But he's still a real smart guy!

I adore Steely Dan, and Donald Fagen's The Nightfly is a real beaut, but his new one is a real snooze. Here's my take.

His name is Prince, and he's Number One

Prince lands his first number-one album since 1989's Batman soundtrack, as well as his first number-one debut. And he does it without giving copies of 3121 away at concerts.

Anybody heard it yet? I'm unconvinced by "Black Sweat."

Sloppy seconds

This week's singles roundup. I'm not infatuated with the Prince and Morrissey singles.

The Kooks - Naive

They know that I know and we all know that naiveté's got nothing to do with chicken-scratch guitars and cute accents.
[1]

Morrissey - You Have Killed Me

Adducing Luchino Visconti and Pier Paolo Pasolini sure doesn't dampen the suspicion that Moz's self-pity has swelled to match his paunch, although clearly he wants his fans to savor these directors' taste for rough trade (since most his youngish fans are, what, 20-something Chicanos I doubt it). His voice breathless and strained, he's lucky that Tony Visconti's muscular production compensates, more Ossessione than Teorema.
[6]

Guillemots - We're Here

Theremins, swooping backup vocals, string sections, and Laid-era James—these young aesthetes are more ambitious than Keane and Travis. Transcending their influences shouldn't be too difficult. Unless they start to believe their own press.

Massive Attack – Live With Me

Still pining for that halcyon moment when Jennifer Lynch had a film career, these men craft yet another peerlessly arranged and engineered bit of love-grunt vacuity. That their new singer sounds like Mark Antony only humidifies the air of drippy melancholia.

Prince - Black Sweat

Now that it's supercool to admit to buying his new records, what does the little guy do? Layer his matchless falsetto over a backing track Eddie Murphy would have jump, jived, and wailed on in a 1982 episode of "Saturday Night Live."
[5]

[5]

Randy Quaid: "It's the gift that keeps on givin', Ang..."

Hell hath no fury like Randy Quaid scorned:

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles, accuses the filmmakers of getting Quaid to cut his seven-figure asking price by portraying Brokeback Mountain as a "low-budget, art-house movie with no prospect of making money." Only later, it says, did Quaid learn Brokeback was a Hollywood-backed production with a budget worth "millions more" than he'd been told.

Quaid, the lawsuit alleges, was hoodwinked:

"Defendants took advantage of Randy Quaid's devotion to filmmaking as an art form and his support of 'true' art films to obtain his performance in Brokeback Mountain," the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit's biggest eye-opeener: who knew that Randy Quaid commands a seven-figure price tag?

Rosanne Cash: On death and such

I haven't played it in a couple of weeks (that last marvelous Bobby Bare record is the one record I'm playing to death), but I'm pretty sure Rosanne Cash's Black Cadillac will end up in my top 10 of 2006. Like her late father's duet partner Bob Dylan, Rosanne understands that album-long meditations on death have gotta approximate an Irish wake (or, hell, Cuban if you've ever attended one) in sound if not ethos. Black Cadillac is no Love & Theft, but it's sure not Interiors either, for which we're all grateful.

Anyway, me on Rosanne Cash in The Village Voice.

"...The sudden appearance of Morrissey's testicles..."

The Guardian's review of Morrissey's Ringleader of the Tormentors makes it seem as if Moz had just recorded an audiobook of The Joy of Gay Sex.

Doggy-Style, Bitch!

Every once in a while a very talented artist outdoes himself and the entire academy by molding or casting or chiselling the perfect sculpture. Here is one such case. Below you can see a very tastefully done Britney Spears ready to give birth doggy-style on a bearskin rug. Because we all know when we think about Britney Spears, we all think, "doggy-style on a bearsking rug, bitch!"

In the words of Daniel Edwards, "The monument also acknowledges the pop-diva’s pin-up past by showing Spears seductively posed on all fours atop a bearskin rug with back arched, pelvis thrust upward, as she clutches the bear’s ears with ‘water-retentive’ hands."

Not as awe-inspiring as the "doggy-style, bitch!" comment overheard in a Fort Lauderdale apartment complex mere blocks for Las Olas Blvd and Riverfront - The Venice of the Americas - but it'll do, Edwards, it'll do.


Link

B is for Banal

Sorry, Ian, but this was enjoyable fluff (better than Batman Begins, lacking the subtextual tug of X-2 or the second Spider Man movie); but why should we take this hokum seriously? Hugo Weaving ("doing an imitation of James Mason in his most hyper-civilized and elocutionary roles, though Mason was acidly witty, and Weaving is merely formal and condescending" -- David Denby) in a Guy Fawkes mask wants to blow up Parliament. I mean, geez: we're supposed to clap along? Parliament represents everything the Chancellor's regime destroyed!

With materal this pulpy any serious discussion about Contemporary Parallels would be de trop. Weaving's character was even more sinister than John Hurt's Chancellor: his strained allusions to Macbeth, the roses he leaves his victims, the rather sadistic mind-fuck he gives Portman, and, that favorite comic book/graphic novel trope, falling in love with the heroine in time to Redeem Himself. He wears a mask! He's good with knives! He quotes The Count of Monte Christo!

This is a film whose intentions are muddled by creators uncomfortable with the demands of pulp (I haven't read Alan Moore's graphic novel but if The Watchmen is any indication he can juggle moral ambiguities without the Wachowski brothers' evident strain). In case we missed the point the director soaks us in violence done by the purported hero that's no different than what the totalitarian state does: the execution of the police in the final third is slowed down so that we don't miss any evisceration, laceration, or spurt of blood our Pillor of Righteousness inflicts on the evildoers.

Stephen Fry-playing-Oscar-Wilde was fine, but I'm not sure the director told him what kind of movie he was starring in; nor was he introduced to the rest of the cast. The always-terrific Stephen Rea was more convincing as a man of pained conscience than Natalie-as-Falconetti. The only scene suggesting that vigilantism might exert a terrible price on its practicer takes place between Weaving and an old doctor (Sinead Cusack), who accepts her complicity with a grace she's too shrewd to confuse for absolution.

Those of you who read graphic novels: Alex, Ian, et al. If I'm wrong, say so.

Taking sides: Punchy vs Slinky

Is it faint praise when I say that the new Yeah Yeah Yeah's single reminds me of a lot of things I've heard before? While the little I've heard of Show Your Bones suggests that I'm going to dredge the sophomore-slump cliche one more time, "Gold Lion" is punchy enough to force me to rue the day I dismissed the YYY's as one more eyeliner-sportin' act enfeebled by post-punk envy.

In this week's singles roundup, neither the YYY's, Kanye trying his damndest to reignite interest in his fading album, Coldplay manque, nor sincere Aussie Keith Urban approach the grace of Amadou and Mariam, who can assemble a groove with less sweat than Karen O can yelp.

"A performance that would be merely silly and self-indulgent if it were not also scandalous"

Last night Andy noted that The Miami Herald will not often run a really nasty reviewsm(though I got away with a scorching Eagles concert write-up three years ago). How reassursing that The New York Times has no such scruples. Take a look at this one of Cate Blanchett starring in a new production of Hedda Gabler.

Krauthammer: "Pagans and polygamy"

I'm not sure what to make of Charles Krauthammer's latest column. Analyzing the decline of heterosexual marriage vis-a-vis gay marriage and polygamy, he sounds more wistful than wrathful :

I'm not one of those who see gay marriage or polygamy as a threat to, or assault on, traditional marriage. The assault came from within. Marriage has needed no help in managing its own long, slow suicide, thank you. Astronomical rates of divorce and of single parenthood (the deliberate creation of fatherless families) existed before there was a single gay marriage or any talk of sanctioning polygamy. The minting of these new forms of marriage is a symptom of our culture's contemporary radical individualism – as is the decline of traditional marriage – and not its cause.

At least in viewing the gay-marriage as a tectonic shift in society rather than evidence of moral decline, his hand-wringing doesn't have the hectoring quality of most social conservatives.

If you died trying, would you make it to paradise now?

"Why do men from Nablus put so much sugar in their tea?" "I don't know, it's just the way it is. Everybody does it."
It's a little exchange early in recent Oscar Nominee "Paradise Now", but that's the heart of the movie. It's about two Palestinian terrorists as they may (or may not- no spoilers here) be getting ready to die, and why they do the things they do, and it's a very human movie. It reminds me (and sometimes I do need the reminder) that terrorists don't crawl out of their mommies with bombs strapped to their chests. That they're people who are capable of kindness, keep pets, have favorite songs, can love their girlfriends (or boyfriends, yes, there are girl terrorists), and sometimes like a lot of sugar in their tea.You don't have to justify murder to understand that it comes from people, not cartoon characters.

I just watched this next to Jim Sheridan's "Get Rich or Die Trying" (a Curtis "Fifty Cents" Jackson quasi-biopic), and some interesting moral problems arose.

Why was I left feeling a lot more sympathy for the terrorists than for Fitty?

I'll tell you three things: One: Fitty makes the big bucks out of rehashing his gansta ways. You're supposed to love him because he's sorry now, has dimples, is on MTV all the time, and loves you like a fat kid loves cake. Still his best line, but damn it, is that really such a cultural accomplishment?

Two: 50 Cents came from a (sort of) impoverished background*, but he was not culturally isolated. (One of the characters in "Paradise Now" has only been to the cinema once in his life- to burn it down during a protest.) By contrast, Fitty wasn't raised believing it was God's will that he should hold up a liquor store with a handgun. He knew different, but went ahead and did what he did. Don't get me wrong, I UNDERSTAND him as much as I understand the terrorists, (who wouldn't like to sell crack to little kids?) but in a weird way he's just a lot less excusable.

Three: Terrorists, whatever else they may be, are not selfish. They do what they do out of ideals (FUCKED UP IDEALS, but ideals nonetheless.) They think they are serving God, their people, their country, whatever particular brainwash they've been subjected to. (No need to mock their feeble mindedness- if you think you haven't been culturally brainwashed into accepting some very horrible things, then you're not thinking hard enough.) But when Fitty was out shooting (and getting shot), he wasn't serving nobody but his need to get a better pair of Nikes. Sorry for the rant. It's late, you know.

Watch "Paradise Now." Don't worry, fellow Zionists, anyone can agree on it. Except the Academy, they went for the less tricky- and treaclier- "Tsotsi."

*re: the "sort of impoverished background"- he still had his Wheaties every morning, he didn't lack a house or a family network, and his crack-selling momma bought him all sorts of nice clothes, as the movie reassures me. Coming from a REALLY impoverished background, I find that sort of sad story inadmissible as an excuse for attempted murder. God, I'm turning into an asshole conservative in my old age, aren't I?

Ode to a Commode

Edmund Wilson – the first critic with the prescience to formally acknowledge the greatness of Joyce, Proust, Yeats, and Stein; author of one of the great dissections of Marx, Engels, and their predecessors (To The Finland Station); did the same for the Civil War (Patriotic Gore); weighed the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls; one of my heroes – on the superiority of the American commode:

I have had a good many more unplighting thoughts, creative and expansive visions – while soaking in comfortable baths or drying myself after bracing showers – in well-equipped American bathrooms than I have ever had in any cathedral. Here the body purges itself, and along with the body, the spirit. Here the mind becomes free to ruminate, to plan ambitious projects. The cathedrals, with their distant domes, their long aisles and their high groinings, do add stature to human strivings; their chapels do give privacy for prayer. But the bathroom, too, shelters the spirit, it tranquilizes and reassures, in surroundings of a celestial whiteness, where the pipes and the faucets gleam and the mirror makes another liquid surface, which will render you, shaved, rubbed and brushed, a nobler and more winning appreciation.

– from "Europe" (A Piece of My Mind).

The Boys are back in town.

One track from the Pet Shop Boys' latest, Fundamental (due in April) has been leaked. "I'm With Stupid" is deliciously retro: specifically, class of 1987 limey dance-pop: a sassy recombination of Stock-Aitken-Waterman synth-horns and Living in a Box's absurd eponymous hit. A pity Neil Tennant sounds so wan.

Drop me a line if you want a copy.

For Your Pleasure

This month's sorting through the detritus of culture, high and low.

Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

Marcello Carlin almost had me sold on this latest NME-approved quartet of laddish ephemerality, not the least because he stresses this point: "And, like the Police, the Arctic Monkeys are the kind of group which only really makes sense when they are number one in the charts" [in England, of course]. I can understand why these guys are sensations: they enact every fantasy dreamt of by the mob. They may have titled one number "From the Ritz to the Rubble," but most of this album chronicles the reverse: a social climber with neither the cheekbones and pedigree of Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' Dostoyevsky-addled killer in Match Point, nor the murderous impulses of Luke Haines (Auteurs model, not Black Box Recorder), he's bilious and resourceful, but not enough to get him past the bouncers or persuade some bird to dance with him, so instead he gets pissed with his mates and narrowly avoids arrest by truncheon-wielding cops. Flashes of wisdom register not on Alex Turner, an asshole infatuated with the put-downs and allusions gleaned from a respectable middle-class education, all of which he's willing to eschew, of course, when he's serenading a whore with a heart of gold who's a lot like Roxanne. So far Turner's smart enough to realize he's gotta try harder ("But now this haze has ascended/It don't make sense no more," he confesses in "From the Ritz to the Rubble"); that his bandmates should stop embellishing their very good tunes with the usual post-punk aural decoupage (Andy Gill guitar, martial beats, elephantine structures, fill in the rest); that he's gotta lead the mob instead of half-assedly asserting his right to exploit its rage. GRADE: B+


* Sasha Frere-Jones, "A Ghost's World"

A brief, excellent overview of Ghostface Killah's remarkable career and review of his latest, Fishscale (four tracks produced by MF Doom!). Always trust great writers to remind you of an obvious-and-of-course-overlooked point: Ghostface's voice "is a gorgeous instrument, mellifluous even when he’s yelling, which he does an awful lot."


* The English Beat, "Can't Get Used to Losing You" and "Save it For Later"

When loneliness holds and horrifies, find succor in smut.

Brokeback, Vidal, and advertising

To protest the naming of Crash as Best Picture of 2005 by the Academy of Motion Picture Farts & Biases and as a gesture of thanks, the members of Dave Cullen's Brokeback forum got together in record time, rounding up over $16,000 to pay for a full-page ad in tomorrow's Variety.

Here's a link to the ad.

Finally, here's Gore Vidal, irascible as usual, proferring mini-reviews of Brokeback, Capote, and Match Point, his favorite film of 2005 (um, well, nobody's perfect). He confirms that Rupert Everett will play him in the Capote biopic due next year:

I’m being played by quite a good British actor—Rupert Everett. I ran into him recently, and he told me he was playing me, and so I said well, have a good time, and he said, “You know I’ve been complaining it’s such a small part.”

I said, “Because I avoided Capote!” [Laughs.]

Har har.

The New World

As an, admittedly, slightly aloof moviegoer (well, individual), 2005 held very few special moments for me. Moments I can recall as breathtaking came seldom and very few times did a film make me smile with the realization that maybe what I was seeing was not just entertainment to pass the time but a slice of that ever-elusive quality - Art. I felt this way while watching David Cronenberg's History of Violence. I felt this way while watching Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain. But most of all, I felt this way while watching Terrence Malick's The New World.

The film's scope, beauty, music, harmony, all resonate in me in quite a soulful manner. Pretentious? Sure the film reeks of pretentiousness, if you buy into that falacious critique. Art, above all else, seeks to illuminate. And illuminating is the only adjective I care to use to describe the moments in the film where Wagner's Vorspiel from Das Rheingold is played to accompanying cinematography.

It was not surprising that The New World did not get nominated for Best Film or Best Directory by the Academy. The following excerpt from J. Hoberman's article in The Village Voice explains how this came to be:

"New York Times critic Manohla Dargis found only one possible explanation for The New World's failure to attract more than cursory Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences attention: 'With the exception of my few dear friends in that august body, [the Academy members] are idiots.'"

Some say the Academy collective is an idiot for not unanimously voting for Brokeback Mountain as Best Picture. I call them idiots for failing to nominate The New World at all.

Jazz dilettantes need not apply

My favorite jazz-rap album, Tribe Called Quest's The Low-End Theory, gets down to business from the opening bars of "Excursions." Q-Tip and Phife were so leery of ostentation that you barely notice the shout-out to bass great Ron Carter in "Verses from the Abstract." Digable Planets' Reachin' deserves similar praise – and the beats are much harder.

De La Soul's Buhloone Mindstate, 1993's other jazz-rap touchstone, is a curious listen. Instead of bolstering the insouciance that's always been their greatest asset, the jazz touches reenforce the impression that a crew of excited dilettantes have commandeered the studio; the album is in its first third so generous about sharing its space with the likes of Maceo Parker that De La's identity is diluted. It does recover, and whatever else, it's their best post-De La Soul is Dead album -- a selfless epitaph to the first part of the career of one of the most consistent acts in pop music.

Anyway, here's my review.

See? We are all getting along!

Enough with the jeremiads. So Brokeback Mountain didn't win. I did -- at a friend's Oscar party...a $25 Macy's gift card!

Since the victory of Crash augurs a new era of understanding, it's only fitting that I post this evidence that the age of Aquarius is well nigh. Clockwise at the Kodak Theatre bar we have: Best Supporting Actor nominee Jake Gyllenhaal, Best Actor winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, Best Actor nominee Heath Ledger, Best Actor nominee Joaquin Phoenix (back to camera), and Best Supporting Actor winner/King of Hollywood George Clooney. One can only hope Clooney got the round of Jaeger shots.

Highway Robbery

"Not since Titanic," one of my-coworkers lamented this morning in the heat of Post-Oscar buzz "has a best-picture win been this surprising." He was hardly alone. Less than 24 hours since the Kodak theater was packed with stars and Jon Stewart's trademark sarcasm, the backlash and the praise depending on which side of the fence you're on had already started to roll in. The arguments have ranged from Titanic comparisons like the one listed above to the extreme right-wing flip-floppers I've encountered who have gone from blasting Hollywood's lack of moral decency to praising its support of traditional values. This is, of course, to be expected. On the list of things people will always argue about to no end, you're likely to find three things: religion, politics and movies. What's fascinating about this year's response, however, is the driving force behind almost every comment I've either read or heard, positive or negative, seems to be not this year's winner, but the loser: Brokeback Mountain.

Like it or not, Titanic's win was hardly a surprise. It had the support of die-hard fans that saw it six times and wept on every occasion. It had the distinction of being one the highest grossing nominees ever and the considerable difficulty of it's production to boast. Crash has neither. Brokeback Mountain's domestic gross alone comes close to matching Crash's overall worldwide gross of 83.4 Million. And the sad story we've been given on how hard it was for a movie as "controversial" as Crash to get off the ground does nothing to eclipse the years Brokeback Mountain spent languishing in the industry waiting for actors and producers brave enough to get behind it. So what exactly is compelling people to make comments like "Thank God Crash beat Brokeback Mountain" which I've found littered across message boards or spoken by the supposedly open-minded individuals I've encountered? They don't strike me as similar to the passionate gushing of obsessive fans I encountered in Titanic's defense. And they certainly seem to forget that there were four other losers. It seems to me that quite simply, there are more Brokeback Mountain haters than there are Crash lovers.

There is obvious evidence of this of course; Crash didn't have essays written on how it contributes to America's moral decay. Try as it might, it didn't spark nearly as much debate as Brokeback Mountain did. And on a subtler level, there potentially exists a contingent of individuals who hoped on the Crash brandwagon as a result of Brokeback Mountain backlash--average, ordinary people who weren't gushing about Crash nearly as much when they first saw it. People who liked it, but weren't necessarily starting best picture campaigns. Average, ordinary people still potentially as unaware of their subconscious prejudices as their favorite film Crash tried desperately to point out. And why does this matter?

Because as the post-Oscar dust settles, Crash "supporters" will try to tell us that its aim was daring, that its message was powerful, and that its impact was immeasurable. They'll tell us it's the kind of film that will be felt for years to come. They will try to make us forget the uphill battle Brokeback Mountain faced, the social debate it sparked and its position as the only film nominated this year with a stake in cinematic history. As good and important as Crash's message was, it joins a long list of powerful films that deal with race relations in America; and moreover, as any Avenue Q fan can tell you, the film doesn't necessarily go any deeper in its 2 hours than the musical does in the 5 minute song "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist." For all that has been said about it's daring, unless I missed a scene or two, Brokeback Mountain didn't feature Jack getting shot with BLANKS. Ennis really loses Jack, and the emotional repercussions ripple as subtly and powerfully throughout the film as its social impact undoubtedly will.

And yet, for anyone attempting to remain liberal without necessarily aligning themselves with the sinister "homosexual agenda," Crash provides a serviceable substitute. A sentiment Sandra Bullock's character may have shared in terms of minorities. Before being attacked on the street, we are lead to believe her character would never have voiced her hidden fears and prejudices. An important message to be sure, but one that makes me wonder if it got through.

In a year that featured George Clooney declaring his pride at being considered "out of touch" and Nicole Kidman describing Jack Gyllenhall's role as "precedent-setting," it seems odd that the Academy as a whole didn't recognize the film itself for that very same reason. We cannot know for sure if it was Brokeback Mountain's theme that kept it from winning the best picture nod it, in my opinion, undoubtedly deserved, but if so, I can only marvel at the irony involved in Crash winning over Brokeback Mountain because Hollywood wasn't able to look past it's hidden prejudices.

I sincerely hope that wasn't the case. And yet, consider this breakdown of the pre-Oscar awards garnered by each of the films:

Crash:

Chicago Film Critics Association
Image Awards
SAG (best ensemble)

Brokeback Mountain:

BAFTA Film Award
Boston Society of Film Critics
Broadcast Film Critics Association
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association
The Director's Guild
Golden Globes
Independent Spirit Awards
London Critics Circle Film
Los Angeles Film Critics Association
New York Film Critics Circle
PGA Golden Laurel Awards
San Francisco Film Critics Circle
Satellite Awards
Southeastern Film Critics Association
Vancouver Film Critics Circle
Venice Film Festival - Golden Lion
The Writer's Guild

Like I said, I can't say for sure what happened last night, but it just doesn't seem to add up. And if you can't stand it, you've got to fix it.

Hollywood: Tara or Sodom?

Responding to Michael Medved's lamentations of doom, James Wolcott reminds us that Hollywood has never reflected "traditional values":

...from its birth it's reflected urban energy, cosmopolitan taste, social conscience, and pagan fascination, and when it's conformed to conventional pieties, as during the dreariest stretches of the postwar period, when disillusionment and subversion had to sneak in through the shadows of film noir as the topline product stayed shiny, bright, and chipmunk cheerful.

Don't forget to cheer for the picture about sodomite ranch hands while chilling the vodka at your Oscar party tonight.