Writing a brief review of Tarkovsky’s immense, uncompromising, willfully difficult Andrei Rublev seems inherently unfair. This is one of the most ambitious and difficult films I have ever seen, also among the longest. When I say it’s immense, I mean it: 9 chapters over nearly 3 ½ hours, ostensibly about the Russian medieval iconographic painter …
The Twilight Zone (1999) by Bernard Herrmann, performed by Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Joel McNeely
Though not the composer of The Twilight Zone‘s most iconic theme, Herrmann composed music for both the overall show and individual episodes. This album collects the scores for seven of those episodes and includes a couple other pieces Herrmann did for the show.
The 2015 Wolfe Island Music Festival August 7-8, 2015
The annual pilgrimage to Wolfe Island Music Festival (WIMF) got off to a bit of an uneven start but ended up being one of the better festivals I have attended over the last half decade or so.
Born to Run (1975) by Bruce Springsteen
Full disclosure: I have avoided Springsteen much of my life because I grew up with a bunch of stupid TV shows telling me “Springsteen saved Rock and Roll from Disco.” These interviewees (boomers all) were apparently ignorant of Punk Music but, also, in retrospect, maybe Disco won in the end? Anyway…
Angel Heart (1987, Alan Parker)
This is an over-stylized but interesting attempt at reviving American Film Noir in a decade in which it could be presumed dead and it’s combined with an interesting genre-mashing twist.
The Egyptian (1999) by Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, performed by Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Choir conducted by William T. Stromberg
The Company You Keep (2012, Robert Redford)
So, the first thing that’s off with this is the ages: Redford is significantly too old to play his character – he would have been in his thirties when he is supposed to have committed these terrorist acts – and most of the other (admittedly fine actor) friends of Robert Redford are also slightly too …
Rabbit Rabbit Radio, Vol. 3 – Year of the Wooden Horse (2015) by Rabbit Rabbit
The third edition of Rabbit Rabbit Radio is different in conception than the first two. This time out, Kihlstedt and Bossi asked twelve guitarists to submit riffs to them, and then they’d build the songs. The results are significantly different than the first two outings. If Volume 2 was “Rabbit Rabbit Goes Pop” then this …
Psycho (1997) by Bernard Herrmann, performed by the Royal Scottish Orchestra conducted by Joel McNeely
The score to Psycho is one of the most iconic film scores ever and, at the film’s release, probably was the most iconic film score for a Hollywood or even English language-film. (Searching my memory, I can only think of The Third Man as an earlier English language-film that got this much attention for its …
Niagara Falling: Tales for the Stage III (2012) by Carla Kihlstedt, Matthias Bossi
This is an EP rounding out Kihlstedt’s and Bossi’s “stage” music. It’s sparse and different from their usual stuff, but there’s not a lot here (and some of the running time is taken up by the creators of the performance piece) and it really isn’t essential. Only of interest to Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Kihlstedt …
BBC Culture’s 100 Greatest American Films
So the BBC released a list of the 100 Greatest American Films (of the last 100 years, by the way) two months ago. It’s a pretty decent list, all things considered, but it’s hardly perfect, by any means. I am presenting the list below, with my thoughts:
The Physicists (1961) by Friedrich Durrenmatt, adapted by Michael Healy, live at the Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford, July 25, 2015
This is a play about the social responsibility of scientists posing as a murder mystery-cum comedy, set in an insane asylum. The play uses comedy and the teensiest bit of mystery to dilute it’s otherwise very heavy-handed message. The play itself is so prescient (and so relevant to our time) that I am shocked I …
America, America (1963, Elia Kazan)
This film – which is about the journey of Kazan’s uncle from Anatolia to the US – is the kind of film which is quite common now but which was quite rare back then, even in the early ‘60s, pre-Renaissance. I honestly don’t know how many other (American) films like this existed at the time. …
All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)
I am not a fan of Fellini. Well, that’s not exactly true, I like early Fellini. But I find “peak” Fellini highly overrated and I pretty much can’t stand late Fellini. Of all the “Great Directors” I a have attempted to appreciate, Fellini is among my least favourite.
RIP EL Doctorow
I got into E.L. Doctorow because he was once one of my father’s favourite American novelists. Over the years I read eight of his twelve novels – though not his most famous, Ragtime – one of his two short story collections and his play. I haven’t read any of them recently. I feel like I …
Hangover Square; Citizen Kane (2010) by Bernard Herrmann, performed by BBC Philharmonic conducted by Rumon Gamba, featuring Martin Roscoe and Orla Boylan
This disc collects a suite of pieces from the 1945 film noir Hangover Square, arranged for orchestra, with a piano concerto Herrmann wrote for the film, with what seems to be the complete (or nearly complete) score to Citizen Kane. The music for Hangover Square is pretty classic Hollywood noir, even if the first three …
The Ides of March (2011, George Clooney)
This appears to be Clooney’s attempt to show how a truly “good” candidate would fair in the US primaries. (Why are these films always about primaries? Oh, right, because the US has a bizarre system.)
Star Wars (2015) by Wilco
For just over a decade (between the mid ’90s and the mid ’00s) Wilco was one of the most interesting “indie” rock bands in the world – they changed their sound (nearly) every album, from roots rock to pop to post rock to classic rock revival. And then they got comfortable. For the last decade …
The Place Beyond the Pines (2012, Derek Cianfrance)
This is the kind of idea that really used to intrigue me when I was younger. It’s the kind of thing that might have blown me away in my mid twenties. SPOILER ALERT
The Essential Plays (1993) by Anton Chekhov
This is a fine collection of Chekhov’s four most famous plays.
The Maze Runner (2014, Wes Ball)
Thoughts (Including major spoilers, but I don’t care because you should not watch this piece of shit):
Whiplash (2014, Damien Chazelle)
I need to see hyped movies either right away or years later when I’ve forgotten about them. Inevitably, whenever I see a hyped movie after I’ve been inundated by hype but before I’ve forgotten the hype, I am disappointed.
The Annual Hockey Hall of Fame Complaint for 2015
First of all, congratulations to the deserving inductees. The problem is, as always, that the Hall of Fame inducted players who both deserve to be in it, and players who do not (or, in this case, not yet). So congratulations to Nicklas Lidstrom, a player who, I have argued elsewhere, might be the 2nd best …
RIP Chris Squire
Among the “Big 6” prog bands, Yes was long my least favourite -though, as I age, ELP has taken their place very handily. I have always found their discography rather immense and, well, kind of repetitive – though I have not given it the time I have given King Crimson’s, for example. So, maybe how …
Does Andrei Kirilenko belong in the Hall of Fame?
Does Andrei Kirilenko belong in the Hall of Fame?
Jagged Little Pill (1995) by Alanis Morissette
If you were born in the late ’70s, or early or mid ’80s – and especially if you’re Canadian – you probably know at least five of these twelve songs whether you like it or not. (Certainly, at age 13, I was not happy to be subjected to these five songs ad nauseum.) If you’re …
Red Medicine (1995) by Fugazi
Years ago, I gave Fugazi a try and got very confused. (Let’s say it was 15 years ago.) I believe it was Repeater I listened to. I got even more confused after I listened to Minor Threat. “Is this what’s come of Ian MacKaye?” I guess I thought, disappointed.
Bernard Hermann: The Film Scores (1996) by Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen
This is a hilariously named compilation – it implies some level of completeness – but it’s actually an interesting survey, focused almost exclusively on Hitchcock scores.
The Phil Kessel Trade
I never believed the Leafs would get the return for Kessel that the Bruins got for him from the Maple Leafs. But I hoped it would be something. When the Leafs traded for Kessel, I was upset. I was upset for the following reasons. On the side of what the Leafs gave up: It was …
Altman (2014, Robert Mann)
Calling this a documentary would be something of a misnomer, it’s more of a love letter. The film is not much concerned with who Altman was as a person, it is rather concerned with who he was as an Artist and what his Art means to both the film industry and his family. And it …