Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room
By Geoff Dyer
PANTHEON BOOKS
Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 sci-fi film, Stalker, left such an impression on Geoff Dyer that he felt obliged to pay it homage decades later. The film—not a prerequisite for the book—follows three men through a postindustrial paradise toward a room where one's ultimate wish is granted. Even if Stalker bored many observers ("Tarkovsky is the cinema's great poet of stillness"), Dyer's musings on everything from on-set disasters to his desire to join a threesome make for a rich and wacky sojourn. At its heart, Zonais about how art changes perceptions: "If I had not seen Stalker in my early twenties, my responsiveness to the world would have been radically diminished."
Liner notes: Crooning with a woozy flair that suggests he just awoke from a long nap, basso front man Kurt Wagner could be a down-home Lou Reed on this sardonic toe-tapper, wherein he confesses that "the good life is wasted on me."
Behind the music: Lambchop, originally known as Posterchild, began a quarter century ago and has been billed as "Nashville's most fucked-up country band," thanks to its signature blend of dark sentiments and smooth sounds. Among its provocative works, the 2000 album Nixon comes with a reading list of books about our 37th president.
Check it out if you like: Leonard Cohen, Glen Campbell's work with Jimmy Webb ("Wichita Lineman"), and the late outsider folkie and Lambchop collaborator Vic Chesnutt, to whom Mr. M is dedicated.
Liner notes: The girl group template gets a zero gravity makeover on this vertigo-inducing song suitable for planetariums or cathedrals.
Behind the music: Brooklyn's Frankie Rose played drums with the noise bands Vivian Girls and Dum Dum Girls (as well as Crystal Stilts) before striking out on her own. She softens her harder edges on this sophomore outing, increasing accessibility without dumbing down.
Check it out if you like: New Order, later Beach Boys, and ABBA's stranger recordings.
A delectable post-gunfight Witherspoon-sandwich in This Means War (2012).
Photo courtesy of 20th Century FoxThis Means War 20th Century Fox
98 minutes
After sitting through This Means War, you will probably feel like someone hit you with a large truck, and then forced you to eat the truck: mentally reeling, bilious, and more than a little mad at the world.
This latest romantic comedy with guns works off a popcorn plot cobbled together from the scraps of other big-budget fluff: A pair of young and debonair CIA operatives are at the top of their globetrotting, terrorist-neutralizing game. There's FDR (played by Chris Pine), the kind of 21st-century spook who spends almost as much time clubbing as he does womanizing. And then there's Tuck (Tom Hardy), his British-American partner who serves as the emotionally mature foil. On top of that, the two are best friends—you might even say that they're bromantically inseparable.
And, sometime between all the overseas terrorist-killing and looking enviably chiseled, the two agents start falling for the same woman: a consumer-products tester and Georgia native named Lauren Scott (a vivacious Reese Witherspoon). FYI, she doesn't know that her suitors are secret agents, or that they're best buds. So begins the personal "war" between two spies, replete with elaborate pranks and borderline-psychotic acts of sabotage.
During the 1990s, according to the National Housing Institute, less than two cents of every dollar spent by African Americans was going to black-owned businesses. Troubled by this and other stats demonstrating stark economic disparities, Maggie Anderson's family, a well-to-do bunch who attended the Obamas' Chicago church, decided to patronize only black-owned businesses for a year. In the process, they had to put up with gangsta wannabes, racism allegations, and the difficulty—shared by many a low-income urbanite—of finding a decent grocery store. But they emerged with an appreciation for how African Americans' collective $913 billion buying power, wielded with due care, might bring a little prosperity to the hood.
Be sure and read our interview with the author here.
An informal survey of other anti-Valentine playlists suggests that the genre is usually interpreted as anti-love. But tales of broken hearts, unrequited desire, and lonely nights are all still very much about love. In the words of Gloria E. Anzaldúa: "All reaction is limited by, and dependent on, what it is reacting against." And that couldn't be truer of love and its absence. Songs about love and anti-love are pretty much the same.
But, of course, Valentine's Day isn't about love—just an over-commercialized holiday celebrating one particular brand of committed, romantic love. Above all, it represents that ubiquitous cultural pressure—driven home by nearly every rom-com and pop song—to find fullfilment within a relationship. As my friend Samhita Mukhopadhyay writes on the Occupy Valentine's Day Tumblr, V-Day "often serves to remind us of the inadequacy of our relationships or the 'tragedy' of being single."
So this playlist is for everyone who's single and doing A-okay—the survivors, the ramblers, and the players. It's for those who aren't ready to settle down yet, and those who never will be. It's for anyone single and happy—whether for a brief interlude between heartbreaks, or forever. These songs tell stories that are drowned out in the saccharine cacophony of Valentine's Day—stories of breakups that come as a relief, the cost of committment, the pull of independence, and the power that comes with dancing on your own.
"Single" by Natasha Bedingfield: "This is my declaration of independence," sings British pop singer Natasha Bedingfield in her 2004 anthem for happy single people everywhere. Best line: I don't need to be anyone's baby/Is that so hard to understand?/No, I don't need another half to make me whole.
"I Will Survive" by Cake: The road back to that happy, single place after a tough breakup can be dark and long—but also make you stronger. Gloria Gaynor’s classic "I Will Survive" has been covereda bazilliontimes, but I'm partial to Cake's 1996 rendition. Best line: I've got all my life to live/I've got all my love to give/and I'll survive.
"Different Drum" by Linda Ronstadt: Written in 1965 by Mike Nesmith, "Different Drum" took off when it was recorded two years later by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys. Ronstadt flipped the gender references in the original version to tell the story of a woman who just isn't looking to settle down. Best line: All I'm saying is I'm not ready for any person, place or thing/to try and pull the reins in on me.
"I'm Free" by the Rolling Stones: Hot Chip also does a great remix of the Stones' cheerful 1965 ode to free love. Best line: I'm free to choose who I please any old time/I'm free to please who I choose any old time.
"Marriage Is for Old Folks" by Nina Simone: The High Priestess of Soul says marriage just ain't for her in this playful 1965 ditty, and probably insulted a bunch of married couples. Best line: One husband, one wife/Whaddya got?/Two people sentenced for life!
"I'm Ridin' Solo" by Jason Derülo: In this single off his 2010 debut, Jason Derülo tells a positively joyful tale about getting back out there after a breakup. Best line: Now I made it through the weather/better days are gonna get better.
"Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper: The exuberance of Cyndi Lauper's classic is hard to beat. While the cover by Starfucker is pretty stellar too, who could pass up a chance to watch this epic romp through the Lower East Side in the '80s? Best line: Some boys take a beautiful girl/and hide her away from the rest of the world/I want to be the one to walk in the sun.
"The Wanderer" by Dion: Dion, who originally recorded "The Wanderer" in 1961, later said that it's actually a sad song: "It sounds like a lot of fun but it's about going nowhere." Maybe, but it really does sound soooo fun. Best line: I roam from town to town/I go through life without a care/and I'm as happy as a clown.
"None of Your Business" by Salt-n-Pepa: The pioneering hip-hop trio's defiant smackdown of sexual double standards is especially good for the ladies but really works for anyone who's been judged for bucking the norm. Best line:There's only one true judge, and that's God/So chill, and let my Father do His job.
"Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" by Led Zeppelin: Written by folk artist Anne Bredon and recorded by Joan Baez in 1962, this song speaks to that yearning for freedom that itches even in the best of relationships. Inspired by Baez's version, Led Zep put together its own take in 1969. Best line: You made me happy every single day/But now I've got to go away, oh, oh, oh.
"Since U Been Gone" by Kelly Clarkson: This song was originally written for Pink, who has the triumphantpost-breakup thing down herself. But it was Kelly Clarkson who made it an instant hit in 2004. Best line: But since you've been gone/I can breathe for the first time/I'm so moving on/Thanks to you now I get what I want.
"Better Off Without a Wife" by Tom Waits: Tom Waits' easygoing, kinda sexist 1975 anthem is dedicated "to the bachelors and the Bowery bums." Best line: Yeah, you see I'm kinda selfish about my privacy/Now as long as I can be with me/we get along so well, I can't even believe it.
"One Night Stand" by the Pipettes: Rocking their signature polka-dot dresses, British indie popsters the Pipettes offer this brutally honest brush-off to a guy who seems to be getting too attached. Hey, she did warn him. Best line: Leave me alone/you're just a one-night stand.
"One Is The Magic #" by Jill Scott: Poet, singer, actress Jill Scott elegantly turns a sorta sad premise—"there's just me"—into something uplifting. Best line: So many times I define my pride through somebody else's eyes/Then I looked inside and found my own stride/I found the lasting love for me.
Let me start by saying how relieved I am to see a Denzel Washington action film that has nothing to do with imperiled trains and wasn't directed by Tony Scott. It was also nice to see Washington play another charismatic, streetwise ass-kicker who gets his jollies up bullying a white-boy rookie—a formula Washington hasn't worked so well since 2001's Training Day.
That said, Safe House is a glut of miserably squandered opportunities.
Washington stars as Tobin Frost, a former high-ranking CIA official now wanted on four continents for selling agency secrets to Iran, China, Russia, and so forth. Just how badass is this character? We learn early on that he "literally rewrote the book" on CIA interrogation and personally convinced a top Hezbollah leader to become an informant during the Lebanese Civil War. Anyway, after finally falling into US custody, Frost is rushed to a black site in Cape Town, where relative newbie Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is waiting as a CIA "housesitter"—a job marked by long hours, crushing idleness, and, as one minor character puts it, "appalling remuneration."
Shortly after Weston's superiors begin waterboarding Frost, a gang of nameless thugs flourishing automatic weapons bust into the safe house, presumably to extract the high-value detainee alive. Suddenly, Weston and Frost are off on a mad dash to the next secure location, racing through the busy streets and shanty towns of South Africa in a blitz of gunfire, civilian casualties, and crashed getaway cars.
What compels people to resist, even when confronted with the risks of bucking authority? Eyal Press examines the cases of four dissenters—an Israeli soldier who refused to serve in occupied territories, a Swiss deputy who aided World War II Jews, a bigotry-defying Serb who saved Croats, and a corporate whistleblower who outed the second-largest Ponzi scheme in US history—and invokes the work of psychologists and neuroscientists to help us ponder the ways we respond to ethical challenges.Proving time and again that the boldest renegades are just regular people with independent minds—rather than dyed-in-the-wool radicals—Beautiful Souls underscores dissent's populist potential. Acts of conscience, as Press puts it, "have a way of reverberating."
Obama gets his war onIn case you've lost track—here are 109 things President Obama currently is or recently has been engaged in a war against (according to conservative pundits, lazy headline writers, and Google trawling):
Katharine McPhee in NBC's "Smash"Photo courtesy of NBC Universal
When watching the first two episodes of Smash,it's hard not to feel a little queasy about the predictability factor. In a serial drama centered around the casting and production of a Broadway musical, of course at least one of the two finalists for the lead female role is going to sleep with the director. But at the half-hour mark of the second episode? Really?
The new NBC series is guilty of several other blench-worthy faults: Too much of the dialogue is clunky or hackneyed. Stock characters abound. There's a pesky, croissant-fetching assistant at the center of the action who simply will not go away. The interwoven stories are weighed down by pointless subplots—some disposable (a messy divorce from a rich, bimbo-chasing husband), others even more disposable (a songwriter adopting a baby from mainland China).
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