Issue #1
Welcome to the very collectable and soon to be only slightly valuable Issue #1 of Down the Rabbit Hole-Adam’s picks (and other assorted crap), my weekly (or monthly or every-two-weeks-ly) picks and recommendations newsletter. I decided that a lot of what I wrote in my slightly irregular Online Diary was talking about records I liked and movies I’d seen (in between the occasional foray into my deep and abiding hatred of fruit sushi and the very real threat posed by large and possibly man-eating seagulls-no one believes me but it’s true) so I decided to just start my own little webzine and talk about cool stuff. This way, my regular diary can be a little more about my life in general and here in The Rabbit Hole, I can talk a little more about music and movies and books and all that stuff that I really enjoy writing about, as well as looking for places that have weird collectable Counting Crows stuff we don’t sell on our website that YOU might enjoy.
I figured, being a huge geek, maybe I know some places you don’t know about or some movies you’ve never seen or some book you haven’t read or some record your local radio station isn’t going to play that I think you might really love. I’m also going to provide links this time so that if something here DOES interest you, they’ll take you right to someplace you can find it. That way you don’t have to go searching for it because some (not all) of these things might be a little obscure.
Anyway, that’s the deal, so…without further ado…Welcome to Issue #1
(remember to store it in plastic so it retains its’ value)
Sufjan Stevens-Come on Feel the Illinoise (2005) Only Sufjan Stevens could write a 2:14 song called “The Black Hawk War, Or, How To Demolish An Entire Civilization And Still Feel Good About Yourself In The Morning, Or, We Apologize For The Inconvenience But You’re Gonna Have To Leave Now, Or, ‘I Have Fought The Big Knives And Will Continue To Fight…” without any words. You’re tempted to laugh for a second then the next song comes on and at 1st sounds like an edit from Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, then it continues and throughout it’s two movements he both explores The Great Columbian Exposition of 1893 and a Hallucinatory dream visitation with the poet Carl Sandburg. By the time the song ( called, incidentally, “Come On! Feel The Illinoise!: Part I: The World’s Columbian Exposition/Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me In A Dream”) reaches the end of its’ 6:45 length, it’s as if the bastard son of Pet Sounds or Smile-era Brian Wilson and Stephen Sondheim had appeared immaculately to make a record just for us.
It’s amazing. Then comes the most lovely song on the record and one of the most chilling pieces of acoustic music ever written. “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” somehow humanizes that most horrific of serial killers to the point that you begin to sympathize with him, then you realize that the horrifying point of the song is just THAT: the John Wayne Gacy’s of our world are not inhuman devils spawned from hell; they’re the kid who grew up next door to us. And that’s what is truly horrifying about them. It’s an amazing piece of songwriting. For Christ’s sake, in the 1st 4 songs and the first 14 minutes of the album he ranges from the idea of UFO sightings through Indian genocides to the last great World’s Fair of the 19th century, visits with the ghost of Carl Sandburg, and examines the dangerous seduction of using childhood traumas to understand the questionable and impossible-to-truly-comprehend motivations of serial killers. I could go on and on through every song on the album, from the banjo and electric guitar driven “Jacksonville” that follows immediately after “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” to the heartbreaking beauty of “Casimir Pulaski Day”, which isn’t actually about the Illinois Holiday commemorating death of the Polish general who, after repeatedly failing to defend his country from Russia, retired to France, befriended Benjamin Franklin, moved to America, volunteered in Washington’s army and became known as the Father of the American Cavalry” before dying at the battle of Savannah in 1779, but rather about an intimate love moment that occurred on the night before the holiday. I could go on and on but the point is that, in all it’s folk music meets Beach Boys psychedelia meets Stephen Sondheim-esque orchestral majesty and in all its’ bizarre lyrical combination of love stories and history lessons and horror, it was simply probably the best album of 2005.Now apparently,Come on Feel the Illinoise is the 2nd in a planned series of fifty albums, one about each state in the Union. The first was 2003’s Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lake State, which I like (It has some really great songs, like “Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)”, “Say Yes! To M!ch!gan!”, and “Romulus”) but not as much as Come on Feel the Illinoise. In any case, I don’t know how likely the fifty album plan really is since he released Seven Swans, an album I haven’t heard, but which is apparently about the relationship between faith in God and human love, in 2004, between the first two State albums, and then Sufjan Stevens Presents Songs for Christmas, a 42 song compilation of songs/Christmas cards he’d been making for and sending to family and friends for the past five years, in 2006 so, if he really is planning this fifty album cycle, he’s either going to need to start working faster, live a very long time, or else hope the Carolinas, Virginias, and Dakotas decide to combine and some other states secede from the Union because finishing all fifty is beginning to seem sort of unlikely.As a side note, he also made two earlier albums , A Sun Came (2000)-a sort of four track “Around the World In 80 Days” exploration of folk music from all over the world, and Enjoy Your Rabbit (2001), a completely instrumental album about all the symbols of the Chinese Zodiac with a different song devoted to each one.
Marvin Gaye -At The Copa [Original Recording REMASTERED]Over the 1st two weeks of August in 1966 or in January of 1967 (I can never figure out which one it is) Marvin Gaye played at the Copa. Motown wanted to send its’ artists there on a regular basis, record the shows, and regularly release live albums. Motown recorded five or six shows on the 2nd weekend for a planned 1967 album but, for some reason, never decided to release or, rumor has it, even mix the shows so the tapes have been sitting around for 40 years. Until now. Hip-O Select recently arranged for a compilation of the shows to be mixed and mastered and put together what is essentially a double live album (it’s 17 songs and over an hour long), surely a more lavish product than the Motown release would originally have been. It’s really fucking cool.
It’s also really interesting because it’s nothing like you really expect it to be, although if you’ve ever heard Gaye’s very 1st album The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye (1961) or his 4th album When I’m Alone I Cry (1964) or got to know his work in the 70’s beginning with the classic What’s Going On (1971), you can kind of see where he was coming from. Soulful Moods and When I’m Alone I Cry aren’t really typical Motown soul albums at all. They’re really a collection of Marvin Gaye singing standards by such very non-soul songwriters as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Nat King Cole and Rodgers & Hart. What’s Going On, of course, is also nothing like the soul hits Gaye mostly recorded in the ten intervening years during the 60’s when he, like The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Supremes, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, and others turned Motown and the city of Detroit into America’s personal hit factory.
Beginning with That Stubborn Kinda Fella (1963) and continuing on with such records as Moods of Marvin Gaye (1966), Take Two (1966), Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston(1966), United (1967), In The Groove (1967), You’re all I Need (1968), I Heard It Through The Grapevine (1968), and That’s The Way Love Is (1970), Marvin Gaye unleashed album after album and, like so many other Motown artists of the time, seemed to churn out hit after mega-hit after super-mega-hit. Over that decade, he had hits with“Stubborn Kind of Fellow”, “Pride and Joy”, “Hitch Hike”, “Ain’t That Peculiar”, “It Takes Two”, “Baby I Need Your Loving”, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, “If I Could Build My World Around You”, “Your Precious Love”, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”, “Some kind of Wonderful”, “You’re All I Need to Get By”, “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing”, “That’s The Way Love Is”, Don’t Do It”, “You’re A Wonderful One”, and “Can I Get A Witness”.
That’s an unreal string of success but all the while Gaye was chafing under the restraints of the Motown hit factory system and feeling like he had more serious things he wanted to say through his music. So in late 1970, he recorded the single “What’s Going On” and, when Motown declined to release it on the grounds that they felt it wasn’t very good and wouldn’t sell any records, Gaye simply told them he was never going to record another note until they did. They finally released it in early 1971, the song was a huge hit, and Gaye recorded the rest of What’s Going On in about a week a couple months later and it came out early that summer. Not only was it a massive hit, it changed the whole way people looked at soul music. It wasn’t a collection of singles; it was a full length album and, more than that, it was actually a concept album, supposedly, according to John Bush in allmusic.com, “from the viewpoint of a Vietnam veteran… a baffled soldier returning home to a strange place”.
It’s also sort of a crooned album. The songs are soul songs but Gaye croons them, in much the same way he crooned the songs of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin and Nat King Cole on The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye and When I’m Alone I Cry ten years before. Anyway, the point I’m getting at is that Marvin Gaye always saw himself as more of a crooner than a straight soul singer and for the rest of his career, from 1973’s “Let’s Get It On” on the album of the same name (available in the normal album version or in this Deluxe edition which includes almost 30 additional tracks of demos, live recordings and alternate takes) to “Sexual Healing” on Midnight Love (1982), he proved it over and over again.
So when Marvin Gaye arrived in New York City in 1966 to play the world famous Copa, he had something completely different planned from what Motown President Berry Gordy had in mind. He wanted to play a show that was some kind of amalgamation of a Motown Hit Factory Soul Revue and Rat Pack style Sinatra or Dean Martin Vegas Lounge set.
And that’s just what Marvin Gaye-At The Copa is. It’s not what you’d expect. It wasn’t what anyone expected. It’s bizarre and unique and different and I guess, for the Motown execs at least, it was a disappointment, but in a way, it’s also the beginning of the revolution. At least for Marvin Gaye, it was one of his first steps toward taking the stand that would lead to him becoming something more than just a soul singer with a lot of hit songs. In this case, it landed him with a live album that, until now some 40 years later, never got released. But a few years later, that backbone he’d been developing would produce What’s Going On which, in this Deluxe Edition expands from 9 to 35 tracks and includes the alternate “Detroit” mix of the entire album, an unreleased 1972 live recording of Marvin Gaye at the Kennedy Center, lyric sheets, killer liner notes and an essay by Smokey Robinson), probably the greatest soul album ever made and, in terms of the revolutionary changes it wrought in the attitudes of other artists and the listening public about what soul music COULD and SHOULD be, definitely the most important soul album of all time.
The first concert I ever attended was a Jackson 5 concert. The first album I ever bought was either Jackson 5-Greatest Hits or Michael Jackson’s first album Got To Be There. I can never remember which one but I think it was the Greatest Hits album because that came out a year earlier. Either way, whichever one wasn’t first was definitely 2nd. My point is…I fucking loved this band when I was a kid. They were just so cool, and they were kids, like me. Well, sort of like me. Even little Michael was six or seven years older than me.
PANIC! AT THE DISCO-A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out
(2006 US exclusive Commemorative Limited Tour Edition 2-disc set)
including
*13-track CD album
*DVD featuring: Live Concert Performance from the Denver show plus
Tour Documentary with backstage interviews,
*Presented in a deluxe 9″ x 6″ sealed picture box complete with
Lyric Cards
Summer 2006 Tour Program
Poster
Phenakistoscope (no fucking idea what that is)
Photos
Blank Diary
Mask
Newspaper
*And Certificate Of Authenticity).
See also:
PANIC! AT THE DISCO-A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out
(2006 Japanese issue 17-track CD album)
*Including the singles ‘Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off’, ‘But It’s Better If You Do’ & ‘I Write Sins Not Tragedies’ plus
*Bonus Track ‘I Write Sins Not Tragedies’ [Recorded Live in Denver]
*3 CD-Rom Videos, picture sleeve + obi-strip.
This website is also really good for weird Counting Crows Memorabilia. They have everything from Import Singles and Albums to Posters to Gold and Platinum Award Discs to Unreleased Promo Videos to Concert Tickets for your scrapbook to a
(I shit you not) rare “Recovering The Satellites” wristwatch “with a ’shooting star’ style seconds hand”. Bizarre.
Because the stuff is often rare memorabilia, it comes and goes often with in days so many of the things listed above may not be there by the time you check this. Still, there’s always something new. Click here to go to the Counting Crows page or here for their Main Page just to find cool shit by other bands.
or
I don’t know why I didn’t mention this before but, if you’re not a fanatic Panic! At The Disco fan, you could also just go buy yourself a regular old copy of A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. It really is a very good album, I love it. My friend Omar raved about the band to me so I went out and bought the album. Sometimes I have no patience with “styles” of music. I get really annoyed by “scenes”.
For instance, I think Chris Carrabba is a great songwriter. I think Dashboard Confessional is a great band. I hadn’t heard of them until Gil Norton (see Recovering The Satellites (1996)) told me he was going to make an album with them but (and take this with a grain of salt since I pretty much worship the ground Gil walks on-if you agree, let’s hang out and that’ll be our “scene”, I guess) I think A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar (2003) is a fabulous album (and, as I later discovered, so are The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most and The Swiss Army Romance). I was flattered to be asked and proud to be on Dusk and Summer (2006).Then a little while later I started hearing all about something called “Emo”. Now I’m not saying Chris started the movement; I’m just saying he was the first I heard of it. I have to admit I was a little more inclined to like Emo than any other scene just because Emo is short for “emotional” (I think) and I like the idea of music that has actual feelings involved in it. I was starting to get really worn out by “irony”. It’s just too easy to be clever and NOT care.
So, in “Hands Down“, the opening song from A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar when Chris sings:Hands down, this is the best day I can ever remember
Always remember the sound of the stereo
The dim of the soft lights
The scent of your hair that you twirled in your fingersAnd the time on the clock when we leave cause it’s so late
And it’s one thing we shared together
The streets were wet and the gate was locked
So I jumped in and I let you inAnd you stood at the door with your hands on my waist
And you kissed me like you meant it
And I knew that you meant it
I know that he means it. I really do because there’s too many details for it to mean anything else. “Hands down, this is the best day I can ever remember” might seem like a corny line in the hands of someone else but not when Chris sings it and DEFINITELY not when ANY songwriter follows that line with the 10 lines that follow it in this song (even if I got some of the lines wrong). So if that’s “emo”, count me in…as long as we’re talking about Chris. It’s when I start to hear that it’s some kind of movement that I get a little squirrelly. Which (and, wow, that was a long digression away from the point I was trying to make about a completely different band) brings me back to Panic! At The Disco. I bought the album with a lot of skepticism. But……I dig it. You will never be able to able to convince me that Ryan Ross doesn’t mean the words he writes deeply and, in Brendon Urie, he’s found a perfect voice to express those feelings. On top of that, the band can flat out play. A lot of bands today can barely manage to properly adjust their guitar straps, but I’ve seen Panic! play live and they either have the most creative background tapes and are the best lip synchers in history or they are simply a very very good live band ( I was a little turned off by the stage show when it first started. It’s a bit of a circus, after all, but all I realized after a few songs was that if “Moulin Rouge” had starred and been directed by Panic! At The Disco, I probably would have liked the movie and I wouldn’t have walked out in the middle like I did.Plus, I just love the lines: “We’re just a wet dream for the webzines
Make us hit, make us hip, make a scene
Or shrug us off your shoulders
Don’t approve a single word that we wroteIt both recognizes the existence AND makes fun of the whole idea of their “scene” while also honestly admitting to the desperate desire all of us have to “make it”. It’s also simultaneously a plea for recognition AND a giant “fuck you!” to the idea of the need for critic’s validation AT THE SAME TIME! That’s quite a bit of writing and they make it sound like the joyous celebration of their situation that it damn well should be. And then the next time the chorus comes around, it’s proceeded by this middle 8: Just for the record, the weather today
Is slightly sarcastic with a good chance of
a) indifference or b) disinterest
In what the critics sayWhich is really fucking funny, especially when that sunny chorus breaks through the clouds of that middle 8 forecast about 7 seconds later. Of course, none of this even takes into account the fact that this is all taking place in a song entitled “London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines”.
Now that is fucking funny.
Between that one and other songs like “Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off”, “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage”, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies”, and “There’s a Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven’t Thought of It Yet”, this may be the best and funniest collection of song titles ever. I’ve had people tell me that annoys them. I can’t see why. I ask them and they inevitably say something stupid like “I don’t know, it’s just a little too clever for me” which makes me really want to look at them and say “Yes. It certainly is.” The world is filled with slack-jawed morons but that’s no reason for you to pay any attention to their taste in music. I mean, for chrissake, like it or don’t like it but please don’t tell me it’s for a reason like that. It makes me want to go out and find something stupid for them to listen to. That shit’s certainly easy enough to find.
Ong Bak-The Thai Warrior (2003)
Starring: Tony Jaa
I just really wanted the 1st sentence of this review to read HOLY FUCKING MASSIVE KUNG FU WHAMMY ACTION SPECTACULAR!!!!!!!!!! The only problem is the movie isn’t Chinese, it’s Thai and the martial art practiced isn’t Kung Fu, it’s Muay Thai.Still…HOLY FUCKING MASSIVE MUAY THAI WHAMMY ACTION SPECTACULAR!!!!!!!!!!I had heard this was a great movie. Everyone who saw it said it was a great movie. I had heard Tony Jaa was awesome. Everyone said Tony Jaa was awesome. Still, lately I haven’t really been into the whole martial arts thing. I mean, I grew up on it. In the 70’s it was just cool to dig Bruce Lee but I didn’t really freak out on it until I saw The Big Brawl, Jackie Chan’s 1st foray into US cinema, in 1980.Jackie Chan just blew my mind. It was like Bruce Lee times ten mixed in with Buster Keaton, with Errol Flynn and Charlie Chaplin and the Keystone Kops thrown in for good measure. I’d never even thought of the idea of mixing martial arts with incredible fast and complex mind-blurringly imaginative physical comedy. I don’t think anyone else had either. I started looking in obscure video stores for subtitled copies of his many Hong Kong films, very few of which ever made it over to the states except in the occasional Art House or Rep Movie Theatre. He pretty much made The Big Brawl, did cameos in The Cannonball Run and Cannonball Run 2 and then disappeared from American movie screens for the most part until Rumble In The Bronx a decade later (To give you an idea of how huge a star he was in Asia…he made 37 other movies between The Big Brawl in 1980 and Rumble In The Bronx in 1995.Anyway, Jackie Chan is a subject for another day and another issue of Down the Rabbit Hole. The point I’m trying to make is that I used to be really obsessed with martial arts movies and lately I just haven’t been able to get all that excited about them.
That all ended last night.
I was waiting for them to get all the sounds ready for the next song here in the studio and I decided to just watch Ong Bak-The Thai Warrior. It is so fucking great. I don’t really know crap about martial arts but Muay Thai, at least the way Tony Jaa kicks everyone in Bangkok’s ass with it, is totally different from Kung Fu or Karate or Jiu Jitsu or anything else I’ve seen before. I’m tempted to say it’s more basic and more brutal but I think “brutal” is the wrong word. There’s just a simplicity to it that somehow makes it rawer and more exciting. By “simplicity”, I don’t at all mean slower or stiffer. It’s just got this raw…I don’t know…maybe “brutality” is the right word, but it’s balletic as well in some of the same ways the Jackie Chan films are. It’s not as humorous but it has a sense of humor.
I don’t know. I just know that I went home last night, finished watching it, and immediately went online and ordered The Protector (2005), Tony Jaa’s last American film. I’m watching it tomorrow as soon as it gets here. I am back on the “Asian-people-beating-the-living-crap-out-of-everyone” movie kick. For the next few weeks anyway, I’m going to pig out on Muay Thai, and then have some Kung Fu for dessert, go to sleep, have some Karate for breakfast, go to work, and then come home and get my Samurai on! My suggestion is that you do too.
20th Century Fox Studio Classics Collection Boxed Set
Every once in a while Amazon does these ridiculous package deals on a bunch of movies from one studio. I got a couple different sets for myself last Xmas. I found those, like this one, on Harry Knowles fantastic AintItCool.com website. I already have too many of these movies to make this set worthwhile but if you’re a fan of classic films, it’s an incredible bargain.
Basically you get 40 fantastic classic films for $240, so they cost you essentially $6 per DVD. I don’t know what that would normally run you because I don’t know what each of these films costs separately but I looked up one of them, All About Eve, and it ran $12 so…you do the math (ok, fuck it, I will): 40 x $12 = $480. You save $240. So, at $240, it ain’t cheap but, if you’re into these kinds of movies (and these are all REALLY good ones), it’s a really great deal (essentially half-price).
In case you’re interested, these are the films in the collection (I got the list off Amazon. Thanks to calvinnme “Texan refugee” of Fredericksburg, VA for the research on all the films):
- In Old Chicago (1937) Nominated for Best Picture, won Best Supporting Actress for Alice Brady. Starring Tyrone Power in film about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871
- Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938) Nominated for Best Picture
- The Rains Came (1939) Starring Myrna Loy
- The Grapes of Wrath (1940) Nominated for Best Picture
- The Mark of Zorro (1940) Starring Tyrone Power
- How Green Was My Valley (1941) Won Best Picture
- The Black Swan (1942) Pirate movie starring Tyrone Power & Maureen O’Hara
- Orchestra Wives (1942) Starring Glenn Miller and his band.
- The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) Nominated for Best Picture starring Henry Fonda.
- The Song of Bernadette (1943) Nominated for Best Picture, Won Best Actress for Jennifer Jones, Best Cinematography, and Best Score
- The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) Gregory Peck nominated for Best Actor
- Leave Her to Heaven (1945) Starring Cornell Wilde & Gene Tierney
- Anna and the King of Siam (1946) starring Rex Harrison
- My Darling Clementine (1946) Directed by John Ford & starring Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp.
- The Razor’s Edge (1946) Nominated for Best Picture.
- Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)-Won Best Picture, Best Director for Elia Kazan, & Best Supporting Actress for Celeste Holm. Starring Gregory Peck
- The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) Starring Gene Tierney (I love her) & Rex Harrison
- The Snake Pit (1948), Nominated for Best Picture, starring Olivia DeHaviland
- A Letter to Three Wives (1949) Nominated for Best Picture
- All About Eve (1950) Won Best Picture, starring Bette Davis
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Klaatu Nikto Barada! (or something like that)
- Titanic (1953) Starring Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck
- Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), Nominated for Best Picture
- Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) Nominated for Best Picture
- Anastasia (1956) Won Best Actress for Ingrid Bergman
- The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956) Starring Gregory Peck
- An Affair to Remember (1957) Starring Cary Grant & Deborah Kerr
- Desk Set (1957) Starring Spencer Tracy & Katherine Hepburn
- The Three Faces of Eve (1957) Won Best Actress award for Joanne Woodward
- Peyton Place (1957) Nominated for Best Picture
- The River’s Edge (1957)
- The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) starring Ingrid Bergman as a missionary in China.
- The Best of Everything (1959) starring Joan Crawford
- The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) Nominated for Best Picture, won 3 other Oscars
- Return to Peyton Place (1961)
- Zorba the Greek (1964) Nominated for Best Picture, starring Anthony Quinn.
- Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) starring Bette Davis
- How to Steal a Million (1966) 60’s comedy w/Peter O’Toole & Audrey Hepburn.
- Two for the Road (1967) C’mon, Albert Finney & Audrey Hepburn. Nominated for best screenplay
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) Won Best Actress for Maggie Smith. This is one of Immy’s favorite movies
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Starring: James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, Director: Ernst Lubitsch
This is pretty much one of my all-time favorite romantic movies. It’s been remade about a billion times, the most recent being the fairly lame You’ve Got Mail. If you watched that movie and thought, “Wow what a cool idea for a plot” but didn’t really get a charge out of the film itself, then the answer to all of your problems, and most of the rest of the world’s too, is to just sit your ass down and watch The Shop Around the Corner. It takes place in Budapest for reasons beyond my understanding (actually, I think it’s because it’s based on a Hungarian play) and right off, that’s pretty cool because the soundstage sets (or maybe that’s just what Hungary looks like) give the movie this really warm homey contained feeling, like you’re watching a movie but with the intimacy of a play or like watching a play with the openness of a movie. The cast of Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan and Frank Morgan (he was the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz) just deliver in every way possible and between them and their director, the great Ernst Lubitsch, they craft a film that manages to be truly romantic without taking any of the cheap shortcuts so many movie romances take. Rather than let the main characters express their feelings through easy movie clichés, the film takes its’ time and lets the relationship between the characters develop slowly and naturally so that we actually feel them fall in love.
(American)
Threshold-The Complete Series
STARRING: Carla Gugino, Charles S. Dutton, Peter Dinklage, Brent Spiner
My friend Carla Gugino has a lot of things going for her: she’s just about the hottest woman on earth, she’s an unbelievable actress, she dates seemingly the nicest guy on the planet, she’s smart as hell, and she’s had enough success in her career from huge hit movies like Spy Kids, Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, Sin City, and Night at the Museum that she can afford to do other things she really wants to do like take time out to do theatre.
I went to see her in Tennessee William’s “Suddenly Last Summer“ a few months ago (It’s too late for you to see the play but you can see the movie Suddenly Last Summer with Elizabeth Taylor, Kathryn Hepburn, and Montgomery Clift) and she was so good it freaked me out a little bit. I was right there in the theatre and I felt like I was watching some woman I didn’t know. It’s a one-act play and I felt like I forgot to breathe until it was over. It was 80 minutes of the most intense riveting theatre I have ever seen. She had a great supporting cast (Blythe Danner was especially good) but pretty much the entire play focuses on Carla’s performance and it was unreal. She’s simply amazing. She just has this one problem.
Every few years she gets her own TV series and, every few years, it’s the best thing on television…and, every few years, it gets cancelled before it makes it halfway through the season.
It lasted for 10 episodes. They rerun them all the time on Sleuth Network. Check ‘em out.Last year it was Threshold. In the wake of the success of Lost, all the networks tried to come up with interesting science fiction shows to take advantage of the public’s apparent hunger for them. Invasion was interesting but it wiped me out after a little while. It lasted 22 episodes. Surface was kind of fun with the whole giant sea monsters idea but it got a little dopey at times and maybe America wasn’t really ready to tune in every week for giant sea monsters. It still made it through 15 episodes. They’re both pretty good (if you dig that sort of thing) and they’re both out on DVD now so, if Sci-Fi’s your thing, you can find them and see for yourself. I guess I kind of enjoyed them both even if I wasn’t nuts about either.But I fucking loved Threshold. It had the most interesting idea for an invasion scenario since Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which was not only a great movie when it was 1st made in 1956 but is one of the few films ever where the remake may have been even better than the original. The 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, starring Donald Sutherland, Leonard Nimoy, and Brooke Adams, and directed by one of my favorite directors, Philip Kaufman (The White Dawn (1974), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Wanderers (1979), The Right Stuff (1983), The Unbearable Lightness Of Being (1988), Henry and June (1990), and Quills (2000)). Kaufman directs very few films (only 12 total since his 1st in 1965) but almost every one is a brilliant and original piece of work).Basically, a US Naval vessel at sea witnesses what seems to be a strange extra-terrestrial phenomenon and it either drives them into a murderous rage or it changes them. The idea is that if aliens really wanted to invade earth, they would simply send a probe that subtly changes the structure of our DNA, Some people it kills, others it deforms, but some simply become something different. No ray guns, no invasion craft, no great air battles; just an insidious change from within. Carla plays Dr. Molly Caffrey, a contingency analyst. In other words, an expert in the field of devising hypothetical response plans (sometimes for the government) for possible disaster scenarios, anything from nuclear attacks to earthquakes to…you guessed it, the threat of possible extraterrestrial contact. After the incident with the Naval vessel, one of her plans, “Threshold” is set into motion. She puts together her team of specialists under the direction of a Deputy National Security Advisor (Charles S. Dutton). So we get a fucked up but brilliant doctor played by Brent Spiner (Data, if you watched Star Trek: The Next Generation), a wonderfully dissolute language and mathematical genius played by Peter Dinklage (the star of the wonderful film The Station Agent-I really freaking loved that film. If you haven’t seen it, you just gotta get off your ass and buy it or rent it. It’s beautiful), as well as several other equally good and interesting characters and cast members.It may seem like a simple storyline and in many ways it was. It didn’t depend on the special effects so much science fiction leans on so heavily. Instead, they went with the things that always work and, yet somehow, people, or at least the fucking knuckle dragging mouthbreathers who run TV networks, never seem to appreciate. They made it good by depending on a great storyline, smart ideas, a fantastic cast (which adds up to great acting), talented directors, and most importantly (and this is always the most important thing so why doesn’t anyone ever seem to care about it?!!!) really good smart original intelligent screenwriting.
It was just such a fucking great show!
So of course they only made 12 episodes. TWELVE EPISODES!!! That’s less than either of the other two and it was ten times as good. Not only that, but I don’t even think they aired them all. Whatever. I hate whoever makes decisions like this.
If you’re out there, whoever you are, I hate you.
Just so you know.
No seriously. I hate you.
Now you have to live with that.
And it’s all your own fault.
You want to know how good this show was? The first episodes were a two-parter called “Trees Made of Glass”. I don’t even know why that’s so cool but it is.
I went out to dinner later that night after “Suddenly Last Summer” with Carla and Peter Dinklage and his wife, who happened to be there at the show as well, and I teased Peter for being foolish enough to get on a TV show with Carla. It was funny but kind of half-hearted because it made me sad. We’re getting dumber and dumber as a culture every day. Canceling Threshold isn’t the end of the world or anything but it’s not exactly the start of anything brilliant either. Maybe I’m just pissed because it was my friend’s show. It’s out on DVD, including the episodes I don’t think they ever aired. I’ve watched 11 of them. I’ve been sitting around with the 12th in my backpack for about two months now. I can’t get myself to watch it because I don’t want the show to be over. Don’t bother telling me how stupid that is. I’m more than well aware. Do me a favor. Go get it and tell me how it ends.
And next time Carla has a show, can we all agree to watch the fucking thing so this doesn’t happen again? Seriously Karen Sisco AND Threshold. Two of the best shows on television in the past decade and they make a grand total of 22 episodes.
It just kills me.
(British)
Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Series
Most Americans had never heard of Hugh Laurie until a few years ago when House M.D. first aired and Gregory House suddenly became everyone’s favorite anti-social asshole doctor and Hugh Laurie’s fascinating portrayal of the misanthropic House made it one of the most popular shows on television (and won him a bunch of awards if I’m not mistaken). But back in the mid to late eighties and early 90’s, he and partner Stephen Fry were one of England’s most popular comedy teams. Their partnership resulted in not one, but two television shows which filmed and ran at the same time: A Bit of Fry and Laurie, a sketch comedy show which ran off and on for four seasons from 1987-1995 (A Bit of Fry and Laurie - Season One & A Bit of Fry and Laurie - Season Two) and Jeeves & Wooster, which ran for four straight seasons from 1990-1993.
I love this show. If you think you know Hugh Laurie from watching House M.D., you have no idea. It’s one of the funniest and most endearing shows ever made for British TV. Based on the Jeeves and Wooster novels and short stories by P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves & Wooster is the story of idiotic bumbling aristocrat Bertie Wooster (played by Hugh Laurie) and his always intelligently cool and collected butler Jeeves (played by Stephen Fry). Basically what happens in episode after episode is Bertie gets himself into stupid amounts of trouble and Jeeves manages to somehow get him out of it. It’s all slapstick, silly humor but it’s a lot of fun too. I think it originally aired in America as part of PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre and, while I love Masterpiece Theatre, Jeeves & Wooster is definitely the show where Masterpiece Theatre pulled the stick out of its’ own ass, waved it around so you could see where it had come from, and then shoved it back up there to show where it would end up again as soon as Jeeves & Wooster went off the air. At $79.95, Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Series is not cheap, but since the individual seasons all run about $36 each, you save about $64 buying them all at once. Still they’re all great and there’s no reason you HAVE to have them all. One might be plenty for you. There may be only so much British master/butler humor you can take. So if you’d rather just try a bite size chunk you might want to just get Jeeves & Wooster-The Complete First Season, Jeeves & Wooster-The Complete Second Season, Jeeves & Wooster-The Complete Third Season, or Jeeves & Wooster-The Complete Fourth Season. Personally, I’d start with the first. The beginning if their relationship is priceless.
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford (1986)
In 1996, Richard Ford won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel Independence Day so you’re probably wondering why this is really a recommendation for The Sportswriter, a novel he wrote a decade earlier in 1986. Well, I don’t know, except to tell you that this book moved me deeply. The writing is simply beautiful. It’s the first in a series of three novels Richard Ford wrote about the life of Frank Bascombe, his 38 year old protagonist whose once hopeful life crumbles following the death of his son. Don’t be fooled by the title. I know you all know I’m a big sports fan but this is not a book about sports. This is a book about failed dreams, despair, and the disconnection one man makes from his life as a result. It’s simply one of the great works of modern fiction. Independence Day is an incredible novel, it really is. He deserved the Pulitzer Prize he won for it. I loved it. I just happen to think The Sportswriter is a better book. It didn’t go unrecognized either at the time of its’ initial publication. It was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. I think Time Magazine may have named it the Best Book of 1986, or “one of the best books” or something. I KNOW they later named it one of the 100 Finest English Language Novels. I remember reading that somewhere.
In any case, it doesn’t really matter whether The Sportswriter or Independence Day is the better book. They’re both great. It’s just that the latter is the sequel to the former so, if you’re inclined to get into reading Richard Ford and you’re deciding between these two books, you might as well start with Part 1, so to speak. I know people who read Independence Day first, not knowing it was a sequel, loved it, and then later went back and read The Sportswriter. They claimed the book stood on its’ own. Most said you didn’t necessarily need to have read The Sportswriter first but they all sort of wished they had. They liked the one so much that they were decidedly inclined to go back and read the other and, that being the case, they all thought they might as well have read them in the correct order.
Not to pile more crap onto what, reading back over the last paragraph, seems to have been a fairly pointless circular argument I just had with myself over two probably equally good books by the same author but…I should add that, the necessary decade having passed, Frank Bascombe reappeared last year in Richard Ford’s latest novel The Lay of the Land. So the story continues. I bought The Lay of the Land right away when it came out but I was on tour and I put it away in the side pocket of a suitcase, promptly forgot where it was, and didn’t find it again until a few weeks ago. I haven’t read it so I can’t really offer any opinions of my own about it but I’ve read several reviews and they all rave about the book so…well, I’m going to read it anyway. You do what you like.
As one more side note, I’ve never really gotten into audiobooks but, if you prefer them (my mom loves them for long trips), the audiobook of Independence Day is apparently fantastic. I don’t remember who the reader is but I distinctly remember several reviewers either in newspapers or on Amazon.com saying it was amazing.
Just so there’s no confusion, these are not the only books written by Richard Ford. He’s actually written six novels and three or four books of short stories, two of which, Women With Men (1997) and A Multitude of Sins (2002), I both read and loved. He began his writing career in the mid 70’s with two novels, A Piece of My Heart (1976) and The Ultimate Good Luck (1981). When neither book sold well, despite solid reviews, he quit fiction writing and became an actual sportswriter for the now-defunct magazine Inside Sports. When that magazine failed and Ford’s application for a job at Sports Illustrated got rejected, he decided to quit sportswriting and went back to writing novels, which resulted in The Sportswriter. So, ironically, Ford’s failed sportswriting career actually resulted in a novel about a failed novelist who turns to sportswriting.
One more bit of trivia: Independence Day, is, I believe still to this day the only novel ever to win both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
These are just some links to other places to find cool Counting Crows stuff:
Try this site for Sheet Music. (sheetmusicplus.com)
Try this site for Posters, Gold Records, T-shirts, and Framed CC art. (allposters.com)
See also Pushposters.co.uk for more options
Also, lest I forget, you can get all the Counting Crows albums HERE or, if you just want to down load them digitally from iTunes you can get them HERE.
Remember, the never-before (officially) released record by the legendary (at least in our minds) San Francisco band The Himalayans (featuring me) is being released on my indie label Tyrannosaurus Records and is, as of right now, available for pre-order at our Dino-Store. It will ONLY be available through the Dino-Store. We are not planning on selling it anywhere else. Order your copy now and it will be shipped to you on April 12th, the day of its’ release!
Visit The Himalayans’ MySpace Page
or at TheHimalayans.com.
Also, visit the Trecs MySpace Page and our other bands:
NOTAR’s MySpace Page
Blacktop Mourning’s MySpace Page
blacktopmourning.com.
Blacktop Mourning will be playing May 6th at the Bamboozle Festival at The Meadowlands In New Jersey.
They’re also playing four dates on The “Kevin Says” stage on the Warped tour:
Sat 7/28 Chicago, IL First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre
Sun 7/29 Minneapolis, MN Metrodome
Tue 7/31 Milwaukee, WI Marcus Amphitheatre
Wed 8/1 Cincinnati, OH Riverbend Music Center
And don’t forget to visit CountingCrows.com. They have last Summer’s concert in Houston there to listen to and some rare live stuff I just sent them going up soon.
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