Issue 149

News: Quite possibly the most bizarre tribute album ever conceived...
Recently, I bought a copy of a tribute album to the Carpenters (If I were a Carpenter) by various alt-rock artists (incidentally, this is not the album alluded to in the title). Think about it; several bands made up of jaded youths covering a band who, in their salad days, not only didn't drink or do drugs, but didn't even move out of their parents' house. Listening to the album again, I eventually ended up thinking about another artist who deserves a similar tribute album where the famous songs are divorced from their traditional style; I am talking about Disney songwriter Alan Mencken. Of course, if the album is ever made, it should feature songs from most, if not all, of his film projects, and even Little Shop of Horrors will be included, likely with more numbers included than the other films. Here are a few highlights of my plans for arrangements for the album, should I find someone to help it come to fruition (ideally a keyboardist who is able to transfer my vision into a medium that other musicians would understand, and is just as mad as I am). From LSOH: "Somewhere that's Green" will be performed as if it is a Tom Waits song, likely with accompaniment coming only from piano to complement my gruff voice singing lines like "I look Like Donna Reed." Yeah. The cover of "Whole New World" from Aladdin is done in a similar alt-rock vein to the Carpenters tribute mentioned earlier, with an unusual intro: the first line "I can show you the world" is punctuated with a low, resonating chord sustained for upwards of half a minute before launching into the song proper, somewhat similar to this song. Enchanted's "True Love's Kiss" (The only one of his songs for that movie to not get an Oscar nomination) will be done in a similar style to Hurra Torpedo complete with the sounds of wrecking kitchen appliances. One strange idea I came up with follows: For the Film "Home on the Range," there were few songs that seemed to be worth covering, even though the villian is a cattle rustler who is also a virtuoso yodeler (I am not making this up), but one part caught my ear: Jennifer Tilly's character, to establish her tone-deafness, is singing a one-note (like Neil Young's solo in "Cinnamon Girl") version of "She'll be coming 'round the mountain." Hearing this, it hit upon me that, to represent this, I could redo the lyrics of that song with the music of another song similarly sung around one note; U2's "Numb." Yes, there will need to be more songs for the album, but it will need to be mentioned that the shadows of Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Sweeney Todd will hang over most of the rest of the songs on the album.

Film Idea of the Day: I am in the process of writing a short story about a couple (a psychiatrist and an english teacher) who celebrate the 25th anniversary of their first date one November evening in the same restaurant that the original had occurred, and the conflict between the man and a baby who just had to cry while "Their song" happened to be playing. Picture it as being in the tradition of Hemingway's "The Killers."

Film Review of the Day: Foxes. The film debut of Adrian Lyne, and the last film Jodie Foster made as a child star (before she went to Yale and went on a hiatus from acting), what I really loved about this movie was its cinematography. I have heard that every frame of Terence Malick's "Days of Heaven" looks like it could be mounted upon a wall as a work of art (I think Scorsese was the one who said it, but I'm not sure), and, in fact, while that may be true for Malick's film (it;s been a long time since I've seen it), watching Foxes, I can safely say that this actually holds true for this film as well. While, admittedly, Foxes has a forgettable plot which does not differentiate it very much from many of the other films in this genre, but it is truly in its photography that the movie saves itself.

Quote of the day: "A thunderstorm interrupted the celebration in Orleans in honor of Joan of Arc and the 477th anniversary of the defeat of the english."
____________Felix Feneon.

Issue 148

News: State of the site.
Well, after spending four weeks on a particularly intense interim Chemistry Course, I'm finally back, and here's hoping that I'll be able to update more frequently than I've been doing in the past few months. Finally, I'll be able to work on the blog, finish my play (since the movie that it's based upon has just been re-released on an unusually cheap Criterion DVD today [for Criterion, $30 for a 2-Disc set is extremely cheap, especially when, sometimes, one-disc sets can cost $40]), and maybe I'll be able to get some work done on the "Once and Future Princess" novella [the one where the director goes insane while doing a film that is pretty much loosely based upon the "Princess Diaries" series, and makes it stranger and stranger]. "To Myself and Others" has been put on hold until I can figure out some ways to pad it to a full novel length. Of course, there will be some changes to the format of each entry, with two sections being temporarily eliminated. The first one "Band NAme of the Day," will be eliminated primarily because I'm lacking in new ideas. The second section, "The Link of the Day" will be eliminated for the same reason, but also for another reason; soon after the last entry was published, I was informed that this site was briefly flagged as a spamblog. Fortunately, I requested a review, and it appears that the scare is over, and my dad surmised that the links had something to do with the flagging. However, for the time being, I have decided to suspend the posting of new links. Here's hoping that I can post something next week that doesn't have to do with how I'm not finding time to write!

Film Idea of the Day: Death to America. The idea for this, as I intend for it, is that it is to be a film about a man who names himself "Ape Rape," and, stricken by a case of Ennui surrounding the funeral of his uncle, decides to run for office in the most surprising way possible; by commandeering a tank (his legacy from his uncle), and handing out flyers while blowing sh*t up, running on a campaign promise of "Death to America," and generally behaving in antisocial ways that many would find unbecoming of a political candidate. Music I intend for it: Creedence Clearwater Revival, some Russian Orthodox church music, a Morricone-ized version of Phil Ochs' "Crucifixion," and, for the rest of the music, duelling cellists. The film, to add to the strangeness, will have all of its dialogue in Esperanto (the idea of a language created to foster world peace being used in a film that is, in essence, a celebration of Anarchy like "V for Vendetta" should have been should be nothing short of bizarre), and, it ends as he dies in a shootout, and wins the election.

Film Review of the Day: The good, The Bad, and the Ugly. I spent a lot of the previous Saturday morning watching this movie for the first time, and I have to say that Sergio Leone's directing ability floors me. Indeed, the fact that this, possibly the real masterpiece of the Western genre that was and really is so peculiar to America, was originally made in Italy for an Italian audience, floors me, especially in its attempts to accurately recreate the era that were so unsuccessful in American films, although, of course, postwar Italy never had a Hays office to deal with in the same way that America did.

Quote of the Day: "Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified. "
_______________Sherwood Anderson.