Saturday, August 13th, 2005
A Very Long Engagement is French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s follow-up to his international hit Amelie and also stars the actress whom that film made a star, Audrey Tautou. The story of a young French woman who sets out to find her fiancee who went missing in World War I, it deftly combines romance, mystery, humour and war into a beautifully shot, mostly sweet but sometimes graphically violent film. The large cast of characters is somewhat difficult to keep track of, not helped along by the fact that moustaches make lots of men look the same, but even with all the plot twists and turns it’s not too difficult to hang onto the main narrative thread.
Tautou is excellent, alternating between determined and despairing as she seeks out the fate of her beloved. There’s also a completely unexpected appearance by Jodie Foster who seems completely at home in a French film. Impressive. While there isn’t the overtly fantastical element that characterized much of Jeunet’s earlier films, there’s still a sense of whimsy and surrealness in the direction that makes the film distinctively his. The (over)use of coloured camera filters probably helped give it some of that character… this may have been the yellowist film I’ve ever seen. But yeah, good. Long, but worthwhile.
Interesting developments in the land of Love (the band). Despite critical raves for their Forever Changes concerts in recent years, Billboard reports that the band that backed original Love frontman Arthur Lee has decided to sack Arthur Lee for a continuing decline in his “mental and physical health”, and will continue to play Love material as The Love Band. Love had been scheduled to play a show in Toronto a few years ago but it got scotched due to immigration issues – something about Canada not liking Lee’s criminal record (he served jail time on weapons charges before resurrecting the band). I had hoped that they’d find a way back up here before their inevitable disintegration, but it looks like it’s not to be. A shame.
It’s great to see that Alejandro Escovedo is now recovered enough from his hepatitis to be able to tour again, including an October 4 show at the El Mocambo here in Toronto. Also coming to town – Echo & The Bunnymen at the Carlu November 23. Anyone seen them recently? Worthwhile or no? I confess I’ve heard almost nothing of their post-reunion material, hell – I’m still catching up on the original albums.
Graham Coxon, Justine Frischmann and Alan McGee – among others – reflect on the the legacy of Britpop for The Guardian. Via Largehearted Boy, who also offers up an alphabet’s worth of recommended music download sites.
PopMatters caught up with Ambulance LTD at this year’s Siren Festival. The band hopes to have an EP out this Fall and a full-length follow-up to LP around March of next year.
My brother is getting married today. I should probably be there. Have a good day.
np – The National / Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers
Friday, August 12th, 2005
I have just finished reading Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself To Live, which has had the unfortunate effect of making me think that the horribly insignificant minutae of my life and mundanity in general are not only profound and probably overflowing with great cosmic significance, but that it’s worth writing about at length. Don’t worry, it will pass. Though billed as a document of his road trip to the death-sites of famous rockers, it’s really a document of the state of his love life with occasion music-related musings or analogies thrown in for relevance. Though it’s self-absorbed and narcissistic (As he’s the first to admit, thus pre-emptively diffusing that path of criticism), it’s still a reasonably amusing and a quick read, if not especially of great consequence.
According to the listings in NOW, there’s some sort of release party for the book taking place at the Horseshoe on August 31 at 6pm – I don’t know what that means, though I doubt Klosterman will be in attendance. Maybe everyone there will get to stand up and talk about their exes and how their past relationships relate to the lyrics of Def Leppard’s Hysteria. And finally, I am befuddled that New Line has optioned the book for a film. Does the world need what would essentially be a Klosterman biopic? No. No it does not.
That official Belle & Sebastian biography is now out. As much of a long-time fan I am, I wonder how interesting a read it would actually be? The band used to be legendarily reculsive, but since Dear Catastrophe Waitress, they’ve been positively chatty with the press (their interview with The Big Takeover a couple years ago is essential reading for fans). Either way, Largehearted Boy seems to have enjoyed it.
Some more shows – The Bauhaus reunion tour comes to the Kool Haus November 17 and Doves make good on their promise to return with a show at The Docks on September 30. I’ve said my peace about the Docks. Whoever does go, have fun.
Glide brings us the story of how Calexico and Iron & Wine’s sordid musical tryst came to be and how it birthed a bastard EP named In The Reins, out September 20.
Despite releasing new albums with The Posies and Big Star, Jon Auer tells Billboard he’s still very excited about the release of his solo debut Songs From The Year Of Our Demise, which has been shelved for an eternity now but will finally be seeing release early next year. Or so they’d like us to believe.
Laura Cantrell tells Paste about her great-aunt Ethel.
Sloan talk to Chart about tennis.
TVgasm comes up with a point-by-point argument why you, or anyone you know, should be watching Veronica Mars. They forget the best reason – Kristen Bell is the hotness. Via Soaring With Eagles.
You have to love what turns up on the internet… screenplays for Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and the Warchowski brothers. Via Rich Johnston at CBR. And somewhat surprisingly, contrary to all previous reports, Katie Holmes will apparently be returning in the Batman Begins sequel. Hopefully as cannon fodder.
np – The American Analog Set / Promise Of Love
Thursday, August 11th, 2005
My Morning Jacket are the latest band to make my October that much more intense, announcing a show at the Guvernment on October 19 in support of their new album Z, out October 4 (This is what you’ll be looking for on store shelves that day, FYI). Kathleen Edwards is opening all dates on the tour EXCEPT for Toronto. Figures.
The only track I’ve heard off of Z so far is the reggae-ish “Off The Record”, but word is a) that the album is very good and b) quite different. There’s apparently less of the hair-whipping Southern rock stylee that characterized It Still Moves, which is just as well since Jim James and company have cut their hair and it ain’t all that suited to whipping around anymore. Maybe the band got their Southern rocks jones out channelling Skynyrd for their appearance in the new Cameron Crowe film, Elizabethtown, where they play a cover band in a bar playing “Freebird”. I’ve always like Cameron Crowe’s films – they’re clever but not snotty and always have genuine heart to them, something that’s all too rare in Hollywood. The film opens October 14, and you can check out the trailer here – it’s weird seeing Orlando Bloom in a non-fantasy/period setting. I kept expecting him to pull out a longsword and behead Kirsten Dunst or something.
But back to MMJ – if you want to hear some of the new stuff (and some old stuff), Glide has the whole of their Bonnarroo set from June available to download in MP3 format.
Thanks to Bradley’s Almanac for pointing out this Rotoscope-y video for The American Analog Set’s “Come Home Baby Julie, Come Home”, off of their last album Promise Of Love. I was listening to a few more tracks off of the upcoming Set Free and they were excellent. This will be a good one.
And on the topic of Arts & Crafts artists, the official word on the new Broken Social Scene album is out – it will be eponymous, in stores October 4 and early pressings will come with a bonus 7-song EP entitled EP To Be You And Me. They’ve also offering a free download of the much bootlegged and distributed song “7/4 (Shoreline)” for a week. You can also grok the artwork for the new album via the same link.
The details of the Three Gut fifth anniversary (and farewell) parties are out. It’ll be a doubleheader of sorts, firstly with an all-ages show on the afternoon of August 20 at the Tranzac, with performances by Jim Guthrie and Gentleman Reg and solo sets from members of Royal City, The Constantines, Oakley Hall and others. Then the nite cap will happen just down the street at Lee’s Palace with The Constantines, Oakley Hall, Oneida and Kinski.
Village Voice. Sufjan Stevens. You thought I was kidding when I said I was doing one of these a day, didn’t you?
The upcoming week in shows for Torontoist.
np – My Morning Jacket / Bonnaroo 2005
Wednesday, August 10th, 2005
Sixeyes continues on his tear of fine postings with an interview with my current musical fixations, The National. Singer Matt Berninger talks to Alan about the band’s creative process and admits The National is a pretty bad band name.
I’ve griped at length about how I’m missing their September 18 show at the Horseshoe but just to rub salt in the wound, I just realized that I could have seen tham at SxSW back in March – I was maybe two blocks away from where they were playing and didn’t have anything else going on at that time… Curses. Anyone and everyone who’s in town that weekend – go see them. Yeah, you’ll have to hoof it from Exhibition Place to the Horseshoe (’cause you WILL be at Ear To The Ground, right? C’mon – Sleater-Kinney!) and maybe there’s a little less hipster draw now that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah aren’t on the bill, but I am betting the show will own, regardless.
Additional National content I’ve come across since my last National post – the video for “Abel”, off of Alligator, and a a couple of MP3s, again courtesy of Sixeyes – there’s more at the end of the interview:
MP3: The National – “All The Wine”
MP3: The National – “Murder Me Rachael”
Video: The National – “Abel” (Quicktime)
More good shows coming our way in October and November – I saw 18 shows in those two months last year. I don’t think I could go for a repeat, it’s not humanly possible. Anyway – Rob Dickinson, ex of Catherine Wheel, will be at the Horseshoe October 7 in support of his solo debut Fresh Wine For The Horses, out September 13 – Torr has a couple tracks available to download. CW were always abnormally popular in Toronto – and have been known to hang out in Hernando’s Hideaway, just up the street from my building, enjoying a big-as-your-head burrito or Mexican flag enchiladas. True. Tickets are $15.50, expect this one to be sold out lickety split.
Austin-via-Brooklyn’s Calla are at the ‘Shoe on November 2 ($10) to pimp Collisions, which is out September 27. I’ve always thought I should like Calla more than I seem to, on paper their hazy atmospheric rock would seem to be right up my alley. I had a copy of their last one, Televise, and it just never got played. The one track I’ve heard off Collisions sounded good – maybe I’ll have to give them another shot.
The American Analog Set will be at the Horseshoe on November 13. Their latest, Set Free, comes out September 20 on local uber-label Arts & Crafts. AmAnSet’s last Toronto show back in 2003 was one of the best I saw that year, for reasons I can’t fully articulate. It just FELT amazing. Attendance at this one is highly recommended, tickets are $12.
The UK’s Athlete are at the Opera House on September 19. They have the honour of possessing one of the lowest Metacritic scores for 2005. Impressive.
Finally, some tickets footnotes – ducats for The Posies’ October 3 show at Lee’s go on sale today for $15 and the October 10 Fiery Furnaces will go on sale Saturday for $16.50.
PopMatters. Sufjan.
Fountains Of Wayne give Paste five tips on how to choose a successful song to cover.
And speaking of covers, this shoegaze tribute album (see np) is pretty good. Andrew Kenney’s Spiritualized track is lovely.
np – various artists / Never Lose That Feeling Volume 1
Tuesday, August 9th, 2005
I should probably be embaressed to admit that I liked Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers. And not because I subscribe to the POV that it was a deliberately stupid satire on politics and the media and the military. I just found it tremendously fun and enjoyable and just the right amount of scary (not a fan of spiders so those warrior bugs freaked me right out). But in my defence, it came out when I was in the middle of university and may have been the first film I saw in many many months, so my frame of reference wasn’t at its zenith.
I’m not so embaressed to say that I also really enjoyed the Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles animated series which came out around 1999. Completely CGI and state of the art for its time (though the animateion now looks a little dated and clumsy, on par with a contemporary video game), it was far more faithful to Robert Heinlein’s novel, at least in terms of setting the scene and the tech (the power suits, drop ships, etc). Pretty much ignoring the film completely (probably for the best), it continued on where the novel left off and followed SICON’s battle with the invading bug armies away from Earth and through the galaxy. The writing was far better and each of the characters within Razak’s Roughnecks, the unit the show chronicled, had more human and nuanced personalities than you’d expect from an animated series. Plus the action sequences and tech design kicked some serious ass.
So why am I writing about an under-the-radar animated show that stopped running years ago? They’ve finally compiled all produced episodes into a single DVD set, Roughnecks: Starship Trooper Chronicles – The Complete Campaigns. All five episodes in each of the seven campaigns have been edited together into a single, full-length feature. Of course, the narrative is still distinctly episodic, but it’s a nice touch to not have to sit through the opening credits five times per and they even edited the wipes and soundtrack to be more seamless. What’s not so nice – and I didn’t realize this because I never saw the whole thing on TV – is that the final three episodes of the series, which wrapped up the entire bug war, are missing. Not because they didn’t include them, but because they don’t exist.
The show was plagued by production difficulties from the get-go, airing before they had enough completed episodes to allow for a good run of repeat-free showings. As a result, they ended up in reruns after like two or three weeks and new episodes were slow to get into rotation. This caused real problems with following the larger story and probably cost them much of their potential audience. While they managed to get through 36 episodes (including four “special” clips episodes), the plug was pulled before the final three episodes could be produced. Which is a goddamn lousy thing to discover after you’ve watched over ten hours of the show and are pretty eager to see how it all wraps up. Extra irony points for ending the final episode with one character saying, “It’s over!” and another – upon realizing the bugs are still invading – saying, “No – it’s just beginning” (paraphrased). Actually, it was over.
Since the show wrapped up production some years ago now, there’s pretty much no chance we’ll ever see those last eps in any shape or form. I’d settle for scripts from those final shows, but I doubt those exist anywhere. This fansite has synopses of how the last three shows were supposed to go down, and it helps a little bit, but it also worsens the sting – “Final Inferno” sounds like it would have absolutely owned. There’s a couple more fansites here and here.
Bloody shame, wot. And let us never speak of the back-alley abortion of a sequel to the film, Starship Troopers 2: Hero Of The Federation.
Reuters reports that Sufjan Stevens – good, practicing Christian he may be – just ain’t Christian enough for the Christian Music Trade Association. Via Largehearted Boy.
VH1 is pretty much the last place I’d expect to find a treasure trove of Ride videos, but there you go. Sadly, they only work in IE and Windows. Mac folks will have to wait until the DVD comes out sometime in the not-too-distant future.
JAM! has an AP piece on Richard Thompson and his new solo acoustic album, Front Parlour Ballads, out today.
Swedish psychedelic rockers Dungen are at Lee’s Palace on October 11. I’ve heard these guys highly recommended, but haven’t heard any of their stuff. Is there a decent (legit) sample floating around anywhere? Also, Death Cab For Cutie bring Plans to the Kool Haus on October 15. I expect I’ll pass on this one – I’ve seen them three times and will always have the memories of their barely-attended show at the Horseshoe back in the Fall of 2001.
And some other shows of interest to people who are not me – KMFDM at the Phoenix October 4 and The Bravery (again) at the Kool Haus October 11.
np – Crooked Fingers / Red Devil Dawn
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