Favorite movies of 2011

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

I watched a lot of movies last year, 82 if my count is right. I re-watched some favorites (Out of the Past, Alien, Back to the Future), but I kept these monthly selections focused on new-to-me stuff. Out of all of them, I think Winter’s Bone and Apocalypto were really amazing movies that you’d be a fool to miss. All the links go to my tumblr, where you’ll find whatever brief or sometimes rambling commentary I had in mind after watching. Right now I’m too lazy to get images like I did for my favorite albums of 2011. So here’s the quick text-only run-down, mostly to give you an encouraging nudge if you get the chance to see them:
January
The American

February
Double Indemnity
The Virgin Suicides
Brazil
Force of Evil

March
High Noon
Chinatown
Winter’s Bone

April
Some Like It Hot
The Social Network

May
Shotgun Stories
ATL
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

June
127 Hours, by default.

July
Days of Heaven

August
3:10 to Yuma
The Last Days of Disco

September
Apocalypto
The Seventh Seal
Ivan’s Childhood

October
Drive
Mystic River
Scarface (1932)

November
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Badlands

December
D.O.A.
The Purple Rose of Cairo
The Artist

~ Mark

When you’re in denial about how invested you are in a single outcome, that’s when unrealistic expectations creep in.

Carolyn Hax.

Hunger

~ Mark

Hunger. Not sure how I feel about this one overall. I was glad Bobby Sands wasn’t really portrayed as martyr-hero or villain-fool, just a really committed guy. Much more about the choices of a life than the politics that motivate them. I wish the dreamy bits at the end had been chopped down a bit, maybe a better balance with the first two acts that way.

~ Mark

Uncouple your own grief from the hopes you pin on others. All relationships stand alone; there are no replacements.

Carolyn Hax.
~ Mark

They say you only live once but every time I come to work I feel like I’m starting a second life.

Kanye West on the transformative power of creative endeavors.

Louis CK Q&A – JonahWeiner.com

~ Mark

Well, this is awesome. (via) Here we have an edited transcript of Jonah Weiner’s interview with Louis CK that was used for the Rolling Stone profile last fall. Lots of good stuff here. Here’s Louis CK on the importance of those early failures and growing experiences:

Stand-up, I didn’t know what that was going to feel like. I guess I thought it would feel like it does in TV shows or movies: they’re going to laugh. That’s part of it, right? You tell a joke and then they laugh. It has this feel to it that I knew, and boy, when you realize how wrong you are, that’s a fucking cold slap in the face. I think that’s true of anybody’s first time. […] You need to enter stand-up with that cold slap in the face, or you’ll never really understand what you’re doing.

This next part rang really true for me. I thought for a long time that I was headed to grad school right after college, but each fall afterward I just couldn’t bring myself to do the paperwork. That’s me sending myself a message. CK on resisting college and keeping a day job while he chased his dreams (cf. Steve Reich):

An old teacher of mine got me an interview at NYU film school, and I brought all these videos I’d made, and photographs, a portfolio – I’d gotten into photography and stuff, and they said that they would accept me to go to film school. So I quit my job with that in mind, and I’d been doing stand-up, but not well or successfully, and then I never filled in – I got these forms from this guy to fill in, on the floor of my apartment somewhere, but I couldn’t get my brain to…I was supposed to go back to my high school and get my transcripts, and the idea of doing all that, just that paperwork – going to NYU film school was this dream come true for me, but I couldn’t fill out the thing, couldn’t fill it out and go to the Xerox machine and put a stamp on an envelope, all that stuff. It made me want to vomit. That sort of thing has always been the case for me, I can’t get that done. That’s why I have an assistant. Now if I just dream up shit I want to do, I have her to take care of it.

So I decided, “Fuck it, I’m a comedian. I’m just going to do that, I’m going to stay in Boston.” That’s when I worked at the garage. I stopped working at local-access cable. I drove a cab for a while. I started taking shitty jobs so I could do stand-up, I didn’t want an all-encompassing job. I liked that, I just liked having dead-end jobs and doing stand-up. I thought, “Fuck it, that’s what I’m going to try to do.” I had an instinct that if I just kept hammering it and hammering it, I had a head start on people, I was very young, and I was resilient, I didn’t mind living stupidly, I wasn’t anxious about making a living, just played it close to the bottom for a long time, and I knew how to do that, it didn’t bother me. I liked the freedom, I didn’t have a job-job, I’m not working for a company, I’m not going to a school, I live on my own.

And, wow, on the typical sitcom plot:

With a lot of these shows, I know what’s going on, and I think the audience does, too. Here comes the part where they’re going to walk in the door while the credits are still rolling. They’re going to trade quick barbs, “What did you do?” “I went to the store to get a coffee and they had the Michael J. Fox coffee today, so they spilled it.” “Oh, ha ha ha.” “What happened to you today?” Kind of inconsequential jokes. Joke, joke, joke, then somebody goes, “Somebody was here to ask you about this” – here comes the story, and it gets quiet, and then, “Oh, I can’t go, because I have this thing,” “He’s only in town for one day,” and now we’re laying pipe and it’s getting quiet. “What are you going to do about that?” “I don’t know,” because here’s a joke about the character that is an outside world joke or observational joke, and then the blow, the big fucking blow to get out of the scene – you have to have a blow, a big enough laugh, and it’s something really contrived: people sat there in the writer’s room, fucking eating fast food and going, “Where’s the blow for this scene, I want to go home.”

Then here comes the funny character, the guest star, who’s in town, and we find out what the lead character hates about him, and then there’s the guy, the character, that carries all the jokes. He says dumb things and keeps it going, there’s this energy, he’s like a circuit or something, just does this one thing. […] So there’s a guy on every show that does that, he has his one way, he has his variety, about eight different joke formulas, and you refill them with different stuff. He’s either the dumb guy or, like, Lisa Kudrow’s character on Friends or whatever. “I thought coffee was from Brazil.” “Ugh, no the guy’s name is Coffee. He’s from Italy.” Garbage like that. Then you start building the story, then you go away on an act break. Then you build a third act that just is the train wreck of not really much fun, but it pays everything off, it leaves everybody feeling exactly the same way they left, that they felt before the show started. That’s what shows are meant to do, is leave on par and leave a few jokes behind, to be printed in Entertainment Weekly’s sound bites.

On kids and growing up:

Having kids, you don’t escape from it, you seize onto it, it’s a big, stressful, exhilarating, real life thing. And it’s permanent, it’s something that you have to evolve for. Some people don’t, but I think you have to actually change your values system, and you have to revolutionize yourself in order to do it properly, because kids can’t raise kids, and I think you’re somewhat a kid until you have them, then you really have to grow up.

Lastly on being in control, experimenting, being wrong, being interesting:

I’m not a dictator, because I’m not in control of anything, I’m just deciding what to try. To me, it’s not that I control a bunch of people, it’s just that nobody controls me. There’s nothing above me except responsibility to the product. That’s the ultimate responsibility, is if the show sucks, then what was the fucking point of being in charge? I’m right about these things on the show, and when I’m not, it’s interesting to watch me be wrong. I don’t think you have to be perfect, you just have to be compelling in the work you do.

Louis CK Q&A – JonahWeiner.com

Right on Cue – Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Atlantic

~ Mark

Age, like all power constructs, (race, gender, class) encourages it’s own ignorance. To not know is a luxury of power. You don’t have to know Their Eyes Were Watching God. But I damn sure better know The Scarlet Letter. (It’s bad enough I’m slipping on Twain.) Age turns ignorance into a luxury, and worse, if you don’t recognize it as a luxury you start to think everyone is as clueless as you. And of course you’re clueless that any of this is even going on. It’s just a bad look all around.

(via)

Right on Cue – Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Atlantic

Super 8 as an Allegory on the Triumph of Digital FX « Pancake Dominion

~ Mark

When a filmmaker makes totally 100% sure that even the most moronic audiences notice some non-plot thing in his film, there’s almost always a solid reason for it.

This brings to mind complaints about, for example, Mel Gibson’s detailed, graphic violence or Tarantino’s fountains of blood and foul language. It might be excess, it might be artistic signature, it might mean something. Note to self: it might be better to assume thoughtful intent, rather than be dismissive or complain about part of a movie/book/song I don’t like. Seek ye first to understand. Whether it works or not is another thing.

Super 8 as an Allegory on the Triumph of Digital FX « Pancake Dominion

The Gollum Effect

~ Mark

Extreme couponers, if you count the value of their time, basically make a modest living doing below-minimum-wage marketing work for the coupon-based marketing universe that welcomes them as raving fans.

From the point of view of the stores, far from being hostile opponents in some asymmetric game of chess, these are merely cheap and committed marketers. They are encouraged to model, in extreme ways, the very couponing behaviors that the marketing machine wants others to emulate in less extreme ways.

Which is exactly what happens. So long as you and I casually clip and use coupons, inspired by the extreme couponers in our midst, the grocery stores still comes out on top. If the extreme couponers’ leadership behavior were to actually lead to large-scale loss-driving sedition by too many customers, the store could easily staunch the losses overnight, by making minor changes to coupon-redemption rules.

I hadn’t thought about it this way.

The Gollum Effect

Why We Stopped Spanking – Megan McArdle – The Atlantic

~ Mark

It strikes me as plausible that a world in which kids spend more time unsupervised requires a parenting style more reliant on swift punishment for detected wrongdoing than rewards for good behavior.

This is probably the best summary I’ve ever seen for 1) why I got spanked every so often, and 2) why I don’t really feel bad about that.

Today’s kids seem to be not only supervised but regimented; most of their time is supposed to be spent in some sort of structured activity. This makes it very easy to create elaborate reward systems, because there is all this elaborate surveillance that makes it very easy to monitor compliance.

File under: parenting.

Why We Stopped Spanking – Megan McArdle – The Atlantic

The Language of Food: Entrée

~ Mark

Language mavens have probably been around pretty much since there were two speakers to complain about the vocabulary, pronunciation, or grammar of a third. They can be very useful for historical linguists, because grammar writers don’t complain about a change in the language until it’s basically already happened

File under: purists.

The Language of Food: Entrée

Wall Street

~ Mark

Wall Street. First movie I saw in 2012, because money never sleeps. Michael Douglas and Martin Sheen are really good. I like how Oliver Stone worked in a couple small moments of respite–the sunrise on the beach, the “Who am I?” on the balcony–and then gets right back to business. The only other Stone-directed films I’ve seen are Platoon (pretty good), The Doors (eh), and Natural Born Killers (ugh). I felt a little sad to realize I have little interest in anything else he’s done.

Dumb and Dumber

~ Mark

Dumb and Dumber. This one makes me wonder how today’s comedies will come across in 2030. This is the first time I finished this movie, though I’ve seen the beginning chunk a couple hundred times. Maybe the slowest-starting comedy I’ve ever seen. The road trip and early Aspen scenes in the middle are the best.

The Karate Kid (2010)

~ Mark

The Karate Kid (2010). I accurately predicted this would be bad. Everything is bigger than it needs to be. The actors are way too young to carry their extremes. The emotions, the violence are waaaaaayyy over-the-top for their age. The 1984 film hit the right tone with hormonal high-schoolers. These kids barely have all their teeth. Smith has little of Macchio’s likeability, and I think a large part of it is because he’s a tween. Weak soundtrack that has too many “We’re on a magical adventure!”-type swelling moments. I could pile on more, but I’ll just point you to these 11 criticisms.

Favorite albums of 2011

~ Mark ~ 2 Comments

Here we go again. Short version: you should buy Kaputt, Hotter Than July, Trap Muzik, Five Italian Oboe Concertos, Apocalypse, The Last Days of Disco OST, Night Drive, and Watch The Throne.
The same rules hold from 2008, 2009, and 2010: these recommendations are selected from all the new-to-me music I listened to this year. Old stuff, new stuff, no matter. Fortunately, 2011 started with my favorite album, which means I got to listen to it all year long.

January

Kaputt

My favorite album of this month, and the year, was Destroyer’s Kaputt, and very few come close to topping it. Amazing listen.

January was my first exposure to Freddie Gibbs, who quickly became one of my favorites. It’s not the most polite music you’ll ever hear, but still… Midwestgangstaboxframecaddilacmuzik is excellent (see: County Bounce, I’m the Man, Boxframe Cadillac).

Curren$y, Pilot Talk and Pilot Talk II. I love the production on both of these. The first has higher peaks, I think (e.g. Breakfast, The Day), but the second is more consistently good.

The Roots, Rising Down. Rock-solid.

February

Bach/Kozena - Arias

Bach. Arias. Can’t go wrong with that combo. Magdalena Kožená sings with Musica Florea cond. Marek Strync. I loved Kožená’s album of French Arias that I heard last year. The highlight from this one was an aria from Cantata BWV 208 Schafe können sicher weiden.

You might recall that I got hooked on dhrupad last summer. Gundecha Brothers to the rescue again with Tears on a Lotus: Ragas Gaoti and Shivranjani.

March

Five Italian Oboe Concertos

Five Italian Oboe Concertos. I played the shit out of this one. Nicholas Daniel and the Peterborough String Orchestra.

Mulatu Astatke & His Ethiopian Quintet, Afro Latin Soul. Great start to finish. Latin tends to wear on me after a while, but this one stays pretty fresh.

Irma Thomas, Wish Someone Would Care. Without Love (There Is Nothing) is a strong, strong tune.

Radiohead, The King of Limbs. It grew on me. Bloom and Give Up the Ghost are the top picks here.

April

Hotter Than July

Big month. Brace yourself.

In April, I started a Stevie Wonder review project, which made clear to me the trouble with best-of lists. Forget Songs in the Key of Life or Innervisions. They’re the reflexively-mentioned albums because they’re damn good. But one of the problems with them being both great and popular is that if you don’t *really* *love* the albums like you think you should, you might give up on the guy. Like I did.

So I’d never heard of his actual best album, Hotter Than July (←opinion!). All I Do, Rocket Love, I Ain’t Gonna Stand for It, and As If You Read My Mind make one of the best four-song sequences you’ll hear.

Fullfillingness’ First Finale is Wonder’s second-best album for me, in no small part because Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away has become one of my all-time favorite songs. Music of My Mind is a close third (see: Happier Than the Morning Sun and Keep on Running). Talking Book is also great (Maybe Your Baby is my fave).

I guess the bottom line is that he’s written a TON of REALLY GOOD music. I need to keep in mind the rule for many really good artists: if the super-popular super-great album/painting/sculpture/book still isn’t quite your thing, there’s still a good chance there’s another worthwhile one out there.

End of digression.

Marvin Gaye, I Want You. I’ve frequently mentioned my love for the title track, but there’s also After the Dance, I Wanna Be Where You Are and Soon I’ll Be Loving You Again.

In another example of how critically-acclaimed amazing things can overshadow other amazing things (what I loosely term the Wonder Conundrum), Let’s Get It On is known for… Let’s Get It On. Rightly so, great track. But If I Should Die Tonight is sooooooo damn good. I also have this weird association with it, as it shuffled on when I found out that Osama bin Laden had been killed. “How many hearts, baby, have felt their world stand still?”

R. Kelly’s Love Letter got foisted on me somehow and I don’t regret it. Love Letter and Number One Hit are the favorites.

John Coltrane’s Stardust was one of the few jazz albums I heard and liked this year. Title track.

Curren$y & Alchemist, Covert Coup. Mostly recommending on the strength of Freddie Gibbs’ guest appearance on Scottie Pippens, though Smoke Break and The Type are also quality.

Speaking of Freddie Gibbs again, I also got into The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs and Str8 Killa No Filla. Both worthwhile. See: How We Do, Do Wrong, Crushin’ Feelin’s, Slangin’ Rocks and most especially Rock Bottom.

May was another really strong month…

May

Trap Muzik

Holy shit, T.I.. My favorite rapper? Probably, yes. Trap Muzik is brilliant. See: Trap Musik, No More Talk, Doin’ My Job, Look What I Got, and Be Better Than Me.

I’d never listened to much Bill Callahan, but glad I started with Apocalypse. Such a good album. My favorite tracks are Drover and One Fine Morning.

Cass McCombs was also new to me. Wit’s End wears out just a little bit by the end, but County Line is a damn fine song.

I’m gonna go ahead and add in Terry Riley’s You’re No Good single here. Partly because it’s awesome, and also because its late ’60s minimalist sound segues nicely into June’s top pick.

June

Electric Harpsichord

Catherine Christer Hennix, The Electric Harpsichord. It’s one track that’s only 25 minutes and change, but this is fantastic.

Another must-recommend single from June was Radiohead’s Staircase (live From the Basement). I hope you didn’t miss it.

Getting back to full albums, The Rosebuds were a nice surprise. Of the albums I heard, Loud Planes Fly Low and Life Like are the best. See: Come Visit Me, Waiting for You, and Border Guards.

July

Down with the King

Bach again. He rarely goes wrong. Cantatas: Trauerode BWV 198 and Jesu, der du meine Seele, BWV 78 is a nice pair of cantatas performed by La Chapelle Royale under Philippe Herreweghe’s direction.

T.I. again, with DJ Drama. Down With The King. This one came from a list of albums recommended in Ben Westhoff’s book Dirty South. Top picks are Jackin’ for Beats, Welcome Back, and Xtaci’s hilarious/brilliant “Why?” freestyle.

Bumba Massa, Dovi. This is sonic Prozac.

August

The Last Days of Disco OST

The Last Days of Disco OST. I previously called this an UNDENIABLE SOUNDTRACK and I stand by that statement. Disco!

I’d never listened to much MF Doom. Take Me to Your Leader is funny and mental and weird and delightful. I love his production and the use of old film clips. I ought to find some more of his work in 2012.

September

The Last Laugh

Yeah… so… Young Jeezy pretty much owned September. I’m the first to admit his lyrics often blow, but man his delivery and production are so good, so often. The Last Laugh mixtape had my favorite tracks, with Pressure’s On and Game Over on repeat pretty often. Trap or Die (see: “GA” freestyle), Trap or Die 2, and 1,000 Grams were the most consistent of the other mixtapes I listened to.

October

Night Drive

I played the shit out of Chromatics’ Night Drive. It seems to fit a lot of moods: work-time productivity, lazy lounging, driving about town…

Hariprasad Chaurasia made one of my favorite albums from last year. Raga Darbari Kanada & Dhun in Mishra Pilu is another solid one.

T.I.’s The Leak is a classic. Front Back Side to Side and Do U Really Want Me are the favorites here.

Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi was the only Camera Obscura album I hadn’t heard yet. It’s amazing how consistent their sound has been since this early stuff, and how it still satisfies every single time.

November

Watch the Throne

Jay-Z & Kanye West, Watch The Throne. I didn’t want to like this album. It’s part of a foolish contrarian streak that doesn’t always serve me well. I actually didn’t like much of it besides No Church in the Wild and Otis (still my favorites) on first listen, but it keeps growing and growing on me. I expect this one to last.

Drake, both Thank Me Later and Take Care. Apparently I’m a Drake fan? I also didn’t want to like these, an opinion mostly based on songs I was tired of hearing on the radio. Happy to be proven wrong. I like Marvin’s Room, Doing It Wrong, and Karaoke in particular.

December

Southern Royalty

After listening to a bunch of other mixtapes this year (and re-visiting Big Pimpin’), I realized I love Bun B. Of the mixtapes I collected, Legends Series Vol. 1, No Mixtape, and Southern Royalty are favorites. Give a listen to It Ain’t Me, I Made It, and The Champion.

I also got UGK’s Ridin’ Dirty, which is awesome — thanks again to Westhoff’s Dirty South recommendations for the tip.

Maria Popova’s Beautiful Mind – Mother Jones

~ Mark

From an interview with the creator of Brain Pickings:

When you intercept the rumination process with something that requires your full attention—that’s stimulating and absorbing, that places a demand on your intellectual focus—you don’t get to ruminate. In a way, it’s a mental health aid to be able to do that so much. My routine, what I do, it just feels like home. It’s my comfort food.

Maria Popova’s Beautiful Mind – Mother Jones