Holly Laurent stars as Lana Del Rey singing her hit single "Hunger Games"

While the culturephiles may now be resting in semi-permanent slumber, it remains important to post Holly Laurent's recent music video in the hope you will enjoy:

Martin's Top 10 Albums of 2011 Only Add Up To 5

When I performed my annual Sorting of the iTunes (typically one of the happiest days of the year), it became surprisingly clear to me that my Top 10 Albums of 2011 was actually a Top 5.  Sure, I could flesh the list out with five or six perfectly fine albums, but you know what? This year was a Top 5-only year. Five albums stood out -- head and shoulders above the rest.  And honestly, I don’t have the time or inclination to agonize over what other decent but uninspiring albums should fill the remaining slots. With that said, my Top 5 of 2011...

5. Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde

Insanely catchy rock & roll. That's that.

4. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
A little bit spiritual, a little bit jangly, a little bit CSNY. What’s not to like?

3. Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire

Even if it’s a little on the tame side, I’ll still take hushed, introspective, open-hearted Ryan Adams over most everybody else out there today.

2. The Low Anthem – Smart Flesh

“Oh My God Charlie Darwin” was a brilliant album; this is even richer from beginning to end, if you can imagine.  I love this band more every day. (To show off of their range, these dudes get two embedded videos.)

1.    Bon Iver – Bon Iver

I know it’s a divisive record, which I assume means that some people must hate it. I can’t stop listening to it.

Follies and Fever Year: a Weekend Full of Chicago Culture

In 48 hours this past weekend I got to enjoy two major Chicago Cultural Events: the new production of Follies at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and a new documentary about Chicago-based musician Andrew Bird.


Follies at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater features four absolutely dynamite lead performances.  I went in fully primed for either a letdown or an unwieldy staging of this supposedly unmanageable show.  What I saw was a character and mood-driven piece filled with great music, unconcerned with "plot."  Maybe -- as fellow erstwhile Culturephile Brendan said as we left the theater -- we've been taught how to watch Follies thanks the movie musical of Chicago.  And while I agree with that, I also think we've been taught to watch Follies by 1) listening to the music from Follies over and over again, 2) watching all the plotless, character-driven, music-filled shows that Sondheim &co have written since 1973, and 3) generally coming around to see musicals as plays with music rather than the corny & inauthentic Zigfeldian spectacles that Follies both eulogizes and buries.  We've gotten to a place, culturally, where we don't always expect a Les Mis-style powerpack of plot when we go see a musical.  Follies is interior, memory-based, and reflective -- full of great music and great songs strung in a row, sung by a crew of supersonic talents.  What's not to like?

I was equally impressed with the artistry and beauty of Andrew Bird: Fever Year -- a concert film blended with a documentary film about one of our all-time favs here at the Culturephiles.  It's an elegant and lovely film that has some weird controversy attached.  Having seen the film now, I see no reason for there to by any controversy whatsoever -- it paints everybody in a lovely and musical light.  Fully 65% of it is concert footage, but the best part of the film are the fascinating little peeks into Bird's creative process and a tantalizing smidgeon of personal life.  I mean, I'm talking JUST a smidgeon.  Nevertheless, I'm only more impressed now with Andrew Bird's talent and thoughtfulness -- and some of his theatricality onstage actually wouldn't be out of place in a modern-day follies.

On the one hand, it's too bad that Fever Year will only screen in festivals -- I would have liked it to find a wider audience -- but as the director Xan Aranda said in her talk-back after the showing, there's something lovely and communal about sharing the experience with a certain group in a specific time and place and a limited setting...kind of like the spirit and joy of an Andrew Bird concert.

The Art of Turning Stress into Page-Turning Art in The Art of Fielding

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really want to give this excellent book 4.5 stars, because as much as I loved the characters and writing, it was pretty freaking depressing and stressful. Now, I don't look for uplift from the novels I read, but the level of stress -- in combination with the level of reality -- got a little oppressive at points. In the end, though, given how much I cared about the characters and outcome -- not to mention the excellent subtle prose style -- I have to round up to 5 stars, rather than down.

Combining a collegiate setting, the topic of baseball, and a focus on interpersonal dynamics, this book turns a perfect triple play (barf, sorry) for me personally. It's Franzen-esque in its insight and writing, but skews younger and less preachy. (I certainly hope Chad Harbach is the next Jonathan Franzen...but no pressure there, Chad!) In fact, The Art of Fielding joins Freedom as the only two books I've purchased in hardcover in quite some time. This, of course, says nothing about their quality, only that I was equally eager to read both.

My only criticisms are:
1) the aforementioned way reading about all these lives unraveling made me a stress-case;
2) the absolutely preposterous cavalcade of ridiculous names: Henry Skrimshander, Geurt and Pella Affenlight, Adam Starblind, Miranda Szabo, et al. I'm sure there's both great meaning and various worthy Melville references in those names...but enough's enough. You can get away with Henry Skrimshander OR Guert Affenlight, not both. And Adam Starblind just has to go.

But these are silly criticisms.

As usual, I carefully avoided reading any reviews or anything about this book beforehand, but the hype surrounding it was unavoidable -- it was on every list of "books to read" I've seen for the last 8 months or more. Yet the careful narration, perfect pacing, and thoughtful characterizations made for an absolutely excellent book, well worth reading, regardless of hype. It felt like an important book, tackling important themes, without ever treating itself as Important and Tackling Important Themes. Some books -- even good or great books -- can become over-saturated, weighted down with their own worthiness. The Art of Fielding felt human and relate-able throughout. As much stress as it gave me, it gave me 100 times more joy and pleasure.

View all my reviews

Forget all the Acclaim and Simply Enjoy "The Goon Squad"

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A really wonderful book that somehow simultaneously manages to:
1) live up to sky-high hype,
2) deliver unexpected twists in spite of massive media coverage, and
3) be a page-turner while being about as uplifting as watching ten consecutive episodes of Frontline.

This is one sad novel-in-time-fragments, yet I couldn't put it down. There's no "plot" to speak of, just the exploration of characters and the connections between those characters over a huge swath of time and many different time-periods. Those connections, relationships and people are so carefully drawn and finely crafted that I could have kept reading forever.

Occasionally the book missteps into overly broad satire -- and by "overly broad" I mean that the satire becomes situational and somewhat heavy-handed for my liking. Most of the time Jennifer Egan's satirical instincts are deftly embedded in character and relationship, letting readers draw meaning for themselves, but in a couple of notable spots the characters get too thin, the situations too over-the-top, and the whole affair strains with effort. Most notably I'm thinking of "Selling the General" (which is the only chapter I disliked) but I also include in this the final chapter, which (while also being beautifully written and terribly sad and pretty daring) struggles to make its points within character & relationship, and moves outside of that successful formula to comment in ways I didn't love. The vast majority of the book was so absolutely gorgeous with subtlety, as perfectly subtle as anything I've read -- that I did find myself ever so slightly disappointed that, in the final chapter, the human characters were too shallow to sustain The Commentary.

That said, 95% of this book is writing so pure that it fills my heart with both appreciation and rank jealousy. "Elegant" is the word that most aptly comes to mind. I devoured this book in a week flat, am filled with thoughts and reactions to it, and have just had a long, thoughtful discussion about it with my wife (who also loved it). It's hard to ask for anything more from a book. Further, it's hard for me to think of a book recently I've enjoyed -- or engaged with -- more.

I'm a Mac -- are YOU?

Comedy's own Ross Bryant can't contain his Apple love or his Mac magic...

Winner, Winner, Chicken Beginner

"Beginners" poses the age-old question: is it worth having your dad die a painful death from cancer if you get to date Melanie Laurent afterwards? Of course, your initial response is no, you love your father and barely know Melanie Laurent. But then your mind wanders to afternoons spent roller-skating through luxury hotels with the most winsome woman since Audrey Tatou, making love in said hotel with said Audrey Tatou heir-apparent, and Audrey Tatou 2.0 dressing up as Harpo Marx for no real reason. Which makes you think, well, we all gotta go at some time.

"Beginners" is a big, moist Kleenex of a movie, and not necessarily for the reasons you're expecting. Oliver's dad, Hal, has just passed away and Oliver, having spent the last several months caring for him, is understandably in a funk. As Oliver embarks on a new relationship with an actress he meets at a costume party, he sorts through the events of his father's illness and begins to re-examine his parents' complicated relationship (I probably should mention Hal came out of the closet shortly after Oliver's mom died).

But the movie is not, as you might expect, the After-School Special about accepting our Elderly Parent's Blossoming Sexuality. All of the characters struggle with love: how to get it, what to sacrifice for it, and how it elevates you. Hal has a seemingly great relationship with a goofy guy Andy, who is 30-40 years his junior. Yet Hal hides his illness from Andy and lets him date other guys, because he is, after all, 30-40 years Hal's junior. Oliver is all coiled apprehension around his girlfriend, never fully relaxing around her because, as he sees it, love never seems to work out. In a few brief scenes Mary Page Keller creates a fully realized character as Oliver's dead mother, a woman alternately bucking the conventions of her time while clinging to her son for emotional support.

The movie trips over time, bouncing back and forth from present to past, as seemingly innocuous phrases betray their roots. Big, vibrant colors fill the screen, reflecting Oliver's work as an artist and Hal's career as a museum curator. I haven't even mentioned the subtitled dog, who has no reason to work but totally does. This dog is so absurdly adorable and heartbreaking that if the movie was hyperlinked you'd touch the screen to adopt a Jack Russell terrier. Plus there's Melanie Laurent, who basically treats sadness the way Hawaiians treat "Aloha," conjuring 100 different meanings with a single look. So go see it, preferably with your dad. At the end, clutch his hand, look him in the eye, and say, "I'd never give you up, man. Not for all the Melanie Laurents in the world."