Collectible

I got an email alert the other day letting me know that Animal Collective's "film" Oddsac is coming out on DVD soon.  I saw it in the theater a few months back, and at the time remarked that I liked it enough that I was eagerly anticipating a home release.  It had a hypnotic beauty and all the goofy weirdness you'd expect, and so much of the music was wonderful.  It's somewhat more in the vein of Merriweather Post Pavillion than Fall Be Kind, but it's just as much about the visuals and how they combine with the music.

If you pre-order you can get $5 off the price, and it also comes with a 40 page art book.  Me, I'm getting it for the 5.1 surround mix.

My upcoming disaster film

Recently I tried to help a friend with 48 Hour Film Festival. Last year I was one of the primary writers, and it was a blast. This year....I don't know. I feel like I did a good job when in the phase of brainstorming for premises, but once it came time to actually write the script I just whiffed. Writing for me needs a spark, and I have to be in the zone, and I simply couldn't get there. This has always been one of my problems, I'll go through a burst of mass creativity where I can produce work quickly, work that even I find to be quality. And then comes an inevitable spell of nothingness, where the ideas just disappear. I suppose every writer must deal with this, and it's one of the main reasons I've never really pursued this professionally.

But today I feel like I had some more of those creative bursts, albeit of the stupid kind. I can be doing anything when a muse strikes and I either have to lose it forever or get it out on any medium. -- even if it happens to be twitter. I somehow got the idea for a bad Hollywood disaster film based on recent events. Entire scenes and characters were forming in my head, but this is all I got out (with minor edits and formatting adjustments):

GRIZZLED SEA VETERAN appears and scrapes nails along chalkboard.

GRIZZLED SEA VETERAN
If you want to stop the oil leak, you've got to THINK like an oil leak!
[...]

EVIL BIOPETROPALEONTOLOGIST dips finger into thick GOO, then brings it up to his mouth for a taste.




EVIL BIOPETROPALEONTOLOGIST
This is from Devonian era ferns (pause) but also Jurassic-era apatosaurus!  This is CROSS-STRATA OIL!
[...]



PRESIDENT
(cont. speech)
We're going to live on!  We're going to survive!  Today we celebrate our Oil Independence Day! 

Yeah. I kept trying to work in some sort of sludge monster, but was hampered by the 140 character limit. A few other people were also chipping in with some pretty good ideas. And I definitely want the biopetropaleontologist to be played by Willem Dafoe.

I need a movie camera, dammit.


I have no idea what the hell blogger is doing to my formatting in the script box. Maybe it's just chrome. Sorry if it's not word-wrapping properly.

That time of the month

I'm supposed to be packing up to move to a new place, and the last thing I need is more clutter.  But I also get that itch where I have to fulfill my needs, and it hit pretty hard this week.  One thing lead to another and I found myself at Sound Garden slurping up music.  I got a good mix of new things, used items, and a couple vinyl double dips of favorite albums I wanted on that media format.  (If they hadn't been out of the deluxe version of Disintegration, I absolutely would have snatched that up, too.)

Vinyl:
Camera Obscura - The Nights are Cold 7"
Cold Cave - Life Magazine
Depreciation Guild - Spirit Youth
Dum Dum Girls - Jail La La 7"
Galaxie 500 - Today
The Mountain Goats - Tallahassee

CD:
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today
Blitzen Trapper - Destroyer of the Void^*
CocoRosie - Grey Oceans
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
The Fall - Totally Wired
Kaki King - Junior
Talking Heads - Little Creatures  (hard to believe I didn't already have this)
Teenage Fanclub - Shadows

I swear I'm absolutely not buying any more music until I've moved.  And by "absolutely", I mean "probably".

^* Half the reason I got this is because my eyes are intrinsically lured in by the word "Destroyer"

For Scores of Twenty Years Ago

Today I read a commemoration of The Goonies' 25th Anniversary.  I happened to catch most of it on TV a few weeks ago, as it's one of those nostalgic films that just grabs my attention if I stumble upon it.  But one thing that really struck me was how great the score was, especially the "Fratelli Chase" song.  Just a few notes of that take me back instantly to the movie.  And then I realized -- I don't know any modern movie scores.  When did they get so boring, or replaced by shitty popular music?  If the Goonies were remade today, is there any doubt that the opening segment would instead be drowned out by some popular "alternative" band who just happens to be represented by the music arm of the conglomerate that owns the movie studio?  (Yes, I know the Cyndi Lauper segment kind of invalidates my whole thesis.)

Think back to all the classic scores.  Jaws.  The Godfather.  Raiders of the Lost Ark.  The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.  (My personal pick for Best Score Ever:  Aguirre the Wrath of God, with the music by Popol Vuh.  It so perfectly fits the mood and visuals.)  Is there anybody still making them like John Williams and Ennio Morricone?  Hans Zimmer seems to win tons of awards, but I can't say he has a distinct style that stands out to me, or has done anything that really holds in my subconscious.  I like Clint Mansell's work, though it's mostly just that Requiem for a Dream song that gets used in all the trailers.  (I also preferred him back in Pop Will Eat Itself, but that's another story.)

I suppose the real issue is that for the most part scores have been replaced by soundtracks, and all too often those are the lazy way out.  If I see one more montage of lonely people over a sappy love song, one more dude walking away from an explosion in slow motion to crap rock, one more Aerosmith anything I'm going to puke.  A good soundtrack can be a wonderful thing, but for every Tarantino out there who picks perfect yet unexpected songs (krautrock in a kung fu flick!) there are 50 directors going for cheap emotional tugs or a Family Guy-esque "Hey, do you remember [x]? I love the 80s!" nod.  Put some effort into it, people!