Since acclimating to the big city life I have found that I do not have the time or wherewithal to keep this blog updated regularly. So I’m moving it! To here! achevele.tumblr.com! Because apparently tumblr is all about microblogging, which sounds more manageable. Go check it out! Right now! I’ve imported some of my old posts in roughly chronological order to the new site, but I’ll leave this one up at least until I figure out the best way to get everything else over.
The inaugural post: Kanye West and a Runaway.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Will you know me?
There was a man on the subway this morning who made an announcement, asking if anyone wanted to be his friend. Well, not in so many words, but that was the gist: he was handing out business cards, amiably offering to teach something (a language perhaps? I couldn't hear) to anyone who wanted to learn. In conversation, he said he rode the F-train daily, just like many of the people there, and decided he needed to change something about his life, or maybe the way he did things, I wasn't sure. And while he definitely was less than cool, he was nowhere near as weird as could easily have been assumed. Even in New York, that was something unusual.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Robyn, Body Talk Pt. 1
By the time you get to “None of Dem” on Robyn’s album Body Talk Pt. 1, a bass-loaded, dubstep-lite (which is an affixation with roughly the same metaphysical heft as a “small tank”) kind of pissed-off, drug-addled hyphenation-inducing song for that time that’s too early to be morning but too late to be night, you are sublimely ready for the not-quite blissed-out extrospection (aka dancing) it provides for. A video for the track has Robyn in a sweatshirt and knit hat in a darkened room, alone and dancing and seriously feeling the music, man. That it is her music she’s feeling seems to make no difference; she’s just as in thrall to it as you are, or will be, if you have not yet had the chance to listen to this sensationally well-constructed album.
Body Talk Pt. 1 is full of songs you like, then love, then really love, and then normally would get tired of and move on, but I’ve been rocking out to “Dancing on My Own,” that exuberant paean to being alone (if not quite to loneliness) at a very high rate for weeks now, and I want to keep doing it. That song is unquestionably the album’s high peak, for its sheer catchiness and singability (“I’m not the giiiiiiiiiirl you’re taaaking home, oooo oooooo”) and the way it revels in something a little stronger than melancholy, makes it desirable and unstoppable and an expression of whatever it is that substitutes for primal joy nowadays. There aren’t too many songs that give explicit license to back away from others that also offer this exuberant validation, to retreat to the corner (which is what you really wanted to do anyway) and be satisfyingly, gloriously emotional in time with the beat. In a word, it’s great.
It’s almost for the best that nothing else on the album reaches the same peak, because then Robyn gets to have that song. But nearly every track on the album is solidly written and even better produced, so that there’s a sense of balance maintained consistently, even rigorously, both both overall and within each song. “Fembot” has her trying on the character of, well, a fembot, to deliciously clever effect (as in, “automatic booty applications / got a CPU maxed-out sensation.” Sweet.). This song does well to show why she stands out from the crowd particularly now, as material that could have easily been pushed to extremes of ridiculousness by her contemporaries here instead remains very grounded. It’s safe to say although her music rises very high indeed, it is built firmly on the ground.
The video that sets her as a fan to her own music has the right of it, actually; this is relatable music for once, tracks that push up from our level rather than sound from on high. Robyn’s syllables are anything but nonsense, and her music makes sense, always. The overwhelmingly positive critical reception to both the album and her as a star is no doubt built on this aspect of her music and performance, its intelligence and honesty; and if she initially comes across as maybe just the tiniest bit blank, as a little less than a truly great singer, the minor quips are quickly discarded as overly hasty judgments about someone who is now a good friend. Flash and fire and fierceness are great from afar, but up close and personal with music wrapping around you in the corner, you’d rather have honesty, and feeling too. Her music is sustainable in a way that elides most pop.
The coda of the album — the straight-up ballad and now soon-to-be dancefloor hit “Hang With Me” and the classic Sinatra tune “Jag Vet En Dejlig Rosa” — is understandable, a respectable way to bow out and set the stage for Body Talk, Pt. 2. If “Hang With Me” is just a touch saccharine, with songwriting just a shade weaker than its minimalist arrangement allows for, it is notable only to appreciate that her songs work so well because of the greatly effective context they are in. And though it would be nice to be able to point to “Jag Vet Swedish” as lovely, it doesn’t really matter, and if anybody makes it through more than a third of that song without listening to “Dancing on My Own” again instead (“giiiiiiiirl”) I would be surprised.
The music is better to listen to than to think about, which is really just a way of saying that this is music that is meant to be music. Her music doesn’t make you feel morally compromised when you listen to it, which is all too often the case with pop. If it’s not quite deep either, that’s probably for the best, so that you can stay giddy and sweaty while still feeling, hard, if you want to. But only if you want to. It’s not going to force you there.
She’s somebody that you like if you give her a breath of a chance. She is somebody relatable. She is catchy and durable. Normally, this would be the point where one would work in a stinger, a shot of critical pithiness to dilute the compliments and strengthen the critique. But that would be cheap, and furthermore, unnecessary. She doesn’t pretend to be what she is not, which is saying something more than it seems. It would also be tempting to do a blow-by-blow comparison with other pop stars of the past few moments (and I will now mention a few in order to get more search engine hits: Beyonce, GaGa, Kesha, Katy Perry, Rihanna. Inception, Twilight, Edward, Jacob), but it is more tempting to let her stand — or dance, perhaps — on her own.
Body Talk Pt. 1 is full of songs you like, then love, then really love, and then normally would get tired of and move on, but I’ve been rocking out to “Dancing on My Own,” that exuberant paean to being alone (if not quite to loneliness) at a very high rate for weeks now, and I want to keep doing it. That song is unquestionably the album’s high peak, for its sheer catchiness and singability (“I’m not the giiiiiiiiiirl you’re taaaking home, oooo oooooo”) and the way it revels in something a little stronger than melancholy, makes it desirable and unstoppable and an expression of whatever it is that substitutes for primal joy nowadays. There aren’t too many songs that give explicit license to back away from others that also offer this exuberant validation, to retreat to the corner (which is what you really wanted to do anyway) and be satisfyingly, gloriously emotional in time with the beat. In a word, it’s great.
It’s almost for the best that nothing else on the album reaches the same peak, because then Robyn gets to have that song. But nearly every track on the album is solidly written and even better produced, so that there’s a sense of balance maintained consistently, even rigorously, both both overall and within each song. “Fembot” has her trying on the character of, well, a fembot, to deliciously clever effect (as in, “automatic booty applications / got a CPU maxed-out sensation.” Sweet.). This song does well to show why she stands out from the crowd particularly now, as material that could have easily been pushed to extremes of ridiculousness by her contemporaries here instead remains very grounded. It’s safe to say although her music rises very high indeed, it is built firmly on the ground.
The video that sets her as a fan to her own music has the right of it, actually; this is relatable music for once, tracks that push up from our level rather than sound from on high. Robyn’s syllables are anything but nonsense, and her music makes sense, always. The overwhelmingly positive critical reception to both the album and her as a star is no doubt built on this aspect of her music and performance, its intelligence and honesty; and if she initially comes across as maybe just the tiniest bit blank, as a little less than a truly great singer, the minor quips are quickly discarded as overly hasty judgments about someone who is now a good friend. Flash and fire and fierceness are great from afar, but up close and personal with music wrapping around you in the corner, you’d rather have honesty, and feeling too. Her music is sustainable in a way that elides most pop.
The coda of the album — the straight-up ballad and now soon-to-be dancefloor hit “Hang With Me” and the classic Sinatra tune “Jag Vet En Dejlig Rosa” — is understandable, a respectable way to bow out and set the stage for Body Talk, Pt. 2. If “Hang With Me” is just a touch saccharine, with songwriting just a shade weaker than its minimalist arrangement allows for, it is notable only to appreciate that her songs work so well because of the greatly effective context they are in. And though it would be nice to be able to point to “Jag Vet Swedish” as lovely, it doesn’t really matter, and if anybody makes it through more than a third of that song without listening to “Dancing on My Own” again instead (“giiiiiiiirl”) I would be surprised.
The music is better to listen to than to think about, which is really just a way of saying that this is music that is meant to be music. Her music doesn’t make you feel morally compromised when you listen to it, which is all too often the case with pop. If it’s not quite deep either, that’s probably for the best, so that you can stay giddy and sweaty while still feeling, hard, if you want to. But only if you want to. It’s not going to force you there.
She’s somebody that you like if you give her a breath of a chance. She is somebody relatable. She is catchy and durable. Normally, this would be the point where one would work in a stinger, a shot of critical pithiness to dilute the compliments and strengthen the critique. But that would be cheap, and furthermore, unnecessary. She doesn’t pretend to be what she is not, which is saying something more than it seems. It would also be tempting to do a blow-by-blow comparison with other pop stars of the past few moments (and I will now mention a few in order to get more search engine hits: Beyonce, GaGa, Kesha, Katy Perry, Rihanna. Inception, Twilight, Edward, Jacob), but it is more tempting to let her stand — or dance, perhaps — on her own.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Greenberg
With Greenberg, I find myself questioning not its execution but its project, its impetus and its worth. Technically, I don’t find much to complain about in the film. Performances range from effective to good (it’s not really the kind of film that permits acting of either extreme), the writing is on point, it is shot well but not distractingly, etc, etc. It achieved what it was aiming for; the space in between the underlying intentions and the result onscreen is remarkably small, which certainly is a kind of success worth having.
And Greenberg is not the first work to depict a misanthropic, unappealing lead (protagonist doesn’t seem like quite the word). It will not be the last, and when I say that my problems with the film stem from how much I disliked its eponymous hero, it is not to cast aspersions on choosing topics for fiction that are less than ideal, or somehow bad, ugly, or otherwise wrong. The ineffectiveness of depicting only the things we would like to see ourselves as has been proven time and again.
I cannot help but view Greenberg and his younger love interest Florence (Greta Gerwig, utterly guileless) from my own perspective, which in this case means my own age. In the simplest way, Greenberg is in this fashion a cautionary figure for me: don’t be like this. But that’s not enough to satisfy, and I don’t think it’s the whole story either. Even the most unappealing characters must be in some way sympathetic. The forms this sympathy can take run the absolute gamut, from fascination to empathy to the camaraderie of people who have nothing in common.
But Greenberg is none of these for me. He hovers infuriatingly on the edge of reasonableness and comprehension, which makes his sheer social repulsion all the more unfathomable, caught uncomfortably in between an intellectual and a visceral response. I think I resent that he is placed in the position of a character with whom we should come to find sympathy, and this resentment is driven home particularly strongly because at the core of his neuroses, his misanthropy and his cruelty, is an inability to grow up. As a young person who is just starting out in the world and looking to the future, I refuse to accept that his is viable.
And similarly, I find Florence to be a frustrating character, in part because it’s impossible to make any intellectual leeway against her. She is so carelessly likeable, so unaffected, so open and yet so vague that any criticism I am likely to make is one she would readily accept. She incarnates a certain form of the sometimes artificially balanced worldview that is so prevalent now, finding a medium and a compromise between all things. In her case, this compromise leads to a certain impotence and self-defeating quality. I get a little indignant at the possibility that she is representative of a culture that I largely buy into. I want to say that it is her, and not the culture, that led to her own affable stagnancy.
And can I? I think so, and perhaps it is a function of my perspective that this affirmation requires a rejection of its opposite. From where I stand, Greenberg is not bad, but Greenberg is, when really, it should be the other way around.
And Greenberg is not the first work to depict a misanthropic, unappealing lead (protagonist doesn’t seem like quite the word). It will not be the last, and when I say that my problems with the film stem from how much I disliked its eponymous hero, it is not to cast aspersions on choosing topics for fiction that are less than ideal, or somehow bad, ugly, or otherwise wrong. The ineffectiveness of depicting only the things we would like to see ourselves as has been proven time and again.
I cannot help but view Greenberg and his younger love interest Florence (Greta Gerwig, utterly guileless) from my own perspective, which in this case means my own age. In the simplest way, Greenberg is in this fashion a cautionary figure for me: don’t be like this. But that’s not enough to satisfy, and I don’t think it’s the whole story either. Even the most unappealing characters must be in some way sympathetic. The forms this sympathy can take run the absolute gamut, from fascination to empathy to the camaraderie of people who have nothing in common.
But Greenberg is none of these for me. He hovers infuriatingly on the edge of reasonableness and comprehension, which makes his sheer social repulsion all the more unfathomable, caught uncomfortably in between an intellectual and a visceral response. I think I resent that he is placed in the position of a character with whom we should come to find sympathy, and this resentment is driven home particularly strongly because at the core of his neuroses, his misanthropy and his cruelty, is an inability to grow up. As a young person who is just starting out in the world and looking to the future, I refuse to accept that his is viable.
And similarly, I find Florence to be a frustrating character, in part because it’s impossible to make any intellectual leeway against her. She is so carelessly likeable, so unaffected, so open and yet so vague that any criticism I am likely to make is one she would readily accept. She incarnates a certain form of the sometimes artificially balanced worldview that is so prevalent now, finding a medium and a compromise between all things. In her case, this compromise leads to a certain impotence and self-defeating quality. I get a little indignant at the possibility that she is representative of a culture that I largely buy into. I want to say that it is her, and not the culture, that led to her own affable stagnancy.
And can I? I think so, and perhaps it is a function of my perspective that this affirmation requires a rejection of its opposite. From where I stand, Greenberg is not bad, but Greenberg is, when really, it should be the other way around.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
People I wouldn't expect to be superheroes
After seeing the trailer for Iron Man 2 today—which looks reasonably, if not excessively cool—and which featured, briefly, what appeared to be a Scarlett Johansson with kung fu abilities, I decided to put together a list of people (actors, mostly) that I find to be implausible in roles that involve superhero alter-egos.
So without further ado:
1. Scarlett Johansson (Iron Man 2, unless I misinterpreted the trailer). I mean, she’s seductive and all, but does she really seem like she could actually have the physical strength to beat someone up?
2. Cameron Diaz (Charlie’s Angels). Ditto the above, minus the seductive, plus a lot of ditzy. She doesn’t look like she could throw a punch without help. But on the other hand, I have an inexplicable fondness for the Charlie’s Angels movies (so sue me), so I’ll let it pass.
3. Uma Thurman (Kill Bill). Hear me out. She’s like 6 ft tall, blonde, stringy, and not without a certain deliberate awkwardness in her movements. But that’s part of what makes her so entrancing in Kill Bill, the unlikelihood of her success, and part of what renders the film so ridiculous and compelling at the same time.
4. Alicia Silverstone (Batman and Robin). Thanks to Marisa for this one. I admit I don’t really recall the details of this movie (probably for the best—didn’t this one involve the governor of California freezing people to death?), but I’m willing to include her on concept alone.
5. Ben Affleck (Daredevil). Aside from the fact that I never entirely understood the notion of a superhero whose superpower is that he’s BLIND, Ben Affleck: costumed vigilante? Yeah.
6. Jessica Alba (Fantastic Four). Actually, what I found unbelievable about her in these movies was not so much that she can turn invisible and shoot force fields, but that she was an astrophysicist.
Any others?
So without further ado:
1. Scarlett Johansson (Iron Man 2, unless I misinterpreted the trailer). I mean, she’s seductive and all, but does she really seem like she could actually have the physical strength to beat someone up?
2. Cameron Diaz (Charlie’s Angels). Ditto the above, minus the seductive, plus a lot of ditzy. She doesn’t look like she could throw a punch without help. But on the other hand, I have an inexplicable fondness for the Charlie’s Angels movies (so sue me), so I’ll let it pass.
3. Uma Thurman (Kill Bill). Hear me out. She’s like 6 ft tall, blonde, stringy, and not without a certain deliberate awkwardness in her movements. But that’s part of what makes her so entrancing in Kill Bill, the unlikelihood of her success, and part of what renders the film so ridiculous and compelling at the same time.
4. Alicia Silverstone (Batman and Robin). Thanks to Marisa for this one. I admit I don’t really recall the details of this movie (probably for the best—didn’t this one involve the governor of California freezing people to death?), but I’m willing to include her on concept alone.
5. Ben Affleck (Daredevil). Aside from the fact that I never entirely understood the notion of a superhero whose superpower is that he’s BLIND, Ben Affleck: costumed vigilante? Yeah.
6. Jessica Alba (Fantastic Four). Actually, what I found unbelievable about her in these movies was not so much that she can turn invisible and shoot force fields, but that she was an astrophysicist.
Any others?
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