layoffs

Though I no longer subscribe to the paper version of the Los Angeles Times, only because it is impossible to do so, it was still very disheartening to find out that Carina Chocano was one of 75 staffers laid off today. She's one of my favorite current film critics. She combines intelligence, warmth, and strong opinions to write really witty, insightful, often spot-on reviews.

She also manages to slip in some biting and too-true cultural commentary in some of her writing. Here is the (somewhat prescient, hopefully not so much so that the currently wildly popular Fey suffers a backlash) last paragraph to her Baby Mama review:

Fey has spent several years proving that she's very good at what she does, and she may spend the next few years having to prove that she deserves any success that comes her way. But hey, this is America -- where the fact that a woman is running for president is still talked about with a kind of gee-whiz-look-how-far-we've-come disingenuousness, despite the many countries that have already seen one or more women presidents. If a Fey backlash happens, I hope Hillary buys her a drink.

Places to read her stuff:

L.A. Times reviews and film writings.

Salon magazine pieces.

I hope she quickly gets an amazing job offer.

Wendy and Lucy trailer

I can't wait to see this. Will this and Rachel Getting Married please come to Omaha? I'm definitely a fan of Kelly Reichardt and her work and I've been eager for this to come out. Michelle Williams is in a bunch of what look to be good movies coming out: Synechdoche, New York, Incendiary, Scorsese's Shutter Island and Mammoth from Lukas Moodyson, another one of my favorite current working directors.

I haven't seen a narrative film that has really blown me away in awhile. I'm ready for inspiration.

More Wendy and Lucy:

UNKLE review

My UNKLE review is up at venuszine.com

reading material if you wish

I have two new articles in the City Weekly this week: Meeting the Band: UUVVWWZ (photo above) and a review of Jenny Lewis' album Acid Tongue.

gossip girl + obama = success

And featuring Hannah from doc American Teen. Pretty awesome.

punk rock tour blog

I'm going to use a word I don't often use in this post: idol. The word has undoubtedly lost much of its grandeur and power, as our culture has tilted towards excess in many ways, including word usage. It's not enough to like something, but instead you love it. Whereas dislike would've once worked or is pretty accurate, hate may be used. And the phenomenon American Idol doesn't help at all either.

But I digress. I am writing because I was alerted to the fact that Tobi Vail's tour diary from her early days in the band Go Team is online at Punk Rock Tour Blog. Tobi Vail was the reason I had to inject that bit about the idol because growing up she was definitely one of them for me. The drummer for Bikini Kill, she was also a writer of the zine Jigsaw Youth, and perhaps more well known to some as the onetime girlfriend and love of Kurt Cobain. She was the primary reason I bought a drumset with all of the money I had saved in the bank in (was it?) eighth grade.

I was alerted to this blog by Monitor Mix, Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney's (another in the idol range) blog for NPR, but I was so excited that I had to share it further.

Other blog posts include entries from Molly Neuman of Bratmobile and Corin Tucker of Heavens to Betsy (and later Sleater-Kinney). This is a very exciting find (what do you call a find that you don't find yourself?) for a Tuesday morning.

I told you to be patient...

I've been listening to Bon Iver a lot again lately (hence the title), since I checked out For Emma from the library and can play it in my car for now. I have a subscription to emusic, which is where I tend to get about half of any new music I acquire (other 40% buying CDs, 10% from friends), but the issue with that is that my car has become increasingly finicky about what CDs it will play and it refuses about 99% of all burned CDs now (a lot of percentages in this post).

I also checked out Lucinda Williams' "West" and an Iron and Wine CD that I haven't heard. On eMusic I got Department of Eagles and Vivian Girls the other day. I like Vivian Girls a lot and look forward to listening to Department of Eagles.

This turned out to be a "what I'm listening to these days" post, when I intended it as an extended apology of not blogging about fireworks, vertigo, throwing up, and crazy bands from Tel Aviv. I've gotten behind on a lot of stuff lately, and I still feel like I'm running to catch up (or maybe jogging).

But the house is coming together, Laura was here for a fun visit, and now I'm off to Minneapolis to hang with my sisters on their birthday. I can't wait!

last night