Pitchfork and solipsism

Solipsism: it's a bad thing for Bishop Allen, but a good thing for Dan Deacon.

Solipsism.

Late Musical Tastes

Bars play a terrible choice of music. Or is it just the bars that I go to? Which brings up a better question: why do I go to bars? If I pop on the I-tunes, or play a record, snap a bottle-cap in my own digs, wouldn't I be better off? Probably, but I don't like drinking by myself, for two reasons: one, it leads to late-night reading of the NT-Times, which leads to weird dreams in which my mind seems to think it knows foreign languages. Secondly, I like to overhear people talk. Especially people from France.

So my latest foray has been the Beatles. Ha. I never really digested them, but after giving them a retrospective, I realize that they're too easy to like. But I have become affected by the album Beatles for Sale, perhaps for the dreary 1-2-3 of "No Reply," "I'm A Loser," and "Dressed in Black." Then a strange, way-too-upbeat cover song. Then I get bored and put on some Mission to Burma. Where is this culture going? Insane. The technology allows us to be causally schitzofrantic. Amen.

Wet Dreams with Roy

Roy Orbison gets the girl.



We all loose our minds.

Hats off to Larry the Football Guy

When I was 10 or 11, I bought a 2 dollar record player, one of those all-in-one units. Then I inherited my sisters shit speakers from a Sears stereo system she had. Rummage sales. Huge boxes of vinyl for a couple bucks, or sometimes for free from my friend's nice mom. Sure, that meant much of musical choices were limited to scratched long plays of Jesus Christ Superstar and warped versions of Aqualung, but what the hell did I care. - it was great being able to listen to the pop-operatic rush of ELO - Ohhhh, Telephone Line - or even dabble in my first forays of punk with the Cars - not to mention all those night I spent in the dark with headphones on, my mind being blown by the Beatles.

But I have to say, that when I was younger I had a penchant for theatricality. Acting out songs became a foray, beginning when I was 5 or 6 and my father played me live Harry Belafonte records. Then one day I found a bunch of compilations, think they were called "Fun Times with Fun Tunes." Some Time Life thing I guess. But it had three records chocked full of ballads, and the Del Shannon tune Hats off to Larry was one of them. There was a kid named Larry in my class at school, though I never sang the song to him. He was fine-tuned, quarterback man, whereas I was pudgy poor freak to shit on.

The perspective of the song has always attracted me. Something about a guy taking his hat to another guy for dumping his gal; and then this girl becomes leftovers, but Del wants her back. What a guy. The song still has my favorite solo.

Knock Knock Joke Pop Tarts

Just never sure what I'm getting when it's discount prices.

Camp moment of the Day

From Troll 2

Movie Review: I'm Not There

Man in Black Coat/Playboy:You sound a bit fatalistic.

Bob Dylan/ Arthur Rimbaud: I'm not fatalistic.  Bank tellers are fatalistic; clerks are fatalistic. I'm a farmer.  Who ever heard of a fatalistic farmer?

    From an interview of Bob Dylan in Playboy Feb. 1966, and from the film I'm Not There.

Finally they've done: they've taken the most notorious pop artist of the last century, all that's he said, done, created, and stood for, and made a wildly inventive film out of it.  Here begins my review:

New Releases are a real pain in the ass, and I usually steer clear of them.  It's a Catch 22: if the movie's a stinker, than I've just wasted 4 bucks and 2 hours, and I probably won't even remember having rented it in a year or two.  On the other hand, if I enjoy the film, chances are I'll want to take a second look.  And the way my mind works, that means the videos going to pull 8 more bucks out of me from late fees.  

This is exactly what happened when I rented I'm Not There this week: I watched it and didn't really understand what I had seen.  This happened with Southland Tales too, but after rewatching that mess, I realized the little sense that could be made wasn't really worth all the pretensions/Timberlake you had to put up with.  I'm Not There is a much better movie than a Donnie Darko done dumb, and it gets better with second viewings.  I kick myself now that I missed it in theaters, because hearing Dylan blasted out of Dobey Surround Sound must be blast.

To explain the film would require an interpretative essay.  All I can say is that this isn't a boring bio like Walk the Line.  The bio formula is thrown out the window, and director Todd Haynes puts on his post-modern goggles and constructs a mystic ode to the life and songs of Bob Dylan. 

Six actors play six different incarnations of Dylan, or at least some abstract conception of the Dylan myth.  There's the folk hobo, the troubled voice of a generation, the amphetamine Judas, the symbolic/absurdist poet, the womanizer/actor, and finally, the retired gunslinger trying to adapt to a world that no longer plays by his rules.  Nothing is linear, nothing explained, but it is beautifully put together, and manages to flow beautifully.  There are wonderful, poignant moments, with such emotional intensity that I forgot the gimmicky idea of six actors playing into a single person.

"Palindromes" did something similar, but with different results.  Perhaps that's because none of the narratives in I'm Not There co-exist in the same world.  They are all separated by space, time, and understanding.  A young black boy doing by the name of Guthrie, traveling cross country on trains, playing folk songs about Unions, doesn't even seem to realize his own time.  He's an anachronism, the mysterious past that Dylan played up, so that one might have actually thought of Dylan as a boyhood Robert Johnson who sold his soul to the Devil so that he could play to his own time.  

The mantle piece of the film, which Hayne knows, is the Judas Dylan, the punk rock insanity of a Dylan forsaking his audience.  Cate Blanchett's performance redefines impersonation.  Not only does she look like the puffy haired Dylan, she sounds, walks, talks, and flirts like him.  Never before, or probably after, will I be so turned on by a woman playing a man.

Playing as it does with narrative technique, I'm Not There hits tremendous highs that abut less interesting moments.  Richard Gere's segment as a grey-haired Billy the Kid, Dylan gone the way of the buffalo I suppose, doesn't quite go anywhere, and the pastoral, early 20th century setting is strikingly discordant compared to the rest of the film.  Haynes was pushing the envelope furthest here, in an attempt to investigate Dylan as a country hero.

I can't say that this is my end all, be all judgement of the musical- yup that's what I'm calling it, because a film that uses music to such an extent can have no other name.  Not a musical in the theatrical sense, but a new genre hybrid.  I mean, the movie actually visually interprets Dylan songs like Ballad of the Thin Man. 

Who knows, maybe I won't like it in a few years, after I've seen it and heard people rave about it.  But it's certainly one of the most interesting/daring things I've seen (in ways that David Lynch's Inland Empire wasn't daring, but rather indulgent.) Not for those who do not like confusion, nor for those who dislike the insecurity of having to interpret something (there's no single meaning to the work, no moral, just a/many spirit(s).)