Showing posts with label Mahershala Ali. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mahershala Ali. Show all posts

Saturday, February 23, 2019

2019: February 23rd



There's a new album from Tamaryn on the way. This is a performer I know nothing about. Somewhere are 2010-2011, her debut album Waves ended up in my iTunes - no idea how it got there, which is a story/theory for another time - the point is when I listened to I fell for the album hard. That's it; I know none of her other music. When this came up in my youtube feed this morning I was interested. Sounds very Cure to me, so a departure from that first album, but pretty cool nonetheless. You can pre-order Dreaming the Dark, out on DERO Arcade March 22nd, from Tamaryn's bandcamp HERE.

K and I went to the movies for the first time in forever last night and saw Green Book. Wow. Here I've been down about the fact that there's pretty much no big Prestige films this year, a sad fact when last year was jam-packed: I, Tonya; Three Billboards; Phantom Thread; Shape of Water. I'm sure I'm forgetting some others as well. This year... not so much. But I'd heard Green Book was good, and Viggo Mortensen is always great, and Mahershala Ali has been blowing me away in True Detective, so we gave it a shot.

FANtastic film. Seriously, it won't be in theaters much longer, but if you can, go see Green Book. Some will say it has a touch of schmaltz, but don't believe them. Life-affirming, and it introduced me to the music of Dr. Don Shirley:



Okay, so I never do Favorite Film list anymore. Probably not in five years. Why? Well, A) I never see everything I want to before the end of the year. And B) at some point I went back and looked at my list for 2012 and basically no longer trusted myself to remove the viewing experience and all its facets from the quality of the film, because in 2012 I ranked Argo over both The Master and The Dark Knight Rises. Nope. I call bullshit on you, sir. The reason for this was a fantastic theatrical viewing experience, at home in Chicago with my parents - a family bonding moment - and although I haven't seen Argo since, there's just no way it's better than those other two I ranked below it. It's good. Great even. But not that great.

So I began to consider myself an 'unreliable narrator' when it came to ranking films.

My favorites of the last few years seem more solid choices: Three Billboards in 2017, a tie between LaLa Land and The Witch in 2016, Hateful Eight in 2015, and Whiplash in 2014, but I never get around to seeing everything I feel I need to in order to make an educated assessment. This year, however, since there haven't been many movies I felt I needed to see, I'm a little bit more assured that my opinions are accurate. So here then, is my 'best of' list for film in 2018:

Best film: a tie between Hereditary and Green Book, sort of both ends of the spectrum, but both affected me immensely.

Best Actress: Toni Collette - by a fucking landslide; the fact that she didn't get nominated for an oscar proves how pointless the award is now, and was the impetus for my never capitalizing the award's name again. Forever.

Best Actor: Mahershala Ali -  Viggo's up there as well for Green Book, but Mahershala also has his performance in True Detective factoring in, because like I said earlier, he has me in awe. Juxtaposing the two performances, I hadn't seen a cast list for Green Book before the credits rolled at the end of the film, and I questioned whether it was him or not for the entire movie. In fact, I had pretty much deduced it wasn't him, and was curious to see who played the part of Dr. Don Shirley. There's a physical difference between Ali in the two roles, some of which comes down to the aging make-up in TD, but some of which is Ali's ability to manipulate his mannerisms, stature, and poise.

Favorite movie: Mandy - the reverberations from my initial theatrical viewing the night of the film's release at the Egyptian Theatre still surround me, coloring my thoughts with excitement. This is the film I struggle not to watch every day, so as not to sap its power.


Playlist from 2/22:

Beck - Odelay
The Goat - Puppy
Jaye Jale - No Trail and Other Unholy Paths
C-Building Kids - Shitting in the Urinal
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Mature Themes
True Widow - AVVOLGERE
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Windhand - Eternal Return
Don Shirley - Waterboy

No card today.

Monday, January 14, 2019

2019: January 14th



There's a new Jozef Van Wissem and Jim Jarmusch album set to drop on February 8th via Sacred Bones Records, and so far it has my favorite album title in quite some time. You can pre-order An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil HERE.


Rounding the final lap on Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel, which I absolutely love. And interestingly enough, Cave's take on a gorgeous baroque, inbred Southern Gothic aesthetic hit a nice harmonic node with my impromptu re-watch of True Detective Season 1, as well as last night's True Detective Season 3, which takes place in Arkansas in 1980, 1990, and 2015 and has a similar tone.

Thus far, Season 3 follows Detectives Wayne Hays as played by Mahershala Ali, as he tries to solve an unsolvable case over the course of three decades. Two episodes in and I'm digging it; I find it a little bit of a lack of confidence that the show went back to the 'deposition and interview' mechanism that worked so well in Season 1, but hey, to climb out of the swamp of Season 2, do what works. With Jeremy Saulnier's episodes now under the belt and his leave approaching, next week's episode is helmed by Daniel Sackheim and then I guess HBO will announce directors as the episodes come up? I'm struggling not to take that as a bad sign, but for right now, doubts or not, the cinematography, acting, and atmosphere are so fucking tight and thick, I'm sticking.


I had actually planned at the last minute to do a new weekly wrap up show, a la my Evolution of the Arm series I did for Twin Peaks: The Return, however there really isn't a lot of 'mystery' to discuss yet. The one thing I'm wondering is, if this season drifts at all into Weird Fiction territory like the first season did, maybe the book we see in missing boy Will Purcell's bedroom while Hays is searching it for clues might come into play. The book is The Forests of Long, and anyone who knows Lovecraft mythos knows Leng as location of the infamous Plateau of Leng. I did a perfunctory search for the book online and couldn't find anything, making me think it was a prop deliberately constructed for the show, which means it is potentially important in some way. I doubt this is where the show is going, but you never know. If David Milch convinced Nick Pizzalato to stick with what made Season One iconic, we may brush up against some Weird after all.

Playlist from yesterday was non-existent.

Card of the day:

Sturdy. Is today that day? Maybe...