Gravity

Holy pants.

 

Dear Earth,

Please go see Gravity, the new film by Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men), starring Sandra Bullock (never ever even close to as good as she is here) and George Clooney (who is perfect in this role). It is undoubtedly one of the best films of the year and a cinematic experience unlike any other I have ever watched. It will win many (all of the?) Oscars.

An addendum: Please go see Gravity in IMAX 3D. I literally cannot imagine experiencing this unbelievable spectacle in any other way.

More to follow.

Thank you and good night.

-Alex

How Many Comebacks Can You Have? – Elton John’s “The Diving Board”

During the Emmy Awards, a show which was not merely a train wreck but a train-crashing-through-the-walls-of-the-station disaster, one of the most glaringly WTF moments came when Michael Douglas and Matt Damon strained credulity by insisting that Elton John’s new single “Home Again” fit in so thematically well with their film about Liberace. Not that “Home Again” is a bad song.  Far from it. It’s actually a gorgeous ballad with elegant music, strongly impressionistic lyrics, and a haunting arrangement which allows touches of horns and choir to sneak in like the memories of the past Sir Elton sings about. And the performance was superb, as one could expect from one of the world’s premier showmen. It just had nothing to do with anything being honored on stage that night. WHY it was there seems to stem, in my opinion, from a tsunami of positive reactions, mostly from middle-aged critics at all of the major media sources, regarding his new album The Diving Board, released this past week.

I was intrigued by The Diving Board mostly because of the tone of these reviews; over and over again from Rolling Stone to The Wall Street Journal the aforementioned critics declared it “a comeback…his best album since the seventies” and variations thereof over and over again.

This worried me.

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Andrew’s Odds and Ends on the Music of Summer 2013

Last year, our readers may remember my ventures to listen to Bruce Springsteen from my front porch and attend Riot Fest to see Elvis Costello and sundry others. This year, big concerts were not in the budget as I am saving for a lot of book-related activities, and the Wrigley Field free concerts were not on the same excitement level as Springsteen, yet it’s hard for me to pass up the chance to hear terrific A-List music. Armed with a case of Shiner Bock in my cooler, I went out to hear some tunes and also observe the audiences.

The Wrigley Field music this year brought back a lot of nostalgia for my days at the Ohio Department of Transportation, cruising along the Mahoning County highways picking up litter and listening to whatever was on the driver’s preferred station, and our drivers preferred the hard rock/heavy metal and country stations without exception. As a strong proponent for melody in music, I developed an unexpected taste for country during those summers as a type of music which thrives on crafting infectious tunes you can hum, and while I did not acquire a similar love for a musical style that seemed to involve screaming out the words half the time, the modern rock station gave me a healthy appreciation for Pearl Jam: the songwriting without the necessity of rhyme, the roaring emotion of Eddie Vedder’s voice, the way Stone Gossard and Mike McCready’s guitar lines never resolved the way you expected. To this day, “Black” remains one of the most impressive and moving—and excellent—rock songs of my lifetime. So I had high hopes for these two evenings.

How much the audience shared these hopes was revealed only with the passage of time. The key takeaway of my pre-show people watching was how corporate these audiences were: while a significant number were in T-shirts and jeans (including about 70 different Pearl Jam shirts from various tours), there were many men in button-down shirts, and many women in dresses, done hair, full make-up, for outdoor concerts on very warm July nights. There was much complaining about scalping, and much discontent whenever someone saw me writing things down in my pocket Moleskine. These did not seem to be people who were enjoying themselves but people who viewed the shows as commodities, presentations of particular things which they deemed fit of occupying a few hours of their time, and treating them as any other event.

This impression was wrong.

 

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Dia de los Venture Bros!

This weekend marks the return of a cultural touchstone of our generation.

What? Yes, I know there’s a lot of vague, loaded terms in that grand declaration. “Generation” itself could spawn an entire graduate curriculum based around its vaguaries, as could trying to figure out what the hell a “cultural touchstone” is, anyway.

But you know what? We stand by our opening line. Because this weekend is when the new season of The Venture Bros. starts on Adult Swim.

At last!

If you haven’t had the illuminating pleasure of watching The Venture Bros…. We are deeply sorry for that hole in your life. On its surface, it’s a cartoon, a comedic re-imagining of Hardy Boys or Johnny Quest for the modern day. But the reason the Ventures have such a dedicated fanbase is that the series is so much beyond the surface: it’s an emotionally-gripping look at flawed and yet hopeful characters. It turns an electron microscope onto failure, expectations, disappointment, American exceptionalism, absurdity, and what superheroes & super science looks like when faced with accountants and bureacracy.

Oh, and it’s riotously funny in unexpected and creative ways.

In anticipation of the new season, Addisonians Alex Bean and J. Michael Bestul have decided to put the reasons why they love this series into terms gushing and supposedly erudite. There may be minor spoilers ahead.
Then again, if you haven’t watched Venture Bros. yet, you still have 48 hours (give or take) to rectify that. GO. DO IT. Or continue reading. Your call. [Read more…]

Maebe Next Time: Some Thoughts on Season Four of Arrested Development

You’re welcome for the pun in the title, by the way.

There was a family reunion last weekend that I had been feeling pretty nervous about. The people gathering for this reunion were guaranteed to say and do outrageous things, act like children (or possibly animals), and make a mockery of moral concerns, good taste, and basic human decency. This wasn’t my own family’s reunion, of course, but the Bluth family, who made their much-hyped return when the fourth season of Arrested Development premiered this past Sunday on Netflix.

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Bryan Ferry’s Whistle: An Observation on an Aspect of Millennial Culture

You do not have to click on the links to fully appreciate this post. But it may help.

BEGIN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bNZGNjvxSM

Last weekend, after much awaiting with bated breath by we at the Addison Recorder, Baz Luhrmann’s film version (version being the key word) of The Great Gatsby opened in cinemas. This piece is not about The Great Gatsby as a movie, especially since none of us have seen it, although I will return to the subject before the end. It is about the soundtrack to a degree, for while the soundtrack is on the surface as misguided as the film, there is one thing the music gets right.  For a few minutes, the film’s score gives way to a singer whose suave, languid, sophisticated persona was made for Fitzgerald, and who has in all likelihood inspired many of his fellow Gatsby contributors, including Florence + the Machine, Lana Del Rey, and even the tuxedo-clad master of ceremonies Jay-Z, with his theatrical, high-art musical stylings—Bryan Ferry.

[Read more…]