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Friday Music Cue: Stardust

Like Thomas McCarthy's 'The Visitor', Neil Jordan's 1991 film 'The Miracle' is bursting with unspoken feeling and intense yearnings, and traffics in a kind of emotional currency that's too uncomfortable, or perhaps just too subtle for a lot of people. And like 'The Visitor' few people actually saw 'The Miracle'--now the film isn't even on DVD, a real shame--this is a perfect candidate for the Criterion Collection treatment. It's not a film that should be encapsulated but rather experienced--I will say it's about the pull and danger of imagination and storytelling, and the pain and liberation of discovering, at last, the truth behind deeply buried family secrets. It's also very much about music as a potent communication of things unspoken, as in this scene with a luminous Beverly D'Angelo singing 'Stardust'.

Paul Newman.

Friday Music Cue (on Monday): Bonjour Tristesse

I'm so overwhelmed with projects that I've been super remiss on keeping Meerkat current-look to see that change next week. Three days late, here's a Friday Music Cue: 'Bonjour Tristess' by Juliette Greco, from the 1958 Otto Preminger film. Just saw BT for the first time and found the poor little perky rich girl played by Jean Seberg to be decidely annoying, and her near incestuous relationship with her dad (David Niven) dark but unexplored. A truly terrible job of looping Seberg's dialogue cast the character in an even less sympathetic light. For a movie set on the French Riviera that stars Seberg, Niven and Deborah Kerr to leave me cold takes some doing. Great intro section here though with Greco's song, and Seberg's (or whomever's) zombiefied voice actually works in the context of these lines.

So Long, Sydney Pollack

Technically Pollack's not in this scene from "Husbands and Wives" where his character's estranged wife is reaming him on the phone, but damn, that's good Jangly Davis. I'm gonna give it to him.

Friday Music Cue: Sentimental Walk

Vladimir Cosma's score for "Diva" hits a high note with this tentatively romantic interlude, as does the film. On a rainy cold day in New York somehow the rain in Paris looks-and sounds-more desirable. The clip is a bit dark, but you get the drift.

Got To Give The People, Give The People What They Want.

Typepad blogs list the referring address for visitors, and I’ve discovered that the single biggest tag that drives search engines to Meerkat is 'Joseph Gordon Levitt'. Closely followed by 'Prison Porn'. The combo of Gordon Levitt’s predominantly underage body of work and that factleaves me a little uneasy, but I’m not above exploiting a little light pedophilia for traffic's sake.

The posters for JGL's new film The Lookout caught my eye on the Bowery yesterday. Looks promising, even if the trailer casts it in a way-too backwards narrative light, the most overused trick in the quasi-indie playbook. Director Scott Frank did write Out Of Sight, however, a movie so good that even Jennifer Lopez came off as a credible Fed, as well as delivering the most gorgeously narcotic cinematic pas de deux in recent memory.

JGL looks soulful and raw entirely without cant in this one, as is usual for this anomaly in glossy young Hollywood. Good chin, too.

Friday Music Cues #1: ABC

Before marriage and fatherhood crushed John Jay's spirit he called every Friday morning on the way to work and played a rousing song for me through his Blackberry. The sound quality was terrible (why I gotta hate on Blackberry? Because they continue to ignore our overtures for sponsorship, that's why. But we're still open to discussion, Big Evil Berry!), but it was always a sweet and even moving gesture, and on certain caffeine-laced mornings JJ would break into his best Bill Murray style lounge singer voice and accompany New Order, The Smiths, or The English Beat. Pretty narrow repertoire, but a good one.

In homage to those halcyon days I’m going to try posting some musical clips each Friday a.m.. This little scene is from Clerks 2, which I completely missed when it came out, but flying back from London on Virgin Atlantic it was one of the movies you could call up on the tiny screen on the back of the seat in front of you (the best way to travel is immersed in films and back episodes of BBC series) and it really got to me. The film was a huge step beyond the charming and clever but lo-fi original. C2 is a living cinematic universe, geeky and irreverent (the anti-Lord Of The Rings rant is sublime) but surprisingly complex and ultimately quite moving. Rosario Dawson is also insanely hot here and reminds me of my super-fine cousin Allison. Maybe it’s the naughty librarian glasses they both wear or the fact that she too has all the fly dance moves down. In this scene, when she’s trying to teach Dante how to dance, you feel yourself falling in love with her as he so clearly is; the choreographed dance number midway through is a ballsy act of faith on Smith’s part that connects the whole film to a deeper realm--the place where the magic that old musicals believed in exists, and people break into song and dance and fall in love and are redeemed on a sunny afternoon-even in New Jersey. All in all: best sequel since Aliens.

Dark Visions of Future make Present seem Better, Somehow

I’m a terrible Johnny come lately to the new Battlestar Galactica, but a friend just leant me seasons 1, 2 and 2.5 and I’m teetering on the edge of compulsion, drawing out my viewing sessions, careful not to OD on too many in one sitting, eke-ing out my stash in doses and making it last. Wicked timely at points in its imagining of politics, paranoia and military tribunals, the series is adult and intelligent, making all those grand, episodic shows on the four big networks look pretty dum-dum by comparison. In addition to some serious gravitas and great space-fu the show is populated by some very randy foxes, male, female and robot.

The female Cylon is hands down the nuclear epicenter of sexual heat on the show, but there’s plenty of interesting fin du monde-style sexual energy to keep things interesting. Much has been made over Jamie Bamber but I find him a little plucked tweezed and prissy-voiced, sounding like your waiter at Cafeteria. (When the clothes come off some masculinity comes through, though-it might be a self-consciouly stylized gym body, but it’s got legitimate meaty heft.)

Aaron Douglas’ Tyrol is that slightly stocky sensitive dreamboat, very otter. I’ll take the interestingly named Tahmoh Penikett as Helo, all tall and broad shouldered with vivid eyes that make you a little nervous and excited. And Grace Park’s smoldering Boomer gets to hit the skins with both of them. Good times at the end of the world.

In other sci-fi escapist news J.J. Abrams taking on the Star Trek franchise is promising, and the rumored casting of Matt Damon as James T. Kirk sounds right. Fox Searchlght has puched pushed Danny Boyle’s Sunshine back again, from summer to a December release, which is concerning. A new round of trailers describe more of an in-space thriller than one would have guessed at first. My feeling is: how bad can it be?

Someone option that man's life story, stat!

A middle school principle is suspected of dealing crystal meth. The cops go to his office to take him in for questioning, find him at his desk, naked and tweaked out and watching gay porn, surrounded by sex toys.  It sounds like a new wrinkle the Boogie Nights/Requiem For a Dream cautionary drug film, but it’s all true. For the film I’m seeing Phillip Seymour Hofmman  if we're going gritty and fleshy and sweaty, or Val Kilmer if we're taking a sexier approach.

John Jay's Real Time Oscar! Reviews

I skipped the Oscars this year as I’ve been railing against the collective Celebrity Fever that’s overtaken the nation and felt like I needed to walk the talk. John Jay (pictured) was kind enough to take the trash-talking reigns, revealing an interesting Jessica Biel/Helen Mirren co-fixation.

8:04 P.M.

I usually boycot the Oscars unless I feel passionate about someone or something...but since Jason is catching an 810pm Reno 911-Miami showing [Edit. Note: A masterpiece, and a pretty accurate representation of my--and John Jay’s--own lost weekends in dirty South Beach motels-J.R.] I am your window to the Oscars...hold on to your wallet

I am watching E's red carpet now. It pretty much stands for everything I hate and feel what's wrong with society. The gay dude with the Billy Idol hair doesn't work. Hate the I'm to cool for school chatter that comes from these babbling idiots.

Shows on now...

Wait, what the fuck, shows not on till 830pm. Going to turn to the SciFi channel and watch 30 minutes of "End of Days"

CONTINUE IF YOU DARE, APRES LE JUMP