Beltmann

My wife and I were watching the TV show New Girl tonight, and one of the characters had a Wilco poster in his bedroom, prominently featured. He also had a Black Keys poster on his door, and poked fun at Steve Miller in a line of dialogue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg0OODPSc44 Page One: Inside the New York Times / dir. Andrew Rossi / USA / 2009 The Green Wave / dir. Ali Samadi Ahadi / Germany; Iran / 2010 There’s no doubt our media landscape is changing, but should we mourn the changing of the guard? The all-access documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times expresses hard-boiled anxiety about a news culture that allows venerable print institutions to collapse and be replaced by amateur bloggers, cable news, Twitter, and aggregate websites. As the Times performs old-school investigations that require weeks to p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KAm7E_R18Y Sophia Takal’s Green begins as a miniature, naturalistic story of culture clash--a Brooklyn couple re-locates to the countryside and befriends a chatty local--and somehow morphs, seamlessly, into an intense psychological study of female sexual jealousy. Takal owes a debt to Cassavetes, yes, but the mood is something new. There’s a strange friction between the comfortable acting and affable dialogue, and the way the forbidding electro score portends the mounting neurosis. Odd, too, how the leaves always seem to be eavesdropping. Unfortunately, t

Have you seen Cinemania, GtrPlyr? (I assume you have. But if you haven't, it's worth seeing. It's also about a particular groups of obsessives, here NYC film fanatics.)

I'm certain that I've heard that tidbit before, but I can't recall whether that was from Jay or some other involved party.

I enjoyed that interview immensely. Thanks for the heads up. Although I've been disappointed in pretty much everything Jay has done since Okemah, I'm still eager for both the Guthrie project and the new Son Volt. I haven't given up on him yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9td_3P3w1S4 City of Life and Death / dir. Lu Chuan / China / 2009 City of Life and Death is Lu Chuan’s unflinching historical drama about the Japanese siege of Nanjing in 1937. As a powerful, black-and-white chronicle of war crimes—the army butchered an estimated 300,000 residents and raped thousands of women, sins compounded by decades of official denial—the movie is within spitting distance of Schindler’s List, another film about the value of collective memory. Like Spielberg, Lu commits to a dynamic, stylized realism fueled by the tension between the un

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoyKe-HxmFk Into Eternity / dir. Michael Madsen / Denmark-Finland-Sweden / 2009 Conscience, albeit on a grand scale, is at the core of Michael Madsen’s otherworldly documentary Into Eternity, which wonders how far into the future our consumer society will have consequences. Madsen invites viewers on a philosophical, gliding tour through the caverns of Onkala, an underground superstructure in Finland being built to bury a fraction of the world’s quarter-million tons of lethal nuclear waste. Scandinavian scientists appear spooked when describing their design

You're the best, Wendy.

I like to stand at concerts, but I'm fairly certain that is not evidence of a superior outlook on life.

Excellent. i wasn't even going to check... thanks for the heads-up.

Refn is definitely a talent to watch. Drive is on my priority list, but I probably won't have a chance to see it anytime soon. Tomorrow night the Milwaukee Film Festival opens, so I'll be consumed by that for 11 days, and then recuperating for some time after (and trying to find time to crank out my write-up).

Got two for Milwaukee! Makes me feel better about having to miss the Madison show.

Glad to see you liked The American as much as I did. I didn't want it to end.

This discussion about the squeak reminds me of a discussion we had on here years ago about the little boing sound in "Far, Far Away" at the 2:39 mark. Ever since, I've never been able to hear that song without listening for it.

I don't hear it. Perhaps that awesome squeak at 1:57 drowns it out? (Seriously, I've loved that sonic burp since the first time I heard the song.)

Mumbai Diaries is the old college try: It's an "indie" alternative to the usual Bollywood films that dominate the world's most prolific film industry, tries to offer a candid look at Mumbai city life, and builds up some goodwill, but it doesn't quite come off. The script is too often creaky, the acting too often amateurish.

I haven't seen it, either! (I'm a mild Malle fan.)

For reasons unrelated to the impending release of TWL, I've spent a lot of time over the last month revisiting all of the previous albums, and it has been a remarkable journey. The differences are so stark that it's difficult to rank the albums against one another. I'm thankful that I enjoy nearly all sides of Wilco--for me, that seems to be the clearest common thread between the different eras and lineups.

No kiddin'. I was talking with a colleague this afternoon about the album and observed that OSM is twelve minutes but feels like four.

Yeah, but 800 of those were just me.

I was happy to see your screen name again!

I loved reading every word of this. Thanks for sharing!