* The new Bat for Lashes album, Two Suns, is really something special, I think. It strikes me as a cross between OK Computer and Boys for Pele, and I’ve been listening to it in its entirety once or twice a day. The whole thing is now streaming online, so if you think it might be your cup of tea, give it a listen. (Via Pitchfork.)
* David Cronenberg is working on a sequel to Eastern Promises. I totally sympathize with the folks who want Dave to go back to gonzo body-horror, but it turns out he’s a terrific director of crackling, grim, violent (comparatively straightforward) thrillers who also seems intent on providing Viggo Mortensen with material that’s his equal, so I’m not complaining. (Hey Hollywood: If you must remake The Long Good Friday, there are better choices out there than Paul W.S. Anderson.)
* Tom Neely’s prepping a new edition of Brilliantly Ham-fisted, a collection of his comic-strip poems which I rather liked.
* Curt Purcell was stunned by Geoff Grogan’s Look Out!! Monsters. It’s a not uncommon reaction.
* CRwM reviews Let the Right One In, focusing on the truth behind Eli and Oskar’s relationship.
* When it comes to the trailer for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, I’m with Carles.
* Douglas Wolk prophesies the coming of the Celestial Jukebox, the “any song, in any order, available instantly anywhere” online music repository of our collective dreams–he says it’s inevitable, that its constituent parts are already here, and the question is simply whether it will be legal or not.
* The Hall of Cliche Super Heroes is a pretty great idea period, let alone a pretty great idea for a T-shirt. (Via JK Parkin.)
I am a 25 year old married man, college graduate, eventual grad school student. Got a good/stable job working with my father, active in my Church and all around nice guy. I also enjoy marijuana in moderation. It does not make me lazy. I do not have to have it. I only do it on one or two nights a week. But I enjoy it. It makes the nights I do it all the more enjoyable. It adds zest to life. I am a lover of film and music and it makes my viewing/listening all the more life affirming.
My husband and I often muse, while smoking pot, that the only thing we are doing wrong is breaking the law. If that is the only wrong you are committing it seems clear that it’s not your behavior that needs to be re-evaluated, but the law itself.
* Quote of the day #3:
“Let’s start with a premise that I don’t think a lot of Americans are aware of. We have five percent of the world’s population; we have 25 percent of the world’s known prison population. There are only two possibilities here: either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice.”
Thanks for the link, Sean–only it doesn’t seem to be working. As for LOM, that really was a sharp review you wrote. I’m STILL flipping pages and trying to absorb it!
I’m impressed with any 25-year-old pot smoker that becomes a United States Senator.
I agree with much of what that post says about LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.
In my mind, not Eli is “the right one,” but Oskar — because, as Eli discovers right before she approaches him for the first time, he’s got a latent potential for murder. He’s the perfect “new Renfield” for her.
As far as the crotch shot is concerned, my take is that it’s fundamentally a story about pedophilia. Eli is, essentially, a human predator, and she may be hundreds of years old. There is no romantic love between someone like her and a 12-year-old boy. It’s a very clever inversion of LOLITA, in a lot of ways.
The real horror of the film, I agree, is that Oskar’s trapped and well on track to become that other guy by the end of the film. So, no, not exactly a love story!
I also agree it’s the best film of 2008 I’ve seen. The story is smart and intriguing, it’s compellingly told and brilliantly acted.
Does Charles actually even have kids to take to see “Where the Wild Things Are”? As someone who complains about the book being “like 10 sentences”, you’d think he could find the time to read it. I’m all for being snarky for snark’s sake, but let’s see some cutting insight, some redeeming value of any kind. That was just random sputum. I usually enjoy your links, but that was a waste of my time.
Ashabanapal: Ha! Uh, I guess you haven’t been to Hipster Runoff before. (It’s a parody site.)
That said, I really don’t like that trailer.
RE: the crotch shot in Let the Right One In.
Supposedly – and I say that simply because I haven’t read the book myself – the explanation of the scars is that Eli is really a boy who has been de-manned, possibly as part of some ritual that turned him into a vampire.
I hope that’s not the case, because that sounds utterly silly, but, hey, maybe it works in the book.