Here’s the movie trailer for one of my favorite cartoons growing up as a kid. The live action sequences and cast seem like tha bomb, though I’m not sure of Emile Hirsch playing the lead character. Christina Ricci as Trixie is a hot choice.
[MP3] Speed Racer “TV Theme”
Over the weekend, I caught This Is England, a semi-autobiographical film written and directed by Shane Meadows (A Room for Romeo Brass and Once Upon a Time in the Midlands). The film is centered on a group of young skinheads in 1983 Thatcherite England and also touches on the The Falklands War and the rise of the white national front. The story is both beautiful and unsettling in its imagery and themes. There are parts of the movie that had me laughing and reminiscing about my childhood and other parts that had me cringing in my seat, head turned peeking out the side of my eyes. Newcomer Thomas Turgoose plays coming-of-age “Shaun Fields,” a 12-year old who has just lost his father in the war and is being bullied at school, brilliantly. Stephen Graham, who plays “Combo,” a bad skinhead, also delivers a powerful performance.
Getting to the point of this post, since this is a music website and all, the film’s soundtrack is incredible. It contains a bunch of reggae from Toots & The Maytals, The Upsetters, Al Barry & The Cimarons, along with 2 Tone ska from bands like The Specials. The music fits the film perfectly and merges wonderfully with Ludovico Einaudi’s melancholic piano score. There’s also some new wave stuff, including Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” and a cover of The Smiths “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.” The opening of the film pairs news clips depicting UK riots and (sometimes brutal) footage from The Falklands War with Toots & The Maytals “54-46.” It really sets the mood for the rest of the film.
Check out the trailer below and I highly recommend picking up the soundtrack too. Oh, and thanks Nghia for introducing me to the movie and letting me crash on your couch over the weekend. You too Gypsy.
[MP3]: Toots & The Maytals ”54-46″
Single, Beverly’s/Pyramid/Trojan; 1968
I was one of the lucky few to witness the debut of Sufjan Stevens‘ BQE last night at BAM. Set in the regal Howard Gilman Opera House, the show consisted of two parts, the BQE and “Sufjan plays the hits”.
The civic-themed evening was a vision expressed by Sufjan through film and music. 8mm video choreographed to a live orchestra spanned the upper half of the stage, while intermittent live performances of hula-hoopers provided a more comical side to the show. The parallel worked, since the grainy film led us back to the early days of the BQE when car was king and the hula-hoop was invented. Sufjan played with imagery of tires and hoops spinning and our love-hate relationship with car-culture by building quiet melodies to intense frantic compositions.
Following intermission, Sufjan played most of his well-known pieces with perfection and beauty. Many of the songs were reworked with revised melodies or longer endings. After the show, I felt somewhat guilty getting in my car and heading back to the West Village across the Manhattan Bridge. But as I approached the on-ramp, I looked up to see signs for the BQE and just smiled.
More pics after the jump:
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For the past two weeks, from 8-10PM, I’ve been glued to my TV to experience the captivating series on The War from the documentary master, Ken Burns. Of course when I say The War, I mean WWII, since it was the last world war where many veterans are still alive. Most of us have family members that were veterans of the war and there are many stories to tell. 16 million Americans have gone through this war and today, the veterans are dying.
These are the reasons Burns took on this 15 hour series that took 4 years to make. The War is told through letters and present-day interviews, highlighting several small towns throughout the series to give us a personal perspective from the home front to the frontline. Add in numerous hours of live footage and thousands of pictures and you gain a real understanding of the war.
Check the PBS website for TV schedules in your area. I think our local PBS will be broadcasting 1 of the 7 episodes each week on Wednesday night.
On a lighter note, these modified military hand signal diagrams are pretty hilarious. Subtle, but brilliant.
Trailer just released this week for the upcoming Michel Gondry film Be Kind Rewind, starring Jack Black and Mos Def. The plot is perfect for Gondry, where two video store owners need to re-enact movies that they lost the on tape. No shortage of cardboard-esque props here with Mos Def and Black creating home-video-quality films that customers actually begin to like. Gondry is known for manipulating scenes into fantasy, so much so that a hilarious spoof has been made about it. The unlikely paring of Gondry, Black and Mos Def seems to work and I must say I’m eagerly awaiting the December 21st release date.
The trailer for Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited came out this week. The trifecta cast of Wilson, Schwartzman, and Brody portray three brothers re-forging family bonds by taking them on a train trip around India. Anderson has a way of making things funny and at the same time pulling on your heartstrings. Kind of makes you want to call up your sibling and say, “hey, let’s get together soon”.
Yeah, I know, I know, three days late on this and in the blog world, three days might as well be three weeks. I actually just got back this morning around 3am and didn’t really have a chance to think about and reflect on what made this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival so much fun for me.
It hit me this morning halfway into work on what made the last four days such a great time. Of course I went to Chicago to see live music, but I unconsciously approached this festival completely different than I have any other in the past. I had no schedule whatsoever, nada; all I knew is that I wanted to see The Field. It was all about the unexpected, I kind of just let the day take me wherever it wanted and surprisingly it turned out better than I could have imagined.
In the past, when I would go to one of these events, I’d have a specific plan that I was focused on, almost like a horse with blinders where I’d fail to take in a whole other side of the event, which I learned in Chicago was the people who actually came to see the music. This may come across as a bit cheesy to all of you, but for me it was a real eye-opener. Instead of rushing from the front of each stage with my camera in hand, I stepped back and took in the entire festival.
I’ll start from the end and work my way backward. In the wee hours of Monday morning, I found myself on the Blue Line heading back to downtown Chicago talking to some guy from Pitchfork about what he does there. Prior to this, I found myself aimlessly wandering and cab-less in a mostly abandoned area of the Near West Side neighborhood of Chicago after seeing DAN DEACON, DEERHUNTER, and some dude in his tighty whiteys perform at a warehouse loft on a scale much much smaller than they had played just a day earlier. The room where the bands played was also about 300 times more humid than it was here on the East Coast just a week ago and Dan Deacon ate up every bit of it, sweating (I mean pouring) it out with the crowd with his trademark show. Deerhunter’s live show was the real surprise of the weekend – putting on a solid (and loud) set to the Chicago crowd of about 100 or so. It’s really great when a band’s live show can completely sway your opinion about them.
Before hitting up a pre-party for the Deerhunter/Dan Deacon warehouse afterparty, I found myself front and center at the Pitchfork Festival for THE FIELD’s (aka Axel Willner) set. Musically, Willner’s set was the highlight of the festival for me, who delivered with layers minimal techno beats topped off with a bit of shoegaze atmospherics, letting loops dangle, extracting them to infinity, and further reinforcing why From Here We Go Sublime is the album of the year. Before The Field, I caught a bit of STEPHEN MALKMUS’ mellow solo set and some of JAMIE LIDELL’s antics.
The earlier part of Sunday was spent roaming around Union Park, browsing through records, getting caught in a water gun fight, playing bottle cap frisbee, drinking too many Goose Island’s and then waiting in dusty endless bathroom lines, watching people play basketball knockout, and finally learning about roller derby from the Windy City Rollers. I got a killer temporary tattoo from them.
We ended Saturday night in a weird and uncomfortable place, but fortunately the music was good. This followed seeing FREER, TIGERCITY, and DJ Mother Hubbard rock it at The Cobra Lounge. The first day of the festival, I watched Dan Deacon get shut down by the fire marshal after being dragged to see CLIPSE which actually was pretty decent. This was preceded by FUJIYA AND MIYAGI and BATTLES, both of who I was gladly seeing for the first time. IRON AND WINE was quite a bore, but you can’t really blame the band, the sound at their stage was suspect all weekend.
Friday night, I headed up to Wrigleyville, which is sort of like Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village on the weekends. Drunkeness all over the place. DJ Bald Eagle, one-half of the Life During Wartime crew, layed down an absolutely killer set at Metro after the crowd was nearly bored to death with a screening of the Daft Punk’s new movie, Electroma. Remember Gus Van Sant’s Gerry? Electroma also sees a duo hike (and drive) around, A LOT. Still, I’d like to get another shot at seeing the film.
That’s pretty much it, at least everything I can remember. Thanks to the people of Chicago and Pitchfork for putting together such a great festival and welcoming us out-of-towners to your great city.
