Hot Tracks

Heads Will Roll Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Back and sassy. I haven't heard the whole album yet, but I sure like this. "Off with your head/Dance till you're dead": a killer disco-ey dance track with a great, dark electronic groove.

The Great Defector Bell X1
What a three-way between the Talking Heads, Soft Cell, and Sufjan Stevens would sound like. Orgasmic!

The Fear Lily Allen
Pop perfection + satire of the E! Network set = a fantastic song that feels like spring & summer.

Sometime Around Midnight Airborne Toxic Event
Adam from U2 likes them and recommended them on U2's recent "radio takeover" hosted by Shirley Manson of Garbage (who has become an actress. She's on that Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles show or whatever it is. Weird.) The song starts off slow but builds big, and it has this great line: "You just have to see her to know that she'll break you in two." Wow. Check them out. Listen loud.

I'm Falling Robyn Hitchcock & the Venus 3
The verses have a nice, easy feel to them, and the more rousing "Take it away" chorus is great.

What Are You Like Indigo Girls
Good, happy tune about how nice it is to have someone who knows you better than you know yourself. Aww.

Crap
Sex on Fire - Kings of Leon
I don't understand why this song is such a hit and everyone's crazy about Kings of Leon. This is one of the dumbest songs I've ever heard, and I hate how Caleb Followill sings in general. If the song were even slightly sexy, I'd feel differently, but it's just stupid, Followill's singing is irritating, the guitar during the chorus makes my skin crawl, and the lines "Your sex is on fire/Consumed with what's to transpire" make me want to never have sex again. The ironic thing is that Followill didn't even like the song when he started writing it. He thought it was "terrible," but the other guys encouraged him to keep going. Follow your gut, songwriters everywhere ...

Stranger Than Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction is a wonderful movie. It is the story of a man who begins hearing the voice of a British female narrator in his head, chronicling his life as it happens, and discovers, with the help of an eccentric literature professor, that he is the protagonist of said British author's latest, long-unfinished novel and that she intends to kill him.

Harold Crick is an IRS agent who lives a by-the-numbers existence, alone. Shortly after he begins hearing the maddening voice, he meets Ana Pascal, a nonconformist young baker he is auditing. The development of their relationship is not too sappy, not too flashy--I liked it. As he develops a desire for Ana and as he comes to know Professor Hilbert, who prompts him to examine whether his life seems to be a comedy or tragedy, Harold begins a quest to make his life worth living. Again, this is done in a way that is not too flashy, not too sappy.

Meanwhile, Karen Eiffel, the chain-smoking, down-on-her-luck author steering Harold's life, does not know that Harold is real. Until she learns this, her struggle is simply to come up with a way to kill Harold in a fashion that her novel deserves and finally finish the thing after ten years--without abandoning her artistic principles, despite the presence of Penny, an "office assistant" sent by her publisher to help the writing process along. When Karen meets Harold, the question of how the story should end takes on a very new meaning.

Will Ferrell gives a perfectly understated performance as Harold (yes, Will Ferrell: understated). Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of the professor is great and took me back to my college days, especially when he quoted Italo Calvino. Emma Thompson gets the job done, as always, as Karen Eiffel, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is believable as Ana, the opinionated but sweet bakery owner who hates paying (part of) her taxes. Queen Latifah is perfectly capable as Penny, Karen's publisher-assigned assistant, but I'm not sure what the point was of putting a big name in that role.

The movie is warmly entertaining throughout--nice humor, an intriguing mystery, and an exploration of life's mundaneness without getting too heavy--but its best part is the ending, which shows that life's greatness is in its seemingly small moments, not its great tragedies. The question of whether great art will triumph over real life is satisfyingly answered. Rent it!

Grade: A

Notable: it has a great soundtrack. The arrival of Spoon's "I Turn My Camera On" (from Gimme Fiction, an album I am now nearly four years late in acquiring, which is just plain silly, considering how great 2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is and that Gimme Fiction is supposed to be better ... I digress) was a highlight for me. The Jam was fun, too. And Will Ferrell's a pretty good singer when he's not hamming it up. Also notable: Tom Hulce's turn as an unhelpful, aging hippie therapist. WOW, he's aged.

Interesting fact: Spoon singer Britt Daniel co-wrote the movie score.

Interesting fact II: The movie was filmed entirely in Chicago, and I hadn't a clue while watching it.