The Movies of 2014, Volume II

Let’s continue looking back at 2014 with #11-20 on my personal list of faves. There’s still plenty of good stuff here to load up your Netflix queue. We won’t start getting to the real duds for awhile yet.

Coherence

You don’t need a lot of money to make a smart, gripping science fiction movie. Shane Carruth proved that with Primer and Upstream Color. This year, James Ward Byrkit followed in his footsteps with this twisty thriller about a dinner party gone seriously haywire. I wasn’t sure where this was headed for quite awhile. Even after I started to figure out what was going to happen, I had a great time seeing if I’d be proven correct or not.

The Lunchbox

Maybe last year’s most pleasant surprise, this is a gentle, extremely winning romance. Nimrat Kaur stars as a lonely wife trying to capture her emotionally distant husband’s attention by making him a special lunch. But the lunchbox is delivered to the wrong address, ending up in the hands of widowed Irrfan Khan. Soon, a friendship blossoms between the two via handwritten notes. Ritesh Batra directs this lovely little sleeper.

Boyhood

Richard Linklater’s 12-years-in-the-making intimate epic is absolutely a remarkable accomplishment. I didn’t exactly fall in love with it like everybody else seemed to. It gets better as it goes along but the first hour definitely feels like Linklater is trying to figure out what story he’s telling. I’m sure in this case he really was but most of his movies feel like that to me. But at its best, Boyhood provides some of the year’s most powerful and emotional moments.

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes was one of the best franchise reboots I’d ever seen. Despite this, I didn’t dare get my hopes too high that lightning could strike twice. But Matt Reeves pulled it off capably with eye-popping visual effects, thrilling action and a bracingly grim tone. The bar for the next installment has been set very high.

Witching And Bitching

Alex de la Iglesia, Spain’s maddest filmmaker, returns with a movie that couldn’t possibly be the work of anybody else. A jewel heist performed by Jesus Christ, a plastic soldier (or men disguised as them, anyway) and a young boy goes awry and the crooks take it on the lam, ending up in a house owned by three generations of witches. This movie starts off over the top but somehow manages to keep turning corners and find new levels of crazy to climb.

Bethlehem

A complex and compelling Israeli drama that does a remarkable job of illuminating the friction between the Palestinians and the Israelis through the story of an Israeli Secret Service officer and his young Palestinian informant. It’s both a tension-filled spy thriller and a gripping drama and well-worth seeking out.

The Trip To Italy

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are back, eating sumptuous meals, staying in beautiful hotels and engaging in frequently hilarious conversation. Not quite as good as the first Trip but so much fun that it almost doesn’t matter.

The Immigrant

James Gray’s period drama went mostly unnoticed for some reason, which is a shame because it’s actually quite good. Marion Cotillard is excellent as a Polish immigrant who reluctantly becomes a prostitute under the thumb of Joaquin Phoenix to provide for her sister, quarantined on Ellis Island. Back in the 70s, this kind of well-mounted, intelligent production was commonplace. It deserved a wider audience.

Night Moves

Kelly Reichardt’s films are very deliberately paced but if you stick with them, they’re extremely rewarding. Jesse Eisenberg, Peter Sarsgaard and a virtually unrecognizable Dakota Fanning are eco-terrorists whose sabotage of a dam leads to unexpected consequences. Not Reichardt’s best work but never less than engaging.

Visitors

Godfrey Reggio’s latest and most challenging work is probably not best experienced at home. The movie’s ultra-long takes and Philip Glass score may well put you to sleep if you’re watching it on your sofa. But on the big screen in a theater without outside distractions, the movie’s effect is actually rather hypnotic. I don’t imagine this will develop the same following as the Qatsi trilogy but on its own terms, it’s a unique and often extraordinarily beautiful film.

I’ll be back tomorrow with ten more. Hey, maybe your favorite movie of 2014 will be one of them! Unless your favorite movie of 2014 was Veronica Mars, in which case you shouldn’t get your hopes up.

The Movies of 2014, Volume I

Hi. Told you I’d be back.

Welcome back (or, possibly for many of you, for the first time) to The Doctor Is In. I started this blog back in 2009 as a place to collect miscellaneous thoughts that didn’t exactly fit at The Digital Bits. It didn’t last long before I got busy with other work and essentially forgot all about this. It happens.

For now, this will be my temporary home until I can bring back the stand-alone Jahnke’s Electric Theatre blog. Or, it’ll be my permanent home until I get busy with other work and essentially forget all about this. We’ll see what happens.

Some of you may be wondering why I left The Bits in the first place. I’ll get into some of that later on, as well as what will hopefully make this different from what I was doing over there. But before Baby New Year turns into Surly Teen New Year, I’d like to take one more look at the movies of 2014.

I didn’t want to start this back up with just another top ten list. For one thing, there are so many 2014 movies that I haven’t seen yet that any attempt at a top ten would be ludicrously limited. According to The Big Checklist assembled by The Dissolve’s Scott Tobias, I’ve only seen 25% of the movies that matter in 2014. Granted, this is the internet and rock-solid opinions are established regularly on far less information but still.

Like a lot of people, my movie-watching habits have changed a lot in the last few years. I confess that I don’t make it to the cinema as often as I’d like. This is primarily due to laziness on my part but also because there are only a handful of theatres I can stand. If I didn’t live in Los Angeles, there’d probably be even less. I’ve been slow to embrace on-demand exhibition because I don’t have cable or satellite TV and I refuse to watch anything longer than 15 minutes on my computer. I did get a Roku this past year, so I’m finally catching up to the wave of the future. And unlike most other people who publish a top ten, I’m not a member of any critics’ association or guild that has year-end awards to bestow, so no screeners for me.

But if you’re doing a year-in-review thing, it’s kind of hard to avoid it becoming a list. Doesn’t matter if it’s 5, 10, 25 or 100, ranked by merit, release date or running time, a list’s a list. I thought about listing everything alphabetically but that seemed like kind of a dick move, so over the next few days, I’ll be writing about all of the 2014 movies I’ve seen, ranked in roughly my order of preference, subject to wiggling around depending on my whims. If you’re wondering why I left off Movie X, it’s because I haven’t seen it yet. Simple as that. (Now if you’re wondering why I haven’t seen Movie X yet, that’s a different story.) I’ll do ten a day to keep it manageable, so if you absolutely must have a top ten, you can stop reading after today’s entry.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

By now, most people seem to have a firmly entrenched opinion on the films of Wes Anderson. Either they find his style insufferable and swore off them long ago or they look forward to the arrival of each new movie like it’s a Christmas present from their most imaginative friend. I’m solidly in the latter camp but even I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this. Beyond the usual, expected delights of Anderson’s sumptuously detailed sets, wonderful music and witty dialogue, there’s a surprisingly dark and even moving story. Anderson’s skill at assembling extraordinary ensemble casts hasn’t been in doubt for some time but he outdoes himself here, led by a superb comic performance from Ralph Fiennes. This might not be Anderson’s best film but it’s certainly one of his most enjoyable.

Guardians Of The Galaxy

It’s been a long time since the top-grossing movie of the year came within spitting distance of my personal top ten. But Marvel’s bold move out into the cosmos proved to be the exact right antidote to superhero overload. Kudos to Marvel (and their new corporate overlords, Disney) for giving James Gunn the keys to such a sweet ride and the freedom to drive it as fast and as far as he could.

Blue Ruin

I’d been looking forward to the second film from writer/director Jeremy Saulnier ever since I fell in love with his low-budget debut, Murder Party, five or six years ago. Macon Blair’s performance as a hapless loser whose life is turned upside down by an ill-advised quest for revenge is on par with William H. Macy’s in Fargo. This is one of the best neo-noirs of recent years.

Snowpiercer

A lot of folks seem to enjoy picking the logic of this movie apart, probably because it’s pretty easy to do. And sure, there is a lot about the last surviving members of humanity trapped aboard an eternally-moving, circumnavigating train that doesn’t make a whole let of sense. But guess what? There’s a lot about Fritz Lang’s Metropolis that doesn’t make much sense and nobody seems to complain about that one. Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi vision is wildly imaginative and thrillingly exciting. And if its central metaphor is a little heavy-handed, at least it has one.

The Babadook 

My vote for horror movie of the year goes to Jennifer Kent’s amazing slow-burn thriller. Essie Davis is brilliant as a single mother whose son and sanity are threatened by a smart-dressed boogeyman manifested from a disturbing children’s book. This one gets under your skin and lodges itself there for days.

Inherent Vice

Give Paul Thomas Anderson this much credit: over the course of his career, he has consistently and steadily increased his difficulty level with each new film. Most filmmakers have steered well clear of adapting the works of Thomas Pynchon to the screen but Anderson jumps right into the deep end, delivering a dense, funny and atmospheric movie that’s all but guaranteed to reward multiple viewings.

20,000 Days On Earth

If you’ve already decided you don’t like Nick Cave, this mythology-perpetuating sorta-documentary isn’t going to change your mind. But it may win you over if you aren’t familiar with him and if you’re a longtime fan, like me, it’s essential. Directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard dig deep into Cave’s creative process. If you’re an artist or aspire to be one, this may be the most inspirational film you’ll see all year.

The Boxtrolls

The stop-motion animation wizards at Laika Entertainment continue their winning streak with this funny, gleefully gross concoction reminiscent of the works of Roald Dahl. Bonus points for what may be the best post-credits bonus scene ever filmed.

The Battered Bastards Of Baseball

I’m not much of a sports fan but I do have a peculiar fondness for sports documentaries. While the game is being played, it doesn’t mean much to me. But if a filmmaker can frame that event in the context of a larger story, then you’ve got my interest. Chapman and Maclain Way have got one hell of a good story in the little-known tale of Bing Russell’s Portland Mavericks, an independent minor league team that shook up the status quo of Major League Baseball. This crowd-pleaser is almost certain to become a Major Hollywood Motion Picture but don’t fail to check out the real deal first.

Nymphomaniac: Vol. II

I was surprised by the number of reviews I saw that felt the first part of Lars von Trier’s Trojan Magnum Opus was far superior to the second. I liked Vol. I just fine (more on that later) but Vol. II justifies the project and raises it to a different level. It’s a bold and provocative film and arguably one of von Trier’s most feminist statements to date. 

My magical mystery tour through the past 12 months continues tomorrow, so y'all come back now, y'hear?

 

Jahnke's Record Collection: In Defense Of Schlock

If you were to look through my CD collection, you’d quickly realize things are broken down into three general sections. Like a lot of movie buffs, I have quite a few soundtrack albums. Far less than hardcore soundtrack collectors but more than the average person, who typically only has a few of the pop-rock compilation variety. There’s a section devoted to classical music, smaller than I’d like but enough to provide a pleasant soundtrack on Sunday mornings while reading The New York Times in an overstuffed leather chair should I ever decide to completely devote my life to pretentious snobbery.

Before you get to either of these two sections, there’s Everything Else. I don’t segregate my albums according to rock, jazz, country or whatever, mainly because this is my home, not a record store. It’s arranged alphabetically, so the Beach Boys and the Beastie Boys hang out side by side, Johnny Cash rubs shoulders with Nick Cave, and Miles Davis rests comfortably next to Dead Can Dance.

Obviously I have more albums by some artists than others, so if you’re just giving the rack a cursory glance, some names are going to jump out at you. But if you give it a closer look, you’ll run across a few albums, primarily greatest hits collections, that could seriously jeopardize your opinion of me as a hipster douchebag. Here’s where we enter the world of schlock pop, songs of debatable musical value that makes a huge impact on the greater world of pop culture. I am not embarrassed to admit that I own (and play) greatest hits albums by ABBA, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Tom Jones and yes, even Madonna.

I never owned a Madonna album during her 80s heyday. I didn’t need to. The woman was inescapable. Switch on MTV at any time of the day and if they weren’t already playing one of her videos, wait ten minutes and one would turn up. I didn’t like all of her music. “Borderline” was the only song from her first album that I could tolerate. But I more or less enjoyed quite a few from the years between Like A Virgin and Like A Prayer. When The Immaculate Collection was released, I didn’t hesitate to make it the first Madonna album I owned. (Come to think of it, that’s not 100% true. I attended a midnight screening of Dick Tracy where a local radio station gave away free copies of I’m Breathless. I didn’t buy the record but I didn’t exactly toss it in the garbage, either.)

These days, if Madonna is discussed at all, it’s usually in terms of her style, her image, her personality and her influence. The music has almost become a footnote. Admitting that you like Madonna opens you up to all kinds of ridicule, especially if you’re a heterosexual male. This strikes me as odd. Let’s turn back to my media library for a minute. If you were to scan my DVD shelves, you’d see plenty of movies like Showgirls, Troll 2, Xanadu, and others that can in no way be considered good films. Yet very few people would blink an eye at their presence.

It boils down to a fundamental but often unexpressed difference between music and any other art form. Enjoyment of a particular song or album is pure, unfiltered by any stopgaps or prior awareness of it. Either a song connects with you or it doesn’t. You either like it or you don’t. You can’t enjoy music ironically, the way many of us dig crappy movies like The Room. You can hear a song and on an intellectual level think it’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard in your life. But music doesn’t work on an intellectual level, at least not entirely. Music is a drug that taps directly into a primeval part of your brain and makes you happy or sad or romantic or nostalgic or even some magical cocktail combination of emotions that can’t be expressed any other way but through a song.

We cannot predict how we’ll respond to a song and this is one of the things that makes music so thrilling. I can’t stand it when I hear people say they enjoy all music except rap or country or whatever. As far as I’m concerned, these people simply need to dig deeper. If you keep your ears and mind open, you can make some remarkable discoveries. I’ve never heard so much as a second of a Justin Bieber song and, while I may not think it’s very likely that I’ll enjoy his music, if I did, I’d be only to happy to fess up to it.

We live in very strange times. Thanks to Facebook, blogging and whatnot, we’re theoretically sharing more about ourselves than ever before. But like attracts like and it’s all too easy to stay cooped up in our virtual bubbles, discovering more and more about things we already know we like but nothing at all about anything else. Radio and television both now cater to specific individual tastes. I enjoy Pandora quite a bit and I’ve discovered some new bands that way but it hasn’t introduced me to completely new forms of music I’d have never heard otherwise. We’re sharing more but discovering less and this is true across the board, for music, movies, TV, books, you name it. If Madonna was starting out today, I’d probably be dimly aware of her music at best. Why? Because she’d only be played on the radio alongside Lady Gaga and Katy Perry on a station I don’t listen to because I’ve predetermined that I don’t like most of what they play. The only reason I’ve heard anything by Katy Perry is because they play that station over the loudspeaker at my local carwash and I forgot to bring my iPod that day.

The only real shot a recording artist has at expanding beyond their core audience today is nabbing a spot on a talk show like Letterman or Conan O’Brien. I’d have never given a thought to Janelle Monae if I hadn’t seen her bring the house down on Letterman. If I’d missed that performance, I never would have discovered her album The Archandroid, which quickly became one of my favorite records of 2010. I’m glad I found her but how many other acts slipped beneath my radar? How do you convince someone who listens mainly to indie rock to give something massively popular a shot? Even more troubling, where does a hip-hop fan go to learn about jazz? For that matter, how do they even learn they might want to learn about jazz in the first place?

I don’t have any answers to these questions. I wish I did. When my friends post music on Facebook, I listen to it, whether or not I’m familiar with it or my tastes perfectly align with their own. Sometimes that leads me to reconsider bands I’d previously dismissed. Other times, it just reaffirms what I thought in the first place. But no matter what, if there is pleasure to be derived from those few minutes, I embrace it without asking questions and go looking for more. Now if you’ll excuse me, “Material Girl” just started playing and I love that song.

Jahnke's Record Collection: Van Dyke Parks - Discover America

And we’re back!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted one of these blog entries. I apologize to those of you who were just starting to get into them. Part of the delay had to do with this year’s Hell Plaza Oktoberfest for The Digital Bits, which effectively wipes out all other projects for the entire month of October. But besides that, Jahnke’s Record Collection had fallen victim to something that happens quite a bit with me. I was overthinking it. I had an idea for an entry back in September which would have been a year-by-year look at albums that had shaped my life since my birth. I still think it’s a neat idea. It’s also ridiculously ambitious and pretty far afield from my original concept for the Record Collection blogs.

So I’m gonna try this again, hopefully on a more consistent basis this time. For those of you who may have forgotten the original idea (like I obviously did), it’s quite simple. Every week, I select an album completely at random from my collection, give it a few listens, then write up my impressions of it, history with it, and in a few cases, attempt to justify why I bought it in the first place and hung on to it all these years. As you may have guessed from the image up above, this week’s entry is Discover America by Van Dyke Parks. And as is the case with several of my albums, my history with this one begins with a list.

I’m a sucker for lists. I love making them and I love reading them. When Rolling Stone or Entertainment Weekly does a list issue, I’m the first to pore over it with a fine toothcomb. I’m also often the first to throw the magazine across the room in disgust. Lists like these are put together by committee. They rarely surprise you or lead you to discover anything you wouldn’t eventually have found on your own. Personal lists, on the other hand, can be a different story. Film Comment, I believe, runs or used to run an annual best-of issue. I always found the most interesting part to be the section devoted to the personal favorites of various critics and filmmakers. This is where you can learn something about the person compiling the list and hear about titles that would otherwise have flown beneath your radar.

Several years ago, Elvis Costello did a list of his 500 essential albums for Vanity Fair. I don’t remember the exact wording. It may have been “essential” or “favorite” or something else entirely. At any rate, it was one of the most interesting and eclectic album lists I’d ever seen before or since. He covered a wide range of genres, including classical, jazz, country, hip-hop and, of course, rock & roll. The list included such out of left field choices as An Evening With Groucho Marx and Noel Coward’s HMV Recordings. Needless to say, the idiosyncratic nature of the list appealed to me and I went on a mission to find as many of these albums as I could.

One of the albums was Van Dyke Parks’ Discover America. I knew Parks’ name from his work with The Beach Boys and Harry Nilsson but had no idea he was a recording artist in his own right. This also happened to be during the heyday of Napster, so it was no problem to jump online and download a song or two to get a taste. Unlike apparently most of the world, I would actually use Napster to help me decide whether or not I wanted to buy an album. I’d get a couple songs and, if I liked them, I’d go buy the album. So if your name is Van Dyke Parks, don’t sue me for downloading one of your tunes. It actually led to a sale you wouldn’t have got otherwise.

Anyway, the song I selected was a little ditty called “Jack Palance”, which I obviously chose because of the name. It was absolutely not what I was expecting. It’s a short and sweet calypso number and despite being barely a minute long, it made me grin uncontrollably. It was just fun. I enjoyed it a lot but half assumed it was a goof. It would sort of be like if you heard The Beatles’ “Maggie May” and assumed it was representative of Let It Be. So I was very surprised when I bought Discover America and learned that yes, in fact the entire album is like that one song. It’s a warm, jaunty calypso record and most of the songs are only about two or three minutes in length.

In addition to Jack Palance, Parks’ subjects include Bing Crosby, J. Edgar Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and The Mills Brothers. But the high point begins with a cover of Allen Toussaint’s “Occapella” and continues with “Sailin’ Shoes” and “Riverboat”. It’s a string of great, infectious songs and if they don’t make you happy, you may want to see a shrink. Get on some antidepressants or something, man, because this is fun, fun stuff.

I was pleasantly surprised that in 1972, the year of Watergate and so much other turmoil, a nostalgically happy album called Discover America was released. It does not surprise me that it seems to remain something of a cult record cherished only by a handful of people. I don’t know anyone who actively dislikes calypso music, although I suppose it’s possible. But I also don’t know many people who like it enough to groove to an entire album of it. A lot of people seem to look at it as background music, enjoyable enough if it’s there but not something they seek out. Their loss. Discover America is a burst of tropical sunshine on a cloudy day and it makes me smile every time I put it on.

Jahnke's Record Collection: Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska

Cast your mind back to 1982. MTV had just celebrated its first birthday and was already beginning to change the way we heard music. Artists as diverse as Pat Benatar, Peter Gabriel, The Pretenders and Billy Idol had already started experimenting with this new music video thing. In May, Duran Duran released Rio, becoming arguably the first major group to owe most of its success to MTV. Even The J. Geils Band had popped up their signature blues bar-band sound, hitting the top of the charts with “Centerfold”. By the end of the year, Michael Jackson would release Thriller and the music industry would never really be the same again.

In the middle of all this, on September 30, Bruce Springsteen defiantly released Nebraska, a stark, stripped-down, unpolished collection of songs about murder, unemployment, loneliness and desperation. Recorded by Springsteen alone in his bedroom on a cheap four-track cassette recorder, Nebraska wasn’t even supposed to be an album. They were demo tapes meant to be played for the E Street Band, fleshed out, re-recorded and then released as a record. But everyone agreed that the full-band versions weren’t nearly as effective as the originals. Supposedly Springsteen carted the tape around in the back of his car for a few weeks while trying to decide what to do with the songs. That may be an apocryphal story but it’s a good one. Regardless, the demos were eventually released as the final album, technical limitations, tape hiss and all.

Considering that Springsteen had just enjoyed the biggest pop success of his career with “Hungry Heart” two years earlier, it’s a bit shocking that Columbia Records let him release Nebraska at all. There were no singles off the album in the US. Springsteen did concede to releasing a video for “Atlantic City”, although it’s really more of an anti-video, consisting entirely of grainy, black-and-white images of the city at its bleakest. The whole thing looks like it was shot from a car in about half an hour and the vibe is downright post-apocalyptic. Needless to say, it made strange bedfellows alongside the likes of “Hungry Like The Wolf” and “We Got The Beat”.

The no-frills approach resulted in one of Springsteen’s most enduring and cohesive albums. The individual songs are brilliant and often beautiful but the total is much greater than the sum of its parts. Nebraska is an intimate, poignant record that demands to be heard from start to finish. The album has inspired countless writers, filmmakers and other musicians. “Highway Patrolman” alone was covered by no less than Johnny Cash and provided the basis for Sean Penn’s film The Indian Runner, while “State Trooper” served as the end credits music for the finale of the first season of The Sopranos. Coincidentally, that was the first episode of the series I watched and I became addicted to it the second I heard that familiar, ominous guitar riff start to play.

If Nebraska isn’t my favorite in the Springsteen catalog, it’s definitely in the top three. Depending on my mood on a particular day, there’s a good chance I will cite Nebraska as my favorite Springsteen album. Back in my college days, I took a cross-country road-trip from West Virginia to Montana with my friend Andrew Hansen. (These days, Andy’s a big-time composer and sound designer in the Chicago area. That doesn’t really have any bearing on this story but it is pretty damn cool.) Our route took us through the great state of Nebraska and there was really only one choice of music to play across those rolling plains. Springsteen’s songs transformed what could have been a deadly dull stretch of empty road into a starkly beautiful American landscape. Suddenly every farm house and small town we passed had a dozen stories to tell. I’d wager we both could have criss-crossed the state a dozen times listening to that album. That’s a pretty good legacy for a record that could have been lost under the passenger seat of Bruce Springsteen’s car.

Jahnke's Record Collection: John Zorn - Filmworks III 1990-1995

Of all the artists in my music library, none is more challenging than John Zorn, both musically and simply in terms of output. I dare you to keep up with Zorn’s staggeringly prolific discography. John Zorn is an intimidating artist for the uninitiated. According to Wikipedia, the man appears on over 400 albums as a composer and/or performer, including work with the bands Masada, Painkiller, Naked City, and more. His work has roots in jazz, neo-classical, klezmer and much more. Where does one even begin to delve into a musician like this?

I was introduced to Zorn through two albums in the late 80s: The Big Gundown, a tribute to legendary film composer Ennio Morricone, and Naked City, a mixture of originals and covers including John Barry’s James Bond Theme and Henry Mancini’s A Shot In The Dark. I enjoyed both quite a bit, although the avant-garde shrieks ‘n’ bleats tracks on Naked City didn’t exactly get played over and over again. I looked for more of Zorn’s work, still a manageable task back then. That began to change in 1995 when Zorn formed his own record label, Tzadik. Finally allowed to release whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, Zorn threw open the floodgates, releasing so much music that I found it impossible to keep up.

I knew I’d have to focus my interest down to just a few key areas unless I wanted to move into a larger house and officially dub one of the closets The John Zorn Room. Since I had first discovered his music through his reinterpretations of Morricone, a safe bet seemed to be collecting his Filmworks series. I’d bought the first volume when it was released on the Nonesuch label in ’92 and enjoyed it. Surely this small corner of Zorn’s music could be easily digested.

Yeah, right. As of this writing, the Filmworks series is up to its 23^rd volume. That’s about two albums per year of music for movies, mostly underground and documentaries you’ve never heard of and will probably never get a chance to see. The most well-known film Zorn has worked on is probably Trembling Before G-d, the acclaimed 2001 documentary about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews.

As much as I liked Zorn’s work, even the most difficult-to-listen-to avant-garde stuff struck me as interesting, he wasn’t someone who received much in the way of media coverage and I wasn’t passionate enough about him to follow his work obsessively. He was one of those guys that, if I was in a record store, once or twice a year I’d go over to the John Zorn section to see if he had a new album out. Usually, he would have about five or six new albums out. Over time, I became overwhelmed by all this and I stopped buying his work. I always tell myself that I’ll return someday but it’s daunting trying to decide which of the 200 or so albums he’s released in the meantime I should start with.

Filmworks III was the last Zorn album I bought, over ten years ago now. It’s divided into four sections, representing Zorn at his best and his most challenging. The music for Thieves Quartet and Hollywood Hotel are both top-notch. It’s jazzy, moody music that evokes a distinct noir mood. It’s virtually impossible for me to listen to the main titles of Hollywood Hotel with its delicate guitar work by Marc Ribot and dreamy alto sax by Zorn without feeling a cigarette between my fingers, the pleasurable burn of whisky at the back of my throat, and the red glare of a flashing neon sign outside the window, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. Zorn’s Music for Tsunta is more schizophrenic, nine cues sequenced back-to-back as one track featuring odd sound effects, turntable scratches and an occasional hesitant banjo from Bill Frisell. It’s good stuff but I can understand why most people would wonder what the hell was going on.

And then there’s the music for Weiden and Kennedy. W+K is a Portland-based advertising agency responsible for iconic campaigns like Nike’s Mars Blackmon spots with Spike Lee. It’s difficult to imagine Zorn’s music accompanying commercials but then again, it’s difficult to imagine some of the filmmakers Zorn works with on these spots, including David Cronenberg, Jean-Luc Godard and Sven Nykvist, making commercials in the first place. These are short little musical sucker punches, ranging from 14 seconds to just over a minute. Again, not the most relaxing music to have playing in the background on a Sunday morning. But Zorn gets his ideas across quickly, immediately conjuring up solid images and moods even if you haven’t seen the commercials. It’s a fascinating study in the specific needs of film composition. If I taught a class in film music, I’d have a day where we listened to these tracks and tried to dissect what they were used for.

Obviously John Zorn isn’t for everybody. I admit that I’ll rarely pull out one of his albums and listen to it from start to finish, although several of his more accessible tracks get played repeatedly on my iPod. But every so often, I enjoy giving my ears a bit of a workout and Zorn fits the bill perfectly, bleating saxes, crashing drums, guttural screams and all.

Jahnke's Record Collection: The Return!

I have not been very diligent about keeping this blog updated, though in my meager defense, it hasn’t been from lack of trying. This is the third time I’ve started writing this entry over the past few weeks. Each time, I’d get a few paragraphs into it and realize that the place I’d started from didn’t really have much to do with where I wanted to go. Some interesting ideas came out of those false starts and I’ll probably end up recycling them at some point. But their time has not yet come.

All I really wanted to do was talk about a band I’d been enjoying lately. Not really a big deal, right? But in my previous efforts, I was overthinking how to lead into that and ended up going down paths that had nothing whatsoever to do with that band. But now, since it’s been awhile since I’ve updated this blog, I thought I’d just catch you up on a number of different bands and albums I’ve been listening to since last time. Some of them are new, some are new to me, and some I’ve had for awhile. And we’ll kick things off with the band I’ve spent the past three weeks trying to write about…

Heartless Bastards – The Mountain

If you’re as lucky as I am, you have several friends whose taste in movies, books or music you trust implicitly. If they recommend something to you, you get it, no questions asked, confident that you will enjoy it as much as they think you will. Not that their tastes mirror yours exactly.But they are extremely knowledgeable and can recommend things based on your specific likes and dislikes. I have two go-to guys for music, one of whom is MusicTAP’s Matt Rowe.Matt’s really good at this kind of thing and so far, he hasn’t steered me wrong once. So when Matt started raving…literally raving, like a man possessed by demons…about Heartless Bastards, I knew I’d have to check them out.

Glad I am that I did, too. The Mountain, the trio’s third album, is a country-blues tour de force. Erika Wennerstrom leads the band with a grungy guitar and deep, authoritative, bourbon-flavored voice. Listening to songs like “Out At Sea” and the title track, you’d think the band had been playing together for decades. In fact, the band’s lineup has changed a bit since their 2005 debut. You’d never guess it from listening to their three albums back-to-back. Both Stairs And Elevators and All This Time have much to offer, including great tunes like “Done Got Old” and “Came A Long Way”. But from album to album, you can hear Wennerstrom honing their signature sound, expanding from simple guitar, bass and drums to incorporate mandolin and violin. In a short time, Heartless Bastards have become a band to reckon with and The Mountain is a massively entertaining slab of roots rock. It’s their finest album to date and I can’t wait to hear what they come up with next. Until then, crank this one up loud while you stir your brandy with a nail.

Gogol Bordello – Trans-Continental Hustle

Pandora is just about the best idea for a website in the history of the internets. If you haven’t stumbled across it yet, the idea is that you enter the name of a band or song you like. Then, through some astonishing computer alchemy, Pandora creates a streaming radio station based on the specific qualities of that band or song. As you give the songs that come up a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”, Pandora refines its parameters and gets better at finding music you like.The really amazing thing is the damn thing actually works. Plenty of websites make computer-generated recommendations but none of them ever come close to getting it right. For instance,Netflix right now seems to think that because I loved the sardonic British comedy In The Loop, I’ll go equally wild for Rob Reiner’s schmaltz-a-thon The Bucket List (the common thread apparently that both are “Comedies on Blu-ray”). By contrast, Pandora runs second only to actual human beings in introducing me to new music.

A few years ago, I created a Pogues station on Pandora and discovered the raucous gypsy punk of Gogol Bordello. It was love at first listen, despite the fact that half the time I have no idea what the hell lead singer Eugene Hutz is babbling about. Their latest album offers up more of the same, despite the presence of uber-producer Rick Rubin and a switch to a major label for the first time. Unlike Heartless Bastards, I can’t say that Gogol Bordello has expanded their scope much over the years. But their unique sound is so much fun, it doesn’t really matter. Trans-Continental Hustle is a loud, loopy good time. It’s a party in your ears and everybody’s invited.

Can You Dig It? The Music And Politics Of Black Action Films 1968-75

This double-disc import from Soul Jazz Records compiles 34 killer tracks from movies like Coffy, The Mack and Petey Wheatstraw from the likes of Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Quincy Jones, Willie Hutch and many, many more. And if that was all it had going for it, this would still be one of the coolest CDs you could hope to own. But wait, there’s more! The set includes a lavishly-illustrated 100-page book with informative, well-written essays and bios by Stuart Baker. More than just an album, this is a multimedia history of blaxpoitation cinema.

Duran Duran – Rio

Back when this album was huge, I listened to Duran Duran in a detached, semi-ironic, I’m-too-cool-to-admit-I-actually-enjoy-this way. In fact, I would refer to the band as “Double Duran”, affecting a hiccupy, Martha Quinn-voice, mainly to annoy my friends who legitimately enjoyed them. I heard the record, of course, but was mainly familiar with the singles. It was virtually impossible to avoid “Rio” and “Hungry Like The Wolf” back then. Now that I’ve bothered to really listen to the album, I’ve got to admit…this is good stuff. I won’t go so far as to say there’s more here than meets the eye but songs like “Lonely In Your Nightmare” and “The Chauffeur” are moodier and more interesting than the band is usually given credit for. Could a reappraisal of Seven And The Ragged Tiger be far behind?