Album of the Moment

The album: Hello Young Lovers by The Sparks. Released in 2006. This album is so weird in its theatrics that its impossible to become fully engrossed in their spinning web of irony. Or if, you're not into that - you'll probably find the whole thing rather stupid.

I've got two youtube videos here. One is a music video for one of the singles of the album (Dick Around - this is a shortened version of the song)

And their guest appearance on the Gilmore Girls.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Seven

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller
Day Three: The Long Goodbye
Day Four: Nashville
Day Five: The Player
Day Six: Gosford Park

Robert Altman died about six months after A Prairie Home Companion was released so it proved to be his last and with its permutations on death turned out to be a rather foreshadowing film. It received lackluster reviews but I highly enjoyed it, this film was my introduction to Altman when I watched it at the end of last year. I picked it up at the video store with the firm intention to finally watch one of his movies. (It would later turn out that I would have to study him the next year - stuff like that always amuses me)

The video is of one of the songs amongst the many I could have chosen.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Six

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller
Day Three: The Long Goodbye
Day Four: Nashville
Day Five: The Player

Ah, the penultimate day and today's featured movie is Gosford Park. This won the oscar for best original screenplay. Beating some of my favourite films like Memento, Amelie and The Royal Tenenbaums. It beat Monster's Ball as well - but I haven't seen that.

The video today is one of the songs sung, which has been a bit of theme for the videos I've posted from Youtube. Mainly because they're about all that can be found. Altman has an interesting relationship with music. Something that totally needs to be explored... just not now.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Four

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller
Day Three: The Long Goodbye

Well, we're now onto the last film of the 70's that I've seen of Altman's. Tomorrow will be quite a leap in time after this. Many consider Nashville to be Altman's magnus opus - this three hour epic film of five days in Nashville. 24 main characters all just living. It's truly an amazing film, one of the few films that feel organic when you watch it. It truly feels like a living breathing thing. The video is one of the songs - I'm Easy by Keith Carradine, though I would have really liked to have used the 200 years song from the very beginning.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Two

In 1971, a year after MASH, Robert Altman released McCabe & Mrs Miller. His take on the Western. Youtube wasn't very giving with videos. All of them featured Leonard Cohen singing (as he provides the soundtrack) so I decided to give you the trailer.

Another Sunny Day

It's pouring down with rain and hail here... on and off in the typical Dunedin way. I was in the kitchen making my breakfast and my MP3 player had been providing me with sufficient gloomy music to match the gloomy weather. Until Belle & Sebastian's "Another Sunny Day" came on... a perky cute contrast that starts off with lyrics like this...

Another sunny day, I met you up in the garden
You were digging plants, I dug you, beg your pardon

Oh well... the rain has stopped now... again. The sun's even came out for a couple of minutes.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day One

I'm about to write an essay about the late film director Robert Altman - so you should expect lots of writing about Altman on this blog. I find him to be completely fascinating as a director and he's currently my latest favourite director - so far this year I've seen six of his films. With the one I watched at the end of last year that's a total of seven - so I've decided to dedicate this week to Altman and will post a new youtube video every day of an Altman movie.

I start off with M*A*S*H which was the film that broke him into the mainstream way back in 1970. This video has the song that will later become the theme song for the television series... with the lyrics removed of course...