Tonight i'm gonna drink my tears

What does one do at a quarter after one in the morning after watching the theatrical version of blade runner on netflix? Don't you dare ask me a question when we're both very aware of the obvious answer. The person in question - namely me - cues up the scott walker documentary, scott walker: 30 century man, of course.

I've had the film in our netflix instant queue almost since we started using their delightful services almost a year ago. What i knew about scott walker was the song "30 century man" from his third solo album. How i knew the song was from its inclusion in the soundtrack to a film which i admire quite a bit. That film is the life aquatic with steve zissou. Wes anderson seems to have a way of turning me on to incredible artists whom i otherwise have had very little to no history with (i.e. arthur lee & love). Come to find out that scott walker is really scott engel and was one third of the pop trio known far and wide, but mostly in the UK and germany as the walker brothers. It also just so happens that he's a pretty enigmatic avant-garde musician and an incredibly abstract poet who pushes well beyond the conventions of song composition.

"I've become the Orson Welles of the record industry. People want to take me to lunch, but nobody wants to finance the picture...I keep hoping that when I make a record, I'll be asked to make another one. I keep hoping that if I can make a series of three records, then I can progress and do different things each time. But when I have to get it up once every 10 years... it's a tough way to work." -Scott Walker, in an interview for The Independent, April 1995.

All this to say, i am now listening to a fair share of baroque pop.

Also, watch all of the films mentioned in this post.

Also, here's some early solo scott as he digs on jacques brel's "matilde" during a performance on dusty's variety show...

http://www.scottwalkerfilm.com/blog/

Sweet sweet Candy

While stretched out across my sofa due to unforeseen illness, the brilliance of john hughes kept me warm.

American blood

I found this photo in a recent unpost...

Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal of oil man Daniel Plainview character is brilliantly executed. His descent into madness is a frightening yet mesmerizing spectacle... on par with Orson Welles' George Foster Kane.

Checked out the film Great Wall of Sound...

often funny. ultimately moving.

Week espresso and the darjeeling limited

Nothing like weak espresso to give one a kick in the pants. No more I say. No more.

An epic turnout at the strange brew turned another last minute hootenanny into a true event. Collaborating with mr. kyle siegel and mr. scott hensley was magic. Sending out the good word about ms. eddie's little film that will. It will.

Met some new folk and was quite pleased to see some old friends. Age has nothing to do with it. Thanks for coming out and supporting the independent arts - music, film, coffee, etc. Speaking of, ms. toni carr who co-owns and operates the strange brew coffee house with her guy mr. dan carr is having a book of her knitting designs published. Pre-order Knock Down Knits: 30 Projects from the Roller Derby Track from amazon.com right now if you know what's good for you.

So, miranda jane and i sat down and absorbed the delightful new wes anderson film The Darjeeling Limited this week. It was a moving tale of brothers reconnecting and coming to terms with their father's death and their mother's abandonment as they venture across India with all of their proverbial and literal baggage in tow. Do see this film.

Also see these films:
Margot at the Wedding
Eagle vs. Shark
Juno

Can you taste spring on the tip of your tongue yet?
What's it taste like?
All i can taste is espresso...
weak espresso.

Thanks mr. bent
Your welcome mrs. moorman

Bottle rocket beginnings

Being a bit of a Wes Anderson film enthusiast, I've been excited about seeing his latest film, The Darjeeling Limited since first seeing the trailer online last summer. Unfortunately, the film never saw wide release in my neck of the woods and I didn't get to experience it from the silver screen. Next week, Darjeeling, starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman, releases on dvd. Hence, I may finally get to partake in a viewing or a few.

Though I do still have yet to see Anderson's latest film, I did get the opportunity to share his first feature film Bottle Rocket with some friends during a viewing last winter at the Rockey home. Today, I stumbled upon the original 13 minute film which led to the full length film a couple of years later. It stars Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson and Robert Musgrave as Dignan, Anthony and Bob following their attempts at becoming gangsters. Elements of Anderson's film making are recognizable even in this low-budget short film. The video and sound quality in this version are pretty horrible, but it's still interesting to watch for someone who has never seen the original blueprint of one of the great pieces of american film. Dig it!

Bottle Rocket, 1994 - written by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson

Never enough

intimate.

moving.
inspiring.
heartbreaking.
brilliant.

Keepin' me alive

Throughout the past fifteen or so years of my life, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers have consistently enthralled and inspired me and my own creative endeavors. Even before knowing much of the band's own history, Petty always came across to me as the genuine article. For all the band's success and MTV exposure, he never seemed to me a guy who would compromise his artistic vision or take any shit from anyone. When Miranda and I became friends and started dating several years ago, the music of Petty and the Heartbreakers often played on the car stereo and always showed up multiple times on mix tapes. The summer after we started dating, we celebrated my birthday under the stars at Deer Creek Music Center enjoying Petty and company along with the incomparable Lucinda Williams.

This Christmas, santa brought us a copy of the new Peter Bogdanovich film, Runnin' Down a Dream, which I've been dying to see since its release back in October. Over two nights, Miranda and I sat down and watched this detailed four hour film tracing the inception and the history of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Since finishing the film, I've been revisiting all of the Petty albums which we have collected in our home with an invigorated and deepened admiration for the man and his music. The song Miranda and I have listened to over and over and over again can be found as a lost track in the 1995 box set Playback. The song is featured during a studio take in one of my favorite parts of the Bogdanovich film. The title of the song is "Keeping Me Alive" and was actually cut from the Long After Dark sessions. In the film, Petty admits that fighting producer Jimmy Iovine for the addition of this track and a few other acoustic based songs would have made the album stronger, to which Iovine replies "Yeah, after the third album you should probably shoot your producer." Maybe this song was just too incredible to be included on an album. It stands on its own as proof of Tom Petty as one of the truly great american songwriters.

Monday movie recap

For better or for worse, many precious hours of this unseasonably mild Summer have been spent by Miranda and myself examining frames and frames of celluloid. We've taken in some surprisingly fun Summer fare at the theater including Transformers, The Simpsons Movie. We've also enjoyed a few second run showings at ye ole dollar theatre such as Disturbia (a modern day knock-off of Hitchcock's Rear Window which still manages to be rather watchable due to the performance of a charming young lad known as Shia), Meet the Robinsons and Spiderman 3 (round two for me... that makes about two too many). We've also embarked upon the rather ambitious quest of checking off the entire AFI 100 films of the past 100 years from our "To See" list... yeah, we've still got some work to do on that one. So far we've managed to squeeze in The Last Picture Show and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, two classics which surprisingly neither of us had ever seen. I have only this to say: Cloris Leachman was mesmerizing; I can't believe TLPS made the list by the skin of its teeth at #95; The music of Burt Bacharach + Western Shoot-em-up starring Newman and Redford = Movie Gold! Which leads me to the next item of attention.

In recent years, my favorite films have included all of those imagined by Mr. Wes Anderson. His attention to detail among the dysfunctional and the quirky characters realized by his rotating ensemble win me over every time. Needless to say, I was quite excited when the trailer for his most recent film starring Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman and "Flowin' Like" Owen Wilson, The Darjeeling Limited, was released online. I'm not ashamed to admit that I've watched the trailer at least fifteen times. The trailer is carried along gloriously by the song "This Time Tomorrow" by The Kinks. This is another reminder of what I love so much about Anderson's films... the music. Some of the most memorable music-in-film moments have come from his perfect juxtapositions of scene and song whether it be 1960's Brit-rock, Icelandic post-rock or the score written by Mark Motherbaugh. I'll be in the seats for The Darjeeling Limited when it opens in September and I'll probably eventually own the DVD and never tire of watching the dysfunctional family shenanigans just as I have with Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic. However, after three films featuring the brilliant Bill Murray, I don't know how I'll react to his absence from this one. Let's just hope Darjeeling helps us forget all of those unfortunate Owen Wilson roles from recent films so we can remember why we all fell in love with Dignan.