Film Review: Into the Wild (Sean Penn, 2007)

via Atlas Film
By Daniel Greenwood
This review constains Idealism and spoilers.

During the final deluge of academic work belonging to my university degree, I bought two Mark Twain books. One was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the classic novel, and the other was Roughing It, written by Twain as he travelled around the southern United States. In the final days of essay writing and editing, these two books gleamed from their spot underneath my desk, I couldn’t wait to read something non-theoretical again. Huck Finn was very good, I ate it up quickly, but Roughing It was more of a slog, and in the final stages of the book, with Twain’s rather dull account of molten lava, I couldn’t wait for it to finish. Into the Wild has spoken to me more closely than Roughing It could.

I have never felt such an urge to leave the city behind, to do as Henry David Thoreau did, or as experimental folk-singer Justin Vernon did to record his debut as Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago. Thoreau is quoted by the protagonist of Into the Wild, Chris (Emile Hirsch), a 23-year-old post-grad (snap): ‘Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.’ It’s a line from Walden that’s also emblazoned on the cover of the Penguin Great Ideas mini-volume Where I Lived and What I Lived For. Thoreau’s beautiful idea, which he managed to achieve and describe so well is a tragic tale here for young Chris. But that’s only really a footnote, because Into the Wild is an exceptionally-shot movie that charters a vast trek across a beautiful country. That it’s a true story is a fact unknown until the end, and that it’s directed by Sean Penn is another example of his thirst for ideas, for the stories of tragic individuals. It doesn’t match The Assassination of Richard Nixon (Niels Mueller, 2004) for pain-value or grit, but it’s Penn musing on death again. He’s interested, and so am I.

Chris is fed up with ‘things’, with the burden his parents’ troubled marriage hands down to him and his sister Carine (Jena Malone). Chris burns his cash, gives his 24,000 dollar college fund to Oxfam and embarks on a Quixotic journey across America. The opening scenes of Into the Wild are of Alaska, how Chris got here is recounted in stylishly edited sequences that make sure the narration is never boring. Carine narrates, never questioning her brother’s reasoning, only recounting the violent quarrels of her parents, underlining why Chris’s disappearance into the world is more desirable than being stuck at home.

Perhaps Chris is similar to Timothy Treadwell, better known as a man eaten by bears in Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005). To be ‘happy’, it’s a belief in yourself that you need, an inner calm which can transform the world around you. Chris oversteps this mark. The moment that he’s assaulted by a police office, or border patrol, as he sits happily on the empty carriage of a freight train the fun is over. This is the harbinger, the prophecy. If only Chris had gone on home.

The problem is that he loses sight of his goal, and the desire to live alone and off the land in Alaska is his downfall. What Chris strives for is greatness, the greatness he reads about in Tolstoy’s novels, in Thoreau. Personally, it’s Thoreau’s pal Ralph Waldo Emerson who stands over this film: ‘The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide; him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him.’

Interview: Ponytail

via Ragged Words
Article & Images by Daniel Greenwood
Flickr Gallery

Ragged Words are meeting Ponytail at the Lexington in North London where, tonight, the band will perform the penultimate leg of their European tour. Ponytail are Molly Seigel on what you might call vocals, she certainly fronts the band, with guitarists Ken Seeno and Dustin Wong either side of her, and Jeremy Hyman on drums. Ken is a little homesick:

‘We’re going home on Thursday and I think part of me is already on that plane. I’ve got one leg on the plane and the other is on the stage playing the show.’ Judging by the frenetic energy of Ponytail’s live performance, this image of Ken isn’t entirely discountable.

‘That’s an amazing image,’ adds Dustin.

‘I have long legs.’

Baltimore, Maryland is home to Ponytail, a city recently gaining notoriety in the light of breakthrough acts such as Dan Deacon and Beach House. Baltimore is also where Animal Collective grew up, though they spend their time elsewhere now. For Ponytail, how does Baltimore compare to a place like the Brooklyn, the capital of buzz?

‘It’s so different,’ says Molly, the angelic-looking spearhead of Ponytail. ‘The city is so small, just the fact that it’s so much cheaper. It’s just friends doing stuff together. I think that, personally, the scene in Baltimore is still really good for a small city, but it doesn’t have as much energy as it had a few years ago. Also, with the buzz of it, with Dan Deacon getting really popular, it kind of created a more, well, maybe people were trying to get famous a little bit. It’s just the fact that it got attention and changed.’

Popularity is something the band are curious about, particularly in an age where it’s difficult to tell who is more popular – the artist selling more music, or the artist with statistical proof on last.fm or myspace profiles:

‘The other day I was trying to work out if anyone actually listens to our music,’ says Jeremy Hyman, Ponytail’s curly-haired drummer.

‘Not if anyone listens to it,’ Molly adds. ‘But if people like it. That’s what I was thinking about.’

‘Yeah, I wonder that too,’ agrees Dustin. ‘We have no idea.’

‘When we were in college,’ Jeremy continues, ‘and starting this band, bands that I thought were huge we’d meet eventually. It’d be like, “Oh, no, you’re not.” It’s all relative.’

‘It’s just numbers,’ Ken concludes.

This genial young band gives an impression that belies the internet era they’re living in. They’re each grounded and focused, and though tired at this point of their tour, they remain philosophical.

‘The most depressing thing is – I haven’t been on the internet in a while, but today I went on – on myspace they’ve changed it: it now says ‘statistics’ for the band,’ Jeremy stresses the term with disbelief.

‘No way!’ proclaims Dustin.

‘Stats!’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I mean, is that it?’ Jeremy reclines into his seat, pondering.



For Ken, the solution to this modern dilemma is simple: ‘If I play a show and I feel kind of down about it, if I’m unsure that the sound was good or something, if at least one person comes up to me and says they enjoyed it or they want to shake my hand, I feel really good. Just one person coming up to me at the show and I feel really good.’

It could be the case that Ponytail’s style will alienate some listeners with the, at times, primitive nature of their sound. Molly’s work at the front of the stage borders on primal, she acts as a guide, shrieking and squalling through the maelstrom of energy conjured by Jeremy’s brilliant percussion work and the unrelenting melodies amassing between Ken and Dustin’s guitar-pedal wizardry. But how are people reacting to Ponytail, and how might that inform their development as a band?

‘Smiles,’ says Dustin. ‘I like smiles a lot, that helps.’

‘I think a lot of what we do is solidified live,’ Jeremy says. ‘If a song isn’t working well with the audience then it might change. It’s different for every song.’

Ken comes across (as do each member of Ponytail) as thoughtful, basing his opinions on experience: ‘A couple of times on this tour, after a show, people have been coming up to me and saying, “Thank you, thank you for coming.” And I’d say, “I was booked to come here anyway, thank you for coming.” It wouldn’t have been a good show without the audience, so it’s an equal part. The last time I had that was in Brighton. London’s awesome, people in London remind me of New York – they bring the mosh. And that’s fun once in a while, just to get punked and thrash around.’

What about negative reactions, are some people turned-off by the lack of familiar song structures? According to Dustin, they are: ‘I think some people are definitely upset about it,’ he says.

‘It’s a possibility’, Ken says. ‘But we don’t invite it, you know? It seems to me that people who are fans of our music are people who are just fans of music. Not necessarily fans of being ‘cool’. The feeling is what they’re after, and that’s what we’re after too. I think it’s kind of hard sometimes when you’re dealing with traditional elements of music that are kind of a dissonance, or sometimes you throw that word “art” around, and people start getting turned-off.’

‘Yeah, we don’t want to upset anyone or anything, that’s not our intention,’ declares Dustin.

If Ponytail were unsure about their popularity in London, tonight they need not worry. It’s a full-house upstairs at the Lexington, and the band manage to whip up a frenzy. The ‘mosh’ that Ken described earlier proves him right, they do bring it, but it’s completely innocent. It’s a varied clientele, perhaps the most energetic of the band’s followers is a man in his forties, re-living his teens, thrashing around amidst the seismic shift in ‘Late for School’. It’s an audience of minor celebrities also – Max Tundra can be seen defending himself with outstretched arms against the revelers that include support act Gentle Friendly.

The band will return home to rest for a little while before heading off to Austin for the annual SXSW festival. Molly hopes the band can find the time this summer, in Dustin’s basement, to finish writing new material and have it recorded in the winter. But the band aren’t sure about where they’ll practice this year. Jeremy likes the idea of Dustin’s basement, ‘it’s pretty cool in there’, he says. But Dustin disagrees: ‘Don’t you remember the summer practices? We were sweaty as hell, man!’ Wherever Ponytail find to write new material, they’ll have a doting audience waiting for them in North London when they’re done. Tonight, London and Ponytail brought the mosh.

Words & Live photo: Daniel Greenwood

Record Review: Loney, Dear - Dear John

via Ragged Words
By Daniel Greenwood
Release Date: 02/03/2009
Ragged Rating: **+ (2.5/5)
In a Ragged Word: Pleasant

The first line of Loney, Dear’s homepage reads: “Every night before I go to bed I try to find a not so good review of the new album, and I get what I ask for.” These are the words of Emil Svanängen, the man behind Loney, Dear’s new record Dear John. Svanängen’s interest in the critical reception of his new record isn’t limited to corners of his website, it also finds its way onto the record, specifically on ‘Harsh Words’ where Svanängen pleads with someone “not to use harsh words over me, over what I do.” He’s asking you not to say he doesn’t try hard, as his voice gets lost in a flurry of percussion. It’s clear he does try hard – the ambient elements of the songs are sewn together meticulously – but you’d have to be a hardened Loney, Dear fan to find this cute at all.

There isn’t really any space for ‘harsh words’ in criticising Svanängen’s music, but the fact that he’s underlined a problem stops the music from moving somewhere meaningful. The real snag is Svanängen’s vocals. The strange layering of voices is grating at times. The lyrics come off as superfluous as much of it amounts to lonely muttering and if not muttering, then throwaway nah-nahing, as on ‘Airport Surroundings’. This is a pop record, with the Scandinavian drum machine beats reminiscent of weaker Tough Alliance tunes. It’s hard to shirk the thought that Bavarians do it better though (in Loney, Dear’s case) and the melancholy that Svanängen aims for is what Lali Puna nailed on Scary World Theory.

It’s hard not to mention Jens Lekman in a review for a Swedish pop album, but he is the zeitgeist, the pinnacle. Dear John lacks what Lekman has by the bucket load: wit. And at the moments when it’s most needed, if not to let the listener in, it just isn’t there. This is a cathartic exercise for Svanängen, as was the case on Solonge, and Loney Noir, but the catharsis is the artist’s own. He isn’t sharing much, and that stops you from accessing a record that is entirely pleasant and well-intentioned. Sadly, it doesn’t feel like that’s enough.

Film Review: The Savages (Tamara Jenkins, 2007)

via Atlas Film
By Daniel Greenwood
This review is unsure of itself.

Here is a dour though accurate portrayal of the strife between two adult siblings, underwritten by the decay of their demented father. Two fine actors compete here as brother and sister - Philip Seymour Hoffman as Jon Savage, Laura Linney as Wendy Savage - a simmering feud that amounts to a tally of who is the more selfish. Jon is a lecturer in the midst of writing a book about Bertolt Brecht, the great dramatist, while Wendy ‘temps for money’ and is a ‘theatre person’ in her spare time. Their father Lenny (Philip Bosco) is left in their care after the death of his girlfriend, and the painful procedure of selecting a home for him to effectively die in haunts The Savages. Both Wendy and Jon are middle-aged and single, though they each flirt with marital commitment: Jon with a Polish intellectual whose visa runs out, and Wendy with a married theatre director who arrives on her doorstep in search of sex. ‘Why don’t you marry her?’ Wendy asks of Jon’s departing lover, but Jon’s perhaps too much a cynic, or too much the purist to marry tactically.

This is a well-shot film, and with Seymour Hoffman and Linney on screen it’s very watchable. But it’s terribly unhappy, too. The inner-city scenes are akin to those of Michel Gondry’s American romantic movies such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, though lacking the childlike innocence of a woolgathering Jim Carrey. Arizona is where Mr. Savage - Lenny - has to be collected from and it’s presented as a sunburnt suburb where elderlies drive golf carts in the streets, where the glare of the sun is mind-numbing. On the other hand you have Boston where much of the story takes place, and where Jon and Wendy find a new home for their father. Boston is a dark, wintry place, and drained of all colour there’s not a speck of sunlight let alone an Arizonian glare.

It’s ok to make a film depressing, I’m totally OK with that but there has to be a release. I’m not talking about a camp-as-Christmas Life is Beautiful (Roberto Benigni, 1997) comedy-holocaust release. Just brief moments to lighten the gloom. I believe there is a basic, if not fundamental sense of humour in a person, if not in me. And that’s what costs The Savages some of the richness it tries to achieve. It’s that these characters are building up so much stress but things never really boil over. If things fail to explode it’s because of intermittent moments of comedy, but they ain’t here! Perhaps The Savages doesn’t lack a sense of humour but wit instead. In Laura Linney you have an actress who deals in self-deprecating comedy, The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, 2005) for example. But in parts this self-deprecation becomes unsavoury wretchedness (I suppose that’s pretty rich coming from me, Interiors is a current favourite of mine). It just feels like what Tamara Jenkins has tried to do with these characters comes off a bit sulky, unrealistic in Wendy’s case. It may even lack the beauty of real tragedy, you know.

What troubles me after watching The Savages is that I don’t know what’s wrong with it, there just is something wrong with it. That’s the ultimate failure of a review of any kind, never mind the film: there’s something you don’t like about it, but, er, dunno what that is. Perhaps this cold film suffers because it has such a monstrous, actorly-duo in Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney. These siblings are savages, and they star-the-hell-out-of this savagely glum movie.

Record Review: Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did with Your Day

By Daniel Greenwood
via Ragged Words
Jagjaguwar
Release Date: 09/03/2009
Ragged Rating: ***+ (3.5/5)
In a Ragged Word: Charming

Julie Doiron’s appearance on Lost Wisdom – Phil Elverum’s latest as Mount Eerie – is the perfect pre-cursor to Doiron’s I Can Wonder What You Did with Your Day. Both records clock out at around half-an-hour and each exude bedroom-to-basement, lo-fi auras. Perhaps Lost Wisdom’s best moment is Doiron singing “Emptiness prevailed/emptiness in the house“, following on from Elverum mourning a double-crossing. I Can Wonder feels like an alternate ending to Lost Wisdom. It begins with ‘The Life of Dreams’, with Doiron grateful for the “good people all around me.” These snippets of good humour and thankfulness never feel ugly – never over-sincere or sickly.

In 2009, Noah Lennox and Animal Collective have made familial love the zeitgeist, but Julie Doiron has been doing this stuff for ages. And on the latest album of catalogue that stretches back over a decade, it’s not so much euphoric but ataractic and tranquil. On ‘Nice to Come Home’, Doiron describes coming home from the cold to turn on a lamp and play guitar, only to think of a distant loved one who’s probably doing the same: “I can wonder what you did with your day/I’d like to tell you ‘bout mine but I’ll wait.” I Can Wonder isn’t simply a woolgatherer’s exercise, ‘Consolation Prize’ and ‘Spill Yer Lungs’ are mini-rockers with chugging distorted bass and guitars working wonderfully with Doiron’s layered vocal harmonies.

Doiron’s finest trait is her down-to-earth-ness, and it’s this aspect of her records that seems most affecting. Songs like ‘Nice to Come Home’ won’t invade your headspace immediately, but this is the kind of music that accompanies you away from a stereo or a computer, from headphones or even live performance. Doiron’s subtle and self-deprecating anxiety smiles at you from the fringes of your own solitude. Perhaps that’s what records like I Can Wonder and Lost Wisdom are for: music to listen to on your own, your right to be selfish. It’s difficult to pull-off a personal record, but Doiron has learnt the trick, the kind of skill she seems to have built-in: “I was forgotten, yeah I was forgotten” the singer claims on ‘Loves of the World’. This record isn’t for everyone but, like Lost Wisdom, it’s just for you.

Film Review: Mr. Woodcock (Craig Gillespie, 2007)

via Atlas Film
By Daniel Greenwood
This review contains nostalgia.

Being fifteen was tough. I had no luck with girls, no money, lots of time and a constant fear of having my Nokia 3210 stolen by people bigger than me. Wait, things haven’t cha–look, if there was one little joy in my life it was Seann William Scott. I saw American Pie (Paul Weitz, 1999) on the last day of school before our Easter holiday. I’d tried to catch it, or sneak it, in the local cinema but couldn’t get in. It was a 15, dude. But American Pie wasn’t really about Seann William Scott, it was more to do with that pie mutilated by Jim (Jason Biggs), while his mum and dad were out. Indeed, that movie was more about a lonely young dude (played by a twenty-something Briggs), and not about Steve Stiffler, the Stiffmeister (William Scott) getting all the chicks.

Though that’s not really why I looked up to Stiffler, it was his confidence that made him a sort of demi-God, his arrogance. How could teenagers be so confident? It was unthinkable. I recall riding home on the bus having just seen American Pie 2 (James B. Rogers, 2001) and devising a plan with friends, trying to think of a way to throw a Stiffler-esque party on a beach somewhere. We never had a party as glamorous as American Pie 2’s sandy soiree, but we entertained the idea for long enough for it to be satisfying. Watching Role Models the other week, it dawned on me what an idol that man was to us fifteen-year-olds who were there at the right time, pubescence, to appreciate the greatness of this actor.

Sitting down to watch Mr. Woodcock, it didn’t matter who was in this film or what it was about, it had the Stiffmeister. Who knew how many people he’d tell to ‘fuck off’, or how embarrassed he’d be by having some kid urinate on him and mistake it for champagne. Stiffler always comes out on top, he was a soldier. But I’ve grown up (a bit) now, and Seann William Scott is (a bit of) a changed man. He isn’t alongside characters like Shit-break anymore, instead he’s kickin’ it with Susan Sarandon as his mother, Beverly, and the stoney-faced Billy-Bob Thornton as Jasper Woodcock. The film begins in a gymnasium, and it’s already clear that Mr. Woodcock is a dick. He gives a line of pre-pubescent pupils a lecture on the greatness of the basketball, before hurling it at them.

It turns out that John Farley (Seann William Scott) was one of those kids, but now he’s grown up and has published a self-help book entitled ‘Let Go’. John’s a bestselling author, and in receipt of a homegrown award, he returns to stay with his mother Beverly. Mr. Farley died some years ago, and Beverly seems to have found a patriarch to fill the fatherly role - Jasper frickin’ Woodcock. John is still a nobody to Woodcock, and though the teacher doesn’t remember the pupil, John is painfully aware of the beast that Woodcock is. In fact, much of this film is ugly jokes about Woodcock sleeping with John’s widowed mother. But, give the man credit, there are no misplaced ‘boobies’ ala Role Models, or the rest of William Scott’s generally flatulent body of work.

John and Woodcock reignite their feud, John’s self-help ego dissolves amidst his rage. ‘Don’t meddle in other people’s lives’, he says to himself, like a mantra, before meddling in his mother’s love life. It’s a pretty cute take on the concept - everyone’s fallible to the kind of behaviour on show here - jealousy, lying, breaking and entering. But that’s about it in the way of cuteness, bar a few laughs, Mr. Woodcock turns on its own hinge and musters a change of heart, tying things up around the 90-minute mark. It’s strange to see that Seann William Scott is growing up, and though he’s in a film with a sexually-connotive title, he’s toned things down somewhat, and I suppose it’s about time I did the same.

Music Video: Deerhunter @ Noise Pop

How long have Youtube allowed hour long footage? Anyway, thanks to Chocolate Bobka for highlighting this wonderful video of Deerhunter at Noise Pop in San Francisco last week. Anyone who hasn't listened to this band yet, you're missing out.

Set list:
Intro + Cryptograms
Disappearing Ink
Rainwater Cassette Exchange
Never Stops
Spring Hall Convert
Nothing Ever Happened
Famous Last Words
Saved By Old Times
Cover Me (Slowly) + Agoraphobia
Hazel St.
Circulation

Music Video: Vivian Girls - Second Date on Pitchfork.tv

ADD is a new feature from Pitchfork.tv where artists perform songs and have them recorded in old school Tascam tape decks while filmed with VHS cameras.



Such a lovely song.

Film Review: Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, 2007)

By Daniel Greenwood
This review contains spoilers.
via Atlas Film

Technology today - the Internet, television, DAB radio, mobile phones, mp3 players, electric shavers, curling tongs, satnavs, super hoovers - it’s everywhere. But you can turn it off. It’s also at the heart of this really rather fine film from director Tony Gilroy, a dude who had his hand in all the Bourne pies, and in Michael Clayton you can tell. The same murky throbbing that follows Matt Damon around foreign cities accompanies George Clooney (Clayton), as he deals well-enough with a gambling habit, huge debts, and worst of all an evil corporation - U-North. The face of these evil scum who hate human life and love money is Tilda Swinton, one of the film’s main roles performed by Brits pretending to be Americans. They pretend well-enough, Oscar well-enough for Swinton and Oscar near-enough for the other Brit, Tom Wilkinson, as madman Arthur Edens. But as ever it’s Clooney who steals the show with his espresso chugging jaw-line and exceptional deviation between witty and damaged.

Michael Clayton’s car is blown up early in the film, but in a Memento-esque (Christopher Nolan, 2000) manoeuvre, Gilroy gives us the ending first and then backtracks four days to witness the run-up to this fiery event. The bomb has been planted by two men who span the whole film techonologically f***ing with people who are close the to U-North’s uber-law suit. The equipment they have is a real threat to personal privacy and to human rights - this has to be a message from Michael Clayton. But there is a superlative twist at the movie’s death that underlines the premise that there’s a balance in the universe which also applies to technological advances. They can be used for good and evil. Whether Michael Clayton as a film tells us of whether it’s of use at all, is something entirely up to you or I. It works against Clayton, but then he uses it with the right people (police) in tow for it to be seen as positive.

Clayton has pissed some people off, big time. Know why? He plays it straight, brother’s a janitor. If Clayton taught me a lesson it’s that you got to use what you can to do good. You got to get your hands dirty. But Clayton’s not the primary school janitor or caretaker, he doesn’t have a dog called Blue who accompanies him in the corridors he steps proudly down with keys jangling on his belt. No, Clayton’s got Jason Bourne-syndrome - people want to blow him up. God, it’s hard being handsome.

As with any film about law or court cases there’s a lot of talk about stipulations and, well, laws. Gilroy does well to keep the film bubbling along, there are enough horrible individuals here to breed ire and thus interest. Swinton is Queen of my hatred as Karen Crowder, a character who everyone loves to hate and then feel a slight tinge of sympathy for. She’s terribly unhappy. Gilroy gives his audience the pleasure of witnessing Karen ready herself for public facades by intersplicing these images of her lonely preparation with the events she’s rehearsing for. What you have are rather scathing interpretations of public speaking in this kind of corporate arena - are these people serious? Karen says in a video interview that she loves what she does, but she also has to conjure this up as she dresses alone before hand (in another of the interspliced scenes). She has to convince herself of something she doesn’t herself believe. She’s as clueless about her life as Arthur is deranged in his underpants at a board meeting. No wonder Swinton won an award, she’s more even more convincing for appearing so painfully unconvincing.

Unlike Memento - *increases firewall protection* - Michael Clayton succeeds with the backwards storytelling routine. The film would have stood-up without the early, though only partial, revelation but it certainly gives it a sense of novelty. What you have in George Clooney is a serious actor who will get improve through his autumnal years. He’s got enough money now to experiment, just like the evil corporations.