Favorite video of the week. Make that the month. Actually – make that the summer.
Heavy Jamal is Devil (Wythe Marschall) and The Mangoose (Scott Neagle of Big Bang TV).
Wythe collaborated with Sam Tyndall of The Kiss Off on the track “Stranger In the Strangest Land,” which will be featured on the upcoming Two Blue Wolves Soundtrack.
On Tuesday I went to see Tony Glazer’s new play Stain at the Kirk on Theater Row. Intense show. The story is about a family unraveling as their secretive inner relationships are revealed. I could elaborate, but that would ruin all the fun. The night was filled with stellar performances – most notably that of Summer Crockett Moore in her role as the young mother who’s long-kept secret is at the heart of the family’s turmoil.
Glazer’s beautiful script carries traces of David Rabe and Neil LaBute, with scenes that are at once outrageous and unmerciful. You’ll find yourself laughing even as the vortex spins deeper into the darkness.
A must-see, and worth the price of admission (which is actually a steal). Catch it before the run finishes on August 23rd.
SH
The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Fitzgerald book you never hear about. This was published by a close friend after Fitzgerald’s death. A collection of his notebooks, broken down into sections like “Dialogue” and “Quotes” and “Names.” It provides a unique look at the author and his process – of connecting the dots that would one day form his most notorious works. There is also something incredibly impressionistic, reflective and sad about this book, illuminating some of the fears and demons that drove him.
View all my reviews.
SH
I was staying with friends on Fire Island this weekend and, randomly, someone knew the exact time the moon was supposed to rise. I had no idea the moon even did this. For some reason, I just thought it appeared from beyond the blue. Anyway, we headed down to the beach and this is what we saw.
This is what’s known as a “blood moon.” It appears a large red sphere on the horizon. The moment I spotted it, I pulled out my ipod and cued up the Violator album.
Photo by Rachael, Northamptonshire, UK
I’ve been swamped with production meetings, script reviews and mastering sessions, which has reduced my creativity to short bursts. But here’s a song I started writing (or maybe it’s finished) about a seeing eye dog.
Seeing Eyes
Lyrics by Sparrow Hall
You’re my eyes
Animal disguise
You keep me safe from pain
You’re my eyes
Animal disguise
I’ll let you guide the way
Cuz you can see where I need to be
Of when to walk and stay
My seeing eyes
Animal disguise
I’ll let you lead the way
Copyright 2008
Sparrow Hall
Anywhere / The Presets
Lovers In Japan/Reign Of Love / Coldplay
Vanished / Crystal Castles
Cry Little Sister / Gerard McMann
Guest Room / The National
Machine Gun / Portishead
LES Artists / Santogold
The Light 3000 / Schneider TM
Only Love Can Break Your Heart / St. Etienne
Stay / Shakespears Sister
This month I’m giving a shoutout to two bands with two new albums. First up, The Presets and Apocalypso. Who knew this guy could sing? Listen to “This Boy’s In Love” and you’ll see what I mean. I may be of the straight persuasion, but I have to admit, the video is pretty hot. Think: Queer As Folk meets Lord of the Flies. Who doesn’t like wrestling in milk?
Just FYI, this is what I look like under my clothes.
My favorite song on Apocalypso (“Anywhere”) made this month’s playlist. It makes me want to make out with 18-year-olds in the back of a dirty club.
The other shoutout goes to Coldplay for Living La Vida Loca or however they’re spelling it these days. Apparently the band is back on their meds and have returned to writing songs about love and the universe. What’s most apparent is Brian Eno’s uncanny ability to whip these boys back into shape. “Lost!,” “A Spell A Rebel Yell” and “Viva La Vida” are all favorites, but my top pick has to be the track that made this month’s list.
I’ve been waiting for The Wackness to come out since the moment I first saw the trailer online. So when it hit the AMC on 42nd St this past Thursday, I was there that afternoon. If you haven’t heard about the film, the synopsis goes something like this: High school senior graduates in 1994 NYC and spends his summer selling marijuana from an icey cart that he pushes around town. In the process he falls in love for the first time with his therapist’s step-daughter. Basically, It’s Say Anything set in the mid-90’s in NYC with a soundtrack playing from a spray-painted boombox.
I went into the movie with some expectations, especially since I graduated from high school the same year. I have a unique affinity for the 90’s and all of its grunge and day glow stylings. But I was not prepared for the vision that The Wackness was about to bring to the screen.
First of all, let me say that I was utterly blown away – in that sort of jaw-droppingly dumbfounded way where you can’t believe how amazing the movie is that you’re watching. The last experience I had like that was at Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón’s vision of a distopian not-so-distant future. The Wackness brought to life that same kind of fully-realized vision – from the incredibly real (and laugh out loud funny) dialogue, to the meticulous art direction and costume design – I mean it was literally like the filmmaker travelled back in time and just started rolling the cameras. But it’s the brilliant cast of actors that really carry the whole thing off – from my future wife, Olivia Thirlby’s performance as the sexually advanced city girl, to Ben Kingsly’s portrayal of a shrink who is equal parts sage and basket case. And then, of course, Josh Peck, the quintessential underdog hero. Josh’s performance is so good it was like he was born for the role. The perfect blend of hip hop cool and virginal awkwardness.
I would love to go into all of my favorite scenes, but I would literally be sitting here typing all day. However, there are some that are just so simple, and so quickly capture that era in such a precise way, that I can’t help but relate one of them here. It happens when Luke (Josh Peck’s character) shows up at his supplier’s headquarters – a warehouse guarded by two huge uzi-wielding Jamaicans. As he enters, a hip hop track is blasting from a boom box set on the one sole table at the center of the warehouse. The supplier is sitting beside it smoking a blunt and he cries out happily, “Dis is da new ting man! Dis is da Biggie Smalls!” Luke ends up leaving the warehouse with $5000 in grass and a cassette copy of Ready To Die.
When you look back at any era you feel a warm place in your chest for everything that chapter meant to you. Looking back at the 90’s you see America at a time when it was just simply coasting by. When hip hop was about doling out hugs and buying a new pair of sneakers. When you could fall in love and have picnics in the park with nothing but a couple 40s. In that way, there’s something that The Wackness evokes that few movies have the power to do. It makes you smile. For 2 hours straight. And then it makes you go home to play your cassette of Biz Markie.
My word to all you fun loving criminals out there: See this movie. And then sneak back in and watch it again. There’s a deficit of good movies this summer – and you deserve it.
SH
Some awesomeness I came across in my internet wanderings.
SH
This Sunday I went out for a drive in the country. A route I like to take, from the house in Poughkeepsie, west into the hills of Amenia, through towns where I sometimes go to write, Millbrook and Millerton. I stopped for gas in Pleasant Valley and as I was about to pull out, back onto 44, I cued my ipod to the Boxer album by The National.
Boxer became a fast favorite of mine after a friend introduced me to it this past winter. And given the right combination of mood and circumstances, I’ve been known to listen to it – and only it – on repeat and shuffle, for a day at a time. With my phone turned off and no destination in particular, this Sunday had all the makings of one of those days.
About a week prior to the drive, I was doing some research on Vincent Moon, the videographer who’s done extensive work with The National, and I revisited a favorite site, dedicated to the Boxer album – www.thenationalboxer.com.
This was how I first learned about Vincent and his beautiful, impressionistic style. I love to linger over the gummy analog images of the band playing their songs on a boat in the harbor, or seated in a dimly lit room around a giant wooden table. There’s a video he made for a song from an earlier album called “Daughters of the Soho Riots” that you can watch at his site http://www.vincentmoon.com/spip.php?article10. There’s a beautiful part in that song that I always think of that goes:
Break my arms around the one I love
And be forgiven by the time my lover comes
Break my arms around my love
So with the trip unfolding and the album playing, and playing again – I found myself seeing the world through Vincent’s lens. There was the walk I took through a field, and the skeleton and claw of a wild turkey devoured by a wolf or fox. The pungent smell of overgrowth after too much rain. And the way an overcast sky makes the colors of the old farmhouses shine. Colors that, without the dark sky and the white light, would seem tired and sunbleached and faded. I was seeing these things through Vincent’s eyes, and in my head I wrote stories for the bird that was eaten by the fox and the rain that came down through the waxy leaves, and the houses that only glowed when the sky was dark.
There was a cemetery of soldiers on a hillside, men who died two hundred years ago, whose graves were held up by wooden braces, and I saw that place through Vincent too, and I thought of how lucky we are to have seers, and how the best seers don’t tell us what to see.
Powered by WordPress