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Andrew Martin
CMJ Report: Windish Agency Showcase
10/23/2009 02:00 PM
The early half of the Windish Agency's CMJ showcase at Piano's on Thursday night provided a broad overview of indie music attitudes–studied indifference followed by quirky obnoxiousness followed by "rock n' roll" earnestness. (PHOTO: MALE BONDING)
The indifferent boys were the UK's Male Bonding, who play a variation of the fuzzy, drowned vocals bash-rock in vogue over at Sub Pop, to which they were recently signed. They played fast and furiously, and when a melody floated up out of the din it was often quite well turned. They churned out one song after another, barely pausing to acknowledge the audience, but the lanky, toe-dancing bassist and enthusiastic drummer seemed to be having a great time. For some of the set, you couldn't help but play "name that rip-off"–one song shamelessly steals from "Please Please Me," for goodness sake–but on the balance, this is a loud, unpretentious bunch that seems to know what it's doing.
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10/16/2009 02:31 PM
"Hello everyone, I'm so happy to see all of you and to welcome you to Season 4." So begins the fourth season of 30 Rock, with Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy staring directly into the camera and seeming to break that old fourth wall. It turns out to be a gag–Jack is speaking to his creative team, and welcoming them to an Asian-fusion restaurant called Season 4–but it puts us on alert for the shenanigans to come. 30 Rock, always a show about a show, is burrowing even deeper inside itself. (PHOTO: STEVE BUSCEMI ON 30 ROCK)
Thus, the season premiere's plot lines include a ridiculous strike at NBC, the need for budget cuts at NBC (Jack: "I'm in the middle of a raging period... of economic turmoil!"), the need to recruit new cast members for a show that is losing its edge, and the need for Tracy Morgan's Tracy Jordan to regain the edge he has lost as a result of having too much money. When introduced to a janitor from Brooklyn, Tracy's idea of common-man banter is this classic conversation starter: "My friend Mooby just opened a delightful tea shop in Park Slope–does he know you?" Like its New York forefather Seinfeld, 30 Rock is determined to bring inside the neighborhood jokes to the masses, whether they understand them or not.
Yeah, it seems like Tina Fey should get out more (Cleveland perhaps?) but it's all still very funny. The lack of a distracting guest star (besides Steve Buscemi, who is always welcome) could portend good things for this season. The presence of Oprah, David Schwimmer, et al. tends to take the teeth out of the nasty meta-jokes. The last lines of the episode get Jay Leno right between the eyes and I, for one, was glad that he wasn't on screen being a good sport. Seriously, he's awful. I hope this 10'clock thing crashes and burns. Wink wink.
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09/15/2009 03:36 PM
The All Tomorrow's Parties Festival takes place at Kutsher's, a decrepit country club in the Catskills. From the first moments of the first set last Friday, remarks about everything from the creepy pool next to the bar to the lousy food to the long hallways' resemblance to the hotel in The Shining were standard operating procedure for both performers and guests. This, and the fact that you kept returning to the same room with the same few people over and over again, made ATP feel like a cruise-ship–how bout those portholes, everybody? I knew it wasn't a cruise though, because besides jokes about the decor, the thing I overheard most frequently was some variation of, "This is the best music festival ever." (PHOTOS BY ABBEY BRADEN)
I'm sure I said something like that out loud to myself a few times on Friday, the first day of the festival. Between the 60's summer camp atmosphere and the killer decade shuffling lineup, the day felt like a semi-lucid dream populated by boys and men in dark clothing and their patient girlfriends.
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08/07/2009 03:57 PM
The lyrics of "Let's Go Crazy," the first song played in Prince's 1984 film Purple Rain, are meant to provide an inspirational lift: "If you don't like/ the world you're living in/ Take a look around you/ At least you got friends." These lines sound particularly weighty booming from massive speakers in front of an IMAX-size screen surrounded by thousands of Prince fans in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Take a look around indeed! At least I had friends, and they were dancing, and yelling at Morris Day, and whistling cat-calls at Appolonia. Except, well, these people weren't my friends; they were just other Prince fans. Most of them were there with their friends. I went to see Purple Rain in the park by myself.
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08/04/2009 12:25 PM
The Hurt Locker is doing its best to defy the curse of the Iraq War Movie. It does not feature bloviating aged liberals (Lions for Lambs), pretentious narrative conceits (Redacted) or Ryan Phillippe (Stop Loss). What it does have is a no-bullshit veteran action movie director in Kathryn Bigelow and a brilliant lead performance by the formerly underappreciated character actor Jeremy Renner. It's currently tearing up art houses, and has been slowly making its way into an expanded number of theaters since opening in limited release in June. The film follows a three-man Army bomb disposal unit as it travels around Iraq defusing improvise
d explosive devices and dealing with alternately curious and hostile locals. As the leader of the team, Renner carries a surgeon's tactical brilliance with a Top Gun swagger—it turns out his ego is writing checks that his body can cash. Perhaps best known for playing Jeffrey Dahmer in the lurid Blockbuster favorite Dahmer, Renner's big leading man credentials are obvious from his first moment onscreen in The Hurt Locker. Renner is already thinking big about the future—as you'll see below, he really wouldn't mind playing Kurt Cobain sometime soon.
ANDREW MARTIN: I really enjoyed the movie.
JEREMY RENNER: Better than a stick in the eye, right? [LAUGHS]
AM: Slightly better, yeah. How has the positive reception to the movie affected you? Have you been getting offers and getting recognized on the street?
JR: Yeah, it's at a much bigger level than I ever experienced. And I feel pretty blessed and lucky. I'm proud to be recognized for something like this rather than doing The Green Lantern or something ... I mean nothing against that, that'd be fantastic, but its actually very much what I wanted to do so I feel blessed for that.
AM: I've heard the heat on the set in Jordan was absolutely overwhelming. Was it hard to focus on acting in those conditions?
JR: I think the focus first of all was really on not passing out. And that heat was difficult for everyone. The only thing really you could focus on was how to react to circumstances in the situation we were in. I mean, all the prep work in the year I was on it prior to shooting-that was all the work we did. Then it was just going out there and applying it. So yeah its tough for everybody, tough conditions working as an actor in the heat–makes you frustrated.
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