Serial, Scribe, American Sniper

I finished the podcast Serial this week and didn't really see what the fuss was about. Serial was a production of the popular radio show This American Life. In it, reporter Sarah Koenig and her team examined the murder case of Adnan Syed, a high-schooler whose ex-girlfriend was murdered. Adnan was convicted and is in prison, but Koenig is determined to find out if he was wrongly convicted. The first few episodes were pretty interesting, but about midway through the series I started getting a bit bored. Funny thing, too, as that sometimes happens when I listened to This American Life.

 

 

Bob Ryan was a heralded sportswriter for the Boston Globe, and last year he released a memoir called Scribe. It's an interesting look at Boston and national sports. I especially enjoyed his account of the Dream Team taking on the world in the 1992 Summer Olympics. Turns out the idea to send pro basketball players wasn't an American plan, but was done to show the rest of the world that international basketball might be played at a higher level if NBA players were involved. In the years following, the international competition improved to the point that a gold medal wasn't a given for the USA. Ryan sounds a little too full of himself a few times, but I'd rather have that than bland storytelling.
 

I still have three Oscar-Nominated films to see, but so far my favorite is American Sniper. The film is about Chris Kyle, a Navy Seal sniper who does several tours in Iraq and in doing so seemingly loses his former self to the war. The film shows him being increasingly obsessed with the war, to the detriment of his family. I thought Bradley Cooper was absolutely excellent in the lead role, going from free-spirited cowboy to family man to sniper. The battle scenes are incredibly tense, and I thought the film did an excellent job of showing how it might be terribly difficult to go back to daily life after serving. 

After writing this, I heard discussion about what was different between book and movie, as there were incidents in the book that were left out of the movie.  This really doesn't detract from the movie for me.  When I walked out, I felt that this was the most important of the Oscar nominees that I'd seen so far (I still have to see Selma and The Imitation Game), because I think any reminder of the costs of voluntarily serving the country is a good thing.  My only real quibble with the film is that I would have liked to see more of what it took for Kyle to re-acclimate to civilian life, as it seems to happen kind of abruptly. 

YouTube Song Mix Week of 1/12

       

Notes on the song mix:

                
Stranger:  From The New Basement Tapes album, featuring Marcus Mumford on vocals.



Hold You In My Arms:  I listened to this last Tuesday (the 13th), our four month wedding anniversary.  I can still hear this echoing in the Historical Society whenever I listen to it!


Small Things:  From Ben Howard's album I Forget Where We Were.  I love Howard's guitar work and the mood it sets.

Burning Down The House:  This video freaked me out as a kid.  Between the images of fire and David Byrne's head superimposed on a freeway, I didn't like watching this video or even hearing the song.  Now the song is one of my favorites, and the video's just goofy.
                            

Songs Of The Week- 1/5/15

A few notes:

• This is a mix of songs that I listened to throughout the week.  Could've been on break at work, while eating breakfast, or while working out.  They're kind of a record for me of the week that was.

• I heard "Use Me" on the radio on a station with a new format and didn't know anything by Bill Withers other than "Lean On Me" and "Ain't No Sunshine".  I couldn't get the hook out of my head all week.

• "The Eye" is the first single off Brandi Carlile's upcoming album The Firewatcher's Daughter.  I'm really looking forward to that in March and hope she comes to Milwaukee this year.

• "Amsterdam Moon" is from the Mavericks' excellent album In Time, which Sarah and I take on road trips because it's a fun listen and a good mix of styles.

• "Electric Feel" is great to listen to when I need a jolt of energy and reminds me of my brother, who introduced me to the song and requested it at our wedding.

A few other things from the past week:

I'd heard that Paul McCartney had written a song for a video game.  When I heard the title, I hoped it wasn't cheesy and overdone.  I hoped wrong.

Trampled By Turtles played New Years Eve in Milwaukee, so I thought I'd give their 2014 release Wild Animals a listen.  The pace is pretty sluggish, and while at first lead singer Dave Simonett's voice reminded me of David Gilmour, in the end I tired of hearing his voice, as it had the same weary tone throughout.

I was really pleasantly surprised by The New Basement Tapes' Lost On The River.  It's a set of songs with lyrics by Bob Dylan but performed by a group with Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford, Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Taylor Goldsmith and Rhiannon Giddens.  I liked pretty much everything except the Elvis Costello tracks.  It was especially good to hear Mumford in a different light, as Mumford and Sons has such a specific sound, and James has some great moments as well (like the just plain odd "Hidee Hidee Ho #11).  Giddens provides some stunning vocals on Spanish Mary (on this week's mix) and a couple other songs.

Best Songs- 2014

 

The Theory Of Everything

The Theory Of Everything was the second half of a double feature for me on Saturday night.  The film tells the story of physicist Stephen Hawking (played by Eddie Redmayne).  The action begins shortly before he meets his wife Jane (Felicity Jones) for the first time when they both were in college.  When Stephen was just 21, he was given the devastating diagnosis of  a motor-neuron disease (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease) and given two years to live. 

Hawking has lived well past that diagnosis, but its effects are debilitating, and the film shows he and Jane trying to raise a family despite Stephen's difficulties.  Jane develops feelings for Stephen's caretaker, so the complications in the story were more than just physical. 

I enjoyed The Theory of Everything, especially the performances by Redmayne and Jones. There were scenes that stuck with me, like when Hawking learns of his diagnosis from  a doctor who lacks  warmth and dumps all the repercussions of his disease out all at once in a hallway.  It's a wonder that Hawking ever gets up again, but Redmayne's portrayal of Hawking's persistence and Jones's firm-jawed performance as Jane Hawking really made the film for me.  I think both could be up for some awards in the months ahead.

Birdman

Riggan Thomsen (played by Michael Keaton) was a big deal.  Past tense.  He played a superhero twenty years ago, but now he's the kind of guy TMZ would catch at an airport to get a meaningless sound bite.  As the film begins he's in his dressing room, and he's got problems. Someone delivered a poster of one of the Birdman movies, and it's taunting him as he tries to mount a Broadway production of a Raymond Carver play that he's starring in and directing.  He needed a miracle when it came to a lead man, and although a solution arrived in the form of Michael Shiner (Edward Norton), that solution is a head case.  Throw in the fact that his daughter Sam (Emma Stone) despises him, and he's got more than enough on his plate.


I was eager to see Birdman.  Other than the part about Michael Keaton playing an actor who was a superhero, I didn't really know what to expect.   Birdman, it turns out, is unlike anything I've seen in a while.  There's steady percussion and drumming in the background.  The camerawork is in-your-face (or rather, in the actors' faces).  The plot adds complication to complication, making the viewer feel almost as overwhelmed as Riggan.  I found myself not on the edge of my seat, but leaning back as events unfolded.

I think Birdman is one of the best films I've seen in a long time, simply because it didn't let up and didn't let me catch my breath. It efficiently and effectively tackles themes of self-worth versus worth in others' eyes, throws in some supernatural elements and a lot of unexpected twists.  I highly recommend seeing Birdman while it's still in theaters, as it's definitely a vivid sensory experience.

Chef

 

In Chef, Jon Favreau plays chef Carl Casper.  Carl's happiest when he cooks, and life's pretty good at his restaurant.  Pretty good, that is, until he receives a humiliating review from food blogger Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt), and the ensuing Twitter fight leads him to try to change his menu to show Ramsey that he hasn't lost his creativity.  The changes don't sit well with the restaurant's owner Riva (Dustin Hoffman), who wants him to "play the hits".  Carl storms out, then storms back in to confront Riva.  Carl's tirade goes viral, and he lays low for a while before finding a new opportunity to be creative and bond with his son.

Chef certainly made me hungry, as there is a heavy focus on food preparation and enjoyment throughout the film.  Unfortunately, Chef also made me restless and a little bored.  After the conflict early on, there's not a lot of drama.  Casper starts a food truck, and too much of the film after that is travelling to the next location, shopping for food, and Casper's son Percy tweeting.

What left the sourest taste in my mouth was Carl storming back into his restaurant to berate Ramsey  To be sure, Ramsey's review got personal (saying that Carl's weight gain probably came from eating the food sent back to the kitchen).  But Carl starts almost whining that the bad review really hurts and wasn't fair to his hard-working staff.  This seemed ridiculous to me, as surely Carl would have had a bad review before and not lost his mind (and job) because a food critic simply did his job.