Ben Kweller + OK Go = an awesome time. And lots of dancing, probably.

Am I the only one who's excited for this year's A&O fall show? OK Go and Ben Kweller definitely beat past shows - I mean, I'd never heard of Jurassic 5 until they came to campus.

And trust me, guys, I've seen OK Go live and they do not disappoint. Though they don't run on treadmills on stage (that would be really hard), they end every show with their original dance to "A Million Ways," which is also awesome.

Fun fact: The guy lipsynching? Not the lead singer. The real lead singer is the lanky guy who walks into the frame at the beginning of the video.

Kweller is a singer-songwriter with some really catchy stuff. Can't say I'm an expert on his stuff, but the buzz on campus makes it seem like many Wildcats are more excited about the opening act than the headliner. And Kweller's no stranger to sweet music videos. Check this one out, for the song "Penny on the Train Track." More silly dancing, but this time straight out of the retirement home.

I want to be like this lady when I grow up.

Interested in the show? It's at Patten Gym, Wednesday December 5th at 7pm. Tickets are $10 at the Norris Box Office. Plus, part of the proceeds go to DM, so you're helping to cure pediatric cancer while enjoying great acts.

Todd Haynes: "Don't understand my movie? Piss off."

I’m Not There is a challenging film, illuminating to Dylan fans and completely impenetrable to those who know nothing about the greatest American songwriter of all-time. The film is a loose biopic of Dylan, jumping across different periods of his life with six different actors playing the singer, most notably Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, and Christian Bale.

Blanchett plays the most recognizable version of Dylan, the electric troubadour that blazed audiences in 1965 and 1966, donned in black shades and a leather jacket while running around England. Bale is the confused folkie breaking his way onto the scene in the early ‘60s and quickly becoming disillusioned with the scene, while Ledger is the successful actor with a troubled family life who gets his start by playing Bale’s character in a movie. Sound confusing? It is. No one’s real names are used in this movie other than Allen Ginsburg – you have to infer that Charlotte Gainsbourg is playing Sara, Dylan’s first wife, and that Julianne Moore is playing Joan Baez, one of his first loves.

Then, some parts are just confusing. Richard Gere plays Billy the Kid (!), the outlaw who is laying low after a showdown with Pat Garrett, the sheriff who chased him. Now, here’s where knowledge of Dylan comes in handy, because Dylanites will recognize these names, as Dylan scored the music to the Sam Peckinpah film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. The metaphor is simple: at that point in his life, Dylan was hiding from the spotlight, releasing disappointing albums that seemed phoned-in, much like Billy the Kid is trying not to get found out by Johnny Law. But in the film, Billy eventually has to confront society, much like Dylan did. This only dawned on me ten minutes after the movie ended, and I’m a giant Dylan fan – again, not for the casual fan.

The dialogue is a little clunky at times, and director Todd Haynes somewhat annoyingly romanticizes Dylan at times. It’s clear he greatly reveres Dylan, but lines like, “I know more about you then you’ll ever know about me!” sound canned. There’s also the problem of the movie’s insular nature – if you’re not a Dylan fan, this movie will make no sense to you. That’s got to be a problem.

The best parts about this movie are the opening sequence and the soundtrack. The movie balances Dylan tunes and Dylan covers from the official CD release, with artists from Sonic Youth (check out bassist Kim Gordon making an appearance, by the way) to Cat Power to Stephen Malkmus to the Hold Steady. In one of the movie’s few song sequences, there’s a phenomenal version of “Going to Acapulco” as performed by Jim James of My Morning Jacket and Calexico. It’s better than the original and got me to Borders to try and buy the soundtrack, which I failed to do. Check it out at the myspace for the movie, which you can Google.

If you are a Dylan fan, you should see this movie. If you’re not, then you can see it anyways, but don’t be put off by the references you won’t understand and the songs you don’t know. Just take it as an opportunity to brush up on some Bobby.

Better than: Walk the Line

Worse than: No Direction Home

Student Film of the Week: Robin's Cage

How much control do we have over our own lives? That seems to be the central question in director Tim Aumun’s Robin’s Cage, a collaboration between five students at Juniata College and submitted by Jigar Patel. Aumun seems to be questioning how much freedom we have to script the itinerary of our existence, and whether, in fact, we’ve become such prisoners of routine that we’re as trapped as a robin in a cage, unable to soar.

The film is about a young man named Robin who awakens every morning at the sound of his alarm to undergo the same routine: school, homework, chores. He doesn’t seem to have any genuine human contact; his parents aren’t there to see him off in the morning. His only connection to his mother is through the Post-It Notes and voicemail messages she leaves to tell him what to do. Robin goes to class, and there he encounters a lecture on Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, which seems to directly address the imprisonment he’s feeling. Whether he understands the lecture, or whether he’s become so lost in his routine that school has just become a chore and not an enriching experience is uncertain. The latter is more likely, however. Once he leaves school for the day, his mother’s voicemail tells him to pick up some milk, which he purposefully drops on his way back from the store, an act of rebellion against this incessant routine. When he arrives back home he discovers his robin’s cage is open and that his pet is now free, even if he can’t be.

The stylistic techniques that the Juniata College students deploy for the film are unusual but deepen the film’s mysteries. The opening credits and title of the film are written on Post-It Notes, stuck to Robin’s wall. Of course, Post-It Notes are the main method of Robin’s mother decreeing what her son should do and how his routine should unfold. But this unusual approach to revealing the film’s title also recalls Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), where the title is only presented near the very end of the film written across the wall of Kurtz’s (Marlon Brando) compound.

It’s admirable that for a film about psychological frustration Aumun and his Juniata colleagues didn’t resort to cliches of psychological drama like voiceover narration, searing close-ups, or subjective shots. Instead, there is an expressionistic quality to the presentation of the narrative, where the elements of the setting (the post-it notes, the “Are You Sick?” poster at the grocery store, the lecture itself) create a symbolic collage of the factors governing Robin’s attitude and behavior. The setting itself reveals his mental state, while he in fact remains more or less passive and expressionless when we see him. This is a clever method of establishing an authorial voice, bringing a unique and fresh perspective to familiar material.

If good filmmaking should show and not tell, then Robin’s Cage succeeds by presenting its narrative in primarily visual terms. Robin himself may still be a prisoner of his circumstances, but these filmmakers from Juniata College have shown that they don’t feel constrained by the limitations of conventional cinematic technique.

Rockin' in the Free World with Neil Young

How can it be that Neil Young hasn’t made a joke out of himself by now? It seems like every other 70’s rock mainstay, from Aerosmith to the Rolling Stones, has become a parody of themselves, a bunch of geriatrics flopping around on stage, playing their hits to people who never cared about the band when they were still relevant. Even Bob Dylan, one of Young’s singer-songwriter peers, has become even more detached from his audience than he was when he was young, showing up in commercials for Victoria’s Secret and Cadillac, playing unrecognizable versions of his songs in concert, unconcerned with what his fanbase thinks. But Neil Young has stayed eternal, as evidenced in his sold-out show at the Chicago Theatre in downtown Chicago, playing a mix of acoustic and electric songs that ranged from number #1 pop hits to unreleased gems from a rich back catalogue.

Young opened up by his lonesome surrounded by several acoustic guitars and two pianos, dressed simply in a beige jacket and a white buttoned shirt (or maybe not, my memory is hazy). When he started singing, it became obvious that his voice hasn’t deteriorated in forty years of playing – it’s still the same thin, almost-falsetto yowl that he draws out with pained facial expressions. He replaced Jack Nietzsche’s string arrangements on “A Man Needs A Maid” with an electric organ, filling the spacious Chicago Theatre with the stark piano arrangements that accompany “Maid,” one of his most depressing songs. “Harvest,” the underrated gem off the album of the same name, was a pleasant, understated beauty, as was “Journey Through the Past,” most recently featured on his recent archive album, Live At Massey Hall.

It’s often said that the mark of a good song is whether or not it can be stripped down to just a singer and an acoustic guitar. This line of thinking is pretty ludicrous, but Young took “Cowgirl in the Sand,” an eleven-minute guitar jam off his second solo album Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and reduced it to a simple acoustic ballad, which worked fine without the layers of guitar fuzz and solos.

After a brief respite, Young came back on stage to play an electric set, somewhat dominated by songs off his most recent album, Chrome Dreams II. Even at his age, Young still jumped around on stage and went wild on guitar – his closing song, “No Hidden Path,” was an insane fifteen-minute epic guitar fest that seemed like improvisation. Young would float out of the song’s rhythm and stab back into the melody with a barrage of guitar daggers, slapping his strings to create a ton of feedback as his band rocked along. It’s a daring song that builds off the feedback-based guitar bands he directly influenced, like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr, that sounded great if not a little excessive (but fifteen-minute songs usually are).

He encored with “Cinnamon Girl,” which still kicks like a bitch almost forty years later, and finished with “Tonight’s the Night,” the chilling requiem for dead roadie Bruce Berry. Young briefly came out at the end to play a few minutes of instrumental music with his band, teasing the audience but ultimately leaving on a high, disappearing to a standing ovation. It should be obvious that I’m a giant Neil Young fan, owning most of his discography and having lost my shit upon finding out he was coming to Chicago, but I’m trying not to turn this into a piece on the hundreds of ways he is great, so just keep this in mind: Neil Young is awesome. He is awesome in concert. If you see him, you will have an awesome time. Awesome.

Set List:

Acoustic
1. From Hank to Hendrix
2. Ambulance Blues
3. Sad Movies
4. Man Needs a Maid
5. No One Seems to Know
6. Harvest
7. Journey Through The Past
8. Mellow My Mind
9. Love Art Blues
10. Love Is A Rose
11. Cowgirl in the Sand
12. Heart of Gold

Electric
13. The Loner
14. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
15. Dirty Old Man
16. Spirit Road
17. Bad Fog of Loneliness
18. Winterlong
19. Oh, Lonesome Me
20. The Believer
21. No Hidden Path

Encore
22. Cinnamon Girl
23. Tonight's the Night II

2nd Encore
24. Sultan

Why The Internet Was Invented: Crank Dat Mashups

If you haven't heard "Crank That Soulja Boy," you clearly have been living under a rock. Or just haven't been around the frat quads lately. For those who are unenlightened, watch this.

Now of course, since it's YouTube, people had to create mashups. Some of the best include Crank Dat Barney, Family Guy, and of course, Superman.
But my latest obsession? Crank Dat Obama.

You know, he dances exactly like I thought he would. Really uncomfortably. But looking at the song he actually danced to, he's not that horrible.

Regardless, it goes to show that Soulja Boy can make anything funny. Even those kids dressed as Teletubbies for Halloween weren't that funny until they came running down my hall with a boom box, doing the Soulja Boy dance.

Best Of The Office: "Branch Wars"

A note before I begin: NBC kind of sucks. Don't freak out, now - I love them for their programming. But they immediately pull any clips from The Office from YouTube, and they just recently shut down their own YouTube page. Which leaves me absolutely no resource to give you Office clips until NBC's fancy new Hulu site launches. Or until they give me access to their beta site. So this recap is going to be picture-filled. Sorry. Moving on.

"Branch Wars" did some smart things, and some stupid things. Now I will list two of each.

Smart Things:

1. Centering the episode around Stanley. Leslie David Baker gets underappreciated a lot on The Office, and this is really unfortunate. In this week's episode, we saw him all the time, as the plot centered around Karen (the new regional manager at Dunder Mifflin's Utica Branch), trying to recruit Stanley to work for her. Of course, Michael can't handle this, because "you can't take away the hilarious black man from the office." Stanley's reaction to this? See the picture on the right. This is typically his reaction to everything.

2) Bringing Karen back the right way. When I saw in promos that Karen was returning, I thought, "Oh, no. This can't be good for Jim and Pam." But you know what? I was really glad to see Rashida Jones again. I was also glad the writers decided to make things not okay with Karen and Jim. Karen definitely has the right to be bitter after the way Jim treated her, and she's getting her revenge by showing off her great new job, and hot new secretary (oh snap, Pam!).

Stupid Things:

1) Those mustaches. How slapstick can The Office get? I really think this is an example of taking things too far. Like Michael driving into the lake because the GPS told him to, or Michael starting the Fun Run. This week? Michael and Dwight trick Jim into driving to Utica to pull the ultimate prank on Karen. Jim is obviously not cool with this, and neither was I. I really did not see the humor in it, except when Dwight tried to pee in an aluminum can, and said "I think I cut my penis on the lid." Gah! Thinking about Dwight's penis is something nobody should ever do. Except Angela, obviously.

2) Not showing us The Finer Things Club sooner! I know I'm kind of cheating with this one, but this is pure genius. The fact that once a month, Pam, Oscar (in "the gayest thing about (him)"), and Toby (who clearly is just in it for quality Pam time) discuss art and literature over finger sandwiches is just too good to be true. Add in the fact that Andy desperately wants to get in because it's "exclusive" just adds to it. Oh, The Office is just like lower school. And that's what I love about it.

The Hold Steady and Art Brut Almost Killed Me

The decision to go see the Hold Steady and Art Brut play at the Metro on Halloween was an impossibly easy one – here at NU, there isn’t much to do on campus if you’re not in a frat and or a girl. So instead of half-assing a costume and cradling a warm can of Natty Ice at Phi Beta Douchebag, I decided to catch a ride in my friend’s car and see two of the best live bands currently playing today.

Before the show, I saw Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos walking around the Metro with his (I presume) girlfriend, decked out in full Elvis costume. As I waved at him (he waved back!) I seemed to be the only one who recognized him, as he strolled past several other concertgoers. I wasn’t sure whether or not it was really him until Art Brut came out to play donned in full costumes, with guitarist Jasper Future dressed up as a Roman centurion, drummer Mikey (From the Block) as a something-or-other (Argos quipped that he saw his silvery costume in the store and said without knowing what it was, “I want to be THAT for Halloween!”), bassist Freddy Feedback as…herself, other guitarist Ian Catskillkin as a spooky skeleton and Argos as (you guessed it) Elvis.

As expected, they started playing AC/DC’s “Back in Black” before segueing into their best song, “Formed A Band,” with a projector displaying some of the song’s lyrics behind them. Argos likes to fill each song up with little leg kicks, microphone twirls, and intense facial expressions – he’s like a fatter version of The Hives’ Pelle Almqvist, who can pull all of that off without looking winded.

Art Brut’s live act is predictable by now – Argos used the same monologue before introducing “Good Weekend” as he did the last two times I saw them play, and with only two albums under their belt (together clocking in at barely over an hour), it’s easy to guess what they’re going to play. However (and most importantly), this does not mean they are boring and easy to figure out – each song is a party, and the band is into audience interaction. What this means is, why ruin a good thing? Art Brut is a must-see band at this point.

As for must-see – talk about the Hold Steady, who has got to be the most anthemic indie band of our generation. They came out decked out in full Mexican western gear, ala “Once Upon a Time in the West” and “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly”. As they launched into the opening chords of “Stuck Between Stations,” the crowd went wild and started jumping up and down while pumping their fists, and the Metro turned into a giant sing-along. And you have to remember, the Hold Steady are supposed to cater to hipsters, who never like to show emotion. But here we were at the Metro with a sold-out crowd chanting the lyrics along to every song. Art Brut has better theatrics, but the Hold Steady just mean more to their fans.

They played every song off last year’s outstanding Boys and Girls in America, a CD full of Randy Newman speak-song with lyrics that combine Bruce Springsteen’s bombast with the youth-voice of The Replacements, epic songs that talk about going to school dances or buying weed for your girlfriend. Frontman Craig Finn worked his way through as many beers as he could, sputtering and twitching across the stage, sometimes barely playing his guitar but always throwing his entire voice into each song.

If Finn had a more palatable voice, the Hold Steady would be a shoo-in to become this generation’s Replacements (which means they’d be recognized by the mainstream a half decade after their prime, which they’ve probably yet to hit) – as they are now, the Hold Steady are the band that means most to their fans in the indie scene, which in an arena full of posturing isn’t that difficult to accomplish.

Track List:
Art Brut
1. Formed A Band
2. Pump Up the Volume
3. Bad Weekend
4. I Will Survive (not a cover!)
5. 18,000 Lira
6. Saint Pauli
7. Modern Art
8. Rusted Guns of Milan
9. My Little Brother
10. Post Soothing Out
11. Emily Kane
12. Nag Nag Nag Nag
13. Direct Hit
14. Good Weekend

The Hold Steady
1. Stuck Between Stations
2. The Swish
3. Chips Ahoy!
4. Hot Soft Light
5. Massive Nights
6. Party Pit
7. Adderall (new song)
8. Barfruit Blues
9. Modesto Is Not That Sweet
10. Same Kooks
11. Chillout Tent
12. You Gotta Dance (With Who You Came With)
13. Lord, I'm Discouraged (new song)
14. You Can Make Him Like You
15. Your Little Hoodrat Friend
16. Southtown Girls

Encore
17. Citrus
18. First Night
19. Girls Like Status
20. Killer Parties

Why The Internet Was Invented: LolSecretz

LolSecretz combines the emo melodrama of PostSecret, a site where people send in their innermost secrets on a postcard, and LolCats, which adds terribly-spelled captions to cute pictures of kittens. When LolSecretz combines the two, you get a whole lot of funny, and a bit of sad, really. Here are a few of my favorites. Behold, the end of the Internet:

"It's Alive!" Bennett Cain's Seed, A Brilliant Student Horror Film

A mask-like figure stairs out into the unknown. Dead and lifeless. Viny tendrils crawl achingly into the frame, ready to ensnare. The crackling, scurrying footsteps of insects punctuate hollow mechanical music. Is this a tomb? Was that a death mask? Wait…the mask turns toward us! In the words of Dr. Frankenstein, "It’s Alive!"

I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed stop-motion animation this much. Bennett Cain’s Seed (Savannah College of Art and Design) is a stop-motion animated film on the level of the best work of the Brothers Quay (Street of Crocodiles). It presents an organic world hollowed out by mechanization, where if you step into it, you too might be transformed…to become a cog in a machine.

Seed is a purely visual experience. Cain doesn’t clutter up the narrative with explanatory dialogue or narration. He shows you what’s happening, rather than tells you. That’s the mark of a great filmmaker.

On a literal level the plot is easy to chart. A young man knocks on the door of a house. The inhabitants inside are already watching him through a surveillance camera. We don’t know why he’s come to this house, or why anybody would be watching him. He’s let in…and discovers a virtual chamber of horrors with denizens who seem to be human-machine hybrids, with machine components substituting for body parts. Despite being machines, these "people" occupy an organic space that seems to be decomposing all around them. Dishes clutter the floor covered in decaying food…or is it axel grease? One character even seems to have worms crawling out of his head in place of hair…or are they wires? Another figure seems to wind down only to be revived by having a battery inserted into his skull. And of course, a sinister "man behind the curtain" seems to control it all…

The idea of replacing body parts with mechanical components is particularly interesting, not only just for our contemporary sense of the horror genre but for understanding the history of cinema. Several hybrid characters in Seed have replaced their eyes with mechanical seeing apparatuses. They also spy on the young man through a surveillance camera, which could be seen as a mechanical eye. In the late 1920s Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov hailed cinema as the greatest art form because of its ability to change our way of seeing. He believed that the movie camera could become a mechanical eye (a.k.a. Kino-Eye) to jog us out of our accustomed ways of seeing and view the world with a new efficient, mechanized objectivity. Isn’t that what’s happening here in Seed? Not only do the hybrids themselves see the world through a mechanized lens, they want the young man, who we identify with, to share their perspective. That’s why he seems to become like them, part of the machine, at the end.

Bennett Cain’s use of stop-motion animation here is important too. What is stop-motion? It’s the process of painfully, meticulously photographing objects in various positions so that when cut together it will give the illusion of movement. In effect, stop-motion animates lifeless objects, making the lifeless appear alive. This happens narratively in Seed as well, when the "man behind the curtain" replaces one of the hybrid’s batteries, reviving him. Stop-motion is a mechanical way of making artificial objects seem real, exactly what the young man is confronted with, with these hybrid characters who seem alive but really aren’t.

Stop-motion can also be seen as a more specific form of what all cinema does. All films create the illusion of movement, of a life-like quality, by rapidly alternating 24 still frames per second. When these still photos are projected so quickly, it makes us believe that we’re watching a motion picture. What’s really happening is that a sense of dynamism is created from a succession of the static. Since still photography has often been paired with images of death, from 19th century death photos to 20th century war photography, we could also say that motion pictures are paired with life. But then again, the components of motion pictures are still photos. So, in cinema, a sense of the life-like comes out of a sense of death. Maybe this is why the mad scientist genre is so unique to film. From Frankenstein to The Re-Animator to Seed, the mad scientist genre always features characters who want to create life from death.

Seed is full of such moments, from the "man behind the curtain" reviving another character, to its inverse, when the living character, the young man, becomes part of the machine at the end. Seed considers the illusory nature of the life-like quality of film. It may be artificial, but for one brief moment, we think "It’s Alive!"

Best of The Office: "Local Ad"

In this week's fabulous half-hour episode, the Scranton branch is called upon to make a commercial. Michael obviously thinks this means he can make Threat Level: Midnight a possibility, but in reality, Corporate just wants to add 5 seconds to their national ad. Michael predictably says "nuh-uh" to this, and makes one of his own.

Great moment here? Calling on Darryl, Creed, Andy, Kevin, and Kelly to make the theme song. Which will be stuck in your head forever.



Obviously, Corporate ends up rejecting the commercial. But Jim decides to show everyone the finished product, Michael Scott-style.



And it's actually awesome! "You have a son, and it's me" is the greatest, as is Stanley in the orange jumpsuit.

Overall, a top-notch episode. We saw every supporting character, and there wasn't much dopey relationship drama. This is exactly what we Office fans needed, and it was great.

The Summer that Was...

Welcome back, film fans! A cool breeze is in the air, which can only mean two things--1) expect four months of temperatures that seem to approach absolute zero; 2) the season of quality filmmaking is upon us!

Yes, the fall, that golden harvest of Oscar-hungry prestige films which seek to challenge, question, and enlighten, with intricate plots, political subjects, actual character development, and the requisite overacting of Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon.

In the next few months, Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee goes NC-17 with erotic thriller Lust, Caution; Cate Blanchett dons face paint once again for Elizabeth: The Golden Age; the Coen Brothers enter Cormac McCarthy territory with No Country for Old Men; Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter show off their musical range (or perhaps lack thereof) tackling operatic melodies and syncopated lyrics from Tim Burton’s adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece Sweeney Todd; and Angelina Jolie strips down and gets covered in gold paint, in 3D, for Beowulf. Hmm, not quite how I envisioned Grendel’s mother…10th grade English class takes on a whole new dimension.

Anyway (focus Christian!), before plunging into films which actually make us think (Beowulf not included), I thought we’d take one last look at the halcyon days of summer’s sun-drenched, imitation-butter-coated movies. These are my picks for the best films of summer 2007...


1. La Vie en Rose by Olivier Dahan--The best musical bio-pic I’ve ever seen, La Vie en Rose stars French newcomer Marion Cotillard as the legendary French songstress Edith Piaf. Chronologically fractured, the film shies away from the bio-pic cliché of "here’s how this song was created," instead focusing on the accumulation of life experiences which informed the emotional content of Piaf’s songs. Full of gorgeous tracking shots worthy of Scorsese, which show both how life has unfolded effortlessly for Piaf, but also how confining the demands of her chosen lifestyle are, La Vie en Rose is not interested in a linear biography, but in capturing the spirit of one of the 20th century’s great artists.


2. The Bourne Ultimatum by Paul Greengrass--The rare genre film which critiques the foundations--or even necessity--of the genre itself. Director Paul Greengrass turned the conclusion of the Bourne trilogy, in which Matt Damon’s amnesiac super spy finally uncovers his lost past and confronts the sinister forces who made him a killing machine, a critique of jingoistic spy fiction like 24 and James Bond. Rather than sinister foreign forces conspiring against the free world, Bourne’s enemy is the establishment itself that would send him on illegal missions and then abandon him to save face. Docudramarian Greengrass’s handheld style is perfectly suited to capturing Bourne’s jagged life lived on the edges and the constant Orwellian techno-surveillance that pervades his world. Preferring immersive handheld camera angles to CGI, Ultimatum’s action scenes don’t even look like they’ve been staged, but have just happened to be caught on film while actually occurring, as if by a quick-thinking bystander. Greengrass’s style allows for immersion in a realistic world, a far cry from the top-heavy, distancing CGI of most other action films.


3. Sicko by Michael Moore--Both his most serious and funniest film to date, Moore’s Sicko mixes heartfelt interviews, humorous stock footage, and his trademark ironic voiceover to illuminate America’s healthcare crisis. From the guy who had to choose which severed finger to re-attach to not be bankrupted, to the tragedy of an elderly woman refused care and turned out to the streets, Moore convincingly makes the case that the right to affordable healthcare is part of our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Mute Math & Eisley @ House of Blues, 10/9

New Orleans power band, Mute Math, made a stop in chicago on a tour promoting their self-titled album. The band has lately been making a name for itself by hitting the festival circuit, but it is their video for "Typical" that has been generating the most buzz, what with it being completely backwards and all. Not to mention the band's performance of the backward version of the song on Jimmy Kimmel Live last month.

Eisley opened Mute Math’s performance at the House of Blues with an ethereal, beautifully performed, but brief, set. The Texas family band is currently promoting their latest album release, Combinations.

After Eisley’s performance, the speakers were turned up several notches and Mute Math took the stage in an onslaught of bright lights and pulsating electro-rock from the booming speakers, shaking the floor of the House of Blues and inspiring some in the crowd to make an attempt at dancing. Valiant efforts, but let’s just say the members of Mute Math don’t have the most rhythmic fans.

Frontman, Paul Meany, however, does have a few moves he can boast about. He spent the entire time dashing up and down the stage, taking dramatic leaps and switching back and forth between the keyboard, keytar and guitar. His contagious energy infected the crowd and had everyone bouncing up and down. Props to Meany for not wearing himself out with his theatrics and keeping the vocals impeccable throughout.

While the band did crank out "Typical" for the fans, they opted for the straight album version. I don't about the rest of the crowd, but I was hoping for a backwards rendition. I mean, the guys (for some reason) took the time to figure out how to play a song backwards - might as well put it to use. Despite this disappointment, the evening's performance was energetic and dynamic. Mute Math definitely knows how to put on a good show.

Be sure to check out Mute Math's video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b13rc6DY74A

By: Blanca Mendez

Why The Internet Was Invented: Dancing Animals!

I feel like this video needs no introduction. So here it is.



Great, now a Backstreet Boys song is stuck in my head. Since when has that happened, 1996? This bird needs to update its taste in music.

Via Cute Overload.

Get to the Bomb Shelter: Best Picture of the Year?

This is it folks - we've reached the apex of society. Behold, the movie that will change the way we think about politics, religion, sex, America, music, and most importantly, ourselves.



I'm not exaggerating when I say that a little part of me just died. It's like I want to cry, but I've forgotten how to.

(In case the title confuses you, I'm going to post anything that bodes negatively for society under the headline of "Get to the Bomb Shelter," cause you know, stuff like this means the world's going to hell.)

Best Of The Office: "Money"

Finally, the last hourlong episode! I don't know about you guys, but I'm sick of The Office being stretched into 40-ish minutes. It really feels like two episodes, with unnecessary plotlines thrown in just to fill time.

However, having said that, I feel like this week's episode was the best hourlong episode yet. And, fun fact, Paul Lieberstein (Toby), wrote and directed it! And played Toby in it!

Lieberstein has said in interviews he tends to want to stay offscreen as much as possible, since he prefers being on the writing staff to being in front of the camera. But thank goodness he didn't completely write himself out, because he was part of the one really funny scene this week, the "whomever" debate.



But besides this gem, this episode was one of the darkest ones yet, examining the effects of the Dwight/Angela/Andy love triangle, and the PB&J romance. Here's one of the saddest ones, featuring Sad Dwight, who deserves a character name all his own, because of the hysterical dying-cow crying sound he makes. I have so much love for Jim here.



And, in the scene immediately after this, I have even more love for Jim:



Okay, enough YouTubing for now. Bottom line: can't wait for the half-hour episodes to start. I need my classic Office back - less relationship drama, more nonstop laughs. That's the way I like my Dunder Mifflin.

Album Review: Chase This Light

Release Date: October 16th, 2007
Rating: 4 out of 5

For me personally, Jimmy Eat World is one more reliable bands I listen to, with wider array of albums I can listen to all the way through without skipping tracks.
Of course, there is a bit of a divide among fans, long-time or otherwise. Clarity fans will more often look down upon anyone who considers Bleed American due to their slightly more mainstream-pop rock sound (or they just ignore it all together).
Yet Chase This Light, their follow-up to 2004's Futures, draws from the best of Jimmy's older alternative sound while not completely ignoring the progression they've made since first dropping Static Prevails.
Songs like the fast-paced 'Big Casino' embrace the big made-for-radio play sound they've picked up on with other memorable (albeit now less tolerable) singles like 'The Middle'.
If anything, Chase This Light is a perfect example of Jimmy Eat World as they are now: still alternative with their not so subtle pop-rock undertones. It's almost predictable at this point, but it is a formula that they've managed to perfect in their favor if nothing else. There's nothing too surprising here, and it can be either a good or bad thing, depending on your expectations for this album.
The album keeps up the pace throughout, where as Futures was made up more of slower (if not emo) songs. There are stll some slightly mellow, catchy beats in songs like 'Carry You' and title track 'Chase This Light' help to overall balance out the album without dragging it down. And of course, tracks like 'Electable (Give It Up)' will take you back to 1998.
This album is definitely capable of drawing in older (less stubborn and/or elitist) fans, while still keeping their newer ones.

Ben Affleck: “Look, I don’t suck anymore!”

Lo and behold, Ben Affleck has remembered (or discovered, depending on your perspective) how to make good movies. In his mainstream directorial debut, Affleck has crafted a compelling tale about a missing girl in Boston and the private detective hired to help find her. The private detective (Ben’s younger brother Casey Affleck, in a surprisingly strong effort) delves into Boston’s underworld, and what he finds isn’t so great. Imagine more film hyperbole here centered around the fact that this movie is dark and ugly at times, but always with a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel.

It’s strangely paced – for one, there’s a rising action, climax, and resolution all within the first hour. My friend and I thought the movie was almost over until we noticed that just an hour had passed since the beginning – from there, it goes through several more plots, with several more climaxes. It builds up slow, but wraps up nicely – I was compelled for the entirety of the movie, even if some of it was a little dry.

More impressive is how great Affleck the elder is at creating tense situations – there are at least half a dozen scenes in the movie that had me and my Beantown buddy (who loved the movie, by the way – no surprise there) wide-eyed and open-mouthed. For the action scenes, Affleck switches to handheld cameras that are carried without a steady arm in order for maximum chaos to be communicated to the audience. This is where the movie excels – these scenes propel the movie from “entertaining” to “Oscar contender”.

There are some weak points. Michelle Monaghan is particularly useless as Casey’s girlfriend/business partner, and I’m not sure what Morgan Freeman added to his role other than being Morgan Freeman. But Ed Harris is great as a cocky policeman, and Amy Ryan is amazing as the missing girl’s coked out mother. I don’t know if Gone Baby Gone will get nominated for Best Picture, but I’d be surprised if Ryan was left out of the Supporting Actress category. The film ends on a morally ambiguous note, and the viewer is left to decide whether or not Affleck made the right decisions along the way. It’s a film worth seeing at least one.

Better than: Anything Affleck has done in the last half-decade

Worse than: The Departed

David Cronenberg: “Subtlety is for pussies”

Film auteur David Cronenberg doesn’t care about offending people, made strikingly clear in the first three minutes of Eastern Promises when a) a guy’s throat is slit in incredibly graphic detail, b) a pregnant girl starts bleeding all over a pharmacy floor, and c) the camera does a close-up of a barely alive baby covered in placenta and blood. It’s cemented when we get another slit throat, multiple shots of Viggo Mortensen’s genitals, and a guy getting stabbed in the eye. What makes all of the violence so shocking isn’t just how graphic it is, but how realistic it’s portrayed – Cronenberg is out to shock you, but not in a cartoony way. A movie like Shoot 'Em Up is more violent, but that's done for camp - this is about realism.

Eastern Promises isn’t just about uber-violence, with a solid plot augmented by great performances from Mortensen (as a Russian mobster) and Naomi Watts (as a midwife in far over her head). Cronenberg is a master of letting us know story details through subtle movements – very little is said outright, but it’s up to the viewer to pick up on clues in the backgrounds and infer what they can. He remembers that film is primarily a visual art, and doesn’t bog us down with exposition. Thus, all of his movies are open to interpretation – they mean what you want them to mean.

Much better than: Shoot 'Em Up

Slightly better than: A History of Violence

Worse than: Goodfellas

Why The Internet Was Invented: To Keep Andy Samberg Employed

Without the success of Andy Samberg's Lonely Island sketch comedy troupe, he wouldn't be on SNL. Without the YouTube potential of his SNL Digital Shorts, he wouldn't be famous.

Depending on your perspective, this is reason enough to wish the Internet out of existence.

Take this digital short, "People Getting Punched Just Before Eating," as an example.

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The first time I watched this, I laughed. Then I felt really bad about myself for thinking this stupidity was funny. Though I must admit, the Dave Grohl moment is fantastic. But Zombie Dance? Quit while you're ahead, Samberg.

Overall, Samberg's very hit-and-miss. My advice? Stick to singing love songs to Iranian presidents. Oh, and apologize for Hot Rod. That was just cruel.

Kiddie Corral

Oh, Kid Nation. What a fabulously intriguing little social experiment you've turned out to be.

In case you're not familiar with the premise, CBS shipped a group of 40 kids ages 8-15 out to a run-down ghost town in the middle of nowhere, New Mexio. The idea: to see if kids can do as good as adults at building a community. The problem: they bascially tell the kids what to do and purposely impose common societal problems on them. For instance, they're broken up into "districts" (though, to the kids' credit, they don't segregate or ridicule other groups).

The newest challenge: establish religious service.

So can the kids do it better? Well, some of them insist that mixing christians and jews and muslims and hindus is a horrible idea. Some argue for a non-denominational spiritual service. A handful of athiests would rather just keep religion out of the town. Some bond with others with similar views (my personal favorite is the "Jew Crew").

The kicker though, is that when given the choice between a huge mini-golf course and a library of religious texts, the kids actually picked the library. The same group who groaned for two days when their council chose a microwave over a pizza party picked a library.

Kids do the darndest things.

Grizzly Bear @ Park West, 10/10

If you haven't heard of Grizzly Bear, it's probably because it's one of those bands you have to "warm up" to, which is coincidentally 94% of all Pitchfork- and blog-endorsed music.

The quartet produces some of the least melodic, ethereal and winding music I've ever heard. But for some reason I've been taking cold showers ever since I heard their second album Yellow House last year.

So when lead singer Ed Droste--clad in an '80s sweater that gave me Williamsburg flashbacks--stepped out nursing an autoharp, I was so smitten that even my internal promise to never buy overpriced venue beer dissolved.

The show was like a terribly long game of Operation: Every note sang and played was so delicate, everything seemed on the verge of breaking. Almost every song was reinterpreted, and as expected, "On a Neck, On a Spit"--my favorite song of all time--left me as awe-stricken as I'm sure hair metal left many ladies unmentionables-less in the '80s. The rest remains a happy Miller Lite haze.

Best Of The Office: "Launch Party"

Hands down, this is the greatest moment from this week's episode of The Office.
Spoiler alert: Andy (Ed Helms) attempts to woo newly single hardass Angela (Angela Kinsey) with the power of song. Watch and love.



How could she not run into his arms after that? I don't understand!
Now, the close second best moment, one of the greatest cold opens in the show's history:



I was really impressed with "Launch Party," since it had a lot of laughs and tender moments (Jim and Pam's second rooftop date!). Honestly, though, I'll be happy when the episodes return to their half-hour format. The writers have been adding in a lot of unnecessary plotlines (like driving into a lake during "Dunder Mifflin Infinity" and kidnapping that pizza guy this week) just to fill time, so when that pressure is gone, we'll be back to "The Office" we all know and love.

OMG TL/RX

It will always be cool to see members of a band setting up their own equipment, which is why the Metro crowd freaked out last night when Ted Leo came out to do his own sound check on his guitar. Of course, it begged the question: how was there going to be any suspense for the show? He walked off after making sure his guitar was tuned, then five minutes later the lights went off and he came back out. As Yo La Tengo broke down the fourth wall by casually interacting with the audience, Ted Leo breaks it down by refusing to make a big deal out of being Ted Leo, even though he’s one of the most recognizable personas in the indie rock music scene.

Anyways, the show was almost identical to the one he played this previous April at the Metro – every song he played now he played then, albeit with a few omissions. After opening with the raucous punk stomper of “Sons of Cain” he blew his hit song wad by doing “Me and Mia”, which of course got the crowd going because it’s probably his most recognizable song. At first, he didn’t talk to the crowd at all, not even pausing to stop in between songs, the first half hour just a constant segue to different tracks. Later on, he loosened up and admitted he had been in a bad mood, which had been quickly negated by how awesome the Chicago crowd is.

Important to note is that Ted Leo passes the sweat test with flying colors: As a general rule of thumb, the more an artist sweats in concert, the more effort they’re putting into it, which means it’ll be more enjoyable. When Ted Leo swings his head, a sweat pattern is left floating in the air – after fifteen minutes, his shirt was drenched even though his light show wasn’t abrasively bright most of the time. Now, the sweat test is not a guarantee – exceptions are made for musicians who are naturally sweaty (like Built to Spill, because they’re fat and middle-aged) but when it works, oh does it work.

For me the highlights were the nostalgic ska-shout out “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?” which is the only song that’s halfway made me consider that perhaps ska is not the worst music genre of all-time and “La Costa Brava” off his most recent record Living with the Living, which is a beautiful Spanish-inflected rumination on the little things that make life worth living, a song that Chekhov could have written if he had an ear for punk rock (see a great solo version in the Youtube video below). Generally speaking, all the songs were enjoyable because Leo plays faster in concert in order to fit in as many songs as possible, which means that even when the melody was lacking there was still a lot of energy to be had.

Leo is also very good at making dull studio tracks into killer live tracks. On record, the song “The Unwanted Things” is a plodding pseudo-reggae number that goes on for far too long – in concert, it’s quicker, funkier, and fun to dance to. On record, “Bomb.Repeat.Bomb” is loud and annoying, but in concert the intensity is conveyed when you see Leo whipping around the stage floor like a charged Tesla coil, screaming like it’s the end of the world. He’s the type of artist that makes you love his records more after going to the show, and that is the best sort of lasting memory.

The lesson is that if you ever have the chance to see Ted Leo in a club, you should do it because he never gives less than 110%, in fact he is the person such motivational clichés were invented for.

Best line of banter: “You want the blues? Alright, I’m going to give you some blues…actually, did I just say that? Can we make a pact here amongst all of us to not let that show up on Youtube?”

Set list (what I took down, anyways):
The Sons of Cain
Me and Mia
Army Bound
Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?
Unknown new song dedicated to Chad
Bomb.Repeat.Bomb
Counting Down the Hours
Colleen
A Bottle of Buckie
The Unwanted Things
La Costa Brava
Who Do You Love?

Encore:
Timorous Me
Walking to Do
Suspect Device (Stiff Little Fingers cover)

Al Gore: "Yo lo tengo, bitches."

So, in case you haven't heard, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah, there was some other group in there, but no one cares, because: Al Gore. Won. The Nobel Peace Prize.

The decision will not only stop global warming dead in its tracks, but also cause all Hummers--and their wasteful, fat-cat owners--to spontaneously combust and turn all non-Hummers into hybrids.

Now, a rundown of past and future Peace Prize milestones:
2005: Bono nominated for AIDS/HIV work.
2007: Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tie for their work on global warming education.
2009: Kanye wins it all for his insights into the gold-digger epidemic.

The real question, though, is this: How much more smug can Gore possibly store in his overly swolen body before it, too, spontaneously combusts?

The Freewheelin' Yo La Tengo

Hyperbole: Yo La Tengo is the best band of all-time. Not hyperbole: Yo La Tengo played at the Lakeshore Theater last night as a part of their Freewheelin’ tour, and they were totally awesome. Basically, Messrs. Kaplan, McNew and Madam Hubley sat down before a packed crowd and played acoustic versions of their songs from their extensive discography and cover songs for an hour and a half, bantering in between and answering questions from the audience. (I would have taken pictures, but security threatened to take away cameras and I couldn't figure out how to turn the flash off on my friend's camera. Boo.)

They opened with “Big Day Coming” off their 1993 album Painful, but I didn’t get excited until their stripped-down cover of “My Little Corner of the World”, which is my favorite song in their catalogue. The only notes I took down during the song were “My little corner!!!” and “Whistle solo!” because during the song’s normal guitar solo, the sound guy came on stage and whistled a perfect version of it, drawing rabid applause. (Check this song as set to a wicked Gilmore Girls montage:

Most of the songs came from their covers album (Fakebook), their masterpiece (I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One) and their most recent offering (I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass), and one of the highlights was an insane version of “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind”, the opening track from the latter. Even though they were mostly unplugged and toned down, guitarist Ira Kaplan let squeals of feedback reverb from his acoustic guitar, using a plugged in distortion pedal to replicate the song’s waves of noise. Who knew you could shred while sitting down? Another highlight was "Black Flowers," which had Kaplan harmonizing the trombone part that's on the recorded version of the song.

The band got their name from a baseball slang, so naturally, Kaplan brought up the epic collapse of his New York Mets at the end of the concert, then speculated over who had it more painful: Mets fans or Cubs fans (the answer: Cubs fans). This was before launching into one of their encore songs, “For the Turnstiles” by Neil Young. It was the second Young song heard that evening, as opener Rick Rizzo covered “Through My Sails” as well. Since Neil Young is awesome, this was pretty good. They finished playing around 9:30 and would play a second set an hour later, presumably drunker and more loosened up. In retrospect, we probably went to the wrong show.

Best line of banter: Ira Kaplan: (about a Dead Boys show he went to) "Cheetah Chrome did perhaps the most punk rock thing I've ever seen, which was to play this show wearing a sweater."

Set List (what I took down, anyways):

Big Day Coming
Mountain of Love (Bill Black cover)
My Little Corner of the World (Anita Bryant cover off I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One)
Magnet (NRBQ cover)
Autumn Sweater
Nuclear war (Sun-Ra cover)
Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind
The Summer
Mr. Tough
Black Flowers
Johnny Thunder (Kinks cover)
Yellow Sarong (The Scene Is Now cover off Fakebook)
Sugarcube
Encore:
It's Alright (The Way You Live) (Velvet Underground cover)
For the Turnstiles (Neil Young cover)
Unknown song with lyric "every cloud has a silver lining" (so I've narrowed it down to a billion possibilities)

Why The Internet Was Invented: Cute Videos of Babies

I really wish I could be that easily entertained. Come to think of it, though, I was easily entertained watching this video about ten times. So maybe we're not so different after all.