january'd

Woody Allen's Alice

2010 Oscar-winning documentary, The Cove

Daniel Kalder's absurd Russian travelogue, Strange Telescopes.

Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar, compendium of food+wartime writing.

"Lo Boob Oscillator" off of Stereolab's compilation, Switched On, Vol. 2.

"Seneca" off of Tortoise's LP, Standards.

"why do people believe in space & time...cause i'm leavin' all of that behind..."

Last Thursday, Amelia & I had the good fortune of travelling to Columbus, OH to see Werner Herzog's new 3-D movie, Cave of Forgotten Dreams.


The movie centers around Chauvet Cave which houses the oldest (and incredibly well-preserved) cave paintings in the known world. It is closed to the public for preservation--thus, this may be the only video footage filmed.

The drawings themselves are incredible, and lent extra-realistic portrayal via the 3-D viewing, as many are painted on undulating cave walls that play into the movement and look of the drawings. This was my first 3-D movie (as long as you don't count amusement parks...like the ridiculous cyberpunk psychedelia of indoor rollercoaster CHAOS...Opryland's finest), and it took me a good 30 minutes to reach a point where I felt like my eyes weren't constantly swimming for adjustment.

Herzog's warmth and humanity are evident as ever in many of the interviews, in which he manages to mine character and compassion from a range of scientists, academics, and cave-seekers. Vibrant personality exists everywhere, and Herzog is adept as ever in exposing it; from a pathetic attempt at spear-throwing, to a scientist's circus past, to the bone-flute-stylings of an experimental archaeologist named...Wulf.

The strongest aspect of the whole movie though, is Herzog's use of the cave to rend the space-time fabric that separates us from our distant ancestors, a gulf that often seems infinite in its breadth. Even considering the vastness of time & space with the added bonus of an understandable context (art!) is intimidating. Without context, in my personal experience, thinking about such distant connections is an impossibility.


Wulf and Werner.
The connections to our past are strong, and emotional, throughout the movie. The wall of handprints in red; the sprayed outline of the same hand; with silence and blinding flashlights as a backdrop (add in the stunning score or reverberating heartbeats) these are stunningly heavy revelations. When Herzog mentions the footprint of a child and a wolf side-by-side, not knowing whether they came in together, or thousands of years apart, the point is hammered home. Time as we perceive it is swift; the usual metaphor being a river. But it comes across here as more of a glacier, inching forwards inevitably, leaving chasms that can be crossed mentally, but rarely physically. This cave, this movie, is one of those rare chances. Seize it.

did you hear the one about the snow

Being all weathered-in (even the gym closed for a day), we've been watching plenty of movies, in-between catching up on Egypt-happenings via the New Yorker's excellent "Dispatches from Egypt" online series and frequent Newshour viewing. Also, completed a large amount of updates to the oft-neglected Everything, Now! internet portal, including figuring out how to stream 4 of our albums in their entirety, and putting a sampler EP up for download.


Cover art for our new CD 4xEP...

In-between, managed to escape the icy clutches of the near-Eastside to see (for the first-time, shame on me) the best American band of the past quarter-century: Yo La Tengo. Post-brewpub pints & burgers, we caught both halves of their set, the first of which was decided by the spin of a wheel. Though I was rooting for a Condo Fucks set, I was pleasantly surprised by DUMP, as bassist James McNew took over Ira's axe(s) and played a stellar, pretty clean and vibrato-y set of guitar-pop numbers. Plus a shredfest at the end, and the dude can shred. The second half of the set was not surprising, but allowed for all the YLT tropes. After classic mellow-organ-and-polyrhythm opener "Autumn Sweater", there was the R&B skronk of recent jam "Periodically Double or Triple". Other highlights were Summer Sun standout "Little Eyes", and on the opposite side of the noise-spectrum, aged guitar-freakout proto-punk blast of "Artificial Heart". There was the requisite noise-kraut jam which saw Ira switching guitars, James roughhousing his bass into his full-stack, loads of feedback closing out their set pre-encore. The encore was mostly quiet & acoustic, a warming coda on a below-zero night.


Pretty much ready for a road-trip to India.

After watching quirky doc Home Movie earlier in the week (a must-see for the Gator Farm owner alone), on a whim we watched director Chris Smith's more recent offering The Pool, a serious comedy/coming-of-age tale in Hindi, set in the beautiful city of Goa. Besides making me want to travel immediately, it was an unexpectedly great movie. The dialog was warm in tone, funny, poignant, smart; the colors fantastically vivid yet real, the locations full of dusty beauty. Unfortunately, you have to compare it to Slumdog Millionaire, but I feel like The Pool is much more realistic and touching in its depth. Just an excellent story.


Get out of my head, Robert Blake. With your no-eyebrows face and glistening hair!

Last night we had a double feature of Lost Highway and...Aziz Ansari: Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening. After the anxiety-ridden creepitude of another Lynch feature, I guess I just needed a palate-cleanser. Lost Highway, upon second viewing, may be my favorite non-Peaks Lynch creation. The story circles around on itself, the sense of suffocation and dread is fairly thick throughout, and the pace is deliberately slow yet carries momentum. Clearly going to need a third viewing. As for Aziz, his post-meta-whatever style does hold water; story-jokes about messing with a younger cousin via-Facebook and hanging out with Kanye both carry weight. For someone who's schtick is so heavy on "not-giving-a-fuck", all the intra-family joking was extra-funny to see. Meta, indeed.

weekly list, vol. 2

being sick the entire weekend yer off sucks. that being said, here's a list!



saw:
--tell no one--
amelia heard about this french thriller exactly a year ago on NPR, and after she watched it tuesday night (i went to sleep), she couldn't stop talking about it. or go to sleep until around 4am. watched it on thursday...and it was pretty good all the way through. smarter and with better performances than...
--michael clayton--
i guess it was the week of thrillers. i was pleasantly surprised by this movie, as long as i didn't think too hard about the too-easy unjust corporation. plus, i like george clooney. all told, it was less thrilling (though with less loose ends than) tell no one.
--the weeping camel--
by far the best movie we watched last week, even though i was feverish & ache-filled while doing so. a quiet, stark-yet-touching account of mongolians living in the desolate, windswept gobi desert, and their quest to reunite a camel & its calf, rejected from nursing since birth. all the sounds in this movie, from the near-constant wind, to the ritual pouring, stirring, and casting of milk into the breeze, to the groans, bleats, chuffs, and chewing emanating from the host of camels and sheep. a movie i wouldn't mind watching again...and i never watch movies twice!


camels: a bit unsightly, aren't they?

heard:
--cocteau twins - heaven or las vegas--
checked out this and a singles collection after reading about cocteau twins in one of those terrible "hear these 1000 records" compilation books. realized i'd never actively listened to any cocteau twins. i'm more than happy with this mix of shimmering, shoegaze & tremolo-ed out guitars over kraut-y drums that don't sound too 80s-ish (usually takes me a long time to get past that; re: stone roses' first record). of course...this record is from 1993. still...enjoying this quite a bit through headphones. not as much as slowdive, but it isn't quite that atmospheric.

read:
--more of John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy--
almost 300 pages in now, and just recently have some of the narratives started to intersect. none have really collided, and some have just barely touched. still pretty wowed by his scope of early 20th century american life...almost enough so to go buy a suit and go get a fantastically odd job by worming my way into high society. is that still possible?

consumed:
--for the first time ever, i added bacon to my homemade mac'n'cheese. this was the best decision i've made in a while.
--friday made pizza (with amelia's new crust...which was pretty much better than mine) with fresh mozz, bacon, and banana peppers. throw in a bottle of red wine.
--awesome jamaican patties with my brother at....patties of jamaica of course. really should eat these more often, though they are highly addictive. pastry + spiced meat = yes.
--el sol de tala on thursday with amelia's parents & sister. still by far the best mexican in town.

now to try & rest/heal up before band practice!

weekly list, vol. 1

things i heard, read, saw, and possibly ate/drank in the last week.



saw:
--american experience: roads to memphis--
despite all my reading about the kennedy assassination, i'd never really investigated the assassination of dr. king. roads to memphis was pretty sad, but it's something you can't turn away from. when it was over, i felt like that days events were still echoing, rippling out into the now. also: i had no idea james earl ray was a fugitive long enough to escape to london, and only just missed a flight to rhodesia.
--trafic (1971)--
amelia didn't really like this french comedy of errors, and at first glance, i wasn't really into it either. a bumbling designer (mr. hulot, apparently a recurring character) follows his designer car to an auto show in amsterdam, and all sorts of hijinx ensue along the way. the best shots and scenes are the monotony of the road, complete with engine and interstate noise levels. also great were the recurring shots of apparent everymen/everywomen, waiting in traffic, succumbing to habits of nosepicking, yawning, etc. not something i would watch again intently, but something i might leave on in the background. also: the little 5-or-so-note melody from the score wormed its way into my brain, all fresh & bright.



heard:
--yo la tengo--Electr-O-Pura and And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out--
definitely a yo la tengo week. after spending weeks with the b-sides & covers collection Genius + Love = Yo la Tengo, i reconvened with 2 records from opposite sides of their spectrum. Electr-O-Pura is mid-90s guitar-buzz that rarely relents. Alt-rocking "Tom Courtenay" and skronky "False Alarm" are two standouts here. And Then Nothing... is the quietest YLT record, less breezy than Summer Sun, but heavy in a way that even the album cover nods to. "You Can Have it All" is pure pop, sweeter and shorter-lasting than Flavor-Ice. "Saturday" is drum-machine-dub filtered through the usual instrumental suspects, organ and guitar-feedback.

read:
--Janet Malcolm's "iphigenia in forest hills" in the New Yorker--
a lengthy summation of a recent somewhat-bizarre, completely complicated murder trial in NYC. while you end up feeling pity/remorse for the protagonist, you never really get a sense of her innocence in any amount. still, malcolm makes you feel for the-guilty-who-are-wronged, a subset of people that never merit much consideration. if you can't protect the weakest amongst a population; who can you protect?
--John Dos Passos' U.S.A.--
finally hacked into this 1000+ page monster that i acquired this summer while browsing for nothing-in-particular at Bloomington's Caveat Emptor. picked it up due to it's seemingly enormous scope. only 40 pages in, i've just scratched the surface of a single narrator (i believe there are upwards of ten), and am becoming accustomed to Dos Passos' accumulation of songs, facts, news headlines, and first-person detritus in-between the more narrative sections of the book. Very rough-and-tumble feel so far, though eminently readable. Just tackling a book of this size again gives me a good feeling.

consumed:
--pork ribs, baked beans, mcclure potatoes, cranberry salad, garlicky greens, mac n cheese, and rhubarb pie for Amelia's Grandpa's 80th birthday celebration. oh, throw in a Sam Adams Pale Ale and a few glasses of red wine (went surprisingly well with the ribs and pie). had never had straight rhubarb pie before, but it was stunningly good with a touch of citrus from orange zest. (and ice cream, of course)
--twin steer at the east side's own Historic Steer-In. the twin steer is a big mac done right, with 2 smash-style burgers, 3 (buttered & griddled) buns, lettuce, tomato, pickle, cheese, and special sauce. always fresh!