The musical chairs game played by the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace is finally over. Jack White (White Stripes, Raconteurs) and Alicia Keys have been officially signed on to record the theme song, a duet entitled "Another Way to Die," written by White. It's the first duet ever for the series, and with White doing the writing and producing, there's potential for a "Live and Let Die"-style burner. White has a (short) history of working well with other vocalists outside his idiom (Loretta Lynn, Brendan Benson) and the combination could be pretty dynamic.
The news is quite a relief for the ill-named film, after running through a myriad of options (Duffy, Leona Lewis, Amy Winehouse, Beyonce, Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz) and The Killers have all been previously linked to the theme,) it was starting to look like they might have to just hand out instruments and microphones with your ticket to the movie. The soundtrack already has an initial release date of October 28 set for it (the film comes out November 7).
I know it was only last month that I was lobbying for Duffy, but I really thought the Jack White rumors were too good to be true. It could be the best Bond theme ever. Heck, with how the last few have gone, I'd settle for one in the top 10.
Last night, South Park pulled out another skeleton from our dork closet -- the so-bad-it's-still-not-good animated film Heavy Metal, which was popular with us back in the day (1981) for it's music and... uh.... bare breasts -- hence the episode title of "Major Boobage." (And now that South Park has every episode online now for free*, you can watch it right now.)
The boys discover, through school counselor Mr. Mackey, that sniffing cat urine can get them high, a method called 'cheesing,' and it's Kenny who tries it and finds himself in an 'augmented' version Heavy Metal's Taarna story line, complete with a nude dip in the mysterious pool.
The repeat journeys by Kenny, and later Kyle's dad Gerald (both of whom end up doing battle "in the Breastiary of the Nippopolis,") are backed by the two iconic title tracks written for the original film, Sammy Hagar's "Heavy Metal" and Don Felder's "Takin' a Ride (Heavy Metal)." The soundtrack sounds pretty dated, but those songs along with tracks from Cheap Trick and Devo (see below) are what I remember from the film. The episode's attention to song and drawing style perfectly captures our imperfect memory of the film, which translates into breasts everywhere.
But, with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, is one lampoon ever enough? Gerald decides to uses his super lawyer skills to ban cats from the town, and Cartmen finds himself hiding the felines from the neighborhood, The Diary of Ann Frank-style. When Gerald is caught cheesing as well, he has a press conference, framed perfectly to match the already infamous Elliott Spitzer apology.
If there's one past episode this is reminiscent of, it's that of their widely popular (and Emmy-award winning) lampoon of Worlds of Warcraft, called 'Make Love, Not Warcraft' (watch now,) which also took to task some not-so hidden dork. I'm already dreaming of someone announcing 'The Emmy goes to...South Park with "Major Boobage!"
The much talked about soundtrack to the much talked about Bob Dylan film I'm Not There (directed by Todd Haynes,) has a preview of a few tracks streaming at Sony's Bob Dylan site. Sufjan Stevens, Cat Power and My Morning Jacket's Jim James are the tracks streaming, but that's just three of the 34 grand total songs on the album.
Todd Haynes and music supervisor Randall Poster previously hooked up for the David Bowie/Lou Reed/Iggy Pop/Brian Eno fantasy Velvet Goldmine, and they've revisited what they did with the soundtrack there, employing the use of a 'house band' (VG featured two backing bands, the Venus in Furs -- featuring Radiohead; and the Wylde Ratts -- featuring Sonic Youth.) This time around, the backing band again features Sonic Youth (guitarist Lee Renaldo, drummer Steve Shelley) along with Television's Tom Verlaine, current Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, keyboardist John Medeski and Dylan bass player Tony Garnier.
This week, it's all about the main players in the indie film/musical Once, as Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova appear not once, but thrice on evening talk shows. They'll both perform and sit down for an interview tonight on Leno, Wednesday on Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, and then Friday on Last Call With Carson Daly.
Hansard is already a rock star in Ireland, being the lead singer/songwriter of the hugely popular The Frames, and had collaborated previously with the then 17-year old Irglova on the album The Swell Season. The duo are touring in support of the film and soundtrack currently, under this moniker of The Swell Season.
The film, directed by ex-Frames bass player John Carney, was initially written as an excuse to use some the songs from that collaboration and had cast Irglova opposite actor Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Sunshine) in the lead. Murphy ended up backing out because of Irglova's inexperience, which opened the door for Hansard to step in and sing the songs he was already writing for the role. While the lead characters remain nameless throughout the film, Hansard and Irglova inject them with something more: reality. It's a love story shot almost like a documentary, and during the filming and shortly after, the two found themselves falling in love, despite their nearly twenty year difference in age. They've since gone back to being friends and collaborators, but it speaks to the magic spell that the film casts, that it affected the performers as much as the audience. Here's their live performance in Washington D.C. that NPR webcasted last week.
This weekend marks the invasion of the kiwis, as both the box office and the boob tube welcome quirky New Zealand products. First, the film Eagle Vs. Shark hits theaters Friday (in limited run,) closely followed by the HBO television premiere of Flight of the Conchords on Sunday. To be more accurate, though, it's truly a Wellington invasion, as this NZ town is the home to the creators and stars of both. Add to that the band The Phoenix Foundation, who wrote the music for Eagle Vs. Shark, and it's like the entire Wellington scene has mounted an attack on our fair shores.
The Phoenix Foundation just finished touring in support of their debut album Horsepower, a great indie rock synthesis of folk and atmospherics ala Grandaddy or early Beta Band. They're widely considered New Zealand's best band and I had the honor to talk via phone and over a few beers, mostly with singer Sam Scott - main singer and one of the songwriters in the group. The following interview is cobbled together from our communications while they were in Seattle for Eagle vs. Shark's SIFF premiere.
DL: So how did TPF get involved with Eagle Vs. Shark?
Sam Scott: Wellington's not that big of a place, so we all [director Taika Waititi (Cohen) and actor Jemaine Clement were also in a comedy duo called The Humourbeasts] knew of each other from going out to parties and clubs. Apparently Taika was listening to our album Horsepower while writing it, and when he approached us, knowing he'd been nominated for an Oscar [for the short, Two Cars, One Night,] we were like "yeah, I think we'd be into that" as it would be an awesome opportunity. While we're influenced by bands like The Pixies, Velvet Underground and the like, we're also influenced by a lot of soundtrack music. Conrad Wedde [guitarist for TPF] did a lot of the compositions for the film and he and Luke (Buda) are really into Vangellis, Ennio Morricone, and things like that. There's this, I guess I'd call it landscape music that we're into... kind dreamy.. atmospheric...
SS: Yeah... we're very much influenced by Air in a lot of ways. Which is funny because they were backed at one point by the band Phoenix, and a lot people thought we took our name from that, knowing we were into Air.
DL: Speaking of your name, I'm interested in hearing about the origin of the band name, knowing that there's a couple interesting possibilities.
SS: It was from the television show MacGyver [the corporation that Richard Dean Anderson's character worked for] but also kind of making joke of DJ groups in Wellington who had names like the Roots Foundation... Dub Foundation and names like that. It's sort of a silly name in light of that, but here it is nearly ten years later and we can't change it now. But MacGyver was a cool show when we were kids so...
DL: But then there's also the...
SS: Oh yeah... then years later we were googling the name and up comes this right-wing business group that tried to cause coups in various countries, to create their own... uh...
DL: Yeah, in the South Pacific [Minerva, and later in the Bahamas with Abaco,] they tried to create these libertarian enclaves, essentially tax havens.
SS: Yeah, but they never managed to do it. But that's just about the worst thing that we wanted to be associated with. We're pretty left wing and happily pay our taxes.
DL: So is it weird at all to be touring in support of an album you recorded four years ago?
SS: It should be weird, but it's not because we quite like the songs and it feels like the right way to introduce ourselves to America, the sort of starting point for the band. We didn't want to forget about that album, and I think we're going to get our next album [Pegasus] out fairly soon... late this year or early next. Hopefully then we'll be up to speed by next year.
EVERYONE: We love The Clean! They're definitely a big influence on us.
DL: I thought so... them and possibly a bit of The Chills came to mind when I thought NZ bands with you.
SS: Not so much The Chills for me, but definitely The Clean.
DL: Knowing their limited sales here in the states, do you see it as a challenge? I mean, even Neil Finn's popularity here is via Australia (with Crowded House.)
SS: Yeah, I guess it's a challenge, but we'd certainly be happy with the level that The Clean acheived. We're not in it to make loads of money, just enough to keep putting out music for people to hear. And being associated with the movie helps, I hope.
SS: Speaking of that, it seems like there's a kiwi invasion afoot with you guys, the film and Flight of the Conchords all coming at once... is there more on the way?
SS: It's funny, almost like Wellington's taking up residence here in the states or something. And yes, there's certainly more where we came from.
Later in the evening, Scott and Buda quickly give me a list of other NZ bands that are golden in their minds: Lawrence Arabia, The Reduction Agents and The Mint Chicks. All worth definitely worth checking out.
They play their set, which shows their musical growth since the casual masterpiece of the their debut. "We've changed the songs a bit live, speeding up the tempo and making them a bit punchier," says Scott, and it shows. Pegasus came out in 2005 to rave reviews in NZ (see video for song "Hitchcock,") and they've got another album at the ready. Meanwhile, last year both Sam Scott (as Samuel Flynn Scott, see "War over Water,") and Luke Buda released solo albums (Conrad Wedde has one the works as well,) but you can only find Buda's electro-pop gem Special Surprise here if you look (Buda thinks this is due to Arch Hill Records association with Touch & Go.) A track from this also appears on the soon to be released Eagle Vs Shark Original Soundtrack.
"Going Fishing" is the first single from the soundtrack, and features snippets from the film. The song shows a bit of the Grandaddy love...
Just because Tony's paranoid doesn't mean there's not someone out to get him. As the downward spiral continues to the end of the series, Tony's insulating himself by cutting off his confidants one by one, and this episode saw him snuff out probably the most significant of them all (consider this your spoiler alert.) As always, The Sopranos utilizes music to tell the story, and the theme song here was "Comfortably Numb" (making it two weeks in a row that an episode has started with that Pink Floyd number.)
While last week had Tony mumbling the tune, leaving it open for debate on it's significance, this week it's cemented into the plot in a couple of ways. Christopher pops a CD of Music From The Motion Picture The Departed into the stereo (it's the lead track,) while he and Tony sing Martin Scorsese's praises. Of course creator David Chase has reference Scorsese before, mostly homages to Goodfellas, but this one is far more overt. The Departed plotline of an undercover cop infiltrating the mob is a nod to Tony's (justified) paranoia about Chrissy. It's more then that though, as Scorsese's use of the particular version of the song speaks multitudes in both The Departed and in The Sopranos.
The song itself was a live recording (video) featuring Van Morrison (singing David Gilmour's part) from an all-star re-staging that Roger Waters did of The Wall in 1990 (The Wall: Live in Berlin,) to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall just a few months prior. They setup the stage at Potsdamer Platz, that strip of no mans land between the East and West wall. While cleaning up the area, they found a smorgasbord of Soviet armaments and even a furnished Nazi bunker (not Hitler's as some rumors would have it.) It's this long-buried evil rearing it's head later that is a key to Scorsese's drama, and even more so to Chase's Sopranos, so it's hard not to forgive him for borrowing it.
The lyrics given emphasis here are "I cannot put my finger on it now / The child is grown, the dream is gone / I have become comfortably numb" which in last week's episode corresponded with Tony's disappointment with his son, AJ, so it's no surprise that Tony seems to be in the same mood here with his mafia son Chris. The songs lyrics also speak to the ease of one's pain, more specifically through drug use (legend has it Waters wrote the lyrics base on an experience with prescribed painkillers.) Christopher is high when he crashes the car, and later Tony hypocritically eases his pain through similar means (albeit, more of the 'organic' variety.)
Of course, there's more going on here then just being numb in comfort, naturally, as every song fits into place with the plot. When Chris' wake causes, and drives the strip to Lucinda Williams' "Are You Alright?" - which is a more then valid question. Later, Tony meets up with Chris' old stripper friend of Chris (Sonya, played by The L Word's Sarah Shahi) to deliver the bad news, and we here M Ward's "Outta My Head" - which is an apt description of Tony's state of mind. He's unconsciously becoming Christopher, showing that there was a bit of jealousy in there thrown in with his resentment. As Tony has proxy sex with Sonya, The Pretender's "Adultress" plays, and he's finally able to follow through on an affair with one of Chris' ladies (see Adriana and Julianna.) The Pretenders continue to provide the soundtrack with "Space Invader" as Tony gets high, ultimately leading to some peyote.
More: Anyone notice the seemingly random Katherine Hepburn interivew with Dick Cavett that Carm watched when she couldn't sleep? Hepburn would've turned 100 this past weekend, and my bet is it was a tribute to the "First Lady of Cinema." Regarding addiction, she says in the interview: "Cold sober, I find myself absolutely fascinating." I think we pretty much all did, Kate.
Director Quentin Tarantino has never claimed to be a wholly original auteur. His films have always drawn from a particular film (geek) genre, and he litters scenes with homages to his favorite cinematic moments, utilizing both sight and sound. Reservoir Dogs was a kiss to Hong Kong crime dramas, Pulp Fiction to film noir (and a pastiche of classic American cinema,) Jackie Brown to blaxpoitation, and the Kill Bill films paid homage to spaghetti western, blaxploitation, kung fu movies, as well as Chinese wuxia and Japanese martial arts films. Similarly, Tarantino (along with music supervisor Mary Ramos-Oden) borrow soundtrack moments from those very genres, adding to the sense that you've somehow seen this before (or better yet, feel like you should've seen it before.)
With his half of Grindhouse (Death Proof,) Tarantino sets his sights directly on the grindhouse genre, which he's danced around before in nearly all his films, and the soundtrack starts right off culling from the cream of the convoluted crop.
"The Last Race" by Jack Nitzsche was the theme song to the grindhouse film Village of the Giants, which starred Beau Bridges, a young Ron Howard (past 'Opie', not yet 'Richie',) and the folk-rock group The Beau Brummels (the 'Beau' thing is a coincidence, oddly enough.) It's essentially the story of a chemistry experiment gone horribly wrong, and the rebel teens that crashed in town all become giants and take over the town.
Next in line is Otto Preminger's odd movie Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970) which featured music from the band Pacific Gas & Electric ("Staggolee".) The movie starred Liza Minelli in one of her first cinematic roles, as the disfigured heroine Junie Moon. While it's not technically a grindhouse film, it has a similar cult following, and you just know Tarantino has to have it in his collection.
Another director that Tarantino loves is Brian DePalma, and his great film Blow Out is, in essence, an homage to director Michelangelo Antonioni's great 1966 film Blowup. The love theme from Blow Out appears here ("Sally And Jack") and composer Pino Donaggio worked with DePalma on many of his films that Tarantino loves. Not only that, he's influenced by two other Tarantino fave composers Morricone and Bernard Herrman (Psycho, Taxi Driver, his theme to Twisted Nerve was featured prominently in Kill Bill Vol. 1.)
And last up is the very obscure (even for Tarantino) song "Riot in Thunder Alley" which is taken from the 1960’s speedway flick Thunder Alley. This film featured beach party vet Annette Funicello alongside teen heartthrob Fabian, who plays a stock car racer known as "Killer Callahan," - which kind of sounds like he could've been a character in Death Proof, right?
Couldn't You Wait? is a documentary on the great band Silkworm. This extended trailer (taken down at the behest of the director) features friends and acquaintances of mine (along with Steve Albini) talking about the band that affected our lives in one way or another. This 14 minutes is purely reverential, and doesn't touch on the tragedy of their ending.
The musical chairs game played by the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace is finally over. Jack White (White Stripes, Raconteurs) and Alicia Keys have been officially signed on to record the theme song, a duet entitled "Another Way to Die," written by White. It's the first duet ever for the series, and with White doing the writing and producing, there's potential for a "Live and Let Die"-style burner. White has a (short) history of working well with other vocalists outside his idiom (Loretta Lynn, Brendan Benson) and the combination could be pretty dynamic. 
