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a film and music blog

[kwhitesays]

Zombies in my space alien movie [Movie Monday]

About 15 minutes into Plan 9 from Outer Space, my wife looked at me and asked, "Why are there zombies in our space aliens movie?" To which I replied, "What I want to know is, why are there space aliens in our zombie movie?"

There's no way I would appreciate this movie without Ed Wood, as charmingly idiotic as it is. I've seen enough bad sci-fi movies (thanks, MST3K!) to know that this ranks technically among the worst of the worst, with frying pans on strings and a nonexistent plot and Criswell, the hilariously overwrought narrator. That Plan 9 exists is a testament to the sheer human stick-to-it-iveness that Eros so dramatically warns against.

I absolutely love how sublimely bonkers Plan 9 is, from the cockpit with a shower curtain, to the cemetery with props falling over, to every awkward moment with actors standing around with uncertainty, to the visible boom mikes and strings holding up flying saucers and sparks from police issue cap guns. It's deliriously awful in the best possible way, and I heartily recommend it to everyone who cares about film. Is it good — who cares? Is it bad — what difference does it make? Of course it's bad, and good, and wonderful, and the worst movie ever made.

[kwhitesays]

The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die: Always Foreign [Album Pick of the Week]

I remember listening to the amply named The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die for the first time outside, in front of my house, putting up the Christmas lights. The band’s 2015 album Harmlessness had just come across my radar, and I didn’t realize that I was on the verge of discovering a whole revival of rock bands that remind me of the ones I listened to when I was younger: bands like the previously mentioned Pinegrove, but also Joyce Manor and The Hotelier, Car Seat Headrest and Beach Slang, and a bunch of others that would inspire me over the next year to shift my thinking and my listening. It was a great time to re-discover this music, and Harmlessness was a key record in that process.

And yet I didn’t return to that record as much as I expected to at the time. It’s excellent, and worth revisiting anytime. But somehow the band slipped by until a few weeks ago when I heard the early single “Marine Tigers”:

The song hooked me immediately, and I'm a bit of a sucker for slow burn songs with a big build, the kind of thing The World Is a Beautiful Place tend to do very well. It sounded more grown up, I suppose, than Harmlessness, which makes sense for a band continuing to evolve and come into their own.

Always Foreign is a deceptively complex record, with cover imagery that recalls Modest Mouse and interludes that belie far more ambitious craft than some of their peers (see “For Robin” or bombastic opener “I’ll Make Everything.” Too much bombast and crashing cymbals can be overwhelming, but The World Is a Beautiful Place strike a key balance that works beautifully for me. This record transcends the emo label and reaches for something grand. 

Also of note this week, in no particular order:

Propaghandi: Victory Lap

Of all the records released in 2017 by punk-pop veterans (Dropkick Murphys, Rancid, AFI), Victory Lap seems to have the most longevity. You can probably thank Chris Hannah’s voice, which has aged perfectly and gives Propaghandi a full and robust sound. The timing for a new Propaghandi record couldn’t be better for reasons that I think are obvious, and so far everything here is terrific. A line like “When the free-market fundamentalist steps on a roadside bomb outside Kandahar, bleeding to death / I swear to Ayn Rand I’ll ask if he needs an invisible hand.” Hashtag punk-as-fuck.

Torres: Three Futures

I was torn a bit on Torres’ previous album, Splinter. I loved “New Skin” but the bulk of the rest of the album didn’t click with me for one reason or another. So far, based on the promise of the early tracks — particularly the eerie and seasonally appropriate “Helen in the Woods” — I’m excited to dig into Three Futures. Torres seems to exist somewhere on the same plane with artists like Bat or Lashes and St. Vincent, two touch-points I’m always happy to hear more from.

Protomartyr: Relatives in Descent

Not too much to say on this one since I haven’t heard it yet, but I liked what I’ve heard of the band so far and I recall their 2015 record The Agent Intellect was on a lot of critics’ year-end lists. I probably never gave it a close listen, something I plan to remedy with their new record.

Worriers: Survival Pop

Speaking of bands I’ve yet to really dig into, I only heard Worriers’ Imaginary Life late last year, and it’s a catchy, dynamic record that’s easy to take for granted with millions of songs available immediately. But it’d be a shame to sleep on them, and I’m looking forward to checking out their new one. Singer Lauren Denitzio has a great voice for the band’s crunchy, anthemic punk, and they’re not afraid to play some nice melodies when it suits them. Solid stuff.

Also: David Crosby has a new record out, and as much as I love a number of his songs I’m not sure I’m going to prioritize it, though it’s always worth mentioning. There’s also a new album by Miley Cyrus, who doesn’t do much for me, despite being immensely talented and subversively successful. The pop world needs more characters like her.

[kwhitesays]

It was more like Eight Fingers of Death and Two Thumbs, Also Essentially of Death [Movie Monday]

I'm not a kung fu guy. I didn't grow up watching kung fu movies, and to this day I'm pretty sure I haven't seen a single Bruce Lee movie (I know, I know). It's a huge blind spot for me, but I love some of what I've seen: Let Li's Fist of Legend, recent wuxia films from Crouching Tiger to The Assassin, and John Woo's hardcore "gun-fu" classics recently popularized again by the John Wick franchise. But classic, Shaw Brothers, grindhouse kung fu? Not my forte.

I first came across Five Fingers of Death (aka King Boxer, aka Number One Fist in the World) on a list of Quentin Tarantino's Top 20 Grindhouse Movies, not realizing so many movies were technically grindhouse. (Halloween? Surpiria?) Five Fingers of Death is on this list and also Edgar Wright's Top 1000 Movies list, so it seemed worth tracking down.

Turns out Amazon Prime has a bunch of these classic, weird old kung fu movies, apparently digitized from old VHS copies. No joke, you can stream Five Fingers of Death on Amazon Prime with muddy sound, blurry visuals, and no wide-screen, complete with tracking lines on the bottom of the screen. (They also have a few others, including Master of the Flying Guillotine, another one I can't wait to catch up with.)

Five Fingers is full of a lot of kung fu movie cliches, but for me a lot of them are fresh and thrilling in a lost world sort of way. The fight scenes are terrific and the story points are obvious but classic: a love triangle, warring clans, training montages. (Tarantino even cribs the loud siren sound in the Kill Bill movies from this one, although the references there go way beyond the Shaw Brothers.)

One quibble: movies made in Hong Kong during this period have a lot of anti-Japanese racist stereotypes, and Five Fingers is no different. It's not something Western audiences have any experience with, but we can relate to it on our own terms and it sours some of the story here.

Now, if i knew more about kung fu movies, would I love Five Fingers of Death more or less? I don't know, and if I watch more, time will tell. But this had a depth I wasn't prepared for and an understanding of structure and filmmaking fundamentals that worked for me beyond its novelty and reputation. I'm just so thrilled it's available to stream and I hope everyone gets a chance to check it out.

[kwhitesays]

Prawn: Run [Album Pick of the Week]

My favorite album of 2016 was, hands down, Pinegrove’s debut Cardinal. It was a record that came at the exact right time for me; it seemed that there was a lot changing in my life personally, with a baby on the way and 35 right around the corner, and changing in the world at large, socially and politically. I found comfort in returning to some of the music and art I had appreciated when I was younger, and it was thrilling to hear new bands who offered fresh takes on those ideas. (Last year was, in general, a great year for the kind of indie/emo/punk-minded rock music, so it was a perfect time for me to circle back to those sounds.)

Prawn is a band I know next to nothing about, having stumbled across the early singles from Run on Stereogum. “North Lynx” was a standout and I immediately checked out their 2014 album Kingfisher and played it a few times in a row.

There are touches of throwback emo, filtered through a thoroughly contemporary perspective. And the recurring themes of nature, animals, and landscapes reminds me of one of my favorite current bands, Shearwater. Like Pinegrove (a band now catapulted into the spotlight on the strength of Cardinal, a record that apparently resonated with a lot of people besides myself), Prawn seems to have come around at just the right time. 

(And on a side note, if the band sees this, I know lots of bands bristle at the dreaded “emo” label, so know that I am a) applying it lovingly, b) fully aware of the implications, and c) hoping you don’t take offense to it. I’m in no way a professional and this is just an excuse to write about and share art I’m loving right now.)

Also of note this week, in no particular order:

The Clientele: Music for the Age of Miracles

The little time I’ve spent with The Clientele’s new album Music for the Age of Miracles has elevated it to the top of the list this week. The Clientele isn’t a band I’ve spent a lot of time with, save their stellar debut Suburban Light and songs like “Reflections After Jane.” But in a way that’s allowed me to come to Miracles with fresh ears, which isn’t easy to do for a band that’s been around for over 20 years.

I’ve seen Miracles compared to Nick Drake, but for me a song like “The Neighbour” more recalls the warm, orchestral folk-pop of Al Stewart or even some of the more lush arrangements from The Kinks. It’s a sound and an era that isn’t drawn from much by contemporary bands, but there’s something rewarding about spending time with such an experienced and confident band. (The album is also perfect for fall, which for me can’t come fast enough — Chicago’s late-September 90-degree heatwave is doing me no favors.)

Shout Out Louds: Ease My Mind

I’ve been eagerly anticipating new Shout Out Louds since 2013′s Optica, my first exposure to them and a record that motivated me to work backward through their catalog. (In a way, it’s been helpful that they waited 4 years to release their follow-up, because it gave me time to go all the way back to 2005′s Howl Howl Gaff Gaff.) Everything from this band is aces, and like The Clientele, Shout Out Louds have such a confident, assured perspective and willingness to expand their sound that I can’t imagine them releasing a disappointing album. This might have been my pick this week if I had been able to listen to more of it before today. Rest assured, it’s queued up next after my umpteenth listen of Run.

Wand: Plum

I dug the L.A. band Wand’s 2015 album Golem, a bit of blissed-out psychedelic pop for fans of Ty Segall / Mikal Cronin, but somehow I didn’t have Plum on my radar until a couple of days ago. The early singles were great, offering a further refinement of the sound they’ve been honing over a couple of albums and singles. “Bee Karma” is a tightly constructed rocker with great throwback harmonies and a clean production.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Luciferian Towers

Although I have in no way kept up with the bulk of those late-90s/early-00s “post-rock” bands with excruciatingly long names (and song titles, and song lengths...) Godspeed is one that has always been rewarding. Maybe it’s the punk politics or the ragged edges of their complex soundscapes that, wonky punctuation aside, makes them feel less pretentious than some of their peers. Whatever it is, Luciferian Towers is every bit the worthy follow up to 2015′s Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress and the excellent Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! from 2012. (Yeah, I know, those album titles are either amazing or obnoxious. Or maybe both?)

Metz: Strange Peace

I’ve been enjoying the early tracks from Metz’s latest, particularly the screeching ripper “Drained Lake,” and I’m thrilled that the album overall delivers. As much as I loved the band’s 2012 self-titled debut, I found their follow-up, II, didn’t really stick with me despite being more or less similarly raw and challenging. Revisiting II after Strange Peace, it’s easier to hear how the band has evolved, using noise and pummeling, post-hardcore drumming as a tool rather than a crutch. Great stuff.

There are also new records this week from The Killers, Cut Copy, Hiss Golden Messenger (which I’ve heard great things about), Josh Ritter, Chelsea Wolfe, and The Horrors, not all of which I’ve heard yet. I was also motivated to check out the new album by Wolves in the Throne Room because I’ve been making a little more time for metal and I think they have the greatest band name of all time, but, sorry, I just can’t take black metal seriously. (It’s the vocals. I think the music is terrific, but I can’t do the singing. See also: Deafhaven.) Again, sorry. It’s not you, Wolves in the Throne Room, it’s me.

[kwhitesays]

Back to Bloggin’

This is more for my information than anyone else’s, but I’m going to try to get on an actual schedule with this thing again. Between my IRL full time job and a scripted podcast project I’m writing with a friend (that is woefully behind schedule), I’ll need a strict regimen to write about the things I care about.

So the idea will be:

Mondays: Film posts

Fridays: Music posts (Album of the Week highlight, other songs/topics)

Starting this Friday, Sep 22. (No movie post today.)

[kwhitesays]

1000 Favorite Songs #173: Folsom Prison Blues

Johnny Cash, 1968

“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.”

There aren’t many more iconic openings to a record than that, huh? (Maybe “This next song is the first song on our new album!”) Johnny Cash’s career is long and his bench of great songs is deep, and he comes up several times on this list. Everything from the meticulous production to the thrilled cheers of the audience (a little of which was added in post-production, but we won’t hold that against the song) makes this a legendary recording, and it’s why Johnny is the country artist for people who don’t like country. (Me? I dabble, although I find I get more out of the style every year as I get older. I expect the number of country songs -- particularly “classic” country -- to grow as this list continues to evolve.)

[kwhitesays]

1000 Favorite Songs #677: A Letter to Elise

The Cure, 1992

The bulk of The Cure I listen to generally comes from that 1984-1989 window, from the singles leading up to The Head on the Door through the best-selling masterpiece Disintegration. I haven’t listen to much 90s Cure, but this dreamy ballad has always been one of my favorites. Wish also gives us the dopey but catchy “Friday I’m in Love” and the excellent kickoff single “High,” and is an overall pretty solid album. Unfortunately, for me nothing quite lives up to that incredible period in the second half of the 80s. (Although I do remember liking a lot of Bloodflowers, so who knows?)

[kwhitesays]

1000 Favorite Songs #496: Beyond Belief

Elvis Costello and the Attractions, 1982

Imperial Bedroom might be my favorite Costello record. The lushness of some of the baroque pop that starts rearing its head here and blending with the rougher edges of his early pub rock/punk songs is too irresistible. Plus I think it’s the first album of his I bought after My Aim Is True, so there’s a definite nostalgia factor there. “Beyond Belief” opens the album and despite its brief runtime, it sets the stage for an eclectic, whimsical album with occasional darkness and serious ambition. It’s a pivotal moment in Costello’s career.

[kwhitesays]

Does Whatever a Spider Can, Sometimes

Hi there. I’d like to start getting back into this as an excuse to write about whatever pop culture I’m digging each week, and also to plug the bi-weekly podcast I do, Comic Book Logic, with my pal and co-host, Joe. (I’m also on vacation this week, so I have a little more time to sit and put something together here.) We’re 2 movies into our “Summer of Spidey” marathon, tackling all of the mid-2000s Sam Raimi-helmed Spider-Man movies, and we were both really surprised that neither of us were particularly impressed with the second entry.

I definitely enjoyed the film more than Joe, and you can listen to our discussion here. But it didn’t strike me as deserving of as much praise as I’ve seen heaped on it in the last few years. I recalled how last year, Patton Oswalt declared Spider-Man 2 to be his favorite superhero movie (although he specified that American Splendor is the best comic book movie — a film that I regrettably haven’t seen).

And why not? Spider-Man 2 has a lot of the things I always look for in comic book movies and blockbusters like it: lots of color, quick action, memorable characters. And I appreciated how it continued the themes of the first film and kept the cast fairly small, only really adding villain Doctor Octopus to give Spidey something to shoot webs at — when they work, that is.

Personally, I think Spider-Man 2 didn’t connect with me because it does so much to recreate the experience of reading comics, something I never did much of as a kid. (I’ve actually written a bit about my limited comic reading experiences before we were doing a podcast, which I think I’ve linked to before, but here it is again anyway.) The movie is very episodic, checking in with characters somewhat regularly, even if it’s just to show that Doc Ock is still working away. You can imagine how the Spider-Man 2 story arc might play out over 6 or 7 comics, each issue adding some new dimension to key relationships, interspersed with Spider vs. Octopus action. Is that what fans are responding to?

Elsewhere

My wife, who is a diehard Harry Potter fan, accompanied me to see Swiss Army Man this past weekend, which was a surprising but ultimately flimsy film about friendship and farting. Without spoiling anything, I’ll say that I think the ending really failed to crystallize whatever the film was trying to say about loneliness, companionship, and what it means to be human, simply by being far too confusing. Right around the time we end back in civilization things start to fall apart, which disappointed me because up until that point I was completely on board with the film’s whimsical (if completely phallocentric) magical realism. There were shades of Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry in the way the film builds an entire world out of nothing for these characters to explore, but I wish the directors were able to cement those themes in a cohesive third act. Still, well worth seeing, especially since it clocks in under 2 hours.

On repeat this week is Shura’s Nothing’s Real, a terrific record rooted in 80s and 90s pop with shades of Rhythm Nation 1814 or True Blue, but distinctly modern in the way it synthesizes those influences. Despite this being a year in which I’ve been listening to a lot more punk and hard rock (more on those in future weeks), Nothing’s Real is a breezy, summery palate cleanse.

[kwhitesays]

50 Favorite Albums of 1970

Last year, for no readily identifiable reason, I spent the better part of 6-8 months listening to every notable album released in 1970. I guess part of it was a forced history lesson: throwing myself into a single year, forced to finally spend time and reckon with albums that I maybe was only slightly aware of and couldn’t really speak to with any confidence. I had my handful of favorites already, but I was curious how they would stack up against others that I maybe had never even heard.

So I ranked them, completely subjectively and arbitrarily (what, really, is the difference between my feelings on, say, #37 and #38?) and cut the list at 50 because that seemed like a nice, round number. 

Next up, 1971 (SPOILER: Hunky Dory is the one to beat).

Offered in order, according to me, with zero commentary:

50. Roberta Flack, Chapter Two

49. Paul McCartney, McCartney

48. Eric Clapton, Eric Clapton

47. The Beach Boys, Sunflower

46. Jorge Ben, Força Bruta

45. Funkadelic, Funkadelic

44. Nico, Desertshore

43. Traffic, John Barleycorn Must Die

42. The Doors, Morrison Hotel

41. Bob Dylan, New Morning

40. Fabrizio De André, La Buona Novella

39. Donny Hathaway, Everything Is Everything

38. Grateful Dead, Workingman’s Dead

37. Bob Seger, Mongrel

36. The Rolling Stones, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!

35. The Allman Brothers Band, Idlewild South

34. MC5, Back In The USA

33. Randy Newman, 12 Songs

32. Soft Machine, Third

31. Diana Ross, Diana Ross

30. Bob Marley & The Wailers, Soul Rebels

29. Elton John, Tumbleweed Connection

28. Kris Kristofferson, Kristofferson

27. Grateful Dead, American Beauty

26. Cat Stevens, Tea For The Tillerman

25. John Cale, Vintage Violence

24. Syd Barrett, The Madcap Laughs

23. David Bowie, The Man Who Sold The World

22. Tim Buckley, Starsailor

21. The Who, Live At Leeds

20. Funkadelic, Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow

19. Van Morrison, Moondance

18. Exuma, Exuma / Exuma II

17. Derek & The Dominos, Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs

16. Black Sabbath, Paranoid

15. Jimi Hendrix, Band Of Gypsys

14. The Kinks, Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Vol. 1

13. George Harrison, All Things Must Pass

12. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Déjà Vu

11. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cosmo’s Factory

10. Curtis Mayfield, Curtis

9. Nick Drake, Bryter Layter

8. Miles Davis, Bitches Brew

7. Simon & Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water

6. Neil Young, After The Gold Rush

5. The Beatles, Let It Be

4. Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin III

3. The Velvet Underground, Loaded

2. John Lennon, Plastic Ono Band

1. The Stooges, Funhouse

[kwhitesays]

My Top 20 Albums of 2015

Spotify playlist of top 100 songs

Kendrick Lamar — To Pimp a Butterfly

Tame Impala — Currents

Grimes — Art Angels

Courtney Barnett — Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

Jamie xx — In Colour

Kurt Vile — b’lieve i’m goin down...

Joanna Newsom — Divers

Sufjan Stevens — Carrie and Lowell

CHVRCHES — Every Open Eye

Father John Misty — I Love You, Honeybear

Carly Rae Jepsen — Emotion

Jason Isbell — Something More Than Free

Hop Along — Painted Shut

Natalie Prass — Natalie Prass

Destroyer — Poison Season

Beach House — Depression Cherry

Murder by Death — Big Dark Love

Waxahatchee — Ivy Tripp

Vince Staples — Summertime ‘06

The World Is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die — Harmlessness

Honorable Mentions:

Miguel — Waves

Sleater-Kinney — No Cities to Love

Shamir — Ratchet

Blur — The Magic Whip

Purity Ring — Another Eternity

Beach Slang — The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us

Julien Baker — Sprained Ankle

Deerhunter — Fading Frontier

Kathryn Calder — s/t

Foals — What Went Down

The Decemberists — What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World

Soko — My Dreams Dictate My Reality

Wilco — Star Wars

Lower Dens — Escape from Evil

The Mountain Goats — Beat the Champ

EL VY — Return to the Moon

Kacey Musgraves – Pageant Material

Jessica Pratt — On Your Own Love Again

[kwhitesays]

Revisiting Tarantino #1: Little Green Bag Edition

Reservoir Dogs, 1992

When I was in high school, I had two full-sized posters on my bedroom wall: the cover of The Clash's London Calling -- featuring the iconic image of Paul Simonon smashing his guitar -- and the promotional poster of the film Reservoir Dogs. OK, so maybe it's a bit cliche, but I was a kid whose tastes in music and film were expanding, and I was proud of my decorative choices. At the time, Reservoir Dogs probably would have made my top 10 films of all time. Even until very recently I might have considered it in my top 10 films of the 90s.

Now? Well, let's get this out of the way: I think Reservoir Dogs holds up despite its limitations, not least of all because of how much fun everyone seems to be having. But this movie is, first and foremost, a script. The dialogue is everything, and Tarantino seems to be so excited to get to direct the guys reading his lines (himself included) that he forgets to direct the scenes. This is a young, inexperienced director with a keen ear but an undeveloped sense of how to shoot the story he's telling.

Take the opening scene: the overlapping dialogue is great, even if some of it is strained and comes off as trying a bit too hard to be cool. It works because some of it is cool, and establishes a few of our key relationships early. But it doesn't establish enough of them. You don't get the sense of Keitel and Roth's father-son dynamic, nor do you get how psychotic Madsen's character is. Relationships that are key throughout the film may be established later, but those sometimes seem like different characters than the ones we meet here. This scene seems like it was written first, before the rest of the story was even thought of, and doesn't give us any real foreshadowing that might have made for a tight script.

(Arguably, Madsen pretending to shoot Keitel could be considered foreshadowing, except Madsen isn't the one who shoots him and is already dead by that time.)

And speaking of relationships, one of the things I was missing was a sense of where Keitel's sense of responsibility for Roth comes from. The earlier scenes don't really give us any indication that these two even spent any real time together. Does Keitel see something in Roth that makes him so protective of him? Does he have a son, maybe one Roth reminds him of? It feels like a scene is missing, one with just the two of them, maybe establishing that dynamic without giving away too much (to avoid personal information). A scene like that might have really tightened up the script and added an emotional layer to the warehouse scenes.

Watching Reservoir Dogs again for the first time in many years, I wouldn't exactly say I was disappointed, but I was surprised by how far down in my esteem this movie has fallen. I have no posters on my walls these days, but if I did (and a list has been growing), I wouldn't consider hanging this one up. Guess sometimes you grow up, tastes evolve, and priorities change.

Still love London Calling, though.

Sidebars:

Tim Roth is either the best actor in this movie or the worst. My friend and podcast co-host, Joe, calls him "the British Nic Cage," and after this I couldn't agree more.

The racist stuff is really off-putting here. It's worse than Pulp Fiction for sure. On some level I understand the defense that this is how these guys would talk, but it's gratuitous and disgusting here. It's tempting to blame the characters but they are fictional, after all. Tarantino wrote those words, and at least with regard to this movie, some of the criticism against his use of racial epithets is justified.

I love Chris Penn in this movie way more than I remembered.

Nope, still can't hear "Stuck In The Middle" without thinking of this scene. A whole generation with a permanent association made by this movie.

[kwhitesays]

A Letterboxd list, just for a larf

Favorite films of the decade so far: 2010-2014

By no means is this comprehensive, as there are still a lot of movies I need to catch up with, and from what I know of them, a lot may end up somewhere on here: Once Upon A Time In Anatolia; The Past; Before Midnight; The Act Of Killing; Winter’s Bone; Take Shelter; Martha Marcy May Marlene, to name a few. But this more or less jives with my individual lists for each of the last 5 years, such as they are.

Top 15:

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Frances Ha

Boyhood

The Master

Dogtooth

Her

The Tree Of Life

Holy Motors

A Separation

Under The Skin

Inside Llewyn Davis

Certified Copy

The Cabin In The Woods

Margaret

It’s Such A Beautiful Day

[youdroppedyourgrocerylist]

Post #1 from guest blogger Nic Wehrwein!

David had learned the hard way that there was hell to pay if he did not follow mother’s shopping list to a T. He had gone to Penzey’s and Whole Foods, but now he was at a loss—did he need to purchase both wood and kambucha, OR was he supposed to go to Woodman’s to get the kambucha?

David was never seen again.

Nic is a Chicago-based, Chicago-loving screenwriter and playwriter extraordinaire. He cofounded a production company named after two of my very favorite things: coffee and whiskey. You can check them out here or on Facebook or follow him on Twitter (@coffee_whiskey). 

[kwhitesays]

Comic Book Logic: The comic book movie podcast for people who don’t really like comic book movies

For the last few months, my frequent podcast co-host Joe and I have been putting out a bi-weekly show that works our way through the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or “MCU”), one film at a time. We’re close to the end; our most recent episode is on Iron Man 3, which means we have just a few more to go until we’re completely caught up with the MCU.

My issues with the entire concept of the MCU are well-documented on the podcast, so I won’t spell them out here. The short version is that I find the whole idea of mapping out a whole slew of movies a decade in advance — including automatic sequels to movies that haven’t even come out yet — distasteful and annoying. A sequel should be earned. The first Iron Man was hugely successful and a ton of fun, so sequels make sense. But the first Thor film was a complete mess for many reasons we discuss in that episode, and despite however much money it made, a sequel really doesn’t feel earned. Thor (the character) is barely present in Whedon’s Avengers film, showing up a ways in and not saying much throughout the rest of the movie. Why are we spending so much time with him?

Maybe I’m just getting prematurely annoyed because that automatic sequel, Thor: The Dark World (a.k.a. Thor 2: The New Batch) is next up and I’m not looking forward to it.

Of course, the next question is the future direction of the podcast. I’m happy to continue discussing comic book movies once we’re caught up — there’s certainly no shortage, and exploring the history of comic book characters on the screen will continue to be a relevant topic in pop culture for a long time. But why stop at superheroes? Plenty of graphic novels and comic strips have been adapted (with mixed results, to say the least) and the variety would do me and our handful of listeners some good.

If nothing else, I know Joe is extremely eager to discuss Marmaduke, so you have that to look forward to.

[kwhitesays]

The delirious horror of BLACK SABBATH

In the spirit of getting this thing transitioned to whatever it’s going to be, here’s something I self-published back in September 2014 in an attempt to start a blog that didn’t go anywhere.

My Halloween horror watching usually starts in mid-September, giving me plenty of time to revisit old favorites and discover new movies I haven’t yet seen. This year I noticed that a selection of movies from Italian director Mario Bava, considered by many to be the grandfather of Italian horror, were available on Netflix Instant, beginning with the 1960 witch-rises-from-the-dead-to-exact-her-revenge flick Black Sunday (aka The Mask Of Satan, which actually makes more sense as a title). My familiarity with Bava was regrettably limited to the bizarre spy film Danger: Diabolik (immortalized by its selection for the final episode of Mystery Science Theater: 3000 and also its parody in a Beastie Boys video) and the excruciatingly terrible House Of Exorcism, which was a chopped up US release of his 1974 film Lisa And The Devil.

Finally getting a chance to dig into Bava, I expected a fair amount of camp, some bad dubbing, and buckets of blood. What I didn’t expect was some of the most visually compelling and, beginning with the horror anthology Black Sabbath, deliriously colorful films I’d seen in a long time.

Black Sabbath was made on the heels of 1963’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much, which, as its title suggests, borrows heavily from Hitchcock to create a slightly spooky murder mystery with ample twists and turns. It’s a striking film to look at, and Bava’s long career as a cinematographer before taking the director’s chair gave him a keen eye for lines and shadows, hugely important in noir and mystery filmmaking. The Girl Who Knew Too Much isn’t a horror film, but it is suspenseful, and its terrific use of black and white makes me wish Bava had waited a bit longer before jumping into color.

But black and white simply would not have done Black Sabbath justice. The above image of Boris Karloff, taken from the anthology’s vampire segment “The Wurdalak,” shows just how saturated the color palette can be. Blues, reds, purples, and greens abound throughout the film, and the costumes are suitably theatrical. It’s a welcome contrast to the drab, washed out sepias and cold blues of most modern horror.

That said, much of the color in the version you’ll find on Netflix comes from the less nuanced approach of American International Pictures for the US release. (The movie’s Wikipedia entry shows some side by side comparisons to illustrate the differences between the Italian- and English-language versions.) I may not have a point of reference for the original version, but I suspect Bava’s intentions shine through regardless, and Black Sabbath exceeds both Black Sunday and The Girl Who Knew Too Much in visual flourish.

The first segment (according to the English-language version available on Netflix that I saw, which differs from the sequencing of Bava’s original), “The Drop Of Water,” is a straightforward tale of the vengeful corpse variety: a woman steals from the body of a recently deceased medium, finds herself haunted by sounds and flies, then gets visited and menaced by the body, now a slowly walking ghost-zombie. Bava punches things up by having the corpse be one of the most ghoulish pieces of nightmare fuel I’ve ever seen. I mean, seriously, just look at this thing:

Nothing in the rest of the film—not even the scenery-chewing visage of Boris Karloff—compares to the sight of this creature, with its bizarre face frozen in a contorted grimace coming straight at the camera in the segment’s penultimate scene. It’s a predictable conclusion, like all of the segments, but one that Bava plunges into with gusto, bathing the ghostly scenes in psychedelic purples, greens, and reds and off-kilter camera angles.

In “The Telephone,” Michèle Mercier plays Rosy, a woman harassed by a mystery caller who can apparently see her and eventually is revealed to be the ghost(?) of a former employer and/or boyfriend, Frank. The details are murky because Bava’s version was heavily recut: the nature of Rosy’s lesbian relationship with Mary and references to prostitution were removed, and Frank is given a weird supernatural treatment that contradicts the violent confrontations he has with each of the women. Because of this tampering, “The Telephone” is the weakest of the three segments, although it’s hard to imagine even Bava’s original cut comparing with “The Drop Of Water” and “The Wurdalak.”

Taking a unique approach to vampire lore, “The Wurdalak” explains that a wurdalak only feeds on the blood of “those whom it loves the most.” Thus, the vampire curse spreads through a family in 19th Century Russia, including a small child. Despite knowing what needs to be done in order to prevent the boy from returning as a wurdalak—staking and beheading the body—his mother refuses to allow it, with predictable results.

Karloff gets generous screen time as Gorca, the family’s patriarch who returns home as the most obvious vampire in all of Russia. Everyone knows he’s become a wurdalak, and Karloff seems to savor his grisly scenes, like removing his partner’s head from his pack and ordering it to be hung outside the door. The segment is as goofy as it is creepy, and the deep blues and purples of the midnight backdrops make for a lot of campy fun.

The availability of Black Sabbath on Netflix Instant, along with some of Bava’s other horror and genre work, hopefully means more movie fans will get to experience it. It’s a terrific little movie, and Bava’s impact on generations of Italian filmmakers and horror filmmakers around the world was profound. I’m looking forward to spending more time with him this season.

[kwhitesays]

What the heck is a Tumblr?

I created this blog-thing a while back (see below!) as a means of documenting and exploring my digital music library. It was an ambitious project with no real scope or agenda, and that’s fine, since no one’s really reading it. Once things seemed to fizzle out, I wrote off Tumblr as something I wasn’t going to keep up with.

Then The Dissolve, my favorite film site staffed by a bunch of my favorite writers, shut down. I knew a few of them used Tumblr as a means of communicating their freelance projects and keeping up with fans and colleagues, and I thought it was an acceptable way to keep up with their work going forward. That required me to log back into my Tumblr account and do some retooling to transition this blog from its original format (as Vinyl Exams, named for a short-lived podcast I did) to... something else.

Anyway the main reason for this post is to get America off the top of my page. Perhaps getting this going will get me back into writing about things I find interesting, and, like the former-Dissolve writers I’m following here, I’ll document things here for the sake of doing so. Cheers.