Thursday, December 26, 2002
The Truth About Charlie
Dir. Jonathan Demme, 2002
A French New Wave homage, full of frenetic hand-held work which at one point moved from cool Godard-style work to just headache-inducing. But awful charming, and I like its view of Paris, all seedy and multi-culti. Plus, Thandie Newton is incandescent.
Dir. Jonathan Demme, 2002
A French New Wave homage, full of frenetic hand-held work which at one point moved from cool Godard-style work to just headache-inducing. But awful charming, and I like its view of Paris, all seedy and multi-culti. Plus, Thandie Newton is incandescent.
Wednesday, December 25, 2002
Overrated and Underrated Lists, 2002
| Overrated - mojitos, ___tinis, merlot - J-Lo's from-the-block cred - the supposed underratedness of rap-rock bands - Sam Mendes - Heath Ledger - Anthony Lane - "Road to Perdition", the movie - "Everyone Loves Raymond" - "Six Feet Under" - Scotland - Carrie - wins by starting pitchers - interleague baseball - the NBA salary cap - the amount of guilty pleasure one can derive from reality shows - the New York Times' liberal bias - William Safire - Cary Tennis as chronicler of generations - "I Don't Know How She Does It" - the hotness of the Bush twins - the freakiness of Bing-Bowie's "Little Drummer Boy" - politically incorrect humour - pronouncing 'Target' with a soft 'g' - spelling 'America' with any number of 'k's - Tom Tomorrow - China - "Best (or worst) lie I've ever told" - Simon Cowell's heartlessness - the staying power of "terror sex" - the sincerity of Strom's renunciation of 1948 - Sean Combs, fashion designer - headlines with the phrase "____ and the City" - Industrial Light and Magic - the 'Dolby Digital experience' effects - the sex appeal of Dubya | Underrated - Manhattans, Pimm's, pinot grigio - "ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup" - the Datsuns, the Leaves - the Weitz brothers - Charlie Hunnam - David Denby - "Possession", the movie - "Buffy" - "Gilmore Girls" - Wales - Miranda - on-base percentage - the wild card in baseball - Tomasz Radzinski - pitchers under 6 feet - Voice Over Internet Protocol - Dahlia Lithwick from Slate - the Ethicist - Cary Tennis as advice columnist - "The Nanny Diaries" - the hotness of the Olsen twins - "Last Christmas" - dirty jokes - saying "23 skidoo!" - anachronistic slang... "heavens to Betsy!" - the Boondocks - Taiwan - "_____ is sexy; ______ is sexier" - Paula Abdul's niceness - the euro - water as a political issue - the sound of "Mills/McCartney" vs "McCartney/Mills" - clubbing in the 80s - WETA vfx - the THX sound - the sex appeal of John Major, apparently |
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
Sunday, December 15, 2002
On the Condition of Music
Here's a good Chicago magazine piece about rock criticism. Mmm, Christgau worship. Speaking of which, here's my traditional end-of-year lists. Like Michael Kinsley, I could never be a completist - we only have so much time, and I can't devote as much of it to listening as I did back in college days. And I don't get promos all the time anymore! So I admit I still haven't got round to listening to the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots or David Gray's A New Day At Midnight. But of what I did get to hear this year, this is what moved me:
Singles of 2002:
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Bang". "As a fuck, son, you sucked". Six words. Sex hurts.
Missy Elliott "Work It". With a ridiculously catchy hook that proved impossible to decipher - until some research pointed out that it was just a flipped-and-reversed version of the previous line. Backward masking lives, and takes centre stage.
Tweet "Oops (Oh My)". Drips sex.
X-ecutioners "Genius of Love 2002". Okay, it's just the scratch geniuses revisiting one of the great 80s songs. But Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz are along for the ride. What do you consider fun?
Eminem "Lose Yourself". Because it loses itself in its own moment.
Albums of 2002:
Coldplay "A Rush of Blood to the Head". What, he's dating Gwyneth now? Blood must have gone to his head. But the album itself is spare, poignant, wistful.
Interpol "Turn on the Bright Lights".
Missy Elliott "Under Construction". She likes, how you say, the sex? All hail.
The Streets "Original Pirate Material". Hilarious. British hip-hop, and no hiding its origins. Don't mug yourself.
The Vines "Highly Evolved". And have you heard their cover of "Ms Jackson"?
Wilco "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot".
Bands of 2002:
The Vines and The White Stripes. Garage reclaimed.
Here's a good Chicago magazine piece about rock criticism. Mmm, Christgau worship. Speaking of which, here's my traditional end-of-year lists. Like Michael Kinsley, I could never be a completist - we only have so much time, and I can't devote as much of it to listening as I did back in college days. And I don't get promos all the time anymore! So I admit I still haven't got round to listening to the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots or David Gray's A New Day At Midnight. But of what I did get to hear this year, this is what moved me:
Singles of 2002:
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Bang". "As a fuck, son, you sucked". Six words. Sex hurts.
Missy Elliott "Work It". With a ridiculously catchy hook that proved impossible to decipher - until some research pointed out that it was just a flipped-and-reversed version of the previous line. Backward masking lives, and takes centre stage.
Tweet "Oops (Oh My)". Drips sex.
X-ecutioners "Genius of Love 2002". Okay, it's just the scratch geniuses revisiting one of the great 80s songs. But Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz are along for the ride. What do you consider fun?
Eminem "Lose Yourself". Because it loses itself in its own moment.
Albums of 2002:
Coldplay "A Rush of Blood to the Head". What, he's dating Gwyneth now? Blood must have gone to his head. But the album itself is spare, poignant, wistful.
Interpol "Turn on the Bright Lights".
Missy Elliott "Under Construction". She likes, how you say, the sex? All hail.
The Streets "Original Pirate Material". Hilarious. British hip-hop, and no hiding its origins. Don't mug yourself.
The Vines "Highly Evolved". And have you heard their cover of "Ms Jackson"?
Wilco "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot".
Bands of 2002:
The Vines and The White Stripes. Garage reclaimed.
Triangulation
Are people the sum of their mailing lists? What would your picture of me be if all you knew was that these were the lists I'm subscribed to?
Bar None
The Civic Strategies E-letter
Defected News
The Economist: World This Week
The Emerald Hill Group
The Fiver (from Football Unlimited)
The Foreign Exchange
Fox Searchlight Pictures
The Harvard Crimson Weekly E-Digest
Juice Weekly Update
Media Bistro
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day
NYTimes.com's Movie Update newsletter
Other Music
The Plain English Campaign
planetdream
Provignage
Random Thoughts
SEconomicsRJC
SG News Bites
Television Without Pity
TransAtlantic: The Atlantic Online
What's New
Writers' Market
ZoukEflyer
Are people the sum of their mailing lists? What would your picture of me be if all you knew was that these were the lists I'm subscribed to?
Bar None
The Civic Strategies E-letter
Defected News
The Economist: World This Week
The Emerald Hill Group
The Fiver (from Football Unlimited)
The Foreign Exchange
Fox Searchlight Pictures
The Harvard Crimson Weekly E-Digest
Juice Weekly Update
Media Bistro
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day
NYTimes.com's Movie Update newsletter
Other Music
The Plain English Campaign
planetdream
Provignage
Random Thoughts
SEconomicsRJC
SG News Bites
Television Without Pity
TransAtlantic: The Atlantic Online
What's New
Writers' Market
ZoukEflyer
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
Downtown
Someone squash the Ketchup Song. Please.
Anyway, so I'm back from Kuala Lumpur. Ethical dilemma: so DVD piracy is rampant in Malaysia and you can get most movies there - even the latest ones like Solaris, which hasn't even come to the screens around here - for about RM10 (roughly S$5 or US$3). This is intellectual theft, of course. But at the same time, it's often the only source of indie films in the region - films like Auto Focus or The Rules of Attraction (Dawson as psychopath!) probably won't make it to the cineplexes or the video store. Or they'll play the film fest circuit, which means I'll have to wait till next year. Oh, I know it's economics - the Picturehouse, my city's attempt at an arthouse cinema, had to shut down eventually. But it still creates a moral morass.
And don't even get me started on censorship...
Sometimes what worries me is that people who seem to want to create that feeling of excitement (I hesitate to use the word "buzz", which started off sounding like instant jargon and has suffered the usual death by overkill) in Singapore don't seem to recognise that in truly exciting cities, art happens on a continuum of scale. Which is to say, yes London and New York have their galleries and West End / Broadway plays and musicals but they also have small-scale exhibitions and cheap theatre in low-rent districts. (I have fond memories of watching a random play in the Lower East Side, from which I have a lovely T-shirt that says "Who Cares Who Died This Week? Alice is Dead". If anyone remembers what this performance is, please e-mail.) And the ideas that come from these small-scale shows and productions feed up to the mainstream.
Actually it disturbs me that people even point to Broadway musicals coming to Singapore as a sign of flourishing art. I like some musicals (the effervescent "Mamma Mia!", the wisecracking "Producers") but they're profoundly middlebrow forms of entertainment. Particularly Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose music is often as inane as the Ketchup Song, which at least doesn't try to be more than it is. Wake me up when "Urinetown" hits the Esplanade.
Someone squash the Ketchup Song. Please.
Anyway, so I'm back from Kuala Lumpur. Ethical dilemma: so DVD piracy is rampant in Malaysia and you can get most movies there - even the latest ones like Solaris, which hasn't even come to the screens around here - for about RM10 (roughly S$5 or US$3). This is intellectual theft, of course. But at the same time, it's often the only source of indie films in the region - films like Auto Focus or The Rules of Attraction (Dawson as psychopath!) probably won't make it to the cineplexes or the video store. Or they'll play the film fest circuit, which means I'll have to wait till next year. Oh, I know it's economics - the Picturehouse, my city's attempt at an arthouse cinema, had to shut down eventually. But it still creates a moral morass.
And don't even get me started on censorship...
Sometimes what worries me is that people who seem to want to create that feeling of excitement (I hesitate to use the word "buzz", which started off sounding like instant jargon and has suffered the usual death by overkill) in Singapore don't seem to recognise that in truly exciting cities, art happens on a continuum of scale. Which is to say, yes London and New York have their galleries and West End / Broadway plays and musicals but they also have small-scale exhibitions and cheap theatre in low-rent districts. (I have fond memories of watching a random play in the Lower East Side, from which I have a lovely T-shirt that says "Who Cares Who Died This Week? Alice is Dead". If anyone remembers what this performance is, please e-mail.) And the ideas that come from these small-scale shows and productions feed up to the mainstream.
Actually it disturbs me that people even point to Broadway musicals coming to Singapore as a sign of flourishing art. I like some musicals (the effervescent "Mamma Mia!", the wisecracking "Producers") but they're profoundly middlebrow forms of entertainment. Particularly Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose music is often as inane as the Ketchup Song, which at least doesn't try to be more than it is. Wake me up when "Urinetown" hits the Esplanade.
Born in the USA?
I continue to be fascinated with the topic of how Americans perceive their countries of ethnic origin, regardless of how far in the past that origin was: how the Irish-Americans in Boston, for instance, find those new 20-something Irish migrants odd because these young Irish people don't come from a land of poverty and of agriculture, but from a dynamic economy that's very urban. (See the entry for "Foreign-Born Irish" in this Southie slang guide.) That was the redeeming part of The Guru, that Jim Mistry-Heather Graham film, for me I think: I liked how the Americans kept insisting on the Indian's mysticism, when really he was brought up on Grease.
I continue to be fascinated with the topic of how Americans perceive their countries of ethnic origin, regardless of how far in the past that origin was: how the Irish-Americans in Boston, for instance, find those new 20-something Irish migrants odd because these young Irish people don't come from a land of poverty and of agriculture, but from a dynamic economy that's very urban. (See the entry for "Foreign-Born Irish" in this Southie slang guide.) That was the redeeming part of The Guru, that Jim Mistry-Heather Graham film, for me I think: I liked how the Americans kept insisting on the Indian's mysticism, when really he was brought up on Grease.
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