This is true of more than one song on this album*, but particularly the opening bars to “No One’s Gonna Love You” sound so much like Explosions in the Sky. I can’t decide exactly which EitS song… maybe “Look into the Air”. Such the same mood.
*also the final bars of “Lamb on the Lam”…
Monthly Archives: October 2007
All TV, All the time.
Michelle says “See ya” to Chuck, and I say “I love you” to both Bones and Brothers&Sisters.
Chicago Film Festival: Silent Light
Very hard to describe. Definitely an “art house” or “film festival” flick. Starts with a sunrise. That seemed to take approximately 20 minutes. Twenty minutes!! With nothing but the sun slowly lightening up the sky. No sounds but the wind and the birds and…maybe you can hear trees growing?
A lot of the movie is that silent. And that slow. And that ponderous. Not in a bad way. But definitely in a disconcerting way. I found my mind racing, racing, racing. Any scene with even a hint that disaster could happen had me imagining the wildest things…things that would never actually happen in this movie.
Technically the “action” of the movie is about a Mennonite farmer, with a wife and six kids, who has fallen in love with another woman. And struggles with how to go on from that moment. Although he stays with his wife, she ultimately dies (of a broken heart?)…but then there’s this one moment of magical realism at the end… Which was lovely, but a bit odd considering the very very NOT fantastical rest of the movie.
It was the opposite of, say, a three hour movie that feels like it only took 45 minutes. It was only a little over two hours, but oh sweet monkey sundae, I felt like I was in the theater for 25 years. Sitting in such utter silence, broken only by, say, the sound of someone’s feet walking through grass. Or walking on snow. Or occasionally having a very slow, very drawn out, very few sentences conversation.
Some of it was really beautiful. And the tension in it was very powerful, despite being such non-tense kind of tension. (Maybe you had to see it to even make any sense out of that sentence.)
But it was not an easy movie, on the mind. It totally wore me out. Consider yourself warned.
First Impression: Band of Horses “Cease to Begin”
It’s really great. I loved their first album but this definitely takes things up a few notches. Melodic and intense. Some songs are what I imagine Explosions in the Sky would sound like if they added a vocal track. A couple songs remind me of Pink Floyd, I admit sheepishly (not my fault! I did date Pink Floyd’s Biggest Fan!). And there’s one song with Eagles-esque harmonies (“Peaceful Easy Feelin'” type harmonies is what I’m sayin’).
Totally love it.
Although it seems kinda short. I want more!
Treats for Me
Arrived today from Amazon UK:
- “The Rain Before It Falls” by Jonathan Coe
- “Hellfire” by Mia Gallagher
Because despite the fact that in Edmund Wilson’s time we were simultaneously releasing the same book on both sides of the Atlantic, we’re apparently unable to do so in modern times.
Lyric of the Day.
I’d like to think I’m a mess you’d wear with pride…
-Band of Horses “I Go to the Barn Because I Like the”
Listening to their old album all day long in preparation for buying the new one from iTunes tonight!!
In Concert: Christine Kane.
Lovely voice, great style. Her guitar playing skills really blew my mind. Very much in the storytelling folk/country/songwriter style, each song pictured a whole world for you. Some sad and thoughtful, some sassy and upbeat. Totally enjoyable!
Chicago Film Festival: Blackout
Dir: Jerry LaMothe
Actrs: Mostly unknowns (to me) but a few familiar faces such as Jeffrey Wright, Zoe Saldana, and Saul Rubinek.
This movie was EXCELLENT. Completely compelling. I turned in my ballot with a 5 and I hope it gets a major distributor. Excellent even though the print we watched had a HUGE time code along the bottom of the screen (blocking about the bottom fourth of the screen) and no credits at the end.
Focuses on the New York City blackout of August 2003*, details the events in one Brooklyn neighborhood, particularly focused on the tenants of one apartment building and the workers at one hair salon. (Based on true events from the blackout, but believe the specific particulars are fictional.)
Really really great. Great acting, great pacing, great suspense, great passion and concern… Loved it. Both thumbs way up.
*hello, I was there! that was my last night in New York and I wound up sleeping on a couch in Manhattan unable to even get to my apartment in Queens!, and walking up and down many sets of stairs in complete darkness, and going for a very scary walk on the dark streets trying to find Amy…
Chicago Film Festival: The Walker
Dir: Paul Schrader.
Actrs: Woody Harrelson (main lead), Kristen Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, Willlem Dafoe, Ned Beatty.
This was a bit of a mess. We were down with it for the first half and then things started to unravel. Had a very 80s/90s feel to it, hard to believe it was filmed recently. Full of Washington DC “high society” (oh sweet monkey sundae, are those people pretentious or what) and supposed intrigue. The attempt to make Harrelson’s character BOTH a gay dandyish society fop AND a gay in a serious relationship with a trendy political artist didn’t really work for us. The two sides of his personality never melded and the contrast of the scenes was choppy.
Some good acting, not terrible, but would be very surprised if this film ever really sees the light of day.
Big Screen: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Very, very moody and melancholy and slow and drawn out. Really really beautiful photography (cinematography?), particularly during the narration. Lots of Midwestern winter shots, snow covered wheat fields, sun dappled groups of trees. Empty rooms with wooden floors and empty rocking chairs and streaks of sun shooting across them.
Oh and yeah the acting? Brad Pitt is progressively manic (eventually becoming an actually intelligible version of someone similar to the character from Snatch) and Casey Affleck really grows on you, after seeming sort of idiot-savant like at the beginning. Mary Louise Parker was excellent in a (very!) small role, as was Zoey Deschanel. Wished Frank (Sam Shepherd) had made another appearance at the end.
At the end you realize the story isn’t necessarily about what it seemed. Thought the narration would be annoying, but came to love it (gives it a very storybook feel, kind of like the narration in Pushing Daisies, although in a very different genre of storybook).
And as I said, the photography was beeeeaaauuuuuuuuutiful.