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29 items tagged reviews
Films I saw in January 2010
I may not be able to keep this up every month, but in January I saw 32 (mostly) good films, so I figure I can do a top ten list. There are a few minor spoilers.
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The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Sometimes my view on a film takes time to coalesce. While I found the experience of watching the Texas Chain Saw Massacre a few weeks ago to be extremely unpleasant, it has stuck in my mind, and the more I think about it, the better I think it is.
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Gimme Shelter
Gimme Shelter is a beautifully edited glimpse of late 60s life. It chronicles the (lack of) planning and execution of the free concert at Altamont in December 1969. The focus is naturally on the Rolling Stones, but it goes beyond the formulaic concert footage that one expects and receives from it.
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Gang of Four
Last night I saw Gang of Four perform songs from their 1979 album, Entertainment! I love the album, but the show was even better than I was expecting.
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Denon DL-160
So today, after nineteen long days of waiting, my Denon DL-160 arrived. I spent about two hours installing it, I'm now enjoying the high output of its moving coil.
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The Dark Knight -- not that dark
I finally saw The Dark Knight which had everyone talking a few months ago. To begin with, it's not a good film or a particularly bad film; it's not properly a film at all, rather an action flick along the lines of the later Die Hard films and should be regarded as such, rather than with the inflated value that people I know seem to have assigned to it.
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Trust
Of his 1981 album Trust, Costello writes:
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Two french films
Perhaps it's just having seen its latter incarnations, Stalag 17, The Great Escape, etc., but I found The Grand Illusion greatly overrated. Renoir's mixture of comic and bleak works in Rules of the Game, whose void leaves its audience to ponder society's vacuity. In The Grand Illusion, most of the jokes fall flat, and one is left questioning the point of the film.
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Lou Reed's Berlin
About three weeks ago I saw Lou Reed perform his 1973 album Berlin, live at Royal Albert Hall. I'm not a huge Velvet Underground fan, and I can't say I know all of Lou Reed's stuff either, but Berlin is definitely an amazing album.
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Meat Puppets Concert
Oddly exactly one year after my last article on the Meat Puppets, I write about them again. I saw them on Monday at Scala.
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There Will Be Blood
Although I don't see many new films, I enjoyed There Will Be Blood tonight, even though I can relate to someecards' take on it.
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Asus eee
I'm writing this post from an Asus eee. It's quite a responsive little thing, though it didn't seem to like when I added some Debian repositories and installed preload on it.
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The Mill on the Floss
This book is not a spectacular read. Its plot would be unsustainable were it not for George Eliot's piercingly brilliant insights into human nature, which hang extraneously on its uneventful narrative. Unlike Middlemarch, the web of characters in this novel is perfunctory, and altogether rather unsympathetic and uninteresting. Although you witness the long lives of the characters, you never feel as if you have aged with them as you do in her later novels.
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PJ Harvey
My obsession with PJ Harvey has ebbed of late, but I was extremely excited by listening to To Bring You My Love just now, because there's such a clear reference in "I Think I'm a Mother" to Captain Beefheart's "Dropout Boogie" (from Safe as Milk).
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Down and Out in Paris and London
George Orwell's great account of what poverty is like as a plongeur in Paris and a tramp in London. Its anecdotes are entertaining, thought-provoking, educational, interesting. I finished it in like two days, definitely worth a read.
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Nine Inch Nails
So, I've been listening to Year Zero or Zero Year or Zero Wing or whatever it's called, and even though it's (musically) standard NIN fare, it's (topically) starting to get sort of annoying. Artistically I don't think Reznor will ever top The Fragile (1999) but his last two have been decent by today's standards. It's just that he's changing little, and most of his developments are for the worse. Not that Pretty Hate Machine (1989) didn't have its catchy political pretensions ('God money nail me up against the wall' etc.), but somehow it wasn't as annoying. The sex/money/God mix with an occasional ounce of politics just isn't doing it for me anymore.
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Buzzcocks
Enjoying Another Music in a different Kitchen (1978). They're like the Sex Pistols, but more talented, less annoying, and they sing love songs.
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Leonard Cohen
First experience with 'Chelsea Hotel' was very painfully different from many listens to Songs from a Room. That's all, I don't even think of you that often... very Boss.
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Talking Heads
Absolute trust keeps me going in the right direction
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Soft Cell
Soft Cell is a band whose reputation has fallen by the wayside. Everyone knows their cover of Gloria Jones' 'Tainted Love', and probably the fact that an oft-played version of that track is itself tainted by its remix with another of their covers (of the Supremes' 'Where Did Our Love Go?') has destroyed the image that their downright masterpiece Nonstop Erotic Cabaret should have given them.
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The Smiths
It was too sedate for many months but now occasionally haunts me. I really don't know and I really don't care.
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Echo & the Bunnymen
Their first album, Crocodiles (1980) is growing on me. I had started with Ocean Rain (1984), which is of course great, but I actually think their best album (of the ones I know) is Porcupine despite what allmusic has to say about the matter. Shocked by how different What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? (1999) sounds but perhaps I shouldn't be, fifteen years is a while.
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The Kinks
'She was so jealous of her sister...'
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Meat Puppets
While Up on the Sun (1985) isn't nearly as good as Meat Puppets II (1984), the opening line is growing on me: 'A long time ago, I turned to myself and said, "You, you are my daughter"'.
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Madness
So despite its incredibly stupid intro, Madness' One Step Beyond (1979) is a pretty good album. Reminds me of The Specials' self-titled, and both are a clear influence on early Sublime.
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Of Montreal
Thanks to Tommy for introducing me to Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (2007). I've been listening to that and The Gay Parade (1999) recently. I think the former is a great album, in the vein of Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Lou Reed's Berlin, maybe Springsteen's The River. If it's not quite as universal of those more masterful relationship-breakdown albums, it's more present.
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Blondie
So yeah, Blondie. So far? Started with Parallel Lines which is typically regarded as their best, although I've been getting into their other stuff. Some random thoughts follow.
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New York Dolls
The New York Dolls' Too Much Too Soon is relatively good for running. The NY Dolls are bombastic, somehow reckless-sounding, funny. It's a great album despite its being difficult to praise. Catchy but not particularly substantive, the experience is more like watching a ridiculous character in a movie than hearing music. Not that I don't recommend them, but if someone were to seriously ask me to defend my taste I don't think I could do it. Still it's somehow great in its own way. Exciting, fun music, not my standard fare. 'Just like puss in boots...'
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Chopper
Just watched Chopper (2001), which was not what I was expecting but worth seeing. When I heard it was about a likeable serial killer I expected something like Man Bites Dog, which it certainly is not. While one is attracted to the charisma of the latter's protagonist at times, he is much more callous and consistently sadistic, whereas Bana in Chopper plays a killer with a more ambivalent relationship to his own brutality (though overall it's an inferior film).
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