Blurbing For The Weekend 12/20/24

My rating scale for stuff on streaming is explained here.

Some critics have warned viewers that Flux Gourmet, about a literally & literarily constipated writer chronicling the residency of a culinary performance-art trio, frequently features nauseating sights and sounds. I love this, because it means I must be desensitized to bodily functions and/or the avant-garde. Gourmet has its share of amusing observations about the egos of artists (like Fatma Mohamed’s manipulative, demanding grande dame of feminist recipe deconstruction) and their financial backers (Gwendoline Christie is the institute head desperate to earn the artists' respect, at least in the bedroom or in regards to one damn flanger). The choice to create a fictional subculture is an inspired way to keep the film satirical instead of parodistic, but the target is still a light one: the clueless self-importance of financially isolated artistic communities, and the shame felt by those who can’t manage the hustle. Peter Strickland, who also directed In Fabric and Berberian Sound Studio, has taste and style, but can’t seem to transcend them enough to be really scary or funny. FOUR BAGS OF POPCORN.

If you give a single crap about free jazz, you’ll love the interviews and footage compiled in the documentary Fire Music, leaving Criterion at the end of the month. I wouldn’t even say you have to like free jazz, just interviews with old heads and players giving “Poopies' up on the strip”-style anecdotes about their encounters with everyone from Albert Ayler to Cecil Taylor. The structure is pat, and the analysis cursory enough you won’t gain much insight as to how Ornette Coleman is obviously a genius now but wasn’t obviously a genius then. Dismissals of this music from within the jazz scene are acknowledged but not wrestled with beyond “they didn’t get it. Yet.” But Fire Music does provide an appreciated historical overview from a jazz-centric perspective, connecting it to bop and swing rather than rock guitarists. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

Ornette Coleman: Made In America, also on Criterion, makes even less effort to explicate the guy’s music, but provides it more of an opportunity to speak for itself. There’s also more political and social context given to the saxophonist’s rise than Fire Music gets into, and a lot of quality young Denardo Coleman content. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

One tangent I forgot to bring up in my Sonic Youth album rundown: the best example I’ve ever heard of what alternapop from Sonic Youth could have sounded like, if the band really made a go of it beyond “Bull In The Heather,” is “Rat Is Dead (Rage),” the first single off underrated Brazilian indie sleaze footnote CSS’s sophomore slump album Donkey. Singer Lovefoxxx breathily blurs Kims Deal and Gordon as she describes helping a friend off an abusive lover, guitars raging and shimmering around the pathos and contempt in the narrative. “I know, I know, I know, I know he will never hurt you again,” goes the chorus, a droll male voice chimes in “rat is dead…rat is dead…” before the shrieking noise break. That the perfect hit for Sonic Youth to promote at Lollapalooza ’95 came out in 2008, from a combo who was supposed to provide more coke music to the nu-rave kids…it’s just wild.

Another tangent...The Top 10 Sonic Youth songs that reference angels, in chronological order:

1. “I’m Insane” (Bad Moon Rising, 1985) “Murdered angels/ bodies in bedlam”
2. “Starpower” (EVOL, 1986) “Spinning dreams with angel wings/ torn blue jeans/ a foolish grin”
3. “Mary-Christ” (Goo, 1990) “Angel in a devil skirt/ buys me a shirt/ says I hope you like”
4. “Sugar Kane” (Dirty, 1992) “Hey angel, come and play/ fly me away”
5. “JC” (Dirty, 1992) “Sunny skies and angel’s pleas/ floating down upon my knees”
6. “Androgynous Mind” (EJST&NS, 1994) “Hey, sad angel walks/ and he talks/ just like a girl”
7. “Becuz” (Washing Machine, 1995) “Angel/ gonna show it/ blow it”
8. “Saucer-Like” (Washing Machine, 1995) “Do you ever sink a bit whenever angels fly?”
9. “Disconnection Notice” (Murray Street, 2002) “Angels turn on heaven’s light”
10. “No Way” (The Eternal, 2009) “Sweet temptation came today/ time for angels to kneel and pray”

References to “angel food cake” and actress Heather Angel were disqualified. Apologies to fans of the three other songs on Experimental Jet Set Trash & No Star that qualified, but failed to make the cut. ‘

And now, some recently revisited POPCORN CLASSICS.

Legion. A truly random group of people at a failing roadside diner (with truly random accents for the desert outside LA) are attacked by a demonic granny, before Paul Bettany’s newly fallen angel reveals they’re at ground zero for a biblical apocalypse. One of those movies where God’s ways seem more half-assed and ill-considered than mysterious, but the twist of the demons actually being angels is fun, the action sequences are unpredictable, and the actors (Lucas Black! Dennis Quaid! Charles S. Dutton! Adrianne Palicki! Kate Walsh! Tyrese Gibson!) don’t seem embarrassed at all. I especially appreciate when Kevin Durand shows up as Gabriel, complete with Hans Zimmer horn, and gives us some warrior angel beefcake.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Daniel Craig’s stoic journalist and Rooney Mara’s troubled punk superhacker try to figure out which of Christopher Plummer’s fucked-up relatives know what happened to his niece decades earlier. Based on a hit Swedish novel, everyone speaking English with vaguely Scandinavian energy. It’s trashy, exploitive hackwork for David Fincher, which means it’s still pretty stylish and well-acted. I haven’t gotten around to watching the Swedish movie series, but I should.

Blue Ruin. Macon Blair plays a haunted, unhoused man from rural Virginia who finally gets to avenge his parents when their murderer is released early from prison. Director Jeremy Saulnier does a remarkable job delivering the thrills of a backwoods justice revenge flick without pretending anyone involved is superhuman, or even smart. Just sincere. And Blair - who directed a Peter Dinklage Toxic Avenger movie we may never see! - is convincing (or at least affectingly enjoyable) as a sadsack who feels like he has no choice but to try and be John Wick. 

This Is The End. The famous comedy guys one or fewer degrees from Freaks & Geeks indulge their emotional anxieties and bromosexual humor one last time while trying to survive a biblical apocalypse. Observe And Report aside, this is the Apatow-adjacent "frat pack" movie I revisit with the most regularity, probably because there's no pretense to romance, just xennial comedy guys doing their shticks in a surreal nightmare world. I would have given Danny McBride an Oscar nomination for this, and Michael Cera a prequel. Plus, the most problematic of the many actors playing themselves all go to hell (I do have to tell myself it's only Jay Baruchel's concept of Nick Carter that appears at the end).

All suggestions and such should be shot over to anthonyisright at gmail dot com.