Recent listens:
Vis a Vis/K Frimpong - forgot that I had bought this highlife record a while ago, it's a blast.
Happy Mondays - Pills & Thrills & Bellyaches - I don't think this is a great album but it's a lot of fun when I'm in the right mood. "Bob's Yer Uncle" gives me the creeps though. I love "Step On" but I think it spoils the album a bit, you get a song with a really good hook and that fun house piano and then the rest of the album seems harder to take.
Camper Van Beethoven - Key Lime Pie, II & III - "Circles" is a lovely song for being a bit of filler made out of reversing a previous song, hell of a lot better than those Stone Roses tracks that use the same trick. Key Lime Pie still blows me away in how fully formed and well-written it is compared to their previous albums, though tbh the earlier stuff is more fun. Only real problem is that Lowery still sounds like a snarky Santa Cruz dude on songs about Jack Ruby and Gravity's Rainbow and the slow death of an elderly person.
Deerhunter - Fading Frontier - seems fine, idk
Spacemen 3 - Playing With Fire
The Belle and Sebastian mix I made - it's good imo, should have put "Nobody's Empire" on there though.
A bunch of stuff by Steven R. Smith/Ulaan Passerine/Ulaan Khol - I like this guy, extremely consistent!
Recent movies:
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? - really entertaining as long as you don't mind lots of jokes focused on the pop culture of 1957. The reveal at the end of Jayne Mansfield's long-lost love was incredible.
The Apartment - somehow had never seen this! For a classic comedy it sure is sad. Nice to see a reminder that Mad Men wasn't exactly breaking new ground in portraying 60s corporate executives as heartless amoral bastards. I thought it was wonderful, real movie magic in making me terribly anxious to have things work out ok for this annoying loser and his BPD crush.
Chess of the Wind - recently rediscovered pre-revolutionary Iranian drama. Insanely beautiful to look at, almost all of it takes place in a gorgeous old house that the camera luxuriates in, some real "every frame a painting" stuff. Shohreh Aghdashloo (I mainly know her as Avasarala in The Expanse) is in this, looking amazing in her first film. The film itself is very good, a family drama that turns into a horror-inflected thriller.
Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction - I'm a sucker for this, if you liked his appearances in Twin Peaks The Return you should see it.
Edge of Darkness - the BBC miniseries, not the Mel Gibson movie. Real weird, I liked it! Starts as a murder investigation drama and expands outward as environmental groups, the nuclear industry, and the CIA get involved. Stars a ton of vaguely familiar British character actors and Joe Don Baker. Also features the protagonist kissing his deceased daughter's vibrator.
August in the Water - Dreamy, kind of new-agey Japanese movie from the 90s, involving teenagers, diving competitions, petroglyphs, people's internal organs turning to stone, communication with dolphins, you get the idea. Pretty good! Same director as the punk film Burst City and the totally deranged Electric Dragon 80000V.
Fantasy Mission Force - insanely stupid Hong Kong movie starring Jimmy Wang Yu and featuring Jackie Chan, who is only in the movie because a Hong Kong mobster put a hit out on him and Wang Yu was able to use his mob connections to defuse the situation. The movie is initially a WWII Dirty Dozen story about a gang rescuing several Allied generals (such as General Abraham Lincoln) from the Japanese Nazis (?) who have captured them in Europe (??) but they get sidetracked by an all-female tribe led by some guy in a tux, and then they have to spend the night in a haunted house and fight some demons. Anyway it's incredible, see it ASAP.
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