Beltmann

The albums that have found a serious spot in my psyche: Lydia Loveless, the Eels, Jack White.  I'm surprised by the lack of enthusiasm for Jack White in this thread.  I think Lazaretto improves upon Blunderbuss, which was strong but perhaps a tad monotonous.  Each track on the new one has a distinct, catchy personality, and plenty of unusual stuff going on without ever losing sight of the distinct melody.  To these ears, it's the best thing Jack's done since Get Behind Me Satan, the Stripes album that this new record most resembles.

I love this place and I think there are quite a few other people who do too. We can make the place what we want it to be. 

Thanks!

 

I really can't believe that was my first post... seriously I've lurked here forever.  

Welcome!  I lurked for a long time, too, before officially joining!

Love the Elbow cover of that, too.

I saw the terrific Milwaukee show, so I'm trying not to be envious... but "Radio King" and "Laminated Cat"?  Jealous!

Fountains of Wayne.  They were a terrific band even before "Stacy's Mom," and sometimes I wonder whether they regret that song--whatever its merits, that song came to define them, for good and a lot of bad.

I adore the Eels, but I never thought of Mark as someone who ever had a "hit."  Was "Novocaine for the Soul" really a breakout?  I suppose the video did get lots of airplay on MTV in '96.

Nice call on Better Than Ezra, too.  I wouldn't have remembered that one, but I really liked that album.

The only problem is it does not come out until August, cause I need this awesome power pop to be my full time summer jam.  

That was my first thought, too!

Thanks for coming to Milwaukee, Jeff! it has been ahwhile. can't wait to see ya!

Yes!  I scored two excellent tickets for Milwaukee in today's pre-sale.

Milwaukee!  Yes.

The nice thing about Fargo is that it will be a limited number of episodes.

I find that appealing, too.  Knowing it was a limited time commitment is one of the reasons I decided to give the show a chance.

I finished watching the latest episode about ten minutes ago.  Best one yet; the ironies are piling up in a very satisfying way.

Fargo is much, much better than I expected.  I'm happy that it eschews imitation, offering instead unfaithful variations of characters, situations, and themes from the movie, but at times that's distracting--I keep finding myself thinking about how things have been re-arranged into unexpected permutations.  That'll wear off, I think, once it sinks in as its own thing.

I attended one of the shows.  A-man, I remember you being slightly miffed that we didn't meet in person that night.

Sam Jones paid me $1 to film me standing in line.  He filmed a bunch of people for the planned DVD.  I still have that dollar bill somewhere...

There are some people you may know in the front row.

Indeed.

Chiming in with another endorsement.  Her latest album is one of my favorites of the year so far.

In the mid-to-late 80s, my family taped Letterman almost every single night and watched it the next day, and some interviews and bits (especially the anniversary specials) were watched by my brother and me over and over again, to the point of memory. Late Night with David Letterman is easily the biggest influence on my sense of humor. 

 

Ditto, on everything.  I really can't remember a time when I didn't view him as the gold standard, perhaps because he came on the scene during my formative years.  His free-for-all style of comedy at the outset definitely helped shape my sense of comedy.

This July they are headlining our county fair (southeastern Wisconsin, in the middle of farmland).  I might go.  It's a five-minute drive.

I posted this on Facebook yesterday, and thought it might be worth re-posting here:
 

Harold Ramis once asked for my thoughts about Jay Gatsby.

It was 2006, and Ramis was at the Oriental Theatre as a guest of the Milwaukee International Film Festival. I was there on assignment, and happened to have the theater lobby all to myself in between screenings when I saw Ramis escorted into the room. He was instructed to stay put while festival staff readied the auditorium for his presentation. This meant that he and I were alone in the lobby.

Neither of us had anything to do, so we started talking, mostly about movies and careers. When he learned that my full-time gig was teaching high school literature, he started peppering me with questions. His son was a sophomore reading all the same books, he explained.

I couldn’t believe my good fortune. After all, Ramis was, perhaps more than anyone, responsible for shaping my understanding of comedy and fostering movie love in the 10-year-old me. Here was one of my childhood heroes, and all he wanted to talk about was Henry Fleming, Hester Prynne, and the Old Man on the sea.

For 20 minutes we talked like old friends. And then, as Ramis was finally whisked away up the lobby stairs, I, like a moron, blurted out, “Can I just say, thank you for Ghostbusters!”

When I heard of Ramis’ death, my first thought was of his son, who now must be 23 or 24. I suppose it’s a testament to his effortless warmth and sincerity that my first thought was not of Harold the filmmaker, but of Harold the father who will be missed.

To be fair, writers don't always get to write the headlines that accompany their pieces.  I have contributed to various print outlets for more than 20 years, and I have never written my own headline or cutline.  (Trust me, it definitely wasn't my bright idea to headline my Jurassic Park review with "Dino-Mite!"  My friends still won't let me forget that one.)

I have written my own headlines for some web pieces, but not all.

Thanks for sharing this, Donna.  Awful news.  Heaps of positive thoughts on the way to Sue and the family.

"We're Just Friends."  It doesn't get a lot of respect, but it's one of my favorite Wilco songs.  I like to think of it as a soft and wounded miniature--simple yet beautiful, with something real, honest, and touching about it, all while sounding like an exposed raw nerve.  The ache in Jeff's scratchy, tremulous vocals is palpable.

I stopped making a point to watch the SOTU years ago, but not because I find it uninteresting.  Instead of watching, I prefer to read the transcript in its entirety.  First, it's (much) quicker when you don't have to endure all the pageantry, the dramatic pauses, the neverending applause.  Second, reading the speech transforms it from theater into a policy paper, which makes it easier to judge the ideas within.  There's nowhere for the ideas to hide; it's all there on the white page, unable to hide behind images, flags, and vocal tones.  It just seems like a better way to engage with the content.  (Unfortunately, it also usually exposes the content as a lot of vague, empty, generic crowdpleasing rather than measured, thoughtful defense of policy.)

I usually end up watching some of the speech, sometimes all of it.  But it's not automatic for me, and certainly not a necessity.

Due to a quirk in the Oscar rules, Blue Is the Warmest Color was not eligible for the foreign-language category (it needed to be released in its home country by the end of September, and then officially submitted by that same country).  If it had qualified, I suspect it would have been a shoo-in for nomination.  The Academy still could have nominated the film in other categories, but foreign-language films rarely score such nods, especially when caught in the foreign-language purgatory.  The worst part?  Since it was eligible for most categories this year, it will likely not be considered next year for the foreign-language category, when it will be eligible.  This weird rule negatively affects a number of international movies every year.  This year it happened to trip up one of the most acclaimed and buzzed-about foreign films of the season.

I haven't actually had a chance to see it yet, but I pre-ordered the Blu.  Looks fantastic.

The Great Beauty is probably in my top 10 films of last year, and one of the few I saw last year that I'd probably watch again. I really dug the lead character, the quirky way the story unfurled and the beautiful cinematography. The film felt modern with a big foot in the world of Antonioni and Fellini.

 

The Hunt is also right up there for me as far as Oscar nominated foreign films go.

I really loved Sorrentino's previous film, so I was primed to see The Great Beauty and just couldn't make room in my schedule for the screening.  I'll see it eventually.  The Hunt and Inside Llewyn Davis would be likely contenders for my year's ten-best list, if I drew one up.  (I'd probably also consider these largely overlooked titles: Closed Curtain; To the Wonder; Berberian Sound Studio; The Act of Killing; Upstream Color; Stories We Tell; Lore; A Hijacking; Something in the Air; Before Midnight; Informant; Beyond the Hills, and a number of others that I'm surely forgetting right now.)

Interesting how you ranked the Best Pic nominees.  I suppose I'd go this way:

1. The Wolf of Wall Street

2. 12 Years a Slave

3. Her

4. Gravity

5. Dallas Buyers Club

6. Philomena

7. Captain Phillips

8. Nebraska

9. American Hustle

I actually like all of the nominated films, but only the top three strike me as full-throated masterpieces.  I don't care a whole lot about what gets nominated and what doesn't, but I'll admit to being a little thrilled about how Bad Grandpa received more nominations than The Butler.

I've been catching up on a lot of movies I've been meaning to watch, as well as trying to see all the Oscar films.

Agree on all counts, except Short Term 12, which I haven't seen yet.  Did you see The Wolf of Wall Street?  I'd be interested in your take on that one.

I somehow managed to catch nearly all of the Oscar nominees this year.  I've seen all of the major nominees except for The Grandmaster (Cinematography), and missed only a handful in smaller categories like short films.  (I love Wong Kar-Wai and meant to see Grandmaster during its Milwaukee run, but never quite found the time... and then it was gone.  It's on Amazon, though, so I'll probably still see it prior to the Oscar show.)

Now I'm kicking myself that I skipped screenings of The Great Beauty and Broken Circle Breakdown, two foreign-language nominees that I could have seen for free.