Entertainment wrap-up: June 2008 edition

On the right you will see what I am listening to (mostly new) and reading (mostly classic American literature). What is missing is the movies that I have seen, which have become numerous due to a relatively recent loosening of constraints on my free time. Below is my review of music, literature, and cinema from last month.

Music
It's been a mediocre first half of a year for music. Last year some of my favorites disappointed me, but some new bands I picked up made it one of the best years in a while for new music.

Billy Bragg, Mr. Love & Justice

I have the deluxe edition, which included full band and solo versions of each track, and I must say that this is Bragg's best album in years. Perhaps a bit unexpected that he went with love and relationship songs, but it is his album and I am not one to criticize him for what he wanted to put out. (I have read a few reviews that take him to task for not writing an album doused in his typically strong leftist politics.) The best tracks are "I Keep Faith," "Sing Their Souls Back Home," "Mr. Love & Justice," and "The Johnny Carcinogenic Show." Unless you are a huge Bragg fan – I am not – there is no real need to buy the deluxe album. Bragg does very little difference on the solo acoustic versions of his songs that warrants the extra bucks.

Bottom line: 3/5, Good, but not great.

Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs

I still have an unknown soft spot for taste testing emo. Perhaps it was wanting too much to listen to my brothers' albums the defunct 1990s emo pioneers Sunny Day Real Estate. And then like a junkie always hoping that they would put out an album as good as In Circles, but they never did. They had some very strong songs, but their subsequent albums were generally uncohesive wrecks. Which brings us to the band made popular by "The O.C." &ndash I have seen every episode of that show...ah the things you do for love. Their previous albums have had some strong songs and had a theme, but lacked maturity. DCfC have finally made a grown up album, though not nearly as spectacularly as Bright Eyes did with amazing Cassadaga. This is DCfC's best album to date lyrically and musically, and it sounds like some of Wilco's early stuff. (Wilco is my favorite band, despite their shitty effort last time out.) Still generally sad and focusing on relationships, but there is something more there this time. If you liked 'em before you will love this; if you hated 'em before, then you might hate 'em less; if you were on the fence, this should tip the balance one way or the other for you. Best tracks include "Bixby Canyon Bridge," "Cath...," 'You Can Do Better than Me," "Long Division," and the haunting "The Ice Is Getting Thinner."

Bottom line: 3.75/5, give it a listen

Jason Mraz, We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.

I am as confused about my listening to Jason Mraz as you are. Not a good musician or a talented rhymer. Funny at best, confusing a worst. Well he has grown up with this album with a collection of introspective semi-autobiographical and non-goofy love songs. It, however, renders an album without a soul and still too many mostly skippable tracks. Best songs include "Love For A Child," "Details in the Fabric" (featuring James Morrison), and "If It Kills Me."

Bottom line: 2/5, borrow it from a friend

Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, Global A Go-Go

It is hard to judge this 2001 album as it was his last. It is a melding of a ton of different music styles from around the world, some of which work and others don't for me. My favorite track, "Johnny Appleseed," was used as the title song to HBO's short lived "John From Cincinnati." The show was a lightning rod for viewer as some liked it and others hated it, while others were pissed that David Milch sacrificed the fourth and final season of (the best show on tv) "Deadwood," so get the bizarre "John From Cincinnati" made. Back to Global A Go-Go, the best tracks are "Johnny Appleseed," "Mega Bottle Ride," and the long "Minstrel Boy."

Bottom line: 3/5, Good, but not great.


Literature
My writing is honestly not very good, and what I have learned is that people I know who I consider good writers are avid readers and have been since childhood. As my mother can attest, I hated reading through early college. I would read when I had to, but it was cursory to get general plot lines and characters &ndash the writing itself was inconsequential to me. In college and throughout most of graduate school, I have read a ton of history and enjoyed it, but let's face it academic writing is incredibly dense and jargon filled. (Surprising that most historians can only get published by academic publishing houses, huh?) Anyway, so a person who I grew close to for a while before a falling out of her making, convinced me to start reading some fiction. I decided that I would in the evenings when my dissertation work had burned a hole in my brain. Further I decided on American classics, since that is a giant hole in my knowledge base and I pretend to be an American historian most of the time. I will throw in an occasional modern one in that I might have laying around or someone loans me. Since they are all classics, they should all be read, so I will not assign any kind of score to them here or in the future. I will with modern books.


Animal Farm by George Orwell
The first and only recommendation by the person who started me on this enterprise. It is short and tightly written, and a book I had never read before – this will be a theme. They playing out of the white and red communist civil war by farm animals was, however, not a subject matter all that interesting to me and further convinced me that I needed to get back to American literature.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I "read" this as an undergraduate in an intro to English course. The actual book is the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Case in Critical Controversy and I remember reading some of the essays at the end of the book for my paper, but I had no recollection of any of the text Twain wrote. I found this book a slow go as Twain captured the way that the barely educated Finn and uneducated Jim spoke. I read slow enough as it is, so when the author adds to me reading even slower I get frustrated easily. This book took more patience to get through than I thought and the pay off just wasn't there for me. I see why it is a classic because of the subject matter and how well Twain tells a story. I am glad I read it, but this is not a book or author I will be returning to any time soon.

Henry and Clara by Thomas Mallon
This is the first book that I have ever read by Mallon, and I must say that I was extremely impressed by his writing and ability to weave historical and fiction elements together. The story is that of the two people who were in the booth with Abraham and Mrs. Lincoln when he was assassinated. You would think that the story would end with the assassination, but that only occurs a bit past the midway point. It is a story of love, longing, and loss in every way but the physical. The story is told primarily through the third person, but has emotionally important chapters told through the first person in the form of letters and diary entries. The ending comes completely out of the blue and makes the book one of my new favorites. The setting of the book is in Albany, NY and Washington, DC, so for me I could picture the latter locations. I have a great friend in Albany, so when I see her and her husband this fall I am going to search out some of the Albany locations, probably to her chagrin. You have been warned Danielle.

Bottom line: 4/5, well worth your time

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I read this book in high school, but I probably watched the movie and ever so lightly scanned the book so as to not disturb the pages. (Another trick I used too much in high school to avoid reading.) The copy I have is a first edition that I took from my grandmother's apartment after her death a few years ago. It has been well read, but it contains no marks on the pages and yellowing of the pages due to her chimney-like smoking. Other than that it is in perfect shape. I could not put this book down most nights as I was captivated by a story that I already knew like the back of my hand. I now understand why this book is a modern classic beyond its important message on race, but for its writing. I was floored by the simplicity of the writing and only wish I could say so much by saying so little I would be a happy camper. My favorite part about reading it was that I knew Scout and Jem weren't going to die and the Arthur Radley was going to save them, but I was literally on the edge of my seat when I was reading it like I didn't know what was going to happen. The writing will probably never cease to amaze me.


Cinema
Movies have not been on my radar for a while as my long time better half and I didn't agree on a lot, including movies. We have since parted, so despite going to movies alone, I have headed back to the cinema in big way recently, though mostly documentaries.


Standard Operating Procedure by Errol Morris
Morris won an Academy Award for For of War and he deserves another one for this superb piece of film making. It is the story of Abu Ghraib prison as told by the people who were there. They are at times people I felt empathy for and at other times I thought that there were more than deserving of the scorn that was heaped upon them. Morris does not wield a big stick like Michael Moore, but through the subtlety of the answers that he gets from his interviewees he makes the audience ask more questions than the movie will ever try to answer. It is at its core an indictment of the Bush administration's lose of American morality that we used to hold up as a shining example to the rest of the world.

Bottom line: 5/5, See it at the first chance you can. If it doesn't win an Academy Award the Academy can, well...you get the point.

Surfwise, by Doug Pray
There was more to this movie than I imagined. I thought it was going to be about a surfing family and their trials and travails, but it was so much more. The documentary take a very strange turn about midway through and then again at the end. It is funny, sad, and heart warming.

Bottom line: 4.5/5, See it.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, by Chris Bell
A documentary about steroids that walks the gray line between their legality and morality versus illegality and immorality. Bell has two brothers who both use steroids, and he even dabbled in it once before deciding they were not for him. So this is a personal story as much as it is about steroids in American culture. This documentary is more in the style of a Moore documentary, but has much more humor and lacks the preachiness of the recent Moore films.

Bottom line: 3.75/5, Try to see it. You won't be disappointed if you have an understanding of American athletics/ultra competativeness, if you don't you might not understand the essence and much of the humor of film.

The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan
I like M. Night's movies, except Lady in the Lake, and think that the criticism for some of his movies after The Sixth Sense have been because reviewers want a repeat experience of Sixth or something different from the movie Shyamalan made. This movie was not his best though it fits the summer movie watching audience to a T. It is a pinch over 90 minutes, and moves breezily. The writing isn't great and some of the shot choices were questionable, but not nearly as questionable as the casting. Zooey Deschanel was dreadful and had no chemistry with Marky Mark, who I think was better than most of the reviews. I mean how much can you do with a costar who is as robotic in delivering lines as she is in her emotions. I never bought her for a second and wondered what she did to get the role. A new mystery from M. Night Shyamalan.

Bottom line: 3/5, not a waste of time, but might be a waste of money if you are going to pay more than $10 to see it. I saw it as a matinee, which made it worth it.

Brick by Rian Johnson
My twin brother got me this a few years ago for Christmas, but I ended up leaving it at my parents' home when I left to come back home. I got it back and then it has collected dust for the intervening time. Not something the ex would have liked I though, and I was correct. It was an superb movie and is definitely worth renting. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is excellent in this movie. I was leery of Gordon-Levitt until I saw The Lookout on cable a month back. He was incredible in both roles, and I think he will be the next Heath Ledger-type of actor. By that I mean he will be able to handle the big roles of major movie houses as well as small indie movies with equal aplomb. I look forward to his future movies, though I see that he is in the GI Joe movie...that can't be good. My only minor quibble with Brick is the over stylized language that Johnson employs. When the actors are speaking quickly or over each other it is hard to follow.

Bottom line: 4/5, Go rent it.

Mongol by Sergei Bodrov
Run to see it. I am not going to give away the plot, except that Temudgin is my favorite characters this year. This is a foreign film that came out last year and was nominated, though didn't win, the Academy Award – IDIOTS. I thought the best foreign film in 2006 was Pan's Labyrinth, so I obviously am good for picking the second best foreign film each year. The movie is subtitled, but it is much like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in that it is not dialogue intensive and it become almost natural to read the lines by the midpoint of the movie.

Bottom line: 5/5, Run, don't walk, to see this movie.