Music Review : Raised Fist – From the North (2015)

Music Review : Raised Fist – From the North (2015, Epitaph Records)

Sweden’s hardcore punk titans of Raised Fist are back with another record titled From the North that could situate them geographically from the other popular hardcore acts. In the early 2000’s hardcore and metalcore genres had been emerging and gained a wide spread popularity until emo and all its sub genres took the stage.

Back with a more mature record Raised Fist shifted their almost metal sound of old school hardcore is slowed down to let to more rock tempos than the usual fast songs. It is also a more commercial shift of their music and their release on Epitaph Records might be one of the explanations for this.

From the North is a solid effort and feels like a good album in the discography of Raised Fist. However, the evolution from Sound of the Republic has molded into more vast audiences and as a fan of their earlier releases it took me longer to get acquainted to From the North. 

6.5

Music Review : Caïna – Setter of Unseen Snares (2015)

Music Review : Caïna – Setter of Unseen Snares (2015, Broken Limbs)

The term one-man-band is well known in the black metal genre and Caïna is an essential representation of this form of metal and band from Manchester, UK. Setter of Unseen Snares is a short album inspired by Matthew McConaughey’s character in the hit television show True Detectives. Filled with a couple of samples of the monologues of the aforementioned character, Setter of Unseen Snares is not your typical one dimension black metal record. Playing with the boundaries of metalcore, dream pop/shoegaze, drone, and post-rock Andrew Curtis-Brignell makes a textured album of experimentation of satisfaction in its overall tenure.

The six songs are imbricated and form a massive ensemble of melancholy, brutality, and ugly beauty. Yes ugly beauty in its form of black metal vocals and shoegaze guitar. A sound popularized by Deafheaven and their masterpiece Sunbather, Setter of Unseen Snares is possibly one of the best metal albums and even one of the best albums of 2015. It brings us into dark places with simple compositions and essential brutality.

8.7

Come and See

Come and See aka Idi i smotri (Elem Klimov, 1985)

After finding an old rifle, a young boy joins the Soviet Army and experiences the horrors of World War II.

Often described as the most realistic War film ever made, Elem Klimov’s final film, Come and See is a tour de force of acting, cinematography, and human extremism exposition. This engaging film of beauty and ugliness of a teenage boy who lives through World War II in Belorussia and who is taken to fight along the Russians against the Nazi occupation and its extermination of those who are called the White Russians.

Midway into this nightmarish vision of one of the worst aspects of humanity in the 20th Century, War and the extermination of nations, I felt like if I was watching the ultimate horror movie. Knowing that this kind of story never ends well I tried not to get too attached to the characters but from the first moments I was hooked with the kids playing on the beach looking to play war during War. As young boys we imagined playing war was fun and wanted to shoot and live those action movie moments. However, Florian (A. Kravchenko) gets way more than he asked for. Not long after he finds an old rifle he is taken from his mother and two young sisters to fight with the Red Army. Just as he is we are the silent witness of the worst humans can do. What frightens the most with Come and See is how it is probably not exaggerated how the horrors and the cruelty is done.

Often, the main critic about War films is that it depicts an exciting vision of killing enemies and action movie of good and bad guys. By far, Come and See is the most efficient anti-War film ever made. I’ve read somewhere that compared to it Apocalypse Now is the ultimate date movie, well Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket are rewatchable movies and have an entertainment value that can distance us from the horrible aspects and are mostly artistic visions of War from their directors. With Klimov’s film there’s a high cinematic value and he probably used some of the most manipulative and involving techniques to makes us feel the disgust of War but no one can stay passive with this film.

As much as the qualities of Come and See are obvious as it is depicting one of the worst nightmarish visions, we feel that the manipulation and the strings of sensationalism are a bit overwhelming. Some scenes are almost unwatchable and no one is spared. Just as the conclusion of the film evokes, History can’t be erased or reversed and sadly monsters like the Nazis have lived before and nothing can be done to correct that. It is a bit pedestrian or blockbuster label but Come and See fells into the mandatory film category and not for the faint of heart too. It reminds us of the U.N.’s statement after the Second World War of never again we must let this happen.

Music Review : The Mountain Goats – Beat the Champ (2015)

Music Review : The Mountain Goats – Beat the Champ (2015, Merge)

With their indie rock infused with melancholy and a certain naive charm, The Mountain Goats released a new record based around wrestling and the ecosystem it is linked with. Scrumy basement rings and a respect for the discipline and entertainment it all represents. This subculture has inspired an album full of gratitude and connections with underground music and small recognition amongst peers and friends.

Adding piano, horns, and a certain depth into their songs, The Mountain Goats are pursuing the path of Transcendental Youth. With a touch of the Vince Guaraldi Trio recalling Charlie Brown on the song Fire Editorial, Beat the Champ is taking us in many territories that ask us to visit a myriad of sentiments and emotions.

As a record Beat the Champ might be more eclectic than its predecessor, but the variety of songs and the reach works well as a series of disconnected songs linked by a theme as surprising as wrestling.

7.6

Music Review : Lightning Bolt – Fantasy Empire (2015)

Music Review : Lightning Bolt – Fantasy Empire (2015, Thrill Jockey)

The noise rock duo of Lightning Bolt has done it again for a seventh time with their new album Fantasy Empire.

Playing with high intensity and fast tempos it is at first almost exhausting to listen to their music. With the subsequent listening, Fantasy Empire rises to another level and becomes more than just noise rock played with by ADD kids. It makes a coherent piece that elevates noise and rock together to a form that is not only an interesting experiment.

The drums of Brian Chippendale are fast and omnipresent as their snare kick are fulfilling the space and time of every song. On the other side, Brian Gibson’s bass guitar is heavy and crunchy. Chippendale’s vocals are tortuous and have an urgency few rock vocalists have achieved before.

Fantasy Empire is one of the very good albums of the year since 2015 might be the year of noise as the rising genre of the year. Since last year was stoner the noise element is a logical evolution of music.

7.9

Analyzing Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining For The Great Villain Blogathon

Analyzing Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining For The Great Villain Blogathon 2015

As anyone who followed this blog for many years, you can easily guess that Stanley Kubrick is my favorite movie director, it is also a given that The Shining is my favorite film from his filmography (note : as favorite I don’t say that it is his greatest film, the answer to that topic might be 2001 : A Space Odyssey). When I got aware of this Blogathon, I immediately wanted to write about Jack Torrance. Apart from the fact that I deeply love this film and that Stephen King hates it (note : King is one of my favorite contemporary author but I disagree with him on many subjects especially this one) I like the fact that Torrance is not completely a movie villain as the classic definition of the term would designate.

First, a movie villain must impersonate an antagonist position with the hero of the story, he is the cause of evil or bad things happening to the hero. In The Shining, Torrance is at first presented as the central character and in some way he is the protagonist of the story. But he is also the father who brings his family to keep in order a closed resort during the winter. He is the bringer of evil since the Overlook Hotel is supposedly haunted. The last element stated as supposedly, the haunting of the hotel, is never really clear and depending on the reading of the film you choose to pick out, the spirits might be visions of Torrance’s mind.

Since the family is isolated in the hotel Jack suffers of writer’s block, of a clear sexual repression from an unsatisfied need for encounter, and a severe need for alcohol. Sober for a long time, Torrance seems to be rekinkling with his old habits as long as the film evolves. Even taking part at an evening in the Golden Age ballroom drinking a bourbon in a room filled with ghosts. At this point, Jack’s implication with the hotel is more than just a job. He is possessed by the power of the hotel and he is given a mission to take care of his family just like Grady did before. Grady was his predecessor and murdered his twin girls with an axe in a bloody way. He was then promoted by the hotel as a permanent resident something Jack now seeks for his career.

On some level, the character might be read as the evil counter part of Danny, his son who is gifted with the shining, deliberately bringing his young family to a resort where solitude and ennui is right at the corner. However, Jack is happy and seems to need to get there and take this job. His motivation is never really clear except from having some quiet time to finish his novel. From the beginning he seems to have a natural attirance towards this job and is fearless to do it.

Towards his job, we never see him actually taking care of the hotel or even his family. His wife, Wendy, takes care of all of this. She checks the furnace and plays with Danny while Jack tries to work on his novel. Most of the time he is wandering, throwing a ball to the wall and struggling to get words onto the paper.

There are many facets of Jack that I think that can be linked to the author’s personality; Stephen King was a noticeable alcoholic in his early days and I’ve always read the novel The Shining as a play on a writer having to write through writer’s block. King often put teachers or writers as his protagonist’s occupations and this is one of his recurrent themes. An old master has said that you have to write about what you know. He sure put it to value giving Torrance both the writer and the teacher titles.

Jack Nicholson is in the role of Jack Torrance in one of his most famous characters with the legendary scene where he’s trying to open the locked door toilet door with an axe. The documentary by Viviane Kubrick, Stanley’s daughter, shows the preparation of  the actor for this highly intense scene. Nicholson seems to have no trouble getting into the right piece of mind to do those scenes while actress Shelley Duvall, who plays Wendy Torrance, struggled with Kubrick’s dictatorial directing. She often complained that Kubrick asked him to redo some scenes more than a hundred times. Following The Shining and also One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nicholson will often be asked to play over the top and his acting will be reduced to be a caricature of himself.

Let’s get back to our villain Jack Torrance, his job was to bring his family to keep the hotel from the possible degradation from the difficult winter elements. In the supernatural reading of the film, Jack was mandated to bring his super powered son to be a gift or an offering to the power of the hotel.

While another reading of the film is a Freudian one, which is probably more accurate when considering the many Freudian elements from Kubrick’s filmography, Jack the biological father of Danny must get Dick Halloran (the hotel’s chef and the man who exposes to Danny all about the shining) out of the way. Halloran is taking the role of Danny’s father figure because Jack is not a potent father figure. In Freudian words, a child who doesn’t feel that he is getting the right kind of fatherly love and strong father figure will try to get it from a more convenient and potent man. In this case, a man that understands him and that knows how to correctly protect him. One could add the Oedipus Rex complex to that where Wendy compensate for Jack’s lack of attention to his son and the child will get rid of his father to be the partner of his mother. A strong father figure has to be imposing a presence of the right kind of authority and indulge fear in his son’s mind that if he tries to get intimate with his mother his father will castrate his son.

It is useless to say that Jack is a failure and at the end of the film he is tricked by his son when at the same time the sacrifice of Halloran helped Danny and his mother to save them from another horror at the Overlook.

A great villain makes a great film and I personally think that Jack is a great villain with a complex construction and he is not easy to define but always interesting to observe and enjoy.

The Exterminating Angel

The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962)

The guests at an upper-class dinner party find themselves unable to leave.

Often described as the twin film to director Luis Buñuel’s own The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Exterminating Angel is a surrealist exercise of style and screenwriting. Again shot by long time collaborator to Buñuel, Gabriel Figueroa, The Exterminating Angel is the story of a group of high class bourgeois that are invited at a dinner party after the opera. Strangely as the guests arrive to the mansion almost all of the domestics leave the house just like rats in a lost ship. Then with twenty seven various repetitions in the story the guests are isolating themselves in the house and have to live together in this island. Much like a play on Lord of the Flies or an essay on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s writings, Buñuel demonstrates how decorum and ethic codes are pompous and empty when humans are piled like a horde of dogs together.

While playing on the edge of comedy, social commentary, and experimental cinema, Buñuel was a one of a kind storyteller. Even more with The Exterminating Angel than with The Discreet Charm he had to convince us of believing such a story and not make us blink with the repetitions. The first two repetitions are quite obvious with the two arrivals of the guests and the two toasts but as the story goes the subtlety of those is almost unperceptible. Just like the characters of his story, Buñuel wants to debilitate us from seeing with our conventional and conformist eye.

In this social commentary by The Exterminating Angel, there’s a clear contempt of the upper-class and its ways. Presenting them as animals or even as wolves. It is clear that Buñuel couldn’t have made such movies some those themes under the Hays code in USA. By chance, Mexican backers believed in their director and left us a great heritage of unique films of great quality.

Beau travail

Beau travail (Claire Denis, 1999)

This film focuses on an ex-Foreign Legion officer as he recalls his once glorious life, leading troops in Africa.

This critically acclaimed film by Claire Denis is a beautiful tale of manhood in the 20th Century. A century that was punctuated by wars and the evolution of the man in the society. Centered around the tensions between men, the relationships of power and envy, and the clash between the military service, the civil life, and the opposition of the rich world (France) and the poor world (Djibouti) Beau travail demonstrates with metaphoric and symbolism a simple story of the post-modern world.

The central character of Galoup (Denis Lavant) is an interesting portrayal of a man in a position of power and submission. Leading a French Foreign troop in the deserts of Djibouti and directing a tough training feels isolated and even in those vast lands, a bit claustrophobic at times. A strong comparison comes to mind with a Spartan regiment of strong men musculated and often shown without a shirt. Their trainings are as gracious as dances and as demanding as a military exercise should be.

The camera of Agnès Godard, no relationship to Jean-Luc, is moving and creates a presence that involves the viewer. The editing proves to be particular and creates an ensemble of bits and moments of a fast but demanding lifestyle. Beau travail is exhausting and also relaxing when its moments of contemplation are in full effect.

As my second encounter with director Claire Denis, the first was 35 rhums, Beau travail is as beautiful as it is meditative and the character of Galoup gives a great canvas for its highly talented actor Denis Lavant. Evocative of many European auteur films to come in the early 21st Century, Denis’ film was probably a revelation in its whole but especially its aesthetics. Godard’s camera as aforementioned gives a nervous signature to the film.

India Song

India Song (Marguerite Duras, 1975)

Poetical tale of Anne-Marie Stretter, the wife of a French diplomat in India in the 1930s. At 18 she had married a French colonial administrator and went with him on posting to Savannakhet, Laos. 

Visually stunning and populated with long shots of almost still life or still lives, India Song is rhythms only by its voice overs and the musical tracks. It plays as bits of a life of boredom into Asia that its screenwriter/director Marguerite Duras has probably took from her own experience in the Eastern World. It is also a piece of History that reminds the role of the Colonialism countries in the World. Just like the scenes in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now Redux with the French living in Vietnam. They are a strange oddity of upper-class in such a poor and distant world.

India Song is the kind of film that gives lots of time and space for its viewer to think, contemplate, get immersed in the story. However, the contemplative element of the film reminds us of how a film can be that much slow and, in fact, almost standing still. As a self proclaimed film historian and movie critic, I had my share of slow and contemplative films but in this case there are few camera movements and long, long, did I mention long takes? Well, there are many long takes in this film. It is beautiful to look at and a lot of style in the way it is done. 

But, it is so slow that it plays as watching a painting and reading a realist novel of the early last century. The composition of the frames must have been studied for weeks and just like Carl Th. Dreyer I'm sure every movement was synchronised and rehearsed. India Song, plays as a novel that was written to be felt by its words and filled with pretty pictures of grand compositions.

As a whole, India Song feels like a artsy film that brought a few number of viewers in and a fewer number out at the end. Has my first encounter with Marguerite Duras, I'm not sure if I'll ever get excited and jolly about seeing another of her films. Not that it was bad or anything but it was a demanding film that uses its own storytelling way and narratives.

Music Review : Viet Cong – Viet Cong (2015)

Music Review : Viet Cong – Viet Cong (2015, Jagjaguwar)

Playing noise rock, art rock, post-punk, indie rock, well rock infused with all those labels, Viet Cong’s self titled record goes and flows in seven songs with a sad hook like early Interpol or 1980’s The Cure. Only the noise element makes it a 2015 album because let’s face it if 2014 was the culmination of the return of stoner rock with Mastodon, Yob, Pallbearer, this year is a noise one with Lightning Bolt and Viet Cong.

Coming from Calgary, Viet Cong, the ex-Women, constructed a contemporary classic that has many grand moments that transcends traditional rock. Sometimes a label fits a particular sound or another texture here and there but mostly the proposition gives a breath of fresh air to modern rock that has been hermetic to evolution since pop and dream-pop has taken some of its stage.

Their experimentation in genres and musical styles hace many of the aforementioned names but also reminds of a little band from England called The Beatles with their more psychedelic phases.

All in all, Viet Cong’s self titled album has something to say and might satisfy many ears.

8.0

Él

 

Él (Luis Bunuel, 1953)

Francisco is rich, rather strict on principles, and still a bachelor. After meeting Gloria by accident, he is suddenly intent on her becoming his wife and courts her until she agrees to marry him.

With the important number of films by Luis Bunuel that are available from his Spanish period, his Mexican exil, and his late French cinephiles from around the world can at least get something for their tastes. Even if he is more reknown for his French surrealistic films, Bunuel took many genres under his particular signature and directed essential timeless films.

With Él and its story of an obsessive lover filled with jealousy, frustration, and paranoiac persona Bunuel will go on and make one of the most interesting thrillers that will go and inspire the great Alfred Hitchcock with his scene in the church bell tower. He also used jump cuts to let his viewer know the anti-hero’s point of view and how he perceives people.

Él was the kind of film I went into with no idea what was the subject and a little bit of a reluctance for another Mexican film from Bunuel fearing this might be a lesser film from the filmmaker. However, this is one of his films I enjoyed the most lately. The only negative comment I would have to say is not even about the film itself but the french subtitles that were poorly translated. As a french speaker, Spanish is also a Latin language and I understand some bits here and there of Spanish and Italian but I could sense that some subtitles needed to say more or were just not right for the scenes. This is a case where the old adage of lost in translation is right for the moment.

Personally, I would rank Él really high but not quite a masterpiece despite the elegant cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa, the elegant but pompous sets of Franscisco’s house, and the use of modern psychology for the central character’s mental disorder. If I would make a list of the 1000 Greatest films of all time, something I am planning to do sometime when I’ll finish the one from They Shoot Pictures, Él will be on it without a doubt.

Of the fifteen Luis Bunuel films listed on the 1000 Greatest Films list, I know have seen eleven and I enjoyed each and every one of them. Needless to say that I digged Él very much. The thriller value and the obsession of love portrayed here makes it one of the most efficient films on paranoia and mental illness.