"I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." Harry Burns - When Harry Met Sally

I am a totally insensitive, unromantic soul. I genuinely detest Valentine's Day. Not in that retarded sense of "this day is so commerical, I HATE it." But romance makes me uncomfortable, and an entire global day dedicated to it has always been an idea that is completely lost on me. I'm not trying to be attention seeking. This is an example of attention seeking hater of Valentines' Day (aka: fraud).

Girl: I hate Valentines' Day.
Boy: Yeah it's shit hey.
Girl: Yeah, let's just ignore it hey.

Valentines' Day comes.... and goes...

Girl: What the fuck?!

These gender roles can be reversed.

Anyway. Enough babble. The point of this is I do not like this day at all, but I LOVE romantic songs. Soul, pop, rock, acoustic. I really enjoy romance in song form. Here's my own V-day playlist.

Mayer Hawthorne - No Strings
This song is definitely not very romantic, but it's sexy.

Etta James - At Last

Aloe Blacc - You Make Me Smile

D'Angelo - Cruisin'

The Moldy Peaches - Anyone Else But You...


Erykah Badu feat. Common - Love of my Life


Led Zeppelin - The Rain Song


Neil Young - Harvest Moon


Elliott Smith - Thirteen


Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps





Happy Lovin'.

Dark Days

One of the most incredible documentaries I've ever seen was Dark Days (2000) directed by Marc Singer. In won three awards at Sundance in 2000, including the audience award. The film is a beautifully constructed portrait of a group of homeless people who reside permanently in the tunnels of New York's underground, which the residents had named The Freedom Tunnel. It's a really incredible journey, and you become attached to the people on screen as they describe how they ended up in such dire living situations. They are basically the forgotten "mole people" of New York, and America. Singer was not a filmmaker before the release of this, he was actually living underground when one of his friends made the suggestion that a film should be made about what was really an ignored aspect of this thriving city. Singer decided to go ahead and make the film, but his main aim was that it would draw attention to the situation, and that those who were a part of it would receive help. It's beautifully melancholy, and although the subject matter is disturbingly morose, you can't help but be drawn in and begin to enjoy it. The film is shot in black and white, which apparently was not an artistic preference, but Singer was told by a friend that if he didn't know how to shoot properly in colour he would "fuck it up and it would all come out green and red."

It's emotionally charged yet it has no dramatic romanticism.

Beside the beauty that is the film itself, it comes with an amazing soundtrack by none other than DJ Shadow. I wanted to write about the amazing story that comes with it, but it's long and I couldn't think of a more fascinating way to write it so I've just copied it directly from IMDb

The soundtrack for the film was provided by DJ Shadow (aka Josh Davis), who is a critically-acclaimed producer and DJ. He is notorious, however, for being very protective of licensing his music for other venues or projects, having declined many other scoring offers in the past. When a friend of Singer's saw the footage assembled to a rough cut, he suggested Shadow for the soundtrack. Singer got hold of a couple of Shadow's albums, and loved the music so much, he began to cut the music into his film without any contact with the DJ. When fellow producer Ben Freedman told him he would need the rights to the music, the duo concocted a scheme whereby they would write a note to him and give it to an attractive female friend who would go backstage after a show and personally hand-deliver it. It worked. Weeks later, the two scheduled a flight to LA to coincide with a last-minute meeting with Shadow and his agent. According to Shadow, he was prepared to turn down the men's offer to use his music. But when they showed him a rough edit of the film with his music that Singer had already cut-in, Shadow was taken aback and completely impressed. He not only let them use existing titles, but even remixed some older tracks intercut with new audio samples recorded by Singer in the tunnels as a special score done for the film.



You can find this film on documentaryheaven.com - seriously... watch this fucking film.

Love
Liv

"The concept of absurdity is something I'm attracted too." David Lynch

I've been away from this blog for sometime, and for no proper reason then I had little-to-no inspiration to add. But I've just spent my entire day listening to great new tunes for myself, and reading about just absolutely anything to do with film.

This awards season is actually the one that I've been the most excited for. I haven't seen The Artist yet, and although it's reviews are so incredible, I think it might be borderline "pure wank" than "pure art", but I am terrible at judging films before I see them. I saw both Hugo and The Descendants, and both struck a great cord with me. Both fantastically entrancing films and Hugo is beautifully shot - which from Scorsese I would expect nothing less. The Descendants surprised me. I knew that I would enjoy it, but the amount that I did was the unprecedented part. Alexander Payne is fantastic at his job, and his ability to juxtapose overwhelmingly emotional scenes with a hilarious moment is done with such ease, instead of being an obvious attempt of "dark humour". I was left somewhat confused, should I be happy, sad, satisfied? But I felt blissful, it is truly really a great cinematic feat.

If you find yourself with a spare couple of hours, I would also recommend downloading Martha Marcy May Marlene. It's the forgotten Olsen sister's debut, and she's amazing! Elizabeth Olsen had sworn that she would finish college before trying to break into acting, and at 22, she has made an incredible burst onto the scene. The film debut at Cannes last year to great critical reception, but only had limited release in the States, and I'm not sure if it even came to Australia, I know it didn't hit Brisbane. Regardless, it's really beautiful. Slow-paced, the film is a psychological thriller about Martha, who ran away from home joining a strange hippie-like religious sect, only to be over exposed to an irrationally bizarre lifestyle. She again runs away from this back to her newly-wed sister, and the film is a series of flashbacks to her life in the cult, explaining why she acts the way she does.

Anyway, here's some tunes.

Kae - Happy


She's just new onto the music scene, but her album is full of amazing producers and collaborations including The Roots and Robert Glasper. She sounds like Erykah Badu. This is really, really good music.


Frenic - Alright


Jurgen Muller - Sea Bed Meditation


Nest - Kyoto




Goodbye