The Wheels on the Bus Go SHHHH!

After a lot of consideration, I have a (modest) proposal for Chicago’s public transit system that I think will be every bit as transformative as an Obama presidency. Sure, my idea may ruffle some feathers and upset some status quos (stati qui?). But what great idea has ever blossomed without an attendant ripple of controversy? I soldier onward, martyr for a greater cause. I can keep my innovative mind silent no longer; down from the mount I come, with this revelation etched on this blog in lieu of stone tablets: public transportation should operate in silence. Yes, silence! Silencio! Buses and trains should be like traveling libraries. (‘Silence’ is maybe too strong. The quiet, studious feel of a library is exactly what I am calling for.) Conversation, if necessary, should be hushed. Cell phones? Only in absolute emergencies. Think your seatmate is cute? Put it in the “missed connections,” friend.

Think about it; while the recent good news from the NEA seems to indicate that reading might be somewhat on the rise, the stats are still generally bleak: “The percentage of American adults who report reading any book not required for work or school during the previous year is still declining. It fell from 56.6 percent in 2002 to 54.3 percent in 2008.”

Now, some of these stats may be weird and wonky – “literary reading” consists only of “novels, short stories, poems or plays” and nonfiction is not counted at all – but I think we can generally agree that Americans are probably not reading as much as they should. To that end, what better place to emphasize reading than in the cramped, miserable commute-boxes of the CTA? I would consider relaxing this rule for weekend and late evening travel, but for Monday through Friday, people can spend their commute reading something quietly. Or just being quiet, quietly. It would be a perfect time to read is all I’m saying.

Some small minded critics may say, “Martin, this sounds like a pretty self-serving proposal. Aren’t you just making this rule because YOU like reading on the bus and get annoyed and distracted by people screaming at each other across the isle and/or shouting into their cellphones?” To those critics, whoever you are, I say: how dare you? My motives are much higher than selfish happiness and solipsistic pleasure. My motives are pure as the driven snow: increased literacy across all of Chicagoland and, hopefully, the country as well. And if some increased napping happens to sneak in there, too, well then so much the better.
Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com

More thoughts on “New Media”

My last post touched on my increasing feelings of comfort when it comes to the passing of old ways, even if those old ways are comfortable, familiar, and rich in tradition. Even if the transition is sure to be bumpy and awkward in places. I keep thinking and reading about all this. I guess for people who ARE the media, in some ways it's the ONLY story right now. Anyway, I had some more scattered thoughts over the past few days as I continue to consider and discuss these ideas:

As I mentioned in the last post, there are plenty of concerns about what the new media cannot do – resource-wise – that an old media outlet, like the Washington Post could. But, as Huffington Post blogger Ari Herzog argues, there are also things that new media can do that old media couldn’t imagine. It certainly seems to be rapidly solidifying conventional wisdom that we are inevitably moving towards some sort of hybrid old & new – a balance of corporate resources (since there will surely be corporations where there is money to be made) and the flexible, so-called “citizen-journalist” model of the current new media. In other words, we will find a natural balance between "some random dude uploading pictures of the Hudson River plane crash to Flickr for free" and "shelling out $1.25 in quarters into a newspaper box to flip through inky, broadsheet pages an entire day after the event to see those same pictures." The Huffington Post itself is surely one of these types of synergized (is that a word?) entities. I don’t think I would consider it a perfect model, but it is certainly a fascinating jumping-off point.

Also on the positive side of the coin for “new media” – huge corporate marketing efforts with bloated budgets and vast resources can't necessarily make something big anymore. Put another way: a tiny operation, or super-low-budget outfit has a hugely increased opportunity for wide success in the leveled playing field of YouTubes and the like. YouTube videos posted from some luminary (like Barack Obama!) are no different than Joe Blow’s posts. Tad Friend wrote a piece in the New Yorker, which was both fascinating and nauseating, about the marketing of major motion pictures, in which the manipulation of a film for maximum marketability (is that a word?) is laid pretty bare.

In this way, the major movie studios, record labels, media conglomerates, etc, are no friend to consumers, and there seems little reason to weep for their passing. Movies and music remain nothing more (or less) than profit margins to huge media conglomerates, without a passing concern for the quality of a product or its innovation or creativity. Safe bets, mass-produced and homogenized to appeal to literally as many people as humanly possible oftentimes leaves you with a mealy, mishmash of lowest-common-denominator ideas. As Tad Friend indicates in that New Yorker article, with an eye on the bottom line, a media company will add to a movie some fart jokes for boys, some action for men, friendship & fashion for women...add it all together and you get the worst movie ever conceived and created! Ultimately, however, even though we are all used to the studio system and the major label system, we probably will get better, more innovative, more creative products if artists/creators/musicians/filmmakers don't have to co-opt their ideas for an executive who cares nothing about the content or quality and cares everything for the $$.

This, of course is also a tired old cliché – the brilliant artists who are forced to sell out and taint their perfect artistic visions with crass commercialism. Another way to look at it is that people who market products can help artists actually sell their work instead of laboring endlessly as talented yet uncompromising amateurs. It kind of melts my brain to imagine how many endlessly terrible bands and writers and filmmakers will be given (ARE being given!) a platform for their total garbage – equal footing with people infinitely more talented. But isn’t this what democracy is all about? The cream rises to the top. With a level playing field, it just means that super-expensive cream and low-budget cream have a more similar chance at success. That is certainly good in theory. Good enough in theory that I don't have a problem trying it out for awhile, at any rate. It seems to be working so far, as major corporations teeter and this "new media" jazz makes speedy inroads...

The further flip side, though, is that this level playing field makes it much harder to reach a wide audience. A consumer can theoretically find the one video made by the one person whom they most identify with. A new media mind-meld! Taken to the absurd, yet logical extreme, imagine a model – a non-lucrative model, it almost goes without saying – where artists can find their one perfect audience member; your favorite band could be a band that only makes music for you! On a more realistic level, this fragmentation also means that there will be no (or far fewer) huge, unifying media events – like The Dark Knight or Titanic or Star Wars or whatever. The muscle and reach and power of the national, major media companies can be a huge blessing to some artists – there are plenty of major studio films and major studio albums that are amazing and even transcendent. But those are few, compared to the massive output of a creative country – nay, WORLD. The tiny percentage of bands and movies (etc) that the all-powerful Fountain of the major media corps chooses to bless certainly reaps huge rewards. But the far more enormous percentage of artists labor in total obscurity. Some of that obscurity is deserved for sure, but some is surely not. The collapse of the conglomerates would seem to mean the select few that have been carried very high will surely be brought lower, but the opportunities for the major mass of other artists to scale higher heights are enormously increased.

Think about music videos that go viral (like OK Go on treadmills), or homemade videos (like Numa Numa, which we have discussed here before), or self-published books that end up at #1 on the NYTimes bestseller list (like The Shack by William P. Young) – all unprecedented levels of success without any major funding or mass-media backing. But also think about the controversy that erupted around the “don’t tase me bro” homemade video or the other kid who was tasered at the UCLA library – videos like these are powerful, immediate, and have effected real change. Videos like these can outperform both expensive studio productions and the best news team on the planet.

As with all things, if people get something better, that’s what they’ll use. I don’t read print newspapers anymore because I can read everything online. It’s cheaper, simpler, and also easier to share with others. Lots of people are like me, which means that the old way of doing business for newspapers has got to change. Sorry to upset the comfortable apple cart, folks, but this is better. If bloggers and twitterers and flickr photographers are able to beat the conventional news media to the punch, as Ari Herzog says, then I’m sorry conventional news media, but you’ve got to switch it up! Or go the way of the telegraph, obviously. That used to be big too.

Ari Herzog's aforementioned article is absolutely worth reading: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-herzog/why-old-media-cant-deny-n_b_160239.html

This Too Shall Pass

We live in crazy times, right? Everything is changing, and so fast! The Internet! iTunes!! The Kindle!!! We are living in the digital age, the world is flat, welcome to the post-American age, and so forth. Lots of hip buzzwords, competing, hipper buzzwords, mass confusion, and critical disagreement on what just about everything means in this new world.

I confess to feeling stressed out over all this sturm und drang every so often, especially as it relates to the things I love. I read about the end of books, the end of newspapers, the end of the album and a slow rhythm of panic creeps into my heartbeat. I love those things! Don’t take them away from me, flat world! I don’t want eBooks – I like organizing my books onto real bookshelves in my home!

Yet, of late, I have found myself increasingly comfortable with our changing media -- the record industry, newspaper industry, book industry, TV industry, etc. It's natural. Just because in our brief lifetimes we’ve gotten used to having ad-supported 30-minute situation comedies on TV all the time, and storefronts full of CDs in plastic cases, and inky newspapers plopping down on our lawns every morning, that doesn't mean it has to stay that way forever. This is a growing, changing, occasionally transforming democracy. ("Yes, we can!") Things tend to work until they stop working and then they stop. Something else fills that void, or else it doesn’t. I'm sure some people were pissed when they stopped getting their milk delivered to their doorstop too. But those pissed off people had electric refrigerators to fill the void, so the right hand gaveth and the left hand tooketh away. Things change! (My wife says people don’t drop old ways, they adopt new, better ways. True – the flip side of the same coin. Remember film canisters? Taking rolls of film to a camera store to be developed? Yes, I did those things less than a decade ago. Seems quaint now, doesn't it? A better, easier, cheaper, digital system came along. Now I use that system.) Change may be weird and scary, but it is also the Way of the World. Since always. Has your mind been blown yet?

At any rate, one feels – I feel that creeping fear when the world seems to be taking away things that I like, comforting things. It’s hard to wake up each morning and be told that something you really enjoy isn’t shared by enough people across the country and that thing is no longer economically viable. Aside from the sadness of losing that thing you love, one tends – I tend – to feel disconnected in addition. Why don’t more people buy books and read fiction like me? Since when did people stop listening to whole albums from beginning to end? What am I doing wrong? How did I fall out of step with society-at-large? And do I even want to get back into step?

Much has been made of the demise of the newspaper in particular, no doubt because all the people making much of this demise are former, current, part-time, or hopeful newspaper writers. On a theoretical level I understand their hysteria: it’s a scary, strange thing when something that feels so much like a pillar-of-organized-society stares down the double-barreled shotgun of inevitable failure. My aunt, a super-successful lifelong newspaperwoman said, and I paraphrase, “sure, the internet is great and all, but since there is no business model for actually generating any serious money off Yahoo! News and the like, who will actually pay writers who write the stories?” To this thought I add: who will pay people to fact check and copyedit, who will pay the expenses incurred to get around the world, who will pay the best writers more and fire the crummy ones, etc etc etc? These are valid questions, and they are the same questions that made me scared, like all these newspaperfolk wailing and gnashing their teeth. But over time I am coming to a slow feeling of peace towards this. The best way will find its way to the top. Newspapers found their way to the top, after all, and stayed there for 150 years or so. Now something else will rise as the Times and Post and Trib find themselves hurting and shrinking. There may be an uncomfortable interregnum, but something will Darwin its way out of the internet ooze and climb to the top of the Galapagos. Or something. Right? (It's also possible that the demise of newspapers has been greatly exaggerated...)

Maybe this is all Obama-fueled “rebuilding America” hope on my part, and maybe it is an empty hope. But even without the Baracktimism, I have to think that a market opportunity (read: $$) will result from the collapse of the newspaper industry, and where there is opportunity, there will be entrepreneurs. Maybe not the Sam Zells of the world, maybe not even the newer dudes like the Larry Pages and Sergey Brins, but someone. And so too with these other industries whose failures are giving me metaphorical heartburn – even if it means that I don’t have bookshelves in the same way as I do now, I believe that books won’t disappear altogether. I fought the idea of digital music on the same sorts of personal grounds: I love shelves of CDs. Yet my iPod and digital downloads pretty much won me over in the end, just like that digital camera. I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if I was won over by some form of awesome e-book in the future, or some sort of digital newspaper. Milk remains as yet undigitizable, so that’s safe in this strange and unsettling new world, even if the milkman was not.

Roll Out the Ridiculous

My wife and I used our snowed-in status recently to dip our toes tentatively in the waters of awards shows. Under normal circumstances, I won’t go within 100 yards of any awards show except for the Academy Awards, which I generally love (to hate). But it was snowing outside, we were happily ensconced on our couch (which rules out the Wii), and I was watching football, which meant that I was obligated by the bonds of my matrimonial vows to switch the channel during commercials and time outs to something my wife and I can both enjoy. This led us to the Golden Globes. Usually I find awards shows pretty gross and hard to watch, but the Golden Globes ended up being passably interesting enough to leave on in the background, while we caught up on episodes of The Office and 30 Rock on Hulu.

What did NOT end up being interesting – or watchable! – were the two - TWO! – red carpet preshows we started to watch and then had to studiously avoid. I really can’t imagine who watches these red carpet shows. No seriously, who watches them? They are the most awkward, unbearable, disgusting possible events you can see on TV. I would rather watch anything than a red carpet show – the home shopping channel, a sleazeball televangelist, According to Jim -- ANYthing. (Well, maybe not According to Jim.) In fact, I would probably also rather scoop out my own eyeballs with a rusty, colonial pewter spoon. These preshows actually gross me out to a point where I have a physically negative reaction to them. I imagine it is a similar reaction to witnessing a fatal car crash, were I ever to witness one. Because even thinking about these shows gets me too worked up and nauseous, I will simply offer a comprehensive list of things that are awful and unbearable about red carpet shows:

1) The “journalists” (hahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!) who “interview” the celebrities on the red carpet are utter morons.
2) The “celebrities” who walk the red carpet and talk to these “journalists” are morons.

And there you have it. The most complete, compelling list of reasons ever compiled to avoid these types of shows.

I’m also pretty sure that everybody involved knows what an absolutely disgusting waste of time it is, too. Everybody with a brain bigger than a prune seems pretty dead-eyed and miserable, which gives me at least a quantum of solace (get it? get it???).

I can only imagine that any human being who watches these shows does so solely to see the fashion, which leads me to heartily beg of everyone: go online. Seriously. Look at the pictures of the dresses online. It’s not worth the degrading spectacle and soul-killing nastiness of the red carpet TV show just to get a look at the back of Renee Zellweger’s monstrous outfit that is only considered a dress in the fantasyland inhabited by fashion designers who are not real people on Earth. It is especially important to keep all this in mind since the Oscars are fast approaching. I think.

Lastly, a personal and private message: Tiki Barber, you were a pretty good football player, but you seriously need to rethink EVERYthing.

Want a Dream Role? Write it Yourself!

In the Woods by Tana French

rating: 4 of 5 stars

“In the Woods” was an awesome, engrossing, fast-paced read. After a garishly overwritten and annoying prologue – mercifully only two pages total – that gave me serious pause as I began, the next 427 pages raced past. In the end, I appreciated this book mostly for the characters and relationships, which felt real and fully formed, not just ciphers facilitating a rocket-fueled plotline. In contrast to some of the other critically acclaimed “police procedural” novels with literary aspirations that I have read in the past couple of years – "Wolves Eat Dogs" and "The Night Gardener" in particular – Tana French’s characters felt real and I cared just as much about their fates and relationships as I did about the solving of the crime(s). French’s author bio calls her “a trained actress” and I couldn’t help but feel the whole time I was reading that she was writing the novel purely so that a high-powered Hollywood screenwriter could adapt it into a screenplay and she could refuse to sell the rights to it until she is hired to play Cassie, the intuitive, emotionally bruised, unorthodoxly attractive female lead. Yet while I took some private amusement from my imaginary scenario (which is probably nonetheless true and accurate), it’s clear that she has an actress’ understanding of character and dialogue. Her descriptions occasionally wander into the realms of the florid, and she has a somewhat maddening habit of having feelings and reactions “flash across” the faces or eyes of her characters. I didn’t mind it until I realized it was being overused. Fortunately, stylistic tics aside, the plot is tense and well-constructed, and French’s subtle skills with character and dialogue are foremost; they go a long and satisfying way toward fleshing the book out into more than just your run-of-the-mill thriller.

To talk about the plot is to spoil it, as far as I am concerned. So I will simply say that I very much enjoyed the mysteriously twinned crimes of past and present, and the unbearable extra layer of tension to know or understand the connection between them, if any. I also enjoyed the (albeit utterly implausible) way the crime of the past was personalized – adding an even more compelling aspect of furious desperation to the story.

Ultimately, I was surprised how sad I was made by the end of the book. Not by the resolution of the plot (which I won’t discuss), but by the resolution of the characters: I was surprised to find that I had really grown to know and like them, failings and weaknesses and all. I connected to these detectives in a way I don’t think I can remember connecting to a detective in a mystery book or even a crime TV show. Who cares (or knows anything) about the personal lives of the endlessly revolving, always interchangeable Law & Order detectives or lawyers? They are there solely to serve the story. But “In the Woods” was satisfyingly the other way around. And the resolution of the plot didn’t hit me with half as much impact as the resolution of the lives of the characters.

photo credit: Gothamist

Wii At Last, Wii At Last

With a fresh wine post under our belts (tagged under 'oenophile' no less!), the Culturephiles-boundaries continue to expand. To keep pushing our horizons past the regular music/book/movie triumvirate, I offer this, our first post on video games. Nobody will ever confuse the Culturephiles with Kotaku, but that doesn't have stop us from trying, right? After all, I believe that of the three Contributing Editors here (I just made up that title right now), I am the only one who even owns a video game system. For this, I can thank my family, who thoughtfully gave my wife and I a Wii for Christmas, probably snatching the last one off the ravaged, postapocalypic Best Buy shelves, as a forlorn little boy watched from the snowy outdoors, his cold nose pressed timidly against the glass – a solitary tear streaking down his grimy cheek as his only hope for a happy Christmas disappeared into a shopping bag in the back of my mom’s Honda minivan, which splashed a wave of freezing sludge onto his threadbare, secondhand winter coat as she sped away. Merry Christmas to me! I’m 28 years old!!!

My mom also tracked down and gave us a Wii Fit (possibly disappointing that little boy’s foster sister), which is, for the uninitiated, a balance board approximately the size of a scale, which you stand on and control games using your body and your balance. Neither my wife nor I have ever been video game players, or “gamers” as we now like to be called, but we have both taken to the Wii swimmingly. After all, most of the press surrounding the Wii was the accessibility, the sheer fun-factor that made it a popular system for kids and senior citizens alike. I can now report that it’s true: the Wii has an extraordinarily low entrance bar and a wonderfully manageable learning curve.

I am especially enamored of this Wii Fit – skiing, heading soccer balls, ski jumping, even boxing – while standing, crouching, leaning, swiveling; it’s a wholly different experience from sitting on the couch with huge controller covered in indecipherable colored buttons, demanding complex, coded sequences and the nimble use of what seems like all ten fingers independently. Don’t get me wrong: I’m still largely terrible at these – and all – video games, but I have never before enjoyed playing a game as much as I have enjoyed learning and experimenting and playing with the Wii Fit balance board.

The marketing and possible use of the Wii Fit as a legitimate fitness tool strikes me as somewhat preposterous, though it’s certainly leagues better than the aforementioned couch-sitting, activity-wise. But the various tools which purport to gauge your weight, your BMI (Body Mass Index, naturally), and “Wii Fit Age,” then help you track and achieve improvements, seem flimsy at best. My first “weigh in” put my fitness age at 32 (a depressing start.....) which was then followed four or five days later with both a stunning 6-pound weight gain, and a simultaneous plummeting of my Wii Fit Age to 24! Figure THAT one out. (I can pretty much guarantee I was not able to pack on six lbs in just five days, even though there is a good amount of holiday chocolate still lying around my home.) And while I have on occasion dipped my toe into the scary, not-as-much-fun waters of the yoga and strength training functions, I tend to leave the idea that it is going to whip me into shape through extremely enjoyable means at the door, and primarily enjoy the Wii Fit as an awesome kind of active controller.

I just unlocked a snowboarding game and it promises to further consume my spare moments. In fact, flaunting the alleged health benefits of the Wii Fit made for the most fun evening I’ve had with it yet, as I sliced and tore my way down a mountain on a Wii-snowboard, while taking the occasional slug from the bottle of delicious Fat Tire in my hand, free from the tyranny of a maddening controller.

I realize this is barely more than an advertisement for the Wii and Wii Fit, but what can I say? I'm falling in love. Don't believe the haters: this is pure FUN.

Oenophile #1: Impress these Grapes

We all know the drill.

You've been invited to a dinner party. You've been told to not bring anything, or maybe, "just a bottle of wine." With sweaty palms, you deliver the phone back to its cradle and look around the kitchen. On top of the refrigerator is a half bottle of port that came with the apartment, elegantly displayed next to a bottle of Southern Comfort, courtesy of your 22 year-old cousin when he came to visit from Virginia. You don't have any wine.

You are now standing in Jewel. Nothing seems to look good, so, in a mounting state of panic, you grab a bottle of Yellow Tail, or something with a moose on the label, and run.

At the dinner party, somehow, your wine isn't opened. Or, when it is, someone says, "Oh, this is good." Good? You feel small and sad and alone. And the nearly full bottle of Moose Ass Merlot is staring at back at you.

Or maybe this was just me. I worked in a wine shop in college, and after I couldn't get wine at wholesale, it was easy to revert back to whatever was within my budget. But the world is getting flatter. Even with wine prices. With the economic stimulus package, soon wine will be free.

I love wine and I thought I would pass on the love through Culturephiles. If you hate wine, that's fine, but at least this isn't a post about the new Andrew Bird album*.

3 Reds Under $20 for January

Wine: Château Pesquié Côtes-du-Ventoux Les Terrasses
Where to Buy: Kafka Wines
Price: $14
Holy cow. The label almost says it all. "Terrasses is a deep ruby color wine, soft and elegant, with red fruits, spices and garrigues aromas.” I love this wine. Red fruits, and jammy. Round and warm but not an ass kicker. And at $14 it is a steal. This is a wine for everyone that no one will bring to the party.

Wine: Caparone Nebbiollo

Where to Buy: Red & White
Price: $20
I'm crazy for this wine. It isn't for everyone: minerals, tar, earth, dark fruits. But if this is your style, grab it. Personally, I feel like a Roman centurion when I drink it. The only place I have seen it is at Red&White, a new shop in Bucktown. It's a great spot with free tastings every week. Well worth the visit and you are sure to find something new and different.


Wine: Cigarzin
Where to Buy: Trader Joe's
Price: $17 - $20

This is a spicy, old vine Zin. Big on the nose. Berries, leather, wood, licorice, gunpowder. A nice winter wine to eat with some comfort foods. Like rabbit stew. Stirred with a ham hock. A hound is sleeping at your feet. A Nor'easter is coming, and you don't give a damn.



*There will be posts, there will. There will be posts. See you January 20th.

VCB: Ding! Ding! Ding! Let's Get It ON!

I tip my cap to Brendan's passionate defense of Vicky Christina Barcelona. (I will also tip my cap to anyone who cares to defend that turdfire, Slumdog Millionaire! (Kidding!)) Further, many of Brendan's points are valid and well-made. Such is the bonhomie of the culturephile crew, who love nothing more than a fiery debate about the relative merits of most everything.

Yet there is one portion of Brendan's post I will fight back on, one point I will concede, and one more point I will make in criticism of the film as a whole.

Rebuttal: I continue to maintain that the characters are Types of People, rather than people. Just because Rebecca Hall is an attractive and talented actress does not make her hazily-drawn, clumsily-written character any more defined. I maintain that she was simply a cog in Woody's clunky story-machine. She's nothing more than the Girl Who Thinks With Head to oppose Scarlett's Girl Who Thinks With Heart, rather than a real person who thinks and/or feels in certain ways. While Hall may well be compelling and hot (Brendan, you dog), and while she may do her very best with what little she’s given to work with, she still didn’t convince me that everything she said came from an actual human being. Brendan carefully neglects to defend Javier Bardem (Brooding Artist), Penelope Cruz (Hot Temperamental Artist), and Scarlett Johanssen (Oy). Javier and Penelope were fun to watch, but were no deeper than your average sitcom protagonists. Scarlett, well…there’s not much there to defend.

Concession: I will concede that in the end, while the characters perhaps did not change enough for my liking -- I felt that the point of their experiences was murky at best -- it is not a prerequisite of a good film to make me walk out of the theater knowing the Correct Answer. Any good critic will tell you that audience interpretation is critical to any artistic endeavor, and I am no different. Woody shouldn't have to tell me the point of his movie. So in this, I concede to Brendan: I retract my criticism of the ending of the film; perhaps the characters were affected and learned something after all.

Continued Criticism: I touched on this before, and will reiterate and expand. The movie wasn’t bad. In my review – which I felt to be lukewarm rather than a full-on pan – I threw this movie the bone that it was "watchable but uneven," and from there I will not back down. This movie was not interesting enough to be a drama, nor funny enough to be a comedy, nor bittersweet enough to be a dramedy. And while I have enjoyed many “uncategorizable” movies in my time, this wasn’t one. This was simply muddled. The “gun scene” at the end (spoiler alert?) typified for me that this movie didn’t know how to handle itself. I guess the scene is meant to be both tense and somewhat comedic (correct me if I’m wrong, Brendan), but it felt like neither to me, as well as ultimately just being a huge cop out: the gun is fired, sort of, and injures one of the main characters, sort of, and it’s not really a big deal, but sort of is. Sort of. Argh. Either let’s have some dramatic stakes to a main character pulling a GUN on the other main characters, or let’s have it be a slapstick joke, but either way I want a side to be picked. Playing it as both – and neither – perfectly encapsulates my problem with the movie as a whole. Get off the fence, Woody! Sure, someone like Brendan could make a case as to why it was one or the other or even argue that doesn’t matter, but, to ME, none of it rings true or feels right.

Brendan and I are like a regular Siskel and Roeper here!

VCB: A Rebuttal

About a month ago, I went to see “Vicky Christina Barcelona.” It was a somewhat unenthusiastic trip, made more for the accolades Penelope Cruz was receiving than any good reviews it had received. I was particularly dissuaded after reading Martin’s scathing pan of it. However, I really liked it. It’s not my favorite Woody Allen film (see: “The Purple Rose of Cairo.” No, seriously, see it right now. Mia Farrow gives a heartbreaking performance and I would say her final scene rivals the great silent film performances of the 1920s, if I had ever seen a silent film from the 1920s). I thought it was a melancholy rumination on love and art and how we live our lives, and I left the theater in such a pleasantly sad state that I was shocked when I reread Martin’s thoughts. I had to respond.

“The blank, borderline dullness of this title presages my thoughts on the film as a whole: Vicky Christina Barcelona is about Vicky and Christina in Barcelona. Ok. We get it. Anything else? No? Ok. That’s…um…fine, I guess.”

Yup, the title should be roundly criticized for not telling us exactly what the movie is about. I guess “A Melancholy Rumination on Love and Art and How We Live Our Lives” was out since it was already used for a Martin Lawrence vehicle back in the mid -90s. Besides, simple titles that state the main characters’ names (“The Great Gatsby,” “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid,” “Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins”) are passé.

"The characters were Types, who likewise never blossomed into people."

Here, I will have to give a spirited defense with my sole exhibit being the performance of Rebecca Hall as Vicky. She totally nails the wordiness of Allen’s dialogue – a difficult feat (see: Scarlett Johansson) – and makes it seem natural. More impressively, she lets you feel the conflict and passion underneath her brittle exterior. It's a very complex role. She has to play the wet-blanket best friend and you’re totally on her side throughout the movie, hoping that she can break free from her hermetic world. She manages to be likable even when she’s annoying, both because the part is so well-written but also because Hall does such a great job of humanizing unsympathetic actions.

"The whole film was set in a world of seemingly unimaginable privilege and wealth."

Well, if you want a movie about unimaginable poverty and despait, see “Slumdog Millionaire.” Oh wait, you did, and you disliked that movie also. VCB is in the “Americans Abroad” tradition popularized by Henry James and continued by Diane Johnson today. Yes, they’re about rich people, because they’re the ones who can afford these experiences. That doesn’t mean we cant relate to the character’s dilemmas of finding one’s identity,

"Nobody even ended up particularly changed by the events of the film. Everybody ends up in pretty much the same position they were in at the very first moment of the film, and I’m not particularly confident that anybody even learned or gleaned anything from the proceedings I watched for 90 minutes."

What about Cristina? She spent the summer playing Anais Nin to Cruz’ June Miller and knows what her heart can and can’t take. She has newfound artistic confidence and, as the annoying narrator points out, knows more firmly what she doesn’t want. And therein lies the distinction between the two characters – both know what they don’t want, but only one has the courage to walk away from it. And you know these two best friends are never going to enjoy the same intimacy now that they’ve each made their decision, because that decision is going to push them farther and farther away from each other. And, even though I didn’t totally buy Johansson’s performance, I was saddened by that.

"Because this bears mentioning: if you have been led to believe that Scarlett Johansson has a hot threesome with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, forget it."

If a steamy Javier-Penelope coupling is what you’re after, rent “Jamon Jamon.” This movie is a melancholy rumination of love and art and how we live our life.

Favorite Albums of 2008

Despite my love of scouring the year-end 'best of' lists, I realize I have been faced with a psychological dilemma in assigning a ranking to anything this year. For some reason, I can't get beyond the mental road block that once I put something on my list, that album or book should be one of the best albums or books I have ever listened to or read. Yes, I know the lists are not meant to be 'best ever' lists, but it is just how I think.

Therefore, in a year where I probably purchased more music than ever before, I feel like there are very few albums that I am going to remember in the future as being truly great. Good, yes. Great...well, we'll have to see. So, in an effort to be more laissez-faire with my music list, I am not ranking them. What music did I listen to the most? What music did I most enjoy? These are the records that made 2008, two thousand and pretty-great. Below are the albums I did not have in common with Martin:

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

Love them or hate them, these Ivy-Leaguers write a great pop song. Song of the summer was 'Mansard Roof' for me, and in the meantime, I have gained a new appreciation boat shoes and hipster rock. This album seems to have made lots of lists, and I am right there with the world in putting it on mine.

Girl Talk - Feed the Animals

The most schizophrenic album I received in 2008 and usually I have little patience for mash-up artists. Every listen gets more fun, and trying to identify all the samples in any track is like an audio "Where's Waldo." Samples per second (s/s) is possibly an imaginary number. This begins my first of a long line of math references when writing about music.

Sigur Ros - Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust

If I were now to have you buy one Sigur Ros album it is this one. I came back to it after putting down and it actually got better. If I would say wait on seeing one band live in 2009, it is Sigur Ros. They haven't put much thought into the live show in support of the record, and it was a bit disappointing. In any event, this is a beautiful, sweeping album.

Esau Mwamwaya & Radioclit - The Very Best Mixtape

What do you get when you take the dulcet tones of Malawi born singer Esau Mwamwaya and the Danger Mouse-like sampling of London-based DJ Radioclit and put them together? 'The Very Best Mixtape' is your answer. It has great covers of MIA's "Boys" and Vampire Weekend's "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa". The very best part of the mixtape is that it is free.

Bob Dylan - Bootleg Series Volume 8

I was a huge fan of "Modern Times" and, like it, this two-disc set contains just the right amount of rambling introspection and head bobbing rock tunes that I want from a later Dylan album. I know it's not really a new album, but I am going by release date for this one.

Magnetic Fields - Distortion

Admission: I can't listen to this album straight through. The conceit of using distortion is not lost on me or my ears, but it becomes a little like hearing music through a beehive. However, I think the songs on 'Distortion' are great. Sprinkle them throughout a party mix to really enjoy. None the less, this is one of the 2008 keepers.

And those I remain in line with Martin on:

MGMT - Oracular Spectacular

They say Western music is about the building of tension and release of tension. Maybe that is why this album is so catchy?

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

Best album of the year.

Mates of State - Re-Arrange Us

Best Album of 2008 to play really loud and sing all day.

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Because EVERYONE has this one on their list.