Love in the Time of Cloverfield

I’ve spent the last few hours thinking over my reactions to Cloverfield as well as gauging that of others. I’ve heard anecdotally that there’s been a lot of disappointed audiences — friends who really liked the film mention being surrounded by people booing and complaining at the end — because, as friend Nicole put it on ILX, there’s no ‘bullshit happy ending.’ (Which is doubly amusing that people would complain because the first minute of the film pretty much confirms there isn’t, with talk of the site formerly known as Central Park and all.)

So it’s a good thing it doesn’t have that kind of happy ending — this is definitely a top-notch horror/disaster film with a downer conclusion, and on many levels I really enjoyed it, and would happily recommend it to anyone interested. Also over on ILX, Slocki noted that “it didn’t do anything startlingly NEW but it did stuff that ppl have been fucking around with for a while now a whole lot better,” which is spot on. It takes advantage of current technologies and attitudes towards them very well — not just in the visual effects, which are very good if not always perfect (perhaps the eternal problem with CGI — we’ll see about the future), but in the fact that there can be mass documentation of a tragic disaster via cameras, cellphones and so forth, a democratization of image retrieval. If there has to be a suspension of disbelief involving the camera always being on and filming what needs to be filmed, it’s no more a problem than, say, a pulp era horror narrator writing out complete sentences in a diary about the evil creature about to nibble his limbs off, and is in fact a lot more logical. (Blair Witch Project obviously dealt with that some time back as well, but more on that film and one part of it in particular later.)

That said, there’s a big problem of squaring the circle that the film must wrestle with and which I ended up wrestling with even more, perhaps — on the one hand, it uses plenty of tropes and situations that are familiar and even expected, with two main arcs: the love story, conventional enough at the start, and then the horror/disaster story, which then knocks the love story for a loop and shapes it towards a new end. Now, none of this is new, as Slocki noted, so there’s no point in criticizing it for that! In fact that’s part of the joy of the film, in seeing how that aspect must work with what’s on the other hand: verisimilitude as much as possible. The conceit of the film is that it’s a documentary record of ‘what really happened’ and as such the idea is that the actions, the actors, everything seen in the film must seem as unforced and as logical as can be demonstrated in order to fully succeed — and again, nothing new here either.

In the end, the filmmakers got very, very close with making this fully work for me. But not quite, and I’ve been in some back and forths with folks about why that is, and my post here isn’t probably going to spell it all out to my satisfaction, but it might explain why I left the film being impressed by it, thinking it was very admirable, still falling short of what would have been a grand slam. It’s probably all been said before by others about other films and works of art, for that matter, but anyway:

In this very good article with comments from the filmmakers, the author notes, “Rather than focusing on the attempts to battle the monster, the film settles in with the individual dramas of those caught up in its destructive wake.” This is echoed in various comments in the article, while friends who really liked it have mentioned how much they appreciated that focus, finding that the love story was the center of the film without which everything else doesn’t make sense.

Now the thing is, I agree with this take — it is exactly what the film aims for, and the structure of the story fully plays this out. However, in order for it to work emotionally, there has to be a resonance with the characters in question for the viewer, a putting yourself in their shoes to imagine the kind of things you might do and think were you them. There’ve been a lot of complaints that this falls flat because the characters are ‘just New York yuppie scum’ or the like — rubbish, that’s a pointless objection. I had no problem with the characters at all, many had a slew of good lines and the actors played them quite well.

But neither was I invested in them all that much. I think this has to do in part with the squaring the circle problem I mentioned above. To explain this further — where I think the film most succeeds is in its depiction of confusion, panic and fear. The combination of jerky camera motion, chaotic sound design and screamed dialogue, sheer instability all around and the inability to figure out what exactly you’re seeing beyond some horrified guesses (for me done with no greater impact than the scene in which Marlena dies) results in some perfect fusions of script arc, acting, filming and editing. Even quieter moments can convey this as well, as when Hud, the cameraman, confesses he’s doing all the bad jokes because otherwise he would freak out completely.

However, when the film is doing calmer and more lower-key set-pieces, from love’s travails to shock and sorrow — as much a pause for breath for the audience as for the characters — I inevitably found myself thinking about how those scenes were just like any other number of similar scenes in other movies, just filmed differently. To repeat Slocki again, this isn’t a criticism per se because they’re not meant to be doing anything new with this film in terms of subject matter. But I ended up thinking about how it was interesting to watch, say, the ‘Army guy tells hero “I shouldn’t do this but go get your friend and be back here by this time or else”‘ scene in terms of how it was framed and filmed, and how a regular steadycam shot would capture the same scene in a much different and more familiar way, rather than caring much about the hero’s plight and how affecting it was meant to be. The very act of trying to make this scene seem like something other than the typical scene it is just called attention to its boilerplate nature all the more, and instead of allowing me to roll with it ended up causing me to trip over it, not thinking about the story but about the film as it was made.

To turn this around a bit, there are some scenes where the personal emotions run high that do work splendidly — for me the highlight is when Rob reaches his mother on a cell phone to confirm he is alive but that his brother has died. All we see and hear is his face reacting to his mother’s reaction, and it is enough. But this gets contrasted with the moment near the end where Rob and Beth are waiting to get into a helicopter, they’re backlit, engaged in a long kiss, and I wondered if Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale looked like this in Pearl Harbor at one point. Too many moments like that crop up throughout the film, while the party scene at the beginning that sets up the dynamics of the main characters — an absolutely necessary scene for the film to work as the filmmakers intended — made me think of how it would have been filmed and shot for a soap opera (primetime WB style, I figure).

Ultimately I couldn’t stop analyzing the film as I watched it, I could never sink into it fully — and sure, you can argue that this means the fault is mine for not letting myself do that, I’d be fully happy to accept that. But I think the film made it hard for me to do so, though I won’t speak for anyone else, of course. I wanted to enjoy the tropes as presented rather than simply acknowledging them as needed points, and where that did work more often is with the monster/disaster aspect. They could be just as obvious but succeeded far more effectively — thus, the lingering shots on the Brooklyn Bridge towers kinda mean that the Bridge was sure to be going down soon enough, and so it was. Similarly the flood of rats in the subway tunnel means something’s about to come out of the dark, and the switch to the night vision in the camera is a solid payoff. And as mentioned Marlena’s final scenes — from the first evidence of her deep bite, which immediately signaled she wasn’t long for the world, to the explosive chaos in the military command center/biohazard area (itself another trope, etc. etc.) — are truly unsettling.

Meantime, as for the monster itself, I agree with general thoughts that it was a bit of a mistake to show so much of it — when the money shot appears at the end with the monster in full daylight, it’s just sort of there. However, avoiding any and all attempts to explain the monster beyond random speculation gets major points — all that needs to be known is that it’s horrifying and there is death and destruction everywhere as a result. (As a result, it’s the wider destruction caused rather than the fate of the main characters which hit me more strongly; I found myself thinking of smashed lives scattered all around.) The smaller parasite monsters were also a good touch, and while I partly agree with a comment on ILX about how just the big one would have been enough, I thought the smaller ones were used just right — seen/dealt with often enough to cause major frights, absent for the most part so that we weren’t always primed to deal with them.

But to conclude on that love story, and to bring Blair Witch Project back into it again — back in 1999, when said film came out, the final scenes in that movie freaked the hell out of me. The film had been developed and edited carefully enough, with the backstory fully in place, so that the image of Michael standing in the corner hit hard, combined with Heather’s agonized screams. It was a perfect example of showing just enough, letting your mind do the rest, as the camera then fell to the ground, showing nothing but a wall and capturing no sound at all before cutting to black. I stayed up most of that night unable to sleep, and typing about it now gives me chills still.

Fully allowing for the fact that it’s not trying to be Blair Witch redux, Cloverfield almost gets to that level of unsettling dread, twice (and I will say I do love the series of fake endings in the film), and does so in ways inevitably calling Blair Witch to mind. First there’s a similar camera lying on the ground part, done after the crash of the helicopter, where for a long while it seems clear that all inside are dead, while a functioning radio includes brief reports about how the ‘target’ is still at large. A number of people felt that would have been a perfectly fine ending and I agree.

Second is when Rob records his farewell message, not specifically an analogue to Heather’s last gasped farewell in Blair Witch but it’s a comparison that can logically be made (and Beth’s own trembling fear and horror isn’t far removed from hers). It’s a very intense couple of minutes and without spelling it all out it clearly ends badly for the two.

But then there’s one final bit, and again I can see how it makes logical sense but still disrupts that squared circle for me one last time. Another conceit throughout the film is that the tape has been made on top of a tape made six weeks prior to the evening’s events where Rob and Beth spend a day together out and about, having just spent a night together, showing a friendship and romance that has collapsed by the time of the disaster. Friend Dan has argued that this chronologically earlier sequence, which starts and finally ends the film, reemerging in brief snippets along the way, is core to the overarching story theme, that one shouldn’t let a chance for happiness pass you by, since nothing is guaranteed.

I can see this as part of the whole logic of the story — in fact I can spell it out one tragic aspect of it mechanistically: if Rob and Beth had been an item or had found some way to make things work by the time of the party, then Beth wouldn’t've left the party, then she wouldn’t've been trapped in the building, then everyone might have gotten away (aside from Marlena) after being rescued in Bloomingdale’s. Etc. etc. but I’ll leave the fanfic to others.

But the effect of having the last clip of Rob and Beth in happier times, talking about how good it was to be alive, conveniently popping up immediately after their final moments were recorded, was another case for me where verisimilitude and standard features collided and weren’t resolved. Instead it just felt like obvious irony, another instance where I acknowledged a story factor but wasn’t moved by it. I sat a couple of seconds, nodded a bit, then got up and walked straight back home.

Now having said all this, let me come back to a key point — I did really enjoy this movie! May sound strange after having spent all this time and effort talking about where it didn’t work for me, I realize. But I’m coming from a position where it got very close for me but not quite close enough, and whether it was supposed to make more effort or I should have been looking at it differently, well, who knows? Yet I’m happy to say that this is a movie where I’m thinking ‘if only it had been a little bit better’ — and I think this without knowing or being confident in any real way to fully address my concerns if I were filming it, so I won’t even try — rather than ranting “SUCKED!” It didn’t, not at all. And I’d rather note a damn strong effort’s impact by seeing how much I’ve been thinking about the flaws I found with it — so to repeat again, if you think you’ll be interested, go. I think you’ll find it worth it.

One thing I must confess, though — I spent way too much time during the party scene trying to figure out what songs were being played. Typical.

Some thoughts on a president with a year to go

Over at in2thefray’s site, he suggested this idea a while back, so today is the day to talk about 1/20/08, a year before 1/20/09 and a new president, whoever it is.

And that means talking about someone who has disappeared in the public eye to a large extent recently. The endless campaign is now first and foremost in domestic news reporting, along with continual economic concerns, a neat combination of issues for those who thrive on it all while simultaneously worrying about where it’ll all end up.

And George W. Bush? Right now he almost seems to be at the level where shuttle missions were for a long while — happening, at work, and mostly shrugged at. His most recent domestic statements had to do with the tax rebate idea, which has been received with, at best, a dismissive ‘yeah, fine, but that’s it?’ As for his current Middle East trip, to say that the neocon wing has pounded its collective head against the wall for Bush ‘just being like Bill Clinton’ or similar understates. This Washington Post story, its usual combination of selective statements and intentionally-informed-by-leaks speculation, basically portrays someone just out for his legacy, and doubtless convinced that history will smile on him kindly.

Mind you, this is common enough stuff among people leaving the public stage — it just happens to be on the biggest public stage in the world, thus the interest or, more intriguingly, the lack thereof. As it is I’m not up to a full discussion of all the things that Bush has overseen on his watch which turned out to be a miserable mess at best — really, where to start? The vaunted base which voted for him has dwindled to a rump, as any number of GOP voters come to terms with something long apparent — namely, that all the time spent defending him basically boiled down ‘he would have been better than the Democrats.’ For some this may be enough, but call me skeptical at ranking that as a effusive demonstration of positive motivation.

And so looking back, a lot of people on the right will claim in a year’s time he was the right person for the right time for two reasons only, I figure — The Great Big Endless War to End War (good luck with that) and the Supreme Court vacancies that were filled. (And is it me or are certain justices making sure to stay alive just one more year?) Everything else is a mess of lofty expectations that translated into nothing, business-as-usual trough filling and obvious incompetence on any number of government levels. Complaints that this is something to always be expected on both sides are understandable but miss the larger point — after all the hyperinflated ‘BEST PATRIOT EVER’ attitudes that settled like a suffocating shroud upon his shoulders following 9/11, after the serious claims being bandied about in some corners that Bush deserved to be on Mount Rushmore and that someone like Donald Rumsfeld proved to be the nation’s best Defense Secretary ever (flawed as Edwin Stanton was, he cleans Rumsfeld’s clock there, now and forever), there’s not much left but a guy who either knowingly winked at the idiocies on his watch or honestly didn’t know what was going on. For his reputation’s sake, he might hope for the latter judgment.

These are the kind of sentiments that when expressed lead certain people — still — to scream “BDS! Nutroots!” and all that nonsense. No offense, but if you were venting a lot when Bill Clinton was in office at the mere fact of his existence then it seems you might be projecting a bit based on your own experience. Further, all you have to do is look at the election campaign now to realize that many of the loudest screamers then are now venting at themselves, looking at the collapse of Fred Thompson’s sleepwalk of an approach, the oily follies of Romney and much more besides and realizing that they have nowhere else to go. A telling sign, perhaps, of the waning of a certain generation’s influence — Rush Limbaugh, with his usual tact and calm mien, said before the South Carolina primary that if either McCain or Huckabee ended up being the nominee that it would destroy the Republican party. They placed one and two in said primary. That’s just one state, of course, and the whole thing is still up for grabs, but what if either scenario happens? Does Limbaugh take his ball and go home, or does he decide that, should one H. Clinton secure her own nomination, that there are bigger fish to fry? What price putative purity when it comes to power politics?

Amusing pipe dreams are already at play, of course — the dreamers at RedState are already talking about a new approach of activism to get things going the way they want them in the future, and even then the poster linked says, “I of course have no illusions that a sudden influx of a few conservatives on the Internet will change this whole national coalition party into The Conservative Party. That can never happen, because there are not enough conservatives to win a national election.” Which, arguably, is the whole point when it comes to the success of candidates in the primary, because right now it’s a party vote and next time it’s everybody. At some point, you slam up into reality.

And reality, to tie it back a bit, is that George W. Bush is still president for a year, and that strange things can happen in twelve months. He has given no overt sign of preference for a candidate. He’ll probably want to avoid being on the road with the GOP candidate at any point in order to assist his prospects by his absence. Fading into the woodwork behind a series of embarrassed coughs might be the best he can hope for. We can but watch, and wait.

WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance

Well, one last Idolator Pop 07 link…

This one to another mix disc rundown, by Mairead Case. She’s a fantastic writer and a friendly soul, and her disc covers Chicago acts — a good introduction to a scene I really don’t have any sense of, and in her description, “a roundup of moments not songs.”

All other essays are up so pretty much I say again, explore the entire site now and go crazy. If you’ve been inspired to check out even one new thing by any of it, then that’s great — it’s what those of us who are inspired to write about music live for, still.

End of week mental reboot

Full week, tiring, got a few things on my mind at this point, but happy to be at the start of a three-day weekend. So nothing much today, though I will note two things briefly, negative then positive:

* Negative — All the economic news lately makes me concerned, and I speak as someone not carrying a load of credit card or mortgage debt or anything like that, and who works in a steady job in the state civil service via the UC. Point is, I’m *still* concerned. I’m going to try and play it very easy this year when it comes to big purchases or plans. But that said:

* Positive — partially because I have the money to do so now plus savings set aside as needed, I’m going through a notable upgrade in various things for home — computer related stuff and the like — partially because I’d rather have some long-standing wishes out of the way, paid for and working well this year. It’ll be handy for my writing work, and just fun in general. Similarly I want to lock in as many vacation plans and tickets as I can in the near future — it’ll be something to look forward to as this strange year unfolds.

Call it an extension of my resolutions in general for the year, selfishly motivated perhaps — but it’s always nice to have something to look forward to. Hope folks have a good holiday weekend if you celebrate/observe it.

A brief digression on dogs

So in trawling around today for this and that I noted over in NROworld that a brief discussion had occured prompted by this post by John Derbyshire, aka the celebrity endorser of my Pi album. (Really!) As he notes, his family dog is sadly not long for the world and he looked for advice on how best to handle it so said beast painlessly passes in the surroundings he knew and loved best, which strikes me as a sound sentiment. Follow-up discussion led to a mention of a poem that he knew, but noted, “I find I can’t read very far into it right now.”

He’s not to be blamed — the poem is one by Rudyard Kipling, until now unfamiliar to me, but written in his best bluff-exterior-covering-a-sore-heart style, “The Power of the Dog.” The whole is worth a read, but to pull out the closing lines:

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ‘em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long–
So why in Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

I find this, in its simply rhyming (but carefully constructed) way, a perfect summation of a welter of feelings and situations. The answer to the poem’s persistent question is answered in many different ways by dog owners and lovers — and the sentiments can and surely do apply in more generalized ways to other animals and those who appreciate them.

I have answered the question in my own way, having no dog or pet at all in my apartment (it would not be allowed in any event) and in fact having had no pet since I left for college twenty years back. Part of it is the matter of responsibility — I would not be able to provide it as I could on my own — and part of it is that issue of grief Kipling so aptly captures, that sad inevitability, which gets to me even (especially?) in fictional portrayals. (I have a sneaking suspicion that I would be extremely bent out of shape by what happens to the dog in I Am Legend, to give you an idea of how deep my feelings can run.) We’ve had family dogs at home for nearly all my life, though, and the current one, Lexie, is a treasure, I’ve always liked her. But she too is starting to age, and every time I see her now I wonder a bit if it will be for the last time. Not yet, I hope — but it cannot last forever.

Talking over love of animals, pets, what have you may seem like something only deserving of an Erma Bombeck column or the like, I’ve no idea. But I’ve never pretended not to be a sentimentalist, really, and the obvious has as much affect on me, and interest for me, as the subtle and long-considered. And so here on a day where work is a bit slower and I’m catching up on a variety of little things involving paperwork and the like, this brief mention of one family’s sad situation and someone’s response to similar from many years back doesn’t surprise me in making my thoughts turn towards such matters.

But on a different concluding note, let us also celebrate what that genius Ambrose Bierce had to say about dogs in his Devil’s Dictionary:

DOG, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship. This Divine Being in some of his smaller and silkier incarnations takes, in the affection of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant. The Dog is a survival –an anachronism. He toils not, neither does he spin, yet Solomon in all his glory never lay upon a door-mat all day long, sun-soaked and fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means wherewith to purchase the idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned with a look of tolerant recognition.

He might have denied it, but that is the kind of snark that covers up an honest love, right down to the final words.

Singling out an Idolator 2007 Poll essay here…

This is actually for one of the mix discs created by various folks asked to do so, in this case writer Rich Juzwiak. It’s a celebration of the 4/4 beat’s resurgence in r’n'b, and as someone who still always feels that something about that perfectly-on-point beat suggests the future, even now, this was a joy to read (and the selection of tracks is stellar):

The mix picks up as it enters the realm of unquestionable dance music, though note the overall lack of high-hats and pronounced polyrhythms, even on something like Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music,” a song so housey, it might as well come with its own gay-pride float. I find that the more unadorned the percussion is, the more hypnotic that 4/4 becomes. Who needs trance when you can actually enter one?

Read the whole thing! And check out the rest of the mix essays as well — more will be posted tomorrow.

[EDIT -- and to make things even better, Rich has posted the mix via his own site. Check it out!]

Contemplating a California vote — bring on the propositions!

So being the nonpartisan fellow I am, it’s nothing but propositions for me this time out — though I’m going to double check the sample ballot to make sure, as there might be local races I’ve missed (entirely possible). This gives you an idea of the fun we always have out here. If you’re wondering about the whole history of such things, this is a brief summary explaining its roots, and there’s more out there. There have been plenty of arguments about what those changes have meant, good and bad — suffice to say it’s always been a fact of life for me, and I think the first time I was specifically aware of the power of elections when I was young wasn’t Reagan’s first election in 1980 but the legendary/notorious — depending on how you look at it — Proposition 13.

So what are we facing this time out? There are seven propositions total, and while I will take the time to consider them more fully, here are some initial impressions:

• Prop 91 — TRANSPORTATION FUNDS. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. — this one’s pretty funny because everyone’s saying to vote against it, even the people who proposed it, as you can see here. It’s a case where other action superseded this proposition, and the will of the people having been allegedly thus expressed, this whole thing is a dead letter. I might never see something like that again, so hey.
• Prop 92 — COMMUNITY COLLEGES. FUNDING. GOVERNANCE. FEES. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AND STATUTE. — basically this ensures lower fees for students attending said community college system. I am of two minds, given the current precarious state of the budget in California, but ultimately I feel that ensuring cheap access to education is crucial, and that objections from taxpayers’ associations should always be taken with a heavy grain of salt. My current vote is a yes.
• Prop 93 — LIMITS ON LEGISLATORS’ TERMS IN OFFICE. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. — the big one this time out, since it addresses a key part of state government in its current term limit form. As the analysis explains, this grows out of a reaction to the passage of Prop 140 back in 1990 — the first time I could vote in an election, as it happens! I believe I supported the idea at the time, but I’m not positive. My feelings on this matter are ill-defined, honestly, but inasmuch as I think that there can be an allowance between ensuring someone does not treat their office as some sort of divine gift unto death and allowing for people in office to build experience and relationships that can be of the greater benefit to the state, I think that the proposition has some value, and that objections to it are not sufficient. For the moment, I vote yes, though with caveats.
• Prop 94, Prop 95, Prop 96, Prop 97 — REFERENDUM ON AMENDMENT TO INDIAN GAMING COMPACT. — it may seem strange to lump all four together this way but, indeed, each is a specific tribe-by-tribe alteration to the compact as noted, and together allows for an overall expansion in the amount of slot machines the four tribes can offer. I have to be honest, though — the question of gambling in any form has been of little interest to me over the years as an election issue. If gambling wasn’t allowed at all in the state, I wouldn’t worry much; if it was unrestricted, I wouldn’t worry much either. On that front, they could expand all they want. The larger arguments brought to the fore — as proponents and opponents sum up here — involves questions of tax revenue, enriching tribes at the expense of poorer ones and other fairly involved issues that means for the moment I am undecided, though I think that that a plan involving a revenue stream that cannot be guaranteed is not exactly a recipe for success.

And that’s where things are for now. The vote is still some time away, so I’ll be spending more time thinking about these issues and always welcome input. Sometimes I don’t make a final decision until the day itself, and it can easily take someone else’s viewpoint to put things in a clearer perspective.

WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance

The 2007 Idolator Pop Critics Poll — and my own best-of music list along with it — is now live

So a few people keep asking me when I was going to post a top-ten list for 2007 musically. I kept saying, “I’m just waiting on the Idolator poll results to get published.”

And they are! So go check it out — it will be further updating throughout the week, and I’m already looking forward to the mix disc features that are going to be published, with contributions from such excellent writers as Mairead Case, Tim Finney, Andy Kellman, Tom Ewing, Douglas Wolk and Mike McGonigal among many others. It’ll be a great collection of individualized snapshots of the year and you’d do well to check them all out and give a listen to what captures your interest.

Meantime, here’s my ballot and therefore my own best-of/top-ten lists, with its accompanying essay. To quote part of it:

This was a hard ballot to draw up. Not because I was weighing the merits of a huge list and trying to narrow it down and encapsulate a full year and so forth. If anything, this was…not the reverse per se, but perhaps the converse: this was me looking at everything that can now be heard, could be heard all over the place, at any time, and realizing how divorced I am from the effort of ranking in general, accelerating a long-held tendency. I heard more music from all over the place this year than ever before and most of it I only heard once before moving on to the next album or song or mix. The big hit singles hit me not with repetition but with generalized and often anonymous osmosis, from being out and about and getting a snatch of a song here and there [and often that was enough -- like hooks have been so relentlessly perfected that one or two listens are all that's needed], rather than trying to actively pursue them or to subject myself to the kind of reigns of aural tyranny that made things like that OneRepublic song omnipresent in recent months. To create a list out of all that seems increasingly close to futile (and if I solely listened to music via my computer, last.fm would have done all the work for me).

But of course I drew a ballot up anyway.

Enjoy, and explore! There’ll be a lot to consider.

If you’d like to nominate something for Da Capo’s next Best Music Writing book…

…here’s the information. There are a couple of things I’ll be recommending that I really enjoyed from this past year.

—

From: daphne carr
Date: Jan 14, 2008 8:32 PM
Subject: Best Music Writing 2008

I’m the editor of the Best Music Writing series, now going on its
eighth year of publishing the year’s best writing on all topics music
related. I am pleased to report to you that for the 2008 edition of
the book I will be working with esteemed writer Nelson George. I look
forward to a fruitful spring of reading and consulting with him on
this project.

This year, as in every year, I am looking for brilliant features,
essays, profiles, news articles, interviews, creative non-fiction,
fiction, book reviews, long-format reviews, blog posts, journal
articles and the like on music and music culture-related topics.

I ask you to please send your own best work, work you’ve edited or
published, great work of your friends and colleagues, and/or work that
you have admired in passing throughout the year. You can send me email
links, hard copies of articles, whole magazines (please
paperclip/post-it the pages to read), or if need be, just the
name/title/publication title/date and I will search the piece out
myself. Feel free to mail me multiple times as you find more pieces
that you love starting right….NOW! and ending by the first week in
February at the very latest.

Email to: musicwriting@gmail.com

Mail to:

Daphne Carr/BMW07
603 West 115th Street #120
New York, NY 10025

And finally, please feel free to post this or forward this email
widely to all of your contacts in the music writing and publishing
community. I look forward to a deluge of mail from all of you in the
very near future.

Feel free to email me with any questions.

Thanks for another great year of writing,
Daphne

–
from the desk of:

Daphne Carr
Best Music Writing Series Editor

http://funboring.com/bestmusicwriting/

603 West 115th St #120
NY, NY 10025
646-591-1166
musicwriting@gmail.com

Dispatches from the primary front — aka, there really WILL be blood

First, the Democrats. Can this be a real battle royale? For real? I’d be entertained. Two posts at Balloon Juice from John today — here and here, and don’t ignore the comments — plus Josh Marshall at TPM provide some thoughts on it all. I’m not as up for following the shenanigans as they are but I’ll just simply say that none of it surprises me and that I wouldn’t be surprised by any of it being true in the sense that everyone’s fighting dirty. I still think it’s likely the successful candidate will win the overall election, so hey.

Meantime, the GOP. Oh, the entertainment value. Two bits from today, out of many:

First, Newt Gingrich has some things to say, including:

Also, there has been some speculation that I have endorsed a Republican candidate or that I am supporting a particular candidate “behind the scenes.” Nothing can be further from the truth. The fact is that I have offered my advice to any candidate that wants it and have had personal conversations with several candidates on a number of issues. My goal is to help every candidate be the best they can be. I want the strongest possible field because ultimately that will lead to a stronger America.

Doubtless. So which Cabinet position is he jockeying for, you figure?

Meantime, Michigan’s Pete Hoekstra, a Romney man, is a little nervous these days:

In response to Huckabee’s line that Americans want to elect as president someone who looks like “the guy they work with, not the guy who laid them off,” Hoekstra insists “the right Republican response is that we shouldn’t be judging people based on what they look like. We should be judging people on whether they have the qualifications . . . the ability to get the job done. I’d like a guy who has the skills of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.” Hoekstra says he wants to elect a president who is “someone who knows how to create jobs. . . . Republicans know that if [Gates or Jobs] gets rich, it is good for Americans.” To suggest otherwise, in the populist tone Huckabee has, is “scary,” Hoekstra says: “Huckabee is scary for the Republican party.”

As someone who is on the verge of making Mr. Jobs a little richer via an iPhone purchase, I can’t say that patriotism via the GOP is driving my assessment of the current state of things. But thank you for trying, sir.

WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance