Film Review Criteria

My next post will be a film review, and (since I’m not sure who reads this blog) I thought it might be useful to post a few thoughts about what I look for in a film. But before I do that I have a few disclaimers. First, just because I review a film on this blog does not mean I recommend it for everyone. I watch a lot of movies and some of them contain things that are probably offensive to some of my readers. Second, just because I give a movie a good review doesn’t mean I like the film, or even that I enjoyed watching the film. It means that there was something about the film that I believe made the viewing experience valuable. Third, if I give a film a poor review that doesn’t mean I don’t like it, it just means that I think it wasn’t well made. I could, however, like the movie quite a bit. Sometimes I’ll think a movie is valuable and I’ll also think it’s great and I’ll also want to watch it several times. Those kinds of movies are my favorite. Finally, I tend to gravitate towards what are often referred to as “art films”, it’s not that I don’t love a big blockbuster, (Live Free or Die Hard was super!) it’s just that generally I prefer films that are going to challenge while entertaining me rather than films that are for pure entertainment.

When I am watching a film with my “critic’s eye” there are several things I keep in mind. Is the film arresting? Does it engross me, or am I looking at my watch after ten minutes wondering when it’s going to end? Once I’m into the film I concentrate on the story, letting it wash over me and giving all my thought to understanding what’s happening. I’ll sometimes think, “I wouldn’t have done that,” or “What was the director thinking?”, but I generally try to save those questions until the movie is over and the credits have rolled. After the film I think about the actors’ (or actresses’) performances, and I pick them apart in my mind. Were they convincing? What did they bring to the character that another actor might not have been able to do? I then consider the director. What was he trying to say? Was it a critique of something, if so what? Was he just telling a story with no ulterior motives (is that even possible)? Was he able to pull the best performances possible from his actors? I then consider the cinematography. Did it fit with the over all feel of the movie? Was it single camera, multiple camera, hand held, or steady? Did it focus on landscapes, people, or a mixture? Did it go for the hard to nail close-ups of the actors’ faces or was it standoffish and perhaps impersonal? I wonder how much independence the cinematographer had, and how much of it is his (or her) eye and how much is the director’s. I then consider the music. Was it appropriate for the film or did it bog the film down? How much say did the director have? If the music doesn’t fit I wonder if it was the director’s fault or the fault of the composer or music supervisor. Finally, I also ponder the themes and ideas explored by the film. Are they relevant? What do they reveal about society at large? Did they challenge me in any way? All of these things add up to make what I like to think of as the composition of the film. I then take the composition as a whole and explore my own personal feelings and reactions to the film. After I’ve done all these things I am then able to talk to someone or write about the film.

Party!

The weekends here a coffee talk will normally be reserved for current events or thoughts on theological or religous issues. Today, however will be a little different. Just under one month ago, on September 29th, I married the love of my life. We had a small ceremony in Texas with family and close friends. However, since we live in New Jersey, most of our friends from the surrounding area weren't able to make the trip down south. So today we are throwing our first party as a married couple! We're expecting between 20 and 30 people. I don't know how we're going to fit everyone in our one bedroom apartment, but we've cleaned the place and rearranged the furniture and I think it's going to work. Hopefully it will stop raining before this afternoon so we can utilize our balcony. The rest of my day is going to be spent doing some cooking and other miscellaneous prep so I'll get back to writing on Monday. I'll leave you with a picture of my wife and I. Have a great weekend!

Goodbye Tonic

My favorite place in Manhattan, Tonic, is closing tonight. I won’t be able to go tonight, but I went on Monday and Thursday and I guess that’s enough. It’s hard for me to explain exactly what Tonic means to me. Tonic is a music venue on the lower east side of Manhattan. They primarily specialize in “avant-garde, creative, and experimental music.” This may not sound like your cup of tea, but to me this is something wonderful.

Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. It was always around, at home, at church, and at school. I started playing piano in 3rd grade and trumpet in 6th. I was even a music major for a couple of years in college. I’ve always loved jazz, jazz gets me going, it makes me feel good and it helps me relax. My problem with jazz started about five years ago, that’s when it all started to sound sterile, like it was stuck in a rut. Although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, I had reached the end of the rope jazz wise, at least according to some people. That’s when I went exploring for new music, and I discovered that jazz wasn’t dead, it was thrillingly alive: I had just been looking in the wrong spots. I discovered groups like The Chicago Underground, Medeski Martin and Wood, The RH Factor, Christian McBride, Soulive, Liquid Soul, DJ Logic, The Roots, John Scofield, John Zorn, Isotope 217 and more recently Sex Mob and Millennial Territory Orchestra. Some of these groups and artists are of a more traditional vein and some are harder to connect to jazz, but that’s where they all come from. In my mind the best musical experience (besides playing) comes from live performances not just albums. So as I found more and more music I started to look for places to listen the artists. Several of these artists play lots of places, but the place where they feel the most free to experiment and explore new directions in front of an audience is Tonic. This is what I discovered when I started looking for a place to hear live music.

Unfortunately, due to geography, I was unable to go to Tonic and hear it for myself. So I started looking around and I found a couple of albums recorded live at Tonic. I looked some more and found some bootlegs from Tonic. I resolved that the first time I visited Manhattan I was going to a show there, so I did. We got there early and it was fantastic. Tonic is located in an old winery and the performance room is quite small. We were sitting about ten feet from the stage. There’s no better way to experience live music than in an intimate setting. Seeing a rock performance in a stadium is cool I’m sure, but there’s no way the audience feels as connected with the music as they do when the place is small. I haven’t been to many shows there, just four. But every performance has been spectacular. Tonic will likely reopen in Brooklyn, but not in Manhattan. They can’t afford the rising cost of rent. Who knows when they’ll actually reopen, it could be a month or never. In my opinion, Manhattan, which is one of the coolest cities in the world, just lost a little bit of cool. Goodbye Tonic.

Favorite Music 2006

The end of the year is upon us, so I am jumping into the fray of year end lists. I listen to a wide variety of music, so a music list was easy. In no particular order these are my favorite albums and musical things from 2006. Please comment and tell me what you think I got right, what I got wrong, and what I might have missed musically this past year.

2006 Soundtrack of My Life : The Last Kiss Soundtrack
Best Place for Live Jazz: Tonic NYC
Favorite Musicology Student: Jennie Gay

The Lists:

Pop

Christina Aguilera: Back to Basics

Justin Timberlake: Futuresex/Lovesounds

Cassandra Wilson: Thunderbird

Scissor Sisters: Ta-Dah

Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere

Jazz

Steven Bernstein: MTO Vol. 1

Sex Mob: Sexotica

Christian McBride: Live at Tonic

Radio Citizen: Berlin Serengeti

MSMW: Out Louder

Rock/Blues

The Raconteurs: Broken Boy Soldiers

Beck: The Information

Ben Harper: Both Sides of the Gun

Derek Trucks Band: Songlines

Allen Toussaint and Elvis Costello: The River In Reverse

Folk

Ray LaMontagne: Till the Sun Turns Black

Josh Ritter: The Animal Years

Bruce Springsteen: The Seeger Sessions

Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris: All the Road Running

Willie Nelson: You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker

Alt-Country/Rock/Southwest

Calexico: Garden Ruin

Ben Kweller: Ben Kweller

Ryan Adams: 29

Willie Nelson: Song Bird

Neil Young: Living With War

Honorable Mention

The Flaming Lips: At War With the Mystics

Beirut: Gulag Orkestar

Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

John Legend: Once Again

Keane: Under the Iron Sea

Loose Fur (Jeff Tweedy): Born Again In the USA

Gotan Project: Lunatico

Tonic, NYC, and Public Transport

This past weekend I made my first trip to NYC and it was an adventure. Those of you who know me know that I am a city person, so let me just say that it was everything I expected. We didn't really do a whole lot of touristy stuff, although we did go to (and get lost in) Central Park. We went to the New York Public Library which was fascinating, wandered around the city, met a friend at Columbia University and then had dinner with some people in her graduate program. After dinner we went to a music venue to check out a local jazz/experimental ensemble that I like. The concert was amazing Steven Bernstein and Friends brought the house down. Bernstein is the band leader and he plays the slide trumpet, along with the slide trumpet there was an amazing bassist, drums, saxophone, and electric guitar. There were two continous sets in which the rythm section laid down an incredible groove and the trumpet and sax soloed and improvised on everything from the Beatles to Prince. It was an incredibly good time. After the concert we headed over to Brooklyn to spend the night with a friend. This is when we ran into problems. The New York City subways are old and sometimes they need work, and obviously the best time to work on them is at night and on the weekends. We hadn't had the foresight to check the internet and see if anything was going on, so we didn't know that the whole lower east side metro system was shutting down for the weekend at midnight. We got to the station at 12:05 and what normally would have been a 20 minute trip ended up taking 2 hours, but we finally made it to our friends house, and spent the next morning with him before heading back to Jersey.