smash cuts: PSYCH!

Yesterday morning I woke up with a strange and sudden urge to listen to Strawberry Alarm Clock, a feeling I had not experienced in a very long time, specifically since my freshman year of high school. My freshman year of high school I was heavy into The Beatles. Not just Abbey Road-owning, graphic tee-wearing, I-watched-A-Hard-Day’s-Night-once-on-TV Land heavy into The Beatles. I mean Really Heavy. For a brief time, I was caught with that all too righteous bug of Beatlemania and soon my whole life started to change in ways that are too long to explain.

One of the unintended effects of this Beatles phase was my sudden urge to devour all things psychedelic, which led me to groups like Strawberry Alarm Clock. I may shudder at it now, but you know what? It might be time to embrace it. In fact, just to show the kind of person I was then, I’ll start this week’s playlist off with a list of things I liked my freshman year of high school: The Beatles, The Beatles, The Beatles, solo albums from Pink Floyd, sitars, Moogs, the Alan Parsons Project, Indian culture appropriated by white musicians,  the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, novelty music, outer space, music inspired by Alice in Wonderland, pretending to be into transcendental meditation, protesting the Vietnam war years after it had ended, romanticizing the 1960s, deluding myself into think another time was more important than my own.

All of these things and more make an appearance in this week’s smash cuts playlist, in which I explore some of the good and not-so-good psychedelic and prog rock I dug my freshman year of high school. At the same time, I attempt in this playlist to draw a line between the music of those artists and of ones I’m into today. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that what we like doesn’t really change, it just appears a little differently over time. Whether I’m listening to Strawberry Alarm Clock and Arthur Brown or Kishi Bashi and Animal Collective, it’s my experiences that reflect how my taste manifests itself. Other than that, I guess I’m still that same Beatles fan at heart.

What We Watched: 4/23/12

Nathan:

It seems like all we’ve been posting lately are new editions of WWW, and I apologize for that, we’ve been crazy busy. But hopefully over the next few weeks we’ll post more, although no promises. In the next short while, expect to see an analysis of the experimental side of George Lucas, a breakdown of the habits and techniques of new spiffy HD filmmakers, and some other posts (I’m not sure what Alec has planned). Hopefully that’ll be enough of a free sample to whet your appetite until then.

Histoire(s) Du Cinema

Roger Ebert once wrote that Notorious was the greatest manifestation of Alfred Hitchcock’s style, and Vertigo his ideas, and I feel like it’s that with Godard and Histoire(s) Du Cinema, but I’m not sure if it’s style or ideas, as the two are so inseparably connected. Maybe neither, maybe both. In this 266-minute long mini-series made for French television over a ten-year period, Godard attempts to say something about the history of cinema, though I’m not really sure what. If you’ve watched much by Godard, particularly everything he’s done later on, (and I don’t know how many of you watch Jean-Luc Godard), you probably have some idea as to what it is like: a hypnotic whirlwind of images and sounds that has some coherence but barely any. This is Godard at his most indulgent, his most cerebral, his most dense. I think if you want to watch the films of Jean-Luc Godard, it’s definitely something you should see, as it is incredibly important to developing a complete understanding of him, but at the same time, it’s extremely difficult to watch. Luckily it’s split into episodes, which alleviates some of the pain this film can induce, but I feel like if you make it through, there is a reward. But only for the right types of people. I don’t know if very many people will be able to watch it, so unless you’re comfortable in the confusion of Godard, maybe shy away.

Recommended? It really depends on who you are.

Pick of the Week:

Magical Mystery Tour

This movie reminds me of the time I was riding on the bus through the quaint farm-lands of Jupiter and Billy Joel was driving and we started singing a parody of his song entitled “Candy Man,” and then I ate a lot of chocolate and Willy Wonka and Mr. Bean showed me their family photo albums. Oh wait, that never happened. I don’t really know what to compare this movie to, but I guess that’s what it was like. Magical Mystery Tour is more surreal than Help!, more energetic than A Hard Day’s Night, more schizophrenic than Yellow Submarine, more over-the-top than Let It Be. It’s the Beatles at the highest point of their drug-dom and surrealism, and it’s so catchy, and quirky, and weird. Weird, weird, weird. I love it.

And it has the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band in it, too!

Alec:

Jesus Christ is my mind going. There are at least three things I’m leaving out. Hopefully they might come to me. Otherwise, not so much, busy week, same old song and dance.

Paul F. Tompkins: Laboring Under Delusions

Now this I liked a lot. Though technically a comedy special, Laboring Under Delusions is more of an hour of storytelling from Paul F. Tompkins in which he reminisces about a few of his most interesting jobs. Tompkins is a great performer, and his stories shine because they feel authentic; we can emphasize with Paul’s frustration at a customer who asks to try on the “king hat.” Side note: Paul looks exactly today as he looked on Mr. Show fifteen years ago. Sorcery? Could be.

Recommended? Yes.

Pick of the Week:

The Thing

Surely one of the great sci-fi horror films. Not only does The Thing features top-notch monster, an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink concoction of all the nastiness the special effects team could fit onscreen, but a great script as well: the titular alien only openly appears in a few of the films’ scenes, letting the film focus more on letting its antarctic engineers wallow in paranoia and suspicion. Plus, the ownage level is off the charts, as would be expected from a film starring Kurt Russell.

All previous editions of What We Watched can be found here.