Certainly, there’s the badassery factor

Book Review on Ma Jing's Bejing Coma - City Paper, July 24...contains one of the best sentences I've ever written. Guess which one! I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Remembrance of Things Pabst - City Paper, July 17...installment Three of my Full Exposure monthly photo column.

Arts Pick on "Contemplative Spaces" sculpture exhiibit - City Paper, July 17...the opening featured an avant-percussionist using the sculptures as his sound source

Sound Advice pick on The Black Angels - City Paper, June 26...the blurb that seriously, made me want to quit writing about music, finally and for real. Any not because it's a good blurb...it ain't.

Also, to reiterate my recent bulletin post, today marks a milestone: my Flickr page is fully, completely up to date for the first time in, like, ever. I've spent the past couple weeks posting stuff that I've been sitting on since spring.

Here's some of what you've been missing:
Siren Festival, Coney Island
XPN Festival, Camden
Ani DiFranco and Regina Spektor, Mann Music Center
Drunken Ambler Fireworks
R.E.M., Mann Music Center
Love Is All, Public Record and a hysterical abandoned building in Fishtown
DeVotchKa at the TLA
Robyn at the TLA
Ministry at the TLA
Monotonix in a West Philly warehouse where the singer hung upside down from the ceiling rafters and stuff
Matt Pond PA at World Cafe Live
Goldenball accompanying a silent movie during Philly Fllm Fest
A couple of Raveonettes shows
A really great shot of Mark Oliver Everett drumming
Druggy pics of Caribou at Johnny Brenda's
The Boyles' awesome attic

Enjoy and gimmie feedback!

Currently listening : Music From the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle By The Olivia Tremor Control Release date: 2004-02-03

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The insurgency began and you missed it

From the June 19 City Paper:
Smooth Operator: JJ Tiziou Documents How Philly Moves - month no. 2 of my new photography column, Full Exposure, this one looking at a guy who has turned lively colorful abstracts of dancers in motion into a really awesome body of work.

Live Review: R.E.M., June 18, Mann Center - one of the only bands I can comfortably say I've been listening to for 20 years...and I got to shoot photos of them! So awesome, so fun.

Currently listening : Evil Urges By My Morning Jacket Release date: 2008-06-10

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Tough to believe, but trust us
Current mood: electric

From this week's City Paper:

Scary Monster music Pick - I broke my no-writing-about-friends'-bands rule, since one of my best friends and favorite Philly musicians is moving to L.A. I'm gonna miss Neal tons, but the fact that I've got so many CDs he recorded over the years will make it seem like he's not so totally far away. It sounds hokey in a Cameron Crowe kinda way, but its true...Neal's music is just so totally Neal, and it's always going to be right here. Add onto that the fact that the full-length album by his latest band, Scary Monster, is probably my favorite thing he's done...it's a good argument for having all your friends record music before they move.

One Track Mind column on Death Cab for Cutie's "Your New Twin-Size Bed" - speaking of moving, here's my thoughts on a song that clicked with me because of my own imminent move (which looks like it may or may not be to the city's Wynnefield section, birthplace of Will Smith and Michael Nutter, close to the Mann and St. Joes, etc.). It's also one of the best songs under eight minutes on Death Cab's new album.

Finally, in OMG WTF news, Carly Simon is playing next week's Free at Noon concert!

Currently listening : Dig Me Out By Sleater-Kinney Release date: 1997-04-08

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There will be lemonade
Current mood: recumbent

Recent CP scribblings:

June 5
One Track Mind: The Chimeras "My Dear Mahommed"
Alex's Lemonade Stand Benefit (feat. The Cobbs, Dark Horse and the Carousels, It's a King Thing) Music Pick
M83 Soundadvice blurb

May 29
Dark Meat Music Pick

May 22
One Track Mind: Firewater "Bourbon and Division"
Black Moth Super Rainbow Soundadvice blurb
Summer Fun Calendar blurb connecting Radiohead and the persides meteor shower (Aug. 12)
Live review: DeVotchKa, May 17, The TLA

Currently listening : St. Elsewhere By Gnarls Barkley Release date: 2006-05-09

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Nothing to do with land-line telephones

Lordy I had a busy week!
All of the following ran in the May 15 City Paper:

Full Exposure: "Parsing Ansel" - The first installment of a new project I'm very excited about...a monthly photography column. This one looks at the opposing takes on the PMA's Ansel Adams exhibit. Next one runs in a month. Send me ideas!

"Plug and Play: Joshua Marcus persuaded four dozen musicians and visual artists to help Reverse the Charges." - music feature on a talented West Philly musician and very cool guy who I had the privlage of interviewing a couple weeks ago, and whose band Fan of Friends factored into my first-ever concert trifecta on May 3!

Music pick on the Liam Finn / Laura Veirs double-bill - a totally interesting lineup, and I think I did a fair job of drawing a connection where there isn't necessarily one.

Music pick on Brass - a Philly band that grew out of a previous Philly band...it's almost entirely the same people, just a less wanky drummer.

Soundadvice music blurb on DeVotchKa - gypsy-indie band I'm very excited to be seeing in concert this weekend!

Little Vittles: Veggie Burger Special at Johnny Rocket's - co-sponsored by PETA! I know. I'm confused too.

...and, from the blogs a couple weeks ago:
Live Review: Ministry - Critical Mass blog at CityPaper.net...Philly's aging goths make a resolute last stand as their once-fearless leader, Al Jourgenson, gives up after "Thieves" and lets some dude from Fear Factory sing for the rest of the show.

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A smackdown or some
Current mood: tired

El-P / Dizzee Rascal / Busdriver music pick- City Paper, May 8...a solid triple  hiphop, happening tonight. Check it out if you're around!

Apocolyptica- City Paper, May 1...chamber trash. Awesomeness.

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This level of insane is necessary
Current mood: cultured

Greyhounds as Guided By Voices - Music Pick, City Paper, April 24...local band opens for themselves, covering Bob Pollard and co.

Soundadvice blurbs on Destroyer and Ports of Call - City Paper, April 24...talking about the understated powerhouse in New Pornographers and the exciting, shoegaze-y new band featuring Carolynne McNeel (Rarebirds, Roomtone, Grammar Debate, April Disaster, some others I can't think of offhand).

Live review: Monotonix / Dark Meat - Critical Mass blog, CityPaper.net, April 20...my chaotic and awesome Saturday night.

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A built-in bullshit meter
Current mood: blustery

Entertain Me: Papertrigger bravely blend rock and showmanship- music lead from City Paper, April 10...a great stylized local band with one of the most absurd / homoerotic press photos I've seen in a while. Accompanied by live pics I took.

Soundadvice blurbs on Spoons for Adam and The Duke Spirit - City Paper, April 10

Live review: Matt Pond PA - Critical Mass blog, CityPaper.net, April 11...saw 'em Monday with Carbon / Silicon. Very impressed.

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Film Fest in review - Week 1

American Teen Fri. April 4, 7:00, Prince Music Theater
High School is miserable. Being a teenager is miserable. These topics have been covered over and over (and over, and over) again in twentieth century art; movies, TV dramas, sitcoms, reality shows, music, books, angsty black-and-white photography...whatever. So what new does Nanette Burstein’s glossified documentary bring to the discussion? Not much; it relies on many of the same tropes we’ve heard and seen before. Band geeks are lonely and never get the girl; rebellious artists (especially manic-depressive types) long to buck their parents’ complacency and do something "important" with their lives for which they’ll be "remembered" after death; and behind every jock is a pushy, overbearing parent foisting off their own failed dreams. Still, I liked this. It made tired points, but made them well, and even had a few unique ripples (albeit downplayed ones) that I appreciated. To wit: the character I most felt for was the overachieving blonde chick who practically lives to get into Notre Dame...which is both uncharacteristic of my own outlook, and contrary to the intents (conscious or sub) of the filmmaker, who seemed to want us to view her as overly cunty. But in the end, she got the most dynamic and most sympathetic treatment. The other point that surprised me was that the film called bullshit on the depressive artist (usually held up as Our Hero) who seems to pride herself on being not as "image conscious" as other girls her age, or whatever. But long shots of her posing and doing rock n’ roll struts in the school hallways with her "gay boyfriend" seem to be included to show that she’s every bit as image conscious, just in a different way. It’s an excellent, important point that fellow artists (eg. filmmakers) usually aren’t willing to make. My biggest problem was with the tagline...I don’t remember it verbatim, but it went something like "Five highschoolers with different lives...who never met before their senior year...by the end of the year, they learned, rebelled... and changed in ways they never thought possible." Obviously this was an homage to The Breakfast Club’s tagline (the movie poster actually arranges the five principles in the same order and design as John Hughes did), but selling it like this is massively deceptive. They never all met, really. None did anything uncharacteristicaly rebellious. And, most egregiously, NONE OF THEM CHANGED.
3 out of 5

Jesus: Spirit of God Sat. April 5, 12:00, The Bridge
An Iranian reinterpretation of the life of Jesus, though it should be noted that"life" refers primarily to the Easter-week scriptures covered in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Spirit is billed as an Islamic response), and the insights it brings by taking a Qur’anic perspective are indeed interesting. The big ones: (a) Jesus did in fact exist, as a prophet and miracle-worker, but he was less a son of God and more a vehicle for foretelling the coming of the prophet Mohammad...and (b) know that guy on the cross at Golgotha? The one whose visage hangs in millions of Christian churches and homes around the world? Yeah. Not Jesus. According to this telling, *that* Jesus was apparently taken back to God in Gethsemane, and Judas was magically transformed to look exactly like Jesus so he would bear the brunt of his execution in retribution for the whole betrayal thing. So yeah, somewhat controversial, definately a lot to mentally chew on. But two major detrimental factors contributed to its low scoring. One: the production values and acting are only slightly more lively than the dry, interminable Easter epics (eg. Jesus of Nazareth) we’d be subjected to each year back in Catholic school. Two, and this is the biggie: the filmmakers opted to, for whatever reason, not translate large sections of the film. Like four, five minutes at a time. Pivitol stuff too, stuff that is unique to the Qur’an’s telling that, ostensibly, much of the target audience (presumably liberal Christians) aren’t familiar with. I don’t speak Persian, so I don’t know if there was an even bigger Big Reveal that escaped me.
2 out of 5

Storm Sat. April 5, 2:30, The Bridge
I didn’t know this many non-blonde Swedes existed! Refreshing. Anyways. This sci-fi flick from the nordic regions made for a good afternoon wakeup. Our protagonist, DD, is a late-twenteysometing post-hipster who works at a newspaper in Stockholm and drinks a lot at clubs and lives in an expensive-looking flat. One day, a woman ambiguously named Promise shows up, claims she’s being chased by scary dudes in suits and shades, hands DD a metallic cube and tells him to keep it safe because it contains "the answers" to "everything" or something. Up until this point, the temptation is probably there to make Matirx comparisons (esp. due to the frenetic pace of the chase scenes), as the festival guide did. But wait. DD’s eventual journey is way more psychological, as his guardianship of the cube forces him to confront repressed childhood trauma, a girl he raped, a brother he tormented, things he would have prefered to forget in his comfy adult life. But all this is happening, apparently, in his own mind and memory; Keanu’s parallel journey, I remember being more tangible and less abstract than that. Then again, I hated The Matrix and couldn’t get through it more than once. In any case, Storm relied more on solid acting and a story that’s willing to be deeply unsettling by being humanist, moreso than campy CGI and some Orwellian hogwash about blue pills and a para-mind-control network whatever shit Keaneo was up against. Sure, it loses itself a bit in its complexity, and either totally leaves itself open for a sequel (which I’ve never seen a festival film do before) or ends on a cliffhanger. Still, I hope it gets a proper stateside release rather than the English-language remake a City Paper review predicted.
3.5 out of 5

Join Us Sun. April 6, 12:15, Ritz East
I really appreciate whena doc is honest-to-God (mwah) objective, and this one gets huge points for that. It follows a group of families who leave an abusive South Carolina religious cult as they go through the process of being deprogrammed, remembering what they went through and deciding upon a course of action against their former leader. Director Ondi Timoner obviously sides more with these people, especially given the life savings they lost, the psychological manipulation they were subjected to and physical abuse that their children endured at the hands of the pastor. What really made this powerful for me was that Timoner went out of her way to let the pastor and his wife tell their side of the story, free of Michael Moore-ish editorial judgement and criticsm. They come across so reasoned and sensible that it’s terrifying.
4.5 out of 5

The Matsugate Potshot Affair Sun. April 6, 2:30, Ritz East
If you’re a film prof looking for a case study on underdevelopment, this Japanese thriller be just the thing. You’ve got two brothers, twins, one a police offier, the other something of an aimless loser. The latter is the perp in a hit-and-run, and it turns out the woman he hit is involved in some sort of seedy heist ring / embezzlement / murder / gold bars at the bottom of a frozen lake ring. It’s never really drawn out, like this flick on the whole, so when loser bro eventually meets the woman he mowed down and is taken captive by she and her husband, you’re still stuck on why. Add to this the sea of tertiary characters swimming about, the depressive mother divorced from the lout of a father who may or may not have incestuously impregnated his daughter. Or is she an in-law? Or just the girlfriend of one of the brothers? Nothing is never made clear - not that total transparancy should be the goal, but neither should complete and utter confoundment...at least not in something so otherwise realist. Suffice it to say,
when the film culminates in the cop brother maniacly firing point-blank gunshots at the town, I could totally relate.
1.5 out of 5

Exodus Tue. April 8, 7:15, The Bridge
There was a lot of God in my first week of Film Fest. In this one, though, what we’re supposed to recognize as God’s message is turned on its head, and replaced with a very cynical, cold and quasi-fascist view of human nature. I loved director Penny Woolcock’s film Mischief Night, which played at PFF last year. That, though, was a dark comedy about race relations between working class white Britons and Pakistanis. This one looks less at race and more at social stratification by retelling the book of Exodus / the story of Moses in the contemporary context of a South African-esque regime. Moses is a gypsy orphaned and adopted in high society; his father, Pharoah, is the dictatorial ultraconservative president of this country who takes the dregs of society - drug addicts, criminals, the poor, the depraved - and herds them into an abandoned amusement park called Dreamland, which is depicted as something between a ghetto and a concentration camp. Through the accidental killing of a national security guard, Moses finds himself hiding out and trying to survive in Dreamland, eventually evolving into the leader of the plebians, urging on the uprising against his adopted father. It fairly neatly paralells the biblical story, down to the plagues (locusts and frogs are cutely turneded into graphical computer viruses that cripple the Promised Land’s infrastructure), an ambitious plan that doesn’t always play out. Daniel Percival as Moses has the occasional tendancy to play Moses on the overdramatic side, which can come off as kind of trite; even though his skill mostly echoed a young Ewan McGregor, in a good way. Meanwhile, one of the characters walks around randomly and inexplicably reciting bible verses. But the ways in which the film succeeds - uncompromising brutality and tragedy, politically allegory, powerful dialogue and moving delivery - outweigh the bad, down to the story-twisting and mindbending conclusion that leaves you wondering if Pharoah was right all along.
4 out of 5

WEEK AVERAGE 3.08
FESTIVAL AVERAGE 3.08

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Zelda looks lonely
Current mood: frustrated

"In the Event That... You’ve Got The Blues" - Arts pick in City Paper, April 3...a very cool photography exhibit at an underappreciated / underutilized photography gallery space in Powelton Village. Everything is blue, one way or the other.

Soundadvice Previews on Beach House and Dark Horse & The Carousels - music blurbs in City Paper, April 3...hipster hype band, new local rock band, both decent and enjoyable and laden with soooooooo many drugs.

Live review: The Raveonettes - Critical Mass blog, CityPaper.net, April 3...compares their awesome 3/27 show at Johnny Brenda’s with their not-as-awesome-but-still-pretty-good Free at Noon appearance at World Café Live the next day.

Live review: eels - Critical Mass blog, CityPaper.net, April 2...where I bitch about the heady mindfuckery and poorly-thought-out concepts of Mark Oliver Everett’s recent Philly appearance, while praising its awesome songs. Includes a kickass photo of E doing the John Bonham thing.

Live review: Caribou - Critical Mass blog, CityPaper.net, March 31...when I photograph a show that includes a projectionist, I’ve got to focus on the projections. Don’t let this lead you to believe the show wasn’t worth actually discussing, though. It was pretty great...just trying something different.

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