Wan­der­ing into Pan’s Labyrinth is not the same as try­ing to find Franken­stein’s mon­ster, but it’s close. I’m not real­ly sure why del Toro’s crit­ics would com­pare his work to a Span­ish film with super­fi­cial sim­i­lar­i­ties; I’m guess­ing that many of them, like myself, were only recent­ly made aware of Erice’s mas­ter­piece thanks to the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, mean­ing that they joined any­one with a Net­flix account in their abil­i­ty to make this asser­tion. So while both are based on a lit­tle girl’s [or girls’] escapist fan­tasies under Fran­co’s reign, del Toro’s treat­ment avails itself of the fright­en­ing bru­tal­i­ty of Grim­m’s fairy tales, while Erice’s lin­ger­ing ele­gy to youth has the feel of Anto­nion­i’s exis­ten­tial meditations.

If a com­plaint should be lodged against Pan’s Labryinth, it’s that del Toro short­changes its audi­ence with too lit­tle fan­tas­ti­cal alle­go­ry and too much of the cook­ie cut­ter strong­man we’ve all seen before. As is point­ed out in the com­ments on Cin­e­marati’s fifth best movie of the year, del Toro fails to con­nect the the two halves of the film in a way that mean­ing­ful­ly con­tributes to the action of the sto­ry. Too lit­er­al by half, del Toro applies the pulpy Hol­ly­wood mod­el to a film that should rely on some dark majesty and falls short of mak­ing the cryp­to-polit­i­cal mas­ter­piece with which he’s being credited.

Dear Cin­gu­lar,

You’re com­mer­cials sug­gest that you have few dropped calls. This is wrong. Your ser­vice is so bad in my neigh­bor­hood [19125, hol­la at your boy] that I’ve con­sid­ered key­ing the Cin­gu­lar-brand­ed truck that’s often parked at the inter­sec­tion of York and Cedar. Your new music ser­vice is idi­ot­ic, and I think Apple made a pact with Satan when they chose your com­pa­ny of all com­pa­nies to pro­vide cel­lu­lar ser­vice to the iPhone. I’m hope­ful that Apple can over­come your rank stupidity.

In the mean­time, here’s what I thought of your phone and its mp3 capac­i­ty. The short answer? They both suck, though there’s a soft spot in my heart for a phone that can’t prop­er­ly queue mp3s in the order they ought to be played. That’s dar­ing, which is how I know it was unin­tend­ed. The web 2.0 beta test? Also dar­ing, and you put your fate in the hands of democ­ra­cy. You’re learn­ing a tough les­son. Best of luck going forward.

XOXO,

Black­mail Is My Life

P.S. Call­ing your beta test web­site My Blue Notes makes no sense. Is it sup­posed to be a jazz phone? It’s about as much fun to use as a Jaz dri­ve!

Here’s me prais­ing a band that’s fol­low­ing the same career arc as Guid­ed By Voic­es. I guess it’s nom­i­nal­ly “punk.” Times New Viking’s Present the Pais­ley Reich is the sort of album that will either pleas­ant­ly sur­prise you for sound­ing so fresh yet famil­iar or make you roll your eyes for seem­ing so derivative.

The longest song is 3:35. The fun­ni­est song title is “Imag­ine Dead John Lennon.”

Hav­ing wok­en up late for break­fast the morn­ing indie rock was served, I total­ly missed out on Yo La Ten­go. By rights, Yo La Ten­go and the Mata­dor cohort should’ve been main­stays of WDRE playlists, yet some­how they were lost in a mias­ma of Mor­ris­sey, Bel­ly and oth­er ear­ly nineties alter­na­tive rock faves. Some say that crit­ics are the art of pre­tend for­get­ful­ness, but the for­ma­tive years of crit­i­cal lis­ten­ing are often those that are most embar­rass­ing. So con­sid­er this post my mea cul­pa for being so late to the table that fate­ful day.

In short, Yo La Ten­go may be the most durable and ver­sa­tile band to ever suf­fer the “indie rock” hair­shirt. Their abil­i­ty to shift from art rock gui­tar tor­ture one moment to the Faux­town sound the next is more than a lit­tle mind­blow­ing when you con­sid­er how few bands in the genre suc­ceed at doing either.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

[Video via Angry Cit­i­zen]

Remem­ber when I men­tioned that thing about David Cross and Stephen Malk­mus? Well, it was an effort in hunt­ing triv­ia for Mr. Cross to use dur­ing the Inside the Rock­er’s Stu­dio seg­ment of the 2007 PLUG Awards at which SM received a life­time achieve­ment award.

Over­all, reac­tions seem mixed at best, rang­ing from “David Cross is awe­some” to “The quiz por­tion was painful­ly awk­ward.” But when you con­sid­er that I went “Mis­sion Accom­plished” unpaid and on a twen­ty-four hour turn­around, you can’t do much bet­ter. Do you think it’s bad form to hyper­link YouTube on your résumé?

As an aside, it’s worth not­ing that what­ev­er Pave­men­t’s lega­cy may be, it will cer­tain­ly remain mys­te­ri­ous. Apart from some rare footage, both the Slow Cen­tu­ry DVD and Per­fect Sound For­ev­er are worth­less doc­u­ments for any­one with more than a sur­face inter­est in Pave­ment and what fol­lowed. More­over, since Mike Bond’s amaz­ing Acid Casu­al­ties web­site went tits up there’s no reli­able archive of Pave­ment and Malk­mus ephemera any­where online.