putting the j in jjosh

Persepolis – B

Well, having read the comics a few years ago when they came out, and absolutely loving them, and being blown away by the art and story and storytelling techniques she uses, my expectations for the film version were high. Then reading articles about how they animated it, seeing the gorgeous previews, hearing about how it was selected for the NY Film Festival, etc., etc.

And it was pretty good. It’s kind of impossible to be objective about it, because I find I have a bit of the "the book was better" syndrome. Obviously, as with any book to film translation, there was lots in the book that wasn’t in the film. And some of the voices didn’t match the kinds of voices I had imagined while reading the comic. And knowing the story already, I wasn’t able to be amazed by discovering what life in Iran was like.

tell me more!

Definitely Maybe – B+

I read three reviews of this film where they basically said "Hey, you know, romantic comedies are usually so dire that when one comes along that isn’t awful, it makes it seem pretty good!" So I went in with reasonably low expectations. Add in the fact that we saw it in the middle of the day, on a whim, and the showtime just happened to match up with when we were walking by the theater.

Further add in the fact that I have a soft spot for romantic comedies (when done well, which is so rarely).

I really liked this film. It kept sort of subverting my expectations and had a good framing device — he is telling his daughter the story of his romantic past and she (and we) is (are) trying to guess which woman is her mother — which the film used to keep poking self-referential fun at the genre. Much the same way in Scream the characters are very horror-film savvy and keep saying things like "Don’t go off alone! That’s when the killer gets you!" There were parts in this where the daughter would say "But can’t you see?! She’s the friend who wants to be something more!" And by drawing attention to them, it gets to wink at the audience and play with genre conventions at the same time.

tell me more!

Max Raabe

I was at Pasha’s apartment in Brooklyn years ago and I asked him what he was listening to that I should check out. I always respected Pasha’s taste in music, so when he told me to check out Max Raabe, I dutifully did. And discovered this strange, Germany-in-the-20’s cabaret orchestral sound, which is pretty unique.

Also around this time I saw The Comedian Harmonists with my family, and I remember liking it quite a bit, liking the old-timey feeling of the music and harmonies, and there was some great stuff in the film too about how they dealt with the war and so on…

The most interesting (or accessible) of Raabe’s stuff is the record he did called "Super Hits", which features his interpretation of the modern hits of the day. I’ll never forget being at Deep Creek with a bunch of people, DJ’ing in the lazy hours of a winter afternoon, and SK requesting some Britney Spears…so I played the Raabe version of "Oops I did it Again" and we were treated to a stunning dance interpretation of the song by the same SK, who had been an (ahem) exotic dancer…a magic moment to be sure…

I’ve always wanted to put his version of "We Are The Champions" at the end of a mix, but it’s so different from everything else that it always comes too far out of nowhere.

And who suggested that he should cover "King of Bongos"? Genius. (end of mp3 is corrupted for some reason…I’ll try to fix at some point)

Finally I’m putting the Abba cover here too because this morning I went to the dentist and they were playing Abba during my whole check-up. At first I was going to say something snarky to my dentist like "Yuck, Abba…" and then the chorus of "Fernando" kicked in and I remembered how Abba was my favorite band when I was seven. Raabe’s version of "Super Trooper" sounds like it’s an original.

Max Raabe – Oops I Did It Again

Max Raabe – We Are The Champions

Max Raabe – Bongo Bong (King of Bongos)

Max Raabe – Super Trooper

I love how now in digital culture all the curtains are coming down and the tricks are being revealed. How do they make those beats anyway? Could I do it in my own bedroom? Check it and yes. This vid is great great great…it takes a little bit to get going, and he’s trying a little too hard to make it sort of "artsy", but the overall effect is nice. It’s a good beat too.

The Art of Beat Making "Believe"-Vinroc from Vinroc on Vimeo.

Well, yesterday I drove 3 hours to Wilmington, DE and for most of the drive (from Brooklyn all the way down the NJ turnpike) I was behind a little red sportscar that had this great sticker on it saying "Pick Up One Piece of Litter A Day". I like that a lot…I’m gonna give it a shot. And then today I came across this, from the late 70’s:

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Letters From Iowa Jima – B+

Well, somehow I’d had a lot of hype on this film…it won an Oscar, right? So I was really primed for it to be great, and there was definitely a lot to like about it. First of all, it was beautifully filmed. The colors, the shots, the staging, the acting, the art direction — all were absolutely fantastic. And the directing was really solid too, you really felt what he wanted you to feel, the dullness of the preparations, the anxiety of the upcoming the attack, the despair and full-on fear of the battle.

And beyond that, the film did a really powerful job of making you connect with the particular cultural idiosyncracies of the Japanese military. It really made me anxious and fearful when the idea of the honorable suicide began to make itself known. And there were lots of points where Maxine and I found ourselves saying "Why is he doing that?!" Somehow that made a real impression.

But there were a number of cheeseball moments too — from the cliche scene with the soldier and his pregnant wife, to the streaky slo-mo of the letters falling out at the end. And something overall was sort of cliche, though I can’t put my finger on it. There’s something about the films that Paul Haggis does that sort of feel like movie-movies, you know? Million Dollar Baby (yuck), Crash (double yuck), and even to a certain extent Valley of Elah (though I liked that one quite a lot).

Overall Letters from Iowa Jima was definitely worth watching, though not as amazing as I hoped it would be. I wonder if I’d get more out of it if I see Flags of Our Fathers. Hmmmm.

I heard this great podcast this morning from WNYC public radio’s Radiolab, which seems to be a sort of hodge-podge, documentary-style radio show that airs intermittently. Their main page is here, and their blog post that I got this mp3 from is here. I’ve taken the mp3 and trimmed it down to just the content and end credit so it doesn’t have any of the radio show bits at the beginning…

It’s by Sherre DeLys, an Australian artist and sound designer, and it’s called "If". I found it weirdly compelling, very moving, sort of like a hypnotic lyrical story. Joshgranger.com is the perfect place for me to be able to post this kind of stuff, because this isn’t anything I’d put on a mix for anyone, and it’s too involved to be the kind of link I’d e-mail around…but it’s definitely a fascinating piece and worth hearing…

It’s about 7 minutes long, so if you want to listen to it later I’m adding a download link under the player…

right-click to download

A great drinking chat with Chris B about God, Zen and the universe reminded me of this cool animation from The Vancouver Film School. It’s basically two films telling the story of the origin of life, one from a creationist perspective, and one from an evolutionary perspective. The fun is that the (religious) creationist one tells it as though it’s pure science, while the (scientific) evolution one tells it like it’s a religious text.

Kind of tough to understand when written out, but easy once you see the films.

Then they take it to the next level by letting you watch both films at the same time, so you can hear the competing creation worldviews giving both sides simultaneously. Whew. I’d post it here, but I can’t match their shmancy simultaneous player. Good stuff, check it out!

Find it here.

Mmmmmm…SILFs.

It seems like I’m always coming across internet memes in postings where people are assuming that EVERYONE knows about it. Like "oh, well, it’s just another lolcatz" or "just a rip-off of All Your Base"…same thing happened when I read about lipdubs (someone in a post used the term "post-Lodwickian" referring to Jakob Lodwick, creator of lipdubs).

Lipdubs are when someone lipsyncs to a song, but splices in the actual song to the video…there are a million out there and most of them are lame (like the first one), but the first I saw (and arguably the most popular) was this one, which is great. It also features SILF:

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video originally posted here.

According to my calendar, it’s Valenmatines Day!

Where does Valentine’s Day come from anyway? Who was St. Valentine? Is this another case of the Church co-opting a big pagan day and making it their own (see Christmas, Easter, Halloween)? The BBC has a great little history of Valentine’s Day that’s pretty interesting. Turns out, no pagan stuff here, though the time is noted as traditionally being the fertility celebration time for the Greeks and Romans…the Greeks celebrating the marriage of Zeus and Hera, the Romans celebrating Lupercus, the god of fertility (also known as the "protector of flocks against wolves").

Who? Lupercus?! Well that’s right, and according to the BBC, Lupercus’s festival was traditionally celebrated with your standard goat-slaughtering, wine-drinking and dead-goat-skin-touching by fertile young girls. Now that’s a Valentine’s Day I can get behind! How did this devolve into chocolates and cards!?

There’s more info here. My favorite bit:

One of [the rituals of Lupercus] was a lottery where the names of available maidens were placed in a box and drawn out by the young men. Each man accepted the girl whose name he drew as his love – for the duration of the festival, or sometimes longer.

Roman key party!

To get to the official Valentine’s Day of Feb 14th, we get to turn instead a heart-warming story of a martyred Bishop who conducted illicit marriages in Rome in 270 AD. The Emperor at the time thought that married men made poor soldiers so he outlawed marriages for young soldiers. But feisty Bishop Valentine (it’s a Roman name?) thought marriage was part of God’s plan and married young people anyway. Nice one!

Meanwhile, back here in 2008 AD, Kanye West celebrates Valentine’s Day by posting a short, Spike Jonze-directed video for "Flashing Lights". It’s kind of great. A bit gratuitous maybe, but isn’t that what Kanye (and Valentine’s Day) is all about?

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When I first started reading about Kanye, I kept calling him Kayne. I bet that happened with a lot of people.

I have not sold the CDJ decks yet, so if you’re interested, drop me an e-mail…

Meanwhile the always sweet Miss Fidget has alerted me that there are other, more low-tech, but also more badass, options that are worth considering. This one comes from New Orleans musician/inventor Quintron. The vid is long, but worth it for the jam session about 3:50 in…

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Well, apparently there’s a possibility of black holes appearing in Switzerland this May as a result of the upcoming Large Hadron Super-collider work that’s coming up.

In this huge machine (the LHC), in Cern, near Geneva, they’re going to collide two counter-rotating proton beams. Hmmm, wonder what that means. Anyway, basically they don’t know what will happen when they do this. Black holes might appear.

There might also be strangelets and monopoles; unfortunately, only brainiac scientists know what they heck those things are, so they don’t seem like such a big deal.

Black holes on the other hand are sexy, very sexy.

You can read the whole paper that assess the risks here, if you dare (thanks, Pat!).

Or I can just quote you the money part of the paper here (liberally *snipped*):

"It is important to notice that: The study for the [previous collider] had concluded that no black holes will be created. For the [LHC super super collider]  the conclusion is very different: "Black holes could be created!" !

The main danger could be the complete destruction of our beautiful planet. Such a danger shows the need of a far larger study before any experiment !

If we add all the risks for the LHC we could estimate an overall risk between 11% and 25%!.

We cannot build accelerators always more powerful with interactions different from natural interactions, without risk. Our desire of knowledge is important but our desire of wisdom is more important and must take precedence. The precautionary principle indicates not to experiment. The politicians must understand this evidence and stop these experiments before it is too late!"

Well, come May some scientists are going to be eating their words. Maybe the guys who wrote this paper, or maybe the rest of the world.

I find it hard to worry about this stuff though…there’s enough going on at the ground level to be worried about without some shmancy sci-fi fears of black holes appearing.

Still, I’m gonna track when they’re switching that thing on…

if you listen carefully, at one point the computer/witch doctor says "when you come to church on palm sunday, come in your birthday suit."

video for kid 606 – the illness

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All I can remember about this is that Mark sent it to me ages ago and I’ve had it on my desktop ever since. I would check it out every now and then and think "I’ve gotta do something with this!" And now I have.

Without further ado…

"Tokyo 1 & 2"

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The Corporation – A

A massive documentary that is so full of amazing stories, facts and characters, it probably has about 8 full-length documentaries lurking within it. From the Bolivian riot in Cochabamba over water privatization to the attempt to destroy Roosevelt after the creation of The New Deal to the public indifference over biological patenting. Holy mackerel this film was full of ideas.

Told very simply, in classic talking-head style, this doc sets out to define what a corporation is, a bit of the history, and how modern-day corporations are functioning in today’s world. Needless to say, most of what it has to tell us is pretty harrowing stuff. But it’s full of fascinating, stimulating, outraging, depressing, invigorating stuff as well.

Mostly what this film made me do, (as have several other films, or books, or discussions about the state of the world today) was question: what has to happen for people to start caring about this stuff and really absorbing it? Because to a certain extent this film is preaching to the choir (I imagine). I expect most people who are willing to rent/buy/download a 2 and a half hour documentary called The Corporation are probably already interested in social issues.

So what has to happen, what kind of story has to be told to get an "average" person to connect to some of these difficult truths. I am somewhat heartened by the success of a film like Michael Clayton, but as far as generating social outrage, it’s a bit of a softball. And it’s not enough to show some astounding facts and leave the audience to get mad. I suppose Inconvenient Truth really affected some people, and Michael Moore’s had great success with his style of "I am the everyman and I can’t believe the world is like this!"

Maybe it’s wrapped up in Maslow’s pyramid of needs, and people can’t face these issues that exist outside of them while they still have so many current, direct issues to face on a daily basis, i.e., where am I going to find the money for that housing payment. But no matter what situation people are in, there’s always a need and connection to stories…

So maybe there’s some way to tell these stories so that people get them, the way The Beatles made music that people couldn’t help but get, the way Shakespeare wrote plays that people couldn’t help but get, the way great leaders stimulate action through speeches that people can’t help but get.

I’m glad Maxine and I are doing the small things we’re doing to contribute to the solution — recycle-mania, buying local food, getting humanely raised meats, limiting consumption, some of our work projects.

Not sure where I’m going with this, or what’s coming out of it, but that’s a powerful film to get me so charged up.

Especially as hung over as I was this morning.