Discovery #16

Lonely Drifter Karen - Grass Is Singing & Fall Of Spring (2008 & 2010)

Tanja Frinta is an old soul. Her voice is melodic and ancient, beautiful beyond repair. She causes the moon to swoon and the sun to dip in the sky. All she needs to make the world a better place is a sweet tune to back her and she may not even need that. Sometimes all you need to find a perfect place in your heart is to discover a quiet moment, someone serenading you as the night calls you into a dream. Then you wander through the landscape of a timeless place and find perspective that just isn't possible when you're awake. There's the echo of it, shimmering off the water with its luminescent presence. Grass Is Singing takes you to that place. It has a profound place in our time, an album that won't disappear. Fall Of Spring is a little more pop, trying to find a place in this modern moment, so it misfires at times. Tanja should go back to that puddle at her feet, a reflection of today but holding a glimmer of something more, something that speaks with a transcendence.


Happy Accidents & Transsiberian - Brad Anderson (2000 & 2008)

Who is this guy Brad Anderson? Have you heard of him before? Have you seen one of his movies? Do you know that he is one of the best kept secrets in Hollywood? Did you know that he has a reputation as one of the finest filmmakers here in the United States? Me neither. I've heard of many of his films but for some reason I have never seen one of them. That is, until we watched Happy Accidents. A little film that seems to come from the long vein from the romantic comedy heart. Yeah, sounds like something annoying but this one has a twist. The guy (Vincent D'Onofrio) is from the future and is in love with the girl (Marisa Tomei, not naked here) from a picture that he found so many years from today. It's funky and quirky and lovely. There's another twist at the end that has something to do with a side effect of time travel that makes everything go backwards for awhile but I won't give it away and it'll sound ridiculous even if I did. Let's just leave it with the point that Anderson just knows how to make a movie interesting; dialogue, cinematography, editing, it's all very impressive. Transsiberian is in the same boat. A thriller with brains is what I call it. It starts out like any other action movie, some drug dealer is dead and the bad guy corrupt cop has to deal with the mess. Enter a married couple (Woody Harrelson in a role that's basically Woody from Cheers who's grown up and found God, and Emily Mortimer, also not naked) who get caught up in the crossfire and have to deal with the consequences. There's intimate nuances that keep you interested in the characters without all of the cheap one-liners and enough intense moments to keep you on the edge of your seat. It's so cool to see films that try to keep the audience intelligent without boring the hell out of us. Again it works because of the guy behind the camera. He's got a few other golden tickets that I've read up on and they sound just as interesting. So we will be watching more Brad Anderson films in the future, unless life suddenly starts to go in reverse. Then we'll watch these two movies again, only backwards. I wonder what subtle messages we might find with that viewing?