I was left ambivalent by Wes Anderson’s last effort, The Darjeeling Limited — a movie alternately palpably emotional and adrift in its own myopic quirk (and reviewed by me here). Fantastic Mr. Fox is a return to form, and really, a new form for the director: stop-motion animation, which under his precise eye is a joy to watch. (Between this and Coraline, can everybody but Pixar really just hang up the CGI, please?) George Clooney and Meryl Streep lead Anderson’s usual gang (Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, etc.) as the voices of a band of eccentric animals playing out the rakish adventures of Roald Dahl’s book of the same name. Read the rest of this entry »

When I listen to Miranda Lambert’s Revolution, I don’t hear Nashville. I don’t hear Tobey Keith — or even Taylor Swift. I do hear the frayed alt.country of Ryan Adams’ Cardinals, and on songs such as the feedback-fueled “That’s The Way The World Goes ‘Round,” even the punk roots of Uncle Tupelo. To be sure, Lambert, a bewitching blonde comely enough to earn a national cotton industry campaign alongside indie pin-up Zooey Deschanel, has the image and the big-tent melodies of her recent colleagues, but the singer flips the script on her crossover sound. The album’s pop and rock accents are the frame; country, the type made famous by the likes of Dolly and Emmylou, is the focus. You say you want a Revolution? Tell your friends.

More: New Music | 2009 Album Release Calendar

Ladies and gentleman, meet Jersey Shore: the Snakes on a Plane of reality shows. Read the rest of this entry »

Destroyer photo by David Greenwald

Rawky Awards: The 2009 Rawky Awards are here! Go vote.

Jams: A great new live Destroyer track; New Buffalo is back as Sally Seltmann; Deerhunter and Atlas Sound‘s latest albums reviewed (spoiler: they’re so good).

News: Jon Brion’s up for a Grammy; eMusic surprises with one of the best end-of-decade lists; my day job red carpet video interviews with Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman a few weeks back are live.

Deeper Into Movies: On Scarface and There Will Be Blood.

Camera Obscurist: A carpenter bee in flight.

Editor’s Note: After a flurry of Black Friday and new apartment-inspired purchases, I’m now the proud owner of a 46″ flat screen TV, a Blu-ray-ready Playstation 3 and a Netflix subscription. Which means I’ll be watching a hell of a lot more movies and hopefully blogging about them regularly in this column. Future installments, this one included, will likely lean more toward scattered notes and thoughts rather than proper reviews.

I’m glad I waited to watch Scarface after hearing the generations of hip-hop it inspired. Thanks to Nas, Clipse and others, I already had a hearty appreciation for Al Pacino’s Tony Montana, the canny Cuban immigrant-turned-Miami drug lord who reaches the top only to discover he has nothing. Scarface is, obviously, a fest of gonzo violence, profanity and coke-snorting, but nothing about it screams B-movie — in its own way, fueled by a smoldering Pacino performance, it’s as serious a look at the dark side of the American dream as, say, There Will Be Blood. Read the rest of this entry »

Interviews and shaky camera work (my first time, sorry, cinephiles) performed by yours truly at the Fantastic Mr. Fox Los Angeles premiere at the AFI Fest. The longer print versions are here and here; my video after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

The last time I wrote about Deerhunter, somebody told me I had penis fingers. (I’m hoping the commenting crew will step its game up this time around.) That was two years ago and my fingers are as penis-y as ever, but having blissfully ignored the band and frontman Bradford Cox’s Atlas Sound side-project ever since, we’re probably due to check in. Do they sound like Jesus yet? They’re getting there! Read the rest of this entry »

The Grammys have long been a (much-deserved) punching bag for people who don’t buy their music on sale at Wal-Mart, but I’d be remiss in not noting that Rawkblog hero Jon Brion has been nominated in the Production, Non-Classical category for his work on Dido’s Safe Trip Home. As for the Album of the Year category, it’s a small relief to see albums of relative pop merit make the cut — and, for a change, all of them by artists who didn’t attend Woodstock. I’ve written about this year’s return-to-form from Dave Matthews Band and have my money on them to win, if only to give Taylor Swift some incentive to top Fearless next time around.