A chance conversation a couple of days ago at the awesome Anstruther Fish Bar, that most venerable of fish and chip restaurants, reawakened my love for the music of Karen Carpenter. When even the merest mention of a song title can cause a grown man to splutter over his glass of milk, his eyes welling up in emotion, you know this is music of incredible power: such to elicit meaningful responses that totally belies its common positioning within the otherwise moribund genres of MOR or easy listening.
In the BBC Arena interview special with an eightysomething Ingmar Bergman, he talked about his love of music (of which, by the way, he has impeccable taste). He pondered on the mystery of its origins, asking people along the way as part of an almost Diogenesian inquiry into its whys, yet never receiving a plausible answer. Neither do I have an answer, and my passionate feelings about these songs is a perfect reason for not having one.
The Carpenters : Love Songs (1998)
Compilations are rarely little more than lazy affairs to cash in on an artist's popularity later in their careers, or posthumously - and at their charitable best, a way of creating interest in further exploration of an artist's career. However, in the case of The Carpenters, this affectionately selected and sequenced collection makes perfect sense. Whereas their original albums were rather tepid affairs showcasing a variety of styles from inoffensive soft rock to country to pop, it was the torch songs and love songs that really stood out.
Karen Carpenter's voice is impossibly beautiful. She breathes life into her lyrics in a way that defies all reasoning, in a way that many others have tried yet all have failed - in fact, so painfully sweet and heartbreakingly pure that you have to admire Richard Carpenter's strength of resolve in not having to be constantly having to reconstitute himself from a sorry puddle of tears.
All the Carpenters' songs that I personally love are on this album, ones like Superstar, (They Long To Be) Close To You, This Masquerade; and there are a few wonderful new discoveries too, such as the soulwrenching A Song For You. A definite criticism could be levelled at some of the fancy post-production applied to this album - it does sound as if they've been 'enhanced' a bit (in my opinion, unnecessarily), and the original version of Close To You was a minute or so longer than the one offered here.
RHODIUM 6
RHODIUM 5
RHODIUM 4
RHODIUM 3
RHODIUM 2
RHODIUM 1
Showing posts with label ingmar bergman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ingmar bergman. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Thursday, July 09, 2009
FILLMORE DISCOS 29
In The Loop (****)
unthinkable: a UK comedy that's funny - unrelenting searing humour thanks to the genial writing skills of Armando Ianucci; fantastic cast with stand-out performances from James Gandolfini and Peter Capaldi - on the downside, there's a pointless tacked-on subplot so that Steve Coogan can cadge a role, but it detracts little from In The Loop's overall excellence
The Haunting in Connecticut (*)
any supernatural film requires a higher qualitative threshold for one to willing suspend disbelief, and since there's so very little to commend in this B-movie retelling of a so-called 'true story', and the mediocre cast have so little to give of themselves, it quickly veers into the unwelcome realm of derivative nonsense
Look (*****)
that Look is entirely made up of enacted CCTV footage is a surprisingly effective gimmick; it's also a measure of how inured we are to this format that within 10 minutes or so you barely even notice; the film itself is a series of loosely connected interweaving subplots, many of whose scenes are occasionally miss rather than hit, yet the good bits are extraordinarily effective, and their ultimate effectiveness creep up on you unawares to the point of eventually becoming moving and shocking, and that is in part due to the unsettling and desensitising effect of our own distant voyeurism
Iron Maiden: Flight 666 (**)
most heavy metal documentary reviews tend to have a reference along the lines of 'like a real Spinal Tap': personally, I see it the other way round: Spinal Tap represents the real heavy metal, the real model other metal bands aspire to, desirous as they are of living the perfect rock fantasy that belongs in the enduring teenage mind of the middle-aged male; Maiden's members come across as rather dull but decent enough guys, and do show incredible diligence towards their legions of worshipping almost exclusively male fanatics from all around the world - but their music seems to me, even by metal's conformist standards, so unremittingly dreary and one-paced, and beyond that the most drama we get to see in this boring film of this tiresome world tour is a minor accident to Nicko McBrain relaxing on the fucking golf course
The Last House On The Left (2009) (*)
for ten minutes of decent character-building your hopes are raised, but gradually as the frequency of the vertiginously stupid directorial decisions accelerates, you sink despairingly into the realisation of its lacking even the basic entertainment value of Wes Craven's otherwise crap original
Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) (*****)
it's depressing how this medieval tale has degenerated via Wes Craven and the recent remake into a crude revenge narrative, one bereft of emotional impact - Bergman directs this beautiful, yet shocking, story and does it complete justice with his masterfully elegant and sophisticated touch
Surveillance (*)
it might be time to reappraise the career of David Lynch for this crime of offering his daughter the reins to direct another film - a blatant gesture of nepotism which heaps embarrassment on the family name with this spectacularly cack-handed attempt at a Twin Peaks
La Donna Nel Mondo (Women Of The World) (**)
mixed bag of footage from around the world, some (but not all) of which is eminently watchable; however, it is certainly not as cohesive a film as it might have been - one for the Jacopetti completists amongst us
unthinkable: a UK comedy that's funny - unrelenting searing humour thanks to the genial writing skills of Armando Ianucci; fantastic cast with stand-out performances from James Gandolfini and Peter Capaldi - on the downside, there's a pointless tacked-on subplot so that Steve Coogan can cadge a role, but it detracts little from In The Loop's overall excellence
The Haunting in Connecticut (*)
any supernatural film requires a higher qualitative threshold for one to willing suspend disbelief, and since there's so very little to commend in this B-movie retelling of a so-called 'true story', and the mediocre cast have so little to give of themselves, it quickly veers into the unwelcome realm of derivative nonsense
Look (*****)
that Look is entirely made up of enacted CCTV footage is a surprisingly effective gimmick; it's also a measure of how inured we are to this format that within 10 minutes or so you barely even notice; the film itself is a series of loosely connected interweaving subplots, many of whose scenes are occasionally miss rather than hit, yet the good bits are extraordinarily effective, and their ultimate effectiveness creep up on you unawares to the point of eventually becoming moving and shocking, and that is in part due to the unsettling and desensitising effect of our own distant voyeurism
Iron Maiden: Flight 666 (**)
most heavy metal documentary reviews tend to have a reference along the lines of 'like a real Spinal Tap': personally, I see it the other way round: Spinal Tap represents the real heavy metal, the real model other metal bands aspire to, desirous as they are of living the perfect rock fantasy that belongs in the enduring teenage mind of the middle-aged male; Maiden's members come across as rather dull but decent enough guys, and do show incredible diligence towards their legions of worshipping almost exclusively male fanatics from all around the world - but their music seems to me, even by metal's conformist standards, so unremittingly dreary and one-paced, and beyond that the most drama we get to see in this boring film of this tiresome world tour is a minor accident to Nicko McBrain relaxing on the fucking golf course
The Last House On The Left (2009) (*)
for ten minutes of decent character-building your hopes are raised, but gradually as the frequency of the vertiginously stupid directorial decisions accelerates, you sink despairingly into the realisation of its lacking even the basic entertainment value of Wes Craven's otherwise crap original
Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) (*****)
it's depressing how this medieval tale has degenerated via Wes Craven and the recent remake into a crude revenge narrative, one bereft of emotional impact - Bergman directs this beautiful, yet shocking, story and does it complete justice with his masterfully elegant and sophisticated touch
Surveillance (*)
it might be time to reappraise the career of David Lynch for this crime of offering his daughter the reins to direct another film - a blatant gesture of nepotism which heaps embarrassment on the family name with this spectacularly cack-handed attempt at a Twin Peaks
La Donna Nel Mondo (Women Of The World) (**)
mixed bag of footage from around the world, some (but not all) of which is eminently watchable; however, it is certainly not as cohesive a film as it might have been - one for the Jacopetti completists amongst us
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