Television's Overachievers for 2011

The year is coming to an end so we at Film Punk decided to talk about what we think is the best television of 2011. We decided that rating Comedies and Dramas in the same basket was completely daft so we each made two separate lists.

Scout

Comedy.

I'll say now that I'm not a TV person, which is strange because the fucking thing is never off in my house. The deal is I've got my broken computer hooked up to the television to constantly watch films, I'm addicted to TCM and haven't totally lost faith in TV being as good as film. I'm one of the last few who doesn't think that TV has surpassed film in writing or direction. It just hasn't. Look around you. Everytime someone makes the argument that TV is where good ideas are coming from, I'd like to ask them the last time they watched a film from West Africa, Romania, Iceland or Argentina. I would then wait about ten seconds and then say "yeah, that's what I thought." But, all the same I do enjoy my stories when they come on. Every week, usually via Skype, Dizzy and I watch Parks & Recreations because it's the funniest show currently on television. Beyond that is the emotional chutzpah to back up even the tiniest throw-away gag. These guys have it down in a way they never quite got out of The Office. Children's Hospital gave it stiff competition, but as the show is only 9 minutes of absurdity, it can't quite compete with reigning heavyweight Parks, though goddamn if they don't come close. NTSF:SD:SUV was nearly as good as Children's but I wanted more from bit players like Peter Serafinowicz and Rebecca Romijn. The Heart, She Holler came and went amicably enough but has nothing of Delocated's immediacy or charming charmlessness. And as ever I remain a loyal and loving fan of the degenerates on It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, who continue to outdo themselves even as I keep thinking they can't possibly. Up All Night is lightweight, to be sure, but it feels lived in and gentle and I greatly enjoy spending time with the three tame nutjobs at its center.

Drama.

My drama choices remain limited by my family being dirt poor and my not having the drive to download whole seasons of television. So yeah I missed Game of Thrones. I watched Mildred Pierce, but let's face it, that was a fucking movie and so it'll show up in my year-end movie round-up. Anyway, I enjoyed Pan Am because I'm a gentleman and the chance to watch four adorable women dressed as Pan Am stewardesses in a blue-screen version of the 60s is not something I can pass up. Or as I told Andrew Nigrosh, it's like a 60s Toy Store and everyone's on a shopping spree. I'm watching Hell on Wheels because I recognize it as a Western and it's trying to win me over and I'm letting it because I like watching people in the costumes trying out the accents while the creators attempt to combine every fifth western ever made into a cohesive unit and unsurprisingly can't quite do it. It's better than Bonanza, anyway, right? And I like The Walking Dead even though no one else but me and Jonathan Maberry seems to. It's a touch like a 70s road movie with zombies, which is all I could ask for from this show. And it got me to like Jon Bernthal and Norman Reedus, who I was definitely not a fan of in Season 1. But the series many directors have let them fill out their characters and this has become as kind of lovely and pastoral as a zombie serial can be, so I have a great time every sunday with those three. I always save Pan Am for last as a kind of pick-me-up. And of course The Closer, another show which has much in common with movies I like, namely a cast filled with fantastic character actors who never got nearly enough to do in movies. Watching the team work together/bicker is the reason I keep coming back and I will be ever so sad to see it go.

Fox

Comedy

1. Parks and Recreation has achieved a status in my mind that only 30 Rock has ever had (and it lost it last season). When an episode of Parks and Rec starts I know it will be good. I know it. I don't have to worry one bit. It's got an amazing cast of incredibly talented funny people who manage not only all the right comedic timing but also manage to play each character with real heart. The writing team only adds to this great recipe with just the right balance of serious storyline and absolute absurdity. Literally every one liner, every fake tv ad, every accepted fact in the world they created is funnier than anything on almost any other network and most of them are treated as throwaway jokes.

2. When they weren't busy kicking the Tony's asses, Matt and Trey were creating another kickass season of South Park. The show definitely has its ups and downs but when the duo are at the top of their game, their satire is both razor sharp and incredibly funny. And when they don't feel like getting political they'll spend 22 minutes on some of the most obscene fart jokes to every be heard, and its still brilliant. This season they actually went for a pretty serious turn by having Stan's parents get divorced and ending their half season with a downer. A lot of people were confused but the message the boys were sending was clear. If you take life too seriously, your whole world will be shitty. After 15 seasons they're still damn near perfect.

3. Curb Your Enthusiasm sent Larry back to his homeland of New York City this season. Most of the humor was fairly similar to what the show has done in the past but they brought in a number of great actors to help add to the improv storyline including Ricky Gervais and Ana Gasteyer. The new environment invigorates Larry a bit and his jokes and humor are a lot more fresh than previous seasons.

4. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia........is perfect. Always.

5. Workaholics was a recommendation from a bunch of people I would never trust. That said this show is incredibly stupid but just so damn funny. It definitely borders on stoner humor but the self awareness of the writer/actors puts it just over the bar that Family Guy and modern Simpsons seems to have fallen under.

Drama.

1. Since Breaking Bad has made its way onto Netflix I've got every Tom Dick and Harry coming up to me and asking me if I watch the show. I politely tell them to go fuck themselves. I discovered it. It's mine. You can all go die. In truth I have been watching the show from the beginning and even though I've been madly in love with it since day 1 I can definitely point out flaws (Particularly in season 2). But luckily for the television community, season 3 came along and really showed off what the show had to work with. What's nice is this year in it's fourth season, Breaking Bad built on all the greatness it had already made for itself. Though getting off to a slow start, the amount of amazingly tense moments they create on the show leaves your hair gray. Not to mention creating a villain so terrifying that you see him at night when you close your eyes. I agree with Tim that it's a tad stagnant in the middle but I think all of the seasons suffer from that. I think more than anything though, this season left me really wondering how the show is going to conclude in its fifth and final season.

2. What can I say about Game of Thrones that hasn't already been said? Its shot beautifully. It's resurrected brilliant actors that I thought would never see the light of day again. And it's got CGI that should make most filmmakers shoot their own dicks off. Now I've read all the novels and I've never seen a screenplay so closely adhere to it's source material. They sold the show to HBO not just because its good, but its because it's got a built in audience of probably millions. It's got minor flaws like everything else but I'm happy to say that I really don't think the show could have gotten off to a better and more complete start.

3. Boardwalk Empire was the definition of the HBO slow burn last season and their style hasn't changed much. What they did come into the second season with though, was an established cast of great characters. Steve Buscemi's Nucky Thompson fell flat with almost everyone that watched the show but not to the fault of the actor. The writers just accidentally made all the tertiary characters far more interesting. This season has followed Nucky, the king of Atlantic City, lose control of his town to his son figure Jimmy Darmody. The 2nd season has set up what I hope will be a Breaking Bad-esque 3rd act and by that I mean a shit show. An all out war for control of the titular Boardwalk Empire. It may seem unfair to list the show before its season actually concludes but the 9 or so episodes that have already aired have proven the show worthy of a best of list. It's acting is beyond flawless and its less is more style of photography just helps viewers to pay attention to the story and characters which are both pretty damn complicated.

4. I've never been more at odds with a television show then I was with Walking Dead this season. AMC knows its their cash cow at present so watching it on tv is all but insufferable. They put in far too many commercials that aren't even scheduled to be part of the episode but I guess that shouldn't fault the show itself. The writers gave me enough to talk about. The show had 7 episodes that really centered on two plot points. One being the rescue of Sofia, a little girl who disappears in the first episode. The problem is that the show was incredibly stagnant this season. They found a farm house and didn't leave it. They're still there in fact. I can't even really decide why I've put it on this list. I yelled at the tv all for seven weeks but at the end of the day I kept coming back to the show for some reason. I hate all but 3 characters and was furious at the story line the entire time. But the midseason break did end well and I'll be happy to return to it when it comes back on tv next year.

5. Now Mad Men would have been on this list but all that contractual bullshit kept it from entering it's 5th season in 2011 so there that is. I'm only 3 episodes into Hell on Wheels and its far from a perfect show but its got the makings of something wonderful once it actually finds its groove. I won't call it one of the best of the year but I will call it promising enough to keep your eyes on it.

Tim

Unlike Scout, I watch a ton of TV. I subjected myself to watching every pilot this fall, and religiously keep up with my old standards. This year was a really great year for television. I am in the camp that firmly believes that TV gets better every year and is quickly catching up with films. My camp regards Scout's camp like that strange Mennonite commune across the river from our dock. We sometimes watch them toiling in the sun, cutting wood and such, while we sip our martinis and blast Cee-lo from our party boat. Anyway, I digress. Here are my picks.

Comedy.

5. Community, in my opinion, sort of lost its way in season 2. I started feeling like the writers were too smart for their own good and their quest for constant self awareness had started to seem more like a gimmick and less like something that naturally came from the characters. It still had some great high points, and was at times funnier than it’s ever been, it just wasn’t very consistent. This season still has all the meta story telling tropes from last season but now I feel like their being used to really tell us about the characters. With the strongest ensemble on television, I’m glad to be back with them.

Best Episode: Remedial Chaos Theory

4. South Park started to get on my nerves a couple of years ago. It’s not that it had gotten worse, really. South Park never really deviates far from the norm. It was that I had changed. I vividly remember the awful sinking feeling the first time I didn’t laugh at a South Park episode. But this season in what almost looked like an attempt to sabotage their own show, Matt and Trey did something really unusual: they let their characters grow. They allowed Stan to get depressed and lose faith in what is basically the show’s premise. In his own way, even Cartman began growing up. In the twelve or so years I’ve been watching this show, the one thing I never expected is for it to become an earnest tale of children growing up. But have no fear, the tasteless Penn State jokes are still included.

Best Episode: Ass Burgers

3. Parks and Recreation is amazing. I didn’t start watching it until recently actually, because the first season just seemed like a terrible The Office rip off. Since then the show has grown so much, becoming one of the most consistently funny shows on television, with a more grounded personal arch that 30 Rock, but a more straightforward approach to humor than The Office or Modern Family.

Best Episode: I'm Leslie Knope

2. Archer really impresses me with its ability to generate effortless humor. So often when watching sit coms I get that nagging feeling that everyone is trying too hard. Archer manages to crack me up but at the same time I get the feeling that the writers really don’t care if I laugh or not. If a joke sinks, there’ll be another one in about half a second.

Best Episode: Swiss Miss

1. Adventure Time is, I kid you not, the best comedy on television in my opinion. It is pure uninhibited imagination. All the best moments of iconic kid’s shows like Invader Zim and Spongebob Squarepants paired with the dark undertones from Ren and Stimpy make for probably the most effective kids show I’ve ever seen. There’s one scene in particular that really sums up why this show is brilliant. Finn lands by his treehouse being carried by a flock of smiling balloons. He thanks them for the ride and then promptly released them from their blood oath. They respond by squealing with delight and shouting, “finally we can go to the stratosphere to die!” The show is filled with childlike adventure but underneath it you can’t help noticing the dark truth behind the stories. Like, why is Finn the last human on the earth? The show sometimes hints at the fact their used to be many humans. In fact they used to rule the world. But now in this strange trippy kingdom populated by talking fruits and dogs that can enlarge their livers at will, the humans are gone. All but Finn. I’m not sure if Adventure Time will ever explain these questions, but even posing them strikes me as remarkable in a show meant for 11 year olds.

Best Episode: As another testament to this show's integrity, I can't pick a best episode. They all impress me equally.

Drama.

5. Last year Justified was probably the best cop drama on television. It should be noted that the cop drama genre has become a really small pond these days, filled with those three eyed fish from The Simpsons that I call NCIS, so Justified wasn’t really that big a fish. But it had everything I wanted from a good cop drama: Cops and robbers each with fun character flaws, having at each other in manageable one hour blocks, usually culminating in someone getting shot in the face. It was a simple show that gave me exactly what I wanted, and nothing more. This year, though, Justified managed to completely transcend its cop drama roots and tell a story about family, and loyalty, so deeply human and tragic that I found myself riffling through my Shakespeare collection, trying to find which play it was ripping off. The focus of the show was still on the rather rigid Timothy Olyphant, but decided to use him to tell other people’s stories instead of telling his own. The show became about a place, so much more than about a person, and in the end I found myself enjoying even the episodes that didn’t end in someone being shot in the face.

Best Episode: Bloody Harlan

4. Doctor Who had a terrific season last year. Stephen Moffat finally took over as head writer and suddenly the show was jumping into seriously uncharted territory with some of England’s cleverest writers. This season, the old crew is back, same every place, same every time, but a little bit of that freshness that kick started season five is lacking. A part of me thinks I’m getting sick of Amy Pond, another thinks that maybe the writers have gotten a little too hung up on trying to confuse their audience. Either way they took a slight step down this year. Regardless, it’s still one of the best shows on television. The writing is sharp and the plot twists while sort of torrential in their delivery, are still well thought out and very very clever.

Best Episode: The Doctor's Wife

3. Breaking Bad, like Doctor Who, found itself coming off an exquisite previous season. And much like Doc Who, it couldn’t keep the momentum it built last year. We ended season three in somewhat of a pickle. We began season four with this pickle being resolved, in as much as a pickle is ever resolved on AMC. But then for about five episodes, I kept feeling like the writers were saying “now what?” Jessie got his opportunity to shine, but Walter just sort of stagnated. He became pathetic, much like season two Walter. I felt like the show had taken one giant step backward, and I was frustrated. Now, it should be noted that the last four episodes of the season are brilliant, but a part of me felt like they weren’t really earned. I wanted Walter to be a badass the whole season and when he finally was (and boy was he) I had a hard time figuring out why it took him this long.

Best Episode: Face Off (Also, best pun)

2. Homeland has completely reformed my ideas about what television is. Usually a show is only as strong as its premise. Star Trek TNG worked so well because its premise allowed for infinite variation. Seinfeld worked because its premise was the anti-premise, a sort of Sartre-esque limbo with a laugh track. Homeland on the other hand is like an exercise in rejecting its own premise. I spent the first few episodes ready for a show about vicarious living, a show where the characters reflect the vicarious nature of television by spying on each other’s personal dramas. But soon that was abandoned and suddenly the show was about the relationship between the hunter and the prey. A sort of cat and mouse game between the two main characters, but soon the game was suddenly over and I was presented another new premise. And while it would seem like this should confuse and enrage a TV viewer, it didn’t. It was fitting, in fact it was inevitable. I couldn’t imagine a show about the CIA that ever let anything be as it appears.

Best Episode: The Weekend

1. Game of Thrones has a truly expansive universe. In a way that no other show I’ve ever seen has ever had. When Catelyn Stark took Tyrion Lannister to see her sister at that crazy cliff castle place I didn’t feel like the writer had invented a new place for his readers to go. I felt like this crazy castle had been there the whole time only in the periphery, not yet in focus. When Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark recount old battles they fought together it seemed impossible that these pasts were invented by the writer but instead that these back stories were always inside them, just waiting for the moment to come out where we, the audience, could see them. This immersive sort of world coupled with some truly complex and engaging character relationships (my favorite being between Robert Baratheon and his bat shit crazy evil wife) made for my favorite show of the year and probably the best fantasy series ever made.

Best Episode: A Golden Crown

Nick and Noel

Blood, Babes, and magic Bows

From the producers of 300 comes....well....300...Two? 301? What comes next? Whatever. It's better. And I don't say that lightly.

I saw 300 in theaters about 6 times. Granted I had plenty of ins at my local cinemaplex so I didn't have to pay for most of my viewings but my point is, I was REALLY into 300. And it's been ousted. Immortals comes on the scene boasting an R rating but not much else. At least to the untrained eye. The trailers showed off a lot of the film's visual beauty (a trademark of helmer Tarsem) but very little violence is promised in the previews. That was the first mistake the marketing folks decided to make.

This movie is violent. Really violent. Granted most of it is digital blood and guts but since 95% of the flick is digital anyway, it doesn't ever stand out or seem wrong. In fact, Tarsem has managed to make a very digital film and still manages to fit in a ton of the incredible art direction that make his films worth watching. There's plenty of crazy set pieces and insane costumes to beat the band. The Gods' outfits in particular would make fashionistas around the world drop to their knees in anguish. Not because they're bad but because Tarsem fuckin pulled it off. He pulled off solid gold costumes.

The Gods are responsible for most of the over the top wardrobe. But thats okay. Their overdramatic demeanor and fuckin ridiculous combat skills allow them to dress a tad nutty. It ends up just making them even cooler once you reach the point in the film where you see what they can do.

Now I threw babes in the title which is a little misleading. This isn't a Zak Snyder film we're talking about. But come on. If you're going to cast an oracle in a movie like this it'd better be Freida Pinto. She's easily one of the most beautiful human beings walking the Earth and so Tarsem shows off that he knows his audience. When everybody (and by that I mean men) watches this movie they're fairly swept up in the action. And when thats not happening, what should they be paying attention to? The story? Yeah okay. No. You pay attention to Freida. And you're fine with the fact that she isn't stabbing people or even running around topless. It doesn't matter. Her friggin face is quite enough. Anymore and men watching might overload from her angelic presence.

At the end of the day this movie wouldn't be a movie without 300 coming first. Much of the styles are incredibly similar. That said, I really do believe Tarsem took what 300 did well and copied it. And what it didn't do well, he improved. It's not a perfect movie. It's got plenty of dumb things happening for that kind of label. But it is incredibly enjoyable. And with all the ways to spend 12 dollars these days, why not spend it on something that'll leave you grinning all the way home?

Melancholia and the Infinite Sadness

Fox: Every time I finish a Von Trier film I can't even talk about it for at least a few hours. I need to give it time to stop bouncing around in my head. I need it to stop smashing every cerebral wall I've ever built in my brain's "expectations for a film" section.

I had the opportunity to see the first hour of this one and then have to wait about a week to see the rest. What that really ended up doing to me was forcing me to think about the film before I'd seen the entire thing. That's a no no for me when it comes to Von Trier.

As far as the film itself goes, I really loved it. Probably more than I've enjoyed any of the other VT flicks that I've seen. The reason for this is that I find it to be the most mature thing he's every produced. In addition to that it’s also fully realized. There's no jump the shark moment in it and I could probably list specific instances of Lars jumping said shark in every other one of his films that I've seen.

As for maturity, Lars seems to have finally found a truly adult way of expressing his problems with the world. Antichrist at least seems to have appeared after Lars had a bad breakup. We've been saying that as a joke about the film since we all saw it but the truth of the matter is Antichrist seems to reek of embitterment. Melancholia instead approaches an incredibly serious topic, that of severe depression, with a sage-like calm. Kirsten Dunst's character Justine never really flies off the handle. She acts erratic at times for sure but most of the film shows that depression can be awful. It can be debilitating. It can be mean. And the instances that Lars has chosen to depict prove above all else that he has most surely experienced this horrible condition. The first conclusion I really came to after viewing the film was that Lars wanted to tell a story about depression but he almost wanted to apologize for those who were close to him during his own depressed period. Kirsten Dunst somehow remains a sympathetic character throughout the movie even though she is such a handful to everyone around her. And most of the people around her really are doing their best to make her or keep her happy. It seems to me that Lars really wished to show that in retrospect he is fully aware of how troublesome he was to other people during his dark times and Melancholia's basic story seems to be his expression of that awareness.

Scout: Well, I'd leap in to argue some point, but I agree with all of this. I think this is, if not his most mature, then certainly the film that contains nothing of his "Fuck you, audience" attitude, beyond, of course, the conceit, nothing of what I'd call his purposefully trying to be called an Enfant Terrible (though Bruce LaBruce would have a problem with that, at his age), and there's nothing here to upstage the action; no visual tricks, no winking at the camera, no talking fox. In other words, this is his 13 Assassins. In my review I got to roughly the same points, and I think the most important point is that this is the first character he's written that is entirely him. Charlotte Gainsbourg in Antichrist is too over-the-top to be anything like a convincing facsimile, though I think he wanted us to believe they were equal. Justine is him though, and in an eerie coincidence, the two of them fucked up a big ceremony with their behavior - how no one at Cannes caught onto this is fucking ridiculous. It's as simple as this: no one gets raped (unless you count Brady Corbett, and I don't) or maimed, so he was making sure that the audience wasn't entirely safe. Alfred Hitchcock used to do his own previews where he wanders around the set, trying to blend fact and fiction before presenting his work of art, putting you on unsteady ground. Von Trier was doing the exact same thing when he gave that press conference. If he couldn't fuck with you in the film, he was going to do it before you walked in. And then it gave him further opportunity to bow out of public in disgrace, vowing to "never give another interview." In other words, making himself out to be even more like Justine. If you think I'm bullshitting you, look up every single Cannes press conference the man has given. There's a little bit of nonsense like that in everyone, if the film's don't have enough in their already. I'm pretty sure Mark Kermode has my back on this one.

But regardless I have nothing to argue with in your reaction. It's my favourite Von Trier and though the establishment would pick Dogville or Dancer in the Dark as his objective best, I say fuck them. This is it. This is his Vertigo, or The Birds (both get shout-outs), or whatever people agree is Hitchcock's best (I’d go Notorious, they share a velvety texture, a blonde in trouble with the ultimate, unthinkable, unfeeling evil and insanely high stakes). Even the Wagner prelude he uses sounds like one of Bernard Herrmann's perfect scores (I realize I've got that backwards, but you get my meaning). I have very few complaints about Melancholia. It's very near the top of my list of best films of the year and I can't wait to own it.

Fox: I guess if I have an argument it isn't with the film but instead it’s with the Cannes judges. Not that Kirsten isn't wonderful in this film but Charlotte Gainsbourg ultimately gets more screen time to herself. At least it seems that way. I guess Cannes giving Kirsten the award isn't a point of contention with me as much as it is a false advertiser for the story itself. I went into Melancholia expecting a lot more Kirsten then I got. And Charlotte is absolutely lovely in her half of the film. I'm not even upset I was surprised I'm just really taken aback by Lars' choice to split the perspective like he did. Especially since Kirsten's half focuses so heavily on her depression while Charlotte's storyline is all about the planet. Each half of the film takes on one half of what the story is about. These aren't complaints or arguments. In fact now that I look back I'm just puking all over this post but there you are. Whatever you can make of my comments I'd love to hear your take.

Lars actually does play it smart by splitting the film seemingly in two. Part one is horror masked by pure joy. Part two is horror unmasked. Like the kind of depression that Justine is dealing with, the end of the world in imminent and entirely out of control. It was be incredibly ineffective to tell the latter half of Melancholia from Justine's point of view. The calm nature that springs from her depression would be truly difficult to relate to. The audience needs to be Claire. We need to want to fucking destroy Justine just as Claire admits she wants to. We like Claire fear this destruction. Even though he shows it to us in the opening of the film we still, like Claire, have some sort of hope in the furthest reaches of our minds that Melancholia will simply pass us by. So every time Claire picks up the homemade planet detector we're on the edge of our seat.

Meanwhile, Justine is a goddamn robot. She moon-bathes. She barely eats, speaks, or rides Abraham. But even after we detest every moment we have to spend with this depressed person we are so happy she is with us at the end of the world. She's there right next to us, holding our hand and comforting our son who we can't even bring ourselves to do because we are so scared. The more I think about this film the more I realize it’s so much bigger than it lets on.

Although I really would like to know about the bridge. Abraham won't cross it. The golf cart dies on it. What is that bridge?

Scout: To pick just one thing to go with here, to start, I think the bridge is normalcy. The bridge is the "happy" life that Claire has for herself. Justine has chance after chance to get happy (or at the very least pretend) and everytime she fails, Claire's response is to get her out of bed, most of the time to ride the horse (who at first looks like a counterpart to her ex-husband-to-be) but the bridge means accepting the life. She bucks the happiness her family assumes she wants/has, just as the horse won't cross the bridge. The dynamics are maybe a little hard to pin down, but I do think that her refusing to get over the bridge is her not wanting or willing to accept normalcy. She's ill and needs to be cured, and her beating the horse is the same thing as her pretending to get married and being punished by everyone around her. Think about every passive aggressive thing that they say to her on her wedding night, I'd bet money that for every comment, there's a crack of the crop on poor Abraham's back.

I agree entirely about needing her next to us because what seems at first a total downer (as the film itself might if you're explaining it's bullet points to anyone), is all the comfort you could possibly have in that situation. "Shut the fuck up and enjoy the spectacle/that you're with the only people you love in the world when it happens." Melancholia is just death, and while Claire tries to run from it, she can't and though Justine may not have a Healthy attitude, at least she isn't in hysterics when it drives up the block and crushes her. It's not much consolation, but on the purest level, Von Trier found the one upshot to depression and I know that I've long thought that myself. Think about death enough and you've got to be slightly more prepared for it than everyone else. This is of course nonsense, but Justine and I seem to have the same outlook on things. Which is why the film is so goddamned compelling to me. Every Single Thing she does makes perfect sense to me, so there's a sublime sense of warmth watching her actions. She's right, for once, and she knows exactly what she's doing.

As for Cannes, my only explanation is that Charlotte got it last year.

Judgment at Cannes

Submitting to film festivals for the first time in my life, I've come to see that there's no rhyme or reason to why something is chosen over anything else. I know that sounds like the testimony of a jaded loser, but I don't mean to say that because my films didn't get accepted as often as I'd like I've decided to rail against the system. No, that's absurd, I'm not even 22, I have quite a bit left to learn; my point is that Drive is still being shown at film festivals in the southern United States despite having had a massive theatrical run, winning best director at Cannes and having a publicity-drawing lawsuit leveled against it. What could you possibly stand to gain by including it over say...Tomboy, the brilliant new Céline Sciamma film or something local and low-budget? Something that could truly stand the publicity. I'm not saying that Drive doesn't deserve every accolade it's been given, but it's entered the culture's diction. Ryan Gosling is a household name and anyone who was going to see it, has. Earlier this year I was invited to the Las Vegas Film Festival where eight or ten feature films were screened out of some three or four hundred being awarded. Here's the bitch, everything screened was given an additional prize and no one was able to see, in any form, the hundreds of other films being awarded. And most maddening is that more time was given over to panels with the people who were the inspiration for the characters from Goodfellas than any of the films my peers had submitted. So on the closing night ceremony we sat and listened to each other speak blindly about films we would never see. After watching grossly undeserving movies like the one paid for by The Ski Channel or Behind Your Eyes, which is the worst film I've seen this year, I was a little miffed that I would never understand why my film was given the prize. I'm hugely grateful for the award, the attention and the opportunity, to be sure. My self-esteem still hasn't sunk since I got the email saying I'd won. But why bring us out there if we couldn't share our work and learn from each other? What message does that send if we only see six movies that they deemed worthy of the top prize?

I bring this up because I've seen every single film from the main competition at the 2010 Cannes film festival and can say without question that they were all on an even keel. No one had a bigger budget or mise-en-scene too far removed from anyone else. From Kiarostami to Kitano, everyone's film was a sober, clinical look at family and/or deep (often metaphorical) relationships. And I agree entirely with their decision to award Uncle Boonmee, for despite it's pace and style being similar to its opponents, it was the most sublimely unique and unforced of all of them. This past year's competition makes much less sense. To a certain point I get it. We Need To Talk About Kevin, Melancholia, The Tree of Life, The Skin I Live In, Drive and The Artist all take ideas or conventions the public is familiar with and runs with them in daringly audacious directions with boisterous, explosive style. And then there's Kid With A Bike, which does neither of those things. It's a film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne about a kid with separation issues learning to overcome his behavioral problems and be a good son to a mother figure who only wants the best for him. The style is identical to the other films by the Dardennes, which is to say beautiful in its understatement. I liked it a lot; Not as much as Lorna's Silence, but it's a beautiful little movie. What I'm having a little trouble understanding is why Cannes put it next to Drive or Melancholia. How in christ could anybody possibly compare them with meaningful results? They have less than nothing in common. I've enjoyed most of the films I've seen so far (exception: Sleeping Beauty) but I find the notion that The Tree of Life gets the Palme d'Or and Kid With A Bike gets second prize a little nonsensical. The Dardennes are royalty on the Croisette and so inviting them back makes sense. Pitting them against movies about the creation of and destruction of the earth, respectively, doesn't. And other than favouritism, I can't see any reason it demonstrably deserved the Grand Prix over Drive, Skin or Kevin. Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre is an evolution of the style of its directors' other works, which means it has absolutely nothing you could use to reasonably compare it to Lars Von Trier's apocalyptic Melancholia. I haven't even seen half of the films in competition, but with each new work I take in, the slate makes less and less sense all the time. How do you compare the featherweight papal comedy We Have A Pope (which I have seen), whose style is much more in keeping with last year's slate than the apparent majority of this year's with Takashi Miike's 3D samurai epic Hara-Kiri (which I have not)? How do you compare Tree of Life to We Have A Pope? The style and aesthetics seem to come from alternate universes and their goals are entirely distinct. I've been racking my brains trying to come up with something that ties together the films from the main competition that I've seen. Everyone's human? Good luck keeping that attitude during Sleeping Beauty. Drive does what it can to humanize its villains, but that isn't because Nic Refn was going way out of his way to get you to sympathize with them, but because Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks are fantastic actors. Melancholia doesn't exactly encourage you to think that about the characters played by Stellan Skarsgård and Charlotte Rampling.

So, I guess my question is what exactly the jury saw as the connective tissue between these disparate films? Is it fair to extend an invitation to the Dardennes, whose film is in every respect a country cottage among mansions and skyscrapers, and then give them second prize for evidently getting more right than films with much crazier subjects and unchained stylistic ambition? I enjoyed Kid With A Bike, I just don't think it sends the right message to reward it when you invited a 3D samurai movie by the director of Zebraman. And furthermore what message does it send to (superficially) ban Lars Von Trier, perhaps the festival's most inventive and doggedly challenging honor student the year he releases his best film and does exactly what he does everytime he sits in front of a microphone? I don't think anyone would argue with Tree getting top prize because I doubt any of the other films are as bold, daring or sweeping in their scope and execution. The problem is that zanier choices then seem like novelties. What chance did The Skin I Live In stand next to the two sober winners even if, to me, between it and Kid with a Bike it's the more entertaining and well-designed film and as a cinephile with a lifelong love of horror, I liked the many reference points in Skin over those in Tree. Skin gambles bigger than Kid and so perhaps doesn't win everytime but Kid With A Bike takes almost no risks. So why then does it warrant the Grand Prize? I still need to see 12 more films to get the full picture, but from where I'm standing, something's off.

Anonymous misleads audiences from the getgo...

My attraction to Special FX auteur Roland Emmerich's latest had very little to do with the man's name. In fact it had little to do with any names at all. Rol Rol made sure, like in many of his films, to cast a troupe of actors who, though brilliant, won't be pinned under one towering name. The problem, in America at least, is that audiences here need a recognizable face to get them into a dark room. Without a name the movie seemingly carries no value. Emmerich managed to quell that by instead filling his movies with such a frenzy of special effects that audiences didn't need a familiar face. Explosions would do.

But there are no explosions in Anonymous. Instead there's genuine acting, plot twists and enough beautiful period costumes to make your head spin. But there's also a pretty solid premise. The trouble with this "solid" premise is that the trailer told you absolutely nothing about it. The film appears to be a story about the theory that Shakespeare as we know him never existed. But that's only half the story and it's the lesser half if that makes any sense. The much larger story arch revolves around the British aristocracy. Characters lie, cheat and backstab their way to positions of power. It all ends up being a pretty engrossing political thriller where most people thought they'd be having to deal with iambic pentameter and brilliant but difficult language.

The film does dwell in the over-dramatic from time to time but luckily its populated by a number of brilliant English actors who can handle the demands of the script. The result is a film that though written in simpler language isn't unlike a Shakespearean play. The themes are universal and ever present, the drama is over-the-top and always earth-shattering and the limelit royal family is used for target practice.

It's not a perfect movie but there are enough fun twists and wonderful actors to keep it going. Emmerich forced himself to downplay and the result is surprisingly enjoyable. I won't give it a rating because I'd like to develop some ludicrous system before I do so. 8 out of 17 dirtbikes. Lets try that on for now.

-Fox Johnson

So, let's first say hello to Fox Johnson (and Tim, too, but you've seen a few of his pieces by proxy by now, so he's less special) who'll be writing about music, TV, graphic novel and film from time to time with the rest of the staff (if he thinks he's writing about video games he's got another fucking thing coming). And let's second add to this, at his behest.

Roland Emmerich and Anonymous are funny cases. It's worth noting that this movie comes at the end of a year where dependable filmmakers' latest historical epics were given something less than the time of day and just more than a kick in the taint. Roland Joffe's There Be Dragons, by all accounts a return to form from the director of The Mission who'd languished in the youth market, losing control of the likes of Captivity and doing christ-knows-what on the set of Undressed, was a day late and a dollar short to everyone but me. Robert Redford's The Conspirator was treated like a middle school textbook-to-be and Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar is currently being yawned at across this great nation of ours. I enjoyed all three. Have my tastes become more populist or am I seeing something other critics don't? Often I find myself in a screening room with nothing but men and women easily 50 years my senior, so perhaps it's me. All the same, "craft" has become synonymous with boring in most reviews, so I feel like someone has to step in and offer Emmerich a life preserver.

The negative reviews I've encountered seem to stop at "what an insulting idea!" And yeah, admittedly, if I thought Emmerich cared about the thesis, I might be slightly outraged that a man as rich as he is would make a film positing that an uneducated pauper could become the world's most celebrated playwright. But, Emmerich, like myself, doesn't seem to give a tinker's damn about Shakespeare. I spent most of Elementary school and high school being told what brilliant work he did. And I believed that he did write beautifully until I was subjected to his best works over and over and fucking over and over and over again and I've lost my zeal for his work. My favourite Shakespeare adaptation is My Own Private Idaho, so that ought to tell you my level of admiration these days. So bring on the revisionist history I say. I count myself among Buñuel's biggest fans, think The Savages is one of Merchant Ivory's best films, and worship Peter O'Toole in The Ruling Class. Why wouldn't I want to watch a movie where Shakespeare is either an incestuous, snobbish prat or a drunken illiterate murderer? Tell me beautiful lies about this beloved figure. And while you're at it, show me Vanessa Redgrave having the time of her life as a scene-devouring Queen Elizabeth, second only to Quentin Crisp in Orlando. Show me anything that proves that a centuries old monarchy is populated by the grotesques who wound up in the man's greatest plays.

Emmerich admittedly has an edge over an academic elite who might make a film about Shakespeare the man, rather than this, a beautifully played, conspiracy-fueled hatchet job, in that he has trillions of dollars to spend on some of the most lavish costumes and sets I've ever seen in my life. Anna Foerster, using the Arri Alexa for the first time on a feature film (advantage Emerich), manages to combine the filth and darkness of your typical period film with the wooziness of Terry Gilliam. The effect is engrossing and absolutely fucking gorgeous. It rakes over the costumed bastards running around John Orloff's vision of England, which takes the reverence we reserve for royalty and Shakespeare and throws it face first in the mud outside the Globe. And for the first time in a long time I was interested in the bard's words again. Sure, it could be read as anti-intellectualism (and in case you think that I agree, ask anyone who's spent ten minutes with me. They know I'm the biggest fucking snob in this part of the world), but unless you're a Shakespearian actor (and frankly Derek Jacobi's here, so I doubt they care), I think slavish worship of the man over the works represents an .08 percent of them anyway. And you know what? John Milius and I would probably shoot each other if we talked politics over dinner (the fact that I made vegan food might incense him enough to pull a gun. Why did I cook? He's a guest here, I'm not gonna make him cook) but the man knows his way around a camera. I hesitate to use the word craft again but watch the orgy scene in Conan The Barbarian again. It's fucking amazing and no one says a word. Absolutely top-notch filmmaking. Shit, people still study Leni Riefenstahl. So, let's stop hiding behind the argument that content = style because suggesting Shakespeare might have had a different name and background than we know is a lot less evil than Nazi propaganda. Nazi Propaganda, I hasten to add, that I was shown clips from not four years ago in a film class. And it's not like the whole thing is oppressive class warfare, either. The most sympathetic character in the film is Ben Johnson, far from the filthy rich Earl of Oxford, who dies penniless anyway (again, all in this film's universe), the words he writes more important than power or even knowing his own legacy would be carried on. The money-hungry Cecils are unquestionably the film's enemy and the greedy, lustful Shakespeare is no angel himself. So I don't get how this fairy tale could possibly enrage people (as it did Keith Phipps, whose D+ betrays his feelings about the plot's implications. I'd also point out that he gave Margaret a C and Paul W.S. Anderson's execrable retelling of The Three Musketeers a C fucking minus. One shade should not separate one of the year's best movies and a goddamn Matrix-ripoff in a corset) to the extent it has. Just fucking look at it! 

And if design does nothing for you, how about Joely Richardson's ravishing young Queen (and a bonus for devotees, she grows into her mother, something I was beside myself to discover when they revealed both actresses), Rafe Spall's hungry ambition morphing into murderous pride, David Thewlis' take on Professor Snape-style string-pulling, or Edward Hogg, one of the best living actors, turning in one of the year's best performances as the eel-like Robert Cecil and nearly walking off with the whole film, managing to be the embodiment of evil on one hand and still capable of peeling back layer after layer to get my sympathy in his most important scene. To get me to like someone I hated the minute I saw him (granted the script doesn't give him a ton of nuance) is no small feat, especially in a movie by the guy who made 2012. Even Sebastian Armesto, who has a little troubling as a convincing shouter when paired with the effortless disgust of Rhys Ifans or Spall's cunning bastard, is a distinct and beautiful enough presence that he wound up the most likable character in the film. I was consistently surprised by how much I loved this film when until this point I was ready to give up on Emmerich. So, let's not pretend we're above this sort of thing because goddamnit we cannot ignore talent when it finally, blessedly makes itself known. And I will not have Emmerich go back to making empty spectacle when I know he's capable of brilliance.

-Scout

And the winner is…

Pilot season’s winners and losers (mostly losers)

by Tim Earle

PAN AM – Best New Show about the 1960s (In other words, it was better than The Playboy Club.)

What interests me most about shows about the “good old days” is when they show us what sucked about those time periods. Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire even Game Of Thrones which isn’t set in an actual historical time period, each show us a world we think we know from movies and books but shown to us in the light of complete disclosure, and of course, hindsight. Then we have Pan Am, a show that’s frank Sinatra scored, glossy exterior is really all you get. Underneath it all is just more Sinatra and more gloss. This to me seems like the wrong direction for media to take, revising the past as it goes. But at the same time, swimming in a pool of gloom and social inequality it’s a nice break to see the someone saying “Yeah, but the 60s were so NEAT!”

TERRA NOVA – Biggest Disappointment
You know what my favorite part of Jurassic Park was? All of it. Every part of the movie was awesome. Every silly caricature. The fat hacker, the smoking Sam Jackson, the gruff paleontologist who’s uncomfortable with kids, Jeff Mother Fucking Goldbloom. It was simple and campy and fun. So why does Terra Nova suck so much? I think the simple reason is that the characters are all boring and stupid. I would describe them all but just describing them in snarky ways would still bore you. So I’ll just do the dumb ass son with stupid hair cut. He goes out drinking by the river outside of the compound even though there is a high chance of being murdered by dinosaurs. Because he’s a teenager and teenagers like drinking, right? This is all played totally straight faced by the way. Speaking as someone who was only a few years ago a teenager, this is fucking stupid. Kids usually drink because they are bored. If there had been dinosaurs when I was 16, I would have been sober as fuck. It’s like showing up in a world populated by pink elephants and purple trees and thinking, “Man, I could do with some acid right now.”

HART OF DIXIE – Worst Cliché
I wish people who wrote TV did their research sometimes. We begin with a med school student who wants to be a heart surgeon. She does really well but her superior says that she isn’t connected enough to the patients to be a doctor, which is funny because training to become a surgeon begins with thinking of a body not as a person. So then little med school bimbo moves to the south where some old dude really wanted her to take over his practice. And in the south they don’t have any “new fangled” coffee places so med school bimbo is lost and out of place. The show steadily lost more and more credibility, convincing me the writer had never lived in New York or the south. By the end I was having a hard time believing the writer had ever even talked to another person before.

SUBURGATORY – Most Surprising Success
There are certain things that everyone loves to hate. So much so that you just sort of get sick of hearing about them. Like Nazis, or the suburbs. Ever since Edward Scissorhands it’s become really hip to diss the suburbs. So while this show certainly began on that obvious note, I really like the direction it decided to take. Instead of turning it into a Juno-fest of sarcastic remarks and loathing, the show took what worked from Edward Scissorhands, the surrealism. There were a couple moments that had me dying of laughter such as the pink clad soccer mom singing along to gangsta rap or the woman grilling a pair of children’s sneakers on the Bar-b. But then in the end the show managed to turn round an unexpected corner. It decided not to hate the suburbs. Or at least not to hate the Cheryl Hines, who sort of represents the suburbs in this show. In the end they made a point to show us that while she is creepy and weird, she really means well. And maybe she’s something that a teenage girl needs in her life.

HOW TO BE A GENTLEMAN – Worst Gender (part 1)
I’ll admit I was curious about this show. I thought the dissection of the male gender by deconstructing its two counter parts, gentlemanliness and brute oafishness, would be rather interesting. But at the end of the day this is just a show about Johnny Drama and a pansy. It reinforces every stupid male stereotype without a hint of self irony.

HOMELAND – Best Pilot
I initially wanted this to be another list about how every show this pilot season sucks, but then I saw this show. And, putting my huge crush on Claire Danes aside, this was a great pilot. With as ambitious a premise as this show has I was really surprised that it was so even paced and consistently toned, even with the gratuitous sex scenes that every Showtime show feels it’s obliged to insert. The thing I like the most was how it played with the audience, making us watch with Danes through the hidden cameras searching for any clue that this Marine is secretly a terrorist. And while doing this I found myself thinking some awful thoughts, like “Oh, that means he’s a terrorist. He’s totally a terrorist. Wait, why am I thinking this? I do that. Oh god. I’m turning into the patriot act!”

AMERICAN HORROR STORY – Worst Acid Trip

In a lot of ways this show was successful. It had some really superb acting from Connie Britton and Dylan McDermott. It was well directed, and certainly peculiar. But the problem was that at the end of the day, it wasn’t scary. Like, not at all. It was weird, yes, creepy, a little, sexy in a really ugly way, sure, but not even a little scary.

ENLIGHTENED – Worst Marketing
I thought this was going to be a comedy. I think so did everyone else. It wasn’t. But that’s OK. I enjoyed it regardless, but as an honest portrayal of someone trying to recover from a nervous breakdown. This isn’t to say that the show didn’t have its funny moments. Just, none of them were really "Haha" funny.

LAST MAN STANDING – Worst Gender (part 2)
I think this show is about a Psychopath. A man so uncomfortable with the gay guys running his grandchild’s day care that he decides to bring his grandchild to work with him, at a hunting store. But unlike shows like Better Off Ted or South Park, the show is completely without irony. At the end of the day all he gets is a mild slap on the wrist or some eye rolling. It all reminded me of a great scene in Louie where he flips out on the set of a sit com because when his character does something awful his wife says “I love you.” And when asked, “What do you think she should say” he says, “We should get a divorce.” I’m not suggesting that every show have a totally downer ending. I’m just saying that you have to earn a loving supportive family. You must prove to the audience that there is a perfectly good reason this family loves the dopey dad. And just being Tim Allen isn’t enough of a reason.

MAN UP! – Worst Gender (part 3)
Yes, another show about a bunch of middle aged guys figuring out how their gender works. And thankfully it was not as morally repugnant as Last Man Standing. Honestly, if it weren't for all the other gender questioning/affirming bullshit this season I would have called it solidly middling. But I'm just so fucking sick of what TV shows seem to think manliness is (and I know, every woman reading this has been dealing with this for their entire life). It's being uncomfortable with gays or having proclivity towards violence. It’s not crying, singing, caring about how you smell or other people’s feelings. Why can't being a man just mean being a reasonable, decent guy who doesn't constantly try to prove how manly he is?

BOSS – Silliest Show
I always wondered what The West Wing would have been with a darker, less romantic view of American politics. Unfortunately Boss loses not only the romantic notions but basically all semblance of realism. Kesley Grammer spends this pilot beating up people in his office, drugging people, buying drugs, putting someone’s ears in a garbage disposal. Nothing in this show seemed even remotely believable. So in the end it becomes ineffectual at displaying the inherent corruption of power and just reads like a farce.

ONCE UPON A TIME – Worst use of those creepy growing violin sounds they always used in Lost
“Rumpelstiltskin knows your daughter’s name!”
DUN DUN DUN DUN!

GRIMM – Worst Premise
Despite David Greenwalt’s nice use of camp and humor, this show has the dumbest fucking premise. I guy can see people for what they really are… fairytale characters. Honestly, if it was deemed that American audiences really needed more Grimm fairytales, then why not just make a show about the actual fairytales instead of all this hodgepodge shit.

ALLEN GREGORY – Most Disturbing
The final scene of this pilot shows us Allen Gregory hitting on his sixty year old principle in a rather sinister way. It’s obvious she wants out but is somehow trapped with this creepy seven-year-old. This is after the superintendent basically told the principle that she was supposed to date him. Nothing about this is funny. The main character is beyond annoying. He’s despicable. And him being seven doesn’t really make up for this. In fact, it just makes it worse because I spent the whole episode wishing someone would just fucking smack him. So then, in the end he walks into the sunset while the principle looks down in shame. Are we supposed to find this funny?

HELL ON WHEELS – Least Informed View of the 1860s

This show was created by a guy whose last film’s tag line was “Slow Justice is No Justice.” That’s all you need to know, really, but I’ll go on. I imagine the writer’s room for this show went something like this.

“What’s awesome about the wild west?”
“Indians, gun slingers, trains, drinking, fighting, whores, open frontiers.”
“Okay. I wrote down all the things you just said. I’m now going to put those things in our show.”
“Good. Let’s get paid now.”
The problem is if you just show us one “Western” image after another without the proper frame work, it winds up seeming jumbled and a little racist. So, while my eyes kept saying “This is a western” my brain kept saying “No, this isn’t even a plot.”

So that’s it. No more pilots. I could make some broad sweeping statements about how this season represents the cultural standing of our country. About how feminism is dying or how we’ve entered a state of self destructive nostalgia. I could talk about how our political frustration has grown to the point where we need to completely deface authority figures on TV, or how all the good comedians already got TV shows so now we’re stuck with Whitney. Instead I’m just going to pretend I Hate My Teenage Daughter doesn’t exist because I only have so much hair left to pull out and I want to get back to watching The Walking Dead.

The State of Noir

With luck Tim'll be a regular contributor around here. Frankly if anyone's got something to say, let me know.

The State of Noir
by Tim Earle

“What could be more Noir than hot pink cursive?”

In a stark apartment under dim lights, a figure in a white jacket with a scorpion on the back stands in his window arranging some dubious undertakings for the night. Harsh shadows dress Gosling’s indeterminable expression as he chews his tooth-pick, driving though LA’s shadowy underbelly. Every little detail just screams Noir at me. So why are the opening credits hot pink and cursive? And why does it work so well?

The fact is that not one detail in this film is accidental, each costume decision, each sound queue. Bryan Cranston’s tucked in Harley Davidson T shirt, Carrey Mulligan’s long flowing skirts, Christina Hendricks’ unfortunate spike heels, Gosling’s skinny jeans and previously mentioned Scorpion jacket, each a carefully placed stylistic choice on the way to making one of the most distinct Noirs of the decade.

So why hot pink? When I saw the credits font I couldn’t help but think of Pretty in Pink, and the whole John Hughes compendium. It seems that Refn really likes the 80s. The purely synth pop score and nearly anachronistic costumes strongly support this fact. And I can imagine, as a director, saying “I love X, so I’m going to put it in my movie,” the effect here is a film that is far superior to the sum of its X’s. Refn is surely not the only guy who madly loves ‘80s pop music out there. Even I felt a strange twinge of nostalgia when the credits came up. I wasn’t even alive for most of the ‘80s. But that nostalgia really brought this movie home for me. Let me explain.

See, Noir has always been a product of afterthought. It’s the side effect of being defined, as a genre, years after it surfaced. By the time these dark and shockingly violent (for the times) tales had a name, they pretty much vanished. Now, 80 or so years later, Noir is a thing of profound nostalgia. The Tommy Guns, downturned hats, smoking everywhere. So when the Neo noir movement came around, they had two choices: Update or time travel. Either you brought the brutal cynical world of noir to the modern times or you took the audience back to the 1940s (ish). It’s been this way for decades. Rarely were their cases outside these two choices (Batman: The Animated Series comes to mind for being simply without a coherent time period). And now here’s Drive, a film that proves that the nostalgia of the Neo-Noir doesn’t have to be for the glory days of Bogart and black and white, but in fact any nostalgia at all.

There’s a great scene in Drive where Gosling, Mulligan and an unnamed assassin all ride in an elevator. The scene features both, a spot lit, slow motion, make out sesh, complete with anthemic synth pop, and a brutal, excruciatingly long face smashing. Once the scene ended and the elevator doors shut it occurred to me, “This is Neo-Noir!” Deep ingrained nostalgia + Brutality. I thought back to every Neo-Noir I’ve loved. Sin City: check (black and white + cannibalism), Brick: check (high school + murder). Memento: check (a man incapable of any memory besides nostalgia + rapemurder). It’s almost too obvious now. The veil has lifted and now I walk around, head high, eyes open, shouting at strangers “It HAD to be hot pink cursive!”

Art History in the making

Joe Swanberg is a brilliant filmmaker and is pretty much exclusively the reason I decided to make Tron Wayne Gacy. This year I've seen the debut of four of his new films (and there are still more to come if you can believe that) this year and no other filmmaker is taking the risks he is, no one else exploring his pet subjects with the same fearlessness and naked honesty. They are terrifying, they are real, they are mesmerizing. So when I heard that he had teamed up with Factory 25, a terrific label based in Brooklyn for a special deal, I read on, intrigued. Turns out it's even more interesting that I initially thought. Me and the FFM guys have been patiently awaiting a Silver Bullets/Art History DVD release (still the only double feature/among the best films of the year) but Joe one-upped our expectations by releasing a quarterly DVD box set of his new films, including one exclusive to the set and bonus content that would shame the Criterion Collection. Swanberg's attempting to beat out not only outmoded distribution models but to stay ahead of the constantly shifting landscape of streaming/home video. He's taken ahold of his artistic works in a unique and brave way. The package is amazing, and on its way to becoming a collector's item. There are only 1,000 being made. I asked Swanberg to talk a little about this unconventional choice of release:

"It's great that the Internet makes everything instantly available, but I'm suffering from instant availability fatigue. I want to make something that arrives in the mail every three months, feels cool in your hands, is fun to show off to your friends and has super limited edition tangible stuff that nobody will ever be able to have ever again. This is it. One time only. 1,000 available. Get it or forever kick yourself for not getting it."

-Joe

I've got mine. How about you?

Pilots, twins, bunnies and Van Gogh

Tim Earle watched all of the pilots this season, so you don't have to. This is what he found.

A deeply bitter look at 2011’s fall pilot season so far

So, as a heads up, they’re all bad. Yup. If that’s all you wanted to know, you can stop reading, go back to watching Archer and check in next fall. But, if you’d like an in depth review of all the ways they suck, a rating of how much each one sucks compared to the others, then go on. But, remember, you’re better off just watching Breaking Bad and ignoring the lot of them.

RINGER
How much it sucked: 10
I’m glad we started the fall season with Sarah Michelle Gellar’s scrunchy little face, her inability to form a cohesive unique character, her sad attempts at expressing complex emotions, her cringe-worthy line delivery. I’m glad we started off with some of the least convincing special effects I’ve seen on TV (and simple ones too, like being on a boat). I’m actually happy this premiered first because it managed to set the bar so low that the rest of the pilots this season actually seemed decent by comparison. Honestly, I wish it were just Gellar’s horrid acting that ruined this perfectly solid concept. But alas, it was actually every single aspect of the show AND Gellar’s horrid acting.

UP ALL NIGHT
How much it sucked: 4
There isn’t a whole lot wrong with UP ALL NIGHT, to be honest. Maya Rudolph’s deeply inflated role treads water sometimes. Arnett sometimes seems to provide all the energy for a scene while Appelgate just follows him around. But these are just minor bumps that will surely be worked out as the show goes on. But the problem is that there isn’t a lot right with the show. There were very few jokes, way too much karaoke, and the actual relationship with the baby was maybe a grand total of two minutes of screen time. They managed to avoid the usual sit com pilot pit falls but unfortunately they missed the memo about being funny while doing so.

FREE AGENTS
How much it sucked: 2
I imagine it must be awkward to be asked to write a pilot for a TV show when you wrote the pilot for the British version two years ago. The result being that I kept thinking the writer was trying to fix something he'd already gotten perfectly the first time. But as soon as the show starts to sprout its own legs and is no longer a line for line remake it becomes delightful. I'd say the British version is better, only because the American version seems to be wearing the British version's shirt, and it doesn't fit.

THE SECRET CIRCLE
Hot much it sucked: 4
The CW certainly doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to impressing me. So, it was a little painful for me to write that 4. But if I’m going to be honest with myself, the pilot wasn’t really that bad. It was well paced and even decently acted (especially by the older cast members). The show’s mystery was established efficiently. The bad guy was certainly the most interesting character in the mix but we all know, sometimes that’s a good thing. The problem was that beneath the passable acting and directing was a deeply stupid concept. Pretty young people use magic. If that sounds like something you’d care about, go ahead and watch the pilot. If that sounds really dumb then you’re lucky because I’m never going get those 45 minutes of my life back.

TWO BROKE GIRLS
How much it sucked: 2

I was expecting way more suck from this show. And sure, on paper it had its problems. But regardless of all the contrived plot points and flat acting the show had something that not a single other sit com provided this season: Laughter. The jokes were funny. In the way that you want to be funny when you imagine yourself making fun of people you hate. Sure, a sit com needs to be more than just funny, but that can come later. In the mean time I’m just so thrilled I actually got the chance to laugh.

THE PLAYBOY CLUB

How much it sucked: 5
The comparison is inevitable. So let’s get this out of the way. It sucked a lot more than MAD MEN. Why? Because Don Draper is a carefully constructed, deeply relatable yet ethereal main character. Eddie Cibrian’s character is a suit with a smile. Beyond that, the show had some good lines and a sort of fun plot involving murder and hot women dressed as bunnies. But, at the very end they ruined everything by trying to make some sort of social statement about how they were ahead of their time or socially progressive or whatever. The problem is that as soon as I was invited to see this work as a social statement I had to ask “so what is your statement?” which was answered by cricket sounds and “Hey, did you notice that Sean Maher was gay?”

THE NEW GIRL
How much it sucked: 4
There is no amount of awkward/uncomfortable things you can make Zooey Deschanel do/wear to make her even a little unattractive. It’s a simple fact. Any guy can tell you this. Sure, I have to accept I’m in a TV world where everyone looks like a model and fat people look like Toni Collete, but there are disbelieves I just can’t suspend. That aside, the show failed on other fronts as well. The chemistry between the roommates was strikingly absent. The laughs were mostly just attempts at feeling less awkward. The only thing I was impressed by was Lamorne Morris’s performance.

UNFORGETTABLE
How much it sucked: 7

You’d think a show about a cop with eidetic memory would be more, well, memorable. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how solid your concept is, you’ve got to make your characters shine. Just look at the Mentalist. That show’s concept is paper thin, yet it’s starting its fourth season. You want a fourth season, Unforgettable? Hire Simon Baker, or anyone with character.

REVENGE

How much it sucked: 4
When I heard this show’s premise I got really excited. A procedural where every episode the main character ruins the life of some other person we hate. Not a cop or a vigilante, just some biddy with tons of money and hate. Awesome. Unfortunately I was given more pretty young people arguing with their parents. And that life ruining I was talking about, amounted to, “You can leave, and take your Van Gogh with you!” Yeah, you gave that bitch what was coming.

PERSON OF INTEREST
How much it sucked: 3
Despite how much I enjoy seeing Caviezel run around smacking the shit out of everyone (and there is a whole lot of that) I will be the first to admit that this pilot has little else going for it. When Caviezel isn’t hulking out he looks barely awake, the bad guys are all grimacing stereotypes, and the concept, while intriguing, makes very little sense. I hope they eventually present some reasonable explanation but if J.J.’s previous work is any indication, they likely won’t.

WHITNEY
How much it sucked: 5
We all needed another show about pretty white girls getting bored with their relationships. Look at her! She’s single so she’s drunk all the time. Look at him! He’s pussy whipped, so he has a pink tie. There was one funny scene where a couple engage in sexy role playing and the sexy nurse gives her boyfriend a bunch of paper work to fill out, but besides that and a few sporadic funny lines the show suffers from having an ensemble of cardboard characters.

PRIME SUSPECT
How much it sucked: 3
Most cop shows suck. I admit this, even though I watch them. But there is one cop show that doesn’t. THE CLOSER. I love THE CLOSER, which means I’ve just recently sunken into a deep depression. For one brief moment, I was lifted out of my deep trench of sadness by watching this show. Here we have a tough, savvy leading lady played by an actress of serious caliber, backed by a terrific ensemble of character actors including Kirk Acevedo, whom I love. Maybe this will be my new cop show that doesn’t suck. But, much like THE PLAYBOY CLUB, after a great first few scenes, the show jumps ship in an attempt to find some sort of social relevance. Yes, it’s tough to be a girl cop, but having all your man cops grumble and call her a bitch doesn’t teach me anything. As far as feminist statements go, I would say that this show failed in the precise way THE CLOSER succeeded. In an attempt to make Bello seem strong, they simply made her more masculine. The stupid hat, the scarf, the whole get up just screams sexual ambiguity. So while the show is saying “woman can be just as good as men” it’s showing us that women have to transform into men. Meanwhile THE CLOSER gave us a woman who was feminine as hell, and maybe human, maybe imperfect, never weak. I’m going to miss you Sedgwick, because with your departure so departs the last semblance of popular feminist television. Now, all I have is women trying to be men or women enjoying the lot as dumb girls. For more examples, see below.

CHARLIE’S ANGELS
How much it sucked: 8

The reason that CHARLIE’S ANGELS was successful back in ’76 is because, back then, people didn’t expect much from their TV. A bunch of hot babes fight crime and obey their charming yet faceless lord. Awesome. It was all steeped in Freudian logic, bringing forth the voyeuristic nature of television. It was a distinctly “empire” (to use an Ellis term) frame of thinking that made it possible. Even CHARLIE’S ANGELS, the movie, managed to make a pretty big splash when it came out less than ten years ago. But a lot has changed in the last ten years, let alone the last forty. Only, no one told these guys. Everything about this pilot just screams “we found this script in a warehouse that’s been locked since 1982, blew off the dust, threw in some cell phones and made it.” But, when it comes down to it, exploitation films and television of the 70s are only cool because of the clothes and the lingo. Take out the afros and the bell bottoms and suddenly it’s just backwards and offensive. Sort of an ouroboros of sexism where men don’t have to put women down, they’ll stand tall in their six inch heels and do it for us.

A GIFTED MAN

How much it sucked: 1
Not a whole lot of suck to be found in this pilot. I found myself really enjoying it. It was well acted, fun, detailed, accurate, well paced, and brilliantly directed by Jonathan Demme. But then I tried to explain the pilot to someone else and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t manage to explain it without sounding sort of dumb. It was the part where the goofy, hippy shaman opened Patrick Wilson’s chakra that did it, really. Then I realized that while I liked the pilot a lot, I really didn’t like show.

My Brother's Ears/My Sister's Eyes

On facebook I saw some friends talking about a film they'd seen the day before. One said he was still thinking about it. That took me a little off guard. Of course you're still thinking about it. Do you ever stop? The best art doesn't just happen near you like a traffic accident, something you tell your coworkers about in passing if you remember to. The best art lives with you and comforts you and keeps you awake. The best art is what you turn to when the rest of the world doesn't make sense. You need to think about it at least the day afterwards or you won't understand it as fully as it deserves. To not give it the full breadth of your consideration is to say that it isn't worthy of it, too shallow to be able to make a dent. All this is my way of saying I kept trying to write about the Psychic Babble record but everytime I sat down to do it, I'd turn it on and get lost. I'd start thinking about influences and points of reference, but just enjoy the record and get distracted.

The first thing to note is that for a solo record, nothing feels convenient. Typically experiments like Psychic Babble, the first record from Circa Survive guitarist Colin Frangicetto (the two projects could hardly be more different), are done on a single guitar with a drum machine. They may sound as professional as this, but hardly as well-realized Every beat, every percussive blow feels deliberate and practiced. This is a record heavy on reverb, but the negative space is hardly its greatest feature. Listen to the opening of "Nothing Familiar," what makes this sound different than most reverb-and-delay records, and admittedly it's small, is that cabasa-like cranking sound. It's an unconventional choice for the sort of song it starts. Then there's the plucking of what sounds like it might be mandolin as it draws to a close. It last a fraction of a second, but it's there and it's beautiful. Either he utilized his free hand to simply follow every urge that seized him or he knew precisely what he wanted for even the smallest moments. Either answer is heart-warming. My Brother's Eyes/My Sister's Ears drips with the fervor of an archeologist setting foot in a cave he's read about his whole life and now has all the time and equipment he could ever want to scrutinize every ancient painting and natural formation. The songs are pretty enough on their own but it's the embellishment that Frangicetto gives himself that's the real draw. He's a one-man Cocteau Twins; tambourine, keys, treated acoustic guitar and of course, his excalibur, the electric guitar. Here and there, "Radio Songs" springs to mind, his sublime and assured electric sounds more the lead instrument than even his voice. Which isn't to say his voice doesn't suit the songs. You can't quite place what it reminds you of, which is perfect, it is as uniquely soft as the production.

His songs are redolent of the best minimal mid-80s post-punk, but whereas most disciples of that era are more concerned with the feel of the rhythm section (Joy Division's tone, Gang of Four's groove) Frangicetto's background as a painter serve him better than his record collection. Like the best of the era, each song seems to take place in a warehouse. Instead of embracing the dead space, the peeling walls and hollow feeling (like Iceage or Cults, for instance. Nothing against them, they just dig minimalism), he paints the walls with synth, melodica and percussion until you hardly recognize the place anymore, as on "Crocodile Tears." And even more remarkably he stops just shy of cluttering up the place. "Tears" many elements snap around each other like fireworks thrown by many different hands, but there's just enough space to pick out each sound. It's never too busy. Nor is he afraid to change horses. "Boulevard" initially bounces like mid-period Gang of Four, though much softer and then recedes quietly to make room for a verse that sounds lifted from Heaven or Las Vegas. And then goes even quieter before bursting into the ether like something from UNKLE's latest record. And all this referencing really gets you nowhere because the sound is far less abrasive than anything mentioned here and never seems to date itself. I could go on and on but the best compliment I can think to pay it is that when I go driving at night, this is the album I play. I'm hesitant to publish this because I still feel like I have some listening to do before I truly know it. I'm still thinking about it, still trying to figure it out.

Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall

I was given a small gift just now, four posters for a horror/thriller called The Year After Infection about living after the end of the world. Here are the four posters representing the four seasons that the film takes place over. I don't quite know what else to do with them, but I'm definitely going to see this film if I get the chance. It sounds interesting!

The Seventh Moth

Here's a bit about Ingmar Bergman and Virginia Woolf. Thanks Christina Carlson!

Film and literature are blessed with different methods of attacking the reader’s unconscious. Be it through film’s ability to represent in purely visual terms the sensation of dreaming, birth and death, or through literature’s ability to directly address in the strictest and most poetic language imaginable those same phenomena; words are the most direct line to the brain when engrossed in a novel you read the words: “"I'll give it you!" he cried, and flung himself vigorously, violently down on to Mrs. Filmer's area railings”. The immediacy of one vs. the other is not in question, but what is most remarkable is that death was of central importance in both the twentieth century novel and what could be thought of as the twentieth century art film, personified in this case by two of each form’s most talented poets, Ingmar Bergman & Virginia Woolf. Because while both told very different stories, the styles they chose to tell them in were incredibly similar. Death lurks behind the most-loved works of both which brings out in their works a fascination with life’s little mysteries. Woolf let her pen wander from the conversation of her two main characters to the comings-and-goings of those they shared a park with, be they perfect strangers or even insects. Bergman’s highly disciplined writing and incredibly focused direction stayed fixed on the psyche of only a few characters but his fleeting departures from their narrative help illustrate the fullness of life. In Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, a single day is used to show the intricacies of life, the presence of death and while it doesn’t immediately seem so how beautiful life can be.

There may be better examples of a confrontation with death in both artists’ canon. There’s a reason, after all, that both To The Lighthouse & The Seventh Seal are thought of as representative of their respective authors’ body of work and I would venture that it’s that their not inconsiderable talent is put in service of a sprawling tale with a disparate cast of characters and a very direct attitude toward death. In each work there is a moment of clarity, a passage that lets the audience know exactly what’s on the mind of the creator. In each case it’s that death unites us all. In The Seventh Seal death is a man who follows the characters throughout the movie. In the final scene day breaks on the last surviving characters, the actor and his wife and he sees that Death has finally taken his companions for good. He looks on the ridge above them, sees his deceased friends dancing in a line and says to his bride:
I see them, Mia! I see them! Over there against the stormy sky. They are all there.…And the strict master Death bids them dance. He wants them to hold hands and to tread the dance in a long line. At the head goes the strict master with the scythe and hourglass. But the Fool brings up the rear with his lute. They move away from the dawn in a solemn dance away towards the dark lands while the rain cleanses their cheeks of the salt from their bitter tears.

This monologue and the phantasmagorical shot that accompanies it of the dance of the dead are unforgettable, but they don’t erase the sense that we were cheated of the characters that death has claimed. We were so certain that the cunning Antonius Block and his squire have made safe all those who have fallen under their protection during their journey. In To The Lighthouse, death similarly leaps from the woodworks in one of Woolf’s most remarkably unpoetic and memorable passages from any of her novels, the section entitled Time Passes. Woolf’s electric prose is rarely as captivating as it is here, and yet she undercuts her gift for crafting sentences by simply announcing death’s presence as if he had walked into the room as he does in The Seventh Seal:
So loveliness reigned and stillness, and together made the shape of loveliness itself, a form from which life had parted; solitary like a pool at evening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its solitude, though once seen. Loveliness and stillness clasped hands in the bedroom, and among the shrouded jugs and sheeted chairs even the prying of the wind, and the soft nose of the clammy sea airs, rubbing, snuffling, iterating, and reiterating their questions—"Will you fade? Will you perish?"—scarcely disturbed the peace, the indifference, the air of pure integrity, as if the question they asked scarcely needed that they should answer: we remain. (106)

As haunting and gorgeous as this is, we find this: “A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men were blown up in France, among them Andrew Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, was instantaneous (110).” It’s so shockingly forward it comes as a disappointment. Here was a character we’d gotten to know so well in the first part of the novel, dispatched with no romance or backwards looking or even a decent sentence; the thing’s in parenthesis for crying out loud. And they pop up all over Time Passes. To quote the film critic Mike D’Angelo’s reaction to an unprovoked murder in Badlands “…you know what, it seems disrespectful. That’s what it is.” Or in the parlance of college kids, it’s lame. It’s like death walking out of nowhere to claim the victims we thought had outsmarted him in Seal. And for that reason, both novels are both more honest than their contemporaries who grant meaning and glory to the deaths of their heroes. Woolf and Bergman have no qualms about death, they just let it happen. But what they did have was a chance to examine all the little things that do give a life, and thus a death, meaning. And they did so no more beautifully and lovingly than in Wild Strawberries & Mrs. Dalloway.
Both texts are about memory, death and about trying like hell to appreciate what you have even if circumstance tells you you got dealt a bad hand. Mrs. Dalloway’s twin narratives follow socialite and parliament member Clarissa Dalloway as she throws a party for her associates at which her two best friends who she hasn’t seen in a number of years show up. Meanwhile the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Smith tries to get through a day marked by visits to his doctor, flashbacks to a fallen friend and pervasive thoughts of the grave. Wild Strawberries follows Dr. Isak Borg on a car trip with his daughter-in-law Marianne to receive an honorary degree. The day starts with a dream foretelling his own death, is specked with shocking revelations about his son from Marianne, flashbacks and daydreams that seem to tell him he’s wasted his life or at the very least, he’s had a better one stolen from him by circumstance. But to say that Mrs. Dalloway is about a party and a veteran and Wild Strawberries is about a road trip would be to sell short the joie de vivre with which Bergman and Woolf pass the time before the conclusion.

As Wild Strawberries opens, the sweater clad Borg sits writing in his diary in the middle of an ornate and dusty study. He is quite alone and the ominous chiming of a clock before the action can only signal one thing: his time is short. “In our relations with other people we mainly discuss and evaluate their character and behavior. That is why I have withdrawn from nearly all so-called relations. This has made my old age rather lonely.” Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf’s heroine, has also been shut off, but it wasn’t by her choosing. “She had the Oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them… this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway (8).” Clarissa’s life has been reduced to social functions, just as Isak’s has been one of isolation. One can picture their “narrow” beds being all too similar (22). Their routines are fixed, only changed by “larks” like buying flowers on their own for a change or driving themselves to the ceremony instead of letting the maid drive (1). It is only real changes, the ones they can’t predict that bring about any kind of real shifts in their perception, fleeting though those might be.

Isak is shaken awake the morning he is to receive his degree by a “weird” dream ("weird sisters" weird) where he is confronted with a lot of bizarre imagery, all of it spelling his death, the chiming clock chief among them. When he wakes, he has decided that today is going to be different. When his daughter-in-law decides to drive with him, he is sidetracked in his reevaluation when she reminds him that his son, her husband, hates him because of the ways he’s become set in. “You’re a selfish old man, Uncle Isak.” He even misremembers the invitation he extended to Marianne a month ago when she first came to stay with him away from her husband. Her relationship with her husband, the brute Evald, is not unlike Clarissa and Richard’s, in that neither seems to understand the other, but Isak’s telling Marianne she ought to see a shrink smacks of Rezia’s cluelessness about Septimus’ condition. She and every doctor he meets thinks he just needs a little more help; he so tires of it that he throws himself out a window. Clarissa’s “dream” that awakens her comes in the form of Septimus’ death announced at her party. Her life, she realizes, is not something she herself evaluates: “Nothing could be slow enough; nothing last too long. No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living…(132)” She doesn’t think of life because she’s too busy living it. And yet she seems ambivalent at best about whether death is something she herself wants herself. She seems torn for the first time realizing what it might mean. “She somehow felt very like him–the man who killed himself…he made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun.” It is only with death in her mind that she sees that she must make the most of herself, something both she and Isak Borg had forgotten.

It wasn’t always so, of course, as both texts lovely flashbacks tell us. Clarissa goes back to the party to be with Peter Walsh and Sally Seton, two people whom she’s had striking and powerful relationships with in the past, but who she understands she has to remain separate from. What’s past is past. And what’s past for Clarissa is an all-too-brief love affair with Sally. She remembers being kissed by Sally (“the whole world might turned upside down”) and a time when the thought of Sally walking down a hallway naked was the most exciting thing in the world. “Sally's power was amazing, her gift, her personality (24).” And yet when she meets Sally again, time has changed her. A mother of five, no longer the spirit she once was. Clarissa doesn’t come out and say it, but she understands that those things are in the past. She must live beautifully and that’s all there is for it. Borg’s flashback is given to him in the same form as his dream of death.

In a profoundly beautiful scene, Isak revisits his childhood home and as an old man relives a time from his youth in a dream. He sees the girl he once loved, pursued in secret by his older brother Sigfrid. Embarrassed by the whole family for her secret tryst with Sigfrid she runs off and through tears confesses to her sister and an invisible Isak: “Isak is so fine and good, so moral and sensitive...And he talks about sin. He’s on such a terribly high level and I feel so worthless...And Sigfrid is so bold and exciting.” Isak realizes that he has tried and failed to be the man he wanted to be. “I was overwhelmed by feelings of emptiness and sadness…” But seeing this makes him put on a much more positive attitude that extends to flirting with a passing girl, Sara and even offering a lift to her and her friends to the town where he’s receiving his degree. They also pick up a bickering couple who nearly crash the car in a heated argument; a potent reminder for both Marianne and Isak that life is simply too short to be mean-spirited or do things you regret (apologies for the semi-colon).

Clarissa realizes that her life is among party guests and that she has an all-too crucial role to play in the lives of those she hosts. Her art is being herself and even though she sees the things she’s left behind in her journey to her current self, she also sees that life is simply too wonderful to let slip by and fill with regrets and worries. Even those she leaves in her wake, Peter and Sally, see that she is right where she belongs. “What is this terror? What is this ecstasy? He thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was (139).” Just as Clarissa is captivated by life anew after Septimus’ death, Isak may not have long left and precious few people to share his life with but he’s going to live what little there is to the fullest. He makes up with his maid though she rebukes his attempts at being overly familiar, just as Clarissa does with Peter and Sally, though just as he goes to sleep, Sara and her friends sing a song for him beneath his windowsill. As they part, their triangular relation reminding him of his own with Sigfrid and his one-time love. Before going Sara leans in close and says to him “It’s you I really love, you know. Today, tomorrow, always.” “I’ll remember.” He says, a look of resignation on his face. He will never hear from them again and he knows it, but he’s happy to have touched one more life before it was time. He is himself, no more, no less, and like Clarissa Dalloway, the world would be far less rich without him, now that they know what they are meant to do.

Woolf, Virginia. To The Lighthouse. Feed. Web.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Feed. Web.

100 Albums Beyond The Canon

Seeing my friend and colleague Tucker Johnson take on the arrogant listmaking over at Rolling Stone has come to make me see that populism and crowd-pleasing have ruled the "last word" in criticism for far too long. Who gives a shit how many staff writers like The Beatles? Is that any excuse for shutting down your exploration of what must be nearly a billion albums made in the last hundred years at one band and its followers. I'd rather listen to Wilco and Elliott Smith adapting their love of those records than the genuine article anyday. So, taking a cue from Cinematical, I thought I'd share 100 albums that no major publication would ever champion despite their largely being better than what the mainstream accepts as a classic. You embrace context, nostalgia and personal taste; Yes, Exile on Main Street was important, but it's fucking boring and sounds like every other post-68 stones album. And worse still you put like two dozen greatest hits and live records which can't be judged together. An album is by a band in a studio, not assembled by money hungry suits. A live performance is also too different to be judged alongside a studio recording. You haven't been right in decades and you put reality tv stars on your magazine covers. So here are 100 fantastic albums Rolling Stone would never tell you to listen to, that I love so much more than anything in their top 20 best albums of all time. And no I'm not going to rank them. Limit one per band.

1. Echo & The Bunnymen - Porcupine
2. John Cale - Paris 1919
3. Living Sisters - Love To Live
4. Regina Spektor - Soviet Kitsch
5. Kings of Convenience - Quiet Is The New Loud
6. Kitchens of Distinction - Strange Free World
7. Stars - In Our Bedroom After The War
8. The Decemberists - Picaresque
9. Chavez - Ride The Fader
10. The Futureheads - News & Tributes
11. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
12. Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
13. Talking Heads - Speaking In Tongues
14. Wolf Parade - Apologies To The Queen Mary
15. Apostle of Hustle - National Anthem of Nowhere
16. Holy Fuck - Latin
17. Belle & Sebastian - The Boy With The Arab Strap
18. Killing Joke - Killing Joke
19. Do Make Say Think - & Yet & Yet
20. A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
21. Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day
22. Sonic Youth - The Eternal
23. Astor Piazzolla - Lo Que Vendra
24. Supergrass - Life on Other Planets
25. Doves - Some Cities
26. Gordon Bok - Clear Away In The Morning
27. Wilco - Kicking Television
28. Yo La Tengo - Painful
29. Air - Talkie Walkie
30. John Frusciante & Josh Klinghoffer - A Sphere In The Heart of Silence
31. The A Frames - Black Forest
32. Witchcraft - Witchcraft
33. Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones
34. Bauhaus - The Sky's Gone Out
35. Amy Millan - Masters of the Burial
36. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
37. World Leader Pretend - Punches
38. The Chills - Kaleidoscope World
39. Loose Fur - Born Again In The USA
40. Roy Orbison - Crying
41. Dungen - Tio Bitar
42. Iron & Wine - The Shepherd's Dog
43. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Paint Your Wagon
44. Rufus Wainwright - Want One/Want Two
45. Emitt Rhodes - The American Dream
46. Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible
47. Feu Thérèse - Feu Thérèse
48. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
49. Sondre Lerche - Phantom Punch
50. Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover
51. The Helio Sequence - Keep Your Eyes Ahead
52. Portishead - Third
53. British Sea Power - Man of Aran
54. Bundy K. Brown - Directions in Music
55. Handsome Furs - Face Control
56. The Horrors - Primary Colours
57. Patrick Watson - Wooden Arms
58. Sparta - Porcelain
59. Ali Farka Toure - Niafunke
60. The Ronettes - Presenting The Fabulous Ronettes
61. Sparklehorse - It's A Wonderful Life
62. Grandaddy - Sumday
63. The Dipers - How To Plan Succesfful Parties
64. Death From Above 1979 - You're A Woman I'm A Machine
65. Madvillain - Madvillainy
66. Fela Kuti - Zombie
67. The Von Bondies - Pawn Shoppe Heart
68. The Walkmen - Bows & Arrows
69. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
70. Tom Vek - We Have Sound
71. Sam Roberts - Love At The End Of The World
72. J. Tillman - Vacilando Territory Blues
73. Julie Fader - Outside In
74. Kris Kristofferson - Jesus Was A Capricorn
75. The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night
76. Nancy Sinatra - How Does That Grab You?
77. Amon Düül II - Yeti
78. Howlin Wolf - Moaning In The Moonlight
79. Nico - Desert Shore
80. David Bowie - Lodger
81. Wire - 154
82. Richard Thompson - You? Me? Us.
83. The Chameleons - What Does Anything Mean, Basically?
84. Cocteau Twins - Head Over Heels
85. Ride - Nowhere
86. French Kicks - Two Thousand
87. Chapterhouse - Whirlpool
88. Eric's Trip - Forever Again
89. Chad VanGaalen - Skelliconnection
90. Final Fantasy - Heartland
91. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The First Born Dead
92. Fly Pan Am - Sédatif En Fréquences Et Sillons
93. Fairport Convention - Liege & Lief
94. The Feelies - The Good Earth
95. The Cramps - Off The Bone
96. The Mars Volta - De-Loused In The Comatorium
97. Basia Bulat - Heart of My Own
98. Women - Public Strain
99. Rolling Stones - Their Satanic Majesties Request
100. Orchestra Baobab - Specialists In All Styles