What I Used to Call My Mom's Mom

The Grammy nominations are out, and I thought it might be fun to illustrate just how much I am out of the loop when it comes to the current music scene by listing out some select categories.

Record of the Year
''We Belong Together,'' Mariah Carey
''Feel Good Inc.,'' Gorillaz featuring De La Soul
''Boulevard of Broken Dreams,'' Green Day
''Hollaback Girl,'' Gwen Stefani
''Gold Digger,'' Kanye West featuring Jamie Foxx

Haven't heard a one.

Album of the Year
The Emancipation of Mimi, Mariah Carey
Chaos and Creation In the Backyard, Paul McCartney
Love. Angel. Music. Baby., Gwen Stefani
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, U2
Late Registration, Kanye West

Have heard the U2 probably a hundred times or so; the others all together, um, zero.

Song of the Year
''Bless the Broken Road,'' Rascal Flatts
''Devils & Dust,'' Bruce Springsteen
''Ordinary People,'' John Legend
''Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own,'' U2
''We Belong Together,'' Mariah Carey

Oooh! I know two of these. Between Bruce and U2, I go with U2.

New Artist
Ciara
Fall Out Boy
Keane
John Legend
SugarLand

????

Solo Rock Vocal Performance
''Revolution,'' Eric Clapton
''Shine It All Around,'' Robert Plant
''Devils & Dust,'' Bruce Springsteen
''This is How a Heart Breaks,'' Rob Thomas
''The Painter,'' Neil Young

I like rock, and only have heard one of these (Bruce). The Neil Young is high up on the X-Mas list, though.

Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal
''Speed of Sound,'' Coldplay
''Best of You,'' Foo Fighters
''Do You Want To,'' Franz Ferdinand
''All These Things That I've Done,'' The Killers
''Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own,'' U2

Why does the U2 ballad get nominated for "Rock Performance?" I've heard the Coldplay, I think.

Rock Song
''Best of You,'' Foo Fighters
''Beverly Hills,'' Weezer
''City of Blinding Lights,'' U2
''Devils & Dust,'' Bruce Springsteen
''Speed of Sound,'' Coldplay

Three of five, wow. My love for "City of Blinding Lights" has been well-documented.

Rock Album
X&Y, Coldplay
In Your Honor, Foo Fighters
A Bigger Bang, The Rolling Stones
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, U2
Prairie Wind, Neil Young

Go U2!!

Best Compilation Soundtrack Album For a Motion Picture, Television, or Other Visual Media
Beyond the Sea, Kevin Spacey
Napoleon Dynamite, Various Artists
No Direction Home: The Soundtrack ? Bootleg Series, Vol. 7, Bob Dylan
Ray, Ray Charles
Six Feet Under Volume 2 ? Everything Ends, Various Artists

Such an eclectic group. The Dylan is awesome.

And some more obscure categories I am interested in:

Traditional Pop
The Art Of Romance, Tony Bennett
It's Time, Michael Bublé
Isn't It Romantic, Johnny Mathis
Moonlight Serenade, Carly Simon
Thanks For The Memory...The Great American Songbook Volume IV, Rod Stewart

Sad how the big names get the nominations here. That Rod Stewart stuff is just horrid.

Musical Show Album
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Billy Straus & David Yazbek, producers; David Yazbek, composer/lyricist
Hair, Kurt Deutsch & Joel Moss, producers (Galt MacDermot, composer; James Rado & Gerome Ragni, lyricists)
The Light In The Piazza, Steven Epstein, producer; Adam Guettel, composer/lyricist Monty Python's Spamalot, John Du Prez & Eric Idle, producers; John Du Prez, composer; Eric Idle, composer/lyricist
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Kurt Deutsch & Joel Moss, producers; William Finn, composer/lyricist

I actually have all but one of these (Hair), and The Light in the Piazza is easily the best.

Best Score Album
The Aviator, Howard Shore, composer
The Incredibles, Michael Giacchino, composer
Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood, composer
Ray, Craig Armstrong, composer
Star Wars Episode III - Revenge Of The Sith, John Williams, composer

I have two (Star Wars and The Incredibles) and have heard all. Hate to be cliched, but Williams Star Wars work was his best Star Wars stuff since Empire, and should win.

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Doin' the Friday Shuffle

Yes, I know it's Thursday. And?

1. "I've Got You to Lean On" - Stephen Sondheim - Anyone Can Whistle (Live at Carnegie Hall - 1995)
Rousing ensemble number from Sondheim's first, flop score, here celebrated with an all-star (Bernadette Peters, Madeline Kahn, and Scott Bakula) cast in a benefit concert performance.

2. "Strange Meadowlark" - Dave Brubeck - Ballads
Very pretty jazz ballad by the very underrated Brubeck.

3. "Guess your nun ain't coming back, De Roche" - Jake Heggie - Dead Man Walking
Sister Prejean tries to comfort death-row inmate Joe after his final appeal is denied.

4. "Grimes! Grimes!" - Benjamin Britten - Peter Grimes
My favorite opera. This is Grimes' final aria, sung as he hears the distant mob of townspeople chanting "Grimes! Grimes!" as they march to his hut to most likely lynch him. Afte this aria, he will set off in his boat to sink it, in the process killing himself.

5. "Invasion Hit Parade" - Elvis Costello - Mighty Like a Rose
Horn-accented Costello tune.

6. "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. (A Salute to 60s Rock) - John Mellencamp - Scarecrow
"What I like about you!"

7. "Drifter's Escape" - Bob Dylan - John Wesley Harding
Not a classic, but a fine Dylan song all the same.

8. "All Aboard" - Stephen Sondheim - The Frogs (Original Broadway Cast)
Brief interlude as our protagonists set sail on the river Styx. And yes, there is a lyric that goes "Get your kicks on the river Styx."

9. "The Night That Goldman Spoke at Union Square" - Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens - Songs from Ragtime (1996 Original Concept Album)
Stirring number from the score, as the young would-be revolutionary is inspired by hearing Goldman speak to a crowd in Union Square.

10. "Hey, Tsigelekh" - Mandy Patinkin - Mamaloshen
From Patinkin's all-Yiddish album. A tender, melancholy ballad.

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9.

Is He Kidding with the U2 Again?

I have always tried to keep a running list in my head of what I consider to be the top 20 U2 songs. Every time a new album is released, that list is thrown into turmoil for a little while as the songs jockey with the old in my personal estimation--and I need a fair amount of time for the new songs to seep in to really, fairly place them amidst the old. Well, some 14 or so months after the release of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, I think I have my new list cemented, at least lightly. And yes, it would have made more sense to do this after I complete my "U2 Canon" series, but, well, I wanted to do it now. So there.

1. Where the Streets Have No Name - My favorite rock song of all time, bar none.

2. Please - I wouldn't have thought U2 could pull off a jazz-inspired drumbeat. I was wrong.

3. Walk On - I don't think any song I have ever heard has made me want to play it louder than this one.

4. One - Slowly but surely becoming the one (hah!) U2 song that will be remembered in the decades hence.

5. Sunday Bloody Sunday - Maybe the defining riff of Edge's career, almost classical in its elegant simplicity.

6. Pride (In the Name of Love) - Bono singing higher than he should; a capsule definition of his career, in a lot of ways.

7. Bad - Live, the setting in which this song becomes truly incandescent.

8. Acrobat - A forgotten deep cut off of Achtung Baby, one of the most impassioned and desperate songs the band has laid down.

9. City of Blinding Lights - If you couldn't get to a concert (like me), get the Chicago DVD and revel in the way this song opens the show. Palpable chills.

10. Kite - Heartbreaking ode to a child; its sister song is below.

11. Beautiful Day - Crank it up on a sunny day with the car windows down and the breeze pouring in. Priceless.

12. All I Want Is You - Epic sweep, filled with a lush grandeur.

13. Original of the Species - The twin to "Kite," another beautiful ode to a child.

14. Mercy - I shouldn't include this, as it has not been officially released, but this song, which was left off of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb will storm the U2 faithful when it eventually sees the light of official day. Trust me.

15. Love Is Blindness - The darkest song the band has ever recorded.

16. Stay (Faraway So Close) - Maybe the most well-constructed song the band has written. In a just world, this would become a standard.

17. Gone - A forgotten Pop shout of a song.

18. When I Look at the World - A painful look at a God we can never live up to.

19. Mofo - Odd, isn't it, that it tool electronic beats to get U2 to rock as hard as they do here?

20. Yahweh - "Always pain before a child is born." Indeed.

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Really?

TV Land is running this week a series running down what they've chosen as the "100 most unexpected TV moments." The special itself is mildly entertaining, and some of the clips are neat to see, but the list itself is bizarre, almost random. I mean, does anyone really recall Karen telling Minnie Driver's character on Will & Grace a few years back to "bite me?" It was a funny line in context, but one of the hundred most unexpected moments ever? And the list is full of bizarre choices like this, check it out. Puzzling.

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Buried Beauties, Vol. VI

Melanie Lynskey plays the slightly pyscho Rose on the solid, if not exactly groundbreaking, sitcom Two and a Half Men. Hers is a very sweet, very open and almost comforting beauty. Many a time you hear the appellation "girl next door" used to describe a girl you could never imagine living next door to - Ms. Lynskey, I think, actually fits that cliched description quite well.


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X-Men 3

The first trailer is up, and unlike many in the geek-osphere I am encouraged. The style and look seem very faithful to the world Singer has established in his first two films, and the hinted at dual plots of (a) humanity trying to foist a cure for the "mutant disease" on mutantkind and (b) the resurrection of Jean Gray/Phoenix hold much promise. How in hell they are going to juggle the number of X-xharacters shown effecively (see below for a list of xharacters referenced in the trailer to see what I mean) is very much up in the air, but that was a fault of the second film as well, and that one was superb. The Beast looks great, very feral and, well, blue, and I have a hunch that the casting of Grammer is going to turn out as inspired. My fingers are crossed, but I really am looking forward to this.

Professor X
Jean Grey
Cyclops
Wolverine
Storm
Magneto
Beast
Angel
Juggernaut
Kitty Pryde
Iceman
Pyro
Rogue
And I might have missed some.

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The U2 Canon - Rattle and Hum

Along with Pop, Rattle and Hum gets derided often as a U2 "misadventure," as a failed experiment and a generally unworthy album. And, in the sense of an "album" as a cohesive, focused artistic statement in which all of the pieces, all of the songs, work together towards one common goal, together, in the order presented, creating a valuable and organic piece of art, well, the received wisdom is right.

But see, Rattle and Hum was not conceived as an "album" in that sense. It was conceived as no more nor less than a scrapbook designed to document a moment in time, a very important moment in time for the band--the moment when they became not just a good, critically appreciated band, not just a cult band, but a huge band on a global scale--the moment when they became huge, especially in America.

And to the metric of this goal Rattle and Hum succeeds quite well. The hodgepodge collection of live songs, new songs, and aural collections from their massively successful Joshua Tree tour contains some good stuff, some great documents of that time, and some real gems.

1. "Helter Skelter" - There's been a lot of talk about how much gall it took for Bono to introduce this live cover of the Beatles classic with his now-infamous "Charles Manson stole this song from the Beatles. We're stealing it back." The thinking is that he was basically claiming the mantle of "greatest band" from the Beatles--announcing U2 as being as big as the Beatles, in effect. I've never understood this. To me, it was always pretty clear that he was saying that the song "Helter Skelter" had become famous not for being a kick-ass Beatles tune but for being connected somehow to a serial killer, and that the band's intention was to reclaim the song as a song, not as a connection to evil. That all said, I do love the band's cover of the song,which is more muscular and aggressive than the original, and which feautures a great vocal from Bono, who was really in the peak of his vocal powers on this tour, a fact really evidenced nicely by the live stuff on this album.

2. "Van Diemen's Land" - The odd solo Edge number--written, played, and sung by his Edgeness. This is one of those rare exceptions to the "U2 really don't write 'songs'" rule I've discussed before--this is a solidly crafted, elegant little folk ballad that many a singer with a guitar would be happy to play.

3. "Desire" - The Bo Diddly homage that does a much better job than you first think at melding American roots rock with U2's more ethereal style. A nice stomp of a quick, tossed-off rock song.
4. "Hawkmoon 269" - This mini-epic, replete with timpani, has always struck me as being woefully underappreciated. The slow build to a climax and the Cash-esque growl Bono shows off do a lot to create real tension and drama, and the big climax at the end, with Bono very likely doing a lot of the vocal damage that would become readily apparent in the 90s through hoarse shouts that would make Daltry himself proud, is suitably ferocious. And that Hammond organ intro? That would be Mr. Bob Dylan himself tickling those keys.

5. "All Along the Watchtower" - From an impromptu free concert U2 did in San Francisco during the tour. There's a truly awesome moment in the film where we see the band in a trailer before hitting the stage deciding on the cuff to do this song. The Edge figures out the chord progression on an acoustic guitar while Bono tries out a verse. At the same time, we hear a roadie yell out for someone to "find someone who knows all the words to 'All Along the Watchtower.'" Brilliant. The rendition U2 comes up with won't make anyone forget Hendrix, but it's a raw, intense performance closer in spirit to the Dylan original than anything else.

6. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - Live from Madison Square Garden. The band brought a local gospel group that had been doing the song as a gospel song on stage to do the song with them, and it's an inspired performance that really brings out the joy and passion in the song, which was almost laconic on disc. Easily my favorite version of this song.

7. "Freedom for My People" - Again, it's an aural scrapbook. Just 30 seconds or so of a street musician singing some blues.

8. "Silver and Gold" - Another live cut, of a Bono original he had penned after being shamed by the likes of Keith Richards at not knowing any blues songs, or being at all conversant with the giants of the genre. Bono went back to his hotel room that night and penned an original blues song, "Silver and Gold." This live version undercuts a little of the bluesiness, but adds a lot of drama and tension. Bono's mid-song rant at the evils of apartheid ("am I buggin 'ya? I don't mean to bug 'ya.") has entered the pantheon as a near-Spinal Tap-esque moment of almost-self-parody, but this is more solid than you probably remember.

9. "Pride (in the Name of Love)" - A great live version of this U2 classic, inspirational and spirited.

10. "Angel of Harlem" - U2 records in Sun Studios, alongside the ghost of Elvis himself. U2 and horns by all rights should not mix, but they do, quite well in fact, at least here (and on "When Love Comes to Town," actually).

11. "Love Rescue Me" - A true forgotten U2 gem. This is another exception to the rule mentioned above--this is a classic song, in structure and form, and I'm surprised it hasn't been covered a ton. Dylan worked with the band on the song, and if the rumors are true, there exists somewhere a recording of Dylan singing some of this--in the end he decided that he didn't want to be on the track and the vocals are all Bono's. This is very Dylan-esque, in lyric and in the music, and is really an all-time great U2 song, albeit one most people completely forget about.

12. "When Love Comes to Town" - Another inspired collaboration, this time with blues legend B.B. King. A great rip of a blues song, with Bono delivering some very B.B.-esque vocals and lyrics.

13. "Heartland" - The song that probably feels most out of place, this feels like a Joshua Tree outtake, and might be for all I know. Not bad, per se, but very kind of generic U2 mood music.

14. "God Part II" - A sinister steam locomotive of a song with some wonderfully biting, snarled lyrics.

15. "The Star Spangled Banner" - This snippet of Hendrix at Woodstock serves as the intro to the live "Bullet the Blue Sky," and it's quite an effective transition.

16. "Bullet the Blue Sky" - A blistering take on what would become a live U2 staple--it's been featured, almost always prominently, in pretty much every tour since this one. This original stab stands up very, very well, with great, intense guitar work from the Edge and a tough, insistent backbeat from Larry and Adam. The Edge's solo, while devoid of pyrotechnics, is distilled beauty.

17. "All I Want Is You" - The cut everyone remembers, and rightly so. This is a gorgeous ballad, tender and open at first and passionate and aching at the end. Entertainment Weekly named it the fifth-greatest love song ever earlier this year, and who am I to argue? This song features my all-time favorite Edge guitar solo, double-tracked as it likely may be.

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Making Gates Look Like a Chump

Forbes magazine presents its annual list of the 15 richest make-believe people. I like that they play it mostly straight, as if it were just another Forbes list. Seen via News From Me.

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1. "The Girl I Mean to Be" - Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman - The Secret Garden (Original Broadway Cast)
The solo by the little girl that New York-area folk of a certain age will remember well from the ad they ran incessantly during the show's run. "I need a place . . . "

2. "Angel Band" - The Stanley Band" - O Brother Where Art Thou? (Original Soundtrack)
Not sure why I eventually broke down and bought this. It's good, but I really don't listen to it.

3. "A Warm Night" - Jake Hegie - Dead Man Walking
An aria from the opera in which our death-row-dwelling lead sings, gorgeously and sadly, about a warm memory from his pre-incarceration days.

4. "Yeah! I Live on My Grape Ranch" - Frank Loesser - The Most Happy Fella (2000 Studio Cast)
Short dialogue scene from this complete recording of the entire play, on three discs.

5. "This Time" - Smashing Pumpkins - MACHINA/The Machines of God
Pretty generic Pumpkins.

6. "By the Rivers Dark" - Leonard Cohen - Ten New Songs
Cohen in his speaking mode.

7. "Airport at Biarritz" - Stephen Sondheim - Stravisky (score)
Pretty little bit of underscore.

8. "Cello Concerto, Op. 22: Allegro Moderato" - Samuel Barber - Barber: Cello Concerto and Medea
He's much more than "Adagio for Strings."

9. "The Rising" - Bruce Springsteen - The Rising
This was the big single they pushed from this album a few summers back, but it's one of the album's weaker tracks.

10. "Entr'acte" - Tom Schmidt and Henry Jones - 110 in the Shade (1999 Studio Cast)
This is an underappreciated, heartland-flavored, Coplandesque score from the Fantasticks team.

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I Won't Brook It

The Recording Industry Association of America's site has a nifty list of the top-selling (in the US) artists. I never would have guessed that Garth Brooks comes in at #4--with a total of over 100 million albums sold. Who knew? My boys, U2, come in pretty far down the list--with 50.5 million. I wonder what the list would look like if worldwide sales were taken into account?

The top ten, in millions sold:
in Millions)
The Beatles - 168.5
Elvis Presley - 116.5
Led Zeppelin - 107.5
Garth Brooks - 105.0
The Eagles - 89.0
Billy Joel - 78.5
Pink Floyd - 73.5
Barbra Streisand - 70.5
Elton John - 69.0
AC/DC - 66.0

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Stupid NBC

As discussed at length elsewhere, I still very much enjoy the oft-maligned current and past few seasons of ER. I also have a fine appreciation for Parminder Negra, who plays Neela on the show, also documented elsewhere. Which is why I hate NBC so much. For the past two seasons or so, ER has been spooling out a well-done and simple love story between Neela and Gallant. At the end of, I believe, the 2003-2004 season, Gallant , a reservist, was called up to active duty in Iraq. Right before he left he and Neela finally acknowledged the attraction that they had been ignoring all season. Since then we've gotten small tastes of how their long-distance love has grown, as well as a very sweet episode last year with Gallant home briefly on leave in which their love was, ahem, consummated. And now, according to the bozos in the NBC promotional department, they are going to get married in tonight's episode. I love that they are putting the two together like this and it feels very right for the characters, but I did not want to know this beforehand. The NBC promo bozos see intent on spoiling all their shows, and especially ER by giving away well-crafted and well-earned plot points like this that I'm sure the writers and producers would rather us find out by, you know, watching the show. I swear, if The Sixth Sense had been a TV show on NBC, NBC would have given away the secret in August before it even premiered. Idiots.

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Music Morsels Volume XII--Linus and Lucy: The Music of Vince Guaraldi


Everyone knows the Linus and Lucy theme, even if they tend to think of it as the Charlie Brown theme (people wouldn't most likely recognize the actual Charlie Brown theme), and it was probably that as much as anything else that spurred me to pick up this album of New Age pianist George Winston covering classic Vince Guaraldi tracks. But when I put the CD into my player, from the very first notes I was transfixed by a tune I had previously been unaware of, the Guaraldi classic "Cast Your Fate to the Wind."

The track starts off with a simple pulsing quarter-note figure in the left hand, a low note striking and then the octave-and-a-third higher repeating. I've since heard the original and Winston's is, as might be imagined, more serene and wistful, and less groovy, than Guaraldi's. But here especially this lighter touch works. The reading Winston gives of the song is just beautiful to my ears; this is Guraldi's best bit of songwriting and Winston runs with the structure to give us a very gentle and spare bit of melody.

"Cast Your Fate to the Wind" hooked me, but the rest of the album ain't shabby either. Here and there you can hear Winston pushing against the limits of his New Age style and, perhaps, abilities--for example, there's a moment in the famous Linus and Lucy theme, right after that famous "doo-doo-doo-doo-do-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo-do-doo opening" bit where the piano hits a staccato burst of chords and then fills in a syncopated triplet figure in the right hand before hitting the staccato part again. You probably can't place it from my poor description, but you know the part. Well, comparing Guraldi's classic original to Winston's cover you see that Winston can't quite get the jazzy rhythm of that figure; it's a bit stilted and square and not quite right.

But still, he handles a lot of these songs very, very well--especially the slower, more melody-based ones, as opposed to the swingers. The other real find for me here is the "Great Pumpkin Waltz" which may just be most accurately autumnal, melancholy piece of music I've ever heard--just rapturous.

Grade: B+

Covering a Cover

From John Scalzi, I get this fun musical meme. The rules they are simple--take an oft-covered song and write a lil' bit about different covers. My choice is Leonard Cohen's esteemed "Hallelujah."

1. Bono (Tower of Song: Songs of Leonard Cohen)
I've expounded at length about my love for Bono as a vocalist, and place him as (no joke) the greatest rock vocalist, ever. But this is horrid. He's being experimental, kind of speaking the lyrics over some inane electronic beat, and the result is just as pretentious as can be and does nothing for the song. Sad.
Grade: F

2. Rufus Wainwright (Shrek)
This is the first version I really heard of the song, and it's a spare but effective melancholy reading, with Wainwright singing in a plain, reedy voice over a simple piano arrangement. The version in the film is truncated, which is not good of course, but the album version may restore the expurgated verses.
Grade: B

3. k.d. lang (Hymns of the 49th Parallel)
A gorgeous rendition, sung at a nicely leisurely, understated pace, and with a great piano-dominated arrangement that really gives the song (simple in its musical structure) some appreciated heft. This could have gotten too big and maudlin easily, but lang holds it all together superbly. Hers is easily the best-sung of any version of this song I've heard, full-bodied and rich in tone without getting Celine-ish.
Grade: A

4. Jeff Buckley (Grace)
One of the all-time great covers, Buckley's version uses only guitar and his own naked voice to give the song a new and stark reading. Similar in spirit to Wainwright's, but more elegantly phrased and passionately felt. The repeated "Hallelujah!"s at the end are spine tingling.
Grade: A

A little Googling tells me that a bootleg of Bob Dylan doing the song in concert also exists (alongside many, many other versions). THAT I would pay to hear.

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What to Show?

A comment on last week's episode of Lost from my local paper's weekly summary of the show got me to thinking.

(Lost spoilers follow.)





In the episode, characters who had left the island a week or so previous on a raft were reunited with some of their fellow castaways unexpectedly. The question was why one of the characters - Mike - didn't just explain what had happened to him and the others from the raft. For those familiar with the show, why Mike didn't explain to Sayid what had happened to him, Jin, and Sawyer during the week since they left on the raft. Here's my question. Are we to assume he didn't? What the writer was asking for was basically for Mike to provide Sayid with exposition--by telling Sayid what had happened to him and Jin an Sawyer since the beginning of the season. Boring stuff, in other words. Now, the episode - 42 minutes or so of actual show - took place over presumably the better part of a day. That's a lot of time unaccounted for. Couldn't the wished-for conversation have taken place during those unaccounted-for hours? In other words, in any filmed entertainment, TV show or movie, how much is the filmmaker allowed to leave unsaid? Given that a show or film showing every second of what happens is vanishingly rare, shouldn't the filmmakers have some leeway as to what is going on during the time in the character's lives we are not seeing--including shuttling off boring exposition to those times? Or is that cheating--is it cheating to not show us Mike explaining what had happened to the tied-up Sayid? Thoughts?

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Buried Beauties, Vol. V

Not really that buried, as an episode of Seinfeld can attest to, but I've always found that Marisa Tomei's beauty has gone largely underappreciated by the public at large.


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Film Language
Jaquandor posts here about his ten least favorite films, and ends with a brief pan of Saving Private Ryan, probably one of my all-time ten favorite films. The pan is brief, and basically alludes to a criticism screenwriter William Goldman made in Premiere magazine the year Ryan was up for several Oscars.

(Saving Private Ryan spoilers follow)



I have the essay Jaquandor refers to in Goldman's The Big Picture, and the thrust of his argument is that the movie is basically one big cheat. See, the film opens with an old man in contemporary times visiting a grave in Normandy with his family. The man breaks down at the grave and as his family moves to comfort him we zoom in for a close up of his face and the film goes back to the D-Day invasion. Part (and not a big part, really--the film hardly nags on this mystery) of the engine of the film is the question of who that old man was--which one of our main characters. We are maybe led to believe that the old man is the film's chief protagonist, Capt. John Miller, played by Tom Hanks. And as the film winds on, and members of our core cast are killed, we have a kind of Ten Little Indians thing going, as old man candidates are eliminated. By the end of the film only a few of our main characters are alive--if memory serves, Miller; Pvt. Richard Reiben, as played by Ed Burns; and the titular Private Ryan, as played by Matt Damon. Ryan has not been introduced until basically the last act, the narrative thrust of the film being Miller leading a band of soldiers to find Ryan, who has earned a free ticket home by virtue of his three brothers all having been killed.

The old man turns out to be Ryan, and Goldman's argument is that this is bullshit, since that opening grave scene flashed back to the Normandy beach, which Ryan wasn't part of. Goldman goes on to say that the whole movie is bullshit since of course the whole film being his flashback makes zero sense--since he isn't around until the end of the film. This would be a valid criticism if you accept Goldman's positing of the whole movie as a flashback. My point is that there is no reason to do so. Just because we close in on the old man's eyes before flashing back does not therefore imply that we are seeing his memories. To my mind, to start a movie in the present and establish that the main story is in the past is not to imply that the main story comprises any one man's memory. One could structure a film like this of course, but there is no real reason to assume Spielberg has done so here. Goldman is taking that zoom shot into the old man's eyes as an established communication in film vocabulary that "we re now going to see this character's memories." But why? Just because many a film has used such a shot to do just that doesn't mean that's what it means here. I think Goldman is falling prey to assuming things he wants to assume--to being, in essence, a lazy viewer who is taking other films he's seen and applying their vocabulary here. The error he ends up watching the film with isn't, therefore, the film's fault.
Spielberg hasn't cheated at all.

Now Goldman has other issues with the film which are more a matter of taste than anything else, but his essay makes clear that this is his chief problem with the film, and I think it's an entirely unfair one. Ryan remains for me a brilliant film, and easily a top ten choice.

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Never? He'll Make Money This Summer!

Take a gander at the teaser for Superman Returns. This briefest of glimpses has me very encouraged about this film. The use of the music, the choice of images, and most especially the attention to detail--look for the mini-explosion that appears when Superman enters the Earth's atmosphere from space--are all spot on. Excellent.

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Things that Make Me Inordinately Happy

Starbucks is selling the almighty Egg Nog latte again. My poor, poor waistline.

Until Whenever

Sweet, Sweet Oxygen

Coming up for air, albeit very, very briefly. Doesn't working for a living just suck?

Taking a page from James Tata, I have provided below a list of my very modest collection of Christmas music. While I with rare exception almost never listen to this music outside of the mid-November through late-December timeframe, I always very much appreciate having it in that timeframe. Driving to get the tree, or decorating the house, just isn't right without some Christmas music jingling away in the background.

Time-Life Treasury of Christmas
A fine sampler, even if a few artists are over-represented (I'm imagining because of rights issues). This set is nice in that includes many rock-solid classic renditions, the ones no season would be complete without hearing at least once, including Perry Como's "Home for the Holidays," Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" (I love reminding the mildly anti-Semitic that "White Christmas" was written by a Jew), Gene Autry's "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." My favorite track though is a positively scorching swing through a pure-jazz "Jingle Bells." The scatting at the end is, as the kid's used to say, the bees' knees (or is it "bee's knees"?).

A Charlie Brown Christmas
One of my favorite all-time CDs, and the exception to the rule stated above--I listen to this all the time. Guaraldi's "Christmas Time Is Here" is to my mind the most gorgeous carol to be written in decades and I love the sly transition between the stately jazz chord intro to "O Tannenbaum" and the swinging main piece.

Britten: A Ceremony of Carols
I got this primarily because "This Little Babe" is so kick-ass, but the rest has never grown on me.

The Christmas Song--Nat King Cole
Smooth and easy, one of the great voices, and this collection provides for some wonderful lazy Christmas and cocoa background music.

I would like to get a new Christmas CD or two for this season--any suggestions?

Until Whenever

Doin' the Friday Shuffle (on a Sunday)

A quick shuffle before another intense, most likely regrettably light blogging week commences.

1. "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)" - Ella Fitzgerald - Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook
Understated, relaxed, and oh-so-smooth. A great rendition of a great song.

2. "The Delivery Man" - Elvis Costello - The Delivery Man
A slow, shuffling song with a great bit of quiet swagger about it from Elvis' latest.

3. "Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major VI" - Bach - Bach: The Cello Suites
From the same suite that gave us the classic piece of music highlighted in a The West Wing episode. The whole thing is well worth hearing.

4. "Bicycle" - Luis Bacalov - Il Postino (Original Score)
The main theme, a beautiful and tender piece of music. The whole score is more or less variations on this, but it is one hell of a theme.

5. "Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm" - Benjamin Britten - War Requiem
Lots o' kettle drums pounding, trumpets spitting out angry fanfares, and a big bari voice declaiming with passion. Britten gives good oratorio.

6. "You're Not Foolin' Me" - Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones - 110 in the Shade (1999 Studio Cast)
From the underrated score, a great scene between the two leads as they do a bit of the classic fighting between a man and a woman feeling obvious attraction.

7. "Peace in Our Time" - Elvis Costello - Goodbye Cruel World
A bittersweet ballad that might have been a classic if not for the wretched 80s synth-heavy and turgid arrangement, features that torpedoed most of the album.

8. "Hoch Uber Der Welt" - Alan Menken and Tim Rice - Der Glockner Von Notre Dame
From the German-language stage version of Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame that played Berlin for a few years a while back. Never made it to Broadway, which is a shame, since this is Menken's most accomplished score.

9. "Black and White World" - Elvis Costello - Get Happy!!
Little bit of soul from Elvis.

10. "New Moon" - Ricky Ian Gordon - Bright Eyed Joy
Kind of a round, a bouncy, infectious, and joyful ode to new beginnings. Nicely appropriate to end the post, actually.

Until Whenever