character to admire. Maybe placing a towel over the driver's seat to catch leaky water drops when it rains isn't something the neighbours have to do, but so what? Some cars deserve infinite chances.

In The Beetle, Yishai Orian lays bare his love affair with a decaying, 40-year-old Volkswagen by documenting his attempt to infuse the car with renewed life. Along the way, he visits previous owners and discovers the Beetle has a surprisingly interesting history (celebritiy drivers, government cover-ups and more). None of this news is enough to convince his pregnant wife that the vehicle is safe or reliable. Despite her pleas to trash it, Orian grows increasingly desperate to restore it as the baby's birth nears. The salvage job is a literal pursuit but also representative of his desire to retain a sense of unencumbered individualism. Like many first time fathers, he isn't sure what to expect of the transition to parenthood and doesn't always know how to make decisions like a parent would. With humour and some sweetness, the film negotiates the space between youthful selfishness and the collegial outlook that having a family demands. For his trouble, Orian landed in the #7 spot on the list of audience favourites.

After

Posthumous works are not always a good idea. They can be undeveloped and unrepresentative. They can also be well worth the effort (hear the rough but lovely Jewel Box, among other songs, from Jeff Buckley's posthumous Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk). News of Armageddon in Retrospect, a new book of unpublished writing by Kurt Vonnegut, is welcome either way. Here's hoping it's a drunk sweetheart kind of read.

Hot Docs Roundup: Waiting for Hockney

From the Waiting for Hockney website:

"Billy Pappas is a true American original. An art school graduate from a working class background living in rural Maryland, Billy has decided that his mission in life is to reinvent realism. He spends eight years on a single drawing of Marilyn Monroe working to show a microscopic level of detail he hopes will reveal something deeper than photography. Literally, he hopes to create a new art form. Aided, one might even say enabled, by an eccentric cast of characters including a clergyman, a professor and an architect calling himself “Dr. Lifestyle,” Billy finally completes the portrait and then begins a quest to show it to renowned contemporary artist David Hockney, the one person he thinks can validate everything for which Billy has been striving."

Director Julie Checkoway introduced her film with a caution that it isn't just about art. She's right. Discussion of art features prominently (the limitations of photography are considered, just as the limitation of film in reproducing the densely layered drawing was raised in the post-screening Q&A). But the film's also about obsession, self-belief, family and reinvention. Billy Pappas is a classic underdog who dreams of the one big break that will change his life. On that level he's easy to identify with; not so on the level of his intensely focused 8-year drawing odyssey. That's what makes the story work. It seems an unbelievable amount of time to spend on a sole pursuit and an audience wants to know why and how he did it and whether he will succeed as an artist. The film is careful to give the unveiling of Marilyn and the Hockney quest a necessary buildup. Revealing too early whether or not Pappas' portrait has a game-changing effect would defeat a large part of the film's purpose: exploring how artistic/life success is determined. Is it measured by profit, new commissions, family pride, the approval of an admired hero or a sense of personal achievement? Waiting for Hockney throws all those balls up into the air for the audience to catch or drop as they see fit.

Read an interview with Billy Pappas here.

Ear Crack

Black Balloon - The Kills
Dead Sound - The Raveonettes
Surprising Me - Will Currie & The Country French

Hot Docs Roundup: Planet B-Boy

Planet B-Boy showcases the moves of the world's best breakdancing crews as they prepare for and compete in the Battle of the Year finals. Voted #2 favourite documentary by Hot Docs audience members, it's easy to understand why. If the performances were shown with no story framework, no context at all, they would still be enthralling. The film's success hangs on the dancing and director Benson Lee is fortunate to focus his lens on highly-skilled B-boys. As the film explains, world crews are know for particular skill sets (e.g. technical mastery in Korea, elegant dance style in France) but every crew shares common ground: amazing athleticism, a sense of creative expressionism and a devotion to dancing. The only major complaint to register is that the Battle of the Year shows weren't shown in their entirety (the intricacy and originality of the Japanese crew's routine demands full-length viewing). But wanting two additional hours of film is hardly a criticism.