"Well, if you promise to go to sleep right after this, you can each have another Mothra-Pop and watch videos."
If it were to be released this year rather than next, the Dardennes' The Son would be my number film 2002 and would ensure that this is the seventh straight year with an A movie. Stupid distributors.
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Review of Aimee Mann's Lost in Space in the November 2002 9 Times: There was early scuttlebutt that LOST IN SPACE would be a more aggressive album from Richmond native Aimee Mann. With that and with the absence of quirky-pop uber-producer Jon Brion, the most surprising aspect of LOST IN SPACE isn’t that it’s different, but that it’s the more of the same as Mann’s 2000 release, BACHELOR NO. 2. In fact, call it BACHELOR NO. 2, PART 2: More clever lyrics that transcend the clichés they’re based on; more adventurous pop tunes (spanning the vast gamut from medium-slow to medium-fast) that are unabashedly melodious; more of Mann’s agreeable, mellow alto.
It’s a holding pattern, no doubt, but given BACHELOR NO. 2’s pervasive critical acclaim, not many are complaining. Nor should they. While LOST IN SPACE may not reach the apexes that NO. 2 sometimes did -- no melody as engaging as the “Karma Police”-esque coda to “How Am I Different,” no lyrics as haunting as the thoughts of an acquaintance’s suicide in “Just Like Anyone” -- but neither is any song on SPACE as expendable as NO. 2’s “Susan.”
The first half of LOST IN SPACE is top-heavy with the album’s best songs. “Humpty Dumpty,” as infectious as any song Mann’s written, is one of many songs on SPACE that deals with romantic relationships. The similarly contagious “Guys Like Me,” four songs later, is embeddedly about Mann’s other major lyrical obsession: the record business. “High on Sunday 51” has one line in each verse that remains wedged on a single, repeated note, which is used as a musical counterpoint to the explicit drug metaphor that underscores the song. And smack-dab in the middle of the album, “Pavlov’s Bell” finally meets those ersatz “more aggressive” expectations: it’s the most brazenly rock that Mann’s been in her solo career. Alas, the final five songs are neither as lyrically or as musically successful as those initial ones -- “The Moth,” in particular, has an odd expansion of the formulaic moth-to-flame metaphor -- but it’s only in comparison to the album’s earlier greatness that they somewhat disappoint.
Over the past couple years, Mann’s been more known for her dislike of major record labels than for her music. Most articles about Mann circa BACHELOR NO. 2 focused on Mann's (initial) self-distribution of the album and her disdain for her greatest-hits record, rather than focusing on the merits of BACHELOR. Two years later, newspapers and magazines seem to be emphasizing Mann’s music again. Thanks to the superiority of much of LOST IN SPACE, they certainly have an excellent rationale.
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I was depressed yesterday, and then I put on Lust Control's We Are Not Ashamed and I became happy. Bad things please me.
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Reviewlet of Roger Dodger (high B+): What this movie is is a version of My Dinner With André where André spends the entire running time of the film trying to get Wally laid because that will prove to André that his view of the world is the most legitimate one. Also in this movie Wally is André's nephew. Ten scenes, I believe, in the entire 100-minute film, three of which are fantastically fantastic (my favorite scene of the year: Roger's "sex is everywhere" conversation with Nick amid traffic), and the rest of which range from good to quite good. LaBute's and Mamet's wordy subversions of masculinity are obvious comparisons, but Roger Dodger ending is somewhat, um, kinder, I guess, than either In the Company of Men or Oleanna. Only major problems: All the best scenes are in the first two-thirds of the film, and why is it that the final encounter is what calls Roger to action rather than the even-more-morally-repugnant situation with Nick at Roger's boss's party? Campbell Scott better win some awards for this.
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Do you like me reposting my reviews here, or do you prefer the former view of segregation?
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If I get my act together, tomorrow's contest will be a picture contest. If you have pictures that would be appropriate for a picture contest, please send me those pictures.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
