Although I begged off committing to any regularly scheduled Community Center hosting, I would like to throw this one out there, since I don’t remember too many people mentioning it previously, and I for one will severely judge you if your taste is not correct. No, but seriously, it is one of the things I find most interesting to learn about people.
I am a fanatic about all three, so I’m not going to attempt to define “favourites” or even “Top Ten” lists, just what comes to mind, meaning I’ve probably seen/heard it recently or found it especially memorable.
Music: Pedro the Lion, Viva Voce, Blue Scholars (all Seattle groups); Catherine Wheel, Luna, Bright Eyes, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine; Lucinda Williams, Ani DiFranco, Indigo Girls; The Beatles, Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan; and all kindsa jazz, especially if it’s live.
Cinema: Naked, Henry Fool, Un Coeur en Hiver, Smiles of a Summer Night, Matewan, Earth, Double Life of Veronique, Metropolitan, Buffalo 66, Flirting with Disaster, dodes ka den, The Harder they Come, Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, Before Sunrise, Slacker, Tampopo, Double Indemnity, Glengarry Glen Ross,/ Swimming to Cambodia, Godfather I & II, Goodfellas, Miller’s Crossing, To Live, Chuck and Buck, Jackie Brown, Requiem for a Dream, Kalifornia, The Sweet Hereafter, Crooklyn, The Best Man, The Crowd, Out of Africa (I was born there, and was going to school there when they shot this wonderful picture)…and too many others I must stop now.
TV: Curb Your Enthusiasm, King of Queens, Scrubs, The Office (both versions), The Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama, Scare Tactics, Celebrity Poker Showdown, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Nature, NOVA, Alan Alda’s Scientific American Frontiers, Six Feet Under, The West Wing, Battlestar Galactica, Survivor, and televised football (especially my beloved Minnesota Vikings), basketball (especially my beloved Carolina Tarheels or Minnesota Timberwolves), and tennis.
I don’t get any channels any more except ABC and Fox, though, so a lot of those are no more than fond memories at this point…
MUSIC: My 13 year old daughter is recording and performing her own songs, so I HAVE to listen to those 🙂
Other than that Kasabian, Miles, Lounge, Goa and a large collection of Asian crossover.
CINEMA: I see most press shows of new movies in Helsinki – but other than that my friends and I have a theory that 1 in 15 of obscure rental DVDs is an unsung gem. Like ‘Galaxy Quest’, ‘Kung Pow’ etc. I collect DVDs of classics. Trying to track down a Jaques Tati boxed set at the moment.
TV: I hardly ever watch live. Have the complete ‘Friends’ which still gives me pleasure, and my Brother in Law in London sends me Divxs of a lot of British shows I miss. Currently watching Little England, Foyle’s War and anything by Bill Bailey. Eddie Izzard’s DVDs get a lot of play and Ricky Gervais stand-up ‘Animals’ gets on at least twice a month. In hotels I can take 3 hours of Discovery before hitting the sack.
for entertainment? I have photoshop.
Rice vs Coulter
Rice vs Coulter
Music: Bebel Gilberto: Daughter of famous Samba artist Joao Gilberto, she updates a classic musical genre with some of the silkiest vocals you have ever heard.
Twelve Girls Band: A find by my 9 year old daughter, this is an all Chinese woman’s band that plays traditional Chinese instruments in wildly original ways to create a musical sound both unique and thoroughly modern. If you have the chance, go to your local music store and listen to them on the headphones, or click on the audio link at their site for a small taste.
And anything by Bobby Darin.
Movies: I’m on an Akira Kurosawa kick at the moment. Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Ran and Kagemusha are all superb, but also consider The Hidden Fortress (inspiration for George Lucas’ Star Wars), Throne of Blood (MacBeth as Japanese epic) and Yojimbo (inspiration for A Fistful of Dollars by Sergio Leone).
All time favorite: Lawrence of Arabia
Music: Mainly video game soundtracks and anime soundtracks.
Movies: Don’t watch very many, but usually anime or foreign (read: Asian) films.
TV: My television usually stays on either Animal Planet (“Crikey!”) or Comedy Central (Daily Show!).
Your music and movies describes my son to a t.
I laid it all out in my recent diary, “‘The Inside’–TV w/Radical Politics From Buffyverse Alum”. Here’s what I said before the flip:
Some info on the show: http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/ShowMainServlet/showid-22376/The_Inside/
I’m writing this and posting it here for the same reason that the work of Charles Dickens continues to have political relevance to this day. It was no accident that there was a Dickens revival in the 1980s, during the Reagan years. Dickens wrote his novels in serial installments, much like TV shows today.
Plus, like any good TV in this age of reality shows, it needs all the help it can get just to survive.
Second episode is tonight, 9 PM on Fox.
Read my whole piece here.
Good morning Paul,
I started watching Buffy reruns in the morning as a prelude to reruns of The Practice. I happened to catch a couple shows that took place shortly after 9/11, and they seemed to be overtly pro Bush in the way in which they were going after. . .forgive me here. . .the “First”? Seemed to align with the administration’s aggressive approach to the war on terror.
to find out that there were a good number of Christian conservative “Buffy” fans. The way I found out about them was their screams of horrified outrage when Willow came out as a lesbian.
Aside from the fact that they remained in denial for a couple of months when it was obvious, but not openly declared, that she was in a lesbian relationship, there was little thing about Buffy herself having slept with a vampire, and Willow’s previous relationship with a werewolf, just for starters. But willful blindness is a powerful force.
You are, however, the first person I’ve met from a progressive POV who’s taken the show to have anything like a rightwing slant.
Whedon long ago discussed the fact that horror genre has a powerful reactionary slant, and that in order to work in it honestly, he has to acknowledge and accept some of those premises. So, Buffy slept with Angel, and he turned into a monster (lost his soul and reverted to pure vampire). But that wasn’t the end of it. There was more. There is always more.
There very fact that it’s in the horror genre means that there’s going to be absolute evil. That alone connotes a reactionary slant. There’s nothing Whedon can do about it, and nothing to prevent people from being so caught up in it that they miss everything else.
Once you get started, a rich creative text–like “Buffy”–is going to allow you to create an interpretation that goes whatever way you want… until one of the major comes out as a lesbian, and everyone says, “Oh, aren’t they perfect together?” If you just got started that late in the show (the last season), it’s unlikely that anything that happened would register as such a strong disconfirmation of a reactionary interpretation. It’s just… you’re missing so much.
Um. . .um. . .gee. . .I’m really sorry. When I saw your post, it was evident that you’re knowledgeable about the subject, and I merely wanted to take advantage of your presence by posing what I thought was an innocuous question. In no way did I intend to oversimplify any richly woven context or imply that the show is right leaning. I just wanted to pose my question because it was something that really jumped out at me when I watched those specific episodes. Buffy’s wording in going after the First was amazingly similar to Bush’s wording about terrorists post 9/11.
I recently started watching the show from the beginning, (after having seen the aforementioned episodes and many others over the past couple months) but I haven’t been in a position to catch every episode. I merely watch the show because I think it’s very well written and highly enjoyable. But it’s quite evident that there’s much more substance than that. So forgive me if I’m frustrating you by not fully engaging myself in every aspect of the show. (As for me, I was really frustrated with friends who viewed the Matrix over and over again just for the special effects – while completely overlooking the deeper significance.)
Under the circumstances, it seems best that I discontinue further discussion of the subject. I do understand the absolutes in the genre, as I have a couple friends who write horror novels. (And, FWIW, I appreciated your background information about the Christian fans and their varying degrees of acceptance toward Willow’s different relationships. Interesting.)
With that, I’ll wish you a wonderful day, and I regret any frustration I may have caused you.
You just didn’t give me much to go on–not even which episodes in particular you were referring to–so I addressed the issue generally.
The fact that phony posturing is immediately associated with any extreme moral struggle isn’t something I find frustrating, exactly.
Appalling is more the word.
And, just to be doubly clear–I’m not saying I’m appalled at you. I think its much more a reflection on the world we live in. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of a passionate intensity” and all that.
I’m not at all sure what just happened here during our sequence of comments, and I need to be on my way.
Before I leave, however, I just wanted to make sure you understood that I wasn’t being snarky when I wished you a wonderful day. I really meant it.
The conservative ring to parts of Season 7 may not be an accident. I read somewhere in the blogosphere a fairly detailed analysis of Season 7 as an attack on Bush’s War on Terror, starting with the nebulous enemy that can’t be defeated by traditional means. As I remember, the Buffy-expert argued that Buffy starts fighting the First with Bush’s methods, and then realises this is doomed. Only by enlisting all traditional allies (the Scoobies = NATO?) and empowering new ones (Potentials = new democracies?) could Buffy hope to succeed. Most memorably (and more improbably), Spike was supposed to represent moderate Islam — a horrible suggestion whose only value is to explain Giles’s ridiculous campaign against him. It was an interesting theory. If this analysis is true, it might at least explain some of the (comparatively) awful writing and flawed character development in Season 7 — complicated analogies not helping with the telling of a story.
Music: just about anything, but I’m most fired up by punk/thrash — Drive like Jehu, Jawbox, Cro-mags, Bikini Kill, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Death from Above etc… and hip-hop: Aesop Rock, Anti-Pop Consortium, Wu-Tang, Edan, Perceptionists, etc. Oh, and the metal, too: Faith No More/Tomahawk/Fantomas, Melvins, Queens of the Stone Age, Sepultura, High on Fire, etc.
Film: mostly sci-fi or animated. What can I say, I’m a nerd.
TV: it’s in the closet, gathering dust. But, in the spirit of things, we watch a fair bit of Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy downloads. Oh, and I really enjoyed League of Gentlemen and Father Ted when I was in Scotland.
Father Ted!!!! Hysterical show. I got totally hooked (PBS aired it here) and was extremely saddened to learn the actor had died. Also love Ab Fab and Fawlty Towers.
Music I have a range of tastes that wander all over the board. Tori Amos, Tool, System of a Down, George Clinton (me loves the P-funk), some rap…Eminem, Dr. Dre and a lil bit of Snoop Dogg. I grew up with mostly country music, but I won’t listen to the Pop/Country crap that they are pumping out now…give me some Conway Twitty, or the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band!
Movies Latest movies I have seen are Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the last Harry Potter movie. (shows ya how often I actually get to go to the movies! I normally prefer to wait for them to come out on DVD.)
TV The tv normally stays on disney (for the almost 2 year old) But when he’s not watching disney, I mostly watch Comedy Central, Animal Planet (gotta get my Irwin fix!) and the National Geographic channel.
Hey Cake – I don’t get out much. When did Hitchhiker’s Guide become a movie? I loved the books and the cheesy show!
Well, technically, this is the second movie. The first one that came out (hubby says late 70’s early 80’s) it had more of the book in it. This last one was chopped a bit, but still good IMO.
Thanks – was the movie any good? And did you watch the old series on PBS? (It was a hoot)
My husband has watched the old series, I haven’t had the pleasure to yet. And yeah I thought it was really good, but then again I happen to like they cast the movie as well. 😉
When you do see it though, don’t forget your bathrobe and a towel…the whole movie theater had theirs!
That’s too funny – sounds like it’s on its way toward cult classicdom – if it’s not already there. (I used to hate standing in line for Rocky Horror Picture Show with my attention-seeking friend in her merry widow ensemble! A bathrobe is much more up my alley ;^)
Yeah I have to admit that a bathrobe is alot more comfy than some of the costumes that I have seen at rocky shows. 🙂
You covered much of my personal preferences. . .
Music: Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Warren Zevon, Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello, James McMurtry, Tom Petty, David Bowie, Peter Himmelman, Tom Waits, Gear Daddies, Lucinda Williams, Johnny Cash, John Prine (pick a name and it’s likely in my vinyl collection of about 2,000 albums and/or my wall of CDs)
Movies: Fargo, Barton Fink (and pretty much anything else by the Cohn brothers), Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Ice Storm, American Beauty, Better Off Dead, Shawshank Redemption, Shrek I & II, Breakfast Club, Michael, Usual Suspects, Dogma, Gray’s Anatomy, Glengarry/Glen Ross, Bad Influence. . .
TV: The Practice, Boston Legal, LA Law, Desperate Housewives, Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Shield, Daily Show, King of the Hill, CSI (the original only), West Wing. . .
Sorry I was unable to think of anything controversial to kick-start your day. (At least to the best of my knowledge) 😉 And I’m still interested to know the artists Sven has worked with. . .
well:
Music: Johnny Cash, David Bowie, The The, Black Sabbath, Queen, Buddy Miller, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Muddy Waters, Type O Negative, Tool/A Perfect Circle, Nine Inch Nails … oh, way too much good stuff.
Movies: Sin City; Highlander; Blade Runner; Alien & Aliens; Hard Boiled; The Killer; LOTR; Ran, Zatoichi (pretty much all of them); XMen; Key Largo; Casablanca; Samurai Trilogy; Gaslight …
I’m hoping that Batman Begins rocks … hoping to see it tomorrow.
TV: Kung Fu; Highlander; Star Trek TNG & DS9, Babylon 5; Milennium; Buffy; Angel; Law & Order; The Wire; Deadwood; Carnivale; Dead Like Me; Battlestar Galactica (the new one, of course); Farscape …
Music-lately it’s mostly Japanese bands-led by Dir en Grey but with Plastic Tree a close second.
(And thanks to the person who posted the Twelve Girls link-I’ll have to find that cd too! That was nice!)
Movies-I want to see Howls Moving Castle! At home the last few movies I saw and loved were Hero and Hush.
TV-um, is that the thing you watch the DVDs on?
Books though, lots of books lately-The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang and Mark Twain on the Damned Human race are the two I’ve been reading this week-have to go for something cheerful next week!
My cd collection is all over the map, but one of the biggest components is classic jazz: Armstrong, Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Anita O’Day, Lee Wiley, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughn, etc. There’s a little of (almost) everything else, too, from Ani DiFranco to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys to Marlene Dietrich to Bikini Kill.
My favorite newish band is Le Tigre. How could I possibly resist a “feminist punk electronic” trio with a song (“Hot Topic”) that name checks feminist artists and inspirations like Carolee Schleeman, Angela Davis and Germaine Greer?
As to movies, my preference is for (again) the classics — I’ve just preordered the Thin Man boxed set and I’m on tenterhooks waiting for the Garbo collection that’s due in September.
I’m just going to go for highlights:
Music: John Eddie (best live show I’ve ever seen) James McMurtry (Google Can’t Make it Here Anymore) incredible, Radney Foster, EmmyLou Harris (marry me please,ok spend the nite) U2, da Beatles, Said Cleaves, the Commitments, the Persuasions, oh heck that’s just a start
Movies: Rainman, Chocolat, One Flew Over the Kuckoo’s Nest, Schindler’s List, Monty Python & the Holy Grail, Fargo, The Yes Men, Postmen in the Mountains, Good Morning Vietnam, Maria Full of Grace, To Be and to Have, and more
TV: The Office, West Wing, NYPD, Half of the stuff on the Sundance Channel (totally great if you can get it), Queer as Folk, Daily Show, Tennis Channel, Olympics, Simpsons, and why aren;t there any really good comedy series anymore?????
Books: Yes, I’m adding a category and I’ll just stick to current stuff or maybe authors: The Lobster Coast,<excellent! A Far Off Place <inspiring, Pat Conroy, William Wharton, John Steinbeck, Isabel Allende, John Irving and many more
Lots of good stuff on here..how could i forget Dylan for instance..and whatever The Inside is, i’ll check it out,
After reading the other posts, I decided I was too embarrassed to admit how mainstream my tastes were 🙂
But what the hell:
Music – Bach and other Baroque composers. Southern Rock (but the music, not the sexist, South rocks business) Anything I can work out to, including rave (Darude)
Movies – very little, Christopher Guest, no “chick flicks” (I’m female, my sister says I like “guy movies” – thrillers, action,etc), old Woody Allen, Girl With a Pearl Earring
TV – History Channel, CSI (the original), Jeopardy, novelas to practice my Spanish, Britcoms, and if a truly neutral news program were developed, I’d be there