M&M #1

St. Vincent – Marry Me (2007)

We come to Annie Clark, she of the golden voice and jazzy textures, of the romantic hopes and desolate dreams, of the vaudevillian swagger and socially distorted loops. As the year came to a close, I began to hear a beautiful sound coming through the headphones and in that world of isolation this one voice rose above all others in charming my inner chanteuse. Like a relic from another time, a foreign epiphany, St. Vincent descends upon our existence. She is freaky and phunky and delicate and languid and spunky and faithful and ambient and stripling and hungry and mellow and beauteous and a clarion for a new age. She is strange...but when have I ever let that bother me?


The Host – Joon-ho Bong (2007)

Korean Monster movie madness! From the negligence of an American scientist (of course!), who dumps toxic chemicals down the drain, comes a creature of horrifying delight. On the Han River in Seoul, we first catch a glimpse of the monster as it terrorizes picnickers with glee until it finally disappears beneath the murky waters with a teenage girl. The rest of the movie shows her family trying to find and rescue her while the government does all that it can to screw everything up, until eventually bringing in the grand ole' US of A to destroy the monster with (irony of all ironies) chemical warfare. A throwback to the monster movies of the past but incredibly original and creatively updated with new technology, this movie was absolute fun. What a joy it is to descend into the dark of a theater and be entertained so thoroughly and to come out with the sun on your face and find that the world around you feels different, electric. That energy can change who you are. Oh, that's why I love movies so much!