Sunday, December 4, 2011

3 Reviews


You're Living All Over Me - Dinosaur Jr.   

    Very few musicians today can actually speak with their instruments.  Of course there are many talented guitarists playing today, but how many of them would you be able to recognize if you heard something new from them?  On Dinosaur Jr.'s 1987 album You're Living All Over Me, guitarist J. Mascis seals his identity as one of the most important guitarists of the last 30 years.  The album's wall of sound production, as well as the emotions pouring out of every song, make the album as fresh as it was nearly 25 years ago.
    From the opening chords of "Little Fury Things," you know you're in for something interesting.  Using a wah-wah pedal, unheard of for a band on SST Records, Mascis builds upon layers of beautiful distortion.  Between his shrieking melodies, Lou Barlow's thundering bass, and Murph's powerful drumming, Dinosaur Jr. sound like Nick Cave if he listened to more Kiss than Leonard Cohen.  This onslaught of melody and power barrels through for the rest of the album, never letting up until the closer, "Poledo."  Sung by bassist Lou Barlow with only an acoustic guitar (a sign of what was to come with his side project Sebadoh), it trades the aggressive emotion of rockers like "Sludgefeast" and instead lays everything out on the table.  With lines like "My stomach always hurts/Milking your attention/For the little it is worth," it's evident that Barlow is crying out for help.  The raw feeling in the lyrics adds to the album's timelessness.   
    The album became the blueprint of indie rock guitar for the next decade, as seen in Nirvana and Pavement.  After You're Living All Over Me, the original Dinosaur Jr lineup recorded Bug before Lou Barlow left the band.  He returned in 2005, and the group has since recorded two albums, but none have come close to their 1987 masterpiece. 

Punch-Drunk Love

    Who would have thought Adam Sandler could actually act?  Apparently Paul Thomas Anderson did.  The writer/director, coming off the 3 hour cancer drama Magnolia, wanted to do something small and sweet for his next project.  So in 2002, Anderson released Punch-Drunk Love, a 90 minute romantic dramedy that is anything but small.     
    Punch-Drunk Love is the story of a man as he grows to find love.  Barry, played by Adam Sandler, is basically what happens to Billy Madison after he loses dependence from his father and friends.  Sandler is the same man-child he has always played, but here there is a reason for his behavior.  Having grown up around 7 emotionally abusive sisters, Barry is shy and alone until he meets Lena (played by Emily Watson).  What ensues is a colorful journey, full of deep blues and bright reds, a mysterious harmonium, and blond brothers out to rob Barry.  The previously mentioned colors are what make the film unique: they almost become characters themselves.  The red's come to represent Lena and the love she brings to Barry, while his own blue suit as well as plain white office represent his loneliness.  Jon Brion's fabulous score puts us inside Barry's head, which is at once nervous and romantic.
    When people talk about Paul Thomas Anderson, they frequently mention the influences of his films, from the Scorsese playground of Boogie Nights to the Kubrickian There Will Be Blood.  The film obviously debts itself to French New Wave, but it isn't easy to pinpoint where the director is pulling from.  So, in a way, Anderson has made his most original film yet.  Punch-Drunk Love is a film full of surprises and a joy to watch.

The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

    Good science fiction never ages, and that's exactly what Alfred Bester's 1954 novel The Demolished Man does.  57 years later, it still holds up as one of the definitive sci-fi stories, going on to inspire countless other books and films.  Written two years before the Phillip K. Dick story that would be the basis for Spielberg's Minority Report, it also precedes the cyberpunk boom of the 1980's.  So what is it that makes The Demolished Man so influential?
    Well for starters, Bester's novel is actually a crime story tucked under a veil of extrasensory perception and flying cars.  It is the story of Ben Reich, CEO of Monarch Enterprises, who sets out to murder rival business man Craye D'Courtney after rejecting a merger of their two companies.  The twist comes in the fact that there hasn't been a murder in seventy years, due to Espers (short for extrasensory perception) working in law enforcement as well as the outlaw of weapons.  Espers function in all levels of society, so Reich decides that to carry out his plan he needs the help of a telepathic psychiatrist named Augustus Tate.  What follows is a high stakes game of cat and mouse between Esper detective Lincoln Powell and Reich, who if caught may be sentenced to Demolition, a process which is discussed but never revealed until the final pages. 
    What's great about The Demolished Man is that you become so enveloped in the story that the speculative aspects of the story become second nature.  You believe the world in which you're immersed could be real because the emotions and actions of the characters are so plausible.  The novel speculates man's animal instincts: it seems that controlling murder and the use of weapons has been effective, but at a certain point it doesn't seem to last.  Luckily, The Demolished Man will always be an effective read: it's extremely entertaining yet never loses it's speculative nature.