Dennis Farina as Gus Demitriou and Dustin Hoffman as Chester "Ace" Bernstein an episode of HBO's Luck ("Pilot").
It's difficult to judge a series like this based on the pilot, especially one written by David Milch. The gifted writer is famous for juggling multiple characters speaking ornate dialogue, and it can take awhile for it to click with an audience. We're dropped into the scene, with the expectation to become "track rats," with the racing terms and handicap lingo, by the end of the first episode. Michael Mann, responsible for the visuals, met the challenge with exquisite camera work. But it was an awful bumpy ride, as Mann and Milch recently divulged.
"[T]o not have preludes, not have contexts, to just parachute into these lives... The challenge is, how do you evoke that in ways that the viewer doesn't need Dramamine after 20 minutes?"
Michael Mann on David Milch's in media res script
Having two heavyweights notorious for their ego (three, when you toss Dustin Hoffman in the mix), a butting of heads is to be expected. In the end, cooler heads prevailed, but only after rules designating a division of labor were put into place. Milch has final say on scripts, but there are no on set rewrites, if Milch needs to change something, production shuts down. Mann demands time for both him and the actors (Hoffman, especially) to digest the scripts before shooting. As a result, Milch is not quite banned from the set, but rendered pointless and thus his presence there ceased to be.
In the trade, Michael Mann also has final say in the music, which could be good or bad, depending on your take. Having Massive Attack's "Splitting the Atom" as the them song feels a bit off, and there might be an over-reliance on Sigur Ros to sell a scene -- putting down the horse with the broken leg -- that didn't require a hard sell to garner watery eyes. I'm never one to look a gift Jonsi in the mouth, though and apparently the Icelandic artist and his Sigur Ros cohorts are all over the first season, so expect more "Hopelandic" to come.
The second season of Skins is a lot more uneven than the first, that's for sure, but there are still moments that redeem even the most histrionic of turns. Take this episode, for instance, where Sid's family takes center stage, and we find out more about why his father is such a jerkoff (his Da is a Scottish nightmare --let's call him Skinny Bastard).
The whole set up is meant to turn him into more of a sympathetic character, something that Skins seems to do a lot (we're looking at you Tony). But just as we're starting to empathize, he's gone and died in his sleep. All of these plot turns aren't necessarily egregious, but with all the strings being pulled leading up to it our grief isn't earned. That is until Sid explodes in pain at a Crystal Castles concert, sobbing uncontrollably on Tony's shoulder during the caucophony of their song "Alice Practice." It's a scene that's powerful in that it's both a bit off and completely real at the same time. Even the craziest of music can trigger all kinds of emotions, and that scene redeemed all that had happened prior in the episode.
Thankfully, the band was in the scene (along with Bristol band The Hats,) pretending to perform the song live, so they couldn't swap out the music to save coin. But they certainly did elsewhere. One of the best bands to wring agony out of the listener is Sigur Ros, so it's no surprise that they were utilized heavily in this episode (and no surprise that those songs were stripped from the imported episode). Ryan Adams' great "Come Pick Me Up" is the other song we're sad not to see make the cut here.
Nobody does grand histrionics like Sigur Ros, who's album Ágætis Byrjun (1999) set the bar for pandering to our emotions in a way that you don't feel 'played.' A song like "Svefn-G-Englar," used to great effect in the films The Life Aquatic and Vanilla Sky, still makes me stop in my tracks when I hear it. Unfortunately, the band has gone back to the well many times since in the past (near) decade, creating a sort of emotional fatigue. Credit the band for picking up on this, as með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (which translates to "With a buzz in our ears we play endlessly") attempts to stray from their established formula. To that end, the first two songs on the album (the amazing "Gobbledigook" and "Inní mér syngur vitleysingur") put some distance to their past recordings by removing reverb and going for a more 'primitive' sound. The third song, "Gódan daginn", is stripped down featuring singer Jonsi Birgisson's voice nearly naked, continuing the move away from their grand sound. At some point after that, though, the Sigur Ros reverts back to the epic, and as a result I have a hard time distinguishing the whole middle section of the album and the past couple albums, let alone pick out songs in my mind. I still seem to keep coming back to the album, though, even if much of it just disappears into the background.
Seattle's premiere party band, The Saturday Knights finally release a full length album, and the good news is that it realizes the promise of their great live performances. Not to be confused with the unfortunate Rap Rock genre, TSK fuse rap and classic rock in a way that keeps the party going, without resorting to stupidity. Just look at the guest list of artists lending a hand: Soundgarden's Kim Thayil, The Dap-Kings, The Presidents Of The United States Of America's Chris Ballew, The Muscle Shoals Horns and legendary producer Jack Endino (playing drums on the already classic "45"). Like S.F. cousin-in-vibe Lyrics Born, The Knights aren't going to change the world with their party jams, but they might just get you to finally loosen up.
Finally getting it's proper US release, Hercules and Love Affair is this year's crossover dance album (dance music for people who hate dance music - think JUSTICE, LCD Soundsystem, The Knife, etc.). DJ Andrew Butler may be the man behind the beats, but the star here is really Antony Hegarty (Antony and the Johnstons,) who's expressive voice sounds even more at home in this updated disco setting than the band he fronts. The albums' centerpiece is the single "Blind," which demonstrates perfectly the oddly beautiful juxtaposition of Hegarty's sad vocals and the joyous disco-funk that backs him. It's the joy behind the sadness, the tears of a clown, the need to shake your thing to forget about how life can be so damn depressing.
