Spring and stress

The snow's melting and the big project at work's wrapping up, so finally I'm able to squeeze a few words out again.

First off: I can't remember if I'd posted this up last time, but there's a new-ish High Hat up, and as always it's a tremendous read (I'm particularly partial to Matt Rossi's ode to Providence, RI, myself, but as always, there's plenty to enjoy).

we, by which I mean I, have been pretty slack about getting through my zip disks the last couple of months. Akira Kurosawa's 1980 samurai epic Kagemusha sat, partially watched and radiating waves of guilt, from late December until about two weeks ago (it's probably an enjoyable movie if you're in the mood for 3 hours' worth of court intrigue, marching, and battle sequences where the action takes place mostly off-camera. I'm pretty sure I've never been in that mood, but who knows.) We also made it part way through Guy Maddin's Cowards Bend The Knee before Jess bailed (no jerk-off motion this time, though); personally, I didn't like it as much as any of his other films I've seen (Saddest Music in the World, Careful, and the short Sombra dolorosa which appeared on a DVD that came with an issue of The Believer.)

The Squid and The Whale was a film I'd heard a great many good things about, although I think I must have missed or blocked out the description of how staggeringly painful it is. Written & directed by Noah Baumbach, a Wes Anderson collaborator (a writer for The Life Aquatic), it follows the separation of a married couple, played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney; it shares something of the look of The Royal Tennenbaums (the large house on a leafy street in Brooklyn, the rumpled collegiate way everyone dresses, the tennis), but in tone the films couldn't be much farther apart. From the opening scene, where the family (the couple has two boys, 16 and 12) play quite possibly the most passive-aggressive game of tennis in the history of sport, there is so much selfish loathesomeness on display it's a wonder the movie isn't harder to watch. And yet the story is greatly compelling, and the characters - while not the kind of people we might want to hang out with - are difficult not to hope for. It also impressed me a great deal that Jeff Daniels, who I've always considered to be a bland, generic nice-guy kind of actor, is able to pull off being so incredibly unlikeable (by the third time he says "Don't be difficult" I was ready to knee-cap the guy.)

Things you can learn from our experience about this movie: it's not a good hangover film. I'm sure you could figure that out yourselves, but, just in case.

I also watched Sud Pralad (aka, Tropical Malady), a surrealistic Thai film from a couple of years back that I'd heard good things about. It's certainly a beautiful thing - the first half just glows as it follows the love between a soldier and a country youth (and considering that the two men don't so much as kiss, the passion between them comes through pretty clearly); they travel around a bit, they listen to music, and then the youth wanders off into the forest. And almost exactly half-way through, the film changes gears, and now the young man has possibly become a tiger. The second half has narration but almost no dialogue (I believe the character with the most lines in the second hour is a monkey). It's a perplexing film, but it's unpretentious, rewarding and sweet, and I hope it - or Apichatpong Weerasethakul's next feature, Sang sattawat (Syndromes and a Century) - gets wider attention.

It's not just been the, ah, esoteric selection of films that have been keeping us from getting our money's worth out of zip recently; we've also sprung for digital cable, so we're more distracted than ever now. I should point out that the process of switching to digital was just about the most confusing and poorly-explained bureaucratic clusterfuck I've ever had to deal with (well, Jess actually dealt with it for the most part, bless her heart), and that given the choice, I'd never deal with Rogers again. But, alas, with the alternative being Bell, we're stuck with Uncle Ted.

Anyway, one of the better channels we've got now is the CBC/NFB Documentary Channel; although I missed Jandek on Corwood last weekend (I was busy painting my teeth), last night they showed loudQUIETloud, which followed the Pixies reunion tour of 2004. As much as I loved the Pixies (and it's quite a bit), the film was just depressing - the years have not been kind to them, and while the concert footage made the shows looked like more fun than the one I saw in 1991 ('92?) in Toronto - when they clearly hated being anywhere near each other - it still seemed very lacking. Sigh.

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There's also been a fair amount of music acquisition here, too. I'm a little disappointed with Ohbijou's Swift Feet for Troubled Times - I'd heard very good things about the band (including that they'd played as Mike Feuerstack's backing band at some Snailhouse shows in Toronto), and while they're clearly good arrangers, the songs didn't grab me, and at times...oh, sometimes indie rock just sticks in my craw really, really badly. I know, I love it most of the time (I've got a fucking Henry's Dress 10" single, and more than one Cub single), but my tolerance for preciousness just isn't what it used to be. (Hence, I'm not as smitten with the seemingly infinite number of Of Montreal songs I've gotten off eMusic in the last few months.)

Lily Allen's Alright, Still has been my favourite of late, and I'm a little embarrassed about that. It's terrific, don't get me wrong - frequently hilarious, catchy and upbeat. But, like when I first got into the Magnetic Fields (ca. Holiday), this is the anti-soundtrack to my life. Seriously, what could be less me than dancey songs about life in London, from the perspective of a devilishly smart, 20-ish clubby girl? Incidentally, if you've only heard the single ("Smile"), I'd recommend giving the rest a listen before you judge (particularly "LDN", "Everything's Just Wonderful" and "Alfie").

The new Arcade Fire album...well, my view of the band is biased and I'm really, really happy for their success. And I do like the new record, quite a bit more than Funeral - they spent their recording budget wisely, bringing their sound up to the level of their ambitions. But my problems with their songwriting haven't gone away: a lot of Win's lyrics are just rubbish, and a lot of their songs are decent, simple tunes with over-elaborate window dressing. Still, it's an enjoyable record, and I would recommend it even to people who didn't like the first one.

Wincing the Night Away, the latest Shins release, is also an improvement over their last (Chutes Too Narrow), but I don't feel the need to qualify my praise so much here. Again, the production budget clearly has gone up somewhat, but the main improvement is simply that they're written better songs here. Their sound is still very much in the 80's 'college rock' mould - any one of the Shins' records wouldn't sound out of place in the Frontier, Homestead or DB records catalogue - but this one's a lot softer, which, old crank I am, sits well on these ears.

Oh, and there's the new Low record, Drums and Guns. It's weird. Lots of drum machines, loops and samples. I'm pretty sure I like (most of) it, but it takes some getting used to.

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Other than that, we're doing okay. Jobs are good, the wine rack is full, and we have things pencilled on our calendar as far away as September. It's finally warm enough that we're opening the windows, and eyeing the balcony as a place to enjoy again; and I've got to say that having daylight savings time this early in the year is disorienting. It's supposed to be warm out when you spring forward, damn it. It's also supposed to feel completely overdue when it happens, not something that sneaks up on you. (Speaking of sneaking up, 37 is an age to put a fellow on edge. It's not one of those years you'd expect to make you feel ancient, but there's something about the sound of the numbers that makes it seem like it might as well be 45.)

And a correction: the Wilderness Club will be playing Babylon on the 23rd, not the 30th. We're also playing sometime in April, I think, and there's rumours we'll be playing Toronto in May. Fingers (mine at least) are crossed.