David Fincher had a little chat with MTV where he mentioned doing a Fight Club musical. It doesn't look like he was joking. He wants to debut it on Broadway in 2009. That's the 10th Anniversary of the movie. Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, is reportedly on board. Trent Reznor is considering writing the music.
Oh, come on! Honestly...this is just ridiculous. I can't even make fun of this. The very idea of the Fight Club musical makes fun of itself. How depressing...
I always wait until a bit into January before publishing my yearly Top Movies list. It's the only way to be sure I don't miss anything crucial, though I tend to end up missing crucial films regardless. Once again, if a foreign film opened in America in 2007, I consider it fair game. And even if it didn't, but I saw the film in 2007, it counts. Just so you know.
15. Hot Fuzz
There's a lot to like about Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's loving parody of overblown Hollywood action films, from the deliriously over-the-top violence to the bevy of sly, unexpected cameo appearances - but what I mainly remember all these months later is the fantastic, scenery-chewing supporting performance from Timothy Dalton. The precise quality that made him the worst James Bond EVER (and I'm including George Lazenby here) - the self-conscious smarm - makes him the ideal foil for Pegg's beyond-high-strung hero cop. It runs about 20 minutes too long and starts to wear out its welcome, but it is an homage to Michael Bay movies, after all, so perhaps it's not even overlong enough.
I've heard several people - friends and film critics alike - refer to Juno MacGuff as an unrealistic portrayal of a teenage girl. Now, I agree that the sarcastic, snappy comments Diablo Cody has provided for actress Ellen Page on every page of the Juno script don't always seem to fit the gravity of the situation in which the character finds herself. But that's not the same as saying that the character herself doesn't seem realistic. I'd say Juno is one of the year's most compelling, genuinely human protagonists. Plenty of sharp teen girls have this kind of offbeat, smartalecky personality, if memory serves. Not every teen is the vapid sort you'd see in...well, in almost every other movie.
Also, I'd like to note that, in response to this idiotic argument raised in certain segments of the blogosphere, claiming Juno as a pro-life movie because she considers having an abortion and then doesn't go through with it, the movie is very clearly pro-choice. No one at any point states or even implies that the decision to have the baby is anyone's but Juno's - her parents, the baby's father, the State, NO ONE ELSE voices an opinion on the matter. To claim that a film in which a woman goes through with a pregnancy is automatically pro-life suggests that the pro-choice side roots for abortions. "Why aren't any girls in movies these days getting abortions? That's why I don't go to the theater any more! Too few abortions!"
Rocket Science is about a stutterer who joins the high school debate team to get closer to a girl, which is an extremely silly high-concept premise. That description makes it sound like the latest edition of those reprehensible direct-to-DVD American Pie sequels.
American Pie: Master Debators! Oh, shit, I'm writing that down...No one steal that...
Instead, Rocket Science is a minor-key, extremely heartfelt and personal story about a likable kid who gets in way over his head and then decides to follow through anyway. (Granted, as a former awkward, shy teenager and high school debater, I probably found the movie more relatable than most will, but that doesn't make me doubt its quality as a motion picture).
At first, I was a it disappointed with David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, which had easily been among my most anticipated 2007 films. I think it's because I'm used to Cronenberg films working on multiple levels at once - most of them are esoteric, cerebral films that function on a superficial level as genre exercises. Eastern Promises, on the other hand, is just a genre exercise. It doesn't really go any deeper than that. But it's an exceptionally well-made genre exercise, and it would spiteful to ignore its pleasures merely because of its limitations.
The script is unfortunately structured and takes some rather outlandish, unnecessary turns. The central character (an unusually stiff Naomi Watts) isn't particularly sympathetic and lacks proper motivation to embark on a dangerous journey through the Russian underworld. The film is kind of all over the place, and winds up telling several different, moderately interesting stories at once rather than a single, relentlessly gripping one.
But Cronenberg's eye and innate understanding of the mechanics of suspense are as sharp as ever, aided by Peter Suschitzky's claustrophobic cinematography. Together with a very brave Viggo Mortensen, they craft the year's most memorable fight scene, a virtuoso, single-take bit of savagery in a Russian steam bath. It's entirely possible Cronenberg made this entire movie just so he could shoot this scene.
This was the first film from writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, and it's a surprisingly accomplished work for a debut, successful both as a thought-provoking allegory about free will and oppression and as a Hitchockian thrill machine. This is a story of a True Believer who gradually realizes he has been taken in by a grand, sinister lie, and the gradual awakening process is navigated delicately, without a lot of melodramatic speeches or heartfelt confessions, such as you'd get with a Hollywood version of the same story.
It has about 2 endings too many, but The Lives of Others has stuck with me all year, since I first saw it back in March.
Herzog's latest adventure film isn't as big or as personal as his standard fare. Like Eastern Promises, this finds a great and idiosyncratic filmmaker sublimating his usual techniques and just telling a story simply, on its own terms. Sure, it's still got some Herzoggian grandeur and fascination with man's struggle against the power of the natural world. Christian Bale and Steve Zahn play U.S. soldiers (based on two real guys) who escape a POW camp through the Vietnamese jungle, and when they're not in imminent danger of discovery by the enemy, they're falling victim to the perils of their unfamiliar surroundings.
But this movie is a true story (previously related by Herzog in the documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly), and obviously one that holds a lot of personal interest for Herzog himself, so instead of Aguirre 2, we get an old-fashioned survival story, gloriously shot and filled with some terrific, small moments.
Can Pixar continue improving on the quality of their animation in each successive film forever? Implicit in the concept of computer animation is that the computer gets smarter with every project. That's just technology. But eventually, it feels like these Pixar films are going to reach maximum gorgeous, colorful detail. In fact, the swarms of rats invading Parisian kitchens in Ratatouille may be too perfect-looking - I could see patrons avoiding some of the city's fine dining establishments after the realism of these kitchen sequences. It'd be difficult to eat a really amazing, authentic ratatouille for me now without imagining some rodent who sounds like Patton Oswalt preparing it with his grubby little hands just out of sight.
What's great about Pixar, and particularly Brad Bird's two films with the studio, is that the amazing technology works in service to warm, funny and smart storytelling. There's kind of an awkward, almost Randian quality to Bird's The Incredibles - it's a great, funny, visually-dazzling film with a peculiar, somewhat elitist moral compass. Ratatouille is not only charming but genuinely uplifting. Anyone not at least a bit touched by the conclusion of villainous food critic Anton Ego's storyline should just give up on movies now...you're never going to get it...
8. Grindhouse
It's a real shame that Planet Terror and Death Proof have been split up on DVD and made into two separate films, as the entire experience of Grindhouse works better all put together. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, whether intentionally or not, took 180-degree, diametrically opposed approaches to the task of updating the Z-grade cinema that once ruled the questionable movie houses of New York's Times Square, and the sensory overload of seeing them together - along with some funny fake trailers - was half the fun.
Rodriguez, in Terror, used contemporary technology to essentially "replicate" the look of an old movie, but with a scale and a style that would not have ever been possible for a low-budget film in the '70s. His zombie horror film is essentially more-retro-than-retro; it looks more like we'd imagine an insane Late-Night UHF creature feature than a real Late-Night UHF creature feature.
Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, on the other hand, inverts the formula, turning his movie into a lament for a dying era in cinema, when everything was fashioned by hand and a market still existed for movies made by amateur outsiders. (Like the real films of the era, Death Proof sags in the middle, filling time with pointless dialogue that doesn't really go anywhere. He's so committed to replicating a lost genre, he's actually willing to make his movie kind of boring for 20 minutes or so!)
He does everything he can, really, to actually make the movie like he's an exploitation director with no budget in the '70s, to limit what he can accomplish until the whiz-bang car chase conclusion. And when that conclusion comes, it's both a tearful goodbye to and a sendup of the grindhouse - he mocks the casual misogyny and perverse humor of these old movies while conceding that they have an authenticity that Grindhouse itself can't even touch.
Paul Verhoeven's Black Book is like some kind of miracle - a realistic, serious WWII film that's never maudlin, even when the story takes a tragic turn. This story of a Jewish spy (an amazing Carice van Houten) working for the Dutch Resistance is an adventure movie for adults, one that's too busy kicking ass for gauzy Hollywood pathos. In fact, the sadness of its characters and the seeming futility of their cause are brought into greater relief because the film's suspense is so relentless. We don't hear about their desperation; we come to feel it, as they do, with each close call and narrow escape. This is Verhoeven reinvigorated, working with some material that's worthy of his gifts, rather than this embarrassing Hollywood sci-fi bullshit he's been doing.
An intriguing premise executed perfectly, Wristcutters is what Defending Your Life would have been like if Albert Brooks could just get over himself for 10 minutes and make a real movie. I'd love for this movie to inspire a mini-trend in American independent film - the mundane fantasy film. This is the Mumblecore Lord of the Rings. The plot, in a nutshell: Zia (Patrick Fugit) thinks better of slitting his wrists over a girl when he discovers the afterlife is just like Earth, only a bit more overcast and dreary. Now, he's stuck in a city filled with other suicides, working a dead-end (literally!) pizza delivery job and afraid to try killing himself again for fear of where he might end up. When he hears word that his lost love has also killed herself, he sets out on one last road trip to find her.
Writer/director Goran Dukic (working from a story by Etgar Keret) has filled this entire world with memorable eccentrics: Tom Waits as Kneller, leader of a ragtag afterlife commune, and Will Arnett as the wannabe cult leader The Messiah are the recognizable faces, but Shea Whigham really steals the show as Eugene, Zia's partner in crime whose entire Russian family have all found themselves in the same disappointing eternity. A fantastic character (who, according to IMDb, is inspired by Eugene Hutz, the lead singer of Gogol Bordello and a friend of Dukic), Eugene bops around this odd world like he finds the afterlife refreshing, a break from his former life even though it's remarkably similar.
5. You, the Living
I wrote about this surreal, plotless Scandinavian dark comedy at length earlier this week when I saw it at the Palm Springs Film Festival. You can go read that review here. It's a breathtaking, haunting and atmospheric flight of imagination, unlike any movie I've ever seen other than Andersson's previous effort, 2000's similarly-brilliant Songs From the Second Floor. This guy is like David Lynch's jocular, perfectionist cousin.
4. Zodiac
Quite simply one of the best police procedurals ever made, this is not a film about the Zodiac investigation specifically, but about the nature of investigation itself. How an investigation quickly involves and even implicates those doing the investigating. The characters in the film stare a bit too long into the abyss of the Zodiac murders, and it sucks them in one by one, obsessing them with its endless string of facts and details and observations and contradictions.
It's hard to find fault with any of David Fincher's decisions here. The music is impeccably chosen, particularly Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man," which becomes the killer's theme music, classic hippie rock rendered ethereal and vaguely sinister. Harris Savides' digital cinematography - this is the first Hollywood film in history made without any film or video tape - is glossy and pristine; it resembles the films of the '70s, but if they had been shot with modern cameras. And everything is so detailed; accurate to the actual Zodiac crimes and making this entire world feel complete and lived-in on screen. Fincher went so far as to use CG blood, so that it would always look exactly right, and even shot some scenes in greenscreen, going back and artificially recreating '70s San Francisco in a computer because the real thing looks too different now. Amazing.
3. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Andrew Dominik's brooding Western is, without a doubt, the year's most underappreciated film. Roger Deakins shot both this film and the one at #2, because he's a genius, and he gives Jesse James the look of a fading photograph; awkward and uncanny and beautiful. It's a long movie, and really something of a slow-motion chase movie, with James pursuing enemies real and imagined, and Robert Ford pursuing James, desperate to share a bit of the legend's glory. It's also the first of three Westerns sitting atop my Top Films list this year, a definitely surprising and clearly unprecedented event. (Not only have I never found 3 Westerns at the top of my list of favorite films, I can't think of any year in which any one genre so dominated the year.)
After Ladykillers, I genuinely entertained the notion that the Coen Brothers were lost to us forever. I've put up with longer dry periods from other directors than the one-two punch of crap that was Intolerable Cruelty and the aforementioned Tom Hanks catastrophe...
But the Coens had been so good for so long, just churning out strange, unexpected, perfectly-realized classic after classic, one every few years since 1984's Blood Simple. Their career had almost come to feel like "Guitar Hero 3" - one split-second's miscalculation could throw off their rhythm, and the whole game would be ruined.
Fortunately, the Coen Brothers' filmography is nothing like "Guitar Hero 3" - or at least, me when I'm playing "Guitar Hero 3" - because No Country for Old Men is one of their greatest achievements, and it succeeds on the same strengths the Coens have been exploiting for years: Unbelievably clever dialogue (this is easily the year's best screenplay), an extrasensory skill at pacing and designing set pieces and an ability to coax career-best work from talented character actors.
Many were turned off by the film's abrupt, low-key and intentionally anticlimactic ending, and it's certainly not a conventional way to close out this story. So much of the film is about what we can't know and can't understand: What drives a man like Anton Chigurh? Where does the money come from and to whom does it belong and why are all these people willing to die for it? What is the nature of Llewelyn Moss, who seems alternately sympathetic and repugnant, or for that matter, Ed Tom Bell, a sheriff who doesn't maybe try as hard as he could to solve crimes any more? It seems only fitting that we'd be left with more questions than answers, that we'd forcibly change perspective the moment the pieces actually fall into place, and once again have to readjust our viewpoint on the film's violent events.
Not much of a surprise here. I've been raving about PT Anderson's latest and greatest for a while now to anyone within earshot, and have seen the film twice theatrically. It's a masterpiece - quite possibly the best American film of our present decade.
What makes it so good? Well, I have to tell you...I'm not 100% sure. I mean, I could go on here at length about the film's qualities: how Jonny Greenwood's spastic orchestral score compliments the unpredictable and hazardous work of drilling for oil or the way Daniel Day-Lewis can make a long, pregnant pause both FUNNY and TERRIFYING. I could spend at least a good paragraph on a single shot, in which Day-Lewis watches oil burn in the distance, his smudgy red face the only thing visible in a sea of blackness.
But I couldn't really tell you why the life story of a lonely, misanthropic, greedy alcoholic, an intense and provocative character study of a horrible man, effected me on such a deep level. Perhaps I sympathize with the angry atheist Daniel Plainview, forced to abide and respect the religious majority in order to get by while secretly disgusted by their self-righteous piety? Perhaps my love of historical films, Daniel Day-Lewis films and Paul Thomas Anderson films just collided in a Perfect Storm of Shit That Appeals to Lons?
Or maybe 2007 was just the right year for There Will Be Blood. A year when a movie about a desperate, empty sociopath, fueled by a bitter distaste for humanity and an insatiable lust for wealth, status and power, felt suddenly relevant.
Patton Oswalt expands on his classic "KFC Famous Bowls" routine for The Onion AV Club in a review that includes lines like "The Famous Bowl hit my mouth like warm soda, slouched down my throat, and splayed itself across my stomach like a sun-stroked wino." Hilarity ensues.
People have been saying that Ron Paul is a racist since the beginnings of his candidacy, and it's well-known at this point that some of his supporters have ties to the white supremacist movement.
But now word is starting to get around that Paul's old newsletters frequently ran articles that were not only crude and bigoted, but also delusional conservative fantasies. The New Republic is running some excerpts from these old newsletters, with names like "The Ron Paul Report" and "Ron Paul's Freedom Report," and they're...well, they're really something. In addition to mocking and criticizing beloved civil rights figures like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, the articles generally revel in the kind of conspiratorial nonsense you'd expect from homemade, far-right 1980's pamphlets.
Here's my favorite:
The October 1992 issue of the Political Report paraphrases an "ex-cop" who offers this strategy for protecting against "urban youth":"If you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example)."
So, Ron Paul allowed a publication bearing his name, and bearing no other writer's identification or byline, to run an instruction manual for disposing of the evidence after murdering "urban youth." Solid.
Paul's response to this New Republic report is actually kind of amazing. First, he denies being racist and says he admires Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Which is all well and good.
But then, he says this:
This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. It's once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the day of the New Hampshire primary.
Okay, fine, it's old news. You have heard these criticisms before. That doesn't make them out-of-bounds in terms of a presidential campaign, does it? I'd agree there are some elements of a candidate's past that don't interest me. I for one don't really care how many wives they've had or whether or not they smoked pot as a teenager. I'm not even as concerned as most people about candidate's changing their positions over the years, so long as there seems to be a rational explanation for the switch.
But if you used run articles in a newsletter featuring your name in big print on the masthead insisting that Martin Luther King "seduced underage girls and boys"...I think you got some splaining to do. Even if it has been brought up before. You canget bored answering that question...it's only fair.
Paul continues his excuse:
“When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”
There's just kind of a big gap here. Why did he allow these "several" still unnamed writers to publish this sort of thing under his own name? Even if you believe he didn't know, at the time, what kind of things they were publishing, he obviously agrees that these were like-minded colleagues with whom he willingly entered into a contract. I mean, a former Congressman...he's just going to turn his name and reputation over to a bunch of strangers, allowing them to print whatever they please and sign it with his tacit approval?
Either we believe Paul actually does agree with these sentiments, or we decide that he's the sort of silly person who would trust a bunch of racist whackjob with his good name. It's not a good decision to have to make about a candidate...
That's the name provided in all the festival materials for this French revenge thriller, but the film itself included the title The Horse Thieves (Voleurs de chevaux), which strikes me as more accurate and appropriate. Set in an unnamed country in "The East" in 1810, the film jumps between two sets of brothers set on a collision course.
The first set, Jakub (Adrien Jolivet) and Vladimir (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), join the Cossack army and endure much hardship during their training. The second set, Roman (Grégoire Colin) and Elias (François-René Dupont), are the titular horse thieves, and the film opens with them pulling a daring heist against Jakub and Vladimir. These events will lead to a good deal of bloody conflict, and will take up the remainder of the film's running time.
Writer/director Micha Wald and his crew have realized the period with a stunning level of vivid detail. Attention has been paid to even the smallest aspects of these characters lives - how they would dress, where they would live, how they would heal their wounds, what they would drink, when they would be covered and shit and when they'd clean themselves up, etc. (In one scene, Roman locks Elias in a cabin, and you actually get a reasonable understanding of the design on the intricate wood and rope "lock" he uses on the door!)
Unfortunately, the characters and their stories have not apparently been given this level of attention. I didn't like Wald's technique of telling Jakub and Vladimir's story and then jumping back in time to follow Roman and Elias - cutting back and forth between them would have likely given the film a quicker pace and set up more dramatic tension between these two sets of brothers. As well, Wald has obviously made the two pairs mirror images of one another - both Roman and Jakub are the strong-willed tough guys, while their younger brothers are kindly weaklings who require constant supervision - and this gives the film a really repetitive sameness throughout. (The characters really are essentially interchangeable. Many of the more senior audience members actually seemed to confuse them with one another).
In fact, everyone in the universe of The Horse Thieves could be described as either a brute or a gentle soul. I wanted to get as much insight into the people populating Wald's film as I did into the engineering and interior design practices of the time, but alas, it was not to be.
Mongol
Sergei Bodrov's Mongol follows the early life of Genghis Khan, from his boyhood to his first major military triumph. Though the film strikes me as essentially accurate history, relating true events in the life of the man then known as Temudjin, it has the feeling of an epic myth, almost like Mongolian Braveheart. Genghis Khan, a legendary figure, is treated as such by the movie - a real man, but also larger than life, someone who was understood as significant and mythic in his own time.
The glossy, sweeping cinematography by Rogier Stoffers and Sergei Trofimov is reminiscent in ways of Lord of the Rings; the heroes navigate harsh but beautiful and ever-changing landscapes en route to one another or to their enemies, and we get a genuine sense for the setting of Upper Mongolia in the late 12th and early 13th centures almost immediately.
The very contemporary editing style of Valdís Óskarsdóttir and Zach Staenberg give the movie the feel of a modern, buzzy action movie. Battle scenes, infused with a generous amount of grit and blood spray, whip by, not giving the audience a clear idea about Temudjin's specific strategies so much as expressing the feeling of being a Mongol riding into war.
Mongol sees Khan's legacy as bringing law and order to Mongolia, and the theme of obeying or ignoring ancient customs runs underneath most of the central action. As the film opens, 9-year-old Temudjin is brought to a village to select a wife. His father is meant to bring him to a rival clan to select a bride, thus ending a decades-long rivalry, but the headstrong boy instead chooses the precocious Borte from a friendly clan nearby. This one fateful decision, a choice based on personal preference and not the strict guidelines for Mongol behavior, sets all the hardships of the remainder of the film in motion.
After growing up in exile, the older Temudjin (now played by Japanese star Tadanobu Asano) returns to find Borte and, along with old friend Jamukha (Honglei Sun), to fight the villains who forced him to leave his family years ago. This leads to even more struggles for power and violence that will eventually lead the young warrior to realize that his people will find peace only if they are united under a code of laws. (One that he alone can provide).
This narrative jumps around, sometimes chaotically, and many of the connecting details between incidents are ignored in favor of scenic vistas or the enhancement of the central love story between Tamudjin and Borte. This is not necessarily a bad thing, merely an artistic choice, and the key relationships do benefit from the added screen time they would not normally get in a period action film of this scope. However, some of the specific decisions made by Bodrov are questionable, particularly skipping what may be the most significant aspect of this story - how Tamudjin actually managed to unite all the warring, disparate clans of Mongols. We get no insight into his political machinations whatsoever - instead, we hear that he has done this in voice-over.
A nitpick, perhaps, but I was only bothered by the film's narrative gaps because I found it otherwise so compelling. This is just really BIG moviemaking pulled off with grace, sophistication and panache. If it ever opens Stateside theatrically, it's one to see in a movie theater with an audience.
Greetings from Rancho Mirage, California, where the only things more ancient and craggy than the towering desert mountains are the residents.
No, I kid the old Rancho Miragers...They're good people.
I'm in town for the first few days of the annual Palm Springs Film Festival, which boasts a tremendous selection of contemporary films from around the world. And it's a good thing the selection is tremendous, because it took 4.5 hours to drive here yesterday from LA.
After spending the early portion of my first day in town enjoying the best sightseeing the Greater Palm Springs Area has to offer ("Look, a Starbucks! And a store that sells items that change color in sunlight!"), I settled down for two rather terrific 2007 European films.
Persepolis
Based on the graphic novel/memoir by Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis is a journey through the last 30 years of Iranian history seen from the perspective of a headstrong young girl. The film's expressive, stark black-and-white animation mirrors the style of Satrapi's book, visualizing her emotions, frustrations and dreams and detailing her encounters with arbitrary authority and cruel indifference, both at home and abroad.
The film works best as compelling, narrative history. Anyone not familiar with the fall of the Shah, the rise of the Ayatollah, the Iran/Iraq War, etc. will likely learn much from Persepolis, and those already vaguely aware of these events will appreciate the personal recollections of someone who was there, taking it all in first-hand.
The film tends to drift around a bit when recalling Marjane's personal struggles with romance and depression, which I think is a direct result of its relatively simple, sketchbook-inspired look. It's hard to make these characters too emotive or resonant with such simple line drawings, and the film overall seems much more comfortable creating fantasy montages and large-scale action-oriented sequences than more immediate character development or pathos. A sequence in which Marjane recalls a string of prior Viennese residences while leaping between rooftops is a standout.
I found it somewhat hard to concern myself with Marjane's Austrian friends, for example, who tended to blend together, but I was ceaselessly engaged by all the scenes in which she brushed up against the brutality of the ruling regime's footsoldiers.
This is not just an entertaining movie but also, I sense, an important one for Western audiences to see. We're so often presented very cut-and-dry, over-simplified versions of life under oppressive Middle Eastern governments; Satrapi's Tehran is far more nuanced, composed like the film in shades of gray. True, it's rulers are greedy, hypocritical and cruel, and Saddam's bombs rain down in the night obliterating once-beautiful neighborhoods, but the city and its residents are not without their charms. I particularly enjoyed the sequences featuring discreet late-night alcohol-fueled parties and hustlers selling Iron Maiden tapes on street corners. The harder you try to stamp out progress and to hinder merriment, the harder the people will work to obtain these precious commodities.
You, the Living
This is the second film I've seen by Swedish director Roy Andersson. 2000's Songs from the Second Floor is available on DVD in this country, and I highly recommend adding it to your Netflix queue immediately. But this year's You, the Living is even better, a surreal and darkly funny series of vignettes about despair, humiliation, failure and the desperation of modern life.
Neither Second Floor nor You, the Living have what could be considered "plots." Though it's not a perfect analogy, they're really the film equivalent of short story collections - motifs, characters, themes and ideas run throughout, but tucked away inside individual, beautifully conceived and immaculately realized shorts.
Much of You, the Living follows members of the Louisiana Brass Band as they perform, rehearse, make love and otherwise live their daily lives, and other various musicians drift in and out of the various sequences, but the focus here is entirely on Andersson's deft comic touch and the ceaselessly brilliant, washed-out cinematography of Gustav Danielsson. Seriously, this may be the best-looking film I've seen in 2007; using a relatively static palatte of icy blues and grays, Andersson and Danielsson have crafted a film that would be totally mesmerizing even without any kind of audio track. Andersson's camera is frequently motionless, setting up a single perspective on a scene and then finding ways to include all the requisite action within that one frame. So ingeniously composed are these sequences, pretty much any still shot could be taken from You, the Living and hung in an art gallery.
So what's it all about? Well, it's somewhat difficult to say. Much of the success of the film is in its ambiguity, how it sets up peculiar scenarios and then allows the viewer to interpret them as he or she pleases. The Film Festival program describes the film as showcasing "the human condition," which is about the most vague description anyone could even theoretically offer for a film.
The movie's more focused than that. It zeroes in on a few universal human foibles and exploits them for comedy and poignancy. Many sequences focus on fear - fear of humiliation, fear of loneliness, fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, fear of the imminent destruction of our world and everything in it.
Andersson's also fascinated by contradition, how people's attitudes and behavior can shift in an instant for no particular reason. In an early scene, a woman weeps and yells at her lover, telling him to scram because he doesn't understand her. As he walks away, she spins around and tells him she may come by his place later. Later, a father expresses disappointment with his mooching son, right before agreeing to send him more money. A hairdresser loses his temper with a customer and lashes out, before apologizing profusely and offering to fix his mistake. The movie seems to suggest that these individuals are not flighty or inconsistent purposefully; they are just bewildered and confused by life, particularly its mandatory social graces and customs. They don't seem to know how to behave at all, and thus make constant errors which then must be corrected. So, I guess, in a way, the movie is about the human condition, like pretty much all great films. I'm not sure what the plans are for releasing You, the Living properly Stateside, but if a DVD release is in the works, this is must see material.
Of all the ludicrous political ads I've posted this year, this piece of work from Rudy Giuliani may be the most offensive and insane:
What's the selling point behind this advertisement? Rudy Giuliani's already been in charge of one place that got blown up! How many cities that have been placed under your immediate supervision were thereafter successful targets for international terrorist conspiraces, Fred Thompson? Oh, zero? How interesting!
I mean, just like the ad says, Giuliani was "tested." He had a chance to select any location in New York City for his command center. He chose the World Trade Center. He had a chance to ensure his fire crews had proper, working radios. He didn't. He had a chance to protect the health and safety of his rescue teams by determining and disseminating accurate information about the the risks of breathing Ground Zero air. He didn't. So, yeah, he's been tested, but it's not like he passed the test. This is like asking a stranger to have sex with you because you've been tested for STD's. I don't care that you took the test...what were the results? Cause if I were to extend the 9/11-STD metaphor, Rudy Giuliani would have, bare minimum, Stage 3 syphilis.
But even putting the logic of his argument aside for a moment, the ad's crude xenophobia is just sickening. If America survives its current economic, social, political, military and existential crises, and our history classes ever get around to studying the politics and culture of the mid-to-late Aughts, I'm convinced this ad would be shown as an example of our growing fear and hatred of Muslims, informed largely by a thoroughly corrupted media propagating a warped, completely counter-factual narrative about encroaching Caliphates and imminent threats to our way of life.
Though it's hard to top the intensely bizarre, maniacal Tom Tancredo ads in which Our Hero attempts to save us from the creeping Brown Menace, I think Giuliani wins the "Most Racist Political Ad of Our Times" award. That this is a serious piece of actual campaigning, airing on Iowa television as recently as today, is scary stuff, and not for the reasons intended. Giuliani, like Bush before him, wishes to terrorize the American public into submission. He aims to make Americans so horrifically, constantly afraid of terrorist threats, they will continue to blindly cede to him the same powers and privileges we have ceded to his predecessor for seven years. If you really like the way things are going for America at this particular moment in history, please, vote Giuliani. However, if you like things like not-torturing-people or being-spied-on, maybe go some other way...
[SPOILER ALERT: These are all bad movies. Sometimes, I will ruin them for you. I'll let you know before I do, but if you actually want to see one of the movies I'm discussing and don't want to know how it ends, probably you're safer just skipping that section and moving on.]
I started at Mahalo last January, so unlike in previous years, I didn't have the benefit of free movie rentals in 2007. Yet I still saw more than enough horrible movies to fill a Worst of the Year list, complete with runners-up. You know...in case you were worried...
First things first, the year's worst movies that even I was not brave enough to see. The "Doomed to Fail" list:
Reign Over Me
The log line on this movie seriously makes me want to barf:
"A man who lost his family in the September 11 attack on New York City runs into his old college roommate."
And that's even before I tell you the tragic case at the heart of Reign On Me is played by Adam fucking Sandler! And that it comes to you from the genius behind HBO's short-lived "Mind of the Married Man"! Nooooooooo!
In the Valley of Elah
In Crash, Paul Haggis bravely told you that racism is teh l4m3z0rz. Now, in In the Valley of Elah (great title there, by the way, PH), he boldly takes on the Iraq War. Hmmm, I can't help but wonder if he'll have any useless, generic bromides to share with us...
Dan in Real Life
Has the "uptight dad terrified his daughter will get laid" genre ever given us an actual good movie? When you find yourself mining the same comic territory as Tony Danza, that's when you know things have gone horribly, horribly awry.
Wild Hogs
I don't really even feel the need to elaborate on this one. At this point, I greet trailers for new Tim Allen comedies with roughly the same enthusiasm as new Osama bin Laden videos. "Oh, shit, what's he going on about this time...What an asshole..."
Kickin It Old Skool
Now I've thought long and hard about this, and I'm pretty sure Jamie Kennedy's wigger persona is the lamest schtick in which any comedian on the fucking planet is engaging at this precise moment in history. Bear in mind, this means I find it less inventive or funny than Carlos Mencia's "look at the wildly gesticulating, racist Mexican who's not even really a Mexican" routine, Larry the Cable Guy's "look at the ignorant backwoods good ol' boy who's not even really a good ol' boy" bit and Michael Richards' "walk into a room full of black people and say deeply insulting things" schtick. Seriously, it's that bad...
Delta Farce
Well, as long as we're talking Larry the Cable Guy...He did manage to get some more work this year. Presumably from people who didn't see Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector.
The Bucket List
The more I find out about this movie, the more I hate it. I hate the way it totally ignores the truth about terminal illness, and pretends you could do stuff like motorcycling across the Great Wall of China while wasting away from cancer. I hate how it reveals our disturbing inability to deal with the plain truth of our own mortality in this country. I hate that it reduces the once-legendary Jack Nicholson and the great Morgan Freeman to sub-sitcom "wacky old people" cliches. But most of all, I hate the very notion of such a "list of generic activities" these two simply must engage in before they die. Most of them (at least from what I can see in the trailer) are unimaginative and predictable, and all of them require spending a lot of money. Well, isn't that just the ideal holiday fantasy? Blowing through a wad of cash on pointless shit you don't need, then dying.
License to Wed
Wins the award for the Worst Trailer of the Year:
I think I talked about this before, but I HATE comedies that rely on one of the main characters being completely insane and another character having to do everything the insane one says. That's such a pathetic, desperate way to write a movie, and because we realize immediately that the entire movie is based on needelssly forcing sane people to act insanely (because we're never provided with a GOOD REASON for such a scenario), we realize there are no stakes and essentially give up. Oh, and Robin Williams cloying, vapid blathering doesn't help matters.
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
Don't remake Toys, you fools! No one liked that the last time!
----------------
Okay, that's quite enough of that. Let's move on to the bad movies I actually took the time to watch:
THE WORST FILMS OF 2007
16. Paris J'Taime
20 different directors contribute 5-minute films to this anthology about romance in Paris, and I can't honestly say a single one really comes together or demands attention. Each one of the films, in its own way, feels half-baked and tossed off, and with a few exceptions, we're only be able to identify the directors involved because they're named at the beginning of each segment. Many of them are shot well, but none of them are compelling, despite the relative freedom of the concept. (Characters in love or falling in love in different neighborhoods of the city in five minutes...that's it.) It might have been tolerable for a while, but 2 hours of this is far far far too much.
15. Bug
Perhaps Bug just works better on a stage. Tracy Letts adapted the script from her own play, and I guess, at least from the level of performance, its teeth-gnashing theatrics might work in a live setting. But William Friedkin's film version is just absolutely ludicrous. Rather than watching Agnes and Peter slowly go mad together in a crummy motel room, we see them discover a new romance, start to get along, and then suddenly FREAK OUT in a mad, overripe frenzy of schizophrenic horror. Now, of course, it's not really about a couple going insane in the midst of a bug infestation. I understand that weightier themes are involved, about desperate co-dependency, the terror of hopeless loneliness, all that...But it's impossible to take the drama seriously, what with all the funhouse lighting and open sores.
14. Mr. Brooks
In this movie, William Hurt plays the physical manifestation of a voice in Kevin Costner's head urging him to kill. Together, they match wits against blackmailer Dane Cook. Do I need to keep going?
13. Vacancy
Okay, I'm putting my foot down. No more "car fatefully breaks down during already-poignant/emotional road trip" horror movies. I can't fucking take it any more. You guys keep making them and I keep watching them and they're all pointless and lame. This movie actually asks us to tremble with fear at the thought of being attacked by a relatively unarmed Frank Whaley. ("You can't run...you can't hide from...The Nerdy Pervert! Rated R.)
12. Smokin' Aces
Perhaps the ultimate reminder that stunt casting for its own sake is lame, and that few things are more painful than unfunny cameos. Many many members of Hollywood's semi-famous B-list ranks pop up for a scene or two in Joe Carnahan's miserable action-comedy Smokin Aces, most of them playing hitmen determined to wipe out Jeremy Piven. (Unfortunately, we're tasked with rooting against them.) None of them does anything even remotely amusing throughout the entire film; the only moment, in fact, that seems to get any kind of reaction from the audience is when several annoying characters die suddenly and mercifully disappear from the film. That earns a round of applause.
11. Factory Girl
Is this film a really sly, subversive homage to Andy Warhol? A simple-minded, superficial tribute to a brazenly and defiantly superficial mind? Maybe, but it's more likely Factory Girl is simply unable to provide any fresh insight into its already-familiar cast of characters nor any sense of the significance of these artists and their experiences. It reduces the story of Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan and the New York art world of their time to the most pedestrian level possible - celebrity gossip. "Did you know that this socialite floozy fucked Bob Dylan? And he thought Andy Warhol was, like, totally using her, and Andy Warhol was all like totally jealous, and she got all messed up on drugs and needed rehab?" And of course, the movie itself was tabloid fodder because of Sienna Miller's highly revealing nude scenes, her crushed award-season hopes and her tumultuous romance with Jude Law. Ugh.
Oh, I didn't mention Hayden Christensen's so-bad-it's-hilarious take on Dylan, who didn't allow the filmmakers to use his name or music in the film because he didn't like their take on his relationship with Sedgwick, probably because it's stupid and poorly-conceived. Having Anakin to impersonate Dylan's highly idiosyncratic manner of speaking poorly throughout the entire film was just a horrible choice by director George Hickenlooper. It makes the whole film feel like a bad SNL sketch. I'll take Cate Blanchett, thanks so much.
10. Spider-Man 3
Raimi had always resisted putting Venom in the Spider-Man films, but the rabid fanboy enthusiasm won out in the end. So we got a Venom movie from a guy who clearly doesn't understand or enjoy the Venom character. (I can't say I blame him...I've never really found Venom all that compelling as a character.) Every decision made on that end just sucked, from casting Eric Forman to play the character to featuring Tobey Maguire in heavy guyliner, trudging around in alien-symbiote-inspired angst like a backup dancer fired from a Fall Out Boy video. The effects were terrific as always in this Spider-Man, but everything else felt turgid and empty.
Wow, 2007 fucking SUCKED. I can't believe this piece of shit is actually coming in #9. I picked EIGHT MOVIES as worse than this piffle? This piffle, I should add, directed by one of my all-time least favorite directors, a guy nearly guaranteed a spot on my Worst of the Year list any time he releases a movie, Mr. Joel Schumacher. Joel can't even make it into the Top 5 this year...Damn...
Anyway, I don't want to blow the whole thing for you necessarily, but the entire mystery behind Number 23 is intensely insulting. The set-up: Jim Carrey and wife Virginia Madsen discover a weird book in a rare book shop. It seems to describe aspects of Carrey's childhood and life, details it would be difficult for someone else to know. Also, the book describes a character who grows obsessed with the number 23 and its significance in probability, the universe, etc. That's all fine, I suppose. Mysterious enough I guess, even though it's punctuated by weird, really irritatingly-shot, overexposed "dream sequences" or whatever in which a tattooed Carrey alter-ego stalks around acting generally menacing. But the ending just feels so gratuitous and rushed, like it occurred to the screenwriters five minutes before their pages were due. A movie like this lives or dies by the last five minutes. If you don't have a great final twist, why write a thriller that spends 90 minutes building up to a final twist?
8. Pirates of the Caribbean 3
This movie was awful in a really weird way. I mean, how could you possibly fuck this one up? The first movie is really good, I personally think the second is even better...and then, this aimless, ceaselessly perplexing final chapter, which seems to purposefully ignore all the charms of the first two films? Really? 20 minutes of Depp, with visible flopsweat, desperately dicking around in front of a plain white backdrop? All of the lively, interesting characters sidelined, and newcomer Chow Yun-Fat killed off near-instantly, in favor of some snooty aristocratic Englishmen in powdered wings and their various double-, triple- and quadruple-crosses? The Kraken, the coolest adversary in the entire series, killed off-screen between films? Like I said, just...weird...One of the year's great disappointments.
As ridiculous as I found the conclusion of The Number 23, Lindsay Lohan's foray into the serial killer genre actually earns the dubious Worst Twist of 2007 award. It's so dubious, they actually have Art Bell appear on-screen during the movie to assure us in the audience that, in fact, these claims are possible. Trust me...they are not. Twists aside, this is just an extremely dark, muddy and unattractive film about a suburban good-girl slasher victim who wakes up after her attack minus an arm and under the impression that she's a stripper. It's just as nihilistic, unpleasant and grim as it sounds, not just brutally violent but also disgusting and lurid. It's trying to shock you, which doesn't make it shocking...Just sad...
6. Southland Tales
This movie's a gigantic mess, and really my respect for Richard Kelly's ambition is the only thing keeping it out of the Top 5. It feels like the work of someone caught up entirely within a world of his own creation. He has no idea how to bring others into this creation, to help us understand the significance of these bizarre characters and random, dimly explained goings-on, to him or anyone else. These images and concepts just sit there, on screen, sometimes coalescing into something approaching satire and other times defiantly refusing to make any sense at all, and after a short time, I found it completely impossible to even pay attention to them.
Interestingly, this is yet another 2007 film with a giant cast of unimpressive, B-level celebrities, many of them "Saturday Night Live" alumni. These kind of deep comedian rosters are like a Grand Tradition truly bad movies. Anyone remember Rat Race? Of course you don't...
5. Stardust
When whimsy fails, it EPIC FAILS. Like farce, whimsical fantasy has to be done with an extremely deft touch. Miss the right tone/tempo/attitude/style/performance even by a bit, and the whole thing's just off. Stardust misses all of the above and MANY MANY MORE. In addition to woefully amateurish special effects and an essentially inert non-romance drearily stretched out to feature-length proportions, Stardust features the least-likable cast of characters in any recent fantasy film. Just when you're thinking no protagonist could possibly be more boring than the Orlando Bloom wannabe they've cast as Tristan, here comes Claire Danes as the whiny Star Girl Yvaine. Oh boy!
The worst of all is, of course, Captain Shakespeare, the friendly mincing sky pirate who pretends to be a tough guy in front of his men even though, when left to his own devices, he's a right dandy! He's played by Robert De Niro, who's obviously in dire need of funds to pay for his grandmother's operation.
It's not that I had high expectations for Transformers, you understand. I knew it was going to be terrible. It had nothing going for it from the first, save perhaps the corporate, almost entirely non-creative input of producer Steven Spielberg. I mean, a Michael Bay adaptation of an '80s toy concept involving truck-robots scouring the Earth for energy cubes. Suddenly the Lindsay Lohan as the forgetful dismembered stripper concept doesn't sound so bad.
What I wasn't prepared for was the migraine-inducing "action" scenes, which were not entertaining at all but did manage to exactly replicate the POV of a kitten that has been placed inside a dryer along with some Hot Wheels. I wasn't prepared for the "comedy" scenes, in which Optimus Prime bumbles around Shia LaBeouf's backyard like he's starring in some kind of anime Preston Sturges homage. I wasn't prepared for the seemingly endless sub-plots that went nowhere and were suddenly dropped in the last half-hour anyway, padding an already-overlong film into a bladder-decimating 150 minute ordeal. Watch as I instantly transform into someone who doesn't pay for Michael Bay movies any more!
Yet more proof that Chuck Jones was a fucking GENIUS. This movie is obviously trying to be live action Looney Tunes, yet director Michael Davis is unable to devise a single joke or set-up that's half as memorable or inventive as any random Warner Bros. classic short. Seriously, to set your expectations this low - a movie with essentially no plot that's just a bunch of random gunfights and cheap chauvanism - and still utterly fail to hit the mark, that's when it's seriously time to consider a new career path. Why would Clive Owen do this to us?
Go back and read the full review to get my extensive thoughts on this horrifyingly offensive, Western-supremacist war porn abomination. The popularity of this film and the fact that so many of my countrymen have defended it and lauded it with praise this year seriously makes me feel badly about where we are as a society. This kind of self-congratulatory, bloodthirsty propaganda, disguised as history of all things, just reinforces - and not in a suble way - a great mass of negative, destructive ideas. Homophobia, the fetishization of war, the demonization of foreign peoples...it's all in there, and you don't have to look particularly hard to find it.
For those of you about to write me angry messages in the comments about how 300 is based on a graphic novel from years ago about a war thousands of years ago, and thus can't possibly relate to anything in 2007, let me just say that you might want to read some books without drawings now and again.
Guy Ritchie's Revolver was produced and released in Europe years ago, but it only made it to America in 2007, because it's clearly one of the worst movies ever made. Here's what Roger Ebert said:
"Revolver" is a frothing mad film that thrashes against its very sprocket holes in an attempt to bash its brains out against the projector. It seems designed to punish the audience for buying tickets.
He's far too kind.
Word on the street is that Ritchie was inspired by his wife Madonna's Kabballah religion, and if that's the case, those people are easily as fucked up as the Scientologists.
Ritchie's movie constantly promises to lead to something, and then keeps turning you around and showing you what you've already seen. (Get it? Revolver? Ha ha, this obvious pun excuses all my film's repetitiveness!) A convict is freed from jail. There's a gangster after him for some reason. Two mysterious guys come to his aid, but keep asking him to pull crappy errands for them in exchange. Are these the same two guys he got to know through the walls of his prison cell, who had long planned how to pull off the perfect crime? I still have no idea, because the movie doesn't so much answer questions as ask them over and over and over again. Eventually, you stop caring about getting any answers and just want to get as far away from the DVD of Revolver as possible. You may even lose your will to live. Who knows? Results may vary.
"Unfortunately these same students are never taught that there exists one sovereign power that reigns supreme, even over the Constitution: King Jesus Christ."
I have to say, as far as personal webpages go, Reed is batting 1000.
In his Dec. 27 letter, Steven Fehr says he believes President Bush is the worst president he has seen. Whenever I hear someone complain about the president, I ask them, “Do you pray for the president of the United States daily?” Is that too much trouble?
She poses this question as if it's obvious. "Oh, no wonder Bush starts illegal wars, tortures innocent people and spies on his own citizenry, then craps all over the Constitution trying to cover it up! We haven't been praying for him every single day! Man, is my face red..."
And I mean...every day? Do we really want to nag the Lord in this way? Imagine if someone asked you to do something and then pestered you about it every day.
"Hey, God, it's me, Lon, again. Look, I hate to be a bother, but you remember how I asked you to bless our millionaire cokehead president? Could you actually get around to doing that? Like, some time soon? I mean, I know you've got a lot on your plate but it's, like, totally super-important that we get this thing squared away. I really appreciate it, Big Guy. Thanks a billion. I'll call you tomorrow to make sure it's done. No, it's no problem. Thanks again. I owe you one."
It's like, he's God. He knows what you're going to ask for before you even ask for it. Once a week ought to be enough.
There used to be a custom of praying for our president.
You know, there used to be a custom of living in caves, dressing in animal skins and doodling on cave walls to pass the hours between sabretooth tiger attacks. It's called progress.
>Perhaps too many people in the United States believe this would be mixing politics and religion.
Yes, I fail to see how engaging in a religious practice on behalf of a politician mixes religion and politics.
If the majority of the people are agnostic and atheistic, it may be that they are partly to blame for the problems we have.
I think, clearly, the majority of the people are not agnostic or atheist...sigh...atheistic. The majority of people still believe in angels and Heaven, last I heard. But you've still got to appreciate how Vera needlessly hedges her bets here. She's saying something irretrievably stupid, but leaves herself rhetorical "outs" anyway in case anyone calls her on her bullshit. the majority of the people are agnostic and atheistic, it may be that they are partly to blame for the problems we have. Why not just out and say it? Shun the non-believers! Shuuuuuuunnnnnn.
To think one man is responsible for the war and the problems we face in our nation is about as foolish as to not believe in the power of prayer.
Where to begin with this one? I mean, what a strawman. No one's suggesting Bush and Bush alone is responsible for the war and the problems we face. It's Bush, Dick Cheney and their cadre of fanatics, of course. I mean, has anyone suggested that Bill Kristol, David Frum, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld and a whole cast of unsavory characters don't share some of the blame here?
Then Vera blathers on for a while meaninglessly. The point is, Atheists is the Devil. Go Bush FTW!
Let's get right to it, shall we...This was extremely difficult to compile. I must have listened to at least 50 good-to-great albums in 2007 that were considered for this list...
21. White Rabbits, Fort Nightly
These guys make experimental indie pop that's also totally accessible. I'm thinking this might even be easy to dance to if I had any natural ability in that area. On first hearing this album, I was reminded of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but this is better than that band's 2005 debut (and far better than their lame 2007 entry, Some Loud Thunder). Long-time readers will also recall my bias towards rock with piano, which helps explain my immediate fondness for The Rabbits.
20. Calla, Strength in Numbers
This is a heavy, brooding guitar rock that's remarkably consistent, both in tone and quality. I love the fuzzed-out, distorted, almost tortured guitar noise on "Simone" in particular, which sounds like a Garbage song performed by a less self-conscious, male lead singer.
19. Windmill, Puddle City Racing Lights
I can't tell if I like this record in spite of its cheesiness or because it's so unapologetically cheesy. They're operatic to such an extent on every track, Windmill somehow moves beyond cheese, like U2 did on Joshua Tree (and Achtung Baby, and then never ever again.) I mean, take the song "Fit." It's ridiculously sweet and also ridiculously silly, from the swelling horns at the opening to the "Guitar for Dummies" riff over the chorus. It's hard to imagine Windmill even performing it with a straight face. It sounds like something from a musical. And not a rock musical. Like one of those Tim Rice jobs.
18. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
Probably my most anticipated album of 2007 (I didn't know Radiohead had anything coming out), so I guess it's surprising this comes in so far down the list. Some songs are great - "Intervention," "Keep the Car Running," "Windowstill" - but there's also a sameness to a lot of the songs that got to me after a while. It certainly didn't hold up to repeat listens like the band's phenomenal "Funeral" from a few years back. And I'm sorry..."No Cars Go" is just a bad song, and the band has now put it on two separate albums.
17. Ween, La Cucaracha
These guys don't get 1/8 of the respect they deserve, so I'm always eager to shower them with praise...but even a superfan like myself must concede "La Cucaracha" was not their best-ever effort. Opener "Fiesta" is just boring, the falsetto on "Spirit Walker" grates after a listen or two and the suitably brown "Blue Balloon" goes on about two minutes too long. This album, in fact, makes the list because of three songs: "Your Party," which made my Favorite Songs of the Year list, "Object" and one of the most hilarious filthy tracks in the band's entire discography, "My Own Bare Hands."
16. Aesop Rock, None Shall Pass
There's so much going on in this album, lyrically and sonically. Even if it weren't so entertaining and listenable, you'd have to admire the sheer amount of effort that went into None Shall Pass. Aesop's rhymes are the polar opposite of the party anthems and club music that dominates the radio - intricate, detailed, absurdist, reference-heavy narratives and rants alike, they could probably be transcribed and published as a short story collection.
15. The New Pornographers, Challengers
First off, the Dan Bejar (aka Destroyer) songs on this album are among his best contributions to any New Pornographers album to date. "Myriad Harbour" in particular. The remainder of Challengers feels a bit less ambitious than Twin Cinemas, my favorite of their LP's, but does include some great indie pop songs. "Failsafe," "All the Old Showstoppers" and "Mutiny, I Promise You" are the highlights.
14. Busdriver, RoadKill Overcoat
Most of the albums on this list won over a lot of fans this year besides me. Many of them made Pitchfork's Best of the Year List, and a slew of other Top 10's from around the Web. But RoadKill Overcoat came out really early this year, and I'm not sure I've heard anyone praise it other than myself. (Granted, I haven't been paying close attention). Anyway, I know Busdriver raps very fast with a very weaselly, high-pitched voice, and that half of the songs on here find him leaving his comfort zone and singing, but I still can't imagine why this isn't more popular, at least with music bloggers.
13. Blitzen Trapper, Wild Mountain Nation
Blitzen Trapper pull off a wide variety of sounds and styles on Wild Mountain Nation and never once sound less than totally confident. You'd swear the title track was written by Jerry Garcia, then it segues neatly into the contemporary indie pop of "Futures & Folly," then suddenly you find you're listening to lo-fi garage rock (interrupted by a harmonica solo) and on and on and on. All Music Guide refers to the style as "schizophrenic," but that implies that it's somehow out-of-control, when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the band sounds incredibly accomplished and tight here, particularly Erik Menteer on guitar.
12. Dinosaur Jr., Beyond
I was a bit young for Dinosaur Jr. the first time around (You're Living All Over Me dropped when I was 8 years old), and actually only discovered the band after developing something of an obsession with bassist Lou Barlow's follow-up project, Sebadoh. So this Dinosaur Jr. "reunion" is actually my first chance to be a real fan - seeing them play together at the Wiltern was definitely the best time I had at a rock show in '07. And it's all particularly gratifying because the new songs are so good, reminiscent of the music they've always made but not outdated or predictable. The Dinosaur Jr. Reunion kicks The Pixies Reunion's ass.
11. Feist, The Reminder
The Reminder sounds like a lost gem from another era. It's hard to believe the same airwaves crowded with shrill, guylinered emo bands and fucking Fergie nightmares actually broadcast these simple, perfect little Feist melodies. I liked Let It Die largely because of Karen Feist's beautiful vocals, but The Reminder gets pretty much everything right.
10. Okkervil River, The Stage Names
Not much to say about Okkervil River I haven't said before. These guys continue to impress with their expert musicianship, Will Sheff's phenomenal singing and deft lyricism and their outsize ambition. This may not be quite as memorable as the haunting Black Sheep Boy, but it's fantastic nevertheless.
9. Battles, Mirrored
I really should have put "Tonto" from this record on my Favorite Songs list. Not sure what I was thinking on that one. Anyway, it's an understandable mistake, because I never once put on an individual Battles song - I always listened to the entire album straight through. It's so easy to just get into the groove of these songs and let my mind drift, I had to remind myself after giving Mirrored about 10 listens to actually pay attention to what I was hearing. The way these guys just develop little melodies and then let them play out and mutate over the course of 7, 8 minutes is truly awe-inspiring at times.
8. The Ponys, Turn the Lights Out
Hands down, the guitar-rock album of the year. "Everyday Weapon," "Small Talk," "Poser Psychotic"...those are my favorites, but Jered Gummere and Brian Case just shred their way through 12 straight tracks. By the time they finish with the epic 6 minute plus finale, "Pickpocket Song," I typically need a nap.
7. The Fiery Furnaces, Widow City
A fine return to form for The Furnaces after several years in a kind of experimental daze, lost in the Friedberger Siblings esoteric and frequently unlistenable artistic impulses, like King Lear if he'd taken become addicted to ether during his travels. Only two songs, "Clear Signal from Cairo" and "Navy Nurse," drift around between several melodies and tempos like Blueberry Boat or Rehearsing My Choir. But rather than allowing the more clipped style to limit their palette of styles and sounds, the Furnaces just zip around more quickly. It makes for an exhilarating, always intriguing hour of music.
6. Bat for Lashes, Fur and Gold
This is late-night music, to be listened to on headphones with the lights out. I'm not sure how Natasha Khan put together such a delicate, quiet collection of songs that's this riveting. Also, what the hell is up with "The Wizard"? " Trembling midnight lands/I travel with the wizard/ Drink his blood and he's our leader"? It scares the hell out of me, and yet I can't stop listening to it.
5. The National, Boxer
I'm not sure what these guys do that other bands don't do, but I can listen to these songs A TON and not get tired of them. "Mistaken for Strangers," "Ava," "Guest Room," "Apartment Story"...I'm not even close to getting tired of these songs. Also, as they did on Alligator, The National have managed to put together a collection of songs that feel like they're about a common theme...but damned if I know what that theme is. And what it has to do with boxers. Also, I don't know how to talk about Matt Berninger's singing without making it sound like I have a mancrush on him. So let's just leave it at that.
4. M.I.A., Kala
At work, my friend Travis and I were both listening to this album obsessively all year, and it felt almost wrong somehow. Like this intensely immediate, exciting music - full of violent anger but also this powerful optimism and humanity - being listened to by a couple of guys sitting near-motionless at computers all day. But it's not really all that strange, because in addition to a good soundtrack for a convenience store robbery and/or block party, Kala is also the most compelling album of 2007, rewarding careful listening and close attention. A fucking masterpiece.
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Maybe Spoon's best album ever, there I said it. This is seriously up there with Girls Can Tell and Series of Sneaks, people. Every single song is good, and quite a number of them are exceptionally good. In fact, the four songs that close it out - "The Underdog," "My Little Japanese Cigarette Case," "Finer Feelings" and "Black Like Me" - are my favorite part of any album of the year. How's that for obsessive listing!
2. Radiohead, In Rainbows
Radiohead's best album since Kid A. I'm sure you're all sick of hearing me talk about Yorke, Greenwood & Co. at this point, so here's the Safety Dance.
1. Panda Bear, Person Pitch
Yes, I have the same #1 album of the year as Pitchfork. I am a poseur. But seriously...listen to this 6 or 7 times, and it just automatically becomes your favorite album of the year. It's that good. Person Pitch is like a puzzle box - at first it's confusing and you don't know what the hell's going on, and then you slowly start to investigate and figure things out and then, suddenly, everything falls perfectly into place. "Oh, wrapped up tightly inside all these sound effects and stray noises are warm little pop songs!" Gradually discovering Panda Bear's hidden melodies was one of the highlights of 2007 for me.
