Baby Mama

Arrived in Buenos Aires yesterday and haven´t entirely found my feet yet after the longish flight; possibly, entries here will be infrequent as I hop around the americas for the next few weeks, but that remains to be seen!

Anyway, saw this film on the plane - Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in a clash-of-opposites comedy, with the former a career-focused 37 year old who is paired with the latter (nice, as a genuinely sweet character, unlike the type she normally plays) who agrees to be a surrogate mother for Fey´s character´s child. It´s rather fluffy, but sweet-natured...a good in-flight film. Maura Tierney (a blast from the past!) and Steve Martin (as a long-haired hippie business tycoon) also pleasing.

Okkervil River - The Stage Names

A somewhat unexpected treat - Okkervil River are really good these days! Here, their thing is basically a sort of ragged indie rock, often with a bit of a rough-edged country/contemporary folk flavour, and they're just as convincing selling out and out rockers like opening pair "Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe" and "Unless It's Kicks" (my current favourite) as mellower dreaming-in-the-sunlight cuts like "A Girl In Port" and "Title Track", not to mention the Spoon-esque rave-up that is "A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene" or "You Can't Hold The Hand Of A Rock And Roll Man", crunching like a late Smiths song, or enigmatically anthemic closer "John Allyn Smith Sails". It's rather delightful how it plays with the pop music canon, too, most notably on that last, which segues seamlessly into a slowed down "Sloop John B" melody and makes it work as the natural close to the record as a whole, and "Plus Ones", which plays wryly with numbers in famous pop songs (eight Chinese brothers, etc). Excellent.

Band of Horses - "Tour ep"

I'm not sure where this came from or when it was recorded - it was in amongst a bunch of stuff that Jon gave me a while back - but it's pretty nice, demo and live versions of mostly familiar tracks, albeit some under unfamiliar names. Brought back fond memories of the Band of Horses live experience.

Jesse Zuba - Bloom's Literary Guide to New York

Kinda boring, unfortunately. A potted history of NYC, as focused on headline political happenings and developments as on the writers and movements who chronicled them, but the analysis never rises above the superficial, nor the prose above the workmanlike. There's no real verve to it, no sense of excitement.

Shoot The Piano Player

A part of me thinks that more or less the whole point of this film is the style, but on reflection that's probably unfair (even were it true, that wouldn't be a criticism in this case) - while its attitude to the gangster/noir flicks on which it's a take is at least partly ironic (or perhaps self-reflexive), Shoot The Piano Player also works for many of the same reasons that its generic (in the sense of genre-y) inspirations do, not least in the treatment given to its central character and his of-course-shadowy past. It's so easy to get swept up by these films...

Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

It took me a lot of listens to get Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, but this afternoon, it's finally taken...lush, luscious, full of longing, and at once dramatic and intimate, it's the album of which, in retrospect, Surfacing and Afterglow were more concise, more contemporary, and less good versions. It has a kind of glow, an energy and a languor, which owes much to its understated electronic elements, which are on the verge of being dated but not quite tipping over...I don't know how much or how regularly I'll listen to it going forward, but it was worth persevering at least to this point.

Whistler - Whistler

This is a sweet little folk-pop album, poised between chipper and melancholy, as it usually goes in this genre; as much could've been expected, of course, from "If I Give You A Smile". They remind me a bit of Drugstore (at their least noisy), a bit of the Sundays, sometimes (as on the drowsy-druggy "The End") of Mazzy Star...

Also, as a historical note: here.

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

Peppy, likeable pop music with many details to savour, from the bop and attitude of early highlight "Oxford Comma" to the electric piano (?) / violin hook in "M79" to the one-two of "I Stand Corrected" and "Walcott", the latter painting in sparkling light what the earlier had set out in muffled tones so that each enhances the other. Heard bits and pieces before; repeat listening to the record as a whole shows the 'afro' elements still prominent, but less so than on initial impression...it's really just neat 21st C indie-pop music, with all that that entails.

Rushmore

Nice! Less stylised than Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic or Darjeeling (being the other Andersons that I've seen), but equally deadpan and pleasing. I think we're supposed to root for Max Fischer; somehow, despite his many obnoxities, I did. It's genuinely funny, and it's kinda got soul, too.

Final Fantasy @ the Toff in Town, Thursday 11 December

Whimsical indie violin-pop, tension-laden and playful, with loops. This was really good; I'll need to listen to He Poos Clouds more carefully.

(w/ Ruth and her friends Simon and Mat)

Legacy

Interesting, this.

The Cardigans - Gran Turismo & Long Gone Before Daylight

Two Cardigans albums, the first exhibiting a bit of a tendency towards jaggedness and a rougher edge mixed in with the band's usual melodic focus, the latter more expansive and mellower, but the records have much in common for all of that. I like them both very much, though neither inspires me to really listen to it over and over.

The Thin Red Line

Man, this is just as good every time I watch it. Drops off in the last 40 minutes or so, once it breaks the two hour mark (and after the battle for the hill), but up to then, it's simply stunningly poetic by any measure, never mind when assessed against other war movies (because, make no mistake, that's exactly what this is, be it as naturalistically beautiful and abstractedly philosophical as it may be).

Peter Høeg - Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow

For mine, this is an excellent novel on any terms, but there are two things that particularly stand out about it - the vividity with which it creates both its chilly settings (the city, the sea, and the ice) and the delightful eponymous character from whose perspective we see its events (the grab on the back blurb, describing her as 'a wonderfully unique creation of snow and warmth and irony ... shimmer[ing] with intelligence', is spot on), and the way in which it completely obliterates any distinction between 'genre' and 'literature', at least as those labels might apply to it.

The plot never stops moving forward, even when Smilla finds her investigation temporarily stymied at various points, and the mystery builds before being satisfyingly resolved, and Høeg doesn't mind throwing in a bit of action as he goes, but the novel's concerns are serious, as is the way in which it explores them, and the way in which it ends, after tying up all the loose ends of the mystery, is satisfyingly unresolved; the novel takes its central mystery seriously, but doesn't treat it as the be all and end all.

The language in which it's written is a feature, too - the first person present tense voice gives the reader ready access to the indefatigable Smilla and to events as they unfold, and is apt to the landscapes, both physical and emotional, in which it unfolds.

(I was interested, incidentally, to read a week or so ago that the people of Greenland had voted in a referendum to take what looks to be a large step towards complete independence from Denmark - see also here.)

The Sweet Hereafter

There's something very lucid and just faintly mournful about The Sweet Hereafter; were it not so plainly spoken, it would seem like an elegy, though I couldn't say to what. So many of its happenings would so easily be susceptible of a sensationalistic treatment - the domestic abuse, the lifestyle and diagnosis of Stevens' daughter, the interview in which Nicole tells her lie, the central accident itself - but everything is handled with a restraint and a quiet which is, cumulatively, rather devastating. There's some lovely stuff on the soundtrack, too - some Jane Siberry, and at least one song on which Sarah Polley herself sings. (The last, and only previous, time I saw this was some time in late high school - almost a decade ago now - but I recall it as having had much the same effect on me then.)

Belle and Sebastian - The BBC Sessions

I wonder if Belle and Sebastian are my favourite band these days? I think they might well be. The BBC Sessions has reminded me of all the reasons why I like them so much by the simple expedient of collecting, across the bbc sessions recordings proper and the bonus 'live in Belfast' disc, many of their absolute best songs - "The State I Am In", "Like Dylan in the Movies", "Judy and the Dream of Horses", "Seymour Stein", "There's Too Much Love", "The Boy With the Arab Strap", "Dirty Dream #2" (a list the incompleteness of which only serves to remind how many other great songs the band has up its sleeve) - and presenting them in versions not terribly different from those so familiar and loved in their lp incarnations...one which is worthy of note is "Lazy Jane", of course an early version of "Lazy Line Painter Jane", which has a very different feel from the barnstorming ep version, being quieter, more 'Stereolab', and more 'calypso' than the other in the absence of Monica Queen to contribute the girl vocals.

Though the songs making it up aren't as consistently great as on the other, I prefer the Belfast disc, both because of its liveliness and fuller sound, and for the three covers - a sweet take on "Here Comes The Sun", a surprisingly faithful "I'm Waiting For The Man", and a sunnily electric version of "Boys Are Back In Town". That said, the bbc sessions disc ends with four B&S songs that I'd not heard before, of which my favourite would have to be "Shoot the Sexual Athlete", though the others, "The Magic of a Kind Word", "Nothing in the Silence" and "(My Girl's Got) Miraculous Technique" all have their charm...oh, lovely!

Lykke Li - Youth Novels

I know that this is lazy, but I'm going to do it anyway: Lykke Li is like a cross between Annie and Robyn. Her sparse electro-pop has a lot going for it, particularly a sense of a certain delicate artistry at work and genuine emotion woven into it, but it's one of those albums which would really have benefited from some trimming of songs - after scene-setting opener "Melodies & Desires", Youth Novels leads off with three of its best songs, "Dance, Dance, Dance", "I'm Good, I'm Gone" and "Let It Fall", before disappearing into trough of four consecutive tracks without a decent melody between them ("My Love", "Tonight", "Little Bit" and "Hanging High"). After that, following the interlude of "This Trumpet In My Head", it picks up a bit with "Complaint Department" and then scores big with an excellent, diverse run home ("Breaking It Up", "Everybody But Me", "Time Flies", "Window Blues") which highlights all of her strengths - strong melodies, arrangements which give the songs space to breathe, and creatively conceived, sparingly used details.

The Departed

Pretty good, but not as good as the original, mostly in that it doesn't quite come to life in the same way; still, had I not seen the other, maybe I would've thought The Departed a masterpiece. Probably not, though. All of the actors impress; Nicholson in particular because of the way he dials it down considerably from his most manic. (Mark Wahlberg also stands out for his ability to channel the aspects of himself - or, at least, his public persona - which most suit his character.)

Interstate 60

A quirky, enjoyable little indie film with an excellent cast up its sleeve, most notably Gary Oldman as the puckish O W Grant and Chris Cooper in an extended cameo and reprise as a man who simply cannot abide lies. It's a rather fey premise - rich kid aspiring artist Neal Oliver (James Marsden) finds himself granted a wish ('to know the answer') which sends him on a brightly surreal road trip down a highway that doesn't exist on normal maps and down various perceptual side-roads - but works well, though it plays somewhat unevenly. Canadian, which figures.

Australia

I didn't really expect this to be good, but the Baz factor got Michelle and I through the door anyway; all of my reservations turned out to be justified, as Australia is, indeed, an overlong, terribly cliché, not particularly interesting take on the romantic/epic/landscape melodrama thing...not wholly unenjoyable, and the scene where the cattle stampede towards the cliff edge is admittedly spectacular, but really just a bit blah. Hugh Jackman wasn't as good as usual either, though what are you gonna do with a role like that?