Jenny Lewis

Another musical fox.

Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley.

Music Review: Under the Blacklight

I know I'm late to the party. But there's barely anyone at the party. Still I dig it.

It's...

Under the Blacklight

Rilo Kiley

2007.

Semi-literate thoughts:

Love any song with Jenny Lewis' twang. Dislike any song with leads by Blake Sennett (i.e. "Dreamweaver"-- although, on another listen "Dreamweaver"'s not bad). This really feels influenced by the brilliance that was Jenny's sideways endeavour-- Rabbit Fur Coat by Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins. As such, most of the album is carried by Jenny's vocals. It feels country, garage, techno, garage, I don't know what, indie rock.

And it's a very sexy album at that. It's mostly a thematic, but it feels like it could be a concept album.

Here's the video for "The Moneymaker." My favourite song is probably track nine, though, "Smoke Detector."

The Last Time I Fell in Love

She said "Am I right?" about 10 times in a row and that was the last time I fell in love.

Twas so lovely, I plucked a star from that sky, a shiny orb from among the starlight as a token of that love.

Horror on Home Video: The '80s

The last three (3) DVDs I bought were:

• Prince of Darkness (1987)
• Monkey Shines (1988)
• C.H.U.D. (1984)

Awesome? Awesome.

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Culper Ring

I love that spy shit. Real, dirty, gritty espionage, black ops, moral grays, for god or for country. I eat that shit up. Here I got my bowl and my secret decoder spoon. And my wooden teeth. Nom nom nom.

We're taking it back. We're taking it back. We're taking it back. To the 18th century. Spy rings and spymasters. The American Revolutionary War. 1778. General Washington has ordered this spy ring, this Culper Ring, to infiltrate New York City. The redcoats, the limey bastards, have taken the City, that was almost two years ago.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

The Endangered American Hobo

It was a golden age...

Film Review: The Boxer

The Boxer.

Directed by Jim Sheridan. Written by Sheridan & Terry George.

Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Emily Watson, Brian Cox, Ken Stott, Gerard McSorley, and Eleanor Methven.

1997.

The Boxer is at its heart a love story. One set amidst a backdrop of Belfast immersed in the tensions of IRA conflicts, both external (with the British) and internal (among the IRA, themselves). But a love story, nonetheless.

It is more thematically strong then that suggests though as it is also a pastiche of Shakespearean tragedies. Day-Lewis and Watson are star-crossed lovers. Day-Lewis the titular boxer, ex-con and patsy for an IRA bombing and Watson his childhood sweetheart and current "prison wife" of a friend and fellow IRA patsy. The concept of "prison wives" present a strong undercurrent of the social politics of The Boxer. IRA women are expected to stand by their imprisoned husbands, at all costs. There are consequences of life and death which go with it. Where the love story sets the tone of the piece, the thrust of the plot is provided by the Macbeth and Lady Macbeth characters of McSorley and Methven who endanger the peace and ceasefire Cox as Watson's father and IRA grand poobah is trying to establish. Methven especially underplays it to perfection with her sly whispers of condescending remarks made under her breath.

As one comes to expect from the rare Daniel Day-Lewis film, he does have that one really explosive, showy scene where he really raises his voice, but I find his best scene is instead the quiet one between him and Watson stealing a moment of tenderness and honesty in her doorway in the dead of night. This is where the script really shines, giving the actors dialogue to sell the love story so their acting doesn't always have to do all the heavy-lifting (although, there acting, as in the previous beach scene, had already sold that love, but without the open honesty brought forth in this scene).

Sheridan, brings a workman-like presentation to the material, that fits the world, if not setting any auteurist theories on fire. Especially interesting is as how he presents the British laissez-faire attitude towards violence as represented when Lewis travels to London to box, and the referee won't call the fight despite the decimated, yet still-standing Nigerian fighter's bloodied countenance.

There are many fact-based IRA-set films out there; this is not one of them. But it is a great snapshot of that world. Nonetheless.

Cinematic Incongruities I

Penelope Cruz is a great actress in Spanish. Penelope Cruz is a terrible actress in English.

One Line Synopsis II: The Wicker Man

Nicolas Cage runs around in a bear suit beating up women.

(source: The A.V. Club's Nathan Rabin)

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Mary Sue

Another deep sea... ahem, not going to go that route anymore.

No, instead I present to you, Mary Sue. A Mary Sue is a super-idealized, wish-fulfillment, author-proxy of a character, often appearing but not limited to fan fiction. And since I'm planning of writing a little about Star Trek I thought it amusing that Wesley Crusher is cited as the prime example of a Mary Sue.

Mary Sue, ladies and gentlemen.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Sonic Incongruities I

I've listened to Jonny Greenwood's soundtrack to There Will Be Blood more than I've listened to the newest Radiohead album, In Rainbows.

Fuck you, it's Family Day

And we're going to celebrate it in the traditional Family Day-manner!

Famous People: That Guy from Student Bodies

A couple of weeks ago I attended the opening night of the inaugural Toronto Romanian Film Festival held in Innis Hall on the University of Toronto campus. Showing was California Dreamin' (Endless). While I won't go into specifics of the film, it does contain English-speaking roles, and as such a Canadian actor filled one of those roles and was in attendance. That's right: I saw that guy from Student Bodies in person. It's been awhile since I saw this Can-Com teen classic, but he, Jamie Elman, played Cody.

For illustrative purposes, here now is a picture of him as Sigmund Freud:

The MaRS Simulacrum

The MaRS Centre currently occupies the Heritage Building, a former wing of Toronto General Hospital located at 101 College Street. The MaRS Centre is the center for the MaRS Discovery District, a not-for-profit medical research corporation, MaRS once being a backronym for Medical and Related Sciences.
This forward-thinking association and this brownstone, only fit when you consider that behind the facade that is the MaRS signage: a sheet of fake brick print containing the MaRS logo is steel. The wind will peel this layer away, revealing the MaRS is not quite what it appears to be, an uncanny display that questions the reality of the cityscape, but becoming a hyperreal truth in its own right.

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Byford dolphin diving bell accident

I must be on some sort of aquatic kick. It's got stop man. The sweet highs, the bitter lows, they're becoming too much. I can see the intervention now... anyway, let's get back on topic.

The Byford dolphin diving bell accident was the explosive decompression of a Norwegian semi-submersible oil rig in 1983. One of the divers "violently exploded due to the rapid and massive expansion of internal gases." Horrendous as these events may be, they offer valuable real world scenarios in the effects of decompression, especially as it may pertain to space, or science fiction.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Film Review: The Notebook

The Notebook

Directed by Nick Cassavetes. Written by Jeremy Leven based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks.

Starring Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, and Gena Rowlands.

2004.

I could have done without the old people.

Conversations with God: Punishment

God must be punishing us.

Oh, mad one, why do you punish us so? Is it because we work for a living?

"In a way. It's that you awake at such an ungodly hour in the morning."

But isn't that punishment in itself? Isn't that punishment enough?

"You'd think so but no."

Chapter Headings II: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

#1: Othello
#2: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
#3: Wuthering Heights
#4: The House of the Seven Gables
#5: The Woman in White
#6: Brave New World
#7: Les Liaisons Dangereuses
#8: Madame Bovary
#9: Pygmalion
#10: The Mysterious Affair at Styles
#11: Moby-Dick
#12: A Moveable Feast
#13: Women in Love
#14: The Housebreaker of Shady Hill
#15: Sweet Bird of Youth
#16: Laughter in the Dark
#17: The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales
#18: A Room with a View
#19: Howl and Other Poems
#20: The Taming of the Shrew
#21: Deliverance
#22: Heart of Darkness
#23: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
#24: One Hundred Years of Solitude
#25: Bleak House
#26: The Big Sleep
#27: Justine
#28: Quer Pasticciaccio Brutto de Via Merulana
#29: Things Fall Apart
#30: The Nocturnal Conspiracy
#31: Che Guevara Talks to Young People
#32: Good Country People
#33: The Trial
#34: Paradise Lost
#35: The Secret Garden
#36: Metamorphoses

Authors: Marisha Pessl

"Marisha Pessl grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and now lives in New York City. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, her debut novel, won the 2006 John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize."
If all authors were as smoking hot as Marisha Pessl, I would read more books. And by read more books, I mean stare intently at the back cover for hours on end, and cease being a functional human being.

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Deep-sea Gigantism

Deep-sea gigantism is not the name of my erotic physical reaction to fish as the tabloids would have you believe. Rather, it is the disposition of deep-sea dwelling creatures to grow to a larger size than their shallow water compatriots. Possible explanations include the major motion picture Cloverfield now playing in a theatre near you.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Man in the Mirror III

Living in a basement apartment, I have low ceilings. So naturally things like the bathroom mirror are a little lower too. How disconcerting is it to see your headless body, paraded like a slab of meat, put all on display like an object? I'm a person too, damnit.

Bloody Super Sunday

I don't have cable living in the 'Rhino. And yesterday was the Super Bowl. As such, I couldn't watch the Super Bowl. As a sort of methadone for my situation, I thought an injection of testosterone in the form of war movies could be the shit. So I watched Black Hawk Down and Jarhead. Now Black Hawk Down was worse than I remembered and Jarhead was better. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed both, but Black Hawk Down is like this action movie take on Modern Warfare, which I don't mean to make sound unappealing, was more style than substance. Jarhead, on the other hand, is essentially about the ennui of war. I.e. Soldiers in the suck, but not the shit. More will be forthcoming. (Also need to upload my entries for the days I've missed updating). Peace out.

The Weather Office

When I check the weather at work, the company intranet provides a link to The Weather Office. Now this is a government website. What a bunch of socialist bastards. I know our flag is red, but come on! I don't need the government telling me how the weather is. At home, I check The Weather Network. I'm talking private sector. The private sector has all the weather I'll ever need.