Dodgey Brits

So I watch a lot of television in my spare time. I DVR tons of shows each week. I watch shows on Netflix and Hulu. . . pretty much anywhere I can get my hands on the stuff. Well, I recently started and finished the British teen drama Skins in a matter of a week or so and it was good. Really good. My only other run ins with British television have been with The Vicar of Dibley (not very good in my opinion), The Office (brilliant!), and Extras (also brilliant). I randomly found Skins on Netflix and decided to try it out out of sheer boredom. From episode one, I was hooked. This show is reminiscent of American teen shows like The OC or 90210 but minus all the melodrama and plus loads of swearing, sex, and drug abuse.

The show has received criticism here in the US and abroad for its controversial depictions of teenagers doing all of the aforementioned activities. The show runs on Britain's Channel 4, but has run in the US on BBC America (although censored in parts due to nudity or other factors that the FCC frowns upon).

The show has a very simple structure. It centers around a group of friends going to college, the British equivalent of the last two years of high school, in Bristol. Each episode focuses on one of the friends, highlighting story lines to further that particular character while still having secondary story lines that help the other characters stay involved. Each season runs about 10 episodes long and so far there have been 4 seasons.

The writing is what separates Skins from any other show that I have seen in recent memory. It is brutally honest, extremely funny, and poignant. Yes, there is a good deal of drug use and sex but there is a good deal of that in real life too if you just look hard enough.

The music selection for this show is also the best that I have ever seen in a television program. This show is an indie music fan's dream. Skins has sampled songs from Grizzly Bear, Florence + the Machine, Born Ruffians, Crystal Castles. . . the list could seriously go on for days. The right song has the ability to change an ordinary scene into something extraordinary, and I think the music supervisors for this show know how to pick the right song for the right moment.

Another reason why Skins is so great is because of the actors themselves. All of the actors are actual teenagers, not freakishly good looking twenty-somethings. Most of the actors are relatively unknown. The only real exceptions are Nicholas Hoult and Dev Patel from the first two seasons of the show. Some might recognize Nicholas as the little boy from About A Boy or more recently as Colin Firth's student, love interest in A Single Man. Dev Patel was only known for his role in Skins until he was chosen to play Jamal in Danny Boyle's Oscar magnet Slumdog Millionaire.

Skins is a daring attempt to depict teenage life as harshly and as real as any show out, and I think is succeeds in that respect. For anyone looking to try out something new, I highly recommend Skins. Those Brits know how to make damn good television if you ask me. . . (minus the Vicar that is).

Concert. I actually went to this one.

I've been slacking a good bit recently in most everything school related so sadly my blog posts have suffered significantly. I intend to stop this now. Yesterday I went to a concert in Atlanta that definitely warrants some sort of discussion so here it goes. I saw The Morning Benders play at the Drunken Unicorn. It was one of the better shows that I have seen recently (considering I haven't been to a show in quite some time. . . my previous post about Royal Bangs and Surfer Blood was premature and I ended up not going to either show. Money troubles). Anyways, enough with the parentheticals. The Morning Benders just released a new album last week entitled Big Echo. It is a big step forward for the band musically. I have one of their previous albums and the change is evident from the opening track. This change may have stemmed from the co-producer of their latest album, Chris Taylor. If that name isn't ringing any bells, Chris is the bass player for indie favorites Grizzly Bear (if you don't know who they are, do yourself a favor and buy all their music. . . seriously. Just do it).

A good friend of mine Cody, who is one of the folks that went to the concert with me, first turned me onto the band by showing me this fantastic video of the band playing this live version of their song "Excuses" with a bunch of their musician friends in San Francisco.

Yours Truly Presents: The Morning Benders "Excuses"

For anyone interested in any of their other songs here is the second track off Big Echo called "Promises":

Also, I am going to try and be a little more consistent with the blog from now on. Everyone could use a little more awkwardness in their life.

Concerts. One of my few vices.

Today is going to be a good day. I am halfway done with classes. Later today I will be going to Atlanta for a concert. This is the first of the semester for me. Sadly, this semester I won't be going to as many concerts as I usually do, but I have to save up for Cannes this summer. I guess I can't complain about getting to go to Cannes. Anyways, I'm off point. Tonight I'm going to see one of my favorite bands at the moment, Royal Bangs. They hail from Knoxville, Tennessee, so I have been anxiously waiting for them to come anywhere near here. When they announced that they are playing at the Masquerade, I kind of flipped out. My good friend Taylor, who introduced me to the band, saw them 2 years ago and said they were incredible. Well the show tonight is only 10 dollars so I figure I can swing that.

Their sound is kind of difficult to pin down. They have some of the dirtiest riffs I've heard in a long time. They like to pepper in random synth, which is always a plus in my book. They also have some of the sickest beats compared to any other rock group out. In short, they are awesome.

Here is a song off their 2009 album Let It Beep called 'War Bells':



Also, there is another concert in Atlanta tomorrow night that I am still debating whether to go to. I probably shouldn't go to this one and the concert tonight but it is another 10 dollar concert and those are very hard for a music addict like me to pass up. Surfer Blood, the band I will most likely end up seeing tomorrow, is playing at the Drunken Unicorn. They are another band that been stuck in my head for a few months now. They remind of an early Weezer, before they forgot how to write songs (Beverly Hills...really?). Their debut album Astro Coast came out in January and it has been in constant rotation on my iPod ever since.

This is the music video for their first single of their debut entitled 'Swim':

Surfer Blood "Swim" from Neue Films on Vimeo.

Warning: This video is a little weird, but I kinda think it fits the song.

A Single Man

Okay, so I'm not sure how well this will go over seeing as how this was kind of an assignment for last week's class, but I still want to dedicate this post to discussing Tom Ford's A Single Man (I went and saw both A Single Man and An Education last week so I decided to discuss one in a blog post and submit the other one over the listserv). I saw this movie sometime last week and I can't seem to get it out of my head. I will probably go see it again this week if some time frees up for me.

First and foremost, Colin Firth is fantastic. Who knew that the British "rom-com" star could actually act? His performance as George, a mourning English professor in 1960's, is probably the best performance from any film last year (for me it's a tossup between Firth and Michael Stuhlbarg in the Coen brothers' similarly titled A Serious Man). George is mourning the loss of his partner Jim, played by Matthew Goode, who died in a car accident 8 months before the film takes place. George is so distraught over the loss of Jim that has decided to commit suicide on the day in which the entire film actually takes place. He sets all of his affairs in order: he empties out his safety deposit box, sets out the suit he wants to be buried in, has a last dinner with his longtime friend and ex-lover Charley (played by Julianne Moore), and he teaches his final English class on Aldous Huxley. But as his day progresses, he ends up having little epiphanies that make him second guess his decision to kill himself, an act that he ultimately decides against at movie's end.

Firth's portrayal of George is filled with nuances that makes the viewer wonder who or what he was channeling for such an inspired performance. The supporting characters also do a good job, but this is clearly Firth's film.

The other characteristic of this film that made it standout for me was its superb editing. I have only seen a few movies (Steven Soderbergh's The Limey, for one) that have even made me notice the editing to the extent that I actually have something to say about it. Most films are edited to simply further the plot, but editing in this film was a great mechanism to pace this emotionally dense film. One particular scene that stuck with me was a flashback from when George first found out about Jim's death. After realizing what has happened he runs over to Charley's house, sobbing in the rain. The camera shifts to a POV from George as he falls to the ground outside of Charley's house. The audio track of him crying and Charley trying to console him is off (the images don't match up with the audio). This scene was too perfect.

I know that many of the students probably went to see only one of the two movies assigned, but if you didn't go see A Single Man I highly recommend doing so (I honestly thought it was much better than An Education).

Red Dress. Strappy Choes.

So I have a confession to make. I have somewhat of an obsession…a Penélope Cruz obsession. This obsession is recent, but she has quickly become one of my favorite actresses.

I have been aware of Penélope for a while now, but I had never been that impressed with her. Sure, she is gorgeous and all but I hadn’t ever seen her in anything that I would call “great” until this past year.

I had seen her in terrible movies like Sahara and Bandidas (and yes…I did actually see Bandidas), but I had no clue that there was a real actress behind that lovely face of hers. I had also seen her in Vanilla Sky, which as a film overall was okay, but her role as Sofia was convincing enough to make me not write her off completely. The real appeal of her in this movie in my opinion is her pronunciation of lines like “Red dress. Strappy shoes.” The delivery of her lines with her Spanish accent was endearing, at least to my ears.

My first taste of Penélope actually owning a movie was Pedro Almodóvar’s film Volver. At the time I had not heard anything about Almodóvar or his movies, but this film made me sit up and notice both him for his distinct style as a director and Penélope for her actual talent as a gifted actress.

After seeing her act so well in her native tongue, I wanted to see more so I then saw her in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. She played a smaller role in this film than in Volver but her screen presence was still as powerful as it was in that film. She played Lena, a psychopathic ex-girlfriend and managed to make it believable and relatable at the same time. This was another role that was primarily in Spanish (with a little English peppered in) so she was in her element. She was so fantastic in fact that it earned her an Academy Award for Best Support Actress.

The most recent movie of hers that I have seen is another Almodóvar picture called Broken Embraces. She once again was able to impress me with her portrayal of Lena, a woman who is caught in a love triangle with two men who would do anything to be with her. The story itself in this film is weaker than the previously mentioned Almodóvar film, but that takes nothing away from her performance. This is perhaps the best that I have seen her.

So I am eager to see more of her work. I have just rented a few more Almodóvar movies that she is in in hopes that she continues impressing me with her performances. Penélope Cruz is a beauty and a talent, a most lethal combination.

"don't forget to turn the light off when you're leaving home, son"

So I haven't posted in a while but I want to let everyone know about this new band that I just discovered a few days ago while surfing the 'blogosphere.' This band called Brazos came out with an album last year entitled Phosphorescent Blues. These guys are good. Really good. It's been a while since I have been this excited about a new band (the last time probably being the Local Natives). Anyways, I went to both School Kids and Wuxtry downtown in hopes of finding this album but sadly neither of them had it. So I was then forced to search for as many songs of theirs that I could find online, mainly via other music blogs. In my pursuit of more Brazos I have found a few gems off Phosphorescent Blues that are pretty darn good. Here is one particular song that I loved off that album called "Kid."

The lead singer's voice reminds me of Nathan Willett's voice at times (he's the lead singer of the Cold War Kids if anyone is scratching their head right now). I have been trying to find out when these guys would be coming anywhere near Georgia, but I just found out they already played a show in Atlanta last November so the likelihood of seeing them anytime soon is pretty slim. Well, I encourage anyone who is looking to get into a new band to give Brazos a shot because they are beastly.

Here is a bonus video of the lead singer singing another song from Phosphorescent Blues entitled "Mary Jo."

the first of many...hopefully

I have always wanted to start a blog. I just never really had the incentive to do so until now. Even though technically this is for a class I think-or maybe hope is a better word-I hope that this will give me the initiative to keep up with this long after the semester is over.

Well, I have opened up the topic for this blog to two major categories, at least in my eyes: music & movies (there is a third topic open for discussion, that being random stuff I find funny/interesting/pressing enough to have to let other people in on). Both music and movies take up a huge chunk of my free-time so talking about them on here will at least give you readers a glimpse into what I'm about.

So for my first post I am posting a video by one of my favorite bands at the moment, Local Natives. They are a small little band from LA, but they have already developed a fairly large fan base through the internet and their live shows. I was lucky enough to see them open for Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros at the 40 Watt here in Athens last semester. I was already a big fan of theirs before the show, but they somehow managed to make me an even bigger fan by the end of their performance. This is one of their better songs off of their upcoming debut album Gorilla Manor, set to come out next month.

Airplanes - Local Natives