Most Anticipated Films of 2010

2009 is over. The 00s are over. It’s time for a new decade and an exciting new year of movies. Some years, I’ve had to scrounge around to find enough movies to fill out this list, but this year I’ve got an overflow. Of course, three of them are the same films that topped last year’s list, but hopefully they’ll all make it out this year, and hopefully this will be a great bunch of films. First off, some films I’m looking forward to that didn’t make the list include Alice in Wonderland, Toy Story 3, Scott Pilgrim, Cemetery Junction and Kick-Ass. Here’s my ten most anticipated…

10. Tron Legacy - If I had to honestly guess, I’d say this will be a terrible film. The first Tron is pretty bad, though it does have some charms, and I think what I’m looking for from this film is not what it’s going to deliver. So why is it on here? It’s primarily because it’s being scored by Daft Punk and in my mind, I see a 90 minute avant garde burst of light and strange visuals, accompanied by a killer new Daft Punk score. The teaser reel shown at Comicon is pretty great, but I just fear the actual dialogue and narrative will kill the experience. So, let’s hope there’s not too much of that, and we can focus on the abstract Daft Punk experience. Bangalter’s score for Irreversible was the best score of the decade, let’s hope he matches it here.



9. Your Highness - I love the old David Gordon Green, “the next Terence Malick,” but he’s chosen now to become the next Ivan Reitman. Still, as long as he makes films as entertaining as Pineapple Express, I’m down. I’d love to see him do a non-studio project next, but the cast here is fantastic, with James Franco, Danny McBride and perhaps too much hipster cuteness to believe with both Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel in the same film. The premise is great, and hopefully it’ll be a really fun epic comedy. And, the thought of Natalie Portman in the role of a warrior princess brings to mind her fantastic work in The Professional, so I’m eager for that.



8. The Green Hornet - I remember the old 60s series, which was most notable for its great theme song. The film offers a lot more, with Gondry and Rogen sure to bring us an unconventional action film. The issue for me is that I’ve seen diminishing returns from Gondry’s work since Eternal Sunshine, his visual tricks have gotten a bit stale, and Be Kind, Rewind just didn’t work that well. Rogen has a similar problem, where his schtick has been so prominent, it doesn’t have the fresh quality it did in Knocked Up. But, Rogen’s never done a bad film, and maybe matching Gondry’s visual style to a blockbuster structure will make for something really special. The presence of Christoph Waltz is a great bonus, coming off an instantly legendary turn in Inglorious Basterds.



7. The Runaways - I’m pretty confident the two preceding films will at least be entertaining, this one’s more of a question mark. I like the premise, and musician biopics can be a great frame through which to explore social and cultural change. Of course, only filmmaker has used them in that way, the brilliant Todd Haynes. But, with director Floria Sigismondi at the helm, I’m hoping this will be something more than your typical rise and fall narrative. She has an amazing eye, and I’m eager to see what she does with a more long form work. The trailer looks pretty exciting, but I fear that she’s going to be constrained by a weak narrative and that she doesn’t have the clout to do Haynes style avant garde visual indulgence. But, it looks like a fun film and will hopefully deliver.



6. Kaboom - Gregg Araki followed up his most consistently great film to date, Mysterious Skin with a goofy throwaway, Smiley Face, that was unjustly neglected by its distributor. But, he’s back in his classic thematic wheelhouse with this tale of teenagers in a wacky universe of craziness. The initial stills look great, and I love Araki at his most personal and experimental, so I’m eager to see how he brings the style of The Doom Generation and Nowhere into a new era. His Twin Peaks comparisons only make me more intrigued.



5. The Black Swan - Speaking of films that have too much hipster cuteness, here’s Natalie Portman and Winona Ryder in the same film. And on top of that Vincent Cassel. But, the real attraction is Darren Aronofsky who’s following up his “comeback” The Wrestler with a thriller that sounds inspired by Argento’s Suspiria. I think Aronofsky’s never made a film that wasn’t great, and I’m eager to see him continue to branch out. I’d like to see a bit more stylistic experimentation here than in The Wrestler, but I’m sure whatever he does will make the film work. For all the attention that his technique gets, he always does a great job immersing you in character subjectivity, and that seems like a perfect technique for a film about identities in crisis.



4. Somewhere - Sofia Coppola is another director who’s never made a film that wasn’t great. Her new one sounds like a retread of some Lost in Translation themes, but I’m confident in her taste, and am sure that even if it is narratively similar, there will be a lot of wonderful images and moments to enjoy. I loved Marie Antoinette, and think she’s been consistent in really using film as a medium in a way that so few other filmmakers can. An assist from her partner Thomas Mars on music will only make it even sweeter.



3. Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance - This film was released in Japan in June, but thanks to the horrific distribution of foreign films, it’s still not made it over here in either a legal format or a subbed DVD release. But, it’s slated to drop on DVD in the spring, and I’m eagerly awaiting checking out this new film which diverges from the timeline of the original series to offer something new. Anno is one of the best filmmakers out there, and I’m sure he has good reason to revisit his masterpiece and bring it into a new, modern light. This film also introduces my favorite character from the series, Asuka. And, if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll see 3.0 this year as well.



2. The Tree of Life - It was a big disappointment when this one didn’t make it out this holiday season, but hopefully we’ll see it in the late summer as rumored. Malick is a master filmmaker, telling stories through film in a way that no one else even tries to, and this sounds like his most ambitious, cosmic project yet. I’m also really excited for the rumored Imax companion project. It’s going to be very annoying if this film turns up on the most anticipated of 2011 list.



1. Enter the Void - Another film that’s been released abroad, but hasn’t been seen here yet. The film got a mixed reception, but every critical review only made me want to see the film more. It sounds like a groundbreaking, sensory experience that redefines what cinema is capable of. Irreversible was the most innovative use of filmmaking in countless years, and I can’t wait to see Noe push it further with this film. I’m hoping to go to Europe in the spring, and if the film hasn’t made it here by then, there might have to be a special trip to France to check this one out.

Best of the Decade: Albums

There’s a bunch of catching up to do with best of lists. Look for the best film and TV of 2009 tomorrow, but for now, here’s the best albums of the decade…

10. Justice – Cross - I like a lot of things about Daft Punk’s Human After All, but Cross seems a lot more like the second best Daft Punk album of the decade. Of course, Justice do have their own slightly harder aesthetic, crafting some of the most intense dance songs of all time on tracks like “Phantom” and “Stress.” But, they could still kill it on the best hipster dance anthem of all time, “D.A.N.C.E.”

9. Scissor Sisters – Scissor Sisters - The album leads off with a succession of instant classic hits, ranging from the glam rock of “Laura” to the rock stomp of “Take Your Mama” to the Moroder inspired neo-disco of “Comfortably Numb.” Those three songs alone would make a classic album, but the rest of the album doesn’t let up. It’s one of the all time great debut albums.

8. The Raveonettes – Pretty in Black - The Raveonettes are a strange case for me, I like everything they’ve done, but I absolutely love this album. They bring the hidden darkness of 50s pop to the fore, crafting songs that seem to come from another world. Rockers like “Somewhere in Texas” or “Twilight” are great, but the best song for me is by far the ballad “Uncertain Times.”

7. The Polyphonic Spree – Together We’re Heavy - On their first and third albums, the Spree generally played tightly structured songs, only on this album did they sprawl out for epics befitting the massive size of the ensemble. One of my all time favorite concert moments was hearing them open their 2004 Irving Plaza set with “We Sound Amazed,” with a sound so huge it literally shook their floor. This album feels very much of a piece, moving seamlessly through longer and shorter songs and culminating in an epic callback to the sun, that brings it full circle with their first album.

6. Junior Senior – Hey Hey My My Yo Yo - One of the greatest pop albums of all time, every song on here is an ecstatic, instantly catchy piece of musical candy. “Take my Time” is a great 80s style dance track, but the high point is the soaring tribute to music “I Like Music” which soars to Michael Jackson heights of pop greatness.

5. Phoenix – Alphabetical - Phoenix broke out with their fantastic fourth album this year, but I still don’t think they’ve topped the smooth synth sound of their second album. Very emotional, but still danceable, the album features the most consistently catchy songs of their career. “Run Run Run” is haunting, layered and totally danceable, and is always the highlight of their live set. If you’ve only heard their most recent stuff, dig back and check this one out.

4. Belle and Sebastian – Dear Catastrophe Waitress - A controversial album for many of their fans, DCW saw Belle and Sebastian shift to a more poppy direction, a change that obviously worked very well for me. Virtually every song on here is a joyous anthem, from the cheeky opener “Step into My Office, Baby” to the 80s inspired closer “Stay Loose.” The album features killer guitar solos on “Loose” and “Roy Walker,” but the high point for me is the anthemic “If You Find Yourself Caught in Love,” a pure piece of sonic joy.

3. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible - I loved many of the 00s’ anthemic multi-instrumental bands, but none of them matched the work that Arcade Fire did on their second album. Diversifying their sound from their already great first album, they crafted one of the deepest, most moving albums I’ve ever heard, full of incredibly beautiful moments. From the climactic crescendo of “No Cars Go” to the majesty of “Intervention” to the cathartic release of energy in “Ocean of Noise,” it’s an album of moments that will last forever.

2. Lovage – Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By - I’ve tried to find more albums like this after listening to it, but nothing else has matched. Dan the Automator’s production lays a soft bed of strings and mood that perfectly accompanies the vocal interplay between Mike Patton’s animal growls and Jennifer Charles’ sexy purr. It’s an album that builds its own world, alternating between skits that poke fun at the very idea of a sexy album like this, and songs that deliver on the title’s promise.

1. Daft Punk – Discovery - You could make a very convincing argument that every trend in 00s pop music began here. Autotune’s roots lie in the vocoder on “One More Time,” and were catapulted to prominence when Kanye sampled “Harder Better Faster Stronger.” The 70s cheese synth aesthetic started out as weird here, but has now become pop, thanks to bands like Phoenix and MGMT. And, most importantly, the album made it cool for music to be fun and pop and cheesy without worrying about “authenticity” or “selling out.” Discovery is as pop as it gets, and that’s its joy! It puts a smile on your face, starting with the greatest album opening run of all time, seamlessly transitioning from the disco pop perfection of “One More Time” to the hard rock dance blend of “Aerodynamic” into the 80s synth cheese perfection of “Digital Love” into “Harder Better Faster Stronger.” No album makes me as happy as this one, and no album has influenced the past decade of music more than Daft Punk did with this masterpiece.

Best of the Decade: Songs

10. Annie – Heartbeat - A perfect example of the way that pop music crossed over to the indie crowd, this song has the impeccable production of the best 80s synth pop, and a great vocal performance cooed by Annie. The song’s hook is infectious, but its greatest coup is using the ever more intense drum line to mimic the heartbeat of the title. An 00s pop classic!

9. Phoenix – Too Young - Another blog classic, Phoenix has still yet to top the pure pop joy of their first big hit. It instantly evokes the joy and tinge of melancholy of a great night out coming to an end. It’s powerfully emotional, and wrapped in a beautiful 70s style soft dance rock production.

8. The New Pornographers – The Bleeding Heart Show - As with many New Pornos song, this one is like three songs in one. It opens melancholy than crescendos to a slightly Spanish flavored swing, all the while building and building going through an unspoken bridge section, and another killer breakdown before finally exploding into the chorus: “Hey La Hey La Hey La Hey La Ooooohh!” harmonized before Neko Case cuts in over it all. A cathedral of sound, and a perfect power pop song with more hooks than a coat room!

7. Justin Timberlake – My Love - I love songs that are simultaneously danceable and emotional, and this is a perfect example of that. It blends a nearly avant garde Timbaland beat with a great vocal to create an enveloping sonic world. It also features one of the best guest verses of all time when T.I. comes in to tear up the mechanical precision of the rest of the song. Perfect for the club or for sitting alone in your room!

6. Arcade Fire – No Cars Go - The song begins in a swirl of horns and strings, as voices chant and instruments swell and drive us forward to a kind of utopia. It’s an anthem of defiance, that reaches an almost religious level of transcendence in the instrumental breakdowns, before swelling back for one more call to action. The song is a battle, and by its end, you come away exhausted and exhilarated.

5. Cut Copy – Hearts on Fire - Like a lot of the songs on here, “Hearts on Fire” is a micro-symphony, to the point that you could ask someone what’s your favorite part? Is it the bubbling synth line that underlies the first occurrence of the repeated chorus, or the Moroder like bass that follows it. Perhaps it’s the NES sounding synths in the instrumental section? For me, it’s the absolutely killer sax solo that starts as a ghostly background presence and builds to a growling climax, capping off a flawless pop song.

4. Justice – D.A.N.C.E - The greatest Michael Jackson song of the last twenty years? The anthem of Williamsburg for the past three years? One of the greatest pop songs of all time? “D.A.N.C.E” is all of these songs, an impossibly infectious song that goes from strength, a killer bass line, a great falsetto lead vocal, that weird cutting string line. The call and response finale. It’s all great! I loved this song the first time I heard it and I still love it, many listens later.

3. Arcade Fire – Wake Up - Perhaps the best film of 2009 was the two minute trailer for Where the Wild Things Are, which only reinforced the near religious power of “Wake Up.” A churning emotional buildup, “Wake Up” is a musical catharsis, that explodes in beauty and power. When the entire band comes in for the chorus, it’s chilling. And, the song even caps it all off with an exciting dance-y outro. A beautiful cathedral of music.

2. Daft Punk – Harder Faster Better Stronger - It started as a humble song, then grew to be sampled by Kanye West for the massive hit “Stronger,” and was mixed with “Around the World” in Daft Punk’s live set producing spontaneous ecstasy wherever it was played. But, the original is still the best. Masterfully using vocoder to warp the vocals into a bass line, a guitar solo and more. It features one of the most perfect bass lines of all time, and a constant sense of technological ecstasy. It’s arguably the greatest dance song of all time, and contains the raw material for many future hits.

1. Daft Punk – Digital Love - A strange, joyous expression of love filtered through 80s videogame guitar sounds and vocoder vocals, “Digital Love” is sonic ecstasy through and through. The opening guitar riff draws you into the song, before it segues into a catchy dance groove. But, things start to get crazy when everything cuts out and we hop to the b section for the “Why don’t you play the game” breakdown. Here, they juxtapose the vocal and a fantastic guitar riff, before merging the two for an incredibly joyous 80s sounding guitar solo, then cutting it all off for another breakdown backed by the most over the top guitar solo of all time, then finally bringing it all together for a smooth conclusion. It’s the happiest song I can think of, just pure joy in sounds, it’s the song every synth pop band has been trying to make for the past four years, but Daft Punk did it first and best. An undisputed masterpiece to cap off a decade of fantastic music!

Best of 2007: Top 15 Albums

A bit late on this, but I’ve been busy. Anyway, here’s the top 15 albums for 2007.

15. Kanye West – Graduation
People talk a lot about the sophomore slump, but I think it’s the third album that’s really problematic. Most artists do the same, but more for the second album, but then were do you go for the third? This album has some of Kanye’s best tracks, but also a couple of duds, most notably “Barry Bonds” and “Drunken Hot Girls,” which just don’t work. Still, the good stuff far outweighs the bad. While “Stronger” got a lot of attention, and is a great track, it’s “Flashing Lights” that stands out as his best dance track. “Homecoming” is also fantastic, with a killer piano line.

14. Jay-Z – American Gangster
The master beat the apprentice with a really great album that presents a time spanning journey between Jay’s past, present and imagined life as Frank Lucas. The lyrics tell a really interesting story, and the beats match it with a great 70s soul aesthetic. The opening, with voiceover courtesy of Idris “Stringer” Elba is wonderfully over the top, but it’s the back half of the album that really shines. “Ignorant Shit” and “Party Life” are the highlights.

13. Tori Amos – American Doll Posse
This album was frequently criticized for being too long. At 80 minutes, it is a bit daunting, and cut down to 45 or 50 minutes, it would be a lot easier to endorse. But, there’s no real bad tracks here, and a lot of great ones. I love the ethereal pop of “Bouncing Off Clouds” as well as the haunting closer “Dragon.” And, she thankfully ditches the adult contempo aesthetic of her past couple albums with the rocking “Big Wheel” and “Teenage Hustling.”

12. Bruce Springsteen – Magic
Springsteen’s popularity peaked during the arena rock Born in the USA era, but unlike a lot of other ultra-popular artists, he’s managed to remain artistically vital for over thirty years. This album has a lot to say about the world we live in today, and manages to sound contemporary without reaching for techno beats or something like that. Born to Run feels like it could have come out this year, so keeping that aesthetic works. The standout here is “Girls in their Summer Clothes,” but the record goes deep. Every track has something to say, and does so in an interesting way.

11. The Colour – Between Earth and Sky
They’ve broken up after only one album, which is a shame because The Colour did a great job of reviving 60s style blues rock for today. Recalling Zeppelin and The Doors, this album rocks pretty hard throughout. The songs can bleed together a bit, but “Silver Meadows” and “Save Yourself” are as good any rock songs out this year.

10. Rilo Kiley – Under the Blacklight
A hugely controversial album, I really liked the new direction. It’s 70s soft rock, crossed with dance beats and the occasional hint of Fleetwood Mac. I like bands that change their aesthetic and explore different sounds and styles. “Moneymaker” is a killer single, and even though I like what’s come before, I’m glad that they’re branching out. My guess is this album is the equivalent of Belle and Sebastian’s “Dear Catastrophe Waitress,” a total departure in style that will eventually be integrated into what the band was doing before on their next album. But, this album really stands up, and just because it’s easy to listen to, doesn’t mean it’s not great.

9. Amy Winehouse – Back to Black
I’m glad I saw Amy play back in March because it seems like she’s gone completely off the deep end, into tabloid land and away from the musician who put out this album. She manages to use retro style without sounding like pastiche, this is a really emotional album. While the two big singles are great, the highlight for me is the pop epic “Back to Black,” a flawless piece of work.

8. The National – Boxer
A fixture on best of ’07 lists for a reason, this album creates a world, drawing you in with the great opener “Fake Empires,” then lingering for mini suites of songs that make up the album. They have a very specific sound, the piano and strings bulking up the sound and making for some really unique songs. These are fantastic songs, and the album has a tangibility that few others do.

7. The Polyphonic Spree – The Fragile Army
As with Kanye, the third album presents something of a problem. I loved the massive epics on Together We’re Heavy, but this album scales things back a bit. The songs are still great, and few bands can match the scope of what they can do when all their instruments are in the mix. But, these songs are generally more closed in, avoiding the epic sweep of Heavy, and focusing on more concise arrangement. It’s still a great album, that sounds like nothing else out there, but it didn’t hook me like their previous albums did. But, considering how much I loved those albums, not quite matching up isn’t a huge problem.

6. Timbaland – Shock Value
An album that the critical establishment knocked even as it continues to produce a litany of top singles. People criticized the album for skipping from genre to genre without any sort of clear aesthetic. I don’t think that’s a criticism, I love that an artist can make an album that takes us from 50 Cent to Elton John. The songs are arranged in sections that flow together well, listened to on random, it would be disorienting. But, the sequencing takes us seamlessly from rap to pop to rock, with great songs all along the way. “Way I R” is a distillation of everything Tim can do well in the rap field, and probably the best track, but really, there’s a lot of highlights on here. “Scream” is fantastic, as is “Time.” Like Handsome Boy Modeling School’s White People, it’s a deliriously kaleidoscopic album, but you’d think skipping between genres and styles wouldn’t be a problem for the IPod generation. Listen to this album and you don’t need to shuffle anything, Tim does it for you.

5. The New Pornographers – Challengers
Even as their weakest album to date, this is still an amazing piece. Like the Spree, they tone down the over the top pop and joy of their previous work, going a bit more melancholy. That gives Neko Case some of her finest showcases, particularly “Go Places.” The epic “Unguided” is one of the most emotional songs they’ve ever done, and “Spirit of Giving” is a perfect distillation of the unique, poppy aesthetic of the band. It sounds like nothing else out there, but I wish that everything sounded like this.

4. Justice – Cross
The big dance hit of the year, Justice produced the album a lot of people wanted Daft Punk to make with Human After All, a fusion of hard rock riffs and poppy synths. “DANCE” stole the show, justly, but it’s a top notch album throughout. The beats are heavy, the hooks colossal, it’s a joy to dance to. “Stress” and “Phantom, pt. 2” are two of the album’s best.

3. Daft Punk – Alive 2007
This was a tough one to rank. My memories of the amazing live show are wrapped up in the disc, so I can’t judge it objectively. However, it’s pretty undeniably a fantastic mix. This should have been their greatest hits album, cobbling together pieces of nearly every song in their catalogue into a monster mix. There’s so many classic moments here, the fusion of “Harder Better” and “Around the World,” the mix of “Da Funk” and “Steam Machine,” and the crawling vocal from “Harder” over the base line from “Face to Face.” Throw this on as high volume as possible and just get lost in it.

2. !!! – Myth Takes - Another fantastic dance album, this album represents a huge jump for the band. “Heart of Hearts” and “Must be the Moon” were killer singles, perfect fusions of rock and dance, but the album didn’t stop there. I love “Break in Case of Anything” and the epic “Bend Over Beethoven” really tears things down. The dance rhythms give the music an energy and vibrancy must rock is lacking, their live show at Studio B in May was one of craziest I’ve ever been to, a mess of jumping and dancing. I’d love to see them live again.

1. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Funeral was already a great album, but this is a quantum leap from that. The scope of their orchestration is amazing, you hear things on this album you won’t hear from any other band. Think of the huge pipe organ intro on “Intervention,” or the wordless vocal breakdown on “Anti-Christ Superstar.” The album just makes me so happy, so charged. There’s a sense of deep emotion here, some regret and sadness all overwhelmed by the sheer power of the music. “No Cars Go” is the band’s opus, a climax for everything that’s come before, and “My Body is a Cage” is a haunting closer, building from nothing to an epic organ line that puts a perfect cap on the album. This isn’t just the best album of the year, it’s an all time classic. People will be listening and talking about this album thirty years from now.

Best of 2007: Top 10 Songs

10. The National – “Fake Empire”
The song opens with a rolling piano line that is just mesmerizing and that tentative march forward underlies everything that comes after. Boxer has been rightly hailed as one of the best albums of the year, and for me, all the tracks kind of blend into each other. But, this one stands out, the overture to the entire piece and a wonderful song on its own, particularly during the majestic interplay of trumpet and guitar at the song’s conclusion.



9. The New Pornographers – “Unguided”
A departure from their usual modus operandi, this song stretches over six minutes and has more of a build than their usual concise power pop songs. However, the song is just as emotional as anything they’ve done. Backed by a beautiful tinkling percussion line, the interplay of male and female vocals all builds into the ecstatic, driving chorus. Some songs just beg to be used in a movie, and listening to this one, I can see the scene in my head. It’s the ecstatic reunion of our heroes, hard fought and well earned, a happy ending after all kinds of trouble.



8. Kanye West – “Flashing Lights”
“Stronger” got all the attention as Kanye’s move toward techno and dance, but it’s this track that impressed me the most. The keyboard line is incredible, both danceable and emotional. The strings are haunting, and Kanye’s delivery is strong as well. Much like “My Love” last year, the song would work just as well in a club as it would in a silent, introspective moment. I first heard the song on the radio and was instantly impressed, I didn’t even realize it was Kanye at first, I just knew it was great. This song should have been a massive hit, I’d still like to see it get a big single push.



7. Rilo Kiley – “The Moneymaker”
Huge controversial upon its release, I loved this thing from the first listen. The video perfectly captures the sleazy funk vibe of the song. I could image the band playing this song in the Canadian club from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, accompanying the decadent drinking and drugging of a bunch of dirty people. The riff underlying this song is fantastic, and Lewis’s vocals are among her best. The whole album was great, but it’s this opening salvo that really sticks with me.



6. Timbaland – “Way I Are”
I know a lot of people have gotten a bit tired of Timbaland, but I thought Shock Value stands up well with his two fantastic albums from last year. This song is probably the most typical Timbaland song on the album, but it’s also a flawless pop song. Fusing elements of “My Love,” “Sexy Back” and “Promiscuous,” he creates a kind of uber-Timbaland song. This is the equivalent of David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., it might not innovate as much as his other work, but it fuses much of his previous work into a singularly successful work.



5. Amy Winehouse – “Back to Black”
The greatness of this album has been largely overshadowed by her tabloid antics, and that’s unfortunate. The whole album is great, but this is the high point, a perfect example of the way she makes 60s sounds relevant for today. The song builds on the percussion line before taking off into the swirling surf guitar backed chorus. I love those tambourines in the background, and this is her most emotional vocal on the album.



4. !!! – “Must Be the Moon”
One of the greatest dancerock songs of all time, this track does not stop bringing it. The bassline is relentless and I love the robotically heavy drumming. I love the rap-style vocal on the chorus, the stripped down nature of that makes the return of the entire band even more powerful. Back at college, when I was responsible for dropping music for our pre-parties, this track was a fixture. It’s one of those tracks you just can’t not like.



3. Daft Punk “Around the World/Harder Better Faster Stronger”
The best moment I’ve ever experienced at any concert is commemorated at 2:48 in the live recording of this song. Both these songs are already colossal hook machines that would have killed live, combined, they become a mutant pop song that just destroys everything in its path. Listening to the track, I’ll sometimes latch onto the “Around the World” bassline and ride that, sometimes hook onto the “Harder Better” vocal, and other times just stick to that crazy synth line. The song just keeps building as it goes on, even during the b-section, which drops some of the heaviest bass I’ve ever heard. This is a track that’s exponentially better the louder it is, only the live experience can do it justice, but put that record up high and you’ll get close. If this wasn’t based off two existing songs, it would easily rank number one on this list, and be a strong contender for the greatest song all time.



2. Justice – “D.A.N.C.E”
While Daft Punk made a resurgence, their protégées at Justice dropped a track that rivals their best. “D.A.N.C.E” is an insane fusion of Jackson 5 and house music, one of the most exuberant pop songs I’ve ever heard. Odds are strong that this track was played at every single party in Williamsburg, Brooklyn this year, and it just never gets old. This was another one that was omnipresent on my college DJ mix, and it never failed to go over. I love the disco style bassline and Goblins sounding synths. It’s a flawless pop song, and should survive on dance floors for a long time.



1. Arcade Fire – “No Cars Go”
This song is extremely special for me, an absolutely exuberant rallying cry, it’s just bursting with energy and dreams, a desire to break free and become something else. The Arcade Fire have a lot of might behind their sound, and no song showcases it better than this. It sounds like there’s a hundred trilling instruments underlying the chorus, and it only builds as it goes into the crazy breakdown in the middle of the song. Win’s shout fo “No Go!” is amazing, but the real highlight of the song for me is the segue between “Well we know!” and the instrumental solo that follows. The song is all about those transitions, taking things down to nothing, then building again to an ecstatic pace. The song’s majesterial finale is like very few things I’ve heard in music. I think the people who lived with me last year hate this song. There were a bunch of nights when I was like “I need to hear ‘No Cars Go’,” and at 2 AM, I’d play this thing real loud, and just get lost in it. It might have woken them up, and I’m sorry about that, but the final minute of this song just left me feeling cleansed and renewed, and maybe that’s worth a wake up.

Daft Punk's Electroma

Daft Punk made my favorite album of all time, the pop epic Discovery. To me, it sounds like someone from a hundred years in the future trying to make music that sounds like the 70s and 80s. It’s simultaneously kitschy and totally sincere, never more so than on the standout track, “Digital Love.” Ever since Discovery, the band has been a bit frustrating. Taking four years to do a followup album, then boasting about how they made it in only two weeks, Human After All was something of a disappointment to everyone. I don’t think it’s so much what the album was, as the fact that it wasn’t like Discovery, it didn’t try to please an audience, it just did its thing.

I always liked the album, but it’s only in 2007 that it’s become clear that Human After All is a small piece of an expanding media empire for the band. They put on one of the greatest live experiences of all time, and have now produced a film that explores the themes of Human After All, and the band’s self created mythology in a really interesting way. This film is an assured piece of work, one of the most idiosyncratic and challenging debut features of all time, complimenting their recording work and, much like their albums, existing in a nebulous 70s/future state, somewhat retro, somewhat future, but certainly not anything like the world we live in today.

The precursor to this film is the three videos Daft Punk directed for Human After All. The first, Robot Rock, introduced the new look of their robot characters, black leather motorcycle outfits replaced the more colorful Discovery era look. Technologic expanded things, with the weird organic robot creature that spit the song’s lyrics. The best by far was “Primetime of Your Life,” a work that on the surface should be somewhat campy, a girl whose family is all skeletons feels she’s too fat, turns into a deeply disturbing work. It’s almost hard to watch the video, watch her literally tear herself apart. The album was minimalist, but the videos expand the song’s scope, in the same way that the live work does, reappropriating the pieces of Human After All as the base elements to support the more poppy hooks of their first two albums.

The final piece of the experiment is Electroma, a work that doesn’t actually feature any of their music, but still feels utterly of the universe they created in their recent work. The film feels a lot like Gus Van Sant’s recent death trilogy, rambling and minimalist, at times testing the audience’s capacity to engage with minimal images, and a non-narrative structure. Like in Van Sant’s films, the lack of plot allows us the engage more directly with the images and emotion of the moment. There’s no dialogue in the film, but we can still understand what the characters are feeling, and that’s a triumph of filmmaking.

Visually, the movie is consistently surreal and dazzling, recalling the varied sights and digressions of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain. By putting everyone in the film in robot helmets, ordinary scenes take on a menacing, otherworldly quality. The film’s first act is mostly about setting up this universe, showing the robot people going about their everyday lives, while our two main characters look on with trepidation. The filmmaking has a consistently slow pace, letting us dwell in the images before moving on. In that sense, the town scenes have a tableau quality, the people feel deliberately staged for us.

From there, we shift to the white room, where the two robots are remade into crude humans. Visually, this scene is amazing. The attendants wear pure white outfits, and blend in with the background. So, when they reach out to the robots, they it appears like an arm coming out of nowhere. When they carry stuff later on, the item seems to just float through the air. Here, the robots are given crude human faces, out of nasty flesh colored slop and false features. It’s a striking birth scene, simultaneously the most alien place in the film and the most relatable. Throughout, this film just hits so many visual motifs I love, a white room, robots, weird looking desert, cool leather jackets, this is the kind of stuff I like to see in movies, and Daft Punk created a movie with all of it.



One of the interesting things about movies is that the least respected movies and the most respected both rely almost exclusively on visuals. Big budget action movies are criticized for being nothing but eye candy, while at the same time, the arty crowd hails people like Malick and Wong Kar-Wai for making lush, visual opuses. I think the difference is that the big budget films don’t create any emotion in the visual, they just stick a CG effect out there and expect that to wow you on its own. With the WKW or Malick films, the visual dazzle is about creating an emotion. With Malick’s best works, it’s a surrender to a spiritual experience. The New World begins with an incantation to the gods, and the rest of the film is a trip back in time to a place and moment that once was.

Electroma is a similar kind of visual experience. This is a film where every frame is interesting to look at. The props are aesthetically interesting, and the visual composition striking. If I like looking at the images, it makes it a lot easier to enjoy a film. I love movies that focus on making images that pop and are fun to look at. Even a movie like Irreversible, horrifying as it is, is so visually striking, you can’t look away. The problem with classical Hollywood conventions is that they focus exclusively on telling a story and ignore the joy that can come from a great visual. When things are working well, the visuals contain in them emotion and thus enhance the story.

In this film, the images are meant to lull you into a trance, where you get lost in the rhythms of what’s going on. The story exists to provide additional emotional context for the images, but what we’ve got here is really just three silent short films where everything you need to know is in the visuals. The first of these was the trip through the town, the second is the robots’ experience with their human masks.

Wearing the human masks, they wander through the streets, getting odd stares from the townspeople. Read on an allegorical level, this film, like 2001, is about evolution. The robots go into the white room and come out changed, a new form of existence. However, this is a world that’s not ready for change. They want to be human, but only the surface is changed, not the soul. The human masks do not give the confidence of true humanity, instead they’re a caricature. It’s a robot’s attempt to be human, not the sincere thing.

The most disturbing section of the film was when their faces started melting and they were chased out of town. The camerawork here was very cutty and handheld, an obvious choice, but still effective. The really disturbing section was in the bathroom, as they tore the human masks off their robot faces. It’s the grunginess of the bathroom that makes it work. This isn’t the clean sci-fi space of the white room, it’s a nasty public bathroom, the dreams they had in the spirit-space quickly breaking apart when they come into contact with reality. That’s a central piece of the film’s thematic message, the dichotomy between the dreamspace of the white room and the real world. In the white room, the facial prosthetics look utterly convincing, when brought into the real world, they seem grotesque. For all we know, there was no white room, it was just the robots doing the makeup themselves.

Next up, they retreat into the desert, the section of the film that seemed to cause problems for most people. Yes, it’s a lowkey part, without much narrative drive, but it still works for me. They don’t push things as far as Van Sant does, there’s always something interesting going on, be it in the visuals or soundtrack. Throughout, the sound design and music are impeccable. I was disappointed when I heard Daft Punk weren’t going to be doing music for the film, but the soundtrack they’ve chosen is fantastic. Most of the songs have a 70s feel, and listening to them, you can hear the roots of Discovery. These songs are a bit softer though, with a couple resembling artists like The Carpenters. I always enjoy that 70s soft rock, and it’s often unjustly maligned. I don’t want a world where every band sounds like The Carpenters, but listening to them every once in a while is great.

The sound design, aside from the music, was very effective. There were odd, disconcerting tones creating a weird mood. Thomas Bangalter did the score and some sound work for Irreversible, and this film features some similar work, with the sound deliberately altering the way the audience views the film. Watching this movie makes you realize how little most films actually do with sound.

During the desert sequence, we segue into an interlude set to Linda Perhacs’ “If You Were My Man.” It’s a gorgeous 70s soft rock song, and while it plays we get helicopter shots of desert hills and mountains, which gradually segue into a shot of a naked woman from the ground level, positioned so that you’re not sure if it’s a woman or more mountains. It’s a really pretty sequence, and a succinct encapsulation of the film’s themes, the tremulous borders of humanity. What is humanity and how do we exist in relation to nature?

The film raises a lot of philosophical questions, but doesn’t delve too deeply into them. It’s more interested in what the visuals can do, and letting you bring your own meaning to the visuals. The lack of dialogue helps the film avoid the pretentiousness that could come with people talking. It’s a really relaxed movie, with a sadness hanging over all of it.

It’s interesting to me that Daft Punk chose to explicitly put their logo on the robots’ jackets. The robot characters they made were a fantasy personality put on to separate them from the press, to separate personality from the music. As such, we speculate not on how the film comments on their own lives so much as its relation to the mythology they constructed. Working in electronic music, there’s always this issue of where the ‘reality’ of their music is. The samples aren’t theirs, but they made them their own. In many ways, the film parallels I’m Not There in its exploration of false identities and the mythology surrounding a beloved musical artist. The closest we get to seeing the real humans behind Daft Punk are those grotesque masks. But, the film itself implies that they are not human, the robot beneath is the truth, no matter what they try to do.

The desert sequence eventually leads to despair as silver helmet robot decides to kill himself. The self destruction was a beautifully poetic sequence, the ticking clock setting us up for a stately demise, only to be jarred by the explosive death. This is where the film reminded me most of Jodorowsky, it hit the same spiritual place his work dwells in, the open desert a lonely and desolate place which tests man’s souls. There’s a deliberateness to the sequence, but it works. Once you’re in that headspace, you don’t want things to move faster.

The second robot’s attempt to kill himself is hard to watch, his inability to reach the self destruction switch. This leads to the gorgeous, haunting final shot of the robot on fire moving through total darkness. It’s a striking image, the total blackness of the surroundings really making it work. I wasn’t expecting the film to end there, I thought they would eventually meet some real humans, but end it did, and in retrospect, it would have been a betrayal of the story universe to have real humans.

Ultimately, this movie did what a film should, it presented astonishing images and put the viewer in another mental space. Movies like this are frequently rejected with the claim that you should only watch it under the influence of drugs. For me, the movie itself is a drug. It puts you in another mental space and lets you get lost and wander around there. The sights are breathtaking and beautiful. It bothers me that all children’s fiction is about wonder and strangeness, but once we get older, people want to reject that fantasy in favor of something more “real.”

Reality is not interesting in and of itself. I live the most realistic movie ever every single day and it’s not that exciting. But, representing those same conflicts and feelings in an allegorical genre space, as this movie does, basic conflicts become something extraordinary and wonderful. This movie is powerful and made with care and enthusiasm. Though it’s their first film, Bangalter and Homem-Christo have an innate understanding of how movies work. There may be some rough patches, but films are not about being polished and smooth, they’re about fire and excitement, and that’s what this movie has. This is a movie unlike anything else I’ve seen, and it’s easily one of the best movies of the year. It’s the kind of movie I want to see a lot more of.



EDIT: Here's an interview with Daft Punk about the film. It's rare they do interviews at all, so it's nice to hear them talk about the film. Hopefully they'll do a full commentary and give us some more background on the DVD.

Daft Punk @ Keyspan Park

This show was easily my most anticipated show of all time. Just reading about the show and watching the videos on Youtube was a rush. Discovery is my favorite album of all time and really sent me in a different direction in terms of the music I listen to. I bought these tickets back in March and after a long wait, the day finally arrived yesterday.

I got to the show a bit late, since I was coming out of work, so I only caught the tail end of The Rapture’s set. They were pretty solid, and I do love their music, but tonight was not the night to see them. I’ve heard they’re playing a Halloween show, and I’ll definitely check that out if it happens, but opening for Daft Punk is something of a thankless task. I moved up the field towards the center of the stage as Kavinsky and Sebastian spun. They played some strong tracks, and set the mood well. I saw Kavinsky destroy Studio B in June, one of the funnest shows I’ve been to this year, but again, this was just prelude.

The screens went dark and the Close Encounter notes started to play, I knew things were about to go down. A lot has been written about their live shows, so I’ll skip the obvious. I’d seen the Youtube videos and knew their basic tricks, but it’s still a very different thing to see it live. As the pyramid emerged, it was smaller than I imagined, I’d built this up so much in my head, there was bound to be a subtle disappointment as my imagined version gave way to reality.

I feel like it took a little bit for the crowd to get into the show. There was a lot of enthusiasm, but the section of crowd I was in seemed more interested in photographing the show than jumping around and dancing. I was a bit worried that would happen, since they had the 125 people shooting the show on mini DV. But, before the end of ‘Robot Rock,’ I shifted towards the center and found a patch of crowd that was more into the show.

A large part of what made the show so amazing was the way they built the set. ‘Robot Rock’ is a song people know, but it’s not one of their megahits, most of those were saved for later in the show, with the less known tracks working as warmup. When ‘Technologic’ dropped, things started to pick up, but it really broke out with ‘Crescendolls,’ which had most of the crowd, or at least the crew around me, shouting “Hey!” at the top of our lungs.

Hearing the clear pop of Discovery emerge out of the darker tinged electro of the early part of the set was a revelation. I think part of the reason they didn’t do this sort of live show for Discovery is that they need the darkness of Human After All to balance things out. Those effusive tracks are much more excited when contrasted with the pounding darkness of a “Steam Machine” or “Brainwasher.” I think Human After All is a generally successful album, but I’ll admit it was a bit of a letdown after the brilliance of Discovery. But, those tracks provided the base that let the Discovery tracks kill. And then the Homework tracks are also still around, serving as great bridge and backing for the more hooky tracks from the past couple of albums.

Things kicked into high gear with what was arguably the greatest song I’ve ever heard live, the mix of ‘Harder Better Faster Strong’ and ‘Around the World.’ Separately, these songs, but combined they become a monster live track that had me jumping all around with everyone in the audience. Daft Punk’s songs are all about the mixing of elements, knowing when to bring in a bass or high line for maximum impact. Here, the two songs are mixed to perfectly compliment each other, creating something that was almost too much to absorb. I’d find myself getting into ‘Around the World,’ then shift over to ‘Harder Better,’ and ultimately just let go and absorb it all.



The other highlight was the slow build mix of ‘Face to Face’ and ‘Harder Better.’ This was accompanied by the green square computer graphics, and built over a slowed down vocal to a bustling groove. Next, they dropped the bells that open ‘Aerodynamic,’ grabbing audience cheers, then surprisingly dropped ‘One More Time’ to even more cheers. At this point, everything was going nuts and it was just a completely ecstatic experience. It was a communal experience unlike any other concert I’ve been to, I was completely lost in the music and the dazzling light show. Ultimately, that kind of experience is something you get so few times in life, it was thrilling to have last night.



The other incredibly sick mix was the mashup of ‘Brainwasher’ and ‘Da Funk,’ which also prompted a singalong. Watching these two screw around with their catalogue and create an entirely new work out of the existing pieces made straight up rock shows seem totally insignificant by comparison. I still do love live music, but this was an entirely different art. Even knowing what to expect, I was blown away by what they pulled off.

A lot of people have been saying “Best show ever” about this one, and I have to agree. After the 90 minutes, I was completely satisfied. I’d have loved more, but I didn’t need it, and that’s the sign of a good show. I think everyone left there completely satisfied with what they got, and as the two of them disappeared into the steam, jackets lit up saying Daft Punk, the mystique of these two only increased. If you want to know how good this show was, I’ll just say that I’m seriously considering making the trip to Vegas for their next show. I don’t want to wait to be a part of this again.

Weekend Update

A New Blog Order

Well, as you might have noticed, The Invisibles blog series has concluded. I think it was successful, I learned a lot about the series, and had a lot of fun reading it through again. I was looking up some Invisibles stuff on Google and kept finding my own posts, so hopefully it will stand as a long term resource for people reading through the series. I'm going to make an index page for easy linking. Along with the end of The Invisibles, we're approaching the end of another long term project, the Babylon 5 blog series. I've got two more on Crusade and then one on Legend of the Rangers, then that's over. And, for the first time since November, I'll have no long term blog project. What this means is I can write up more films and general stuff, get back to the way things were before 2007. I know I have some people who haven't read The Invisibles or watched B5, and all I can say is keep the RSS feed, we'll be getting some more stuff of general interest coming up.

Concerts

Part of that will be a lot more concerts. I'll be back in New York starting next week, and have a bunch of shows lined up for the next couple of weeks. I can get into a bunch of shows free due to my Blog Critics writing, so I'll be able to go to even more than I normally would. Here's my upcoming agenda...

5/31 - !!! @ Studio B
6/1 - Cansei de Ser Sexy @ Irving Plaza
6/5 - The Pipettes @ Highline Ballroom
7/1 - The Polyphonic Spree @ Warsaw
7/4 - The New Pornographers @ Battery Park
7/20 - DJ Tiesto @ Hammerstein
8/9 - Daft Punk @ Coney Island

And I'm sure there'll be a bunch more in there as stuff comes up.

Series Enders

Two series that I've blogged about here in the past have come to an end, Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars, both have fallen from my esteem this season. Veronica never actually had that much of my esteem, I watched the first two seasons on DVD, where they flowed smoothly and had enough momentum to bring me to the conclusion. But, this year I lost track of things and stopped watching around midseason. I have no particular desire to see the rest, and am not sad to see the show cancelled. Honestly, you can't say they didn't give a chance. Any show that makes it to three seasons and doesn't catch on can probably go. And, this isn't a case like Arrested Development where it got awful time slot shuffling. They put it after the highest rated show on the network and it still didn't make it.

As for Gilmore Girls, I've seen through episode 16 of the season, and will likely finish it soon. But, it just doesn't feel like the same show without the Palladinos, and as such, the show I knew ended last season. I'm one of the few people who loved season six of the show, and I'd have loved to see where the Palladinos planned to take things. Oh well, at least the show had a good run. When I do finish it up, I'll write up the last couple and give some reflections on the series as a whole.

Music Update

Upcoming Concerts

I'm back in New York for the next two weeks, on break from school, and it's going to be a big time for shows. I'll be happy when I graduate next year and can get to shows whenever they are, but for the past couple of years, I've been fortunate that there's been a lot of great shows in New York during my time off. Here's what I'll be going to:

3/10 - The Raveonettes @ Southpaw
3/11 - The Pipettes @ Luna Lounge
3/12 - Either The Raveonettes or Pipettes again
3/13 - Amy Winehouse/The Pipettes if I can get tickets
3/20 - The Colour @ Pianos
3/22 - North @ Sin-e
3/23 - Elysian Fields @ Joe's Pub

That's a lot of shows, my densest bunch yet, but it should be a lot of fun. The 3/22 show with North will feature a video backing designed by me. They played it at a show in January and apparently it went over well, so I'm eager to see my work in action. I'm heading out to The Raveonettes soon, and a review will follow.

Blog Critics Work

As part of my affiliation with Blog Critics, I've been getting a bunch of free CDs to review. I wrote up Amy Winehouse earlier this week, and I'm listening to The Colour right now. I also get the bonus of getting into the Colour show for free. It's a great setup for me, I'd write this stuff up anyway, so if I can get into places for free, that's a great bonus. The only issue is that there's so many people on the mailing list, most of the good stuff goes really quickly. I'd like to eventually get connected with these publicists for this site only, and have access to whatever I want to review.

Daft Punk Tour

The biggest news of the week for me was the announcement that Daft Punk will be doing a US tour this summer. Discovery is my all time favorite album, and I hear their live show is mindblowing. After hearing about the tour, I decided to watch a little bit of their Coachella set, and wound up watching the entire hour and twenty minutes on Youtube. The way they mix elements from all their songs, creating new compositions live is phenomenal. I'm not sure how much is actually done live and how much is prerecorded, but I'd enjoy just listening to their music really loud with other people who were into it, so hearing the live remixing is just a bonus. I've actually never been a techno show, so it'll be a fun experience. August 9th can't come fast enough.

New Tori Amos

This week we also got sneak peeks of two tracks off Tori Amos's new album. They both sound much better than anything off her last two albums, a bit edgier, more emotional. I love her first five albums or so, but I never really got into Scarlett's Walk or The Beekeeper. Maybe it's just I haven't listened to them as much, but they don't quite work. These new tracks sound right up there with the best she's done. 'Big Wheel' is a 70s style rolicking rock song, bringing back memories of 'God,' but with some Scissor Sisters in there. 'Bouncing Off Clouds' is more classic Tori, but with a bit of a trip hop feel, like a lighter Goldfrapp song. It's also great, and I'm curious if she can keep up this quality for the whole album. I'm pretty excited though, and I'd like to see her live when she tours around, perhaps even for free.

2007 Movie Preview

2006 was a pretty good year for cinema, a lot of my favorite directors had projects coming out, and most of them turned out quite good. And next year looks like it should have an equally exciting plethora of new films to delight and enthrall.

10. Electroma - This is Daft Punk's film about a robot's quest to be human. It's supposedly very experimental, and seems like the kind of thing that could be either great or tedious depending on your mood. But, I love the trailer and I'm very curious to see what they do as film directors. I'm not sure what the status of this is, it showed at Cannes back in May, but I havent' seen much since. Hopefully it will re-emerge and get a 2007 release.

9. Smiley Face - This year, Gregg Arkai became one of my favorite directors, and I'm eager to see some new work from him. that said, this one sounds like a much more straight ahead mainstream comedy than he's done in the past. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, as long as he maintains his own voice in there. The plot, surrounding a woman who eats some pot brownies and has a crazy day offers the potential for some Doom Generation or Nowhere style craziness. After the intense drama of Mysterious Skin, he's earned a lighter film.

8. Be Kind Rewind - Another director's lightening up for a more accessible mainstream comedy. However, with Gondry at the helm, it's sure to be idiosyncratic and full of weird, wonderful images. The premise, that a guy who work sat a video store gets zapped with a magnet, erases all the tapes, and has to remake them himself, is absolutely ridiculous, but full of comic potential. Jack Black is great in the right role, and this sounds like it has the potential to harness that School of Rock go getterness. The combination of him and Gondry should be brilliant.

7. Grindhouse - Tarantino has never made a film that's less than great, and he's only gotten better as time passed. So, I'm going to check out anything he does. That said, I feel like this film will allow him to indulge all his worst instincts, and the premise, a slasher film with a car as the killer, is pretty inane. Without considering the director, the Robert Rodriguez side of the project looks a lot more interesting, Rose McGowan with the machine gun leg is genius and we've even got Freddy Rodriguez, Six Feet Under's Rico, in the film. Ultimately, I think this will be a joycore film, full of so much love from the creators, you can't help but get caught up in it.

6. Sweeney Todd - Burton made a virtually unmatched run of quality films from 1988-1994, but since then he's been a bit underwhelming. After the good, but not great Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I said that he should do a musical, so I was excited to hear he'll be adapting Sweeney Todd. I haven't seen the show, but the subject matter fits perfectly into his visual world. Rarely do you see a musical that fully uses the possibilities of cinema, I'm really excited to see what Tim brings to it. On top of that, there's a fantastic cast, Johnny Depp, Alan Rickman, Sacha Baron Cohen and even Anthony Head. This has the potential to be Burton's best film in a long time.

5. I'm Not There - Normally, I would be disgruntled that we're seeing yet another musician biopic. These films are usually boring reenactments of culturally iconic moments that give no real insight into the person they're interrogating. The only two musician biopics that really worked were Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and Velvet Goldmine, both directed by Todd Haynes, and what do you know, he's directing this film as well. Haynes is a conniseur of pop culture, using cultural trends to examine the direction of society as a whole. Superstar and Velvet Goldmine are more about a time and place than specific people and I'd imagine this film will be the same. The fact that there's seven actors playing Dylan could potentially be gimmicky, but it makes me think this'll be a crazy, surreal film and that's a good sign. He's never made a bad film and I doubt he'll go wrong here. Plus, the cast is just fantastic: Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Heath Ledger to name just a few.

4. There Will Be Blood - Finally we're getting a new Paul Thomas Anderson film. Magnolia is the best film of the past twenty-five years, PTA the rare person who's equally adept at writing and directing. Paul himself said he didn't think he'd ever top Magnolia, and I'd agree, but I'm still eager to see new work. There's not too many details out on the project, but I've got to say, a period piece of this nature is not what I'd really want to see from him. Still, all his films are amazing in their own way, and someone with his talent is going to make films that are full of compelling details even if the whole doesn't work. I'm eager to see some stills or a trailer because right now I really have no idea that this movie will be like. It's just PTA's name that earned it this place on the list.

3. I'm a Cyborg (But That's OK) - After wrapping up the Vengeance Trilogy in spectacular fashion, Park Chanwook moves on to a lighter, but still odd, comedy. The premise of this one is great and I think it has the potential to be that rare kind of movie that is simultaneously very funny and very touching. It's difficult territory, but the hard edged sensibility of Park means we won't drift too far into melodrama. And, as the trailer shows, virtually no one working today can make images as striking as Park's.

2. Southland Tales - Many of my favorite films have been described as self-indulgent messes, so I wasn't too wary when Southland Tales got savaged at Cannes. I'm increasingly less concerned with narrative coherence, instead interested in seeing moments of cinematic transcendence, and even the bad reviews concede this film offers those. Kelly's Donnie Darko is one of the best films ever, even though every re-edit and comment he makes about the film makes it sound like he has no idea why it worked in the first place. But, I still believe in him, this one sounds so over the top weird, I can't wait to see it. If Inland Empire showed us anything, it's that a three hour, barely narrative piece of directorial self indulgence can be utterly satisfying. Of course, Kelly isn't Lynch, so this one could really just be bad, but there's only one way to find out.

1. My Blueberry Nights - Wong Kar-Wai is the best film director of all time, he has redefined the way the medium can be used, inventing a totally different, more emotional, language for cinema. No one works like he does, and no one makes films like his. So, a new Wong Kar-Wai movie is an event. 2046 was a great closer to one part of his career, and My Blueberry Nights offers a lot of changes. The major one is that he's shooting in America, in English, with an American cast. I love the Hong Kong cityscapes his characters usually inhabit, but Happy Together worked well in Argentina, pushing WKW to even more visual experimentation. Perhaps shooting in America will do the same. An article I read about the shooting made it sound like this will have plenty of classic Wong Kar-Wai moments, though they're taking place in a Midwestern diner instead of a Hong Kong fastfood stand. He's got a fantastic cast, and the way he works, he seems to push people to their best work. And, it'll be great to have my first viewing of this movie in a theater instead of on an import DVD.

In addition to films, there's a few other things I'm eagerly awaiting.

True Blood - Alan Ball's work on Six Feet Under is some of the best writing ever, and I was thrilled to hear he's doing another HBO series. This one involves vampires. A supernatural conceit like this should allow him to mix things up a bit from Six Feet Under. Rarely do you see a TV auteur like Ball do a second series, primarily because a series uses up so much story, how much can one man have left? Clearly, SFU was very personal, and I'll be curious to see how the way he reimagines his trademark themes to fit in this new genre context. I'm not sure if the show will actually premiere this year, but whenever it starts up, I'll be there.

The Sopranos - More HBO, we're going to finally see the end of The Sopranos in April. There are a select group of TV shows that I consider to be in the pantheon, the absolute best series, and The Sopranos is the only one is still on the air. I'm really curious to see what happens in the final season, will Chase continue the lethargic, introspective style of the second half of the sixth season or will things rev up and end in fire? I'd guess it'll be more of a fade away than a burn out, but we'll see. Even when it's frustrating, there's no current show that can match it.

New Babylon 5 - I've still got a lot of material to go through, but I'm happy that JMS is doing some new stuff in the Babylon 5 universe. The direct to DVD format has been much discussed as an option for continuing cult shows with a small, but devoted fanbase. I would love to see the movies become wildly successful, and possibly open the door for the Buffyverse direct to DVD movies Joss wanted to do. He claimed it came down to a budget issue, so maybe some success here would inspire Fox to do an about face and fund those movies. Maybe it's been too long, but if Babylon 5 can return after eight years, why can't Buffy after only three?

Buffy Season Eight Comics - Speaking of Buffy, if we can't get DVD movies, at least there's something coming in. I'll be picking up a monthly comic again for the first time in a while. It's been too long since I spent time with these characters and I'm eager to see what they're up to. The preview pages indicate we're still in a season seven millieu, which doesn't thrill me, but I'm sure there'll be some great stuff in there as well. I don't know that a project like this has ever been attempted, a canon continuation of a series in comic book form by the original creators. I'm excited to see how it works.

Morrison/JH Williams Vertigo series - This one is the most hypothetical. In a recent interview, Grant said he was working on an original series for Vertigo with JH Williams on art. The two of them did amazing work on the two Seven Soldiers bookends, in the first creating an entire universe of believable characters and then destroying it in only thirty pages. The second was a hypercompressed pop speed pill, one of the most dizzying, awe inspiring single issues I've ever read. Morrison's projects are frequently riddled with artist problems, the few times all has gone well on art, as with Flex Mentallo, We3 or Kill Your Boyfriend, he's made masterpieces. The thought of JH on a long term project with Morrison is almost too much to handle, I just hope that it happens.

Music I've Been Listening To

In the ongoing journey through life you encounter many things, and in my recent journeys, I've been listening to some new albums.

Daft Punk - Human After All: Discovery by Daft Punk is one of my favorite albums of all time. It's a brilliant concoction of music that simultaneously sounds like it's from the 70s, the 80s and the future. It walks the line of campiness, but never strays too far. 'Digital Love' is one of the greatest songs of all time. So, understandably I had high hopes for Daft Punk's new album, Human After All. I have sort of mixed feelings about the album. On the one hand, it's great fun to listen to and has some excellent tracks, notably 'Robot Rock' and 'Human After All,' but it's also disappoiinting since it doesn't even approach what Discovery did. If this was just the follow up to 'Homework,' I would probably like it a lot more since I wouldn't be expecting that much. But Discovery is such a great album, I can't help but feel disappointed. A lot of the tracks have very cool elements, but they're not played with in the same way previous Daft Punk songs were. There's not enough variation. But, remove this from its context, and it's a really nice techno, and one I've thoroughly enjoyed listening to, and probably will far into the future. I think I just have to admit that Discovery is something of a standalone creation, and enjoy it for what it is, rather than seek more of the same.



Gwen Stefani - Love, Angel, Music, Baby: Speaking of Discovery, that's an album that did a great job of sounding simultaneously retro and very now. And with her solo album, Gwen Stefani pulls off the same, with the greatest 80s album never made. Now, I liked some of No Doubt's stuff, but other than a few tracks (Hella Good, Hey Baby, It's My Life), they didn't really grab me. But, after hearing the opening track off this album, 'What You Waiting For,' I was intrigued, and I got the rest of the album, and it did not disappoint. I love the 80s sound, but a lot of tracks from the 80s just aren't that good, this album gives you everything you would want from an 80s song, but also brings it subtly into the present day. This is one of the few albums where the singles aren't the best tracks on the album. 'Rich Girl,' which is pretty popular on radio right now, is probably the worst track, and even at that, it's still great. The album has an incredible pop sound and is just so fun to listen to.

This is an album where pretty much every track is great. 'What You Waiting For' is a great energetic opener, and after a couple of weaker hip hop type tracks, she busts out the first 80s ballad, 'Cool,' which reminds me a lot of Yazoo's 'Only You,' but also stands on its own. The use of synth in this song is beautiful, it belongs in a Wong Kar-Wai film. 'Bubble Pop Electric' with Andre 3000 is pretty bizarre, but lives up to the title with some bubbly pop. It's a smart, fun song. 'Luxurious' uses the same sample as 'Big Papa,' but it puts it in a different context and makes it work. This leads into a four song run that is perfect. 'Crash' continues the car as sex metaphor, the lyrics may not be groundbreaking but the song works. 'Real Thing' is an update of New Order, featuring a cameo by them, and it may be the best song on the album. Gorgeous guitar work, great vocal, it works. 'Serious' also deserves props. Then, 'Danger Zone' is hard hitting synthpop that just owns. It's a track that begs for an extended remix, since it's got an absoultely killer riff, and great use of bass. The last track's the only real dud, sounding like a reject from 'The Love Below,' but that doesn't stop this from being one of the best albums I've heard in a long time. Good pop music is an art, and with this album, Gwen proves she's a master of it. Retro without being dated, it's an album that seems effortless. This really is a must listen to album.




Doves - Some Cities: Another great album from one of the best bands at work. 'The Last Broadcast' is one of my favorite albums of all time, so I was hoping for an equally great followup and the Doves pretty much deliver. I don't think it's quite as good as Broadcast, but with each listen it's growing on me. They do some really interesting things on here that pay off quite well. There's an odd vocal processing on Snowdon that's great and makes the track. 'The Storm' goes for an almost trip hop feel in the middle, and that really works. 'Black and White Town' and 'Sky Starts Falling' are great rocking tracks and 'Almost Forgot Myself' has a nice upbeat melancholy. 'Walk in Fire' is a great track, but sounds a bit too similar to 'There Goes the Fear,' and the middle of the album slows down a bit too much. That said, it's still an awesome album and a worthy followup to The Last Broadcast. I'm really looking forward to seeing them live on my birthday.



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Daft Punk

Yesterday, I listened to Daft Punk's album Discovery in a way that I had never really listened to it before. Normally when I play an album, I'm listening to it in the background as I do something else, the better the album, the less complex the activity I'm doing, and I was planning on doing a little drawing when I played Discovery, but 'One More Time' started playing and I just sat on my bed and really heard it, in a way that I had never before. I listened to 'One More Time,' and it just flowed into 'Aerodynamic,' then 'Digital Love,' and for the rest of the album, I just sat there in the dark really hearing the music. It's an absolutely phenomenal album, that I feel like I only got for the first time yesterday.

The brilliance of Daft Punk is in the way they play with the elements of each song. Most music is based around a vocal, and the music exists to support that vocal. This has produced a lot of great music, but that doesn't mean that variety isn't good. What Daft Punk does is construct songs where each element is of equal value.

The most notable thing about this in listening to them is the way they use vocals. Rather than doing extended lyrics, with verses and stuff, they have only a couple of lines in each song. Think of 'One More Time,' there's about four lines in a five minute song. There's some slight variation towards the end, but there's no verse/chorus structure. What 'One More Time' does is blend together a few elements, the staticy guitar part, the bass, the vocals, and use them in different combinations throughout the song. Rather than doing chorus/verse, what Daft do is gradually build up the song, adding elements as time passes, then in the middle remove all the elements except the vocal, and gradually bring everything back. It may seem like it's just some guy saying the same thing over and over again, but that's only if you look at the song from a vocal-centered perspective. There's a ton of variation.

'Digital Love,' my favorite Daft Punk song, and one of my favorite songs period, uses a vocoder to make the voice blend in with the music, and become almost abstracted. There's more lyrics in this song, but it's not really about the lyrics, it's about the way the vocal is blended with the 80s style guitar. At the end of the song, the "Why don't you play the game" part, the vocal and guitar do a call and response, and the guitar has as much melodic weight as the vocal, it's not an echo, it's more like a duet.

Perhaps the best song at abstracting the vocal is 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,' which repeats the title refrain in different contexts to make an incredible song. The vocal becomes basically pure beat, and the variations throughout the song are incredible. On the last song of the album, 'Too Long,' the vocal is reduced to one repeated line, and mixed in with a bunch of other elements, which gradually phase in and out of the song, slowing things down and bringing them back again.

Daft Punk are masters are manipulating the listener, they know just how long to sustain a loop, and exactly when to bring it up again. This is especially apparent on the non-lyric tracks, like 'Verdis Quo,' and 'Superheroes,'which use repeated vocal loops over the course of the entire song.

That's one of the reasons I love Michel Gondry's video for 'Around the World.' It represents each element of the song with a type of creature (robot, skeleton, mummy, etc.) which really allows you to see how they manipulate all the elements of the music. The Spike Jonze Big City Nights video is great, but Gondry's is perhaps the best music video of all time in the sense that it so perfectly visually represents the song.

While they are masters at song construction, ultimately a lot of the greatness comes down to the instrumentation. Discovery uses really distorted 80s style guitars, and it gives it this wonderful disco type atmosphere, that is at once very retro, and almost futuristic. The bubble pop type noises on 'Something About You' are a highlight, as is the entire 'Digitial Love' song, which is impossibly cheesy, yet completley pulls it off. I don't like that song in an ironic way, it's an out and out great song.

Then, today I played Daft Punk's new album Human After All. On the first listen, the title track and 'Robot Rock' were standouts. Human After All is definitely a move back to the more subdued, instrumental work of their first album, Homework. There's no songs with any real lyrics, like 'Digital Love.' There's also less of the 80s style stuff, it's a harder album. I don't think I'll ever like it as much as Discovery, but it's a nice addition to their canon.

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More Pop

I noticed in that last post that almost all my images of pop involved people with guns. What's so cool about guns? I don't know, I don't like them in real life, but in movies, they're awesome. Perhaps it's because it's such a great prop, it gives you power and gravity. I'm all for gun control in real life, but in the movies, sometimes a firearm is needed.

Anyway, movies and comics, we know what's pop there now. But what about music, and my other favorite medium, TV? TV's probably a bit easier, since it's basically the same as movies. The most pop show on TV now is Alias. It's all about dressing up cool and being a spy, few things are more pop than that. The show is at its best when it busts out really cool, innovative costumes, in interesting settings. Sometimes the plot gets lost, but at least they always look cool, no matter what they're doing.

The other pop TV show, one that has both substance and surface is Cowboy Bebop. This series is beautiful to look at, and for a good chunk of its run is a salute to being cool. Spike is the ultimate pop character, and the music of the series creates some amazing purely aesthetic/music moments. Like The Invisibles, this show is at once beautiful, but also has a lot of depth. You can appreciate it on many levels.

Music is a tougher realm. Despite having an actual genre called pop, I don't think that catergory includes all of what is actually pop in music. It's tough to actually describe what makes a song pop, it's more one of those things where you hear it and you know it. The best pop album of all time is Daft Punk's Discovery. The songs are really hooky, with really infectious beats that just make you smile. 'Digital Love' is perhaps the most pop song of all time, with vocoder vocals, great quasi-cheesy guitar, and just phenomenal music. What are the lyrics? Not great, but they work in the context of an undeniably pop song. On this album, you've also got 'One More Time,' 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' and 'Something' forming an army of brilliant pop songs. They dress like robots, this must be pop.



A recent album I listened to that was incredibly pop was Gwen Stefani's Love Angel Music Baby. 'What You're Waiting For' is genius. Other than this sort of fluffy club type music, we've got another favorite genre of mine, Britpop, from people like Oasis and Travis. These are songs that aren't trying to reinvent the wheel, but they work as really entertaining pop songs.

The undisputed masters of pop, the Morrison of music, are The Beatles. What they did was create songs that are at once incredibly complex, and imminently pop as well. 'Magical Mystery Tour,' 'Strawberry Field,' 'Penny Lane,' these are all great songs that really pop, but are also really deep, with a ton of instruments that work together to form an interesting whole. Too many bands today that make really 'important' albums like The Beatles did get bogged down in really ugly music. Pop music is always beautiful, and that's what The Beatles' stuff was.

I think that's one of the main problems with much of today's music that's actually popular, stuff like Linkin Park, Korn, etc. It's just so ugly, there's no sense of joy in the making of the music. That's part of the pop aesthetic, in The Invisibles, you can practically see Morrison loving any minute of his writing, I can't see Linkin Park doing the same.

So, why is pop a dirty word in music? Why is it synonymous with selling out, and why is being beautiful and melodic somehow not a goal? I feel like a prime case to explore is that of Radiohead. They made one of the best pop albums of all time, The Bends, which, like The Beatles' stuff, is complex and groundbreaking without sacrificing great song writing and beautiful musical moments. Then they drop an even better followup, OK Computer. From there, there probably was a need to reinvent, but they go so far in a glitchy electronic direction that they lose a lot of the pop train, making music that's so self consciously distant from their past stuff, it becomes much less entertaining. I enjoy Kid A, but the fact that it's less melodic doesn't make it better than OK Computer. I love electronic stuff, and if Radiohead had dropped something like DJ Shadow or Massive Attack on us, I would have loved it. However, they straddle an odd line between electric and rock, not really committing to either, and therein lies the problem.

This isn't to say that all music need to pop, pop is more instantly listenable, but there's merit in music that's more mood than melody. As much as I do love Sub Sub's really poppy single, 'Ain't No Love (Ain't No Use),' I like the stuff they make as Doves much more, even though it is definitely less pop.

Some of the bands I like correspond to Wong Kar-Wai's less narrative (melody), more mood. Air feels sort of like a Wong Kar-Wai movie, where you're not letting a vocal guide you, you're more just enjoying every moment of the music.

So, pop in music, it's indefinable, but a lot of really good club stuff has it, and when it works, it's horribly undervalued. I'm unashamed to say that 'Like I Love You' and 'Rock Your Body' by Justin Timberlake are two of the best songs of recent years. These are infectious songs that just pop.

Pop, when you hear it, see it, or read it, you just know it somehow.

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