Since my plea for advice re: music to look out for I’ve got­ten sev­er­al love­ly respons­es. Thank you very much! A quick update on what’s hap­pen­ing with Black­mail Is My Life:

• Major car pur­chase like tomor­row. Not music relat­ed, until you fac­tor in the sweet iPod jack Prius­es have standard.
• Awe­some fun tak­ing pic­tures with Helen’s new cam­era. Way eas­i­er to break out than my dad­cam [see pho­to above.]
• Ous­mane Sem­bene’s Black Girl arrives tomor­row via Netflix.
• Fritz Lang’s M is a talkie masterpiece.
• Want to see some­thing that will crack you up about Music 2.0? Look at all the asso­ci­at­ed icons! [See also those that appear beneath this post. How many of those social networking/bookmarking sites are still viable?]
• Two mon­ster box­es to digest, 12 discs of prog and 2 com­pressed discs of heavy/extreme music, both inspired by that 1981 box that final­ly returned to my pos­ses­sion today after a two year loan.

There’s an inter­view with Pedro Almod­ovar on Volver that real­ly changed my think­ing about his char­ac­ters. In response to why he writes such beau­ti­ful­ly strong women into his films, he claims that it’s based on mem­o­ries from youth, that women ran the home when he observed them as a child, even if men were either at work or in the bar. Par­don my fem­i­nism, but isn’t this the most roman­tic way to char­ac­ter­ize unpaid domes­tic work?

Also: Mr. Frere-Jones prob­lems with the movie take issue with the Coen-esque mur­der mys­tery, but mine are with Raimunda’s state­ment that “they are a poor fam­i­ly, so they’ll live like one.” Once Agosti­na is diag­nosed with can­cer, every­one stops work­ing to sud­den­ly con­cen­trate on hid­ing Paco’s body, sort­ing out things with a moth­er who’s reap­peared and sup­pressed mem­o­ries from childhood.

It’s not about plau­si­bil­i­ty real­ly, but these are the sorts of holes that make you won­der what the movie’s actu­al­ly about in the first place. Okay so there’s an over­ar­ch­ing for­give­ness motif, but why should the view­er have to put those pieces togeth­er so delib­er­ate­ly when its the writer/director’s job to get us there?

And most impor­tant­ly, Pene­lope Cruz should’ve been nom­i­nat­ed for sup­port­ing actress for her role in All About My Moth­er instead of this Span­ish mur­der mys­tery that could’ve been filmed with out­takes from Woman on Top.

• Unless Jess, Ronan, Philip, Jack or Gee­ta pipe any­thing else direct­ly into my ear via the blo­gos­phere or the var­i­ous out­lets to which they con­tribute, I can safe­ly say that Gui Borat­to and Jus­tice will prob­a­bly be my token dance records of the year. I still need to hear the Field and Pan­tha du Prince though, so we’ll see what happens.
• Speak­ing of tokens, I haven’t been all that amped on met­al so far this year either. Noise too. That new Liars’ track pre­dictably brought me down and there’s noth­ing star­ing me in the face that I feel I must hear [okay Air Con­di­tion­ing and maybe a few choice cuts iden­ti­fied over at Paper Thin Walls.]
• In all seri­ous­ness, tell me what I’m miss­ing in the com­ments, or write me @ black­mail AT black­mail is my life dot com. I’m des­per­ate for new, weird input! Man can’t live on Raven Sings the Blues alone [though it sure as hell is a good start. Check out Raven’s 2007 faves so far in ’07.]
• Also a must read: David Raposa’s review of the new QOTSA album. Is there any­thing more shock­ing than what I’d hoped would be the guar­an­teed hard rock album of the sum­mer? Raposa dives right in and diag­noses the prob­lem. Bravo.

Shin­ing’s take on King Crim­son’s “21st Cen­tu­ry Schizoid Man.” That is all. [MySpace]

Will the next album be called Boomerang or A.B.D. at UMich?