Rewind #34

Thao & The Get Down, Stay Down: We Brave Stings And All (2008)

I heard the song, Feet Asleep, a couple of years ago on a compilation disc. It was good, one of the better songs on the album but every time I looked for more music from Thao Nguyen, my search revealed nothing. So, when I noticed the release of this album early this year, I was excited. I thought that I would be welcoming a strange new voice into the realm of indie greatness. Then I listened...and listened...and listened some more and for some reason all that I could conjure up was a partial shrug of appreciation. That was almost ten months ago. I'm still listening and the songs have wormed their way into me. The essence of her music has grown beyond a simple analysis of what I can expect to obtain from this sound. There's nothing to expect, nothing to know, nothing to learn. I've found a small part of the universe that has burst through like a tiny supernova upon my brain. I hear the weight of it and I completely understand.


Climates: Nuri Bilge Ceylan (2006)

Every so often a film-maker comes along and they have an awareness of the profound saving grace of the cinematic eye. They make a film that doesn't actually have to say anything, doesn't have to carry you along a traditional vein. They simply have to reveal what it is that they see. Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of those masters. This movie is about a miserable man, a selfish beast. Someone that you'd never care for in a million years. Ceylan plays this man in the film and his wife in the film, is his actual wife in real life but I don't know if the story in the film, their separation, is in any way related to reality. I don't even care. I only want to watch this woman stand in the cold, while she stares up into the snow after the trail of a plane that carries off her husband's deceit. Because it's beautiful, this moment. It's absolutely exquisite and sometimes that's all you need from a film.