It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and I wanted to let you know I apologize deeply for that. I’ve still been seeing movies on my golden pass, but I’ve failed you on posting my rambling thoughts.

Well I’m here today to let you know not about movies, but instead about some music you should be checking out. The album I’m recommending is Giggle In Awe by MSIF+Boost. MSIF is currently based out of Atlanta, although they just recently moved from St. Louis. The album (released May 1st) is the first release by Mike Stasny, the main man behind MSIF. It’s also important to credit Mr. Stasny for his role in writing the lyrics for this viral video.

This is some electro-dance pop. The album has tracks that fulfill the lighter-side of dance (“A Few Good Men”, “The Boogie That’s Mine”) and some that make you wish you were at a lunch rave in Sweden (“Change Me Levity”, “Full Circle”, “Abby”). It passingly reminds me of a less grandiose Empire of the Sun, combined with Jookabox (whose song “You Cried Me” is a must listen to jam). One thing that stands out to me is the production quality on all these tracks. It’s high quality.  I’m not sure how the drums were recorded, but the record sounds like the instrumentation was recorded by real people and not just a producer behind a drum machine and a keyboard. Props are also due for the vocals, which are in many cases double tracked in an excellent manner that keeps the range open and prevents them from ever getting boring.

The moral of this story is get on over to the Bandcamp page, grab yourself a copy of this album, and dance (or nod if you’re at work).

Recommended if you dig: The Notwist, Empire of the Sun, Jookabox White Flight

1. Lotus Plaza – “Strangers”

Though Lockett Pundt lacks the indie-ubiquity of his Deerhunter bandmate Bradford Cox, his second solo album under the Lotus Plaza moniker confirms his ability to write music that is big, catchy, and incredibly good. “Strangers,” the first single from Spooky Action at a Distance, finds its lineage in Pundt’s Deerhunter contributions (especially “Desire Lines”), but doesn’t sound like a leftover from any of their sessions. Guitars twinkle and shine in between one another beneath Pundt’s calming voice in pure pop perfection. I could have picked any track from Spooky Action, but “Strangers” stands out for the simple fact that after nearly a month, I still want to listen to this song multiple times a day.

2. Father John Misty – “Hollywood Forever Cemetery”

For such a spare, minimally composed song, “Hollywood Forever Cemetery” packs an immediate punch. While I’ve never been a big fan of Fleet Foxes (the reasons why could fill a separate blog post), former member J. Tillman adds a jagged edge to their simple formula to craft a song that has more power than it would seem at first listen. With just reverb soaked guitar and clattering drums, “Hollywood Forever Cemetery” is the kind of song you can listen to at both 2PM and 2AM and experience it differently each time. Equal parts catchy and dark, the song showcases Tillman’s ability to craft complicated ideas in simple arrangements with great effect. (The Aubrey Plaza-starring video makes for an awesome companion btw)

3. The Walkmen – “Heaven”

The Walkmen have come a long way from the the discontented 20-somethings that broke onto the scene with their fantastic second record Bows + Arrows. On 2010’s Lisbon, they finally found the middle ground between the fire and passion of “The Rat” and the gorgeous “We’ve Been Had,” and the lead, eponymous single from their newest effort finds them in an even more comfortable spot than before. Hamilton Leithauser still lets his uncertainties and doubts come to the fore, but they’re mixed in with a sound and feeling of contentment the band has yet to display. I don’t know when exactly The Walkmen became one of my favorite bands, but songs like “Heaven” verify why.
Stream “Heaven” here

4. MMoths – “Heart (Featuring Keep Shelly in Athens)”

While fans of louder, faster tempo jams might find “Heart” too slow and atmospheric, the standout track from the band’s self-titled debut has been in heavy rotation for me since first hearing it. Equal parts meditative and moving, “Heart” builds slowly to a drop that is subtle, but powerful. The song finds the middle ground between Grouper’s palette of washed out beauty and Beach House’s dreaminess, coming together to create a song that draws you in and becomes embedded in your mind.

5. The Death Grips – “Get Got”

I’m going to be completely honest and say I have no idea why I find this song as compelling and great as I do. Sometimes, a song just has intangible qualities that are hard to define, and “Get Got” is undoubtedly one of them. I don’t know if it’s the track’s wiley hook or frontman MC Ride’s seemingly disinterested snarl or even the inherent weirdness of the song that has kept it on repeat, but whatever it is, it works incredibly well.

Honorable Mentions: Screaming Females – “It All Means Nothing,” The Chromatics – “Kill for Love,” Breton – “Edward the Confessor,” Dirty Projectors – “Gun Has No Trigger,” Japandroids – “The House That Heaven Built”

Best Old Song Discovered Now: Grizzly Bear – “Easier (Alternative Edit)”

Daniel Rossen’s fantastic solo EP led me back to the welcoming embrace of Grizzly Bear, especially this alternate take on the opening track from 2006’s Yellow House. A b-side to the band’s breakthrough, “Knife,” this version of “Easier” features a different set of lyrics and some major arrangement changes that in many ways are superior to the album cut. This song isn’t just for obsessives like myself either. It’s a gorgeously arranged song with a level of emotional resonance that made the band’s name in the first place.

The Craig Finn thing is kind of easy to understand given that for much of my college career, no band was as important to me as The Hold Steady. However, their graph has been trending downward, unmistakably so in light of the uneven and bloated Heaven is Whenever, and a Finn solo record held the potential of a palate cleanser or perhaps a bold new step. But Finn isn’t one for boldness and Clear Heart Full Eyes sounds like The Hold Steady drained of its scope. It is an intimate album and its best songs, specifically “Jackson,” sound more personal than Finn has sounded in years. But they also sound like acoustic performances of Hold Steady songs, Finn’s storytelling remains idiosyncratic but a touch underealized and that sin was easier to ignore when it was covered up by the band’s boozy festival field scope. Clear Hearts Full Eyes has none of the Springsteen scope or Replacements rambunctiousness of Finn’s best work, its subdued, singer-songwriter vibe may be more mature but is far less satisfying.

Listeners looking for some of that old Hold Steady swagger, but with more than a touch of Clear Heart’s lilting Southern drawl would do well to turn to the newest record from Heartless Bastards. On Arrow, Heartless Bastards do little to change their heady, classic rock direction nor do they need to. This is the genre of music that Erika Wennerstrom’s voice was basically created to sing and she doesn’t let it down. Arrow cuts between heavy riffs and introspective slow cuts with ease and while the album struggles to match the highs of “Parted Ways,” that song is more than enough to fuel your Dazed and Confused reminiscing.

Tennis is probably the most embarrassing of these three records, after all it is the follow-up to a breeze-pop record about buying a sailboat and sailing along the Atlantic coast. It is indie at its Vampire Weekend bougiest and, to top it all off, this album is produced by one of the Black Keys guys and man do I fucking hate the Black Keys. And yet I can’t stop listening to Young and Old, even when I should be giving my attention to the perhaps too thought-out new Sleigh Bells album or the more complex Grimes record. Part of that is Young and Old simply makes itself so easy to listen to. I’m not even sure which song is the single because they’re all so brisk and joyous. The band added a light folk touch to their first record’s traditionalist pop bent and the result is a kind of generic brand Grizzly Bear (albeit lacking in the dense, exacting production, lush instrumentation, or intricate songwriting that we’d need for such a comparison to make any sense at all) that would fit almost as snuggly in the 1930s as it does on Spotify.

Over at Gawker, Brian Moylan has had enough of waiting for TV shows to become good:

That’s the problem with these slow burn shows, especially ones with fancy pedigrees backed by highbrow channels like HBO or AMC. We can’t imagine how they could not be good, so we keep watching, episode after boring episode, all the while waiting for some amazing payoff. And sometimes, like a skilled horse coming from behind, it pays off. But remember: For every The Wire there is a Treme, and for every Mad Men there is a The Killing

…

Sometimes slow isn’t good. Sometimes slow is just drab.

This is an interesting point and one I’ve thought about from time to time. Are you getting tired of “prestige” shows that promise payoff down the line but ask you to invest a lot upfront?

However, for me, I’m not sure that Moylan is looking for the same things out of TV that I am. Is all TV inherently about some sort of “payoff?” To put it another way, I think its damaging to look at TV shows in terms of a cost-benefit analysis and assume that the time you’re putting in should be rewarded down the line.

That is not to say that shows shouldn’t continue to get better the deeper and more intricate they become. TV has the luxury of time, a luxury that no other visual medium really has, and that allows it to set up more intricate ideas and play with different modes of storytelling. Take Treme, which, according to Moylan, is an utter failure because it did not adequately reward his time. But Treme is not a show about plotting and payoff, it is more of a low-key, character based drama about people living their lives. The stakes are much lower and the payoffs will be much smaller than on The Wire.

But Treme never pretended like that wasn’t the case. From the first episode, it was clear that we weren’t dealing with the life-or-death, all-in-the-game world of The Wire. Treme has gotten deeper and more involving, its characters more complex, but it is the same show that it was in the first episode. On the other hand, The Killing isn’t a bad show because it never told us who killed Rosie Larsen; it is a bad show because it took a bunch of hollow, uninteresting characters and drowned them in a sea of red herrings without ever giving us a reason to care. It didn’t take 13 episodes to realize that show wasn’t going to be good.

Of course, shows change and improve over time and there are programs that you have to invest some time in at first to be truly rewarded by them. But they also have moments, even early on, that make you want to invest in them. The Wire was puzzling at first, but it still had the chess scene and the “fuck” scene in the first four hours. Mad Men was gripping from its first moments. Shows may be paced slowly, but that doesn’t mean they’re uninvolving. Moylan brings up Boardwalk Empire as an example of this problem but BE just finished its season with about as big of a payoff as it could have possibly done.

It is important that the shows that are usually held up as an example of this form, The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, are shows that people usually caught up on after they aired. If an episode was disappointing or somewhat unsatisfying, you didn’t have a week to stew about it and increase the pressure on the next week. All of which is to say that if you are watching a show because you need it to vindicate itself for making you watch it, then it is probably time to cut the cord. Whether that takes two episodes or two hundred, it is up to you. But it isn’t a TV show’s job to turn itself into what you want it to be so that you don’t have to feel like you’ve wasted your time.

Somehow, we have reached a point where M.I.A. can play the Super Bowl Halftime show, where she made an appearance along side Madonna, LMFAO, and Cee-Lo. Somewhere, in 2005, 18-year-old me just had his head explode. Anyway, M.I.A., as she is wont to do, gave us all the finger, predictable people responded predictably, and it turns out that anyone who would be inclined to listen to M.I.A. probably didn’t care too much about this whole thing to begin with. Now let’s watch the hilarious, hilarious Bradshaw touchdown and never speak of this again.

Like everyone else, my favorite new show of the season has been Showtime’s Homeland. Homeland is kind of like 24 for adults, a counter-terrorism thriller with strong characters and more of an emphasis on realism. The show is about Carrie (Claire Danes), a CIA analyst who believes that a POW (Damien Lewis) who was recently recovered in Iraq is actually a double agent. Here’s a few thoughts/ideas I had about the show, while mainlining its first season a few weeks ago (spoiler alert for the whole season, so maybe don’t read this until after you’ve watched the show?)

Terrorism:

For a show about terrorists and the people who fight them, Homeland is actually at its least interesting when engaged with issues of national security. While I don’t agree with Pamela Aucoin, whose article suggesting that Homeland validates and slyly supports the excesses and abuses of the War on Terror, I do sense an ambivalence towards the War on Terror in the show. It balances between different notions of how to fight terrorists before, in the end, pretty clearly endorsing the empathic mode used by Mandy Patankin’s Saul and, eventually, Carrie. Saul gets important information, not through torture or illegal surveillance, but by just spending time getting to know the suspect and understand her reasons. Similarly, Carrie saves the day in the season finale because she knows Brody and his family well enough to know how to reach out to him.

But this all can’t help but feel a little tired. In the ten years that we’ve had the war on terror, there’s been plenty of entertainment raising questions about the exchange of liberty for security. Homeland doesn’t have much to add to the conversation, but it also doesn’t seem too interested in that, either. I appreciate the matter -of-fact way that it deals with all of the tactics its characters use to fight terrorists, whether its Carrie’s illegal wiretap or the illegal airstrike that ignites much of the plot. It presents these as things that happen and generally trusts the audience to make its own decisions about whether it is right or not.

Gaslighting

Gaslighting is a clinical term that refers to when a person tries to manipulate another person into thinking they are crazy, like in the film Gas Light where a husband tries to gain possession of his wife’s jewelry by convincing her that she is crazy and having her committed. As depicted in this essay, gaslighting is something that happens to women a lot, and this same problem forms the spine of Homeland.

Carrie’s illness is not imaginary; she is bipolar and, towards the end of the season, has a manic episode that gets her fired. However, despite her illness, she is the only person who recognizes that Brody is a terrorist from the beginning. She figures out a large part of the case and even saves the day in the end. But as a reward, she is fired from her job at the CIA, everyone dismisses her as crazy, and she ends up having electroshock therapy to try and fix her illness.

Carrie is the only woman we really see involved in the CIA but her voice is marginalized and dismissed as crazy. This seems important. Would she have to go to such great lengths to hide her disease if she were male? Would her colleagues dismiss her as much? Homeland’s approach to Carrie’s gender is interesting and makes the show much deeper.

Television

In the end, however, I wonder if Homeland’s primary concern isn’t the medium of television itself and the relationship between it and its viewers. After all, Carrie spends most of the first four episodes watching TV: her surveillance footage of Brody and his family. She wears her pajamas and sits on the couch and eats snacks, just like a lot of the audience watching Homeland is doing, I imagine. However, as the season goes on, the walls between Carrie and her TV go down. She meets Brody in the real world and they end up hooking up. Carrie, in many ways, is living out the dreams of every television viewer: she gets to become a part of the action.

Several studies have shown that watching television has the same affect on the brain as forming friendships. Homeland, in some ways, is about the peculiar mix of voyeurism and loneliness that seems to cause that effect. It implicates its audience by making Carrie’s surveillance, so similar to our own, illegal and intrusive. It also questions what we’re getting out of it; Carrie isn’t able to stop the terror attack until she steps out of her living room and actually gets to know Brody as a person. And it shows the psychological cost of this surveillance, by ending with Carrie getting electroshock treatment. In the end, Homeland asks some interesting questions about television as a medium and what viewers get out of it.

Musician, mogul, throne-watcher, and Donda CEO Kanye West is finally returning to his roots as a filmmaker. According to the New York Observer, Ye is in the Middle East to shoot a follow-up short to “Runaway,” which, of course, was so good that it cured world hunger. This time, Yeezy has his sights set even higher, according to his reps:

“His reps seemed genuinely enthusiastic about creating a piece which highlights the culture accurately,” our source explained. “There’s a lot of preconceived notions and stereotypes about Emiratis and Qataris, which Westerners often play up. They discussed how Kanye is looking to bridge the cultural divide and break misconceptions.”

Yup, the film will indeed finally create peace between the West and the Middle East, so we have that to look forward to, along with Ye’s eventual Nobel Peace Prize (and subsequently shoving Philip Roth off the stage to demand the Nobel Prize for Literature should go to Haruki Murakami instead). Of course, its always possible that this is just a ruse to cover up the fact that Kanye is finally beginning work on The Jetsons movie, so more on this story as it develops.

The nominations for the Oscars went out this morning and with them, the first round of quick reactions and predictions. After several months of following smaller, but not insignificant awards, here are our official predictions and complaints. Agree? Disagree? Let us know!

Best Picture

The Artist

War Horse

Moneyball

The Descendants

Tree of Life

Midnight in Paris

The Help

Hugo

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Who Will Win: The Artist. It’s had all the steam throughout the early awards season, and it doesn’t appear any of the other films have the clout to take it down.

Who Should Win: Really it’s a wide open category if The Artist loses, but look for The Descendants to take the statue if Oscar voters aren’t into French silent films.

Who Was Snubbed: Young Adult. Not a single nomination for Jason Reitman’s latest. It’s surprising The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo got nothing, but the lack of any love for Young Adult is a travesty.

Best Actress

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Viola Davis, The Help

Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Who Will Win: Michelle Williams. She’s clearly been the front runner through most of awards season and though Meryl Streep has had a lot of buzz, Williams is by the far the safest bet of all nominees.

Who Should Win: If not Williams, it will be Meryl Streep. The other three nominees are all deserving, but Oscar politics always trump anything else.

Who Was Snubbed: Tilda Swinton. I’m not sure if We Need to Talk About Kevin was eligable for the Oscars, but if it was, it’s a travesty she didn’t get a nod. Also deserving: Charlize Theron, who carried Young Adult.

Best Actor

Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

George Clooney, The Descendants

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Demián Bichir, A Better Life

Who Will Win: George Clooney. He has a Supporting Actor award already, and as is the Oscar way, he’ll win because it’s his time.

Who Should Win: Honestly, this category is dynamite. If it’s not Clooney, expect either Oldman, Dujardin, or Pitt, in that order.

Who Was Snubbed: Michael Fassbender for Shame and Michael Shannon for Take Shelter. Two of the most talked about performances of the year got no attention. I expected at least one to get a nod, and it’s surprising neither of them did.

Best Supporting Actress

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Who Will Win: Jessica Chastain. Sometimes the Oscars are about welcoming people into the community of Oscar winners, and after a huge year, expect Chastain to get that honor.

Who Should Win: This is another loaded category in which anyone has a convincing argument, but if it’s not Chastain, Bejo could steal the show.

Who Was Snubbed: Though she really didn’t get nominated for any other awards, Shailene Woodley from The Descendants deserved at least a little attention for her breakthrough performance.

Best Supporting Actor

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Who Will Win: Christopher Plummer. This is the closest thing to a lock in this year’s ceremony.

Who Should Win: Honestly, Plummer. He owns Beginners and is truthfully the most deserving.

Who Was Snubbed: Albert Brooks. Without a doubt the biggest snub of the Oscars. Though no one expected him to beat Plummer, not even getting nominated was absolutely crazy. Special Mention also goes to Patton Oswalt for Young Adult.

Best Director

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

Terrence Malick, Tree of Life

Who Will Win: Martin Scorsese. When Oscar voters are in doubt, they always go with one of the all time greats.

Who Should Win: Alexander Payne. Consider it the consolation prize for The Descendants if The Artist picks up Best Picture.

Who Was Snubbed: David Fincher is notably absent from this list, but given the overall lack of love for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, it’s not too surprising.

Best Original Screenplay

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, Bridesmaids

J.C. Chandor, Margin Call

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

Asgar Farhadi, A Separation

Who Will Win: Woody Allen. Midnight in Paris was a phenomenal film, and given his uneven work in the last 10 years, this could be the Academy’s last chance to honor one of the greats.

Who Should Win: Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo have the best shot at sneaking in if Allen doesn’t win. Hazanavicius has a shot as well, but he’ll win elsewhere, leaving the door open for the breakthrough comedy duo.

Who Was Snubbed: Diablo Cody for Young Adult. It’s ridiculous this film didn’t get a single nomination. It rank with Albert Brooks as one of the biggest snubs of the year.

Best Adapted Sceenplay

Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, The Descendants

John Logan, Hugo

Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian, Moneyball

George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon, Ides of March

Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Who Will Win: Payne, Faxon, and Rash. Again, look for The Descendants to pick up a bunch of awards that aren’t Best Picture. That’s not to detract from the fact that they actually deserve this award though.

Who Should Win: If the Descendants  lose, the safe money is on Sorkin and Zaillian, picking up Moneyball’s consolation prize.

Who Was Snubbed: Yasmina Reza and Roman Polanski for Carnage. Easily one of the funniest films I saw all year.

Yes, after 9,000 months of campaigning and preliminary awards, today the Academy separated the contenders from the pretenders and announced who was up for Oscars. There were plenty of surprises, both pleasant and otherwise. Support for Terrance Malick’s masterpiece The Tree of Life was stronger than a lot of people expected, as the film garnered Best Picture and Director nods. Best Actor contained two surprises, as Gary Oldman’s soft spoken spy from Tinker Tailor Solider Spy and Demian Bashir’s illegal immigrant from A Better Life edged out expected frontrunners Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Fassbender. Melissa McCarthy got a well-deserved nomination for Bridesmaids, but unfortunately Albert Brooks got ignored for his work in Drive. Oh and you guys will love this, 9/11 exploitation-fest Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close somehow got nominated for Best Picture. Predictions and analysis to come, but let’s all remember one thing: the Dean from Community is now an Oscar nominee.

First up is “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”. Where to even begin? I guess I should let you know that I only saw bits and pieces of the first one while on a bus traveling to a rowing event. This meant it had bad sound, I was likely tired and in the process of cutting weight. I came to this movie with fresh eyes (you really don’t need to know much about the first movie to get the plot of this one), so maybe I missed something that would have changed my opinion, but I’m skeptical.

The dialogue is terrible. It’s presented as pithy and witty. But it’s neither. You might get wrapped up in the way it’s acted (which has the airs about it), but don’t be fooled. Just take a look at IMDB’s “Memorable Quotes” page and you’ll get the idea.

The only redeeming quality of this movie is the way it looks. The color of the movie is very cool. Blues and greens pop out creating a look that does seem to evoke a historic feel. The movie also periodically slows things down for certain action scenes, sometimes using a narrative to explain the thought process behind certain movements. This produces some effective scenes that breed excitement. But they are few and far between, and had they been used more, they would have likely lost their charm. The final part of the movie I liked was the abundance of amazing facial hair. It’s just luxurious. It’s hard to go wrong when you have beards like this:

(not even the best one, but no appropriate images are easily available)

Rounding out this post is “The Adventures of Tintin”. Which in my opinion was delightful. It wasn’t perfect, and some parts of the movie seemed to drag a bit for me, but I for one had a good time. When I tell people that I’ve seen the movie, they always ask me what I thought about the animation. “Was it creepy?” or “Was it hard to watch for the entire time?” were the two questions I was asked the most. My response is that it seems so for the first few minutes, but tends to just fall into the background.

(Real)

The plot centers around the first meeting of Tintin and Captain Haddock. The movie merges the plot lines of a few of the different comics to set up the series. In a way, it was somewhat of an overview of the whole series. This provided one of the most interesting features of the movie. Captain Haddock, as any reader of the comics would know, is a terrible alcoholic, and it features prominently into the plot. This is the first kids movie that I recall seeing that features alcohol this prominently. It certainly made for interesting questions from my “Little Brother” Joshua on the way back from the movie. It is brought to attention in the film, but the actions still make it a little fun. I’m guessing most of the readers of this review are over 21 or close. But don’t let the alcohol dissuade you from taking young people to see the movie if it’s appropriate.

Anyways, there are the reviews. See Tintin, don’t see Sherlock. It’s that simple people.