LOST's season 6 promo photo resembling da Vinci's "The Last Supper." The homage was no accident.
LOST’s final season has been slightly disappointing…until last night’s (Tuesday, March 9, 2010 in the United States) Ben-centric episode #7, “Dr. Linus.” The episode pulses from a lively, yet taught script and an original vision deftly directed by veteran actor/director Mario Van Peebles.
Whoever the genius was that hired Van Peebles – an established independent film director – to direct such a pivotal episode in the LOST mythology, they deserve much credit for helping to create what proved to be a series-defining episode. Van Peebles has made a few cheesy choices as an actor, but the majority of his work as a director is passionate, powerful and under-appreciated (including NEW JACK CITY, PANTHER and his pièce de résistance biopic about his father, BAADASSSSS!
The LOST creative team have produced a unique situation in network television: for the first time, fans are looking forward to the end of a series…as opposed to watching a great series continually get green lit until it becomes mediocre, running out of new ideas and story themes until finally advertisers drop off and the series is cancelled.
With LOST’s planned series ending, longtime fans anticipate the wrap-up of plot points and conflicts introduced five and six years ago. The writers continue to innovate, appropriately blowing up your standard serial drama expectations as they developed an entire new time line with season 6, further complicating the master story arch.
Now casual and devoted fans alike, don’t get discouraged.
LOST writers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have already used the first 7 episodes of sesason 6 to pay off some of the island’s biggest mysteries:
1. The numbers – We now know where the origin of the numbers significance. Candidates from a master list of mortal heroes. Mortal warriors for the forces of righteousness, fallen and flawed as all humans.
2. The Smoke Monster – …is nature’s dark force. A force that also uses a genetic replica of John Locke’s body to walk the Earth island in human form.
3. Jacob – …God? Buddha? Jesus of suburbia? The Holy Ghost? Jacob has clearly come into focus as a force of nature. A force of positivity. A steward of the hero candidates.
4. Super Fanboy Easter Eggs – …continue to pay off. Minor characters like Rose, Leslie Artz and many, many others continue to return with crucial plot-forwarding screen time. Likewise, popular deceased characters like Boone Carlyle and Alex Rousseau have returned as part of the “flash sideways” time line. Wikipedia reveals – complete with credible sources – that nearly every major and minor character from the series will return for season 6 including Elizabeth Mitchell as fertility specialist Dr. Juliet Burke, Michelle Rodriguez as police officer Ana Lucia Cortez, Dominic Monaghan as rock star Charlie Pace, Jeremy Davies as deceased physicist Daniel Faraday, Rebecca Mader as anthropologist Charlotte Lewis, Harold Perrineau as Michael Dawson Maggie Grace as Shannon Rutherford, Katey Sagal as Locke’s ex-girlfriend Helen Norwood and Cynthia Watros as Hurley’s short-lived love interest, Libby Smith.
Considering the season 5 cliffhanger wherin series hero Jack Sheppard (his last name is beginning to have added subtext) puts the gears in motion to blow up an atomic bomb and yield the dual timelines in season 6, Jack has been a reflective, passive protagonist throughout season 6…until episode 7.
Absorbing and internally deliberating the universal forces of darkness and light – forces beyond his control – Jack’s standoff with fate, as the lit stick of dynamite hisses, allows the audience to see that Jack’s inner battle has been resolved: his transformation into a man of faith is complete. The prodigal hero even impresses ageless Others’ adviser Richard Albert with his show of faith in Jacob’s motives (at the crucial life-saving moment when Albert has lost his own faith).
Considering the show’s Western hemisphere production, it would be easy for the writer’s to make the good-versus-evil themes play out in a Judeo-Christian sub-textual framework. But show runners Cuse and Lindelof have managed to evade that pothole in which creative works like THE MATRIX and LORD OF THE RINGS unavoidably fell…an endorsement of monotheism by proxy. The promo photo tribute to “The Last Supper” might suggest otherwise, but LOST entire current season is more of a battle between good and evil as opposed to the Christian God and Devil.
Ben’s monologue at the end of act 2, prior to the final commercial break, pulses as a moving work of mannered acting, eliciting that same emotional push/pull that only an unspeakable car-crash combination of happiness and sadness can pronounce. That cold weather melancholy only a Superchunk song can elicit. Or a Nick Drake, Elliott Smith or Big Star song. Prosaic pop songs wherein crushing sadness is only alleviated because you (the listener) realize that there is at least one other person in the world (the songwriter) that feels the way you feel.
The monologue is punctuated by the unexpected response from Jacob’s mysterious guard, Ilana. Her character’s emotional response to Ben, that she’ll be willing to vouch for his soul, to give him another chance at redemption is one of the most original, pure storytelling devises that Lindelof and Cuse have created. Completely unexpected, the often tragic history that we’ve seen associated with Ben’s character arch makes the monologue and the entire episode payoff with a deep emotional punch unlike anything network television storytelling has ever encountered.
When I was a little kid, I thought the United States was the greatest country in the world. And in 1976, it very well may have been.
I remember singing Yankee Doodle Dandy in a chorus line at my private elementary school during our end of the year pageant. Being that it was the United States’ bi-centennial celebration, the feeling in the air was quite magnanimous and fantastic. Parades made their way through the Southern Florida streets. In Boca Raton, the Florida town where I spent my first 7 years, many of my schoolmates parents worked at IBM, as did my father, so there was a sense of financial security and middle-class stability as it was still possible to achieve the American Dream.
My father was a hard-working high school valedictorian who ran out of money while attending junior college, yet he was still able to secure good jobs at Lockheed Martin, then later at International Business Machines (IBM). I was proud of my dad when I was a little kid…and I didn’t even really know why. I think I was able to figure out just by watching popular culture that there were not a plethora of African American men working as systems analysts at IBM. Even as a young tyke, I knew my dad was special. Likewise, I quickly picked up that my mother was one of the most gifted high school English teachers in the country.
Now – all these years later – while I think about my country and my president…I feel more pride than I felt in 1976.
And I find it interesting that none of the news cycle pundits are questioning why Congress is voting down party lines – for every vote – for the first time in its history.
If you could put a microphone in the Republican’s caucus meetings, I’m convinced you’d hear: “The Nigger gets none of our votes…not a one…not for anything.”
I can’t wait for that racist, homophobic, sexist baby boomer generation to finally die off.
“The music business is a scornful, mirthless lover hellbent on breaking most musicians’ hearts,” said a very wise sage. Actually that’s not true, I just made that sentence up, but I think it’s more often true that not.
No talent pop stars with beautiful smiles often rise to the top of the mediocrity heap while some of the greatest recorded works by the most artful musicians never see the light of day. My friends and their former band Dynamite Hack still watch their greatest creative work collect dust as an unreleased album. Likewise, my old band Schatzi’s sophomore album Snow Is for Saving Hearts remains unreleased, tied up in legal limbo. (The film industry has it’s own version of this scenario – something called “development hell,” or turnaround purgatory – when a project or a great script can never get beyond developmental talks and negotiations.)
That jaded experience aside, Jan and Dean’s lost album Carnival of Sound is an interesting piece of music history that is finally seeing some sunlight thanks to Rhino Records’ Handmade division.
If you enjoy California surf music from the 1960s, you’ll enjoy this creative curiosity that Jan Berry spent 3 years recording after his unfortunate car accident on Dead Man’s Curve, ironically the very same stretch of road that his band immortalized with their hit song of the same name years earlier.
I love the majority of art created during the fertile period between 1967-1969. And Jan and Dean’s lost tracks are no different. Poppy, whimsical and artfully mixed in mono, Carnival of Sound is a deserving legacy to two musician’s that caught a horrible break during the height of their career.
As distribution becomes more and more available to the masses, albums like Carnival of Sound will hopefully find the appreciative niche audiences that they deserve.
I’ve been admiring Kristen Wiig in bit parts (ADVENTURELAND, KNOCKED UP) for a while now, but I hadn’t watched enough Saturday Night Live (SNL) to discover that she is a comic genius…until I watched her host the SNL primetime Christmas special as Gilly.
With Gilly – the little trouble-causing, Orphan Annie-resembling, minx – Wiig’s face becomes elastic, her voice and spacious timing are dastardly neurotic while her eyes bug right out of her head. You can tell that Wiig has fine-tuned her comic skills with more than 10,000 hours of rehearsal, improve and performance from the sheer intensity…she never breaks character (Jimmy Falon anyone?). With years of training as a member of The Groundlings, her focus and comic timing leave some of the other SNL cast members appearing amateurish and boring.
Digging up the best holiday related clips from season 1 to the present, the entire special was hilarious, but it was the Gilly character that forever sold me on Wiig’s mighty thespian powers.
The Gilly character and her childish desire to create anarchy while remaining mostly silent holds a mirror up to society. She becomes both light and dark, good and evil…and Wiig abandons her mastery of sarcasm with Gilly. Sadistic and adorable, Gilly is Wiig at her most brilliant…rolling the entirety of the dark chaos of the human condition into a character that barely speaks. It’s both creative and creepy…and I totally understand why they had Wiig host the Christmas clips show as Gilly.
I absolutely get it…and it’s genius. Look for Wiig to become SNL’s next break-out superstar.
Fashion designer and director Tom Ford makes his model work.
As Tom Ford jumps from career to career, from fashion design to filmmaking, I find myself fascinated by his life story. Born in Austin to realtor parents, Ford’s family moved around Texas a bit before settling in Sante Fe (one of the cities on the hippie trail that leads up the West Coast). Ford left Santa Fe to attend New York University at age 17; then he dropped out of NYU after a year to focus on modeling and acting. Ford found time to study at prestigious art schools in New York during the Studio 54 days. Later, he provided the artistic vision that resurrected the Gucci fashion line as well as their overall brand. Ford would go on to start his own line, complete with a few boutiques spread around the world. And that is where my Ford appreciation burns hottest: the man knows how to design clothes…from head to toe, glasses to shoes.
And did I mention hisclothes. I have no idea how much they cost, but I know their expensive, becauseno prices listed on his online store. Perhaps Ford will one day expand his brand to include the middle class…
…or maybe his brand will remain a fashion-forward lifestyle that we can aspire to.
Tom Ford’s directorial debut A SINGLE MAN is garnering rave reviews in limited release around the United States. Blackswansongs.com looks forward to viewing it.
The first time I’d heard of Owl City was when I checked the Emo’s show listing in the back of the printed edition of the Austin Chronicle and their show at Emo’s was sold-out about three months in advance. Out of 50 upcoming road shows, the Owl City show was the only one sold-out. I immediately went to their MySpace page (normal early 21st century protocol) and diligently listened. I had to know: “What’s the deal?” Why were they special?
Part-time Austinite Alan Palomo is Neon Indian (with a little help from his friends).
Within 10 seconds of hearing their music I discovered that they were one of those bands that would have never gotten exposure even ten years ago, before the days of MySpace and Facebook, back when radio, a killer live show and an A&R guy dictated what records got recorded.
Owl City is one guy…creating music on his computer…in his bedroom. Owl City is just a kid that spent way too much time listening to the Postal Service; Owl City’s music is like vanilla tasting vanilla ice cream. Their tracks have the gloss of a $100,000 studio, yet its just ultimately…a guy making pop music for the masses out of his bedroom.
Granted, musicians have always recorded masterpieces in their bedroom or rehearsal space, but prior to a few years ago those musicians never had a world-wide distribution network which costs pennies on the dollar. They never had blogs and social networks to spread the buzz. In fact, a great mixtape was lucky to make regional impact.
Now that technology has evened the playing field for recording and distributing music, the bedroom Beethoven can now find his/her niche audience. And his/her niche audience can become such passionate proselytizers that their feverish fandom becomes contagious.
During the music businesses’ old business model (selling CDs), the artists never made money on albums unless they were moving several hundred thousand. The companies had the machine rigged that way (See Steve Albini’s treatise, “Why Some of Your Friends Are This Fucked”).
While Owl City’s music these days exudes a hi-fi gloss, Austin’s latest bedroom maestro Neon Indian (a.k.a. Alan Palomo) possesses a novice, lo-fi charm. Earnest in its cheekiness, the Neon Indian listener feels like they could play in the band. It’s accessible while being arty. It’s the perfect mix of low art and high art pastiched into pop art and pop music.
Neon Indian list their location as Brookyln (cq)/Austin on MySpace. The hipsters of the world with too much money are moving back and forth these days (and occasionally to Portland and San Francisco). This artistic collision between Brooklyn and Austin was inevitable sealed with a miss as soon as Brit Daniel remixed Interpol several years back.
Prior to that, many hipster musician discovered Daniel Johnston through Kurt Cobain, although they likely won’t admit it now.
Every now and again a musician bubbles up from the underground scene in Austin and becomes the flavor of the month in taste-maker circles the world over. Ghostland Observatory took Bob Schneider’s formula for success (self released product + killer live show x ass shaking = exponential word of mouth fame) and moved the happening from the frat party to the dance party, complete with smoke and laser lights.
Now Austin has birthed another musician that combines dance music with a dreamy visual special effects show creating pastiche remix pop art with the insider-meets-outlier feel of someone like Andy Warhol or Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Neon Indian tastes like psychedelic candy mixed with late-night discussions about why every moment in the present is the most important moment in the universe. We live in the moment that will simultaneously decide our broken past and our translucent future. Can you dig it? Let me know what you think about the current Brooklyn-Austin collabo…
Grizzly Bear: “Cheerleader (Neon Indian ‘Sega Genesis P-Orridge’ Remix)”:
Grizzly Bear: “Cheerleader (Neon Indian ‘Studio 6669′ Remix)”:
Friday, November 27, Neon Indian will headline the kickoff show for a new series sponsored by Austin transplants WOXY.com. Click here for tickets.
One of the BlackSwanSongs’s contributors received a byline on http://brooklynvegan.com for an excerpt of the report below combined with the photos above.
Jay Z appeared very comfortable playing the role of the gracious “king of hip-hop.” Memphis Bleek dropped counterpoint rhymes, providing hardscrabble verbal interplay without the silliness of a sideman like Flavor Flav. I was a casual Jay Z fan going into the show (I bought a “Hard Knock Life” mix tape and have downloaded a couple of other records), but by the end of the show I had been become a hardcore Jay Z fan for life.
The show highlights were too numerous to list here, but they included the rock and bass bombast of “99 Problems,” the audience’s deafening call and response during “Jigga What, Jigga Who” and the booming, thuggish, palpitation-inducing low-end produced by his 10-piece band during “Dirt” and “Big Pimpin’.”
And when Jay Z wasn’t showing us Texans how his crew goes hard in Brooklyn, he spoke from the heart during his between song banter. “I know it sounds cliche, but don’t let any haters block your dream,” Hova said earnestly during one of the final breaks. Another one of the show’s more intimate moments came when he brought up vocalist Bridget Kelly for two songs. After her inspired assist on “Empire State of Mind,” Jigga Man smiled his biggest smile of the evening and said, “Damn…she put something extra on it for Texas…she put some extra bar-b-que sauce on it for Texas!”
Before Jay Z’s final curtain call, he took a break to turn on the house lights and point out individuals in all areas of the basketball arena, personalizing the show and reducing the scale as he talk to individuals, calling them out by their attire, homemades signs, dancing skills, etc.
The set list below is word-for-word identical to the setlist at the front of the stage (which I photographed). I’ve left their abbreviations and notes in tact.
SETLIST: RUN THIS TOWN
D.O.A.
Takeover
U Don’t Know
99 Problems
Show Me What You Got
Give It To Me
Diamonds
Jigga
Izzo
Jigga What
P.S.A.
Heart of City (live)
Already Home (last verse Acapella)
Empire State of Mind
A Star Is Born
So Ambitious
Dirt
—–break—–
Thank You
(PLAYBACK SET)
Big Pimpin’
Hardknock Life
Encore
Forever Young
"Some of your friends are already this fucked," said Steve Albini.
Within a two week period I’ve had two friends approach me about attending a seminar…one to join Ignite Energy and one to join LTDTeam.com. Being that I’m incredibly skeptical of anything and everything, especially anything that promises financial rewards, I Googled both companies because something just seemed fishy.
A couple of Google clicks on “LTDTeam.com” combined with the word “scam” immediately brought up this Yahoo answer. Likewise, one click of “Ignite” and “scam” brought up a ton of hits.
At first I felt a little insulted that these friends would try to suck me into their collective mess(es), but then I remembered that these “multi level marketing” businesses often insist that the participants try to get their friends and family involved before anyone else.
I feel sorry that someone wasn’t able to warn these two friends of mine. They are both women, but one has a rich husband and the other does not…meaning, the results are going to be much more disastrous for one of my friends.
If a mult-level marketing company tells you how much you will earn by recruiting rather than by selling, then it is moving closer to a pyramid scheme. People often get hooked in because they see all these possible profits from recruiting others: friends, families, acquaintances, the guy pumping gasoline on the other side of the pump. Unless you get in at the beginning, your earnings will come from recruiting other people.
Unless you love sales and are willing to sell to everyone – from your neighborhood letter carrier to the woman ringing people up at Luby’s Cafeteria – avoid multi-level marketing schemes.
The one-sheet for MANCORA...I feel your temperature rising already.
Late night Saturday night at my crib included an HBO On Demand screening of MANCORA, a tight, sexy, Peruvian film directed by Ricardo de Montreuil.
This film blindsided me because I hadn’t read or heard anything about it. It made the festival rounds last year, and it appears to have received an excellent reception at Sundance Film Festival’s 2008 screenings.
MANCORA was very stylish. The cameras moved smoothly through the environment with the life-like grace of the hand-held camera work you might see in a documentary. Peru served as a lead character too: the landscape, people and culture all colliding to guide the lead character Santi into a life-changing epiphany regarding sex, desire and coping with the loss of a family member through extreme balls-to-the-wall hedonism.
This film was steamy. Sexy. Caliente. It will make you want to hang-out with your lover and just take all your clothes off and jump into an enormous, warm body of water. And the film wasn’t at all sleazy or corny. It was just pure, unbridled Peruvian sensuality captured on film in a very creative and original way.
There is subtext about class-battles between dark-skinned Indian people from the country side versus the young, urban, light-skinned Spanish and Portuguese-speaking upper class. And Miami-born actor Enrique Murciano nearly steals the film portraying Iñigo, an affluent “gringo” and Lothario-type who speaks fluent Spanish, yet plays the part of the Ugly American with devilish elan.
I’m reluctant to give any of the plot away, because the film unfolds like that adventure you always dreamed of taking during college. The director spent many years as the creative director for MTV Latin America, so he has a highly-trained visual eye and keeps the viewer entertained with about five or six of the most beautiful young actors in all South America. There’s plenty of eye candy for both men and women in this sexually-charged drama.
I watched it alone, but I definitely recommend watching MANCORA with your significant other…then after the film is done the two of you can plot and hatch plans for your own trip to northern Peru’s bohemian beach paradise.
To view the film’s official Flickr photostream, click here.
Some nice person was generous enough to post their high definition video of Thom Yorke’s new (and still unnamed) band during their live debut Saturday night at the Echoplex in Los Angeles.
The band definitely qualifies as a supergroup: Yorke in front on vocals, Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Beck/R.E.M. drummer Joey Waronker, percussionist/multi-instrumentalist Mauro Refosco, and Flea on bass.
Check this video out! And don’t forget to blow it up to full screen. Or better still, cable it to your 1080 p television and check it out super large. The sound is decent and the HD digital video maintains so much quality that the bigger it gets, the more you feel like you are actually at the show…a strange effect of the HD video combined with the location in the room where the videographer is standing.
