Phish -- Dick's Night #1

The FUCK YOUR FACE show.

Set 1:
First Tube
Uncle Pen
Carini
Kill Devil Falls
You Enjoy Myself
Ocelot
Undermind (bliss jam)

Set 2:
Runaway Jim
Farmhouse
Alaska
Chalkdust Torture (bliss jam)
Emotional Rescue
Fuck Your Face

Encore:
Grind
Meatstick

After listening, best show of 3.0 era.

Singh X

Check out Naveen's blog. The revolution will not be televised.

Harmony Korine

Coming off of Trash Humpers, Harmony Korine is at again.

GQ: For a long time, people have associated you with New York. And then I read that you hated it. Are you driven by place? Florida seems like it's own country.
Harmony Korine: Yeah. It definitely felt like that. I travel to mostly shitty places, I try not to travel anywhere too nice. I almost never go anywhere nice, but I go lots of places that are horrible.

GQ: Like where?
Harmony Korine: Like everywhere in America.

Spring Breakers

Breaking Bad - Say My Name

"Shut the fuck up. And let me die in peace." The death of Mike knocks the wind out of the show.  I know there's more, but he was the heart and soul.
And his death scene, staring out at a placid river, a gun shot wound in the depth of the belly is an ode to  Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.
If you're going to steal, steal from the best.

Echo Park Rising

"Strawberry Shortcake" on drums. Already in love.

Lavender Diamond.

Paegents.

Driftwood Singers.

Dead Ships.

The Far West.

Sonny Voss, Stoned Country

The Moviegoers Episode 3

Is now up. Take a listen. We talk about Cosmopolis and Bachelorette. And try to stay positive.

Cosmopolis

Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Don DeLillo. It's been a long time time since I've found a movie as tedious as this one. Difficult to muster any sort of energy to talk about this quasi-intellectual/philosophical exercise of a film. Neither emotional, nor intellectual, or philosophical. Sat in the theater seat -- feeling stuck -- and thought about the theater layout, the projection, counted how many people were leaving, if the gentlemen to my left was asleep, if the woman behind me was asleep, what is the percentage of dialogue  Robert Pattinson comprehends versus just strict memorization, would I'd fallen asleep if I went to the 10pm showing...Tedious.

Seattle

Bachelorette

The 'Sundance' version of Bridesmaids with Lizzy Caplan, Kristen Dunst, and Isla Fisher. Garbage. And what is Lizzy Caplan known for other than Party Down?

Super Bowl Bound!

The only pre-season article I needed to read. Now I'm a believer. Hibernation is over. Bear down.

The Moviegoers Episode 2

We talk Killer Joe/Hope Springs. So, obviously the discussion naturally leads to the topic of who gives better head -- Gina Gershon or Meryl Streep?

Saturday in August

Dog days here in L.A. Car repairs. Hot, and hotter.

Hinano's on Washington last night. Beach bar dive.

Hope Springs

Not the feel-good film I thought it would be. Tommy Lee Jones complains and bullies Meryl Streep. Yuck.

Time Fades Away

"Nobody expected Time Fades Away and I'm not sorry I put it out," Young told Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe in 1975. "I didn't need the money, I didn't need the fame. You gotta keep changing. Shirts, old ladies, whatever. I'd rather keep changing and lose a lot of people along the way. If that's the price, I'll pay it. I don't give a shit if my audience is 100 or 100 million. It doesn't make any difference to me. I'm convinced that what sells and what I do are two completely different things. If they meet, it's coincidence.
 

Sight & Sound's Top Film List (with one obvious snub)

A defense of the list of timeless, old films. Still, where the hell is Lawrence of Arabia?

Hard Knocks: A Season with the Miami Dolphins

They are going to be a bad team. Coach Joe Philbin seems to be overdoing his hard-as-nails persona. A little uncomfortable, trying to hold on, humorless. Lacks a personableness. Tough job.

My favorite part: Chad Johnson (no more 'Ochocinco') walking into a coaches' meeting, pulling up a chair, and expecting just to hang out, join in the discussion. What a cancer.

Feelin' It!

Killer Joe

William Friedkin in control of a luridly, wild dark tone.  McConaughey bringing evangelical, super-charged energy. "No he's not okay, he lit his genitals on fire."
(And beaver.)

The Moviegoers Eps. 1

Virginia Beach. August 3rd, 2000

Prologue: Eulogy in Song at Virginia Beach
The day had come for Pearl Jam to return to the stage. In the preceding weeks the rumors surrounding this show had been accorded more weight than a normal first show of a tour as a result of the Roskilde tragedy which sent Pearl Jam to cancel the final dates of the European leg, and go off into seclusion for the two months up to the beginning of the U.S. leg. No press conferences to answer questions of the incident, or MTV interviews to talk about the band's future, only a short statement offering the band's condolences to the victims' families. With no words from the band, questions arose between fans of would they cancel the U.S. dates, or even go so far as to break-up. Now in Virginia Beach, the questions turned to the mystery surrounding this show: how would the band react on stage, making their first public appearance since Denmark? Would the set list consist of only slower, introspective songs? For the more loyal fans, this show meant everything. Out of the public sphere since their last tour in '98, their latest record, Binaural, received little attention, with dwindling record sales for each of their last three records, and larger inquiries into the relevance of a "grunge" band in the year 2000. Had Pearl Jam become irrelevant, an anachronism of the times? Even the weather -- rainy, cloudy, and dark -- accompanied this unsure, almost somber mood as well as offering a reminder to Roskilde. A tension was certainly present on that slick, muddy hill waiting for Pearl Jam to respond to the questions.

Would they open with, Of the Girl, a song off Binaural which they had opened a majority of European shows? This would be the safe choice. As they walked on stage concealed behind a blue lighting, under the dark, foreboding sky, Eddie Vedder emerged having a let a beard grow, a sign of his isolation in Spain. The first chord was struck, certainly not Of the Girl, but a song offering a more majestic sound and a greater meaning, Long Road. Beginning slow in tempo, quietly:

And I wished for so long. Cannot stay.
All the precious moments. Cannot stay.
It's not like wings have fallen. Cannot stay.
But still something's missing. I cannot say...


The tempo and strength build upon the first verse:

Holding hands are daughters and sons.
And their faiths are falling down, down, down, down.
I have wished for so long. How I wished for you today.


As a song to lost loved ones it provided an emotional opus to reveal everything, everything unanswered in the past couple of months, the song became transformed into a self-conscious confession, a catharsis of stored up pain and guilt, a cry out to the fans for comfort and understanding:

All the friends and family.
All the memories going round, round, round, round.
I have wished for so long. How I wised for you today.


Each verse expanding on the last, the song conveyed their experience at Roskilde but was also an acknowledgement of the journey the band had dealt with for ten years, the ups and downs:

And the wind keeps roaring. And the sky keeps turning grey.
And the sun is setting. The sun will rise another day.


These images in their simplicity explained more, and expressed a deeper passion than any verbal statements to the media could have supplied. A personal communication directly to the fans through music. They were words of grief, but also a renewal, a continuation of the journey, as the song winds down to a quiet serenity:

I have wished for so long. How I wish for you today.
I have wished for so long. How I wish for them today.
Will I walk the long road? We all walk the long road.
Will I walk the long road? We all walk the long road.
Will I walk the long road?...
We all walk the long road...the long road.


The moment was eternal. To understand why this band is the exception in today's world, why they are powerful, and unique, one needs to understand the emotion of that moment, between the band and their fans. An answer to all doubters of the ability of music, at its best, to communicate and transcend.
--PWD, May '01

The Moviegoers

A night of cinema and discussion. Featuring Phil D., Greg J., and Andy V.

Thursday, & Louie -- Barney/Never

Kasey Chambers on the Santa Monica pier. Picnic-style on the beach. Then Louie to close out the night. It's only one episode of an entire season but an episode that never quite took off, half-baked with ideas that never fully formed.
"I diarrheaed in the tub" mixed with a scottish-looking Robin Williams, Sister Christian in a strip club, Artie Lange popping out of a toxic-holding truck, JB Smoothe as a wise-cracking non-"African" talking grave digger.
Thought the episode was leading up to a confrontation between Louie and the "vagina-removing" Mom over parenting but that didn't come to fruition. Cameos run amuck, though it was good to see Artie, alive and well, in NYC. Too much, maybe the episode as a whole is like Never, no one tells him 'no.'

A Conversation with Gore Vidal

In September, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for leaving the U.S. in 1978 before being sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in Hollywood. During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?

From The Atlantic (10/09)

Nas on Girls

Nas Says His Favorite TV Show Is HBO's "Girls"

BY ERIC DIEP | AUG 2, 2012 | 9:55 AM | PERMALINKing!”

Nas is publicly known to show love for his kids Destiny and Knight and his Queensbridge neighborhood. But many fans don’t know about his secret obsession. In a recent interview with People, he spoke highly of a certain HBO show that follows the lives of 20-something women. It's both suprising and very cool. What else do you like Nasir?

“My favorite show right now is Girls. I don’t know where this girl Lena Dunham came from, but she’s amazing!”

Sight & Sound Top 10

BFI Top 50 Film of all time

1. Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock, 1958 (191 votes)

2. Citizen Kane
Orson Welles, 1941 (157 votes)

3. Tokyo Story
Ozu Yasujiro, 1953 (107 votes)

4. La Règle du jeu
Jean Renoir, 1939 (100 votes)

5. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
FW Murnau, 1927 (93 votes)

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick, 1968 (90 votes)

7. The Searchers
John Ford, 1956 (78 votes)

8. Man with a Movie Camera
Dziga Vertov, 1939 (68 votes)

9. The Passion of Joan of Arc
Carl Dreyer, 1927 (65 votes)

10. 8½
Federico Fellini, 1963 (64 votes)

11. Battleship Potemkin
Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 (63 votes)

12. L’Atalante
Jean Vigo, 1934 (58 votes)

13. Breathless
Jean-Luc Godard, 1960 (57 votes)

14. Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola, 1979 (53 votes)

15. Late Spring
Ozu Yasujiro, 1949 (50 votes)

16. Au hasard Balthazar
Robert Bresson, 1966 (49 votes)

17= Seven Samurai
Kurosawa Akira, 1954 (48 votes)

17= Persona
Ingmar Bergman, 1966 (48 votes)

19. Mirror
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974 (47 votes)

20. Singin’ in the Rain
Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1951 (46 votes)

21= L’avventura
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960 (43 votes)

21= Le Mépris
Jean-Luc Godard, 1963 (43 votes)

21= The Godfather
Francis Ford Coppola, 1972 (43 votes)

24= Ordet
Carl Dreyer, 1955 (42 votes)

24= In the Mood for Love
Wong Kar-Wai, 2000 (42 votes)

26= Rashomon
Kurosawa Akira, 1950 (41 votes)

26= Andrei Rublev
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966 (41 votes)

28. Mulholland Dr.
David Lynch, 2001 (40 votes)

29= Stalker
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979 (39 votes)

29= Shoah
Claude Lanzmann, 1985 (39 votes)

31= The Godfather Part II
Francis Ford Coppola, 1974 (38 votes)

31= Taxi Driver
Martin Scorsese, 1976 (38 votes)

33. Bicycle Thieves
Vittoria De Sica, 1948 (37 votes)

34. The General
Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926 (35 votes)

35= Metropolis
Fritz Lang, 1927 (34 votes)

35= Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock, 1960 (34 votes)

35= Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles
Chantal Akerman, 1975 (34 votes)

35= Sátántangó
Béla Tarr, 1994 (34 votes)

39= The 400 Blows
François Truffaut, 1959 (33 votes)

39= La dolce vita
Federico Fellini, 1960 (33 votes)

41. Journey to Italy
Roberto Rossellini, 1954 (32 votes)

42= Pather Panchali
Satyajit Ray, 1955 (31 votes)

42= Some Like It Hot
Billy Wilder, 1959 (31 votes)

42= Gertrud
Carl Dreyer, 1964 (31 votes)

42= Pierrot le fou
Jean-Luc Godard, 1965 (31 votes)

42= Play Time
Jacques Tati, 1967 (31 votes)

42= Close-Up
Abbas Kiarostami, 1990 (31 votes)

48= The Battle of Algiers
Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966 (30 votes)

48= Histoire(s) du cinéma
Jean-Luc Godard, 1998 (30 votes)

50= City Lights
Charlie Chaplin, 1931 (29 votes)

50= Ugetsu monogatari
Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953 (29 votes)

50= La Jetée
Chris Marker, 1962 (29 votes)